Watch SpaceX's Starship SN8 do a wild landing flip and then explode in this awesome video

21-12-2020 om 18:37 geschreven door peter  

Scientists think they've detected radio emissions from an alien world

Similar findings may tell scientists about magnetic fields around exoplanets.

Scientists may have detected radio emissions from a planet orbiting a star beyond our sun for the first time.

"We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm," Jake Turner, an astronomer at Cornell University and lead author of the new research, said in a statement. "We make the case for an emission by the planet itself. From the strength and polarization of the radio signal and the planet's magnetic field, it is compatible with theoretical predictions."

• Related: 7 ways to discover alien planets

However, Turner and his colleagues aren't yet positive that the signal they detected really is coming from the planet, dubbed Tau Boötes b; the researchers called for additional observations of the system, which is about 51 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Boötes.

Then, the scientists consulted observations made in 2016 and 2017 by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands. In addition to the potential signal from Tau Boötes b, the researchers also report that they may have picked up a signal from the star Upsilon Andromedae or its planet, but that detection was even fainter than the one from Tau Boötes b.

The researchers are interested in detecting radio emission from planets because such information may help scientists decipher what's happening in the same worlds' magnetic fields. Those magnetic fields, in turn, influence conditions on the surface of the planet — Earth's magnetic field protects the atmosphere that makes the world one we can survive, for example. Such magnetic fields can also tell scientists about other qualities of a world, like its structure and history.

But so far, studying those magnetic fields directly has been difficult for scientists to manage, despite the fact that nearly every planet in our solar system has had one at some point in its history. Hence the interest in using radio emissions as an intermediate.

"We learned from our own Jupiter what this kind of detection looks like," Turner said. "We went searching for it and we found it."

But that's just the beginning of the story, not the end of it, he emphasized, since the radio emissions could still be coming from the stars or another source instead of the planet. "There remains some uncertainty that the detected radio signal is from the planet. The need for follow-up observations is critical."

• The research is described in a paper that will be published by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is already available to read online.
• Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

21-12-2020 om 18:19 geschreven door peter  

Christmas star: Jupiter and Saturn set to align in the night sky

By Victoria Gill
Science correspondent, BBC News

{ https://www.bbc.com/ }

21-12-2020 om 17:54 geschreven door peter  

Alien hunters are investigating a mysterious radio signal from our neighbouring star Proxima Centauri - causing the biggest excitement since the 'Wow' signal in 1977

• A strange radio signal was first detected by the Parkes telescope in early 2019

• It was a 'short-lived' signal and astronomers can't identify the original source

• Astronomers are looking to see if any human-made source could be responsible 

• The star is 4.2 light years from the Earth and includes an Earth-like rocky planet 

By Ryan Morrison For Mailonline

A mysterious radio signal from our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, is being 'carefully investigated' by a team of alien-hunting astronomers.

Researchers from the Breakthrough Listen Project – a £70m initiative to find alien life through radio telescopes – have been studying the radio waves since April 2019.

Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years from Earth and has two confirmed planets, a Jupiter-like gas giant and a rocky world called Proxima b in the habitable zone.

The signal was spotted by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia in April or May 2020, according to a report in The Guardian, and, unlike previous radio bursts hasn't been attributed to any Earth-based or near-Earth human-created source.

It is likely that this signal has a natural explanation, but that hasn't stopped alien-hunting astronomers from listening more closely than they normally would.

The team say this is one of the most exciting radio signals since the 'WOW!' signal in 1977 that led many to speculate it originated from a distant alien civilisation.  

Pictured, a not-to-scale representation of how far away Proxima B is from Earth compared to Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object which was launched in 1977 

Artist's rendering of Proxima Centauri system. Portrayed on the right, Proxima c orbits in about 5.2 years around its host star. The system also comprises the smaller Proxima b, on the left, discovered in 2016 that orbits in the 'habitable zone' closer than Mercury is to the Sun

Proxima b is an Earth-like rocky world that orbits within the 'habitable zone' of Proxima Centauri – that is an area where liquid water could flow on the surface of the planet.

However, as Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, the habitable zone is very close to the star, meaning the planet is likely tidally locked and exposed to intense radiation, making it unlikely any civilisation has been able to form – at least on the surface. 

The radio signal was detected in the 980MHz range, and shifts in the frequency detected by the Parkes telescope are consistent with the movement of a planet.

This suggests it could be evidence of a third planet within the system, rather than signs of an alien civilisation, something researchers say would be 'very unlikely.' 

Pete Worden, director of Breakthrough Initiatives, said the signals are likely interference from Earth-based sources we can't yet explain.

However, he told The Guardian that it was important to wait and see what the project scientists conclude from their close examination of the signal. 

The beam being investigated hasn't been spotted since the first observation in April or May 2019, causing astronomers to speculate it is similar to the 'Wow! signal.

This was a short-lived radio signal detected from a distant star system by the Big Ear Radio Observatory in the US in 1977, and labelled with the word 'WOW!'.

Until now, that has been the best possible candidate astronomers have had to work with for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence - although like this new signal, very little is known about it or what unleashed the signal in the first place. 

In this image from the Hubble Space Telescope is our relative neighbour Proxima Centauri, a low mass star in the triple-star Alpha Centauri system. Proxima Centauri is not visible to the naked eye due to its small size - eight times smaller than the Sun

The team from Breakthrough Listen are currently preparing a research paper on the findings, although no date for publication has been set.

Breakthrough Listen involves listening out for 'technosignatures' within the range of signals coming from the universe and signatures from human-made objects.

Speaking to the Guardian, Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist from the University of Westminster, said it was incredibly unlikely this signal is from an alien civilisation.

'We've been looking for alien life for so long now and the idea that it could turn out to be on our front doorstep, in the very next star system, is piling improbabilities upon improbabilities,' he told The Guardian.

The professor of science communication said if there is intelligent life as close as Proxima Centauri then it is likely the galaxy is teeming with life.

'The chances of the only two civilisations in the entire galaxy happening to be neighbours, among 400bn stars, absolutely stretches the bounds of rationality,' he said. 

Proxima b is also likely to be constantly bathed in stellar radiation, making it unlikely liquid water and life 'as we know it' could have formed on the rocky world.

An earlier study by University of Sydney researchers found that Proxima Centauri has regular coronal mass ejections that hit the nearby rocky planet.

This discovery was based on a different radio signal that is thought to have been caused by a particularly large ejection or solar flare from the star.

These solar flares would kill all life on a planet too close - and Proxima b is within this danger zone, and so likely showered with sterilising particles on a regular basis.

The planet is also likely tidally locked - just like the Moon is with the Earth - due to its close proximity to the star, meaning one side is always day, the other night.

'It's hard to imagine how you can have a stable climatic system and all the things you need to get from bacteria, which are hardy, up to intelligent animal life forms, which certainly are not,' Dartnell told the Guardian. 

'But I'd love to be proved wrong,' he added.

It is possible there are other planets, slightly further from the star, that have yet to be discovered by astronomers, but they are likely too far away for liquid water to form.

KEY DISCOVERIES IN HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE

Discovery of pulsars

British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar.

Since then other types of pulsars that emit x-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted.

Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnatised neutron stars but when they were first discovered it was believed they could come from aliens.

'Wow!' radio signal

In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the nigh sky above Ohio spotted a powerful radio signal so strong that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data.

In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the nigh sky above Ohio spotted a powerful radio signal so strong that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data

The 72-second blast, spotted by Dr Jerry Ehman through a radio telescope, came from Sagittarius but matched no known celestial object.

Conspiracy theorists have since claimed that the 'Wow! signal', which was 30 times stronger than background radiation, was a message from intelligent extraterrestrials.

Fossilised martian microbes

In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs.

The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. 

Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike.

Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike (pictured)

However, the excitement did not last long. Other scientists questioned whether the meteorite samples were contaminated. 

They also argued that heat generated when the rock was blasted into space may have created mineral structures that could be mistaken for microfossils. 

Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005 

The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015.

It dims at a much faster rate than other stars, which some experts have suggested is a sign of aliens harnessing the energy of a star.

The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015 (artist's impression)

Recent studies have 'eliminated the possibility of an alien megastructure', and instead, suggests that a ring of dust could be causing the strange signals.

Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2015 

In February this year astronomers announced they had spotted a star system with planets that could support life just 39 light years away.

Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life.

Three of the planets have such good conditions, that scientists say life may have already evolved on them. 

Researchers claim that they will know whether or not there is life on any of the planets within a decade, and said 'this is just the beginning.' 

Read more:

• Scientists looking for aliens investigate radio beam 'from nearby star' | Space | The Guardian

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21-12-2020 om 17:23 geschreven door peter  

‘I’ve seen 29!’: Discover Colorado’s UFO hotspot with more sightings per capita than any place else

Sure, you can go and see every star in the beautiful Colorado night sky, but that’s not the real draw of this place.

“You’ve had lots of people have an experience but they can’t talk about it.” Here, at Judy Messoline’s place. They can.

In Saguache County, Colorado – UFO Watchtower is a beacon that draws the curious from all over the world. There’s plenty of activity to investigate. “Cigar-shaped, narrow and really long,” Judy describes the closest sighting near UFO Watchtower. “It went zip like that!”

She says a dozen other people saw the same thing.

Messoline also describes another phenomenon on the property. She says there are two large vortexes out front full of an unexplained energy, according to multiple reports from psychics.

Head down to UFO Watchtower in San Luis Valley to discover where the aliens have landed.

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

21-12-2020 om 16:48 geschreven door peter  

While it may be a tempting invitation that could lead to lost treasures of Egypt, anyone who has ever seen a ‘mummy’ movie knows that following one can only lead to bad things, not riches. And riches are one of the things ancient Egypt is known for. It’s no mystery how many non-local riches like gold, ivory, rare woods, and unusual wild animals were obtained – Egypt conducted a thriving trade business with many lands. One of those was the lost land of Punt – referred to in writings as Ta netjer or the “Land of the God” because it was considered to be a holy land associated with the Sun God and thought by some to be the Egyptian ancestral homeland. Despite that, little is known about where the land of Punt was actually located. That changed recently when a group of researchers followed a mummy (you knew we’d get back to that) – but not a human one … a baboon mummy. Wait … what?

“The Red Sea was witness to important events during human history, including the first long steps in a trade network (the spice route) that would drive maritime technology and shape geopolitical fortunes for thousands of years. Punt was a pivotal early node in the rise of this enterprise, serving as an important emporium for luxury goods, including sacred baboons (Papio hamadryas), but its location is disputed.”

A study led by Nathaniel J. Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, and others, published recently in eLife, describes the historical importance of Punt to the ancient world as a trader of valuable commodities, and to the Egyptians as a supplier of sacred goods. Despite its significance, historians have never agreed on its location – various spots have included northeast Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea on the Red Sea coast, or Somalia on the horn of Africa, reachable by the Gulf or Aden and the Indian Ocean. Its importance to Egypt is apparent by the distance needed to traverse to get there and back by sea, showing Egypt’s nautical prowess on the waters as far back as 4500 years ago. That’s a long way to go for baboons.

“Baboons were central to this commerce, so determining the location of Punt is important. For over 150 years, Punt has been a geographic mystery. Our analysis is the first to show how mummified baboons can be used to inform this enduring debate.”

Archeologists have found references to baboons, especially as a manifestation of Thoth, the god of wisdom, dating to 3,000 BCE. That explains why they were mummified with extreme care – often in a seated position with its tail wrapped and curved to the right, just like paintings of Thoth depict. Since baboons have never been native to Egypt, tracing their origin seemed to Dominy and his team like a good way to find Punt.

The story is getting good.

The study focused on mummified baboons from the New Kingdom period (1550-1069 B.C.) stored in the British Museum and specimens from the Ptolemaic period (305-30 B.C.) available in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. For comparison, they examined tissues from 155 baboons from 77 locations, encompassing every hypothesized location for Punt. In particular, they measured strontium isotope compositions in teeth — strontium is unique to geographic locations and stored in tooth enamel as animals (and humans) drink water. Digging through the layers to get to early enamel, the researchers found strontium from when they were young in their birthplace. Two of the mummified baboons had strontium from somewhere other than Egypt.

“The area encompasses much of present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, and portions of Somalia and Yemen.”

Punt! Well, that’s still a big area but it’s a better answer than ever determined before. (Maps can be seen in the study.) Obviously, more research is necessary. The study also found that many of the mummified baboons had no non-Egyptian strontium isotopes at all, indicating that some Egyptians got tired of waiting for native baboons and bred them themselves.

It all adds up to the first story where something good happened to those who followed a mummy.

ALL RELATED IDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

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

Dark storm on Neptune wider than the Atlantic Ocean baffles astronomers after it reverses direction in never-before-seen phenomenon

• Dark spots were first seen on Neptune in images taken by the Voyager 2 probe

• Hubble captured other dark spots when it started observing the planet in 1993 

• This new dark spot is unusual as it didn't break up at the equator as expected

• Scientists believe this may be due to a smaller storm breaking away from it 

By RYAN MORRISON FOR MAILONLINE 

A dark storm 4,600 miles across on the distant ice giant Neptune has left astronomers confused after it changed direction, a phenomenon never seen before.

Storm vortices like Neptune's dark spot aren't unusual, but nobody had previously witnessed one turning back towards the poles after migrating to the equator.  

Using images from the Hubble space telescope, University of California, Berkeley astronomers said the change of direction was 'unexpected' and surprising.

The storm is wider than the Atlantic Ocean on Earth and was first discovered by Hubble in 2018 where it was born in the northern hemisphere of Neptune.

A year later fresh observations showed the same storm migrating towards the equator and computer simulations suggested that as it got closer to the 'equatorial kill zone' it would be destroyed.

However, the latest observations from August 2020 show it clearly moving back to the north towards the polar region, a phenomenon that baffled astronomers.

Some predict it may have been caused by the breaking away of a smaller storm, also spotted by Hubble in images from August that helped it avoid breaking up fully.

Storm vortices like Neptune's dark spot aren't unusual, but nobody had previously witnessed one turning back towards the poles after migrating to the equator

This massive storm wasn't alone, according to the UC team. Images captured by Hubble in January 2020 revealed a small, similar dark spot on Neptune.

It was short lived and may have been part of the large storm that 'broke off' and dissipated - as it wasn't visible in follow up observations from August. 

'We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot's disruption process,' said author Michael H. Wong.

'This is a process that's never been observed. We have seen some other dark spots fading away, and they're gone, but we've never seen anything disrupt, even though it's predicted in computer simulations.' 

The large storm is 4,600 miles across and is the fourth dark spot Hubble has observed on Neptune since the first observations of the ice giant in 1993.

Voyager 2 - the spaceship that is now outside the solar system in interstellar space - also observed two dark storms in 1989 when it flew by the distant world.

These 'dark vortices' are high-pressure systems that can form at mid-latitudes and could then eventually migrate towards the equator on the blue planet.

They start stable - due to the Coriolis forces which cause northern hemisphere storms to rotate clockwise - but as it drifts towards the equator this effect gets weaker and the storm begins to disintegrate.

Computer simulations predicted these storms would follow a relatively straight path to the equator until there is no Coriolis effect to hold them together.

However, observations by Hubble revealed this didn't happen, in fact, as the dark spot approached the equator it began to turn back towards the polar region.

'It was really exciting to see this one act like it's supposed to act and then all of a sudden it just stops and swings back,' Wong said. 'That was surprising.' 

This massive storm wasn't alone, according to the UC team. Images captured by Hubble in January 2020 revealed a small, similar dark spot on Neptune

The exact cause of the Dark Spot surviving the equatorial kill zone is unknown, but Wong believes it could be to do with the smaller dark spot seen in the images.

He dubbed it 'Dark Spot Jr' - it was about 3,900 miles across and near the side of the main spot that faces the equator - where simulations predicted it would fall apart.  

'When I first saw the small spot, I thought the bigger one was being disrupted,' Wong wrote in a blog post for NASA. 

'I didn't think another vortex was forming because the small one is farther towards the equator. So it's within this unstable region. But we can't prove the two are related. It remains a complete mystery.

'It was also in January that the dark vortex stopped its motion and started moving northward again,' Wong added. 

'Maybe by shedding that fragment, that was enough to stop it from moving towards the equator.'

Another unusual feature of this dark spot is the absence of a lighter set of bright companion clouds surrounding it - that were visible in the 2018 Hubble images.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft sent back images of dark spots on Neptune when it did a fly by of the ice giant in 1989

These clouds form when flow of air is perturbed and diverted upwards over the vortex and causing gasses to freeze into methane ice crystals.

Astronomers plan to study this phenomenon in more detail in the hope it could reveal information on how the dark spots first evolve. 

This doesn't solve the larger mystery of how these giant storms form on the ice giant, but this latest spot is the most closely studied so far thanks to Hubble.  

'We wouldn't know anything about these latest dark spots if it wasn't for Hubble,' Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center wrote.

 'We can now follow the large storm for years and watch its complete life cycle. If we didn't have Hubble, then we might think the Great Dark Spot seen by Voyager in 1989 is still there on Neptune, just like Jupiter's Great Red Spot. 

'And, we wouldn't have known about the four other spots Hubble discovered.' 

The team's research was presented at the 2020 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. 

NASAs Hubble Space Telescope is still working and has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990

The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

It is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889.

He is arguably most famous for discovering that the universe is expanding and the rate at which is does so - now coined the Hubble constant. 

The Hubble telescope is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 (pictured)

Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990 and helped publish more than 15,000 scientific papers.

It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.

Hubble has the pointing accuracy of .007 arc seconds, which is like being able to shine a laser beam focused on Franklin D. Roosevelt's head on a dime roughly 200 miles (320km) away.

The Hubble telescope is named after Edwin Hubble who was responsible for coming up with the Hubble constant and is one of the greatest astronomers of all-time

Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 meters (7 feet, 10.5 inches) across and in total is 13.3 meters (43.5 feet) long - the length of a large school bus.

Hubble's launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. 

Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same. 

Read more:

• Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment | NASA
• Abstract: Neptune's NDS-2018: The Dark Vortex That Would Not Die (AGU Fall Meeting 2020)

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

21-12-2020 om 15:18 geschreven door peter  

Move over Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot”, there’s another massive storm that’s making headlines. For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed a storm completely reversing directions and it didn’t happen here on Earth. A gigantic storm that’s wider than Earth’s Atlantic Ocean is present on Neptune and its never-before-seen movements are completely baffling scientists.

Neptune’s dark storm, which measures about 4,600 miles across, has completely turned back around towards the north after traveling down to the equator. The storm was first observed by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere of Neptune and about a year later, it was seen moving towards the equator where it would more than likely die off based on computer simulations. The storms are high-pressure systems that are very stable as they travel towards the equator because the Coriolis forces make them rotate in a clockwise pattern. But as they get closer to the equator, they get weaker which causes them to disintegrate.

However, that didn’t happen. Based on observations taken in August of this year, the storm is moving back towards the Northern Hemisphere where it originated from. Some experts think that this strange movement was caused because a smaller storm broke apart from it. In fact, a smaller dark spot (but still very large at 3,900 miles across) was seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in January of this year that may have broken off of the larger storm, but that smaller one quickly died off as the images taken in August didn’t show it.

Author Michael H. Wong described what he thought of this mystery, “It was really exciting to see this one act like it’s supposed to act and then all of a sudden it just stops and swings back.” The fact that the larger storm survived the “equatorial kill zone” of the equator remains unknown but Wong suggested that by having the smaller storm break off of the bigger one, it may have stopped it from moving into that danger zone where it would have been destroyed. Their research was presented at the 2020 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

This wasn’t the first storm discovered on Neptune as Hubble located three more in the past several years and Voyager 2 noticed two storms when it flew by the planet in 1989. More studies need to be conducted in order to better understand these giant storms, such as how they formed on the planet. Amy Simon from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center stated, “We wouldn’t know anything about these latest dark spots if it wasn’t for Hubble.” “We can now follow the large storm for years and watch its complete life cycle. If we didn’t have Hubble, then we might think the Great Dark Spot seen by Voyager in 1989 is still there on Neptune, just like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.”

Several pictures of Neptune’s massive dark storm can be seen here.

{  https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

21-12-2020 om 15:00 geschreven door peter  

Just about everyone has heard of the Black Eyed Children. Even my dad has heard of them! But, what about Black Eyed adults? Granted, such reports are in the minority, but that’s not to say there aren’t such reports. There most assuredly are. As you will now find out. Tracie Austin is a long-time friend who I first met back in 1995. At the time, Tracie and I only lived about a 45-minute-drive from each other in central, rural England. As a result, we spent a lot of time traveling to UFO conferences in the U.K. and having a good time, very often with a mutual friend, Irene Bott, who used to run the Staffordshire UFO Group. Tracie moved to the United States a couple of years before me and now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has done very well for herself and has her own TV show, which is broadcast out of the heart of the city.

One of the most fascinating things that Tracie has come across is that of the Black Eyed Adults (what we might call the BEAs). She says: “I have a friend named Dana; she works in timeshare, at a resort out here in Las Vegas, on the far end of the strip. She was working one day – this was in April 2016 – when she said this lady was sent over to her, with two kids: a young boy and a girl. The girl was about six or seven and the boy was about four or five. The woman was wearing dark brown pants and had long brown hair. And the reason why the woman was sent over was because Dana gave the gifting in the timeshare company. When you listen to a presentation, you’re given a gift. But, the woman said she didn’t want a gift and Dana said, ‘When she looked at me and said that, I saw that she had total black eyes. There were no whites whatsoever [italics mine]. And the kids were exactly the same. But, in every other sense they were completely normal; they weren’t wearing the hoodies.”

Hoodies and Horrors

Tracie continues: “Dana commented, ‘I wish I had said something, like how do you see with those eyes?’ When she said that, I thought you can’t really ask them something like that. Maybe you could say, ‘Wow, your eyes are beautiful.’ But, maybe that’s bringing attention to something they don’t want you to know about. But, they could wear sunglasses all the time and no-one would know. So, maybe they are testing our reactions, they want their eyes to be seen. The kids were quiet; they didn’t say anything to her. Dana asked the woman how long she was going to be staying at the resort. And she said just one night and then they left.

“Dana said to me, ‘I couldn’t believe it, Trace; I saw after that that you were going to be doing a show on the Black-Eyed Kids.’ She reached out to me on Facebook and said, ‘I had an encounter with a Black-Eyed Woman and Black-Eyed Kids.’ Then, a couple of months after encountering this woman, Dana asked me if there was some connection between seeing them and people dying, when they have an encounter with the Black-Eyed-People. Right around a month or two after her encounter, her parents – who were both in their seventies – died. They hadn’t been sick, weren’t ill. Her father had developed kidney failure, out of the blue, and then her mother developed pneumonia. She said to me: ‘Tracie, this is freaking me out, as I hear [the Black-Eyed Children] can be omens of death.’ I said I didn’t know, as I didn’t want to scare her.”

Tracie Austin

Tracie says, too: “I also have a friend who had an experience with a Black-Eyed Man; this was in a Wal-Mart in Michigan where she saw him. I was living in California at the time and this would have been about 2004, Christmas time. They were at the check-out and he insisted that he gave a gift to her son. It was a Spiderman clock. She said where he stood in line, there was someone in between her and this man. But, when he gave the gift, it was like his hand reached through the person between them; just passed right through the flesh of this person. And what freaked her out was that he had the pure black eyes [italics mine]. She didn’t want him to accept the clock, with him being a stranger. But, he insisted.”

Perhaps, in light of all the above, we should expand our horizons and keep our eyes out for the adult versions of those creepy kids.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

21-12-2020 om 14:52 geschreven door peter  

First Radio Signals From Planet Outside Solar System Could Have Been Received, Astronomers Say

Authored by Douglas Braff via SaraACarter.com,

Perhaps the universe is trying to send Earth a message...

Astronomers might have received the first radio signals from a planet outside of our solar system, The Independent‘s Andrew Griffen reported Thursday.

{ https://www.zerohedge.com/ }

21-12-2020 om 12:44 geschreven door peter  

21-12-2020 om 12:35 geschreven door peter  

30,000 Quakes In 4 Months! Melting Antarctic Ice Heading To Planetary Disaster Of Epic Proportions! - Epic Economist Must Video

In a year devastated by natural disasters, the melting of Antarctic ice has been worrying the scientific community. NASA has recently discovered that under the continent of Antarctica, there is a mantle plume producing almost the same amount of heat as the Yellowstone supervolcano. Consequently, ice plates have been melting at an extraordinary pace and the results of it could generate an apocalyptic catastrophe all around the planet. That’s what we are going to discuss in this video. 

It’s no news that 2020 has been marked by tragedies. So far we have had a health crisis that fast spread around the globe, taking millions of lives and harming millions of others. Floods, droughts, and pests decimated crops and created a worldwide food shortage of grains, also contributing to the break of food supply chains. And now, a recent report has featured warnings of researchers of the University of Chile that revealed more than than 30,000 tremors have been registered in Antarctica since the end of August. 

Scientists stated that although the majority of the quakes had small proportions, some of them hit magnitude 6. The shakes were detected in the Bransfield Strait, and although the surroundings of the strait have numerous tectonic plates and microplates, the center’s experts say that such a staggering incidence of tremors in the area has been utterly unusual. 

Trembling episodes have become so recurrent the strait itself, which used to increase in width at a rate of roughly 7 or 8 mm – or 0.30 inch – a year, now has been expanding 15 cm – or 6 inches – a year, the center informed. “It’s a 20-fold increase, which suggests that right this minute the Shetland Islands are separating more quickly from the Antarctic peninsula,” described Sergio Barrientos, the center’s director. 

The peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the entire planet, and scientists have been carefully watching the impact of climate change on icebergs and glaciers. What is happening in Antarctica right now has become a very relevant and rather alarming discussion amongst experts. Especially because the melting of Antarctic ice could impact on the quick rise of sea levels and provoke cataclysmic accidents all around the world. 

Massive ice shelves have been melting from underneath for quite some time now. NASA has discovered a mantle plume almost as hot as the Yellowstone supervolcano that appears to be responsible for melting part of West Antarctica from beneath. Experts say the existence of an immense mantle plume could be the reason why this land is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so fast 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. 

Analysts the continent’s conditions are starting to become unsettling. If that’s the case we could soon be witnessing a scenario we have only seen before in dystopian movies. Live Science has reported that “half of Antarctica’s ice shelves could collapse in a flash”. In fact, the rise in sea level is a phenomenon that has been preoccupying academic circles for decades. Considering the average expansion of all the seas on the planet, the land is being gradually swallowed up by ocean water and the tendency is that this situation will only worsen. 

If you’re wondering what could happen if Antarctica’s ice melting process vastly accelerated and suddenly pushed sea levels up, National Geographic has published a projection on how the world would look like if all the ice melted, and their study uncovered that “the entire Atlantic seaboard would vanish, along with Florida and the Gulf Coast”. That is to say, every city that sits along the east coast of the United States would disappear. In California, San Francisco’s hills would become a cluster of islands and the Central Valley a giant bay. The Gulf of California would stretch north past the latitude of San Diego – not that there’d be a San Diego.

These changes are about to affect our lives in ways we could never have imagined. And no place on the planet will remain untouched by the calamities brought by environmental catastrophes. We are just at the start of a process that will alter the Earth’s landscape and all of our lives forever. That’s why experts say that if the ice in Antarctica starts to melt much more quickly, nothing will ever be the same. 

For more interesting content checkout our website: 

• http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

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21-12-2020 om 12:24 geschreven door peter  

The ‘Crazy Beast’ That Lived Among The Dinosaurs

Credit: © Andrey Atuchin

Adalatherium is an important piece in a very large puzzle on early mammalian evolution in the southern hemisphere, one in which most of the other pieces are still missing

The bizarre features of this mammal have scientists perplexed as to how it could have evolved; “it bends and even breaks a lot of rules”  

New research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes a bizarre 66 million-year-old mammal that provides profound new insights into the evolutionary history of mammals from the southern supercontinent Gondwana – recognized today as Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, the Indian subcontinent, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Named Adalatherium, which, translated from the Malagasy and Greek languages means “crazy beast,” it is described based on a nearly complete, exquisitely preserved skeleton, the most complete for any mammal yet discovered in the southern hemisphere prior to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The research, carried out over 20 years, demonstrates that Adalatherium was a “giant” relative to the mostly shrew- or mouse-sized mammals that lived during the Cretaceous period.

Its “bizarre” features include more trunk vertebrae than most other mammals, muscular hind limbs that were placed in a more sprawling position (similar to modern crocodiles) coupled with brawny sprinting front legs that were tucked underneath the body (as seen in most mammals today), front teeth like a rabbit and back teeth completely unlike those of any other known mammal, living or extinct, and a strange gap in the bones at the top of the snout.

A team of 14 international researchers led by Dr David Krause (Denver Museum of Nature & Science) and Dr Simone Hoffmann (New York Institute of Technology) published the comprehensive description and analysis of this opossum-sized mammal that lived among dinosaurs and massive crocodiles near the end of the Cretaceous period (145­–66 million years ago) on Madagascar.

The 234-page monographic treatment, consisting of seven separate chapters, is part of the prestigious Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) Memoir Series, a special yearly publication that provides a more in-depth treatment of the most significant vertebrate fossils. Initial announcement of the discovery was made in the journal Nature earlier this year.

Adalatherium, from Madagascar, belongs to an extinct group of mammals known as gondwanatherians, which were first discovered in the 1980s and, until recently, were only represented by a few isolated teeth and jaw fragments. But even those meager remains already indicated that gondwanatherians were very different from other contemporaneous mammals. So many mysteries had surrounded gondwanatherians that it was unclear how they fit into the mammalian family tree.

Now the research team presents the first skeleton for this mysterious group that once roamed much of South America, Africa, Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent, and even Antarctica.

The completeness and excellent preservation of the skeleton of Adalatherium opens new windows into what gondwanatherians looked like and how they lived, but the bizarre features still have the team perplexed.

“Knowing what we know about the skeletal anatomy of all living and extinct mammals, it is difficult to imagine that a mammal like Adalatherium could have evolved; it bends and even breaks a lot of rules,” Krause explains.

Although the life-like reconstruction of Adalatherium is superficially similar to a run-of-the-mill badger, its “normality” is only skin deep. Below the surface, its skeleton is nothing short of outlandish.

As Hoffmann puts it, “Adalatherium is simply odd. Trying to figure out how it moved, for instance, was challenging because its front end is telling us a completely different story than its back end.”

Adalatherium 

Credit Simone Hoffmann and Kathrine Pan

While its muscular hind legs and big claws on the back feet may indicate that Adalatherium was a powerful digger (like badgers), its front legs were less brawny and are more similar to those of living mammals that can run fast.

The limbs of Adalatherium also indicate that its posture was a hybrid between those of living mammals and more ancient relatives. Its forelimbs were tucked underneath the body (as seen in most mammals today) but its hind limbs were more sprawling (as in crocodiles and lizards).

This is not were the strangeness stops.

The teeth of Adalatherium, reconstructed by employing high-resolution micro-computed tomography and extensive digital modeling, are indicative of herbivory but are otherwise beyond bizarre.

Not only did Adalatherium have rabbit- or rodent-like ever-growing front teeth, but the back teeth are completely unlike those of any other known mammal, living or extinct. If just these teeth had been found, the mystery of what this animal was would likely not have been solved! Added to the seeming chaos is a hole in the top of the snout for which there is simply no parallel.

About the size of a Virginia opossum, the 3.1 kg Adalatherium was very large for its day. While not particularly large by today’s standards, it was a giant compared to the mostly shrew- and mouse-sized mammals living in the Cretaceous.

The geological history of Gondwana provides clues as to why Adalatherium is so bizarre.

Adalatherium was found in rocks dated to near the end of the Cretaceous, at roughly 66 million years ago. At this time Madagascar had already been an island separated from Africa for over 150 million years and from the Indian subcontinent for over 20 million years. “Islands are the stuff of weirdness,” says Krause, “and there was therefore ample time for Adalatherium to develop its many extraordinarily peculiar features in isolation.”

“Adalatherium is an important piece in a very large puzzle on early mammalian evolution in the southern hemisphere, one in which most of the other pieces are still missing,” adds Hoffmann.

More than anything, the discovery of Adalatherium underscores how much more remains to be learned from new finds of early mammals in Madagascar and other parts of the southern hemisphere.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir series represents one of the few print publishing platforms for monographic treatments like that completed for Adalatherium by Krause and Hoffmann. Particularly notable is that this work uses an extensive digital modeling (µCT) approach, with the data accessible to researchers via Morphosource (www.morphosource.org); phylogenetic information used in the comprehensive study is accessible via Morphobank (www.morphobank.org).

Funding used in support of the field and laboratory research was provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

Contacts and sources: 

• Simon Wesson 
• Taylor and Francis Group

Publication: 

• Introduction to Adalatherium hui (Gondwanatheria, Mammalia) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2020.1805455
•  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2020.1805455 

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

21-12-2020 om 12:07 geschreven door peter  

Thirty meter UFO in Area 51, still there! At Airport Hanger! Google Earth Map, UFO Sighting News.

I found this 30 meter UFO parked under a hanger about 12 years ago and wanted to check on it to see if its still there. It is still there. So thats good to know. The disk actually had a hanger being built all around it. Its clear that they wanted to hide it inside a structure from prying eyes, but the google satellite caught sight of it in 2006 and took this map photo of it. Super cool, but does take an understanding of how to use the history button. 

This is 100% proof that the USAF had UFOs way back in 2006. Talking about it is one thing...seeing satellite evidence is 100% proof. 

People can figure out every single thing on Facebook, poking you, hitting you with pillows, messaging you even spying on your life, yet something as easy as the year button in lower left to view history...bewilders people. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

VIDEO BELOW HAS SHADOW ADDED TO SEE THE SURFACE AND DEPTH OF THE UFO BETTER. 

VIDEO BELOW IS NORMAL COLORS. 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

21-12-2020 om 11:39 geschreven door peter  

By Ken Croswell

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

21-12-2020 om 00:15 geschreven door peter  

Jupiter and Saturn Will Form Rare "Christmas Star" on Winter Solstice

On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer in Earth’s night sky than they have since 1226 A.D. You can watch the event live here, courtesy of Lowell Observatory.

On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will get so close in the sky that they will almost appear to merge with one another. Such a conjunction has not occurred in December for some 800 years.

(Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly)

Humanity won’t have to wait quite as long to see the solar system’s two largest planets repeat this month's performance, though. Another Great Conjunction will occur in 2080. Of course, many of us alive today won’t be around then, so it would be wise to soak in this show while you can.

How to Find Jupiter and Saturn

Though not perfect, your hand (with your arm fully outstretched) is a great tool for estimating angles in the night sky.

(Credit: The Conversation)

For much of the year, Jupiter and Saturn have shared the same region of sky. The pair begin the month of December just 2 degrees apart, creating an already impressive sight. Now, you can find them both in the southwestern sky just after sunset, located some 20 degrees above the horizon at 6 P.M. local time.

By mid-month, they’ll be just one moon-width apart. On December 16, the moon will sit just 5 degrees away from the pair, offering a handy comparison. They’ll reach greatest conjunction on December 21. 

Conjunctions happen when two celestial objects appear to pass close to one another as seen from Earth. Of course, those objects aren’t necessarily physically close, they simply look that way because of their orbital alignment.

Conjunctions are extremely common, though. Throughout the year, the moon regularly appears alongside a number of planets and bright stars. And two or more planets come together relatively frequently. However, having two bright planets like Jupiter and Saturn pair up is extremely rare.

The last conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happened in May 2000. That close approach in our sky occurred relatively near the sun, which made it hard to observe. A similar thing occurred in 1623 A.D., when Jupiter and Saturn brushed shoulders near the sun.

Jupiter and Saturn Conjunction 2020

On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will have a "Great Conjunction" in Earth's night sky. The two planets will appear so close together that they'll almost look like one object.

(Credit: Roen Kelly/Astronomy)

We don’t have to worry about that this time. Throughout the month, the gas giants will be hard to miss. Jupiter shines brighter than any star in the sky at magnitude -2.0, while Saturn is dimmer at magnitude 0.6 — though the Ringed Planet is still quite bright.

So, you certainly won’t need binoculars or a telescope to see the Great Conjunction of 2020. But if you do have observing equipment, you’ll be able to zoom in and watch the dance of Jupiter's four moons — Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede.

Then, without moving the telescope, you can slightly shift your gaze to Saturn and its magnificent rings. Despite the significant size difference between the planets, Saturn’s massive rings mean the two worlds both appear to have about the same diameter when viewed through a telescope.

As the conjunction reaches its climax on December 21, scopes located in the Eastern United States will be able to catch Ganymede as it transits Jupiter for three and a half hours starting at 7:04 P.M. EST. Meanwhile, telescopic observers on the West Coast will see Ganymede’s shadow hovering over Jupiter’s cloud tops by 9:40 P.M. EST.

20-12-2020 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Late dawn. Early sunset. Short day. Long night. December solstice 2020 arrives on December 21 at 10:02 UTC. High summer for the Southern Hemisphere. For the Northern Hemisphere, the return of more sunlight!

Check this out … the Breathing Earth. It’s a year of seasonal transformations on our planet. John Nelson created this animation, using images from the NASA Visible Earth team. Read more about the animation via John Nelson.

For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the December solstice marks the longest nights and shortest days of the year. Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere is having short nights and long days. The 2020 December solstice moment – when the sun reaches its southernmost point in the sky – will happen on Monday, December 21, 2020, at 10:02 UTC (4:02 a.m. CST; translate UTC to your time).

No matter where you live on Earth’s globe – no matter what time the solstice happens for you – it’s your signal to celebrate.

• EarthSky lunar calendars are cool! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

View larger. | Ian Hennes in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, created this solargraph between a June solstice and a December solstice. It shows the path of the sun during that time period. Thank you, Ian!

Sunlight on Earth, at the December solstice. North Pole in 24-hour darkness; South Pole in 24-hour daylight.

Gif via Wikimedia Commons.

When is the solstice? 

The solstice happens at the same instant for all of us, everywhere on Earth. In 2020, the December solstice comes on December 21 at 4:02 a.m. CST. That’s 10:02 Universal Time (UTC). It’s when the sun on our sky’s dome reaches its farthest southward point for the year. At this solstice, the Northern Hemisphere has its shortest day and longest night of the year.

To find the time in your location, you have to translate to your time zone. Click here to translate Universal Time to your local time.

Just remember: you’re translating from 10:02 UTC on December 21. For example, if you live in Perth, Australia, you need to add 8 hours to Universal Time to find out that the solstice happens at 18:02 (6:02 p.m.) AWST (Australian Western Standard Time).

An animation of Earth as it orbits, with points marking both equinoxes and solstices along with relevant information.

Image via James O’Donoghue/ Business Insider.

Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the December 2020 solstice (December 21, 2020, at 10:02 UTC).

Image via EarthView.

What is a solstice? 

The earliest people on Earth knew that the sun’s path across the sky, the length of daylight, and the location of the sunrise and sunset all shifted in a regular way throughout the year. They built monuments such as Stonehenge in England – or, for example, at Machu Picchu in Peru – to follow the sun’s yearly progress.

But we today see the solstice differently. We can picture it from the vantage point of space. Today, we know that the solstice is an astronomical event, caused by Earth’s tilt on its axis and its motion in orbit around the sun.

Because Earth doesn’t orbit upright, but is instead tilted on its axis by 23 1/2 degrees, Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres trade places in receiving the sun’s light and warmth most directly. The tilt of the Earth – not our distance from the sun – is what causes winter and summer. At the December solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is leaning most away from the sun for the year.

At the December solstice, Earth is positioned in its orbit so that the sun stays below the North Pole horizon. As seen from 23 1/2 degrees south of the equator, at the imaginary line encircling the globe known as the Tropic of Capricorn, the sun shines directly overhead at noon. This is as far south as the sun ever gets. All locations south of the equator have day lengths greater than 12 hours at the December solstice. Meanwhile, all locations north of the equator have day lengths less than 12 hours.

For us on the northern part of Earth, the shortest day comes at the solstice. After the winter solstice, the days get longer, and the nights shorter. It’s a seasonal shift that nearly everyone notices.

Earth has seasons because our world is tilted on its axis with respect to our orbit around the sun.

Image via NASA.

Where should I look to see signs of the solstice in nature? 

Everywhere.

For all of Earth’s creatures, nothing is so fundamental as the length of daylight. After all, the sun is the ultimate source of all light and warmth on Earth.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you can notice the late dawns and early sunsets, and the low arc of the sun across the sky each day. You might notice how low the sun appears in the sky at local noon. And be sure to look at your noontime shadow. Around the time of the December solstice, it’s your longest noontime shadow of the year.

In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s opposite. Dawn comes early, and dusk comes late. The sun is high. It’s your shortest noontime shadow of the year.

Around the time of the winter solstice, watch for late dawns, early sunsets, and the low arc of the sun across the sky each day. Notice your noontime shadow, the longest of the year.

Photo via Serge Arsenie/ Flickr.

Meanwhile, at the summer solstice, noontime shadows are short. Photo via the Slam Summer Beach Volleyball festival in Australia.

Why doesn’t the earliest sunset come on the shortest day? 

The December solstice marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and longest day in the Southern Hemisphere. But the earliest sunset – or earliest sunrise if you’re south of the equator – happens before the December solstice. Many people notice this, and ask about it.

The key to understanding the earliest sunset is not to focus on the time of sunset or sunrise. The key is to focus on what is called true solar noon, the time of day that the sun reaches its highest point in its journey across your sky.

In early December, true solar noon comes nearly 10 minutes earlier by the clock than it does at the solstice around December 21. With true noon coming later on the solstice, so will the sunrise and sunset times.

It’s this discrepancy between clock time and sun time that causes the Northern Hemisphere’s earliest sunset and the Southern Hemisphere’s earliest sunrise to precede the December solstice.

The discrepancy occurs primarily because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis. A secondary but another contributing factor to this discrepancy between clock noon and sun noon comes from the Earth’s elliptical – oblong – orbit around the sun. The Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle, and when we’re closest to the sun, our world moves fastest in orbit. Our closest point to the sun – or perihelion – comes in early January. So we are moving fastest in orbit around now, slightly faster than our average speed of about 18.5 miles per second (30 kilometers per second). The discrepancy between sun time and clock time is greater around the December solstice than the June solstice because we’re nearer the sun at this time of year.

Solstice sunsets, showing the sun’s position on the local horizon at December 2015 (left) and June 2016 (right) solstices from Mutare, Zimbabwe, via Peter Lowenstein.

The precise date of the earliest sunset depends on your latitude. At mid-northern latitudes, it comes in early December each year. At northern temperate latitudes farther north – such as in Canada and Alaska – the year’s earliest sunset comes around mid-December. Close to the Arctic Circle, the earliest sunset and the December solstice occur on or near the same day.

By the way, the latest sunrise doesn’t come on the solstice either. From mid-northern latitudes, the latest sunrise comes in early January.

The exact dates vary, but the sequence is always the same: earliest sunset in early December, shortest day on the solstice around December 22, latest sunrise in early January.

And so the cycle continues.

Solstice Pyrotechnics II by groovehouse/ Flickr.

Bottom line: The 2020 December solstice takes place on Monday, December 21 at 10:02 UTC (4:02 a.m. CST; translate UTC to your time). It marks the Northern Hemisphere’s shortest day (first day of winter) and Southern Hemisphere’s longest day (first day of summer). Happy solstice to all!

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

20-12-2020 om 22:40 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious UFO Orb Seen Near SpaceX Rocket Again Prior to Accident

With all of the successes SpaceX has had recently – even the recent explosion upon landing of a Starship SN8 was spun into a success — it’s easy to forget the company had a number of significant failures on the road to stardom. One of those was a SpaceX 9 Falcon rocket explosion during a prelaunch test in September 2016 – an event whose video showed a mysterious UFO near the rocket … a UFO that even CEO Elon Musk could not rule out as a possible cause. While the explosion was eventually traced to the rupture of a helium-filled pressure vessel, the UFO was never explained – leaving it open to conspiracy theories. Those conspiracies came back recently when a video taken the day before the SN8 explosion – on December 8 when the launch was delayed for a day – shows a glowing orb over the ill-fated rocket. Are these connectable dots? If so, who or what is monitoring SpaceX’s failures?

“UFO STOPS LAUNCH”

The video was first uploaded by the LabPadre YouTube channel which covers SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, live launches and testing. However, the UFO seems to have been spotted first by YouTuber A.I. Food, who uploaded it on December 11 with the above comment. It needed quite a bit of zooming to see and that made it difficult to determine just how close the UFO was to the SN8. UFO Sightings Daily posted a longer video on December 17 which had the obligatory red circle around the UFO but still didn’t put it in perspective next to the rocket. Nonetheless, it was enough for the site’s Scott Waring to add his usual “This UFO is 100% aliens” analysis.

“Orb Over SpaceX Rocket Launch, Camera Guy Zooms In, Stops Launch!”

Interestingly, Waring thinks this shows that the “aliens” support Elon Musk, even though the same rocket exploded on landing the following day … just as the Falcon 9 exploded in 2016 with a UFO overhead. That certainly doesn’t sound like support. On the other hand, UFOs were also seen during the SpaceX launch on May 30 taking astronauts to the ISS – the historic first launch of NASA astronauts on a commercially built spacecraft. Show of support or just debris and fertile imaginations?

Although Waring denies the possibility, the most recent orb could certainly be one of the drones that are used to monitor SpaceX launches, seen at such a distance that the pixels can’t be formed into a discernible shape. That fact that this and the other UFO appeared within 24 hours of the rocket on the pad being lost could certainly suggest something more than coincidence. Could it be an ironic payback to SpaceX for causing so many false UFO sightings with its nighttime launches and those annoying trains of Starlink satellites?

Aliens expressing their approval or disproval? Space debris? Drones? SpaceX rivals spying? Whatever it is, it accomplishes the one thing Elon Musk craves … publicity.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-12-2020 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

My previous article was titled “Taking a Look at Those Mysterious Ghost Lights.” In part, the article went like this went like this: “Over the years I’ve been asked for my thoughts on what have popularly become known as ‘Ghost Lights.’ Well, I can say for sure I’ve heard all sorts of theories for what they might really be. Those theories include some kind of intelligent ball of energy, the souls of the dead (people and animals), shapeshifting aliens, ball lightning, and entry points to other dimensions. Of course, there may be numerous other theories, too, but these are most definitely ones that I often hear about. I can’t say, at all, that I’m an expert in this field; however, I do have an interest in the subject.” I have to say I think at least some so-called Ghost Lights might actually be the creations of military agencies looking to use them on the battlefield. While such a thing might sound too way out for some people, bear with me.

There’s a distinct possibility some Ghost Lights are that rarely seen phenomenon called ball lightning. And what might that be? Read on. The following words are from the people at EarthSky: “Ball lightning is one of the best-known natural phenomena that few have seen. Until recent years, most scientists remained skeptical about ball lightning; it seemed more myth than reality. Nowadays, ball lightning’s street cred among scientists is stronger, but it’s still the case that most of the images you see online purporting to be ball lightning are just over-exposed images of ordinary lightning. In fact, no expert we asked could point us to an actual image of ball lightning in nature. What is ball lightning? Since the time of the early Greeks, there’ve been reports of small balls of bright plasma-like light moving over the ground and then vanishing. The explanation still eludes scientists for the most part, although various explanations have now been offered.”

Over the years, I have taken a deep interest in the matter of ball lightning. As my research has progressed, I have used the Freedom of Information Act and requested – from many of the ABC agencies within government – copies of any and all papers dealing with ball lightning. Some of the material that was released to me was highly intriguing. The long list included: Theory of the Lightning Ball and its Application to the Atmospheric Phenomenon Called ‘Flying Saucers’, that was put together by Carl Benadicks in 1954; Ball Lightning: A Survey, prepared by one J.R. McNally for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee [year unknown]; D.V. Ritchie’s Reds May Use Lightning as a Weapon, which popped up in the pages of Missiles and Rockets in August 1959; and An Experimental and Theoretical Program to Investigate the Feasibility of Confining Plasma in Free Space by Radar Beams, the latter being the work of a C.M. Haaland, in 1960, for the Armor Research Foundation, situated in the Illinois Institute of Technology.

One document really stood out: Survey of Kugelblitz Theories for Electromagnetic Incendiaries. It was the brainchild of W.B. Lyttle and C.E. Wilson. At the time, they were in the employ of Melpar, Inc., which is described as “an American government contractor in the 20^th century Cold War period. At a time when most employment in Washington, D.C. was directly by the U.S. federal government, Melpar became an early private sector contracting company training a high technology workforce in the area.” Lyttle and Wilson were assigned to the Edgewood Arsenal, and to what was intriguingly titled as a “New Concepts Division / Special Project”” operation. At the beginning of their 92-pages-long report, the two wrote: “The purpose of this study was to review the theory and experimental data on ball lightning, to compare the existing theory and experimental data to determine whether ball lightning is a high or low energy phenomenon, and if it is a high energy phenomenon define an effective theoretical and experimental program to develop a potential incendiary weapon [italics mine].”

The pair added: “Three major categories were established for the purpose of grouping the numerous theories on the subject. These categories are the classical plasma theories, the quantum plasma theories, and the non-plasma theories. A theoretical and experimental Kugelblitz program is recommended by which the most promising high energy theories could be developed so that a weapons application could be realized.” On the matter of what, exactly, ball lightning was, the pair had a few ideas. Those same ideas included a “plasma created by a lightning strike and maintained by electromagnetic standing waves;” a “non-plasma phenomenon;” and the “nuclear theory;” which was “based on the assumption that the content of the ball is radioactive carbon-14 created from atmospheric nitrogen by the action of thermal neutrons liberated by a lightning strike.” Wilson and Lyttle said that “since the high energy Kugelblitz is clearly the only type weapon of importance, we believe that the major effort should be expended along these lines.” The effort continued.

Keep one important thing in mind: the document I quoted from dates back from the mid-1960s. That makes me wonder just how much we might have advanced –  in relation to the utilization of ball lightning – since then?

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-12-2020 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

20-12-2020 om 21:26 geschreven door peter