Polaire vortex breekt, maar laat ons nog met rust

De wervelwinden tienduizenden meters hoog boven de Noordpool hebben zich opgebroken in drie afzonderlijke wervels. De Oostkust van de Verenigde Staten heeft daar de eerste gevolgen al van gevoeld, zo schrijft de Washington Post, en hun experten voorspellen ook voor Europa extreme koude.

De splitsing van de polaire vortex betekent immers dat de grote luchtstromen die gewoonlijk van oost naar west stromen, lichtjes verschuiven richting het noorden en zuiden. Dat betekent dat koude poollucht makkelijker richting Europa getrokken wordt.

Voorlopig lijkt het er echter niet op dat de poolwervel ons veel schade zal berokkenen. Weerman Frank Deboosere ziet de temperaturen de komende weken niet al te fel meer dalen. ‘Overdag blijven de temperaturen net boven het vriespunt, alleen ’s nachts duiken we eronder.’ In de nacht van vrijdag op zaterdag en de nacht erna kan het zelfs vriezen met temperaturen tot -7 graden.

Daarna wordt het weer wat warmer met dinsdag kans op sneeuwbuien en woensdag kans op winterse neerslag.

{ http://www.standaard.be/ }

18-01-2019 om 23:47 geschreven door peter  

What’s Really Affecting Climate Change & How Can We Fix It?

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report foretells an inhospitable Earth unless we drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Globally, people are already subjected to hardships caused by extreme weather events, such as blizzards, droughts, floods, hurricanes and wildfires. Combined with the havoc overpopulation creates on finite disaster recovery resources, these problems are going to get significantly worse without immediate action.

Climate change is a natural event unnaturally exacerbated by humans, especially since the industrial revolution. There are dozens of high-profile causes such as agriculture, fossil fuel powered manufacturing plants and deforestation. However, the main culprits are 100 fossil fuel companies.

Outside of political intervention or attacking these companies’ bottom lines, it’s unlikely we’ll effectively curb that 71 percent. However, there are meaningful methods we can use to address the other 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

1. Grow More Trees

Every minute, about 27 football pitches’ worth of forests are destroyed, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. The blatant destruction of forests, grasslands and mangroves creates significant amounts of greenhouse gases while simultaneously reducing nature’s capacity for capturing and storing CO2 and methane. The solution is simple: stop rampant deforestation and plant more trees.

The consequences of planting more trees are significant. Like most photosynthesizers, trees offer carbon sequestration and storage. With enough trees, we can achieve 37 percent of the greenhouse gas reduction target by 2050. That’s because one tree stores nearly 48 pounds of carbon dioxide in one year, according to a recent study by Scientific American. Furthermore, forests can store enough carbon dioxide emissions to equal the entire CO2 output of countries like Peru and Colombia, the Scientific American article states.

Image in public domain.

2. Carbon Capture Storage

Carbon capture storage is a necessary method to achieve the global greenhouse gas reductions needed by 2050. With carbon capture facilities, we can achieve 14 percent of the IPCC’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. That’s because carbon capture allows industrial manufacturers to prevent more than 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions from being ejected into the atmosphere.

3. Green Cities

By 2050, medium-to-large cities will likely contain two-thirds of the planet’s human population, according to a National Geographic article. Currently, urban areas account for 76 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions, with buildings being responsible for approximately one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, the article states. These figures are likely to get worse as the population huddles together. However, cities committed to transitioning toward 100 percent renewable energy sources, such as San Diego, can significantly reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Plus, the National Geographic article theorizes that cities that “go green” and tackle climate change initiatives will also reduce pollution, improve infrastructure, and make their cities more attractive to residents and businesses. These energy renovations include solar panels, growing roof gardens, incentivizing electric and hybrid vehicles, and retrofitting buildings with triple pane windows and energy-efficient HVAC systems.

4. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection

A controversial climate change solution is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). Most climate solutions target CO2 at its source to prevent greenhouse gases from clogging Earth’s atmosphere.

Stratospheric aerosol injection takes the opposite approach by focusing on preventing solar radiation from warming the planet. The practice mimics what happens after strong volcanic eruptions, like the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.

During an eruption, sulfur dioxide spews into the stratosphere and reflects sunlight back into space. In the aftermath of Pinatubo’s eruption, the Earth cooled by about 0.5°C.

The natural scenarios of SAI are limited in scope and scale, making it difficult to predict how a wide scale implementation would affect the world. For example, a Dezeen report points out that implementing SAI in one area improperly can trigger rain and extreme weather conditions in neighboring territories.

Despite these concerns, SAI has a high predicted success rate and the international climate research community is considering its implementation.

5. Eat Less Meat

Eat more veggies!

At an industrial scale, livestock production is among the largest culprits related to greenhouse gas emissions, air quality degradation, waterway pollution, deforestation and land use, according to the study “options for keeping the food system within environmental limits,” which is published in the journal Nature.

The study states that western countries must cut beef consumption by 90 percent to stave off the ill effects the agriculture industry has on climate change. In the average Western diet, meat and dairy provide 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein, according to a report by The Guardian. To produce enough livestock to meet this demand requires 83 percent of farmland and produces 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. However, by replacing meat with beans and legumes, we can drastically reduce the required agricultural resources while preventing more CO2 emissions than the entire transportation industry combined.

Climate change affects every single person on the planet. Soon, it’ll affect nearly every aspect of our lives. An unwelcoming climate affects access to clean air and water and harms biodiverses ecosystem that provide us with food. Add in overpopulation, deforestation and weak-willed politicians and we’re in for a challenging fight — but the fight can be won.

We each must make difficult sacrifices to promote a green lifestyle and hold toxic companies and governments accountable. Together, we can create a sustainable world. Our future depends on it.

• This is a guest post by Morgen Henderson.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

18-01-2019 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

Has the invasion begun? Mysterious blips appear over South Florida, US

18-01-2019 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

Of all the lasting themes that have remained prevalent in science fiction over the last century, what would the genre have been without ray guns, lasers, and “death rays”?

One might even argue that lasers have been a part of science fiction as we know it today since the very beginning, or close to it, at least. Some argue that the creation of science fiction harkens all the way back to Mary Shelly’s eerie tale of reanimation, Frankenstein, while others claim that better “early” examples of the genre appeared in the writing of American authors like Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote what are among the earliest stories that incorporated space travel and journey to locations like the Moon.

However, if ever there were a “Shakespeare of Science Fiction,” as some have argued, it might have been H.G. Wells, whose contributions to literature included everything from the first non-anthropomorphic aliens (as well as what may be the earliest use of the word “extraterrestrial” in reference to an alien craft), to the “heat rays” wielded by the Martian antagonists in his War of the Worlds. And, with the appearance of these directed-energy weapons in his story, we also have one of the earliest appearances of lasers or “death rays” in science fiction

It would not be the last, of course. After humanity fumbled their way to triumph over its Martian invaders (with a helping hand from a few friendly terrestrial viruses), later fiction cast these futuristic weapons in the hands of human characters the likes of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and other characters.

Ryan Lambie, writing for Den of Geek, argues that it wasn’t until decades later in the 1950s and 60s that the laser truly claimed its place in science fiction, in part thanks to the real-world development of laser technologies in various industries: 

The production of ray guns of all kinds reached its zenith in the 50s and 60s. Real-world scientific breakthroughs in laser (“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”) and maser (“microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”) saw numerous kinds of ray-gun appear in the sci-fi movies and shows of these decades, which no doubt fed back into the popularity of the huge armory of toy weapons that appeared around the same time.

The trend continues today, of course, with laser weaponry remaining an indelible part of the fictional Star Wars universe, along with other fantastic interpretations of alternate futuristic realities.

Lasers used for weaponry exist in real life too, but nothing like what we see in science fiction. I recently caught up with Jeff Hecht, author of Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon and a fellow of the Optical Society of America. As Hecht puts it, in the early days finding practical uses for lasers may have been more challenging than actually building the lasers themselves:

“At the very beginning, the running joke was, ‘the laser is a solution in search of a problem.’ They would say that because a lot of the problems the laser was supposed to solve didn’t just go away when you brought in a laser and applied it; you had to do a lot of good engineering to make them work. And we’ve had a lot of good engineering, and certainly for telecommunications, the pairing of the advances in lasers and fiberoptics and the advances in electronics, are behind the whole information technology advance. You can’t have one without the other.”

An example of an operational laser system in use by the U.S. Navy.

Of course, most of the lasers in use today have nothing to do with weaponry, and finding ways to concentrate a beam with strength comparable to what we see in science fiction seems a ways off, too. However, that doesn’t mean that lasers haven’t been useful in terms of making existing weapons more deadly. Hecht says that even in the early years of laser innovation, “what they were looking at was using lasers, at first, just to measure the range to a target–how long does it take to get back and forth–that’s the range of a radar. And then there was a device called a laser target designator, and what that would do is send a series of coded, invisible infrared pulses at a target.”

“If you had an infrared sensor, you’d see this code of reflective pulses coming from something and you could aim a weapon at that ‘something.’ That was how a smart bomb worked.”

So lasers certainly have weapons systems applications, and field tested designs in use by the U.S. Navy, for instance, are capable of disarming drones and other objects at a distance, as was demonstrated in the summer of 2017 with the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System.

Drone being dispatched using a long distance laser system from aboard a U.S. Navy ship in 2017.

While the capabilities of laser weapons described here may remain limited in the present day, this is not to say that someday more powerful lasers won’t still be developed. However, it is obvious that the current state of the art has not caught up with the imaginations of our science fiction luminaries from over the decades.

In short, lasers continue to play an important role in technological development, as they have since the end of World War II. Their influence and relevance to a variety of industries cannot be denied, and yes, lasers even see some practical use in modern weaponry. But despite these innovations, it remains true that the most powerful lasers are the ones on the printed page; so to reappropriate an old adage for our use here, perhaps the pen truly is mightier than the sword… and the same still goes for the laser.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-01-2019 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

An unidentified aircraft seen circling overhead for days has residents of the Canadian city of Kingston wondering if something strange could be afoot. Kingston sits along Lake Ontario at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river a few hours from the major metropolises of Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. For days now, residents have seen an aircraft with “minimal lighting” flying over the city under the cover of darkness. Even more curious, not one law enforcement agency or branch of the military has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the craft. What’s going on in the skies over Kingston?

It’s probably just another one of those shadow government planes again turning the frogs gay with chemtrail magic.

The Kingston Whig Standard reports that the news paper has received multiple emails and calls about the unidentified aircraft. According to Kingston resident Doug Stewart, the aircraft appears to circle for hours in the dead of night:

It’s a mystery. I can hear it at 2 and 3 a.m., and I’ve only heard it after dark at about 6, 7, 8 p.m. Some nights it’s constant … it seems like it’s circling.

Other witnesses have estimated that the aircraft is flying fairly low around 3,000 to 5,000 feet and appears to circle the same area every five minutes or so. Naturally, many Kingston residents assumed that the nearby Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Canada’s busiest Air Force base, was to blame. However, Public Affairs Officer Capt. Graeme Scott reports that the aircraft isn’t theirs.

Many law enforcement agencies now operate spy aircraft equipped with incredibly high-resolution video cameras.

Likewise, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have issued a rather opaque, somewhat passive aggressive statement denying any knowledge of the aircraft:

The RCMP’s primary concern is the safety and security of Canadians. We have multiple aircraft that support our mandate in Ontario and elsewhere in the country. To maintain the integrity of our investigations and operations, the location of our aircraft is not disclosed. We therefore have no additional information to share with you at this time.

With such little information to go on, Kingston residents are left in the dark about the plane circling their homes and who it might belong to. While many see this as an invasion of privacy, deciding who owns the airspace above privately-owned homes has proven tricky for federal governments. Should undisclosed, unidentified aircraft be able to loiter in the sky despite the public’s concern or alarm?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-01-2019 om 20:23 geschreven door peter  

Despite the frequent warnings of both experts in the field and laymen, we continue to march along towards a future dominated by artificial intelligence constructs. For some reason, those with the ability to shape our futures just really want us to become the subservient Terminator fodder of a superintelligent AI hivemind built right into the very fabric of the technosphere. Are we creating our new overlords? Even worse, have already already created them? Could it be possible that we’ve already passed the tipping point and are already controlled by AI constructs?

It’s possible, according to technologist and historian George Dyson, son of theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. Dyson has built a career out of studying the history of science and technology, and believes current trends point to a future in which the machines surely take over. To ring in the New Year in the most depressing and hope-crushing way possible, Dyson sat down with Edge.org to discuss the digital revolution and where he sees it heading. According to Dyson, we’ve already lost control of our most advanced technology and are already following the orders prescribed to us by the machines:

As computers proliferated, the humans providing instructions could no longer keep up with the insatiable appetite of the machines. Codes became self-replicating, and machines began supplying instructions to other machines. […] There is now more code than ever, but it is increasingly difficult to find anyone who has their hands on the wheel. Individual agency is on the wane. Most of us, most of the time, are following instructions delivered to us by computers rather than the other way around.

Think about it: your social media feeds, search engine results, suggested products on Amazon – all of these are curated for you by intelligent algorithms which study your habits even when you put the phone down for a few scant seconds. Ever notice how ads occasionally appear on your phone for things you’ve been talking about within hearing range of your phone? The machines are listening.

Let’s hope they like what they hear.

Dyson goes further, stating that whereas search engines and social media were once descriptive – that is, they were designed to map and index human knowledge and relationships – they have now become prescriptive. Google ishuman knowledge, and Facebook is your social life. When you want to know something, where do you go to look it up? When you want to know what your friends are up to, do you ask them or Facebook? According to Dyson, this shows we’ve already given up control to the machines, or at least those controlling the machines. As those companies give more and more control to their AI networks, though, we’ll see human control removed from the equation entirely.

As early as 2017, technology experts were already warning that there was a dark secret at the heart of AI: we have no idea how the most advanced systems actually do what they do. What happens ten years from now when these systems are exponentially more advanced than they are now? Will all-intelligent AI became the new gods? After all, humankind has always created our gods and supreme beings using whatever media were available to us at the time: stone, ink and paper, big-budget superhero films, and now machine learning algorithms. Will the new gods be as malevolent as the old ones?

Dyson does add a bit of hope, stating he believes we’ll soon see a new “analog revolution” spring up in response to the out-of-control digital revolution. Does that mean angry mobs of pitchfork-and-torch-wielding Luddites will =smashing computers and self-driving cars will become a more common sight?

Man, I hope so.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-01-2019 om 19:45 geschreven door peter  

There was once a children’s book called If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. It was spellbinding little tale about what happens when a mouse shakes you down for your baked goods and you give in. Spoiler alert: he takes you for everything you’ve got. Well, it might be time to update that story, a 21st century reboot if you will. The book could be called something like If You Give A Nerd A Particle Accelerator. It’s a working title.

I’ve been fascinated with CERN and the large hadron collider for years. It’s one of those perfect, real-life-science-fiction endeavors that is just so cool and so terrifying to a lot of people. It’s understandable. There’s a lot of wires and buttons and pipes and tunnels. All of which are intimidating by themselves. Add to that the search for something called the “god particle” and the idea of creating mini black holes, it start’s to look like something that just shouldn’t be. But it is, and we’re still here, seemingly unaffected—unless you buy the idea that we jumped universes the minute they switched it on, explaining why everything feels like it’s gone sideways and the proof is in the Berenstain Bears. If so, you’re right and I’m sorry.

Seemingly not content with the level of fear and fear-mongering they’ve caused, CERN is now looking for funding to build an even bigger, even badder particle collider to sit next to the LHC outside Geneva, Switzerland. The plan for the “Future Circular Collider” (which sounds like what mad scientists call things, but probably just refers to a circular collider that will be built in the future) was unveiled Tuesday, and officials at CERN hope that the 22 member states commit to providing the estimated 21 billion euros that would see the machine completed and operational by the late 2050’s.

“And now we shall smash….the future!”

That’s a lot of time, and a lot of money, but CERN believes it will be worth it. The FCC would consist of a 100 kilometer-long circular tunnel for smashing things together, which is four times larger than the tunnel at the Large Hadron Collider. Not only would the size of the thing be greatly increased, but the energy output as well. Frédérick Bordry, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, says:

“The FCC’s ultimate goal is to provide a 100-kilometre superconducting proton accelerator ring, with an energy of up to 100 TeV, meaning an order of magnitude more powerful than the LHC”

According to CERN’s website, the proposal would provide “tantalizingly more powerful particle colliders that can inaugurate the post-LHC era in high-energy physics.” Whenever physicists start using the word “tantalizing,” that’s a red flag.

The first phase of the FCC project would be the construction of the tunnel and an electron-positron collider that could be operational by 2040 at a cost of 9 billion euros. The second phase would be the “superconducting proton accelerator ring” in the same tunnel, which would require another 15 billion euros and an extra ten years of construction.

These machines just look like the sort of serious business I’ll never be a part of.

Credit: CERN

What will they use it for? The technical answer, I believe, is “blowing stuff up.” Extremely small stuff, but it’s the same basic premise. CERN says that they can’t predict what discoveries the FCC could produce, but CERN Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen gives a much less snarky explanation of the potential benefits to humanity:

“Proton colliders have been the tool-of-choice for generations to venture new physics at the smallest scale. A large proton collider would present a leap forward in this exploration and decisively extend the physics programme beyond results provided by the LHC and a possible electron-positron collider.”

So, blowing stuff up then. Got it. Excuse me, I have a children’s book to write.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-01-2019 om 17:07 geschreven door peter  

The world of law enforcement has a large arsenal of techniques, equipment, technology, and training at its disposal to help hunt down criminals and solve the many crimes that plague society. Yet, sometimes leads go cold, evidence is sparse, and not even all of these resources seem to be able to penetrate the murk, leaving a case to go unsolved. In some such instances police and even the FBI can be tempted to look past their usual repertoire of technology, to go out past known science and attempt to harness the powers of the unknown in an attempt to find answers, seeking the help of those with psychic gifts. Who are these people and do their powers really do any good? Welcome to the weird world of police psychic investigators.

One quite well-known supposed psychic who has claimed to have lent his unique set of mysterious skills to the police and FBI is a man named Troy Griffin. According to Griffin, he first became aware of his powers at the age of 12, when he had a vision of his friend in a car accident and the predicted crash happened exactly when and how he had seen it. Fortunately, no one was injured, and the young Griffin became convinced that he had the gift of clairvoyance, intuition and foresight, which he believed he could further hone with practice and use for good.

In later years he says he found he could discern what people were going to say before they said them, or predict certain events down to amazing accuracy, and he also became aware of another gift lurking there in his mind. As well as being able to predict the future, Griffin claims that he developed the ability to talk to the spirits of the dead, and that it is this ability which would end up making him popular among law enforcement, although it started mostly as a freelance hobby. Among his many supposed successes is the case of a missing woman named Lora Hale Costner, whose sister approached Griffin for help. The psychic would then divine “impossible” information that he should not have known about what had happened, saying that she was killed, how it had been done, and that he knew where the body was. When the sister sent this information to authorities they supposedly found the body exactly where he said it would be. Not only that, Griffin was able to point police to the perpetrator, 19-year-old, McKinley Lane Cody, who was found to have killed her after a drug deal gone bad.

This case and others like it apparently got Griffin on the police radar, and he became a sort of unofficial, unpaid psychic investigator for both them and he says the FBI as well, and he has supposedly worked over 100 cases in various countries such as the United States, Germany, Canada and Australia, mostly called in as a last resort when all else fails and the mysterious case has gone ice cold. Griffith says he has some sort of innate ability to look through pictures of missing people, such as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database and get a sort of psychic “hit” just by looking at the person’s eyes, as if that person is somehow calling out to him from beyond the grave. He says he will get further information when these people subsequently appear to him and talk to him in his dreams.

It sounds rather amazing, and to the families of the victims of crimes he has successfully “solved” it is, but he has also raised his fair share of skepticism. One problem is that the law enforcement authorities he claims to have worked with, including the FBI, have remained silent on Griffin’s involvement, neither confirming or denying his assistance. There is also the fact that by Griffin’s own admission he typically has an 18 to 20 percent success rate, which doesn’t sound really all that impressive, although he defends himself by pointing out in an interview with ABC News, “When you look at murder cases and unsolved missing persons, they’re very few percentage that actually get solved.”

Adding to the skepticism is that Griffin has been very close-lipped about exactly which cases he has worked or which ones were successes and why he thinks so, nor has he provided any proof that he really has ever worked with the FBI and police at all, making it all rather murky. Nevertheless, there are many who are confident in his abilities, and he has managed to make quite a living for himself, charging up to $300 dollars an hour as a freelance psychic or also as a spirit medium, although he says his work on crimes and his police and FBI work he does for free. For his part, Griffin says of the skepticism aimed at him:

I don’t take advantage of people that are grieving. Most are referred to me from what I did. I don’t charge them. I’m not coming with false hope either way. I’m not here to tell you yea or nay. I’m here to help. What I say to skeptics is, if you have never been in the people’s shoes that I walk with, don’t judge or put opinion on it until you really know if it’s real or not. The only way you’re going to know is if there’s ever a day that you need somebody like me. Then you’ll know. Before then you’ll probably never believe in me but the people that I help and walk away with closure moving forward. They’re the ones who believed in me. That’s why I continue to do what I do.

Another psychic detective who has claimed to not only have helped on official cases but also given training and lectures on criminal profiling to police officers, the CIA and the FBI, is profiler Deborah Schurman-Kauflin. She is well-known for her incredibly accurate profiles, which she in part credits her psychic abilities, of which she says in an article on Psychology Today:

I trained thousands of police officers, CIA and FBI agents and interviewed 25 serial killers and mass murderers. I was famous for how accurate my profiles tended to be. Many, many times, shrewd detectives told me I was so accurate it was eerie. There was a reason for that, a truth that I kept secret. I kept this secret because telling the truth about this subject is often taboo. The truth is that I am a psychic medium.

From the time I was little, I had spirits around me. I didn’t think it was strange because I thought everyone did. My family was very open to psychic phenomenon, and my mother’s aunt was also a practicing psychic medium. But even though I experienced things firsthand, like knowing people’s secrets, I was very skeptical. It became harder and harder to hide my abilities when working with police because I’d come up with things I had no way of knowing. And more than one shrewd detective outright asked me if I was psychic.

With her we face the same situation as Griffin, as police and FBI tend to shy away from talking about involvement with psychics, but she claims that these agencies most definitely are willing to use such gifts to get answers in times of desperate need. She also says that law enforcement and psychic prowess sort of go hand in hand, and that the police and FBI believe in these powers much more than they let on, of which she has said:

In law enforcement, it is not something that is widely accepted. However, the majority of detectives who I worked with admitted to going to crime scenes and asking deceased victims for help in solving their murders. I even know a homicide lieutenant who used a psychic to locate a body only to say he’d never admit that publicly for fear of ridicule. The interesting thing is that the best police officers are the most intuitive. They get gut feelings about suspects which later prove to be true. Some have prophetic dreams. How often have detectives pursued something “on a hunch?”

The reality is that people use their intuitive skills every day. You know when you meet someone, and your gut tells you that something is wrong even though the person looks normal? Perhaps something tells you not to take a certain route to work, and you later learn by doing so you avoided an accident. I’m sure many of you have stories of where your intuition saved you from something bad. I believe that those in police work have lots of protection from the other side, so it is not surprising that police can be some of the most intuitive people. Though not commonly accepted in police circles, psychic abilities are being used. With time perhaps people can be taught how to better ‘tune in’ to their own abilities and learn to trust their gut instincts. There is more to this world than meets the eye.

Whether they really believe in or rely on this power or not, and whether they want to admit it or not, state and federal law enforcement certainly do turn to psychics on occasion, although perhaps not as much as many may think, and not typically treating this information as some magical solution. In a 1993 survey on the matter it was found that a third of the 50 police departments surveyed admitted to using psychics, although in most cases this information was not treated any differently than tips from other, more ordinary sources. The FBI also uses psychics, although they typically deny it, and one former senior investigator for the FBI has explained that “psychics may be used as a last resort and as an investigative tool with caution,” although this information is not typically admissible in court. One retired Police Commander named Rick Bruno has also said of law enforcement and psychics:

We didn’t necessarily employ psychics. They sort of came out of the walls. Especially when reward money was set up. But we listened to anyone who might add something to the case. We still do. We had five innocent women murdered in cold blood in a clothing store. They were moms and sisters and daughters whose only crime was to be in the store when a monster walked in with a gun.

We had a hundred detectives working on the case. We even asked NASA if they had any available photos of the exterior environment to see if we might catch a glimpse of a getaway car or the murderer running away on foot. We sent cops to Texas and to England to follow up on leads. We were doing everything we could think of to find that son of a bitch. So when someone would call and say they had “a vision” of who the murderer was, or where he might be found, we listened. And we send cops out there to interview them.

It certainly does not help the case of psychic investigators that unfortunately some of the psychics who have helped law enforcement have been exposed as frauds. Before her death one of the most well-known and talked about psychic detectives of all was a woman named Sylvia Browne, who appeared on countless TV programs such as regular appearances on The Montel Williams Show, as well as news outlets, expounding her abilities and the important work she had done for the police and FBI. Indeed, allegedly had many endorsements from some of these officials, such as that of former FBI agent Ted Gunderson, who said of her powers, “I’ve worked with numerous psychics in the past and very few are really on target, but Sylvia Browne is probably one of the most accurate psychics in the country.”

However, despite this, an eye-opening article in a 2015 edition of The Skeptical Inquirer managed to mostly smash this illusion by digging into her past and scouring files requested from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. This research showed that not only had Brown made many misleading and outright false claims as to the extent of her police and FBI dealings, but also that there were no records of her dealing with the FBI at all. The author of the article explains:

There is no documentation released by the FBI to support the claim that Browne conducted any psychic readings for the FBI, either directly or indirectly. Moreover, Gunderson’s name appears nowhere in her FBI file, and the topics in the FBI release do not discuss working with the FBI. Thus, there is no evidence from the records that Browne was involved with the agency. Assuming Browne worked with Gunderson, it appears to have occurred after he retired from the FBI and when he was investigating aliens, “Satanic” child abductions, and numerous other conspiracies.

In addition, further damning evidence against Browne was her big mistakes, such as declaring a missing girl dead when she was later found to be alive, and she seems to have had just as many misses as hits. It was also discovered that not only had she apparently never worked with the FBI before, but her and her organization, the Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research, had actually been investigated by them in the 1980s for “selling securities without a permit,” and “violations of federal law in applying for loans from federally insured financial institutions.” This in no way means that every psychic detective is a charlatan or fraud, but it certainly makes them look bad, and gives fuel to those who would doubt them. It has been pointed out that these people are merely very good at tricking everyone and feeding off of desperation, grief, and a potent desire for any answers at all, throwing out vague clues and relying on confirmation bias to do the rest. Famed skeptic Joe Nickell does not mince words when he says of their supposed abilities:

What people should realize is psychics cannot do what they claim to do. They have been reviewed by mainstream science, and they can’t do it. If they can do it, let’s see that they do it. It could be defined as ‘after-the-fact matching. In other words, the detectives have a missing person. They assume the person might be dead, but they’re looking to find that person. In comes the psychic, often ingratiating himself or herself with the family, forcing the police, pretty much, to have to pay attention to the psychic. The psychic will say things like, ‘I see water. I’m getting the number 7. I see some sort of tall structure,’ and so on. They call these clues.

Is this accurate? Are these and the many other psychics allegedly helping law enforcement merely frauds feeding off of suffering and strife, trying to make a name off of tragedy? Are their abilities really all bogus? Or are there some who under the right circumstances manage to reach out and touch some force that allows them to see into where others cannot? Whatever the case may be, there are many who believe this phenomenon to be genuine, and as long as there is hope that it could pry open cold cases and unsolved cromes there will likely be people in times of desperation that will seek these psychic detectives out, whether they really believe or not.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-01-2019 om 16:31 geschreven door peter  

A nuclear bomb detonates at Maralinga, South Australia, in 1956.

Source:News Corp Australia

Why would someone want to hide files related to nuclear tests unless there was something in those files they didn’t want to go public? That’s the question many are asking after multiple documents related to the nuclear weapons testing conducted by Great Britain in Australia during 1950s and 1960s. There are many claims made that there are parts of the tests the British and Australian government would like to keep a secret. Who took the files, and what are they attempting to hide from the public?

A photograph taken during Operation Buffalo in which four separate warheads were detonated at Maralinga on September 27 1956.

Whatever it is, it’s likely related to radioactive materials left behind by the tests – although with all of the allegations made about the tests, there’s no telling what’s in the files. The British conducted twelve fairly low-yield nuclear tests in the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia and on the Montobello Islands in Western Australia between 1956 and 1963. As it turns out, of course, many of the tests also created a particularly nefarious type of radiation known as “black mist” which covered the Maralinga area and drifted towards Australia’s more populated east coast after detonation. Many Australian and British service members died after being exposed to the fallout. There have also been allegations made that human test subjects were flown into the site and never flown back out again, and it has even been claimed that people with severe disabilities were used as human guinea pigs to test the effects of the weapons.

What the Maralinga test site in South Australia looks like today.

Picture: Glenn Hunt

Source:Supplied

Maralinga today.

Perhaps worst of all – although testing weapons on disabled people is pretty reprehensible – one of the test sites, Maralinga, was home to the the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal people prior to the tests. They were relocated against their will to make room for the test range, but many of them refused their new settlement and ventured back into the off-limits former test site. Signs warning that the area was a weapons test site were written only in English and could therefore not be read by many of these people, and it has been suspected that some Aboriginal people may have already returned to the site when the test weapons were detonated.  In 2017, the Australian government announced that any indigenous Australians suffering from radiation exposure would qualify for upgraded healthcare.

The British nuke tests were kept a secret from most of the Australian people until journalists in the 1970s began uncovering government documents related to the tests. Public scrutiny grew stronger questions arose over the last few decades over how well the the sites were cleaned of any radioactive waste. While the radioactive waste issue is a probable reason why the documents have suddenly vanished, who knows what else could be in them? A spokesperson for the National Archives from where the documents went missing stated only that the archives were “asked to temporarily withdraw these records” and that they have been reclassified to “access under review.” Of course it remains unclear how long the review will take or how many of the documents will be restored to the public.

Aerial image of the Woomera A-bomb site in October, 1953.

Source:News Corp Australia

Why were these files suddenly withdrawn from public access? What is the Australian government hiding?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-01-2019 om 18:04 geschreven door peter  

Australia Made An Amazing Discovery How To Safe Water From Plastic Pollution

The Australian city of Kwinana has done something during this past summer that many countries have been attempting to do for years.

They installed a new simple, but unbelievably effective, filtration system in the Henley Reserve to help prevent plastic from polluting our oceans. Everyone including the government as well as the citizens have seen first hand the benefits that it can offer.

What is it?

The pipes that were first used in the initial experiments are pipes that drain water from residential areas to natural areas. More often than not the trash and litter from these places can come in large quantities and be harmful to the environment. Furthermore, this garbage is usually washed away by heavy rain which managed to pull it all down to the drainage systems.

The idea started when the authorities installed two nets and then when they saw the results, they were amazed. The new infiltration system managed to catch more than 800 pounds of litter in only a number of weeks.

Is this the future of trash collection?

Although the monetary cost of these nets is quite large - about $10,000 each, the overall system is still quite profitable as it will save significant amounts money in the long run. Therefore, it has been decided that these trash nets will be installed all over the city with the aim to minimize the pollution to the environment and wildlife in the area.

When they get full, the nets can simply be picked up and emptied into special trucks. After that they are taken to a sorting centre where they are separated into items that be recycled and items that cannot. They are then disposed of in their respective manners.

I personally think this is a great idea that has been fabulously executed. This new idea proves that small changes can have huge impacts.

As the population continues to grow and the amount of trash we produce inevitably increases too, could this be the solve the world's pollution problem? Only time will tell…

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

15-01-2019 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

8 bizarre places on Earth where water disappears

From a waterfall that flows into a pothole to a lake that drains into the ground, scientists aren't always sure where water ends up.

LAURA MOSS

{ https://www.mnn.com/ }

15-01-2019 om 21:55 geschreven door peter  

In 1816, something very strange and ominous occurred across the planet: temperatures dropped by around 1.3 °F. That may not sound like a lot, but it was enough to cause significant problems which bordered upon catastrophic, and particularly so across much of the Earth’s northern hemisphere, which is defined as anywhere and everywhere north of the equator. It was a situation which had its origins as far back as the 1300s. That’s when the Earth was subjected to what has become known as the Little Ice Age. While certainly nowhere on the scale of previous ice ages, it still proved to be calamitous for the people who were forced to endure it.

The Little Ice Age – a term created by a Dutch geologist named François Émile Matthes (1874-1948) – was a period of more than a few centuries which resulted in noticeable fluctuations of temperature, which, having begun in the 14^th century, extended to midway through the 19^th century. Much of North America was affected, as was Europe, to the extent that from the commencement of the 15^th century to the 18^th century, London, England’s famous River Thames froze solid on no less than two dozen occasions. In 1683, the huge river was frozen for no less a period than an incredible two months. Norway, Holland, and Iceland were particularly hit hard, too. But, what was it that provoked such disastrous, cold temperatures, ones which led to famine and death on a large scale? The U.S. Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offers the following:

“…climate data obtained from trees, ice cores, marine sediment and historical documents indicate 1816 was part of a mini ice age that lasted from 1400 to around 1860. During this time lower solar output produced harsh winters, shorter growing seasons and drier climates which were blamed for a host of human suffering and crop failures such as the Irish Potato Famine.”

But, other things were afoot, too, as NOAA make very clear: “Another possible cause was the eruption of the Tambora volcano on the island of Soembawa in Indonesia on April 15th 1815. The eruption lasted one week and rumbled for 3 months. The mountain elevation dropped from 14,000 feet to 9000 feet, killed close to 10,000 people on the island and another 80,000 people would eventually die from starvation and diseases related to the eruption. Tambora was one of the largest recorded eruptions with estimates of 1.7 million tons of dust put into the air equaling 6 million atomic bombs. The theory is that the dust reached the Northern Hemisphere during 1816 reducing solar output.”

Science and history have both demonstrated that Ice Ages have certainly occurred – and up to recent times, too, as the story of the Little Ice Age demonstrates. Theories abound, however, with regard to what, exactly causes them. Massive volcanic eruptions, strikes by huge meteorites and comets, and changes in the levels of methane and carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, have all been offered up as potential candidates. What we do know for sure, however, is that over the course of the last one million years alone, there has been more than a handful of glacial events, specifically in the northern hemisphere, and of varying degrees of harshness.

Around 650,000 years ago the Earth was engulfed by massive amounts of ice, with gigantic sheets extending from what is, today, the American Midwest to central Europe. It was a turbulent time for the planet and for the early, primitive humans and wild animals that lived in that era. And it was a long spell of time, too: the glacial period lasted for around 50,000 years. Successive ice ages occurred, of varying lengths and frequency, with the most recent true Ice Age having reached its end around 11,500 years ago, but having reached its peak roughly about 18,000 to 16,000 years ago. And it wasn’t just the colder, northern parts of what are today Europe, Russia, and North America that were badly affected. Evidence exists to show that New Zealand suffered too, as did portions of South America, including the Andes of Chile.

As staff at the San Diego-based University of California – a focal point for research into Ice Age history and development – note: “The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood” We would do well to remember that. Maybe even prepare for such events. Anyone who thinks climate change is nonsense is speaking nonsense themselves.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-01-2019 om 20:32 geschreven door peter  

Unexplained Shifts in Earth's Magnetic Field Imperil Global Navigation

The magnetic field is changing like never before, and scientists aren't sure what to do.

The Earth’s magnetic field has always been in flux, thanks to the changing patterns of molten metals in the planet’s outer core. But a new report suggests that this natural variability has taken on surprising dimensions since 2015. New geologic evidence shows that the Earth’s magnetic field is changing far more and more frequently than usual. It’s not great news news for crucial global networks that depend on its stability, like navigational instruments and satellite GPS, as well as natural phenomena like animal migration, and even the protection we receive against solar winds.

The report, published in Nature on Wednesday, showed that the Earth’s magnetic field is shifting so rapidly and unpredictably that it’s rendering the models on which our lives depend obsolete at a faster rate than ever before. Scientists, faced with the new rate of change, are scrambling to keep up.

Normally, scientists with the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey get together every five years to produce a model of the shifting magnetic field called the World Magnetic Model, which helps technologists, researchers, and navigators around the globe maintain a shared map on which to base their systems. Since the WMM is only updated every five years, scientists build in some room for variability to account for subtle changes that will inevitably occur before the next update rolls out.

But so much has changed since the 2015 WMM came out that the world can’t wait for the 2020 update. As Nature reported, by early 2018 the WMM was already reaching unacceptable levels of error for navigation. Unfortunately, even the short-term solution is in limbo. With NOAA staff furloughed because of the government shutdown, the proposed short-term update is on hold for at least a few weeks.

The 2015 WMM was rendered obsolete almost immediately after it was released. As early as 2016, ESA Swarm satellites over South America showed some of the first evidence that the magnetic field was changing faster than expected. Then, in 2018, a phenomenon in the field between South America and Africa, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, weakened so much that it actually disrupted satellites as they passed through the region.

News of these two events raised concerns that Earth was about to undergo a total magnetic pole reversal, in which the north and south poles fully swap positions and thus wreak havoc on satellites, power lines, ocean currents, and animal migration. Concerns of a complete reversal in the near future have been dismissed as unrealistic, but some geophysicists have noted that the Earth is historically overdue for such a flip. Regardless, the shifts we have seen exceed the level of variability accounted for by the WMM’s wiggle room, making a fix more urgent than ever.

An interim update was meant to be released on January 15, Nature reported, but not long after publication the article was updated to state that the US government shutdown had pushed it back to at least January 30

• Media via NASA, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA, Flickr / Astro_Alex

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

15-01-2019 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Questions and Answers - THE ALLIES OF HUMANITY

BY MARSHALL VIAN SUMMERS

SIXTH BRIEFING

We feel that it is important, given the information that we have provided thus far, to respond to questions that must surely arise regarding our reality and the significance of the messages that we have come to give.

“Given the lack of hard evidence, why should people believe what you are telling them about the Intervention?”

First, there must be great evidence concerning the visitation to your world. We have been told that this is the case. Yet we have also been told by the Unseen Ones that people do not know how to understand the evidence and that they give it their own meaning—a meaning that they prefer to give it, a meaning that provides comfort and reassurance for the most part. We are certain that there is adequate evidence to verify that the Intervention is occurring in the world today if one takes the time to look and to investigate this matter. The fact that your governments or religious leaders do not reveal such things does not mean that such a great event is not occurring in your midst.

“How can people know that you are real?”

Regarding our reality, we cannot demonstrate our physical presence to you, and so you must discern the meaning and the import of our words. At this point, it is not merely a matter of belief. It requires a greater recognition, a Knowledge, a resonance. The words we speak we believe are true, but that does not assure that they can be received as such. We cannot control the response to our message. There are people who require more evidence than can possibly be given. For others, such evidence will not be necessary, for they will feel an inner confirmation.

In the meantime, perhaps we remain a controversy, and yet we hope and we trust that our words can be considered seriously and that the evidence that does exist, which is substantial, can be gathered and understood by those who are willing to give this their effort and their focus in life. From our perspective, there is no greater problem, challenge and opportunity to receive your attention.

Therefore, you are at the beginning of a new understanding. This does require faith and self-reliance. Many will reject our words simply because they do not believe that we could possibly exist. Others perhaps will think that we are part of some manipulation that is being cast upon the world. We cannot control these responses. We can only reveal our message and our presence in your life, however removed that presence may be. It is not our presence here that is of paramount importance, but the message that we have come to reveal and the greater perspective and understanding that we can provide for you. Your education must begin somewhere. All education begins with the desire to know.

We hope that through our discourses we can gain at least part of your confidence in order to begin to reveal what we are here to offer.

“What do you have to say to those who view the Intervention as a positive thing?”

We understand, first of all, the expectation that all forces from the heavens are related to your spiritual understanding, traditions and fundamental beliefs. The idea that there is prosaic life in the universe is a challenge to these fundamental assumptions. From our perspective and given the experience of our own cultures, we understand these expectations. In the distant past, we maintained them ourselves. And yet we had to relinquish them in facing the realities of Greater Community life and the meaning of visitation.

You live in a great physical universe. It is full of life. This life represents countless manifestations and also represents the evolution of intelligence and spiritual awareness at every level. What this means is that what you will encounter in the Greater Community encompasses almost every possibility.

However, you are isolated and do not yet travel in space. And even if you had the capability to reach another world, the universe is vast, and no one has gained the ability to go from one end of the galaxy to the other with any kind of speed. Therefore, the physical universe remains enormous and incomprehensible. No one has mastered its laws. No one has conquered its territories. No one can claim complete dominance or control. Life has a great humbling effect in this way. Even far beyond your borders this is true.

You should then come to expect that you will meet intelligences representing forces for good, forces for ignorance and those who are more neutral regarding you. However, in the realities of Greater Community travel and exploration, emerging races such as your own will, almost without exception, encounter resource explorers, collectives and those seeking advantage for themselves as their first contact with Greater Community life.

Regarding the positive interpretation of visitation, part of this is human expectation and the natural desire to welcome a good outcome and to seek help from the Greater Community for the problems that humanity has not been able to resolve on its own. It is normal to expect such things, particularly when you are considering that your visitors have greater capabilities than do you. However, a large part of the problem in interpreting the great visitation has to do with the will and the agenda of the visitors themselves. For they are encouraging people everywhere to view their presence here as wholly beneficial to humanity and to its needs.

“If this Intervention is so well underway, why didn’t you come sooner?”

At an earlier time, many years ago, several groups of your allies came to your world to visit in an attempt to give a message of hope, to prepare humanity. But alas their messages could not be understood and were misused by those few who could receive them. In the wake of their coming, the visitors from the collectives have amassed and gathered here. It has been known to us that this would happen, for your world is far too valuable to be overlooked, and, as we have said, it does not exist in a remote and distant part of the universe. Your world has been observed for a long time by those who would seek to use it for their own benefit.

“Why can’t our allies stop the Intervention?”

We are only here to observe and to advise. The great decisions facing humanity are in your hands. No one else can make these decisions for you. Even your great friends far beyond your world would not intervene, for if they did so, it would cause warfare, and your world would become a battleground between opposing forces. And should your friends be victorious, you would become wholly reliant upon them, unable to fend for yourself or to maintain your own security in the universe. We know of no benevolent race that would seek to bear this burden. And in truth, it would not serve you either. For you would become a client state to another power and would have to be governed from afar. This is not beneficial for you in any way, and it is for this reason that this is not occurring. Yet the visitors will cast themselves as saviors and rescuers of humanity. They will utilize your naiveté. They will capitalize on your expectations, and they will seek to wholly benefit from your trust.

Therefore, it is our sincere desire that our words can serve as an antidote to their presence and to their manipulation and abuse. For your rights are being violated. Your territory is being infiltrated. Your governments are being persuaded. And your religious ideologies and impulses are being redirected.

There must be a voice of truth regarding this. And we can only trust that you can receive this voice of truth. We can only hope that the persuasion has not gone too far.

“What are realistic goals for us to set, and what is the bottom line with regard to saving humanity from losing its self-determination?”

The first step is awareness. Many people must become aware that the Earth is being visited and that foreign powers are here operating in a clandestine manner, seeking to hide their agenda and endeavors from human understanding. It must be very clear that their presence here is a great challenge to human freedom and self-determination. The agenda that they are furthering and the Pacification Program that they are sponsoring must be countered with sobriety and wisdom regarding their presence. This counteraction must occur. There are many people in the world today who are able to understand this. Therefore, the first step is awareness.

The next step is education. It is necessary for many people in different cultures and in different nations to learn about life in the Greater Community and to begin to comprehend what you will be dealing with and are dealing with even at this moment.

Therefore, realistic goals are awareness and education. This in itself would obstruct the visitors’ agenda in the world. They are operating now with very little resistance. They are encountering few obstacles. All those who seek to view them as “allies of humanity” must learn that this is not the case. Perhaps our words will not be enough, but they are a beginning.

“Where can we find this education?”

The education can be found in The Greater Community Way of Knowledge, which is being presented in the world at this time. Though it presents a new understanding about life and spirituality in the universe, it is connected to all of the genuine spiritual paths that already exist within your world—spiritual paths that value human freedom and the meaning of true spirituality and that value cooperation, peace and harmony within the human family. Therefore, the teaching in The Way of Knowledge calls forth all the great truths that already exist in your world and gives them a greater context and arena of expression. In this way, The Greater Community Way of Knowledge does not replace the world’s religions, but provides a larger context within which they can be truly meaningful and relevant to your times.

“How do we convey your message to others?”

The truth lives within each person at this moment. If you can speak to the truth in a person, it will become stronger and begin to resonate. Our great hope, the hope of the Unseen Ones, the spiritual forces who serve your world, and the hope of those who value human freedom and wish to see your emergence into the Greater Community successfully fulfilled, rely upon this truth that lives within each person. We cannot force this awareness upon you. We can only reveal it to you and trust in the greatness of Knowledge that the Creator has given you that can enable you and others to respond.

“Where do humanity’s strengths lie in opposing the Intervention?”

First, we understand from observing your world, and from what the Unseen Ones have told us regarding things that we cannot see, that though there are great problems within the world, there is sufficient human freedom to give you a foundation for opposing the Intervention. This is in contrast to many other worlds where individual freedom was never established to begin with. As these worlds encounter alien forces in their midst and the reality of Greater Community life, the possibility for them to establish freedom and independence is very limited.

Therefore, you have a great strength in that human freedom is known in your world and is practiced by many, though perhaps not all. You know you have something to lose. You value what you have already, to whatever extent it has been established. You do not want to be ruled by foreign powers. You do not even want to be ruled harshly by human authorities. Therefore, this is a beginning.

Next, because your world has rich spiritual traditions that have fostered Knowledge in the individual and fostered human cooperation and understanding, the reality of Knowledge has already been established. Again, in other worlds where Knowledge was never established, the possibility for establishing it at the turning point of emerging into the Greater Community shows little hope for success. Knowledge is strong enough in enough people here that they may be able to learn of the reality of life in the Greater Community and to comprehend what is occurring in their midst at this time. It is for this reason that we are hopeful, for we trust in human wisdom. We trust that people can rise above selfishness, self-preoccupation and self-protection to view life in a greater way and to feel a greater responsibility in service to their own kind.

Perhaps our faith is unfounded, but we are trusting that the Unseen Ones have counseled us wisely regarding this. As a result, we have placed ourselves at risk by being in the proximity of your world and witnessing events beyond your borders that have direct bearing on your future and destiny.

Humanity has great promise. You have a growing awareness of problems in the world—the lack of cooperation amongst nations, the degradation of your natural environment, your diminishing resources and so forth. If these problems were unknown to your people, if these realities had been kept hidden from your people, to the extent that people had no idea of the existence of these things, then we would not be as hopeful. However, the reality remains that humanity has the potential and the promise to counteract any intervention into the world.

“Is this Intervention going to become a military invasion?”

As we have said, your world is too valuable to incite a military invasion. No one who is visiting your world wants to destroy its infrastructure or its natural resources. That is why the visitors do not seek to destroy humanity, but instead to engage humanity in service to their collectives.

It is not military invasion that threatens you. It is the power of inducement and persuasion. This will be built upon your own weakness, upon your own selfishness, upon your ignorance of life in the Greater Community and upon your blind optimism regarding your future and the meaning of life beyond your borders.

To counteract this, we provide education and we speak of the means of preparation that are being sent into the world at this time. If you did not already know human freedom, if you were not already aware of the problems endemic to your world, then we could not entrust such a preparation to you. And we would not have confidence that our words would resonate with the truth of what you know.

“Can you influence people as powerfully as the visitors, but for the good?”

Our intention is not to influence individuals. Our intention is only to present the problem and the reality into which you are emerging. The Unseen Ones are providing the actual means of preparation, for that comes from God. In this, the Unseen Ones influence individuals for the good. But there are restraints. As we have said, it is your self-determination that must be strengthened. It is your power that must be increased. It is your cooperation amongst the human family that must be supported.

There are limits as to how much help we can provide. Our group is small. We are not walking amongst you. Therefore, the great understanding of your new reality must be shared from person to person. It cannot be forced upon you from a foreign power, even if it were for your own good. We would not, then, be supporting your freedom and self-determination if we sponsored such a program of persuasion. Here you cannot be like children. You must become mature and responsible. It is your freedom that is at stake. It is your world that is at stake. It is your cooperation with each other that is needed.

You now have a great cause to unite your race, for none of you will benefit without the other. No nation will benefit if any other nation falls under alien control. Human freedom must be complete. The cooperation must occur around your world. For everyone is in the same situation now. The visitors do not favor one group over another, one race over another, one nation over another. They only seek the avenue of least resistance to establish their presence and their domination of your world.

“How extensive is their infiltration of humanity?”

The visitors have a significant presence within the most advanced nations in your world, particularly the nations of Europe, Russia, Japan and America. These are viewed as the strongest nations, having the greatest power and influence. It is there that the visitors will concentrate. However, they are taking people from all over the world, and they are furthering their Pacification Program with all those that they capture, if those individuals can be responsive to their influence. Therefore, the visitors’ presence is worldwide, but they are concentrating on those whom they hope will become their allies. These are the nations and governments and religious leaders who hold the greatest power and sway over human thought and conviction.

“How much time do we have?

How much time do you have? You have some time, how much we cannot tell. But we come with an urgent message. This is not a problem that can simply be avoided or denied. From our perspective, it is the most important challenge facing humanity. It is of the greatest concern, the first priority. You are late in your preparation. This was caused by many factors beyond our control. But there is time, if you can respond. The outcome is uncertain and yet there is still hope for your success.

“How can we focus on this Intervention given the immensity of other global problems which are occurring right now?”

First of all, we feel that there are no other problems in the world that are as important as this. From our perspective, whatever you can resolve on your own will have little meaning in the future if your freedom is lost. What could you hope to gain? What could you hope to achieve or secure if you are not free in the Greater Community? All of your accomplishments would be given to your new governors; all of your wealth would be bestowed upon them. And though your visitors are not cruel, they are completely committed to their agenda. You are valued only insofar as you can be useful to their cause. It is for this reason that we do not feel that there are any other problems facing humanity as important as this.

“Who is likely to respond to this situation?”

Regarding who can respond, there are many people in the world today who have an inherent knowledge of the Greater Community and who are sensitive to it. There are many others who have been taken by the visitors already but who have not yielded to them or to their persuasion. And there are many others who are concerned about the future of humanity and who are alerted to the dangers that humanity faces, even within your own world. People in all or any of these three categories may be amongst the first to respond to the Greater Community reality and to the preparation for the Greater Community. They may come from any walk of life, from any nation, from any religious background or from any economic group. They are literally all over the world. It is upon them and upon their response that the great Spiritual Powers that protect and oversee human welfare are depending.

“You mention that individuals are being taken all over the world. How can people protect themselves or others from being abducted?”

The more you can become strong with Knowledge and aware of the visitors’ presence, the less you become a desirable subject for their study and manipulation. The more you use your encounters with them to gain insight into them, the more of a hazard you become. As we have said, they seek the path of least resistance. They want individuals who are compliant and yielding. They want those who cause them few problems and little concern.

Yet as you become strong with Knowledge, you will be beyond their control because now they cannot capture your mind or your heart. And with time, you will have the power of perception to see into their minds, which they do not wish. You then become a danger to them, a challenge to them, and they will avoid you if they can.

The visitors do not seek to be revealed. They do not wish for conflict. They are overly confident that they can achieve their goals without serious resistance from the human family. But once such resistance is mounted, once the power of Knowledge awakens in the individual, then the visitors are facing a much more formidable obstacle. Their intervention here becomes thwarted and more difficult to achieve. And their persuasion of those in power becomes more difficult to accomplish. Therefore, it is the individual’s response and commitment to the truth that are essential here.

Become aware of the visitors’ presence. Do not yield to the persuasion that their presence here is of a spiritual nature or that it holds great benefit or salvation for humanity. Resist the persuasion. Regain your own inner authority, the great gift that the Creator has given to you. Become a force to be reckoned with regarding any who would trespass against or deny your fundamental rights.

This is Spiritual Power being expressed. It is the Will of the Creator that humanity should emerge into the Greater Community united within itself and free from foreign intervention and domination. It is the Creator’s Will that you should prepare for a future that will be unlike your past. We are here in service to the Creator, and thus our presence and our words serve this purpose.

“If the visitors encounter resistance in humanity or in certain individuals, will they come in greater numbers or will they leave?”

Their numbers are not great. Should they encounter considerable resistance, they would have to fall back and make new plans. They are wholly confident that their mission can be fulfilled without serious obstacles. Yet should serious obstacles arise, then their intervention and persuasion would be thwarted, and they would have to find other ways of gaining contact with humanity.

We trust that the human family can generate enough resistance and enough consensus in order to offset these influences. It is upon this that we are basing our hope and efforts.

“What are the most important questions that we must ask of ourselves and others with respect to this problem of alien infiltration?”

Perhaps the most critical questions to ask yourself are, “Are we humans alone within the universe or in our own world? Are we being visited at this time? Is this visitation beneficial to us? Do we need to prepare?”

These are very fundamental questions, but they must be asked. There are many questions, however, that cannot be answered, for you do not know enough about life in the Greater Community, and you are not yet confident that you have the ability to counteract these influences. There are many things lacking in human education, which is primarily focused upon the past. Humanity is emerging from a long state of relative isolation. Its education, its values and its institutions were all established within this state of isolation. Yet your isolation now is over, forever. It was always known that this would happen. It was inevitable that this would be the case. Therefore, your education and your values are entering into a new context, to which they must adapt. And the adaptation must happen quickly because of the nature of the Intervention in the world today.

There will be many questions that you cannot answer. You will have to live with them. Your education about the Greater Community is only at the very beginning. You must approach it with great sobriety and care. You must counteract your own tendencies to try and make the situation pleasant or reassuring. You must develop an objectivity about life, and you must look beyond your own personal sphere of interests in order to put yourself in a position to respond to the greater forces and events that are shaping your world and your future.

“What if enough people cannot respond?”

We are confident that enough people can respond and begin their great education about life in the Greater Community in order to give promise and hope to the human family. If this cannot be achieved, then those who value their freedom and who have this education will have to retreat. They will have to keep Knowledge alive in the world as the world falls under complete control. This is a very grave alternative, and yet it has occurred in other worlds. The journey back to freedom from such a position is quite difficult. We hope that this will not be your fate, and that is why we are here giving you this information. As we have said, there are enough people in the world who can respond to offset the intentions of the visitors and to thwart their influence on human affairs and human values.

“You speak of other worlds emerging into the Greater Community. Can you speak of successes and failures which might have bearing on our situation?”

There have been successes or we would not be here. In my case, as the speaker for our group, our world had already been greatly infiltrated before we realized the situation at hand. Our education was prompted by the arrival of a group such as ourselves, providing insight and information about our situation. We had alien resource traders in our world interacting with our government. Those who were in power at that time were persuaded that trade and commerce would be beneficial to us, for we were beginning to experience resource depletion. Though our race was united, unlike your own, we began to be wholly dependent upon the new technology and opportunities that were being presented to us. And yet as this occurred, there was a shift in the center of power. We were becoming the clients. The visitors were becoming the providers. As time went on, terms and restrictions were placed upon us, subtly at first.

Our religious focus and beliefs were also influenced by the visitors, who showed interest in our spiritual values but who wished to give us a new understanding, an understanding based upon the collective, based upon the cooperation of minds thinking alike in unison with each other. This was presented to our race as an expression of spirituality and achievement. Some were persuaded, and yet because we were well advised from our allies beyond our world, allies such as ourselves, we began to mount a resistance movement and over time were able to force the visitors to leave our world.

Since that time, we have learned a great deal about the Greater Community. The trade that we maintain is very selective, with only a few other nations. We have been able to avoid the collectives, and that has preserved our freedom. And yet our success was difficult to achieve, for there were many of us who had to die in the face of this conflict. Ours is a story of success, but not without cost. There are others in our group who have experienced similar difficulties in their interaction with intervening powers in the Greater Community. And yet because we eventually learned to travel beyond our borders, we gained alliance with one another. We were able to learn what spirituality means in the Greater Community. And the Unseen Ones, who serve our world as well, helped us in this regard to make the great transition from isolation to Greater Community awareness.

Yet there have been many failures that we are aware of. Cultures where the indigenous peoples had not established personal freedom or had not tasted the fruits of cooperation, even though they were advancing technologically, did not have a foundation to establish their own independence in the universe. Their ability to resist the collectives was very limited. Induced by promises of greater power, greater technology and greater wealth, and induced by the seeming benefits of trade in the Greater Community, their center of power left their world. In the end, they became wholly dependent upon those who supplied them and who gained control of their resources and their infrastructures.

Surely you can imagine how this could be the case. Even within your own world according to your history, you have seen smaller nations fall under the domination of greater ones. You can see this even today. Therefore, these ideas are not wholly foreign to you. In the Greater Community, as in your world, the strong will dominate the weak, if they can. This is a reality of life everywhere. And it is for this reason that we are encouraging your awareness and your preparation, in order that you may become strong and your self-determination may grow.

It may be a grave disappointment to many to understand and to learn that freedom is rare in the universe. As nations become stronger and more technological, they require greater and greater uniformity and compliance amongst their peoples. As they bridge out into the Greater Community and become involved in Greater Community affairs, the tolerance for individual expression diminishes to the point where large nations that have wealth and power are governed with a strictness and an exacting attitude that you would find abhorrent.

Here you must learn that technological advancement and spiritual advancement are not the same, a lesson that humanity has yet to learn and which you must learn if you are to exercise your natural wisdom in these matters.

Your world is greatly valued. It is rich biologically. You are sitting on a prize that you must protect if you are to be its stewards and its beneficiaries. Consider the peoples in your world who have lost their freedom because they lived in a place considered valuable by others. It is now the whole human family that is so imperiled.

“Because the visitors are so skilled in projecting thoughts and influencing people’s Mental Environment, how do we ensure ourselves that what we are seeing is real?”

The only basis for wise perception is the cultivation of Knowledge. If you believe only what you see, then you will believe only what is shown to you. There are many, we are told, that have this perspective. Yet we have learned that the Wise everywhere must gain a greater vision and a greater discernment. It is true that your visitors can project images of your saints and of your religious figures. Though this is not practiced often, it certainly can be used in order to evoke commitment and dedication amongst those who are already given to such beliefs. Here your spirituality becomes an area of vulnerability where Wisdom must be used.

Yet the Creator has given you Knowledge as a foundation for true discernment. You can know what you are seeing if you ask yourself if it is real. Yet to do this, you must have this foundation, and that is why the teaching in The Way of Knowledge is so fundamental to learning Greater Community Spirituality. Without this, people will believe what they want to believe, and they will rely upon what they see and what they are shown. And their potential for freedom will have been lost already, for it was never allowed to flourish in the first place.

“You speak about keeping Knowledge alive. How many will it take to keep Knowledge alive in the world?”

We cannot give you a number, but it must be strong enough to generate a voice within your own cultures. If this message can only be received by a few, they will not have this voice or this strength. Here they must share their wisdom. It cannot be purely for their own edification. Many more must learn of this message, many more than can receive it today.

“Is there a danger in presenting this message?”

There is always a danger in presenting the truth, not only in your world, but elsewhere. People gain advantage from the circumstances as they currently exist. The visitors will offer advantage to those in power who can receive them and who are not strong in Knowledge. People become accustomed to these advantages and build their lives upon them. This makes them resistant or even hostile to the presentation of truth, which calls for their responsibility in service to others and which may threaten the basis of their wealth and achievements.

This is why we are hidden and do not walk in your world. Certainly the visitors would destroy us if they could find us. But humanity may seek to destroy us as well because of what we represent, because of the challenge and the new reality that we demonstrate. Not everyone is ready to receive the truth even though it is greatly needed.

“Can individuals who are strong with Knowledge influence the visitors?”

The chance of success here is very limited. You are dealing with a collective of beings who have been bred to be compliant, whose whole life and experience have been encompassed and engendered by a collective mentality. They do not think for themselves. For this reason, we do not feel that you can influence them. There are few amongst the human family who have the strength to do this, and even here the possibility for success would be very limited. So the answer must be “No.” For all practical purposes, you cannot win them over.

“How are collectives different from a united humanity?”

Collectives are made up of different races and of those who are bred to serve those races. Many of the beings that are being encountered in the world are bred by collectives to be servants. Their genetic heritage has long been lost to them. They are bred to serve, as you breed animals to serve you. The human cooperation that we are promoting is a cooperation that preserves the self-determination of individuals and provides a position of strength from which humanity can interact, not only with the collectives but with others who will visit your shores in the future.

A collective is based upon one belief, one set of principles and one authority. Its emphasis is complete allegiance to an idea or an ideal. Not only is this engendered in the education of your visitors, but in their genetic code as well. That is why they behave in the ways that they do. This is both their strength and their weakness. They have great strength in the Mental Environment because their minds are united. But they are weak because they cannot think for themselves. They cannot deal with complexities or adversity very successfully. A man or woman of Knowledge would be incomprehensible to them.

Humanity must unite to preserve its freedom, but this is a very different establishment from the creation of a collective. We call them “collectives” because they are collectives of different races and nationalities. Collectives are not one race. Though there are many races in the Greater Community that are ruled by a dominant authority, a collective is an organization that spans beyond the allegiance of one race to its own world.

Collectives can have great power. Yet because there are many collectives, they tend to compete with one another, which prevents any one of them from becoming dominant. Also, various nations in the Greater Community have long-standing disputes with one another, which are difficult to bridge. Perhaps they have competed for a long time for the same resources. Perhaps they compete with one another to sell the resources that they have. Yet a collective is a different matter. As we are saying here, it is not based upon one race and one world. They are the result of conquest and domination. That is why your visitors are comprised of different races of beings at different levels of authority and command.

“In other worlds that have successfully unified, did they maintain their individual freedom of thought?”

To varying degrees. Some to a very high degree, others less so, depending upon their history, their psychological make-up and the needs of their own survival. Your life in the world has been relatively easy compared to where other races have developed. Most places where intelligent life exists have been colonized, for there are not many terrestrial planets such as your own that provide such a wealth of biological resources. Their freedom, in large part, depended upon the wealth of their environments. But they have all been successful in thwarting alien infiltration and have established their own lines of trade, commerce and communication based upon their own self-determination. This is a rare accomplishment and must be earned and protected.

“What will it take to achieve human unity?”

Humanity is very vulnerable in the Greater Community. This vulnerability, in time, can foster a fundamental cooperation amongst the human family, for you must join and unite in order to survive and to advance. This is part of having a Greater Community awareness. If this is based upon the principles of human contribution, freedom and self-expression, then your self-sufficiency can become very strong and very rich. But there must be greater cooperation in the world. People cannot live for themselves alone or put their own personal goals above and beyond the needs of everyone else. Some may view this as a loss of freedom. We see it as a guarantee for future freedom. For given the current attitudes prevalent in the world today, your future freedom would be very difficult to secure or maintain. Take heed. Those who are driven by their own selfishness are the perfect candidates for foreign influence and manipulation. If they are in positions of power, they will give over their nation’s wealth, their nation’s freedom and their nation’s resources in order to gain advantage for themselves.

Therefore, greater cooperation is required. Surely you can see this. Surely this is apparent even within your own world. But this is very different from the life of the collective, where races have been dominated and controlled, where those who are compliant are brought into the collectives and those who are not are alienated or destroyed. Surely such an establishment, though it may have considerable influence, cannot be beneficial for its members. And yet this is the path that many in the Greater Community have taken. We do not wish to see humanity fall into such an organization. That would be a great tragedy and a loss.

“How is the human perspective different from yours?”

One of the differences is that we have developed a Greater Community perspective, which is a less self-centered way of looking at the world. It is a point of view that gives great clarity and can provide great certainty regarding the smaller problems that you face in your daily affairs. If you can solve a great problem, you can solve lesser ones. You have a great problem. Every human being in the world faces this great problem. It can unite you and enable you to overcome your long-standing differences and conflicts. It is that great and that powerful. This is why we say there is a possibility for redemption within the very circumstances that threaten your well-being and your future.

We know that the power of Knowledge within the individual can restore that individual and all of their relationships to a higher degree of accomplishment, recognition and ability. You must discover this for yourself.

Our lives are very different. One of the differences is that our lives are given to service, a service that we have chosen. We have the freedom to choose and thus our choice is real and meaningful and is based upon our own understanding. Amongst our group are representatives from several different worlds. We have come together in service to humanity. We represent a greater alliance that is more spiritual in nature.

“This message is coming through one man. Why aren’t you contacting everybody if this is so important?”

It is merely a matter of efficiency. We do not control who is selected to receive us. That is a matter for the Unseen Ones, those whom you could rightly call “Angels.” We think of them in this way. They have selected this person, a person who has no position in the world, who is not recognized in the world, an individual who has been chosen because of his qualities and because of his heritage in the Greater Community. We are glad to have one through whom we can speak. If we spoke through more, they perhaps would disagree with one another, and the message would become confused and lost.

We understand, from our own studenthood, that the transmission of spiritual wisdom is generally given through one, with the support of others. This individual must bear the weight and the burden and the risk of being so chosen. We respect him for doing this, and we understand what a burden it can be. This will be misconstrued, perhaps, and that is why the Wise must remain hidden. We must remain hidden. He must remain hidden. In this way, the message can be given, and the messenger can be preserved. For there will be hostility towards this message. The visitors will oppose it and are opposing it already. Their opposition can be significant but will primarily be aimed at the messenger himself. It is for this reason that the messenger must be protected.

We know that the answers to these questions will generate more questions. And many of these cannot be answered, perhaps even for a long time. The Wise anywhere must live with questions that they cannot yet answer. It is through their patience and their perseverance that real answers emerge and that they are able to experience them and embody them.

*These questions were sent to the New Knowledge Library by many of the first readers of the Allies Material.

Final Words

Humanity is at a new beginning. It is faced with a grave situation. The need for a new education and understanding is paramount. We are here to serve this need at the request of the Unseen Ones. They are relying upon us to share our wisdom, for we live in the physical universe, as do you. We are not angelic beings. We are not perfect. We have not achieved great heights of spiritual awareness and accomplishment. And therefore our message to you about the Greater Community, we trust, will be more relevant and more easily received. The Unseen Ones know far more than we about life in the universe and about the levels of advancement and accomplishment that are available and that are practiced in many places. Yet they have asked us to speak regarding the reality of physical life because we are fully engaged there. And we have learned through our own trials and errors the importance and the meaning of what we are sharing with you.

Thus, we come as the Allies of Humanity, for such we are. Be thankful that you have allies that can help you and that can educate you and that can support your strength, your freedom and your accomplishment. For without this assistance, the prospect of your surviving the kind of alien infiltration that you are experiencing now would be very limited. Yes, there would be a few individuals who would come to realize the situation as it actually exists, but their numbers would not be great enough, and their voices would go unheard.

In this, we can only ask for your trust. We hope that through the wisdom of our words and through the opportunities you have to learn their meaning and relevance, that we can gain this trust over time, for you have allies in the Greater Community. You have great friends beyond this world who have suffered the challenges that you are facing now and have achieved success. Because we were assisted, we must now assist others. That is our sacred covenant. It is to this that we are firmly committed.

{ https://alliesofhumanity.org/ }

14-01-2019 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

It’s aliens! It’s HAARP! It’s the ghost of Darth Vader making sure you never ever forget his sacrifice! Or not. Either way, a recent video has surfaced showing what could be interpreted as all those things. A glowing red pillar of light appeared in the skies over Edmonton, Alberta earlier this month. It was filmed by a group of witnesses who, in turn, suggested all of those explanations (more or less).

Here’s a link to the video. It’s an eerie sort of light that just hangs there in the sky, perfectly still, for the duration of the video. There’s a presence to it, the beam of light is thick and seems to pulse, though perhaps that’s simply due to the refraction through the clouds. According to Youtube channel Secureteam10, who shared and commented on this video, this is far from the first sighting of these mysterious red pillars of light. Apparently they have been seen all over the globe, as well as spotted in footage from the International Space Station. So what is it?

Another example of the mysterious pillars of light.

Credit: Raitisfreimanis (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The first thing that comes to mind is a laser pointer illuminating low hanging clouds. Yeah, that’s a pretty boring explanation, I know, but that’s also the simplest. However, if it was someone just pointing a laser straight up, it wouldn’t be perfectly still. It’s near impossible to keep something perfectly still and pointed perfectly vertical unless you have the physical discipline of a Buddhist monk. So if it was a laser, it would have to be mounted on something.  Also, what would be the purpose? Other than staging a weird video for imaginary internet points, of course.

The other problem with the laser hypothesis is that the beam ends abruptly and symmetrically at the top and bottom. If it was a laser, there should be more of a gradual tapering of the beam. Of course, that’s also the problem with one of the other, more paranoid explanations: that it’s one of those new directed energy weapons that’s taking the blame for just about everything these days.

OK. What about HAARP? While it’s hilarious to think of the shadow government targeting Edmonton, Alberta, specifically, with their swiss-army-knife weather manipulation super-weapon (or something) for no good reason other than to spook some folks, it just doesn’t make sense. Which is usually the case whenever HAARP gets brought up.

So, aliens then. It’s got to be aliens. Towards the end of the video, one of the people in the video notices something small and black fly across the light at high speed. Perhaps these lights are portals for the ever-upcoming alien invasion. Although it’s totally understandable to look at a weird light, see a shape flying near it, and see a pattern, there’s absolutely no logical reason to think those two things are connected. Birds don’t take time off when something spooky is happening.

Actually, the most reasonable explanation is a natural phenomenon. It’s known, predictably, as “light pillars.” In cold weather, ice crystals in clouds can refract light in such a way that it looks like a pillar of light disconnected from the ground. This would explain the symmetry, the shimmering quality, and the stillness of the beam. There’s likely a red light from a business or sign directly beneath the mysterious pillar, yet hidden from the perspective of the video.

Dear God, they’re everywhere.

Credit: Christoph Geisler (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What about the International Space Station? Well, if you look at the still from the space station video, it doesn’t really look anything like a light pillar. It’s red and it’s a line, yes. But that’s where the similarities end. There’s no symmetry, it is not perfectly vertical, and it only appears briefly. It’s safe to say it’s not the same thing. Which means that, yes, it could still be an inter-dimensional alien portal. Most things are, until proven otherwise.

The scientific explanation

However, skeptics have another different opinion. The lights would actually be a fairly common atmospheric phenomenon called pillars of light. Although they look a lot like the aurora, they are not related to the Northern Lights, which are caused by electrically charged particles from the atoms that excite space in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, which causes them to release a spectacular light. Instead, these pillars occur in freezing temperatures when hexagonal ice crystals form lower in the atmosphere than they normally would.

When this happens, the crystals essentially form a collective giant mirror, which can reflect a source of light, like the lights of the city and the automobile. The pillars of light are an optical phenomenon that belongs to the halo family, since it is due to the interaction of light with ice crystals. It would simply show that nature tends to be more spectacular than science fiction itself. It is clear that this is the skeptical explanation, but perhaps its origin is not as logical as it seems.

What do you think of the pillar of light on Canada? Is it a natural phenomenon, directed energy weapons or is it of extraterrestrial origin?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

14-01-2019 om 16:13 geschreven door peter  

The Mysterious Genius Who Patented the UFO

Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte.

Alexander Weygers made numerous detailed drawings of an aircraft called the "Discopter", a vertical liftoff aircraft that looked very much like what was to be later termed "flying saucer" and other drawings of an American cities specifically flying saucers in San Francisco and as well as a port in Chicago.

He sent these detailed plans to all the branches of the U.S. Military and was eventually told that they were intrigued by the concept and the design of the craft but were not prepared at that time because the war effort superseded its development.

However he did indeed patent the design for the "Discopter" in January 1944 with the U.S. Patent Office and it served as the prototype for other similar aircraft that have been developed up to the present day.

Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.

  

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

13-01-2019 om 17:55 geschreven door peter  

Experiencers, Unique Intuition, and Biomarkers

A guest article written by “Twitter User Jay.” (@Jay09784691) 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have slides shared with me by Dr. Garry Nolan (@GarryPNolan) a professor at Stanford University who has been undertaking some incredible work on a patient population brought to him by Dr Kit Green that might shed light on individuals with unique cognitive and intuitive abilities. The study was accomplished in close collaboration with Dr Christopher (Kit) Canfield Green who worked for the CIA between the 1970s and 1980s, and who is now a private physician in forensic medical practice, and is affiliated with the Departments of Diagnostic Radiology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the Wayne State School of Medicine and Detroit Medical Center.

The presentation itself occurred during the Consortium for Space Genetics at Harvard Medical School, so carries weight not only from the people giving the presentation but from the venue as well. The whole talk centers on one main topic with two relating subtexts. The leading reason for the talk isquestioning whether there is evidence for biological indicators that identifies people with unique forms of intuition and the two subtexts being the intuition itself with related information on what’s known as “experiencers” – more on those later.

It’s important to mention that some of the details may sound like a work of science fiction, but the information here was presented to a group of mainstream scientists at one of the most prestigiousuniversities in the world. If doubt arises, please consider performing some research into the authors of the paper and looking into the histories around this subject. While it’s important to have some skepticism, I would suggest it’s also important to consider the wider picture and message being sent.

Several of the slides are included in this article to better represent the information that was shared at Harvard back in December 2018; as agreed with the authors of the slides not all can be shared. The first slide is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Opening slide of the presentation by Drs. Nolan and Green at Harvard.

What is Intuition?

A question asked in the talk is whether there are forms of inherited intuition that are handed down across families that allows for distinct forms of intelligence and which are correlated, roughly, bycontributing to higher IQ (later referred to those with >140). The subtext asked is whether thisbenefits the population with “high intuition” and “high performance”. It would appear these indicators are present in the patients included in the trial, however, it’s not clear whether such high performance is absolutely required to be considered an “intuit” along with the required brain connections (discussed below). According to Green and Nolan, a wider patient population will be required to explore this matter further.

The primary section of interest will be the intuitive abilities, since high performers – while rare– are possibly less unique than people with the brain features as outlined in the presentation. The definitionof intuition, and there are many, are initially mentioned in Figure 2.

Figure 2. RPD model = Recognition Primed Decision

The concepts above are from the mainstream literature, which has honed an understanding of where decisions are made in the brain when presented with complex problems to be solved in 1) limited time and with 2) limited information. The cohort studied by Green and Nolan included a heavy sampling of individuals whose daily jobs, and lives, depended on taking the correct course of action for time-limited events and have fast problem solving. While interesting, this alone doesn’t make the patients seem especially unique, it’s when we get later in the slides that we start to get an idea of the broader picture.

The following was included in the presentation to show that identification of a particular area of the brain involved in these processes may have been first recognized by a Russian neuroscientist by the name of Oleg Sergeivich Adrianov (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Excerpts from Oleg Adrianov’s paper in 1988.

Now this is where the nature of the patients’ abilities starts to reveal itself. Dr. Adrianov has called out “high integrative activity”, which is much the same as listed in the prior slide, and then, “programming future activity” and “foreseeing the future”. All of which allow the brain to have a “higher psychic function”. This is especially interesting since it seems to indicate that people can anticipate future events. Of course, that’s what intuition is—just predicting what might happen. The open question is from where the information in the brain, or environment, arrives. Whether these people are particularly good at processing information from their senses in a way that allows them to predict the most likely course of action logically or if they’re witnessing some sense of future information remains unanswered. I believe it the latter. If they’re able to foresee (remote view) the future, without having the data at hand as understood by mainstream physics, then it would suggest that some level of precognition of future events are possible. While none of the slides even speculate about this per se, the mention of the work of Dr. Adrianov is revealing in and of itself.

While an aside, it was alluded to elsewhere in the slides that people have “multiple episodes” without explicitly stating the type of episodes suffered. It’s specified as being “Hallucinations… NOT”, so presumably these people are getting visions or are seeing/hearing things to which the general populace may be oblivious. Later in the slides it’s mentioned that people see “visual and auditory of orbs, voices, entities”, it’s worth noting that these experiences are not detailed beyond this piece of text.

Experiencers

Individuals commonly referred to as “Experiencers” are people that have received exposure to something that would normally be referred to as paranormal, whether that be UFOs, spirits, ghosts, or religious apparitions. These can be experienced when these people are, as mentioned in the slides, “awake”. While the talk never specifically mentions paranormal, it seems to suggest that hallucinations may not explain the visual or auditory experiences, the slides are vague on this point. I suspect this was Dr Nolan’s intent to not distract from the central message of “real science” and data.

The presentation again mentions savant level IQs, so it can only be assumed that this is a main requirement for the experiences. It also has more references to genetic inheritance as two brothers and their mother are mentioned as well as a father, mother, and daughter.

While the study points out to the, now, mainstream understanding of the caudate-putamen’s role in processing complex information, it is possible to speculate that the study population might be capable of interpreting some information from their environments to which the rest of the population may be somewhat blind. Whether this is the “akashic field” that’s been spoken about in various esoteric religions and scripts, Annie Jacobsen’s reporting on the “spidey sense” program(http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/) , or something else is not clear. Considering it’s mentioned that people see “entities”, it may be possible that such a thing (whatever they are – religious spirits, aliens, fairies, etc.), if existing, may be drawn to these people. We should consider the possibility that they’re attracting these things as these people can interpret their environmental changes in a manner that makes some forms of communication feasible. Without full analysis of the communication across a blinded population, it may be impossible to read much more into any possible consistent message being received. However, this is speculation on my part.

Caudate-Putamen

The general focus of the slides appears to be the identification of a physical biomarker (by MRI brain scan) that can be used to identify people that have these novel traits. There are no references to DNA analyses in the slides, so the genetic DNA markers are unlikely to have been identified by the time of the presentation. It’s entirely possible that should the features be genetically determined, they will require the interplay of thousands of genes that architect the relevant brain functions, making genetic analyses difficult until more precisely determined.

The brain feature that correlates to this patient population are the connections between the caudate and the putamen. Helpfully, the slides show normal brain connections compared with those in the study group, again none of the brain scans from the slides can be shared here due to privacy reasons.

In some of the images it’s possible to see a scan of a patient with the specific caudate and putamen connections with the relating sections highlighted. While the MRI scans cannot be shown here, some of the “cartoon” 3D renders that have been prepared are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The snapshot in this image is from a slide showing a 3D spinning representation of both the control (i.e., “Normal” people) and the intuit (listed on the slide as “hyper”). The visual representation above where there are “bright” regions indicated heightened areas of neuronal connectivity between the head of the caudate and the putamen.

Figure 5. A diagram from the literature of the Caudate-Putamen.

The oval shaped section is the putamen with the tail being the caudate (see the figure above for specifics, from http://what-when-how.com/neuroscience/the-basal-ganglia-motor-systems-part-1/).

In the 3D rendered image of Figure 4’s slide, on the right all the additional connections (termed hyper)between both parts are highlighted (the lines or nerves connecting the two). The total number of these connections or strands are not as complex for the control population (as measured in 100 ‘normals’), as shown in the left-hand side of the image.

Fundamentally, the additional connections (or strands) between these areas of the brain are speculated to identify people that have higher intuitive capabilities that are not present in the greater populace. At present this is only correlation, speculation, and no causality has been demonstrated. The significance of these findings may start to become more apparent as more details are released and data are available. Dr Nolan insisted in our side discussions that these findings are, so far, preliminary data and require considerable further analysis. While the study was carried out in a blinded fashion, it was his feeling that the study of this area of the brain can be accelerated by pointing out these findings to others for independent verification and invite the field in general to participate. Apparently, since many mainstream scientists are focused on this area of the basal ganglia and its role in decision making processes, data will be forthcoming from others to support, or not, the speculation put forward.

Whether or not these people are approaching an evolution of the species or if these types of rare connections are present in what would have been present in the shamans of the past remains unclear, but it appears that Drs Nolan and Green are onto something interesting.

It’s worth noting that patients with ADHD and autism (as presented in the talk) have been shown in the mainstream literature to have deficits in the caudate region of the basal ganglia—among other deficits. This supports the role of this region in “perception” and information management. There are no indicators as to the population size when compared to the control to determine percentage rates across the general population. But publicly available databases of brain MRIs might be scanned to determine the frequency of the trait.

Might our species may be going through an evolutionary process as suggested by several scientists in their papers over the past few years? My speculation in this blog posting is that perhaps as consciousness evolves to interpret messages from elsewhere (for instance a hyperdimensional space if you’re willing to accept the “woo”), then this region of the brain might be involved. Considering that super-string theory suggests that there may be as many as ten spatial dimensions and that our minds, or consciousness, appear to exist in something greater than the three usual spatial dimensions, then maybe there is some exposure is occurring to wider/greater dimensional spaces.

The significance of the details of this presentation are potentially dramatic. While Drs Nolan and Green were not claiming at all that this area of the brain functions as an antenna per say, what ifhumans are experiencing evolutionary changes that allow access (whether visual or auditory) to some future events, and be in receipt of information from something “other” that currently can’t be easily objectively measured? Given the role of the caudate putamen in the mainstream understanding of information processing, it is reasonable to speculate it would be involved in processing data from anomalous sources.

While it may be trickier to accept, there have been suggestions from psychics in the past that have for all intents and purposes intuited the exact same brain connections Drs Nolan and Green determined empirically. Specifically, Dr Nolan called out in one of his later slides the book “Through the Curtain”by Viola Petitt Neal and Shafica Karagulla. Ms. Neal talks about this exact area of the brain, it’sconnections to higher consciousness capabilities in the 1960s—well before mainstream neuroscience understood the role of the caudate-putamen in cognition. The full detail around this will be covered in a later article.

For some further reading, I would suggest some of the following scientific papers (also check my Twitter account for more; @Jay09784691):

Theoretical Physics Between Adjacent Realities by ex-NASA scientist Alex Vary.

Tuning the Mind in the Frequency Domain by Shelli Renee Joyce.

Analysis of Technically Inventive Dream-Like Mental Imagery by Bruce Towe and Cay Randall-May

Intuitive Consciousness and the Logic of Single Field Physics: A Conscious Synergy of Worldviews and Theories by James Beichler and Sperry Andrews

{ https://silvarecord.com/ }

13-01-2019 om 01:08 geschreven door peter  

12-01-2019 om 18:29 geschreven door peter  

25 Pics Of Underwater Creatures That Defy All Logic - PART II

{ https://www.thetravel.com/ }

12-01-2019 om 18:27 geschreven door peter  

Scientists warn Earth's magnetic North Pole has begun moving 'erratically' at speeds so fast they are having to issue an emergency update to maps used by electronic navigation systems

• Magnetic North Pole is 'skittering' away from Canada, towards Siberia 
• Researchers say it is moving at an 'unusually high speed of about 50 km per year'
• Say Canada is essentially losing a magnetic tug-of-war with Siberia
• Researchers around the world are scrambling to update global models relied on by GPS navigation systems

By MARK PRIGG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

Earth's magnetic fields are shifting - and scientists are unsure why.

Researchers say the magnetic North Pole is  'skittering' away from Canada, towards Siberia.

The problem has got so bad, researchers around the world are scrambling to update a global model of the fields.

Called the World Magnetic Model, it underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones. 

Scroll down for video 

Researchers say the magnetic North Pole is 'skittering' away from Canada, towards Siberia, far more quickly that they expected it to.

The most recent version of the model came out in 2015, and it was supposed to last until 2020.

However, researchers say the  magnetic field is changing so rapidly that they have to fix the model urgently.  

It was due to be updated on the 15th January, but due to the US Government shutdown, that has already been delayed until the 30th.

'It's moving at about 50 km (30 miles) a year. It didn't move much between 1900 and 1980 but it's really accelerated in the past 40 years,' Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, told Reuters on Friday. 

The magnetic field is in a permanent state of flux. 

Magnetic north wanders, and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so that a compass would point south instead of north.  

'The error is increasing all the time,' Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Centers for Environmental Information, told Nature. 

'In early 2018, as part of our regular assessment of the WMM, we found that the model exceeded its specification for declination only three years into the five-year WMM cycle,' he told the American Geophysical Union meeting. 

'We investigated this error and tracked it down to the combined effect of a global geomagnetic acceleration pulse occurring in 2015-2016, and a fast-changing magnetic field in the North polar area. 

A remarkable manifestation of the field variation is the drift of the North magnetic pole towards Russia, which has been occurring at the unusually high speed of about 50 km per year since the beginning of the 21st century. 

'On the contrary, the South magnetic pole drift is very slow (less than 10 km per year) and has not changed much over the past few decades, and hence provided a much smaller contribution to the overall model declination error.'

To fix the model, he and his colleagues fed it three years of recent data, which included a 2016 geomagnetic pulse, and he says the new model, when it is released,  should remain accurate until the next regularly scheduled update in 2020.

Satellites such as the European Space Agency's Swarm mission tracked the shift. 

Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, UK, said at the American Geophysical Union meeting 'the location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,' Livermore says. 

'The Siberian patch is winning the competition.' 

WHAT IS THE WORLD MAGNETIC MODEL? 

The charts, known as the World Magnetic Model (WMM), are used to convert between compass measurements of magnetic north and true north and can be found in the navigation systems of ships and airplanes as well as geological applications (such as drilling and mining). 

The WMM is also part of map applications in smartphones, including the Google Maps App.

Researchers from the U.S.'s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintain the WMM.

The charts, known as the World Magnetic Model (WMM), are used to convert between compass measurements of magnetic north and true north

'Although GPS is a great tool for navigation, it is limited in that it only provides your position,' geodetic scientist James Friederich from the U. S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency explained in 2014. 

'Your orientation, the direction you are facing, comes from the magnetic field.'

'Our war fighters use magnetics to orient their maps. 

'Your smartphone camera and various apps can use the magnetic field to help determine the direction you are facing,' he continued. 

'All of these examples need the WMM to provide your proper orientation.'

Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth's magnetic field could be gearing up to 'flip' – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa.

Such an event could have catastrophic effects, wreaking havoc on the electric grid and leaving life at the surface exposed to higher amounts of solar radiation.

While it's previously been thought that these reversals take place at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years, one recent study suggests it could happen in just a matter of centuries. 

Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth's magnetic field could be gearing up to 'flip' – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa. Earth's magnetic field is illustrated above

Scientists estimate Earth's North and South magnetic poles flip every 200,000-300,000 years.

But, it's been roughly 780,000 years since the last such event, causing many to suspect we're overdue.

When the magnetic poles flip, Earth's protective magnetic field weakens, leaving its inhabitants at higher risk from the effects of space weather.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO EARTH IF ITS POLES FLIPPED?

The Earth’s magnetic field is in a permanent state of change. 

Magnetic north drifts around and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north. 

The strength of the magnetic field also constantly changes and currently it is showing signs of significant weakening. 

Life has existed on the Earth for billions of years, during which there have been many reversals. 

There is no obvious correlation between animal extinctions and those reversals. Likewise, reversal patterns do not have any correlation with human development and evolution.

It appears that some animals, such as whales and some birds use Earth's magnetic field for migration and direction finding.

Since geomagnetic reversal takes a number of thousands of years, they could well adapt to the changing magnetic environment or develop different methods of navigation.

Radiation at ground level would increase, however, with some estimates suggesting that overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. ‘But only slightly,’ said Professor Richard Holme.

‘And much less than lying on the beach in Florida for a day. So if it happened, the protection method would probably be to wear a big floppy hat.’

The movement of the Earth's magnetic poles are shown in this animation at 10-year intervals from 1970 to 2020. The red and blue lines sjpw the difference between magnetic north and true north depending on where you are standing. On the green line, a compass would point to true north.

Credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

Electric grid collapse from severe solar storms is a major risk. As the magnetic field continues to weaken, scientists are highlighting the importance off-the grid energy systems using renewable energy sources to protect the Earth against a black out. 

'The very highly charged particles can have a deleterious effect on the satellites and astronauts,' added Dr Mona Kessel, a Magnetosphere discipline scientist at Nasa.

In one area, there is evidence that a flip is already occurring. ‘The increasing strength of the South Atlantic anomaly, an area of weak field over Brazil, is already a problem,’ said Professor Richard Holme. 

The Earth's climate could also change. A recent Danish study has found that the earth's weather has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field.

They claimed that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.

Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

'Earth's magnetic field, which has existed for at least 3.45 billion years, provides a shield from the direct impact of solar radiation,' said Professor Roberts from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.

'Even with Earth's strong magnetic field today, we're still susceptible to solar storms that can damage our electricity-based society.'

In the new study, researchers at the Australian National University analyzed the paleomagnetic record from 107,000 to 91,000 years ago by analyzing a stalagmite from a cave in southwestern China.

The team conducted magnetic analysis and radiometric dating on the meter-long sample, revealing the behaviour of the ancient magnetic field.

And, they found the magnetic field experienced a rapid shift over the span of about two centuries, decreasing in strength by about 90 percent when a field reversal occurred.

In the new study, researchers at the Australian National University analyzed the paleomagnetic record from 107,000 to 91,000 years ago by analyzing a stalagmite from a cave in southwestern China

The damage to power grids and communications systems resulting from such a flip in today's society would cause trillions of dollars in damage, the researchers explain.

'Hopefully such an event is a long way in the future and we can develop future technologies to avoid huge damage, where possible, from such events,' Professor Roberts said.

The study suggests Earth's magnetic field is a lot more unpredictable than suspected, the researchers say.

'The record provides important insights into ancient magnetic field behaviour,' Professor Roberts said, 'which has turned out to vary much more rapidly than previously thought.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

12-01-2019 om 17:01 geschreven door peter