Several prominent scientists and researchers in the U.S. have reportedly died or gone missing over the past year, fueling speculation about whether some of the disappearances may have occurred under suspicious circumstances.

William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old retired Air Force major general who had knowledge of UFOs, went missing in New Mexico on Feb. 27, NewsNation reported. Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail on Sunday that he believes there may be a pattern emerging of other researchers throughout the nation similarly disappearing “under suspicious circumstances.”

“There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,” Burchett told the outlet. “I think we ought to be paying attention to it.”

Since mid 2025 a bizzare, and disturbing pattern has emerged among US scientists and defense figures working in one specific field-

"Advanced aerospace propulsion plasma physics fusion rocket tech" (and its related national security fields)

And here's whats most strange and… pic.twitter.com/04S7lItE0i

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) March 23, 2026

The congressman also indicated that “the numbers seem very high in these certain areas of research,” adding “I think we’d better be paying attention, and I don’t think we should trust our government.” He went on to claim that researchers with knowledge about UFOs are usually “very secretive about what they know.”

“Everybody’s talking about the UFO stuff,” the Tennessee Republican told the Daily Mail. “Those folks are very secretive about what they know. So I suspect very much that [McCasland] was involved in some of that.” (Read more from “High-Profile Scientists Keep Winding Up Dead Or Missing — GOP Rep Suggests There May Be A Conspiracy At Play” HERE)

It is difficult to describe how bonkers this week’s heat wave is in the southwestern United States. Alan Gerard, a typically even-keeled meteorologist with 35 years of forecasting experience under his belt, attempted to do so in a recent edition of his newsletter, Balanced Weather. He settled on: “jaw-dropping,” “insane,” “truly historic,” “literally flabbergasting,” “incredible,” and “anomalous [even for] the middle of summer.”

Jeff Berardelli, the chief meteorologist at WFLA, the NBC affiliate in Tampa, tried to contextualize it on social media, noting that based on historical patterns, Phoenix could expect a March day as hot as it was on Thursday — 105 degrees Fahrenheit — only once every 4,433 years.

Phoenix is just one part of the story. The heat wave — which began ramping up on Tuesday, peaks Friday, and won’t subside until early next week — has set or tied March record highs in at least 480 locations so far, stretching from New Mexico to Southern Oregon. California has already broken the record for the hottest winter day ever recorded anywhere in the U.S.: 109 degrees on Thursday at a station in the eastern Coachella Valley. “The extent and magnitude of this particular heat wave is without comparison to anything that we’ve seen in March,” John Abatzoglou, a professor of Climatology at the University of California, Merced, who specializes in climate impacts in the West, told me.

That’s partially because this heat wave would be “virtually impossible for the time of year in a world without human-induced climate change,” per a report released Friday by scientists from World Weather Attribution. Heat waves have one of the clearest climate signals of any extreme weather event because a hotter planet means a hotter baseline. “Across almost the entire western U.S., temperatures [this week] were made at least five times more likely due to climate change,” Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, which maps the effects on daily temperatures, told me.

The March 2026 heat wave is likely to become a reference point in the same vein as the 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, subject to study, research, and scrutiny by climatologists, public health experts, hydrologists, and emergency managers in the months and years to come. The consequences of the current heat wave will also outlast the record temperatures. When it is this hot — and, more importantly, when it is this hot this soon — the effects compound, touching everything from hydropower capacity to the coming wildfire season. (Read more from “A Once-in-a-4,433-Year Heat Wave Is Hitting the Western U.S.” HERE)

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