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 BBS: The Matrix BBS
Date: 04-14-98 (11:03)             Number: 195
From: JACK SARGEANT                Refer#: NONE
  To: ALL                           Recvd: NO
Subj: 1                     1/4      Conf: (195) UFO
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From: UFO UpDates - Toronto 
 for ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 00:42:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Masinaigan  [Joseph Trainor]
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 23:05:01 EDT
To: updates@globalserve.net
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 3, Number 15
     UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 3, Number 15
April 12, 1998
Editor: Joseph Trainor
PHOTO OF CYDONIA FACE
SPURS FIERCE DEBATE
     On Sunday, April 5, 1998, at 12:39 a.m. Pacific
time, the Mars Global Surveyor, beginning its 220th
orbit, aimed its camera at the surface and took a
new photograph of the mysterious "Face" on Mars.
     The "Face" is located at 40.8 degrees North
and 9.6 degrees West on Mars.  It was late morning
in Cydonia at the time, with the sun in the southeast.
     Controlled from the Malin Space Sciences System
(MSSS) facility in San Diego, California, the spacecraft's
Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) shot a high resolution
photo of 14.1 feet (4.3 meters) per pixel.  This was
about ten times better resolution than the Viking photo
of September 1976.
     The new MOC photo encompasses an area
measuring 25.7 miles (41.5 kilometers) long and
2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) wide.
     The photo was processed at the MSSS facility
following its arrival on Monday, April 6, at 9:15 a.m.
It was then downloaded to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, Cal.
     "The famous 'Face on Mars' thought by some to be
the work of an alien civilization, appears to be nothing
more than natural ridges and craters."
     The photo "shows the features to be simply
'erosional remnants' of rock shaped either by wind or
water, said Alden Albee, project scientist at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory."  (See USA Today for April 7,
1998, page A-3, "NASA: Mars 'face" just a pile or rocks.")
     Release of the new Cydonia photo touched off a fierce
debate among scientists.
     "The formation in the image beamed back to Earth
from the Mars Global Surveyor and released Monday
looks like everything from a sandal print to a stuffed
chili pepper--everything, that is, but a face."
     "'It's a mesa, a butte, a knob,' said Michael Ravine,
advanced projects manager at Malin Space Sciences
Systems..."It's a natural formation.  I hope this has
scotched this thing for good."  (NASA news release for
April 8, 1997)
     But Richard C. Hoagland of the Enterprise Mission,
a space research group based in New Mexico, "said too
much data had been stripped from the picture in
enhancing it and the result was too poor in quality to
draw conclusions." (see USA Today, April 7, 1998)
     "It's like looking at a TV with a bunch of snow on
it," Hoagland said.
     Michael Carr, a geologist at the U.S. Geological
Survey in Menlo Park, Cal., said, "The area photographed
is in a transition zone between an old cratered area and
newer low-lying northerly plains.  Knobs of rock from the
old formation poke up in the plains, and this is one of them."
     The debate over the Face has raged on the Internet
all week, with no sign of letting up anytime soon.
(Editor's Comment:  I saw the new photo at the Malin
site, and I tend to agree with the geologist.  The Face
is clearly an uplift feature.  However, the extreme weathering
of the butte/mesa was clearly caused by water, not wind,
erosion.  Also, that type of weathering shows that the Face
mesa consists of sedimentary, not igneous, rock.  All of
which deepens the mystery of Mars.  What happened to
the oceans/seas/lakes in which the Cydonia sedimentary
formations were laid down millions of years ago?)
SPANISH UFOLOGIST CLAIMS
ALIEN CONTACT IN BOYHOOD
     According to an article in the Spanish language
magazine Enigmas, by author Iker Jimenez, the
famous Spanish ufologist Antonio Ribera claims to
have made contact with an alien back in 1930.
     According to Spanish ufologist Pedro P. Canto,
"Ribera, 78 years old," claimed that the incident
"happened in 1930 when (he was) in his room in
Barcelona."
     "There appeared a very potent green light" without
any visible source, Canto reported.  Ten-year-old
Antonio then saw "a short-statured being, corpulent
and quadruped."  The boy could not "distinguish arms,
thorax or legs...Ribera did not feel any fear but rather
amazement and curiosity."
     The alien reportedly told Ribera that space-
traveling species such as his had begun an era of
"quiet contact" with selected humans.
     In the article, Ribera, the author of 40 books on
UFOs in Spanish, is quoted as saying, "It was as if
someone had extended to me the knowledge--to speak
up for the people's right to know that this exists."
     Barcelona is the largest city in Spain's Catalonia
region, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, located about
425 kilometers (255 miles) east of Madrid.  (Muchas
gracias a Pedro P. Canto para esas noticias.)
(Editor's Note:  I consulted that "Prince of Saucerers,"
Charles Fort, and came up with two UFO-related
incidents for 1930.  Here they are:
     April 28, 1930 - During an eclipse of the sun, Dr.
H.M. Jeffries at Lick Obervatory spotted an
anomalous shadow "five miles broad" on the moon.
See the Los Angeles Evening Herald for April 28,
1930.
     December 25, 1930 - Tremendous "meteor"
seen and heard in southern Idaho.  "The crash,
heard for miles, was described as 'like an
earthquake.'"  See the Idaho Statesman of
Pocatello, Idaho for December 26, 1930.
     See also THE COMPLETE BOOKS OF
CHARLES FORT, Dover Press, 1974, pages
725 and 832.)
MYSTERY METEOR AWES
HUNDREDS IN HAWAII
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 * SLMR 2.1a * "It's a big desert and nobody will ever find your bones."
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