The Secret Behind Mysterious African Fairy Circles Revealed by Scientists

Sarah Sloat

The so-called “fairy circles” of Namibia have long been sites of mystical intrigue and scientific controversy. Millions of these circular patterns of red dirt and patchy dry plants dot the Namib desert, ranging in circumference from 12 feet all the way to a massive 114 feet. Historically, their existence has been credited to aliens, gods, and dragon breath, but recent research pinpoints another culprit: thirsty and competitive plants.

In a recent paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research, researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis argue that the reason these strange circular plots, consisting of a bare inner circle and a raised outer circle, exist is because of “self-organization theory.” This is the idea that circular vegetation patterns emerge because plants in dry regions use the empty inner circle as a natural water reservoir, which then the grass on the raised edges of the circle can tap into to survive.

That these circles emerge because of how plants have adapted to deserts stands contrary to the claim of other scientists who argue that the strange spots of arid soil arise because of termites.

A plot of fairy circles.

The scientists behind the study came to their thirsty-plant conclusion after analyzing the infiltration rate, soil moisture, grass biometrics, and sediment grain size distribution of the fairy circles, together with the distance between circles. This showed them that water was absorbed more quickly on the inner portion of the circles and that the roots of the grass on the outside of circles were larger than the grass exactly on the ring. The researchers concluded that the grass grows in a way that its roots are on the inner side of the ring, competing for water. When rain does come, the roots can slurp it up because the water fills the dry inner circle, flowing up to its edge.

Besides solving once and for all the mystery of the origin of these circles, the scientists hope to leverage their research to better understand the “underlying dynamics of water-limited ecosystems.”

While these rings are vastly different than the fairy circles of Europe (those are simply a ring of mushrooms on grass), they are not completely unique in the world: In March 2016, scientists discovered similar arid rings in Australia, the only other place besides the Namib desert where they have been observed.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons, School of Science

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04-04-2017 om 00:40 geschreven door peter  

Caltech Creates a New Technique for Finding Aliens

Monica Hunter-Hart

The recent discovery of seven potentially habitable exoplanets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, greatly raises the odds of finding alien life on other worlds with whom we might one day have a real chance of directly coming into contact.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we’ll need to figure out for certain whether there are signs of life on those and other planets. A group of scientists at Caltech’s Exoplanet Technology Laboratory believe they have a solution for turning our most powerful telescopes into alien-hunting instruments.

The technique is called “high-dispersion coronagraphy,” and is intended to help scientists find biosignatures on exoplanets. Biosignatures are disturbances in an environmental equilibrium; they reveal the existence of an unknown force or process. Certain colors might indicate photosynthesis, for example, or a certain kind of excess gas might indicate an organic life source.

In order to study faraway planets, scientists need to block the light emanating from the stars they orbit. Stars are brighter than planets — anywhere from a thousand times to several billion times brighter — and that light can interfere with our ability to take a good look at anything around them. To fix this problem, scientists employ a coronagraph, which is a device in a telescope that helps block starlight.

Scientists have been using coronagraphs for some time, but this new high-dispersion coronagraphy technique innovatively combines it with a high-res spectrometer. Spectrometers expose the “fingerprints” of chemicals; researchers can use them to find elements that are associated with life, such as oxygen.

But here’s the real kicker: scientists realized that using a coronagraph with a high-res spectrometer specifically caused even more light to be filtered out than usual. Using these two instruments together allows researchers to “improve the sensitivity of our system by a factor of 100 to 1,000 over ground-based methods,” explained Dimitri Mawet, the head of the Caltech team who made the discovery.

The team used optical fibers to combine the coronagraph with the high-res spectrometer. The fibers, it turns out, also help to remove starlight. These discoveries were, in the words of team member Garreth Ruane, “serendipitous.”

When high-dispersion coronagraphy is put into practice, scientists will be able to learn much more about the molecules that exist in exoplanets’ atmospheres, as well as the planets’ appearances, rotation rates, and weather patterns. We’ll need that information if we want to discern whether life exists outside of our galaxy.

What high-dispersion coronagraphy looks like.

Right now, we only have one in-progress telescope that’ll be up to the job of locating biosignatures using high-dispersion coronagraphy. It’s called the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and it will become the world’s biggest optical telescope when it’s finished in about a decade. Scientists will be able to use TMT to apply this new technique to planets around M-dwarf stars, the most common star in the galaxy, which are smaller than our sun. Stronger telescopes designed in the future could help researchers apply the technique to planets around bigger stars.

Since TMT won’t be finished until the late 2020’s, right now this is a waiting game, at least in terms of using the new technique to help solve the mystery of extraterrestrial life. High-dispersion coronagraphy has already been tested in laboratories, and scientists can use it for now on certain gas exoplanets. But we’ll have to wait for the blessed day it can be used on the Earth-like exoplanets around TRAPPIST-1.

Photos via Photo via Caltech/IPAC-TMT, GIF via Caltech/IPAC-TMT, 

Getty Images / NASA

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04-04-2017 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

What UFOs are teaching us

Why is it that a large portion of the scientific community is hostile to the idea that we are being visited by extraterrestrials ….

…. when it is clear that accepting their existence would be scientifically beneficial and would lead to a major philosophical shift?

Orthodox scientists do not like to be told about UFOs because, for many of them, the interest is nonexistent and such a topic is outside the scope of their methodology. According to them, scientific research must lead to a discourse on nature and must be tangible because science is only concerned with observable and reproducible phenomena. Thus, still according to them, a study that relies solely on testimonies and interpretations of unverifiable observations has more to do with psychology or sociology, and certainly not with science.

This clearly illustrates the level of apathy that exists within the scientific community regarding the subject and is nothing more than an expedient way of rejecting thousands of testimonies related to flying saucers that have shown, time and again, impressive and unexplained capabilities that defy the imagination. The maneuvers executed by these flying objects and described by random observers have proven to be extremely consistent, and have provided a clear and systematic picture of the characteristics that these flying objects display. These vehicles appear to be intelligently and skillfully piloted by their occupants, and very often they execute vertical ascensions at extremely high velocities. Only a minority of cases testify to the presence of non-human occupants in these vehicles.

Moreover, landing marks have been found on the ground as well as alterations of the vegetation at the cellular level, breakdown of cars from a distance, physiological effects on witnesses, and even observations made by highly credible witnesses who stood relatively close to these enigmatic machines.

Those who speak in the name of “official science” argue that no planet in our solar system is inhabited and therefore potential visitors would clearly have to come from a distant planetary system. Furthermore, according to them, the distance that separates us from the closest stars is such that it would make it virtually impossible for us to ever establish a direct contact with any civilization outside of our solar system.

The speeds that our man-made spacecrafts are susceptible to reach is laughable when it comes to the distance to be travelled, and the duration of such a journey would be incompatible with human life expectancy. Thus, the journey could only be a one-way ticket and it would likely spread over several generations or require the use of cryogenic preservation.

Several seemingly insurmountable obstacles would need to be addressed:

There is the problem of carrying the mass of combustible material needed for these crafts to propel themselves in space. However, eye witnesses never reported seeing a trail of combusted material coming out of these UFOs. Instead, these objects always moved silently at very high acceleration only emitting a small light. This is quite a contrast to our slow and noisy rockets that use the principle of kinetic momentum preservation. Indeed, the amount of movement or force of the motion executed by the UFO, which is the product of its mass by its velocity, should theoretically be compensated by an equal and opposite force obtained from the ejection at very high speed of a combustible material stored onboard the ship. This means that the amount of potential kinetic energy to be loaded onboard for an interstellar voyage (or even simply to carry out the observed accelerated motion) is completely incompatible with the approximate size and mass of these UFOs. Witnesses never report seeing a trail of combusted material, and from the given description of the crafts witnessed they appear way too small to store any combustible energy required for an interstellar voyage regardless of the form, including the most exotic forms imaginable such as ’annihilation of matter/anti-matter.
Another issue has to do with the acceleration of these UFOs. Eye witnesses have all observed enormous changes in speed, chaotic trajectories with abrupt changes in direction that would make it impossible for any human to withstand due to our physiology. How could any biological organism survive such brutal conditions?

… and yet there are visitors from outer space who are proving that the journey is definitely possible!

The daily accounts by credible witnesses of extraterrestrial crafts flying in our skies clearly indicate that there is a solution to all the problems mentioned:

Their very presence is a clear sign that they are able to survive the journey at a speed compatible with the distance covered, and that they have an enormous source of energy at their disposal, one that we still struggle conceptualizing within the narrow framework of present-day science.

How is it possible to achieve such a significant acceleration and reach speeds of up to several thousands of miles per second, and even speeds that are near or above the speed of light? What technology and what kind of energy can we use to achieve this, and where can we find it?µµ

 The obvious acceleration observed suggests that the living entities in the UFOs are not affected by it. Could it be that each passenger is subjected to the same acceleration field and gravitational flux as the chair they sit on?

This indicates that the beings who visit us know where to harness the needed energy from and they have solved the issue of creating and controlling gravitational fluxes.

If we would conquer anti-gravitation technology and were able to harness the energy from the diffused energetic fields that we bathe in, everything would change. The accelerations and speeds that could be reached would be considerable (thousands of g). The problems related to physiological resistance at great accelerations would be solved.

But before we get to that point, we will have to radically change the way we look at the structure of both matter and space. The main stumbling block for us today is a conceptual one coupled with a clear ignorance of what the fine structure of matter truly is. The path we will not further elaborate on here is the one that deals with the acceptance of a model of an infinite universe that has a fractal and multi-leveled structure that goes in both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. As above so below. 

For a very long time now, we have had solitary pioneers working tirelessly to unravel the secrets of gravitation. A draft answering all these questions currently exists, and the most advanced of these pioneering researchers is Claude Poher. “Claude Poher (born in 1936) is a retired French engineer from the National Center for Space Studies (CNES). He is an engineer in space research and electronics, and also holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics. He is best known for his involvement in the creation of a Study Group working on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEPAN), the first official ufology bureau created in France in 1977, and devoted to the study of the UFO phenomenon.”

For nearly forty years he has dedicated his life in the elucidation of the major gravitational energy enigma: where did the kinetic energy from the stars in all the galaxies come from, and where did the kinetic energy from the flying saucers described by credible eye witnesses come from? Not to mention, how do you explain the mechanism with which these massive space vehicles propel themselves without releasing any combustible material?

As early as 1980, he was already embracing the notion that the galaxies’ gravitational enigma was intimately intertwined with that of the propulsion of these incredible flying objects. Indeed, in both cases there had to be a humongous source of energy that stars and UFOs could draw from, and this colossal and diffused energy had to be usable anywhere in the Universe.

µAccording to Claude Poher, it was inconceivable that such an energy be only attributable to the gravitational potential energy brought about by a “hidden mass of unknown and invisible matter” merely surrounding the galaxies in a halo of incredible size. It was imperative for this same energy in the meadow of the local farmer where a flying saucer had flown at great acceleration to be exploitable. It was then, in 1980, that he imagined the theoretical concept of an isotropic cosmic flux of quanta each carrying a tiny amount of movement that he named, Universons. In his mind, this was what he believed to be the cause of gravitation.

The existence of this natural flux was essential in order to solve the two enigmas, and it was then necessary to try and understand how to extract kinetic energy from this natural flux.

At first, he did not yet have the slightest idea about the interaction between this hypothetical flux and matter, therefore a lot still needed to be imagined and verified. And he was all alone to face this challenge.

What was the clearest in his mind was the following astronomical experimental fact: stars were capable of extracting 90% of their kinetic energy from this isotropic quantified natural flux. And if stars were able to do it, then it’s fair to say that a technology that is more advanced than our own could have done it too, and this would theoretically enable it to reach interstellar travel.

He went on to get involved in the progressive elaboration of a theoretical model based on hypotheses that are consistent with observations.

This was a theoretical elaboration sowed with multiple pitfalls, because the model did not follow a series of acceptable hypotheses within the framework of known physics.

Indeed, in order to be able to extract kinetic energy from the natural flux that he had imagined, it was necessary for the behavior of the energy particles, which this energy flux should be composed of, to have a very particular behavior with respect to ordinary matter.

On the one hand, it was necessary for this flux to carry a tremendous amount of energy, and on the other hand it had to be unnoticeable, since it had never been detected prior. For him, this meant that there was a need to imagine a new type of fundamental interaction between the particles of energy (Universons) and the elementary particles of matter. It was a matter of discovering a particular type of quantum interaction.

The gravitational quanta contained in this flux could not in fact collide with the particles of matter and yield their momentum as is the case when two billiard balls collide. Moreover, the Laws of celestial mechanics were very clear on this issue. Any notion about collision systematically failed.

And yet the flux must have been able to yield extraordinary amounts of motion to the stars’ matter or to that of the UFOs!

Then came the transition to experimental verification.

Experimental realizations:

Claude Poher succeeded in creating a ceramic material that, when kept at very low temperatures such as liquid nitrogen and then submitted to a very high current at high voltage (current of 1000 Amps and 1000 V) accelerated the electrons within it and thus produced a flux of Universons. He would rightfully call it a Universons’ transmitter.

These Universons have been used to show:

•  the acceleration of matter in the flux of Universons regardless of the masking effect and the number of elements stacked up in the flux of Universons itself, which showed that Universons do indeed go through matter over great distances without a problem and really generates a movement within it. Matter was accelerated to amazing levels (several hundreds or thousands of g force). Fortunately, the acceleration only lasts a short time, yet over two microseconds it can generate a force equivalent to several hundred grams, even exceeding a kilogram.

Evidence of his theory: 

Other than the experiments that unequivocally validate his theory, as an astrophysicist, Claude Poher has shown that his theory solves a lot of the astronomical mysteries that we know of today:

• the slowing down of the Pioneer probes once they exit our solar system,
• the missing mass of the universe, which is non-existent (what’s truly missing from our theory are the Universons),
•  The unexplained acceleration of pieces of spiral galaxies according to their distance in the center,
• and many other points, which I did not address.

Poher created the GEPAN when he was working at CNES, and it’s because he developed an interest in the propulsion system of UFOs that he worked on his anti-gravity theory. µHe also goes over the many known phenomena caused by UFOs — car breakdowns, paralyzing effect on people, sudden acceleration of UFOs, and how the Universons’ technology simply allows the nullification of inertia on board a spaceship moving with the flux of Universons, etc…

But another strange enigma remains for which we have no answer today: Our Extraterrestrial visitors challenge the General Theory of Relativity!

Astronomers assert that the star nearest to the sun (proxima in the Centaurus constellation) is 4.24 light-years. Thus our visitors come from very, very, far and manage to return within the time frame compatible with their life expectancy.

In the second Message, Rael gives a summary of the contact he had on October 7, 1975, and describes his 24-hour journey on the planet of the Eternals. A journey he estimates to have lasted less than an hour… Since this planet cannot be located in our solar system, we have here a confirmation that their traveling speed is very different from everything we know, including the speed of light.
The General Theory of Relativity in its current interpretation is thus being challenged!!! If this theory proved to be true, the relativistic constraints of the contraction of time would make communication impossible (several years at a speed close to that of light would correspond to several centuries on earth)

Exotic assumptions can be proposed. We can imagine that there is no material displacement but only transfer of information. The genetic code and memory bank of individuals could be transferred and then reconstituted at destination?

But the transport of the information should still circulate thousands of times faster than the speed of light. This topic is so far ahead from what we know and the only indisputable conclusion we can come up with is that we just don’t know!!!

The presence, for thousands of years, of extraterrestrial ships flying in our proximity must incite us to change our paradigms. Yes, they are out there and it’s not a matter of believing, but more about having a minimum amount of common sense to understand…

Their inconspicuous but permanent presence is also a key element that confirms the Raelian Messages given both in 1973 and 1975 to the one these visitors named Raël. Many have not yet taken the time to try to understand…

The diffused energetic environment and the anti-gravitation techniques will soon be available to us, but the best goes alongside with the worst. This undertaking can lead to the development and well-being of humanity, but it can also accelerate its destruction. Individuals without a conscience having access to an omnipresent and inexhaustible source of energy can build weapons capable of destroying all of humanity.

Marcel Terrusse

Bibliography

“Gravitation, Universons, energy of the future » C.Poher 2003 du Rocher edition (ISBN 2 268 04789).

“Gravitation and Universons”Claude Poher 2016 ebook version at http://www.universons.com/

The Messages that will change your life: http://rael.org/home

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04-04-2017 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Running away from Einstein

Einstein’s theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after researchers at the University of St Andrews found a gigantic ring of galaxies darting away from us much faster than predicted.

This 10 million light year-wide ring made up of small galaxies is expanding rapidly like a mini Big Bang. The team believe our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, once flew past our own Galaxy at close range, creating a sling-shot of several small galaxies.

Dr Hongsheng Zhao, Reader in the School of Physics and Astronomy and co-author of the paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by Oxford University Press, said: “If Einstein’s Gravity were correct, our Galaxy would never come close enough to Andromeda to scatter anything that fast.”

If true, the discovery would force a new understanding of gravity and about our cosmos, as such a galactic flyby only makes sense if gravity weakens more slowly as galaxies drift apart than mainstream thinking suggests.

Indranil Banik, the PhD student who led the study, said: “The ring-like distribution is very peculiar. These small galaxies are like a string of raindrops flung out from a spinning umbrella. I found there is barely a 1 in 640 chance for randomly distributed galaxies to line up in the observed way. I traced their origin to a dynamical event when the Universe was only half its present age.”

This tsunami-like wake in the sky was likely stirred up by a near-miss of the speeding Andromeda galaxy with our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. The two massive galaxies always orbited each other in a plane and would have scattered dwarf galaxies in their paths, perhaps explaining why the speeding dwarfs are in a plane also containing the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Mr Banik added: “In Einstein’s gravity paradigm, hypothetical dark matter is always invoked. Such a high speed requires 60 times the mass we see in the stars of the Milky Way and Andromeda. However, the friction between their huge halos of dark matter would result in them merging rather than flying 2.5 million light years apart, as they must have done.”

“Science progresses through challenges,” said Marcel Pawlowski, a Hubble Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, who prompted Mr Banik’s discovery. “Together with two other known planes of closer-in satellites, this gigantic ring forms a serious challenge to the standard paradigm.”

Dr Zhao is currently applying for a UK Science and Technology Facilities Council grant to follow up this work with detailed simulations of the origin of the ring and our neighbouring galaxies in alternative gravity; this funding body currently supports Mr Banik.

Image caption: A present-day near-miss of two spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427, which may be comparable to the early flyby of the Andromeda Galaxy past our own Milky Way. Courtesy of © Gemini Image Gallery.

ARP atlas of peculiar galaxies shows the similar spiral pairs NGC 3395/3396, NGC 4485/4490 and NGC 6050/IC1179.

Background information
Dynamical history of the local group in ΛCDM slowromancapii@ - including external perturbers in 3D is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by Oxford University Press.
Anisotropic distribution of high velocity galaxies in the local group by the same authors is under review.

{ https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/ }

03-04-2017 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

03-04-2017 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

03-04-2017 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

‘Aliens use my body’: Sydney-based medium claims to communicate with extraterrestrials

Former nurse Kerrie-Ann Thornton, 37, says her first alleged encounter with an extraterrestrial took place when a dark figure suddenly appeared from the back seat of her car as she was driving on a Sydney highway.

“From then on it kept happening,” she tells news.com.au.

“It made my life hell until I actually learned to communicate with them and then it settled down. “And eight years later here we are.”

Ms Thornton now dedicates her life to serving ‘the greys’ — a “peaceful alien species” she claims to have a contract with. As a self professed psychic medium and telepathic communicator, she says she also has contact with other alleged “alien races” including the Draconians, Reptilians, Annunaki and Illuminati. Ms Thornton, from Harrington Park, is one of thousands of people around the world who believe in the existence of these so-called extraterrestrial creatures which she claims talk directly to her.

She says the purpose of the communications is so the aliens can pass on messages about living and dead people and animals to “help us”.

While some people might call Ms Thornton and her beliefs crazy, she insists she, and they, are not.

“If you want to call me crazy, or I’m just making things up, or an attention seeker, go right ahead,” Ms Thornton says.

“It’s not my business.

“My job and my business is to deliver messages for the ET’s ... it’s up to you what you do with those messages.”

About 12 people, men and women, pay a $20 entry fee and file into the small function room to watch Ms Thornton become possessed by aliens and deliver messages to them on a sunny Sunday afternoon in March.

They meet in an old country-style motel, tucked behind a used car sales business in Campbelltown, on the outskirts of western Sydney.

“You are invited to ask questions about anything, the ET’s themselves, life, the universe, etc and the ET’s will answer all questions,” a pamphlet advertising the seminar reads.

No “security sensitive” questions are allowed. It’s in the best interests of the human race, Ms Thornton says.

It’s the first time Ms Thornton has attempted to lend her mind, body and soul to the aliens she claims to have been communicating with telepathically and in person for almost a decade. She says the aliens will today possess her to deliver important messages to earthlings.

She says she has been preparing her body “mentally, spiritually and physically” for this moment for seven years.

She warns that “everyone will be running for the door” in the second half of her seminar when she becomes possessed or if the aliens decide to appear in the room.

“I’m told they’re going to put on a big show,” she tells news.com.au.

“They’re calling it ‘the Awakening’. They’re going to make a statement.

“I won’t remember the second half after it’s happened.”

Guests are told there is nothing to fear and advised not to be alarmed if they “feel something touch (their) shoulder” or if the medium starts levitating.

“There are 30 plus ET’s in this room right now ... invisible,” Ms Thornton says.

“They’re invisible.”

John Farnham’s ‘You’re the Voice’ starts playing on a small radio at the front of the room. Ms Thornton looks at guests in the front row and tells them: “not my choice”.

“You ready guys?’ she asks the invisible ET’s.

Psychic medium and telepathic communicator Kerrie-Ann Thornton.

Source:news.com.au

MESSAGES FROM “INVISIBLE ETs”

Ms Thornton starts the seminar by giving audience members individual readings she says come directly from the other worldly entities.

She tells one audience member that her dead grey cat didn’t like the Whiskers meat she fed it and would have preferred the Kitekat brand.

Another woman is asked who “the young child who fell out of a tree and broke their arm” was. She says she has no idea who the psychic is talking about.

Ms Thornton tells another woman that one of the aliens recommends she buys some lotto tickets.

“I had a dream about that last night,” the woman says.

“I will definitely buy some now.”

The guests all appear to share Ms Thornton’s beliefs and that she’s psychic and cling onto every words she says.

She tells a young woman in the audience she was a medieval princess in a past life who now has healing abilities.

“I can feel it when she hugs me as it’s warm,” the girl’s friend tells the group.

Another guest is asked if she has an older brother.

“Yes,” the guest says.

Ms Thornton: “When he was your age was there a car accident not him but could be close friend or family.

“The person driving the other car wants to say he’s really sorry and wants to say it was his fault and please accept his apology.

“He didn’t mean to cause harm was young and dumb.”

The woman she's addressing says this is the first she’s ever heard about her brother being involved in a car accident.

“Who likes fish? Ms Thornton asks the crowd.

No one answers.

Ms Thornton: “Gold fish?”

Silence.

Ms Thornton: “Tropical fish?”

One woman raises her hand: “My brother,” she says.

Ms Thornton: “Tell him to keep a check on thermometer as it’s faulty and you’ll wake up with fried fish.”

She then turns her attention to another young woman in the audience.

Ms Thornton: “You’re having internet trouble.”

Guest: “No.”

Ms Thornton: “OK it might be coming. Just watch your internet server, (the provider is) going through issues.”

After a short break, tea and biscuits, the second half of the seminar gets underway. This is where things are expected to get especially interesting as Ms Thornton attempts to allow aliens to take over her body. It’s the moment guests were warned they might run for the door. She takes a swig of water and shakes her hands like an athlete preparing to compete. She stares intently at the ground, awaiting for something phenomenal to take hold. Nothing happens. So she fills the time instead by relaying second-hand messages from the alleged aliens.

Psychic medium and telepathic communicator Kerrie-Ann Thornton stares intently at the ground as she attempts to become possessed by aliens she says she’s in contact with.

Source:news.com.au

TRUMP, KATE & WILL, AND THE QUEEN

Talk turns to celebrities, royals and politicians and which of them are supposedly aliens or hybrids.

“Is Queen Elizabeth a clone?” one guest asks.

Ms Thornton: “No, she’s not.”

But the same can’t be said for Kate Middleton, according to Ms Thornton.

“She is a draconian hybrid, half woman, half, they’re 10ft tall T-Rex type thing,” she says.

“She’s in the right place to seize power.

“They’ve designed her specifically to be in that position.”

Ms Thornton says the suggestion that the “Queen and Trump are shape shifters is rubbish”.

“They’re not aliens,” she says.

“Trump has no interest in Americans.

“His only interest is gaining technology, gaining power, gaining money and wanting to take over the world, and this is driven by his ties to Putin and the Illuminati.”

A member of the audience raises his hand.

“What is Pauline Hanson?” he asks.

Ms Thornton: “A few people have said she’s an alien but she is not. She is someone with morals and integrity.”

U.S. President Donald Trump is not an alien, according to Kerrie-Ann Thornton.

AP Photo/Files)

Source:AP

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, is part alien hybrid, according to Sydney psychic medium Kerrie-Ann Thornton.

Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images.

Source:Getty Images

‘WHY I WAS CHOSEN’

Ms Thornton tells news.com.au she sees the aliens through her “third eye and physical eyes”.

She describes the “typical grey” as being about seven foot tall with “large heads, black eyes, small nose and mouth, skinny necks, long slender bodies and very muscular”.

Ms Thornton also claims to have twice been impregnated by aliens on their “space buses”. She says she miscarried several months into each pregnancy.

She believes she was given the ability to communicate with aliens because of her “rare DNA”.

“It’s something not many people have,” she says.

“And another possibility is that I don’t care what people think. I will do my job regardless of what people think of me.”

Ms Thornton’s mother, who also attends the seminar, supports her claims.

“Her DNA is special,” her mother tells inquisitive guests.

‘THE ALIENS ARE COMING’

As the three and a half-hour session comes to a close it becomes apparent Ms Thornton’s attempt to become possessed by aliens has not worked. Not today. Her seven years of training for the moment has apparently all been in vain.

“I think they have not done that because they have not got their message across,” she tells news.com.au.

“People have understood why they’re here and their messages and I believe that they would have done a possession if people did not believe, if they were challenging what they said.”

News.com.au reminds Ms Thornton that many sceptics will read this story and not believe her claims.

But according to Ms Thornton, that doesn’t matter because all will be revealed later this year.

“They will be showing themselves in the next couple of weeks and months,” she says.

“To everybody. To the world.

“They’re not waiting for the government to disclose their existence they’re going to do it themselves.”

She says the aliens “want people to know when they come they’re not here to harm anyone”.

“They believe that the earth is dying and that we have to go somewhere.”

So what are they waiting for?

“That’s a good question and I have asked them repeatedly that during the afternoon,” Ms Thornton says.

“They just didn’t want to.”

• megan.palin@news.com.au

{ http://www.news.com.au/ }

03-04-2017 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Public domain

Phoenix Lights, 1997.

Al Bates

On the evening of March 13, 1997, widely scattered reports came in from across Arizona—including Prescott, Prescott Valley and Dewey-Humboldt—of mysterious lights crossing the sky. This phenomenon, now popularly called “The Phoenix Lights,” is still a topic of controversy.

Official explanations—including military flares and Air Force night exercises—leave too many questions for the many who prefer to classify the sightings as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). And there were numerous eyewitness accounts that tracked the lights from the Prescott Basin rapidly travelling south toward Phoenix and beyond to Tucson. One eyewitness report from the Phoenix area was made by Arizona’s then-Governor Fife Symington.

But this was not the Prescott area’s only experience with unexplained aerial phenomena. Prescott’s Granite Mountain had a previous brush with another mysterious event on a warm evening over a century earlier. That event was recorded by Daniel Ellis Conner, who was noteworthy as a member of the famed Walker Party and as an early member of the Territorial Legislature and member of the surveying team that laid out the Prescott town site.

Connor’s tale (lightly edited for punctuation) follows:

“On a warm night in 1865, whilst in company of three or four others, in the town of Prescott at or about midnight, my attention was called by someone present, to an unusual appearance northwest toward Granite Mountain . . . It was an exceedingly large transient, luminous body and it was slowly and steadily moving toward the west. It was light and brilliant and seemed to have been suspended in the atmosphere at an equal height of Granite Mountain, the summit of which the meteoric phenomenon appeared to be slowly approaching.

“Like a full moon suspended in the heavens amongst the passing clouds, it gave us ample time to observe its steady course. As it appeared to approach the summit of this mountain eight miles distant, it began to color into an increasing shade of pink, thence to a deep burning passionate red and then burst into a thousand fragments like a bomb-shell against the summit of the mountain and went out. Presently there came upon the night air the deep tone of an explosion, like the low tone of a distant cannon once exploded and then silent . . .

Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum

Daniel E. Conner, c.1870s. Call number PO-1961P

“I should have thought that we might have been mistaken as to distance in the night, as it was, had not other parties four miles below Prescott and four miles nearer, described it just as we saw and heard it. Its reality thus became the strangest part of it. It may have arisen from the bed of the lake, which has been described previously [by Conner] as lying at the eastern foot of Granite Mountain and subsequently drained. This single instance of any meteoric discovery in Arizona was the only one I ever saw of or heard of in that country and the largest I ever heard of existing in any country.”

Born in Kentucky and trained as a civil engineer at Hanover College, Indiana, before seeking his fortune in the western mine fields, Conner probably rates well as a reliable observer of natural phenomena, although he was lacking in knowledge of extensive impacts on the Earth from outer space such as Arizona’s then-unknown Meteor Crater.

What did Conner and others see that night? It certainly was not “military flares” or Air Force exercises. And this was a long time before UFOs and Extraterrestrials came into the popular lexicon. If the explosion he observed was a meteorite, there may be traces left behind for some adventurous soul to find near Granite Mountain. Until then Conner’s sighting will remain an intriguing but unexplained episode from Arizona’s territorial past.

Conner’s account of the Granite Mountain sighting is contained in his posthumously published book called Joseph Reddeford [sic] Walker and the Arizona Adventure.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles to dayspastshmcourier@gmail.com. Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastshmcourier@gmail.com for information.

More like this story

• Symington confirms he saw UFO 10 years ago
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• Official says lights likely a single meteor
• Meteor lights night sky from Utah to Yavapai County

{ https://www.dcourier.com/ }

03-04-2017 om 23:08 geschreven door peter  

More than a dozen UFOs seen in Mississauga, Brampton in 2016: report

Canadian UFO Survey shows there were 1,131 sightings across country

UFO Report

Submitted

There were a total of 16 reports of UFO sightings in Peel in 2016 with 13 in Mississauga and 3 in Brampton according to the 2016 Canadian UFO Survey from the Ufology Research organization.

{ http://www.mississauga.com/mississauga-on/ }

03-04-2017 om 22:57 geschreven door peter  

Where UFOs Are Scarce

ByCheryl Costa

 

Columnist Cheryl Costa discusses where UFO sightings are few and far between

03-04-2017 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

Alien sightings REVEALED in shock report on UFO hotspot

A REVEALING report has lifted the lid on unexplained sightings last year in UFO hotspot Canada.

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

03-04-2017 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

UFO experts believe live feed from SpaceX Satellite launch mysteriously cut 'due to mystery objects'

It is not the first time a live feed has been dropped and conspiracy theorist believe it was deliberate to allow the UFOs to get off the screen

BY KELLY-ANN MILLS

UFO experts have revealed at least three white objects were spotted on a live feed of a rocket launch - seconds before it was pulled mysteriously from TV screens.

The UFOs were seen by at least 20 observers who have now shared their concerns online.

Cameras were filming at the launch of SpaceX Satellite at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

But it seems the live feed of the launch was cut at the exact time UFOs were seen on the screen, leading some to think the timing of the change of screen to that of a map was deliberate.

The clip was brought to the attention of SecureTeam10 , a group of UFO experts, who investigate the footage and share their findings online.

Secureteam's Tyler said: "This was sent over to me on by at least 20 people who saw this and said 'woah'.

"These are not stars and in no other part of this footage will you see stars."

He adds: "They immediately cut to this animated tracking system, for a few moments, almost as if they are giving it just enough time, for this UFO to move out of sight, before they immediately cut back to the fed of the rocket."

The SpaceX Satellite launch took place on Thursday at Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre. The 23-storey rocket lifted off at 6.27pm local time.

It is not the first time a live feed has been cut.

Earlier this year Nasa's live feed stopped as 'six large UFOs' crept past International Space Station leading conspiracy theorists to again think it was a deliberate action.

{ http://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

03-04-2017 om 22:30 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX Satellite launch live feed suddenly CUT over ‘mysterious triangle-shaped UFO'

THE live feed of the launch of the SpaceX Satellite was cut deliberately to avoid UFOs being caught on screen, so alien experts have claimed.

03-04-2017 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

UFO Seen Over Ireland Could Be Evidence That Leprechauns May Be Aliens, March 2017, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 29, 2017

Location of sighting:  Carlow, Ireland

News source: 

http://www.carlow-nationalist.ie/2017/04/02/ufo-seen-over-the-skies-of-carlow/

This UFO was seen last week in Ireland and the shape of the disk is beautiful. As you see from the enlarged screenshot above, this is no cloud. This is a metallic disk, which has more similarities to tens of thousands of UFO reports more than it has to any cloud. 

 

Coincidence...I think not, because think about the old Irish stories about little green men...they call leprechauns  Were they leprechauns or were they really just aliens? You have to tie together the patters, not just in UFO reports, but historic events, folklore and cultural traditions.

Scott C. Waring

News states: 

IT was a case for Mulder and Scully, or maybe just for a weatherman last Saturday, as a UFO-like cloud hung ominously over Carlow. The mysterious, striking-looking cloud caused widespread panic among locals, although panic can come in different forms – in this case, mild curiosity and a Facebook post. Greg MacLennan and his wife from Carlow town were out for a drive on Saturday evening when they spotted the large, dark, stationery cloud near Carlow Train Station. “It was very odd,” said Greg. “All the other clouds were very high and light like a cirrus type of cloud. This was totally one of its own. Me and my wife were both thinking it’s very odd. It was just sticking out like an eyesore, if you know what I mean. We were saying that ‘it looks like a UFO, doesn’t it’, or something was hiding inside of it, like camouflage! ‘UFO clouds’ are another name that’s given for this particular cloud.” Greg considers himself open-minded but, disappointingy for The Nationalist, did not believe these were UFOs. Although, he could well be in denial. A sober, rational assessment would indicate that it was a lenticular type of cloud, according to Greg. “They usually form over mountains. It has to do with the warm air that moves up from the base of the mountain. Sometimes they form when there is low pressure on the way.” However, sober assessments are no fun and The Nationalist prefers the idea of camouflaged UFOs watching us do a shop at Aldi.

{http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

03-04-2017 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

Massive Shadow Passing The ISS In NASA Video

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that an alien mothership was recorded on video flying past NASA’s International Space Station.

The footage shows a black nothingness and part of the space station. Moments later, the dark part of the scene starts to get lighter for no apparent reason, except for a circular object flying past the station.

As the shadow is lifted, the dark outlook continues to get lighter and lighter.

In a caption of a YouTube video that made the rounds online, the uploader says that he is not certain whether the mysterious massive thing is a mothership or some kind of an alien spacecraft. However, he seems to be so sure that it does not look something usual.

The video was posted to the video-sharing site on Saturday, March 19. The uploader notes the shadow is coming across the picture as the UFO moves across.

Some viewers believe the video shows evidence of alien life, saying that the UFO is an ET mothership. Others are skeptical, suggesting that the so-called mothership is just the filter in the camera moving out of the screen. There are also who think that the anomaly is simply the sun’s light coming around.

One viewer believes a large unknown object is completely obscuring the background.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

03-04-2017 om 21:47 geschreven door peter  

Red Planet versus Dead Planet: Scientists Debate Next Destination for Astronauts in Space

THE WOODLANDS, Texas—Should the U.S. send humans back to the moon in a 21st-century reboot of the cold war–era Apollo program … or should the nation go full-throttle and for the gusto, sending crews to all the way to Mars, where none have gone before? U.S. scientists and policy makers have grappled ad nauseam with America's next great otherworldly destination for decades, without making much meaningful progress. Now that it is approaching a half-century since an American — or anyone at all, for that matter — last left low Earth orbit, the debate seems lost in space.

Soon that shall change, many advocates of human spaceflight believe, through a hybrid of new initiatives by Pres. Donald Trump's administration as well as commercial efforts led by private industry. The Trump White House's vision for U.S. astronauts remains at present a foggy TBD, but there are plans afoot to relaunch a National Space Council. Helmed by Vice Pres. Mike Pence, the council would set a new space agenda not only for NASA but also for U.S. rocket companies, big and small, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Orbital ATK.

In the meantime, speculation about the U.S.'s future in space has reached its highest point in recent memory, as made clear here last week by the proceedings of the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). At the meeting, scientists unleashed the latest findings regarding Earth's moon, Mars, asteroids, comets and myriad other cosmic objects of interest, often with a hopeful eye toward rekindling human voyages to other worlds. Although robotic probes are the persistent currency of discovery in today's planetary science, many researchers increasingly see astronauts as crucial agents of exploration in the not-too-distant future.

Destination Moon

"Planetary science will completely change once we get crew beyond low Earth orbit," says David Kring, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. "The best way to explore the moon is by the well-trained astronaut, hands down. Apollo demonstrated that wonderfully."

Kring says he is eager to see the first NASA exploration missions using the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is currently being developed along with a crewed Orion spacecraft. At the Trump administration's insistence, NASA is assessing the prospect of flying a two-person crew around the moon in mid-2019 — years ahead of schedule for the delay-plagued SLS and Orion programs. "I'm even more anxious to see crews deploy robotic assets to the lunar surface and eventually land there themselves," Kring adds. "We need to get back on the surface. We need to collect samples. And we need to bring them back to Earth."

A Scientific Bonanza

The moon is a bonanza for scientists, Kring says, because it offers crucial insights for understanding the origins and evolution of Earth and other planets: how they formed from the accretion and differentiation of smaller bodies; how they were bombarded by impacts early in their histories; and even how some of them migrated in their orbits around the sun. "The best place to answer those questions is on the moon," he explains, given that its airless surface contains the scarcely altered imprints of 4.5 billion years of solar system history.

Here on Earth destructive geologic processes cloud our view of those long-gone formative eons, Kring says. Even on modern-day Mars, a planet far more inert than Earth, many of the answers we might seek to our solar system's deepest mysteries have been erased by the slow workings of geology.

Kring also sees the moon as a gateway to Mars. "We have to have legitimate, meaningful milestones on our way to Mars," he explains. "We all want to get humans on Mars. The question is how do you get there? I don't think we're going to develop the right workforce with the capabilities to magically get to Mars by 2035 or 2045. We need to develop the techniques and the workforce for that leap, and that can happen in [lunar orbit] and on the moon."

Every Martian is a Lunatic

According to Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, any moon-versus-Mars argument is a nonstarter. "It's not either-or," he says, because the moon can enable Mars by tapping lunar resources to support a sustainable human expansion deeper into the solar system.

"You can't be a Martian without being a lunatic," Neal says. "If you want to do 'flags and footprints,' go to Mars now. But you'll never go back, because that's Apollo — a fantastic program, but it was not sustainable."

To Neal, Earth's satellite is first and foremost a world rich in resources that can and should be used. For example, he pointed to sun-shy craters at the lunar poles, where near-constant darkness has trapped and preserved water ice ripe for conversion into oxygen, water and rocket propellant. "We have to do some basic geologic prospecting," he says. "And if the moon's resources are shown to be substantial, "you then bring the Moon into our economic sphere of influence. I view the moon as enabling, and that comes through its resources."

Apollo Dreams

Speaking at a breakout session prior to the formal start of the LPSC gathering last week, Apollo 17 moon walker and geologist Jack Schmitt reflected on the value of human exploration of the moon. It had been nearly 45 years since Schmitt bunny-hopped his way across the low-gravity lunar landscape in December 1972 during the final Apollo mission; half of Apollo’s 12 moon walkers have now died. With the passing of his Apollo 17 crewmate, Gene Cernan, earlier this year, Schmitt spoke as the last living person from that mission to have set foot on the moon.

Schmitt's speech raised issues familiar to many in the audience. For decades, he has championed the potential economics of lunar mining for helium 3, an isotope that could be crucial for certain forms of nuclear fusion. The lunar surface has soaked up vast quantities of helium 3 from billions of years of bombardment by the solar wind, Schmitt explained, and drawing on that resource is how a lunar settlement could support itself. Provided, that is, that scientists back on Earth can first figure out how to make nuclear fusion an economically viable power source — a goal that has eluded them for decades.

Schmitt's faith in a lunar future for humankind is unwavering. "A settlement on the Moon based on helium 3 export to Earth for fusion power makes a lot of sense to me. It starts not only to make us a two-planet species but enables, I think, Mars exploration in many different ways," he noted.

For example, he said, helium 3 mining would produce by-products including water, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. These useful substances exist in only the most minuscule traces in lunar soil — but such an enormous amount of surface material would have to be processed to harvest helium 3 that they would accumulate in significant amounts. Water sourced from the low-gravity moon, Schmitt explained, could be utilized as a protective, radiation-thwarting cocoon, built into the superstructures of Mars-bound crewed spacecraft. "A few inches of water around a spacecraft weights an awful lot and it is expensive bringing it from Earth. You can produce water anywhere on the moon," he said.

Red Planet Runs

Others have little time for the moon and the decades that would be required to develop infrastructure there. Their eyes are instead on the bigger prize: Mars. Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO and chief rocketeer, is the foremost example of the "Mars first" contingent. And according to SpaceX engineer Paul Wooster, Red Planet planning by Musk's private company is steadily progressing. "The vision for SpaceX, long-term, is making it possible for large numbers of people to go to Mars," he says.

SpaceX plans to build a mega-rocket and a giant interplanetary crew transporter to populate Martian outposts and eventually a full-size city, Wooster reports. But before the company can achieve those wild goals it must first firm up its capability to send something — anything at all — to Mars. That would come via interplanetary flights of the firm's Red Dragon spacecraft — a derivative of the SpaceX Dragon capsule that has already hauled cargo to the International Space Station and in due course will take astronauts there. Wooster says SpaceX is intent on rapidly building up surface infrastructure on Mars, hopefully beginning by the mid-2020s. "We obviously have a lot of work ahead of us," he says.

A crucial component of the SpaceX plan for Mars has been demonstrated several times here on Earth. The company has repeatedly landed its Falcon 9 rocket's first stage at sea on a drone ship, and on land at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Because the first stage can then be repeatedly reused rather than flown once and discarded, an economy of scale could develop that greatly reduces the cost of access to space, and thus the price tag of a bank-busting plan to colonize Mars. For SpaceX's ambitious plans to work, the company will have to develop and demonstrate reusability on its next generation of rockets poised to debut after Falcon 9.

Wooster says an unpiloted SpaceX Red Dragon flight to Mars, able to deliver roughly one ton of useful payload, is being considered for 2020. Other Red Dragons could follow every two years or so, when Mars and Earth are in favorable alignments that minimize the fuel needed for an interplanetary crossing.

SpaceX Marks the Spot

"First and foremost is to learn how to land large payloads on Mars," Wooster says. In preparation for planting an outpost on that far-off world, experiments onboard Red Dragon are set to test on-the-spot propellant production. That can be done, he says, by processing water from Mars' surface and with gases extracted from the carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere. In fact, NASA is also set to try out something similar — a Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) on the space agency's Mars 2020 rover.

SpaceX has been quietly working with NASA and non-NASA landing site specialists to plot locales for plopping down its spacecraft. Site selection is driven by the quantity of water the firm is looking for — thousands of tons, Wooster explains. One such spot "is looking quite promising," he says: Arcadia Planitia, a smooth plain on Mars that appears to have large quantities of ice near the surface.

Of course, where there is ice there may well be subsurface pockets of liquid water — and potentially life, raising the possibility that SpaceX could violate "planetary protection" protocols by landing in such regions. Wooster says SpaceX is working with NASA's Office of Planetary Protection to properly address such concerns. For now, he reiterates that the company is most definitely open for business and eager to entice researchers to make use of Red Dragon for toting their experiments. "SpaceX is a transportation company," Wooster explains. "We're very happy to deliver payloads to Mars for various people," he adds, an offer that has also piqued NASA's interest in contracting with the company to launch a potential science experiment in 2020. "We want to turn this into a steady cadence where we are sending [Red] Dragons to Mars based on every opportunity as we go forward, and eventually shifting over to our large Mars vehicle to deliver very large payloads," he concludes.

Be it back to the moon or first footfalls on Mars, the trajectory taken by the U.S. appears to have the research community in ready-and-waiting mode. Whether it comes via government-backed public-private partnerships, international collaboration or go-it-alone endeavors by the only nation to have landed astronauts on the moon, there is plenty of extraterrestrial science that can — and will — be done, potentially even by humans.

This article was first published at ScientificAmerican.com. ©ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.

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{ http://www.space.com/ }

03-04-2017 om 00:12 geschreven door peter  

MACK LAMOUREUX

...and one Sasquatch.

Did you guys know that there is a group that tracks yearly UFO statistics in Canada?

Because there is and they're goddamn glorious.

The main crew tracking the data is the Winnipeg-based Ufology ResearchCentre who just released their 2016 findings of UFO sightings in the great white north. The data—which is totally true because, you know, it's data—is produced by the centre working in cooperation with investigators and researchers all across the country. The group releases the information yearly "in an attempt to promote the dissemination of information across the field of ufology. "


So, with that in mind, let's go through these numbers, why don't we?

To start, since 1989 the crew has reported 18,038 Canadian UFO sightings or encounters. In total, there were 1,131 UFO reports officially filed in Canada—"the fifth year in a row above 1,000 cases," excitedly reads the study. The only year that had more sightings was 2015.

"This data clearly contradicts comments by those who would assert that UFOs are a 'passing fad' or that UFO sightings are decreasing in number," reads the study.

Fuck yeah, the truth is out there, fam.

Like all good studies, this one is chock full of weird little statistics and breaks down the sightings by province. Turns out, Quebecers see the most little grey men, followed by Ontario, BC, and Alberta and that summer is the best time to see the extraterrestrials. Montreal had the highest amount of any sightings in a major city with 73—Vancouver took a close second with 70.

Sadly, though, most of these sightings had "insufficient evidence" and "the percentage of UFO cases considered unexplained in 2016 has dropped to four percent, the lowest in 28 years of study," which is a total bummer. The crew writes this off as the "result of more careful scrutiny of raw report information available."

The best part comes at the tail end of the study where they keep the "unusual" reports. In this segment, you can find the short tale of a man who "reported that an alien entity was responsible for stealing his sunglasses, belt and silver possessions."

Further into the study, you can read about a person in Cornwall, PEI who had a close encounter with "a thin, six-foot-tall, long-fingered, white alien in a black suit" that appeared in his bedroom. The person then had a chat with the alien before it took its leave by walking through a wall. Meanwhile in Quebec, on the same night, a person was transported in a flash of white light to a bathtub. Here he encountered "three green, big-eyed humanoid creatures who communicated with him telepathically."

Another is straight-up elegant in its simplicity:

"A report was received which read simply, 'They contacted me!'"

The study ends with a man in northern Quebec who spotted himself a sasquatch—which I don't believe counts as an alien but, frankly, who cares, because sasquatches are awesome. Not all encounters were as wonderful as these, some are kinda, well, boring.

In total, close encounters were less than one percent, the majority of sightings (over 50 percent) were just simple lights in the sky. The study also breaks down the sightings that weren't simple lights and, oddly enough, the "flying saucer" classification only was reported five percent of times, tying it with whatever "fireball" is.

So, kiddos, keep your eyes on the sky and the curiosity in your heart strong because if you're lucky, very lucky, maybe one day you'll end up on this list.

At the very least you might see a sasquatch, which apparently counts.

Lead image via Flickr user maxime raynal

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

02-04-2017 om 23:47 geschreven door peter  

Sightings from former astronauts, airline pilots, and police officers top his list.

When an alien aircraft hovers over your house, you'll want to talk to someone about it.

For the past 43 years, that's been one of the main functions of the National UFO Reporting Center. It's served as a hotline for skeptics and believers: If you look up and see something strange, they'll meticulously take your story.

Peter Davenport has served as the center's director since 1994, managing sighting reports through the website and the 24-hour hotline, and posting updates to the charmingly low-tech NUFORC database. People who report UFOs "quest to speak with someone who will believe what they have to say," he said.

He told me, over a series of emails, what NUFORC does and why it does it. Serving as a listening ear is one half of the job. Presenting those stories as publicly-available reports is the other. People should have access to information about extraterrestrial activity, "without having to rely on a government which is lying to all of us about the UFO phenomenon."

Davenport estimates out of the tens of thousands of people who witness a true Unidentified Flying Object in their lifetimes, very few will take the time to report it. Right now, they receive between 10-20 written reports in a day through the website. But those sightings are going up.

Most are "serious-minded attempts to describe some type of object that the witness was unable to identify himself." Some are bound to have mundane explanations, such as routine rocket launches, meteors, high-altitude balloons and the like. Terrestrial false alarms.

Davenport said the most reliable reports involve multiple witnesses who corroborate each other's sightings. Photographic or radar evidence certainly helps. Following up with a witness is also an important due-diligence. In many of the reports listed on NUFORC's database, Davenport has noted the tone of the witness (if it's a phone conversation), and whether or not they seemed "sober" and "serious-minded." Occupation sometimes lends credibility, as well: Public servants, police officers, military veterans, airline pilots and former astronauts are among his most reliable witnesses.

An ideal example of a reliable report, he said, is the Phoenix Lights mass sighting in 1997. NUFORC was one of the few organizations that kept records and a hotline open for reports of this sighting.

I asked Davenport to show me more reports that fit this standard of sober-mindedness in the face of the inexplicable. These are his choices for the most noteworthy UFO encounters and sightings in recent memory, condensed here. The full reports are publically available by date.

"I have no explanation for what we saw."
Athens, Texas
July 5, 2013
10:15 p.m.

My family and I were sitting outside. When I looked up into the sky, I saw a fairly large orange glowing orb moving rapidly overhead right about 90 degrees of elevation.

About one or two minutes later, we saw a group of three similar objects along the same flight path as the first one.

I am a retired military fighter pilot, retired commercial airline pilot and former astronaut. I have no explanation for what we saw.

"This was not like any star or planet I have ever seen in the sky before."
Eastpointe, Michigan
May 27, 2016
11:11 p.m.

When the object first appeared it was very blue and very brightly illuminated, the lights weren't flickering or dimming like in typical aircraft. This was not like any star or planet I have ever seen in the sky before. The object was slightly bigger in appearance than the North Star, and emitted no sounds, and moved very smoothly, until it came to a complete stop northeast of where we were looking and positioned.

"Like ships hiding in plain sight." 
Above Mt. Shasta, California
February 16, 2015 
10:30 p.m.

I am an airline captain... We decided to look out and up at the night sky for falling stars and or satellites passing overhead.

The stars, now obviously lights, we not in motion, they were not satellites and were not falling stars. They were as stationary as the stars in the background.

Mankind does not have craft that can fly at that altitude and not be moving.

"I can not refute what I saw today."
Arlington, OR
February 19, 2015
11:55 a.m.

I looked directly out my [car] passenger window and parallel with me was a small domed craft, what appeared to be hovering, but it also stayed parallel with me as I continued to drive. It was approximately 10-15 feet above the Columbia River water, well below the Interstate and train track. There were no boats in the water and this was an obvious aircraft with an obvious shape, above the water.

This entire event was only a matter of seconds, approximately 12, but felt slow motion at the same time as I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

"I was very concerned and still am."
Gibson, Illinois
November 16, 2014
3:30 p.m.

I was deer hunting in central Illinois.

I saw a small object come down about 4 feet in front of me. At first I glanced at it and thought it was a spider or some insect. I stared at this object for a few seconds and realized it was not an insect. This object was a round ball slightly smaller than a marble with a brownish iridescent color, like motor oil. This ball hovered in front of me at eye level, about 4 feet directly in front of me.

This troubles me as I can not think of a logical explanation for this.

"I know what I saw."
Glendale, Arizona
September 28, 2013
7:15 p.m.

I am a retired state police officer from the state of Arizona after nearly 35 years of service.

I happened to glance out my kitchen window that faces north, and I observed some bright orange lights traveling from the west to east.

I was in awe because they just keep   coming. I would estimate as many as 150 of these orange objects.

I thought "but I have video proof", and when I went to view the pictures, nothing was visible, just a black screen.

I know what I saw and unless someone has a better explanation, I feel that I was fortunate enough to see what many of us hope to see someday and will not.

Image: maxime raynal/Flickr

{ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us }

02-04-2017 om 23:39 geschreven door peter  

The Most Interesting Science News Articles of the Week

Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in science this week.

Making a comeback?

Is Australia's extinct thylacine — a striped, dog-like marsupial commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger — not extinct after all? Recent alleged thylacine sightings convinced scientists at James Cook University in Australia to investigate whether the species is still among the living.

The new investigation for the purported thylacines will survey sites on the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, Australia, based on accounts supplied by an employee of the Queensland Park Service, and by another observer. [Read more about the Tasmanian Tiger.]

Good for you

Vegetables are good for your health, but now there's a whole new way that one veggie could help your heart: Spinach leaves can be used as a scaffold for beating human heart cells, a new study finds.

Spinach leaves make a good scaffold because once the plant cells are washed away, a cellulose structure remains, the researchers said. [Read more about the lab grown heart.]

Pucker-less dinos

The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex didn't have lips if it looked anything like a newly discovered tyrannosaur species that scientists are calling the "frightful lizard."

The researchers studied the D. horneri skulls in minute detail, and then compared them with the skulls of crocodilians (a group that includes crocodiles and their semiaquatic reptile relatives, such as alligators and caimans), birds and mammals, as scientists have determined what skin type goes with each bone texture in these creatures. [Read more about the strange dino.]

Blind tadpoles

If you've ever wished you had eyes on the back of your head, meet the amphibian with eyes on its butt: Researchers have enabled tadpoles to see through eyes grafted onto their tails.

In experiments, the tadpoles could distinguish between colors and could follow rotating patterns, even though the eyes were not connected to the animals' brains the same way that natural eyes would be, the study said. [Read more about the odd eyes.]

Lonely colds are the worst

If you've got a cold, being around others is likely to blame, but loneliness can actually make your symptoms worse, a new study found.

In the study, the researchers looked at 213 healthy participants, collecting data on how lonely the participants felt, and the size of their social networks. They also looked at the "diversity" of the participants' networks, meaning the different types of relationships they had, for example, relationships with friends, a spouse, plus co-workers. [Read more about the effects of isolation.]

Dangerous science

It sounds like a fun science project, but making "slime" at home can hurt kids.

Homemade "slime" has been increasing in popularity. So how does the concoction burn the skin? [Read more about the dangerous activity.]

Muddy elephants

A rescue in Cambodia saved 11 Asian elephants from a muddy death after they fell into an old bomb crater.

The rescued elephants live in the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected forest in eastern Cambodia in the foothills of the Annamite Mountains. According to the WCS, there are more than 60 species in the protected area that are threatened or near-threatened, or that may be threatened but are too poorly understood for scientists to be sure. [Read more about the rescue.]

Heroin use

Heroin use is on the rise, particularly among white adults, a new study finds.

The findings suggest that an estimated 1.1 million Americans developed a heroin-use disorder over the study period, according to the study, published today (March 29) in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. [Read more about the statistics.]

Cats and people

Do cats like being around people, or are they only using humans to open doors and operate can openers?

The study originated at Oregon State University's Human-Animal Interaction (HAI) lab. Prior research had explored cats' preferences for food, visual stimuli and scents, evaluating the impact these could have on the animals' behavior. But this new study was the first to also investigate cats' interactions with humans as a behavior that could affect the felines' quality of life, the authors said. [Read more about the furry friends.]

Computerized brains

Elon Musk wants to hack the brain.

Musk has been teasing the possibility of a venture into computer-brain interfaces for months. He spoke at Recode's Code Conference in 2016 about the need to speed up human "output." Essentially, he said, humans are incredibly rapid at taking in information, but slow at outputting information to their digital devices. [Read more about the hacking the brain.]

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02-04-2017 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

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02-04-2017 om 22:55 geschreven door peter