Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
In his 1942 short story “Runaround,” legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov clearly outlined his “Three Laws of Robotics,” which could, at least in fictional worlds, fundamentally underpin autonomous robots’ behavior. The last of the three laws states, in part, that, “A robot must protect its own existence…” This may turn out to be quite necessary for the development of real-life autonomous robots as well, especially when it comes to their ability to feel. At least that’s the argument being made in a recently published white paper outlining the significance of self-preservation in robots.
The paper, which comes via Futurism, was recently published in the journal Nature Machine Inteligence by Antonio Damasio and Kingson Man of the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI); Damasio is one of the institute’s directors, and Man is one of its research scientists. In the paper, available in full here for free, Damasio and Man argue that in order to develop “feeling machines,” they must be programmed with the task of maintaining homeostasis. So if engineers want to build machines that feel and empathize with what people feel, the machines are going to have to care about their own health.
Kingson Man@therealkingson
we wrote a thing. hope you like it.
How do we design machines with something akin to feeling? (1/n)
The paper is about seven pages long and is rich with the logical sequence of steps that comes to the conclusion that machines need to worry about their own state of “mind” and “body” in order to interact effectively with we meat bags (a term borrowed from the greatest fictional robot of all time). In essence, Damasio and Man are saying that just as biological life needs to be concerned with its own well-being to have meaningful interactions with its environment, so too will genuinely autonomous robots.
That is to say, caring about one’s own self—one’s own temperature, level of hunger, amount of sleep, etc.—is a critical part of what gives life any meaning at all. The researchers say as much, in regards to robots, when they note, “This elementary concern would infuse meaning into [a machine’s] particular information processing” capabilities.
This intuitively makes sense because maintaining homeostasis is a significant impetus for—perhaps the only impetus for—biological organisms having any goals whatsoever. If you’re cold, your goal is to find some way to get warm; if you’re hungry, your goal is to find food; if you’re tired, your goal is to find somewhere to sleep; if you’re bored, your goal is to use any one of the bazillion streaming services currently available until you’re hungry or sleepy, at which point you circle back to goal two or three. (We’re kidding to some extent with that last one, of course, but you get the point.)
The paper describes the concept succinctly when it notes that “machines capable of implementing a process resembling homeostasis might… acquire a source of motivation and a new means to evaluate behaviour, akin to that of feelings in living organisms.”
Antonio Damasio@damasiousc
The natural force of homeostasis, present in the simplest organisms, carried over into organisms with nervous systems, was expressed as feelings, and motivated creative reason. It has remained pervasive in cultures. #TheStrangeOrderofThings
In terms of how robots could develop their own intuitive sense of homeostasis, Damasio and Man write that sensors, in a very real sense just like our own biological ones (eyeballs, ears, taste buds, etc.), are the answer to that problem. They specifically discuss human skin as an example of a biological sensor, or more specifically, an amalgam of biological sensors, that could be duplicated in robotic builds by utilizing “soft robotic” materials. They note that “a soft electronic ‘skin'” made with an “elastomer base with droplets of liquid metal that, on rupture, cause changes in electrical conductivity across the damaged surface,” have already been developed by researchers and could be deployed on robots as one way of monitoring homeostasis.
But even though a robot covered in “skin” that senses tears or leaks may be able to develop a sense of homeostasis, and thusly some kind of “feeling,” it seems that this evolution would inevitably lead to what can only be described as vulnerability. This is exactly what Damasio and Man are aiming for, however, and it seems they believe that vulnerability necessarily goes hand-in-hand with sensing homeostasis. This would mean vulnerability, for both robots and people, necessarily goes hand-in-hand with having feelings. “Rather than up-armouring or adding raw processing power to achieve resilience,” the authors write, “we begin the design of these [feeling] robots by, paradoxically, introducing vulnerability.”
A video demonstrating a soft robotic sensor skin developed by researchers at UC San Diego.
“Homeostatic robots might reap behavioural benefits by acting as if they have feeling,” Damasio and Man write in their conclusion, adding that “Even if they would never achieve full-blown inner experience in the human sense, their properly motivated behaviour would result in expanded intelligence and better-behaved autonomy.” And even if robots never understand why something feels good, or whether they experience a feeling of “goodness” at all, creating better-behaved autonomous robots seems like a worthwhile goal: It could potentially work to help preserve the homeostasis of our entire species, after all.
What do you think of Damasio and Man’s paper on “feeling machines”? Do you think robots need to have a sense of homeostasis in order to develop empathy, or do they just need to do what they’re told? Give us your thoughts in the comments if that action will help you maintain homeostasis!
Photo from UFO sighting in Riverside, California, November 23, 1951. Photograph via National Archives, Records of Headquarters U.S. Air Force (Air Staff).
The US Air Force ended the two-decade-plus-long UFO investigation known as Project Blue Book 50 years ago this week, deciding that, among other things, that no sighting or evidence had managed to “represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.”
If you believe that, you may not be the target audience for the National Archives’ new exhibit, which will place some of Project Blue Book’s documents on display in the Archives’ East Rotunda Gallery.
This chart shows the correlation between national media coverage of several highly publicized sightings and daily UFO sightings reported between June and September 1952. Image via National Archives, Records of Headquarters US Air Force (Air Staff).
Project Blue Book has maintained a spot in some parts of the American psyche, including a History Channel series named for it, and another, Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, executive produced by former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge. DeLonge has emerged as a somewhat unexpected expert on ufology. The Air Force still considers 701 of the sightings reported to it during the investigation as “unidentified.”
A majority of UFO sightings reported to Project Blue Book could be explained. Most, like the incident depicted in this comic, were caused by misidentification of known objects. As this comic book sensationalizing the sightings over Washington, DC, in 1952 shows, not all Americans were convinced by the government’s conclusions. Image via National Archives, Records of Headquarters US Air Force (Air Staff).
The documents will be on display from December 5, 2019, through January 8, 2020. The National Archives Museum, 701 Constitution Avenue, NW.
Correction:This post originally incorrectly stated DeLonge was an executive producer on Project Blue Book.
The ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs for their Pharaohs, or kings. A Pharaoh would begin planning his tomb, or "house of eternity," as soon as he took the throne. This was because the Egyptian pyramids held many items in preparation for the afterlife. It was believed that the Pharaohs would need many of his belongings, as well as slaves, for the afterlife.
There are more than 100 Egyptian pyramids, each built for a different person. Most pyramids were actually pyramid complexes including a main pyramid surrounded by a courtyard, a nearby mortuary temple, and a small cult pyramid that was to house the king's soul. Some pyramids had nearby small pyramids or other kinds of tombs set aside for family members.
In ancient Egypt, it was believed that death began a journey that brought the person to the next world of the afterlife. The king was mummified and the mummy kept inside the pyramid both for protection and for easier travel to the afterlife. His belongings were kept with him in the pyramid so that he might have access to them in the afterlife.
There was a specific reason for the shapes of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids. They believed that the Pharaoh ascended to heaven on the rays of the sun. The sun's rays, which a Pharaoh would use to climb to the afterlife, were symbolized by the shape of the pyramid. The pyramid shape could also have been a monument to Ra, the Sun God, who was believed to have created all life.
The location of the pyramids were also important, since the pyramids needed to be located under the stars which were considered the most important. Most pyramids were built on the west bank of the Nile because the sun was thought to "die" in the west each night.
The first of the Egyptian pyramids of ancient Egypt was built in 2611 B.C. for Pharaoh Djoser. This pyramid did not have smooth sides, but instead was comprised of six step-like levels. The "Bent Pyramid," the first pyramid without steps, was built approximately thirty years later. The angle of its sides were changed about halfway through construction, making the sides appear bent. This pyramid was not very tall.
About fifty years later, the largest of the pyramids at Giza was built. This pyramid was a true feat of engineering, built of about two million stone blocks, with each block weighing as much as fifteen tons. It took over 80 years to build all three pyramids located at Giza.
Huge Asteroid Capable of 'Continental-Scale Devastation' on Track to Zoom Past Earth
Huge Asteroid Capable of 'Continental-Scale Devastation' on Track to Zoom Past Earth
According to the Center for NEO Studies, as of September 2019 there are over 20,600 near-Earth objects, of which roughly 922 near-Earth asteroids have been listed on the risk table, with about 95 per cent far too small to qualify as a potentially hazardous object.
A giant asteroid measuring up to 2,034 feet in diameter is speeding past Earth today, 20 November, packing a speed of around 17,800 miles per hour.
The space rock—dubbed 481394 (2006 SF6)—was on schedule to make its close approach at 7:01 p.m. EDT, within around 2.7 million miles of our planet, or about 11 times the Earth-Moon distance, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS.)
The zooming space rock was first discovered on 17 September 2006 by the Catalina Sky Survey.
The astronomical project, managed by scientists at the Steward Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, was designed to look for asteroids and comets.
The space rock's last close approach to Earth took place in February this year, while it will next zoom past us in November 2020.
Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was quick to allay any fears regarding the likelihood of the cosmic visitor’s impact with our planet.
"Regarding the future, over the next 200 years this asteroid will not approach closer than it will this month," Chodas was quoted by Newsweek as saying.
Asteroid 481394 (2006 SF6) is considered to be a near-Earth object (NEO), as its path around the sun takes it within 121 million miles of the star and 30 million miles of our planet's orbit, and has no chance of striking the Earth in the next two centuries or so.
“A near-Earth asteroid is considered “potentially hazardous” if its orbit approaches the Earth's orbit to within approximately 4.6 million miles, or about 19 lunar distances, and its size is greater than roughly 140 meters,” added Chodas.
If an asteroid the size of 2006 SF6 were ever to impact the Earth the result would be “continental-scale devastation,” claims the scientist, while it would stop short of reaching a “global catastrophe/mass extinction level.”
Observations have determined about roughly 25,000 NEOs larger than 460 feet in diameter, with Chodas noting that about 35 per cent of the total figure are currently known to scientists.
NASA keeps a watchful eye on speedy space rocks to evaluate their potential for impact, relying on observations provided by the Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS).
CNEOS computes high-precision orbits for Near-Earth Objects in support of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, using Sentry - a highly automated impact prediction system.
Despite Ho 229’s outstanding technical features, one of them allegedly making the plane a true pioneer in its class, the flying machine never made it off the ground. However, it arguably served as an inspiration for American firm Northrop Grumman.
Although stealth fighters, like for instance the B-2 Spirit or its soon-to-be-manufactured successor B-21 Raider, are commonly perceived as a 21st century US-led breakthrough, it appears the very first jet-powered aircraft was actually devised by two German brothers in Nazi Germany, National Interest reported.
Walter and Reimar Hortens’ idea was to marry the new turbojet engine Germany started manufacturing in the 1940s with a flying wing design - a tail-less plane that is sufficiently aerodynamically clean not to generate any drag whatsoever.
The design came from their practical know-how, as Walter, an ace fighter pilot in the German Luftwaffe, and Reimar, an airplane designer lacking formal aeronautical qualifications, had constructed a number of tail-less manned gliders in their youth.
The Hortens were given a green light to start their venture in August 1943, around the time American Northrop XB-35 flying wing bomber failed to enjoy mass production due to certain design setbacks, as the lack of a tail rendered the vehicle prone to uncontrolled stalls and swings.
Horten Ho 229 being unloaded after making it into the hands of the US military.
The Horten brothers’ first unpowered glider known as the H.IX V1 was assembled soon afterwards, featuring thin long wings made of plywood so as to save weight, the bell-like shape of which ruled out yawing.
The planes were designated as Ho 229s or Go 229s and were to be used as military gliders. However, due to their capacity for a breakneck speed of about 975 kilometres per hour, they were repurposed to serve as fighters with two heavy Mark 103 thirty-millimetre cannons. The speed was truly exceptional, as it could have exceeded the maximum speed of the best Allied fighters of the time by at least 33 percent.
War-Time Projects Go Awry The plan, however, was never fulfilled, because when American troops from the VIII Corps rolled into the factory at Friedrichroda, Germany in April 1945, they found just the cockpit parts of the manta-like jet’s prototypes in various stages of construction.
The most complete one, the V3 prototype, was shipped to the United States for study along with the wings, and can today be seen at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the United States Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia.
The last surviving Horten Ho 229 airframe, pictured here at the Smithsonian museum's storage facility.
Capable of Breaking Radar Waves?
Although it was never explicitly intended to be a stealth jet, the Hortens reportedly viewed the Ho-229’s design as one that lends itself to a diminished radar cross-section, ideal for a stealth vehicle. Reimar Horten, who spent the post-war years in Argentina, wrote an article in 1950 for the Revista Nacional de Aeronautica arguing that wooden aircraft would absorb radar waves.
Thirty years later, as the theory behind stealth aircraft became more widely known, Reimar wrote that he had actually intended to make the Horten flying wing into a stealth plane, claiming that he had even constructed the airframe using a special radar absorbent mixture of carbon, sawdust and wood glue with his bosses being unaware of it.
One of two tests conducted to determine if carbon dust had indeed been used, proved his claim, while the other didn’t, adding to the overall skepticism of whether stealth was the German brothers’ design goal.
Alleged Footage of Mysterious Aircraft at US Top Secret Facility Near Area 51 Emerges Online
Alleged Footage of Mysterious Aircraft at US Top Secret Facility Near Area 51 Emerges Online
The Tonopah Test Range is a restricted military polygon located in the vicinity of the eponymous town in the state of Nevada. It is currently used for nuclear weapons stockpile reliability testing, research and development of fusing and firing systems, as well as testing nuclear weapon delivery systems.
A YouTube blogger nicknamed TheArea51Rider has uploaded a video in which he claims that he filmed an unidentified aircraft at a restricted test range southeast of Tonopah, Nevada.
In the video, the authenticity of which cannot be confirmed, the blogger recorded himself ostensibly nearby the military site, located in the vicinity of the notorious and highly-classified Area 51. The YouTuber showed images of an open hangar with what appeared to be an aircraft inside. However, he failed to identify the vehicle, pondering whether it is some sort of new secretive military plane.
The Tonopah military site is a hotspot for various conspiracy theories surrounding the use of experimental and classified aircraft.
However, it is less popular among conspiracy theorists than the nearby Area 51 that attracts UFO enthusiasts who are convinced that the government is hiding the existence of extraterrestrial technology.
Beelden opgedoken van mysterieus vliegtuig op topgeheime basis bij Area 51. Wat spoken ze hier uit?
De Tonopah Test Range is een militaire installatie in de Amerikaanse staat Nevada. Er wordt onder andere onderzoek gedaan naar kernwapens.
Een YouTuber genaamd TheArea51Rider heeft een video geplaatst waarin volgens hem ten zuidoosten van Tonopah een onbekend object is te zien, schrijft persbureau Sputnik.
De blogger filmde zichzelf in de buurt van de militaire installatie, die nabij Area 51 gelegen is.
Open hangar
De YouTuber toonde beelden van een open hangar met daarin een vliegtuig.
Het is niet duidelijk om wat voor soort vliegtuig het gaat. Mogelijk is het een geheim legertoestel, klonk het.
Complottheorieën
Tonopah is omgeven door complottheorieën rond het gebruik van experimentele en geheime vliegtuigen.
De installatie is altijd nog minder populair dan het nabijgelegen Area 51, dat al jarenlang UFO-enthousiastelingen aantrekt die ervan overtuigd zijn dat de Amerikaanse overheid er buitenaardse technologie bewaart.
RUIMTESCHIP OBSERVEERT ASTRONAUT BIJ ISS ( VIDEO )
RUIMTESCHIP OBSERVEERT ASTRONAUT BIJ ISS ( VIDEO )
Nog nooit eerder is er, voor zover ons bekend, zo duidelijk een vreemd ruimteschip waargenomen bij het ISS ruimtestation.
Wanneer een astronaut een ruimtewandeling maakt verschijnt er achter hem een vreemd object.
Wij schrijven al jarenlang over hoe NASA iedere keer probeert te verbergen dat er zich vreemde ruimteschepen ophouden in de buurt van het ISS ruimtestation.
Wanneer er iets vreemds valt waar te nemen op de camera's van het ISS dan valt ongeveer standaard de verbinding weg met het ruimtestation en is er alleen een blauw scherm te zien. Navolgende gaat ervan uit dat er inderdaad zoiets is als de ruimte en het ISS; uiteindelijk kan ook dat echt allemaal nep zijn en wat we "zien" bij het ISS deel van "disclosure".
Soms gaat het wegpoetsen bij NASA mis en dit keer goed, want nu zijn er opnames opgedoken die ronduit spectaculair zijn want nabij het ISS houdt zich een vreemd ruimteschip op.
Wanneer één van de astronauten bezig is met een reparatieklus buiten het ruimtestation en door de camera's wordt gefilmd, is het duidelijk dat hij wordt geobserveerd vanuit een ander ruimteschip. Het object dat je ziet rechts op de volgende foto is een door intelligente wezens gemaakt vliegend object en niet een wolk zoals ongetwijfeld later door NASA zal worden verklaard.
Het is een object met een bepaalde structuur en het is echt; onderstaand de bewegende beelden.
Wat we natuurlijk niet weten is of het hier een buitenaards ruimtevaartuig betreft of een exemplaar van de geheime ruimtevloot zoals wij die op aarde hebben. Een vloot waarvan het grote publiek nooit of te nimmer het bestaan te weten zal komen.
Hierna een close up van wat het dan ook mag zijn dat zich daar ophoudt en het ruimtestation volgt met exact dezelfde snelheid.
Hieronder een video met een analyse van Mr. MB333 en bewegende beelden waar je de astronaut ziet buiten het ISS, waar dan opeens het hierboven getoonde object verschijnt.
NASA moet van goede huize komen om dit weg te verklaren als een wolk of een ander natuurlijk fenomeen, maar waarschijnlijk horen we nooit iets van dat instituut over dit voorval, want ze zijn iets slimmer dan prins Andrew en weten precies wanneer ze hun mond dicht moeten houden. En nogmaals, dit hele verhaal kan ook een groot sprookje zijn wat ons op de mouw gespeld wordt.
RUIMTESCHIP OBSERVEERT ASTRONAUT BIJ ISS ( VIDEO )
RUIMTESCHIP OBSERVEERT ASTRONAUT BIJ ISS ( VIDEO )
Nog nooit eerder is er, voor zover ons bekend, zo duidelijk een vreemd ruimteschip waargenomen bij het ISS ruimtestation.
Wanneer een astronaut een ruimtewandeling maakt verschijnt er achter hem een vreemd object.
Wij schrijven al jarenlang over hoe NASA iedere keer probeert te verbergen dat er zich vreemde ruimteschepen ophouden in de buurt van het ISS ruimtestation.
Wanneer er iets vreemds valt waar te nemen op de camera's van het ISS dan valt ongeveer standaard de verbinding weg met het ruimtestation en is er alleen een blauw scherm te zien. Navolgende gaat ervan uit dat er inderdaad zoiets is als de ruimte en het ISS; uiteindelijk kan ook dat echt allemaal nep zijn en wat we "zien" bij het ISS deel van "disclosure".
Soms gaat het wegpoetsen bij NASA mis en dit keer goed, want nu zijn er opnames opgedoken die ronduit spectaculair zijn want nabij het ISS houdt zich een vreemd ruimteschip op.
Wanneer één van de astronauten bezig is met een reparatieklus buiten het ruimtestation en door de camera's wordt gefilmd, is het duidelijk dat hij wordt geobserveerd vanuit een ander ruimteschip. Het object dat je ziet rechts op de volgende foto is een door intelligente wezens gemaakt vliegend object en niet een wolk zoals ongetwijfeld later door NASA zal worden verklaard.
Het is een object met een bepaalde structuur en het is echt; onderstaand de bewegende beelden.
Wat we natuurlijk niet weten is of het hier een buitenaards ruimtevaartuig betreft of een exemplaar van de geheime ruimtevloot zoals wij die op aarde hebben. Een vloot waarvan het grote publiek nooit of te nimmer het bestaan te weten zal komen.
Hierna een close up van wat het dan ook mag zijn dat zich daar ophoudt en het ruimtestation volgt met exact dezelfde snelheid.
Hieronder een video met een analyse van Mr. MB333 en bewegende beelden waar je de astronaut ziet buiten het ISS, waar dan opeens het hierboven getoonde object verschijnt.
NASA moet van goede huize komen om dit weg te verklaren als een wolk of een ander natuurlijk fenomeen, maar waarschijnlijk horen we nooit iets van dat instituut over dit voorval, want ze zijn iets slimmer dan prins Andrew en weten precies wanneer ze hun mond dicht moeten houden. En nogmaals, dit hele verhaal kan ook een groot sprookje zijn wat ons op de mouw gespeld wordt.
The rule that one should never look directly at the Sun doesn’t not apply to the Hubble telescope and it’s a good thing for us that’s the case. Otherwise, we’d never know about what astronomers are calling the brightest light energy ever recorded. Aliens burning a lot of leaves? Independence Day on Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri? Actually, the real reason for the light is much more interesting.
An artist's concept showing a "naked-eye" view of a GRB up close. Observations suggest that material is shot outward in a two-component jet (white and green beams). Credit: NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones (NASA / Swift / Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith / John Jones) Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/astronomers-detect-record-breaking-gamma-ray-bursts-colossal-explosion-space-180973610/#1bZX1LyZe5OMMMmI.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
“Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away. This is really unusual, and suggests that might be why it produced this exceptionally powerful light.”
“Burst” gives it away. What Andrew Levan of the Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics & Particle Physics Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, was referring to in a press release on the Hubble Space Telescope web site is a gamma-ray burst – the rare, extremely brief and intensely bright explosions thought to be caused by massive supernovas. This one was discovered on January 14, 2019, by astronomers using the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The coordinates were immediately sent to fellow astronomers around the world who trained their telescopes at the rare event. Shortly thereafter, time was allocated on the Hubble’s busy schedule to observe the gamma-ray burst, which is now known as GRB 190114C.
It didn’t take much observation to determine that GRB 190114C was special. Its light was measured at 1Tera electron volt (TeV). One electron volt (eV) is the “amount of kinetic energy gained (or lost) by a single electron accelerating from rest through an electric potential difference of one volt in vacuum” (Wikipedia). That makes it a unit of energy, not light. 1Tera electron volts is one trillion electron volts. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) web site has an interesting way of looking at this amount of energy.
“A TeV is a unit of energy used in particle physics. 1 TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito. What makes the LHC so extraordinary is that it squeezes energy into a space about a million million times smaller than a mosquito.”
This is also the amount of kinetic energy released by proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider, making GRB 190114C the ultimate big thing in a small package. It’s such a big deal, the journal Nature published four papers in one day on it. While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact location of GRB 190114C, the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 focused in on a pair of interacting galaxies, with the GRB appearing in the nuclear region of the more massive galaxy – something else that’s never been seen before.
“This new observation is a vital step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, their immediate surroundings, and just how matter behaves when it is moving at 99.999% of the speed of light.”
Antonio de Ugarte Postigo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain, lead author of one of the papers, described the immensity of the discovery – at least to astronomers. Let’s hope it’s eventually a big deal to the rest of us – at least in our lifetimes.
GRB 190114C, located about 4.5 billion light-years away in the constellation Fornax. (NASA / ESA / V. Acciari et al. 2019) Read more:
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In the world of the paranormal there are countless reports of encounters with strange creatures, entities, and apparitions of all shapes and sizes. These accounts run the range of the slightly odd to the full on absurd, and they never cease to amaze with their pure outlandishness. Some of these are perhaps stranger than others, and I am always on the lookout for such reports and experiences. Well, here I have compiled an array of a certain subspecies of strange encounter reports, which deals with what can only be described as octopoid entities complete with tentacles, which have come wandering in from beyond the limits of the reality we perceive.
In some of these reports of strange entities with tentacles the apparitions in question seem to be of a decidedly paranormal nature. Take the case of one witness on the site Psychic Experiences, calling herself “Alkara.” She claims that seeing strange entities was nothing particularly strange or new for her, as she had been having such visions from a very young age, being constantly tormented by shadow people. She had always taken these to be some sort of demons, and according to the witness they took many forms, such as reptilian creatures, alien “greys,” and others, but the strangest was an octopoid entity that would come to her in her room at night, and she says of it:
My encounters with different types of entities and dead people has continued since. But a week ago, I encountered an entity that looked so ridiculous that I brushed it off as my own imagination. It had a structure of a human: head, torso, two legs but the remarkable difference was it had eight octopus-like tentacles for arms. I couldn’t remember how it’s face looked like because at that time it seemed so ridiculous to me that I didn’t take time to study it.
Very strange indeed. A similar and maybe even creepier account comes from Darkness Radio, concerning a witness called Ken, who also encountered a tentacled entity in his own bedroom. He explains that at the time he had been living out in Rosemead, California, in a small little house from which he ran a tattoo business. Things were apparently pretty odd from the moment he moved in, as he said he was prone to hearing strange things rustling or moving around in the dark in the kitchen and living-room area, and he occasionally saw a “misty shadow” roaming about, but nothing was quite so strange as something that would come to him one evening when he awoke to quite the surreal experience. He says of this:
One night I woke up in a very calm and relaxed state but I found myself floating above the bed with my feet barely hovering off the mattress. I knew I wasn’t dreaming because I was aware of all the items in my room and my eyes were scanning around. I found my body floating gently back down onto the bed but was suddenly slammed down onto the mattress violently, as if somebody put his hand across my face and pulled me down. It felt as if I was in that state of sleep paralysis. To my horror, as I looked to my side; I could not move my face or body but with my eyes, I clearly saw the silhouette or the shadow figure of this creature. I saw the clear defined sharp pointed nose and as crazy as it sounds the silhouette of this tentacle for an arm with all suction cups clearly defined. Its other arm held my head down to the bed and pulled it, as it was trying to make me look back at the ceiling and, in shock, every inch of my black ceiling was covered with this bizarre looking hieroglyphic as if it were painted in wet substance. In my head, it was the color of blood as it was hard to make out in the moonlight shining through my window. I felt as if the entity was trying to tell me something.
With all my energy, I willed myself out of this paralyzed state and once I blinked my eyes, it was over. No writings on my ceiling. No creature. Everything was gone. A few other weird things happened after this incident, especially at night and sometimes even during the day but nothing that tops that crazy night I told you about. I’m not sure if there is a dark history in this residence or if I’m just haunted myself because I’ve seen things in every place I’ve lived. Friends don’t believe me, thinking I was under the influence of something but I wasn’t. I was completely sober. I know what I witnessed.
Was this a ghost, something more demonic, or just sleep paralysis and hallucinations, the witness caught in that bizarre limbo between sleep and wakefulness? It is hard to say. In another account from Your Ghost Stories, we have a witness who says this happened to him after he moved to a small apartment in the state of Illinois with his wife and 2-year-old son. He claims that he was plagued with sudden, very intense headaches after moving into this place, which he had never experienced before but which he chalked up to just the stresses of moving and settling down in a new place, yet it seems there was perhaps more to it than that. He says that one night he would have a horrifying encounter with a very menacing, possibly demonic apparition tormenting his young son, and he explains the outlandish scene thusly:
It was one Sunday when my son was playing in my bed and all of a sudden he started screaming holding his head. When asked he showed the exact same place where I got my pain in head and said that it pains (the pain will be like some one puts a nail on back of the head). I was little concerned but thought to ignore. The interesting thing here is I was not feeling this pain anymore by my son started getting this pain often. We took him to medical check up and turns out to be nothing. Finally after 3 attempts, I decided to use my supernatural medium to protect everyone and it worked.
The face to face happened one night. We were in a good sleep and I was suddenly awake and I noticed a pink ball with tentacles floating above my sons body. When tried to catch it, it just moved away and disappeared and I felt asleep. The very next night we were all sleeping and I was awake at 12. 05 midnight and I saw the wall above my head and ceiling was full black. I turned around and stared at the wall (just 2 feet away) and I saw a totally black object with huge tentacles floating. After this incident I finally confirmed that there are some demonic presence in this apartment and I secured the full house until we vacated.
Again, we seem to be dealing with something very paranormal in nature with these particular reports, or perhaps even projections of the mind or other tenuous phenomena, but other reports point to something more concretely physical in nature. There are a few accounts that seem to definitely at least suggest aliens or inter-dimensional interlopers of some sort, and these are perhaps even more bizarre that the reports of tentacled ghostly specters. There are a few cases such as these from the 1960s and 70s, which have been covered by different UFO and paranormal researchers over the years. Probably the more well-known and indeed creepier of these is what has come to be known as the “Octosquatch.” In the summer of 1961, a 29-year-old truck driver named Arquimedes Sanchez was driving along a precipitous mountain road through the Basque mountains in Spain at around 11 PM, along with an unnamed companion, on their way to the town of Puerto de Barazar. As they rounded a bend, their headlights hit a bizarre and rather monstrous being standing upon an embankment nearby, which prompted the pair to stop their vehicle.
When they peered through the murk ahead of them they claim that they saw a “hairy octopus,” which stood around 4 feet tall, with glowing eyes and “tentacle-like” arms. The witnesses and the thing apparently sat there completely frozen and immobile for several minutes, both parties probably just as startled and scared as the other, before Sanchez snapped out of it and slammed the accelerator, which caused the weird apparition to scurry backwards away from the threat, after which Sanchez backed up and tried again, apparently intent on running it over. Interestingly, the otherworldly intruder refused to take off into the night, instead always just managing to avoid being run over, as if it were all a game. Finally the two men, neither who were willing to step out of the vehicle to investigate, drove off to leave the being behind, never to be seen again. What in the world was this thing? Who knows?
Just a few years later in 1966 we have a case that was covered in both Jim Brandon’s Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, as well as Jerome Clark’s Extraordinary Encounters: An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings. the state of Oregon for an equally bizarre case. On the night of April 5, 1966, a 16-year-old witness named Kathy Reeves was allegedly walking along with her friend on a secluded dark road in the small city of Newport, Oregon, when they got the sudden, unmistakable feeling that they were being followed and watched. The two girls assumed it was just someone messing around trying to scare them, which was made clearer when they thought they could see a dimmed flashlight beam bobbing about behind them.
They picked up their pace and even tossed rocks behind them at the unseen follower, but the feeling that someone was lurking in the darkness behind them did not abate, and when they turned around at one point what they thought had been a simple flashlight suddenly erupted into a brilliant beam of incandescent light far beyond what would be expected, which was then joined by more spears of brightness jutting from the night to converge upon them. Squinting through the glare, they claimed that they could make out a large, dome-shaped object some distance off that seemed to be wreathed in some sort of fog or smoke. The now terrified girls began to run as fast as they could towards home, but as they did their path was blocked by three unearthly creatures the likes of nothing they had ever seen. The entities were described as being headless and armless, and as looking like mobile tree stumps that moved about on what resembled spider legs and which were dressed in some sort of multi-colored cloth. The creatures thankfully did not seem to pay too much attention to the witnesses, instead scurrying across the road to scamper off out of sight towards the inscrutable dome, which still flickered in the dark behind them.
The 1960s seem to have been a rather odd time for these sorts of octopoid extraterrestrial encounters, because our next case is every bit as bizarre and occurred in 1968 in the province of Tarragona in Spain. It revolves around a humble farmer by the name of John Mateu, and according to a report contained within the Barcelona Tele-Express, in the summer of that year Mateu was out doing his usual farm work like any other day, when he caught sight of what appeared to be something glinting in the morning light some distance down the dirt road that went past the property. His first impression was that it was someone who might be lost or even worse broken down, and so he walked off down the dusty road with his dog in tow to see what was going on. It would soon become quite clear that this was no car, nor any sort of vehicle he recognized.
As he approached, Mateu could see that rather than a car the source of the glinting light was actually some sort of oval, metallic object that was glowing and hovering several feet off of the ground. As the dumbfounded farmer stared on in amazement, he noticed three small creatures that looked vaguely octopoid, moving along swiftly on tentacles towards the craft. When they reached it, the weird entities were described as piling into the spheroid object and shooting off into the sky and leaving Mateu there to faint and lose consciousness. Indeed, he’d go on to remain missing for a full day as friends and family searched for him, after which he wandered home, unable to account for his missing time. Mateu and his brother would go on to find several patches of scorched earth where it was surmised that the alien craft had landed, and oddly enough their watches were also reported as stopping when they entered the vicinity.
Moving on to the 1970s we have the extraordinarily odd account of 9 year-old José Cantu, of the town of Harrah, in Washington state. On January 19, 1977, Cantu was up early in the morning making himself breakfast when he looked outside to see a strange, diminutive “little men” out in the yard. He tried to wake his mother, but she told him to leave her alone and that he was imagining things, so he went out to take a look for himself, soon coming face to face with a pair of 3-foot-tall beings with greenish skin and no legs, instead sitting atop rotating bases with various tubes and small wheel-like protuberances attached to them. The heads of the things were monstrous, with pig-like snouts, odd mushroom-shaped caps, and only a single eye placed within the center of their heads, as well as tiny, useless looking forearms jutting out from the middle.
Cantu immediately hid behind a shed, and it was here where he would notice two brightly lit metallic crafts parked nearby which had ramps leading to the ground and seemed to be piloted by more of the same cyclops beings. The two beings he had seen earlier then boarded these “spaceships” via the ramps, after which the crafts hovered into the air and vanished into puffs of smoke. The boy ran back inside, woke his sleeping mother, and told her all about what he had seen, but she would not believe him and sent him on his way to school. There he would tell anyone who would listen about what he had seen, and two classroom aides ended up being so enthralled by his sincerity that they went home with him after school to take a look at the scene themselves.
In the yard, the aides would find circular indentations within the earth, apparently caused by the bases that the two aliens had sat upon, and neighbors would say that they had also found enormous depressions in the ground where Cantu said the craft had been resting. An examination of these depressions showed that they had strange patterns of swirled grass within them, and this was all big enough news that the following day a a police officer for the Indian Reserve of Yakima by the name of Willard J. Vogel came to investigate, seeing the evidence and interviewing the boy, and he became convinced that the boy at least truly believed that he was telling the truth.
Moving on into more recent years, a truly otherworldly account was given by the Dutch psychic Robbert van den Broeke, who had his own strange experience as he was investigating a crop circle in the area of Zevenbergen with a friend called Roy. At one point they both felt an intense sensation of being watched, after which Robbert had his mind invaded by a sudden, very vivid image of an octopus-like creature. At the time he was puzzled by this, but it would only get weirder in the coming days. Upon returning to his home, Robbert was allegedly overcome with an irresistible urge to venture out to a grassy field near Seppen airport, and when he arrived he says he did so to the sight of an egg shaped craft emanating a golden light hovering over the field. As he watched the strange UFO with awe, the bottom opened and from within came two creatures that looked exactly like the slithering thing he had seen in his vision. They were described as being slippery, reptilian looking things with pear-shaped heads, almond shaped eyes, and numerous tentacles sprouting from their chest and back. These outlandish entities approached him, and gave out a telepathic signal that seemed to be benign in nature, and indeed they allowed Robbert to get close enough to touch one of their tentacles, where things would get more deeply odd.
As soon as he made contact with the wet, slimy skin, he says that he was jolted by a strong shock that was accompanied by an urgent telepathic message from the creature that apparently proclaimed that Robbert was meant to be a bridge between humans and them. Right after this, a light enveloped the beings and they began to spin around at great speed, as if caught up in a tornado, and the tentacles of one of the creatures then seemed to fly off of its body to go scattering all over the field. Alarmed, Robbert telepathically asked them if they were OK, and they said that the tentacles had been left behind as evidence of the encounter and that they would regrow quickly, after which they spun off back into their craft and shot up into the sky out of sight to leave him standing there in the field alone and surrounded by the detached tentacles. Robbert then claims that he gathered these tentacles up and that he now is keeping them frozen in a safe place awaiting analysis. It all seems pretty questionable, since he has not come out publicly in any capacity that I know of on these tentacles, so it should probably all be taken with a huge grain of salt, but it is a wild tale all the same, and when dealing with octopus entities what tale isn’t?
From Reddit user “horrorbxtch” we have a pretty bonkers report that he says happened to him in the summer of 2016 while visiting his grandparents near Grand Junction, Colorado. He describes their house as being rather rural, and situated near a river, and on this evening he had let the dog to do its business when the animal suddenly started viciously barking and snarling at something out in the dark. The witness then grabbed a flashlight to go investigate and he explains of the strange series of events that would unfold:
My dog is outside for maybe a minute before I hear her start viciously growling and barking like I’ve never heard before. She’s growled/barked at animals or people outside before but this was more aggressive than I’d ever heard her. I start making my way over to my dog to investigate, I make it about halfway to my dog and I freeze dead in my tracks. Im pointing my flashlight in the direction she’s facing, and I see the most unsettling thing I’ve ever seen. At first I think I’m just imagining it or tripping out but there was no denying it was clear as day. It was about 3-4 feet tall, a rectanglular figure but with rounded edges. Imagine like a 4 foot tall twinkie lol. It was this gross translucent tan/flesh color. Like the color of a naked mole rat. There was no apparent face, or limbs. All I saw was a bunch of tentacle/leg looking things potruding all down the front and side of it’s body. The way it was moving was creepy.
At first it was sort of gently rocking side to side, and then I swear it started taunting my dog like running from one spot to another to mess with her. At this point I got too scared it would do something to my dog so I ran to her, snatched her up, and booked it inside and locked the door. When I peeked back outside the thing was gone. I don’t think anything has ever disturbed me that much in real life before. My body wouldnt stop shaking for probably 25 mins after I got inside. The most fucked up part is the next day I told my aunt I saw a “weird Alien bug looking creature” outside the night before. She then said “Ive seen some weird shit out there.” And proceeded to explain seeing the exact same thing I saw. Same color, shape, lots of tentacle/centipede looking appendages, and the icing on the cake for me was when she said it kept rocking from side to side. I said you’re kidding me thats exactly what I saw last night. We both got chills and flipped out because it confirmed it wasn’t our imagination.
Also in more recent years, in December of 2014 there was a very odd report taken by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), concerning an outlandish bipedal creature that was sighted and almost hit by a car in the vicinity of the sleepy town of Carmel, in Highland County, Ohio. The witnesses, a former Marine and his wife, had just moved to the area, and one evening they were driving along the rural road through a wooded area towards their home when a 7-foot-tall creature with muscular, very bendable, tentacle-like legs, and a tubular body without any arms or head ran in front of their car and into the woods on the other side of the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by the vehicle in the process.
It would later be described as being a dull, sickly grey in color and looking sort of like a “walking squid,” and after the report was featured in the local paper there was a lot of speculation as to what it might be. One of the most popular ideas is that this was merely a misidentified deer that had just happened to be witnessed in a strange, bipedal pose. This sort of makes sense, as white-tailed deer are known to rear up on their hind legs and even take a few steps in that position, but it seems odd that one would walk so far, and it doesn’t really seem to totally match the witnesses’ description. Interestingly, the witnesses also claimed that there was a large sphere of grass near their house that is always greener than the surroundings and where snow does not gather, so make of that what you will. Whatever it is, the “Walking Squid” Of Carmel, Ohio, is a truly bizarre case that can’t easily be explained away.
With such completely bizarre, almost absurd reports as we have looked at here, it is rather difficult to get a handle on what could be going on. In some cases it looks like these might be ghostly or demonic in nature, while others might have to do with aliens, interdimensional phenomena, or something else. Perhaps none of them are real at all, and have their origins merely in the imagination and the mind. In the end, we are left with a range of accounts that really stretch the limits of the bizarre, and hint that this world is perhaps far odder than any of us even suspect.
Archaeologists in Russia have discovered the remains of a 250-million-year-old dragon-like creature that roamed the Earth even before the dinosaurs. In fact, it looks quite similar to the Komodo dragon that lives on the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Flores, Rinca, and Gili Motang.
The fossils that were found 45 miles from the city of Orenburg on the Ural River belonged to a creature called Garjainia that was part of a reptilian group named erythrosuchids. Erythrosuchids are nicknamed “red crocodiles” because of their long bodies and gigantic teeth.
Garjainia
The species called Garjainia was around ten feet tall and had a gigantic head along with large teeth that have been described as being like “steak knives”. The creature would have lived in different parts of the world like South Africa, Eastern Europe, China, and India. Although it may sound strange that it lived in such different places, it actually makes a lot of sense as the creature was alive during the time of the super-continent Pangaea which was before Earth’s land separated into different continents.
Dr. Richard Butler, who is from the University of Birmingham and is also the lead author of the study (which can be read in full here), said that he was surprised at how well preserved the Garjainia remains were.
He said, “Erythrosuchids are large, predatory meat-eating reptiles that lived shortly after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the largest ecological crisis in Earth history.” The mass extinction wiped out almost every species on Earth 252 million years ago when volcanoes erupted in Siberia causing the oceans to turn into acid.
Garjainia
Another interesting fact about Erythrosuchids is that they roamed the Earth a few million years before the dinosaurs did, meaning that they were by far the planet’s most dominant predator. “They lived just prior to the very first dinosaurs, so erythrosuchids and dinosaurs did not live alongside one another, as far as we know,” Butler stated.
One of the species’ most notable features is its disproportionately gigantic head. “Proportionately, their skulls are probably larger than any other group of living or fossil reptiles,” Butler said. “In appearance, they looked a bit like a Komodo dragon – walking on four legs,” he noted, adding, “But they had very large heads relative to their body, with powerful jaws and large, sharp, steak-knife-like teeth.”
An artist’s rendition of what a Garjainia looked like can be seen here along with pictures of the bones that scientists analyzed
These are some of the bones that the team examined, some with the animal's teeth preserved
The bones from the study were excavated in Russia in the 1950s. This is the team preparing to take material from the site in November 1953.
A Russian excavation in 1954
A G. madiba reconstruction from Gower et al. (2014).
The appearance of an alien structure in Antarctica has made the rounds online, but the disappearance that made it even more exciting to many conspiracy theorists. The so-called alien structure has surfaced and then disappeared on Google Earth, sparking conspiracy theories on its origins after some suggested it had been black-out.
Some conspiracy theorists brought up a possible top-secret government cover-up. YouTube conspiracy page thirdphaseofmoon released the mysterious footage on the video-sharing site showing a row of identical structures lined up apparently in Antarctica on Google Earth. The place was claimed to be found at coordinates 75° 0’46.98″S 0° 4’52.71” E.
The massive structure also seems to have undergone a significant change, with an alleged airstrip disappearing between 2015 and 2016.
Blake Cousins, who runs the YouTube channel, suggested it may be an ancient alien city after analysing the footage.
He told viewers that he had never seen anything like it before and said that the place gets more bizarre as they go through it. He added that it is not some natural event created by weather as it looks like each point has its own entrance, like some sort of tunnel. He explained that there might be a hidden city below.
They measured the site at around 2,000 metres-long.
Scientists have created a recording of the eerie ‘song’ that Earth sings when it’s hit by a solar storm.
An international team of scientists, using data from ESA’s Cluster mission, have created the first recording of the eerie “song” that Earth makes when it’s hit by asolar storm.
The song comes from waves that are generated in the Earth’s magnetic field by the collision of the storm. The storm itself is the eruption of electrically charged particles from the sun’s atmosphere. The sun constantly sends out streams of charged particles, but Earth’s magnetic field prevents these particles from entering our atmosphere. However, explosions on the sun’s surface can send a huge clouds of particles and radiation out into space. If these solar storms are directed towards Earth, when they hit they can disrupt our satellite systems, cause widespread blackouts and affect GPS systems.
To create the recording, the team analyzed two decades of data from ESA’s Cluster mission, four spacecraft that have been orbiting Earth in formation since 2001, investigating our planet’s magnetic environment and its interaction with the solar wind.
As part of their orbits, the Cluster spacecraft repeatedly fly through the what’s called the foreshock, the first region that particles encounter when a solar storm hits our planet. The team found that in the early part of the mission, from 2001 to 2005, the spacecraft flew through six such collisions, recording the waves that were generated.
The new analysis shows that, during the collision, the foreshock releases magnetic waves that are much more complex than first thought.
When the frequencies of these magnetic waves are transformed into audible signals, they give rise to a psychedelic song more reminiscent of sound effects from a science fiction movie than from a natural phenomenon.
In this image – a computer simulation being developed at the University of Helsinki – you can see the intricate wave pattern that appears in Earth’s magnetic environment during solar storms. Earth is the tiny white dot at the left, within the dark blue half circle. The large arc around Earth represents our planet’s magnetic bow shock. The swirling pattern to the right is the foreshock region where the solar wind breaks into waves.
Image via Vlasiator team/University of Helsinki/AGU.
In quiet times, when no solar storm is striking the Earth, the song is lower in pitch and less complex. But when a solar storm hits, the frequency of the wave is roughly doubled, depending on the strength of the magnetic field in the storm.
University of Helsinki astrophysicist Lucile Turc is lead author of the study, published November 18, 2019 in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. She said in a statement:
It’s like the storm is changing the tuning of the foreshock.
The researchers said that not only does the frequency of the wave change, but it also becomes much more complicated than the single frequency of the quiet times. Once the storm hits the foreshock, the wave breaks into a complex network of different, higher frequencies. According to a statement about the research:
The changes in the foreshock have the power to affect the way the solar storm is propagated down to the Earth’s surface. Although it is still an open question exactly how this process works, it is clear that the energy generated by waves in the foreshock cannot escape back into space, as the waves are pushed towards Earth by the incoming solar storm.
Before they reach our atmosphere, however, the waves encounter another barrier, called the bow shock, which is the magnetic region of space that slows down solar wind particles before they collide with Earth’s magnetic field. The collision of the magnetic waves modifies the behavior of the bow shock, possibly changing the way it processes the energy of the incoming solar storm.
Behind the bow shock, the magnetic fields of Earth start to resonate at the frequency of the waves and this contributes to the transmission of the magnetic disturbance all the way to the ground. It is a fast process, taking around 10 minutes from the wave being generated at the foreshock to its energy reaching the ground.
Bottom line: Listen to an eerie song of Earth getting hit by a magnetic storm.
Scientists are still trying to figure out where Mars’ methane comes from. Now there’s a new mystery that might be connected: unusual fluctuations of oxygen in Mars’ atmosphere, detected by the Curiosity rover.
Recent self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity on Mars, stitched together from 57 individual images taken by a camera on the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm on October 11, 2019 (Sol 2,553).
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Curious about Curiosity’s self-portraits?
The presence of methane in Mars’ atmosphere has been a fascinating puzzle for planetary scientists. That’s because, on Earth, methane is linked to life, but it can also be produced geologically. Some of the best data about Mars’ methane has come from the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars after a daring descent through the atmosphere in August, 2012. Now Curiosity has made another intriguing discovery: oxygen at the rover’s location is behaving in ways that haven’t yet been explained by any known atmospheric or chemical process. The levels of the gas increase much more in the spring and summer months than had been predicted, similar to the still-mysterious methane. The big question, of course, is why?
The baffling peer-reviewed results were just published in the November 12, 2019, issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Sushil Atreya, professor of climate and space sciences at the University of Michigan, said:
The first time we saw that, it was just mind boggling.
Seasonal variations in oxygen levels in Gale Crater from 2012-2017. So far, scientists haven’t been able to explain these changes.
Image via Melissa Trainer/Dan Gallagher/NASA Goddard/NASA.
Curiosity analyzed the composition of the air at Gale Crater over three Mars years (about six Earth years), using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) portable chemistry lab. The results were pretty much what had been expected, and known for years: 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), 2.6% molecular nitrogen (N2), 1.9% argon (Ar), 0.16% molecular oxygen (O2), and 0.06% carbon monoxide (CO). (The methane is normally in much smaller amounts, about 0.00000004% on average).
The nitrogen and argon tend to follow a predictable pattern each year, increasing and decreasing relative to how much carbon dioxide there is. This is related to changing air pressure during the year, since carbon dioxide freezes as snow and ice over the planet’s poles during the winter, which lowers the air pressure. The air pressure rises again when the carbon dioxide evaporates in the spring and summer.
This is where it gets weird. Scientists had expected that the oxygen would follow the same pattern as the nitrogen and argon, but it didn’t. The oxygen level increased much more in spring and summer – as much as 30% – and then dropped back to normal levels, and even below, in the fall. This same process was observed by Curiosity each Martian spring and summer.
So what are the possible explanations? The researchers have considered several possibilities, but none of them explain all of the results.
Was there a problem with the SAM lab? The researchers checked but the instrument was fine and working properly.
Could carbon dioxide or water molecules have released oxygen when they broke apart in the atmosphere due to solar radiation? Probably not, since it would take five times more water vapor than exists to produce the amount of oxygen observed. Carbon dioxide would break up too slowly to generate the same amount of oxygen over such a short time period.
As for the oxygen decrease seen later, could that have been caused by solar radiation breaking apart oxygen molecules? No, since that would be an even slower process, taking up to 10 years.
The scientists involved also think it is unlikely to be caused simply by atmospheric circulation patterns. According to Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GFSC) who led the research:
We’re struggling to explain this. The fact that the oxygen behavior isn’t perfectly repeatable every season makes us think that it’s not an issue that has to do with atmospheric dynamics. It has to be some chemical source and sink that we can’t yet account for.
As Timothy McConnochie, assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, also noted:
We have not been able to come up with one process yet that produces the amount of oxygen we need, but we think it has to be something in the surface soil that changes seasonally because there aren’t enough available oxygen atoms in the atmosphere to create the behavior we see.
Diagram showing the seasonal cycle of methane as detected by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater. The methane also varies in concentration on a daily basis as well as seasonal.
The paper itself goes into more detail about each of these hypotheses and how none of them adequately explain the results so far. Yet something is producing a lot more oxygen during the warmer months than there should be. Intriguingly, both the oxygen and methane have been observed to fluctuate like this in tandem on at least some occasions, suggesting there may be a common source. As Atreya also noted:
We’re beginning to see this tantalizing correlation between methane and oxygen for a good part of the Mars year. I think there’s something to it. I just don’t have the answers yet. Nobody does.
On Earth, having oxygen and methane together is regarded as a biosignature, since they tend to destroy each other unless they are being continuously produced and fluxed into the atmosphere at relatively high rates. Because of this, the two gases are said to be in a state of thermodynamic disequilibrium.
By far, most of the oxygen and methane on Earth are produced by and/or consumed by life. Could that really be what’s happening on Mars? Or is there still some other unknown chemistry occurring? The Curiosity data showed that the background methane levels decreased at the same time as the oxygen levels did in the last half of each year, although the oxygen increases again earlier in the year than the methane, and is more variable year-to year. The larger “spike” in methane seen by Curiosity however, also occurred during the same period of time as the increase of oxygen in the spring. What all this means isn’t clear yet, and more study will be needed.
Melissa Trainer at Goddard Spaceflight Center (GFSC), who led the new research.
If there really is a correlation between the oxygen and methane on Mars, that could be a potential biosignature. A previous study in 2014 by Shawn Domagal-Goldman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found that while oxygen and methane by themselves could sometimes be created by non-biological processes, on exoplanets for example, but finding them together would be a more convincing biosignature:
However, our research strengthens the argument that methane and oxygen together, or methane and ozone together, are still strong signatures of life. We tried really, really hard to make false-positive signals for life, and we did find some, but only for oxygen, ozone, or methane by themselves.
These odd fluctuations in the oxygen levels at Gale Crater – with a possible connection to the methane fluctuations and spikes – are a fascinating new mystery for Mars scientists to try and solve. As Trainer summarized:
This is the first time where we’re seeing this interesting behavior over multiple years. We don’t totally understand it. For me, this is an open call to all the smart people out there who are interested in this: See what you can come up with.
Bottom line: NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected unusual increases and decreases in the level of oxygen in the air at Gale Crater. In some ways these are similar to the fluctuations of methane, and may even be connected.
Aliens ‘turning off nuclear weapons to show humans they’re useless’
Aliens ‘turning off nuclear weapons to show humans they’re useless’
Aliens have been turning our nuclear weapons on and off to show us how "useless" they are against them, according to a lobbyist who says he thinks ETs are "not a threat"
Aliens have been turning our nuclear weapons on and off to show us how “useless” they are against their superior technology, a lobbyist has claimed.
Stephen Bassett is the founder of Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which has spent years trying to get the US government to reveal the “truth” about extraterrestrials and UFOs — which he prefers to call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in line with the US Navy's official definition.
Discussing what motives aliens might have, Stephen claimed several witnesses have observed them controlling our own nuclear weapons with ease.
But he insists this is not intended as a “threat” and actually shows us that ETs and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) support nuclear disarmament.
According to Stephen many sources have observed aliens "turn off" nuclear weapons(Image: Time Life Pictures)
He told Daily Star Online: “They turned off our nuclear weapons repeatedly, does that mean they are bad?
“The witnesses to the events, and there are many, generally believe that it is not an ominous thing but rather it was a message.
“It wasn’t a threat but a message that these things are useless.
“[As if they're saying] 'they certainly are useless against us, all you are going to do is kill yourselves and we can’t turn them off at will, why don’t you just get rid of them?'
“That’s how the witnesses, by and large the majority, have interpreted this.”
This is not the first time it has been claimed that aliens have been shutting down nukes and showing an interest in military bases.
Former US Air Force lieutenant Bob Jacobs gave a shocking interview on CNN’s Larry King Live in 2008.
He made the staggering claim that during a missile test an object “shot a beam of light at the warhead” in what has been called the 1967 Malstrom AFB UFO incident.
A 'UFO' photographed by a government employee was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization(Image: Getty)
The footage was confiscated and he was told “never to speak of it again”, he added.
Stephen previously told this site that NASA is forced by the US government to shut down the ISS live feed when aliens appear.
This comes after a cigar-shaped UFO was allegedly spotted flying over Kansas in a mysterious video.
Guys, this was just sent into me from a fellow Youtuber going by the name of Infowars Wikileaks. The photos we have here are all viewing earth and space from orbit. They were taken from the International Space Station...the ISS. I know this because the URL address has ISS036 in it. That should be the 36th day of active duty of the space station. The photo shows many glowing lights between the space station and the earth, but more close to the ISS. NASA has been recording UFOs since the day NASA was founded. They just don't want the public to ever find out. Scott C. Waring
Russian Astronaut Says..."A Ship!" NASA Control Say..."Copy All. Its With You!," Nov 21, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Russian Astronaut Says..."A Ship!" NASA Control Say..."Copy All. Its With You!," Nov 21, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Nov 21, 2019 Location of sighting: International Space Station Source: NASA live ISS cam Russian astronaut on ISS noticed the UFOs appearing on the live cam... Russian on ISS: "A ship..." NASA on earth: "Copy all. We just clarified. Its with you...thank you." This conversation recorded from the NASA live cam is 100% proof that NASA knows about alien craft buzzing past and around the space station. When the Russian astronaut aboard the ISS said, "a ship..." The NASA ground control cut him off and said, "Copy all," before he could finish what he was saying. She already saw it on live cam at ground control. She reacted fast, before he could talk about it too much...but he already said the most important thing he could..."a ship!" You see, even he knew it was an alien ship off the bow of the ISS. Eventually going to a red screen with no cam. Also, did you notice the video was clear, but when the UFOs appeared...it caused a disturbance in the tech and made the video fuzzy. UFOs are known to cause electrical disturbances and to even shut down cars, trucks and watches. So...here is 100% proof that NASA and Russia know that aliens frequently visit the space station. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan JUMP TO 2:00 INTO VIDEO TO HEAR THE WORDS... "A SHIP."
Massive underwater explosion in South China Sea caused by mysterious craft captured on ISS Live Cam?
Massive underwater explosion in South China Sea caused by mysterious craft captured on ISS Live Cam?
According to HalTurnerRadioShow the oceanographic instruments that monitor the South China Sea have recorded a significant underwater nuclear explosion.
The explosion occurred on November 21st at around 18.22 ET and took place at a depth of about 50 meters and had to be between 10 and 20 Kiloton.
After the explosion an increase of radiation was detected on the coast of China and Taiwan by the uRADMonitor.
There are rumors that China would have been responsible for the underwater explosion to set off a small nuclear device to try and cause an earthquake for several reasons which you can read in the article of HalTurnerShow but was it China or is it possible that the underwater explosion has been caused by something else?
On the same day of the explosion in the South China Sea, Scott Dillon recorded via the ISS Live Cam application on his cellphone a mysterious partially cloaked craft at about the same time of the explosion.
But what is striking is that at the time of Scott Dillons's recording the ISS and thus the mysterious craft were exactly above the location of the explosion.
Without stating that the craft has been responsible for the underwater explosion we may ask ourself whether it has dropped a nuclear device or not.
To date there is a lot of mystery surrounding the underwater explosion.
Below Scott Dillion's video showing the mysterious craft captured on the ISS Live cam.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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