In today’s edition of “As the Paranormal Turns Normal,” CNN and Vice – two reputable (send your negative comments to them) mainstream media sources – recently promoted Thailand’s Area 51 as a popular and fun tourist attraction. And there’s no need to storm it because its aliens and UFOs are openly discussed and often encountered. Should you start checking the flight schedule to Bangkok? Let’s find out.

“A hilltop in central Thailand is attracting UFO seekers who believe extraterrestrials hover above a huge Buddha statue, send telepathic communiques, walk across nearby sugarcane fields and use a crocodile-infested lake as a portal from their planets — Pluto and Loku.

It’s all happening three hours by road or rail north from Bangkok in Nakhon Sawan — which translates to “City of Heaven.””

If CNN’s description of Khao Kala hill, the alien-attracting base of the giant Buddha statue near Nakhon Sawan sounds familiar, it’s because that was the site of Thailand’s own Area 51 ‘storming’ in August 2019 … only this one involved the local police storming two meetings of the UFO Kao Kala group who discuss their sightings and encounters with each other and interested parties. While the authorities said they were just making sure the capacity of the room wasn’t exceeded and the visitors didn’t trample the park grounds. That seems reasonable … except there are a lot of people in the area who object to these UFO and alien believers, especially since they link their sightings to Buddhist meditations and philosophies.

“The aliens are described as slender, little, silvery humanoids. Illustrations depict them standing upright on two legs with two arms and a bulbous bald head with a pointy face topped with a single antenna. Huge, glossy, almond-shaped black eyes gaze above a thin nose and miniature mouth. Believers say silvery spaceships appear festooned with colorful lights or resemble the domed, circular, retro-UFOs seen in low-budget 1950s movies.”

If we can get along, why can’t they?

Since CNN Travel is promoting Khao Kala hill as a vacation spot for UFO enthusiasts, it deemphasized the controversies and instead described the aliens, who witnesses say are from Pluto and Loku, a planet orbiting another star in the Milky Way galaxy. Wassana Chuensamnaun, daughter of the first person to encounter the aliens, says both groups can take on physical forms but there’s no guarantee visitors will meet them. However, they may hear from them telepathically – Wassana claims that the Plutonians are looking for a few humans who will survive an upcoming nuclear holocaust and can contact the aliens to come help with the cleanup. (Why not help prevent it? Asking for a friend.)

This might be a good place for Buddhists to visit, since Wassana says the Plutonians think he was “the greatest human mind” and often talk to her about karma, reincarnation and other Buddhist interests. This connection to the religion may also save the UFO Kao Kala group from future raids and complaints by suspicious locals.

Welcome aliens!

The Vice article points out that there are weekend bus tours to the site and plenty of baggy t-shirts plastered with garish alien designs” and other souvenirs and alien-themed food items for sale there. Now THAT sounds more like the other Area 51, especially during the recent storming events. However, that site still doesn’t have alien and UFO encounters – real or telepathic – while Khao Kala hill claims to have them, plus a group that will help visitors attempt to contact the Plutonians and Lokucians (Lokunatics?) themselves.

Which one sounds like a trip worthy of your hard-earned vacation days? Whichever you choose, it’s just another of the growing signs that the paranormal is becoming the normal.

Photoreportage of CNN-travel: peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-10-2019 om 17:21 geschreven door peter  

Dulce Underground Base Secrets

Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, engaged in some aggressive radio monitoring of the nearby Sandia Labs, then.

Dulce Base is an alleged secret alien underground facility under Archuleta Mesa on the Colorado-New Mexico border near the town of Dulce, New Mexico.

Dear Viewers, Philip Schneider claimed to be a former US Government Geologist and Engineer, who was involved in producing the underground explosions. This video looks at wars between aliens and the military at an underground facility in Dulce. The underground base in New Mexico definitely has a connection to.

Once we go below the crust of the planet past five or six miles, there’s thousand of miles more, and we don’t know or understand exactly what could be down there, he pointed out.

There’ve long been rumors about a secret underground base at Dulce, NM, and that area has had a large number of strange lights seen on the mesas, Strieber noted, adding that the local Jicarilla tribe has a legend they were created inside the mesa.

A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

15-10-2019 om 13:46 geschreven door peter  

Reptillian Face Seen In Earths Orbit From Space Station, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Oct 15, 2019
Location of sighting: Earths Orbit from ISS
Source: NASA Live Cams

I was watching the live cams trying to catch sight of a UFO and noticed this reptilian face passing below the space station in earths orbit. 

I believe this was made by an alien living on Earth, who was dreaming or thinking deeply about a distant person. Some alien species minds are so powerful that they can do telekinesis, which is simply the ability to move an object in some manner without coming into physical contact with it. Whats easier to change the shape of than a cloud? In essence, it is the psychic ability to use the power of the mind to manipulate a specific target and conform it to your will. We have just witnessed an alien thinking about someone. We have seen its memory! 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

15-10-2019 om 13:27 geschreven door peter  

The deep ocean is a mysterious world. Now it appears that Norwegian divers (Ronald Raasch) found a strange bag filled with liquid in the Arctic Ocean.

A huge underwater bubble was discovered by a group of scientists who were studying the state of the ocean. Swimming to the ball, divers lit it with a flashlight, which allowed a closer look at its insides.

While it almost looks like there is an alien-like figure inside the underwater bubble, it turns out that it is a rare jelly-like structure intended to protect the offspring of squid inside.

Original full video:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJMHsi0HBUo

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

15-10-2019 om 13:14 geschreven door peter  

The discovery of exoplanet GJ 3512b – a planet “too big for its star” – adds fuel to the competition between 2 theoretical models of how planets form. It suggests many more Jupiter-like planets are waiting to be found, orbiting nearby sunlike stars.

Notice the spiral structure here? This isn’t a galaxy; it’s a computer simulation of a newly forming solar system. It’s part of the disk instability model of how planets form, a model that’s been less accepted by astronomers – until now. A new discovery suggests this model may be correct. If so, Jupiter-like worlds may be common around nearby sunlike stars.

Image via astronomical theorist Alan Boss/Carnegie Science.

Astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets so far, and the number is still going up. Many are gas giant worlds like Jupiter or Saturn in our solar system, but that’s in part selection bias; the more massive exoplanets orbiting closer to their stars are the easiest exoplanets to find. Now, a new study suggests that there may be a large population of still-unseen Jupiter-like exoplanets waiting to be found orbiting nearby sunlike stars. The new results, from theorist Alan Boss at Carnegie Institution for Science, relate in a profound way to astronomers’ understanding of how planets form. These results have been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Boss’s new work is supported by a September 27, 2019, paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, reporting on the discovery of a new exoplanet labeled GJ 3512b. This confirmed, massive, Jupiter-like planet orbits a very low-mass red dwarf star. And thus this planet – sometimes called the planet that shouldn’t exist – belies the previously most-popular theory of planetary formation, which had suggested it was impossible for such a massive planet to form around such a small star. From the September 27 paper:

Surveys have shown that super-Earth and Neptune-mass exoplanets are more frequent than gas giants around low-mass stars, as predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. We report the discovery of a giant planet around the very-low-mass star GJ 3512, as determined by optical and near-infrared radial-velocity observations. The planet has a minimum mass of 0.46 Jupiter masses, very high for such a small host star, and an eccentric 204-day orbit … We use simulations to demonstrate that the GJ 3512 planetary system challenges generally accepted formation theories …

It’s the challenge of the “impossible exoplanet” GJ 3512b to the most widely accepted planet-formation model that Boss is now addressing in his new paper.

The lunar calendars are here! Get your 2020 lunar calendars today. They make great gifts. Going fast!

The new study is supported by, and expands on, the discovery of GJ 3512b, a gas giant that “shouldn’t exist” because current planet formation theory says it is too big for its very small star.

Image via The Sun.

Astronomical theorists – people who’ve spent entire careers studying how planets form – have settled on two scenarios for the formation of gas giant planets. One scenario is called core accretion, and the other is called disk instability. In core accretion, planets slowly form through the collisions of increasingly larger material in the debris disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star, such as dust grains, pebbles, boulders, and eventually larger planetesimals. Meanwhile, the competing theory – disk instability – suggests a rapidly triggered process that occurs when the debris disk is massive and cool enough to form spiral arms.

According to the disk instability model of how planets form, clumps of self-gravitating gas and dust then form and contract and coalesce into a baby planet.

Core accretion has been the dominant theory for some time now, but planets like GJ 3512b represent a challenge to it. Boss has long been a proponent of the disk instability theory. With GJ 3512b now discovered and confirmed, Boss more than ever believes disk instability is the correct model for the formation of gas giant planets, and – if so – that there are many more Jupiter-like planets waiting to be found. According to Guillem Anglada-Escudé, a former Carnegie postdoc who worked with Boss on disk instability models, now at the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia:

It’s a great vindication for the disk instability method and a demonstration how one unusual discovery can swing the pendulum on our understanding of how planets form.

Alan Boss, a theorist and observational astronomer at Carnegie Institution for Science.

Image via Carnegie Institution for Science.

Here’s the big problem with core accretion as an explanation for planets like GJ 3512b. According to core accretion, the mass of a debris disk should be proportional to the mass of the young star around which it revolves. When you have a star that’s much smaller than our sun – hosting a planet that should be too big for it – then either the original debris disk was enormous in relation to this star, or core accretion just didn’t work in this planetary system.

In contrast, in the disk instability scenario, hot debris disks start out as very stable. As they gradually cool down, they form spiral arms around the star – yes, spiral arms similar to those in a galaxy – from which dense clumps eventually form planets. And as it turns out, the gas giants resulting from that process are at similar distances from their stars as Jupiter and Saturn are from the sun. As Boss surmised:

My new models show that disk instability can form dense clumps at distances similar to those of the solar system’s giant planets. The exoplanet census is still very much underway, and this work suggests that there are many more gas giants out there waiting to be counted.

If Boss is right, then disk instability for the creation of planets may be more common than thought, and there should be many more Jupiter-like worlds waiting to be discovered around nearby stars. Finding more planets like GJ 3512b would make that scenario even more compelling.

Artist’s concept of exoplanet GJ 504b, a gas giant 57 light-years away. Similar worlds may be common around nearby stars, according to a new study by theorist Alan Boss. 

Image via Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger/Sci-News.

• Bottom line: A new study from Carnegie Institution for Science suggests there are many more Jupiter-like gas giant planets orbiting nearby stars, waiting to be found. The study expands on the recent discovery of GJ 3512b, a massive planet that should be too large for its small star, and “shouldn’t even exist” according to the current most-popular theory of how planets form.
• Source: A giant exoplanet orbiting a very-low-mass star challenges planet formation models
• Via Carnegie Science

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

15-10-2019 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

What is mutilating cows in the Midwest? FBI probed thousands of reports of cattle killed with 'surgical precision' since the early 1970s - with the deaths blamed on satanic cults, the government and ALIENS

• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
• Since the early 1970s, thousands of cow murders and mutilations have reportedly taken place in the Midwest
• Reports include cattle having ears, lips, eyes, noses, anuses and genitalia removed with 'surgical precision' 
• Conflicting theories abound - some believe either aliens or the government are responsible for the mutilations, or 'mutes', which have also been reported across the US and abroad
• The FBI attempted to investigate the incidents but were largely unsuccessful due to 'lack of jurisdiction'

By ANNA HOPKINS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

On a bright, sunny morning in the summer of 1973, Ron and Paula Watson, two farmers in Springfield, Missouri, witnessed something that changed their lives forever.

It was an alien abduction, they say. But not of a human – of cattle.

They said they saw a 'green, cone-shaped craft' – next to which two 'silver little beings' were standing over a large black cow.

'I told Ron, 'My god, they got a cow! What are they doing to it?' Paula said. 'It had its eyes open and its tongue was like, hanging out a little bit. But it just laid there and it didn't move.'

She described in detail how she saw the aliens running their hands over the cow and then inspecting their long fingers before they 'floated' it into their large ship in the distance.

Their neighbors never believed their story, though one did admit to having one black cow left unaccounted for.  The Watsons' story sounds like something out of an early science-fiction film – but it became one of many stories of alien and UFO sightings used to explain the thousands of cow mutilations reported across the United States in the 1970s. 

Since the 1970s, bizarre murders and mutilations of cattle have been reported across the nation, primarily in the Midwest. In this photo (left) of a cow in Saguache County, Colorado in 1975, a female cow's utters have been removed with surgical precision. In the image on the right, a cow was found with its tongue removed in July 2013 on a farm in Missouri

News reports make up the bulk of the FBI's 32 page report on the subject, which is prefaced by a brief explanation that their investigation was hindered by a lack of jurisdiction in most cases

Within the depths of the FBI's database of unsolved mysteries lies the graphic tale of these cattle murders, which outraged and petrified farmers for decades, and is still continuing today.

Speculation surrounding who – or what – might be responsible for the killing and mutilation of thousands of cows has ranged from satanic worshipers, government agents, and even aliens.

The most curious aspect is not that the cattle have died, but the way in which they did. Since the early 1970s farmers have discovered their treasured (and expensive) animals dead with various organs excised – including eyes, noses, tongues, hearts, livers, anuses, and genitalia removed with laser precision.

Though many theories have been offered it's a phenomenon that no one – not even the FBI – have ever been able to solve. 

In 1974, newspapers started to catch wind of these bizarre mutilations, which first took place primarily in extremely rural farmlands in the Midwest. Instances were reported across the nation but were mostly scattered among South Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, and Nevada.

The news reports make up the bulk of the FBI's 32 page report on the subject, which is prefaced by a brief explanation that their investigation was hindered by a lack of jurisdiction in most cases.

The FBI told DailyMail.com that this was due to the fact that at the time there was no federal law declaring animal mutilation a federal crime, which didn't allow the department to continue investigating.

Many residents reported seeing helicopters circling the areas where cattle later turned up dead and sliced up with seemingly surgical accuracy. This prompted concerns that the mutilations, nicknamed 'mutes' by those familiar with the subject, were being propagated and covered up by the government.

in this image on the left, the cow's heart was excised with expert care - and was the third of three cattle mutilated on the same farm in Missouri beginning in 2011. Theories of who, or what, might be responsible have ranged from satanic cults, aliens, and the government. In the image on the right, ranchers found an animal with its sex organs and anus removed

Linda Moulton Howe is a former Miss Idaho turned investigative journalist and regional Emmy-winning filmmaker who has been a primary proponent of the 'alien argument'

This was around the same time of the height of alien paranoia in the United States – when UFOs, or balls or discs of floating light, were being spotted in similarly rural areas, often preceding or following the cow mutilations.

Many who have dedicated their lives to the subject believe, in fact, that aliens are responsible for the mutilations and that the government has been attempting to cover up their crimes (and existence) for years.

One such person is Linda Moulton Howe, the regional Emmy-winning filmmaker who the Watsons shared their story with for her documentary Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms. She has been one of the most steadfast supporters of the alien argument.

Her research conjures the images of what we picture as the stereotypical alien abduction – flying saucers beaming animals up into space with light.

At least two people even reported being abducted by aliens at that time – including one woman named Judy Doraty and her daughter Cindy.

In a 1990 symposium proceeding Howe wrote: '…I found in so many eyewitness accounts of orange glowing objects the size of football fields hovering above pasturelands where mutilated animals were later found. Or beams of light observed shining down from 'silent helicopters' that lighted pastures 'brighter than daylight' and the next day mutilated animals were found. And eyewitness reports of strange craft and/or non-human creatures involved with animals.

'There was Judy Doraty who in 1973 watched a brown and white calf rise in a pale beam of yellow light. Inside the craft, she saw tissue cut from the eye, tongue and testicles by two small grey-skinned creatures. They had four fingers, instead of five, and those long, thin fingers tapered into dark nails. Their eyes had vertical pupils like a cat or a crocodile's.

'Judy's daughter, Cindy, also described in a 1990 hypnosis session seeing a calf rising in a beam of yellow light.'

In a rare winter mutilation, this calf was found in Hooper, Nebraska in 1975 with its jaw completely cut out all the way  up to its right eye socket. Eyewitnesses often reported seeing beaming lights or suspicious helicopters near where mutilated cows were later found 

US Senator Floyd Haskell from Colorado pleaded with the FBI to become involved with the mutilations in August 1975 after receiving more than 130 cases in the state alone, and farmers had taken to arming themselves out of fear 

Supernatural explanations were the only ones that made any sense at the time – given that the technology of the era was not advanced enough to have performed what appeared to be the use of localized lasers.

The areas surrounding the excisions, often around the anus of the murdered animals, had a blackened and burned appearance to them – suggesting the use of a high-powered laser. Other researchers, however, proposed different conclusions.

Christopher O'Brien, an author and investigative journalist on the subject, said that in his 200 cases of dealing with cattle death, about 40 of those were done by 'something with intelligence'.

Christopher O'Brien, an author and who has investigated the subject for decades, said that in his 200 cases of dealing with cattle death, about 40 of those were done by 'something with intelligence'. He is pictured researching left in 1993 and right in 2012

This Hooper, Nebraska calf also had its anus cut in a 10-inch wide diameter and 18-inch deep. O'Brien told DailyMail.com that he didn't believe aliens were responsible - because 'who would fly thousands of light years to collect cow butts?'

He is more skeptical of the alien explanation – saying that Howe's research doesn't incorporate many of the scientific findings that have been made.

He told the DailyMail.com that when a cow decomposes, the vegetable matter contained in one of its four stomachs makes the animal bloat. As the moisture leaves the body it then starts to deflate – causing the exposed edges of the animal to stay hard and darkened.

'To someone who doesn't know what they're looking at – it looks like a burn,' he said.

O'Brien feels that the alien argument is one used to sensationalize the topic and are only looking at a small portion of the total data.

He can't deny, however, how disturbing the number of 'high strange' cases are that he's seen – the ones that involve otherworldly circumstances.

On one occasion which O'Brien calls his 'strangest case' – he was called to the scene of a mutilated calf in Del Norte, Colorado. 

'It was really freaky, it wouldn't rot,' he said. 'It was found in a complete pristine, five inch snow field without one drop of blood on the snow. All the blood had been taken from the animal. The heart and liver had been expertly excised and left in the body cavity.

'The chief medical veterinary pathologist said "it wasn't an animal that did this",' he continued.

In O'Brien's book, Stalking the Heard, he writes that the month-old calf was also missing its spine from the hips to the skull and the brain was gone. It's right front leg was also gone, and the vast majority of its ribs, both eyes, ears, intestines, reproductive tract, and lungs had been removed. Its rectum was also mutilated.

Two witnesses also reportedly saw a large beam of light near the house the previous evening before the calf was found.  

O'Brien's 'strangest case' was this month-old calf that was missing its spine from the hips to the skull and the brain was gone. It's right front leg was also gone, and the vast majority of its ribs, both eyes, ears, intestines, reproductive tract, and lungs had been removed. Its rectum was also mutilated and its heart and liver were excised but left inside the body cavity

He hits on another popular argument for the cattle deaths – though arguably the least plausible explanation. Many believe that the excisions were being done simply by other animals – scavengers such as vultures or coyotes.

O'Brien is quick to discredit this based off of his own experience.

'The first thing I look for is cut hair follicles,' he said. 'When birds or coyotes rip they rip between the lines of hair they don't cut the hair. If I find a 2-3 inch section of cut hair follicles I know that someone or something with a sharp implement did that. It wasn't done by birds or scavengers.'

These 'high strange' cases are less likely to be reported by ranchers, according to O'Brien.

'The freakier the case the less likely the rancher is to report it – they're so freaked out they won't even tell their family or neighbors. He doesn't want people in the community to think he's been singled out and victimized by some supernatural thing. That's why they're very reluctant to come forward.

'It's only when they see the hundreds and hundreds of helicopters being reported around these sites – mostly military helicopters – it's only when they see that that they feel like they've been targeted or victimized by their government and that pisses them off.'

Though the occurrences in the United States have considerably slowed down since they were at their height in the early 1970s, they certainly haven't stopped. O'Brien notes that they have seen a consistently high number of cases in South America, especially Brazil and Argentina.

O'Brien says that throughout his decades of studying mutilations, he's noticed that there's been a shift to South America, where he believes they've had more than 4,000 cases since 2002. A news report included in an FBI briefing stated that more than 1500 cattle in 22 states were killed and mutilated from 1973 to 1976 in the United States 

He claims that since 2002, there have been more than 4,000 cases of cattle mutilation in South America - and are still reporting anywhere from three to a dozen cases a week.

Back in the United States, just before the New Year in 2016, and again a few days afterwards, two cows were mutilated in nearby rural towns in Kansas.

In McPherson County, Carla and John Shearer discovered one of their pregnant cows dead with one eye removed and both her top and bottom eyelids and eyelashes excised.

'We lose animals, but not like this,' Shearer told the Kansas Agland. The couple believes whoever killed their $4,000 cow used a tranquilizer or stun gun to immobilize it before killing it.

'She died in motion – she was walking and she just went straight down,' Shearer added.

Carla and John Shearer on McPherson County, Kansas discovered one of their pregnant cows dead with one eye removed and both her top and bottom eyelids and eyelashes excised in January 2017 

The bull found in nearby Harvey County was found dead with its genitals removed – also cut with surgical precision.

It is O'Brien's opinion that the mass mutilations – of which there were thousands reported in the 1970s alone – are a part of a secretive government effort to research animal plagues such as mad cow or prion disease.

'We've seen this many, many times throughout history – where one case will happen and then within a week there will be a dozen. I think they're looking for something – that's the best explanation I can give. And I think they're looking for something within the food chain.

'Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is the most horrendous affliction that you could possibly imagine. It's 100% fatal – it produces large holes in the brain tissue and creates holes like Swiss cheese in the neuron system and the brain synapses start to misfire. You forget to breathe and your autonomic system starts to break down.

'That I think is the basic underpinnings of it – we're dealing with a group that is interested in keeping an eye on the food chain. The beef industry is the largest, most powerful industry that you never hear about. I think we're dealing with something that's being protected by some quasi-governmental group,' he said.

Though tempting to indulge in the possibility of space creatures invading the planet to study our animals, O'Brien finds this explanation a bit too impractical.

'It sounds like bad science fiction,' he said. 'Who would fly hundreds of light years to come and gather cow butts?' 

Read more:

• Cow found killed, mutilated in McPherson County | State Ag News | kansasagland.com

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-10-2019 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

Scientists working with the Curiosity rover have found salt-enriched rock at a place called Sutton Island on Mars. The rocks suggest ponds with briny water on Mars, billions of years ago.

The video above provides concise background on insights obtained so far via NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Gale crater on Mars since 2012. Curiosity has joined other Mars explorers in providing evidence that the red planet must once have been warmer and wetter, likely with liquid water on its surface. Could life have gotten a foothold there? Maybe, and that’s part of what has scientists so intrigued. This week (October 7, 2019), Curiosity scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, announced another new study about Mars water, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience.

A statement about the new work painted a vivid picture of Mars, billions of years ago:

Imagine ponds dotting the floor of Gale Crater, the 100-mile-wide (150-kilometer-wide) ancient basin that Curiosity is exploring. Streams might have laced the crater’s walls, running toward its base. Watch history in fast forward, and you’d see these waterways overflow then dry up, a cycle that probably repeated itself numerous times over millions of years.

That is the landscape described by Curiosity scientists …

The authors of the new paper interpret the rocks found by Curiosity – enriched in mineral salts – as evidence of shallow briny ponds that existed on Mars’ surface billions of years ago. The rocks provide evidence that these ponds on Mars went through episodes of overflow and drying. NASA commented:

The deposits serve as a watermark created by climate fluctuations as the Martian environment transitioned from a wetter one to the freezing desert it is today.

• The lunar calendars are here! Get your 2020 lunar calendars today. They make great gifts. Going fast!

View larger. | Possible mud cracks preserved in Martian rock. Earthly scientists call this Martian rock slab Old Soaker. It might have formed from the drying of a mud layer more than 3 billion years ago. The view spans about 4 feet (1.2 meters) left-to-right and combines three images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the arm of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. 

Read more about this image.

William Rapin of Caltech is the lead author of the new paper. He said:

We went to Gale Crater because it preserves this unique record of a changing Mars. Understanding when and how the planet’s climate started evolving is a piece of another puzzle: When and how long was Mars capable of supporting microbial life at the surface?

Rapin and his co-authors describe salts found across a 500-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) section of sedimentary rocks called Sutton Island, which Curiosity visited in 2017. The mud cracks at one location look so much like a dry lakebed that the scientists have nicknamed the location Old Soaker. NASA said:

… the team already knew the area had intermittent drier periods. But the Sutton Island salts suggest the water also concentrated into brine.

Typically, when a lake dries up entirely, it leaves piles of pure salt crystals behind. But the Sutton Island salts are different: For one thing, they’re mineral salts, not table salt. They’re also mixed with sediment, suggesting they crystallized in a wet environment – possibly just beneath evaporating shallow ponds filled with briny water.

Given that Earth and Mars were similar in their early days, Rapin speculated that Sutton Island might have resembled saline lakes on South America’s Altiplano [in west-central South America, the place where the Andes are widest]. Streams and rivers flowing from mountain ranges into this arid, high-altitude plateau lead to closed basins similar to Mars’ ancient Gale Crater. Lakes on the Altiplano are heavily influenced by climate in the same way as Gale.

Rapin added:

During drier periods, the Altiplano lakes become shallower, and some can dry out completely. The fact that they’re vegetation-free even makes them look a little like Mars.

View as panorama. | This self-portrait of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity combines 66 exposures taken by the rover’s MAHLI imaging system during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (February 3, 2013).

Curiosity’s science team is now seeing a cycle of wet-to-dry across long timescales on Mars. Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL said:

As we climb Mount Sharp, we see an overall trend from a wet landscape to a drier one. But that trend didn’t necessarily occur in a linear fashion. More likely, it was messy, including drier periods, like what we’re seeing at Sutton Island, followed by wetter periods…

Read more about this new study via NASA/JPL-Caltech

This animation illustrates the Sutton Island model of drying lakes on Mars. Sutton Island is a 500-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) section of sedimentary rocks on Mount Sharp – the central mountain in Gale Crater – where Curiosity has been exploring since 2012. The model suggests stream flow from Mount Sharp to the floor of Gale Crater. Salty ponds might have been left behind as the region dried out over time. The rocks enriched with mineral salts, found here by Curiosity, suggest that water vanished slowly, and they suggest a possible, persistent cycle of drying and overflow.

Image via ASU Knowledge Enterprise Development/Michael Northrop/NASA.

• Bottom line: Scientists working with the Curiosity rover have found salt-enriched rock at a place called Sutton Island on Mars. The rocks suggest ponds with briny water existed on Mars, billions of years ago.
• Source: An interval of high salinity in ancient Gale crater lake on Mars

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

14-10-2019 om 23:55 geschreven door peter  

Asteroid hurtling towards Earth as scientists fear it could collide within decades

{ https://7news.com.au/ }

14-10-2019 om 23:27 geschreven door peter  

Alien artifacts from ancient Egypt found in Jerusalem & kept secret by Rockefeller Museum

Alien enthusiasts have been left fascinated by reports of ancient Egyptian artifacts that were discovered in the home of famous Egyptologist Sir William Petrie. The artifacts are believed to be the ultimate proof of alien contact and are said to rewrite not only Ancient Egyptian history but the history of the entire planet. Like many other ‘controversial objects’ these mysterious artifacts were also kept a secret.

So, where do we start?

A YouTube video posted by Paranormal Crucible purports to show alleged ancient Egyptian artifacts and sculptures which were found at the Giza plateau. These items were reportedly taken away from Petrie’s home in Jerusalem by ‘officials belonging to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum’ after the discovery was made reports popular UFO portal UFO Sightings Daily.

The reports of the alleged artifacts captured the internet as you would expect.

According to Intellihub News, the alleged ‘otherworldly’ artifacts were discovered in a secret room in the home of Sir William Petrie.

According to UFO researchers, among the artifacts were some that contained ‘otherworldly’ symbols.

It is sad that the renowned Egyptologist had found ultimate proof of alien life before he died in 1942, but instead of sharing the discovery, for some reasons he decided to hide the artifacts away in his home.

Now, according to reports, these items have been taken by the Rockefeller Museum and like many other discoveries that contradict mainstream history, these too could be hidden from society.

Interestingly, the Inquisitr decided to dig further and was able to confirm that the prestigious Petri Museum of Egyptian Archaeology has in their possession a grandiose collection of ancient Egyptian and Sudanese items which include ancient Egyptian “firsts,” such as the “oldest linen” and “oldest dress” from ancient Egypt (5,000 B.C.).

The Petri Museum also displays some of the earliest examples of Metallurgy in Ancient Egypt.

However, as the Inquisitr indicates they were NOT able to confirm that the museum has displayed ‘Alien Artifacts’ discovered in Egypt, nor recovered from a secret room in Petrie’s residence in Jerusalem.

But this may be because these items contradict history and mainstream beliefs say ufo researchers who believe in the story. Like many other things that go against the beliefs of mainstream scholars, these artifacts too have been locked away from society.

As always, sensational stories require sensational evidence.

According to the editor of Intellihub News, the Ancient Egyptian artifacts found in Petrie’s residence in Jerusalem directly link the ancient Egyptian civilization to an advanced civilization, not from Earth.

 Among the artifacts –now in possession of the Rockefeller museum— are two alleged mummified bodies of approximately four feet in height. Some have even speculated that these mummified bodies could be the remains of ‘alien’ visitors.

According to reports from Intellihub News, the physical features of the alleged mummified bodies indicate their possible alien nature. According to the editor of the website, the anomalous skeletons have “stereotypical alien “elongated heads, large eye sockets, and long spiral arms.”

But as if the mummified bodies weren’t enough, it is said that among the artifacts were “highly advanced” mechanical devices and a golden spherical object with strange writings.

Intellihub News’ editor indicates that the high-tech devices have “an intricate mechanism which is surrounded by gold spiral tubing that has several small gold orbs and crosses attached to it.”
Is it possible that the alleged artifacts are part of ‘interstellar navigational devices’?

Intellihub News points towards Abydos and the temple built by Seti I, and his son Ramses II, where we can observe the so-called Flying machines of Abydos.

There, we are able to ‘spot’ what seem to be representations of modern day vehicles like Helicopters, submarines, and aircraft.

The only problem is that these inscriptions are believed to be thousands of years old.

Scientists believe these are not aircraft but the result of a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia.

However, there are more mysteries when it comes to Ancient Egypt and Aliens.

But is it just because we would love to find a connection between one of the greatest civilizations to inhabit Earth and alien visitors?

Well, it is a possibility, but there are more interesting details worth looking at.

An Ancient Egyptian text called the Tulli Papyrus mentions a fascinating story during the reign of Thutmose III when an alleged mass UFO sighting occurred over ancient Egypt.

The ancient text reads (translated):

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor.

 Its body was one rod in length and one rod in width. It had no voice. It came toward His Majesty’s house. Their heart became confused through it, and they fell upon their bellies. They [went] to the king, to report it. His Majesty [ordered that] the scrolls [located] in the House of Life be consulted. His Majesty meditated on all these events which were now going on.

After several days had passed, they became more numerous in the sky than ever. They shined in the sky more than the brightness of the sun, and extended to the limits of the four supports of heaven […] Powerful was the position of the Fiery Disks.

The army of the King looked on, with His Majesty in their midst. It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down from the sky: a marvel never before known since the foundation of the country. And His Majesty caused incense to be brought to appease the heart of Amun-Re, the god of the Two Lands. And it was [ordered] that the event [be recorded for] His Majesty in the Annals of the House of Life [to be remembered] for ever.”

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

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Ancient Lake on Mars Turned Salty for a Spell, Curiosity Rover Finds

By Mike Wall * Science & Astronomy 

Gale Crater's water apparently didn't stay drinkable forever.

This September 2016 self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle in the scenic Murray Buttes area on lower Mount Sharp. 

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover may have just captured a snapshot of the Red Planet's long-ago Great Drying.

Curiosity has detected relatively high levels of sulfate salts in the rocks of Gale Crater, a new study reports. Gale hosted a lake-and-stream system in the ancient past, and the newfound salts were likely concentrated by evaporation during a period of low water levels, researchers said.

This period may have been part of a normal cyclical fluctuation, a regular climatic change perhaps driven by recurring shifts in Mars' axial tilt or orbital parameters. "Alternatively, a drier Gale lake might be a sign of long-term, secular global drying of Mars, posited based on orbital observations," the scientists wrote in the new study, which was published online today (Oct. 7) in the journal Nature Geoscience. 

• Related: Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)

A planet transformed

Mars was once a relatively warm and wet world, complete with rivers and lakes and, most researchers believe, an ocean covering a large swath of the planet's northern hemisphere.

But things began to change around 4.2 billion years ago. Mars lost its global magnetic field, which had protected the planet's atmosphere from the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the sun. 

As a result, Mars lost the vast majority of its air to space by about 3.7 billion years ago, causing the planet to become much colder and drier. Today, Mars' air is just 1% as dense as Earth's atmosphere at sea level. (Luckily for us, Earth still has its global magnetic field.)

(Image credit: ASU Knowledge Enterprise Development (KED), Michael Northrop)

The Curiosity rover is helping scientists better understand the Red Planet's history, including its dramatic transformation. 

The car-size rover landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked primarily with assessing the area's past habitability. Curiosity quickly found lots of evidence of long-ago liquid water. Indeed, the mission team has determined that Gale's floor is an ancient lake bed, and that the area could have supported Earth-like life for long stretches — perhaps hundreds of millions of years at a time — in the ancient past.

In September 2014, Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp, the bizarre, 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain that rises from Gale's center. The rover has been climbing the mountain's foothills ever since, examining younger and younger sediments as it goes. And that brings us to the new study.

• Related: Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover (Latest Images)

A salty crater lake

The researchers analyzed measurements Curiosity made while exploring the upper Murray Formation, an assemblage of exposed sedimentary rock near Mount Sharp's base thought to be 3.3 billion to 3.7 billion years old.

They found that these rocks are strongly enriched in sulfate salts — much more so than the deposits Curiosity had previously examined on the crater floor. (Those older rocks indicated an aqueous environment with water so fresh it was probably drinkable, mission team members have said.)

"Bulk enrichments" of calcium sulfate are widespread through about 500 feet (150 m) of the Murray Formation, the new study reports, while nuggets of high magnesium sulfate concentration speckle a thinner section of rock layers.

These salts were probably deposited along the margins of the Gale Crater basin, where the water was shallow. The deposits may trace back to multiple ponds on the fringes of the central lake, the researchers said.

Still, these salty ponds may have been habitable, the researchers added, noting that hypersaline lakes here on Earth teem with life. Indeed, the nature of the detected salts is intriguing from an astrobiological point of view.

"Sulfur is a basic element for life," study lead author William Rapin, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com. "And we show that there was sulfate available in the water."

This animation shows a proposed route for NASA's Curiosity rover, which is climbing lower Mount Sharp on Mars. The annotated version of the map labels different regions that scientists working with the rover would like to explore in coming years.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/University

of Arizona/JHUAPL/MSSS/USGS Astrogeology Science Center. 

Full image and caption ›

Solving the mystery

It's possible that the Gale Crater lake system was drying out for good around the time these salty deposits were laid down, Rapin said.

"Maybe habitable environments had started to become niche," he said. "Maybe large regions of Mars were already too arid."

But there's also that other possibility — that Mars was in a temporary dry spell but would become wet again when its axis of rotation, or its orbital eccentricity, changed.

Curiosity's work could soon help solve this mystery. Mars orbiters have detected sulfate salts higher up on Mount Sharp. Curiosity is making its way toward those deposits and should start encountering them in the next year or two, if all goes according to plan, Rapin said. (The newfound salt deposits were not spotted by Mars orbiters.)

What the rover finds there, and along the way, should help researchers piece together the evolution of the Gale Crater lake system, he added.

"We know we're going to have an answer — maybe a big answer — about what happened next, including with the sulfate deposits, in the years to come," Rapin said.

• The Search for Life on Mars (a Photo Timeline)
• 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars
• The Search for Water on Mars (Photos)

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

14-10-2019 om 20:13 geschreven door peter  

The Mystery Behind What Caused the Tunguska Explosion May Have Been Solved

{ https://www.unknowncountry.com/ }

14-10-2019 om 18:35 geschreven door peter  

(CNSA/CLEP)

VICTOR TANGERMANN, FUTURISM

China's Yutu-2 lunar lander just sent back new images of a strange substance it found near a small crater on the far side of the Moon.

Last month, the team behind the lunar rover claimed it had found a "colored mysterious substance" as described in the rover's diary, which claimed that the material's "shape and color is significantly different from the surrounding lunar soil."

A new post released by the team over the weekend shows new images of the strange substance — though it's unfortunately located in the middle of a crater, making it difficult to reach.

(CNSA/CLEP)

The images were taken by the rover's obstacle-avoidance camera, which makes sure the rover doesn't bump into anything. The red and green shapes in the image above are most likely artifacts of the rover's Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer, Space.com reports.

(CNSA/CLEP)

So what is it? The best guess we have so far is that it's a piece of lunar glass that formed during a meteor impact.

It's likely that the Chinese researchers will release more images and spectrometer readings of the mysterious substance in the future.

It will have to — at the very least — wait for the Sun to rise again to continue its investigation. And that's roughly a week from now.

• This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

14-10-2019 om 18:24 geschreven door peter  

Aliens exist but are 'hiding in underground seas and imprisoned on super-Earths'

We've been searching for alien civilisations for over 30 years – why haven’t we found them?

By Michael Moran - Audience Writer

We haven't seen scenes like this because space travel is harder than it looks 

(Image: Getty)

Where is everybody? The question, famously asked by pioneering nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, is one that many people have wondered about at one point or another.

Our planet is teeming with life. Even in the most inhospitable environments; deep underground, in the depths of freezing Antarctic lakes, life will always find a way.

SETI started actively searching for aliens in 1984

(Image: Getty)

Unless Copernicus was wrong, the Earth is not special. There are planets just like ours scattered throughout the Universe.

Even if breaking the light speed barrier is completely impossible, and there isn’t an interstellar empire thriving somewhere in our galaxy, we should be able to perceive the signs of alien megastructures and listen in on extraterrestrial communications.

Why not?

 Some theorists have suggested that there is a "Great Filter" that most habitable planets don’t make it through: either a purely biological one like the transition from single-celled to multicellular life, or a more technical one, like the difficulty of sustaining an industrial civilisation without succumbing to runaway climate change.

But maybe the answer to that question is simpler than that. Maybe we’re just looking in the wrong places.

We have already detected a number of ocean worlds, where the surface is either mostly or completely covered with water.

NASA’s Alan Stern thinks that water worlds would provide the kind of stable environment that intelligent life would thrive in: shielded from radiation and all but the biggest asteroid impacts, undersea life could evolve in peace.

"Impacts and solar flares, and nearby supernovae, and what orbit you're in, and whether you have a magnetosphere, and whether there's a poisonous atmosphere — none of those things matter," he told Space.com.

But that liquid "suit of armour" is also a prison. "If they have technology, and let's say they're broadcasting, or they have city lights or whatever — we can't see it in any part of the spectrum, except maybe very-low-frequency [radio]," he said.

Stern, who works on NASA’s long-range New Horizons space probe, adds that intelligent sea creatures would naturally have less interest in the stars than us, and their spacecraft – filled as they would be with water – would be very heavy and hard to launch.

It would be even harder to get off the ground if you lived on a Super-Earth.

Super-Earths – rocky planets with a mass between two and ten times that of Earth – appear to be very common in the Universe.

Since first being discovered in 1992, many more have been identified. Of the 1,000 or so exoplanets so far mapped, over 300 of them are Super-Earths.

Many of these are in what scientists consider to be the "Goldilocks Zone" of their parent star – not too hot and not too cold for liquid water: and therefore candidates for life.

Not only habitable, they could be "super-habitable" with denser atmospheres providing better shielding against cosmic menaces such as asteroids and solar flares.

"On more-massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive," says astronomer Michael Hippke. "Such civilisations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission or a Hubble Space Telescope.”

He says that humans are very lucky to live on a comparatively "lightweight" planet with a gravitational pull that’s weak enough to escape.

"Other civilisations, if they exist,” he says “might not be as lucky."

To launch a 1 tonne satellite from Kepler-20b (a Super-Earth about 1.87 times Earth's radius and 9.7 times its mass), a conventional-fuel rocket would need to be about 3 times the size of the Saturn V that carried Neil Armstrong and his crew to the Moon – a payload of around 45 tonnes.

If our imaginary Super-Earth dwellers actually wanted to stage their own equivalent of the Apollo programme, they’d need a rocket in the region of 400,000 metric tons, or roughly the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

In a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Dr Hippke drily notes that a pyramid-sized rocket "is probably a realistic limit for chemical rockets regarding cost constraints."

Interstellar space travel may be impossible

(Image: Getty)

There are other explanations for our cosmic isolation. Perhaps we are in a simulated universe where no other intelligent species have been created. Maybe we being quarantined by super-intelligent aliens who don’t think we’re ready for contact yet.

Until we actually find extraterrestrial life we won’t know.

But as author and satellite communications pioneer Arthur C Clarke pointed out: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

14-10-2019 om 18:11 geschreven door peter  

It's Official: The Strange, Aurora-Like STEVE Is a Completely Unique Celestial Phenomenon

By Chelsea Gohd 

This composite image shows STEVE alongside the Milky Way over Childs Lake, Manitoba, Canada. 

(Image: © Krista Trinder/NASA)

As the northern lights danced and glowed in the night sky this past Labor Day weekend, skywatchers in places like Alaska and Canada may have spotted a rose-tinted streak amidst the dazzling display. But this pink-ish ribbon isn't an aurora — it's STEVE!

STEVE (the Strong Thermal Emissions Velocity Enhancement) is a spectacular and colorful celestial phenomenon that was first spotted 2016. Scientists have studied the particles associated with STEVE for decades, but only recently have they witnessed the phenomenon in the sky. This past summer, a research team led by University of Calgary researcher D.M. Gillies confirmed that, despite its colorful appearance, STEVE isn't a type of aurora but something entirely unique. 

In May, researchers confirmed that STEVE is not an aurora. But this new research expands our understanding of the strange phenomenon even further.

Related: Meet 'STEVE,' the Mystery Scientists Are Beginning to Unravel

"The big thing is, we can clearly say now it's [a] not regular aurora," study co-author Don Hampton, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a statement. "It's a new phenomenon; that's pretty exciting."

One characteristic that distinguishes STEVE is its mauve hues, which are different from the typically green, purple, blue and yellow beams of auroras. Additionally, STEVE is visible from latitudes much farther south than auroras usually are. 

The researchers used a spectrograph, which they built at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, to study the light coming from STEVE which they observed on April 10, 2018 at Lucky Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. They analyzed its emissions to determine its wavelengths, patterns and other properties. A spectrum acts as an identifier, so by determining STEVE's spectrum, the team hopes to further understand and categorize the phenomenon. 

"We need to understand what the spectrum looks like and therefore understand the physics behind it," Hampton said in the statement.

Alberta Aurora Chasers captured STEVE in April in British Columbia, Canada. STEVE is the narrow ribbon of white-purple hues overhead, and the vibrant green light on the right is an aurora located further north.

Ryan Sault

Green optical structures, often described as "picket fence" structures because of their distinctive shape, can be seen jutting through STEVE at lower altitudes, and in studying the wavelengths of the emissions from STEVE and these green structures, the team found that the green emissions have a much different spectrum from STEVE. 

The team determined that the green columns which appear alongside STEVE are caused by particle precipitation, which occurs when energetic particles like electrons, protons, neutrons and ions are accelerated through the atmosphere. This makes these green streaks a type of aurora very similar to a typical auroral structure. However, because they have a very different spectrum, STEVE is in a category of its own, the researchers concluded.

The team found that STEVE isn't caused by particle collisions in the atmosphere but rather some sort of warm atmospheric emission. 

"When we looked at the spectrum of STEVE, it had none of those distinct wavelengths … Instead, it's a very broad band of light," Hampton said in the statement. "When you turn your electric stove on, those coils get red hot, right? If you look at it with a spectrograph, you would see broadband emissions … So this is like very, very warm atmosphere emissions of some sort."

Scientists will continue to study STEVE, what exactly it is and what causes it. Understanding STEVE is more than just an important scientific pursuit, however. Phenomena in the atmosphere can disrupt radio communications between spacecraft and humans back on Earth, so understanding this strange, pink phenomenon could have immediate, practical applications. 

This research was published in a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.  

• An Aurora Called 'Steve'? Strange Sky Phenomenon Investigated
• Amazing Auroras: Photos of Earth's Northern Lights
• That Weird, Aurora-Like Phenomenon Called STEVE Finally Has an Explanation

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

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Paul M. Sutter Contributor Science

Astrophysicist | Agent to the Stars

So in the middle of the 20th century, after we first invented radio telescopes, we found all sorts of surprises. It turns out that the universe is pretty loud, full of all kinds of interesting radio sources. Some of them were familiar, and some of them were quite odd. As you can imagine, it was a pretty exciting time to be a radio astronomer.

Out in the middle of the English countryside, two particularly excited people were Antony Hewish and his grad student Jocelyn Bell Burnell. They were hunting for quasars, relatively new characters on the astronomical scene, which were at the very at the time poorly understood. All we knew then is that they were very loud radio sources and very far away.

In their hunt for quasars they instead found something absolutely remarkable and unprecedented in the history of astronomy: they found a single source in the sky that flashed. Perfectly. Every 1.33 seconds. This source, whatever it was, pulsed a burst of radio energy. And then turned off. And then did it again, exactly 1.33 seconds later

It was astounding. How could something in nature produce something so regular and periodic?

Hewish and Burnell didn't really believe that they had found evidence for an extraterrestrial alien civilization, but you never know, right? As an "inside joke" within the community they dubbed this source LGM-1. That stands for Little Green Men (and the first such one to be encountered).

Whatever it was, there was a lot of excitement around it. But once another similar source was discovered on the opposite side of the sky, and then another, and then another, and then another, astronomers sadly put away the LGM moniker. They got a new name: pulsars, short for pulsating quasar. It turns out that pulsars have absolutely nothing to do with quasars, but you can't fault astronomers in the 1960s for not really knowing what was going on. Especially after coming off the high of potentially finding alien life.

The theoretically minded folks in the community quickly devised a solution to explain their behavior. They had known for some time of a hypothetical object called a neutron star, formed when a massive star dies and compresses its core down to crushing extremes. At the time they were just hypothetical objects, but the pulsar provided a way to test if they were real.

Because of their extreme gravity coupled with extreme electric and magnetic fields, these neutron stars could rotate up to incredible speeds and shoot out jets of radiation from their poles. These jets sweep around like a lighthouse, with the Earth sometimes getting caught in the blast. From our perspective we won't see the beam all the time, just a brief flash as the it washes over us.

A pulsar.

One of the most extreme, exotic objects in the known universe. Second only to - and perhaps exceeding - the strangeness of black holes themselves. The odd, repeating signal Burnell and Hewitt found in the 1960s wasn't an alien, but it just might be more fascinating after all.

• Follow me on Twitter. 
• Check out my website.

{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

14-10-2019 om 16:21 geschreven door peter  

Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

The Labeled Release experiment on the Viking mission reported positive results, although most have dismissed them as inorganic chemical reactions

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