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.
20-07-2019
US Military Warns People Preparing to Storm Area 51(More Than 1 Million People Agree To ‘Storm Area 51’)
US Military Warns People Preparing to Storm Area 51(More Than 1 Million People Agree To ‘Storm Area 51’)
Officials warn public of dangers at secretive Nevada base and signal that the Air Force stands ready; national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin report from the Pentagon.
Imagine throngs of people who have never met each other assembling in mid-September before dawn in a Nevada desert town to rush the entrance of Area 51 in search of aliens.
It is a fantastical idea conceived of as a joke on social media, but its popularity has spread fast. On Monday, the number of people who signed up for the tongue-in-cheek Facebook call to “Storm Area 51” exceeded 1 million.
And now, U.S. military officials say they are monitoring the situation.
“The U.S. Air Force is aware of the Facebook event encouraging people to ‘Storm Area 51,’ ” an Air Force spokesperson told NPR.
“The Nevada Test and Training Range provides flexible, realistic and multidimensional battlespace to test and develop tactics as well as conduct advanced training in support of U.S. national interests,” said the official, using the full name of a site that includes Area 51. “Any attempt to illegally access the area is highly discouraged.”
According to the event’s page, the plan is to “naruto run” toward the facility so the group can “move faster than their bullets,” the event says. “Lets see them aliens.”
“All featuring aliens and/or Area 51”
The top-secret base is not accessible to the public, though it has become a tourist destination, with alien-themed outfits like West’s not uncommon. Nevada even renamed a state road “Extraterrestrial Highway” because of reports of UFO activity along the road.
Conspiracy theorists have obsessed over Area 51 for decades, claiming the U.S. government is hiding aliens and crashed UFOs at the site. In 2013, the CIA released a classified 1992 report in which the federal government acknowledged that spy planes were tested there. Officials also admitted that Area 51, the place where many sci-fi stories have been based, is a real-life government facility.
In May, the New York Times reported that Navy officials, in classified guidance, described “unexplained aerial phenomena, or unidentified flying objects,” stoking anew theories about extraterrestrial life hiding at Area 51.
It is difficult to say how many of the event’s million backers know it is a joke and how many are really considering making a trek to Nevada, but most of the thousands of posts on the page seem to indicate that it is not serious.
“We are forgetting something very crucial,” wrote Nick Prafke. “We need vape lords to create a smokescreen to block out satellite and camera images.”
The person who created the event page is a 20-year-old man from California who would be identified only as Val. He wouldn’t share his last name for fear the publicity around the event would lead to his being harassed.
“I just thought it would be a funny idea for the meme page,” Val said via Facebook Messenger. “And it just took off like wildfire. It’s entirely satirical though, and most people seem to understand that.”
Val told NPR that he’ll “more than likely be there, but not for the intended purpose.”
He has been talking “with some pretty great people” about planning a different kind of shindig, perhaps something educational, though it was unclear what exactly the lesson would be.
Long Frozen Organisms in the Arctic Awakened, Hinting at Life on Other Planets
Long Frozen Organisms in the Arctic Awakened, Hinting at Life on Other Planets
In recent years, researchers have reawakened life in frozen organisms in the Arctic permafrost, bringing them back to life. These studies are now challenging accepted ideas as to the resilience of lifeforms, indicating the future of the environment after global warming, and even the chances of life on other planets. They have revived moss and even worms that had been assumed dead in glaciers and in the frozen earth but are now often being revealed by thawing glaciers.
Moss Revival After 150 Years
In 2009, Catherine Le Farge, an evolutionary biologist, and her colleagues were working at the edge of a massive glacier known as the Teardrop, in Northern Canada. She came across a number of specimens of moss “of the species Aulacomnium turgidum finally free from its icy entombment,” according to Stuff. There were some green tints on the plant, even though it had been frozen in ice since the mid-19th century.
This material was presumed to be dead but the verdant hues on the moss indicated to Le Farge that this was something worth investigating. She decided to bring the samples back to her University in Edmonton and placed them in nutrient-rich soil in a bright and warm environment. After a period of time, a number of the mosses came into leaf, despite being ‘dead’ for over a century. Le Farge is quoted by Stuff as stating that "We were pretty blown away."
The moss had desiccated in the extreme cold and this meant that it did not become frozen solid. Typically, ice can form in the tissues of living and dead organisms and this means that it “can shred cell membranes and other vital biological machinery” according to Stuff. This unique biological characteristic of moss meant that it could be revived.
Frozen lifeforms, such as the moss, have been successfully revived.
Following on from the work of Le Farge and her colleagues, other scientists have begun to revive frozen organisms. Peter Convey and his team from the British Antarctic Survey have “awakened a 1500-year-old moss buried more than three feet underground in the Antarctic permafrost,” according to Annith. It appears that the frozen ice can preserve the mosses from environmental damage and the radiation that can lead to the break-down of their DNA and preserve the plants.
Researchers have been able to renew and bring to life bacteria and complex multiple cell organisms that have been entombed in glaciers . One of the most exciting instances of this is the work of Tatiana Vishnivetskaya, from the University of Tennessee, on nematodes (roundworms), that are thousands of years old and were found in the Tundra of Siberia.
She announced an ‘accidental discovery’ when she was working with the organisms in Petrie dishes says Stuff. The scientist saw the worms reawakening , even though they had been frozen for thousands of years. Her work has shown that it is not only a simple organism that can survive in the brutal environment of extremely low temperatures.
The recent research has shown that desolate areas like the Arctic are not just dead zones. Instead, it appears that “glaciers and permafrost are not merely graveyards for multicellular life” according to Stuff. It is also showing that a select few species have great resilience.
It also appears that some organisms can wait for a more favorable environment as part of their survival strategy. They are able to stay literally frozen in time or become ‘ zombies’ until conditions mean that they can be revived.
What Does This Say About Life on Other Planets?
Some believe that the ability of organisms to survive in the extreme cold can have repercussions for the possibility of life on other planets . If lifeforms can survive in a glacier could they not also survive in apparently desolate and uninhabitable worlds ? The resilience of certain organismsmay make it more probable that life may exist elsewhere in the universe.
Northern polar ice cap on Mars. Does the ice hold frozen lifeforms?
The discovery that some organisms can survive in the extreme cold can help us understand how areas, which are now frozen, may look after global warming. As the glaciers and permafrost thaws and retreats, it means that something that can survive in the ice can re-colonize the environment. For example, mosses can flourish once again and prepare the way for other plants and even animals to colonize formerly frozen lands.
The studies by Le Farge, Covney, and others are demonstrating that ancient life can be renewed and the resilience of some forms of biological life . This is very positive given the growing concerns over the environment. The research may give hope that life will be able to survive even the impending environmental disasters predicted by many scientists and environmentalists.
BAS, the team studying the frozen lifeforms, research stations in the British Antarctic Territory.
Another crop circle has appeared in Switzerland recently, and a UFO enthusiast claims that this is proof that aliens do visit the Earth every now and then.
Crop circles aren’t new. According to Live Science, people from years past claim that these crop formations have been “appearing” on Earth for centuries now, starting with the one that came from the legend known as the “mowing devil.” Some also claim that the first crop circle was seen in 1966 in Australia. This crop circle, according to a farmer, was left by an alien saucer that took off and left a mark on a swampy area.
So far, nothing has been established as to the link between aliens and crop circles, which are but often aesthetically pleasing formations in fields. A UFO enthusiast, however, claims that these are linked.
Alien base?
In an entry on the ET Database, self-titled astrobiologist and UFO researcher Scott Waring said a farmer recently spotted another crop circle formation in Bern, Switzerland. The farmer said it measured about 50 meters across, and that it looks “beautiful and anything but ordinary.”
Waring believes that the crop circles are the “locations where UFOs have entered and exited alien bases,” implying that there might be alien bases under the ground. These bases, he claimed, would be located about five to six kilometers deep under the ground.
The UFOs landing on the crop circles, he said, would enter and exit that “base” by passing through a tubular space that had a platform that slowly went down like an elevator.
He then capped the outlandish claim by saying something more outlandish: “Aliens have control of everything and controlling dirt and grass is much easier than you might think.”
It’s all a prank
Waring’s outlandish yet creative claims seem to be at par with the creativity of two men who, in 1991, admitted to creating crop circles for decades simply because they want to fool people.
According to Live Science, these crop circles baffled everyone until the two men admitted they created them to fool people into believing that UFOs land there. While they weren’t responsible for creating all crop circles appearing in various places particularly in the U.K., they are the ones who started the crop circle phenomena.
Simply put, while alien theorists theorize that these circles are entry and exit points for aliens, they’re pranks created by those who want to make fun of people who fall for alien theories.
Crop Circle found in Chualar, Ca, now known to be created by NVIDIA.
If there’s anyone who understands why someone would want to “storm” Area 51, knows what they might or might not find and can knowledgeably warn of the dangers, it’s Bob Lazar– the man who claims he worked on reverse-engineering alien technology that the stormers (and many others) believe is still at Area 51. In an Instagram post responding to the “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” movement, he had this to say:
“The last time someone tried to get in to Area 51 he was shot.”
OK, Bob, but that was one person. We’re talking 1.4 million now, making it the second largest army in the world, if it was an army (it’s not, but you can bet that a number of them will be armed). The Air Force has already warned that Area 51 is one of its open training ranges, an asset of the United States, and “The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.” Would it be ready if it was the Indian Army (with slightly less forces) instead of the Area 51 stormers? No one thinks it will come to that, including Lazar. And even if it was half that number, the effort would be futile, because:
“This is a misguided idea. Area 51 is a classified research base. There are no aliens or alien technology located there. The only place there was ever any alien technology was at Site S4, south of Area 51 proper. That was 30 years ago. S4 may have moved decades ago or it’s possible it’s no longer being used for the project.”
Thanks, Bob!
Will the fact that whatever (if anything) was going on there or at S4 satisfy the Area 51 stormers? Did it satisfy Bluto (John Belushi’s character in ‘Animal House’?
“What? Over? Did you say ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! It ain’t over now, ’cause when the goin’ gets tough, the tough get goin’. Who’s with me? Let’s go! Come on!”
It’s pretty easy to imagine tens of thousands of UFO-loving Blutos rushing the gates of Area 51. Lazar admits that he likes that kind of enthusiasm.
“What is good, is the interest in the subject – the science and technology. That is what would immediately change the world we live in.”
Well then, Bob … where SHOULD they storm? The White House? President Trump has admitted he’s not really interested in UFOs. Congress? Good luck getting their attention these days. The Pentagon? Their security makes Area 51 look like it’s guarded by a mall cops. S4? That doesn’t have the X-Files cachet of Area 51 and Lazar says it probably doesn’t have the alien stuff either. How about the house of the guy who organized the movement in the first place? He’s already backed off, saying:
“P.S. Hello US government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan. I just thought it would be funny and get me some thumbsy uppies on the internet.”
Joke? We don’t joke.
Bluto would know what to do with wimps like that.
“What the f–k happened to the Delta (Area 51 Storm Troopers) I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re gonna let it be the worst. ‘Ooh, we’re afraid to go with you, Bluto, we might get in trouble.’ Well, just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this. Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer…”
And that’s when the Stormers make like Bluto’s frat brother Otter and yell:
“Dead! Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight ’em with conventional weapons. That could take years and cost millions of lives. No, in this case, I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. We’re just the guys to do it…LET’S DO IT!”
Bob Lazar says it’s time to change the world. The Stormers are organizing. September 20th is not far away. Who will be their Bluto and Otter?
What will be their really futile and stupid gesture?
On June 22 2018, a team of scientists from the University of Rhode Island and University of East Anglia announced in a paper published in Nature Communications that they had discovered a new factor in the rapid melting of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier – a previously unknown active volcano buried deep under the ice.
When combined with another scientific study released in 2017 by a team of scientists from the University of Edinburgh, which announced the existence of 91 volcanoes buried under West Antarctica’s ice sheets in addition to the 41 previously discovered, a disturbing conclusion is reached. West Antarctica’s ice sheets are being rapidly melted from a vast network of buried volcanoes, which are far more active than scientists previously thought possible.
To date, as many as 138 volcanoes have been identified throughout West Antarctica9, including the presently active Mt. Erebus10 along the Terror Rift, as well as Mt. Siple10 and Mt. Waesche11, which both show evidence of recent activity. However, the locations and extent of volcanic activity along the WARS are debated, because many of these 138 known volcano-like features are buried beneath several kilometers of ice, and some evidence suggests that much of the interior subglacial WARS is dormant.
The assumption that the majority of West Antarctica’s volcanoes are dormant is increasingly being challenged by new scientific discoveries. Telltale signatures of volcanic activity are being found in ocean waters as evidenced from rare isotopes such as Helium-3, which was used by the authors of Pine Island Glacier paper to reach their conclusion.
In addition, heat increases and seismic activity in Antarctica points to large amounts of magma moving deep below the West Antarctic Ice Sheets (WAIS), as the June 22 paper suggested:
The apparent surface deformations in the WAIS thickness also suggest localized heat fluxes that are most likely volcanic due to their intensity14,15, while ash layers from ice cores reveal more recent eruptions16. Last, the detection of earthquakes as recently as 2010 suggest magma migration beneath the Executive Committee mountains, in a region of Marie Byrd Land where seismic studies have revealed thin crust and low-density mantle material beneath.
The discovery of volcanoes beneath the Antarctic ice sheet means that there is an additional source of heat to melt the ice, lubricate its passage toward the sea, and add to the melting from warm ocean waters. It will be important to include this in our efforts to estimate whether the Antarctic ice sheet might become unstable and further increase sea level rise.
While the June 22 paper focused on the impact of the buried volcano melting the Pine Island Glacier, the wider impact of other buried volcanoes on the West Antarctic Ice Sheets (WAIS) was briefly mentioned in the abstract:
Our finding of a substantial volcanic heat source beneath a major WAIS glacier highlights the need to understand subglacial volcanism, its hydrologic interaction with the marine margins, and its potential role in the future stability of the WAIS.
The new findings about the influence of one or more active volcanoes to explain the rapid melting of Pine Island Glacier, along with the temperature increase and melt-offs observed elsewhere in the frozen continent all point to powerful transformative events in West Antarctica.
The following long-term temperature map of Antarctica alongside the newly discovered volcanoes, shows how and why West Antarctic is heating far more rapidly than East Antarctica.
Left image shows temperature increase of Antarctica from 1956-2006 (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio); right image shows 2017 discovery of 90 new volcanoes in Antarctica.
If global warming due to CO2 emissions was the explanation, then warming oceans would be uniform in heating both East and West Antarctica. Yet most scientific data points to West Antarctica melting.
The June 22 paper, along with other scientific studies provide a cogent explanation for what is really driving the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheets. The submerged volcanoes are more active than previously thought and are melting the ice sheets far more rapidly than scientists believe possible.
If we take the upcoming Solar Cycle 25 (2019 – 2030) as the catalyst for triggering volcanic activity around the Earth through increased solar activity, West Antarctica’s ice sheets could disappear in as little as a decade or so.
There are four major effects that will occur from West Antarctica’s ice sheets disappearing so quickly.
First, ocean levels will rise far more dramatically than previously thought. If all the ice in West Antarctica were to melt, ocean levels would rise by 10 feet (3.3 meters). Rather than humanity having centuries to prepare as estimated by many geologists, it would only have a decade.
Second, whistleblower claims that there are large subterranean bases in Antarctica that belong to multiple secret space programs dating back to World War II will be exposed for all the world to see. It can be predicted that nations and corporations managing such classified programs would not allow themselves to be preempted by geologic events, and accelerate official disclosure initiatives.
Third, ancient artifacts of a flash frozen advanced civilization buried under the Antarctic ice will be revealed confirming rumors and eyewitness accounts of such a discovery going back to the early 1990’s. The technologies and knowledge acquired from such discoveries is likely to provide humanity with rapid scientific revolutions spanning aerospace, health, archeology and even religion.
Finally, the rapid melt-off of West Antarctic ice will impact the centrifugal forces driving Earth’s axis of rotation, thereby leading to a possible Pole Shift as discussed by Charles Hapgood and Albert Einstein in the book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust (1958).
Scientific corroboration of Pine Island Glacier being melted from underneath by volcanic activity should serve as a warning about the profound effect of such a phenomenon repeating itself throughout the entire chain of volcanoes buried deep under West Antarctica, and the powerful implications this holds for the entire planet.
[Note: The author has provided documents and testimonies addressing many of the above issues in his March 2018 book. Antarctica’s Hidden History: Corporate Foundations of Secret Space Programs. He will discuss his book and the latest scientific findings about Antarctica at the following upcoming speaking events]
Without doubt, one of the strangest aspects of cryptozoology is it’s tie-in with the Crop Circle mystery. Although it’s a little-known aspect of both phenomena, more than a few accounts exist of strange creatures seen in and around Crop Circles. From Matthew Williams – the only British man ever arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop Circle – come several such accounts. It transpires that, unsurprisingly for someone who has spent years deeply immersed within the Crop Circle controversy, Matthew is a veritable fountain of knowledge with respect to tales of weird creatures either having been seen in, or at least in the direct vicinity of, complex Crop Circle formations. One such case is truly strange.
Matthew advised me that the story in question concerned a man who had felt curiously compelled to drive late at night to a certain field in Wiltshire many years ago. On doing so, he parked his car and duly, and carefully, began his walk into the depths of the crop. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large, black, human-like figure appeared in the air over the field. “It reminded me a little bit of the Mothman sightings when I heard this story,” said Matthew, not without a high degree of justification. Matthew continued that the source of the story could only stand and stare in awe, while suddenly gaining the distinct impression that the hovering entity was the source of at least some of the Crop Circle formations that were appearing in Wiltshire. At that precise moment, a simple Crop Circle suddenly appeared on the ground immediately below the black figure – after which it vanished from the skies and the man was left utterly alone in the field, and with no real option other than to make his shocked way back to his vehicle and drive home, baffled and bewildered by both the weird, aerial entity and what it was that had directed him to the field.
Example of simple crop circles
Matthew expands: “There was one time, I’d rather not say when or where exactly, as I could get into trouble for admitting I trespassed on the farmer’s land and made the crop circle formation. Plus, I had a friend named Paul helping me with this one. We were making this circle when we noticed these three bright lights – small balls of lights coming towards the field. We watched them; we were fascinated. But they split up and each of them went to a corner of the field – and which only left one corner for us to leave by without getting too close to these things. That was a bit unsettling. We didn’t know what these balls were; so we raced out of the open corner of the field. We looked back as we ran and could see the balls heading towards us: gliding very gracefully just above the top of the crop. It was like they were on a railway track, just moving very smoothly, but it left us sort of disturbed too: like they were almost ghostly and alive.”
The story was far from finished, as Matthew notes: “Well, I went to get the car, and told Paul to wait in the bushes at the edge of the road so he wouldn’t be seen. The last thing I wanted was for him to get arrested if the police happened to drive past. But by the time I had got the car and got back to Paul, he was walking up the middle of the road with all his Crop Circle equipment in full view. I pulled up, wound the window down and shouted at him: ‘What the hell are you doing? If people see you carrying your [crop circle-making] equipment, we’ll get arrested.’
“Paul looked scared stiff and said: ‘If they had arrested me, I’d have gone with them, just to get me out of there.’ I asked him what he meant, and Paul said that while I was getting the car he had heard these strange, animal-like screaming noises coming from inside the field and he had just charged out of there and onto the road. We never found out what it was though.”
Matthew Williams is not alone in commenting on such matters. In the summer of 2007, I spoke with Marcus Matthews, a researcher of mysterious big-cats in the U.K., who told me that he was then currently investigating a case involving a person who had seen a “huge black cat” sitting inside the confines of a Wiltshire Crop Circle. So, how do we define and explain such rogue reports as these? The answer, admittedly, and right now, is that we can’t. All I can say is this: if you ever find yourself deep in the heart of a huge Crop Circle, then keep a careful watch. There may be something monstrous keeping its eyes on you, getting ready to pounce.
A recent photo of Area 51/Groom Lake area taken by a pilot flying legally outside restricted airspace with a superimposed crossair clip art.
(Photo: anonymous to TheAviationist.com)
The Tongue-In-Cheek Internet Sensation Has Gained Traction, But “What If”?We talked about the crazy “plan” with Deputy Sheriff Murphy of the Nye County Sheriff’s Office near the Area 51 and to Adventure Photo Tours who run regular tours to legal areas of interest outside the Nevada Test and Training Range.
You’ve heard about the sensational internet plan to “Storm Area 51”. The gag originated from a Facebook page called, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”. While no one is taking the idea seriously, it’s received remarkable media attention. As of Thursday, July 11, 2019, a Google search on “Storm Area 51” produced 174,000,000 results. Nearly “300,000 people” have signed up for the event on its Facebook page.
What would happen if 300,000 people tried to storm the U.S. Air Force’s secure Nevada Test and Training Range? We visited the area in 2017 to learn more about the massive, secretive test range, and today we spoke with local law enforcement and area experts surrounding the Nevada Test Range about the “Storm Area 51” social media trend.
Here is what we learned about trying to “storm” or even get near Area 51.
Donna and Will Tryon operate Adventure Photo Tours in Las Vegas, Nevada. The couple run regular tours to legal areas of interest surrounding the remote area outside the Nevada Test and Training Range. TheAviationist.com spoke to Donna Tryon, one of the owners of Adventure Photo Tours on Thursday after the “Storm Area 51” Facebook group went viral. When we asked Donna Tryon what would happen if an unauthorized person tried to gain entry to Area 51 she told us, “That would be very, very stupid. Area 51 is not a joke. No matter what is going on there, people need to remember, this is a military facility. You wouldn’t get far.”
A screen capture of the “Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us” Facebook event page taken on Thursday, July 11, 2019. (Photo: via Facebook)
Tryon knows. On May 24, 2014, one of Tryon’s company tour operators was momentarily distracted by a tour client’s question as he drove their tour vehicle along the outer perimeter of Area 51. He accidently crossed a restricted area boundary sign. Within seconds, an armed response team stopped the tour company vehicle and made its occupants get out of the vehicle. The Area 51 security team, often called “the camo dudes”, summoned local law enforcement to issue violations to the tourists and the tour guide driver. It was an expensive and potentially dangerous lesson. In the more than 20 years that the Tryons’ company has been legally guiding tourists around the outer perimeter of Area 51, they have been buzzed by aircraft and had targeting lasers appear on a person’s head from out of the desert.
But the “camo dudes”, motion sensors, fences, remote cameras and other surveillance devices that ring the Nevada Test and Training Range are just some of the obstacles a person would face trying to get near the secret facility.
The first real obstacle anyone faces trying to enter the restricted area surrounding the Nevada Test Range is distance. If you start your trip to Area 51’s outer perimeter from Las Vegas and head toward Creech AFB in Clark County, Nevada, you drive about 45 miles on US 95. The last place you’ll be able to buy gas along the route before skirting the massive southwestern perimeter of the Nevada Test and Training Range is across from Creech AFB in Indian Springs. From here, the drive gets serious. “We get calls all the time about people stranded out there,” local law enforcement told us. “They’re in serious trouble. It’s an unforgiving place.”
Interstate 95 between Indian Springs and the next town, Beatty, is 73 miles of the worst driving in the world. The area is remarkably desolate, with no cell service during most of the trip. Daytime temperatures in the summer are almost always above 100-degrees. There is little traffic on the road and nothing on either side of the road but empty desert. When we made the trip between Indian Springs and Beatty along Interstate 95 at night we saw three other vehicles during the entire 73-mile stretch of road. Two of those were government vehicles.
Even the credible Newsweek.com media outlet picked up the “Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us” Facebook event story. (Photo: via Newsweek.com/Google search)
The second obstacle is terrain. The area is remarkably unforgiving. With loose sand, rock, cactus, venomous snakes and a series of desert mountains surrounding the Nevada Test and Training Range, only a well trained and equipped person experienced in desert travel could cover the distance from the outer perimeter to get anywhere near Groom Lake where Area 51 is located.
There is also the issue of fitness.
Most people untrained in desert travel would have difficulty crossing even a single mile on foot during the day in the open desert, let alone the 26 miles from Highway 95 near Goldfield to the classified airfield at Area 51. Navigation in the desert, the heat, and especially the terrain would tax even the best athlete in this environment. Most people have a tough time walking a few miles in the Midwest on a mild day if their car breaks down. In the open Nevada desert, they probably wouldn’t survive the experience.
Finally, there is the issue of logistics. Every town surrounding the Nevada Test and Training Range is very small, most with either one or two small stores stocking water and food with public bathroom facilities. There are very few hotels in the area since there is little to see and such oppressive security. The few convenience stores around the outer perimeter of the area likely only have a few hundred bottles of water in stock, nowhere near enough food and water to support a crowd of more than 50 people at a time. So, if you plan to be one of the several hundred thousand people “storming Area 51”, be sure to bring your own snacks and a cooler. And ice. Plenty of ice.
We spoke to Deputy Sheriff Murphy of the Nye County Sheriff’s Office near the Area 51/ Nevada Test and Training Range about the internet sensation to storm Area 51. “We take every threat seriously,” Deputy Sheriff Murphy told TheAviationist.com. “Security for that area is handled by the military, with our agency providing support if ever needed”. Deputy Sheriff Murphy said his agency became aware of the social media trend around midnight Wednesday, and that members of his agency were not authorized to discuss specific plans and contingencies regarding potential security threats to the Nevada Test and Training Range. “People should respect those boundaries. They are there for a reason, and part of that is for public safety,” Deputy Sheriff Murphy told TheAviationist.com.
Another good reason to avoid travel in the area, especially away from roads, is the environment. The desert environment is extremely fragile, and any human intrusion into the desert has the potential for negative impact on the region. A large number of people in the open desert would create an environmental calamity for the fragile region, its plants and animals. When we visited the area in 2017, we saw many interesting species of desert animals including wild donkeys, desert fox, snakes, lizards, predatory birds and even wild dogs.
The environment surrounding the Nevada Test and Training Range is extremely fragile and includes many species who would be negatively impacted by too many visitors. We spotted these wild donkeys crossing the road while driving out of Beatty, Nevada next to the restricted area. (Photo: Tom Demerly / TheAviationist.com)
Lastly, there probably isn’t much to see in the Area 51/Nevada Test Range area unless you are an aviation enthusiast. Donna Tryon told TheAviationist.com that, “We know for a fact that they are doing development out there, that is what the place is for.” But added that not even locals know the specifics of what the military is working on inside the vast restricted area. Recent sightings of exotic aircraft in the area have included an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, thought to be retired from Air Force service in 2008. In 2017, TheAviationist.com spotted an F-117 being moved on a flatbed truck on November 14 along the southwest perimeter of the Nevada Test and Training Range.
But aside from extremely determined aircraft spotters or alien conspiracy theorists there is not much reason to join the group planning to storm Area 51. In our experience, there truly is “nothing to see here” around the area.
Most people think tree rings are primarily used to tell the age of a tree and secondarily to make furniture look better. Believe it or not, there’s so much more that can be found in tree rings that an entire scientific field – dendroclimatology – is devoted to the study of climate and atmospheric conditions during different periods in history that can be revealed by analyzing tree rings. Excited dendroclimatologists are shaking like redwoods in a California quake at what they might find in the rings of a well-preserved kauri tree from about 41,000 years ago found buried in a swamp in New Zealand. One thing they won’t find is end tables and bookcases. However, what they will find is a bark-encased picture of Earth’s last magnetic polar shift – an event that is quickly occurring again. Did the rings reverse too?
“Over a period of 200 to 300 years, the virtual geomagnetic pole moved in clockwise fashion from its original northern position, traveling well into the Southern Hemisphere before swinging north again. If this were to occur at present, it would probably have significant implications for modern technology because very much stronger cosmic radiation impinging on the Earth’s surface would almost certainly impact upon satellites and communication. We do not need to be alarmist over this but it is important to know just how quickly these changes can occur.”
Kauri tree
It’s too late to not be alarmist, since the news about the magnetic North Pole moving to Siberia and on to the Southern Hemisphere has already been on Twitter, conspiracy sites and the mainstream media. However, Alan Hogg, director of Waikato University’s Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory, say studying the rings throughout this monstrous 16-meter-long (52.5 feet), 2.5 meters wide (8.2 feet), 60-ton log will reveal exactly how radiocarbon changed during its life span. That life span, which was estimated to be between 1500 and 200 years, began about 42,5000 years ago near what is now Kaikohe, a town in the Far North District of New Zealand. The kauri (Agathis australis) was found in late March in a massive swamp during excavations for a new geothermal power station near Ngāwhā Springs. The tree was preserved in clay 9 meters (29.5 feet) underground and the ends had to be cut off to move it. during site works for the new power station.
”It feels like it’s being returned to its rightful owners.”
Project site manager Mike Ohs gave the tree to local Maori leaders, who, after finding out it may be the only tree ever discovered from the Laschamp Event, the most recent reversal of the Earth’s north and south magnetic poles, allowed researchers like Alan Hogg and Professor Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales, an expert in paleoclimatology and climate change over the past 40,000 years, to study it. their initial reports in early July confirmed the tree’s age.
“We will be comparing results from dating this tree with dating from other sites to build a clearer picture of past climate changes.”
The tree was part of a vast kauri forest which covered the upper North Island and was exposed to the climate change caused by the Laschamp Event. While traumatic, it obviously survived, as did the kauri forests until the 1820 arrival of Europeans with axes, saws and a burning desire to cut down trees. It’s estimated that only 4 per cent of that original forest now remains.
What will this tree reveal about the last magnetic pole reversal … and the next one? What will it tell us … and possibly warn us … about climate change?
The "time traveller”, who called himself Noah, claimed to have come from the year 2030. But in a video posted Saturday, 16-year-old YouTuber Denis Bel claimed he was the real Noah. "I can't do this stupid character anymore," he said in the video.
Describing the impact "Noah" has had on his life, he went on: "I have to get rid of this looming that's above me that keeps making me scared of being exposed."
Later on, Denis alleges that ApexTV tried to make him and his parents sign a non-disclosure agreement so he could never reveal his true identity.
"I know ApexTV is going to be flipping once he sees this video because he knows I'm revealing everything," he added.
In a series of videos which appeared on ApexTV's website and YouTube channel, "Noah" made a series of outlandish claims.
YouTuber Denis Bel has claimed he is the real Noah
(Image: Youtube/ DENISBEL)
Time traveller Noah claims it was all a hoax
(Image: Youtube/APEXTV)
These included that he had taken a picture of dinosaurs 66 million years ago, that Britain will rejoin the European Union and that by 2030 most of the US east and west coasts would be underwater.
The videos racked up millions of views over the course of two years.
But in a video posted on Saturday, 16-year-old YouTuber Denis Bel claimed he was the real Noah.
Describing how he rose to international attention through the character, Denis said "Noah" had taken over his life.
Denis apologised to anyone fooled by his fake videos
(Image: Youtube/Denisbel)
In the video, Denis claimed he was first approached by ApexTV when he was 14 years old.
He said the channel, which specialises in paranormal and mysterious videos, offered him money to make a fake time travel video.
But as the character's popularity rose, Denis said many tried to work out his real identity.
He even had a number of death threats from people who accurately linked him to Noah.
Denis said he also had to delete one of his other YouTube channels which used his real identity after it was flooded by internet users furious about the hoax.
The teenager also apologised to anyone who fell for his fake videos.
Now, Denis says he just wants to be a regular YouTuber.
“I am not attempting to deceive anyone, my sole objective is to prove to you that time travel exists and that I, myself, am a time traveller. First of all, time travel became possible in the year 2003, it is only used by top-secret organisations. The ability to time travel will not be released to the public until 2028. Well, I have actually predicted multiple things before. Including celebrity deaths, world issues, world events. And the future president of the United States that will be coming soon, who is Yolanda Renee King. Granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr.”
If you believed those words (and many others) when a pixelated young man named “Noah” made them in late 2017 and throughout the next two-and-a-half years on the Apex TV YouTube channel – including one while allegedly connected to a lie detector — this next statement from him is going to be a big disappointment.
“I cannot believe I’m making this video now. It’s absolutely insane that I’m actually recording this and I’m saying everything finally. It’s been so long oh my gosh. Hello, everyone, my name is Denis and I’m Noah the time traveller, the famous viral time traveller who was all over the internet at one point.“
No, he’s not just coming clean on using a fake name – all of the alleged time travelers do that – he’s showing his face and admitting he’s not from the future or the past – he’s a present-day fraud.
“Well, it’s all fake. If you haven’t guessed already… I’m not an actual time traveller. It started when I was 14-years-old, I was an obsessive YouTubers and was posting comedy videos on … my channel nearly every day. Eventually it led me to become friends with the owner of ApexTV and that’s where it all started.”
And ended … although 16-year-old Denis Bel’s 10-minute long confessional video has been pulled due to copyright infringement by – no surprise here – ApexTV (you can see parts of it here), which is still posting videos of other “time travelers” and soliciting any hiding in closets to come out and partake in the fame and fortune that hooked Denis “Noah” Bel when he was just 14 into making numerous videos where he said things like:
“When you time travel you gain time. When I was in junior high and I was a time traveller, I had to take these pills to make sure I don’t grow old while time travelling.”
He also predicted that bitcoin would survive at least until 2030, Donald Trump would be re-elected president (which may explain why so many people are both happy and unhappy Noah is a hoax), “designer babies” will be popular and expensive, Google Glass-style robotics will be common and the Internet of things will make home operations totally independent of human intervention. While Denis made some money and got virally famous, he couldn’t predict what else would happen.
“I was scared every day that people were going to find my home address, visit me, or find my school and start calling in there. I can’t do this stupid character anymore. I have to get rid of this looming threat that’s above me.”
Besides pressure from Apex TV for him and his parents to sign non-disclosure agreements, Bel says he received death threats from people who already figured out he was Noah. Death threats! Sadly, it doesn’t take a time traveler to correctly predict that death threats have become the new middle finger salute.
What’s next for Denis Bel? He wants to live a normal life and post ordinary videos on his own YouTube channel. Good luck with that. What about Apex TV? While it doesn’t appear to have made an official comment on Denis “Noah” Bel, it will likely continue to post its time traveler videos.
Will anyone believe them anymore? Did anyone believe them before?
I’ve never wanted to end something so bad as when I stepped into the grocery store and saw, for the first time, Marty the robot. I know, I know, property destruction is wrong. I didn’t act on it, but seeing those googly eyes peek over the mangoes filled me with a deep and primal blood lust (oil lust?) that’s been locked up in my DNA since before the flood. I saw Marty the robot and I saw that it must not be. So I left before I made a scene. I’m no freedom fighter.
There seems to be a very real and very deep repulsion inherent in humans’ feelings towards robots. We don’t like robots, as evidenced by the growing trend of people acting on that atavistic urge to murder them. But we also aren’t creeped out by all robots equally. There’s a concept called the “uncanny valley” which shows the point of maximum creepiness. A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has found the part of the brain responsible for the uncanny valley effect and what’s going on in our primitive monkey brains as we meet our replacements.
The uncanny valley was first described by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. It’s where something, in this case a robot, is made to look like a human but falls a bit short. People tend to like robots more as they become more humanoid, but at a certain point there is a dramatic dip in likability, the so-called valley, before becoming more likable again as they get closer to a perfect facsimile of a human. According to a new study that has located the part of the brain responsible for the uncanny valley, different people may react to the uncanny valley with varied intensity. This may explain why a robot that’s essentially a rolling traffic cone almost landed me in jail. I blame the googly eyes.
Whoever thought the googly eyes were a good idea is a grade-a psychopath.
To figure out the physical location in the brain of the uncanny valley, researchers hooked up 21 volunteers to MRI machines and gave them some tests that involved pictures of various kinds of robots and humans combined with likability decisions. In one experiment, the volunteers were shown pictures of humans, artificial humans, android robots, humanoid robots and mechanoid robots, and were asked to assign values to how likable each was. Then they were asked to pick one of these humans or robots to complete a task: selecting a gift that a hypothetical human may like. The volunteers chose either real humans or human-like robots, but they did not choose the robots in which the difference between human and robot was the hardest to make out.
According to the study, researchers found a link between the uncanny valley and both the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that is the most different from other primates. It’s the part that makes executive decisions that go against our primal urges. It was my prefrontal cortex that weighed the risk-reward balance for murdering Marty the robot. The amygdala is a very primitive part of our brain responsible for the “fight-or-flight” response, fear, anxiety, all those fun things. It was my amygdala that made me want to do a robot murder.
“I want you to quietly accept the inevitable.”
The prefrontal cortex showed a dip in activity when volunteers were shown robots in the uncanny valley, and conversely the amygdala seemed to show more of a reaction to the robots in the uncanny valley.
The researchers think that understanding how humans react to the uncanny valley is key to a future where humans and robots coexist peacefully. According to Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, from the RWTH Aachen University in German:
“This is the first study to show individual differences in the strength of the uncanny valley effect, meaning that some individuals react overly and others less sensitively to human-like artificial agents. This means there is no one robot design that fits – or scares – all users. In my view, smart robot behaviour is of great importance, because users will abandon robots that do not prove to be smart and useful.”
So regardless of our repulsion, they hope to be able to make robots that even stubborn cranks like myself will tolerate. To that I say: good luck.
There are many groups of people the world over who are renowned for unique adaptations to their environment. These range from the tribal groups of the deep Amazon, whose hunter-gathering way of life has remained primarily unchanged for thousands of years, to the enigmatic Sherpas, whose genetics allow them to traverse the steep Himalayan slopes without suffering the effects of the thin air at those altitudes.
Similar feats are achieved almost daily by the Bajau of Southeast Asia, especially where oxygen is concerned. These “sea nomads”, as they are often called, have the unique ability to hold their breath for minutes at a time, ranking them among the world’s most unparalleled divers (and hence their unique nickname).
Some of the Bajau divers are able to operate underwater with such ease that it led to speculation as to whether they had adapted genetically over time, similar to people who thrive in higher altitudes. Last spring, evolutionary geneticist Melissa Ilardo led a study that proposed such adaptations might involve the unusually large spleens found among the Bajau, outlined in a paper published in the journal Cell. Similar adaptations have been observed in ocean-dwelling mammals, such as sperm whales which are able to hold their breaths for up to 90 minutes thanks to a substance in their bloodstream called myoglobin, which binds oxygen in their blood and becomes electrically-charged when the whales go underwater.
The Bajau perform their incredible diving feats completely naturally, although the current record for a human holding their breath underwater is held by 47-year-old Peter Colat, a diver from Zurich, Switzerland, who managed to hold his breath for an astounding 19 minutes and 21 seconds in 2010.
Colat, who was 38-year-old at the time, managed to achieve this through oxygen-assisted static apnea, where one breathes pure oxygen for 10 minutes prior to diving, according to rules set by the Guinness Book of World Records. His record ousted the previous record holder, Nicola Putignano of Italy, by just 19 seconds.
It begs the question, just how long could a person or animal survive underwater with the help of a little extra added oxygen? More specifically, what if rather than holding their breath, the mammals in question were able to breathe oxygen from the water itself?
Perhaps the earliest study looking into this goes all the way back to 1964, as reported in the journal Sea Frontiers by Johannes A. Kylstra, which discussed experiments with mice that involved such processes. The experiments were conducted in chambers partially filled with water, where the air was replaced with compressed oxygen and pressurized equivalent to that of eight atmospheres, allowing for an artificially oxygen-enriched liquid environment below it. Finally, salts which are similar to those that appear naturally in the blood of mammals were added to the water.
The study found that mice introduced into the liquid environment were actually able to “breathe for several minutes and, in some cases, hours.” Temperature was also a factor in survival, with mice surviving the longest at a temperature of 68°F. The mice, despite being within a liquid environment, were found to be “active and alert,” and “did not appear to be in severe distress” while submerged in the oxygenated water.
Most of the mice began to lose consciousness within half an hour of entering the liquid environment. Subsequent experiments involved the introduction of a chemical buffer into the water, which helped preserve a constant acidity in the liquid solution, whereafter some of the mice responded to stimuli such as shaking or tapping the outside of the tank for up to six hours while submerged.
These initial studies led to further experiments with perfluorinated hydrocarbons, which unlike the oxygenated water from the earlier studies, could more effectively remove carbon dioxide from the lungs. The most effective substance of this variety, called perflubron, has roughly double the density of water, and can also carry as much as twice the amount of oxygen as air (this substance is most often referenced as “radiopaque perfluorocarbon solution for lung lavage,” and is sold under the name “LiquiVent” in the United States and other countries, generally only for research purposes).
If all of this sounds a lot like the famous liquid breathing apparatus used by Ed Harris during the climax of the sci-fi film The Abyss, you wouldn’t be the only one who thinks so. In fact, several years ago during a revolutionary medical procedure that was used to save Adrianna Mancini–a child born five months premature–Dr. Jay Greenspan at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Dr. Thomas Shaffer of Temple University in Philadelphia employed the then-experimental process of liquid ventilation in order to save the child’s life, after comparing it to the liquid featured in the famous film.
“I knew that I was watching medical history being made,” Mancini later told Reader’s Digest. Shafer and Greenspan’s procedure went on to be used to save other premature infants in the years that followed.
Quite obviously, the futuristic deep-sea breathing apparatus featured in The Abyss was partially inspired by the real-life science described here (in fact, one scene in the film actually depicts a rat being submerged in a perfluorinated hydrocarbon-like liquid; an obvious a nod to the 1960s studies that introduced the idea). But what began with experiments aimed at helping mice breathe in special liquid environments did more than just inspire the world of sci-fi, and now, the real-world applications of these studies can even help save lives.
It’s not a great plot for a horror movie – they’re not eating brains (yet) – but it’s real. Plants that were once alive hundreds of years ago, then frozen during the Little Ice Age and buried under a hundred feet of ice the Canadian tundra, are being exposed to light once again due to (no surprise here) climate change and not just rising up as the ice melts again but growing and even thriving. If they need some help getting reestablished, some worms found in Siberia (where else?) that were frozen 40,000 years ago have warmed up and are alive again. Aspiring screenwriters want to know … has anyone offered them brains yet?
“You wouldn’t assume that anything buried for hundreds of years would be viable. The material had always been considered dead. But by seeing green tissue, “I thought, ‘Well, that’s pretty unusual.’ We were pretty blown away.”
The model for Indiana Jones in this movie might be evolutionary biologist Catherine La Farge (Indiannette Jones?), who recently went to the Trardrop Glacier on Canada’s Ellesmere Island intending to study what she expected to be decaying ancient plants being exposed by climate change. As reported in The National Post, when she scraped up the moss Aulacomnium turgidum, La Farge was shocked to see something green … shocked because this moss last saw light somewhere between 1550 and 1850 when The Little Ice Age hit North America, severely dropping temperatures for centuries and growing its glaciers in both area and depth. The moss La Farge found was indeed rising back to life on its own. She brought samples back to her lab in Edmonton and gave them a little help in the form of warmth and nutrients, and they not only arose but grew into seemingly normal (a Rip Van Winkle kind of normal) plants.
Aulacomnium turgidum
La Farge may have some competition in getting a Frozen Frankenstein Flora movie based on her discovery. There’s news from Antarctica of the discovery of mossfrozen 1500 years ago that was also growing again. Peter Convey, an ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey, wasn’t quite as surprised because he believes ice protects plant cells from the stresses of surface life – freeze-thaw cycles and radiation are two big ones. As the ice permanently melts, the first plants exposed have the best chance to arise and take over before anything else thaws, which “really accelerates the recolonization process” and allows the ground frozen and buried for centuries to quickly become green once again.
If these ‘new’ ancient plants need help growing, they can open a can of worms from Siberia, where University of Tennessee microbiologist Tatiana Vishnivetskaya has been drilling deep into the Siberian permafrost and recently discovered frozen 40,000-year-old segmented worms (nematodes) that began wiggling once again when thawed.
“Of course we were surprised and very excited.”
Soybean cyst nematode and egg
That probably applies to the worms too, especially if they know they might be moving to slightly warmer dirt where they can eat, poop and fertilize centuries-old plants. It might also be good news for life on other planets, and even life forms on spaceships or asteroids traveling around the galaxy looking for a place to land/crash, thaw and live long and prosper.
Not a great movie plot but definitely a glimmer of hope of the continuation of life on Earth and possibility of life on other planets.
Most people who have lived in Southern California their entire lives would be quick to tell you that earthquakes there are nothing out of the ordinary.
However, with the arrival of the Fourth of July holiday, residents north of Los Angeles had more than just fireworks to shake things up, as a swarm of earthquakes rattled desert communities throughout the region well into the following week.
NBC Los Angeles reported that as of Monday morning, “nearly 3,000 aftershocks [were] recorded in the area since Friday’s magnitude-7.1 main shock and magnitude-6.4 Independence Day quake, the strongest earthquakes to hit Southern California in the last 20 years.” The earthquakes were centered just outside the town of Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert, approximately 150 miles northbound from Los Angeles.
Although earthquakes aren’t uncommon in the region, that isn’t to say that last week’s wave of holiday tremblors was anything typical, either.
USGS map depicting mainshock and aftershock locations shortly after the M7.1 event, which displays a distinctive “T” pattern, created by the two perpendicular fault zones.
(USGS/Public domain).
Geologists note that there is only around a 5% likelihood that a significant earthquake will be followed by an even larger one; however, this was only one way that initial pair of earthquakes that struck the region seemingly defied the odds. Live Science reported that the Independence Day earthquake occurred on an unmapped fault region along the Little Lake fault zone near Ridgecrest, and involved right angle ruptures, which may be more easily detected today than they were only years ago.
“This is very interesting geologically,” geoscientist Michele Cooke told Live Science. “We don’t have a lot of earthquakes in our record that show simultaneous slip on two perpendicular faults,” she said.
“Many of us are wondering if these complications are actually the norm and that our instruments 10+ years ago were not sensitive enough to pick up these complications,” Cooke also said, suggesting that these “rare” seismic events may not be so unusual after all.
However, geologists weren’t the only ones noticing odd things coinciding with the recent California earthquakes. According to the National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL), disturbances in HF propagation on the west coast appeared to coincide with the July 4 earthquake as well, resulting in a “massive short-wave radio blackout” over the holiday weekend, a phenomenon that was observed by a number of HAM radio operators in the region.
Alex Schwarz, an amateur radio operator out of British Columbia, Canada who operates the RF Seismograph, reported that there were correlations “between earthquake activity and HF band conditions, said the radio disruption began at around 1600 UTC on July 4, and continued into July 5.”
According to the ARRL, “[Schwarz] said that on July 4, the blackout was total except for 20 meters, where conditions were ‘severely attenuated’… The RF Seismograph also detected the magnitude 7.1 earthquake on July 6 in the same vicinity.”
Finally, NASA was also monitoring the quakes, with a little help from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and one of their satellites, which resulted in colorful imagery of the areas affected by the earthquakes:
Image depicting earthquake elevational displacement following the July 4th seismic events
(Credit: JPL/Caltech/NASA).
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the space agency’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team borrowed data collected by synthetic aperture radar, which was then colorized to reveal minor changes that were visible in the area of the earthquakes.
“Each colour… represents 12 centimetres (about 4.8 inches) of lifting or sinking in the landscape, with evidence of cracks in the lines cutting through the fringes of some colours,” Science Alert reported.
Despite the significant strength of last week’s earthquakes, few injuries were reported since the epicenter of the quakes had been located in a remote area. It is also possible that more earthquakes and aftershocks will continue over the next several weeks, although the unique data being collected in their aftermath may help reshape our understanding of similar seismic phenomena for decades to come.
Should everything go according to plan, more than a half-million strangers will gather in a remote Nevada town in mid-September, united by a common goal: to raid Area 51 in the wee hours of the morning — using a strength-in-numbers approach to reveal any extraterrestrial treasures stashed within the notoriously clandestine government base.
By Friday evening, more than 540,000 people from around the world had signed up to attend the joke Facebook event: “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” — and just as many had indicated they were “interested.” Planned for Sept. 20 in Amargosa Valley, an hour’s drive from Las Vegas, the event page is filled with thousands of satirical posts and memes theorizing the best way to break into the top-secret facility.
“We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry,” reads a brief description of the event, which was created by popular video game streamer SmyleeKun. “If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets.” The latter part of the description references anime ninja Naruto Uzumaki, whose signature head-forward, arms-behind-the-back running technique has led some to believe it makes them run faster. (It doesn’t.)
What we know — and don't know — about aliens and UFOs
The Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. explains why a 2017 admission from the government was like pouring kerosene on UFO conspiracy theories. (Video: Monica Akhtar/Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Most people discussing the raid, including various news outlets that have written about the event, recognize that it’s not intended to be taken seriously. But what about those who don’t? It’s not clear exactly how many people — if any — will actually show up to lead a blitzkrieg on the Nellis Air Force Base Complex, which houses the land containing Area 51.
Though some who’ve posted on the event page in recent days have considered that possibility.
“P.S. Hello U.S. government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan,” wrote user Jackson Barnes, following his rather descriptive proposed game plan. “I just thought it would be funny and get me some thumbsy uppies on the Internet. I’m not responsible if people decide to actually storm area 51.”
Speaking with The Washington Post on Friday, Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews said officials were aware of the event. When asked how authorities would respond to ardent explorers who might attempt to enter Area 51 in September, McAndrews said she could not elaborate on specific plans or security procedures at the base.
She did, however, issue a warning to those itching to try their luck.
“[Area 51] is an open training range for the U.S. Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces,” McAndrews said. “The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”
The facility has long been a source of public intrigue, yet for decades, Americans were told Area 51 didn’t exist at all. That notion was officially debunked in 2013 when the CIA confirmed its existence through documents obtained in a public records request by George Washington University.
Yes, Area 51 is definitely real — and even though the report indicated it was nothing more than an aircraft-testing facility, mentioning nothing about extraterrestrial life, the revelation gave credence to conspiracy theories alleging the government uses the base to hide aliens and their spacecraft. The CIA has since published information about test flights that took place there, and the alien aspects in many of those theories have been debunked.
However, in 2017, the Pentagon confirmed the existence of a $22 million government program to analyze “anomalous aerospace threats” — also known as UFOs — giving the alien-obsessed kooks fresh fodder for their conjectures.
Though the facility is not publicly accessible, the area around Area 51 is a popular tourist destination, sprinkled with alien-themed motels, museums and restaurants. (In 1996, Nevada renamed state Route 375 to “Extraterrestrial Highway.”) But those who venture too far into the land surrounding the base are greeted with warning signs indicating they could be fined or jailed for trespassing and taking photos.
Some signs suggest those who enter could be subject to “deadly force.”
In 2014, a tour bus carting four passengers near Area 51 inadvertently drove through the warning signs and entered the base, Las Vegas Nowreported. The truck was stopped by men in “military garb,” and everyone in the vehicle was threatened with a misdemeanor conviction and $650 fine. The incident was caught on video, making it obvious the tour’s passengers thought it was all part of the experience. Only the driver was charged.
Of course, those who say they will participate in the September raid know their mission won’t be easy. Some have offered their own plans and even schematics detailing how the group will take on the base.
But the chatter mostly inspired dozens of jokes and memes:
I’m a sucker for unidentified sonic phenomena. The latest weird noise to pop up in the news comes by way of the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where residents say a mysterious and unidentified noise has been causing painful side-effects and curious medical conditions for months. Oddly enough, some of the symptoms seem eerily similar to the unexplained medical complications reported by U.S. diplomats at several embassies reportedly plagued by sonic attacks over the last few years. Could the two related?
The story of the strange Brooklyn hum first appeared on Patch.com last week. According to reports, up to a half a dozen complaints have been filed with city officials concerning the pain-inducing noise but no action has been taken as nobody knows where the sound is coming from. Locals describe the sound as a “mysterious, headache-inducing tone” or a “high pitched noise” that can be heard both inside homes and on city streets.
Bedford–Stuyvesant
Some Bedford-Stuyvesant residents report that the noise has been causing them headaches, mental stress, or even “hangover-like symptoms.” Painful sinus pressure and “mental stress” have also been reported since the unidentified tone first appeared.
One Bed-Stuy local says the noise seems to be getting louder in recent weeks after first being noticed in May. “I couldn’t run away from it,” Drew Robbi told Patch.com. “I went inside it was still piercing. If it’s emanating from a house it would get higher, but that’s not been the experience. It’s even throughout the whole block.” Have a listen for yourself: Robbi posted a recording of the noise to Twitter. It’s an objectively miserable sound and one you certainly wouldn’t want to hear 24 hours a day.
Local police and utility officials have looked into the noise but have not been able to identify a cause. The best theory going is that a malfunctioning air conditioning unit could be to blame, but the New York City Department of Environmental Protection does not have the resources to hunt down every single A/C unit in the city. Instead, they recommend all residents turn their units off briefly to determine if they might be the ones responsible for the piercing noise. With temperatures climbing higher as summer drags on, it will prove difficult to convince Brooklyn residents to turn their A/C units off.
Rooftop air conditioning units
Another unexplained hum caused similar issues for Michigan residents back in March, and the strange saga of the sonic “attacks” at embassies has been well-documented. What could be behind these unexplained sonic phenomena? Are they merely an unfortunate byproduct of modern technology and infrastructure? Maybe we’re doomed to live in a noisy, headache-inducing world as more machinery comes to occupy human spaces alongside us.
Maybe though, just maybe, something stranger is lying under the surface of all of these seemingly unrelated stories. Unidentified visual phenomena tend to receive much more attention than unidentified sonic phenomena, but many disparate stories about strange noises over the last few years prove that high strangeness can come in many forms. What’s causing the strange tone in Brooklyn?
Artificiële intelligentie: het einde van menselijke controle of niet?
Artificiële intelligentie: het einde van menselijke controle of niet?
Onze apparaten, digitale assistenten en zelfs onze auto’s lijken soms te weten wat we willen, zonder dat we ernaar vragen. Toeval? Nee hoor, ze worden steeds slimmer door artificiële intelligentie. Het lijkt toekomstmuziek, maar in werkelijkheid zijn er al heel wat snufjes die gebruik maken van AI. Wat betekent dat voor ons dagelijks leven en moeten we er bang voor zijn? Flore van BEEGO houdt deze evolutie tegen het licht.
Wat is artificiële intelligentie?
In een vorig artikel hadden we het al over digitale assistenten zoals Siri, Alexa en Cortana die bijvoorbeeld je digitale agenda bijhouden, je favoriete muziek afspelen en je leven op allerhande manieren efficiënter maken. Een digitale assistent is een voorbeeld van artificiële intelligentie, maar het gaat nog veel verder dan dat.
AI (artificiële intelligentie) is een enorm uitgebreid wetenschappelijk domein waarin onderzocht wordt hoe computers, machines en apparaten zelfstandig problemen kunnen oplossen. Met behulp van ingewikkelde algoritmes verwerken de systemen gigantische hoeveelheden data om daaruit te leren en zo menselijke intelligentie te imiteren.
Artificiële intelligentie leert de menselijke intelligentie te imiteren.
Zo’n zelflerend algoritme kan patronen herkennen, en door te leren uit de eigen fouten, levert het achteraf een beter resultaat. Op dit moment zijn de meeste intelligente systemen nog maar gespecialiseerd in één taak, en ze zijn zich niet bewust van de taken die ze uitvoeren. Zo kunnen ze bijvoorbeeld wel een kat herkennen op een foto, maar ze beseffen zelf niet wat een kat precies is. Daarvoor moet AI nog verder ontwikkeld worden.
Waarschijnlijk maak jij ook al gebruik van AI in je dagelijkse leven, bijvoorbeeld met:
Waze, een navigatie-app die de reisgegevens van jou en andere gebruikers inzet om de snelste route te berekenen,
Online chatbots, soms word je op een website te woord gestaan door een chatbot die antwoorden kan formuleren op vaak gestelde vragen,
Facebook, de manier waarop en welke berichten je te zien krijgt in je nieuwsoverzicht, ja hoor, daar is ook AI mee gemoeid.
Bedreiging voor de mensheid?
AI evolueert aan een razendsnel tempo. Daarom waarschuwen sommige experts voor de risico’s die het met zich meebrengt.
Zo kan het voor een stuk de controle van de mens wegnemen als er steeds meer beslissingen automatisch genomen worden. Daarom vreest men dat we op langere termijn onze kennis en initiatiefzin kwijtraken.
Daarnaast zijn het vooral grote bedrijven en overheden die inzetten op AI. Wat als ze alle data die de systemen vergaren gaan misbruiken en inzetten als een politiek wapen? Of als een oorlogswapen? Legers over de hele wereld hebben de afgelopen jaren hun investeringen in autonome technologie aanzienlijk verhoogd. Daarmee zouden ze wel eens wapens kunnen ontwikkelen die zichzelf besturen en kille, onmenselijke beslissingen kunnen nemen.
Andere experts voorspellen dan weer dat artificiële intelligentie veel jobs zal overnemen en dat er hierdoor een chaos in de samenleving zal ontstaan.
Of verrijking voor mensheid?
Gezondheidszorg
De overgrote meerderheid van experts in het domein zien de toekomst positiever in en verwachten grootse dingen van AI, vooral in de gezondheidszorg. Zo kan AI de levenskwaliteit en overlevingskansenverhogen van patiënten in de gezondheids- en ouderenzorg.
AI kan nu al beter dan 'echte' artsen longontstekingen detecteren en autisme voorspellen.Intelligente software kan bijvoorbeeld net zo goed als artsen symptomen interpreteren en diagnoses stellen bij bepaalde aandoeningen. Volgens het Amerikaanse wetenschappelijke tijdschrift IEEE Spectrum is AI vandaag zelfs al beter dan ‘echte’ artsen in staat om longontstekingen te diagnosticeren en autisme te voorspellen op basis van hersenscans.
Daarnaast kan AI je helpen om langer, veiliger en comfortabel thuis te blijven wonen. Slimme toestellen kunnen iemand verwittigen in noodsituaties, je eraan herinneren je medicijnen te nemen of zelfs detecteren wanneer je gevallen bent of wanneer je hartslag onregelmatig is.
Ogen voor blinden en slechtzienden
Verschillende bedrijven ontwikkelen software die beelden omschrijft aan blinden en slechtzienden met spraaktechnologie. Zo maakt de app ‘Lookout’ van Google handig gebruik van artificiële intelligentie: het enige wat de gebruiker moet doen, is z’n smartphone richten naar iets dat ie wilt zien, en de app vertelt welke personen, tekst of objecten zich voor de camera bevinden. In de eerste fase heeft Google de app beperkt uitgebracht in de VS om hem te blijven verbeteren op basis van feedback de gebruikers. (Foto: Google Play)
Ook Facebook en Instagram werken aan een tool die de inhoud van beelden herkent, zodat ook blinden en slechtzienden sociale media kunnen gebruiken.
Eerlijkere rechtspraak?
Juridische processen kunnen zeer traag en inefficiënt verlopen. Artificiële intelligentie zou hier een oplossing voor kunnen bieden en ook vandaag wordt het al ingezet. Zo berekenen algoritmes hoe groot de kans is dat iemand een misdrijf nog eens zal plegen en helpen ze rechters te beslissen of ze een borgtocht weigeren of aanvaarden.
Er zijn onvolkomenheden aan deze aanpak, omdat de software gevoed wordt door criminele feiten uit het verleden en op die manier zelf verbanden leert leggen die misschien niet altijd kloppen voor de persoon over wie een oordeel geveld moet worden. Toch kan AI ook een meerwaarde betekenen voor het gerecht: algoritmes worden bijvoorbeeld niet beïnvloed door een slechte nachtrust, aankomende verkiezingen of een voetbalwedstrijd die ze willen bijwonen, rechters wel.
Robocop
Politierobots waren een paar jaar geleden misschien nog sciencefiction, maar we zullen ze in de toekomst steeds vaker tegenkomen. Politierobots kunnen repetitief of saai werk overnemen, maar ze kunnen ook ingezet worden op gevaarlijke of moeilijk bereikbare plekken. Zo vergroten ze de veiligheid van zowel de burgers als de ‘echte’ politieagenten en vullen ze het groeiende tekort aan politieagenten op.
Verschillende politiekorpsen ter wereld maken al gebruik van robotica, en sinds dit jaar is de eerste robotagente in dienst in een korps in India. De KP-Bot, een vrouwelijke onderofficier, zit aan de balie in het politiebureau en begeleidt bezoekers naar de juiste afdelingen. Ze kan verbaal met mensen communiceren, klachten opnemen en informatie tonen op haar scherm.
Veel onderzoek nodig
Er zijn nog een heleboel andere toepassingen van artificiële intelligentie, maar het is duidelijk: AI biedt ons de mogelijkheid om enerzijds het werk efficiënter aan te pakken in verschillende bedrijfstakken en anderzijds om ons leven op allerhande manieren makkelijker te maken. Om de risico’s en knelpunten aan te pakken, is er nog veel onderzoek en tijd nodig om artificiële intelligentie een waardesysteem aan te leren en zelfs een gevoel voor empathie.
Om deze complexe technologie te ontwikkelen, en de systemen te controleren, onderhouden en blijven verbeteren, blijven er natuurlijk mensen nodig. AI zal sommige jobs overbodig maken, andere aanvullen, maar het zal er ook heel veel creëren.
Wij zijn alvast benieuwd wat de toekomst brengt! En jij?
It is unclear how many intelligent civilizations have arisen in the Milky Way galaxy so far, but if some have, a pressing question comes to mind: were they or are they more intelligent than we are?
When reading the morning newspaper, it is difficult to avoid the thought that our own intelligence bar is not particularly high nor difficult to surpass. We fight among ourselves in “lose-lose” situations; we do not promote long-term solutions over short-term fixes; and we have been broadcasting our existence to the galaxy with radio waves for over a century without worrying whether about whether there are any predators or competitors in outer space. (If it’s the latter, they might have been ignoring us because we appear so incompetent.)
If other civilizations do exist, one key in becoming aware of them is whether we are intelligent enough to adequately interpret their signals or to identify a piece of their technology if it should appear in our solar system. One fact is clear: if we assign a zero prior probability for such evidence coming our way, as some scientists did in the case of ‘Oumuamua by invoking the principle “it’s never aliens,” we will indeed never find any. We will be like ostriches burying our heads in the sand.
In fact, this attitude may be one sign that our intelligence isn’t very impressive—that the human race as a whole suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which those with mediocre abilities insist that they’re unusually talented or smart.
How can our civilization mature? The same way kids do: by leaving home, going out into the neighborhood, meeting others and comparing notes with them. In other words, we can develop a balanced perspective on our current technological accomplishments by engaging in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Since our own technological development accelerates exponentially with an e-folding time of a few years, it is difficult to imagine what a much more advanced technology crafted by a civilization that had lived for a cosmic timescale—billions of such e-folding times—would look like.
As natural as this suggestion to search might seem, however it is evident that SETI faces a hostile mainstream culture in astronomy. The simple proposal to consider the possibility that ‘Oumumua is technological debrisas an explanation for its unusual properties, for example was met with controversy on social media.
True, SETI carries non-scientific baggage related to unrealistic aspects of the science fiction literature and unsubstantiated reports about unidentified flying objects (UFOs)—something SETI researchers sometimes refer to as the “giggle factor.” But at the same time, it would be a strategic mistake for observers to restrict the interpretation of data from their telescopes and not search for “other kids in our neighborhood” just because of this baggage. The existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has nothing to do with the credibility of science fiction stories of UFO reports. The problem with adopting this wrong attitude is that it delays scientific progress. Grant applicants are frequently asked to forecast the scientific discoveries they will make if their application is approved—but by bracketing the range of possibilities in advance, we might never discover the unexpected. Instead we cultivate a scientific culture that tends to replicate what we already know.
History teaches us that this is a mistake. The search for extrasolar planets encountered mainstream resistance in its early days. Observing proposals to search for low-hanging fruits, such as “hot Jupiters”—which are easiest to detect—were rejected by conservative committees of telescope-time allocation that argued that such planets should not exist in nature based on what we know about the solar system. But discovery forged ahead as some observers dared to challenge this prejudice, demonstrating that hot Jupiters are abundant. There was 40-year delay, however, given that the first theoretical proposal to do such a search was made by Otto Struve as early as in 1952.
Hence, an obvious obstacle to identifying our neighbors is the tendency to limit our imagination to what we already know. But this should not necessarily remain the case in the future. What we imagine for extraterrestrial life should not be solely defined by the natural chemical and geological processes that took place spontaneously on Earth. We could, for example produce synthetic life in the laboratory under a broader range of conditions than those with which we are familiar. Metaphorically, we could bake new kinds of cakes using the same ingredients, expanding the book of recipes handed to us by Mother Earth.
Realizing that life can exist under new conditions will improve our forecasts for where to search for it in space and how to interpret our findings, in just the same way that the laws of physics—which were first revealed in laboratory experiments—allowed astrophysicists to study the universe billions of light years away.
An important survival skill in the company of unknown neighbors is to listen before speaking out. Given our sloppy behavior in transmitting signals to outer space without restraint, we can only hope that we have not become the laughingstock of our galactic neighborhood by now. But even if we have, we can still get our act together and do better in the future. In order to know how to behave, we should find out first who is on our street by searching with our best telescopes for unusual electromagnetic flashes, industrial pollution of planetary atmospheres, artificial light or heat, artificial space debris or something completely unexpected.
Fortunately, we possess instruments that are sensitive enough to find out not only whether we have neighbors but also whether they have noticed us already.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Brian Sharpless woke up in the middle of the night with the haunting feeling that he wasn’t alone. Slowly, his bedroom door creaked open, like a hand was lightly touching it. Moonlight from the hallway window streamed through the open door. He wondered if he was getting robbed. Then Sharpless discovered something even more alarming: He couldn’t move. He lay paralyzed as he watched a dark form with a long, serpentine neck creep through the doorway. “I saw a shadowy face that looked like a ninja mask with red eyes,” Sharpless told me. It stared at him, moving closer and closer, and Sharpless felt … relieved.
Sharpless is a researcher who studies sleep disorders, and as he watched this demonic creature slip into his bedroom, he realized he wasn’t in danger. He was, for the first time, experiencing sleep paralysis himself.
Normally while you’re dreaming, your body is paralyzed so that you don’t act out your dreams. But in sleep paralysis, you wake up while your body is still frozen. And even though you are fully conscious, looking around your real room, part of your brain is still dreaming. People often hallucinate creepy things — shadowy forms, monsters, and aliens — in their bedrooms.
I talked to Sharpless, associate professor at the American School of Professional Psychology and author of Unusual and Rare Psychological Disorders, and Michael Breus, fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and founder of The Sleep Doctor website, to learn more about this mysterious disorder and what you should do if you find yourself in the middle of it.
How common is sleep paralysis?
As weird as waking up to hallucinations sounds, the experts I talked to say it’s more common than you might think. An estimated 8 percent of the worldwide population has experienced it, according to Sharpless, and that’s a conservative estimate. The number jumps to 28 percent for college students and 32 percent for psychiatric patients.
“I think really anybody could have it if the circumstances are right,” Sharpless said. Just being sleep deprived can make someone experience it. In fact, researchers induce sleep paralysis in labs all the time. They wait until a person has fallen asleep and gone into REM, then touch them lightly. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
Even though many haven’t heard of the term “sleep paralysis,” people knew about the disorder long before there were sleep labs or even modern countries. Ancient Greeks called it “Pan ephialtes,” explained Sharpless, which means something like “when the god Pan leaps on your chest.” In fact, the word “nightmare” used to mean to what we now call sleep paralysis. In Middle English, nightmare referred to a “female spirit or monster” that would “settle on and produce a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (“Mare” used to mean “evil female monster.”) After all, people dealing with sleep paralysis often feel as if a monster — be it a Greek god, a female spirit, or an alien — is sitting on their chests. “Nightmare” only started meaning “bad dream” in the 20th century.
What causes sleep paralysis?
Sleep is, to drastically understate matters, really complicated. For one thing, the different states of sleep — light dreaming, deep dreaming, etc. — aren’t actually so separate. A lot can go on in the transition between being awake and being asleep.
“The more complicated you make a computer or the more complicated you make a car, the more things can go wrong,” Sharpless explained. In sleep paralysis, you wake up before your brain stem, which stops your muscles from moving while you’re asleep, realizes it’s awake. As a result, it continues sending neurotransmitters that tell your muscles to freeze. Scientists still don’t know why this happens.
How do these hallucinations work?
“The hallucinations seem to happen in stages,” explained Sharpless. First, you wake up with the sense that you’re not alone. “It’s kind of like when you’re walking down a lonely street at night,” Sharpless continued. “You wake up, your eyes open, and you feel this uneasy feeling.”
As your brain tries to make sense of what’s going on, it creates something to explain why you feel so uneasy. It might whip up a menacing figure to watch you, often one that fits into your worldview.
“If you’re in 21st century America, you might see an extraterrestrial,” Sharpless said. “If you were in 15th century France, you might see a witch or a demon.”
It doesn’t stop at seeing imaginary things. You can feel them too. Sharpless says that, just as the brain can create imaginary sights and sounds, it can create imaginary physical sensations, too. People say that the monster in their room sits on them, and they can sense the pressure on their chest. Sharpless notes that the anxiety from seeing monsters may create or add to this feeling, since anxiety can cause chest pain. Sometimes, people experiencing sleep paralysis can’t breathe for a few seconds. In really scary cases, people feel like something is attacking or sexually assaulting them.
Are some people more likely to have sleep paralysis than others?
Sharpless says that anyone who easily dissociates — that is, goes into a kind of trance where they lose awareness of the world around them — may be more likely to have sleep paralysis. That might conjure images of prophets or fortunetellers, but dissociation is usually pretty mundane. If you drive along a highway and you zone out, then come to after a couple miles, you’re dissociating. People who do so more often might be more likely to develop sleep paralysis.
How do you stop sleep paralysis when it happens to you?
Nobody actually knows how to stop sleep paralysis, but there are ways to make it less scary. Simply knowing what’s going on can help. During Sharpless’s own sleep-paralysis episode, just knowing he was hallucinating made “the demonic thing with the giraffe neck” seem silly rather than scary, he explained.
“Either look at it dismissively, ignore it, or find humor in it,” he suggested. “You might say to yourself, ‘“Am I really seeing a demon in the bedroom now? Really?’” You can also try and focus on a body part or reassure yourself that what you’re seeing isn’t real. If your brain is creating an imaginary monster, making your brain pay attention to something else can cause the imaginary thing to cease to exist, or at least not be so scary. Sharpless says some of his patients have tried these methods and reported that they help, as they takes focus off of the monsters.
Is sleep paralysis harmful to your health? Can you die from it?
“Other than that it scares the crap out of you, it’s not dangerous,” Breus told me. Still, your reaction to sleep paralysis could cause problems. Some people who get recurring sleep paralysis take stimulants at night or try other methods to stay awake, which can be pretty unhealthy. In one 19th-century case, a man paid his manservant to watch him all night in order to wake him up if he got sleep paralysis. (Spoiler: This did not help him sleep.)
And then of course, if you don’t know what’s going on, you could believe all sorts of creepy things when you’re awake. You might think you’re being regularly attacked by demons or kidnapped by aliens. “I’ve had people say to me, ‘the Devil possessed me,’” Breus said.
These sorts of beliefs can really strain your relationships with friends and family. “Some people think they’re going crazy,” said Sharpless. It’s especially tough on people who already have psychosis; they have an even more difficult time distinguishing between reality and hallucination.
How do you treat sleep paralysis?
If you only get sleep paralysis occasionally, you don’t need to treat it. But some people get it every day, or even a few times a night. They may choose to go on antidepressants to help them sleep better. Working on underlying issues like anxiety can help too.
How do you prevent sleep paralysis?
There are some simple things you can do. Sleeping on your side makes sleep paralysis less likely. Avoiding alcohol improves matters since alcohol interferes with sleep. Most importantly, getting regular, quality sleep is the best way to avoid sleep paralysis. Sharpless, for instance, got his moment of sleep paralysis when he was jetlagged from giving a presentation in England on, coincidentally, sleep paralysis.
“Now I’m wondering if I’m going to get sleep paralysis or something,” I told Sharpless after we’d been talking about the disorder long enough to make me nervous.
“You just might,” he said playfully. “They used to talk about it being contagious in ancient Rome, but we don’t have any good data on that.”
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.
