Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
19-02-2020
A Secret Search for Giants Has Been Going On in New Zealand
A Secret Search for Giants Has Been Going On in New Zealand
“(The world will) now never know for sure if this cave was filled by hand specifically to hide some fourteen 8’+ pre-Polynesian skeletons.”
There’s a mini war of sorts underway in New Zealand over … giants! A reporter for Radio New Zealand (RNZ) has brought to light a hunt that has been underway for some time for evidence of giants that the searchers believe lived on the island prior to the Polynesians who arrived between 1250 and 1300 and developed the Māori culture. The group calls itself Tangata Whenua (Māori for “people of the land”) and, according to its website, has been secretly digging (often at night) a cave or tunnel since 2016 in the Waikato region in northern New Zealand for evidence of the 8-foot tall giants that they believe have been found before in 16 locations. The website states that the group knows of four of these sites and, earlier this month, they found what they claim is part of a femur from what would have been a being 7’10” to 8’4″ tall and lived 2500 years ago. (You can read the account and see a photo here.)
“But after viewing photos and a video of the bone, multiple experts told RNZ it likely belonged to a moa.”
Moa
RNZ reporter Susan Strongman has been reporting on the secret dig that has annoyed the landowner, who says they never asked permission, and archeologists and indigenous people, who say the hunters are not archeologists and risk harming historical artifacts and human remains. Strongman raised the heat on the group by revealing the name of one member — Rodney Davidson, a reiki practitioner from Northland. In a response on the group website and on his Facebook page, he defended the hunt, criticized Strongman and admitted that the group has stopped looking in that area, so no one will ever know for sure in the cave has giant skeletons in it. He said they will continue their clandestine searches in the other caves whose locations are apparently still secret.
“Be aware that a Reiki protection is on the cave dig and has been since the start too. It has made it,s [sic] presence felt on at least two occasions to great benefit in fact. Abuse it in anyway and there will be a ‘ result ‘ ! I have no control over this so all your choice!”
Along with the warning that a reiki aura or shield is protecting the cave, Davidson also gave out her twitter and email addresses for his supporters to send their responses – supporters whose numbers he claims have risen since she broke the story.
Meanwhile, experts like Otago University associate professor of bioarchaeology Dr Siân Halcrow agree that the bone is probably from a moa (a large extinct flightless bird resembling the emu), there is no evidence of any humans or human-like species of any size on New Zealand prior to the Māori (thus, no evidence that the Māori killed them off – a popular but unproven theory), and any searches for pre-Polynesian giants are disconcerting.
“It does really highlight what some New Zealanders think, in terms of pre-Māori conspiracy theories, with really racist undertones. It’s not grounded in fact, so people should be aware.”
Māori
Archaeologist Sian Keith told RNZ that archeologists seek evidence and are passionate and thorough, so talk of coverups and secrecy in his field are upsetting. That may be true among his own colleagues, but there are plenty of stories from Egypt, Central America and other archeology sites that would disagree.
As with any war of words, deep-seated beliefs, secrecy, conspiracy theories and conflicting information, this one is far from over.
UFO encounters happen all over the world, to people from all walks of life. It is an all-encompassing phenomenon that includes a wide range of different reports that run the range from the slightly odd to the downright insane. Some of the most exciting and intriguing of these are those encounters that have occurred between aircraft pilots and something seemingly not of this world, and one of the best known and most mysterious cases of this is the time Iranian fighter jets engaged something very weird and seemingly aggressive in their skies.
It all began with a series of strange phone calls. On September 19, 1976, at approximately 11:30 PM, the Imperial Iranian Air Force command post at Tehran, Iran, began receiving panicked calls from concerned citizens in the Shemiran city district, who claimed to be witnessing unusual bright lights moving about in the sky. The Iranian Air Force at first assumed this to be conventional aircraft or helicopters, but it was soon found that there was nothing scheduled to be in the sky at that time that could be creating the phenomena, and so assistant deputy commander of operations General Yousefi personally contacted the control tower at Mehrabad International Airport and then looked out over the landscape to see with his own eyes a very bright object like a star travelling across the sky, only far too large and bright to be a regular aircraft or star.
In the meantime, more calls were coming in from frightened citizens, and the commander felt it would be prudent to investigate the disturbance further. To this effect he authorized an F-4 Phantom II jet to be scrambled at Shahrokhi Air Force Base in Hamadan and sent to go take a look and possibly intercept. As the jet approached it began to experience various technical malfunction and glitches, with the instrument panel falling to work properly and communications ripped through with heavy static, which all got bad enough that the pilot was forced to abort and head back towards base. Oddly, the plane supposedly began to function normally as soon as he left the area, suggesting that perhaps the unearthly object had been responsible. Undeterred, the Iranian Air Force sent up another F-4, which was able to get a radar signature for the mystery object, which they estimated was similar to that of a passenger jet, although the blinding nature of the light it emitted prevented an accurate judgement of size. Whatever it was then reportedly shot away from the approaching fighter with a sudden, breathtaking burst of speed and acceleration, and the chase was on.
F-4 Phantom
The fighter was able to pace the fleeing UFO but not gain on it, yet the crew, composed of a Lieutenant Parviz Jafari and Lieutenant Jalal Damirian, was able to make some observations. Other than the immense, nearly blinding brightness of the object, it was also noticed that it had an array of rectangular lights upon it that alternated between red, blue, green, and orange in some inscrutable rapid pattern. As they stared in awe and tried to catch up to it, the mysterious unidentified aircraft reportedly at several points ejected into the air a total of four smaller objects, one of which headed right for its pursuers, causing the alarmed pilot to try to lock onto it with a missile, but he would later report that the targeting system suddenly went haywire and all communications with base were cut off. This aggressive smaller object showed no signs of slowing down, inexorably approaching at very high speed, and thinking that this was perhaps a missile of the unidentified object’s own, the fighter took emergency evasive maneuvers. According to the crew, they took a deep dive, and the smaller object followed their movement to chase them some distance before turning around to join its larger brethren. The large UFO then shot off at mind-boggling speed and the jet’s instruments went back online. On their way back to base they apparently would see another smaller object, which apparently descended to the desert below. The pilot Jafari would later say of these objects in a press conference:
Four other objects with different shapes separated from the main one, at different times during this close encounter. Whenever they were close to me, my weapons were jammed and my radio communications were garbled. One of the objects headed toward me. I thought it was a missile. I tried to launch a heat seeking missile to it, but my missile panel went out. Another followed me when I was descending on the way back. One of the separated objects landed in an open area radiating a high bright light, in which the sands on the ground were visible. We could hear emergency squash all the way, which was reported by other airliners flying at the time and continued for another couple of days.
It would indeed later turn out that a passenger airliner had also had their equipment disrupted, and additionally the large object had also apparently been visually observed by air traffic control on the ground. Rather eerily, air traffic control claimed that as the F-4 made its approach to land they observed another object or craft, this one cylindrical and with a light on each end and a flashing light in its center, appear and follow the fighter back towards base. This second object would then apparently pass dangerously close over the fighter and do a fly by over the base, causing the control tower to lose all power as it did, only for everything to return to normal when it was gone. It would then reportedly be seen again some time later by a pilot over the Mediterranean, as well as by the crew and passengers of a passenger airliner over Lisbon, Portugal, and also over Morocco. An Iranian air traffic control officer at the time would later say of the incident:
When they heard our report and the report of the pilots, they concluded that no country is capable of such technology, and all of them believed it was a strange object from outer space.
Another odd little detail is that when the area where the “probe” was claimed to have been dropped was investigated, locals claimed that they had heard a loud noise and seen a bright light on the evening in question, although no physical evidence was apparently found. The whole strange incident would be investigated by not only the Iranian authorities, but also the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Tehran, the U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and there have been many attempts to try and explain it all over the years. There have been many conventional explanations offered, such as that what was seen was a rocket, meteor, or the re-entry of a decaying satellite, or that this was a misidentified astronomical body such as Venus or Jupiter, but none of these really seem to fit all of the odd features of the case. These objects were witnessed by numerous experienced, qualified personnel such as pilots, military officers, and air traffic control workers, which makes it unlikely they would make such an observational mistake. There is also the detail that something was jamming equipment aboard the jets, which is hard to explain away and has left authorities and researchers of the case puzzled. It has been suggested that this could have been the result of pilot error and faulty, under-maintained equipment, but there is also the report that an air control tower was temporarily disabled as well.
Was this all explainable with mundane explanations? Is it all a perfect brew of witness error and malfunctioning equipment? Or was this something more bizarre? The Tehran UFO incident has become a very exciting case for several reasons. The object was seen by multiple witnesses, ranging from residents to military personnel and pilots, many of whom are highly reliable observers and all of whom describe the same thing within the same time frame. There is also the strange anomaly that at least three separate aircraft experienced technical malfunctions and equipment jamming similar to electromagnetic effects during the event. Finally, it was very well investigated, with no official explanation ever offered. Whatever is going on here has remained very much discussed in UFO circles, and it remains a true unexplained case for the files, perhaps doomed to remain locked in a limbo of debate and speculation for a very long time.
The entire saga of the US military’s modern investigations into UFOs has been clouded in confusion, obfuscation, and a whole alphabet soup of acronyms—AATIP, AAWSAP, UAP, etc.—which has enabled the Pentagon to avoid actually answering the real question: is there something weird going on or not? Since the story of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program broke in 2017, the Pentagon’s story has gone from acknowledging that AATIP investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs, not UFOs, which is rather important to them), to saying AATIP had nothing to do with UAPs. Add to this the strange list of AATIP funded projects and the former head of AATIP starting a side-project with Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge and you’ve got the dumbest possible byzantine labyrinth that could maybe lead to “soft disclosure.”
This week, however,Popular Mechanics reported that they had obtained leaked documents dating to 2009 which show that not only did AATIP investigate UFOs, but they also investigated them as possibly otherworldy or interdimensional phenomena and continued to do so beyond 2012, the year AATIP was “officially” shuttered. Furthermore, AATIP took an interest in the paranormal phenomena at Utah’s famed Skinwalker Ranch with an interest in harnassing whatever’s going on there for defense purposes. Paranormal weaponry, that’s just what we need, right?
It even looks like a UFO.
The leaked documents come from Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). It is a 494-page “Ten Month Report” compiled by BAASS for the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), the contracting division of the broader AATIP program. Bob Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, is a well-known figure in the UFO world. Bigelow’s private research group the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) was stationed at Skinwalker Ranch for years after the billionaire purchased the property. Bigelow Aerospace’s involvement with AATIP has also been well-publicized.
In 2008, BAASS was awarded a $10 million contract by AAWSAP for a guaranteed year with a 5-year option. According to Popular Mechanics, the “Ten Month Report” was one of many such reports given by BAASS to AAWSAP through the duration of the contract. Throughout the document, it is clear that what is being investigated is not an unknown foreign weapons system. From the Popular Mechanics piece:
From cover to cover, the BAASS report references the government’s new buzzword for UFOs: UAP. However, nowhere could Popular Mechanics find a single reference to foreign (terrestrial) advanced aerospace weapon systems, or projected technological innovations based on current industry trends.
Contrary to the Pentagon’s recent sidestepping, it seems clear that what was being investigated was something not just unidentified but completely unknown. Here’s an incomplete list of topics covered in BAASS’s “Ten Month Report” as summarized by Popular Mechanics:
●Overview of the BAASS Physics Division’s efforts to conduct research on advanced aerospace vehicles, including the development of standardization for measurement of physical effects and signatures associated with UAP.
● Overview of BAASS research for measuring and gleaning the effects on biological organisms from UAP.
● Mention of Skinwalker Ranch in Utah as a “possible laboratory for studying other intelligences and possible interdimensional phenomena.”
● Strategic plans to organize a series of intellectual debate forums targeted to broad audiences pertaining to the “potential disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence.”
● Mention of BAASS program dubbed “Project Northern Tier,” which involved securing documents related to instances where dozens of UFOs flew over restricted airspaces of facilities housing nuclear weapons.
● Project databases of UAP-related materials compiled through various partnerships, and the intent to expand these databases by coordinating with foreign governments.
● Summaries of multiple UAP events both inside the U.S. and in foreign countries.
● Photographs of UAPs provided by various sources, including foreign governments.
Cover of the BAASS “Ten Month Report”
These reports are technically the property of BAASS and, due to the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, are conveniently excluded from FOIA requests. Attorney Josh Budray told Popular Mechanics:
“Unfortunately, the government attempting to evade FOIA by contracting out its responsibilities is nothing new. Both federal and state FOIA statutes strive to eliminate such obvious gamesmanship—avoiding transparency and disclosure obligations by contracting out functions—but whether they are successful in doing so is an entirely different story.”
There’s honestly too much in the Popular Mechanics report to summarize here, and it is recommended that you take a read for yourself. Seriously, it’s huge. Other leaked documents obtained include a 54-page report on the physiological effects of exposure to UFOs, as well as proof that AATIP operated beyond its official closure in 2012.
While much of what is in the leaked documents have been in the realm of solid assumptions since the AATIP story first broke, they have still been assumptions. The Pentagon has admitted that footage such as that from the USS Nimitz does show “unidentified aerial phenomena,” it has always been delicately handled from a position that “unidentified” might mean “we just don’t know who built it.” While these leaked documents reveal nothing about the nature of these phenomena (because of course not), they do show that whatever AATIP and BAASS were, and likely are, studying is completely weird and has been treated accordingly by the Pentagon.
Disc-shaped UFOs spotted on mountain ridge in Antarctica
Disc-shaped UFOs spotted on mountain ridge in Antarctica
There have been a number of unexplained Google Earth sightings in Antarctica recently and now zooming in on a mountainous region, we found what appears to be several disc-shaped UFOs on a mountain ridge of the Victory Mountains.
Whether the UFOs have crash landed, part of a secret military project or may be of extraterrestrial origin, is not clear, but there is clearly a lot of activity around these disc-shaped objects.
First location:
2 UFOs and operational base
UFOs: 40 meters in diameter
Coordinates: 73° 4'46.72"S 73° 4'46.72"S
Second location:
3 UFOs and operational base
UFOs: 10 meters in diameter
Coordinates: 73° 4'50.32"S 167°41'36.31"E
How many hours of scouring Google Earth must it take to find these things?
The mountain range where the object was found lies on Antarctica‘s northern coast near Australia.
Huge bright object recorded over Lake Mary, Florida 17-Feb-2020
Huge bright object recorded over Lake Mary, Florida 17-Feb-2020
This stationary unidentified flying object was seen and filmed in the sky above Lake Mary in Florida on 17th February 2020.
Witness report:
Observed Orange Star like object. Driving into work on Lake Mary Blvd. stopped at traffic light on Lake Mary Blvd and Lake Emma and witnessed a star like orange object, so I decided to record it, not realizing that there was a object above it with all kinds of lights, a long cigar shape. (Attached recording) Got to work at 3300 Exchange Place, Lake Mary and decided to get my camera and started recording to see if I could find the object and I got it on camera. Then I saw another object to bottom right, plus the orange one, and cigar one which was high. Then all of a sudden an object (green) appears above the cigar object, and beams down at something in the ground and then disappears! I continued to record until I had to go into work.
Massive UFO Fleet Appears Over Pennsylvania, Expert Claims
Massive UFO Fleet Appears Over Pennsylvania, Expert Claims
KEY POINTS
A fleet of UFOs appeared over a community in Pennsylvania
Some of the bright objects appeared in large clusters
The objects could be satellites orbiting Earth
Anew video shows an alleged fleet of UFOs flying over a community in Pennsylvania. As seen in the clip, the strange objects were moving slowly in the same direction.
The video was taken by an eyewitness as he was driving with his family in King of Prussia. It was shared on YouTube by Scott Waring of ET Data Base.
In the video, clusters of bright orbs can be seen in the sky. Although they did not appear to follow a specific formation, all of them were moving in the same direction. Some of them were moving slowly while the others remained stationary.
“Personally observed with my family on the way home from the King of Prussia Mall, heading eastbound multiple bright lights in the sky remaining stationary,” the eyewitness stated. “Have video taken in car while observing. This is unexplainable unless there is some type of unknown military aircraft I am unaware of.”
Interestingly, the bright orbs appeared in different parts of the sky. Some of the objects were grouped in large clusters. Based on the brightness of the objects and since there were no stars in the sky when the video was taken, Waring noted that other people most likely saw the strange objects too.
Hopefully, videos taken by other eyewitnesses of their sightings could shed light on the nature of the strange objects.
“The UFOs were moving slowly, glowing and following the same path,” Waring wrote in a blog post. “I do not hear the objects over the sound of the cars on the freeway. This must have been recorded by others. Thousands of people must have seen this so I am expecting a few more videos to come in.”
Although it is not yet clear what the objects were, it is possible that the bright orbs were only satellites. Back when SpaceX launched the first batch of Starlink satellites in May last year, the event sparked numerous UFO sightings due to the formation of the satellites. As seen in the photos, the satellites orbited Earth together and appeared like a “train of stars” in the sky.
A photograph of a screen shows infra-red video of taken from a Mexican Air Force patrol aircraft of 7 bright objects flying over the eastern coastal state of Campeche on March 25, 2004.
From 2007 to 2012, a small team of military investigators looked into sightings of unidentified flying objects—yes, UFOs—from an office deep inside the Pentagon. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, championed by former U.S. senator Harry Reid, paid contractors to analyze close encounters between military pilots and mysterious airborne objects.
Some of those close encounters probably involved secret military prototype front-line pilots didn’t know exist. Others, however, remain unexplained — and could be revolutionary for human civilization.
“Just because something’s unexplained doesn’t mean that it’s extraterrestrial, of course, but I never say never,” Nick Pope, who ran the British military’s own UFO investigative unit in the early 1990s, told me via email. “Extraterrestrial visitation might be unlikely, but if a single case turned out to be true, it would be a game-changer.”
One 2004 incident, in particular, has befuddled skeptics. Two U.S. Navy fighter pilots flying off the coast of southern California tracked an airliner-size, cigar-shaped object that appeared to hover and maneuver in ways that seem to exceed conventional aeronautics. “I have no idea what I saw,” David Fravor, one of the pilots, told The New York Times.
“There are still those observations that defy explanation—observations by highly trained individuals such as fighter or airline pilots who would recognize aircraft shapes and aircraft movements,” Luis Elizondo, the head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and related UFO efforts until his October resignation, told me via email.
“The basic instinct of intelligence personnel looking at the most convincing UFO sightings is to assume that they’re secret prototype aircraft or drones, developed either by another nation, or by another part of the government—but in a situation where the information is so compartmentalized nobody else can get access,” Pope said.
“Another theory is that some of these sightings are attributable to some sort of atmospheric plasma phenomenon that science doesn’t yet fully understand,” Pope added, using the scientific term for electrified air.
“Many UFO sightings in the southwest United States during the 1980s were actually secret advanced military aircraft such as the Lockheed F-117 and Northrop Grumman B-2,” Elizondo said.
There has been no shortage of rumored or confirmed, high-performance military prototypes in recent years that could account for UFO sightings. The U.S. Air Force secretly developed the RQ-170 stealth spy drone in the early 2000s, finally admitting to its existence only after a photographer spotted one at an airfield in Afghanistan in 2007. It’s unclear whether sightings of the RQ-170 explain any recent UFO reports.
More recently, the Air Force has been working on a bigger and ever stealthier spy drone called the RQ-180, along with the new radar-evading B-21 bomber. In 2014, a mysterious, wedge-shaped aircraft—possibly an early technology demonstrator for the B-21 program—was photographed flying over Kansas.
The military and the defense industry have also been hard at work on so-called “hypersonic” aircraft and space-planes capable of flying at speed exceeding Mach 5. Some of those efforts are public. Others, such as Lockheed Martin’s self-funded SR-72 hypersonic spy plane, remain cloaked in secrecy.
The abundance of secret prototypes plying American skies gives plenty of cover to government investigators and skeptical outsiders whose impulse is to dismiss possible evidence of alien life. “That said, there are those in government—including, clearly, some of the intelligence officials who worked in the AATIP—who are prepared to think the unthinkable, and say that some of these things might be extraterrestrial,” Pope said.
The 2004 video seems unexplainable now. But remember, many similarly mysterious UFO sightings in the past turned out to be military prototypes. Maybe aliens really are buzzing Planet Earth. But if history is any guide, it’s more likely the Pentagon’s own advanced aircraft that are making surprise appearances in front of baffled pilots.
Remarkable new details about secretive research into UFOs produced for the Pentagon has been revealed in a bombshell new report.
In a lengthy and detailed report published on Friday, Popular Mechanics delved into the Defense Department's cryptic Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
Using black-budget money under the auspices of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in 2008 AATIP contracted private space technology company Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) to provide the government with technical reports and research into UFOs, according to the magazine.
BAASS also controlled 'Skinwalker Ranch' in Utah - which the company proposed as a 'possible laboratory for studying other intelligences and possible interdimensional phenomena.'
A 494-page report that BAASS delivered to the Pentagon in July 2009 goes into heavy detail about reported UFO encounters, it was revealed on Friday
In 2008, the Pentagon awarded a $10 million contract to BAASS under a contracting program known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program
The investigative report offers an unprecedented look inside the AATIP, the existence of which was first publicly revealed with the publication of the USS Nimitz encounter video in 2017.
The AATIP program was officially de-funded by 2012, though many familiar with the matter believe it may have continued on under different auspices.
Mysteries at Skinwalker Ranch may have helped inspire the DIA research program
In 2008, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) awarded a $10 million contract to BAASS under a contracting program known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP).
BAASS, today known as Bigelow Aerospace, was founded in 1999 by Robert T. Bigelow, the owner of hotel chain Budget Suites of America.
A lifelong enthusiast of space travel and the paranormal, Bigelow had in 1996 poured some of the fortune he made in business into BAASS and the purchase of the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, after various strange and paranormal events were reported there.
Bigelow proposed to use the ranch to study paranormal phenomenon, and a visit to the ranch by a DIA scientist in 2007 may have inspired the creation of the AATIP, according to Popular Mechanics.
Robert Bigelow, founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace, speaks during a tour of Bigelow Aerospace in North Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. September 12, 2019
Former AAWSAP contractor and astrophysicist Eric Davis shared what colleagues had told him of the DIA scientist's experience in an interview with researcher Joe Murgia.
'In the living room of the former NIDS double wide observation trailer/staff quarters. A 3D object appeared in mid-air in front of him and changed shape like a changing topological figure. It went from pretzel-shaped to Möbius strip shaped. It was 3D and multi-colored. Then it disappeared,' he said.
According to former Senator Harry Reid, whatever happened at Skinwalker was enough to convince the DIA to seriously investigate paranormal and UFO phenomena.
'Something should be done about this. Somebody should study it.' I was convinced he was right,' Reid told New York Magazine.
The gate to Skinwalker Ranch is seen prior to its 2016 sale. A visit to the ranch by a DIA scientist in 2007 may have inspired the creation of the AATIP
In 2016, Bigelow sold Skinwalker Ranch for $4.5 million to a shell corporation, and concrete barriers and heavy security were erected around the perimeter
A 2009 BAASS report commissioned by the Pentagon mentions Skinwalker Ranch in Utah as a 'possible laboratory for studying other intelligences and possible interdimensional phenomena.'
In 2016, Bigelow sold Skinwalker Ranch for $4.5 million to 'Adamantium Holdings', a shell corporation whose true owners have never been traced.
After this sale, all roads leading to the ranch were blocked, the perimeter was secured with cameras and barbed wire, and signs went up warning strangers not to approach.
Anyone who does approach the ranch now reports being immediately confronted by guards and ordered to leave.
Project Northern Tier: BAASS report details high frequency of UFO contacts near nuclear missile silos
Under the DIA contract, BAASS was tasked with providing the Pentagon with technical reports, surveys and studies related to 'future aerospace weapon systems.'
The language in the DIA's $10 million contract with BAASS - and its objectives - seem purposely vague, obscuring the fact that the AAWSAP contract was focused on what the Pentagon now calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).
But a 494-page report that BAASS delivered to the Pentagon in July 2009, and revealed by Popular Mechanics, is explicitly focused on UAP.
The 'Ten Month Report,' as it's called, is filled with strategic plans, project summaries, data tables, charts, descriptions of biological field effects, physical characteristics, methods of detection, theoretical capabilities, witness interviews, photographs, and case synopses, all related to UAP.
Robert Bigelow, (left) founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace, and NASA astronaut Mike Gernhardt, are seen on September 12, 2019
BAASS, today known as Bigelow Aerospace, was founded in 1999 by Robert T. Bigelow, the owner of hotel chain Budget Suites of America
The report mentions a BAASS program called Project Northern Tier, which involved securing documents related to instances where dozens of UFOs flew over restricted airspaces of facilities housing nuclear weapons.
One chart published in the report details the alarming frequency of UAP encounters near four current and former key ICBM facilities: Malmstrom AFB in Montana, Minot AFB in North Dakota, former Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan and former Loring AFB in Maine.
The time period of the study seems to focus on a five-month window from July through November of 1975, when the BAASS report claims Malmstrom reported an alarming 61 unexplained encounters.
The BAASS report, directly quoting the book Clear Intent, describes one astonishing encounter on November 7, 1975 at the K-7 ICBM missile silo attached to Malmstrom.
A map shows the location of two still-active ICBM facilities mentioned in the BAASS report
One chart published in the report details the alarming frequency of UAP encounters near four current and former key ICBM facilities
Responding to an intrusion alarm, a Sabotage Alert Team raced in a vehicle to the silo, where they encountered a 'brightly glowing, orange, football field-sized disc' hovering in the air.
'It began to rise, and at about 1,000 feet, NORAD picked up the UFO on radar,' the report states. Two F-106 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the object, but were never able to get a visual. 'At about 200,000 feet, it disappeared from NORAD's radar.'
Specialists were brought in to do a systems check on the missile, and discovered that the computer in the warhead had 'mysteriously changed the target numbers.'
UFO enthusiasts have long noted the apparent connection between sightings and nuclear activity. The famous 2004 USS Nimitz carrier strike group encounter with the 'Tic Tac' object is also connected in that regard, as the air craft carrier is nuclear-powered.
The BAASS report (above), directly quoting the book Clear Intent, describes one encounter on November 7, 1975 at the K-7 ICBM missile silo attached to Malmstrom
One astonishing encounter is described in the BAASS report from November 7, 1975 at the K-7 ICBM missile silo (above in satellite image) attached to Malmstrom AFB
A Minuteman III missile is seen in its silo. In 1975 there is a report that the onboard targeting computer of such a missile inexplicably changed coordinates after a UFO encounter
Medical study examines possible physiological effects of UFO encounters
Popular Mechanics also published in full a previously unreleased technical paper listed as one of AATIP's products, .
The paper titled 'Clinical Medical Acute & Subacute Field Effects on Human Dermal & Neurological Tissues' examines injuries that have been reported after contact with UFO/UAPs.
'This focused on forensically assessing accounts of injuries that could have resulted from claimed encounters with UAP,' the study's author, Christopher 'Kit' Green, told Popular Mechanics.
'I didn't work for BAASS, other than as a contractor for my paper, and I wasn't a part of AAWSAP. However, it is my understanding this program was a UFO study that outwardly was not supposed to look like it had anything to do with UFOs,' he said.
Green also told the magazine that while his work focused on encounters with unknown or unidentified aerial objects, all of the injuries he assessed could be accounted for by known terrestrial means, and did not provide any evidence for extraterrestrial or non-human technologies.
By now you’ve probably read the New York Times article detailing a UFO research program run by the Pentagon which received $22 million — a tiny amount by Defense Department standards — from 2007 to at least 2012. The disclosure of the program is the biggest such reveal since Project Blue Book of the 1950s and 1960s and the French government’s 1999 COMETA Report.
If that wasn’t strange enough, the article included declassified footage from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter’s AN/ASQ-228 sensor display as it trailed a still-unidentified flying object over the Pacific near San Diego on Nov. 14, 2004.
In the footage, the Super Hornet pilot, while traveling at 252 knots at nearly 20,000 feet, switched between his display’s infrared and visual modes as the sensor tried to lock onto the blurry, oblong or pill-shaped object. The flying object appeared white in IR mode, and black in TV mode — indicating that whatever it was, the sensor had picked up on the object’s emission, temperature or reflection.
The video comes from the same incident when Cmdr. David Fravor, a veteran Navy pilot assigned to the USS Nimitz carrier fighter squadron VFA-41 Black Aces, was on a training mission off San Diego. “It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” Fravor told the Washington Post. Telling the paper that he believes it was “not from the Earth.”
During an exercise, commanders ordered Fravor to intercept an object that was appearing at 80,000 feet — above the range of Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Princeton’s SPY-1 air-search radar — before dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet. “Officials told they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks,” the paper reported.
The story that followed has circulated in the military aviation world and fighter community for several years, including this write-up by former Navy F-14A Tomcat pilot Paco Chierici at Fighter Sweep. With orders to intercept the object, Fravor in his jet — callsign FASTEAGLE 01 — headed toward with aid from an E-2 Hawkeye early warning and control plane.
The Hawkeye’s sensors, however, couldn’t detect the object and vector him toward it, so Princeton directed FASTEAGLE 01 and Fravor’s wingman, FASETEAGLE 02 to the location, and even asked Fravor whether he was carrying weapons — he wasn’t. He just had two training missiles. Below the jets, Fravor saw whitewater sloshing in the blue ocean.
All four aircrew were eyes out from this point forward. The first unusual indication Dave picked up was the area of whitewater on the surface that Cheeks was looking at over his shoulder as he flew away. He remembers thinking it was about the size of a 737 and maybe the contact they had been vectored on had been an airliner that had just crashed. He maneuvered his F-18 lower to get a better look. As he was descending through about 20K he was startled by the sight of a white object that was moving about just over the frothing water. It was all white, featureless, oblong and making minor lateral movements while staying at a consistent low altitude over the disk of turbulent water.
In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier. They described it as uniformly white, about 46 feet long (roughly fighter-sized), having a discernible midline horizontal axis (like a fuselage) but having no visible windows, nacelles, wings or propulsion systems.
There was no apparent exhaust or rotor wash, either. The pill-shaped object then “oriented one of its skinny ends towards him,” and rose in a “right 2-circle flow” — fighter speak for when each aircraft have their noses pointed at each other’s tails. The object then accelerated away at “multi-Mach” speed.
The video of the AN/ASQ-228 sensor display occurred later in the day with a different set of fighters. The object at this point appeared stationary before taking off.
This is consistent with a U.S. Navy report obtained by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a UFO research company which published the footage. The Navy pilots, apparently, first believed the object could have been a classified missile test from a submarine. The Navy report cited a source who indicated the object maneuvered in a manner “that seemed to defy the laws of physics” and “‘tumbled’ into nonsensical angles that made any engagement by the F-18 impossible.”
So what was it? A secret U.S. test project? A classified drone or hypersonic weapon? A maneuverable reentry vehicle or something like DARPA’s Falcon Project? Naval Air Systems Command, which tests airborne weapons, has 36,000 square miles of controlled sea and airspace off the Southern Californian coast. And the Falcon Project’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 has reached Mach 22 — albeit six years after the 2004 object sighting in the Pacific.
Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.
Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.
The Pentagon UFO-hunting mission, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, is still partially classified. In any case, even if the explanation is as mundane as a weapons test, the eyewitness accounts and FLIR footage make this an interesting mystery worth further study. Whether Fravor saw an object of extraterrestrial origin is beside the point.
It’s also worth reading the comments section at Fighter Sweep:
I was on board the USS Princeton (2001-2005) when this all went down. We actually went to GQ (General Quarters) for about 4 hours as all if this was going down. I’ve been telling everyone about this even, but have gotten the usual “yeah right” look when I tell them about it. I saw the video after it happened, but didn’t think that it would somehow make it’s way to the public, considering all of the “security” that surrounded the issue.
Crazy how the world turns, isn’t it?!
Thank you for giving this event life! I no longer look like a tin foil hat wearing idiot!
In the description to the sighting, which was posted to the Mutual UFO Network, the user explained that the “aircraft” was hovering 30 feet above the ground.
The triangle-shaped UFO seen over Texas(Image: MUFON)
“It was flying right at me going 75mph and then it hovered over my car for one second and disappeared,” they said.
The footage has been seen more than 5,000 times since it was shared by YouTube conspiracy channel UFOmania.
Many viewers claimed the object was more proof of the infamous TR-3B spy plane.
The TR-3B is the name of a surveillance plane of the United States Air Force, speculated to have been developed under a black project.
It is said to be a supersonic stealth spy plane with a triangular design but its existence has never been acknowledged.
“That's a TR-3B, or a for real ET craft,” one viewer commented. “I just wish he could have stopped the car, got out and took more footage.”
Another added: “TR-3B… secret Space Force.”
A third agreed, simply writing: “TR-3B, look it up.”
But others weren’t as convinced. One noted that even though the lights were in a triangular pattern, it didn’t mean the object itself was triangular.
And other sceptics suggested it was nothing more than a drone.
The Neanderthal skull, flattened by thousands of years of sediment and rock fall, in situ in Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit: Graeme Barker
The first articulated Neanderthal skeleton to come out of the ground for over 20 years has been unearthed at one of the most important sites of mid-20th century archaeology: Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Researchers say the new find offers an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the "mortuary practices" of this lost species using the latest technologies.
Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s, when archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered partial remains of ten Neanderthal men, women and children.
Some were clustered together, with clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of the skeletons. Solecki claimed this showed Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers.
The 'flower burial' captured the public imagination, and prompted a reappraisal of a species that—prior to Shanidar Cave—was thought to have been dumb and animalistic.
It also sparked a decades-long controversy over whether evidence from this extraordinary site did actually point to death rituals, or burial of any kind, and if Neanderthals were really capable of such cultural sophistication.
More than 50 years later, a team of researchers have reopened the old Solecki trench to collect new sediment samples, and discovered the crushed skull and torso bones of another Shanidar Neanderthal.
The discovery has been named Shanidar Z by researchers from Cambridge, Birkbeck and Liverpool John Moores universities.
View of the entrance to Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of the Baradost Mountains of North-East Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit: Graeme Barker
The work was conducted in conjunction with the Kurdistan General Directorate of Antiquities and the Directorate of Antiquities for Soran Province. The find is announced today in a paper published in the journal Antiquity.
"So much research on how Neanderthals treated their dead has to involve returning to finds from sixty or even a hundred years ago, when archaeological techniques were more limited, and that only ever gets you so far," said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology, lead author of the new paper.
"To have primary evidence of such quality from this famous Neanderthal site will allow us to use modern technologies to explore everything from ancient DNA to long-held questions about Neanderthal ways of death, and whether they were similar to our own."
Ralph Solecki died last year aged 101, having never managed to conduct further excavations at his most famous site, despite several attempts.
In 2011, the Kurdish Regional Government approached Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge's McDonald Institute of Archaeology about revisiting Shanidar Cave. With Solecki's enthusiastic support, initial digging began in 2014, but stopped after two days when ISIS got too close. It resumed the following year.
"We thought with luck we'd be able to find the locations where they had found Neanderthals in the 1950s, to see if we could date the surrounding sediments," said Barker. "We didn't expect to find any Neanderthal bones."
In 2016, in one of the deepest parts of the trench, a rib emerged from the wall, followed by a lumbar vertebra, then the bones of a clenched right hand. However, metres of sediment needed carefully digging out before the team could excavate the skeleton.
During 2018-19 they went on to uncover a complete skull, flattened by thousands of years of sediment, and upper body bones almost to the waist—with the left hand curled under the head like a small cushion.
The bones of the Neanderthal's left hand emerging from the sediment in Shanidar Cave. Credit: Graeme Barker
Early analysis suggests it is over 70,000 years old. While the sex is yet to be determined, the latest Neanderthal discovery has the teeth of a "middle- to older-aged adult".
Shanidar Z has now been brought on loan to the archaeological labs at Cambridge, where it is being conserved and scanned to help build a digital reconstruction, as more layers of silt are removed.
The team is also working on sediment samples from around the new find, looking for signs of climate change in fragments of shell and bone from ancient mice and snails, as well as traces of pollen and charcoal that could offer insight into activities such as cooking and the famous 'flower burial'.
Four of the Neanderthals, including the 'flower burial' and the latest find, formed what researchers describe as a "unique assemblage". It raises the question of whether Neanderthals were returning to the same spot within the cave to inter their dead.
A prominent rock next to the head of Shanidar Z may have been used as a marker for Neanderthals repeatedly depositing their dead, says Pomeroy, although whether time between deaths was weeks, decades or even centuries will be difficult to determine.
"The new excavation suggests that some of these bodies were laid in a channel in the cave floor created by water, which had then been intentionally dug to make it deeper," said Barker. "There is strong early evidence that Shanidar Z was deliberately buried."
CT-scans in Cambridge have revealed the petrous bone—one of the densest in the body; a wedge at the base of the skull—to be intact, offering hope of retrieving ancient Neanderthal DNA from the hot, dry region where "interbreeding" most likely took place as humans spilled out of Africa.
Added Pomeroy: "In recent years we have seen increasing evidence that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than previously thought, from cave markings to use of decorative shells and raptor talons.
"If Neanderthals were using Shanidar cave as a site of memory for the repeated ritual interment of their dead, it would suggest cultural complexity of a high order."
The universe is permeated by a vast, invisible web, its tendrils weaving through space. But despite organizing the matter we see in space, this dark web is invisible. That's because it is made up of dark matter, which exerts a gravitational pull but emits no light.
That is, the web was invisible until now. For the first time, researchers have illuminated some of the darkest corners of the universe.
A long time ago, the universe was hotter, smaller and denser than it is now. It was also, on average, much more boring. There wasn't much variation in density from place to place. Sure, space was much more cramped overall, but in the young universe, no matter where you went, things were pretty much the same.
But there were tiny, random differences in density. Those nuggets had slightly more gravitational pull than their surrounding neighborhood, and so matter tended to flow into them. Growing bigger in this way, they developed an even stronger gravitational influence, pulling more matter in, causing them to be bigger, and so on and so on for billions of years. Simultaneously, as the nuggets grew, the spaces between them emptied out.
Over the course of cosmic time, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
Eventually, the dense patches grew to become the first stars, galaxies and clusters, while the spaces between them became the great cosmic voids.
Now, 13.8 billion years into this massive construction project, the job isn't quite finished. Matter is still streaming out of the voids, joining groups of galaxies that are flowing into dense, rich clusters. What we have today is a vast, complex network of filaments of matter: the cosmic web.
A light in the dark
The vast majority of matter in our universe is dark; it does not interact with light or with any of the "normal" matter that we see as stars and gas clouds and other interesting things. As a result, much of the cosmic web is completely invisible to us. Fortunately, where the dark matter pools, it also drags along some regular matter to join in the fun.
In the densest pockets of our universe, where the gravitational whispers of dark matter have influenced enough regular matter to coalesce, we see light: The regular matter has converted itself into stars.
Like a lighthouse on a distant, black seashore, the stars and galaxies tell us where the hidden dark matter lurks, giving us a ghostly outline of the cosmic web's true structure.
With this biased view, we can easily see the clusters. They pop out like giant cities seen from a red-eye flight. We know for sure there's a tremendous amount of dark matter in those structures, since you need a lot of gravitational oomph to pool together that many galaxies.
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, we can easily spot the voids; they are the places where all the matter isn't. Because there are no galaxies to illuminate these spaces, we know that they are, by and large, truly empty.
But the grandeur of the cosmic web lies in the delicate lines of the filaments themselves. Stretching for millions of light-years, these thin tendrils of galaxies act like great cosmic freeways crossing black voids, connecting bright urban clusters.
Through a dim lens
Those filaments in the cosmic web are the hardest part of the web to study. They have some galaxies but not a lot. And they have all sorts of lengths and orientations; in comparison, the clusters and voids are geometric child's play. So, even though we've known of the existence of filaments, through computer simulations, for decades, we have had a hard time actually, you know, seeing them.
Recently, though, a team of astronomers made a major advance in mapping our cosmic web, publishing their results Jan. 29 to the arXiv database. Here's how they went to business:
First, they took a catalog of so-called luminous red galaxies (LRGs) from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) survey. LRGs are massive beasts of galaxies, and they tend to sit in the centers of dense blobs of dark matter. And if the LRGs sit in the densest regions, then lines connecting them should be made of the more delicate filaments.
But staring at the space between two LRGs isn't going to be productive; there isn't a lot of stuff there. So, the team took thousands of pairs of LRGs, realigned them and stacked them on top of each other to make a composite image.
Using this stacked image, the scientists counted all the galaxies that they could see, adding up their total light contribution. This allowed researchers to measure how much normal matter made up the filaments between the LRGs. Next, the researchers looked at the galaxies behind the filaments, and specifically, at their shapes.
As light from those background galaxies pierced the intervening filaments, the gravity from the dark matter in those filaments gently nudged the light, ever so slightly shifting the images of those galaxies. By measuring the amount of shifting (called "shear" by the scientists), the team was able to estimate the amount of dark matter in the filaments.
That measure lined up with theoretical predictions (another point for the existence of dark matter). The scientists also confirmed that the filaments weren't entirely dark. For every 351 suns' worth of mass in the filaments, there was 1 suns' worth of light output.
It's a crude map of the filaments, but it's the first, and it definitely shows that while our cosmic web is mostly dark, it's not completely black.
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe.
Two CubeSats, part of a constellation built and operated by Planet Labs Inc. to take images of Earth, were launched from the International Space Station on May 17, 2016.
Last month, SpaceX became the operator of the world's largest active satellite constellation. As of the end of January, the company had 242 satellites orbiting the planet with plans to launch 42,000 over the next decade. This is part of its ambitious project to provide internet access across the globe. The race to put satellites in space is on, with Amazon, U.K.-based OneWeb and other companies chomping at the bit to place thousands of satellites in orbit in the coming months.
These new satellites have the potential to revolutionize many aspects of everyday life — from bringing internet access to remote corners of the globe to monitoring the environment and improving global navigation systems. Amid all the fanfare, a critical danger has flown under the radar: the lack of cybersecurity standards and regulations for commercial satellites, in the U.S. and internationally. As a scholar who studies cyber conflict, I'm keenly aware that this, coupled with satellites' complex supply chains and layers of stakeholders, leaves them highly vulnerable to cyberattacks.
If hackers were to take control of these satellites, the consequences could be dire. On the mundane end of scale, hackers could simply shut satellites down, denying access to their services. Hackers could also jam or spoof the signals from satellites, creating havoc for critical infrastructure. This includes electric grids, water networks and transportation systems.
Some of these new satellites have thrusters that allow them to speed up, slow down and change direction in space. If hackers took control of these steerable satellites, the consequences could be catastrophic. Hackers could alter the satellites' orbits and crash them into other satellites or even the International Space Station.
Makers of these satellites, particularly small CubeSats, use off-the-shelf technology to keep costs low. The wide availability of these components means hackers can analyze them for vulnerabilities. In addition, many of the components draw on open-source technology. The danger here is that hackers could insert back doors and other vulnerabilities into satellites' software.
The highly technical nature of these satellites also means multiple manufacturers are involved in building the various components. The process of getting these satellites into space is also complicated, involving multiple companies. Even once they are in space, the organizations that own the satellites often outsource their day-to-day management to other companies. With each additional vendor, the vulnerabilities increase as hackers have multiple opportunities to infiltrate the system.
Hacking some of these CubeSats may be as simple as waiting for one of them to pass overhead and then sending malicious commands using specialized ground antennas. Hacking more sophisticated satellites might not be that hard either.
Satellites are typically controlled from ground stations. These stations run computers with software vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. If hackers were to infiltrate these computers, they could send malicious commands to the satellites.
A history of hacks
This scenario played out in 1998 when hackers took control of the U.S.-German ROSAT X-Ray satellite. They did it by hacking into computers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The hackers then instructed the satellite to aim its solar panels directly at the sun. This effectively fried its batteries and rendered the satellite useless. The defunct satellite eventually crashed back to Earth in 2011. Hackers could also hold satellites for ransom, as happened in 1999 when hackers took control of the U.K.'s SkyNet satellites.
Over the years, the threat of cyberattacks on satellites has gotten more dire. In 2008, hackers, possibly from China, reportedly took full control of two NASA satellites, one for about two minutes and the other for about nine minutes. In 2018, another group of Chinese state-backed hackers reportedly launched a sophisticated hacking campaign aimed at satellite operators and defense contractors. Iranian hacking groups have also attempted similar attacks.
Although the U.S. Department of Defense and National Security Agency have made some efforts to address space cybersecurity, the pace has been slow. There are currently no cybersecurity standards for satellites and no governing body to regulate and ensure their cybersecurity. Even if common standards could be developed, there are no mechanisms in place to enforce them. This means responsibility for satellite cybersecurity falls to the individual companies that build and operate them.
Market forces work against space cybersecurity
As they compete to be the dominant satellite operator, SpaceX and rival companies are under increasing pressure to cut costs. There is also pressure to speed up development and production. This makes it tempting for the companies to cut corners in areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Even for companies that make a high priority of cybersecurity, the costs associated with guaranteeing the security of each component could be prohibitive. This problem is even more acute for low-cost space missions, where the cost of ensuring cybersecurity could exceed the cost of the satellite itself.
To compound matters, the complex supply chain of these satellites and the multiple parties involved in their management means it's often not clear who bears responsibility and liability for cyber breaches. This lack of clarity has bred complacency and hindered efforts to secure these important systems.
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had to get creative to squeeze an antenna into a CubeSat called RainCube, scheduled to fly in 2017. (Image credit: Tyvak/Jonathan Sauder/NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Regulation is required
Some analysts have begun to advocate for strong government involvement in the development and regulation of cybersecurity standards for satellites and other space assets. Congress could work to adopt a comprehensive regulatory framework for the commercial space sector. For instance, they could pass legislation that requires satellites manufacturers to develop a common cybersecurity architecture.
They could also mandate the reporting of all cyber breaches involving satellites. There also needs to be clarity on which space-based assets are deemed critical in order to prioritize cybersecurity efforts. Clear legal guidance on who bears responsibility for cyberattacks on satellites will also go a long way to ensuring that the responsible parties take the necessary measures to secure these systems.
Given the traditionally slow pace of congressional action, a multi-stakeholder approach involving public-private cooperation may be warranted to ensure cybersecurity standards. Whatever steps government and industry take, it is imperative to act now. It would be a profound mistake to wait for hackers to gain control of a commercial satellite and use it to threaten life, limb and property — here on Earth or in space — before addressing this issue.
Up to four people could fly higher than any space tourists in history by 2021!
SpaceX and Space Adventures have signed a deal to launch up to four passengers into Earth orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft like the one seen here. This Crew Dragon will launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020.
SpaceXjust inked its first deal to launch space tourists into orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The private spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk has signed an agreement with the U.S. space tourism company Space Adventures to launch up to four passengers on an orbital trip aboard a Crew Dragon space capsule. The mission would last up to five days and could launch as early as late 2021, Space Adventures representatives told Space.com.
"This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures team on the mission," SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement from Space Adventures.
Under the agreement, Space Adventures will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon vehicle to fly up to four passengers to Earth orbit. The trip will not visit the International Space Station. Instead, it will remain in orbit as a free-flying spacecraft.
"This will provide up to four individuals with the opportunity to break the world altitude record for private citizen spaceflight and see planet Earth the way no one has since the Gemini program," Space Adventures representatives said in the statement. For comparison, the space station orbits the Earth at an average altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers).
"Honoring our combined histories, this Dragon mission will be a special experience and a once in a lifetime opportunity — capable of reaching twice the altitude of any prior civilian astronaut mission or space station visitor," said Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, said in the statement.
To date, Space Adventures has arranged eight orbital trips to the International Space Station for seven wealthy customers: Dennis Tito in 2001; South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2002; American entrepreneurs Greg Olsen in 2005 and Anousheh Ansari in 2006; Microsoft co-founder Charles Simonyi (twice) in 2007 and 2009; computer game developer Richard Garriott in 2008; and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte in 2009.
Those spaceflights all cost tens of millions of dollars, with Laliberte's flight costing a reported $35 million for his 11-day trip. The passengers, called "spaceflight participants," flew to and from the station on Russian Soyuz space capsules under agreements between Space Adventures and Roscosmos, Russia's space agency.
SpaceX or Space Adventures did not announce exact pricing for the Crew Dragon tourist flight, but the cost per seat is expected to be in the same range of other commercial spaceflight opportunities.
As for timing, it's likely that the free-flying Crew Dragon flight will launch only after SpaceX begins flying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Those trips are expected to begin later this year.
SpaceX (and rival Boeing) have multi-billion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts on round trips to and from the space station. In 2019, SpaceX performed a successful uncrewed test flight to the station with Crew Dragon, following it up with a launch abort test last month.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft is a reusable space capsule designed to carry up to seven people on trips to and from Earth orbit. SpaceX missions for NASA will launch the capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket, visit the International Space Station for months, then return to Earth for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
In December, Boeing launched an uncrewed test flight of its own Starliner capsule, but it failed to reach the space station due to software and communications issues. Boeing and NASA are investigating that flight to determine if another uncrewed flight will be required.
Meanwhile, Space Adventures is also working with Roscosmos to fly two space tourists to the International Space Station on a dedicated Soyuz spacecraft in 2021. Roscosmos announced the agreement with Space Adventures last year.
"Creating unique and previously impossible opportunities for private citizens to experience space is why Space Adventures exists," Anderson said. "Since its maiden mission in 2010, no engineering achievement has consistently impressed the industry more than the Dragon/Falcon 9 reusable system."
Editor's note: This story, originally posted at 10 a.m. EST, has been updated to include mission duration, timing and cost details from Space Adventures.
Breakthrough Listen Scans Milky Way Galaxy for Beacons of Civilization
Breakthrough Listen Scans Milky Way Galaxy for Beacons of Civilization
Artist’s concept of a nearby civilization signaling Earth after observing our planet crossing in front of the sun. Astronomers have now scanned 20 nearby stars in the Earth transit zone in search of such signals.
Credit: UC Berkeley image courtesy of Breakthrough Listen
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative today (Friday, Feb. 14) released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.
At a media briefing today in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly 2 petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.
The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz (GHz). About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center. The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country’s national science agency, CSIRO.
The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world’s largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California.
“Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public,” said Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. “It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.”
“For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question,” said Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen.
Moonset, around 2:30 a.m., at the Very Large Array on the Plains of San Agustin, about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. The VLA is teaming up with the SETI Institute to capture data that can be searched for intelligent signals.
Credit: UC Berkeley
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also announced today an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and provide data to state-of-the-art digital backend equipment built by the SETI Institute.
“The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky,“ said Siemion, who, in addition to his UC Berkeley position, is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. “This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.”
“As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we’re already collecting,” said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”
Earth transit zone survey
In releasing the new radio and optical data, Siemion highlighted a new analysis of a small subset of the data: radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit such that an advanced civilization around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the sun (a “transit” like those focused on by NASA’s Kepler space telescope). Conducted by the Green Bank Telescope, the Earth transit zone survey observed in the radio frequency range between 4 and 8 gigahertz, the so-called C-band. The data were then analyzed by former UC Berkeley undergraduate Sofia Sheikh, now a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, who looked for bright emissions at a single radio wavelength or a narrow band around a single wavelength. She has submitted the paper to the Astrophysical Journal.
Australia’s Parkes radio telescope, 210 feet in diameter, conducted the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the Milky Way galaxy in search of technosignatures from advanced civilizations around other stars.
Photo courtesy of CSIRO
“This is a unique geometry,” Sheikh said. “It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky.”
While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.
“We didn’t find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz,” Siemion said. “These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.”
Sheikh noted that her mentor, Jason Wright at Penn State, estimated that if the world’s oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub’s worth of it.
“My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose,” Sheikh said. “So, we know that there isn’t anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky.” Beacons in the galactic center?
The so-far unanalyzed observations from the galactic disk and galactic center survey were a priority for Breakthrough Listen because of the higher likelihood of observing an artificial signal from that region of dense stars. If artificial transmitters are not common in the galaxy, then searching for a strong transmitter among the billions of stars in the disk of our galaxy is the best strategy, Simeon said.
Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, collects petabytes of data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia (right) and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (left) and makes it available to the science community to analyze in search of signals from intelligent civilizations.
Graphic courtesy of Breakthrough Listen
On the other hand, putting a powerful, intergalactic transmitter in the core of our galaxy, perhaps powered by the 4 million-solar-mass black hole there, might not be beyond the capabilities of a very advanced civilization. Galactic centers may be so-called Schelling points: likely places for civilizations to meet up or place beacons, given that they cannot communicate among themselves to agree on a location.
“The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy,” Siemion said. “If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
Visit from an interstellar comet
Breakthrough Listen also released observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which had a close encounter with the sun in December and is now on its way out of the solar system. The group had earlier scanned the interstellar rock ‘Oumuamua, which passed through the center of our solar system in 2017. Neither exhibited technosignatures.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this photo of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in October 2019, two months before its closest approach to the sun.
Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt, UCLA
“If interstellar travel is possible, which we don’t know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don’t know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices,” said Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen. “Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.”
Regardless of the kind of SETI search, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces, or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-fi and myriad other human sources.
In Sheikh’s case, she turned the Green Bank telescope on each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes and repeated that twice more. She then threw out any signal that didn’t disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial 1 million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.
Siemion emphasized that the Breakthrough Listen team intends to analyze all the data released to date and to do it systematically and often.
“Of all the observations we have done, probably 20% or 30% have been included in a data analysis paper,” Siemion said. “Our goal is not just to analyze it 100%, but 1000% or 2000%. We want to analyze it iteratively.”
Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, is supported by a $100 million, 10-year commitment from the Breakthrough Initiatives, founded in 2015 by Yuri and Julia Milner to explore the universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective.
Contacts and sources:
Robert Sanders University of California – Berkeley
I was having some fun with the Google Mercury map and found so many structure that I had to make a video about them. I only show about ten in this short video, but one day AI will run ramped through the internet and find thousands of structures in the same planet photo. AI is much better at finding and identifying such tiny details, and people might accept discoveries from AI more easily than a human like myself. Can you imagine the technology within one of these ships? It would advance tech on earth thousands of years in just a few days. The country that has one of these ships...will be the most powerful country on earth. Scott C. Wari
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO Seen Shooting Across Sky Over Fremont, California, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen Shooting Across Sky Over Fremont, California, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Source: MUFON Location of sighting:Fremont, California, USA Guys there is a close up before and at the end of this video I made to help you see it better. I hope it helps. This is an outstanding video of a circular disk craft shooting across the sky trying to make itself look like a meteor. Its not a meteor, its going too slow and at an angle that would be impossible for a meteor. 100% proof that aliens fly over cities in California. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
Taking my dog for a walk when I saw this about 6pm. going north over Fremont, Ca. took video with iphone. this is an mp4 video.
BruceSeesall shows a UFO hurtling towards the moon. The footage was captured last year. We get in close in 5K strong magnification.
Other UFO sightings as shown in the video: Directional changes seen in infrared camera...UFO changing directions in the skies of Montreal Canada and UFO's plunging in and out of clouds on the moon seen in high quality 5K.
KLIMAATVERANDERING: ZOU DE ZON DE BOOSDOENER KUNNEN ZIJN?
KLIMAATVERANDERING: ZOU DE ZON DE BOOSDOENER KUNNEN ZIJN?
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De aarde warmt op. En volgens sommigen is dat het resultaat van de zonne-activiteit. Is dat denkbaar?
In de jaren zeventig ontdekt paleo-ecoloog Bas van Geel in een veenkolom uit Engbertsdijksveen een klimaatomslag. Veen dat ten tijde van het Subboreaal onder relatief droge omstandigheden was gegroeid, maakte ten tijde van het Subatlanticum (ca. 800 voor Christus) plaats voor veen dat onder zeer natte omstandigheden was ontstaan. De oorzaak bleef onbekend. Tot het eind van de twintigste eeuw. Dan ontdekt Van Geel dat de klimaatomslag samenvalt met een plotselinge afname in de activiteit van de zon. Een ontdekking die zijn professionele leven verandert. “Ik ontpopte mezelf tot een klimaatscepticus.”
Zonne-activiteit Van Geel is geen klimaatscepticus in de traditionele zin van het woord. Zo ontkent hij zeker niet dat de aarde de laatste eeuw is opgewarmd. Wel betwijfelt hij of de rol die CO2 hierin speelt, werkelijk zo omvangrijk is als momenteel wordt aangenomen. Een deel van de opwarming die nu aan CO2 wordt toegeschreven, is volgens hem namelijk niet te herleiden naar onze uitstoot van dit bekende broeikasgas, maar naar de activiteit van de zon. “Ik denk dat we de rol van de zon onderschatten.”
Activiteit op de zon.
Afbeelding: NASA / GSFC / Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Onze actieve moederster Wie wel eens plaatjes van het oppervlak van de zon heeft gezien, weet dat het er aldaar vurig aan toe kan gaan. Onze moederster kan zonnevlammen genereren en coronale massa-ejecties uitspugen. Kortom: onze zon is actief. Maar de mate van activiteit fluctueert. Daarin is – grofweg – een elf jaar durende cyclus te onderscheiden die gekenmerkt wordt door een zonneminimum (een periode met weinig zonneactiviteit) en een zonnemaximum (een periode met veel zonneactiviteit). “De verschillen tussen de energie die een actieve zon afgeeft en de energie die een inactieve zon afgeeft, zijn niet zo groot,” erkent Van Geel. Sterker nog: ze zijn te klein om de klimaatomslagen – zoals bijvoorbeeld die ten tijde van het Subatlanticum – te kunnen verklaren. “Er moeten dan ook versterkingsmechanismen zijn,” denkt Van Geel. Mechanismen die ervoor zorgen dat het geringe verschil tussen een actieve en inactieve zon toch een enorme impact heeft op ons klimaat. Maar wat voor mechanismen zijn dat dan? Er zijn twee hypothesen, aldus Van Geel. De eerste draait om kosmische straling. “Kosmische straling speelt een rol bij wolkenvorming: watermoleculen condenseren door kosmische straling. Als de zon heel actief is, is er weinig kosmische straling in het zonnestelsel.” En zouden dus minder wolken ontstaan. En omdat wolken zonlicht reflecteren (en het aardoppervlak koelen) zou een actieve zon – met enige vertraging – resulteren in een opwarming van dat aardoppervlak. “En dan is er nog een hypothese waar ik persoonlijk wat meer in geloof. Deze hypothese stelt dat de verschillen tussen de energie van een actieve en de energie van een inactieve zon misschien klein zijn, maar dat de veranderingen in de afgegeven UV-straling wel groot zijn.” Tijdens een zonneminimum neemt de UV-straling afkomstig van de zon sterk af en wordt minder ozon gevormd. En dat merken we op aarde, doordat ozon energie absorbeert en in die hoedanigheid dus gezien kan worden als een broeikasgas. Tijdens een zonneminimum wordt er minder van gegenereerd en koelt de aarde dus af.
Een kritische blik op de versterkingsmechanismen “Al achttien jaar proberen we een manier te vinden waarop de vrij kleine waargenomen solaire variaties van de afgelopen dertig jaar versterkt kunnen worden,” vertelt professor Werner Schmutz, directeur van het Physikalisch-Metorologisches Observatorium in Davos, aan Scientias.nl. “Fluctuaties in de hoeveelheid UV-straling die van invloed zijn op ozon in de stratosfeer lijken daarbij het meest veelbelovend.” Maar de hamvraag is natuurlijk: oefent een actieve zon via ozon daadwerkelijk invloed uit op ons klimaat? Schmutz en collega’s zochten dat in 2013 uit en moesten in het resulterende paper concluderen dat het vermeende versterkingsmechanisme eigenlijk geen naam mocht hebben. Oefent de zonne-activiteit dan misschien een effect uit op ons klimaat via kosmische straling? De hypothese klonk professor Terence Sloan, verbonden aan de University of Lancaster, plausibel in de oren. En dus besloot hij dat in 2008 eens uit te zoeken. Het leidde tot een serie papers, waarvan het laatste deel in 2013 gepubliceerd werd. “We ontdekten dat het effect te klein was om te detecteren,” zo vertelt Sloan aan Scientias.nl. “En dus sprake was van een verwaarloosbaar effect op de opwarming van de aarde.” De benodigde, hypothetische versterkingsmechanismen lijken in recente studies dus geen stand te houden.
“DE ZON KAN ZEER ZEKER UITGESLOTEN WORDEN ALS DE OORZAAK VAN DE OPWARMING DIE DE AARDE IN DE LAATSTE VIJFTIG JAAR HEEFT DOORGEMAAKT”
Stralingssterkte Speelt de zonne-activiteit dan helemaal geen rol in het klimaat? Zover willen de meeste onderzoekers ook weer niet gaan. Schmutz grijpt opnieuw terug op zijn studie uit 2013 die het versterkingsmechanisme omtrent UV-straling en ozon praktisch van tafel veegde, maar wel enige invloed van de zon op het klimaat bespeurde. “Als de zon inderdaad, zoals wij vermoeden, van invloed is, dan lijkt dat aan het einde van al onze studies simpelweg toe te schrijven te zijn aan variaties in de totale stralingssterkte van de zon (dus variaties in de hoeveelheid energie die de zon afgeeft).” Die fluctuaties in de intensiteit van het zonlicht dat de aarde bereikt, zijn klein. En het Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stelt dan ook dat recente zonne-activiteit geen noemenswaardige impact heeft gehad op het klimaat. Schmutz is het daarmee eens. “De zon kan zeer zeker uitgesloten worden als de oorzaak van de opwarming die de aarde in de laatste vijftig jaar heeft doorgemaakt, omdat de stralingssterkte stabiel was. En als we wat verder inzoomen, zien we zelfs dat de stralingssterkte sinds de jaren veertig ietsje is afgenomen en in de huidige elf jaar durende cyclus zelfs heel duidelijk is afgenomen.” Vandaar dat klimaatmodellen de huidige opwarming ook niet kunnen reproduceren als ze onze uitstoot van broeikasgassen buiten beschouwing laten en zich alleen laten leiden door natuurlijke fluctuaties, zoals veranderingen in de zonne-activiteit.
Het verleden en de toekomst Maar hoe zit het dan met die opmerkelijke perioden in het verleden, zoals het Maunder Minimum (1645-1715)? Een tijdvak waarin de zonne-activiteit uitzonderlijk laag was, net als de temperatuur op aarde? “Er was een minimale zonne-activiteit in de zeventiende eeuw en die viel samen met een historisch koude periode waarin zelfs de rivier The Theems bevroor,” vertelt Sloan. “Maar niemand kan je vertellen waarom een afname in zonnevlekken een koude periode op aarde veroorzaakt.” “We hebben eigenlijk alleen in het verleden maar goede correlaties gezien tussen zonne-activiteit en een dalende temperatuur,” voegt Schmutz toe. “Aangezien we de stralingssterkte van de zon pas sinds 1978 vanuit de ruimte meten, beslaan onze observaties nog maar een korte tijd. En in die tijd is de zon niet veel veranderd, in ieder geval duidelijk niet genoeg om van invloed te kunnen zijn op het klimaat. En dat betekent dat er op dit moment twee mogelijkheden zijn. De eerste: de zon heeft in ongeveer dertig jaar het volledige scala aan mogelijke variaties laten zien. In dat geval moet de zon uitgesloten worden als een drijvende kracht achter historische klimaatveranderingen.” Een andere optie is dat we in deze dertig jaar – een tijdvak van niks, als je spreekt over een ster die al 4,5 miljard jaar meegaat – eigenlijk nog niets gezien hebben en de zon op grotere tijdschalen tot veel grotere variaties in staat is. “Dan is de zon de belangrijkste verdachte op het gebied van historische klimaatveranderingen.” In andere woorden: op lange termijn zou de zonne-activiteit dus wel een effect kunnen hebben op het klimaat. Maar in welke mate, is onduidelijk. Schmutz en collega’s verkenden dat heikele vraagstuk recent in dit onderzoeksproject. Op basis van modellen – die speculatief van aard zijn en ervan uitgaan dat ons een periode van sterk verminderde zonne-activiteit te wachten staat “Niemand weet zeker of de zon de komende 50 tot 100 jaar in een Grand Minimum belandt, maar we verwachten het” – voorspellen ze dat de zon er de komende eeuw voor kan zorgen dat de temperatuur op aarde 0,5 graden lager uitvalt dan het geval zou zijn als de zonne-activiteit niet sterk zou verminderen. “Als hun model klopt, kan die 0,5 graad afkoeling de effecten van broeikasgassen verminderen,” merkt Sloan op. Maar wederom kan de zon niet het verschil maken. Want de door menselijk handelen aangedreven opwarming van de aarde gaat aanzienlijk sneller dan de voorspelde en zeer speculatieve afkoeling die de zon zou kunnen veroorzaken. Als we niks doen, zitten we aan het eind van de rit dus – ongeacht of de zon nu voor een beetje verkoeling zorgt of niet – met een planeet die enigszins over de kook is.
Van Geel wacht ondertussen rustig de komende jaren af. “De zonneactiviteit loopt nu terug en de vraag is: wat doet het klimaat? Ik denk echt dat we richting afkoeling gaan.” En als dat niet zo is? “Dan heb ik ongelijk en ben ik dom geweest. Maar als ik twijfelde, zou ik niet naar buiten treden.” Sloan en Schmutz zien het op basis van hun onderzoek allemaal heel anders. Het feit dat de aarde opwarmt, kunnen we volgens hen niet afschuiven op de zon. Als de zon al een rol speelt, dan is deze nihil in vergelijking met de rol die onze eigen activiteit speelt. Tegelijkertijd sluiten de onderzoekers nog niet uit dat de zon op lange termijn wel impact kan hebben op het aardse klimaat. Maar hoe dan precies en in welke mate: dat blijft voorlopig in nevelen gehuld. Het lijkt voor het klimaatdebat allemaal niet zo heel relevant, zo benadrukt Schmutz. “Het is in mijn optiek onmogelijk dat huidige, natuurlijke effecten de invloed van ons mensen domineren.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interviews met Bas van Geel, Werner Schmutz en Terence Sloan Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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