Time Distortions and the UFO Experience

For most people, spotting a UFO would be considered extremely unusual, but for two Ohio women, seeing a UFO was the least surprising part of their experience.

In June 2001, two sisters, Angie Whitmeyer and Deborah Simmons, were returning from a day of shopping in Dayton, Ohio, when a strange light in the sky caught their attention.

“We were heading home to Kingman, Ohio, on State Road 73,” Deborah recalled. “It was a beautiful evening around 8:30 p.m., the air was warm and the sky crystal clear. Angie was driving and I was watching the scenery go by when I noticed a bright light in the western sky.”

Deborah watched in amazement as the light grew in intensity and flew towards the car at an incredible speed.

“Deborah asked me what that weird light was,” said Angie. “But we were close to Caesar Creek Lake and the road was pretty dark so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to it. But then it flew right in front of us so I couldn’t miss it.”

The bright light soared past the car and hovered over the nearby treetops, casting an eerie glow over the entire area. Whitmeyer pulled the car over onto the side of the road so they could get a better look at the unusual object.

Deborah was shocked by how large and close the UFO was to them: “The light was so bright and white that you couldn’t see any shape behind it. But we could tell it was pretty big, at least as big as a house. The funny thing was that I couldn’t hear any sort of engine like you would normally hear with an airplane or helicopter. It was completely silent.”

Suddenly, another, identical bright light swooped down from the sky and hovered a short distance away. The two sisters decided the situation was becoming too strange and tried to drive away.

“That’s when I discovered that the car had stopped and I couldn’t restart it,” Angie said. “Nothing worked, the lights, the radio, it was completely dead.”

The two women also noticed an odd silence had descended over the area, accompanied by a strange feeling of isolation. Angie remembered that it seemed as if they were the only people in the world.

“I don’t remember seeing another car come by during the entire time we were there, which is really weird because at that time of an evening there’s always traffic on that road. And it was just dead silent outside, no birds, nothing. It was as if we were in another world.”

Uncertain what to do next, Angie and her sister continued to watch the strange pair of lights, when, unexpectedly, both objects shot straight up and disappeared into the night sky. The area was plunged into darkness, and oddly enough, the normal sounds of the night came back almost as if switched on.

“As soon as the lights flew away,” Deborah said, “the car started running again all by itself. The lights and radio were on just as they were before everything happened.”

According to their watches, the strange encounter had lasted more than 20 minutes. However, when they arrived home, Deborah’s husband seemed unconcerned about what they thought was a late arrival. That’s when they discovered that instead of being after 9:00 p.m., as their wristwatches indicated, it was only 8:35 p.m.

“It was as if the entire time we spent looking at those lights had never happened,” Angie said. “But it did happen, our watches both showed we had been stuck out there for over 20 minutes, but somehow we gained that time back with a few minutes to spare. Normally we should have been home at around ten to nine, but somehow, despite what had happened, we got there early.”

How the Mainstream Press..

On November 26, 2002, North American Aerospace Defense Command began receiving reports of a contrail of unknown origin in the air over the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Fighter jets were scrambled from several bases to intercept the unknown that was heading northwest toward the U.S., but reportedly, nothing was spotted. Commercial airline pilots later reported the contrail over Florida and later over Indiana.

This fascinating report received scant attention in the U.S. press, which is unusual considering the zeal for "national security" that has been rampant since 9/11. The thought is disturbing that an unknown aircraft could fly with impunity over the United States and receive only a few paragraphs in local papers. What could possibly explain this odd lack of curiosity by the national media?

Actually, the failure of the press to respond to this story is no surprise considering that the mainstream press has developed the attitude that UFO reports are strictly for the tabloids. This position has become so pervasive that when some editors and journalists have attempted serious, well researched, UFO investigations, they found themselves isolated by their peers.

The popular misconception is that UFOs are seen only by the uneducated, the mentally ill, or hoaxers seeking personal gain. Because of this, many think that any reporter interested in handling such a story must also be so inclined. Heaven help a journalist who has had a personal UFO experience and attempts to report on it. He may face severe questions concerning his credibility as a journalist.

There had been some hope within the UFO community that the subject of UFOs would be given fair treatment when ABC ran the special Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs - Seeing Is Believing on February 24 2005. However, the program had little to do with objectively reporting on the UFO phenomenon and instead dealt more with debunking the extraterrestrial hypothesis, treating the subject as if this was the only explanation for UFOs. For those who have been active over the years in UFO research, the ABC show was just more of the same when it comes to the media's mind-set towards the phenomena.

According to the current attitude with the news media, there has never been anything mysterious about UFO sightings; they can all be easily explained away with glib, uninformed blanket statements. However, this has not always been the case. In the late 1940's the mainstream press regularly covered UFO reports. At that time UFOs were a relatively unknown phenomenon and had not been tainted by the "lunatic fringe" that would surface in the 1950's and 60's. By then, most media outlets had become discouraged by the lack of progress in explaining UFOs and little, if any, verifiable evidence.

By the time the seventies had rolled around, UFO stories were permanently consigned to the back pages next to the horoscope column. Except for local, small town papers, the news media rarely reports UFO sightings. When they do, the subject is presented as a "feature story," not to be taken seriously. In large metropolitan newspapers, the occasional UFO report that does gets printed is usually restricted to the paper's entertainment section.

There has been one recent exception to this trend and that was the November 7, 2006 sighting of a UFO over O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Although it was not until January 1, 2007 that the Chicago Tribune decided to run a report about the O'Hare incident, when the story did finally hit the Tribune's pages, the story was intelligently written with none of the condescending attitude or editorializing that usually accompanies UFO reports.

Doctors and experts on Alioshenka

Igor Uskov, an urologist with a local hospital, was on duty on that day. A telephone rang in his office about midday. He burst out laughing when policeman on the other end of the line told him the reason why his services were required.

“The dead body of an alien? Stop kidding me, will you?”

“Doctor, you’d better take a look at it yourself …”

Dr. Uskov was the first medical professional to examine the body. He reckoned that it might as well be a human fetus aged some 20 weeks. Dr. Uskov asked his colleague Irina Ermolayeva, a gynecologist, for a second opinion. Dr. Ermolayeva agreed that the body looked very much like an underdeveloped fetus expelled from the womb prematurely i.e. a miscarriage.

The doctors’ verdict was music for Bendlin’s eyes. Everything was falling into place. The strange thing was not an alien any more; it was a human fetus, yet another case of illegal abortion. The investigator had dealt with several cases of illegal abortion before. He expected to close the case right after getting an autopsist’s opinion. Bendlin hoped that the autopsist would tell him that the fetus was either stillborn or too underdeveloped to live, and therefore the case would be not be a matter for further investigation.

Stanislav Samoshkin, a chief of morbid anatomy department at the Kyshtym hospital, didn’t smile and make cheesy jokes about aliens when the policemen brought the creature to his office. He performed a thorough autopsy on the body of the dwarf. And then he announced that the creature was neither a human being nor an animal. According to him, it was some new life form.

I met Dr. Samoshkin several years after the Kyshtym dwarf caused a worldwide sensation. According to him, he never doubted the conclusion he reached on that day.

“The creature was not by any means a human being. The human skull consists of six bones. The skull of that creature was made up of 4 bones. There were other differences in the skeleton structure. Those anomalies didn’t look like any congenital malformations known to date,” Dr. Samoshkin said.

The curse of Alioshenka

The dwarf from Kyshtym did not do any harm to anybody while he was in the land of the living. Some really weird things began to happen following the death of the creature. The old lady, a “godmother” of Alioshenka the Alien, died in a hit-and-run accident. The woman was knocked down by a car just a few days before a team of researchers arrived in the town from Moscow.

The body of the dwarf vanished without a trace. An investigator assigned to the case is reported to have handed the corpse to some perpetrators who walked off with it. A Japanese TV crew arrived in Kyshtym to do a documentary on Alioshenka. The Japanese posted a reward of $200,000 for information on the whereabouts of the stolen creature. However, their attempts to locate the body of the dwarf ended in failure. A minute piece of the dead body was the only hard evidence the Japanese somehow managed to recover. The Japanese displayed the object for the benefit of the cameras.

Academician Mark Milkhiker looked into the Kyshtym phenomenon on location. He carefully examined the area in which the dwarf was found. Milkhiker fell seriously ill shortly after he returned to Moscow. He died of a sudden heart attack while in hospital.

The above Vadim Chernobrov was also taken ill four years after the discovery of the dwarf. A mysterious disease paralyzed him from the waist down. Doctors were unable to explain the cause of his disease. It was Chernobrov who found a piece of fabric used by the old lady for wrapping around the dwarf on the day she found him.

Were all those misfortunes a coincidence? Did the alien really put a curse on everyone who tried to solve his mystery?

It is clear that Deguchi Masao, a producer of the Japanese documentary on Alioshenka, fell victim to his own naivety that borders on idiocy. What did he do? He promised to pay cash to locals who could share their memories of the dwarf with his crew. Needless to say, the news spread across the town like wildfire. Dozens of bums and drunkards formed a long line around the house where the Japanese were interviewing “eyewitnesses.” It took the producer a while to realize that all those incredible accounts of the event were a fake.

I have been following the Kyshtym phenomenon since it came to light in 1996. I visited Kyshtym several times to get firsthand information from those who were part of the story. Now it is about time I dusted off my old notebooks containing real eyewitness accounts so that we can separate a few grains of truth from a collection of assorted conjectures and speculations.

I am quite confident that the mummified body of the creature is not a myth. There are numerous witnesses who saw the dead body of Alioshenka. Major (Ret.) Vladimir Bendlin, a former investigator with the police department of Kyshtym, is the most important witness.

On a rainy summer morning the police detained one Vladimir Nurtdinov, a local resident suspected of stealing electrical wire. The police confiscated a bundle the man was carrying. Having removed a piece of red cloth from the object, the police were amazed to see a small mummified body of a strange creature. The police placed the corpse on the cloth and videotaped it. Bendlin noticed on the spot that the creature looked like an alien, in a way aliens are usually portrayed in sci-fi movies. The creature looked stone-cold and lifeless. It felt the same by touch.

Bendlin opened investigation into the case of an “alien.” A dead body found under the circumstances normally entails a police investigation. In line with regulation, the police were supposed to determine the cause of death of the strange being.

Russian geneticists to reveal alien’s DNA mystery

Scientists may soon unravel the mystery of the “Uralian alien,” a tiny creature found near the town of Kyshtym in the Urals. Scientists carried out five series of laboratory studies investigating the DNA samples of the creature’s biological material.

The latest study conducted by a Moscow-based Institute of Forensic Medicine produced sensational results.

“A gene discovered in the DNA samples doesn’t correspond with any genes pertaining to humans or anthropoid apes,” said Vadim Chernobrov, a coordinator with the public research center Kosmopoisk. “No gene samples available at the laboratory match the gene. The experts in DNA research haven’t come across any creatures with such an elongated DNA molecule,” Chernobrov added.

Scientists have been looking for an explanation of the Kyshtym phenomenon for more than ten years. The story began in the summer of 1996 after a miniature creature was found in the Chelyabinsk region. The find was soon dubbed the “Kyshtym alien.” A local medical examiner who performed an autopsy concluded that the dead body was neither human nor animal in nature.

Ufologists regarded the Kyshtym dwarf as a clear-cut case of the extraterrestrial. The clergy believe the dwarf was a demon. The creature was still alive when it was found by an old and barely literate woman. She was the only one who gave the dwarf a human name – Alioshenka (a diminutive of the Russian name “Alexei” – ed. note).

Alien recoveries

The two Air Force reports on the Roswell UFO incident, published in 1994/5 and 1997, form the basis for much of the skeptical explanation for the 1947 incident, the purported recovery of aliens and their craft from the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico.

The first report, “The Roswell Report: Fact verses Fiction in the New Mexico Desert,” identified a secret military research program called Project Mogul as the source of the debris reported in 1947. The second report, "The Roswell Report: Case Closed” concluded that reports of alien recoveries were likely misidentified military programs or accidents.

Based on the evidence which could be gathered, the report concluded that the 1947 incident was not an airplane crash, a missile crash, a nuclear accident, or the recovery of an extraterrestrial craft. Obviously, the latter conclusion was the key one. “…the research indicated absolutely no evidence of any kind [italics in original] that a spaceship crashed near Roswell or that any alien occupants were recovered therefrom, in some secret military operation or otherwise.”
The overwhelming focus of the military at the time was on something more down-to-earth, the report noted: “All the records… indicated that the focus of concern was not on aliens, hostile or otherwise, but on the Soviet Union.”

While the report acknowledged that there would be some who would label the report itself as part of the “cover up,” and would probably assert that evidence corroborating alien recoveries at Roswell or nearby remained hidden or was destroyed, an assertion nearly impossible to disprove, evidence showing the increased activity which would surely be associated with a cover up operation of such a seminal event was also completely lacking, making the assertion that something was being hidden extremely unlikely. “There were no indications and warnings, notice of alerts, or a higher tempo of operational activity reported that would be logically generated if an alien craft, whose intentions were unknown, entered US territory.” The report also refuted claims that several specific high-ranking military personnel were engaged in activities surrounding a recovery of aliens and a cover-up during the time in question by tracing their actual documented activities.

In eliminating an alien recovery as the source of the incident, the report concluded: “… if some event happened that was one of the ‘watershed happenings’ in human history, the US military certainly reacted in an unconcerned and cavalier manner. In an actual case, the military would have had to order thousands of soldiers and airmen, not only at Roswell but throughout the US, to act nonchalantly, pretend to conduct and report business as usual, and generate absolutely no paperwork of a suspicious nature, while simultaneously anticipating that twenty years or more into the future people would have available a comprehensive Freedom of Information Act that would give them great leeway to review and explore government documents. The records indicate that none of this happened (or if it did, it was controlled by a security system so efficient and tight that no one, US or otherwise, has been able to duplicate it since. If such a system had been in effect at the time, it would have also been used to protect our atomic secrets from the Soviets, which history has showed obviously was not the case). The records reviewed confirmed that no such sophisticated and efficient security system existed.”

UFO Crashes

On July 8, 1995, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed "flying disc" from a ranch near Roswell, sparking intense media interest. Later the same day, the Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force stated that, in fact, a weather balloon had been recovered by RAAF personnel, rather than a "flying saucer." A subsequent press conference was called, featuring debris said to be from the crashed object that seemed to confirm the weather balloon description. The case was quickly forgotten and almost completely ignored, even by UFO researchers, for more than 30 years. Then, in 1978, ufologist Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel, who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947. Marcel expressed his belief that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft. His story circulated through UFO circles, being featured in some UFO documentaries at the time.

In response to these reports, and after congressional inquiries, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two reports. The first, released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul. The second report, released in 1997, concluded that reports of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, and the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive conducted in the 1950s, and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents. The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancy with the years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible, though significant numbers of UFO researchers discount the probability that any alien crash was in fact involved

What's the difference between a star and a planet?

Introduction

If you want to examine what conditions are necessary for a planet to support live, an important question will be: When do you call an object a planet? Or what is the difference between a star and a planet? In this article I will try to explain the exact difference between the two and I will look at the atmosphere, the mass and the temperature, to examine if live is possible on these objects.

Star formation

A star forms when a very big cloud of gas contracts under the influence of its own gravitational force. As this contraction takes place the object emits energy. This energy is called fall energy. As a result of this contraction the core gets denser and hotter. When the core reaches a temperature of about 3 million Kelvin, it starts to emit light, because of nuclear fusion ( Krane, K.S) reactions in the core. At this stage the gas cloud will stop its contraction because now the gravitational force is in equilibrium with the pressure build up by the hot gas. When this starts to happen you can say that a new star is born.

Planet formation

A planet on the other hand is build up out of the dust that surrounds a star. When a star is formed there is still a disk of gas surrounding it. As this gas cools, it condenses and forms solid grains. These grain particles accrete into large bodies called planetesimals, which then collide and accrete to make protoplanets. These protoplanets evolve into planets like the planets in our own solar system.
So the formation of a star is totally different from that of a planet. This is the main difference between a star and a planet. If an object has a mass of 0.084 times the mass of our own sun (85 times the mass of Jupiter) the core reaches a point where it can start the process of nuclear fusion in its core (see fig.1). If the mass is smaller than this, the lowest temperature to support nuclear fusion will never be reached and the object will never shine like a star. But can we call all of these objects planets? No, objects with a mass between 85*Mj (85 times the mass of Jupiter) and 13*Mj can't sustain nuclear fusion of elements like hydrogen (H) and helium (He) but can support the fusion of two protons into deuterium (D), early in their lifetime. These objects are called brown dwarfs. They form the transition between stars and planets.

Above a calm, dark ocean, a huge, bloated red sun rises in the sky - a full ten times the size of our Sun as seen from Earth. Small waves lap at a sandy shore and on the beach, something stirs...

This is the scene - or may be the scene - on what is possibly the most extraordinary world to have been discovered by astronomers: the first truly Earth-like planet to have been found outside our Solar System.

The discovery was announced today by a team of European astronomers, using a telescope in La Silla in the Chilean Andes. If forced bookies to slash odds on the existence of alien beings.

The Earth-like planet that could be covered in oceans and may support life is 20.5 light years away, and has the right temperature to allow liquid water on its surface.
his remarkable discovery appears to confirm the suspicions of most astronomers that the universe is swarming with Earth-like worlds.

We don't yet know much about this planet, but scientists believe that it may be the best candidate so far for supporting extraterrestrial life.

The new planet, which orbits a small, red star called Gliese 581, is about one-and-a-half times the diameter of the Earth.

It probably has a substantial atmosphere and may be covered with large amounts of water - necessary for life to evolve - and, most importantly, temperatures are very similar to those on our world.

It is the first exoplanet (a planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun) that is anything like our Earth.

Of the 220 or so exoplanets found to date, most have either been too big, made of gas rather than solid material, far too hot, or far too cold for life to survive.

"On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," says Xavier Delfosse, one of the scientists who discovered the planet.

"Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life."

Is There Life on Mars?

With each passing day, those peppy robots on Mars - Spirit and Opportunity - churn out extraordinary new views of the red planet. Each robot is over a year in operation, relaying a steady stream of eye-catching photos.

And more than once, the Mars machinery has sent back an image that stirred up a promising eureka moment: Finding evidence for life on that remote world.

A case in point, during a recent run of Spirit in the Columbia Hills, the robot used its arm-mounted devices to poke and probe a select Mars rock. One piece of hardware -- the Rock Abrasion Tool, known better as the RAT -- is on hand to expose fresh martian rock.

The RAT utilizes a single diamond matrix wheel to scrape the rock surface. It does this ever so slightly and progressively to achieve a wanted depth. The abraded surface is actively swept clean by a brush to prepare it for scientific examinations.

Once the rock was worked over, Spirit's Microscopic Imager went in for close-up looks at the results.

And within the images, an odd feature could be seen, seemingly a pattern of something more biological than just rock.

Planets around other Stars

Did you know that about 200 planets have been discovered around distant stars? The first planet found to be orbiting a star like our Sun was announced in 1995. Since then astronomers have continued to find new planets outside of our solar system, at a rate of more than one new planet every month!

Artist's concept of a rocky planet in orbit around a distant star.

The star and its planet orbit around each other. The planet moves in a wide orbit, while the star just appears to wobble slightly. By measuring the Doppler shift of the light coming from the star, scientists can detect the tiny motion caused by the planet. Most of the distant planets were discovered this way.

If we are lucky, some of the planets can pass in front of their star. This blocks out some of the light that we usually see from the star, briefly making it dimmer. It's like a solar eclipse, but the planet only covers a small part of the star. Only a few planets outside our solar system pass in front of their stars.

All of the distant planets are too far away to see directly. We can only see their effect on the star that they orbit.

Strange Stuff In Space

There is some pretty strange stuff in space. Things which are unlike anything that anyone sees every day on Earth. Things that challenge our ideas about the Universe. Things that are just so weird that even astrophysicists don't know what they are.

The doomed star Eta Carinae, it is blowing itself apart before it finally goes supernova

When stars die they go out in many different ways. When average mass stars, like our sun, die they go by throwing off their outer layers and leaving behind a White Dwarf. When very massive stars die they often blow themsleves apart in a huge explosion called a Supernova. Depending on how massive a star was that went supernova, a Neutron Star or a perhaps a Black Hole may be left behind as a monument to its former glory.

There are still stranger things in space. Not very long ago astronomers were baffled by the mystery of Quasars. These objects look like stars but are much farther away than stars in our galaxy and they are much more luminous than entire galaxies.

There is also a phenomenon (no, not John Travolta) that has caused much excitement and wonder among astronomers called Gravitational Lensing. This is where massive objects, like galaxies and galaxy clusters, actually bend light like a lens, using gravity! Is that wacky or what!?

One of the strangest things in space is the mystery of Gamma Ray Bursts. These are what seem to be random bursts of gamma rays, you know the radiation that transformed Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. They come from every direction in the sky, they never repeat, and they may indicate the most energetic processes ever seen.

Top 10 Pieces of Evidence For Extra-Terrestial Life

If you are looking for intelligent life beyond our planet here are 10 controversial pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life:

1. 1976, The Viking Mars landers detect chemical signatures indicative of life

2. 1977, The unexplained extraterrestrial “Wow!” signal is detected by an Ohio State University radio telescope

3. 1996, Martian “fossils” are discovered in meteorite ALH80041 from Antarctica

4. 2001, A more rigorous estimate of the “Drake equation” suggests that our galaxy may contain hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets

5. 2001, The red tinge of Jupiter’s moon Europa proposed to be due to frozen bits of bacteria, which also helps explain the mysterious infrared signal it gives off

6. 2002, Russian scientists argue that a mysterious radiation-proof microbe may have evolved on Mars

7. 2002, Chemical hints of life are found in old data from Venus probes and landers. Could microbes exist in Venusian clouds?

8. 2003, Sulphur traces on Jupiter’s moon Europa may be the waste products of underground bacterial colonies

9. 2004, Methane in the Martian atmosphere hints at microbial metabolism

10. 2004, A mysterious radio signal is received by the SETI project on three occasions - from the same region of space

Classification of Asteroids

Asteroids are classified into a number of types according to their spectra (and hence their chemical composition) and albedo:

• C-type, includes more than 75% of known asteroids: extremely dark (albedo 0.03); similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites; approximately the same chemical composition as the Sun minus hydrogen, helium and other volatiles;
• S-type, 17%: relatively bright (albedo .10-.22); metallic nickel-iron mixed with iron- and magnesium-silicates;
• M-type, most of the rest: bright (albedo .10-.18); pure nickel-iron.
• There are also a dozen or so other rare types.

Because of biases involved in the observations (e.g. the dark C-types are harder to see), the percentages above may not be representative of the true distribution of asteroids. (There are actually several classification schemes in use today.)

There is little data about the densities of asteroids. But by sensing the Doppler effect on radio waves returning to Earth from NEAR owing to the (very slight) gravitational tug between asteroid and spacecraft, Mathilde's mass could be estimated. Surprisingly, its density turns out to be not much greater than that of water, suggesting that it is not a solid object but rather a compacted pile of debris.

Asteroids are also categorized by their position in the solar system:

• Main Belt: located between Mars and Jupiter roughly 2 - 4 AU from the Sun; further divided into subgroups: Hungarias, Floras, Phocaea, Koronis, Eos, Themis, Cybeles and Hildas (which are named after the main asteroid in the group).
• Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs): ones that closely approach the Earth
  • Atens: semimajor axes less than 1.0 AU and aphelion distances greater than 0.983 AU;
  • Apollos: semimajor axes greater than 1.0 AU and perihelion distances less than 1.017 AU
  • Amors: perihelion distances between 1.017 and 1.3 AU;
• Trojans: located near Jupiter's Lagrange points (60 degrees ahead and behind Jupiter in its orbit). Several hundred such asteroids are now known; it is estimated that there may be a thousand or more altogether. Curiously, there are many more in the leading Lagrange point (L4) than in the trailing one (L5). (There may also be a few small asteroids in the Lagrange points of Venus and Earth (see Earth's Second Moon) that are also sometimes known as Trojans; 5261 Eureka is a "Mars Trojan".)

Between the main concentrations of asteroids in the Main Belt are relatively empty regions known as the Kirkwood gaps. These are regions where an object's orbital period would be a simple fraction of that of Jupiter. An object in such an orbit is very likely to be accelerated by Jupiter into a different orbit.

Asteroids

The first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, is the largest asteroid known to date and is now classified as a dwarf planet. All others are currently classified as small solar system bodies. The vast majority of asteroids are found within the main asteroid belt, with elliptical orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter. It is thought that these asteroids are remnants of the protoplanetary disc, and in this region the accretion of planetesimals into a larger planet or planets during the formative period of the solar system was prevented by large gravitational perturbations by Jupiter. Some asteroids have moons or are found in co-orbiting pairs known as binary systems.

253 Mathilde, a C-type asteroid.

Asteroids, also called minor planets or planetoids, are a class of astronomical objects. The term asteroid is generally used to indicate a diverse group of small celestial bodies in the solar system that orbit around the Sun. 'Asteroid' (Greek for "star-like") is the most commonly used word in the English literature for minor planets, which has been the term preferred by the International Astronomical Union; some other languages prefer planetoid (Greek: "planet-like"), because it more or less describes what they are. In late August 2006, the IAU introduced the term "small solar system bodies" (SSSB), which includes most objects thus far classified as minor planets, as well as comets. At the same time they introduced the term 'dwarf planet' for the largest minor planets. This article deals specifically with the minor planets that orbit in the inner solar system (roughly up to the orbit of Jupiter). For information on other types of objects, such as comets, Trans-Neptunian objects, and centaurs, see Small solar system body.

Comets

Unlike the other small bodies in the solar system, comets have been known since antiquity. There are Chinese records of Comet Halley going back to at least 240 BC. The famous Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, depicts an apparition of Comet Halley.

As of 1995, 878 comets have been cataloged and their orbits at least roughly calculated. Of these 184 are periodic comets (orbital periods less than 200 years); some of the remainder are no doubt periodic as well, but their orbits have not been determined with sufficient accuracy to tell for sure.

Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or "icy mudballs". They are a mixture of ices (both water and frozen gases) and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into planets when the solar system was formed. This makes them very interesting as samples of the early history of the solar system.

When they are near the Sun and active, comets have several distinct parts:

• nucleus: relatively solid and stable, mostly ice and gas with a small amount of dust and other solids;
• coma: dense cloud of water, carbon dioxide and other neutral gases sublimed from the nucleus;
• hydrogen cloud: huge (millions of km in diameter) but very sparse envelope of neutral hydrogen;
• dust tail: up to 10 million km long composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off the nucleus by escaping gases; this is the most prominent part of a comet to the unaided eye;
• ion tail: as much as several hundred million km long composed of plasma and laced with rays and streamers caused by interactions with the solar wind.

Comets are invisible except when they are near the Sun. Most comets have highly eccentric orbits which take them far beyond the orbit of Pluto; these are seen once and then disappear for millennia. Only the short- and intermediate-period comets (like Comet Halley), stay within the orbit of Pluto for a significant fraction of their orbits.

After 500 or so passes near the Sun off most of a comet's ice and gas is lost leaving a rocky object very much like an asteroid in appearance. (Perhaps half of the near-Earth asteroids may be "dead" comets.) A comet whose orbit takes it near the Sun is also likely to either impact one of the planets or the Sun or to be ejected out of the solar system by a close encounter (esp. with Jupiter).

By far the most famous comet is Comet Halley but SL 9 was a "big hit" for a week in the summer of 1994.

Meteor shower sometimes occur when the Earth passes thru the orbit of a comet. Some occur with great regularity: the Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when the Earth passes thru the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle. Comet Halley is the source of the Orionid shower in October.

Many comets are first discovered by amateur astronomers. Since comets are brightest when near the Sun, they are usually visible only at sunrise or sunset. Charts showing the positions in the sky of some comets can be created with a planetarium program.

Advanced extraterrestrial alien civilization

It is estimated that terrestrial technologies can detect one in hundred asteroids and comets that is in a collision course.

Interestingly, even if we in the earth find some incoming asteroids that will collide with the earth, little we can do. Take the example of asteroid 1950AD. It is about three quarters of a mile in length. It will collide with earth in year 2880. The collision will cause an explosion equivalent to 100,000 megaton. The human race will get wiped out. Knowing this very well, we can do little to protect us. A nuclear missile if sent out to encounter the asteroid will make a zillion scattered pieces and the earth will get bombarded zillion times in different place and the effect will be even worse. We do not have the power to vaporize this asteroid with the entire nuclear arsenal in the earth. A close vicinity nuclear explosion may deflect it if the asteroid is of high density and we know about the asteroid at least two years before it impacts on the earth. There are other evolving theories to neutralize the incoming asteroids but nothing has been tested. On top of that we can detect one in hundred such crashing bodies (comets and asteroids) coming towards us. Many scientists believe we just do not have the technologies to protect us.

But case after case in different parts of the world, there are evidences that comets and asteroids have been neutralized either through deflection or explosion before hitting the earth. Who is doing the protection job deflecting and neutralizing asteroids and comets before they are hitting the earth?

According to some scientists, the asteroid belt is disturbed and many asteroids are colliding among themselves. This causes deflection of these asteroids into the inner solar system with possible collision paths with the earth. If any one of these hit the earth, we are history. We can detect very few of these asteroids. As a matter of fact in many cases we realized that these asteroids and comets have missed the earth by a hair in the cosmic scale.

According to scientists there is some advanced alien civilization that is protecting the earth for a long time and is determined not to let these asteroids collide with earth. If you have a doubt, they suggest look at moon surface that have received zillion asteroids and comets and the moon’s dead surface bear the history in every inch of its surface. No one is protecting the moon or mars for whatever reason.

Energy needed to vaporize a comet or asteroid to protect the earth is far larger than the combined aggregation of all nuclear bombs in different parts of the earth. The extraterrestrial alien civilization is using radiation energy tapped from the Hyperspace through the fermions to neutralize the asteroids and comets.

Scientists getting a clue from this are rapidly looking at the Hyperspace to tap endless radiation energy to neutralize incoming comets and asteroids. This radiation energy can also provide enormous alternative fuel that is cheap, have no nuclear waste and above all intense to perform whatever we want to do.

Looking for aliens in all the wrong places

So why hasn't SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, heard any alien radio signals yet, ask the report authors? The question is best known as "Fermi's Paradox," first posed by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950, when he asked, "Where are they?" Even a modestly sophisticated alien species could likely colonize every star in the galaxy within 10 million years, Fermi reasoned, based on technologies understood more than half-a-century ago. Ever since, Fermi and his successors have been asking why we haven't heard from any aliens yet.

An artist?s impression of a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. A study suggests that such sun-centered planets are the wrong place to look for alien life.

SETI has long searched for signals from aliens in radio transmissions. The focus has been on nearby sun-like stars, which may have life like our own, says astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. The effort has been privately funded since 1994. So far, no alien signals, which some argue calls for a change in direction.

"The need for such reassessment is fueled not only by the failure of SETI thus far, but also by great advances recently made in astrophysics, astrobiology, computer science and future studies," say the New Astronomy report authors. One reason for the failure, they contend, may be that we are looking for the wrong aliens in the wrong part of the galaxy. Just like humanity today, any reasonably intelligent aliens will quickly develop and become dependent on computers, or "machine intelligence," they argue, following a suggestion made by science historian Steven Dick in 2003.

That matters, because, "as almost anyone having practical experience with computers will have experienced, heat is an enemy of computation," they note. So, they argue, since the stars where these computer-dependent aliens arose will slowly be burning up (our sun will turn into a red giant in 5 billion years, for example), the places where extraterrestrials will slowly migrate to, and perhaps build space colonies, is the place where computers are most comfortable. That would be in the cold depths of space at the edge of galaxies, far from the fiery stars.

SETI, Cirkovic and Bradbury charge, is "fundamentally flawed" because it looks for signals from aliens from nearby sun-like stars. "Outward migration of advanced technological species should be taken into account in future practical SETI projects," they write. "The true test here would be to detect signs of astro-engineering efforts at the outskirts of nearby spiral galaxies."

Shostak, of the SETI Institute, agrees that intelligent aliens likely are dependent on computers, or are computers themselves. But the assumption that computational efficiency will drive aliens ever outward, overriding any other goal, is a big one, he says. "It's a clever idea, but more than likely to be wrong."

After all, finding some place cold in space to do computations isn't the biggest problem that aliens will likely face, he says, compared to the energy lost in migrating outside the galaxy. Besides, "who knows what will motivate alien machines?" he asks. "Our knowledge of alien sociology is pretty sparse."

On a more practical level, the challenge for SETI astronomers is the simple fact that radio signals get weaker as they get farther away, limiting how many places we can actually listen to. Our galaxy's edge is loosely at least 25,000 light years away (one light year equals about 5.9 trillion miles), making radio signals from there quite faint.

The real problem is that the Milky Way galaxy contains several hundred billion stars, Shostak adds, so even looking at a million stars constitutes a search of only a tiny fraction of possible homes for aliens. And actually only about 800 nearby stars have been carefully listened to in recent SETI searches, making it a needle-in-the-haystack deal. "It all depends on your guess of the number of broadcast locations in the galaxy," Shostak says. Astronomer Frank Drake, one of SETI's founders, estimated that perhaps 10,000 alien species live in the Milky Way. "That means you have to look at a few million stars to have a reasonable chance," Shostak says.

Still, Shostak says that SETI would be happy to try looking. One thing they likely won't try is broadcasting messages, he says, because the speed of light puts a limit on how fast you can converse. Given that the nearest aliens might be 1,000 light years away, even if we are lucky, "that's long time to wait to hear back 'huh? could you repeat that?'," he says.

Did aliens save planet in 1908?

Members of a Russian scientific team researching the site of the Tunguska meteorite crash of 1908 say they have found remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, report a variety of Russian news agencies.

The object appeared to be a large metallic block, according to the reports. The researchers chipped off a piece of the object and will now test its composition.

One scientist said based on his calculations, the mass of the space object headed for Earth in 1908 was nearly 1 billion tons. He believes the meteorite was blasted by the spaceship at an altitude of 10 kilometers to prevent the destruction of all humanity on the planet.

"I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization," Yuri Lavbin said. "They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed," he said. "Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research," he added.

Lavbin says that the results of this year's expedition give him hope that the Tunguska mystery will be solved before the phenomenon's 100th anniversary. To do this, Russian researchers plan another large-scale expedition to the Eastern Siberia.

The scientific team says the Tunguska event was an aerial explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia June 30, 1908. The blast felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,150-square kilometers. Local residents observed a huge fireball, almost as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. A few minutes later, there was a flash that lit up half of the sky, followed by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows up to 400 miles away.

The explosion registered at seismic stations across Eurasia, and produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected by the recently invented barographs in Britain. Over the next few weeks, night skies over Europe and western Russia glowed brightly enough for people to read by. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months.

The size of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 15 megatons. Until this year members of numerous expeditions have failed to find any remains of the object that caused the event.

The Bermuda Triangle

The "Bermuda Triangle" or "Devil's Triangle" is an imaginary area located off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States of America, which is noted for a supposedly high incidence of unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft. The apexes of the triangle are generally believed to be Bermuda; Miami, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The US Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name. The US Navy does not believe the Bermuda Triangle exists. It is reported that Lloyd's of London, the world's leading market for specialist insurance, does not charge higher premiums for vessels transiting this heavily traveled area.

The most famous US Navy losses which have occurred in the area popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle are USS Cyclops in March 1918 and the aircraft of Flight 19 in December 1945. The ship probably sank in an unexpected storm, and the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean -- no physical traces of them have ever been found. Another well known disappearance is the civilian tanker SS Marine Sulphur Queen carrying bulk molten sulfur which sank in February 1963. Although the wreck of Marine Sulphur Queen has not been located, a life preserver and other floating artifacts were recovered. These disappearances have been used to provide credence to the popular belief in the mystery and purported supernatural qualities of the "Bermuda Triangle."

Since the days of early civilization many thousands of ships have sunk and/or disappeared in waters around the world due to navigational and other human errors, storms, piracy, fires, and structural/mechanical failures. Aircraft are subject to the same problems, and many of them have crashed at sea around the globe. Often, there were no living witnesses to the sinking or crash, and hence the exact cause of the loss and the location of the lost ship or aircraft are unknown. A large number of pleasure boats travel the waters between Florida and the Bahamas. All too often, crossings are attempted with too small a boat, insufficient knowledge of the area's hazards, and a lack of good seamanship.

To see how common accidents are at sea, you can examine some of the recent accident reports of the National Transportation Safety Board for ships and aircraft. One of the aircraft accident reports concerns an in-flight engine failure and subsequent ditching of a Cessna aircraft near Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas on 13 July 2003. This is the type of accident that would likely have been attributed to mysterious causes in the Bermuda Triangle if there had been no survivors or other eyewitnesses of the crash.

A significant factor with regard to missing vessels in the Bermuda Triangle is a strong ocean current called the Gulf Stream. It is extremely swift and turbulent and can quickly erase evidence of a disaster. The weather also plays its role. Prior to the development of telegraph, radio and radar, sailors did not know a storm or hurricane was nearby until it appeared on the horizon. For example, the Continental Navy sloop Saratoga was lost off the Bahamas in such a storm with all her crew on 18 March 1781. Many other US Navy ships have been lost at sea in storms around the world. Sudden local thunder storms and water spouts can sometimes spell disaster for mariners and air crews. Finally, the topography of the ocean floor varies from extensive shoals around the islands to some of the deepest marine trenches in the world. With the interaction of the strong currents over the many reefs the topography of the ocean bottom is in a state of flux and the development of new navigational hazards can sometimes be swift.

It has been inaccurately claimed that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on earth at which a magnetic compass points towards true north. Normally a compass will point toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 60 degrees at various locations around the World. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, navigators can find themselves far off course and in deep trouble. Although in the past this compass variation did affect the "Bermuda Triangle" region, due to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field this has apparently not been the case since the nineteenth century.