'Giant staircase' in Antarctic may be alien landing site or ancient pyramid

Satellite imagery has uncovered what appears to be a large staircase in the middle of an area which is supposed to be a barren wasteland. The shock "discovery" - which comes after a curious high-profile visit to the region - has sparked wild claims about its origin.

Users on popular conspiracy theory forum Godlike Productions suggested the huge steps were part of a pyramid structure. Others went further - claiming they were tracks left by a UFO.

One so-called "truther" linked the strange phenomenon to "tubes" spotted on Mars. Dark rumours have swirled around the little-visited frozen region, with claims it is home to a secret Nazi base, an ancient civilisation or an underground alien race persisting for decades.

An anonymous user posted the image on the forum, explaining: "This morning, in the work van, we were talking about conspiracies, and one of them were about so many big names going to Antarctica out of the blue.

"I was bored so I pulled out Google Earth for a while, just exploring, when I came across something that looked like a giant staircase."
He suggested it could be a glitch with the satellite cameras.

But fellow netizens were quick to put forward more far-fetched reasons. One poster said: "It does look like stairs - maybe on a pyramid structure? "I'm not an alien believer but I do believe we've been all over this planet many times in our past."

But another disagreed, writing: "They are not stairs - way too big. "They are ridges formed by a saw-teeth-shaped weight bearing down and compacting the snow. "It's more likely a landing site than stairs."

Another agreed: "Very interesting that it is just above the big rectangular blur and it's also in the circle of alien activity." One of the forum's administrators, with the username Trinity, said: "Looks a lot like the tubes on Mars you see."

Ancient Civilization Discovered In Antarctica? Giant Castle On Google Could Revolutionize Understanding Of History, Conspiracy Theorists Claim

UFO conspiracy theorists claim to have found evidence in Google Earth satellite imagery of an ancient city buried in Antarctica ice. According to conspiracy theorists, what looks clearly like an artificially constructed fort-like structure was spotted emerging from beneath Antarctica ice in satellite imagery.

The giant structure, allegedly about 400 feet (121 meters) across, looks like an oval-shaped medieval castle or fort with concentric walls, according to conspiracy theorists. The giant circular structure in Antarctica gives strong evidence of a lost ancient city and civilization that once flourished in the South Pole region.

But while some theorists said that the structure was built by advanced extraterrestrial beings, others insisted they were built by humans.

The discovery of a giant, ancient artificial structure that appears to have been a castle or fort suggests that an ancient city and civilization could lie undiscovered under thick layers of Antarctica ice, a conspiracy theorist claimed on the blog Ancient Code. The evidence of the existence of ancient civilization structures buried under Antarctica ice compels a review of our understanding of human history and civilization, according to conspiracy theorists. It suggests the existence of a previously unknown phase of human history and civilization in Antarctica much older than the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations.

Conspiracy theorists speculate that a civilization might have flourished in Antarctica thousands of years ago at a time that the climate of the environment was much different than today. This means, according to conspiracy theorists, that Antarctica was not always frozen wasteland and that the continent was warm enough in the past to sustain large and complex technological human societies that created impressive monuments, such as temples, castles and cities. But we are unable to see the remains of ancient Antarctica civilization today because most of the ruins are buried in thick layers of ice and snow.

But scientific researchers have denied the sensational conspiracy theory claims, saying that the alleged artificial structure, claimed to be a castle or fort, is in fact part of the natural Antarctica landscape known as a sastruga, the Daily Mail reports.

Sastrugi are irregular ridges on snowy surfaces formed through the battering action of freezing winds and heavy snowfall in polar and cold temperate region.

But conspiracy theorists rejected the explanation offered by scientific researchers, arguing instead that the shape of sastrugi, determined by the direction of wind, is very rarely oval-shaped. The symmetry of the 400-ft structure is also not characteristic of sastrugi. The symmetry shows that it is not part of the natural landscape of the area but an artificial structure created by intelligent designers, conspiracy theorists claimed.

Some theorists insisted that compelling evidence that people have known about lost ancient civilizations on Antarctica for centuries comes from a map drawn in 1513 by Turkish admiral Piri Reis. The map identifies Antarctica landmass unambiguously despite the official version of history that Antarctica was discovered much later.

This is not the first time that conspiracy theorists have claimed the discovery of monumental artificial structures buried beneath Antarctica ice. Conspiracy theorists claimed recently to have spotted a pyramidal structure jutting out of ice and snow in Antarctica. According to conspiracy theorists, the perfect geometric symmetry of the structure gave evidence that advanced civilizations once flourished on the frozen continent.

But skeptics dismissed the claim.

"Pictures of the pyramid structures are either photoshopped or cropped pictures to make the mountains look more like pyramids or simply pictures of natural formations called nunataks," skeptical UFO investigator Nigel Watson told the Daily Mail.

"[Nunataks] are mountainous formations created by shifting glaciers and erosion, not by laser zapping aliens."

Contesting the claim by skeptics that the alleged pyramidal structure was a natural feature of the Antarctica landscape called a nunatak, conspiracy theorists argued that the symmetry of the structure, which makes it stand out against its natural environment, proved that it was an artificial structure.

The Inquisitr reported that conspiracy theorists claimed that the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Antarctica recently to see the ruins of ancient civilizations and underground facilities built by an alleged U.S. secret space program being run in collaboration with technologically advanced alien races under top-secret treaty agreements.

'Giant Alien Hand' Found In Peru Desert Cave, Paranormal Researchers Claim

A group of paranormal researchers claim to have found the giant hand of a mysterious humanoid being in Cusco, Peru. Paranormal enthusiasts believe the hand belonged to an alien or extraterrestrial being.

According to the researchers, they obtained the hand, which has three long and thin fingers, from a group of friends who found it while exploring caves and tunnels in the desert near their home in southeastern Peru.

The group of friends also claimed that they found a small mummified and elongated humanoid skull at a spot near where they found the hand. They allowed the paranormal researcher Brien Foerster and his team to examine the mysterious specimens. But they allegedly declined to give specific information about the location of the cave and tunnel where they found the strange hand and skull remains.

Although paranormal and UFO enthusiasts declared the alleged "alien hand" and skull as evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial beings, skeptics have dismissed the latest claim by paranormal researcher Brien Foerster and his Hidden Inca Tours team as a hoax.

But Foerster insisted that he examined the hand personally in Cusco, Peru, and that he was convinced they were genuine hands of a humanoid creature.

According to Foerster, the person who found the hand did not want to sell it. The owner said he agreed to grant Foerster's team access because he was curious to learn about the nature of the strange objects.

Foerster claimed that he and his team presented the "alien" hand and the elongated skull to physicians in Cusco who conducted X-ray analysis and found that each of the three fingers had six bones, compared with human hands that have only three. The physicians concluded that the hand and skull were genuine biological objects, with real animal bone and skin tissues.

The physicians, according to Foerster, confirmed that the specimens were not Hollywood props or the creation of a hoaxer. The physicians also determined that the hand was not human. But they were unable to identify the type or species of life form the skull and hand had belonged to.

"It was X-rayed and examined by physicians here in Cusco who stated that it clearly was not a human, but was a life form of some kind."

The paranormal researchers said that detailed examination the end of a finger showed that the fingernail was remarkably human in appearance and form. The skin was also very human-looking. Thus, even if the alleged being was not human it must have been very human-like or humanoid.

X-ray analysis also allegedly confirmed that the skin and bones had characteristic mammalian features.

The researchers said that they planned to conduct radiocarbon and DNA testing of the mysterious specimens in the U.S. early in 2017.

But UFO blogger Scott C. Waring warned that DNA tests will not determine if the genome of the creature is alien because "we have no aliens to compare it to."

"DNA results will only say the DNA doesn't match any known species," Waring argued on his UFO Sightings Daily blog.

He argued that the hand and skull might have belonged to different alien individuals of different species because while the skull looked like it belonged to an infant, the hand looked like an adult's.

"Sure there is a skull, but it looks to be the size of an infant, if it is the same species as the hand."

"Several different kinds of aliens may have been working together and died in the Cusco cave tunnel where it was found," Waring concluded.

Some online viewers appeared to find the evidence presented in the video convincing.

"Truly amazing," a YouTube viewer exclaimed. "It makes you question the whole idea of life and how it evolved."

Others argued that the hand was a hoax.

"Maybe someone attached human fingers on top of a fin," a skeptical viewer suggested.

Others claimed that the person presented in the video as a physician was only an actor pretending to be a physician.

"Yeah, lets examine this interesting piece of alien evidence in the middle of my kitchen without any kind of environmental contamination measures or proper tools, just bare handed," a skeptical viewer commented sarcastically. "But, oh, but don't forget the gloves and coat, we are scientists!"

But this is not the first time that Foerster and his team have been involved in controversial investigation of alleged evidence of alien life. He claimed to have sent samples of DNA obtained from the famous Paracas skulls for analysis and that the results showed they contained non-human DNA, presumably of extraterrestrial origin.

The Paracas skulls refer to strange-looking skullls, believed to be about 3,000 years old, found by a team of archaeologists in the Paracas desert area of the Pisco province of southern Peru in 1928. The shape of the skulls sparked a debate, with paranormal enthusiasts insisting they were not human but alien.

However, mainstream scientific researchers insisted that the strangely elongated shape of the skulls was due to the practice of artificial cranial deformation, also known as head-binding.

Head-binding involves apply steady pressure to soft, growing juvenile skulls to distort the shape.

But paranormal researchers, including Foerster, insisted that the unusual shape of the skulls was not due to head-binding. They argued that unlike skulls elongated by head-binding procedures, the Paracas skulls had greater volume and weight than normal human skulls.

Previous studies had shown that head-binding only reshapes the skull. It does not increase its volume and weight.

Foerster claimed that DNA analysis showed that the mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) of the skulls had non-human mutations. This suggested that the humanoid creatures that owned the skulls were not related to Homo sapiens and their close relatives, such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

Alien UFO 'Normandy' Invasion? Mysterious Mothership Flashes Signals To Approaching Smaller Craft Over British Beach

Footage taken on the night of Monday, January 2, 2017, showing a mysterious shimmering UFO hovering over the sea, off the south east coast of the Isle of Wight in England, has sparked debates on multiples UFO forums after some enthusiasts claimed that it shows a mothership UFO flashing signals to an approaching smaller craft.

According to UFO enthusiasts, the footage is the latest evidence corroborating claims from different parts of the world of mysterious UFO activity involving mothership UFOs apparently dropping smaller crafts to Earth or receiving them back on board.

UFO enthusiasts claim that recent multiple UFO videos showing mysterious mothership UFOs alongside smaller crafts, including a slew of footage showing large UFOs apparently dropping smaller crafts to Earth, suggest that a stealth alien invasion of Earth is underway.

UFO hunters claim that the new footage from the Isle of Wight in England shows a mothership UFO sending out signals to retrieve a landing craft it dropped earlier.

The latest "UFO evidence" footage was sent to Mirror Online by a reader. According to UFO enthusiasts, it appears to show a shimmering mothership UFO hovering over the sea, off the coast of Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, flashing secret signals to a smaller craft that appears several seconds into the footage. The footage shows the smaller landing craft apparently responding to the signals by moving toward the mothership and boarding it, UFO hunters claim.

The footage consists of two video clips, about six minutes long, taken just before 9 p.m. on Monday, January 2, 2017, by 22-year-old James Ward. The witness was sitting in his car near his home in Lake, on the English Isle of Wight, and looking toward Shanklin beach, when he noticed a mysterious, large and shimmering UFO hovering in the sky.

The large UFO hovered in the dark sky, flashing signals in different colors. Soon a smaller UFO with a bright white light approached it as if responding to the flashing lights as a signal to approach.

"I was mesmerized by it. I was sat watching and just couldn't believe my eyes," Ward told the Isle of Wight Radio. "I saw a flash and managed to get my phone out and take some pictures and videos. It was surreal."

He told the Mirror that he did not realize he might have captured a large UFO interacting with a smaller UFO until he reviewed the footage later. He said he was stunned to notice, while reviewing the footage, that it appeared to show a large craft flashing signals as a smaller craft approached.

"I was sat in my car and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw these amazing lights in the sky."

"Looking back at the pictures and zooming in it is incredible, there's a much larger object and a very small object that appeared just for a few seconds next to it," the witness said.

Baffled by the sighting, Ward checked the local radar and flight data but found no information that could explain the mysterious sighting.

"I've looked online at various aviation website and there doesn't appear to be anything in that area at the time," he told the Isle of Wight Radio. "I can't think of any other explanation for it."

The latest sighting comes after the Inquisitr reported last February that members of the online UFO community debated and speculated about remarkably similar reports of glowing UFOs dropping "landing pods" over several locations in the U.S.

UFO hunters claimed that the reports could be evidence that a stealth invasion of Earth by hostile alien species was underway.

Some UFO hunters suggested that Ward may have captured on camera the moment that a mothership UFO flashed signals to retrieve a landing craft it dropped earlier. The footage shows clearly a mothershp UFO sending out signals in different colors to a smaller craft which approached and boarded its mothership, according to enthusiasts.

This is not the first time that residents of the Isle of Wight have reported sighting mysterious UFOs. The island is known to be a UFO hotspot. A witness, Chris Shaw, reported in January 2016 that he sighted a mysterious "warp speed" mothership UFO flying over nearby Ryde.

"My God, just seen a UFO... looking up at the stars ahead of me and then all of a sudden it looked like a festival spotlight was above my house," Shaw told On The Wight. "The light was in and above the clouds... I saw it, then it was gone within a flash. It flew above my house towards Sandown."

"It was a round shape, black with a light rim, with a massive mothership size. It must have been doing Mac 10, 20, 50 or warp speed."

The Isle of Wight is located in the English Channel, about 4 miles off the coast of Hampshire. It is the largest and second-most populous English Island.

Sweden's Queen Silvia believes her royal palace is plagued by ghosts and even claims to have MET several friendly phantoms

QUEEN Silvia of Sweden believes her royal palace is haunted with “small and pretty friendly” ghosts.

The royal insisted she was not scared of the “phantoms” roaming the corridors of the 17th-century Drottningholm Palace near Stockholm.

Speaking in a documentary to be aired on public television channel SVT, she said: “There are ghosts, many.

“It’s really exciting. But you don’t get scared,” she said.

When asked whether she had ever seen any of the ghosts, she said “Of course. But they are friendly.

“You sometimes feel that you’re not completely alone.”

Queen Silvia, 73, lives in the UNESCO-listed Royal Palace with her husband, King Carl XVI Gustaf.

They were married 40 years ago, which makes her Sweden’s longest-serving queen.

Princess Christina, the king’s sister, backed the queen’s claims when she was interviewed for the film.

“There is much energy in this house. It would be strange if it didn’t take the form of guises,” the princess said.

The residence on Stockholm’s Lovon Island, which was built in the 1600s, has long been rumoured to house ghosts.

Its ghostly inhabitants reportedly include a “gray man” and a “white lady,” according to a 2010 column in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

'Star Trek' UFO Sighting: Admitted Skeptic Captures 'Enterprise' Object Hovering Over Island

An admitted UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) skeptic has captured to photos an object that resembles, he says, the starship Enterprise from the hit science fiction franchise "Star Trek." And although he has shied away from attributing UFOs as alien controlled vehicles or anything other than phenomena that are ultimately explainable, the skeptic admits that he is hard-pressed to offer up an explanation as to what the strange image he captured might be.

The Mirror reported this week that Chad Haines was completely baffled by what was apparently a UFO sighting, where a "Star Trek" spaceship-looking image was caught on a few photos he had shot earlier in the year. The photos depicted a moonlit scene over Random Island, which is across a bit of water from where he lives in eastern Canada.

He told Canadian reporters to whom he gave the UFO photos that he was the "last person" to believe in aliens, UFOs and extraterrestrials. Now, however, the self-described skeptic says he doesn't know what to believe.

Haines said that he was deleting images from his camera, freeing up space for some Christmas photography, when he made the discovery. The photos, which were taken near his house in Clarenville (in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador), show an odd image hovering in the sky. The UFO can be seen to the left of a bright, glaring moon (which is reflected off the water at the bottom of the photos). Its strange shape bears a strange resemblance to the spaceship Enterprise (if seen from the vantage of the ship approaching the viewer's position), which warped into the imagination of the people of Earth as part of the famous "Star Trek" television series (and, later, television serial and motion picture franchise).

Prolific UFO investigator Tyler Glockner, who operates the YouTube channel "SecureTeam10," posted the UFO photos in a video. He noted, "Something [has been] caught flying in the skies over Canada. It looks like a saucer, it kind of looks like the 'Star Trek' ship from the TV series."

As Haines told TC Media, the photos were taken during a starless night, and the UFO moved up and down as it hovered. He said the object was "out there for two or three hours" before quickly flying away, disappearing from sight.

Although he does not know what the object was, Haines is convinced that the object wasn't an airplane and it was much to large to be a drone. Over the years, he said he had seen videos and reports of strange sounds, beams of light, and other phenomena, but was never swayed to think that any of it could not have been by just about anything. But after capturing the UFO images on photos himself, he is a bit more doubtful with regard to the unexplained.

"I couldn't believe it," Haines said of his experience.

His is not the first UFO sighting over Random Island. Back in 1978, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Jim Blackwood reported, along with dozens of other locals, the sighting of what they believed was a UFO hovering over the Canadian island.

The "Star Trek" object spotted in Canada was also the second Enterprise UFO sighting to occur in 2016. A family out sightseeing in West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom noticed, after reviewing photos they had taken while on their jaunt, a dark image in one of the photos they had shot, according to The Sun. Enlarged, the object looked like a disk with two elongated bars extending away from it.

The image prompted a Facebook user, Gary Raymer, to comment, "It looks like the USS Enterprise."

Speculation abounded as to what the photographed "Star Trek" image might actually be, but Philip Mantle, the former director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association, believes the object can be explained. He says that two clues suggest that the image is not a UFO. The fact that the object was not noticed at the time the photo was taken and that the object in question, when enlarged, has a pronounced "halo" around it (which suggests the object was very close to the lens when the photo was taken).

"When you look at the location where the photo was taken it is probably a grass pollen," Mantle says, "a bug of some kind or something similar."

As for Chad Haines' "Star Trek" UFO, an enlargement of the image does not produce a "halo" effect, although he, too, did not notice the strange object in the night sky when he was shooting photos over Random Island. The UFO remains unexplained.

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Mystery cosmic radio bursts pinpointed

They're one of the most persistent puzzles in modern astronomy.

As the name suggests, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short-lived - but powerful - pulses of radio waves from the cosmos.

Their brevity, combined with the fact that it's difficult to pinpoint their location, have ensured their origins remain enigmatic.

Outlining their work at a major conference, astronomers say they have now traced the source of one of these bursts to a different galaxy.

It's an important step to finally solving the mystery, which has spawned a variety of different possible explanations, from black holes to extra-terrestrial intelligence.

The first FRB was discovered in 2007, in archived data from the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. Astronomers were searching for new examples of magnetised neutron stars called pulsars, but found a new phenomenon - a radio burst from 2001. Since then, 18 FRBs - also referred to as "flashes" or "sizzles" - have been found in total.

"I don't exaggerate when I say there are more theories for what these could be than there are observed bursts," first author of the new study, Shami Chatterjee, told the BBC's Science in Action programme.

All FRBs were found using single-dish radio telescopes that are unable to narrow down the sources' locations with enough precision to further characterise the flashes. 

But Dr Chatterjee, from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and colleagues used a multi-antenna radio telescope called the Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, which had sufficient resolution to precisely determine the location of a flash known as FRB 121102.

Unlike all the others, this FRB - discovered in 2012 - has recurred several times.

"When we reported last year that one of these objects was repeating, that - in one go - knocked out about half of those models, because for this one source, at least, we knew it couldn't be explosive. It had to be something where the engine that produced this survived for the next flash."

In 83 hours of observing time over six months in 2016, the VLA detected nine bursts from FRB 121102. 

"We now know that this particular burst comes from a dwarf galaxy more than three billion light-years from Earth," said Dr Chatterjee. That's a staggering distance from Earth, underlining just how energetic these flashes are. 

"That simple fact is a huge advance in our understanding of these events."

The team has published their findings in Nature journal and has outlined them at the 229th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Grapevine, Texas.

Since this is the only known repeating burst, it's possible it could represent a completely different phenomenon to other FRBs.

In addition to detecting the bright bursts from FRB 121102, the team's observations also revealed an ongoing, persistent source of weaker radio emission in the same region. 

The flashes and the persistent source must be within 100 light-years of each other, and scientists think they are likely to be either the same object or physically associated with one another.

"This persistent radio source could be an active galactic nucleus (AGN) at the centre of a galaxy that's feeding (consuming matter from its surroundings), sending out jets, and these sizzles we see are little bits of plasma being vaporised in the jets," said Dr Chatterjee.

"That's not the interpretation we favour. The one we favour is that maybe it's a baby magnetar - a neutron star with a massive magnetic field - and it's got a nebula surrounding it that's powered by the energy being lost by this object. Every once in a while, we're getting a flash from this baby magnetar."

Prof Heino Falcke, who had investigated FRBs, but was not involved in the latest study said that, even without a clear answer, the new findings were a "game changer". But he admitted several features associated with FRB 121102 remained mystifying.

He agreed that some features of the radio source resembled those associated with large black holes. But he said these were typically found only in large galaxies.

He told BBC News: "Why is this spectacular FRB in such a little, very innocent looking galaxy? There are many things coming together which don't make much sense yet.

"Maybe it's a neutron star orbiting a black hole," he said. This might explain the on-off nature of the bursts. But he added: "Why would that produce an FRB where others don't?" 

Further research will be needed to clarify the nature of the flashes, and to determine whether all FRBs are caused by the same phenomenon - or have different causes.