Two bright UFOs filmed over Franco da Rocha, Brazil 25-Jan-2021

This new UFO video was filmed in Franco da Rocha, a municipality in the state of São Paulo on 25th January 2021. Two huge bright unidentified flying objects were flying above the city and then they slowly disappeared.

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

31-01-2021 om 14:18 geschreven door peter  

Giant Face of Ucanha: Huge Sculpted Mayan Mask Found in Mexico

In the southeastern Mexican state of  Yucatán on the Yucatán Peninsula, an archaeological team digging at a lightly explored site near the tiny, picturesque village of Ucanha uncovered something highly unusual. It was a giant human-looking face, as tall as a person and sculpted in stucco. Its features clearly identified it as  a Mayan mask of the ancient Maya civilization , which enjoyed total hegemony in this part of the world more than one thousand years ago.

Mayan Mask Discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula

The Maya stucco relief was first discovered in 2017. Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico spent three years carefully restoring the sculpture, between periods when it was temporarily reburied to prevent its rapid deterioration from exposure to the elements. They were able to positively date the Mayan mask to the Late Pre-Classical era of the ancient Maya civilization, meaning it was created sometime between 300 BC and 250 AD.

View of the giant stucco face, or Mayan mask, in situ. The face was discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula near the village of Ucanha.

( INAH)

In their statement announcing the finding , INAH stated that sculptures like these “represent the faces of individuals with particular features that can be associated with deities or with characters of prominent social status.” It was a common practice in Maya civilization to decorate buildings with large-scale, embedded decorative sculptures, which often featured the faces of rulers or gods. 

• The Olmecs: Mesoamerican Mother Culture of Colossal Heads and Giant Mysteries
• Study of Maya Statues Shows That Facial Expressions Are Universal
• Maya Animation? Breathing Newfound Vitality into Ancient Maya Art

Relics like this are a rare find, however, since so many of the sculptures that once existed have been irrevocably damaged, or destroyed, or remain deeply buried in undiscovered locations. Nevertheless, similar sculpted stucco reliefs have been found in the villages of Acanceh and Izamal. But those are the only other giant faces discovered on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Recognizing the delicate nature of their discovery, the archaeologists have now reburied the fully-restored sculpture, thereby guaranteeing its preservation. However, tourists interested in getting a closer look at ancient Maya stucco reliefs can do so by  traveling to Acanceh . There, several sculptures honoring Maya deities have been put on display to the public, in the town’s “Palace of the Stuccos.”

Detail of the stucco Mayan mask discovered near the village of Ucanha in Mexico.

( INAH)

Olmec Influence on the Maya

The giant stucco Mayan mask represents outstanding examples of  ancient Maya art . Maya gods and rulers were routinely honored in sculpted form, and in addition to stucco, Maya artists also sculpted in stone, wood, bone, shells, and fired clay. The Maya interest in creating human-like sculpted faces dates back to the first millennium BC. Their artistic endeavors in this area were clearly influenced by their contacts with the Olmecs, the so-called “ Mother Culture of Mesoamerica ” that occupied the expansive land regions to the west of the Yucatán Peninsula until around 400 BC, when their societies vanished for reasons undetermined. 

Little is known about the nature of the contacts between the Olmecs and the Maya. But  Olmec influence on Maya culture was profound. The  Olmecs affected the Maya people’s spiritual beliefs, practices and even their recreational activities, as well as their preferences in artistic style and architecture.

The Olmecs are best known today for their  colossal carved stone head statues , which weigh several tons each and are believed to represent the visages of revered Olmec rulers. The carved faces in these gigantic chunks of rock are reminiscent of the Mayan masks and  giant faces  created by Maya sculptors, who would have been commissioned to make these works of art by rulers in the various small kingdoms that comprised the greater Maya civilization. 

In the late Pre-Classical era, when the  giant face  at Ucanha was sculpted, the Maya were living in still small but increasingly populated agricultural villages. These rapidly expanding settlements formed the seeds of the great Maya cities that arose to dominate the region in the Classical era, which ran from 250 AD to 900 AD. 

Larger-than-life artistic creations like the giant face of Ucanha are reflections of a society that was becoming increasingly confident and ambitious. At the height of their power, the Maya exercised political, cultural, and social control over a wide swath of southern  Mexico and Central America. They were able to maintain that control for several centuries, before internal decay followed by Spanish conquest brought about the demise of their kingdoms.

Recognizing the sensitive nature of their discovery, the archaeologists have now reburied the fully-restored sculpture, thereby guaranteeing its preservation.  (INAH)

Exploring History Through Artifacts Left Behind: The Mayan Mask

While the  Maya people  are still around in significant numbers, the great cultures built by their distant ancestors exist only in the form of the artifacts, relics, and architectural masterpieces they left behind. Amazing discoveries like the giant face at Ucanha don’t reveal many details about the culture or artists that created them. But they do act as markers of the ongoing cultural evolution that was changing  Maya society , taking them away from their modest agrarian roots and transforming them into a diversified, ambitious, and highly successful urban culture, one which was ultimately doomed to  extinction, as all great civilizations and empires seem to be.

Of course, what the  Maya experienced during the transition from the Pre-Classical to the Classical era is the same type of evolutionary transformation that has been experienced in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere across the planet over the past two centuries. When archaeologists from the far future are digging through the rubble left behind following our final  collapse, they will likely be just as curious about the long-lost civilization that created the giant carved heads at  Mount Rushmore  as we are about the long-lost civilization that created the giant sculpted faces on the Yucatán Peninsula.

• Top image: Mayan mask made of stucco which was discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.
• Source:  INAH

By Nathan Falde

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

30-01-2021 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

Back in the 4^th century, a Maya community created a large stucco mask at the now-archaeological site of Ucanha which is located in the municipality of Cansahcab in the state of Yucatán, Mexico.

The mask, which is about as tall as a human, depicts a face of an unknown individual – possibly a deity or a very important person. In a statement, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reiterated this by saying that this type of mask would “represent the faces of individuals with particular features that can be associated with deities or with characters of prominent social status.” It was made with stucco (a fine plaster often used to coat walls and ceilings) and dates back to the Late Preclassic Period (approximately 300 BC to 250 AD).

An example of stucco.

While this is the first of its kind to be discovered in Ucanha, these types of stucco masks have been found at other archaeological sites in Acanceh and Izamal.

It was discovered by a graduate student from Yale University named Jacob Welch who was part of a team of Mexican and American researchers, student and laborers. Archaeologists from the INAH stated that while it was discovered in 2017, it remained unreported until recently so that it could be protected against possible looters. They added that the excavation work only began in 2019.

Another way that the team protected the mask was that they reburied it after it was found until experts could analyze and preserve it. It was dug up again in 2018 for restoration work as samples from the mask showed that it had deteriorated a bit. They also restored weak parts and relocated sections that had moved over time back to their original spots in addition to cleaning the mask’s surface so that its colors and patterns were more visible. After finishing their work in 2019, the mask was again reburied in order to preserve it.

The team was actually very lucky to have found the mask as many of them had not survived throughout the years because of roots, soil, erosion, and/or looters. Hopefully the restoration work and reburying it will help keep it in the best possible condition for many years to come. Pictures of the excavation site can be seen here.

The archaeological discovery was made in 2017 by Yale graduate student Jacob Welch.

Photo: INAH

Archaeologists and workers protect the now excavated mask from the elements using tarps and a tent.

Photo: INAH

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-01-2021 om 23:29 geschreven door peter  

When it comes to UFOs, most people accept the eyewitness accounts of astronauts, military and professional pilots over sightings by the general public. That may explain why a sighting by a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) pilot and crew on a domestic flight over Pakistani airspace is getting intense scrutiny worldwide. It helps that someone in the cockpit captured the UFO on video and the sighting was in bright daylight against a clear blue sky. With that many witnesses, including reports from the ground, Pakistan International Airlines felt obligated to issue a statement. What did all of these people see? What did the airline think?

“The video was shot over Multan-Sialkot region by Captain Faisal Qureshi and his First Officer Captain Talha while piloting the Karachi-Lahore flight at an altitude of 35,000 feet.”

The Express Tribune reports that the UFO was spotted by the crew of domestic flight PIA flight PK304 from Karachi to Lahore. At about 4 pm on January 23 near Rahim Yar Khan, the pilot saw the UFO about 1,000 feet above the Airbus A-320. According to the records, Captain Qureshi immediately reported the sighting back to the control room. After landing in Karachi, the pilot shared the video with officials of Pakistan International Airlines. They were sufficiently concerned that a spokesperson made a statement to the public:

“It is too early to say what that object was. In fact, we might not be able to tell what the object was at all. However, something was spotted and it was reported in accordance with the required protocol.”

Better call the tower on this one.

Somehow, as usual, the 41-second video appeared on social media. (Watch it here.)

Speaking in English, the pilot can be heard saying “It’s not a balloon, it’s not an aircraft.” Some of the video was censored due to language, but reports say the pilot was also heard commenting “The UFO was extremely bright despite the presence of sunlight” and speculating that it was not a planet but could be a “space station” or an “artificial planet.” One report also stated the pilot saw what looked like a metal ring surrounding the UFO and a brilliant light coming from its center.

Despite the pilot’s expert opinion that the object was not a balloon, that was the prevailing comment on media posts. The Express Tribune contacted Pakistan Meteorological Department spokesman Khalid Malik, who explained they have some balloons that fly at an altitude of 6,000 to 7,000 feet, and Radiosondes balloons which can reach 70,000 feet. However, private weather station operator Jawad Memon pointed out that Radiosondes, which he claims the Meteorological Department no longer uses, are non-reflective rubber while the UFO was obviously very shiny. Some commenters and media sites referred to the UFO as an alien Foo fighter, but that term – first used during WWII – has been explained to be either electrical discharge from the wings of a plane or reflective ice crystals – both of which follow the plane and are close to it, unlike the Pakistan UFO. And, since it was recorded on video, it’s not a hallucination due to fatigue or stress.

Foo fighter?

“A similar incident was also reported in January 2019 by PIA pilots in Karachi. A UFO was spotted by the flight crew flying 105 feet above the aircraft, while the plane was flying at an altitude of 2,500feet. The flight captain suspected it could be a drone. The incident was immediately reported to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Karachi.”

Was this one a drone too? The altitude rules out commercially available drones, but it could be a military drone, although the pilots didn’t make that connection. That puts this object solidly in the “unidentified” category with a slight lean towards “balloon” but a contrary pull towards UFO because of the inability of the pilots to identify it.

Which way do YOU lean?

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-01-2021 om 23:04 geschreven door peter  

Art Bell: The Reptilian Overlords... 20 Years of Alien Encounters via Jim Sparks

Art Bell: The Reptilian Overlords… 20 Years of Alien Encounters via Jim Sparks

COAST TO COAST AM INSIDER Archived Show – Abductee and author Jim Sparks returned to share more details of his encounters with aliens, which have persisted for almost two decades. His main experiences are with the ETs known as the Grays, though he’s also had contact with Reptilians, whom he believes are directing the Grays. Sparks told of the time the aliens gave him a “gift,” which came in a square black box.

After receiving telepathic instructions on how to open it, he found a black, tarry substance 2-3 inches thick that contained a horrible smell. The aliens informed him that it had been extracted from his lungs.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

 { https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

30-01-2021 om 22:30 geschreven door peter  

Magnetic Pole Shift Update, Life, Nova, Quake Watch | S0 News Jan.30.2021

Magnetic Pole Shift Update, Life, Nova, Quake Watch | S0 News Jan.30.2021

Pole Shift (magnetic): A shift in “magnetic” poles is one of the more common and accepted theories across the world, however, this is not to be confused with those that speak of a “geographic” pole shift. Even though these events can occur at the same time, they actually have quite different affects on Earth.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

30-01-2021 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

Linda Moulton Howe: Self Activating Extraterrestrial Machines... Probes From Another Dimension

Researcher, Journalist and Author Linda Moulton Howe presents a fascinating lecture about her recent research which has led her to a concept which is at the same time logical and mind blowing: alien self-activating machines. What are these strange unearthly devices, seemingly covered in strange unknown texts?

This is an archived show. All content on this channel is licensed, and or produced by Zohar Entertainment Group/Awakening Expo/Phenomena Magazine

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

30-01-2021 om 21:31 geschreven door peter  

30 Meter UFO Enters Volcano Popocatépetl In Mexico, 1-22-2021 UFO Sighting News.

 

Date of sighting: January 21, 2021

Location of sighting: Near Mexico City, Mexico

Source: Popocatepetl live cam

 

While watching the live cam for volcano Popocatepetl, I noticed this strange disk like object entering the mouth of the volcano. The object actually overlaps (half way covers) the volcano cloud...which is all the proof needed to confirm this object did enter the mouth of the volcano. You see if it went behind the clouds, it would mean its a plane. However I quickly rolled this out because this object is huge, and a plane would stay at least 5 km away from an active volcano...so if this was a plane, it would be close to 150 meters across! Thats impossible, and the fact that the volcano is erupting right at this moment prevents planes from flying over or near it.

 

Its absolutely mind boggling to see this UFO 30% in front of the clouds from the mouth of the volcano. This is 100% proof that an alien base is 5-7km below this volcano and has been there for thousands of years. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan- USAF vet. 

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

30-01-2021 om 20:43 geschreven door peter  

Bright UFO Over St. Peters, Missouri On Jan 28, 2021, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: January 28, 2021

Location of sighting: St Peters, Missouri, USA

Source: MUFON #113445

 

Here is an interesting UFO report just in today. A UFO was spotted near a road in St. Peters, Missouri when a passenger in a car saw the bright floating object near a power line and took a quick photo. Soon after the UFO disappeared and wan not seen again. UFOs are often seen near power lines and its been my belief that aliens could tap into our power and communication networks in order to download information about humanity faster and sort through it latter. Much like the American NSA does. This is absolute proof aliens are trying to learn about us, but the world governments are trying to prevent this from happening to keep the public from panicking. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

Eyewitness states:  

While being a passenger in a car, I noticed a very bright stationary light in the sky Northwest direction about 45° and somewhere from about a mile or further distance from me guesstimated. The object illuminated brightly, I took a picture of it, and it disappeared within 30 seconds. No other objects we're witnessed in that direction during that time.

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

30-01-2021 om 20:24 geschreven door peter  

The Sharjah Lunar Impacts Observatory Telescope (SLIO). in United Arab Emirates has detected a series of impacts on the moon, but what is distinguishing is that this series of impacts, occurred within one minute and they were of greater brightness than usual. 

Image credit: Sharjah Lunar Impacts Observatory Telescope (SLIO).

Also, their flash periods were relatively long, as periods of up to a quarter of a second were recorded in each impact and this is considered a long time for such events. 

It is noticeable that these impacts spread in the middle of the dark eastern side of the Moon at the time of observation and spread over a distance of 1,000km on its surface. 

Image left: Sharjah observatory.

According to Prof. Hamid M.K. Al Naimiy, Chancellor of the University of Sharjah, General Director of SAASST, and President of the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences, the team has analyzed the time of impacts and their relative positions and based on this, they have concluded that the series of impacts are caused by meteorite impacts, reports khaleejtimes. 

What do you think hit the moon, meteorites, or something else crashed onto the lunar surface?

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

30-01-2021 om 18:45 geschreven door peter  

Oval-shaped UFO over Piriapolis, Uruguay 9-Jan-2021

This possible footage of a flying saucer was filmed in the sky above Piriapolis in Uruguay on 9th January 2021.

Witness report: 

Oval shape or arrangement of the lights. I received a message by Messenger on January 12, 2021, from Mr. Martín Chacón, a resident of the La Falda neighborhood, Piriápolis, Maldonado, Uruguay. I contacted him on WhatsApp and he sent me a video of strange lights perched on Cerro del Toro, near his home, recorded with his cell phone on January 9 at approximately 23 hours and 30 minutes. I did analysis using Vegas software and then contacted him by phone to ask about the details of his observation.

In addition, he gave me another video recorded by a friend who was with him that night. The friend’s name is Gustavo Ledesma. They first observed an oval shape or arrangement of the lights, and before disappearing it changed to a V shape. The lights were intense and flashing. The estimated size was more than 20 meters long. Both witnesses noted that he was not fully supported on the ground, but remained leaning with a part in the air. It did not emit any kind of sound.

Moments before starting the observation, the witnesses noticed that all the dogs in the area began to howl. The entire sighting lasted about 5 minutes. I accompany the report with both videos and photos of the site.

RELATED VIDEO, selected and posted by peter2011

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

30-01-2021 om 18:26 geschreven door peter  

China and the United States are both reportedly working on UFO designs that could lead to the creation of a Spacetime Modification Weapon that would make the deadly Hydrogen bomb seem like a "firecracker"

By Emma Parker

A series of tests on a UFO design theorised a space weapon so large that it could make the Hydrogen bomb seem like a "firecracker."

The United States Navy’s aerospace research enterprise confirmed the Air Warfare Division conduced experiments on UFO blueprints.

Research focused on exploring the work of Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais - an aerospace engineer who works for the U.S. Navy.

Dr Pais focus is on a theoretical concept dubbed the ‘Pais Effect,” which enables controlled "motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin."

The electrically charged matter then produces "powerful electromagnetic energy fields" that could re-engineer "the fabric of reality."

It is understood the energy produced by the Pais Effect could lead to the creation of an ultra-powerful " Space time Modification Weapon."

According to documents seen by the Warzone, a military website, the weapon could make "the Hydrogen bomb seem more like a firecracker, in comparison."

"'Extremely high energy levels can be achieved with this invention, under pulsed ultrahigh current (I) / ultrahigh magnetic flux density (B) conditions (Z-pinch with a Fusion twist)," the documents reportedly read.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

30-01-2021 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

RUSSIAN SECRET BOOK: Secret Documentation On UFO.

SMERSH counterintelligence service was built by the Red Army at the end of 1942 or perhaps even earlier, but officially founded on April 14, 1943. This SMERSH invented Josef Stalin. January 13, 1947 was given a small book containing a description of extraterrestrials top SMERSH agents. This book described eight kinds of aliens and contained drawings and illustrations beings and UFOs.

Over the years, the book has been replenished, were added to the UFO photographs, as well as photographs and witnesses abducted (especially children), but also statistics. And much more! In the 80s he was found a copy of this book in the field in Buryatia (East Siberia). This copy of the book ended up in the hands of the KGB agent who had friends in the media. After the collapse of the USSR, only one (!) Of information and drawings of it leaked.

This book still exists, it is used and is supplemented by so-called Russian. “Special services”. The book is Secret documentation on UFO.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://dailymysteries.com/ }

30-01-2021 om 16:33 geschreven door peter  

« Nous avons la preuve qu’il existe des civilisations extraterrestres » assure l'astrophysicien Avi Loeb

 Nathalie Mayer - Journaliste

 [EN VIDÉO] Que sait-on vraiment d’Oumuamua ? - EC - YouTube  Le 19 octobre 2017, un observatoire à Hawaï (États-Unis) rapporte l’observation, au cœur de notre Système solaire, d’un objet mystérieux : ‘Oumuamua. Depuis les astronomes cherchent à percer les secrets de cet objet interstellaire qui ne ressemble à aucun autre. Certains en viennent même à envisager l’inimaginable : ‘Oumuamua pourrait avoir été construit par une intelligence extraterrestre.

© Futura 

Sommes-nous seuls ? C'est probablement la question la plus profonde qui se pose aujourd'hui encore à l'humanité. Et si la réponse à cette question était non ? Serions-nous prêts à l'accepter ? Pour Avi Loeb, astrophysicien à l'université de Harvard (États-Unis), une technologie extraterrestre a récemment traversé notre Système solaire. Il nous explique comment il est arrivé à cette conclusion.

Octobre 2017. Un observatoire à Hawaï (États-Unis) rapporte l'observation d'un objet mystérieux qui traverse notre Système solaire à une vitesse environ quatre fois supérieure à celle de la plupart des astéroïdes. L'objet suit une trajectoire hyperbolique qui indique aux astronomes qu'il vient d'ailleurs. Il est baptisé 1I/2017 U1. Et rapidement surnommé 'Oumuamua, comprenez « l'invité », « le messager ». Il éveille toutes les curiosités. « 'Oumuamua éblouit les scientifiques », titre alors la Nasa. Parce qu'il est le tout premier objet interstellaire observé aussi près de la Terre. Mais aussi parce qu'il présente un certain nombre de caractéristiques pour le moins surprenantes.

Comète, astéroïde, fragment de corps céleste. Au fil des mois, toutes les hypothèses concernant sa nature ont été mises sur la table. Y compris la plus folle de toutes : celle du vaisseau extraterrestre ! Une hypothèse soutenue -- envers et contre presque tous -- par Abraham Loeb, président du département d'astronomie à l'université de Harvard (États-Unis). « La méthode scientifique encourage à la prudence. Nous formulons une hypothèse, recueillons des preuves et testons cette hypothèse. Puis nous affinons l'hypothèse ou rassemblons plus de preuves. Mais les modes peuvent décourager la prise en compte de certaines hypothèses et le carriérisme peut diriger l'attention et les ressources vers certains sujets et les éloigner d'autres », explique-t-il.

Le saviez-vous ?

« Personnellement, je suis convaincu que 'Oumuamua est la preuve qu'il existe ou qu'il a existé des civilisations sensibles autres que la nôtre, ailleurs dans l'Univers. Et j'aimerais que la communauté accepte d'accorder autant de crédit à ma théorie qu'elle en accorde à l'hypothèse de la supersymétrie ou du multivers. Mais je crois aussi que l'humanité n'est pas prête à accepter que nous ne soyons pas uniques. »

‘Oumuamua, un objet interstellaire à la forme étrange

Mais sur quoi Avi Loeb appuie-t-il son hypothèse ? Sur quelques singularités relevées par les chercheurs qui ont étudié l'objet interstellaire. Sa forme d'abord. « Nous n'avons aucune image bien nette de l'objet. Seulement les données de onze jours d'observations -- avant que l'objet s'éloigne trop de la Terre -- par plusieurs télescopes, précise Avi Loeb. Elles montrent que la luminosité de ‘Oumuamua varie d'un facteur dix toutes les huit heures. » De quoi conclure que l'objet est bien plus long que large. Certains ont d'abord parlé de forme de cigare. Puis les données ont orienté, de manière statistiquement bien plus probable, vers une forme de disque.

 Quoi qu'il en soit, nous n'avons jamais observé dans la nature, d'objet aussi plat et/ou allongé, nous assure Avi Loeb. Et c'est sans parler du fait que 'Oumuamua était aussi au moins dix fois plus brillant que n'importe quel astéroïde ou comète de taille similaire. » Un certain nombre d'explications ont été avancées.

Une trajectoire qui défie les lois de la physique

« S'il n'y avait eu que cela, je serais passé à autre chose », nous confie Avi Loeb. Mais il y avait aussi l'anomalie de trajectoire qui apparait dans les données recueillies par les astronomes. Selon le chercheur de l'université de Harvard, celle-ci est « époustouflante ». « Les lois de la physique nous permettent de prédire la trajectoire d'un objet soumis à l'influence gravitationnelle du Soleil. Mais 'Oumuamua ne s'est pas comporté comme prévu. » À distance de notre étoile, il s'est vu comme poussé par une force mystérieuse. « Cela arrive aux comètes aussi. Une sorte d'effet de « moteur-fusée » qu'elles doivent à leur longue queue de glace qui s'évapore. »

Pour que cet effet fusée explique la déviation de trajectoire de 'Oumuamua, il aurait fallu que l'objet perde un dixième de sa masse. Pourtant, en scrutant l'espace environnant, les astronomes n'ont trouvé aucune trace d'eau, de gaz ou de poussière.

D'autres hypothèses ont été avancées. Celle d'une collision avec un autre objet, d'abord. Mais les données ne correspondaient pas. Puis celle que la glace portée par l'objet interstellaire ait été exclusivement composée d'hydrogène. Mais l'idée n'a pas tenu bien longtemps. Celle de l'action de la pression de rayonnement du Soleil a également été investiguée. Mais elle impliquerait une densité massique incroyablement faible. 1 % seulement de celle de l'air à la surface de la Terre. De quoi faire de 'Oumuamua l'objet le plus poreux jamais observé dans notre Système solaire.

Selon Avi Loeb, astrophysicien à l’université de Harvard (États-Unis), les caractéristiques d’’Oumuamua peuvent s’expliquer par l’hypothèse qu'il s'agit d’un engin extraterrestre.

© Giovanni Cancerni, Adobe Stock 

‘Oumuamua, un vaisseau extraterrestre ?

« Pour moi, 'Oumuamua ne ressemble tellement à rien d'autre de ce que nous connaissons dans l'Univers qu'il doit avoir été conçu, construit et lancé par une intelligence extraterrestre. Peut-être un voile flottant dans l'espace. Une bouée de communication. Ou un débris abandonné par une civilisation autre que la nôtre, avance Avi Loeb. J'ai conscience que c'est une hypothèse exotique. Mais les autres hypothèses avancées pour expliquer ces caractéristiques particulières ne le sont pas moins. Aucune ne parvient à réellement expliquer la trajectoire de 'Oumuamua. Et pourtant, l'objet a dévié », n'hésite pas à lancer le chercheur en clin d'œil à Galilée.

« Soyons clairs. Je ne suis pas de ceux qui cherchent la lumière des projecteurs. Je ne suis pas "l'enfant terrible de l'astrophysique". Je me pose seulement des questions. En essayant de ne pas me laisser déborder par des préjugés. »

{ https://www.futura-sciences.com/sciences/ }

30-01-2021 om 16:01 geschreven door peter  

De sensoren op en rond de Mid-Atlantische Rug waarmee de gegevens voor de nieuwe studie verzameld werden.

University of Southampton

• 
  WETENSCHAP
  Maak kennis met Groot-Adrië: een verdwenen continent dat onder Europa is gedoken

De conventionele visie is dat het uit elkaar wijken van de platen wordt aangedreven door gravitationele krachten - zwaartekracht - vanop een verre afstand, doordat de zwaardere delen van de platen ver weg opnieuw wegzinken in de aarde. De zwaardere delen die wegzinken aan de randen van de platen, trekken als het ware de platen uit elkaar waar ze elkaar raken in het midden van de oceaan. 

Het probleem is dat de Atlantische Oceaan niet omringd wordt door dergelijke zware, wegzinkende delen van platen en dus is het een raadsel wat de platen uit elkaar drijft in het midden van de oceaan. 

Nu heeft een team van seismologen onder leiding van de University of Southampton bewijzen gevonden voor een opwelling in de aardmantel - het materiaal tussen de aardkorst en de kern van de aarde - vanop diepten van meer dan 600 kilometer onder de Mid-Atlantische Rug. Die opwelling kan de platen van onderuit wegduwen en zo maken dat de continenten verder uit elkaar gaan. 

Normaal gezien denkt men dat de opwellingen onder ruggen afkomstig zijn van veel kleinere diepten, van zo'n 60 kilometer.  

De belangrijkste tektonische platen op aarde. De Mid-Atlantische Rug is aangeduid in het geel.

Wikimedia Commons

39 seismometers

Het team achter de studie stelde 39 seismometers op in het midden van de bodem van de Atlantische Oceaan in het kader van het PI-LAB (Passive Imaging of the Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary) experiment en van EURO-LAB (Experiment to Unearth the Rheological Oceanic Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary). De seismometers stonden verspreid over zo'n 1.000 kilometer en ze bleven een jaar lang werken om aardbevingen van over de hele wereld te registreren. 

De seismometers legden vast hoe de seismische golven van de aardbevingen zich door de verschillende zones van de aardmantel bewogen. 

De gegevens van de seismometers stelden de onderzoekers in staat om voor het eerst op grote schaal een beeld in hoge resolutie op te stellen van de aardmantel onder de Mid-Atlantische Rug. 

Het experiment is een van de weinige die ooit op deze schaal zijn uitgevoerd in de oceanen en het liet het team toe variaties in de structuur van de aardmantel in beeld te brengen op diepten tussen 410 en 660 kilometer. Tussen die diepten ligt de zogenoemde manteltransitiezone, een overgangszone tussen de bovenmantel en de ondermantel van de aarde, die gekenmerkt wordt door abrupte faseovergangen in de mineralen van de mantel. Die mineralen nemen dichtere kristalstructuren aan naarmate de diepte en de druk groter worden. 

Het signaal dat de seismologen zagen, wees op een onverwachte, trage, diepe opwelling van materiaal vanuit de diepere aardmantel. 

De onderzoekers brachten in totaal tien weken op twee onderzoeksschepen in de Atlantische Oceaan door om de seismometers op te stellen en na een jaar opnieuw binnen te halen.University of Southampton

"Ongelooflijke resultaten"

"Dit was een gedenkwaardige missie die ons in totaal 10 weken naar het midden van de Atlantische Oceaan bracht", zei hoofdauteur Matthew Agius. "De ongelooflijke resultaten werpen nieuw licht op onze kennis van hoe het binnenste van de aarde verbonden is met platentektoniek, en we hebben waarnemingen opgetekend die nooit eerder gezien zijn." 

• 

BUITENLAND

"Indo-Australische aardplaat valt uit elkaar"

Agius was een postdoctoraal onderzoeker aan de University of Southampton die nu aan de Università degli studie Rome Tre werkt. Platentektoniek is de wetenschappelijke theorie over hoe de bovenste laag van de aarde verdeeld is in platen die zich onafhankelijk van elkaar bewegen. 

"Dit was volkomen onverwacht", zei doctor Kate Reichert, een van de leiders van het onderzoek. "Het heeft belangrijke gevolgen voor onze kennis over de evolutie van de aarde en haar bewoonbaarheid. Het toont ook aan hoe belangrijk het is nieuwe data te verzamelen uit de oceanen. Er is nog zo veel te onderzoeken."

"Dit werk is opwindend en het ontkracht aannames die al lang geloofd worden over het feit dat de mid-oceanische ruggen enkel een passieve rol spelen in de platentektoniek", zei professor Mike Kendall van de University of Oxford, een andere leider van het onderzoek. "Het suggereert dat in plaatsen zoals het midden van de Atlantische Oceaan krachten rond de rug een belangrijke rol spelen bij het uit elkaar drijven van nieuw gevormde platen." 

De onderzoekers zeggen dat de bevindingen van de studie een beter inzicht bieden in de platentektoniek, die veel natuurrampen veroorzaakt, onder meer aardbevingen, tsunami's en vulkaanuitbarstingen. Ze kunnen wetenschappers helpen betere modellen en waarschuwingssystemen te ontwikkelen voor natuurrampen. De platentektoniek heeft ook een impact op het zeeniveau en heeft zodoende ook een invloed op de schattingen in verband met de klimaatverandering op een geologische - erg lange - tijdschaal. 

De studie van de onderzoekers van de universiteiten van Southampton en Oxford is gepubliceerd in Nature. Dit artikel is gebaseerd op een persbericht van de University of Southampton. 

Een video (Engels) van de universiteit van Southampton met uitleg over het experiment en de studie.

De seismometers van PI-LAB tekenden gedurende een jaar de effecten van aardbevingen overal ter wereld op en aan de hand van hoe de seismische golven zich door de aardlagen bewogen, konden de onderzoekers zich een beeld vormen van wat er zich in de aardlagen afspeelde, vooral in de manteltransitiezone, tussen 410 en 660 kilometers, die de overgang vormt tussen de bovenmantel en de ondermantel van de aarde.University of Southampton

{ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/ }

29-01-2021 om 23:55 geschreven door peter  

Unraveling The UFO Mystery: France Is Working On It

Thousands of UFO sightings are reported every year but not many countries are willing to spend money investigating them – there is just one dedicated state-run team left in Europe. Is France onto something?, asks BBC.

You don’t need a time machine when you visit the French Space Centre headquarters in Toulouse – it’s already a throwback to the 1970s. Green lawns sweep on to wide boulevards with stout long rectangular office blocks on either side.

It’s almost Soviet-style in the heart of southern France. There are few signs of life even though 1,500 people, most of them civil servants, work in boxy offices along narrow unappealing corridors.

France has the biggest space agency in Europe – the result of the 1960s space race and President Charles de Gaulle’s grand determination to keep France independent of the US by building its own satellites, rocket launchers and providing elite space research.

An offshoot of all that – France is the only country in Europe to maintain a full-time state-run UFO (unidentified flying objects) department. There used to be one in the UK and another in Denmark but they closed down years ago due to budget cuts.

France’s UFO unit consists of four staff, and about a dozen volunteers who get their expenses paid to go on site and look into reports of strange sightings in the skies.

The team is called Geipan. That’s a French acronym for Study Group and Information on Non-Identified Aerospace Phenomenon.

Its boss is Xavier Passot. Surrounded by dozens of books on UFOs, and stacks of documents, he tells me his mission is to be as transparent as possible about strange sightings and to follow up on each one that his team receives.

They publish their results on their website which gets 30,000 hits a month. The team receives, on average, two UFO sightings a day. The department insists an 11-page form is filled out for each one. The idea is to provide details including photographs where possible but also weed out jokers and time-wasters.

If someone claims to have seen strange lights in the skies, the UFO team might go online to see whether the observation took place on a flight path – it can trace commercial air traffic going back more than a week.

The team also has access to military flight paths and is in touch with the air force and air traffic controllers.

Sometimes if its staff are really intrigued by photos they have seen or if there have been several witnesses to the same sighting, they will call the local police to ask whether they can be considered credible.

They might even check with neighbours to see whether they were out drinking that night or perhaps smoking something other than cigarettes.

Passot says many of the people who get in touch are smokers, puffing away outside bars or their own homes at night, gazing at the stars.

One of the boxy offices houses yellowing archives going back to the 1950s. The papers I look at contain eerie accounts of strange things encountered in the skies by fighter pilots on routine reconnaissance missions.

For what it’s worth and for those who suspect there’s conspiracy afoot, Passot tells me he has never covered up a UFO sighting.

I take a look at some amazing photos of strange lights and circular forms caught on camera. One, taken by a motorist, of a white ring shape above Marseille is particularly grabbing.

But the team figured that one out – it wasn’t invaders from Mars, just the reflection of a small interior overhead light in the car.

In fact, the department can explain away nearly all these phenomena and, believe it or not, the most common culprits are Chinese lanterns sent up at night during parties. The investigators often telephone the local town hall to ask if, perhaps, there had been a wedding going on at the time.

Balloons and kites floating in the skies also get mistaken for alien craft, and space debris and falling meteorites giving off strange lights are more common than one might think.

But there are around 400 UFO sightings going back to the 1970s that the French team cannot explain. One, an alleged flying saucer landing near Aix-en-Provence in 1981, they take very seriously – there were landing marks and multiple witnesses.

So are there really little green men? Well, the jury’s out on the colour but there are many working here, as well as others around the world, who are convinced there is some life out there.

And does the use of French taxpayers’ money on UFO research make sense, particularly in these times of budgetary constraint? That probably depends on whether you just saw an alien and, in the words of those Ghostbusters, who you gonna call?

By Chris Bockman

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{ https://anomalien.com/ }

29-01-2021 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

How Bob Lazar Spoke The Truth About Flying Saucers 30 Years Ago

By George Knapp

A buzz was building inside the Kulturhuset, a community center built on Islands Brygge, the historic property on the waterfront of Copenhagen’s harbor.

Inside the hall, an audience of more than 120 Danes, Norwegians, Germans and Brits were waiting to hear about a mystery that first surfaced on Las Vegas television 30 years ago. What’s the latest about Area 51, they wanted me to tell them — and whatever happened to that flying-saucer guy Bob Lazar?

Few people know better than I do how outlandish the Lazar story sounded when his tale of a secret Nevada base housing UFOs exploded onto the scene back in November 1989.

To this day, it is still a bit befuddling to me that educated professionals, artists, musicians and retirees from all around Europe would gather to hear the latest scuttlebutt about the flying saucers supposedly housed in a secretive facility in the Nevada desert.

The Exopolitics Denmark conference, a two-day gathering in October, wasn’t the first to focus on the subject, and it won’t be the last. Area 51 is known around the world.

Every day I receive letters, emails or phone calls from curious people in Ecuador, Iceland, Hong Kong, Russia or other far-flung places asking about Area 51 or the bookish whistleblower who put it on the map.

And that’s exactly what Lazar did. Today, Area 51 is an oxymoron of the highest order — the world’s best-known secret base. It has been mentioned in such blockbusters as The Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, an Indiana Jones sequel and Independence Day, in which Earthlings used the base to fight off an alien invasion.

It’s been featured in “X-Files” episodes, inspired dozens of books, hundreds of magazine articles, songs, cartoons, poems and business enterprises.

Earlier this year, former President Clinton talked about his interest in aliens and Area 51 on the Jimmy Kimmel show. President Obama became the first sitting president to mention the name of the base — during a ceremony honoring Shirley MacLaine.

Heck, even the Kardashians visited the outskirts of the base for their reality show.

There are several businesses named after Area 51 — a rock ’n’ roll band, a couple of bars, a video game, a fireworks company, jerky stores, inflatable love dolls, a dance troupe, art exhibits and the Las Vegas triple A-baseball team.

After my first televised interview with Lazar, the most prominent business in Rachel, Nev., wisely changed its name from the Rachel Bar and Grill to the Little A’Le’Inn, selling T-shirts, posters, wine and Bob Lazar Christmas tree ornaments, along with “Beam Me Up, Scotty” drinks at the bar and Alien Burgers in the kitchen.

The story as told by Lazar has not only persisted but has blossomed, despite overtly hostile treatment by major media outlets and some of the best-known honchos of Ufology. Many of my journalism colleagues have worked their ink-stained panties into pretzel-thick bunches by fretting about the story.

Nonetheless, since the saucer stuff burst into the public consciousness, every major media organization, program and paper in the world has, sometimes reluctantly, beaten a path to Area 51’s once-obscure door. The attention has irritated some of my fellow reporters to the breaking point.

The nonexistent military base

“Sometimes I really do regret it.” On the media screen inside the Denmark hall, attendees are intently watching an edited clip of an interview with Lazar. “I almost feel like apologizing to them, saying, ‘I’m sorry. Can I have my job back?’”

It’s far too late for that — assuming he ever had a job out there in the first place. Whatever anonymity Area 51 enjoyed evaporated forever the moment Lazar spoke into a TV camera.

That first interview was broadcast in May 1989. Lazar’s face was hidden and he used a pseudonym, Dennis. He claimed he worked intermittently at a location called S-4, south of Groom Lake, the main facility of Area 51.

He said nine aircraft hangars had been built into the side of a mountain, adjacent to Papoose dry lake, disguised to look like the desert floor. Inside were nine flying saucers of alien origin.

“Dennis” said the program was controlled by the U.S. Navy and that he and other scientists were taking the saucers apart to figure out how they worked — “reverse engineering,” he called it.

Eight months later, on Nov. 10, KLAS-TV identified Lazar by name and showed his face as part of a series called “UFOs: The Best Evidence.” To this day, it ranks as the highest rated, most-watched local news program ever produced here. Within days, Lazar’s claims had spread to Europe and Japan.

TV crews and tabloid outfits flocked to Nevada. Tour buses filled with UFO enthusiasts staked out the deserts of the Tikaboo Valley. The guards, nicknamed “camo dudes,” who patrol the perimeter of Area 51 were overwhelmed by all the attention, and ticked off, too.

Before that first broadcast, the only people familiar with the name of the base were folks who worked there or at the Nevada Test Site, or who lived in one of the remote communities of central Nevada. A few journalists had written bits and pieces about the base in the ’60s and ’70s.

Aviation magazines speculated about spy planes that might be flying out of Groom Lake: the sleek SR-71 Blackbird, the gangly and magnificent U-2 and a strange craft rumored to be nearly invisible to radar.

Among the handful of Nevada journalists with an interest in the base were two Las Vegas muckrakers, Bob Stoldal and Ned Day, who years later would become my bosses.

Acting on a tip from a former CIA pilot and Area 51 watcher named John Lear, Day and Stoldal broke a big story about the existence of the stealth fighter, which, they reported, had been developed and tested at Area 51. Federal lawmen hauled Day in for questioning about the source of his information.

Stoldal was nabbed by military security on the outskirts of the base. In the early ’80s, when they hired me to work at KLAS-TV, they told me intriguing stories about the ominous military base known by many names — The Ranch, The Box, The Watertown Strip and, best of all, Dreamland.

By then the base had vanished from maps of the Test Site. The government began to pretend it didn’t exist, even though it had been acknowledged by the military as early as 1955 and had been photographed by Russian satellites. It became readily apparent that intelligence agencies and the military were flat out lying to the public, and, as lies go, it wasn’t very convincing.

‘There is no delusion’

In Copenhagen, I told the audience that it no longer matters to me whether anyone believes Lazar’s wild tale. (That’s almost true.) For years after the story broke, it was a burning priority for me to try to convince the public — and my skeptical colleagues — that the story was legitimate and true. Not anymore.

These days, I focus on explaining why we took the story seriously in the first place, why we put our credibility on the line and how the tale subsequently took on a life that no one could have imagined. Like it or not, the Lazar meme is alive and well.

“Look, I’m not out there giving UFO lectures or producing tapes. I’m not in the UFO business,” Lazar told me in an interview recorded this year at my home.

“I’m trying to run a scientific business, and if I’m The UFO Guy it makes it really difficult for me. It is to my benefit that people don’t believe the story. So when somebody says that they don’t believe my story, I say, ‘Great. Pass it around. I don’t want you to believe it because it makes life difficult for me.’”

These days, he owns a scientific supply company in Michigan. He doesn’t grant interviews and has done his best to put the whole episode behind him. He makes an occasional exception for me, mostly because of the strange road we have traveled together and the wars that have been fought in the odd little universe of Ufology.

“Look, I know what happened is true,” Lazar says. “There is no doubt. Period. There is no delusion.”

“Bob wouldn’t go to the trouble to make up a story to lie to people and then perpetuate that lie,” adds his close friend Gene Huff, a Las Vegas real-estate appraiser.

“I mean, he lives in his own world and doesn’t care what people think. Bob has no idea who won the Super Bowl last year, or the World Series. He’s busy doing scientific stuff in Bob Lazar World and would not waste his time perpetuating a lie about UFOs.”

When KLAS decided to pursue Lazar’s claims, we spent eight months looking into his background and the larger story about UFOs at Area 51. On the surface, Lazar seemed an unlikely person to bring into such a sensitive program, assuming such a program exists.

He likes machine guns and hookers, builds jet-powered cars, operated an outlaw fireworks spectacular and flies a skull-and-crossbones flag over his house. Hardly the profile of a stuffy government scientist. What’s more, the claims he made about places he worked and the school he attended could not be verified.

But instead of scaring us away from the story, the lack of records is what hooked us. Lazar said that prior to S-4, he had worked as a physicist on classified projects at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico.

The lab told me it had no record whatsoever of Lazar. After I found a lab phone book listing his name, and a front-page Los Alamos newspaper article that named him as a lab physicist, Los Alamos still denied having any records.

A headhunting company confirmed to me that it had hired Lazar to work at the lab and would send me copies of his records — but then clammed up, refusing to return phone calls or respond to letters, later denying it ever told me that it had the records.

I interviewed four people who had personal knowledge of Lazar working at Los Alamos on classified projects, and I even took a tour of the lab with Lazar as my guide.

Something was clearly wrong with this picture. Later, after Lazar got into legal hot water, I asked Nevada Rep. Jim Bilbray for help tracking down Lazar’s employment records. The congressman’s office said it was stonewalled by several agencies and had never seen anything like it.

The second thing that hooked us was Lazar’s knowledge of how things worked at Groom Lake. He says he spent very little time at Groom itself, but he knew, for instance, that a company called EG&G handled hiring. (Lazar claimed he had been sent to EG&G on a recommendation from physicist Edward Teller, whom he had met at Los Alamos.)

Lazar knew that employees were flown to the base in unmarked planes or driven to Groom on buses with blacked-out windows — all true. He told us he had been interviewed by a guy who might have worked for the FBI as part of a background check for his security clearance.

The agent’s name was Mike Thigpen. As it turned out, Thigpen was a real person, but he worked for something called the Office of Federal Investigation, which conducts background checks on people hired to work at the former Test Site. That part of Lazar’s story turned out to be true.

We also confirmed the existence of a location called S-4 on the Nellis range. There had been no references anywhere to such a place, but the public affairs office at Nellis confirmed to me that S-4 was a location at which the Air Force “tested certain equipment.” (If you ask them today, they will tell you they are “unable to find any such designation on any maps” of the range.) How did Lazar know it existed?

The most important information Lazar had was the location and time of test flights of the saucerlike craft. Three weeks in a row, he escorted a group of people out to the desert east of the Papoose range, and they witnessed a glowing saucer-shaped object rise above the mountains and perform dramatic maneuvers.

One of the sightings was captured on videotape. I interviewed each of the people who went along, and they told me the same story. Again, how did Lazar know? There had been no reports of aerial activity at Papoose.

To this day, the official story is that the government has never had a facility at that location (even though satellite maps show a road leading from Groom Lake to the spot where Lazar says the hangars were located). As an aside, earlier this year, a UFO researcher found images on Google Earth that appear to show the outline of what could be nine hangar doors on the side of Papoose dry lake.

After an inconclusive result on one polygraph test — the examiner thought Lazar was too frightened — he easily passed a second test, administered an ex-cop named Terry Tavernetti, who quizzed him about his core claims. No attempt at deception was detected. Not long after we reported Tavernetti’s findings, his office was burglarized and the charts from Lazar’s test were stolen.

Yet another reason we gave Lazar the benefit of the doubt is that we found witnesses to back up at least parts of his story. I’ve interviewed more than two dozen people who worked at Groom Lake at various times from the 1950s through the ’80s who have told me they saw saucerlike craft being tested or stored or taken apart in the vicinity of Area 51.

Most telling of all are those witnesses who were subsequently visited and threatened by various Men In Black types. Six people who offered to tell me their stories say they were visited immediately afterward and ordered to keep their mouths shut. If it had happened only once, I wouldn’t think much about it.

But these six people were solid citizens, not UFO nuts. One woman says she her life was threatened. Another man says he was warned about imprisonment if he talked.

What this told me was that someone was listening to my phone calls. In the days before Edward Snowden’s revelations, before we took for granted that the government is listening to every call and reading every email, this knowledge really pissed us off.

Years after the story broke, I spoke to two former spooks who admitted that their job was to follow me, Lazar, Lear and Huff to see who we met or spoke to, at our workplaces, homes or bars. If Lazar’s tale was baloney, why were we being followed?

Nonetheless, my approach to the Lazar material changed in the mid-’90s, for a couple of reasons. One is that I was concerned that I had crossed into advocacy instead of merely reporting on it. The fact is, it became personal. So many weird things happened during those first few years, things that are hard to explain if you weren’t there.

Second, I reluctantly came to realize that I would never be able to prove Lazar’s claims, no matter how many witnesses came forward to verify parts of his story.

The folks who run Area 51 are simply better at this stuff than I am, and were always able to deflect stories about what goes on there. So I changed my focus to merely explaining how the story played out and why I remained interested over the years.

Amazing and ridiculous

In the years since the stories broke, I’ve read the most amazing and ridiculous things about Area 51 and the saucer stories in local and national publications.
Quite a few articles have poked fun at the story or at me. I’ve been the subject of at least three terrifically funny editorial cartoons in the Review Journal — all three now hang on my bathroom wall.

The RJ media critic speculated that people were “rushing home at night to see my UFO reports” because they wanted to see the moment when I finally went “bull-goose loony on the air.” One columnist bestowed on me the title of “grand mullah in the church of cosmic proctology.”

Some of this stuff was pretty funny, but it bothered me that so many journalists had made up their minds about the Area 51 stories without ever doing a bit of work on it or without interviewing any witnesses. They seemed to know ahead of time, perhaps through psychic visions, that the story was bunk. To my mind, that isn’t how journalism is supposed to work.

The most troubling failures by my colleagues has been their willingness to accept whatever stories are promulgated by the Air Force or CIA, as long as the end result is to poke fun at crazy UFO buffs.

In the years since the Lazar story broke, I’ve met scores of men who worked at Groom Lake on classified projects who have told me they never saw any saucers, and I believe them. But those same men have told me they would see co-workers in the chow line every day and never know what they were working on because they couldn’t talk about it. They were reportedly ordered to lie about their work to their own spouses.

The other explanation that has been swallowed by those who don’t want the story to be true is that maybe the tale told by Lazar is part of a disinformation plot, devised by the CIA or Air Force, as a way to distract attention away from something else flying around out there.

If that was the plan, it was a miserable failure.

As a result of the saucer tales, tens of thousands of people have made the trek out into the desert to watch the skies. Media crews are out there every week. Congressional investigators have asked tough questions. No one at Groom Lake ever wanted this much attention, regardless of what they are doing these days.

Critics of the story, or of Lazar, are welcome to laugh at it all they want. But the fact is, the debate is effectively over. Area 51 is now permanently carved into the public consciousness. Area 51 is now the yin to Roswell’s yang, and the UFO stories are never going to be divorced from the base itself.
The UFO crazies won the battle. Long live Area 51.

By George Knapp (George Knapp is a Nevada journalist who has been honored with the highest awards in broadcast journalism–the Peabody Award (twice), the Dupont Award from Columbia University, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and 27 regional Emmy awards for investigative reporting, environmental reporting, and news writing.)

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29-01-2021 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

Nine young hikers came to a mysterious end in the winter of 1959 on a frigid remote pass in the Ural mountains, launching Dyatlov Pass into the world lexicon and kicking off a search for the reasons how they died and why their bodies were found scattered around the area, some with horrific and baffling injuries, others with none, some in various stages of undress, all frozen to death. When conventional causes proved inconclusive, the strange and bizarre quickly emerged – UFOs, aliens, Yeti, radiation from a secret rocket test, secret heat ray weapon, poisoned alcohol, KGB killing, a vacuum bomb and more. None of those has been confirmed either, so a group of scientists went back to one of the conventional causes and revealed this week the most plausible scientific explanation for the Dyatov Pass incident.

--“Here we show how a combination of irregular topography, a cut made in the slope to install the tent and the subsequent deposition of snow induced by strong katabatic winds contributed after a suitable time to the slab release, which caused severe non-fatal injuries, in agreement with the autopsy results.”

Drum roll, please.

If you missed the clues (irregular topography, cut, snow, slab release), the authors of the study, published in the journal Communications, Earth & Environment, concluded that the Dyatlov Pass hikers were run over by a small avalanche which them the injuries and scattered them and their belongings, forcing their deaths by hypothermia.

Arguments against the avalanche theory, please.

A snow avalanche is not a new probable cause – in fact, it was one of the first proposed and first rejected. For one thing, there was no sign of an avalanche when rescuers finally arrived. Second, the slope was less than the minimum angle for an avalanche. Third, the hikers fled their tents in the middle of the night – not a typical avalanche time. Finally, not all of the injuries appeared to be of the type normally seen in avalanche victims.

Arguments for the slab avalanche, please.

Johan Gaume, head of the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and Alexander Puzrin, a researcher at the Institute for Geotechnical Engineering in Zurich, studied records from the time of the incident and then ran them through a digital avalanche model. A slab avalanche addressed the main “it’s not an avalanche” objections. The angle of the slope was steeper than reported and subsequent snowfalls reduced the pitch and also smoothed over the signs of an avalanche. While the cut in the slope was made during the day, extreme winds blew as much as a foot of snow above the highest tent, weighing it down enough to cause a break and a slab avalanche. Finally, because the hikers were asleep in a vertical position, the injuries they suffered would not have looked the same as those of people upright while hiking, skiing or running away. (Excellent drawings of the above can be seen in the study.)

Time for a “That’s it!” drumroll?

“In conclusion, our work shows the plausibility of a rather rare type of snow slab instabilities that could possibly explain the Dyatlov Pass incident. Yet, we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation such as traces of radioactivity found on the victims’ garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of bodies, etc. While possible explanations are given in multiple published sources as well as by both the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, we believe that this will always remain an intrinsic part of the Dyatlov Pass Mystery.”

Gaume and Puzrin hedge their bets by using the word “plausibility” in their conclusion. Still, it seems to be the best argument for a slab avalanche cause for the Dyatlov Pass incident. Will it convince those hoping for aliens, Yeti or one of the other unconventional explanations? No drum roll needed here.

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29-01-2021 om 22:18 geschreven door peter  

The mid-1980s were a tense time in the world, with the Cold War in full swing and two heavily armed nuclear powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, at odds with each other. It was a time of proxy wars being fought and the two powers constantly saber rattling, an era of frequent brinksmanship, with nuclear missiles aimed at each other and the very existence of the world hanging in the balance, watching with fear what these two massive countries would do. In many ways it was akin to a standoff between two gunslingers, each staring the other one down, hand at the holster, waiting for the other to make a move, the slightest movement likely to cause the other to fire. Both countries had massive nuclear arsenals, which had been growing all of the time in a seemingly never-ending cycle of one-upmanship, and this was one of the reasons for Geneva Summit of 1985, held in the neutral territory of Geneva, Switzerland. Among the topics they would discuss were controlling the arms race, improving relationships, and whether or not they would team up if aliens ever invaded Earth. Wait, what?

The meeting was originally meant to discuss options for cutting down the number of nukes and smooth over diplomatic relations related to the ongoing arms race, but it was turning out to mostly serve as a venue for both powers to flex and posture on the stage of public opinion. The Geneva Summit had been tense going even during the planning stages, as the two nations had difficulty seeing eye to eye on anything or establishing a dialogue at all, really, not helped by the fact that the U.S. chose the months ahead of the meeting to unveil their plans to test the Strategic Defense Initiative. Also known popularly as Star Wars, it was a space based proposed missile defense system designed to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons, both launched from land or submarines, and it really stirred the hornets’ nest as far as the Soviets were concerned, making things that much more abrasive and antagonistic when talks at the summit actually began.

When they met in Geneva, both superpowers engaged in a dance of demands and proposals met with rebuffs and counter demands, with both seeming to have different agendas. For instance, the Soviets wanted to halve the number of nuclear weapons, while the U.S. seemed more interested in making sure that both sides did not gain a first-strike advantage. The Soviets wanted the Star Wars system halted, whereas the U.S. was very interested in protecting their right to have defensive systems. The Soviets suggested a unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear tests, but the U.S. refused to join it. It seemed to be going nowhere, as it was very apparent that neither one of the superpowers trusted the other at all.

Among all of this, one of the main attractions of the Geneva Summit was that it was the first time for then American president Ronald Reagan to meet Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev face to face. As all eyes around the world watched, the two Cold War leaders met at the picturesque chateau Maison de Saussure, and it was just about as awkward as one might expect. One the first day of the two-day meeting, Reagan told Gorbachev that the U.S. desired peace above all else, to which Gorbachev retorted that the U.S. government was intentionally keeping its citizens tense and distrustful of the Soviets. Indeed, Gorbachev complained that one of their main problems was this distrust and paranoia. And around and around it went, going a half an hour over schedule. Reagan accused the Soviets of being overly aggressive, and Gorbachev retorted that the Americans were fear-mongers and overreacting. They also clashed about the arms race, the Strategic Defense Initiative and various other issues, with Reagan later saying that Gorbachev was belligerent and Gorbachev describing Reagan as “unyielding.” Just about the only thing they could agree on was that they should meet again and continue the talks. Yet there was apparently something else they agreed on as well.

At one point during the negotiations, Reagan and Gorbachev stopped the meeting to take a break and have a walk together. It was frustrating for reporters and everyone watching from home, because it turned out to be a very private walk, with only their interpreters allowed to follow, and with not even Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz allowed to go with them. They went for their walk, came back, and for years there was much debate and discussion about what the two had talked about during that time. It was not until 2009 when both Schultz and Gorbachev participated in an interview with Charlie Rose and the subject came up. Shultz described how the two had suddenly taken a break to go to “some cabin on Lake Geneva where there was a fire in a fireplace and you sat down there.” At that point Gorbachev excitedly jumped in to tell of what they had talked about, and that was apparently what the two countries would do if they were attacked by aliens. Gorbachev said:

From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’ I said, ‘No doubt about it.’ He said, ‘We too.’ So that’s interesting. I’m sorry for having interrupted you, but it was an interesting moment.

At the time there was a lot of laughter in the studio, and one might have even gotten the impression that Gorbachev had just made it up on the spot as a joke, if it weren’t for the fact that Reagan would later corroborate it and confirm that it was true. He even related it at a speech to the United Nations a few years later. It is unclear just how serious Reagan was when he asked this, whether it was an honest question or merely he, being a total science fiction geek, desperately trying to find some footing with the Soviet leader during tense exchanges by approaching it through a pop culture lens. Yet there has been much debate that perhaps Reagan was not only being sincere, but that it suggests he had inside knowledge that an alien attack was an actual possible threat. Writer Alex Hollings, at the site SOFREP has said of this:

It seems reasonable to assume that Reagan was using the concept of an alien invasion to point out how even the enemy nations had a mutual desire to see the world survive — a concern that seems appropriate when working to avert a nuclear war. However, in the minds of some, that private stroll in 1985 remains as among the best evidence to date that the United States government was aware of a potential threat posed by the presence of UFOs or alien life. Whether or not Reagan was secretly aware of the presence of UFOs, or if he was simply using popular culture to find common ground with other world leaders, will remain the subject of debate among those with interests in either explanation, but regardless of any potentially hidden intent, it’s nice to know that even the United States and Soviet Union could have put their tensions on hold long enough to fight for the sake of the planet.

There has also been a lot of talk that the two leaders delved into this much more than they let on, or that they actually put plans into place. This little meeting has managed to attract a great deal of attention, despite the fact that it was a seemingly tiny little exchange that likely meant nothing. Yet, we are left to wonder. Why did Reagan bring this up? What did it mean, if anything? Did he know anything, or was this just banter coming from a science fiction aficionado trying to break the ice with a formidable rival? We will probably never know for sure, but it is certainly an odd little exchange from a turbulent time in history.

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29-01-2021 om 22:05 geschreven door peter  

The Charlotte Observer reports that multiple witnesses to a string of strange lights in the sky near Charlotte, North Carolina Saturday night took to Facebook to report their sightings. Photos documenting a formation of lights floating over the Indian Trail community in Union County, just southeast of Charlotte, were shared in the private Facebook group “What’s Up Indian Trail?”.

Witness Alisa Homewood described her sighting as soundless. The lights “flickered like lanterns, but followed the same exact path up until they disappeared which was odd.” Homewood later told The Charlotte Observer the lights “resembled how a flame would look, flickering in the dark.”

Although Homewood’s description seems typical of so-called Chinese lanterns or sky lanterns, which in complete darkness resemble a series of candle flames or floating fires drifting through the sky, the photos she captured of a trio of those lights show them to be bluish in color. If the lights were sky lanterns, they would most likely be reddish or orangish in hue.

In clarification Homewood said:

“In the sky it did not look blue, it looked like a group of bright lights. I thought it was odd though, that a few people have seen and photographed that same blue-ish grouping of lights.”

Hundreds of commenters on Facebook passionately opined on the lights, speculating that they were flares, drones, or even a SpaceX rocket launch. Others suspected it might be a Starlink train, a line of low-orbiting satellites deployed by SpaceX, intended to one day offer broadband Internet connectivity everywhere on Earth. Videos of these Starlink trains resemble an alien invasion and should be widely distributed to quell any future War of the Worlds-level-hysteria. If you’d like to see one of these formations in action, you can track Starlink and get recommendations of dates and times that offer the best visibility in your area.

A Starlink train was my favorite explanation. That is, until I got in touch with Alisa Homewood, and was able to ask some follow-up questions.

I’m writing an article on the NC lights. Have you received a satisfactory explanation of what they were?

AH: I haven’t received any explanations and don’t anticipate I will. There are several speculations from the community but nothing with evidence.

What color would you say the lights were? White? Yellow? Orange? Red?

AH: They were orange first then looked bright white, then when they were right overhead they were orange like fire.

How many other witnesses posted about the sighting Saturday?

AH: I only saw one other person in the parking lot with me (other than my family), but she hasn’t come forward and I don’t know who she was. Otherwise there are over 100 comments on the Facebook post, and I believe maybe 5-10 mentioned seeing something similar, and I believe only a few (3 or so) said they saw what I saw the same night, but no one has produced photos to confirm we saw the same thing.

What time of night was your sighting?

AH: 9:30-9:40 p.m. Another lady saw them at 5 a.m. a different day.

I presented Alisa Homewood with a video that I took of known sky lanterns, which initially look very mysterious, especially if you’ve never seen them before. When I first saw these flickering flames in the sky, I was compelled to follow them in my car until I got to the bottom of it. Then I made a video about it.

Did what you saw resemble the sky lanterns in this video?

AH: Yes, only there were several. The lights looked like individual flames, they were flickering just like that video you just shared. That was my thought . .  . Chinese lanterns. They formed into almost a line and went very high then disappeared. No one in the area has confirmed they sent them up, I was hoping someone would say “Oh, that was our group.” To be fair, I was honestly just curious what they were. I have no notion to believe they are or aren’t lanterns, I was just curious. But yes, my exact words when I saw them were “They resembled lanterns.”

For me, pending new information, the case is closed. The string of strange lights spotted by Alisa Homewood this Saturday in North Carolina were most like sky lanterns. One mystery solved. Onto the next!

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29-01-2021 om 18:39 geschreven door peter