The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
03-11-2017
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
An intricate crop circle spans a diameter of more than 45 metres in a barley field close to Barbury Castle near Wroughton, England, about 130 kilometres west of London, in 2008. The circle is noteworthy for its complexity, representing the first 10 digits of the mathematical constant pi, or 3.141592654. Lucy Pringle, CC BY-SA
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the paranormal mainstream.
Unlike UFOs, ghosts and sasquatches, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. At least 30 appeared in England last summer. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001.
Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of my ongoing four-year research project, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.
Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West.
Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life.
Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream.
Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific
Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream.
Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.
The 1990s TV series, The X-Files, which followed FBI agents investigating strange phenomena, has regained popularity and returned to production amid rising interest in the paranormal.
Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in a lack of critical studies on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.
Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and cryptids such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people’s everyday lives.
My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes.
Rationality conflicts with crop circles’ mystery
Crop circle research or “cereology” exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.
No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard’s book Discourse, Figure.
The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.
A crop circle enthusiast from Dublin lies on the ground to connect with what he believes are sacred energies in a crop circle in Wiltshire, England, in July.(Paul Kingsbury), Author provided
One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: “Crop circle closed.” The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.
Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the “Crop circle closed” sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle.
For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was “calling out” to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred.
The researchers had differing views on whether a “Crop circle closed” sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the “call” of the crop circle.
The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a sacred geometry workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles.
Interpreting paranormal cultures
As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles.
Lyotard aligns these events with “figural space” — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery.
Despite claims by “circle-makers” that they are human-made, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation.
According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers’ questions.
Furthermore, finding and getting to the crop circles — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.
Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people’s desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
An intricate crop circle spans a diameter of more than 45 metres in a barley field close to Barbury Castle near Wroughton, England, about 130 kilometres west of London, in 2008. The circle is noteworthy for its complexity, representing the first 10 digits of the mathematical constant pi, or 3.141592654. Lucy Pringle, CC BY-SA
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the paranormal mainstream.
Unlike UFOs, ghosts and sasquatches, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. At least 30 appeared in England last summer. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001.
Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of my ongoing four-year research project, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.
Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West.
Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life.
Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream.
Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific
Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream.
Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.
The 1990s TV series, The X-Files, which followed FBI agents investigating strange phenomena, has regained popularity and returned to production amid rising interest in the paranormal.
Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in a lack of critical studies on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.
Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and cryptids such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people’s everyday lives.
My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes.
Rationality conflicts with crop circles’ mystery
Crop circle research or “cereology” exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.
No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard’s book Discourse, Figure.
The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.
A crop circle enthusiast from Dublin lies on the ground to connect with what he believes are sacred energies in a crop circle in Wiltshire, England, in July.(Paul Kingsbury), Author provided
One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: “Crop circle closed.” The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.
Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the “Crop circle closed” sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle.
For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was “calling out” to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred.
The researchers had differing views on whether a “Crop circle closed” sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the “call” of the crop circle.
The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a sacred geometry workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles.
Interpreting paranormal cultures
As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles.
Lyotard aligns these events with “figural space” — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery.
Despite claims by “circle-makers” that they are human-made, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation.
According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers’ questions.
Furthermore, finding and getting to the crop circles — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.
Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people’s desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.
Since 1950, Missouri is fourteenth in the highest number of sightings of unidentified flying objects.
File photo
In recent years, the state of Missouri has embarked on an aggressive tourism campaign, designed to attract visitors from surrounding areas. Some of those visitors may even be from other galaxies.
Since 1950, Missouri is fourteenth in the highest number of sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), with 2,114 reports to the National UFO Reporting Center. Among the eight states bordering Missouri, only Illinois has more.
The statistics were revealed in the most extensive release of government UFO files to date. In January 2015, some 136,000 pages of declassified records from Project Blue Book, the renowned Air Force investigation of UFOs, were placed online.
Project Blue Book, based at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, recorded 12,618 reports of UFOs between 1947-69. Most were easily explained, though 701 are still listed as “unidentified.”
More than ever, Americans are convinced that aliens visit Earth. In 2012, a National Geographic survey revealed that 36 percent of Americans believe in UFOs, with only 17 percent disputing such a notion. The rest – a whopping 47 percent – was undecided. Some eighty percent of those surveyed think the U.S. government has concealed information on UFOs from the public.
The following year, a Huffington Post survey found that 48 percent of American adults were “open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet,” with 35 percent disagreeing. Men and women were nearly equal in percentage of believers, though political preference apparently influences UFO support. The Huffington survey found that 58 percent of Democrats call themselves believers, compared to 37 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of independents.
Missouri’s high ranking may be attributed to several factors, including relative population. Of the leading ten states for UFO reports, eight are in the top ten in population. California, for instance, leads the nation in population with 38.3 million residents, and its 12,658 UFO reports are over twice the number of the next-highest state.
Water may also be a factor. UFO reports tend to be clustered around large bodies of water, a trait shared by nine of the top ten states for sightings. With the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake, and the Mississippi River, Missouri has plenty to attract cosmic visitors looking for a scenic vista or a cool drink.
Several sightings have been reported around the area in recent years, including in Perryville on Dec. 10, 2011. In that instance, two witnesses reported “two triangle-shaped objects hovering very high above the Missouri bootheel.”
On April 4, 2012 in Perryville, “one large, spherical unblinking light” was “seen in the distance that made quick movements.” The sighting lasted for thirty to forty-five minutes. Sometimes the reports were not of sightings at all. On Jan. 11, 2015 in Perryville, “an unusual and almost deafening rumbling noise” was reported that “sounded very low but could not be seen.”
Perhaps otherworldly visitors to Perry County want to see what’s happening at the Perry Park Center. Or to check out the latest Cruise In.
Maybe they were passing through on their way to nearby towns. On June 21, 2014, a slow-moving orange light was reported across the sky over Fredericktown, where a “blinking white light” that “traveled a short distance, (then) disappeared” was also reported on May 2, 2015.
To the north, Farmington’s slogan of “the city of tradition and progress” may have attracted a “huge fireball-type object with humanoid object in the center,” according to a report on Nov. 8, 2012. On Dec. 19, 2013, “three horizontal bright white lights hovering in the southwest sky at night” were witnessed in Farmington, which may be comparable to a sighting there on June 17, 2015 of “a flash, or streak” that “seemed very bright, brighter than the moon, with the intensity of lightning.”
Aliens may have wanted to celebrate July 4 in Farmington in 2015, because on that night, a motorist “looked out (the) windshield and viewed the craft headed west. It seemed quite large, a fireball, with no discernible flashing lights.”
At least two recent UFO reports in neighboring Illinois have garnered national attention. In the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 2000, a string of local policemen on night patrol in neighboring towns reported a well-lit triangular object flying quietly at low altitudes over such locations as Highland, Lebanon, Dupo, Millstadt, and O’Fallon. Dubbed the “St. Clair Triangle,” the sighting has been the subject of national television features and multiple investigations by UFO enthusiasts.
On Nov. 7, 2006, mass reports of a lighted, saucer-like phenomena over a concourse of the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare Airport in Chicago set the Windy City abuzz. The alleged craft hovered for several minutes before racing into the sky and leaving what appeared to be a hole in the clouds.
Commercial and military pilots sometimes report strange lights in their airspace, though, as are sightings on the ground, the extraterrestrial possibility of these objects is hotly debated.
Interest in UFOs revives every few years, sometimes with reported sightings. The spike in the post-war era started with reports of alleged UFO wreckage near Roswell, N.M. in 1947. However, Roswell was hardly the first alleged UFO incident, as some researchers argue that strange phenomena in the skies is reported in the Bible.
In 1896 and 1897, there was a spate of UFO sightings across the nation, usually of cigar-shaped lighted objects in the sky. On April 17, 1897, reports surfaced of an extraterrestrial vehicle crash near Aurora, Tex., which allegedly resulted in one alien casualty.
Closer to home, three men claimed to have seen a cigar-shaped object with some sort of canopy top and oars that landed in a field near the tiny town of Nilwood, Ill., 30 miles south of Springfield, a mere two days before the Aurora crash. Whether or not the incidents are connected is not clear.
Despite the debate, Hollywood has made billions on the fantasy of space travel and the encounters that follow. The never-ending Star Wars releases are among the most profitable films of all time, while television favorites like Star Trek have legions of fans.
Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill., and a non-believer in UFOs. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.
After more than 70 years of tourism, authorities announced this week that the iconic Australian landmark Uluru would be off limits for climbers as of October 2019.
The huge red monolith, formerly known as Ayers Rock, has been considered by many tourists a must-visit site when travelling through Australia.
However, it is sacred to its traditional Aboriginal owners who have long been asking people to stop climbing it.
“The land has law and culture. We welcome tourists here. Closing the climb is not something to feel upset about but a cause for celebration. Let’s come together; let’s close it together,” said Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park board chairman Sammy Wilson.
But what other famous landmarks around the world are off-limits to visitors?
1. Lascaux Caves, France
The cave complex in southwestern France is home to some of the world’s most famous examples of prehistoric paintings.
After being discovered by a group of teenagers in 1940, the site became a popular tourist spot, accepting more than a thousand visitors a day following World War II.
However, the UNESCO World Heritage Site had to be sealed off to the public in 1963 because the breath and sweat of visitors, presence of light and changes in air circulation had damaged the paintings.
Lascaux II, an exact copy of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery, opened in 1983 for visitors.
2. Vatican Secret Archives, Vatican City
Hidden deep within the walls of the Vatican City are the Vatican Secret Archives, storing thousands of important historic documents on an estimated 52 miles of shelves.
Files include correspondence between the Vatican and some of the world’s most famous historic figures, such as Mozart, Queen Elizabeth I and Adolf Hitler.
The archives, which are officially the pope’s personal property, are off-limits to visitors. Scientific researchers from qualified universities can apply to enter, but even if granted access, no document after 1939 is available for public viewing.
3. Ise Grand Shrine, Japan
Visitors hoping to get inside the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan will have to think again, as authorities won’t even let you see the building.
The shrine is dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu and is considered one of the holiest places in Japan.
Only the chief priest or priestess of the shrine, who must be a member of the Imperial Family, is allowed to enter the sacred site.
4. Area 51, US
The United States Air Force facility in the Nevada desert commonly known as ‘Area 51’ is the stuff of UFO legends.
The CIA publicly acknowledged the existence of the base for the first time in 2013.
But while the surrounding area, including the small town of Rachel on the so-called “Extraterrestrial Highway”, is a popular tourist destination, Area 51 itself is off limits.
While you can see the complex’s buildings in satellite images, it doesn’t appear on public US government maps, and you can’t drive anywhere near it.
5. Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, China
Located at the northern foot of the Lishan Mountain, the Qinshihuang Mausoleum is the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang, the founder of the first unified empire in Chinese history.
The huge complex reportedly took 38 years to build, from 246 to 208 BC, and was designed to mirror the urban plan of the then-capital, Xianyang.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site contains thousands of intricately crafted terracotta soldiers, each designed individually with horses, chariots and weapons and first unearthed in 1974.
However, far from being open to visitors, the tomb itself has not yet even been excavated.
6. Mezhgorye, Russia
Mezhgorye is a closed town in the Republic of Bashkortosan, Russia, which is believed to serve as a bunker against a nuclear attack.
Its status means that the federal government has the power to grant and deny access to the town of around 17,000 inhabitants, making it out of bounds for tourists.
It has been reported that the site is home to Russian military battalions that serve a secret nuclear missile base.
7. Snake Island, Brazil
Ilha da Queimada Grande, also known as Snake Island, is a tiny island off the coast of Brazil that is home to more than 4,000 deadly snakes.
The island is deemed so dangerous that the Brazilian government banned visitors, and while scientists occasionally venture there for study, no humans or mammal species call the island home.
8. The Queen’s bedroom, England
Buckingham Palace has long welcomed tourists, but the Queen’s bedroom remains completely out of bounds to visitors.
The heavily guarded chamber is said to be among the most secure rooms in England, and has become even more so since 1982, when a man named Michael Fagan broke into the bedroom and saw the Queen in her nightie in the biggest royal security breach of the 20th century.
9. Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen is strictly off limits to the public.
The vault was built to store seeds that could be retrieved in the case of a huge environmental disaster.
It is one of the most secure storage facilities on the entire planet, so tourists hoping to pay a visit to the vault will have to think again.
10. North Sentinel Island, India
The remote North Sentinel Island off the coast of India is home to the indigenous Sentinelese people who actively avoid contact with the outside world.
India has reportedly stopped all attempts at contacting the tribe and imposed a three-mile out-of-bounds zone around the island.
In 2006, two fishermen approached the island illegally and were killed.
11. Room 39, North Korea
North Korea is one of the most secretive countries in the world, but even more secret is its Room 39.
Very little is known about Room 39 – thought to be inside the Workers’ Party headquarters in downtown Pyongyang – but it is believed to handle weapons deals, drug trafficking and money counterfeiting.
For tourists visiting the country on one of the official tours, it is certain to be left off the itinerary.
Historical discovery: Researchers find hidden ‘chamber’ inside the Great Pyramid
Historical discovery: Researchers find hidden ‘chamber’ inside the Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid is a universal symbol of genius and creativity. The evidence that humankind can make the impossible possible., It was ‘opened’ in the Middle Ages by Calif Al-Mamun. His team found most of the major internal structures we see today.
Launched in October of 2015 the ScanPyramids Mission is looking through stones using non-invasive technologies in order to detect unknown internal structures.
The void looks like a corridor, it has remained hidden behind the chevrons of the North face of the pyramid for centuries.
The detected part of this big void has a more or less similar size to the known Grand Gallery. The Grand Gallery has a length of 47 meters in length, a height of 8 meters, and volume of 600m3.
The Big Void’s minimum length is 30 meters and is located between 50 to 70 meters from the ground. It could be composed of one or more internal structures. It is either horizontal or inclined, and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery.
With the aid of muon detectors, scientists from the ScanPyramids project have found a previously unknown, 30-meter-long structure, hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
For millennia has the Great Pyramid of Giza remained shrouded in mystery? Now, thanks to revolutionary new technology—particle physics— new details and long-held secrets from within the monument may come to life.
Using cosmic-ray based imaging, scientists have found a narrow void embedded deep within the ancient structure.
Located just above the “Grand Gallery” which links two of the main chambers inside the Pyramid, the hidden structure goes on for around thirty meters.
Researchers still do not know the exact design and what the purpose of the void was, but the finding has already been hailed by scholars around the globe as the biggest discovered inside the Pyramid since the 19th century.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is believed to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Khufu and completed sometime around 2550 BC.
The Great Pyramid of Giza remained as the world’s tallest manmade structure for thousands of years.
The construction technique and process used to build the Great Pyramid of Giza has remained one of the greatest scientific mystery for decades.
However, as the ScanPyramids project explains, “Just because a mystery is 4,500 years old doesn’t mean it can’t be solved.”
However, the latest discovery could help researchers understand how and why the Great Pyramid of Giza was erected thousands of years ago.
Since 2015, a group of scientists from various countries including France and Japan, and experts from Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, the University of Cairo, and the non-profit organization the Heritage Innovation Preservation (HIP) Institute, began scanning and studying the structure with revolutionary new technology.
Now with the help of ‘cosmic ray muons’ which are partially absorbed by stone, researchers have spotted something ‘big’ inside the Pyramid. Something that has never before been spotted. Something that has remained a mystery for thousands of years.
Muon data showing the big void. This view is looking upward from the Queen’s Chamber.
ScanPyramids/HIP Institute; Business Insider
Scientists set up a number of muon detectors inside the pyramid, including the Queen’s chamber.
This allowed experts to ‘view’ the inside of the Pyramid without physically touching anything.
The presence of the ‘structure’ which has been dubbed by Scan Pyramids as the ‘Big Void‘ was confirmed using three different Muon detectors, observed and confirmed several months after it was spotted for the first time, wrote scientists in a study published in the journal Nature.
The results were analyzed several times before the discovery was confirmed.
“We have been very surprised to discover something so big—a big anomaly,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, one of the authors of the paper, during a press conference.
“A lot of people tried to dig some tunnels looking for chambers,” Tayoubi added. “But as far as I am aware, no one has tried to dig something in this area. There was no theory expecting to find something as big as the Grand Gallery here.”
Tayoubi and his fellow colleagues are firmly convinced that the “Big Void” is neither an anomaly in the data nor porous rock or loose rubble.
Furthermore, the team is 99.99% certain it is real, it exists, and a foremost expert on Egypt’s pyramids agrees with that conclusion.
“I don’t think this is bulls…,” Mark Lehner, an archaeologist and Egyptologist at the Ancient Egypt Research Association, told Business Insider. “I put credence in the results, and I think they have indications of a large empty space.”
NEW HIDDEN CHAMBER WITH UNKNOWN PURPOSE FOUND INSIDE GREAT PYRAMID AT GIZA
NEW HIDDEN CHAMBER WITH UNKNOWN PURPOSE FOUND INSIDE GREAT PYRAMID AT GIZA
An international team of scientists claims to have discovered a previously unknown space within the Great Pyramid of Giza. In a study published in Nature detailing their use of advanced scanning processes, the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute disclosed the apparent existence of a large unknown structure located above the famed Grand Gallery.
Mehdi Tayoubi, the institute's president, told Daily Mail reporters “it could be composed of one or several structures. Maybe it could another Grand Gallery. It could be a chamber; it could a lot of things.”
There are so many theories — nice ones but also crazy ones,
He went on to tell the BBC "what we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any theory."
THERE ARE SO MANY THEORIES — NICE ONES BUT ALSO CRAZY ONES
The team, composed of French and Japanese scientists, employed the use of cosmic-ray imaging. The process uses plates designed to record the activity of muons, a kind of naturally occurring sub atomic particle. Such muons are constantly entering the earth's atmosphere, but their path can be interrupted by solid objects, such as the pyramid's rock walls.
Using these plates and triangulating the data, the team was able to approximate the size of the “void” without disturbing the surrounding walls. This technology has been employed successfully in multiple geological studies as well as, more recently, the investigation into the reactor failure at Fukushima.
says Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation institute in Paris
The pyramid is also known as Khufu's Pyramid for its builder, a 4th dynasty pharaoh who reigned from 2509 to 2483 B.C.
Researchers placed muons detectors inside and outside the pyramid
The pyramids of Giza have drawn both scientific and artistic study for ages. However, no major discoveries have been found in the pyramid since the 1800’s. The 19th-century techniques of excavation were primitive and often damaged to the artifacts being studied. “We can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder, ” the American archaeologist Mark Lehner said while calling for “more of a focus” on the discovered “anomaly.” More recent explorations using robots, such as the Upuaut Project campaigns in 1992 and 1993, were significantly less damaging but produced only minor successes.
However, not all of the archeological community is thrilled with the published results, and some have expressed doubts regarding the validity of the find. Archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying “The Great Pyramid is full of voids. We have to be careful how results are presented to the public.”
Coincidentally, both the exact details of the Great Pyramids construction and the ultimate source of the universe’s muons are unknown. In both sciences, arguments clash and contradict each other, and new theories are frequently created and disposed of. In this unique case, scientists can use the known qualities of one mystery to explore the unknown facts of another.
BRIGHT 'FLYING SAUCER' CAPTURED OVER THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
BRIGHT 'FLYING SAUCER' CAPTURED OVER THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
It seems it’s not just humans who love the Great Barrier Reef. A woman in Australia thinks she has photographic evidence of aliens visiting the reef.
After a long day fishing with friends, Jenny Morrison couldn’t help but take a few quick photos of the beautiful sunset over the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Jenny took her photos around the area of Elford Reef, a reef around 50km east of Cairns.
Later that evening in the comfort of her own home Jenny looked through the images she’d taken of her day out on the 2,300km-long reef. To her astonishment, she noticed what appeared to be an odd shape hanging in the sky.
The odd shape in the sky seemed to resemble a flying saucer, a disc-like shape with a haze around it. With the availability of photo editing equipment, any image can easily be manipulated, but Miss Morrison was quick to stress she had not interfered with the image in any way and she cannot explain what is on the photograph.
No doubt most people will be skeptical and say this image was not a UFO and was simply some kind of glitch or effect created by the light reflecting off the seawater or some dirt on the camera lens.
All the above is possible, but maybe it’s not just earthlings who find the barrier reef a majestic beauty, surely anyone looking down on earth from above would surely be interested in the largest living thing on the planet.
Maybe an alien expedition? Or a package holiday to visit Earth's most beautiful natural landmarks.
This part of North Queensland is a Hotspot for UFO activity. For decades UFO sightings have been reported.
They have an annual UFO event called The Cardwell UFO Festival, held every October to celebrate the area’s links with extraterrestrial activity by encouraging members of the public to share their experiences.
BEIJING, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- There's a giant "ruler" hidden among millions of galaxies in the universe. With it, scientists can measure how fast the universe is expanding. This will help them explore dark energy, the mysterious power behind cosmic expansion, and so speculate on the universe's destiny.
With this ruler, Chinese astronomers recently succeeded in reconstructing the evolution history of dark energy based on the observation of over a million galaxies. The research shows that dark energy is dynamic.
"What it means is that dark energy, which causes cosmic expansion, might not be a vacuum energy with a constant density, like many scientists previously believed, but rather an energy field with certain dynamic properties," said Zhao Gongbo, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The research result made by a team led by Zhao was recently published on the academic journal, Nature Astronomy.
Dark energy determines the universe's destiny, he said.
"If dark energy is indeed a vacuum energy, the universe will keep on expanding until it ends with a 'big rip'. But if dark energy is dynamic, the universe might go through expansion, contraction and then expansion again -- a cyclical universe."
FINDING THE RULER
How do scientists measure such a vast universe? According to Zhao, nature provides a magic ruler -- baryon acoustic oscillations.
The early universe consisted of a hot, dense plasma of electrons, baryons (protons and neutrons) and photons, like a pot of porridge. The primordial disturbances from cosmic creation transmitted through the "porridge," causing periodic changes to its density, temperature and pressure on the chronological sequence. This transmission mechanism is similar to sound waves transmission, so it is called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) by scientists.
About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the cooled-down universe became transparent. The transmission of BAOs stopped, and the information of those oscillations is frozen in space-time. But the great power of it influenced the distribution of galaxies in the universe.
In 2005, the BAO signal was discovered for the first time. Thus cosmologists finally got the "standard ruler" they dreamed of, in order to measure the universe -- whether it's flat or curved, and how fast it's expanding.
But that's just the start. Scientists also have to make accurate measurements.
Since 2012, Zhao's team has been making observations with the Sloan telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Based on the observation of galaxies and quasars, they obtained high-precision BAO signals.
"The observation of BAOs is becoming more precise. Previous observations focused on a short period of the universe, but we adopted a new method. Like doing a CT scan for a more remote universe, we get to know more about the history of cosmic evolution," said Zhao.
Based on the measurement with the ruler, astronomers will be able to draft a three-dimensional map of the universe.
EXPLORING DARK ENERGY
In 1929, U.S. astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble discovered most galaxies are moving away from the Earth, indicating the universe is expanding. The discovery shocked the world, overthrowing the long-held perception of a static universe.
But many scientists still believed that cosmic expansion would slow down. However, to their surprise, two research teams, in the United States and Australia, reported respectively in 1998 that they had discovered cosmic expansion is speeding up.
Scientists assumed an unknown power they called dark energy was accelerating cosmic expansion. Even now, scientists still know little about it, although they have put forward many theoretical models.
For instance, a model of dark energy advanced by Zhang Xinmin, a researcher at Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS, conforms to the observation results of Zhao's team using the Sloan telescope.
In order to test so many theories, large-scale computer simulations are needed. "With the help of China's Tianhe supercomputer as well as foreign supercomputers, we simulated approximately 2,000 universes for analytic purposes," said Zhao.
On the computer screen, billions of years flew by, galaxies took shape and the universe evolved.
"I want to understand why cosmic expansion is accelerating," said Zhao. "There is so much new physics in that. Normal matter only accounts for about 5 percent of the universe, while the other 95 percent of dark matter and dark energy is still unknown to us. If one day we know what dark energy is, the whole discipline of physics will be revolutionized."
In the next five to 10 years, many projects will study dark energy on Earth and in space, both in China and abroad, he said. For example, China's future space station will contain a space telescope two meters in diameter. Its major scientific goal is to study dark energy.
Ancient UNDERWATER structure, said to be 14,000 years old—Could this be evidence of ALIEN bases & UFOs?
Ancient UNDERWATER structure, said to be 14,000 years old— Could this be evidence of ALIEN bases & UFOs?
Three decades ago, a Japanese diver discovered a massive stone complex near Yonaguni, at the southwestern-most tip of the Japanese archipelago. Scientists have determined that this structure is man-made and that it must have been built more than 14,000 years ago—a conclusion that led some to seek out more “paranormal” explanations.
The massive structure, first discovered by tour diver Kihachiro Aratake, consists of megalithic stone formations, the largest of which resembles a tiered pyramid the size of two football fields.
The underwater ruins, which lie at depths ranging between 60 and 100 feet below the surface, is considered one of the greatest underwater archeological discoveries in history.
Based on geometric patterns present at the site, scientists have concluded that the formation is not natural. While the structure contains “tons of right angles,” there are also clearly rectangular channels, which lead to stairwells.
According to Graham Hancock, author of the book “Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization,” the structure, which he believes to be a “ceremonial complex,” was built using a scale of thinking that far surpasses all stone-age civilizations known to us. According to him, the structure was probably built before the thaw of the last ice age, which would have caused massive flooding, a conclusion that would date the structure to over 14,000 years ago.
Given that mankind was unable to conceive of such structures so early, (thus implying that they could not have been built by mankind), some scientists have further formed theories in the direction of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Looking into the history of the area where the ruins were found, there are untold numbers of accounts of strange phenomena that have occurred.
According to ancient Japanese history, the area of sea south of Japan has long been the subject of legends, telling of fire-breathing underwater dragons flying out of the water and capsizing vessels, while causing sailors to meet a watery grave. That area of ocean was termed the “Dragon’s Triangle,” also known as the “Devil’s Sea.”
In modern times, this area is considered a hotbed of UFO activity, with descriptions of glowing objects rising out of the water and circling ships from above.
Strangely enough, this vast stretch of water has a counterpart on the exact opposite side of the earth, on exactly the same line of latitude, the 25th parallel north—and that is of course the Bermuda Triangle, also considered to be a hotbed of UFO and paranormal phenomena.
Both areas of water similarly are considered treacherous, where magnetic phenomena causing compasses and instruments to fail are common, and literally thousands of vessels and aircraft have entered the region only to vanish, often without a distress call being made, and without a trace.
The similarities don’t end there; just as ancient ruins were discovered on the outskirts of the Dragon’s Triangle, so too have there been ruins found beneath the oceans off the coast of Cuba, just on the outskirts of the Bermuda Triangle, including terraced, pyramid structures. Could there be some connection between the ruins of the east Atlantic and those of Yonaguni in the Pacific?
Some paranormal experts have considered the possibility that the areas of the Triangles could indicate the existence of alien bases, which might have existed on earth for thousands of years.
Given the facts that these structures must have been built before they were submerged some 14,000 years ago and that stone-age man could not have conceived such structures as early as that time, who could have created these structures? Is it merely coincidence that ruins are located beside the mysterious seas of the Bermuda and Dragon’s Triangle?
Could all of these mysteries be explained by the existence of aliens and alien bases beneath the sea, or could there be some less extraordinary, more conventional explanation? Please share your thoughts!
“Imagine a social networking site, where instead of having a page with posts of people here you have an actual cave wall or roof full of different pictographs.”
If you’re looking for proof that the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans were ahead of their time, a new study that is the result of three years of intense spelunking in the caves of the uninhabited Puerto Rican island of Mona Island is a good place to start. Researchers found 70 cave systems on the currently uninhabited island filled with indigenous pre-Columbian rock art and the reason behind the strangeness of some of the drawings is a surprise.
All images used with permission from University of Leicester
In a press release announcing their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from the University of Leicester, the British Museum, the British Geological Survey and Cambridge University call the thousands of well-preserved wall drawings deep in the caves the “greatest diversity of preserved indigenous iconography in the Caribbean.”
“Most of the precolonial pictographs are in very narrow spaces deep in the caves, some are very hard to access, you have to crawl to get to them, they are very extensive and humidity is very high but it is extremely rewarding.”
Fortunately for the pictorials, but not for the indigenous people, the island has been uninhabited since the 16th century. First settled by Arawaks from Hispaniola and later by the Tainos from Cuba and other Caribbean islands, Ámona had the bad luck of being ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. It quickly became a major port and the natives were offered ‘jobs’ as ‘laborers’ in the fields while merchants and pirates (including Captain Kidd) pillaged the island. By the late 16th century, the Spanish had no more use for Mona and abandoned it to the natives – who had already abandoned it to the ruthless Europeans. As a result, there was no one to see or destroy the hidden cave artwork.
Being in caves, it’s not surprising that the artists used bat guano that had changed colors by absorbing minerals from the floors. Most of the pictures were drawn with their fingers after dipping them in the guano ‘paint’ or simply by using their fingertips to remove the dark calcite on the walls and expose the lighter rock underneath. The figures in the drawings appear to be humans in transition to animals or plants which the researchers say indicates that these wee deeply spiritual pictures in a deep, dark spiritual place. In fact, that explains the strange shapes in the pictures.
“They took cohoba a hallucinogenic drug that you snort and it’s very powerful.”
According to co-author Dr. Jago Cooper, the Tainos people inhaled the ground seeds of cojóbana tree for a psychedelically-induced spiritual experience. Under the direction of a shaman or religious leader, the people would be led deep into this temple-like place.
“The further you go into the cave the more into the spiritual world you go. In the dark a lot of your sense are totally transformed – it’s very eerie and strange. You are completely out of your comfort zone – it’s discombobulating and the same thing would have happened would have happened to the people making this art.”
The art shows that the caves acted as portals to the spiritual world – a kind of transition point where the human changed to another form. More research is planned. (Shouldn’t this be done under the influence of cohoba? Asking for a friend.)
Mona Island is still generally uninhabited and the areas where the drawings are found in the caves are difficult to reach, so they’re safe … for now.
Aliens and Illuminati confirmed: a plane-sized hole has been found in the middle of the Great Pyramid, according to scientists.
What lies in the middle of the structure has been subject to debate for years as researchers were unable to get a look inside. But they now appear to have discovered that it contains a huge room with an unknown purpose... did someone say 'landing dock'?
Discovered as part of the 'ScanPyramids' project, it is the first of its kind to be made since the 19th century. The project sees researchers using particle physics to look deep inside the structure without disturbing what's inside.
Credit: PA Images
"We don't know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined; we don't know if this void is made by one structure or several successive structures," explained Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute, Paris.
"What we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any sort of theory."
The Great Pyramid, or Khufu's Pyramid, was constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu between 2509 and 2483 BC. It is the largest of the Egyptian pyramids located at Giza
Japanese and French scientists made the announcement after two years of study at the famous pyramid complex, after making the discovery using cosmic-ray imaging.
Credit: PA Images
"It could be a kind of space that the builders left to protect the very narrow roof of the grand gallery from the weight of the pyramid," American archaeologist Mark Lehner told the BBC's Science In Action programme.
"Right now it's just a big difference; it's an anomaly. But we need more of a focus on it, especially in a day and age when we can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder as [British] Egyptologist Howard Vyse did in the early 1800s."
Hidden structure found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in massive breakthrough.
IT’S A GAS When a massive meteorite slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, it vaporized rocks, sending up enough climate-changing gases to spark mass extinction.
NASA
The asteroid collision that may have doomed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago really stank. A new analysis of gases released from vaporized rocks at the impact site in modern-day Mexico suggests that the smashup released up to three times more smelly, climate-cooling sulfur than previously believed.
The study reveals for the first time how much sulfur and carbon dioxide gas was ejected
The Chicxulub impact spewed about 325 billion tons of sulfur and 425 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air, researchers report October 31 in Geophysical Research Letters.
This relatively modest release of CO₂ might have contributed to long-term planetary warming. But the massive cloud of sulfurous gas would have more immediately blocked out the sun, the researchers suggest, plunging the planet into a dark Narnia-style winter that was colder and longer than previously thought. That could help explain why so many of Earth’s plants and animals went extinct around this time, even those living nowhere near the impact crater (SN: 2/4/17, p. 16).
The new study suggests that the impact may have released around three times as much sulfur and much less carbon dioxide compared with previous estimates from 20 years ago. The new calculations incorporate a better understanding of the meteor’s angle of impact, the composition of the rocks and how much gas would make it high enough into the atmosphere to influence climate.
The Yellowstone supervolcano’s last eruption wasn’t a single event, but 2 closely-spaced eruptions that put the brakes on a natural global-warming trend, says a study.
The gorgeous colors of Yellowstone National Park’s Grand Prismatic hot spring are among the park’s myriad hydrothermal features created by the fact that Yellowstone is a supervolcano – the largest type of volcano on Earth.
The Yellowstone supervolcano’s last catastrophic eruption, about 630,000 years ago, was not a single event, but two powerful and closely-spaced eruptions, according to a new study. The super-eruptions were powerful enough, the researchers say, to slow a natural global warming trend that eventually led the planet out of a major ice age.
For the study, presented at the Geological Society of American’s annual meeting in Seattle on October 25, 2017, a team of geologists from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) analyzed two layers of volcanic ash discovered in seafloor sediments off the coast of Southern California. These layers of ash, sandwiched among sediments, bear the unique chemical fingerprint of Yellowstone’s most recent super eruption. and contain a remarkably detailed climate record of the violent events that formed the vast Yellowstone caldera – or cauldron-like crater – that we see today. UCSB geologist Jim Kennett said in a statement:
We discovered here that there are two ash-forming super eruptions 170 years apart, and each cooled the ocean by about three degrees Celsius.
By comparing the volcanic ash record with the climate record of single-celled marine animal fossils, it’s quite clear, Kennet said, that both of these eruptions caused separate volcanic winters, when ash and volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface and cause temporary cooling. According to the study, the onset of the global cooling events was abrupt and coincided precisely with the timing of the supervolcanic eruptions.
These cooling events occurred at an especially sensitive time, Kennet said, when the global climate was warming out of an ice age and easily disrupted by such events. But, Kennet added, each time, the cooling lasted longer than it should have, according to simple climate models. He said:
We see planetary cooling of sufficient magnitude and duration that there had to be other feedbacks involved.
These feedbacks might include increased sunlight-reflecting sea ice and snow cover or a change in ocean circulation that would cool the planet for a longer time.
Bottom line: New research suggest that the Yellowstone supervolcano’s last eruption wasn’t a single event, but 2 closely-spaced eruptions that slowed a natural global-warming trend.
Antediluvian monument? Scientific study says the Sphinx may be up to 800,000 years old
Antediluvian monument? Scientific study says the Sphinx may be up to 800,000 years old
“…it is the sea level during the Calabrian phase which is the closest to the present mark with the highest GES (Great Egyptian Sphinx) hollow at its level. High level of sea water also caused the Nile overflowing and created long-living water-bodies. As to time, it corresponds to 800000 years.
Great, mysterious, almost mystical, shrouded in mystery, millennial, how else would you describe this amazing ancient monument?
It is probably one of the most recognized monuments in the world, one of the icons representative of the power and culture of the ancient Egyptian civilization, cradle, and tomb of pharaohs.
It is ironic then, that the Great Sphinx of Giza is also one of the least understood architectural wonders of ancient Egypt, even though researchers from around the globe have tried to understand when the Sphinx was carved, how, why and what it represents.
An artists illustration of the Great Sphinx before it was completely excavated.
But the most mysterious part of the Sphinx is probably its age. Egyptologists estimate that it was sculpted around the XXVI century BC., as part of the funerary complex.
Having a lion’s body and a human head, this strange hybrid being, which we know with the term of the Sphinx, is one of the most striking productions of Egyptian art.
The ancient Egyptians called it Shesep-ankh, “living image,” the name given to the royal statues.
They symbolized the idea of strength and power, and the Pharaoh was generally represented in this form.
This is indicated by the fact that the sphinxes wore nemes— the striped headcloth worn by pharaohs in ancient Egypt.
This ancient monument faces from West to East and stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt.
The face of the Sphinx is commonly assumed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre.
The Great Sphinx was created by carving a mound of limestone located on the Giza plateau.
It has a height of about twenty meters and the fact of the creatures measures around five meters. In ancient times it was painted in bright colors: red body and face, and the nemes that covered the head were decorated with yellow and blue stripes.
A man standing on the shoulder of the Great Sphinx. The image was taken in the 1900’s. Notice the size of the monument.
Titled “GEOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE PROBLEM OF DATING THE GREAT EGYPTIAN SPHINX CONSTRUCTION” a study presented in 2008 offers controversial details about the Great Sphinx of Giza, and particularly its age.
As noted by Vjacheslav I. Manichev and Alexander G. Parkhomenko in their study, after all these years of intensive scientific work trying to determine the exact age of the Sphinx, we still have problems coming to an agreement.
“The problem of dating the Great Egyptian Sphinx is still valid, despite the long-term history of its research. A geological approach in connection to other scientific-natural methods allows answering the question about the relative age of the Sphinx. The conducted visual research of the Sphinx allowed the conclusion about the important role of water from large water bodies which partially flooded the structure with formation of wave-cut hollows on its vertical walls,” wrote experts in the study.
“The morphology of these formations has an analogy with similar hollows formed by the sea in the coastal zones. The genetic similarity of the compared erosion forms and the geological formation and petrographic composition of sedimentary rock complexes lead to a conclusion that the decisive factor of destruction of the Great Sphinx is the wave energy rather than sand abrasion in Eolian process.”
“Voluminous geological literature confirms the fact of existence of long-living fresh-water lakes in various periods of the Quaternary from the Lower Pleistocene to the Holocene.”
“These lakes were distributed in the territories adjacent to the Nile. The absolute mark of the large upper erosion hollow of the Sphinx corresponds to the level of water surface which took place in the Early Pleistocene.”
“The Great Egyptian Sphinxwas already present on the Giza Plateau by that geological (historical) time,” concluded experts.
Manichev and Parkhomenko are convinced that the Great Sphinx had to hae been submerged for a long time underwater and, to support this theory, they point towards existing literature of geological studies of the Giza Plateau.
According to a number of studies, it was at the end of the Pliocene geologic period (sometime between 5.2 and 1.6 million years ago) that sea water entered the Nile valley and gradually created flooding in the area.
This phenomenon led to the formation of lacustrine deposits which are at the mark of 180 m above the present level of the Mediterranean Sea.
According to Manichev and Parkhomenko, it is the sea level during the Calabrian phase which is the closest to the present mark with the highest GES (Great Egyptian Sphinx) hollow at its level.
High level of sea water also caused the Nile overflowing and created long-living water-bodies. As to time, it corresponds to 800000 years.
Scientists have just found THOUSANDS of new lifeforms that redraw the Tree of Life
Scientists have just found THOUSANDS of new lifeforms that redraw the Tree of Life
A stunning discovery has just been made by scientists who have found ‘organisms that are different from any other life forms on Earth known to science’.
While humans are the dominant species on Earth, if we take a look at the tree of life, we will notice that we share this branch with a number of different creatures on Earth, who all have one thing in common, a backbone.
This small—yet extremely important feature—is enough to place humans in a group referred to as ‘phylum’ together with dogs, fish, and lizards. This is something we see repeated across Earth’s organisms, and essentially connects all of life’s diversities into one.
A phylogenetic tree of life. Note how small the phylum Animalia — where humans fit in — is compared to bacteria and archaea.
(Image Credit: Adl, Sina M.; Simpson, Alastair G. B.; et al.)
Their study, published in the Journal Nature Microbiology, experts revealed a new technique referred to as metagenomics, which essentially involves the sequencing of ALL the DNA in a sample of an environment — dirt, water, feces, etc. — to produce that sample’s metagenome.
With aid of an international massive database composed of 1,500 metagenomes, scientists were able to reconstruct the individual genomes of 7,280 new bacteria and 623 new archaea.
A fertile hunting ground for new species
Then, scientists came across something totally unexpected. The discovered that out of all these microorganisms, around a third were UNLIKE anything experts had seen before, resulting in the creation of 17 completely new bacterial phylums and three new achaeal phylums.
“The real value of these genomes is that many are evolutionarily distinct from previously recovered genomes,” asserts lead researcher Gene Tyson. “They increase the evolutionary diversity spanned by both bacterial and archaeal genome trees by over 30 percent, and are the first representatives within 17 bacterial and three archaeal phyla.”
“To give this context, every single insect on Earth belongs to just one phylum, and every single animal with a backbone belongs to one phylum, so this is crazy new levels of stuff,” says Nicholas Coleman at the University of Sydney.
“But this is probably an underestimate, as we’ve recently found that existing methods for estimating this actually miss a lot of organisms,” says Donovan Parks at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Of all the many and varied encounters with the Men in Blackthat I have on record, there is no doubt that one of the creepiest is that of an Englishman, Nev Jacques. Nev told me, just a couple of years ago, that while he and his wife were vacationing in the Canary Islands in 2012 they had a very strange encounter with a mysterious MIB. Nev began as follows:
“Hi Nick, I listened to your show on Coast to Coast, re Men in black recently, the header photo for that gave me some relief! Let me explain. I was on holiday with my wife in Fuerteventura, in the Canaries, November-December 2012. We were walking back to our hotel on a very long promenade walk. It was close to 4 p.m. There were other people milling about. It’s kind of high up on a volcanic rock face, directly at the seas edge and a wide open area.”
Up until that point, everything had been completely normal. That normality, however, was destined to change radically and drastically, as Nev revealed to me: “We noticed about 100 meters in front of us a tall, thin man, at least 6 foot 2 with a big rimmed black hat, round feature hugging black sixties type sunglasses, a long sleeved shirt and a light-colored jumper over his shoulders and long trousers! What made it more strange was his face looked white, as if it was plastered in sun block, (whiter than white). We both laughed and watched him walk towards us. I got the feeling he was watching me, although I couldn’t see his eyes. As he drew closer it became apparent that it wasn’t sun block it was his skin! He had big hands and long fingers, also very white; kind of in front of him, not by his sides!”
There was far more to come. All of it was very weird, which is hardly surprising: just about everything concerning the Men in Black is weird. Back to Nev: “When we where about 5 feet from him I noticed his skin was almost translucent. That’s the only way I can describe it. His sunglasses covered all of his eye area and wrapped around the full socket area. They were round and black. He had a narrow, sunken face, and had a very angular jaw and prominent cheek bones. He looked in his sixties or so.”
Things got stranger…
“When he was passing us he turned his head looking at me and spoke, with a kind of acknowledging manner and said something that I and my wife couldn’t understand or describe as human language. It was high and low pitched all at the same time and very short, that’s the best way to describe it! Strangely, we didn’t look back to see where he went or take a photo. Both of us don’t know why we didn’t. I got the feeling he was watching me from me first noticing him.”
The brief experience was over, but Nev was unable to shake off the spine-tingling effects of that eerie encounter, as he told me: “We got back to the hotel and I could stop thinking and talking about the encounter with my wife. I kept telling her he wasn’t from here, his clothes weren’t right. In fact, he was totally alien in appearance to anyone I have ever seen in my life. I went to bed that night and didn’t sleep much. Every time I tried to go to sleep all I could see was him and I thought about the encounter for the rest of the holiday.”
Nev concluded: “I searched the Internet for all types of albinos that I could find for months after, but couldn’t find a match for him. Then, I found your interview on Coast to Coast and, bingo, the artist’s impression of the Man in Black was him, only without the hat and glasses. It still freaks me out to this day, Nick, We can still not explain it! Kind Regards, Nev Jacques, UK.”
Today, many of the world’s leading companies are in a one-of-a-kind race: To bring artificial intelligence (AI) to life. Already, machine learning systems are the core of many businesses, so it’s no surprise that updates about this AI or that neural net often pop up on our newsfeed. Such headlines typically read along the lines of, “AI beats human players in video game” or “AI mimics human speech” and even sometimes things like “AI detects cancer using machine learning.”
But just how close are we to having machines with the intelligence of a human—machines that we can talk with and work with like we do any other individual? Machines that are conscious?
While all of the aforementioned developments are real, Yann LeCun, Director of AI Research at Facebook and a professor of computer science at NYU, thinks that we may be overestimating the abilities of today’s AI, and, thus building up a bit of hype. “We’re very far from having machines that can learn the most basic things about the world in the way humans and animals can do,” LeCun told The Verge in an interview published last week. “Like, yes, in particular areas machines have superhuman performance, but in terms of general intelligence we’re not even close to a rat.”
This so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to an AI operator capable of performing virtually every task a human being could. Conversely, today’s AI specialize in particular tasks: for example, image or speech recognition, or identifying patterns by sifting through tons of data that machine learning AIs have been trained on. These specialized AIs are also called “applied AI” or “narrow AI” to highlight their rather limited intelligence.
Speaking to Futurism via email, Manuel Cebrian, one of the MIT researchers that developed Shelley, an AI horror storyteller, agreed with LeCun’s sentiments. “AI is just a great tool,” he said, adding that, “it seems to me, based on my work with Shelley, that AI is very far from being able to create professional-level horror fiction.” And thus, still quite far from human levels of intelligence.
LeCun clarifies that we shouldn’t devalue the significant work that AI researchers have made in recent months and years, but that work in machine learning and neural networks is not the same as developing true artificial intelligence. “So for example, and I don’t want to minimize at all the engineering and research work done on AlphaGo by our friends at DeepMind, but when [people interpret the development of AlphaGo] as significant progress towards general intelligence, it’s wrong,” LeCun added. “It just isn’t.”
Pierre Barreau, CEO of Aiva Technologies, the company behind the music-composing AI Aiva, also thinks that the advancements that we have made towards synthetic intelligence are overstated. “AGI is a very hyped topic,” he noted via email. “I am, in general, quite optimistic about how fast tech develops, but I think a lot of people don’t realize the complexity of our own brain, let alone creating an artificial one.”
Making Artificial General Intelligence
People often use AI-related terms as synonymous with true artificial intelligence. News coverage drops terms like machine learning or deep learning together with artificial neural networks whenever AI is discussed. While each of these have something to do with AI, these aren’t exactly AI per se.
Machine learning is a tool: a set of algorithms that learn by ingesting huge amounts of data, from which an intelligent system is constructed. Similarly, deep learning refers to a kind of machine learning that is not task-specific. An artificial neural network, on the other hand, is a system that mimics the way the human brain works, and upon which machine learning algorithms are built.
All of these, AI experts believe, are the foundation for a synthetic intelligence with truly human cognition. But this is just the nascent stage; we have made a lot of progress, but current research isn’t really close to creating true intelligence.
So the big question is, when can we expect to have this type of intelligent AI? What’s the specific timeline?
For Luke Tang, general manager of AI startup accelerator TechCode, the shift will start with a “breakthrough in unsupervised learning algorithms.” Once this is accomplished, “machine intelligence can quickly surpass human intelligence,” he said in a statement sent to Futurism.
Needless to say, the path to this will be quite challenging. “In order to achieve AGI, there will need to be major breakthroughs not just in software, but also in Neuroscience and Hardware,” Barreau explained. He clarified, “We are starting to hit the ceiling of Moore’s law, with transistors being as small as they can physically get. New hardware platforms like quantum computing have not yet shown that they can beat performances of our usual hardware in all tasks.”
Indeed, for an AI to be considered truly intelligent, most agree that it has to pass at least five tests, foremost of which is the Turing Test—where a machine and a human both converse with a second human being, who will determine which one is a machine. Barreau said that he’s confident that we will see in our lifetime an AI passing the Turing Test; i.e., that it would pass as a human being. However, he says this won’t necessarily be “AGI, but good enough to pass as AGI.”
A Case for Augmented Intelligence
It goes without saying that an AGI is the prerequisite for the so-called singularity. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of “singularity,” it’s essentially that moment when intelligent machines surpass humankind’s levels of intelligence, spurring runaway and exponential technological growth that will transform the foundations of life as we know it. The term was coined in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, who wrote: “We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.”
While this is something SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Google’s Ray Kurzweilare excitedly looking forward to, other brilliant minds of today, such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and even Bill Gates, aren’t quite as keen for this moment. They assert that, in the same way that we don’t really understand what it means to have a super-intelligent AI, we’re also not prepared for whatever consequences the singularity would bring.
“We should focus our efforts on an exciting outcome of AI: augmented intelligence (i.e. human intelligence being augmented by AI),” Barreau said. Like Aiva and Shelley, other AIs have done considerably well when working side-by-side with human beings.
Still, with intelligent robots like Hanson Robotics’ Sophia and SotfBank’s Pepper, it does not seem very far-fetched to imagine truly intelligent machines living among us. Could Masayoshi Son’s super-intelligent AI, with an IQ of 10,000, be the cognitive machine intelligence we’re looking for? If that’s the case, we might have to wait for at least three more decades. “It’s probably only 30 to 50 years away,” Tang said. “So it is likely–it will just take some time to get there. But it also means many of us will have a chance to see that day come!”
Electrifyingly GIANT: Futuristic Tesla Towers built and tested in Russia
Electrifyingly GIANT: Futuristic Tesla Towers built and tested in
This futuristic Tesla Complex can produce enough power matching all power generation facilities in Russia when lightning is discharged onto a platform.
It’s not a massive alien colony. It’s not part of a Hollywood movie set up, it’s not HAARP. What you are seeing here is in fact a massive TESLA tower complex located in a forest outside of Moscow.
Dubbed as the “High Voltage Marx and Tesla Generators Research Facility,” the weird facility belongs to the Russian Electrical Engineering Institute. It was created near the town of Istra, some 40 kilometers of Moscow.
The massive high-voltage testing range was not built recently. It was erected in the 1970’s and it was created in order to test insulator and protect vehicles, aircrafts and electronic equipment against lightning.
This futuristic facility is absolutely stunning, and most importantly its unique. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, and its mostly because of its outlandish charging capacity.
According to Rossiya-1 TV reports, at its peak operating capacity, and when lightning is discharged onto an isolated platform, this Tesla-like generator has power equal to ALL power generating facilities in Russia, including thermoelectric, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, and wind power stations combined. However, it can only last for around 100 microseconds.
The massive facility consists of a 3 Megawatt capacity transformer cascade; a 9 Megawatt Pulsed Voltage Generator (PVG), measuring 39.3 meters high, capable of creating 150-meter artificial lightning, believed to be the largest in the world; and a 2.25 Megawatt constant voltage unit.
The facility is one of the most powerful in the world. If not the most powerful. In fact, when the facility is operational, the static charge in the ‘hot zone’ is so massive that the air of anyone present ‘bristles’ reports Rossiya-1 TV.
Here is a video of the facility filmed from a drone:
Northern lights (aurora borealis) illuminate the sky over Reinfjorden in Reine, on Lofoten Islands, Arctic Circle, on September 8, 2017./Photographers waiting for the Northern Lights in Siberia on the night of Oct. 26 saw an unexpected sight.
(Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)
A group of photographers camping out in Siberia to shoot the Northern Lights saw a sight every bit as spectacular and even more mysterious.
Viewers were stunned to see a huge, glowing, bubble of light rise into the sky. It was weird, it was unidentifiable—and it was flying. It was an Unidentified Flying Object.
According to Siberian Times, many people saw the inexplicable bubble and at least five took pictures on the night of Oct. 26–27.
Some people described the bizarre bubble as “a gap in the space-time continuum” according to the Siberian Times. Others said it must have been aliens.
The actual explanation is a bit more mundane.
The Topol ICBM (Vitaly V. Kuzmin via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported on its Facebook page that it had launched a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile from a missile base in northern Siberia that night.
According to the Facebook page, the Topol-M missile was fired from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia toward the Kura testing range in Kamchatka, which is on Russia’s far eastern Pacific peninsula.
An S-300 PMU-1 anti-aircraft missile launches during a Greek army military exercise near Chania on the island of Crete on Dec. 13, 2013. (Papanikolaou Giorgos/AFP/Getty Images)
The strange atmospheric effects caused by the missile launch came as a kind of extra treat for the photographers, who were there to capture what was predicted to be an exceptionally bright display of the Aurora Borealis.
Tourists photograph the Northern Lights near Reykjavik, Iceland on Oct. 30, 2015. (Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images)
‘Flying saucer’ photographed over Great Barrier Reef
‘Flying saucer’ photographed over Great Barrier Reef
A WOMAN believes she has snapped a picture of a bright “flying saucer” over the Great Barrier Reef.
Daniel Bateman
UFO Bargo NSW
ARE aliens intent on invading the Great Barrier Reef?
A Cairns woman has photographed, what she believes, is a UFO flying off Fitzroy Island, while she was sailing back to the mainland from a reef fishing trip on Saturday afternoon.
Jenny Morrison was returning from Elford Reef, about 50km east of Cairns, after spending a day at sea with friends, and took a series of photographs of the sunset on her smartphone.
Jenny Morrison photographed this UFO with her iPhone, off Fitzroy Island, on Saturday afternoon. WHAT IS IT????
Source:Supplied
When she later examined the photos, she noticed in several of the images, an inexplicable luminous green dot shrouded in a distinctive flying saucer shape.
“There’s this little light, that looks just like a bit of water on the lens,” she said.
“I haven’t edited the photos, or done anything to them.
“When you look through the photos, though, the dot is in the middle of a saucer-shaped shadow thing.
“I don’t know how to explain it.”
Adding to the mystery, the green dot eventually vanishes from the last few photographs in the series.
Jenny Morrison photographed this UFO with her iPhone, off Fitzroy Island.
Source:Supplied
Ms Morrison said she did not notice anything with her naked eye, when she took the photos.
“It’s so weird. It looks really real — like something you’d see on TV,” she said.
“It’s crazy.”
Far North Queensland is considered a UFO hotspot, with several sightings of mystery aircraft in the sky over several decades.
The Cardwell UFO Festival, held each October, celebrates the region’s interstellar links by inviting the public to share their experiences of the unexplained.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 75 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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