Spring is the season that carries a lot of good things: warmer days, flowering trees —miniskirts ;)— and this year will have an added bonus, courtesy of Anomalist Books: Mac Tonnies' (1975-2009) long awaited book, 'The Cryptoterrestrials.'. From the Foreword to the book, written by Nick Redfern:

If evidence for the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis has failed to surface—despite decades of hard work and diligent investigations —then maybe we should consider the notion that we are looking for the answers in all the wrong places. Instead of looking up, maybe we should be looking around us. And, perhaps, even below us, too.

Anomalist Books has prepared a webpage devoted to the release of the book; from there we learn that it will be 128 pages long, and will include 11 illustrations by Mike Clelland. Mike is not only an incredibly gifted graphic artist — as can be perceived from the beautiful illustration below — but he himself is becoming a rising voice around the paranormal blogosphere; his own blog Hidden Experience has become an open diary where he's not afraid to graciously share his experiences with honesty & open-mindedness, and he even had the chance to become a friend of Mac's.

Our friend Mac, at the threshold of the unknown
(click on the image for a larger view)

So, yet another reason why I predict 'The Cryptoterrestrials' will become an insta-classic, and yet an even broader audience will have the luck to know the works of the mind behind Posthuman Blues.

One of my favourite Fortean sites on the 'net is Magonia, and one of my favourite researchers is Martin Shough. Put them together and you get a fascinating article, "A Social History of Ball Lightning". In his essay (originally printed in Magonia 81, May 2003), Martin looks at how the ball lightning phenomenon has come to be largely accepted by modern science (if not totally, then at least accepted as a topic worthy of discussion), and compares it to UFO sightings:

Back in 1967 the astronomer Gerard Kuiper dismissed a 10% residue of unexplained ‘UFO’ reports with a wave of the hand, thinking it ‘reasonable to assume’ that this testimony must be “so distorted or incomplete as to defy all analysis”. Inconsistently, however, he advocated a major Defence Department/FAA programme to research “very rare natural phenomena” such as ball lightning. Why? Because “no adequate data yet exist of ball lightning”, even though its existence had been ‘known for at least a century’.

This raises a very interesting question: How was it possible for science to ‘know’ anything with ‘no adequate data’? The answer is that science did not ‘know’, and as a whole declined to have anything to do with such stories for at least a century. Unpicking some of the reason and unreason behind this curious condition of scientific double-think is instructive.

Logically and evidentially speaking, there is precious little difference between a ‘very rare natural phenomenon’ which is unexplained and an unexplained phenomenon characterised as a ‘UFO’. Even more subtle is the distinction sometimes drawn between ‘a unique natural phenomenon never before observed’ and a UFO. Because there will always be unique combinations of natural phenomena never before observed (in practice), how is a distinction to be supported be tween such effects and UFOs?

One approach to this difficulty is to abandon hope of finding any distinction. But why does this collapsing of the phenomenological distinction not translate into a collapsing of the epistemological distinction? How can there then be ‘unexplained natural phenomena’ which we say are allowed to be distinct from mere combinations of natural phenomena never before observed, and ‘unidentified flying objects’ which are not allowed to be distinct? Is this classification a matter of sense or mere semantics?

Some excellent insights, as always with Martin's work. With your extra time on the weekend, make sure you also browse the rest of the content at Magonia, as the site is chock-full of win.

Previously on TDG:

• The Real Ufology
• UFOs and Radar Spoofing
• Excellent 'Channel Islands UFO' Report
• Magonia Online

First broadcast in 2006, this Horizon episode looks at various researchers investigating the possibility that life on Earth arose via a 'seeding' from space, also known as the theory of 'panspermia' (first proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1960s):

Features include the mysterious 'red rain' that occurred in India a few years ago, and projects designed to look for life on other bodies in our Solar System.

While the British Ministry of Defence quietly removed itself from the UFO reporting loop late last year, it still did manage to publish all the reports it received during 2009 - you can download a PDF listing the date, location and short description of each sighting from the MoD's website.

Though I haven't counted them, there looks to be in the region of 600 to 700 reports up until December 1 (when the MoD decided to stop recording/investigating sightings). Plenty sound like chinese lantern sightings (though interestingly, a number of reports state directly that the lights seen weren't chinese lanterns...showing some familiarity with this modern faux-sighting), but in amongst them are some genuinely interesting reports ranging from a "shiny black flying cylinder" sighted by a pilot above his aircraft, to phenomena which sound very much like manifestations of ball lightning.

You can also browse reports from previous years at the same website (again as PDF downloads).

Paranormal TV has made Paul Kimball's excellent documentary Stanton Friedman is Real available online in its entirety via YouTube:

I don't agree with a number of Stan's conclusions and views, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a fascinating character - a gifted speaker, a driven researcher, and a preacher of sorts for the 'nuts and bolts' view of UFOs as alien flying saucers (and of course, the 'grandfather of Roswell' and supporter of the MJ-12 documents). A wonderful portrait of one of ufology's most enduring and controversial public faces.

Previously on TDG:

• The Daily Grail review of Paul Kimball's Best Evidence: The Top Ten UFO Cases
• Skeptologists Attack Ufologists
• Friedman on the Skeptologists
• Flying Saucers are not Welcome in Florida

So, 2010 is finally here! Feeling all futuristic & space-y already?

Still, if you wish to continue retrospecting about the year that is now part of our collective memory, then I suggest you go listen to the latest podcast at Binnall of America, where Tim chats with two of my favorite commenters of the Fortean realm: Nick Redfern & Greg Bishop, the duo behind UFO Mystic.

In this two-part, dual guest interview, BoA:Audio looks back at 2009: The Year in Ufology with our special guests, longtime friends of the program, Nick Redfern & Greg Bishop. We'll be examining what was a relatively "down" year in UFO studies and giving some perspective to the stories that did create a buzz in the research community as well as the mainstream media. Here in Part One, such stories include: the UK Wind Turbine "UFO" of January, the file releases of Denmark & Brazil, the Morristown NJ UFO hoax from the early part of this year, the failed disclosure predictions for July in France and November in America, the Google UFO logo mania of September, the Socorro UFO hoax allegations from the Fall, and we'll remember the lives of some of the esoteric figures that we lost in 2009 like contactee Howard Menger, UK UFO researcher Tony Dodd, fortean legend John Keel, Ufology legend Dick Hall, and Socorro UFO witness Lonnie Zamora.

To enjoy of this Ufological ménage à trois, click here and here (two-part podcast).

Yes, our own little third rock from the Sun is pretty super, but I'm talking about something else: astronomers have detected a transiting exoplanet 'just' 40 light years from us, whose density suggests that it is largely made up of water:

The alien world known as GJ 1214b orbits a red dwarf star one-fifth the size of our own sun, 40 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, the astronomers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"Astronomically speaking, this is on our block," David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lead author of the study, told reporters this week. "This is a next-door neighbor. For perspective, our own TV signals have already passed beyond the distance of this star."

The downside? The planet's surface hits around 200 degrees C, leading Charbonneau to speculate that the newly-discovered planet was probably too hot to host life as we know it (Jim)...though "it didn't miss it by very much."

Centauri Dreams has more on the story.

The latest Binnall of America audio podcast interview is with Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

One of the hardest working researchers in all of Ufology, Peter Davenport, returns to BoA:Audio for a discussion on the National UFO Reporting center and the world of Ufology. Peter will provide us with updates on his move to a decommissioned missile site in Washington state as well as what has been going on with the NUFORC since our last conversation three years ago. We'll revisit how he became director of the NUFORC in 1994, how the hotline has changed in the last 15 years, the pros and cons of both the emergence of the Internet as well as cell phones, his dealings with other UFO groups and the issues surrounding sharing of case reports, the woeful coverage of UFOs by the mainstream media, and some noteworthy trends and cases from the last few years. We'll also hear about Peter's 1997 meeting with government officials who were very interested in the information he's collected at the NUFORC. This re-telling of the fascinating event is a must-hear for any serious student of Ufology as it provides an amazing potential glimpse into the government's stance on UFOS.

Note too that the BoA website is about to be upgraded - if you want a sneak peek at the 'beta version', you can check it out here. Don't forget to click on the PayPal donation button and give Tim a pat on the back for all his hard work.

Plenty of web discussion and linkage this morning about a curious sighting in the skies above Norway (heaps of images at that link). A strange spiral in the sky, complete with beam of light 'emanating' from its centre, led to explanations ranging from UFO to an energy vortex created by the Large Hadron Collider.

However, the official explanation is a little more prosaic - the spiral was likely created by the test-launch of a Baluva missile from a Russian submarine (not only has this been seen before, but there was an advisory issued regarding possible launches). Just to confuse the issue however, the Russians at this stage are denying that they have fired any missiles or rockets.

Whatever the explanation, it would have been seriously creepy to be a local when that 'black hole' developed at the end...

Update: Russia confirms failure of 3rd stage of a Baluva missile test launch.

Five years ago, SpaceShipOne entered history by becoming the first privately funded human spaceflight, winning the $10million Ansari X-Prize in the process. Today, the next step in the evolution of commercial spaceflight took place with Virgin Galactic's public unveiling of SpaceShipTwo, also known as the VSS Enterprise. Our good friend Alan Boyle was at the event, and has posted a comprehensive write-up on Cosmic Log, with plenty of insights into Richard Branson's thoughts about the project:

Branson is spending an estimated $250 million to $400 million on his space venture. The company already has signed up more than 300 would-be spacefliers, including actress Victoria Principal, Hollywood director Bryan Singer and 90-year-old enviro-theorist James Lovelock. Paralyzed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who sampled zero-G two years ago, may eventually fly as well.

The price for a three-day space tour package, including training, is $200,000.

Is there enough of a market for space travel to allow Branson to recover his investment? "To be perfectly honest, I'm not too worried if I make money or not," he told our NBC News crew today during a tour of SpaceShipTwo's hangar in advance of tonight's ceremony. He said his prime concern was to create something he's proud of, and have faith that any venture that inspires his pride will end up attracting customers and making money.

Heaps more details at Cosmic Log, go check it out. Also worth looking at is this slideshow and the Virgin website. And if you're on Twitter, it's well worth following Alan (@b0yle) for up-to-the-minute news and comment on various space and science related topics.

And for a good insight into the human factor of developing a craft like this (one that, literally, travels faster than a bullet), check out this documentary on SpaceShipOne's third flight:

As Alan points out in his piece, it's worth noting the difference in size to the new vehicle.