Egyptian pyramids under a night sky. Several researchers believe astronomical at this site point to signs of an ancient advanced civilization.alignments 

Ancient Astronomical Alignments: Reading and Mapping the Stars at Early Advanced Civilization Sites

Many of the cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs of Egypt make reference to the sun, stars, or planetary positions. Also, a number of ancient structures in many parts of the world are aligned with, or directly oriented toward, the cardinal points (East, North, South, and West) or celestial objects. A recent study by astronomy historian Michael Horkin involved cataloging 2000 Neolithic tombs and researching over 1000 others in France, Portugal, Spain, and North Africa. His paper, presented to the Royal Astronomical Society in England, points out that thousands of Neolithic structures erected prior to 1000 BC were apparently built to face the sun or key constellations.

Commenting on the study, E.C. Krupp, an archaeoastronomer with the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, states, “It implies a certain social organization in the commitment to build the construction of these monuments, as well as a system of celestial observation.” Yet, Horkin says about one part of the study, “We do not know much about the constellations as viewed by the [ancient peoples], since they were not literate.” Illiteracy is the common assumption about ancient and unknown cultures – but what are we to make of the vast number of megalithic structures, dolmans, cairns, and henges (like Stonehenge) that we find built and precisely aligned with astronomical coordinates?

Stonehenge. 

( LuckyStep/Fotolia)

A Belief that ‘Prior’ Meant ‘Primitive’

If myth tells us there was a time when man was regularly reading the stars, communing with the Earth and the heavens, and generally studying from the book of Nature rather than symbols on paper, can we really say he was illiterate?

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Most early and literate explorers did not recognize the astronomical alignments and mathematical characteristics inherent in the pyramids , Egyptian temple ruins, and other ancient megaliths. Since it was assumed that the people who built them must have been more primitive than the later people of Greece, and especially Rome, no one was looking for architectural features that required celestial calculations.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century, when the prominent British Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer first seriously began to look at ancient temples around the world, that many astronomical alignments were noted. And even then, most archaeologists downplayed such observations as coincidence or merely structural aspects of primitive religious beliefs.

British Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer.

( Public Domain )

Astronomical Alignment and Mathematical Feats at the Great Pyramid

Astonishingly, we had to wait until the 1960’s before any serious study of celestial alignment was undertaken at Stonehenge (which we now know can be used to predict eclipses), one of the most famous megalithic sites in the world. Because of this lack of interest in connecting the dots, so to speak, important clues that resided in temple alignments with solstices, equinoxes, and other celestial phenomena were completely missed and went undiscovered for centuries. Still today, many archaeologists dismiss much of this astronomical information as unimportant because it does not fit well with accepted interpretations of archaic civilizations.

Over the past few decades, though, the tide has slowly begun to turn, as irrefutable evidence reveals that sophisticated astronomy, mathematics, and other higher sciences were indeed incorporated into many ancient structures. The most obvious candidate for study is the Great Pyramid at Giza , which is larger than anything the Romans or Greeks ever built, and still the largest stone building on Earth.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Credit: BigStockPhoto

With its original white (or possibly gold) capstone and limestone siding, it must have been an amazing sight, visible for miles (some ancient people referred to it as “The Light”). It is aligned to within 1/20th of a degree of the direction of the Earth’s rotation – not an easy feat. The massive base of the pyramid today appears to be level to within one centimeter, yet this accomplishment is said to have been performed with stone hammers, an assumption impossible to believe.

J. H. Cole, using modern surveying techniques, has accurately measured the pyramid, finding the ratio of the perimeter to the height a perfect imitation of a sphere (2 times Pi, the radius to circumference ratio of a sphere). Peter Tompkins, in his Secrets of the Great Pyramid , points out several other mathematical representations as well. Dividing the surface area of the Great Pyramid by the area of its base results in a number very near the golden mean (1.618), “a famous ratio in art and architecture.” In addition, he shows that the three great pyramids as they are laid out fit exactly into a rectangle aligned to the cardinal directions, measuring 1414 cubits by 1732 cubits, “a thousand times the square roots of 2 and 3 respectively.”

Still more interesting, in 1993 Robert Bauval (co-author of several books on the pyramids) noticed that the three main pyramids on the Giza Plateau were a mirror reflection of the three belt stars in the constellation Orion, a constellation important to the Egyptians . Bauval and others have also pointed out that the shafts in the Great Pyramid extending from the King’s and Queen’s Chambers also represent stellar alignments. Cutting such stones to the precise angles, placing them in a position so that their sides form a diagonal shaft that aligns with key astronomical coordinates (which must be calculated when most of the stars are not visible in that position, due to precession), embedding them in a massive structure comprised of millions of stones – some up to 70 tons – and doing it all without harder-than-stone tools or instruments or math, or even wheels, is pretty amazing stuff for a “primitive” culture. Or maybe that simplistic assumption is wrong.

Giza pyramids superimposed over the three stars of Orion's Belt.

(Davkal/ CC BY SA 3.0 )

The Mark of Early Advanced Civilizations?

One of the great enigmas presented by the ruins of many of these ancient cultures, most notably Egypt, is that they seemed to have arisen very quickly out of nothing. The Great Pyramid is supposed to have been built near the presumed beginning of this mysterious civilization. As author and rebel Egyptologist John Anthony West states, “The evidence for these advanced civilizations is almost universal in the sense that they all seem to be at their height near the beginning...practically all of them have deluge myths, practically all of them talk about earlier times, Golden Ages when people lived longer and were much more enlightened and advanced.”

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When Mesopotamia was being unearthed and some of the Biblical royal and city names could for the first time be confirmed as actual historical sites, there began to be good reason to take the stories of the Old Testament more literally, as well as some of the other myths and legends from prehistory.

There really might have been a flood of Biblical proportions , and a type of Noah’s Ark and the near loss of all that came before. It may not have happened exactly like the story, but there could have been massive flooding in some parts of the world that wiped away much evidence of prior civilizations. How else could civilization seem to develop out of nothing in Mesopotamia or Egypt 5000 years ago? The plant may have been chopped to the ground, but the roots would still be there.

‘The Deluge’ by Francis Danby, 1840.

( Public Domain )

• Top Image: Egyptian pyramids under a night sky. Several researchers believe astronomical alignments at this site point to signs of an ancient advanced civilization. Source: CC0

By Walter Cruttenden

• Extract from Chapter 1: Astronomical Alignments in ‘ Lost Star of Myth and Time ’ by Walter Cruttenden.

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

13-12-2019 om 01:10 geschreven door peter  

Cataclysm, Mass Extinctions, and the Consequent Myths

According to geologists, in the interval from 10,000 to 8,000 BC, some 35 to 45 species of large mammals became extinct. This is called a mass extinction. Mass extinctions can be defined as species death within a relatively short interval of time.

None of the mainstream theories which attempt to account for these great extinctions are entirely satisfactory. This is likely because orthodox geologists are operating out of the straitjacket of the theory of uniformitarianism, which suggests a rather slow, gradual change over time.

In geology, the present is key to the past. However, it’s commonly agreed that geologic time is marked by a relatively sudden change in climate about 10,000 years ago or more, from a cold glacial to warm interglacial environment.

During this time, there were catastrophic changes across the planet. For example, the asphalt and tar seeps of California, like those in South America and Africa, host a rich assemblage of evidence of faunal and floral life, the most spectacular having occurred in Rancho La Brea where the remains of numerous animals are tightly packed together.

Approximately 700 skulls of saber-toothed tigers have been systematically excavated, accompanied by a huge number of remains from horses, camels, bison, mammoths, mastodons, coyotes, wolves, sloths, and other faunal contemporaries, broken, mashed, and contorted. This suggests a sudden mass extinction where animals, predator and prey alike, were suddenly thrown together.

The Beresovka mammoth in Siberia was found with daises in its stomach. The intense refrigeration of this mammoth and others suggests that this happened very suddenly.

The Beresovka mammoth, except for head, it is an almost wholly preserved, mummified mammoth carcass discovered in Siberia.

(Cropbot / CC BY-SA 2.0 )

It froze the ground solid, turned lake and ground water into great lenses of ice, and froze dead and dying animals and plants throughout the region into grim memorials which have survived, unchanged, in that condition, down to our own day. Among these have been the frozen carcasses of mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and other large mammals.

It is important to note that these mammoth carcasses represent healthy, well-nourished individuals. They do not belong to very old, degenerate, or starving animals as some have maintained.

Indeed, a deep-frozen six-month old baby mammoth carcass found in 1977 was so perfectly preserved that analysis of its blood and protein, and its tissues were used for genetic studies. Interestingly, the date for its demise was determined to be about 12,000 years ago.

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The frozen mammoth calf "Lyuba" which still had food in its stomach.

(FunkMonk / CC BY-SA 2.0 )

The frozen mammoth flesh was described as fibrous and marbled with fat and looked as fresh as well-frozen beef. Excellent soup was made from the meat of some frozen mammoth carcasses, and the meat itself was apparently cooked and eaten.

The area where mammoths once lived is today called the tundra, where the average annual temperature is only two degrees above zero. It is treeless and the ground is frozen for 10 months of the year.

Where did these huge animals get enough to eat, considering the adult elephant can consume up to about 350 pounds of food daily? In addition, mastodons have been found deep frozen next to the carcasses of mammoths in Alaska, as well as the remains of horses, squirrels, and rhinoceroses.

Theories of Mass Extinction: The Clovis People

In an attempt to explain the extinction of so many species of land animals during this period, mainstream scientists have put forward a number of theories. One theory postulates that overhunting by early man was the cause. This is the most popular theory today.

It is believed that the Clovis people , hunters and gatherers, who suddenly emerged into prominence about 11,500 BC were responsible for the great extinctions. This is because, compared to the indigenous people of North America , the immigrant Clovis people were more numerous and more advanced in their hunting methods.

It is theorized they hunted many large mammals, or megafauna, to extinction. Their hunting amounted to overkill.

Clovis points from the Rummells-Maske Cache Site, Iowa.

(Billwhittaker / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

The most popular theory suggests that the immigrants must have gone from the arctic (Siberia) to the tropics and on to the near Antarctic regions of South America in a little over a thousand years. In addition to traveling this great distance in such a relatively short period of time, the Clovis people, seemingly ubiquitous, nearly wiped out whole large mammalian genera in the New World.

Archaeological research has yielded evidence of human occupation in the Americas as early as 32,000 years ago. Yet within 1,000 to 2,000 years after the arrival of the Clovis people, most of the big mammals were gone.

These animals, or megafauna, included mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, horses, camels, giant bears, cave lions, giant bison the size of mammoths, and saber-toothed tigers. That the Clovis could wipe out most of the big mammals, predator and prey alike, in such a short period time seems a bit unlikely.

Other Theories that Account for a Cataclysmic Event

What could have caused the climate to change so suddenly? Theories that account for this are not accepted by mainstream scientists. The first theory proposed here is crustal displacement as was elucidated by Charles Hapgood in his book Earth’s Shifting Crust , later called The Path of the Pole .

The ice cover of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago, is asymmetric with respect to the present position of the North Pole in the Arctic Sea. The North Pole was presumedly positioned in Greenland. A modeled path of a rapid polar shift is shown. It is a spiral, starting in Greenland and ending in the Arctic sea. A turn takes about 400 days. A relaxation time of 1,000 days for global deformations of the Earth was assumed.

(Walter Baltensperger / Public Domain )

One intriguing question is why so many of the large mammal carcasses are found so far north. In fact, their numbers increase farther north towards the Arctic Ocean. In addition, their bones are spread over the bottom of that ocean, where ships have dredged them up.

If the pole was at Hudson Bay instead of the Arctic Circle, as it is today, Siberia and Alaska would have been south of the pole and hence in a warmer climate. These large creatures could have survived, even flourished, in such an environment.

There are thousands of well-preserved mammoth tusks that have been discovered in Siberia and which have led to a worldwide trade in ivory, which has been going on since Roman times. If the ivory tusks are exposed to the air for any length of time, they rot; and yet there are well preserved tusks from extinct animals in the Arctic area still found today.

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Tusk of the adult male "Yukagir mammoth".

(FunkMonk / CC BY-SA 2.0 )

Some theorists have proposed that the outer crust of the Earth shifts periodically, moving some continents towards the poles and others away from them. Although this process may take up to 5,000 years, the final stages are rapid. According to this theory, the poles shifted from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Circle suddenly with dire consequences.

As a result, a crustal displacement model proposes catastrophic changes have occurred on the surface of the Earth. This theory challenges the central idea of geology: the principal of uniformitarianism, which we have already discussed.

There were earlier models of crustal displacement. One theory, purporting to explain the cause of the ice age, was due to the sliding of the lithosphere over the viscous magma underlying it through tidal friction.

Normal mantle viscosity, enhanced by powerful external influence, combined with sudden deglaciation, thus seemingly caused not only sudden crustal slippage and fracturing, volcanism, seismic activity but also a change in the actual inclination of the Earth’s spin axis. Proportional to the Earth as a whole, the crust is scarcely thicker than an onionskin is to an onion.

According to Hapgood, the last crustal displacement, around 11,500 years ago greatly affected North and South America, Australia, as well as parts of Asia. Hancock suggests some parts of Europe were impacted as well. The continent of Africa was not as greatly affected.

This is consistent with other theorists who propose that an Earth crust displacement would cause extinctions to occur on different continents at different rates as a result of varying changes in the world’s latitudes. Some continents experience great climatic change while others are largely unaffected.

Diagram of the internal layering of the Earth showing the lithosphere above the asthenosphere (not to scale).

(Nefronus / Public Domain )

Extraterrestrial Strike

Another theory is that an extraterrestrial object struck the planet, a catastrophic event. In his book, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization , Graham Hancock proposes that a comet struck North America 12,900 years ago and then again 11,600 years ago, wiping out the Clovis people, many species of megafauna, and melted the ice caps, causing a great flood, which is also reported in so many myths. Such an event could have facilitated a crustal displacement as well, causing the poles to shift.

Hancock suggests that parts of Europe and northern South America were also impacted. This is called the Younger Dryas comet impact theory, first proposed in 2007, and it has gained the support of some mainstream scientists.

A large enough comet could cause a cataclysm on Earth.

(urikyo33 / Public Domain )

It is important to mention that evidence of melted minerals such as chromite, quartz, and chert suggests temperatures were so high as to melt steel. As a result, Hancock proposes that an advanced civilization of prehistoric antiquity was obliterated from the face of the Earth during the Younger Dryas period. This has come down to us as the legend of Atlantis.

Myths of the Great Flood

Myths of a great flood are also associated with this period. A myth is defined as a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some superhuman being or some alleged person or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or of natural explanation.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell has said that the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bear within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source.

Many legends exist about the flood. Most peoples on Earth have ancestral memories of a flood of such a magnitude and with disastrous consequences, a universal catastrophe.

Thus, flood stories are found in Asia - in India, Burma, China and Malaya, in Palestine and Mesopotamia; as well as in Australia and most of the Pacific Islands, and among the Indians of the Americas. They are rarer, although not unknown, in Europe. They are not known at all in Africa, however.

The very fact that flood stories are found among people so diverse and far apart, both in time and space, shows that their common features cannot be coincidences, being the human mind’s similar reactions to similar circumstances. Other researchers have found, however, that there are tales of cataclysmic deluges told by peoples who have never seen the sea, or lakes, or great rivers.

The Greek fear of an errant sun was expressed in the myth of the sun god Helios and his son, Phaethon, born to him by a mortal woman. According to the story, the teenager Phaethon wanted to impress his friends by driving Helios’ chariot; however, he couldn’t control the winged steeds and thus dragged the sun closer to the Earth, setting it on fire.

Helios appealed to Zeus who killed Phaethon with a thunderbolt and unleashed a great flood to drown the fire, perhaps a symbolic version of real physical events. Some accounts suggest a comet or meteor striking or coming too close to Earth, an event that could, as already mentioned, precipitate a crustal displacement, facilitating a pole shift , and consequent flood.

In fact, according to Plato, the Egyptians told his ancestor, Solon, that the truth behind the myth is that there is a deviation in the heavenly bodies that travel around the Earth, which causes huge fires that destroy what is on the Earth across vast stretches of time.

The Ojibwa of North America had a myth of a fiery comet. They describe a comet that burned everything to the ground. It was depicted as having a long white tail that scorched the Earth, ushering in a different world. According to the Ojibwa, soon after the comet, the flooding of the Earth occurred.

Similar myths can be found between widely separated cultures around the globe. For example, there are striking similarities between the Haida Gwaii of western Canada and, halfway across the world, the Sumerians.

The Haida myth states that:

Long ago, our ancestors lived in the world’s largest village. Life was carefree until the chief of the heavens decided to destroy humankind by changing the sky and bringing a worldwide flood. Survivors escaped in giant canoes, which took them to a new home, where they landed on a mountaintop. A new era began.

Here is the Sumerian myth:

Long ago our ancestors lived on the island paradise of Dilmun. Life was carefree until the flood god Enlil decided to destroy humankind by changing the sky and bringing a worldwide flood. Survivors escaped in a large ship, which took them to a new home, where they landed upon a mountaintop. A new era began.

At the end of the last ice age, mainstream scientists note, the melting of ice is believed to have raised ocean levels by some 300 feet (91 meters). Flood myths from all over the world characteristically describe scenes when humans and animals flee from the rising tides and take refuge on mountaintops.

The Great Flood myth is a cataclysm that is prevalent in many cultures throughout the world. 

(JarektUploadBot / Public Domain )

The ancient Egyptian Papyrus describes a terrible devastation created by an early cataclysm, which turned the Earth upside down. The Ermitage Papyrus , now preserved in St. Petersburg, refers to a similar ancient world convulsion, while a third Egyptian papyrus tells how the world was nearly destroyed by fire and water during a tremendous celestial upheaval long ago, when the south became north and the world turned over.

The Berbers of North Africa have a legend of a land across the sea called Attala, which was rich in tin, silver, and gold but was submerged by the sea. The Basques of northern Spain and southern France consider themselves descendants of Atlaintika, or Atlantis.

Ancient Celtic legends called the continent reclaimed by the sea, Avalon. Arabian legends refer to the land of Ad, reputed to be the seat of civilization located across the western ocean. The ancient Indian texts refer to a continent called Atyantika, which was the scene of a catastrophic destruction.

There are over 500 cultures worldwide with legends of a great deluge. Survivors include single individuals or small groups. All seemed to have been forewarned of an impending catastrophe. They escaped by seeking high ground, caves, or by means of various objects that would float.

In summing up, something catastrophic happened at the end of the last ice age. Myths by people who experienced this help us better understand what occurred.

• Top image: The Earth endured a cataclysm that caused a mass extinction of many large mammals. Source:  James Thew / Adobe Stock.

By Pat Hanratty

{ https://www.stellanovus.com/ }

13-12-2019 om 00:29 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars

{ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ }

12-12-2019 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

44,000-Year-Old Cave Painting Could Be the Earliest Known Depiction of Hunting

A section of the cave painting.
Image: Griffith University

Archaeologists in Indonesia have stumbled upon an extraordinarily old cave painting which appears to depict human-like figures in pursuit of wild pigs and buffaloes. It’s quite possibly the oldest portrayal of a hunting scene in the archaeological record, but the vague nature of the artwork leaves it open to interpretation.

New research published today in Nature describes the discovery of an approximately 43,900-year-old cave painting found at the Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 site in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The lead authors of the new study, archaeologists Adam Brumm and Maxime Aubert from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, say it’s a hunting scene, making it the oldest on record—assuming their interpretation is correct. One of the experts we spoke to said the painting, which depicts a series of human-like figures around several animals, may represent something else entirely.

A wide view of the entire painting, with annotations.
Image: Griffith University

Regardless of what exactly it depicts, this piece is significant due to its extreme age, the sophistication of the artwork, and its geographical location. Assuming the dating was done correctly, it’s now the oldest known figurative art drawn by early modern humans.

“This is a very important paper,” said Chris Stringer, a physical anthropologist from the Natural History Museum in London who wasn’t involved with the new research, in an email to Gizmodo.

First, some important context before we dive into the details.

Older cave art dating to around 64,000 years ago has been discovered in Europe, but those drawings, featuring animals, dots, geometric signs, and hand stencils, were almost certainly produced by Neanderthals. An older, non-figurative art piece attributed to our species was recently unearthed in South Africa in the form of a 73,000-year-old cross-hatched pattern drawn onto a smooth rock. And in 2014, the same Griffith University researchers from the new study found the oldest known cave paintings produced by early modern humans—a series of hand stencils dating back some 40,000 years, also in Sulawesi.

As for cave paintings depicting hunting scenes, in which both humans and animals are unambiguously shown together, that’s surprisingly rare. Prior to the new discovery, the oldest known hunting scenes belonged to Upper Paleolithic European cultures, sometimes referred to as Magdalenian cultures, dating to around 21,000 to 14,000 years ago, including the famous drawing found at The Shaft in Lascaux France, which depicts a wounded bison charging a bird-headed humanoid. These artworks inspired the idea that Magdalenian cultures kickstarted these sorts of figurative, or representational, drawings, to which all subsequent cave artists owe their inspiration. The new discovery at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 effectively overturns this Eurocentric assumption.

Found in 2017, the 43,900-year-old cave painting appears to be a single composition that measures around 4 meters (13 feet) wide. The painting isn’t perfectly legible due to bright splotches that formed over it, but much of the scene is still visible. The artist, or artists, appears to be depicting tiny human-like figures who are brandishing spears and/or ropes as they pursue buffaloes and pigs.

Possible therianthropes, in which hunters are depicted as part-human, part-animal beings (the red arrow up top shows the figure’s ‘beak’)

Image: Griffith University

Fascinatingly, the figures were drawn as human-animal hybrids—an abstraction or impression known as therianthropes. While rare, anthropologists and archaeologists have seen this sort of representation before.

“Previously, the earliest relatively unambiguous image of a therianthrope known to archaeology was the so-named ‘Lion-man’ figurine from Germany, a sculpture of a part-human, part-cave lion being carved out of mammoth tusk,” Brumm told Gizmodo in an email. “This was found in 1939 in cave deposits believed to around 40,000 years old. The meaning of this image has been extensively debated for decades; some think it represents a trancing shaman transforming into a lion, others think it is an image of a spirit or god or some sort of supernatural creature, and others think it just depicts a guy wearing an animal skin.”

Clearly, therianthropes are evidence of highly developed thinking. In this case, the figures, with body parts borrowed from lizards and birds, were used to convey a story or possibly some kind of spiritual meaning. Consequently, this might be the oldest known depiction of spiritual or mythical beings, highlighting the existential or metaphysical sophistication of this early culture.

“These images represent some of the oldest storytelling anywhere in the world and contain elements that have never been seen together—a hunting scene depicting hunting strategies combined with the use of therianthropes,” Kira Westaway, an associate professor from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University in Australia, told Gizmodo. “This is not just a simple representation of themselves, such as a hand stencil, but a complex representation of their existence and potentially their beliefs—to find this at this early age is astonishing,” said Westaway, who wasn’t involved with the new research.

A section of the cave painting, showing six human-like figures surrounding an anoa, or dwarf buffalo.
Image: Griffith University

As noted, much of the painting is covered in splotches, which turned out to be as much of a blessing as it was a curse.

“These features are small, hard, popcorn-like nodular growths comprised of calcium carbonate materials that form naturally on the limestone cave walls and ceilings over very long periods of time and sometimes, fortunately, as in this case, over the prehistoric paintings,” said Brumm. “I say fortunately because in some instances it is possible to date when these mineral deposits formed using the uranium-series method, which essentially measures the radioactive decay of elements within the calcium carbonate.”

So the popcorn-like growths, which formed well after the drawing was made, were used to date the piece, which means the painting could be older—perhaps considerably older—than the date given of 43,900 years ago. The earliest fossil evidence of Homo sapiens in this part of the world dates to around 70,000 years ago in Sumatra, but evidence of archaic humans, namely Homo erectus, living in Indonesia date back to—get this—around 1.5 million years ago in Java. Intriguingly, Denisovans, a sister group to the Neanderthals, were still around when this cave painting was made, and fossil and genetic evidence suggests they made it into southeast Asia and Melanesia. We asked Dr. Stringer if this art could’ve been produced by other humans, Denisovans included.

“Well, they might still have survived in Asia at this date, but this kind of art was certainly demonstrably created by Homo sapiens at later dates in various parts of the world, so it is most likely to be the work of our species, which is represented in the region at more than 70,000 years ago in Sumatra (Lida Ajer) and about 40,000 years ago in Borneo (Niah Cave) and Australia (Mungo),” said Stringer.

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi, showing the location of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 in the limestone karst region of Pangkep, near Makassar.
Image: Kim Newman

The painting was drawn with natural mineral pigments, including ochre and ironstone hematite. According to the authors, the scene depicts several therianthropes in the act of killing or subduing six animals: two Sulawesi warty pigs and four dwarf buffaloes known as anoas, both of which were common to Sulawesi at the time.

“Although these animals were depicted in outline profile with irregular patterns of infill the figures were executed with a relatively high degree of anatomical realism and certain [anatomical features] of these species are clearly represented, such as, in the case of Sulawesi warty pig, its distinctive head crest, and, with the anoas, their characteristic straight, dagger-like horns,” Brumm told Gizmodo.

Brumm said “we can’t ever know the real meanings of this cave painting,” but the “depiction of armed human-like figures surrounding the animals and confronting them with what seem to be ropes or spears, at least in our view, is fairly convincing evidence that this is a hunting scene of some description,” he explained, adding that it’s wholly plausible that “the presence of therianthropes possibly implies a spiritual dimension to the art” and it could represent “some kind of myth or religious story, but of course we can only guess.”

Given the extreme date and location of this cave painting, it’s exceptionally unlikely that artworks seen later in Europe had any cultural connection.

“Certainly these paintings show that any Eurocentric narrative of the development of such complex representational art must be wrong,” Stringer told Gizmodo. “In my view, comparable artistic creations in Australia will eventually be placed to this same remote period of time, and even older representational art may one day be found in Africa, preceding significant dispersals of modern humans from there, beginning around 60,000 years ago.”

Relatedly, Westaway said “religious thoughts and hunting strategies that are older than those depicted in European rock art certainly changes our perspectives on the abilities of the modern humans that traveled down through Asia en route to Australia.”

Close-up view of an animal-like figure with the red arrow indicating a possible ‘tail’.
Image: Griffith University

But does the cave painting actually portray a hunting scene? Paul Bahn, author of The First Artists: In Search of the World’s Oldest Art, isn’t convinced, saying the interpretation of the piece is “somewhat excessive and simplistic.” Here’s what he said to Gizmodo in an email:

The big animals are fine, and seem straightforward to our modern eyes. The ‘humanoid’ figures, on the other hand, are so tiny and badly weathered that their interpretation is by no means clear. They might be therianthropes, but this is highly uncertain. Therianthropes are extremely rare in European Ice Age art, and in fact this collection—if valid—almost outnumbers those in Europe! For example, the supposed ‘tail’ on [one of the figures pictured above] could just as easily be a backward-pointing phallus, like the one on Europe’s most famous therianthrope in Les Trois Frères cave [see here].

I agree with the authors that, if they are indeed therianthropes, then their status and their tiny size would suggest that this is not a straightforward hunting scene. It is far more likely to be a story or myth, and may not involve hunting at all—I see no clear weapons, and the lines may not even be ropes. They could be many things. One could argue that the small creatures are creating the big ones, or vice versa! In short, there is a lot of wishful thinking in the chosen interpretation. Personally I would have rested content with presenting some very fine early art in a part of the world which has only recently come to the fore in this field. It is especially hard to judge since we do not have a single clear hunting scene in the whole of European Ice Age art!

In addition to this, Bahn said the European examples of therianthropes are equally worthy of criticism in terms of how they’ve been interpreted, and he felt the authors made a mistake by failing to mention a complex stone-bone figure known as the “Mask”—a 70,000-year-old artifact found in La Roche-Cotard, France, that was produced by Neanderthals and which is in his opinion is an early example of figurative art.

Stringer, on the other hand, said some experts might question the uranium-series dating of the wall markings, but the “method looks to have been applied carefully, and this is almost certainly the oldest dated representational art so far,” he told Gizmodo. As for the interpretation of the therianthropes and the ropes, Stringer said that was “more speculative,” but he found the authors’ interpretations to be “reasonable.”

It’s pretty amazing how a single old painting can cause so much conversation and speculation—but such is the nature of art and science. It’s a magical thing when these two disciplines converge, and it’s safe to say this cave painting will continue to spark discussions and arguments over the years to come.

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

12-12-2019 om 23:41 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX to Make Starlink Satellites Dimmer to Lessen Impact on Astronomy: Report

12-12-2019 om 23:19 geschreven door peter  

How NASA's Next Mars Rover Will Hunt for Alien Life

By Mike Wall 

The strategy involves matching geochemistry with structure.

Artist's illustration on NASA's 2020 Mars rover on the Red Planet.

(Image: © NASA)

SAN FRANCISCO — Spotting signs of long-dead life is a tall order for a lonely robot on a faraway world, but NASA's next Mars rover should be up to the challenge, mission team members said.

NASA's 2020 Mars rover is scheduled to launch next summer and touch down in February 2021 inside the Red Planet's 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which scientists think hosted a lake and river delta in the ancient past.

The six-wheeled robot will then scour the area for potential biosignatures. This work will consist of observing Jezero rocks in fine textural detail and using several spectrometers to map geochemistry precisely onto that texture, Mars 2020 deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan told reporters today (Dec. 10) here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

• Related: NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures

"It's our understanding of biosignatures in the rock record that it's that combination — texture and mapping of composition — that really allows you to build a strong case for a biosignature," said Stack Morgan, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"So, we are very much hoping that, with our payload, we can make a very strong case that there are biosignatures on the surface of Mars," should any exist, she added.

Stack Morgan passed around a fossil stromatolite that formed here on Earth to help illustrate her point. Stromatolites are mats formed by the growth of photosynthetic microbes known as cyanobacteria. This growth occurs in discrete layers, so mapping carbon-containing organic compounds precisely onto the layers in a similar Martian structure would provide strong evidence of life, she said.

Mars 2020 — which will receive a more memorable moniker soon, via a student naming contest — will be able to do such work. Its predecessor, NASA's Curiosity rover, cannot. Curiosity can image rocks in similar detail to Mars 2020, but it determines composition in bulk and therefore cannot map the geochemistry onto the observed structure.

"We would just grind up that stromatolite and tell you it has carbon," Curiosity mission scientist Ashwin Vasavada, also of JPL, said with a laugh during today's media roundtable.

That's no knock on Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012 and is still going strong. Curiosity has achieved a great deal, finding, for example, that Gale supported a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system for long stretches in the ancient past. But the older rover isn't equipped with life-hunting gear.

• Related: Long Window for Life on Mars: Hundreds of Millions of Years?

Mars 2020's on-site observations alone may not be enough to convince some researchers that life once existed on the Red Planet. Scientists are a skeptical bunch by nature, after all, and any announcement of a potential discovery of alien life will be scrutinized incredibly intensely, as we've already seen with the Viking Mars lander results and analyses of the Red Planet meteorite ALH84001.

But the mission is making accommodations for such skepticism. A core part of Mars 2020 is the collection and caching of 20 to 30 drilled samples for eventual return to Earth, where multiple research teams in well-equipped labs around the world can study the material.

The retrieval of those samples will be a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). Details of this plan are still being worked out, but Earth return does indeed seem like it's going to happen: ESA brass officially confirmed the agency's participation during a high-level meeting late last month. (ESA is working on its own life-hunting Mars rover, by the way, a robot named Rosalind Franklin, which is scheduled to launch next summer, just like Mars 2020. Rosalind Franklin is part of the ExoMars program, a collaboration between ESA and Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos.)

Mars 2020 isn't just a life-hunting mission, however. The rover's analyses should also help scientists better understand the ways in which rocky planets evolve over time, Stack Morgan said. And Mars 2020 carries gear that should aid NASA's plan to put astronauts on the Red Planet in the 2030s.

For example, the coming rover is equipped with ground-penetrating radar, which will search for deposits of subsurface water ice — a key resource for Mars pioneers — and pockets of briny liquid, among other things. Another instrument is a technology demonstration that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere. 

Overall, the car-size robot will tote seven science instruments and 23 cameras to the Red Planet. Mars 2020 will also sport a microphone to capture otherworldly sounds, and the probe will bring a tiny, technology-demonstrating helicopter scout as well.

• Mars 2020: The Red Planet's Next Rover
• Life on Mars: Exploration & Evidence
• Photos: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life

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/ }

12-12-2019 om 23:05 geschreven door peter  

Some of the most spectacular UFO accounts come from pilots and aircraft. These are the witnesses that seem to know what they are talking about, who are familiar with the skies and the various phenomena associated with them, and reports of strange unidentified objects from such witnesses always capture attention. One of the most well-documented such accounts on record comes from a crew aboard a Japanese airliner flying over Alaska, and it has gone on to become a much discussed entry into the realm of airborne UFO sightings.

It was November 17, 1986, and Japan Air Lines flight 1628, a Japanese Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft, was on its way from Paris to Narita International Airport, in Japan, with a cargo of Beaujolais wine. The flight was overseen by Japan Airlines Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot and senior airline pilot with more than 10,000 hours flight experience, and everything was smooth at the start. The plane took off on schedule and made its way towards its destination, a route which would take it over a portion stretching from Reykjavík to Anchorage, Alaska. It was here in these skies that the routine flight would take a turn for the decidedly unusual.

At approximately 5:11 PM, the plane was passing over eastern Alaska when some of the crew made an observation of two unidentified objects on the left of the aircraft, described as having rectangular arrays of thrusters that appeared to be glowing. The objects seemed to be square shaped and somewhat cylindrical, and were keeping to the cover of the clouds and darkness, yet undeniably were apparently pacing the plane, suddenly rising with great speed to approach the plane, getting so close that the interior of the aircraft was illuminated by their glow and the heat emanating off of them could be felt. The alarmed Captain Terauchi made a series of panicked calls to the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center to see if there were any other aircraft in the area, to which they responded that there were none showing up on radar. It was about at this point that the two unidentified objects began to dart and move in a very erratic manner, and a much larger craft also would loom into view behind them. Terauchi would say of the weird encounter:

The distance from the lights was far enough from us and we felt no immediate danger. I thought perhaps it is a UFO. The lights were still moving strangely. Most unexpectedly two spaceships appeared [directly in front of the plane], shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt [the warmth of the UFO’s thrusters’] on my face. Then, three to seven seconds later, the fire — like from jet engines — stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly in level flight at the same speed as we were. The middle of the body of the ship sparked an occasional stream of lights, like a charcoal fire. Its shape was a square, flying 500 feet to 1,000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us. Its size was about the same size as the body of a DC-8 [similar in size to a Boeing 707].

It is impossible for any manmade machine to make a sudden appearance in front of a jumbo jet that is flying 910 kilometers per hour and to move along in a formation paralleling our aircraft. But we did not feel threatened or in danger. Honestly, we were simply astounded. I have no idea why they came so close to us. There was a pale white flat light in the direction where the ships flew away, [pacing us]. The Anchorage Center replied that they saw nothing on their radar. I set our digital weather radar distance to 20 miles, radar angle to horizon. There it was, on the screen: a large, green, round object had appeared seven or eight miles away, in the direction of the object. We arrived at the sky above the Eielson Air Force Base and Fairbanks. It was a clear night. We were just above the bright city lights and we checked the pale white light behind us. There was a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship! We must get away quickly!

The larger craft was described by Terauchi as “a mothership,” and reported as being twice the size of an aircraft carrier, looming out there on the horizon and pacing the airplane. Throughout the whole ordeal, the original lights were displaying feats of maneuverability that were well beyond any known aircraft, seeming to defy gravity, and Terauchi would say of this:

The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it [appeared to be] standing still. The next instant it changed course. In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity.

In the meantime, Air Traffic Control was unable to register anything on their radar to confirm any of this, although Elmendorf’s NORAD Regional Operations Control Center (ROCC) did manage to pick up a “surge primary return” in the area. Terauchi carried out evasive maneuvers, changing altitudes and moving about in circles, but the strange craft easily managed to match them and continue to follow, and when offers were made to scramble military jets the Captain refused, not sensing that there was any imminent threat. The objects would continue their inscrutable activities until a United Airlines passenger jet entered the airspace around 150 miles from Anchorage and purportedly sent the UFOs scattering off into the unknown. Flight 1628 would land safely, and Terauchi and his crew, co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba, would file a report with the Federal Aviation Administration on what they had witnessed.

The bizarre account would get out into the press, and interestingly Captain Terauchi would be grounded in response, relegated to a desk job, which only stoked the fires of conspiracy talk. John Callahan, the FAA Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations branch, launched an investigation and would turn up some interesting findings, such as evidence that showed that the objects at some points had been clocked at moving thousands of miles per hour. Callahan would apparently have a meeting attended by representatives of the FBI, CIA and President Reagan’s Scientific Study Team, during which the data was met with excitement according to him. He would say:

When they asked me what I thought, I told them that it looked like we had a UFO that was up there. As far as I was concerned, Reagan’s science team were the ones that verified my own thoughts about it. They were very, very excited about the data. They had said at that time that this was the was the only time — and they had used the words ‘a UFO’ — was ever recorded on radar for any length of time.

Regardless of this, it was allegedly decided to basically bury the data on the incident and all present were told to act as if the meeting had never taken place at all. Not only this, Callahan would claim that the officials had confiscated all of the data and whisked it away, although he managed to squirrel away the initial pilot’s report. The FAA would conduct a 3-month investigation into the incident, and after it wrapped up there would be a fair amount of backtracking, such as claiming that the military radar signatures had been caused by technical difficulties and a “split radar image,” and that there was no evidence at all that anything had been there.

The case has ever since been picked up and hotly discussed in UFO circles, where various hypotheses have been thrown about. The skeptical argument is that the crew had been disoriented and had misidentified Venus or Mars, both of which had been unusually bright at the time in question, or that they had been reflections on cloud cover or the result of optical illusions caused by ice crystals. However, we must remember that these were experienced pilots and that there was mention of actual heat from the UFOs permeating the air around them. Another skeptical argument is that Captain Terauchi had already established himself as being a UFO believer, having logged several other sightings during his tenure with the airline, and so it is suggested that perhaps he was not a totally unbiased observer, but here the phenomenon was witnessed by other crew as well, who corroborated the story, although it is only Terauchi who apparently saw “the mothership.” The exact details of the meeting allegedly attended by Callahan have never been officially released or corroborated either, further muddying the waters.

What did Japan Airlines Flight 1628 see, if anything? The theories have orbited the case of course, including that this was some sort of top secret stealth technology or experimental aircraft being tested, that it was actual aliens, or that it was nothing more than Venus or ice crystals. The intriguing thing here is the meeting that supposedly took place afterwards and the unceremonious grounding of the pilot who logged it all. Is this evidence of a cover up, or something else? Regardless of what is really going on here, the case has become one of the most oft-discussed and pervasive in UFO literature, and stands tall among the numerous accounts of pilots having brushes with the unknown.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

In my previous article, I detailed how Kenneth Arnold – the man who ushered in the era of Flying Saucers in June 1947 – eventually changed his views on the nature of the UFO phenomenon. In Arnold’s own words in the early 1960s: “After some 14 years of extensive research, it is my conclusion that the so-called unidentified flying objects that have been seen in our atmosphere are not space ships at all, but are groups and masses of living organisms that are as much a part of our atmosphere and space as the life we find in the depths of our oceans. The only major difference in the space and atmosphere organisms are that they have the natural ability to change their densities at will.” That’s quite a change of opinion, to say the very least! Still on this issue of changing opinions, I’ll share with you today what I think is the most spectacular (and controversial and mysterious) change of opinion in the entire history of Ufology. It all revolves around the Roswell affair of July 1947 and the U.S. Air Force.

In 1994, the USAF published a detailed report (followed by an even bigger one in 1995) stating that while the Pentagon did not believe aliens crashed at Roswell, its staff no longer believed that the cause of the event was a weather balloon. The Air Force said that what really came down was a Mogul balloon: a huge balloon array designed to monitor for early Soviet atomic test-explosions in the atmosphere. But, that’s not the most amazing change of opinion I want to share with you. Yes, it relates to Roswell (directly, no less) but it is focused on a very different aspect of the mystery – that involving claims that bodies had been found at the crash site. In its 1994 report, the Air Force firmly stated that they had not addressed the matter of bodies for one specific, simple reason: Mogul balloons didn’t have crews. They were completely, 100 percent unmanned. In light of the USAF’s 1994 words on the bodies (or the lack of them), it was a very big surprise when, in 1997, the Air Force announced they were releasing a new report that would show bodies were found after all. They were, in reality, the Pentagon said, crash-test dummies. In other words, witness to the affair were really seeing military dummies on the ranch floor when they thought they were seeing small unusual bodies.

The 1997 report is a strange one. We have to wonder why the USAF even decided to publish the “dummies report.” Three years earlier it had made a clear and concise statement that no bodies of any kind – human, animal or alien – were found. When the USAF changed its opinion  – and having published a new report in 1997 that, in many ways, only served to create suspicions that this was all part of an ongoing cover-up – it wasn’t just UFO researchers who sat up and took notice: it was the mainstream media, too; many of who displayed doubts about the new theory. Or the new opinion. Let’s see what the Air Force had to say about this massive turnaround.

The 1997 report was titled The Roswell Report: Case Closed. In the foreword to the extensive report, Sheila Widnall, who at the time was the Secretary of the Air Force, stated this: “‘The ‘Roswell Incident’ has assumed a central place in American folklore since the events of the 1940s in a remote area of New Mexico. Because the Air Force was a major player in those events, we have played a key role in executing the General Accounting Office’s tasking to uncover all records regarding that incident. Our objective throughout this inquiry has been simple and consistent: to find all the facts and bring them to light. If documents were classified, declassify them; where they were dispersed, bring them into a single source for public review. In July 1994, we completed the first step in that effort and later published The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. This volume represents the necessary follow-on to that first publication and contains additional material and analysis. I think that with this publication we have reached our goal of a complete and open explanation of the events that occurred in the Southwest many years ago. Beyond that achievement, this inquiry has shed fascinating light into the Air Force of that era and revitalized our appreciation for the dedication and accomplishments of the men and women of that time. As we celebrate the Air Force’s 50th Anniversary, it is appropriate to once again reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to make ours the finest air and space force in history.”

So, why did the USAF alter its opinion? The 1997 report includes the following: “The July 1994 Air Force report concluded that the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, did indeed recover material near Roswell in July 1947. This 1,000-page report methodically explains that what was recovered by the Army Air Forces was not the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien crew, but debris from an Army Air Forces balloon-borne research project code named Mogul. Although Mogul components clearly accounted for the claims of ‘flying saucer’ debris recovered in 1947, lingering questions remained concerning anecdotal accounts that included descriptions of ‘alien’ bodies. The issue of ‘bodies’ was not discussed extensively in the 1994 report because there were not any bodies connected with events that occurred in 1947. The extensive Secretary of the Air Force-directed search of Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force records from 1947 did not yield information that even suggested the 1947 ‘Roswell’ events were anything other than the retrieval of the Mogul equipment.”

The USAF continued: “Subsequent to the 1994 report, Air Force researchers discovered information that provided a rational explanation for the alleged observations of alien bodies associated with the ‘Roswell Incident.’ Pursuant to the discovery, research efforts compared documented Air Force activities to the incredible claims of ‘flying saucers,’ ‘aliens’ and seemingly unusual Air Force involvement. This in-depth examination revealed that these accounts, in most instances, were of actual Air Force activities but were seriously flawed in several major areas, most notably: the Air Force operations that inspired reports of  ‘bodies’ (in addition to being earthly in origin) did not occur in 1947. It appears that UFO proponents have failed to establish the accurate dates for these ‘alien’ observations (in some instances by more than a decade) and then erroneously linked them to the actual Project Mogul debris recovery. This report discusses the results of this further research and identifies the likely sources of the claims of ‘alien’ bodies. Contrary to allegations that the Air Force has engaged in a cover-up and possesses dark secrets involving the Roswell claims, some of the accounts appear to be descriptions of unclassified and widely publicized Air Force scientific achievements.”

The military’s conclusions read as follows, in summarized form:  “Air Force activities which occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947. ‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research. The ‘unusual’ military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations. Claims of bodies at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital were most likely a combination of two separate incidents: 1) a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and, 2) a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.”

The biggest change of opinion in UFO history? In my view, yes.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

The landscape of UFOlogy is littered with an array of stories of the strange and outlandish. This area is by nature a wellspring of high strangeness, the bizarre, and reports that often seem to defy all attempts to categorize them. Among these the most unusual seem to be those cases in which an unidentified object has come hurtling down from the heavens to crash, and there is a surprisingly high number of such otherwordly tales. One of the more well-known and oft-discussed of these is a mysterious event that unfolded in the remote wilds of Nova Scotia, Canada, and which has attracted much attention from UFOogists and remains unsolved to this day.

It was the evening of October 4, 1967, and the day had come to an end at the tiny, rustic fishing village of Shag Harbour, tucked away in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and surrounded by scenic vistas. The sun went down, and the evening was just like any other, until at 11:20 PM something very strange happened at this isolated place. Up in the sky there was a sudden bright flash, and four brilliant lights that travelled over the area for nearly an hour, until a bright object suddenly dipped down to go crashing into the water with great force. Some people would claim that the anomalous object had made an otherworldly whistling noise as it descended, to punctuate its landing with a loud, reverberating boom, while others reported that the object seemed to flash a sequence of lights before its fall. One witness named Laurie Wickens would later say of it:

We see four lights in the sky and over the land here. We thought it was a plane and never paid no attention – more or less just watching lights go on and off. It went across the road in front of us, behind the hill – we couldn’t see it. We made it to the top of the hill. There was a light in the water. We went to the phone booth, called the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and reported a plane crash.

Shag Harbour

Wickens would add that the mysterious craft had floated about in the water around a half mile off shore while trailing a strange yellowish substance, bobbing along for nearly an hour before sinking down into the depths, and there were several RCMP officers who saw the floating object as well. In all, at least eleven people would flood the RCMP with reports of having seen essentially the same thing, a bright light whizzing across the sky to crash into the sea, and it was at first assumed to be an airplane crash. In response, both local fishermen and the RCMP immediately launched a search and rescue operation, quickly arriving at the scene where the object had supposedly gone down, joined by the Coast Guard, but there was no wreckage or sign of the aircraft other than an unusual yellow foam found swirling about in the waves.

Interestingly, it would be found that there were no aircraft reported missing, and that indeed all commercial, private and military aircraft were totally accounted for all along the eastern seaboard stretching down through New England. Simply put, if this had been a plane, then no one knew who it was or where it came from. The mention of the lights and behavior of the craft before impact, as well as the lack of any missing aircraft and the fact that it did not sink right away, led RCC Halifax to pass along the strange incident to the “Air Desk” at Royal Canadian Air Force headquarters in Ottawa, where it was labelled as a UFO report. It was at around this time that the military moved in, with a Navy ship and divers from the Royal Canadian Navy and the Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic arriving on the scene to search the depths for a full three days, scouring the entire area, although their official report would claim that they had found nothing at all, no bodies, no wreckage, nothing. Of course, there were some witnesses who would step forward to claim that the Navy had indeed found something, and that it had been whisked away, but there is nothing to verify this.

In the meantime, the story was hitting the news in a major way, and there was much talk about the possibility that this had not been a plane at all, but rather a crashed UFO. Feeding into this idea were several other UFO sightings that had been reported in the same general area in the days leading up to what had been dubbed “The Shag Harbour Incident” and could be related. In one report, on the same evening at 7:15 PM Air Canada flight 305 reported that they had spotted a brilliantly lit, rectangular object with smaller lights behind it pacing their plane about a mile off, before they witnessed a large explosion, followed by another apparent explosion, although these produced no noticeable sound. could this have been the craft that went down? In another, Capt. Leo Howard Mersey, of the fishing vessel MV Nickerson, had picked up four anomalous objects on radar, after which the entire crew had seen a formation of four bright lights in the sky.

It would turn out that there had been several other reports of strange lights in the skies of the area in the hours leading up to the crash, which only served to fuel the fires of discussion that this had been no airplane. This would help the incident launch itself firmly into the UFO discourse, and it would become a classic case of a possible UFO crash, surrounded by mysteries and conspiracy theories. The case would go on to be investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Canadian government, and the U.S. Condon Committee, making it one of the most well-documented cases of what officially remains a UFO out there.

The incident has gone on to become a part of local and Canadian UFO lore, to the point that there is an annual two-day Shag Harbour UFO festival, as well as a limited edition series of glow-in-the-dark coins depicting the incident that were released by The Royal Canadian Mint that sold out nearly immediately. The case has become a classic, iconic addition to theUFO lore, very well documented, and still no one really has any idea of what exactly transpired on that fateful evening. Was it aliens, meteors, an earthquake, or what? Did the government cover it all up to relegate it into the dark recesses of history? No one really knows, and the Shag Harbour Incident remains a much talked about case within the annals of the strange.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 21:02 geschreven door peter  

One of the UFO-related issues that isn’t touched on as much as it could be is that of what I call “UFO warnings.” I’m talking specifically about those in the UFO field who have made statements designed to deter other researchers from digging too deep into the subject – for the sake of their physical health and sanity. In many cases, they are former researchers; people who had stumbled across something that led them not just to quit Ufology, but to encourage others in the field to quit, too. Frederick “Ted” Holiday – the author of The Goblin Universe, The Dragon and the Disc, and The Great Orm of Loch Ness – claimed to have seen a Man in Black-type character near the shores of Loch Ness, Scotland, in 1973. Roland Watson, an authority on the Nessie phenomenon, says: “Events took an even stranger turn when [Holiday’s] co-author, Randall Jones Pugh, did a radical thing when in 1980 he destroyed his UFO work and walked away from the subject. This happened after a series of personal experiences which he said ‘were too frightening to talk about‘. Why did he do that? What were these experiences that put fear into him and did the death of his fellow investigator, Ted Holiday, months before add to some intimidation he felt he was under? There is now no way to tell since Randall died in 2003.” Pugh warned people to stay away from the UFO subject, such was the fear he developed of the phenomenon.

In an interview I did with Ray Boeche – both a priest and a long-time UFO investigator – he told me: “I have always thought that one of the most important things that John Keel ever said was that if you have kids or teenagers, this is not something to encourage them to get involved with. Keel was a pretty dyed-in-the-wool atheist. But he understood that, at some level, there’s something, in some sense transcendent over us, that can, if nothing else, ‘mess’ with us. And it can cause a lot of damage. Sometimes, I think I’m singing a one-note song with this, from a Christian perspective. I would not consider myself theologically liberal or a theological fundamentalist. My beliefs are solidly orthodox, and rooted in my view of the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. But there are things that we just aren’t equipped to deal with from a mechanistic, naturalistic worldview. There are malevolent forces out there that will be happy to take advantage of just about any opening we give them. And, so, we need to be very cautious. I tend to think that may be what happened to Albert Bender, but he might not have been so cautious.”

And talking of Albert Bender…he was the poor soul who, in almost single-handed fashion, unleashed the Men in Black phenomenon on Ufology, in the early 1950s. He was also a direct witness to the chilling things in black. Not only that, Bender largely quit Ufology after writing his 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. Eventually, he quit the subject completely. Even today, the full story of Bender’s exit from Ufology remains shrouded in mystery. Notably, Bender himself – back in the fifties – warned his colleagues of the dangers of looking into the UFO phenomenon.

Now, let’s take a look at the work of John Keel, most noted for his books The Mothman Prophecies and Operation Trojan Horse. In a 2017 review of the latter book, Andrew Griffin wrote: “Keel says that ‘black magic’ is often linked to the phenomenon, and some people have such frightening experiences dabbling in the topic, that they abandon it for good. In fact, Keel tells his adult readers who are parents to warn their children away from Ufology altogether.‘I have in my files hundreds of cases, some of which have now been investigated by qualified psychiatrists, in which young men and women obsessed with the UFO phenomenon have suffered frightening visits from these apparitions, been followed by mysterious black Cadillacs which appeared and disappeared suddenly, and have been terrified into giving up their pursuit of UFOs. Many contactees report similar experiences‘ [italics Griffin’s].”

Gareth Medway addressed the experiences of a a UFO researcher named Brian Leathley-Andrews, of Coventry, England. Medway said that Leathley-Andrews had a series of strange experiences in the 1960s, and one particularly weird affair in October 1968.  On the day in question, Medway wrote, he “returned home to notice a man standing by the next-door garage.”

Leathley-Andrews said of the man: “His face was glowing orange and as I watched, the face changed to that of an old man before my eyes.”

Medway stated that: “After this [Leathley-Andrews] started experiencing problems with his telephone, and getting threatening calls. He soon abandoned UFO investigation.”

In 2018, Leathley-Andrews finally came out of the shadows, years after he quit Ufology, and said: ““I want to publicly warn all teenage hobbyists that this is nothing to dabble in lightly.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

Every high school physics student knows that the universe is governed by four forces of nature – gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism and the strong force – and anything found to be different would change everything we know about everything … or at least about physics. Get ready because that moment may have arrived. Researchers in Hungary claim to have discovered a new particle which exhibits a fifth force – and it may explain dark matter … provided we survive the end of physics as we know it.

In “Observation of Anomalous Internal Pair Creation in 8Be: A Possible Indication of a Light, Neutral Boson,” a paper submitted recently for peer review, researchers from the Institute of Nuclear Research in Hungary describe new evidence they discovered supporting the existence of X17, a strange-behaving particle apparently emitted during the breakdown of radioactive beryllium. First theorized in 2016, they estimated the mysterious particle has a mass of nearly 17 megaelectronvolts and named it X17

In their latest experiments, the researchers observed X17 again, this time in the decaying of helium atoms. But the bigger discovery is that the particle is a boson—which means it’s not ordinary matter. If it’s not ordinary matter, then it could be … dark matter! That would make X17 proof of a fifth fundamental force and all that goes with it actually existing. If only there were a way to prove that X17 is the chosen one.

Enter CERN – you knew the home of the Higgs boson particle would eventually be involved with this. The European Organization for Nuclear Research has been using the Large Hadron Collider to search for the X17 particle and hasn’t found one yet. The new research operated at a much lower energy level than the LHC, so it could offer new data to help in that quest – if the evidence is first verified by peer review. Needless to say, not everyone (well, not every particle physicist) is willing to accept the idea of a fifth particle and the subsequent changes it would make in the Standard Model of particle physics (the theory describing the electromagnetic, weak, and strong force interactions). However, any explanation of dark matter – which is believed to make up 85% of the universe – would move us to another level of understanding the universe.

“(It would be) a window into some aspect of the universe that we are completely unaware of. Not only would it be obviously Nobel Prize–winning because it would be a new [fundamental] particle, but this particular particle doesn’t fit into the existing table of particles.”

Matt Strassler, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University not involved in the study, told Scientific American he thinks it’s a big deal. So does Daniele Alves, a particle physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory not involved in the study.

“It’s possible that this particle is part of a larger ‘dark sector,’ meaning it could also interact with dark matter particles. It could be a portal to this sector.”

“A portal to this sector.” That doesn’t sound like a “This changes everything!” exclamation, but that’s how scientists are. Most are awaiting further reviews and research on X17. Alves is heading to the Los Alamos lab where she will be “looking at the production of particles in neutron-capture reactions, when a neutron is captured by another nucleus, and in the process, it might emit things. The most common thing it might emit is a photon, but it could also possibly emit this new X17 particle.”

Meanwhile, The Fifth Force would be a great name for a prog rock band, with an album called “A Portal to This Sector.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

MYSTERIEUS RUIMTESCHIP BOVEN FLORIDA, USA EN SPANJE ( VIDEO )

Op twee verschillende plaatsen zijn vrijwel tegelijkertijd waarnemingen van een groot object in de buurt van de zon.

Beiden zijn grote objecten, beiden worden in de richting van de zon waargenomen en beiden hebben een driehoekige vorm.

Als er ergens een vreemd niet geïdentificeerd object (ufo) wordt waargenomen, dan is dat uiteraard al bijzonder, maar wanneer eenzelfde soort object op twee locaties worden waargenomen die duizenden kilometers uit elkaar liggen, dan is dat toch iets heel speciaals.

De eerste waarneming van het object in kwestie is boven de noordwestkust van Spanje en ziet er als volgt uit:

De tweede waarneming van wat hetzelfde object lijkt te zijn, vindt plaats boven de oostkust van Florida en ziet er zo uit:

Dat het een solide object is dat ook beweegt blijkt uit de volgende twee foto's die enkele minuten na elkaar zijn gemaakt. Op de eerste foto zie je het object aan de rechterkant van de zon en vervolgens zie je dat het zich langzaam naar de linkerkant heeft bewogen.

In de volgende video van Mr. MB333 zie je meer beelden, een vergelijking en een analyse van de objecten boven Spanje en Florida.



Zijn dit buitenaardse schepen of hebben we hier te maken met een schip dat behoort tot de menselijke geheime ruimtevloot? Een object dat qua vorm veel doet denken aan de TR-3B waarover wij enkele jaren geleden het volgende schreven:

Talloze meldingen zijn er de afgelopen jaren geweest van mensen die vreemde driehoekige objecten in de lucht hebben zien hangen of vliegen en die zich afvroegen of ze hier te maken hadden met een buitenaardse UFO.

Tot op de dag van vandaag gaan de meldingen door, zoals die van een maand geleden boven Exmouth in het Engelse graafschap East Devon.

Een Engelse buschauffeur neemt rond kwart voor tien ’s avonds even pauze en kijkt naar de lucht, waar hij iets vreemds ontdekt. En dat waren drie lichten in een driehoeksformatie die stil leken te hangen en als het ware om de eigen as ronddraaiden.

Hieronder volgt de opname die de man maakte en vooral zijn commentaar is heel interessant en toont aan hoezeer mensen onder de indruk zijn wanneer ze zoiets meemaken.

In een eerder artikel schreven wij het volgende over dit toestel:

Hebben we hier te maken met een buitenaards of een experimenteel toestel van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht, zoals de TR3B?

Officiëel is er uiteraard weinig te weten te komen over dit toestel, maar op de website WijWordenWakker vonden wij de volgende uitleg:

Veel mensen verwarren dit vliegend object met een UFO, terwijl het dat niet is, wel zit er UFO technologie in verwerkt. Van de TR-3B wordt algemeen aangenomen dat het een product is van het "Aurora" zwart-project. Volgens verschillende bronnen is dit de top van de geheime projecten. Dit geheime project van de V.S. kost $ 3 miljard per object en onlangs zijn er 3 TR-3B Astra’s aan Israel verkocht.

De TR-3B is een nucleair aangedreven vliegende driehoek, in staat tot fenomenale snelheden. Het toestel kan door reactieve elektrische stimulatie van kleur en van uiterlijk veranderen en een andere vorm aannemen of onzichtbaar worden voor het menselijk oog. De TR-3B Astra bevat een plasmaveld versneller annex magnetisch veld verstoorder ('disruptor') , waardoor de massa van het toestel incl. inzittenden met 90% verkleind zou kunnen worden, zodat de zwaartekracht nauwelijks invloed heeft op de prestaties van het toestel.

Mede hierdoor zou de snelheid boven Mach 50 uit komen, ter vergelijking: de meeste gevechtsvliegtuigen hebben Mach 2. (Mach 1 is gelijk aan de snelheid van het geluid). Daarnaast zou de Astra uitgerust zijn met een deeltjesversneller/pulselasers, 'scalaire' wapens (waardoor de vijand zo verward wordt, dat men vrijwillig de wapens neerlegt) en tevens 40 neutronenbommen.

Maar, nu wordt het echt interessant, want de afgelopen dagen is er via een aantal UFO onderzoekers een patentregistratie naar voren gekomen uit 2004, wat in feite precies dit TR-3B anti zwaartekracht toestel beschrijft.

De samenvatting van de Amerikaanse patentaanvraag US 20060145019 A1 luidt als volgt:

A spacecraft having a triangular hull with vertical electrostatic line charges on each corner that produce a horizontal electric field parallel to the sides of the hull. This field, interacting with a plane wave emitted by antennas on the side of the hull, generates a force per volume combining both lift and propulsion.

Wie de hele aanvraag wil bekijken, kan dat hier doen. Het begint al vrij snel heel technisch te worden, maar wat hier wordt beschreven is een ruimtevaartuig zoals de TR-3B.

De aanvraag staat op naam van John St. Clair, op wiens naam nog talloze patenten zijn aangevraagd. Wie of wat John St. Clair is, is niet duidelijk, waarschijnlijk een pseudoniem voor het militair-industrieel complex.

Hierna twee video’s. De eerste waarin de maker uitlegt hoe ze aan dit patent gekomen zijn: Dit is gebeurd via een kijker van een eerdere video die ze maakten over dit onderwerp en die als tweede is geplaatst.

Is hiermee echt een mysterie opgelost of is er een andere verklaringen? Suggesties zijn welkom.

{ https://niburu.co/ }

12-12-2019 om 18:56 geschreven door peter  

This Ancient Civilization Was so Advanced, it Has Confounded All the Experts

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

12-12-2019 om 18:34 geschreven door peter  

Mars Exploration in Focus as Europe Prepares ExoMars Rover for Search of Life (Video)

2020 may be the year humanity takes its biggest step toward finding evidence of life beyond Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are each working on its own rover that will roam Mars’s surface in search of life.

The ExoMars mission is Europe’s first Mars rover. Named after British DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, the golf cart-sized robot is approximately one-third the size of NASA’s planned Mars 2020 rover and will look for signs that life might have existed on Mars.

Both rovers will act as remote scientists, beaming back a wealth of data and images to Earth.

Mars 2020 will collect Martian samples for eventual return to Earth sometime in the future, while ExoMars will use its unique drill to burrow below the surface. Here, the rover will find pristine samples that were shielded from the harsh radiation bombarding Mars’s surface. Scientists are hopeful that below the surface is where we could find our first evidence of life. 

A Rover’s Purpose

Mars is a hostile place. Because its atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, life as we know it would have a difficult time surviving on the surface.

Billions of years ago, the surface of Mars was probably quite similar to that of Earth. However, that changed when Mars lost its magnetic field, which stripped its atmosphere, and exposed its surface to intense radiation. All of which made survival above ground incredibly challenging.

Historically, Mars missions have searched for signs of life on the planet’s surface, usually at places where there are signs of ancient water. That’s because this is typically where we find life on Earth.

But since we haven’t found life on the planet’s surface yet, mission scientists propose we need to dig deeper. There may be some microbial Martians underground.

The ExoMars rover (and accompanying lander) are a follow-on to ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter mission which reached Mars in 2016. That initial mission consisted of two parts: the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli landing demonstrator. 

TGO made it to Mars and is doing great, however, Schiaparelli didn’t fare so well — the lander crashed during its descent to the Martian surface. 

Landing a probe on Mars is not easy. To safely navigate the tenuous Martian atmosphere requires a combination of sophisticated landing gear, including heat shields, retrorockets, and even giant, inflatable airbags. 

Despite the crash landing, Schiaparelli achieved its goal as a technology demonstrator. It also showed that the team needed to revamp the landing system before the rover launches. But, with less than a year till liftoff, the rover team is struggling with an established piece of landing architecture: parachutes. 

In order to slow the rover down, the mission requires multiple parachutes — one 15 meters (49 feet) in diameter and one 35 meters (115 feet).  

As the rover begins its descent, atmospheric drag will slow the craft from around 21 000 km/h (13,048 mph) to 1700 km/h (1,056 mph). That’s when the first parachute will deploy. About 20 seconds later, at about 400 km/h (248 mph), the second chute will deploy. Lastly, the braking engines will kick in about 1 km (or half a mile) above the ground, enabling the rover land safely on the Martian surface.

The entire sequence takes just six minutes.

Parachute Troubles

During high-altitude testing conducted earlier this year, the craft’s parachutes ripped as soon as they deployed. ESA engineers made several adjustments, including reinforcing both the parachutes and their storage bags with Teflon to make them deploy easier. The chutes are still tearing.  

Now the agency is turning to NASA for help. ESA engineers are teaming up with the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to put the enhanced parachutes through months of rigorous testing. 

In the meantime, the rover team is putting its hardware through a round of thermal testing. For 18 days it will be subjected to the same harsh temperature conditions experienced on Mars. 

The parachutes are expected to finish testing sometime in April 2020; they will then be integrated with the rover and shipped to the launch site in Kazakhstan. However, if any part of the mission misses its deadline, the entire project could be sidelined until the next favorable Mars launch window — in 2022.

Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.

The post Mars exploration in focus as Europe prepares ExoMars Rover for search of life appeared first on TESLARATI.

Source: 

• https://www.teslarati.com/mars-exploration-exomars-rover-mission/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

12-12-2019 om 18:24 geschreven door peter  

Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space.

Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever, reports The Drive in their extensive article on advanced space technology.

Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast

Around the 12:00 mark in the video, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:

"The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists."

"This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour."

  

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

12-12-2019 om 17:30 geschreven door peter  

Nooit eerder kwamen we zo dicht bij de zon: NASA geeft deze prachtige beelden vrij - HLN.be

De foto die nu is vrijgegeven, is trouwens gemaakt op 24 miljoen kilometer afstand. Pas in 2024 moet Parker de corona binnenvliegen, het gebied bomvol straling en deeltjes dat je vanaf de aarde kunt zien tijdens een zonsverduistering.

Parker is naar de zon gestuurd om het gedrag van de ster te onderzoeken, en de mogelijke impact op de aarde. Zo zijn de wetenschappers van NASA geïnteresseerd in de zonnewind, waarbij een massa geladen deeltjes de ruimte in worden gestuurd, en het magneetveld van de zon. Parker ontdekte nu bijvoorbeeld al de magnetische stralingen die de zon uitstuurt, plots fel van richting kunnen veranderen.

 EPA 

Een artistieke impressie van Parker en de zon voor zijn lancering.

AP

AFP 

De Parker Solar Probe voor zijn lancering in 2018.

 REUTERS

De raket die Parker naar de ruimte bracht.

{ https://www.hln.be/  }

12-12-2019 om 00:33 geschreven door peter  

Ask most people what an asteroid is and they’ll probably say it’s a small space rock which is only dangerous if it hits Earth. Ask a businessperson the same question and they might say it’s a dead space rock full of rare minerals that belong to no one so they’re just waiting to be mined and brought back. Tell that to a NASA scientist working on the OSIRIS-REx mission which is currently orbiting the asteroid Bennu and they might say “Not so fast – this one is mysteriously exploding and firing rocks at us!” Is there some Little Prince on Bennu protecting his stuff? (Who? Google it.)

“No one has ever seen an active asteroid up close like this. It wasn’t that long ago that the conventional wisdom was that asteroids are these dead bodies that didn’t change very much.”

Well, Carl Hergenrother, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and the scientist who proposed Bennu as the target for OSIRIS-REx, doesn’t believe THAT anymore. In a new paper published in the journal Science and reviewed in Wired, Hergenrother tells us that Bennu has been observed regularly exploding tiny pieces of rocks off of its surface – some high enough that they enter temporary orbits around it. This was seen as soon as OSIRIS-REx itself entered orbit around Bennu in December 2018. Since a few other asteroids have been observed doing the same thing, astronomers assumed Bennu was either flinging rocks into space with its centrifugal force or steaming them there as ice particles quickly turned to gas. While that’s the case for other asteroids, neither fit Bennu.

“Our observations classify Bennu as an active asteroid. Active asteroids are commonly identified by major mass loss events observable with telescopes, on scales much greater than we observed at Bennu.”

“Active asteroids” are dead rocks that are still acting alive – space zombies. However, OSIRIS-REx’s close proximity has found that Bennu is not made up like other active asteroids. So, without ice or centrifugal force, why is it exploding rocks off of its surface?

“Plausible mechanisms for the large ejection events include thermal fracturing, volatile release through dehydration of phyllosilicates, and meteoroid impacts.”

Hergenrother and the other astronomers in the study noticed that the explosions generally occurred in what would be considered the late afternoon of a Bennu day. That’s when the surface, which has been baking in a non-atmosphere-blocking sunlight all day reaches the temperature when its rocks fracture. Phyllosilicates are parallel sheets of silicate minerals that are also affected by the extreme heat and facilitate the rocks breaking via shrinkage. Rocks flinging off the surface during other times are probably caused by tiny micrometeoroids hitting the surface of Bennu hard enough to knock other tiny rocks into space, only to have them fall back down and possibly knock more loose, creating a cycle of ever-decreasing spitting events.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu.

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard

Whatever is causing Bennu’s rock explosion, it’s not enough to abort the mission whose main purpose is for OSIRIS-REx itself to bang into its surface and extract rock and soil samples, then return then to Earth in 2023. Any further studies of the zombie asteroid effect will have to wait for another future expedition.

One thing is for certain – there’s no Little Prince on Bennu tending to its volcanoes, because there are no volcanoes on Bennu. If OSIRIS-REx spots a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, it’s someone else. (What? Google it.)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2019 om 00:12 geschreven door peter  

Whenever there are strange lights over a part of Arizona, it seems to be mandatory to immediately link them to the Phoenix lights – the famous illuminated UFOs seen be thousands over Phoenix, other cities in Arizona, Nevada, and Sonora, Mexico, on two separate occasions in 1997. Because there were so many witnesses, potential explanations, denials, investigations and media follow-ups, the Phoenix lights live on – often taking some of the luster off of other UFO sightings in the area. That may not happen with the latest one. On December 8, multiple witnesses reported and recorded a lighted orb over Mesa that appeared to be dropping smaller orbs. Officials from government, law enforcement and the military claimed to be just as puzzled as the witnesses. What did they see? Have the Phoenix lights returned?

“It was a cloudy night and had drizzled off and on. Regular planes had been flying by since we can see the flight path for the airport. All of a sudden I saw this bright glowing orange light. I thought it was a planet or a star at first and then I realized ‘oh that’s close and it’s moving towards us. Then ‘boom’ it started dropping what looked like orange fireballs or something that traveled for a few seconds before they faded out and disappeared.”

Phoenix

According to The Daily Star, ABC News, The Deseret News and other media sites, Mesa residents Kerri Burnett and Doug Maier were watching planes coming in and out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (about 14 miles away) at around 9 pm when they saw the first orange orb coming in from the southeast — not the direction of the airport, which is slightly northwest of Mesa. They both recorded the UFO on their cell phones, noting that their neighbors were also outside watching the UFO, which then became UFOs. Maier immediately posted the video on Facebook, and was soon contacted by a reporter from the local ABC affiliate.

“The interviewer informed us of his research, speaking to Luke AFB who confirmed it was nothing from them. He also stopped at a place where he saw an FAA member and showed him the video, and that too was inconclusive.”

The reporter told Burnett that some officials believed they had seen parachute flares. However, Luke Air Force Base – about 40 miles northwest and the most likely source of such flares – denied that speculation. Other news organizations contacting the various authorities – the FAA, the military, etc. – received similar explanations and no further comments. Maier is so convinced the real identity of the objects is something else, he put together a comprehensive video of all of the cell phone recordings, the media reports and further details on the sighting. (Watch the video here.)

Flares

“We put together a compilation of the footage we had from each of our phones, my Facebook Live Footage, and the News Interview. After I go into detail and recap of what was strange in the sky, how it behaved, and the news interview. I am still in shock because I believe whatever that thing was, it wasn’t man-made. Yes, I swore like a sailor but hey I was in shock. My way of dealing with whatever the heck that thing was.

THOSE WERE NO FLARES! The thing was SILENT and it made no sound whatsoever. It had a Lava-Flow like color that I can’t explain. It maneuvered in ways we could only dream of. The way that thing moved and maneuvered around in the sky was IMPOSSIBLE for us. Finally, the object was not as far away as it appeared to be on video. It had the altitude of a Cessna and was below the clouds. It was amazing, confusing, frightening, and unreal all at once.

I don’t care what the aviation experts say or who they work for. I know what I saw, and it wasn’t from this world.”

“I know what I saw, and it wasn’t from this world.” That’s the opening line for the first “Mesa Lights” documentary sure to be produced as this mysterious sighting gains momentum. Being one orb dropping smaller ones — as opposed to a V-shaped group or a series, as the Phoenix lights were – suggests these were something different. But what?

Will Kerri Burnett and Doug Maier ever find out? Will we? We’ll keep tabs on this breaking story.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-12-2019 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Something Huge Above Florida is Slowly Moving Through the Sky

On December 7, 2018 a photographer in Florida captured something unusual in the sky below the sun.
 

Some say that it is a hole in the clouds or a triangle sundog but it looks like it is a cloaked arrow head shaped craft which is casting it’s shadow on the clouds.

You can actually see the “wake” of the craft slowly moving through the atmosphere.

 

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

11-12-2019 om 23:48 geschreven door peter  

UFO Disclosure: FBI Investigator Uncovers the Nature of Aliens, John DeSouza

John DeSouza has investigated and collected experiences on paranormal topics for two decades. He was an FBI Special Agent who maintained a Top Secret security clearance for over 25 years. He worked counter-terrorism and violent crime cases. And also during that time, he collected what he calls “The Real Life X-FILES.”

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

11-12-2019 om 23:41 geschreven door peter