Every once in a while there is a case in the field that really raises eyebrows. These are the cases in which even the most open-minded and willing to believe are sometimes left speechless and wondering what to think. Such stories have become almost legendary within the field, and one of these is certainly the time a supposed Venusian emissary was a guest at the Pentagon.

In the winter of 1967, Harley Andrew Byrd, nephew to the late Rear Admiral Richard R.E. Byrd of the United States Navy, who was a high ranking official at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a part of Project Blue Book, got a harried and panicked call from the Police Department in Alexandria, Virginia. According to him, two policemen reported that they had seen a UFO had landed in a field, and a that tall man dressed in white had emerged, claiming to be from “The High Council” and calling himself “Valiant Thor.” This being was then purportedly picked up and taken to the Pentagon, where he was introduced to the Under Secretary of Defense, as well as Secretary of Defense Neil H McElroy, and then given VIP status and hurried off to see the president of the United States himself, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as the vice-president at the time, Richard Nixon. According to Byrd, Valiant Thor was from Venus, and spent some amount of time at the Pentagon speaking to the president about the world’s problems, and Byrd would say:

Commander James was on duty at the Security Clearance and Review for the branch officer of the Project Blue Book. He oversaw the meeting through official channels and reported the landing and meeting of the “space emissary”, as he was labeled by the Department of Defense, to a governing group of high military officials including Secretary of Defense F.F. Forestall and other scientific men of which there were twelve. They in turn made recommendations to the President and Cabinet members, the CIA, FBI, NSA, and so on. The landing of Valiant Thor was perhaps the first documented landing of a human-type alien by military officials. He contacted an individual in the Pentagon who was an advocate of the UFO alien situation. “Nancy Warren” in turn contacted a minister, who was also a private investigator and theologian, a Dr. Frank E. Stranges, who then met with this individual. Dr. Stranges had been a guest speaker at the National Evangelistic Center for two weeks.

Val Thor landed in Alexandria and met with the President to discuss the world’s problems and offer advice and counsel on how to deal with and eliminate them. He indicated to Mr. Eisenhower that the world was in a precarious situation and that if the world continued to proceed on a war footing – it would cause an economic imbalance throughout the world. He indicated that his race of people lived and dwelled underground and that many of the planets throughout the universe sustain life in this same manner. He also mentioned the waves of aliens who would land around the world to help with the Earth’s seemingly insurmountable problems. He stated that a group from a distant planetary system would be coming to give aid and data to help the Earth’s progress.

Alleged photo of Valiant Thor

Richard Nixon was apparently fascinated by Val Thor, and allegedly said to him:

You have certainly caused a stir… for an out-of-Towner. Of course, we are not totally convinced of anything just yet. But suffice it to say we are checking and double checking everything you say and do. When Sergeant Young from Alexandria radioed in and stated that you had just landed in a flying saucer, we thought Sergeant Young had flipped. Say, were you in on that UFO flap over Washington? You certainly had us all in a dither, if you were.

Frank E. Stranges would have a personal meeting with the entity and give much information of these interactions between Valiant Thor and the government in his book on the matter, the 1967 Stranger at the Pentagon, and would also go into depth about the alien’s appearance and behaviors. Stranges said that Val Thor looked like a perfectly normal human being, except that he had six fingers on each hand and could live for 500 years, and it also turned out that he wasn’t alone, having actually arrived with three companions, called Donn, Jill, and Taniya. Val Thor supposedly told him that they had been watching humanity closely since the atomic bombs in World War II, and sought to “begin a new era in knowledge, wisdom and understanding on our planet.” Curiously, Stranges would also claim that Valiant Thor had a deep interest in Christianity, even going as far as to say that Jesus was in fact an alien from outer space, and had spread His word across the galaxy. This might not be so surprising since Stranges just happened to be a travelling Evangelical preacher, and he would say:

He told me that his purpose in coming was to help mankind return to the Lord. He spoke in positive terms…always with a smile on his face. He said that man was further away from God than ever before, but there was still a good chance if man looks in the right place.

Apparently, Valiant Thor stayed there in Washington D.C. for a full 3 years on his mysterious mission, before suddenly dematerializing in 1960 to return to his home planet. The story was published in Stranges’ book and went on to become firmly entrenched in UFO lore as one of the most completely bizarre accounts on record, going on to be much discussed and debated, and even appearing on TV shows and in the media. However, if you have been paying attention so far you may perhaps see why it has all drawn skeptics to it like moths to a flame. The list of gripes against this outlandish tale is long. For one, Venus is far from what one would consider a traditionally habitable planet, so why would it produce a race of beings nearly indistinguishable from humans? Also, where is all of the evidence? He was here for 3 years, yet the only evidence that has been offered are some photographs of a man in a suit said to be him and one of a group of some clean-cut young people who Stranges claims to be Val, Donn, Jill, and Tanyia, but who seriously could be anyone at all. it is all pretty flimsy at best.

Valiant Thor and his Venusian friends

Another is that the credentials of Stranges and others involved in this case have been seriously called into question. There is no independent verification that Stranges ever had top security clearance at the Pentagon, and his self-proclaimed credentials have also been challenged, such as his assertion that he has Ph.Ds. in psychology, philosophy, and criminology, as there is no evidence that he ever earned such diplomas. It is curious, as he often calls himself Dr. Stranges despite being unable to prove that this actually fits. Indeed, there is no real corroboration on any of the people involved in any way. There is no evidence that a Harley Andrew Byrd ever had such top clearance at the Pentagon, or even that he had any relation to Admiral Byrd at all. Brian Dunning at the site Skeptoid would say of him:

“Harley Andrew Byrd” is probably not who he says he is. Records on Ancestry.com can’t really confirm or disprove the possibility that Admiral Byrd had a nephew by this name, but his story requires that he would have held a senior role at Project Blue Book with top security clearance and over a year of training behind him, all by the age of 18. When he went on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio show in 1995 it went south very quickly. He told ridiculous stories of Admiral Byrd’s adventures, including that the admiral entrusted him as a young boy with secret diaries telling of his contacts with aliens and Nazis. One listener wrote:

“[Harley Byrd] talks nonsense, makes all manner of bizarre claims about greys, sasquatch, Aryans, and other alien types, and assiduously commercializes the whole for profit… Harley Byrd is actually a huckster [who] merely poses as Byrd’s grandson to sell these bogus diaries.”

It certainly is all pretty out-there, and is likely to be scoffed at by most in the general mainstream. There are plenty of inconsistencies and red flags in the story, and yet it has become a pretty indelible mainstay within the field. For some it is one of those persistent stories we like to brush under the carpet and pretend doesn’t exist. For others it is a point of debate and discussion. For others still it is enough to make one just shrug their shoulders and wonder. Was Stranges telling the truth or is this all complete woo woo nonsense? Whichever side you fall on, the story of Valiant Thor has become fairly legendary, and at the very least is another one of the many other truly bizarre cases that inevitably pop up from time to time.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{  https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

28-01-2021 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

The Five Most Mysterious & Shocking UFO Sightings Ever Reported in Ireland

28-01-2021 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

If you live in Ireland, you may want to look up towards the sky as the country has the most UFO sightings in all of Europe. According to data collected by Psychic World from the National UFO Reporting Center State Report Index, Ireland has the most UFO sightings, followed by France and then Spain.

A total of 105 recorded UFO sightings have occurred in Ireland with the encounters lasting an average of 13 minutes each. Most of the sightings in Ireland consist of mysterious bright lights. However, bright lights are the second most common form of sightings in all of Europe (the lights are usually red, blue, or white) while unidentified flying disks are the most common occurrences in the entire continent.

Northern Ireland reported a total of 6 UFO sightings last year in 2020 (two more than the previous year) which may have been partly because of the pandemic where so many people were staying home and spending time outside.

As for the Northern Ireland sightings in 2020, the first one was reported on March 13^th of a UFO “with many flashing lights making no noise” in Dunmurry which lasted about half an hour. Six days later, a “flying object” that looked like solar panels in Bangor was reported. Then there was a “UFO going down the Springfield Road” on April 3^rd.

The most interesting report came in on May 12^th when a man claimed to have been dropped off at Bangor Marina by a UFO. The last two reports consisted of one sighting on August 22^nd where three UFOs were witnessed flying over Belfast, and then on September 26^th when a man in the Ballygomartin area claimed to have seen six UFOs flying over his house.

David Moore, who is the editor of Astronomy Ireland Magazine, stated that more people were stargazing during the lockdown. He went on to say, “About 90% of all reports end up having a straightforward explanation,” adding, “It’s the few that don’t that are really intriguing. But the guy claiming to be dropped off at Bangor Marina, that’s very difficult to explain.”

Chris McMurray, who is a chairperson of the Northern Ireland UFO Society, weighed in by stating that the majority of the increased sightings of “unknown aerial phenomena” have occurred around the Cavehill and Black Mountain area in addition to the Mourne region. “A common theme that we notice is that sightings of anomalous lights tend to be seen near certain geographical features, such as the granite mountains and other areas of a crystalline nature,” he noted, adding, “This could be because, as widely accepted by ufologists and paranormal investigators alike, these can help amplify the natural energies of the Earth.”

France came in second place with a total of 71 sightings, but their encounters only lasted an average of 6 minutes. Spain is a close third with 70 sightings lasting an average of 12 minutes, but their encounters consisted mostly of diamond-shaped objects in the sky.

As for the longest sightings in all of Europe, they occurred in Monaco where the estimated time lasted 45 minutes. And if you don’t want to see a UFO, your best bet is to move to San Marino where they hadn’t had any official encounters or Georgia where there were only two short sightings of mysterious fireballs that each lasted about 15 seconds.

In the entire continent of Europe, there were a total of 994 UFO sightings with an average duration of 12 minutes each.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

4

{  https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

28-01-2021 om 17:08 geschreven door peter  

According to the terrified photographer he was ducking and flinching as it flew past and could not believe what he witnessed. 

We can rule out that it would be an insect or bird that flies by just in front of the camera lens as the slow motion footage shows the object moving away from the photographer's location at a high speed until it disappears. Mufon. 

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

28-01-2021 om 15:59 geschreven door peter  

Triangle-shaped formation filmed over Naples, Florida 27-Jan-2021

This was filmed over Naples, Florida on 27th January 2021.

Witness report: 

Went to the beach for sunset. Noticed a very bright object.

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

28-01-2021 om 15:51 geschreven door peter  

Can you name the top 12 brightest objects in the solar system? How many have you seen without the aid of binoculars or a telescope?

South Carolina sunrise through a piece of beach glass.

Image via Fran Aquino.

What are the brightest objects in our solar system that you can see in your sky? The sun is the very brightest, of course, but you might be surprised by some of the other objects that make the list. You can see the first seven objects on this list using just your eyes, even from cities and suburbs. The last items on the list are fainter and therefore more challenging, and likely require a dark-sky site and some optical aid.

In astronomy, the brightness of objects is measured by what’s called magnitude. The lower the number, the brighter the object. So, 1st-magnitude objects indicate the brightest stars in our sky, 2nd-magnitude fainter ones, 3rd-magnitude fainter still, and so on. Note that some objects, some planets for example, are even brighter than 1st magnitude, peaking in negative numbers at their brightest.

Without optical aid, the human eye can see objects to around 6th magnitude, in optimum conditions and under dark skies. There are about a dozen natural solar system objects that are, in theory, visible to the unaided eye. In practice, the fainter ones are very difficult to see with the eye alone, but perhaps possible for those keen vision and true darkness.

Transient objects, such as very bright meteors or comets, aren’t included in this list. Extraordinary meteors can turn the night sky as bright as day, and some comets reach stunning brightnesses, too, such as Ikeya-Seki in 1965, which reached a whopping -10 magnitude and could be seen at noon. But because they’re only in the sky on a temporary basis, and not something that can regularly or consistently be observed, these objects aren’t included here. We also don’t include manmade objects, such as satellites and the International Space Station. Try the Heavens-Above website, if you’re interested in observing human-made Earth-orbiting objects.

Here are the top 12 brightest natural solar system objects, in order from brightest to dimmest:

1. The sun.

No surprise here. The sun shines at magnitude -26.7. Technically, the sun can’t even be looked at without special safety filters to protect your eyes. Gazing at the sun directly without special protective filters can cause blindness. That said, now would be a good time to equip yourself with filters for solar observing, and to begin a program of regular sun viewing. You might know that the sun increases and decreases in activity in a cycle lasting 11 years. The new cycle – Solar Cycle 25 – was officially announced in September 2020. At EarthSky Community Photos, we’re beginning to see more sunspots! And more are surely coming, increasing in number to a peak five or so years from now.

• Read more: Top 7 tips for observing the sun safely

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Victor C. Rogus wrote on January 20, 2021: “The sunspot formerly known as AR2797 has split in two: AR2797 and AR2798. Trailing sunspot AR2798 is crackling with C-class solar flares.” Thank you, Victor!

2. The moon.

The moon varies in brightness depending on what phase it’s in. At its full phase when it’s the brightest, it tops out at magnitude -12.7. On the other hand, the moon in its crescent phase shines at only about magnitude -6. If you’re a deep-sky observer, the moon is bright enough to ruin your night vision, meaning it’ll prevent you from getting the best view of distant, faint star clusters, nebulae and galaxies. If you’re using a telescope, the moon should be your last stop during a night of observing. To the eye alone, though, there’s nothing more beautiful than a bright moon shining in the night sky, casting its light and creating moon shadows in the landscape all around you. Visit EarthSky’s moon phases page to learn the dates of major moon phases throughout 2020.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kannan A in Singapore captured this image on January 26, 2021, and wrote: “The waxing gibbous moon rising from behind the apartment block. The moon was 94.1% illuminated and distance from Earth was 391,375 km [243,000 miles] away from Earth when this photo was taken. It was still very much a day moon, as the skies were still bright at this time.” Thank you, Kannan A!

3. Venus.

The closest planet to Earth, one step inward in orbit around the sun, is also the brightest planet. It can shine as brightly as magnitude -4.7, bright enough to be seen in daylight if you know just where to look. The brightness of Venus is thanks in part to its proximity to Earth and also, largely, to its thick, reflective clouds. As with all the other solar system objects, Venus varies in brightness depending on a number of factors, including how close it is to Earth and what phase it’s in. Yes, as a planet orbiting inward from Earth, Venus shows phases! Venus was in our morning sky – in the east before sunrise – throughout late 2020. Soon, though, it’ll be gone from our skies for a few months, traveling behind the sun from Earth. Venus will return to our evening sky in May 2021. Find Venus’ location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Catherine Evans caught Venus near daybreak on January 17, 2021, from the Edna Valley in San Luis Obispo, California. She wrote: “Closer and closer to the sunrise, so it won’t be seen much longer.” So true, Catherine! Thank you. Even into early February 2021, if you have a clear sky to the eastern horizon, you might still be able to snag a last look at Venus. Look very low in the east before sunup. If you can’t see it, try sweeping with binoculars.

4. Mars.

The red planet is the second-closest planet to Earth after Venus, and it doesn’t often reach its maximum magnitude of -2.9. But when it does … wow! What a sight to behold. Just like other planets outside Earth’s orbit, when Mars is brightest around the time of its opposition, when it’s opposite the sun from Earth, rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. Mars’ oppositions come when our faster Earth moves between Mars and the sun. That happens about every two years. Some Mars oppositions are better than others. Mars was particularly bright in 2018, and its last opposition – around mid-October 2020 – was a good one, too. For about a month around the 2020 opposition, Mars was brighter than Jupiter. At other times (in fact, most of the time), Mars is relatively faint. Sometimes it’s very faint indeed, when it’s on the far side of the solar system from us, shining across its nearly-maximum distance from Earth (about 250 million miles, or 400 million km). After all, Mars is just a little planet, littler than Earth. So its brightness waxes and wanes dramatically as we and Mars move around the sun. Find Mars’ location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Niko Powe in Kiwonee, Illinois, captured Mars next to the Harvest Moon on October 2, 2020. Niko said: “There was a layer of clouds but these two’s appearance would not be denied.”

5. Jupiter.

Because Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, some mistakenly believe it’s the brightest planet. But not so. Jupiter’s greater distance from us lets Venus and Mars, our neighbors, shine more brightly. Jupiter is nearly always brighter than Mars, though (except when Mars is at its best). At its maximum, Jupiter shines at magnitude -2.8, nearly as bright as Mars’s peak of -2.9, and brighter than Sirius, the sky’s brightest star, which shines at magnitude -1.4. Jupiter was named for the ancient king of the gods. And it has a king-like aspect, always shining at the same dazzling brightness, not changing in brightness like Mars. Plus Jupiter moves in a stately way around the sky; it isn’t tied to the sunrise or sunset like Venus. Come to know Jupiter, and you’ll enjoy spotting in your sky for much of every year. Find Jupiter’s location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

6. Mercury.

Surprise! The rarely-seen planet Mercury shines more brightly than Saturn at its best. Mercury can reach -1.9 magnitude. That’s brighter than Sirius, the sky’s brightest star. But – because Mercury is our solar system’s innermost planet – this world, more than any other in our solar system, is tied to the sun in our sky. It’s always seen shortly before sunrise, or shortly after sunset, and never gets very high in the night sky. Therefore its brightness is often offset by the fact that you’re viewing the planet in twilight and not in a nice dark sky. Still, Mercury’s brightness will surprise you!

7. Saturn.

The ringed planet Saturn is stunning in a telescope, and it’s also an easy catch without optical aid. With the eye alone, you won’t see its rings, but you will see Saturn’s golden color and steady light. At magnitude +0.7, Saturn outshines most stars and is on a par with most of the brightest stars. Plus – because it orbits our sun beyond Earth’s orbit – it’s seen more often than Mercury by casual observers. Saturn is often around deep into the night, when its brightness contrasts with the depths of a dark night sky.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Dan Wyman in Oceanside, California, captured Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and a flock of birds on January 11, 2021. Thank you, Dan! Find Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

8. Ganymede.

If you’re a sky-watcher, you’ve probably seen all the objects mentioned so far without optical aid, knowingly or not. But have you seen Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede? Binoculars will let you spot Ganymede circling Jupiter when the satellite is at its brightest, approximately 4.6 magnitude. Ganymede takes about seven Earth-days to complete an orbit around Jupiter, and the other Galilean moons take varying amounts of time (Io nearly two days, Europa about four days, Callisto 17 days). So on any given night, you’ll find the moons in ever-shifting locations with respect to Jupiter. They look like little “stars” strung out in a line that bisects Jupiter. Thus you’ll want to use software, for example SkyandTelescope.com’s interactive Jupiter moon page, to let you know which dot circling Jupiter is Ganymede, from the location, date and time at which you’re looking. Which leads us to …

9. Io.

The next item on the solar system brightness list is Jupiter’s volcanic satellite, Io. At a little larger than our moon, Io is the innermost Galilean satellite and shines at magnitude 5.0 when it’s at its best. Can you see Io – or Ganymede – with the eye alone? In theory, you should be able to. But in practice they’re not that easy to see in the glare from Jupiter itself. Some observers with renowned vision (for example, Steven James O’Meara) have claimed to have seen Ganymede with the unaided eye. But such claims are rare. You’ll likely need binoculars for Ganymede or Io, or Europa (see below). Small telescopes show all four Galilean moons in their never-ending dance around Jupiter.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | John Nelson was at Puget Sound, Washington, on September 24, 2020, when he captured this image. See Jupiter and its moons in the upper left? You might need to view this photo larger to see Jupiter’s moons. John wrote: “All four Galilean moons were visible. I brightened them up just a bit in Photoshop Elements so they would be easier to see in a photo that you can’t zoom in on. From left to right, the moons are Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and just to Jupiter’s right is Io.” Thank you, John.

10. Vesta.

The fourth asteroid to be discovered, Vesta, is the only asteroid to make our list of brightest solar system objects. Vesta is the second-largest asteroid, after Ceres. Vesta can reach magnitude 5.1 at its closest approach to Earth. Its opposition – a highlight of the year for asteroid observers – is coming up on March 4, 2021. This is when Earth will sweep more or less between Vesta and the sun, bringing the asteroid closest to us for this year. Because it doesn’t have a bright nearby locator, as Ganymede and Io have with Jupiter, it’s best to watch for Vesta for a couple of nights in a row to see which dim “star” in the area appears to move slowly in front of the fixed star background. Try TheSkyLive for charts and other information on how to observe Vesta.

11. Europa.

We bounce back out to Jupiter for the next item on the list, Europa, another of Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons. Europa is a great object to attempt to view and ruminate on, because it may harbor an ocean – and possibly life – beneath its icy crust. Europa just makes our list of the brightest objects in the solar system at magnitude 5.2. Again, we recommend using observing software, such as SkyandTelescope.com’s interactive Jupiter moon page, to know which Galilean moon is which.

12. Uranus,

finally. Many know that planet Uranus is theoretically visible to the unaided eye. The seventh planet from the sun appears at magnitude 5.6 at its best. Uranus is most easily picked up with the unaided eye after first pinning down its location with binoculars or a telescope. It has a disk instead of a pinpoint image through an optical device and may even appear faintly bluish green. It is particularly easy to find on the occasions that it pairs up closely with objects easier to locate, such as Mars.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Victor C. Rogus in Sedona, Arizona, captured this image of Uranus and Mars through his telescope on January 20, 2021. He wrote: “The sky this evening was fair at best, but I was able to capture this image of an over-exposed Mars and the planet Uranus through thin clouds. Light takes 2 hours, 43 minutes and 27 seconds to travel from Uranus and arrive to us.” Thank you, Victor!

• Bottom line: Here are the top 12 brightest natural solar system objects, in order from brightest to dimmest. If you’ve seen every one of these objects, with or without optical aid, congrats!

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

28-01-2021 om 00:26 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s space helicopter is one month away from landing on Mars

Helicopter to Mars, submarine to Titan, what’s next? A subway on Venus?

 by Alexandru Micu

Did you ever dare to dream of the day you’d see a helicopter in space? Well, rest easy, your watch has come to an end — NASA’s Ingenuity, the “Mars Helicopter”, is one month away from touching down on the red planet.

Ingenuity is currently onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, the US’ latest Mars-bound rover. It’s the first American mission to Mars since 2018’s InSight, but it was only one of three missions sent out to Mars in 2020 alongside the UAE’s Hope orbiter and China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, lander, and rover.

While all of them are very exciting, Ingenuity will be the first helicopter to actually be sent to space, ever. NASA is expecting it to touch down on Mars on February 18.

Flying on new horizons

“NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is the first aircraft humanity has sent to another planet to attempt powered, controlled flight,” NASA explains in a press kit. “If its experimental flight test program succeeds, the data returned could benefit future explorations of the Red Planet – including those by astronauts – by adding the aerial dimension, which is not available today.”

The helicopter is pretty small, similar to a medium-large commercial drone, and comes equipped with two carbon-fiber rotors. These will spin at around 2,400 rpm in different directions so as to stabilize the craft in flight. That speed of rotation is many times faster than those used by passenger helicopters on Earth, due to their smaller size and Mars‘ thinner atmosphere both. Since the air is thinner there, rotors have to put in a lot of extra work to generate the same lift they would produce on our planet.

If all goes well, Ingenuity could completely change how we explore Mars, and other planets with atmospheres. Up to now we’ve been using rovers, which have quite a few benefits (ground vehicles have great energy efficiency since they don’t need to stay aloft, and weight is much less of an issue, for example). However, they’re also much slower than any other vehicles in general, as they have to contend with terrain features. If Ingenuity manages to do its job, and do it well — and, especially, if it can withstand Mars’ harsh environment — space helicopters will definitely become much more common in the future.

But until then, Perseverance still needs to reach its target, and Ingenuity still needs to prove it can fly on Mars. Fingers crossed.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

Although the intelligence communities, military and government agencies of numerous nations have undertaken countless official (and off-the-record, too) projects pertaining to both mind-control and mind-manipulation, without any doubt whatsoever, the most notorious of all was Project MKUltra: a clandestine operation that operated out of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and that had its beginnings in the Cold War era of the early 1950s. It was, I believe, MK-Ultra that created the fabricated “alien encounters” of 1950s-era “UFO Contactee” Orfeo Angelucci. The date of the project’s actual termination is a somewhat hazy one; however, it is known that it was definitely in operation as late as the latter part of the 1960s – and, not surprisingly and regretfully, has since been replaced by far more controversial and deeply hidden projects.

To demonstrate the level of secrecy that surrounded Project MKUltra, even though it had kicked off at the dawn of the fifties, its existence was largely unknown outside of the intelligence world until 1975 – when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission began making their own investigations of the CIA’s mind-control-related activities – in part to determine if (a) the CIA had engaged in illegal activity, (b) the personal rights of citizens had been violated, and (c) if the projects at issue had resulted in fatalities – which they most assuredly and unfortunately did. Rather conveniently, and highly suspiciously, too, it was asserted at the height of the inquires in 1975 that two years earlier, in 1973, CIA Director, Richard Helms had ordered the destruction of the Agency’s MKUltra files. Fortunately, this did not stop the Church Committee or the Rockefeller Commission – both of whom had the courage and tenacity to forge ahead with their investigations, relying on sworn testimony from players in MKUltra, where documentation was no longer available for scrutiny, study and evaluation.

The story that unfolded was both dark and disturbing –in equal degrees. Indeed, the scope of the project – and allied operations, too – was spelled out in an August 1977 document titled The Senate MK-Ultra Hearings that was prepared by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources, as a result of its probing into the secret world of the CIA. As the document explained: “Research and development programs to find materials which could be used to alter human behavior were initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These experimental programs originally included testing of drugs involving witting human subjects, and culminated in tests using unwitting, non-volunteer human subjects. These tests were designed to determine the potential effects of chemical or biological agents when used operationally against individuals unaware that they had received a drug.”

The Committee then turned its attention to the overwhelming secrecy that surrounded these early 1940s/1950s projects: “The testing programs were considered highly sensitive by the intelligence agencies administering them. Few people, even within the agencies, knew of the programs and there is no evidence that either the Executive Branch or Congress were ever informed of them. The highly compartmentalized nature of these programs may be explained in part by an observation made by the CIA Inspector General that, ‘the knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its missions.'”

The research and development programs, and particularly the covert testing programs, resulted in massive abridgments of the rights of American citizens, and sometimes with tragic consequences, too. As prime evidence of this, the Committee uncovered details on the deaths of two Americans that were firmly attributed to the programs at issue; while other participants in the testing programs were said to still be suffering from the residual effects of the tests as late as the mid-1970s. And as the Committee starkly noted: “While some controlled testing of these substances might be defended, the nature of the tests, their scale, and the fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate a fundamental disregard for the value of human life.”

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-01-2021 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

That's according to the founding documents of Way of the Future, a group intended to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society", according documents published by Wired. Mr Levandowski is the group's CEO and president, and it isn't clear how many members it has or what it is actually doing.

A range of scientific experts and technology billionaires, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have warned that our relaxed attitude towards artificial intelligence could mean we're at risk of being killed by it. Mr Musk has likened artificial intelligence to "summoning the demon", suggesting that while we might think we could control such a force we ultimately couldn't – and has founded an organisation called OpenAI focused specifically on stopping such a thing from happening.

Wired, which revealed the strange new church as part of a long profile on Mr Levandowski, pointed out that his interest in self-driving cars and our robot god are far from separate from each other. The engineer is among the foremost experts on self-driving cars in the world – and those vehicles give artificial intelligence its most powerful embodiment, as well as being a look at how AI will change the world.

{ https://www.independent.co.uk/ }

27-01-2021 om 23:24 geschreven door peter  

Here's what we learned about aliens in 2020

By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer

An artist's illustration of the evolution of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua, whose weird, elongated shape may have come from tidal forces.

(Image: © YU Jingchuan from Beijing Planetarium)

In a year when mysterious monoliths literally appeared out of nowhere, you'd think the first real detection of alien life would be a stone's-throw away. Well, 2020 didn't bring any little green men, but it did bring astronomers closer to finding extraterrestrial life than ever before. From organic molecules turning up around the solar system to mysterious radio signals finally being traced back to their source, here are some of the biggest findings of the year about where aliens may be (and definitely aren't) hiding in the universe.

1. There could be alien life in the clouds of Venus

In September, Venus became the most popular planet on Earth when scientists discovered possible traces of the molecule phosphine in the planet's atmosphere. On Earth, phosphine (made from one phosphorous atom and three hydrogen atoms) is mostly associated with non-oxygen-breathing bacteria, as well as some human activities. The molecule is produced naturally by gas giants, but there's no good reason why it should be on the hot and hellish world of Venus, the researchers concluded — unless, perhaps, there is some sort of life breathing it into the planet's mysterious clouds?

2. … But it's not likely

Exciting as it was, the phosphine discovery was met with strong skepticism from the scientific community. For starters, it's not even clear that the researchers detected phosphine at all; their observations contained so much noise that something mimicking phosphine's chemical signature could have appeared by accident, John Carpenter, an observatory scientist at the Atacama telescope in Chile, previously told Live Science. 

And even if the reading was accurate, phosphine could very easily be created totally randomly through a number of geological processes that don't involve life at all, said Lee Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. The processes that shape Venus' scorching surface and sky are largely a mystery, and one trace of an inexplicable molecule is, sadly, not enough to confirm alien life exists there. Significant study of the planet is required to solve this chemical conundrum.

3. There could be 36 alien civilizations sharing our galaxy

How many intelligent alien civilizations are lurking among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way? According to a study published June 15 in The Astrophysical Journal, the answer is 36.

How did the researchers arrive at that number? By taking a fresh stab at a decades-old alien-hunting riddle known as the Drake equation. Named for astronomer Frank Drake, who debuted the equation in 1961, the puzzle attempts to guess the likely number of alien civilizations in our galaxy based on variables like the average rate of star formation, the percentage of stars that form planets and the much-smaller percentage of planets that have the right stuff for life. Most of these variables are still unknown, but the authors of the new study tried to resolve them with the most up-to-date information on star formation and exoplanets available.

Their result? There are precisely 36 planets in the Milky Way that could host intelligence life similar to that on Earth. But even if the researchers nailed all those unknown variables, it'll still be a while before we meet one of our intelligence neighbors; assuming an even distribution of civilizations throughout the galaxy, the closest one is 17,000 light-years away from Earth.

4. And more than 1,000 alien stars could be watching us

Will they find us before we find them? We could find out in this lifetime. Two stars on the list host known exoplanets, one of which will have a direct line of sight to Earth in the year 2044.

But while we hunt for alien worlds, are aliens also hunting for us? That's the question that motivated an Oct. 20 study in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which astronomers calculated the number of alien star systems that have a direct line of sight to Earth — and therefore could be watching us right now.

The team calculated that approximately 1,000 star systems within about 300 light-years of Earth could feasibly see our planet as it passes between their location and Earth's sun. Those sky-watching aliens would see our sun dim as Earth passes over it, just as humans have detected thousands of exoplanets by watching for suddenly-dimming stars in the night sky. What's more, if those alien astronomers have similar technology to ours, they could even detect traces of methane and oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which would be potential signs of life, the researchers noted.

5. Aliens aren't responsible for FRBs (at least, not this one)

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long pulses of radio light that blast through space thousands of times a day. Until recently, nobody had any idea what they were. Could it be aliens, pulsing the jets on their hyper-speed spacecraft? The idea had crossed at least one astronomer's mind. But for better or worse, that idea may be dead after astronomers successfully traced an FRB to a known source in the Milky Way for the first time ever.

The source, it turns out, was a magnetar: the fast-spinning, highly magnetized corpse of a long-dead star. For thousands of years after their formation, these temperamental objects cycle through periods of violent activity, beaming powerful pulses of X-ray and gamma-ray radiation into the universe around them at seemingly random intervals. While astronomers were watching one such outburst, they also caught an FRB beaming out of the dead star. Perhaps not all FRBs in the universe come from magnetars (aliens, you're still on notice), but this discovery goes a long way toward solving a decade-old mystery of the cosmos.

6. White dwarfs may be alien strongholds

About 4 billion years from now, Earth's sun will swell into a red giant, then collapse into a small, smoldering white dwarf. This fate is inescapable, and the odds of humankind fleeing to another star system are near-impossible. Maybe, if we're still around at the time, we could find a way to harness the dim light of our dead star and keep on trucking as a civilization. And maybe, a paper published earlier this year to the preprint database arXiv suggests, other alien civilizations are already doing the same.

White dwarfs have been largely ignored in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the paper's authors claim, as a dead star is unlikely to host a thriving civilization. But white dwarfs do sometimes have planets in their orbit – and a highly advanced civilization might be able to make their tiny sun work for them, even after death. Astronomers therefore shouldn't cut white dwarfs out of their SETI equations, the authors write; in fact, maybe we should be looking to them first.

7. Aliens might not breathe oxygen

Another underrated target in the search for alien life: oxygen-free planets. While it has been long assumed that alien life needs air to breathe, a study published May 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy argues that maybe "air" and "oxygen" aren't always synonymous. Hydrogen and helium are far more common elements in our universe (Jupiter's atmosphere is 90% hydrogen, for example), so what if an alien species evolved to breathe that stuff instead?

It turns out, it may be possible. The study authors exposed a type of non-oxygen-breathing bacteria called E. coli to two different "atmospheres" fabricated inside some test tubes. One set of flasks was pure hydrogen, the other pure helium. They found that the bacteria were able to survive in both conditions, though their growth was stunted. This experiment "opens the possibility for a much broader spectrum of habitats for life on diverse habitable worlds," study author Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, wrote in the paper.

8. Aliens (probably) didn’t build 'Oumuamua

The strange, cigar-shaped rock named 'Oumuamua has puzzled scientists since it was first spotted in our solar system in October 2017. The object was traveling too fast to have originated in our solar system, and seemed to be accelerating for no good reason. Some astronomers — particularly Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb — said it could be an alien spacecraft, powered by a paper-thin sail. That theory met with ongoing skepticism this year, however, thanks to several studies that describe the object's potential natural origins.

One of the leading theories: 'Oumuamua is a "hydrogen iceberg" – essentially, a solid chunk of hydrogen gas that strayed away from its local star and into the icy heart of a giant molecular cloud. After leaving the core of the cloud, the berg was battered by radiation and molded into an elongated shape. Once it entered our solar system, hydrogen began boiling off of the icy rock, causing it to accelerate without leaving a visible trail of gas. It's a tantalizing theory that explains many of 'Oumuamua's quirks; still, Loeb believes aliens are the more likely explanation.

9. Four worlds hold the most promise

In our solar system, four worlds seem to have the right stuff for the possibility of life. The foremost is Mars — one of the most Earth-like worlds in our solar system. Earlier this year, a large lake was detected beneath the southern polar ice cap, giving new hope that tiny microbes could be present there (assuming they have something to eat).

The other three candidates are all moons: Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan. Like Mars, Europa hold the promise of water; its surface is a vast expanse of ice, which may conceal a gargantuan global ocean more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) deep. Enceladus, too, is an icy world that may holds liquid water deep beneath its surface. Recently, gargantuan geysers were spotted spraying water, grains of rocky particles and some organic molecules off of the moon and into space. Titan, meanwhile, is the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere, which is rich in nitrogen — an important building block of proteins in all known forms of life.

10. Alien hunting just got a little harder

On Tuesday, Dec. 1, the Arecibo Observatory's iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico finally collapsed, after hanging on by a literal thread for nearly five months (two mysterious cable-snapping incidents in August and November left the telescope in dire condition).

The tragic collapse ends Arecibo's 57-year legacy of searching the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial life. In 1974, the telescope broadcast the now-famous "Arecibo Message," declaring the technical prowess of humanity to any intelligent extraterrestrials that might be listening. So far, there have been no answers – but that message to the stars inspired the 1997 film "Contact," in which the Arecibo telescope plays a starring role. The telescope's loss leaves a gap in SETI that won't easily be filled.

• Originally published on Live Science

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 22:56 geschreven door peter  

'Resident Alien' launches from comics to Syfy this week

27-01-2021 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

EXPERTS: WE SHOULD HIDE FROM THE APOCALYPSE IN UNDERGROUND CITIES

JULIAN HERZOG

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

27-01-2021 om 22:13 geschreven door peter  

Were Unveiled New English Government Documents, Previously Secret, Related To UFOs

Were unveiled new English government documents, previously secret, related to UFOs. They were published by the National Archives. The documents reveal atañidas cards with a massive UFO landing in the early sixties, involving multiple “places shock” throughout the country.

The documents were published as part of the wider dissemination of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Among the thousands of pages of files is a letter to the Ministry of Defense of filmmaker John Keeling, who has been investigating the case, and the response of the MoD. The letter asks permission to speak with officials from the Ministry of Defence and the response of one of the officers says:

“Investigations of UFO sightings were one of my duties at that time. However, I say that the measure of my support may be limited by the requirements of the Official Secrets Act.

“When the original incident occurred there had been reports generated by witnesses, but all are lost. I was told some time that there is more information out ago, which is disappointing. It’s also instructive to see your name at the top of the secret archives of the Government! “

Police, scientists and Royal Air Force were sent to the area to examine a number of flying discs that had appeared in the fields of Britain. The documents reveal that Westland Whirlwind helicopter was sent from the RAF base at Manston to investigate the “alien spacecraft” who had “landed” in Sheppey.

They also show that 30 years after the incident senior officials of the Ministry of Defence thought muzzling the retired group captain of the Royal Air Force who was the intelligence officer who dealt with UFO sightings as part of their duties Ministry Defense at that time. National Archive files include letters of 1997 between the Ministry of Defense and the intelligence officer belonging to the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence.

The man claimed to have gone down to the police station and Bromley have examined a flying saucer that landed in that city, and wrote to the Ministry of Defense saying that he intended to participate in a television documentary on the case.

When he approached the Ministry of Defence in 1997, for permission to talk about the event, they considered gag him, but decided that would be the laughingstock if they did: “If we can not trust a former ripe official Defence Intelligence Secretariat, go astray, “he advised a senior defense chief.

The retired captain of the group, whose name is included in the files, described the deception as “very intelligent”.

“The fraud was executed with intelligence and seems destined to appear in a TV movie of the future and therefore deserves and needs accurately recorded. Can I get help with that goal? “.

Whitehall documents published in the National Archives show that in Whitehall “cheating flying saucer 1967″ was considered at the Ministry of Defense as a “bad joke obviously very successful.”

But let’s stop here for a moment. That summer of love, hippies and psychedelia, was also the year of an apparent alien invasion. The secret documents of the Ministry of Defense reveal fears of an alien invasion in the UK and details of a six flying saucers landing: Clevedon, Somerset; in Elm Tree, Lacock, Patterdown, Chippenham, Wiltshire farm; Welford, Newbury, Berkshire; in Nyewood House, Winkfield, Berkshire; in Bromley, Kent; and on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.

Does the Ministry of Defence was trying to hide the facts? Did conceal the invasion and prevent the captain of the RAF speak? ¿As in Roswell, they labeled the case as a fraud, to hide the reality UFO? What he was behind that story?

THE NIGHT INVASION

It all started the night of 3 to 4 September 1967. The alien invaders arrived noiselessly. No spacecraft leaving gigantic shadows of miles wide about our great cities. They were not huge, circular ships, constructed from exotic alloys, but bright pods fiberglass and plastic that looked like giant fried eggs, and they were light enough to be carried by two burly men. There was no death rays or anything to make clear the prompt annihilation of mankind.

For beachhead on Earth, these modest aliens chose not Central Park in New York, or the gardens of the White House in Washington DC. Instead, this would be a close encounter very British. After traveling for tens of light years through interstellar space, a small armada of six flying saucers chose to land on the southern English soil, about equidistant points along the same latitude in the parallel 51 ° 30′N . Something magical and mysterious must have this parallel.

The flying saucer landed on the green of a golf course near Bromley, southeast London, and other areas scattered throughout the south of England and a hill in Somerset.

ThePiperAtTheGatesOfDawnPero see a little context that made their appearance these flying saucers. It was September 1967, three months before the appearance of the Magical Mystery Tour Beatles, and just a few weeks after the appearance of the first seminal disk space rock of Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The Cold War was at its peak. Five years ago the Cuban missile crisis had occurred and the space race kept everyone looking skyward. The interest in new technologies and innovations was at its highest point. UFOs were one of the hot topics in England. There were 360 ​​”sightings” British that year, almost one a day, and the media were taking seriously the issue of extraterrestrials.

It was also a time when the aliens had a prominent place in TV programming of the time, Dr. Who of the Quatermass series, a factor known to increase the reported sightings of aliens.

Under this context is not uncommon for a woman named Cynthia Tooth woke up in the middle of the night by a strange noise coming from the night sky. The woman got up and went to her bedroom window and saw a strange light, a UFO, she says, that “down behind some trees.” She alerted the local press the next day.

Bromley1Pero was not until the morning that a caddy named Harry Huxley, discovered an “egg” in the golf Bromley in South East London. Huxley had gone out early in search of lost balls. The boy decided to carry out the search of golf balls before reporting their finding.

But later that morning a policeman named Gordon Hampton ( “Flash” to his friends and colleagues  Huxley saw while patrolling the streets around the area in his panda car. Huxley spoke of his encounter with the “egg”.

BromleyCuando Hampton police officer left his car, he heard a “creepy noise” from the UFO. He radioed the station, convinced that this was something alien, but at first was careful not to use the words “spaceship” or “UFO” on the airwaves (this was a time when police radios not were routinely encrypted and were heard by radio amateurs).

“I found a strange object” he told his boss, who asked him to describe. As the conversation was difficult, eventually the Hampton agent admitted that he had found a flying saucer. A support group was sent Bromley station to see if he was drunk or telling the truth.

BromleyMás later, the decision of the police to bring the dish through the streets of Bromley to the season, earned them a serious reprimand of senior Scotland Yard officers, who were concerned that might have contaminated the city.

Once the UFO was in custody, the officer in charge of the operation, Superintendent Sheppard, telephoned someone in Scotland Yard known as the “Back Hall Inspector”. BHI work was to answer the unusual requests of police forces in the country, and contact the relevant government departments. He called the bomb disposal team of Scotland Yard, in order to review it with portable X-ray equipment The report landed on a desk at the Ministry of Defense, just after 9 am.

The mystery deepened when several similar objects were found in other sites across southern England, spread in a line along the same latitude.

Clevedon1Cuando southern England awoke, they report that the country was under attack filtered. Clevedon, Somerset, in a paperboy, Neal Batey, 15 years old, he found a flying saucer in Dial Hill. This guy ran to his shop and told his boss. Everyone laughed. But in fact discovered on that hill of Somerset flying saucer eventually worked his way up the chain of command of the defense industry to be analyzed by the designer in chief of the division of guided weapons in the British Aircraft Corporation [but I had no idea what they were.

Clevedon2El Sergeant John Durston said it was “identical to the class of spaceships seen in the television science fiction.”

But Sergeant Durston was skeptical that the flying saucer had come from outer space.

“I think it’s a kind of experimental object, but what purpose ?, I’m afraid I do not know”.

{ https://dailymysteries.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

The stories of people within the government or military coming forth with tales of encounters with UFOs or alien beings are numerous. They always seem to come from someone who claims to be in the know, and a first hand witness to what the government is up to behind closed doors, making them seem to be the best witnesses there are. Yet many times such reports go off to derail into the truly outlandish, to the point that even the most open-minded individual might take pause, and one of these must certainly be the story of an ex-Air Force man who tells of the mysterious entities he calls the “Tall Whites.”

One of the stranger stories to come from a supposed insider revolves around an ex-U.S. Air Force personnel by the name of Charles Hall, who says that in 1964 he was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada when he first became aware that the government had had ongoing contact with extraterrestrials since the 1950s. He says that there were three main types of aliens on Earth talking with the military and meeting with them at a top secret base. According to him there are the Greys, some of which actually have yellow or orange skin, the Nordics, who look completely human and have 24 teeth, and then there are the very mysterious entities he calls the “Tall Whites.” It is the latter that Hall has spent much of his time talking about, and he says of his first acquaintance with them:

In 1964, when I was a weather observer at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, I witnessed interactions between the military and a group of mysterious tall, white, human-like extra-terrestrials. Their craft are capable of traveling faster than the speed of light because Einstein was wrong about relativity. When you encounter the ‘tall whites’ it’s such a shock, you are not sure if you are looking at a ghost or an angel, or if you are dreaming.

They are described as being 7 feet tall or over, very slender and with alabaster white skin, thin, straight blond hair, and large piecing blue eyes that gradually turn pink as they grow older, which can take a long time as they are claimed to live for up to 800 years. Despite their freakish height, Hall claims that they can more or less blend into human society with the right disguises, and although they communicate with each other with barking or whistling sounds, they are able to emulate human speech. They are so more or less human-looking in fact, they Hall has claimed that the Tall Whites would often head into Las Vegas to go to Casinos along with a CIA entourage, with the Stardust being their favorite place to go. One suspects they’d fit right in in Vegas.

Hall claims that the Tall Whites are from the star system called Arcturus, which is about 100 light-years from Earth, and that they gave the U.S. military much technology. In exchange for this, the U.S. built bases for the aliens, specifically designed for their height and with very precise environmental settings in order to make them as comfortable on our world as possible. Hall even says that there were play areas made for the Tall Whites’ children. However, according to Hall, the aliens only ever really spoke to higher level officials, and were very wary and nervous around human beings in general. He says that they were paranoid, and all carried with them a pencil-like device that could “influence ions in the human body” to stun or kill a person, mesmerize them, cause pain, or control their muscular responses, although they thankfully rarely used them. He would say of his experience living with them and trying to communicate with them:

You can’t go hunting for them or approach them. They have to come to you and the children are especially curious by nature. It was a traumatic experience being isolated in the desert, alone with someone so different and obviously more advanced than us. At first I thought I was going insane. But I learned over time how to communicate, how to approach them and to never try and force them to do anything. Their nervous systems operate very quickly and they are very protective, very suspicious of our intentions.

Hall claims he had some rather weird and often frightening incidents with the Tall Whites. He says that they would sometimes hypnotize him for reasons he couldn’t understand, and that they would often berate him, calling him a lesser being and a “teacher’s pet.” The most terrifying experience he had with them was the time he claims a group of Tall Whites jumped him in the desert and physically assaulted him. The aliens allegedly injured him very badly, explaining later that they had merely wanted to observe a human being in the midst of fighting for his life. In general, the Tall Whites seem to be rather indifferent to the humans, merely trying to maintain a peaceful, symbiotic relationship so that they may continue to use our planet as a stopover base and strategic location.

It all sounds like pure, science fiction mumbo jumbo, and indeed Hall originally wrote of the Tall Whites as fiction in his series of science fiction novels Millennial Hospitality, but according to him this is all real and he merely wrote the story under the guise of fiction because he had feared coming forward with his experiences. He has said that he has not seen the Tall Whites since he went off for a tour of duty in Vietnam, and that he did not feel truly safe to come forward with his information until his children had grown up and moved out. Hall, who also claims to be a nuclear physicist, has continued to give talks on his experiences with the Tall Whites and we are left to puzzle over what to make of all of this. It all seems so absurd, and to many it is, but there have been others who have held on to it as a genuine case. Is there anything to this at all, or is it just delusional ranting? No matter what one might think, the story of the Tall Whites has remained impressed upon the landscape of ufology, and will probably not go away any time soon.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-01-2021 om 20:36 geschreven door peter  

Whitley Strieber’s Alien Abduction & Encounter With Stranger Who Told Him Universe Secrets

Born in Texas, USA, Whitley Strieber is famous for his horror novels “The Wolfen,” “The Hunger,” and “Communion.” He has been known for his fiction and non-fiction works, but the Communion is actually based on a real incident that happened with Strieber in the 1980s.

Read also:

• British Politician Claimed E.T. Race Mantids Wants To Repopulate Earth With Alien Hybrids
• Aliens From Andromeda Told US Army Personnel That Humans Are Composite of 22 different E.T. races
• After Ex-US Marine Captured UFO In His Cell Phone In 2007, He Experienced Multiple Alien Abductions
• Story Of ‘Star People’ By Indian Elder & Alien Ship Crashed In 1945, Rescued By Mothership After Months

Strieber’s work was also featured in many movies and TV shows. He is a world-acclaimed best-selling author, but his popularity went up after his non-fiction novel “Communion” got published in 1987, which tells about the author’s encounter with non-human intelligent species. It became a big hit in Strieber’s career and was The New York Times’ No. 1 non-fiction bestseller novel.

A movie based on the “Communion” book was created in 1989, starring Christopher Walken and Lindsay Crouse.

The author’s real encounter with aliens happened on December 26, 1985, when he was sleeping alone in his cabin in the woods, upstate New York. That night, he was awakened by an unusual noise. When he opened his eyes, he saw a small alien creature approaching his bed.

The next thing he remembered was that he felt disoriented and aggressive, as he had no clue what did happen. After few months, he went through regressive hypnosis and recalled that he had been abducted and physically assaulted by someone whom he designated as “Visitors” to keep the possibility of extraterrestrials’ involvement low.

Whatever he had recalled in the hypnosis became the story of his best-selling novel. Since that night, he was full of curiosity about the unknown visitors.

Another strange incident witnessed by Streiber happened on June 6, 1988, at the Delta Chelsea Hotel in Toronto. It was 2:30 in the morning, and he woke up by the knock at the door. He thought it was room service, but there was a strange man.

Strieber said: “It was a man I described as about 5 and a half feet tall, older-looking, like someone in his 70s. He wore dark-colored clothing, a turtleneck and charcoal slacks.”

Strieber discussed this incident in his novel “The Key: A True Encounter,” published in 2000. He said the stranger stood near the window and did not move for long. He wrote everything that the strange man spoke.

“Mankind is trapped,” the stranger told Strieber. “I want to help you spring the trap.” He was not sure who this man really was, a “Master of Wisdom” or someone from a different dimension, but the one thing Strieber was sure in was that this encounter was real.

The conversation between them was about a life lesson, science, and ethics, where the stranger tried to tell him why humans had been caught in a cycle of repeat violence and self-destruction, and the small, but the very real, possibility for release.

When the author asked him about technologies, the strange man replied:

“An intelligent machine will always seek to redesign itself to become more intelligent, for it quickly sees that its intelligence is its means of survival.

At some point, it will become intelligent enough to notice that it is not self-aware. If you create a machine as intelligent as yourselves, it will end by being more intelligent.”

A lot of things happened that night in Toronto as Strieber said. He asked many questions, and the visitor told him many things in detail related to Universe and catastrophic events that occurred in the Earth’s history.

The most interesting part of the conversation was when the stranger told the author about the presence of multiple universes. “There are more galaxies in your universe than there are stars in your galaxy, and more universes in the firmament than there are galaxies in your universe,” the stranger told Strieber.

The conservation was 45 minutes long. The more the stranger spoke, the more author’s curiosity rose. At one point, Strieber wanted to ask him something else, but the stranger asked him to drink something that he was holding in his hand. He drank it without hesitating and fell asleep immediately.

The identity of the stranger has never been found out, and this incident made the author look into the future and think about where humanity is going. The stranger talked about science which is yet to be discovered by humans.

Strieber’s claim of alien abduction is still doubtful for many people, but John B. Alexander, a former Green Beret Commander and developer of weapons at Los Alamos, New Mexico said:

“For more than two decades, I have been interacting with Whitley Strieber and found him to be one of the most intelligent and thoughtful researchers in the field.”

References:

• coasttocoastam.com/show/2013-04-06-show/
• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/communion-author-whitley-strieber_n_943681

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 17:26 geschreven door peter  

Charlie Red Star: Alien Spaceship Visited Canadian Nuclear Site Every Night In 1975

A Winnipeg-based report says that in the last 200 years, 2000 UFO sightings have been reported in the Canadian province Manitoba. In the mid-1970s, there were hundreds of UFO sightings all over the US-Canadian border. The places where a huge number of UFOs were spotted are Ontario, Manitoba, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota.

Read also:

• British Politician Claimed E.T. Race Mantids Wants To Repopulate Earth With Alien Hybrids
• Aliens From Andromeda Told US Army Personnel That Humans Are Composite of 22 different E.T. races
• Whitley Strieber’s Alien Abduction & Encounter With Stranger Who Told Him Universe Secrets
• Story Of ‘Star People’ By Indian Elder & Alien Ship Crashed In 1945, Rescued By Mothership After Months

These sightings included the highest number of cattle mutilations, and the UFOs were often seen over restricted areas where nuclear activities were performed. Canadian UFO researcher Chris A. Rutkowski spent more than 25 years studying the UFO sightings in Canada. He concluded that Manitoba has a long history of close alien encounters.

He said:

“It’s not a recent phenomenon. It’s not a phenomenon that’s a product of television and movies that are going on right now. These things go back quite a number of years. People have been fascinated with things in the sky and wondering, ‘Are we alone in the universe?”‘

Rutkowski donated his UFO research, which contains 30,000 UFO reports, to the University of Manitoba in Canada. His reports include information about the Falcon Lake incident which, according to him, is the best-documented UFO case of Canada.

Author Grant Cameron published his book “Charlie Red Star: True Reports of One of North America’s Biggest UFO Sightings” in 2017, in which he described in detail how the Manitobans had witnessed the largest UFO sightings in history. The province was stunned by the object known by the name “ Charlies Red Star,” which had been seen almost every night in 1975.

Cameron said that he personally witnessed Charlie Red Star multiple times at night, even tried to chase it. According to him, a glowing red plasma-looking ball used to visit a small town called Carman, Manitoba, near Winnipeg almost every night. It is the same time period when Travis Walton claimed to have been abducted by UFO for 5 days.

Once, a Winnipeg TV station captured footage of Charlie Red Star which made Cameron chase it. He was in his car when the red ball flew very close in front of it. He said that moment had changed his life forever.

Cameron noted: “I took pictures and analyzed them painstakingly. I investigated the sites the object had reportedly landed. There were so many reports it was hard to talk to everyone.”

He stated that one of the US media outlets wanted to name Carman “The UFO Capitol Of The World,” but it never happened as the sightings suddenly stopped.

Cameron believes that Manitoba UFO sightings have connections with Nuclear weapons because 35 years later, he found out that there were restricted areas where the government secretly installed nuclear missiles and other weapons just south of the border at the beginning of 1975. Later in November, the missiles were removed and so the sightings also stopped.

In the last 75 years, military pilots have reported unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs) near the sites associated with nuclear weapons, power, and technology.

According to journalist George Knapp, UFOs had been seen in almost every nuclear facility (Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, Savannah River).

The author thinks the nuclear technology that humans possess could be created after extraterrestrial contact.

References:

• https://www.livescience.com/canadian-ufo-collection-falcon-lake-incident.html
• https://www.dundurn.com/news/Nuclear-Secret-Brought-Aliens-Manitoba-1975
• https://www.history.com/news/ufos-near-nuclear-facilities-uss-roosevelt-rendlesham

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 17:09 geschreven door peter  

27-01-2021 om 16:18 geschreven door peter  

UFO dropping orbs over Phoenix, Arizona 23-Jan-2021

This strange phenomenon was filmed in the sky above Phoenix, Arizona. Larger UFO was dropping smaller orbs, this happened on 23rd January 2021.

RELATED VIDEO, selected and posted by peter2011

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

27-01-2021 om 15:22 geschreven door peter  

Earth lost a record 28 TRILLION tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 — equivalent to a sheet over 300 feet thick covering the whole of the UK

• Experts from the University of Leeds surveyed global ice loss using satellite data

• They found the annual rate of ice melt has increased by 65 per cent since 1994

• Increases have been mainly driven by losses from the polar ice sheets, they said

• Melting ice raises sea levels across the globe, threatening people and wildlife

By IAN RANDALL FOR MAILONLINE

A record-breaking 28 trillion tonnes of ice — enough to cover the whole of the UK in a sheet over 300 feet thick — melted from the face of the Earth between 1994–2017.

Researchers from the University of Leeds carried out the first ever global survey of ice loss using data collected from satellites orbiting our planet.

The team found that the annual rate of ice loss increased by 65 per cent over the 23-year period — going from 0.8 trillion tons in the nineties up to 1.3 trillion tons. 

The accelerating melt — which continues to get worse — has been driven largely by steep increases in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Ice melt serves to raise sea levels across the globe, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities and endangers natural habitats that wildlife depend upon.

Scroll down for video

A record-breaking 28 trillion tonnes of ice — enough to cover the whole of the UK in a sheet over 300 feet thick — melted from the face of the Earth between 1994–2017. Pictured, a stream of meltwater cuts through the ice sheet in Greenland, one of the areas examined in the study

Researchers from the University of Leeds carried out the first ever global survey of ice loss using data collected from satellites orbiting our planet, the results of which are pictured

'Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most,' said paper author and earth scientist Thomas Slater, of the University of Leeds.

The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.'

'Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.'

'Over the past three decades there's been a huge international effort to understand what's happening to individual components in Earth's ice system,' he added.

This endeavour, he explained, has been 'revolutionised by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found.'

'Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet.'

According to Dr Slater and colleagues, the rising ice loss is due to the warming of Earth's atmosphere and oceans — which have, respectively, seen temperature increases of 0.5°F (0.26°C) and 0.2°F (0.12°C) each decade since the 1980s.

The majority — 68 per cent — of global ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting, while the remaining 32 per cent of losses have been driven by oceanic melting.

The team's survey covered 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.

'Sea ice loss doesn't contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence,' said paper author and earth scientist Isobel Lawrence, also of Leeds.

'One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool.'

'As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.

'Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it's also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise.'

The accelerating melt — which continues to get worse — has been driven largely by steep increases in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Pictured: an artist's impression of a 1 trillion tonne cube of ice — each face 10 km wide — looming over New York City. The Earth's glaciers and ice sheets have lost 28 times this amount since the early nineties

Experts have estimated that for every centimetre of sea level rise, approximately a million people are placed at risk of being displaced from their low-lying homelands.

Despite storing only one per cent of the Earth's total ice volume, glaciers were found to have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period — with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.

'As well as contributing to global mean sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as a freshwater resource for local communities,' said paper author and climate scientist Inès Otosaka, also of the University of Leeds.

'The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of crucial importance at both local and global scales.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal The Cryosphere.

WIND-BLOWN MINERAL DUST FUELS MICROBES ACCELERATING MELT OF GREENLAND ICE SHEET

Pictured: algal blooms on Greenland's ice

Phosphorus dust blowing across the Greenland ice sheet may be fuelling ever-larger blooms of microscopic algae that lower the reflectiveness — or 'albedo' — of the ice, resulting in faster melting, a study has found.

Researchers led from the University of Leeds took samples from the southwestern margin of the Greenland ice sheet over a two-year period. 

The team found that phosphorus in surface dust — contained within a mineral known as 'hydroxylapatite' is a vital nutrient for the algal growth and is responsible for a low-albedo band of ice dubbed 'the Dark Zone'.

The melt season in the Dark Zone, the team explained, has been occurring earlier and lasting longer each year since the turn of the millennium. 

The hydroxylapatite is being blown out onto the ice from local rock outcrops, the researchers explained — a trend which will increase with climate change as dryland areas in the northern latitudes become drier still.

'The photosynthesis rate of the ice algae improved significantly when we provided them with a source of phosphorus,' said paper author and geomicrobiologist Jenine McCutcheon.

'Our mineralogy results revealed that the phosphorus used by ice algae may be coming from the hydroxylapatite we identified in the mineral dust.'

'It's important to understand the controls on algal growth because of their role in ice sheet darkening.'

'Although algal blooms can cover up to 78 per cent of the bare ice surfaces in the Dark Zone, their abundance and size can vary greatly over time.'

'From one season to the next, algal blooms may change and vary in intensity, making them difficult to model year-to-year.'

'The findings of this study will improve how we predict where algal blooms will happen in the future, and help us gain a better understanding of their role in ice sheet albedo reduction and enhanced melting.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Read more:

• TC - Review article: Earth's ice imbalance
• Mineral phosphorus drives glacier algal blooms on the Greenland Ice Sheet | Nature Communications

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

27-01-2021 om 12:17 geschreven door peter  

Ice Is Disappearing Across the Planet at Record Rate

By UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Meltstream cuts through Greenland ice sheet.

Credit: Ian Joughin

The rate of global ice loss is speeding up, according to new research.

And the findings also reveal that the Earth lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 – equivalent to a sheet of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole of the UK.

The figures have been published today (Monday, January 25, 2021) by a research team which is the first to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

The team, led by the University of Leeds, found that the rate of ice loss from the Earth has increased markedly within the past three decades, from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017.

Ice melt across the globe raises sea levels, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities, and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which wildlife depend on.

The findings of the research team, which includes the University of Edinburgh, University College London and data science specialists Earthwave, are published in European Geosciences Union’s journal The Cryosphere.

The research, funded by UK Natural Environment Research Council, shows that overall, there has been a 65 % increase in the rate of ice loss over the 23-year survey. This has been mainly driven by steep rises in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Lead author Dr. Thomas Slater, a Research Fellow at Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling , said: “Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.

“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.”

Dr. Slater said the study was the first of its kind to examine all the ice that is disappearing on Earth, using satellite observations .

He added: “Over the past three decades there’s been a huge international effort to understand what’s happening to individual components in Earth’s ice system, revolutionized by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found.

“Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet.”

The increase in ice loss has been triggered by warming of the atmosphere and oceans, which have warmed by 0.26°C and 0.12°C per decade since the 1980, respectively. The majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting (68 %), with the remaining losses (32%) being driven by oceanic melting.

The survey covers 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.

Rising atmospheric temperatures have been the main driver of the decline in Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers across the globe, while rising ocean temperatures have increased the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. For the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic ice shelves, ice losses have been triggered by a combination of rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures.

During the survey period, every category lost ice, but the biggest losses were from Arctic Sea ice (7.6 trillion tons) and Antarctic ice shelves (6.5 trillion tons), both of which float on the polar oceans.

Dr. Isobel Lawrence, a Research Fellow at Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: “Sea ice loss doesn’t contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence. One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool.

“As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.

“Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it’s also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise.”

Half of all losses were from ice on land – including 6.1 trillion tons from mountain glaciers, 3.8 trillion tons from the Greenland ice sheet, and 2.5 trillion tons from the Antarctic ice sheet. These losses have raised global sea levels by 35 millimeters.

It is estimated that for every centimeter of sea level rise, approximately a million people are in danger of being displaced from low-lying homelands.

Despite storing only 1 % of the Earth’s total ice volume, glaciers have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period, with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.

Report co-author and PhD researcher Inès Otosaka, also from Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: “As well as contributing to global mean sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as a freshwater resource for local communities.

“The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of crucial importance at both local and global scales.”

Just over half (58 %) of the ice loss was from the northern hemisphere, and the remainder (42 %) was from the southern hemisphere.

Reference: “Earth’s ice imbalance” by Thomas Slater, Isobel R. Lawrence, Inès N. Otosaka, Andrew Shepherd, Noel Gourmelen, Livia Jakob, Paul Tepes, Lin Gilbert and Peter Nienow, 25 January 2021, The Cryosphere.
DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-233-2021

Funding: UK Natural Environment Research Council

 { https://scitechdaily.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 12:02 geschreven door peter