Yesterday, aliens popped up in the news again as NASA sought to distance itself from former Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell who claimed extra-terrestrials have been coming to visit for decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said governments have been covering it up for 60 years.

“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit,” he said.

Dr Mitchell’s former bosses were quick to distance themselves from the renewed buzz: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe,” the agency said.

But the Australian Skeptics were not impressed by what Dr Mitchell – or anyone else – thought they saw.  Skeptic spokesman Barry Williams said today the truth is closer to home: it’s all in your head, and you’re wrong.

“We love mysteries and we love solving them, just look at how popular crime fiction and crime TV shows are,” Mr Williams said.  “The brain needs to find answers, it can’t stand not knowing, so it comes to an explanation and quite often it’s wrong.”

Pictures of UFOs

Mr Williams said the UFO explanation is “ready made” after decades of articles, books and movies about alien life.  “Two hundred years ago, when nothing of human construction had ever flown, people thought things in the sky were angels or demons.

The sightings

British tabloid The Sun has been leading the UFO charge in the UK, with almost daily sightings being reported. One story includes a photograph of an object in the sky near a mini tornado, while on June 20, a police helicopter apparently chased a UFO in the sky above Cardiff.

The Daily Telegraph reports that a few weeks ago, a UFO spotter at Nowra on the New South Wales south coast reported seeing a military helicopter following a “rounded triangle shape, about the size of a helicopter without tail or rotor blades” across a golf course.

Around the same time, residents of a small town in the Northern Territory reported being terrified by four unidentified flying objects, while in early June an elderly couple on an NT highway said their car was “dive-bombed” by a UFO.

In March, police in Queensland received several reports of an object glowing orange that streaked across the sky. Whatever it was, it was never found and nor was there any evidence that it hit the ground.

Sydney Observatory astronomy educator Mel Hulbert said it was probably a type of meteor known as a bolide and that a rock falls to Earth every two hours, but volunteers at UFO Research Queensland reckon aliens like visiting the sunshine state because of its natural wonders, like the Great Barrier Reef.

The answers

Mr Williams said the more likely explanation was that people were seeing our planetary neighbours, not inter-stellar visitors.

He said Venus is the most common object mistaken for alien aircraft, followed by Jupiter and Saturn which “can look very bright in the sky at different times.”

“Most of us live in cities or in towns and don’t look at the sky very often,” he said. “A flock of birds flying in formation and all turning at once can be mistaken for a UFO. In the right light and from the right angle it can look like a flash of metal.”

Mr Williams said the problem is that despite all the UFO sightings around the world, no one has produced any concrete evidence that aliens are visiting Earth.

“We live in a vast, vast universe, which the human mind not capable of comprehending. The thought that this one planet in the whole galaxy is the only one to produce life is a fairly daunting thought,” said Mr Williams.

“It’s fairly reasonable to speculate about life, but the huge chain of evidence between that and aliens coming to visit just isn’t there.”

The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur. Although solar and terrestrial magnetic fields behave differently, they do have something in common: their shape. During solar minimum the Sun’s field, like Earth’s, resembles that of an iron bar magnet, with great closed loops near the equator and open field lines near the poles. Scientists call such a field a “dipole.” The Sun’s dipolar field is about as strong as a refrigerator magnet, or 50 gauss (a unit of magnetic intensity). Earth’s magnetic field is 100 times weaker. When solar maximum arrives and sunspots pepper the face of the Sun, our star’s magnetic field begins to change. Sunspots are places where intense magnetic loops — hundreds of times stronger than the ambient dipole field — poke through the photosphere. “Meridional flows on the Sun’s surface carry magnetic fields from mid-latitude sunspots to the Sun’s poles,” explains Hathaway. “The poles end up flipping because these flows transport south-pointing magnetic flux to the north magnetic pole, and north-pointing flux to the south magnetic pole.” The dipole field steadily weakens as oppositely-directed flux accumulates at the Sun’s poles until, at the height of solar maximum, the magnetic poles change polarity and begin to grow in a new direction. Hathaway noticed the latest polar reversal in a “magnetic butterfly diagram.” Using data collected by astronomers at the U.S. National Solar Observatory on Kitt Peak, he plotted the Sun’s average magnetic field, day by day, as a function of solar latitude and time from 1975 through the present. The result is a sort of strip chart recording that reveals evolving magnetic patterns on the Sun’s surface. “We call it a butterfly diagram,” he says, “because sunspots make a pattern in this plot that looks like the wings of a butterfly.” In the butterfly diagram, pictured below, the Sun’s polar fields appear as strips of uniform color near 90 degrees latitude. When the colors change (in this case from blue to yellow or vice versa) it means the polar fields have switched signs. The ongoing changes are not confined to the space immediately around our star, Hathaway added. The Sun’s magnetic field envelops the entire solar system in a bubble that scientists call the “heliosphere.”

The heliosphere extends 50 to 100 astronomical units (AU) beyond the orbit of Pluto. Inside it is the solar system — outside is interstellar space. “Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field are carried outward through the heliosphere by the solar wind,” explains Steve Suess, another solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center. “It takes about a year for disturbances to propagate all the way from the Sun to the outer bounds of the heliosphere.” Because the Sun rotates (once every 27 days) solar magnetic fields corkscrew outwards in the shape of an Archimedian spiral. Far above the poles the magnetic fields twist around like a child’s Slinky toy. Because of all the twists and turns, “the impact of the field reversal on the heliosphere is complicated,” says Hathaway. Sunspots are sources of intense magnetic knots that spiral outwards even as the dipole field vanishes. The heliosphere doesn’t simply wink out of existence when the poles flip — there are plenty of complex magnetic structures to fill the void. Or so the theory goes…. Researchers have never seen the magnetic flip happen from the best possible point of view — that is, from the top down. But now, the unique Ulysses spacecraft may give scientists a reality check. Ulysses, an international joint venture of the European Space Agency and NASA, was launched in 1990 to observe the solar system from very high solar latitudes. Every six years the spacecraft flies 2.2 AU over the Sun’s poles. No other probe travels so far above the orbital plane of the planets. “Ulysses just passed under the Sun’s south pole,” says Suess, a mission co-Investigator. “Now it will loop back and fly over the north pole in the fall.” “This is the most important part of our mission,” he says. Ulysses last flew over the Sun’s poles in 1994 and 1996, during solar minimum, and the craft made several important discoveries about cosmic rays, the solar wind, and more. “Now we get to see the Sun’s poles during the other extreme: Solar Max. Our data will cover a complete solar cycle.”

	STS-80 Lift off from Pad 39B.

Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-80 took a crew of five astronauts into a 17 day, 15 hour and 54 minute mission around the earth, the longest flight in the history of this vehicle. During this lengthy flight a very strange event occurred that even had crewman Dr. Story Musgrave unable to explain what he observed from the shuttle windows.

A large disc shaped object appeared below the Columbia. The shuttle was approximately, 190 Nautical miles high.

The disc was first observed to miraculously appear from out of nowhere, flying through the clouds below and progressing from right to left as the astronauts stared in utter amazement. The outer rim of the craft appeared to be rotating counter-clockwise. It was very large (compared to common space junk and breakaway ice), approximately 50 to 150 feet in diameter.

Astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave, a Payload Specialist on the STS-80 Mission, was interviewed following the flight. As he viewed a videotape of the incident which showed lightning flashes in the atmosphere, the city lights of Denver, Colorado and other earthbound sights, he stated: “I don’t know what it is. Whether it’s a washer, debris, ice particles, I don’t know. But it’s characteristic of the thousands of things which I’ve seen. What is not so characteristic is it appears to come from no where. You would think that if it’s facing the dark side or facing a side towards you which is not reflecting the sun, you would think that you would see something there. It’s really impressive.”

Story Musgrave (STS-80).

During an earlier interview, Dr. Musgrave stated he attempted to communicate with ET life forms during each of his six missions. He actually asked them to take him with them. Now that’s an astronaut with a lot of courage. Dr. Musgrave retired after this flight from NASA. Since then he’s been spreading his considered opinion that alien life exists. When Musgrave speaks of this, it’s no great leap for one to assume he’s admitting knowledge of alien life. As the final slide of a “Grey” ET was shown during a recent astronomy presentation by Dr. Musgrave, he made this surprising comment: “These guys are real… I guarantee it!” Dr. Musgrave does know the truth. This author guarantees it!

Consider that carefully. These are world renown scientists making statements almost beyond belief. Dr. von Braun and others of his stature have the courage to disclose “sensitive” information, but obviously the leaders of the USA and the world do not. If billions could find a way of coping with the overwhelming threat of atomic annihilation for half a century, it is reasonable to assume we can cope with the knowledge of these “Other Intelligence’s” from the stars. We can cope with the fact they are visiting earth, and have been since the beginning of history. We must. Those still asleep must open their eyes. We Are Not Alone.

About the author:

Clark C. McClelland, former ScO, Space Shuttle Fleet, KSC, Florida 1958 to 1992. Former Director, NICAP Unit-3 at Cape Canaveral and KSC, former MUFON Assistant Florida State Director, and former Director, Kennedy Space Center MUFON Unit, KSC. LINK

The photo of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to Earth by NASA’s Mars explorer Spirit, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed website.

Though no official confirmation has come from NASA whether the figure is an alien or an optical illusion caused by a landscape on Mars, it has set the Internet abuzz that there really is life on Mars.

As one enthusiast put it on the website, “These pictures are amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars.”

The news of the mystery woman on Mars came just days after a team of French scientists claimed to have discovered proof that the red planet possesses high-level dense clouds of dry ice, which scud across its orange sky.

Using data obtained by the OMEGA spectrometer on board ESA’s Mars Express, the team found the existence of the ice clouds which sometimes become so dense that they throw quite dark shadows on the dusty surface of the red planet.

“This is the first time that carbon dioxide ice clouds on Mars have been imaged and identified from above. This is important because the images tell us not only about their shape, but also their size and density.”

“Previously, we had to rely on indirect information. However, it is very difficult to separate the signals coming from the clouds, atmosphere and surface,” according to lead scientist Franck Montmessin of the Service d’Aeronomie at University of Versailles.