But now scientists from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México believe it could have been a massive comet that came close to hitting the Earth - with a similar mass to the object that killed the dinosaurs.

'IMPACT EVENTS': WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Nasa's latest scan for 'impact event' threats used the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE and took two infrared scans of the entire celestial sky between January 2010 and February 2011.

The scan aimed to find asteroids and comets 'near Earth' - ie within 120 million miles.

The scan found there are 19,000 asteroids and comets that could destroy a city-sized area within 120 million miles of earth - previously the figure was thought to be 35,000.

Nasa says the risk of impact is less than previously thought. The likelihood of a 'planet-killer' - the mountain-sized asteroids in the 'large-sized' range, above 3,300ft - appears to have fallen more significantly.

There are only 981 of these objects near Earth, and Nasa has found 911 of them.

Mexican astronomer José Banilla took the image, which appears to show something passing in front of the sun, on August 12 1883.

When it was released publicly in 1886 in the magazine L'Astronomie it was dubbed the first photo of a UFO - a series of 447 objects that looked 'misty' and 'left behind a similar misty trace.'

A new study by the Univeridad Nacional Autónoma de México now suggests that it was a comet in the process of breaking up.

'Our working hypothesis is that what Bonilla observed in 1883 was a highly fragmented comet, in an approach almost flush to the Earth’s surface,' writes Hector Javier Durand Manterola, the lead author of the report.

'Using the results reported by Bonilla, we can estimate the distance at which the objects approach to the Earth’s surface.

'According to our calculations, the distance at which the objects passed over was between 538 km and 8,062 km, - and the width of the objects was between 46 m and 795m'

The mass of the original comet could have been up to eight times the mass of Halley's comet.

If the photograph did show a comet in such close proximity to the Earth, it should have resulted in a meteor shower. Bonilla's photograph was taken just before the annual Perseid meteor shower (pictured) - but 1883's shower was no brighter than usual

Using the time that it took the object to cross the sun combined with the location of Bonilla's observatory, the report calculated that the object would be at most 8,000km away, and possibly much less.

'The only bodies in the Solar System which are surrounded by a bright mistiness are the comets, so it is appropriate to suppose that the objects seen by Bonilla were small comets,' said the scientists.

And as well as being shockingly close to earth, the scientists believe that the comet could have had the same mass as the object that wiped out the dinosaurs - eight times the mass of Halley's comet.

The report's claims have been questioned, though, as a comet breaking up so close to earth should have resulted in a meteor shower, and no astronomers detected one.

The regular Perseid meteor shower, which occurred shortly after Bonilla's photograph was described in reports as 'not a fine one by any means.'

Article Courtesy Of: The Inquirer

Psychic perception may come to us through any of our five senses. If through the sense of sight, it is called “clairvoyance,” which literally means “to see clearly.” If through the sense of hearing, it is “clairaudience.” If through the sense of touch or feeling, it is “clairsentience.” If through the sense of smell, it’s called “clairolfaction.”

I don’t know what it’s called if the psychic information comes through the sense of taste, if there’s such a thing.

However, I have come across at least two persons who receive psychic information through the sense of smell. They discovered such a gift or talent in my class on ESP. Since they attended my seminars many years ago, I have never heard of anybody else with the same psychic ability. It seems this is not a very common one.

Interesting letter

But recently, I received a very interesting letter about this rare psychic ability from a reader named Karen Padayhag.

Here’s her letter:

“After reading your book “Understanding The Psychic Powers of Man,” containing the different psychic manifestations, I was amazed. I remembered that I usually smell something different in places that are considered to be haunted or in funerals.

“During my father’s funeral, I smelled this unusual smell—and I continue to smell this in every funeral I go to.

“I also smell it in my school building for my class in home Economics (H.E). At first I didn’t think it was something important. However, one day, in the same building, we gathered there to eat. We brought food to our H.E room. When I got near the table, the unusual smell in that room became more intense. Again, I did not bother with it.

“After the gathering, I became very sick. Getting sick after smelling that unusual smell usually happened to me. I also smell the same smell when the death anniversary of my father is near.

“I do not know what it means. I can’t describe it except that it is unusual and not normally smelled by people.

“Here’s one other thing. Every time I would reminisce or imagine things, they would be accompanied by certain smells. For me, everyday would be a different smell and I clearly sense them when I remember those events.”

Highly developed

Karen, you are definitely one of those rare individuals who receive psychic information through the sense of smell. As mentioned earlier, yours is a very rare psychic gift or ability. Your sense of smell is so highly developed that you can even smell things that you merely imagine, and that you can associate each day with a different smell.

Others can see people as “beings of light” and in color. They can see the human aura that is not normally visible to everybody. These are people with a highly developed sense of sight, that’s why it is commonly called “The Third Eye.”

Try to experiment with this rare psychic ability of yours, so that you can use it in a practical way. One of the students I mentioned above can smell sickness in people, even if he has a cold. That’s why he is able to diagnose or tell what’s wrong with a person simply by being aware of that smell.

Can you imagine the tremendous possibilities this rare ability of yours can have? People with this psychic ability, when meeting a friend, will not say, “You don’t look well today.” They are more likely to say, “You don’t smell good today!”

Note

A special thanks to Angela Moore for bringing this article to my attention. Her site on how to get a good psychic reading is one of the best reads on the subject as well as how to avoid getting ripped off my unscrupulous psychics. Lots of good customer reviews listed here for the most popular psychic phone services online.

Article Courtesy of: Fox News

LINCOLN, N.H. –  Fifty years after Betty and Barney Hill reported seeing a flat, cigar-shaped craft hovering over them in New Hampshire's White Mountains, the state has put up a historical marker noting their close encounter with a UFO.

Returning from a vacation in Canada on Sept. 19, 1961, the Hills arrived home in Portsmouth puzzled by stains and tears on Betty's dress, scuffs on Barney's shoes and shiny spots on their car. Their watches weren't working.
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When they got home, they realized they had "lost" about two hours of time. They called family and reported the event to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth the next day.

Barney, who had binoculars, later told science investigators that he could see figures on the craft. The couple also reported seeing a fiery orb. In 1964, they underwent a series of taped hypnosis sessions -- recalling they had been abducted and physically examined by "men" who did not appear to be human. Paintings and a sculpture of their descriptions depicted them with large, bald heads, slanted eyes and gray skin.

"They dragged me, kicking and screaming," Betty told The Associated Press in a 1986 interview.

In 1965, their story, known to only a small circle of investigators, close friends and family, was leaked to the Boston Traveler, which published it. Their UFO experience was described in a best-selling book in 1966, "The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard A Flying Saucer," by John Fuller; a 1975 television movie starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons, "The UFO Incident"; and numerous speaking engagements. Last week, Hollywood writer-producer Bryce Zabel, who developed the UFO conspiracy series "Dark Skies" in the 1990s, said he is planning to make a new film about the couple's experience.

In July, the state erected a historical marker to the "Betty and Barney Hill Incident" in Lincoln near some cabins at the Indian Head Resort on Route 3, one of the last places the couple recalled seeing that night.

The resort is the site of a conference Sept. 23-25 devoted to what the state marker describes as "the first widely-reported UFO abduction report in the United States." Kathleen Marden, the Hills' niece, will give a guided tour of places they stopped at during their encounter.

"How many states have courage enough to do something like that? Even the state of New Mexico hasn't put up a plaque for Roswell," asked Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who was the first civilian investigator of the Roswell incident, a purported UFO crash on a ranch in July 1947. The military later declared it was a top-secret weather balloon.

Friedman has authored papers and books on his UFO research, including one co-authored in 2007 with Marden, "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience."

"I started off kind of neutral," Friedman said when he first heard of the Hills' story back in the 1960s. "After meeting with them, I was very impressed with them. ... I saw no enlargement at all, no attempt to make more of the story than was there."

Friedman, another conference speaker, said the state marker gives some credibility to UFO sightings and research.

Michael Stevens of Farmington, who started a petition for the marker in 2008, said the state's Division of Historical Resources was "very clear from the get-go that they weren't necessarily backing that the event happened.

"What they could back up -- the report and the cultural effect it had -- was in and of itself historical, and that's what they could go on to get the marker through," he said.

Stevens said he had no connection to the case or to the Hills; he said he's just always been interested in their story. "I just thought it was one of those important things that history was going to overlook because it didn't fit into society's little box of `normal." The one-paragraph marker was backed up by 20 footnotes and 28 references that Marden provided to the state.

The Indian Head Resort is dedicating its own bronze plaque to the Hills next weekend. It's also having fun with the event -- the gift shop has alien-themed green golf balls, lollipops, "UFO Crossing" signs -- even a juicer shaped like a flying saucer.

"One of the things we're hoping to do with this event is to explore the potential for this being a UFO 'destination,' similar to the area around Roswell," said Stew Weldon, resort marketing manager.

The Irving Notch Express gas station on Route 3 in Lincoln also pays tribute with a mural of an alien and a flying saucer. Inside, it sells alien-themed hats and balloons -- and summarizes what happened in what it claims is the "First Rest Room Museum Dedicated to Alien Abduction."

The gas station is at the site of what used to be a farmer's field and apple orchard where Barney had said the UFO descended, hovering less than 200 feet above him and his wife.

Chris Berlo, a gas station cashier, said some people who have dropped by have full knowledge of the Hills' story. Others ask, 'What's with the aliens?"'

Marden, who was 13 at the time, recently put together a self-guided tour of the places where her aunt and uncle stopped that night, in response to a number of queries. She was a teacher and social worker before beginning research on the story in 1990.

"I think I had always secretly harbored the desire to investigate this for myself, to attempt to determine whether or not it was real or fictitious -- not that they would have made it up, but that perhaps the abduction was more of a fantasy event than a reality," Marden said.

"I believed, I always believed, that they had a close encounter with an unidentified flying object," she said. She believes her aunt and uncle were telling the truth about their capture.

Marden, who grew up in Kingston but now lives in Clermont, Fla., said the couple weren't seeking attention.

"They never wanted this to be released to the public. It would be the worst thing that could have happened to them. They were prominent citizens in the state of New Hampshire and in their community."

The interracial couple -- he was a U.S. Postal Service worker, she was a social worker -- were actively involved in civil rights causes. "They were both members of the NAACP, the state and regional board." She said the governor appointed him to serve on the New Hampshire advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Marden said they were afraid of losing their jobs -- which didn't happen -- not to mention their reputations. But after meeting with family members, they decided to speak publicly.

Betty died in 2004 at age 85; Barney died in 1969 of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 46.

In 2009, the University of New Hampshire held an exhibition and seminars devoted to the Hills. Betty's dress and other artifacts are part of UNH's special collections. Betty was a 1958 UNH graduate.

"I think that she wanted to make sure the materials were available for serious study," said David Watters, director of UNH's Center for New England Culture. "She said to me that she wanted the dress to be preserved, so that when our science caught up with alien science that it would be able to determine what the chemicals were on her dress, for example. Or the star chart that she made under hypnosis -- some day she thought it would be possible to have that confirmed through astronomy."

In 1991, Betty told The Associated Press she was retiring from making public appearances because of her age and her "disappointment in the way the UFO field is headed." She said too many people with "flaky ideas, fantasies and imaginations" were making UFO reports.

"If you don't know the answers to something, you can always dream them up, whether they are true or not," she said. "A lot of the UFO field certainly is not sticking to the facts."

Article Courtesy Of: Reuters

Charles Hickson, the Mississippi man who claimed he was abducted and probed by aliens while he was fishing with a friend in 1973 and never backed off the story despite the ridicule he endured, has died.

Hickson, 80, died last Friday of a heart attack, his family said on Tuesday.

Hickson, then 42, was fishing with 19-year-old Calvin Parker Jr. on a pier near Pascagoula, Mississippi in October 1973 when they said a cigar-shaped UFO with flashing blue lights suddenly appeared above them.

A door opened up, the two men later told authorities, and they were pulled into the craft by aliens, who paralyzed them, examined them on a table and then let them go.

Although Hickson was reluctant to share the story -- he said all he and Parker wanted to do "was go fishing" and he feared people would "laugh me out of Jackson County" -- he and Parker eventually went to local police and reported the incident.

"They weren't lying," the chief investigator for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department told reporters at the time. "Whatever it was, it was real to them."

As word of their claims leaked out, Hickson and Parker became minor celebrities, celebrated by believers in extraterrestrial life but derided by skeptics.

In 1974, after wire services picked up the story, Hickson appeared on a number of national TV programs, including The Dick Cavett Show.

In 1983, Hickson wrote a book about the incident called "UFO Contact at Pascagoula" with William Mendez.

Article Courtesy of: The Examiner