Mark Carlotto | General Dynamics (original) (raw)
Papers by Mark Carlotto
A video posted on YouTube in late March 2020 shows what appear to be three very large unidentifie... more A video posted on YouTube in late March 2020 shows what appear to be three very large unidentified objects flying around the moon. The objects are estimated to be between 5 and 15 miles in length and roughly 1 to 3 miles in width, and appear to be moving in speeds in excess of 30 miles/sec. between 5 and 10 miles above the lunar surface.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2020
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites of archaeological importance throughout the world.... more There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites of archaeological importance throughout the world. In this study the alignments of over twohundred ancient sites were measured and analyzed. Sites are organized into eight geographic regions: South America, Mesoamerica, North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Google Earth imagery and measurement tools were used to estimate the alignment of linear and rectilinear structures at these sites with respect to true (geographic) north. In considering standard celestial and geographic reasons for the alignments, many were found to be oriented to the cardinal directions, in the directions of solstices and other solar events, to lunar standstills, and certain stars. A number of sites in China and Thailand were likely aligned to magnetic north at the time of construction using a compass. Some sites appear to have been aligned to “sacred directions” that include Islamic qibla and Quechua ceques. Site alignment sta...
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Spatial data sharpening techniques that fuse images and maps are described. The statistical basis... more Spatial data sharpening techniques that fuse images and maps are described. The statistical basis of these techniques are reviewed and extended for sharpening other kinds of spatial data that can be difficult to collect in denied areas. One example is demographic data. We demonstrate the ability to derive highresolution population maps from county or district census data and Landsat imagery that is accurate to within 5% of the true population within a test area.
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 1999
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2005
A new unified approach to object and change detection is presented that involves clustering and a... more A new unified approach to object and change detection is presented that involves clustering and analyzing the distribution of pixel values within clusters over one or more images. Cluster-based anomaly detection (CBAD) can detect man-made objects that are: 1) present in a single multiband image; 2) appear or disappear between two images acquired at different times; or 3) manifest themselves as spectral differences between two sets of bands acquired at the same time. Based on a Gaussian mixture model, CBAD offers an alternative to compute-intensive, sliding-window algorithms like Reed and Yu's RX-algorithm for single-image object detection. It assumes that background pixel values within clusters can be modeled as Gaussian distributions about mean values that vary cluster-to-cluster and that anomalies (man-made objects) have values that deviate significantly from the distribution of the cluster. This model is valid in situations where the frequency of occurrence of man-made objects is low compared to the background so that they do not form distinct clusters, but are instead split up among multiple background clusters. CBAD estimates background statistics over clusters, not sliding windows, and so can detect objects of any size or shape. This provides the flexibility of filtering detections at the object level. Examples show the ability to detect small compact objects such as vehicles as well as large, spatially extended features (e.g., built-up and bomb-damaged areas). Unlike previous approaches to change detection, which compare pixels, vectors, features, or objects, cluster-based change detection involves no direct comparison of images. In fact, it is identical to the object detection algorithm, different only in the way it is applied. Preliminary results show cluster-based change detection is less sensitive to image misregistration errors than global change detection. The same cluster-based algorithm can also be used for cross-spectral anomaly detection. An example showing the detection of thermal anomalies in Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery is provided.
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Snapshot/Lay Summary—In 1958 Charles Hapgood proposed that mass imbalances created by a buildup o... more Snapshot/Lay Summary—In 1958 Charles Hapgood proposed that mass imbalances created by a buildup of polar ice could displace the earth’s crust over the mantle and that resulting pole shifts were the cause of catastrophic climate changes and ice ages. We contrast the first part of his theory with plate tectonics and true polar wander and propose a new mechanism that is triggered by short-term reversals of the geomagnetic field that “unlock” the crust from the mantle, driven by earth–moon–sun tidal forces, the same forces that move earth’s oceans. It is shown that by combining a modified version of the second part of Hapgood’s theory with elements of existing climate theories it may be possible to account for periodic sea-level changes associated with the buildup and melting of polar ice over past glacial cycles with a combination of Milanković cycles and Hapgood pole shifts. —In previous studies of more than two hundred archaeological sites, it was discovered that the alignments of ...
SSRN Electronic Journal
Does the spatial arrangement of a group of structures or features on the ground "reflect" a patte... more Does the spatial arrangement of a group of structures or features on the ground "reflect" a pattern in the sky? We examine the Hermetic concept of what is below, the microcosm, is a reflection of what is above, the macrocosm. A methodology is developed for mapping stellar coordinates to corresponding ground locations for the purpose of measuring the similarity between patterns. Several examples are examined and evaluated.
Introduction: Geospatial terrain statistics and object symmetries of enigmatic landforms in Cydon... more Introduction: Geospatial terrain statistics and object symmetries of enigmatic landforms in Cydonia are examined and correlations identified. Analysis of Viking image-derived MDIM data (1/256 deg./pixel) over Cydonia (37.5-42.5° N and 4.5-15.5° W) shows directional anisotropies in the spatial autocorrelation (variogram) at medium to long wavelengths (10-100 km.). One is in the direction of the crustal dichotomy in this part of Mars (~ 64.6°, or ~25.4° north of east), along with two others at 103.7° and 164.2°. Anisotropies in similar directions at shorter wavelengths (down to tens of meters) are evident in the variograms of Viking, THEMIS, and MGS images within this area. The spatial autocorrelation structure of selected regions in Viking images show indications of rectilinear geometry (directional anisotropies approximately 90 deg. apart) similar to that of highly eroded terrestrial archaeological ruins. Previous analyses of THEMIS and MGS imagery reveal a high degree of bilateral symmetry in several landforms. We show the axes of symmetry are roughly in line with the directional anisotropy at 164.2° noted above.
Journal of Space Exploration, 2016
The authors present an analysis of Apollo 15 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of two unusu... more The authors present an analysis of Apollo 15 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of two unusual features in the crater Paracelsus C on the far side of the moon. At first glance these structures appear to be walls or towers on the lunar surface. By combining multiple images, we show the larger feature, oriented in a northeast/southwest direction, is not simply a wall but two walls on either side of a narrow valley or âÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂpassagewayâÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ. Using single image shape from shading and 3D terrain visualization we show in a computer-generated perspective view looking northeast that the southwest end appears to be the entrance to the passageway. A reverse angle view looking southwest shows the passageway ending at a rise of terrain at the other end, possibly leading underground. The terrain surrounding the two structures is not flat but appears âÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂexcavatedâ by some unknown mechanism, natural or artificial. It is shown that these objects are visually...
Cuneiform tablets list the reigns of between eight and ten kings who are thought to have ruled in... more Cuneiform tablets list the reigns of between eight and ten kings who are thought to have ruled in Sumeria before a flood approximately 20,000 years ago. These kings are associated with a number of ancient Sumerian cities. Analyzing the visible remains of these cities and other ancient sites in Mesopotamia reveals approximately fifty sites and/or structures within sites are aligned in directions that reference previous locations of the North Pole. Interpreting the alignment of the sites in the context of Hapgood’s theory of earth crustal displacement suggests a far more ancient dating of their origin from thousands of years old to between 20,000 and 130,000 years old depending on alignment. All five of the antediluvian cities contain structures aligned to previous (i.e., pre-flood) poles. The cities associated with the earliest rulers are aligned to the older Greenland pole, while cities associated with later rulers are aligned to the more recent Hudson Bay pole. It is shown that the...
Could climate changes caused by pole shifts explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in... more Could climate changes caused by pole shifts explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in certain parts of the world? We explore this possibility in Southern Arabia, where evidence supports the existence of a previous civilization tens of thousands of years ago in what is now one of the most inhospitable places in the world.
We consider a challenge problem involving the automatic detection of large commercial vehicles su... more We consider a challenge problem involving the automatic detection of large commercial vehicles such as trucks, buses, and tractor-trailers in Quickbird EO pan imagery. Three target classifiers are evaluated: a “bagged” perceptron algorithm (BPA) that uses an ensemble method known as bootstrap aggregation to increase classification performance, a convolutional neural network (CNN) implemented using the MobileNet architecture in TensorFlow, and a memory-based classifier (MBC), which also uses bagging to increase performance. As expected, the CNN significantly outperformed the BPA. Surprisingly, the performance of the MBC was only slightly below that of the CNN. We discuss these results and their implications for this and other similar applications.
Analysis of video from Space Shuttle mission STS-80 provides new insight into a number of unusual... more Analysis of video from Space Shuttle mission STS-80 provides new insight into a number of unusual events captured by a camera aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1996. Three different phenomena are analyzed: 1) two slow moving circular objects, 2) a number of fast moving objects in space near the shuttle, and 3) a strange luminous apparition near the earth’s surface. The two slow moving circular objects have attracted a great deal of popular interest due to their disk-like shape. One seems to appear out of a cloud layer, the other moves into the camera’s field of view. It is argued that both are likely to be pieces of shuttle debris emerging from the spacecraft’s shadow. The fast moving objects in space near the shuttle appear as bright streaks moving rapidly across the video frame. Analysis of their speeds and directions implies that they are not shuttle debris or meteors. Perhaps the most interesting observation is a rapidly moving burst of light that appears near the earth’s sur...
Social Science Research Network, 2020
Evidence is presented suggesting the possible existence of a previous temple dedicated to Hathor ... more Evidence is presented suggesting the possible existence of a previous temple dedicated to Hathor at Dendera. Two astronomical alignments of the temple with Alkaid, a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, occur during the 26,000 year-long precessional cycle. The more recent alignment is when the current temple was constructed around 50 BCE. An earlier alignment occurred approximately 10,000 years ago. We propose that the present temple was built over a preexisting foundation that was originally aligned to Alkaid 10,000 years ago. An interpretation of parts of the Dendera Zodiac is consistent with this hypothesis.
SPIE Proceedings
Motivated by biologically-inspired architectures for video analysis and object recognition, a new... more Motivated by biologically-inspired architectures for video analysis and object recognition, a new single band electro-optical (EO) object detector is described for aerial reconnaissance and surveillance applications. Our bio-inspired target screener (BiTS) uses a bank of Gabor filters to compute a vector of texture features over a range of scales and orientations. The filters are designed to exploit the spatial anisotropy of manmade objects relative to the background. The background, which is assumed to be predominantly natural clutter, is modeled by its global mean and covariance. The Mahalanobis distance measures deviations from the background model on a pixelby-pixel basis. Possible manmade objects occur at peaks in the distance image. We measured the performance of BiTS on a set of 100 ground-truthed images taken under different operating conditions (resolution, sensor geometry, object spacings, background clutter, etc.) and found its probability of detection (PD) was 12% higher than a RX anomaly detector, with half the number of false alarms at a PD of 80%.
SSRN Electronic Journal
An analysis of more than 375 ancient locations in the Levant was performed to assess the alignmen... more An analysis of more than 375 ancient locations in the Levant was performed to assess the alignment of sites and structures relative to the current and former locations of the geographic pole. A small fraction of the sites had clear rectilinear features/structures suitable for aerial analysis. Of those about a third of the sites are oriented either along cardinal directions or in directions of solstices or lunar standstills. The remainder (almost twice as many) appear to be aligned relative to the directions of former poles in Hudson Bay, the Norwegian Sea, northern Greenland, and the Bering Sea, which according to Charles Hapgood’s theory of earth crustal displacement, suggests the possibility that these sites may have been first established 12,000 to 130,000 years ago.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Analysis of over 90,000 reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) database offers p... more Analysis of over 90,000 reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) database offers preliminary answers to several key questions regarding unidentified flying objects/aerial phenomena (UFO/UAP). Report statistics over the past eighty years indicate the UFO phenomenon is growing at an exponential rate in the United States. Breaking down the statistics by state reveals a strong correlation between the number of sightings in a state and its population density, suggesting UFOs appear more frequently in populated areas. Statistics also show that the frequency of different shape observables has changed over time (e.g., from disks to triangles), indicating the phenomenon has and may continue to evolve.
SSRN Electronic Journal
A new method for estimating the ages of Egyptian pyramids using a data-driven approach is describ... more A new method for estimating the ages of Egyptian pyramids using a data-driven approach is described. Measurements of eight pyramids (Meidum, Bent, Red, Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure, Sahure, and Neferirkare) reveal correlations that can be exploited and used to estimate the ages of older pyramids from more recent ones. Preliminary results using a linear regression model support the possibility that some pyramids could have been built over pre-existing structures several hundred to several thousand years older than the pyramids themselves.
SSRN Electronic Journal
The theory that civilization developed in India as the result of the migration of Aryans from the... more The theory that civilization developed in India as the result of the migration of Aryans from the north had to be revised after the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s. In 1999-2000, a marine archaeological survey found the remains of an ancient civilization beneath the Gulf of Cambay. The similarity of structures submerged for more than 10,000 years to those in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and other Indus Valley cities that are thought to have been built in the 3rd millennium BCE raised the question of whether or not an even earlier civilization once existed in this part of the world. New evidence is presented suggesting that certain sites in the Indus Valley and in other parts of India were first established during and possibly even before the last ice age based on their alignments to previous locations of the North Pole.
A video posted on YouTube in late March 2020 shows what appear to be three very large unidentifie... more A video posted on YouTube in late March 2020 shows what appear to be three very large unidentified objects flying around the moon. The objects are estimated to be between 5 and 15 miles in length and roughly 1 to 3 miles in width, and appear to be moving in speeds in excess of 30 miles/sec. between 5 and 10 miles above the lunar surface.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2020
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites of archaeological importance throughout the world.... more There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites of archaeological importance throughout the world. In this study the alignments of over twohundred ancient sites were measured and analyzed. Sites are organized into eight geographic regions: South America, Mesoamerica, North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Google Earth imagery and measurement tools were used to estimate the alignment of linear and rectilinear structures at these sites with respect to true (geographic) north. In considering standard celestial and geographic reasons for the alignments, many were found to be oriented to the cardinal directions, in the directions of solstices and other solar events, to lunar standstills, and certain stars. A number of sites in China and Thailand were likely aligned to magnetic north at the time of construction using a compass. Some sites appear to have been aligned to “sacred directions” that include Islamic qibla and Quechua ceques. Site alignment sta...
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Spatial data sharpening techniques that fuse images and maps are described. The statistical basis... more Spatial data sharpening techniques that fuse images and maps are described. The statistical basis of these techniques are reviewed and extended for sharpening other kinds of spatial data that can be difficult to collect in denied areas. One example is demographic data. We demonstrate the ability to derive highresolution population maps from county or district census data and Landsat imagery that is accurate to within 5% of the true population within a test area.
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 1999
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2005
A new unified approach to object and change detection is presented that involves clustering and a... more A new unified approach to object and change detection is presented that involves clustering and analyzing the distribution of pixel values within clusters over one or more images. Cluster-based anomaly detection (CBAD) can detect man-made objects that are: 1) present in a single multiband image; 2) appear or disappear between two images acquired at different times; or 3) manifest themselves as spectral differences between two sets of bands acquired at the same time. Based on a Gaussian mixture model, CBAD offers an alternative to compute-intensive, sliding-window algorithms like Reed and Yu's RX-algorithm for single-image object detection. It assumes that background pixel values within clusters can be modeled as Gaussian distributions about mean values that vary cluster-to-cluster and that anomalies (man-made objects) have values that deviate significantly from the distribution of the cluster. This model is valid in situations where the frequency of occurrence of man-made objects is low compared to the background so that they do not form distinct clusters, but are instead split up among multiple background clusters. CBAD estimates background statistics over clusters, not sliding windows, and so can detect objects of any size or shape. This provides the flexibility of filtering detections at the object level. Examples show the ability to detect small compact objects such as vehicles as well as large, spatially extended features (e.g., built-up and bomb-damaged areas). Unlike previous approaches to change detection, which compare pixels, vectors, features, or objects, cluster-based change detection involves no direct comparison of images. In fact, it is identical to the object detection algorithm, different only in the way it is applied. Preliminary results show cluster-based change detection is less sensitive to image misregistration errors than global change detection. The same cluster-based algorithm can also be used for cross-spectral anomaly detection. An example showing the detection of thermal anomalies in Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery is provided.
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Snapshot/Lay Summary—In 1958 Charles Hapgood proposed that mass imbalances created by a buildup o... more Snapshot/Lay Summary—In 1958 Charles Hapgood proposed that mass imbalances created by a buildup of polar ice could displace the earth’s crust over the mantle and that resulting pole shifts were the cause of catastrophic climate changes and ice ages. We contrast the first part of his theory with plate tectonics and true polar wander and propose a new mechanism that is triggered by short-term reversals of the geomagnetic field that “unlock” the crust from the mantle, driven by earth–moon–sun tidal forces, the same forces that move earth’s oceans. It is shown that by combining a modified version of the second part of Hapgood’s theory with elements of existing climate theories it may be possible to account for periodic sea-level changes associated with the buildup and melting of polar ice over past glacial cycles with a combination of Milanković cycles and Hapgood pole shifts. —In previous studies of more than two hundred archaeological sites, it was discovered that the alignments of ...
SSRN Electronic Journal
Does the spatial arrangement of a group of structures or features on the ground "reflect" a patte... more Does the spatial arrangement of a group of structures or features on the ground "reflect" a pattern in the sky? We examine the Hermetic concept of what is below, the microcosm, is a reflection of what is above, the macrocosm. A methodology is developed for mapping stellar coordinates to corresponding ground locations for the purpose of measuring the similarity between patterns. Several examples are examined and evaluated.
Introduction: Geospatial terrain statistics and object symmetries of enigmatic landforms in Cydon... more Introduction: Geospatial terrain statistics and object symmetries of enigmatic landforms in Cydonia are examined and correlations identified. Analysis of Viking image-derived MDIM data (1/256 deg./pixel) over Cydonia (37.5-42.5° N and 4.5-15.5° W) shows directional anisotropies in the spatial autocorrelation (variogram) at medium to long wavelengths (10-100 km.). One is in the direction of the crustal dichotomy in this part of Mars (~ 64.6°, or ~25.4° north of east), along with two others at 103.7° and 164.2°. Anisotropies in similar directions at shorter wavelengths (down to tens of meters) are evident in the variograms of Viking, THEMIS, and MGS images within this area. The spatial autocorrelation structure of selected regions in Viking images show indications of rectilinear geometry (directional anisotropies approximately 90 deg. apart) similar to that of highly eroded terrestrial archaeological ruins. Previous analyses of THEMIS and MGS imagery reveal a high degree of bilateral symmetry in several landforms. We show the axes of symmetry are roughly in line with the directional anisotropy at 164.2° noted above.
Journal of Space Exploration, 2016
The authors present an analysis of Apollo 15 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of two unusu... more The authors present an analysis of Apollo 15 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of two unusual features in the crater Paracelsus C on the far side of the moon. At first glance these structures appear to be walls or towers on the lunar surface. By combining multiple images, we show the larger feature, oriented in a northeast/southwest direction, is not simply a wall but two walls on either side of a narrow valley or âÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂpassagewayâÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ. Using single image shape from shading and 3D terrain visualization we show in a computer-generated perspective view looking northeast that the southwest end appears to be the entrance to the passageway. A reverse angle view looking southwest shows the passageway ending at a rise of terrain at the other end, possibly leading underground. The terrain surrounding the two structures is not flat but appears âÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂexcavatedâ by some unknown mechanism, natural or artificial. It is shown that these objects are visually...
Cuneiform tablets list the reigns of between eight and ten kings who are thought to have ruled in... more Cuneiform tablets list the reigns of between eight and ten kings who are thought to have ruled in Sumeria before a flood approximately 20,000 years ago. These kings are associated with a number of ancient Sumerian cities. Analyzing the visible remains of these cities and other ancient sites in Mesopotamia reveals approximately fifty sites and/or structures within sites are aligned in directions that reference previous locations of the North Pole. Interpreting the alignment of the sites in the context of Hapgood’s theory of earth crustal displacement suggests a far more ancient dating of their origin from thousands of years old to between 20,000 and 130,000 years old depending on alignment. All five of the antediluvian cities contain structures aligned to previous (i.e., pre-flood) poles. The cities associated with the earliest rulers are aligned to the older Greenland pole, while cities associated with later rulers are aligned to the more recent Hudson Bay pole. It is shown that the...
Could climate changes caused by pole shifts explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in... more Could climate changes caused by pole shifts explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in certain parts of the world? We explore this possibility in Southern Arabia, where evidence supports the existence of a previous civilization tens of thousands of years ago in what is now one of the most inhospitable places in the world.
We consider a challenge problem involving the automatic detection of large commercial vehicles su... more We consider a challenge problem involving the automatic detection of large commercial vehicles such as trucks, buses, and tractor-trailers in Quickbird EO pan imagery. Three target classifiers are evaluated: a “bagged” perceptron algorithm (BPA) that uses an ensemble method known as bootstrap aggregation to increase classification performance, a convolutional neural network (CNN) implemented using the MobileNet architecture in TensorFlow, and a memory-based classifier (MBC), which also uses bagging to increase performance. As expected, the CNN significantly outperformed the BPA. Surprisingly, the performance of the MBC was only slightly below that of the CNN. We discuss these results and their implications for this and other similar applications.
Analysis of video from Space Shuttle mission STS-80 provides new insight into a number of unusual... more Analysis of video from Space Shuttle mission STS-80 provides new insight into a number of unusual events captured by a camera aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1996. Three different phenomena are analyzed: 1) two slow moving circular objects, 2) a number of fast moving objects in space near the shuttle, and 3) a strange luminous apparition near the earth’s surface. The two slow moving circular objects have attracted a great deal of popular interest due to their disk-like shape. One seems to appear out of a cloud layer, the other moves into the camera’s field of view. It is argued that both are likely to be pieces of shuttle debris emerging from the spacecraft’s shadow. The fast moving objects in space near the shuttle appear as bright streaks moving rapidly across the video frame. Analysis of their speeds and directions implies that they are not shuttle debris or meteors. Perhaps the most interesting observation is a rapidly moving burst of light that appears near the earth’s sur...
Social Science Research Network, 2020
Evidence is presented suggesting the possible existence of a previous temple dedicated to Hathor ... more Evidence is presented suggesting the possible existence of a previous temple dedicated to Hathor at Dendera. Two astronomical alignments of the temple with Alkaid, a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, occur during the 26,000 year-long precessional cycle. The more recent alignment is when the current temple was constructed around 50 BCE. An earlier alignment occurred approximately 10,000 years ago. We propose that the present temple was built over a preexisting foundation that was originally aligned to Alkaid 10,000 years ago. An interpretation of parts of the Dendera Zodiac is consistent with this hypothesis.
SPIE Proceedings
Motivated by biologically-inspired architectures for video analysis and object recognition, a new... more Motivated by biologically-inspired architectures for video analysis and object recognition, a new single band electro-optical (EO) object detector is described for aerial reconnaissance and surveillance applications. Our bio-inspired target screener (BiTS) uses a bank of Gabor filters to compute a vector of texture features over a range of scales and orientations. The filters are designed to exploit the spatial anisotropy of manmade objects relative to the background. The background, which is assumed to be predominantly natural clutter, is modeled by its global mean and covariance. The Mahalanobis distance measures deviations from the background model on a pixelby-pixel basis. Possible manmade objects occur at peaks in the distance image. We measured the performance of BiTS on a set of 100 ground-truthed images taken under different operating conditions (resolution, sensor geometry, object spacings, background clutter, etc.) and found its probability of detection (PD) was 12% higher than a RX anomaly detector, with half the number of false alarms at a PD of 80%.
SSRN Electronic Journal
An analysis of more than 375 ancient locations in the Levant was performed to assess the alignmen... more An analysis of more than 375 ancient locations in the Levant was performed to assess the alignment of sites and structures relative to the current and former locations of the geographic pole. A small fraction of the sites had clear rectilinear features/structures suitable for aerial analysis. Of those about a third of the sites are oriented either along cardinal directions or in directions of solstices or lunar standstills. The remainder (almost twice as many) appear to be aligned relative to the directions of former poles in Hudson Bay, the Norwegian Sea, northern Greenland, and the Bering Sea, which according to Charles Hapgood’s theory of earth crustal displacement, suggests the possibility that these sites may have been first established 12,000 to 130,000 years ago.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Analysis of over 90,000 reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) database offers p... more Analysis of over 90,000 reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) database offers preliminary answers to several key questions regarding unidentified flying objects/aerial phenomena (UFO/UAP). Report statistics over the past eighty years indicate the UFO phenomenon is growing at an exponential rate in the United States. Breaking down the statistics by state reveals a strong correlation between the number of sightings in a state and its population density, suggesting UFOs appear more frequently in populated areas. Statistics also show that the frequency of different shape observables has changed over time (e.g., from disks to triangles), indicating the phenomenon has and may continue to evolve.
SSRN Electronic Journal
A new method for estimating the ages of Egyptian pyramids using a data-driven approach is describ... more A new method for estimating the ages of Egyptian pyramids using a data-driven approach is described. Measurements of eight pyramids (Meidum, Bent, Red, Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure, Sahure, and Neferirkare) reveal correlations that can be exploited and used to estimate the ages of older pyramids from more recent ones. Preliminary results using a linear regression model support the possibility that some pyramids could have been built over pre-existing structures several hundred to several thousand years older than the pyramids themselves.
SSRN Electronic Journal
The theory that civilization developed in India as the result of the migration of Aryans from the... more The theory that civilization developed in India as the result of the migration of Aryans from the north had to be revised after the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s. In 1999-2000, a marine archaeological survey found the remains of an ancient civilization beneath the Gulf of Cambay. The similarity of structures submerged for more than 10,000 years to those in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and other Indus Valley cities that are thought to have been built in the 3rd millennium BCE raised the question of whether or not an even earlier civilization once existed in this part of the world. New evidence is presented suggesting that certain sites in the Indus Valley and in other parts of India were first established during and possibly even before the last ice age based on their alignments to previous locations of the North Pole.
This paper presents the first verifiable space-based evidence of an enormous underground structur... more This paper presents the first verifiable space-based evidence of an enormous underground structure at Hawara that is likely the below-ground portion of the Labyrinth first mentioned by Herodotus. Combining historical sources with modern geospatial data reveals a discrepancy between Herodotus's account of colossal stone structures in the middle of Lake Moeris and Petrie's archaeological survey of much more modest ruins at Biahmu. An analysis of the alignment of the Labyrinth and other ancient sites in the Faiyum suggests they may be much older than we think.