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.
The magnetic North Pole is hurtling towards Siberia so quickly scientists have had to release new data a year ahead of schedule to keep navigation systems working properly
World Magnetic Model (WMM) gives compasses the means to navigate north
WMM provides a five year forecast of changes to the Earth’s magnetic field
The North Pole is moving so rapidly that current estimates weren’t accurate
Monday’s update showed the magnetic north is leaving the Canadian Arctic towards Siberia at a speed of around 34 miles (55km) per year
Earth’s magnetic North Pole has been wildly shifting towards Russia so quickly that scientists have been forced to publish an update on its actual location a year early.
The World Magnetic Model (WMM) enables compasses to point north and is used in navigation systems. Its latest update revealed the North Magnetic Pole is wandering about 34 miles a year. It crossed the international dateline in 2017 and is leaving the Canadian Arctic on its way to Siberia.
This is causing a navigational nightmare for compasses in smartphones, boats and for airport navigators as well as in some consumer electronics, and WMM was forced to update a year early in order to keep it accurate.
Scroll down for video
Earth’s north magnetic pole has been drifting so fast in the last few decades that scientists say that past estimates are no longer accurate enough for precise navigation. The World Magnetic Model was updated on Monday, showing it is wandering about 34 miles (55 km) a year
WMM provides a five year forecast of changes to the Earth’s magnetic field. The US and UK tend to update the location of the North Magnetic Pole every five years in December, but this update came early because of the pole’s faster movement.
It had been hoped that the updated model could be released even earlier, last month, but it was held up by the recent shutdown in the US government, which oversees the project along with the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Turbulence in in the planet’s core, where the motion generates an electric field, has caused the field to change in systems described as ‘akin to weather’.
Airplanes and boats also rely on magnetic north, usually as backup navigation, said University of Colorado geophysicist Dr Arnaud Chulliat, lead author of the WMM.
The military depends on where magnetic north is for navigation and parachute drops, while NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and US Forest Service also use it. GPS is not affected because it’s satellite-based.
Airport runway names are also based on their direction toward magnetic north and their names change when the poles moved.
For example, the airport in Fairbanks, Alaska, renamed a runway 1L-19R to 2L-20R in 2009.
Since 1831 when it was first measured in the Canadian Arctic it has moved about 1400 miles (2300 km) towards Siberia.
The magnetic north pole is located at the white star and the individual lines in red and blue show the magentic field lines of Earth. These are used in navigation systems by boats and for airport navigators as well as in some consumer electronics
Its speed jumped from about 9 mph (15 kph) to 34 mph (55 kph) since 2000.
The reason is turbulence in Earth’s liquid outer core. There is a hot liquid ocean of iron and nickel in the planet’s core where the motion generates an electric field, said University of Maryland geophysicist Dr Daniel Lathrop.
Dr Lathrop, who who wasn’t part of the team monitoring the magnetic north pole said: ‘It has changes akin to weather. We might just call it magnetic weather.’
WHY ARE THE EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELDS MOVING?
The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet.
Liquid churning in Earth’s core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change.
In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission tracked the shift.
The magnetic south pole is moving far slower than the north.
In general Earth’s magnetic field is getting weaker, leading scientists to say that it will eventually flip, where north and south pole changes polarity, like a bar magnet flipping over.
It has happened numerous times in Earth’s past, but not in the last 780,000 years.
‘It’s not a question of if it’s going to reverse, the question is when it’s going to reverse,’ Dr Lathrop said.
When it reverses, it won’t be like a coin flip, but take 1,000 or more years, experts said.
Dr Lathrop sees a flip coming sooner rather than later because of the weakened magnetic field and an area over the South Atlantic has already reversed beneath Earth’s surface.
That could bother some birds that use magnetic fields to navigate. And an overall weakening of the magnetic field isn’t good for people and especially satellites and astronauts.
The magnetic field shields Earth from some dangerous radiation, Dr Lathrop said.
Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth’s magnetic field could be gearing up to ‘flip’ – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa. Earth’s magnetic field is illustrated above
WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO EARTH IF ITS POLES FLIPPED?
The Earth’s magnetic field is in a permanent state of change.
Magnetic north drifts around and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north.
The strength of the magnetic field also constantly changes and currently it is showing signs of significant weakening.
Life has existed on the Earth for billions of years, during which there have been many reversals.
There is no obvious correlation between animal extinctions and those reversals. Likewise, reversal patterns do not have any correlation with human development and evolution.
It appears that some animals, such as whales and some birds use Earth’s magnetic field for migration and direction finding.
Since geomagnetic reversal takes a number of thousands of years, they could well adapt to the changing magnetic environment or develop different methods of navigation.
Radiation at ground level would increase, however, with some estimates suggesting that overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. ‘But only slightly,’ said Professor Richard Holme.
‘And much less than lying on the beach in Florida for a day. So if it happened, the protection method would probably be to wear a big floppy hat.’
The movement of the Earth’s magnetic poles are shown in this animation at 10-year intervals from 1970 to 2020. The red and blue lines sjpw the difference between magnetic north and true north depending on where you are standing. On the green line, a compass would point to true north.
Credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
Electric grid collapse from severe solar storms is a major risk. As the magnetic field continues to weaken, scientists are highlighting the importance off-the grid energy systems using renewable energy sources to protect the Earth against a black out.
‘The very highly charged particles can have a deleterious effect on the satellites and astronauts,’ added Dr Mona Kessel, a Magnetosphere discipline scientist at Nasa.
In one area, there is evidence that a flip is already occurring. ‘The increasing strength of the South Atlantic anomaly, an area of weak field over Brazil, is already a problem,’ said Professor Richard Holme.
The Earth’s climate could also change. A recent Danish study has found that the earth’s weather has been significantly affected by the planet’s magnetic field.
They claimed that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.
Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.
We Need More Non-Binary Characters Who Aren’t Aliens, Robots, or Monsters
We Need More Non-Binary Characters Who Aren’t Aliens, Robots, or Monsters
Most characters who aren’t male or female also aren’t human. Where does that leave those of us who are?
There’s a running joke in NBC’s The Good Place about Janet, the neighborhood’s anthropomorphized operational mainframe. Every time one of the other characters calls her a “girl” or a “woman,” she cheerfully corrects them, “I’m not a girl.”
The point is that Janet is a manufactured database and not a person. But bound up in this idea is a more complicated one: that Janet, not being a human at all, is also specifically not a girl. She is a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, and while she presents in a feminine manner she doesn’t identify as female — or even have a sense of binary gender identity. She’s a non-binary character on a major network sitcom whose gender identity, or lack thereof, does not define her — a feat which should be in and of itself a kind of revolution.
The flip side, though, is also embodied in the joke: Janet isn’t a girl because she’s not a person. Where non-binary characters appear in literature and culture, they are more often than not robots, or aliens, or monsters. They are not so often, as I am, human beings.
Where non-binary characters appear in literature and culture, they are more often than not robots, or aliens, or monsters.
I came out as non-binary in a series of stages, over the course of a number of years. It was a hard identity to put a name to, to come to understand. I’m still not completely out, and I tend to hide my gender in situations where I’ve been made to feel like it’s an inconvenience — with professors who make no space in their classrooms for considerations like pronouns, with family members for whom explaining the concept would fall on ultimately uncomprehending ears, with my housemates in the all-female campus housing in which I live.
No queer identity ever comes with a singular “coming out,” and every time I meet a new person I fall into a routine of social calculus to decide whether or not it’s worthwhile to explain my identity. Will I see this person again? Will they attack me, if I tell them? Will they respect my pronouns, if told? Will they invalidate my identity if I reveal it to them at a later date, or take offense that I didn’t tell them earlier? I have a body that is read as female, no matter what I do, and sometimes the process of explaining that I’m not a woman isn’t practical in the moment.
I don’t like that my social identity boils down to some kind of cost-benefit analysis, but society’s understanding — or lack thereof — of non-binary gender forces me to think of it that way. Social interactions are structured with this mental math at the forefront. When faced with someone new, people instinctually calculate the answer to a rote question which will influence almost everything about the way they will interact with this person: are they a boy or a girl?
There is no room, in this question, for the answer to be “no.”
The first time I realized I was non-binary, I was listening to a recording of Andrea Gibson’s poem “Swingset,” which opens with exactly this question: Are you a boy or a girl?
In the poem, Gibson never answers the question: they can’t, or perhaps they don’t need to. The normalization of their non-binary gender, the understanding that there is a third answer — a non-answer, in its own way — to this question, revolutionized me.
There is a recent trend in speculative fiction towards the inclusion of characters with non-binary genders, or characters who use non-binary pronouns (they/them/their, xe/xem/xyr, etc). Every time I see a singular they in one of the science fiction or fantasy novels I’ve picked up to read in my vanishingly small spare time, my heart skips a beat in joy and disbelief.
And yet, nearly every time a character in speculative fiction uses non-binary pronouns, it is also a signifier of something other than just gender; it is a signal to the reader that there is something other about the character in question, something which sets them apart from the other characters, and from the reader, too. It is a shortcut to remind the reader that, whoever this character is, they are emphatically not human.
It is a shortcut to remind the reader that, whoever this character is, they are emphatically not human.
For example: in Victoria Schwab’s Our Dark Duet (2017), the second book in her Monsters of Verity series, Schwab introduces a character who uses they/them pronouns. The character, Soro, is a Sunai — a monster of vengeance that consumes the souls of criminals. Their non-binary gender does not go unremarked upon in the book, which might normalize it the way any other character’s gender is unremarkable. Instead, this happens:
[When] he’d worked up the courage to ask whether Soro considered themself male or female, [they] had stared at him for a long moment before answering.
“I’m a Sunai.”
There are no non-binary humans in Our Dark Duet.
This scene should be significant — here, in a novel that isn’t about gender, a character is calling attention to the aching lacuna left by the binary question, “are you a boy or a girl?” They are finding an alternative answer. When Soro answers, I’m a Sunai, they are finding a new way to answer the question.
I’ve answered the question this way, too. A young child at my place of work once asked me: are you a boy or a girl? I panicked and answered: I’m a librarian. Can I help you find something?
But Soro’s answer actually becomes significant for a different reason. Their answer, I’m a Sunai, emphasizes above all else that which makes them inhuman, their monstrous identity. Because the other characters in Our Dark Duet are decidedly and unremarkably delineated as either male or female, Soro’s gender identity — or, more accurately, their refusal of gender — becomes a feature of their monstrosity. The answer comes not from a lack of identification with “male” or “female,” but from a lack of identification with humanity as a whole. It becomes synonymous with being an Other, just another way they are unfathomably different from those around them.
The answer comes not from a lack of identification with “male” or “female,” but from a lack of identification with humanity as a whole.
Our Dark Duet isn’t the only work of speculative fiction which does this. In fact, unlike in the lived experience of the non-binary people they represent, in speculative fiction characters who are neither a boy nor a girl are almost always something else. They are almost always something inhuman.
In Becky Chambers’ novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet(2014) there is a genderfluid alien species known as the Aandrisk, who cyclically fluctuate among three genders: a male-aligned gender, a female-aligned gender, and a neutral gender identified with neo-pronouns.
There are, also, no notable genderfluid, non-binary, or transgender human characters in the novel.
The sequel to Planet — A Closed and Common Orbit (2016) — tells the story of an artificial intelligence named Sidra, who struggles with fitting into a body that does not fit her, and searches for ways and means of making that body into a place in which she can feel at home. Because of Sidra’s struggle, themes of embodiment run throughout the novel, and each character struggles with it in one way or another. An Aandrisk character named Tak plays a major role, with his/xyr/her gender fluidity never underplayed but treated as absolutely normal, which seems to cement the themes of gender identity squarely at the forefront of the novel. His/xyr/her ability to change his/xyr/her body in accordance with the gender-of-the-day is something Sidra envies.
And yet: it is only an alien character who deals openly with gender identity.
Tak and Sidra are joined by two human characters: Pepper, who was cloned to work in a manufacturing plant and escaped at a young age; and Blue, who was disowned by his wealthy ruling-class family for his persistent lisp. Every character in Orbit struggles, in their own way, with turning their body into a habitable home. To parallel Sidra’s narrative, as she struggles with the discomfort of not fitting into the body she was given, it would have been more than fitting for either Pepper or Blue to be non-binary or transgender. Blue, in particular, has a veiled past that isn’t revealed until late in the novel; until I reached the point where I realized that it was for his speech impediment that his family disowned him, I was certain he was trans.
But when only an alien’s relationship with their body involves a deviation from concepts of binary gender, the exclusion says more than the inclusion does.
It feels lazy, in a way. As if an author is checking off a diversity box for “character uses alternate pronouns,” but can’t be bothered to stretch their mind enough to imagine an actual human who might identify that way.
It feels lazy, and it feels — quite literally — alienating.
When only an alien’s relationship with their body involves a deviation from concepts of binary gender, the exclusion says more than the inclusion does.
Often, like in the case of Soro or Janet, non-binary identity becomes a specific indicator that a character is not human, a distinct marker that sets them apart from humanity where their appearance might not. Other times, as with Tak and the Aandrisk, non-binary identity is meant to signify just how different — how alien — another culture is to humans. Non-binary identity becomes a shorthand for whatever it is that sets a character or group of characters apart from humans.
The problem here is that the non-binary people like me who want to see themselves represented and validated in the fiction they read, who might benefit most from seeing a character with alternate pronouns in their escapist media — are human. And most of the time, we’re faced with a daily barrage of people questioning the legitimacy of our gender identity.
It doesn’t help anyone to say that aliens, robots, and monsters may have non-binary identities, but to imply by exclusion that humans do not.
When the only non-binary characters in media are aliens, robots, and monsters, we tacitly assert that the non-binary people in our lives are unnatural, that there is something inherently inhuman about their existence.
When the only non-binary characters in media are aliens, robots, and monsters, we tacitly assert that the non-binary people in our lives are unnatural.
Gibson’s poem “Swingset” is, among so many other things, about the experience of being human. Their kindergarten students, wide-eyed and curious, batter them with a litany of questions which always ends with the innocent inquiry: Can I have a push on the swing? — the only answer provided to the unanswerable question presented in the poem’s first line.
The poem, as I replayed the video obsessively for weeks when I was seventeen, showed me a reality in which I did not have to be a boy or a girl, in which I could be something else and still be myself.
“Swingset” meant something to me, in my teenage struggle with my gender identity, because I could see myself in it. The non-answer to the unanswerable question gave me permission to accept that my gender was allowed to be unanswerable, too.
When this question is answered, and the answer is, “I’m a monster,” or “I’m an alien,” that permission gets lost in the shuffle.
There is speculative fiction that gets it right sometimes. But I can count on one hand the stories I have found lately that include gender non-conforming characters who are humans.
The ones that do, for me, are revolutionary.
Take, for instance, the podcast Friends at the Table. Their science fiction series COUNTER/weight includes, yes, robot characters who use they/them pronouns, and yes, an entire nearly-human alien race whose concept of gender is completely dissimilar from our own. But it also includes several non-binary human characters, such as the genius roboticist Cene Sixheart, and the Divine Candidate Kobus.
The message this sends is different: it shows us a future where humanity has eclipsed its obsession with binary concepts of gender, where non-binary gender is as much of a norm for humanity as it might be for an alien species that never developed the concepts of “male” and “female” to begin with. It shows that there is nothing inherently alien, monstrous, or unnatural — “inhuman” — about an identity that doesn’t fall in line with the gender binary.
It shows that there is nothing inherently alien, monstrous, or unnatural — “inhuman” — about an identity that doesn’t fall in line with the gender binary.
It shows, in the same way that “Swingset” does, that non-binary people are just as human as anyone else. It erases the equation between non-binary and alien, blurs the strict separation that aligns binary gender with humanity and non-binary gender with everything else. It gives us space to see ourselves, whoever we may be, exactly as we are.
It is vital to be conscious of the dangerous patterns that can emerge from a kind of representation that isn’t aware of its own history, or the implications it makes when it is not written with care. Otherwise, we end up reaffirming a system which continues to alienate non-binary gender and those who identify with it.
I love non-binary monsters. I love non-binary aliens, and non-binary robots. I love space operas and paranormal romances and anything “inhuman” that I come across. But sometimes there are days when — exhausted by the social calculus of navigating a world that does not make space for me, that does not take me for what I am — I need my fiction to remind me that I am human, too.
Richard Hoagland: They Found Advanced Technology on the Moon
Richard Hoagland:They Found Advanced Technology on the Moon
“They’re claiming NASA has hidden crucial data, information, rocks, samples, and cultural artifacts,” said Richard Hoagland , pointing to Russian president Putin as the force behind this inquiry.
“[He's] driving a dagger through the heart of the deepest most extraordinary secret of the West,” he added.
According to Hoagland, there are those in power who would do almost anything, to keep the advanced technology discovered on the moon a secret.
Hoagland revealed he has heard from a reliable intel source about reverse-engineered torsion field technology which can actually suppress nuclear weapons. Featured guests also include: Joseph P. Farrel
The news that there are no hotel rooms available for miles around Area 51 hasn’t deterred the millions who have sworn in Facebook commitment blood that they will storm it on September 20th. Those planning a Burning Man-style campout have no doubt heard that Lil Nas X has offered to perform there, and more music is planned. Now all they need is some food and adult beverages for themselves and any aliens they may liberate during the storming – not to mention to share with any soldiers who don’t shoot them first.
“We can’t confirm if there are aliens at Area 51. But, if they do show up, they deserve the best meats on Earth. If not, Arby’s will still be there serving the planet’s best meats to everyone else attending this historic event.”
Jim Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer for Arby’s, announced via Twitter that the “We have the meats” people will be sending their ‘Arby’s Roadside Meathouse’ to Area 51 on September 20th to feed the storming masses (hopefully before they get shot) from a “secret menu” developed especially for the event. While some reports suggest that the sandwiches will be free, that hasn’t been confirmed – although it seems likely that aliens will certainly eat free – providing there’s anything left if two million people show up.
You shouldn’t storm on an empty stomach
For the adult beverages, Anheuser-Busch announced a “Screw it. Free Bud Light to any alien that makes it out” promotion offering free Area 51 Special Edition Bud Light in a specially-designed can for any aliens liberated who have a taste for “a light bodied space lager with a fresh taste, a crisp, clean finish, and a smooth drinkability.” It’s a safe bet that there will be some additional cans/cases/truckloads for sale for the hot stormers who might need to cool down while cooler heads prevail (although getting drunk won’t help that).
For those who aren’t fans of country rapper Lil Nas X, Matty Roberts – the infamous college student who came up with the Storm Area 51 idea – is trying to make amends by repainting the event as an EDM festival and is recruiting artists from the electronic dance music world to perform there. He says he’s also been contacted by indie rock bands and other performers, but hasn’t named names nor announced a schedule yet.
Play Freebird!
Finally, if you have a conflict on that date or fear being shot or not getting an Arby’s sandwich or Bud Light but still want to experience the thrill of the storming, you can stay home and play the ‘official’ Storm Area 51 video game from Keemstar.
“Can you survive the break in, find the helpless alien captives and get them safely to their UFO to pilot them out of Area 51 and show the world what the government has been hiding all these years? Find and explore hidden back routes and enter the legendary Area 51, avoid the guards using classic stealth mechanics, locate the captured aliens and escort them to their mothership! Utilise the other runners as human cover or provide the ultimate sacrifice so that others might succeed!”
Add your own fast food, beer and gunshots and it’s just like being there – although reviews of the early access version are “mostly negative” at Steam. Then again, maybe “mostly negative” WILL be just like being there.
If there’s one thing for certain about the Storm Area 51 event, there’s money to be made and plenty of non-aliens lining up to get their piece.
The PR people at To the Stars Academy sure know how to keep their name in the headlines, even if they’re only good at rehashing worn out, unsubstantiated claims or repackaging previously reported incidents. Now that the buzz of the first season of Unidentified has died down, the company which claims itself to be at “the forefront of socializing the UFO conversation through entertainment media in the public” has now revived a decades-old claim about possessing and studying alleged exotic metamaterials.
While many similar claims have been made in the past about what appear to be the exact same samples, I can’t help but notice that some of the language in their press release and accompanying social media posts sounds oddly familiar to descriptions of other recent strange developments loosely related with TTSA and the Navy’s ongoing UFO “revelations” or whatever you want to call them.
The latest press release claims that TTSA is now in the possession of “multiple pieces of metamaterials and an archive of initial analysis and research” of their properties. Accompanying that announcement are statements by Steve Justice, current director of TTSA’s Aerospace Division and the former director of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works.” In the press release, Justice claims that while the claims surrounding these materials still cannot be substantiated, these metamaterials could completely revolutionize science as we know it – if they are ever able to be manufactured:
The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application. They’ve been collected from sources with varying levels of chain-of-custody documentation, so we are focusing on verifiable facts and working to develop independent scientific proof of the materials’ properties and attributes. In some cases, the manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available, but the material has been in documented possession since the mid-1990’s. We currently have multiple material samples being analyzed by contracted laboratories and have plans to extend the scope of this study. TTSA will also seek to engage the potential partners who have expressed interest in helping accelerate ADAM [Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials] research and development.
If the claims associated with these assets can be validated and substantiated, then we can initiate work to transition them from being a technology to commercial and military capabilities. As noted in our October 2017 TTSA kickoff webcast, technologies that would allow us to engineer the spacetime metric would bring capabilities that would fundamentally alter civilization, with revolutionary changes to transportation, communication, and computation.
While many hopeful ufologists and believers take this press release to be evidence of extraterrestrial technologies, note that Justice never mentions anything about aliens or advanced civilizations. Instead he says merely that “the structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application” (emphasis added). The fact that Justice states these samples are “not from any known existing military or commercial application” leaves open the possibility that they could be from a highly classified program not yet made public outside of highly compartmentalized special access programs.
Writing for The War Zone, I previously reported on a series of strange patents patented assigned to the Navy which concern new forms of energy production and incredibly advanced hybrid craft which are claimed to travel at incredibly high speeds and maneuver with disregard for their own inertia equally well through air, water, or the vacuum of space thanks to a radical new form of electromagnetic propulsion. Despite the claims made in those patents, I’ve yet to speak with one physicist who believes the underlying mechanism for that type of quantum physics-bending electromagnetic propulsion is possible.
Still, in a 2019 aeronautics conference presentation describing one of those patents, the inventor Salvatore Pais claimed that these new Navy patents represent “a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that their “military and commercial value is considerable.” Notice the curious similarities with the language of Justice’s statements in the press release.
Even more curious is the Harold Puthoff connection. Harold Puthoff has traveled among the hard sciences and the fringe sciences for years, making somewhat out-there claims at times. Puthoff isn’t mentioned anywhere in this latest press release, but is acknowledged in several of Pais’ publications and Navy patents. Puthoff now sits on the TTSA board, is listed as a co-founder, and is the Vice President of TTSA’s Science and Technology division. Puthoff has for years published theoretical research into so-called “Space Time Metric Engineering,” the same type of physics-bending propulsion described in the Navy’s advanced aerospace patents – patents the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise claims are already operable.
In a presentation given in 2018 at a Conference for the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), Puthoff says that while he’d “love to talk about really fancy materials,” he can’t do so because “they’re classified.” However, Puthoff adds that there are plenty of examples of such metamaterials “provided even in the public domain.” A sample of one such material he’s studied, Puthoff claims, is an “excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation.”
Images of two of the Navy’s patented aerospace craft.
Again, the language Puthoff used in that speech to describe the properties of these materials echoes the language of the Navy’s strange electromagnetic propulsion patents, and during the same presentation Puthoff claims the objects observed in the alleged Navy sightings behaved “as if the craft didn’t have any inertial mass” – the exact language used to describe the abilities of the “hybrid aerospace-underwater vehicle” patented by the Navy. Is this proof of any connection between TTSA’s research and the Navy’s patents? There are only so many words for describing these types of theoretical propulsion methods and alleged aeronautical abilities after all, so it’s likely a coincidence. Still, the Puthoff connection between the patents and these alleged metamaterials is odd.
What’s odder still is why someone like Steve Justice would now throw his name into the ring with fringe scientists or even pseudoscientists who for decades have made what some would describe as dubious, unfounded claims about alien metamaterials. Justice never goes so far as to say that these materials are in fact legitimate or extraterrestrial in origin, though, only that TTSA has received them and will study them.
I’m also drawn to Justice’s statement that the “manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available.” Could this be why the Navy suddenly decided to patent such radical-sounding technologies and appeal them so forcefully with the U.S. Patent Office? I’ve been toying with an idea lately and it’s still nothing but a flight of the imagination, so take it for what it is.
Imagine that the U.S. government has indeed been researching electromagnetic propulsion methods, advanced metamaterials, and hybrid craft for years and has encouraged the extraterrestrial hypothesis in order to keep these projects a secret. What if they were finally ready to go public with these new advances, but the new administration elected in 2016 decided to keep it under wraps in order to continue kowtowing to the fossil fuel industries? Could that be why Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and others decided to form TTSA to take these technologies into the private sector or as a means of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the public? Could that be why the Navy made their curious patents available to the public? Just a thought.
Returning to TTSA and this latest press release, be sure to take into account how the “Invest Now” button is now permanently anchored to the TTSA website’s masthead, so as usual, take everything they say with a shaker of salt or two. Until they cough up anything more than a cable TV program and social media buzz, there is no way of knowing if they are any better than any other charlatans who have for years made unfounded claims of exotic technologies for profit.
FRANCE TO DEVELOP ANTI-SATELLITE LASER WEAPONS FOR SPACE WARFARE
FRANCE TO DEVELOP ANTI-SATELLITE LASER WEAPONS FOR SPACE WARFARE
PETE LINFORTH VIA PIXABAY/TAG HARTMAN-SIMKINS
KRISTIN HOUSER
Laser Focus
On Thursday, French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced the nation’s plans to develop anti-satellite laser weapons — though she says the country will only use them in retaliation.
“If our satellites are threatened, we intend to blind those of our adversaries,” Parly said, according to Agence France-Presse. “We reserve the right and the means to be able to respond: that could imply the use of powerful lasers deployed from our satellites or from patrolling nano-satellites.”
Satellite Bite
Approximately 2,000 satellites currently orbit the Earth, and they serve as the foundation for the planet’s global communications systems. Knock out the right satellites, and you could effectively disable an entire nation’s ability to communicate.
No surprise, then, that the United States, Russia, India, and several other countries are already developing anti-satellite technology, which could prove invaluable in future military operations.4
Space Force
This isn’t the first sign that France is starting to prepare for space warfare, either — on July 13, President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to create a French space force command.
That command, which will operate within the French air force, will go live on September 1 — a sign France knows it has no time to waste if it wants to effectively protect its interests in space.
The jungles of the Amazon are one of the last great wildernesses of the world, and have served as the siren’s call for explorer’s since time unremembered. Many have come here to never return, and just as many have come back with amazing tales of adventure and discovery, and it is a place steeped in legends, intrigue, and the unknown. It is a realm of lost tribes, strange mysteries, and weird beasts that roam the gloom, a place perpetually in a sort of shadow and existing unto itself. One very odd account that comes from these wilds is that of an intrepid explorer who came here looking for mysteries, and would soon get more than he bargained for, embarking on a quest that would include lost, uncontacted tribes and strange powers of the mind.
Loren McIntyre was a seasoned explorer, photojournalist, and writer for such esteemed publications as National Geographic, Time, Life, Smithsonian, GEO, Audubon, and South American Explorer, and was in many ways a sort of real-life Indiana Jones figure, spending much of his life doggedly exploring the forbidding, uncharted, and most impenetrable reaches of the Amazon rainforest of South America. Indeed, it was he who would be the first one to discover the source of the mighty Amazon River, when he made an expedition in search of it in 1971. He would make history when he found that the largest, longest, and most powerful river in the world began with a runoff of snow at a mountain in the Andes called Mismi, some 6,400 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean, which trickled down to pond now called Laguna McIntyre, which in turn emptied into a brook named Carhuasanta, in Peru, after which it began its inexorable growth and meandering journey through some of the most remote wilds on earth. Yet, although this is McIntyre’s most famous discovery it certainly wasn’t his only one, and he would have a very mysterious encounter out in those jungles that he would keep to himself for years.
In 1969, McIntyre embarked on an excursion into the unexplored depths of the Amazon jungle of Brazil. His target was the little-known Mayoruna tribe, also called the Matsés, who were so elusive that they had never been successfully contacted by outsiders and were known as “The Cat People,” due to the arrays of imposing spikes that they wore implanted into their faces. Next to nothing was known about this enigmatic tribe, and they were only ever fleetingly glimpsed. They were like ghosts, and McIntyre had little to go on when he was basically dumped off on the shores of the Amazon River in a place called the Javari valley, on the border between Brazil and Peru, and left to continue on his own, penetrating into dense jungle that no outsider had ever set eyes on in an attempt to find these mysterious people. Little did he know that it would be they who found him.
Loren McIntyre
As the brave, seasoned explorer made his way through mosquito infested jungle he got perhaps too focused on finding the lost tribe, and soon realized that he was hopelessly lost. His journey then turned into aimlessly wandering through the perilous wilderness, and it became obvious that he was not going to be in time for his scheduled pick up at the point where he had been dropped off. He began to resign himself to the fact that he just might end up another mysterious lost explorer, like his childhood idol Percy Fawcett before him, a fellow explorer who had mysteriously vanished while looking for a mythical city he called “Z.” Making this trek more ominous was when at some point McIntyre would stumble across a clearing littered with the bodies of what appeared to be four lumberjacks, half devoured by ants and with arrows sticking from their silent corpses.
This grim discovery had the explorer watching the trees carefully as he aimlessly wandered around half expecting death to come for him at any moment through the shadows, and more sure than ever that he would not see civilization again. It was as he was in this fog of panic and fear that some figures crept out of the forest before him, spikes embedded into their faces, necklaces made of bones, possibly human, around their necks, and looking upon him with a mixture of apprehension and surprise, but not aggressiveness. These were the Mayoruna, and this was the closest any outsider had ever gotten to them. At least any who were still alive.
The frightened explorer immediately and very slowly pulled out some gifts that he had brought in the event that he actually made contact. From his bag he produced some cloth and mirrors, which he dropped before the tribesmen as they looked on with inscrutable expressions on their pierced faces. They stepped closer to accept the gifts, and then seemed to beckon for him to follow them as they began to melt back into the forest. The weary McIntyre stumbled after them, barely able to keep up with their nimble navigation of the jungle, and so would begin the next chapter of his strange adventure.
They arrived at what seemed to be a makeshift camp full of other members of the tribe, and they seemed to show a strange mixture of curiosity and aggression towards him. Upon examining his tennis shoes they went about burning them to ashes, and his watch they found fascinating, but they destroyed that too. Indeed, most of his possessions would be either stolen from him or destroyed, and even his camera, which they oddly showed no interest in, was broken when a monkey descended from the trees to take it from him. Although there was no outright aggression against him, there were some grim reminders that he was very much in danger. He would claim that they possessed trinkets made of human bone and that they drank out of hollowed out skulls. They were also very well armed and never far from their bows, and one tribesman with red face paint, who he called “Red Cheeks,” took to menacing him and scowling at him.
McIntyre would end up staying with this lost tribe for two months, and during this time made many observations. He noticed that they were constantly on the move, perpetually moving to a new camp, sometimes suddenly and without warning, and they clearly had a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They also seemed to have no concept of individual possessions, freely sharing everything with each other and taking or using whatever they liked without repercussions. Even odder still, he noticed that these people often moved quite bizarrely in sync, knowing what the others would do or acting in precise tandem without speaking to each other. For some time, he pondered this anomaly, but he would soon learn that the explanation was far odder than anything that he had ever guessed at.
One day he was approached by the one he took to be the chief of the tribe, an ancient looking, sinewy and grizzled tree trunk of a man, covered in warty growths that would earn him McIntyre’s nickname “Barnacle.” When the chief approached he spoke to McIntyre, and the explorer found that bizarrely, after weeks of being unable to understand anything any of them had said, he clearly comprehended what Barnacle had to say. This utterly perplexed him, but he soon realized that this chief was not moving his mouth when he spoke, and that he was talking directly into his mind, using a sort of telepathy that McIntyre would later call “beaming,” and which Barnacle called “the other language.”
Barnacle explained that the tribe existed as a sort of hive mind consciousness, and that their thoughts were all linked to each other, although only the tribal elders were proficient at focusing this telepathic power and truly using it to its full potential. Here he learned that there was no real “self” as Westerners would think of it, and that to them the concept of an individual “self” made little sense. The chief also telepathically explained that they were under constant threat from loggers and other outsiders, and that the reason the tribe moved so often was that they were on a spiritual journey to what he called “The Beginning,” or the literal beginning of time, where they hoped to be beyond the reach of the intruding outside world. Indeed, the tribe seemed to have a very strange grasp of how time worked that was rather alien to anything the explorer was familiar with. A 1991 article in The Los Angeles Times about McIntyre’s bizarre experience explains the tribe’s philosophy on time as follows:
The main feature of time, by western definition, is its passage. But for the Mayoruna, time is at once mobile and static. It moved with man, stopped with him, advanced and retreated with him. It is not the implacable judge, condemning man to a tragically brief life. Time is a shelter, an escape into safety and regeneration, a repository whose chief function is not piling up the past, intact yet dead, but rather keeping it alive and available. And, in the face of violent encroachment on their land by white settlers, that past assisted them with an alternative to a menacing present.
The chief invited McIntyre to come along with them on their journey to “The Beginning,” and for the next few weeks he followed them on their mystical quest and engaged in their rituals, often taking psychoactive jungle concoctions that warped his perceptions. He found that if he concentrated he could pick up on a sort of static fuzz that contained the interlinked thoughts of all of the tribe members, through processes he could never hope to fathom. However, he knew at some point he would have to part ways with them and try to leave this land of jungle, telepathy, and time travel behind him to get back to the civilization that was no doubt convinced he had vanished. The only problem was that he had no idea where he was, and on top of this, although he had been invited and was not physically threatened by the Mayoruna in any way, he had no illusions that he was anything other than their prisoner, and wondered what they would do if he tried to flee. However, in the end the decision was made for him, a flood swept through during a torrential rain, and McIntyre would be whisked away as he clung to a balsa raft, emptied into the river and incredibly found the next day by a pilot flying over.
Upon getting back to civilization, McIntyre would keep what had happened to him a secret for years, and it is quite likely that the whole fantastical tale would have died with him in 2003 if it hadn’t been for a Romanian-American writer, director and movie producer, by the name of Petru Popescu. In 1987 Popescu met McIntyre by chance while on a river boat trip up the Amazon River. The two men hit it off, and for some reason McIntyre confided to him about what had happened all of those years ago with the mysterious Mayoruna tribe. It was all rather amazing, and when Popescu asked why he had never told anyone about it, McIntyre said that he didn’t think any one would ever believe him, and he had been worried about maintaining his reputation as a respected explorer, writer, and photographer. He would say of this:
I’m pretty reluctant to voice very much about the beaming experience because I didn’t want my friends to think I’d gone around the bend. ‘What is this? The guy’s hallucinating?’
Popescu would finally manage to convince McIntyre to let him write a book on his adventures, and in 1991 released The Encounter: Amazon Beaming. The explorer would claim that in his dealings with dozens of other tribes in the same region he had never before or since experienced anything like he did during his time with the Mayoruna, and he did not know what became of them. We are left to wonder just how much of this account is true, and if it is just what was going on with these elusive people of the jungle. The tribe itself has sort of disappeared, they have never been formally studied, and since McIntyre passed away in 2003, we are left only with Popescu’s book as a window into this strange tribe and their world and ways. One wonders if they are still out there, or if they managed to make that journey to “The Beginning,” finally at peace and forevermore out of our reach.
Cryogenic Breakthrough: Worms Frozen in Permafrost for 42,000 Years Have Been Resuscitated!
Cryogenic Breakthrough: Worms Frozen in Permafrost for 42,000 Years Have Been Resuscitated!
By The Siberian Times reporter
Two ancient nematodes are moving and eating again for the first time since the Pleistocene age in a major scientific breakthrough, say experts.
The roundworms from two areas of Siberia came back to life in Petri dishes, says a new scientific study.
‘We have obtained the first data demonstrating the capability of multicellular organisms for long-term cryobiosis in permafrost deposits of the Arctic,’ states a report from Russian scientists from four institutions in collaboration with Princeton University.
Duvanny Yar, a rea of permafrost where one of the worms was gathered.
(Image: Nikita Zimov)
Some 300 prehistoric worms were analyzed - and two ‘were shown to contain viable nematodes’.
‘After being defrosted, the nematodes showed signs of life,’ said a report today from Yakutia, the area where the worms were found.
One worm came from an ancient squirrel burrow in a permafrost wall of the Duvanny Yar outcrop in the lower reaches of the Kolyma River - close to the site of Pleistocene Park which is seeking to recreate the Arctic habitat of the extinct woolly mammoth, according to the scientific article published in Doklady Biological Sciences this week.
This is around 32,000 years old.
Another was found in permafrost near Alazeya River in 2015, and is around 41,700 years old.
Currently the nematodes are the oldest living animals on the planet.
The worms came back to life in a laboratory at The Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow region.
The scientists say: “Our data demonstrate the ability of multicellular organisms to survive long-term (tens of thousands of years) cryobiosis under the conditions of natural cryoconservation.
'It is obvious that this ability suggests that the Pleistocene nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific and practical importance for the related fields of science, such as cryomedicine, cryobiology, and astrobiology.”
Specialists of the Institite of Psycico-Chemical and Biological Problems and Soil Science in Moscow region.
(The Siberian Times)
The Russian institutions involved in the pioneering research were: The Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science; Moscow State University; Pertsov White Sea Biological Station, part of Moscow State University; and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
The Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, was also involved.
Top image: Awake after 42,000 years...nematodes. Source: The Siberian Times
Birds spend a lot of time and energy singing, but they don’t do it the same way in every season of the year. And some can’t sing at all. What’s the purpose of birdsong?
A male olive-backed euphonia (Euphonia gouldi), photographed in Costa Rica.
Birds are some of the most attractive creatures on earth. Who doesn’t like to watch a blue jay, cardinal or Baltimore oriole going about its business?
But the beauty of birds isn’t just their looks – it’s also their noises. Bird songs are among nature’s most distinctive and musically satisfying sounds. Why do birds spend so much time and energy singing?
There are two main purposes, and they are connected. First, male birds sing to mark territories. A singing bird is saying, “This place is mine, and I’m willing to defend it, especially from others of my species.” He may patrol his chosen space and sing often, either from the middle or the edges of what he considers his turf.
The second purpose of singing is to attract a mate for nesting. Female birds often choose their mates based on some blend of visual and vocal cues. Even male birds with beautiful breeding-season plumage can have trouble finding mates if their songs don’t measure up.
Each bird species typically has its own unique song. That allows an individual bird to hear a song and recognize whether the singer is from its own species.
Birds are most vocal during nesting season. For example, in Florida where I live, cardinals live year-round. They usually start singing in January, just a few weeks after the days begin to get longer. After the nesting period is over, birds sing much less and their territories break down.
Birders can learn to recognize different bird species by memorizing the sonic patterns of their songs.
Many species of North American birds migrate with the seasons instead of staying in one place all year. As they fly south in the fall, they make little “chip” notes or “contact calls” that allow them to stay in touch with other birds.
In many species only male birds sing, but in others, both males and females sing. And some birds don’t sing at all. For example, vultures and storks can barely produce any sound – let alone something musical enough that we would call it a song.
Learning to identify birds by their songs is as much fun as spotting them by sight. In fact, good ears are often as important as good eyes in appreciating the birds you encounter. Take off your headphones and listen to your neighborhood birds – especially when they are active in the morning or evening. You’ll be surprised by what you hear.
Not only is the climate warming faster than at any point in at least 2,000 years, but in contrast to pre-industrial climate fluctuations, climate change is now occurring across the entire planet at the same time.
There is no event like current global warming in the past 2,000 years.
Image credits: Bern University.
When it comes to global warming, the general situation is essentially a settled issue. We know that the planet is heating up, and we know that this is happening as a result of our emissions of greenhouse gases (particularly carbon dioxide). However, some details and particularities of this process are not as well understood.
For instance, climate variability over the past 2,000 years has been subject to great debate. As climate change deniers are quick to point out, our planet’s climate has changed before in the past — although this is missing the true scope of the issue. For instance, some might point out that the Earth has been hotter than it is now in its geological past while ignoring the fact that these events happened tens of millions of years ago, due to natural causes, over long periods of time, and the effects were still devastating for life on Earth. The more you look at today’s context, the more you understand that this situation has no precedent.
In a recent study, researchers analyzed the past two millennia, assessing the factors that caused climate variability in the past and the extent of the climatic changes.
In one paper, Raphael Neukom and colleagues from Bern University compiled data from around 700 proxy records of temperature changes. They specifically looked at unusual warming and cooling events. But wherever they looked, they found the same thing: nothing is even close to the current scale of events.
Take an event commonly called the Little Ice Age, a significant cooling event that started in the 1300s and lasted centuries. The period is well-represented in art, with numerous painters covering it through the centuries. This produced an important misunderstanding, researchers say, because it propagated the idea that the entire planet was cooling at the same time.
“It’s true that during the Little Ice Age it was generally colder across the whole world,” explains Raphael Neukom, “but not everywhere at the same time. The peak periods of pre-industrial warm and cold periods occurred at different times in different places.”
The Frozen Thames, by Abraham Hondius, is a typical Little Ice Age painting depicting colder-than-usual winters in the northern hemisphere. The original painting is in the collection of the Museum of London.
According to the study, the cooling events happened mostly in parts of Europe and North America. Because these areas were so influential culturally and artistically, it propagated the idea that the Earth cooled similarly in all parts of the world, which was not really the case — as shown by climate proxies from other parts of the world. For instance, the coldest temperatures occurred in central and eastern Pacific regions in the 15th century, in northwestern Europe and southeastern North America in the 17th century, and elsewhere during the 19th century. This lack of uniformity suggests that local influences, rather than planet-wide phenomena, were at play.
In contrast to that, all of the Earth’s major regions have seen their warmest temperatures in recent years, and the overall trend indicates a constant, planetary warming.
“We find that the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the 20th Century for more than 98% of the globe,” the study reads.
“This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic (human induced) global warming is not only unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures but also unprecedented in spatial consistency within the context of the past 2,000 years.”
The study debunks another misconception: that volcanoes or solar activity are the main drivers of climate change. In pre-industrial times, random fluctuations within the climate systems themselves drove variations and change. External factors such as volcanic eruptions were not intense enough to cause major climate change for decades — let alone centuries.
So what does this tells us? In general principle, nothing new. We knew that the current global warming event is unprecedented in recent history.
However, the two published papers paint a much more complete picture of climate variability over the past two millennia. They offer important constraints and parallels, showing that no period in recent human history is quite like the one we are living in right now. The current warm period is happening across the world for the first time, and it’s unprecedented. There is extremely strong evidence that we are causing it. What we choose to do with that information is up to us.
The results were published in two studies:
Steiger et al. “No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the pre-industrial Common Era”. Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1401-2
PAGES 2k Consortium. “Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era”. Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0400-0
Conducted by the Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology (MIPT), the device used electrons as the time-traveling particle. The negatively charged particles within an atom, electrons play a big role in quantum mechanics, the science that covered particles smaller than an atom.
The researchers chose a pool break as the analogy for their time machine with the balls representing the electrons. When a pool player executes a break, the laws of physics and probability dictates that the balls moved in random directions. The same principle applies to scattered electrons.
Thanks to a customized quantum computer, the MIPT research team got the electrons to return to their starting positions instead of scattering to the winds. The effect resembled a video recording playing in reverse, a popular way of depicting the reversal of time in media.
Based on the results of their experiment, the MIPT researchers made the bold claim of successfully circumventing the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of an isolated system will never decrease despite the passage of time.
Russian researchers successfully reverse the “evolution” of a quantum computer
One of the rules of physics dictates that everything in the universe experiences decay in the form of entropy. That rule ensures that events move from the past to the future instead of the other way around.
The MIPT researchers defied this rule with a time machine based on a typical quantum computer. In turn, the computing device incorporated qubits.
A unit of data that represented either “one,” “two,” or a “superposition” that combined both values, a qubit fits on a space the size of a single electron.
In their experiment, the Russian researchers used an evolution program that forced the qubits to form an increasingly complicated and shifting pattern of zeros and ones. The evolutionary process caused the qubits to lose cohesive order in a similar way that a pool break scatters balls across the table.
As the qubits evolved from orderly patterns to chaotic movement, the researchers implemented another program. The new program altered the state of the quantum computer so that it evolved in the opposite direction.
The “superposition” of qubits allows them to travel back in time
MIPT researcher Dr. Gordey Lesovik oversaw the development of the quantum computer. He showed how the qubits appeared to be moving backward in time instead of forward when viewed from the outside.
“We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time,” explained Lesovik, the head of the university’s Physics of Quantum Information laboratory.
He and his research team tested the number of qubits required to pull off a successful time reversal. They found that using two units of data sufficed to achieve a success rate of 85 percent.
However, adding more qubits also increased the number of errors. Three units dropped the chances of success to 50 percent.
“Our algorithm could be updated and used to test programs written for quantum computers and eliminate noise and errors,” he brought up.
The electronic circuits of conventional computers were either in an off state or an on state. Quantum computers, on the other hand, used circuits that existed in both states at the same time. Among other things, this superposition lets them predict the future.
Humorist James Thurber once wrote, "There are two kinds of light — the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures." He may as well have been talking about the ocean at night. In today's light-polluted world, the beauty of the night can all-too-often be obscured by the glare of businesses that surround the beaches of the world. But if you look closely, beyond that man-made light, you might see something special: the quiet glow of bioluminescence.
Bioluminescent tides, which shine quietly in the darkness, exist in many locations throughout the world. Sometimes these glowing waters seem like little twinkling stars suspended in the water. Other times they glow with almost enough brightness to read.
This phosphorescence is usually caused by algae suspended in the water. Much like fireflies flitting through the air, the algae (of a wide variety of species) emit a glow whenever they are jostled. Sometimes that's caused by the tides rolling in and out. Other times it can be caused by the motion of a boat or a fish moving through the water. Once in a while, the glow is even strong enough to be created by the gentle stroke of a finger.
Here are five places around the world where you can go to see the waters glow:
1. The Blue Grotto, Malta
The Blue Grotto is one of nine caves near the island of Filfa that produces a phosphorescent glow.
Reachable only via specially licensed boat, the Blue Grotto of Malta is said to be one of the most spectacular natural sights in the world. These oceanic caves on the small island of Filfa are surrounded by tall cliffs that are constantly pounded by waves, producing the phosphorescent glow for which they are known. Blue Grotto is actually just one of nine caves, all of which are popular tourist destinations. Filfa itself, located more than three miles out to sea, is completely uninhabited — except for several species of birds and a subspecies of wall lizard that can be found nowhere else.
2. Bioluminescent Bay, Puerto Rico
The waves at these three bioluminescent lagoons aren't really strong enough to photograph, but that doesn't stop them from being a popular tourist spectacle, a place where people can kayak into the glowing waters at night. The three bays glow a gentle green, a situation that is natural but has been enhanced by humans, who mostly cut them off from the surrounding ocean a couple of centuries ago.
San Diego's bay waters don't always glow, but it's always a sight to behold when they do.
(Photo: Kevin Key/Shutterstock)
You have to time things just right if you hope to see the glowing tides in San Diego. They don't happen every year — in fact, scientists don't yet know how to predict when they will happen. But when they do happen, they happen in a big way and people flock to the beaches to photograph the bright blue tides. The San Diego tides may or may not glow again this year, but they have glowed more years than not in the past decade. So who knows, if you're in San Diego, try a walk on the beach at night. You just might be surprised.
4. Navarre Beach, Florida
Bioluminescent plankton in Navarre Beach make the water shine in summer months.
The warm summer months are a great time to go kayaking in Florida, especially around Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon. There, when the plankton is right, the water glows as both boaters and fish move through the water. According to the Florida tourism website, the effect makes "fish look like blue comets." The effect can also be seen from time to time on the ocean beaches, as in the photo above.
5. Toyama Bay, Japan
This one is just a little bit different from the rest. Every other site we have profiled so far glows because of the algae present in the water. The glow at Toyama Bay comes not from phytoplankton but from a phosphorescent creature called the firefly squid. Every year from March to June, the bay becomes inundated with millions of these three-inch squid, which come up from the depths of the ocean to breed. As they fill the waters and beaches, both fishermen and tourist operations spring into action. You can see the several photos of this magnificent natural event in the short video above.
6. Matsu Islands, Taiwan
A four-month study confirmed the presence of Noctiluca scintillans as the cause of the 'blue tears' near the Matsu Islands.
So-called "blue tears" had been causing quite the stir around the Matsu Islands. Researchers from the National Taiwan Ocean University conducted a four-month study of the waters, taking samples and studying organisms in the water. According to the China Post, the researchers pinpointed Noctiluca scintillans as the sea-glowing culprit. They will take another year to continue to study the water, seeing if other organisms are contributing to the blue waters, and they will work with businesses to identify a "blue tears" season, presumably to optimize tourism.
Editor's note: This file was originally published in May 2014 and has since been updated with new information.
A well known, and very unique quality of certain ocean life is its propensity to produce eerie illumination, which can light up the deep in what range from faint glows, to colorful light shows. Such bioluminescence ranges from plankton and other maritime minutiae that flash in quick, propulsive little blasts of light barely visible to the naked eye, to random–and remarkable–kaleidoscopic light shows rippling across the ocean surface.
Such phenomena include, but are not limited to stories like those of colorful “spinning wheels” of light observed in various regions of the ocean, as I’ve detailed previously here at Mysterious Universe.
An account given of one such display described that a colorful show of spinning wheels of light, which was later discussed by N.J. Greig in an issue of the journal Marine Observer in 1996. “They were all about 3 meters in diameter and changed both size and shape while flashing intensely,” the report stated.
However, “by (6 PM local time) the effect had completely stopped on the starboard side, and only the pulsating rings were left on the port side and, with these, the intensity of the light reduced until (6:22) when there was nothing more to observe.”
Such light shows are uncommon, but not particularly unique in maritime literature from over the years. In fact, they are not even unique to the Strait of Hormuz, where the report outlined above occurred in May of 1996. In fact, just months earlier on the date of October 3, 1995, a similar strange “light show” was observed by the crew aboard the M.V. Chilham Castle, which was sailing from Karachi to Kuwait when it observed a series of perplexing illuminations emanating from below the surface.
The crew aboard the vessel gave the following report of the incident, which was subsequently published, as with previous similar oceanic anomalies, in the Marine Observer in 1996:
“At about 2240 UTC, the observers saw a strange effect in the sea stretching for approximately 100 m from the parallel body. It was a soft white light, almost strobe-like in character that pulsed irregularly. The light was bright enough to illuminate the wheelhouse deckhead and seemed to emanate from below the water, almost as if something was shining a spotlight upwards, shimmering and twirling: psychedelic projections of the 1960s were brought to mind. Curiously, the wash from the bow was not illuminated and appeared normal, likewise the wake.”
The phenomenon lasted for 6 or 7 minutes, faded, and then reappeared briefly. The night was clear and the visibility excellent.
On a rather eerie note, the description of the light seeming “to emanate from below the water, almost as if something was shining a spotlight upwards” is worth noting in the description, whether or not the display in question had some kind of technological origin.
It is certainly not impossible that such phenomena may have a natural origin. Around the same time, Discover Magazine reported on the discovery of novel forms of aquatic life that congregate around volcanic vents deep within the ocean. “At midocean ridges,” they reported, “where new ocean floor rises up as molten rock from Earth’s interior, where cold seawater mixes with the rising magma and, heated to 650 degrees, spews back up through chimney-shaped hydrothermal vents, researchers stumbled across bustling ecosystems.”
Odd lights photographed over the North Pacific in 2014 by Dutch pilot JPC van Heijst
(Credit: JPC van Heijst).
However, such molten meetings between lava vents and seawater would be an awkward explanation for the kinds of luminous curiosities that appear below the surface of various regions of our oceans, as seen from the surface by nighttime crews in the right place and right time. Still, lava has been offered as an explanation in the past when unusual illuminations have appeared on the ocean surface, as with an incident in 2014 where a Dutch pilot photographed an unusual light display on the North Pacific ocean.
It may be that we’re a long way off from determining what, precisely, the source of all of the ocean’s many strange and colorful “light shows” could be. Whether some natural phenomenon already well known to science, or something else altogether, such illuminations provide just another example of the many beautiful little oddities planet Earth still has to offer.
Can’t nobody tell me nothin’ You can’t tell me nothin’ Can’t nobody tell me nothin’ You can’t tell me nothin’
Most people not living in a cave will recognize these lyrics from the hugely popular country rap song ‘Old Town Road’ by rapper Lil Nas X, but they could just as easily be the words of people planning to participate in the ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’ event in defiance of warnings by the US Air Force ,Area 51 guru Bob Lazar and many others who think it’s a bad idea. Lil Nas X seems to be with the stormers as he’s released an animated video set to the music of his hit song that shows him and some other country singers storming to Area 51 on their horses. Not only that, Lil Nas X has offered to perform at the event. Will this give the movement some much-needed legitimacy in the wake of the admission by its ‘organizer’ that it was all a joke?
“i got y’all for free! let’s do this shit.”
That was the rapper’s response on Twitter when he heard about a GoFundMe set up to raise money to bring him to the September 20th event. The fundraiser was inspired by the animated video (watch it here) of Lil Nas X, Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug and Mason Ramsey on horseback heading to Area 51. The video shows them dealing with soldiers and encountering green aliens inside. Watch carefully and you’ll see actor Keanu Reeves, also a fan of the event, making his trip to the base in the ‘recommended’ way.
This isn’t the recommended way to storm Area 51
“We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.”
The original ‘Storm Area 51’ Facebook page has its own animation connection – ‘Naruto’ Uzumaki is a fictional character in the Japanese anime and manga series Naruto who apparently can outrun bullets by sprinting in the arms-flailing -backwards style Reeves’ animated character imitates.
I been in the valley You ain’t been up off that porch, now
Is Lil Nas X issuing a call to Storm Area 51? If he inspires you to get off your porch and go, experts advise you to bring along bug spray, snake repellent, proper clothing, water, bail money and the number of a good lawyer. Is he really planning to perform there? Time will tell. If Lil Nas X is just trying to promote the song and keep in on the charts so it can become the longest-running #1 song ever, he’s doing a goodjob of that too.
No matter what you think he’s doing, you already know his response:
Can’t nobody tell me nothin’ You can’t tell me nothin’
China Lake/Ridgecrest: Super Volcano Forming, Emergency Water Releases From Reservoirs, And More
China Lake/Ridgecrest: Super Volcano Forming, Emergency Water Releases From Reservoirs, And More
dutchsinse- Earthquake Live Stream — 24/7 Seismic Activity — Past 48 hours up to current
USGS Report Leaked. Super Volcano forming near China Lake Naval Station, Emergency Water Release From Major Reservoirs, More Earthquakes To Follow. , Prepare To Evacuate. Total Media Blackout To Prevent Panic.
Geologist at China Lake are reporting that there is a large chamber of magma discovered beneath China Lake/Ridgecrest, appears to be a new super volcano forming, this would explain the earthquake swarm that has smothered this area recently. FEMA and National Guard Alerted, Standing By….
All this information, from AMERICAN UNDERGROUND ARMY, is in the video below.
In an attempt to Debunk this information, I have come across some other interesting reports I would like to share with you.
Marfoogle news is also working to verify this leaked information and discredit it, but hit a brick wall. I will include the Marfoogle Video below as well. Marfoogle basically confirms the information from AMERICAN UNDERGROUND ARMY Youtube report above.
Significant DATA on Lake Levels Falling Confirm an attempt to lower the water levels behind the dams on the reservoirs in this geographic locations, as fast as possible.
With FEMA and the National Guard at the Ready, Water Levels being reduce on the Largest Reseviors, Emergency Funding Approved in minutes for China Lake Naval Base….. Marfoogle’s report will drive home the significance of the events taking place in the last 24 hours.
Now in my search for the truth, of all places, I found this information over at the Los Angeles Times.
More than 80,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the Ridgecrest area since July 4
The U.S. Geological Survey says the chance of an earthquake of magnitude 7 or higher resulting from the Ridgecrest quakes is 1 in 300
This activity is common in areas where there’s a high heat flow in the earth, Ross said. (Super Volcano?)
The Ridgecrest earthquakes are relatively close to the Coso Volcanic Field of Inyo County, which is mainly within the borders of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, the sprawling military installation where much of the earthquake rupture occurred underneath. It’s one of the nation’s largest producers of geothermal power.
Scientists have been urging the public to use heightened concern over quakes to get prepared, including planning for a home or apartment retrofit and furniture and heavy appliances to walls.
If you have loved ones living along the West Coast, you may want to raise their awareness to these current events that mainstream media seems to be ignoring for some reason. Of course if anything happens in these areas, they will claim the “Blackout” was for our own good.
Be Prepared, Do Your Own Research, God Bless.
From KTLA News: A magnitude 4.2 earthquake jolted the Twentynine Palms area on Monday morning, more than two weeks after a pair of powerful temblors rattled the region, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A 4.2 quake centered near Twentynine Palms hit on July 22, 2019.
(Credit: USGS)
The quake struck about 9:26 a.m. and was centered nearly 10 miles south of Twentynine Palms and 23 miles north-northeast of Coachella, USGS reported.
It was initially reported to be a 4.4 before being downgraded to a 4.2.
The first quake was followed about an hour and a half later by a small 2.2 temblor, according to USGS.
There were no immediate reports of damages or injuries.
Twentynine Palms is about 180 miles southeast of Ridgecrest, where magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 quakes struck on July 4 and 5 respectively.
That area has been shaken by thousands of aftershocks since the Fourth of July, including at least 70 with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater.
CaSeismograph Live Earthquake Stream
On July 5, 2019, the largest earthquake to strike California in 20 years occurred near the town of Ridgecrest with a moment magnitude of 7.1 following a magnitude 6.4 foreshock on the previous day.
The National Tsunami Warning Center (NTWC) in Palmer, Alaska, has the primary responsibility for determining whether earthquakes in the continental United States, including California, pose a tsunami threat.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) also monitors these earthquakes in case it has to provide back-up service for NTWC .
While California produces many earthquakes, most are too small, too far from the ocean, and/or move the earth in such a way that they are unlikely to produce tsunamis, though there are exceptions.
This animation covers a period of 30 years to put the Ridgecrest earthquakes in context and show how they compare with other recent, noteworthy earthquakes including: Oct 10, 1989 — Loma Prieta — 6.9 Mw Apr 25, 1992 — Cape Mendocino — 7.2 Mw (caused a small tsunami) Jun 28, 1992 — Landers — 7.3 Mw Jan 17, 1994 — Northridge — 6.7 Mw Oct 16, 1999 — Hector Mine — 7.1 Mw Dec 22, 2003 — San Simeon — 6.6 Mw Apr 4, 2010 — Baja California (Mexico) — 7.2 Mw Aug 24, 2014 — South Napa — 6.0 Mw Jul 4, 2019 — Ridgecrest — 6.4 Mw Jul 5, 2019 — Ridgecrest — 7.1 Mw
Imagine a world where magic existed. In such a world, one might be able to wear a cloak that, once it covered our bodies, rendered us invisible; the likes of things we read about or see in films that include Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Such things will never really exist, at least not from magical means. However, that’s not to say that science won’t eventually be able to achieve similar things. One day, with the use of unique and, at times, almost unearthly composite materials–the likes of which are never found in nature–humans may indeed be able to bring such things as invisibility cloaks into real existence.
To achieve invisibility, a metamaterial needs to possess certain optical properties. Specifically, scientists would have to design the material so that they could control how light moves around an object without being reflected or absorbed. This design is possible, but it would take just the right material with just the right structure.
The aforementioned algorithm, created by Yongmin Liu, a professor at Northeastern University, and his team found that using a computer algorithm to create such unnatural composite materials was “much faster and more accurate than previous approaches, paving the way for engineers to design next-generation materials.”
By introducing the algorithm to some 30,000 different sample data sets, it was able to not only learn those relationships, but to expand on them and predict new varieties based on the data.
Fast forward to 2019, where new developments in this burgeoning field are pushing boundaries even further into tomorrow: a multidisciplinary team with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have now formalized a system “that allows researchers to choose materials and design photonic structures arbitrarily by using deep learning.”
In layman’s terms, this means they are using artificial intelligence to aid in the creation of new kinds of metamaterials, capable of functions that include invisibility.
“The resulting metamaterials can be utilized in display, security, and military technologies. In this regard, introduction of AI to the design method is expected to make important contributions to the technological development of metamaterials,” PhysOrgreported.
Of the three areas listed above, perhaps the mention of “military technologies” is the most interesting and impactful. It also reminds us of the kinds of “innovations of tomorrow” that were being foreshadowed decades ago, albeit in relation to more speculative lines of thought.
A good example might include an article that appeared in Britain’s Sunday Dispatch in October 1954. In it, a quote from a spokesman with the British War Office stated that “(UFOs) are invisible to the human eye,” and that radar operators frequently detected “fleets” of unidentified—and invisible—objects passing overhead in the mid-afternoon. Any attempts at establishing visible line-of-sight confirmation proved unsuccessful.
“Every time, they have followed the same pattern, always around mid-day. All our radar sets in the area have picked them up,” the article stated.
This may sound like a description of some rather exotic technology; however, early camouflage techniques were already being developed by around the time of World War I that would allow aircraft to become functionally “invisible” when viewed against the sky at a distance. One 1917 patent application attributed to Mary “Mitty” Taylor Brush proposed a pattern that would be “able to produce a machine which is practically invisible when in the air.” Such techniques, later put into use during wartime, were derived from techniques used in fine art already for centuries.
Modern stealth technology is, of course, far more advanced than this, and although these modern aircraft are generally only “invisible” to radar systems, their incredible speed, sophistication, and maneuverability allows them to often function in ways that almost exceeds any necessity for possessing actual invisibility.
Nonetheless, if current innovations in metamaterials (helped along by artificial intelligence) are any indication, the aircraft of tomorrow may indeed take such technologies into new and unforeseen places… or for that matter, perhaps into the unseen, period.
Guys this is nuts! Google is attacking MUFON calling the UFO reporting site a hacking site and telling visitors not enter or risk losing passwords and valuable data. That MUFON is a deceptive website. Its not, its a safe place for anyone to report their photos or video of UFOs that they have seen and for others to read them. It really looks like Google is working with the US government to edit and delete all UFO evidence. This is 100% proof that Google and the US Gov are working together to control what the public knows.
Creator of 'Storm Area 51' Movement Fears Event Could Lead to 'Military Base Slaughter'
Creator of 'Storm Area 51' Movement Fears Event Could Lead to 'Military Base Slaughter'
It all started as an apparent farce but has undoubtedly been blown out of proportion, as just under 2 million people signal their intent to storm one of the most highly protected facilities in the United States.
The man behind the ludicrous idea to raid the secretive Area 51 and "see them aliens" has opened up on what will happen next to his viral campaign.
"It started out as just a pure stroke of imagination, just funny. I wanted to do something cool out there now, that we have a bunch of people, but I don't want anybody to get hurt," Matty Roberts told KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas.
Roberts, from California, is concerned that some overly enthusiastic fans of the alien cover-up theory from Facebook expressed willingness to die for the event. He noted that he didn't want to turn the prank into a "military base slaughter" and would like to see "something educational, maybe music and art. That's what I'm working on".
He showed up for the interview in a black cloak with ominous red clouds and a forehead protector, the signature costume of Akatsuki members, a criminal organisation from the hit anime Naruto.
23ABC News
@23ABCNews
DID YOU KNOW? The guy behind the 'Area 51' Facebook page, which has reached millions, lives in Bakersfield?
We talked to Matty about his actual "raid" plan, social-media buzz, and what exactly is a Naruto Runner? Hmmmm.
The satirical Facebook event he launched, titled 'Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us', suggests an unorthodox way of breaking in: "If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets."
He was referring to the 'anime' running technique, which implies that a ninja can move much faster with their torso leaning forward and their arms tucked back.
The event, scheduled for 20 September, has become the latest Internet fascination. As of the time of writing, 1.8 million users had RSVP'd confirming attendance, while another 1.4 million marked themselves as 'interested'.
Area 51 is a highly-classified US Air Force facility in the Nevada desert. Established in the 1950s, Area 51 was so closely guarded that the government only acknowledged its existence in 2013.
The base is believed to be a test site for top-secret aircraft and aviation technologies, including the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s and the B-2 stealth bomber.
However, a long-running conspiracy theory suggests that Area 51 is where the US government is keeping classified information about alien encounters, or even the aliens themselves.
Meteorite Found in Siberia Contains Naturally Impossible Crystal
Meteorite Found in Siberia Contains Naturally Impossible Crystal
In 2009, scientists made a groundbreaking discovery that was ultimately traced to a remote corner of the world. In a box obtained from the Italian Museum of Natural History in Florence, Italy, they found a small grain of extraterrestrial mineral that was formed shortly after the birth of our solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. The mineral came from an area near the Koryak Mountains in eastern Siberia, and was delivered to Earth by an object known as the Khatyrka meteorite. The latter was discovered only after researchers returned to the area in search of more exotic minerals in 2011.
This new rock has been designated as a quasicrystal, in recognition of its unique structural properties. A quasicrystal looks like a normal crystal on the outside, but on the inside it is noticeably different. While the atoms in a pure crystal are arranged in constantly repeating patterns, the atomic lattices inside the quasicrystal are both ordered and diverse, displaying a range of shapes never before seen in a natural substance.
More than 100 synthetic versions of these minerals have been produced in laboratories, between 1982 and the present day. Until these experiments, such a form of matter had never been seen before, and in the past had been believed to be theoretically impossible according to accepted ideas about the laws of nature. Previously the only thing ever found were crystals, with their rigidly repetitive patterns, and so-called normal solids, which are comprised of atoms arranged in no particular order.
A Scientific Detective Story
Even after quasicrystals were created in a laboratory, their existence in nature was doubted. But one of the people who’d predicted that quasicrystals might actually be makeable, Princeton University theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt, was determined to leave no stone unturned (figuratively and literally) in his search for quasicrystals formed by the processes of nature .
It was Steinhardt who was responsible for finding the quasicrystal sample in the box from the Italian museum, with assistance from an Italian geologist named Luca Bindi. Steinhardt formed a team of scientists to study this intriguing mineral, and they eventually confirmed the unique structure of the tiny rock from one of the planet’s remotest areas.
To uncover the true origin of the quasicrystal sample, the team of scientists investigated numerous possibilities. They tried to develop a realistic scenario explaining how the quasicrystal could have formed naturally on Earth. But in the end, they were able to establish with near 100-percent certainty that it had arrived on Earth from somewhere else in the solar system.
Steinhardt’s analysis showed the mineral was embedded in another mineral known as stishovite. This rock comes from meteorites, and its encirclement of the quasicrsytal meant both minerals had been formed by a high-pressure process at approximately the same time inside a meteorite that eventually landed in the wilds of Siberia. Further cementing their conclusion was the discovery that the ratio of oxygen isotopes inside the quasicrystal was not consistent with ratios found on Earth, but was instead explainable only if the quasicrystal had been created off-planet.
“The finding is important evidence that quasicrystals can form in nature under astrophysical conditions, and provides evidence that this phase of matter can remain stable over billions of years,” Steinhardt explained after announcing the results of his team’s analysis.
Not content with finding just one quasicrystal, Steinhardt and associates made their own trip to Siberia in 2011. After searching the Kamchatka Peninsula area near the Koryak Mountains, they were able to obtain a fresh sample of rock from the Khatyrka meteorite, and inside they eventually found two more quasicrystals , each of which had a unique molecular structure. Since quasicrystals are extremely small the hunt for them is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack, and the most recently discovered sample was only uncovered in 2016, five years after the meteorite sample was removed from Siberia.
All three quasicrystals were found to contain a mixture of aluminum, copper and iron. The third quasicrystal discovered has a special structure that has yet to be created in synthetic form in a laboratory, highlighting nature’s persistent habit of producing more novelty than we expect or imagine to be possible.
As for the source of the naturally-formed quasicrystals, Steinhardt speculates that a violent collision between two asteroids in the early days of the solar system may have created these remarkable minerals. Close study of their characteristics, and other materials in the Khatyrka meteorite sample retrieved, could help physicists and geologists determine more about what conditions were like when the solar system was in its formative stage.
Quasicrystals possess an interesting package of characteristics. They are extremely hard, but they are also slippery to the touch and do not generate much friction.
So far, the search for useful applications has yielded only a few results, even though researchers have been working with synthetic samples for more than three decades. Quasicrystal has been used to harden the steel from which surgical and other medical instruments are manufactured, and Steinhardt himself invented a quasicrystal-lined frying pan that has some impressive no-stick qualities. But as of now, that’s about it.
Nevertheless, hope springs eternal.
As explained by Paul Asimov, a quasicrystal researcher from the California Institute of Technology, scientists working in this area hope “to find new quasicrystalline alloys that might have some use, because none of the ones discovered so far really have any use other than ‘wow, this is cool. But its not out of the question that someone will find a really good use for quasicrystals one of these days.”
Treasure Troves from the Sky
It is estimated that as much as 100 tonnes of space debris will enter the Earth’s atmosphere each and every day. Most of it will burn up, but a few thousand kilograms of material will actually make it to the Earth’s surface annually.
Few would ever guess that we’re constantly being showered by rocks and dust from the solar system, only a small portion of which will ever be seen or identified.
Which of course bings up a question. Are there other exotic, extraterrestrial forms of matter delivered by meteorites laying around in remote or distant locations, just waiting to be discovered by intrepid scientific explorers? The possibility cannot be ruled out.
At one time, the existence of substances like quasicrystals was considered impossible Other impossible leftovers from ancient times may have landed here as well, brought in on the wings of fiery, glowing chariots of rock. If and when they’re discovered, they may force us to expand our conceptions about the nature of matter.
Top image:An iron meteorite. Credit: Vladimir / Adobe Stock
The shameful truth: America only put a man on the moon with the help of Nazi monsters - not that anyone will admit it amid all the hype about the 50-year anniversary
The shameful truth: America only put a man on the moon with the help of Nazi monsters - not that anyone will admit it amid all the hype about the 50-year anniversary
For the moon landing, America's scientists had been given a huge helping hand
German scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt Debus and Arthur Rudolph all helped
But it wasn't mentioned all three were Nazi war criminals, guilty of mass murder
All of these men were veterans of the infamous programme to build V2 rockets
Weapons Hitler believed would obliterate London and save Germany from defeat
Watching the Moon landing 50 years ago from his comfortable Paris home, Yves Beon could barely contain himself at the spectacle unfolding on TV.
Dozens of white-shirted scientists and engineers at the Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, were on their feet, many waving flags, cheering at a triumph that was enhancing American prestige and unleashing an ocean of apple-pie patriotism.
Yet Beon, a hero of the French Resistance, was spitting venom at the screen that night and, had he been alive to see last week’s documentaries repeating the footage of Neil Armstrong’s ‘giant leap for mankind’, his reaction would have been incandescent.
Amid the jubilation half a century ago, no one bothered to point out that America’s scientists had been given a huge helping hand. Or that the Moon landing was, in fact, the brainchild of German scientists led by Wernher von Braun, Kurt Debus and Arthur Rudolph. Or that all three were Nazi war criminals, guilty of mass murder.
Making history: The only clear shot of Neil Armstrong's face as he stepped on to the Moon - it was produced by a British photographer using the latest photo-enhancing technology
'Ardent Nazi': Wernher von Braun (pictured), a veteran of the V2 programme that killed thousands in Britain, was later acclaimed as an Apollo 11 hero
Dr Hubertus Strughold (left) used concentration camp detainees for high-altitude experiments - and filmed their excruciating deaths. While at a V2 factory, Arthur Rudolph (right) would hang slave labourers if they did not work hard enough. He later had a key role in the Apollo programme
The 1969 footage of the three German scientists embracing each other in the centre of the Houston control room never reached the global television audience – and neither was it broadcast amid last week’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
The fact that more than 130 German scientists were employed on the design and production of the Apollo 11 Moon landing was conveniently ignored at the time of the mission, and no wonder. These men were veterans of the infamous programme to build V2 rockets, the secret weapons that Hitler believed would obliterate London and save Germany from defeat in the Second World War.
‘Everyone forgot the hell those Nazis created to build their rocket,’ Beon recalled when we met in 1986. ‘They were b******s with brains. The world forgot that 20,000 innocent men were murdered by those Germans.’
Today, the amnesia continues and it seems wilful. Why, 50 years on, has the BBC refused to re-show The Paperclip Conspiracy, a TV documentary I produced in 1987, for example? It exposed the shocking crimes committed by von Braun’s team and the subsequent conspiracy to conceal the atrocities.
AMID the sentimental nostalgia of the past few days, the Corporation has ignored a fundamental question: what price conscience and morality for that ‘giant leap for mankind’?
The world only knows about the true history of the Apollo programme because of people such as Beon, one of the few slave labourers to emerge in 1945 from the underground factory where Hitler’s engineers built the V2s. Himmler’s SS forced an estimated 60,000 Europeans on to the production line in Nordhausen at the foot of the Harz mountains in central Germany. Survivors were rare.
Beon has particular memories of Arthur Rudolph, the 37-year-old director of production in Nordhausen who, just 17 years later, was the director of Apollo production in America.
As Beon recalled, Rudolph’s management technique in Nazi Germany was distinctive. ‘If he suspected anyone of not working, he hanged them above the production line and left the body dangling above us for a few days, as a warning. Every week, dozens were killed that way,’ he said.
‘Sometimes an electric crane lifted 12 prisoners at a time, hands behind their backs with a piece of wood in their mouths to prevent them crying out. Every day over 100 people died from exhaustion, starvation or disease.’
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is photographed walking on the Moon during humanity's first landing in 1969
The crew of the Apollo 11, from left, Neil Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, module pilot; Edwin E. 'Buzz' Aldrin, lunar module pilot. Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to the surface of the moon
As the chief director of the American Apollo programme, von Braun had arranged for Kennedy to witness the test firing of a Saturn rocket (pictured), the type that would eventually deliver Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the Moon
Beon recalled how von Braun, an SS major, and other scientists ‘just passed by us without looking at the bodies, without any sign of emotion’.
Von Braun’s team were committed Nazis, including Rudolph who, when I interviewed him in 1987, told me: ‘Hitler’s first six years were marvellous. They were the best years in Germany. Everybody was happy.’
The fact that Beon survived Nordhausen was a miracle. With the Americans approaching, vengeful SS guards went on a murderous rampage against the labourers but Beon managed to hide.
Von Braun and his team, meanwhile, had already left, calculating – correctly – that they could wait in the Bavarian countryside, then offer their expertise to the Americans. ‘We were interested in continuing our work,’ he said later. He had no intention of ‘being squeezed like a lemon and then discarded’.
The first V2 rocket hit London in September 1944. By the end of the war, 3,172 rockets had been successfully launched, killing thousands of civilians and dispelling any doubts that the Germans had invented an outstanding weapon of the future – years ahead of the Allies. In 1945, US soldiers were dispatched across Germany to seize completed V2s and the blueprints. Among them was 28-year-old Major Robert Staver, a mechanical engineer, who followed the US 1st Army into the Nordhausen factory on April 11, 1945.
‘The Germans’ cups were still warm when we arrived,’ he recalled when we met in California in 1986. He admitted that, bewitched by the sight of the rockets and such brilliant mechanical innovation, he had ignored the hundreds of corpses scattered across the area.
About 100 rockets were shipped to White Sands in New Mexico, but to understand them and develop rockets of their own, the Americans needed von Braun’s team, too. And that meant reaching them before the Russians. ‘These were geniuses 25 years ahead of us,’ gushed Staver. ‘My orders were to get the top rocket team in history. I decided to treat the Germans as normal, friendly human beings. Otherwise we wouldn’t get their co-operation.’
Buzz Aldrin sets up the landing gear on the Moon after he, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins
Winston Churchill (pictured) and Franklin D.evelt issued solemn wartime pledges to prosecute all Nazi war criminals
Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt issued solemn wartime pledges to prosecute all Nazi war criminals, promises that Staver and his bosses decided to ignore.
The secret journey of the rocket scientists from Nordhausen to America’s Apollo space programme involved an astonishing conspiracy between US army officers and a handful of complicit Washington bureaucrats. In September 1945, following rapid negotiations with Staver and other American officers, von Braun and a small group of his senior aides were flown to El Paso, Texas.
American law explicitly ruled out permanent residence for incriminated Nazis, so they were contracted to stay in America ‘temporarily’ for a few months while they were debriefed. The scheme was known as Operation Paperclip. Later, a further 118 members of his team were flown from Germany. While Yves Beon and other victims of the Nazis struggled to keep body and soul together in wartorn Europe, von Braun lived well on $750 a month plus unlimited free food, comfortable accommodation and generous healthcare.
It wasn’t only engineering expertise that the Americans lacked – they wanted medical information, too. In a parallel operation, American air force officers led by Colonel Harry Armstrong negotiated a deal with Dr Hubertus Strughold, the leader of Germany’s aviation doctors.
Strughold and other specialists had developed techniques to protect Luftwaffe pilots flying at high altitudes. German designs for pressurised cockpits, G-suits and oxygen masks to avoid blackouts were far more advanced than anything available in America or Britain – but that was not surprising, since the German research had been conducted by testing human ‘guinea pigs’ at the Dachau concentration camp.
Inmates had been locked into pressurised chambers by doctors to test the limits of their endurance. The filmed experiments recorded the inmates’ excruciating deaths.
Tom Bower is author of The Paperclip Conspiracy. He is known for his investigative journalism and for his unauthorized biographies
In early 1946, Armstrong decided to ignore the doctors’ crimes. For him, as for Staver, morality was not an issue. The principles of justice for which millions had died during the war were ignored. ‘They were scientists, after all,’ as Armstrong told another, similarly complacent officer. So Strughold and 37 other German specialists were flown to Wright Field, a US air force base in Ohio.
Armstrong had twin motives: to develop America’s aviation medicine, but also to protect the Germans from prosecution as war criminals in American military courts in Nuremberg. With remarkable foresight, Armstrong ordered the medics to focus on how man could survive in space and, in 1969, Strughold was acclaimed among the heroes of Armstrong’s walk on the Moon. No one asked questions about his wartime crimes.
This state of affairs was in part testimony to the skill of Colonel Walter Rozamus, the US army officer in charge of Operation Paperclip at the Pentagon and a man determined to overcome the American laws that explicitly forbade Nazis from staying in the US. By 1946, the German scientists wanted permanent contracts and wished to be reunited with their families. Yet security files compiled by US army investigators in Germany made their Nazi affiliations all too clear.
Herbert Axster, von Braun’s assistant, was described as ‘a notorious supporter and profiteer of the Nazi regime’. Kurt Debus, Apollo’s second-in-command, had been a member of the Brown Shirts and the SS and was guilty of denouncing an innocent German to the Gestapo to remove a rival scientist.
Von Braun was described as ‘an ardent Nazi’ and a ‘potential security threat’. Investigators had discovered that, in 1931, Rudolph had marched through Berlin in a brown Stormtrooper uniform holding a flaming torch and singing the Nazi anthems of racial hatred. He was classified as ‘100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type’ and recommended for imprisonment. By now, Rudolph and 134 rocket experts were living in New Mexico and Rozamus was determined to keep them there.
His next obstacle was Samuel Klaus, an officer in the visa section of the State Department, the equivalent of Britain’s Home Office. Klaus, a Jewish lawyer, had toured Europe in 1945 and was appalled by the atrocities. He understood better than most the terrible crimes committed by German scientists.
Outraged by the Pentagon’s attempt to ignore the truth, Klaus refused to allow von Braun’s team to become American citizens. None of them, he said, was so vital that their expertise could not be extracted within six months. After that, they must be returned to Germany. In the Pentagon, Rozamus and his superiors fumed. ‘Get that little Jew off the committee,’ ordered Major Simpson of the Pentagon’s intelligence section during a conversation in Washington with Klaus’s superior.
‘What the Germans did during the war was irrelevant,’ recalled another army officer. ‘We had to keep the scientists out of the Russians’ hands.’
Wernher von Braun, Kurt Debus and Arthur Rudolph were veterans of the infamous programme to build V2 rockets, the secret weapons that Hitler (pictured) believed would obliterate London and save Germany from defeat in the Second World War
So, with the support of senior politicians, Klaus was removed from the visa section.
The next step was to sanitise the security records. Paperclips were attached to all the files requiring attention and American officers in Germany were told to ‘rewrite’ reports, allowing the Pentagon and State Department to form ‘a different interpretation’. Overnight, Herbert Axster, von Braun’s assistant, was given ‘a clear record’. Rudolph was declared to be ‘not an ardent Nazi’. Von Braun’s revised report said his records had been lost in the Soviet zone of Germany and that ‘no derogatory information’ was available.
The path to permanent residence was now clear and, for the most important of the Nazi scientists, US citizenship soon followed. Protecting Nazi mass murderers was by now a favoured – if secret – policy in Washington. In 1949, the CIA invented the ‘Ratline’ to help their German agents and informants to escape Europe to South America. Among the first to flee was Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief known as the Butcher of Lyons.
Not merely rehabilitated but thoroughly respected, in September 1962 von Braun met President Kennedy in Huntsville, Alabama. As the chief director of the American Apollo programme, von Braun had arranged for Kennedy to witness the test firing of a Saturn rocket, the type that would eventually deliver Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the Moon.
Charismatic and smiling, von Braun greeted the President as if he were a close friend and, together, the two men watched as the orange flames spurted out of the base and the rocket launched successfully. Turning to Kennedy, von Braun said: ‘I will fulfil your promise to put a man on the Moon by the end of this decade. And by God we’ll do it.’
Von Braun was simply too important for the Americans to allow his murderous past to interfere. A clutch of war criminals had now become Cold War heroes.
Wernher von Braun would die in 1977 in Virginia without a blemish on his reputation. Arthur Rudolph was less fortunate. In 1984, Eli Rosenbaum, a zealous lawyer in the US Office of Special Investigations, forced Rudolph to renounce his American citizenship and return to Germany. ‘I’m really angry,’ Rudolph told me before leaving America for ever. ‘I helped put the first man – an American – on the Moon and then I was treated like this.’ He died in 1996 in Hamburg aged 89. He was never brought to justice for his wartime barbarity.
Today, we know the truth in all its terrible detail. Yet there was no mention of these monstrous crimes during last week’s celebrations of the astonishing Moon landing 50 years ago. Why?
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...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
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.
.jpg)
Neil Armstrong's face is seen on the Moon for the first...
Celebrating his 50th birthday, Aldrin Armstrong Collins -...
