Who’s flashing us from the moon?

Moon Mystery

Have you heard about flashes of light from the moon? It’s something I vaguely recall reading about years ago, but it hasn’t come to my attention for a long time. However, recently while reading a book by Ingo Swann, called PENETRATION, the subject came up again. In fact, it’s the topic of the second part of the book, which was pubished in 1998.

Apparently people have reported seeing flashes of light beamed from the moon for centuries. So these flashes must sometimes be bright enough to see with the naked eye. The phenomenon usually last only two or three seconds, but sometimes continue for minutes or hours, and the illuminations even change colors. Swann wrote that scientist have studied the phenomena, but have no answer and are peculiarly quiet on the subject. That seems strange because by the turn of the century a lot of research had been done on the moon.

Swann notes that many of the illuminations come from large meteor craters, such as one named Plato, which is 60 miles across. He writes: “Many of the self-luminous ‘objects’ are seen to move about. Others of them form geometric patterns, such as circles, squares, and triangles. Sometimes lights have been seen emerging from smaller or nearby craters and moving to Plato, then descending the crater walls. In 1966, there were numerous reddish glowing spots shining out from Plato.

Swann, who died in 2013, was a renowned psychic researcher. In Penetration, he revealed a secret series of experiences he had with an intelligence agency, experiences that related to unusual activities on the moon, especially the dark side. He tells a story of meetings held in a secret underground facility not far from Washington DC, and of being taken to a remote location near the Arctic Circle to witness the expected arrival of a huge UFO over the surface of an Alaskan lake. Swann contends the government knows far more about the moon than has been made public.

But what about those mysterious moon flashes? Now, twenty-one years after that book was published, I decided to see what, if anything, I could find out about the subject. Where would Google lead me? Would it be conjecture by outside observers about aliens or has science solved the question?

I was surprised to see that Popular Science published an article on the very subject of moon flashes June 6 of this year and it appeared on the Internet just hour before I began writing this moon commentary. Very convenient and up to date. Synchronicity, right?

The headline on the article says it all: THE MOON KEEPS FLASHING US AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHY. That’s surprising. Despite extensive research, no one knows for certain what these flashes are about. But they have a name now: Transient lunar phenomenon (TLP).

From the article: “Tony Cook, a researcher based at Aberystwyth University in the UK who’s written about TLP, estimates that there’ve been about 3,000 reports of lunar flashes, although many have been made by amateur astronomers and inexperienced observers. More recently, the European Space Agency has operated its NELIOTA telescope since 2017, discovering there are far more flashes happening than we thought and they’re distributed more widely across the surface.”

According to a German astronomer, Hakan Kayal, who was cited in the article: “TLP flashes are typically just that—bursts of light that appear and disappear within a second or two, although the literature also documents some longer lasting observations that brighten the surface for minutes or even hours. The spikes in light have been previously described as a sort of sparkle, often red or pink in hue, that stretch out for up to 10 miles in diameter. Astronomers nowadays typically see them happening several times a week. In rare instances, these light changes sometimes result in darkened patches popping up on the surface.”

Although scientists don’t have any explanation yet for TLP, here are some ideas that have been suggested by scientists: meteorite impacts; the release of gas or vapors, perhaps through moonquakes, that can cloud the surface and reflect light abnormally; electrostatic discharge due to interactions with the solar wind; and light emission caused by rock fracturing.

Hm, no mention of aliens beaming us from their hideouts in the craters. That option, of course, doesn’t make science magazines. Interestingly, the article doesn’t even attempt any jokes about aliens. 

Certainly the author must be aware that some of us might see an alien link! The fact that no mention of aliens is made, not even as a joke, is odd. Ignoring the alien factor won’t make it go away.  In fact, if Ingo Swann were still alive, he would read the article and probably say that there are scientists working for the government who know more than they’re telling us about the moon.

It  appears that Swann was right. Newly leaked government documents prove that the  government has not only known about aliens for decades but has physical evidence in the form of crashed vehicles from out of this world. You can read about that part of the story here.