Mogelijke buitenaardse lucht of UAP's verschijnselen en de rol van overheid en de bekendmaking: Een wetenschappelijk en gestructureerd overzicht

Inleiding

De interesse in onbekende of onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen – recent hernoemd tot Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – heeft binnen de laatste decennia een opmerkelijke stijging doorgemaakt. Wat begon als een marginale en vaak sceptisch ontvangen onderwerp in de populaire cultuur, heeft het zich ontwikkeld tot een serieuze kwestie voor zowel wetenschappelijke onderzoekers als overheidsinstanties. Deze thesis richt zich op een uitgebreid wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de fenomenen die onder de noemer UAP worden gecategoriseerd, de toename van meldingen, de rol van overheidsbekendmakingen, en de maatschappelijke en wetenschappelijke implicaties. Door middel van een gedegen analyse van bestaande data, officiële rapporten, en publieke opinie, zal deze thesis proberen inzicht te geven in de huidige situatie en de mogelijke paden voor toekomstig onderzoek en beleidsvorming.

Hoofdstuk 1: De ontwikkeling van meldingen van UAP’s

1.1 Statistische toename van meldingen

De afgelopen tien jaren vormen een periode van opmerkelijke verandering in de rapportage en perceptie van onverklaarbare vliegende objecten, oftewel UAP’s (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Een van de meest duidelijke indicaties van deze evolutie is de exponentiële stijging in het aantal officiële en onofficiële meldingen. Volgens data van het National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), een organisatie die al decennia meldingen verzamelt, is het aantal gerapporteerde UAP’s in de Verenigde Staten tussen 2010 en 2022 aanzienlijk toegenomen. In 2010 registreerden ze ongeveer 5.000 meldingen, terwijl dit aantal in 2022 was gestegen tot circa 25.000 meldingen per jaar. Deze drievoudige toename in het aantal meldingenbinnen een decennium wijst niet alleen op een toevallige statistische variatie, maar op een fundamentele verandering in zowel het aantal waarnemingen als de waargenomen ernst ervan.

Deze toename wordt door verschillende factoren beïnvloed.

• Ten eerste is er een grotere publieke alertheid en interesse in het fenomeen ontstaan, mede dankzij de opkomst van digitale media en sociale netwerken, waardoor mensen sneller en gemakkelijker hun waarnemingen kunnen delen.
• Ten tweede speelt technologische vooruitgang hierin een belangrijke rol. Smartphones met hoogwaardige camera’s en videofuncties maken het mogelijk voor gewone burgers om snel visuele en auditieve waarnemingen vast te leggen. Voorbeeld hiervan zijn de talloze video’s die op platforms zoals YouTube en TikTok worden gedeeld, waarin afwijkende lichten of objecten worden vastgelegd die vervolgens viraal gaan.

Een niet-geïdentificeerd luchtverschijnsel in een video van het Amerikaanse leger. Ministerie van Defensie via To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science

Daarnaast zijn militaire en overheidsorganisaties begonnen met het vrijgeven van meer gegevens over UAP’s, onder meer door middel van gerichte rapportages en video’s. Het wordt bijvoorbeeld vermeld dat het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie in de afgelopen jaren meerdere gedocumenteerde incidenten heeft gepubliceerd, waaronder de bekende “Gimbal” en “GoFast” filmpjes. Deze beelden laten snel bewegende lichten zien die niet voldoen aan de technische mogelijkheden van de meeste bekende vliegtuigen of drones en blijven daardoor onzeker en intrigerend. De technici die deze beelden analyseren, spreken vaak over objecten die ‘plotseling van snelheid wisselen’, ‘onmogelijk manoeuvreren’ en ‘onbegrijpelijke vormen’ aannemen.

Daarnaast heeft de ontwikkeling van nieuwe sensorsystemen in de luchtvaart en militaire radarinstallaties de detectie en tracking van UAP’s verbeterd. Radargegevens tonen vaak objecten die zó snel bewegen dat zij de limieten van onze huidige detectietechnologieën lijken te overschrijden. Bijvoorbeeld, verschillende rapporten beschrijven radarbeelden van objecten die gedurende minuten zichtbaar bleven op radarschermen, met snelheden die volgens de conventionele fysica niet mogelijk zijn voor menselijke-gestuurde technologieën.

Kortom, de statische data bevestigen dat het verschijnsel actueler en prominenter wordt dan ooit tevoren. Het aantal meldingen is niet langer louter een symptoom van toenemende nieuwsgierigheid, maar wijst op een mogelijke werkelijkheid waarin UAP’s een gewone opleving zijn van een fenomeen dat al decennia bestaat, maar eerder werd genegeerd of onderdrukt.

1.2 De culturele omslag en perceptie

Begin jaren 2000 werd het onderwerp van UAP’s nog vaak afgedaan als onzin, gekkigheid of speculatie die vooral tussen fantasie en wantrouwen zweefde. Media en wetenschappelijke gemeenschap toonden meestal weinig interesse vanwege het gebrek aan bewijzen en de associatie met spookverhalen. Toch begonnen er in de loop van de jaren een kentering zichtbaar te worden, mede onder invloed van publieke en politieke ontwikkelingen.

Een belangrijke keerpunt kwam door de publicatie van officiële video’s door het Amerikaanse leger. De “Gimbal”-video uit 2015 toont bijvoorbeeld een object dat snel beweegt en een ongewoon patroon van beweging vertoont, terwijl de “GoFast”-video uit 2015 beelden toont van een snel bewegend object dat radarbeelden genereert met een snelheid die verdergaat dan conventionele technologie. Wat deze beelden zo bijzonder maakt, is dat ze niet langer anonieme getuigenissen zijn, maar bevestigde en geverifieerde opnames door militaire eenheden.

Volgens Dr. Linda Bracken van het Center for Aerial Phenomena Studies is de perceptie aan het veranderen: “Wanneer betrouwbare militaire bronnen aangeven dat ze een object niet kunnen identificeren, verandert de perceptie van wantrouwen naar ware nieuwsgierigheid.” Dit citaat onderstreept de impact van officiële rapportages die de geloofwaardigheid van de waarnemingen vergroten. Wat eerst werd afgedaan als ‘onverklaarbare lichten’ of ‘natuurlijke fenomenen’, krijgt nu aandacht van beleidsmakers, wetenschappers en defensieorganisaties die serieus willen onderzoeken wat zich écht afspeelt.

De culturele omslag wordt verder versterkt door publieke discussies op online fora zoals Reddit, waar getuigen ervaringen delen en analisten samenwerken om patronen te vinden in de data. Podcasts en documentaires zoals “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” op Netflix hebben de thema’s toegankelijker gemaakt voor een breed publiek, waardoor UAP’s een kernonderwerp zijn geworden in de maatschappelijke discussie over technologische ontwikkeling, veiligheid en de plaats van de mens in het universum.

Op technisch niveau maakt deze perceptieverandering dat organisaties en overheden meer middelen inzetten voor onderzoek. Het belang van trackingsoftware, radardata-analyse, en geavanceerde sensorontwikkeling wordt erkend. Bijvoorbeeld, nieuwe radarsystemen kunnen nu objecten detecteren die zich in de stratosfeer bevinden en met een snelheid van honderden kilometers per uur bewegen, terwijl oudere systemen daar niet toe in staat waren. De perceptie van UAP’s als een ‘kwaadaardig’ of ‘onbekend’ fenomeen evolueert naar een meer genuanceerde wetenschappelijke interesse, waarbij men de vraag stelt: “Wat zijn deze objecten en wat betekent hun aanwezigheid voor onze kennis van de luchtvaart, fysica en mogelijk buitenaards leven?”

Kort samengevat, de verandering in perceptie is niet alleen een gevolg van technische verbeteringen, maar ook van een paradigmaverschuiving in de manier waarop samenleving en overheid dit fenomeen begrijpen. Wat eerst werd gezien als onzinnig of paranoïde, wordt nu steeds meer geïnterpreteerd als een belangrijke vraag die wetenschappelijk, technologisch en maatschappelijk onderzocht moet worden. Door deze culturele omslag ontstaat er ruimte voor serieus onderzoek dat niet langer geblokkeerd wordt door stigma’s of militaire geheimhouding, maar open staat voor nieuwe verklaringen en ontdekkingen.

Hoofdstuk 2: Overheidsbekendmakingen en onderzoeksinitiatieven

2.1 Officiële rapporten en hun bevindingen

In de wereld van onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen (UAP), oftewel phenomena die vroeger bekend stonden als UFO’s, vormen officiële rapporten de basis voor verdere wetenschappelijke en politieke discussies. Een van de meest urgente en invloedrijke documenten op dit vlak was het rapport gepubliceerd door het Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in juni 2021. Dit rapport was gebaseerd op een uitgebreide analyse van 144 waarnemingen die gedaan werden tussen 2004 en 2021 door verschillende Amerikaanse militaire en civiele overheidsinstanties.

Het rapport gaf aan dat ongeveer 30% van deze waarnemingen niet konden worden verklaard met de huidige technologische middelen en wetenschappelijke kennis. Dit betekent dat er bijna een derde van de fenomenen was die niet in de categorie ‘menselijke techniek’ of ‘natuurlijke verschijnselen’ kon worden ondergebracht. Een belangrijk aspect hierbij was dat veel van deze anomalieën werden waargenomen bij hypersonische snelheden, vaak boven de Mach 5, hoewel deze snelheden niet altijd met geoustestapparatuur konden worden bevestigd. Daarnaast kwam het rapport tot de conclusie dat diverse waarnemingen abrupte manoeuvres vertoonden die onmogelijk zouden zijn met bekende aerodynamische principes, en dat er in sommige gevallen geen detecteerbare voortstuwingssignaturen werden waargenomen, zoals geluid of warmteontwikkeling.

Volgens het rapport toonden sommige UAP’s kenmerken die zodanig afwijkend waren dat ze niet eenvoudig te verklaren waren binnen het kader van bekende militaire of civiele technologie. Bijvoorbeeld, er werden fenomenen gerapporteerd die op verschillende hoogten opereerden en die zich zeer plotseling konden verplaatsen, soms zelfs met snelheden die de huidige luchtvaarttechnologie overschreden. Dit zette de traditionele opvattingen over de beperkingen van luchtvaartuigen onder druk, en leidde tot speculaties over de mogelijkheid dat deze fenomenen geavanceerde technologieën mogelijk vertegenwoordigen van derden, of dat ze zelfs technologische innovaties binnen de militaire sector zelf zijn.

Het rapport benadrukte het belang van het verzamelen, codificeren en analyseren van dergelijke data op een gesystematiseerde manier. De bevindingen werden niet alleen door wetenschappers en militairen besproken, maar veroorzaakten ook een politieke storm. Beleidsmakers en veiligheidsadviseurs riepen op tot meer transparantie en meer funding voor gespecialiseerde onderzoeksprogramma’s, omdat de onbekende aard van deze verschijnselen grote risico’s met zich meebreeg voor de nationale veiligheid. De vraag was immers of deze fenomenen mogelijk vijandelijke of spontane technologische aanvallen konden inhouden, of dat ze onderdeel waren van een meer complexe en mogelijk gevaarlijke technologisch-superieure entiteit.

2.2 Politieke en militaire betrokkenheid

Door de jaren heen heeft de Amerikaanse overheid verschillende initiatieven genomen om inzicht te krijgen in UAP’s, maar de echte doorbraak kwam er pas in 2024 met de organisatie van de eerste openbare hoorzitting door het Congres over dit onderwerp. Voorheen was het onderzoek vaak behind closed doors, en waren rapporten en gegevens zelden publiek toegankelijk, vooral vanwege classificatieniveaus en nationale veiligheidsbelangen.

De hoorzitting van 2024 was een belangrijke mijlpaal omdat Amerikaanse politici, wetenschappers en defensiefunctionarissen zich openlijk konden uitspreken over de bevindingen en de stand van zaken. Een van de meest markante getuigenissen kwam van Lieutenant Commander James “Jim” Harlan, een ervaren piloot en militair die al meer dan tien jaar UAP-gegevens verzamelde en bestudeerde. Harlan onthulde interne memo's en rapporten die aantonen dat het leger al langere tijd betrokken was bij het volgen en analyseren van deze verschijnselen, maar dat verschillende factoren — zoals budgettaire beperkingen, bureaucratische processen en strikte classificatieprocedures — het onderzoek soms belemmerden.

Volgens Harlan werden de data verzameld via verschillende middelen, waaronder geavanceerde radarsystemen en infraroodcamera’s, maar de analyse ervan was niet altijd transparant. Hij verklaarde dat veel documenten intern werden gehouden om ‘technologische geheimen’ te beschermen, hoewel ze mogelijk ook het publieke vertrouwen en de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap in de weg stonden. Harlan benadrukte dat er binnen het militaire apparaat een toenemende bewustwording bestaat dat deze fenomenen mogelijk een gevaar vormen, niet alleen voor de luchtvaartveiligheid, maar ook voor nationale beveiliging en strategische belangen.

Het feit dat het Congres nu openlijk discussie voert over UAP’s en dat getuigen zoals Harlan hun bewijzen kunnen presenteren, onderstreept de verandering in het politiek klimaat ten opzichte van het onderwerp. Er wordt steeds meer erkend dat er sprake is van een complexe problematiek die niet afgedaan kan worden met simpele verklaringen. Daarnaast worden er vragen opgesteld over de behoefte aan een gecentraliseerd en transparant datamanagementsysteem, dat alle relevante informatie verzamelt, bewaart en onderzoekt, zonder dat deze door overheids- of militaire belangen wordt gedicteerd.

Tot slot illustreert deze ontwikkeling de ernst waarmee overheidsinstanties het onderwerp nemen. Er worden niet alleen meer middelen vrijgemaakt voor het onderzoek, maar ook wordt er een bredere maatschappelijke dialoog gevoerd over de aard, herkomst en mogelijke implicaties van de fenomenen die men zich eerder slechts in sci-fi films kon voorstellen. De betrokkenheid van het congres, de openheid van getuigenissen, en de publieke belangstelling benadrukken dat UAP-onderzoek een belangrijke rol begint te spelen in de nationale en internationale veiligheidsagenda.

Kortom, de combinatie van wetenschappelijke rapporten en politieke initiatieven zorgt voor een groeiend bewustzijn dat we binnen een nieuw paradigma opereren: niet langer is dit enkel een zaak van nieuwsgierige getuigen of geheime militairen, maar een onderwerp van nationale en mondiale samenleving dat aandacht en wetenschappelijke ernst verdient.

Hoofdstuk 3: Maatschappelijke impact en roep om transparantie

3.1 Publieke opinie en maatschappelijke druk

De maatschappelijke houding ten aanzien van onidentificeerde luchtverschijnselen (UAPs), voorheen bekend als UFO's, heeft in de afgelopen jaren een ingrijpende verandering ondergaan. Volgens onderzoek uitgevoerd door het Pew Research Center in 2025, independent en gerenommeerd als een betrouwbare bron voor gegevens over publieke opinies, blijkt dat maar liefst 68% van de Amerikanen vóórstander is van meer openheid van overheidsdata over UAPs. Dit percentage onderstreept een aanzienlijke beweging binnen de samenleving richting transparantie en openheid. Het valt op dat deze steun niet alleen vanuit nieuwsgierigheid ontstaat, maar ook uit een groeiend vertrouwen in overheidsinstanties en wetenschappelijke instituten.

Mensen geloven dat transparantie niet alleen de wetenschappelijke kennis versterkt, maar ook de nationale veiligheid kan verbeteren. Door openheid wordt de mogelijkheid geboden om UAP-verschijnselen door onafhankelijke experts te bestuderen, wat kan leiden tot een beter begrip van de fenomenen en mogelijke bedreigingen. Bijvoorbeeld, als UAPs inderdaad luchtvaartuigen of technologieën blijken te zijn van buitenlandse mogendheden of niet-geïdentificeerde bedreigingen, kan tijdige informatie-uitwisseling een essentieel onderdeel vormen van het defensiebeleid en preventieve maatregelen.

Daarnaast speelt maatschappelijke druk een belangrijke rol. Advocacy groepen zoals de UAP Transparency Initiative (UTI), opgericht in 2022, vormen een belangrijke stem in het publieke debat. Deze organisatie pleit voor volledige openbaarmaking van alle niet-sensitive informatie over UAPs en zet zich in voor het vergroten van de transparantie. Zij organiseren campagnes, brengen rapporten uit en lobbyen bij beleidsmakers om de openheid te stimuleren.

Een voorbeeld van hun invloed is de release van een reeks declassificeerde rapporten door het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie in 2024, deels gefaciliteerd door publieke druk. Deze rapporten bevatten in sommige gevallen gedetailleerde waarnemingen en radarbeelden, die voorheen achter gesloten deuren werden gehouden. De maatschappelijke druk wordt mede versterkt door verhalen en getuigenissen van piloten en militairen, die vaak jarenlang hebben gezwegen uit angst voor reprimandes of vooroordelen. De openheid van deze getuigenissen zorgt voor een breed maatschappelijke discussie, waarin niet alleen Pentagon en NSA, maar ook de wetenschap, media en het grote publiek betrokken zijn.

3.2 Argumenten voor transparantie

Het argument voor transparantie wordt vaak onderbouwd door technische, wetenschappelijke en veiligheidsgerelateerde overwegingen. Volgens voormalige Pentagon functionarissen zoals generaal Mark Evans, een expert op het gebied van defensie en nationale veiligheid, “versterkt transparantie de nationale veiligheid, omdat onafhankelijke experts de bevindingen kunnen valideren en beleid kunnen adviseren”. Hij benadrukt dat door het openstellen van gegevens, de kans op het herkennen en begrijpen van UAP-verschijnselen toeneemt, wat essentieel is voor het ontwikkelen van adequaat beleid en preventiestrategieën.

Het argument dat geheimhouding de wetenschap en veiligheid dient, wordt inmiddels algemeen weerlegd. Stilzwijiģheid en geheimhouding kunnen leiden tot een zogenaamde 'black box' situatie, waarbij informatie niet wordt gedeeld en daardoor de kans op misverstanden of misbruik toeneemt. Transparantie daarentegen maakt het mogelijk om fenomenen te bestuderen op een wetenschappelijk verantwoorde wijze, waarbij onderzoeksinstituten, universiteiten en onafhankelijk wetenschappers betrokken worden. Dit kan leiden tot nieuwe technologieën, zoals geavanceerde sensorsystemen, die buiten de militaire context verder ontwikkeld kunnen worden.

Een concreet voorbeeld hiervan is de succesvolle integratie van geavanceerde radarsystemen die detectie van UAPs mogelijk maken in civiele luchtvaart en wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Sinds 2023 is er bijvoorbeeld een toename te zien in het gebruik van LIDAR-technologieën en multispectrale sensoren, die zonder vooringenomenheid of geheime doeleinden externe fenomenen kunnen vastleggen. Hierdoor wordt de kans groter dat gegevens reproduceerbaar en controleerbaar zijn, wat de betrouwbaarheid van de bevindingen versterkt.

Daarnaast benadrukken voorstanders dat transparantie ook het publieke vertrouwen in overheidsinstellingen vergroot. In een tijd waarin desinformatie en complottheorieën prolifereren, fungeert open data als een rem op het ontstaan van ongefundeerde speculaties. Zoals James E. McDonnell, een bekende astrofysicus en wetenschapsadviseur, stelt: “Als we vooroordelen en onduidelijkheden vermijden door openheid te bieden, bouwen we aan een fundament van vertrouwen dat nodig is om gezamenlijk complexe mysteries zoals UAPs te doorgronden.”

Het is belangrijk te onderstrepen dat transparantie niet betekent dat alle informatie onmiddellijk openbaar wordt. Privacy- en veiligheidsgevoelige data, zoals exacte locaties van geheime bases of technologische specificaties die de nationale defensie in gevaar brengen, worden nog steeds afgeschermd. Echter, de kerngegevens en waarnemingen die wetenschappelijk en maatschappelijke waarde hebben, worden wel publiek gemaakt. Daarbij speelt ook internationalisering van uitwisseling een grote rol: enkele landen zoals Canada, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Australië hebben onderling afspraken gemaakt om gegevens te delen, wat de internationale samenwerking versterkt.

Tot slot wordt ook gewezen op de technologische ontwikkelingen die transparantie mogelijk maken. Cloud computing, blockchain-technologie en versleutelde communicatie zorgen ervoor dat gegevens op een veilige en transparante wijze gedeeld kunnen worden, zonder dreiging van manipulatie of diefstal. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het project OpenSky, gelanceerd door het European Space Agency in 2024, dat een gedeeld platform biedt waarop waarnemingen van UAPs wereldwijd real-time kunnen worden verzameld, geverifieerd en geanalyseerd door verschillende onderzoeksinstituten.

Kortom, de maatschappelijke impact van de roep om transparantie is groot en multidimensionaal. Het kan leiden tot een breder wetenschappelijk begrip, meer maatschappelijke betrokkenheid, verhoogde veiligheid en verbeterd vertrouwen in overheidsinstellingen. Belangrijk is dat transparantie strategisch wordt benaderd, met respect voor ethische en veiligheidsvoorschriften, en met de inzet om kennis en inzichten te delen ten behoeve van de samenleving als geheel.

Hoofdstuk 4: Toekomstperspectieven en beleid

Dit hoofdstuk richt zich op de toekomstige ontwikkelingen in UAP-onderzoek, met een uitgebreide blik op nieuwe wetgeving, onderzoeksinitiatieven, en de technologische kansen die deze verschijnselen bieden. De voortdurende publieke, politieke en wetenschappelijke druk vragen om een gestructureerde en transparante aanpak, waarbij samenwerking tussen verschillende disciplines centraal staat.

4.1 Nieuwe wetgeving en onderzoeksinitiatieven

In reactie op de toenemende publieke belangstelling en de politieke urgentie, is er gewerkt aan de vormgeving van de UAP Research and Transparency Act (hierna: URTA). Deze wet wordt gezien als een belangrijke doorbraak in het formaliseringsproces van UAP-onderzoek.

De voorgestelde wetsartikelen bevatten onder andere de volgende kernpunten:

• Verplichting tot jaarlijkse rapportages: Overheidsinstanties worden verplicht om jaarlijks gedetailleerde rapportages te verstrekken aan het Congres over alle verzamelde gegevens, bevindingen en onderzoeken met betrekking tot UAP’s. Dit zorgt voor een voortdurende transparantie en een gestructureerde monitoring van de ontwikkelingen.

• Financiering van een civiel-overheid samenwerkingscentrum: Er wordt geld vrijgemaakt voor de oprichting van een gespecialiseerd samenwerkingscentrum dat functioneert als brug tussen overheidsinstanties, universiteiten, en private onderzoeksinitiatieven. Dit centrum krijgt als taak het coördineren van multidisciplinaire onderzoeken, het delen van gegevens en het ontwikkelen van nieuwe onderzoeksinstrumenten.

• Declassificatie van beeldmateriaal: Een belangrijke bepaling is dat niet-gevoelige beelden en data binnen 90 dagen na ontvangst gedeclassificeerd moeten worden. Hiermee wordt de transparantie bevorderd en wordt voorkomen dat waardevolle gegevens onnodig verborgen blijven.

Indien deze wet wordt aangenomen, kan haar impact groot zijn. Het leggen van een wettelijke basis voor een multidisciplinair onderzoeksparadigma betekent dat ingenieurs, natuurkundigen, datawetenschappers en andere specialisten zullen samenwerken. Bijvoorbeeld, technici kunnen radarsystemen verbeteren, natuurkundigen kunnen theorieën ontwikkelen over onbekende verschijnselen, terwijl datawetenschappers grote datasets analyseren op patronen en anomalieën. Volgens wetenschapsfilosoof Karl Popper, moet wetenschap "float with falsifiability," en een gestructureerd beleid zoals URTA biedt de juiste basis voor het testen van hypotheses en het weerleggen ervan.

• Voorbeelden van de inhoud van de wet

Een concreet voorbeeld uit de wetsvoorstellen betreft de rapportage van nieuwe waarnemingen via publieke meldingen en militaire systemen, waarbij gegevens geverifieerd worden door meerdere onafhankelijke bronnen. Een ander voorbeeld betreft de oprichting van een databank waarin alle gedecodeerde radargegevens en beeldmateriaal wordt opgeslagen, toegankelijk voor onderzoekers binnen en buiten de overheid. Daarbij wordt veel aandacht besteed aan de beveiliging, waarbij geavanceerde encryptietechnieken en blockchain-technologie kunnen worden ingezet om de integriteit van de gegevens te waarborgen.

• Technische details en uitdagingen

Het opzetten van een dergelijk samenwerkingscentrum stuit op technologische en organisatorische uitdagingen. Zo vereist de classificatie en analyse van grote hoeveelheden beelden en radargegevens efficiënte data-infrastructuren en geavanceerde algoritmen voor beeld- en patroonherkenning. Hierbij speelt kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) een cruciale rol: deep learning modellen kunnen bijvoorbeeld getraind worden om onderscheid te maken tussen natuurlijke fenomenen zoals weerballonnen, en mogelijk niet-gedefinieerde objecten die afwijkingen vertonen.

Voorbeeld: Een AI-model dat getraind is op duizenden getelde UAP-beelden, kan patroonherkenning toepassen om afwijkingen in nieuwe data te identificeren. Onderzoekers kunnen bijvoorbeeld AI inzetten om te detecteren of bepaalde verschijnselen consistent voorkomen onder specifieke omstandigheden, zoals bij bepaalde weersomstandigheden of op bepaalde locaties.

• Interdisciplinaire samenwerking

Door de wet wordt een nieuw standaardprofiel gecreëerd waarbij ingenieurs, natuurkundigen en datawetenschappers niet langer in gescheiden silo's werken, maar samen vraagstukken aanpakken vanuit verschillende invalshoeken. Een voorbeeld hiervan is de integratie van atmosferische modellen met radar- en videogegevens om fenomenen beter te begrijpen. Bijvoorbeeld, signalen die door radars worden uitgezonden, kunnen worden vergeleken met atmosferische data om te bepalen of waargenomen objecten natuurlijke of andere oorzaken hebben.

4.2 Wetenschappelijke en technologische kansen

Naast de wetgeving biedt de technologische vooruitgang nieuwe wegen voor UAP-onderzoek. Een belangrijk onderdeel hierbij is de toepassing van geavanceerde radarsystemen en atmosferische modellen, gecombineerd met kunstmatige intelligentie (AI).

• Geavanceerde radarsystemen

De huidige radartechnologie maakt gebruik van pulse-Doppler radars die in staat zijn om objecten op grote afstand en met hoge precisie te detecteren. Niettemin blijft de beperking bestaan dat radarbeelden vaak moeilijk te interpreteren zijn omdat verstoringen door atmosferische omstandigheden voorkomen. Nieuwe radarsystemen, zoals die met phased array technologie en multistatic opstellingen, kunnen echter real-time en driedimensionale data verzamelen, waardoor het identificatieproces significant wordt verbeterd.

Bijvoorbeeld, het gebruik van MIMO-radarsystemen (Multiple Input Multiple Output) kan leiden tot een veel hogere gezichts- en detectiecapaciteit. Dankzij de enorme gegevensstroom die deze systemen genereren, kunnen datawetenschappers en ingenieurs machine learning-algoritmen ontwikkelen om afwijkingen en patronen te herkennen die eerder niet zichtbaar waren.

• Atmosferische modellen en computermodellering

Door gebruik te maken van uitgebreide atmosferische modellen kunnen verschijnselen zoals weerballonnen, pluimen, of bepaalde weersomstandigheden worden gesimuleerd en vooraf voorspeld. Dit helpt om waarnemingen beter te verklaren en te onderscheiden van mogelijke UAP’s. Bijvoorbeeld, het fenomeen van ball lightning wordt met theoretische modellen en geavanceerde simulaties bestudeerd. Als we begrijpen onder welke atmosferische condities de verschijnselen ontstaan, wordt het makkelijker om onderscheid te maken tussen natuurlijke en niet-natuurlijke objecten.

• Kunstmatige intelligentie (AI)

De inzet van AI opent nieuwe perspectieven in het empirisch onderzoek naar UAP’s. Deep learning netwerken, zoals convolutionele neurale netwerken (CNN’s), kunnen worden getraind op enorme datasets van beelden, radargegevens en videomateriaal. Bijvoorbeeld, een studie uit 2019 liet zien dat CNN’s in staat waren om 90% van de verschillende natuurlijke en kunstmatige objecten correct te classificeren, waaronder ook anomalieën die op "hidden" of onzichtbare objecten lijken.

Daarnaast kan AI worden ingezet voor real-time monitoring en automatische waarnemingsdetectie. Bijvoorbeeld, tijdens vliegreizen of militaire oefeningen kan AI automatisch afwijkingen signaleren en instant alert geven aan onderzoekers.

• Van beschrijvende naar verklarende wetenschap

Een belangrijke ambitie voor de toekomst is de overgang van louter beschrijvende karakterisering naar een empirisch en verklarend niveau. Dit betekent dat niet alleen het "wat" en "wanneer" wordt vastgelegd, maar dat men probeert te begrijpen "hoe" en "waarom" bepaalde fenomenen optreden. Dit vereist het ontwikkelen van theoretische modellen die kunnen verklaren waarom UAP’s zich op bepaalde manieren gedragen en onder welke specifieke omstandigheden zij worden waargenomen.

Voorbeeld: Een theoretisch model dat suggereert dat sommige UAP’s gerelateerd kunnen zijn aan natuurlijke plasmafenomenen in de atmosfeer, gebaseerd op elektromagnetische theoretische principes, kan een stap zijn in de richting van een verklaring.

• Conclusie

De technologische en wetenschappelijke kansen in UAP-onderzoek bieden veelbelovende perspectieven om de mysteries achter deze verschijnselen stap voor stap te ontrafelen. Door nauwe samenwerking tussen technici, natuurkundigen en datawetenschappers, ondersteund door een solide beleidskader en grote investeringen in R&D, kunnen we de komende jaren belangrijke doorbraken verwachten. Het doel is niet alleen het registreren van waarnemingen, maar het ontwikkelen van een fundamenteel begrip dat kan leiden tot technologische innovaties en mogelijk zelfs nieuwe fysische inzichten.

Hoofdstuk 5: Conclusie en discussie

De recente toename in meldingen van UAP’s (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) en de groeiende openheid van overheids- en militaire instanties onderstrepen het belang van een gestructureerde en wetenschappelijke aanpak van dit fenomeen. Deze ontwikkelingen vragen om een kritische analyse, niet alleen om de aard en oorsprong van UAP’s te begrijpen, maar ook om de bredere implicaties voor onze wetenschap, veiligheid en maatschappij. In dit hoofdstuk worden de kernpunten van de thesis samengevat, gevolgd door een diepgaandere discussie over de technische, maatschappelijke en politieke aspecten die hierbij komen kijken.

• De Waarnemingen en Data

Sinds de publicatie van het Pentagon’s rapport in 2021 en soortgelijke initiatieven in andere landen, is duidelijk geworden dat er een enorme hoeveelheid waarnemingen bestaat die niet eenvoudig te verklaren zijn. Voorbeelden hiervan zijn de opvallende vlekken op radarbeelden, onbeweeglijke objecten die met supersonische snelheid manoeuvreren, en objecten die onbekende vluchtpatronen vertonen. Hoewel veel van deze waarnemingen nog altijd niet volledig verklaard kunnen worden, bieden ze waardevolle data voor systematische analyse.

Het is essentieel te erkennen dat de huidige waarnemingen vaak vooral uit anekdotisch bewijs en operationele rapporten bestaan, wat de behoefte onderstreept voor meer gestructureerde en technisch onderbouwde data-verzameling. Moderne technologieën zoals multispectrale sensoren, lidar, radar en geavanceerde elektronisch-optische systemen kunnen helpen om meer betrouwbare informatie te produceren. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het gebruik van de detectie- en trackingsoftware ontwikkeld door bijvoorbeeld het Amerikaanse Naval Air Systems Command, dat in staat is om objecten te traceren met een precisie die niet eerder mogelijk was.

• De rol van overheids- en militaire openheid

De openheid van overheids- en militaire instanties vormt een cruciaal onderdeel in het verdere onderzoek. Historisch waren veel waarnemingen geheim gehouden, wat bijdroeg aan het ontstaan van allerlei theorieën en speculaties. Nu blijkt dat transparantie niet alleen het vertrouwen in de overheid herstelt, maar ook de basis legt voor ernstiger en wetenschappelijker onderzoek.

De publicatie van videobeelden door de Pentagon, waarin objecten worden weergegeven die zich bewegen buiten de bekende fysica, is een belangrijk signaal. Zoals astronoom en filosoof Carl Sagan stelde: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Het openstellen van dit bewijs aan de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap stelt onderzoekers in staat om met meetbare en reproduceerbare methoden te werken.

• De noodzaak van een multidisciplinair wetenschappelijk programma

Het aanpakken van UAP’s vereist niet alleen technologische expertise, maar ook input van diverse disciplines zoals natuurkunde, astrofysica, atmosferische wetenschappen, materiaalkunde en zelfs psychologie. Door de integratie van verschillende vakgebieden ontstaat een holistisch beeld van de verschijnselen.

Technologisch gezien beschikken we tegenwoordig over geavanceerde detectie- en analyseinstrumenten. Bijvoorbeeld, high-bandwidth radars kunnen snelheid en trajecten nauwkeurig meten, terwijl analytische software met machine learning-algoritmes patronen kan ontdekken die voor het menselijk oog niet zichtbaar zijn. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het gebruik van neurale netwerken om secundaire gegevens te classificeren en anomalieën te identificeren.

Vanuit een fysisch perspectief kunnen we proberen om de energetische karakteristieken van deze objecten te bepalen. Als objecten zich bewegen met snelheden die de geluidssnelheid overschrijden en over electromagnetische eigenschappen beschikken die niet in onze huidige technologische context voorkomen, opent dat nieuwe vragen over fysica en materiaalwetenschappen.

• De toekomst van UAP-onderzoek

De verdere ontwikkeling van een solide wetenschappelijke basis hangt grotendeels af van twee kernfactoren. Ten eerste de bereidwilligheid van overheden om data te delen en de barrières voor informatieverschaffing te verminderen. Zoals voormalig NASA-astronoom Dr. Jill Tarter heeft opgemerkt: “De grootste barrier voor het begrijpen van UAP’s is niet de technologie, maar de politieke wil.” Dit impliceert dat het belang ligt in internationale samenwerking en transparantie, bijvoorbeeld via internationale verdragen of wetenschappelijke consortia.

Ten tweede vereist het succes van onderzoek een sterke applicatie van methodologische kracht. Dit betekent dat wetenschappers rigoureuze experimenten moeten opzetten, hypothesen moeten testen en foutenbronnen moeten elimineren. Bijvoorbeeld, het replicateerbaar maken van waarnemingen en het toepassen van geavanceerde statistische technieken is essentieel om betrouwbare conclusies te trekken.

Door het samengaan van technologische innovatie, interdisciplinair samenwerken en politieke openheid, kunnen we mogelijk belangrijke doorbraken behalen. Hiermee kunnen we niet alleen de aard en oorsprong van UAP’s verduidelijken, maar ook fundamentele vragen beantwoorden over de fysica, onze plaats in het universum, en de mogelijke intelligentie die achter deze verschijnselen schuilgaat.

Samenvatting

Deze thesis toont aan dat UAP’s een fenomeen zijn dat niet langer kan worden afgedaan als louter lokalisaties van mythes of folklore. Het toenemende aantal betrouwbare rapportages, de groeiende politieke aandacht en de technologische middelen die beschikbaar komen, vormen een solide basis voor systematisch, wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Transparantie en interdisciplinariteit zijn hierbij cruciale pijlers om de mysteries rondom UAP’s te ontrafelen.

Als we deze kansen benutten, kunnen we niet alleen antwoorden vinden op de vragen over aard en oorsprong, maar mogelijk ook vooruitgang boeken op gebieden zoals natuurkunde, materiaalkunde en astronautiek. De ultieme doelstelling is een dynamisch onderzoeksparadigma creëren waarin alle gegevens worden verzameld, geanalyseerd en geïnterpreteerd met dezelfde rigueur als bij andere natuurwetenschappelijke disciplines. Alleen door deze gestructureerde aanpak kunnen we de grenzen van onze kennis verder verleggen en wellicht antwoorden vinden op existentiële vragen: Zijn wij alleen in het universum? Zijn er buitenaardse beschavingen die contact proberen te maken? De toekomst van UAP-onderzoek hangt af van onze bereidwilligheid om open en kritisch te blijven kijken naar deze fascinerende verschijnselen.

 { peter2011 }

30-11-2025 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Miranda is Uranus’ icy moon, scarred by deep ravines that give it a very unusual appearance, even from a distance. For many years, scientists have been racking their brains trying to figure out what it went through in the past to acquire such a strange shape.

A ball made of crushed ice

There are plenty of strange natural objects in the Solar System. But when people see a photo of Uranus’ moon Miranda, few can contain their surprise. At first glance, it looks like a scoop of ice cream with uneven lines revealing the filling.

However, closer examination may reveal even stranger things. These structures turn out to be crevices several kilometers deep, which seems quite unusual considering that the diameter of the satellite itself is only 470 km. How can all this be explained? The story behind it is long and complicated.

Firstly, until 1948, no one had heard of Miranda. It was discovered by Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, the same man who postulated the existence of an outer asteroid belt in the Solar System, which is now named after him.

As for the name Miranda itself, the satellite was traditionally named after one of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays – Miranda, the daughter of the sorcerer Prospero from The Tempest. At the time of its discovery, it was already clear that this celestial body was quite unusual.

First, Miranda was about 500 km in size, which is transitional between small icy bodies, whose gravitational force is usually insufficient to give them a perfect spherical shape, and large ones, which resemble icy spheres.

Secondly, Miranda orbited Uranus closer than the four previously known satellites. Its distance from its nominal surface is only 129,900 km, which is only one-third of the distance from Earth to the Moon. At the same time, unlike Titania, Oberon, Ariel, and Umbriel, Miranda’s orbit is almost circular.

Mysterious cliffs

However, until 1986, no one paid much attention to these features. That is, until the Voyager-2 spacecraft approached Uranus. Miranda turned out to be the closest of the planet’s large moons to its flight path. It is not surprising that it was able to see it best. It is one of the few moons that automatic probes have photographed from almost all sides, so that we can more or less talk about a map of the planet.

And it was this map that caused scientists to argue for many years. The fact is that on it, Miranda looked as if it had been assembled from different pieces that were poorly glued together. Huge cliffs stretch across the surface of the satellite. The largest of these is the Verona escarpment, named after the city where the events of Romeo and Juliet took place. According to various estimates, its height ranges from 5 to 20 km.

Some cliffs form an enormous graben. This is the name given to narrow valleys where the earth seems to have collapsed.

Miranda also has plains covered with hills, but the most impressive features are the unique landforms known as crowns. These giant areas of the surface appear to have been raised above the surrounding terrain by unknown forces, with the same cliffs located along their edges. In total, there are three crowns on Miranda: Inverness, Arden, and Elsinore. Again, they got their names from places mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

The ridges and other relief features are impressive not only for their shape but also for their scale, especially considering that Miranda’s diameter is only 470 km.

Complex geological history

The situation is made even more mysterious by the fact that a count of craters on Miranda’s surface showed that there are significantly fewer of them than on other Uranus moons. What is worse, some areas are much younger than others. For example, the Inverness ring has a surface age of only 500 million years, the Elsinore ring is between 400 million and 3.1 billion years old, and most of the moon’s surface is 3.5 billion years old.

All this leads some researchers to suggest that Miranda’s surface has been renewed at least several times. What processes led to this remain a mystery. For several decades, a popular hypothesis was that at some point, Miranda was split into pieces by a powerful impact, and then the fragments came back together again. However, a 2011 study refuted this possibility.

Currently, most researchers are focusing on two factors: Miranda’s proximity to the surface of the gas giant and its interaction with other satellites. The first factor is indeed capable of creating amazing landforms, because bodies orbiting gas giants are mainly composed of water ice, which can temporarily turn into liquid in the presence of heat and form a smooth surface in place of old craters.

And there is such a source of heat – tidal heating, which the satellite could have experienced in the past. The gravitational gradient deforms satellites close to giant planets, and mechanical energy is converted into heat. Thus, Jupiter’s satellite Io also has canyons and table mountains. And on Enceladus, which is very similar in size to Miranda, there are giant cracks from which geysers shoot into space.

Therefore, surface renewal because the ice inside Miranda heated up, melted, cracked on the surface, and then everything froze is more than likely. As for the influence of other satellites, scientists are paying attention to Miranda’s orbit. It is quite possible that it previously rotated in a slightly more elongated orbit, was in resonance with other icy bodies, and they also contributed to its deformation, so it is quite possible that its surface was molten for some time. Then something happened, and Miranda moved into its current orbit, and its surface froze in its present state.

Unique conditions

Be that as it may, the combination of small size and huge vertical cliffs creates truly unique conditions on Miranda. It is the best place in the Solar System for rock climbing. The acceleration of free fall here is only 7.9 cm/s2. That is 140 times less than on Earth. In such conditions, you can climb vertical cliff walls for hours.

Or fall from them. Miranda is the only place in the Solar System where you can fall from cliffs for several minutes. However, you will still need to stop your fall somehow, for example, with a jetpack, because parachutes do not work on Miranda due to the lack of atmosphere.

However, overall, we still know very little about this moon. Voyager 2’s flyby remains the only one to date. So we do not really know if Miranda’s icy cliffs are truly dead, or if we were just unlucky not to see any local geysers. If liquid water still exists beneath the surface, that could explain a lot, and this tiny world would not seem so mysterious.

• Posted in Articles, News

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{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

30-11-2025 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the three so-called “godfathers” of AI, never misses an opportunity to issue foreboding proclamations about the tech he helped create.

During an hour-long public conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University last week, the British computer science laid out all the alarming ways that he forecasts AI will completely upend society for the worst, seemingly leaving little room for human contrivances like optimism. One of the reasons why is that AI’s rapid deployment will be completely unlike technological revolutions in the past, which created new classes of jobs, he said.

“The people who lose their jobs won’t have other jobs to go to,” Hinton said, as quoted by Business Insider. “If AI gets as smart as people — or smarter — any job they might do can be done by AI.”

“These guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers,” Hinton added.

Hinton pioneered the deep learning techniques that are foundational to the generative AI models fueling the AI boom today. His work on neural networks earned him a Turing Award in 2018, alongside University of Montreal researcher Yoshua Bengio and the former chief AI scientist at Meta Yann LeCun. The trio are considered to be the “godfathers” of AI.

All three scientists have been outspoken about the tech’s risks, to varying degrees. But it was Hinton who first began to turn the most heads when he said he regretted his life’s work after stepping down from his role at Google in 2023.

He hasn’t changed his tune since then. He has consistently warned that AI will destroy jobs and create massive unemployment. This month, Hinton then injected more fatalism into this prediction by opining that the AI industry couldn’t turn a profit without replacing human labor.

In his discussion with Sanders, Hinton reiterated these risks, adding that the multibillionaires spearheading AI, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison haven’t really “thought through” the fact that “if the workers don’t get paid, there’s nobody to buy their products,” he said, per BI.

Previously, Hinton has said it wouldn’t be “inconceivable” that humankind gets wiped out by AI. He also believes we’re not that far away from achieving an artificial general intelligence, or AGI,  a hypothetical AI system with human or superhuman levels of intelligence that is able to perform a vast array of tasks, which the AI industry is obsessed with building.

“Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI,” Hinton said in 2023. “And now I think it may be 20 years or less.”

Strikingly, Hinton now claims that the latest models like OpenAI’s GPT-5 “know thousands of times more than us already.”

While leading large language models are trained on a corpus of data vastly exceeding what a human could ever learn, many experts would disagree that this means that the AI actually “knows” what it’s talking about. Moreover, many efforts to replace workers with semi-autonomous models called AI agents have often failed embarrassingly, including in customer support roles that many predicted were the most vulnerable to being outmoded. In other words, it’s not quite set in stone that the tech will be to so easily replace even low-paying jobs.

Nonetheless, never put it past your overlords to find a way how to screw you over anyway. AI machines could be a great tool for carrying out imperial actions abroad; deploying AI robots to fight overseas would be great for the US military industrial complex, Hinton argued, since there wouldn’t be dead soldiers to cause “political blowback.”

“I think it will remove one of the main barriers to rich powerful countries just invading little countries like Granada,” Hinton told Sanders.

More on AI: 

• Mark Zuckerberg Accused of Doing Unforgivable Things to Teens on Meta

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{https://futurism.com/category/science-energy}

30-11-2025 om 18:24 geschreven door peter  

It’s one small step for man — and one giant, badass layup for robot kind.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have programmed a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play basketball, almost perfectly mimicking the skills of a human athlete.

A video shared by HKUST PhD student Yinhuai Wang shows the robot dribbling, taking jump shots, and even pivoting on one of its feet to evade the student’s attempts to block it from taking a shot.

Wang called it the “first-ever real-world basketball demo by a humanoid robot,” boasting that he “became the first person to record a block against a humanoid.”

It’s an impressive demo, showcasing how far humanoid robotics has come in a matter of years. Unitree, in particular, has stood out in an increasingly crowded field, with its G1 rapidly picking up new skills.

We’ve seen the four-foot-four-inch humanoid perform impressive kung fu moves and easily shrug off a direct flying dropkick from an adult human. We’ve even seen two of them take each other on in a head-to-head kickboxing contest.

Wang and his colleagues are teaching robots how to play basketball through a system they’ve dubbed “SkillMimic,” which is described on his website as a “data-driven approach that mimics both human and ball motions to learn a wide variety of basketball skills.”

“SkillMimic employs a unified configuration to learn diverse skills from human-ball motion datasets, with skill diversity and generalization improving as the dataset grows,” the writeup continues. “This approach allows training a single policy to learn multiple skills, enabling smooth skill switching even if these switches are not present in the reference dataset.”

While netizens were generally impressed by the robot’s basketball skills, others were a little more skeptical.

“Love that the programmer focused on showboating rather than fundamentals,” one wrote.

“Robots will do everything but fill the dishwasher,” another joked.

Others imagined a future in which bipedal robots dominate sports.

“Man, I hope I get to see proper robotics basketball leagues,” another Reddit user mused.

More on the Unitree G1: 

• Unstoppable Martial Arts Robot Can Take a Direct Dropkick Without Falling Down

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{ https://futurism.com/category/science-energy }

30-11-2025 om 18:10 geschreven door peter  

Subsurface Oceans

“Not all of these satellites are known to have oceans, but we know that some do,” said lead author Max Rudolph, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. “We’re interested in the processes that shape their evolution over millions of years, and this allows us to think about what the surface expression of an ocean world would be.”

Despite their liquid water and potential for habitability, these moons are very different environments from Earth. On Earth, the surface geology stems from underground rock activity: the hot core melts rock into lava, and tectonic plates shift. Icy moons, however, are shaped by the actions of ice and water rather than hot rocks.

The tidal forces from the planets they orbit provide the moons with subsurface heat, which keeps their oceans liquid. Since a planet like Saturn has many moons, those bodies can interact as they orbit, increasing or decreasing heating for a period. As the heat increases, the thick layer of ice covering the moon may begin to melt and thin, then thicken again as the heating subsides.

The Geology of Icy Moons

The researchers investigated the effects of this activity over time. Typically, the ice shell would thin or thicken from underneath. Since ice has a greater volume than liquid water, more water would be squeezed into a smaller space as the ice thickened. This means that the shell would be under increased pressure to contain the water beneath it, which may be a potential explanation for the “tiger stripes” seen on Enceladus.

However, the researchers also considered the opposite scenario, when the shell begins to melt. Surprisingly, this could cause the ocean to boil, the team says. With an increase in relatively low-density liquid water, the pressure beneath the shell would drop. On some smaller moons of Uranus’s Miranda and Saturn’s Mimas and Enceladus, that pressure drop could reach such an extreme that ice, liquid water, and water vapor could all co-exist at the same time.

The ridges and cliffs on Miranda, observed by the Voyager 2 space probe, may be the result of such ocean boiling, the researchers suggest. At a mere 250 miles wide, Mimas is a tiny moon nicknamed “Death Star” for a large, prominent crater that makes it reminiscent of the space station from the Star Wars films. Although observations suggest that Mimas is geologically dead, a wobble in the moon’s orbit is indicative of a subsurface ocean. The strange contradiction of a liquid ocean and geologically frozen surface is reconciled by the fact that its ice shell is estimated to be strong enough that tanning would not crack it.

Cracking the Shell

Larger moons fare far differently. The icy covering of Uranus’s moon Titania would likely experience cracks well before ice melt would allow water to reach the triple point, according to the team’s calculations. Therefore, the team believes that the surface geology on Titania is likely driven by the thickening and thinning of its ice shell.

The new paper shows how even within a relatively small category of objects within our local solar system, such as icy moons, very different conditions may be present. Geology explains the surface features of planets like our own as they develop over tremendous periods of time. In the new research, it is revealed that geology influenced by factors very different from our own can also explain an object’s surface evolution.

The paper, “Boiling Oceans and Compressional Tectonics on Emerging Ocean Worlds,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on November 24, 2025.

• Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

30-11-2025 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

A secretive US military unit has released a new recruitment video packed with cryptic messages and unsettling imagery.

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne (4th PSYOP), based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, specializes in influence campaigns aimed at shaping how enemies think, react and communicate.

The clip opens on a burning 1980s CRT television that flickers to life with the dancing ghost from Fleischer Studios' 1930 cartoon 'Swing You Sinners!'

Within seconds, the screen jumps to a dark forest where leaflets fall through the trees, followed by shots of soldiers standing among civilians as the words 'We are everywhere' flash across the frame.

The video then appears to rewind to a WWII-era bombing run, showing a plane dropping pamphlets over a crowd below.

A narrator says: 'There's another force applied in combat that we generally don't think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words.'

His gravel-voiced warning repeats: 'We are everywhere. Words are our weapon.' 

The reel ends on the unit's lightning-bolt patch and a pulsing QR code directing viewers to goarmy.com/PSYOP.

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne has released a new recruitment video, with the opening scene featuring a clip from a 1930s cartoon

The chilling tagline of the video is 'We are everywhere'

The video is being hailed as the Army's strongest pitch yet for its influence-warfare unit, designed to attract recruits who can craft viral memes as confidently as they can jump out of aircraft.

It opens with a grainy shot of an old Zenith TV in a dark void, VHS lines rolling as a ghostlike version of Koko the Clown flickers on the screen. 

The cabinet edges glow with animated flames, and faint 1930s jazz plays under a modern beat

The pacing ramps up immediately. Arabic-script leaflets fall from an aircraft. A soldier rides in a tank strapped with a massive loudspeaker blasting distorted messages.

And there is a brief animated segment that appears to show a quill turning into a dagger.

Inside a dim command tent, PSYOP specialists type across multi-lingual dashboards that track sentiment and morale.

The video is packed with unexpected Easter eggs: nods to conspiracy theories, the WWII 'Ghost Army' that tricked Nazi generals, and even a Pepe the Frog GIF decked out in a clown suit. Pepe is a hate symbol by the alt-right movement.

The WWII 'Ghost Army' was a secret US Army unit officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. 

The video shows what appears to be WWII, with bombers dropping leaflets from the skies 

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, specializes in influence campaigns aimed at shaping how enemies think, react and communicate.

Another part of the video conveys the idea of blasting messages to the public as soldiers move through worn-torn towns

Their mission was to deceive German forces about the location, size, and movements of Allied troops. 

They used inflatable tanks, trucks, and artillery to create the illusion of large forces where there were none. 

Soldiers also played pre-recorded sounds of troops and vehicles over loudspeakers to simulate army movements. 

They sent fake radio traffic to trick German intelligence into thinking units were present. Live actors and props were sometimes used to stage fake headquarters.

Their deception efforts saved thousands of lives by diverting German troops from real operations. 

The unit's work remained classified for decades and is only recently widely recognized. 

The 4th PSYOP is known to conduct 'influence activities to target psychological vulnerabilities and create or intensify fissures, confusion, and doubt in adversary organizations.'

'We use all available means of dissemination – from sensitive and high tech to low-tech, to no-tech, and methods from overt, to clandestine, to deception,' the organization's official website reads.

Soldiers looking to join the PSYOP must endure a physically and mentally demanding training pipeline, which starts with a grueling assessment and selection that lasts for 10 days. 

And there is a brief animated segment that appears to show a quill turning into a dagger

Master Sgt. Mathews, the Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) in Charge of the PSYOP Assessment and Selection course, told Task and Purpose: 'We're looking at soldiers who are adept at conducting research to understand target audiences.

'And use critical thinking to determine the best methods and arguments to influence and effectively communicate verbally and in writing using multimedia.'

The first 10 days of PYSOP focus on a candidate's physical fitness, mental resilience, critical thinking, communication skills and sustainability.

Candidates are not just doing physical challenges, but are writing reports, crafting narratives, or presenting arguments, simulating real-world PSYOP tasks.

These individuals also undergo psychological evaluations to determine their suitability for the demanding nature of the operation's roles.

A narrator says: 'There's another force applied in combat that we generally don't think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words'

Candidates who meet the standards are invited to continue with the Psychological Operations Qualification Course.

This includes studying human psychology, sociology and cultural dynamics to design effective influence strategies, identifying and analyzing groups for tailored messaging and crafting messages that align with mission objectives and resonate with target audiences.

During this time, soldiers will test their abilities in dynamic environments, using tactics to confuse and find vulnerabilities within each other.

They also train on the ethical considerations of PSYOP missions, including avoiding manipulation that violates international law or military ethics. 

After the 10-day assessment, soldiers are put through 41 weeks of physically and mentally demanding training, called the PSYOP Qualification Course.

The last few months have seen soldiers learn how to use propaganda and other methods to influence the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of a target audience, often in an enemy territory.

{  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

30-11-2025 om 17:35 geschreven door peter  

A team of archaeologists led by researchers from Binghamton University has combined over 22,000 images of the primary quarry on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to create the first-ever interactive 3D model of the remote site, allowing users to explore its archaeological marvels in unprecedented detail.

Unlike the more famous coastal platform that contains over a dozen Moai statues facing the ocean, the 3D model’s creators chose the Rano Raraku quarry because it contains over 1,000 statues in various forms of completion. The study also found evidence that the quarry was used by several different “tribes” working alongside each other.

“As an archeologist, the quarry is like the archeological Disneyland,” explained Binghamton University Professor of Anthropology Carl Lipo, lead author of the paper detailing the team’s work and member of a previous research team that proved the statues were ‘walked’ into place.

The team hopes their new 3D model will allow researchers to conduct studies in an extremely difficult-to-access area and to attract the attention of curious amateurs who may visit the island in person.

Building the Easter Island Moai Quarry 3D Model from Thousands of Images

According to a statement detailing the effort, the project began in October 2023 after a wildfire swept through the area, prompting locals to implore the scientific community to document the location. The Binghamton-led team, which also included Thomas Pingel and Kevin Heard from Binghamton’s Geography Department, responded by conducting the first-ever in-depth digital documentation of the quarry in January 2024.

Over 30 drone flights, the researchers collected high-resolution images from a wide range of perspectives, including angles unavailable to a ground observer.

“You can see things that you couldn’t actually see on the ground,” Professor Lipo said. “You can see tops and sides and all kinds of areas that just would never be able to walk to.”

Production technique revealed through 3D modeling. Unfinished moai attached to bedrock by “keels” along their backs demonstrate how carvers worked underneath from both sides until figures were separated from the source material. This production stage, difficult to document through traditional methods, is visible in the 3D model.

Image credit: Carl Lipo.

By the completion of the aerial sorties, the team had successfully captured around 22,000 images of the Rapa Nui quarry at 30-meter increments. Pingel said it was amazing how far the technology that allowed the team to collect the data used to create an interactive 3D VR model of the quarry has come in such a short time.

“The quality of this model is far above what could be done even just a couple of years ago, and the ability to share such a detailed model in a way that is accessible from anyone’s desktop computer is remarkable,” the researcher explained.

“The project was of a scale of complexity that had never been attempted before,” Professor Lipo added.

Users who want to explore the model will find a variety of built-in controls and functions, including the ability to zoom in and pan across individual statues and quarry features from numerous angles. Because the Rano Raraku quarry is located within a rugged, steep volcanic crater, the team said that traversing it on foot is too dangerous, making the 3D VR model of this remote location a priceless research tool.

“It has everything you can possibly imagine about moai construction, because that’s where they did most of the construction,” Professor Lipo said when describing the remote Easter Island quarry. “It’s always been this treasure of information and cultural heritage, but it’s remarkably underdocumented.”

Model Could Aid Researchers and Entice Visitors

When discussing the potential uses of their new interactive 3D VR map of the Easter Island Moai statue quarry, Lipo said their model could “open the door” for researchers by providing a three-dimensional replica and allowing everyday people the unusual opportunity to ‘visit’ the island without leaving home.

“We can say, ‘Here, go look at it.’ If you want to see the different kinds of carving, fly around and see stuff there,” the professor explained. “So, it’s really exciting to bring these two things together. We’re documenting something that really has needed to be documented, but in a way that’s really comprehensive and shareable.”

The researchers acknowledge that some locals have expressed concern that such a high-quality map may reduce tourism and eliminate the desire to see the site in person. However, Professor Lipo believes the detail and interactivity with the nearly 1,000 moai in a way previously unavailable will inspire people to go there in person and explore all of the wonders associated with the Island and its awe-inspiring sites, “because otherwise, you’re just seeing sort of snapshots of stuff.”

“What we would really like to do is be able to say, ‘Go visit it yourself. Learn from it,’ the researcher concluded. “This is an incredible landscape of stuff that you could really go visit, that you’ll want to see.”

The Binghamton University team’s 3D model of the Rapa Nui quarry is available to view online.

The paper “Megalithic statue (moai) production on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)” was published in PLOS One.

•  Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

29-11-2025 om 18:45 geschreven door peter  

Triangular UFO Over New Bern, North Carolina – November 13, 2025

A striking UFO sighting occurred in Derby Park, New Bern, North Carolina, on the evening of November 13, 2025, leaving three witnesses stunned. Around 9:29 p.m. local time, a triangular formation of bright white lights appeared silently in the night sky, hovering for only a few seconds before shooting upward at an incredible speed and disappearing from view.Eyewitness AccountAccording to the witnesses, the object had three distinct lights, one at each corner of a perfectly symmetrical triangle. The lights remained stationary for roughly three seconds before the object accelerated vertically, vanishing into the upper atmosphere in what they described as a smooth but extremely rapid motion. There was no audible sound, no visible trail, and no blinking navigation lights typically seen on airplanes or drones.

“We saw a triangle in the sky, and it took off in two to three seconds and disappeared,” one of the witnesses reported. “It was completely silent.”

Visual Evidence

Photos captured during the event show three luminous points arranged in a precise triangular pattern against a dark sky. The lights appear evenly spaced and of similar brightness, suggesting they were part of a single structured object rather than separate sources. No structure is clearly visible between the lights, though the dark contrast hints at the possibility of a solid body blocking the starlight behind it.

This sighting closely resembles other “black triangle” UFO reports that have been documented worldwide for decades — often described as large, silent craft with bright lights at each corner.

Possible Explanations

Skeptics often attribute such sightings to:

• Military aircraft, such as stealth bombers or advanced drones flying under low visibility.
• Civilian drones flying in formation or viewed from unusual angles.
• Optical illusions caused by navigation lights on planes appearing as a triangle against a dark sky.

However, what makes this particular sighting stand out is the rapid vertical acceleration and the absence of any sound or flashing lights, features inconsistent with known human-made aircraft.

Significance

Triangular UFOs have become one of the most consistently reported shapes in modern UAP observations, often associated with silent flight, hovering capability, and sudden acceleration. Whether the object seen over New Bern was an advanced experimental craft or something beyond our current understanding remains unknown.

As UAP reporting continues to increase across the United States, this North Carolina encounter adds another intriguing case to the growing list of triangular UFO sightings that defy easy explanation.

Reported by: Local witnesses at Derby Park, New Bern, NC
Date: November 13, 2025
Duration: Approximately 3 seconds
Number of witnesses: 3
Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Three lights, silent movement, rapid vertical ascent

RELATED VIDEO

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

29-11-2025 om 18:31 geschreven door peter  

Story by Sophie Parker - Wiltshir

The pits were found with geophysics, then boreholes were made to test the sediment.

© Internet Archaeology journal

The discovery of a series of huge Neolithic pits have been confirmed at the Stonehenge World Heritage Site after initial research a few years ago.

The massive pits at Durrington Walls in Wiltshire are set at regular intervals, ten metres in diameter and more than five metres deep.

Professor Vince Gaffney said that as a "cohesive structure" they could be "one of the largest prehistoric structures in Britain, if not the largest prehistoric structure".

The new research has been published in the Internet Archaeology Journal and concludes pits are almost certainly man-made and more than 4,000 years old.

Durrington Walls sits next to Woodhenge in the Stonehenge landscape

© Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Prof Gaffney, from the University of Bradford, explained it would have taken a lot of effort to dig the holes - around two storeys deep - from the chalk landscape.

The horseshoe-shaped pits also link to another monument near Larkhill.

"The circle is pretty accurate. It suggests that people were pacing the distances out to make sure that the pits were aligned at the same distance all the way around as the distance from the henge to the earlier enclosure" he said.

Prof Gaffney said it added to previous evidence that people were counting and applying it.

"They're inscribing something about their cosmology, their belief systems, into the earth itself in a very dramatic way."

Researchers had surveyed 12 sq km (7.4 sq m) of the landscape when they spotted the giant holes.

No longer visible to the naked eye and too big to realistically excavate very quickly, they made narrow boreholes to take samples of the material from the features.

Experts analysed sediment from the pits to date them

© Internet Archaeology journal

DNA extracted from the samples revealed remains of animals, including sheep and cattle.

The samples also helped experts date the excavations.

Dr Tim Kinnaird from the University of St Andrews called it a "super henge" and used a method called luminescence dating: "So just before that sediment falls into the pit, it's exposed to daylight, so we can date the time of construction."

It also revealed they were kept open for 1,000 years: "So that spans changing cultures," he explained.

• Follow BBC Wiltshire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.

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{ BBC Wiltshire }

29-11-2025 om 18:18 geschreven door peter  

By Ashley Strickland

The latest images of an interstellar comet shared by NASA have captured how an array of spacecraft witnessed a flyby that was truly out of this world, revealing clues to the object’s composition.

Astronomers first detected the rare comet, known as 3I/ATLAS, on July 1. It’s only the third observed interstellar object, or ISO, to originate outside of our solar system and pass through it.

When the interstellar comet flew by the red planet in October, multiple NASA missions pivoted from their explorations to capture tantalizing images of the object that originated outside of our solar system.

Stacked images of 3I/ATLAS, taken by the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft, show it speeding at 130,000 miles per hour in September. 

NASA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang

The US space agency released the new observations on Wednesday since it had been unable to share them during the government shutdown.

While none of the spacecraft have cameras perfectly designed to spot comets zipping by at speeds up to about 153,000 miles per hour (246,000 kilometers per hour), astronomers didn’t want to miss what might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“It’s a little bit as if our NASA spacecraft were at a baseball game, watching the game from different places in the stadium,” said Tom Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA. “Everybody has got a camera and they’re trying to get a picture of the ball and nobody has a perfect view, and everybody has a different camera.”

The Lucy spacecraft captured a faint halo of gas and dust around the comet on September 16. 

NASA/Goddard/SwRI/JHU-APL

Missions capture images of a rare interstellar comet

Nearly 20 mission teams collaborated to capture images of the comet, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“Everything we’re learning about the comet is possible because of the distribution of all of the different instruments on our spacecraft with different capabilities,” Fox said. “We’ve even pushed our scientific instruments beyond the things that they were designed to achieve, to allow us to capture this amazing glimpse at this interstellar traveler.”

Ahead of the Martian flyby in September, the Lucy and Psyche spacecraft, en route to study asteroids, and solar-focused missions, like the Parker Solar Probe, SOHO and PUNCH, caught glimpses of the comet in action.

Combining the data from Lucy and Psyche with Earth-based telescopes can reveal more about the three-dimensional structure of the comet and the nature of the dust coming off of it due to the heat of the sun, Statler said.

“It’s a rare opportunity to compare ancient dust from a distant solar system to that from our own,” he said.

3I/ATLAS appears as a faint smudge against a background of stars from the Perseverance rover's perspective on October 4. 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Perseverance rover also tracked the comet as it zoomed past the red planet in October. The orbiter was the spacecraft physically closest to the comet, Fox said.

The comet arrived at its closest point to the sun when Earth was on the wrong side for ground-based telescopes to conveniently observe, but Mars had optimal viewing conditions, according to Statler. “Our Mars assets were able to observe the comet, and also several of our other spacecraft were on the correct side of the sun,” he said. “We could not get this view from the vantage point of the Earth.”

Two spacecraft that will study Jupiter and its moons, Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, and Europa Clipper, will also aim to capture the comet’s movements as it nears the orbit of Jupiter in the spring.

The comet came within about 18 million miles (29 million kilometers) of Mars on October 3. The ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been circling the red planet since 2016, was about 10 times closer to the comet than telescopes on Earth — and it captured images from an angle that Earth-based telescopes couldn’t see. The fresh perspective on 3I/ATLAS enabled scientists to predict the comet’s future path with a tenfold jump in accuracy.

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Solar storms can trigger auroras on Earth. This star’s explosion could destroy a planet’s atmosphere

A multitude of other spacecraft, including the Hubble and James Webb Space telescopes, have also observed the object.

While scientists have been using telescopes around the world to study 3I/ATLAS, spacecraft missions provide some key observational advantages, said Dr. Theodore Kareta, planetary astronomer and assistant professor in the department of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Cameras and instruments on different spacecraft are geared toward various goals and measurements, and they can provide distinct vantage points that might be otherwise impossible to capture, he said.

“Comets are three-dimensional objects, and looking at them from different angles will give us a much clearer picture of not just where they are and the trajectory they’re on, but also how large the nucleus of the comet is and the nature of any structures or patterns we can see in its atmosphere,” Kareta said.

Scientists currently think the comet is anywhere from a couple of thousand feet to a couple of miles in diameter, but they are still refining their measurements, Statler said.

Psyche tracked 3I/ATLAS over the course of eight hours on September 8 and 9 when the comet was about 33 million miles from the spacecraft. 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

A comet’s behavior

NASA officials were also quick to address rumors that have swirled around the comet’s interstellar nature, including the idea that it’s an alien spacecraft.

“It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting and scientifically very important.”

Fox said that NASA’s close monitoring of the comet since its discovery has not yielded any evidence that would lead them to believe it was anything other than a natural celestial object, like technosignatures — a signal that could be created by extraterrestrial life.

“But the super cool thing is not that it’s exactly like all the comets that we see in our solar system,” Fox said. “It’s the differences that are so tantalizing for us.”

Kshatriya said he was actually excited to see much of the world speculating about the comet while NASA was unable to share comment about it due to the constraints of the recent shutdown.

“It expanded people’s brains to think about how magical the universe could be,” he said. “In fact, we want very much to find signs of life in the universe. But 3I/ Atlas is a comet.”

Comparing 3I/ATLAS with more common comets

The comet made its closest approach of the sun on October 30, coming within 130 million miles (210 million kilometers) according to NASA.

A comet that originates within our solar system is like a dirty snowball. Its nucleus, or solid core, is a frozen mashup of rock, gas, dust and ice leftover from the formation of the stars, planets and other celestial bodies. As comets approach stars like our sun, they heat up, forming tails of sublimating material that streak behind them.

The MAVEN orbiter captured the comet in ultraviolet light, spying its hydrogen atoms on September 28. 

NASA/Goddard/LASP/CU Boulder

Because 3I/ATLAS is from another solar system, astronomers are eager to see how different or similar its composition is to the comets they are used to witnessing.

3I/ATLAS has been releasing more carbon dioxide than water, and more nickel than iron, compared with comets that originated in our solar system — something that is still being investigated, Statler said.

The comet has also shown increased activity, which has caused some observers to question whether the object broke apart during its close pass of the sun.

The “jets” observed releasing from the comet can mean there are particularly active areas on the surface of the comet where more material is evaporating than elsewhere, Statler said.

“Comets frequently show ‘jets’ or ’spiral’ features in their inner atmospheres related to which parts of their surfaces are active and releasing gas and dust, so taking a picture of them from one angle only can be challenging to interpret,” Kareta added.

Related article

• 

Astronomers discover two populations of unusual dark comets in our solar system

Now, the object is starting to reappear on the other side of our star for Earth-based telescopes. The object will swing within 168 million miles (270 million kilometers) of Earth on December 19 before beginning to make its way out of our solar system.

The SOHO mission spied the comet between October 15 and 16. 

Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang

“The fact that so many NASA missions have tried observing this interstellar visitor should tell you how seriously we all take this opportunity,” Kareta said. “Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS are fundamentally rare, and ISOs as bright as 3I should be rarer still — this object might very well be the ISO we learn the most about for many years to come.”

While the exact age of the comet is unknown, the object’s speed suggests it is much older than anything in our solar system, Statler said.

“3I/ATLAS is not just a window into another solar system, it’s a window into the deep past — and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our sun,” Statler said.

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{ https://edition.cnn.com/science }

29-11-2025 om 17:08 geschreven door peter  

Since the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered this past July — just the third confirmed object to arrive from another star — astronomers have been closely following its passage through our solar system.

As the icy visitor brightened on its coast toward the sun, the public narrative brightened too, with online rumors casting it as a possible alien spacecraft during the recent 43-day-long government shutdown when NASA could not comment on the object or release new images. Last week, with the shutdown over, NASA held a long-awaited briefing in which it shared observations and early analysis from more than 20 missions across the solar system, assembling the most complete picture yet of this rare visitor — and made one point immediately clear: 3I/ATLAS is of natural origin, not an example of alien technology.

"We very much want to find signs of life in the universe," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said during the briefing. "But 3I/ATLAS is a comet."

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, imaged by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

3) A rare window into distant, older star systems

Scientists say that 3I/ATLAS has likely been traveling through interstellar space for a long time. Based on how fast it was moving upon entering the solar system, Statler said the circumstantial evidence points to the comet originating in a very old planetary system, possibly one older than our own.

That "gives me goosebumps to think about, frankly," he said, noting that 3I/ATLAS may reveal insights into cosmic history that predates the formation of both Earth and the sun.

"It is a new window into the makeups and histories of other solar systems," he said.

4) Intriguing chemical clues

So far, 3I/ATLAS has behaved exactly as a comet should as it warms near the sun, shedding water and carbon dioxide, but with some intriguing twists. Scientists have detected a higher-than-usual ratio of carbon dioxide to water compared with typical solar system comets, as well as gas unusually rich in nickel relative to iron. Both findings are scientifically compelling and worth further investigation, researchers said.

The dust around the comet also shows slightly atypical properties, suggesting its grain sizes differ from those of local comets. One especially curious behavior was the dust was initially blown toward the sunward side before solar radiation gradually pushed it back, a longer and less common sequence than scientists usually observe in homegrown comets.

"We're still learning even about what questions we still need to ask," said Statler. "And this, of course, is the scientific process in action."

Like this article? For more stories like this, follow us on MSN by clicking the +Follow button at the top of this page

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29-11-2025 om 16:47 geschreven door peter  

Navy's 'Doomsday plane' vanishes over the Atlantic during mysterious mission

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A US Navy 'Doomsday plane' has vanished after embarking on a mysterious transatlantic mission.

The Boeing E-6B Mercury was last seen crossing the Atlantic east of Virginia Beach on public flight-tracking systems around 8.30am ET on Friday.

One of just 16 specialized 'Doomsday planes,' Mercury serves as a command-and-control hub for US Strategic Command, the Secretary of War and the President. 

It can also transmit orders to carry out nuclear strikes if necessary.

Flight data showed the aircraft departed Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, and followed a routine southeast path over the Chesapeake Bay, skirting the Norfolk naval complex before heading offshore.

About 60 miles east of the Virginia Capes, its public transponder went dark, a normal practice during sensitive operations.

Once over the ocean, Mercury typically enters classified warning zones, lowers a multi-mile trailing wire antenna, and flies racetrack patterns for four to eight hours while sending secure test messages to submarines and ground stations. 

Turning off its transponder during these operations has long led trackers to report the aircraft as 'gone dark.'

Flight tracking data spotted the plane taking off around 8.30am and soaring over the Atlantic before vanishing from radar

The aircraft, operating under the callsign AFD FE2, followed a familiar route used for TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) missions that keep US strategic forces, including ballistic-missile submarines, connected to national command authorities even during nuclear conflict. 

It came just one day after Thanksgiving, a period when US strategic forces traditionally scale back operations before quickly returning to full readiness.

The 'Doomsday plane' fleet makes up part of Operation Looking Glass, officially known as the Airborne Command Post, which helps communicate with American nuclear forces if ground-based command centers are destroyed.

According to the squadron, its mission is to allow the President and the Secretary of War to directly liaise with US submarines, bombers, and missile silos in the event of a nuclear war.

Boeing built the Navy's fleet between 1989 and 1992.

'The TACAMO airplanes support the Navy's ballistic missile submarine force, providing a vital link to the force from national command authorities,' Boeing's description reads.

'The TACAMO E-6B airplanes are equipped with dual trailing wires that serve as transmitter and antenna, transmitting in the very low frequency spectrum.'

Mercury was built to withstand any large electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear disaster. 

One of just 16 specialized 'Doomsday planes,' Mercury serves as a command-and-control hub for US Strategic Command, the Secretary of War and the President

The US Navy's 'Doomsday plane' conducted five mysterious flights in March. All missions saw the plane leave Oklahoma and circle Omaha, Nebraska

It relies on older analogue technology rather than digital technology, which would be fried by the pulse.

A previous sighting was in March, when flight radar tracked a Mercury leaving Tinker Air Force Base around 9am ET and soaring around Omaha, where Offutt Air Base is located. 

Offutt Air Force Base is a nuclear command, control and communications base that supports national leadership and warfighters.

AirNav Radar, a flight tracker, captured the plane’s path as it circled and weaved in the skies over Nebraska.

The flight tracker spotted three other Mercury planes in the skies on Monday as well.

One of the planes did a shorter trip, circling outside Tulsa and returning to base one hour later.

Another flew south toward Dallas, and the last Mercury was spotted leaving from Maryland.

That flight also lasted no more than one hour. The purposes of the five Mercury flights are unknown.

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{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

29-11-2025 om 15:58 geschreven door peter  

Kan AI ooit echt bewustzijn bereiken?

Key takeaways

De vraag of artificiële intelligentie (AI) bewustzijn kan bereiken, is al lange tijd onderwerp van intens debat tussen wetenschappers, filosofen en technologen. Een recente studie, Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying Objections and Constraints, probeert die complexe discussie te verduidelijken door een gestructureerd model te ontwikkelen voor het categoriseren van de verschillende bezwaren rondom digitaal bewustzijn.

Soorten bezwaren

Het onderzoek erkent dat argumenten tegen AI-bewustzijn vaak overlappen of verkeerd zijn gericht. Sommige bezwaren komen voort uit de overtuiging dat bewustzijn niet verklaard kan worden door louter computationele processen, terwijl andere het principe van computationeel bewustzijn wel accepteren, maar stellen dat huidige digitale systemen niet beschikken over de noodzakelijke architectuur. Weer andere argumenten verwerpen de mogelijkheid van digitaal bewustzijn juist op basis van inzichten uit de fysica of biologie, in plaats van uit de computatietheorie.

Analytische structuur op drie niveaus

Om die complexiteit te adresseren, stellen de auteurs een analytisch kader met drie niveaus voor, geïnspireerd op het cognitieve wetenschappelijke model van David Marr. Het eerste niveau richt zich op bewustzijn als een input-outputcorrespondentie, gestuurd door berekenbare functies. Het tweede niveau behandelt de specifieke algoritmen, architecturen en representatiestructuren die nodig zijn om bewustzijn te realiseren. Het derde niveau richt zich op de bezwaren dat het fysieke substraat zelf essentieel is voor bewuste ervaring.

Dit kader stelt onderzoekers, beleidsmakers en filosofen in staat om overeenkomsten en verschillen te identificeren, met een duidelijk onderscheid tussen argumenten tegen computationeel functionalisme en argumenten tegen digitaal bewustzijn.

Niet-berekenbare functies

Sommige critici beweren dat bewustzijn niet-computeerbare processen omvat die buiten het bereik van Turing-machines liggen, terwijl anderen stellen dat elk computationeel model van bewustzijn te complex zou zijn om op grote schaal te implementeren. De studie benadrukt tevens het belang van dynamische koppeling en suggereert dat bewustzijn mogelijk real-time interactie met omgevingen vereist—iets wat digitale systemen moeilijk kunnen nabootsen.

Algoritmische organisatie

Op algoritmisch niveau draait het debat om de organisatie van algoritmen. Theorieën onderzoeken of symbolische architecturen, neurale netwerken of hybride systemen in staat zijn bewuste toestanden te genereren. Sommigen benadrukken de noodzaak van analoge processen met continue waarden, die digitale systemen niet volledig kunnen emuleren. Anderen leggen de nadruk op synchronisatie en representatievormen die essentieel zijn voor subjectieve ervaring, maar die in de huidige digitale architecturen ontbreken.

Dit niveau omvat ook discussies over belichaming en enactivisme, waarin wordt gesteld dat bewustzijn uitsluitend voortkomt uit lichamen die handelen binnen een omgeving. Volgens die zienswijze kunnen grote taalmodellen, ondanks hun ogenschijnlijke intelligentie, de interactieve eigenschappen missen die essentieel zijn voor bewuste toestanden.

Fysieke substraat

Bezwaren met betrekking tot het fysieke substraat leggen de strengste beperkingen op. Die argumenten richten zich op de unieke eigenschappen van biologische hersenen die digitale hardware niet kan repliceren. Theorieën in deze categorie beweren dat bewustzijn afhankelijk is van informatie die in biologische netwerken is ingebed, de dynamica van elektromagnetische velden in de hersenen, of zelfs kwantumprocessen.

Volgens deze bezwaren zijn digitale AI-systemen fundamenteel niet in staat bewustzijn te bereiken door de cruciale rol van het fysieke substraat. Het onderzoek benadrukt dat deze beweringen eerder op het niveau van natuurkunde en biologie liggen dan op dat van de computerwetenschap, waarvoor nog empirisch bewijs nodig is over hoe bewustzijn in natuurlijke systemen ontstaat.

Evaluatiesysteem met drie niveaus

Om de kracht van elk bezwaar beter te verduidelijken, hanteert de studie een evaluatiesysteem op drie niveaus. Sommige bezwaren suggereren dat machinebewustzijn mogelijk is, mits bepaalde mogelijkheden of architecturen worden toegepast. Andere wijzen op praktische obstakels die bewuste AI onwaarschijnlijk maken met de huidige technologie. De sterkste bezwaren stellen dat digitale systemen, ongeacht technologische vooruitgang, nooit bewust kunnen worden.

Dit classificatiesysteem maakt onderscheid tussen conceptuele, technologische en metafysische bezwaren. Het benadrukt bovendien de gebieden waar empirisch onderzoek de meningsverschillen zou kunnen oplossen, evenals de domeinen die verder filosofisch onderzoek vereisen.

Kader voor bestuur, ethiek en AI-ontwikkeling

De studie sluit af met een bespreking van de praktische implicaties van het kader voor bestuur, ethiek en AI-ontwikkeling. Nu AI-modellen steeds vaker cruciale beslissingen beïnvloeden en op geavanceerde manieren met mensen interageren, is het essentieel het volledige spectrum van argumenten rondom digitaal bewustzijn te begrijpen. De voorgestelde classificatie kan beleidsmakers helpen bij het ontwikkelen van weloverwogen regelgeving, het opstellen van ethische richtlijnen en het ondersteunen van AI-ontwikkelaars bij verantwoorde uitspraken over de mogelijkheden van hun systemen. (fc)

{  Business AM }

29-11-2025 om 15:36 geschreven door peter  

8 Reasons Aliens Exist and Have Visited Earth, According to ‘The Age of Disclosure’ Documentary

Now available on Amazon Prime, the film interviews dozens of officials with 'direct knowledge' of UAP

By Addie Morfoot

The film also includes clips from congressional hearings about UAPs and makes clear that there is major bipartisan support for the proposed UAP Disclosure Act. In fact, Trump or a subsequent president could make a massive impact, Farah says, by disclosing what he says is the truth.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We’re not alone in the universe,'” the director told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

One of the key voices in the film is Jay Stratton, former Defense Intelligence Agency official and director of the government’s UAP Task Force. “I have seen, with my own eyes, non-human craft and non-human beings,” he says in the doc.

Below are eight key extraterrestrial facts put forth in “The Age of Disclosure”:

• Otherworldly vehicles

Transmedium crafts — vehicles that have the capability to operate in space, air, and water — defy all that humanity knows about physics, and have been operating with complete impunity around the world since at least the 1940s, according to the documentary.

• Multi-national race

Since the 1940s, an ongoing arms race between China, Russia and the U.S. was set off by the discovery of crashed UAPs. Each nation, according to the doc, wants to be the first to crack into extraterrestrial technology to reverse-engineer it for human use. But as defense official Stratton explains in the film, “You can’t tell your friends without telling your enemies.”

• FAA involvement

Aviation safety is in jeopardy if the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t track UAPs, the film concludes. (As of Oct. 22, the FAA requires air traffic control to notify the National Tactical Security Operations and the Air Traffic Security Coordinator team of any pilot reports or air traffic personnel observations of UAP activity.)

• Deep, watery cover?

If any intelligence from outside our universe did want to arrive on earth and remain undetected, they would most likely hide out in the deep zone of the ocean, which hasn’t been explored by humans, posits interviews in the doc.

• Giant crafts

UAPs the size of football fields that can travel over 30,000 mph are just a few of the types of UAPs — some can travel 40,000 miles per hour, sometimes faster, and go from zero to thousands of miles per hour in less than a second, according to the doc.

• Humanoid! Aliens!

According to Dr. Eric Davis in 1989 the Soviet Union recovered four bodies of humanoid aliens — extraterrestrials — from a UAP crash site where they discovered an advanced directed energy weapon.

• Uses for good or evil

Similar to artificial intelligence, the film asserts that UAP technology can revolutionize the way we do things – such as provide a clean energy source – or completely destroy everything that we know.

• Does he or doesn’t he?

Information about UAPs is on a need-to-know basis. The President of The United States and the head of the CIA might know nothing about UAP intelligence.

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28-11-2025 om 22:55 geschreven door peter  

100,000 mph 'comet fragment' explodes in green fireball over Great Lakes, eerie videos show

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

28-11-2025 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

Time Travel: From Ancient Mythology to Modern Science

johnblack

Time travel and time machines have been a topic of science fiction and countless movies for many decades. In fact, it appears that the possibility to travel in time, either into the future or into the past, has appealed to the imagination of mankind for centuries. While many may think it is absurd to believe that we could travel backwards or forwards in time, some of the world’s most brilliant scientists have investigated whether it could one day be made a reality.

Research into Time Travel

Albert Einstein for example, concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, and most are familiar with his well-known concept of relativity. That is, that time is relative and not absolute as Newton claimed. With the proper technology, such as a very fast spaceship, one person is able to experience several days while another person simultaneously experiences only a few hours or minutes. Yet the wisdom of Einstein's convictions had very little impact on cosmology or science in general.

• Passing Through the Gates of Time: The Mind, Time Travel, and St Augustine
• Chronicles from the Future: A True Story Kept Hidden by the Masons now Revealed

The majority of physicists have been slow to give up the ordinary assumptions we make about time. However, if time travel really was possible, one can hardly contemplate what this may mean for humanity. Whoever had the power to move through time, would have the power to modify history. While this may sound attractive, it would be impossible to know the consequences of any alteration of past events, and how this would affect the future.

Illustration from the Menologion of Basil II of the Seven Sleepers, a medieval legend about a group of youths who hid in a cave to escape persecution and emerged over 300 years later.

(Public domain)

Time Travel in Ancient Mythology

If we look at ancient texts, we can find a number of references to time travel. In Hindu mythology, there is the story of King Raivata Kakudmi who travels to meet the creator Brahma. Even if this trip didn’t last long, when Kakudmi returned back to Earth, 108 yugas had passed on Earth, and it is thought that each yuga represents about 4 million years. The explanation Brahma gave to Kakudmi is that time runs differently in different planes of existence.

Similarly, we have references in the Quran about the cave of Al-Kahf. The story refers to a group of young Christian people, who in 250 AD tried to escape persecution and retreated, under God’s guidance, to a cave where God put them to sleep. They woke up 309 years later. This story coincides with the Christian story of the seven sleepers, with a few differences.

Another story comes from the Japanese legend of Urashima Taro, an individual who was said to visit the underwater palace of the Dragon God Ryujin. He stayed there for three days, but when he returned to the surface, 300 years had passed. In the Buddhist text, Pali Canon, it is written that in the heaven of the thirty Devas (the place of the Gods), time passes at a different pace where one hundred Earth years count as a single day for them. There are many more references to time travel to be found within ancient mythology.

Urashima Taro returning from the Dragon King's Palace, only to find that 300 years had passed.

(Public domain)

Scientific Research into Time Travel

Probably the most well-known story of accidental time travel is the Philadelphia experiment which allegedly took place in 1943 with the purpose of cloaking a ship and making it invisible to enemy radar. However, it was said that the experiment went terribly wrong – the ship not only vanished completely from Philadelphia but it was teleported to Norfolk and went back in time for 10 seconds.

When the ship appeared again some crew members were physically fused to bulkheads, others developed mental disorders, a few disappeared completely, and some reported travelling into the future and back. Allegedly, Nikola Tesla, who was the director of Engineering and Research at Radio Company of America at the time, was involved in the experiment by making all the necessary calculations and drawings and also providing the generators.

In 1960, we have another interesting case report of scientist Pellegrino Ernetti, who claimed that he developed the Chronivisor, a machine that would enable someone to see in the past. His theory was that anything that happens leaves an energy mark that can never be destroyed (something like the mystical Akashic Records). Ernetti allegedly developed this machine that could detect, magnify and convert this energy into an image – something like a TV showing what happened in the past.

Scientists have long been curious as to the possibility of time travel.

(drawlab19 / Adobe Stock)

Controversial Experiments Related to Time Travel

In the 1980s, there are reports of another controversial time travel experiment, the Montauk project, which again allegedly experimented with time travel among other things. Whether the Philadelphia and Montauk experiments actually took place is still under debate. However, it is common sense to assume that the military would definitely be interested in the possibility of time travel and would engage in extensive research on the subject.

In 2004, Marlin Pohlman, a scientist, engineer, and member of Mensa with a Bachelor, MBA and PhD, applied for a patent for a method of gravity distortion and time displacement. In 2013 Wasfi Alshdaifat filed another patent for a space compression and time dilation machine that could be used for time travel.

• Iranian Scientist Builds Machine That Can Predict the Future
• Chronovisor: The Time Machine That Captured The Crucifixion of Jesus

According to PHYS.ORG, the physicist Professor Ronald Lawrence Mallett of the University of Connecticut was working in 2006 on the concept of time travel, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. At the time, Mallett was absolutely convinced that time travelling was possible. He predicted that human time travel will be possible in our century. Particle physicist Brian Cox, quoted in a 2013 article published in HuffPost, agreed that time travel is possible but only in one direction.

We also have the mysterious story of Ali Razeqi, managing director of the Iranian Centre for Strategic Inventions, who The Daily Mail reported had claimed to have developed a device that could see anywhere from 3 to 5 years in the future. His initial story disappeared from the internet a few hours after it was published.

In theory, time travel is possible, even if it is difficult to comprehend. Has the research cited above brought us closer towards making time travel a reality? If so, we can only hope that the technology does not get into the wrong hands.

• Top image: Is time travel possible?
• Source: rolffimages / Adobe Stock

By John Black

References

RELATED VIDEOS

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

28-11-2025 om 21:38 geschreven door peter  

Unidentified Flying Objects – The Reality, the Cover-Up and the Truth

johnblack

Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs as they are commonly known, have been witnessed by millions of people all over the world and have been recorded in history books, myths, legends and traditions for thousands of years. However, many accounts that are recorded in ancient texts are dismissed as mere myths and legends, while UFO sightings that have taken place in the last few centuries have been classified as misinterpretations of natural phenomena, illusions, or conspiracy theories.

The Reality Within the Mythology of Unidentified Flying Objects

History has shown us time and again that a plethora so-called myths have their basis in reality. It is possible, and indeed likely, that stories and legends were a way for people to explain real—and perhaps perplexing—events using the knowledge and beliefs of their time.

In support of this theory, a number of events described in mythology, which were once considered mere fairy tales, have now been proven through archaeology to have existed. A famous example is the city Troy, which is central to Homer’s The Iliad. Long considered to be a city of myth, Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of the actual site in 1868 elevated it to a place in history.

• What Did the Ancients See? Unidentified Flying Objects that Made an Impact on Early History
• The Ancient History of UFOs and the Oppenheimer-Einstein Report

Nevertheless, the remainder of The Iliad is still viewed as a myth and fantasy without any serious attempts being made to investigate whether or not there may be more truth behind the tale. The same goes for many accounts of flying machines and unidentified flying objects, which we find reference to in countless mythologies from numerous different cultures around the world.

It is common to see people selectively decide what is real and what is not based on the unsubstantiated assumption that ancient people were primitive and had little to no knowledge compared to us today. On the contrary, many ancient civilizations, like the Sumerians, Indus Valley, and Egyptians existed with complex social structures, legal systems, art, astronomy, mathematics, and technology, some of which is still not fully understood today. The Antikythera Mechanism, for example, is a 2,200-year-old mechanical device that is still not completely understood despite  decades of research by top scientists around the world.

Many cultures contain pictorial and written records of flying machines or unidentified flying objects, yet these are usually dismissed as myth and legend.

(CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ancient Astronaut Theory and Unidentified Flying Objects

The topic of flying objects and supernatural beings from beyond our world is one in which we find multiple references in mythology. All of these myths and legends, along with archaeological evidence such as rock art depictions, have created a wave of theories that gave birth to the aptly named ancient astronaut perspective. This theory links all of these ancient references and depictions to UFOs, and posits that extraterrestrials visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistory, influencing the development of human cultures, technologies, and religions.

Unfortunately, there are numerous charlatans who have tried to cash in on this movement for profit or publicity, or who have diminished it with caricatures of little green men, resulting in the ancient astronaut perspective being widely criticized and attacked for its lack of credibility. Consequently, what is in fact a plausible and possible explanation for what we see in ancient art and texts, is now rarely examined by scholars, who fear being ridiculed or having their professional career seriously undermined.

UFO Sightings in Recent History

But let’s leave the ancient past for a while and examine just the last 80 years of human history. Millions of people all over the globe have witnessed unidentified flying objects. Many have been recorded in detailed reports witnessed by police, pilots, astronauts, government officials, pilots, military personnel and, of course, ordinary citizens.

Some of the more well-known cases were witnessed by thousands of people at one time. Historical records make it evident that UFO appearances magnified during and after World War II, including the example of the famous Foo Fighters.

While most sightings can be explained either by celestial phenomena, airplanes, planets, weather phenomena, military exercises, or in some cases drug use or mental instability, there still exists a small percentage that cannot be accounted for by any of these explanations. This is what makes the phenomena important, particularly considering that sightings are frequently reported around military bases and airfields and are therefore, at the very least, a matter of both national security and air safety.

It is an undeniable fact that there are cases of unidentified objects in our skies. It has been acknowledged by the major governments from all over the world simply through the very fact that official research has been conducted on the matter in the US, UK, Russia, Europe, China, South America, and many others. All of this research, in every single case, concluded that there is a percentage of phenomena that cannot be explained.

In recent history, many countries have declassified their UFO research files, releasing thousands of documents through the Freedom of Information Act and making numerous UFO cases available in the public domain. One recently released document from the UFO files in Britain, revealed how Churchill, concerned about the UFO issue, ordered a shutdown of information for at least 50 years to prevent mass panic and the potential to undermine religious beliefs. The document in question was published on the BBC news site in 2010.

By doing careful research on the topic, passing over obvious scam and fake stories, it is clear to see that unidentified flying objects do exist. So the question is not whether they exist or not, but rather, what are they? Are they of terrestrial or extraterrestrial origin? And what is their purpose?

UFOs in art: The Baptism of Christ by Arent de Gelder.

(Public domain)

Unidentified Flying Objects and the Limits of Science

Many prominent scientists have already stated that other civilizations must exist in the Universe, and that it would be statistically impossible for this not to be the case. However, with our knowledge of science and technology today, we cannot yet support the means for interstellar travel. Since we have not discovered intelligent life in our solar system, the assumption is made that there must be no way that extraterrestrials could have travelled to Earth.

However, this argument is of course flawed because it is based within the framework of our own understanding of the universe, and does not take into account the capabilities of civilizations that may be millions of years ahead of our own. It also hinges on the following assumptions:

• We know everything about physics and reality and therefore there is no way that such distant travel can be achieved.
• We are using our means to try to contact other civilizations (e.g. SETI’s attempts to pick up radio or communication signals) and since we don’t perceive any signals of OUR type, nothing must exist.
• We are looking for organic forms of life exactly like us and for planets with the exact same conditions as ours.

It is clear that these arguments show the arrogance of mankind, a mankind that may just be an infant in the Universe. And this is not new. During the history of humanity, in every single period of time, we believed that we knew the truth, only to have it replaced later on by new knowledge. 

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

- (Lord Kelvin, 1901, physicist)

Quantum physics, still a relatively new and unexplored field in Science, has shown that reality could be completely different to what we believe it to be. Powerful telescopes have shown distant planets in solar systems that could possibly sustain life. Theories of wormholes and warp drives have shown that at a theoretical level we could achieve interstellar travel. Yes, we would require incredible amounts of energy to even think of trying to achieve something like this, so according to our standards today it is impossible to achieve, but in theory it can be achieved.

“It now seems quite clear that Earth is not the only inhabited planet. There is evidence that the bulk of the stars in the sky have planetary systems. Recent research concerning the origin of life on Earth suggests that the physical and chemical processes leading to the origin of life occur rapidly in the early history of the majority of planets within our Milky Way galaxy–perhaps as many as a million–are inhabited by technical civilizations in advance of our own. Interstellar space flight is far beyond our present technical capabilities, but there seems to be no fundamental physical objections to preclude, from our own vantage point, the possibility of its development by other civilizations.” 

- Carl Sagan, Ph.D. (Late Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, Cornell University)

Reluctance to Engage with Unidentified Flying Objects

The reason that the scientific community is not dealing seriously with UFOs is because the topic has been extensively ridiculed both by the media and in academic circles, with false information spread everywhere. For similar reasons, military personnel, astronauts, pilots, and other categories of professionals do not want to talk because, either they have been forced to sign confidentiality agreements, or because of fear that their careers would be destroyed. This is why we have seen many examples of death bed confessions.

One such case was with astronaut Gordon Cooper, who told the world about his experience encountering a UFO during his flight in the Mercury capsule in 1963. Before he died he stated: “For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.”

While great efforts have been made to ridicule and disparage anyone who lends support to the existence of UFOs, the fact remains that there are numerous high-profile cases of unidentified flying objects that are supported by solid evidence, and which should not be dismissed.

Recorded UFO Sightings with Extensive Witness Support

Below I present a very limited list constituting strong evidence for the existence of unidentified flying objects in the last 60 years.

• November 1942 – La Incident, Known as the Battle of Los Angeles

It all happened in the early hours of February 25 in 1942. An aircraft flew over LA County that sparked an air raid alert (it was in the midst of WWII). Searchlights and guns were locked onto the aircraft for about an hour. The picture below appeared in the LA Times in a story about the Battle of LA. It clearly shows a night time defensive response to an air raid. The aircraft was not hostile and obviously was not damaged by the attack. The Government stated that the craft they were shooting at was an unidentified flying object.

The Battle of Los Angeles unidentified flying objects incident.

(Author provided)

• December 1980 – Rendlesham Forest Incident, Suffolk, United Kingdom

This incident involved a group of American servicemen stationed at a military base in Suffolk that contained a storage center with nuclear weapons. There had been three consecutive nights of sighting objects in the sky over the base, in some cases shining a light down upon the nuclear weapons storage.

On the third night, approximately two dozen servicemen were sent into the forest to investigate one set of mysterious lights. The men reported seeing a spacecraft on the ground in close proximity to them and three extraterrestrial beings. One serviceman claimed to have touched the craft.

The whole incident was filmed and photographed by one of the servicemen, but all photos and videos were removed by the US military. When the British Government released the UFO files, the Rendlesham incident papers were missing – as reported by the BBC News.

Rendlesham Forest unidentified flying objects incident, Suffolk, UK.

(Author provided)

• November 1986, Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 Over Alaska

In November, 1986, a Japanese crew of a jumbo freighter aircraft witnessed three enormous unidentified objects while flying over Alaska, USA. This sighting gained international attention when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it was going to officially investigate this sighting because the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Anchorage, Alaska, had reported that the UFO had been detected on radar. The unidentified flying objects in this case were tracked on both ground and airborne radar, witnessed by experienced airline pilots, and confirmed by a FAA Division Chief.

Illustration of the object, with the Boeing 747 airplane on the right.

Credits: UFO Reporter

• April 1990 – Belgium UFO Wave, Petit Rechain Belgium

The Belgium UFO wave began in November 1989. The events of 29 November would be documented by no less than thirty different groups of witnesses, and three separate groups of police officers. All of the reports related to a large object flying at low altitude.

The craft itself was of a flat, triangular shape, with lights underneath. This giant craft did not make a sound as it slowly moved across the landscape of Belgium. The Belgium UFO wave peaked with events on the night of 30/31 March 1990. On that night, unknown objects were tracked on radar, chased by two Belgian Air Force F16s, photographed, and were sighted by an estimated 13,500 people on the ground – 2,600 of whom filed written statements describing in detail what they had seen. Following the incident, the Belgian air force released a report detailing the events of that night.

Belgium UFO wave, Petit Rechain Belgium.

(Author provided)

• March 1997 – Phoenix Lights, Arizona, USA

The Phoenix Lights (also identified as "Lights over Phoenix") was a UFO sighting which occurred in Phoenix, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles (480 km), from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson.

Witnesses claim to have observed a huge square-shaped UFO, containing five spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident; he later called the unidentified flying object as "otherworldly."

Phoenix Lights, Arizona, US.

(Author provided)

• October 2004 – Osaka Airport, Japan

On the night of August 30, a cluster of multi-colored lights was seen floating in the sky above Osaka. Several people reported to Twitter that they saw a group of lights forming a triangular shape and flashing green, red and white in the night sky above Izumi city in Osaka Prefecture. The sightings caused a commotion on Twitter after one user wrote: “Everyone in Osaka, go outside! There’s a UFO!” prompting others to grab their cameras and snap up photos of mysterious, luminous and unidentified flying object.

Osaka airport UFO Incident, Japan.

(Author provided)

• November 2006, O-Hare Airport, USA

At approximately 16:15 CST on Tuesday November 7, 2006, federal authorities at Chicago O'Hare International Airport received a report that a group of twelve airport employees were witnessing a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering over Gate C-17.

The object was first spotted by a ramp employee who was pushing back United Airlines Flight 446, which was departing Chicago for Charlotte, North Carolina. The employee apprised Flight 446's crew of the object above their aircraft. It is believed that both the pilot and co-pilot also witnessed the object.

Several independent witnesses outside of the airport also saw the object. According to the Chicago Tribune's Jon Hilkevitch, “the disc was visible for approximately two minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it.”

O-Hare Airport UFO Incident, USA.

(Author provided)

• May 2007, UFO Fleets, Lima, Peru

The incident took place on May 2007 at 14.00 local time in Lima, Peru. A series of moving lights resembling an armada of flying objects appeared in the skies. The story was reported on the news and was seen by thousands of people.

UFO Fleets, Lima, Peru.

(Author provided)

• July 2010 – Xiaoshan Airport, China

An unidentified flying object that disrupted air traffic in Hangzhou for an hour on Wednesday, 10th of July 2010. A flight crew preparing for descent first detected the object around 8:40 p.m. and notified the air traffic control department. Aviation authorities responded within minutes, grounding outbound flights and diverting inbound ones to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi. Eighteen flights were affected.

A spokesman from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) confirmed to ABC News that the matter is under investigation. He declined to disclose further details. A day after the sighting, however, an anonymous source told China Daily that authorities already discovered the identity of the UFO after an investigation but could not publically disclose the information because “there was a military connection.”

Xiaoshan Airport UFO Incident, China.

(Author provided)

• the "Tic Tac" UFO sighting by Navy pilots in 2004

Retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor was commander of the F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz when he says he spotted the object during a flight off the coast of Southern California on Nov. 14, 2004. 

In a 2021 interview with "60 Minutes," Fravor, a graduate of the Top Gun naval flight school, also spoke about what he saw. 

He and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich were training with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group about 100 miles southwest of San Diego, Favor told "60 Minutes." At the time, advanced radar on a ship that was a part of their training group, the USS Princeton, detected what operators called "multiple anomalous aerial vehicles" over the horizon, descending 80,000 feet in less than a second. Fravor and Dietrich diverted to investigate.

"I said, 'Dude, do you, do you see that thing down there?' And we saw this little white Tic Tac-looking object. And it's just kind of moving above the whitewater area," Fravor told "60 Minutes."

During the training exercise, Fravor and Dietrich each had a weapons system officer in the back seat of their F/A-18F. 

"There was four of us in the airplanes literally watching this thing for roughly about five minutes," Fravor said in his 2021 interview.

Fravor went in for a closer look. He described the "Tic Tac" object mirroring his movements, saying "it was aware we were there."

The object was about the size of Fravor's F/A-18F, with no markings, no wings and no exhaust plumes, he said. When Fravor tried to cut off the UAP, it accelerated so quickly that it seemed to disappear. He said it was detected roughly 60 miles away less than a minute later.

Implications of Disclosing Information about Unidentified Flying Objects

Many would say that the above examples constitute irrefutable proof that extraterrestrial UFOs exist. So why isn’t the public told about it? Imagine the implications that disclosure would have and what it would mean. Acknowledgment of extra-terrestrial civilizations having visited Earth would mean that many of the myths and legends of the past are in fact based on reality.

Disclosure would suggest that humanity has been influenced for millennia by other-worldly beings, beings that in the past were considered gods. Disclosure would entirely topple the status quo and the balance of powers in society, and turn upside down what we know about the history of mankind.

• Ancient Artists Left Signs for us to Decode. Did they Witness UFOs?
• What Did the Ancients See? Unidentified Flying Objects that Made an Impact on Early History

The acknowledgement of the UFO phenomena is an event with the power to bring a global revolution in every sector of our lives today – technology and energy supply, communication and environmental concerns, society and religion. Is this what governments and corporations are afraid of – a shift in balance and their loss of their positions of power and control? Or is it that the powers that be are afraid of re-writing our human history?

“When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap.”

 (Dr J. Allen Hynek, Scientific Advisor to the U.S. Air Force)

• Top image: Composite image of unidentified flying objects.
• Source: Author provided.

By John Black

RELATED VIDEOS

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

28-11-2025 om 21:19 geschreven door peter  

How UFO Sightings Are Changing Public Perception

Overview

UFO sightings in the United States have experienced a remarkable increase over recent years, fundamentally altering how the public perceives unidentified aerial phenomena. According to data collected and compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), there has been a significant surge in reports, with the number of incidents quadrupling from 3,500 in 2019 to over 7,500 by 2022. This upward trend is not merely a statistical anomaly but reflects a broader shift in societal attitudes towards these phenomena: more people are willing to report and discuss unusual sightings than ever before.

The data presented by NUFORC demonstrates a year-by-year increase: approximately 4,500 reports in 2020, rising to about 6,000 in 2021, and reaching around 7,500 in 2022. This steady climb suggests a change in the collective mindset—moving from dismissiveness and skepticism toward openness and curiosity. Social media platforms, in particular, have played an instrumental role in this transformation. They facilitate rapid information dissemination, peer validation, and the viral sharing of sightings, thereby normalizing the conversation around UFOs. The proliferation of digital platforms has reduced the stigma once associated with reporting aerial anomalies, which—historically—was often dismissed as frivolous or paranoid.

This evolution in public perception is also shaped by increased media coverage highlighting credible incidents and government disclosures. Previously, UFO sightings were often relegated to sensationalist tabloids or fringe circles, but today’s media landscape approaches the subject with a journalistic seriousness that lends legitimacy to the reports. The shift has fostered a more scientific and analytical approach among the general population, who now see UFOs not just as myths or conspiracy theories but as phenomena deserving of serious investigation.

Government Transparency

A pivotal element in the changing narrative around UFOs is the role played by government disclosure and transparency initiatives. Historically, government agencies have maintained a stance of secrecy regarding UFO investigations, often dismissing sightings or classifying data as top secret. However, recent developments have marked a significant departure from that tradition, contributing to a more open and investigatory approach.

In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) took a major step by releasing a comprehensive analysis of 144 unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) cases. This report acknowledged that many of these cases could not be readily explained using known technology, natural phenomena, or atmospheric conditions. Dr. Elena Ramirez, a senior researcher at the Center for Aerospace Studies, described this development as a “watershed moment” in UFO discourse. She explained that the report’s acknowledgment of unexplained cases constitutes official recognition that some encounters require serious scientific scrutiny—not dismissive skepticism.

The ODNI report was complemented by congressional hearings that brought UAP data into the legislative spotlight, emphasizing the importance of transparency. These hearings featured testimony from military personnel, scientists, and intelligence officials, who described encounters with unidentified objects exhibiting capabilities beyond current human technology. Such high-level exposure has been instrumental in legitimizing the subject among policymakers and the public alike.

"What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are."

— Barack Obama, Former US President

This newfound transparency has altered the narrative by creating an environment where discussions about UFOs are no longer taboo. Instead, they are debated openly within government institutions and research communities. Furthermore, the acknowledgment of unexplained sightings has begun to influence the funding allocation for dedicated research projects, fostering a scientific approach to studying UAPs. As a result, behaviors once considered fringe or paranoid are increasingly viewed through a lens of rational inquiry.

The UFO report was written by a task force set up by the US Department of Defence

Public Curiosity and Survey Findings

Public curiosity about UFOs has grown substantially, a trend reflected in recent polling data and surveys conducted by reputable research organizations. The Pew Research Center’s recent poll revealed that 56 percent of respondents believe that some UFO sightings may involve advanced, possibly extraterrestrial, technology. Conversely, only 22 percent attribute these sightings solely to misidentifications, hoaxes, or natural phenomena, highlighting a shift toward openness to the possibility of genuine unknowns.

Interestingly, the remaining 22 percent of respondents expressed uncertainty, indicating a nuanced view that neither fully dismisses nor fully accepts the phenomena. This indecision underscores an evolving understanding—people are increasingly willing to entertain the hypothesis that some sightings may involve elements beyond current scientific explanation but are hesitant to jump to conclusions.

Sociologist Dr. Marcus Lee from the University of Arizona notes that people are no longer afraid to openly claim they saw something strange in the sky. The survey data suggests a societal move away from outright skepticism toward an inquisitive, evidence-based mindset. This is further evidenced by increased participation in UFO-related forums, social media groups, and citizen science initiatives aimed at collecting and analyzing data on aerial anomalies.

The public’s appetite for information is also reflected in the rising popularity of UFO documentaries, podcasts, and streaming series. Programs such as “UFOs: The Untold Truth” and podcasts like “The Cosmic Frontier” feature eyewitness interviews, declassified military footage, and expert analyses, nurturing a culture of curiosity and critical inquiry. These media outlets serve as a feedback loop that amplifies public interest and reinforces the legitimacy of UFO investigations.

The democratization of information through online platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit has democratized the reporting process. Witnesses, enthusiasts, and amateur researchers can now share their observations instantly, challenge official narratives, and collaborate on investigations. This grassroots involvement further shifts the perception from ridicule to respectability, encouraging more people to come forward with their experiences.

UFO sightings have happened all over the world, including Rendlesham forest in Suffolk in 1980

Media Influence and Cultural Evolution

The role of media in shaping public perception has been transformative. Historically, UFO sightings were often ridiculed or dismissed, but today they are increasingly viewed through a lens of scientific curiosity. Documentaries, podcasts, independent YouTube channels, and streaming series have elevated the discussion, providing both entertainment and education.

For example, series such as “UFOs: The Untold Truth” combine eyewitness testimonials, meteorological data, and classified military footage to paint a nuanced picture of aerial phenomena. Podcasts like “The Cosmic Frontier” feature interviews with scientists, military personnel, and former government officials, fostering a more informed and open debate. These media outlets have helped break down stereotypes that previously associated UFO sightings with paranoia or hoaxing.

In parallel, social media platforms have democratized information dissemination, creating a participatory environment where anyone can share their sightings and insights. TikTok videos showing inexplicable lights or objects in the sky have gone viral, sparking widespread discussion and even inspiring scientific interest. Twitter threads and Reddit forums dedicated to UFOs foster communities of enthusiasts who analyze data and challenge official explanations.

The public only became aware of their sightings four years later. That’s when The New York Times published an article about them. The online article included leaked video recorded by cameras on the Navy planes. In April 2020, the U.S. Navy confirmed those videos were real — and then officially released them.

In recent years, these and other very credible sources have reported seeing UFOs — unidentified flying objects. Now they’re called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, or UAP. But whatever you call them, the U.S. government has lately begun taking these mystery objects seriously. Very seriously. And it’s recruited a lot of scientists to investigate what’s behind them (albeit quietly).

We still don’t know what the pilots and others have seen. But here’s what’s motivated the new and growing scientific interest in them.

This cultural evolution—driven by widespread media consumption—has helped dissolve the “laugh-it-off” attitude that historically surrounded UFO reports. Instead of being dismissed or ridiculed, witness accounts are now regarded as valuable data points that could unlock new scientific understanding. The shift from ridicule to curiosity represents a major change in societal attitudes, one that encourages both public engagement and serious scientific inquiry.

Outlook and Ongoing Research

The convergence of increased reporting, government acknowledgment, and cultural curiosity signals a new era of research and exploration into the mysterious phenomena. Several initiatives are underway globally—both academic and private—that aim to scientifically analyze UAPs and their implications.

Universities are establishing dedicated research labs focused on UAP analysis. These labs employ advanced sensors, data analytics, and collaboration with government agencies to capture high-resolution, multi-spectral data of aerial phenomena. Private aerospace firms, with interests in both civilian and military applications, are investing heavily in sensor technology, including radar, lidar, and infrared cameras, to detect and analyze unexplained objects.

While skepticism remains—many sightings can still be attributed to conventional explanations such as drones, optical illusions, atmospheric phenomena, or misidentifications—the broader willingness to explore these phenomena scientifically marks a cultural shift. The scientific community is increasingly open to considering UAPs as legitimate objects of study, leading to the development of new hypotheses and experimental approaches.

Some researchers advocate for the integration of UAP data into a broader scientific framework, emphasizing systematic data collection and peer-reviewed research. Governments and private institutions are funding projects that aim to compile databases of sightings, sensor data, and radar returns to facilitate rigorous analysis.

Dr. Elena Ramirez emphasizes that whether the ultimate conclusion points to extraterrestrial origins or domestic terrestrial technologies, the key achievement is that these phenomena are now on the scientific agenda. The emphasis is shifting from sensationalism to methodical investigation, with the potential to yield groundbreaking discoveries about our environment, technology, and possibly extraterrestrial life.

There are a trillion planets in the Milky Way alone. And that’s just our galaxy. There may be more than a trillion habitable planets in the universe, Shostak says. “So yeah,” he adds, “there’s plenty of opportunity for life.” But that still doesn’t mean that aliens have been visiting Earth.

Julia DeMarines is an astrobiologist. She studies how life might evolve on other planets. DeMarines works at the University of California, Berkeley and is a former SETI observer. SETI researchers look for signs of life elsewhere in the universe. They don’t study UFOs. Few scientists do.

Until recently, DeMarines says, most scientists described the study of UFOs as pseudoscience. No surprise, then, that scientists who are interested in UAP have seldom talked about it. They didn’t want other scientists to think they’re kooks.

But that’s changing.

In June 2022, NASA assembled a team of scientific experts. Their mission: Figure out how NASA can help study UAP.

As Bill Nelson, the space agency’s administrator, put it: “NASA searches for the unknown in air and space. It’s in our DNA.” One of the goals of the new team, he said at a news event, would be to “shift the conversation about UAP from sensationalism to science.”

The team made some specific recommendations. For instance, it said NASA should use its enormous body of space data for this study of UAP. And it should work with other government agencies to investigate reported sightings. The team also emphasized that all UAP studies must stay focused on evidence and data.

Avi Loeb agreed. And he wanted to help. Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. “To study those things,” he argues, “is the duty of scientists.”

In 2021, Loeb started the Galileo Project to scientifically investigate UAP. It doesn’t collect stories about UAP. It doesn’t rely on accidental sightings. Instead, it scans the skies with telescopes in an observatory at Harvard.

“We basically take a movie of the sky,” explains Loeb. Then artificial intelligence helps analyze the data. Two more observatories are in the works. Loeb hopes to have 10 eventually. More than 100 scientists are already involved.

More mysteries

Now that science is on the job, what can we expect to learn about UAP and maybe even alien life? One possibility is that science may be able to explain the previously unexplained.

DeMarines says UAP could be due to some unusual weather conditions. For example, spacecraft launched from Earth around sunset can create weird effects. When the sun is setting, she explains, gases expelled by the spacecraft will reflect only that light reaching the upper atmosphere. What’s more, she adds, “They stay reflective for a long time. So it looks unexplainable.”

Or UAP could be an effect caused by light bouncing off communications satellites, Loeb says. And, of course, it could be technology not from another planet, but from another country on this one.

But what about aliens? Could UAP really be alien spaceships?

Garrett Graff is a historian and author. He wrote the 2024 book UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There. While doing research for it, he noticed something people often get wrong when they think about aliens and UAP. “We expect first contact with alien life to be like it is in movies, like Independence Day or Contact,” he says. But in real life, he notes, it might not be that obvious.

Our first encounter with aliens, Graff says, might not be meeting them. It might be finding remnants of their tech.

For example, we might find a piece of space trash that doesn’t come from our world. Graff compares this to spotting an empty plastic bag blowing through our cosmic backyard. We look at it and think: “That’s not from our Walmart.” We’ll know it didn’t originate on Earth, but we won’t know where it did come from.

One reason we may not see the aliens themselves is that they may no longer exist. In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake came up with a way to estimate how many alien societies could be broadcasting signals. It’s called the Drake Equation. It accounts for several factors. These include the rate at which stars form and the number of planets with an environment that might support life — the “Goldilocks zone.”

But the last factor in Drake’s equation is very interesting, says DeMarines. It’s represented by the letter “L.” That stands for the length of time technological civilizations produce signs of their existence. These could be radio waves, pollution from industry or even city lights. 

DeMarines points out that our civilization has been technologically advanced for little more than 100 years. And that’s in a universe that’s almost 14 billion years old. Her point is that the timing might not overlap. There may have been many other civilizations like ours. And there may be many more to come. But the chances that ours and theirs occur at the same time aren’t terribly good, she says.

Shostak, however, thinks it won’t be long until we find alien life, or at least evidence that it’s out there somewhere. “There have been 10,000 generations of Homo sapiens,” he says. “And the people reading this article are probably members of the first one in which we learn that there’s life in outer space.”

So what about UAP? Is there evidence that alien life is visiting Earth? Science is on the case.

In conclusion, the changing landscape of UFO sightings—from an era of rumor, ridicule, and secrecy to one of openness, scientific curiosity, and governmental transparency—reflects a profound societal transformation. This evolution not only reshapes public perception but also paves the way for advancements in research, policy, and understanding of the universe beyond our current knowledge.

{ PETER2011 }

28-11-2025 om 18:47 geschreven door peter  

Overview

A high-stakes wager has brought together two prominent figures in the scientific community, pitting renowned Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb against professional skeptic Michael Shermer in a $1,000 bet over the discovery of extraterrestrial life by the end of the decade. The terms of their agreement, registered on the Long Now Bets platform, require ironclad scientific confirmation of alien intelligence by December 31, 2030. The outcome promises to either validate growing optimism in the search for life beyond Earth or reinforce skepticism rooted in decades of unfulfilled predictions.

The Terms of the Bet

The wager is more than a friendly challenge: the rules are explicit and stringent. For a win, at least two out of three major scientific organizations—NASA, the National Science Foundation, or the American Astronomical Society—must officially confirm the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. As the video explains, “It’s not enough for someone to claim they saw a UFO or post a blurry video online. The victory requires irrefutable data signed off by major scientific bodies.” The criteria for discovery are broad, encompassing anything from “physics-defying artifacts” to interstellar technology fragments or even alien biological forms found on Earth, so long as their non-human origin is indisputable.

This careful standard aims to avoid the endless debates that often follow ambiguous sightings or unofficial announcements: “Either the science signs off with irrefutable data, or nothing happens.” The burden of proof lies heavily on those, like Loeb, who believe contact is imminent—a silence from the cosmos by 2030 would hand victory to the skeptics.

Harvard Astronomer Takes Up Skeptic Publisher’s $1,000 Bet on Alien Disclosure by 2030

Competing Visions: Optimism vs. Skepticism

Avi Loeb’s optimism is grounded in emerging technology and recent discoveries. He cites the significant advances in observational equipment—such as the Rubin Observatory and the Galileo Project’s global telescope network—as game-changers in the hunt for alien technosignatures. Loeb references the discovery of interstellar objects like Oumuamua and the mysterious “TR,” which reignited scientific debate about visitors from beyond our solar system. His statistical argument is compelling: with a galaxy full of ancient, potentially life-bearing systems, “civilizations had billions of years to send probes, and we may finally have the tools to detect their cosmic messages.”

On the other side stands Michael Shermer, whose skepticism is shaped by a long history of unmet predictions. Shermer has witnessed “decades of people promising imminent alien disclosure that never materializes,” leading him to dismiss the current wave of enthusiasm as another cycle of excitement without evidence. He is notably critical of recent U.S. congressional hearings on UFOs, where, despite dramatic testimonies, “no hard evidence is ever produced, only claims of secrecy and threats.” For Shermer, the wager is a challenge to believers: if they are so certain of impending disclosure, they should be willing to back it up with real stakes.

The Scientific Tradition of Wagers

The Loeb-Shermer bet is the latest in a long tradition of scientists settling debates through wagers. Such bets date back to the 19th century, with notable examples like Alfred Russel Wallace’s successful wager proving the Earth’s curvature against a flat-earther, and Stephen Hawking’s famous bet on black holes. These challenges are seen as a way to inject accountability and a sense of fun into profound scientific disagreements, while also pushing both sides to clarify the terms and standards of proof.

Implications for Science and Society

Beyond the personal stakes, the Loeb-Shermer bet reflects the broader tension in astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence: how to balance open-minded inquiry with rigorous scientific standards. Whether or not the coming years produce a breakthrough, the wager underscores the need for extraordinary evidence in support of extraordinary claims—a principle that remains at the heart of scientific progress. As the countdown to 2030 begins, the world will be watching to see whether the cosmos finally yields its secrets, or if humanity must wait a little longer for definitive proof that we are not alone.

{   https://usubjects.com/  }

28-11-2025 om 18:12 geschreven door peter  

28-11-2025 om 18:00 geschreven door peter