MoD department that investigated UFO sightings ‘closed’

MoD chiefs said there was no benefit to investigate any UFO sightings. Photo: GETTY

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The Ministry of Defence department that investigated UFOs sightings has been closed after almost 60 years, it has been disclosed.
By Andrew Hough

 The MoD department, which has dealt with more than 12,000 reports – including 135 last year - was used to assess threats posed by any Unidentified Flying Objects sightings throughout Britain.

Any reports made would now not be investigated or followed up as the hotline had been closed, a spokesman said.

UFO experts expressed anger at the decision.

MoD chiefs made the decision to close the £50,000 a year department, established in 1950, after deciding there was no benefit investigating sightings which were “an inappropriate use of defence resources”.

It comes after the team was moved from the MoD’s team, similar to the FBI team featured in the TV programme the X Files, was moved a year ago from the Whitehall Headquarters to the RAF Command in High Wycombe, Bucks.

After an application under the Freedom of Information Act, the MoD admitted that responding to every UFO sightings “diverts MoD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence”.

No decision was announced and the disclosure was instead buried on its website earlier this month.

It said that in more than 50 years “no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom”.

After investigation, around 5 per cent of reports remain unexplained.

“The MOD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life,” the spokesman said.

“The MOD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings.

“Accordingly, and in order to make best use of Defence resources, we have decided that from the 1 December 2009 the dedicated UFO hotline answer-phone service and e-mail address will be withdrawn.”

He added: “MOD will no longer respond to reported UFO sightings or investigate them.”

Nick Pope, who ran the Ministry of Defence UFO project from 1991 to 1994, said it was “outrageous”.

“We’re leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attacks,” he told The Sun.

The spokesman said the programme to release departmental files on UFO matters to the National Archive would continue.


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Are We Alone In The Universe

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UFOs vs The Government (History Channel)

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Evidence of life on Mars lurks beneath surface of meteorite, NASA experts claim

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(NASA/PA)

NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars.

It showed that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilised bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting that they were already present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of subsequent contamination by Earthly bacteria.

“This is very strong evidence of life on Mars,” said David Mackay, a senior scientist at the Nasa Johnson Space Centre , who was part of the team of scientists that originally investigated the meteorite when it was discovered in 1984.

In a 1996 study of the sample, Dr Mackay and others argued that the microfossils were evidence of life, but sceptics dismissed the claims, saying that similar-shaped structures might not be biological. The new analyses, the product of high resolution electron microscopy, make a strong case for the Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite having carried Martian life to Earth. The microscopes were focused on tiny magnetite crystals present in the surface layers of the meteorite, which have the form of simple bacteria. Some argued that these could be the result of a carbonate breaking down in the heat of the impact.

The new analyses show that this is very unlikely to have resulted in the kinds of structures seen in the rock. Close examination suggested that about 25 per cent of the crystal structures were chemically consistent with being formed from bacteria.

“We feel vindicated. We’ve shown the alternate explanation is absolutely incorrect, leading us back to our original position that these structures are formed by bacteria on Mars,” Dr Mackay said.

Dennis Bazylinski, an astrobiologist from the University of Nevada who peer-reviewed the findings, said: “Until now I was on the fence but this paper has really thrown out the non-biological explanation.” However, he added that the study was not a “smoking gun” for life on Mars. “One meteorite is never going to answer such a complex question,” he said.

According to scientists, the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the impact of an asteroid, and reached Earth after floating through space for about 16 million years. It landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica. Scientists were able to trace the meteorite back to Mars, as its chemical composition matched the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s.

The meteorite also preserves evidence of liquid water on Mars, suggesting that the planet may have had more suitable conditions for life to develop in the past. The investigation was published in the November issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the Geochemical and Meteoritic Society. Nasa is expected to announce the findings formally on Monday.

The team has also been studying two other Martian meteorites — Nakhla, which landed in Egypt in 1911, and Yamato 593, which was found by a Japanese expedition to Antarctica. In research due to be published shortly, the scientists claim that both of these fossils also show evidence of microbial life.

Bill Clinton, then the US President, said of the research in 1997: “It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our Universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.”

NASA/ESA HUBBLE FINDS FIRST ORGANIC MOLECULE ON"EXTRASOLAR" PLANET (HD 189733b)

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Just 0.3° due east of the familiar Dumbbell Nebula, M27 in Vulpecula, shines the 7.7-magnitude star HD 189733 with a very hot Jupiter in close orbit around it. Binoculars are all you need to see the star, a pale orange K dwarf 63 light-years away. The star is at right ascension 20h 00.7m, declination +22° 43' (2000.0 coordinates). This view is 0.9° wide; click on the image for a view 1.3° wide. North is up, east is left.

Photo by Akira Fujii.

The European planet-hunting team founded by Michel Mayor (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland) has just announced a new extrasolar planet that crosses the face of its host star — the ninth transiting exoplanet found to date. But this planet is special. The planet, which orbits the 7.7-magnitude type-K star HD 189733 in Vulpecula, offers professional astronomers their best prospects for studying an exoplanet's atmosphere and temperature. It also gives amateurs their easiest opportunity to detect a world orbiting another star. Moreover, the host star is located just 0.3° from the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), ideally positioned for Northern Hemisphere observers during early evening this season.

Using the 1.9-meter telescope at the Haute-Provence Observatory in France, Mayor's group used the radial-velocity method to discover the planet's gravitational tug on its host star. These observations not only revealed the planet, they also indicated that the planet periodically blocks some of the star's light. Follow-up observations with Haute-Provence's 1.2-meter telescope confirmed the transits (which last 2 hours) and the fact that the star's brightness drops by a whopping 3 percent (0.03 magnitude) every time the planet crosses the star's disk. These are the deepest exoplanet transits yet seen.

An artist depicts the newly discovered planet transiting its host star, HD 189733. The planet's diameter is about 17 percent of the star's, meaning it blocks about 3 percent of the star's light during transits.

S&T illustration by Gregg Dinderman.

The combined radial-velocity and transit observations have yielded the planet's mass (1.15 Jupiters), diameter (1.26 Jupiters), orbital period (2.219 days), distance from its host star (0.0313 Earth's distance from the Sun), and density (0.75 gram per cubic centimeter, confirming that it is a bloated gas giant). Lead author François Bouchy (Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, France) and his colleagues report these findings in a paper submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Based on the host star's temperature and the 0.0313-astronomical-unit separation, the planet's temperature must be several hundred degrees Celsius. This places it in the class of "very hot Jupiters" — Jupiter-mass planets that orbit their host stars in less than 3 days. With its high temperature, it's almost inconceivable that any life exists on this planet or any moons it might have.

"This planet is absolutely phenomenal for follow-up observations," says David Charbonneau (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who has used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to detect the atmospheres and measure the temperatures of several other transiting exoplanets. Charbonneau's Harvard colleague Scott Gaudi adds, "This planet is going to be a gold mine for learning about planets through follow-up observations."

Researchers are ecstatic about the HD 189733 planet (HD 189733b) for several reasons. First, its incredibly tight orbit means transits occur frequently. Second, the 3 percent brightness decrease (due to the planet's relatively large size with respect to the star) makes transits easy to detect. Third, the star is bright, being only 63 light-years from Earth, which means astronomers can achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio in their observations. Fourth, the planet's high temperature guarantees that Spitzer can detect its heat emission, as the telescope has previously done for the transiting exoplanets HD 209458b and TrES-1.

Thanks to these favorable conditions, research won't be limited to professional astronomers. The star itself is so bright that it can be seen with just a pair of binoculars. Amateur astronomers and students using small telescopes equipped with CCDs will easily be able to measure the 3 percent drop in brightness caused by the transits. "Heck, this transit is so deep some of our most experienced visual observers could do it!" claims Aaron Price of the American Association of Variable Star Observers.

Gregory P. Laughlin (University of California, Santa Cruz), a cofounder of Transitsearch.org, has added HD 189733 to his observing list. Transitsearch.org organizes worldwide amateur observing campaigns to catch transiting exoplanets. The next transit occurs at 1:53 UT, October 8th, which is best suited for eastern North America observers. By tracking any slight irregularities in the timing of future transits, professionals and amateurs could detect the gravitational presence of additional planets in the system, including planets with masses as low as Earth's.

"It will be very interesting to get high-quality amateur photometry for additional radius estimates, since like HD 209458b, the HD 189733 planet is clearly larger than predicted by standard models," says Laughlin. "Since high-end amateur setups are reliably observing the HD 149026b transit, whose depth is close to 10 times shallower than the HD 189733 transit, I think we can expect to see some awesome light curves of the transit." Laughlin also notes that amateur observations will reveal whether the star is marred by starspots.

More information about the planet and the discovery team can be found in the Haute-Provence press release.

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