Nazca Lines- The Mystery

As a plane soars over the high desert of southern Peru, the dull pale sameness of the rocks and sand organize and change form. Distinct white lines gradually evolve from tan and rust-red. Strips of white crisscross a desert so dry that it rains less than an inch every year. The landscape changes as lines take shape to form simple geometric designs: trapezoids, straight lines, rectangles, triangles, and swirls. Some of the swirls and zigzags start to form more distinct shapes: a hummingbird, a spider, a monkey.

These are the renowned Nasca lines—subject of mystery for over 80 years. How were they formed? What purpose could they have served? Were aliens involved?

The Nazca Lines /ˈnæzkə/ are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD.[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, and lizards.

The plain, crisscrossed, by these giant lines with many forming rectangles, has a striking resemblance to a modern airport. The Swiss writer, Erich von Daniken, even suggested they had been built for the convenience of ancient visitors from space to land their ships. As tempting as it might be to subscribe to this theory, the desert floor at Nazca is soft earth and loose stone, not tarmac, and would not support the landing wheels of either an aircraft or a flying saucer.

So why are the lines there? The American explorer Paul Kosok, who made his first visit to Nazca in the 1940s, suggested that the lines were astronomically significant and that the plain acted as a giant observatory. He called them "the largest astronomy book in the world." Gerald Hawkins, an American astronomer, tested this theory in 1968 by feeding the position of a sample of lines into a computer and having a program calculate how many lines coincided with an important astronomical event. Hawkins showed the number of lines that were astronomically significant were only about the same number that would be the result of pure chance. This makes it seem unlikely Nazca is an observatory.

Perhaps the best theory for the lines and symbols belongs to Tony Morrison, the English explorer. By researching the old folk ways of the people of the Andes mountains, Morrison discovered a tradition of wayside shrines linked by straight pathways. The faithful would move from shrine to shrine praying and meditating. Often the shrine was as simple as a small pile of stones. Morrison suggests that the lines at Nazca were similar in purpose and on a vast scale. The symbols may have also served as special enclosures for religious ceremonies.

History

Contrary to the popular belief that the lines and figures can only be seen with the aid of flight, they are visible from atop the surrounding foothills. The first mention of the Nazca lines in print was by Pedro Cieza de León in his book of 1553, where he mistook them for trail markers. Interest in them lapsed until the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe spotted them while he was hiking through the foothills in 1927. He discussed them at a conference in Lima, Peru in 1939, although it must be added that although some of the figures can be worked out from the surrounding foothills the full designs cannot be truly appreciated unless viewed from the sky.

Paul Kosok, a historian from Long Island University, is credited as the first scholar to seriously study the Nazca Lines. In the country in 1940-41 to study ancient irrigation systems, he flew over the lines and realized that one was in the shape of a bird. Another chance helped him see how lines converged at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. He began to study how the lines might have been created, as well as to try to determine their purpose. He was joined by Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist to help figure out the purpose of the Nazca Lines. They proposed one of the earliest reasons for the existence of the figures: to be markers on the horizon to show where the sun and other celestial bodies rose. Archaeologists, historians and mathematicians have all struggled to determine the purpose of the lines.

Determining how they were made has been easier than figuring why they were made. Scholars have theorized the Nazca people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines. Archaeological surveys have found wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines, which support this theory. One such stake was carbon-dated and was the basis for establishing the age of the design complex. The scholar Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky has reproduced the figures by using tools and technology available to the Nazca people. The National Geographic called his work "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the actual lines. With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance.

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

The Nazca "drew" several hundred simple but huge curvilinear animal and human figures by this technique. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi), and the largest figures can span nearly 270 metres (890 ft). Some of the measurements for the figures include that the Hummingbird is 93 meters (310 ft) long, the Condor is 134 meters (440 ft), the Monkey is 93 meters (310 ft) by 58 meters (190 ft), and the Spider is 47 meters (150 ft). The extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. The Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25 °C (77 °F) all year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible to the present day.

The discovery of two new small figures was announced in early 2011 by a Japanese team from Yamagata University. One of these resembles a human head and is dated to the early period of Nazca culture or earlier and the other, undated, an animal. In March 2012 the university announced that a new research center would be opened at the site in September 2012 to study the area for the next 15 years.The team has been doing field work there since 2006 when it found about 100 new geoglyphs.

In 2013, it was reported machinery used in a limestone quarry had destroyed a small section of a line, and caused damage to another.

Theories-

Kosok was followed by the German Maria Reiche who became known as the Lady of the Lines. Reiche studied the lines for 40 years and fought unyieldingly for her theories on the lines’ astronomical and calendrical purpose (she received a National Geographic grant in 1974 for her work). Reiche battled single-handedly to protect the site; she even lived in a small house near the desert so she could personally protect the lines from reckless visitors.

The Kosok-Reiche astronomy theories held true until the 1970s when a group of American researchers arrived in Peru to study the glyphs. This new wave of research started to poke holes in the archeo-astronomy view of the lines (not to mention the radical theories in the ‘60s relating to aliens and ancient astronauts).

Johan Reinhard, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, brought a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of the lines, “Look at the large ecological system, what’s around Nasca, where were the Nasca people located.” In a region that receives only about 20 minutes of rain per year, water was clearly an important factor.

"It seems likely that most of the lines did not point at anything on the geographical or celestial horizon, but rather led to places where rituals were performed to obtain water and fertility of crops," wrote Reinhard in his book The Nasca Lines: A New Perspective on their Origin and Meanings.

Anthony Aveni, a former National Geographic grantee, agrees, "Our discoveries clearly showed that the straight lines and trapezoids are related to water…but not used to find water, but rather used in connection with rituals."

"The trapezoids are big wide spaces where people can come in and out," says Aveni. "The rituals were likely involved with the ancient need to propitiate or pay a debt to the gods…probably to plead for water."

Reinhard points out that spiral designs and themes have also been found at other ancient Peruvian sites. Animal symbolism is common throughout the Andes and are found in the biomorphs drawn upon the Nasca plain: spiders are believed to be a sign of rain, hummingbirds are associated with fertility, and monkeys are found in the Amazon—an area with an abundance of water.

"No single evaluation proves a theory about the lines, but the combination of archeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology builds a solid case," says Reinhard. Add new technological research to the mix, and there’s no doubt that the world’s understanding of the Nasca lines will continue to evolve.

Related to Water?

Recently two researchers, David Johnson and Steve Mabee, have advanced a theory that the geoglyphs may be related to water. The Nazca plain is one of the driest places on Earth, getting less than one inch of rain a year. Johnson, while looking for sources of water in the region, noticed that ancient aqueducts, called puquios, seemed to be connected with some of the lines. Johnson thinks that the shapes may be a giant map of the underground water sources traced on the land. Mabee is working to gather evidence that might confirm this theory.

This figure appears to be a giant spider. (© Jarnogz & Dreamstime.com)

Other scientists are more skeptical, but admit that in a region where finding water was vital to survival, there might well be some connection between the ceremonial purpose of the lines and water. Johan Reinhard, a cultural anthropologist with the National Geographic Society, found that villagers in Bolivia walk along a straight pathway to shrines while praying and dancing for rain. Something similar may have been done at the ancient Nazca lines.

Human Sacrifice

A recently discovered headless body suggests that human sacrifice was used by the Nazca people in religion ceremonies. "Human sacrifice and decapitation were part of powerful rituals that would have allayed fears by invoking the ancestors to ensure fertility and the continuation of Nasca society," wrote Christina Conlee of Texas State University in an article in Current Anthropology. "The decapitation of the La Tiza individual appears to have been part of a ritual associated with ensuring agricultural fertility and the continuation of life and rebirth of the community." The body is one of eight found in the Nazca area, buried seated with no head. A ceramic jar painted with an image of a head was found next to the remains. The head on the jar has a tree with eyes growing out of it, making it seem likely that the sacrifice was part of a fertility ceremony.

A giant bird biomorph on the Nasca desert plain. (© Jarnogz & Dreamstime.com)

What was done with the heads of the victims? The Nazca were known to collect "Trophy Heads." The Nazca removed the brain and soft tissue from the skulls, sewed the lips closed with cactus spines and drilled a hole through the forehead to accommodate a loop of woven rope. The heads were then hung on the ropes for display. Originally these were considered to be war trophies collected from distant tribes, but recent DNA analysis shows that the heads came from the Nazca population itself, suggesting that the motive was religious in nature.

Other South American Lines and Figures

The lines at Nazca aren't the only landscape figures South America boasts. About 850 miles south of the plain is the largest human figure in the world laid out upon the side of Solitary Mountain in Chile. The Giant of Atacama stands 393 feet high and is surrounded by lines similar to those at Nazca.

Along the Pacific Coast in the foothills of the Andes Mountains is etched a figure resembling a giant candelabrum. Further south, Sierra Pintada, which means "the painted mountain" in Spanish, is covered with vast pictures including spirals, circles, warriors and a condor. Archaeologists speculate that these figures, clearly visible from the ground, served as guideposts for Inca traders.

"The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars."

MH370 The lost Flight

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

The missing aircraft, 9M-MRO,
Incident summary
Date 8 March 2014
Summary Missing
Site Southern Indian Ocean (presumed)
Passengers 227
Crew 12
Aircraft type Boeing 777-200ER
Operator Malaysia Airlines
Registration 9M-MRO
Flight origin Kuala Lumpur International Airport
Destination Beijing Capital International Airport

pictured in 2011

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370)[a] was a scheduled international passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that lost contact with air traffic control on 8 March 2014 at 01:20 MYT,[b] less than an hour after takeoff. At 07:24, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) reported the flight as missing. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 nations.

A multinational search and rescue effort, later reported as the largest in history,[6] was initiated in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.[7][8] Within a few days, this was extended to include the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea. On 15 March, based on military radar data and radio "pings" between the aircraft and an Inmarsat satellite, investigators concluded that it had first headed west across the Malay Peninsula, then continued on a northern or southern track for approximately seven hours. The search in the South China Sea was abandoned. Three days later the Australian Maritime Safety Authority began searching the southern part of the Indian Ocean.

On 24 March, the Malaysian government confirmed two independently made analyses by the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) and Inmarsat, and concluded "beyond any reasonable doubt", that the aircraft had gone down in the southern part of the Indian Ocean with no survivors. This conclusion led to all earlier search areas being abandoned, and efforts being concentrated on the Australian-led area. There has been no confirmation of any flight debris, nor has a crash site been found.

Disappearance

Route: Kuala Lumpur – Beijing. Insert: initial search areas and known path through waypoints IGARI, VAMPI, and IGREX. Small red squares: radar contacts. Small circles: claimed spotting of debris.
The flight departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on 8 March 2014 at 00:41 local time (16:41 UTC, 7 March) and was scheduled to land at Beijing Capital International Airport at 06:30 local time (22:30 UTC, 7 March). It climbed to its assigned cruise altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 m) and was travelling at 471 knots (872 km/h; 542 mph)[25] true airspeed when it ceased all communications and the transponder signal was lost. The aircraft's last known position on 8 March at 01:21 local time (17:21 UTC, 7 March) was at the navigational waypoint IGARI in the Gulf of Thailand, at which the aircraft turned westwards, heading towards a waypoint called VAMPI in the Strait of Malacca,[26] primary radar tracking suggests that the aircraft descended as low as 12,000 feet (3,700 m). From there, the aircraft flew towards a waypoint called GIVAL, arriving at 2:15 local time (18:15 UTC, 7 March), thereafter to the Southern Thailand Islands (Andaman Coast) of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called IGREX.

The crew was expected to contact air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City as the aircraft passed into Vietnamese airspace, just north of the point where contact was lost.[30][31] The captain of another aircraft attempted to reach the crew of Flight 370 "just after 1:30 am" using the International distress frequency to relay Vietnamese air traffic control's request for the crew to contact it; the captain said he was able to establish contact, and just heard "mumbling" and static.

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) issued a media statement at 07:24, one hour after the scheduled arrival of the flight at Beijing, stating that contact with the flight had been lost by Malaysian ATC at 02:40.[4] MAS stated that the government had initiated search and rescue operations. It later emerged that Subang Air Traffic Control had lost contact with the aircraft at 01:22 and notified Malaysia Airlines at 02:40. Neither the crew nor the aircraft's onboard communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before the aircraft vanished from radar screens.

Passengers
152 of the 227 passengers were Chinese citizens, including a group of 19 artists with six family members and four staff returning from a calligraphy exhibition of their work in Kuala Lumpur; 38 passengers were Malaysian. The remaining passengers were from 13 different countries. Of the total, 20 were employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas – 12 of whom were from Malaysia and 8 from China. One passenger who worked as a flight engineer for a Swiss jet charter company was briefly suspected as potential hijacker because he was thought to have the relevant skill set.


But with no results from the multi-national search operation for the Boeing 777, which vanished on March 8 carrying 239 people, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday set a one-week deadline to locate the plane by mini-submarine. 

The Australian-led search effort is relying on a single US Navy submersible sonar scanning device to scour an uncharted seabed at depths of around 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) or more. 

Technical hitches, including the fact that the torpedo-shaped Bluefin-21 is operating at the extent of its depth limit, made for a slow start to the search. 

Launched from an Australian naval vessel, the device has so far made six deep-sea scanning runs but has detected nothing. 

"We have pursued every possible lead presented to us at this stage, and with every passing day the search has become more difficult," Hishammuddin, who is heading up the Malaysian government's response to MH370, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur. 

As the search and rescue effort expected to be the costliest in aviation history wears on, authorities have indicated alternative methods may be needed, including possibly deeper-diving devices. 


A second mystery around the disappearance of Flight MH370 has largely gone unnoticed: why hasn't the United States been in the forefront of providing information about it? The implications of this question are massive.

America has a fleet of the most sophisticated spy satellites, called "keyhole" satellites, covering the earth's surface daily with imaging systems comparable to those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of data from any of these, we read of data from China and France. One can understand that the CIA does not want others to understand fully the capabilities of its satellites, but surely the lives of more than two hundred people are cause for some information, however indirectly supplied.

Then again, the American military has some of most sophisticated radars on earth, and there is, without a doubt, an installation of the highest capability at the secret base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. How could there not be? But we have read of no data from them, only from others less capable of telling us what happened.

Could it be that the United States shot down Flight MH370, either accidentally or deliberately, and now wants to keep it secret? The possibility of recovery of the full wreckage, even if its location were found, from 4 miles under the sea amongst underwater mountains is extremely remote at best, so the United States can remain confident that physical evidence will never emerge.


There would be nothing unprecedented in such an act: on at least 3 occasions, regrettably, America's military has shot down civilian airliners, only admitting eventually to the one they could not hide. They are also indirectly responsible for a fourth.

Iran Air Flight 655 was stupidly shot down in 1988 by the USS Vincennes in Iranian waters during the Iraq-Iran War, not only killing 290 people including 66 children, but there was a long period afterwards in which the U.S. admitted no wrong-doing, offered no apology, and no compensation to its victims (only 8 years later was a quiet settlement made).

It was a quite vicious set of circumstances and the injustice of it led unquestionably to the motive for bombing Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people and 11 on the ground, later the same year by people still unknown.  

TWA Flight 800 over the East Coast of the United States was certainly the victim of a shipboard American anti-aircraft missile accidentally released. The evidence included radar tracks and eye witnesses. But the U.S., instead of admitting its horrible error and compensating victims, conducted a long and almost farcical investigation headed up by the same FBI that gave us the farcical investigation into the Kennedy assassination.

Last, the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11, United Flight 93, of "Let's roll" pop legend, which crashed over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down by an air-to-air missile from a fighter plane. A plane was seen by witnesses, the distribution of the wreckage tends to support a shoot-down, and just the sheer impossibility of America's hundreds of billions of dollars in air defences staying asleep at the switch for a fourth event the same day argue powerfully for an attack.

I have no idea what event (a rogue pilot, a hijacker?) led to Flight MH370 turning off its communications, changing course, and flying low, but I do know that the event could not have gone unnoticed by America's military-intelligence eyes and ears, especially when its new course showed any possibility of Diego Garcia as a destination, a place which is top secret and from which America forcibly removed the locals when it leased it from Britain.  

It will likely remain one more "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," as Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union, an expression now entirely suitable to a great many of the activities of the United States.

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

Valentich Disappearance- The Mystery

The Valentich disappearance refers to the disappearance of 20-year-old Frederick Valentich while on a 125-mile (235 km) training flight in a Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass Strait in Australia on 21 October 1978.

 Frederick Valentich, was attempting to rack up flying time for his commercial license, flying his single engine Cessna 182 to King Island some 130 miles south of Melbourne Australia. He failed to touch down at the King Field airstrip on schedule. At 1906 his last radio transmission was received by Melbourne Flight Service Control on Saturday, October 21, which makes this disappearance unique in the annals of aviation history.

Just before his voice was abruptly cut off after making contact with Melbourne flight controllers, Valentich reported he could see four bright green lights- 1,000 feet above his position: “It is approaching from due east toward me, it seems to be playing some sort of game, flying at a speed I find impossible to estimate” And then: “It is not aircraft, it is…” Finally a long silence, broken when communication was initiated by ground control asking for an identification of the object in question. The young pilot’s answer: “It’s not an aircraft…” and the contact was lost…permanently.

An intensive land, sea and air search was begun by the Australian Navy and Air Force, centered on Bass Strait, 130 miles south of Melbourne and 25miles north of King Island, the point of Valentich’s last radio contact. But the search failed to turn out any trace of the pilot or his aircraft. It was determined that weather conditions at the time of disappearance were ideal, with almost unlimited visibility and a mild breeze. The pilot’s father Guido Valentich strongly believed his son was still alive—that he was being held by someone from another world. More importantly, the elder Valentich said his son had been interested in UFOs for many years and even reported sighting one about 10 months before. There were numerous other witnesses who called police that same night claiming to have seen a UFO on Saturday night. According to a Royal Australian Air Force spokesman, about 10 reports of UFO sightings were logged during the same weekend of the disappearance.

Frederick Valentich

Frederick Valentich had about 150 total hours flying time and held a class four instrument rating which authorized him to fly at night but only “in visual meteorological conditions”. He had twice applied to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force but was rejected because of inadequate educational qualifications. He was a member of the Air Training Corps, determined to have a career in aviation. Valentich was studying part-time to become a commercial pilot but had a poor achievement record, having twice failed all five commercial licence examination subjects, and as recently as the previous month had failed three more commercial licence subjects. He had been involved in flying incidents, straying into a controlled zone in Sydney, for which he received a warning, and twice deliberately flying into cloud, for which prosecution was being considered. According to his father Guido, Frederick was an ardent believer in UFOs and worried about attacks from UFOs.

Details

Valentich radioed Melbourne Flight Service at 7:06 PM to report an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 feet and was told there was no known traffic at that level. Valentich said he could see a large unknown aircraft which appeared to be illuminated by four bright landing lights. He was unable to confirm its type, but said it had passed about 1,000 feet (300 m) overhead and was moving at high speed. Valentich then reported that the aircraft was approaching him from the east and said the other pilot might be purposely toying with him. Valentich said the aircraft was "orbiting" above him and that it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. Valentich reported that he was experiencing engine problems. Asked to identify the aircraft, Valentich radioed, "It isn't an aircraft" when his transmission was interrupted by unidentified noise described as being "metallic, scraping sounds" before all contact was lost.

Search and rescue

A sea and air search was undertaken that included oceangoing ship traffic, a P-3 Orion aircraft, plus eight civilian aircraft. The search encompassed over 1,000 square miles. Search efforts ceased on 25 October 1978.

Investigation

A Department of Transport (DOT) investigation into Valentich's disappearance was unable to determine the cause, but that it was "presumed fatal" for Valentich. Five years after Valentich's plane went missing, an engine cowl flap was found washed ashore on Flinders Island. In July 1983 the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation asked The Royal Australian Navy Research Laboratory (RANRL) about the likelihood that the cowl flap might have "traveled" to its ultimate position from the region where the plane disappeared. The bureau noted that "the part has been identified as having come from a Cessna 182 aircraft between a certain range of serial numbers" which included Valentich's aircraft. The bureau also noted that while it is possible for cowl flaps to separate from aircraft in flight, this had not happened with any recent aircraft.^{[citation needed]}

Proposed explanations

It has been proposed that Valentich staged his own disappearance: even taking into account a trip of between 30 and 45 minutes to Cape Otway, the aircraft still had enough fuel to fly 800 kilometres; despite ideal conditions, at no time was the aircraft plotted on radar, casting doubts as to whether it was ever near Cape Otway; and Melbourne Police received reports of a light aircraft making a mysterious landing not far from Cape Otway at the same time as Valentich's disappearance.

Another proposed explanation is that Valentich became disoriented and was flying upside down. What he thought he saw, if this were the case, would be his own aircraft's lights reflected in the water. He would then have crashed into the water.

Another proposed possibility is suicide, although it has been suggested that he had a content lifestyle.

A 2013 review of the radio transcripts and other data by astronomer and retired U.S. Air Force pilot James McGaha and author Joe Nickell proposes that the inexperienced Valentich was deceived by the illusion of a tilted horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his plane into a downward, so-called "graveyard" spiral which he initially mistook for simple orbiting of the plane. According to the authors, the G-forces of a tightening spiral would decrease fuel flow, resulting in the "rough idling" reported by the pilot. McGaha and Nickell also propose that the apparently stationary, overhead lights that Valentich reported were likely the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury along with the bright star Antares which would have behaved consistent with the pilot's description.

UFOlogists

UFOlogists have speculated that extraterrestrials either destroyed Valentich's plane or abducted him, asserting that some individuals reported seeing "an erratically moving green light in the sky" and that he was "in a steep dive at the time." Ufologists believe these accounts are significant because of the "green light" mentioned in Valentich's radio transmissions.

Phoenix, Arizona- based UFO group Ground Saucer Watch claim that photos taken that day by plumber Roy Manifold show a fast moving object exiting the water near Cape Otwaylighthouse. Though the pictures were not clear enough to identify the object, UFO groups argue that they show "a bona fide unknown flying object, of moderate dimensions, apparently surrounded by a cloud-like vapor/exhaust residue."

This picture was taken on the day of Valantich’s disappearance and to this day, has not been explained.

This whole mystery got an even more bizarre twist years later. According to the testimony of a number of witnesses, a young man who identified himself as Frederick Valentich, the Australian pilot who mysteriously disappeared in 1978 was alive and well in 1990 at Plaza del Charco, a resort on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Displaying an Australian passport to prove his claim, Valentich told those with whom he spoke on several occasions that he now belonged to a group of humans who had been “recruited” by extraterrestrials. It is also worth noting that the supposed Valentich showed no signs of aging, and resembled the photos circulated around the time of his disappearance at the age of 20. Pretty bizarre huh? I am also very curious what Valantich was doing there at this resort. Did the aliens give him a few days off?

The Bermuda Triangle - Mysteries and Facts

Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

Located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Bermuda Triangle falls between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida.

Origins

The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in The Miami Herald (Associated Press)  by Edward Van Winkle Jones. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine.In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." He also wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars."  Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region.The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.

Events-

Stories of unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle started to reach public awareness around 1950 and have been consistently reported since then.

Unverified supernatural explanations for Bermuda Triangle incidents have included references to UFO’s and even the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.

Other explanations have included magnetic anomalies, pirates, deliberate sinkings, hurricanes, gas deposits, rough weather, huge waves and human error.

Some famous reported incidents involving the Bermuda Triangle include:
The USS Cyclops and its crew of 309 that went missing after leaving Barbados in 1918.

The TBM Avenger bombers that went missing in 1945 during a training flight over the Atlantic.

A Douglas DC-3 aircraft containing 32 people that went missing in 1958, no trace of the aircraft was ever found.

A yacht was found in 1955 that had survived three hurricanes but was missing all its crew.

Supernatural explanations

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantis story is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Road off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of the purported psychic Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be of natural origin.

Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19 aircrews as alien abductees.

Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.

Natural explanations

Compass variations

Compass problems are one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorized that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalies have not been found. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, a fact which navigators have known for centuries. Magnetic (compass) north and geographic (true) north are only exactly the same for a small number of places – for example, as of 2000 in the United States only those places on a line running from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. But the public may not be as informed, and think there is something mysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will.

Gulf Stream

The Gulf Stream is a deep ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up to about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mi/h). A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.

Human error

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, the Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.

Violent weather

Tropical cyclones are powerful storms, which form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives lost and caused billions of dollars in damage. The sinking ofFrancisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.

A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of the Pride of Baltimore on May 14, 1986. The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 km/h (20 mph) to 97–145 km/h (60–90 mph). A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James Lushine, stated "during very unstable weather conditions the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water." A similar event occurred to the Concordia in 2010 off the coast of Brazil.

Methane hydrates

Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area, off the southeasternUnited States coast. However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 yearsAn explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water; any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called "mud volcanoes") may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.

All in All Bermuda Triangle Mystery..

A journalist named Larry Kusche asked the question if there is any mystery in the Bermuda Triangle at all, and came to a surprising answer: there is no mystery about strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche exhaustively re-examined the "mysterious disappearances" and found that the story was basically created by mistakes, mystery mongering, and in some cases outright fabrication — all being passed along as fact-checked truth.

In his definitive book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved," Kusche notes that few writers on the topic bothered to do any real investigation — they mostly collected and repeated other, earlier writers who did the same. Unfortunately, Charles Berlitz's facility with language did not carry over into credible research or scholarship. His books on the paranormal — and on the Bermuda Triangle, specifically — were riddled with errors, mistakes, and unscientific crank theories. In a way, the Bermuda Triangle is largely a creation of Charles Berlitz's mistakes. Kusche would later note that Berlitz's research was so sloppy that "If Berlitz were to report that a boat were red, the chance of it being some other color is almost a certainty."

In some cases there's no record of the ships and planes claimed to have been lost in the aquatic triangular graveyard; they never existed outside of a writer's imagination. In other cases, the ships and planes were real enough — but Berlitz and others neglected to mention that they "mysteriously disappeared" during bad storms. Other times the vessels sank far outside the Bermuda Triangle.

It's also important to note that the area within the Bermuda Triangle is heavily traveled with cruise and cargo ships; logically, just by random chance, more ships will sink there than in less-traveled areas such as the South Pacific.

Despite the fact that the Bermuda Triangle has been definitively debunked for decades, it still appears as an "unsolved mystery" in new books — mostly by authors more interested in a sensational story than the facts. In the end, there's no need to invoke time portals, Atlantis,submerged UFO bases, geomagnetic anomalies, tidal waves, or anything else. The Bermuda Triangle mystery has a much simpler explanation: sloppy research and sensational, mystery-mongering books.

Interesting Space Facts

Space Facts-

• 1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.
• 2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.
• 3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space.
• 4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.
• 5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil!
• 6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.
• 7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module.
• 8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.
• 9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.
• 10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions.
• 11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.
• 12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.
  13. The Milky Way galaxy is whirling rapidly, spinning our sun and all its other stars at around 100 million km per hour.
• 14. The Sun travels around the galaxy once every 200 million years – a journey of 100,000 light years.
• 15. There may be a huge black hole in the very middle of the most of the galaxies.
• 16. The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but the estimations vary.
• 17. One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.
• 18. The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.
• 19. The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.
• 20. The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.
• 21. If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.
• 22. Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.
• 23. The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.
• 24. The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.
• 25. A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.

Saint-Germain : The Immortal Count

Immortality has been and would always be something that every human wants to achieve, in some way or another. But is it really possible? that a man/woman can live on forever? Your answer ofcourse that it is not possible, atleast not till now. But the mystery ahead is something which claims that it had already been done, and that also, long ago.

Saint Germain, the Immortal Count

Was Count St. Germain the real Doctor Who?

Is it possible for a person to live forever? That is what some people are claiming about a historical figure known as Count de Saint-Germain. His origins are still unclear. Some records date his birth to the late 1600s, although some believe that his longevity reaches back to the time of Christ. He has appeared many times throughout history – even as recently as the 1970s – always appearing to be about 45 years old. He was known by many of the most famous figures of European history, including Casanova, Madame de Pampadour, Voltaire, King Louis XV, Catherine the Great, Anton Mesmer, George Washington and others. He has also been linked to a number of occult movements and conspiracy theories.

Who was this mysterious man? Are the stories of his immortality mere legend and folklore? Or is it possible that he really did discover the secret of eternal life?

The date of birth for Saint German is unknown, although most accounts say he was born in the 1690s. A genealogy compiled by Annie Besant for her co-authored book, The Comte De St. Germain: The Secret of Kings, asserts that he was born the son of Francis Racoczi II, Prince of Transylvania in 1690. What we do know for certain is that he was an accomplished alchemist, which means he could turn heaps of metal into pure gold. If that wasn’t a neat enough trick already, the count also claimed to have discovered the secret of eternal life! Between 1740 and 1780 Saint-Germain, who was quite a celebrity in those days, traveled extensively throughout Europe – and in all that time never seemed to age. Those who met him were astonished by his many abilities and peculiarities like:

• He spoke 12 languages
• He could play the violin like a virtuoso.
• He was an accomplished painter.
• Wherever he traveled, he set up an elaborate laboratory, presumably for his alchemy work.
• He seemed to be a man of great wealth, but was not known to have any bank accounts. (If it was due to his ability to transmute base metals into gold, he never performed the feat for observers.)
• He dined often with friends because he enjoyed their company, but was rarely seen to eat food in public. He subsisted, it was said, on a diet of oatmeal.
• He prescribed recipes for the removal of facial wrinkles and for dyeing hair.
• He loved jewels, and much of his clothing – including his shoes – were studded with them.
• He had perfected a technique for painting jewels.
• He claimed to be able to fuse several small diamonds into one large one. He also said he could make pearls grow to incredible sizes.
• He has been linked to several secret societies, including the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Society of Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati and Order of the Templars.

Officially Saint Germain died in 1784, but of course dying equals having a bad day, when your called the “immortal count”.  He would continue to be seen throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century!

• 1760,In Paris that year, Countess von Georgy heard that a Count de Saint-Germain had arrived for a soiree at the home of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France. The elderly countess was curious because she had known a Count de Saint-Germain while in Venice in 1710. Upon meeting the count again, she was astonished to see that he hadn't appeared to age, and asked him if it was his father she knew in Venice.
  "No, Madame," he replied, "but I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last and the beginning of this century; I had the honor to pay you court then."
  "Forgive me, but that it impossible!" the perplexed countess said. "The Count de Saint-Germain I knew in those days was at least forty-five years old. And you, at the outside, are that age at present."
  "Madame, I am very old," he said with a knowing smile.
  "But then you must be nearly 100 years old," said the astonished countess.
  "That is not impossible," the count told her matter-of-factly, then continued to convince the countess that he was indeed the same man she knew with the details of their previous meetings and of life in Venice 50 years earlier.
• In 1785 he was seen in Germany with Anton Mesmer, the pioneer hypnotist. (Some claim that it was Saint-Germain who gave Mesmer the basic ideas for hypnotism and personal magnetism.)
• Official records of Freemasonry show that they chose Saint-Germain as their representative for a convention in 1785.
• After the taking of the Bastille in the French Revolution in 1789, the Comtesse d’Adhémar said she had a lengthy conversation with Count de Saint-Germain. He allegedly told her of France’s immediate future, as if he knew what was to come. In 1821, she wrote: “I have seen Saint-Germain again, each time to my amazement. I saw him when the queen [Antoinette] was murdered, on the 18th of Brumaire, on the day following the death of the Duke d’Enghien, in January, 1815, and on the eve of the murder of the Duke de Berry.” The last time she saw him was in 1820 – and each time he looked to be a man no older than his mid-40s.

Voltaire, the 18^th century philosopher, perhaps best summed up the Count of St. Germain saying:

this is “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.”

Now what truth it really holds, only history knows.