December 2, 2008 - Strange Aerial Object Over Irving, Texas. 
Click for report.

Irving, Texas, around 8 PM Central,
on Thanksgiving night, November 27, 2008.
Image: Olympus E-500 camera with
40-150mm lens © 2008 by Ovi.

December 1, 2008 - Common Cold Viruses Came from Birds.
“We calculated that the moment of divergence between various
[cold virus strains] occurred approximately 200 years ago ...
crossing the species barrier to infect humans around that time.” 
- Dr. Ron Fouchier, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Metapneumoviruses that cause cold-like symptoms
in humans originated in birds and may have crossed the species
barrier around 200 years ago, according to a new article published
in the December 2008 Journal of General Virology.
Image credit: iStockphoto/Stephen Uber.

Metapneumovirus strains such as HMPV and AMPV-C have high evolutionary rates, similar to those of other RNA viruses such as influenza, hepatitis C and SARS. By understanding the evolution and emergence of these viruses, medical researchers hope to develop ways of monitoring and predicting the emergence of new pathogenic viruses that could lead to pandemics.

November 30, 2008 - Part 11:  Army/CIA Unit Studied
the Real UFO Blue Book Cases.   Click for Real X-File.

“We were supposed to talk with Vice President Nixon
about what we in the CIA were going to do with the special
Project Blue Book.”  - “Stein,” Former Army/CIA UFO Analyst

November 29, 2008 - Canadian Fireball Fragments Found.

Meteorite fragment weighing 250 grams from November 20, 2008,
explosion near Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Canada, was found by University
of Calgary researchers south of Lloydminster in an area called Buzzard Coulee.
Image © 2008 by Bruce Edwards, Edmonton Journal.

On Thursday, November 27, 2008, University of Calgary student, Ellen Milley, was traveling south of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, with meteorite expert, Alan Hildebrand, when she discovered a 250-gram piece of dark space rock lying atop a frozen pond. A dozen meteorite pieces have now been found in the Ian Mitchell ranch near the Battle River valley on frozen ponds where the dark space rocks are more clearly seen.

November 27, 2008 - Part 10:  Army/CIA Unit Studied
the Real UFO Blue Book Cases.   Click for Real X-File.

“You’re going to see some highly classified equipment.
At this time, we have some saucer craft that have been gathered
in the United States from New Mexico and we have other craft
that have been gathered from around the world.” 
- “Col. Jim,” USAF, Area 51, Nevada

November 26, 2008 - Canadian Fireball A 10-Ton Space Rock.

“At least half a dozen infrasound stations ranging from Greenland to Utah,
including Canada's Lac Du Bonnett, Manitoba and Elgin Field, Ontario stations,
recorded energy from the fireball's explosions. The indicated energy is approximately
one third of a kiloton of TNT.”  - Peter Brown, Ph.D., Univ. of Western Ontario

On Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 5:26:40 to 5:26:45 PM Mountain,
this 5-second fireball came in at a steep 60-degree-angle from the horizon, exploding
as it fell, with the largest explosion at 5:26:44 PM. The location was NNE of Lloydminster,
Saskatchewan, Canada, traveling SSE towards the Battle River valley. The fireball was recorded
on all-sky and security cameras across Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, and was witnessed by
thousands of people. Image source SkyNews.  Also see Devon, Alberta,
police car dashboard camera video.

Universe Today reports: “The search is on for fragments of a 10-ton rock that lit the sky over western Canada last Thursday evening. Scientists estimate that at the time it hit Earth's atmosphere, the asteroid fragment weighed approximately 10 tons and was probably about the size of a desk. It exploded with the force of 300 tons of dynamite, and hundreds of fragments of the meteorite weighing more than 50 grams (1.76 ounces) are likely strewn over a wide area. The speed of entry was relatively slow, about 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) per second, well below the average 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) per second of most meteorites, said University of Calgary researcher Alan Hildebrand.”

November 25, 2008 - New Satellite Data Links Greenland
Ice Melt to Persistently Rising Sea Levels.

“It could be that we are seeing a decadal fluctuation, and in the near future
the rate will fall again, but I do not think so. For several years now, the rate of rise
has not changed significantly.”  - Anny Cazenave, Ph.D., Laboratoire d’Etudes
en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiale (LEGOS), France

Seasonal surface melt extent on the Greenland Ice Sheet
has been observed by satellite since 1979 and shows an increasing trend.
The melt zone, where summer warmth turns snow and ice around the edges
of the ice sheet into slush and ponds of meltwater, has been expanding inland
and to record high elevations in recent years. Image courtesy Delft Univ. of Technology.

Researchers from Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands, along with the Center for Space Research (CSR) in Austin, Texas, and France's LEGOS have developed a way to produce an accurate picture of Greenland’s shrinking ice cap. On the strength of this method, it is now estimated that Greenland is accountable for a half millimeter-rise in the global sea level per year. Their research is based on the German-American GRACE two-satellites mission (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), which measures how the Earth's gravity field varies with time. New data shows that since the start of 1993, sea level has been rising by 3.3 mm a year, almost double the rate of the previous 50 years. French scientist Anny Cazenave, Ph.D., LEGOS, reports that between 1993 to 2003, about half of sea level rise was caused by warmer, expanding ocean waters and half by melting land ice. But since 2003, 80% of persistent rising sea levels is caused by Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt.

The two GRACE satellites measure how mass is distributed on Earth based on how the two satellites speed up or slow down over various Earth regions. The new data shows that the Greenland ice sheet is now melting about 150 gigatons (150 billion tons) of ice each year into the sea. That ice melt, combined with Antarctic ice melt, has caused seas to rise about one millimeter per year since 2003. See: European Science Foundation.

Earthfiles Honored for
News Standard of Excellence.

November 21, 2008 - Colorado State Patrol Officer Encountered
UFO and “Human” Stranger.  Click for report.
Tune In Dreamland Online. 

“ My gut feeling says I spent twenty minutes talking
to somebody who was not from this world.”  - Jon M. Spaulding,
Retired Police Detective

November 19, 2008 - Part 9:  Army/CIA Unit Studied
the Real UFO Blue Book Cases.   Click for Real X-File.

“After the medical people cut off the top of the skull,
you could see two brain hemispheres, but instead of having
a solid brain like humans, it looked like a lot of branches.
We called those aliens ‘branch brains,’” 
- “Stein,” Former Army/CIA UFO Analyst

November 19, 2008 - World's First Stem Cell Creation
of Windpipe Organ Transplant.

“This will represent a huge step change in surgery.
Surgeons can now start to see and understand the potential
for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve
their ability to treat patients with serious diseases.”  - Martin Birchall,
Prof. of Surgery, Univ. of Bristol, who helped grow trachea cells for transplant

    
Left:  CAT Scan of narrowed windpipe before surgery.
Right: New trachea grown from patient's own stem cells. For the first time
in medical history, tissue transplants are now possible without tissue rejection.
Source:  Lancet medical journal

Claudia Castillo, stem cell trachea transplant patient
is a 30-year-old mother of two who says, “I was a sick woman.
Now, I will be able to live a normal life.” Claudia's trachea was
damaged after contracting tuberculosis. Image © 2008 by BBC.

November 17, 2008 - Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA -
Scientific Research.  Click for Part 3.     Click for Part 4.   

“This seems to be physical evidence of very thin energy beams
only 1/10th of a millimeter wide, probably of a microwave nature,
that caused these straight line lesions in the leaves. ... I’ve never seen
anything like this before.”  - Biophysicist W. C. Levengood

Arrow points to unusual reddish, thin, straight line
on one of the sampled silver maple leaves exposed to the Levittown
aerial object's glittery light energy. Image © 2008 by W. C. Levengood.

November 16, 2008 - Part 8:  Army/CIA Unit Studied
the Real UFO Blue Book Cases.   Click for Real X-File.

“Anthony told me the small, grey, non-humans
lived for a long time. He also said that knowledge could be
transferred from a dying or dead non-human into a replacement body.” 
- “Stein,” Former Army/CIA UFO Analyst

November 15, 2008 - India's Lunar Orbiter
Crash-Lands Probe On Moon's South Pole.

Lunar south pole images taken by India's Moon Impact Probe (MIP)
on November 14, 2008, as MIP was dropped from India's orbiting Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.
Raw, unprocessed images by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The MIP aimed to transmit ground images and kick up dust, which instruments in Chandrayaan-1 will analyze. ISRO: “A principal objective is to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth, but could be more plentiful on the moon and could power nuclear fusion, a valuable source of energy in the future.” India has joined Chinese and Japanese spacecraft also currently orbiting the moon in what is shaping up to be a 21st Century space race to build bases on the moon and to mine its minerals. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was launched on October 22, 2008, from the Sriharikota Space Center in southern India.

November 14, 2008 - Part 2: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA - Scientific Research.    Click for report. 

Summer privet leaves with abnormal red-brown discoloration
associated normally with fall production of the pigment anthocyanin.
Hypothesis is that unusual external energies associated with the
Levittown aerial phenomenon provoked premature anthocyanin
production. Image © 2008 by W. C. Levengood, Pinelandia Biophysical Lab.

November 13, 2008 - Part 1: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA
Drops Little Squares of Light.    Click for report.
Tune In Dreamland Online. 

             
Left:  Digital image of curved cylinder, or boomerang aerial object, that morphed
into middle pink-colored disc. Right: The pink disc then flashed three oval, white lights on
its bottom surface and “little squares of light” dropped like snow in the air around privet bush
and silver maple tree, but never reached the ground, floating three feet above yard. Half
a dozen sightings April through July 2008, Levittown, Pennsylvania.
Image and drawings by resident and eyewitness.

November 13, 2008 - Hubble Photographs Planet Orbiting Another Star.

“Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding.
Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than its star (Fomalhaut).
We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off.”
- Paul Kalas, Ph.D., Hubble Astronomer

Fomalhaut is 25 light-years from Earth and is sixteen times brighter than our sun.
Fomalhaut b is the newly photographed planet about three times Jupiter's mass
and 10.7 billion miles from its sun, Fomalhaut. Image credit: 
NASA Hubble, ESA, and P. Kalas, Univ. of California-Berkeley.
For more information, see Hubble Site.

The tiny white box on red scattered starlight “noise” pinpoints Fomalhaut b's location. The larger inset at bottom right is a composite image showing the planet's position during Hubble observations taken in 2004 and 2006 and shown here in false color. Astronomers have calculated that Fomalhaut b completes an orbit around its parent star every 872 years. The star, Fomalhaut, is marked by the white dot at middle of red noise and is surrounded by black because astronomers used the Advanced Camera's coronagraph to block out the star's bright glare to find the planet, Fomalhaut b, which is one billion times fainter than its sun.

November 12, 2008 - Saturn's Mysterious Northern Aurora.

“We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere.
This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas
on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty,
so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise.” 
- Tom Stallard, U. K. University of Leicester

Northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora
and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared
light as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA, JPL, Univ. of Arizona.

This new infrared image by the Cassini spacecraft will be reported in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. One of the contributors is Nick Achilleos, Ph.D., on the Cassini magnetometer team at the University College London. He says, “Saturn's unique auroral features are telling us there is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere. Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn.”

November 11, 2008 - 4,300-Year-Old Pyramid
Discovered At Saqqara, Egypt.

“There was so much sand dumped here that no one had
any idea there was something buried underneath.” 
- Zaia Hawass, Chief, Egyptian Antiquities

Discovered in September 2008, all that remains of the pyramid
is a square-shaped 16-foot (5-meter) tall structure (long stepped wall center screen) that
had been buried under 65 feet (25 meters) of sand. Originally, it's estimated the pyramid was
45-feet-high and probably built for Queen Sesheshet, 6th Dynasty. Image © 2008 by Ben Curtis, AP.

November 11, 2008 - Mars Phoenix Lander Is Silent.

“Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident
we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come.”
- Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, Ph.D., Univ. of Arizona.

NASA: The lander's Surface Stereo Imager camera recorded this view of trenches
dug by the Phoenix robot arm Aug. 25 to Aug. 26, 2008. The camera's shadow is near image center.
NASA's Phoenix landed near the Martian north pole on May 25, 2008, and communicated with Earth scientists until November 2, when the Martian winter interfered with the solar energy power of the lander. During its five months of operation, Phoenix found perchlorate, calcium carbonates and snow falling.
Image by NASA, JPL-Caltech, University of Arizona, Texas A&M University.

November 7, 2008 - U. S. Border Patrol Agent Reports Camouflaged Underground Bases in NM and Beam “Swallowed” California Airplane.
Click for report.   

“There were two people jogging on the beach.
They saw the strange, intense beam and watched it swallow up
an airplane that was flying over the ocean west of San Diego!” 
- Retired U. S. Border Patrol Agent

November 6, 2008 - “Star Wars” Caught On U. K. Cell Phone Video?
See video of multiple beams and lights at:  The Sun Nov. 6, 2008

“Through binoculars you could see clusters of lights.
They seemed to form a circle and were attached to something.
It freaked us out.” - Betty Williams, Hartcliffe, England

Undated cell phone videotape given to The Sun newspaper
on Wednesday, November 5, 2008, by Shellie Williams, age 20,
and her mother, Betty Williams, age 53. The women told The Sun that
several unidentified aerial objects were videotaped on their respective mobile phones
from Shellie's home in Hartcliffe, southwest of downtown Bristol, England. The lights
shot down vertical, laser-looking red beams and white beams near the radio mast on
Dundry Hill in southwest Bristol. The Bristol International Airport did not report any
“unusual activity” and the local police confirmed their helicopter was not flying and their
station had not received any UFO reports. Image © 2008 by Shellie and Betty Williams.

November 5, 2008 - Part 7:  Army/CIA Unit Studied the Real UFO
Blue Book Cases.   Click for Real X-File.

“The Ft. Belvoir photograph from Italy,
that our CIA unit investigated, showed a saucer-shaped craft
that had landed. There were two or three small, non-humans outside,
like walking around.”  - “Stein,” Former Army/CIA UFO Analyst

November 4, 2008 - India's First Unmanned Moon Mission
Is Moving into Lunar Orbit.

“Chandrayaan-1 has commenced its final journey
towards the moon and will be inserted into the lunar orbit Saturday
through complex maneuvers controlled by the Space Research
Organization (ISRO) in Bangalore.”  - S. Satish, ISRO Director

India's Chandrayaan-I unmanned, cube-shaped, spacecraft
will be inserted into lunar orbit on November 8. The mission goal is to orbit
the moon for two years with eleven payloads to perform remote sensing. The United
States designed two of the payloads. With Chandrayaan-1, India joins Russia,
America, Japan, China and the European Space Agency, in unmanned
lunar explorations. Image courtesy ISRO.

November 3, 2008 - Cause of Mysterious Northeastern
Bat Deaths Found, But Mystery Deepens.
“The bats have done this for millions of years.
They have hibernated in these same caves using the same
physiological mechanism, dropping their heart rates down, not eating,
dropping their core body temperature down, and they didn't used to get moldy.”
- David Blehert, Ph.D., Microbiologist, USGS

Eight Little Brown Bats hanging upside down in hibernation west of Albany, New York,
inside Hailes Cave in winter 2007. Previously unidentified white fungus rings the noses on seven,
which now has been identified as the fungi Geomyces that likes cold and humid places like
northeastern caves. But why is Geomyces killing bats now? No one knows. Bat mortality
in two caves affected by the white-nose syndrome was 90% and 97%. By February 2008, the
white-nose syndrome has spread to twenty caves in New York state, southwestern Vermont
and western Massachusetts. Image © 2007 by Nancy Heaslip.

The killer is a member of a group of cold-loving fungi called Geomyces. This white, powdery-looking fungus coats the muzzles, ears and wings of bats and has meant death for more than 100,000 bats in the northeastern United States since 2007. See: previous   022908Earthfiles.

November 2, 2008 - Mystery of Rapidly Changing Low
and High Tides On Maine Coast.

on Tuesday, October 28, 2008, around 3 PM, eyewitnesses in Boothbay Harbor,
Southport and Bristol, Maine, northeast of Portland, said that low tides became high tides
within minutes, changing half a dozen times from 4 feet to at least 12 feet. The rapidly changing
low and high tides damaged boats and piers. The most common cause could be earthquake
shifting of underwater land, but no seismic activity was recorded in the Boothbay
Harbor region on October 28, 2008. Also see:  WCSH6.com.

Updated: October 31, 2008 - Strange Lights Chased by Jets Again October 29, Over Stephenville, Texas, and Crystalline Triangle in Ohio.
Click for report.  

“As the large white-orange object was rising up,
it looked like it was going into the center of the triangle of blue lights. ” 
- Tim Comstock, Ohio Truck Driver

Cell phone image around 3:48 AM, October 23, 2008 (date correction),
on Route 7 near W. H. Sammis coal power plant between Empire
and Stratton, Ohio, along Ohio River. Image © 2008 by Tim Comstock.

October 30, 2008 - More Encounters with Glowing Humanoids,
Green Orbs, Strange Aerial Lights and “Thunderbirds.”  
Click for report.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and saw three typical “gray” aliens
standing in my bedroom. One was standing right next to the bed,
glowing a bright azure blue.”  - Coast to Coast AM listener

October 30, 2008 - Mysterious Blue Substance on Mercury - Volcanic?
“Mysterious dark blue material is all over Mercury.”
- Mark Robinson, Planetary Geologist, Arizona State University

The blue color of assumed volcanic material is enhanced
by special infrared cameras. Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.|

NASA's Messenger spacecraft orbiting the planet closest to our sun snapped this image of Mercury while only 124 miles above the planet's surface. At right, blue material was ejected from the nearby 65-mile-diameter crater and covered older smooth plains, suggesting the blue material is volcanic and that Mercury is not the big, dead rock scientists used to assume. One Mercury crater is larger than Washington, D. C., and is filled a mile deep with the blue stuff assumed to be cooled lava. Analysis of exactly what the blue substance is has not yet been done.

October 28, 2008 - More Strange Aerial Lights Seen Over
Stephenville and Dublin, Texas.   Click for report.

“Accounts started trickling in on Tuesday, October 21.
But on Thursday and Friday, October 23 and 24, they poured in,
with dozens of people claiming to see unexplainable lights across the
Erath County area.”  - Stephenville Empire-Tribune

Cropped cell phone image showing two of three strange lights
(middle reddish and top white), first lined up horizontally
and then rotated counterclockwise to a vertical line above Henderson
Junior High football field (bottom two stadium lights). Cell phone image
taken on Thursday, October 23, 2008, 8:34 PM Central, from parking lot of
Gilbert Intermediate School on Frey Street near Henderson in
Stephenville, Texas. Image © 2008 by Brent Chambers.

September 23, 2008 - AH-1W SuperCobra Helicopters
and Glowing Sphere.  Click for Real X-File.

“One second, the glowing sphere was between the two Cobras;
the next it was moving vertical with out any sort of turn, and it started
making amazing, impossible 90-degree turns in the air, which is something
I know no sort of aircraft can do at those speeds.” - U. S. Marine, Camp Lejeune, NC

January 8, 2007 - U. S. Navy Yeoman Sees Extraterrestrial Photos.

A brief video excerpt from an upcoming Earthfiles Vodcast about an aerial disc technology described by government documents as “interplanetary” and the strict American policy of denial about the disc intelligences in the interest of national security.

              
Click on Google or YouTube for links to Earthfile's video excerpt.
For more about Navy Yeoman, drawings of non-humans and documents:
Click on Earthfiles reports:
• 03/17/2006 -- Part 1: U.S. Navy Chief Yeoman Describes "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" in TOP SECRET/MAJIC Photographs.

• 03/23/2006 -- Part 2: U.S. Navy Chief Yeoman Describes "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" in TOP SECRET/MAJIC Photographs.