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ISCNI*Flash is the twice-monthly electronic newsletter of ISCNI.
The subject matter of the ISCNI*Flash is inherently controversial, and the views and opinions reported herein are not necessarily those of ISCNI or its staff.
Highlights in this edition are:
THE SANTILLI FILM: THE PLOT THICKENS (AGAIN)
Researcher Kent Jeffrey to Publish Detailed Report
Cameraman Challenged to Submit to Authentication
[ISCNI*Flash thanks Kent Jeffrey, Rebecca Schatte and Gayle Nesom for this story.]
by Gayle Nesom and Rebecca Schatte
Another important piece of the infamous "alien autopsy" puzzle will soon be dropped into place. An article written by Roswell researcher Kent Jeffrey, "Santilli's Controversial Autopsy Movie," ("SCAM") will make its appearance in the upcoming (March) issue of the MUFON Journal. The meticulously researched article, which bears important expert testimony, reveals information that promises to resolve various inconsistencies and controversies. Details of the article will be announced in the United Kingdom on March 2, 1996, by Graham Birdsall of Quest International, publishers of the British UFO Magazine, with same-day publication in newspapers in more than 10 countries, including Australia, Germany, and Japan.
Author Kent Jeffrey, organizer of the International Roswell Initiative and a fervent critic of the film since he attended a preview screening in London in May, 1995, feels that this film is in no way related to the 1947 Roswell Incident. He also believes the film's association with that event could seriously undermine efforts to obtain information about the incident from the United States government.
Several interesting new revelations are made in the "SCAM" article. In particular, the article presents the testimony of three "real" military photographers who served during WWII, all of whom would have been contemporaries of Santilli's alleged cameraman (SAC). The testimony of these cameramen establishes just how top-secret film was taken and developed, as well as how military autopsies were filmed during the 1940s.
The cameramen interviewed were involved in photographing very historical projects, some of which were classified. One of the cameramen, Lt. Col. Dan McGovern, offers in the article to authenticate SAC and challenges Mr. Santilli to allow SAC to present himself to Lt. Col. McGovern.
What follows is an excerpt from the article referencing McGovern's challenge:
"On the basis of the information that has been made available to him, Dan McGovern, like his colleagues Bill Gibson and Joe Longo, feels the Santilli film is a fraud. However, McGovern is willing to keep an open mind and to give Santilli the benefit of the doubt. Just as Kodak has offered to authenticate the film, Colonel McGovern has offered to authenticate the cameraman. McGovern would require the cameraman's full name and serial number so that he could verify his military service with the Air Force Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Colonel McGovern, a man of his word and a man who has held a top-secret security clearance, would reveal only his conclusion. He would keep other all information, including the cameraman's identity, strictly confidential, revealing it to no one. The secret of the alleged cameraman's identity would surely be safer with McGovern, who has no ax to grind, than it would be with the two foreign businessmen who are now supposedly aware of it and who would have much to gain by revealing the name, since the value of their film would soar with confirmation of the cameraman.
"Aside from the cameraman's name and serial number, the only other requirement of Colonel McGovern is that the cameraman make one 15-minute phone call to McGovern. At the time of his retirement, McGovern was one of the highest ranking photographic managers in the military. Considering his experience, he is probably the most qualified person available to evaluate the alleged cameraman. In short, authentication by him would be of extreme value because no impostor in the world could fool Colonel Dan McGovern. Furthermore, Santilli's alleged cameraman, who was stationed in Washington, D.C., in June 1947, would surely enjoy talking with McGovern because, in addition to a common background and probable common acquaintances, they have something else unique in common. In June 1947, Colonel Dan McGovern was a 'motion picture project officer' for the Air Force -- stationed in Washington, D.C."
Mr. Santilli has been made aware of the MUFON Journal article and has seen an advance copy of it, thanks to Philip Mantle, a board member of BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) and its chief of investigations.
Phil Mantle has been a somewhat controversial figure in this autopsy story himself. As a prominent member of BUFORA, and as the British representative of MUFON, one would think that he would maintain a somewhat neutral stance concerning this film until proper verification could be obtained. However, late last week (on approximately February 19), Mr. Mantle obtained a copy of the article. Despite knowing the article's contents were confidential and not to be released until after March 2, Mr. Mantle immediately sent a copy to Ray Santilli. This action by Mantle represents a clear bias on Mantle's part, something before now widely speculated about but not confirmed.
BUFORA has been asked for a comment on Mantle's breach of confidence and possible reason for his actions. Their response, as well as any comments by Mr. Mantle and Mr. Santilli, will be made public when available.
CONTROVERSY SURROUNDS NOVA'S "KIDNAPPED BY UFOs?"
[With apologies to our international readers who have not seen the recent U.S. television program "Kidnapped by UFOs?", the editor of ISCNI*Flash feels an obligation to address the significant complaints aroused by the show.
Even before the PBS network aired this NOVA special on February 27, several people interviewed for the program, notably abduction researcher Budd Hopkins, were crying foul. PBS/NOVA clearly intend to capitalize on the controversy. Videotapes of the program were on sale in some video stores a week before the show aired. But how valid are the complaints? Opinions will surely vary, but without doubt many experiencers and researchers of the abduction phenomenon think NOVA did a hatchet job.
In a live ISCNI chat on Wednesday evening, Feb 28, author Whitley Strieber said: "In February of 1995 I wrote NOVA that they should not be doing a show on abduction because they are a science program and there has been no science done for them to do a program about. I therefore declined to participate. The program they did was irresponsible and vicious in the extreme ... I felt that it was an example of religious fundamentalism (in this case, scientific) run amok. Irresponsible, stupid and vile."
Michelle LaVigne, author of the 1995 book "The Alien Abduction Survival Guide" and editor of the magazine Contact Forum, has interviewed a number of key people involved in the NOVA production. Her complete report is presented in a special edition of Contact Forum (see details at the end of this story). ISCNI*Flash thanks Michelle for sharing excerpts here.]
by Michelle LaVigne
In 52 minutes of broadcast time, the NOVA program "Kidnapped by UFOs?" seen by U.S. viewers on February 27 presented only a small fraction of the information gathered by the NOVA staff. About 30 hours of filming and hundreds of pages of available information and documentation went into the creation of this program. The question is raised, "From all that information, is the final 52 minutes really the most accurate, balanced, and true-to-fact representation of the ET encounter phenomenon?"
Budd Hopkins and John Mack don't think so. After reading the following excepts from Contact Forum's interviews with both John Mack and NOVA producer Denise DiIanni, and other supporting documents, you may not think so either.
Did NOVA really suppress evidence that would have helped prove the case of Alien Abduction reality? Were the witnesses and facts NOVA brought forward reliable? What would those involved like to see come out of a show like this?
Denise DiIanni, Producer of "Kidnapped by UFOs?": "If NOVA could have found evidence to substantiate these claims, I assure you we would have reported on it. Budd Hopkins is saying we suppressed evidence we didn't like. Quite the contrary is true. It's bewildering to me having never been involved in this sort of thing, that there actually is a level of real dishonesty going on. For instance, Budd Hopkins had shown us some material that he thought was evidence of alien abductions. He showed us an X-ray in one case and some photographs.... A photograph of a scar does not necessarily prove an alien abduction."
John Mack, MD: "In the case of Budd Hopkins, they present material around his work with a child in which they make a case, weak I think, that he is trying to introduce into that child's mind that he has had experiences. What they leave off is all the material from this child and from this family that Budd had given to them [NOVA] about the father actually seeing the beings in the house, and the spontaneous communications from the child and the family members about the abduction encounters.... Only selected material that shows Budd in the worst possible light was presented."
Budd Hopkins (talking about the family case presented on the show): "His [the husband's] testimony was the most vivid and important of our visit to [their] home. It corroborated his wife's account... But all of this eyewitness testimony and dramatic film footage was suppressed by NOVA... In its place, producer DiIanni assembled an emasculated case in which only the vaguest, more tenuous aspects of the family's testimony were presented."
Mack [in a statement directly to NOVA]: "The segment of your broadcast dealing with Donna Bassett is factually inaccurate, and the statements which she made... were totally false... Of more than one hundred individuals I have worked with, you have chosen to rely heavily upon the testimony of a person whose story you did not in fact check."
Hopkins: "NOVA said that the film 'Close Encounters' led to an increase in the number of new UFO sightings... But in fact during the year following the film's premiere, the number of new sightings actually decreased."
Mack: "[Robert] Baker even suggests that I would serve experiencers better by telling them that an experience is 'all a dream, and it was all imaginary, and it will probably never happen again.' His suggestion is clinically unsound and, as any psychiatrist would agree, would do harm."
Hopkins: "The program implied over and over with sledgehammer thoroughness that hypnosis should be thought of as the generating cause of these abduction accounts. My discussions of contradictory data wasn't even mentioned on the program."
DiIanni: "We stand behind the reporting on the show. This show is basically about a complicated phenomenon as I'm sure you and your readers will agree... It's a tough area to evaluate the stability of any particular witness. In each case, we try to treat each witness with respect, allow them to present themselves as they want to be presented, and allow other analysis within the show to respond to that."
Hopkins: "I was naive enough, however, to credit the producers and Ms DiIanni in particular, with sufficient honesty to make a very small admission: that despite all the debunkers' theories, all the data has not been explained and that an intriguing mystery does remain."
DiIanni: "I've seen people who are troubled by the notion that they and their children, four generations now and into the future, will be abducted and there is not a thing they can do about it. I think as a mother of a small child and as a human being that is a really frightening proposition. I'm glad that science and scientist methodology exist to tell me that perhaps there is a different explanation."
Mack: "I would like to see a national dialogue that brought in top scientists, government people, ordinary folks, mental health professionals, even military people, any kind of interested, intelligent professionals, just about anybody who wants to get into the debate, who cares about human identity and who we are in the cosmos and our relationship to nature and one another, and how the abduction story relates to the human experience. I'd like to see the program provoke that kind of discussion."
[If you would like to respond in writing to the NOVA program, you can do so at the PBS web site: http://www.pbs.org]
"CONTACT FORUM" SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE PBS/NOVA PROGRAM
For a detailed report containing full text of above-mentioned interviews and supporting documents, you can order Contact Forum's Special Issue on the NOVA controversy. The special issue alone costs $4.00 (includes postage in U.S.); or subscribe to a whole year of Contact Forum for only $18.50 (U.S.) by calling 1-800-366-0264, or writing Contact Forum C/O Wild Flower Press; P.O. Box 726; Newberg, OR 97132. For information on overseas delivery, contact Michelle LaVigne by email at: Mickkee@aol.com
NEW RASH OF BIZARRE MUTILATIONS REPORTED IN ALABAMA
[Large numbers of unusual livestock mutilations were reported in Alabama during 1993. Now they are occurring again. In one of the strangest yet reported, a section of neck bone was surgically excised from a cow, leaving the rest of the body intact. As always, the cause of these events remains in question, but some witnesses suggest the possibility of a UFO connection. The following text is excerpted from a longer article that appeared in the Feb 25 edition of the Huntsville (Alabama) Times, written by Mike Marshall. ISCNI*Flash thanks James Sutton for sending this text.]
Junior [James] Pittman, a 60 year old retired military man, now farmer, lost a 10 year old 1,100 lb. Holstein cow in the early morning of Feb 9, 1996. His comment was, "It's weird and it don't make no sense -- what would anybody want with a cow, as cheap as they are today? They're going for about 16 cents a pound, just giving 'em away, up in Tennessee. What would anybody want with a neck bone?"
"Foggy, damp, overcast," said Pittman, citing the ideal weather conditions for such covert operations. "That's when they do their dirty work. That's when this happened."
Sue Pitts, the assistant state director for MUFON, from Huntsville, investigated the scene. She [found] an 8 inch deep, 6 inch wide, 8-1/2 inch long incision at the base of the [cow's] neck.
But who did this? What caused this, another dead animal in an area beleaguered by more than 30 cow mutilations in 1992 and 1993?
"This happens all over the world," said Ms. Pitts. "It's not exclusively Sand Mountain."
"There was some question on that one (the Pittman cow), that it was something besides a predator," said Marshall County Sheriff Mac Holcomb. "As to what, who knows?"
James Pittman doesn't think aliens killed his cow. He thinks someone passed over his pasture, snuck through the night in a helicopter with a silent, sophisticated motor, and started another rash of cow mutilations.
Since Pittman's cow was killed, two more cows have been found dead in Marshall County, one near Boaz and another one in a community called Asbury, near Albertville. Sheriff Mac Holcomb's investigators concluded that the latest cow deaths were not the result of [surgical] mutilations.
"A perfectly round incision," said Milton Rains, the Asbury farmer who found his cow dead last Tuesday morning [Feb 20]. "It wasn't done by dogs, either. I don't believe a predator could have cut an incision as round as that one was."
Junior Pittman could not explain the lack of smell and blood where the cow was found. He could not figure out why rigor mortis hadn't set in four days after death. There weren't any tracks, footprints or cow tracks near the mud-stained scene.
"I don't want to say UFOs," Junior Pittman said. "It wasn't devil worshippers or gangs. It was quick and quiet, the way they did it. It (a UFO) is a possibility."
Ms. Jaci Pittman discovered the cow by the pond. That morning about 8 a.m., when she heard a calf hollering, she went over to the calf, and she saw the dead cow 50 yards away with the hole in its neck, sprawled in the mud and water.
Phyllis Baldwin, a family friend and a nurse in Fort Payne said, "They injected her. They took all the blood. There was no clotting or blood in the belly."
Pittman said, "The skin was smooth," describing the area inside the wound. "... even with a good steady hand, you couldn't do it that good." He commented it looked like a laser beam had done it.
"They went into her neck, behind the jawbone," said Milton Rains, describing his dead cow. "That blood hadn't clotted, and she'd been dead 12 to 48 hours. There was no sign of anything on the ground."
Pittman said he woke up around 2:30 that morning and heard a helicopter going over in that direction. "I didn't think anything of it. It was a quiet helicopter. In Vietnam, you could hear a helicopter a long time before it got to you." He says that wasn't a military helicopter he heard on the morning of Feb. 9.
A blue and white helicopter has been spotted by the Pittmans over their pasture before.
DUTCH ABDUCTION REPORTS MATCH U.S. PATTERN
[A leading Dutch hypnotherapist, Hilda Musch, has shown that reports of apparent abduction among Dutch experiencers seem identical in every respect to such reports in the United States. This might come as a surprise to some European researchers who have previously claimed that reported abduction by "grey aliens" is primarily a U.S. phenomenon. ISCNI*Flash thanks Dutch journalist Filip Coppens for the following story. Filip is editor of the magazine "Frontier 2000" and can be reached by email at fsffilco@glo.be.]
by Filip Coppens
At a recent UFO meeting in Holland, Dutch hypnotherapist Hilda Musch presented an illustrated lecture on the abduction phenomenon. So far, she has counseled over 80 people whom she believes are abductees. Hilda asks her patients to draw what they saw, as a means of emotional release and coping with the situation. Her abductees see scenes and beings identical to what is reported in the American abduction literature: grey beings, with a taller being in control, ice-cold surroundings, "mindscans", baby- and fetus presentations, etc.
Hilda has drawings from children (the youngest she counseled was 4 years old) and adults. While there are obvious differences in style, all depict the same characteristics. Hilda showed how all, independent of one another, drew the "examination room," in which the abductee was examined, as a round enclosure with a large opening, a door, at one end. Above are two curved lines, a detail not mentioned frequently, but still drawn by a majority of people who had recollections of being in such a room.
Also at this lecture was a woman named Ine, an abductee. One evening, she was walking outside her house with her husband and other relatives. All saw a UFO arrive and disappear. Not all of them saw the UFO up close, but Ine and her sister-in-law did. At that time, Ine was four months pregnant. The day afterwards, when she got up, she noticed her belly was "small" again. Her husband believed that as the day progressed, it would "show pregnant" again; but it didn't. Therefore she consulted a doctor, who informed her she had been pregnant, but the baby was gone. The day before, she had also visited the doctor, who had confirmed the baby was alright.
"I was really pregnant, and have documents to prove I was," Ine said. [If this is true, it would be one of the first fully documented instances of "missing fetus" associated with abduction. Though this claim is often heard, a number of researchers in the United States have tried without success to locate medical histories of pregnant women that clearly demonstrate a missing fetus under such conditions. - ed.]
Under hypnosis, Ine was able to remember certain details; a beam of light from the UFO touched her belly and "took" the baby away. She did not see any beings.
Ine had had children before, and one since who suffers from some form of mycosis. She believes this might be "abduction-related."
Holland is slowly but definitely learning about UFO abductions, mainly through the work of Hilda Musch, who wrote about the phenomenon in several magazines, including magazines for the clinical community. Clinicians frequently refer clients to Hilda Musch whom they feel might be abductees.
Hilda Musch has no idea what the phenomenon might be about, but she does report that a majority of the abductees are told that "they" are "doing this" because of what we do with this planet. And that is a clear echo of what Professor John Mack has heard from American abductees.
SURGEON TELLS FIRST RESULTS OF IMPLANT ANALYSIS
Sims, Leir Say They Might Have Hard Evidence of Abduction
[This story summarizes information presented by hypnotherapist Derrel Sims and physician Roger Leir at a public meeting in Thousand Oaks, California on February 23, 1996, sponsored by the local chapter of MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network). ISCNI*Flash thanks Debra Lindemann for writing this story.]
by Debra L. Lindemann
Dr. Roger Leir is a California surgeon who has removed what may be actual alien implants from two people brought to him by hypno-anesthesia therapist and abduction researcher Derrel Sims of Houston, Texas. Sims was the main speaker at a MUFON meeting on Feb 23 but turned the podium over to Dr. Leir for the medical part of the presentation.
On August 19, 1995, several alleged "implants" were surgically removed from two abductees who have been working with Sims. If preliminary findings are confirmed by further laboratory testing, these implants might provide hard evidence that the abduction phenomenon is a reality.
Dr. Leir removed a total of three objects, two from one patient and one from a second patient. Both specimens in the first patient, a woman, were located in her large toe, one on each side of the toe. The third object was removed from the back of the left hand of the second patient, a man, slightly above the web area between the thumb and the index finger.
According to Sims, these people were originally unaware that they had the implants. The objects were accidently discovered on x-rays taken for unrelated reasons. At the time, these individuals were seeing Derrel, as there were indications that they had a history of abduction. After extensive interviews were taken by Derrel, he ordered copies of their medical records and these objects came under scrutiny. There was no pain associated with these implants, and neither patient had any prior sensation of foreign objects in the body. Another peculiar fact is that these implants also left no sign of entry into the body; if there was an initial incision, it healed so perfectly that there was no outward scar.
To help locate the implants more specifically prior to surgery, Dr. Leir used a stud finder and a gauss meter. A gauss meter measures electromagnetic fields. When the gauss meter was put near the object in the man's hand, the meter "went crazy." Dr. Leir first tested the man with the gauss meter indoors, then took him outdoors away from all other magnetic influences. The results were the same. Similarly, when he used the stud finder, it lit up brightly over the man's hand, so they knew there was something there.
Prior to the surgery, both individuals received a type of local anesthetic which would normally anesthetize the area of surgery for up to six hours. While Dr. Leir was searching within the woman's toe for the first implant, he accidently touched the object and the patient "almost jumped off the table." Dr. Leir explained that the only time a surgeon gets this type of pain reaction under anesthesia is when something, in this case the object, is in close proximity to a nerve fiber. This is because the nerve fiber arouses the sensation of pain directly in the patient's brain, outside of the field of anesthesia. This happened in all three spots with both patients. When the objects were extracted, both patients had the same painful response. Dr. Leir concluded that these objects were somehow attached to nerves.
The first object removed was flat and approximately triangular in shape, about half a centimeter on each side. Though metallic inside, it was covered with a thick, dense gray membrane. Dr. Leir tried to cut into the membrane with a scalpel, but couldn't.
When foreign objects have been in the human body for a long time, they get covered with a dense fibrous coating, but usually such material can be scraped off with a blade. In this case, however, the membrane was nearly impossible to remove. A similar coating was found on all three objects.
Derrel Sims took the implants back to Houston for further analysis, while Dr. Leir sent samples of surrounding tissue to a local pathologist. When the objects were taken out, Dr. Leir had noticed that the tissue around them was a discolored gray tone, not the color normally seen in tissue inflammation surrounding a foreign object. He received three reports back from the pathologist, one for each of the tissue samples. He was excited to see that none of the samples showed any signs of inflammation.
Normally there is an inflammation response to any foreign object in the body. This results from white blood cell activity in the area, attempting to rid the body of what it considers garbage that doesn't belong there. If the object is something soft, like a sliver, the body is able to disintegrate it and take it away one piece at a time. If the body can't remove the foreign object, it does the next best thing. Thousands of cells join together in a process called differentiation, changing form and surrounding the object to wall it off and separate it from the rest of the body. Any type of foreign object placed in the body -- whether by accident, such as a splinter, or something surgically inserted by a doctor -- will show this type of inflammation. So it was extremely strange that the pathology reports on these objects showed no inflammatory cells at all.
Similary strange was the discovery that in the tissue around each implant, there were numerous nerve endings that didn't belong there. None of the investigators could say why these nerve endings were there, but it suggests the possibility that the implants act as some kind of monitoring device through attachment to the nervous system.
When Derrel Sims got the objects back to Houston, his first test was to expose them to ultraviolet light. He found that they all glowed brilliant fluorescent green. Derrel has found in his research with abductees that patches of some substance, invisible to the naked eye but fluorescent under black light, sometimes show up on the abductee's body following an abduction. He suspects that whatever this substance is, it could result from direct physical contact with the body of the abductor. With this in mind, he said he was not surprised to see that the three removed objects were fluorescent.
Later, Derrel dried out the three objects, and the membranes surrounding them became brittle. He was then able to scrape some of the membrane material off and send it back to Dr. Leir for analysis. After scraping off the brittle membrane, he found a highly magnetic, metallic, shiny black material inside.
When Dr. Leir received the three different scrapings of the membrane coatings from Derrel Sims, he sent them out to three separate pathologists. When the reports came back, it turned out that the main ingredient in this very tough membrane was something simply made from blood. In this bloody mass were some brown granules. The pathologists did an iron stain test and found that these brown granules were made of oxygen-carrying pigment from human red blood cells. Besides this, they also found a material called keratin, which comprises the outer layers of human skin, hair and fingernails.
Dr. Leir pointed out that if medical science could figure out how to duplicate this membrane, we would solve one of the biggest problems in medicine, that of transplant rejection. The membrane around the objects was apparently composed of material from the patients' own bodies BEFORE the objects were inserted. If we knew how to do this, we could put almost anything into the human body and have absolutely no rejection.
Leir and Sims illustrated the structure of one of the implants taken from the woman's toe. When first removed, it was flat and triangular. When the outer membrane was removed, inside were two separate pieces of shiny black metal, tightly joined together in the shape of a "T". Apparently only the membrane itself held these two metal pieces in alignment.
On February 22, the first preliminary lab reports came back on the metal itself. Leir and Sims both said they would await the final reports before announcing any details. They stressed that they had sent the samples for testing to highly specialized labs and had not indicated anything about where the samples came from. Dr. Leir told the Thousand Oaks audience that the preliminary findings are "mind-boggling," and that the first metallurgist simply said: "Wow, you guys really found something here." Dr. Leir stated that as soon as they get final reports from all three labs, they will make their findings public. "I think you're watching history," he said in conclusion.
Prior to working with Derrel Sims on this project, Dr. Leir had been an occasional consultant for MUFON, but had not been deeply involved. Now, he says, this project "has literally changed my life."
ANOTHER PLANET FOUND AROUND DISTANT STAR
Astronomers' Hopes Rise For Evidence of Intelligent Life
[This story combines excerpts from an article that ran in the San Jose (California) Mercury News on February 11, another article from the Vancouver (BC) Sun of February 13 and a third article from the (UK) Electronic Telegraph of February 12. ISCNI*Flash thanks James Sutton, Paul Anderson and the United Kingdom UFO Mailing List for contributing to this story.]
American astronomer Geoffrey Marcy, who last month discovered two planets, announced the discovery of yet another -- this one nine times the mass of Jupiter -- that signals a new frontier of astronomy.
To the cheers of a capacity 800-person crowd attending his lecture at Foothill College [near Palo Alto, California] on February 9, Marcy laid a transparency on an overhead projector showing data gathered from Lick Observatory's 120-inch telescope and analyzed earlier that day.
"This is a new class of planets -- I even hate to use that term -- this may be a new beast... This is a new frontier," Marcy said.
This planet marks the fourth discovered using a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect that measures a star's wobble caused by the gravity of a nearby object.
The new planet, found orbiting a star in the Milky Way known as HD 114762, has an eccentric or egg-shaped orbit and takes 87 days to orbit its star.
Marcy, who has become accustomed to rocking the astronomical world since his and colleague Paul Butler's discoveries last month of two new planets, said that he was especially excited by this discovery because it proves that a planet they discovered orbiting the star 70 Virginis late last year is not a freak.
Like the one announced on Feb 9, that planet also has several strange characteristics, including a mass 6.5 times the size of Jupiter, and an eccentric 116-day orbit.
"When you have two discoveries of similar-type planets, it proves 70 Vir is not a freak," Marcy said. "We're dealing with a new class of planets."
Marcy explained later that he could not claim discovery of the latest planet because astronomer David Latham at Harvard University discovered that HD 114762 wobbled back in the late 1980s. Latham, however, lacked instruments that could break up the light from the stars into colors and determine that a planet caused the wobble.
"So the research languished until we could use higher-precision instruments to confirm that a planet did exist," Marcy said, noting that his student Eric Williams has been analyzing the data for his master's thesis.
Marcy acknowledged that with current instruments, only planets the size of Jupiter and larger can be detected. But next year, advances in data collection and tools will allow astronomers to find planets the size of Saturn.
He was less certain about the possibility of finding intelligent life on other planets.
"I believe, based on my limited information, that all the stars you see at night have planets," he said. "Are there terrestrial planets to allow liquid water to puddle? Let others say whether life exists."
Others are hard at work on that very question. Puzzling radio signals have been detected from Virginis 70, the very star around which Marcy found his first planet last year.
The discovery has raised hopes that extraterrestrial civilizations may exist. However, those responsible for picking up the emissions have cautioned that there is only a slim chance that an alien broadcaster is behind them.
Nevertheless, the scientists -- based at the University of California at Berkeley -- say they cannot explain the repetitive nature of some of the signals from Virginis 70, in the constellation Virgo.
The discovery was made by scientists working on a project called Serendip 3, part of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), a privately funded program. On first learning that a planet had been found orbiting Virginis 70, the Serendip 3 team searched their records for data that the project might have received from space near the star. They found one "highly unusual" set of signals with a repetitive pattern. As a result, they have announced that they are going to begin a new search of space near the star later this year.
Growing numbers of astronomers now believe that radio signals from alien civilisations will soon be detected.
"I believe the odds on there being advanced civilisations in our Milky Way galaxy are a thousand to one on," said Prof. Paul Horowitz of Harvard University. His team operates an 84-foot radio telescope near Boston that continually searches the sky for artificial signals.
So far, there have been many false alarms where likely signals have failed to repeat themselves.
Another astronomer, Prof. Frank Drake, said: "The real signal, when it is found, will be unmistakable. I strongly believe that we shall find one before the year 2000."
But other scientists warn that it could be dangerous to advertise our own presence on Earth by transmitting signals.
Prof. Robert Rood of Harvard said: "The civilisation that blurts out its existence on interstellar beacons at the first opportunity may be like some early hominid descending from the trees and calling 'Here, kitty' to a sabre-toothed tiger."
[One of the central features of "saucer mechanic" Bob Lazar's story is his claim that "element 115" provided power for the spacecraft he studied at a secret test facility in Nevada. Lazar said element 115 was stable and could even be held in the hand, unlike most other elements heavier than uranium (atomic number 92) which disintegrate quickly. The following story does not confirm Lazar's claim, but does point in the right direction. ISCNI*Flash thanks Geoff Olson for alerting us to this story, which appeared on the Reuter newswire on Feb 22, written by Andrew Gray.]
BONN, Germany (Reuter) - Scientists at a German research institute have added a new element to the Periodic Table -- number 112, a heavier, still unnamed relative of zinc, cadmium and mercury.
A team of German, Russian, Slovakian and Finnish physicists detected a single atom of the new metal on Feb. 9, the Society for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, announced.
They made it by bombarding lead, element number 82, with zinc, element number 30, until a pair of atoms fused as a new substance with as many protons as the two together.
The new element is the latest in a string of successes for a team headed by German Peter Armbruster, who were the first to create elements 107 to 111.
The new element is so difficult to produce that it is unlikely to serve any purpose but research. But the way it decays offers proof of a theory about how so-called "super-heavy" atoms behave.
The 30-year-old theory contends that atoms with 162 neutrons -- tiny neutral particles in the heart of an atom -- are more strongly bound together than their chemical neighbors.
"Proving the existence of element 112 provides important confirmation for theoretic nucleus structure models," German Science Minister Juergen Ruettgers said.
Armbruster, who has worked on new elements for 20 years, and his team plan to press on. But the search will not continue forever.
"According to theory, element 114 should be especially stable," said an institute spokesman. "There won't be an element 200 and there probably won't even be an element 130."
[ISCNI*Flash thanks the United Kingdom UFO Mailing List for sending this information from the Inverness (Scotland) Courier and other UK sources.]
There's something strange flying about in the night sky over Inverness. An Inverness father and his 10-year old daughter became the second local family in a fortnight to see an unidentified flying object over the area.
And it seems that air traffic controllers at Inverness Airport have also had some sort of close encounter, but they are not saying very much about it. A spokesman yesterday would only confirm that a report had been filed with the MoD, about a possible UFO sighting earlier this week [week of Feb 5].
On Wednesday [Feb 7] journalist Paul Breen and his daughter Susan believe they spotted what could have been a mystery object at 9pm when travelling home to Westhill.
Mr. Breen added: "I haven't a clue what it was. At first I thought it might have been a balloon, but it was far too luminous."
The sighting by Mr. Breen and his daughter comes days after the Courier reported that a Black Isle family had spotted a UFO and tried to capture the craft on video.
Pauline Mackay of Drumsmittal said the object seen by her, her husband and two sons in the sky near Inverness had three lights and stayed in one place. "We could see circular lights on the outside. It seemed to pulsate."
Meanwhile, the Edinburgh Evening News reports a spate of strange sightings in the sky over Edinburgh. The chairman of Scottish Earth Mysteries Research, Mr. Ron Halliday, is absolutely astonished by the reports. "People have seen strange objects in the sky all over the Edinburgh area," he said.
One witness was a City official, Dave Pickering. He said, "I saw red parallel lights travelling fast over my area on Sunday evening." Other witnesses have described a "red ball-shaped object", three lights "chasing across the sky," or a "triangular object."
Air traffic control at Edinburgh Airport reported a strange object last December. Two RAF fighters were scrambled from nearby Leuchars, but no findings have so far been released.
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