Dead and Missing Scientists Linked To Secret Technology, Congressman Believes in Underwater Non-Human Bases, Saving Gentle Giants
April 21, 2026

A NASA scientist mysteriously died without any cause of death listed or autopsy — sparking questions about whether he was part of a pattern of deaths tied to the US space and nuclear program. Michael Hicks, who worked on a myriad of NASA space science missions, died in July 2023 at the age of 59 and worked at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1998 to 2022. He assisted on the DART Project, the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Project, the Dawn Mission, and the NASA Deep Space 1 Mission. He joins eight other scientists or top officials who have died or disappeared recently. Monica Reza, JPL’s former director of the Materials Processing Group, disappeared in June 2025 while hiking and has still not been found. Retired Air Force Gen. William Neil McCasland also disappeared in February, walking out of his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, without his prescription glasses or phone. JPL astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was murdered on his front porch in February, and Frank Maiwald, another JPL scientist, died in July 2024 without explanation. Maiwald was a longtime co-worker of Hicks. Two nuclear workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory vanished from their homes in 2025 under mysterious circumstances. Boston fusion energy researcher Nuno Loureiro was killed at his home in December 2025. Lastly, pharmaceutical researcher Jason Thomas was found dead in a Massachusetts lake last month after also disappearing several months earlier.

The disappearance of a rocket scientist has taken a chilling new turn after it emerged she holds a one-of-a-kind patent tied to advanced US launch systems. Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, was last seen hiking in the rugged San Gabriel Wilderness area in the Angeles National Forest on June 22 last year. Reports ... indicated that a man walking about 30ft ahead of Reza on the trail to the Waterman Mountain summit turned around moments later and discovered she had vanished without a trace. Records show she is the only surviving co-creator of a 2010 patent filed with Dallis Ann Hardwick, who died of cancer in 2014, for a specialized metal designed to resist burning while remaining incredibly strong under extreme heat. She was also credited as a co-inventor of Mondaloy, a nickel-based superalloy later used in key components of advanced propulsion systems developed through US Air Force and NASA-backed research programs. Reza spent decades working at Rocketdyne, later part of Aerojet Rocketdyne, a major aerospace contractor involved in government propulsion programs, while retired US Major General William Neil McCasland, who oversaw related Air Force research portfolios, also went missing in June 2025. Reza and McCasland are among nine recent cases involving scientists with ties to aerospace, defense or nuclear research whose deaths or disappearances have drawn public attention.

A series of deaths and disappearances among scientists in the United States has raised alarm, as some of the cases are both puzzling and high-profile. Among the missing is a retired Air Force general, with several other scientists having professional ties to him. The long list recently grew to nine with the death of Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who passed away on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. The cause of death was never made public, and no record of an autopsy could be found. Hicks worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022 and was credited with publishing over 80 scientific papers. He contributed to multiple teams that helped NASA understand the physical properties of comets and asteroids. Whether there is a connection between these cases remains unclear. However, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department in New Mexico told Newsweek that it is investigating the disappearance of retired Air Force General William “Neil” McCasland. Two of the missing scientists, McCasland and Monica Reza, “had a close professional connection” and vanished within eight months of each other, according to The New York Post, which described Reza as a “rocket scientist.” Some of the deaths appear unrelated. Four of the eight other scientists simply disappeared under mysterious circumstances. While these cases have been widely reported across multiple media outlets, authorities have not indicated any confirmed connection.

Aliens arrived on Earth thousands of years ago and may STILL be hiding in secret bases thousands of feet below the oceans' surface, according to a respected congressman. The amazing declaration by Rep. Tim Burchett was based on the extraordinary number of UFO sightings recorded by U.S. Navy personnel near "five or six" unspecified deep-water sites around the globe. Those sightings have prompted "a lot of questions" focusing on whether secret alien bases are hidden at sea, according to Burchett, who is a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating USO (unidentified submerged objects) reports. "We have naval personnel telling me that we have sightings," notes Burchett. The underwater crafts "they're chasing are doing hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we've got is something that does maybe just a little bit under 40 miles an hour," he said. His stunning comments are only the latest to raise the specter of aliens hiding on Earth. As far back as Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage to the New World, sailors – and pilots in more recent times – have reported seeing mysterious crafts dramatically emerge from the oceans and soar into space. U.S. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins testified during a September 9 congressional hearing on UFOs that he was aboard the USS Jackson off the coast of Southern California in 2023 when a "self-luminous Tic Tac-shaped object emerged from the ocean before linking up with three other similar objects" right in front of him. "The orb then disappeared simultaneously with a high, synchronized, near-instantaneous acceleration," Wiggins testified.

Records unsealed this year by Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs have confirmed an eyewitness account from 1991, when military personnel and civilian researchers in Antarctica detected and then saw a large flying saucer over their base. Miguel Amaya, a retired Argentine Air Force non-commissioned officer, told UFO investigators in the early 2000s that he was stationed at General San Martín Base, a small scientific and military station on a tiny island in Antarctica in April of that year. At the start of the polar night, when the sun stays down for months, an alarm went off on the station's riometer, a machine that measures changes in the upper atmosphere. All of the needles began drawing the same pattern, which is scientifically impossible. According to Amaya, outpost personnel claimed that the strange readings could only have been caused by something producing the same energy as a nuclear aircraft carrier or a large city floating over Antarctica. Over 120 feet of paper was reportedly used during the four-and-a-half hour incident at General San Martín Base, with Amaya revealing that the needles were moving so violently they went off the paper multiple times. Hours later, another base member was walking outside during a snowstorm when they allegedly saw 'a huge circle of light.' 'He noticed a huge circle of light, very dim due to the cloud cover, passing above the base, but still visible, and moving very slowly and silently towards the sea,' Amaya claimed in his testimony. The 1991 incident has finally come to light after Amaya claimed he and the other members at General San Martín Base were told never to talk about what they had seen by their superiors. An Argentine civilian UFO research group known as CEFORA pushed for the records to be released under the nation’s public information law. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the original paper rolls, which recorded the strange readings over Antarctica, still exist and have been stored at the Argentine Antarctic Institute.

In Kargi, a remote desert village in the far north of Kenya, cancers of the digestive tract plague the population at unusually high rates. The disease most often attacks the esophagus, though stomach cancer is also common. Some patients think it’s a punishment from God. The evidence on the ground suggests it’s more likely from a multinational oil company. In the 1980s, foreign work crews dressed like astronauts descended on the village of Kargi and the surrounding Chalbi Desert to drill for oil. They spent five unsuccessful years boring nearly a dozen wells thousands of feet into the ground. The men were from Amoco, an American oil company now owned by BP. To mark their presence was a dry white substance scattered on the ground, close to the water wells used by residents and their livestock. The substance the company left behind contained heavy metals and known carcinogens. When locals discovered the flaky substance around the wells, many believed it was natural salt and started using it to cook their food. The water was contaminated. High levels of carcinogenic toxic chemicals, namely nitrates, had seeped into surrounding boreholes and wells — the only water supply in the desert. Animals began dying in the thousands. And people started getting cancer. By the early 2000s, the cancer rate in the community was three times the national average. No official cleanup has ever been done. The community has lost hope in getting answers.

Avi Loeb, a theoretical physicist and the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, says he has “no issue” with Vice President JD Vance’s perspective on who aliens are. Vance was asked about the possibility of releasing more government files on UFOs and aliens. The vice president, who is Catholic, said he does not believe they are beings from another planet; instead, he says, they are demons. Vance noted many world religions have long acknowledged the existence of what he described as “weird things out there” that are difficult to explain. Loeb [said] Vance’s theory is not new based upon scientific findings and Judeo-Christian beliefs. “I don’t see necessarily a conflict between religious beliefs and science as long as everyone agrees that we should attend to the evidence that should guide us,” Loeb said. “If the U.S. government cannot figure out what these objects are, then of course, people have their own speculations or theories, or they connect them to some past traditional thoughts.” Vance’s comments came as the Trump administration has signaled interest in releasing more information on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena. Loeb suggested that labeling aliens as evil entities may be too far for his taste. “All I’m saying is we should be open-minded to the possibility that we’re not at the top of the food chain within the Milky Way galaxy,” he said.

Whistleblowers, new congressional mandates and mounting political pressure are pushing the US toward what insiders say could be its first true UFO disclosure in 2026. A growing number of insiders from the military and intelligence community are now prepared to testify publicly. That pressure intensified after the November 2025 release of The Age of Disclosure, a documentary featuring 34 current and former US government, military, and intelligence officials discussing an alleged decades-long UFO cover-up. Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison's claims of having a lead on 'new' UFO whistleblowers could be further evidence that disclosure is approaching. Burlison previously drew attention after presenting video footage showing a U.S. military drone firing a Hellfire missile at an unidentified object, only for the weapon to appear to bounce off the craft with minimal damage. Congress has moved to force transparency through the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which mandates new briefings on UAP encounters dating back to 2004. The legislation also requires a review of whether key UFO-related data has been over-classified or improperly withheld from lawmakers. Whistleblowers such as David Grusch ... a former US Air Force intelligence officer and decorated veteran who became a prominent whistleblower, alleged the US government possesses secret programs for recovering and reverse-engineering crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft, including non-human 'biologics.' Alongside official action, speculation has intensified in popular culture. Some ... believe Steven Spielberg's upcoming film Disclosure Day could act as a carefully staged reveal rather than a conventional leak.

54-year-old fisherman [Ganeshbhai Devjibhai Varidum] was on a trawler off the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat. They had mistakenly caught a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. Up to 40 feet in length ... the whale shark is as long as a city bus. Twenty-five years ago, the giant animal would have been killed. But Varidum did something extraordinary: He cut the net, which would have cost him upwards of $2,500, to free the shark. “Watching it go free gave me peace of mind.” Found in tropical waters in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, whale sharks ... are known as the sea’s gentle giants. Their interactions with humans are peaceful and curious, but they face a number of manmade threats. Until the late 1990s, the shores of Gujarat were ground zero for whale shark hunting. Their fins, oil and even meat were lucrative commodities. "400 to 500 of these gentle giants were being killed every year in India,” [says Vivek Menon, co-founder of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI)]. In response, the Trust started a conservation program in 2002, and their first breakthrough came about ... thanks to [Hindu spiritual leader Morari Bapu]. When the WTI team told him about whale sharks there, he began urging his listeners to protect the fish in his sermons. The whale shark went from being nameless in the local language to becoming the “vhali,” or beloved one. “Bapu made me realize that the whale shark is the largest fish in the sea but it never harms anyone,” Ratilal Bamaniya, an elected leader of a fisher village on the Gujarat coast, says. “So why should we harm it? The whale shark is like my daughter. If she hurts, I hurt.” In 2006, the forest department introduced a compensation scheme to pay fishers for net repairs after whale sharks have been released unharmed — a simple but vital recognition of the role fishing communities play in protecting whale sharks. To document these releases for compensation, WTI has distributed over 1,500 waterproof cameras to fishers, helping establish a shared data repository. More than compensation ... it seems fishers have come to be motivated by the respect and public attention that each rescue elicits.

The human brain remains deeply mysterious. Scientists have mapped its synapses and neurons in extraordinary detail, yet ... the felt experience of being you still defies efforts at a full explanation. However, researchers do have one fascinating window into that inner world: near-death experiences, or NDEs. As the name suggests, near-death experiences are altered states of consciousness reported by upwards of one-fifth of people who experience a life-threatening medical emergency. Some common traits of NDEs have emerged over nearly 50 years of research: intense emotions of peace and joy, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), encounters with dead relatives, altered perceptions of time, and elevated lucidity, among others. These accounts from people who’ve nearly died appear to contradict what scientists expect to occur in the brain as its regions begin to shut down one by one. In a new qualitative study published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, [researcher Nicole] Lindsay and her colleagues reveal details of how individuals’ dreams changed drastically following an NDE. A participant named Basil said he could confidently recall one dream every week or two, but after his near-death experience, that recall became a nightly occurrence. Others reported that dreams become intensely vivid after an NDE and that the separation between dreaming and waking was much more ambiguous than it was before.

Children regularly survive near-death experiences, or NDEs, just like anyone else. But a new study published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice notes that very few researchers actually speak with this critical age group, despite the special insights it offers for experts exploring human consciousness. In their review, the authors noticed that children reported some similar “core features,” including tunnels, bright lights, and out-of-body sensations. They interviewed seven children who survived cardiac arrest in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) using arts- and play-based approaches, rather than the more direct questions used in most adult-based NDE interviews. Strikingly, however, the children’s self-reported NDE experiences did not include every hallmark found in adult descriptions of NDEs. For example, there are no life reviews or messages from loved ones present in children’s descriptions. Culture and religion also played little to no role in their responses, leading the authors to assert that a child’s NDE may be more “raw” ... than adult NDEs, and should be considered extremely valuable data for future research. Unlocking the secrets of NDEs could help us understand consciousness, but scientists need more data. Thankfully, as resuscitation techniques become ever more advanced, it’s likely that more and more people will experience these events instead of simply dying before they can share what happened to them.

A 2021 study published in Explore suggests that past life experiences have been reported across various parts of the world. Children often begin recalling past life memories around the age of 2 and gradually stop discussing them by about 9, when they’re well into their schooling years. Many children describe events, names, families or places from their alleged past life. Many also recall violent or unnatural deaths in their previous life, and about 20% participants mention an “intermission” period between lives, with an average gap of 16 months between a previous death and rebirth. Children can also display skills or behaviors they haven’t been taught, such as xenoglossy (speaking a language they’ve never learned). Research on near-death experiences, published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, also suggests that survivors sometimes experience past-life memories, similar to those that young children in past-life recollection studies recall. Mr. David Moquin ... was in a coma and hospitalized with double pneumonia. “During that time, I experienced at least two events that felt like past lifetimes. The one that has haunted me for the past 24 years was that of burning to death in an airplane crash. Many years later a psychic told me that in my last lifetime I died landing a fighter plane on an odd single digit day in November 1944. I was born December 21, 1944,” Moquin explains. “My daughter, hearing the recording of the reading, googled and found that Captain Fryer was the only pilot that died on an odd single digit day that November, and that he died trying to land his burning P-51 Mustang. My favorite plane has always been the P-51. The model sits on my desk. My daughter asked me questions and I seemed to know the names of my wing commander, squadron commander, mother and father."

www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all