Space geologist Greg Brennecka, Ph.D., is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the first half, he talked about meteorites and how they've interacted with our planet for eons. He explained that an asteroid is a floating rock in space, a meteor crosses into our atmosphere, and a meteorite is something that has landed on Earth-- essentially, the same object at different trajectories or stages. Meteorites come in all sizes, he noted— as small as a grain of sand or as large as the planet Mars. It's theorized that a Mars-sized object collided with our planet and formed the moon around 4.5 billion years ago.
While meteors are unlikely to carry life forms, they contain biologic precursors, which raises the possibility that they seeded the ingredients for life in many different solar systems. On average, over 100 tons of extraterrestrial material is added to Earth every day, mostly from micrometeorites, he pointed out. And though many stories exist, only two people have ever been verifiably hit by meteorites, and both survived. Meteorites have been treated as special or holy objects throughout cultures-- King Tut was buried with a knife made from an iron meteorite, and the Romans even officially worshiped a meteorite as their prime deity under the reign of Emperor Elagabalus, he detailed. Brennecka also talked about the importance of NASA's DART mission, which seeks to avert or deflect the impact of dangerous space objects possibly headed our way.
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Photojournalist and news producer Tim Swartz has traveled extensively and investigated paranormal phenomena and other unusual mysteries in such diverse locations as the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the Great Wall of China. In the latter half, he shared his latest work on Dulce, an alleged secret underground base in New Mexico, that was said to be manned by the US military and alien races. Strange activity in the Dulce area-- black helicopters, UFOs, and cattle mutilations, has contributed to the mythology of the base, and the material from a disinformation campaign used on Paul Bennewitz, a scientist from Albuquerque, left its mark on the UFO field in general, Swartz revealed.
In the 1980s, Bennewitz, whose home overlooked Kirtland AFB, took photographs of UFOs flying over the nearby mountains and recorded associated 'alien transmissions.' When he contacted Kirtland, the Air Force invited him to give a presentation of his materials, but then they assigned Richard Doty, a disinformation agent, to convince Bennewitz that UFOs were real, and related to two alien groups (Greys and Reptilians) working with the US govt. at Dulce. Swartz suggested the reason behind the Air Force's campaign was to draw attention away from their stealth craft and secret projects. Bennewitz subsequently suffered mental breakdowns, was institutionalized by his family, and committed suicide in 2003. Swartz also memorialized his good friend Timothy Green Beckley, who passed away last year. The two collaborated on books, radio shows, and various projects for over 25 years.
News segment guests: Mish Shedlock, Cal Orey