DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
A screenshot from the AARO website.
• The Pentagon has launched a new website featured information on declassified material about solved UFO sightings. The website of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which was established in July last year, says its team of experts is “leading the US government’s efforts to address Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach”. It says the website will soon be acceptiong reports from current or former US Government employees, service members, and contractors “with direct knowledge of US Government programs or activities related to UAP dating back to 1945”. It notes that the Department of Defense defines Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs as “sources of anomalous detections in one or more domain (ie, airborne, seaborne, spaceborne, and/or transmedium) that are not yet attributable to known actors and that demonstrate behaviors that are not readily understood by sensors or observers”.Stay tuned.
‘Dirty Wars’ videogame recreator, Jorge Olivares, inspired by Chile’s military coup and the fight against Pinochet’s dictatorship, shows a screen with his game featuring La Moneda government palace, in Santiago, Chile, on 4th September, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Rodrigo Gutierrez
• With the sound of helicopters whirling and Chile’s La Moneda presidential palace ablaze, a virtual couple join the resistance movement against a military dictatorship in a video game released ahead of the 50th anniversary of Chile’s 1973 coup. Creator and Chilean sociologist Jorge Olivares spent six years working on the espionage video game Dirty Wars: September 11, set during Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship and referencing the date he led a coup against socialist President Salvador Allende. The coup was part of a wave of military rule in South America in the 1970s that left thousands dead, disappeared, tortured and exiled. In Chile, democracy was only restored in 1990 and the memories of the period still loom large. Olivares said the main protagonists of the ‘stealth’ genre game, that typically allows players to remain undetected by hiding, were inspired by his own family. “The main characters are basically inspired by my parents’ story,” Olivares told Reuters. The couple in the game, Maximiliano and Abigail, choose to confront the military regime by joining a resistance group. Chile on 11th September will mark half a century since the coup, which saw a violent siege of the government palace in Santiago. Olivares said his game, launched on online gaming platform Steam, was not intended as “Marxist propaganda” or an “allegory” for the Allende government. Instead, his intention was to “fully show the context of the time,” at an important anniversary of the country’s history, he said. – NATALIA A RAMOS MIRANDA and REUTERS TV, Santiago, Chile/Reuters
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A combination picture of NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images shows the surface of the moon on 27th June, 2020 and 24th August, 2023, before and after the appearance of a crater, likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna-25 mission, in these screengrabs obtained from a GIF image released on 31st August, 2023. PICTURE: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University via Reuters
• The Moon has a new crater. NASA images reveal that Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10-metre wide crater on the moon when it crashed last month after a problem preparing for a soft landing on the south pole. Luna-25, Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years, failed on 19th August when it spun out of control and crashed into the moon, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space program. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft imaged a new crater on the surface of the moon that it concluded was the likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna 25 mission. “The new crater is about 10 meters in diameter,” NASA said. “Since this new crater is close to the Luna-25 estimated impact point, the LRO team concludes it is likely to be from that mission, rather than a natural impactor.”After the crash, Moscow said a special inter-departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft. – With GUY FAULCONBRIDGE/Reuters
