In The Times (London), that excellent journalist, Ben Macintyre, ask the serious question: where have all the UFOs gone? Here’s part of his answer:

Just a few years ago, the sky seemed to be littered with flying saucers and every other sort of astral crockery: strange lights, cigar-shaped spaceships, paranormal things that went bump in the night. Scully and Mulder were rushed off their feet. Now the UFOs have almost vanished. Sure, you still get a few alien abductions, especially on New Year’s Eve, and diehard ufologists are still recording close encounters of the umpteenth kind.

Since 1955 the National UFO Reporting Centre in Seattle has clocked 125,000 reports of sightings. But in recent years the numbers have dropped dramatically. The British Flying Saucer Bureau closed down three years ago after half a century of saucer-spotting. The simple truth is that the little green men don’t come calling like they used to, and they have stopped leaving circles in our crops.

[ … ]

But it is also a result of human invention, and humanity’s evolving relationship with new technology. UFO sightings have declined as the internet has expanded. The web is the natural home of every crackpot and conspiracy theorist, but it also, eventually, produces a rarefied atmosphere of rationalism in which aliens and other elusive creatures cannot long survive. In the short term, the internet was a blessing to UFOs; but over time, it has all but killed them off.

[ … ]

UFOs tend to appear at moment of turmoil and technical innovation, and the full-scale alien invasion started after the Second World War. On June 24, 1947, an American pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted nine silvery objects hurtling through the air near Mount Rainier in Washington state.

[ … ]

Within a month, flying saucers had been reported in 28 states. On a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, the US Air Force recovered bits of debris from a crash site, and rumours of bodies of bug-eyed aliens quickly spread. Britain became a favoured UFO landing strip, with hundreds and then thousands of reported sightings. “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?”, wondered Winston Churchill in a memo written in 1951. “What can it mean?”

Read the whole article.

About.com is giving you the chance to share your prophetic sense with the world. Here’s the gen :

DO YOU HAVE a sixth sense? Prophetic dreams? Psychic visions of the future? Or are you just really good at guessing what’s going to happen in the near future?
In any case, here’s your annual chance to show your stuff. Every year around this time, we invite members of the Paranormal Forum to post their predictions for the coming year. There are several categories:

Best World Event
Worst World Event
Best National Event
Worst National Event
Greatest Scientific Discovery/Invention/etc.
Awards Predictions (Oscars/Grammies/Nobel Prize)
Surprise Prediction
Other Predictions

You can respond to as many or as few of the categories as you want. If you prefer, you can also just e-mail your predictions to: paranormal (AT) about (DOT) com.

A company is claiming that its new product, a dietary supplement called Magneurol6-S, will help users to develop a sixth sense.

The product contains magnetite, a mineral said to give the brain of animals the sixth sense-like abilities often known as ESP. Magnetite is a valuable iron ore made up of the mineral iron oxide. Permanently magnetized deposits are called lodestone. Pigeons are said to have a lump of this mineral in their brains which accounts for their homing abilities.

The company selling the supplement claims that the amount of magnetite in human tissue determines the degree of paranormal awareness each individual experiences. “Animals have long been known to sense magnetic fields,” said Baard Williams, spokesperson for RemCure Enterprises. “Fin whales mysteriously follow the Earth’s geo-magnetic fields. Canines demonstrate the ability to predict earthquakes and, additionally, in India an entire tribe escaped the recent Tsunami two days before the devastating wave.”

RemCure believes that it can safely increase magnetite levels in humans with its product, Magneurol6-S.

N.B. This is not an endorsement of the product.

[Source: Send2press]

The alleged manifestation of Katie King

William Crookes* was a remarkable man by any standards. The list of his achievements is a long one (see below). In an appendix to his work Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism, an unknown author describes the furore that followed his investigations into the “materialization” of Katie King in the presence of the medium, Florence Cook.

The reader may have gotten the impression from the earlier experiments entered in this journal that Victorian Britain took these reports from its leading physicist in stride. It is a tribute to Crookes that he makes small reference to the religious and scientific storm that swirled around him because of his investigations. He was regarded by many as a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, contributing monumental scientific discoveries on the one hand, and on the other, plunging into the depths of irrationalism. But nothing was comparable to the furious response that followed the first reports of his investigations with Florence Cook and the Katie King materialization. He and Florence Cook were bitterly attacked.

A photograph of the materialization appears above, so readers can make up their own minds. The full text of Crookes’s journal can be read online : Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism.

*Highly distinguished physicist and chemist. Discovered the element thallium. Elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1863, Royal Gold Medal 1875, Davy Medal 1888, Sir Joseph Copley Medal 1904, knighted in 1897 and the Order of Merit in 1910. Invented the radiometer, developed the Crookes tube, invented the cathode-ray tube, pioneered research into radiation effects, contributed to photography, wireless telegraphy, electricity and spectroscopy. President at different times of the Royal Society, the Chemical Society, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Society of Chemical Industry, the Society for Psychical Research (from 1896-1899) and the British Association. Founder of the Chemical News, editor of Quarterly Journal of Science.