Tag: close encounters

Montana Tech professor teaches class that takes serious look at UFO phenomenon

Here on the campus of Montana Tech, you can study science, mathematics, engineering, biology, even nursing, but here in the Chemistry Biology Building in this classroom, you can learn about UFOs. Yeah, I’m serious, and so is Dr. Michael Masters, so let’s go check out his class.

“Fiber optics technology may have come from reverse engineering these craft,” Montana Tech Professor Michael Masters told his class Thursday morning.

The Butte university is one of only a handful of colleges around the country with a class on unidentified flying objects.

“One of my students was very honest and said that she saw the posters and thought it was a joke and registered to see if it was actually a joke,” Masters said.

It’s no joke. The anthropology class studies the history and science behind the UFO phenomenon.

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Landmark Brazilian UFO Case Reaches Capitol Hill as Varginha Incident Turns 30

OVER A LARGE BOX of untouched donuts in Washington’s Longworth House Office Building, Congressional representatives sat rapt as a visiting Brazilian neurosurgeon described what it was like to stare back at the large lilac-colored eyes of a highly intelligent, nonhuman being.

So, not your usual Capitol Hill meeting.

The closed-door session on Jan. 15 brought together three members of Congress seeking greater government transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, long called UFOs, and a group of Brazilians who say they witnessed the crash of an otherworldly spacecraft and later encountered its nonhuman occupants.

Coming thirty years after the striking events, the private Washington meeting (to which we alone had media access), followed by a public press conference five days later, raised the prospect of unprecedented Brazilian-American cooperation in unraveling the mysteries of one of the best researched—and shocking—UFO cases on record.

The witnesses included the highly respected neurosurgeon, a forensic pathologist, and a geography teacher. They were brought to the United States by filmmaker James Fox, who interviewed more than two dozen witnesses for a new feature documentary that expands on a 2022 version of his film Moment of Contact. Fox has been investigating the case, with his Brazilian counterpart Marco Aurelio Leal, for over two decades.

“This could settle the debate once and for all that we’re not alone,” Fox told the packed news conference, which he organized at the National Press Club on Jan. 20.

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Two veterans shaped the UFO phenomenon from a joke into real federal policy

For more than three quarters of a century, reports of strange objects in the sky have unsettled pilots, challenged scientists, and tested the credibility of governments.

What began in the late 1940s as scattered sightings of so-called flying saucers has evolved into a modern national security issue discussed openly in Congress under the term Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP. Two men, separated by generations but united by military service and a refusal to accept official dismissals, played defining roles in that transformation. Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe and Luis Elizondo each forced the United States to confront uncomfortable questions about what is operating in its airspace and how much the government should tell the public.

Their work reflects not only changing technologies but also changing attitudes toward secrecy, transparency, and the responsibilities of democratic institutions. Together, they form a continuous historical thread linking the earliest UFO debates of the Cold War to today’s formal federal reporting systems.

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Alien Abduction Odds Index 2026: Where Reports Cluster Across the U.S. and Canada

Tracking Where Alien Abduction Stories Consistently Surface

Most alien abduction stories begin quietly — a strange light, a missing moment, something that feels off. Many are never reported. Others are quickly dismissed.

But when years of UFO data are compared, a clear pattern emerges: these reports don’t appear evenly across the map.

The Alien Abduction Odds Index 2026 compares where abduction-related UFO reports are most often recorded across the United States and Canada. It doesn’t predict events — it compares patterns.

Each state and province is given an implied probability, an odds-style measure that shows how frequently these reports have appeared in one place compared with others.

The odds are low everywhere. But the takeaway is simple: these reports don’t appear everywhere — they appear somewhere.

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The Pentagon Is Rebranding Miracles as Threats

The U.S. government is afraid.

For the last few years, we have watched a slow-motion collision between the Department of Defense and a reality it cannot explain. We have seen Congressional hearings where decorated pilots testify about objects performing impossible maneuvers. We have heard intelligence officials invent sterile, bureaucratic language to describe the inexplicable: “Instantaneous acceleration,” “transmedium travel,” and “signature management.”

They call these objects UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). They treat them as a technological surprise—a potential national security threat from China, Russia, or somewhere further afield. The Pentagon is scrambling to collect data, desperately trying to catch up to a phenomenon they believe is new.

But it isn’t new. If the intelligence community bothered to open a theology textbook—or even a history book—they would realize they are thousands of years late to the conversation.

The Ancient Data Set

The Church has the oldest, most verifiable data set on this phenomenon in the world. But even before the Church, this reality was recorded by every major civilization.

We see it in Egyptian hieroglyphs. We hear it in the oral traditions of indigenous peoples who spoke of “Star People” long before the Old Testament was written down. This phenomenon has been a constant companion to humanity. The only thing that changes is the language we use to describe it.

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Reports of UFOs sightings on the rise in Belgium – with spike reported in March

Belgium’s UFO hotline recorded 237 sightings of unidentified flying objects in 2025, according to its annual report published on Monday.

The Belgische UFO-meldpunt (Belgian UFO Reporting Centre) has been analysing strange aerial phenomena in Belgium since 2007, supported by a team of five scientists.

Sightings in 2025 rose by 44% compared to the previous year, following a significant drop from 227 reports in 2023 to 161 in 2024. Most incidents occurred in March and September.

March’s spike was attributed to the release of excess fuel by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket during a satellite launch. The fuel created a spiral-shaped illuminated cloud, made up of water and carbon dioxide.

Reports were also driven by “skytracers” – bright lights used to illuminate clouds – and sightings of Starlink satellite trains.

In November, only 11 sightings were linked to drones spotted near military bases and airports.

In most cases, misidentifications involving aeroplanes, helicopters, or stars were found to be the cause.

The French-speaking counterpart, the Belgian Committee for the Study of Space Phenomena (Cobeps), is set to release its 2025 report in the coming days, according to its president Patrick Ferryn.

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Sources Blame Senator McConnell for UFO Transparency Law Failure

In 2025, Senator Mitch McConnell and his staff played a central role in the derailment of major Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) transparency legislation, according to sources who spoke to Liberation Times.

Sources identify Terry Carmack, McConnell’s chief of staff, as the staffer who they say pressed to have the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA) stripped from the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), after Representative Eric Burlison had submitted it as an amendment. 

One source claimed to Liberation Times, “Mitch has always worked against it [UAP disclosure] – he is the number one villain – number two is Terry.”

During a UAP hearing on 9 September 2025, convened by the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, Burlison said he had only recently learned that his UAPDA amendment had not made it into the House NDAA package. 

He suggested the decision was made on ‘germaneness’ grounds—House procedure for whether an amendment is considered relevant to the underlying bill—and he added in frustration:

“Just last night, I tried to get an amendment onto the National Defense Authorization Act that fit in the germaneness [meaning relevant to a subject under consideration] of that bill to have UAP disclosure, and conveniently it was named non-germane, mostly deemed by staff, not even an elected official – this is the kind of stuff we repeatedly see.”

In a recent appearance on the Psicoactivo Podcast, Burlison said there was a final, narrow window to add the UAPDA during ‘conference’—the closed-door phase when House and Senate negotiators reconcile their competing NDAA versions into a single compromise bill. 

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Wyoming Dealing With Eerie UFO Problem Being Described As ‘New Normal’

According to a local Wyoming sheriff’s office, unidentified flying objects (UFOs) continue to gather at high altitudes above the Red Desert and the Jim Bridger Power Plant in Sweetwater County.

Sheriff John Grossnickle of Sweetwater County personally observed the drone-resembling aerial objects, according to his spokesperson Jason Mower who informed the Cowboy State Daily of the information.

Mower noted that this represents 13 months of illuminated objects resembling drones assembling in groups, frequently appearing in organized patterns, above the Red Desert and the power plant. He further mentioned that their extreme altitude makes them impossible to target or bring down from ground level.

“We’ve worked with everybody,” said Mower to the Cowboy State Daily. “We’ve done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers.”

According to Mower, the sheriff accompanied Wyoming U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman to view the aerial objects, and she personally witnessed them.

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UFO Swarms Puzzle Wyoming County Officials

Mysterious swarms of UFOs have been appearing over a Wyoming county for over a year, leaving officials scratching their heads and searching for answers. According to a local media report, the curious clusters were first spotted in December of 2025 in the skies above the Jim Bridger Power Plant and the Red Desert in Sweetwater County. Although thought to be drones, the exact nature of illuminated aerial objects remains uncertain to authorities despite their best efforts to get to the bottom of the odd mystery.

“We’ve done everything we can to figure out what they are,” Jason Mower of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s office explained, “and nobody wants to give us any answers.” Remarkably, he indicated that the once-astonishing UFOs have now become so commonplace that residents no longer even report seeing them to police. “It’s like the new normal,” Mower mused, noting that, despite being something of an unnerving presence in the sky, the objects have posed no danger to the public nor done anything to necessitate police action. Should that change, Mower stressed, “we’ll certainly act accordingly.”

It would appear that the situation in Sweetwater County is not an isolated phenomenon, as law enforcement officials in another part of the state also reported seeing similar recurring UFO swarms beginning in late 2024 and into the first quarter of 2025 until they suddenly stopped visiting. The subject even came up during a state legislature meeting wherein Wyoming National Guard leader Greg Porter was reportedly asked about “any incidents of UAPs over your airspace,” to which he replied “no.” That said, he interestingly added that he knew of cases “near some other federal facilities,” but that he could not publicly discuss them.

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FAA Updates Controller Manual to Reflect New UAP Reporting Policy

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has formally replaced the term “Unidentified Flying Object” (UFO) with “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP) in its core air traffic control manual, marking a notable procedural update that aligns with recent federal terminology and U.S. code. The change was highlighted by Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA) and its founder, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who praised the revision as a step toward transparency and improved aviation safety reporting.

The update was issued under FAA Notice N 7110.800, effective October 26, 2025, and applies to all Air Traffic Organization (ATO) personnel. The notice modifies two key sections of FAA Order JO 7110.65, the governing document for air traffic control procedures. Specifically, it updates paragraph 1-2-6, “Abbreviations,” and paragraph 9-8-1, “General,” to remove the word UFO and introduce UAP in its place.

(Editor’s Note: As of publication, the FAA’s online version of Order JO 7110.65 does not yet reflect the revisions outlined in Notice N 7110.800. The updated language appears only in the notice itself, pending formal incorporation into the manual.)

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