Lima Area UFO Research Associates P.O.

Box 5193 Lima, Ohio 45802-5193

http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/

July/August 2012

Issue # 14 "NEWS FROM THE OFFICE LIBRARY" The Office Library is now in possession of four current copies of the MUFON UFO JOURNAL and all are invited to come and check them out. Highlights are as follows: APRIL 2012 EDITION: -50 foot unknown object off of the right wing of an aircraft in Virginia as seen by a father and son in a private aircraft. -Triangles 2011: Best Closed Cases including a triangle spotted in Trumbull, Oh. -Debunkers ignore UFO research by Stanton Friedman. -Alien Abduction or sleeping Paralysis? by Kathleen Marden. -"Battle of LA" a highly overlooked case by John Ventre. MAY 2012 EDITION: -Triangles 2011: Fourth quarter cases reviewed. -Test your MUFON field investigation skills. -MUFON in the news: Anderson Cooper probes UFOs. JUNE 2012 EDITION: -Cylinder UFOs reviewed as a common shape. -Glimmer of hope in SETI's Intellectual desert? by Stanton Friedman. -Filers Files reports sightings in Kentucky,Indiana, and Ohio. -Looking back 60 years at the modern UFO era. JULY 2012 EDITION: -Florida woman encounters triangle object. -Orange lights seen over Eastern U.S. skies. AUGUST 2012 EDITION: -Large hovering orange object seen by two Virginia boys. -UFOs activating U.S. and Soviet Nuclear Missile sites documented. -"Fireballs" or Orange lights on the increase across U.S. skies. -Check in on "Open Minds" magazine. -What not to do on investigations.

This is but a glimpse of the articles you will find in the MUFON Journal, now available for loan in the LAURA Office Library. The Library is open from 11:15 to 1:00 most every Tuesday and by appointment. Contact Tom Bowman at 419-999-4785
-submitted by Tom Bowman

The LAURA group would like to thank Tom for giving a very interesting July lecture on Roswell entitled What Really Happened at Roswell? It was very informative, as Tom not only gave a lecture, but he had storyboards, pictures, drawings, newspaper articles, and handheld models. In late July Tom gave this lecture at the Findlay Public Library to an audience of about 30 people. There was a full page article in the Findlay Courier the next day! -Tom, good job on showing leadership on this controversial subject, and for getting the LAURA name out to the public.

MUFON director defends actions, denies exaggerations

Mutual UFO Network executive director David 'The Captain' MacDonald defended the manner the information presented at the recent annual symposium was touted as major and blockbuster, stating that importance is in the eye of the beholder. When asked via email to comment on disappointments expressed, as well as specifically what material was considered to be so sensitive that proper security protocols were implemented to protect the material and parties involved, MacDonald replied: The sensitive material which requires "proper security protocol" is the Leonard Stringfield files which have been acquired by MUFON. These files contain material which names names, dates, places and events of such a nature that special caution needs to be exercised. In regards to that material, we absolutely stand by our statement. I briefly described the nature of the contents in my opening remarks at the Symposium. To date, I have heard no disappointment pertaining to that release. As to the second announcement, to which the notion of security was never attached, at least by MUFON, the jury is still out. We have a few who are thrilled, a few that are deeply disappointed while the majority remains neutral. That is a typical reaction in a field such as ufology and I expressly pointed that out in my last "Directors Message" published in the 'MUFON Journal'. The Symposium is a place where ufologists have the opportunity to present their findings to the organization and each member can accept or reject those findings as they so choose. MUFON has done its job by offering an acceptable forum for the presentation of those findings. MUFON, like any other organization, cannot flawlessly predict the level of interest on any given subject to any given group. That is what marketing firms do, albeit with mixed results. However, in the case of the Stringfield files we hit a home run and future releases will bear us out. I explained to MacDonald I interpreted from his reply that he did not consider the "national release of blockbuster UFO discovery," which was scheduled for Sunday at 4:30 p.m., to have been sensationalized, misrepresented or exaggerated in any manner. I then asked if that was a correct interpretation on my part, to which MacDonald replied: You are correct! MUFON simply does not need to exaggerate, misrepresent or sensationalize anything. As a matter of fact, as of today, the positive response to the Sunday release far exceeds the negative. As you know, importance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Internet discussion forums such as UFO Casebook continued to attract comments from members frustrated with the situation and outraged over what they interpreted to be misleading implications. Popular UFO-related information sites contained posts expressing concern related to seemingly never ending claims of imminent smoking guns that consistently fail to materialize within ufology. Some suggested the Stringfield files might actually be interesting and potentially significant for a number of reasons. However, concern was equally expressed over how the files might be handled due to perceived decreasing MUFON credibility, as well as due to the MUFON reputation of failing to publish information of public interest. Harry Drew, the researcher who made a presentation on alleged crashed alien craft during the time slot scheduled to contain a blockbuster announcement, may be destined to be remembered more for questionable MUFON public relations than the research he presented. If current trends are any indication, Drew may very well long be associated with failing to produce blockbuster evidence, deserving or not.

'Impressive' Curiosity landing only 1.5 miles off, NASA says

(CNN) -- Early data shows the Mars rover Curiosity landed with amazing accuracy this week, coming down about 1.5 miles from its target after a 350-million-mile journey, NASA scientists said Friday, perhaps giving planners more confidence about landing spacecraft in tight spaces in the future. The $2.6 billion rover is on a two-year mission to determine whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting life. It landed Monday and will spend the next four days installing operational software that will give it full movement and analytic capabilities, scientists said at a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Curiosity missed its target entry point into Mars' atmosphere by about only one mile, and most everything in its complicated descent and landing operations -- a spectacle popularly known as the "seven minutes of terror" -happened on time, including the deployment of the largest-ever supersonic parachute and the heat shield separation. "From all the data we've received so far, we flew this right down the middle, and it's incredible to work on a plan for (years) and then have things happen ... according to plan," said Steve Sell, who was involved in the powered descent phase. "It was an impressive ride," said NASA's Allen Chen, the operations lead for descent and landing. Tail winds might account for some of the off-target distance, NASA's Gavin Mendeck said, but the actual landing spot was well within the expected range of uncertainty, or the area where the rover could well have ended up. "With what we learn over the next few months, we'll see if we can chop (the area of uncertainty) back a bit" for future missions, Chen said. Chen said the early information about the landing is based on only 1 megabyte of data received on the day of the landing; much more information will be received in the coming weeks. Precision in landing was important because NASA chose a relatively tight area for Curiosity's arrival: The Gale Crater, which contains an 18,000-foot high mountain about 7.5 miles south of the landing site. The rover's prime target is Mount Sharp, the mountain in the crater. Scientists hope the layers of rock that form the mountain will give them a timeline of the history of Mars.

Though Curiosity's primary science mission has yet to begin, the rover, along with probes in orbit, already have transmitted images. On Thursday, NASA released a sweeping color panorama of the planet's surface, showing the rocky, reddish desert surrounding it and the mountain it will explore in the coming months. The 360-degree view captures the landscape of Gale Crater. NASA has said photographs like the ones beamed back by the rover, as well as others taken by the probes in orbit, will be used to map a path to the mountain's base. The rover is built to run for two years, but a previous rover, Opportunity, has been working on Mars since 2004, well beyond the three months NASA planned. Opportunity's sister rover, Spirit, ran from 2004 to 2010. The rover is installing its full surface operations software after the landing because its computers didn't have room for it during flight. The new software essentially replaces the flight operations programs, which Curiosity now doesn't need, NASA said.
Scale 6: Milky Way Galaxy Galaxies are made of stars

The Milky Way, a faint ribbon of light that spans the sky, has been known throughout history. Its true nature was not discovered until the 17th century, when Galileo Galilei studied the Milky Way with a telescope and determined that the ribbon was composed of a multitude of stars. Small fuzzy patches of light can be seen in the sky; these were called nebulae. By the 18th century it was speculated that the Milky Way was a huge system of stars bound together by gravity, but the nature of the nebulae remained unknown. They could have been small clouds of gas within the Milky Way, or perhaps they were external to our galaxy. It could not be proved whether or not the Milky Way constituted the entire universe. Using the newly constructed 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California, American astronomer Edwin Hubble studied stars called Cepheids, which brighten and dim in a pattern related to their intrinsic brightness, making them suitable for use as a yardstick in estimating cosmic distances. In a 1925 paper, Hubble concluded that some of the nebulae were external to the Milky Way, and were giant galaxies in their own right, revealing a universe much larger than our own home galaxy. Bobs note: The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light YEARS across. Light travels 186,282 miles per SECOND. (You do the math, my calculator isnt wide enough )

Its not Are We Alone?

- Its

How Could We Be Alone!

Number of stars in Milky Way galaxy = ~200-400 billion Number of galaxies in known universe = ~200 billion Estimated number of stars in observable universe = 300 sextillion (23 zeroes)

The LAURA Club News is a publication of the Lima Area UFO Research Associates, in Lima, Ohio. The study group meets on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at the New Creation Lutheran Church (just west of Tom Ahl auto) in the upstairs church fellowship hall at 7pm-please join us!

Contacts: President, Bob Prater ~~ ada_potato@hotmail.com; Secretary, Tom Bowman ~~ mbowman27@woh.rr.com Co-editors, Robert and Marcia Prater ~~ ada_potato@hotmail.com