
Molecular Cloud Barnard 68 is a reverse cloud, or negative cloud, or more technically, a "molecular cloud" previously thought to be a hole in the sky. Now astronomers have concluded these are clouds, of a type.
Image: NASA
Noctilucent clouds are an unsolved puzzle. They float 83 km above Earth's surface at the edge of space itself. People first noticed NLCs in the late 19th century. In those days you had to travel to high northern latitudes to see them.
In recent years, however, the clouds have been sighted in the United States as far south as Oregon, Washington and even Colorado. Climate change, space dust, and rocket launches have all been cited as possible explanations for the phenomenon. (italics mine.)
Whipped into fantastical shapes, these clouds hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm.
But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognised with a name.
They have been seen all over Britain in different forms - from Snowdonia to the Scottish Highlands - and in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, but usually break up without producing a storm.
Forecasters have radar and other instruments to help them track the path and strength of storms, but hurricane intensity can ramp up suddenly and unpredictably, as Hurricane Charlie did before striking the southwest coast of Florida in 2004.
But an April study in Nature Geoscience found that the peak winds of a hurricane are preceded by an increase in lightning activity by about one day. Because lightning activity is easily monitored around the world, it could prove a useful tool in hurricane predictions.
Do you feel as if Big Brother is watching you? Is that voice in your head getting louder and louder? Is your TV talking back to you? Are you seeing things, that are not supposed to be there, but are? And what about that black helicopter that passe by your window twice a day?
... there is another interpretation, one which, while it is taken quite seriously by premiere UFO researchers like Jacques Vallee, remains a definite minority point of view: What if what we are witnessing and experiencing actually originates on Earth and has been here throughout mankind's struggle to understand the strange environment he finds himself thrust into? Are the diminutive gray aliens so frequently claimed to have visited hapless mortals as they lay abed really just a variation on millennia of old folklore about fairies, changelings, elves and other forms of wee people?
That is the primary thrust of this 2008 release from Global Communications, called "UFOs, Time Slips, Other Realms and the Science of Fairies." The bulk of the book is a reprint of a much older book by Edwin Sidney Hartland, in which he offers a wonderful overview of the folklore of fairies and other mysterious creatures that frequently cross over from their shadowy dimension to enter ours.
This is Vallee territory (among others) as well of course, and I don't disagree. But I acknowledge I have a bias for the reality of ET as well, and I don't see why the explanation needs to be an either/or one. Isn't it possible there are at least two concurrent reasons for phenomena like this, one being literal extraterrestrials from outer space (whether from our own solar system or beyond)? It's also possible one manipulates the other for our benefit -- in order to deceive, which is one characteristic of the phenomena. There's also a symbiotic relationship between us and "them," -- all of "them" -- whoever "they" are, of course.
Looking forward to reading this book.