Flying saucer over Barcelona during a thunderstorm

This giant disc-shaped object was caught on tape over Barcelona, the capital and largest city of Catalonia. Author recorded a huge flying saucer like craft with a blinking lights around it. This happened on 15th March 2020 during a storm.

Your thoughts about this video?

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16-04-2020 om 21:12 geschreven door peter  

Forged in fire: Earth's past and future explored in 'Cosmos: Possible Worlds'

A young Neanderthal girl kneels at the water's edge as host Neil deGrasse Tyson looks on. Until about 40,000 years ago, our Neanderthal relatives lived very much as we did.

(Image: © Cosmos Studios)

Evil, catastrophe and disease, on the other hand, were caused by Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian representation of what modern Christian societies would call the devil. Why people thought of these maladies as being the creation of an evil being becomes more obvious as Tyson walks us through how a rabies virus invades a dog's body after the pup has been infected by a rabid bat. 

Disease microbes not only attack and kill cells, Tyson explains, but also change their hosts' behavior to facilitate the virus' spread to other hosts. The rabies virus, for example, turns its host into a fearless, crazed animal by attacking the limbic system, which deals with emotions and memory. Once the limbic system is compromised, the virus turns its attention to the mechanisms in the animals' throat that produce saliva, causing infected animals to foam at the mouth. The virus also inhibits the swallowing mechanism, maximizing the chances infected saliva will spread to another host. 

How does the virus "know" to do this? "Evolution by natural selection," says Tyson, explaining that "given enough time, a random mutation will take hold if it enhances the virus' chance of survival." Ironically, it's the victims that keep a virus' "wicked flame" alive as it leaps from host to host, bending them to its will as if it were a sentient being. "We are at the mercy of unseen forces; viruses, microbes, hormones, our very own DNA. Where does the programming end and free will begin, if it ever does at all?" 

Elaborating on these points, Tyson turns to insects and animals. Simple behavioral programs are abundant in the animal kingdom; for example, upon their death, bees secrete oleic acid (a "death pheromone") to tell their fellow hive members to remove their corpses from the hive, and geese will instinctively retrieve any egg-like objects that may have rolled away from their nests. While we may detect evidence of spontaneous decision-making in animals, Tyson says, can we identify a source of executive authority in them, or a "soul"? What about human beings? 

We don't yet have established parameters for what it means to be "distinctly human," Tyson notes. Plato was one of the first philosophers to put forth a definition: "Man is a featherless biped." Aristotle, a student of Plato's, would later proclaim that man is a social and political animal. Neither of these definitions hold much weight; after all, ants, bees, and termites are also social animals. Underscoring this point, Tyson gives us several examples of animal species that engage in trade and art, use technology and tools, parent their young through adolescence into adulthood, and who enslave and exploit other animals and keep them in captivity. Other animals even show each other affection and tenderness. 

• Related: Creative creatures: 10 animals that use tools

It would seem the only thing that separates us from other animals, Tyson ponders, is our "neurotic need to feel 'special.'" Against the backdrop of the Halls of Extinction, featured prominently in previous episodes, Tyson insists that there must be a clear distinction between ourselves and animals that justifies our eating them, wearing them and even bringing an end to their species.

"Is DNA destiny, and if it is, does it have the power to write epic tales of heroism and saintliness?" There's heroism in the way a gazelle will put herself in harm's way to protect her offspring and herd from a cheetah, but there's also heroism in stories from our ancient past, as Tyson illustrates with the story of Ashoka. Five seconds ago on the "cosmic calendar" — approximately 2,200 Earth years ago — the emperor Ashoka's reign of terror over the Indian subcontinent began, marked by his proclivity for torture and extreme violence. 

After an exchange with an unnamed Buddhist monk, Ashoka underwent a profound change; having realized the true scope of his power, social welfare became Ashoka's top priority as his idea of "kinship" expanded to include everyone, even animals. He banned the ritual sacrifice of animals and established veterinary hospitals. Ashoka further dug wells, planted trees, built shelters, signed peace treaties with neighboring countries he once warred with, built schools, hospitals and hospices, introduced the education of women and free healthcare for all, and much more. 

"Ashoka's dream," Tyson says, referring to his philanthropic pursuits, "grows louder with time." We cut to a scene of a mother with her crying child, who had been born just moments before. We see the child again in the twelfth and penultimate episode of the series, "Coming of Age in the Anthropocene." The opening scene finds us on a placid seashore where Tyson describes life on Earth to the newborn. "We're all very young here," he coos, "new, like you, to the mysteries of the universe." Science, Tyson states, is our birthright and is how we piece together our history. 

Setting the stage for this new episode, Tyson recalls our own planet's fiery beginnings when it was hammered by a celestial body the size of Mars, which blasted into space material that became Earth's moon. Earth gradually cooled, forming a crust on its surface that allowed oceans to form. In our planet's infancy, days were much shorter; only about six hours long, notes Tyson. The environment was also toxic and hostile: "Scientists reason that the thick, hazy atmosphere trapped the heat of the Earth and made it scorching hot," Tyson explains.  

• Related: How the moon formed: 5 wild lunar theories

Amazingly, there were organisms that survived this seemingly uninhabitable environment; these were cyanobacteria that lived deep in the oceans, and "remade" the planet by consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, which in turn consumed the thick methane that enveloped our planet, causing temperatures to drop. Atoms of oxygen then gathered in the sky above our planet and formed ozone molecules. Life on land became possible, and the young Earth's landscape changed drastically as this life began to adapt to its new conditions. 

At 11 o'clock on New Year's Eve of the cosmic year, Homo erectus stood up for the first time, freeing its hands and earning the species its name. "They began to move around, to explore, daring to risk everything to get to unknown places. They were brave, and their blood runs in your veins," says Tyson of our ancient ancestors. Some explored Africa and others went on to Europe, and evidence supports the theory the European pioneers would later evolve into Neanderthals. Other H. erectus individuals would go on to Asia and evolve into our hominid cousins, the Denisovans.

Our Neanderthal relatives lived much as we did and did many of the things we consider to be "human," says Tyson. To this day, a few of us even carry some Neanderthal genes; however, some unknown force wiped out the Neanderthals and Denisovans many years ago. Scientists postulate it may have been their complacency that doomed them, as we have evidence showing they never ventured beyond ocean coastlines. 

More restless than their cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans, our Homo sapiens ancestors crossed seas and unforgiving landscapes, changing the land, ocean and atmosphere, leading to mass extinction. The scientific community gave our age a new name, "Anthropocene," from the Greek words for "human" and "recent." Just as the Neanderthals and Denisovans may have doomed themselves, however, early Homo sapiens may have doomed their descendants: us. 

Altering our world comes at a great price; a "darkness," Tyson says, has been looming over us as our technology advances and population increases. The invention of agriculture allowed humans to settle on farms and later in cities. The carbon dioxide and methane released from various farming and agricultural techniques increased exponentially as our need for them increased, to sustain ever-growing numbers. In China we began burning coal, which became fuel for foundries, forges and homes. 

As harmful to the environment as these were, nothing compared to the damage done by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Before refrigerators, we kept food items cool and stored them in ice boxes. Later, the ice box was replaced by a gas-powered refrigerator that used ammonia sulfur dioxide as a coolant. However, these chemicals were poisonous and the mechanism would often leak, making them dangerous. The invention of CFCs, a molecule that hadn't existed in nature previously, was so successful it was used in almost everything. 

The catastrophic effect CFCs had on ozone was not discovered until the early 1970s, when chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rolland, studying the effects rocket fuel had on the atmosphere, found CFCs not only accumulated in the atmosphere, but had already thinned the ozone layer. When UV light hits a CFC molecule, it strips away the chlorine atoms, which then eat away at ozone, the very insulation that makes it possible to live on Earth. Thankfully, the scientists worked tirelessly to warn the world, and global governments heeded their warning; manufacturers stopped producing CFCs, and the ozone has been getting thicker ever since. Our children may even see the damage completely healed.

• Related: The effects of global warming

The episode ends on a harrowing note, another scientists' warning we have yet to heed. Syukuro Manabe was born in rural Japan and took an intense interest in Earth's average global temperature. During the course of his career, he would assemble the evidence he needed to write "Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity," a paper that predicted the increase of Earth's temperature due to greenhouse gases until it becomes an uninhabitable and toxic environment again, leading to our extinction. 

Many still believe the "science is unsettled," however, despite Manabe's correctly predicting the rise in temperature and its effects on our planet. "The scientists warned us," says a remorseful Tyson as we look into our future at life on Earth: lethal outdoor temperatures, global water shortages, wildfires. These ruminations culminate in the striking visual of battered baby bottles littering a dry and barren field, implying the worst for mankind. Tyson ends on a hopeful note, which will carry us into the final episode of the series. 

"This doesn't have to be," says Tyson. "it's not too late. There's another hallway, another future we can still have. I promise to get you there; we'll find a way."

"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.

• 'Cosmos' with Neil deGrasse Tyson Returns in March 2020 on Fox, NatGeo Channel 
• 'I want the solar system to become our backyard,' astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says
• Carl Sagan: Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot & famous quotes

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

16-04-2020 om 01:41 geschreven door peter  

This stunning crescent Earth is the last view of home from the Mercury-bound BepiColombo

The European Space Agency released this animation of the BepiColombo spacecraft's final view of Earth, captured on April 10 and April 11, 2020.

(Image: © ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

"Images gathered just before closest approach portray our planet shining through darkness, during one of humankind's most challenging times in recent history," wrote the European Space Agency in a statement. Officials had previously urged astronomy enthusiasts to observe novel coronavirus-related "social distancing" guidelines while searching for the spacecraft from their balconies or backyards.

One of the most difficult parts of the flyby involved 34 minutes of darkness for BepiColombo, when it flew through the shadow of Earth. This was the first time the solar-powered spacecraft did not receive sunlight to "power up" instruments and essential equipment since its launch 18 months ago, in October 2018.

To prepare for the darkness, mission operators fully charged the spacecraft's batteries and made sure all components were nice and warm. Social distancing efforts due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic were in force at the spacecraft mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, with only limited personnel on site. The effort worked without any problems, ESA added in the same statement.

"It is always nerve-wracking to know a spacecraft's solar panels are not bathed in sunlight. When we saw the solar cells had restarted to generate electrical current, we knew BepiColombo was finally out of Earth's shadow and ready to proceed on its interplanetary journey," Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo spacecraft operations manager for ESA, said in the statement.

Scientists switched on most of the instruments during the flyby to do scientific measurements of the moon and Earth's magnetic field, ESA added. These observations will serve as a test run for operations at Mercury. BepiColombo scientists will analyze the data in time to make any necessary calibrations for the spacecraft's next flyby, which will be of Venus in October.

ESA marked the maneuver's conclusion by sharing an animation of images captured as the spacecraft flew away from Earth within a day of the flyby, paired with a quote from famous astronomer Carl Sagan. "That receding crescent … 'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.' - Carl Sagan. Farewell @BepiColombo, and goodnight."

Numerous spacecraft and agency Twitter feeds provided updates on the mission during and after the flyby.

"Dear Earthlings, I'm almost one million km from Earth now and I miss you so much," the @BepiColombo Twitter account said Monday (April 13). "It would make me so happy if you could share any photos you've taken of my flyby on Friday." The account added a link to a Flickr group hosting photos of the flyby taken by amateur photographers tracking the spacecraft's passage.

The animation also caught the attention of some prominent tweeters. 

"EXCEPTIONAL MUTUAL GLANCE: #BepiColombo was looking us while we were looking at it, AT THE VERY SAME TIME," wrote the hosts of the Virtual Telescope project, based in Italy, on Twitter on Saturday (April 11), sharing a composite of their image and that of the spacecraft.

London's Northolt Branch Observatories, which typically studies comets and asteroids during Earth flybys, posted a picture on Twitter showing its view of BepiColombo in the sky. "It was visible at +16.9 mag at the time, in the direction of the constellation Hydra," the tweet on Sunday (April 12) read. A +6 magnitude in brightness is considered the threshold of naked-eye visibility, so +16.9 magnitude is only visible in a large telescope.

Scientific updates about the mission's progress will be available in the coming weeks at @ESA_Bepi, @ESA_MTM and @BepiColombo.

•  Photos of Mercury from NASA's Messenger spacecraft 
•  What a view! Mercury probe snaps stunning photos of our planet during Earth flyby. 
•  See amazing photos of Mercury by a doomed NASA spacecraft (video) 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.  

{ https://www.space.com/ }

16-04-2020 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

Newfound asteroid the size of a house will fly safely by Earth Wednesday

16-04-2020 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

Helderste supernova ooit ontdekt - HLN.be

Bron: Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

De helderste supernova draagt de (abstracte) naam SN2016aps en vond zo’n 3,6 miljard lichtjaar van de aarde plaats. “SN2016aps is om verschillende redenen spectaculair,” aldus astronoom Edo Berger. “Hij is niet alleen helderder dan elke andere supernova die we ooit hebben gezien, maar hij heeft ook verschillende eigenschappen en kenmerken die ’m erg zeldzaam maken in vergelijking met andere explosies van sterren in het universum.”

Het onderzoeksteam identificeerde de supernova SN2016aps voor het eerst in 2016. Daarvoor gebruikten ze de gegevens van de Pan-STARRS, een stel van twee telescopen. Al snel volgde een vierjarig vervolgonderzoek waarbij de energie-uitstoot nauwgezet bestudeerd werd.

Lees ook

Rode reus toch niet aan zwanenzang toe

100 keer zoveel massa als de zon

Wat bleek? De explosie van de ster was tien keer zo krachtig als een supernova van normale grootte. Bij de gemiddelde supernova is slechts 1 procent van de totale energie-uitbarsting zichtbaar. Maar de SN2016aps straalde ongeveer 50 procent van zijn energie uit. “De intense energie-uitstoot van deze supernova wijst op een zware ontplofte ster, die bij zijn geboorte minstens 100 keer zoveel massa had als onze zon,” zegt Berger.

Uiteindelijk kwamen de onderzoekers tot de conclusie dat SN2016aps wellicht is ontstaan door de samensmelting van twee zware sterren.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

15-04-2020 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

Comet Atlas is acting very strangely

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

15-04-2020 om 23:24 geschreven door peter  

Linda Moulton Howe Explores Area 29, White Sands Missile Base

COAST TO COAST AM – Linda presented her interview with researcher Ryan Wood, who revealed information about a secret facility within the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico referred to as “Area 29.”

Wood and his father Robert received documents and photos referring to this facility beginning in the mid-1990s, and recently hired a remote viewer he referred to as “Sky Arrow” to report on any impressions that could be deduced from the material.

According to Wood, the viewer first said that the “target makes me nervous,” but went on to describe a facility that housed space vehicles, UFOs, and “experimental energy research for deep space propulsion vehicles.” From these impressions, Wood concluded that the facility is “tapping into something that modern, open science doesn’t know or understand.”

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

15-04-2020 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

NASA Actually Recorded Strange And Chilling Sound In Space

John Vibes, Truth Theory
Waking Times

For a long time, many experts believed that there was no sound in space because it is a vacuum, but sound does exist in the form of electromagnetic vibrations, you just need the right tools to be able to hear it. NASA scientists with the Van Allen Probes mission were able to record these sounds, and have given them different classifications.

To make the recordings, scientists used the “Waves instrument,” which is part of the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science project, also known as EMFISIS. EMFISIS is an instrument suite on the Van Allen Probes, and it is sensitive to both electric and magnetic waves.

Accord to the NASA blog, “It probes them with a trio of electric sensors as well as three search coil magnetometers, which look for changes in the magnetic field. All instruments were specifically designed to be highly sensitive while using the least amount of power possible.”

Scientists were recording these waves because they want to learn more about how space works.

“These plasma waves knock about high-energy electrons speeding around Earth. Some of those freed electrons spiral earthward, where they interact with our upper atmosphere, causing auroras, though others can pose a danger to spacecraft or telecommunications, which can be damaged by their powerful radiation,” according to NASA.

Below are some of the descriptions that NASA gave for the sounds:

• Juno Captures the “Roar” of Jupiter: NASA’s Juno spacecraft has crossed the boundary of Jupiter’s immense magnetic field. Juno’s Waves instrument recorded the encounter with the bow shock over the course of about two hours on June 24th, 2016.
• Plasma Waves: Plasma waves, like the roaring ocean surf, create a rhythmic cacophony that, with the EMFISIS instrument aboard NASA’s Van Allen Probes, we can hear across space.
• Sounds of a Comet Encounter: During its February 14th, 2011, flyby of comet Tempel 1, an instrument on the protective shield on NASA’s Stardust spacecraft was pelted by dust particles and small rocks, as can be heard in this audio track.

If you are into that sort of thing, you can also purchase entire recordings like this from Amazon, but they are also available widely on streaming services like SoundCloud as well.

Source: 

• https://www.wakingtimes.com/2020/04/15/nasa-actually-recorded-strange-and-chilling-sound-in-space/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

15-04-2020 om 23:09 geschreven door peter  

15-04-2020 om 22:40 geschreven door peter  

Energy Entity Recorded Over North Carolina Darting About, Video, April 14, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 14, 2020
Location of sighting: Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Source: MUFON

I have heard reports of a sphere being seen around the world. Videos and photos have been uploaded all week. From the shape of this object in the photos above...I would say this is not a perfect sphere and looks to have over ten right angles on it. Planets dont have right angels. They are round. Also the description of this object darting about also falls into place with other reports. This is an awesome video. This is not a UFO so much as an energy being...and entity that is of the highest level of assertion for any species. Very rare, very real. 
Scott C. Waring 

Eyewitness states: 

Visual bright orb brighter than typical star. Not an aircraft . Potentially thought was a drone however it aas above and well beyond cloud cover altitude. Moved erratically at points and changed locations. Too large for drone and outside all flight paths of rdu. Moved out of sight after 30 min. 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

15-04-2020 om 22:02 geschreven door peter  

Alien Artifact On Surface Of Mars In Rover Photo, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: July 12, 2015

Location of discovery: Mars, Sol 1037

Original link: Deleted by NASA 

Here is an old discovery I have never seen before. It was found by Youtuber IC Devices and shows some ancient artifact on the surface of Mars. The object in question is folded and has three layers with a baseball size sphere sitting on the top layer. The objects color looks different from the color of its surroundings. It looks grey, metallic in appearance. Another strange thing is the original link to this was deleted by NASA. This is a remarkable find, and had this been discovered in an ancient Aztec or Mayan dig site...there would be no question about it being made by intelligent beings. I hope this discovery inspires you to start searching and reporting discoveries of your own. We learn together as we teach each other. 

Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

15-04-2020 om 21:35 geschreven door peter  

There are a number of artefacts, found at varying parts of the world, which, fly in the face of current paradigms, in regards to the chronology of man.

Iron pots, zinc vases, even imprints of ancient chariot wheels, are but a few artefacts, which have in the past, been found in numerous coal seams – and found by people in positions of responsibility, whom often testify not only in regards to their legitimacy, but are often accompanied by the lump of coal in which they were found - still possessing the intriguing imprint upon their surface, undeniably supporting the testimonies of these individuals, all but proving authenticity beyond doubt.

Like that of the iron pot, and its accompanying coal block which was its tomb, carbon dating has indicated that the pot is an astonishing 300 million years old.

However, as time goes on, and coal mining, along with many other mining activities becomes more rapid and advanced in nature, it is simply a matter of time before even more mysterious and unexplainable artefacts are also found.

Unfortunately, due to the controversial nature of these artefacts, it is very likely that a number of them have either been shrugged off, or actively destroyed before ever achieving wide spread acclaim.

However, fortunately, the next artefact of interest, just like that of the many others we have previously covered, can not only be seen as yet another smoking gun, indicating that there has been a number of advanced phases within human civilisation, but yet again, this timeline could in all possibility, date back an astonishing 300 million years.

Although modern society has been taught that we are at the height of human accomplishments, many of the techniques we currently claim as our own accomplishments, could have been achieved an unimaginably long time ago, far back within earth’s history.

Dated to the same age as that of a number of other artefacts, which we have covered in the past, a group of brass doorknobs were once abandoned, eventually finding their way into a coal seam, which has been dated as 300 million year old geology. Found still encased within this ancient strata, these astonishing artefacts are undeniably of an incredible age.

Unfortunately, and rather predictably, not much has been done in regard to mainstream investigation into said artifacts, and their current location, if indeed still in existence is unclear, yet fortunately, before their disappearance, photographic evidence was taken. Subsequently allowing us to add it to the volume of research and artefacts which not only support our posit of lost civilisation, but place human activities an impressive 300 million years back into earth’s history.

Who made these brass doorknobs?

Could we really be a civilisation hundreds of millions of years old?

We find the evidence to suggest such, highly compelling.

Videos, peter2011

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

15-04-2020 om 21:06 geschreven door peter  

Top 10 UFO Sightings: Best Cases

Aliens are visiting us

I’ve asked a friend of mine to review this new book about UFOs that’s available on Amazon:

If you want to be sure of unusual things such as aliens or UFOs, then you must think about it from an unusual way of thinking.

This book not only gives you a proof of the sightings of UFO, but it changes the way of thinking and perception about them. UFO sightings are becoming more and more popular and no one can deny it.
Even the Pentagon has admitted that the aerial objects in the videos are simply unidentified, and for now, unexplained.

I never believed in aliens or UFOs. I always thought that this is something created by man himself to become popular or something but after reading the book ”top 10 UFO Sightings by Sebastian Privett’’ my whole perception has changed. This book gives me all the answers to my questions. And now I have started believing in these things.

After reading this book I ask myself how people can close their minds off to the size of the Universe. With billions of stars, millions of galaxies, and possibly a googol of planets, how can it be that human beings are the only thinking animal in creation?

This book unfolds a thrilling journey with a lot of information with proof, so I suggest everyone to read this book. Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed—if they’re here, I want to know about them.

It changes my perception maybe it changed yours.

Get your own copy of the book at this link: https://amzn.to/2R582th

Videos, selected by peter2011

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

15-04-2020 om 20:17 geschreven door peter  

UFOs started appearing over Kroměří¸, Czech Republic 10-Apr-2020

Check out this really interesting footage that was filmed over Kroměří¸, a city in east part of Czech Republic. These bright unidentified flying objects just started to show them selfs in the middle on nowhere.

What do you think these are? Extraterrestrial beings or crafts or something more earthly (experimental maybe?).
You can leave your comments below!

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

15-04-2020 om 20:04 geschreven door peter  

Muldashev: four civilizations on Earth before man

Written by Gianni Rizzo

A well-known Russian expert, Ernst Rifgatovich Muldashev, an ophthalmic surgeon by profession and researcher by passion, has long been looking for traces of ancient civilizations disappeared before the rise of mankind on Earth.

Muldshev, who in 2002 published three volumes of “In Search of Cities of the Gods”, followed by numerous other volumes (among which “Where do we come from” e “Between the arms of Dracula”), believes that the existence of more ancient civilizations of man is confirmed by archaeological finds, rock carvings, references to airplanes and Ufos in stories and legends. According to the expert, the civilizations that inhabited the planet would have been four.

ASURAS, THE NATIVES

The Asuras, or the natives, according to Muldashev were the first race that appeared on Earth 10 million years ago. They were incredibly tall beings, up to 50 meters, they had an etheric body, they lived for up to ten thousand years and used telepathy to communicate with each other. In reality, they were not natives of the Earth: they moved there after the death of the Phaethon planet.

ATLANTEANS, THOSE BORN AFTER

As the millennia passed, the Asuras changed, their bodies became denser. Thus a new race would develop, the Atlanteans, i.e. “those born after”. They were slightly smaller than the Asuras, they still did not have bones, but they had a third eye, located between the eyebrows.

LEMURIANS, THE BUILDERS OF THE SPHINX

After the Atlanteans, appeared on Earth the Lemurians. Much more similar to modern humans, they possessed a bone skeleton and were differentiated according to sex. The third eye was still present, but not as well developed as the Atlanteans.

Lemurians were about 7-8 meters tall and lived about a thousand years. According to Muldashev, they were the ones who built the Sphinx, Stonehenge and many other wonderful monuments of antiquity.

BOREI, THE MOST SIMILAR TO MAN

Lastly the Borei would have appeared: this race was formed long after the other, its members were much lower, did not exceed 3-4 meters in height, their third eye was more hidden while the other organs were very similar to those of man. What happened to all these beings?

According to Muldashev, about 25-30 thousand years ago on our planet occurred a nuclear catastrophe following a conflict between Lemurians and Borei. Some of the Lemurians took refuge in the caves, where they fell into a hibernating state, the other side flew away on space ships.

ARYANS, AFTER THE FALL OF ATLANTIS

After the Lemurians left the scene, the Boers and the Atlanteans reached unprecedented development peaks, but they could not avoid the disappearance of their civilizations that would have happened about 12 thousand years ago.

According to Muldashev a fifth race would have developed just before the disappearance of Atlantis, whose myth survived so far: the "aryan" race. The ancestors of modern man did not have a third eye and that's why our society would be developing more slowly.

Will it be true, or as official science says it's just about fantastic theories without any concrete proof? The experts have spoken, but this does not interest the readers of Muldashev.

{ https://www.fanwave.it/ }

15-04-2020 om 01:47 geschreven door peter  

‘Holy Grail’ Dating Technique Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Past

A new archaeological dating technique has been successfully applied to shards of pottery uncovered from a dig in East London’s Shoreditch.

The “groundbreaking” new dating technique analyzes fatty acids rather than organic materials, and the University of Bristol scientists who developed the method proved its effectivity by dating ancient pottery samples from sites of known ages. Among them was a collection of pottery fragments discovered beneath Shoreditch in East London, containing traces of meat and dairy products, made and consumed by descendants of Europe's first farmers around 3,600 BC.

Enter: Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Analysis

A new study published in the journal  Nature by a team of scientists, from the University of Bristol in England, explains that pottery is one of the most commonly recovered artifacts from archaeological sites. However, pottery is among the most difficult artifacts to date accurately using the traditional radiocarbon dating method, but the new method is based on “accelerator mass spectrometry analysis” of food residues including fatty acids.

Experts at the University of Bristol have developed a groundbreaking new dating technique for pottery (like the fragment of the one pictured, which here is being prepared for dating).

( University of Bristol )

According to the paper, this new dating technique for pottery vessels has several advantages over the traditional method, as it can directly determine the period it was made. It also identifies the origins of the organic residues found on the pottery, which helps scientists map when specific foodstuffs were exploited. What’s more, when testing their new method, they successfully dated dairy and carcass products in Neolithic vessels from Europe and Saharan Africa .

Behold, a Holy Grail of Archaeology

The team’s new method dates pottery with an accuracy to within around “one human lifespan” by analyzing the porous surfaces of pottery, which absorb fatty acids left over from foodstuffs. And speaking of this groundbreaking new method of directly dating archaeological pots, chemist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol said it’s one of the “holy grails of archaeology.”

Emmanuelle Casanova one of the Bristol scientists who worked on the project loading the Bristol accelerator mass spectrometer with samples for the new dating technique.

( University of Bristol )

Having conceptualized this technique more than twenty years ago, the scientist says it wasn't until the team established their own radiocarbon facility in Bristol that they “cracked it,” according to The Daily Mail .

Before this new method was approved, the researchers had to demonstrate that it could determine dates as accurately as samples of bones, seeds and wood and this was achieved by extracting fatty acids from ancient pottery at a range of key sites across Britain, Europe and Africa, known to be up to 8,000 years old. The British sample is described in The Daily Mail as Neolithic “dirty dishes" dug up in Shoreditch at the Principal Place dig site, which is the foundations of Amazon’s new headquarters.

The Shoreditch excavation site, Principal Place, London.

( MOLA)

Shoreditch is a hipster heaven for artists and clubbers and people who like to dress up as 19th century cobblers through the day, and this hub of glassy office blocks interspersed with vintage clothes markets, indie coffee shops and cool co-working spaces is but a modern venire over a deeply ancient landscape.

Comprising 436 fragments from at least 24 separate vessels and weighing a total of nearly 6.5 kilos, the pottery included traces of goat, beef, lamb and dairy products, which the team were able to date to within a window of just 138 years, to around 3,600 BC. This means the poetry was made and used around 5,600 years ago by ‘early East Enders’, descendants of Europe's first farmers who arrived in Britain just four centuries earlier, who we now know ate a diet of dairy products from cows, sheep and goats.

Residues found within the round-bottomed vessel suggest it was used to process meat stew. These fragments were used as part of the new dating technique. 

(MOLA)

• Fine-Tuning Radiocarbon Dating Will Rewrite History!
• Dating methods in Archaeology. Are they accurate?
• Baffling Bronze Age Weapons Hoard Found in London

Revealing the Sedentary Secrets of Neolithic Hipsters

This “remarkable collection” from Shoreditch helps to fill a “critical gap in London's prehistory,” according to consultant prehistorian Jon Cotton of the Museum of London Archaeology, and he added that this is the “strongest evidence yet” that the people in the area later occupied by London lived “a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle during the Early Neolithic period.”

This evidence challenges the traditional archaeological view that hunting and gathering was the preferred survival method in the mid fourth century BC by demonstrating the people in what would become Britain’s capital were more sedentary than thought.

Historic England's head of scientific dating, who complied the statistical analysis in the new study, Alex Bayliss, said it is very difficult to overstate the importance of this advance to the archaeological community and that the opportunity to date different kinds of pottery much more securely will be “of great practical significance in the field of archaeology.”

• Top image: 6,000-year-old prehistoric pottery from the Sahara Desert, which was subjected to the new dating technique. Source: Emmanuelle Casanova et al. / University of Bristol / Nature

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

15-04-2020 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

New Crucifixion Evidence Sheds Light on the Death of Jesus Christ

An investigation into crucifixions reveals evidence using the latest medical technology on how the horrific form of execution was slow and excruciating, providing new insights into the death of Jesus Christ.

An Excruciating Death

A new TV documentary on the Smithsonian Channel called Crucifixion Mystery discusses the latest theories by medical experts. Dr. Per Lav Madsen, a Danish cardiologist believes the whole process was to cause immense suffering before death. “ Crucifixion was a horrible way of killing people because it took so long. It was a slow way of dying and that’s the reason they used crucifixion in the first place.”

The length of time and suffering varied, according to Dr. Kristina Killgrove. “Someone might have survived on the cross for as long as four or five days until they died of dehydration.”

Rare Skeletons Provide Insights Into Death of Jesus

The documentary also investigates two rare examples of skeletons believed to have been crucified.

The most recent archaeological discovery was in 2007, when a construction team in northern Italy’s Gavello municipality accidentally uncovered an isolated skeleton from a Roman-era burial. Scientists believed the man who was in his thirties was crucified. Using the latest technological advances to study the skeleton, this could offer up new insights into the death of Jesus Christ .

Grave of the man from Gavello during excavation by the provincial archaeological superintendency. 

(Soprentendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio Per Le Province Di Verona, Rovigo e Vicenza )

The research team included Emanuela Gualdi-Russo, Ursula Thun Hohenstein, and Nicoletta Onisto from the University of Ferrara and Elena Pilli and David Caramelli from the University of Florence. They extracted DNA from the remains and were able to rule out an accidental origin for a hole in the calcaneus – the heel bone.

The hole was circular, passing from the inside of the foot to the outside, with evidence showing it was caused at the time of death. “In our interpretation,” the archaeologists wrote in A multidisciplinary study of calcaneal trauma in Roman Italy: a possible case of crucifixion? : “We found a particular lesion on the foot of a skeleton from an isolated Roman burial discovered by excavation in 2007 in northern Italy. Here we suggest crucifixion as a possible cause of the lesion.”

Right calcaneus from 1st c AD Gavello, Italy, showing possible evidence of crucifixion. This archaeological evidence has provided new clues to the death of Jesus.

(Emanuela Gualdi-Russo & Ursula Thun Hohenstein / University of Ferrara )

The researchers believed that “the type of lesion found on the right calcaneus from Gavello is compatible with a position of the body [...] contorted to the right with legs and feet in contact to allow a single nail to pierce both heels, [or with] knees in an open position and feet with heels overlapping and fixed on the medial side by a single nail.”

The skeleton was dated to the Roman era as archaeologists discovered fragments of typical Roman bricks and tiles nearby, which places this crucifixion on or near the time of Christ’s death.

Why did the Romans Use Crucifixion as a Form of Punishment?

This form of execution was reserved for the lowest of the low - slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners and political activists.

During the 1st century AD, large numbers of rebels against Rome were crucified in Palestine.  It’s believed that Christ was crucified on the pretext that he instigated rebellion against Rome, who were ruthless in suppressing political dissent.

The first example of possible crucifixion came from an excavation in 1968 of a cemetery in Giv’at ha-Mivtar just outside of Jerusalem. It revealed a heel bone with a nail still skewered through it. Yehohanon ben Hagkol is the name on the tomb – and he may also have been a political activist like Jesus Christ.

The calcaneus of Yehohanon ben Hagkol, with transfixed nail, which provided insights into the death of Jesus.

( Israel Museum / Ilan Shtulman)

Even the Romans themselves thought crucifixion was barbaric. The Roman orator Cicero noted that “of all punishments, it is the most cruel and most terrifying.” He added that it was the most “extreme and ultimate punishment for slaves.”

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, described the various ways in which crucifixion took place. “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in different ways: some have their victims with their head down to the ground, some impale their private parts, others stretch out their arms,” he wrote in 40AD.

The victim could have also had their eyes pulled out or their tongue excised. One of the worst cases of sadism was recorded by Josephus during the reign of Antiochus IV, where the condemned man’s strangled child was placed around his neck.

The Lex Puteolana tablet reveals the ritual and economics of crucifixion in the Roman world. The 2,000-year-old tablet, now housed in a medieval castle on the Bay of Naples, was found in the town of Puteoli. It’s the only inscription which details the precise practice of crucifixion. The inscription tells us how much the workers who flogged the slaves to be crucified were paid – as well as the executioner. The standard fee for an execution team was four sesterces each – the price of a glass of wine.

In an ironic twist, during later rebellions, the Romans were themselves crucified. According to historians, in AD 9 local Germanic tribes crucified many of the Roman general Varus’ defeated soldiers. In AD 28, the detested Roman tax collectors also met the same fate at the hands of Germanic tribesmen.

How did Jesus Christ die?

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is believed to have taken place in Jerusalem under Roman rule between AD 30-36. No confirmed archaeological evidence of that event has been found, although Christ is mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians.

Tacitus mentions that Christ was executed while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect in charge of Judaea (AD26-36), during the reign of Tiberius. According to biblical accounts, Jesus died after six hours, nailed to the cross. The two thieves who died with Christ were Gestas who was on the left and Dismas on the right. 

In Roman law, a person condemned to crucifixion was scourged first, usually with a wooden stave. Short whips with studded leather thongs were also used to flay the skin. The person was stripped naked, tied to an upright wooden post and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by Roman legionnaires.

A depiction of Jesus Christ being scourged.

(Hans Leonhard Schäufelein / CC0)

Death may have been due to cardiac arrest after the scourging or dehydration. Many scientists have come to the conclusion that it was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. The Roman guards were only allowed to leave once the victim had expired. Due to impatience, the soldiers may have sped up matters by breaking their legs or stabbing the chest.

• Sir Isaac Newton’s Astronomical Dating of Christ's Crucifixion
• Second (Or Third) Ever Skeleton with Evidence of Crucifixion Discovered
• The Bizarre Crucifixion of Margaretta Peter: The Short Life of a Prodigy and Devoted Christian

Crucifixion in Modern Times

Shockingly, this horrific form of execution is still used today. Amnesty International recorded a case of crucifixion in Yemen in 2012, when an Islamist group found a 28-year-old guilty of planting electronic devices in vehicles. He was executed first and then hung on a cross.

In Iraq during 2016, a man revealed that his brother-in-law was crucified after being tortured for five hours. “My wife’s brother was crucified by Daesh (Isis),” he told the charity ADF International. “He was crucified and tortured in front of his wife and children, who were forced to watch. They told him that “if he loved Jesus that much, he would die like Jesus.” Isis then cut his stomach open and shot him before leaving him to die on a cross.

Every Good Friday in the Philippines (which is 80% Catholic), a man playing the role of Jesus Christ is nailed to the cross. Since the 1980s, Ruben Enaje has had four-inch nails hammered into both his hands and feet and then hoisted on a wooden cross for around five minute

In 2016, Enaje decided that would be his last crucifixion. The significance was that this was the Filipino’s 33rd time. According to religious tradition, Jesus was 33 years old at the time of his crucifixion.

• Top image: Main: depiction of the crucifixion/death of Jesus Christ and the thieves, Gestas and Dismas. (Andrea Mantegna / Public domain ).       
• Inset: The calcaneus of Yehohanon ben Hagkol, with transfixed nail. ( Israel Museum / Ilan Shtulman)

By Fiona Keating

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

15-04-2020 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

60,000-Year-Old Underwater Forest May Hold Next Medical Breakthrough!

About 60,000 years ago, pre-historic humans began emerging out of Africa and shared hunting places and cave residences with Neanderthal populations in what is today Europe. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a vast cypress tree forest carpeted riverbanks off the coast of Alabama in Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The ancient underwater forest of withering trees and the shipworms they contain were entombed beneath encroaching sediments and sea waters until Hurricane Ivan tore up the Gulf Coast in 2004 and exposed the ancient forest, which was discovered 60 feet below the surface water of Mobile Bay.

The Ancient Secrets of Modern Medicine

A new documentary film by Ben Raines produced by This is Alabama, reveals how dive shop owner Chas Broughton first discovered evidence of the ancient forest and invited an environmental journalist and scientists from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) to assess his find. The results were published on the NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research website, saying this ancient submerged forest has remained undisturbed for thousands of years and that it holds “the secret to the creation of new medicines .”

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• Snake Oil Has Long Been Deemed A ‘Fake Medicine’, But It’s Not Guilty, It Really Does Cure!

A report in Nature World News says Dr. Kristine DeLong from the Louisiana State University (LSU); marine scientist Robin Cobb from LSU; and Dr. Grant Harley, a dendrochronologist from the University of Southern Mississippi collected and analyzed tree samples to determine the type of marine environment in which the forest had been entombed, and what the climatological conditions were like when the forest was alive.

300 Ancient Animals Found Entombed in Submerged Forest

A sample of tree sap was recovered from within the bark of one tree, that when cut released resin strong enough to “permeate the air” and the tree’s fibers and growth rings were still visible. Dr. Harley said the tree’s growth rings were narrower and were more uniform in size than those of modern cypress trees, indicating the environment was much colder than our current climate , and Dr. DeLong radiocarbon dated the sample at 40,000-45,000 years old.

Collected from an ancient cypress forest submerged in Mobile Bay, this log contains hundreds of marine organisms that either burrow into the wood or live in burrows made by other organisms.

( Brian Helmuth )

Last December, NOAA-funded an expedition of scientists from the University of Utah and Northeastern University , and marine and environmental sciences professor Brian Helmuth, who determined that the ancient trees were very well preserved under sediment layers that had prevented oxygenation and decomposition. It was Francis Choi, a senior lab manager at Northeastern University Marine Science Center , who looked at organisms buried within the wood and discovered 300 ancient animals.

This dried specimen of Teredo navalis was extracted from the wood and the calcareous tunnel that originally surrounded it and curled into a circle during preservation. The two valves of the shell are the white structures at the anterior end; they are used to dig the tunnel in the wood.

( Public Domain )

The Anti-Viral Property of Ancient Shipworms

Sometimes called “termites of the sea,” shipworms are tiny marine bivalve mollusks(saltwater clams) with long, soft, naked bodies, and they are notorious for boring into wood immersed in sea water. As these worms bore their way into organic matter, what comes out the other end is converted into animal tissue.

In this study, one hundred bacterial strains from shipworms, many of which were novel, were dated to being at least 60,000 years old. The team of scientists DNA-sequenced 12 of the strains, determining that they could be applied in the creation of new antibiotics for treatment against “parasites, pain and anti-cancer drugs, antimicrobial activity, and possibly anti-viral drugs”, according to University of Utah medicinal chemistry research professor Margo Haygood.

Ocean Genome Legacy Center Director Dan Distel removes a shipworm. The bacteria that shipworms create may lead to new life-saving medicines.

( Brian Helmuth )

This is not the first time scientists have studied shipworms in a medical context, in 2017 a paper by Northeastern University scientists titled “'Unicorn' shipworm could reveal clues about human medicine, bacterial infections” was published by Science Daily . Researchers discovered a “dark slithering creature four feet long” dwelling in foul mud in a remote Philippines lagoon and this “giant shipworm”, with pinkish siphons at one end and an eyeless head at the other, was said to have added to the scientific understanding of how “bacteria cause infections and, in turn, how we might adapt to tolerate, and even benefit from them.”

• Medieval Medical Books Could Hold the Recipe for New Antibiotics
• Critically Endangered South American Forests were Planted by Ancient Peoples
• Scientists Find 280-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Forest…in Antarctica

Modern Virus Halts Research on Ancient Anti-Virus

According to East Idaho News , the COVID-19 pandemic has put a stop to diving at the ancient forest site in the Gulf of Mexico, but Dr. Choi and his team plan to launch unmanned underwater robots to provide 3D visualizations of the forest and Dr. Haygood and her team plan to study more tree samples next year, which NOAA said might have applications in “textile, paper, food, renewable fuel, animal feed, and fine chemical production.”

• Top Image: Wood from an ancient bald cypress forest buried off the coast of Alabama was uncovered by storms. Newly exposed wood offers a unique habitat for marine organisms and creates a novel ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico. 
• Source: Francis Choi

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

15-04-2020 om 00:23 geschreven door peter  

UFO sighting: Mysterious 'man-made' crafts in Siberia stun top scientists - watch footage

A BIZARRE UFO sighting in northern Siberia has stunned Russian scientists, who have failed to come up with a logical explanation for the footage - amid odd claims of alien involvement.

14-04-2020 om 23:50 geschreven door peter  

2020 has been an exciting year so far for SETI – the search for extraterrestrial life – in terms of new technological developments and strategies.

Artist’s concept of a nearby civilization signaling Earth after observing an Earth transit in front of our sun. Scientists have looked for radio signals from at least 20 nearby stars, those situated so that they might see Earth transits. So far, no signal has been found. And so the search continues.

Image via UC Berkeley/ Breakthrough Listen.

2020 has been an interesting year so far with respect to the search for extraterrestrial entelligence, aka SETI. No, there’s been no alien signal yet, but scientists have been working with new technologies and strategies that should greatly improve the search. Earlier this year, they also announced that they have a ton of new survey data to go through, collected in previous years by radio telescopes.

An outline for new approaches to the question of alien intelligence, and how best to look for it, was announced by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in mid-February 2020. The old SETI paradigm of only searching for radio signals is now changing as new technology is used and new ideas are considered.

Also in mid-February, the Breakthrough Listen initiative announced via UC Berkeley that a whopping 2 petabytes (2 million gigabytes) of data was released from the latest SETI survey of our galaxy. It is the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the galaxy and the region around the central black hole. The associated peer-reviewed paper can be found on arXiv.

When SETI first started in the 1960s with Project Ozma, its only focus was to look for radio signals from an advanced alien civilization among the stars. SETI still does that, but a lot has also changed since then. Now, as well as searching for radio signals, scientists are looking for technosignatures, a wide variety of possible signs of alien intelligence including chemical changes in a planet’s atmosphere, laser pulses and even megastructures orbiting a planet or star.

As part of the new technological advancements, the SETI Institute will add a new signal-processing system to the Very Large Array.

Image via Bill Saxton/ NRAO/ AUI/ NSF.

This year, some radio telescopes that are already looking for radio signals are having new SETI capabilities added to them with a new signal-processing system. This is the result of an agreement between NRAO and the SETI Institute. The National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is the first to use this technology, with the addition of a state-of-the-art technosignature search system. NRAO director Tony Beasley said in February, in a statement:

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.

Andrew Siemion is director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, and he’s principal investigator for the Breakthrough Listen initiative. He explained:

The SETI Institute [is developing and installing] an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky. This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.

Such an endeavor is welcome news for those who have advocated that SETI needs to expand its search away from looking only for radio signals, given that a civilization older and more advanced than ours might have abandoned the use of radio signals long ago.

With the new technologies, scientists say they’ll be able to look for other signs of intelligent activity, such as lasers, megastructures like Dyson spheres that could be built around a star to harness its energy, chemicals in the atmosphere of a planet caused by industrial pollution, or rings of artificial satellites orbiting a planet. All this can be done while the telescope is also doing other kinds of observations, they say. Siemion explained:

Such indicators are becoming detectable as our technology advances, and this has renewed interest in SETI searches at both government agencies and private foundations.

The data from the VLA’s new observations is being provided to a new signal-processing system built by the SETI Institute. This will allow VLA to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence while doing other kinds of observations at the same time.

Image via Bill Saxton/ NRAO/ AUI/ NSF.

SETI traditionally involved the search for alien civilizations. But there’s more to discover here. For example, simple life forms might also alter a planet’s atmosphere in ways that could be detected; for example, they might produce oxygen and methane. According to Victoria Meadows, principal investigator for NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL):

Upcoming telescopes in space and on the ground will have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars, so it’s important to understand how best to recognize signs of habitability and life on these planets. These computer models will help us determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life.

Of course, it would be exciting to find any kind of extraterrestrial life on an exoplanet orbiting a distant star. And now scientists have new and better tools to find it. But if alien life were found sometime relatively soon, then what? Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute has said:

How strong does the evidence need to be to justify claiming a discovery? Can we expect to find smoking guns? If the evidence requires many caveats, how do we responsibly inform the public?

Tarter also emphasized the need for media to accurately relay the discovery to the public:

A real detection of extraterrestrial intelligence would be such an important milestone in our understanding of the universe that journalists need to avoid uncritical reporting of obviously fake claims.

Beasley spoke to a new era for SETI as well when he said:

As continuing discoveries show us that planets are very common components of the universe, and we are able to study the characteristics of those planets, it’s exciting that at the same time, technological advances are giving us the tools to greatly expand our search for signs of life. We look forward to this new realm of discovery.

We also look forward to the coming decade, when we hope to build a next-generation Very Large Array, which will be able to search a volume of the universe a thousand times larger than that accessible to current telescopes, making it the most powerful radio technosignature search machine humanity has ever constructed.

Artist’s concept of a Dyson sphere, a theoretical megastructure built by an advanced alien civilization to harness energy from its star. This is one type of possible technosignature – evidence of a past or present technology, built by an alien civilization – included in SETI 2.0.

Image via SentientDevelopments.com.

In the meantime, as we wait for that big discovery – as we’ve waited hopefully for a lifetime – Breakthrough Listen also said in February that nearly 2 petabytes of data had been released from the most comprehensive survey to date of radio emissions from the plane of our galaxy and the region surrounding the central black hole.

It was the second data dump from the project’s four-year search. The first data release was in June 2019. The survey covered the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz. Half the data is from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, and the other half is from the Green Bank Telescope, part of the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in California.

Matt Lebofsky, Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, said in February in a statement:

Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public. 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.

Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen, also emphasized the importance of having much more data to work with:

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 the general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question.

Breakthrough Listen is using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes telescope in Australia for the most comprehensive search for alien radio signals yet conducted.

Image via Breakthrough Listen/ UC Berkeley.

The center of our Milky Way galaxy – and our galaxy’s flat disk – are considered good places to search for evidence of advanced alien life, since they are so dense with stars. It makes sense that we’d find a powerful transmitter or beacon in the galactic center or disk. According to Siemion:

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. 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.

Now that’s a mind-blowing idea!

These scientists said earlier this year that a small subset of the new data had already been analyzed, from 20 nearby stars in the Earth-transit zone, that is, the zone in our sky aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. Distant planets in this part of our sky would see Earth transiting the sun, if they had powerful-enough technologies, and if they happened to be looking our way.

The search of 20 stars in the Earth-transit zone was conducted in the C-band – 4 to 8 gigahertz – by the Green Bank Telescope. Sofia Sheikh, a UC Berkeley undergraduate, conducted the analysis and submitted her findings to The Astrophysical Journal (here’s a draft on arXiv):

This is a unique geometry. 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.

The Green Bank Telescope, part of the Green Bank Observatory, in West Virginia.

Image via Wikipedia.

So what did Sheikh find? Nothing yet, but this new comprehensive search is still in the very early stages. Siemion said:

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. These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.

Sheikh added:

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. 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.

As noted in the paper:

We conclude that at least 8% of the systems in the restricted earth transit zone within 150 pc [parsecs] do not possess the type of transmitters searched in this survey.

The Green Bank Telescope was aimed toward each star for five minutes, then was turned away from each star for five minutes. That process was repeated two more times. If a detected signal disappears when the telescope is turned away, that makes it more likely that it really is originating from the star and isn’t just terrestrial interference. An initial 1 million radio spikes were narrowed down to a couple of hundred good candidates, which were then eliminated as Earth-based interference. The last four signals turned out to be from passing satellites. Disappointing, but there is still a long way to go.

While searches like this cover a lot of cosmic territory, it should be kept in mind that we have still really only looked at a very tiny portion of even just our own galaxy. As Jason Wright at Penn State put it, if our oceans were an analogy to all the places and radio wavelengths that could be searched, then to date we have only explored the equivalent to a hot tub. That leaves a lot of cosmic real estate still to cover. According to Siemion:

Of all the observations we have done, probably 20% or 30% have been included in a data analysis paper. Our goal is not just to analyze it 100%, but 1000% or 2000%. We want to analyze it iteratively.

Andrew Siemion, principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen.

Image via Berkeley SETI Research Center.

It’s not just distant stars that Breakthrough Listen can monitor. The project recently listened to interstellar comet 2I/Borisov as well as the previous interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua in our solar system, just in case. Nothing was heard, which isn’t too surprising, but since we don’t really know when or how a distant civilization might send a probe our way, it doesn’t hurt to check them out. As Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen, explained:

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. Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.

With new technology, strategies and mountains of data to analyze, these are good days for SETI. Broadening the search for alien intelligence, or other life, is a smart move, and one of these days it might just pay off in spades.

• Bottom line: 2020 has been an exciting year so far in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, aka SETI, with some technological developments and new strategies.
• Source: The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone
• Via NRAO
• Via Berkeley News

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

14-04-2020 om 23:28 geschreven door peter