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
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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.
28-09-2019
LAND VAN HERKOMST van de bezoekers aan mijn blog - COUNTRY OF ORIGIN of the visitors to my blog
Stastistiek van Land van herkomst van de bezoekers van mijn blog
Stastistiek Country of origin of visitors to my blog
Stastistiek Herkunftsland der Besucher auf meinem Blog
Stastistiek Pays d'origine des visiteurs sur mon blog
What were the mystery fireballs of Devon? Police launch urgent search after 'two fireballs tear through sky' sparking 999 calls over fears of a plane crash
What were the mystery fireballs of Devon? Police launch urgent search after 'two fireballs tear through sky' sparking 999 calls over fears of a plane crash
Two bright lights spotted over south coast of England early this morning
Sparked several 999 calls from witnesses concerned it was a plane crash
Devon and Cornwall police have searched the area and are 'satisfied' it was not a plane crash but more likely an asteroid
Police in Devon are investigating a mysterious bright object spotted falling across the night sky over the south coast.
Two 'fireballs' sparked several 999 calls, with witnesses suspecting there could have been a plane crash.
Plymouth police reached out to the public to try and establish the cause, questioning whether it might have been asteroids breaking up in the atmosphere.
'Did anybody else see two glowing objects falling southwesterly direction out towards Plymouth sound? I know I have been up all night, but that was odd. Asteroid?' the force tweeted.
Plymouth police reached out to the public to attempt to identify a mysterious bright object spotted falling across the night sky over the south coast, questioning whether it might have been asteroids breaking up in the atmosphere
Another officer responded with a picture they managed to take of the bright light at around 5.52am this morning.
The Force Incident Manager for Devon and Cornwall Police said: 'We have had further reports of seeing an object in the sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.
'There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people.
'We’ve got two aircrafts in the air looking and doing aerial searches of the area. At the moment we are saying it is the Yelverton/Tavistock/Prince Town area.'
Sightings were also reported across the South Coast of England, London and Wales in the minutes before 6am.
In a further update, officers in Devon have ruled out the possibility of a plane crash due to a lack of debris, suggesting it was more likely a meteor shower.
Insp John Shuttleworth said: 'We are as satisfied as we can be that this has not been a light aircraft crash and no persons have been injured.
'The expert opinion of trained search officers is that if there had been an aircraft crash, assets in the air would have seen some debris.
'There have also been a couple of reports from the Cardiff and Dorset areas of people watching meteor showers across the South West.'
Thanks to 2019’s record drought in Europe, a 7,000-year-old circle of 150 upright stones is back on dry land in western Spain, after 50 years underwater.
This image shows the remains of the standing stones in July 28, 2019, after having been submerged since the 1960s.
After 50 years underwater, Spain’s Dolmen of Guadalperal— a 7,000-year-old circle of 150 upright stones — is back on dry land, thanks to record heat and drought in Europe this summer.
The megalithic monuments – known as the Spanish Stonehenge, located several miles from the town Peraleda de la Mata – have been underwater since the 1963 construction of the Valdecañas Dam flooded this region of western Spain. In the summer of 2019, several areas of Europe experienced drought conditions, including Spain, which had its third-driest June of the century, along with above-average temperatures in July and August. The drought conditions were enough to expose the Dolmen of Guadalperal, so that some residents of the nearby town of Peraleda de la Mata were able to see it for the first time. Angel Castaño is president of Raíces de Peralêda, a local cultural association dedicated to preserving the monument. He told AtlasObscura.com:
All my life, people had told me about the dolmen. I had seen parts of it peeking out from the water before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in full. It’s spectacular because you can appreciate the entire complex for the first time in decades.
When we saw it, we were completely thrilled. It felt like we had discovered a megalithic monument ourselves.
NASA Earth Observatory also reported on the reappearance of the Dolmen of Guadalperal, showing two different satellite images of it, captured in July 2013 and July 2019, by NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite. Note the changing water levels and the widening of the tan ring around the along the reservoir’s shoreline in the second image. These lighter colored sediments are the recently exposed lake bottom. A circle marks the Dolmen of Guadalperal.
The Dolmen of Guadalperal was found in 1926, part of a research and excavation campaign led by the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier. Scientists believe it could have been a solar temple, as well as a burial enclave. Roman remains have been found there, including a coin, ceramic fragments and a grinding stone. Axes, ceramics, flint knives and a copper punch were found in a nearby dump. According to the Spanish media outlet Repelando, a settlement was also found nearby, thought to date back to the time of the monument’s construction. There were homes, charcoal and ash stains, lots of pottery, mills and stones to sharpen axes, among other objects, .
Since the 1960s, tips of the tallest megaliths have peaked out of the lake as water levels fluctuated. The monument consists of 150 granite stones or orthostates, placed in vertical arrangement that make up a circular chamber about 15 feet (five meters) in diameter, preceded by an access corridor about 70 feet (21 meters) long.
At the end of the hall, just at the entrance of the chamber, there is a menhir or standing stone, about 6 feet (2 meters) high, that contains the image of a snake. Research suggests this image represents the Tagus River – longest river in the Iberian peninsula – which passes through the area.
The Dolmen of Guadalperal are located in the town of Peraleda de la Mata in Spain.
Archeologists believe the Dolmen of Guadalperal was originally constructed as an enclosed space — a large stone house with a cap. The dolmen could have served as a tomb, a site for religious rituals, or a trading hub since it was relatively easy to cross the river at this location.
The most recent recorded exploration and excavation of the site was by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in the 1920s. By the time Obermaier’s findings were published in the 1960s though, Valdecañas Reservoir was filled with water.
The Dolmen de Guadalperal was excavated and studied in the 1920s, drowned in the 1960s, and dry again in 2019.
Image via 1080 Wildlife Productions/ AtlasObscura.
Bottom line: The Dolmen of Guadalperal – aka the Spanish Stonehenge, submerged for 50 years – is back on dry land, thanks to the hot and dry 2019 summer.
US MILITARY THREATENED TO BOMB “MILLENNIALS” STORMING AREA 51
US MILITARY THREATENED TO BOMB “MILLENNIALS” STORMING AREA 51
U.S. AIR FORCE/VICTOR TANGERMANN
KRISTIN HOUSER
Joke Bombed
On Friday, approximately 75 alien-enthusiasts gathered in the Nevada desert for Storm Area 51, a jokey Facebook event that went viral back in June.
But just before those folks met up for what ended up being afar smaller event than expected, a public relations unit within the U.S. military took to Twitter to share a “joke” of its own — threatening to kill attendees with a stealth bomber.
And I Oops
On Friday, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) tweeted a photo of a B-2 stealth bomber along with the caption “the last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today.”
The unit later deleted the tweet and apologized for posting it in the first place.
“Last night a DVIDSHUB employee posted a Tweet that in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defense,” DVIDS tweeted on Saturday. “It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake.”
Come In Peace
The tweet was clearly in very poor taste, but had anyone actually attempted to raid Area 51, the military would have legally been allowed to use deadly force against them.
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. In fact, the whole event seems to have gone peacefully. Law enforcement arrested just one person, and even that attendee didn’t attempt to breach Area 51’s gates — they just got caught urinating near them.
Area 51 bestormen? Ans Hoornweg 'weet' al lang wat er daar gebeurt
Area 51 bestormen? Ans Hoornweg 'weet' al lang wat er daar gebeurt
Wat gebeurt er precies in het geheimzinnige ‘Area 51’? Twee Nederlandse Youtubers reisden er speciaal voor af naar Amerika en werden opgepakt. Niet nodig, want Ans Hoornweg heeft het allemaal al gehoord van de aliens zelf.
Over Ans later meer, maar eerst: waar komt die plotse aandacht voor Area 51 nu eigenlijk vandaan?
Is er een ufo neergestort?
Rond de streng verboden en zwaarbeveiligde militaire basis in Nevada hangt al decennia een hardnekkige zweem van geheimzinnigheid. Wat er zich binnen de hekken van het afgeschermde terrein afspeelt, houdt mensen al generaties bezig.
Zo wordt er gefluisterd dat in 1947 een vliegende schotel zou zijn neergestort. Ook zouden er illegale experimenten worden uitgevoerd op buitenaardse wezens.
Om voor eens en voor altijd te weten wat er in Area 51 gebeurt, willen mensen het gebied vrijdag bestormen. Een oproep daartoe gaat viraal op Facebook en wordt overspoeld met reacties.
De lokale autoriteiten maken zich ernstig zorgen over het aanstaande ‘evenement’ en waarschuwen iedereen om niet in de buurt van het geheime terrein te komen. De Amerikaanse overheid doet de geruchten steevast af als onzin.
‘Mijn alienvriend zit in Area 51’
Daar gelooft de 77-jarige Ans Hoornweg dus helemaal niets van. Sterker nog, ze weet dat het niet waar is. Man bijt hond sprak de vrouw, die al van kinds af aan ‘contact’ heeft met ruimtewezens. “Ik ben zelf een alien geweest”, verklaart ze.
Ans is namelijk ‘geïncarneerd’ vanaf een andere planeet en heeft sinds haar kindertijd goed contact met een speciale vriend, die toevallig in Area 51 gevangen wordt gehouden. “Dat wezen is daar binnen.”
En zoals mensen met elkaar praten, laten buitenaardse wezens elkaar dingen weten via beelden. Zo heeft Ans als kind al ‘gezien’ wat er zich in het complex afspeelt. “Ik ben er niet naartoe gevlogen. Nee, ik heb mijn zesde zintuig.”
Wat kan haar vriend vertellen over de geruchten over ruimteschepen en aliens? “Wat ik kan zien is dat ze daar gecrashte ufo’s hebben. Ook hebben ze buitenaards wezens in hun bezit die ze gevangen houden.”
Tekst loopt verder onder de foto
Feestje voor de bestorming
Ans vindt het verschrikkelijk wat haar vriend moet doorstaan, maar voelt zich machteloos. “Wat kan ik doen?” Buitenaardse beschavingen zijn volgens haar dan ook blij met de aandacht, zodat ‘alles’ naar buiten kan komen.
Inmiddels zijn de eerste bestormers gezien in het afgelegen gebied op zo’n 130 kilometer van gokstad Las Vegas. Mensen zijn met campers gekomen omdat er in de wijde omtrek geen hotels zijn.
Ze houden feestjes bij de geheime militaire basis. De politie houdt er rekening mee dat er weleens 30.000 mensen zouden kunnen komen.
Youtubers Govert Sweep (21) en Ties Granzier (20) besloten vorige week al een kijkje te nemen en moesten dat bekopen met een paar dagen cel en een boete van 4500 dollar. Ze vlogen vrijdag terug naar Brussel.
Ans is vol lof over de Nederlanders. “De jongens die het op de kaart gezet hebben, ja geweldig. Dat vind ik echt fantastisch. Die jongelui hebben we nodig.”
Het hele verhaal van Ans kun je bovenaan dit artikel bekijken. Het begint na vijftien seconden.
Ancient ET Base Found In Antartica! UFO Sighting News.
Ancient ET Base Found In Antartica! UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Sept 23, 2019 Location of discovery: Antartica Google Coordinates: 74° 3'44.57"S 103°16'4.79"W I was looking at Google Earth in the Antartica region and found four underground base facilities located within 1km of each other. Each building sits on the ocean floor and barely breaks the surface of the top of the ocean. Each buildings between 2km and 2.8km across according to google ruler. Watch the video to learn and see more photos of them. This is 100% proof that alien bases exist in Antartica. Scott C. Waring
What started off as a joke had about 2 million people pledging to “Storm Area 51” this weekend, and even after the event was cancelled, authorities were still worried that tens of thousands of people may still show up at the gates of the highly guarded Area 51 Air Force base. In total, approximately 3,000 people showed up to the several alien-themed events that took place in the desert region, not far from the base.
With the “storm” weekend finally finished, a surprisingly low amount of visitors gathered at the gate to the base in the early morning hours of September 20th. Law enforcement officers blocked the road around a mile away from the gate and approximately 150 people walked the remainder of the way up to the back gate of Area 51. Around a dozen officers were present at the gate, as well as an officer with a police dog just in case anyone attempted to get a closer look at the base. At one point, around 20 people in the crowd acted as if they were going to “storm” the gates while the song “Final Countdown” played in the background, but everyone started laughing and nobody ended up “storming”.
A total of five people were arrested – three people (two males and one female) were arrested for trespassing; one person was arrested for indecent exposure for urinating near the gate to Area 51; and one was taken into custody for an alcohol-related incident.
As for the festivities, one event was a lot more successful than the other. “Storm Area 51 Basecamp”, which took place at the Alien Research Center in Hiko, was cancelled after just 500 people showed up on the first day. Keith Wright, who organised the event, said that they had expected 5,000 people to show up. “We put on a safe event for people that showed up,” he said, adding that they had to cancel it because “it costs tens of thousands of dollars to staff each day.”
“Alienstock” seemed to have been a much bigger success. Connie West, who runs the Little A’Le’Inn motel in Rachel, said that “This is the most fabulous time,” and “I’m just so grateful that people came.” The several thousand travelers who were camping on the grounds of the motel and in surrounding areas, were apparently really enjoying all of the musical talent West had brought in for the festivities.
In other news, the US military has issued an apology after posting a tweet that suggested that UFO enthusiasts should be worried that a B-2 nuclear-capable bomber was ready to protect the secrets of Area 51. The Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (or DVIDS) tweeted a photo of a B-2 stealth bomber with a very stern warning that read, “The last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today.”
All in all, it was a pretty quiet weekend considering that just a few weeks ago, the event was still scheduled to happen with around two million people pledging to storm the base. You can see some pictures here from the “storm” weekend.
An attendee is detained after briefly physically crossing a security line, as people gathered to “storm” Area 51.
Attendee Daniel Rodriguez wears at tinfoil hat as he and other Alien hunters gathered to “storm” Area 51 at an entrance near Rachel, Nevada.
Getty
Attendees depart after gathering to “storm” Area 51 at an entrance to the military facility.
Attendee Ellie Urquhart walks past a security line as people gather to “storm” Area 51.
Members of law enforcement stand near barb wire, as people gathered to “storm” Area 51, at an entrance to the military facility near Rachel, Nevada on September 20, 2019.
Attendees discuss with guards as they gather to “storm” Area 51.
Aliens of all stripes are zeroing in on the secretive Area 51 this weekend.
Area 51 is the hush-hush U.S. Air Force military installation located at Groom Lake in southern Nevada.
The installation has been the focus of numerous conspiracies involving the base's extraterrestrial connection — a locale for captured flying saucers and surely an alien holding site.
The town of Rachel is an unincorporated portion of Lincoln County, Nevada. As the closest habitation to the Nellis Air Force Range and Area 51, the area has become a Mecca for inquisitive UFO believers.
The town is roughly three hours drive north of Las Vegas along Nevada Highway 375, also called the "Extraterrestrial Highway." Rachel is home base for Little A'Le'Inn that has been selling tickets for "ALIENSTOCK."
Be forewarned: There is no gas available in Rachel. Incoming alien hunters are urged to fill their tank in Alamo/Ash Springs from the east or Tonopah from the west.
Meanwhile, instead of storming a secretive government base, the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center is partnering with Collective Zoo and Bud Light to host an evening of top-secret entertainment on Thursday, September 19 with the Area 51 Celebration.
"The time has come to sit back, share a beer, and talk all things aliens," exclaims the associated website. "Come in peace, we have everything you need to make this celebration a blowout, including a classified lineup of music artists specially curated by Collective Zoo."
Matty Roberts, the man behind the virtual "Storm Area 51" movement has been abducted to host the alien-themed event in downtown Las Vegas.
Gate-crashing no-no
Overall, there's no telling how many are truly expected to populate the Area 51 festivities. As of this posting, it remains unclear what events may have been cancelled or are still planned in light of an alien free-for-all, even legal fights over events.
In the meantime, for those wishing to storm a highly-classified military base, UFO devotees are being warned that any gate-crashing is a no-no and will be deterred.
Leonard David is author of the recently released book, "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Live Stream! Area 51 Raid! The Event Begins in Nevada
Live Stream! Area 51 Raid! The Event Begins in Nevada
Area 51 Raid Live Stream
The Event begins in Nevada. What was once a Hoax has now become reality. lol Pretty foolish but fun to watch I’m sure. I doubt anyone will be raiding Area 51 today.
Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range. Officially, the facility is called Homey Airport or Groom Lake, named after the salt flat situated next to its airfield.
Cosmic Disaster, Solar Micronova, Superflare, Magnetic Reversal, Crustal Displacement, Ice Age, Tsunamis, Volcanoes… it’s all here, it’s all been done before and it’s all coming again soon.
Science tells us these magnetic events come on a cycle, we are due up again now, and shocker… the magnetic field is shifting and accelerating. This is not a coincidence.
The cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis suggests that there have been geologically rapid shifts in the relative positions of the modern-day geographic locations of the poles and the axis of rotation of the Earth, creating calamities such as floods and tectonic events.
Researchers Looking For Dark Matter Fail And Find Gold Instead
Researchers Looking For Dark Matter Fail And Find Gold Instead
Over the past recent years, scientists have devised several methods to detect the mysterious dark matter particles, but no one has been successful in doing so.
Any signal from dark matter is incredibly small. A research team from Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Australia thus attempted to detect dark matter, deep in the core of a mine in Stawell, Victoria. However, they failed in their task.
Even though the researchers carried out the experiments, almost a kilometer down the mineshaft using a highly sensitive sensor device, the rock above them could not shield the cosmic radiations, called Muon particles, which ruined the measurements. However, there was a silver lining. The scientists ended up detecting gold in the process!
Now, muons are similar to electrons but are said to be 200 times heavier. As high atomic numbers preferentially scatter muons, heavy metal deposits like gold create shadows like bones in a medical X-Ray. Thus, researchers designed a portable muon detector, the size of a paperweight equipped with a sensor that runs our smartphones. Given its portability, it can be used to explore lower mineral boreholes.
Gold formed on quartz in a hydrothermal vein. Unspecified mine at or near Grass Valley, Nevada County. Image credits James St. John / Flickr
“The first one we built was a cylindrical piece of scintillating plastic in a paint tin. You’ve never seen anything that looked so rough and ready, but it just gave the most beautiful detections,” said Alan Duffy, an Associate Professor at Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, as reported by ZME Science.
The team looks forward to reconstructing a picture of the minerals from the data in a few short weeks. The researchers also ideally want a new company to be built around the sensor after it develops the device to be sturdy enough for use in real mines.
Last month, rafts of pumice, spewed from an undersea volcano and spanning an area about the size of Washington, D.C., appeared in the South Pacific.
Satellite image of a pumice raft floating near the Kingdom of Tonga.
Image via NASA Earth Observatory.
In early August 2019, an unnamed volcano in the South Pacific Ocean near the Kingdom of Tonga erupted roughly 130 feet (40 meters) underwater. As lava spewed from the volcano, it cooled into pumice — porous rock filled with gas bubbles — and floated to the surface. This volcanic debris, with some fragments tiny and some as large as beach balls, aggregated into pumice rafts spanning an area of about 60 square miles (200 square km) — almost as big as Washington, D.C.
These temporary islands of volcanic rock are shaped and moved by ocean currents, wind, and waves, and provide a literal toehold for marine life, such as barnacles, coral, seaweed and mollusks, say scientists.
Several sailing crews have encountered the rocks. In a video, below, posted on YouTube on August 17, Shannon Lenz said:
On August 9, 2019, we sailed through a pumice field for 6-8 hours, much of the time there was no visible water. It was like plowing through a field. We figured the pumice was at least 6-inches thick.
An Australian couple, Michael Hoult and Larissa Brill, were sailing a catamaran to Fiji, when they encountered the raft on August 16. The couple said in a Facebook post:
We entered a total rock rubble slick made up of pumice stones from marble to basketball size.
Pumice rafts aren’t that common, according to Martin Jutzeler, a volcanologist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. He told EOS:
We see about two per decade.
Jutzeler told EOS that not all undersea eruptions produce them, but the rafts that do form tend to stick around. They can last for months or years until the pumice abrades itself into dust or finally sinks. And floating pumice can traverse long distances. For example, he said, when the same unnamed volcano near Tonga erupted in 2001, the pumice raft it created eventually arrived in Queensland, Australia.
These transient, movable islands play an important role in marine ecosystems, scientists say, moving barnacles, coral, and seaweed that cling to the pumice to new homes. Some news outlets are reporting that the pumice might make it to Australia to help restore the Great Barrier Reef’s corals , half of which have been killed in recent years as a result of climate change. According to Denison University volcanologist Erik Klemetti, the long-distance journeys of pumice rafts are
… definitely a way to get organisms to disperse widely.
But the idea that the stowaways aboard pumice rafts might replenish the Great Barrier Reef’s corals is wishful thinking, Klemetti told EOS. He said:
That’s probably an oversell.
Researchers are keeping a close watch on how the rafts are moving. Satellite imagery provides nearly daily updates. Ocean currents, wind, and waves sculpt and power the rafts, which now number in the hundreds.
7NEWS Gold Coast✔@7NewsGoldCoast
A raft of rock, the size of 20,000 football fields is floating towards Queensland. The pumice was created when an underwater volcano erupted off Tonga. Scientists say it'll bring millions of new coral to the Great Barrier Reef. @ErinEdwards7@QUT#7NEWS
Bottom line: In August 2019, rafts of pumice, spewed from an undersea volcano and spanning an area about the size of Washington, D.C., appeared in the South Pacific.
Although the exact cause of ice ages is not known, scientists speculate that they are caused by a combination of the distance of the Earth from the Sun, the position of the continents and solar output. The last ice age happened around 20,000 years ago.
During an ice age, the whole planet is noticeably colder. Ice ages can last for million of years and help to shape continents. Today's climate is actually a warm period between periods of glaciation. The world's climate continues to change and land masses continue to move. This means that the Earth is in the middle of a major cooling period that started more than 3 million years ago.
Over long periods of time, the temperature of the Earth fluctuates between a cold phase (an ice age) and a warmer, interglacial phase.
An ice age is a time where a significant amount of the Earth’s water is locked up on land in continental glaciers. During the last ice age, which finished about 12,000 years ago, enormous ice masses covered huge swathes of land now inhabited by millions of people. Canada and the northern USA were completely covered in ice, as was the whole of northern Europe and northern Asia. In Europe, Britain was connected to the rest of the continent through an area called Doggerland, and on average, the Earth’s average temperature was about 12 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) colder than it is today.
Image via Wikipedia.
At the moment the Earth is in an interglacial period — a short warmer period between glacial periods. The Earth has been alternating between long ice ages and shorter interglacial periods for around 2.6 million years. For the last million years or so these have been happening roughly every 100,000 years – around 90,000 years of ice age followed by a roughly 10,000-year interglacial warm period.
Within the ice ages more temperate and more severe periods occur. The colder periods are called glacial periods, the warmer periods interglacials — this is the period in which we are living now.
It should also be said that different disciplines sometimes use some different terminology. In glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres. In most cases, the term “ice age” refers to the geological period called the Pleistocene, which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago. The Pleistocene spanned the world’s most recent period of repeated glaciations — these glaciations are sometimes also called ice ages, though the term is improper.
Why does an ice age happen?
There are many aspects related to ice age onset, but if we want to truly understand this phenomenon, we have to look outside of the Earth itself and onto its orbit.
The main cause of ice ages is connected to something called the Milankovitch cycle. The Milankovitch cycle refers to the collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements on its climate over thousands of years. Very small changes in the Earth’s orbit shift the angle at which the Sun’s rays hit the Earth. While this may seem like a small thing, it actually has a huge impact.
Even small tilt changes of the Earth can change the planet’s temperature by several degrees. When the tilt is low, ice sheets grow and snow continues to accumulate. When the tilt is high, the ice sheets melt away. Since then the tilt has reached a maximum of 24.2 degrees (10,000 years ago), current the Earth’s tilt measures approximately 23.5 degrees — and as a result, large ice sheets are restricted to the polar areas.
Relationship of Earth’s orbit to periods of glaciation.
It’s not just the tilt — other factors about the Earth’s orbit can play a role. The three main orbital parameters are:
eccentricity (how circular the Earth’s orbit around the Sun); this varies with periods between 400,000 and 100,000 years.
obliquity (how tilted the Earth is with respect to its orbit); this varies with a period of around 40,000 years.
precession (changes between the distance of the Sun and the Earth in over the same season); this varies with a period of around 23,000 years and is particularly important around the Equator.
Having 3 major factors with different time periods leads to some hard-to-predict interactions, but the ice ages we know about can generally be traced back to these factors. The 100,000-year cycle seems to be the most significant one, and also coincides with interactions between 40,000 and 20,000-year cycles — it’s basically when all the factors “team up” to play their part. However, this is still an area of active research.
420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica research station, reveal the approximate ciclicity.
More to this story
Still, things aren’t really all that simple. It actually takes thousands of years for an ice age to begin, and things are not always neat and clear.
Ice ages are triggered when summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere fail to rise above freezing for years. This triggers a snowball effect: winter snowfall doesn’t melt, builds up, compresses, and over time starts to compact, or glaciate, into ice sheets. This further accentuates the cooling, as snow and ice have a higher albedo, meaning they reflect more of the solar energy and cool down even more.
Over thousands of years, these ice sheets start to build up. They seem to start out in the northern areas like Canada or Russia and then spread out across the northern hemisphere. The onset is, again, related to the Milankovitch cycles — but these changes in the Earth’s tilt and orbit combine are complemented by other geological factors to favor the emergence of ice ages.
When all these factors align so the northern hemisphere gets less solar radiation in summer, you have all the ingredients needed for an ice age.
Glacials are characterized by cooler and drier climates over most of the earth and large land and sea ice masses extending outward from the poles. Mountain glaciers in otherwise unglaciated areas extend to lower elevations due to a lower snow line
Could there be more factors involved?
We have the rough picture pretty well drawn out, but there are still some details missing. For instance, the position of continents, which is affected by plate tectonics, can also influence ice ages, as they control the circulation of the oceans and the atmosphere which in turn, affects how ocean currents carry heat to high latitudes.
The atmospheric composition (which can also shift somewhat in geologic time) is another important parameter.
Scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany have shown that the onsets of past ice ages were triggered mainly by decreases in carbon dioxide and that the dramatic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because of human-caused emissions, has likely suppressed the onset of the next ice age for up to 100,000 years.
“Like no other force on the planet, ice ages have shaped the global environment and thereby determined the development of human civilization,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, former director of PIK, said. “For instance, we owe our fertile soil to the last ice age that also carved out today’s landscapes, leaving glaciers and rivers behind, forming fjords, moraines, and lakes. However, today it is humankind with its emissions from burning fossil fuels that determines the future development of the planet.”
Nevertheless, while some aspects may be more difficult to assess, the overall processes are pretty well understood.
What impacts have ice ages had on the planet?
Today, less than 10% of our continents are covered by ice, but that figure has been as high as 30% in the past.
Ice ages caused enormous changes to the Earth’s surface. Glaciers are not static — they reshaped the landscape by picking up rocks and soil and eroding hills during their unstoppable push, their sheer weight razoring the Earth’s crust. As temperatures dropped in areas adjacent to these ice cliffs, cold-weather plant life was driven to southern latitudes. These processes tend to create spectacular scenery which can be seen in many parts of Canada, Scandinavia, and the Alps.
Meanwhile, the dramatic drop in sea levels enabled rivers to carve out deeper valleys and produce enormous inland lakes, with previously submerged land bridges appearing between continents. Upon retreating during warmer periods, the glaciers left behind scattered ridges of sediment and filled basins with melted water to create new lakes.
During the last ice age, which ran from about 110,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, the lower sea levels allowed humans to move out across the entire world. While there was still some water between Asia and Australia it took just a few short canoe trips to bring the first humans to Australasia.
The world’s ecosystems also try to adapt to these climatic changes. Some creatures survive and adapt, others don’t. The extreme glaciation periods put extreme pressure on species, who devise adaptations for the colder or warmer periods.
Scientists have a variety of methods they use. Evidence for the more recent ice ages comes from changing sea levels in the past, which can be seen by looking at coral reefs or modern landscapes, as well as samples conserved in glacial ice over millions of years.
Ice core records provide invaluable information on changes in temperature and greenhouse gases over the last 800,000 years. If we want to go back even further into the past, evidence for ice ages in the last tens of millions of years is predominantly seen in ocean sediments.
And for thedeep time ice ages that occurred tens to hundreds of millions of years ago,scientists use the geological record where the story of sea level and climatecan be unraveled by analyzing rocks of various ages.
How many ice ages have happened so far?
At least five major ice ages took place in Earth’s history. These include the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Karoo, and the Quaternary ice ages.
The Huronian Ice Age is dated to the early Protezerozoic Eon, roughly 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago. The Cryogenian Ice Age lasted from roughly 850 to 630 million years ago and was perhaps the most severe in Earth’s history. The Andean-Saharan Ice Age occurred during the Late Ordovician and the Silurian period (roughly 460 to 420 million years ago).
The Karoo Ice Age is attributed to the evolution of land plants during the onset of the Devonian period (ca. 360 to 260 million years ago). The current ice age, known as the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has experienced several glacial and interglacial periods.
Approximately a dozen major glaciations have occurred over the past one million years, the largest of which peaked 650,000 years ago and lasted for 50,000 years.
The Earth is currently in an interglacial period, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. What remains of the continental ice sheets that once stretched across the globe are now restricted to Greenland and Antarctic, as well as smaller glaciers
What would happen if a new ice age occurs?
While we may have delayed the onset of the next ice age, for now, a new one would have significant consequences for human civilization. Besides the fact it would be an awful lot colder, huge regions where hundreds of millions of people live would become completely uninhabitable. They’d be covered in thick ice sheets and subject to an inhospitable climate.
There would be a lot less agricultural land available, so it would be very difficult to support the human population. The physical shape of the continents would look completely different across the whole planet. Plus, a huge drop in sea level of up to 120 meters would close down marine channels – the Mediterranean Sea, Torres Strait, Bass Strait, and Bering Strait – and create new areas of land that could be used for habitation or agriculture.
Nevertheless, this is not really a matter of concern. As mentioned, the onset of ice ages is a geological process — it takes a really long time and is very gradual.
Which leads us to our final point.
Don’t blame man-made climate change on natural processes!
The world’s climate is currently heating up. This is not a natural process — there is ample and conclusive evidence that this process is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
However, although there is a scientific consensus on this issue, disinformation campaigns have been successful in spreading climate change denialism and doubts. “Climate change is natural” is one of the favorite quips of climate change deniers — but this is not the case here.
Climate does change naturally, and ice ages and glaciation periods are excellent examples of that. We are also currently in a warming phase. However, it is a simply incorrect to use this as an argument to suggest that the current climate heating is natural — it’s not.
Crop circles – sophisticated patterns hewn into crop formations seemingly overnight – have fuelled mystery in Sussex for decades.
The circles, which were first discussed as far back as the 17th century, appeared under mysterious circumstances in Sussex last year, when ‘map-like markings’. appeared in fields around Ifield, Crawley.
While pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley dispelled some of the mystery behind their appearance in the 1970s and 80s – one man still questions the assumption crop circles are all man-made.
Andy Thomas, one of the UK’s best-known mysteries researchers and authors, will visit Burgess Hill next week to explain why.
He said: “The belief that all the crop circles were invented by two elderly gentlemen with rope and planks in the 1980s – a story which has recently reemerged in the media – is provably untrue.
“The crop circles were there long before them, and continued long after they ‘retired’.
“Yes, some designs are indeed man-made, but it is very hard to explain all of them that way, as eye-witness sightings, scientific evidence, geometrical observations and bizarre circumstances make very clear.
“By looking at this year’s events, I will discuss many aspects of this very persistent and intriguing phenomenon.”
Andy has been researching and writing about crop circles for nearly 30 years but has a variety of specialisms.
His books – the most famous of which are The Truth Agenda and Conspiracies – also cover UFO landings, the origin of the pyramids and mystifying paranormal activity. He has also appeared on television, representing his views on The One Show, Richard and Judy and GMTV.
Andy, who discovered his passion for the crop circle controversy while on holiday in Wiltshire in 1991, is also a public speaker, having lectured everywhere from Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre to Rio de Janeiro.
In his talk, at Cypress Hall on Tuesday (September 17) from 8pm, he will explore crop circles in particular.
Entitled Crop Circles of 2019, he will look at all the crop circle formations of the last year, both in England and abroad, and share insights.
$Tickets are available at the door and cost £7 each.
DAYS OF NOAH: US Navy Spokesman Makes Official Statement Confirming Existence Of UFOs, Says Videos Should Never Have Been Shown To Public
DAYS OF NOAH: US Navy Spokesman Makes Official Statement Confirming Existence Of UFOs, Says Videos Should Never Have Been Shown To Public
The United States Navy has confirmed three UFO bombshell videos of mysterious crafts taken by pilots do indeed show ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’.
The US Navy has now officially confirmed that the shocking videos showing Navy pilots chasing UFOs are indeed real and that they are unable after years of intense investigation to give an explanation for exactly what type of crafts they are. But the government refuses to use the term ‘UFOs’ and instead are now calling them ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’, or UAPs.
“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Daniel 12:4 (KJV)
For decades now, our government in general and our military in particular has not only refused to acknowledge UFOs, they went so far as to mock and belittle people who insisted that UFOs exist and interact with humans. But recent advances in military technology has let the proverbial cat out of the bag by allowing pilots to accurately record encounters with them in not one but in dozens of videos that were leaked to the public. We have included two of those pilot-captured videos at the bottom of this article. With apologies to Seinfeld, they’re real and they’re spectacular.
“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matthew 24:37 (KJV)
The book of Daniel was given a book of prophecy related to the end times, the time we now find ourselves in, and he was told to ‘seal it up’ until the ‘time of the end’. Jesus tells us in Matthew 24, the the time of Jacob’s trouble will be like the ‘days of Noah‘, where the fallen angels had sex with human women and created the race of evil giants known as the Nephilim. Now you know why pilots are all of a sudden chasing real UFOs around the skies, because those days are almost upon us. The event that will officially and formally usher in the end times is called the Pretribulation Rapture of the Church, the first item on the Day of the Lord checklist. Are you ready for what comes next?
US Navy labels mystery craft in famous videos as ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’
FROM THE DAILY STAR UK: The three groundbreaking clips were released back in 2017 as part of The New York Times’ report into the government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Each video, shown above, saw US Navy pilots debating what the unidentified crafts were as they undertook aerial manoeuvres not possible with current aviation technology right in front of them.
In one clip, for example, the object “appeared suddenly at 80,000ft and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000ft and hovering”. The release of videos sparked a fresh wave of interest in UFOs and the US Navy said they would be revising rules to encourage pilots to report sightings.
Earlier this year, the official spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, John Gradisher, said the US Navy took the reports “very seriously” and were investigating “each and every one”.
‘WOW,WHAT IS THAT, MAN?’ US NAVY PILOT RYAN GRAVES REPORTS SEEING UFO FLYING AT SPEEDS UNSUSTAINABLE FOR HUMAN BEINGS MAKING SUDDEN STOPS AND INSTANTANEOUS TURNS
But it now appears these investigations have come to an end, with Mr Gradisher labelling the crafts in the three videos as “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena”.
“The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena,” he told The Black Vault, an online site that documents previously-classified material.
“The ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ terminology is used because it provides the basic descriptor for the sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects that have been observed entering/operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training ranges.”
By using this description, the Navy is refraining from saying the objects are extraterrestrial in nature but can simply not be explained at this moment in time.
The Black Vault also revealed that, while the videos were unclassified, they were never cleared for public release.
“The videos were never officially released to the general public by the DoD and should still be withheld,” Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told the news site earlier this year. Mr Gradisher then confirmed the Pentagon’s position in the new report last week by adding: “The Navy has not released the videos to the general public.” READ MORE
UFO Spotted By US Fighter Jet Pilots
UFO Spotted: The video was filmed in 2004 and investigated as part of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. It’s not clear if the object was ever identified. The New York Times reports that the US Department of Defense programme was shut down in 2012.
Watch Navy jet lock scope on UFO
A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet encountered this apparent UFO off the East Coast of the United States in 2015.
Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last days before the Rapture of the Church
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Technologies linking human consciousness to any sort of a cloud computing service could not just open the way for totalitarian mind control, but destroy the very essence of human relations, philosopher Slavoj Zizek says.
A computer that can read the thoughts of many people at once would make normal human life impossible, the Slovenian cultural philosopher told RT in the wake of the World Artificial Intelligence (AI) Conference in Shanghai, which saw Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma and Tesla CEO Elon Musk clashing over the future of AI.
While the two technopreneurs engaged in a heated discussion over the possibility of humans being controlled by machines in the future, the senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana shared his thoughts on the issue with RT.
Our brain being connected to a machine is not a utopia
What I am studying now is the so-called phenomenon of wired brains, a possibility of our brains being connected with strong digital machines. And that is not a utopia. In the media lab at MIT, Massachusetts, they already have simple machines like that. It is like a helmet, nothing intrusive, they put it on your head.
And then something horrible happens - I saw the video - you think certain thoughts, you do not say anything, and the machine reproduces them either in writing or with artificial voice.
60 Minutes✔@60Minutes
Arnav Kapur, a student in MIT’s Media Lab, has developed a system to surf the internet with his mind. He silently Googled our questions and heard the answers through vibrations transmitted through his skull and into his inner ear.
The primitive level machines can already read your thoughts. It is ok, if it involves your agreement but what if it is done (and it is easy to imagine that) without you knowing it?
Now, there is a serious option to read our thoughts, not just our emotional attitudes like being angry or sad but even the line of our thoughts in our mind. The next step in this “utopia” will be a computer that can read my thoughts and your thoughts that can connect us so that we can share our thoughts. If you and I are connected through the same computer, I can literally participate in your thinking directly without any external communication like word typing.
As you probably know, modern technology theorists Ray Kurzweil and Melanie Swan called it a new form of divinity.
It will no longer be a transcendent God but all of us sharing our thoughts through some AI cloud system. Millions of people will be participating together in a new form of awareness. I find this prospect pretty horrifying.
We are entering a post-human era if computers can identify & share a person’s thoughts
We as human beings are precisely what we are, free individuals as far as we can be sure that you do not know what I am thinking. I think what I think, I am free in my mind. What happens if I cannot be sure even of this?
If I think about something and computer can identify what I am thinking and then share it with others, we are really entering a post-human era. I believe that we should not be just fascinated about what it means technologically.
Do you not agree that we should worry about who will control these digital machines?
I do not have fears about the machines controlling us. We are not there yet. However, who will control this, who will use this? What remains of our freedom? Private companies, like Google or Facebook, are already developing similar technologies.
Thought ‘transparency’ is biggest threat to our freedom today
I see it as the biggest threat to our freedom. We will literally become transparent. Let’s think about the everyday consequences of this. All flirting will be out. I meet someone and instead of all the lovely games of erotic hints she can read ‘I want to go to bed with you’ and the eroticism will disappear.
Another simple example is everyday politeness. Let’s say we know each other but we are not mega-close friends. I see you on the street and say the usual polite things like: “hello, how are you? I am glad to meet you.” But if you can read my mind this is nonsense because this is politeness and I do not mean it. Usually, I do not care how you feel.
This intrigues me very much. What is happening? How will it affect our everyday manners, our old civilization social inventions? All our cultivated interactions are based on this.
There is another thing.
What new way of suffering and torture can be developed in this way? Can you even imagine someone controlling your mind? What can they do to you? What horrible thoughts can I implant into your mind? There might be images [of] your nearest terribly tortured, and so on.
I know this is not a joke. It is a very serious thing.
Lying will become more complicated and more privileged
If we imagine this happening in a society where economic and power relations are structured the way they are now, I think, this will mean that the privileged ones will be those who will be able to conceal their minds, who will exclude themselves from this network.
Not everybody will be controlled in the same way. That’s the first problem, who will control the game and who will be excommunicated?
It is always like this. The first thought when a new spying device is developed usually is ‘how can I escape it?’ The privilege is to be outside of it. Lying will become more complicated but it will also become more privileged.
RT✔@RT_com
Ministry of Truth: US military develops AI to identify 'fake news'
Computers are smarter on mechanical level, but lack the ability to simplify
An idea of AI beating humans in the field of intellect in fact depends on how you define being smart. If by smart you simply mean a more complex mathematical or logical operation as well as knowing more data, computers are definitely smarter. Yet, there is still hope for us.
The greatness of [the] human mind is not in knowing all the details but in picking out from the multitude of data to catch the essence and simplify it.
A book by a Soviet psychologist Aleksandr Luria titled ‘The Mind of a Mnemonist’ describes a guy with perfect memory. He remembered almost everything that he read and saw. The psychological consequences of this were horrible because he knew so much [that] he could not decide anything, the moment he wanted to take a decision, hundreds of other data popped up in his mind. He lacked the great ability of simplification.
Computers can be smarter than us on some mechanical level – and even in learning – but I do not think they can deal with the phenomenon of simplification.
Robots will not take menial jobs, they will be tasked with planning
Today’s paradox is that we are afraid of robots that could supposedly take our jobs, but those of us who work, work more than ever. Second, we still have the idea that robots will do the primitive work for us and we will just plan what they are doing. In many companies, from McDonald’s to those which do day services, it is robots that do the planning and individuals that execute it.
In McDonald’s everything is programmed by robots and ‘stupid’ people just serve other people. It eventually depends on the social order, if we remain in the same capitalist order, in which we are, it will be even worse than today.
There is a possibility, a hope, that we will work less. Yet, many new stupid forms of amusement might fill our free time. I still believe in work and creativity. If we do not have enough things to do, even if we will feel happy just sitting, watching films and drinking, it will be a very stupid existence. It will soon get dire.
It is not technology as such, it is how we will use technology socially.
Verdwenen continent onthuld in reconstructie van geologische geschiedenis
Verdwenen continent onthuld in reconstructie van geologische geschiedenis
Een zeer gedetailleerde reconstructie van de afgelopen 240 miljoen jaar vertelt het turbulente verhaal van een oercontinent genaamd Groot Adria.vrijdag 13 september 2019
De Corno Grande, de hoogste berg in de Apennijnen, rijst op uit de wolken. De Apennijnen, de ruggengraat van het Italiaanse schiereiland, maken deel uit van de afgeschraapte restanten van het oercontinent Groot Adria, zo blijkt uit speurwerk van geologen.
FOTOGRAAF GUIDO PARADISI, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Wie een bergwandeling door een van de vele bergketens rond de Adriatische Zee maakt, wandelt eigenlijk door de verkreukelde restanten van een al sinds lange tijd verdwenen oercontinent.
Deze hutspot van gesteenten is wat er overbleef van een stuk continentale korst ter grootte van Groenland dat miljoenen jaren geleden werd verbrijzeld, zo berichten wetenschappers deze maand in het tijdschrift Gondwana Research. Het epische verhaal van de ondergang van dit continent maakt deel uit van een nieuw onderzoek waarin de laatste 240 miljoen jaar van de tektonische geschiedenis van het Middellandse-Zeegebied in ongekend detail is gereconstrueerd.
Uit het model blijkt hoe het continent zich eerst afscheidde van een gebied dat nu Spanje, Zuid-Frankrijk en Noord-Afrika omvat en een aparte landmassa vormde, die van het onderzoeksteam de formele naam ‘Groot Adria’ heeft gekregen. Maar terwijl de tektonische platen van de planeet onverbiddelijk langs en over elkaar heen bleven schuiven, daalde dit continent af in meerdere subductiezones, de alles verwoestende geologische kaken van de aarde.
Toen de plaat de helse diepten van de aardmantel in werd geduwd, werd de bovenste laag van het continent van het gesteente afgeschraapt, alsof een titaan een kolossale appel aan het schillen was. Dit schraapsel kwam op de bovenliggende platen te liggen, waar het later de Apennijnen, de bergketen die de ruggengraat van Italië vormt, en ook het bergland van Turkije en Griekenland, de Alpen en het Balkangebergte zou vormen.
Maar meerdere fragmenten van Groot Adria ontsprongen de dans: ze werden niet afgeschraapt en ook niet door het gestage subductieproces vermalen. Deze relatief intacte overblijfselen van Groot Adria zijn tegenwoordig nog te vinden in de hiel van de Italiaanse laars, in een gebied tussen Venetië en Turijn en in de Kroatische regio Istrië – wat betekent dat je grote kans maakt je vakantie door te brengen op een scherf van een verloren gewaand continent.
EARTH 101
De aarde is voor zover we weten de enige planeet waarop leven voorkomt. Kom meer te weten over de oorsprong van onze planeet en over een aantal van de belangrijkste factoren die van dit blauwe stipje in de ruimte een uniek wereldwijd ecosysteem maken.
De reconstructie van dit puzzelstuk uit de geologische geschiedenis van de aarde is van groot belang voor een beter inzicht in het heden, zegt onderzoeksleider Douwe van Hinsbergen, expert in mondiale tektoniek en paleogeografie aan de Universiteit Utrecht.
“Alles wat je om je heen ziet dat niet uit hout of textiel bestaat, is ooit door een geoloog in een berg ontdekt,” zegt hij. Ertsen, metalen en mineralen die van groot belang zijn voor onze beschaving, worden in deze bergen gevonden, en de aaneengesloten aders van deze ertsen en mineralen zijn als gevolg van de turbulente platentektoniek in allerlei fragmenten opgebroken.
Met modellen zoals die ook in dit onderzoek zijn toegepast, kunnen onderzoekers de geologische klok terugdraaien en dat fragmentatieproces in detail bestuderen. Als bijvoorbeeld een grote koperader in een bepaald gebied wordt aangetroffen, kunnen de onderzoekers aan de hand van hun modellen zien waar deze aders zijn afgesneden en waar ze weer verderlopen, zodat er een soort prehistorische schatkaart ontstaat.
Het terugdraaien van de klok
De reconstructie van de geologische evolutie van het Middellandse-Zeegebied sinds het Trias stelde de wetenschappers voor de nodige uitdagingen. Ze konden al geruime tijd beschikken over een algemeen overzicht van de tektonische geschiedenis van deze regio, maar door de wirwar van geologische brokstukken in dit deel van de aarde was een gedetailleerdere analyse zeer lastig. “Het Middellandse-Zeegebied is een allegaartje,” zegt Robert Stern, een expert in platentektoniek van de University of Texas in Dallas die niet bij het nieuwe onderzoek was betrokken.
In deze tumultueuze zone hadden geologen eerder al aanwijzingen voor het bestaan van een verdwenen continent gevonden, maar het was moeilijk om de cruciale details van het verhaal te achterhalen. De restanten van het continent lagen verspreid over een dertigtal landen, die elk met hun eigen modellen, kaarten, landmeetmethoden en terminologieën werkten. In de vakliteratuur werden voor het continent zelfs talloze verschillende benamingen gebruikt.
Om de zaken wat overzichtelijker te maken vergaarde het team tien jaar lang een kolossale hoeveelheid geologische en geofysische gegevens over het hele gebied en stopten die in hun computermodel, dat liep op software met de naam GPlates. In de afgelopen vijftien jaar hebben onderzoekers met behulp van deze software, die door Van Hinsbergen als “kinderlijk eenvoudig” wordt omschreven, steeds gedetailleerdere visualisaties en aanpassingen van complexe tektonische modellen kunnen opstellen. Het nauwgezette proces van het team onthulde de ontbrekende hoofdstukken in het verwrongen verhaal van dit verdwenen continent.
Rond 240 miljoen jaar geleden maakte Groot Adria nog deel uit van het supercontinent Pangea, waar het lag ingeklemd tussen landmassa’s die nu Noord-Afrika, Spanje en Zuid-Frankrijk vormen. Twintig miljoen jaar later splitste Groot Adria zich af van Afrika en daarna ook van Frankrijk en Spanje, om nog eens veertig miljoen jaar later een apart continent te vormen.
Hoewel de precieze geografie van Groot Adria tot nu toe niet duidelijk is, moet ze vergelijkbaar zijn geweest met die van het grotendeels onder water liggende continent Zeelandia, waarvan gedeelten uit zee steken (in dit geval Nieuw-Zeeland en Nieuw-Caledonië). Groot Adria kan ook hebben geleken op de huidige Florida Keys, een archipel van niet-vulkanische eilandjes die boven het zeewater uitsteken.
Monumentaal werk
De verwoesting van Groot Adria begon honderd miljoen jaar geleden pas echt, toen de landmassa op het huidige Zuid-Europa botste en onder een hele reeks platen in deze regio begon te schuiven. De zeer gefragmenteerde subductie van het hele continent betekende dat “elk brokstuk zo zijn eigen geschiedenis heeft,” zegt Van Hinsbergen. “En zo beland je dan in de geologische puinhoop die het Middellandse-Zeegebied nu is.” Maar gelukkig “laten continenten vaak littekens achter als ze verdwijnen,” zegt hij, en daartoe behoorde ook de vorming van bergketens.
Bergen ontstaan wanneer twee continenten op elkaar botsen, zoals in het geval van de vorming van de Himalaya. Maar voor het ontstaan van bergen heb je niet altijd zo’n botsing nodig. Het kan volgens Stern ook gebeuren als een overschuivende plaat de bovenste gesteentelagen van de onderschuivende plaat afschraapt en dit ‘schraapsel’ zich ophoopt en plooit tot een bergketen.
Dit principe was doorslaggevend voor de reconstructie van het geologische verleden van het Middellandse-Zeegebied, zegt Van Hinsbergen. Aan de hand van de huidige restanten van deze bergvormende subductie kunnen geologen inschatten hoe lang de oorspronkelijke aardschol was die door de onderliggende aardmantel werd opgeslokt, waardoor ze een gedetailleerder model van de stukjes van deze oerpuzzel kunnen opstellen.
Dit onderzoek is “duidelijk een monumentale onderneming geweest,” zegt geofysicus Dietmar Müller, een van de leiders van het EarthByte Project van de University of Sydney, de onderzoeksgroep die GPlates heeft ontwikkeld. Het werk dat in het nieuwe onderzoek is gestoken, kan in omvang alleen worden vergeleken met de reconstructie van het tektonische verleden van de hele aarde door zijn eigen groep, en daar waar de nieuwe studie minder omvangrijk is, maakt ze dat goed door een adembenemende mate van detail.
Dit artikel werd oorspronkelijk in het Engels gepubliceerd op NationalGeographic.com
Geologists uncover history of lost continent buried beneath Europe
About 140 million years ago, Greater Adria—which later got shoved beneath southern Europe—was a Greenland-size landmass (submerged portions in gray-green) south of the continent.
VAN HINSBERGEN ET AL., GONDWANA RESEARCH (2019)
Geologists uncover history of lost continent buried beneath Europe
Forget the legendary lost continent of Atlantis. Geologists have reconstructed, time slice by time slice, a nearly quarter-of-a-billion-year-long history of a vanished landmass that now lies submerged, not beneath an ocean somewhere, but largely below southern Europe.
The researchers’ analysis represents “a huge amount of work,” says Laurent Jolivet, a geologist at Sorbonne University in Paris who was not involved in the new study. Although the tectonic history of the landmass has been generally known for a few decades, he says, “[T]he amount of detail in the team’s systematic time-lapse reconstruction is unprecedented.”
The only visible remnants of the continent—known as Greater Adria—are limestones and other rocks found in the mountain ranges of southern Europe. Scientists believe these rocks started out as marine sediments and were later scraped off the landmass’s surface and lifted up through the collision of tectonic plates. Yet the size, shape, and history of the original landmass—much of which lay beneath shallow tropical seas for millions of years—have been tough to reconstruct.
For starters, Greater Adria had a violent, complicated history, notes Douwe van Hinsbergen, a geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. It became a separate entity when it broke away from the southern supercontinent of Gondwana (which comprised what is today Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, the Indian subcontinent, and the Arabian Peninsula) about 240 million years ago and started to move northward, scientists believe. About 140 million years ago, it was a Greenland-size landmass, largely submerged in a tropical sea, where sediments collected and slowly turned into rock. Then, as it collided with what is now Europe between 100 million and 120 million years ago, it shattered into pieces and was shoved beneath that continent. Only a fraction of Greater Adria’s rocks, scraped off in the collision, remained on Earth’s surface for geologists to discover.
Another complication is that Greater Adria’s rocks are dispersed across more than 30 countries, in a swath from Spain to Iran. So, like the rocks themselves, data have been scattered and thus are difficult to collect, van Hinsbergen says. And finally, he notes, until the past decade or so geologists haven’t had the sophisticated software needed to perform such byzantine reconstructions. “The Mediterranean region is quite simply a geological mess,” he says. “Everything is curved, broken, and stacked.”
In the new study, van Hinsbergen and his colleagues spent more than 10 years collecting information about the ages of rock samples thought to be from Greater Adria, as well as the direction of any magnetic fields trapped in them. That let the researchers identify not just when, but where, the rocks were formed.
Rather than simply moving north with no change in its orientation, Greater Adria spun counterclockwise as it jostled and scraped past other tectonic plates, van Hinsbergen’s team reports this week in Gondwana Research. Although the tectonic collision happened at speeds of no more than 3 to 4 centimeters per year, the inexorable smash-up shattered the 100-kilometer-thick bit of crust and sent most of it deep within Earth’s mantle, van Hinsbergen says.
The study is not the only evidence for Greater Adria as a lost continent. Other researchers who use seismic waves to generate computerized tomography–like images of structures deep within Earth have created an “atlas of the underworld”—a graveyard of slabs of crust that have sunk into the mantle. This research shows that portions of Greater Adria now lie as much as 1500 kilometers below our planet’s surface.
Bones of Strange 2000 Pound Giants Discovered in Australia
Bones of Strange 2000 Pound Giants Discovered in Australia
Palorchestid marsupials, an extinct group of Australian megafauna, had strange bodies and lifestyles unlike any living species, according to a study released September 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hazel Richards of Monash University, Australia and colleagues.
For most of the last 25 million years, eastern Australia was home to a now-extinct group of marsupials called palorchestids. These animals are well known for their large size, strange tapir-like skulls, and large claws, but so far there has been no detailed study of their limb morphology. In this study, Richards and colleagues examined more than 60 fossil specimens of palorchestids of varying geologic ages to characterize the function and evolution of their arms and legs.
Ancient Australia was home to strange marsupial giants, some weighing over 1,000 kg.
Credit: Hazel Richards (2019)
Over the course of their evolution, palorchestids grew larger and stranger. Using limb proportions as a proxy for body size, these authors estimated that the latest and largest of the palorchestids may have weighed over 1,000kg. Furthermore, their forelimbs were extremely muscular and were likely adapted for grabbing or scraping at leaves and branches. Uniquely among known mammals, the elbow joints of the largest palorchestids appear to have been immobile and fixed at roughly a 100-degree angle, so that the arms served as permanently flexed food-gathering tools.
This study provides the first formal description of limb morphology in palorchestid marsupials and reveals a group of giant herbivores that probably filled a niche no longer occupied in modern Australian ecosystems. Fossil remains are still missing for certain parts of the palorchestid body, such as the shoulders and wrists, but the authors are hopeful that more material may be found in existing museum collections.
The authors add: “This study has allowed us for the first time to appreciate just how huge these mega-marsupial palorchestids were, while also providing the first comprehensive view of a strange limb anatomy unprecedented in the mammalian world. This research reveals yet more about the diversity of unique large marsupials that once roamed Australia not so long ago.”
See China Hit Typhoon With Microwaves To Break It Into Pieces! UFO Sighting News.
See China Hit Typhoon With Microwaves To Break It Into Pieces! UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Sept 4, 5, 6, 2019 Location of discovery: North of Nigde, China I was using a weather map radar and noticed some peculiar beams shooing from China and hitting the eye of the Typhoon heading towards us in Taiwan. That blue dot, thats me. The last seven typhoons that have come at us head on have all stopped abruptly just as it hits our shores...then either dies or changes direction. Typhoons so powerful that the movement usually declares a no work day, but then its a sunny day and they feel angry about it. Now HAARP or weather modifications often use lasers that shoot out microwaves...yes you heard me right. The kind thats deadly to most living creatures...and yet its used anyways. Here in this video I show the typhoon being hit in the eye with several beams from china. There has never been more proof of weather modification ever than this. This is 100% proof weather modification is being used...but is it to steer typhoons or does it actually create the typhoons? It probably can do both. Scott C. Waring
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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Matthew Carswell@Leche_frio
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