William G. Pullin

Greetings. Alien visitation. The possibility is fascinating to ponder, challenging to consider, and easily considered from a biased, homocentric point of view.  The Archean Eon is the second of the four geologic eons of Earth's long and storied history, preceded by the Hadean Eon and followed by the Proterozoic. The Archean represents the time period from approximately 4,031 to 2,500 million years ago. The Late Heavy Bombardment is hypothesized to have overlapped with the earliest stages of the Archean. The Huronian glaciation occurred at the very end of the Archean Eon.  The Earth during the Archean was mostly a water world, the planet possessing a continental crust, but with the majority submerged underneath a global ocean substantially deeper than today's oceans. Except for some rare relict crystals, today's oldest continental crust dates back to the Archean, however, much of the geological detail of the Archean has been destroyed by subsequent tectonic and environmental...

Greetings. Chiles-Whitted.  The Chiles-Whitted UFO sighting occurred on July 24, 1948 at approximately 2:45am in the skies in the vicinity of Montgomery, Alabama. Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, both commercial pilots, claimed to have observed a "glowing object" pass by their aircraft before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of visual sight.  According Edward J. Ruppelt, the former head of Project Blue Book, the Chiles-Whitted sighting was one of the three classic UFO incidents in 1948 that convinced the personnel of Project Sign, the predecessor of Projects Grudge and Blue Book, that the UFO problem was a reality, along with the Mantell UFO incident and the Gorman dogfight. Subsequent studies by Air Force and civilian UFO researchers have revealed that Chiles and Whitted likely witnessed a large meteor, possibly a bolide, with Project Blue Book in 1959 formally declaring that a meteor was the explanation of the incident. In the early morning hours of...

Greetings. Kentucky, January of 1976.  Mona Stafford's 36th birthday was January 6th, and in celebration, she and her friends Louise Smith and Elaine Thomas decided to drive thirty-five miles from their home in Liberty, Kentucky, to have dinner at the Redwoods Restaurant, between Stanford and Lancaster, Kentucky. Louise Smith was driving her 1967 Chevy Nova. The three women had an enjoyable dinner together, and none of the ladies drank any alcoholic beverages with their dinner. At about 11:15pm, the trio headed back home, expecting to be home by around midnight. At Stanford, Kentucky, nine miles from Lancaster, they turned off Highway 27 and onto Highway 78 towards Hustonville. Just beyond Stanford, unexplained events began to transpire. The ladies spotted a bright object in the night sky, which Mona Stafford initially thought was an airplane in distress, possibly on fire, due to its reddish glow. As the object descended from the right side of the road to a point ahead of them, the...

Greetings. Lakenheath/Bentwaters. My favorite historical UFO case.  The Lakenheath/Bentwaters incident was a series of radar/visual sightings with unidentified flying objects over military installations in Great Britain on the nights of August 13th and 14th of 1956. The events involved personnel from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF.) The events, despite their robustness, have remained relatively unknown to the UFO subculture.  The Condon Committee's final report, which came to the conclusion that unidentified flying objects were simple misidentifications of natural phenomena or aircraft, assumed a contrary position on the case, stating, and I quote: "In conclusion, although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high." You read that right.  The sequence of events, in their entirety, ...

Greetings. Aztec, Aurora, Del Rio, Edinburg, Kingman, Maury Island, San Agustin. The names are infamous, in fact legendary in UFO circles. Add Morristown to that debased list.  The 2009 Morristown UFO hoax was a series of alleged events involving unidentified red lights in the sky, first reported near Morristown, New Jersey, on Monday, January 5th of 2009, between 8:15 pm and 9:00 pm local time. The unidentified lights were later observed on four other additional nights: January 26, January 29, February 7, and February 17th of 2009. The alleged events were later revealed to be a complete hoax, perpetrated by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo. Rudy and Russo described the hoax as a social experiment, with the ambition of exposing the UFO topic as a pseudoscience, which it is. The two men also stated that they wanted to raise consciousness about the unreliability of eyewitness claims. Five flare lights attached to helium balloons were released by Rudy and Russo and seen in the skies above Mor...

Greetings. Alien abduction. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the UFO mythology.  The scenario refers to the phenomenon of people reporting what they believe to be the real experience of being physically kidnapped by aliens and subsequently put through a series of traumatizing physical and psychological examinations. Individuals claiming to have been abducted normally call themselves "abductees"or "experiencers." The vast majority of reputable scientists and mental health professionals offer false memory syndrome, sleep paralysis, deception, and psychopathology as likely explanations for the reported phenomenon. The possibility of contact with non-terrestrial intelligences is not considered.  The typical set of claims and testimonials involve forced medical examinations that tend to focus on the particular individual's reproductive systems. Some alleged abductees have claimed to have been warned against environmental destruction and the dangers of nuclear wa...

Greetings. USOs, underwater submerged objects, operating in proximity to underwater alien bases. Is there any tangible evidence to support such a possibility? It all depends on whom you ask. As with so many other aspects of the UFO mythology, the theory of underwater alien bases is void of anything physical which would allow for any sort of scientific inquiry. The theory is built on the frail foundation of anecdotal information coming from true believers. Stories. A subterranean house of cards. Despite this not unexpected situation, there is one image that has set the UFO faithful on fire with fervent religious passion, the image featuring Sycamore Knoll.  Less than three miles off the Ventura County coastline, or just under five miles southwest of Malibu, California in Los Angeles County, Sycamore Knoll is an interesting geologic construct, approximately 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The feature is located at geographic coordinates 34° 1’23.31″N 118° 59’45.64″...

Greetings. The Bandwagon Effect. A ticket to ride the UFO train to herd mentality.  The bandwagon effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own belief structures, which they may ignore, override, or abandon. This tendency of people to align their beliefs and behaviors with those of a larger group is commonly referred to as a herd mentality. Following others' actions or beliefs can occur because of the influence of information coming from others. A substantial majority of the bandwagon effect's influence comes from the desire to 'fit in' with peers; by making similar selections as other people, this is seen as a way to gain access to a particular social club or group. The phenomenon is observed in various fields, such as economics, political science, medicine, and psychology. In social psychology, people's tendency to align their belief structures and personal behaviors with a gr...

Greetings. Christopher Hitchens (April 13th of 1949 - December 15th of 2011) Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author, critic, educator, journalist, and intellectual. During his long, storied, and accomplished career Hitchens wrote 18 books on faith, culture, politics and literature. Born and educated in Great Britain, Hitchens graduated in the 1970s from Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. By the dawn of the 1980s Hitchens had emigrated to the United States and wrote extensively for The Nation and Vanity Fair, becoming known for his intelligent and thoughtful approach to various topics of importance. His epistemological razor, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" is still held in high regard in the fields of law, science, and philosophy. Mr. Hitchens steadfastly defended the rights of free speech and of open inquiry, regardless of the particular topic or individual point of view being taken ...

Greetings. The age of the universe.  In classical cosmology, the age of the universe is defined as the length of time elapsed since the Big Bang, the explosion that birthed the universe as we know it. Astronomers have derived two different measurements of the age of the universe: 1. A measurement based on direct observations of an infant state of the universe, which indicate an age of approximately 13.787±0.020 billion years.  2. A measurement based on the observations of the local, modern universe, which suggest a younger age overall. The uncertainty of the first measurement mentioned has been narrowed down to about 20 million years, based on a number of studies that all have reached a scientific consensus showing similar mathematical figures for the universe's age. These studies include long term examinations of the microwave background radiation by the Planck spacecraft, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, and other space probes of note. Measurements of the cosmic bac...

Greetings. The question. Are we alone in the universe? That particular query has been on the minds of people for centuries, perhaps since the days of prehistoric humans.  Perhaps no other unanswered question has held such an intense fascination, or such historic ramifications for the human race. Although the vast majority of laypersons and the scientific community believes that extraterrestrial life exists somewhere out in the cosmos, we simply don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt. We just don't know. To a great extent the resulting discussions and considerations have centered around the commonality of potential homes for extraterrestrial life, exoplanets. Thanks to the efforts of astronomers around the world, and the wonderful technology available to them, we now know of thousands and thousands of exoplanets. While the majority of exoplanets have been determined to be gas giants, similar in composition and construction to the Solar System's Jupiter and Saturn, we do know ...

Greetings. The speed of light in a vacuum. 299,792,458 meters per second, or approximately 186,000 miles per second, or 671 million miles per hour. The speed limit of the universe, beyond which nothing with mass can travel.  Thanks to the herculean efforts of the late Nobel laureate Albert Einstein (March 14th of 1879 - April 18th of 1955) we know far more about how the fabric of the universe works, including the intimate relationship between space and time and gravity. According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which was published in his 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," 'c' is the upper limit for the speed at which normal energy and matter can travel through normal space. The theory posits the two following ideas:  1. The laws of physics are invariant (identical) in all inertial frames of reference (that is, frames of reference with no acceleration.) This is known as the principle of relativity.  2. The speed of light in vacuum is ...

Greetings. Money. Perhaps no other carnal motivation can be so influential on a field of study or entertainment industry as money. The goal of financial gain, the allure of the almighty dollar and its attached gems, prizes, and ancillary treasures. Although the lure of money has always been a part of our capitalistic society, it goes without saying that some spheres of activity are far more susceptible to money's pull, money's power, money's attraction.  The UFO subculture may be at the summit of that particular heap, completely at the mercy of the almighty dollar, with the field having willfully abandoned its integrity decades ago to chase the dollars down the UFO road to oblivion. In past decades, the UFO field had a strong representation of legitimate researchers and investigators, all working to solve the UFO problem, whereas nowadays the credibility of the majority of the people who have a level of notoriety in the field is firmly in question. Once upon a time, the UFO...

Greetings. The question of whether or not we are alone in the vast expanse that is the known universe has been at the forefront of the human condition since we first descended from the trees of Africa all those uncounted thousands of years ago. Cavemen living in Europe likely spent time looking at the stars in the Pleistocene night sky, wondering and wondering.  Now the human race has arrived at 2024, with our technology and intelligence. But has anything changed, and what about them?  We have spent vast amounts of time and money on exploratory efforts to learn about the universe and its mysteries. We have landed on the Moon, sent unmanned probes to the outer planets, and even made it as far as escaping the heliosphere into interstellar space. All amazing accomplishments for a species of hominid from a rocky planet orbiting an ordinary main sequence star in the Milky Way Galaxy.  On the other side of the coin, we have spent vast amounts of time and money blowing members o...