In 2019, a National Geographic and OceanX underwater photographer appeared in a video and said this:

“I think, in the ocean, I have come across potentially beings from another heavenly body that are more highly advanced than humans.”

The photographer is Luis Lamar and the video appears to have been made by or for OceanX, an ocean exploration initiative whose website describes a “mission to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world.” Does that mission include bringing photos of underwater aliens back to the world?

“I’ve seen giant deep sea arachnids, venomous sea snakes far offshore with, like bright-yellow heads. Sharks in a frenzy, Orcas swarming all around me. Some sort of you know, hyper-advanced aquatic alien creatures inhabiting the shallow waters, which almost look like stingrays.”

I think I know that alien!

According to the Meeko TV YouTube channel, Lamar stated that he was waiting for an underwater film crew to assemble when he saw the sharks in a frenzy. When he approached them, he saw the “hyper-advanced aquatic alien creatures.” While they looked like stingrays, Meeko TV reports he said something about them didn’t feel right, something that wasn’t normal. The original report and video was said to have been made by The War Zone, which is well known for its in-depth reports on advanced military aircraft and strange encounters. In fact, in 2019 it was fact reporting on U.S. nuclear submarines having a number of encounters with unidentified submerged objects or USOs.

And that is where the plot thickens. The War Zone has no record of Luis Lamar. Links to the original video no longer work. Lamar is definitely a real person and National Geographic photographer — his photos appear in a 2019 story titled “If alien life exists in our solar system, it may look like this.” That’s “may.” However, the underwater alien encounter story is still alive, having popped up on various paranormal and UFO sites and on Reddit. This week on the UFO Reddit, a follow-up on this story was alluded to. u/MFLUDER posted a tweet by filmmaker Steven Greenstreet … who retweeted a post by Andrew Harbinson (@sSamscwantch), a “Para experiencer” who contacted Luis Lamar to asked for clarification on his encounter in light of the recent UFO/USO/UAP encounter disclosures by the Pentagon. Luis Lamar responded with this:

“this was a stupid joke video my friend made while we were bored on a shoot – for kids on Instagram or whatever. It’s complete bullshit. Stop wasting your time.”

What was that word again?

Sigh. This is why we can’t have nice things … like accurate and honest reports on UFOs and USOs. Some commenters tried to save it by saying that Lamar could have been pressured by the government to disavow the video and remove it, but it sounds more like his employers may have been behind it. Or Lamar just got tired of being contacted by serious researchers about his “joke” video. These days it’s hard to be a comedian or satirist or just a plain old person trying to have some fun, especially when trying to joke about politics or world affairs. It’s getting to be the same way with UFOs.

Let that be a warning to UFO or USO hoaxers – payback can be a bitch.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

04-08-2021 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

My previous article was on the matter of some of the lesser-known aspects of the Rendlesham Forest “UFO landing” of December 1980. With that said, today I’ve decided to do something similar with the Roswell case. Namely, share with you some of the aspects of Roswell that many might not be aware of. So, let’s begin: when personnel at the Roswell Army Air Field announced, in July 1947, that they had recovered a crashed flying disc, one thing was one hundred percent absent: any mention of bodies. And, needless to say, the body angle was also absent from the hasty follow-up explanation of a weather-balloon recovery. The body angle was also denied in the Air Force’s July 1994 report on Roswell (titled Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident), as the following extract shows: “It should also be noted here that there was little mentioned in this report about the recovery of the so-called ‘alien bodies.’ The wreckage was from a Project Mogul balloon. There were no ‘alien’ passengers therein.'” Three years later, however, things had changed. In a then-new document – The Roswell Report: Case Closed – it was stated by the Air Force that: “‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research…The  reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.”

While the dummy theory is well-known in Ufology, there’s one far-lesser-known story that can be found in the U.S. Air Force’s large report. On one occasion northwest of Roswell, a local woman – who was wholly unfamiliar with the test activities – arrived at a dummy landing site prior to the arrival of the recovery personnel and had the scare of her life. The woman saw what appeared to be a person embedded head-first (no less!) in a snowbank and became hysterical. The woman screamed, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” Even though I don’t buy into the crash-test dummy picture, this tale is undeniably  bizarre! Moving on, there’s the story of Frank Edwards and Roswell – and of another lesser-known story. Edwards was a radio broadcaster and someone who had a deep interest in the UFO subject. Indeed, he wrote two books on UFOs. They were Flying Saucers – Here and Now! and Flying Saucers – Serious Business. Edwards also wrote a handful of books on the world of the paranormal. So, you might ask: what does any of this have to do with Roswell? Well, I’ll tell you. It was early July 1947 when the Roswell event took place. And although the story, at the time, got widespread coverage from the world’s media, it was actually quickly forgotten. That is, until the mid-1970s, when Bill Moore and Stan Friedman resurrected the story and dug deep into it. However, there’s something else. It’s a little-known fact that Edwards gave the Roswell story brief coverage in Flying Saucers – Serious Business. Indeed, between 1947 and the 1970s, when Moore and Friedman were getting moving on the case, Edwards was the only person to have promoted the case.

In Serious Business, in 1966, Edwards wrote: “There are such difficult cases as the rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, who phoned the Sheriff that a blazing disc-shaped object had passed over his house at low altitude and had crashed and burned on a hillside within view of the house. The sheriff called the military; the military came on the double quick. Newsmen were not permitted in the area. A week later, however, the government released a photograph of a service man holding up a box kite with an aluminum disc about the size of a large pie plate dangling from the bottom of the kite. This, the official report explained, was a device borne aloft on the kite and used to test radar gear by bouncing the signals off the pie pan. And this, we were told, was the sort of thing that had so excited the rancher. We were NOT told, however, how the alleged kite caught fire – nor why the military cordoned off the area while they inspected the wreckage of a burned-out kite with a non-inflammable pie pan tied to it.” Admittedly, Edwards’ version of the story was way off-course. But, the man – for all of his flaws – was the first to give Roswell any significant coverage in the post-1947 period.

Moving on, there’s another not particularly well-known story concerning Roswell. It all revolves around the matter of the United States Capitol. It goes as follows: Jesse Marcel, Jr. was the son of Major Jesse Marcel who was present at the Roswell crash-site itself in July 1947. According to Marcel, Jr., in the early 1990s he received an invite to meet with a “mysterious government official” in none other than the Capitol Building. The meeting went ahead. The subject: the Roswell events of 1947. Marcel, Jr. said of that same official figure: “He told me that he had been charged with the responsibility of investigating the operation of a ‘black government’ within the government, where funds were being spent without appropriate oversight to maintain a false story about the Roswell incident and cover the true story up. He said that his job was to report to the Senate Appropriate Committee, and advise them as to where these dollars were going, and why.” The mystery of all those secretly siphoned dollars still exists.

Finally, there’s the mysterious issue of Roswell files that can’t be found. But, that should have been found. This was a specific issue that the General Accounting Office (today, it’s called the Government Accountability Office) addressed when it went looking for the truth of Roswell in the early 1990s. Its staff said: “In 1947, Army regulations required that air accident reports be maintained permanently. We identified four air accidents reported by the Army Air Forces in New Mexico during July 1947. All of the accidents involved military aircraft and occurred after July 8, 1947 – the date the RAAF public information office first reported the crash and recovery of a ‘flying disc’ near Roswell. The Navy reported no air accidents in New Mexico during July 1947. Air Force officials told us that according to record- keeping requirements in effect during July 1947, there was no requirement to prepare a report on the crash of a weather balloon. In our search for records concerning the Roswell crash, we learned that some government records covering RAAF activities had been destroyed and others had not. For example, RAAF administrative records (from Mar. 1945 through Dec. 1949) and RAAF outgoing messages (from Oct. 1946 through Dec. 1949) were destroyed. The document disposition form does not indicate what organization or person destroyed the records and when or under what authority the records were destroyed.”

And, that’s where, today, our story comes to its end. No doubt, there are far more Roswell secrets that, one day, will surface. Whether they will provide answers or even more mysteries is something that, right now, is hard to predict.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

04-08-2021 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 04 - 08 - 2021

UFOs Sighted Over Jiutepec, Mexico ( August 3, 2021 )

UFOs were sighted over Jiutepec, Mexico on August 3, 2021

STATEMENT : Will it be planes coming out of the cloud? One after another??

ORIGINAL : Serán aviones saliendo de la nube? Uno tras otro??

They are here

• credit : J Arellano

UFOs Sighted From Plane Over Middle East At 40, 000 ft ( August 2, 2021 )

STATEMENT : I saw these lights in the sky from our plane window, at 40,000 ft, on Monday morning, somewhere over the Middle East. I’ve not seen anything like it previously and wonder if anyone else has? What are they?

• credit : Miles Ellerby 

UFO Sighted Over Duque de Caxias. Brazil ( August 1, 2021 )

A personal friend of mine filmed this Sunday the 01/08/2021th Flamengo game time...Duque de Caxias RJ A strange and unusual situation.. stood still for about 5 minutes in the same spot without making a noise and in a blink of an eye it was gone

ORIGINAL : Um amigo meu pessoal filmou nesse domingo dia 01/08/2021 horário do jogo do flamengo ...duque de caxias ,RJ. Uma situação de fato estranha e inusitada ..ficou parada por volta de 5 minutos no mesmo lugar sem fazer barulho e num piscar de olhos sumiu

2 videos

• credit : Digo Arruda

Flying Saucer Shaped UFO Sighted Over Italy ( July 30, 2021 )

This UFO flying saucer or flying disc was sighted over Italy on July 30, 2021. : This flying craft has a disc or saucer-shaped body, Classic Flying saucer Saucer commonly : anomalous flying object.

STATEMENT : Classic Flying saucer Saucer

• credit : think tank

Future of flight? Black Fly electric flying vehicle. UFO?

August 1, 2021 Live : 09:20

STATEMENT : Future of flight? Black Fly electric flying vehicle. UFO? : The difficult thing will be for us to distinguish what comes from the outside and what is right here.

• credit : Marcel Evandro

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

04-08-2021 om 23:15 geschreven door peter  

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - - 4 - 8 - 2021

MUFON CASE : 117150 Los Angeles, California ( August 3, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : 12 ufo orbs appear no airplanes or anything else around.

Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117150

• There were no airplanes or anything else around. Witnessed by me & my g/f

Date Submitted : 2021-08-03

Date of Event : 2021-08-02

MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 12ufos.mp4

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

04-08-2021 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Strange object in sky caught on camera in Croatia. What is it?

In Croatia, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding peoples being scared at a street location by what has been described as a “strange UFO”.

That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake?

Video here:

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

04-08-2021 om 22:46 geschreven door peter  

'Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified': Tom DeLonge's Mind Was Blown by This Encounter

04-08-2021 om 22:19 geschreven door peter  

Harry Reid tells the government to continue studying UFOs after landmark report leaves more questions

However, he explained, there are decades of reports and investigations about UFOs to uncover what they are. None of those were included in the report and Reid wants to know why sightings between 2004 and 2021 were the only things considered. Some of the videos have been examined and released to the public with little information. Reid believes that there should be ongoing study as we learn more and technology gets better.

"We've been talking about these UFO's for 70 years and we have not gotten any place other than to understand that the more we learn, the more we need to learn," he explained. "And so I am satisfied that the medical Pentagon is doing the right thing."

He said that he's "ready" to find out specifics about what these UFOs actually are.

• Listen to the full interview here.

04-08-2021 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

Stealth Fighters, Not UFOs—What Really Goes On in Area 51

Area 51's location - Groom Lake - was perfect as an experimental aircraft testing site: it was far from prying eyes and "smooth as a billiard table."

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

Area 51, the highly secretive U.S. Air Force test facility in the deserts of southern Nevada, is enjoying a resurgence of popular interest thanks to an internet meme—as if being featured in X-File episodes, arcade shoot’em up games and films weren’t enough.

Despite the countless dubious conspiracy theories attributed to the site also known as “Dreamland” or “Groom Lake,” there’s no doubt that for over six decades the base hosted all sorts of “black project” aircraft whose existence was not formally disclosed by the Pentagon. 

Though the CIA only obliquely admitted to the site’s existence in 2013, we actually know a fair bit about how Area 51 came to be—and even how it first became a subject of juicy UFO stories.

A Private Testing Ground for Eisenhower’s Top-Secret Spy Plane

In the early 1950s, the United States was super keen on monitoring the Soviet Union’s rapidly developing nuclear ballistic missile program. As the first spy satellites remained a few years away from being launched, the only way to reliably spy on these sights was to fly above them and snap pictures with giant cameras. But by the early 1950s, the Soviet Union’s new air defense system and high-flying jet interceptors made spy flights excessively risky.

To overcome these defenses, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson proposed a glide-liker spy plane that would simply fly too high to be intercepted at over 70,000 feet. This still involved illegally violating Soviet airspace—but as long as the spy planes couldn’t be shot down, Moscow couldn’t prove the spy flights were happening at all.

In November 1954, Eisenhower approved development of this U-2 spy plane in a program known as “Project Aquatone” to be operated by the CIA. While the plane would be built at Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks facility, an aircraft designed for illegal spy overflights needed to be tested somewhere more discrete.

Johnson asked Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier to find a suitably clandestine airfield. As described in the book Dark Eagles by Curtis Peebles, test pilot Tony LeVier departed from the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale, California flying a Beechcraft Bonanza light plane, ostensibly on a “hunting trip.” In reality, they proceeded to survey 50 decertified sites in Arizona, California and Nevada over two weeks—but none seemed sufficiently remote.

However, Air Force liaison Col. Osmond Ritland recalled an abandoned X-shaped landing strip that had served as a gunnery field during World War II.

CIA officer Richard Bissell, LeVier and Johnson flew down to inspect the strip, which lay next to a dry Nevada salt flat called Groom Lake. Bissell described the site as “…a perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”

Johnson indicated “We’ll put it right there. That’s the hangar.”

A fake company called CLJ, created to obscure Lockheed’s involvement, recruited contractors to build up the facilities in the sweltering summer of 1955 at a cost of $800,000.

The desolate site, deceptively nicknamed “Paradise Ranch,” started out with a nearly mile-long runway, two hangars, a control tower, fuel and water storage tanks, an access road, and trailers for onsite personnel. LeVier personally road about the lakebed to clear it of debris and spent shell casings to make it safe for landing.

Finally, on July 24, 1955, the prototype U-2, dubbed Article 341, was disassembled and stowed into a hulking C-124 Globemaster transport plane, which transported it to the “Ranch”—landing with deflated tires so as not to break through the thin runway.

LeVier took the gawky aircraft around on taxi tests, hitting 80 miles per hour on the runway—only for the aircraft’s lengthy wings to lift his plane twenty feet into the air during his second run. The U-2 flew over a quarter-mile, before LeVier was able to get the lift-prone aircraft back down on the lakebed on his second attempt—though the hard landing caused one of the jet’s tires to burst and catch fire.

The U-2 went on to see several successful flight tests and in a matter of months was deployed on spy flights over the Soviet Union with CIA pilots.

Civilian airline pilots and air traffic controllers began spotting the silvery U-2s flying at supposedly impossible heights. Given that the Air Force couldn’t explain the sightings by telling the truth, it devised weather-related incidents to explain them away. These often unconvincing explanations only fed the fervor of conspiracy theorists.

The Blackbirds: A-12, D-21 and SR-71

When a Soviet S-75 surface-to-air missile blasted Gary Powers’s U-2 in 1960, and he subsequently confessed to performing espionage flights) it became clear that altitude alone would not provide an adequate defense. Kelly Johnson had already anticipated this vulnerability in 1958, when he began exploring a new spy plane concept: combining high altitude with sustained speeds exceeding three times the speed of sound, and radar-stealth—hopefully making the jet too high and fast to ever intercept.

This CIA-Lockheed “black project”—codenamed “Project Oxcart”—spawned the futuristic-looking A-12 single-seat spy plane, the progenitor of the famous (and unclassified) two-seat SR-71 Blackbird flown by the U.S. Air Force. 

The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

The first A-12s arrived in 1962 along with elite military pilots temporarily discharged and placed in the employ of the CIA, a protocol known as “sheep-dipping.” Though the White House never dispatched A-12s on overflights of the Soviet Union, they did fly thirty-two missions over Vietnam and North Korea in Project Blackshield before being retired in favor of the Air Force’s SR-71s, which had side-looking cameras that didn’t require overflight of hostile airspace.

Lockheed also devised a D-21 spy drone that resembled a miniature, single-engined Blackbird, carried on top of a Blackbird-derived carrier aircraft called the M-21.   

Tragically, one of the piggybacked D-21 drones collided with its M-21 carrier during a test launch. Though both of the M-21’s crew ejected, one drowned before he could be rescued, and Johnson canceled M-21 program.

However, the CIA did later try to make use of the D-21s by launching them from B-52 bombers to snap footage of Chinese nuclear test sites. However, a series of mishaps meant the Air Force was unable to recover footage from any of the five drone missions it dispatched.

Birthplace of the Stealth Jet

While the A-12 and Blackbird had limited stealth characteristics, by the 1970s, the Air Force was interested in taking another crack at a low-radar-observable jet, this time with combat application.

In 1977, the Skunk Works used new computer modeling technology to design and build two pale aircraft with diamond-like faceted surfaces coated with radar-absorbent iron ball paint. These “Have Blue” aircraft were disassembled and flown to Area 51 in a giant C-5 cargo jet November 16, then rebuilt and test flown.

Lo and behold, the Have Blues did exhibit drastically reduced radar cross-sections—but they were also highly aerodynamically unstable, and both crashed in 1979.

Lockheed evolved Have Blue into the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet, which used computer fly-by-wire systems to correct the aircraft’s inherent instability. A YF-117 prototype too made its first flight at Groom Lake on June 17, 1981. Production F-117s were then stationed at Area 51 before being redeployed to the nearby Tonopah Test Range.

Though the Pentagon admitted to the existence of a stealth jet in 1983, the secrecy surrounding the F-117 was so effective that the public never had any inkling of the Nighthawk’s true appearance, nor even its designation (widely believed to be the “F-19”) until was finally unveiled in 1988.

Meanwhile, Northrop, too, began refining its stealth technology with the Tacit Blue demonstrator, dubbed the “whale” or “alien school bus” for its decidedly unglamorous appearance. This made its first flight at Groom Lake in February 1982—the first of 135 in all before the demonstrator was retired in 1985.

Conceived as stealthy surveillance plane with a discrete Low Probability of Intercept Radar, Tacit Blue instead pioneered the use of computer-engineered curved-surfaces in stealth aircraft which heavily informed Northrop’s forthcoming B-2 stealth bomber.

• Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.
• This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

{ https://nationalinterest.org/ }

04-08-2021 om 21:39 geschreven door peter  

The footage was captured at the Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve. The park posted the video to its Facebook page and explained that the mirage is called a "Fata Morgana". 

The strange dome-shaped object in the video is actually your brain being tricked into seeing a distorted version of an island. 

A Fata Morgana is a mirage that appears just above the horizon and can significantly distort an object that's already there. Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve explained on Facebook: "Fata Morgana is a mirage seen within a narrow band on Earth’s horizon. 

Islands in glacier bay turn to UFOs or the flying Dutchman with a little imagination and a pinch of cool science! When air of different densities meet, the air in Earth’s atmosphere acts as a refracting lens, creating the mirage effect we see.

  

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

04-08-2021 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

The Man Who Says He Was Abducted by Aliens

In this clip from a 1994 episode of “The Oprah Show”, guest Peter Faust claims he was visited—and ultimately abducted—by aliens at the age of 8. As an adult, Peter says he’s had terrifying recollections of the abduction, which left him so unsettled he ultimately sought the help of a psychiatrist. Here, John Mack, MD, joins Peter on stage to give credence to his patient’s abduction story, and those of thousands of other people claiming similar experiences.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

04-08-2021 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

NASA beams back spectacular images of Jupiter and our solar system's biggest moon, Ganymede

04-08-2021 om 01:29 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s Fermi Spots a Weird Pulse of High-Energy Radiation Racing Toward Earth

By FRANCIS REDDY, NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

On August 26, 2020, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a pulse of high-energy radiation that had been racing toward Earth for nearly half the present age of the universe. Lasting only about a second, it turned out to be one for the record books – the shortest gamma-ray burst (GRB) caused by the death of a massive star ever seen.

GRBs are the most powerful events in the universe, detectable across billions of light-years. Astronomers classify them as long or short based on whether the event lasts for more or less than two seconds. They observe long bursts in association with the demise of massive stars, while short bursts have been linked to a different scenario.

Astronomers combined data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, other space missions, and ground-based observatories to reveal the origin of GRB 200826A, a brief but powerful burst of radiation. It’s the shortest burst known to be powered by a collapsing star – and almost didn’t happen at all.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“We already knew some GRBs from massive stars could register as short GRBs, but we thought this was due to instrumental limitations,” said Bin-bin Zhang at Nanjing University in China and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “This burst is special because it is definitely a short-duration GRB, but its other properties point to its origin from a collapsing star. Now we know dying stars can produce short bursts, too.”

Named GRB 200826A, after the date it occurred, the burst is the subject of two papers published in Nature Astronomy on Monday, July 26. The first, led by Zhang, explores the gamma-ray data. The second, led by Tomás Ahumada, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, describes the GRB’s fading multiwavelength afterglow and the emerging light of the supernova explosion that followed.

“We think this event was effectively a fizzle, one that was close to not happening at all,” Ahumada said. “Even so, the burst emitted 14 million times the energy released by the entire Milky Way galaxy over the same amount of time, making it one of the most energetic short-duration GRBs ever seen.”

When a star much more massive than the Sun runs out of fuel, its core suddenly collapses and forms a black hole. As matter swirls toward the black hole, some of it escapes in the form of two powerful jets that rush outward at almost the speed of light in opposite directions. Astronomers only detect a GRB when one of these jets happens to point almost directly toward Earth.

Each jet drills through the star, producing a pulse of gamma rays – the highest-energy form of light – that can last up to minutes. Following the burst, the disrupted star then rapidly expands as a supernova.

Short GRBs, on the other hand, form when pairs of compact objects – such as neutron stars, which also form during stellar collapse – spiral inward over billions of years and collide. Fermi observations recently helped show that, in nearby galaxies, giant flares from isolated, supermagnetized neutron stars also masquerade as short GRBs.

GRB 200826A was a sharp blast of high-energy emission lasting just 0.65 second. After traveling for eons through the expanding universe, the signal had stretched out to about one second long when it was detected by Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. The event also appeared in instruments aboard NASA’s Wind mission, which orbits a point between Earth and the Sun located about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away, and Mars Odyssey, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2001. ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) INTEGRAL satellite observed the blast as well.

All of these missions participate in a GRB-locating system called the InterPlanetary Network (IPN), for which the Fermi project provides all U.S. funding. Because the burst reaches each detector at slightly different times, any pair of them can be used to help narrow down where in the sky it occurred. About 17 hours after the GRB, the IPN narrowed its location to a relatively small patch of the sky in the constellation Andromeda.

Using the National Science Foundation-funded Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar Observatory, the team scanned the sky for changes in visible light that could be linked to the GRB’s fading afterglow.

Discovery image of the fading afterglow (center) of GRB 200826A.

Credit: ZTF and T. Ahumada et al., 2021

“Conducting this search is akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the IPN helps shrink the haystack,” said Shreya Anand, a graduate student at Caltech and a co-author on the afterglow paper. “Out of more than 28,000 ZTF alerts the first night, only one met all of our search criteria and also appeared within the sky region defined by the IPN.”

Within a day of the burst, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory discovered fading X-ray emission from this same location. A couple of days later, variable radio emission was detected by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico. The team then began observing the afterglow with a variety of ground-based facilities.

Observing the faint galaxy associated with the burst using the Gran Telescopio Canarias, a 10.4-meter telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands, the team showed that its light takes 6.6 billion years to reach us. That’s 48% of the universe’s current age of 13.8 billion years.

But to prove this short burst came from a collapsing star, the researchers also needed to catch the emerging supernova.

“If the burst was caused by a collapsing star, then once the afterglow fades away it should brighten again because of the underlying supernova explosion,” said Leo Singer, a Goddard astrophysicist and Ahumada’s research advisor. “But at these distances, you need a very big and very sensitive telescope to pick out the pinpoint of light from the supernova from the background glare of its host galaxy.”

To conduct the search, Singer was granted time on the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii and the use of a sensitive instrument called the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph. The astronomers imaged the host galaxy in red and infrared light starting 28 days after the burst, repeating the search 45 and 80 days after the event. They detected a near-infrared source – the supernova – in the first set of observations that could not be seen in later ones.

The researchers suspect that this burst was powered by jets that barely emerged from the star before they shut down, instead of the more typical case where long-lasting jets break out of the star and travel considerable distances from it. If the black hole had fired off weaker jets, or if the star was much larger when it began its collapse, there might not have been a GRB at all.

The discovery helps resolve a long-standing puzzle. While long GRBs must be coupled to supernovae, astronomers detect far greater numbers of supernovae than they do long GRBs. This discrepancy persists even after accounting for the fact that GRB jets must tip nearly into our line of sight for astronomers to detect them at all.

The researchers conclude that collapsing stars producing short GRBs must be marginal cases whose light-speed jets teeter on the brink of success or failure, a conclusion consistent with the notion that most massive stars die without producing jets and GRBs at all. More broadly, this result clearly demonstrates that a burst’s duration alone does not uniquely indicate its origin.

References:

• “A peculiarly short-duration gamma-ray burst from massive star core collapse” by B.-B. Zhang, Z.-K. Liu, Z.-K. Peng, Y. Li, H.-J. Lü, J. Yang, Y.-S. Yang, Y.-H. Yang, Y.-Z. Meng, J.-H. Zou, H.-Y. Ye, X.-G. Wang, J.-R. Mao, X.-H. Zhao, J.-M. Bai, A. J. Castro-Tirado, Y.-D. Hu, Z.-G. Dai, E.-W. Liang and B. Zhang, 26 July 2021, Nature Astronomy.
  DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01395-z
• “Discovery and confirmation of the shortest gamma-ray burst from a collapsar” by Tomás Ahumada, Leo P. Singer, Shreya Anand, Michael W. Coughlin, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Geoffrey Ryan, Igor Andreoni, S. Bradley Cenko, Christoffer Fremling, Harsh Kumar, Peter T. H. Pang, Eric Burns, Virginia Cunningham, Simone Dichiara, Tim Dietrich, Dmitry S. Svinkin, Mouza Almualla, Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, Kishalay De, Rachel Dunwoody, Pradip Gatkine, Erica Hammerstein, Shabnam Iyyani, Joseph Mangan, Dan Perley, Sonalika Purkayastha, Eric Bellm, Varun Bhalerao, Bryce Bolin, Mattia Bulla, Christopher Cannella, Poonam Chandra, Dmitry A. Duev, Dmitry Frederiks, Avishay Gal-Yam, Matthew Graham, Anna Y. Q. Ho, Kevin Hurley, Viraj Karambelkar, Erik C. Kool, S. R. Kulkarni, Ashish Mahabal, Frank Masci, Sheila McBreen, Shashi B. Pandey, Simeon Reusch, Anna Ridnaia, Philippe Rosnet, Benjamin Rusholme, Ana Sagués Carracedo, Roger Smith, Maayane Soumagnac, Robert Stein, Eleonora Troja, Anastasia Tsvetkova, Richard Walters and Azamat F. Valeev, 26 July 2021, Nature Astronomy.
  DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01428-7

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.

{ https://scitechdaily.com/ }

04-08-2021 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

The Mysterious Ancient Etruscan Monuments of Selva di Malano

Selva di Malano, which may be translated to mean ‘Forest of Malano,’ is an archaeological site located in Viterbo, in the central Italian region of Lazio. The site is known for its carved stone monuments, a number of which have been interpreted to be altars. It is believed that these altars date to the time of the Etruscans, though some of the site’s monuments are thought to be from the Roman period.

There is evidence that some of the Etruscan monuments were reused by the Romans for funerary purposes. It has been suggested that the monuments at Selva di Malano, as well as other Etruscan monuments in the area, played a part in the creation of the 16 ^th century Sacro Bosso (‘Sacred Grove’), located in nearby town of Bomarzo.

The Malano Jungle

Selva di Malano is a wooded area located between the municipalities of Soriano nel Cimino and Bomarzo. The forest is situated in the foothills of the Cimini Mountains, in the Vezza River Valley, and about 4 km (2.5 miles) to the west of the Tiber River . In terms of geology, the Selva di Malano “borders a long, exposed outcrop of quartzolatitic ignimbrite from the Cimini complex.” In other words, this is an area that has access to volcanic rock suitable for construction purposes. And there is evidence that the Romans carried out quarrying activities within the Selva di Malano.

The exploitation of this natural resource in the Selva di Malano, however, predates the Romans, as is evidenced by the monuments in the forest. Before the hegemony of Rome in Italy, the central part of the peninsula was dominated by the Etruscans. At the peak, during the 6 ^th century BC, the Etruscan civilization stretched as far north as the Po River valley and as far south as Campania. Additionally, by this time, the Etruscans had developed into three confederacies consisting of 36 cities. Central Italy, however, remained the heartland of the Etruscan civilization. This region, known as Etruria, corresponds roughly to modern day Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria.

The Etruscans: The People and Culture That Influenced Rome

The origin of the Etruscans has been debated since antiquity. Some have argued that they were an indigenous people of Italy, while others claim that they came from outside Europe, perhaps from Lydia, or from the Greek island of Lemnos. Though this debate continues even today, it is clear that the Etruscan civilization had a huge impact on Europe and the Mediterranean world, as a result of their influence on the Romans.

The Etruscans made a big contribution to Roman culture, as Rome was once situated within Etruscan territory. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that during the early part of Rome’s history, the city was dominated by the Etruscans. In fact, it was only in 396 BC when the Etruscan city of Veii was sacked by the Romans.

One of the important sources for our understanding of the Etruscan civilization are ancient texts. It may be pointed out, however, that these works were written by Greek and Roman authors, rather than the Etruscans themselves. In addition to these texts, archaeological work has also helped to shed light on this ancient civilization. Nevertheless, archaeology its own limitations. Very few preserved Etruscan constructions have survived, as the Romans who succeeded them built over their settlements.

On the other hand, archaeologists have discovered numerous Etruscan necropolises in the areas where they once inhabited. Amongst the most famous of these are the necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, which have been designated as World Heritage Sites . The tombs and grave goods unearthed at these necropolises offer us a glimpse into the world of the Etruscans, especially their artistic achievements.

Steps leading to an Etruscan rock altar.

Source: Project Tuscia

The Notable Etruscan Monuments of the Selva di Malano

Although Selva di Malano is an Etruscan site, it is not considered to be a necropolis since the original Etruscan monuments are not believed to have had a funerary purpose. Neither are the monuments that are remnants of a lost Etruscan settlement. Instead, the site is thought to have been a place where ritual ceremonies were carried out. Some have even speculated that sacrifices to the gods were performed by the Etruscans in the forest. Therefore, a number of monuments in the Selva di Malano have been interpreted as being ‘altars,’ or ‘sacrificial altars’.

Sasso del Predicatore or ‘Stone of the Preacher’ in the Selva di Malano.

( Youtube screenshot )

Amongst the most notable monuments in the Selva di Malano are the two so-called Sasso del Predicatore (‘Stone of the Preacher’). The monuments were given this name due to their resemblance to pulpits. Both monuments are quite similar, consisting of an ovoid boulder with an altar on its flattened top. A flight of stairs is carved into the boulder, which allows access to its top. On the top of the first Sasso del Predicatore are the remains of what may have been a small altar. The top of the second Sasso del Predicatore , on the other hand, was modelled into a cube-like structure, which is still visible today.

The actual function of these two monuments is unclear, though it is quite unlikely that the Etruscans used them for preaching. It has been suggested that the monuments were used for haruspicy, a form of divination involving the inspection sacrificed animal entrails. Alternatively, it has been speculated that the two monuments were used for augury, specifically the interpretation of omens based on the flight of birds, or that they were used for astronomical observations .

Incidentally, there is another Etruscan monument not far from the Selva di Malano that resembles the Sasso di Predicatore . Tacchiolo, near Bomarzo, is the location of the so-called Piramide Etrusca di Bomarzo (‘Etruscan Pyramid of Bomarzo’). In spite of its name, the monument bears more resemblance to the Etruscan altars in the Selva di Malano. Like the Sasso del Perdicatore , steps were cut into the rock. The first flight of stairs leads to a pair of intermediate altars. Beyond the altars is another flight of stairs, which leads to the top of the rock, where there seems to have been another altar.

Piramide Etrusca di Bomarzo or the ‘Etruscan Pyramid of Bomarzo.’

(Alessio Pelligrini / Flickr)

Within the Selva di Malano, the second Sasso del Predicatore is not the only monument in the area with a cubic structure. Not far from the first Sasso del Predicatore is another cubic monument called the Ara Cubica (‘Cubic Altar’). Unlike the two monuments mentioned previously, the Ara Cubica is thought to have been created during the Roman period, and that it served as a sepulchral memorial stone. The problem with these three monuments, however, is the fact that there are no identifying or epigraphic marks on them. This means that their date of creation and their purpose are still nothing more than speculations. Nevertheless, one cannot help but marvel at the ability of the Etruscans and Romans to carve such perfectly shaped cubes out of rocks.

Etruscan Sasso del Predicatore rock cube in the Selva di Malano, Italy.

(Project Tuscia / Youtube screenshot )

Rock-cut ‘Dice Tombs’ of The Selva di Malano

At the bottom of a steep tufo (or volcanic tuff) cliff in the Selva di Malano are three rock-cut tombs, which are also believed to have been created during the Roman period. The tombs are known as tombe a dado in Italian, which roughly translates to mean ‘dice tombs.’ They are believed to have been made during the Late Republican or Early Imperial period, based on the observation that they possess both Roman and Etruscan characteristics. One of the tombs is surmounted by a low relief pediment and entablature, which are supported by five fictive Doric columns in sunken relief. As these features were carved into the rock, it looks as though the monument is emerging from the rock.

Etruscan tombe a dado or “dice tombs” in the Salvo di Malano.

(Giulio Monaldi / Flickr)

Another tomb has the inscription “Heros V.A. XXV”, above a niche, indicating that this was the tomb of a 25-year-old slave with the Hellenized name of Heros. Interestingly, a Benedictine abbey called San Nicolao was built on the top of the cliff much later. Today, however, the abbey lies in ruins.  

Epigraphic marks and artistic features allow us to attain a better understanding of the monuments, as seen in the case of the tombe a dado . Another monument where inscriptions have been found is the so-called Coelius Altar, known also as the Coelius Tomb or the Coelius Monument. This monument is believed to have originally been made by the Etruscans. Later on, however, it was reused by the Romans. The inscription on this monument reads “D. Coelius D. L. Alexander / Quintia P. L. Hilara”, which means “Decimus Coelius Alexander, freedman of Decimus and Quintia Hilara freedwoman of Publius.” In addition to this inscription, a small modification was made to the original monument, in order to make it suitable for its new purpose. Two niches were carved on the top of the Coelius Altar. These were meant to hold the ashes of Coelius and Quintia.

• Do not Underestimate the Etruscans: Art and Culture of their Own
• Civita di Bagnoregio - Italy’s Most Enchanting and Surreal Ancient Town Is Dying
• Unlooted Etruscan Tomb Complete with Sarcophagi and Treasures Unearthed in Italy

Glaucus in the Parco dei Mostri, Bomarzo.

( CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Connections Between Selva di Malano and the Parco dei Mostri

The monuments in the Selva di Malano may be regarded as relics of a lost civilization. Nevertheless, it seems that they were not entirely forgotten by the inhabitants of that region. Similarities have been drawn between these ancient monuments and the Sacro Bosso , a Renaissance garden in nearby Bomarzo. This has led to the suggestion that the garden was partly inspired by the monuments of the Selva di Malano.

The Sacro Bosso is known also as the Parco dei Mostri , or ‘ Park of the Monsters ,’ due to its grotesque sculptures. The garden is located beneath Orsini Castle, and was commissioned in 1552 (based on an inscription in the park) by Pier Francesco Orsini, known also as Vicino Orsini. According to one interpretation, the garden was designed as an expression of grief, and was meant to shock those who visited it. In any case, in order to comprehend the Sacro Bosso , one has to first gain some understanding of its patron.

Pier Francesco Orsini was born in 1523. He was the second son of Duke Gian Corrado Orsini of Bomarzo and Clarice di Franciotto di Monterotondo. When he grew up, Orsini became a condottiere (a mercenary captain) like his father and served under the banner of the Farnese family. In the early 1540s, Orsini married Giulia, the daughter of a fellow condottiere, Galeazzo Farnese. During the 1550s, Orsini was active in the field. He retired from military service around 1560.

It was also around the time of Orsini’s retirement that his wife died. It has been argued, therefore, that the death of Giulia left Orsini inconsolable, and that he created the Sacro Bosso in her memory. An alternative interpretation argues that the garden was Orsini’s pet project. This takes into consideration Orsini’s infidelity and the pride he took in taking nobles and learned men (Orsini himself was an accomplished man of letters) around the garden.

As mentioned earlier, the Sacro Bosso was filled with grotesque sculptures, many of which make a clear reference to classical mythology . These include the Orcus Mouth, Proteus with the weapons of the Orsini family, and a triton in a niche. Other sculptures include a war elephant seizing a Roman legionary in its trunk, a turtle with a winged woman on its back, and a giant tearing its victim apart.

If the inhabitants of the region during the Renaissance had no memory or understanding of the Etruscans, then the monuments of the Selva di Malano would have made no sense to them. In this case, the monuments in the forest and the sculptures in Orsini’s garden would have been similar, in the sense that they are both enigmas that puzzle on-lookers. Moreover, both the ancient monuments and the grotesque sculptures are covered with moss and lichen. In Orsini’s garden it is unclear whether he intended his sculptures to have this look, though one may imagine that he was inspired by the monuments in the forest and to allow nature to add the ‘finishing touches’ to his art pieces.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

04-08-2021 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

This could be fodder for moon landing deniers – the Eagle may not have landed a second time. Wait … what? For those who don’t get the reference, on July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong radioed the following message from the lunar surface: “Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.” That meant the Apollo 11 Lunar Module nicknamed ‘Eagle’ descended successfully. On July 21, Armstrong and Aldrin left the surface of the moon with their cargo of 22 kilograms of lunar rock in the ascent stage of Eagle. After docking and unloading, the Eagle was undocked and it was assumed to have ended a retrograde orbit by plummeting back to the surface for a second, albeit un-eagle-like, landing. Unfortunately, it was not tracked and no one knows where it crashed. Or did it?

Space enthusiast and Eagle researcher James Meador is not affiliated with NASA, but perhaps he should be. He tells Discover magazine he became intrigued with what happened to the Eagle after hearing about NASA’s 2012 mission to map the Moon’s gravitational field using a pair of spacecraft called GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory). They showed that the Moon’s mass is not evenly distributed, which causes tiny variations in its gravitational field that make most lunar orbits unstable in the long term.

Rendering of the Apollo 11 command module Columbia, and the lunar module, Eagle.

In 2012, NASA sent a pair of spacecraft called GRAIL to map the Moon’s gravitational field and this mission eventually created a detailed map of this varying field. Meador decided to use the data to calculate where the Eagle’s impact crater debris might be. This was not an issue with the lunar ascent modules from Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 because surface seismometers left by the astronauts recorded their impacts. GRAIL data is available to the public, as is an open-source program called the General Mission Analysis Tool developed by NASA and others to model a spacecraft’s trajectory in any gravitational field.

“The simulations show a periodic variation in eccentricity of the orbit, correlated to the selenographic longitude of the apsidal line. The rate of apsidal precession is correlated to eccentricity. These two factors appear to interact to stabilize the orbit over the long term.”

The model takes into account outside forces such as the gravitational pull of the Earth, the Sun and all the planets except Mercury and calculates how a spacecraft’s orbit changes over time. Meador used the supplied set of starting parameters for the Eagle — the time of jettison, the latitude, longitude and altitude, heading angle and others, and was able to manipulate them to see if they produced different results. Instead, they all came to the same conclusion. (Meador details the research in a pre-print paper.)

“Numerical analysis described here provides evidence that this object might have remained in lunar orbit to the present day.”

In other words, the Eagle HASN’T landed – it may still be in orbit. That means it could be located and observed. The Indian Space Research Organization lost contact with the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, less than half the size of Eagle, in 2009 and it was found again in 2016 by modeling where it should be and aiming radar at that spot. In 2019, NASA found Apollo 10’s lunar module named Snoopy which had been left behind by the crew during their test flight for Apollo 11. That one left lunar orbit and was found circling the Sun.

Buzz Aldrin getting ready to leave the Moon

So, finding the Eagle is entirely possible. Will it convince deniers that the Moon landing really happened? Probably not. Will Jeff Bezos offer to retrieve the Eagle and bring it back to Earth so Buzz Aldrin can see it? Only if NASA gives him an exclusive contract.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

04-08-2021 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 03 - 08 - 2021

UFO Sighted Over Ecatepec, Mexico ( August 1, 2021 )

UFO Sighted Over Ecatepec, officially Ecatepec de Morelos, a municipality in the State of Mexico on August 1, 2021.

• credit :
  • Eduargo Lugo
  • Mauricio Escaleij
  • Pedro Durán Ramírez

UAP ORB Sighted In The Scottish Highlands ( June 6, 2021 )

Amazing UAP ORB sighted in the Scottish Highlands !
The distinct singular UAP ORB phenomenon was captured at Dukes Pass, Aberfoyle in Scotland on the 6th of June 2021.

This most fascinating video footage should be seen in its entirety.

• credit : PRET 

Cigar-Shaped UFO Sighted From Plane Over Atlantic Ocean ( July 30, 2021 )

Cigar-Shaped UFO Sighted From Plane Over Atlantic Ocean on July 30, 2021 : I present here the cigar-shaped interstellar object : alien spaceship : original and approach.

More evident every day

• credit : UFO Sightings Footage

Being That Is Just Legs (No Body) Captured On Camera & UFO Invisible To The Naked Eye (Redux)

First Clip:

This footage just appeared on the internet with no source or location but i liked it and this is why i wanted to show it to you guys. I feel that this footage is 100% real ( not CGI or any other trickery) but what do you guys think?

Second Clip:

This footage was filmed on May 23, 2021 from Taxco a town in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. This object which appears invisible to the naked eye and other recording devices but was only picked up by his night vision camera. The night vision that was used to film this was "Sionyx Aurora Pro" and this enabled him and us to see this object. There is a extinct volcano that is part of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range named Cerro Mohinora and this is where this object was filmed hovering over, with the witness recording from his vantage point we get a good view from where he filmed and we can see that there is nothing there....
The witness stated the following "I took this video on may 23, 2021 in Taxco Guerrero around midnight from a well-known hotel next to the magic town of Taxco, watching the song appreciate some lights on the left side of the town which are only perceptible through the night vision of a camera with Sionyx aurora pro."

SOURCE:

MUFON/UFO Stalker: Case Number 116553

• https://ufostalker.com/sighting/116553

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

03-08-2021 om 23:48 geschreven door peter  

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - - 3 - 8 - 2021

MUFON CASE : 117138 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ( August 2, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Giant ring came from cloud footage

Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117138
I never seen anything like this before.

Date Submitted : 2021-08-02
Date of Event : 2021-07-31
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : J00312021.mp4

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

03-08-2021 om 23:32 geschreven door peter  

NASA is Going Ahead With a Hopping Lander to Explore the Lunar Surface

Methods of movement for robotic explorers of other worlds have been as varied as the worlds themselves. Some missions have been simple landers, some rovers, and now there’s even been a helicopter flight on Mars.  But there is an unexplored hybrid mode of movement that will soon be coming to a Moon near you – hopping.  NASA just granted an additional $41.6 million to support development of a hopping lunar lander that will explore the inside of craters that are permanently in shadow.

The mission, known as Micro-Nova, was granted as part of NASA’s $370 million “Tipping Point” contract for technologies that are developing milestone-based new technologies.  The $41.6 million was awarded to Intuitive Machines, a Texas-based company that specializes in developing autonomous systems for drones and other exploration technologies.  To be clear – the “hopping” the Micro-Nova will do is actually a control flight using thrusters rather than the more biological form of hopping that insects do on Earth. The company won’t be working alone on the project – they recruited scientists from Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.  

Those specialists will help to define what Micro-Nova will carry as part of its 1 kg payload.  Most likely it will involve cameras to peer into areas that no person has ever seen before.  The reason Micro-Nova uses its unique mobility technique is to peer into “permanently shaded regions” (PSRs) of the moon.  Rovers would be unable to descend into the craters, and helicopters wouldn’t work with the moon’s lack of atmosphere.  So a hopper is the best bet to reach these difficult environments.

They are not just difficult because they are hard to reach – they are also hard to observe and extraordinarily cold.  Even once Micro-Nova is in the crater, it will still only be able to take full color spectra images of its immediate surroundings, but it should be able to take black-and-white images of a wider swath of the whole crater.  Any information it is able to gather is better than the complete lack available right now at least.

Cold is a completely separate problem, with temperatures in these permanently dark areas dipping to 40°-80° Kelvin (-388° to -316° F).  Most electronics will not function at those temperatures, and even the materials themselves would fail if they were not especially designed to withstand them.

That is a lot to expect from a hopper that measures only 76.2 centimeters on a side.  But with the moon’s miniscule gravity and the hopper’s impressive leaping ability, it should be able to achieve its mission when it is dropped off by a Nova-C lander near the lunar south pole in December 2022.

Learn More:

• ASU – NASA funds hopper to explore lunar polar craters
• The Science Times – NASA Awards Over $41 Million Fund for Lunar Hopper to Hop Around Moon’s Surface, Takes First Pictures Inside Craters
• Intuitive Machines – Intuitive Machines and NASA Finalize Contract for Extreme Lunar Mobility Spacecraft
• NASA – 2020 NASA Tipping Point Selections

Lead Image:

• Artist’s depiction of the Micro-Nova hopper and it’s Nova-C landing craft deployed to the moon. 
  Credit – Intuitive Machines

The post NASA is Going Ahead With a Hopping Lander to Explore the Lunar Surface appeared first on Universe Today.

Source:

•  https://www.universetoday.com/152053/nasa-is-going-ahead-with-a-hopping-lander-to-explore-the-lunar-surface/

Intuitive Machines’ Micro-Nova, a lunar hopper that will explore permanently shaded regions of the moon.

(Credit: Intuitive Machines)

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

03-08-2021 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

Rood pigment in Spaanse grot blijkt aangebracht door Neanderthalers, ruim 60.000 jaar geleden

Neanderthalers werden lange tijd gezien als onnozel, maar volgens een gisteren gepubliceerde studie brachten ze meer dan 60.000 jaar geleden rood okerpigment aan op stalagmieten in een Spaanse grot in Malaga.

Tim Van Rodijnen  

 Bron: AD.nl

In 2018 verscheen al een onderzoek in Science waarin het rode okerpigment, gevonden op stalagmieten in Cueva de Ardales, werd bestempeld als werk van Neanderthalers. Sindsdien houdt het de wereld van de archeologie die zich verdiept in de oude tijd flink bezig.

Lees ook

• 

  Neanderthalers verdwenen duizenden jaren eerder uit België dan gedacht

• 

  Resten van negen neanderthalers gevonden in Italiaanse grot

In het onderzoek van drie jaar geleden werd geschreven dat de ‘kunst’ minstens 64.800 jaar oud is, maar de bevinding werd controversieel gevonden. “Wetenschappers zeiden dat de pigmenten wellicht een natuurlijke oorzaak hadden”, vertelt Fransisco d’Errico, hoogleraar aan de universiteit van Bordeaux en co-auteur van een nieuw onderzoek dat verscheen in het academische tijdschrift Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Spatten en blazen

© AFP

Een nieuwe analyse toont aan dat de samenstelling van de pigmenten niet consistent genoeg was voor natuurlijke processen. De rode kleur zou aangebracht zijn door middel van spatten en blazen. Ook komt de textuur van het pigment niet overeen met monsters uit grotten, wat suggereert dat ze van een externe bron kwamen.

Het onderzoek laat zien dat de pigmenten op verschillende tijdstippen werden aangebracht, waar soms wel 10.000 jaar tussen zat. Volgens d’Errico ondersteunt dit de hypothese dat Neanderthalers gedurende duizenden jaren verschillende keren de grot met pigment hebben gemarkeerd. Het onderzoek stelt dat het pigment geen uiting van kunst is, maar eerder een manier waarop Neanderthalers de betekenis van een ruimte aangaven.

Toenemend bewijs 

Deze nieuwe bevindingen dragen volgens het onderzoek bij aan het toenemende bewijs dat Neanderthalers, die zo'n 40.000 jaar geleden uitstierven, niet zulke ‘lompe verwanten’ van de homo sapiens waren als lange tijd werd gedacht. Het pigment in de grot speelde volgens de onderzoekers ‘een fundamentele rol in de symboliek voor Neanderthalers’, maar wat die symbolen precies betekenden blijft, ook na dit onderzoek, voorlopig een mysterie.

GERELATEERDE VIDEO'S, uitgekozen en gepost  door peter2011

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

03-08-2021 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Patty’s Triangle Remains Among Michigan’s Most Baffling UFO Sightings

Steve Friess

 

What am I looking at?

Nobody really knows. Unofficially, it’s called Patty’s Triangle because a woman named Patty Blackburn caught it on camera on June 14, 2006, near Lansing. In 24 seconds of video, Patty captured an unexplainable triangular configuration of lights that jerked around the sky. Maybe it’s a military aircraft that nobody’s seen before, or maybe it’s extraterrestrial beings from galaxies far, far away accidentally giving Earthlings a glimpse of themselves while surveilling humankind. Those, it seems, are the two most likely options to longtime aficionados of unidentified flying objects or, as the U.S. government has rebranded them, “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Why are you showing me this particular blur?

Mostly because, as obscured and fuzzy as it is, it’s the best available image of a UFO from a Michigan sighting. Hundreds of sightings are reported each year to the Michigan chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), but the vast majority are resolved as something of clearly human origin. Patty’s Triangle is among the few that remain unexplained, says Michigan MUFON State Director Bill Konkolesky.

OK, but why should I care about something someone saw 15 years ago?

Because UFOs, once relegated to the province of crackpots, are having a big moment. The federal government, partly prompted by videos shot by U.S. Navy sailors of airborne objects moving in erratic manners that defy the understandings of modern physics, even released a report in June from the Defense Department’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force that can be summed up thus:  That is, no evidence that E.T. is phoning home but no earthly ideas, either. Of 144 sightings involving military aviators, the task force was able to explain just one — it was a deflating  balloon. The other 143 remain a mystery. The feds have been taking the matter seriously for more than a decade now. Then-Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, secured $22 million for UFO research in 2007, and more recently Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told 60 Minutes this spring that he wants answers, too. Last year, former CIA Director John Brennan told a podcaster these incidents “could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.” And former President Barack Obama sent speculation into hyperdrive by telling TV’s James Corden recently there are “objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.” 

Whoa! Obama believes in little green men?

Not exactly. You don’t have to think a slow-moving alien invasion is underway to accept that there’s weird stuff in the air that defies explanation. But many avid ufologists — yep, that’s a legit word — reason that astronomers claim there are possibly millions of inhabitable planets and moons in the Milky Way or other galaxies. “If life happened somewhere else and they’re even just a couple hundred years more advanced than we are, they probably have the ability to visit us,” says Konkolesky, who notes MUFON officially has no position on the existence of extraterrestrial sentient life. Either way, Konkolesky says interest from credible leaders makes the topic “a lot easier to talk about now. Some neighbors and family members who used to treat it with a giggle now ask with sincere interest. It takes a very short time, when you’re a dedicated, sincere UFO investigator, to conclude something really unusual and unexplainable is happening.”

What’s this Konkolesky guy’s deal, anyway?

He’s a 50-year-old father of two who works in the Academic Support Center at Oakland Community College and found a kinship when he discovered MUFON. He’s  also a Michigan native who says that as a high school senior in February 1989, he and some buddies saw a blue football-shaped, car-sized ball of light the height of two telephone poles arching over their Chevette. Then it morphed into a display of white lights that “ping-ponged all over the sky,” followed by a red ball of light the size of a full moon. “We all saw the same thing,” he says. “It took a few years for me to find a group that actually investigates such things.”

Are there lots of UFO sightings in Michigan?

Michigan’s MUFON chapter received 2,789 sightings from 2010 to 2020, of which 80 to 95 percent turned out to have easy, earthly explanations, Konkolesky says. In 2019, for instance, a third of the reports turned out to be sightings of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, a stream of thousands of machines floating in a line in low-Earth orbit that aims to provide low-cost internet access the world over. There are four still-unexplained sightings that stand out — a 1953 sighting of disc-shaped objects darting across Lake Superior over the Soo Locks; a cluster of sightings in 1966 in which “many hundreds of witnesses” saw UFOs across southeastern Michigan, capped by a claim by a Dexter man of a landing in his backyard; a 1975 incident in which people at four Air Force bases where nuclear weapons were stored around the U.S., including Wurtsmith in Iosco County, saw a white disc descend for a bit before flitting off; and a 1994 sighting outside Grand Rapids that prompted a flood of calls to 911 and front-page coverage in the Detroit newspapers.

What do I do if I see something? 

You can call the police, the military, or your shrink, as many people do. Or you can contact Konkolesky via mufon.com. Be aware, though, that Konkolesky offers this caveat: “If they’re saying something landed in their backyard, there’s not a lot we can do for them.”

{ https://www.hourdetroit.com/ }

03-08-2021 om 22:26 geschreven door peter  

2 new ways to find aliens, according to a Nobel Prize winner

 

03-08-2021 om 22:15 geschreven door peter