Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
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 In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-04-2020
Building blocks of life found in famous Mars meteorite
Building blocks of life found in famous Mars meteorite
And the organics contain nitrogen, another ingredient necessary for life as we know it.
A rock fragment of Martian meteorite ALH84001 (left). An enlarged area (right) shows the orange-colored carbonate grains on the host orthopyroxene rock.
Ancient Mars is looking better and better as an abode for life.
The famed Mars meteorite Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) contains 4-billion-year-old native organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it, a new study suggests.
And that's not all. The organics contain nitrogen, another ingredient that Earth life depends on, and were found within carbonate minerals, which usually form in groundwater. So the discovery adds to an emerging picture of a wet and potentially habitable Mars in the distant past, study team members said.
This picture has been fleshed out by a range of observations over the years, including recent work by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. Curiosity has spotted ancient native organics as well, and the car-size robot found evidence of a long-ago, but long-lived, lake-and-stream system at its study site, the Red Planet's 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater. (Mars is very different today, of course; the planet transitioned to a cold and dry world about 3.5 billion years ago, after it lost most of its atmosphere to space.)
Scientists think ALH84001 was blasted off Mars by a powerful impact 16 million years ago and came down to Earth much later, about 13,000 years ago.
The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica in 1984, has been in the spotlight before. In 1996, a research team led by David McKay of NASA's Johnson Space Center claimed to have found compelling evidence of ancient microbial Mars life in ALH84001. The scientists cited four main lines of evidence, one of which involved carbonate globules and organic molecules.
The scientific community has generally deemed this collection of evidence to be unconvincing, stressing that abiotic factors could explain the observations. But the study authors stand by their original conclusions, and debate over ALH84001 continues to this day.
In the new study, researchers led by Mizuho Koike, of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, looked at the Mars rock in a new way. The team used novel and highly precise analytical techniques, including a type of X-ray spectroscopy, to detect nitrogen in ALH84001 and trace it to the carbonate minerals.
This was a first; nobody had found nitrogen-containing organics in the rock before, team members said. The researchers think the organics were trapped in the carbonate about 4 billion years ago; they said their techniques minimized the chance of terrestrial contamination, which is always a concern with Mars meteorites.
To be clear: The organics are not evidence of Mars life; such compounds can be produced abiotically as well as biotically. And there are other important questions about the ALH84001 organics as well, such as where they formed.
"There are two main possibilities: either they came from outside Mars, or they formed on Mars," study co-author Atsuko Kobayashi, of the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said in a statement.
"Early in the solar system's history, Mars was likely showered with significant amounts of organic matter, for example from carbon-rich meteorites, comets and dust particles," Kobayashi added. "Some of them may have dissolved in the [Martian] brine and been trapped inside the carbonates."
Scientists have a chance to make some real progress on the Mars-life question soon. NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, which is scheduled to launch in July, will hunt for signs of ancient Red Planet organisms and collect samples for future return to Earth. Once this pristine Mars material lands here — which could happen as soon as 2031 — researchers around the world will be able to scrutinize it in great detail.
This animation demonstrates the salty ponds and streams that scientists think may have been left behind as Gale Crater dried out over time. The bottom of the image is the floor of Gale Crater, with the peak being the side of Mount Sharp.
Credit:ASU Knowledge Enterprise Development (KED), Michael Northrop > Download larger gif
Getty Images/Science Photo LibraEen grafische voorstelling van de Spinosaurus.
Maak kennis met de Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, de eerste dinosaurus waarvan wetenschappers hebben bewezen dat hij in het water leefde. Dat blijkt uit een nieuwe studie in Nature. “De nieuwe ontdekking verandert onze huidige kennis over de diversiteit van dinosauriërs in het algemeen en over de Spinosaurus in het bijzonder”, schrijft National Geographic daarover. Een ‘riviermonster’ noemen ze dit uitgestorven, gigantische roofdier van 15 meter lang, met een krokodillenkop.
De conclusie van het nieuwe onderzoek is dat de Spinosaurus zich tijdens het jagen in het systeem van rivieren dat zijn leefgebied destijds kenmerkte, bediende van een ’staartaangedreven voortbeweging door het water’. Dat dit kon worden aangetoond, is een wetenschappelijke primeur, meldt National Geographic.
Voor het bredere publiek dook de Spinosaurus aegyptiacus voor het eerst op in 2001 in de film ‘Jurassic Park III’. Maar de échte versie van deze dino leefde waarschijnlijk in Noord-Afrika tijdens het Krijt, zo’n 112 tot 93,5 miljoen jaar geleden.
In 2014 leidde paleontoloog en National Geographic-avonturier, dr. Nizar Ibrahim van de universiteit van Detroit Mercy, een team van wetenschappers in de Kem Kem-regio van de Marokkaanse Sahara om er fossiele overblijfselen van de Spinosaurus te onderzoeken. Ze ontdekten dat een volwassen Spinosaurus tot 15 meter kon worden, langer dan de Tyrannosaurus rex. Nog belangrijker: Ibrahim en kornuiten vermoedden ook dat de Spinosaurus een roofdier was dat van water hield.
via REUTERSDe plaats van opgraving in het Kem Kem-gebied in de Marokkaanse Saharawoestijn.
Maar bewijzen konden ze dat niet, ook niet nadat het skelet van de reusachtige dino was gereconstrueerd. In de vijf daarop volgende jaren verzamelde het wetenschappelijke team nog meer fossielen van het skelet, waaronder “een opmerkelijk complete, vinachtige staart, in staat tot uitgebreide zijwaartse bewegingen en gekenmerkt door extreem lange stekels”.
In 2018 keerden de onderzoekers terug naar de plaats van opgraving in Marokko. Hun bevindingen werden gisteren eindelijk wereldkundig gemaakt. De bizarre Spinosaurus gaat de geschiedenis in als de eerste bekende zwemmende dinosauriër. Daar wijst de “gigantische knokige peddel” op, zoals National Geographic de staart omschrijft. “Deze staart is de meest extreme aanpassing aan het water die we ooit bij een grote dinosaurus zagen.”
Throughout science fiction books, comics, and movies we have been treated to a never ending menagerie of alien beings taking a vast number of forms. In the old days budget constraints for TV and films meant that usually aliens looked at least a little, well, human. In more modern times computer effects have made things a little more bizarre, but still mostly aliens are portrayed as at least something we can understand or relate to at least on a basic level. It is all indicative of our intense curiosity as to what alien life, and in this case intelligent spacefaring life, would actually look like. If a spaceship came down tomorrow and opened up a door, what would step out? Would it be something like us, or something beyond anything we have ever imagined? It is a question we have no way to answer, but there has been quite a lot of speculation on the appearance of aliens, and here we will take a look.
So, if we were to meet aliens what could we realistically expect them to physically look like? What form would they take and how would they interact with the world around them? The answers to this seem to be as varied as the people who ponder the question, and there are several ways that the discussion can head. On one side we have the idea that since they have evolved from a different lifeform and on a completely different alien world, they would look nothing like us, and could be beyond what we can even imagine. There have been all manner of ideas on this, ranging from that they might not be even carbon based to that they don’t have DNA, live in an invisible wavelength we can’t see, or that we might not even recognize them as life within our own definition of the term at all. One science fiction author by the name of Aaron Rosenberg explains of this idea:
Living beings evolve in response to their environment. We grew opposable thumbs so we could better grasp objects. Monkeys developed prehensile tails for the same reason. We have eyes because light breaks down into the visible end of the electromagnetic spectrum here. But if we had occurred on a completely different world, with different temperatures and topography and flora and fauna, we would have evolved differently. And if that other world had a completely different chemical composition, so would we. All life on Earth is carbon-based, but that wouldn’t be the case elsewhere. Life forms could be silicon-based or iron-based or anything else at all. They could have any number of arms and legs—or none at all.
Perhaps life on other planets evolved without physical form or with no fixed form—perhaps there are aliens who are nothing more than sentient clouds, or who have mutable bodies that can alter to suit the needs of the moment. Maybe they can sail through space unaided, and use stellar radiation for a food source and a sensory array, detecting changes in the radiation the same way bats detect sound waves. Who needs eyes and ears when your entire being resonates? Who needs a distinct brain when your consciousness is spread throughout just like our nerve endings are with us? Why have skin when your form is held together by electrostatic shock and mental control, and can condense or expand at will?
There are plenty of creatures here on Earth that are so astoundingly different from us that we can barely comprehend them. Try watching an octopus pull itself through a tiny crack in a glass tank sometime, or examine a tobacco hornworm, or look at a praying mantis up close. Then think about how small our planet is compared with the universe as a whole—it’s like finding the weirdest shaped M&M in the bag, and then realizing that you’re in an entire candy store filled with literally thousands of other kinds of candy, most of which you’ve never even heard of before. A real alien would be so far from anything we’ve ever imagined that we would barely be able to comprehend its existence. And we would seem just as completely, bafflingly bizarre to it.
The thrust of the idea here is that aliens would be, well, completely alien to us, perhaps even incomprehensibly so, and that all bets are off when trying to expect how they would appear to us. One only needs to look at some of the incredibly different and even seemingly alien forms of life on our own planet to know that something from another world could be vastly different from us. However, we are talking about intelligent life here that has created a civilization and reached out across the stars to meet us, and so the opposite side of this argument is that, although they would certainly be quite different from us, there are certain constants that we could expect that would match up with us as well, and we can perhaps make an educated guess as to what they might be like.
There have been many suggestions for certain criteria that any intelligent, space-faring race would likely conform to, boxes to tick, so to speak. For one, although they would be coming from far, far away, they would nevertheless follow the same laws of physics and chemistry as us, as that is a constant across the universe, at least this one. Prof Peter Ward, a paleontologist at the University of Washington, explains of this, “On any planet in the Universe the laws of physics and chemistry will still be the same as here. There’s only a limited number of ways to beat physics.” One of the other very basic things we could expect from an alien being is that it would likely be bilaterally symmetrical, that is with one half mirroring the other to at least some extent. Every form of life on Earth is this way, and even inanimate objects such as crystals, and even whole galaxies, so following this seemingly universal constant they would probably be at least symmetrical to a degree.
Because of the universal physics involved, there would also probably be some broad rules of ecology in place that they would have to have overcome in specific ways. For instance, they would need a way of gaining energy, of hunting and eating, as well as sensory organs to perceive the world around them, and they would have to obey the rules of gravity, ambient density, and having a source of energy. They would need some way to reproduce and propagate their species and they would have to out compete other species in the same environment to last long. In other words, no matter where the aliens are from, they would basically have to overcome the same basic physical and evolutionary constraints as us. There are only so many ways to move around or get food, look at how similar some swimming or flying species are on Earth, no matter how genetically different, think bats and birds or sharks and dolphins. Some ways just work better, and evolution would have weeded out the inefficient ones in the face of competition from other species. In many opinions, these hypothetical aliens also would have probably evolved from predators, meaning they would probably have stereoscopic vision, which allows the judgement of distance, meaning more than one eye on the front of the head, and they would likely be mobile rather than a sedentary plant-like species. They would have also likely would have had to become the dominant lifeform on their world, so probably not microscopic or unduly frail. The renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has said of this:
In all likelihood, intelligent aliens in space will have descended from predators that hunted for their food. This does not necessarily mean that they will be aggressive, but it does mean that their ancestors long ago might have been predators. We may be well served to be cautious.
Another constant they would probably exhibit is that they would have something that passes for a brain, and that it would be encased in some sort of protective shell, be that a skull, exoskeleton, or whatever, and this brain would also probably be held high off the ground. The aliens would need some way to breathe, and some form of locomotion that would have to have at least been fast enough to have allowed them to hunt and survive on their own planet to become an evolved species. These would probably come in the form of some sort of legs if the alien is land-based, and there would be some sort of covering over the body that we could recognize as “skin” of a sort. Harry E. Keller, a chemistry professor at Northeastern University has spoken of these two points with Popular Mechanics, saying:
Legs? Most certainly. Other means of locomotion will be relatively slow and be relegated to armored animals and of those living in holes. Neither of these lifestyles will lead naturally to greater intelligence. How many legs? In our case, we adapted the forelegs for manipulation from animals with four legs. No land animals with endoskeletons have more legs. The implication is that aliens with two legs are more likely than those with four.
Fur? Hair? Feathers? Scales? Something else truly alien? The skin covering could be anything that makes sense. Real feathers are not so likely. Because feathers are used for flight, brains will be small. Scales are unlikely because they are particularly well-adapted for ectotherms, although a scaly sort of skin might be possible. Fur versus hair is hard to sort out because of my inherent bias. Fur has good reasons for being that are not related to intelligence. If furry, our aliens probably have short fur.
In order to make tools and manipulate their technology, they would have to have evolved some sort of appendages with fine movement control. This doesn’t necessarily have to be fingers and a thumb like we have, but some grasping appendages of some sort, something akin to what we would recognize as their version of digits. These appendages would also likely be freed up for use, meaning they might be recognizably bipedal. They would also need some sort of analog of sensory organs to perceive their surroundings, such as eyes, nose, and ears, as well as some way to procure energy, in short, a mouth, probably near the eyes where they can see what they are trying to eat. As for these eyes, there would probably be at least two eyes facing forward, for that stereoscopic vision we talked about earlier, and there aren’t a whole lot of other viable ways to achieve that. The eyes would likely be recessed, and there would likely be some way to cover and protect them. These eyes would also probably be close to the brain, so as to minimize the time of signal transmission. They would be attuned to the spectrum of their own sun, and may look very different from our own eyes, but they would likely be at least recognizable as such. In addition to all of this, they would need a way to produce sounds or signals for some form of communication and crucially, language, as any spacefaring society would need a way to convey complex information to each other, although that potentially holds therein its own problems. Some other theories of what intelligent civilizations of aliens would need even go so far as to say that they would likely not have evolved underwater because they would need to have developed a mastery of fireto progress to that stage.
To sum it all up, when faced with the same physics, physical requirements for survival, evolutionary constraints, and criteria for developing tools and technology, in this idea, with any aliens who flew starcraft to Earth we could probably expect to see land based, symmetrical beings with recognizable sensory organs, limbs, and other features with some analog to what we know of, and so would not be as completely, absurdly outlandish as others would have us believe. They would most certainly not look like humans, and of course depending on the gravity and specifics of their atmosphere and world at large they would look very different in various ways, but the point here is that they perhaps they would not be so mind-bogglingly, impossibly and vastly different from life as we know it and understand it to be. However, this is all assuming they are even from this dimension at all, because if they were from a completely different universe, possibly even with different laws of physics, then we can probably throw all of this out the window.
Of course, this is all assuming that the aliens are even organic lifeforms at all. There has in recent years been increasing speculation that space-going aliens that make it to Earth might not be biological organisms at all, but rather very advanced robots. These machines might have been sent here by their creators or might even be a self-replicating race of robots that usurped their biological makers, with their originators perhaps even distant, long gone prehistoric faded memories for them. It makes sense, as it would be the next step up in evolution from the confines of biology, and robots would be perfect for the rigors of space and the vast distances involved with travelling to other worlds. However, if they were robotic, then all bets would probably be off as far as appearances go, and they might display design choices that truly are beyond comprehension, although they would still have to follow our same laws of physics. Professor Susan Schneider from the University of Connecticut and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton thinks that such robotic alien civilizations could feasibly be billions of years old, and has said:
I do not believe that most advanced alien civilizations will be biological. The most sophisticated civilizations will be post-biological, forms of artificial intelligence or alien superintelligence. Other civilizations may be vastly older than us – earthlings are galactic babies. All lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that the maximum age of extraterrestrial intelligence would be billions of years, specifically ranges from 1.7 billion to 8 billion years.
In the end, it is hard to really get a handle on how intelligent spacefaring aliens would look, as we really only have one example to compare them to- us. All of our ideas on extraterrestrial life and how to find it revolves around our basic presumption that they would meet the criteria for life as we know it, but there is of course the possibility that this is not true at all. Indeed, there is a vocal contingent that thinks the reason we have not found alien life out in the universe despite all of our efforts is that we are looking in the wrong places and in the wrong way. Maybe our own definition of life is the rarity rather than the norm, and perhaps we have to change our perceptions. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, we are left to speculate. What will intelligent alien life from another planet look like if we ever make that first contact? Would they look in some way like us and life as we know it, or would it be incomprehensibly and unfathomably alien? Would we even be able to recognize it as life at all? We can guess, extrapolate, speculate, and debate it all we want, but the only way it seems we are ever going to get the real answer is when that ship lands and they step, slither, or float out into the light.
The first ever evidence of a dinosaur which swam, lived and hunted underwater has been discovered in the now-barren wilderness of the Saharan desert.
But 100 million years ago this region would have been a lush oasis interspersed with rivers and waterways teeming with life.
And lurking beneath the surface, sitting atop the entire food chain, was a fearsome aquatic dinosaur.
The river monster — called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus — powered through the water with a fin-like tail and captured slippery prey with six-inch long conical teeth.
A fossilised tail of a juvenile of the species, which belongs to the therepod group, the same as the T-rex, was found in modern-day Morocco.
Adults are known to reach up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes but this specimen had yet to reach its full size, measuring 35ft from snout to tail and weighing around four tonnes.
Fully-grown individuals had no natural predators, but researchers say juveniles may have been at risk from giant fish and enormous prehistoric crocodiles.
The researchers who led the project and discovered the fossil deemed this hostile marine world 'the river of death'.
A 3D rendering of Spinosaurus hunting a group of sawfish. Spinosaurus powered through the water with a fin-like tail and captured slippery prey with six-inch long conical teeth
Pictured, an artist's impression of two Spinosaurus hunting sawfish from National Geographic. Adults are known to reach up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes but this specimen had yet to reach its full size, measuring 35ft from snout to tail and weighing around four tonnes
Pictured, part of the tail discovered in modern-day Morocco. The newly discovered tail of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus shows it was well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle
How the fearsome Spinosaurus hunted underwater
Spinosaurus could grow up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes.
The beasts were so large and fearsome that the adults of the species had no natural predators.
It had several adaptations that allowed it to survive and hunt underwater.
Its nostrils were far back on its head, allowing it to breath with only a small portion of its head poking above the water level.
Its bones were extremely dense, similar to penguins, which allowed it to carefully control its position in the water, striking a careful balance between buoyancy and submersion.
Large, flat feet that were most probably webbed allowed it to lumber across the soft land around the river banks, while locomotion in water was similar to crocodiles.
Its flat tail moved laterally and propelled the dinosaur forward.
It was a therepod, the same group of dinosaurs that includes dinosaurs.
It is the only dinosaur that is known to have swum and had huge jaws packed with six inch long razor sharp teeth.
The teeth were conical and not blade-like, which were well adapted to hold on to the slippery prey it hunted.
Its snout is more similar to that of crocodiles than to other predatory dinosaurs. This housed sensory structures able to capture the waves produced by swimming prey.
This organ functioned like a sonar - allowing the animal to hunt even in murky waters.
Around the time of Spinosaurus, several other reptile groups had mastered the water, including ichthyosaurs, but no dinosaurs.
The newly discovered tail of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus shows it was well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
Two foot long struts on the main vertebrae broaden the tail into a paddle-like shape.
Dr David Unwin, Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester, who was involved in the research, said: 'The Spinosaurus' fin-like tail is a game changing discovery for us that fundamentally alters our understanding of how this dinosaur lived and hunted – it was actually a "river-monster".
'As well as its tail, many other features of this dinosaur, such as the high position of the nostrils, heavy bones, short legs, and paddle-like feet point to a life spent in the water rather than on land.
'Not only did dinosaurs dominate the land and take to the air as birds, they even went back into the water and became the top predators there as well.'
The study, published today in the journal Nature, comes to the conclusion that this animal was a truly water-dwelling, tail-propelled dinosaur which likely spent most of its life underwater.
National Geographic explorer and University of Detroit Mercy paleontologist Dr Nizar Ibrahim led the research.
His team included Dr Unwin and Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth.
Academics began excavating a skeleton of Spinosaurus in southern Morocco in 2015 and made the historic discovery of its almost-complete and well preserved tail in 2018.
Tails of other therapods, which existed on solid land, had a a stiff tapering tail.
But analysis of the vertebrae found in Morocco revealed long spines that supported a large, highly flexible, fin-like tail comparable in shape to that of a crested newt.
Reconstruction of Spinosaurus in life: long narrow jaws with conical teeth, and a unique tail for aquatic locomotion
Top: reconstruction of the tail skeleton of Spinosaurus (missing bones shown in white). Center: cross sections through the tail showing changes in the vertebrae, tail volume, and arrangement of major muscles. Bottom: the new - and surprising - look of Spinosaurus (black, soft parts/body outline; red, bones collected in 2008 by a local fossil collector; green, bones from recent scientific excavations; yellow, bone fragments collected in the debris around the main excavation area)
The site in the Sahara where the fossil was found is a hotbed for fossil hunters, with other finds including sawfish, crocodiles, flying reptiles and land-dwelling dinosaurs.
Professor Martill said: 'This fossil site has been incredible. This is the first Spinosaurus skeleton to be found for over a hundred years. It is also one of the few associated dinosaurs skeletons ever to be found in the Kem Kem rocks.
'Scientists have always puzzled about Spinosaurus, because applying new scientific techniques on this animal have, until now, not been possible because the original material was destroyed in World War Two. Now we have a new baby to play with.
'Every time we look at this dinosaur we discover something fascinating about it. Discovering its tail was such an amazing gift. We had no idea that its tail was going to be so different from other dinosaur tails.
'One thing that still puzzles me though, is why only Spinosaurus became aquatic among the dinosaurs. Why are there no aquatic iguanodons, or stegosaurs.'
While it remains a mystery why only one dinosaurs conquered the water, the discovery does put to bed a long-standing belief that dinosaurs never swam.
Dr Ibrahim said: 'This discovery is the nail in the coffin for the idea that non-avian dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic realm.
'This dinosaur was actively pursuing prey in the water column, not just standing in shallow waters waiting for fish to swim by. It probably spent most of its life in the water.'
The September 2018 team that unearthed the tail of the only associated Spinosaurus skeleton in existence. Left to right, and top to bottom: Simone Maganuco, Ayoub Amane, M'Barek Fouadassi, Nizar Ibrahim, Samir Zouhri, Cristiano Dal Sasso, Gabriele Bindellini, Marco Auditore, Matteo Fabbri, Diego Mattarelli, Hamid Azroal, Mhamed Azroal
A view of the Kem Kem region, Sahara Desert (south-eastern Morocco), from the excavation site of Spinosaurus
The site in the Sahara where the fossil was found (pictured) is a hotbed for fossil hunters, with other finds including sawfish, crocodiles, flying reptiles and land-living dinosaurs
Experts discovered the remains of a 100-million-year-old “river monster” that proves dinosaurs once lived underwater. In fact, it’s the first time that they have found conclusive evidence that proves some dinosaurs lived, swam, and hunted beneath the water.
The remains were found in the now-barren wilderness of the Saharan desert but it was not always this way as 100 million years ago it contained waterways and rivers. Researchers began excavating the area in southern Morocco back in 2015 and by 2018 they had uncovered a nearly-complete well-preserved skeleton of the dinosaur’s tail. The species belongs to the theropod group which the Tyrannosaurus rex is a part of.
Skeleton of a Spinosaurus.
The dinosaur, which has been named Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, had razor-sharp six-inch long cone-shaped teeth that it used to capture and hold onto its prey. The nostrils were located on the back portion of the head and its snout was quite similar to a crocodile’s. It had very dense bones as well as large flat feet that were more than likely webbed.
Even though it was only a juvenile when it died, it still measured 35 feet long and weighed approximately 4 tonnes. Fully grown adults could have measured as long as 50 feet and weighed up to 20 tonnes. While the adults had no known predators, the juveniles could have been attacked by giant prehistoric crocodiles and fish. In fact, the location in which the skeleton was found has been nicknamed the “river of death” by the researchers. Numerous groups of reptiles inhabited the waters (such as the ichthyosaurs), but this is the first ever evidence of a dinosaur living underwater.
And based on the evidence the researchers found, the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus thrived in the ancient Saharan waters. As for its unique tail, the species had two-foot long struts located on the main vertebrae which made its tail into the shape of a paddle that moved from side to side. This is quite interesting as other therapods that lived on land had a stiff tail that tapered off at the end.
Dr. David Unwin, who is a Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester and was also involved with the research (their study can be read here), explained this further, “The Spinosaurus’ fin-like tail is a game changing discovery for us that fundamentally alters our understanding of how this dinosaur lived and hunted – it was actually a ‘river-monster’”. “As well as its tail, many other features of this dinosaur, such as the high position of the nostrils, heavy bones, short legs, and paddle-like feet point to a life spent in the water rather than on land,” he said, adding, “Not only did dinosaurs dominate the land and take to the air as birds, they even went back into the water and became the top predators there as well.” A picture of the excavation site can be seen here.
One of the greatest achievements that mankind has ever made is the historic Apollo 11 manned mission to the moon. When on July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin touched down on that remote, alien landscape in their Apollo Lunar Module Eagle, it was a momentous step forward for humankind’s quest towards the stars. They spent 21 hours on that lunar surface that had only until then been viewed from afar, and they lifted off from Tranquility Base back towards Earth with new dreams in their hands. The whole world watched and cheered in celebration, patting ourselves on the back for our technological accomplishment, and we did it again with subsequent Apollo missions, but according to some accounts, there were others watching as well.
Ever since that fateful mission there has been a rather vocal group out on the fringe that has argued that those astronauts and others since were not alone out there in that void of space, and that those men might have actually witnessed something very strange out there. Such speculation really runs the range of weirdness, from alien moon bases, to ancient pyramids, to spaceships and more, and it is all overlaid by the ominous fact that we haven’t been back there in decades. It mostly sounds like the rantings of tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracists, but some of the people who have made these claims seem to be more, in a sense, “legit.” One of these is a retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant by the name of Bob Dean, who has 28 years of experience in the military and also some very strange, yet intriguing things to say about the Apollo program and its relation to aliens. He has lectured all over the place on such things, and some particularly memorable things were to come from his appearance at the Exopolitics Summit on July 25, 2009, in Barcelona, Spain. What he had to say and show was eyebrow raising, indeed.
Apllo 11 moon landing
In amongst his presentation among talk of aliens almost starting World War III in 1961, cities on Mars, the fact that by 1964 we were being visited by at least four types of alien races all with differing agendas, that we were as a species engineered by extraterrestrials, and other various revelations, he gets to Apollo, and it is a doozy. He gets especially excited when he talks about our trips to the moon, and says that NASA was onto the strangeness there as early as Apollo 11. He goes on to say that NASA has been very dishonest about what went on with the Apollo missions, and that that they have reams of data and photographs of bizarre things from the missions that prove aliens were there, but which have conveniently disappeared or been flat out destroyed. He explained of this at the conference as follows:
Something happened in my country over the last few years that I am very, very troubled by. Just last week the United States celebrated the 40th anniversary of putting a man on the moon. They went through this whole whoop-dee-do of patting ourselves on the back. Gee, wasn’t that neat. Armstrong, Aldrin, you know, Collins up there in orbit, on the moon. Aren’t we great people, aren’t we magnificent? Look what we did. Well let me tell you about a couple of things they did that you may not have ever have heard about before. They took the few pictures they had; they had it all televised. Everybody — Rock, Walter Cronkite and all of them were looking up. Golly, gee, isn’t this great, isn’t this neat? We’ve got a couple of guys on the moon.
Ladies and gentlemen, my government, NASA, which many of us in the United States say stands for Never A Straight Answer, proceeded to erase 40 rolls of film of the Apollo Program — the flight to the Moon, the flight around the Moon, the landings on the Moon, the walking of guys here and there. They erased, for Christ’s sake, 40 rolls of film of those events. Now we’re talking about several thousand individual frames that were taken that the so-called authorities determined that you did not have a right to see. Oh, they were disruptive, socially unacceptable, politically unacceptable. I’ve become furious. I’m a retired Command Sergeant Major. I was never famous for having a lot of patience.
It is a shocking claim, indeed, but fortunately, Dean claims to have had contacts in the know, who were able to secure some of the photos that hadn’t been destroyed, and he was more than happy to share them with the spellbound audience. Here are some excerpts from the photo presentations with links to the photos he is talking about. He says as follows (taken from the transcript of the talk):
Well, thanks to the idea that there were a few employees in NASA 40 years ago – even today there are some good people working there, decent people, honest people – I have some film that they preserved, that was not destroyed. Gentlemen, put up the next picture for me. [applause] This is a NASA photo. This is Apollo 12, Apollo Systems 12, roll number 50, negative number 7348. They were flying over the Moon before they landed. They went into orbit around the moon, as many of you know. I’m sure this is no secret. They went into orbit around the Moon and, while they were there in orbit around the Moon, a number of anomalous artifacts began showing up showing interest in them. Next picture, please.
Ah, this picture was taken by Neil Armstrong. While looking out of their window of their little craft, this object flew by. There is the moon in the background, of course, below the object that flew by the window of that little craft that they were riding in. Neil took the Hasselblad camera that he had, put it up to the window and snapped this picture. Next picture, please. Ah, NASA Apollo 12, roll 51, negative 8653, something like that. Now this is a good-sized object. This is several hundred feet in diameter that came up next to the Lander and flew along beside them for a time. The guys in the Apollo craft put their camera to the window and snapped the thing, and I’ve always jokingly said there were guys inside of this, taking pictures of the NASA craft. We were photographing them; they were photographing us.
One area of the moon that Dean claims was of very much interest to NASA is an area known as the Lansberg crater, located in a region of the moon called the Mare Insularum, about 60 kilometers from the landing site of the 1969 Apollo 12 mission. The crater is notable for its high rim, inner terraces, and mountain in the center, but according to Dean there was all manner of strange stuff going on here at the time. He says (along with links to the photos he mentions):
This is the Lansberg crater on the moon. The astronauts in orbit above the Moon were particularly fascinated by the Lansberg crater. They had been given a special designation to take pictures of Lansberg, because the crater, which they named as the Lansberg, had things going on that were very anomalous. There was construction going on. There were gigantic facilities in the crater up there. So, they were specifically delegated and assigned to photograph Lansberg to see if they could figure out what the hell was going on down there. While they were looking at Lansberg, this object happened to express interest in them and flew by. Now this line is an artificial line that was drawn to show you the … it gave the direction that this object was going. This is a good-size object flying past the Apollo Lander. God, I’m so glad that some of these were saved. I still get angry, 40 rolls of film, for Christ’s sake, and they erased them. Anyhow, next picture, please. This is the same photo of Lansberg, but the next negative, 9838 of this object here flying by.
The Lansberg crater
Besides NASA, Dean also claimed during his talk to have telling photographs left from the Apollo mission by what he calls the “Japanese NASA,” which is actually called the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). He claims that JAXA years ago signed an agreement with NASA to buy copies of all of the photographs taken during the Apollo moon missions for a handsome price, and because of this he says a good many of the photos originally destroyed by NASA are still in Japan’s possession. Indeed, he showed a few of these during his presentation, along with some truly spectacular, as well as ominous and sinister commentary throughout, saying:
So this photograph was released by the Japanese space agency; you can see the Japanese writing here.This was taken by Apollo 13. Now, you’re all familiar, I’m sure, with Apollo 13. That was the aborted mission that was going to the moon to land and they had an accident on the way. They couldn’t land. They damned well barely got back. While they were on the way to the moon – here’s the moon – a number of things began happening. Some strange objects were appearing outside the windows of the spacecraft so the guys grabbed their Hasselblad cameras and start taking pictures. This photograph shows three different objects. This looks like a circular object with an enlarged dome on top. This is a smaller object with a circular kind of disc-shaped craft, but coming in from the right margin of this picture is this. Next picture, please.
Here we are. This is a blowup of the positive in the photograph and here is a blowup of the negative of this object here. Ladies and gentlemen, this particular object is five miles long. I’m tempted to use the term big mother. No pun intended because it appears to be a mother ship. It’s gigantic, five miles long and here are these NASA guys are up there in this little cramped Apollo capsule, and they look out their window and they see something that is five miles long. It shakes them up a little bit. And when it got back to NASA, these pictures shook them up a hell of a lot. Next picture, please.
Ah,this is the next sequence. Here this large mother has moved into the middle of the frame and something else has come up over here, which has been estimated to be two miles long. But this really upset the guys. I have never been able to find out which one of the three Apollo members of the Apollo 13 group would admit to ever having taken these pictures. So, as you know, the Apollo astronauts were threatened with their lives, I kid you not. They were threatened seriously. They even threatened their families if they ever divulged any of the information that they knew. Next photo, please. Here we are. Here’s the big mother; here’s the other one two miles long. Here’s a picture of the positive; this is the negative. This mother is five miles long. Up here you can see what appear to be two circular objects, either arriving or departing from that particular big ship.
Is it two miles long, or five miles long, Dean? Who knows? After this, his talk veers off the rails into still other anomalous photos taken by the Voyager missions of Saturn as well as those of facilities and alien bases on Mars, and thoughts about alien agendas, which is beyond the scope of this article, but you can read the transcript of the entire talk here, if you like. It can get a little rambling at times, but it is well worth checking out, and entertaining at the very least, no matter what you may think of it in the end. However, what are we to make of these mysterious photos and revelations from the Apollo missions? Is this all for real, and if so what do these entities want and why have they been watching us? Indeed, why is NASA so dead set against releasing such images and why would they have them destroyed. Dean thinks he has the answer, and it will be a familiar one to any of you who have wondered about the lack of disclosure shown by the government. He says:
I can almost understand why the authorities in NASA, why the authorities in the space program didn’t want this information to come out. They were frightened; they were stumped; they couldn’t deal with it themselves and they figured, if they couldn’t handle it, you couldn’t handle it. There would be social disruption; I believe is one of the terms they used. They would disturb the body politic; I believe the term they used. So they clamped the lid down on this and it is still down and it is going to stay down, I’m afraid, for some time yet, until people like yourselves and me and the rest of the people here on this stage, by pushing and prodding and chipping away at this lie and the secrecy, until, eventually, we will succeed. And, don’t you doubt that for a minute.
Dean ends the lecture on a bit of a spooky note, pointing out that aliens are all around us, intermingling with us, and that they have been watching us for a long time. He even goes so far as to say that every conference he has ever done has been attended by a few of these entities in the audience, and implores those in attendance to take a look around them and see if they can spot any. Although he has already claimed that the aliens are not out to harm us, it is still all a very conspiratorial and sinister vibe, which led one audience member to comment on the site Above Top Secret:
Bob Dean is clearly a fraud, at the end, after Henry Deacon gives a wonderful message of love, Bob comes back and doesn’t like the idea of such a message being given out and letting it end there. He then turn the audiences attention on the fact that “they” have members in the audience and to “look around you and think about that”, completely wiping out any remnants of Henry’s love message and replacing it with paranoia.
So what are we dealing with in the man called Bob Dean? He certainly seems to have the credentials to make him look like a respectable and knowledgeable whistleblower, but with such spectacular claims what are we to think? Is he a fraud as many have claimed, or is he on to something? Is NASA really embroiled in a conspiracy to keep this all from us? Is this man a crackpot, hoaxer, delusional weirdo, or the real deal? Opinions seem to be starkly divided, but he certainly at least seems to really believe what he is saying. Whatever that means, perhaps only time will tell, and whatever the case may be, it seems to definitely put a new spin on humankind’s missions to the moon and perhaps beyond.
Bob Lazar 'The Craft I Worked on at Area 51 Were Not Made on Earth'
Bob Lazar 'The Craft I Worked on at Area 51 Were Not Made on Earth'
COAST TO COAST AM -
Bob Lazar described a strange craft he reported working on at Area 51 as “smooth and rounded everywhere – no sharp corners.” He commented that he is quite interested in the reported characteristics of the recent “Tic Tac” UFO story because it “just reeks of the drive mechanism I worked with.” He is convinced that the craft he saw and worked on were “not made on Earth and…not made of earthly materials.”
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.
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100% Proof Alien Autopsy Is Real And Was Performed In Wright-Patterson AFB, Video, UFO Sighting News.
100% Proof Alien Autopsy Is Real And Was Performed In Wright-Patterson AFB, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of alien autopsy: July 1947
Body retrieved from Roswell, New Mexico UFO Crash.
Location of autopsy: Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, USA
Now I know that there is a UK musician who claims to have created this video, but I say he lied because he was paid by the US CIA to take credit for the video and thus spread disinformation so that the public would no longer believe that this real video is real. UK musician Ray Santilli, was paid by the CIA or MI5 working through the CIA to cause the public to stop believing in this raw footage from the Roswell UFO crash. I stake my reputation on that! For instance the CIA had a program that started in the 1950s to use money to cause disinformation and control what the public believes...its called Project Blue Bird.
For years this raw footage has been circulating the web and many try to say its a hoax, but I am here to tell you this...there has never in the history of man, been a more real video of an alien ever released than this one. This video has 22 minutes and 47 seconds of pure unadulterated raw footage.
Let me explain to you why this is 100% real:
1. This video was taken in back in 1947, fakes were not being made until 2008, when Youtube started monetization of videos and people discovered they could make money from video views.
2. I analyzed the picture quality, saturation and contrast and came to the conclusion that it is from the 1940s. I came to this conclusion after analyzing ten different Hollywood movies from 1947, like Gentlemans Agreement, A Double Life, Mourning Becomes Electra and Miracle and 34th Street and many more. All made in 1947 and all the movies clarity, black and white contrast, vibrance, and brightness match the alien autopsy footage.
3. The technique the doctors are using for the autopsy matches exactly how an autopsy would take place in the 1940s.
4. The autopsy video shows detailed inside organs, blood and bones that no video would show until the year 1970s.
5. Not only is the autopsy of an alien seen in the video, but actual metal parts from the Area 51 crash site were seen in the doctors hands with the only high detail of the alien writing symbols in existence! (16:58 to 19:43 mark).
6: At the 18:29 mark, we see the metal beam taken from the Roswell UFO crash. At the end of its...is broken...jagged and shows that it broke under pressure. This kind of detail would only be seen in real footage, a fake would not think of this extreme detail.
7. Also the hand controls of the UFO were seen at the 18:08 mark. You can see that the controls were mere hand marks pressed deeply into the metal for the alien to place their six fingered hands. This was how they controlled the craft...through tying themselves metal with the craft, using telepathic control. All computers tech was built directly into the material itself...not nano tech, but much smaller and a billions of years of technological innovation to make it. Also note, as the man places it on the table, it appears to be incredibly light, an advancement that only alien tech could achieve. Did you notice the holes in the hand imprints on the controls? That allows for a more pure connection to the craft.
8. The paper tags on the UFO metal fragments...one says W-377 and another says W-130. The W stands for the location of the alien and the fragments were at when this movie was made...Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. Notice the (-) after the W is also in the AFB name? Yeah...link the patterns to see the evidence.
Overall I find that this raw footage of an alien autopsy and artifacts taken from the Roswell crash are 100% real, and nothing and no-one will ever be able to disprove this footage.
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Kurt Russel Gets Memory Wiped After Witnessing 6 UFOs As A Pilot, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Kurt Russel Gets Memory Wiped After Witnessing 6 UFOs As A Pilot, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of event: March 13, 1997 Location of sighting: Phoenix, Arizona, USA In this interview Kurt Russell, the famous American actor recalls his UFO sightings while being a pilot. The strange thing is...it left his mind afterwards. Meaning, he never talked about it for years afterwords. Why? Such an amazing and rare event and it never says a word about it, not to the other eyewitness (his son) and not even to his wife. His spouse, actress Goldie Hawn had to find out when watching a TV show. Now Kurt Russell and his son were flying to Phoenix when they were eyewitnesses to 6 glowing lights in the sky heading their direction. He called it in, but the radio tower said there were no aircraft in his area. I believe that Kurt Russell had his memory wiped by the sighting itself. That maybe the UFOs got closer than he remembers and they recorded his thoughts and then blanketed his memories of the UFO sighting...hiding them in essence from himself. Until a memory brought them back to the surface of his conscious. I myself was in the USAF at Ellsworth AFB and worked on B1 bombers at the time, when I was eyewitness to 25 UFOs the size of 747s...each being a glowing florescent ball that appeared in one of four cloud tunnels that started directly above my apartments parking lot (off base in Rapid City, 15 miles from base). When I walked out of my apartment to go to work in uniform...I noticed that there were about 20 others standing in the parking lot looking staring straight up...no one talking, no one saying anything. I thought it was a joke, I looked up and saw the a single UFO orb appear at the end of this cloud tunnel above us...then it moved every slowly down the tunnel, beginning to make a rumble noise...like a a luggage cart being pulled over a cobble stone walkway. The UFO sped up as it got further down the tunnel until it was going 10-20X the speed of a jet and then was gone over the horizon...then another started above our heads. What I'm saying is...I (Scott C. Waring) never talked to the other eyewitness there. I never told anyone about the UFO sighting for almost ten years. It was almost like...the UFOs had manipulated my memory of the event...not allowing me to talk or even recall it for years. I believe this is what happened to actor Kurt Russell. The UFOs have incredible technology and can manipulate a humans emotions, feelings, and thoughts into whatever they want. Yes, mind control. I said it. Aliens can control anyone on earth if they so wish. And they can use mind control on large groups. I even asked myself why I didn't speak of it ever...and I had no explanation...and I'm a UFO researcher, but the whole city of Rapid, SD saw it that day, and no-one said a word about it. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Mysterious Pulsating Beams Of Light Coming From Venus
Mysterious Pulsating Beams Of Light Coming From Venus
Several days ago something strange has happened in deep space. A sky-watcher has captured multiple pulsating beams with its infrared camera / telescope that seemingly came from the planet Venus.
The sky-watcher refers to a gigantic object (second video - jump to the 8 minutes mark), that looks like it is as long as Oumuamua, that came over Venus and wonders whether this object could have caused the flashes or pulsating beams.
Another possibility for the multiple bright flashes could be massive explosions caused by asteroids hitting the planet.
Anyway, whatever it may have been, something very unusual has happened near or on the planet Venus.
Many UFO encounters leave the witnesses in profound states of wonder and amazement. Others provoke terror and paranoia. Just occasionally, however, the UFO phenomenon becomes downright deadly. Take, for example, the encounter of a Brazilian mannamed Joao Prestes Filho, a farmer from the village of Aracariguama. On the night in question, and quite out of the blue, Filho found himself bathed in a powerful glowing light, which emanated from something unknown in the skies directly above. Whatever it was, it ensured a horrific death for Filho. The heat coming from the object was so hot that Filho fell to his knees. Worse was to come: his skin suddenly began to heat up. Then, it began to bubble. In mere minutes, he was exhibiting the physical effects of someone suffering from severe burns. Filho’s family, utterly terrified, raced him to a nearby hospital. It was all to no avail. During the journey, Folho grew progressively, and quickly, worse. His skin began to fall off his bones. One of the medics at the hospital – Aracy Gomide – confirmed poor Filho literally melted before the horrified eyes of the medical staff. Proof that not all close encounters are positive ones.
The so-called “Kinross Case” focuses upon the strange – and still-unresolved – disappearance of a US Air Force F-89C jet fighter that was scrambled late on the night of November 23, 1953, on an “active air defense mission” to intercept an “unknown aircraft” over Lake Superior. Kinross Air Force Base, which was closest to the scene where the “unknown” was initially tracked, quickly alerted the 433rd Fighter Interception Squadron at Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin, and the F-89C gave immediate chase. Available USAF records demonstrate that the F-89 was vectored west-northwest, then west, climbing to 30,000 feet. While on its westerly course, the crew received permission to descend to 7,000 feet, turning east-northeast and coming steeply down on the target from above. Alarmingly, as the aircraft closed-in on the “unknown” it subsequently vanished into oblivion, along with its two crew-members. The last radar contact placed the interceptor at 8,000 feet, 70 miles from Keeweenaw Point, and about 150 miles northwest of Kinross AFB, which, today, is called Kincheloe AFB.
An extract from the official USAF Aircraft Accident Report outlines further details of the story: “Aircraft took off at 2322 Zebra 23 Nov 53 on an active Air Defense Mission to intercept an unknown aircraft approximately 160 miles Northwest of Kinross Air Force Base. The aircraft was under radar control throughout the interception. At approximately 2352 Zebra the last radio contact was made by the radar station controlling the interception. At approximately 2355 Zebra the unknown aircraft and the F-89 merged together on the radar scope. Shortly thereafter the IFF signal disappeared from the radar scope. No further contact was established with the F-89. An extensive aerial search has revealed no trace of the aircraft. The aircraft and its crew are still missing.” For both ufologists and the Air Force the matter of the Kinross affair remains wide open.
All was normal – on November 28, 1954 – for Jose Ponce and Gustavo Gonzalez, as they traveled along a small road on the fringes of Caracas, Venezuela. Or, to be absolutely correct, all was normal for a while. The dark road was suddenly lit up by what the astonished pair could only describe as a bright ball of light, with a circumference of around three feet. It swayed slightly in the air, not unlike a small boat bobbing along on the water.
The two slowed down their vehicle as they approached it, eventually coming to a complete halt. It was then, suddenly, that astonishment was replaced by outright terror. While Ponce stayed inside the van, Gonzalez cautiously exited the vehicle; he began to slowly and tentatively walk towards the hovering globe. Suddenly, Gonzalez found himself thrown to the ground by an unseen force. The reason why the attacker was unseen – for a few seconds, at least – was because of its size. Or, rather, its profound lack of size. Gonzalez, to his shock and fear, was finally able to see what had assaulted him: a small, hair-covered creature that was built like a man, but which was only around three feet in height. Acting on impulse and adrenaline, Gonzalez attempted to plunge his knife into the body of the creature, only for the knife to bounce off it.
In mere seconds, another hairy dwarf was on the scene, and temporarily blinded Gonzalez with a bright light that emitted from a powerful, flashlight-type device. Shocked to the core, Ponce gathered his wits together and jumped out of the van to help his friend, who was stumbling around, his eyesight still affected by the powerful beam that hit him with full force. To Ponce’s growing concern, two more of the hairy creatures surfaced out of the shadows, and both making their way towards the men – and armed, no less, with large rocks. Although the presence of the rocks suggested to the men that the hairy things were ready to kill them, with hindsight it seems they were only a defensive measure, in the event a last resort-style situation developed. Fortunately, it did not. The small things raced to the ball of light and, somehow, launched themselves inside it, despite its equally small size and vanished in the blink of an eye!
As the cases above demonstrate, it may be wise to be very careful if you have an encounter of the close type.
The Curiosity team may soon be forced into a difficult exploration decision.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie on Feb. 26, 2020. The crumbling rock layer at the top of the image is the Greenheugh Pediment, which Curiosity crested on March 6.
Budget cuts may force NASA's Curiosity rover to slam on the brakes just as it's reaching its highly anticipated home stretch.
Curiosity landed inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked with determining if the site could ever have supported microbial life. The rover's work quickly answered that question in the affirmative, showing that Gale hosted a long-lived lake-and-stream system in the ancient past.
The $2.5 billion mission also seeks to shed light on Mars' long-ago shift from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold and dry planet we know today. Gale is well suited for such inquiry; it harbors a 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) massif called Mount Sharp, whose many rock layers preserve a long history of Martian environmental conditions.
Curiosity has been climbing through Mount Sharp's foothills since September 2014, studying clay-rich sediments that are evidence of ancient aqueous environments. The six-wheeled rover has gotten about 1,350 feet (410 meters) above the crater floor to date — so high that it's nearing a transition zone between the clay unit and the sulfate-rich rocks above, which are evidence of a much drier Mars.
But the funding situation may make exploring this new and potentially revelatory region tougher and more time-consuming than the Curiosity team had thought. The White House's 2021 federal budget request allocates just $40 million to the mission, a decrease of 20% from the rover's current funding. And that current funding is 13% less than Curiosity got in the previous year, said Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
If the 2021 request is passed by Congress as-is, Curiosity's operations would have to be scaled back considerably. Running the mission with just $40 million in 2021 would leave unused about 40% of the science team's capability and 40% of the rover's power output, which comes from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), Vasavada said.
"The team feels a bit under a crisis now because of the funding situation," Vasavada said on April 17 during a meeting of NASA's Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), which aids agency efforts to explore the Red Planet. "This is a big morale hit for us."
In addition to the clay-sulfate boundary region, the Curiosity team wants to spend some time studying a nearby formation called the Greenheugh Pediment. Just atop Greenheugh is a ridge that may have been formed by debris-carrying liquid water that originated higher up on Mount Sharp, long after Gale's lakes dried up, Vasavada said in his MEPAG presentation.
"This is just a huge climate signature that we want to be able to explore," he said.
An end in 2022?
Vasavada said that Greenheugh and the clay-sulfate transition zone are the mission's two major exploration objectives for the near future. But enactment of the 2021 budget request would probably force the mission team to push one of those two activities beyond 2022, he said — and such a delay might end up consigning the unlucky objective to the dustbin.
That's because Curiosity's outlook gets far more uncertain after next year. For starters, the 2021 federal budget request zeroes out the mission in 2022, projecting no money for the mission that year or in any future years.
And, even if funding does eventually come through, the output of the rover's RTG — which converts to electricity the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 — will likely have declined enough by 2022 to start taking a significant toll on science work, Vasavada said. (Curiosity remains in good health otherwise, he stressed.)
"NASA and the Mars science community have the great fortune of having this flagship rover in great shape with an experienced team, ready to further advance our study of ancient habitability," he said. "There's a window that's closing to use Curiosity because of the RTG."
Vasavada isn't the only Mars mission lead with budget laments; the 2021 funding request is rough for most of the space agency's other robotic Mars probes currently in operation as well.
For example, proposed cuts to the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter mission would "require a significant downsizing of the science team starting this year, this coming year, and then each year into the future," principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said during his MEPAG talk on April 17. (Leaders of NASA's robotic Mars missions gave updates on that day.)
The $2.5 million proposed cut to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2021 would force the venerable mission to reduce its targeted imaging observations by 50% and its radar observations by 30%, said project scientist Richard Zurek of JPL.
Then there's Mars Odyssey, an orbiter that has been studying the Red Planet since 2001. The 2021 budget request allocates just $1 million to Odyssey. As a result, the mission "would have to end this calendar year — really, in the next few months," said project scientist Jeff Plaut, also of JPL, in his MEPAG presentation.
All of these orbiters remain in good health, the MEPAG presenters said, and all of them provide vital communications-relay services in addition to their science work. Odyssey, for example, relays to Earth 62% of the data collected by NASA's marsquake-hunting InSight lander, which touched down in November 2018.
And those communications needs are going to increase less than a year from now, when NASA's next Red Planet rover touches down. The life-hunting, sample-caching Mars 2020 rover Perseverance is scheduled to launch this July and land inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021.
Plaut ended his MEPAG talk by saying he hopes the Mars science community sees value in the continuation of Odyssey's mission and voices that value to decisionmakers — namely, Congress, which controls the nation's purse strings and therefore has final budgetary say. (A White House federal budget request is just that — a request — before Congress enacts it.)
He found a receptive audience. One of the findings of the three-day MEPAG meeting, as determined by the steering committee and chairwoman Aileen Yingst of JPL, was an objection to the budgetary treatment of Odyssey, MRO, MAVEN and Curiosity (whose mission is officially called the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL).
"MEPAG finds that the substantial reduction of funding for the extended missions of MSL, Odyssey, MRO and MAVEN and the projected closeout of MSL in 2022 and Odyssey in 2021 are inconsistent with their high rankings by the Planetary Mission Senior Review," Yingst said on April 17, reading the finding for meeting participants.
"This would result in major, perhaps unrecoverable, losses for science and does not reflect community priorities," she added.
Overall, the 2021 federal budget request allocates $25.2 billion to NASA, a 12% boost for the space agency over its 2020 funding. But a big chunk of this money would go toward NASA's crewed exploration projects, especially its Artemis lunar program, which aims to land two people on the moon in 2024. The space agency's planetary science funding next year would decrease by 1.9% from 2020 levels.
With UFOs whizzing about, doing physics-defying aerial acrobatics, and hovering close to the ground, one might get the impression that it is all rather dangerous and an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, this seems to be the case, as there have been numerous reports of near-misses with UFOs and various aircraft over the decades. Yet sometimes these UFOs truly learned the hard way, and actually collide with other objects. From trains, to planes, to automobiles, to even other UFOs, here are some of the strangest cases of UFOs crashing into other vehicles.
One of the last things one might expect to crash into a UFO is a train, yet on January 14, 2002, that is exactly what allegedly happened in the area of Paintsville, Kentucky, in the United States. At approximately 2:50 AM in the early morning hours, a coal train was lumbering along its course when the electronic systems on the train starting going haywire. As the crew tried to figure out just what was going on, they turned a bend at a stretch called “milepost 42” and that was when they noticed lights headed in their direction. It was assumed that this was an oncoming train, and so they killed their own lights so as not to blind the incoming conductor. However, this was no train. The witness describes what happens next in his official report with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) as follows:
As we rounded the corner our onboard computer began to flash in and out, speed recorder went nuts, and both locomotives died. Alarm bells began to ring and thats when we saw the objects. Apparently scanning the river for something, the objects, (at least 3) had several “search” lights trained there, the first object hovered about 10 to 12 feet above the track. Metallic silver in color with multiple colored lights near the bottom and in the middle, no windows or openings of any kind that we could see. Approximately 18 to 20 feet in length and probably ten feet high. With both engines dead as we rounded the corner we made little noise and the first object did not respond in time, I estimate that we hit the object at 30 mph with 16,000 trailing tons behind us. It clipped the top of our lead unit then skipped back slicing a chunk out of our trailing unit and first two coal cars. The other objects vanished into thin air.
After this, the train came to a stop around 2 miles after the impact, screeching slowly to a grinding halt after the emergency brakes had kicked in, and the power to their systems jumped back to life. They notified their dispatcher and then surveyed the damage, finding the cab of the rear locomotive to be “demolished and smoking” and the second two cars looking as if they “had been hit with a giant hammer.” Despite the extensive damage, the train was deemed track worthy, and was able to limp along the rail back to the yard, and this is where things would get perhaps even stranger than they already were. The witness explains:
We pulled into Paintsville yard at approximately 5:15 am. The huge overhead lights lining the yard were noticeably dark and the only lights came from what we assumed were railroad officials’ vehicles parked near the end of the track. We pulled to a stop and began unloading our grips off the wounded train. We could hear what sounded like an army of workers immediately tending to our train. Vehicle doors slamming, guys running by in weird outfits and lights glaring from all directions, the one thing missing was railroad officials. A guy named Ferguson shook my hand and asked me to follow him into the old yard office. We did, once inside they, and by they I mean I have no idea who these people were, began to ask us hundreds of questions, they then told us for our own protection we’d be medically tested before we could leave.
I asked repeatedly to talk to my road foreman or trainmaster and not only were these requests denied but they confiscated my conductors’ cellular phone. Hours later we were led outside the old yard office and the strange things continued to happen, the 2 locomotives and two cars were removed from the rest of the train we had brought in and my only guess was parked 4 tracks over under a huge tent like structure buzzing with activity. We were led off property and told due to national security our silence on this matter would be appreciated. We were then put in a Railroad vehicle and taken to Martin Kentucky were we went through questioning again with railroad officials and were then drug tested.
What exactly happened here? Was this an actual collision with a UFO and how did a slow-moving coal train manage to hit it? Who were those officials they were interrogated by? or is this all some sort of hoax? It is hard to say, but a train crashing into a UFO is not something you see every day. Our next tale is almost as unlikely, and was reported by a Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, of Marshall County, Minnesota. On August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol near the North Dakota border when he saw a strange light apparently off in the wilderness. As he took a side road to get closer, the light apparently began to approach his car at an amazing rate of speed. It seemed to almost be on a collision course, and Johnson lost consciousness after being blinded by a bright flash to the sound of breaking glass. When he came to he was still sitting in his stalled car, happy to be alive but alarmed that he could not see anything. Oddly, his car had travelled some distance from where the object had engaged him, and he would say of his bizarre experience:
I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.
At this point, at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren.
The officer called on his radio for help, and he was rushed to the hospital with what looked like burns on his face and irritation of the eyes. Meanwhile, the patrol car he had been in was found to have a smashed in right side headlight, a crack in the windshield on the driver’s side, an unusual circular dent on the hood, also on the driver’s side, and a roof antenna that was bent over at a 60-degree angle. The windshield was particularly weird, as it seemed to have sustained “inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously.” All of the damage was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The interior clock was also found to be 14 minutes slow, and oddly Johnson’s wristwatch had the same anomaly. Experts who examined the vehicle would be unable to explain the peculiar damage it had incurred, and it did not seem to be any normal collision, with the official explanation being “mechanical forces of unknown origin.” Luckily his eyes would heal and he would regain his eyesight.
A place where one would perhaps more expect to see some sort of UFO collision is with aircraft in the sky, and while there have been many reports of near-misses with UFOs over the years, there was in 2013 an account of a plane possibly actually crashing into one. The Air China Boeing 757 passenger plane was allegedly flying at around 26,000 feet on a course from Chengdu to Guangzhou, when about 20 minutes into the flight things got bizarre. The crew would report that out of nowhere the plane was rocked by a very strong impact and a loud thud reverberated through the aircraft, frightening the passengers and causing the pilot to enact evasive maneuvers. The plane was given permission to make an emergency landing, and although amazingly no one had been hurt, it was found that the front of the plane had an enormous dent in it. At no point was there any radar signature of anything else in the vicinity of the plane that could have hit it, and this has led to speculation that the plane actually hit everything from a flock of birds to an unmanned drone, to of course a UFO. Unfortunately, Air China would refuse to give any further details, and Chinese authorities have allegedly just sort of swept it all under the carpet. The former U.S. government UFO investigator Nick Pope would say of the outlandish incident:
Whatever struck the aircraft will have left evidence. Analysis of the damaged nose cone should reveal microscopic traces of whatever struck the aircraft, or possibly even larger pieces of debris. So this is a solvable mystery. The only question is, will the notoriously secretive Chinese authorities reveal the truth about what happened? Cases like this show that whatever people believe about UFOs, there are serious air safety issues here. MoD and CAA files contain dozens of reports of near misses between UFOs and commercial aircraft. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a catastrophe. From the look of the photos, this disturbing incident came very close to blowing this aircraft out of the sky.
The damaged Chinese plane
There does not appear to have been any further information released by the Chinese government or the airline, leaving this purely in the realm of speculation, but it is intriguing nevertheless. What is probably more spectacular than a plane colliding with a UFO is a UFO smashing into another UFO, and that is what reportedly happened in a report given to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). It began with a sighting made in Rosh Haayin, in Israel, on September 28, 1995, by a man called Spasso Maximovitch. He purportedly saw in the sky a silvery glowing object that apparently separated into several other smaller objects as he watched in amazement, even managing to capture the event on videotape. He then went about watching the skies constantly after that, becoming obsessed with witnessing the objects again, and on June 24, 1996 it seems his patience paid off.
On this occasion he saw what looked to be the same object he had observed before, or at least one very similar to it, and he began to film it. At the same time, he noticed another object just like it streaking through the sky from the west, and headed straight towards the first object. According to Spasso, the second object approached at a very fast speed and collided with the first one, causing an explosion, all of which was captured on film. Spasso then turned the video evidence over to a journalist named David Ronen, with the local UFO magazine called “Maariv,” and a copy of it managed to find its way to UFO researcher Barry Chamish. The tapes were sent by Chamish to London for examination, even as other analysts pored over the footage trying to figure out what it shows. According to MUFON, one of these was a professional photo and video analyst by the name of Jeff Sainio, who said of the footage:
When the 2 objects apparently collide and explode, the apparent size of the light expands by a factor of roughly 2.5; this does not appear to be due to overexposure, but is the real size of the object. The last 2 frames of the video are NOT overexposed, but diffuse; since overexposure is not involved, this indicates he actual size of the explosion is shown. The real increase in size of the bright area is certainly much larger than 2.5.
In the video the explosion moves downward; this is probably due to camera motion of the startled videographer; the reference tower is too smeared to verify this conclusion. The explosion is not due to any conventional method I am familiar with; conventional, large explosions require much more than 1/4 second to disappear, and usually generate flaming debris that falls from the explosion. Neither characteristic is seen here. The acceleration, light size, and explosion are not explainable in any convention way that I know of, and this case remains unidentified.
A still from the Israeli footage
Strangely, shortly after the footage was made public, Spasso Maximovitch seems to have dropped off the grid and vanished. According to Chamish no one has been able to locate him, and besides being rather ominous, it also leaves us with not much more to go on. We are left with a compelling piece of footage of an alleged UFO collision, but little else, and so far it has remained inconclusive. You can read Sainio’s full analysis and see the video here. Is this hoaxed footage, and if not, what are we looking at here? If it was really UFOs, then how in the world did this collision happen? Was it pilot error, a malfunction, or maybe even intentional? There is no way to know.
It certainly seems that UFOs are not totally above making mistakes, and that sometimes their antics can lead to accidents. With aircraft this seems to be a particular area of worry, and there have been those who have seriously considered the threat that this may cause to airspace. But is any of this real at all, or is it just sensationalized stories, perhaps born from mundane reasons? Is there truly anything to worry about at all? Who really knows, but it all makes for some fascinating cases.
This spring season, the ozone layer over the Arctic experienced a tear, which grew into the biggest ozone hole across the North Pole in recorded history. Amid tensions and gruesome daily news about the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed like the apocalypse was nigh. Good news, though: the ozone hole was plugged nearly as fast as it appeared thanks to natural atmospheric activity.
Since it was first spotted in February, the hole in the Arctic ozone layer stretched over 620,000 square miles (1,600,000 square kilometers). No sizable hole that comes near this caliber has been reported in the Arctic since 2011.
Now, the hole has been plugged.
Researchers affiliated with the Copernicus Program, the European Union’s Earth observation program, have been on top of the situation since the ozone hole was first signaled.
This week, they announced that the “rather unusual” hole over the Arctic was not related at all to human activity and was instead caused by a strong Arctic polar vortex.
As such, the ozone layer recovery cannot be pegged to massive reductions in pollution to the coronavirus-related nationwide lockdowns.
Copernicus ECMWF@CopernicusECMWF
The unprecedented 2020 northern hemisphere #OzoneHole has come to an end. The #PolarVortex split, allowing #ozone-rich air into the Arctic, closely matching last week's forecast from the #CopernicusAtmosphere Monitoring Service.
Polar vortexes, the kind that triggered this recent massive gaping hole in the ozone layer 11 miles above the Arctic surface, are essentially large areas of low pressure and cold air that surround both of the planet’s poles.
These atmospheric phenomena wean over the summer and strengthen in the winter. Typically, polar vortexes are much weaker over the Arctic compared to the Antarctic due to local topography, as nearby land and mountain ranges disturb the flow of air more.
Ozone hole in Antarctica is a different matter entirely
At ground level, ozone or smog is a poisonous chemical often expelled by vehicle exhaust. Higher up in the stratosphere, ozone accumulates at altitudes between 10 and 50 km where it acts as a shield against the harmful ultraviolet rays, which can cause cancer. Ozone holes occur naturally from cooling, but man-made chemicals greatly accelerate their formation.
While ozone depletion over the Arctic in natural, the same can’t be said about the one in the stratosphere above Antarctica.
Almost four decades ago, scientists had learned that chlorine-containing industrial chemicals triggered the formation of a gaping hole in the ozone layer right above the icy continent.
Since then, the ozone layer has recovered after a UN emergency panel banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) under the Montreal Protocol. This was one of the few highly commendable episodes where nearly all the world’s countries chose to set aside their differences and work for the common good of the planet and all life that calls it home.
Currently, the ozone hole above Antarctica is the size of North America, which sounds humongous. However, it’s the smallest it’s been since 1988, according to NASA.
UFO-hype: ‘We zeggen letterlijk tegen jullie dat aliens bestaan. Het kan niemand wat schelen’
Foto: United States Department of Defense
UFO-hype: ‘We zeggen letterlijk tegen jullie dat aliens bestaan. Het kan niemand wat schelen’
Het Pentagon heeft videobeelden vrijgegeven van drie UFO-waarnemingen die door piloten van de Amerikaanse marine gemaakt zijn tijdens vluchten.
De eerste opname dateert van november 2004, de overige twee van januari 2015.
Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie zegt in een verklaring dat de beelden officieel zijn vrijgegeven ‘om alle misverstanden rond de authenticiteit ervan’ uit de wereld te helpen.
Ongeïdentificeerd
De objecten die zijn waargenomen, beschouwen wij als ongeïdentificeerd, aldus het Pentagon.
In één van de video’s is een langwerpige UFO te zien die zich erg snel verplaatst en enkele seconden nadat hij werd opgemerkt, links uit het zicht verdwijnt na een plotse versnelling. In een andere video duikt een object boven de wolken op.
De Amerikaanse oud-senator Harry Reid schreef op Twitter dat hij tevreden is dat het Pentagon de beelden eindelijk vrijgeeft, maar ook betreurt dat ‘hiermee slechts een deel van het onderzoek en de beschikbare documentatie geopenbaard is’.
Pingpongbal
David Fravor was de piloot die de beelden uit 2004 maakte. Hij zei: “Toen ik naderde, versnelde het object plotseling en in minder dan twee seconden was het uit het zicht verdwenen. Het bewoog als een pingpongbal.”
Voormalig Navy Seal Robert J. O’Neill, de man die beweert Osama bin Laden te hebben gedood, reageert: “We zeggen letterlijk tegen jullie dat aliens bestaan, en het kan niemand wat schelen.”
Robert J. O'Neill✔@mchooyah
We literally just told you aliens are real. Nobody cares.
VOLGENS POLITIE IS SUGGESTIE DAT GRAANCITKELS GEMAAKT ZIJN DOOR ALIENS " GEKKIGHEID"
VOLGENS POLITIE IS SUGGESTIE DAT GRAANCITKELS GEMAAKT ZIJN DOOR ALIENS " GEKKIGHEID"
Wat de boer niet kent dat vreet hij niet en dat is zeker van toepassing op de politie in ons land. Die verklaart stellig te weten dat de graancirkels die zijn gevonden op het strand van Zuid-Holland niet door aliens zijn gemaakt.
De mens is een angstig wezen. De mens is bang voor alles wat hij niet kent en dat geldt zeker voor alles wat vaag in de buurt van buitenaards komt. Daarom is het ook zo interessant om te zien hoe men reageert als er graancirkels worden aangetroffen.
De doorsnee mens zegt dan niet: “Ik weet het niet, maar theoretisch zou het best door buitenaardsen gemaakt kunnen zijn”. Nee, dat doen ze niet, maar wat ze wel doen is stellig verklaren dat het niet buitenaards is, maar door mensen gemaakt.
En dat laatste wordt dan volkomen acceptabel geacht en daar hoef je dan ook geen enkel verder bewijs voor aan te voeren, maar op het moment dat je zelfs maar suggereert dat het wel buitenaards zou kunnen zijn, dan is de wereld te klein.
Wijkagent Frits Adriani kwam de cirkels toevallig tegen. ,,Wat is dit nou? Dacht ik”, zegt Adriani. ,,Wel leuk voor een post. Weer eens wat anders in deze coronatijd. Het is de eerste keer dat ik zoiets ben tegengekomen.”
De cirkels zijn gevonden op een zandmotor, een kunstmatig aangelegd stukje natuur. ,,De cirkels beslaan een behoorlijk groot gebied. Zo'n 30 bij 10 meter. In totaal vonden we 15 tot 20 cirkels.”
En dan ontstaat iets leuks. Wijkagent Adriani heeft geen flauw benul hoe die graancirkels daar op het strand terecht zijn gekomen. Maar, ondanks dat, weet hij absoluut één ding zeker:
Wijkagent Adriani weet het wel: ,,Aliens? Nee, dat is gekkigheid. Ik denk dat het door mensen is gedaan.”
Dat is mooi dat de politie dat zo zeker weet, ondanks dat niemand heeft geclaimd deze cirkels te hebben gemaakt en er geen aanwijsbare sporen zijn aangetroffen. Misschien zijn ze door mensen gemaakt, maar misschien ook niet.
Wat bijzonder is bij deze formaties is dat het een herhaling is van één en dezelfde vorm, namelijk een spiraal. Alsof iemand een boodschap wil geven zoals: "Let op, deze spiralen hebben een betekenis".
Er is eerder een spiraalvormige graancirkel gevonden in het zand van de woestijn, ergens in het Midden-Oosten. Deze zag er als volgt uit:
Ook zijn er eerder “normale” graancirkels gevonden in de vorm van een spiraal.
Iets dat wijkagent Frits Adriani ook niet heeft geleerd op de politieschool is dat onze verre voorouders de spiraalvorm gebruikten om ons te waarschuwen voor naderend onheil en te vluchten naar hoger gelegen streken. Hebben de graancirkels in een spiraalvorm daarmee te maken, of zijn het toevallige voortvloeisels van mensen met planken en stokken die niets beters konden bedenken dan het maken van talloze spiraalvormen? Coronacriminelen zullen we maar zeggen.
Wij weten het niet, maar kunnen het ook niet uitsluiten. Daarom, hierna nog een deel uit een eerder artikel over onze verre voorouders en de spiraalvorm.
Als we dan uiteindelijk terechtkomen bij iets wat op geschreven documenten lijkt, dan zien we naast de kleitabletten van de Sumeriërs iets wat de Kolbrin Bijbel wordt genoemd. Het is een verzameling van oeroude teksten die vertaald zijn. De herkomst is het oude Egypte en daarna komen we ze weer tegen in de Middeleeuwen.
De manuscripten zouden gered zijn tijdens een brand in het klooster van Glastonbury Abbey in 1184. Er gaat zelfs het gerucht dat de beroemde Nicola Tesla enkele van zijn wijsheden haalde uit de Kolbrin Bijbel. Deze bestaat uit in totaal elf boeken, waarvan men zegt dat de eerste zes geschreven zijn door Egyptenaren ten tijde van de Exodus. Het boek is nooit toegankelijk geweest voor het grote publiek, maar werd altijd geheimgehouden bestemd voor een select groepje mensen. Tegenwoordig is er een gedrukte versie beschikbaar via het Culdian Trust.
Uit de vele petrogliefen die wereldwijd zijn aangetroffen blijkt dat men bang was voor iets en dientengevolge vluchtte naar hogergelegen gebieden. Dit vinden we ook terug in de Kolbrin Bijbel.
Zo staat er in het boek Manuscripts (3:6) het volgende:
“De mensen zullen in paniek overal naartoe vluchten. Ze zullen de trompetten horen en de strijdkreet van de Verwoester en zullen hun toevlucht zoeken in de grotten op aarde. Ze zullen verlamd zijn van schrik en de moed zal uit hen stromen zoals het water uit een gebroken kruik. Ze zullen worden opgegeten door de wrekende vlam en de adem van de Verwoester”
Op de volgende foto zie je een rotstekening van mensen en dieren die wegvluchten naar de bergen. Op deze tekening vind je ook iets waar wij nu veel last van hebben: dode vissen.
Iets wat opvalt in bijna al die afbeeldingen is de spiraal en die komt keer op keer terug. Dit komen we straks ook weer tegen in de Kolbrin Bijbel.
Zo staat er in het boek Creation (4:6):
“De ster groeide uit en werd steeds helderder en was indrukwekkend om te zien. Het kreeg horens en het zong en nog nooit had iemand zoiets gezien”
Op de volgende foto zie je de man afgebeeld met horens en weer de spiraal.
Hoofdstuk 5 van het boek Manuscripts, vrij vertaald, gaat als volgt:
Vers 1.
"De Onheilsvorm, de Verwoester genaamd, werd in Egypte gezien en in alle landen daaromheen. Het had een heldere en felle kleur, het veranderde en was onstabiel. Het draaide rond zoals een spoel/spiraal zoals het water opborrelt uit een ondergrondse bron in een poel en iedereen was het erover eens dat het een angstaanjagend gezicht was. Het was niet een grote komeet of een verdwaalde ster, maar meer als een vurig object".
Vers 2.
"Haar bewegingen hoog in de lucht waren langzaam. Het kronkelde rond zoals rook dat doet en het bleef dichtbij de zon wiens gezicht het verborg. Het had een soort bloedachtige roodheid dat veranderde naarmate het haar pad vervolgde. Het veroorzaakte dood en verwoesting als het opkwam en weer onderging. Het veegde over de aarde met een grijze regen van sintels en veroorzaakte pest, hongersnood en andere kwaden. Het beet in de huid van mens en beest totdat ze bedekt waren met zweren".
Vers 3.
"De aarde trilde en had het zwaar, de heuvels en de bergen bewogen en schudden. De met zwarte rook gevulde hemelen bogen voorover naar de aarde en er bereikte een groot gehuil de oren van de levende mensen, tot hen gebracht door de vleugels van de wind. Het was de kreet van de Donkere Meester, de Meester van de Doden. Dikke vurige rookwolken gingen voor hem langs en er was afgrijselijke hagel van hete stenen en vurige kolen.
De Onheilsvorm donderde zwaar in de hemel en er schoten felle bliksemflitsen uit. De waterwegen werden op zichzelf teruggeworpen toen de grond overhelde en grote bomen werden rondgegooid en knapten af als takjes. Toen, een stem als duizend trompetten, werd gehoord boven de wildernis en voor haar brandende adem spleten de vlammen uiteen. Het hele land bewoog, de bergen smolten. De hemel zelf brulde als tienduizend leeuwen in pijn en vurige pijlen van bloed schoten her en der over haar gezicht. De aarde zwol op als brood op de haard".
Vers 4.
"Dit was het aspect van de Onheilsvorm, die de Verwoester werd genoemd, toen het verscheen in die dagen die lang vervlogen zijn. Dit is zoals het staat beschreven in de oude archieven, waarvan er nog maar weinig zijn. Er wordt gezegd dat wanneer het verschijnt in de hemelen boven de aarde, deze zal opensplijten als een noot die geroosterd wordt boven het vuur. Dan zullen de vlammen omhoogschieten door het oppervlak en deze zullen als felle vijanden op het zwarte bloed springen. Het vocht in het land is allemaal opgedroogd, de weiden en de bewoonde plaatsen zullen door de vlammen worden verzwolgen en zullen met alle bomen witte as worden".
Vers 5.
"De Onheilsvorm is als een ronddraaiende bal van vuur die kleine vurige deeltjes in haar spoor rondslingert. Het bedekt ongeveer eenvijfde van de hemel en stuurt kronkelende vingers die lijken op slangen naar de aarde. Ervoor ziet de lucht er angstaanjagend uit en dan breekt het open en uiteen. Midden op de dag is het net zo licht als ’s nachts. Het omvat heel veel vreselijke dingen.
In de oude archieven worden dingen verteld over de Verwoester. Lees ze met een plechtig hart, wetende dat de Onheilsvorm haar eigen tijd heeft en terug zal keren. Het zou dom zijn om hen zonder waarschuwing te laten gaan. Nu zeggen mensen: “Zulke dingen zijn niet voorbestemd in onze dagen”. Moge de grote God boven genadig genoeg zijn om dit toe te staan. Maar, komen zal die dag zeker en zoals in de natuur van de mens ligt, zal deze totaal onvoorbereid zijn".
De tekeningen en de Kolbrin Bijbel vertellen ons wat er eerder gebeurd is. Ook nu leven wij in een tijd van rampen en snel verslechterende omstandigheden op aarde. De aarde trilt en beeft, dieren sterven massaal, het klimaat verandert, honger en oorlog liggen op de loer. Overal ter wereld hoort men vreemde geluiden en veel mensen “voelen” dat er iets staat te gebeuren.
What Lives At The Bottom Of Antartica ? | Scientists Were Shocked to Discover
What Lives At The Bottom Of Antartica ? | Scientists Were Shocked to Discover
The moon rotates around the earth about the same speed it does around its axis, that is why we can only see one side of it. Meaning 41% of it hasn’t’ been explored yet, this little known fact surprises most people who assume they know everything about all things in the world, while so many things in our planet remain a mystery. For instance, Antarctica which is not so popular is as mysterious and full of wonder as any place on earth. Whether it’s the inexplicable ice domes or a giant face right in the middle of ice valley or a crater that is likened to the state of Colorado It’s the land of a thousand icy secrets, we’re going to raise the curtain just a little and narrate to you the recent discoveries that will make your blood run cold with wonder, excitement or surprise. Under the thick layer of ice, mysterious creatures live.
SOURCE: Book called, "Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon." In the back of this book is a computer CD with full resolution photos. These came from there.
Close up below, click to enlarge. I was looking at some Lunar Orbiter photographs when I came across a few that I had not see before. They partially reveal the dark side of the moon, or almost dark side because Earth cannot view this part of the moon, but a little sun light does hit part of it. The white dots, which so many inexperienced people have called photo flaws, are real. My proof is the shadow. Look at the shadow covering them. Note: the shadow might not exist, you might be looking at the black metal surface of an artificial moon, see the shadows from the structures? Moon shadows would not affect photo flaws, however if they were structures on the moon, it would logical. To argue that photo flaws would disappear in the shadows is ridiculous so I will not acknowledge such foolishness. You will notice like I did that there is some unusual formations of white dots.
These are evenly spaced apart and stay close to one another. That is because you are looking at cities on the moon. You see, there are three types of buildings I have identified on the moon. First is the metallic buildings which have angles like human buildings, but these are always smaller compared to the other two. Second are the white ceramic buildings. These will have black windows, yet the surface of the building is so shiny that it looks like light reflecting off the surface. Their shape is usually round or oval, never with sharp angles, always smooth edges. See below photo shadows from white buildings? Third are the dark buildings. These are the most unusual and seem biomechanics or living structures that were grown. These are flat black, meaning they have no reflective surfaces.
They are massive, up to hundreds of kilometers long. They often have the small buildings near their entrances with many (4-8 usually) tunnel like attachments going back and forth. So the Lunar Orbiter satellite gives you a birds eye view of partially lit side of the moon which is never visible to Earth. I use to believe in NASA, held them up on a pedestal with the highest of admiration, but then I discovered they lied to us and I can never respect someone that lies to your face. You decide for yourself, don't let anyone else decide for you. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
I found a cube spaceship again in the SOHO/NASA sun photo website. The cube is clearly three dimensional and not a glitch in programing or pixilation. The cube is one of the many spacecraft that shoot around Earths sun on a daily basis. This cube and many others have been recorded near our some, some show the 2D view, but occasionally like this one...you get a more 3D view. I'm certain that NASA doesn't tell the public about these UFOs near our sun because they are afraid that the public would panic...but the truth is...these giant UFOs have been there long before humanity had ever been on Earth.
This UFO is about the same size as our moon. Yes its big, and yes it seems impossible for such a ship to exist...because we view it through humanities eyes...our own experiences say its impossible...and it is...but only in our moment in time in evolution. If we came back to earth in 1 billion or even 10 billion years, if humans still existed...then a moon size or even earth size spaceship would be the norm. Scientists say our universe is 13.5 billion years old and that earth is only 4.5 billion years old, so that leaves 9 billion years for other planets and intelligent life to evolve, grow and expand across the universe. We...are still infants in this universe.
What's worse than a train of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo? Two trains of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo. In the Czech republic on April 19th, amateur astronomer Zdenek Bardon captured perhaps the first picture of two orthogonal Starlink trains in a single image.
Image left: Credit Zdenek Bardon showing the astonishing image of the cross-hatch pattern made by Starlink satellites.
"I was trying to photograph disintegrating Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4)," says Bardon. "My local night sky suffers from light pollution, and stacking of multiple exposures is necessary in order to image the comet. Unfortunately, I had not considered the trajectories of the Starlink satellites, and many of my exposures were contaminated."
This is the latest illustration of a growing problem. To date, SpaceX has launched 360 Starlink satellites, with more than 12,000 planned.
Elon Musk said satellites launched from next month will also have 'sunshades' and for now his company is ‘fixing’ the brightness of his ultra-bright constellation of satellites, which are disrupting the night sky for astronomers.
But if you look up in the sky and you see Starlink trains and think that they just only crosses each other then you have to see these images.
The remarkable images are screenshots from a video uploaded a few days ago but suddenly deleted again. Even the YouTube channel has been removed which in itself is suspicious, maybe they don't like that the public see that they are testing the laser communication system.
The laser beams are not visible to the human eye because their wavelengths are not in the visible light spectrum. Digital cameras can capture a wider range of wavenlength, so it´s possible to record the laser beams.
The whole situation reminds Spaceweather.com reader Peter Tarr (Chief Science Writer at the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation) of a classic science fiction. Bardon's astonishing image of the cross-hatch pattern made by Starlink satellites is the coming-to-life of 'The Tholian Web' of the original Star Trek series."
Update: I found a channel who has uploaded the video of Starlink testing laser beams too.
Pentagon Officially Releases 3 Navy Videos Showing UFOs
Pentagon Officially Releases 3 Navy Videos Showing UFOs
The Pentagon formally released three unclassified videos on Monday. The videos, which were captured by Navy pilots, have circulated for years showing unidentified aerial phenomena.
One video shows an incident from 2004, while the other two were recorded in January 2015, according to Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough. The Navy previously verified their authenticity when they became public after unauthorized leaks in 2007 and 2017.
Gough said the videos had undergone a thorough review, and the department has determined that the official release of these unclassified videos doesn’t compromise any sensitive capabilities or systems. She added that the authorized release of these videos doesn’t intrude on any subsequent investigations of military air space unauthorized entries by unidentified aerial phenomena.
The 2004 incident took place around 100 miles out in the Pacific, according to The New York Times. Two fighter pilots doing a routine training mission were dispatched to investigate unidentified flying object that had tracked by a Navy cruiser for weeks.
The Navy pilots spotted an oblong object around 40 feet long floating about 50 feet above the water, and it started a quick climb as the pilots approached before quickly flying away. One of the pilots told The Times that it accelerated like nothing they’ve ever seen.
The pilot added that they left the area to meet at a rendezvous point around 60 miles away. When they were about 40 miles out, the ship radioed and informed the object was at the rendezvous point, having cut through the distance in less than a minute.
The two other videos taken in 2015 include footage of UFOs moving rapidly through the air. One of the videos shows an object racing through the sky and rotating in midair.
A pilot exclaims on the video “Dude, this is a f–king drone, bro. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” another person says.
The first person says “they’re all going against the wind. The wind’s 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing, dude!”. “It’s rotating!”
The other 2015 video shows an object from above speeding over the ocean, prompting the pilot to ask, “What the f–k is that?”
Five Navy pilots who observed the objects in 2015 said that they had a series of interactions with unidentified aerial objects during training missions along the East Coast from Virginia to Florida in 2014 and 2015. The episodes prompted the Navy to specify how pilots should report incidents with unidentified aerial phenomena, which has been studied by the government from 2007 to 2012 under a Pentagon program.
Gough said the department was formally releasing the three videos to address questions about their integrity. She explained that “DOD is releasing the videos to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” Gough stated. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.'”
Morrison CO – 29 April 2020 I Live in Morrison CO. Walk my dog every night and watch the stars. As we were walking home tonight (from a dark state park “Bear Creek Lake Park” I saw what I thought was a shooting star just below the moon, then I saw it was followed by another-I’m thinking cool maybe 2 or a meteor shower, then 3, then 4, as 12+ ended up passing by, all evenly spaced apart, as small as Stars. I tried to film them but they were too small. All 12 plus were in a perfect line, evenly spaced apart, cruised right below and passed the moon until they went out of site. We have had drone sightings in CO before but these were not drones. We have the Air Force academy and a couple Air Force bases, but I’ve NEVER seen anything like this. Has anyone reported something similar from Colorado tonight?
exton, pennsylvania – 04/27/2020 8:45PM and 9:05PM Traveling from NW to SE. Three sets of three lights traveling in a perfectly straight line. No noise. No flashes. Just bright white lights. Brightness was more than the evening stars, but not brighter than Venus. Speed appeared slightly faster than what would normally be observed high altitude aircraft. Thirty minutes later. Approximately 20 lights traveling on the same course in a perfect straight line. All other attributes were the same as the first set. The line of lights was relatively even spaced. The line filled the full field of vision.
Tennessee – 27 April 2020 Hey, i live in Tennessee and just wanted to get your opinion on this. Started the night the iss was supposed to be visible ive seen it two other times since with the latest being this evening around 930 cst. Its been in the same spot all three times.
Zandvoort, Netherlands – 27 April 2020 I am a Brit living in the Netherlands. I am a keen stargazer/amateur astronomer. On the evening of 27 April 2020, I saw a phenomenon that I have never seen before. I was looking southwards at 22.45 hours (local). I saw a pinpoint of bright light moving east-south-east (a heading of approx. 112 degrees) at speed. To my great surprise, it was followed at about 20-30 second intervals by a further 7 similar brightly lit objects, so, a total of 8. All were travelling at the same speed & track, except the 6th, which was a little further north, but travelling parallel to the other 7. It was a quiet night with no wind, but I heard nothing. (We are below a flight path for planes at 30,000 ft plus coming into Europe from North America; these we can normally hear, faintly). These objects made no noise & had no navigation lights. They seemed very high, but as I could not estimate altitude, I therefore could not estimate speed, but they seemed faster than civil airliners…….. I discounted shooting starts as the constant distances between them, their tracks & identical speeds would seem to inconsistent with shootings stars. I wondered if they might be military planes? But why no noise & no navigation lights if on a normal, non-clandestine mission. Why would they be lit up? And why would any power be flying over the Netherlands- with 8 craft- on a clandestine mission? Who’s air force? I thought about satellites, but these don’t normally travel in groups and at speed. They are normally brighter, slower moving (to our eyes) & are bigger. I also wondered if this might be the sun (already well over the horizon since setting 4 hours previously), reflecting on the underside of aircraft fuselages? Again discounted; no noise, no navigation lights etc… and the sun was long gone. I’m wondering if there might have been even more objects- but that I’d only seen the last 8 of them. The whole incident is a complete mystery to me. I had no time to consider recording what I’d seen…….the whole incident was over in about 4 minutes. I am a rational, educated man. I had not been drinking for several days & do not take drugs or have hallucinations. I definitely saw what I saw, but have no explanation. Who should I contact? Any suggestions (including taking a cold shower), welcome.
Carmel Indiana – 4/26/2020 10:10PM evening Long line of luminated dots estimated number 20 to 25 traveling north west to south east from horizon angle to overhead and disappeared one by one. Estimated altitude 10,000 feet. It lasted about 3 minutes
New Albany, Indiana – April 26, 2020 At 1020pmEST about 45 degrees to the right of the north star 15-20 bright lights following each other in the atmosphere way higher then planes and then all the sudden at a certain point they all disappeared once each one entered the same spot in the sky then few mins later there were single one no line of them and then 15 mins later all 15-20 of them again but little closer to the moon
Virginia. US – 23 April 2020 This is not a joke: did anyone else who was out looking at the meteor shower tonite see the ufo? Me, dallas, jaylinn and hunter all watched it for over an hour! It zig zagged , was sporadic in its movements, extremely fast! Able to maneuver side to side as well. We pretty certain it isn’t a drone. Way too high…would have to have been one size of my truck at least! And over hour. Hour and half. Batteries that lasting????? Im seriously freaked out. We all are. Its amazing and terrifying simultaneously.
California – 23 April 2020 Recorded this Thursday night 4/23/2020 @ 9:08pm. There were two more we missed lower in the sky.
Val Comeau , NewBrunswick – April / 22 / 2020 9.24pm a long (150+feet long) tube like series of bright and dark lights , going against the Wind 3+ miles up .Going realy fast more than supersonic making no noice , with the ban on airplane travel due to covid19 it was the only thing in the sky exept stars. Whe where 6 who saw it i tried to film it with no result , but whe got a picture of it. It turned at 2 miles in front of us and soom whent away.on the picture you can see a star on the right .if you look a bit lower on the left side the bright line is it!
Nuthall, Nottingham, NG16 1QN England – 19 – 04 – 2020 Last night at 21.30, i took my dog out and noticed 2 bright lights at great altitude travelling in a southwest to northeast direction. Then noticed there were more travelling in the same direction and counted 33 in all. Each one was positioned exactly the same distance apart in line astern formation and took 15 minutes to pass. There was no engine noise at all.
Cadiz province Spain – Friday 17 April 2020 At about 22.45 Spanish time we went out onto the roof of the villa to look at the night sky like we always do when clear. Whilst looking at Venus which was the brightest object in the sky we saw several bright lights [a total of over 25] moving in one directions away from the right of Venus. Then we suddenly noticed one after another traveling from the same direction. There were no flashing navigation lights or sound. I counted about a dozen in a row about 10 seconds apart. One would appear and disappear then another would follow. They were moving too fast and too high to be aircraft. First we thought they were satellites until we saw them come across one after another, I also noticed that one of them became quite bright and then accelerated away, this event went on for about 15 minutes until a thin veil of cloud came across. Sorry no photos.
Ireland – 17 April 2020 I took this in Ireland yesterday eve I didn’t see it until after I took photo of sun set ?
Huntington, NY – April 16, 2020
Wallisville, Texas – April 2020 Just figured someone might no what it is , it looks like a satellite sitting over the house about Last 2 weeks it doesn’t appear to move , i didn’t see that until I looked back at video
Knox, Indiana – 14 April 2020
Fountain Inn SC – 13 April, 2130 EST 29 plus objects moving from NNE to SSW…60k feet or more. Fast. Looked to be separated by one mile. All appeared to be on same vector. 9 people witnessed this.
Fountain Inn SC – 13 April, 2130 EST 29 plus objects moving from NNE to SSW…60k feet or more. Fast. Looked to be separated by one mile. All appeared to be on same vector. 9 people witnessed this.
belgavi, karnataka, india – 04/09/2020 I was seeing the super moon as have an hobby of astronomical science . While seeing frm different angles of the moon i cud see some creatures like alien moving with some machinery collecting some things like soil i guess . I cudnt further zoom as my eyes and head started aching so within fraction of minute wht i saw i wanted to take video but cudnt so managed with some pics.. My finding is first landing of the space ship ie ufo..then with some machinery collecting some soil on the surface of the moon might be to get some energy frm soil as it contains iron magnesium ,etc these are my findings and thoughts. The crust of the Moon is composed mostly of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum. There are also trace elements like titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium and hydrogen. Since a week i am following up closely seeing the moon at night… Might these aliens hav power to change their colours and bcum invisible time to time bcz of rays of sun falling on the moon.. Moon does not have its own light. It gets its light from the Sun’s rays that fall on it and are reflected towards the Earth. Thus, we can see only the illuminated part, (i.e., the part on which the rays fall) of the Moon.
Chillicothe, OH between hopewell mound city & the CCI – 04-08-2020 I walked outside to get in my car to go to Pinnacle in central center. It was about 5:00am. before i get in the car i can see a very bright light kinda stationary hovering over town. I didn’t think anything of it so i get in my car and heading to town. As i get about a mile or two down the road i notice this bright object is an aircraft and starts moving slowly as if it noticed me and was gonna move along. As i’m driving closer it flies directly overtop the car. The night before some guy was arrested for tossing tobacco over the CCI fence so i figured it was military doj g surveillance over the prison. I had my phone on me so i snapped two photos of it. you can’t make out much detail but you can see that the object is glowing super bright. There is a star in the background for reference of how bright the object appeared. It was brighter than any aircraft lights i’ve ever seen. there were four fo five circular lights and greenish blue light in the front that was blinking. My dad asked if it was a helicopter. i said no it wasn’t a helicopter. I would’ve heard it if it was a helicopter.This aircraft had no noise to it which is why i knew it wasn’t of this realm. i told him i wish it were a helicopter so i wouldn’t be left wondering! i couldn’t make out what the object really looked like behind the lights due to them being so bright. I included a drawing of what i actually saw. It’s actually kind of amusing that i saw this cuz the past few weeks i’ve been really intrigued by watching ufo videos from your subreddit. I’ve always been interested in the paranormal but it was just recently that i began watching them. i’m not sure if anyone else reported anything from that day but ik everyone outside that morning had to have seen it.
Pentagon releases three UFO videos taken by US Navy pilots [Shocking Video]
Pentagon releases three UFO videos taken by US Navy pilots [Shocking Video]
The Pentagon on Monday released three declassified videos that show US Navy pilots encountering what appear to be unidentified flying objects.
The grainy videos, which the Pentagon says depict “unexplained aerial phenomena”, were previously leaked, with some believing they show alien UFOs.
The Pentagon said it released the footage to “to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real or whether or not there is more to the videos,” a statement on the Department of Defense website said.
“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena,” the statement said.
The videos had been “circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017”, the statement said, adding that “the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’”.
The three videos show what the pilots saw during training flights in 2004 and 2015. Two of the videos were published by the New York Times in 2017. The other video was released by the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science group, a media and private science organization.
The 2004 video shows an incident that happened 100 miles out over the Pacific, according to the New York Times. Two Navy fighter pilots found a oblong object hovering above the water. It then flew quickly away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one of pilots, Commander David Fravor, told the NYT.
The 2015 videos show objects moving quickly through the sky, one of them seeming to spin in the air. “Look at that thing, dude!” a pilot says. “It’s rotating!”
The release of the videos by the Pentagon adds to the legitimacy of the the videos and will spur more speculation that humans have recently interacted with extra terrestrials. The Navy has guidelines for reporting UFO sightings.
In response, the former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, from Nevada, tweeted the three videos “only scratches the surface of research and materials available”.
Le Pentagone déclassifie des vidéos de «phénomènes aériens non identifiés»
Le Pentagone déclassifie des vidéos de «phénomènes aériens non identifiés»
Le Pentagone a publié ce lundi trois courtes vidéos montrant des «phénomènes aériens non identifiés».
Ces vidéos montrent ce qui semble être des objets volants non identifiés (ovni) filmés par des caméras infrarouges.
Sur deux des vidéos, on peut entendre des personnes remarquer la vitesse remarquable à laquelle les objets se déplacent. L'une des voix indique que l’objet pourrait être un drone.
La Marine américaine avait certifié la véracité de ces images en septembre dernier.
«Elle les rend maintenant publiques afin de clarifier toute fausse idée du public sur la réalité ou non de ces images», a précisé une porte-parole du Pentagone, Sue Gough.
«Après un examen approfondi, le département de la Défense a déterminé que la publication de ces vidéos ne révélait pas d’informations délicates», a poursuivi la porte-parole dans un communiqué.
«Cela n’empiète sur aucune enquête future sur les incursions de l’espace aérien militaire par des phénomènes aériens non identifiés.»
Selon CNN, la Marine américaine a des directives officielles sur la façon dont les pilotes peuvent rapporter ce qu’ils pensent être des ovnis.
Les vidéos de la Navy ont été publiées pour la première fois entre décembre 2017 et mars 2018 par la To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, une société cofondée par l'ancien musicien de Blink-182 Tom DeLonge qui affirme étudier des informations sur des phénomènes aériens non identifiés.
En 2017, l’un des pilotes ayant vu l’un des objets non identifiés en 2004 a déclaré à CNN qu’il s’était déplacé d’une manière qu’il ne pouvait expliquer.
«Alors que je m'en approchais, il a rapidement accéléré vers le sud et a disparu en moins de deux secondes», avait expliqué le pilote à la retraite de l'US Navy, David Fravor.
«C'était extrêmement brusque, comme une balle de ping-pong, rebondissant sur un mur. Elle frappait et allait dans l'autre sens.»
Le Pentagone a précédemment étudié les enregistrements de rencontres aériennes avec des objets inconnus dans le cadre d'un programme classifié comme fermé depuis.
Luis Elizondo, ancien responsable de ce programme, avait déclaré à CNN en 2017 qu'il pensait personnellement «qu'il existe des preuves très convaincantes que nous ne sommes peut-être pas seuls dans l’univers».
1998 OR2 will stay 3.9 million miles away from our planet.
Don't be fooled by any hyped-up headlines you may have read: This week's asteroid flyby poses no threat to Earth or anything on it.
The big asteroid 1998 OR2 will zoom within 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) of our planet early Wednesday morning (April 29). While that's a close shave in the context of the visible universe, which is more than 90 billion light-years wide, there's zero chance that the space rock will hit Earth on this pass, scientists stress.
Indeed, at its closest approach, the roughly 1.5-mile-wide (2.4 km) 1998 OR2 will still be about 16 times farther from us than the moon is from the Earth. (The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 239,000 miles, or 385,000 km.)
And you can let relief keep washing over you, for we know of no big asteroids that could harm us in the foreseeable future.
"There are no asteroids which have any significant chance of hitting the Earth that are of any significant size," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during a pre-recorded "NASA Science Live" webcast today (April 27). "There are none on our list."
That list is pretty comprehensive. NASA scientists think they've found and tracked more than 90% of the near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that are least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide, big enough to pose a global threat to humans should they line Earth up in their crosshairs.
But such relief should not breed complacency, said both Chodas and Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer and program executive of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. After all, the number of NEAs out there is enormous, so some big dangerous ones may still lurk out there undetected.
And asteroids commonly get jostled this way and that by the gravitational pulls of other objects, making it very difficult to model their orbits over the very long term. Given enough time, these jostles will eventually send a big space rock screaming toward Earth, as the dinosaurs' demise can attest.
"Impact of the Earth by an asteroid large enough to do damage at the surface is an extremely rare event, but it's an inevitable event," Johnson said during today's webcast.
That inevitability makes asteroid discovery and tracking efforts incredibly important, both he and Chodas said, because we're not as helpless as the dinosaurs. We can do something about an incoming asteroid if we spot it far enough in advance
For example, a lead time of five to 10 years is probably the minimum needed for humanity to mount a kinetic-impactor deflection mission, which would send a spacecraft out to knock the hazardous space rock off course, Chodas said.
If we have considerably more time than that, we might be able to employ the nonviolent "gravity tractor" method, slowly nudging the rock away from Earth with a fly-along probe. And if we have very little time at all, we might have to quite literally employ the nuclear option.
Former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid said Tuesday that the three UFO videos released by the U.S. Navy Tuesday “only scratches the surface” of the Pentagon’s research into UFOs and that the government should consider releasing more information to the American people.
Reid, who was a senator for 30 years and was Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015, helped to create a so-called “black budget” for the Pentagon’s UFO program, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, according to a 2017 New York Times investigation that revealed its existence. The program was run by Luis Elizondo, who shared UFO videos filmed by the military with former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge’s UFO group, To the Stars Academy. The videos, called GIMBAL, GOFAST, and FLIR, have circulated widely over the last three years and were finally officially published by the Navy Monday. Elizondo now works for DeLonge’s organization.
Reid tweeted that he is “glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.”
Motherboard and Popular Mechanics have reported that the military has a classified version of the FLIR video, which was filmed off the coast of California in 2004; Reid seems to suggest that there exists many more files and documents.
Elizondo and other Pentagon officials have said that the AATIP program is intended to identify “unknown aerial phenomena,” with the idea being that advanced aircraft could pose some sort of threat to national security. While many people hear “UFO” and immediately think “aliens,” the thinking in much of the UFO community is that the U.S. government and other countries’ militaries are hiding highly advanced, stealth aircraft.
The leaking of these three videos spurred a renaissance in UFOlogy over the last few years, and their official release has created another wave of interest in the government’s UFO research. There does indeed seem to be movement in this space—last year, the military officially partnered with DeLonge’s organization to study “exotic” materials, and more details have slowly trickled out about a series of government programs that studied UFOs.
Moving on from my earlier article – on the strange alien abduction affair of 1980 involving policeman Alan Godfrey– I thought I would share with you several more cases that involve UFOs and the strange things seen inside them. From 2003 to 2009 I lectured at Ryan Wood’s annual UFO Crash-Retrieval Conference, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. As is so often the case at such conferences, an attendee came up to me at the 2008 event with a very strange story to tell. Aged around thirty he said that his now-retired father had worked out at Area 51 in the early 1980s, specifically in the development of Stealth technology for military aircraft. The guy said that on several occasions, in the 1990s, he had asked his father about the rumors of crashed UFOs and dead aliens held at the secret vase. His father said that the only thing he knew about aliens at Area 51 came from watching TV shows. Indeed, he told his son that he had never seen any evidence at all of alien-related activity at Area 51. But, there was one strange event that the man was willing to share with his son – and which was then shared with me.
The story told to me was that on one occasion in January 1981, a pedal bike was found deep in a remote part of the vast amount of land that is collectively known as Area 51. Yes, a bicycle. The highly-sophisticated sensors that are carefully placed all around the facility had picked up the sudden presence of something not far from one such sensor. So, a security team was quickly sent out to investigate. It was that team, I was told, which found the bike. There was, though, something very strange about the bicycle: it was extensively damaged – as if it had plummeted to the ground from a great height. The source of the story came to believe (or, more likely, to suspect) that someone had been abducted onto a UFO while riding their bike – and the bike was taken onto an alien craft, too. After which, the bike was thrown out from a great height and down onto Area 51! I guess such a thing is possible.
Moving on, and getting into really controversial areas, I have three cases on file that deal with sightings – by alien abductees – of so-called “Alien Big Cats” on-board UFOs. Yes, I can already see certain mainstream cryptozoologists clenching their fists and letting their blood-pressure soar out of control. Too bad. The UK, in particular, has a long history of sightings of Alien Big Cats, or ABCs. They are erroneously and often referred to as “black panthers.” Most cryptozoologists suggest they are escapees from private zoos and enclosures. Or, perhaps, they may have been secretly released into the wild, when their owners could no longer handle them. None of the above, however, explains why or how I have no less than three cases in my files – all from the English county of Devon, oddly – of alien abductees seeing large and menacing ABCs on-board UFOs. And at the exact time the person is at the mercy of the black-eyed, dwarfish Grays of UFO lore.
The creepiest story of all came from a Houston, Texas-based woman. She told me, back in 2002 or 2003, of her experience with the Grays in the winter of 1977. Her abduction story was very much like so many others that have become staple parts of Ufology. What set it apart, however, was when one of the Grays took out of a box and placed onto her stomach something that looked like a large spider, but with way more legs. Like something out of a horror movie it crawled up her body, onto her face, and inserted one its spindly legs into her right nostril. For a moment there was a flash of pain. Then, nothing. Except that the woman suddenly found herself back in her car that she had been abducted from, hours earlier. Should you ever be taken onto a UFO, be careful: the Grays might not be the worst thing you get to encounter!
The saga of the Navy UFO videos, which began in 2017, has been a long, strange, and sort of boring. Which is weird, considering this is a tale of the United States military acknowledging the existence of unidentified flying objects—sorry, aerial phenomena. Since the three UFO videos were leaked in 2017, it has been a slow grind of half-hearted attempts of obfuscation on the part of the military followed, inevitably, by the acknowledgment that these videos are real and do show something unidentified. In other words, it’s been three years of confirming what everyone already knew. Maybe that’s being a bit jaded. Another way to say it is that it’s been a long stretch with the military repeatedly saying that UFOs are real after the dude from Blink-182 leaked their videos. Right, sorry, that’s not boring, it’s absurd. In September of last year, the Navy acknowledged that the videos were real and did show UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, the military’s preferred terminology because they just have to be different). Now the Pentagon is formally releasing the videos after determining that they do not show any secret military tech.
The three videos show grainy footage of two separate incidents of something flying at high speeds which the cameras struggle to track. The first, filmed in 2004, is the famous “tic-tac” UFO seen by Commander David Fraver of the USS Nimitz. The second incident was captured by two pilots in 2015 and shows another UAP rotating in mid-air. According to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough, the Pentagon has released the videos to “clear up any misconceptions” about whether they are real and whether there is anything more to them. That’s beautiful bureaucratic language, isn’t it? We’ve got things flying around at impossible speeds, spinning, all sorts of weird stuff, and this is how you clear up “any misconceptions.” In a statement, the Department of Defense writes:
“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.
The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as “unidentified.”
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO.
Unfortunately, it seems this might have done the opposite of clearing things up. For one, if these videos don’t show any sensitive capabilities or systems, then that seems to imply that these things aren’t secret military tech that these pilots just weren’t privy to. And nothing in the release of these videos seems to give any indication of what these UAP might be or what anyone thinks they might be.
Former Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who was instrumental in securing the funding for the Pentagon’s not-so-secret UFO programs AATIP and AAWSAP tweeted his response to the videos’ release. Reid wrote:
I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.
So at the end of the day have we learned anything new? Not really. But it is a direct confirmation that the videos are real, do not show any classified military tech, and that the objects remain “unidentified.” There’s nothing about aliens, fae-folk, or sky-captain Bigfoot in the release of the videos, and if the military does know whether or not Bigfoot is tooling around our skies posing a threat to the national security of the United States, they ain’t telling. For now, the only conclusion is that the videos are real and we still have no idea what UFOs are.
Ever since their unauthorized leaks, the so-called Tic Tac UFO videos have been the darlings of the mainstream media which pretty much ignores almost all other UFO sightings and reports. If they’re covered at all, it’s usually on back pages (for those who still read newspapers) or deep withing their websites. That was the case once again this week as every mainstream media site announced that the Pentagon had “officially” released the three Tic Tac and similar videos of still “unidentified” aerial phenomena. While the mainstream salivates over this old news, let’s attempt to give the same kind of attention to another story this week of an alleged on-the-ground flying saucer-like object spotted in Antarctica using Google Earth. (Photo here.)
“In the images provided by Google Earth we can see a silver circular object that has nothing to do with the rest of the surface.”
The Tic Tac UFO
The Tic Tacs have their Luis Elizondo and Tom DeLonge – this Antarctic UFO has Marcelo Irazusta, a well-known Argentine UFO researcher. It appears he found this one in December 2019 and uploaded it then (watch it here) to the YouTube site Planeta Snakedos, where it languished until this week when a clip from the video was posted by UFOMania. The location is given as “Coordinates: 64 ° 7’2.78 “S 61 ° 40’48.23” W,” which is on Graham Land, a northern piece of portion of the Antarctic Peninsula belonging to Argentina.
“From the International space station, several unknown objects (UFOs) were captured in a video near its limits, NASA estimates to cover them up and continues with its recurring role of censoring the evidence that can support that something happens in space.”
The Tic Tacs were spotted by U.S. military personnel and equipment, so Irazusta points out that Google Earth belongs to NASA. And, like the Tic Tacs, many anomalies that appear on Google Earth or on video feeds from the International Space Station are removed, hidden, filed away and otherwise kept from the public view until they’re leaked or discovered.
“It is clearly an artificial object and very similar to classic flying saucers.”
Here’s where the Antarctic object and the Tic Tacs deviate. The Antarctic object appears to be round and reflective and some commenters estimate its size as about 15 meters in diameter. While it certainly could be a case of pareidolia – after all, Irazuta is a UFO investigator – it definitely looks like something that could be a craft. On the other hand, the Tic Tacs aren’t referred to as Tic Tacs for nothing – they look like little white oval mint candies. That’s true from the videos, the radar images, the descriptions, everything. They don’t look like any conventional or any secret-son-of-conventional aircraft developed by humans and the coverage of them doesn’t give sizes or any further descriptions that help imagine them as alien spacecraft. Yet the Tic Tacs are in The New York Times and the Graham Land object is on Planeta Snakedos.
Ice can fool the eye
“Hello community, referring to the first section of the video about the UFO in Antarctica, to say that it can be very deceptive with a block of ice, I do not discuss it, but from my point of view, totally metallic, not ice.”
Should Marcelo Irazusta send his videos (yes, he has many others) to Tom DeLonge? Or should he find some other celebrity UFO fan to sponsor him? (How about Dan Aykroyd?) Should he narrow his Google Earth searches to the U.S. in order to get a politician like former Senator Harry Reid to champion him? Should he start a GoFundMe page to raise money for his own expedition?
The point of this discussion is not to suggest the media give attention to every UFO or strange anomaly report. Rather, it’s to request that some of the attention given to the Tic Tac UFOs be directed at some other reports. Let’s use some of the energy spent demanding the truth from governments on searching for more anomalies, sightings and possible evidence of our own. Sure, it may turn out to be drones (whatever happened to those strange drones in Colorado anyway?) or shadows or reflections or something else. Don’t wait for the powers that be to give you their data – start giving it to THEM!
The Hollow Earth Science, Recent Experiment Shows it Could Be Real After All
The Hollow Earth Science, Recent Experiment Shows it Could Be Real After All
COAST TO COAST AM – Electrical engineer and physicist Brooks Agnew shared updates on a variety of topics, including his work on a North Pole Inner-Earth expedition, his theory of Earth being made of two planets, and the human consciousness evolution.
In 2007, a hypothesis was proposed that the core of the Earth might be a solid iron crystal that has been there for around four billion years. But the science behind this didn’t work, Agnew said, so a new lab experiment was conducted in 2012, which indicated that the core of the Earth has only been around for less than one billion years.
If this is the case, he continued, that means the crust is thick at the equators and thin at the poles.
'The Most Dangerous Place in the History of Planet Earth' Revealed
'The Most Dangerous Place in the History of Planet Earth' Revealed
Predator paradise – The giant predatory dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus eyes a group of Elosuchus – crocodile-like hunters – near a carcass.
Artwork by Davide Bonadonna
100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area of Cretaceous rock formations in south-eastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.
The review, published in the journal ZooKeys, “provides a window into Africa’s Age of Dinosaurs” according to lead author Dr Nizar Ibrahim, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Detroit Mercy and Visiting Researcher from the University of Portsmouth.
About 100 million years ago, the area was home to a vast river system, filled with many different species of aquatic and terrestrial animals. Fossils from the Kem Kem Group include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, including the sabre-toothed Carcharodontosaurus (over 8m in length with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long) and Deltadromeus (around 8m in length, a member of the raptor family with long, unusually slender hind limbs for its size), as well as several predatory flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and crocodile-like hunters. Dr Ibrahim said: “This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”
Many of the predators were relying on an abundant supply of fish, according to co-author Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth. He said: “This place was filled with absolutely enormous fish, including giant coelacanths and lungfish. The coelacanth, for example, is probably four or even five times large than today’s coelacanth. There is an enormous freshwater saw shark called Onchopristis with the most fearsome of rostral teeth, they are like barbed daggers, but beautifully shiny.”
Researchers from the Universities of Detroit, Chicago, Montana, Portsmouth (UK), Leicester (UK, David Unwin), Casablanca (Morocco), and McGill (Canada), as well as the Paris Museum of Natural History, have produced the first detailed and fully illustrated account of the fossil-rich escarpment, previously known as the “Kem Kem beds”. The researchers now define this sedimentary package as the Kem Kem Group, which consists of two distinct formations, the Gara Sbaa Formation and the Douira Formation.
To assemble the huge datasets and fossil images, which were originally included in his PhD thesis, Dr Ibrahim visited Kem Kem collections on several continents.
Shedding light on Africa’s ancient past is important says Professor Martill, “This is the most comprehensive piece of work on fossil vertebrates from the Sahara in almost a century, since the famous German palaeontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach published his last major work in 1936.”
Contacts and sources:
Kate Daniell University of Portsmouth
Publication:
Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco Nizar Ibrahim, Paul C. Sereno, David J. Varricchio, David M. Martill, Didier B. Dutheil, David M. Unwin, Lahssen Baidder, Hans C. E. Larsson, Samir Zouhri, Abdelhadi Kaoukaya http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.928.47517
In 2019, the Navy confirmed the legitimacy of those videos—which show bizarre encounters between Navy fighter pilots and “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but said they were never intended for public release.
The U.S. Navy has officially published three videos that show UFOs are genuine, several years after the notorious clips first leaked online and properly ushered in the UFO renaissance. Last year, the Navy confirmed the three videos, taken by Navy pilots, indeed show “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but the service also said the footage should have never been released to the public in the first place.
The Navy just dropped the three videos—titled “FLIR.mp4,” “GOFAST.wmv,” and “GIMBAL.wmv”—on its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) page, a repository for documents released under the federal law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of U.S. government information to the public. The clips were first released in 2017 and 2018 by The New York Times and To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research group from former blink-182 member Tom DeLonge.
In November 2004, Navy fighter pilots with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group spotted a strange, Tic Tac-shaped UFO—“around 40 feet long and oval in shape”—about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. “FLIR” shows this encounter. Then, in January 2015, an F/A-18F fighter jet off the East Coast captured additional videos using the aircraft’s onboard Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod. “GIMBAL” and “GOFAST” show this encounter. In the videos, air crews loudly debate what the objects are and where they came from.
“The Department of Defense [DOD] has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015, which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough says in a statement.
In September 2019, the Navy admitted the clips were legitimate, and the objects shown are “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP), the catch-all term for the “sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects that have been observed entering/operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training ranges,” per a spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare.
“After a thorough review,” Gough says, “the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Gough says DOD released the videos in order to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.”
“The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified,’” says Gough.
But our reporting suggests there is more to this story. In November 2019, Popular Mechanics interviewed several Nimitz witnesses, who said they saw a longer, better video of the encounter than the one released to the public. One witness, for example, told us he “definitely saw video that was roughly 8 to 10 minutes long and a lot more clear.”
Then, in January, Popular Mechanics published a follow-up feature called “The Tale of the Tape,” a thorough examination of the video’s convoluted history that shed light on exactly how the clip made its way into the mainstream. And one month later, we revealed even more secrets about The Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program.
Navy Releases Video of 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'
Navy Releases Video of 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'
The Defense Department has declassified three videos that had previously been unofficially circulating in the public. The clips show three incidents described by the Defense Department as “unidentified aerial phenomena.” One of the videos was recorded in November 2004, and the other two were recorded in January 2015.
US Navy pilot LT. Ryan Graves goes on the record with his firsthand account of a UFO sighting while flying training missions over the Atlantic ocean in this clip from Season 1, “UFO Fleet.”
Asteroid warning: NASA tracks a 4KM asteroid approach - Could end civilisation if it hits
Asteroid warning: NASA tracks a 4KM asteroid approach - Could end civilisation if it hits
CLARIFICATION: This article originally claimed that asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2) will approach our planet in April, and that the rock would be "heading our way". In fact it will pass on close approach at an estimated distance of 3.9 million miles from Earth. The article was also accompanied by a graphic showing a stylised asteroid hitting Earth. The diameter of that stylised asteroid was 1,500km, not the 4.1km which asteroid 52768 (1998OR2) actually measures. That graphic has been removed. In addition, a graphic marked 'asteroid warning' has also been removed.
An asteroid which is big enough to end civilisation should it ever hit will make a close approach to our planet in April, NASA's asteroid trackers have found. Theasteroidis listed by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies' (CNEOS) in California, US. The asteroid has been officially called 52768 (1998 OR2) and is estimated measure up 2.5 miles (4.1km) across.
An object this big could potentially kill millions of people if it ever hit the planet in the distant future.
Although the asteroid in question, 52768 (1998 OR2), has been deemed safe by NASA there are cosmic processes that could influence an asteroid to change its trajectory onto an Earth-bound one.
NASA has dubbed asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2) “potentially hazardous”, which describes the small possibility of an Earth-bound collision at a later, unspecified date.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California: “A relatively small number of near-Earth objects pass close enough to Earth and are large enough in size to warrant close observation.
“That's because the gravitational tug of the planets could, over time, cause an object's orbital path to evolve into an Earth-crossing orbit. This allows for the possibility of a future collision.”
The findings are supported by Dr Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society who said, however unlikely, asteroids can be shifted from their path by the gravitational effects of planets and other bodies in the solar system.
Dr Betts said: “The effects of Mars’ gravity and Jupiter’s gravity can actually dislodge some asteroids from the inner asteroid belt and that is where we think most near Earth asteroids come from.”
Another process by which an asteroid can change paths is known as the Yarkovsky effect and is caused by an asteroid in direct sunlight heating and cooling down to release radiation from its surface.
Asteroid: NASA is tracking the movement of a 4.1km space rock
(Image: GETTY)
NASA said: “This radiation exerts a force on the asteroid, acting as a sort of mini-thruster that can slowly change the asteroid's direction over time.”
There is also a third scenario by which an asteroid could be hit by another object and break into smaller chunks, sending them towards Earth.
Although astronomers have never directly observed such a hit, there is some evidence to suggest the asteroid that struck Earth about 65 million was the result of such a collision.
According to astronomer Deborah Byrd, founder EarthSky, the so-called Chicxulub meteor could have been created by asteroids colliding some 100 million years ago.
She said: “One fragment of that ancient smashup might have struck Earth 65 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, according to astronomers.”
But the likelihood of any of these scenarios unfolding in the foreseeable future is extremely low and once astronomers determine a rock's trajectory it is unlikely to change.
NASA said of potential risks: "As more and more observations are used to further improve an object's orbit, we become more and more confident in our knowledge of where the object will be in the future."
As the space agency points out, no human is known to have died from a cosmic impact in the last 1,000 years.
NASA said: “It's likely that we could identify a threatening near-Earth object large enough to potentially cause catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment, and most astronomers believe that a systematic approach to studying asteroids and comets that pass close to the Earth makes good sense.
“It's too late for the dinosaurs, but today astronomers are conducting ever-increasing searches to identify all of the larger objects which pose an impact danger to Earth.”
NASA estimates the rock is travelling at speeds of about 8.7km per second or 19,461mph (31,320kmh).
At this rate, the asteroid will make a close approach to Earth on April 29.
When this happens, NASA said the asteroid will make a “close approach” to our planet.
According to the Planetary Society, an asteroid bigger than 0.6 miles (1km) across is big enough to threaten global destruction.
Astronomers estimate such objects have a one in 50,000 chance of hitting Earth every 100 years.
The Planetary Society lists the following impacts: “A crater of 10km or more: global devastation and possible collapse of civilisation.”
Asteroid facts: What is a close approach?
(Image: EXPRESS/GETTY)
Dr Bruce Betts from the international group of astronomers said: “Small asteroids – few metres – hit frequently and burn up in the atmosphere and do little damage.
“Chelyabinsk size asteroids – about 20m that hit in 2013 – create shock waves that shatter windows and cause injuries.
“Tunguska sized – about 40m that hit Siberia in 1908 – could completely destroy a city or create a tsunami.
“Larger asteroids that hit on average less often could cause regional destruction.
“Even larger asteroids that hit even less frequently could cause a global catastrophe.”
The destructive potential of space rocks this big was also outlined in a 2018 report published by the US National Science and Technology Council.
The National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy reads: “Objects close to and larger than one kilometre can cause damage on a global scale.
“They can trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and other secondary effects that extend far beyond the immediate impact area.”
For comparison, the asteroid that is believed to have killed the dinosaurs measured about six miles (10km) across.
Asteroid OR2 will drastically cut this down to just 3.9 million miles (6.29 million km) on April 29.
In other words, the space rock is expected to miss us by about 16.36 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
Dr Betts said: “There are a few asteroids that currently are known to have a low probability of hitting Earth in tens to hundreds of years.
“For example, one of the highest probabilities currently is an approximately 37m diameter asteroid called 2000 SG344 that has a 1 in 1100 chance of impact in 2071.
“But these always are based on asteroid observations that have uncertainties in them.”
Have you heard about an asteroid close-approach happening on April 29? Asteroid 1998 OR2 poses no threat to our planet, but we can still learn a lot by studying it. Don’t miss a special Planetary Defense episode of NASA Science Live on Monday, April 27 at 3:00 p.m. EDT to learn how we find, track and monitor asteroids and near-Earth Objects.
Pentagon Releases Statement On UFO Videos, Because Something Big Is On Its Way To Earth, UFO Sighting News.
Pentagon Releases Statement On UFO Videos, Because Something Big Is On Its Way To Earth, UFO Sighting News.
The Pentagon on Monday released three unclassified videos showing UFOs in an attempt to assure the public that the videos, which have been circulating for years, are real. The videos have been making their rounds ever since 2007. "After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," the Department of Defense said in a statement Monday. -------------------------------------------------------------- I find this intriguing in the fact that it was the Pentagon that made the official announcement and that they did from the DOD. For the US government to come out and admit that the videos are real means they know that something big is coming soon. For instance...earth got a new moon starting Nov 2019...the same time that Coronavirus began circulating in China. Which means...it came for a purpose...to watch, to learn and to report back all that its seen and heard. And since the probe is known by the US gov and NASA...none of which know what to do about it...the US gov is trying to quickly leak out real info to the public to make any sudden announcement less of a blow. Something big has been notices by the US government...something big enough to scare them. That moon may have friends on its way. And if thats true...then we are in danger. Scott C. Waring
Statue Found On Mars Of Half Goat Half Human Animal, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Statue Found On Mars Of Half Goat Half Human Animal, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: April 23, 2020 Location of discovery: Mars I found this strange artistic statue on Mars today. It has a nose, cheeks and eyes of a human, but ears of a goat, leges like a horse, but the back leg has the hoof reversed pointing the opposite direction. The chiseled face makes me know this is a statue that was created...although the creature looks like it just collapsed in place. Only two of its leges are visible...one front, folded under itself, and a back leg. This is very primitive art compared to human art...but I have seen some art on walls in museums that didn't deserve to be called art...for instance the art on Mars looks like something that Damien Hirst, a UK artist made. Very odd indeed, and yet...its still art. So...everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it. Thats why there are artists...to show you the possibilities that exist. Scott C. Waring – Taiwan
I went to the Venus NASA map and it was no longer working. Its ok, I got my own copy of it I downloaded last year. Let me show you why they took this map down. There are many alien cities visible on this map. Some so big...they look like a single structure, but are actually bigger than the city of Los Angeles...my place of birth. Just like LA this wheel structure extends 70 km across. I found that the structure above has a wheel like design and is very similar to descriptions of the ancient city of Atlantis. Can you see the tunnels, the intelligent design? Its just extraordinary to see, let alone to think about. I never expected the US gov to take down the Venus map, but lucky I had a copy of it. I will continue to post structures from it now and then. And a personal message to NASA, you will never be able to hide the existence of other alien species by hitting the delete button. That is so 1980s of you. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Pentagon formally releases 3 Navy videos showing "unidentified aerial phenomena"
BY STEFAN BECKET
Washington — The Pentagon on Monday formally released three unclassified videos taken by Navy pilots that have circulated for years showing interactions with "unidentified aerial phenomena."
One of the videos shows an incident from 2004, and the other two were recorded in January 2015, according to Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman. The videos became public after unauthorized leaks in 2007 and 2017, and the Navy previously verified their authenticity.
"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," Gough said.
The 2004 incident occurred about 100 miles out in the Pacific, according to The New York Times, which first reported on the video in 2017. Two fighter pilots on a routine training mission were dispatched to investigate unidentified aircraft that a Navy cruiser had been tracking for weeks.
The Navy pilots found an oblong object about 40 feet long hovering about 50 feet above the water, and it began a rapid ascent as the pilots approached before quickly flying away. "It accelerated like nothing I've ever seen," one of the pilots told The Times.
An unidentified object seen in footage captured by the Navy in 2004.DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The pilots left the area to meet at a rendezvous point a
bout 60 miles away. When they were still about 40 miles out, the ship radioed and said the object was at the rendezvous point, having traversed the distance "in less than a minute," the pilot told The Times.
The two other videos of incidents in 2015 include footage of objects moving rapidly through the air. In one, an object is seen racing through the sky and begins rotating in midair.
Footage released by the Defense Department shows an object rotating in midair in January 2015.DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
"Dude, this is a f--king drone, bro," a pilot exclaims on the video. Another person says "there's a whole fleet of them."
"They're all going against the wind. The wind's 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing, dude!" the first person says. "It's rotating!"
In the other 2015 video, an object is shown from above speeding over the ocean, prompting the pilot to excitedly remark, "What the f--k is that?"
Footage released by the Defense Department shows an object speeding over the ocean in January 2015.DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Five Navy pilots who spotted the objects in 2015 told The Times in 2017 that they had a series of interactions with unidentified aircraft during training missions in 2014 and 2015 along the East Coast from Virginia to Florida. The episodes prompted the Navy to clarify how pilots should report experiences with "unidentified aerial phenomena," which had been studied under a Pentagon program from 2007 to 2012.
Gough, the Pentagon spokeswoman, said the department was formally releasing the videos to address questions about their veracity.
"DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos," Gough said. "The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified.'"
Het Pentagon heeft drie opvallende video’s vrijgegeven waarin te zien is hoe Amerikaanse marinepiloten tijdens trainingsvluchten in contact komen met ‘ongeïdentificeerde vliegende objecten’ - UFO’s. De korrelige video’s, die volgens het Pentagon ‘onverklaarde luchtfenomenen’ tonen, werden al eerder gelekt. Nu zijn de video’s officieel ‘declassified’ verklaard en gedeeld met het grote publiek. Daarmee wordt meteen ook bevestigd dat het gaat om authentieke beelden.
Pentagon geeft nu zelf drie gelekte UFO-video’s vrij
De grijze, korte, onduidelijke, maar wel ophefmakende beelden begonnen in 2007 en 2017 te circuleren na een ongeautoriseerd lek. Ze tonen wat marinepiloten zagen tijdens trainingsvluchten in 2004 en 2015. Twee video’s werden eerder gepubliceerd door The New York Times, de andere video werd vrijgegeven door een private organisatie. Te zien is hoe ongeïdentificeerde vliegende objecten pijlsnel door de lucht bewegen, ze worden maar heel kort opgepikt door infraroodcamera’s.
Het gebeurde extreem abrupt, als een pingpongbal die van de muur afketst. Alsof het iets raakte en in de andere richting werd gekatapulteerd
Vooral het commentaar van de betrokken piloten in de twee video’s uit 2015 is fascinerend. Ze zijn duidelijk onder de indruk van de snelheid van de objecten en kunnen hun ogen niet geloven. “My god. Het gaat tegen de wind”, zegt een stem. “Kijk naar dat ding!”, klinkt het. “Het is aan het draaien!” In de andere video juicht een piloot: “Yes, ik heb het”, als hij het in zijn camera kan vastgrijpen. “Kijk hoe het vliegt! Wow.”
In 2017 verklaarde de intussen gepensioneerde marinepiloot David Fravor, die de beelden uit 2004 maakte (zonder geluid), dat het object dat hij had gezien, “bewoog op manieren die hij niet kon uitleggen”.
(Lees verder onder de foto)
Pentagon
Geautoriseerd
Het Pentagon zegt dat het de beelden nu besluit vrij t
e geven “om eventuele misvattingen bij het publiek weg te nemen over het vraagstuk of het circulerende beeldmateriaal wel echt was en of er meer aan de video’s was”, zo luidt het in een statement van het ministerie van Defensie.
“Na een diepgaand onderzoek heeft het ministerie besloten dat een geautoriseerde vrijgave van deze video’s geen enkele gevoelige informatie qua capaciteiten of systemen onthult en ook geen afbreuk doet aan eventuele nog volgende onderzoeken naar ongeïdentificeerde luchtverschijnselen in het militaire luchtruim”, is te lezen. Verder klinkt het dat de fenomenen geobserveerd in de video’s onder de noemer blijven van ‘ongeïdentificeerd’.
Speculaties
Dat het Pentagon de video’s nu zelf vrijgeeft, draagt bij tot de legitimering van de beelden. Het zal ongetwijfeld alleen maar de speculaties voeden dat mensen mogelijk in contact zijn gekomen met buitenaardse wezens.
Het Pentagon bestudeerde eerder opnames van luchtontmoetingen met onbekende objecten als deel van een ‘classified program’ dat in 2007 werd opgezet in opdracht van de toenmalige Amerikaanse Democratische Senaatsfractieleider Harry Reid. Maar in 2012 eindigde het geheime programma - het ‘Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program’ - omdat er werd geoordeeld dat er andere prioriteiten waren die budgetten nodig hadden.
“Eindelijk”
Het voormalige hoofd van het programma, Luis Elizondo, verklaarde in 2017 aan CNN dat hij gelooft dat er “overtuigend bewijs is dat we misschien niet alleen zijn”. “Deze vliegtuigen - laten we het vliegtuigen noemen - hebben kenmerken die niet bekend zijn”, zei hij over de objecten die hij had bestudeerd.
Ex-senator Reid tweette maandag dat hij “blij” is dat het Pentagon “eindelijk” de video’s heeft vrijgegeven, maar dat het “maar het topje van de ijsberg is van het onderzoek en beschikbaar materiaal”.
Senator Harry Reid✔@SenatorReid
I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.
HELSINKI — China has named its first independent interplanetary mission Tianwen-1, with the combined Mars orbiter and rover spacecraft apparently proceeding towards launch in July.
The name and mission logo were unveiled at a China National Space Administration online ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the country’s first satellite. DFH-1 launched on a Long March 1 rocket from Jiuquan April 24, 1970, making China the fifth country to independently launch a satellite.
Tianwen-1, meaning ‘questions to heaven’, is taken from the name of a long-form poem by Qu Yuan, a poet born in the fourth century B.C., according to CNSA chief engineer Ge Xiaochun.
The ‘Lanxingjiutian’ logo includes representations of the Latin letter ‘c’, referring to China, cooperation, and the cosmic velocity required to undertake planetary exploration. Further Chinese planetary missions will also carry the Tianwen name.
China is understood to be planning a Mars sample return mission, a Jupiter orbiter and considering possible missions to icy giants and interstellar space. A joint near-Earth asteroid sample return and comet rendezvous mission has also been proposed.
Spacecraft delivered, rocket engines tested
Few details of the Tianwen-1 mission have been released so far. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to have a wet mass of around 5 metric tons. Launch on a Long March 5 launcher is expected from Wenchang early in the short launch window to Mars open in late July and early August.
The YF-77 liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen engines for the Long March 5 passed tests in January. The same engines were the cause of the failure of the second Long March 5 launch in 2017.
Comprehensive software and hardware tests of the spacecraft were completed in March. The spacecraft has apparently been delivered to Wenchang Satellite Launch Center.
The test launch of the Long March 5B—currently expected in early May—will likely need to succeed for the Tianwen-1 mission to proceed. Following that mission, the Yuanwang-21 and -22 cargo vessels will collect the components of the Long March 5 for Tianwen-1 from Tianjin, north China, for delivery to Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan.µ
Tianwen-1 orbiter, lander details
The Tianwen-1 orbiter will be equipped with a high-resolution camera comparable to HiRise on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It also carries a medium-resolution camera, subsurface radar, mineralogy spectrometer, neutral and energetic particle analyzers and a magnetometer. The orbiter will also play a relay role for the mission rover.
The roughly 240-kilogram solar-powered rover is nearly twice the mass of China’s Yutu lunar rovers. It will carry a ground-penetrating radar, multispectral camera, a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument and payloads for detecting the climate and magnetic environment. The rover has a mission design lifetime of three Earth months. The rover will receive a name through a public vote closer to launch.
China has outlined two landing areas, with a candidate landing site in Utopia Planitia. The landing ellipse is understood to be around 100 x 40 kilometers. Site selection was driven by a range of factors including flight system engineering constraints and the challenges of entry, descent and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet, and the science goals of the mission.
The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to reach Mars around February 2021. However, the rover landing attempt may not take place immediately. There are suggestions that the landing segment of the mission will be conducted months later, in April. This would allow mapping and observation of the landing site, despite the availability of high-resolution NASA imagery from HiRise.
The Tianwen-1 mission will join NASA’s Perseverance Mars 2020 rover and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter, which this week shipped to its launch site in Japan, in launching during the July-August Mars launch window. ESA’s Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover has been delayed to the next opportunity in 2022.
Map indicating two preliminary landing areas for China’s 2020 Mars rover presented at the sessions of COPUOS in Vienna, Austria in June 2018. Credit: CNSA
Starship SN4 just took a big step toward a test flight.
The newest prototype of SpaceX's Starship Mars-colonizing spacecraft just passed a crucial pressure test, likely setting the stage for a test flight in the near future.
Starship SN4 survived a "cryo pressure test" late Sunday night (April 26) at SpaceX's South Texas site, near the village of Boca Chica, company founder and CEOElon Musk announced.
"SN4 passed cryo proof!" Musk said via Twitter late Sunday Texas time (early morning on Monday, April 27, EDT), in a post that included a "relieved" emoji. "Great work by SpaceX engineering!" he added in another tweet.
Musk's excitement is understandable, for success was far from guaranteed. This trial, in which the vehicle is filled with frigid liquid nitrogen to simulate the conditions experienced during operational missions, which will use ultracold propellant, felled three previous prototypes over the past five months.
The SN4 can now progress to the next step of the development campaign: engine tests, which will culminate with a static fire of its single Raptor engine on the ground. In yet another late-night tweet, Musk said SpaceX aims to conduct the static fire later this week.
Provided that goes well, the SN4 ("Serial No. 4") will be cleared to fly, on an uncrewed test with a target altitude of 500 feet (150 meters) or so. SN4 would be the first full-size Starship prototype to fly, and the second of any sort; a stubby test vehicle called Starhopper got off the ground briefly last year but was soon retired.
Future Starship prototypes will go higher, powered by more Raptors. For example, the SN5 will sport three of the powerful, next-generation engines, Musk said in another tweet.
The operational Starship, whose design SpaceX is homing in on via rapid prototype iteration, will feature six Raptors. The 165-foot-tall (50 m) spaceship will launch off Earth atop a gigantic rocket known as Super Heavy, which will have room for 37 of the engines, Musk has said.
Both vehicles will be reusable. Super Heavy will come down to Earth for vertical touchdowns shortly after liftoff, just as the first stages of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets do now. Each Starship, meanwhile, will be able to fly many missions between Earth and Mars, or Earth and the moon, or anywhere else people (or payloads) need to go. (Starship will be powerful enough to launch itself off Mars and the moon, which have relatively weak gravitational pulls. Super Heavy is needed to get the craft off Earth, however
And SpaceX will make many Starships, if all goes according to plan. Musk's long-term vision involves sending a huge fleet of the 100-passenger vehicles off to Mars every 26 months, when the Red Planet and Earth are properly aligned for interplanetary trips. He sees Starship and Super Heavy as potentially slashing the cost of spaceflight enough to make Mars colonization — a driving ambition for the billionaire entrepreneur, and the main reason he founded SpaceX back in 2002 — economically feasible.
A cutting-edge implant has allowed a man to feel and move his hand again after a spinal cord injury left him partially paralyzed,Wired reports.
According to a press release, it’s the first time both motor function and sense of touch have been restored using a brain-computer interface (BCI), as described in a paper published in the journal Cell.
After severing his spinal cord a decade ago, Ian Burkhart had a BCI developed by researchers at Battelle, a private nonprofit specializing in medical tech, implanted in his brain in 2014.
The injury completely disconnected the electrical signals going from Burkhart’s brain to his hands, through the spinal cord. But the researchers figured they could skip the spinal cord to hook up Burkhart’s primary motor cortex to his hands through a relay.
A port in the back of his skull sends signals to a computer. Special software decodes the signals and splits them between signals corresponding to motion and touch respectively. Both of these signals are then sent out to a sleeve of electrodes around Burkhart’s forearm.
But making sense of these signals is extremely difficult.
“We’re separating thoughts that are occurring almost simultaneously and are related to movements and sub-perceptual touch, which is a big challenge,” lead researcher at Battelle Patrick Ganzer told Wired.
The team saw some early successes regarding movement — the initial goal of the BCI — allowing Burkhart to press buttons along the neck of a “Guitar Hero” controller.
But returning touch to his hand was a much more daunting task. By using a simple vibration device or “wearable haptic system,” Burkhart was able to tell if he was touching an object or not without seeing it.
“It’s definitely strange,” Burkhart told Wired. “It’s still not normal, but it’s definitely much better than not having any sensory information going back to my body.”
In the first discovery of its kind, researchers in France have found that 19 asteroids in our solar system – between the planets Jupiter and Neptune – they say are likely of interstellar origin.
Illustration depicting one of the Centhers think originated from interstellar space. It was orbiting the sun in an orbit highly perpendicular to the protoplanetary disk of dust and gas, and still maintains that orbit today.
Image via NASA/ CNRS.aur asteroids, which the researc
You likely heard about ‘Oumuamua, the strange asteroid-like object that entered our solar system from interstellar space in 2017. More recently, astronomers found a second interstellar object – definitely a comet this time, labeled 21/Borisov – in 2019. Both of those objects were only visitors to our solar system, passing through for a time before heading back out into interstellar space. Meanwhile, in 2018, the asteroid 2015 BZ509was also identified as being of interstellar origin. But this asteroid isn’t just passing through. It’s a permanent member of our solar system, orbiting the sun. Now, researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) say they’ve found the first known population of 19 interstellar asteroids, now-permanent members of our solar system that apparently originated from somewhere else in space.
Like 2015 BZ509, they are permanent residents of the solar system, belonging to a group of objects called Centaurs, small rocky bodies orbiting between the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt objects beyond Neptune.
The 19 new interstellar asteroids are in highly inclined orbits in contrast to other asteroids, comets or planets in our solar system.
The Centaurs (red dots) are small rocky objects generally between the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune (N) and the Trojans near Jupiter (J).
The new peer-reviewed findings were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) on April 23, 2020. The study was conducted by lead author Fathi Namouni, a CNRS researcher in the Laboratoire Lagrange and Helena Morais, researcher at UNESP in Brazil.
While these asteroids have been orbiting the sun for a long time, they did not originate here, according to the new research. Analysis indicates that they were not part of the original protoplanetary disk of dust and gas that surrounded our sun when it was first born 4.5 billion years ago, where the young planets were forming, so they must have come here from somewhere else. Namouni said in a statement:
The close proximity of the stars meant that they felt each others’ gravity much more strongly in those early days than they do today. This enabled asteroids to be pulled from one star system to another.
2015 BZ509, discovered in 2018, was the first permanent asteroid in the solar system (unlike ‘Oumuamua or 21/Borisov) determined to have originated from interstellar space.
Image via Christian Veillet/ Large Binocular Telescope Observatory/ CNRS.
So how did Namouni and Morais determine the interstellar origin of these asteroids?
They developed a precise computer simulation of the orbits of these asteroids. By doing so, they could “go back in time” to find out what the positions of the asteroids were in the distant past. The simulations showed that, like now, the asteroids were eccentric, orbiting the sun highly perpendicular to the orbits of the young planets and other objects at the time. They were also located far away from the protoplanetary disk itself. These two findings indicate that the asteroids did not form in the protoplanetary disk along with all the other objects in our solar system, but rather they must have originated from somewhere else, perhaps another star, and were caught by the sun’s gravity early in the solar system’s history.
Morais commented:
The discovery of a whole population of asteroids of interstellar origin is an important step in understanding the physical and chemical similarities and differences between solar system-born and interstellar asteroids. This population will give us clues about the sun’s early birth cluster, how interstellar asteroid capture occurred, and the role that interstellar matter had in chemically enriching the solar system and shaping its evolution.
Artist’s concept of ‘Oumuamua, whose actual appearance is unknown. While it was actually the first rocky interstellar visitor identified, in 2017, it didn’t remain in our solar system like the asteroids discussed in the new study have.
These asteroids are similar to 2015 BZ509, which shares an orbit with Jupiter, but is traveling in the opposite direction. In 2018, the same researchers, Namouni and Morais, found that the asteroid has always had that retrograde orbit, going back to the birth of the solar system. This suggested it came from a nearby star system, and was captured by Jupiter’s gravity. 2015 BZ509 was first spotted in the Pan-STARRS survey in 2015.
It’s still possible that there could be another explanation for asteroids like these, but as they explained in a recent Gizmodo article on April 23, 2020, Namouni and Morais seem confident in their conclusions. They’ve faced some skepticism from other scientists, but so far no peer-reviewed papers have been published refuting their results. Only time will tell if their results continue to stand up to scrutiny, but at the moment, it seems that they have established a good case for some Centaurs (and perhaps some other similar objects in the solar system?) having an extraterrestrial origin.
Fathi Namouni of CNRS, lead author of the new study.
Objects like ‘Oumuamua and 21/Borisov were more difficult to study, since they were only in our solar system for a relatively short amount of time. But these other 19 asteroids, although far away from Earth, keep orbiting the sun, making it easier to observe them remotely over long time periods. If they truly are interstellar, then they offer a unique opportunity to examine asteroids that are alien to our solar system, and compare them to asteroids that were already here when the solar system began to form. Additional analysis could show how they differ in appearance or composition to asteroids that formed here, and provide valuable clues as to how asteroids and other rocky bodies form around other stars.
Bottom line: A new study from CNRS reveals that 19 asteroids in our solar system are actually of interstellar origin.
Astronomers have found nineteen interstellar asteroids orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune. These asteroids previously belonged to a distant star system and have been orbiting our sun for approximately 4.5 billion years –the same time as the birth of our solar system.
It is believed that when the universe expanded, these asteroids were grabbed from their original star system and ended up staying in our own solar system because of the gravitational pull from our sun. “The close proximity of the stars meant that they felt each other’s gravity much more strongly in those early days than they do today,” explained Fathi Namouni who is from the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur in France and is the lead author of the study (which can be read in full here). “This enabled asteroids to be pulled from one star system to another.”
‘Oumuamua
These interstellar asteroids are part of a group called Centaurs which has baffled scientists since the first one called Chiron was identified back in 1977. It has been suggested that these bodies were once part of the Kuiper Belt in the outer part of our solar system prior to travelling to the more interior region.
Dr. Namouni and co-author of the study Maria Helena Morais from the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Brazil performed computer simulations and found that billions of years ago the asteroids were orbiting the sun on a plane perpendicular to planetary motion. During that time when our solar system was forming, there was tons of debris floating around that would eventually form into Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, but the interstellar asteroids were able to avoid the debris as they were orbiting at a further distance.
2I/Borisov
Dr. Morais went into further detail about this significant revelation, “The discovery of a whole population of asteroids of interstellar origin is an important step in understanding the physical and chemical similarities and differences between Solar System-born and interstellar asteroids.” “This population will give us clues about the Sun’s early birth cluster, how interstellar asteroid capture occurred, and the role that interstellar matter had in chemically enriching the Solar System and shaping its evolution.”
This is such an incredible discovery as only two interstellar visitors have been previously discovered – ‘Oumuamua (which was found in October of 2017) and 2I/Borisov (noticed in August of 2019 but is now breaking apart).
With nineteen newly found interstellar asteroids, there are surely a bunch more hidden in our solar system, so the next question is ‘how many more?’
I’m a ghost Living in a ghost town I’m a ghost Living in a ghost town “Living In A Ghost Town” The Rolling Stones
There are many who believe that The Rolling Stones possess some sort of magic elixir or have made a pact with some supernatural being to make them seemingly immortal, because they’ve not only outlived but out-played and out-recorded virtually all of their contemporaries while indulging in the rock star lifestyle (especially Keith Richards) that has ended the careers – fatally or otherwise – of so many others. Yet here they are in 2020, releasing a song that quickly became their first chart-topping hit in decades. “Living in a Ghost Town” is the perfect song for these times, even though it was written long before the coronavirus pandemic turned many places into ghost towns (can they see the future too?). Having avoided becoming ghosts in real life, this writer (full disclosure – a longtime fan of the band) wondered if Mick, Keith and the boys have had their own experiences with real ghosts. Turns out they have … and aliens too!
“Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones stated that his family saw headless ghosts at one of the holiday homes in France which they believe may be the ghosts of the building’s former residents who died during the French Revolution.”
Mick Jagger
The book “Paranormal Case Files of Great Britain (Volume 2)” recounts one of Mick Jagger’s ghostly encounters. According to “Keith Richards: The Biography” by Victor Borkris, Keith lived in a five-story Queen Anne house on the Thames in London in 1969 which his longtime girlfriend Anita Pallenberg turned it into a “hippie’s dream pad.” However, there were some things she couldn’t change.
“A number of people who stayed there claimed the house was haunted.”
That was the same year band co-founder Brian Jones died, and Keith had an eerie encounter with Jones’ ghost many years later while recording “Blue & Lonesome.”
“The last time I ever played ‘Little Rain’ was with Brian Jones. Now, I’m playing ‘Little Rain’ in the studio and suddenly Brian is looming in front of me…”
Keith Richards
Keith probably had more that he can’t remember – after all, this is the guy who snorted his late father’s ashes (“My dad wouldn’t have cared, he didn’t give a shit.”). Drummer Charlie Watts hasn’t reported any ghost encounters, nor has Ronnie Wood, but Wood and his wife Jo have had a number of UFO and alien experiences, which Jo has retold many times in books and lectures.
“A blue-green orb floated alongside my window. My son Tyrone, who was 15 at the time, saw it too. I had the same feeling as I did on the beach in Brazil: that it was not from this planet.”
Jo says Ronnie has seen the UFOs too, but doesn’t talk about it as much. So has Mick Jagger, who claims his first encounter was with a luminous cigar-shaped ship when he went camping in Glastonbury in 1968 with his then girlfriend, singer Marianne Faithful. He also claimed to have seen a UFO during The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Altamont Concert in California and has some sort of UFO detector installed at his British estate. He should have loaned it to Keith, because Richards claimed to have seen UFOs landing at his Redlands estate in West Sussex in 1968.
“I’ve seen a few, but nothing that any of the ministries would believe. I believe they exist – plenty of people have seen them. They are tied up with a lot of things, like the dawn of man, for example. It’s not just a matter of people spotting a flying saucer… I’m not an expert. I’m still trying to understand what’s going on.”
The Stones are not known for burying messages about paranormal experiences in their song lyrics. Is “Living in a Ghost Town” an attempt to tell us something?
Outside of “We’re still alive!” and still recording great music, we’ll have to wait to find out.
“…expeditionary, deployable, reversible offensive space control (OCS) effects applicable across the full spectrum of conflict. It prevents adversary Satellite Communications (SATCOM) in Area of Responsibility (AOR) including Command & Control (C2), Early Warning and Propaganda, and hosts Rapid Reaction Capabilities in response to Urgent Needs.”
As reported in Popular Mechanics, that’s US Space Force-speak for its first weapon, the Counter Communications Systems (CCS) Block 10.2 – a jammer that effectively cuts the electronic cord between ground troops and the satellites they use to communicate with their generals, allies and each other. This is much more effective than trying to know out the transmitter on the ground or the satellite in space, and the latest generation of these jammers covers a greater frequency spectrum than ever before. Needless, to say, Russia is not pleased.
“We also have a lot of questions. We asked them quite a long time ago and want to have an answer after all. A full-fledged meaningful Russian-US dialogue on a wide spectrum of issues of space activities security Russian and US senior diplomats agreed on on January 16 will help resolve mutual concerns.”
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS that her government is not pleased with what it perceives to be a first step towards an arms race in space. She’s right about a “race” because Russia’s military already has a similar satellite jammer that’s believed to be not as robust as the Space Force’s. Of course, this is also a war of words, as Zakharova was responding to criticism by Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations for the Space Force, about Russia’s alleged testing of an anti-satellite missile.
“Previously, such claims were voiced by US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford. We have commented on each and every such anti-Russian attack which are all nothing but the United States’ attempt to divert public attention from real threats in space and to justify its moves to deploy weapons in outer space and obtain extra financing for such causes.”
That’s a diplomatic in-your-face response from Zakharova. This may seem like much ado about nothing since the satellite jammer is ground-based, but anything that’s launched must communicate with satellites to get to space. In fact, it’s becoming clear that nearly everything on Earth depends on satellites. The Space Force is part of the Air Force, so using jets to rapidly deploy the jammers around the world seems like a good idea. Meanwhile, NASA and Elon Musk (the distinction between these two is slowly beginning to blur) are covering space with satellites – perhaps in an attempt to overwhelm Russia’s anti-satellite missiles or its own jammers.
“It is obvious that serious concerns, if any, cannot be resolved by means of such statements, by means of fakes. It is necessary to use the existing channels for expert and political dialogue for that. We do have such channels and it is necessary simply to use them. Unwillingness to do so is rather an evidence of insufficiently grounded position of our American colleagues.”
Sigh. Even space cannot escape from ‘fake news’ and ‘insufficiently grounded positions’. Are we doomed to resume the Cold War’s massive arms race in space? Strategic space command. Lt. Col. Steve Brogan gives Interesting Engineering an answer.
“CCS is the only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal. This upgrade puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for Space as a warfighting domain.”
Just about anyone and everyone who has an interest in the worlds of the supernatural and the paranormal will have heard of the Black Eyed Children. But, what about BEAs? That’s Black Eyed Adults, by the way. Reports of the BEAs are far less in number than those concerning the BEC, but they do exist – as you will see now. Tracie Austin – UFO author and researcher– is a long-time friend of mine who I first met back in 1995. At the time, Tracie and I only lived about a 45-minute-drive from each other in central, rural England. As a result, we spent a lot of time traveling to UFO conferences in the U.K. and having a good time, very often with a mutual friend, Irene Bott, who used to run the Staffordshire UFO Group. Tracie moved to the United States a couple of years before me and now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of the BEC and the BEA, Tracie told me: “I have a friend named Dana; she works in timeshare, at a resort out here in Las Vegas, on the far end of the strip. She was working one day – this was in April 2016 – when she said this lady was sent over to her, with two kids: a young boy and a girl. The girl was about six or seven and the boy was about four or five. The woman was wearing dark brown pants and had long brown hair. And the reason why the woman was sent over was because Dana gave the gifting in the timeshare company. When you listen to a presentation, you’re given a gift. But, the woman said she didn’t want a gift and Dana said, ‘When she looked at me and said that, I saw that she had total black eyes.’ There were no whites whatsoever. And the kids were exactly the same. But, in every other sense they were completely normal; they weren’t wearing the hoodies.”
Tracie continued as follows: “Dana commented, ‘I wish I had said something, like how do you see with those eyes?’ When she said that, I thought you can’t really ask them something like that. Maybe you could say, ‘Wow, your eyes are beautiful.’ But, maybe that’s bringing attention to something they don’t want you to know about. But, they could wear sunglasses all the time and no-one would know. So, maybe they are testing our reactions, they want their eyes to be seen. The kids were quiet; they didn’t say anything to her. Dana asked the woman how long she was going to be staying at the resort. And she said just one night and then they left.”
And there was one more story from Tracie: “I also have a friend who had an experience with a Black-Eyed Man; this was in a Wal-Mart in Michigan where she saw him. I was living in California at the time and this would have been about 2004, Christmas time. They were at the check-out and he insisted that he gave a gift to her son. It was a Spiderman clock. She said where he stood in line, there was someone in between her and this man. But, when he gave the gift, it was like his hand reached through the person between them; just passed right through the flesh of this person. And what freaked her out was that he had the pure black eyes. She didn’t want him to accept the clock, with him being a stranger. But, he insisted.”
Christina is the founder of the Psychic Paranormal Research Society, and someone who had a truly disturbing encounter in 2012 that involved a Black Eyed Woman and two BEC. As Christina told me: “Back in the summer of 2012 myself and a few members of my paranormal group, here in Sacramento, went up to see a client about a report of being abducted. He was claiming he had an implant and was experiencing paranormal activity; this was in Redding, California. We finished up our investigation and headed back home.” It was when Christina got home that things turned very weird. Dangerous, maybe. A woman and two children were outside of her home.
Christina continued: “All three of them, in unison, turned from the waist back and looked dead at me, as if they knew I was looking at them. It was almost like robotic. All three did it at the exact same time, and it startled me. But, not only did it startle me, one of the things I was looking at, I locked eyes with them.” Christina added: “All I could see, now, was complete black. I even looked at the little boy, because I’m thinking, he was a little faraway and I’d not seen him up close. But I look at this little boy and, again, complete black. It almost made their eyes look bigger, like the eyelid wasn’t closed over it; very prominent. I lock eyes with them. I will tell you I have never felt such fear in my life.” Equally disturbing is the fact that the creepy trio vanished at an impossible speed – to the extent that it was almost as if they had de-materialized. That may have been exactly what happened.
Without a doubt that is a controversial question! The fact is, though, that some alleged extraterrestrials do seem to be trying to move among us and without being noticed for what they really are. In fact, it may have been going on for not just years, but decades. We’ll begin with the Men in Black. Not the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones type. Rather, the real Men in Black: the pale, scrawny, weird-looking Men in Black who surfaced in the early 1950s and who have never gone away. There is strong evidence to show that the Men in Black realize there are certain differences between us and them. As a result of this, they do their best to make them look like us. Those who have unfortunately crossed paths with the MIB state that their black-suited visitors wore make-up and lipstick. In some cases, they even had what were clearly painted-on eyebrows – as bizarre as it all sounds. On occasion, the MIB will wear large, wraparound sunglasses. This is clearly done for camouflage: in some cases the MIB are described as having large, abnormal eyes that they hide behind those glasses. Often, though, they don’t do a good job of hiding those bulging eyes – which is why we sometimes get to see those creepy eyes.
Very much the same can be said about the Women in Black – who also terrorize witnesses to UFOs. The WIB are described as wearing long black wigs and sunglasses. Like the MIB, the WIB mask their milk-white skin with make-up. While there is no evidence that the Black Eyed Children are connected to the UFO subject, it is a fact that there are some similarities. For example, the BEC very often wear hoodies, which they pull down to hide their large, completely black, eyes. In many occasions, the Black Eyed Children keep their eyes firmly aimed at the ground – clearly to try and prevent people from seeing those eerie eyes. In issue 187 of Fortean Times magazine, writer Mark Pilkington did a review of the FortNite 2004 gig. Pilkington highlighted certain material that was disclosed at the gig by Budd Hopkins, the author of Missing Time: “…in order to better blend in with us humans, the greys have taken to wearing wigs and sunglasses…the aliens are also experimenting with growing hair on the heads of their genetic hybrid grey-human creations…they’re also developing pupils to get around those giveaway wraparound black eyes.”
Eris Andys had an encounter with one of these human-appearing things in the later part of the 1980s. She detailed it in a 2004 feature for Fortean Times, which was appropriately titled “A Quiet Invasion.” While walking down one particular street (location not stated) Andys encountered a humanoid creature with “waxy, grey” skin, “…with no pores and no hair. It looked damp. The mouth was small, the nose tiny, and the chin pointed.” She added: “The most amazing thing was the pair of glasses ‘he’ wore – made of some yellow reflective stuff, they wrapped around the sides of the head like some futuristic ski-wear.”
This all reminds me of Mac Tonnies’ “Cryptotererstrials.” In his theory, Tonnies suggested that ancient humans lurk among us, and do so in ways that will ensure we don’t get to see the subtle differences between them and us. Tonnies said: “I envision the cryptoterrestrials engaged in a process of subterfuge, bending our belief systems to their own ends. And I suggest that this has been occurring, in form or another, for an extraordinarily long time. I think there’s a good deal of folkloric and mythological evidence pointing in this direction, and I find it most interesting that so many descriptions of ostensible ‘aliens’ seem to reflect staged events designed to misdirect witnesses and muddle their perceptions.” Tonnies suggested that the Cryptoterrestrials – like our aliens – may employ the likes of wigs, make-up, sunglasses and hats, in an effort to try and deflect attention away from their slight differences. A creepy thought, to be sure.
WETENSCHAPDe vier eerste maanden van het jaar 2020 hebben getoond hoe het ‘kleinste’ gevaar om het hoekje loert en op 1,2,3 catastrofale gevolgen kan hebben. Maar niet enkel een onzichtbaar virus bedreigt onze planeet. Volgens een rapport van enkele vooraanstaande Australische onderzoekers hebben we te maken met tien potentiële risico’s.
Het rapport – genaamd ‘Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century’ - werd samengesteld door onderzoekers die deel uitmaken van de Commision for the Human Future. De onderzoekers identificeerden tien grote (onzichtbare) gevaren die onze wereld bedreigen. En een pandemie zoals het coronavirus is slechts één van de tien gevaren.
In totaal worden er tien gevaren opgesomd: op willekeurige volgorde.
1. Klimaatverandering
2. Achteruitgang van het milieu
3. Kernwapens
4. Schaarste aan levensnoodzakelijke natuurlijke hulpbronnen (waaronder water)
5. Voedselonzekerheid
6. Gevaarlijke en oncontroleerbare nieuwe technologieën
7. Overbevolking
8. Chemische vervuiling
9. Pandemieën
10. Mislukken in het preventief optreden tegen deze risico’s
De onderzoekers roepen overheden op om actie te ondernemen met behulp van hun gebundelde lijst. Ze stellen nog dat niemand ter wereld “een plan heeft om de risico’s het hoofd te bieden”. “Het gebrek aan paraatheid betekent onoverkomelijk dat de mensheid getroffen zal blijven worden door onvoorziene crises.” En of we al dan niet iets ondernemen de komende jaren, zal bepalen of huidige en toekomstige generaties “een veilige, duurzame en welvarende toekomst tegemoet gaan”, zo luidt het besluit van het rapport.
De toekomst van de mens
De Commision for the Human Future – vrij vertaald naar de commissie voor de toekomst van de mens – is een organisatie die bestaat uit tal van wetenschappers en burgers. Ze focussen op de mondiale uitdagingen waarmee de mensheid worstelt.
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27-04-2020 om 21:52
geschreven door peter
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Planetoïde scheert binnenkort voorbij de aarde mét mondmasker - HLN.be
Planetoïde scheert binnenkort voorbij de aarde mét mondmasker - HLN.be
Anne VirkkiHet lijkt een beetje alsof de planetoïde een mondmasker draagt.
WETENSCHAPOver twee dagen, op 29 april, scheert de planetoïde 1998 OR2 voorbij de aarde. Zo’n doortocht van ruimteblokken gebeurt overigens wel vaker, maar dit exemplaar ziet er wel heel bijzonder uit: het lijkt volgens enkele wetenschappers wel alsof de planetoïde een mondmasker draagt.
Wetenschappers verbonden aan het Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico bestuderen de naderende planetoïde al een tijdje: op die manier houden ze in de gaten of die een gevaar zal vormen voor de aarde. Dat blijkt niet het geval te zijn. In tegendeel, het lijkt wel alsof de planetoïde zich voorbereidt op de pandemie op aarde. De radarbeelden van de ruimtesteen tonen iets wat volgens sommigen verdacht veel op een mondmasker lijkt.
“Aangezien we allemaal aan Covid-19 denken, zorgen de topografische kenmerken ervoor dat het lijkt alsof 1998 OR2 eraan gedacht heeft een mondmasker te dragen”, vertelt onderzoekster Anne Verkki.
Of het radarbeeld een mondmasker toont of niet is voor discussie vatbaar. Wat vaststaat is dat 1998 OR2 twee kilometer groot is en iets meer dan vier uur nodig heeft om een rondje rond zijn eigen as te voltooien.
Verder kunnen de beelden van het Arecibo Observatory voorspellen hoe de planetoïde zich in de toekomst voortbeweegt: “De radarmetingen stellen ons in staat om heel nauwkeurig vast te stellen waar de planetoïde in de toekomst – onder meer tijdens scheervluchten langs de aarde – zal zijn.” Dit jaar blijft de planetoïde nog ver weg van de aarde – op een afstand die zestien keer groter is dan de afstand tussen de aarde en de maan - maar in 2079 komt 1998 OR2 alweer wat dichterbij. “In 2079 zal 1998 OR2 ongeveer 3,5 keer dichter bij de aarde in de buurt komen dan dit jaar het geval is. Daarom is het is belangrijk om de baan heel nauwkeurig te kennen”, legt onderzoeker Flaviane Venditti uit.
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American President Ronald Reagan Tried Many Times To Leak The Existence Of Aliens, Video, UFO Sighting News.
American President Ronald Reagan Tried Many Times To Leak The Existence Of Aliens, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of speeches: Sept 16, 1983 Location of speech: United Nations Below is a video, of US President Reagan speaking at three different engagements, and in each...he tries to leak the truth...that aliens exist. He really tried hard to inform the public, even when he knew it was against national security to do so. On Sept 16, 1983, US President Ronald Reagan gave a memorable speech in front of the United Nations. In it, he subtly suggests that aliens exist and that all of humanity could be lost if they decide to attack. President Reagan states: Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. Of course President Reagan had inside information from the CIA and NASA and was told that aliens do exist. But he couldn't just come out and say so without breaking national security rules. So instead...he subtly hinted to the rest of the world leaders about what he had learned from the CIA and NASA. He also knows that a small percentage of the other presidents at the United Nations meeting also knew about the existence of aliens. He even hints at one other president...he talked to the General Secretary Gorbachov...who then later became Russian president. Now pondering about world peace is nice...but I feel that President Reagan felt a weight on his shoulders...a burden of carrying this knowledge of the existence of aliens. Remember its was the 1980s and back they the technology was very inferior to today tech marvels. It must have been very frightening for him to know that aliens existed, but to have so few people he could sit down and talk about this subject openly. Watch the video below and see. He is trying to tell the world the truth...that aliens exist. Scott C. Waring
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Astronomers discover mysterious red planet that never existed?
Astronomers discover mysterious red planet that never existed?
What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system has now seemingly vanished from sight, suggesting that what was heralded as one of the first exoplanets to ever be discovered with direct imaging likely never existed.
According to Physorg. two University of Arizona astronomers conclude that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was instead looking at an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies that smashed into each other. Hubble came along too late to witness the suspected collision but may have captured its aftermath. The missing-in-action planet was last seen orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light years away.
The suspected exoplanet, named Fomalhaut b, was first announced in 2008, based on data from 2004 and 2006.
The object was bright in visible light—highly unusual for an exoplanet, which is simply too small to reflect enough light from its host star to be seen from Earth. At the same time, it did not have any detectable infrared heat signature again, highly unusual, as a planet should be warm enough to shine in the infrared.
Astronomers conjectured that the added brightness came from a huge shell or ring of dust encircling the planet that may have been collision-related.
Data analysis of Hubble images taken in 2014 showed the object had vanished, to their disbelief. Adding to the mystery, earlier images showed the object to continuously fade over time, they say.
The astronomers said that Fomalhaut b was doing things a bona fide planet should not be doing.
Indeed, very mysterious, maybe it was not an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies at all but a huge mothership or something like the infamous red planet Nibiru?
Triangle UFO filmed over Statue of Liberty, NY 5-Mar-2020
Triangle UFO filmed over Statue of Liberty, NY 5-Mar-2020
This amazing video was just submitted through our Facebook page. It show some kind of a triangular-shaped craft maneuvering in the sky above the Statue of Liberty in New York. This happened on 5th March 2020.
What do you think this is? Please leave your comments below!
Founder of the Center for UFO Physical Trace Research, Ted Phillips Has Died
Founder of the Center for UFO Physical Trace Research, Ted Phillips Has Died
A young Ted Phillips
Ted Phillips, the founder and director of the Center for Physical Trace Research died, on March 10, 2020. Phillips was born in 1942 and spent his life in Missouri.
He began investigating UFOs in 1964 and met Dr.J. Allen Hynek during the investigation of the Socorro UFO landing. Phillips was trained as an engineer and was a professional photographer. He was involved in the Vanguard Satellite Program and was a field engineer on the Minuteman Missile Project. He was also employed as an inspector for the Missouri State Highway Department, an associate of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, and made presentations at the MUFON Symposiums.
By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 3-11-20
It was Hynek who suggested that Phillips concentrate on UFO physical trace cases. Phillips and his team investigated more than 4000 physical trace cases in more than 90 countries. Phillips once said that if you told him the physical markings left be the UFO, he would be able to describe the craft that left them.
Ted Phillips at the Illinois conference
With Hynek, Dr. Jacques Vallee and Dr. David Saunders, Phillips participated in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences meetings. He was also participated as a member of a small group who met with the United Nations Secretary-General. Phillips made presentations to a wide variety of groups and was a participant in several television programs and documentaries dedicated to UFOs.
In recent years he was involved in the investigation of strange lights seen in the Marley Woods in far southern Missouri. I met him in Illinois when he made a presentation about those lights at a UFO conference there. I had hoped to talk to Phillips about this while at the conference but there never seemed to be a couple of moments when the two of us crossed paths, with one exception. I told him it was my impression, from his presentation, that he wasn’t looking toward the extraterrestrial on this. He confirmed that he had thought it was some sort of terrestrial manifestation but he didn’t know what it might be. For those interested, there is more about Phillips’ presentation here.
In the 1970s, he provided a “position statement” for Ron Story’s Encyclopedia of UFOs that said:
The available facts are mostly statistical, but by taking a large number of reports, we can begin to develop a fairly clear picture of the objects observed and the traces left behind. Obviously, a report involving a landed object is of much greater value than a nocturnal light case. The landed object immediately eliminates a number of possibilities. One would not expect a balloon to land, leave unusual traces, and then ascend vertically at high speed. Stars and planets do not appear at ground level between witnesses and a line of trees. When several witnesses observe a disk-shaped object with a metallic surface, no wings and no sound, landing, ascending vertically, they have, with their descriptions, eliminated most of the natural or conventional explanations. When these objects then leave traces at the landing site, we have something tangible to examine I believe, after thirteen years of investigation, the data indicates a nonterrestrial origin.
Ted Philips, truly one of the pioneers in scientific UFO research and a dedicated investigator is dead at 78.
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Minerals suggest large blocks of Earth’s crust moved around as early as 3.2 billion years ago
As early as 3.2 billion years ago, a portion of Earth's crust (seen this artist’s interpretation) moved relatively quickly across the planet's surface, a hallmark of modern plate tectonics.
Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces of Earth’s crust could have played a role in making the planet more hospitable to life.
Geologist Alec Brenner of Harvard University and his colleagues measured the magnetic orientations of iron-bearing minerals in the Honeyeater Basalt, a layer of rock that formed between 3.19 billion and 3.18 billion years ago. The basalt is part of the East Pilbara Craton, an ancient bit of continent in Western Australia that includes rocks as old as 3.5 billion years.
This craton, the researchers found, was on the move between 3.35 billion and 3.18 billion years ago, drifting around the planet at a rate of at least 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s a speed comparable to modern plate motions, the team reports April 22 in Science Advances.
The basalt layer, which burbled up as lava and hardened during the journey, contains iron-bearing minerals that can act as tiny signposts pointing the way toward Earth’s magnetic poles. While the lava was still molten, the minerals rotated, orienting themselves to align with either the north or south magnetic pole. By tracking the changes in orientation within the lava as more basalt formed during the journey, the researchers were able to determine how quickly the craton was moving.
Scientists have long used such preserved magnetic signposts to reconstruct plate motions, retracing the steps of drifting bits of continent. But the constant grinding and shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates over the last few billion years have reworked Earth’s surface many times over, leaving few outcrops that are older than 3 billion years.
The Honeyeater Basalt, however, is a rare site, both ancient and relatively unworked by metamorphism, the heat and pressure from which could have altered the minerals and reset their magnetic orientation. The team examined 235 samples of the basalt using an instrument called a quantum diamond microscope that can detect traces of magnetism at the micrometer scale. From these analyses, the researchers created a high-resolution map of magnetic orientations within the rock.
Based on the map, the team estimates that about 3.2 billion years ago, the East Pilbara Craton was at a latitude of about 45°, but whether north or south isn’t certain, Brenner said April 21 in a video news conference. That’s because researchers aren’t sure whether Earth’s magnetic poles at the time were in their current orientation or reversed. Either way, this bit of ancient crust moved in a gradual, steady motion — a hallmark of modern plate tectonics, the researchers say. Today, the craton is located at about 21° S, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Plate tectonics is generally thought to have become a well-established global process on Earth no earlier than around 2.8 billion years ago. Before that, Earth’s interior was considered to be too hot for cold, rigid plates to form at the surface, or for deep subduction to occur, in which one crustal plate dives beneath another.
An earlier start to plate tectonics would have implications for the evolution of life on Earth, Brenner told reporters. Whether the process was in operation when the first single-celled organisms emerged, currently thought to be at least 3.45 billion years ago, isn’t clear, he said (SN: 10/17/18).
But it is clear that plate tectonics is currently closely tied to the biosphere, he added. It promotes chemical reactions between once-buried rocks and the atmosphere that can modulate the planet’s climate over millions to billions of years. “So if [plate tectonics] happened on the early Earth, these processes were likely playing a part in the evolution of life,” Brenner said.
Active, modern-style plate tectonics is the most likely explanation for the data, the researchers say. But they acknowledge other possible explanations can’t yet be ruled out, including an early, episodic, fit-and-start style of plate tectonics.
Some researchers have proposed that, during the Archean Eon that lasted from about 4 billion to about 2.5 billion years ago, there was a proto-plate tectonics process in which bits of crust moved in fits and starts as the planet began to cool after its formation (SN: 4/9/12). Sediment eroded from Earth’s earliest continents may also have helped grease the wheels, setting the stage for modern plate tectonics (SN: 6/5/19).
The researchers’ data could support episodic rather than gradual plate motion, perhaps as a precursor to modern plate tectonics, says Michael Brown, a geologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. Those data suggest that after its initial burst of speed, the Honeyeater Basalt’s progress slowed considerably, from 2.5 centimeters per year to 0.37 centimeters per year, he says.
It’s still unclear how similar proto-plate tectonics may have been to the modern process. “We know too little to answer this question with confidence,” says geophysicist Stephan Sobolev of the University of Potsdam in Germany. Sobolev has suggested previously that, for about a billion years during the Archean, plate tectonics occurred regionally: Plates could have been broken apart by large meteorite impacts or powerful plumes rising from the mantle, generating regional cells in which ancient continents formed and small blocks of crust subducted.
Such a regional cell may have formed the East Pilbara Craton in Australia, Sobolev suggests. But for that bit of ancient continent to have traveled so far so quickly, he says, “large-scale subduction must have been involved” — a surprising possibility for early Earth’s history.
Scientists suspect that the complex life that slithers and crawls through every nook and cranny on Earth emerged from a random shuffling of non-living matter that ultimately spit out the building blocks of life.
Even so, the details to support the idea are lacking.
But researchers recently got creative in figuring out the probability of life actually emerging spontaneously from such inorganic matter — a process called abiogenesis.
In the study, Tomonori Totani, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Tokyo, modeled the microscopic world of molecules across the epic scale of the entire universe to see if abiogenesis is a likely candidate for the origin of life. He was essentially looking at whether there were enough stars with habitable planets in the universe at the time to allow complexity to arise. His results, published Feb. 3 in the journal Nature, show the betting odds for life emerging are not good, at least for the observable universe.
RNA is made up of a chain of nitrogen-based molecules called nucleotides. Researchers think that in order for RNA to perform its essential function of copying itself, it needs to be composed of a chain of nucleotides longer than 40 to 60 nucleotides.
So, how would these RNA molecules made up of at least 40 to 60 nucleotides have popped up on their own? Nucleotides have been shown experimentally to randomly organize into RNA given enough time and under the right conditions. But these experiments show that the abundance of RNA rapidly decreases with the length of their chains and none of the experiments could consistently produce strands longer than 10 monomers.
"It has been experimentally confirmed that RNA polymerization can occur by a basic random process," Totani said. "Some experiments claimed that more than 50 (monomer long) RNA were produced, but these are not reproducible. One problem is that aggregates are easily mistaken for a long RNA polymer."
Totani's model uses the most conservative method of RNA polymerization, where each monomer is attached randomly one-by-one until a chain of monomers is formed. Scientists have suggested that polymers (each made up of multiple monomers) could attach to each other to speed up the process, but Totani said such a process is "highly speculative and hypothetical."
Life as we know it
Scientists think life emerged on Earth around 500 million years after the planet formed. Given that there are an estimated 10 sextillion (10^22) stars in the observable universe, it may seem that the odds of life popping up in the universe should be good. But researchers have found that the random formation of RNA with a length greater than 40 is incredibly unlikely given the number of stars — with habitable planets — in our cosmic neighborhood. There are too few stars with habitable planets in the observable universe for abiogenesis to occur within the timeframe of life emerging on Earth.
"However, there is more to the universe than the observable," Totani said in a statement. "In contemporary cosmology, it is agreed the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation, producing a vast region of expansion beyond the horizon of what we can directly observe. Factoring this greater volume [of stars with habitable planets] into models of abiogenesis hugely increases the chances of life occurring."
After our universe flashed into existence some 13.8 billion years ago during the Big Bang, it underwent a period of rapid expansion that continues today. If we think of the universe as a loaf of bread baking in the oven, our observable universe is like a bubble of air trapped in the dough, where the walls of the bubble are the farthest distance light can travel since the Big Bang. As the loaf rises (inflation), our bubble grows while other pockets of air within the bread get farther away. Our observable bubble of air is all that we can see, even though the rest of the loaf is out there.
It is estimated that the whole universe could contain more than 1 googol (10^100) stars. When Totani factored in this new abundance of stars, he found that the emergence of life was no longer improbable, but very likely.
This may be good news for the RNA world hypothesis, though it could also mean that the search for life in the universe is a hopeless pursuit.
If life first got its start in RNA, "life on Earth was created by a very rare chance of producing a long RNA polymer," said Totani. "Most likely, Earth is the only planet harboring life in the observable universe. I predict that future observations or explorations of extraterrestrial life will yield no positive results.
If by chance, life is discovered elsewhere in our cosmic neighborhood, Totani believes it would likely be of the same origin as life on Earth. Life may have hitched a ride from comets and asteroids across interplanetary or interstellar space, seeding the local universe with life from a single origin event.
Totani's work is far from an answer to one of science's most existential questions but it may guide further research on the origins of life. Whether we are alone in the universe still remains unanswered, but if Totani's numbers tell us anything, you shouldn't bet on it.
Tiny, levitating "nanocardboard" flyers could one day explore the dusty red surface of Mars.
This summer, NASAwill launch its newest Mars rover, Perseverance, and a helicopter that will fly over the planet's surface as part of a "high-risk, high-reward" experiment. But even before its launch, researchers are designing much more ambitious aircraft for Mars as well.
Of particular interest are flying aircraft that could, with less risk, more effectively observe and study Mars' surface. In a new study, researchers have demonstrated the abilities of a unique fleet of aircraft that could thrive on Mars: tiny "nanocardboard" flying vehicles. These aircraft each weigh about a third of a milligram, or less than a fruit fly, and have no moving parts. Instead of flying with wings or rotating blades, they actually levitate.
Researchers tested the "nanocardboard" flyers in a "Mars-like" environment in a lab. (Image credit: Bargatin Group, Penn Engineering)
"The Mars Helicopter is very exciting, but it's still a single, complicated machine," lead author Igor Bargatin of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, who is not involved in the Mars Helicopter, said in a statement. "If anything goes wrong, your experiment is over, since there's no way of fixing it. We're proposing an entirely different approach that doesn't put all of your eggs in one basket."
Each tiny flyer is a plate of "nanocardboard," which is inspired by paper cardboard's corrugations, or ridges. Plates of "nanocardboard" are hollow aluminum oxide a few nanometers thick with ridges made by a pattern of micro-channels on the plates that keep them stiff and unbroken.
The micro-channels in the "nanocardboard" plates are actually the secret behind their unique method of flight, according to the statement: The channels create a temperature gradient that pushes air through the hollow plates and allows them to float.
This strange method of flight would be particularly advantageous on Mars because the planet's thin atmosphere and weaker gravity would allow the plates to lift more weight and travel over much longer distances than here on Earth.
Researchers tested the "nanocardboard" flyers' ability to carry small payloads. (Image credit: Bargatin Group, Penn Engineering)
In this study, the researchers tested "nanocardboard" vehicles in a Mars-like environment in a lab environment. They tested the vehicles in a low-pressure test chamber and experimented with mock payloads by having the little floating plates carry silicone rings.
Additionally, Bargatin is working with other researchers to develop new, tinier chemical sensors that could collect important data and detect substances like methane and water on other planets, according to the statement.
"In addition to carrying sensors," Bargatin said, "our flyers could simply land and have grains of dust or sand passively stick to them, then transport them back to the rover so it doesn't need to travel as far."
Bargatin also suggested in the statement that fleets of these tiny flyers could be used to study our own planet's atmosphere — specifically, the mesosphere.
"The Earth's mesosphere is pretty similar to the Martian atmosphere in terms of density, and we currently don't have anything that flies there, since it is too low for space satellites but too high for airplanes and balloons," Bargatin said. "Ideally, you'd like to have some sensors up there as well. The more knowledge you have about the movement of the atmosphere at that level, the better predictions you can make about Earth's climate and even weather."
Gravitational waves have revealed the first unevenly sized black hole pair
Gravitational waves have revealed the first unevenly sized black hole pair
One big black hole and one little one partnered up, LIGO and Virgo detections show
A black hole orbiting with a much smaller partner stirred up gravitational waves (illustrated by colors in this simulation) that scientists with the LIGO and Virgo experiments detected on Earth.
As far as odd couples go, this is one for the record books.
The ripples in spacetime stirred up by two distant, merging black holes suggest that one of the pair was much bigger than the other. It’s the first definitively mismatched black hole pair spotted by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations, which search for the gravitational waves emitted in the cosmic encounters of black holes. The collision, detected on April 12, 2019, occurred about 2.5 billion light-years from Earth.
For all previous such black hole mergers, the two partners have been of similar size. But in this case, the bigger black hole had a mass about 30 times that of the sun, while the smaller was about eight times the mass of the sun, researchers with the LIGO and Virgo collaborations reported April 18 at a meeting of the American Physical Society, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to this result, scientists did not know if such lopsided partnerships existed, or how rare they might be. “This one event represents a big step forward in our understanding,” astrophysicist Maya Fishbach of the University of Chicago said in a talk at the meeting.
Understanding what types of black holes partner up could eventually help answer the question of how the duos form (SN: 6/19/16). The black holes might partner up within a dense star cluster, or when two stars are born together as twins and both collapse into black holes. Both possibilities could occasionally create unequal mass partnerships.
The researchers also tested whether Einstein’s theory of gravity still held up in this new type of black hole collision. Surprise, surprise: Einstein was right again.
The detectors of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the United States and Virgo in Italy are currently shut down, in an early end to operations that was hastened by COVID-19. They’re scheduled to once again start observing the heavens in 2022.
Summary: In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC.
In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50 year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.
This legend might be of little interest to anybody but the two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, who recorded it from four Dogon priests in the 1930's. Of little interest except that it is exactly true. How did a people who lacked any kind of astronomical devices know so much about an invisible star? The star, which scientists call Sirius B, wasn't even photographed until it was done by a large telescope in 1970.
The Dogon stories explain that also. According to their oral traditions, a race people from the Sirius system called the Nommos visited Earth thousands of years ago. The Nommos were ugly, amphibious beings that resembled mermen and mermaids. They also appear in Babylonian, Accadian, and Sumerian myths. The Egyptian Goddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is also linked with the star Sirius.
The Nommos, according to the Dogon legend, lived on a planet that orbits another star in the Sirius system. They landed on Earth in an "ark" that made a spinning decent to the ground with great noise and wind. It was the Nommos that gave the Dogon the knowledge about Sirius B.
The legend goes on to say the Nommos also furnished the Dogon's with some interesting information about our own solar system: That the planet Jupiter has four major moons, that Saturn has rings and that the planets orbit the sun. These were all facts discovered by Westerners only after Galileo invented the telescope.
The story of the Dogon and their legend was first brought to popular attention by Robert K.G. Temple in a book published in 1977 called The Sirius Mystery. Science writer Ian Ridpath and astronomer Carl Sagan made a reply to Temple's book, suggesting that this modern knowledge about Sirius must have come from Westerners who discussed astronomy with the Dogon priests. The priests then included this new information into the older traditions. This, in turn, mislead the anthropologists.
This is a possibility considering Sirius B's existence was suspected as early as 1844 and seen was through a telescope in 1862. It doesn't seem to explain a 400-year old Dogon artifact that apparently depicts the Sirius configuration nor the ceremonies held by the Dogon since the 13th century to celebrate the cycle of Sirius A and B. It also doesn't explain how the Dogons knew about the super-density of Sirius B, a fact only discovered a few years before the anthropologists recorded the Dogon stories.
It is also important to remember that although many parts of the Dogon legends seem to ring true, other portions are clearly mistaken. One of the Dogon's beliefs is that Sirius B occupied the place where our Sun is now. Physics clearly prohibits this. Also, if the Dogon believe that Sirius B orbits Sirius A every 50 years, why do they hold their celebrations every 60 years?
Sirius A is the brightest star in our sky and can easily be seen in the winter months in the northern hemisphere. Look for the constellation Orion. Orion's belt are the three bright stars in a row. Follow an imaginary line through the three stars to Sirius which is just above the horizon. It is bluish in color.
Sirius is only 8.6 light years from Earth. Astronomer W.Bessel was the first to suspect that Sirius had an invisible companion when he observed that the path of the star wobbled. In the 1920's it was determined that Sirius B, the companion of Sirius, was a "white dwarf" star. The pull of its gravity caused Sirius's wavy movement.
White dwarfs are small, dense stars that burn dimly. Sirius B is, in fact, smaller than the planet Earth. One teaspoon of Sirius B is so dense that it weighs 5 tons.
So did alien fish-men pay a visit to ancient Earth and give the Dogon their knowledge? Or was the Dogon's culture contaminated by western visitors? Or could the Dogon's have had ancient technical or non-technical means to find this information out? Or is the whole thing just a matter of coincidence?
The question maybe settled as larger and more powerful telescopes take a look at the Sirius system. According to the legend there is a third star: Sirius C, and it is around Sirius C that the home planet of the Nommos orbits. Most scientists do not consider any part of the Sirius system a prime candidate for life, though.
When Temple first issued his book in the 1970's there was no solid evidence of a Sirius C. In 1995, however, two French researchers, Daniel Benest and J.L. Duvent, authored an article in the prestigious journal Astronomy and Astrophysics with the title Is Sirius a Triple Star? and suggested (based on observations of motions in the Sirius system) there is a small third star there. They thought the star was probably of a type known as a "red dwarf" and only had about .05 the mass of Sirius B.
So has the home star of the Nommos been discovered? Or is this just another strange coincidence?
EXPLORERS IN ANTARCTICA FIND THE FOSSILS OF A "TOTALLY UNEXPECTED" ANIMAL
EXPLORERS IN ANTARCTICA FIND THE FOSSILS OF A "TOTALLY UNEXPECTED" ANIMAL
Researchers were shocked to find 40-million-year-old remains.
The Earth's South Pole, known for being a land of penguins, is covered in ice. But it wasn't always this way: Tens of millions of years ago, Antarctica was lush and green — and full of very different creatures.
Recently, while exploring the frigid region for ancient fossils, researchers found the shockingly out-of-place remains of a helmeted frog. It's the oldest-ever discovery of an amphibian and demonstrates that 40 million years ago Antarctica was more similar to present-day South America.
Paleontologist Thomas Mörs and his team were on a mission to find fossils of mammals who inhabited Antarctica before the big freeze. They collected and sifted through samples of sediment from Seymour Island, a process that revealed the teeth and bones of a variety of mammals — including tiny marsupials.
While sorting through their findings, Mörs found something shocking: an ilium — a large hip bone — and an ornamented skull. Both are telltale signs of a HELMETED FROG.
"I first found the hip bone, and I directly realized that I found an Antarctic frog, the first!" Mörs tells Inverse. "It was a totally unexpected discovery under the microscope."
This finding was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
This discovery also indicates that Antarctica might have actually played a large role in the evolution of vertebrates, including amphibians, before the mass extinction event that happened at the end of the Eocene.
Before the ice came.Simon Pierre Barrette and José Grau de Puerto Montt, Wikimedia Commons
ANTARCTICA, KEY TO ANCIENT FROG HISTORY — The frozen continent at the Earth's South Pole may have been where some animals originated or dispersed, Mörs says, tens of millions of years ago.
The two fossilized frog bones are around 40 million years old. That helps pin down what the environment was like in Antarctica during that time — six million years before Antarctica froze over permanently.
But the ice was already coming: The researchers found evidence that some glaciers were already present during the days of the helmeted frogs. This suggests that the cold-blooded amphibians, and other vertebrates on the land, were able to survive even as the area became increasingly icy.
The fossilized illium.Thomas Mörs
Mörs says the research helps to connect some dots about helmeted frogs, too.
Today, helmeted frogs live Australia, New Guinea, and South America, where they are sometimes called Southern Frogs. These are places with climates that are probably similar to what Antarctica once looked like.
This discovery is a sign that helmeted frogs likely formed a single population across Pangea, before the supercontinent split.
"We have now a fossil frog from Antarctica that links the living frogs of the other two continents," Mörs says.
Antarctica, then, may have been an important link — not only between the continents but also between various groups of ancient helmeted frogs.
Abstract:
Cenozoic ectothermic continental tetrapods (amphibians and reptiles) have not been documented previously from Antarctica, in contrast to all other continents. Here we report a fossil ilium and an ornamented skull bone that can be attributed to the Recent, South American, anuran family Calyptocephalellidae or helmeted frogs, representing the first modern amphibian found in Antarctica. The two bone fragments were recovered in Eocene, approximately 40 million years old, sediments on Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. The record of hyperossifed calyptocephalellid frogs outside South America supports Gondwanan cosmopolitanism of the anuran clade Australobatrachia. Our results demonstrate that Eocene freshwater ecosystems in Antarctica provided habitats favourable for ectothermic vertebrates (with mean annual precipitation ≥900mm, coldest month mean temperature ≥3.75°C, and warmest month mean temperature ≥13.79°C), at a time when there were at least ephemeral ice sheets existing on the highlands within the interior of the continent.
In the beginning, there was an infinitely dense, tiny ball of matter. Then, it all went bang, giving rise to the atoms, molecules, stars and galaxies we see today.
Or at least, that's what we've been told by physicists for the past several decades.
But new theoretical physics research has recently revealed a possible window into the very early universe, showing that it may not be "very early" after all. Instead it may be just the latest iteration of a bang-bounce cycle that has been going on for … well, at least once, and possibly forever.
Of course, before physicists decide to toss out the Big Bang in favor of a bang-bounce cycle, these theoretical predictions will need to survive an onslaught of observation tests.
Bouncing cosmologies
Scientists have a really good picture of the very early universe, something we know and love as the Big Bang theory. In this model, a long time ago the universe was far smaller, far hotter and far denser than it is today. In that early inferno 13.8 billion years ago, all the elements that make us what we are were formed in the span of about a dozen minutes.
Even earlier, this thinking goes, at some point our entire universe — all the stars, all the galaxies, all the everything — was the size of a peach and had a temperature of over a quadrillion degrees.
Amazingly, this fantastical story holds up to all current observations. Astronomers have done everything from observing the leftover electromagnetic radiation from the young universe to measuring the abundance of the lightest elements and found that they all line up with what the Big Bang predicts. As far as we can tell, this is an accurate portrait of our early universe.
But as good as it is, we know that the Big Bang picture is not complete — there's a puzzle piece missing, and that piece is the earliest moments of the universe itself.
The problem is that the physics that we use to understand the early universe (a wonderfully complicated mishmash of general relativity and high-energy particle physics) can take us only so far before breaking down. As we try to push deeper and deeper into the first moments of our cosmos, the math gets harder and harder to solve, all the way to the point where it just … quits.
The main sign that we have terrain yet to be explored is the presence of a "singularity," or a point of infinite density, at the beginning of the Big Bang. Taken at face value, this tells us that at one point, the universe was crammed into an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point. This is obviously absurd, and what it really tells us is that we need new physics to solve this problem — our current toolkit just isn't good enough.
To save the day we need some new physics, something that is capable of handling gravity and the other forces, combined, at ultrahigh energies. And that's exactly what string theory claims to be: a model of physics that is capable of handling gravity and the other forces, combined, at ultrahigh energies. Which means that string theory claims it can explain the earliest moments of the universe.
One of the earliest string theory notions is the "ekpyrotic" universe, which comes from the Greek word for "conflagration," or fire. In this scenario, what we know as the Big Bang was sparked by something else happening before it — the Big Bang was not a beginning, but one part of a larger process.
Extending the ekpyrotic concept has led to a theory, again motivated by string theory, called cyclic cosmology. I suppose that, technically, the idea of the universe continually repeating itself is thousands of years old and predates physics, but string theory gave the idea firm mathematical grounding. The cyclic universe goes about exactly as you might imagine, continually bouncing between big bangs and big crunches, potentially for eternity back in time and for eternity into the future.
Before the beginning
As cool as this sounds, early versions of the cyclic model had difficulty matching observations — which is a major deal when you're trying to do science and not just telling stories around the campfire.
The main hurdle was agreeing with our observations of the cosmic microwave background, the fossil light leftover from when the universe was only 380,000 years old. While we can't see directly past that wall of light, if you start theoretically tinkering with the physics of the infant cosmos, you affect that afterglow light pattern.
And so, it seemed that a cyclic universe was a neat but incorrect idea.
But the ekpyrotic torch has been kept lit over the years, and a paper published in January to the arXiv database has explored the wrinkles in the mathematics and uncovered some previously missed opportunities. The physicists, Robert Brandenberger and Ziwei Wang of McGill University in Canada, found that in the moment of the "bounce," when our universe shrinks to an incredibly small point and returns to a Big Bang state, it's possible to line everything up to get the proper observationally tested result.
In other words, the complicated (and, admittedly, poorly understood) physics of this critical epoch may indeed allow for a radically revised view of our time and place in the cosmos.
But to fully test this model, we'll have to wait for a new generation of cosmology experiments, so let's wait to break out the ekpyrotic champagne.
The sun begins to rise along Nevada Highway 375, also known as the Extraterrestrial Highway, just north of Groom Lake or 'Area 51.'
(Photo: Will Pedro/Shutterstock)
Behind every alleged unidentified flying object sighting, every creepy alien story and every first-contact theory, there's a person. An earthling who believes a little — or a lot — in the idea that aliens have visited Earth or are trying to.
So who are all these people? Writer Sarah Scoles was interested in finding out, and it's the people behind the science, philosophy and conspiracy theories of UFOs who she focuses on in her book, "They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers."
Belief in UFOs is currently at a high point, with a 2019 Gallup poll showing that 33% of Americans "believe that some UFO sightings over the years have in fact been alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies." About 60% of Americans are skeptical and 7% aren't sure — but 16% of people who answered the poll said they have personally witnessed a UFO.
Why UFOs now?
Those numbers are on the rise again in recent years due, in part, to a bombshell of an article published in December 2017 by The New York Times. A front-page story detailed a five-year program at the Pentagon call the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). That program's findings included a number of reports of unidentified flying objects. In later interviews, key members of that program offered more detail.As MNN covered at the time, Luis Elizondo, the head of AATIP, told then-Defense Secretary James Mattis:
"In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt.' I hate to use the term UFO, but that’s what we’re looking at," said Elizondo. "I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so one has to ask the question where they're from."
Contrary to what might be assumed, many in the UFO community were skeptical of this news, though author Scoles said this was interestingly divided by generation, with older people more skeptical and Millennials excited to hear confirmation, a divide that got Scoles interested in the group. She attended the UFO Congress — a huge annual meeting of the UFO-interested — held just a couple months after the Pentagon program's revelation. She talked to 22 people for her book, and what's interesting is how different they are from each other; this is no monolithic group.
She traveled to famous sites on the extraterrestrial map, including Roswell, New Mexico and Area 51, the UFO Congress, the Pentagon, Skinwalker ranch in Utah and even meetings of a local UFO group in Denver where she lives. As she dug deeper into UFO society, Scoles discovered there are different reasons and attitudes that get people thinking or obsessing about UFOs.
The moderate skeptics
Sheer curiosity — and a feeling that information is being withheld — is the drive that keeps many people engaged in the UFO conversation.
(Photo: Dean Clarke/Shutterstock)
"I was surprised to find the moderate types," says Scoles, pointing out that when you think about someone who spends a lot of time thinking about UFOs, you're unlikely to picture a science-minded person who thinks there are likely good explanations for UFO sightings. She was curious, "If you don't believe in this thing, why would you spend time or energy to figure this out?"
Scoles says this group is a "large minority" of UFO-interested people, and discovered that what drives them is probably similar to what drives a scientist: plain old curiosity. Like a good researcher, they're not out to "prove" a belief; instead they're focused on the question, and how to answer it. This group is focused on how they can use science to understand, explain, explore or disprove the idea of alien life.
Scoles says the people in this group reminded her of the SETI astronomers, who use giant telescopes to look for possible messages from beyond Earth. Many of those scientists don't think alien civilizations exist, but they're "interested in the question even if the answer isn't exciting," says Scoles.
The spiritualists and the hopefuls
A tall metal alien sculpture greets visitors to the Alien Research Center, an extraterrestrial-themed gift shop in Hiko, Nevada.
(Photo: BrianPIrwin/Shutterstock.com)
Another subset of UFO fans are those who treat the idea of extraterrestrials as a kind of secular religion. While there are some cultists (including those who see aliens as some kind of god or gods), many of those who see the possibility of advanced alien life regard it as a sign of hope. If they survived, then humanity may be able to overcome our current challenges and keep advancing to the stars. This idea is behind plenty of sci-fi franchises as well, especially "Star Trek," which directly addresses the idea that we live in perilous times and that there can be positive visions of humanity's future.
Thinking about how aliens may have overcome their own challenges can give us a hypothetical look at how aliens could be a model for us, says Scoles. "If there is [an alien civilization] it will be older, it will have survived energy and other crises. The idea that somebody else did it gives us a role model for ourselves."
But there's also a less practical spiritual take — the sweet allure of the unknown. Scoles writes of a friend who stopped in a small town south of Des Moines, Iowa, where "spook lights" had been seen. As soon as he sat down at a bar and asked about the lights, people opened up, excited to tell a stranger what they had seen. "There was some mystery and magic left here, after all. There still existed something, even in this tiny town, that felt unfamiliar," Scoles writes. "And maybe someday, when they weren't expecting it, they'd be lucky enough to experience that feeling first hand again."
The true believers and conspiracy theorists
There are some people who believe that, odds are, there is life in the universe outside Earth, and those life forms have have visited our planet. This group might overlap with the spiritualists, but not necessarily. After all, some people fear the idea of aliens: "There's people who talk about aliens and UFOs who see them as an existential threat," says Scoles.
But others look at the statistics around the number of stars and habitable planets and see the possibility of life having arisen on other planets as not just possible, but probable. They think first contact has already likely happened, or they believe enough of the conspiracy theories that their judgement says it's more likely than not that we've already had some alien contact.
Of course, there are those who believe in UFOs almost entirely due to their belief that it's been covered up for years, "whether they think the conspiracy is hiding aliens or their classified technology," says Scoles. Their belief is rooted in what they see as the "cover-up."
So with all these different groups of people interested in alien life and spacecrafts, is there anything that unites them?
"I think everybody across the whole UFO spectrum from skeptics to true believers is motivated by a sense of wonder, encountering a thing that they don’t know fully," says Scoles.
Hey everyone, I found some thought provoking things on Mars in a Curiosity Rover photo today. Two the objects are structures with doorways...both located next to one another.
The other thing is a giant sculpture head with a equally sized hand with four visible fingers (hi lighted in yellow)...near it is a dragon skull (highlighted in orange). This may be evidence of a giant species...turned into a giant fossil. But my be a statue, since the doorways were so small...one 1/3 a meter tall openings, compared to the hand of the giant...which appears to be 2 meters across.
There were also two pyramids...one still being carved from the local stone, the other finished but with a face on the top. All in all, it seems Mars was teaming with intelligent life and the evidence is all over the place. Hard to believe NASA kept the secret for so long.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Weird spherical object floating over General Carrera Lake in Aysén, Chile
Weird spherical object floating over General Carrera Lake in Aysén, Chile
It seems the Aysén region in Chile is a UFO hotspot. According to The Journal Of Hispanic UFOlogy, Ysaac Wichmann, a mountaineer with a good knowledge of the area in the Aysén region, Chile said that the UFO phenomena have always been visible in this region, in the mountain ranges or at sea, on islands, canals or archipelagos, and particularly in unpopulated, isolated, distant and hard-to-reach locations.
A member of his family who served years ago in the Chilean navy witnessed this phenomenon while approaching a small island in the Aysén region in a Navy ship. Their mission was to work on a lighthouse to provide orientation and navigation assistance to those transiting along those waters.
What they saw before reaching the lighthouse, an oval metallic object rose vertically and slowly near the lighthouse, until it reached a certain altitude. After a while, the object rose quickly into the air and vanished from sight.
In another case two black objects can be seen floating at a distance over the surface of General Carrera Lake in Aysén, Chile.
According to witnesses, who were aboard a boat during the observation on June 23, 2019, the objects appeared to hover over the water, sometimes appearing and disappearing mysteriously.
Another small grey spherical object also appeared out of nowhere beside these dark objects, along with an orb of light that appears to fly over the lake. Some claim the objects are buoys; however, buoys do not fly, disappear and reappear.
UFO-Like Sphere Recorded on Video Hovering Over Paris, France
UFO-Like Sphere Recorded on Video Hovering Over Paris, France
A Paris, France resident reported his UFO sighting a few weeks ago, which he recorded from his balcony during this lockdown. The video shows a sphere-like object hovering and appears watching over the city.
UFO sightings became more frequent over the past weeks. Many suggest that aliens may have been trying to figure out whether humans follow the rules of wearing face masks, physical distancing, and lockdowns or not.
Conspiracy theorists further speculate that aliens observing the Earth during the pandemic may have gathered information that would provide them a predictive model of what will bound to happen soon.
The video was published on YouTube and has gotten more than 25,000 views. Some observers rule out advertising balloons as a possible explanation because there are no customers and not weather balloons either as they typically fly at higher altitudes.
A few others believe that it’s just understandable UFO sightings are becoming more frequent this past couple of weeks as aliens pride themselves on their knowledge.
Others suggest it could be chemtrail, drone, or a blimp.
One commenter on the YouTube video pin hopes that if these are aliens, they are friendly.
UFO-Like Sphere Recorded on Video Hovering Over Paris, France
UFO-Like Sphere Recorded on Video Hovering Over Paris, France
A Paris, France resident reported his UFO sighting a few weeks ago, which he recorded from his balcony during this lockdown. The video shows a sphere-like object hovering and appears watching over the city.
UFO sightings became more frequent over the past weeks. Many suggest that aliens may have been trying to figure out whether humans follow the rules of wearing face masks, physical distancing, and lockdowns or not.
Conspiracy theorists further speculate that aliens observing the Earth during the pandemic may have gathered information that would provide them a predictive model of what will bound to happen soon.
The video was published on YouTube and has gotten more than 25,000 views. Some observers rule out advertising balloons as a possible explanation because there are no customers and not weather balloons either as they typically fly at higher altitudes.
A few others believe that it’s just understandable UFO sightings are becoming more frequent this past couple of weeks as aliens pride themselves on their knowledge.
Others suggest it could be chemtrail, drone, or a blimp.
One commenter on the YouTube video pin hopes that if these are aliens, they are friendly.
"It's wonderful to see USGS create a resource that can help NASA with their planning for future missions."
A new map has provided the blueprints for the moon, revealing the true nature of Earth's rocky companion.
Scientists at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute, have created the first-ever comprehensive geologic map of the moon. In this new digital map, titled the "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon," the entire lunar surface has been thoroughly charted and all of its features uniformly classified.
You can find the map, which shows an incredible amount of detail at a 1:5,000,000 scale, online here.
This map details exactly what makes up the beautiful variety of dark and light spots on the moon's surface. It is intended not only as a scientific and educational tool, but it could also be invaluable for future crewed missions to the moon.
Scientists at the USGS created the most comprehensive geologic moon map of all time. (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/USGS)
"People have always been fascinated by the moon and when we might return," Jim Reilly, a former NASA astronaut and current director of the USGS, said in a statement. "So, it's wonderful to see USGS create a resource that can help NASA with their planning for future missions."
This new digital map is so comprehensive, in part, because it uses data spanning the last five decades. The collaborative team behind the map used data from recent satellite missions to the moon, as well as data collected and maps created during NASA's Apollo missions to and around the moon.
Among the recent data are elevation measurements from stereo observations made by the Terrain Camera on JAXA's SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) mission and topography data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
"This map is a culmination of a decades-long project," Corey Fortezzo, USGS geologist and lead author on this work, said in the same statement. "It provides vital information for new scientific studies by connecting the exploration of specific sites on the moon with the rest of the lunar surface."
These scientists merged the old and new datasets and updated the Apollo-era maps with the more recent data. Additionally, they developed a new, unified method for describing the moon's rock layers. Previously, moon maps have used a variety of names for the different types of rock and rock layers, and this new unified description method absolved that inconsistency.
You can read an abstract describing the work on this map here, published by the USGS.
You need a telescope to see it, but astronomers have been observing it already. Charts, tips, recent images, how to watch online here.
Radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2, acquired April 18, 2020 by astronomers at Arecibo Observatory. The radar data confirm that 1998 OR2 is at least 2 km in diameter [a little over a mile wide]. It is probably about 2 1/2 times that long. It rotates once every 4.1 hours.
Image via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
A big – very big – asteroid will pass relatively close to Earth on April 29, 2020. Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass at a safe distance, at some 4 million miles (6 million km), or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. It’ll be the biggest asteroid to fly by Earth this year (that we know about so far); according to current estimates, it’s probably a bit over a mile wide (2 km) and maybe twice that long. Closest approach will be April 29 around 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:56 UTC; translate UTC to your time). Professional observatories have been pointing their telescopes at the huge space rock already. Amateur astronomers with smaller telescopes will also have an opportunity to see it as a slow-moving “star.” If that’s you, we give charts and tips for observers at the bottom of this post that should help.
The Virtual Telescope Project will present an online viewing of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on April 28, 2020. As the time approaches, check this page for more details.
No access to a telescope? No problem. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host a free, online public viewing of the asteroid on April 28, 2020. See the poster above.
Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project also acquired 166 images of the asteroid – collected back to back – and assembled them to make the animated gif below. The animation shows you the asteroid’s motion in front of the stars. It was made with images from the Elena robotic unit of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, Italy. The asteroid is in the center of the image, visible as a sharp dot of light.
Asteroid 1998 OR2 was at about 7.5 million miles from us (about 12 million km) when astronomers acquired the images to make this animation. At its closest on April 29, the asteroid will be 4 million miles (6 million km) from us, or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. The asteroid appears to move in front of the stars because it is so much closer to us than the stars.
Astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have been studying the asteroid since April 8, as it’s traveled through space at 19,461 miles per hour (31,320 km/h). The high-resolution radar images at the top of this post and below – from Arecibo – are some of the first glimpses of this large asteroid. In addition to confirming the asteroid’s size (about 2 km [1.25 mi] wide, and maybe twice that long), the images uniquely revealed the overall shape of the asteroid and some smaller-scale topographic features, such as hills and ridges. The team of observers working now at Acrecibo to observe this asteroids includes astronomers Anne Virkki, Flaviane Venditti, and Sean Marshall from UCF/Arecibo Planetary Group, Dr. Patrick Taylor (remotely) from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, and the Arecibo telescope operators Israel Cabrera, Elliot Gonzalez, and Daniel Padilla.
Radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2, acquired April 18, 2020.
Image via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Let’s make it absolutely clear that there’s no chance of a collision between this asteroid and Earth. It’s true the object is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. The Center for Near Earth Objects defines such an object as one that comes as close to Earth as:
… 0.05 AU or less [about 19.5 lunar distances] and an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less …
In other words, such objects are reasonably close and reasonably big. And do we need to say there are a bunch of objects like this? Wikipedia lists 22 of the largest here. Recent decades have revealed more and more asteroids orbiting the sun.
None of the 22 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids listed by Wikipedia is known to be on a collision course with Earth in the foreseeble future. In fact, none of the asteroids in the video above is known to be on a collision course. Likewise, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 isn’t on a collision course with Earth, not anytime soon. The orbit of this asteroid is well known for at least the next 200 years. Its closest approach to Earth in this century and the next will happen in 2079, when it’ll swoop to within about a million miles of Earth (still about four times farther away than the moon). That 2079 sweep past Earth will still be a big deal. Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the largest known of all large Near-Earth Objects that’ll pass less than five times the Earth-moon distance over the next two centuries!
Astronomers with reasonably sized telescopes are already capturing images of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. This March 6, 2020, image of the asteroid comes from a single 30-second exposure, remotely taken with Elena, a 17-inch (43 cm) robotic telescope. At the imaging time, (52768) 1998 OR2 was about 22 million miles (36 million km) from Earth. At its closest in late April, it’ll be about 4 million miles (6.4 million km) away.
Orbit of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. It requires 3 years and 8 months to orbit the sun once. It gets nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter (about 5 times Earth’s distance from the sun).
Image via NASA/ JPL.
How to see asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 with a small telescope
During its April 2020 pass, this asteroid will at no time be bright enough to view with the unaided eye. However, it’s estimated to reach a visual magnitude of around 10 to 11, which means observers with at least 6-inch or 8-inch (15 to 20 cm) telescopes (the number indicates the size of the primary mirror) will see the asteroid (very slowly) moving in front of the stars!
Sky enthusiasts can initially use a wide-angle (32mm or 35mm) eyepiece to point the telescope to a reference star in the asteroid’s path (charts below). After being assured that the instrument is pointing at the correct patch of the sky, a 26mm or 27mm eyepiece is recommended to detect the asteroid’s slow motion. You will want to note the star field, and watch for the object that moves over a period of about 10 to 15 minutes. Yes, that’ll be the space rock.
Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is in our sky now, but it’s not visible to the eye alone. You need a telescope to see it. This illustration shows the asteroid’s location on the night of April 24, 2020, around 11:45 p.m. Central Daylight Time (04:45 Universal Time, April 25). As seen from central U.S., facing west-southwest.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 24, 2020, at 11:45 p.m. CDT (04:45 UT April 25) observers using small computerized telescopes can point their instruments at these reference stars to observe asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. Compare the views 10 or 15 minutes later to detect an apparent star that has changed position.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
There will be closer approaches of asteroids in the future, including Apophis, which – although smaller – will pass very close to Earth in 2029. Another, larger space rock – 2 miles (3 km) wide – designated as asteroid (415029) 2011 UL21 will pass slightly farther than (52768) 1998 OR2 in June 2024.
But the upcoming flyby in April 2020 of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the most significant close approach of an asteroid until 2027, when another huge asteroid known as (4953) 1990 MU will safely pass by Earth at 12 lunar distances.
Astronomers first discovered asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on July 24, 1998, from Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii.
Have a Go-To Telescope? Point your instrument at star HIP 48674 on April 25, 2020, at 10 p.m. CDT (03:00 UTC April 26) to find the huge asteroid, which will appear as a slow-moving star. To see its movement, compare the views over about 10 to 15 minutes.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on the night of April 27, 2020. The space rock passes close to star HIP 50745 around 9:15 p.m. CDT April 27 (02:15 UTC April 28).
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 around the nights of closest approach (April 28-29, 2020). Facing south, as seen from the central U.S.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 29, 2020, around its closest approach to Earth, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass close to galaxy NGC 3463 and star HIP 53416. Around 9:30 p.m. CDT April 29 (02:30 UTC April 30), point your small computerized telescope to these reference objects. Compare the views 10 to 15 minutes later to detect the apparent “star” that changed position. That’s the asteroid.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 30, 2020, at 9:30 p.m. CDT (02:30 UTC May 1) asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is located close to stars HIP 54875 and 55201. Use a GoTo telescope to locate these reference stars to locate the slow moving asteroid.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Bottom line: The huge asteroid known as (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass closest to Earth on April 29, 2020. Observers peering through telescopes will see it as a slow-moving “star.” Charts, tips, how to watch online – plus some recent images – here.
China hasn’t been getting much good press lately due to the coronavirus pandemic and is probably hoping for some good news, even if it’s from 3500 years ago. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. Archeologists digging in a major site dating back to the Shang Dynasty found an unusual ‘oracle’ bone in a very creepy tomb. It’s unusual because oracle bones – used by religious diviners to ask questions of the deities – are normally made from ox bones or turtle shells, while this one is a human bone. It’s creepy because this oracle bone was found in a grave where the skeletal remains indicated that the body was a human — a human sacrificed by beheading. Sorry, China … this is not your year.
“This well-preserved human bone is shaped like the oracle bone inscription of the character ‘Kan.'”
Proving that the Chinese media will cover bad news, China Daily interviewed Liang Fawei, head of the Chaizhuang site excavation project, about the recent find. Oracle bones were the key ingredient in the practice of pyromancy, where a diviner or oracle would etch a question on a large bone, then heat it with a hot metal rod until the bone cracked. The diviner would then interpret the cracks, determine the deity’s answer to the question and often scratch that onto the bone. This practice began in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BCE-1046 BCE) and continued into the Zhou Dynasty. Fawei notes that the question in this case was the primitive Chinese character ‘Kan’ from the ancient language Jiaguwen – one of the many hieroglyphics used to describe animal and human sacrifices.
“The bone remains found at the site suggest that the human sacrifice was beheaded, facing north and kneeling in the pit with his hands crossed in front of him.”
The Chaizhuang site covers 300,000 square meters and contains houses, wells, ash pits, roads, pottery, stones, bones, jade artifacts. other relics – and plenty of evidence of human sacrifices. Shang kings were often buried with hundreds of humans and evidence shows other sacrifices by this agrarian and warring culture were made to Di (the High God), the sun and mountains and various ancestors. While the ‘Kan’ message had been found on other oracle bones, this was the first discovered with the bones clearly indicating the human was beheading in a kneeling position rather than lying down. (Photos of the grave and oracle bone here.) The Google translation is a little confusing in that it seems to say both that the oracle bone was a human bone and that the character was on a human bone that matched those found on oracle bones.
A piece of oracle bone discovered at the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, Central China's Henan province.
[Photo/Xinhua]
Bone remains suggest ancient human sacrifice at the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, Central China's Henan province.
[Photo/Xinhua]
Whatever the case, the clear indication of a kneeling decapitation in a culture known for its human sacrifices means this story is well-deserving of headlines indicating that it was found in a “creepy tomb” or a “terrible tomb.” It’s both.
One persistent feature of the world of the weird is the phenomenon known as “spontaneous human combustion,” which is when a human being is immolated by fire that seems to have no discernible cause or eternal source of ignition. In most cases there are strange details surrounding these cases, such as bodies that were charred by extremely high temperatures, yet left the surroundings or even clothing untouched, or of cases in which certain body parts have somehow managed to remain unscathed while everything else is ash. It is a phenomenon that had been written of in literature for centuries, and one mostly stable feature of these cases is that the victim does not survive the ordeal. Indeed, most cases are known from their violent aftermath, in which the corpse or parts of the corpse are burned beyond recognition, and survivors are scarce. Yet, although rare, there are a few people who have been the victim of apparent spontaneous human combustion who have lived to tell the tale, and here are some of them.
Many of these reports come from pretty far back in time, and the earliest we will look at here is from 1776. It all revolves around an Italian friar by the name of Don Gio Maria Bertholi, who seems to have somehow drawn fire to him to spontaneously combust, and yet live to tell the tale. In October of that year he was in the small town of Filetto, and after conducting some business in town he retired for the evening at his brother-in-law’s house. Not long after he closed himself into his room for the night, the other residents were alarmed to hear Bertholi screaming loudly as if in great pain, and when they rushed to his aid, they found the friar surrounded by an aura of blue flame. Oddly, as the relatives approached the flames are said to have actually cringed away from them as if aware of their presence, before dissipating completely, leaving Betholi moaning in agony. One report of the odd event reads:
Perceiving the cries of the priest, they repaired instantly to the apartment; and, on entering it, found him extended on the paved floor, and enveloped in a thin flame, which receded as they approached him, and at length entirely vanished. They placed him, as soon as possible, upon his bed, and administered to him every kind of aid that was at hand.
Although the friar had survived the incident, he was suffering serious burns, and when he was able to articulate what had happened, he explained that it felt as if an unseen hand had struck him, after which he had erupted in flames. Oddly, it was found that although his body was burned and his silk cap had been burned to a crisp, his shirt and trousers were undamaged, and his hair had remained unscathed too despite burns on his face. Making it stranger still was that, although there had been quite a bit of fire, the room had no smoke or odor of the fire, and nothing in the vicinity had been damaged. When Bertholi was brought to a physician for an examination, he was found to be in quite a rough state. The French physician François-Emmanuel Fodéré would describe it in excruciating detail, writing:
On the following morning, the patient was examined by M. Battaglia, who found the integuments of the right arm almost entirely detached and pendant from the flesh; from the shoulders to the thighs the integuments were equally injured; and on the right hand, the part most injured, mortification had already commenced, which notwithstanding immediate scarification rapidly extended itself. The patient complained of burning thirst, and was horribly convulsed, he passed by stool putrid and bilious matter, and was exhausted by continual vomiting accompanied by fever and delirium. On the fourth day, after two hours of comatose insensibility, he expired; during the whole period of his suffering, it was impossible to trace any symptomatic affection. A short time previous to his decease, M. Battaglia observed, with astonishment that putrefaction had made so much progress that the body already exhaled an insufferable odor, worms crawled from it on the bed, and the nails had become detached from the left hand.
In the end it has never been ascertained exactly what happened to Bertholi, and no explanation offered that really explains the entirety of the very bizarre phenomenon that he experienced. It remains a historical oddity, and a curious case of a person who survived what certainly at least appears to be spontaneous human combustion. Our next weird case comes from 1822, in the countryside of France. One summer day a local man called Renateau was out in the countryside of the village of Loignan when he allegedly felt a sudden, sharp pain in his right index finger. He casually glanced to it and his eyes widened in terror as he realized that his finger was actually on fire, and when he waved his fingers around the whole hand ignited. He wildly batted his hand at his pants, setting them on fire as well, and his left hand erupted into flames when he clapped his hands together.
Now in a panic, the man dashed as fast as he could to his house and screamed at his wife to bring him a bucket of cold water in which to douse the fire, but plunging his hands into the water failed to stop the flames. He then tried shoving his hands into wet mud and even tried milk, but this didn’t work either, and by this time he had attracted a crowd of curious onlookers milling about. One of these gawking spectators then brought him some holy water, and this seemed to do the trick. Oddly, although his clothes where he had touched them were burned, his hands were remarkably intact, suffering only minor burns considering how long them had been ablaze. This curious case appears in 1822 in the French medical journal Nouveau journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, Volume 15 and is an odd historical account that doesn’t seem to have ever been solved.
While these cases so far have mostly been met with horror and desperate panic, there is another case from 1835 that appeared in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Volume 17, and is notable for just how calm the victim was. In January of that year, a professor at the University of Nashville by the name of James Hamilton was doing an experiment in which he was outside making atmospheric measurements. As he went about checking his barometer, thermometer, and hygrometer, he felt a sudden acute pain in the thigh of his left leg. At first, he tried to ignore it, but it got steadily more intense until the pain was nearly unbearable. When he examined his leg, he then noticed that there was a flame emanating from the point of pain, right above the cloth of his pants. Perhaps it was his scientific inquisitiveness that guided his actions then, because he calmly cupped his hands around the flame in order to cut off its oxygen supply and it went out and the pain subsided greatly. He then went about inspecting his leg.
He found upon the skin a dry spot about the size of a dime, that seemed more like a scrape than a burn. Curiously, a hole was found to have been burned through his drawers in a perfect circle where the pain had been, yet the underwear between the skin and the outer clothing remained strangely untouched. It was all very weird, but the professor could see no need for medical attention, and calmly went back to his experiment just as calmly as he had dealt with the spontaneous flame that had spewed from his leg. The strange wound would take longer to heal than would be expected, but the professor made a full recovery, and it was considered by the journal to be a reliable case of “partial spontaneous combustion.”
There have been more modern cases of this as well. In 1974 a door to door salesman by the name of Jack Angel allegedly woke up at his mobile home in Savannah, Georgia, in the United States to find his hands, arms, back, and chest covered with burns. This was very odd, as he was not a smoker, there was no source of flame, and nothing around him was burned, including his clothes, which were unscathed. He claims that doctors told him that whatever had happened did so “internally,” and had originated from his left arm. The case gets a little suspicious when in later years he changed the story to say that he had been sprayed by scalding hot water as he was fixing the mobile home’s water pressure, but then in an episode of the TV series That’s Incredible he reverted back to his original tale of spontaneous human combustion. What is going on here?
In 1985 we also have the case of decorated Vietnam War veteran Frank Baker, who says he had his strange experience while on a fishing trip with some buddies. He says that as he was just sitting there on the sofa chatting away in their cabin his body suddenly burst into flames for no reason at all. They were able to put the flames out, and Baker said, “I had no idea what was taking place on my body — none. We were getting ready for fishing and sitting on the couch. Everything was great. Pete was sitting next to me — we were having a helluva time.” Making it even stranger is that when doctors examined him he was informed that the fire seemed to have burned from the inside out. The case was featured on an episode of the Science Channel’s Unexplained Files, and is pretty strange, indeed.
As of yet there is no real consensus on what causes the human spontaneous combustion phenomenon, and it has long remained a fixture of the world of the paranormal. However, while there is usually no one left to give a first hand account of what it was like to experience it, these cases that we have looked at here are very intriguing, indeed. What can we learn from such stories? Do they provide any insight into what is going on or do they merely take the mystery deeper? Whatever the case may be, they certainly do provide a different spin on the mystery of spontaneous human combustion, and it seems to be an enigma that will be talked about for some time to come.
Satelliettrein van Musk voor derde keer gepasseerd, morgen nieuwe kans - HLN.be
Satelliettrein van Musk voor derde keer gepasseerd, morgen nieuwe kans - HLN.be
BELGA.
De satelliettrein van SpaceX van Elon Musk is vanavond rond 22 uur opnieuw boven ons land gepasseerd. De trein was deze keer iets moeilijker te zien.
Net als de vorige twee avonden, passeerde de satellietentrein van Musk ook vanavond rond 22 uur boven ons land. Wellicht zullen we de treintjes nog enkele avonden kunnen waarnemen, maar ze zullen wel telkens minder helder worden. Ze worden namelijk geleidelijk in een hogere baan gebracht en bovendien verspreiden ze zich steeds meer, zodat het mooie ‘treintjeseffect’ stilaan verdwijnt.
Ook morgen zal de satelliettrein te zien zijn omstreeks hetzelfde uur, als het niet bewolkt is tenminste.
Supersnel internet
Woensdag was het al de zevende keer dat er satellieten gelanceerd werden van het Starlink-project, dat supersnel internet moet aanbieden in elke uithoek van de aarde. In mei vorig jaar werden de eerste gelanceerd en in totaal moeten er 12.000 in een baan rond de aarde gebracht worden.
De satellieten zijn zichtbaar als een streep van lichtjes. Volgens astronomen is die zichtbaarheid vandaag nog geen probleem, maar kan het wel een probleem worden als er nog meer satellieten bijkomen. Ze veroorzaken immers lichtvervuiling die het werk van astronomen bemoeilijkt.
Helderheid
Elon Musk liet echter weten op Twitter dat zijn bedrijf iets gaat doen aan de helderheid van de satellieten. Die heeft deels te maken met de manier waarop de zonnepanelen op de satellieten bevestigd zijn. De komende maanden zullen de panelen richting zon worden gedraaid, waardoor ze minder zichtbaar worden. De satellieten vliegen ook dicht bij de aarde en zijn vrij groot, waardoor ze licht reflecteren. Speciale zonneschermen zouden dat probleem moeten verhelpen.
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America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation
America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation
This article was published in New Dawn 175 (Jul-Aug 2019)
Humans were in America long before we’ve been told, and the Australian Aborigines have a genetic connection to the Amazon which once had great cities. FRANK JOSEPH looks at the fresh discoveries in Graham Hancock’s latest book.
As the former editor-in-chief (1993 to 2007) and ongoing writer for Ancient American – a US magazine examining Old World impact on the New World before 1492 – recently released materials regarding pre-Columbian possibilities often come my way. I was surprised, however, to find that Graham Hancock’s latest tome, America Before, compares remarkably with Before Atlantis (2013), my own book, published six years earlier, in more than title.
Both works go into the Bering land-bridge Theory, megalithic alignments with the Cygnus constellation, Easter Island’s moai, Gobekli Tepe, the discoveries of Albert Goodyear, Brazil’s Stonehenge, the Meadowcroft Rock shelter, Neanderthals, the Clovis First Controversy, Pedra Furada, etc., etc. Other topics tackled in America Before – Ohio’s Great Serpent Mound, North American earthworks, the Piasu Bird, Cahokia, et al. – were likewise described at length in my earlier releases: Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America (2006), Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds (2008), Unearthing Ancient America (2009), Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America (2010), Lost Worlds of Ancient America (2012), Lost Colonies of Ancient America (2014), and Lost History of Ancient America (2016).
Independent research that arrives at common conclusions tends to validate disparate investigators at work in the same field. Of them all, Graham Hancock is certainly the best known, thanks to his early association with such prestigious periodicals as The Times, The Independent, The Economist, and The Guardian, which granted him access to major book publishers with international distribution, such as St. Martin’s Press, publisher of his latest work. His Fingerprints of the Gods was a worldwide bestseller. At the time of its release in 1995, critics – even those sympathetic to the author’s belief in ancient catastrophism – faulted him for merely reworking long-known if not well-publicised information. But they were forced to admit that Hancock acquainted millions of readers with otherwise neglected information about the deep past.
America Before is not unlike Fingerprints of the Gods in that it introduces an international audience to a version of antiquity not otherwise available in schools or mainstream publications. America Before also joins Before Atlantis in highlighting “a global cataclysm that occurred near the end of the Ice Age around twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. A disintegrating comet crossed the orbit of the Earth and bombarded our planet with a ‘swarm’ of fragments.” Familiar language to readers already familiar with The Destruction of Atlantis (2002) and its sequel. Survivors of Atlantis (2004) similarly tells how an abundance of physical proof for worldwide destruction left by comets during the Bronze Age was offered by scientists meeting at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge, England.
In 1997 they presented undeniable evidence in the form of annual growth rings at Irish bogs and oak forests, ash-fall deposits from Greenland ice-cores, impact lines made by colossal waves along the shores of Morocco, abrupt lake level changes from Western Europe to South America, and small, glassy spherules that result specifically from cometary collisions subjecting rock to intense heat. Earth’s periodic brushes with celestial upheaval belong to a pattern of astronomical interface with our planet that abruptly terminated the Ice Age, as described in America Before and earlier in Before Atlantis.
Buried in the floor of Lake Cuitzeo was a thin, dark layer containing unequivocal evidence for a large, cosmic body that struck central Mexico just when the Younger Dryas period opened with such violence. Virtually identical sediment strata dated to the same period have been previously located at numerous locations throughout North America, Greenland, and Western Europe. According to Science Daily, “The data suggest that a comet or asteroid – likely a large, previously fragmented body, greater than several hundred meters in diameter – entered the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle. The heat at impact burned biomass, melted surface rocks, and caused major environmental disruption.” The resulting crater became Lake Cuitzeo, measuring twelve and one-half miles across, with an average depth of ninety feet.
Dr James Kennett, professor of earth science at the University of California (Santa Barbara), told the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “These results are consistent with earlier reported discoveries throughout North America of abrupt ecosystem change, megafaunal extinction, and human cultural change and population reduction. These changes were large, abrupt and unprecedented, and had been recorded and identified by earlier investigators at a ‘time of crisis’. The timing of the impact coincided with the most extraordinary biotic and environmental changes over Mexico and Central America during the last approximately twenty thousand years, as recorded by others in several regional lake deposits.”
Professor of earth science Dr James Kennett and other researchers postulate from the evidence that a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth close to 12,800 years ago, causing rapid climatic changes, megafaunal extinctions, sudden human population decrease and cultural shifts and widespread wildfires (biomass burning). They studied the impact spherules in 18 sites in nine countries on four continents for their study. (Graphic credit: YDB Research Group)
The floor of Lake Cuitzeo is rich in spherules formed when they collided with each other at high velocities during the whirling chaos of an extraterrestrial impact. They are joined by numerous specimens of lonsdaleite – an identifiable configuration nanodiamonds assume when they are pressured by large meteorite collisions – and aciniform soot, the acne-like appearance of dust residue resulting from the same cause. “These materials form only through cosmic impact,” Kennett explained, not through volcanic or other natural terrestrial processes. In the entire geologic record, the only other known continental layer with abundant peaks in lonsdaleite, impact spherules and aciniform soot is in the sixty-five-million-year-old Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary layer that coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Evidence for Early Human Settlement
“Recent discoveries show that North America was first peopled at least one hundred thirty thousand years ago,” according to Hancock, “many tens of thousands of years before human settlements were established in Europe and Asia.” Homo sapiens-sapiens? Yes, but the European continent was actually settled one hundred seventy thousand years earlier by Neanderthals. In fact, the oldest evidence for proto-humans in Europe goes back 1.3 million years. “At least” is a bit of an understatement for human settlement in the New World, because Before Atlantis describes how prehistorian Juan Armena Camacho discovered lithic implements at Hueyatlaco, seventy miles south-east of Mexico City. According to US geologist Dr Virginia Steen-McIntyre, “radiometric dates using methods identical to those used in Africa to date the early sites there place Hueyatlaco’s stone tools to slightly over a quarter of a million years ago.”
Some thirty years prior to Camacho’s find, a still older site came to light one mile north from the Oklahoma town of Frederick, at a ten-mile-long, half-mile-wide ridge. Ten to twenty-five feet beneath the surface of this gravel deposit occur dozens of well-crafted stone implements cemented in place in common strata with the bones of extinct animals firmly dated to seven hundred fifty thousand years ago. C.N. Gould, Director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, reported: “There can be no doubt that the artifacts occur in the pit near the basal portion, on the same level as the fossil remains. An examination of the undisturbed face of the pit, immediately above the position of the finds, showed unbroken, nearly horizontal strata above it. As the case stands, it looks very much as though the artifacts are of the same antiquity as the fossil animals. At the same time, it would be well to reserve final judgment until we are certain that the artifacts are not secondary inclusions.”
Since Gould released his report in 1929, subsequent investigations of the Holoman Pit, as it is locally known, repeatedly confirmed that the stone tools are not later inclusions but were indeed laid down at the same time the animal bones were stratified, three quarters of a million years ago. As recently as 2005, archaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool’s John Moore’s University in England discovered a line of human footprints dating back forty thousand years ago near Puebla, in Mexico. Conventional scholars, convinced no human set foot in Middle America before twelve thousand years ago, sought to debunk the heretical period she assigned the evidence by dispatching a team of leading geologists led by Paul R. Renne, director of California’s Berkeley Geochronology Center, to the site.
Once there, they took repeated argon testing to investigate the magnetic imprint of the foot-printed, magmatic rock, together with other state-of-the-art procedures. Renne announced their results in the scientific journal Nature, stating that the rock featuring the footprints was not forty thousand years old after all. It was, instead, 1.3 million yearsold.
During the early 20th century, archaeologist Carlos Ameghino (1865 to 1936) led teams of excavators along the Argentine coast south of Buenos Aires after detecting clues to an early habitation site at Miramar. By 1914, he discovered numerous stone tools cemented within Pliocene Era strata. As Silvia Gomez experienced in the following century, Ameghino’s critics commissioned a group of professional geologists to debunk his assertion. Instead, they verified it, stating that the artefacts had been laid down between two million and three million years ago. Although their analysis was released by the prestigious Anales del Museo de Historica Natural de Buenos Aires, it has since been ignored by archaeologists in the outside world.
Australia-Amazon: An Unexpected Discovery
“Certain tribes of the Amazon jungle,” states America Before’s back cover blurb, “are closely related to Australian Aborigines. How did this extraordinary, unexpected, and extremely ancient DNA signal get to the Amazon?” This question elevates Hancock’s new book with fresh discoveries that threaten to shake the scientific establishment to its core by opening an entirely new and revolutionary archaeological theatre of operations.
The vast Amazon region has long been dismissed by mainstream scholars as anciently under-populated and barren of all but the most backward, native cultures, hermetically sealed off by nature from the outside world. Hancock writes, “in September 2015, Pontus Skoglund, his senior colleague Professor David Reich of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and other leading experts in the field, announced in the pages of Nature that they had found new evidence in South America, and specifically in the Amazon rainforest, that called for a rethink.”
Researchers mapped similarities in genes, mutations and random pieces of DNA of Central and South American tribes with groups in other parts of the world including Australia. Warmer colours indicate the strongest affinities. Researcher Skoglund said “a statistically clear signal linking Native Americans in the Amazonian region of Brazil to present-day Australo-Melanesians and Andaman Islanders” was confirmed.
(Graphic credit: Pontus Skoglund, Harvard Medical School)
He quotes Skoglund’s “genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to present-day Eurasians or Native Americans,” and are, in Hancock’s words, “more closely related to Melanesian Papuans and Australian Aborigines than to any other Native American population.” “We spent a really long time trying to make this result go away,” Skoglund explained, “but it just got stronger.” In the end, “a statistically clear signal linking Native Americans in the Amazonian region of Brazil to present-day Australo-Melanesians and Andaman Islanders” was confirmed.
“We also know it has to be pre-Columbian,” added Professor Eske Willerslev of Denmark’s Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. Further studies by Willerslev and his colleagues “found Australian DNA already present in skeletal remains from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, dated to 10,400 years ago, and confirmed the suspicion of the researchers that the anomalous genetic signal must have reached South America in the Late Pleistocene – that is, near the end of the last Ice Age, [when] a group of people carrying Australo-Melanesian genes settled in what is now the Amazon jungle.”
The headline of the Oct/Nov 2010 edition of Cosmos magazine and accompanying by-line, augmented by a photograph of an American skull (Luczia) exhibiting morphology that closely resembles Australian Aboriginal people. The oldest human skull unearthed in the Americas has cranial features similar to those of Australian Aborigines. Another piece of anomalous evidence pointing to an early human story, but largely ignored because it contradicts official scientific theory.
This is undoubtedly one of the most striking revelations ever made in the entire history of archaeology, as inexplicable as it is astounding. It does not mean that a few Australoid castaways accidentally washed ashore on Peruvian shores, then somehow traversed the formidable Andes Mountains and descended into Brazil’s totally different, but no less forbidding jungle, where they cohabited with a few, indigenous individuals.
Rather, DNA evidence signifies a mass-migration of Australo-Melanesians to Amazonia, where they interbred with native peoples on such a broad scale some ten and a half centuries ago, the genetic imprint is still discernible. Their epic, 12,940–kilometre, trans-Pacific voyage to coastal Peru and subsequent 1,890–kilometre trek to Brazilian rain forest were successfully achieved at a time when Western European Man was struggling to survive the challenging Upper Paleolithic, or Late Stone Age. Australia’s contemporaneous material culture was itself far too underdeveloped for undertaking anything even approaching an oceanic crossing of such magnitude, not only in terms of the extreme distances concerned, but especially regarding the large number of persons participating in the expedition, or expeditions.
The maritime technological requirements necessary for conducting an operation of transpacific scope alone rule out all possibilities for Australoid responsibility. Moreover, what conceivable motivation could have possessed them to attempt such a huge enterprise? Hancock wonders if a third party was involved – a different, unrelated, unknown, though far higher culture that, for reasons even more obscure, transported Australo-Melanesians to Amazonia.
Speculation like this begins to conjure ‘legendary’ Lemuria, the pre-Polynesian civilisation that rose to ancient heights of technological greatness and imperialist domination of the Pacific realm, before succumbing to a natural catastrophe sufficiently powerful enough to shake the very foundations of the Earth itself. Hancock, however, shies away from any Lemurian connotations.
Ancient Amazonia Rises Out of the Cleared Forests
Even so, America Before’s most valuable and original contribution to our deepening grasp of antiquity is its investigation of Amazonia, an area of the world hitherto neglected by conventional and alternative researchers alike. They traditionally laboured under the assumption that Brazil’s rain forest was always far too environmentally hostile for civilisation to have taken root there. Hancock cites the academic view “that the Amazon could only have been inhabited for about 1,000 years, and then only by very small groups of hunter-gatherers, since the jungle was ‘resource poor’.”
Among the very few archaeologists who personally challenged this dominant paradigm was Percy Harrison Fawcett. His disappearance in search of the lost city of Z during 1925 seemed to confirm consensus opinion that no such place could possibly exist in the Brazilian jungle, and America Before is remiss in failing to properly credit or even mention in passing the British Colonel, whose self-sacrificial, if percipient effort foreshadowed the very discoveries Hancock describes in Chapters 11 through 17.
Together with the two previous chapters detailing Amazonia’s genetic connection with Ice Age Australia, they combine to represent the book’s highest worth. Nowhere else may readers learn more about the Amazon Basin’s otherwise unknown archaeological wealth.
An artist’s conception shows a Xinguano village of the Brazilian Amazon as it might have appeared before 1492. An example of how the Amazon was once likely inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people in numerous well-managed cities, towns and villages. Archaeologists have found traces of wide, curbed roads and managed parklands.
He tells how the first modern Europeans travelling the Amazon River from Ecuador to its estuary on the Atlantic coast of Brazil saw “great cities” that “glistened in white” (suggesting limestone construction, like that favoured by Maya construction engineers) during their 7,000-kilometre, seventeen-month journey. Some of these urban centres were “more than twenty kilometres from end to end, roughly the length of Manhattan… enormous expanses were given over to productive agriculture, and there were signs everywhere of large and well-organised political and economic systems linked to centralised states that were capable of fielding disciplined armies thousands strong.”
Hancock quotes the mid-16th century expedition’s Spanish chronicler, Dominican friar Gaspar de Carvajal, concerning an abandoned, native “villa, in which were a great deal of porcelain ware of various makes, both jars and pitchers, very large, with a capacity of more than twenty-five arrobas [one hundred gallons] and other small pieces such as plates and bowls and candelabra of this porcelain of the best that has ever been seen in the world, for that of Malaga [Spain’s centre for pottery production] is not its equal, because this porcelain which we found is all glazed and embellished with all colours, and so bright, that these colours astonish, and, more than this, the drawings and paintings which they make on them are so accurately worked out that one wonders how with only natural skill they manufacture and decorate all these things making them look just like Roman articles.” Native porcelain of such high quality does not appear in Brazilian archaeology.
The largest native city Carvajal and his companions saw was greater than twenty kilometres in extent, with a population of twenty thousand or more residents. Their chieftain, Machiparo, also ruled over “many settlements and very large ones, which together contribute for fighting purposes fifty thousand men…”
Two, subsequent expeditions, twenty years later and 1637-38, respectively, supported Carvajal’s report. Hancock quotes UCLA Professor David Wilkinson, “an authority on long-term and large-scale phenomena in world politics [who] has made a special study of the level of civilisation in the Amazon prior to European contact.” Based on a late 17th-century report that one of Brazil’s native cities could field 60,000 warriors, Wilkinson found “comparative-civilisational standards have implied an urban population of 300,000 to 360,000.”
He goes on to describe “more than 30 epidemics – smallpox, measles, and other outbreaks – some on a massive scale – in 16th-18th century South America.” With fatal consequences in the upper ninety percentile, the Amazonian metropolitan areas literally died out though depopulation. “Once left deserted,” Hancock explains, “the great cities and monuments and other public works of any hypothetical Amazonian civilisation would quickly have been encroached upon and soon completely hidden by the jungle…” They only began re-emerging in 1977, “when giant, geometrical earthworks were discovered in the Rio Branco area of the Brazilian state of Acre, in the southwestern Amazon.”
It was the first of many related sites that have since come to light, including a pair of perfect squares – 200 metres and 100 metres wide – connected by a 20-metre-wide, 100-metre-long causeway. Archaeologists estimate “that as many as 1,500 geoglyphs might ultimately be found.” Severino Calazans, the largest Amazonian structure of its kind so far surveyed, “defined by an enclosure ditch twelve metres wide, measures 920 metres.” This particular location and other, outsized designs “have since been revealed by mass clearing of the forest for the cattle industry, thus becoming visible, especially from the sky, over the past 30 years. Indeed, the enormous size of the geoglyphs makes it easier to distinguish their shape and configuration from an aerial perspective, than at ground level…”
Groups are composed chiefly of circles, ellipses and rectangles, suggesting possible celestial orientations. Hancock writes that “because they offer an unobstructed view of the horizon, such locations are also very often what ancient astronomers looked for when they set out monuments on the ground – aligned, say, to the June solstice sunset or to the March equinox sunrise. Without a full-scale archaeo-astronomical survey of the Amazonian geoglyphs,” however, their suspected celestial significance remains unproven.
Their resemblance to Old World Stone Age sites nevertheless inspires provocative comparisons. Hancock tells how “the square enclosure ditch at Severino Calazans shares the ground plan, base diameter and cardinality [orientation to the Four Cardinal Directions] of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. That epoch, moreover, around 2500 BC, coincides and overlaps with the megalithic epoch in Europe, so another curiosity is the way that the circular geoglyphs of Amazonia resemble henges – the circular embankments with deep, internal ditches that surround the great, stone circles of the British Isles. The scale is very similar and the resemblance is so obvious that even the most sober archaeologists, usually wary of cross-cultural comparisons, are willing to remark upon it.”
The Severino Calazans site, formed by a single square-shaped ditch, is cut and partially destroyed by Highway BR-317. A farm has been built inside the area enclosed by the ditch. Indigenous people consider the earthworks sites as sacred and do not use them for housing. (Photograph by Sanna Saunaluoma)
Whatever critics may make of America Before, they cannot deny that its unique discussion of the lost civilisation of the Amazon, plus revelations concerning the mind-boggling heritage of its present-day descendants from 9th millennium BCE Australia, opens new vistas of antiquity, as trailblazing, as they are intriguing.
America Before is available from all good bookstores.
The UFOS or Unidentified Flying Objects phenomena seems to continue to make headlines even though these sightings may not be that regular. However, scientists have created a new category for the UFOS in which they named them unidentified aerial phenomena or UAAQS or UFOS as it is also known. This means that the reports of this unexplained phenomenon are no longer classified under UFO sightings or misidentification.
In fact, the reasons for the sightings remain unclear and no one can really pinpoint the reason as to why the UFOS is so rare. They say that the UFOS phenomenon has an extremely strong presence among people and that it might be a very powerful means for communication. The UFOS sightings have many different levels and the one that are usually seen are that the UFOS have no shapes or planes to identify it but that it is a light or a ray that seems to come from space.
Despite the lack of any clear image of the UFOS or its location, some researchers think that the UFOS phenomenon is really something more than just an unknown object sighting. One of the main theories behind the phenomenon involves the said ray that is believed to be coming from the Milky Way. However, scientists deny this theory because there is a possible indication that many of the sightings occur near the galactic center, which is the place where the Milky Way is found.
The researchers also say that while the existence of such phenomenon is often being denied by experts, the evidence is still out there for all of us to see. It will take time and patience on our part to find the source of the UFOS. However, the data has been collected and analyzed and is ready for analysis. All you need to do is to sift through the details of this data and get your answer.
Sightings of UFOS seem to be closely related to the military. There are those who claim that these sightings were caused by other government agencies because the objects seem to be interfering with certain electromagnetic sensors of military operations. If the object had already done this before the military forces were conducting their mission, then it is said that the UFOS have a bad influence on the operation.
One of the basic basis that the UFOS are related to the military is the fact that the UFOS are powerful rays that can affect aircraft that fly in the sky. They have the ability to pass through the aircraft and after coming out, they could cause extensive damage to the equipment. This is how the UFOS came to be termed as beam weapons because the UFOS weapons are directly attacking their enemy.
They also say that while most of the sightings occur near the galactic center, they also have connections to the CERN laboratory because of the experiments that were conducted there. However, the UFOS are said to have a very strong presence near the laboratory where the experiments were conducted. These beams are also said to have a strong connection to the physicists who conduct experiments on the particles.
It is also said that the UFOS are also due to the poor weather conditions of the military areas. This is also the reason why the UFOS are said to be extremely light because the weather is quite stable. To avoid detection, these rays are likely to be very light and are said to be similar to meteors.
Giant UFO Near Apollo 13 Images Watching Crews Stressful Dilemma, NASA Source. UFO Sighting News.
Giant UFO Near Apollo 13 Images Watching Crews Stressful Dilemma, NASA Source. UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery:April 23, 2020 Location of discovery: Space Source:Apollo 13 images (URL coming tomorrow) Hey everyone, how you doing? I was looking through the NASA Apollo 13 image archives and found this very unique photo with a huge UFO in it. The UFO seems to have jumped from one side of the photo to the other, so there is a shadow location on the left side of the photo and its clearly visible on the right side. This is not some light reflection. Look at it with the earth near it. This object is solid, its huge and detailed and its moving! Apollo 13 took place back in April of 1970 and lasted only 5 days, but they did have some trouble on the mission and almost didn't make it home. I believe this UFO was observing the humans on board and how they deal with stressful situations. My biggest question is...is this a living biological entity or is this some kind of alien ship or probe? Ah...the mystery...its the icing on the cake. Scott C. Waring
Ancient 20km Pyramid Leaving 650km Trail On Ocean Floor Near Japan, UFO Sighting News.
Ancient 20km Pyramid Leaving 650km Trail On Ocean Floor Near Japan, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery:April 24, 2020 Location of discovery:Ocean near Japan Source: Google Map I was looking over Google map and found the four sided pyramid that is about 20km across and it has traveled across the ocean floor leaving a 18-20km wide trail behind it for over 650km. This pyramid is a UFO that had landed thousands of years ago under the ocean. During that time it moved across the ocean floor until it rested 650km from its starting point. Can you imagine the alien technology that rests inside this ancient pyramid? Its hard to say if its abandoned or still occupied. Only one way to find out and thats to go down there and explore it. The only person with the ocean submarines and money to do that would probably be UK billionaire Richard Branson who is loves deep sea diving and research. Perhaps he will explore this alien realm. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
UFO Seen Playing Over California Zig Zagging At 6AM, April 23, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen Playing Over California Zig Zagging At 6AM, April 23, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:April 23, 2020 Location of sighting: Tracy, California, USA Source: MUFON #108111 An eyewitness in California got off work and saw something unusual in the sky...smoky trails coming down from space. UFOs often do make smoke, both when damaged badly and when they are making cloud tunnels for other UFOs to hide within and just for play. Here we see a straight fall turn into a zig zag motion and then right before it hit the ground, it suddenly went horizontal to the ground and rode off into the horizon. At 6am in the morning...it looks like it was just having a good ol time. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Just got off work driving home And saw these strange objects in the morning sky 615ish.
UFO Caught Over North Carolina Horse Farm, April 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting World News.
UFO Caught Over North Carolina Horse Farm, April 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting World News.
Date of sighting: April 24, 2020
Location of sighting:Chapel hill, North Carolina, USA
Source: MUFON #108123
This dark triangle UFO was caught over North Carolina yesterday and shows just how fast they can be. The eyewitness didn't even notice it until they got home and looked at the photos. Often times, smaller unmanned UFOs called probes will shoot past so fast that no one even notices them. This is such a case. We can easily make out it is some kind of think triangle disk. The eyewitness caught it on one photo, but the very next photo the UFO was gone. UFOs are everywhere and interested in everyone and everything. Yes, they record and watch lots of things besides humans. UFOs have been seen over ponds, flowers, bushes, trees, even near planes. They love flying tech for some reason...probably easiest to get at in the air.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Took 2 photos of horses in pasture. First picture shows no spot 5 seconds later black spot appears in photo. Did not notice till I looked at photograph.
Ever seen a meteorite that changes course abruptly? Well, this one does!
Ever seen a meteorite that changes course abruptly? Well, this one does!
Several days ago we reported about the many strange objects falling from the skies around the world.
Well, here is new one captured in the sky over Tracy, California on April 23, 2020. The photographer, who reported the sighting to Mufon, stated that he just got off work driving home when he saw a strange object in the morning sky.
Experts will say that it was a meteorite, but have you ever seen a meteorite turning into something with two burning trails behind it, which then, before hitting the ground, changes course abruptly before it continues its flight.
This object was certainly not a meteorite, but rather something that is equipped with a technology unknown to us
Strange Slow Moving Flaming Objects Fall From The Skies
Strange Slow Moving Flaming Objects Fall From The Skies
Something strange is going on. The last week many people around the world witnessed slow moving flaming objects that fell from the skies.
Experts believe the unusual occurrences were meteors, potentially linked to the annual Lyrid meteor shower due to commence this week, but looking at these unusual flaming objects then it is hard to imagine that they all were linked to the Lyrid Meteor shower.
1. Bright flaming object falls from the sky over Iowa.
US National Weather Service Des Moines Iowa wrote on their Facebook page: Does anyone know what happened this morning (April 21, 20200 around 6:20 am in the sky looking East. I was on my way to Pella when I noticed the “explosion”. Looks like an explosion of some sort. I would hate to think an airplane but I’m not sure what else it would be. You can see a dark streak then a big poof a smoke and a bright object falling. I know there is a meteor shower tonight…..maybe this one is a bit premature?
2. Slow moving bizarre fireball spotted over Hull, UK
On Sunday evening (April 19, 2020), a mysterious burning object was spotted traversing the sky over the northern part of Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, England. Eyewitnesses suggested that the object moved too slowly to be a meteor.
Rebecca Holmes saw it from her garden in Bransholme, near Kingston upon Hull and said ‘It was weird it looked like either a plane or a rocket or something.’
3. Flaming objects spotted over UK and Canada
From left to right: Object 3A – Object 3B and Object 3C
3A. Mysterious Flaming Object Spotted Over Cambridgeshire England A mysterious flaming object spiraling through the sky over Cambridgeshire, England, was spotted by witness this past Wednesday (April 15, 2020)at 8:00 PM. The witnesses described the sight as appearing as a thick chemtrail but with “flames coming out of the back of it.
3B.Flaming object in apparent vertical free fall over London, UK recorded on April 14, 2020. See object 5.
3C. And a burning object falling from the sky over Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on April 14, 2020 and reported to Mufon. The witness states: Driving into Winnipeg at around 8:30 in the morning on April 14 There was a big black streak in the sky, not moving. I thought it was a contrail at first, but it had no beginning or end and no sign that it was dissipating. It just hung there for about 15 min then it was gone.
4. Strange burning object falls object from sky
A flaming object falls from the sky and although the location is unknown, we can see a v-shaped object with a burning trail behind. Video.
5.And another very strange smoking object that fell from the sky over Iceland on April 14, 2020. Video.
Did President Eisenhower Meet With Aliens at Holloman Air Force Base?
Did President Eisenhower Meet With Aliens at Holloman Air Force Base?
In 1953, President Harry Truman gave up the oval office and passed the reins of power to his successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike). It appears that Truman also gave Ike a pretty hefty file concerning a top-secret project called Majestic 12 that Truman established By Classified Executive Order. Majestic 12 consisted of a group of scientists, military personnel and other governmental professionals who all worked together to understand and communicate with UFOs and extraterrestrials (ETs).
President Eisenhower was extremely interested in UFOs and ETs: there is Evidence that he met with ETs secretly, at least three times.
Once at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California and twice at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. Since the Eisenhower meetings, other instances of UFOs landing at or near Holloman AFB have been reported.
1954 Eisenhower ET Meeting at Edwards AFB
In 1953, President Harry Truman gave up the oval office and passed the reins of power to his successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike). It appears that Truman also gave Ike a pretty hefty file concerning a top-secret project called Majestic 12 that Truman established . Majestic 12 consisted of a group of scientists, military personnel and other governmental professionals who all worked together to understand and communicate with UFOs and extraterrestrials (ETs).
President Eisenhower was extremely interested in UFOs and ETs: there is that he met with ETs secretly, at least three times.
Once at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California and twice at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. Since the Eisenhower meetings, other instances of UFOs landing at or near Holloman AFB have been reported.
President Eisenhower, who had been a five-star Army general, always had a “strong belief in life on other planets.” In February 1954, he was spending several days in Palm Springs On Vacation. He disappeared for several hours one Saturday afternoon and even missed a scheduled public dinner. He was not seen again until late the following morning.
The press questioned Ike’s whereabouts, so the White House Press Secretary told them that Ike had chipped a tooth and gone to see a dentist. Even at that time, rumors were that he was visiting ETs at nearby Edwards AFB. The dentist’s story falls apart upon close inspection. Washington Post Staff Writer, Peter Carlson, denies the story of the chipped tooth and calls it a cover-up.
There Was No Dentist Visit
The Eisenhower Presidential Library has detailed reports of all Eisenhower’s medical and dental records. There is no reference to a broken or chipped tooth or dentist visit related to the Palm Springs visit. The Library also has copies of acknowledgments that were sent to everyone Eisenhower had contact with while in Palm Springs. There were records of people who met the airplane, people who sent flowers, the minister who gave the sermon at the Sunday service he attended, and others who played minor roles. But there is no proof of a note sent to a dentist. Years later, the dentist’s widow said she had no recollection of ever being told by her husband that he had done dental work on the President.
Corroborating Evidence of the ET Visit
William Cooper, who was on the Naval Intelligence briefing team and had access to classified documents, is a credible witness. His Review Of Those Documents revealed that ETs had had contact with Earth. They had warned that the Earth was “on a path of self-destruction” and they wanted to meet to help effectuate a long-lasting peace.
Meeting With Eisenhower
The first meeting with the aliens and President Eisenhower occurred at Edwards AFB in February 1954. Navy Commander Charles L. Suggs reported that his father had attended the meeting between Ike and the ETS. Eisenhower met with two Nordic appearings, blue-eyed ETs. A third one stood near the door as a lookout.
The discussions were polite. Eisenhower wanted to effectuate a treaty with the aliens but was unwilling to agree to their demand that we cease testing nuclear weapons. The aliens left with no treaty in place but returned the next year to Holloman AFB in New Mexico, not too far from the famous Roswell alien aircraft crash site, for a subsequent meeting with Eisenhower.
Gerald Light’s Letter
There is a corroborating Story to the ET meeting with Ike at Edwards AFB. The accuracy of the story is difficult to confirm. A man named Gerald Light Wrote A Letter in April 1954 claiming to have been an eyewitness to the Edwards AFB meeting between Eisenhower and ETs. Light provided details such as watching Air Force officials studying five aircraft with the permission of their alien owners!
Some question the credibility of Light’s report since he was known to have a love of the occult and claimed to be clairvoyant, but others like Meade Layne, the former director of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, confirms and believes Light did know first-hand what occurred.
1955 Eisenhower ET Meeting at Holloman AFB
There were Several Eyewitness Reports of a second meeting between Ike and ETs at Holloman AFB in New Mexico, which is only about 120 miles from the well-known Roswell incident. The reports are more detailed than the ones provided for the Edwards AFB meeting.
In February 1955, approximately 300 people saw Air Force One land at Holloman AFB and taxi back out to the end of the runway. Shortly after the plane landed, the pilot instructed the tower to turn off all radar while the president’s plane was on the tarmac. Shortly after Air Force One landed, and the radar was turned off, three, round objects were seen in the sky. One landed about 200 feet in front of Air Force One, another hovered over the area as though keeping watch, and a third one disappeared from visibility.
A man, presumed to be Eisenhower, descended the steps of Air Force One.
He was seen shaking hands with a being at the door of the saucer, then entering the unusual saucer-shaped aircraft. Ike was in the saucer for about 45 minutes.
When he left, he was not wearing a hat and was clearly visible to many observers. All witnesses recognized him as President Eisenhower.
The respected author and former pentagon consultant, Timothy Good, came forward in 2012 to talk about Ike’s meetings with ETs. Good discussed the purpose of those meetings. The upshot is that these particular extraterrestrials, like many others ETs, apparently wanted peace. They were trying to negotiate some sort of positive settlement for Earth’s problems. Evidence indicates that they wanted the U.S. To Discontinue Testing Nuclear Weapons. At first, they apparently wanted the public to be told the truth about their existence. In the final treaty, they seemingly had changed their minds and wanted to remain secret.
Ultimately, Eisenhower Signed A Treaty with an alien race called Alien Grays. The terms of the Treaty are reported to have been:
We would not be involved in their affairs and they would not become involved in ours
They would help us with developing our technology
They would not make a treaty with any other nation on Earth
They could abduct humans for various experiments, but had to provide names of all those they abducted to Earth’s Majestic 12 committee
The public would not be informed about the existence of ETs.
UFO Landings at Holloman AFB
In 1964, Three UFOs Flew Into The Air Space At Holloman AFB. They were tracked on radar and actually Captured On Film. One seemed to wobble and eventually landed at the AFB. Three humanoids with blue-gray complexions, dressed in tight-fitting flight suits, were met by the Air Force base commander and four other officers. The aliens stayed for several days and their aircraft was purportedly repaired. What was discussed in the meetings is still a mystery… It is also still a mystery as to why so many people could have been involved in the meetings and, to date, so few people have broken their silence.
Through the years, there have been more reports of UFO landings at Holloman AFB. Documentaries have mentioned Holloman AFB as the site of alien landings. A Documentary Narrated By The Legendary Rod Serling, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future,” was produced in 1974. It has a segment on UFO landings at Holloman AFB and the 1955 meeting with Eisenhower. The documentary was nominated for a Golden Globe award as the best documentary of the year. A later documentary, released in 1976, “UFOS: It Has Begun,” also referenced Holloman AFB and the landings that have occurred there.
Is This One of Many Alien Government Cover-ups?
There may have been a time when alien cover-ups were beneficial for the safety of the country and the planet, but is it still necessary in modern times? There is a Strong Consensus among officials that alien evidence and cover-up are widespread. Will the government ever share with the public all the documents concerning ETs visiting the Earth and making treaties with our government? Why does the government still believe alien visits need to be covered-up? Learn more about Alien Visitors To Earth and subsequent Government Cover-Ups.
Ever since humankind became aware that other planets exist, we have pondered the question of whether there is anyone else out there or if we are alone in this cold universe. Likewise, since as long as this question has stirred within our consciousness, we have sought ways to send messages to anyone who may be listening and somehow detect if there are other intelligent beings out there in the far reaches of space, perhaps just as lonely as we are. One of the most prominent ways of doing this has been to monitor space for any sort of transmission that might be directed our way just as surely as we have sent out our own, the most famous example being the famous SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). So far we have remained alone as far as we can tell, but there have been many times over the years when it has seemed like our efforts might have paid off, and which have served to further stoke the imagination. From the explained to the still mysterious, here we will look at some of the most promising possible communications from aliens received over the decades.
The earliest case we will look at here is not as mysterious as it once was, but is nevertheless rather intriguing and of historical significance when looking for messages from alien civilizations. In November of 1967, a graduate student at Cambridge University in England by the name of Jocelyn Bell Burnell picked up an anomalous and very curious signal on the Interplanetary Scintillation Array of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, UK, which was used to study quasars. The signal was notable for its almost perfect regularity, that it operated on a very specific frequency, and it was so fast, constant, and consistent that it didn’t seem possible that it was just chaotic cosmic background noise. Bell’s advisor, Antony Hewish, was equally perplexed by the odd signal, and thought it might be artificial, although not by someone on Earth, causing them to name the signal LGM-1, for “Little Green Men.”
At first this moniker was sort of a joke, as they weren’t really looking seriously at the extraterrestrial angle just yet, but it was definitely mysterious. They analyzed the data and the only thing they could be sure of at first was that it was not from a quasar, a phenomenon for which the array had indeed originally been built to detect and study. It didn’t seem to be from any known cosmic phenomenon, and in the end they were forced to at least entertain the possibility that they had picked up some sort of beacon from an extraterrestrial intelligence, which left them with the added problem of how they would present this news, if it were true, to the world at large. Hewish would explain:
We did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem – if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe, how does one announce the results responsibly? Who does one tell first?
It is an interesting conundrum which still doesn’t really have an official answer, but in the end, there was no need to worry. After this initial discovery they found a very similar signal in another part of the sky, and this led them to believe that rather than aliens, they had found some previously unknown cosmic phenomenon. Burnell would say of this second signal:
It finally scotched the little green men hypothesis. Because it’s highly unlikely there’s two lots of little green men, on opposite sides of the universe, both deciding to signal to a rather inconspicuous planet, Earth, at the same time, using a daft technique and a rather commonplace frequency. It had to be some new kind of star, not seen before. And that then cleared the way for us publishing, going public.
They were right. What they had actually stumbled across was the first official detection of what is called a pulsar, which is basically a fast-spinning, incredibly dense mass of matter left behind when a dying star collapses in on itself. In this case, the first signal was coming from a pulsar that is now labelled PSR B1919+21. Alas it was not extraterrestrials, but it was no less an exciting discovery, as pulsars would go on to provide vast amounts of data and knowledge of the life cycle of stars, as well as shedding light on other cosmic mysteries and also adding to the physical evidence of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Although it was not proof of aliens, in the end LGM-1 was still an incredible, revolutionary discovery that will go down in history as one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of our time.
A more recent and perhaps far more well-known case is that of a signal that was first picked up on the night of Aug. 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope at The Ohio State University, in the United States. When SETI astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was looking at the data from the telescope, his attention was caught by a very strange radio burst that had come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, lasted 72 seconds, and was incredibly loud, far more pronounced and intense than any of the other cosmic noise. Making it even more bizarre was that it was on a narrow bandwidth at a protected frequency, meaning that no one on Earth could have sent it out, and it was curiously at a frequency range of about 1,420 megahertz (MHz), the same as the signal which is naturally emitted by the common element hydrogen, and which is a relatively quiet range on which nothing much usually happens. Indeed, this frequency had been chosen as a promising place to look for signals from extraterrestrials, because it would be a frequency that was non ambiguous and easy to listen in on. Ehman famously circled the burst in red pen and wrote “Wow!” next to it, and the mysteries would continue.
There was an immediate scramble to lock back onto and find a repeat of what was officially signal 6EQUJ5, but which is better known as the “Wow! Signal,” as the signal had peaked after 36 seconds and then faded back out as the telescopes range had passed it, meaning it theoretically was still transmitting, but it could not be relocated and it never repeated. Without a second sampling, it is hard to know exactly what to make of it, but the signal was definitely strange, and has created all manner of speculation as to its origins. Natural and human-made sources on Earth or on artificial satellites have pretty much been ruled out, but nothing in space really matches all of its unique characteristics either. One main candidate is that the signal emanated from two comets called “266P/Christensen” and “335P/Gibbs,” but there are quite a few scientists who disagree with this, saying that the fact that the signal was short lived and didn’t repeat, as well as that no similar signal from a comet has ever been found, and furthermore that these comets were not in the telescope’s beam at the correct time, argue against it. Other ideas are that it was an unidentified cosmic phenomenon, a malfunction with the telescope itself, and of course an actual signal from an alien civilization. The mystery of the Wow! Signal has never really been satisfactorily explained, and it remains one of the best candidates for a possible actual alien transmission from extraterrestrial intelligences. Whatever it was, it hasn’t been seen since, indeed nothing anything like it has, and it leaves us to look up at the stars and wonder.
The Wow Signal
Even more recent still was picked up in 2015, when a signal was detected coming from the vicinity of a star called HD 164595, which lies in the constellation of Hercules. The signal in question comes from a star very much like our own Sun, located around 92.2 light years away, and although it has only one known planet that is thought to be unsuitable for supporting life, there could be more that we don’t know about. It is from this star that on 15 May 2015, a very brief, 2-second burst of radio waves was picked up by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia. Although the signal was very anomalous and showed all of the hallmarks of a signal possibly sent by extra-terrestrials, the problem here is that it was only picked up by a single team on one telescope, and it was only recorded once. Because of this, until we can be more sure and have corroborating evidence, SETI astronomers have leaned towards the theory that it perhaps came from an Earth satellite, although the exact origin remains mysterious.
Besides single radio signal events like we have looked at here, there have been other phenomena picked up on telescopes around the world that have at one point or another been attributed to aliens. One of these are what are called “fast radio bursts,” which were officially discovered in 2007 and have been picked up on numerous telescopes, but which have remained largely unexplained. These bursts are radio pulses that only last about a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds, and have never been adequately explained by astronomers, pointing to some as yet mysterious cosmic phenomena. While there could be any number of reasons for these bursts, of course aliens have made an appearance in the discussion. One very strange, but compelling idea is that they might be indicative of alien space travel. Astrophysicists Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb have proposed that they could be used to propel starships, where they might be beamed into an enormous sail to push a ship forward, and they have explained of this in the abstract of their paper “Fast Radio Bursts From Extragalactic Light Sails”:
Our analysis shows that beams used for powering large light sails could yield parameters that are consistent with FRBs. The characteristic diameter of the beam emitter is estimated through a combination of energetic and engineering constraints, and both approaches intriguingly yield a similar result which is on the scale of a large rocky planet. Moreover, the optimal frequency for powering the light sail is shown to be similar to the detected FRB frequencies. These `coincidences’ lend some credence to the possibility that FRBs might be artificial in origin. Other relevant quantities, such as the characteristic mass of the light sail, and the angular velocity of the beam, are also derived. By using the FRB occurrence rate, we infer upper bounds on the rate of FRBs from extragalactic civilizations in a typical galaxy. The possibility of detecting fainter signals is briefly discussed, and the wait time for an exceptionally bright FRB event in the Milky Way is estimated.
Of course there is also the idea that these bursts are caused by some other galactic phenomenon such as neutron stars or black holes, but giant light sails on alien starships are more fun. Other unidentified radio signal phenomena have proven to be less mysterious, such as the once very enigmatic bursts called “perytons.” Named after the mythological creature of the same name, perytons are similar to fast radio bursts in that they are only a few milliseconds long, and they usually appear in clusters. First discovered at the Bleien Radio Observatory in Switzerland and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, their origins were long shrouded in mystery, with extra-terrestrial intelligences a major theory. For years the perytons were a complete mystery, until in 2015 it was determined that they probably originate from a rather underwhelming source. It was found that a microwave oven at the Parkes facility was leaking, and that when its door was opened prematurely and the telescope happened to be pointing in its general direction it would create the peryton phenomenon. Oh well, better luck next time.
It seems that we still have not sought the true answers we seek yet, and for now we are still for all we know the only intelligent life in the universe. It has even been suggested that we are going about our search the wrong way, and that these intelligences might be far beyond using radio technology to send signals. They could feasibly be blaring messages right into our ears and we simply don’t know because we lack the technology to detect them. Yet we still use our telescopes and scour the skies for strange transmissions as we have done for years. Listening and hoping that someone out there is listening back.
10 Bizarre figures from the “UFO Contactee” movement (VIDEO-PHOTOS)
10 Bizarre figures from the “UFO Contactee” movement (VIDEO-PHOTOS)
Author: Thema Newsroom
The truth is out there…
After Kenneth Arnold kick-started the UFO craze in 1947, a group of believers sprang up, claiming that they had sustained contact with flying saucers. These “contactees,” as they were known, told outlandish tales about talking to aliens via telepathy and visiting distant planets.
Their most famous spokesmen, such as George Adamski and his friend George Hunt Williamson, wrote best-selling books and lectured across the country during the 1950s. Though their popularity faded in the ‘60s and their stories were blatantly fake and unscientific, there’s no denying that the original contactees were a strange, interesting bunch.
10) Buck Nelson
The host of an annual UFO convention on his own Missouri farm, Buck Nelson was a humble, plainspoken man who self-published in 1956 a ridiculous pamphlet entitled My Trip to Mars, The Moon, and Venus. After two earlier UFO sightings, Nelson claimed that four occupants from a UFO had come to his house on March 5, 1955.
The visitors consisted of a young earthling, a pair of men from Venus, and a giant, 136-kilogram (300 lb) dog named Bo. After examining his house, the visitors told Nelson that they could take him on a trip to other planets sometime.
More than a month later, on April 24, Nelson’s new friends picked up him and his dog Ted for a trip to outer space. First, the men traveled to Mars, which Nelson described as colorful and similar to Earth. Next, they made a stop on the Moon. Then they finished the trip with a look at Venus, a utopia that had no need for jails, policemen, or wars.
After returning to his home planet, Nelson promised the aliens that he would tell everybody about his travels. He spoke to the media about his experiences and was supposedly questioned by the armed forces. At his farm conventions, Nelson sold pieces of Bo’s hair to back up his story. Skeptics noted that the Venusian dog hair was similar to the kind found on Earth dogs. He told them, “Dawgs is dawgs. Don’t matter what planet they’re from.”
9) Cynthia Appleton
On November 18, 1957, English housewife Cynthia Appleton was taking care of her children at home when she suddenly heard a high-pitched whistling sound in her sitting room. Once the sound stopped, Appleton saw a tall, blond man materialize near her fireplace. Using telepathy, the man instructed Appleton not to be afraid. He was a visitor from the planet Gharnasvarn, and his people wished to make contact with special earthlings like Appleton.
Over the next year, the man from Gharnasvarn would make seven more appearances at Appleton’s house, sometimes bringing along a friend. When not explaining how to cure cancer, the man would make pseudo-philosophical babble, insisting that time was not real and that all life was unified. During his last six visits, the man also shunned teleporting and opted to arrive in a big black car instead.
In September 1958, the Gharnasvarn man and his friend showed themselves to Cynthia Appleton one last time. They told the mother of two that she was pregnant. Confusingly, the child would be “of the race of Gharnasvarn” yet also her husband’s son.
In May 1959, Appleton gave birth to a baby boy just as the aliens had apparently predicted. Despite some media attention, the Appletons never saw the Gharnasvarn men again, and they soon quietly disappeared from the public spotlight.
8) Gabriel Green
Once a professional photographer, Gabriel Green gave up his career to pursue an interest in UFOs. He was the founder of an early UFO organization called the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, Inc. and also edited the group’s journal, the Flying Saucers International. In 1960, Green launched an independent campaign to become president of the United States, competing against Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon.
Though Green was a write-in candidate and had no political experience, he took his bid for president seriously. In an August 1960 interview, Green claimed that the “Space People” had asked him to run.
He admitted that he was reluctant at first, but he realized that Earth was doomed unless mankind listened to the wisdom of the Space People. In his official platform, Green promised the abolition of taxes, free college educations, and a spaceship mission to Mars.
Unfortunately, despite the support of the Space People, Green eventually withdrew from the race. In 1962, Green tried running for the US Senate as a Democrat but lost the election. After another failed bid for the presidency in 1972, Green quit his political ambitions for good, presumably content that the Earth was doomed.
7) Ted Owens
Calling himself the “PK (Psychokinetic) Man,” Ted Owens considered himself something like a real-life superhero. A member of MENSA, Owens was a genius with a 150 IQ who claimed that aliens had given him supernatural powers. Thanks to the help of “Space Intelligences,” he could do everything from controlling the weather to altering the results of a sports game.
According to Owens, the Space Intelligences were hyperdimensional beings who rode around in UFOs and kept a close eye on Earth. He first made contact with them in 1965 when one of their UFOs appeared and vanished before his car. They communicated with Owens via telepathy and were the source of his PK powers. In his own words, Owens was a test “to find out just how much of the PK power a human being can absorb and stand.”
Although Owens had his fans, he struggled to convince academics and scientists of his abilities. He obsessively collected newspaper clippings and records that allegedly verified his demonstrations and predictions. Most professionals treated him skeptically, however. Only some sportswriters, a CIA agent, and a NASA official believed his bizarre stories.
6) Aladino Felix
In 1959, under the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon, Aladino Felix published a typical book of the contactee movement called My Contact with Flying Saucers. Felix, a Brazilian, wrote that he met the crew of a UFO in the state of Sao Paulo. The experience led to the UFO’s captain visiting Felix at his home a few months later, where he made the usual extraterrestrial warnings about the dangers of the Atomic Age.
Six years later, Felix resurfaced in the public eye, styling himself as a psychic. He made vague predictions about natural disasters, coinciding with one of the deadliest flash floods in Brazilian history in 1966. During a politically turbulent time in Brazil, Felix also prophesied spates of terrorist attacks in the country.
If some of Felix’s predictions proved eerily accurate, it might have been because of his own intervention. In 1968, Felix and 18 other people were arrested after being suspected of some bank robberies and bombings. The gang had even plotted to assassinate politicians, and it turned out that Felix was their ringleader.
Before he was sent off to prison, Felix vowed, “My friends from space will come here and free me and avenge my arrest. You can look to tragic consequences for humanity when the flying saucers invade this planet.”
5) Daniel Fry
On July 4, 1950, Daniel Fry was taking a walk in the New Mexico desert when a remote-controlled UFO landed 20 meters (70 ft) away from him. A voice from the UFO invited Fry to come for a ride. While the ship’s remote pilot talked to him, Fry was whisked away to New York City and back in only 30 minutes.
Fry’s host, Alan, had a lot to say to his bewildered passenger. Alan revealed that the aliens who were riding around Earth in flying saucers were originally earthlings themselves. Alan’s ancestors had built the legendary countries of Atlantis and Lemuria, two advanced superpowers that ended up destroying each other. The few survivors were forced to relocate to Mars, where they rebuilt their civilization and observed Earth from afar.
To spread the Martians’ messages, Fry founded a spiritual organization called Understanding, Inc. When it was founded in California in 1955, the group had only nine members. But it soon grew to have a number of members organized in 60 “units” across the world. Long after the original heyday of the contactees, the organization survived into the 1980s, although one academic study had noted it was by then “in serious decline.”
4) Orfeo Angelucci
A factory worker who had once suffered a nervous breakdown, Orfeo Angelucci and his contactee adventures were studied by the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Angelucci’s stories had a Christian tinge, involving angels, Lucifer, and even a meeting with Jesus Christ.
In possibly his most amusing anecdote, Angelucci claimed that he had swapped bodies with an alien named Neptune in January 1953. Angelucci remembered falling asleep on a divan on Earth but woke up in Neptune’s body on another planet.
Neptune’s companions, Lyra and Orion, showed Angelucci a projection of an ancient planet called Lucifer. The Luciferians tried conquering the people of other planets, and as punishment, they were imprisoned on Earth. According to Angelucci’s hosts, most modern humans were the descendants of the fallen Luciferians.
Like many of the other contactees on this list, Angelucci felt an obligation to save his fellow humans. While in the body of Neptune, Angelucci was shown a horrifying vision of the apocalypse. If the people of Earth failed to change their ways by 1986, their planet would be destroyed by a gigantic comet. Needless to say, the comet never came and Angelucci quietly died in 1993.
3) Reinhold O. Schmidt
On November 5, 1957, German-American farmer Reinhold O. Schmidt allegedly stumbled upon a balloon-like UFO in a remote part of Kearney, Nebraska. Curious, he approached the ship, but it shot a beam of light at his chest and paralyzed him. Then two men walked out of the UFO, searched Schmidt for weapons, and invited him inside. Oddly, the entire crew spoke German and their leader spoke English with a thick German accent.
After Schmidt was let out, the UFO took off into the air. Though he was worried that nobody would believe him, Schmidt decided that he had to contact the authorities. He took Kearney’s deputy sheriff to the spot of his encounter. Schmidt showed it to the chief of police and some other local notables as well.
The city authorities admitted to Schmidt that his story must have been true, but then they pressured him into denying it. When the story spread across the city, a defiant Schmidt was thrown in jail for a day.
Of course, Schmidt had many more encounters with the odd German-speaking UFO crew, and books and lectures naturally followed. It wasn’t long, however, before legal troubles had cast doubt on his claims. In 1961, Schmidt scammed an elderly widow out of thousands of dollars. He was convicted and sentenced to serve time in prison for grand theft.
2) Wilbert Smith
When the public first became interested in UFOs, there were two groups of believers in the spotlight. On the one side were the contactees who make up this list, laypeople who claimed they were talking, meeting, and traveling with beings from other worlds.
On the other side were more educated professionals represented by the likes of Donald Keyhoe, a naval aviator and co-founder of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). Keyhoe and his group dismissed contactee stories and tried doing more scientific investigations of UFOs using their backgrounds as military figures and scientists. The two groups never got along well. For example, Keyhoe often refused to be seen on TV shows with contactees.
Wilbert Smith, a radio engineer for the Canadian Department of Transport, was an interesting mix of the two competing groups. He served as a special adviser for the original NICAP, yet he associated with contactees like George Hunt Williamson, reporting to be in contact with the same extraterrestrial characters that Williamson’s circle knew. From 1950 until 1954, Smith also directed Canada’s Project Magnet, a government-funded research group that studied UFO sightings.
Smith’s conclusions greatly embarrassed the Department of Transport. He went beyond saying that the studied UFO sightings were real and argued that flying saucers were actually from parallel universes.
He believed that people could communicate with UFOs through psychic powers and pointed to bogus studies by a contactee group called Borderland Sciences Research Associates as proof. Unsurprisingly, Project Magnet eventually lost its funding, but Smith continued researching UFOs until his death on December 27, 1962.
1) William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley was perhaps the oddest contactee to come out of the 20th century. An extreme anti-Semite, he had worked as a screenwriter during the 1920s. But he left Hollywood because he thought Jews controlled the movie industry and the world at large.
After abandoning Hollywood, Pelley got involved in mysticism and published a popular article (and later book) about a near-death experience he had. Pelley claimed that he spent seven minutes in “eternity,” visiting God, Jesus, and hyperdimensional beings who told him that souls were reincarnated throughout time until they climbed the spiritual hierarchy and became white people.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Pelley eagerly combined his mysticism and racism into the Silver Legion of America, a paramilitary fascist group that attracted over 15,000 members. In 1936, Pelley unsuccessfully ran for president under the Christian Party, a political party he founded.
After years of listening to Pelley’s tantrums and threats, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his government became annoyed. Pelley was arrested, charged, and convicted of sedition in April 1942.
Once he was released from prison in 1950, Pelley was forbidden from political activism. Instead, he channeled his energy into mysticism, and his writings became even more insane.
Using some of his earlier ideas, Pelley created a set of racist spiritual teachings called Soulcraft, teaching that Asian, black, and white people had souls which came from different planets. To appeal to contemporary crackpots, Pelley threw in telepathy and UFOs as well, meeting with and influencing such early contactees as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson.
Although Soulcraft had a small set of fans, Pelley never regained the popularity of his heyday in the 1930s. He died practically forgotten in June 1965.
One pervasive feature of the UFO phenomenon is that of what are called alien contactees. These are the people who have supposedly had first hand encounters with alien beings, which can take the form of meetings with the entities or more invasive alien abductions. The contactee phenomenon really runs the range. Some people come back with prophetic insights or messages from beyond our world. Others tell of humiliating, painful and terrifying medical procedures, which often scar them mentally and physically for life. Others still are entirely more bizarre in nature, and one of these is the alien contactee who claimed that he was part of an experiment to give him potent, nearly limitless psychic powers.
The man known as Ted Owens had a rather colorful life even before he gained notoriety within the paranormal and UFOlogy worlds. Born in the United States in 1920, he lived with his grandparents to escape his father’s abuse, and this is where he would learn that both of his grandparents were powerful psychics. After this he claimed that he had begun to exhibit various psychic powers as well, such as moving objects with his mind and levitating around the room on several occasions as a child. He also said that he was taught new information by an “imaginary friend,” and in later years he became a gifted hypnotist who wowed people wherever he went.
These psychic abilities would become more powerful in his adult years, when he says that he gained the ability to read minds while serving in the U.S. Navy. He would end up further honing his powers throughout his years at Duke University, and later started to claim that he had the ability to control the weather as well. He said that he could invoke storms, make it rain, conjure up tornados, and direct lightning strikes. Several high-profile people, such as Philadelphia lawyer Sidney Margulies, attested that they had witnessed Owens make lightning come down from the sky on command, and his wife claimed that he routinely made rain fall on command, even during droughts. Other powers he claimed to have were the ability to predict catastrophes and to even cause them, as well as control minds and other assorted abilities. In the meantime, he was a member of Mensa with a genius IQ of 150, and in 1965 it got even weirder.
Ted Owens
It was in 1965 that Owens, who called himself the “PK Man,” began to come forward with why his intelligence was so high and why his powers were getting so vast. According to him, he had been abducted by hyperdimensional entities, which he called “Super Intelligences” (SIs), described as looking like “small grasshoppers standing on two legs,” who had performed a sort of “psychic surgery” upon him in an experiment to “find out just how much of the PK power a human being can absorb and stand.” In other words, according to Owens they had taken his already considerable psychic abilities and magnified them exponentially, essentially turning them up to 11, and making him more or less a real-life superhero. He even had “proof” of this operation, in the form of an odd crease along the base of his skull. He was not humble about any of this either, calling himself a “UFO Prophet” and even comparing himself to the biblical Moses. In 1969 Owens would finally write a book on all of this, entitled How to Contact Space People, and then in the 1970s he began to engage in a series of ominous displays of his supposed power, which range from the odd to the absurd, and he would simultaneously sort of fly off the rails, in a way becoming more of a super villain than a super hero.
Owens had made a lot of predictions that no one really took seriously, and it did not help that in general he was largely ignored by the scientific community, who did nothing to try and test his powers and mostly just blew him off. In response to this, he began to make sinister claims that was going to create destruction on a wide scale, on many occasions having people sign affidavits of what he said in order to prove that he was right, and some of which spookily seemed to have come true. In May of 1972, he told people that he was going to cause mass lightning storms, blackouts, and accidents in the city of Cleveland, Illinois, and sure enough on that summer there was a massive freak storm that caused a city-wide blackout, numerous accidents, and three deaths by lightning strike. In October of that same year he said he was going to create an unusually warm winter in Virginia, and this came to pass. He also claimed to be behind highly bizarre weather that caused vast damage to crops in Texas in 1974, as well as myriad other droughts, floods, hurricanes, freak storms, earthquakes, fires, plane crashes and other myriad calamities all over the world throughout the 70s, many of which eerily went down as predicted. Owens was also known to accurately predict waves of UFO sightings, and claimed that he could make UFOs appear wherever and wherever he wanted.
Owens often used his supposed powers to try and earn some sort of financial gain. On several occasions he offered to make disasters go away in return for cash, such as several times when he even used his supposed powers to try and sabotage sports games, threatening disasters or team losses if he wasn’t paid. He would claim, “The SIs have increased my metal power to the point that I could watch a TV game at home and I can take tacklers and with my mind power actually fling them, with two or three times their actual weight, at the quarterback.” He on many occasions tried to blackmail teams for large amounts of money, although no one ever actually seems to have ever paid. He even used this tactic during a spell of homelessness he suffered, threatening that there would be a major war in the U.S. if he wasn’t taken off the streets and given money. This war never materialized.
Throughout all of this Owens was still mostly seen as a loon, and he was known to seek attention by relentlessly contacting publishers, newspapers, scientists, and government agencies, whoever would listen, trying to get them to take him seriously. In 1979 he began to constantly badger a military historian and news correspondent with the National Enquirer by the name of Wayne Grover, saying that he was going to spend the year providing a hardcore demonstration of his abilities on the state of Florida. It got off to a pretty rock start, to say the least, and Grover writes of this all:
My experience with Ted Owens started in 1979, when Owens contacted me at the Enquirer. He portrayed himself as “PK Man” and said he could predict events and control the world’s weather. Owens claims were met with skepticism by both myself and my editor, Don Horine, and I told Owens so.
Angered, Owens responded by saying that he could prove his abilities. He also said he could produce UFOs on demand. Horine gave Owens a chance to produce UFO sightings on demand and we arranged to have him and several witnesses including a scientist meet for an all-night vigil. The bottom line was that Owens said UFOs were seen. One witness agreed, but two others said they did not see them. We did not run a story. Owens, who had wanted a forum for his predictions, was very angry and felt betrayed by the Enquirer and particularly by Don Horine, the editor.
Owens called me and made the following predictions for the year: “I will bring three June hurricanes to life and bring one right over the Enquirer. Furthermore, I will use my PK powers to destroy Don Horine’s life for crossing me. He will lose his job, and his wife and he will regret the day he laughed at me.”
However, according to Grover, a lot of what Owens had threatened began to actually come true. Southern Florida really suffered the worst drought it had had in 40 years, there indeed was a series of freak hurricanes, and Horine’s life was plagued by misfortune and personal problems, eventually getting fired and also having his wife leave him. Through this all, Owens continued to regularly contact Grover to make various predictions and threats, and it was soon noticed that many of these things came true beyond coincidence. Grover would say of this correspondence and its bizarreness:
Owens and I then spoke several times and he liked me enough to take me into his confidence. Over a more than five year period, Owens phoned me several times a week, usually after midnight and predicted dire events about to happen including earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and violent events worldwide. Within two days or so, I always received the same prediction via letter, often accompanied with some strange drawing of unknown symbols and signed “PK Man.” The predictions usually were about five to ten days before actual events took place. When they did, I very often heard them on the news and dozens of times told my wife, “Another coincidence for Owens.” When the event took place, he copied the news stories and sent me copies. The pattern was: (1) Predict by phone, (2) Send written backup. (3) Send news clips of the event predicted. As much as I didn’t want to believe Owens, the long string of coincidences went on. At one time, I estimated that – with some flexibility on the matter of timing – Owens’ predictions were about 80% accurate.
It was enough to make Grover take notice and start to think that maybe there was something to it all, even going so far as to beg Owens to stop the drought and call off a hurricane that was heading towards the state. Amazingly, after this the hurricane weakened considerably. Grover says that Owens seemed to have taken a liking to him, and diverted catastrophes for him because he was the only one who believed him. Grover explains:
In September 1979, when Hurricane David was heading for West Palm Beach, I spoke to Owens about 2 a.m. the night of the approach. I told him thousands of people would be made homeless because the “manufactured” hurricane was bearing down on us. In an unusual softening, he said something like, “I don’t want to hurt you or your family or others needlessly. I’ll ask my SIs to turn the cane away from you. Keep watching the TV to see what happens.”
By five in the morning, the local TV weatherman had the National Hurricane Center on the air with new coordinates for the storm. It had suddenly stopped moving toward West Palm and was veering northward away from us. We got fringe winds but nothing more. Owens called about seven and said, “That was for you Wayne.” I didn’t believe it was possible but the series of events went as Owens said they would.
I logged that information into the delusional category and didn’t worry about it. In the next hurricane season, Florida was again threatened by a large storm bearing down on us and Owens called and warned me to get to high ground. I informed him them was no high ground here. “I’ll move it away from you Wayne because you are the only one to believe in me,” That hurricane devastated Charleston, SC the next day. During the last storm season I had contact with Owens, he told me he would keep Florida clear of “killer canes,” True to his word, the hurricanes went north of us, south, turned into the open Atlantic and dissipated with sheer winds blowing their tops off.
This correspondence with Grover, which was the most contact Owens ever had with anyone directly, ended just as bizarrely as it started. After a period of going silent, in 1987 Owens suddenly contacted Grover again to inform him that he had moved to upstate New York in order for him and his family to be picked up by a UFO. After that there would be no further contact from him. Grover says of this last mysterious call:
Suddenly Owens went silent for months, then in 1987 he called me from upstate NY and said he had moved his family there to be picked up by the UFOs. He sent me several drawing his son Beau had made of vertically long, non-saucerlike UFO that were hovering over his rural home – as well as newspaper clippings reporting local UFO sightings and an affidavit to the same effect from a neighbor. There was a flurry of calls and then one last one whose contents were very strange and I choose to kept private. Suffice it to say, the predictions of that last conversation changed my life and caused me to wonder where science leaves off and the unknown begins. My wife was witness to the events that followed and shares with me the wonderment of it.
Apparently, he never made that final UFO trip, because according to official records Owens died in 1987 of sclerosis of the liver, leaving many mysteries behind. Besides Grover, there was a handful of others who believed in his abilities to some extent. Perhaps the most well-known of these was the parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove, who carefully studied all of Owens’ claims and predictions throughout his life, including the 1979 Florida predictions he had made and even the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Michlove came to the conclusion that Owens was correct more often than could be accounted for by blind chance, and said of the Florida predictions:
It certainly looks as though Florida’s 1979 weather was somehow manipulated by Ted Owens. The coincidences between the psychic’s pronouncements and the resultant changes in Florida’s weather are too numerous and exact to be dismissed.
Mishlove would write a whole book on Ted Owens, entitled The PK Man: A True Story of Mind Over Matter, which is the most complete record of the man’s life. Mishlove came to the conclusion that Owens really did have incredibly potent psychic powers, which he attributed to some sort of “intelligent energy” that he was able to harness. Mishlove says there are too many things in Owens’ life that cannot be coincidence, and in the end admits that, while he cannot fully explain the phenomena, that “Science is ill-equipped to explain the phenomena reported herein.” He does temper it all with a bit of skepticism, saying that Owens was often wrong and stating, “the newspapers are full of unusual events. Every day something unusual occurs, and it is not always the result of psychokinesis.” However, for the most part Mishlove thought there was more to this, and also expressed that he was very afraid of Owens, a sentiment that is reflected by the few others who chose to actually listen to his wild stories.
In the end, there doesn’t seem to be a large contingent of people who actually bought all of this, and Owens has been mostly relegated to the fringe. There are certainly skeptics who have painted him as a delusional weirdo who sought to promote himself and instill terror in his own demented way. We are left to ask, was Ted Owens a charlatan, scam artist, or mentally unstable individual? Or was there perhaps anything more to this all? Whatever the ultimate answer might be, he remains one of the most bonkers alien contactee accounts out there, for better or worse.
If you’ve ever been caught in a heavy downpour without an umbrella, hood or awning to duck under, you know that the force of heavy, sometimes wind-driven drops can be painful … especially when the showers last for a long time. But can they carry enough power to trigger a volcano? That’s the premise of a new study which proposes that an extreme and extended heavy rain period triggered the 2018 extreme eruption of Kīlauea in Hawaii, burying a portion of the Big Island with a four-month-long flow of lava. Is it time for weather reporters to start giving “chance of volcano” forecasts?
“The May 2018 rift intrusion and eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, represented one of its most extraordinary eruptive sequences in at least 200 years, yet the trigger mechanism remains elusive.”
Kīlauea
Kīlauea is one of Hawaii’s most active volcanoes and has actually been in a period the eruption on , entered an extraordinary new phase on May 3, 2018, throwing incandescent lava nearly two hundred feet in the air and spewing lava over 13 square miles across the well-populated east coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. The unprecedented eruption, which destroyed hundreds of homes, involved the collapse of the summit caldera before it ceased four months later in September 2018. Kīlauea is heavily monitored and has been under especially close scrutiny since 1983 when the latest activities began.
“An eruption happens when the pressure in the magma chamber is high enough to break the surrounding rock and the magma travels to the surface. This pressurization causes inflation of the ground by tens of centimeters. As we did not see any significant inflation in the year prior to the eruption we started to think about alternative explanations.”
In their new study, published in the journal Nature, UM Rosenstiel School scientists Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung describe how they were surprised by the extreme May 2018 eruption which launched lava two hundred feet in the air, covering over 13 square miles and destroying hundreds of homes, before the summit caldera collapsed and it quit erupting in September 2018. With the usual warning signs missing, Farquharson and Amelung went looking for others and noticed a sustained period of rain right before it. Could the rain have penetrated the volcano’s edifice and changed the pressure, causing the ground to crack enough to allow an eruption?
“Here we show that immediately before and during the eruption, infiltration of rainfall into Kīlauea Volcano’s subsurface increased pore pressure at depths of 1 to 3 kilometres by 0.1 to 1 kilopascals, to its highest pressure in almost 50 years. We propose that weakening and mechanical failure of the edifice was driven by changes in pore pressure within the rift zone, prompting opportunistic dyke intrusion and ultimately facilitating the eruption.”
Kīlauea
Going back through meteorological records in the Kilauea area, they found that “magmatic intrusions and recorded eruptions are almost twice as likely to occur during the wettest parts of the year. Based on that, the team plans to investigate other volcanoes and their rainfall patterns, giving people living in the area another thing to worry about during heavy downpours – something an umbrella won’t help. And it gets worse, as Farquharson describes in a press release.
“It has been shown that the melting of ice caps in Iceland led to changes of volcanic productivity. As ongoing climate change is predicted to bring about changes in rainfall patterns, we expect that this may similarly influence patterns of volcanic activity.”
Climate change contributing to volcanic activity? Is it time to do something about it or move farther away from Yellowstone?
De satellietentrein van Elon Musk gemist? Vanavond nieuwe kans - HLN.be
De satellietentrein van Elon Musk gemist? Vanavond nieuwe kans - HLN.be
videostillHet satelliettreintje van Elon Musk.
Wie donderdagavond de satellietentrein van Elon Musk aan onze hemel heeft gemist, krijgt deze avond een nieuwe kans. De flamboyante ondernemer wil met zijn Starlink-project supersnel internet op elke uithoek op aarde bewerkstelligen en realiseert dit door duizenden satellieten te lanceren.
“De satellieten gebruiken zonne-energie om zichzelf te voorzien van energie. Het is net door de aanwezigheid van deze zonnepanelen dat wij op Aarde de satellieten kunnen waarnemen”, weet Nicolas Roose van weerdienst NoodweerBenelux.
Bij helder weer en voldoende donkere omstandigheden is de ‘ketting’ van tientallen lichtjes opnieuw te zien in westelijke richtingen. Wie ze wil spotten, moet even vóór 22.00 uur richting westen kijken. Een tweede episode volgt net nà 22.00 uur. “Dit duurt slechts enkele minuten, dus op tijd klaar staan is de boodschap”, stelt Roose. Qua weerbeeld verwacht NoodweerBenelux geen problemen met de bewolking. “Diverse weermodellen laten een hoeveelheid hoge bewolking zien, maar veel problemen mag dat niet opleveren.”
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50 Unexplainable UFO Images 1870-1960 in Oregon, Massachusetts, South Africa, Italy, France and Other Countries
50 Unexplainable UFO Images 1870-1960 in Oregon, Massachusetts, South Africa, Italy, France and Other Countries
In the past, UFO sightings have often been regarded as a hoax. However, now many people are going on record to tell of their encounters with mysterious flying objects. So is there really a real flying saucer phenomenon?
Impressive electrical phenomenon appears in the sky over João Pessoa, Brazil
Impressive electrical phenomenon appears in the sky over João Pessoa, Brazil
Agigantic electrical phenomenon also called a jet was recorded using a BRAMON experimental camera in João Pessoa, which monitors the skies 24 hours a day in Full HD (in high resolution) on April 17, 2020 but what about the bright sphere under the jet?
Credit image: Bramon, Brazil.
According to bramonmeteor.org. a gigantic Jet is a rare type of Transient Luminous Event (TLE) that starts as a blue jet from above storm clouds (~ 20 km altitude) and becomes reddish, extending in some milliseconds to the upper limit of the mesosphere (~ 95 km altitude).
This interesting photos of a flying saucer in the sky above Devon, UK were taken on 23rd April 2020 and submitted to us to our email “report @ latest-ufo-sightings.net”.
Witness report:
I was sat in the back garden sky watching and it was a lovely hot sunny day. The sky was clear and blue and there were no planes about in the sky. It was the perfect day and I couldn’t wait to capture something odd in the sky above me. I was sat there for some time looking around the sky with my Nikon P900 camera when a royal navy helicopter flew over the area. I watched it for a while before I took some photographs. I looked on as the helicopter flew over the horizon where I then instantly spotted a saucer shaped object that was moving at speed across the sky.
When I zoomed in on the saucer with my Nikon P900 camera I could see that it was violet in colour. I quickly took a photograph of the saucer and watched as it accelerated away at great speed before I lost sight of it. Even though I only managed to capture the saucer in one photograph I still feel that it is very compelling evidence of alien crafts in our skies. I regularly see UFO’s around this area day or night and I strongly believe that the reason for this is because of our close proximity to the sea where I believe the aliens have underwater bases. The photograph was taken at 1:36 PM on the 23rd of April 2020, at Newton Abbot Devon England. All the best John.
The International Space Station captures a huge alien spacecraft hidden in the clouds
The International Space Station captures a huge alien spacecraft hidden in the clouds
Experts have been warning us for some time: we should reconsider the search for life on other worlds. It would be the greatest discovery in history, but that does not mean that we can control it biologically, epidemiologically, and most importantly, emotionally. We are currently in a global panic over what is, in some respects, a strange way of life: the SARS-CoV-2 virus , which causes the disease known as COVID-19 .
At the time of writing, there are over two and a half million confirmed cases worldwide, in 68 countries, leading to more than 174,000 deaths. Flights have been canceled, international trade agreements canceled, the Tokyo Olympics will be held in 2021, and we will experience the greatest recession since the Great Depression of 1929. Humanity as a whole is suffering from the effects of the pandemic.And last but not least, the countries point to each other, especially to China because they are to blame for the spread. We are told that COVID-19 is a completely terrestrial virus, whether natural or artificial, but there is another possibility: that it is a weapon of extraterrestrial origin and prelude to a silent invasion. And for those who think that it is a theory without foundation, there is evidence that would show that it is already happening.
Huge alien ship
An amazing image from the International Space Station (ISS) shows a huge cloud with a strange shape on Earth , which many have compared to the iconic Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. According to the Daily Star, a woman named Annie, who was watching a live broadcast of the ISS, saw something that caught her eye. In the image, clouds in question appear to form a perfect circle over the west coast of Africa. The images were shared by the popular YouTube channel MrMBB333, which specializes in science and space.
“On the west coast of Africa, we have a large, what appears to be, a Millennium Falcon , “ said MrMBB333. “The outline of that cloud is not random, the rest of the clouds around it are seen at random, but it looks like a version of the Millennium Falcon. It’s an almost perfect match, a great observation from Annie. “A lot of people notice some very extraordinary things about the ISS live camera and this is one of them.”
The video has gone viral on social media since it was posted on YouTube on April 17. And there were many who wanted to comment on the anomaly. Some highlighted the fact that the shape was eerily similar to the Millennium Falcon and even the Independence Day mothership . This led conspiracy theorists to suggest that the images are new evidence that the coronavirus pandemic is the prelude to an impending extraterrestrial invasion.
Alien invasion?
These images would be new evidence of the presence of alien spacecraft on our planet. Remember that at the beginning of the month we published a video that showed hundreds of lights in formation approaching Earth . We thought they were satellites or meteorites, but after a few minutes they disappeared as if they had never existed. To this we must add how in recent weeks strange blue lights have been recorded and photographed in the skies around the world.
For example, in Madrid, Spain, several people saw clouds at night that turned blue over buildings. The mysterious light stayed in the clouds for more than seven minutes, then disappeared. And even on a beach in Barcelona, Spain, a strange blue light in the sky during a lightning storm transformed into what appeared to be a giant UFO.
These are just some evidences that we are facing an imminent alien invasion . And science also warned us that this scenario could happen. Physicist Stephen Hawking has repeatedly said that an encounter between civilizations could have catastrophic consequences for humans. The physicist predicted that something similar could happen to what happened when Europeans arrived in America in the 15th century : they destroyed and massacred indigenous populations.
And if these extraterrestrial civilizations are able to travel to Earth, it means that they are more advanced than humans and have developed technologies unknown to us. Now, we will have to know what they want from us, annihilate us, enslave us, or feed on us.
What do you think about the image of the International Space Station? Alien ship? Or do you have another explanation?
Humans across cultures are drawn to the mystery of horizons. This impulse has led to perilous voyages across land, oceans, and into outer space, but it has yet to unlock the secrets of the ultimate boundary: the cosmological horizon, or the edge of the observable universe.
As the name implies, the observable universe is everything that humans can see from Earth with our increasingly sophisticated observatories. As our astronomical vision has improved over the centuries, we’ve discovered that gazing into space is also a form of time travel to the past. If you look at a star like Sirius, which is eight light years away, you are seeing an image of it eight years ago, when the starlight hitting your eye left it. The farther away an object in space is, the more distant in time it is as well, and so the light from stars that died long before our planet was born continues to reach Earth.
Such dazzling vistas are enough to keep humans busy with new discoveries as long as we exist. That said, the observable universe that surrounds us is absolutely infinitesimal compared to the dimensions of the broader universe—which may, in fact, be infinite.
This is the part of the universe labeled 'there be dragons'
There are limits to how far back we can directly look in time due to the glare of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the oldest light in the universe, which shone when the universe was about 400,000 years old. There are also limits to how far we can look into space due to the cosmological horizon, a boundary that cleaves the observable universe from the unseen expanse outside of it.
What might lie beyond our sight, in the vast unobservable universe? Could it contain exotic physics, new worlds, or even alien lifeforms? And will this hidden realm remain out of reach forever? Read on, but beware—this is the part of the universe labeled “there be dragons.”
What is the cosmological horizon?
Given that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and light travels at the same speed throughout it, it seems intuitive that the universe's radius would be 13.8 billion light years. But there’s one thing that can move even faster than light: the expansion of the universe itself.
The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, which means that light that travels from faraway objects has more ground to cover as the universe grows older and more disparate over time.
“It’s easier for a photon to get from A to B in the early universe than it is in the late universe because in the early universe, A and B were a lot closer to each other,” explained Malcolm Fairbairn, a cosmologist at King’s College London, in a call.
For instance, the CMB is a faint glow we see in all directions that was emitted when the universe was a few hundred thousand years old. While this ancient light was traveling to Earth, its source has been swept farther away from us by the universe’s expansion. Photons from the CMB may be around 13 billion years old, but they are from a region that is now an estimated 46 billion light years from Earth—or 440 "yottameters," the largest unit in the metric system—assuming that the cosmic inflation rate is constant.
“As soon as people started to realize that the universe was expanding, they started to think about the fact that the distance from which you could receive signals depends upon how the universe has expanded in the past,” Fairbairn said.
That distance is the cosmological horizon, also known as the particle horizon, and it recedes as the universe ages. If intelligent life still exists in our solar system in a billion years, those observers might discover “new” galaxies and stars when their light finally arrives at Earth.
But the cosmological horizon is not the only key boundary that scientists have identified on cosmic scales. One of the quirks of living in an expanding universe is that the more distant an object is, the faster it is receding away from Earth (or any vantagepoint, for that matter). At a certain boundary, called the Hubble horizon or sphere, objects start to retreat faster than the speed of light.
The cosmological horizon is currently wider than the Hubble horizon by a few billion light years. In a trippy twist, this enables us to observe objects that are traveling away from us at “superluminal” velocities that are quicker than light speed.
These objects aren't moving through space faster than light themselves, which is impossible according to known physics. Rather, spacetime itself is outpacing light speed. This means that if aliens evolved in some distant galaxy that we see beyond the Hubble horizon, but within the cosmological horizon, we would never be able to contact them. Any signal or message we sent, even at the speed of light, could never catch up with the superluminal expansion of space outside of the Hubble horizon.
Are there aliens beyond the cosmological horizon?
Nobody knows what's beyond the horizon. But theoretically, there’s no reason to think that the universe outside it is radically different from what we see within it.
“From everything that you can do observationally, it’s exactly the same beyond the horizon as it is below the horizon,” Fairbairn said. “People have tried to look to see, for example, if things are gradually changing as we get closer to the horizon and as far as they can tell, there’s no evidence for that whatsoever.”
This predicted coherence between the observable and unobservable universe might be disappointing to people who enjoy dreaming up unfamiliar and exotic realms that lie beyond each new horizon. But this cosmic homogeneity could also lend weight to one of the juiciest ideas in science: the possibility that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe.
For decades, scientists have struggled to square the theoretical probability that alien life exists with the complete lack of observational evidence for this idea, a tension that is known as the Fermi paradox.
Tomonori Totani, an astrophysicist at the University of Tokyo, proposes that the paradox could be addressed by widening the scope of potential “abiogenesis” events, which is the term for the origins of life. Instead of focusing on the emergence of life within the observable universe, he probes the likelihood of abiogenesis in “the whole inflationary universe”—including everything beyond the cosmological horizon—according to a study published in February in Scientific Reports,
“The origin of life is certainly the biggest question in science, and I wanted to think about it from a viewpoint of an astrophysicist,” Totani said in an email. “It was rather natural for me to think about the abiogenesis probability beyond the observable universe, because all astrophysicists studying cosmology know that the real universe’s size is much bigger than the observable universe.”
Indeed, the entire universe may well have no limits at all. From this perspective, it's no wonder we haven’t found signs of complex life in such a small sample size. Perhaps that means that the evolution of sentient beings on Earth is a singular event within the cosmological horizon.
“Some people say that abiogenesis by random reactions is impossible because of too-low probability even within the observable universe,” Totani noted. “However, if life can emerge in the real size of an inflationary universe, there is no difficulty to explain the existence of life on Earth.”
Totani is not the first scientist to ponder the idea that life could be abundant in the unobservable universe. For instance, he cites a 2007 study by Eugene Koonin, senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, that suggests that an infinite universe, which could contain a “multiverse” of many universes, would make the emergence of life “inevitable.”
“In contrast to the traditional cosmological models of a single, finite universe, this worldview provides for the origin of an infinite number of complex systems by chance, even as the probability of complexity emerging in any given region of the multiverse is extremely low,” Koonin said in the study.
“This change in perspective has profound implications for the history of any phenomenon, and life on Earth cannot be an exception,” he concluded.
While this is a satisfying hypothesis for resolving the Fermi paradox, it is also excruciating to imagine that the universe could be teeming with intelligent aliens beyond the cosmological horizon, where we could never hope to contact them.
Will we ever see beyond the cosmological horizon?
Probably not. For that, you can thank dark energy, a mysterious force that scientists think is fueling the expansion of the universe. While we may receive some new light from beyond the current horizon over the next few billion years, the far-future universe will be so spread out that any surviving observers in the Milky Way will probably only be able to see the closest galactic systems.
“If the universe was full of normal stuff like matter and radiation, bits of stuff and photons, and we were to just sit here and wait long enough, we’d be able to see
further and further as the horizon went backwards and backwards,” Fairbairn said. “But because of dark energy, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen and in fact, we won’t be able to see beyond the horizon.”
But this bleak outlook does not preclude mind-boggling new discoveries about parts of the universe that are currently unobservable. Cosmologists are particularly eager to see if they can snag gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, in the milliseconds following the Big Bang—an era that has never been directly probed before.
Scientists have already figured out how to detect gravitational waves produced by disruptions in spacetime, such as the collisions of black holes and neutron stars, which are events occurring in relatively modern cosmic times. But weird waves may have also been created by exotic physical processes in the moments immediately after the universe’s birth.
“We hope to be able to see gravitational waves that were produced by really crazy fundamental processes in the early universe,” Fairbairn said. “There are lots of different mechanisms by which gravitational waves could be produced in the first tiny fraction of a second after whatever the beginning was," he continued, "when you get phase transitions occurring where you go from one kind of physics to another kind of physics.”
The theoretical signature of these waves is expected to be a stochastic buzzemanating from all directions, much like the cosmic microwave background. But while the CMB was emitted hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang, these ripples in spacetime would have emerged earlier than any known signal.
“We’ve always kind of been limited by this wall around us, the cosmic microwave background radiation, because light cannot travel through it,” Fairbairn said. “But in principle, gravitational waves don’t really care about the CMB, so you can see beyond it and further backwards in time. That might tell us more about how the horizon changed in the past.”
Future gravitational wave observatories, such as the European Space Agency’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), could potentially tune into this wave feedback. While this would not break the cosmological horizon, it would finally allow us to directly explore the era before the universe turned one second old.
“Before that, really, we don't have a clue,” Fairbairn said. “So any kind of information we can get about the period would be amazing.”
It’s tantalizing to think that there is a whole universe beyond what we will ever see, even with our best telescopes, perhaps filled with intelligent aliens that are grappling with their own cosmological horizons. As difficult as it might be for humans to accept there is no realistic way to breach this horizon, we should take comfort in the fact that the observable universe is pretty awesome, even if it is a very small fragment of a potentially infinite entity.
SPACE FORCE UNVEILS ITS FIRST WEAPON, A SATELLITE JAMMER
SPACE FORCE UNVEILS ITS FIRST WEAPON, A SATELLITE JAMMER
ANDREW BERTAIN/US SPACE FORCE
DAN ROBITZSKI
Playing Offense
The U.S. Space Force recently acquired its first offensive weaponry: a device capable of blocking satellite communications, temporarily rendering orbiting satellites useless.
The technology behind these Counter Communications Systems, as they’re called, has already existed for years,Interesting Engineering reports, but the devices were only delivered to the military last month. With them, the U.S. can now disable enemy satellites from the ground.
Arms Race
While these weapons are new for the U.S. military, they had already been deployed elsewhere. For instance, Popular Mechanics reports that Russia’s military has had similar weapons in place since 2019.
And while the technical details of how the jammers work are kept under wraps, PopMech reports that there have been at least 13 similar systems up and running around the world back in 2017.
Logistical Nightmare
While the Counter Communication Systems don’t actually damage the satellites they target, they pose a major threat to military and other communication networks that rely on satellites to relay messages.
That means soldiers could be cut off from communication networks while they’re on a mission. And in a far more drastic scenario, missile alert systems could suddenly be disabled, leaving whatever nation got jammed vulnerable to a devastating attack.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Wie iets voor 22 uur naar de hemel keek, was getuige een indrukwekkend, uniek spektakel. SpaceX – het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Tesla-baas Elon Musk – lanceerde gisteren een reeks van 60 Starlink-satellieten in een baan om de aarde en die waren daarnet te zien vanuit ons land, tot groot enthousiasme van veel Vlamingen.
De satellieten waren met het blote oog goed te zien, aldus de gelukkige kijkers. “Met de verrekijker was het een waar feest”, zei weerman Frank Deboosere op Twitter.
Het was gisteren al de zevende keer dat er satellieten gelanceerd werden van het Starlink-project, dat supersnel internet moet aanbieden in elke uithoek van de aarde. In mei vorig jaar werden de eerste gelanceerd en in totaal moeten er 12.000 in een baan rond de aarde gebracht worden.
De satellieten zijn zichtbaar als een streep lichtjes. Volgens astronomen is die zichtbaarheid vandaag nog geen probleem, maar kan het wel een probleem worden als er nog meer satellieten bijkomen. Ze veroorzaken immers lichtvervuiling die het werk van astronomen bemoeilijkt.
Twitter
Helderheid
Elon Musk liet gisteren echter weten op Twitter dat zijn bedrijf iets gaat doen aan de helderheid van de satellieten. Die heeft deels te maken met de manier waarop de zonnepanelen op de satellieten bevestigd zijn. De komende maanden zullen de panelen richting zon worden gedraaid, waardoor ze minder zichtbaar worden. De satellieten vliegen ook dicht bij de aarde en zijn vrij groot, waardoor ze licht reflecteren. Speciale zonneschermen zouden dat probleem moeten verhelpen.
SpaceX
Frank Deboosere✔@frankdeboosere
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Ik had ze iets helderder verwacht, maar het was met het blote oog toch wel goed te zien. Met de verrekijker was het een waar feest. #Starlink6
Sofie Lemaire@sofie_lemaire
Gezien! Alsof de Kerstman voorbij kwam gevlogen...
Zo was ook radiomaakster Sofie Lemaire onder de indruk. “Gezien! Alsof de Kerstman voorbij kwam gevlogen”, tweette ze.
“Indrukwekkend! Wat een lange trein!”, meldde iemand anders. Nog andere mensen meldden dat ook hun kinderen onder de indruk waren en dat de satellieten heel dicht bij elkaar te zien waren.
“Schitterend! Je zou bijna zeggen buitenaards, maar niet dus. Bedankt om dit soort gebeurtenissen te blijven aankondigen”, bedankte Twitteraar Frank Vanmeenen weerman Deboosere nog.
Door het enthousiasme van de kindjes de instellingen van het fototoestel helemaal verklooid, maar het was prachtig! 'Over hoeveel uur zijn ze hier terug?' 'Komen er nog satellieten?' Dat wordt een extra uurtje #thuisonderwijs, morgen. #Starlink6
There can be very few people reading this who have not at least heard of the monstrous Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It terrorized the people of the town and the surrounding area between late 1966 and Christmas 1967. Its diabolical exploits were chronicled in the 2002 Hollywood movie, so named after the 1975 book of the same title written by Mothman authority John Keel. A winged monster with red eyes, Mothman’s appearance came quite literally out of nowhere and, some say, culminated in high tragedy and death. It should be noted, though, that there are a number of intriguing tales of lesser-known flying humanoids, as they have become known. And, that’s what I’m going to highlight today. Certainly, one of the most bizarre of all the many and varied strange beings that haunts the lore and legend of Texas is that which became known, albeit very briefly, as the Houston Batman. The most famous encounter with the beast took place during the early morning hours of June 18, 1953. Given the fact that it was a hot and restless night, twenty three year old housewife Hilda Walker, and her neighbors, fourteen year old Judy Meyer and thirty three year old tool plant inspector Howard Phillips, were sitting on the porch of Walker’s home, located at 118 East Third Street in the city of Houston.
Walker stated of what happened next: “…twenty five feet away I saw a huge shadow across the lawn. I thought at first it was the magnified reflection of a big moth caught in the nearby street light. Then the shadow seemed to bounce upward into a pecan tree. We all looked up. That’s when we saw it.” She went on to describe the entity as being essentially man like in shape, sporting a pair of bat style wings, dressed in a black, tight-fitting outfit, and surrounded by an eerie, glowing haze. The trio all confirmed that the monstrous form stood about six and a half feet tall and also agreed that the strange glow engulfing him was yellow in color. The Batman vanished when the light slowly faded out and right about the time that Meyer issued an ear-splitting scream. Mrs. Walker also recalled the following: “Immediately afterwards, we heard a loud swoosh over the house tops across the street. It was like the white flash of a torpedo-shaped object… I’ve heard so much about flying saucer stories and I thought all those people telling the stories were crazy, but now I don’t know what to believe. I may be nuts, but I saw it, whatever it was… I sat there stupefied. I was amazed.” Meyer added to the newspaper that: “I saw it, and nobody can say I didn’t.” Phillips, meanwhile, was candid in stating the following: “I can hardly believe it. But I saw it…we looked across the street and saw a flash of light rise from another tree and take off like a jet.” Now, let’s take a trip to the U.K., so to speak.
Midway through November 1963, one of the most chilling and eerie of all monster encounters on record occurred in the dark and shadowy environment of Sandling Park, Hythe, Kent, England. It was an encounter that, in terms of the description of the creature, provokes Mothman-style imagery – even though the latter, famous creature did not hit the headlines in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia until the mid-1960s onwards. Although Sandling Park was certainly shrouded in overwhelming darkness at the time of the beastly event, it was hardly the sort of place where one would expect to encounter nothing less than a fully-fledged monster. Amazingly, however, and according to a group of terrified witnesses, that is exactly what happened.
John Flaxton, aged seventeen on the night that all hell broke loose, was accompanied by three friends, including eighteen-year old Mervyn Hutchinson. As they walked along a lane running by the park – after returning from a local Friday night dance – the group of friends became aware of a bright object moving overhead, which they at first took to be nothing stranger than a star. How very wrong they turned out to be. The teenagers were amazed, and more than a bit scared, by the object’s presence, as they watched it hover and then drop out of sight behind a group of trees. The boys decided to leave the area with haste, but the light soon loomed into view again. It hovered around ten feet from the ground, and at an approximate distance of two hundred feet, then once again went out of sight.
Suddenly, the boys heard the snapping of twigs from a nearby thicket, and out from the wooded area shuffled a creature of horrendous appearance. “It was the size of a human,” reported Mervyn Hutchinson. “But it didn’t seem to have any head. There were wings on its back, like bat wings.” The group fled, perhaps understandably not wanting to hang around and see what developed next. Matters didn’t end there, however. Five night later, Keith Croucher saw an unusual object float across a nearby soccer field. Forty-eight-hours after that, one John McGoldrick, accompanied by a friend, checked out the location and stumbled upon unusual impressions in the ground, which gave every indication that something solid and significant had landed there. Moving on…
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 first man ever arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop Circle – came a fascinating, relevant account. 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. Once again, and like so many similar cases, the beast was not seen again.
Scientists hypothesize that a sign of intelligent extraterrestrials could reside within the human genetic code.
Dr. Vladimir I. shCherbak, a mathematician at the al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Kazakhstan, and Maxim A. Makukov, an astrobiologist at Kazakhstan’s’s Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, recently published a paper titled “The ‘Wow! signal’ of the terrestrial genetic code” in the planetary science journal Icarus. This title references the famous unidentified radio signal detected by seti (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) scientists in 1977. But rather than listening for extraterrestrial radio transmissions, these scientists considered the possibility of biological seti. Seeing that features in the human genetic code defy natural explanation, the team considered the possibility of an intelligent embedded signal in the code. And, as Discovery News explains, the researchers believe “the scheme has much greater longevity and chance of detecting E.T. than a transient extraterrestrial radio transmission.”
The abstract of the paper states:
It has been repeatedly proposed to expand the scope for SETI, and one of the suggested alternatives to radio is the biological media. Genomic dna is already used on Earth to store non-biological information. Though smaller in capacity, but stronger in noise immunity is the genetic code. The code is a flexible mapping between codons and amino acids, and this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially. But once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it is the most durable construct known. Therefore it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature, if that conforms to biological and thermodynamic requirements. As the actual scenario for the origin of terrestrial life is far from being settled, the proposal that it might have been seeded intentionally cannot be ruled out. A statistically strong intelligent-like “signal” in the genetic code is then a testable consequence of such scenario.
These scientists assert that the genetic code appears to have been “invented outside the solar system already several billions years ago.” Discovery News points out that this notion endorses the idea of panspermia–life on Earth was seeded by life that originated elsewhere in the universe.
Since the dawn of humankind we have sought to explain our origins and answer the fundamental, basic question: where do we come from? In every far-flung culture across every corner of the globe one can find origin myths and legends, each as different as the culture it spawns from. In more recent times we have science and the theory of evolution, a more scientific effort to explain the same age-old question that has haunted us since the first flickers of self awareness sparked in our brains, but for some this has still not been enough, and there are some decidedly more fringe ideas still floating around out there. For at least one scientist, the answer to this question is that we did not come from Earth at all, but were rather dropped off or exiled here long ago. Welcome to the bizarre world of the Prison Planet.
The main thrust behind one of the most bonkers theories on the history of human beings on this planet is an American ecologist by the name of Dr. Ellis Silver. His main idea is that our origins on this planet are not what they seem, and that perhaps we are not the product of evolution on this world, but rather visitors that, for whatever reasons, ended up here relatively recently in the geographical timescale, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even as recently as tens of thousands of years ago, after which we bred with earlier species such as Neanderthals in order to become the hybrid creatures we are today. It sounds completely outlandish, the ravings of a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but Silver is no usual crackpot, but rather a respected scientist, and he has his evidence to try and back up this on-the-surface crazy notion.
Forgetting for the moment of how we might have wound up here in the first place, Silver is more than ready to present his arguments on why, as a species, we just don’t seem to belong here. The first and foremost reason for this is that we humans are unlike anything else on this planet in terms of intelligence and mental capacity. There is no other animal that even comes close to our ability to think, philosophize, create politics, artwork and poetry, or advance in technology so incredibly rapidly. This is the most obvious argument in his case, but it is certainly not the only one, and in his opinion human beings exhibit many characteristics and physiological features that prove we are not as acclimated or suitable for this planet as our original originators might have thought, and indeed he cites a long list of differences between us and pretty much every other lifeform on this planet, which he says mark us as hilariously ill-equipped to deal with this environment and world.
According to Silver, these anomalous differences can be seen as early as the beginning of our lives. Human women have enormous complications and pain during childbirth, which he claims are not seen any where else in the animal kingdom, with births among animals natural and smooth, whereas human beings need much support and can even die in childbirth, something which still happens occasionally even to this day. Of course, this is due to the largeness of the head of human babies, but why, Silver argues, should this be if it is a normal process of evolution? After being born after an unusually short gestation period we than undergo an extremely comparatively long process of slow development, with human babies completely and utterly helpless for years after birth, which Silver argues is far from the norm in the animal kingdom. This might be raising some eyebrows already, but this is only the beginning.
Upon eventually maturing, humans display many anomalous traits not really shared by other creatures on this planet. Silver says that we are unnaturally prone to chronic illnesses and conditions such as hay fever, allergies, and others, which doesn’t seem to make sense. He also brings up our unusual weakness to the sun, saying that we are one of the only creatures that suffers from sunburn to the extent that we do, despite the fact that we “evolved” to have no body hair, and that we are additionally one of the only creatures that needs to squint the eyes when the sunlight is bright. The range of frequencies that we can audibly hear is also woefully low compared to most animals, as is our range of smell, which is argued as all being the result of being in tune on a biological level with another entirely different environment. Human beings also tend to have chronic back problems, which he says is a result of the differing gravity between our home world and Earth, and he continues with the notion that our bodies actually seem to be more in tune with a 25-hour day rather than 24, and that many of us have sleeping disorders and a general sense of anxiety because of this. Furthermore, we tend to dislike raw and uncooked foods as a rule, unlike other animals, have evolved with little body hair, are upright rather than with a lower center of gravity, unlike other animals, and he even points out our large amount of extra “junk DNA” as being evidence that we are, in fact, aliens. In his opinion we are just too different in too many ways from every other animal on the planet. Generally it is of Silver’s opinion that our bodies are just not suitable for this environment if we have actually evolved here over millions of years, and he has said of this:
My thesis proposes that mankind did not evolve from that particular strain of life (native earth organisms), but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago. Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more. This suggests (to me at least) that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species. The Earth approximately meets our needs as a species, but perhaps not as strongly as whoever brought us here initially thought.
However, if any of this at all is really true, then why would we have ended up here in the first place? Well, according to Silver one possibility is that Earth might be a planet for stowing away prisoners who were unable to integrate into their normal society. Our ancestors might have been exiled here, after which they were forgotten about and interbred with native species, to form what we are now, albeit with certain quirks indicative of our extraterrestrial origins. After all, humans have had had far away penal colonies before, so who is to say aliens don’t as well? Indeed, Silver calls it all “The Prison Planet Theory,” and he says of why we are here, “One reason for this, discussed in the book, is that the Earth might be a prison planet – since we seem to be a naturally violent species – and we’re here until we learn to behave ourselves.”
He has even suggested that at one time there may very well have been some sort of overseers, and that these became the gods in the minds of our ancestors. Indeed, the UFOs that many people see today could be our real ancestors keeping an eye on our progress. Other ideas are that an asteroid destroyed our home planet long ago and we fled here, over the centuries forgetting our true origins, or that we are even refuges from the dying planet Mars. We also might have been planted here for some sort of a long-running experiment, essentially making us intergalactic guinea pigs. One could speculate on an on. Whatever the ultimate reason is, the end result is we did not come from here.
While there have certainly been ideas and theories that life on Earth might have actually begun with bacteria or other biological material arriving her on a meteor, Silver is one of the first to seriously suggest that we in fact came here more or less fully formed, with perhaps some hybridization along the way. Silver has written an entire book on the subject, entitled Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence, and it is controversial to say the least. What are we to think of these ideas that human beings did not originate from what we have long thought to be our native home world? Of course there has been a lot of criticism aimed at the theory and it all remains highly speculative, but it is nevertheless another intriguing example of our kind trying to delve into our history and extract some meaning from where we came from, who we are, and where we are headed.
During the afternoon of 27th July 1999, several people witnessed a cigar-shaped object “with wings” scream out of the skies and ultimately crash into waters of Lake Backsjon. Most witnesses agreed the object was approximately 15 feet in length and around 5 feet wide. What’s more, it was evident that water was “thrown into the air” following the craft’s apparent disappearance beneath the waves.
A report would eventually find its way to the local police. However, after conducting interviews with the witnesses they would seemingly wash their hands of the matter.
Several weeks later, though, in late August, an official presence was back on the waters of Lake Backsjon. And this time there were representatives from the military, the security police, and the rescue service from nearby Arvika. Initial searches were on a relatively small scale. The searches were thorough, though. However, the size of the waters and area to cover would quickly dawn on the units.
So much so, that Operation Sea Find was put into action on 13th September. And whether the military knew something that the general public didn’t, there appeared to be a decisive effort to locate something, somewhere in the waters. These suspicions appeared even more credible when the local population was assured that the whole operation was nothing but a training exercise.
Speculation only deepened when several conflicting reasons for the exercise surfaced. For example, one claimed there was a concern the object might be “foreign surveillance equipment”. Another, on the other hand, would claim the exercise was a response to a spate of “robberies of government facilities”. Whether there was any truth to all or any of those statements is perhaps open for debate.
Operation Sea Find – A Genuine Recovery Mission Or Another Cover Story?
Whatever the real reasons for Operation Sea Find, the 14-strong unit utilized high-tech underwater photography equipment, as well as equally high-tech sonar devices. What’s more eight of the unit were specialist divers with substantial experience in their field.
The search would continue for several days. It would then suddenly come to a halt with an announcement that nothing of significance had come to light. Vast regions of the waters remained unsearched. However, the sheer size of the lake would have likely meant an operation in excess of a year.
Once more, much like the reasons for beginning the operation, whether the reasons for bringing it to a close are genuine or not remains an area of concern. At least to some. We should perhaps note, however, that the military themselves would express surprise that they hadn’t managed to recover anything of interest from the waters.
What might they have been expecting to find in the cold, murky lake? Might something actually have been found only to be covered up by those in charge of the search? We should note that such claims are speculative, although, given the subject at hand, perhaps understandable.
Might it be, though, that the military really didn’t find anything as there wasn’t anything to find? Not that the strange craft didn’t enter the water as per the multiple witnesses. But that it did so purposely in order to enter some kind of unknown gateway or tunnel system. One that might take it to another part of the country, or even the world.
World news is talking about an extraordinary astroid that is expelling a large sum of carbon monoxide. And yet, I read a physics article about how the International Space Station has a machine that state similar results. The article states:
"The CO2 breathed by astronauts aboard the ISS is captured by using a sponge-like mineral a zeolite, which has tiny pores to lock in a CO2 molecule. On the space station, the zeolites empty their CO2 when exposed to the vacuum of space."
So you see, this physics article basically has proven that the so called asteroid Borisov...may actually be an alien space station that is expelling the carbon monoxide from its crew inside the ship. The carbon monoxide is 100% proof that aliens exist on the interior of this ship that NASA calls comet 21, Borisov. Wikipedia states;
"Early estimates of nucleus 2I/Borisov diameter have ranged from 1.4 km to 16 km."
So even NASA the size measures from 1.4-16km or bigger. That is one big starship! Its often seen with a trail behind it, not just of ice, but of carbon monoxide. So the proof is in the pudding. The facts are in front of us...and the the results are in. Comet Borisov...is a confirmed spaceship. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
While looking over some Mars photos, I came across a strange figure hidden in the lower part of a hillside. The figure looks like its made of a copper or golden metal. I know this because the color is very different from the color of its surroundings. This was probably a god...a statue of a god that the people on Mars prayed to for protection. The statue itself has a head, a thick chest with a long robe covering it...a large book or shield on one arm. Very amazing discovery and absolute proof that ancient intelligent aliens not only lived on Mars, but prayed on Mars.
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Huge UFO Disk Seen Exiting Mouth Of Mexico Volcano, April 20, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Huge UFO Disk Seen Exiting Mouth Of Mexico Volcano, April 20, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 20, 2020 Location of sighting: Popocatepetl, Mexico Source: Volcano live cam Here we see a catch from the live Popocatepetl volcano cam. The person caught a large glowing UFO exiting the mouth of the volcano and moving up into space. The ancient volcano is home to an alien base 5-6km below the surface that is the size of an entire city. UFOs are frequently seen on live came exiting and entering the volcano. This is just further proof that the alien base does exist and that the aliens living there have very large spacecraft. The mouth of the volcano is about 600 meters across. That makes this UFO about 50 meters across. This is 100% proof that aliens use this volcano to enter a base deep below. Its very possible the Mexican government has an agreement with the aliens to allow them continual use of this area. And possible getting some tech in exchange, which Mexico trades to the USAF for money. Scott C. Waring
Satelliettreintje van Elon Musk vanavond aan hemel te zien: “Het kan spectaculaire passage worden” - Hln.be
Satelliettreintje van Elon Musk vanavond aan hemel te zien: “Het kan spectaculaire passage worden” - Hln.be
EPA
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETWie vanavond naar de hemel kijkt, maakt kans om een indrukwekkend spektakel te zien. Gisteren lanceerde SpaceX – het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Tesla-baas Elon Musk – een reeks van 60 Starlink-satellieten in een baan om de aarde en die zijn vanavond iets voor 22 uur te zien vanuit ons land. “Het kan een spectaculaire passage worden”, aldus weerman Frank Deboosere op Twitter.
“De satellieten bevinden zich nog heel dicht bij elkaar”, weet Deboosere. “Het satelliettreintje zal zichtbaar zijn tussen 21.55 en 21.59 uur. Gebruik eventueel een verrekijker.”
En dat is nog niet alles. Een 40-tal Starlink-satellieten die op 18 maart gelanceerd werden, zullen vanavond ook zichtbaar zijn, tussen 21.37 uur en 21.53 uur. “Zij bewegen van west over noord naar oost en volgen allemaal ongeveer dezelfde baan aan de hemel”, zegt Deboosere op zijn website, “van Venus via Capella (de helderste ster van de Voerman) naar de bak van de Kleine Beer.”
Ruwweg om de halve minuut trekt er een satelliet voorbij. “Zorg in elk geval voor een donkere waarnemingsplaat, ver van alle hinderlijke kunstmatige lichtbronnen”, aldus nog Deboosere.
Frank Deboosere✔@frankdeboosere
Een reeks van 60 Starlink-satellieten is zichtbaar op donderdag 23 april 2020 tussen 21.55 uur en 21.59 uur. Deze satellieten zijn gisteren gelanceerd en bevinden zich nog heel dicht bij elkaar. Dat kan dus een spectaculaire passage worden.
Het was gisteren al de zevende keer dat er satellieten gelanceerd werden van het Starlink-project, dat supersnel internet moet aanbieden in elke uithoek van de aarde. In mei vorig jaar werden de eerste gelanceerd en in totaal moeten er 12.000 in een baan rond de aarde gebracht worden.
De satellieten zijn zichtbaar als een streep van lichtjes. Volgens astronomen is die zichtbaarheid vandaag nog geen probleem, maar kan het wel een probleem worden als er nog meer satellieten bijkomen. Ze veroorzaken immers lichtvervuiling die het werk van astronomen bemoeilijkt.
Helderheid
Elon Musk liet gisteren echter weten op Twitter dat zijn bedrijf iets gaat doen aan de helderheid van de satellieten. Die heeft deels te maken met de manier waarop de zonnepanelen op de satellieten bevestigd zijn. De komende maanden zullen de panelen richting zon worden gedraaid, waardoor ze minder zichtbaar worden. De satellieten vliegen ook dicht bij de aarde en zijn vrij groot, waardoor ze licht reflecteren. Speciale zonneschermen zouden dat probleem moeten verhelpen.
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Strange Slow Moving Flaming Objects Fall From The Skies
Strange Slow Moving Flaming Objects Fall From The Skies
Something strange is going on. The last week many people around the world witnessed slow moving flaming objects that fell from the skies.
Experts believe the unusual occurrences were meteors, potentially linked to the annual Lyrid meteor shower due to commence this week, but looking at these unusual flaming objects then it is hard to imagine that they all were linked to the Lyrid Meteor shower.
1. Bright flaming object falls from the sky over Iowa.
US National Weather Service Des Moines Iowa wrote on their Facebook page: Does anyone know what happened this morning (April 21, 20200 around 6:20 am in the sky looking East. I was on my way to Pella when I noticed the "explosion". Looks like an explosion of some sort. I would hate to think an airplane but I'm not sure what else it would be. You can see a dark streak then a big poof a smoke and a bright object falling. I know there is a meteor shower tonight.....maybe this one is a bit premature?
2. Slow moving bizarre fireball spotted over Hull, UK
On Sunday evening (April 19, 2020), a mysterious burning object was spotted traversing the sky over the northern part of Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, England. Eyewitnesses suggested that the object moved too slowly to be a meteor.
Rebecca Holmes saw it from her garden in Bransholme, near Kingston upon Hull and said 'It was weird it looked like either a plane or a rocket or something.'
3. Flaming objects spotted over UK and Canada
From left to right: Object 3A - Object 3B and Object 3C
3A.Mysterious Flaming ObjectSpotted Over Cambridgeshire England A mysterious flaming object spiraling through the sky over Cambridgeshire, England, was spotted by witness this past Wednesday (April 15, 2020)at 8:00 PM. The witnesses described the sight as appearing as a thick chemtrail but with "flames coming out of the back of it.
3B.Flaming object in apparent vertical free fall over London, UK recorded on April 14, 2020. See object 5.
3C. And a burning object falling from the sky over Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on April 14, 2020 and reported to Mufon. The witness states: Driving into Winnipeg at around 8:30 in the morning on April 14 There was a big black streak in the sky, not moving. I thought it was a contrail at first, but it had no beginning or end and no sign that it was dissipating. It just hung there for about 15 min then it was gone.
4. Strange burning object falls object from sky
A flaming object falls from the sky and although the location is unknown, we can see a v-shaped object with a burning trail behind. Video.
5. And another very strange smoking object that fell from the sky over Iceland on April 14, 2020. Video.
Triangle-shaped craft filmed over Los Angeles, CA 22-Apr-2020
Triangle-shaped craft filmed over Los Angeles, CA 22-Apr-2020
This triangle-shaped UFO was recorded in the sky above Los Angeles, California on 22nd April 2020.
Witness report:
A triangle shaped object with a bright white light in each corner. The object was stationary and kind of spinning in place before finally traveling north. The distance between the lights kept changing. At one point it was a straight line.
The Arecibo Observatory captured this radar image of the big asteroid 1998 OR2 on April 18, 2020. 1998 OR2 will fly by Earth at a distance of 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) on April 29.
We've now got a good visual on the big space rock that's going to fly by Earth next week.
On Saturday (April 18), the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico captured a radar image of the asteroid 1998 OR2, which will zoom within 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) of our planet on April 29.
For perspective: The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of about 239,000 miles (385,000 km). So we have nothing to fear from asteroid 1998 OR2's Earth flyby on April 29, scientists stress.
Arecibo team members have been wearing masks in the workplace to help minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus, and they apparently see a bit of themselves in the approaching space rock.
"#TeamRadar and the @NAICobservatory staff are taking the proper safety measures as we continue observations. This week we have been observing near-Earth asteroid 1998 OR2, which looks like it's wearing a mask! It's at least 1.5 km across and is passing 16 lunar distances away!" team members tweeted on Saturday via the @AreciboRadar account. (@AreciboRadar is not an official Arecibo account. But @NAICobservatory is, and it retweeted the April 18 post.)
Arecibo Radar@AreciboRadar
#TeamRadar and the @NAICobservatory staff are taking the proper safety measures as we continue observations. This week we have been observing near-Earth asteroid 1998 OR2, which looks like it's wearing a mask! It's at least 1.5 km across and is passing 16 lunar distances away!
The Arecibo researchers aren't the only ones keeping an eye on 1998 OR2. For example, Italian astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, who runs the online Virtual Telescope Project, has been tracking the asteroid as well.
And Masi will continue to do so. On April 28, in fact, he will host a live webcast about 1998 OR2 that will feature telescope views of the object.
Astronomers estimate that 1998 OR2 is between 1.1 and 2.5 miles (1.8 to 4.1 kilometers) wide — big enough that an impact could threaten human civilization. But, to repeat, there is nothing to fear here; the asteroid will miss us by a large margin on April 29.
Indeed, you should quell any general death-from-above fears that may be running rampant in your head. NASA has found and tracked the vast majority of giant near-Earth asteroids, and none of them pose a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future.
Europe's new exoplanet-spotting space telescope has observed its first alien worlds.
The probe, called the Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS), launched into Earth's orbit last December and has just completed a three-month commissioning phase. During that time, the European Space Agency (ESA) tested out CHEOPS' instruments and even used the telescope to observe a few exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars beyond our solar system. The space observatory is now ready to begin routine science observations, which should begin at the end of April, ESA officials said in a statement.
While other exoplanet missions like NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) were designed to search for planets around other stars, CHEOPS will spend its time honing in on known exoplanets to measure their sizes with unprecedented accuracy and precision. Combined with data on each exoplanet's mass, which can be calculated from their orbits, the size measurements will allow astronomers to determine each exoplanet's density, thus revealing more clues about the composition of these worlds — and whether they could sustain life.
An image of the star HD 88111, taken by the European Space Agency's Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) during its in-orbit commissioning in early 2020. The star is located 175 light-years away from Earth in the Hydra constellation. Cheops took an image of this star every 30 seconds for 47 consecutive hours to demonstrate the stability of its instruments. (Image credit: ESA/Airbus/CHEOPS Mission Consortium)
CHEOPS performed a series of in-flight tests between January and February to make sure its instruments were functioning and calibrated properly. The spacecraft took its first images in February, featuring blurry views of star systems. Those fuzzy images were no accident.
"The deliberate defocusing is at the core of the mission's observing strategy, which improves the measurement precision by spreading the light coming from distant stars over many pixels of its detector," ESA said in the statement.
In March, the new space telescope began looking at well-known star systems. CHEOPS "first needed to observe stars whose properties are well known, stars that are well-behaved — hand-picked to be very stable, with no signs of activity," CHEOPS project scientist Kate Isaak said in the statement. This allowed the CHEOPS team on Earth to verify that the satellite's instruments are precise and stable enough for observations.
"We were thrilled when we realised that all the systems worked as expected or even better than expected," CHEOPS instrument scientist Andrea Fortier said in the same statement.
Artist's impression of the star HD 93396 and its hot Jupiter planet, KELT-11b. (Image credit: ESA)
CHEOPS spent the last two weeks of in-orbit commissioning observing two stars that are known to host exoplanets. Specifically, the telescope practiced watching as exoplanets transited their stars. During a transit, an exoplanet crosses in front of the star, blocking a tiny bit of starlight and causing the star to dim slightly. While TESS uses the "transit method" to search for alien worlds, CHEOPS will use transits to take precise measurements of exoplanets.
One of the exoplanets that CHEOPS observed during this practice one is a puffy, gaseous world known as KELT-11b. The exoplanet orbits a subgiant star called HD 93396, which is located 320 light-years away from Earth. HD 93396 is three times larger than our sun, and KELT-11b is about 30% larger than Jupiter, but the gas giant orbits closer to its host star than Mercury is to the sun.
Using data CHEOPS gathered during that transit, scientists measured that KELT-11b is 112,800 miles (181,600 kilometers) wide. This measurement is five times more accurate than what can be done using Earth-based telescopes, ESA officials said in the statement.
This infographic shows the light curve that ESA's CHEOPS mission measured as it observed the transit of exoplanet KELT-11b in front of its host star, HD 93396.
ESA held a formal review of the satellite's performance and ground operations on March 25, and CHEOPS passed it with flying colors. "The in-orbit commissioning phase was an exciting period, and we are pleased we were able to meet all requirements," said Nicola Rando, CHEOPS project manager at ESA. "The satellite platform and instrument performed remarkably, and both the Mission and Science Operation Centres supported operations impeccably."
While the mission's science phase has not yet officially begun, CHEOPS is already taking a peek at some of its early targets, which include the exoplanets 55 Cancri e (a hot 'super-Earth' with a lava ocean) and GJ 436b, a so-called 'warm Neptune' that is losing its atmosphere.
Just a few days ago I was asked an interesting question. It basically went something like this: are there any really good “cold cases” (so to speak) that might advance our knowledge of the UFO phenomenon? Well, there’s one case in particular that I have addressed occasionally – as have various other researchers of the UFO subject, too. It’s a case that goes back to 1978. The location: Bolivia. It’s an eye-opening case for one particular reason: there is a substantial body of official, U.S. government documentation on the mysterious affair. Yes, 1978 is a long time ago; but, the Roswell event was quickly forgotten when it occurred, and wasn’t resurrected by Bill Moore, Stan Friedman and Charles Berlitz until the mid-1970s. And, although I don’t think that aliens crashedoutside of Roswell, you’ll get my point: old cases can often result in the discovery of fascinating data and startling testimony. To a major degree, the 1978 incident has largely been forgotten. But, it doesn’t have to be. So, with that said, perhaps someone will decide to tackle this case and see if anything new surfaces.
It was on May 15, 1978 that the story began to take off. We know this thanks to documentation that has surfaced through the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. In a U.S. State Department titled “Report of Fallen Space Object,” the following was stated: “The Bolivian newspapers carried this morning an article concerning an unidentified object that apparently recently fell from the sky. The object was discovered near the Bolivian city of Bermejo and was described as egg-shaped, metal and about four meters in diameter. The Bolivian Air Force plans to investigate to determine what the object might be and from where it came. I have expressed our interest and willingness to help. They will advise. Request the department check with appropriate agencies to see if they can shed some light on what this object might be. The general region has had more than its share of reports of UFOs the past week. Request a reply ASAP.”
Whether the object was a UFO, the remains of a satellite, or something else entirely, someone at least was looking at things from a UFO perspective. The story was far from over. On May 15, 1978, the CIA prepared a document on what its staff had learned about the incident. Again, the documentation surfaced via the FOIA: “Many people in this part of the country claim they saw an object which resembled a soccer ball falling behind the mountains on the Argentine-Bolivian border, causing an explosion that shook the earth. This took place on May 6. Around that time some people in San Luis and Mendoza provinces reported seeing a flying saucer squadron flying in formation. The news from Salta confirms that the artificial satellite fell on Taire Mountain in Bolivia, where it has already been located by authorities. The same sources said that the area where the artificial satellite fell has been declared an emergency zone by the Bolivian Government.”
The CIA had much more to say. On May 16, the agency prepared a second document. Its title: “Reports Conflict on Details of Fallen Object.” It reads as follows: “We have received another phone call from our audience requesting confirmation of reports that an unidentified object fell on Bolivian territory near the Argentine border. We can only say that the Argentine and Uruguayan radio stations are reporting on this even more frequently, saying that Bolivian authorities have urgently requested assistance from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration in order to determine the nature of that which crashed on a hill in Bolivian territory.”
Even more was to come from the CIA: “Just a few minutes ago Radio El Espectador of Montevideo announced that there was uncertainty as to the truth of these reports. Argentine sources indicated that the border with Bolivia had been closed but that it might soon be reopened. They also reported that an unidentified object had fallen on Bolivian soil near the Argentine border and that local Bolivian authorities had requested aid from the central government, which, in turn, had sought assistance from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to investigate the case. A La Paz newspaper said today that there is great interest in learning about the nature of the fallen object, adding that local authorities for security reasons had cordoned off 200 km around the spot where the object fell. The object is said to be a mechanical device with a diameter of almost 4 meters which has already been brought to Tarija. There is interest in determining the accuracy of these reports which have spread quickly throughout the continent, particularly in Bolivia and its neighboring countries. Is it a satellite, a meteorite, or a false alarm?”
May 18 was the day on which the U.S. Embassy in La Paz got involved in the very strange story. The recipient of the findings of the Embassy’s staff was the U.S. Secretary of State: “Preliminary information provided has been checked with appropriate government agencies. No direct correlation with known space objects that may have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere near May 6 can be made; however, we are continuing to examine any possibilities. Your attention is invited to State Airgram A-6343, July 26, 1973 which provides background information and guidance for dealing with space objects that have been found. In particular any information pertaining to the pre-impact observations, direction of trajectory, number of objects observed, time of impact and a detailed description including any markings would be helpful.”
The U.S. Defense Attaché Office in La Paz reported: “This office has tried to verify the stories put forth in the local press. The Chief of Staff of the Bolivian Air Force told DATT/AIRA this date that planes from the BAF have flown over the area where the object was supposed to have landed and in their search they drew a blank. Additionally, DATT/AIRA talked this date with the Commander of the Bolivian army and he informed DATT that the army’s search party directed to go into the area to find the object had found nothing. The army has concluded that there may or not be an object, but to date nothing has been found.”
It wasn’t just elements of the U.S. Government who were following this story. So were UFO researchers. Leonard Stringfield was someone who collected numerous stories of crashed UFOs from the mid-to-late 1970s to the early 1990s, said. In the summer of 1979, Stringfield corresponded with an Argentinian UFO researcher named Nicholas Ojeda. He told Stringfield: “There is a report of a group of investigators who vanished mysteriously in the area. I really think something big happened in Salta. NASA investigated, but there was no news of it. I have to tell you that in La Paz, Bolivia, a huge Hercules C-130 carried ‘something’ from the area where the UFO crashed.”
Yes, this is – as I said at the beginning – very much a case that could still go far. There are more than a few leads to follow up. There may well be more documents on the case that have still not surfaced via FOIA, but which just might appear if someone is prepared to do the research. And opening some doors may result in even more doors opening. How about digging into the words of Nicholas Ojeda? What about the NASA connection? It’s clear that this story is rich in data and government records. Who is up for the challenge?
Among all of the alleged UFO encounters out there, some of the most spectacular are those that have been reported by pilots and aviators. After all, these are people who have a firm grasp as to what to expect to see up in the sky, and know when something is wrong with this picture. There are numerous such accounts to be found, but one of the weirder is the time a Spanish airliner was actually forced to land due to a stubborn and very aggressive UFO.
One of the weirdest UFO incidents in Spanish history began on the evening of November 11, 1979, when Transportes Aéreos Españoles Flight JK-297 took off from Salzburg, Austria on a commercial flight to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. Aboard the TAE Super Caravelle airliner were 109 passengers, an experienced crew, and it was meant to be a totally routine flight. The plane made it to its refueling stop at the island of Majorca without incident, but as they headed out towards their final destination things would begin to get odd indeed. It started with a sudden request from ground control to pilot Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada to switch to his emergency channel because an emergency beacon had been detected in their general area. The pilot obeyed, and that’s when he and his crew noticed something very unusual to the left of their aircraft. Out in the night sky they could see two red lights, which seemed to be moving at great speed, and unsettlingly looked to be headed right towards them. It was alarming enough that Tejada immediately contacted the flight control center in Barcelona to get more information on the approaching lights, but they could see nothing on their radar to explain it. An original transcript of this initial conversation between the flight (TAE-297) and ground control reads:
– Barcelona, this is TAE 297 -TAE-297 tell me? – Can you confirm me that we have a traffic next to us, to our left, more or less four five miles? – TAE-297 negative. No traffic reported.. – We see two signals, red lights now. About three miles to ten in our position.. Approximately the same height.. -at ten of your position, three miles left now? -yes -TAE-297 received, thank you. -(voice starting to panic) when you can, inform me about that traffic. – 297 we Are not aware of any traffic on that route, you are the only one from Ibiza to Alicante. -thank you very much (it is possible that traffic, yes) -TAE-297 confirm me, those lights are on the sea or in the air? -I repeat, is a traffic and it is in our high! -TAE-297, received, thanks. -Barcelona, this TAE 297, confirm me the type of aircraft that it could be that traffic! -TAE-297 confirm me if it’s in the same direction? -yes! We got closer and closer! … I can only see two red lights, no flashes -TAE-297 we have no reported traffic around, we have also called Palma(Mallorca) to see if it’s a “lower level 240” and they told us they had no reported traffic either.
The military radar of Torrejón de Ardoz in Madrid could also not detect anything on radar except the airliner,there were no other flights scheduled to be in the area, and in the meantime, those lights were closing the distance fast. Tejada decided to take evasive maneuvers to avoid what he believed to be an incoming collision, rapidly lowering his altitude, but the lights mirrored this movement to stay on the same level as them, and at this time they were reported as no longer closing in, but rather maintaining an uncomfortably close distance of approximately half a kilometer from the airliner. If this was another plane it was shamelessly ignoring safety precautions, and at this distance further evasive maneuvers were considered too dangerous, so Tejada requested to make an emergency landing at the airport in Manises, Valencia, which was granted.
As the plane approached its new destination, those eerie red lights continued to follow them with inscrutable purpose, still not showing up on radar anywhere, but very visible to the crew and passengers. These lights would follow them until they were nearly at Manises, after which they broke off to fly away just as mysteriously as they had arrived. At this point the lights were close enough to the airport that personnel on the ground were able to make visual confirmation of the anomalies, and then there were sudden radar signatures picked up of three more large flying objects estimated as measuring around 200 meters in diameter circling about. It was thought that there was perhaps an unregistered flight coming in for an emergency landing, but all efforts to hail what they believed to be an aircraft were met with silence.
This was all enough to put the Spanish Air Force on high alert, and they began scrambling a Mirage F-1 fighter jet at the Los Llanos airbase in order to get a closer look and see what was going on. The fighter pilot, Spanish Air Force captain Fernando Cámara, reported that the object was moving very rapidly, forcing him to speed up to mach 1.4 just to keep up. He then made visual contact with the mysterious object, which he described as a “truncated cone” with multi-colored flashing lights on it. This was about all he was able to make out, as the strange craft then sped away out of sight faster than he could possibly keep up. At that moment things got even more intense, when there was a report of another object that had appeared near Valencia, which the pilot dutifully went to intercept, yet as he drew closer he was forced to break off when his electronic flight systems were inexplicably jammed and his system additionally gave him an ominous warning that he was being locked onto by missile radar. Alarmed, he aborted his chase as the object allegedly sped off in the direction of Africa, after which his systems returned to normal.
After the harrowing incident, the crew of Flight JK-297 was allegedly strictly forbidden to speak about it to the press and public, but the story got out into the wild nevertheless, and it was indeed curious enough that a full government investigation was launched into what has come to be known as the “Manises UFO Incident.” For his part, pilot Tejada would adamantly deny that what had been seen was another conventional aircraft, although he stopped short of claiming that it was an alien spacecraft. As the media was picking up on the case there were some conspiracies popping up among passengers, many of whom had not actually seen the UFOs and believed it was all a story to get the airline out of having to give them a refund for the delayed and aborted flight. Of course, the airline denied this, saying that an unusual aerial situation had definitely played out on that evening. However, what exactly that was is open to debate.
The government would do its best to explain it through the usual suspects of mundane phenomena, such as the planet Venus, stars, even the lights from a distant chemical plant, but it seems highly unlikely that an experienced crew would all make that misidentification. As for the experience of the fighter pilot Cámara, it was suggested that his electronic systems had been disrupted by “powerful electronic warfare equipment” being used in military exercises being carried out in the area at the time by the United States Sixth Fleet. The pilot completely rejects this possibility, as the fleet was too far away and the disruption had only occurred as he tried to engage the unidentified flying object. Regardless of these arguments by the witnesses, the official explanations still stand, and the Spanish military, government, and the airline involved had constantly tried to downplay the whole affair.
Yet, the pilots and those involved, experienced airmen who know what they are doing, insist that this is wrong. So what are we to think of all of this? Was this misidentified planets and stars, a UFO, or perhaps even some sort of secret military experiment being carried out by the U.S. fleet? How can the government stick so strongly to the mundane explanations when none really seem to fit? What is going on here? As we search for answers, the Manises UFO Incident has attracted much discussion, and remains the earliest and perhaps only account of a commercial airliner being forced to land because of a UFO.
When we can finally get back to having family gatherings again (won’t that be a wonderful day?), three things that will still be (or perhaps even more) taboo to discuss are politics, religion … and the existence of a Planet 9 — especially if the other party guests are still mourning and/or protesting the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status. This rule applies for Planet X or Nibiru as well – both of which can prompt saucer throwing of the plate kind. However, if you’re brave enough to test the subject, a new study may help defend the position of denial or doubt in the existence of Planet 9. Let’s get ready to rumble!
“We test whether the population of “extreme” trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs) detected in the Y4 Dark Energy Survey (DES) data exhibit azimuthal asymmetries which might be evidence of gravitational perturbations from an unseen super-Earth in a distant orbit. By rotating the orbits of the detected eTNOs, we construct a synthetic population which, when subject to the DES selection function, reproduces the detected distribution of eTNOs in the orbital elements a,e, and i as well as absolute magnitude H, but has uniform distributions in mean anomaly M, longitude of ascending node Ω, and argument of perihelion ω.”
This opening argument comes from “Testing the isotropy of the Dark Energy Survey’s extreme trans-Neptunian objects,” a new study submitted to the journal Astrophysics by Pedro Bernardinelli, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania working on solar system science. Bernardinelli and his co-authors were using data from the Dark Energy Survey, a visible and near-infrared survey using the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile. Over a six-year period from August 2013 to January 2019, DES imaged the southern sky multiple times in five photometric bands. They were primarily interested in extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (eTNOs) – those large enough to be a planet that can exert gravitational pressure on smaller TNOs, forcing their orbits to be strangely aligned. Such an object should be bright enough to be picked up, travel large distances across the sky and be seen over multiple consecutive days – all good criteria for disqualifying just about everything out there … except for seven objects.
“The DES data taken on their own are thus consistent with azimuthal isotropy and do not require a “Planet 9” hypothesis. The limited sky coverage and object count mean, however, that the DES data by no means falsify this hypothesis.”
It won’t bring back Pluto
When the team modeled a population of 40 million TNOs and plugged in the real seven eTNOs, they found that their strange alignments could all have occurred randomly with no influence by a Planet 9. In four different cases, this was the result – although they note that the fourth case, using only 3 eTNOs, it was hard, but not impossible, to randomize the alignment.
Will this win an argument with your uncle who strongly believes there’s a giant planet beyond Neptune? Probably not, since the study uses a very small sample in simulations, not actual images from a spaceship like New Horizons or an extremely powerful telescope with a panoramic view. Still, it’s probably strong enough to produce a stalemate, allowing you to turn the discussion to something less controversial – like sports.
Until then, practice social distancing, wear a mask and hide your saucers.
It’s a common expression, one that dates back to John Calvin’s 1549 “Life and Conversion of a Christian Man.” Unless you’re watching Star Trek or a Star Wars movie, it’s not something generally heard when discussing a planet … until now. Astronomers watching a Jupiter-sized exoplanet discovered in 2008 and tracked for years with the Hubble space telescope announced this week that it has disappeared. Did they look around for a Death Star?
“The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).”
ESA image of Fomalhaut b
In 2004, astronomers created the first-ever resolved visible light image of a large dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut. In 2005, Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley proposed that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring’s inner edge, and in 2008 a point source of light was photographed which was named Fomalhaut b. Its unusual brightness suggested it either had a Saturn-like ring or multiple moons, and its orbit followed a strange, non-elliptical path. Still, astronomers were confident Fomalhaut b was a large exoplanet.
“To my surprise, it was not present on the latest images. So, I went through all the data and started to analyze it and noticed a pattern: it was fading.”
Astronomer András Gáspár of the University of Arizona told Vice.com that he was looking for something else when he noticed that Fomalhaut b had disappeared from Hubble images in 2014. Going back through older images, Gáspár also saw that the planet was visibly fading and its strange orbit was no longer an orbit but an “escape trajectory” sending whatever it was out of Fomalhaut’s star system. The new data was fed into models, which showed only one thing could have caused all of these anomalies to happen.
“We do have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but none of this magnitude has ever been observed. This is a blueprint for how planets destroy each other.”
Did it look like this?
This was not a confrontation between a giant planet and a Death Star but a collision between two asteroid-sized bodies orbiting Fomalhaut – a collision that likely occurred just prior to the discovery of the dust cloud by Hubble astronomers in 2004. Neither of these space objects were planet-sized, but the resulting debris cloud was and it fooled them into thinking they had discovered exoplanet Fomalhaut b.
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
That saying dates back to 1651 when it appeared in “The Court and Character of King James” by Anthony Weldon, and it applies to Fomalhaut b and its star. Fomalhaut can be described by yet another more recent adage: “Live fast, die young.” That one dates back to the 1947 book Knock on Any Door by Willard Motley (actually “Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse”). Fomalhaut is a very hot star, which means it will have a short life in star terms. Its heat will keep its dust and debris ring agitated, so there could be more of these asteroid collisions, which means astronomers will be watching it carefully with the Hubble telescope and eventually the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2021.
Meanwhile, Fomalhaut b is fading fast into a massive cloud of dust, soon to be just a memory … and without a good-looking corpse. Perhaps Billy Joel wrote the best epitaph for this unusual space event.
This false-color composite image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the orbital motion of the planet Fomalhaut b. Based on these observations, astronomers calculated that the planet is in a 2,000-year-long, highly elliptical orbit. The planet will appear to cross a vast belt of debris around the star roughly 20 years from now. If the planet's orbit lies in the same plane with the belt, icy and rocky debris in the belt could crash into the planet's atmosphere and produce various phenomena. The black circle at the center of the image blocks out the light from the bright star, allowing reflected light from the belt and planet to be photographed. The Hubble images were taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph in 2010 and 2012. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute)
Dit jaar al 241 UFO-meldingen in ons land, maar meestal zit Elon Musk er voor iets tussen (en vanavond kan je weer Starlink-satellieten spotten) - HLN.be
Dit jaar al 241 UFO-meldingen in ons land, maar meestal zit Elon Musk er voor iets tussen (en vanavond kan je weer Starlink-satellieten spotten) - HLN.be
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Het Belgische UFO-meldpunt heeft dit jaar al 241 UFO-meldingen op de teller staan. Het gros van de meldingen werd echter veroorzaakt door Starlink-satellieten van SpaceX, het ruimtebedrijf van de Amerikaan Elon Musk. Het meldpunt vraagt waarnemers om in de toekomst eerst na te gaan op zijn website of het de satellieten betreft alvorens een UFO-melding in te sturen.
Afgelopen weekend heeft het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt weer 70 nieuwe UFO-meldingen ontvangen. Met momenteel 241 waarnemingen dit jaar komt het aantal waarnemingen zo stilaan in de buurt van de 270 meldingen die voor het volledige jaar 2019 binnenkwamen.
Ook de komende dagen zullen deze satellieten bij helder weer te zien zijn
Het merendeel van de meldingen betreffen dus echter de Starlink-satellieten van SpaceX. Het gaat hierbij recent om 60 satellieten die op 18 maart vanuit Florida in een baan rond de aarde werden gebracht. Vooral op 18 en 19 april zag het UFO-meldpunt een piek aan waarnemingen. “Ook de komende dagen zullen deze satellieten bij helder weer te zien zijn”, klinkt het.
Vanavond Weerman Frank Deboosere laat alvast op zijn website weten dat vanavond tussen 22.38 uur en 22.56 uur zo’n 40 Starlink-satellieten zichtbaar zullen zijn. “Zij bewegen van west over noord naar oost en volgen allemaal ongeveer dezelfde baan aan de hemel. Ze passeren ongeveer 8 graden boven de Poolster.”
Donkere plaats
“Starlink-satellieten zijn minder helder dan het ISS, dus mogelijk heb je een verrekijker nodig. Ruwweg om de halve minuut trekt er een satelliet voorbij”, laat Deboosere nog weten. “Zorg in elk geval voor een donkere waarnemingsplaats, ver verwijderd van alle hinderlijke kunstmatige lichtbronnen.”
En ook: “Als alles goed gaat, wordt vanavond om 21.37 uur een nieuwe reeks van 60 Starlink-satellieten gelanceerd. Mogelijk zien we dat heel “gecondenseerde” treintje ook rond 22 uur. Ik ben benieuwd.”
(Lees verder onder de foto)
astroblog.nlZo zag de lichtjestrein van SpaceX-satellieten er eerder uit.
Regelmatig
Sinds 24 mei 2019 zijn met regelmaat konvooien van satellieten van het Starlink-project waar te nemen die meestal van westelijke naar oostelijke richtingen passeren, legt het meldpunt uit. Door uiteindelijk duizenden satellieten in een lage aardbaan te plaatsen, hoopt SpaceX wereldwijd breedbandinternet te kunnen leveren.
Om te voorkomen dat er nog meer meldingen binnenkomen over de satellieten roept het meldpunt waarnemers op eerst een kijkje te nemen op een speciaal toegevoegde pagina over de Starlink-satellieten op zijn website alvorens het meldingsformulier in te vullen.
Dr Marco Langbroek@Marco_Langbroek
Kaartjes voor de overkomst van de 23 minuten eerder gelanceerde Falcon 9 met nieuwe batch Starlink satellieten vanavond rond 21:53 NL tijd, voor een viertal locaties: (NB: onzekerheid in tijdstip overkomst 1-2 minuten)
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What Will Happen on 29 April 2020 | NASA
What Will Happen on 29 April 2020 | NASA
According to NASA, every 37,000 years or so, our dear planet Earth is in serious danger of being stuck by a large asteroid (one measuring over 250 meters). The average life expectancy for most people sits at 78 years according to 2011 preliminary figures from the Centers for Disease Control. If the statistics say we can live 474 lifetimes before ever encountering an asteroid attack, there’s no reason to worry, right? Not exactly.
Seeing as how a majority of our closest encounters happened over the past few decades many are beginning to question how much longer can Earth continue to avoid cosmic disaster. That’s been said , Have you heard the buzz about a big – very big – asteroid that’ll pass relatively close to Earth This Month ? A monster asteroid with a diameter of 1.8 – 4.1 km is set to fly past Earth on April 29, 2020 . On its closest approach, the space rock will be 6.3 million km to Earth. Data from the US space agency NASA shows that this is the most massive asteroid to fly so close to Earth this year. The asteroid, named 52768 (1998 OR2), is big enough to destroy several countries and have a global impact, if it hits Earth. In fact, even the least estimate of its diameter (1.8 km) is more than twice the height of the tallest structure in the world, Burj Khalifa (0.83 km).
However, according to NASA, there is no possibility of this asteroid hitting the Earth. Phew.. Any asteroid bigger than 1 km is categorised as having the potential to trigger mass destruction on Earth. The asteroid, which killed the dinosaurs, measured more than 10 km across. As per the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy, “Objects close to and larger than one kilometre can cause damage on a global scale. They can trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and other secondary effects that extend far beyond the immediate impact area.” That’s been said here are 10 more Asteroids That Nearly Destroyed Earth
On the evening of 13th August 1970 in Hadersley in southern Denmark, police officer, Evald Maarup was guiding his car through the quiet and peaceful countryside close to the border with Germany. It would be a drive that he would never forget and would change his outlook on the world forever.
It was around 10:30 pm when a sudden “bluish light” suddenly enveloped his vehicle. At the same time, the car engine suddenly died, and the car came to a stop. When he went to radio the situation to the police switchboard, he realized that the radio was also dead. In fact, no electronic equipment in the entire vehicle worked at all.
It was also around this time that he realized that the interior of the car had suddenly heated dramatically. As he peered out through the car windshield he could see that the bright light was the underside of an oval vehicle, similar to a hat-shape, although definitely made from a metallic exterior.
He watched, and it now appeared to be ascending once again into the sky above and so leading to the lead appearing to dim somewhat. As it did so, it appeared to Maarup that the object itself was “withdrawing the light” back inside it as opposed to literally becoming dimmer. When the light had fully vanished, he could make out what appeared to be a darker patch with several protrusions around it. This would suggest a physical device attached onto the underside of the object.
He would snap himself back to his senses and then reach for the Fujaxa camera that he always had in his police car. He managed to quickly snap several pictures which were developed the following day. However, they would show no details whatsoever due to the dark of the night sky.
It was as he was snapping the pictures that he realized that the object appeared totally silent. Indeed, there was not a sound of any kind around him. He would estimate the entire episode lasted around five minutes before the object disappeared from sight at great speed. Certainly faster than any conventional aircraft of the times.
Bizarrely, although something that is experienced in multiple other UFO encounters around the world, as soon as the strange object disappeared from view the electrics and engine of Maarup’s car came back to life.
What we need to know here is whether the dying out of respective car engines and electrics is a purposeful act on the part of the occupants of these strange crafts, or whether it is a coincidental consequence of being in such close proximity to them – perhaps because of electromagnetic energy in the propulsion systems.
Perhaps also interesting, was Maarup’s findings when he exited the vehicle once the craft had gone. Walking around the sides of the car in order to inspect it to discover if there was anything out of the ordinary, he discovered how “heated” the exterior appeared as if it had been left sat outside on a baking summer’s day.
He would return to the police station a short time later and would make an official report of the incident.
Shortly after making his report, the police officer was ordered to undergo a basic psychiatric evaluation. He was found to be of sound mind, and essentially, truthful and trustworthy. In short, there was no obvious reason to doubt his claims.
What is perhaps also interesting is that the police officer – perhaps expectedly – would receive a wave of criticism and abuse in the local and national press once the story arrived with them. Rather than cut him adrift, though, his fellow officers and superiors would publicly defend him, and his solid police record.
While looking over a gigapan Mars photo I noticed that there were some odd anomalies that seemed to have been overlooked by NASA. One was a small face on a smooth stone. The smooth stone didn't fit in with its rough surroundings...but the detail on the stone reveals a face carved into it. It looks like some kind of dog-like face, but the cranium extends far back, making the face 3X longer.
Another anomaly was a claw or tooth not far from the face. Everyone in the area fossil hunting knows that the easiest bones to discover are the teeth and claws. They are the hardest and can last hundreds of millions of years or more. Also I found an strange bone, the end sticking out of the Mars dirt, but clearly its some kid of bone...its joint area makes that obvious.
Of course there are two sides to every story, and then there are screenshots. NASA wants to believe that the possibility of single cell life in our solar systems exists...but I present to you the evidence from intelligent species that we may or may not want to meet one day.
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A Third Explosion on the sun - Could THIS be the Culprit?
A Third Explosion on the sun - Could THIS be the Culprit?
On March 20, 2020 and on April 12, 2020 huge mysterious explosions occurred on the far side of the sun. Now, on April 18, 2020 NASA's satellites have captured a third explosionfrom which it is believed to be asteroid impacts.
But so many impacts in a short time is unusual and would suggest that we are dealing with a massive celestial body.
According to Tio Abandom who monitors the solar system, a rogue planet, Nibiru with its moons, is on its way, possible causing the asteroid explosions on the sun.
Suppose that he has it right about this planet Nibiru, then what is going to happen when it passes the sun. Is the sun heating up, because its magnetic poles are being skewered by the Nibiru system adjacent to the sun? Could it be that it results in massive earth directed CMEs causing a total black out here on earth?
I don't know but it looks like history is about to repeat itself. The images as shown in the video say enough.
Unlike Earth, the gases in Venus’ atmosphere aren’t uniformly mixed
Unlike Earth, the gases in Venus’ atmosphere aren’t uniformly mixed
MESSENGER data surprisingly show different nitrogen concentrations at different altitudes
For decades, scientists assumed that the gases in Venus’ atmosphere are uniformly mixed below an altitude of about 100 kilometers. A new study undermines that assumption.
A new look at the nitrogen on Venus may overturn a decades-old assumption about the planet’s atmosphere.
Scientists long thought that atmospheric turbulence would create a uniform mixture of gases in Venus’s atmosphere below an altitude of about 100 kilometers. That’s how it works on Earth. But data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft now indicate that this part of Venus’ atmosphere contains layers of gas with different nitrogen concentrations, researchers report online April 20 in Nature Astronomy.
The unexpected stratification of Venus’s atmosphere may serve as a cautionary tale for astronomers analyzing the atmospheres of planets around other stars, says Patrick Peplowski, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The new results suggest that observations of a planet’s upper atmosphere from afar don’t necessarily reflect conditions closer to the surface.
Peplowski and colleagues analyzed measurements of neutrons escaping from Venus’ atmosphere made by MESSENGER as it flew by the planet in 2007. Neutrons are produced by galactic cosmic rays hitting gas in Venus’ atmosphere between about 60 and 90 kilometers off the ground. Since nitrogen tends to absorb neutrons, the number of neutrons that escape reveal nitrogen content.
Gas at altitudes from 60 to 90 kilometers must contain about 5 percent nitrogen to create the neutron counts measured by MESSENGER, computer simulations showed. In contrast, space probes in the 1970s measured a nitrogen concentration of about 3.5 percent closer to Venus’ surface, at altitudes below 45 kilometers (SN: 12/16/78).
It’s not yet clear why nitrogen in the upper atmosphere is more abundant than in the lower atmosphere. But the apparent divide between nitrogen layers overlaps with a persistent blanket of sulfur dioxide clouds about 50 kilometers above the ground, Peplowski says. “I do wonder if it’s a coincidence, or if the same processes that form that cloud deck are responsible for somehow separating the lower and upper atmospheres.”
Interstellar comet Borisov has an unexpected amount of carbon monoxide
Interstellar comet Borisov has an unexpected amount of carbon monoxide
Second visitor from the stars has three times the CO relative to H2O than any local comets
A wispy tail of gas and dust trails behind interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, seen about 420 million kilometers from Earth in this Hubble Space Telescope picture from October 12, 2019.
Comet 2I/Borisov, the solar system’s second known interstellar visitor, probably hails from a planetary family that is chemically distinct from our own.
Martin Cordiner, an astrochemist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Dennis Bodewits, planetary scientist at Auburn University in Alabama, report the findings in two papers published online April 20 in Nature Astronomy.
Astronomers don’t know where Borisov came from. It was discovered in August 2019 on a trajectory tracing back to somewhere in the constellation Cassiopeia (SN: 9/12/19). Seeing a unique opportunity to get a glimpse at the chemistry of another star system, researchers sifted through data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope. Both observatories checked in on Borisov shortly after its closest pass by the sun in December, when the comet was just beyond Mars’ orbit.
To retain so much carbon monoxide, Borisov must have formed cold and stayed cold throughout its life. That means it likely formed in the remote outskirts of a carbon-enriched planetary system, the researchers say, far enough from its star so that carbon monoxide could readily freeze. A close run-in with a large planet may have kicked it out of its home. It then stayed brutally cold — never breaking 25 degrees Celsius above absolute zero (the temperature at which solid carbon monoxide turns to gas) — as it wandered among the stars.
The bottom axis of this graph shows the range of carbon monoxide concentrations (or amount of carbon monoxide relative to the amount of hydrogen cyanide) among solar system comets. The unusually high concentration detected in 2I/Borisov, the first interstellar comet, is highlighted in red. The comet shown on the far right is C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), presumably, a solar system comet with CO levels estimated to be dozens of times higher than Borisov’s.
Gravitational waves have revealed the first unevenly sized black hole pair
Gravitational waves have revealed the first unevenly sized black hole pair
One big black hole and one little one partnered up, LIGO and Virgo detections show
A black hole orbiting with a much smaller partner stirred up gravitational waves (illustrated by colors in this simulation) that scientists with the LIGO and Virgo experiments detected on Earth.
As far as odd couples go, this is one for the record books.
The ripples in spacetime stirred up by two distant, merging black holes suggest that one of the pair was much bigger than the other. It’s the first definitively mismatched black hole pair spotted by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations, which search for the gravitational waves emitted in the cosmic encounters of black holes. The collision, detected on April 12, 2019, occurred about 2.5 billion light-years from Earth.
For all previous such black hole mergers, the two partners have been of similar size. But in this case, the bigger black hole had a mass about 30 times that of the sun, while the smaller was about eight times the mass of the sun, researchers with the LIGO and Virgo collaborations reported April 18 at a meeting of the American Physical Society, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to this result, scientists did not know if such lopsided partnerships existed, or how rare they might be. “This one event represents a big step forward in our understanding,” astrophysicist Maya Fishbach of the University of Chicago said in a talk at the meeting.
Understanding what types of black holes partner up could eventually help answer the question of how the duos form (SN: 6/19/16). The black holes might partner up within a dense star cluster, or when two stars are born together as twins and both collapse into black holes. Both possibilities could occasionally create unequal mass partnerships.
The researchers also tested whether Einstein’s theory of gravity still held up in this new type of black hole collision. Surprise, surprise: Einstein was right again.
The detectors of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the United States and Virgo in Italy are currently shut down, in an early end to operations that was hastened by COVID-19. They’re scheduled to once again start observing the heavens in 2022.
Scientists just announced 2 new exciting updates about exoplanets. One is a potentially habitable world similar in size and temperature to Earth. The other is a possible new planet – possibly with rings – orbiting the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri.
Artist’s concept of Kepler-1649c. This world appears to be the closest analog to Earth yet found in terms of both size and temperature.
Image via NASA/ Ames Research Center/ Daniel Rutter.
Last week was very interesting for anyone who loves the idea of exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars. Not only did NASA and the SETI Institute announce the discovery of a new potentially habitable Earth-sized world – one of the most promising yet – but there was also another possible larger planet directly imaged orbiting the closest star to our sun,Proxima Centauri. And that second planet, if real, might have a huge ring system, according to some analyses done so far.
The possibly habitable world was announced by NASA and SETI Institute scientists on April 15, 2020, with a newly published and peer-reviewed paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The larger possible planet orbiting Proxima Centauri is the subject of a new peer-reviewed paper that was submitted to arXiv on April 14 and has been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Let’s look at these worlds, one by one.
A new potentially habitable Earth-sized world. The first planet is called Kepler-1649c. It’s 300 light-years from Earth. Astronomers found it in old data from the Kepler space telescope mission. It had been missed when the data was analyzed the first time around by a computer algorithm called Robovetter, but spotted later on when double-checked by scientists in the Kepler False Positive Working Group (FPWG). As it turned out, this this false positive really was a planet after all.
Estimated size of Kepler-1649c as compared to Earth (artist’s concept).
Image via NASA/ Ames Research Center/ Daniel Rutter.
Andrew Vanderburg, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) and first author of the new paper, said in a statement:
Out of all the mislabeled planets we’ve recovered, this one’s particularly exciting, not just because it’s in the habitable zone and Earth-size, but because of how it might interact with this neighboring planet. If we hadn’t looked over the algorithm’s work by hand, we would have missed it.
Kepler-1649c is almost the same size as Earth, only 1.06 times larger. Orbiting in its star’s habitable zone, where liquid water could exist, it receives about 75% the amount of light that Earth does from the sun, and so its temperature is estimated to be similar to Earth’s as well.Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said:
This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found. The data gathered by missions like Kepler and our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will continue to yield amazing discoveries as the science community refines its abilities to look for promising planets year after year.
In terms of size and likely temperature, this is the most similar planet to Earth that has ever been found with Kepler. It’s incredible to me that we just found it now, seven years after data collection stopped on the original Kepler field. I can’t wait to see what else might be found in the rich dataset from Kepler over the next seven years, or even seventy.
These findings make Kepler-1649c one of the most promising exoplanets yet found in terms of potential habitability. One caveat to this, though, is that it orbits a red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are well known for emitting large, dangerous flares that might make it difficult for life to exist on any planet. But there’s a lot we don’t know yet about this world (and about red dwarf flares). We don’t know, for example, whether Kepler-1649c has a substantial atmosphere; if so, the atmosphere might help protect any life forms that exist on its surface.
Artist’s concept of what Kepler-1649c could like like on the surface.
Image via NASA/ Ames Research Center/ Daniel Rutter.
By comparison, TRAPPIST-1f may be even closer to Earth in terms of size. Also, it is possible that Teegarden c, TRAPPIST-1d and TOI 700 d may be closer in terms of temperature. But Kepler-1649c is intriguing, since it is now considered to be the most similar to Earth of any exoplanet found so far, in terms of both size and temperature, which orbits in the habitable zone of its star.
Kepler-1649c orbits its star in only 19.5 Earth days. This star also has at least one other known planet, Kepler-1649b, which is similar in size but orbits the star at only half the distance of Kepler-1649c. This is similar to how Venus orbits the sun at about half the distance that Earth does.
Could there be any additional planets in this system? Scientists don’t know yet, and so far haven’t found a third one. But the two known planets orbit in a stable ratio. Every four times the outer planet orbits the star, the inner planet orbits almost exactly nine times. This nine-four ratio is rather unique, and might hint at a third, still-undiscovered planet between the two known ones. If so, both the inner and outer planets could orbit in synchronicity with the middle planet, creating a pair of three-to-two resonances.
Finding planets like Kepler-1649c is exciting, since red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy. Many planets have now been discovered orbiting these stars, with many more expected in the near future. Even though red darfs are volatile, this increases the chances of finding worlds around them that are actually habitable. According to Vanderburg:
The more data we get, the more signs we see pointing to the notion that potentially habitable and Earth-sized exoplanets are common around these kinds of stars. With red dwarf stars almost everywhere around our galaxy, and these small, potentially habitable and rocky planets around them too, the chance one of them isn’t too different than our Earth looks a bit brighter.
Now what about the second planet, the one orbiting Proxima Centauri? Keep reading …
Combination of five images showing the possible second planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, from the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT). It shows a bright dot at the predicted location of the planet in April 2018 and the position where it would be now.
A second possible planet, possibly with a huge ring system, orbiting Proxima Centauri. In another interesting development, scientists may have directly imaged a new planet orbiting the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri. Those results, from the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), have just been published in the paper so far, without an official announcement, but it has stirred up conversations on Twitter. Astronomer Phil Plait wrote an excellent update about it for SYFY Wire on April 16.
The possibility of a second planet at Proxima Centauri – called Proxima Centauri c – had been announced previously last January, but now another another research team thinks they may have successfully imaged it! It hasn’t been confirmed yet, and more work needs to be done, but it is certainly intriguing. The possible planet appears as a bright dot near the star, in a combination of five images taken over two months, beginning in April 2018.
Andrew Vanderburg at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA), first author of the new paper.
What’s puzzling is that the possible planet appears significantly brighter than it should. If the brightness was entirely from the light reflected off the planet itself, then the planet would be about five times larger than Jupiter. But its estimated mass is more similar to Neptune’s. So it’s possible, the researchers say, that the planet is actually smaller, but has a huge ring system around it. And if it’s a real planet, then it would be the closest one imaged so far. Previous studies suggest that Proxima Centauri c is a super-Earth; larger and more massive than Earth, but smaller and less massive than Neptune.
The other already known planet orbiting Proxima Centauri is Proxima Centauri b, with a mass about 1.3 times that of Earth, which orbits about 30 times closer to its star. Proxima Centauri is also a red dwarf star, which orbits the binary star system of two sun-like stars known as Alpha Centauri.
Both of these are exciting discoveries, even if one is a bit more tentative, and show how there are still many new fascinating worlds waiting to be discovered.
Bottom line: Last week was great for exoplanets, with a new potentially habitable Earth-sized world, and a possible new planet – that may have rings – orbiting the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri.
In 2019, astronomers made an incredible discovery: a comet from a different star system making a close approach to the Sun at an extremely unusual trajectory, which was later named “2I/Borisov” after the amateur astronomer who discovered it.
Observations suggest that its home star system could resemble our own. NASA scientists have even suggested that the object may hold water.
Now, a new study by an international team of researchers led by NASA has revealed something highly unusual: gas emanating from the comet contained unusually high amounts of carbon monoxide — up to 26 times higher than that of the average comet.
“This is the first time we’ve ever looked inside a comet from outside our solar system and it is dramatically different from most other comets we’ve seen before,” Martin Cordiner, astrochemist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy said in a statement.
The fact that they found any carbon monoxide isn’t in itself unusual. It’s one of the most commonly found molecules in space. But the extremely high concentration puzzled the researchers.
“The comet must have formed from material very rich in CO ice, which is only present at the lowest temperatures found in space, below -420 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius),” Stefanie Milam, planetary scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and co-author of the study, said in the statement.
They believe the abundance of the gas could tell us about the comet’s home.
“If the gases we observed reflect the composition of 2I/Borisov’s birthplace, then it shows that it may have formed in a different way than our own solar system comets, in an extremely cold, outer region of a distant planetary system,” said Cordiner.
Scientists suggest that 2l/Borisov could’ve spent billions of years traveling through the extreme colds of interstellar space after being yeeted out of its host system as it came near a passing star.
But we still can’t pinpoint what it’s home system looks like just yet.
“2I/Borisov gave us the first glimpse into the chemistry that shaped another planetary system,” said Milam. “But only when we can compare the object to other interstellar comets, will we learn whether 2I/Borisov is a special case, or if every interstellar object has unusually high levels of CO.”
NASA’s WFIRST mission – an infrared space observatory planned for launch around 2025 – will use the fact that the gravity of distant objects warps spacetime, bending and focusing light, thereby revealing new worlds.
Artist’s concept of how WFIRST will use microlensing – the bending and focusing of starlight via the gravity of distant objects – to search for exoplanets. WFIRST will focus on the region near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, where stars are most densely packed.
Most exoplanets orbiting distant stars are found by observing a planet transit, or pass in front of, its star. As the planet transits, the star’s light temporarily and minutely dims. The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), now being developed by NASA for a possible launch in the mid-2020s, will do the opposite. It’ll search for little surges of light that occur during what are called microlensing events, or events where the gravity of distant objects warps spacetime, bending and focusing light, in this case revealing new worlds.
Any time two stars align closely from our vantage point, light from the more distant star curves as it travels through the warped space-time of the nearer star. This phenomenon, one of the predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, was famously confirmed by British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington during a total solar eclipse in 1919. If the alignment is especially close, the nearer star acts like a natural cosmic lens, focusing and intensifying light from the background star.
Planets orbiting the foreground star may also modify the lensed light, acting as their own tiny lenses. The distortion they create allows astronomers to measure the planet’s mass and distance from its host star. This is how WFIRST will use microlensing to discover new worlds.
Pretty cool!
The new search will combine WFIRST’s results with those of the Kepler and TESS missions.David Bennett, who leads the gravitational microlensing group at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explained that WFIRST’s capabilities as a survey telescope will be key to its potential to find exoplanets:
Microlensing signals from small planets are rare and brief, but they’re stronger than the signals from other methods. Since it’s a one-in-a-million event, the key to WFIRST finding low-mass planets is to search hundreds of millions of stars.
How microlensing can help find exoplanets. Microlensing depends on the chance alignment of two stars. As one star passes behind the other, the closer star acts like a lens, bending the light so that the brightness smoothly increases and decreases. If there is a planet is around the closer star, its gravity will also bend the light slightly, causing a spike that can be detected and measured by scientists.
WFIRST will set its sights on the star-rich center of our Milky Way galaxy. Since WFIRST is an infrared telescope, it can see through dust clouds that block visible light. That’s especially important in planet searches near the galaxy’s center because, when we look in that direction, we see vast clouds of dust in space.
Other space-based telescopes like the TESS mission and the no-longer-active Kepler mission have looked for exoplanets around stars up to about 1,000 light-years from our sun. WFIRST will look tens of thousands of light-years away, toward the more densely populated central region of our galaxy.
So far, 86 out of more than 4,000 exoplanets found have been discovered using microlensing. Most exoplanets have been found via the transit method. But the microlensing technique has a very powerful potential: the potential to find solar systems like our own. The NASA statement explained:
The techniques commonly used to find other worlds are biased toward planets that tend to be very different from those in our solar system. The transit method, for example, is best at finding sub-Neptune-like planets that have orbits much smaller than Mercury’s. For a solar system like our own, transit studies could miss every planet.
WFIRST’s microlensing survey will help us find analogs to every planet in our solar system except Mercury, whose small orbit and low mass combine to put it beyond the mission’s reach. WFIRST will find planets that are the mass of Earth and even smaller – perhaps even large moons, like Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
So WFIRST will be able to find other worlds with masses similar to Earth or smaller, in larger orbits. It will also be ideally suited to finding ice giants, similar to Uranus and Neptune, which may be the most common type of planet in our galaxy.
Using microlensing, WFIRST will search for planets in the habitable zones of their stars, where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist.
No one detection method can find all planets, but by combining the data from missions like WFIRST, Kepler and TESS, scientists will be able to obtain a much better idea of how many kinds of planetary systems there are. According to Matthew Penny at Louisiana State University:
Trying to interpret planet populations today is like trying to interpret a picture with half of it covered. To fully understand how planetary systems form we need to find planets of all masses at all distances. No one technique can do this, but WFIRST’s microlensing survey, combined with the results from Kepler and TESS, will reveal far more of the picture.
Comparison of exoplanet discoveries from the Kepler mission and other telescopes with those expected from WFIRST. Red and black dots are large planets with small orbits found by Kepler and others. WFIRST will find planets with a much wider range of masses orbiting farther from their stars (blue dots).
Image via NASA/ GSFC (adapted from Penny et al. 2019).
Kepler’s search area was about 100 square degrees of the sky, containing 100,000 stars typically about 1,000 light-years away. TESS, on the other hand, covers the entire sky and looks at about 200,000 stars, but those stars are much closer, about 100 light-years. By comparison, WFIRST will focus on only three square degrees, but search 200 million stars up to 10,000 light-years distant.
Of the microlensing searches that have been done to date, most have been in visible light. Those searches wouldn’t be able to find planets around stars near the galaxy’s center that are obscured by dust clouds. Another microlensing survey, by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, has been mapping the central region since 2015. This will help pave the way for WFIRST’s upcoming observations by measuring the rate of microlensing events near the galaxy’s core.
UKIRT uses machine learning, which will also be used by WFIRST to help streamline the enormous amount of data. Savannah Jacklin, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, said:
Our current survey with UKIRT is laying the groundwork so that WFIRST can implement the first space-based dedicated microlensing survey. Previous exoplanet missions expanded our knowledge of planetary systems, and WFIRST will move us a giant step closer to truly understanding how planets – particularly those within the habitable zones of their host stars – form and evolve.
David Bennett at Goddard Space Flight Center, who leads the gravitational microlensing group.
As exciting as finding new worlds near the center of our galaxy is, WFIRST will be able to discover other fascinating objects as well. This includes free-floating planets, as small as Mars, not orbiting any stars, and brown dwarfs, which are too large to be planets but too small to be stars. WFIRST could also find neutron stars and black holes. Penny said:
WFIRST’s microlensing survey will not only advance our understanding of planetary systems, it will also enable a whole host of other studies of the variability of 200 million stars, the structure and formation of the inner Milky Way, and the population of black holes and other dark, compact objects that are hard or impossible to study in any other way.
WFIRST and its microlensing capabilities represent a huge step forward in the search for new exoplanets and other amazing objects in the central part of our galaxy, a region brimming with new discoveries yet to be made.
Bottom line: The upcoming WFIRST space telescope mission will use microlensing – which relies on massive objects in space bending spacetime – to search for exoplanets near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
A very unique planetary system was discovered with all six of its planets orbiting in almost perfect rhythm. The star, which is calledHD 158259, is slightly larger than our own sun and is around the same mass. It is located approximately 88 light-years away from us and is orbited by one super-Earth (which is about twice the mass of Earth) and five mini-Neptunes.
An international team of researchers studied this system for seven years and took measurements using the SOPHIE spectrograph as well as the TESS exoplanet-hunting space telescope. By using this information, they calculated the orbits of all six planets orbiting HD 158259.
(Not HD 158259 and its planets)
The fact that the planets are orbiting in an almost perfect rhythm makes it quite extraordinary. In fact, each planet orbits the star at a near 3:2 resonance with the next-closest one, meaning that every time a planet completes three orbits, the next one completes two orbits. Nathan Hara, who is from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and is the first author of the study (which can be read in full here), explained this further, “This is comparable to several musicians beating distinct rhythms, yet who beat at the same time at the beginning of each bar.”
Their orbits are incredibly quick as it takes all six planets 2.17, 3.4, 5.2, 7.9, 12, and 17.4 days to complete an orbit around the star (starting from the closest to the furthest away). Even though all six planets orbiting HD 158259 are situated close together, they may not have been formed that way. For comparison, the distance from the star to the outermost planet is 2.6 times shorter than the distance from Mercury to our sun.
Stephane Udry, who is also from UNIGE and another author of the study, explained how this would have happened, “Several compact systems with several planets in, or close to resonances are known, such as TRAPPIST-1 or Kepler-80. Such systems are believed to form far from the star before migrating towards it. In this scenario, the resonances play a crucial part.”
Hara went into further detail by stating, “The current departure of the period ratios from 3:2 contains a wealth of information.” “With these values on the one hand, and tidal effect models on the other hand, we could constrain the internal structure of the planets in a future study. In summary, the current state of the system gives us a window on its formation.”
A longtime staple of science fiction is the depiction of extraterrestrials having extremely large heads holding almost-as-large brains … think “To Serve Man,” the classic Twilight Zone episode. H.G. Wells may have been the first writer to describe aliens with big heads, and that image eventually became the ‘grey aliens’ many believe are actual extraterrestrials. Many experts paid to ponder what extraterrestrials would look like stick with the ‘big head’ idea. It turns out all of these depictions are rooted in truth … although not because these species evolved into big-brained, smart beings first. A new study of NASA astronauts found that the human brain expands during long-term space fights – a phenomena that space traveler’s skulls may have to evolve quickly to accommodate to avoid damaging their brains. Or will cranial binding return for parents who want their infants to grow up to be Mars explorers?
“When you’re in microgravity, fluid such as your venous blood no longer pools toward your lower extremities but redistributes headward. That movement of fluid toward your head may be one of the mechanisms causing changes we are observing in the eye and intracranial compartment.”
You should have planned a-head.
Detailed medical examinations of astronauts post-flight – especially Scott Kelly and his earthbound twin Mark — found problems with eyesight and cognition long after they returned, raising concerns and prompting more extensive research. In a new study published in the journal Radiology and summarized in Sci-News, Professor Larry Kramer from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston led a team which gave MRI scans to 11 astronauts (10 men and one woman) before they departed for extended stays on the International Space Station. The astronauts were then given MRIs the day after they returned from space and periodically throughout their first year back. What they found will definitely affect the future of human space travel.
“What we identified that no one has really identified before is that there is a significant increase of volume in the brain’s white matter from preflight to postflight. White matter expansion in fact is responsible for the largest increase in combined brain and cerebrospinal fluid volumes postflight.”
White matter – the fibers of the central nervous system that act as relays between brain regions – expanded astronauts’ brain and cerebrospinal fluid volumes, causing elevated intracranial pressure to what appear to be dangerous levels. How dangerous?
“We found that the pituitary gland loses height and is smaller postflight than it was preflight. In addition, the dome of the pituitary gland is predominantly convex in astronauts without prior exposure to microgravity but showed evidence of flattening or concavity postflight.”
Future astronaut?
The pituitary gland is considered to be the body’s master gland because it controls the thyroid and adrenals, the ovaries and testicles, and others, affecting the body’s hormone levels. The MRI scans found that this elevated cranial pressure lasted the entire year and can cause normal pressure hydrocephalus, whose symptoms include difficulty walking, bladder control problems and dementia.
Will future human space travelers need to develop larger skulls – either evolutionarily or artificially? As usual, more research is needed. However, it wouldn’t be the first time that H.G. Wells saw the future and depicted it accurately. Let’s hope Rod Serling and “To Serve Man” isn’t the same.
Un objet volant non identifiée filmé par un pilote de l'US Navy en janvier 2015.DR
Dans "Ovnis: une affaire d'Etats", Dominique Filhol aborde les objets volants non identifiés non comme un folklore mais comme un sujet aussi sérieux que les scientifiques, politiques et experts qui se succèdent dans ce documentaire. Parmi eux, l’ancien directeur des renseignements à la DGSE, Alain Juillet, qui a répondu à nos questions.
C’est une première : l’ancien directeur des renseignements à la DGSE, Alain Juillet, s’exprime sans tabous sur un sujet qui, pour beaucoup, sent encore le souffre: les objets volants non identifiés. Fort de son immense expérience dans le renseignement, il prône une approche pragmatique et un esprit ouvert pour élucider un mystère trop important pour être laissé aux rêveurs et aux sceptiques dogmatiques.
Alain Juillet est l’un des intervenants de haut niveau, politiques, scientifiques et militaires, qui apportent leur expertise au documentaire de Dominique Filhol, «Ovnis : une affaire d’Etats». «Il y a un terme qui revient de plus en plus souvent parmi les spécialistes du sujet c’est l'idée ‘d’intelligence non humaine’ ce terme est intéressant car il ne rejette pas l’hypothèse extraterrestre mais il englobe bien d’autres théories quant à la nature du phénomène» résume le réalisateur, marqué dès l’enfance par des témoignages spectaculaires de proches qui ont observé des phénomènes inexplicables.
Le tournage a encore renforcé ses convictions : «Le phénomène est devenu palpable. J'ai eu la chance de pouvoir filmer une réunion des membres de la commission SIGMA 2 qui étudie les Ovnis de manière rigoureuse et scientifique ou encore de rencontrer le Sénateur Harry Reid à l’origine du programme AATIP de recherche sur les OVNIs du département de la Défense américaine. Toutes ces interviews ont conforté mes intuitions.»
La succession des témoignages et des analyses dans «Ovnis : une affaire d’Etats» le rappelle : les ovnis existent, au moins comme sujet d’études mais leur nature reste insaisissable : «les hypothèses concernant la nature de ces "objets" ne se limitent pas à une origine extraterrestre.» Mondes parallèles, voyageurs temporels: rien ne peut être écarté d’un revers de manche. «Il y a aussi un courant de l’ufologie qui étudie les liens entre la conscience et le phénomène OVNI et c’est un point qu’on aborde dans le film» poursuit Dominique Filhol.
«Pour de plus en plus de chercheurs, dans les cas de rencontres rapprochées, le phénomène semble interagir avec la conscience des témoins. C’est d’ailleurs ce que certains pilotes de chasse de l’US NAVY ayant observé ces phénomènes ont relaté : ces objets semblaient anticiper les réactions des pilotes, comme s’ils étaient capables de lire dans leur esprit.»
Comme d’habitude, le sujet ovni nous emmène très loin. Un voyage moins périlleux si l’on est bien accompagné. C’est en tout cas la conviction d’Alain Juillet pour qui politiques et scientifiques doivent maintenant prendre le sujet à bras le corps.
Vous avez accepté de participer au documentaire de Dominique Filhol, «Ovnis: une affaire d’Etats». Est-ce la première fois que vous intervenez publiquement sur le sujet des ovnis ?
Alain Juillet: Oui. J’avais participé à une réunion de passionnés d’aéronautique où avait été évoqué le problème des objets non-identifiés. J’étais dans la salle et j’avais répondu à quelques questions. Mais je n’étais jamais intervenu sur ce sujet publiquement. C’est à la suite d’un entretien avec le réalisateur, Dominique Filhol, que nous avons abordé ce thème. Il m’a posé deux, trois questions et m’a dit : «ça, ça m’intéresse, je suis en train de préparer quelque chose.» C’est comme cela que ça s’est passé.
Aviez-vous un intérêt particulier pour les ovnis ?
Oui, même si je ne suis pas un passionné. En revanche, je suis, à l’origine, un homme du renseignement et lorsque l’on voit des choses inexplicables aujourd’hui, on sait qu’on pourra les expliquer demain. C’est simplement que nous n’avons pas les éléments pour imaginer ou comprendre ce qui se passe. Dans le domaine particulier des ovnis, sans parler des gens qui voient une soucoupe volante se poser dans un champ, il y des pilotes de chasse, des astronautes, des gens qui sont tout sauf des rigolos et rapportent des observations très précises. Il ne faut pas dire que ce sont des bêtises mais juste reconnaître qu’il y a des choses qui nous échappent. C’est dans cadre là que je me suis intéressé à ce problème car la première chose que l’on voit quand on étudie ce phénomène, c’est qu’à l’évidence ces engins ou ces apparitions ne fonctionnent pas selon les lois terrestres et en particulier qu’ils ne sont pas soumis à la gravitation. La question qui se pose est donc: un pays a-t-il mis au point un système qui permet d’échapper à la gravitation ? Il y a 20 ans, j’aurais répondu: «Pourquoi-pas?». Mais, aujourd’hui, si un pays dans le monde avait réalisé une telle découverte, on le saurait. Aucun progrès de cet ampleur ne peut rester secret. C’est impossible.
Si un pays disposait d’une telle technologie, elle aurait donc déjà été utilisée ouvertement…
D’une façon ou d’une autre, il y aurait eu des fuites, une indiscrétion des scientifiques qui travaillent dessus… Puisqu’il n’y a absolument rien eu, c’est que c’est autre chose et que ça échappe à la dimension terrestre.
Les services de renseignement disposent-ils des outils adéquats pour traiter des sujets aussi élusifs que celui des ovnis, dont on ne connaît pas la nature et dont l’existence même reste sujette à caution ?
Pour que le sujet les intéresse, il faut qu’ils aient reçu un ordre. Afin de de collecter des informations, il faut développer des moyens techniques et humains. Un service de renseignement ne peut travailler sur les ovnis que s’il y a un besoin qui est exprimé par ceux qui dirigent, c’est à dire par les plus hautes autorités de l’Etat. Si ces dernières considèrent qu’il ne s’agit pas d’un problème prioritaire, ce qui est en général le cas, rien ne se passe. On sait que les Américains ont lancé une étude très sérieuse avec un gros budget pour essayer de comprendre. Et il semble bien que d’autres grandes puissances, en particulier la Russie et la Chine, ont fait la même chose, sans doute pour les mêmes raisons : découvrir s’il n’y pas derrière le phénomène ovni quelque chose qui, techniquement parlant, peut être intéressant. Là, je débouche sur un autre aspect que j’évoque dans le film et qui a été expliqué par d’autres beaucoup plus forts que moi en la matière : nous passons d’une vision du monde modelée par la physique traditionnelle à une autre vision fondée sur la physique quantique. Et l’on comprend beaucoup mieux ces phénomènes à travers le prisme de la physique quantique qu’avec celui de la physique actuelle.
Dans le monde, quelques rares personnalités politiques de premier plan, comme l’ancien directeur de cabinet de Clinton et d’Obama, John Podesta, ont pris publiquement position en faveur d’une plus grande transparence des gouvernements sur les ovnis. Est-ce utile selon vous ?
Dans la compétition mondiale qui fait rage aujourd’hui, notamment entre la Chine et les Etats-Unis, il est évident qu’une arme nouvelle qui s’impose parce que personne ne sait l’arrêter donne un avantage concurrentiel au pays qui la possède. Les Russes, par exemple, ont mis au point un système de missiles sol-air, les S-400, qui font peur à toute le monde, car personne ne sait les arrêter, les Américains pas plus que les autres. Les avions de chasse préfèrent les contourner plutôt que de prendre le risque d’être abattus. Les Russes ont aussi sorti le missile hypersonique, Avangard, qu’aucune défense ne sait arrêter. Intéressante aussi cette torpille, mise au point par les Russes, dont un exemplaire aurait explosé dans le Koursk, en 2000, après être resté bloquée dans le tube lance-torpilles. Cette torpille se déplace à une vitesse incroyable, plusieurs centaines de kilomètres heure, beaucoup plus vite que tout ce que l’on a sur le marché. Pourquoi ? Parce que cette torpille se crée dans l’eau un environnement qui n’est plus de l’eau mais de l’air, ce qui réduit au maximum le frottement.
Je ne pense pas que le secret soit vraiment utile
Ce qui rejoint les recherches sur la MHD la Magnétohydrodynamique
Exactement… C’est un engin qui est redoutable car ses performances dépassent de loin celles de tous les autres. Je ne suis pas un rêveur mais quand on voit comme dans le documentaire un engin qui accélère, ralentit, passe dans l’eau, en ressort, tout cela filmé par des avions de chasse américains, on se pose des questions. Et on se dit : «N’est on pas en train d’y arriver nous aussi?». Pour en revenir à la physique quantique, elle postule que deux points séparés peuvent être les mêmes. Cela nous paraît inconcevable mais à partir de là, on peut aller très loin, jusqu’à l’existence possible de mondes parallèles. A titre de comparaison, une mouche avec ses yeux à facettes peut voir d’autres dimensions que les nôtres bien qu’elle vive dans notre monde. Peut-être existe-t-il donc des choses qui sont dans notre univers mais qu’on ne peut pas voir en temps normal car elles ne sont pas dans notre champ de vision. Mais peut-être que, de temps en temps, il se passe quelque chose, qu’un phénomène passe dans notre champ de perception avant d’en disparaître. Je ne parle pas là des «petits hommes verts». J’ai plutôt l’impression d’être dans la même démarche que certains savants et astronomes qui se disent simplement «quelque chose nous échappe».
D’un point de vue militaire, ce sont donc des recherches qui touchent à la Défense, aux intérêts nationaux… N’y a-t-il pas une contradiction entre réclamer publiquement des recherches sur le phénomène ovni et la nécessité de maintenir une forme de secret ?
Je ne pense pas que le secret soit vraiment utile, sauf si on découvre des choses inquiétantes. Mais on constate que le phénomène n’a pas manifesté, jusqu’à présent, d'intention agressive. Donc, il n’y pas de raison de s’inquiéter, on n’est pas dans un film d’horreur… En revanche, je ne crois pas qu’il soit nécessaire d’en parler trop car beaucoup de gens vont se mettre à fantasmer à tout va ! Si l’on dit «les ovnis sont peut-être une réalité» ou qu’on évoque les avancées de la physique quantique, on s’entendra répondre «oh le pauvre, il est devenu fou». Comme on sort du rapport classique que les gens entretiennent avec la science, ça risque de ne pas passer. Et il y a évidemment la possibilité que des gourous s’emparent de la question et racontent n’importe quoi. Il ne faut pas faire une promotion excessive de tout ça mais essayer de rester scientifique et de se dire : il y a quelque chose, c’est indiscutable. Un certain nombre de facteurs laissent penser que c’est à côté de nous sans provenir de nous et que, ça peut venir d’autres mondes, pourquoi pas après tout… Il ne sert à rien de rêver. J’en reviens à mon métier d’origine, il faut essayer de se demander : quelles conclusions puis-je tirer des éléments dont je dispose ? Or, je n’ai pas de conclusion, tout ce que j’ai, c’est un certain nombre d’indices qui me permettent de réfléchir sans pour autant avoir de certitudes.
Il faut penser en dehors de la boîte
On peut risquer une comparaison peut-être hasardeuse avec l’irruption du Covid-19 comme un élément radicalement nouveau dans la vie de milliards de gens. On constate que les sociétés s’adaptent et intègrent cet évènement avec calme malgré la menace. N’en serait-il pas de même avec la prise de conscience que le phénomène ovni ne provient pas de notre monde ?
Tout à fait. Je pense que les gens s’adaptent très bien. Si demain matin, on a la confirmation que les ovnis viennent d’un monde parallèle au nôtre, et bien tout le monde dira «bon, voilà, il existe un monde parallèle ». Le jour où on le dira, dans les cinq ans, tout le monde l’aura accepté comme un phénomène banal. Dans «Le crabe tambour», film que j’ai adoré, un curé breton interprète des trainées blanches dans le ciel comme des signes. Et il entraîne ses paroissiens à les suivre dans un sens, puis dans un autre. A la fin, épuisés, les fidèles rentrent chez eux et on découvre que ces signes étaient en réalité les trainées laissées par les premiers avions à réacteur qui faisaient Paris New York…
Que pensez vous du travail du Geipan qui au sein du CNES accomplit un gros travail de collecte d’informations sur les Phénomènes aériens non identifiés ?
Les gens dans le renseignement vous diront tous que le premier travail c’est la collecte d’informations. Dans un premier temps, il faut recueillir tout ce que l’on peut recueillir et ils font ça très, très bien. Ensuite, il faut sélectionner dans cette collecte ce qui apparaît véritablement sérieux, et ils le font aussi. Après cela, en ce qui concerne l’analyse elle-même de ces éléments sérieux, ce sont des spécialistes et des chercheurs de haut niveau qui doivent réfléchir là-dessus.
Le GEIPAN, malgré son travail, semble assez peu sollicité par la recherche publique ou privée…
Nous sommes le pays de Descartes, cartésien par essence, le pays des normes, des principes, des règles… Les Américains, eux, apprennent dans leurs écoles à penser «out of the box», en dehors de la boîte. Nous, nous apprenons encore à penser «dans la boîte». Je crois que ça se fera en France le jour où les gens n’auront plus peur d’être ridicules. Si l’on apprend que les Etats-Unis ou la Chine consacrent non seulement des études importantes à ce sujet, mais qu’en plus des scientifiques de haut niveau en ont tiré des réflexions dignes d’intérêt, alors nos chercheurs ne craindront plus d’être pris pour des farfelus.
Never underestimate the French. Just when you think your country is about to open its secret X-Files and reveal the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrials, France beats you to le punch. A former director of the country’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) opens up in a new UFO documentary and reveals his experiences and observations have convinced him that some of these unidentified crafts are from parallel worlds. Why in France? Is the cheese famous in ALL universes?
“In the particular field of UFOs, not to mention the people who see a flying saucer landing in a field, there are fighter pilots, astronauts, people who are anything but funny and report very precise observations. We must not say that they are nonsense but just recognize that there are things that escape us.”
Alain Juillet held high level positions in the French government (DGSE director, Senior Economic Intelligence Officer to the Prime Minister) in between a storied career as a business leader, educator and now a media consultant. He recently spoke to David Ramasseul of Paris Match about his participation in “UFOs: a matter of States” – a documentary by director Dominique Filhol, who talks to scientists, politicians and experts on the subject of UFOs.
Juillet begins the interview by revealing why he believes sophisticated UFOs like the ones spotted by US Navy pilots are not created by humans – humans would have leaked this kind of information that is too big for scientists, military personnel or officials to keep secret for long. That’s a common belief held by many about various conspiracy theories – it would have taken a large number of people to pull off a moon landing hoax, yet no one has leaked any explosive and conclusive data. Hard to believe, but not a surprise. Anything else, Mr. Juillet?
“We know that the Americans have launched a very serious study with a big budget to try to understand. And it seems that other great powers, in particular Russia and China, have done the same thing, undoubtedly for the same reasons: to discover if there is not behind the UFO phenomenon something which, technically speaking, can be interesting.”
By “interesting” Juillet means that something is worthy of governments spending money on … money that may exceed the secret budgets and thus be exposed to public scrutiny. He believes that the U.S. and China are “interested” because Russia has developed weapon systems which appear to be unstoppable by conventional defenses – the S-400 surface-to-air missile and the Avangard hypersonic missile are two examples. If traditional physics can’t develop a defense (or a better offense), it’s time to turn to the thing used to explain the performance of unexplainable flying objects like the Tic-Tac UFOs — quantum physics.
“To return to quantum physics, she postulates that two separate points can be the same. It seems inconceivable to us but from there, we can go very far, until the possible existence of parallel worlds. For comparison, a fly with its faceted eyes can see dimensions other than ours even though it lives in our world. Perhaps there are therefore things that are in our universe but that we cannot see in normal times because they are not in our field of vision. But perhaps, from time to time, something happens, that a phenomenon passes through our field of perception before disappearing. I’m not talking about “little green men” there. I rather have the impression that I am following the same approach as certain scientists and astronomers who simply say to themselves “something escapes us”.”
Something escapes “us” … but not GEIPAN, the investigative arm of the French Space Agency CNES whose purpose is to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP) and make its findings available to the public. It’s no surprise this former intelligence official is interested in intelligence and proud of his own government’s UAP intelligence collection agency. Unfortunately, he believes GEIPAN is being underutilized by his country, which has a hard time “thinking outside of the box.” When will that happen … if ever?
“I believe it will be done in France the day when people are no longer afraid of being ridiculous. If we learn that the United States or China are not only devoting important studies to this subject, but that in addition to high-level scientists have drawn worthwhile reflections, then our researchers will no longer fear ‘be taken for wacky’.”
So, if you want some full disclosure from an agency that has convinced a former intelligence official that UFOs come from parallel universes, stop it with the French jokes already!
I have to admit that I was inspired to write this article by one that good mate Rich Reynolds wrote a few days ago. The title of Rich’s article is “Inside a UFO: Alien Abduction stories.” Rich began: “In a response to a comment from DrDee for a posting further down in the cycle here, I mentioned that I read some remarks about ‘seeing’ or ‘getting’ inside a UFO to find a clue as to what they are or something more: what we’re dealing with, reality perhaps? The commentary I read came from a UFO group at Facebook, I think, which deals with things UFO-related, and referenced abductees – persons who think they’ve been kidnapped by ETs.” Rich adds: “In the Barney/Betty Hill event, Betty alleged to have seen the ‘star map’ and a book, along with some observations of medical gear or lab-like appurtenances, plus entities.” With that all said, I thought today I would share with you one of the strangest cases of seeing something out of place on a UFO. You would not believe what was seen. In this case, it was nothing less than a dog! Yes, you did read that right!
ET?
The case is as fascinating as it is weird. Let’s take a look at it. The man in question was Alan Godfrey, a Yorkshire, England policeman. UFO Casebook say of the incident: “Police Constable Alan Godfrey was on patrol on the night of 28 November 1980. Just before dawn he drove along Burnley Road on the edge of Todmorden looking for some cows that had been reported missing. They were only found after sun-up, mysteriously relocated in a rain-soaked field without hoofmarks to indicate their passage. Giving up his nocturnal hunt, Godfrey was about to go back to base to sign off duty when he saw a large mass a few hundred yards ahead. At first, he thought it was a bus coming towards him that took workers to their jobs in town and that he knew passed about 5:00 a.m. But as he approached, he realized that it was something very strange. It was a fuzzy oval that rotated at such speed and hovered so low over the otherwise deserted highway that it was causing the bushes by the side to shake.”
The Dark Histories Podcast reveal what happened next: “He pulled his car over and tried to contact the station on his police radio, after getting only static as a reply, he tried his personal radio, but once again, nothing but static filled the cars interior. This in itself was not altogether unusual, as driving through the valley, it was common to meet radio black spots and so PC Godfrey did the only thing he could think of doing as an officer of the law. He stepped out of the vehicle, pulled out his notepad and pencil and drew the object he saw as it floated noiselessly above the road surface, whipping up leaves around it in a silent vortex.” The story continues: “As he continued to sketch out the object in the road, a blinding flash of white light filled his vision and the next thing PC Alan Godfrey could remember, he was continuing to drive the Burnley Road, twenty feet past where he had stopped to see the object.”
It was a classic case of alien abduction (whatever an alien abduction really is: a genuine case of kidnapping from the stars, hallucination, vision – the list goes on). The story got even stranger, however, when Godfrey went under hypnosis to try and figure out what had happened during that period of missing time. While undergoing hypnotic regression, Godfrey said that aside from seeing a human-looking entity on-board the craft, he also encountered a large black dog. He said: “Well, I think it’s a dog. Horrible. Just looks like a dog. Like the size of an Alsatian [Note: Alsatian is U.K. for a German Shepherd dog].”
This was not the first encounter Godfrey had with an anomalous hound. Years earlier, he had seen a ghostly Labrador. There was also an odd occasion – in the 1960s, and near Todmorden – when what seemed to be a woman with a large black dog stepped out in front of Godfrey’s vehicle, causing him to slam the brakes on. Both the woman and the dog vanished. It just so happens that Todmorden has in its midst centuries-old legends of what are known as the “Gabriel Hounds.” They are akin to the UK’s wider, ancient, phenomenon of so-called “Phantom Black Dogs” of the kind that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to pen the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. I said it was a strange one!
We have a long history of strange things falling from the skies. On occasion some of the most bizarre things have been reported as falling from the heavens, ranging from space junk, to meteors, to UFOs, some of which is explained and others which remain anomalies. One of the latter is a case from a remote area of Canada, where one day an outlandish stone fell from the sky, seeming to hold some inscrutable message from an alien intelligence.
It was a beautiful afternoon in the Cowichan Valley, near the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It was a clear and sunny September afternoon in 1908, and 14-year-old Willie McKinnon was working in his father’s garden doing his daily chores. It was mundane work, but things were about to get very strange indeed. As Willie toiled away, he thought he could hear something in the distance that sounded almost like a rumbling train, even though there was no railroad nearby. As he looked around trying to figure out what the sound was, he was startled to realize that it seemed to be getting closer, inexorably approaching and after a few minutes becoming deafening as it reverberated through the air. That’s when something went whizzing by his head, just barely missing him, only to barrel on and lodge itself into the ground just 8 feet away from him to spray earth and rocks in all directions and create a shockwave that knocked him off his feet.
As soon as the boy checked himself to see that he was not injured he crept towards where the object had fallen, thinking it had to be a meteor that had luckily managed to miss taking his head off. Yet, as he got closer, he could see that this was no normal meteor. The smoking object in the crater was around 10 inches in diameter and seemed to be completely in one piece. Strangely, it seemed to be a perfect orb, with a smooth surface like marble, and even more bizarre still, the outer shell appeared to be etched with a series of cryptic glyphs that looked to Willie like Egyptian hieroglyphics. He circled the bizarre stone for a while and then decided to try and move it, only to find it was immensely hot. Indeed, he would report that it remained too hot to touch for over a half and hour, but as soon as it was cool enough he went about moving it back to the house.
Willie and his father then apparently went about trying to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphics, and, well, that it pretty much where the story here ends. The article in which this story appeared was in the Sept. 5, 1908 edition of the Cowichan Leader, in an article entitled, “A Message From Mars,” and it ends rather abruptly. There was no further information until a month later, when a follow up article claimed that the Dept. of Mines, Geological Survey, in Ottawa was looking for more information on the event, according to the article they were trying to get:
fuller particulars than those contained in the [Cowichan Leader] dispatch: the time of day, the nature of the sounds emitted by the falling body, their duration and the direction from which they seemed to come, the depth of the hole and the nature of the soil as well as the direction in which the earth was thrown by the impact.
It is unclear if they ever got this information or not, and making things more difficult was that Willie’s father was apparently not cooperative with those looking to investigate. He was apparently very keen to keep the stone hidden away, refused to lend it out or sell it, and was confrontational when people demanded to see it. The writer of the article laments:
The questionnaire included an offer of purchase if terms could be arranged. Whether, in fact, this meteor did make it to Ottawa and public preservation, I can’t say, alas, other than that it’s a matter of record that Willie’s father, Angus McKinnon, was known to be, at the very least, argumentative, and this suggests that negotiations would be challenging. As for the so-called hieroglyphics? Was it, in fact, a Rosetta Stone from Outer Space?
The case rather frustratingly sort of ends there, leaving us to wonder what happened to this amazing find. There is no other follow up article on the matter from the era, and it is unknown if the strange stone was ever sent off for more testing. Indeed, it is hard to verify for sure if any of this ever really happened at all, or whether it was just a piece of creative journalism on a slow news day. In the end, it is unknown where that mystery rock is, what happened to it, what its glyphs meant, or even if it ever existed at all, and it remains a strange historical oddity.
Interestingly, there was a similar case dredged up by the site Message to Eaglewhich is spookily similar. In this case the report appeared in the November 14, 1865 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and revolves around a Rocky Mountain trapped by the name of Mr. James Lumley. On one day in September of that year he was allegedly trapping out near the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri when he saw a bright light making its way across the sky, before spectacularly breaking apart on a rain of sparks, followed by a strong wind and an odor like Sulphur. He would investigate to find a swath of forest cut down by something, a trail of destruction, at the end of which lay a stone that seemed to be divided into compartments and held upon it various hieroglyphics. The story reads:
More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by a liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics were the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but a fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings. Strange as this story may appear, Mr. Lumley relates it with so much sincerity that we are forced to accept it as true.
So were these really “Rosetta Stones” from space? If so, who sent them and why? Were they ever translated, and if so what did they say? Unfortunately, considering the scant coverage of these cases it is difficult to say. If these stones ever did exist they have slipped through the cracks of history and been forgotten, maybe collecting dust somewhere or in the collection of a private collector. Maybe even lost forever. Whatever the case may be, they remain odd little curiosities, that will sadly probably never be solved.
“This particular NASA photo has a lot in it, but the crown jewel is its hieroglyphs on a large broken wall.
“The video shows writing on Mars. The writing itself is actually protruding from the wall, instead of carved deeply within it.
“There are a lot of similarities between this and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“I went through the photo and found dozens of ancient artefacts, but picked only the best and posted them below.
“The writing is finally the absolute proof that we needed to prove that these beings were intelligent enough to have a written language.”
Ufologists around the world firmly believe that some of the images taken by NASA 4WD Alien Droid on the red planet show what appear to be intelligent markings on some of the rocks on the red planet. They argue that these markings are the remains of a long lost alien civilization from Mars that inhabited the planet in the distant past, when Mars had an atmosphere nearly identical to that of Earth, and liquid water flowing in rivers, lakes and oceans.
Scot Warring states: “A written language from another planet, it’s the final straw that will reveal disclosure. This is what we need to find more of.”
NASA peeks inside first interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, revealing its alien composition
NASA peeks inside first interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, revealing its alien composition
By Lonnie Shekhtman
When the scientists peeked inside the halo of gas that formed around comet 2I/Borisov as it came closer to the Sun, they detected something peculiar: 2I/Borisov was releasing gas with a greater concentration of carbon monoxide (CO) than anyone had detected in any comet at a similar distance from the Sun.
When amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov discovered an interstellar comet zipping through our solar system on Aug. 30, 2019, astronomers promptly turned their telescopes towards it hoping to catch a glimpse of this rare and ephemeral event. After all, no one had ever set eyes on a confirmed comet from a foreign star system, and it was clear from its projected trajectory that the alien visitor, named 2I/Borisov, would soon disappear from the sky forever.
Before it dimmed from view, a team of international scientists led by Martin Cordiner and Stefanie Milam at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, probed it with the world’s most powerful radio telescope. The comet was near its closest approach to Earth at about 180 million miles, or nearly 300 million kilometers, away.
When the scientists peeked inside the halo of gas that formed around the comet as it came closer to the Sun and its ices began to vaporize, they detected something peculiar. 2I/Borisov was releasing gas with a greater concentration of carbon monoxide (CO) than anyone had detected in any comet at a similar distance from the Sun (within less than 186 million miles, or 300 million kilometers). 2I/Borisov’s CO concentration was estimated to be between nine and 26 times higher than that of the average solar system comet.
Until more interstellar comets are observed, this result raises more questions than it answers. If it was unaltered during its journey, could observations of 2I/Borisov be our first glimpses of the chemistry that shaped another planetary system? Or, could this comet’s composition hint that there’s a wider diversity of CO among solar system comets than scientists are aware of?
Milam, Cordiner, and their colleagues observed the comet using a radio telescope observatory in northern Chile. Known as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the telescope is made of 66 dishes that work together to observe the sky in great detail. Radio telescopes are ideal for looking at cold, low-energy gas in objects like comets.
On December 15 and 16, 2019, ALMA pointed at a location in the sky where 2I/Borisov was expected to be. This was based on an orbit trajectory that was precise to within 1/5,000th of a degree. The telescope collected a spectrum of energy emitted by the comet’s gases which helped materialize an amorphous image of it and information about its chemical makeup.
The researchers started by looking for the most easily detectable cometary gas, hydrogen cyanide. Detecting it was not too much of a surprise, considering that other scientists using optical telescopes had found the closely related cyanide gas in 2I/Borisov.
Carbon monoxide was a different story, however. Unlike hydrogen cyanide, emissions from CO are much weaker and harder to detect. The researchers almost didn’t bother looking for the gas it in their dataset.
But when the data came back from Chile, the team’s low expectations were shattered. The signal for CO — a lot of it, relative to the other gases — was irrefutable. “As soon as the spectrum came in, we knew it was a significant result,” Milam says.
The bottom axis of this graph shows the range of carbon monoxide concentrations (or amount of carbon monoxide relative to the amount of hydrogen cyanide) among solar system comets. The unusually high concentration detected in 2I/Borisov, the first interstellar comet, is highlighted in red. The comet shown on the far right is C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), presumably, a solar system comet with CO levels estimated to be dozens of times higher than Borisov’s. Credit: NASA Goddard/Martin Cordiner/James Tralie
Carbon monoxide is one of the most abundant molecules in space. Scientists expect to see it inside all comets, which are balls of frozen gases, rock and dust that form far away from the heat of the Sun. Yet, there’s a huge variation in the concentration of CO in comets and no one quite knows why. Some of this might be related to where in the solar system a comet was born; some has to do with how often a comet’s orbit brings it closer to the Sun and leads it to release more fragile ices.
So far, nothing explains why 2I/Borisov is “off the charts” of the carbon monoxide continuum, as Cordiner puts is. “It is dramatically different from other comets we’ve seen before,” says Cordiner, an astrochemist who led the Borisov observations.
The length of nine football fields, or 3,200 feet (975 meters), 2I/Borisov is a relatively small comet. Its path through the solar system made it clear to scientists that the comet came from outside our system and was not bound to it by the Sun’s gravity. 2I/Borisov was traveling too fast for that, at an extraordinary speed of about 74,000 miles (120,000 kilometers) per hour, in a hyperbolic trajectory that would bring it around the Sun and then fling it back out into the depths of space.
Carbon monoxide is the most volatile of all comet ices, or the quickest to vaporize in warmer temperatures. Thus, the comet likely formed very far away from its star in one of the coldest environments known, based on how much CO it had preserved. If it had formed around our Sun, 2I/Borisov would have been born in the vicinity of the Kuiper Belt. This is a donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, where temperatures during the formation of the solar system could have reached -420 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius) according to models. Scientists suspect that gravitational disturbances from young, jostling planets may have thrown 2I/Borisov out of its home star system.
“Then, after a cold, lonely voyage, 2I/Borisov made its close encounter with our solar system and started outgassing and showing us what it’s got inside,” Cordiner says.
He and his colleagues offer a few possible explanations for 2I/Borisov’s exotic CO levels, though none explains why this comet would’ve emerged this way while solar system comets didn’t. One idea is that 2I/Borisov could be a fragment of a dwarf planet that had a lot of carbon monoxide near its surface. “If that object collided with another, then the carbon monoxide-rich fragments could be released into space,” said Cordiner.
But 2I/Borisov may have simply formed as a comet with a high concentration of carbon monoxide. Or, perhaps it has a thick, thermally insulating outer layer that’s keeping gases like hydrogen cyanide and water frozen, while the more volatile carbon monoxide outgasses and appears more abundant relative to the other gases that make up comets.
2I/Borisov is not the first comet to stump scientists with its inexplicably high concentration of CO. Discovered in 2016, a comet known as C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), was even more striking, with CO levels estimated to be dozens of times higher than Borisov’s.
Scientists determined that R2/PanSTARRS came from the Oort Cloud, a spherical shell of comets and other objects enveloping the solar system. But today’s finding raises the possibility that this mysterious comet may have originated elsewhere. Could R2/PanSTARRS and other presumed solar system comets with unusual chemistries have come from other star systems?
“It’s a provocative idea,” Milam says. “The question that will help comet observers sort this out is whether every interstellar object is going to be unusually high in CO? Will they all have this unique chemistry, or is there going to be a distribution of CO like we see in our own solar system?”
The only other known interstellar object astronomers have ever observed was 'Oumuamua. When it was discovered in October 2017 — the first interstellar object ever identified — 'Oumuamua gripped scientists and the public. But this space rock was already on its way out of the solar system, so it didn’t reveal chemical details, nor settle questions about whether it was a comet, asteroid, or something else.
With increasingly advanced technologies and more large telescopes coming online in coming years, scientists expect to see more Borisovs and 'Oumuamuas. Though these aliens will remain a relatively rare sight, Cordiner warns.
“Our solar system is so tiny compared to the distances between star systems. For an interstellar comet to come in and hit the bullseye like Borisov did is incredible,” he says.
via REUTERSDe interstellaire komeet 2I/Borisov passeert op dit moment nog altijd langs ons eigen zonnestelsel.
WETENSCHAPKomeet 2I/Borisov is nog maar het tweede ruimteobject uit een ander sterrenstelsel ooit dat we in ons eigen zonnestelsel hebben zien passeren, na de fameuze sigaarvormige ‘Oumuamua’ in oktober 2017. De samenstelling van deze 2I/Borisov blijkt nu compleet anders te zijn dan die van andere kometen. Het voorwerp bevat ongewoon veel koolmonoxide, wat iets zou kunnen zeggen over de plaats waar het ontstaan is.
De interstellaire komeet 2I/Borisov werd vorig jaar op 30 augustus gespot door amateurastronoom uit de Krim, Gennady Borisov, die er zijn naam aan gaf. Het ruimteobject zal ons sterrenstelsel ook weer verlaten, maar op dit moment raast het er nog altijd door tegen een snelheid van 33 km per seconde. Al is het inmiddels in twee stukken uiteengespat. Maar daardoor kon de samenstelling ervan worden achterhaald met behulp van de Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Het vakblad Nature Astronomy heeft twee nieuwe onderzoeken over de bijzondere komeet gepubliceerd.
“Dit is de eerste keer dat we in een komeet van buiten ons zonnestelsel hebben gekeken en het is drastisch anders dan andere kometen die we tot nu toe zagen voorbijkomen”, verklaart Martin Cordiner. ALMA vond twee moleculen in het gas dat 2I/Borisov uitstootte: waterstofcyanide (HCN) en koolmonoxide (CO). Het was de hoeveelheid koolstofmonoxide (CO) die de onderzoekers verraste. Die bleek veel hoger te liggen - tussen 9 en 26 keer meer - dan bij kometen uit ons eigen zonnestelsel. De CO-concentratie is hoger dan ooit is gedetecteerd in een komeet op minder dan 300 miljoen kilometer van de zon. Wetenschapper Stefanie Milam concludeert daaruit dat “de komeet moet zijn gevormd uit materiaal dat heel rijk is aan CO-ijs”. Dat kan volgens haar enkel in de gebieden van het heelal waar de temperatuur onder de -250 graden Celsius.
Extreem koud gebied
De koolmonoxide kan inderdaad ook volgens Martin Cordiner een aanwijzing geven van waar 2I/Borisov werd gevormd. “Als de gassen die we hebben waargenomen de samenstelling van de geboorteplaats van 2I/Borisov weerspiegelen, dan toont het aan dat die op een andere manier is gevormd dan de kometen in ons eigen zonnestelsel, in een extreem koud buitengebied van een ver planetair systeem”, aldus Cordiner.
Photo NewsOumuamua was het eerste ruimteobject uit een ander sterrenstelsel dat het onze bezocht.
In de tweede studie beargumenteert Dennis Bodewits een ander standpunt, met name dat de komeet zou kunnen zijn ontstaan rond een rode dwergster, het type dat het vaakst voorkomt in het melkwegstelsel. “Deze sterren hebben de juiste lage temperaturen en helderheid zodat een komeet zich daar zou kunnen vormen met het type samenstelling dat in komeet Borisov is aangetroffen”, aldus Bodewits.
“2I/Borisov gaf ons de eerste kijk in de chemie die een ander planetair systeem vormde”, besluit Milam. “Maar alleen als we het object kunnen vergelijken met andere interstellaire kometen, kunnen we te weten komen of 2I/Borisov een speciaal geval is dan wel dat elk interstellair object een ongewoon hoog CO-gehalte heeft.”
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Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe? Presented by Linda Moulton Howe Filmed by Conscious Life Expo, LA
Most of us would have likely remembered a strange or weird incident in their lives, be it incredibly rare coincidences we occasionally experience or the moment we notice a ‘jump in the Matrix’. Could the world we know really be run by some kind of computer?
Neo is a cubicle worker sidelining as a computer hacker when he learns he’s nothing more than a data point in the Matrix, a malevolent cyber-force controlling all life on Earth. Soon Neo is recruited by a covert rebel organization to take back his life and all of humanity.
Fleet Of UFOs Over Michigan During Sunset, Should We Be Worried? Video, UFO Sighting News.
Fleet Of UFOs Over Michigan During Sunset, Should We Be Worried? Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 20, 2020 Location of sighting: Rives Junction, Michigan, USA Source: MUFON #108024 Here is a great video that was just sent into MUFON today. The eyewitness recorded several glowing lights in the sky during sunset. All the lights clearly have no wings, body or tail. No sound of jets is heard. The lights were seen moving across Rives Junction in Michigan and a tiny population of just 4,600 this city probably didn't have more than a handful of eyewitnesses. This is more proof that glowing white energy orbs are monitoring our planet and how the human race reacts to lock downs and coronavirus. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I heard a weird sound Like A Pulsating hum. Thought it was coming from power substation across the street. Concerned I went to look. I opened my front door and Heard it Above the house looked up and There it was. It had a Set of 4 lights in sets of 2. 2 in front 2 behind those. One on each rear area and One big red blinking light. Out line was clearly visable and shapes see lights lit up underside. Was was very unique shape if seen again could Identify. But I have never seen Anything like this. And it flickered 3 times and Disappeared.
Another UFO Seen On Same Night But Across England! April 20, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Another UFO Seen On Same Night But Across England! April 20, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:April 20, 2020
Location of sighting:City of Street, England
Source: MUFON #108008
As I said in the last post, this energy sphere has been seen worldwide, and this is the second post about this orb, but this time its in the city of Street, England. Street is a village that is 520km from Coatbridge to Street. And yet the two reports came in on the same day, seen on the same day, but obviously from two different locations, different quality of phones. This is some extraordinary detail of this UFO or energy sphere. Its certainly enjoying the fact that England is on lock down and UFOs have free passage across the sky. Amazing and exciting to see two different reports with photos. Undeniable proof...that aliens are watching over the England...but are they watching because they are scared of what is about to happen to the human race? Or are they watching to understand how well humans are working together to prevent the spread of coronavirus? I wish I knew.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Observed bright light in sky in a westerly direction from my house in Street. Appeared to be star like as it was so bright, I was able to zoom in on my iPhone 11 which shows a doughnut shape.
Glowing Sphere Seen Over Coatbridge, Recording Info On Lock Down, England, April 20, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing Sphere Seen Over Coatbridge, Recording Info On Lock Down, England, April 20, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 20, 2020 1:20 AM Location of sighting: Coatbridge, England Source: MUFON #108009 This particular shape of UFO is a glowing energy sphere. Its not a solid object or a spaceship with a metallic outer wall. Instead its pure energy. These have been seen around the world on a daily basis a lot over the last two months. People try to dismiss them as stars, but they often dart around high in the sky so we know its not a Venus or some other planet. It really makes sense...aliens taking notice of the humans race right now...sending these energy probes to watch, record and return with data to inform them of whats to come for humanity. You see, aliens are intelligent, deeply so, they use the data about the current situations to create thousands of possible resulting outcomes. The outcomes with the highest chance of happening...is the ones that aliens will assume will most likely happen with humanity. Think of their data gathering as...a road map to the future. Coronavirus...may be far from ending. It is even possible that the gov is downplaying the virus, which eventually they know will mutate and...cause our extinction over the next few years. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Pulsing ball of light moving at incredible speed over short distances, changing shape and size frequently. It stayed in same place for hours then slowly moved away into the distance.
Billy Meier UFO Contacts, The Predictions Are Accurate and Immensely Important
Billy Meier UFO Contacts, The Predictions Are Accurate and Immensely Important
COAST TO COAST AM - Michael Horn, spokesperson for famed UFO contactee Billy Meier, addressed how recent developments in Europe were specifically predicted by Meier as far back as 1958.
Horn declared that if the Meier claims of ET contact are real, it would be "the most important thing in human history."
Horn continued with a litany of testimonials he says he has received from professionals who have checked on the Meier films, prophecies, and other material, and declared them genuine.
He recounted his interaction with a former Air Force investigator who says he looked carefully into Meier’s personal history and claims and found them to be entirely true. He (and others, such as special effects experts) Horn says, believe that photos of UFOs taken in the 1960s by Meier would have been impossible to fake at that time.
Daytime UFO filmed over Albuquerque, New Mexico 19-Apr-2020
Daytime UFO filmed over Albuquerque, New Mexico 19-Apr-2020
This UFO video was just submitted to US through our Facebook page. It was filmed over Albuquerque, the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Witness recorded a really fast bright unidentified flying object that was making maneuvers in the sky.
On April 19, 2020, many in western Europe were stunned to spot a line of satellites crossing the night sky. They were the SpaceX Starlink satellites.
We woke up today to many email questions from EarthSky readers in Europe, who saw a line of lights last night (April 19, 2020), trailing each other across the sky. Some on Twitter compared them to a string of Christmas lights, although they were all one color, and they moved. Others weren’t so gentle in their descriptions, because, indeed, these were the SpaceX Starlink satellites, which some fear will ruin the night sky for astronomy. The satellites seen last night over Europe were part of a much-larger group of thousands of satellites that SpaceX has launched or will launch to low-Earth orbit, with the goal of providing global Internet access.
For example, Chris Jones wrote to EarthSky:
Hi, you’re probably inundated with the same question this evening but, I watched approximately 30 ‘star like’ objects traveling at speed from a general west to east direction at around 21:50 GMT. They all seemed to be in-line following each other … Now I realize we are having the Lyrid meteor showers at present but didn’t expect them to be in such a uniform trajectory …
Right! The meteors would not look like these artificial satellites did; instead, meteors are bright streaks across the sky that typically appear one by one, or just a few at a time. The Starlink satellites, on the other hand, can be seen in a group – sometimes referred to as a “constellation” of satellites – all moving across the sky together.
The video above, by the way, was posted last night by ViralVideoLab. There’s not much of a description at VVL’s YouTube page, but the video itself appears to be the same one posted by the Daily Mail last night. Both videos show the SpaceX satellites, as you would see them in the night sky. The Daily Mail video is below. If you go to YouTube, and search for “Starlink satellites,” you can find a number of videos that look just like this one, showing various sightings of Starlink satellites:
The first test launches of Starlink satellites were in February 2018. But the satellites blasted into the consciousness of amateur (and probably many professional) astronomers in May 2019, after a launch of 60 of the first true working satellites by SpaceX. Netherlands-based satellite tracker Marco Langbroek stunned space fans shortly afterwards with a video of dozens of the Starlink satellites soaring overhead. See Marco’s video here.
We skywatchers had, frankly, never seen anything quite like this.
At first, it seemed exciting. Then, many astronomers got mad.
Tweets via DailyMail. This is a screen grab, by the way, and the links aren’t live.
SpaceX plans to launch some 12,000 of these satellites in all. SpaceX – and astronomers around the world – have been surprised at their brightness in the night sky, and many worry that our night skies will become polluted with these SpaceX Starlink satellite trains, as they’re sometimes called. Many fear they will adversely affect studies of the universe around us that can be done from the ground.
Last I heard, SpaceX was trying to find a way to make future satellites less bright. But so far they haven’t accomplished it. The next SpaceX satellite launch will be this week, April 23.
The Starlink satellites are a brainchild of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. The company wants to create a constellation of thousands of low-orbit small satellites to provide global internet access.
Bottom line: Skywatchers in western Europe last night were stunned to see a line of bright satellites, perhaps 30 according to some estimates, trailing each other across the night sky on April 19, 2020. They were part of the SpaceX Starlink fleet.
Posted by Eddie Irizarry in ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS | SPACE
A huge asteroid – (52768) 1998 OR2 – will pass closest to Earth on April 29. Astronomers have already been observing it. Charts, tips, images, how to watch online here.
Radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2, acquired April 18, 2020. According to current estimates, this space rock is probably at least a mile wide (1.8 km) and maybe 2 1/2 times that long (4.1 km).
Image via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Have you heard the buzz about a big – very big – asteroid that’ll pass relatively close to Earth later this month? Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass at a safe distance, at some 4 million miles (6 million km), or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. It’s big – the biggest asteroid due to fly by Earth this year – and will come closest to Earth on April 29, 2020. Astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have been studying the asteroid since April 8, as it’s traveled through space at 19,461 miles per hour (31,320 km/h). The high-resolution radar image above – from Arecibo – is one of the first glimpses of this large asteroid.
Images like these should provide scientists a better estimate of the space rock’s size and shape.
Closest approach will be April 29 around 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:56 UTC; translate UTC to your time). Professional observatories have been pointing their telescopes at the huge space rock already. Amateur astronomers with smaller telescopes will also have an opportunity to see it as a slow-moving “star.” If that’s you, we give charts and tips for observers at the bottom of this post that should help.
No access to a telescope? No problem. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host a free, online public viewing of the asteroid on April 28, 2020.
The Virtual Telescope Project will present an online viewing of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on April 28, 2020. As the time approaches, check this page for more details.
Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project also acquired 166 images of the asteroid – collected back to back – and assembled them to make the animated gif below. The animation shows you the asteroid’s motion in front of the stars. It was made with images from the Elena robotic unit of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, Italy. The asteroid is in the center of the image, visible as a sharp dot of light.
Asteroid 1998 OR2 was at about 7.5 million miles from us (about 12 million km) when astronomers acquired the images to make this animation. At its closest on April 29, the asteroid will be 4 million miles (6 million km) from us, or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. The asteroid appears to move in front of the stars because it is so much closer to us than the stars.
Let’s make it absolutely clear that there’s no chance of a collision between this asteroid and Earth. It’s true the object is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. The Center for Near Earth Objects defines such an object as one that comes as close to Earth as:
… 0.05 AU or less [about 19.5 lunar distances] and an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less …
In other words, such objects are reasonably close and reasonably big. And do we need to say there are a bunch of objects like this? Wikipedia lists 22 of the largest here. Recent decades have revealed more and more asteroids orbiting the sun.
None of the 22 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids listed by Wikipedia is known to be on a collision course with Earth in the foreseeble future. In fact, none of the asteroids in the video above is known to be on a collision course. Likewise, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 isn’t on a collision course with Earth, not anytime soon. The orbit of this asteroid is well known for at least the next 200 years. Its closest approach to Earth in this century and the next will happen in 2079, when it’ll swoop to within about a million miles of Earth (still about four times farther away than the moon). That 2079 sweep past Earth will still be a big deal. Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the largest known of all large Near-Earth Objects that’ll pass less than five times the Earth-moon distance over the next two centuries!
Astronomers with reasonably sized telescopes are already capturing images of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. This March 6, 2020, image of the asteroid comes from a single 30-second exposure, remotely taken with Elena, a 17-inch (43 cm) robotic telescope. At the imaging time, (52768) 1998 OR2 was about 22 million miles (36 million km) from Earth. At its closest in late April, it’ll be about 4 million miles (6.4 million km) away.
Orbit of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. It requires 3 years and 8 months to orbit the sun once. It gets nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter (about 5 times Earth’s distance from the sun).
Image via NASA/ JPL.
How to see asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 with a small telescope
During its April 2020 pass, this asteroid will at no time be bright enough to view with the unaided eye. However, it’s estimated to reach a visual magnitude of around 10 to 11, which means observers with at least 6-inch or 8-inch (15 to 20 cm) telescopes (the number indicates the size of the primary mirror) will see the asteroid (very slowly) moving in front of the stars!
Sky enthusiasts can initially use a wide-angle (32mm or 35mm) eyepiece to point the telescope to a reference star in the asteroid’s path (charts below). After being assured that the instrument is pointing at the correct patch of the sky, a 26mm or 27mm eyepiece is recommended to detect the asteroid’s slow motion. You will want to note the star field, and watch for the object that moves over a period of about 10 to 15 minutes. Yes, that’ll be the space rock.
This illustration shows the location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on the night of April 24, 2020, around 11:45 p.m. Central Daylight Time (04:45 Universal Time, April 25). As seen from central U.S., facing west-southwest.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 24, 2020, at 11:45 p.m. CDT (04:45 UT April 25) observers using small computerized telescopes can point their instruments at these reference stars to observe asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. Compare the views 10 or 15 minutes later to detect an apparent star that has changed position.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
There will be closer approaches of asteroids in the future, including Apophis, which – although smaller – will pass very close to Earth in 2029. Another, larger space rock – 2 miles (3 km) wide – designated as asteroid (415029) 2011 UL21 will pass slightly farther than (52768) 1998 OR2 in June 2024.
But the upcoming flyby in April 2020 of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the most significant close approach of an asteroid until 2027, when another huge asteroid known as (4953) 1990 MU will safely pass by Earth at 12 lunar distances.
Astronomers first discovered asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on July 24, 1998, from Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii.
Have a Go-To Telescope? Point your instrument at star HIP 48674 on April 25, 2020, at 10 p.m. CDT (03:00 UTC April 26) to find the huge asteroid, which will appear as a slow-moving star. To see its movement, compare the views over about 10 to 15 minutes.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on the night of April 27, 2020. The space rock passes close to star HIP 50745 around 9:15 p.m. CDT April 27 (02:15 UTC April 28).
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 around the nights of closest approach (April 28-29, 2020). Facing south, as seen from the central U.S.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 29, 2020, around its closest approach to Earth, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass close to galaxy NGC 3463 and star HIP 53416. Around 9:30 p.m. CDT April 29 (02:30 UTC April 30), point your small computerized telescope to these reference objects. Compare the views 10 to 15 minutes later to detect the apparent “star” that changed position. That’s the asteroid.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On April 30, 2020, at 9:30 p.m. CDT (02:30 UTC May 1) asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is located close to stars HIP 54875 and 55201. Use a GoTo telescope to locate these reference stars to locate the slow moving asteroid.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Bottom line: The huge asteroid known as (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass closest to Earth on April 29, 2020. Observers peering through telescopes will see it as a slow-moving “star.” Charts, tips, how to watch online – plus some recent images – here.
The Department of Defense has top-secret classified briefings and a classified video about a UFOincident.
The U.S. Navy acknowledged the existence of the information, which concerns a 2004 encounter between the USS Nimitz and strange unknown aerial objects, in response to a public records request from Vice.
Last year, the Navy for the first time acknowledged that three UFO videos -- one from the 2004 USS Nimitz incident and two from 2015 -- were real videos of unidentified flying objects.
Top-secret UFO files could damage U.S. national security, the Navy says.
(PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock)
Responding to Vice's Freedom of Information Act request, the Navy said it had "discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526 and the Originial Classification Authority has determined that release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States."
“We have also determined that ONI possesses a video classified SECRET that ONI is not the Original Classification Authority for,” the letter continued.
Vice reports that a Pentagon spokesperson said the Navy has the video of the mysterious incident in its possesion but has no plans to release it.
“However, I can tell you that the date of the 2004 USS Nimitz video is Nov. 14, 2004," the spokesperson told Vice. "I can also tell you that the length of the video that’s been circulating since 2007 is the same as the length of the source video. We do not expect to release this video.”
NASA thinks alien life might be hiding underground in ancient caves on Mars
NASA thinks alien life might be hiding underground in ancient caves on Mars
By Charlotte Edwards, Digital Technology and Science Reporter | The Sun
The annotated area in this illustration shows where water ice is located near the surface of Mars.
(Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Scientists think if there is life on Mars it's likely to be hidden in deep underground caves.
This theory is supported by NASA experts and the U.S. space agency will be sending a new rover to the red planet this summer.
According to Space.com, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory research scientist Vlada Stamenković explained the Martian underground life theory at a recent space event.
Potential caves have been mapped on the surface of Mars
Credit: USGS
Nasa could use a rover to try and detect signs of life underneath the surface
Credit: JPL/CORBY WASTE
Nasa intends to send a new and improved rover to Mars later this year
Credit: EPA
Speaking at the Mars Extant Life conference, Stamenković reportedly said: "The surface of Mars is a very oxidizing, radiation-heavy environment where liquid water is not really stable for an extended amount of time.
"It’s the worst place to look for life-sites on Mars.
"Groundwater might be the only habitat for extant life on Mars, if it still exists today."
The surface of Mars is cold, dry and there is lots of radiation.
Underground could be more habitable for life forms and may have some form of stable water supply.
Some scientists think that agile robots should be made that could try and explore the cave systems on Mars.
More than 1,000 potential cave entrances have been mapped on Mars by the US Geological Survey's (USGS) Astrogeology Science Center.
Building nimble robots to enter all these potential caves would be costly and intricate.
However, Stamenković has proposed that Nasa could use a rover that could sense underground groundwater or chemicals associated with life from the surface.
This would make it easier to target specific areas that life is most likely to be found.
NASA intends to send its WED rover to Mars later this year.
The plan is for the 2,260-pound space probe to gather new events of life that's alive or extinct and send Martian samples back to Earth.
NASA also has plans to send humans to Mars in the mid-2030s.
Mars facts
Here's what you need to know about the red planet...
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun
It is named after the Roman god of war
The landmass of Mars is very similar to Earth but due to the difference in gravity you could jump three times higher there than you can here
Mars is mountainous and hosts the tallest mountain known in the Solar System called Olympus Mons, which is three times higher than Everest
Mars is considered to be the second most habitable planet after Earth
It takes the planet 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun
So far, there has been 39 missions to Mars but only 16 of these have been successful
Researchers with the world’s gravitational wave detectors said today they had picked up vibrations from a cosmic collision that harmonized with the opening notes of an Elvis Presley hit. The source was the most exotic merger of two black holes detected yet—a pair in which one weighed more than three times as much as the other. Because of the stark mass imbalance, the collision generated gravitational waves at multiple frequencies, in a harmony Elvis fans would recognize. The chord also confirms a prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity.
Such mismatched mass events could help theorists figure out how pairs of black holes form in the first place. “Anything that seems to be at the edge of our predictions is most interesting,” says Chris Belczynski, a gravitational theorist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the observation. But the one event is “not quite in the regime where you can tell the different formation [routes] apart.”
Physicists first detected gravitational waves in 2015, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of detectors in Washington and Louisiana, spotted two black holes spiraling into each other, generating infinitesimal ripples in spacetime. Two years later, the Virgo detector near Pisa, Italy, joined the hunt, and by August 2017, the detectors had bagged a total of 10 black hole mergers.
All involved pairs of black holes with roughly equal masses, says Maya Fishbach, a physicist and LIGO member at the University of Chicago. But on 12 April 2019, the three detectors detected a black hole merger 2.4 billion light-years away in which one weighed 30 solar masses and the other just eight, says Fishbach, who reported on the event at the American Physical Society’s online April meeting. “This is the first event in which we can confidently say the mass-ratio is not one,” she says.
Ordinarily, two spiraling black holes pump out gravitational waves concentrated at a single frequency: double the rate at which they orbit each other. That doubling arises because of the matched masses of the black holes. Every half orbit they return to a position that’s effectively identical to their original one. But if the black holes have distinctly different masses, then general relativity predicts that they should also generate weaker waves at higher frequencies, or overtones.
The next strongest note sung by the pair should vibrate at three times the orbital frequency, or 1.5 times the main gravitational wave frequency. If the main frequency were a C on a piano, the overtone would be the next higher G—a perfect fifth, and the interval of the first two notes in the melody of Presley’s hit “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” That is what the LIGO and Virgo researchers detected, says Maximiliano Isi, a physicist and LIGO member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also spoke at the meeting. The overtone rang roughly as loudly as predicted by general relativity, Isi says. “Einstein prevails again.”
Such oddball events might help researchers figure out how the black holes pair in the first place. That’s a puzzle because it’s not obvious how such big black holes can form so close together. Theorists have two general ideas. The pairs could originate from a pair of orbiting massive stars, which each collapse into black holes at the ends of their lives. Alternatively, in so-called dynamical models, the black holes might form completely separately and find each other across space and time, a scenario more likely in globular clusters, the dense clumps of stars found in the outer reaches of galaxies.
Either scenario can probably account for the mismatched black holes in this event, Belczynski says. “If it [the mass ratio] had been 10-to-one I would have bet on the dynamical models,” he says, as binary star systems generally don’t form with such skewed ratios. Fishbach agrees that the single event isn’t enough to rule out one scenario or the other. But she says that if LIGO and Virgo spot more mismatched events, the statistical distributions could suggest which scenario is more likely.
However, the event could have a more complex origin, says Emanuele Berti, a gravitational wave astronomer at Johns Hopkins University. The fact that the one black hole is so much heavier than the other and appears to be spinning fast suggest that it, too, was the product of a merger. “It looks quiet like the product of a multiple-generation merger,” he says.
More peculiar collisions might be waiting among the dozens of recorded events that researchers have yet to analyze. LIGO and Virgo’s observing run three, which went from 1 April 2019 to 26 March, picked up 56 new gravitational wave events, more than five times the previous total. LIGO and Virgo researchers had hoped to finish a global analysis of roughly half that data set by now, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed them, says Patrick Brady, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and spokesperson for the LIGO scientific collaboration. Belczynski says he’s anxious to see those results. “I’m just sitting here with my students, my entire group, waiting for this paper.”
It is amazing just how many strange discoveries have been stumbled upon by complete accident. Some of the most baffling mysteries have been found by pure chance, hidden away in the shadows before suddenly being thrust into the light to baffle and perplex. On an isolated hill in Scotland just such a discovery was made, when there were found a collection of mysterious, anomalous coffins that have never been explained.
In June of 1836 a group of young boys set out to go hunting for rabbits of the slopes of a place called Arthur’s Seat, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The location itself is an ancient volcanic hill already steeped in history and legend, giving it a mystical air, and it is here where the boys stumbled across a small cave on the north-east slope. The cave was not easy to see, more a gap in the rocks than anything else, concealed there behind some stone slabs for who knows how long, and boys being boys of course they just had to investigate. The curious boys peeked inside the dank murkiness of this long forgotten cave and there lined up within the gloom were 17 tiny coffins, each one of them only 3 or 4 inches long and containing within a meticulously carved wooden doll with wide, gaping eyes and dressed in clothing that had been expertly fashioned of cotton. The coffins were arranged in two tiers of eight coffins each, and a third one with only one coffin on it, with the dolls less decayed and rotted away the higher the tier was, that solitary coffin and doll at the top looking to be the newest. The Scotsman newspaper would describe the finding:
Each coffin contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently laid out with a mimic representation of all the funereal trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead. The coffins are about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lid and sides of each are profusely studded with ornaments, formed with small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great care and regularity.
Arthur’s Seat
Of course, boys being boys, they had no idea of the value of their discovery, and according to the article in The Scotsman newspaper they destroyed half of them on the way home by “pelting them at each other as unmeaning and contemptible trifles.” People who saw the coffins and dolls at the time immediately thought that they were the result of witchcraft and black magic, and indeed The Scotsman would fan the fires of such speculation, writing:
Our own opinion would be – had we not some years ago abjured witchcraft and demonology – that there are still some of the weird sisters hovering about Mushat’s Cairn [sic] or the Windy Gowl, who retain their ancient power to work the spells of death by entombing the likenesses of those they wish to destroy.
Another theory at the time was that the dolls might have represented dead sailors who had died at sea, effigies created to give them a proper burial, while others still thought that the boys were just playing a prank. Whatever the case may be, after the initial news coverage the coffins were just sort of forgotten and quietly found their way to a private collector, fading into the mists of time for decades before a set of eight was eventually donated to the National Museum of Scotland in 1901. It was only then that they were really noticed and discussed for the first time, and they baffled pretty much everyone who saw them. Questions abounded. Who had put them there in that remote cave and why? Why craft these tiny little coffins and their dolls? What was their significance? No one knew, indeed, we still don’t, but there have been ideas.
The main idea at first was that these had been effigies of people crafted in order to give them “honorific burials,” but other speculation would come up over the years. One idea was that the coffins were lucky charms made be a local craftsman in order to be sold to passing sailors for a safe voyage. However, there is no evidence to point to any one of these theories in particular, and so the dolls and their little ornate coffins remained a mystery, and they were seen as mostly mere anomalous curiosities.
The mysterious coffins
It would not be until 1990 that anyone would really launch any sort of in-depth study of the coffins and their occupants, when a Professor Samuel Menefee, of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, and Dr Allen Simpson, of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, began taking a closer look at them. They made many observations about the enigmatic objects, such as that they had likely all been made by the same person, that the way they were made seemed to suggest they were created by a shoemaker, and that they seemed to have been built in the style of toys rather than funerary effigies. It was also noted that some of them had had their arms removed, and maybe even hats that had once sat upon their heads taken off, possibly to fit them into the coffins and suggesting that the dolls were not necessarily specifically made for their final resting places. The style and fabric of their clothing also suggested that they had been buried in the 1830s, probably not very long before they were found, although the paper that lines some of the coffins was dated back to the 1780s.
The theory that the researchers came up with is that the figures and their coffins represent the victims of two Irish immigrant serial killers William Burke and William Hare, who were infamous for a brutal murder spree in the 1820s that left 17 people dead. They targeted mostly transients, and killed in order to feed the trade in cadavers for Edinburgh’s medical school. It is the opinion of Simpson and Menefee that these wooden figures were made in order to give a proper burial to the 17 dead in the wake of what are typically referred to as the West Port murders. The researchers would write of this:
The problem with the various theories is their concentration on motivation, rather than on the event or events that caused the interments. The former will always be open to argument, but if the burials were event-driven—by, say the loss of a ship with seventeen fatalities during the period in question—the speculation would at least be built on demonstrable fact. Stated another way, what we seek is an Edinburgh-related event or events, involving seventeen deaths, which occurred close to 1830 and certainly before 1836. One obvious answer springs to mind—the West Port Murders by William Burke and William Hare in 1827 and 1828.
Considering beliefs such as the alleged mimic burial given to Scottish sailors lost at sea, it would not be unreasonable for some person or person, in the absence of the seventeen dissected bodies, to wish to propitiate these dead, the majority of whom were murdered in atrocious circumstances, by a form of burial to set their spirits at rest. While it is always possible that other disasters could have resulted in an identical casualty list, the West Port murders would appear to be a logical motivating force.
The problem with this idea is that all of the figures in the miniature coffins are male, where almost all of the victims of the West Port murders were female, yet it is an interesting line of speculation. What is the deal with these mysterious coffins and their dolls? In the end there has been no concrete, definitive answer, and these coffins and their creepy, eerie dolls remain on display in museums, fascinating people as much as they always have, and probably always will.
The name Yaphet Kotto is not one that many may be familiar with, but if you are a fan of movies from the 1970s and 80s you will most certainly know his face. Most fout that his father was in fact the Crown Prince of Cameroon, before studying acting at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio and then landing stage roles and after that his first film role in uncredited bit roles to work his way up from there to eventually become a show business legend. Yet while Kotto’s life is colorful and intriguing, what really makes it even more interesting are his many alleged experiences with UFOs and supposedly very real aliens.amous for his supporting role in the sci-fi horror Alien he has appeared in a wide range of movies and television shows, including playing the devious villain Kanaga in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man, Robert DeNiro’s Midnight run, and many others. Kotto already has an interesting enough life as it is, growing up as a black Jew on the streets of New York and in later life finding
Kotto’s personal accounts were not really known by any one except his immediate family, rabbi, and psychologist for years, and it was not until journalist Noel Ransome, with Vice, tracked him down for an interview that it would all come out into the open. Ransome had been merely interested in talking to the actor about his experiences making the 1979 film Alien, and although the actor typically did not give interviews he agreed, and Kotto’s talent agent Ryan Goldhar made the cryptic statement that he might like to ask him about UFOs as well. Ransome did, and Kotto would prove to be very candid talking about it all, expressing his desire to finally talk about it after all of those years, and weaving some bizarre tales indeed. According to Kotto, he has had encounters with UFOs and aliens most of his life, starting from when he was just a kid. He says:
It started when I was about nine or ten years old. I’m being grounded in the house for coming home late from school. I remember being told I couldn’t go outside, so I would look out at the streets of my neighborhood in the Bronx, watching the kids play stickball. I get tired of watching and turn to leave and standing right at the edge of the doorway to my room was a figure of what we now call The Grays. When I turned around, a figure was behind me, it was at least five or six feet tall with an elongated head. It appeared, then jumped to the back of me and disappeared.He leaped out of the way like he didn’t want me to catch him. I looked down the hall and there was nobody there. I asked my grandmother if there was anybody in the house and she said, ‘No, just you and me.’ But I never forgot that. And as I got to be a teenager and an adult, I realized that, holy s***, that was an alien.
Yaphet Kotto
He was not sure how to classify these experiences at first, but they seemed to follow him wherever he went. When he was younger it was all very confusing for him, because he wasn’t sure how to process it all or who to turn to talk about it. On some occasions he saw UFOs, on others the aliens themselves, and he also believes that he may have been even abducted. He has explained of this and the effect it all had on him:
At one point, I remember being at my home at 6 PM. I went into my office in the garage to meditate, and I saw something. I Looked at it for about five minutes, and it was light. I was wondering why the neighbors were shining a light through the top of my garage window. So I went to talk to them. Now keep in mind, I had been sitting in that car garage for some 12 hours and I believed that I contributed to those things that were flying above my garage… I shouldn’t call them things, they were aircrafts. As I got older, I understood what they were. I went through my youth, however, not knowing what I was experiencing, therefore, I didn’t talk about it. I would just experience something and file it away until something larger happened. This is the thing other UFO witnesses don’t talk about. Every time I moved into a house, above it at some point, there would be a circle of what looked like smoke. I’d wonder where it came from because it sure as hell didn’t look like clouds. Those sightings continued for a good ten to 15 years. I’ve also had time loss. I have a big loss of time between some of these moments, and I’d often wonder if I was taken.
It didn’t mean anything to me back then, but looking back I thought, wait a minute brother, these guys are real. I didn’t accept it fully until I was 35-40 years old. A lot of the time I never talk about it. I was having extraterrestrial experiences from the time I was 10 years old. Weird experiences. First they took me to a psychiatrist, priest, rabbi, and no one could dispute it. Why would I be making things up at 10? I saw the damn things.
Some of his most disturbing experiences he claims happened when he was in the Philippines for work. While there he says that he had several strange incidents with UFOs, of which he says:
It was one evening in my office in the Philippines. I heard my wife and the waiters calling me to come outside in very anxious voices. So I went out and when I got there, I saw the same huge circle of smoke over the house. When I asked them what they saw, they said they saw a UFO as big as the Yankee Stadium turned upside down. They were freaking out. Two or three nights later, I saw it. The thing blotted out the entire sky. The moon and everything, it was huge. I just remember saying, “Jesus Christ.” I mean I got so nervous man because you don’t see something like that without being vulnerable to becoming psychologically blown away. You get scared to put it quite frankly. That messed me up for a good three or four days.
I mean we’ve had them follow us around. Showing up in places where I am. At one point, I was getting ready to run with my assistant in the morning around Manila in the Philippines. Got up, went outside and we hadn’t gone very far when one of those aircrafts showed up. My assistant freaked out and said, “look at that!” and I said yeah and kept it moving. It followed us around and she ended up telling all her friends. The next morning, when we got ready to go out, I mentally sat down and began to disbelieve it and thought, if two show up, I’ll believe. So we went out and sure enough, two of them showed up and the next day, it was three that showed up as if by request.
Kotto says he even had odd experiences while filming the movie that he is perhaps most famous for amongst mainstream audiences, Ridley Scott’s Alien. Filming occurred during the heyday of his UFO experiences, and at that point he was already very deep into UFOlogy and had had many encounters. As he made his way around the set he says he made some curious observations, of which he explains:
Now, I’ll admit, there were things that I alone found on the set of Alien—the spaceship. That mechanism that Sigourney Weaver throws to put the Sulaco (fictional spacecraft) on automatic destruct. There were symbols there. Symbols that had nothing to do with the ship in the film and I kept finding these symbols. They were like Egyptian symbols and I started trying to decipher them, which I was able to do.
What in the world? This one is a headscratcher, to be sure. It is difficult to know what he means by this, he doesn’t elaborate any further in the interview, and it is at this point that some people might start to think he might be delusional, but Kotto claims that he is completely serious and has no family history of mental illness. He is also very clear about having nothing to gain from coming forward with these experiences. When Ransome suggests that some of his stories and some readers might think he is making it all up, Kotto goes on the defensive, saying:
There’s no reason for me to make these claims. I never promoted any book or anything like that. I never read anyone talking about the experiences I’ve had. I’ve made 75 movies and I’ve done television shows. I’m known all over the world. This confession wouldn’t advance me, I advance myself through my acting. Other people may do this to try to advance themselves, make it public, and then become famous. I’m already famous so what possible purpose would I have to tell these stories except how it relates to the movie Alien? This is the reason why I never talked about it after that movie because of course, they’d say, “oooh, he’s trying to promote his movie.” Well, I’m not promoting anything now. I’ve written no books and I have no movie that’s about to be released. This is the time to reveal this because no one can connect it to anything that’s a financial gain or form of media exposure. Now, if someone asks me if I ever experienced anything that’s remotely close to an alien, I’ll say “damn right I did.” It’s happened since I was nine years old and has continued since then. So I really don’t care whether anyone thinks I’m delusional. My delusion is over. I’ve taken a position on that.
Kotto does not seem to really understand why he should be chosen to be so closely followed by these entities, or why they have done so for decades. However, he does think he knows the reason that they are here to begin with, and believes that they have a larger purpose to play in the future of humankind. In the end, his closing thoughts on the matter are explained thusly:
We’re not alone, we’re not alone in the universe. If you totally westernize the idea look at it from a supremacy viewpoint, then you’ll say, everyone’s imagining them when it comes to these things. We can say that, but much of the world would reject that premise. We’re not alone. They aren’t going to go away and I honestly believe these species are close to making themselves known in this century, to this generation,” he explained. “I believe their purpose is to make sure we don’t kill ourselves. We’re losing our rivers, lakes, mountains and our caps are melting. We need to take a serious look at what we’re doing and they’re going to help us do that.
So what are we dealing with here? Is this notable actor telling the truth, or is this all delusions and tall tales? It is hard to see why the notoriously reclusive Kotto would suddenly come out of hiding to lay this all out for everyone to see, and it is hard to argue that he would have no promotional or monetary motivations to do so. Is he just delusional or is he maybe telling the truth about these odd encounters? The fact that he is well known makes his stories more widely played, but in the end what are we to make of them? Whatever the case may be, the irony cannot be possibly lost that the actor of “Alien” has had some rather weird alien encounters of his own, and it remains a compelling oddity.
The most spectacular UFO accounts seems to revolve around those in which some sort of physical evidence has been left behind, and the more sinister of these is when this evidence takes the form of physical injury upon a person that seems indicative of some sort of aggressive action. Are UFOs benevolent or not? It is not a question that has really been adequately answered, but it at least some accounts it seems to decidedly be the latter. There are in fact quite a few cases of UFOs allegedly attacking human beings, and one of the most harrowing of these is one that supposedly occurred in Brazil in the 1970s. It is a spooky glimpse into the possible darker agenda of this phenomenon, and remains one of the few cases of a human being said to have died directly due to a UFO encounter.
Luis just a few days before his death
Credit: Philip Mantle
Luis Barroso Fernandez was a simple farmer living on a rural property near the town of Quixada, in the state of Ceará, in Brazil. He led a humble, simple life, but things would get very bizarre on April 3, 1976, when Fernandez was out doing a routine check of his cattle. It was just after 2 AM, his usual time for doing this weekly chore, but this time would be far from usual. As he made his way along the property in a horse drawn wagon, he allegedly saw a metal craft that looked sort of like a disc descend to hover over the ground not far away, emanating a sound like “like a swarm of bees.” The baffled farmer had never seen anything like this, and was both terrified and filled with curiosity at the same time, and his horse was getting very upset about it all. He would later tell his son that as he stared at the strange sight, the craft had suddenly fired a blindingly bright beam of light at him, and two beings holding what looked like flashlights came out to aim their devices at him, after which they reentered the craft and it simply sped off into the sky. Fernandez would say:
We received a light and were totally stopped, unable to move, the animal and I, of course. It opened up a kind of door and appeared two short stature beings. They were normal people, albeit with weird clothes and a kind of flashlight in hand. Pointed one beam of light at us and I lost consciousness.
However, for the farmer it would turn out to be far from the end of this incident. Fernandez would describe how he had lost consciousness, only to wake with a splitting headache and had difficulty breathing and moving his limbs. Even more alarming was that one side of his body seemed to be deeply burned, as if a severe sunburn, even though it had been in the hours of darkness. He managed to make his way home, but was in such pain that his family arranged for him to be examined by a doctor in town. The doctor did not really buy the farmer’s story of the UFO, but was also unable to explain the anomalous injuries to his body, and ended up just sending him home with some medication to rest in bed. It was still not over, though, and things would only get weirder from there.
The claims are being made in new book UFO Contacts in Brazil
Credit: Philip Mantle
Over the next few weeks, Fernandez was described by his family as slowly losing his mental facilities. He began to mentally devolve in a sense, becoming more and more childlike as the days and weeks went on, seeming to revert to a child state. Making it even more anomalous was that his skin also seemed to be getting younger, healing from the burns and taking on a youthful glow far younger than his years, leading his son, Francisco Leonardo Barroso, to comment that “it was as though it had grown over again.” During this time, he was examined by many medical and psychiatric specialists who could not figure out what was wrong with him. In the meantime, despite his more youthful appearance, his health rapidly deteriorated, as did his mental state. Indeed, whatever was ailing him eventually killed him, with Fernandez passing away from his condition in 1993. According to those around him, by the time he died he had so completely lost his mind that he was purportedly only able to say “Mom”, “give” and “fear.” UFO researcher Philip Mantle, author of the book UFO Contacts in Brazil, has said of the bizarre incident:
Many people claim to have come into direct contact with a UFO and some even claim that it has hurt them as a result. A bruise here, a small cut there, but Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person ever killed after his encounter with a UFO. Contact with a UFO is not common at all but when the UFO in question shoots a beam of light at you, a light that hits you full in the face is extremely rare. This is what happened to Luis Barroso Fernandes. The illnesses that followed his immediately after this encounter is bizarre to say the least and went undiagnosed by a number of different doctors. Did the beam of light that hit him cause these illnesses and eventually his death? We will probably never know but this is one of the most bizarre and rarest such close encounters on record, of that there is no doubt.
Luis Barroso Fernandez after the attack
Interestingly, this was not the end of the strange phenomena that would revolve around the family and indeed the whole town. There would be many other reports of UFO sightings in the area, and Fernandez’ own son would have his own odd experiences in the coming days, seeing UFOs on multiple occasions. More frightening still was that there is at least one other report of a UFO in the area of Quixada seemingly attacking human beings. Here we have the account of Francisca Rosete da Silva, 23, and her brother Antonio Leudo da Silva, 12, who were walking along a wooded area in the vicinity when they saw a blazing light through the trees. According to the witnesses, the light then shot a beam at Francisca, which burned her skin and left her disoriented and dizzy. Doctors would find her eyes to be swollen and bruises and burns on her body, although no cause could be determined. The brother, Antonio, was not injured in the incident, and would say of what they saw, “What I saw, I did not want to see ever again. It was not a plane, helicopter or another known thing. It was strange and threatening.”
What happened in this remote town, and what is it that plagued Luis Barroso Fernandez? Was this a malicious attack by a UFO, and if so why would these entities do so? Was is a defensive measure, or perhaps even accidental? It is unclear just what happened here, but Fernandez’s case has never been adequately explained and he is often touted as being one of the only human being to ever be killed by a UFO. Whether it was real or not, it does leave us to ask ourselves whether UFOs are friendly or not, and poses the question of whether there are perhaps times when they have more sinister goals than we may realize.
On the evening of November 21, 1957, businessman Frank Dickenson and two of his friends, Frank Hutton and Fred Taylor, were driving through dark moorland just outside of the tiny town of Silpho, in the Scarborough district of the county of North Yorkshire, England. It was a routine drive, and there wasn’t much to see over those moors, but the monotony was broken by a bright slash of light across the sky, which seemed to come down nearby. The men at first thought is was a meteor that had come down, and went to investigate, but this would be far more bizarre than that. This would begin a weird odyssey of the little UFO that fell to earth, only to disappear and show up in a museum years later
When they got to the place where the glowing object had come down, they could see that this was no meteor, but rather what they described as a “copper-bottomed flying saucer,” looking to be out of commission but in relatively one piece considering it had just plummeted from the heavens. The disc measured just 17 inches across and weighed 33 pounds, and although here were no noticeable seams or opening, the whole of it was covered with cryptic symbols that were etched across its side, similar in appearance to Egyptian hieroglyphics. The men knew they had found something strange, and they went about handing it over to some UFO researchers by the names of Frank Dickenson, Anthony Parker and Philip Longbottom.
They went about trying to pry it open to see what was inside. They finally succeeded, and allegedly found within the saucer 17 thin copper sheets engraved with more of the same glyphs that were on the outside. Of any occupant there was no sign, leading them to believe it was some sort of unmanned craft for purposes unknown. After this the object was apparently cut into several pieces and sent off to be studied by different institutions, with the findings differing depending on who looked at it. Scientists at the Natural History Museum noted that it did not seem to have ever been in space, as it showed no signs of the extreme temperature changes it would have been subjected to in that environment, leading them to believe that it was terrestrial in origin and likely a hoax. However, Manchester University found that the metal of the object was of an unusually high purity and that its shell had been “radiation-proofed,” and when an Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding of the Royal Air Force examined it he came away convinced that it definitely had to be of extraterrestrial origins. That seems to be about as far as anyone got at the time, and the various pieces of what is now called the “Silpho UFO” sort of disappeared, being filed away in backrooms to gather dust or just vanishing altogether. After this, the whole incident and this diminutive UFO were just sort of forgotten about.
It would not be until 2018 that an old cigarette tin was found sitting hidden and forgotten in a store room by archivists at London’s Science Museum, containing 5 envelopes with some odd metal fragments and pieces of foil within it, all of it labelled “Victoria and Albert Museum- alleged UFO bits.” The box had been sitting there in the dark collecting dust since 1963, and they realized that this discovery in their collection might have cultural significance. It was turned over to a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University by the name of Dr. David Clarke, who was at the time giving a lecture on UFOs. Clarke would say of it all:
One of the museum staff tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was aware that ‘bits of a flying saucer’ had been kept in a cigarette tin for decades. I thought it must be a joke, or the pieces of metal would be worthless. They were stored off-site, so I arranged for the files to be sent to London for examination early in the New Year. I was absolutely amazed when later we opened the tin box and saw the wreckage. It was obvious these were the remains of the missing Silpho Saucer that some have claimed as Britain’s answer to the famous Roswell incident. It’s incredible to hear that pieces of this mystery object have been sitting in a museum archive for more than half a century.
Some contents of the box
Pieces said to be from the wreckage of the Silpho UFO found in 1957.
Clarke was able to track the fragments back to an expert on meteorites and explosives by the name of Gordon Claringbull, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, who had forwarded them the Science Museum in 1963, after which they had just been sort of thrown into storage and swept away. Interestingly, not long after this rediscovery of the lost wreckage, Longbottom one of the ones who allegedly originally pried the UFO open, claimed that he had become obsessed with the meaning of those glyphs, and after intensively studying them for years he claimed to have translated a portion, which he said was written by an alien calling itself “Ullo,” and gave the rather ominous message of “You will improve or disappear,” as well as various passages warning mankind not to tinker with nuclear weapons. This seems as if it surely must be a hoax based off of the reemergence of the Silpho UFO into the news, but it certainly puts a bizarre spin on things.
The Science Museum said it was likely the items in their collections were from Silpho Moor.
The object itself is widely believed to have been merely an elaborate hoax enacted by the men who found it, but there are plenty of people who have discussed it in forums and in other articles as being the real deal. Of course, there are also conspiracies that abound, such as that the wreckage found in the museum wasn’t the real UFO or that the findings were covered up. Was it real, and if so what was it? Was this some unmanned probe sent here with a message that only one guy has ever figured out? Or is this perhaps a piece of hoaxing history? This is in the end probably a hoax, but it is still an interesting little piece of UFO lore that seems to have been mostly forgotten. It is pretty amazing that it managed to fade away into the shadows and be buried in a museum’s archives for so long, and even if it is not real, it raises the question of if this has ever happened to a real piece of a UFO. Is there maybe some fragment of an alien craft relegated to some dank basement forgotten, just waiting for the right person to stumble on to it? Perhaps time will tell.
The remaining parts of the Silpho UFO, found in 1957, were rumoured by the UFO community to have ended up on a scrap heap or even on display in a local fish and chip shop.
Aliens and encounters with strange humanoids are one thing, but quite another is when these creatures are found dead or dying, leaving behind riddles that we may never solve. Such cases are rare, but they seem to happen all over the world, and never cease to amaze with the potential for what they mean and what could have been. A very bizarre and obscure report of a dead humanoid alien comes to us from the country of Sweden, and it is truly one of the weirdest.
The whole strange affair revolves around an intriguing report dug up by UFO researcher Ed Komarek, and originally made by a man named John Fontaine, supposedly published in the publication UFO Universe Magazine under the title Humanoid Dies In Sweden. Fontaine would claim to have met the witness at a UFO conference in Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Sweden, in a lecture hall full of UFO and alien enthusiasts, and that the two had struck up a friendly conversation that made its way to the topic of alien humanoids. The man would then choose to launch into a very curious encounter and brush with the unexplained that he himself had had back in 1955, which would leave Fontaine awestruck and baffled.
The man said that at the time he had been working as a lumberjack in the town of Vestra Norrland, at the Gulf of Bothnia, along with his two brothers, where they toiled away shipping out lumber. On a calm morning in July, their attention was captured by a noise in the remote wilderness that sounded like “a big animal thrashing its way through the forest,” which was so insistent that the men were immediately on alert. As they gazed off into the murky trees, they caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a cigar-shaped object that was flying through the treetops to rain down branches and debris all over the place. At first, they thought that this was merely a small aircraft that had flown too low and had perhaps lost its wings, now in danger of crashing, and indeed they were sure that at any second it would come down in a fiery collision with the earth. However, things were about to get much more bizarre than that.
Gulf of Bothnia, Sweden
The craft seemed to come down at a nearby river that meandered through the area, after which there was no sound, but rather a sudden bright flash of light “like a vast flashbulb,” that was absolutely blinding in its sheer intensity. The witness would even claim that such was the incredible brightness of it all that they could actually see through the trees, as if through an X-ray machine, and all of this was followed by a kind of vacuum that seemed to pull them towards it. As they were sucked towards the source of the light they could see that leaves, branches, and everything else not nailed down was also flying towards whatever it was, and such was this inexorable pull that the men found themselves holding on to whatever they could to keep from being drawn towards that mysterious light, during which time the forest was bathed in complete, surreal silence.
Although the whole incident at the time seemed to last far longer, it was estimated that it was all over within a split second, after which the forest returned to normal as if nothing had happened. The men looked about them and crept forward through the brush towards that forbiding unknown, but they did not notice anything unusual, nor anything at all that would even suggest that anything odd had happened at all. Just as the puzzled crew were about to head back, one of them then noticed what he described as a “dwarf dressed in uniform” sprawled out on the ground in some bushes. As the three of them warily stepped closer they could see that there was indeed some sort of humanoid being lying there, and their first thoughts were that whatever had come down had crashed into the water and that this was an occupant who had been hurled out to safety.
The “dwarf” was described as being only around 4 feet in height, surrounded by “white light that vibrated like a halo,” and totally unmoving. They assumed it to be dead, but when they got closer still it snapped awake and recoiled from their touch, saying in perfect Swedish, “Do not touch me! It will only bring you difficulties! Now you know who I am!” The group were not sure what to make of this, and during the whole surreal incident they felt as if an unnatural calm had washed over them and they could now make out various details about this mysterious stranger. Fontaine would quote the witness as saying:
Suddenly I became quite calm and studied him closely. He was no dwarf. He was very well-built with broad shoulders and normal features. His skin was yellowish like that of an Asian. The eyes were deep socketed and black, without any white around. His face was badly bruised with a couple of big wounds on the chin and on the forehead. It did not bleed but the skin watered around the wounds. The top of his head was slightly downy and the hair almost white. The earlobes were one with the neck and resembled a shark’s fin. The lips were wrinkled, narrow and colorless. When he smiled reassuringly, which he did a lot, he revealed a row of small teeth in the upper as well as the lower part of his mouth. I especially noticed that his canine teeth were flat and as broad as two of our front teeth.
His hands were small with five slender fingers without nails and when he moved his hand it looked as if the ring finger had grown together to the little finger, if not they moved synchronized. His uniform was of a reddish metal and appeared glued to his body closely. Head and hands were free, but at the feet the clothing continued into a couple of closed shoes, size 35-37. The foot-soles were ribbed and vibrated, and for a moment I thought of caterpillars on a tank. The stranger looked at me and nodded slightly. There was no doubt that he knew what I was thinking. With those shoes he could roll forwards and backwards without moving his feet. Around the waist he had a broad silvery metal belt with an unusually large buckle, which shone slightly in a light-blue shade, which later when he was dead, turned dark blue. In the middle of the buckle was a sign in yellow — UV — it looked like a V which was incorporated in a U.
It was all a lot to take in, but as amazing as this all was there was a tragic air to it all, as the humanoid then let them know that he was gravely wounded and dying. He then produced a rectangular device with a pencil slate attached to it from his pocket, upon which he wrote something and tossed it out into the wilderness, telling the men that they should not touch it, and that it was meant to be a beacon to draw other of his kind to his location. The witness then claimed that he had talked with the creature for a full 2 hours as he lie there dying, although he seemed loathe to reveal what they had actually talked about. All he would reveal were certain details, such as that the entity claimed to have been from the constellation we call “The Eagle,” that several alien races had routinely visited humans over the centuries, and that many of them had been keenly observing us. He then jumped to the part where the mysterious stranger seemed to be dying, and before so instructed them to place his corpse inside a bag he gave them, saying that it would expedite the destruction of his remains to keep his existence secret. The witness says of the creature’s death:
Just before the stranger died, he gave me folded bag from the invisible pocket and said: “When I am dead, the light will disappear from my body and with the help of the other two men you shall put me in this bag and carry me out into the river where I shall disappear. Then you shall rinse yourself thoroughly in the water, so that you don’t get ill.” He was now breathing heavily, and I could see the end was near. The halo around him became weaker and gradually disappeared. His light blue buckle gradually got darker. He looked at me for a moment and smiled. The he said something in a language I have never heard before or since. Suddenly he switched into Swedish, and I got the last couple of sentences… “You have come without any wish to and depart against your own wish. Our life is like vapor.” He said a few more worlds, but his voice was so weak that I did not catch them. I am convinced he prayed to some deity before dying. I was very moved.
The witness and his brothers then gathered up the being’s corpse, stuffed it into the bag as instructed, and carried him off towards the roaring river, noticing how the body smelled intensely of Sulfur, the skin irritating their flesh. He would claim that the water began bubbling as they lowered the body into it, and that after 5 minutes the corpse had completely dissolved away into nothing. They would apparently go years without discussing the incident, and the witness claimed to Fontaine that that was the first time he had discussed it in decades. He then left in a rather mysterious fashion, showing him the pencil slate from that rectangular device, which he had kept as evidence of the encounter. Fontaine would say of this:
The witness produced a piece of metal and held it to my nose. “Look” he said. I looked bewildered. It resembled a bit crochet hook. “What is it?” He laughed knowingly. “A couple of days after the incident I wandered around where he had been lying. The rectangular object was gone, but the pencil slate was lying in the grass shining. I have kept it as a proof that I was not dreaming.” He left. And while I gazed astonished after him, he disappeared in the crowd. An anonymous, who with his story and pencil slate could hit the front page on the world’s newspapers.
What are we to make of all of this? This is a relatively obscure case, translated into English from Swedish and given by a stranger to a UFO researcher and told third hand, without anything in the way of evidence. Of course, there could be something to it all, but whatever truth there is to it all seems to have left with that enigmatic stranger at that UFO conference long ago, and we are left to merely speculate. Did this entity crash in his ship? If so, why was he here? Is there any truth to this story at all? There is sadly very little information on this obscure case out there, and whether it was true in any way or not we will probably never know for sure, and the secret to this all is confined to that wood in Sweden.
Strange encounters with UFOs and their often enigmatic occupants have happened all over the world, from every corner of the globe. While those that happen in the United States and the U.K. seem to be the most well-known of oft-covered, this is certainly not the extent of this phenomenon. Perhaps it is the language barrier, but there are many cases that seem to have fallen through the cracks in other countries, and some remarkable ones that don’t seem to get much coverage are a series of very bizarre encounters with what seem to be alien entities in the far eastern country of Japan.
One very weird alien encounter that also happens to have so-called photographic proof supposedly occurred in April of 1975, in the city of Kawanoe, on Japan’s Shikoku Island. On the night of March 24th, 1975, a local resident by the name of Giichi Shiota was at a city landfill when he says he saw something very bizarre indeed. There amongst the rubble he spied a luminous figure in some sort of metallic suit hovering around 7 feet off of the ground, which he would describe as an “alien cosmonaut.” The being itself was said to be about 6 feet tall, and it then smoothly descended to about a foot off of the ground before floating towards the startled witness, who says he then began to develop a sharp headache that increased with intensity the closer it came. This headache apparently became absolutely agonizing, sending him on his way.
Shiota then became determined to go back to the scene of his strange encounter, this time taking with him three cameras for the purpose of possibly capturing something strange on film. He would visit that landfill night after night for a whole week hoping to catch another glimpse of the otherworldly, and then on March 31 his patience apparently paid off. He would claim that that familiar head splitting headache had descended upon him once again, at which point he knew that he was no longer alone their huddling in the darkness. Looking about him, he could then make out what appeared to be a bluish, cloud-like light hovering around 300 feet away, which he described as an “electrical disturbance,” and as he peered through the gloom at it the humanoid emerged from its center. One again it glided towards him, and this time Shiota claimed that he had taken a series of photographs of the strange entity. As if realizing that it was being photographed, the creature then veered off at great speed and vanished into thin air.
Alleged photograph of the “alien cosmonaut”
What did he catch on film? The photos are inconclusive to say the least. Is this a hoax or is there anything more to it? Interestingly, on February 23, 1975, of that same year two 7-year-old boys named Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata, were out roller skating in the early evening hours in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, when they claim that they saw in the sky a pair of luminous orange lights that flickered and made a strange “ticking sound.” As they looked on in amazement, one of the lights apparently moved off towards the distant mountains, while the other started to descend towards the ground nearby. The boys claimed that they went off to investigate, and saw the strange craft come down to rest in a small vineyard behind an old, abandoned estate. The craft was described as being a domed disc around 15 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, which rested upon three ball-shaped legs. The surface of the strange object was silver-colored, and appeared to have characters or letters of some sort etched upon it. The loud ticking sound of the craft was very pronounced as they drew closer, sounding somewhat reminiscent of a Geiger counter. As the two boys pondered what they were seeing, a hatch purportedly opened on the side out of nowhere and a ladder extended towards the ground, after which a strange looking being climbed out.
The creature stood around 4 feet tall, and was wearing a reflective silver suit of some sort. The being’s skin was allegedly a dark brown in color, and it was covered with thick wrinkles that were so pronounced as to make most of its facial features indiscernible, save for two pointed ears and prominent and intimidating 2-inch long silver fangs that jutted out from the folds of where its mouth might be. In its hands it held some sort of device whose purpose could not be fathomed, but which looked somewhat like “a rifle.” Another of the creatures could be seen sitting within the craft huddled over some sort of flickering control panel. Whatever it was seemed to have completely ignored the two young boys standing there gawking at it as it proceeded to carefully examine the surrounding terrain. After a few moments of this it suddenly seemed to become aware of the boys, after which it approached them and patted one of them, Yamahata, twice on the shoulder while issuing a sound that sounded like “a tape recorder running backwards.”
Upon being tapped, Yamahata allegedly slumped to the ground and was unable to move, paralyzed by some inscrutable force. This pushed Kawano into action, and he quickly scooped his friend up onto his shoulders and ran from the area as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got home, Yamahata came to, and they supposedly told their parents what had happened, who would grudgingly follow the boys out to the estate outside to see the strange orange light climbing up into the sky for themselves. The light would then emit a burst of blinding light and vanish. Later, school officials would descend upon the area in daylight to examine the site, and would allegedly find two sturdy concrete posts that had been pushed over by some powerful force, as well as a ring pattern etched into the ground nearby. Authorities of the Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry would later get wind of the story and dismiss the lights as merely from normal aircraft in the area. No word on what they thought the fanged humanoid could have been, or if it had anything to do with what Shiota would witness a month later.
A few years later, in 1978 we have another very outlandish encounter, this time in the area of Sayama City. In October of that year, the city had been going through a spate of intense UFO activity, and on the evening of October 3 things would take a turn for the truly bizarre. On this night, 29-year-old Hideichi Amano was out testing out some HAM radio equipment on a hill overlooking the city. It was a hobby of his, and on this occasion he was using the radio to talk with other HAM enthusiasts throughout the area. He didn’t stay long, as his young daughter was waiting for him in the car, but as he got ready to leave something remarkable would purportedly happen.
As he prepared to start the vehicle, the entire interior was bathed in a bright light, its source a complete mystery as they had been out there completely alone. Amano looked outside but could see nothing that could account for the light, and when he looked back to his 2-year-old daughter she was in some sort of daze and foaming at the mouth. As he panicked and wondered what to do, an orange beam of light pierced in from out of the night to land upon his stomach, and he felt himself feeling woozy and faint. There was then the sensation of something pressing into the side of his head, and when he turned to look there was allegedly a humanoid entity with a round head, no neck, and glowing blue eyes standing there outside the car with a “pipe-like” instrument pushed up to his head, which was producing “voiceless high-pitched noises” that seemed to penetrate directly into his mind.
The panicked witness desperately tried to start his car, but nothing worked, and he seemed to be without any power at all. Indeed, moving his limbs felt like moving through a thick liquid, giving him the sense that he was partially paralyzed. He started to get the impression that that rapidly fluctuating droning in his head was giving him a message, although he had no idea what it could be. This apparently went on for about 5 minutes, after which that bizarre entity pulled away his instrument and vanished into the night. There was a beat of utter silence, and then the car roared to life, scaring Amano nearly as badly as that creature had. To his great relief, his young daughter now seemed to be OK, acting as if nothing had happened at all.
Amano would frantically contact police to tell them of what had happened, but they didn’t take it seriously at all. Through all of this his head was becoming increasingly painful, overcome with a relentless headache. After several nights of terrible nightmares, he would seek out hypnotic regression, which would turn up some curiosities. Amano related how the creature had given him a future date, time, and location to meet again, and how the entity had given him a bracelet of some sort, claimed to be some sort of communications device. Even more eerily still was his insistence that something had been placed within his head and was influencing his mind, and the whole story was so sensational that it made the rounds on Japanese television for a while before fading into obscurity. What was going on here? Who knows?
These cases for the most part seem to be pretty obscure and forgotten, relegated to the back catalog of alien encounters, despite their spectacular natures. There seems to have been very little follow-up done on them and little further information on them, leaving us to wonder what could be going on here. Were these aliens, interdimensional interlopers of some sort, the ravings of the imagination, or something more? Whatever the case may be, they remain some of the strangest that Japan has to offer.
Top 15 Secrets of Frederick Valentich Missing Case
Top 15 Secrets of Frederick Valentich Missing Case
On October 21, 1978, an Australian pilot named Frederick Valentich went missing over Bass Strait while on a training flight. Till date, neither his nor his aircraft’s remains have been found. There are different theories related to his disappearance. Know about the top 15 secrets related to the case of disappearance of Valentich.
(1) Valentich’s last radio transmissions mentioned of a “green light”, and some locals also found a green light moving erratically in the sky.
(2) Before his disappearance, he informed the Melbourne air traffic control that he was being accompanied by a flying object around 300 m above him, and that it was not an aircraft.
(3) There are speculations by UFOlogists that it was aliens who destroyed his spacecraft and possibly even abducted him, basing their supposition on the green light that was seen during Valentich’s disappearance and his final radio transmission.
(4) On the night he vanished, there were belated reports about a UFO having been spotted in Australia.
(5) Could he have dived into water and committed suicide? That is unlike him, and colleagues and doctors who knew Frederick rule out this possibility.
(6) The air traffic controller, Steve Robey, whom Frederick spoke to on the night of his disappearance, say that he sounded genuine and perfectly normal on the radio.
(7) Although he was a moderately experienced pilot, Valentich has a few flight incidents behind him and his flying style was often erratic. But even if he crashed somewhere, why had his remains not been found?
(8) Did Frederick’s paranoia about UFOs come true for him? Guido Valentich, his father, reported that his son seriously believed in UFOs and also worried about being killed by extra terrestrials with UFOs.
(9) During the last radio contact, Frederick said that a flying object with a shiny, metallic exterior and having a green light and 4 bright landing lights was orbiting above him. The last sound that radio officials could hear was the scraping of metal.
(10) 5 days after his mysterious vanishing, a light aircraft pilot reported of a very bright light passing by 3 times at the speed of jet, even forcing him to land.
(11) All attempts of the Australian Department of Transport came to nothing. But 5 years later, an engine cowl flap was found on Flinders Island that came from a similar aircraft as Frederick and its serial numbers were in a similar range.
(12) An anonymous farmer claimed that he saw a 30-meter long aircraft hovering above his farm the morning following Frederick’s disappearance. The Victorian UFO Group tried very hard to contact him but could not find any information about him.
(13) Valentich’s case is open even today, and his mysterious disappearance continues to hunt conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists in Australia.
(14) Frederick’s family has erected a memorial for him at the same spot he vanished from, and visits it annually on every anniversary of his disappearance.
(15) His case was widely discussed when flight Malaysia MH370 search disappeared in a similar way, which is untraceable even today.
20 Facts about the Wow! Signal from Space to Know What is It
20 Facts about the Wow! Signal from Space to Know What is It
When the world was divided into two, debating about the possibilities of the existence of extraterrestrial life, the news of the Wow! Signal from the space rejuvenated the enthusiasm of the believers of existence of ET life in outer space. Many people believed that the signal was sent by aliens trying to establish contact with earthlings. Here are 20 facts about the Wow! Signal from space that will help you understand what it as actually.
(1) The Wow! Signal was received by the Big Ear radio telescope at the observatory of Ohio State University.
(2) The signal was received on 15th August 1977.
(3) Big Ear radio observatory was the only system on the planet that received the signal.
(4) The signal was first noticed by 37 year old volunteer researcher Jerry Ehman who worked at the Ohio State University.
(5) As Ehman was taking a look on the data sheet he noticed a vertical sequence of alpha numeric figures that was much different than the regular 1s and2s that filled the sheet.
(6) The total duration of the Wow! Signal was just 72 seconds.
(7) The vertical sequence read ‘6EQUJ5’.
(8) Amazed by the unexpected sequence amidst the regular radio signals, Ehman wrote the letters ‘Wow’ with an exclamation mark. He wrote this with a red pen to mark the importance of the whole thing. This is how the signal earned the name ‘Wow! Signal’.
(9) The intensity of radio signals that are received by the scientist are measured from a scale of 1 to 9. Signal with intensity 1.0 is denoted by 1 and signals of intensity equal to or more than 10.0 are denoted by letters A to U. A would represent signals of intensity between 10 and 11; B would represent signals of intensity between 11 and 12 and so on.
(10) If you have understood the representation of signal intensity, you would understand this better now. The Wow! Signal had four letters E, Q, U and J which are supposedly signals of very high intensities!
(11) The intensity of the Wow! Signal was about 30 times higher than the average ambient noise of the outer deep space.
(12) The frequency of the Wow! Signal was very close to that of hydrogen, which goes hand in gloves with the hypothesis of Cocconi and Morrison.
(13) The frequency of the Wow! Signal was about 1420.456 MHz
(14) Usually, the radio signals that emanate out other extraterrestrial bodies have a frequency range which is much broader than the frequency range of the Wow! Signal.
(15) After the source of the signal was tracked back, it was found to have been originated from northwestern part of the Sagittarius constellation’s M55 globular cluster.
(16) The probable point of origin from where the signal was believed to have been originated does not have any planets or stars. The evident question that comes out of this is then who had sent the signal?
(17) The probable point of origin of the Wow! Signal was 220 million light years away from the Earth.
(18) The signal was received once. Even after multiple attempts scientists failed to receive a signal similar to the Wow! Signal. This gave birth to the apprehension that if an alien was actually trying to communicate with earth, why would they give up after just one attempt?
(19) Scientists do confirm that looking at the transmission time along with the intensity graphs, it is confirmed that the origin of the Wow! Signal lies somewhere in the outer space only.
(20) Before Big Ear radio telescope was dismantled in 1997, scientists carried out extended research to receive signals similar to the Wow! Signal, but they failed to receive even one signal that matched the one received by Ehmar in 1977.
Billy Meier, for his surprising predictions has been always one of the most debated and controversial characters in the modern history of Human civilization. Some of the predictions from this Swiss came true, while others did not. However, you cannot overrule the mystery in his predictions, if you are to believe that he made such predictions, with the help of some extraterrestrial creatures and the UFOs, as he claimed.
Strange Facts about the predictions of Billy Meier
(1) It was Billy Meier, first predicted the Iraq war. It seems to surprise people at how he got the indication of such events.
(2) Billy Meier once stated that AIDS would spread across the world at a rate that will resemble an epidemic. Standing in today’s time, this prediction has come absolutely correct
(3) About almost 50 years ago, Billy was instrumental to predict the devastating effect of global warming. It was made in a time when the slightest clue was not available in this regard.
(4) At a time when there were no issues with the ecological balance, Billy voiced the prediction that the world in heading towards such challenges.
(5)One of his prophecies hinted about the outbreak of the 3rdWorld War.
(6) It is a mystery as how Billy was successful to predict overpopulation of the planet in the near future,
(7) Billy predicted the chances for a Civil War to break out in the United States of America.
(8) If Billy’s prophecies are to be believed, the sovereign US will split into several new nations, as the result of the Civil war.
(9) Billy’s prediction had references to militant activities on pleas of religion to attack the US.
(10) The idiotic act of mankind is paving the way for the extinction of the human civilization.
(11) The future of mankind is in danger as consequences of their own acts.
(12) Billy predicted that the entire world would collapse due to a devastating global fire.
(13) His prophecies correctly predicted the rise of terrorism across the globe in the 21st
(14) Hundreds of atom-sun was predicted to break out, resulting in complete extinction of Germany and several of her neighboring nations.
(15) Billy was instrumental to predict a sharp fall in the values and humanitarian approaches in mankind.
(16) A civil war is expected to demolish Canada in the 21st
(17) Billy predicted that somewhere in the middle of the 21st century, the USA and various other Europen countries would experience a sharp drop in the quality of life and lifestyle.
(18) Billy claimed that all these predictions came from his foresight, assisted by the UFOS and the extraterrestrial creatures.
(19) Some people hold the notion that these predictions are the results of his success in time travel.
(20) Billy was never able to produce any evidence in favor of his claims, however, many of his predictions actually came true.
Billy Meier UFO Contacts, the Predictions Are Accurate and Immensely Important
Billy Meier UFO Contacts, the Predictions Are Accurate and Immensely Important
COAST TO COAST AM – Michael Horn, spokesperson for famed UFO contactee Billy Meier, addressed how recent developments in Europe were specifically predicted by Meier as far back as 1958. Horn declared that if the Meier claims of ET contact are real, it would be “the most important thing in human history.”
Horn continued with a litany of testimonials he says he has received from professionals who have checked on the Meier films, prophecies, and other material, and declared them genuine. He recounted his interaction with a former Air Force investigator who says he looked carefully into Meier’s personal history and claims and found them to be entirely true.
He (and others, such as special effects experts) Horn says, believe that photos of UFOs taken in the 1960s by Meier would have been impossible to fake at that time.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
NASA gears up Mars rover for perfect 20/20 ‘SuperCam’ vision ahead of mission to red planet
NASA gears up Mars rover for perfect 20/20 ‘SuperCam’ vision ahead of mission to red planet
NASA engineers are busy preparing the agency’s next Mars rover for its upcoming journey to the red planet. The six-wheeled robot will scour the Martian surface to look for signs of life. Deemed essential by NASA’s administrator, the mission is progressing as planned in order to meet a July launch.
The Perseverance Mars rover will land on Mars in February 2021, touching down in an ancient river bed called Jezero Crater. The 28-mile-wide crater is the site of an ancient river delta, and as such, scientists believe it could harbor fossilized life. That’s because the region is home to mineral deposits like hydrated silica, which is a preservative material here on Earth.
To help it search out key mineral deposits, the rover is packing a suite of scientific instruments, including some specialized cameras. The rover was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California but was shipped to its Florida launch site earlier this year.
NASA’s Mars2020 rover will explore Jezero Crater in search of life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Since its arrival, engineers have begun reassembling the rover and preparing it for flight. It will not be flying solo to the red planet, but instead, will be accompanied by the first interplanetary helicopter. Approximately the size of a softball, the Mars helicopter has passed pre-launch testing and was recently installed on the belly of the rover.
The rover, however, still has a few more milestones to complete before its ready to be tucked into its aeroshell and loaded into the launch vehicle. To that end, the rover recently had its vision tested.
Perseverance is packing multiple cameras that have a range of imaging capabilities from wide-angle cameras capable of capturing sweeping vistas to a narrow-angle, high-resolution camera capable of zooming in on details on the Martian surface.
The rover will use the SuperCam (along with its laser and spectrometers) to examine Martian rocks and soil, looking for organic compounds that could indicate past life on Mars.
So how does one test a rover’s vision? With a giant grid of dots.
Engineer Chris Chatellier stands next to a target board with 1,600 dots. The committee was one of several used on July 23, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s High Bay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to calibrate the forward-facing cameras on the Mars 2020 rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rover’s vision was first tested back in July 2019 at the Jet Propulsion Lab and then rechecked once the cameras were installed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rover’s main camera, called the SuperCam, is installed on the rover’s head. It appears as a large circular opening, and this is the lens. Underneath it are two grey boxes that are two Mastcam-Z-imagers, and on the outside of those boxes are two more cameras used for navigation.
“We completed the machine-vision calibration of the forward-facing cameras on the rover,” Justin Maki, chief engineer for imaging and the imaging scientist for Mars 2020 at JPL, said during the test. “This measurement is critical for accurate stereo vision, which is an important capability of the vehicle.”
Anatomy of a Mars2020 rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Cal-tech
To calibrate the imagers, target boards that feature grids of dots were imaged and placed at distances ranging from 1 to 44 yards (1 to 40 meters) away. Those boards were used to confirm that the cameras meet the project’s requirements for resolution and geometric accuracy.
“We tested every camera on the front of the rover chassis and also those mounted on the mast,” Maki said. “Characterizing the geometric alignment of all these images is important for driving the vehicle on Mars, operating the robotic arm, and accurately targeting the rover’s laser.”
But the work isn’t done yet, the imagers on Perseverance’s body and arm will happen in the coming weeks.
Solar Winds Hitting Earth Are Hotter Than They Should Be–Here’s Why
Solar Winds Hitting Earth Are Hotter Than They Should Be–Here’s Why
Our planet is constantly bathed in the winds coming off the blistering sphere at the center of our Solar System.
But even though the Sun itself is so ridiculously hot, once the solar winds reach Earth, they are hotter than they should be – and we might finally know why.
We know that particles making up the plasma of the Sun’s heliosphere cool as they spread out. The problem is that they seem to take their sweet time doing so, dropping in temperature far slower than models predict.
“People have been studying the solar wind since its discovery in 1959, but there are many important properties of this plasma which are still not well understood,” says physicist Stas Boldyrev from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“Initially, researchers thought the solar wind has to cool down very rapidly as it expands from the Sun, but satellite measurements show that as it reaches the Earth, its temperature is 10 times larger than expected.”
The research team used laboratory equipment to study moving plasma, and now think the answer to the problem lies in a trapped sea of electrons that just can’t seem to escape the Sun’s grip.
The expansion process itself has long been assumed to be subject to adiabatic laws, a term that simply means heat energy isn’t added or removed from a system.
This keeps the numbers nice and simple but assumes there aren’t places where energy slips in or out of the flow of particles.
Unfortunately, an electron’s journey is anything but simple, shoved around at the mercy of vast magnetic fields like a roller coaster from Hell. This chaos leaves plenty of opportunities for heat to be passed back and forth.
Just to complicate matters further, thanks to its tiny mass, electrons get a good head start over heavier ions as they shoot forth from the Sun’s atmosphere, leaving a largely positive cloud of particles in their wake.
Eventually, the growing attraction between the two opposing charges takes over the inertia of those flying electrons, pulling them back to the starting line where magnetic fields once again play havoc with their paths.
“Such returning electrons are reflected so that they stream away from the Sun, but again they cannot escape because of the attractive electric force of the Sun,” says Boldyrev.
“So, their destiny is to bounce back and forth, creating a large population of so-called trapped electrons.”
Boldyrev and his crew recognized a similar game of electron ping-pong playing out in their own laboratory, inside an apparatus commonly used to study plasma called a mirror machine.
A linear fusion reactor, or ‘mirror machine’.
(Cary Forest)
Mirror machines don’t actually contain any mirrors. At least, not the familiar shiny kind. Also known as magnetic mirrors or magnetic traps, these linear fusion devices are little more than long tubes with a bottle-neck at either end.
Their reflective nature is created as streams of plasma passing through the bottle pinch in at either end, altering the surrounding magnetic fields in such a way that particles within the stream reflect back inside again.
“But some particles can escape, and when they do, they stream along expanding magnetic field lines outside the bottle,” Boldyrev says.
“Because the physicists want to keep this plasma very hot, they want to figure out how the temperature of the electrons that escape the bottle declines outside this opening.”
Or if you’re Boldyrev and his team, those leaking electrons can be studied to better understand what’s happening with our very own solar wind.
He and his colleagues suggest the population of trapped electrons that yo-yo back and forth play a major role in the way electrons distribute their heat energy, changing the typical distributions of particle velocities and temperatures in predictable ways.
“It turns out that our results agree very well with measurements of the temperature profile of the solar wind and they may explain why the electron temperature declines with the distance so slowly,” says Boldyrev.
Finding such a good match between the mirror machine’s figures and what we see in space suggests there could be other solar phenomena worth studying this way.
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Hey everyone, let me take a break from UFO and aliens today and talk about something that in plaguing the world...coronavirus. I first became concerned that something was not right on March 13th, 2020 when Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft...his baby. This was the very week that American news began to panic as the coronavirus began infecting large numbers of Americans. Nothing but an apocalypse could pull this man away from his child...Microsoft. I didn't understand at the time...but I began to link the patterns between Bill and coronavirus. I feel the evidence points to Bill Gates stepping down because he feel responsible for this virus. I did some investigating and Bill Gates owns a laboratory, controlled and owned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Back in 2000 his foundation became the worlds biggest foundation in the world holding over 46.8 billion dollars in assets...including some laboratories. His laboratory has a patent on coronavirus...the very virus circulating around the world population at this very moment. I believe that the virus came out of this laboratory and into the hands of the Chinese. How? One of three possibilities:
It was stolen by an Chinese scientist working for Gates and taken to or shipped to China.
It was sent by Gates to China to have others work on it to help create a map and possible cures for future epidemics.
The virus was created by China in Wuhan...and they followed Bill Gates exact steps and process he lays out in his highly detailed lectures in 2015 at John Hopkins. Bill says how dangerous of a weapon that coronavirus could be...and maybe China wanted to harness its power.
So...you see, Bill Gates himself is responsible for this coronavirus that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Although he stepped up back in 2015 to warn the world...in one way or another...he instead caused it to take place. And I leave with a quote by Bill Gates; "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks." Watch his lectures below...and decide for yourself. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Bill Gates Talks Coronavirus on TED April 2015.
Bill Gates Tells You His Worst Fear...Says 50% Chance of Epidemic In His Lifetime.
Millions Could Die From Bio-Terrorism, Gates Feb 2017
UFOs forming triangular shape over Michigan 19-Apr-2020
UFOs forming triangular shape over Michigan 19-Apr-2020
These orbs were recorded above Harrison Township, Michigan, just near Lake St Clair on 19th April 2020.
Witness report:
Orbs flashing and appearing in the western sky approximately 9 were seen. My brother in law recorded this on 04/19/20 at approximately 9:30pm facing west from his home in Harrison township, Michigan. He stated there were approximately 9 orb type lights in the sky appearing and disappearing. They appeared to be moving in a northern direction. No navigation lights ( red and green) were seen, no sounds were heard.
Black triangle photographed over Kissimmee, Florida
Black triangle photographed over Kissimmee, Florida
Today we found this great photo of a BLACK triangle-shaped craft that was recorded in the sky above central Florida in United states back in April 2019 (19th) and it was just uploaded to MUFON website today.
Witness that uploaded this photo said the following statement that you can read below
What do you think this is? Do you think this is a military project called TR-3B that is seen all over the world?
Witness report:
As I was driving I noticed this black triangle flying in front of me. I only have time to take this picture,because I couldn’t find it again
Confirmed: Air Force “Men In Black” Were Investigating Luis Elizondo Over UFO Videos
Confirmed: Air Force “Men In Black” Were Investigating Luis Elizondo Over UFO Videos
JAZZ SHAW
The last time we checked in on the folks at the Pentagon who have gone almost entirely silent on the matter of government and military investigations into Navy encounters with UFOs, there were plenty of questions left unanswered. One of the key issues was why they seemed to keep changing their story when pressed for answers and how they couldn’t seem to define precisely what Luis Elizondo did or didn’t have to do with their secret UFO program known as AATIP (Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program). One other question was how those three Navy UFO videos wound up making their way into the public eye if all of this was supposed to be so hush-hush.
Now we know the answer and several other new details. The revelation once again comes to us thanks to the work of Investigative journalist Lt. Tim McMillan (ret). This week he has a new article out at Motherboard which includes a report from the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) detailing the results of their probe into how Elizondo got hold of the videos and how they wound up being released. AFOSI has become well known as “the real Men in Black” for the Air Force, and they clearly weren’t pleased with how this all played out.
The new document, obtained from the Air Force Office of Investigations (embedded below), shows that after that New York Times article, AFOSI looked into the classification of the released videos, called “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR.” Originally, it found “all three videos were classified” and that, though a declassification request had been made for these videos, it was never granted…
Though his name is redacted, the investigation is clearly focused on Elizondo, who left the Pentagon, spoke to the New York Times, and has since joined DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy. Before leaving his position as an intelligence specialist in the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence’s Office, it was Elizondo who applied for the release of the three UFO videos…
“I did everything I was supposed to do to request the release, and even went above and beyond by also engaging Foreign Disclosure personnel; which I did not have to do by regulation,” Elizondo told Motherboard.
You should click through to read the full AFOSI report for yourself, but the story turns out to be rather convoluted. A few months after the first video went public, AFOSI launched an investigation to see if the videos, which they believed to be classified, had gone through the proper declassification process. We can safely presume that if Elizondo had improperly released classified material they could and likely would have gone after him. But at the conclusion of their investigation, it turned out that the videos were never classified in the first place. They were determined to be “unclassified and for official use only.” So somebody screwed up, but it was almost certainly someone at the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) and not Elizondo.
But wait (as the saying goes), there’s more. The AFOSI report directly contradicts information that we’ve previously received from Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough. The report specifically identifies Elizondo as having worked on AATIP and adds a flatly stated detail saying that the program “focused research issues on Unidentified Flying Objects.” Both of these details are in direct contradiction to what the Pentagon has told us in the past. But then, virtually everything we’ve learned about AATIP has been cloaked in secrecy from the beginning and we also found out (courtesy of Tim McMillan once again) that they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the public from ever having access to a lot of this information.
Was this a case of the Pentagon spokeswoman simply not being aware that the Air Force was looking into all of this? Or were they just lying to us? Another nagging question is why it was the Air Force investigating the situation when those were Navy videos, to begin with? As we discussed previously, Elizondo believes that there are still people in the Defense Department with an ax to grind about him taking all of this information public. And that’s the most sensible explanation I can think of.
I remain both hopeful and confident that there are still more shoes to drop in this story. Elizondo has repeatedly said in interviews that he knows and has a lot more information than he’s revealed so far. He can’t just empty the bag, however, because he’s still under multiple nondisclosure agreements and he refuses to violate his oaths. While incredibly frustrating, I can respect that as a former military person myself. But stay tuned. There are cracks showing in this dam, and we may finally get some additional revelations this year.
UFO Sightings In Religious Art: Part 4 – Utsuro-Bune (Circa 1800)
UFO Sightings In Religious Art: Part 4 – Utsuro-Bune (Circa 1800)
by Andrew Arnett
With all the UFO related hubbub kicking up as a result of an article published last December by The New York Times regarding the existence of a secret Pentagon UFO study program and, more recently, the release of yet another Pentagon video of a UFO encounter, foreign governments are under increasing scrutiny and pressure from their citizenry to come clean and reveal what, if anything, they know about the UFO phenomenon.
Such is the case in Japan where, on February 27, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet issued a statement denying a UFO threat and stating “their existence has not been confirmed” and “we have not made any particular consideration of how to respond should one fly into Japan.” The statement came in response to an inquiry made by Seiji Osaka, a member of the Lower House opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
There’s little surprise that the government there has chosen at this time to not lay its UFO evidence out on the table for all to see, if such evidence does exist. This is and has been the M.O. for governments round the world since the UFO flap began in 1947. Nonetheless, the necessity for such a denial speaks volumes regarding ever increasing occurrences of sightings and encounters with UFOs, and the need for governments to quell concerns.
Indeed, the UFO mystery goes way back, in Japanese culture, and is embeded in Japanese folklore itself. We shall, in this article, take a closer look at some such curious cases, starting back at the dawn of the Industrial Age. In Japan, during the early 19th century, a series of unusual paintings appeared, by a variety of artists, from different provinces, which share a similar theme — that of the mystery of Utsuro-bune.
Depicted in all these paintings is a young woman, sometimes seen with red hair but always pale-skinned and beautiful. Nearby sits a spherical object, referred to as the Utsuro-bune (“hollow boat”). Though rendered with some variation by differing artists, this object is invariably round, covered, large enough to fit at least one person, and fitted with panels, or some kind of window opening.
The paintings tell of a legend, and the story goes like this: In the year 1803, there drifted onto the northern beaches of Hitachi province, in modern day Ibaraki prefecture, a large disc shaped object. A group of local fishermen found the object and described it as being made of metal, with crystal windows. Some said the object looked like a large incense burner.
Upon looking into the windows of this unusual ship, the fishermen could see strange symbols written on the walls but, most surprisingly, they discovered a fair skinned beautiful woman inside, wearing a garment made of some unknown fur or fine fabric. When the woman emerged from the ship, they found they could not communicate with her, for she spoke in an unknown language. Nonetheless, the woman appeared friendly enough, though she clutched a mysterious box which she kept to herself.
One version of the story states that the woman stayed on in that province where she landed, and lived to a fine old age. Other versions suggest the fishermen were quite spooked by the appearance of this stranger and thought it best to load her back onto her ship and push her back out to sea, wherein she drifted until landing on other beaches, evoking similar responses of shock and suspicion from locals along the way.
The legend of Utsuro-bune comes to us from a variety of sources, the first one appearing in 1825 in Toen shōsetsu (Tales from the Rabbit Garden) by Kyokutei Bakin. Another version appears in Hyōryū kishū (Diary and Stories of the Castaways) written in 1835 by an unknown author, and in Ume-no-chiri (Dust of the Apricot) by Nagahashi Matajirō in 1844.
It is easy to see the appeal of this story to Ufologists, who find in the spherical Utsuro-bune an object closely resembling a UFO or, more accurately, a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) as well as the alien-like description of the woman found inside. Another layer of mystery is added by researchers who find similarity between symbols found on Utsuro-bune, as depicted by artists, and those symbols associated with the Roswell incident and the Rendlesham Forest incident.
Perhaps Utsuro-bune was a bonafide extraterrestrial or, maybe, there is a perfectly reasonable terrestrial explanation to the mystery. Whatever the case may be, it is not the only incident of strange UFO encounters handed down to us through Japanese legends, as we shall examine in our next article.
This story was originally published by Andrew Arnett on April 6, 2018 @ Paranoia Magazine
Rare Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon seen over Sun City, Arizona
Rare Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon seen over Sun City, Arizona
There are a shocking amount of strange and unidentified objects flying through our skies. Unfortunately most of these objects are not seen but on April 13, 2020 a resident of Sun City, Arizona saw, in the blink of an eye, several 'black things' while filming cloud formations.
Subsequently, the photographer, started going frame by frame and was shocked to see that he caught one these 'black things' on film.
The object resembling an elongated UAP/UFO must have been supersonic to appear in just only 1 frame. Whatever it may have been, it is unconventional.
The photographer has reported the sighting to Mufon for further investigation.
NASA has detected two asteroids which are headed towards Earth at speeds of up to 29,000mph.
According to NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies, one of the approaching objects is an asteroid which will intersect Earth’s path.
The first space rock is expected to visit our planet’s path on Friday and is called 2020 GR2.
2020 GR2 is currently travelling across space at a speed of almost 10,000mph and is believed to be 102ft tall.
The asteroid is an Apollo asteroid as it follows a wide orbit around the Sun.
It will not intersect Earth’s orbit this time, but it does flies close to our planet during some visits.
2020 GR2 is currently travelling across space at a speed of almost 10,000mph and is believed to be 102ft(Image: Getty Images)
According to NASA, 2020 GR2 make its near-Earth approach on April 17 at 6.57pm BST.
The asteroid will be about 0.03188 astronomical units from the planet’s centre, which is equivalent to almost 3 million miles away.
It is not expected to return to Earth’s vicinity until February 21, 2080, after this pass.
Trailing behind 2020 GR2 is an asteroid known as 2020 GT2, which is much larger and fast than 2020 GR2.
NASA Estimated that 2020 GT2 measures about 177ft tall and it is expected to fly past Earth at a speed of over 29,000mph.
2020 GT2 follows an elongated orbit that extends beyond the path of Mars.
The asteroid is known to intersect Earth’s path as it goes around the Sun and is classified by NASA as an Apollo asteroid.
According to NASA, 2020 GT is expected to intersect Earth on April 17 at 1.07am on Saturday morning.
The asteroids are known to intersect Earth’s path(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Astronomers are currently tracking nearly 2,000 asteroids, comets and other objects that threaten our planet.
According to Nasa, a NEO is a term used to describe "comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood".
Earth hasn't seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago.
Mass UFO sightings reported over Cincinnati as mystery lights filmed vanishing from sight
Mass UFO sightings reported over Cincinnati as mystery lights filmed vanishing from sight
SOCIAL media has been flooded with reports of UFOs appearing over Cincinnati, as baffling footage appears to show lights vanishing and reappearing.
By Katy GillVideo News Reporter
Shocked witnesses Laina and Angie captured the bizarre sighting in the skies above the city in Ohio, US, on August 3.
The clip begins with for bright objects moving in a line across the grey clouds.
But, one-by-one, they start to vanish from sight.
"They're gone, I just don't know," one of the camerawomen says as the objects then re-appear.
A fifth light then emerges on the left-hand side of the screen.
YouTube conspiracist MrMBB333 who uploaded the clip and said: “They didn’t go behind the clouds, they were in front of the clouds.
“Something comes in from the left, they appear to be in a straight row and at a slight angle.”
When the conspiracist switches the light formats, he claims the footage shows the planes turning “invisible”.
BIZARRE: The bizarre sightings were captured over multiple states in the US(Image: YOUTUBE / MRMBB333 / THIRDPHASEOFMOON / ALBERT513TV)
“It was still daylight, so if they were some sort of physical craft, which I’m sure they probably were, how come you couldn’t see them?” he asks.
Another eyewitness captured the moment from a different location in Cincinnati and submitted it to YouTube star Blake Cousins, of thirdphaseofmoon.
The clip captured the lights changing from a triangular shape into a straight line before moving back.
Three of the four lights disappear for a few moments before gradually reappearing.
SIGHTINGS: The bizarre lights were spotted some 600 miles away(Image: YOUTUBE / THIRDPHASEOFMOON)
Other videos have surfaced on Twitter since the sighting on Saturday and dozens of people have claimed they saw the lights as well.
One YouTuber uploaded a clip of the lights moving throughout the sky.
The cameraman shouts: “We’ve got aliens in Cincinnati.”
A viewer commented: "I saw the same lights!"
STRANGE: The lights in the sky appeared to move(Image: YOUTUBE / MRMBB333)
Another person said: "I saw that UFO move up in the air into some clouds and then down and side to side."
Over the last month, multiple sightings of a “snake-like” UFO have hit the headlines.
A conspiracy theorist told Daily Star Online that the series of snake-shaped UFOs spotted across the US could be military craft linked to the Space Force.
The first sighting of the mysterious object happened last month when YouTuber Cody Kennedy was stunned to discover a flashing light hovering above the Mojave Dsert in California.
In a new paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Vincenzo Rizzo from the National Research Center in Cosenza, Italy, asks a provocative question: Why are many scientists reluctant to accept the use of geological methods to identify biological processes on Mars, when those methods are commonly used on Earth?
He points to a case in Germany from 1908, when a scientist by the name of Ernst Kalkowsky proposed that layered mounds, columns, and sheet-like sedimentary rocks called stromatolites were of biological nature. His contemporaries did not believe him. But Kalkowsky was later proven correct, when it was recognized that stromatolites formed because biofilms—composed of cyanobacteria and other microorganisms—trapped sediments. Stromatolites are now known to be the oldest evidence for life on Earth, stretching back at least 3.5 billion years, and they still exist in some remote regions, such as Shark Bay, Australia.
In his paper Rizzo follows in Kalkowsky’s footsteps by analyzing images from theSpirit, Opportunity, andCuriosityrovers on Mars that indicate the presence of biotic macrostructures such as stromatolites. He suggests that if no non-biological explanation can be found, the images should be considered as possible candidates for Martian stromatolites. Rizzo shows many examples of structures that have an amazing resemblance to stromatolites on Earth.
In principle I’m very skeptical of any evidence based only on visual resemblance or morphology, because the human brain has the tendency to see or fill in familiar patterns, even where they don’t quite exist. Rizzo goes well beyond appearances with his analysis, however. He made me realize that if—and it’s a big if—stromatolites did in fact exist on early Mars, they would probably look like the specimens he found in the rover images.
Carl Sagan’s saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” comes to mind. For every structure produced by biological processes, there might be some geochemical or physical process that mimics it. Some of these processes may be unknown to us on an alien planet such as Mars. On the other hand, we know more about Mars than we did in the past. We know there were lakes and possibly oceans on the planet early in its history, including at Gale Crater where the Curiosity images are from. Organic compounds have also been found at that location, and we know that rocks can travel from Earth to Mars (and vice versa), and that microbes are able to survive the trip. What, then, is the more “extraordinary” claim? That Mars during its early habitable period had life forms similar to those on Earth, which produced similar biogenic structures? Or that Mars is and always has been a dead planet?
Still, the bar for claiming to have detected life on Mars, past or present, has to be set high. Even on Earth it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a particular structure is the result of biology. Even though our ability to explore Mars has improved, we’re still not able to do what we routinely do on Earth—go out with a hand lens or other tool and study some enigmatic feature.
Future isotopic analyses of the stromatolite-like structures identified by Rizzo may strengthen or weaken the case for a biological origin (life prefers lighter isotopes, which we can use as a test). But I suspect that his hypothesis will have a similar fate as Ernst Kalkowsky’s. Only much later—likely when humans are exploring Mars—will we get a final verdict, which I hope will prove him correct.
The Cheops telescope, a project of the European Space Agency (ESA), has now joined other similar spacecraft that examine stars in the hunt for exoplanets.
This week ESA announced that the Cheops telescope had begun its science mission.
The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, or Cheops, “is the first mission dedicated to studying bright, nearby stars that are already known to host exoplanets, in order to make high-precision observations of the planet’s size as it passes in front of its host star. It will focus on planets in the super-Earth to Neptune size range, with its data enabling the bulk density of the planets to be derived – a first-step characterization towards understanding these alien worlds.”
Earlier this year Cheops took its first picture, a star known as HD 88111. The image was taken its in-orbit commissioning. According to ESA, “the star is located in the Hydra constellation, some 175 light years away from Earth, and it is not known to host any orbiting planets. To demonstrate the stability of the satellite and instrument, Cheops took an image of this star every 30 seconds for 47 consecutive hours.”
Watch the ESA feature on Cheops science mission
“The images taken by Cheops are intentionally blurred: this deliberate defocusing is at the core of the mission’s observing strategy, which improves the measurement precision by spreading the light coming from distant stars over many pixels of its detector.”
“The in-orbit commissioning phase was an exciting period, and we are pleased we were able to meet all requirements,” says Nicola Rando, Cheops project manager at ESA. “The satellite platform and instrument performed remarkably, and both the Mission and Science Operation Centres supported operations impeccably.”
Now that the science mission is underway the Cheops team published its first result, an observation of the transit of KELT-11b in front of its host star HD93396.
In this graphic, the Sun is shown as a comparison, along with the diameter of Earth and Jupiter (calculated from the mean volumetric radius). Credit: ESA.
“HD 93396 is a subgiant yellow star located 320 light-years away, slightly cooler and three times larger than our Sun. It hosts a puffy gaseous planet, KELT-11b, about 30% larger in size than Jupiter, in an orbit that is much closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun.”
“The light curve of this star shows a clear dip caused by the eight hour-long transit of KELT-11b, which enabled scientists to determine very precisely the diameter of the planet: 181,600 km – with an uncertainty just under 4300 km. The measurements made by Cheops are five times more accurate than those from Earth, providing a taster for the science to come from the Cheops mission.”
A glimpse into China's readiness to handle samples from the moon reveals steps to be taken for storage, processing and preparation of the specimens.
China's Chang'e 5 robotic moon mission is scheduled to launch later this year. That venture represents the third phase of China's Chang'e lunar exploration program: returning samples from the moon.
The reported candidate landing region for Chang'e 5 is the Rümker region, located in the northern Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"). The area is geologically complex and known for its volcanic activity.
The Chang'e 5 mission has four main parts: an orbiter, ascender, lander and Earth reentry module, which will contain up to 4.4 lbs. (2 kilograms) of lunar surface and subsurface samples.
China plans to launch the ambitious Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission later in 2020. (Image credit: Used with permission: Loren Roberts/The Planetary Society at https://www.planetary.org/)
Sample history
The former Soviet Union successfully executed three robotic lunar sample return missions. Luna 16 returned a small sample (101 grams) from Mare Fecunditatis ("Sea of Fertility") in September of 1970; in February 1972, Luna 20 returned 55 grams of soil from the Apollonius highlands region; and Luna 24 retrieved 170.1 grams of lunar samples from the moon's Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crisis") for return to Earth in August 1976.
The United States brought back much more moon material. The six Apollo missions that touched down on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972 collected 842 lbs. (382 kg) of lunar samples at different landing sites on the lunar surface, including rocks, core samples, lunar soil and dust.
China's moon rock plans
In a paper that was scheduled to be presented last month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), which ended up being cancelled due to concerns about the novel coronavirus, lead author G. L. Zhang from the National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, details the main tasks of the Ground Research Application System (GRAS) of the country's lunar exploration project.
These tasks include: receiving lunar samples from the spacecraft system; establishing special facilities and laboratories for permanent local storage of samples and backup storage at another location; and preparation and preprocessing of lunar samples.
According to the requirements of the mission, GRAS formed a complete lunar sample preprocessing, storage and preparation plan.
This plan mainly includes: handover and transfer of lunar samples from the spacecraft system to GRAS, unsealing of the sample package, sample separation (drilled sample separation and scooped sample separation), sample storage (scooped and drilled samples) and sample preparation.
A detailed pipeline for this plan is discussed in the LPSC paper.
First, the returned lunar samples will be divided into scooped samples and drilled samples after entering the lab. Both scooped and drilled samples will then be divided into four categories: permanent storage samples, backup permanent storage samples, scientific research samples and exhibition samples.
"All the tools that contact with lunar sample are made of stainless steel, Teflon, quartz glass or materials of known composition to strictly control the factors that will affect subsequent scientific analysis. The water and oxygen content in the glove box, filled with pure [nitrogen], will be strictly monitored to prevent the lunar samples from Earth pollution," the LPSC paper notes.
U.S. and China approaches
"They seem to be taking a very similar approach to how we have (and continue to) process and curate Apollo samples (and other astromaterials in our collection)," said Ryan Zeigler, NASA's Apollo Sample Curator and manager of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office of the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"There are a few minor differences, but that is to be expected since each mission has unique characteristics," Zeigler told Inside Outer Space.
The Chinese are clearly taking seriously the handling, storage and preliminary examination of a potential set of new lunar samples. The technology described is in many ways similar to the technology in the NASA Lunar Sample Laboratory, noted Carlton Allen, a former NASA Astromaterials Curator. (He is now retired.)
"The use of a nitrogen atmosphere for preparation, subdivision and storage has proven both necessary and sufficient over 50 years of lunar curation at NASA," Allen said.
Glovebox photos show that the nitrogen is maintained at positive pressure with respect to the laboratory atmosphere, which has proven important for contamination control. The importance of restricting the materials that come into contact with the samples, another important aspect of contamination control, is also recognized.
The technology described by G. L. Zhang and colleagues "has the potential to make these future lunar samples directly comparable to Apollo and Luna samples, which could significantly increase the value of each sample set," Allen said.
Leonard David is the author of the book"Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades.
Astrophotographer Chris Schur captured this view of Comet Atlas on April 9, 2020, from Payson, Arizona. "The comet appears quite diffuse now, hopefully there will be something left to see near perihelion!" Schur told Space.com via email. (Image credit: Chris Schur (http://www.schursastrophotography.com))
As I write these words, Comet ATLAS, which a month ago looked like it might evolve into the first really bright naked-eye comet in a decade, is now falling apart. It has fragmented into several pieces, quickly dispersing and not leaving behind enough material to produce any kind of significant display.
Soon after this comet was discovered near the end of 2019, it brightened at an almost furious pace. That combined with the fact that it was traveling in the same orbit as the "Great Comet" of 1844 suggested that it might be a fragment of that famously spectacular comet, and that by the spring it might evolve into a beautiful celestial showpiece that could possibly excite the world as well as inject some new interest and exposure to the science of astronomy.
Sadly, those expectations will not be met.
Once again, the fickle, unpredictable nature of comets came into play as we here at Space.com couched our initial projections as to what might — or might not — happen concerning the future of Comet ATLAS.
Back in another time, astronomers probably would have relied on one particular set of predictions as to how bright the comet might ultimately get. However, during February and especially March, in this age of an internet run amok, we were seeing radically conflicting information and opinions from both bona-fide and "wannabe" experts. Some had suggested that ATLAS might rival Venus or even the moon in brightness!
Lacking a crystal ball, we felt it best to convey the full range of possibilities, from a bright naked-eye comet adorning the western evening sky in late May, to an object that might completely fizzle out. Unfortunately, ATLAS decided to pursue its own agenda, befuddling even veteran comet observers and not behaving like any previous comet. Despite claims to the contrary by some in the mainstream media, nobody knew for certain exactly what ATLAS was going to do.
Breaking up wasn't hard to do
The Virtual Telescope Project captured this view of Comet Atlas' shattered nucleus on April 11, 2020. (Image credit: Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project (www.virtualtelescope.eu))
We had sounded an alarm in a column about the comet on April 6, when we pointed out that the amazing brightening trend of Comet ATLAS "hit a wall" on St. Patrick's Day (March 17) and by early April it actually began to fade. Prophetically, well-known comet expert John Bortle had suggested to Space.com that ATLAS could be "several magnitudes fainter than we currently assume it to be and may or may not, be large enough to survive perihelion passage."
And at the same time that our story was published, astronomers Quanzhi Ye (University of Maryland) and Qicheng Zhang (Caltech) submitted a report to The Astronomer's Telegram (a bulletin board of astronomical observations posted by accredited scientists) titled "Possible Disintegration of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)." Their findings showed that the comet's head, or coma, of the comet was rapidly elongating, suggesting that the comet nucleus was beginning to fragment.
Confirmation of this came on April 11, when images of ATLAS revealed that its nucleus had broken into at least three pieces. It is not yet clear exactly what caused the comet to break apart, but this is likely the beginning of the end for ATLAS. The comet continues to show indications of breaking up as well as slowly fading away. Indeed, as Bortle had suggested, there may be nothing left when ATLAS makes its closest pass at the sun on May 31.
But even as Comet ATLAS slowly goes to pieces, another comet has moved in to take its place.
Enter Comet SWAN
On April 11, the same day that ATLAS broke into three pieces, amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo discovered a new comet while looking at data from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Con Stoitsis@vivstoitsis
Michael Mattiazzo’s new SWAN comet (C/2020 F8?) is surprisingly bright and visible in 15x70 binoculars, despite the moon. Here is an 6 minute exposure. Image Terry Lovejoy
The comet suddenly appeared in images from SOHO's Solar Wind ANisotropies instrument, which goes by the acronym "SWAN." Mattiazzo has discovered eight comets since 2004 by carefully checking SWAN data most every day.
SOHO's SWAN instrument was not designed to find comets; its job is to survey the solar system for hydrogen. But because the comet is spewing a fairly significant amount of hydrogen in the form of water ice, it was picked up by SWAN.
Coincidentally, Mattiazzo lives in Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia.
A prehistoric visitor
The new comet appears to be traveling in a very elongated ellipse. For fun, I fed its orbital elements, which includes the eccentricity of its path around the sun, into an orbital simulator.
My simulation suggests Comet SWAN is traveling around the sun in a period of about 25 million years. This means that the last time it swept through the inner solar system may have been during the Oligocene Epoch, when Paraceratherium, a genus of hornless rhinoceros and one of the largest terrestrial mammals, was walking the Earth.
Future developments
This 3D orbit animation shows the path that Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) will take around the sun between April 2020 and March 2021. Comet SWAN is expected to reach perihelion, its closest point to the sun, around May 27, 2020 — two weeks after its closest approach to Earth. The comet's steep orbit is inclined 111 degrees relative to the ecliptic plane. (Image credit: NASA JPL)
Currently, Comet SWAN is only accessible to those south of the equator. It is currently located in the faint constellation of Sculptor, not far from the first-magnitude star Fomalhaut. As of April 16 it was shining at magnitude +7.8 — easy enough to pick up in good binoculars — and displaying a head roughly one-sixth the apparent width of the moon.
The question is, will SWAN evolve into a bright object? The consensus is: "maybe." Like ATLAS, Comet SWAN appears to be a relatively small comet. It will pass closest to Earth on May 12 at a distance of 51.8 million miles (83.3 million kilometers), and it will be at its closest point to the sun (called perihelion) on May 27, when it will be 40 million miles (64.4 million km) away from our star.
Assuming Comet SWAN continues to brighten at its current pace, it could reach third magnitude during the final week of May. That would make it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye just when those of us in the Northern Hemisphere might have an opportunity to see it, both very low in west-northwest sky after sunset and again very low in the east-northeast sky before sunrise.
But the fact that the comet appeared quite suddenly suggests that it might be undergoing an outburst in brightness and that after a few days or weeks, SWAN might undergo a fade-down — or even possibly break up in much the same fashion as did Comet ATLAS.
In other words, SWAN ultimately could end up as an "ugly duckling."
We will be monitoring Comet SWAN closely in the coming weeks and will provide another update regarding its development next month. So stay tuned!
Editor's note: If you have an amazing comet photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, you can send images and comments to spacephotos@futurenet.com.
The Mysterious Aboriginal Rock Art of the Wandjinas
The Mysterious Aboriginal Rock Art of the Wandjinas
One of the most intriguing and perplexing legends of the Australian Aboriginal people is that of the Wandjinas, the supreme spirit beings and creators of the land and people. The land of the Wandjina is a vast area of about 200,000 square kilometres of lands, waters, sea and islands in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia with continuous culture dating back at least 60,000 years but probably much older. Here, traditional Aboriginal law and culture are still active and alive.
The Worora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people are the three Wandjina tribes – these tribal groups are the custodians of the oldest known figurative art which is scattered throughout the Kimberley.
Perhaps what is most interesting about their figurative art painted on rocks and in caves is the way in which they have represented the Wandjinas - white faces, devoid of a mouth, large black eyes, and a head surrounded by a halo or some type of helmet.
The ancient paintings have received all manner of interpretations from stylized representations of people or even owls, to ancient astronaut theories which suggest that extraterrestrial beings visited Earth tens of thousands of years ago and had direct contact with the inhabitants. Some believe that the extraterrestrials even played a direct role in creation, which is reflected not only in the Dreamtime stories of the Aboriginals but also the myths and legends of many ancient civilizations around the world.
One could be forgiven for thinking that there is indeed a remarkable similarity between the Wandjinas and the stereotypical image of an extraterrestrial which we see time and again in art, movies and witness accounts. And many raise logical questions such as, why were the Wandjinas painted with white skin if it was representing another Aboriginal, all of whom had black skin? Why were the eyes always painted so disproportionate to the face and nose? And why were they all painted without a mouth?
But what is even more surprising is the oral account of the Wandjinas which has been passed from generation to generation as all of the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories have.
The story goes like this – the Wandjina were “sky-beings” or “spirits from the clouds” who came down from the Milky Way during Dreamtime and created the Earth and all its inhabitants. Then Wandjina looked upon the inhabitants and realised the enormity of the task and returned home to bring more Wandjinas. With the aid of the Dreamtime snake, the Wandjina descended and spent their Dreamtime creating, teaching and being Gods to the Aboriginals whom they created. After some time, the Wandjinas disappeared. They descended into the earth and since then, have lived at the bottom of the water source associated with each of the paintings. There, they continually produce new ‘child-seeds’, which are regarded as the source of all human life. Some Wandjina also returned to the sky, and can now be seen at night as lights moving high above the earth.
Aboriginal people, in the Kimberley also believe that even after they disappeared, the Wandjina continued to control everything that happened on the land and in the sky and sea.
Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, rock art and cave paintings have often been considered more myth then reality, like the stories we find in the teachings of modern day religions. However, recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed the reality of at least some of the Dreamtime stories. For example, those that spoke of huge mammals walking the Earth were once considered fantasy. But discoveries of animal fossils belonging to ‘mega fauna’ including giant mammals confirmed that these stories were accounts of real life events, passed down by generations over tens of thousands of years.
Interestingly and of course controversially, objects have been found on geographical sites which suggest the area had been inhabited as long ago as 174,000 B.C. This contradicts the theory that Aboriginals had their routes in Africa and that inhabitants travelled from Africa to Australia about 60,000 years ago. Other researchers have suggested that Homo sapiens actually originated in Australia .
Today, the Aboriginal tribes of the Worora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul still revere the Wandjina and only certain individuals are given permission to paint them. It is said that the Wandjina could punish those who broke the law with floods, lightening and cyclones and the paintings of the Wandjina are believed to possess these powers, therefore according to the Aboriginals they are always to be approached and treated respectfully.
Why would ancient Aboriginal people create so-called myths or fanciful stories if it meant so much to them and remains so important to their culture to this day? So many myths and legends of the past have already been proven true by archaeological findings, such as the legend of the city of Troy , the labyrinth of the Minotaur, Norse legends of navigational crystals and many more. Could it not be that the Aboriginal people of the time were simply telling of events as they saw them and how they understood them at the time? Perhaps one day we will uncover the answers to these intriguing questions.
Mystery Deepens: For the Second Time Something Exploded on the Far Side of the Sun
Mystery Deepens: For the Second Time Something Exploded on the Far Side of the Sun
On March 20, 2020, something exploded on the far side of the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) saw the debris flying over the sun's eastern limb.
Now on April 12, 2020, something exploded on the far side of the sun again. The blast hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. Two days later on April 14, 2020 there was a large solar explosion too. Coronagraph images from NASA's STEREO A probe confirm that a CME emerged from the blast site.
Two mysterious explosions within one month on the far side of the sun is very strange. But what caused the explosions?
It is suggested that it could be a far side sunspot or collapsing filaments but what about, as we have suggested in our first article - Mysterious explosion on the far side of the Sun - if these mysterious explosions on the far side of the sun are caused by an unknown source which has more devastating energy than anything we have ever seen so far.
April 2020: Dr. Steven Greer LIVE on The Science of Consciousness
April 2020: Dr. Steven Greer LIVE on The Science of Consciousness
Presented by Dr. Steven Greer. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun (narrated by Jeremy Piven) features groundbreaking video and photographic evidence and supporting interviews from prominent figures such as Adam Curry of Princeton’s PEAR Lab; legendary civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan, and Dr. Russell Targ, who headed the CIA’s top-secret remote viewing program. Their message: For thousands of people, contact has begun. This is their story. Dr. Greer’s previous works, Sirius and Unacknowledged, broke crowdfunding records and ignited a grassroots movement. In this film, Dr. Greer presents the most dangerous information that the architects of secrecy don’t want you to know: how forgotten spiritual knowledge holds the key to humans initiating contact with advanced ET civilizations.
Canal boat owner Gerry Underwood, 55, spotted the object at around 8pm on Wednesday
A flaming red UFO was spotted circling the skies over Cambridgeshire before disappearing behind some trees.
It was spotted by a stunned canal boat owner in Stretham, around 8pm on Wednesday, who says he watched its eerie descent for 20 minutes.
Gerry Underwood, 55, believes the flaming object was "very big" too big to have been a shooting star and created a massive "chemtrail".
Gerry who lives on his boat with partner partner Melanie, told CambridgeshireLive they were outside "having a small fire" when the mysterious object flew into view.
He said: “It looked like a very thick chemtrail to start with. It looked like a short, skinny cloud.
“It wasn’t moving quickly at all. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a meteorite, because they are gone in seconds.
The mysterious flaming object generated a ‘very big’ trail across the sky(Image: Cambs News/BPM MEDIA)
“We have seen hundreds of shooting stars, but this definitely wasn’t that either.
“This was coming down very slowly and spiralling. It started to glow orange as you can see in the pictures.
“There were flames coming out of the back of it as well. It was really unusual.”
Gerry took several pictures of the burning entity dropping through the sky. A huge plume of smoke can be seen behind it as it descends into the distance.
Gerry said he watched the unidentified object fall through the sky for "between 10 and 20 minutes," as it was coming down slowly.
Eventually, the burning mass vanished behind the trees in the distance.
Gerry said he was looking towards Huntingdon as he watched it descend, but stressed the object might have landed "well beyond that."
He said: “The sheer size of it is what’s got me. When you look at the pictures, they show the trees in the foreground and it’s way beyond that, it was very big.
“It landed beyond the horizon, that’s how big it was - we couldn’t see it land.”
The object is still to be identified but a similar report has recently been given from Bristol
Gerry compared his sighting to a similar incident in Bristol just a few days ago.
He said: “They have put it down as a UFO on fire, which I don’t think this was, but it was so, so bright.
“We see a lot of strange things down the river, but that’s the first time we’ve ever seen something like that.”
Cylinder UFO Uncloaks Near Space Station, NASA Cuts Transmission! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Cylinder UFO Uncloaks Near Space Station, NASA Cuts Transmission! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 2020
Location of sighting: Earths orbit at ISS
Source:NASA Live Cams
Hey guys, I was looking at the NASA live cams of the space station and noticed something in the far left side of the screen. As I watched...just as the cylinder object was just about to come into focus...NASA cut transmission and went to red screen. Red screen is the updated old blue screen. So I wasn't sure it was a UFO at first, but when NASA also noticed it and went to red sceen...it sealed the deal. NASA was put effort into hiding this object from the public, therefore this object must have been a threat to national security. Kinda cool wouldn't you say? The object looks solid, its edges look like the edges of the space station arm...the object is undeniably solid. The sunlit side of the earth coming into view caused the UFOs shields to malfunction for a short time. That is why we saw it. Just as I have said a hundred times before, if you want to see a UFO, watch a few sunsets...I promise you will see one, but bring a camera or your friends will never believe you.
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
A few terms contributing to the zero-point energy in quantum electrodynamics. Although we frequently... [+]
R. L. JAFFE; ARXIV:0503158
Imagine, if you can, what it would mean to have a Universe with absolutely nothing in it. You could take all the various quanta of matter and energy and remove them, leaving a Universe with no particles or antiparticles of any type. You could remove any sources of gravitation or spatial curvature, reducing your Universe to nothing more than purely empty space. You could shield the Universe from any external electric, magnetic, or fields that exert a nuclear force, eliminating any possible influence they may have on the spacetime you're considering. Even if you do all that, you still wouldn't get "zero" on your balance sheet for the energy of the Universe.
That's what Niels Hermes wants to know, as he writes in to ask:
Would it be possible to shine a light on the concept of zero point energy?
It's a challenging concept, but let's take a crack at it.
A scalar field φ in a false vacuum. Note that the energy E is higher than that in the true vacuum or... [+]
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER STANNERE
For any physical system we can dream up, there's always going to be at least one configuration that we can place it in that will have the lowest total amount of energy. For a series of masses isolated from the rest of the Universe, that's a black hole. For a proton and an electron, that's a hydrogen atom in the ground (i.e., lowest-energy) state. And for the Universe itself, that's to set up empty space in the absence of any external fields or sources.
That lowest-energy state is known as the zero-point energy state. For a long time, scientists who studied the Universe assumed that the zero-point energy was zero. Not for any physical reason, mind you, but because we only had two ways to attempt to arrive at it, and both of them gave answers that pointed to problems with any value other than zero.
Countless scientific tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity have been performed,... [+]
LIGO SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION / T. PYLE / CALTECH / MIT
The first time the idea of a zero-point energy to space arose was in the context of Einstein's (then-new) theory of gravity: General Relativity. According to Einstein, the curvature of space determines the future behavior of matter and energy in the Universe, and the presence of matter and energy determines the curvature of space.
Well, almost. The presence of matter and energy determines the curvature of space almost completely, but you are free to add a constant to space itself. (Those of you who've taken calculus will recognize this constant as something that arises whenever you do an integral: you determine the answer completely, up to an additive constant, "plus c.") That constant, whatever it is, represents the zero-point energy of space. When we discovered the expanding Universe, the constant was completely unnecessary, and was thrown away as such for some 60+ years.
Today, Feynman diagrams are used in calculating every fundamental interaction spanning the strong,... [+]
DE CARVALHO, VANUILDO S. ET AL. NUCL.PHYS. B875 (2013) 738-756
The second time the idea of zero-point energy showed up was when quantum field theory rose to prominence. In addition to all of the ways that particles could interact with one another through the quantum fields permeating the Universe, there were also "vacuum" contributions, which represented how quantum fields in the vacuum of space behaved.
Individual channels contributed enormous amounts to what we called the "vacuum expectation value" of these fields, which were typically some ~120 orders of magnitude greater than the observational limits. But some were positive and some were negative, and many assumed that they'd all cancel out. Additionally, some field theories were proven to be exactly equivalent to free theories (whose vacuum expectation values were zero), and so again, we assumed that the zero-point energy was zero.
Whether the expansion of the Universe accelerates or decelerates depends not only on the energy... [+]
NASA & ESA / E. SIEGEL
And then, at the very end of the 20th century, the unthinkable happened. We had always anticipated that the Universe was expanding, that gravity was working to slow the expansion, and that either:
gravitation would win and the expansion would reverse,
the expansion would win and continue to slow forever and ever,
or they would balance exactly, and the expansion would asymptote to zero but never quite reverse.
But then we discovered that the expansion of the Universe wasn't slowing down at all, but that distant galaxies were receding from us faster and faster as time went on. The Universe didn't just have matter and radiation in it, but appeared to have a new form of energy in it: what we now call dark energy. In the 22 years since that first discovery occurred, not only has dark energy been confirmed by many lines of evidence, but it's been demonstrably shown to be indistinguishable, to great precision, from a cosmological constant.
The blue "shading" represent the possible uncertainties in how the dark energy density was/will be... [+]
QUANTUM STORIES
This is why we care about the zero-point energy of space. Observations from many lines of evidence — including the cosmic microwave background, distant sources of light (like supernovae), and the clustering of galaxies in the Universe — all point to the same tiny, non-zero value of the amount of dark energy in the Universe. It appears to be a form of energy inherent to space itself, it appears not to change with time, it appears to be of a constant density everywhere and always, and we don't know what's causing it.
That's why we have such a strong motivation to try and understand what the zero-point energy of space is: precisely because we measure the Universe's expansion, which depends on it, to be inconsistent with a value of zero for this quantity. Just as hydrogen atoms have a finite energy to their ground state, so must the ground state energy of empty space itself.
Instead of adding in a cosmological constant, modern dark energy is treated as just another... [+]
That brings us to the big question: why? Why is the zero-point energy of space the value that it is? There are many plausible answers, but each one of them is dissatisfying in some way.
It could be that the cosmological constant from General Relativity simply has the positive value that it does. It's allowed to take on any value, and everything that we observe is consistent with the zero-point energy of space having a small, constant, positive value since the start of the hot Big Bang. This is appealing because it doesn't need to invoke any new physics: we can explain what we observe by setting one free parameter equal to the correct observed value. But it's dissatisfying because there's no mechanism or reasoning to help us understand why it has the value that it does.
Visualization of a quantum field theory calculation showing virtual particles in the quantum vacuum.... [+]
DEREK LEINWEBER
Alternately, it could be that the zero-point energy of all the quantum fields permeating the Universe sum up to the observed value required for dark energy. Perhaps, if we knew how to calculate this value correctly, we'd arrive at the correct answer.
The problem with this scenario is that we don't know how to do this calculation, and all of our attempts give us an answer that's ridiculously too large. It's possible that there's an almost-perfect-but-not-quite cancellation that will occur, leading us to the correct value, but that's a tough proposition to bet on. "We don't know how to do this, and the task seems difficult but isn't proven to be impossible," isn't exactly a compelling line of thought.
Quantum gravity tries to combine Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.... [+]
SLAC NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY
But there are always "novel physics" scenarios to consider as well. It's possible that there's no cosmological constant and no contribution to the zero-point energy from the quantum fields we know. We could instead postulate a new type of field in the Universe, which could be:
a contribution from whatever quantum theory of gravity turns out to be correct,
a leftover relic from an earlier broken symmetry in the Universe (from the grand unification scale, the Higgs scale, the neutrino sector, etc.) that simply sets the zero-point energy to its presently non-zero value,
that there's a relic amount of energy that didn't quite go to zero from our earlier inflationary epoch,
or that the highly speculative idea of the string landscape, which itself requires many unproven, evidence-free assumptions about how the Universe behaved prior to the hot Big Bang, simply "landed on the value we see today" for the value of the zero-point energy (or vacuum expectation value) of empty space.
In the absence of a solution, all possibilities — no matter how ill-motivated they appear — ought to be considered.
On a fundamental level, even purely empty space is still filled with quantum fields, which affect... [+]
NASA/CXC/M.WEISS
But no matter what the answer to the zero-point energy puzzle is, there are two facts we cannot deny. The first is that dark energy is real, corroborated by a slew of independent lines of evidence that our Universe simply cannot do without. It is consistent with having a constant value everywhere in space and throughout time: it behaves in a fashion that's indistinguishable from space having a non-zero, constant zero-point energy.
The second fact is that, whatever the solution is, we still must reckon with the presence of quantum fields — mandated by the laws of physics — permeating our Universe. Until we know how to calculate that value, any proposed solution requires that we make an unfounded assumption for whatever that value is. The zero-point energy of empty space is inconsistent with a value of zero. There are many possible origins of this non-zero value, but its ultimate cause still remains a mystery.
FBI Files: Northwestern astronomer J. Allen Hynek wrote about ‘UFO phenomenon’ for the FBI
The Chicago-born scientist, once a familiar name to those studying UFOs, was described in FBI files as a man ‘of good character’ and ‘person of good habits.’
Back when supposed UFO sightings were becoming common, two people in an Air Force control tower reported seeing an object resembling “a lighted upended automobile” that the Air Force later said it determined was an aircraft.
But J. Allen Hynek, a Chicago-born astronomer and Northwestern University professor who studied UFO reports for the Air Force, wasn’t convinced.
“So, the witnesses were solid, the radar operator competent, and the object unidentifiable as any other phenomenon, and therefore the object had to be an aircraft,” Hynek wrote.
He studied at the University of Chicago, taught at Northwestern and Ohio State University and founded the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in the Chicago area. He approached the topic of UFOs with a healthy skepticism, according to Mark Rodeghier, the center’s scientific director.
“He absolutely came into the subject as highly skeptical at the phenomenon, as almost every scientist was back then,” Rodeghier says. “He was a scientist dedicated to the data. He, over time, said, ‘Wait a minute, not only can I not explain this, this stuff can’t be explained.’ ”
J. Allen Hynek, who consulted with the Air Force about reports of unidentified flying objects, was vetted by the FBI, whose files say agents were told he was “of good character.” FBI
Paul Hynek, one of Hynek’s five children, says his father “wanted to go to the edges of mainstream science and see what’s going on there and push things a little further” but “would give an unbiased look.”
From 1947 to 1969, more than 12,000 UFO sightings were reported, and 701 were categorized as “unidentified,” according to FBI records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, many of which are now part of the newspaper’s “The FBI Files” database.
Hynek died in 1986 at 76. The FBI often will agree, on request, to release records it maintained on people who have died.
Hynek’s FBI files show he was vetted by the FBI, which reported it got references commending him as a man “of good character” and a “person of good habits.”
Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s initiative that investigated UFOs, ended in 1969, concluding that, whatever they were, supposed UFOs didn’t pose any threat to national security.
Hynek “strongly resisted accepting the idea that a genuine UFO phenomenon might exist,” according to his text “Twenty-One Years of UFO Reports.” He wrote that he studied UFO reports based on “strangeness” and “probability,” analyzing which reports seemed unexplainable and the objectivity of the people who reported a UFO sighting.
Though J. Allen Hynek ‘s name was associated in the public eye with UFOs, he studied reports of unidentified flying objects with a sense of skepticism, according to his son Paul Hynek. Provided
The FBI appeared to entertain the possibility UFOs existed. Hynek’s article “The UFO Mystery” was published in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in February 1975.
One of the FBI’s records on J. Allen Hynek. FBI
“There are many misconceptions about the UFO phenomenon held generally by those who have never examined the data,” Hynek wrote. “The first of these is, of course, that UFO reports are made mainly by crackpots. The facts are quite otherwise.”
J. Allen Hynek in 1977. He was a technical adviser and consultant for the Steven Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Sun-Times file
Melville Ulmer, a physics and astronomy professor at Northwestern who worked with him for about six years, says Hynek was convinced there was a UFO phenomenon, though not that it necessarily was connected to extraterrestrial life.
J. Allen Hynek in 1966, taking notes on a reported UFO sighting in Michigan. Before coming to Northwestern University, where he chaired the astronomy department, his past posts included having been associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University. Sun-Times file
“He wasn’t committing himself to the conclusion that it was, but he did have the conclusion that so many people can’t be having this experience without there being some explanation,” Ulmer says.
According to Ulmer, Hynek thought the phenomenon could have been a mass psychological effect.
Creepy, scary UFO sightings reported in Texas last year
Creepy, scary UFO sightings reported in Texas last year
Ismael Perez
In the minutes leading up to 2019, someone witnessed fiery orange lights flying soundlessly at a low altitude over San Antonio.
And that was just the beginning of numerous reports of unidentified flying objects spotted in Texas skies last year.
Three months into the year, there have been at least 24 reported unidentified flying objects reported throughout the state, according to the National UFO Reporting Center. The reports range from seeing strange lights to crafts hovering above people's cars and houses.
Note: Actual sightings are not pictured below.
UNKNOWN/P-I FILE
Allen, Jan. 18
"It zig-zagged across the sky in fluid and precise motions moving back behind houses and extremely close to the total five people around."
B/W P-I FILE
Austin, Jan. 20
"This is the second time I have witnessed such a craft hovering generally above my house."
Lance Iversen
Burleson, Jan. 23
“6 flickering red/white lights linked together in a broken V, converged to form a Hexagon then flew away”
IDAHO STATESMAN / Associated Press
Austin, Feb. 15
“Two glowing spheres seen in sky north of the airport at first moving together in the same direction. Emitting yellow to orange light which was very different than the lights of a jetliner that was on approach to the airport.”
AP
Tolar, Feb. 22
“An object with 3 lights flew over our car tonight.”
Josie Auten
Huffman, Feb. 25 "A huge saucer/droid type with lots of lights blinking and floating low and no noise seemed to be following my car late at night.
ARMEND NIMANI / AFP / Getty Images
The Woodlands, March 15
“I noticed a large bluish green light shaped like a ball moving smooth and extremely fast.”
Aaron Foster/Getty Images
Hurst, March 29
“Look up and there's 4 white lights not blinking in a diagonal line, spaced out evenly maybe 400 to 500 feet above. With a dimmed light to the right.”
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Cave excavation yields braincases from both Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus
Two hominid fossils unearthed in a South African cave, including this Homo erectus braincase, point to a major evolutionary shift that occurred around 2 million years ago.
Members of three different hominid lines clustered at the bottom of Africa around 2 million years ago, signaling an evolutionary swing propelled by the spread of a highly successful, humanlike species, new fossil discoveries suggest. It’s unclear, though, if the three ancient populations inhabited the region at precisely the same time.
Excavations at Drimolen, a set of caves in South Africa, uncovered two fossil braincases, one from Homo erectus and the other from Paranthropus robustus, say paleoanthropologist Andy Herries of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues. Both finds date to between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years ago, the scientists report in the April 3 Science.
The H. erectus fossil comes from a child who displayed a long, low braincase typical of adults from that species. The P. robustus braincase is that of an adult.
Researchers previously determined that two Australopithecus species, A. africanus and A. sediba (SN: 7/25/13), inhabited nearby parts of South Africa approximately 2 million years ago.
Taken together, these discoveries indicate that a major transition in hominid evolution occurred in southern Africa between around 2.1 million and 1.9 million years ago, Herries’ team says. During that stretch, climate and habitat fluctuations drove Australopithecus species to extinction. H. erectus and P. robustus weathered those ecological challenges, possibly outcompeting Australopithecus for limited resources, the researchers speculate.
It’s unclear whether members of the three hominid lines ever encountered each other during that transition period.
Excavators at South Africa’s Drimolen site, shown with some of the animal bones they have found, have recovered roughly 2-million-year-old fossils of two hominid species, Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus.A. HERRIES
“These spectacular discoveries confirm what some of us have expected for some time, that three genera of [hominids] coexisted in southern Africa,” says paleoanthropologist Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the research.
Earlier work at several other South African cave sites had suggested that H. erectus, P. robustus and A. sediba all dated to nearly 2 million years ago. But many fossils from the first two species are fragmentary, and precise dating of cave sediments that held those finds has proven difficult.
Herries’ team dated the fossil braincases at Drimolen using two techniques for calculating the time since sediments formed just below and above where the specimens were found. Evidence of previously dated reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in Drimolen sediment helped to confirm age estimates for the fossils.
The South African H. erectus fossils may be slightly older than those of A. sediba, but a controversial proposal that A. sediba was an ancestor of the Homo genus remains in play, de Ruiter says. Researchers don’t know how much earlier than 2 million years ago A. sediba originated or how far it ranged beyond its one known fossil site in South Africa. Even so, some other researchers consider A. sediba a dead-end species and regard East Africa as the best bet for where Homo originated.
Unearthing an H. erectus fossil dating to around 2 million years ago in South Africa considerably expands that species’ range at an early stage of its evolution, says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. H. erectus fossils in western Asia date to about 1.8 million years ago (SN: 10/17/13). And H. erectus may have made 2.1-million-year-old stone tools in China (SN: 7/11/18).
“It’s possible that this child from Drimolen is the earliest-known representative of the first global [hominid] species,” says Hawks, who did not participate in the new study.
H. erectus’ last known appearance was as late as 108,000 years ago on an Indonesian island, meaning it survived about 2 million years (SN: 12/18/19).
The H. erectus fossil found at Drimolen “marks the beginning of the most successful species of Homo ever known — present company included,” writes paleoanthropologist Susan Antón of New York University in a commentary published with the new Science report.
When giant stars eat giant planets, their starlight may shine a bit less brightly. That dimming could affect how astronomers measure distances across the universe — and possibly even put past measurements in doubt.
“You would think the planet would be a small perturbation to the star,” says astrophysicist Licia Verde. “It turns out that it’s not.” Those perturbations may even help explain why estimates for how fast the universe is expanding disagree, Verde and her colleagues argue in a paper posted March 25 at arXiv.org.
When stars similar in mass to the sun burn through most of the hydrogen in their cores, their outer layers puff up until the stars are hundreds of times their original sizes, becoming red giants. At a certain core density, red giants were all thought to reach the same peak brightness.
That uniform brightness has helped astronomers estimate cosmic distances. It’s hard to know how far away a star is without knowing its intrinsic brightness — a star may appear dim because it’s very far away, or just because it’s dim, or both. Because red giants always peak at a certain brightness, they can act as distance markers across the universe, giving astronomers cosmic landmarks to measure the space between Earth and far-off galaxies.
Astronomers have seen signs that red giants engulf nearby planets while expanding (SN: 12/21/11). Verde and astrophysicist Raul Jimenez, both of the University of Barcelona, along with Uffe Gråe Jørgensen, an astrophysicist at the University of Copenhagen, wondered if those planetary meals could change how the star shines. If so, that would mean a red giant’s peak brightness is a little less reliable as a uniform constant than previously thought.
There are a few different ways a planet could change the star’s brightness, the team reasoned: If the planet gave the star’s core more matter to burn, that could turn up the lights, making the star seem nearer than it is. Or eating a planet could stir up the star’s outer gas layers in a way that made light particles, or photons, bounce around more within the star’s atmosphere. Then fewer photons would escape, and the star would appear dimmer.
Computer simulations to test these scenarios would be slow and expensive. So the team did some rough calculations to see if simulations would even be worth it. And in fact, those calculations showed that the extra mass from ingesting a planet doesn’t matter very much on its own. But if a large enough planet plunges into the star at high speed, it could stir up the star’s outer layers “like a spoon in a teacup,” Jimenez says. In that scenario, the star’s brightness drops by up to 5 percent, the team estimates.
That slight shift could make a big difference to cosmology, and particularly to estimates of the universe’s expansion rate — a number known as the Hubble constant. To measure the Hubble constant, astronomers need to know precisely how fast cosmic objects appear to be receding thanks to cosmic expansion, as well as how far those objects actually are from Earth.
So astronomers use objects with known luminosities as so-called “standard candles” to help determine cosmic distances. Red giants are one example; supernovas and stars called Cepheids are others.
But measurements using different candles have resulted in different estimates for the Hubble constant. Another method using details of how matter was distributed in the very early universe gave yet another Hubble constant value. The discrepancies have led to a crisis in cosmology: Either some of the measurements are wrong, or the universe behaved differently in its early epochs than it does today. That would mean long-held ideas about how the universe formed and evolved may need revision (SN: 7/30/19).
“People believe [the mismatch] could be a signature of new physics,” Jimenez says. “That’s the excitement.”
Cosmologist Wendy Freedman of the University of Chicago, who measured the Hubble constant using red giant stars, thinks more detailed studies are needed to figure out if planetary meals are a problem for the Hubble constant estimate. Even if some stars shine less brightly because they’ve ingested a planet, that won’t make a difference if the same thing is happening in every galaxy, she notes.
Astronomers also have used both Cepheids and red giants in a single galaxy to measure that galaxy’s distance from Earth, and the two methods give the same answer. That suggests cosmologists might not need to worry about red stars’ dimming after devouring planets.
“Theoretical components and constraints you can get from existing observations suggest that, at the moment, this is not a serious issue,” Freedman says.
Messages sent by aliens from space could destroy life as we know it on Earth if we're not careful about how we read them, scientists have warned.
A new paper explores how we might read and understand a message that came to us from space. And it finds that it would be impossible to know that a message was dangerous before we opened it.
In fact, the messages are so dangerous that it would be safest to simply discard them without ever reading them, scientists have warned.
It's unlikely that any alien civilisation we came into contact with would be harmful, researchers Michael Hippke and John G. Learned write in a new study posted on arXiv.org. But since it's impossible to know what the message would say before we read it, the safest scenario would be to avoid doing so entirely.
"After all, it is cheaper for ETI to send a malicious message to eradicate humans compared to sending battleships," the researchers write.
Some have suggested that such a message would have to be "decontaminated" before we actually read it, to ensure that the danger was understood and removed before people came to read it. But the paper – titled "Interstellar communication. IX. Message decontamination is impossible" – suggests that it would be practically impossible to remove that danger.
The theory of “panspermia”, which suggests life originated somewhere other than Earth, has existed in one form or another for decades, with scientists proposing different mechanisms for the interstellar dispersal of life over the years.
Upon the arrival of Oumuamua, astronomers Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb saw an opportunity to examine this theory in more detail.
“In principle life can be transferred between planets through rocks; we know that rocks from Mars for example reach the Earth and vice versa,” Professor Loeb told The Independent.
He noted that some creatures on Earth, such as microscopic tardigrades, are capable of surviving the kind of extreme environments found in space. Alternatively, chemical “seeds” for life could be delivered inside rocks from distant solar systems.
“The solar system acts as a fishing net – it capture objects from interstellar space that belong to other planetary systems, and Oumuamua is the first object discovered to originate from outside the solar system.”
While astronomers know there are objects in our solar system that originated elsewhere, calculating their abundance has historically been tricky because – prior to our recent visitor – they had never been observed before.
“Now with Oumuamua we have a data point, a calibration of that abundance,” said Professor Loeb.
Asteroids and other space debris can enter our solar system, as Oumuamua did, and become trapped there due to the gravity of the Sun and Jupiter.
“At any given time you should have thousands of objects trapped from interstellar space, and the objects – if they came from another planet that had life – could in principle transfer the life into the solar system, for example by colliding with a planet like the Earth,” said Professor Loeb.
Using computer models, the scientists calculated the number of objects that would have been pulled into our vicinity prior to the emergence of life on Earth.
They found that around 400 interstellar objects 100 metres in size, and 10 objects about a kilometre in size, could have struck the planet prior to the emergence of life 3.8 billion years ago.
The study is currently awaiting publication in The Astrophysical Journal, and is available as a pre-print.
Besides understanding our own origins, the Harvard researchers suggested their work could also have a role in the search for alien life.
If astronomers can determine which of the objects in our solar system originated elsewhere, by analysing their chemical composition for example, it might be possible to find aliens in our own backyard.
“It’s not just primitive life; we could also look for artefacts associated with intelligence life,” said Professor Loeb. “There is a possibility that advanced civilisations could produce robotic spacecraft that roam through interstellar space and every now and again one of these could be trapped in the solar system.”
This work could make the search for alien life considerably easier.
“Instead of travelling in interstellar space, going to another planetary system we can actually just wait and see what our ‘fishing net’ captures in our own neighbourhood, and examine the fish that are in that net,” said Professor Loeb.
On tonight’s Black Files Declassified, the fans of anything alien and UFO will love the coverage that the series gives the unexplained sightings by the US military that have been kept under wraps from the media and the general public.
Weekly Black Files Declassified aims to reveal the most clandestine of all government programs told from the vantage of a former CIA operative who worked on some of these secretive initiatives.
From the creepy and inexplicable to the jaw-dropping technological advances, this series will open your eyes to what our government is up to with monies earmarked for this hidden research and secretive departments.
A strange UFO sighting alerts the US Military, but why are they keeping it from the public? Pic credit: Science Channel
The episode tonight examines strange unexplained UFO sightings by our military during regular air flight exercises.
The exclusive clip opens in November 2004, described by Baker as a clear sunny day off the coast of San Diego, California.
Until something odd occurs.
Commander David Fravor pilots an F18 off the USS Nimitz at near Mach 1 speed. The Navy striker has logged thousands of hours flying hundreds of combat missions.
But suddenly, his training exercise is canceled, and he receives orders to investigate an air threat.
Baker notes that he’s confronted dozens of them, but nothing like this.
This incredible video shown on the episode tonight is one of three released by the Department of Defense.
The New York Times broke the story, describing a US government-funded program investigating UFOs run by military intelligence deep within the Pentagon.
About Black Files Declassified
Each week, Mike will sort the truth behind some of the world’s most puzzling and unimaginable mysteries.
In the first episode, Mike revealed a top-secret aviation program funded by a well-hidden money trail that will change the game for flight transportation by attaining Mach 5 speeds, at 4,000 mph.
That episode explored the ramifications of that hypersonic speed technology falling into the wrong hands.
Also, in that episode, Mike researched the black files and revealed how a few nations are already working on hypersonic missiles, capable of reaching their target in minutes, and not to frighten you, but are described as “completely unstoppable.”
Other future episodes cover a space-based military program to an unbeatable army with otherworldly strength and the ability to kill with their minds, and Mike will open the kimonos up of these crazy sounding programs that sound more like science fiction than truth.
And another episode will see Mike dive into a clandestine program that fans of Ancient Aliens will love.
He investigates the program tasked to investigate alien sightings and a program dedicated to researching, tracking, and identifying UFOs. We find out that most government officials do not even know this exists.
Is there truth that the government has already captured hostile spycraft?
Science Channel said in a press release:
“A series of recently released videos filmed by the Department of Defense show a technology that scientists and aviation experts agree is beyond our capability and very possibly, something from beyond our world.
Mike Baker looks into one of the most fascinating subjects of our time.
The series comes from Espiritus Productions and Spark TV. For Espiritus Productions, the executive producers are Michelle and Bill Katz. For Spark TV, the executive producer is Paul Wooding.
For Science Channel, Wyatt Channell is the executive producer, and Andrew Lessner is the producer.
Black Files Declassified airs Thursday at 10/9c on Science Channel.
Pentagon UFO Program Interested in Psychic Child’s Abilities says DeLonge
Pentagon UFO Program Interested in Psychic Child’s Abilities says DeLonge
Recently, Tom DeLonge took part in a video interview with 91X, a mexican owned english language radio station that broadcasts in San Diego. His band, Angels and Airwaves, released a new song and Tom was promoting it. During the interview DeLonge was explaining how the song came about and why it was released. He went on to say this:
Tom DeLonge: I was struck, kind of, by public consciousness because there’s a lot of studies that have been done, and a lot within the US government as well that I’m aware of, but that your mind… your mind over matter… that saying is very true… where they found, and I actually have a really amazing sensitive document that… and I’d always tell people about this, where they actually were…it was part of the UFO program at the Pentagon. They were following this kid in China that can move objects with his mind and he was like 10 years old.
Danielle: What?
Tom DeLonge:Yeah, so they repeated the experiment in the Department of Defense. And they put a piece of paper in a glass mason jar and they screwed the lid on it. With their mind they moved the paper through the lid of the jar six feet across the floor. And it says right there in the document with the letterhead and everything, on our defense (letterhead). You know it’s… they found that it’s… a hundred percent of people can do it, but only 10% of the people can really like master it. And my point being is that, you know, your mindset that you’re in, it affects all matter around you. And I can give you another couple laboratory experiments, but we won’t go down that rabbit hole, but they prove that consciousness affects all matter around you. In terms of healing they’ve even healed like 30 mice with like crazy terminal cancers. They healed all the mice with just energy healing in a lab. It was a wonderful lecture I listened to, but I was thinking when everyone was really scared with the virus you have mass consciousness but for something that’s negative, fear, and that’s a really bad place to be because it’s going to perpetuate things, you know, in a negative way. So I was like, well maybe my little part ,you know, put out something more hopeful or more optimistic…”
Which program was DeLonge referencing? AAWSAP, AATIP or a different unnamed program? We know AAWSAP researched a wider spectrum of so called paranormal topics. Allegedly AATIP did not. Any UFO program Tom references as taking part in psychic studies is interesting, but AATIP especially would be a surprise. View the interview below.
Thanks to Twitter user and graphics guru Mark for the lead.
A fresco from Visoki Dečani which confused the scientists around the world
A fresco from Visoki Dečani which confused the scientists around the world
The foothill of a high mountain massive Prokletije, has been keeping safe the Serbian sanctity whose existence is connected to the inexplicable miracle, and whose walls own the frescoes of a priceless value. The beauty and uniqueness of fresco art in Visoki Dečani have made people talk about Serbia as a country which keeps strong evidences about the existence of aliens, and made this monastery the world known place.
Southwestern from Peć, in Kosovo and Metohija, in the long gone 1327, a construction of the endowment of the King Stefan Dečanski and Dušan the Mighty had begun. Frescoes from the monastery which is among the five Serbian monuments on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List, have always represented the masterfully works, and today, the best kept icons in Serbia. Still, one of them has singled out and became a subject of numerous science researches and discussions.
The most famous domestic and foreign media has dedicated their articles to the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Enormous interest and curiosity have woken up the second when the unusual objects were spotted on it. A large number of scientists around the world have attributed the extramundane features to the a bit unusual look of these objects, claiming that they represent an indisputable proof of the once aliens’ visit to the Earth.
Visoki Dečani Monastery is famous for the bones which are kept inside it. Here is the rot-proof body of Stefan Dečanski, a rot-proof hand of St. Nikita Gotski from the 4th century, as well as the jaw which belonged to the St. Gregory Niski.
While some scientists compare the strange objects left and right from Jesus’s head with the spaceships in which aliens used to travel, a majority of domestic experts agree that it is about the heavenly bodies.
Serbian historians explain the art as a wish of a former artists to show the Sun and the Moon suffer because of the crucifixion of Jesus, in an unusual way, indeed.
Exactly that extraordinary way of presenting the heavenly bodies has spawned numerous conspiracy theories which have brought the Serbian monastery into connection with the creatures from outer space.
From the one that Visoki Dečani are known as a place where proofs of aliens’ existence were found, to the spaceships drawn on the frescoes, and lastly, putting it into the wonders of the world.
Still, there is no solid evidence to the claims of Serbian and global experts. The only one who had ever known the truth is the unknown author who had completed the Crucifixion of Jesus in bygone 1350, leaving the mystery on the walls of Visoki Dečani.
What do you think is on the Crucifixion of Jesus? Heavenly bodies or aliens?
Russian Scientists Warn the Return of the Fallen Angels
Russian Scientists Warn the Return of the Fallen Angels
The Military and Scientific Committee reports reveal that Russia’s allies, which are India, China, and Brazil, need to defend the Earth because some extraterrestrial entities disguising as Fallen Angels are coming back to the planet.
During World War 2, sources suggest that Soviet Intelligence Services confirmed the strange relationship of Nazis with the so-called “fallen angels or demons.” However, in our oldest records, these entities are known as “gods.”
Fallen Angels have been defeated during the great revolution that wiped out the city-state called Atlantis some 500 years ago. The devastating event has been recorded in religion and myths as “the great flood.”
Any news related to a series of mysterious craters in Siberia has been classified as a national threat by Vladimir Putin. Also, don’t forget the Chelyabinsk meteorite from 2013.
It appears that the US, with the support of Europe, is making its best effort to demonize Putin and entrap Russia into a battle to invade Siberia and control the old defense system that has been designed to protect Earth from the invasion of these “fallen angels”, that could also be alien beings.
Please watch the video for more detailed information and share your opinions with us.
Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data
Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data
While the star it orbits is much smaller than our Sun, it gets about 75% of the sunlight Earth does. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed Kepler mission development.
A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star’s habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water.
Scientists discovered this planet, called Kepler-1649c, when looking through old observations from Kepler, which the agency retired in 2018. While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this distant world – located 300 light-years from Earth – is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature.
This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet Kepler-1649c could look like on its surface. The planet is the closest to Earth in size and temperature found yet in data from the Kepler space telescope.
Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Sun – meaning the exoplanet’s temperature may be similar to our planet’s as well. But unlike Earth, it orbits a red dwarf. Though none have been observed in this system, this type of star is known for stellar flare-ups that may make a planet’s environment challenging for any potential life.
“This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The data gathered by missions like Kepler and our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite [TESS] will continue to yield amazing discoveries as the science community refines its abilities to look for promising planets year after year.”
There is still much that is unknown about Kepler-1649c, including its atmosphere, which could affect the planet’s temperature. Current calculations of the planet’s size have significant margins of error, as do all values in astronomy when studying objects so far away. But based on what is known, Kepler-1649c is especially intriguing for scientists looking for worlds with potentially habitable conditions.
This artist’s concept shows exoplanet Kepler-1649c orbiting around its host red dwarf star. This exoplanet is in its star’s habitable zone (the distance where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface) and is the closest to Earth in size and temperature found yet in Kepler’s data.
Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
There are other exoplanets estimated to be closer to Earth in size, such as TRAPPIST-1f and, by some calculations, Teegarden c. Others may be closer to Earth in temperature, such as TRAPPIST-1d and TOI 700d. But there is no other exoplanet that is considered to be closer to Earth in both of these values that also lies in the habitable zone of its system.
“Out of all the mislabeled planets we’ve recovered, this one’s particularly exciting – not just because it’s in the habitable zone and Earth-size, but because of how it might interact with this neighboring planet,” said Andrew Vanderburg, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and first author on the paper released today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “If we hadn’t looked over the algorithm’s work by hand, we would have missed it.”
Kepler-1649c orbits its small red dwarf star so closely that a year on Kepler-1649c is equivalent to only 19.5 Earth days. The system has another rocky planet of about the same size, but it orbits the star at about half the distance of Kepler-1649c, similar to how Venus orbits our Sun at about half the distance that Earth does. Red dwarf stars are among the most common in the galaxy, meaning planets like this one could be more common than we previously thought.
Looking for False Positives
Previously, scientists on the Kepler mission developed an algorithm called Robovetter to help sort through the massive amounts of data produced by the Kepler spacecraft, managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Kepler searched for planets using the transit method, staring at stars, looking for dips in brightness as planets passed in front of their host stars.
This graphic compares the size of Earth and Kepler-1649c, an exoplanet only 1.06 times larger than Earth by radius.
This graphic compares the size of Earth and Kepler-1649c, an exoplanet only 1.06 times larger than Earth by radius. › Larger view
Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
Most of the time, those dips come from phenomena other than planets – ranging from natural changes in a star’s brightness to other cosmic objects passing by – making it look like a planet is there when it’s not. Robovetter’s job was to distinguish the 12% of dips that were real planets from the rest. Those signatures Robovetter determined to be from other sources were labeled “false positives,” the term for a test result mistakenly classified as positive.
With an enormous number of tricky signals, astronomers knew the algorithm would make mistakes and would need to be double-checked – a perfect job for the Kepler False Positive Working Group. That team reviews Robovetter’s work, going through each false positive to ensure they are truly errors and not exoplanets, ensuring fewer potential discoveries are overlooked. As it turns out, Robovetter had mislabeled Kepler-1649c.
Even as scientists work to further automate analysis processes to get the most science as possible out of any given dataset, this discovery shows the value of double-checking automated work. Even six years after Kepler stopped collecting data from the original Kepler field – a patch of sky it stared at from 2009 to 2013, before going on to study many more regions – this rigorous analysis uncovered one of the most unique Earth analogs discovered yet.
A Possible Third Planet
Kepler-1649c not only is one of the best matches to Earth in terms of size and energy received from its star, but it provides an entirely new look at its home system. For every nine times the outer planet in the system orbits the host star, the inner planet orbits almost exactly four times. The fact that their orbits match up in such a stable ratio indicates the system itself is extremely stable and likely to survive for a long time.
Nearly perfect period ratios are often caused by a phenomenon called orbital resonance, but a nine-to-four ratio is relatively unique among planetary systems. Usually resonances take the form of ratios such as two-to-one or three-to-two. Though unconfirmed, the rarity of this ratio could hint to the presence of a middle planet with which both the inner and outer planets revolve in synchronicity, creating a pair of three-to-two resonances.
The team looked for evidence of such a mystery third planet, with no results. However, that could be because the planet is too small to see or at an orbital tilt that makes it impossible to find using Kepler’s transit method.
Either way, this system provides yet another example of an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. These small and dim stars require planets to orbit extremely close to be within that zone – not too warm and not too cold – for life as we know it to potentially exist. Though this single example is only oneamongmany, there is increasingevidence that such planets are common around red dwarfs.
“The more data we get, the more signs we see pointing to the notion that potentially habitable and Earth-size exoplanets are common around these kinds of stars,” said Vanderburg. “With red dwarfs almost everywhere around our galaxy, and these small, potentially habitable and rocky planets around them, the chance one of them isn’t too different than our Earth looks a bit brighter.”
For more information about Kepler and its discoveries, go to:
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps Its Highest-Resolution Panorama Yet
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps Its Highest-Resolution Panorama Yet
To go along with the stunning 1.8-billion-pixel image, a new video offers a sweeping view of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface. Composed of more than 1,000 images taken during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama; meanwhile, it relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover’s deck and robotic arm.
Along with an almost 1.8-billion-pixel panorama that doesn’t feature the rover, NASA’s Curiosity captured a 650-million-pixel panorama that features the rover itself
Both panoramas showcase “Glen Torridon,” a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. They were taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, when the mission team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Sitting still with few tasks to do while awaiting the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings from the same vantage point several days in a row. (Look closer: A special tool allows viewers to zoom into this panorama.)
It required more than 6 1/2 hours over the four days for Curiosity to capture the individual shots. Mastcam operators programmed the complex task list, which included pointing the rover’s mast and making sure the images were in focus. To ensure consistent lighting, they confined imaging to between noon and 2 p.m. local Mars time each day.
NASA Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada guides this tour of the rover’s view of the Martian surface.
“While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which leads the Curiosity rover mission. “This is the first time during the mission we’ve dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama.”
In 2013, Curiosity produced a 1.3-billion-pixel panorama using both Mastcam cameras; its black-and-white Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, provided images of the rover itself. Imaging specialists carefully assemble Mars panoramas by creating mosaics composed of individual pictures and blending their edges to create a seamless look.
Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Curiosity’s Mastcam. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Navigation Cameras and the rover.
Mystery as ‘very big flaming object’ spotted spiraling through sky above Cambridgeshire for 20 minutes
Mystery as ‘very big flaming object’ spotted spiraling through sky above Cambridgeshire for 20 minutes
A “VERY big flaming object” was spotted spiraling through the sky in Cambridgeshire this week – leaving onlookers dumbfounded. Gerry Underwood, 55, spotted the mysterious flaming object at around 8 pm on Wednesday from outside his canal boat in Stretham, Cambs. He said: “It looked like a very thick chemtrail to start with. It looked like a short, skinny cloud. “It wasn’t moving quickly at all. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a meteorite, because they are gone in seconds. We have seen hundreds of shooting stars, but this definitely wasn’t that either. “This was coming down very slowly and spiraling. It started to glow orange, as you can see in the pictures.
“There were flames coming out of the back of it as well. It was really unusual.” Gerry, who shares his canal boat with partner Melanie, photographed the burning spectacle as it dropped through the sky – leaving a huge trail behind it as it descended into the distance. He watched the mysterious object slowly falling for “between 10 and 20 minutes,” before it disappeared behind the trees in the distance.
The large flaming object was spotted spiralling through the sky near Stretham, Cambs
Credit: BPM Media
According to one witness, the object was moving slowly for 20 minutes
Credit: BPM Media
Gerry said he was looking towards Huntingdon as he watched it descend, but stressed the object might have landed “well beyond that.” He said: “The sheer size of it is what’s got me. When you look at the pictures, they show the trees in the foreground and its way beyond that, it was very big. “It landed beyond the horizon, that’s how big it was – we couldn’t see it land.” –The Sun
UFO Follows Dog Walker In New York City During Lock Down, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Follows Dog Walker In New York City During Lock Down, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:April 8, 2020 Location of sighting: New York City, New York, USA Source: MUFON This is some great raw footage of a UFO that looks like a cube that is following a woman as she walks a dog. As she moves down the street, the UFO also moves to keep her in view. John Lennon himself has said he and his wife saw a UFO back in 1974 in New York City...so you know its possible its still happening today. Awesome raw footage taken during lock down of coronavirus. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
Good morning, My name is [name removed] i'm 34 years old and i live in New York City. Last night, Wednesday April 8 2020, I went out my apartment (Upper west side) at 8pm to bring out my dog for a quick walk. As soon I went out i notice this bright light in the sky, I didn't pay attention that much thinking was an airplane even if was to low because was close to the building but still was up to the sky. I did half block with my dog (82 street and Columbus avenue) i stopped (dog has to smell) and again notice this light that move position, but was not going in a clear direction as airplane will do) so i start to pay more attention to this light . When I walk i notice this light also moving and when i stop even this light seems stopping parallel to me! That was funny and I take my phone and start to recording this wired light! I had my phone pointing this light and my dog leash in the other hand but my dog start to get nervous and he start running in our home direction so I stop the video and bring him inside to come out right after. At 8.10pm i was out in the street to be able to see this funny light that catch my attention and recording. I end up stay out till almost 9pm going up and down the same blocks (82nd street till 84street) back and forth and this light clearly did the same!!! I have almost 30 minutes of video were you can see the street (the pizzeria in 82nd, the school in 83, the supermarket in 84 and this light always above moving also up and down! i make a joke that i end up "walking the light" instead my dog!! :)
Scientists took a second look at a strange object and spotted the most powerful winds ever detected gusting off of a special flavor of black hole called a quasar.
A quasar forms when a supermassive black hole accelerates certain particles it cannot absorb so dramatically that they reach nearly the speed of light as they shoot away from the black hole in bright, jetlike structures. Quasars often also produce winds that can gust through the surrounding galaxy, reducing star formation. But, until now, scientists haven't ever seen such powerful quasar winds.
"While high-velocity winds have previously been observed in quasars, these have been thin and wispy, carrying only a relatively small amount of mass," Sarah Gallagher, an astronomer at Western University in Canada and lead author on the new research, said in a university statement. "The outflow from this quasar, in comparison, sweeps along a tremendous amount of mass at incredible speeds. This wind is crazy powerful, and we don't know how the quasar can launch something so substantial."
The newly studied quasar, which scientists refer to as SDSS J135246.37+423923.5, is produced by a supermassive black hole containing more than 8 billion times the mass of our sun, or perhaps 2,000 times the mass of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, according to the team's calculations.
This quasar was first discovered by a project called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which produces massive maps of the universe, and was revisited by the Gemini North telescope located atop Maunakea in Hawaii. The team behind the new research also needed to apply a recently developed technique for analyzing this sort of quasar, which scientists call a broad absorption line quasar after a characteristic in the data such objects produce.
"We were shocked — this isn't a new quasar, but no one knew how amazing it was until the team got the Gemini spectra," Karen Leighly, a co-author on the new research and an astronomer at the University of Oklahoma, said in the same statement. "These objects were too hard to study before our team developed our methodology and had the data we needed, and now it looks like they might be the most interesting kind of windy quasars to study.
An artist's depiction of the same system as seen in infrared light. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld)
The calculations based on this analysis suggest that this particular object is producing the most powerful quasar winds scientists have ever detected. The phenomenon is particularly intriguing because scientists believe such winds play a key role in sculpting the galaxies that surround the structure.
The researchers hope that this quasar isn't the only one of its kind. "We don't know how many more of these extraordinary objects are in our quasar catalogs that we just don't know about yet," Hyunseop Choi, first author on the new research and a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, said in the same statement. "There could be more of these quasars with tremendously powerful outflows hidden away in our surveys."
The research is described in a paper published March 1 in the Astrophysical Journal.
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
When you think of religion, you probably think of a god who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But the idea of morally concerned gods is by no means universal. Social scientists have long known that small-scale traditional societies – the kind missionaries used to dismiss as “pagan” – envisaged a spirit world that cared little about the morality of human behaviour. Their concern was less about whether humans behaved nicely towards one another and more about whether they carried out their obligations to the spirits and displayed suitable deference to them.
What came first – all-seeing Gods or complex societies? God the Father and Angel, Guercino Giovan Francesco Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons
Nevertheless, the world religions we know today, and their myriad variants, either demand belief in all-seeing punitive deities or at least postulate some kind of broader mechanism – such as karma – for rewarding the virtuous and punishing the wicked. In recent years, researchers have debated how and why these moralising religions came into being.
Now, thanks to our massive new database of world history, known as Seshat (named after the Egyptian goddess of record keeping), we’re starting to get some answers.
Eye in the sky
One popular theory has argued that moralising gods were necessary for the rise of large-scale societies. Small societies, so the argument goes, were like fish bowls. It was almost impossible to engage in antisocial behaviour without being caught and punished – whether by acts of collective violence, retaliation or long-term reputational damage and risk of ostracism. But as societies grew larger and interactions between relative strangers became more commonplace, would-be transgressors could hope to evade detection under the cloak of anonymity. For cooperation to be possible under such conditions, some system of surveillance was required.
What better than to come up with a supernatural “eye in the sky” – a god who can see inside people’s minds and issue punishments and rewards accordingly. Believing in such a god might make people think twice about stealing or reneging on deals, even in relatively anonymous interactions. Maybe it would also increase trust among traders. If you believe that I believe in an omniscient moralising deity, you might be more likely to do business with me, than somebody whose religiosity is unknown to you. Simply wearing insignia such as body markings or jewellery alluding to belief in such a god might have helped ambitious people prosper and garner popularity as society grew larger and more complex.
Nevertheless, early efforts to investigate the link between religion and morality provided mixed results. And while supernatural punishment appears to have preceded the rise of chiefdoms among Pacific Island peoples, in Eurasia studies suggested that social complexity emerged first and moralising gods followed. These regional studies, however, were limited in scope and used quite crude measures of both moralising religion and of social complexity.
Sifting through history
Seshat is changing all that. Efforts to build the database began nearly a decade ago, attracting contributions from more than 100 scholars at a cost of millions of pounds. The database uses a sample of the world’s historical societies, going back in a continuous time series up to 10,000 years before the present, to analyse hundreds of variables relating to social complexity, religion, warfare, agriculture and other features of human culture and society that vary over time and space. Now that the database is finally ready for analysis, we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history.
One of the earliest questions we’re testing is whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies. We analysed data on 414 societies from 30 world regions, using 51 measures of social complexity and four measures of supernatural enforcement of moral norms to get to the bottom of the matter. New research we’ve just published in the journal Nature reveals that moralising gods come later than many people thought, well after the sharpest rises in social complexity in world history. In other words, gods who care about whether we are good or bad did not drive the initial rise of civilisations – but came later.
As part of our research we created a map of where big gods appeared around the world. In the map below, the size of the circle represents the size of the society: bigger circles represent larger and more complex societies. The numbers in the circle represent the number of thousand years ago we find the first evidence of belief in moralising gods. For example, Emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism 2,300 years ago after he had already established a large and complex South Asian empire known as the Mauryan Empire.
The global distribution and timing of beliefs in moralising gods shows that big gods appear in big societies.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
Our statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to appear only when societies make the transition from simple to complex, around the time when the overall population exceed about a million individuals.
Social complexity tends to increase more rapidly before the appearance of moralising gods, not after.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
We are now looking to other factors that may have driven the rise of the first large civilisation. For example, Seshat data suggests that daily or weekly collective rituals – the equivalent of today’s Sunday services or Friday prayers – appear early in the rise of social complexity and we’re looking further at their impact.
If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions, what might declining belief in such deities mean for the future of societies today? Could modern secularisation, for example, contribute to the unravelling of efforts to cooperate regionally – such as the European Union? If beliefs in big gods decline, what will that mean for cooperation across ethnic groups in the face of migration, warfare, or the spread of xenophobia? Can the functions of moralising gods simply be replaced by other forms of surveillance?
Even if Seshat cannot provide easy answers to all these questions, it could provide a more reliable way of estimating the probabilities of different futures.
Strange tale: Ojibwa tale of a ‘Skyman’ visitor may have been Extraterrestrial
Strange tale: Ojibwa tale of a ‘Skyman’ visitor may have been Extraterrestrial
The modern Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) craze began in the late 1940s, when a wave of people reported seeing strange objects in the skies above America.
Indeed, it was in 947 the term flying saucer entered the popular consciousness after pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed several brightly-lit saucer-like objects weaving in and out of distant mountain peaks while he was flying in Washington State.
This wasn’t the first wave of UFO sightings, however. An earlier wave occurred in Britain in 1909, when hundreds of people described flying objects shaped like dirigibles and emitting beams of light carrying out extremely advanced manoeuvres overhead. A decade earlier, throughout 1896 and ’97, there was a rash on similar sightings in the United States.
But these weren’t the first accounts of alien spacecraft on record. Legends of god-like beings coming from the heavens exist in many cultures. Throughout North America, there are numerous caves that date back thousands of years. These paintings figures and objects much like the modern imagery of aliens and flying saucers.
One intriguing legend comes from the First Nations people of central Ontario. Their ‘Skyman’ tale may in fact be one of the earliest alien encounters on record.
According to the story recorded in 1917 by ethnologist Colonel G.E. Laidlaw, 500 years ago there was a large Ojibwa village about 550 native people living somewhere in our region. One day, a pair of them stumbled upon a stranger sitting on the grass in a field. This figure, a male, was notably “clean and shining bright.”
The natives approached the stranger and asked who he was and how he came to be in the field. “I am not one of you. I do not belong to this land. I dropped down from above,” the stranger explained.
Showing unusual hospitality, the Ojibwa invited him back to their village. The stranger agreed, but on one condition: “Go home and clean the place where I will stay, and when you come back for me, I will go with you for a few days.”
Agreeing, the Ojibwa men went back to their community, told their fellow villagers about their experience, and cleaned the hut where they would house the ‘Skyman.’
The stranger did in fact accompany them to their village, but he was clearly restless. He watched the skies often and told people that in two days something would come and get him to take him back up to the sky.
One afternoon, Skyman looked up and said, “It is coming.” The villagers craned their necks and turned their eyes above and saw something that looked like a bright shining star streak down from the heavens and hover near the ground.
This was the most beautiful thing any of them had ever seen. Skyman entered the shining star and disappeared from view. The shining star then shot back into the sky and faded away.
This tale seems to be a description of an encounter with an ‘ancient astronaut,’ as seen in many cultures and popularized by Swiss theorist Erich von Daniken of Chariots of the Gods fame.
Many modern UFO theorists believe Skyman was a marooned extraterrestrial astronaut whose own craft was somehow damaged or destroyed. They point to the fact Skyman clearly entered the glowing star as proof the object was a spacecraft of some sort. Was he ‘clean and shining bright’ because he wore a silvery pressure suit? Did he request his hosts clean his quarters out of fearof contracting human viruses against which he had no immunity?
Many researchers believe Skyman was no mythological tale, but rather an actual encounter of the first kind between an ancient alien and an entire Ojibwa community. And it was said to have occurred somewhere nearby. Maybe we too should be craning our necks and scanning the skies.
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Video – The Anunnaki Creation Story: The Biggest Secret in Human History
Video – The Anunnaki Creation Story: The Biggest Secret in Human History
445 000 years ago, “creator gods” – as they call it – came to Earth. They were called the Anunnaki, which means “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came”. These beings inhabited a distant orbiting planet called Nibiru, which only entered our solar system every 3,600 years. They describe Nibiru as many times the diameter of Earth, and abundant with iron oxide, making its rivers and lakes appear red. A side note about Nibiru: according to the Sumerian tablets, Nibiru’s atmosphere began to deteriorate and became a hostile place for life, and in order to restore it, the Annunaki needed one important element for their atmosphere: gold.
When a black hole burps out particles in a cosmic jet known as a quasar, it can sometimes create powerful winds that stream through the surrounding galaxy.
Usually these winds are fairly small, but Space.com reports that astronomers just found a quasar giving creating a massive cosmic storm that was unlike anything they had ever seen.
“Crazy Powerful”
Normally, a quasar’s winds can inhibit star production in the galaxy around it, according to Space.com. The research on this particular quasar, published last month in The Astrophysical Journal, didn’t look into its impact, focusing instead on how incomprehensibly powerful the wind storm was.
“While high-velocity winds have previously been observed in quasars, these have been thin and wispy, carrying only a relatively small amount of mass,” Western University astronomer Sarah Gallagher said in a press release. “The outflow from this quasar, in comparison, sweeps along a tremendous amount of mass at incredible speeds. This wind is crazy powerful, and we don’t know how the quasar can launch something so substantial.”
New Category
The astronomers behind the research suspect they’ve uncovered an entirely new class of quasar altogether.
“These objects were too hard to study before our team developed our methodology and had the data we needed,” University of Oklahoma astronomer and study co-author Karen Leighly said in the release, “and now it looks like they might be the most interesting kind of windy quasars to study.”
CORONA IS OOK AFLEIDING VOOR IETS GROTERS, MAAR WAT? ( VIDEO )
CORONA IS OOK AFLEIDING VOOR IETS GROTERS, MAAR WAT? ( VIDEO )
Mensen zijn veel gevoeliger dan we dikwijls beseffen en dat betekent dat wij dingen aan voelen komen ook al zijn ze nog niet zicht- of tastbaar. Naast alle controletechnieken die nu dankzij corona door overheden worden ingevoerd, is er misschien nog wel een andere reden voor het verschijnen van dit virus.
Het mooie van wat er nu gebeurt is dat er steeds meer mensen dieper gaan nadenken, simpelweg omdat velen “aan hun water voelen” dat er dingen niet kloppen.
Iemand die ook dat gevoel heeft is Sven Hulleman die daar verder op ingaat in onderstaande video. Hij heeft een heel eigen theorie ontwikkeld over wat er nu mogelijk gaande is. Hij noemt het een hypothese en het is zeker de moeite waard om daar wat aandacht aan te besteden.
Hulleman voelt ook dat er dingen niet kloppen en gelooft niet dat overheden nu allemaal in overdrive gaan omdat ze zo begaan zijn met de gezondheid van hun burgers. Hij zegt hetzelfde wat wij altijd zeggen en dat is dat de overheid geen sodemieter geeft om de gezondheid van haar burgers.
Dit betekent dan dat er hoe dan ook een achterliggende agenda moet zijn waarom overheden dit allemaal doen.
De hypothese van Hulleman houdt in dat er krachten vanuit de ruimte actief zijn die zorgen voor veranderingen in elektromagnetische straling op aarde. Iets dergelijks kan veroorzaakt worden door kometen waarvan er nu toevallig enkele in onze buurt zijn, zoals de komeet C/2019 Y4 ook wel Atlas genoemd en planetoïde 1998 OR2.
Daarnaast zijn er op dit moment allerlei observatoria gesloten vanwege de coronacrisis en dat alles is naar de mening van Hulleman geen toeval.
Hij denkt verder dat deze elektromagnetische velden kristallisatie van calcium veroorzaken in het menselijk lichaam, wat op zijn beurt weer zorgt voor een behoorlijke verzwakking van het menselijk immuunsysteem. Dit verschijnsel doet zich vooral ook voor bij mensen met overgewicht en zoals we de afgelopen weken hebben kunnen lezen zijn juist zij vaak slachtoffer.
Zo schrijft hij onder andere:
Zouden deze fenomenen met elkaar te maken kunnen hebben? Voor veel mensen een absurde gedachte, echter aanzienlijk minder vergezocht dan het wellicht in eerste instantie lijkt; wanneer men zich realiseert dat wij allemaal grote zakken water met mineralen zijn is de invloed van een verstoring van het elektromagnetische veld van de aarde verre van insignificant.
Ook refereert hij op zijn website aan gebeurtenissen zoals die in Amerika plaatsvinden, waar nu regelmatig oefeningen worden gehouden voor mogelijke asteroïden die op aarde terecht kunnen komen.
Wat er echter ontbreekt in het verhaal van Hulleman is een reden voor dit alles. Waarom worden mensen weggehouden van de ruimte, waarom worden observatoria gesloten en vooral wat is het voordeel voor de machthebbers achter de schermen c.q. overheden?
De strekking van de hypothese van Hulleman is een klein beetje in lijn met een artikel dat wij publiceerden op 6 april en waarin ook wordt gesteld dat één van de doelen van dit virus is om de mensheid af te leiden van wat er werkelijk in de ruimte plaatsvindt.
Waar Hulleman het dan houdt op kometen, gaan wij een stap verder door te zeggen dat het waarschijnlijk is vanwege de komst van een, bij velen hier al jaren bekende, mini-zonnestelsel. Ook dat zou namelijk exact die verstoringen teweegbrengen waar Hulleman over spreekt.
Het maakt niet uit wat je precies gelooft, de strekking van dit alles is dat er andere redenen zijn dat overheden en machthebbers achter de schermen nu komen met deze coronapandemie en dat dit mini zonnestelsel er daar wel eens een belangrijke van kan zijn.
Niemand heeft op dit moment de wijsheid in pacht, maar “out of the box” denken en het besef dat we hier niet met een natuurlijk virus te maken hebben is een begin. Vanuit die gedachte is het dan zaak om door gezamenlijk denken en hypothesen naar voren brengen, misschien wel tot de juiste antwoorden kunnen komen.
Kijk en luister naar Sven Hulleman en mocht je geïnspireerd raken en tot bepaalde inzichten komen, laat het ons weten.
ISS Live Cam Captured Something Mysterious In The Sky
ISS Live Cam Captured Something Mysterious In The Sky
Several days ago the International Space Station captured something mysterious in the sky. You can see that this object is underneath the clouds and very out of the place.
It seems the enormous structure is partially cloaked and it doesn't look like it is a random cloud if you compare it to the other clouds and it doesn't look like it is land or water.
If we are looking at a negative image of the object then we clearly see the structure, which has a unique systematic shape.
I don't know what is going on, I've never seen anything like this but there is no doubt that the ISS cam has captured something extraordinary.
The Pentagon Discovery of Anunnaki Underground Facilities in Romania and Iraq
The Pentagon Discovery of Anunnaki Underground Facilities in Romania and Iraq
Several vital facilities scattered all over the world could store the latest alien technology, more particularly the ones that belong to the Anunnaki.
One of those facilities is on the Bucegi Mountains in Romania. Conspiracy theorists suggest that Enki took refuge in the area during the flood.
It looks like this facility is protected with electromagnetic technology that enables its invisibility.
Romanian Sphinx
In 2002, an aperture that penetrated the interior of this incredible complex was discovered. The so perfect design of the cave has made conspiracy theorists to suggest that it could have been created artificially. Also, sources indicate that it has two walls of electromagnetic energy. The Pentagon reportedly locked this base shortly after discovery.
Another similar complex has been found in Iraq. Sources revealed that the Pentagon discovered it, and that could be the primary reason for the American troops for invading the country.
They found a lot of amazing things inside those caves, including cuneiform inscriptions of unknown origin.
Watch the video for more information and share your opinions with us.
Signs Of Ancient Water Pipes Found On Mars, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Signs Of Ancient Water Pipes Found On Mars, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery:April 16, 2020 Location of discovery: Mars Source: Coming soon. Today I went through a Mars photo and found something that really didn't belong in this environment. I found a tool of some sort...like a pickaxe but not sharp on its ends but dull like the end of a pipe. This can't be be there and yet...it is. Perhaps this is some sort of pipe on the surface which would indicate that there was once running water which required pipes to bring it to the surface. Or perhaps this is some kind of tool, stuck in the surface of this hillside. Either way it cannot be explained by NASA. The photo was put into false color by NASA, so I put it back to normal color so yo can see the true color and details. I also found two alien faces, similar to the faces of the move ID4. One is very large and fat, probably the male. The other is smaller and more well defined with a extended long cranium, neck. Its always interesting to find a face with good detail. It shows us who left these artifacts behind. Scott C. Waring
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Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Arriving in 2029. Tom Horn exposes the untold news of Biblical Wormwood! Is the Wormwood star from Revelation 8 already headed toward Earth?
Are NASA and high-level government officials aware of an asteroid that is on a collision course with our planet?
Traditional interpretation claims that Wormwood will be an asteroid. In 2029 the large asteroid called Apophis is projected to visit Earth.
Now respected author Tom Horn blazes a trail through the many questions NASA is reluctant to even talk about.
He believes Wormwood is the asteroid Apophis - How the threat of Wormwood could create world-wide revival - Why NASA funded a Deep Space Armageddon Asteroid telescope?
Tom Horn doesn’t answer the question of what Biblical Wormwood will actually be. But we do know exactly when this large asteroid Apophis is coming.
The year 2029 is coming soon enough, and Horn’s research will give you plenty to think about!
The green flash image at the top of this post was taken by Jim Grant, an EarthSky friend onFacebook. He captured it off the coast of Ocean Beach, California, and identified it as a mock mirage green flash.
It’s not hard to see a green flash with the eye alone, when sky conditions are right, and when you’re looking toward a very clear and very distant horizon. That’s why those who live near an ocean tend to report green flashes most often. A sea horizon is the best place to see them.
The video below, posted to EarthSky by Vladek in 2016, is an excellent example of the experience of seeing a green flash:
Most people see green flashes just at sunset, at the last moment before the sun disappears below the horizon. Be careful and don’t look too soon. If you do look too soon, the light of the sunset will dazzle (or damage) your eyes, and you’ll miss your green flash chance that day. But if you wait – looking away until just the thinnest rim of the sun appears above the horizon – that day’s green flash could be yours.
Of course, the green flash can be seen before sunrise, too, although it’s harder at that time of day to know precisely when to look.
Mock mirage and green flash seen from San Francisco in 2006.
There are many different types of green flash. Some describe a streak or ray of the color green … like a green flame shooting up from the sunrise or sunset horizon.
The most common green flash, though – the one most people describe – is a flash of the color green seen when the sun is nearly entirely below the horizon.
Again … you need a distant horizon to see any of these phenomena, and you need a distinct edge to the horizon. That’s why these green flashes, streaks, and rays are most often seen over the ocean. But you can see them over land, too, if your horizon is far enough away. Pollution or haze on the horizon will hide this instantaneous flash of the color green.
Jim Grant photographed this green flash on April 27, 2012, off the coast of San Diego.
And, of course, Les Cowley at the great website Atmospheric Optics devotes many pages to the green flash phenomenon. Notice the menu bar at the left side of the page; it’ll let you explore many different types of green flashes.
Green flash atop sun pyramid via astrophotographer Colin Legg in Australia.
Bottom line: The green flash is legendary, and some people have told us they thought it was a myth, like a unicorn or a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But green flashes are very real. You need a distant and exceedingly clear horizon to see them at the last moment before the sun disappears below the horizon at sunset.
A STAR IS CIRCLING A BLACK HOLE AND ITS ORBIT IS ABSOLUTELY NUTS
A STAR IS CIRCLING A BLACK HOLE AND ITS ORBIT IS ABSOLUTELY NUTS
ESO/L. CALÇADA
DAN ROBITZSKI
Cosmic Dance
A star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has a bizarre orbit — but also one that strongly supports Einstein’s theories.
After monitoring the star, dubbed S2, for 27 years straight, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute determined that it traces a distinct flower-like shape as it orbits, CNN reports. The fact that the star makes a rosette as it travels supports Einstein’stheory of general relativity, which predicts that such a pairing would remain dynamic instead of fixed in a set, ellipse-shaped orbit.
Exhaustive Evidence
S2’s orbit around the black hole Sagittarius A* isn’t the first evidence for the theory of general relativity — but the research, published last month in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, strengthens the idea even further.
“This famous effect — first seen in the orbit of the planet Mercury around the Sun — was the first evidence in favor of general relativity,” Reinhard Genzel, director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, said in a press release. “One hundred years later we have now detected the same effect in the motion of a star orbiting the compact radio source Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way.”
Indirect Discovery
The decades of data have an added bonus — it helps confirm scientists’ theories about the size and behavior of the black hole itself.
“This observational breakthrough strengthens the evidence that Sagittarius A* must be a supermassive black hole of 4 million times the mass of the sun,” Genzel added.
An international team of scientists have discovered an exciting Earth-sized exoplanet that’s capable of supporting liquid water.
“This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, who was not part of the research, said in a statement.
The exoplanet, called Kepler -1649c, orbits its small red dwarf star within the system’s habitable zone, a distance at which rocky planets receive enough star radiation to allow for liquid water to exist. It’s almost precisely the same size as large as Earth and receives 75 percent of the amount of light Earth receives from the Sun.
In other words, it’s a distant world that’s likelier than many others to support life. At 300 light-years from Earth, it’s the most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature out of the thousands of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope, according to the researchers.
But plenty of questions remain before we can definitively say that the planet is capable of supporting life. For one, we don’t know what its atmosphere looks like — the key determinant of the planet’s surface temperature.
The team made the discovery while re-analzying older observations from NASA’s now-retired Kepler space telescope program. Kepler -1649c orbits its star at an extremely short distance — a full revolution takes only 19.5 Earth days — alongside a similarly sized rocky planet that orbits at half the distance of Kepler-1649c.
“Out of all the mislabeled planets we’ve recovered, this one’s particularly exciting — not just because it’s in the habitable zone and Earth-size, but because of how it might interact with this neighboring planet,” Andrew Vanderburg, researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in the statement.
The two rocky planets orbit their host star at an exact ratio: Kepler-1649c completes nine orbits in almost exactly the same time the inner planet completes four orbits. The researchers believe this could make the system extremely stable over a long period of time.
“The more data we get, the more signs we see pointing to the notion that potentially habitable and Earth-size exoplanets are common around these kinds of stars,” said Vanderburg.
“With red dwarfs almost everywhere around our galaxy, and these small, potentially habitable and rocky planets around them, the chance one of them isn’t too different than our Earth looks a bit brighter,” he added.
IS THE INTERSTELLAR VISITOR 'OUMUAMUA A FRAGMENT OF A SHATTERED ALIEN WORLD?
Artwork depicting the aftermath of an asteroid, comet, or planet being disrupted by a star, creating countless numbers of elongated objects like the interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua.
Credit: YU Jingchuan, Beijing Planetarium
IS THE INTERSTELLAR VISITOR 'OUMUAMUA A FRAGMENT OF A SHATTERED ALIEN WORLD?
So it's been an interesting week for comets. 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar comet we've ever seen, split in half; the comet we were hoping would be the brightest of the year (C/2019 Y4 ATLAS) instead disintegrated; and the first interstellar comet we've ever seen, 'Oumuamua, may be a shard shredded off a planet that got torn apart by its dying host star.
The first alien visitor to our solar system ever found shocked astronomers when it first appeared in 2017. Seen in observations by the Pan-STARRS telescope, it immediately was seen to be weird, moving on an orbit that looked like it came from deep interstellar space. The orbit was hyperbolic, meaning the object was moving too quickly to be bound to the Sun. It must have come from another star.
Then it got weirder. It tumbles, flipping end over end, roughly once every eight hours. These observations also indicated it's extremely elongated, at least five times longer than it is wide, so it's kinda cigar-shaped. That’s bizarre. We don’t see any objects in our solar system that elongated.
Then it got weirder again. As it headed away from the Sun it slowed down, as expected from the Sun's gravity pulling it, but it wasn't slowing down rapidly enough. The most likely reason is that it was outgassing, with ice turning to gas and expanding away, acting like a very low-power rocket. But sunlight-reflecting dust escaping with the gas would make it easy to see, yet nothing was seen around it!
They looked at what would happen if an object like a rubble pile asteroid — literally a bunch of rocks held together by their own gravity, a very common structure for small bodies in our solar system — got too close to its star. They found that if it gets too close, the tides from the star will tear it apart. That's old news (in that we know things getting too close to stars can be ripped into pieces), but they also found that the heat from the passage does two things. First, the object is sintered; tiny particles break off and recollect onto it, and as they do they tend to fall on the ends pointing toward and away from the star due to tides, elongating the object. That's pretty cool! Second, a lot of stuff that vaporizes at lower temperatures goes away, leaving behind a hardened crust.
Artwork depicting why ‘Oumuamua is so elongated; as particles were boiled off a more spherical object, tidal forces guided them to the longer ends, stretching the shape out.
This does explain a lot of 'Oumuamua’s behavior and appearance. But they also found that long-period comets (with orbits hundreds or thousands of years long) that pass very close to their host stars can also break up and create shards like 'Oumuamua in a similar way, providing a second creation path.
And there's a third that's pretty interesting. They looked at planets being the source. A super-Earth, bigger and more massive than Earth, on a highly elliptical orbit its star (maybe poked gravitationally by a second star in the system and dropped too close to the first star) can be disrupted in the same way, and if the pass is close enough the process winds up being similar to what happens to the rubble pile asteroids and long-period comets. It may be somewhat less likely, but a single event like that can create a lot of 'Oumuamuas. Billions. More.
Artwork depicting the aftermath of an asteroid, comet, or planet being disrupted by a star, creating countless numbers of elongated objects like the interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua.
Credit: YU Jingchuan, Beijing Planetarium
If the star is a white dwarf — the remains of a star like the Sun after it uses up its nuclear fuel and blows off its outer layers, leaving just the hot and very dense core behind — then this process is really efficient. White dwarfs have immense gravity, and can easily tear a planet to shreds. Moreover, we have tons of evidence this actually happens. That’s terrifying — the idea of planets being torn apart like the Cookie Monster going to town on a snickerdoodle — but the Universe really seems to like ripping up perfectly good things like asteroids and comets and planets.
So this work is theoretical, using physical models of how objects break up, so the question is: Is it right? The prediction it makes is that we'll see a lot more objects as elongated as 'Oumuamua, so what we need to do is find more! Extrapolating from these observations indicates that interstellar bodies like 'Oumuamua are relatively common, it's just that we haven't been able to see them (and follow up on them with big observatories) until recently. So we'll see. If the next ten in a row are more like Borisov then that's hard to explain this way, but if they look more like 'Oumuamua then maybe this idea holds water.
I love that there are so many ideas about what this thing is. But that's par for the course in science; when something new and strange is found, tons of ideas bubble up. More observations eliminate lots of them, and the ones that survive get tested even more. Eventually one or a few survive, and these become the standard against which other ideas must compete.
It's like evolutionary science for science itself, and the process helps us find our way to the truth. I’m really curious what the truth is about 'Oumuamua, and hopefully we’ll have a lot more such beasts to look at that will help us along the path to finding it.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Waar kwam de sigaarvormige ruimterots vandaan die drie jaar geleden plots in ons zonnestelsel verscheen? Was het een komeet? Of een buitenaards ruimteschip, zoals zelfs een gerenommeerde wetenschapper suggereerde? Een computersimulatie werpt nu nieuwe licht op de zaak.
Het was eind 2017 dat de wetenschappelijke wereld plots op zijn kop stond. Voor de allereerste keer was er een object waargenomen in ons zonnestelsel dat er niet uit afkomstig was.
Het rotsachtige voorwerp had de ongewone vorm van een sigaar en werd Oumuamua gedoopt. Dat betekent ‘boodschapper van ver weg die als eerste aankomt’ in het Hawaïaans. Het was dan ook een observatorium in die Amerikaanse staat dat het object voor het eerst zag.
Meteen rees de vraag wat het tollende ruimteobject was. Was het een gewone ruimterots? Een asteroïde van een andere ster? Of een ruimteschip van een andere planeet, zoals zelfs een wetenschapper van de gerenommeerde universiteit van Harvard opwierp?
Volgens een nieuwe computersimulatie zou het om scherf van een dode planeet kunnen gaan. Dat schrijven onderzoekers in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature. Volgens hen is hun uitleg de enige die de bijzondere vorm van het object kan verklaren. En het geeft ook een uitleg voor de manier waarop het object draait en versnelt.
Volgens de auteurs van de studie – Yun Zhang van de Côte d’Azur Observatory in Frankrijk en Douglas Lin van de universiteit van Californië – kan Oumuamua van een stelsel komen met een kleine en dichte ster. Een ster met voldoende zwaartekracht dat ze planeten en andere objecten in stukken kan scheuren zonder ze eerst op te branden.
via REUTERS
De onderzoekers tekenden de mogelijke banen uit voor drie types van objecten: planetesimalen (waaruit planeten gevormd kunnen worden) van een halve kilometer groot, bevroren objecten zoals kometen en grote planeten. Wat bleek? Als elk van die objecten binnen een afstand van 350.000 kilometer van de ster zou komen, zouden ze opgewonden, uitgerekt en in stukken gescheurd worden door de zwaartekracht van de ster.
Afhankelijk van de samenstelling van het object zou zo een object kunnen ontstaan dat eruit ziet als Oumuamua en de ruimte in geslingerd wordt. Zo zou Oumuamua – mogelijk na miljoenen jaren – in ons sterrenstelsel terechtgekomen kunnen zijn.
Artwork depicting why ‘Oumuamua is so elongated; as particles were boiled off a more spherical object, tidal forces guided them to the longer ends, stretching the shape out.
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Dr. Michael Salla, the Chinese Secret Space Program & ET Inner Earth Connections
Dr. Michael Salla, the Chinese Secret Space Program & ET Inner Earth Connections
Dr. Michael Salla is a pioneer in the development of exopolitics. He is the author of several books that include Kennedy’s Last Stand (2013) and Galactic Diplomacy (2013). Dr. Salla was an Assistant Professor/ Researcher in Residence in the School of International Service, American University from 1996-2004. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Queensland, Australia.
He is also the Founder of the Exopolitics Institute, a non-profit organization that analyzes the political implications of the extraterrestrial presence. Most recently, he is the author of Antarctica’s Hidden History: Corporate Foundations of Secret Space Programs (2018) which is the third book in his Secret Space Programs series.
Military Officer Speaks Out... A Lifetime of Incredible UFO Encounters
Military Officer Speaks Out... A Lifetime of Incredible UFO Encounters
Military Officer George Filer has been researching this phenomena for many years and reveals how he was introduced to UFOs and their occupants at a young age. What he learnt whilst as a military pilot stunned the nation. There is a lot more going on than just contact!
Presented by George Filer Filmed by MUFON MAINLINE
Ancient Alien Base And Ship Found On Mars, NASA Photo, UFO Sighting News.
Ancient Alien Base And Ship Found On Mars, NASA Photo, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: April 15, 2020
Location of discovery:Mars
Source photo: Coming soon.
Hey guys, I was looking through the NASA Mars photo index from the Mars Global Surveyor missions and found an unusual structure. I believe the photo was taken in 1999 and shows a huge rectangular structure with a large opening in it. The opening seems to go below the ground, which leads me to think there is an underground alien base here...or at least there was once long ago. To the right of the structure is a very unique ship thats docked inside of a crater. The ship has layers and long coming out of its front and top...kid of like a telescope coming out of submarine. They are docked inside the crater to give it some saftey from both detecting and micrometeorites. The micrometeorites wont hurt the ship, but if repairs are being made, it may injure those doing the repairs. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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UFO Caught Moving Over City Of Seville, Spain, Video Proof, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Caught Moving Over City Of Seville, Spain, Video Proof, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:March 15, 2020 Location of sighting:Seville, Spain A glowing pinkish sphere appeared over Seville, Spain last month. It moved slowly across the horizon and then became smaller and disappeared on video. The UFO moved slowly and smoothly, unlike an aircraft or helicopter. Its lights were not those of any aircraft I have ever seen before, and I was in the USAF working on the flight line with B1 bombers. This is very cool, very abnormal and important video. You see it shows us not only the UFO, but how it smoothly it moves across the sky, how it stops, how it shoots away so fast that it literally looks like it disappeared. Fantastic and important evidence before us. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Flying saucer over Barcelona during a thunderstorm
Flying saucer over Barcelona during a thunderstorm
This giant disc-shaped object was caught on tape over Barcelona, the capital and largest city of Catalonia. Author recorded a huge flying saucer like craft with a blinking lights around it. This happened on 15th March 2020 during a storm.
A young Neanderthal girl kneels at the water's edge as host Neil deGrasse Tyson looks on. Until about 40,000 years ago, our Neanderthal relatives lived very much as we did.
Religion and worship are intrinsically tied with our history as a species, as is fire, and both are recurring motifs in this week's episodes of "Cosmos: Possible Worlds."
At the beginning of episode 11, called "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors," host Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us that when Homo sapiens, which means "wise ones," discovered and controlled fire hundreds of thousands of years ago, everything changed. Fire allowed us to cook food and heat dwellings, and it served as a focal point for storytelling and sharing cultural identity among community members.
Persepolis, a complex built by emperors around 600 BCE when Persia was the only superpower on Earth, illustrates the central focus fire had in ancient civilization. The domestication of fire played a crucial role in the worship of the Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, and symbolized the god's purity and the "light of the illuminated mind."
Evil, catastrophe and disease, on the other hand, were caused by Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian representation of what modern Christian societies would call the devil. Why people thought of these maladies as being the creation of an evil being becomes more obvious as Tyson walks us through how a rabies virus invades a dog's body after the pup has been infected by a rabid bat.
Disease microbes not only attack and kill cells, Tyson explains, but also change their hosts' behavior to facilitate the virus' spread to other hosts. The rabies virus, for example, turns its host into a fearless, crazed animal by attacking the limbic system, which deals with emotions and memory. Once the limbic system is compromised, the virus turns its attention to the mechanisms in the animals' throat that produce saliva, causing infected animals to foam at the mouth. The virus also inhibits the swallowing mechanism, maximizing the chances infected saliva will spread to another host.
How does the virus "know" to do this? "Evolution by natural selection," says Tyson, explaining that "given enough time, a random mutation will take hold if it enhances the virus' chance of survival." Ironically, it's the victims that keep a virus' "wicked flame" alive as it leaps from host to host, bending them to its will as if it were a sentient being. "We are at the mercy of unseen forces; viruses, microbes, hormones, our very own DNA. Where does the programming end and free will begin, if it ever does at all?"
Elaborating on these points, Tyson turns to insects and animals. Simple behavioral programs are abundant in the animal kingdom; for example, upon their death, bees secrete oleic acid (a "death pheromone") to tell their fellow hive members to remove their corpses from the hive, and geese will instinctively retrieve any egg-like objects that may have rolled away from their nests. While we may detect evidence of spontaneous decision-making in animals, Tyson says, can we identify a source of executive authority in them, or a "soul"? What about human beings?
We don't yet have established parameters for what it means to be "distinctly human," Tyson notes. Plato was one of the first philosophers to put forth a definition: "Man is a featherless biped." Aristotle, a student of Plato's, would later proclaim that man is a social and political animal. Neither of these definitions hold much weight; after all, ants, bees, and termites are also social animals. Underscoring this point, Tyson gives us several examples of animal species that engage in trade and art, use technology and tools, parent their young through adolescence into adulthood, and who enslave and exploit other animals and keep them in captivity. Other animals even show each other affection and tenderness.
On the Monterey Cliffs, "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" host Neil deGrasse Tyson gently rocks a newborn baby. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
It would seem the only thing that separates us from other animals, Tyson ponders, is our "neurotic need to feel 'special.'" Against the backdrop of the Halls of Extinction, featured prominently in previous episodes, Tyson insists that there must be a clear distinction between ourselves and animals that justifies our eating them, wearing them and even bringing an end to their species.
"Is DNA destiny, and if it is, does it have the power to write epic tales of heroism and saintliness?" There's heroism in the way a gazelle will put herself in harm's way to protect her offspring and herd from a cheetah, but there's also heroism in stories from our ancient past, as Tyson illustrates with the story of Ashoka. Five seconds ago on the "cosmic calendar" — approximately 2,200 Earth years ago — the emperor Ashoka's reign of terror over the Indian subcontinent began, marked by his proclivity for torture and extreme violence.
After an exchange with an unnamed Buddhist monk, Ashoka underwent a profound change; having realized the true scope of his power, social welfare became Ashoka's top priority as his idea of "kinship" expanded to include everyone, even animals. He banned the ritual sacrifice of animals and established veterinary hospitals. Ashoka further dug wells, planted trees, built shelters, signed peace treaties with neighboring countries he once warred with, built schools, hospitals and hospices, introduced the education of women and free healthcare for all, and much more.
"Ashoka's dream," Tyson says, referring to his philanthropic pursuits, "grows louder with time." We cut to a scene of a mother with her crying child, who had been born just moments before. We see the child again in the twelfth and penultimate episode of the series, "Coming of Age in the Anthropocene." The opening scene finds us on a placid seashore where Tyson describes life on Earth to the newborn. "We're all very young here," he coos, "new, like you, to the mysteries of the universe." Science, Tyson states, is our birthright and is how we piece together our history.
Setting the stage for this new episode, Tyson recalls our own planet's fiery beginnings when it was hammered by a celestial body the size of Mars, which blasted into space material that became Earth's moon. Earth gradually cooled, forming a crust on its surface that allowed oceans to form. In our planet's infancy, days were much shorter; only about six hours long, notes Tyson. The environment was also toxic and hostile: "Scientists reason that the thick, hazy atmosphere trapped the heat of the Earth and made it scorching hot," Tyson explains.
Amazingly, there were organisms that survived this seemingly uninhabitable environment; these were cyanobacteria that lived deep in the oceans, and "remade" the planet by consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, which in turn consumed the thick methane that enveloped our planet, causing temperatures to drop. Atoms of oxygen then gathered in the sky above our planet and formed ozone molecules. Life on land became possible, and the young Earth's landscape changed drastically as this life began to adapt to its new conditions.
At 11 o'clock on New Year's Eve of the cosmic year, Homo erectus stood up for the first time, freeing its hands and earning the species its name. "They began to move around, to explore, daring to risk everything to get to unknown places. They were brave, and their blood runs in your veins," says Tyson of our ancient ancestors. Some explored Africa and others went on to Europe, and evidence supports the theory the European pioneers would later evolve into Neanderthals. Other H. erectus individuals would go on to Asia and evolve into our hominid cousins, the Denisovans.
Our Neanderthal relatives lived much as we did and did many of the things we consider to be "human," says Tyson. To this day, a few of us even carry some Neanderthal genes; however, some unknown force wiped out the Neanderthals and Denisovans many years ago. Scientists postulate it may have been their complacency that doomed them, as we have evidence showing they never ventured beyond ocean coastlines.
More restless than their cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans, our Homo sapiens ancestors crossed seas and unforgiving landscapes, changing the land, ocean and atmosphere, leading to mass extinction. The scientific community gave our age a new name, "Anthropocene," from the Greek words for "human" and "recent." Just as the Neanderthals and Denisovans may have doomed themselves, however, early Homo sapiens may have doomed their descendants: us.
Altering our world comes at a great price; a "darkness," Tyson says, has been looming over us as our technology advances and population increases. The invention of agriculture allowed humans to settle on farms and later in cities. The carbon dioxide and methane released from various farming and agricultural techniques increased exponentially as our need for them increased, to sustain ever-growing numbers. In China we began burning coal, which became fuel for foundries, forges and homes.
As harmful to the environment as these were, nothing compared to the damage done by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Before refrigerators, we kept food items cool and stored them in ice boxes. Later, the ice box was replaced by a gas-powered refrigerator that used ammonia sulfur dioxide as a coolant. However, these chemicals were poisonous and the mechanism would often leak, making them dangerous. The invention of CFCs, a molecule that hadn't existed in nature previously, was so successful it was used in almost everything.
The catastrophic effect CFCs had on ozone was not discovered until the early 1970s, when chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rolland, studying the effects rocket fuel had on the atmosphere, found CFCs not only accumulated in the atmosphere, but had already thinned the ozone layer. When UV light hits a CFC molecule, it strips away the chlorine atoms, which then eat away at ozone, the very insulation that makes it possible to live on Earth. Thankfully, the scientists worked tirelessly to warn the world, and global governments heeded their warning; manufacturers stopped producing CFCs, and the ozone has been getting thicker ever since. Our children may even see the damage completely healed.
The episode ends on a harrowing note, another scientists' warning we have yet to heed. Syukuro Manabe was born in rural Japan and took an intense interest in Earth's average global temperature. During the course of his career, he would assemble the evidence he needed to write "Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity," a paper that predicted the increase of Earth's temperature due to greenhouse gases until it becomes an uninhabitable and toxic environment again, leading to our extinction.
Many still believe the "science is unsettled," however, despite Manabe's correctly predicting the rise in temperature and its effects on our planet. "The scientists warned us," says a remorseful Tyson as we look into our future at life on Earth: lethal outdoor temperatures, global water shortages, wildfires. These ruminations culminate in the striking visual of battered baby bottles littering a dry and barren field, implying the worst for mankind. Tyson ends on a hopeful note, which will carry us into the final episode of the series.
"This doesn't have to be," says Tyson. "it's not too late. There's another hallway, another future we can still have. I promise to get you there; we'll find a way."
"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.
The BepiColombo spacecraft headed for Mercury showed off an epic last view of Earth while zooming away from our planet on Friday and Saturday (April 10 and 11).
Footage from the spacecraft shows a crescent Earth slipping away from the structure of the European-Japanese probe, which should arrive in orbit Mercury in 2025. The Earth flyby was one of a series of planetary encounters needed to lose speed for the long journey, a procedure that saves on fuel.
The spacecraft zoomed to as low as 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) above our planet, with an altitude roughly 32 times the normal cruising orbit of the International Space Station.
"Images gathered just before closest approach portray our planet shining through darkness, during one of humankind's most challenging times in recent history," wrote the European Space Agency in a statement. Officials had previously urged astronomy enthusiasts to observe novel coronavirus-related "social distancing" guidelines while searching for the spacecraft from their balconies or backyards.
One of the most difficult parts of the flyby involved 34 minutes of darkness for BepiColombo, when it flew through the shadow of Earth. This was the first time the solar-powered spacecraft did not receive sunlight to "power up" instruments and essential equipment since its launch 18 months ago, in October 2018.
To prepare for the darkness, mission operators fully charged the spacecraft's batteries and made sure all components were nice and warm. Social distancing efforts due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic were in force at the spacecraft mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, with only limited personnel on site. The effort worked without any problems, ESA added in the same statement.
"It is always nerve-wracking to know a spacecraft's solar panels are not bathed in sunlight. When we saw the solar cells had restarted to generate electrical current, we knew BepiColombo was finally out of Earth's shadow and ready to proceed on its interplanetary journey," Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo spacecraft operations manager for ESA, said in the statement.
Scientists switched on most of the instruments during the flyby to do scientific measurements of the moon and Earth's magnetic field, ESA added. These observations will serve as a test run for operations at Mercury. BepiColombo scientists will analyze the data in time to make any necessary calibrations for the spacecraft's next flyby, which will be of Venus in October.
ESA marked the maneuver's conclusion by sharing an animation of images captured as the spacecraft flew away from Earth within a day of the flyby, paired with a quote from famous astronomer Carl Sagan. "That receding crescent … 'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.' - Carl Sagan. Farewell @BepiColombo, and goodnight."
ESA✔@esa
That receding crescent... “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives." - Carl Sagan
Numerous spacecraft and agency Twitter feeds provided updates on the mission during and after the flyby.
"Dear Earthlings, I'm almost one million km from Earth now and I miss you so much," the @BepiColombo Twitter account said Monday (April 13). "It would make me so happy if you could share any photos you've taken of my flyby on Friday." The account added a link to a Flickr group hosting photos of the flyby taken by amateur photographers tracking the spacecraft's passage.
The animation also caught the attention of some prominent tweeters.
London's Northolt Branch Observatories, which typically studies comets and asteroids during Earth flybys, posted a picture on Twitter showing its view of BepiColombo in the sky. "It was visible at +16.9 mag at the time, in the direction of the constellation Hydra," the tweet on Sunday(April 12) read. A +6 magnitude in brightness is considered the threshold of naked-eye visibility, so +16.9 magnitude is only visible in a large telescope.
Scientific updates about the mission's progress will be available in the coming weeks at @ESA_Bepi, @ESA_MTM and @BepiColombo.
A newly discovered asteroid about the size of a house will zip safely by Earth on Wednesday (April 15), passing just inside the orbit of the moon.
The asteroid 2020 GH2 will pass Earth at a range of about 223,000 miles (359,000 kilometers). The average distance from the Earth to the moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 km).
Asteroid 2020 GH2 is about between 43 and 70 feet (13-70 meters) wide, or about the size of a detached house, according to data from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the agency's Asteroid Watch Twitter account. It was first discovered on Saturday (April 11) and is being tracked by astronomers at several observatories, including the Catalina Sky Survey at Mount Lemmon in Arizona, according to the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This NASA graphic depicts the orbits of the Earth, the moon and the asteroid 2020 GH2 during its Earth flyby on April 15, 2020. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Asteroid 2020 GH2 poses no impact risk to Earth during its flyby. While flying inside the moon's orbit sounds like a close shave by an asteroid, there's actually a lot of room.
In a March 31 video shared on Twitter by NASA's Asteroid Watch Twitter account, Kelly Fast of the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office demonstrated just how much space is out there. She used a tennis ball as the moon and a basketball as the Earth, placing them 25 feet (7 meters) apart in a hallway — the scale distance between the Earth and moon. At that scale, a huge asteroid like the one that doomed the dinosaurs would be the size of a grain of salt, Fast said.
"Space is pretty big," Fast said in the video, which is part of the NASA At Home project. "A close-approach asteroid is really starting to get close, maybe, when it gets within the distance of the weather satellites." Geostationary weather satellites orbit the Earth at a distance of about 22,000 miles (35,000 km).
That's not to say that near-Earth asteroids don't represent a potential threat to Earth. Scientists with NASA's Planetary Defense Program and around the world regularly observe the skies for new and known asteroids that might pose a danger to Earth.
Any asteroid about 500 feet (140 m) or larger with an orbit that brings it within 4.7 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, NASA officials have said. As of 2019, scientists have discovered about 19,000 near-Earth asteroids, with about 30 newfound asteroids added each week.
And if you thought the house-sized asteroid 2020 GH2 sounds big, NASA is gearing up for an even larger asteroid to fly by on April 29. On that day, the potentially hazardous asteroid 1998 OR2 will fly by Earth at a safe distance of 3.9 million miles (6.2 million km).
Correction: This story was updated on April 15 to reflect that NASA's Asteroid Watch is an outreach arm online on Twitter and this website and not a planetary defense program. The agency's Planetary Defense Program is overseen by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
De helderste supernova draagt de (abstracte) naam SN2016aps en vond zo’n 3,6 miljard lichtjaar van de aarde plaats. “SN2016aps is om verschillende redenen spectaculair,” aldus astronoom Edo Berger. “Hij is niet alleen helderder dan elke andere supernova die we ooit hebben gezien, maar hij heeft ook verschillende eigenschappen en kenmerken die ’m erg zeldzaam maken in vergelijking met andere explosies van sterren in het universum.”
Het onderzoeksteam identificeerde de supernova SN2016aps voor het eerst in 2016. Daarvoor gebruikten ze de gegevens van de Pan-STARRS, een stel van twee telescopen. Al snel volgde een vierjarig vervolgonderzoek waarbij de energie-uitstoot nauwgezet bestudeerd werd.
Wat bleek? De explosie van de ster was tien keer zo krachtig als een supernova van normale grootte. Bij de gemiddelde supernova is slechts 1 procent van de totale energie-uitbarsting zichtbaar. Maar de SN2016aps straalde ongeveer 50 procent van zijn energie uit. “De intense energie-uitstoot van deze supernova wijst op een zware ontplofte ster, die bij zijn geboorte minstens 100 keer zoveel massa had als onze zon,” zegt Berger.
Uiteindelijk kwamen de onderzoekers tot de conclusie dat SN2016aps wellicht is ontstaan door de samensmelting van twee zware sterren.
Linda Moulton Howe Explores Area 29, White Sands Missile Base
Linda Moulton Howe Explores Area 29, White Sands Missile Base
COAST TO COAST AM – Linda presented her interview with researcher Ryan Wood, who revealed information about a secret facility within the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico referred to as “Area 29.”
Wood and his father Robert received documents and photos referring to this facility beginning in the mid-1990s, and recently hired a remote viewer he referred to as “Sky Arrow” to report on any impressions that could be deduced from the material.
According to Wood, the viewer first said that the “target makes me nervous,” but went on to describe a facility that housed space vehicles, UFOs, and “experimental energy research for deep space propulsion vehicles.” From these impressions, Wood concluded that the facility is “tapping into something that modern, open science doesn’t know or understand.”
For a long time, many experts believed that there was no sound in space because it is a vacuum, but sound does exist in the form of electromagnetic vibrations, you just need the right tools to be able to hear it. NASA scientists with the Van Allen Probes mission were able to record these sounds, and have given them different classifications.
To make the recordings, scientists used the “Waves instrument,” which is part of the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science project, also known as EMFISIS. EMFISIS is an instrument suite on the Van Allen Probes, and it is sensitive to both electric and magnetic waves.
Accord to the NASA blog, “It probes them with a trio of electric sensors as well as three search coil magnetometers, which look for changes in the magnetic field. All instruments were specifically designed to be highly sensitive while using the least amount of power possible.”
Scientists were recording these waves because they want to learn more about how space works.
“These plasma waves knock about high-energy electrons speeding around Earth. Some of those freed electrons spiral earthward, where they interact with our upper atmosphere, causing auroras, though others can pose a danger to spacecraft or telecommunications, which can be damaged by their powerful radiation,”according to NASA.
Below are some of the descriptions that NASA gave for the sounds:
Juno Captures the “Roar” of Jupiter:NASA’s Juno spacecraft has crossed the boundary of Jupiter’s immense magnetic field. Juno’s Waves instrument recorded the encounter with the bow shock over the course of about two hours on June 24th, 2016.
Plasma Waves:Plasma waves, like the roaring ocean surf, create a rhythmic cacophony that, with the EMFISIS instrument aboard NASA’s Van Allen Probes, we can hear across space.
Sounds of a Comet Encounter:During its February 14th, 2011, flyby of comet Tempel 1, an instrument on the protective shield on NASA’s Stardust spacecraft was pelted by dust particles and small rocks, as can be heard in this audio track.
If you are into that sort of thing, you can also purchase entire recordings like this from Amazon, but they are also available widely on streaming services like SoundCloud as well.
Strange Looking Government Officials or Aliens - True Accounts of Men In Black!
Strange Looking Government Officials or Aliens - True Accounts of Men In Black!
Descriptions of strange men dressed in smart black suits visiting eye witnesses of UFOs have taken place in numerous countries. They have been described as android looking, almost alien in appearance and act very unusual to simple things.
Who or what are they? Presented by Nick Redfern Filmed by Conscious Life Expo, LA
Energy Entity Recorded Over North Carolina Darting About, Video, April 14, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Energy Entity Recorded Over North Carolina Darting About, Video, April 14, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 14, 2020 Location of sighting: Raleigh, North Carolina, USA Source: MUFON I have heard reports of a sphere being seen around the world. Videos and photos have been uploaded all week. From the shape of this object in the photos above...I would say this is not a perfect sphere and looks to have over ten right angles on it. Planets dont have right angels. They are round. Also the description of this object darting about also falls into place with other reports. This is an awesome video. This is not a UFO so much as an energy being...and entity that is of the highest level of assertion for any species. Very rare, very real. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Visual bright orb brighter than typical star. Not an aircraft . Potentially thought was a drone however it aas above and well beyond cloud cover altitude. Moved erratically at points and changed locations. Too large for drone and outside all flight paths of rdu. Moved out of sight after 30 min.
Alien Artifact On Surface Of Mars In Rover Photo, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Artifact On Surface Of Mars In Rover Photo, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: July 12, 2015
Location of discovery:Mars, Sol 1037
Original link: Deleted by NASA
Here is an old discovery I have never seen before. It was found by Youtuber IC Devices and shows some ancient artifact on the surface of Mars. The object in question is folded and has three layers with a baseball size sphere sitting on the top layer. The objects color looks different from the color of its surroundings. It looks grey, metallic in appearance. Another strange thing is the original link to this was deleted by NASA. This is a remarkable find, and had this been discovered in an ancient Aztec or Mayan dig site...there would be no question about it being made by intelligent beings. I hope this discovery inspires you to start searching and reporting discoveries of your own. We learn together as we teach each other.
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300-Million-Year Old Doorknobs Found In Coal?
300-Million-Year Old Doorknobs Found In Coal?
There are a number of artefacts, found at varying parts of the world, which, fly in the face of current paradigms, in regards to the chronology of man.
Iron pots, zinc vases, even imprints of ancient chariot wheels, are but a few artefacts, which have in the past, been found in numerous coal seams – and found by people in positions of responsibility, whom often testify not only in regards to their legitimacy, but are often accompanied by the lump of coal in which they were found - still possessing the intriguing imprint upon their surface, undeniably supporting the testimonies of these individuals, all but proving authenticity beyond doubt.
Like that of the iron pot, and its accompanying coal block which was its tomb, carbon dating has indicated that the pot is an astonishing 300 million years old.
However, as time goes on, and coal mining, along with many other mining activities becomes more rapid and advanced in nature, it is simply a matter of time before even more mysterious and unexplainable artefacts are also found.
Unfortunately, due to the controversial nature of these artefacts, it is very likely that a number of them have either been shrugged off, or actively destroyed before ever achieving wide spread acclaim.
However, fortunately, the next artefact of interest, just like that of the many others we have previously covered, can not only be seen as yet another smoking gun, indicating that there has been a number of advanced phases within human civilisation, but yet again, this timeline could in all possibility, date back an astonishing 300 million years.
Although modern society has been taught that we are at the height of human accomplishments, many of the techniques we currently claim as our own accomplishments, could have been achieved an unimaginably long time ago, far back within earth’s history.
Dated to the same age as that of a number of other artefacts, which we have covered in the past, a group of brass doorknobs were once abandoned, eventually finding their way into a coal seam, which has been dated as 300 million year old geology. Found still encased within this ancient strata, these astonishing artefacts are undeniably of an incredible age.
Unfortunately, and rather predictably, not much has been done in regard to mainstream investigation into said artifacts, and their current location, if indeed still in existence is unclear, yet fortunately, before their disappearance, photographic evidence was taken. Subsequently allowing us to add it to the volume of research and artefacts which not only support our posit of lost civilisation, but place human activities an impressive 300 million years back into earth’s history.
Who made these brass doorknobs?
Could we really be a civilisation hundreds of millions of years old?
We find the evidence to suggest such, highly compelling.
I’ve asked a friend of mine to review this new book about UFOs that’s available on Amazon:
If you want to be sure of unusual things such as aliens or UFOs, then you must think about it from an unusual way of thinking.
This book not only gives you a proof of the sightings of UFO, but it changes the way of thinking and perception about them. UFO sightings are becoming more and more popular and no one can deny it. Even the Pentagon has admitted that the aerial objects in the videos are simply unidentified, and for now, unexplained.
I never believed in aliens or UFOs. I always thought that this is something created by man himself to become popular or something but after reading the book ”top 10 UFO Sightings by Sebastian Privett’’ my whole perception has changed. This book gives me all the answers to my questions. And now I have started believing in these things.
After reading this book I ask myself how people can close their minds off to the size of the Universe. With billions of stars, millions of galaxies, and possibly a googol of planets, how can it be that human beings are the only thinking animal in creation?
This book unfolds a thrilling journey with a lot of information with proof, so I suggest everyone to read this book. Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed—if they’re here, I want to know about them.
UFOs started appearing over Kroměří¸, Czech Republic 10-Apr-2020
UFOs started appearing over Kroměří¸, Czech Republic 10-Apr-2020
Check out this really interesting footage that was filmed over Kroměří¸, a city in east part of Czech Republic. These bright unidentified flying objects just started to show them selfs in the middle on nowhere.
What do you think these are? Extraterrestrial beings or crafts or something more earthly (experimental maybe?). You can leave your comments below!
A well-known Russian expert, Ernst Rifgatovich Muldashev, an ophthalmic surgeon by profession and researcher by passion, has long been looking for traces of ancient civilizations disappeared before the rise of mankind on Earth.
Muldshev, who in 2002 published three volumes of “In Search of Cities of the Gods”, followed by numerous other volumes (among which “Where do we come from” e “Between the arms of Dracula”), believes that the existence of more ancient civilizations of man is confirmed by archaeological finds, rock carvings, references to airplanes and Ufos in stories and legends. According to the expert, the civilizations that inhabited the planet would have been four.
ASURAS, THE NATIVES
The Asuras, or the natives, according to Muldashev were the first race that appeared on Earth 10 million years ago. They were incredibly tall beings, up to 50 meters, they had an etheric body, they lived for up to ten thousand years and used telepathy to communicate with each other. In reality, they were not natives of the Earth: they moved there after the death of the Phaethon planet.
ATLANTEANS, THOSE BORN AFTER
As the millennia passed, the Asuras changed, their bodies became denser. Thus a new race would develop, the Atlanteans, i.e. “those born after”. They were slightly smaller than the Asuras, they still did not have bones, but they had a third eye, located between the eyebrows.
LEMURIANS, THE BUILDERS OF THE SPHINX
After the Atlanteans, appeared on Earth the Lemurians. Much more similar to modern humans, they possessed a bone skeleton and were differentiated according to sex. The third eye was still present, but not as well developed as the Atlanteans.
Lemurians were about 7-8 meters tall and lived about a thousand years. According to Muldashev, they were the ones who built the Sphinx, Stonehenge and many other wonderful monuments of antiquity.
BOREI, THE MOST SIMILAR TO MAN
Lastly the Borei would have appeared: this race was formed long after the other, its members were much lower, did not exceed 3-4 meters in height, their third eye was more hidden while the other organs were very similar to those of man. What happened to all these beings?
According to Muldashev, about 25-30 thousand years ago on our planet occurred a nuclear catastrophe following a conflict between Lemurians and Borei. Some of the Lemurians took refuge in the caves, where they fell into a hibernating state, the other side flew away on space ships.
ARYANS, AFTER THE FALL OF ATLANTIS
After the Lemurians left the scene, the Boers and the Atlanteans reached unprecedented development peaks, but they could not avoid the disappearance of their civilizations that would have happened about 12 thousand years ago.
According to Muldashev a fifth race would have developed just before the disappearance of Atlantis, whose myth survived so far: the "aryan" race. The ancestors of modern man did not have a third eye and that's why our society would be developing more slowly.
Will it be true, or as official science says it's just about fantastic theories without any concrete proof? The experts have spoken, but this does not interest the readers of Muldashev.
‘Holy Grail’ Dating Technique Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Past
‘Holy Grail’ Dating Technique Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Past
A new archaeological dating technique has been successfully applied to shards of pottery uncovered from a dig in East London’s Shoreditch.
The “groundbreaking” new dating technique analyzes fatty acids rather than organic materials, and the University of Bristol scientists who developed the method proved its effectivity by dating ancient pottery samples from sites of known ages. Among them was a collection of pottery fragments discovered beneath Shoreditch in East London, containing traces of meat and dairy products, made and consumed by descendants of Europe's first farmers around 3,600 BC.
Enter: Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Analysis
A new study published in the journal Nature by a team of scientists, from the University of Bristol in England, explains that pottery is one of the most commonly recovered artifacts from archaeological sites. However, pottery is among the most difficult artifacts to date accurately using the traditional radiocarbon dating method, but the new method is based on “accelerator mass spectrometry analysis” of food residues including fatty acids.
Experts at the University of Bristol have developed a groundbreaking new dating technique for pottery (like the fragment of the one pictured, which here is being prepared for dating).
According to the paper, this new dating technique for pottery vessels has several advantages over the traditional method, as it can directly determine the period it was made. It also identifies the origins of the organic residues found on the pottery, which helps scientists map when specific foodstuffs were exploited. What’s more, when testing their new method, they successfully dated dairy and carcass products in Neolithic vessels from Europe and Saharan Africa .
Behold, a Holy Grail of Archaeology
The team’s new method dates pottery with an accuracy to within around “one human lifespan” by analyzing the porous surfaces of pottery, which absorb fatty acids left over from foodstuffs. And speaking of this groundbreaking new method of directly dating archaeological pots, chemist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol said it’s one of the “holy grails of archaeology.”
Emmanuelle Casanova one of the Bristol scientists who worked on the project loading the Bristol accelerator mass spectrometer with samples for the new dating technique.
Having conceptualized this technique more than twenty years ago, the scientist says it wasn't until the team established their own radiocarbon facility in Bristol that they “cracked it,” according to The Daily Mail .
Before this new method was approved, the researchers had to demonstrate that it could determine dates as accurately as samples of bones, seeds and wood and this was achieved by extracting fatty acids from ancient pottery at a range of key sites across Britain, Europe and Africa, known to be up to 8,000 years old. The British sample is described in The Daily Mail as Neolithic “dirty dishes" dug up in Shoreditch at the Principal Place dig site, which is the foundations of Amazon’s new headquarters.
The Shoreditch excavation site, Principal Place, London.
Shoreditch is a hipster heaven for artists and clubbers and people who like to dress up as 19th century cobblers through the day, and this hub of glassy office blocks interspersed with vintage clothes markets, indie coffee shops and cool co-working spaces is but a modern venire over a deeply ancient landscape.
Comprising 436 fragments from at least 24 separate vessels and weighing a total of nearly 6.5 kilos, the pottery included traces of goat, beef, lamb and dairy products, which the team were able to date to within a window of just 138 years, to around 3,600 BC. This means the poetry was made and used around 5,600 years ago by ‘early East Enders’, descendants of Europe's first farmers who arrived in Britain just four centuries earlier, who we now know ate a diet of dairy products from cows, sheep and goats.
Residues found within the round-bottomed vessel suggest it was used to process meat stew. These fragments were used as part of the new dating technique.
Revealing the Sedentary Secrets of Neolithic Hipsters
This “remarkable collection” from Shoreditch helps to fill a “critical gap in London's prehistory,” according to consultant prehistorian Jon Cotton of the Museum of London Archaeology, and he added that this is the “strongest evidence yet” that the people in the area later occupied by London lived “a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle during the Early Neolithic period.”
This evidence challenges the traditional archaeological view that hunting and gathering was the preferred survival method in the mid fourth century BC by demonstrating the people in what would become Britain’s capital were more sedentary than thought.
Historic England's head of scientific dating, who complied the statistical analysis in the new study, Alex Bayliss, said it is very difficult to overstate the importance of this advance to the archaeological community and that the opportunity to date different kinds of pottery much more securely will be “of great practical significance in the field of archaeology.”
Top image: 6,000-year-old prehistoric pottery from the Sahara Desert, which was subjected to the new dating technique. Source: Emmanuelle Casanova et al. / University of Bristol / Nature
New Crucifixion Evidence Sheds Light on the Death of Jesus Christ
New Crucifixion Evidence Sheds Light on the Death of Jesus Christ
An investigation into crucifixions reveals evidence using the latest medical technology on how the horrific form of execution was slow and excruciating, providing new insights into the death of Jesus Christ.
An Excruciating Death
A new TV documentary on the Smithsonian Channel called Crucifixion Mystery discusses the latest theories by medical experts. Dr. Per Lav Madsen, a Danish cardiologist believes the whole process was to cause immense suffering before death. “ Crucifixion was a horrible way of killing people because it took so long. It was a slow way of dying and that’s the reason they used crucifixion in the first place.”
The length of time and suffering varied, according to Dr. Kristina Killgrove. “Someone might have survived on the cross for as long as four or five days until they died of dehydration.”
Rare Skeletons Provide Insights Into Death of Jesus
The documentary also investigates two rare examples of skeletons believed to have been crucified.
The most recent archaeological discovery was in 2007, when a construction team in northern Italy’s Gavello municipality accidentally uncovered an isolated skeleton from a Roman-era burial. Scientists believed the man who was in his thirties was crucified. Using the latest technological advances to study the skeleton, this could offer up new insights into the death of Jesus Christ .
Grave of the man from Gavello during excavation by the provincial archaeological superintendency.
The research team included Emanuela Gualdi-Russo, Ursula Thun Hohenstein, and Nicoletta Onisto from the University of Ferrara and Elena Pilli and David Caramelli from the University of Florence. They extracted DNA from the remains and were able to rule out an accidental origin for a hole in the calcaneus – the heel bone.
The hole was circular, passing from the inside of the foot to the outside, with evidence showing it was caused at the time of death. “In our interpretation,” the archaeologists wrote in A multidisciplinary study of calcaneal trauma in Roman Italy: a possible case of crucifixion? : “We found a particular lesion on the foot of a skeleton from an isolated Roman burial discovered by excavation in 2007 in northern Italy. Here we suggest crucifixion as a possible cause of the lesion.”
Right calcaneus from 1st c AD Gavello, Italy, showing possible evidence of crucifixion. This archaeological evidence has provided new clues to the death of Jesus.
The researchers believed that “the type of lesion found on the right calcaneus from Gavello is compatible with a position of the body [...] contorted to the right with legs and feet in contact to allow a single nail to pierce both heels, [or with] knees in an open position and feet with heels overlapping and fixed on the medial side by a single nail.”
The skeleton was dated to the Roman era as archaeologists discovered fragments of typical Roman bricks and tiles nearby, which places this crucifixion on or near the time of Christ’s death.
Why did the Romans Use Crucifixion as a Form of Punishment?
This form of execution was reserved for the lowest of the low - slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners and political activists.
During the 1st century AD, large numbers of rebels against Rome were crucified in Palestine. It’s believed that Christ was crucified on the pretext that he instigated rebellion against Rome, who were ruthless in suppressing political dissent.
The first example of possible crucifixion came from an excavation in 1968 of a cemetery in Giv’at ha-Mivtar just outside of Jerusalem. It revealed a heel bone with a nail still skewered through it. Yehohanon ben Hagkol is the name on the tomb – and he may also have been a political activist like Jesus Christ.
The calcaneus of Yehohanon ben Hagkol, with transfixed nail, which provided insights into the death of Jesus.
Even the Romans themselves thought crucifixion was barbaric. The Roman orator Cicero noted that “of all punishments, it is the most cruel and most terrifying.” He added that it was the most “extreme and ultimate punishment for slaves.”
Seneca, the Roman philosopher, described the various ways in which crucifixion took place. “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in different ways: some have their victims with their head down to the ground, some impale their private parts, others stretch out their arms,” he wrote in 40AD.
The victim could have also had their eyes pulled out or their tongue excised. One of the worst cases of sadism was recorded by Josephus during the reign of Antiochus IV, where the condemned man’s strangled child was placed around his neck.
The Lex Puteolana tablet reveals the ritual and economics of crucifixion in the Roman world. The 2,000-year-old tablet, now housed in a medieval castle on the Bay of Naples, was found in the town of Puteoli. It’s the only inscription which details the precise practice of crucifixion. The inscription tells us how much the workers who flogged the slaves to be crucified were paid – as well as the executioner. The standard fee for an execution team was four sesterces each – the price of a glass of wine.
In an ironic twist, during later rebellions, the Romans were themselves crucified. According to historians, in AD 9 local Germanic tribes crucified many of the Roman general Varus’ defeated soldiers. In AD 28, the detested Roman tax collectors also met the same fate at the hands of Germanic tribesmen.
How did Jesus Christ die?
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is believed to have taken place in Jerusalem under Roman rule between AD 30-36. No confirmed archaeological evidence of that event has been found, although Christ is mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians.
Tacitus mentions that Christ was executed while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect in charge of Judaea (AD26-36), during the reign of Tiberius. According to biblical accounts, Jesus died after six hours, nailed to the cross. The two thieves who died with Christ were Gestas who was on the left and Dismas on the right.
In Roman law, a person condemned to crucifixion was scourged first, usually with a wooden stave. Short whips with studded leather thongs were also used to flay the skin. The person was stripped naked, tied to an upright wooden post and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by Roman legionnaires.
Death may have been due to cardiac arrest after the scourging or dehydration. Many scientists have come to the conclusion that it was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. The Roman guards were only allowed to leave once the victim had expired. Due to impatience, the soldiers may have sped up matters by breaking their legs or stabbing the chest.
Shockingly, this horrific form of execution is still used today. Amnesty International recorded a case of crucifixion in Yemen in 2012, when an Islamist group found a 28-year-old guilty of planting electronic devices in vehicles. He was executed first and then hung on a cross.
In Iraq during 2016, a man revealed that his brother-in-law was crucified after being tortured for five hours. “My wife’s brother was crucified by Daesh (Isis),” he told the charity ADF International. “He was crucified and tortured in front of his wife and children, who were forced to watch. They told him that “if he loved Jesus that much, he would die like Jesus.” Isis then cut his stomach open and shot him before leaving him to die on a cross.
Every Good Friday in the Philippines (which is 80% Catholic), a man playing the role of Jesus Christ is nailed to the cross. Since the 1980s, Ruben Enaje has had four-inch nails hammered into both his hands and feet and then hoisted on a wooden cross for around five minute
In 2016, Enaje decided that would be his last crucifixion. The significance was that this was the Filipino’s 33rd time. According to religious tradition, Jesus was 33 years old at the time of his crucifixion.
Top image: Main: depiction of the crucifixion/death of Jesus Christ and the thieves, Gestas and Dismas. (Andrea Mantegna / Public domain ).
Inset: The calcaneus of Yehohanon ben Hagkol, with transfixed nail. ( Israel Museum / Ilan Shtulman)
60,000-Year-Old Underwater Forest May Hold Next Medical Breakthrough!
60,000-Year-Old Underwater Forest May Hold Next Medical Breakthrough!
About 60,000 years ago, pre-historic humans began emerging out of Africa and shared hunting places and cave residences with Neanderthal populationsin what is today Europe. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a vast cypress tree forest carpeted riverbanks off the coast of Alabama in Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The ancient underwater forest of withering trees and the shipworms they contain were entombed beneath encroaching sediments and sea waters until Hurricane Ivan tore up the Gulf Coast in 2004 and exposed the ancient forest, which was discovered 60 feet below the surface water of Mobile Bay.
The Ancient Secrets of Modern Medicine
A new documentary film by Ben Raines produced by This is Alabama, reveals how dive shop owner Chas Broughton first discovered evidence of the ancient forest and invited an environmental journalist and scientists from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) to assess his find. The results were published on the NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research website, saying this ancient submerged forest has remained undisturbed for thousands of years and that it holds “the secret to the creation of new medicines .”
300 Ancient Animals Found Entombed in Submerged Forest
A sample of tree sap was recovered from within the bark of one tree, that when cut released resin strong enough to “permeate the air” and the tree’s fibers and growth rings were still visible. Dr. Harley said the tree’s growth rings were narrower and were more uniform in size than those of modern cypress trees, indicating the environment was much colder than our current climate , and Dr. DeLong radiocarbon dated the sample at 40,000-45,000 years old.
Collected from an ancient cypress forest submerged in Mobile Bay, this log contains hundreds of marine organisms that either burrow into the wood or live in burrows made by other organisms.
Last December, NOAA-funded an expedition of scientists from the University of Utah and Northeastern University , and marine and environmental sciences professor Brian Helmuth, who determined that the ancient trees were very well preserved under sediment layers that had prevented oxygenation and decomposition. It was Francis Choi, a senior lab manager at Northeastern University Marine Science Center , who looked at organisms buried within the wood and discovered 300 ancient animals.
This dried specimen of Teredo navalis was extracted from the wood and the calcareous tunnel that originally surrounded it and curled into a circle during preservation. The two valves of the shell are the white structures at the anterior end; they are used to dig the tunnel in the wood.
Sometimes called “termites of the sea,” shipworms are tiny marine bivalve mollusks(saltwater clams) with long, soft, naked bodies, and they are notorious for boring into wood immersed in sea water. As these worms bore their way into organic matter, what comes out the other end is converted into animal tissue.
In this study, one hundred bacterial strains from shipworms, many of which were novel, were dated to being at least 60,000 years old. The team of scientists DNA-sequenced 12 of the strains, determining that they could be applied in the creation of new antibiotics for treatment against “parasites, pain and anti-cancer drugs, antimicrobial activity, and possibly anti-viral drugs”, according to University of Utah medicinal chemistry research professor Margo Haygood.
Ocean Genome Legacy Center Director Dan Distel removes a shipworm. The bacteria that shipworms create may lead to new life-saving medicines.
This is not the first time scientists have studied shipworms in a medical context, in 2017 a paper by Northeastern University scientists titled “'Unicorn' shipworm could reveal clues about human medicine, bacterial infections” was published by Science Daily . Researchers discovered a “dark slithering creature four feet long” dwelling in foul mud in a remote Philippines lagoon and this “giant shipworm”, with pinkish siphons at one end and an eyeless head at the other, was said to have added to the scientific understanding of how “bacteria cause infections and, in turn, how we might adapt to tolerate, and even benefit from them.”
According to East Idaho News , the COVID-19 pandemic has put a stop to diving at the ancient forest site in the Gulf of Mexico, but Dr. Choi and his team plan to launch unmanned underwater robots to provide 3D visualizations of the forest and Dr. Haygood and her team plan to study more tree samples next year, which NOAA said might have applications in “textile, paper, food, renewable fuel, animal feed, and fine chemical production.”
Top Image: Wood from an ancient bald cypress forest buried off the coast of Alabama was uncovered by storms. Newly exposed wood offers a unique habitat for marine organisms and creates a novel ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico.
UFO sighting: Mysterious 'man-made' crafts in Siberia stun top scientists - watch footage
UFO sighting: Mysterious 'man-made' crafts in Siberia stun top scientists - watch footage
A BIZARRE UFO sighting in northern Siberia has stunned Russian scientists, who have failed to come up with a logical explanation for the footage - amid odd claims of alien involvement.
A mysterious trio of UFOs circling in the daylight sky over northern Siberia has sent the Internet into meltdown. The bizarre sighting was caught on video in a car park close to a shopping centre in Tomsk, Russia. Scientists, who typically dismiss such sightings, have been left baffled by the footage of the UFOs, amid growing speculation over its origins.
In the 15-second video, three mysterious bright spots lined up in a triangle above Siberia appear to move closer together.
The person behind the footage told Russian media they spotted the UFO formation on the 6th April.
The clip, which went viral across Russia, immediately prompted online viewers to start speculating if the sighting was a genuine UFO.
Tatyana Galushina, an astronomy professor at Tomsk State University, explained that she and her colleagues could not agree on what exactly the video shows.
A mysterious trio of UFOs circling in the daylight sky has sent the Internet into meltdown
(Image: IG)
The scientist did suggest that the objects filmed were "man-made" but refused to speculate on their origins
(Image: IG)
Professor Galushina said: "The main theory is that it is something illuminated by the sun.
"It could be balloons, paper lanterns, or even quadrocopters."
Galushina also suggested that the UFO footage was a hoax or potentially camera glare.
This comes amid claims video is a result of "bored" Russians during the coronavirus lockdown measures.
The unusual lights follow a similar sighting of mystery lights across the border of the US and Mexico over a week ago
(Image: IG)
Professor Galushina told RIA Novosti: "This is certainly not a natural phenomenon, because if a person really filmed an incomprehensible phenomenon and wanted to find out what it was, they would give more information, film for longer, and so on.
"The problem is that it’s hard to make any reliable conclusions from this video."
She did suggest that the objects filmed were "man-made" but refused to speculate on their origins.
2020 has been an exciting year so far for SETI – the search for extraterrestrial life – in terms of new technological developments and strategies.
Artist’s concept of a nearby civilization signaling Earth after observing an Earth transit in front of our sun. Scientists have looked for radio signals from at least 20 nearby stars, those situated so that they might see Earth transits. So far, no signal has been found. And so the search continues.
2020 has been an interesting year so far with respect to the search for extraterrestrial entelligence, aka SETI. No, there’s been no alien signal yet, but scientists have been working with new technologies and strategies that should greatly improve the search. Earlier this year, they also announced that they have a ton of new survey data to go through, collected in previous years by radio telescopes.
An outline for new approaches to the question of alien intelligence, and how best to look for it, was announced by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in mid-February 2020. The old SETI paradigm of only searching for radio signals is now changing as new technology is used and new ideas are considered.
Also in mid-February, the Breakthrough Listen initiative announced via UC Berkeley that a whopping 2 petabytes (2 million gigabytes) of data was released from the latest SETI survey of our galaxy. It is the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the galaxy and the region around the central black hole. The associated peer-reviewed paper can be found on arXiv.
When SETI first started in the 1960s with Project Ozma, its only focus was to look for radio signals from an advanced alien civilization among the stars. SETI still does that, but a lot has also changed since then. Now, as well as searching for radio signals, scientists are looking for technosignatures, a wide variety of possible signs of alien intelligence including chemical changes in a planet’s atmosphere, laser pulses and even megastructures orbiting a planet or star.
As part of the new technological advancements, the SETI Institute will add a new signal-processing system to the Very Large Array.
This year, some radio telescopes that are already looking for radio signals are having new SETI capabilities added to them with a new signal-processing system. This is the result of an agreement between NRAO and the SETI Institute. The National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is the first to use this technology, with the addition of a state-of-the-art technosignature search system. NRAO director Tony Beasley said in February, in a statement:
Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.
Andrew Siemion is director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, and he’s principal investigator for the Breakthrough Listen initiative. He explained:
The SETI Institute [is developing and installing] an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky. This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.
Such an endeavor is welcome news for those who have advocated that SETI needs to expand its search away from looking only for radio signals, given that a civilization older and more advanced than ours might have abandoned the use of radio signals long ago.
With the new technologies, scientists say they’ll be able to look for other signs of intelligent activity, such as lasers, megastructures like Dyson spheres that could be built around a star to harness its energy, chemicals in the atmosphere of a planet caused by industrial pollution, or rings of artificial satellites orbiting a planet. All this can be done while the telescope is also doing other kinds of observations, they say. Siemion explained:
Such indicators are becoming detectable as our technology advances, and this has renewed interest in SETI searches at both government agencies and private foundations.
The data from the VLA’s new observations is being provided to a new signal-processing system built by the SETI Institute. This will allow VLA to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence while doing other kinds of observations at the same time.
SETI traditionally involved the search for alien civilizations. But there’s more to discover here. For example, simple life forms might also alter a planet’s atmosphere in ways that could be detected; for example, they might produce oxygen and methane. According to Victoria Meadows, principal investigator for NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL):
Upcoming telescopes in space and on the ground will have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars, so it’s important to understand how best to recognize signs of habitability and life on these planets. These computer models will help us determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life.
Of course, it would be exciting to find any kind of extraterrestrial life on an exoplanet orbiting a distant star. And now scientists have new and better tools to find it. But if alien life were found sometime relatively soon, then what? Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute has said:
How strong does the evidence need to be to justify claiming a discovery? Can we expect to find smoking guns? If the evidence requires many caveats, how do we responsibly inform the public?
Tarter also emphasized the need for media to accurately relay the discovery to the public:
A real detection of extraterrestrial intelligence would be such an important milestone in our understanding of the universe that journalists need to avoid uncritical reporting of obviously fake claims.
Beasley spoke to a new era for SETI as well when he said:
As continuing discoveries show us that planets are very common components of the universe, and we are able to study the characteristics of those planets, it’s exciting that at the same time, technological advances are giving us the tools to greatly expand our search for signs of life. We look forward to this new realm of discovery.
We also look forward to the coming decade, when we hope to build a next-generation Very Large Array, which will be able to search a volume of the universe a thousand times larger than that accessible to current telescopes, making it the most powerful radio technosignature search machine humanity has ever constructed.
Artist’s concept of a Dyson sphere, a theoretical megastructure built by an advanced alien civilization to harness energy from its star. This is one type of possible technosignature – evidence of a past or present technology, built by an alien civilization – included in SETI 2.0.
In the meantime, as we wait for that big discovery – as we’ve waited hopefully for a lifetime – Breakthrough Listen also said in February that nearly 2 petabytes of data had been released from the most comprehensive survey to date of radio emissions from the plane of our galaxy and the region surrounding the central black hole.
It was the second data dump from the project’s four-year search. The first data release was in June 2019. The survey covered the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz. Half the data is from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, and the other half is from the Green Bank Telescope, part of the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in California.
Matt Lebofsky, Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, said in February in a statement:
Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public. It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.
Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen, also emphasized the importance of having much more data to work with:
For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to the general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question.
Breakthrough Listen is using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes telescope in Australia for the most comprehensive search for alien radio signals yet conducted.
The center of our Milky Way galaxy – and our galaxy’s flat disk – are considered good places to search for evidence of advanced alien life, since they are so dense with stars. It makes sense that we’d find a powerful transmitter or beacon in the galactic center or disk. According to Siemion:
The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy. If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Now that’s a mind-blowing idea!
These scientists said earlier this year that a small subset of the new data had already been analyzed, from 20 nearby stars in the Earth-transit zone, that is, the zone in our sky aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. Distant planets in this part of our sky would see Earth transiting the sun, if they had powerful-enough technologies, and if they happened to be looking our way.
The search of 20 stars in the Earth-transit zone was conducted in the C-band – 4 to 8 gigahertz – by the Green Bank Telescope.Sofia Sheikh, a UC Berkeley undergraduate, conducted the analysis and submitted her findings to The Astrophysical Journal (here’s a draft on arXiv):
This is a unique geometry. It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky.
The Green Bank Telescope, part of the Green Bank Observatory, in West Virginia.
So what did Sheikh find? Nothing yet, but this new comprehensive search is still in the very early stages. Siemion said:
We didn’t find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz. These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.
Sheikh added:
My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose. So, we know that there isn’t anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky.
As noted in the paper:
We conclude that at least 8% of the systems in the restricted earth transit zone within 150 pc [parsecs] do not possess the type of transmitters searched in this survey.
The Green Bank Telescope was aimed toward each star for five minutes, then was turned away from each star for five minutes. That process was repeated two more times. If a detected signal disappears when the telescope is turned away, that makes it more likely that it really is originating from the star and isn’t just terrestrial interference. An initial 1 million radio spikes were narrowed down to a couple of hundred good candidates, which were then eliminated as Earth-based interference. The last four signals turned out to be from passing satellites. Disappointing, but there is still a long way to go.
While searches like this cover a lot of cosmic territory, it should be kept in mind that we have still really only looked at a very tiny portion of even just our own galaxy. As Jason Wright at Penn State put it, if our oceans were an analogy to all the places and radio wavelengths that could be searched, then to date we have only explored the equivalent to a hot tub. That leaves a lot of cosmic real estate still to cover. According to Siemion:
Of all the observations we have done, probably 20% or 30% have been included in a data analysis paper. Our goal is not just to analyze it 100%, but 1000% or 2000%. We want to analyze it iteratively.
Andrew Siemion, principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen.
It’s not just distant stars that Breakthrough Listen can monitor. The project recently listened to interstellar comet 2I/Borisov as well as the previous interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua in our solar system, just in case. Nothing was heard, which isn’t too surprising, but since we don’t really know when or how a distant civilization might send a probe our way, it doesn’t hurt to check them out. As Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen, explained:
If interstellar travel is possible, which we don’t know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don’t know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices. Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.
With new technology, strategies and mountains of data to analyze, these are good days for SETI. Broadening the search for alien intelligence, or other life, is a smart move, and one of these days it might just pay off in spades.
Bottom line: 2020 has been an exciting year so far in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, aka SETI, with some technological developments and new strategies.
A NEW, VIOLENT ORIGIN STORY FOR 'OUMUAMUA EXPLAINS THE INTERSTELLAR OBJECT’S WEIRD SHAPE
A NEW, VIOLENT ORIGIN STORY FOR 'OUMUAMUA EXPLAINS THE INTERSTELLAR OBJECT’S WEIRD SHAPE
The more we learn about this interstellar visitor, the weirder it gets.
ON OCTOBER 19, 2017 OUR SOLAR SYSTEM RECEIVED AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
The rocky, elongated object came to us from beyond the realms of the Sun — the first ever recorded interstellar object to cruise through our neck of the galaxy. We dubbed it 'Oumuamua, which means "A messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian.
Since then, scientists have puzzled over this cigar-shaped alien body. Where did it come from? Is it a misshapen comet? An alien probe from a distant world?
It turns out 'Oumuamua's origins are even more unusual than we could have supposed.
A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy is the first to propose a comprehensive origin story for the mysterious interstellar object.
It suggests 'Oumuamua was once part of a planet that got too close to its host star. Like Icarus flying too near to the Sun, the planet was destroyed in its close encounter, violently shredded by the star's gravity into long, thin, rocky pieces.
Oumuamua is likely a fragment that was broken off from a dead planet.ZHANG Yun
VIOLENT ORIGINS— Yun Zhang, a researcher at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France and lead author of the new study, began the quest to uncover 'Oumuamua's origins because there were just no good theories out there to explain the object's weird features.
'Oumuamua resembles a cosmic cigar. And while many assumed 'Oumuamua is a comet, it lacks the telltale coma, or envelope surrounding a comet’s core, and tail of gas and dust. It also has a dry surface more akin to that of rocky asteroids.
Another strange characteristic of 'Oumuamua is how fast it travels through the Solar System. It slingshotted past the Sun at a speed of 196,000 miles per hour — too fast to be explained by the force of gravity alone.
"It really is a mysterious object," Zhang tells Inverse. "We did not know any scenario that can produce that shape before."
To unravel 'Oumuamua's mysteries, Zhang and her team created a series of computer simulations to model what would happen when three types of objects — half-mile-wide planetesimals, frozen objects similar to comets, and larger planets such as super-Earths — came too close to their host star.
The study found that if any of these objects came as close as 220,000 miles to their host star, they would be torn apart by the star's tidal forces. They would essentially shredded into elongated fragments, and then ejected out into interstellar space. The smaller the object, the closer it would have to get for this process to take place.
In 'Oumuamua's case, that means it could be the shrapnel left after one of these destructive events — the remains of a planet that came too close for comfort to its star, somewhere out in our galaxy.
"Our scenario is still hypothetical, but it’s the only scenario that can explain all the puzzling characteristics of 'Oumuamua," Zhang says. The theory is just that, however — the researchers can't prove this is the true origin tale of 'Oumuamua.
"Although we cannot verify the actual thing that happened, but we have high confidence about this scenario."
The tidal forces of the star acts on the particles that make up the object, causing it to be elongated. Yun Zhang
'OUMUAMUA POPULATION— If the findings hold up, they suggest there may be many more 'Oumuamua-type objects out there.
The process described in the study would take place in planetary systems around low-mass stars or white dwarfs which would have strong enough tidal forces to rip the planets that come too close to shreds. Reassuringly, our Sun isn't dense enough to exert such strong forces. It does exert some tidal forces on the Earth, but the effect is smaller than that of the Moon.
On average, each of the qualifying planetary systems could eject about a hundred trillion objects like 'Oumuamua over the course of their lifespan, according to the researchers. To know whether that is the case, they need a bigger sample size than a single strange space rock, Zhang explains.
"If we can observe many more interstellar objects and we can compare their properties with 'Oumuamua, we can compare the formation and ejection we propose, and compare the occurrence rate, and then we will see how many interstellar objects can be actually produced from our scenario," Zhang says.
There's hope we will find more objects like 'Oumuamua to help unravel these mysteries. Just two years after the discovery of 'Oumuamua, a second interstellar object was spotted by an amateur astronomer. The object, dubbed 2I/Borisov after its spotter, Gennady Borisov, is more similar to comets that formed inside the Solar System.
“We have two interstellar visitors, and each of them is completely different,” Michal Drahus, a postdoctoral scholar at Jagiellonian University in Poland, who co-authored a study on 21/Borisov in 2019, told Inverse at the time.
“One is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the Solar System, and the other one is completely similar to the Solar System’s comets.”
If scientists are able to observe more of these interstellar objects, they may offer a unique opportunity to study the composition of planetary bodies that form outside of our Solar System. They could also offer clues as to whether or not these interstellar objects are capable of carrying life with them. This is the foundation of a theory known as "panspermia."
The theory of panspermia suggests that life didn’t originate on Earth at all. Instead, so the theory goes, it originated elsewhere in the Universe, and was transported to our planet via interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua, which travel between planetary systems, seeding them with the ingredients for life as they go.
Abstract:
The first discovered interstellar object (ISO), ‘Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) shows a dry and rocky surface, an unusually elongated shape, with short-to-long axis ratio c∕a≲ 1∕6, a low velocity relative to the local standard of rest (~10 km s−1), non-gravitational accelerations and tumbles on a timescale of a few hours1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. The inferred number density (~3.5 × 1013−2 × 1015 pc−3) for a population of asteroidal ISOs10,11 outnumbers cometary ISOs12 by ≥103, in contrast to the much lower ratio (≲10−2) of rocky/icy Kuiper belt objects13. Although some scenarios can cause the ejection of asteroidal ISOs14,15, a unified formation theory has yet to comprehensively link all ‘Oumuamua’s puzzling characteristics and to account for the population. Here we show by numerical simulations that ‘Oumuamua-like ISOs can be prolifically produced through extensive tidal fragmentation and ejected during close encounters of their volatile-rich parent bodies with their host stars. Material strength enhanced by the intensive heating during periastron passages enables the emergence of extremely elongated triaxial ISOs with shape c∕a≲ 1∕10, sizes a ≈ 100 m and rocky surfaces. Although volatiles with low sublimation temperature (such as CO) are concurrently depleted, H2O buried under surfaces is preserved in these ISOs, providing an outgassing source without measurable cometary activities for ‘Oumuamua’s non-gravitational accelerations during its passage through the inner Solar System. We infer that the progenitors of ‘Oumuamua-like ISOs may be kilometre-sized long-period comets from Oort clouds, kilometre-sized residual planetesimals from debris disks or planet-sized bodies at a few astronomical units, orbiting around low-mass main-sequence stars or white dwarfs. These provide abundant reservoirs to account for ‘Oumuamua’s occurrence rate.
In 2004, when I visited Puerto Rico for the first time – in search of the Chupacabras – I was told of the account of a former civil-defense employee. He had seen a gigantic, unknown craft rise silently out of the coastal waters of the island, while he was on an early-morning jog in the spring of 1999. In this case, the vast device, which was viewed at a distance of around half-a-mile off the coast, or perhaps slightly more, wobbled slightly – rather like a falling-leaf – as it took to the skies, and then streaked vertically at a fantastic speed, before finally vanishing from view as it grew ever smaller, and was finally lost due to the effects of the bright, rising sun. It’s a fact that there are more than a few cases on record of these “falling leaf”-type UFO encounters.
In September 1952, a notable UFO encounter occurred at Royal Air Force Topcliffe, a military base in Yorkshire, England. One of the witnesses, Flight Lieutenant John Kilburn, said of the incident: “Sir, I have the honor to report the following incident which I witnessed on Friday, 19th September, 1952. I was standing with four other aircrew personnel of No. 269 Squadron watching a Meteor fighter gradually descending. The Meteor was at approximately 5000 feet and approaching from the east. [Flight Officer R.N.] Paris suddenly noticed a white object in the sky at a height between ten and twenty thousand feet some five miles astern of the Meteor.”
Kilburn continued: “The object was silver in color and circular in shape, it appeared to be traveling at a much slower speed than the Meteor but was on a similar course. It maintained the slow forward speed for a few seconds before commencing to descend, swinging in a pendular motion during descent similar to a falling sycamore leaf…After a few seconds, the object stopped its pendulous motion and its descent and began to rotate about its own axis. Suddenly it accelerated at an incredible speed towards the west turning onto a south-easterly heading before disappearing.”
From the 1953 files of NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) comes the following, which occurred over Barter Island, Alaska: ” 4:50 a.m. local time. Captain R. E. Barnes was thawing and heating a C-47 at Barter Island air strip when he heard a noise that seemed to be out of synchronization with the Herman Nelson heaters running nearby. He ducked out of the wheel well and walked over to the heaters located in front of the left main gear. He immediately realized that the noise was emanating from a large, round, bright object which was descending over the building area about 3/4 of a mile away. This object appeared to be at approximately 5,000 feet in altitude and descending in a sort of falling leaf pattern. Captain Barnes estimated the distance covered by the side to side movements at about 200 feet. Approximately 45 seconds later the object had reached an estimated 2000 feet directly over the building area.
“The object was described as round in shape and brilliant white in color and approximately 30-40 feet in diameter. Small ray-like appendages appeared on either lower side. After hovering for approximately 45 seconds, the object began an ascent using the same pattern as it did for the descent. During the climb out, 1st Lt. Lewis E. Griffin arrived at the aircraft and Capt. Barnes pointed out the object for Lt. Griffin. a rated pilot. At this time the object was directly overhead at an estimated altitude of 10,000 to 15,000 feet. The two witnesses continued to watch the object for two more minutes as it traveled to the east blinking as it went. Capt. Barnes is an F-94 jet pilot with 1470 hours of flying time.”
The cases that I have shared with you above are just a few of many. Are those falling leaf movements signs of malfunctions in the craft? Problems soaring through our atmosphere? I have to admit that I have no idea. All I can say for sure is that the falling leaf aspect of UFO encounters is one that dates back to the very early years of Ufology – and that still continues.
In October 2017, an odd-shaped space object was discovered with characteristics unlike any ever seen. It immediately lived up to its unusual name by defying definition, deceiving some into thinking it might be a spaceship and stumping all as to where it came from, let alone how it got here or how it got its cigar shape. Two astronomers have been pondering this space cigar since it lit up our telescopes and think they have the answers to what ‘Oumuamua is, how it formed and why they think there may be trillions … yes, trillions … more objects like it.
“It is really a mystery, but some signs, like its colors and the absence of radio emission, point to ‘Oumuamua being a natural object.”
Yun Zhang, postdoctoral researcher at the Université Côte d’Azur, co-authored the study – published this week in Nature Astronomy — of all of the available data on ‘Oumuamua. The origin in another star system, elongated shape and slight rate of acceleration not caused by gravitational forces caused him and co-author Douglas Lin, professor emeritus in the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to speculate that ‘Oumuamua was once a planet or planetoid that was broken apart with a force that shattered it into odd-shaped pieces and flung them out of their solar system. A model gave them an idea of how this happened.
“Zhang and Lin ran high-resolution computer simulations to model the dynamics of an object closely flying by a star. They found that the star can dramatically split the object, if it comes enough close to the star, into extremely elongated fragments, and then eject them into the interstellar space.”
In a press release announcing the study results, Zhang and Lin explain that the model generated some elongated pieces with a greater than a 10-to-1 length-to-width ratio. The fragments may have melted but managed to stay together long enough to cool down again, giving them the same kind of surface as ‘Oumuamua, while trapping moisture inside, allowing them to release a very small vapor trail that could cause a spin like ‘Oumuamua’s. This Icarus-like event caused by space objects as large as planets or as small as disk debris getting too close to a star can explain a lot of space and interstellar objects.
“The discovery of ‘Oumuamua implies that the population of rocky interstellar objects is much larger than we previously thought. On average, each planetary system should eject in total about a hundred trillion objects like ‘Oumuamua.”
Carl Sagan
If Carl Sagan were alive today, he’d be saying “trillions and trillions” instead of “billions and billions” as he described what astronomers now expect to see when the Vera C. Rubin Observatory astronomical observatory opens later this year in Chile. The more that look like ‘Oumuamua, the closer this new model will come to fact.
Let’s just hope nothing in our own solar system gets too close to the Sun. Are you listening, Planet X?
Have you ever wondered what multidimensional beings look like? David Nemes did once, but he developed a tool for viewing them and now has thousands of images of multidimensional beings on his Facebook page. Have you ever wondered what a multidimensional being is? He’s a good person to answer that. Most believers in a multiverse or multiple universes don’t often talk about any beings living in them, other than parallel universes with some alternate form of us. Neme’s photos of multidimensional beings or entities look nothing like humans. He posts them quite frequently, so viewing them can be a welcome, albeit just as scary, alternative to watching pandemic news. (A video containing many of the images can be viewed here.)
“It is an electronic Ouija board, with image and sound, the project is quite advanced.”
According to an interview with MysteriousTimes.com, Nemes was a science and astronomy buff growing up in Madrid, Spain, and is now a scientist and inventor in Colombia. Using “mathematical calculations and optical experiments,” he developed a device that uses “special lenses, ultrasensitive screens of his invention and above all sunlight. The process – which he calls “Energivision” – allegedly generates images of … things. Some look like faces, others like bodies, sometimes with wings. With his Facebook comment about the device being an “electronic Ouija board,” he obviously thinks these could be beings that are evil and he’s convinced they exist in other dimensions or planes.
It would be nice if the images were this clear.
“The only way I have to publicize my invention and the captures are by Facebook, since 2015 I have posted 1000 photos on my facebook.”
Nemes claims he’s tried to show Energivision to the scientific community, although he doesn’t say how, and was rejected – not a surprise. He also claims the mainstream media has ignored the photos and his theories. That’s not surprising when you consider some of the comments of those who agree with him – often referring to astral planes, which is more religious of occult than science. In addition, most of the photos appear to be split mirror images – like a Rorschach inkblot. As anyone who has looked at those for any length of time can attest, the imagination, anthropomorphism and pareidolia kick in quickly and it’s easy to see faces, winged creatures, horned beings and other scary things. Finally, the faces all appear to be looking straight into the Energivision device – like multidimensional mugshots.
Rorschach inkblot – see anything?
This is not to discredit Nemes’ photos – just to point out that to make a scientific analysis, it would be helpful to know more about his Energivision device, the process he uses, the locations where he finds these beings, etc. To his credit, Nemes’ comments on Facebook have a definite philosophical and psychological angle – he promotes positive thinking and vibrations and warns viewers to avoid negative thoughts … which would probably attract these things out of their dimension and into ours – if they’re real.
Nothing wrong with using scary pictures and stories of evil beings to get people to think positive amidst the stream of round-the-clock negativity we’re getting exposed to these days. For that, and to expose your mind to the possibility that he really has invented a way to photograph multidimensional beings, it’s worth a trip to the Facebook page of David Nemes.
My curiosity got the best of me today and I was looking over some sun photos from NASA Helioviewer.org when I found something...something seen before, but yet, mysterious in and of itself. The object is huge, looks planet size, but I believe to be about 1.5km across and very close to the satellite and moves in jumps from place to place, often at or around the speed of light, sometimes leaving trails seen on camera, but here...one stopped, rested a bit, move a bit closer to the sun resting again, then jumped away into the directing it came from...space. The object jumping like that and seeing trails of others similar shaped objects zooming around the sun makes me wonder are these living beings made of energy? Energy travels at the speed of light too...and this would explain the speed of the objects. I believe these are incredibly large energy beings...intelligent beings. But the way some move around is like they are children at play, chasing each other across a grassy playground. Odd I know, but true observation of their behavior.
So...are these energy beings ships not beings? Not likely, why would an energy being need a ship? Are they gods? Maybe in our terms of what a god is...they are. But god the creator...I don't thinks so. Just god like beings...still beings, still a species, not our god, but have incredible powers...speed being one of them. Where are the species arms and legs you ask? Why would an omnipotent being need arms, legs or a head? We as humans view things as if everything must happen according to our rules...however the universe has its own rules...and doesn't care about ours. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
NASA satellite captured mile long UFO near the sun before it jumped away into space
NASA satellite captured mile long UFO near the sun before it jumped away into space
Scott C. Waring, owner of the website ETdatabase, was looking over some sun photos from NASA Helioviewer.org when he found something...something seen before, but yet, mysterious in and of itself.
According to Scott: The object is huge, looks planet size, but he believes to be about 1.5 km across and very close to the satellite and moves in jumps from place to place, often at or around the speed of light, sometimes leaving trails seen on camera before it jumped away into the directing it came from...space.
Similar large planet sized objects flying by the sun has been captured by BruceSeesAll during a time in 2017 and 2018 that a lot of activity was being seen on the moon too. (Watch Video).
Jump to 2:45 to see actual video of the mile long UFO moving.
Huge Cigar-shaped UFO emerges from the ocean off coast Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa
Huge Cigar-shaped UFO emerges from the ocean off coast Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa
Several days ago a resident from Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa captured an incredible image of a huge cigar-shaped UFO/USO at the moment it emerged from the ocean off coast Umtuntweni beach nearthe city of Kwa Zulu Natal.
USOs are defined as unknown craft that are sighted in the water, sighted rising up out of the water, or diving into the water. There's a long history of this kind of sightings but till now we don't know whether these UFOs/USOs are secret government craft or of extraterrestrial origin.
If we look at this huge flying object, we see that it is comparable to several UFOs / USOs that were caught by an American submarine years ago.
UFO off coast Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.
Two UFOs captured by by an American submarine.
Sanderson, a renowned zoologist with a keen interest in the paranormal, puts forward the curious theory that OINTS" - 'Other Intelligence's' living in the Earth's oceans.
This underwater, parallel, civilization may be twice as old as Homo sapiens, he proposes, and may have developed what we call space flight.
What better place to have an impenetrable base than deep within the oceans of the planet.
This UFO footage was filmed somewhere over United States in April 2020. Similar sightings were recorded over different places in the USA recently. What are those unknown lights?
The bizarre newfound world resides in the mostly barren 'hot Neptunian desert.'
An artist's depiction of the exoplanet NGTS-4b, one of the few known Neptune-sized worlds that orbit very close to their stars. The odd newfound planet TOI-849b also resides in this “hot Neptunian desert.”
A distant world about 40 times more massive than Earth may be the remnant core of a giant planet, or a giant planet in the making whose growth stalled, a new study reports.
These findings may help shed light on what the mysterious cores of giant planets look like, researchers said.
Scientists investigated the exoplanet TOI-849b, which NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) first detected in 2018 and whose existence the La Silla Observatory in Chile later helped confirm. This alien world orbits the sunlike star TOI-849 about 730 light-years from Earth.
With a mass about 40 times that of Earth, TOI-849b is nearly half as massive as Saturn. At the same time, data from the Paranal Observatory in Chile and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope helped reveal that the exoplanet has a diameter about 3.45 times that of Earth, comparable to Neptune's. Altogether, this information suggests the exoplanet has a density similar to Earth's, making it the densest Neptune-size planet discovered to date.
TOI-849b circles its star in a fast, tight orbit just 18.4 hours long. This brings it scorchingly close to its star at a distance of just 1.5% of an astronomical unit (AU), the average distance between Earth and the sun (which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).
The newfound exoplanet therefore lies in the middle of the so-called "hot Neptunian desert," an apparent (and mysterious) dearth of Neptune-size worlds that orbit very close to their stars.
"There are not a lot of planets in this in-between place, so to see a planet this size this close to a star is pretty cool," Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist at the Observatory of Bordeaux in France, who did not take part in this research, told Space.com.
Previous models suggested that nascent planets more than 10 to 20 times Earth's mass should have strong enough gravitational fields to gobble up huge amounts of material from the protoplanetary disks of gas and dust that surround their newborn stars. Such worlds should therefore swell to become gas giants similar to Jupiter or Saturn. As such, one might think that TOI-849b is the remnant of a gas giant that lost most of its weight somehow, perhaps due to the heat it experiences orbiting so close to its star.
However, as much as the light from TOI-849b's star would sear the exoplanet, the scientists noted such heating alone might still not strip a gas giant's atmosphere down to nearly the planet's core. They estimated the star is about 6.7 billion years old. Given that amount of time, as well as TOI-849b's distance from its star, they calculated a Jupiter-like gas giant would have lost only a few percent of its mass due to stellar radiation to date.
This is the first clear image of a planet forming from the disk of gas and debris surrounding its host star. The planet, PDS 70b, is visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the star's blinding light.
ESO / A. Muller et al.
As such, the researchers suggest that TOI-849b may be the remnant core of a gas giant that lost mass through a different mechanism. Perhaps it collided with other giant planets, for example, or the gravity of its star peeled off much of its gas envelope. Alternatively, if TOI-849b were slung to its current position due to gravitational clashes with other planets, the energy the exoplanet would have experienced as its star's gravity pulled TOI-849b into its current circular orbit would have greatly heated that world, potentially leading to significant mass loss.
Another possible explanation for TOI-849b's current state has to do with arrested development. Perhaps TOI-849b formed late, when much of its system's protoplanetary disk was gone, the researchers said. Alternatively, perhaps as TOI-849b developed in orbit around its star, it carved off all the material available to it for its growth within the protoplanetary disk.
All in all, TOI-849b may give scientists a glimpse at what the core of a gas giant looks like. Future research may directly observe that core's composition by analyzing evaporated material in the exoplanet's remaining atmosphere.
Further work may also investigate whether this exoplanet actually was a gas giant whose atmosphere was stripped away by the light from its star.
"They claim that it's unlikely, but these calculations are hard to do," Raymond said.
The new study, which was led by David Armstrong of the University of Warwick in England, has been accepted by the journal Nature. You can read a preprint of the paper for free at arXiv.org.
The little chopper will attempt to pioneer a new type of off-Earth exploration.
The Mars Helicopter, visible in lower center of the image, was attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover at Kennedy Space Center on April 6, 2020. The helicopter will be deployed onto the Martian surface about two-and-a-half months after Perseverance lands.
The newest Mars rover's pioneering passenger has come aboard.
Technicians attached the first-of-its-kind Mars Helicopter to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover on Monday (April 6) at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the robot is being prepped for its upcoming launch. That liftoff will take place during a three-week window that opens on July 17.
Prep work on the rover is officially in high gear. For example, over a four-day span in late March, mission team members finished installing Perseverance's parachute system and also put on the robot's six wheels.
The Mars Helicopter and its Mars Helicopter Delivery System were attached to the Perseverance Mars rover at Kennedy Space Center on April 6, 2020. The helicopter will be deployed about two-and-a-half months after Perseverance lands. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Perseverance's descent stage was also fueled up last weekend, just before the helicopter integration, NASA officials said.
The descent stage is the rocket-powered sky crane that will lower Perseverance onto the Martian dirt via cables in February 2021. Gassing up the crane was no trivial task; the craft's four tanks hold a total of 884 lbs. (401 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant, agency officials said.
"The last hundred days before any Mars launch is chock-full of significant milestones," David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. (JPL built Perseverance and is the lead center for the rover's mission, which is called Mars 2020.)
"Fueling the descent stage is a big step," Gruel added. "While we will continue to test and evaluate its performance as we move forward with launch preparations, it is now ready to fulfill its mission of placing Perseverance on the surface on Mars."
That placement will occur inside Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) hole in the ground that hosted a lake and a river delta in the Red Planet's ancient past. Perseverance will hunt for signs of long-dead Martian life, characterize the region's geology and perform a number of other tasks, chief among them collecting and caching samples for a future return to Earth.
The Mars 2020 mission will also demonstrate several new technologies, including an instrument that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere and the 4-lb. (1.8 kg) Mars Helicopter, which will be the first rotorcraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth.
If all goes according to plan, the helicopter will be deployed in May 2021, 2.5 months after Perseverance's touchdown. The little solar-powered chopper will then conduct a series of short flights during a test campaign that will last up to 30 days.
The Mars Helicopter won't gather any scientific data during these excursions; it carries no instruments. But a successful test campaign could pave the way for extensive aerial exploration of the Red Planet in the not-too-distant future, mission team members have said.
Scientists have detected what may be the largest hole in theozone layer ever recorded over the North Pole.
The ozone hole covers an area roughly three times the size of Greenland, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement, and could expose people living at far northern latitudes to high levels of ultraviolet radiation if it grows much larger. Fortunately, the hole looks likely to close on its own in the next few weeks, the ESA researchers said.
Holes form in the ozone layer — which is a sheet of gas in Earth's atmosphere that absorbs much of the harmful ultraviolet light emitted by the sun — every year over Antarctica due to seasonal changes in cloud cover. Ozone holes over the Arctic, however, are rarer. The last time an Arctic ozone hole opened was in 2011, and it was significantly smaller than the hole seen now, the researchers said.
"From my point of view, this is the first time you can speak about a real ozone hole in the Arctic," Martin Dameris, an atmospheric scientist at the German Aerospace Center, told Nature.
The Antarctic ozone hole opens every year due to the combination of frigid temperatures and man-made pollution. When temperatures plummet at the start of Antarctica's winter, high-altitude clouds form over the South Pole. Industrial chemical pollutants, includingchlorine andbromine, trigger reactions in these clouds that eat away at the surrounding ozone gas.
The Arctic, which has more variable temperatures, doesn't usually see the same ozone-depleting conditions, the researchers said. But this year, powerful winds trapped cold air in a "polar vortex" above the Arctic. That led to colder temperatures and more high-altitude clouds than normal. Hence, North Pole ozone-depletion began.
Fortunately, with the sun slowly getting higher over the Arctic, atmospheric temperatures are already beginning to increase, which means the conditions causing the ozone hole should soon change, the researchers said. However, if the hole continues to expand south, Arctic residents — like those living in southern Greenland — may need to apply sunscreen to prevent UV damage.
The much larger Antarctic ozone hole will remain a seasonal feature, as it has for roughly four decades, though that hole has begun shrinking in size. A 2018 assessment by theWorld Meteorological Organization found that the southern ozone hole has been shrinking by about 1% to 3% per decade since the year 2000, with the 2019 hole measuringsmaller than it ever has since 1982. The shrinking of the southern ozone hole is thanks largely to a global ban on ozone-depleting chemicals initiated in 1987, though some key nations still do not appear to be participating. According to a2018 investigation, factories in China still appeared to be pumping large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals into the atmosphere.
During the 1970s, thousands of ranchers and farmers across America woke up to discover a bizarre and horrible thing in their fields and pastures. They found that not only had one of their cows or bulls died, but that it had been bizarrely mutilated. The lifeless body would be lying on its side completely drained of blood, the desiccated corpse staring up at them with empty eye sockets, the flesh cut away from the nose and jawbone creating a macabre grin. The anal cavity was bored out, and the sex organs completely removed. There were no signs of footprints, or any other kind of forensic evidence to point to any kind of perpetrator, human or animal. The ranchers filed reports with local brand inspectors, the sheriff’s office, and in some cases even federal investigators, but investigations resulted in no suspects, leads or explanations.
This exact scenario played out this summer in eastern Oregon. Five previously healthy bulls from the Silvies Valley Ranch were suddenly found dead, drained of blood, and with organs and pieces of their soft tissue precisely removed. There were no footprints or signs of predation, and authorities currently have no explanation. The story was covered by national news outlets like NPR and USA Today.
“The common denominator for every one of these is the lack of blood,” says Chuck Zukowski, a Colorado Springs resident and the deputy director of Animal Mutilation Investigations for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) International, which has more than 4,000 members and has been investigating UFO phenomena since 1969. Zukowski has 35 years of experience researching paranormal phenomena, including cattle mutilations. He is also the subject of the Travel Channel’s TV show Alien Highway. “Not only that, but the lack of evidence of blood. How much blood is in a cow?” asks Zukowski. “There’s a lot of blood in a cow, and for that blood not to be there when a carcass is found is unusual.”
These kinds of cattle mutilation cases rose to national prominence in the 1970s, when thousands of carcasses across 21 states were discovered to be mutilated. By 1975, the response to the problem had reached a fever pitch amongst ranchers across the Midwest. Many were carrying guns and patrolling their fields at night. The Bureau of Land Management ran ads in eastern Colorado newspapers urging ranchers not to shoot at survey helicopters. The prevailing theory at the time was that these killings were the work of a nefarious cult. The horrific Manson family murders were recently seared into social memory in the U.S., so it seemed like a plausible explanation. When satanists were hiding in the lyrics of rock ‘n’ roll songs, in the pages of fantasy novels, and in American basements in the form of the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons, certainly it had to be their work when it came to the cattle as well.
In August 1975, the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph (now the Gazette) reported on a study conducted by eastern Colorado law enforcement officials who were dealing with the approximately 60 mutilation cases reported so far that year. The Gazette said the study provided “a glimpse into a satanic organization with national political overtones which has grandiose plans of bringing about a 1,000-year reign of terror and darkness.”
As law enforcement officials desperately searched for proof of cult involvement, the mutilations increased in number and frequency, popping up in Crowley, El Paso, Elbert, Douglas, Las Animas, Washington and Morgan counties here in Colorado — and in 20 other states across the country.
Courtesy ufonut.com
Local Chuck Zukowski is a nationally recognized UFO investigator.
The most comprehensive media coverage of the phenomena at the time came from an unlikely publication out of a small farming community just east of Fort Morgan. It was there that Dane Edwards, a recent Colorado transplant who had allegedly spent time in “Europe, the Middle East and Far East filing wire service reports,” acted as editor and publisher of the now-defunct Brush Banner, Brush's weekly newspaper. Information about Edwards' life prior to Colorado is limited, but a “Meet Your Editor, Publisher” column from a July, 1975 issue of the Banner boasts “17 years newspaper experience, Former member of the President’s Council on Youth Opportunities, and in August, 1972, Invited to the White House by the President.”
Edwards' first mutilation story ran on July 30, 1975. Grisly black-and-white photographs of mutilated cattle adorn the front page of the Banner with the headline, “Cattle Mutilations Hit Near County.” He documented an incident from Woodrow, where a 1,000- pound cow “had its nose, one eye, an ear and its tongue cut away.” Edwards noted that “while massive mutilations often occur, little blood is found in the area of the carcasses. In some instances, officials report that scavenger animals and birds refuse to touch the body.”
The owner of the mutilated cow, John Kalous, told Edwards, “There wasn’t a sign of a footprint in the area either.” In spite of the lack of human-generated evidence, though, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department noted that the cow’s tracks were clearly visible, thanks to a recent rain. Moreover, law enforcement officials were unable to photograph the evidence. “After several attempts, both the Morgan County and Washington County officers were unable to take a photo of the carcasses with a Polaroid camera. … The photos were consistently dark and even when the camera settings were changed to compensate for the conditions, the pictures were without contrast,” Edwards wrote.
“I can’t explain it,” Washington County Undersheriff Bob Jones was quoted as saying, “I’m not going to try.”
The following week the Banner ran another story about the first mutilation reported in Morgan County, and Edwards was one of the few journalists at the time to critically analyze the cult hypothesis. He interviewed Lorin Paull, an Episcopal priest who claimed, “in considering what is cut from the animal, the mutilations do not suggest cultism of a satanic nature. None of the items removed from the cattle are used in satanic rites.”
Edwards also interviewed a coven of Denver witches, who provided him with a symbol, a stylized variation of the evil eye, which was supposed to “ward off the activities of satanic followers.” Displaying the symbol would supposedly stop the satanists from “further acts until the symbols have been removed.” The Banner ran the symbol with the story. “By printing the symbols in each of our 6,500 papers,” Edwards wrote, “they obviously cannot be removed.” Edwards also was able to track down the origins of the cult story, which came from federal prisoner Kenneth Bankston. Bankston had read an article about the wave of mutilations that took place in Minnesota in 1975 and wrote to the author of the article, who forwarded Bankston’s letter to an agent within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That agent took Bankston’s claims seriously and launched an investigation. According to Edwards, Bankston claimed that the mutilations were “the work of a cultist operations, and that the group had also drawn up a list of future human victims that included notable political figures such as Hubert Humphrey.”
The Gazette reported on the “bizarre Satanical group somewhat reminiscent of the Charles Manson ‘family’” in August 1975, quoting a “field investigator.”
“There’s a right wing, white supremacist faction to the cult which has planned the assassination of a number of prominent liberal-type political figures.”
In return for his cooperation with the investigation, Bankston was transferred to a lowersecurity facility, from which he escaped on May 31, 1975. No member of the “Sons of Satan,” the alleged name of the cult, was ever arrested. The cult theory quickly became a dead end for both law enforcement and journalists.
With satanists out of the picture, ranchers and law enforcement began looking for other explanations. The scope of the mutilations led many to believe it was the work of a vast government conspiracy, and others to look to the stars for an extraterrestrial explanation.
By the end of August and into September, Edwards was reporting on new twists in the cattle mutilation incidents: menacing aircraft and strange lights at the mutilation sites. Edwards collected reports from Elbert County, Elizabeth, Franktown and Simla of unmarked helicopters “buzzing” farmers and “chasing” people. “Several people reported having seen a flashing ‘strobe’ light,” wrote Edwards, “travelling from east to west at an extremely fast rate of speed and changing directions with a staccato effect in the sky.”
Edwards allegedly began working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, providing them with evidence gathered during the course of his investigations, after reporting that “agencies such as the FBI stated there is no evidence of federal crimes.” Edwards was frustrated with the response, noting that “it would mean that 21 groups of mutilators have operated in 21 states. Since it is a federal offense to commit interstate crimes that would open the door for their participation in the investigation.”
It wasn’t until Edwards began receiving threats at the Banner to “lay off the investigations of the cattle mutilations,” that Colorado Senator Floyd Haskell finally sought the FBI’s assistance within the mutilation investigations.
In October of 1975, the Gazette reported that the Banner, with reporting by Edwards, was “the only newspaper in Colorado known to have conducted a full scale investigation into the matter of mysterious deaths and mutilations of livestock in Colorado.” Edwards was interviewed in the Gazette to announce that this phenomenon was actually “an outcropping of a program” that began in 1961, and that he would be writing a book that “will tell how the project was conceived, how it progressed and why.” Edwards admitted in the interview that “anger made me interested in the cattle mutilations. It disturbed me that the public would take the word of officials, that no one was willing to look into it himself.”
But in that same interview, he alleged that not everyone appreciated his investigations, saying, “my office had been broken into twice and things gone through. Blood was thrown on my glass storm door at my home.”
Edwards also criticized law enforcement officials, who were beginning to ditch the cult theory for claims that the mutilations were actually the natural result of predation, scavengers and the decomposition process. This would be the conclusion of both a CBI investigation and an FBI investigation into the matter. Edwards called the investigations “an unimaginative job” and noted that “the most popular but weakest theory is that the mutilations are caused by predators. This is a good one for law men who can’t solve cases, since they don’t have to pursue the case any further.”
Shortly after Edwards’ interview with the Gazette, he was terminated at the Brush Banner. The new publisher, Drusilla Georgsson, said it was for “poor business practices.”
Then, on Dec. 10, 1975, the Banner’s headline read: “Ex Banner Publisher Presumed Missing.” The paper reported that Edwards’ wife filed a missing person’s report five days earlier, after he failed to contact her “as was his policy while he was away.” The Banner also noted that, “While in the Banner’s employ Mr. Edwards expressed concern for his well being on various occasions.”
Edwards’ car was found abandoned at a truck stop, and no one in Brush ever heard from him again.
“There’s two ways of looking at what happened with this guy,” says MUFON’s Zukowski. “He got caught into something and he got threatened bigtime and he went underground. I can think of one other person who that happened to. They went off the grid.” Zukowski also mentions the case of Max Spiers, a UK conspiracy theorist and UFO investigator who died in Warsaw, Poland under mysterious circumstances, allegedly vomiting black goo. “There are issues with doing different types of UFO investigations that could cause you to step over the proverbial line, so to speak,” warns Zukowski. “You have to be careful what you do. When you do UFO investigations and you go too far, you will get silenced.
Courtesy ufonut.com
The team of Travel Channel's show, Alien Highway
“Then you have the case where he just started a new life,” adds Zukowski. “There’s always the possibility he left his wife and used the conspiracy theory to cover his tracks.”
Zukowski works full-time as a microchip engineer and has served as a reserve deputy for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. He says he applies scientific and forensic methodology to his mutilation investigations, and has also reported strange findings with mutilated remains, some similar to Edwards’ findings from decades ago, and some uniquely weird. “I’ve had a few cases where the animal is lying in a round ground depression — not a crop circle — but a ground depression, where something pressed the vegetation down, 16 to 22 feet in diameter,” he explains. “I’ve taken soil samples from inside the ground depression and compared it to a test sample outside the ground depression, and the nutrients, the soil itself, in the ground depression is less water-soluble. The cations and CECs are different.” Zukowski implies that something, presumably whatever the deceased bovine had come in contact with, was able to change some fundamental atomic aspects of the soil. Cation exchange capacity (CEC) is a measure of a soil’s ability to hold positively charged ions — it's an inherent soil characteristic and is difficult to alter significantly. “That tells me that whatever made the round ground depression that the animal is laying in the middle of might have been a high energy source," he says. "I’ve also picked up EMF, electromagnetic field, from these ground depressions.”
As for what Edwards observed in the ’70s, many of those anomalies still occur.
“Unmarked helicopters will show up after the fact,” explains Zukowski. “August 2014 in Walsenburg, I investigated eight cows that were mutilated within a couple of miles of each other. The majority of the cows were found lying in the same direction. All the animals had the same type of cuts. The dewclaws were cored out. I interviewed two ranchers who reported helicopters in the area with spotlights where the animals were mutilated. There were also reports of lasers that diverted commercial air traffic. A week after the last mutilation, the rancher’s daughter saw a UFO.”
Zukowski has collected findings that cause him to doubt the predator theory, which Edwards also thought was bogus. “One thing we’ve learned is that the animal is picked up from location A — wherever it was grazing — it’s taken to a location B and it is mutilated and drained of blood, and then it’s taken to a location C, which is in the vicinity of Location A, not exactly, but close by. There was a case in Trinidad where we actually found the tracks of the cow where it ended, and then a good 60 yards away was the cow laying on the ground. Did it jump?”
The alleged predators’ choice in prey has also caused suspicion in some of Zukowski’s cases. “There was another case in the Walsenburg area,” recounts Zukowski, “where a cow had calved. The next day the cow was found mutilated. It was void of blood and the milk sack was cut out. A good 50 or 60 feet away was the newborn calf and the half-eaten placenta. Predators don’t go after a 1,000-pound animal and leave a 100-pound calf.”
Chuck Zukowski
Zukowski still documents cattle mutilation cases.
Others have also questioned the predation theory. The Gazette covered a mutilation in October 1976, a year after the Banner’s initial investigations: Logan County Sheriff Harry Graves found signs that a coyote had approached the mutilated animal, but “he never got closer than 22 ½ feet from the animal. Other cattle and horses in the same pasture were spooked and wouldn’t approach the dead steer either.”
Additionally, during the few field autopsies that were able to be performed, in cases where the time of death could be estimated, veterinarians discovered various anomalies. In January, 1976, the Gazette reported that Dr. Susan Colter of the Trinidad Animal Clinic was able to examine “various parts of the animal including the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver and she sent specimens to the extension laboratory in La Junta. She was especially interested in the way the animal’s organs turned to mush in a short time.”
Cattle mutilations have lessened in frequency since 1975, but continued. Many cattle mutilation cases allegedly go unreported. In 1975, Edwards noted that “one hundred and eleven mutilation cases held in the files of the Nebraska Brand Inspector’s office had never been turned over to law enforcement agencies.”
Zukowski attributes the under-reporting to what he calls the “giggle factor.” He notes that “ranchers don’t want to speak out and report something just to be made fun of.” Zukowski’s most recent mutilation investigation took place in Westcliffe in 2018. Since 1975, no arrests have been made in any of the over 10,000 cases involving cattle mutilations.
Forty-four years after mutilations originally terrified American ranchers, explanations of this phenomena remain controversial. The mutilators, whatever or whoever they are, have been able to keep their secrets this whole time, while conducting operations around the nation, without any defectors, leakers or whistle-blowers. UFO investigators, like Zukowski, are seen as conspiracy theorists at best. With unsatisfying official findings, and recent publicized cases, old explanations are resurfacing.
Colby Marshall, Vice President of the Silvies Valley Ranch in Oregon, which recently saw five bulls mutilated under mysterious circumstances, said in USA Today, “We think that this crime is being perpetuated by some sort of a cult.”
A new study of unusual ripples on Pluto’s far side add to the evidence for a subsurface ocean on this distant and cold dwarf planet.
New Horizons’ view of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, which makes up half of Pluto’s “heart” feature. A new study of odd ripples on the opposite side of the dwarf planet supports previous evidence that Pluto has a subsurface ocean.
Not all that long ago, scientists thought that Earth was the only place in the solar system with an ocean. But then we learned – surprise! – that several icy moons in the outer solar system are also water worlds. They’re true water worlds, too, in the sense that most, if not all, of their oceans are global. These alien oceans are different from Earth’s oceans: they’re not on the surfaces of the moons, but below the moons’ surface crusts of ice. Now, evidence is building for yet another such ocean, this time not on a moon but on the dwarf planetPluto. The evidence is based on what the scientists called “ripples” on Pluto’s surface.
Scientists presented the latest findings about ripples in Pluto’s surface – and a possible ocean below Pluto’s crust – at the virtual 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The evidence suggests that Pluto has a deep ocean between its crust and core. The conference had been scheduled to be held from March 16-20 in The Woodlands near Houston, Texas, but was changed to a virtual-only format this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This latest update on a possible Plutonian ocean was also the subject of a new article by Theresa Machemer in Smithsonian Magazine on April 1, 2020. The results are based on a new paper that was first pre-published on ArXiv in October 2019, and is still waiting for peer review. Lead author is a name you may recognize. It’s Alan Stern, who spearheaded the New Horizons mission to Pluto for decades, from concept to reality.
The main focus of the new paper was to study the far side terrains of Pluto, and how they formed. From the paper:
The New Horizons spacecraft provided near global observations of Pluto that far exceed the resolution of Earth-based data sets. Most Pluto New Horizons analysis hitherto has focused on the encounter hemisphere of Pluto (i.e., the anti-Charon hemisphere containingSputnik Planitia). In this work, we summarize and interpret data on the far side (i.e., the non-encounter hemisphere), providing the first integrated New Horizons overview of the far side terrains.
The unusual dark “ripples” on the far side of Pluto (circled). Pluto’s far side was only able to be seen in lower resolution during the New Horizons flyby, but the images still provide valuable clues as to the possibility of a subsurface ocean.
The evidence for a Pluto ocean comes from dark ripple-like features on the far side of Pluto. How did these ripples form? Scientists think they were produced by the same large impact that created Sputnik Planitia, which is a huge smooth plain of primarily nitrogen ice on the other side of the dwarf planet. This shallow basin composes one half of the distinctive huge “heart” feature on Pluto. As Purdue University planetary scientist Adeene Denton told Lisa Grossman in a statement to Science News:
If the impact is large enough, the planet itself can act like a lens, and focus the wave energy at the exact opposite point on the planet from the impact.
Denton and her colleagues had run computer simulations to see how the shock waves from the impact might have affected Pluto’s interior. The simulations suggested that an ocean was necessary to explain the ripples. As Denton said:
We got the fun answer.
Diagram of what the interior of Pluto might look like below Sputnik Planitia (the cellular terrain on the right side, on top). The ice crust above the water is thinner in this region.
The ocean would need to be at least 90 miles (150 km) deep, and Pluto’s core must contain minerals, such as serpentine, that form through interactions between rock and water. Denton said:
It’s certainly not exactly a smoking gun. But it’s exciting.
This new modeling of Pluto’s interior is the latest of a growing number of studies suggesting that Pluto could still have liquid water beneath its surface. Previously, in 2016, scientists also showed that fissures on the surface, and the spherical shape of Pluto itself, were evidence for a subsurface ocean. Pluto’s orientation may also be a clue. Another study from last year contends that the rocky body that collided with Pluto and created Sputnik Planitia actually broke through the dwarf planet’s icy crust. This allowed the ocean to briefly flow on the surface before freezing, which affected Pluto’s axis orientation.
The new research is compelling, although not conclusive yet. It’s still possible that there is another explanation for the rippled terrain on the far side. As James Tuttle Keane, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Scientific American in a statement:
There’s a lot of weird stuff on that far side of Pluto. And there are a lot of different ways that you can imagine creating some of those odd patterns that we see.
Close-up view of the unusual cellular terrain in Sputnik Planitia, composed of nitrogen ice. Water ice mountains are on the edge of this region.
Whether the newest research really does indicate an ocean on Pluto remains to be seen. But if it does, that would greatly help scientists understand how such subsurface oceans can exist on worlds that are otherwise too cold and too far from the sun, including possibly other small objects in the Kuiper Belt – a ring of small rocky and icy bodies orbiting the sun beyond Neptune – where Pluto resides. As Denton toldScientific American:
We might need to think a little differently about the Kuiper Belt itself and all of these distant worlds in it and maybe look at them a little bit closer. They could all host such incredible, rich geologic histories.
If there really is an ocean on Pluto, then how and when did it form? As planetary scientist Carver Bierson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, toldScience News:
If there’s an ocean today, it raises the question of, when did that ocean get there?
According to Bierson, if Pluto had a “cold start,” then the water would have been frozen from the beginning, before melting later on due to decaying radioactive elements in the dwarf planet’s core. It would then partially re-freeze again. But if Pluto had a “warm start,” then the ocean would have always been liquid, and probably still is today, with perhaps only partial re-freezing. Cracks would form from the water partially re-freezing, and this is what the New Horizons images seemed to show. Bierson said:
That means maybe Pluto did start off warm. Maybe it started with a liquid ocean really early on.
Pluto backlit by the sun, as seen by New Horizons. The thin atmosphere glows an ethereal soft blue color.
So if Pluto has had an ocean for the past few billion years, could it be habitable? Could Pluto’s ocean actually support life? If Pluto’s core does contain minerals as hypothesized, then water-rock interactions at the ocean bottom could conceivably provide the necessary energy and nutrients, as in oceans on Earth and possibly ocean moons like Europa and Enceladus. And if Pluto could be habitable, what about other bodies in the Kuiper Belt? As Keane surmised in Science News:
This lays out one of the coolest hypotheses that a future Pluto mission could test. If Pluto can have an ocean and potentially be habitable, it’s very likely that other bodies in the Kuiper Belt also are ocean worlds and also are potentially habitable.
Although New Horizons’ mission at Pluto is long over, the data sent back will keep researchers busy for decades to come. As noted in Scientific American by Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University:
It’s amazing how we squeeze every little bit out of it.
Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and lead author of the new study.
New Horizons found that Pluto is a complex little world, with vast, smooth icy plains of frozen nitrogen, the surface of which is divided into large “cells” (known as cellular terrain) and mountains composed of water ice with methane “snow” on top. Pluto also has a very thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, and when New Horizons viewed Pluto backlit by the Sun, the atmosphere glowed softly as a blue ring around the dwarf planet. And even though Pluto is much smaller than Earth, it has no less than five moons! If there is an ocean below as well, that would make this already bizarre world even stranger.
Bottom line:Odd ripples on Pluto’s far side add to the evidence for a subsurface ocean.
THE DISCOVERY OF MICROBIAL LIFE ON EARTH OFFERS A NEW HOPE FOR LIFE ON MARS
THE DISCOVERY OF MICROBIAL LIFE ON EARTH OFFERS A NEW HOPE FOR LIFE ON MARS
“I am now almost over-expecting that I can find life on Mars.”
WHEN WE THINK OF WHAT LIFE MIGHT LOOK LIKE ON OTHER PLANETS, we might picture the Hollywood-induced image of green, slender aliens, or the more scientific approach -- tiny forms of bacterial life hidden beneath a planet’s surface.
But a recent discovery of a microbial form of life here on Earth gives scientists hope of findinglife on Mars, and narrows down what they should be looking for in the ongoing search forlife outside of our planet.
The discovery is detailed in a study, published this month in the journal Communications Biology, which follows a 10-year quest to find life hidden in the cracks of volcanic rock beneath the seafloor, and how that discovery can lead to the discovery of life in Martian samples collected from the Red Planet.
A colony of tiny microbial life was found wedged in tunnels on these volcanic rock samples.Suzuki et al. 2020,
The team of researchers found a community of bacteria on ancient volcanic rock, which they believe hold similar qualities to rocks on Mars. As a result, their discovery has initiated a collaboration with NASA to design a plan to find life on Martian rocks.
MICROBIAL COLONY— The team of researchers behind the new study have been probing at these volcanic rocks for 10 years.
The rock samples were collected during the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program in 2010, which carried a group of researchers onboard a ship that traveled across the Pacific Ocean. The researchers drilled 125 meters below the seafloor, extracting rock samples that were between 13.5 million to 104 million years old.
Yohey Suzuki, associate professor at the University of Tokyo and lead author of the new study, had been trying to take a crack at the samples since, quite literally.
“I was making loud noises with my hammer and chisel, breaking open rocks while everyone else was working quietly with their mud," Suzuki said in a statement.
Suzuki and his team were attempting to find bacteria in the rocks by chipping away their outer layer, and grinding the center of the rocks into a powder. However, the team’s initial method was not successful.
Over the years, Suzuki developed a new method by coating the rocks in a special epoxy to support their natural shape, and then slicing off thin layers. He then washed the super thin layers with dye that stains DNA, and placed the samples under a microscope.
A thin slice of the volcanic rock, where microbial life was discovered.Caitlin Devor, University of Tokyo, CC BY 4.0
And then bacteria appeared under the microscope in a colorful, glowing display of life hidden in the cracks of these volcanic rock samples. The bacteria was in the form of glowing green spheres, packed into orange tunnels, which are clay mineral deposits, and surrounded by black rock.
Microbial life appeared as glowing green streams under the microscope.Suzuki
"I thought it was a dream, seeing such rich microbial life in rocks," Suzuki said. "Honestly, it was a very unexpected discovery. I was very lucky, because I almost gave up."
So, how did life get there in the first place?
It seems like an unlikely place to find any form of life, but the study suggests that the bacteria were attracted to mineral-filled cracks in the rocks which they use for nutrients to build their tiny colony.
Volcanoes erupting underwater produce lava at a scorching temperature of approximately 1,200 degrees Celsius. The lava eventually cools, and then cracks to become rocks. These cracks, which are around 1 millimeter wide, fill up with clay minerals over millions of years.
Bacteria are attracted to this clay, the same kind used to make pots, and therefore settle in those cracks to multiply.
"These cracks are a very friendly place for life,” Suzuki said. “Clay minerals are like a magic material on Earth; if you can find clay minerals, you can almost always find microbes living in them."
The new study estimates that the cracks are home to a community of bacteria as dense as that of the human gut, forming about 10 billion bacterial cells per cubic centimeter. Meanwhile, bacteria forming in mud sediments on the seafloor are around 100 cells per cubic centimeter.
In mud sediments, seawater dilutes the nutrients that the bacterial live off of, which is why the concentration of bacteria found on the volcanic rocks is eight times as much as those found in mud sediments.
NOW, BACK TO MARS — By now, you might be wondering what a tiny colony of microbes found beneath the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean has to do with a planet 135.81 million miles away.
NASA rovers are roaming the Red Planet, collecting samples for a future return to Earth.NASA
The researchers behind the new study believe that the cracks filled with clay minerals found in deep ocean rocks are likely similar to the minerals that may be in rocks on the surface of Mars. This hypothesis is based on the idea that the deep ocean and the Red Planet share the same conditions of low temperature, moderate salinity, iron-rich environment, and basalt rock.
"I am now almost over-expecting that I can find life on Mars,” Suzuki said. "This discovery of life where no one expected it in solid rock below the seafloor may be changing the game for the search for life in space."
Suzuki’s team will begin a collaboration with NASA to put together a plan of examining the rock samples brought back from Mars by the space agency’s rovers.
NASA is launching the recently named Perseverance rover to the Red Planet this summer. The car-sized robot will spend at least one Martian year on the planet, the equivalent of 687 days on Earth, collecting samples of rocks and soil and setting them aside for a future mission to return them back to Earth.
A new document acquired by Motherboard shows that the Air Force launched an investigation into the release of classified UFO videos by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge’s UFO outfit To the Stars Academy.
At the end of last year, we revealed the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations had looked into several videos, which The Pentagon claims show "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or UFOs. This news was particularly curious considering the videos were initially filmed by the Navy (not the Air Force) in 2004 and 2015. Since the videos were published in a New York Times article in December 2017, the Air Force has refused to discuss anything related to UFOs.
The new document, obtained from the Air Force Office of Investigations (embedded below), shows that after that New York Times article, AFOSI looked into the classification of the released videos, called “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR.” Originally, it found “all three videos were classified” and that, though a declassification request had been made for these videos, it was never granted. As we reported in December, AFOSI has become known as "The Real Men in Black" in the UFO community.
The AFOSI investigation also contradicts the Pentagon's claims that Luis Elizondo, the man who says he ran the Pentagon's UFO program, called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, never worked on UFOs at all.
Though his name is redacted, the investigation is clearly focused on Elizondo, who left the Pentagon, spoke to the New York Times, and has since joined DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy. Before leaving his position as an intelligence specialist in the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence’s Office, it was Elizondo who applied for the release of the three UFO videos.
In the years since the videos’ release, the Pentagon has contentiously denied the existence of a current Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and has denied that Elizondo investigated UFOs for the DoD. This appears to be disputed by this investigation. The AFOSI report states, “[Elizondo] disclosed his involvement (to several news outlets) with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which focused research issues on Unidentified Flying Objects.”
Similar to what’s implied in the OSI report, since Fall of 2019 when the Pentagon made it known the videos weren’t cleared for public release, the court of public opinion has widely assumed Elizondo was responsible for side-stepping regulations and releasing the videos before leaving the DoD.
However, during a previous investigation, I was able to locate a former colleague of Elizondo who was involved in the process. According to them, any errors in the process were the fault of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) agency, and not Elizondo. When asked who was responsible for the videos not being cleared, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough acknowledged to me, “DOPSR in this specific case.”
“I did everything I was supposed to do to request the release, and even went above and beyond by also engaging Foreign Disclosure personnel; which I did not have to do by regulation,” Elizondo told Motherboard.
According to the report, three months into OSI’s investigation, an unnamed official with the Unauthorized Disclosure Office said the videos were finally determined to be “Unclassified and For official use only.” The official also told OSI agents the videos were submitted to multiple offices within the Navy for review, and it was determined they contained “No sensitive symbology or other items of concern.”
In one final interview detailed in the report, another unnamed official said “100% of all F-18 videos go through his office for declassification and public release,” however, the videos in question, “never went through his office.” The official says there’s no indication the videos were ever classified and it’s uncertain where exactly they came from since “individual units kept track of their own footage.”Intriguingly, the official told OSI, “Some videos were kept for training purposes and some for situations such as SUBJECT’s public release of unauthorized videos.” What isn’t clear, is if the “situations” being referenced relates to video taped encounters with UFOs, or if this was a reference to unauthorized releases generally.
"There are still elements within the Pentagon who are very sensitive about this topic and are unhappy with this information being brought forward for public discussion"
Almost four months after launching their investigation, the report says on April 13, 2018 OSI closed the case after it was determined the three UFO videos were “unclassified,” and the Unauthorized Disclosure Program Management Office equally considered the matter “closed.”
What’s still unclear is why the Air Force was investigating Navy videos.
“I find it strange the Pentagon would assign an Air Force unit to investigate alleged data spills involving Navy information, technology, and data,” Elizondo said. “Especially, when there are NCIS [Naval Criminal Investigative Service] representatives in the same building.”
When OSI’s involvement became known in December of 2019, Motherboard asked DoD spokesperson Susan Gough if she could clarify why the Air Force’s investigative service would have been involved with the Navy’s UFO videos. Gough initially agreed to provide a response, however, she subsequently failed to respond, and ignored numerous follow-up requests.
Other journalists have expressed similar frustrations when it comes to the DoD’s sudden silence to anything UFO related. Tyler Rogoway of The War Zone recently published an entire feature detailing the DoD’s refusal to answer his inquiries related to the 2004 Nimitz UFO event.
After being provided with a copy of the report, Motherboard asked Elizondo if he had any significant takeaways from it or the DoD’s current silence. Elizondo said, “Even though there was no wrongdoing on the part of my office, there are still elements within the Pentagon who are very sensitive about this topic and are unhappy with this information being brought forward for public discussion.”
Scientists in Myanmar have discovered six new types of coronavirus in bats. While the viruses are part of the same family as the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the six new types are not closely genetically related to SARS-Cov-2, SARS, or MERS.
The new types of coronavirus were identified when researchers were studying bats in Myanmar for a government-funded program that’s called PREDICT. The program is used to find infectious diseases that could possibly be transferred from animals to humans. They analyzed hundreds of samples of saliva and feces (also called guano which is used to make fertilizer) from 464 bats and at least 11 different species between the years 2016 and 2018. The samples came from bats living in three different locations around Myanmar where humans often get into close contact with them.
Map of bat capture sites in Myanmar between 2016 and 2018.
In their study (which can be read in full here), the researchers wrote in part, “Two of these sites also featured popular cave systems where people were routinely exposed to bats through guano harvesting, religious practices and ecotourism.”
The genetic sequences of the hundreds of samples were compared with the genomes of coronaviruses that have already been identified. The new types of the virus were identified in three species of bats: the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat (Scotophilus heathii) which PREDICT-CoV-90 was identified; the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat (Chaerephon plicatus) which was host to PREDICT-CoV-47 and -82; and Horsfield’s leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros larvatus) which contained PREDICT-CoV-92, -93 and -96.
Bats have been named as the most likely source of the COVID-19 transmission to humans and it’s been predicted that thousands more types of coronavirus that have yet to be discovered could be living in them.
But don’t panic just yet, as more research needs to be done in order to understand fully how – or if – these new types of coronavirus could be transferred to other species and how/if they could affect the health of humans. Suzan Murray, who is the director of the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program as well as the co-author of the study, said, “Many coronaviruses may not pose a risk to people, but when we identify these diseases early on in animals, at the source, we have a valuable opportunity to investigate the potential threat,” adding, “Vigilant surveillance, research and education are the best tools we have to prevent pandemics before they occur.”
Marc Valitutto, who is a former wildlife veterinarian with the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program and the lead author of the study, weighed in by stating, “Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals — what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species –– the better we can reduce their pandemic potential.”
In other bat news, the United States has recommended that all testing of bats be suspended in order to prevent coronavirus from spreading to North American species and ultimately causing another wave of the virus to hit the public.
In a statement, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson told the Washington Post, “We know that many mammals are susceptible to infection by a diversity of coronaviruses,” adding, “What is not known is whether the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect, or cause illness in, North American wildlife, including bats.”
There have already been several reports of humans passing the virus on to animals, specifically cats and dogs, as well as a Malayan tiger that was more than likely infected by an asymptomatic worker at the Bronx Zoo. And since bats in the United States have been suffering through white-nose syndrome since 2006 – which has killed over 5.5 million bats – researchers have to be careful not to infect them with coronavirus as they may be more susceptible to catching it.
One way some people are passing the time while in coronavirus lockdown is by traveling vicariously around the world via Google Earth. And just as when really exploring, they’re finding unusual things in unexpected places. While the Nazca desert area of Peru — home of the Nazca lines — isn’t exactly an unexpected place, what one such Google Earth explorer found is definitely unusual. On a mountain just northeast of the lines he discovered some strange stone circles and a large, curved mound in the shape of a serpent. What could they be and why has no one seen them before?
“I found something about 20-25 miles NE of the famous Nazca Lines in Peru on Google Earth. Circular stone structures in the mountains above 10,000 ft in the middle of nowhere.”
YouTube user cf-apps7865 (Chuck. Las Vegas, Nevada) describes his channel as a “look at ancient history without an agenda” and that seems to be the case with this video (watch it here) he uploaded recently titled “I Unveil A Mystery Above Nazca, Peru ~ Google Earth.” Using all of the impressive features of the software, cf-apps7865 first focuses on a group of what appear to be stone circles about the size of a “football pitch” (between 100 yards (90m) and 130 yards (120m) long and between 50 yards (45m) and 100 yards (90m) wide) at an elevation of about 10,000 feet (3 km). While this seems to be in the middle of nowhere for human activity, many of the commenters on the site quickly linked them to similar structures in South Africa that have been identified as ancient livestock corrals known as the Blaauboschkraal stone ruins.
The Blaauboschkraal stone ruins have two theories of origin. One is that they were made by European settlers (most likely Dutch) in the 1600s to use as corrals or kraals (Afrikaans) in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. They also may have been there before and were used by the local Zulu people for pens, defense and possibly areas for rituals. The other theory refers to them as Adam’s Calendar and author Michael Tellinger (among others) proposes they’re indeed part of an extraterrestrial calendar built by Annunaki 300,000 years ago. While it’s certainly plausible that Spanish and Dutch settlers could have made the same types of corrals in Peru, There are also theories that the Nazca lines are ancient calendars made by, inspired by or used to attract extraterrestrials. Are these circles a part of them, or could they be a different, unfinished attempt at an alien calendar?
“The ‘serpent’ just really jumped right out at me. It’s either a very large natural formation or a manmade artificial site like the serpent mound in Ohio.”
The serpent-shaped stone mound is more mysterious because of its resemblance to earthen mound in southern Ohio in the U.S. That Great Serpent Mound is believed to have been made by indigenous people as part of the funeral rituals for nearby graves. Some astronomical thought was put into it – the head of the serpent aligns with the summer solstice sunset, tail points to the winter solstice sunrise and the shape matches the constellation Draco, making it potentially a giant compass pointing to true north. Since the Nazca lines are believed by many to be directional guidelines, this stone mound might have a similar purpose and a study of its alignment to the solstices and the stars is in order.
Or it could just be a natural formation. That might make for sense if it weren’t for the mound’s close proximity to the stone circles – which themselves might be natural formations. It looks like an expedition is in order … except the world is currently in lockdown and travel restrictions and social distancing would prevent a proper one for now.
In the meantime, keep searching Google Earth for more unusual anomalies. It beats binge-watching old TV shows.
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
The new Comet ATLAS may disintegrate more quickly than expected. Could the new coronavirus do the same? Trying to following the various projections of paths the coronavirus pandemic may take may seem as complicated as suddenly trying to become a NASA-worthy astrophysicist during your down time while sheltering at home. And the universe being the mysterious wonder it is, it turns out tracking astronomy and COVID-19 may share a deeper connection than you knew before. As of Sunday, April 5, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts that 81,766 people will die of COVID-19 in the U.S. between now and August 4, 2020. This is a welcome decrease from the prediction of 93,531 deaths they’d estimated during the previous week, a sign, they say, that social distancing measures seem to be working to flatten the curve.
If this trend in coronavirus cases, deaths, and recoveries continues, the worst of COVID-19 is expected to rock the U.S. in mid-April, peaking on April 16, then tapering off throughout the month of May. Somewhat mystically, the trajectory of this pandemic aligns with the path currently being traveled by Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), more commonly known as Comet ATLAS, Comet ATLAS was first discovered by astronomers using the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) in Hawaii on December 28, 2019.
While it’s not yet visible to the naked eye, and no one can say for sure it ever will be, astronomy enthusiasts have been able to spot it and capture some (literally) stellar images using medium-sized telescopes under dark skies. Initial predictions showed the comet coming closest to the Earth on May 23 and closest to the sun on May 31. Should it continue on this path, it might be bright enough to be visible to the unaided human eye on or around May 1, right as COVID-19 should be (pleasepleaseplease) fading into oblivion.
One redditor shared a 7-year-old article titled “Sun-Grazing Comets as Triggers For Electromagnetic Armageddon” in the subreddit named r/conspiracytheories. Everything is intensifying rapidly,” one user commented. “California is having earthquakes. Utah had one. Now there’s a comet that is going to be as bright as the moon. Earlier this year we had the massive wildfires. Locust plague is sweeping Africa and the Middle East. Of course, can’t forget to mention the pandemic (which we don’t know the true numbers/severity of), and war looming on the horizon. “One of the big red flags for me is celebrities suddenly being diagnosed, politicians faking getting tested, and a couple hundred CEOs resigning just this year alone. They must know that something devastating is coming.”
But just as we hope will be the case with the coronavirus pandemic, scientists observing the comet say it may be disintegrating and could disappear more quickly than previously expected.
Comet Atlas: The Real Reason Why Donald Trump Wanted To Purchase Greenland - (Incoming on May 11th)
Comet Atlas: The Real Reason Why Donald Trump Wanted To Purchase Greenland - (Incoming on May 11th)
Shoutouts to @RoseHannah, @GlobalWatchmenNews and @TheFinalDays YouTube Channels in assisting me with my research as we look at the incoming Comet Atlas and the possibility that a rather enormous ‘magnetic’ planet has entered Earth’s atmosphere and may be playing games with Earth’s magnetic force field in the coming month’s. You will see more predictive programming (just like we saw with the Coronavirus Pandemic) and how the Global Elite may be running and hiding from further calamity here on Earth. By the end of April we will clearly be able to see the approaching Comet Atlas and there may be an underlying reason as to why we have all been placed under House Arrest. See no evil… speak no evil. Out of sight, Out of mind. Just saying. We will be following this right up to the very end.
A team of researchers demonstrated that water has been here since the Earth was formed. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this discovery has profound implications in terms of the habitability of the Earth, Venus and Mars.
While everyone agrees that our blue planet is rich in water, this observation seems contradictory, first, with the exploration of other rocky planets with an arid surface, and then, with the idea of ‘a giant impact between proto-Earth and a planetary embryo the size of Mars, from which the Moon would have originated. Such an event should have vaporized the preexisting water, and dried up the primitive Earth.
Size comparison of the four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), Earth’s Moon and dwarf planet Ceres in true color.
“So we have two options to explain the presence of water on Earth after such a giant impact: either the water was reported later, after the disaster, in particular by ice-cold or water-rich asteroids; or the giant impact was not important enough to vaporize all the water on Earth “, underlines Cédric Gillmann.
To investigate the origin of terrestrial water, a team of modelers and geochemists led by Cédric Gillmann – G-Time laboratory, Faculty of Sciences, Free University of Brussels, funded by the EOS ET-HoME project – traveled – digitally – far beyond Earth: to Venus.
While Earth and Venus are often thought of as twin sisters, their respective geological and climatic developments have diverged dramatically in the past.
Using numerical simulations of impacts by different types of asteroids containing different amounts of water, the team discovered that collisions with asteroids rich in water cannot explain the current composition of the atmosphere of Venus. This means that the material brought to Venus – and therefore to Earth – after the last giant impact had to be dry, which drastically limits the late water supply.
“As water is obviously present today on our planet, this implies that it must be there since the formation of the Earth, probably buried deep at the start to be able to survive the giant impact”, concludes Cédric Gillmann.
This idea has very profound implications in terms of the habitability of Earth, Venus and Mars, as it suggests that the planets probably formed with their almost complete water budget, and slowly lost it over time.
Because of the importance of water to sustain life, the question of the origin of water on Earth is primordial. A major challenge in investigating this question is that Earth has lost all the traces of its formation since it is an active planet.
A team of numerical modelers and geochemists led by Cédric Gillmann – Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB, funded by the EoS project ET-HoME – has decided to look far beyond Earth – up to Venus – to investigate the origin of terrestrial water.
While Earth and Venus could be considered as, twin sisters their respective geological and climatic evolutions diverged dramatically in the past, leading to Venus’ present-day 92 bar atmosphere heated by an infernal greenhouse up to 470°C, opposed to the mild conditions and only 1 bar pressure at the surface of Earth.
However, Venus’ volcanic activity and outgassing are reduced compared to Earth, because it has no plate tectonics, but has a stagnant lid instead. Even better, such a convection mode implies very little recycling of volatile species into the mantle.
As such, despite being an inferno, the evolution of the atmosphere of Venus is much easier to understand and model over geological times. In addition, because of their proximity, the Earth and Venus should have received the same type of material during their history. All these aspects combine to make Venus a perfect place to study the primitive evolution of terrestrial planets.
Contacts and sources:
Cédric Gillmann Laboratory G-Time ULBFree University of Brussels
UFOs over Corona, California – recorded yesterday!
UFOs over Corona, California – recorded yesterday!
This strange UFO video was recorded in the sky above Corona in California on 11th April 2020 at 5.30AM and submitted to our website throughreport form.
Witness report:
I was taking my dog out for her morning duties when I notice something orange in the sky approaching from the south east direction. At first I thought it was a small plane since there is a nearby local airport in the town. However, as I waited I noticed the orange light was not making a sound. I used my frame of reference by first noticing the light moving through the tree branches. It was moving slowly from branch to branch, that was my first indicator that it was moving. I then stopped moving to listen for any sound coming from ‘an engine’of the orange object but I did not hear any engine sound in the distance. It was then I quickly ran inside and grabbed my cell phone and began recording. As I began to record, the orange object stopped and slowly began moving north. I could see it by my naked eye but on my cellphone camera kept trying to adjust the image. I swear on everything I hold dear…this thing stopped moving and was below the clouds. It could not be a planet or star but I could be wrong. After 5 minutes it disappeared. For the recorded, I served over ten years in the US Army and I have been in a war zone. I have seen satellites, rockets, and drones…I have never seen anything like this. Plus, I HAVE NEVER SEEN A UFO IN MY ENTIRE LIFE….except what I saw that morning. I will email you my video from email if I can…it is 4m and 11sec long.Be advise…most of the clear video starts at minute 1:55. Again…it could be a planet…but I knew what I saw.
Corona California – April 11th, 2020 5:30AM Saturday
I was taking my dog out for her morning duties when I notice something orange in the sky approaching from the south east direction. At first I thought it was a small plane since there is a nearby local airport in the town. However, as I waited I noticed the orange light was not making a sound. I used my frame of reference by first noticing the light moving through the tree branches. It was moving slowly from branch to branch, that was my first indicator that it was moving. I then stopped moving to listen for any sound coming from ‘an engine’of the orange object but I did not hear any engine sound in the distance. It was then I quickly ran inside and grabbed my cell phone and began recording. As I began to record, the orange object stopped and slowly began moving north. I could see it by my naked eye but on my cellphone camera kept trying to adjust the image. I swear on everything I hold dear…this thing stopped moving and was below the clouds. It could not be a planet or star but I could be wrong. After 5 minutes it disappeared. For the recorded, I served over ten years in the US Army and I have been in a war zone. I have seen satellites, rockets, and drones…I have never seen anything like this. Plus, I HAVE NEVER SEEN A UFO IN MY ENTIRE LIFE….except what I saw that morning. I will email you my video from email if I can…it is 4m and 11sec long.Be advise…most of the clear video starts at minute 1:55. Again…it could be a planet…but I knew what I saw.
Tilden, Nebraska – APRIL10 10 P.M.
I was in my backyard at 305 s. Elk street and while facing southwest I saw several bright lights [a total of over 25] moving in various directions. [not all at one time but in a fairly small area] about 60 degrees off the west horizon and could see them until they were 80 degrees off east horizon, then suddenly I noticed one after another traveling from northwest to southeast. There were no flashing lights or sound & there was just a trace of wind. I counted 13 in a row about 10 seconds apart. One would appear and disappear then another would follow. They were moving too fast to be airplanes. First I thought they were satellites until we saw them come across one after another. My neighbors- alex and emily were also in their back yard at the time and they witnessed 8 or 9 after I called to them. Sorry no photos.
Melton, Victoria, Australia – 9/04/2020
I honestly can not believe I am writing this, I also can’t believe what I have just witnessed over the last 3 hours. This is the first time I have ever written to any forum like this, about this ect. I am really shaken still so please excuse my grammar. What was witnessed tonight is hand on bible true, we were not under ANY INFLUENCE, we are not drug users, weed users, drinkers or smokers. We are literally the most ordinary suburban couple, I have always believed that there might be life outside our planet, but I never looked into it or anything, my husband on the other hand, does not(DID NOT) believe in anything like this until tonight, I feel like I had to write a little disclaimer because if someone told me they had witnessed what I have just witnessed, I WOULD THINK THEY HAD LOST THEIR MINDS! This is the true account of our UFO sighting and I am only writing this in the hopes that someone else out there saw it too, I find it now quite coincidental that this happened while the world is on lockdown, it has started to make me question EVERYTHING. Anyways…. At about 6.15pm my husband and I were sitting outside (on lockdown from Covid 19) in Victoria, the sun was still setting the sky was a dark pink/purple but the sun had not fully set yet and there was no sign of stars in the sky. When I looked into the sky directly behind my husbands head all of a sudden a HUGE bright star looking thing appeared out of thin air, I told my husband to look and asked what is that? (I myself have always believed in E.T, ufos ect but my husband did not. He freaked out when he saw this light, you could clearly see it was not a star, it was an oblong shape and With the lights shinning from it, it almost looked like a cross shaped object, we watched it for about 10 minutes in which we KNEW WITHOUT A DOUBT that it was NOT a star, the object was hovering and moving quite slowly and it was very large, I ran inside for a couple of minutes while he stayed to watch it and came back in 2 minutes in which I could no longer see it from the position I had first sighted it, meaning the object had moved quite a significant distance in a short amount of time. As we kept our focus on the large object because as it flashed quite brightly, I swear on everything, this sounds so crazy I honestly can’t believing I’m typing this but I am in hopes that SOMEONE ELSE SAW WHAT WE DID… we started to see this distinct black shadow looking thing coming from the brightly flashing object, the best way I can describe it as crazy as it sounds is it looked like these black tentacles moving around, we both saw it, we were both screaming to each other “can you see the black thing coming out from the right, left bottoms ect” we could both see it at the same time. As that caught our attention to say the least… we failed to see that many more objects (about 10) had appeared in the same area of the sky but spread a distance from each other, as the sun began to set and the sky became darker, it was all very very clear, the other 10 objects were a lot smaller then the initial first one but still significantly bigger then a star, not only that but you could clearly see a red and white flashing light from them as well as they were also of oblong shape, it was as clear as anything, (The stars started to appear and without a doubt you could tell the difference between the stars and these objects, the stars stayed in the same spot and were not flashing red and white) (we also sighted 2 airplanes in this time which just had no comparison to the object) we watched all of this with our own eyes, but that’s not the craziest part, as we shifted our attention from the initial big one to the smaller (but still quite large) flashing objects, IT WAS CLEAR AS DAY WE COULD SEE ABOUT 20 or so even smaller objects FLYING out of the larger ones, it was as CLEAR as the letters I am typing right now, we both saw it, I called my mum and told her to look she also lives in the same suburb, and she could see them clear as day also, the smaller little objects would flash their lights bright and then switch them off and switch them back on, they were flying so quickly and then stop to hover away from each other, some would fly far into the distance and disappear, others would fly towards the other bigger objects and disappear into them, the smaller ones were the ones moving around, we were clearly so shocked by this and did not want to move our attention to anything else, we kept track of them but there was soo many moving around so quickly, now this is what scares us the most, these smaller objects (from what we observed in particular the ones that flew away and disappeared rather then the ones that would go back into the bigger object)as they flew around, stopped to hover, and flew away again WE BOTH SAW (my mum also still on the phone while watching this happen too) A DARK OBJECT FALLING FROM THE FLYING OBJECT…you could distinguish the dropped object over the flying object because it would fall from the flying object at such a speed (like someone jumping from a plane for example). Now clearly we were very distracted by this in which we all started looking for the 1st Biggest object we saw… it had completely vanished. We spend 3 hours outside watching this, the activity decreased as all the smaller objects flew back to the “medium” sized objects and then those medium objects would hover around for some time until they flew away until they also disappeared. I honestly can’t believe in my life I could witness something so bizarre and unexplainable as this. I was able to get a video of the larger object from my iPhone but the video DOES NOT do it justice, you can clearly see the first big object (no better then you can see a star) but the camera could not pick up the “medium” objects (as you can tell by the footage 1. We had not seen the smaller objects yet and 2. The “stars” we said were flickering was actually the “medium” objects we had not identified yet, at this point there was still not 1 actual “star” in the sky, the “stars” were the 10ish medium objects that we witnessed the smaller objects fly out of and into. ( Your website will not allow me to upload the video, can I email it??) I hope this is clear to read, I am honestly in that much shock after what we witnessed that I am just trying to document this ASAP!
Kumanovo Macedonia – Apr 9, 2020
Indianapolis, Indiana – 8 April 2020
Umtuntweni beach, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa – April 2020
I took this photo off the sea, when l took it there was nothing on the horizon, when l look later there was this black spot on the photo. First l thought the lens was dirty, or something on the windscreen. Can not enlarge properly to see wat it was. Maybe you can help in this regard, as you have more experience in things like this.
Unknown location in United States – April 2020
Alameda, ca. – March 26th 2020
I saw 6 objects coming out of the western sky with Orions belt as the background. This was on 3-26-20 at approx. 8:20 pm. The first one I saw was bright and moving fast, thought it might be a satalite, but then a second one came out of the same area, and a 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. They were moving from West to East following each other at equal distance, and speed. Took about 40 seconds for them to clear . I don’t know what they were, but do know they were in space above the Earth. Any ideas out there?
New Smyrna Beach Florida – June 2017
Cigar shape photo was taken from the Motel balcony we were staying at. My wife took it during or after a thunder storm that day.
Winchester. U. K. – September 2006
Flat saucer cream coloured shape shot from deep out in space between stars faster than anything I’ve ever seen, faster than anything made by humans as we do not have the power yet to go as fast as this disc, I thought for a minute it was a comet or something, it was faster than a comet. It looked like it just feel out off the sky iand past our planet. I was driving a coach back from London on the M3 Motorway on a September evening I was approaching Winchester and looking for Harvest Moon when I saw this shape just drop from out off outside of our atmosphere, from between the stars, so fast I could not believe what I saw, I’m usually a bit of a synic but hey < I saw this and I know people won’t believe it< it was like the Star Trek warp speed, the size of the disc compared to say a plane was absolutely huge
«Le phénomène est devenu palpable. J’ai eu la chance de pouvoir filmer une réunion des membres de la commission SIGMA 2 qui étudie les Ovnis de manière rigoureuse et scientifique ou encore de rencontrer le Sénateur Harry Reid à l’origine du programme AATIP de recherche sur les OVNIs du département de la défense américaine. Toutes ces interviews ont confortés mes intuitions.»
Dominique Filhol pour Paris Match
Oui, vous avez bien lu, Alain Juillet, ancien Directeur de la DGSE, est en ITW pour Match sur le sujet des OVNIS.
Parce qu’Alain Juillet fait partie des intervenants du nouveau documentaire de Dominique Filhol, “OVNIS, Une Affaire d’Etats”, qui sera diffusé Mardi en début de soirée.
On rappelle que Dominique Filhol accueillera dans un live exceptionnel Luc Dini, Pierre Bescond (Sigma 2) et Jan Harzan (Président MUFON US), tous participants dans le documentaire.
Informations sur le live :
⚠️ LIVE INÉDIT avec des invités exclusifs ⚠️
▼▼▼ Toutes les informations en description ▼▼▼
Le MUFON France vous propose une émission spéciale post-diffusion du documentaire de Dominique Filhol “OVNIS, une affaire d’États”
🤔 QUI SONT NOS INVITÉS ? Nous échangerons et discuterons du sujet OVNI avec Dominique Filhol avec :
Alain Juillet – Ex-Directeur des renseignements a la DGSE
Luc Dini – Président de la commission technique SIGMA (3AF)
Pierre Bescond – ex CNES membre de COMETA et SIGMA2
Jan Harzan – Directeur du MUFON – Mutual UFO Network
Et Pascal Fechner, qu’on voit de façon subliminale dans le reportage mais il est content quand même puisque ça a été filmé au QG du MUFON France à Valensole
💕 NOS COUPS DE CŒUR – A voir et à revoir …
• “OVNIS, UNE AFFAIRE D’ÉTATS” le Mardi 14 Avril à 21h sur Planète+ A&E, Réalisé par Dominique Filhol : https://youtu.be/zd6SXDrFAr8
NASA is headed to Saturn's largest moon, Titan — but some scientists hope to convince the agency to send another mission to Titan's neighbor, Enceladus, to look for signs of life.
Enceladus is a tiny, icy world that scientists best know from NASA's Cassini mission to the Saturn system, which ended in 2017. During Cassini's tenure, the spacecraft determined that the moon has an ocean hidden below its icy crust. The probe also found that Enceladus spit plumes containing material from this ocean out into space. These plumes are the primary reason why scientists want a dedicated spacecraft to visit the world.
"Enceladus is the only confirmed current habitable environment beyond Earth, it's the only world meeting the canonical requirements for habitability," Amanda Hendrix, a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said during a presentation coordinated by the National Academies of Sciences on March 31. "The next step is to search for signatures of life in the Enceladus ocean materials, and Enceladus makes it easy because it ejects its ocean material into space."
Specifically, Hendrix argued that Enceladus should be a target for the next round of the same mission size that includes the new Dragonfly mission to Titan, as well as missions like the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission, the Juno mission to Jupiter and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Two missions proposed during the most recent round did focus on Enceladus, but they did not make the final selection. Both Enceladus and Titan were listed together as the same potential type of destination, "ocean worlds." Because NASA didn't select an Enceladus mission, scientists are worried that the "ocean world" goal will now be considered under control, even though Dragonfly's visit to Titan will only teach us so much about Enceladus. The same limitation holds true of NASA's Europa Clipper, which will visit an icy moon of Jupiter that is superficially much more similar to Enceladus than Titan is.
"We now know that there's a lot of ocean worlds in our solar system and each as we currently understand it is unique and each offers something different to our understanding of ocean worlds," Hendrix said. "Enceladus is distinct from Europa and Titan."
The most exciting reason Enceladus is so distinct from other ocean worlds in our solar system is those plumes shooting out of the moon near the south pole. These plumes mean that scientists wouldn't need to build a spacecraft that can land on and penetrate an icy shell to study the hidden ocean.
"This is my personal opinion, but if we're going after life in our solar system and we've got an ocean out there that's just spewing itself out into space and making it easy for us," Hendrix said, "let's go do it, let's not make things harder on ourselves by first trying to do a lander mission."
While Enceladus' plumes make its ocean more accessible to spacecraft, the innards of the world remain isolated enough that, if there is indeed life in its hidden ocean, it could have evolved independently of life, say, here on Earth. But right now, that is a possibility of a possibility, and the only way to begin navigating out of these "ifs" is to send a spacecraft to check out the ocean.
"This ocean at Enceladus could be a host to a whole separate genesis of life," Hendrix said. "It could be uninhabited or it could be in a prebiotic state, but regardless, any Enceladus mission exploring this ocean is going to provide groundbreaking discoveries."
The new results challenge a core tenet of modern cosmology.
These four galaxy clusters were among hundreds analyzed in a large survey to test whether the universe is the same in all directions over large scales. The study results suggest the concept of an "isotropic" universe may not entirely fit.
The universe may not be the same in every direction after all.
The expansion rate of the universe appears to vary from place to place, a new study reports. This finding, if confirmed, would force astronomers to reassess just how well they understand the cosmos.
"One of the pillars of cosmology — the study of the history and fate of the entire universe — is that the universe is 'isotropic,' meaning the same in all directions," study lead author Konstantinos Migkas, of the University of Bonn in Germany, said in a statement. "Our work shows there may be cracks in that pillar."
The universe has been expanding continuously for more than 13.8 billion years, ever since the Big Bang — and at an accelerating rate, thanks to a mysterious force called dark energy. Equations based on Einstein's general theory of relativity suggest that this expansion is isotropic on large spatial scales, Migkas wrote Tuesday (April 7) in a blog post about the new study.
Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the universe-pervading radiation left over from the Big Bang, support this notion, he added: "The CMB seems to be isotropic, and cosmologists extrapolate this property of the very early universe to our current epoch, nearly 14 billion years later."
But it's unclear how valid this extrapolation is, he stressed, noting that dark energy has been the dominant factor in the universe's evolution over the last 4 billion years or so. Dark energy's "baffling nature has not yet allowed astrophysicists to understand it properly," Migkas wrote. "Therefore, assuming it to be isotropic is almost a leap of faith for now. This highlights the urgent need to investigate if today's universe is isotropic or not."
The new study reports the results of one such investigation. Migkas and his colleagues studied 842 galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, using data gathered by three space telescopes: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Europe's XMM-Newton and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a joint Japanese-U.S. mission that ended in 2001.
The researchers determined the temperature of each cluster by analyzing the X-ray emissions coming from huge fields of hot gas within them. They used this temperature information to estimate each cluster's inherent X-ray luminosity, without needing to take into account cosmological variables such as the universe's expansion rate.
The researchers then calculated X-ray luminosity for each cluster in a different way, one that did require knowledge of the universe's expansion. Doing so revealed apparent expansion rates across the entire sky — and these rates didn't match up everywhere.
"We managed to pinpoint a region that seems to expand slower than the rest of the universe, and one that seems to expand faster!" Migkas wrote in the blog post. "Interestingly, our results agree with several previous studies that used other methods, with the difference that we identified this 'anisotropy' in the sky with a much higher confidence and using objects covering the whole sky more uniformly."
This graphic shows a map of the universe's expansion rates in different directions, estimated in a new study by Konstantinos Migkas and collaborators. The map is in galactic coordinates, with the center looking toward the center of our galaxy. The black and purple colors show the directions of the lowest expansion rates (the Hubble constant); yellow and red show the directions of the highest expansion rates. (Image credit: University of Bonn/K. Migkas et al.)
It's possible that this result has a relatively prosaic explanation. For example, perhaps galaxy clusters in the anomalous areas are being pulled hard gravitationally by other clusters, giving the illusion of a different expansion rate.
Such effects are seen at smaller spatial scales in the universe, the researchers said. But the new study probes clusters up to 5 billion light-years away, and it's unclear if gravitational tugs could overwhelm expansion forces over such vast distances, they added.
If the observed expansion-rate differences are indeed real, they could reveal intriguing new details about how the universe works. For instance, maybe dark energy itself varies from place to place throughout the cosmos.
"It would be remarkable if dark energy were found to have different strengths in different parts of the universe," study co-author Thomas Reiprich, also of the University of Bonn, said in the same statement. "However, much more evidence would be needed to rule out other explanations and make a convincing case."
The new study appears in the April 2020 issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. You can read it for free at the online preprint site arXiv.org.
The following is a true and accurate account of my “close encounter” in Seattle, Washington, which occurred in 1993. I believe it was in the month of November.
It was a Sunday night about 9:30. I often had occasion to be driving north about that time of evening on Sundays, and I usually took the I-5 freeway. This time, however, I knew the freeway, northbound, was jammed up due to an accident. So I took an alternate route which eventually led me to what I think was East Marginal Way, right next to the main Boeing Aircraft facility in Seattle.
As I was traveling, northbound, I noticed three red lights low in the sky ahead of me and to my right. They were moving in unison, very slowly across my field of vision from east to west. At first, I thought they must be the lights of a low flying plane, perhaps about to land. Then I thought, no, they must be helicopters because a plane, even if it was landing, wouldn’t be moving that slowly.
The trouble was, I couldn’t actually see the craft or crafts that the lights were attached to. They were, maybe, a half mile ahead of me, about 30 degrees to my right. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to this because I’d been making that Sunday night drive past Boeing (although via the freeway) for twelve years.
This is also not too far from the Sea-Tac Airport. In all that time I’d seen plenty of airplanes and helicopters flying low in this area. But something was different this time. It took me a minute to realize what it was. It was the fact that the lights weren’t blinking. I thought that was odd.
It seemed to me every airplane or helicopter I’ve ever seen flying at night had blinking lights. I squinted my eyes as I drove toward the lights, trying to see just what I was actually looking at.
Although I was now only about two blocks away from being directly under the flight path of these lights, I still could not make out what they were attached to.
However, from their slow, steady movement, in unison, I was pretty sure all three of them were attached to a single object, rather than being independent of each other. By the time I was directly in line with their flight path, they were about to enter the airspace above Boeing Field to my immediate left.
At this point I was convinced it was a single, low-flying craft of some kind and I knew there was something very odd here. I pulled my car off to the side of the road and rolled down the window to get a better look. But the craft was now directly overhead so I had to get out of the car to see it…
I opened the car door and stepped out, craning my neck to see the craft as it passed slowly directly over my head at an estimated altitude of less than 500 feet (Note: at the actual time of the sighting my impression was that the craft was perhaps only about 150 feet above me).
I could see it was a gigantic black triangle. There is no other way to describe it because that’s precisely what it was; a huge, black, triangle; not just “sort of” triangular-shaped, like one of those stealth jets I’d seen photos of.
It was just one big, three-sided, cookie-cutter-straight-edged, black, geometric shape; a triangle with one large, round unblinking red light at each of its three corners, flat up against the underside of the craft. There was a high, gray cloud cover that evening, subtly lit by the Seattle city lights in the distance. I could clearly and without obstruction see the object like a huge, dense, black silhouette against this gray ceiling.
I stood there almost not believing what I knew I was seeing. I actually said to myself, “Ok. What, exactly, are you seeing? You’re going to want to remember every detail of this! Just the facts, now. What, exactly, do you see?”
I made a mental inventory. “Black triangle. Red light on each corner, flat up against the underside of the craft. They don’t blink…
(Note: at this point it has proceeded on past me and was now over Boeing field)… It looks like it’s about seventy-five to a hundred feet above one of the main Boeing hangars. It’s moving very slowly. Maybe five miles per hour. It’s heading west. It appears to be about the size of a football field.”
Suddenly I realized, as I stood there in the dark on this quiet empty street, the object didn’t make a sound! Maybe more than anything else, that’s what made the whole thing so eerie. Something that huge, that close, moving through the air at a snail’s pace should be making some kind of a sound. A hum. A rumble. Anything. But, no.
It just moved across the sky like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie with the volume turned off. I looked up and down the street to see if anyone else was witnessing this silent event, but the street was dark and empty in both directions.
It occurred to me, however, that the thing had just passed directly over hundreds of cars on the freeway which was only a few miles east of where I was standing. I looked up again at the mysterious craft now blending into the dark horizon. I watched it until I couldn’t see it anymore and then it was over.
I got back into my car and closed the door. The window was still open and I took another look. Nothing was there but the gray night sky, softly aglow from the distant city lights. It was as if nothing had happened. But believe me, it did, indeed, happen.
Lyn Buchanan, one of the STARGATE army remote viewers, claims, as multiple others within the program have, that he was tasked to find out information on extraterrestrial groups that were/are visiting the planet.
Reflect On:
Why is the success and validity of remote viewing and parapsychology often ridiculed? Why are the most successful remote viewers within the program all relaying to humanity that we're not alone?
For anybody who’s looked into the Remote Viewing programs that were (and probably still are) in operation within several governments around the world, it’s very easy to become awe struck with regards to the validity of these programs, despite the fact that they’ve received a lot of criticism from skeptics. One merely has to look at the facts to get a good picture of just how successful, accurate, and useful these programs were, and again, probably still are. Here is a great quote from Dr. Jessica Utts, the Chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Irvine and a professor there since 2008.
“What convinced me was just the evidence, the accumulating evidence as I worked in this field and I got to see more and more of the evidence. I visited the laboratories, even beyond where I was working to see what they were doing and I could see that they had really tight controls…and so I got convinced by the good science that I saw being done. And in fact I will say as a statistician I’ve consulted in a lot of different areas of science; the methodology and the controls on these experiments are tighter than any other area of science where I’ve worked.” (source)
Such an eye opening and revealing quote, and a fact that needs to be emphasized because when it comes to remote viewing, it conflicts with so many people’s belief systems, including many within the fields of academia. Thus, it is often brushed off as ‘pseudoscience’ without any proper investigation or inquiry. This is odd, given the fact that multiple governments have admitted to studying remote viewing, and other phenomena that falls under the umbrella of parapsychology.
What is remote viewing? It’s an ability that allows the ‘viewer’ to be able to describe a remote geographical location up to several hundred thousand kilometres away (even more) from their physical location — one that they have never been to.
Here’s another great quote from the declassified literature in 1995 from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) archives, from scientist and co-founder of Stanford’s remote viewing program, Harold E. Puthoff:
“To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the [remote viewing] phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise. . . . The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions.” (source)
Multiple viewers were used with exceptional skills inside of this program, which was known as the STARGATE program. One of them was Lyn Buchanan, a veteran and an Army Remote viewer who worked inside of the program. His status within the program has been verified by the declassified literature that was released on the program in 1995.
Here is an example within the literature. Although there are many, I chose this one because it also mentions the professor I quoted above, Jessica Utts.
The document mentions Utts’ responsibility with regards to conducting a review of the remote viewing research. It also mentions a program that aired featuring many people from within the program, like Lyn Buchanan, but obviously does not mention all of them as there were many.
One common theme among several army remote viewers, like Ingo Swann and Pat Price, names that are also found throughout the de-classified STARGATE literature, is extraterrestrial.
I recently came across an interview with Lyn Buchanan, and according to him:
“After the military I was asked by a branch of the government to do a paper, a study paper to compare and contrast ET psychic ability to human psychic ability. The study that I did was because I was given access to many of the things that never made it into project grudge or the blue book or anything like that because they couldn’t be denied. So anyway, in studying these, I found out that we can take the ET’s of all different kinds and species and all that and put them into four main categories. We’ve got those who are more psychic than us and those that are less psychic than us. In each of those two categories we’ve got friendly to us and unfriendly to us, the unfriendly non-psychic ones tend to not come here. They don’t like us, they don’t want to be around us. The non-psychic friendly ones come here for trade. The psychic friendly ones actually want to help us develop our abilities and become stronger at it. And the unfriendly psychic ones want us wiped off the planet, they want us dead, period, no questions asked.”
He also mentions extraterrestrial bases that are on Earth, and he says there are approximately five. He mentions that they are all inside of mountains and that at some of these bases humans are working with these extraterrestrials in various ways. He is not the only viewer to mention these bases and extraterrestrials, as Ingo Swann told many fascinating stories in his book, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy. Furthermore, Joseph Mcmoneagle was another individual who had experience in remote viewing an extraterrestrial presence.
Then, there is Pat Price, who, along with Ingo Swann, is described as one of SRI’s most successful viewers, as his sessions were extremely accurate.
Legendary UFO researcher Timothy Good tells the story quite well in his book, Unearthly Disclosure:
According to Captain Frederick H. Atwater, a retired US Army officer also involved at the time in highly classified ‘remote viewing’ experiments for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as for the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Price had remotely viewed four alien bases on Earth, one of which was located under Mount Ziel, Northern Territory. Mount Ziel lies some 80 miles west-northwest of Pine Gap. Price believed the base contained a mixture of ‘personnel’ from the other bases, one purpose being to ‘transport new recruits, with an overall monitoring function’. The other bases were said to be under Mount Perdido in the Pyrenees, Mount Inyangani in Zimbabwe, and, coincidentally, in Alaska under Mount Hayes. Price described the occupants as ‘looking like homo sapiens, except for the lungs, heart, blood and eyes.’
Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, and Chairman of the NATO military committee, wrote the forward to the book by Good. Here’s a great quote from him:
“There are objects in our atmosphere which are technically miles in advance of anything we can deploy, that we have no means of stopping them coming here … [and] that there is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations. That it behooves us, in case some of these people in the future or now should turn hostile, to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.” (source)
Bellow is a screenshot of the first page of a document from 1979, which wasn’t approved for release until after the year 2000. The document is written by Atwater, and you can scroll down to the bottom and see that yourself. I thought I should post it here because it mentions Price and it’s very interesting, although you can’t make out all of it because some is blanked out. However, you can see how useful Mr. Price was to the CIA, and how interesting findings were not shared. His story regarding the alien bases is one example of many that corroborates other stories from many viewers like Buchanan and Ingo Swan (both of whom were mentioned above). They’re also mentioned on the second page of the document below.
If you pay a visit to the CIA’s electronic reading room and type in any of the names I’ve mentioned in this article, you will find a plethora of articles.
Being a UFO researcher for a very long time, what’s interesting to me is that the comments remote viewers make about ET presence corroborates with a lot of other information in the field. The success of the remote viewing alone is why it’s even more intriguing.
Discussing Remote Viewing & The Moon
Joe and I recently sat down and went a lot deeper into remote viewing and how it relates to the extraterrestrial phenomenon. Below is a clip from our hour discussion on the topic during our 3 hour broadcast of The Collective Evolution Show. Check out the clip below, and if you want to watch the entire broadcast you can sign up for CETV.
The Takeaway
Human ability and capability expands far beyond what is presently known. There are concepts regarding our reality and facts about the human experience that are still being revealed. We are literally living in apocalyptic times. ‘Apocalypse’ (ἀποκάλυψις) is a Greek word meaning ‘revelation,'”an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling.’ (source)In today’s day and age, no matter how much evidence and empirical data supports a phenomenon, and no matter how obvious it may seem, if it conflicts with long held collective belief systems, it will always be rejected simply based on the implications it could have. This process of revelation is happening now, and although it’s slow and gradual, it has been accelerating.
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US Army Remote Viewers Say Ancient Bases Under Earth Are 'Relaying' Something into Space
US Army Remote Viewers Say Ancient Bases Under Earth Are 'Relaying' Something into Space
This has some untapped potential to move the public conversation forward on the UFO (and ancient ET) topic imo. It was declassified but has long been held offline, beyond the reach of the internet. Enjoy
Not widely known about, Project 8200 was an effort within the US Army’s remote viewing unit to verify claims of subterranean extraterrestrial bases made by CIA analyst Pat Price in the 1970s. *We obtained every ’82 to ’86-era declassified file of Project 8200, most of which were never officially reported to their higher-ups in the intelligence community. This is what the episode covers.* In 2009, ex-Stargate head Skip Atwater declassified all of this information at an International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA) conference, though only hard copies of his presentation are available offline.
What they show are the apparent confirmation by several other gifted remote viewers that a “network” of underground bases exists across the world for the purpose of “relaying” something into space. As elite viewer Joseph McMoneagle and Atwater discuss in these tapes, Project 8200 data suggests the locations relay information to a “deep space” platform of unknown origin, sitting on a sort of tether to Earth. It is not suggested in the file, but after review, we think it’s reasonable to ask if a Lagrange point (positions in space the Sun and the Earth’s gravity create islands of stability) explains why the object McMoneagle sees remains “fixed” there. The deep space platform is described as ancient but with new technology. Other viewers describe the bases as a strange mix of natural and artificial formations.
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Classic Disk UFO Seen Below Space Station On Live NASA Cam, April 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Classic Disk UFO Seen Below Space Station On Live NASA Cam, April 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 2020 Location of sighting: International Space Station At the 5 min mark in this video, Secureteam10 talks about a UFO seen at the space station on live cam. This UFO looks like a classic disk design. The metallic glint is unmistakable. It looks to be in lower orbit as the space station passes it in upper orbit. Awesome catch, very rare, but absolutely real. This is what NASA doe not want the public to see, but this UFO was so faint and so small, that I'm sure they missed it, especially since most NASA is at home on lock down, probably fooling around instead of doing real work. The first UFO sighting seen in this video has too high of detail and to little info about it for me to think its real. I don't believe the first video is real, however this second one on live cam...is real. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
UFO Watches Over Paris, France On April 10, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Watches Over Paris, France On April 10, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 10, 2020 Location of sighting: Paris, France This UFO was reported by Youtube user HiddenUnderBelly. The UFO was reported of Paris this week and it seems to be holding its location and watching the citizens around it. At a moment in time when Paris is on lockdown from coronavirus, aliens seem to be taking interest in human behaviors. Perhaps aliens are trying to figure out if humans heed the rules of masks, social distancing and lock downs or not? This info would give them a predictive model of what will happen in the near future. Aliens pride themselves on their knowledge, so its understandable that UFO sightings are becoming more frequent at the moment. Scott C. Waring
US Army: Ancient Extraterrestrial Bases Under Earth Are 'Relaying' Something Into Space
US Army: Ancient Extraterrestrial Bases Under Earth Are 'Relaying' Something Into Space
Not widely known about, Project 8200 was an effort within the US Army's remote viewing unit to verify claims of subterranean extraterrestrial bases made by CIA analyst Pat Price in the 1970s.
We obtained every '82 to '86-era declassified file of Project 8200, most of which were never officially reported to their higher-ups in the intelligence community.
In 2009, ex-Stargate head Skip Atwater declassified all of this information at an International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA) conference, though only hard copies of his presentation are available offline: https://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/atwater.html
What they show are the apparent confirmation by several other gifted remote viewers that a "network" of underground bases exists across the world for the purpose of "relaying" something into space.
As elite viewer Joseph McMoneagle and Atwater discuss in these tapes, Project 8200 data suggests the locations relay information to a "deep space" platform of unknown origin, sitting on a sort of tether to Earth.
It is not suggested in the file, but after review, we think it's reasonable to ask if a Lagrange point (positions in space the Sun and the Earth's gravity create islands of stability) explains why the object McMoneagle sees remains "fixed" there.
The deep space platform is described as ancient but with new technology. Other viewers describe the bases as a strange mix of natural and artificial formations.
Purple Celestial Body Spotted Next To The Sun And The Moon
Purple Celestial Body Spotted Next To The Sun And The Moon
The celestial body was caught live going by the sun as we will see in this video, then it got smaller and going by the moon as it was leaving the Solar System.
Even though the object looks like a UFO disguised as a rock, Bruce is convinced that this purple object is an asteroid or a small unknown celestial body and that's what we are going to look at.
Lights in the sky above Kalamazoo, Michigan 7-Apr-2020
Lights in the sky above Kalamazoo, Michigan 7-Apr-2020
This UFO sighting video of an unknown lights flying across the night sky above Kalamazoo, Mi was filmed on Tuesday, 7th April 2020. It was submitted to us through our Facebook page.
The author said: “This isn’t the first I’ve seen but it is the first I caught…“
(April 9th, 2020: Please see the end of this release for an added note discussing the possibility of systematic errors.)
One of the fundamental ideas of cosmology is that everything looks the same in all directions if you look over large enough distances. A new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton is challenging that basic notion.
Astronomers using X-ray data from these orbiting observatories studied hundreds of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity, and how their apparent properties differ across the sky.
"One of the pillars of cosmology — the study of the history and fate of the entire universe — is that the universe is 'isotropic,' meaning the same in all directions," said Konstantinos Migkas of the University of Bonn in Germany, who led the new study. "Our work shows there may be cracks in that pillar."
Astronomers generally agree that after the Big Bang, the cosmos has continuously expanded. A commonly analogy is that this expansion is like a baking loaf of raisin bread. As the bread bakes, the raisins (which represent cosmic objects like galaxies and galaxy clusters) all move away from one another as the entire loaf (representing space) expands. With an even mix the expansion should be uniform in all directions, as it should be with an isotropic universe. But these new results may not fit that picture.
"Based on our cluster observations we may have found differences in how fast the universe is expanding depending on which way we looked," said co-author Gerrit Schellenberger of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "This would contradict one of the most basic underlying assumptions we use in cosmology today."
Scientists have previously conducted many tests of whether the universe is the same in all directions. These included using optical observations of exploded stars and infrared studies of galaxies. Some of these previous efforts have produced possible evidence that the universe is not isotropic, and some have not.
This latest test uses a powerful, novel and independent technique. It capitalizes on the relationship between the temperature of the hot gas pervading a galaxy cluster and the amount of X-rays it produces, known as the cluster's X-ray luminosity. The higher the temperature of the gas in a cluster, the higher the X-ray luminosity is. Once the temperature of the cluster gas is measured, the X-ray luminosity can be estimated. This method is independent of cosmological quantities, including the expansion speed of the universe.
Once they estimated the X-ray luminosities of their clusters using this technique, scientists then calculated luminosities using a different method that does depend on cosmological quantities, including the universe's expansion speed. The results gave the researchers apparent expansion speeds across the whole sky — revealing that the universe appears to be moving away from us faster in some directions than others.
The team also compared this work with studies from other groups that have found indications of a lack of isotropy using different techniques. They found good agreement on the direction of the lowest expansion rate.
The authors of this new study came up with two possible explanations for their results that involve cosmology. One of these explanations is that large groups of galaxy clusters might be moving together, but not because of cosmic expansion. For example, it is possible some nearby clusters are being pulled in the same direction by the gravity of groups of other galaxy clusters. If the motion is rapid enough it could lead to errors in estimating the luminosities of the clusters.
These sorts of correlated motions would give the appearance of different expansion rates in different directions. Astronomers have seen similar effects with relatively nearby galaxies, at distances typically less than 850 million light years, where mutual gravitational attraction is known to control the motion of objects. However, scientists expected the expansion of the universe to dominate the motion of clusters across larger distances, up to the 5 billion light years probed in this new study.
A second possible explanation is that the universe is not actually the same in all directions. One intriguing reason could be that dark energy — the mysterious force that seems to be driving acceleration of the expansion of the universe — is itself not uniform. In other words, the X-rays may reveal that dark energy is stronger in some parts of the universe than others, causing different expansion rates.
"This would be like if the yeast in the bread isn't evenly mixed, causing it to expand faster in some places than in others," said co-author Thomas Reiprich, also of the University of Bonn. "It would be remarkable if dark energy were found to have different strengths in different parts of the universe. However, much more evidence would be needed to rule out other explanations and make a convincing case."
Either of these two cosmological explanations would have significant consequences. Many studies in cosmology, including X-ray studies of galaxy clusters, assume that the universe is isotropic and that correlated motions are negligible compared to the cosmic expansion at the distances probed here.
The team used a sample of 313 galaxy clusters for their analysis, containing 237 clusters observed by Chandra with a total of 191 days of exposure, and 76 observed by XMM-Newton, with a total of 35 days of exposure. They also combined their sample of galaxy clusters with two other large X-ray samples, using data from XMM-Newton and the Japan-US Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA), giving a total of 842 different galaxy clusters. They found a similar result using the same technique.
A paper describing these results will appear in the April 2020 issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online. In addition to Migkas, Schellenberger and Reiprich, the authors of this paper are Florian Pacaud and Miriam Elizabeth Ramos-Ceja (University of Bonn), and Lorenzo Lovisari (CfA).
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge and Burlington, Massachusetts.
Other materials about the findings are available at:
In the original posting of this press release we did not mention the possibility of "systematic errors" explaining some or all of these results, rather than the two cosmological explanations we discuss. First author Konstantinos Migkas had explained an example of a possible systematic error in his blog post that accompanied the press release. A relevant excerpt is here:
"So did we tear down one of the most crucial pillars of cosmology? Not so fast, it is not that simple. At least two scenarios may have led us to wrong conclusions.
Firstly, cosmic material might interfere with the light that travels from the clusters to the Earth. For example, previously unknown gas and dust clouds beyond the Milky Way could obscure a fraction of photons emitted from the clusters. Since we ignore the possible existence of such clouds, we do not account for their interference, and hence we would falsely underestimate the true luminosity of the clusters. Eventually, we could mistake this for a cosmological effect. We performed several tests that led us to believe that this scenario seems unlikely, but not impossible. However, considering that the direction of the anisotropy we find agrees with other studies that used observations in light at different wavelengths, where such obscuring effects are not expected, one could argue against the possibility of such biases in our analysis."
Their peer reviewed and published paper considers this and several other possible systematic errors in detail, and will address other possibilities in a future peer-reviewed paper.
OPMERKELIJK: HET UNIVERSUM DIJT MOGELIJK NIET IN ALLE RICHTINGEN GELIJKMATIG UIT
OPMERKELIJK: HET UNIVERSUM DIJT MOGELIJK NIET IN ALLE RICHTINGEN GELIJKMATIG UIT
Vivian Lammerse
De studie veegt daarmee een lang aanvaarde theorie van tafel, waardoor we mogelijk ons huidige kosmologische model moeten herzien.
Astronomen zijn het er grotendeels met elkaar over eens dat de kosmos na de oerknal voortdurend uitdijde. Het betekent dat de afstand tussen sterrenstelsels in ons universum per seconde steeds een stukje groter wordt. Daarbij gaan wetenschappers er al decennia van uit dat het heelal zich in alle richtingen met dezelfde snelheid uitbreidt. Maar een nieuwe studie gepubliceerd in Astronomy & Astrophysics veegt die lang aanvaarde theorie nu hardvochtig tafel.
Rozijnencake De uitdijing van het universum kun je nog het beste vergelijken met een rozijnencake. Terwijl de cake – die het heelal vertegenwoordigt – in de oven bakt en uitzet, bewegen de rozijnen – die kosmische objecten zoals sterrenstelsels voorstellen – van elkaar vandaan. Met een gelijkmatige mengsel zou de cake in alle richtingen op dezelfde manier uit moeten zetten, net als bij een isotroop universum. En daar gingen astronomen al decennia lang van uit.
Onderzoekers besloten de zogenaamde ‘isotroophypothese’ over het universum uit te dagen. Want klopt het eigenlijk wel dat het heelal gelijkmatig in alle richtingen uitdijt? “We hebben gekeken naar meer dan 800 clusters in het huidige heelal,” vertelt onderzoeker Konstantinos Migkas. “Als de isotroophypothese correct is, zouden de eigenschappen van de clusters overal hetzelfde zijn. Maar we zagen al gauw significante verschillen.”
Vier van de honderden clusters die in de studie werden geanalyseerd.
Afbeelding: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bonn/K. Migkas et al.
De astronomen gebruikten röntgen temperatuurmetingen van het extreem hete gas dat doordringt in de sterrenhopen en vergeleken de gegevens met hoe helder de sterrenhopen verschijnen. Clusters met dezelfde temperatuur en op een vergelijkbare afstand zouden er – volgens de theorie – even helder uit moeten zien. Maar dat is niet wat de onderzoekers opmerkten. “We zagen dat clusters met dezelfde eigenschappen en met vergelijkbare temperaturen in de ene richting veel minder helder leken dan verwacht, terwijl ze in een andere richting juist veel helderder waren,” vertelt Thomas Reiprich. “Het verschil was behoorlijk groot, ongeveer dertig procent.”
Verklaringen De onderzoekers besloten op zoek te gaan naar mogelijke verklaringen. Want wellicht dat onopgemerkte gas- of stofwolken het zicht belemmerden, waardoor de clusters in een bepaald gebied donkerder leken. Dat bleek echter niet het geval. Ook enkele andere oorzaken die de nieuwe studieresultaten zouden kunnen ontkrachten werden onderzocht, maar van tafel geveegd. Het betekent dat het universum wellicht echt ongelijkmatig uitdijt. Maar wat ligt hieraan ten grondslag? De wetenschappers speculeren nu dat mogelijk donkere energie een vinger in de pap heeft. Het grootste deel van het universum bestaat mogelijk uit deze mysterieuze vorm van energie, al weten we hier op dit moment nog niet veel van af. Het enige dat wetenschappers veronderstellen is dat donkere energie op de een of andere manier verantwoordelijk is voor de versnelling van de uitdijing van het universum. In dit geval zou het kunnen dat donkere energie in sommige delen van het universum sterker is dan in andere delen, waardoor er mogelijk verschillen ontstaan in hoe snel het universum in bepaalde richtingen uitdijt.
Een kaart van de snelheid van de uitdijing van het heelal in verschillende richtingen.
Afbeelding: K. Migkas et al. 2020, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Gevolgen De bevindingen hebben grote gevolgen. Want tot op heden gingen onderzoekers er eigenlijk standaard vanuit dat het universum isotroop is. “Als het heelal echt anisotroop is – al was het maar in de afgelopen paar miljard jaar – dan zou dit enorme gevolgen hebben,” zegt Migkas. “Wanneer we de eigenschappen van objecten analyseren moet er namelijk rekening gehouden worden met de richting van elk object. Vandaag schatten we bijvoorbeeld de afstand tot zeer verre objecten in het heelal door een reeks kosmologische parameters en vergelijkingen toe te passen. We geloven dat deze parameters overal hetzelfde zijn. Maar als onze bevindingen juist zijn, dan zou dat niet meer op gaan en moeten we dus al onze eerdere conclusies herzien.”
Of dat ook echt nodig is, zal toekomstig onderzoek moeten uitwijzen. “De bevindingen zijn echt interessant, maar de steekproef in de studie is nog relatief klein om zulke verstrekkende conclusies te trekken,” zegt René Laureijs van ESA. “Als we het algemeen aanvaarde kosmologische model echt zouden moeten heroverwegen, hebben we meer gegevens nodig.” En die gaan er wellicht ook komen. ESA’s aankomende telescoop Euclid is ontworpen om miljarden sterrenstelsels in beeld te brengen. Deze telescoop zal in staat zijn om de uitdijing van het universum, de versnelling en de aard van donkere energie nauwkeuriger dan ooit te onderzoeken. De lancering van de telescoop staat gepland voor 2022. We wachten gespannen af of deze telescoop het grote mysterie in toekomst zou kunnen helpen oplossen.
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het medicijn – dat nu gebruikt wordt om parasieten te bestrijden – lijkt in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovend.
Tot die conclusie komen onderzoekers van Monash University nadat ze het middel in het laboratorium loslieten op cellen die met het virus geïnfecteerd waren. De experimenten wijzen uit dat het middel het virus binnen 48 uur kan doden. “We ontdekten dat een enkele dosis in 48 uur tijd in feite al het virale RNA verwijderde en dat er zelfs na 24 uur al sprake was van een significante afname van het virus,” aldus onderzoeker Kylie Wagstaff.
Meer onderzoek Of dit dan de behandeling is waar talloze patiënten wereldwijd naar smachten? Die conclusie zul je Wagstaff nog niet zo snel horen trekken. Het is namelijk belangrijk om je te realiseren dat deze resultaten enkel in het laboratorium geboekt zijn. Of het middel in vivo – oftewel in het menselijk lichaam – hetzelfde resultaat heeft, is nog onduidelijk. “We moeten nu uitzoeken of de dosis waarin je het aan mensen kunt toedienen, effectief is. Dat is de volgende stap.”
Over ivermectine Wagstaff en collega’s bogen zich al snel nadat het nieuwe coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 tot een pandemie uitgroeide, over het betreffende geneesmiddel: ivermectine. Het medicijn wordt nu ingezet om parasieten te bestrijden. Zo krijgen mensen het bijvoorbeeld voorgeschreven bij worminfecties. Maar eerdere studies hebben al uitgewezen dat het in vitro – oftewel buiten het lichaam, in kweekculturen in het lab – ook wel raad weet met een breed scala aan virussen, waaronder zika en het influenzavirus. En dat bracht Wagstaff en collega’s op het idee om het middel ook los te laten op het nieuwe coronavirus.
Hoe werkt het? Het levert in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovende resultaten op. Hoe het middel in de petrischaaltjes van Wagstaff en collega’s precies afrekent met het virus is niet onderzocht. Maar de wetenschappers hebben daar – afgaand op wat ze het middel eerder met andere virussen hebben zien doen – wel ideeën over. Ons immuunsysteem maakt normaliter korte metten met lichaamsvreemde stoffen, zoals virussen. Om toch cellen te kunnen infecteren, onderdrukt het nieuwe coronavirus die immuunrespons, waardoor onze cellen er minder goed in slagen om het virus op te ruimen. En ivermectine lijkt er kort gezegd voor te zorgen dat het virus er niet meer in slaagt om onze cellen ervan te weerhouden het virus op te ruimen.
Vervolgonderzoek Als uit vervolgonderzoek blijkt dat het middel ook in het menselijk lichaam wel raad weet met SARS-CoV-2 dan kan het in theorie snel gaan. Omdat ivermectine al een bestaand en dus goedgekeurd en veilig bevonden medicijn is, kan het in principe snel worden ingezet om geïnfecteerde patiënten te behandelen. Zover is het echter nog niet, zo blijven Wagstaff en collega’s benadrukken. Eerst moet er in het laboratorium nog meer onderzoek worden gedaan en dan pas kan er na worden gedacht over klinisch onderzoek, waarbij het middel op mensen wordt getest. En om dat alles mogelijk te maken, is heel dringend geld nodig.
Malariamedicijn Op dit moment is er geen effectieve behandeling voor mensen die met SARS-CoV-2 besmet zijn geraakt. Artsen behandelen momenteel dan ook noodgedwongen de symptomen. Onderzoekers wereldwijd werken hard om daar verandering in te brengen. Zij kijken daarbij – vanwege de urgente vraag naar een behandeling – het liefst naar bestaande medicijnen. Zo werd eerder al geopperd dat een bestaand malariamedicijn kon helpen in de behandeling tegen COVID-19. Maar wetenschappelijke studies naar de effectiviteit van het middel leveren tot op heden uiteenlopende resultaten op. Er is tot op heden dus geen hard bewijs dat dit geneesmiddel het verschil kan maken.
Dat een effectieve behandeling tegen COVID-19 hard nodig is, staat buiten kijf. Wereldwijd is het virus inmiddels bij meer dan 1,2 miljoen mensen officieel vastgesteld. En bijna 70.000 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Lang leek China – het land waarin het virus voor het eerst opdook – het hardst te zijn getroffen, maar inmiddels tellen de VS, Spanje, Italië, Duitsland en Frankrijk meer officiële besmettingen dan China. In Nederland zijn meer dan 17.000 besmettingen bevestigd en 1766 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Maatregelen bedoeld om de verspreiding van het virus af te remmen, lijken ondertussen hun vruchten af te werpen. Onduidelijk is nog hoelang die maatregelen – of in ieder geval een deel ervan – in stand moeten worden gehouden om het virus echt onder controle te houden. Deskundigen sluiten niet uit dat onze samenleving er zeker nog 12 tot 18 maanden anders uit zal zien dan in pre-COVID-19-tijden.
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Southern Peru is famous for UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site the Nazca Lines, which represent a group of giant and ancient geoglyphs. However, something even more mysterious and unexplainable have now been spotted close to the site by one curious Google Earth user.
Some cryptic shapes and patterns were spotted by Google Earth enthusiast 30-40 kilometres North East from the famous Nazca Lines in Peru. The user published a video of his mysterious discovery on YouTube, and the image immediately attracted thousands of views in just several days, with observers rushing to express their astonishment with the finding.
The patterns spotted by the Google Earth admirer included strange “football pitch”-sized circles in a deserted mountain ridge nearby Uchumarca, as well as a cryptic snake-like structure, which he described as a “serpent”. He also noted in the video that it was difficult to understand whether the pattern was occurring naturally or was a human-designed structure.
“The ‘serpent’ just really jumped right out at me”, the Google Earth user wrote on YouTube after his video was published. “It's either a very large natural formation or a manmade artificial site like the serpent mound in Ohio. Other than that - I got nothin'. Very interesting”.
“Very cool find my friend. Definitely looks like a petrified serpant to me”, one of the video viewers commented on the finding.
“Yo that snake was so eye popping, it def looks man made but the scale of it, im amazed by it”, another YouTuber added.
Despite a flow of comments and speculations about what could have caused such exotic shapes in one of the highest elevations in the area, the truth behind the origin of giant patterns still remains a mystery.
The Nazca Lines, which lie close to the analysed site, are a group of geoglyphs which are believed to be created around 2000 years ago. They are located in southern Peru and are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
NASA’s incubator programme which funds the development of far reaching, long term advanced concepts that “think outside the box,” has awarded a grant for research into turning a huge crater on the far side of the Moon into a giant radio telescope.
NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is a platform that each year nurtures visionary ideas that have the potential to create breakthrough technologies for possible future space missions, by funding projects still in the early stages of development.
For 2020, the US space agency has selected 23 potentially revolutionary concepts with a total award value of $7 million; recipients of Phase I awards receive $125,000 to advance their concept over a nine-month period.
One of the new successful applicants is Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Bandyopadhyay’s idea is to turn a suitable existing lunar crater, one to 50 kilometres in diameter, on the far-side of the Moon into a spherical reflecting dish and use it as a radio telescope.
Called the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), the dish would be able to observe the Universe in the 5 –100 metre wavelength band, a region of the electromagnetic spectrum rarely utilised in astronomy.
The radio telescope, which would have “tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based telescopes,” according to Bandyopadhyay’s description of his radical concept, could “potentially make tremendous scientific discoveries in fields of cosmology and extrasolar planets.”
An added advantage is that as it will be tucked away out of sight from Earth, the Moon will act as a physical shield that isolates the telescope from the radio interference and noises coming from our planet.
To create the LCRT, Bandyopadhyay suggests using wallclimbing DuAxel robots to drape a deployable wire-mesh one kilometre in diameter on the inside of a large lunar crater.
This would require only a few robots from Earth thereby significantly reducing launch weight and cost compared to all previous lunar-surface telescope mission concepts, says Bandyopadhyay.
If the concept ever came to fruition, then the LCRT would be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System.
Furthermore, the concept idea specifies that the robots could then go onto create a network of LCRTs that would facilitate in lunar Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) astronomy.
VLBI is already a technique used on Earth to perform very high angular resolution observations of cosmic radio sources. It works by linking together antennas that are spread thousands of kilometres apart around the globe.
When connected, they act as a virtual planet-size dish, giving astronomers exceptional resolving power; for example VBLI observations were used by the Event Horizon Telescope last year to make the first ever photograph of a black hole.
A feat that the LCRT's creator is hoping to emulate. “We envisage that this concept would unlock the potential for ground-breaking scientific discoveries in radio astronomy,” concludes Bandyopadhyay.
In addition to Bandyopadhyay’s concept, NASA also awarded a Phase III grant to Slava Turyshev, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to continue his design for imaging Earth-like planets outside of the solar system.
Turyshev will receive a $2 million grant to further mature the concept and related technologies of his solar gravity lens; a probe located 80.4 billion kilometres (50 billion miles) from Earth that uses multiple small spacecraft and solar sail technology to propel the lens to its target destination.
Turyshev’s idea is only the third study selected for Phase III funding in the history of the program said NIAC Program Executive Jason Derleth.
“We’re excited by its potential to bring us closer to imaging an exoplanet in detail, at a resolution comparable to the well-known Apollo 8 Earthrise photo,” Derleth said.
“The trailer has arrived for Greenland, a movie that probably won’t do much to help you relax during this particular period. Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin star in this disaster thriller, which follows a family’s fight to get to Greenland bunkers as comet fragments – preceding a big mofo – collide with the Earth. Roger Dale Floyd and Scott Glenn also star.”
At this point, most announcements of the release of the trailer for the upcoming comet disaster movie “Greenland” inserted a YouTube video of it and clickers watched it … for a day. Latecomers got this message instead: “Video unavailable. This video has been removed by the uploader.” (Try it yourself here.) What happened?
“They got it all wrong. There’s a ton of fragments! Planet killers…”
That 10-second ‘elevator pitch’ describes the plot of “Greenland,” which stars Gerard Butler (Angel Has Fallen) and is directed by Ric Roman Waugh (Felon, Shot Caller). A planet-killing comet is breaking up and threatening Earth, the media reports are inconsistent, panic ensues, humanity shows its best and worst sides as government breaks down and laws are ignored and people search for a safe place.
Does any of this sound eerily familiar?
“The trailer has some eerie similarities to what’s been happening in our real world, as many of us looked at those early reports of COVID-19 with little concern and the subsequent media info has been frustratingly inconsistent.”
Firstshowing.net gives one clue as to why the trailer may have been pulled. That reason can easily hide behind the obvious other coronavirus-related one – the June U.S. premier will be delayed by the lockdown. However, Ufohotspot.com gives another possibility:
“Talking about a comet breaking into pieces, according to the latest information from astronomers around the world, comet Atlas discovered on December 28, 2019 and it’s close approach to Earth on May 23, 2020 might be breaking apart and is starting to fade.”
As of this writing, the interstellar comet Borisov is breaking apart and may not make it out of the solar system at all. At the same time, the highly-hyped “supercomet” Atlas — whose icy center is only kilometers wide but whose atmosphere measures five times the size of Jupiter and is being misleadingly described by many sites as “planet-sized” – is also breaking up and may not light up the sky and be visible to the naked eye as predicted. While these comets are too far away for any of their pieces to strike the Earth, the already terrified and confused world doesn’t need much to push it completely over the apocalyptic edge to suspecting their government is hiding the truth about these two comets in addition to the coronavirus – it doesn’t take many connected dots to see this picture forming.
Speaking of pictures and trailers, the Watchtower.org website has a foreign version of the trailer (at least as of this writing) that can be viewed here.
Cover-up? Coincidence? Coronavirus? Comets? Conspiracy? Cinematic conjecture? (Today’s story was brought to you by the letter ‘C’.)
So far as can be determined, the menacing Chupacabrafirst surfaced in March 1995, twenty-five years ago. That was when numerous animals – mainly goats – were found dead in the towns of Morovis (located in central Puerto Rico) and Orocovis, which is situated within the La Cordillera Central mountain range. Locals were plunged into states of near-hysteria by the attacks, which reportedly left animals dead, with strange marks on their necks, and a distinct lack of blood in their corpses. At least, that was the rumor. Since many of the early attacks were on goats, the term, “Chupacabra,” was created. It translates as “goat-sucker.” Matters really began in August 1995. That was when a woman named Madelyne Tolentino – who lived in Canovanas, which is close to the northeast coast of Puerto Rico – changed everything. Madelyne’s description of the creature she encountered, close to her mother’s home, was disturbing, to say the very least. It was a description eagerly embraced by the island’s media and by investigators of monsters and mysteries.
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Madelyne told journalists and researchers that the creature was around three feet in height, bipedal, ran in a weird, hopping fashion, had large black eyes, bony fingers on each hand, overly long arms and legs, and a kind of feathery line running down its back. Or, it appeared to Tolentino to be a feathery line: a young boy employed by Tolentino’s husband claimed that he saw the beast up close and personal and maintained that the feathers were, in reality, sharp spines. The boy also said that the creature possessed a mouthful of vicious-looking fangs. Not only did the people know of the chupacabra and its attacks, they also now knew what it looked like: something straight out of their worst nightmares. A legend was born. Some would say that a legend is all it is.
As someone with a big interest in the field of cryptozoology, I sat up and took notice when the stories of the Chupacabra began to surface in 1995. Indeed, of all the things I investigate, research and write about, Cryptozoology is the number one. It wasn’t until July 2004 that I was able to visit Puerto Rico and investigate the mystery for myself. I was there with a good friend of mine, Jon Downes, who runs the U.K.’-based Center for Fortean Zoology. The reason? We were there with a crew from the SyFy Channel who were making a new (and short-lived) show called Proof Positive. It was during those eight days on Puerto Rico that I quickly came to realize how much interest there was on the island, even nine years after the first sightings in 1995. Twenty-five years later, I’ve now been to Puerto Rico on nine occasions and obtained a wealth of data on the monster. Some of it suggests that the phenomenon is real. Other data destroys some of the more controversial aspects of the story.
Time and again I heard rumors that the Chupacbara lived on blood – or that blood was, at least, an integral part of the creature’s daily intake. It was this angle of the Chupacabra lore and legend that really stood out. But, it wasn’t true. If it shatters some cherished assumptions, that’s too damned bad, but – contrary to what many people believe – there’s no proof of the Chupacabras sucking blood. Even vampire bats do not suck blood. Ever. Instead, when a bat lands on its sleeping prey, it makes a tiny incision, with its razor-sharp teeth, that provokes the flow of blood – in much the same way that blood flows to the surface of our skin when it’s cut. The bat then proceeds to lap the protein-rich blood, rather than suck it. Rather incredibly, if the skin of the prey is covered in significant amounts of hair, the vampire bat has the ability to use its teeth to “shave” the hair away, thus allowing it to feed easier. Most ingenious of all, Mother Nature has taken steps to ensure the saliva of the vampire bat contains anticoagulants that prevent the blood of its prey from clotting. The blood, as a result, runs and runs – and runs even more.
To demonstrate the sheer speed and ability with which the vampire bat can feed voraciously on its victim, a fully-grown specimen can lap around fifty percent of its own body weight in less than half an hour. The vampire bat has a near-unique digestive system that allows its stomach to absorb plasma from the blood. From there, it makes its way to the kidneys, and finally to the bladder. It’s a very quick process, too: from intake to urination, the passage of time is around one and a half minutes. And, like all of us, when it’s done feeding, the vampire bat finds a place to settle down, relax, and let the process of digestion do its thing.
During the course of my investigations on Puerto Rico, barely a day went by when I didn’t hear at least one story of the chupacabra’s vampire-like attacks on livestock and other animals. And I can’t tell you how many times the words “blood” and “draining” (or “sucking”) were used in the very same sentences. Certainly, I uncovered a number of stories from people who claimed their dead animals were subjected to necropsies, and which confirmed that massive blood loss had occurred. The problem, however, was that I was never able to secure even a single, official necropsy report to validate those claims. On the other side of the coin, I have heard more than a few very plausible stories suggesting the assumed, huge loss of blood was actually due to the blood of the dead animals sinking to the lowest parts of the victims’ bodies, after death. What appeared to have been evidence of a significant loss of blood may have really been be due to nothing more than misidentification. Today, I have just about completely dismissed the theory that the creature lives on blood. Even in minute amounts.
That didn’t take away the fact, however, that people were still seeing the creature – regardless of the blood angle. Some witnesses were sure that what they had seen was actually a giant bat. Others described it as a large bird with what appeared to be human-like legs. Then, there were those in the field of conspiracy-theorizing, who believed that the Chupacabras were actually genetically altered monkeys turned into raging, killing machines and let loose in Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rain-forest. The scenario told to me was something like a combination of Predator and 28 Days Later! That there was a lot of UFO activity on Puerto Rico led to the inevitable scenario of the Chupacabras being extraterrestrial in nature. And, there was the theory that the monsters were supernatural in origin – things that could be invoked via rite and ritual. A few people supported the admittedly interesting theory that perhaps some of the attacks were the work of escaped large cats.
Today, as we “celebrate” the Chupacabras’ 25th year of infamy, not much has changed – in terms of the theories, the claims and the legends. Based on all of the research I’ve done on Puerto Rico, I still believe there is such a creature – a mysterious animal that has yet to be found and identified. There is another aspect to all of this. Namely, all of the friends I have made on Puerto Rico over all the years, and who I have stayed in touch with. Puerto Rico is a great place, with an equally great culture and a cool history. And Puerto Rican food is superb. And after a hard day of seeking out a Chupacabra or several, there’s a plentiful supply of Medalla beer to chug down. I can easily see myself moving to Puerto Rico one day – all as a result of a quest for the truth of the island’s resident monster.
Alien Communications Are Getting More Urgent, Something Big is About to Happen 2020
Alien Communications Are Getting More Urgent, Something Big is About to Happen 2020
COAST TO COAST AM – Certified hypnotherapist, abduction researcher and Director of CERO (Close Encounter Resource Organization) Yvonne Smith discussed stories from the last five years of her work as a hypnotherapist specializing in alien abduction. She has seen a shift or “urgency” in the messages received by the abductees from these beings as if something enormous is about to happen.
Smith has been regressing and counseling abductees for over 25 years, and is convinced that the abduction phenomenon is real and is caused by some sort of extraterrestrial beings or intelligences because the accounts of her clients are “so startlingly similar.”
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The 40,000 Year Old Legacy of the Advanced Siberian Denisovans Giants
The 40,000 Year Old Legacy of the Advanced Siberian Denisovans Giants
COAST TO COAST AM – Andrew Collins has been investigating the idea of advanced civilizations in prehistory since 1979. In the latter half, he spoke about the legacy of the Denisovans, an extinct species of hominins that lived in Siberia around 40,000 years ago, and whose existence was just discovered in 2010.
Collins believes they developed sophisticated technology, using high-speed drilling techniques and creating unique jewelry and musical instruments. The Denisovans, who were large in size and may have been the source of legends about giants (such as the Nephilim) were fascinated by celestial movements, he noted.
Rare View of Advanced Alien Technology next to the Planet Venus
Rare View of Advanced Alien Technology next to the Planet Venus
Astunning image has been taken by a sky-watcher from Waujesha, Wisconsin on April 9, 2020 showing what appears to be two huge UFO lightships next to the planet Venus.
Credit images sky-watcher Waujesha, Wisconsin -
Original image submitted to Mufon .
At first glance it looks like it is just one UFO lightship but zooming in on the object it turns out to be two UFO lightships.
Further analysis shows that the two UFOs are connected to each other by a beam of light whereby a red glowing object surrounds the beam.
It may be that the sky-watcher has captured a rare view of advanced alien technology in deep space.
Mass daytime UFO sighting above Utica, New York 8-Apr-2020
Mass daytime UFO sighting above Utica, New York 8-Apr-2020
Another recent video of a mass UFO sighting in the skies above United States. This one was filmed over Utica, New York on 8th April 2020.
Witness report:
9 Orbs Video Over House 1 moves from left to right. April 8 2020. 1 orb is seen moving left to right. My brother & I both experienced missing time on the same day which was on Sunday 3 days before this encounter. My whole family has been having encounters with aliens the grays & 7 other different species for over 3 decades. No matter where we move the aliens always find us.We believe these craft are flown by aliens not of our world. There was no sound coming from these craft.
Evidence of New Human Species Discovered in a Cave in the Philippines
Evidence of New Human Species Discovered in a Cave in the Philippines
There were once many human species, but today there is only one; modern humans, Homo sapiens. However, the human family tree is growing. Researchers working in a cave in the Philippines claim to have found a new, previously unknown species to add to human history.
Remarkably this hominin was probably less than four feet high and had some of the characteristics of modern people but also anatomical features from much earlier hominins . It is believed that the discovery will transform the understanding of our evolution.
New humans found in the Philippines
In recent years there have been a series of finds of early humans in the Philippines. The latest was made by archaeologists as they were digging in the ‘rocky floor of Callao Cave on Luzon island’ according to History.com. A team of experts found a number of fossils that are unlike anything else in the world. They were unearthed by a team of experts led by Professor Philip Piper, from the Australian National University.
According to the Daily Mail , “the fossil remains included adult finger and toe bones, as well as teeth.” The femur bone of a juvenile was also unearthed. The remains are estimated to be about 50,000 years old, at a period of time in the Pleistocene when several human species co-existed on the planet. A preliminary examination of the remains indicated that they came from an ‘unknown species of hominin’ according to Haaretz.
The five upper teeth found belonged to a single individual of previously unknown hominin, provisionally named ‘Homo luzonensis’. The have a strange mix of Australopithecine and modern features.
The stunning discovery has been provisionally named Homo luzonensis . The new species had some of the same characteristics of modern humans , in particular, its molars. However, they also had characteristics of a far earlier species namely of Homo australopithecus . This hominin was the ancestor of many human species including Homo erectus and lived between 2 and 3 million years ago. The Daily Mail reports that ‘hand and feet bones, are remarkably Australopithecine-like’.
Despite these similarities, the shape of the tooth and the anatomy of the feet shows that they are a unique human species. The slight but significant difference are such that taken together they strongly indicate that Piper and his team have unearthed a new species. What is most striking about the new species was their estimated height, possibly just under four feet.
The height of the new humans was determined by the size of the tooth and the other bones. However, more evidence is required to confirm this. If the size is confirmed, it is raising the possibility that the hominins are somehow related to another species found in the Indonesian island of Flores . This hominin is Homo floresiensis and stood under four feet high. Because of their diminutive stature, they are popularly known as the Hobbit.
An examination of the foot bones found morphological features that come from both earlier and later hominins. This could indicate that they had a particular way of walking. According to Science Mag , the human had ‘long, curved fingers and toes’. This means that it was as comfortable scrambling up trees as walking upright. This would seem to suggest that it ‘might have descended from an earlier human relative, H. erectus , that somehow crossed the sea to Luzon’ reports the WRAL.com.
The proximal foot phalanx of Homo luzonensis. Notice the longitudinal curvature of the bone, which suggests that this species was adapted to climb trees.
According to History.com ‘human evolution was clearly much more complex’ in Asia than previously assumed. It seemed that H. erectus in evolved in the region into new species such as that possibly found in Luzon. It appears that the human evolved in a unique way on the island of Luzon, very different from those on mainland Asia. Science Mag reports that many experts “suspect the islands of Southeast Asia may have been a cradle of diversity for ancient humans.”
New theory on human evolution
The find is casting doubt on the accepted theory of how humans evolved and spread out over the globe. The first wave of our relatives to leave Africa was made up of H. erectus and the second wave was H. sapiens . It was thought that H. erectus settled in Asia and it was the only human in Asia until the arrival of modern humans. The discovery of H. luzonensis , along with the earlier discovery on Flores have upturned this theory.
More work needs to be done to establish if the human remains found on Luzon are from a new group of hominins. At present, there are approximately 12 human species recognized but there is no agreement as exactly how many have been identified. It seems likely that the humans whose bones were found in the Callao Cave may be another one of our relatives and will add greatly to our understanding of human evolution.
Top image: Callao Cave, Luzon Island, Philippines where the bone and teeth of the new human species were found.
The excavation of the site, known as Kunara and located near the city of Sulaymaniyah, was only possible after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003. Researchers also noted that the ISIS terrorist group’s presence in Iraq also hampered their efforts.
“The situation is much more favorable now,” project leader Aline Tenu said in the journal.
4,000-Year-Old "Lost" City That Bordered Ancient Mesopotamian Empire.
Credit: Tenu/Mission Archeologique Francaise du Peramagron
According to the journal, “This city stood in the heart of an unknown kingdom: that of the mountain people, who had until then remained in the shadow of their powerful Mesopotamian neighbors,” including the Akkadians. The Akkadian Empire is considered the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia and reached its peak about 4,000 years ago under ruler Sargon of Akkad . After its fall, historians believe it split into Assyria and Babylonia.
People lived in the city, located near the Zagros Mountains, around 2200 BC, archaeologists have theorized.
“The city of Kunara provides new elements regarding a hitherto unknown people that has remained at the periphery of Mesopotamian studies,” Tenu added.
The lost city was found near the Zagros Mountains,
pictured (sghiaseddin / Adobe Stock)
Meanwhile, dozens of clay tablets covered in cuneiform were also discovered, which showed how people may have delivered flour. Cuneiform is one of the oldest systems of writing.
Researchers said the city underwent a period of decline after it was ravaged by a fire 4,000 years ago, the researchers speculated.
Cuneiform specialist Philippe Clancier said the people who lived in the city had a good “grasp of Akkadian and Sumerian writing, as well as that of their Mesopotamian neighbors.”
An Akkadian tablet
(public domain)
“The first tablets found in a building of the lower city register a large number of entries and departures of flour,” Clancier continued.
“It was actually a kind of flour office,” Tenu explained, adding that it was for the governor of Kunara.
“The city must have even been fairly prosperous,” Tenu noted. “As rare stones such as obsidian [and carnelian, a semi-precious gems stone] were used to produce entirely commonplace tools.”
Residents in the city “most likely took advantage of its strategic location on the border between the Iranian kingdom in the east and the Mesopotamian kingdom in the west and south,” Kepinski also theorized.
Researchers also discovered tools and ceramics that were bought and traded in the city’s ruins.
“It was surely the area’s agricultural wealth that promoted its rise. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of goats, sheep, cows, and pigs, suggesting the existence of a major livestock farming system. The presence of an irrigation network in the city’s south is also a reminder of the mastery the region’s inhabitants achieved in grain farming, especially barley and malt,” the journal also noted.
They haven’t found anything about the city’s original name, which is still a mystery, “But we will continue to look,” Tenu added.
Top image: 3D reconstruction of an ancient Mesopotamian city. (Satori / Adobe Stock)
An amazing transformation has occurred in modern science. It has been slow in coming and is one that many scientists avoid discussing: there is a point where science and religion coincide. The frightening truth about this agreement is that it isn’t about new age physics, the nature of God or the transcendent union of science and religion – it concerns the nature of man, or rather, the problem of man.
For many years, under the influence of liberalism and humanism, science tended to favour the logic of the ‘Noble Savage’. Violence and evil were human problems, probably caused by the conflict between our intellect and natural instincts. Nature was great, instincts were marvellous and sex was fun. This logic was buttressed with romantic notions about the innocence of animals, the moral purity of instinct, and the marketable icon of the harmless, playful, innocent ape. However, as science progressed, these notions fell like a house of cards.
During the 1970s science began to refine its interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This refinement became known as sociobiology – the inclusive fitness theory – or in journalistic terms, ‘the selfish gene’. It was popularised by Richard Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene. This discovery, which is now conventional scientific wisdom, holds that the ultimate driving force for evolution is the genes, the molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. The maximisation of genetic successes to assure the passing on of certain genes to subsequent generations. This principle, however terrifying in its ramifications, is the state of present evolutionary theory.
When this is combined with our new understanding of the nature of animal behaviour, a darker and more reflective scientific paradigm arises, one that has more in common with Gnosticism, a stream of thought that extends from the early followers of Christ.
A Man & a Chimp
Our relationship to apes has always been a matter of conjecture. We need to abandon the theories and debates about origins and consider the state of humanity at present. There are many ways to consider evolution: Whether we accept Darwinian evolution or a modification thereof, or that evolution was manipulated by ETs, God(s), or even if we consider we are part of a stage of a larger evolutionary cycle (Theosophy, Anthroposophy etc.), the fact remains that our present genetic inheritance indicates something about our present condition.
Science places modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the centre of the ape kingdom. It says humans are part of the same lineage as orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The standard view of this great-ape ‘family tree’ is that humans and chimps are more similar to each other than either is to the gorilla – because chimps and humans diverged more recently. But with the publication of the sequence of the full gorilla genome in 2012, this theory has been overthrown. Scientists realised that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.
While they may seem affectionate and lovable at first appearance, extensive study in the wild has shown a far darker side to ape behaviour. Apes murder, rape and torture. They will defend their territory and intrude on any surrounding territories using guerrilla warfare, literally! In various studies of ape behaviour, it is estimated that at least forty per cent of all cases of copulation involves elements of violence, which would be interpreted as rape. Apes have short-term memories when it comes to companions. If an ape leaves one pack to join another, he becomes an instant enemy. Raids on other packs are frequent, bloody and brutal and involve ambush, torture and death. Apes behave differently from many other animal species and their aggressiveness seems very similar to human behaviour. It’s frighteningly clear that our genetic heritage is directly related to the ape kingdom. This invokes some fascinating questions and quandaries.
Why Intellect?
Apes and related kin are excellent reproducers. They create many offspring and continually reinforce their genetic heritage by territorialism and brute force. Researchers in this field raise the question: why would the ‘genetic program’ create what we understand as the conscious mind?
Many argue that intelligence developed as the result of enhanced hand-eye coordination by using tools. However, many other species use tools, including apes. Apes are quick learners, and use whatever they can find to open that nut, get that fruit, or crush that skull. But apes did not develop a high level of intelligence – only the offshoot of Homo sapiens sapiens. This argument sheds light on a fascinating possibility – was human nature tweaked? Did genetic engineering take place that modified available genetic substances to create modern humans? Such writers as Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Daniken use this sort of reasoning extensively.
The darker side of this theory is why would an alien life form modify genetic substance without adequately balancing the social effects of the inherent flaws within the original substance? If an alien species, a deity or whatever was capable of manipulating genetic materials, then surely it would be aware of the destructive power within the primate form it was transforming. If we consider there was some manipulation of our genetic structure, then was this accomplished by a somewhat primitive and ignorant entity (which is unlikely considering the required technology)? An entity or force that was malefic and unsympathetic to the resulting human condition?
This may seem too much to grasp at first, yet if we consider the myths and legends that abound within humanity’s history, they all seem to include such tales of genetic interference.
The Gnostics believed that a false creator (Demiurge) formed Matter (the physical world), and humans were moulded out of fallen substance in an effort to trap particles of Light (preexistent Souls). Sitchin argued that an alien race (the Anunnaki) genetically engineered humanity as a slave species, but the early humans rebelled and developed consciousness. Numerous myths, stories and legends suggest someone or something interfered with the ape to create man, and all tend to see this creation as negative. While most religions insist that Matter is good and ‘God’ is the creator, other more esoteric approaches from the Vedas to the Gnostic suggest that Matter is at best dangerous, at worst malefic, and our creation was the result of either a miscalculation or error – or a deliberate destructive act.
This view posits that apes were engineered as a mechanism to trap Souls which existed in the ‘first estate’ (the spiritual worlds). Many Gnostic sects believed that the fallen creator, in his attempt to wrest control of the universe, first created Matter to encapsulate and control the Light. He then evolved the physical form of mankind to capture the preexistent Light forms and turn them into automations under his control. While we may debate details, it is certainly true there is a dichotomy between our genetic programming and mind (which is the gate for one’s true spiritual self). Even if we have trouble accepting the more flamboyant aspects of this theory, the split within humanity and the violent traits of our innate genetic programming cannot be ignored.
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The Role of the Mind
The role of the mind in human development has been ambivalent to say the least. From one perspective it is our saving grace, from another it keeps us enslaved. According to Sitchin, the mind was genetically engineered through modifications to the brain so that a slave race could be created. Apes were difficult to command, so a brain/mind complex (however originally limited) was created. Through the dichotomy between the brain/mind and the instincts, mind control was achieved. Continuing from this argument, early religions and social structures would have worked as ‘control mechanisms’ to keep the slaves in their preordained roles. As time went on, however, the mechanism of control became the tool of liberation. Even the most limited mind/brain complex began to develop thoughts outside the ‘control spectrum’, and one thought led to another and ultimately rebellion. Whether we accept this paradigm or not, we can see that intellect has a contradictory role: it exists as an affront to what science understands as the normal evolutionary process and can work to enslave or liberate.
In this extraterrestrial cosmology, we deduce there are diverse alien species – some wish to help humans, while many desire to keep us enslaved. Accordingly, some early cultures worked to liberate humanity’s intellect, while some cultures, if not the same ones over time, regressed their culture back into slavery by the same means.
It is interesting to note that many early Gnostic groups had a similar view of human nature. In one Mandean account, we read of demons copulating together and their progeny being man’s body and mind. Man’s physical and mental forms are in direct opposition to his spiritual essence. In other Gnostic traditions, our mind is a mixture of light and darkness which offers the opportunity to ascend beyond limitation through its redemption.
Sigmund Freud argues that civilisation exists only in as much as it suppresses instinct, and in many ways we are now returning to his understanding. While pleasure may be the veneer that we accept as justification for our behaviour, not far under the surface is a pit of uncontrolled violence. The major contradiction in our culture is the desire for individualism – the more we demand freedom, the more restraints removed, the more we return to the unfettered ape-like creature we once were. As moral codes are loosened and as we gain more supposed freedom, crime, rape, murder and social disorder arises. As culture fails, the apes return.
Light Emissaries
If we contemplate the adversarial view of prehistory with evil alien forms controlling humanity for their own purposes, we can perceive it in different ways. Gnostics and some Christians may interpret this on a more spiritual level, with dominions and principalities, demos and demi-gods replacing the ‘little green men’. For the scientifically-minded researcher, we could replace aliens and demons with complexes and unconscious social control mechanisms (memes).Ultimately the symbol system is irrelevant. This model could be extended to explain the role of such figures as Zoroaster, Krishna, Jesus, Gautama (Buddha) and so on.
As humanity’s consciousness began to expand, it rejected the ‘social control religions’ and tried to make it on its own. However, humanity was unaware that the forces which created these paradigms of control also started the human mind on a journey of development. An immense conflict evolved. When man rejects tyranny, his instincts take over and a new tyranny, one of ape violence, comes into effect. He is caught in a vicious cycle.
The forces of Light, which exist beyond the contamination of Matter, decided to intervene. Over many millions of years, they sent emissaries to explain to man his real constitution and the conflicting nature of his being. Each avatar taught that man is a hybrid, a mixture of fallen Matter and Light ‘stuff’. Man is a split being – Animal, Intellect and Spirit – each with its own agenda and programming. The physical organism is made of fallen Matter and its programming is that of an ape ruled by the ‘selfish gene’. It is innately violent and destructive. In some sense it has its own consciousness, we could perhaps call it the ‘GE’ (genetic entity).
The mind is another problem. It was created as a modification to the brain but evolved into something more. It has facets (such as the brain stem) which hark back to its original nature, and yet has advanced nodes that offer interface to the spirit. It is a collection of false I’s, sub-identities and personas. It craves domination and works best under control, whether by a cult or ism or by TV and computer games. Its liberation is painful, yet necessary. The emissaries of Light have been giving man ‘wake-up’ calls for thousands of years, yet man does not listen. As soon as the emissaries die, sometimes even before, their messages are distorted and become part of the ‘social control mechanism’.
Aliens, DNA & Beyond
Ultimately it does not matter how we perceive our masters, whether we believe the extraterrestrial theory of our origins or see them in more religious, psychological or scientific terms. The point of reference for all these paradigms is spiritual: if the aliens created slaves, it was under the influence and control of greater and more malefic spiritual powers and dominions. The Gnostics said that Matter is fallen, nature is a trap, and man’s real self is locked in an eternal game.
As we move further and further into the Kali Yuga, the age of blood and iron, the game becomes more and more vicious. The ‘selfish gene’ is far more malleable than we care to realise, since it is an intrusion from a spiritual reality: it can transform and change according to new challenges. In the distant past the ‘selfish gene’ program realised man could not be controlled by the genetic entity alone, so it evolved new gene-like structures to control the mind like Memes. A Meme is a virus of the mind.
Meme: (pron. ‘meem’) A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. – David S. Bennahum
Memes mould consciousness to fulfil the directive of the original DNA program. Memes transform meaningful social movements into bureaucracies, and take ideals and turn them into commodities. They take transformational technologies and turn them into mechanisms of control. TV, computer games and sport are means to stop us using our mind to any spiritual end by keeping it absorbed and controlled. Our entire culture is based on this premise: all thought must be controlled, albeit covertly, so that freedom is impossible. Democracy is simply the choice between different paradigms of control. Isms, cults and ologies offer further mechanisms of control. Many appear to be outside of the structure, but are really part of it.
Where Science Meets Religion
We have arrived in the new millennium, and science meets religion at last, yet in a way neither would have expected. By understanding the ‘selfish gene’, and the split nature of humanity, we have uncovered the reasons behind the constant tension and violent behaviour of modern man. Illusions are washed away when we truly comprehend the hybrid composition of human nature.
Scientists reveal highest-ever resolution images of the sun
Scientists reveal highest-ever resolution images of the sun
The pictures were captured with a telescope that had been carried to the cusp of space on a sub-orbital rocket flight.
The high-resolution images reveal impressive detail.
Pic: UCLan
The highest-ever resolution images of the sun have been revealed by British scientists working alongside NASA researchers.
The images analysed by a team from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and NASA offer astronomers insights into the sun's atmosphere.
Before the images were released, aspects of the sun's atmosphere were a mystery - appearing dark or mostly empty.
Image:The individual strands are up to 500km thick. Pic: UCLan
But now scientists have discovered these spots actually contain strands of incredibly hot electrified gas - strands that are individually up to 500km (311 miles) thick.
The images were captured by NASA's high-resolution coronal imager (Hi-C), a telescope which was carried to the cusp of space on a sub-orbital rocket flight.
Being ultra-sharp, the telescope is able to identify structures in the sun's atmosphere as small as 70km (43 miles), or about 0.01% of its total size.
Despite knowing these strands exist, scientists are still puzzling over what exactly is creating them.
Why they are formed in the sun's atmosphere and how their presence helps us understand the eruption of solar flares and solar storms which could affect life on Earth are subjects of ongoing debate.
Professor Robert Walsh, professor of solar physics at UCLan, said the images provide an "ultra-high definition" glimpse of the our solar system's star for the first time.
Image:The pictures are the clearest ever of the sun. Pic: UCLan
"Until now, solar astronomers have effectively been viewing our closest star in 'standard definition', whereas the exceptional quality of the data provided by the Hi-C telescope allows us to survey a patch of the sun in 'ultra-high definition' for the first time," he said.
"Think of it like this: if you are watching a football match on television in standard definition, the football pitch looks green and uniform," Prof Walsh said.
"Watch the same game in ultra-HD and the individual blades of grass can jump out at you - and that's what we're able to see with the Hi-C images. We are catching sight of the constituent parts that make up the atmosphere of the star."
Image:The telescope took the images on a rocket ship. Pic: UCLAn
Dr Tom Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLan who worked on the Hi-C data, said the images help provide a greater understanding of how the Earth and sun related to each other.
"This is a fascinating discovery that could better inform our understanding of the flow of energy through the layers of the sun and eventually down to Earth itself," he said.
"This is so important if we are to model and predict the behaviour of our life-giving star."
NASA RELEASES BREATHTAKING INFRARED IMAGE OF PILLARS OF CREATION
NASA RELEASES BREATHTAKING INFRARED IMAGE OF PILLARS OF CREATION
NASA
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Pillars Of Creation
NASA’s incredible view of the “Pillars of Creation,” courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope, has become one of the most iconic views of our cosmos since it was first captured in 1995.
The agency’s newest image of the Eagle Nebula, however, has left us speechless. It shows the radiating glow of the pillars in infrared light — and you can see the infrared light piercing through dust and gas, giving the pillars a spectacular blueish shadow.
Now In Infrared
The earliest image of the pillars, a composite of 32 different images compiled using visible light, shows the pillars located in the Eagle Nebula throwing off cool hydrogen gas and cosmic dust.
First discovered in 1745 by Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, the Eagle Nebula is roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth, a nursery for stars in the Serpens constellation.
The pillar structure is immense. Just the largest pillar on the left is about four to five light-years long.
Schmidt OceanHet gaat om een tientallen meters lange sliert die bestaat uit miljoenen kwalachtige, ongewervelde diertjes die één kolonie vormen.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Biologen hebben tijdens een expeditie voor de westkust van Australië op grote diepte de waarschijnlijk grootste siphonophorae ooit ontdekt. Het gaat om een tientallen meters lange sliert die bestaat uit miljoenen kwalachtige, ongewervelde diertjes die één kolonie vormen maar de indruk wekken een zelfstandig organisme te zijn. Op de wetenschappelijke website Sciencealert jubelen experts over de vondst: “Dit is de spectaculairste en langste die in de diepzee is gespot.”
Op het controleschip aan de oppervlakte kwamen de beelden uit de duikboot binnen, waarna het personeel enthousiast en vol verbazing op beeldschermen in de stuurhut het buitenaards lijkende fenomeen aanschouwde.
“We werden volledig weggeblazen”, vertelden biologen Nerida Wilson en Lisa Kirkendale naderhand. Met name omdat siphonophorae meestal ‘maar’ 25 meter lang zijn en min of meer recht. “De buitenste cirkel van deze langzaam en hypnotiserend bewegende vorm was ongeveer 47 meter, dus de totale lengte van het ding was gigantisch.”
Specifieke taken
Elk individu dat onderdeel is van een siphonophorae heeft een specifieke taak en een op die taak aangepaste vorm. Zo zijn er eet-, vang-, tast- en geslachtsdieren. De prooi van het schepsel bestaat uit kreeftachtigen en vis die door netelcellen worden verlamd en vastgehouden.
...most of the siphonophore colonies I've seen are maybe a 20cm long, maybe a meter. But THIS animal is massive. AND not just massive, the colony is exhibiting a stunning behavior: it's hunting....
Open Ocean Exploration@RebeccaRHelm
Some of the clones specialize in catching prey. Their slender bodies hang with a single long tentacle dangling like a hook-studded fishing line. Like the frilled tentacles of another siphonophore pictured below... (pic: @SchmidtOceanhttps://bit.ly/2JLKWmS)
P.S. Totally unplanned, but one of the only animals I know to prey on siphonophores is a cousin of the fish-shaped sea slug that I just happened to tweet about earlier today. It's like weird on weird down there! https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1247210620526657537 …
The sea slugs, called Cephalopyge, grab onto siphonophore clones using their tiny snail food and slowly eat them while hanging off the colony like an ornament! Pic by: https://lindaiphotography.com/black-water-mollusks/ …
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What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
TESSA KOUMOUNDOUROS
New footage has revealed a trailing ribbon of conjoined tentacled clones sweeping the ocean off the coast of Australia. Known in some regions as the "long stringy stingy thingy", siphonophores blur the line between organ and organism. They somehow manage to be both at once.
"The whole thing looks like one animal, but it's many thousands of individuals which form an entity on a higher level," marine biologist Stefan Siebert of Brown University told Wired.
The Ningaloo Canyons Expedition, a team of international researchers from institutes including Western Australia Museum, Schmidt Ocean Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recently came across one of these spectacular deep sea aliens.
They were exploring a little-studied but biologically rich part of the ocean off the coast of Western Australia, using ROVs and sonar. The creature was spied on the way back up:
"Everyone was blown away when it came into view," biologists Nerida Wilson and Lisa Kirkendale from the Western Australian Museum told ScienceAlert. "There was a lot of excitement. People came pouring into the control room from all over the ship. Siphonophores are commonly seen but this one was both large and unusual-looking.
"Although the ROV pilots made an estimate of its length, it has yet to be formally measured. However, it does appear to be longer than any other animal on the planet," they added.
The outer ring was estimated to be around 47 metres long (154 feet). The whole giant thing is composed of tiny individuals called zooids. They clone themselves thousands of times into one of several flavours - some with stinging tentacles and even red lures to attract food, others specialised for reproduction or movement. Each individual acts like an organ in the larger siphonophore body.
Biologist Rebecca Helm from the University of North Carolina Asheville describes the feeding clones on Twitter:
Some of the clones specialize in catching prey. Their slender bodies hang with a single long tentacle dangling like a hook-studded fishing line. Like the frilled tentacles of another siphonophore pictured below... (pic: @SchmidtOceanhttps://bit.ly/2JLKWmS)
The siphonophore in the video "appears to have assumed a planar feeding posture, which makes it look a bit like a spiral UFO," Wilson and Kirkendale explain.
In a colony this massive, there would have to be at least millions of these conjoined organ-individuals working together, to sift the pelagial depths for food. They share their spoils with each other by passing nutrients along a stem they're all connected to - a vertical branch which also serves as a passageway for nerve signals.
Helm believes there are many millions of these siphonophores floating out there in the ocean, along with other strange creatures they interact with - such as this sea slug (Cephalopyge trematoides) that finds them tasty:
The sea slugs, called Cephalopyge, grab onto siphonophore clones using their tiny snail food and slowly eat them while hanging off the colony like an ornament! Pic by: https://lindaiphotography.com/black-water-mollusks/ …
Another memeber of the entourage is this bizarre barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma). It has a fluid-filled head shield thought to allow them to sneak into stinging tentacled zooids and steal their food.
It's a soothing glimpse of the strange ocean depths that siphonophores call home. And you can check out even more amazing weirdos from the Ningaloo Canyons in the video below.
With so much incredible life hidden away in our planet's oceans, who even needs aliens?
Strange Men In Black, Women in Black and Black Eyed Kid Encounters
Strange Men In Black, Women in Black and Black Eyed Kid Encounters
COAST TO COAST AM –
Nick Redfern shared the latest information on the sinister Men in Black (MIB), the chilling Women in Black (WIB), the creepy Black-Eyed Children, and the ability of these seemingly multi-dimensional entities to invade our space in a hostile fashion.
The majority of the MIB reports describe encounters with very pale, almost emaciated men with very large eyes that they hide behind wraparound sunglasses. People typically get a knock on the door late at night and feel an odd compulsion to let them in, as though they were hypnotized or mind controlled, which has led to the idea that their visitors might not be entirely human, Redfern detailed.
New asteroid disaster movie trailer has suddenly been removed from the web
New asteroid disaster movie trailer has suddenly been removed from the web
Just a few days ago, the production company released the first trailer for the asteroid disaster movie "Greenland" but suddenly the trailer has been removed at the request of the studio and now it's gone everywhere.
Lucky, nwomaster just found one last playable trailer remaining on a German movie site and one illegal re-uploaded to YouTube which has been removed too already. The trailer still can be watched at disclosetv/nwomaster but for how long I don't know.
The story: "They got it all wrong. There's a ton of fragments! Planet killers…" Whoaaa! How about some apocalyptic disaster action to make things even scarier nowadays? The first trailer has debuted for an action movie titled Greenland, the latest from stuntman turned director Ric Roman Waugh (Shot Caller, Angel Has Fallen). The mega disaster in the film involves a comet breaking into pieces, and these pieces striking Earth causing complete devastation.
Talking about a comet breaking into pieces, according to the latest information from astronomers around the world, comet Atlas discovered on December 28, 2019 and it's close approach to Earth on May 23, 2020 might be breaking apart and is starting to fade.
I'm not saying there is a connection between the movie "Greenland" and the comet Atlas but it does make you think...
Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) captured over 2 hours on April 4, 2020.
X-RAYS REVEAL A SURPRISE INSIDE 200 MILLION-YEAR-OLD DINO EGGS
X-RAYS REVEAL A SURPRISE INSIDE 200 MILLION-YEAR-OLD DINO EGGS
"These embryos are beautiful."
FOSSILIZED DINOSAUR EGGS DISCOVERED IN 1976 have finally revealed their inner secrets for this first time — thanks to a cutting-edge new technology called synchrotron scanning.
In a new study, researchers scanned two Massospondylus carinatus dinosaur embryos first found in 1976 in South Africa’s Golden Gate Highlands National Park. They used synchrotron scanning, which is a kind of 3D X-ray scan.
What they discovered was completely unexpected. The dinosaurs are far more similar to modern reptiles than scientists had anticipated.
The reasons why rest on two key findings:
1. The seemingly full skeletons were actually only about 60 percent developed.
2. The dinosaur embryos have two different sets of teeth.
DECEPTIVE DINOSAURS — The embryos “look like the skeleton of an animal ready to hatch,” study co-author Vincent Fernandez, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, tells Inverse.
But the bones in the tiny dinos' skulls, which had remained obscured in the rock, suggest otherwise.
"They are a lot younger that we expected,” Fernandez says.
“With the scan we discovered that these bones were there, but poorly ossified," he says. "Comparing with modern reptiles, we estimated that the dinosaur embryos were about 60 percent of incubation."
The dinosaur eggs studiedin the new research were discovered in 1976 in Golden Gate Highland National Park, South Africa.Brett Eloff
In modern reptiles and birds, “the pattern in which bones start ossifying is quite similar.” In these creatures, the skull bones start to harden at the tip of the snout. The upper and back part of the skull, also known as the "braincase," is the last piece of the puzzle to ossify, along with some jaw bones.
The findings indicate that these prehistoric herbivores were already using an embryo-development strategy common to modern crocodiles, chickens, turtles, and lizards.
The dinosaur specimens also had two different types of teeth. They range in size from 0.4 to 0.7 millimeters — with one set of tiny, triangular, first-generation teeth.
Crocodiles and certain other modern reptiles have similar first-generation teeth, that they resorb or shed before they even hatch. Now, researchers know that ancient dinosaurs did, too.
Peering inside on e of the Massospondylus carinatus embryos using synchrotron scans to look at the skull bones. Kimi Chapelle
The idea that both modern reptiles and ancient dinosaurs might develop similarly is not new, but this is some of the first concrete evidence that modern reptile development is actually prehistoric.
“This development strategy has been around for 190 million years, which is quite surprising," Fernandez says.
A paper detailing the new findings was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
"BEAUTIFUL" EMBRYOS HELD BIG MYSTERIES — Since their discovery some five decades ago, researchers believed these Massospondylus carinatus embryos had perished just before their eggs hatched.
“These embryos are beautiful, but information that could get obtained from the prepared surface was quite limited,” Fernandez said. To discover whether that was indeed the case, the researchers needed to look below the surface of the fossils' rock.
That’s where the synchrotron scanning came in.
They used high-powered X-ray beams to scan the bones down to the cellular level. That enabled them to recreate the embryos’ 2-centimeter-long skulls as a 3D model, or "virtually extract them from the rock," as Fernandez puts it.
Watercolor painting of the Massospondylus carinatus dinosaur embryos at 17, 60, and 100 percent development, respectively.Mélanie Saratori
“This is a very special moment, knowing you are the first one to see such a beautiful specimen,” he says. It is a slow process, however. “When you have access to a synchrotron, you have to use the machine day and night for days on.”
The team took turns to do the research, eat, and sleep, Fernandez says. The results are a just reward for their travails. Using the novel technology, the team got the first glimpse inside the eggs, and even identified a third embryo inside the samples.
“Virtual extraction of the bone is a painstaking process,” Fernandez says. Researchers had to extract each bone, one at a time.
Kimi Chapelle
The work is testament to how technology can reveal new, granular details of old fossils, Fernandez says. in the future, synchotron scanning could allow researchers to estimate the incubation time of dinosaur embryos, revealing yet more about their early development and how it stacks up to modern reptiles.
The results of such high-level scans are also just visually stunning, Fernandez says.
“I keep being impressed by the level of details we can achieve: We can see these tiny teeth, smaller than the tip of a toothpick,” he says.
“I particularly love when the bones are put back in 3D, and we see the big eye socket of the dinosaur, it really starts looking like a baby.”
Abstract:
Dinosaur embryos are among the rarest of fossils, yet they provide a unique window into the palaeobiology of these animals. Estimating the developmental stage of dinosaur embryos is hindered by the lack of a quantitative method for age determination, by the scarcity of material, and by the difficulty in visualizing that material. Here we present the results of a broad inquiry, using 3D reconstructions from X-ray computed tomography data, into cranial ossification sequences in extant saurian taxa and in well-preserved embryos of the early branching sauropodomorph dinosaur Massospondylus carinatus. Our findings support deep-time conservation of cranial ossification sequences in saurians including dinosaurs, allowing us to develop a new method for estimating the relative developmental percentage of embryos from that clade. We also observe null-generation teeth in the Massospondylus carinatus embryos which get resorbed or shed before hatching, similar to those of geckos. These lines of evidence allow us to confidently estimate that the Massospondylus carinatus embryos are only approximately 60% through their incubation period, much younger than previously hypothesized. The overall consistency of our results with those of living saurians indicates that they can be generalized to other extinct members of that lineage, and therefore our method provides an independent means of assessing the developmental stage of extinct, in-ovo saurians.
TO BUILD A MOON BASE, NASA FIRST HAS TO SOLVE A “BIG” COMPUTER PROBLEM
TO BUILD A MOON BASE, NASA FIRST HAS TO SOLVE A “BIG” COMPUTER PROBLEM
To kickstart a big new era of lunar activity, NASA will have to think small.
If it wants to support a permanent human settlement on the moon, NASA must solve a curious problem first, and is seeking the public's help, the space agency announced Thursday.
NASA has put out the call to the global scientific and technological community to submit ideas for miniaturized moon payloads. It sounds complicated but essentially it comes down to this:
THE PROBLEM— NASA wants to collect data from the moon. In other missions, the agency has used vehicles called rovers to wheel around other planets, equipped with machines to take measurements. The upcoming Mars 2020 Rover, for example, will include an X-ray spectrometer to understand the composition of Mars soil, as well as a radar that can penetrate the ground to reveal the underground geology. But NASA wants to send much smaller rovers to the moon. Sending the vehicle to the moon with these traditional bulky, power-sucking data collectors is likely to cause the rover to run out of power, or collapse under the huge amounts of weight. The moon will be littered with broken-down vehicles that failed to collect enough data.
THE SOLUTION — Crowdsourcing. NASA will call on talented people from all over the world, reaching outside its own team of people, asking them to submit new ideas for data collectors, ones that are small and light enough to fit on the agency's tiny rover. This will ensure the rover can complete its mission, happily whizzing around the moon with data collectors on its back, without running out of power or collapsing in a pile of space rubble.
This new collection of data could help NASA scientists better understand the moon, which in turn could help construct a permanent lunar base for humans as part of the Artemis program.
The challenge, called “Honey I Shrunk the NASA Payload,” named after the 1989 movie, is being organized by the NASA Tournament Lab and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The challenge is accepting payload designs from all around the world, and winners will receive prizes of $160,000.
The agency is planning to send tiny rovers to the moon within the next one to four years. These rovers are about the size of a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which will support even smaller payloads. The data collected by these tiny packages could help support future plans like a lunar base, as well as help better use the moon's resources.
But a Roomba-sized rover poses some unique challenges. It's a far cry from the Apollo mission's Lunar Roving Vehicle, a 10-foot-long vehicle that could carry payloads over 1,000 pounds. Overloading such a tiny machine on a critical mission would be a bad idea, as witnessed by the cats sitting on Roombas that interfere with the cleaning.
NASA tells Inverse that the payloads will need to measure no more than 100 millimeters by 100 millimeters by 50 millimeters, around the size of a bar of soap. They will also need to weigh no more than 0.4 kilograms (0.88 pounds) and be able to withstand external temperatures between minus 120 degrees Celsius (minus 184 degrees Fahrenheit) and 100 degrees (212 degrees Fahrenheit). These are the maximum limits, but smaller and lighter is preferred.
The agency also explained that payloads that could support a future human lunar presence are desirable, as well as those that enable new technologies, advance lunar science, or even pave the way for in-situ resource utilization. The winners, the agency explained in a press release, will be "ones that can demonstrate near-term technical readiness, high impact, and the ability to integrate with micro-rovers."
The rovers on the moon, complete with payload targets.HeroX
"This is an opportunity to contribute ideas to advance our understanding of the moon and its resources, which will be helpful for future missions," Niki Werkheiser, program executive of NASA’s Game Changing Development Program, said in a statement.
The challenge will be hosted on the crowdsourcing platform HeroX, a Los Angeles-based firm founded in 2013. The platform was co-founded by Peter Diamandis, who also founded XPrize. The XPrize Foundation has hosted challenges seeking to create virtual worlds and use A.I. to tackle global problems. HeroX is aimed at opening up the XPrize model so anyone can create their own challenges.
"Solvers around the world are understandably enthusiastic at the opportunity to contribute to a NASA mission,” Christian Cotichini, CEO of HeroX, said in a statement. “The ability of our community to solve such incredibly complex problems is a powerful case study for the capacity of crowdsourcing.
Entry is open to anyone from any country, assuming United States federal sanctions don't restrict entry, and prizes of $160,000 will be awarded across two categories.
The JPL-led challenge is seeking tiny payloads no larger than a bar of soap for a miniaturized Moon rover.NASA
Winning on the small scale will help NASA, and the wider space community, achieve big things on a big scale. The agency's planned "Lunar Gateway," and subsequent resupply missions, could enable all manner of imaginative experiments.
NASA plans to build a spaceship-like Lunar Gateway, complete with deliveries from SpaceX, similar to the International Space Station -- only it will orbit the moon.
The Lunar Gateway space station will be used to support a manned mission to the moon in 2024, including the first woman to step on the moon. This mission will lead to the Artemis Base Camp "sustained presence" on the South Pole, which will then support more ambitious missions like a manned Mars trip.
All this could lead to a mass expansion of humanity's presence in space. Morgan Stanley projected in July 2019 that the global space industry's revenue could jump from $350 billion today to over $1 trillion by 2040. Perhaps it's little wonder that the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin are so keen to help build the infrastructure to enable this expansion.
The moon could play a role in this by opening up to widespread scientific experiments, similar to the International Space Station. The ISS has supported student and commercial projects like Nickelodeon slime experiments and space broccoli, through a series of resupply missions that send up and bring back projects in capsules. The most recent of these, SpaceX's CRS-20 mission, included Adidas Boost sneakers to test their performance in microgravity.
But not everyone is on board with the idea. Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society who convinced Elon Musk to set his sights on Mars, dismissed it in a May 2017 article as "NASA's worst plan yet" that will "accomplish nothing." Zubrin argued that the Gateway would add no value compared to the International Space Station and a lunar base, making it an irrational goal.
NASA disagrees, and statements suggest the Gateway is intended to lay the foundations for much more ambitious missions.
“The Gateway will give us a strategic presence in cislunar space. It will drive our activity with commercial and international partners and help us explore the Moon and its resources,” William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA's Washington headquarters, said in a February 2018 statement. “We will ultimately translate that experience toward human missions to Mars.”
The Artemis Base Camp could help support those Mars missions. The camp would initially see astronauts stay for between one to two months, hosting four crew members. Support infrastructure like communications, power and waste disposal would be added over time. One potential site is near Shackleton Crater, pictured below with the Capital Beltway for scale:
The Shackleton Crater could be one location.NASA
NASA is not the only one that wants to build a moon base. China and Europe have both expressed interest in building a lunar base.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, declared in March 2019 that humans "should" build a "permanently occupied" human base on the moon. SpaceX is currently developing the fully-reusable Starship, which can refuel using resources available in space and either continue its journey or return home. Musk is famous for his plans to eventually build a city on Mars by 2050.
While NASA wants to send soap-sized science projects to the moon, humanity's future presence in space could cover many more places.
One of the consequences of what is fast becoming a worldwide shutdown of businesses and travel is that the noise level outdoors has been reduced drastically, to the point where many people are enjoying the quiet. The lack of clatter and shatter is also allowing people to hear more things that they may not have heard before and therefore may not have worried about before, like the mysterious sounds, horns and hums reported in many places around the world. That seems to be the case in Brazil, Slovakia, the U.S. and Argentina where concerned citizens are uploading recordings, sharing their experience, getting advice and often scaring the pants off of others. Are these sounds related? What are they?
“At 2:15 pm, I heard a crash similar to that of a jet crossing the sky or that of an airplane turbine. I heard it twice, and there was nothing in the sky, I didn’t see any planes, despite being cloudy. I commented to a friend who lives in another location, and he said he heard it too.”
The website Otempo in Brazil reports numerous accounts of people hearing a variety of unexplained sounds across the country, including the one above from Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. It noted that “Noise in the sky” was trending on Twitter but the Civil Defense website in Belo Horizonte had no mention of the sounds. Local astronomer Bernardo Riedel said there were no reports of meteorites in the area.
“On April 3, 2020, very scary news came from the city of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia: Usually, there are always a lot of questions with these “trumpet sounds”, since the videos are isolated incidents, but in this case the whole city heard it all.”
At about the same time, the website SoulAsk reported on “trumpet” sounds in Bratislava. In this case, there are multiple YouTube videos of the sounds, which are more like “respirators” than trumpets, according to one witness. (Listen to one here.) With respirators in the news so much lately, that could just be the power of suggestion, but they do sound more like Darth Vader breathing than Miles Davis blowing. One scientific explanation was the shifting of tectonic plates rubbing against the lost microcontinent of Greater Adria underneath Europe, although there were no reports of earthquakes or other seismic disturbances.
“This is something unheard of, I never heard anything like this, it is beyond my capabilities.”
Moving to Olavarría in the province of Buenos Aires, SoulAsk also reports of strange, unexplained sounds of various types, some of which disturbed local dogs. (Listen here.) “Researcher” Mauricio Gorili had no explanation, nor did astronomers or meteorologists. That left it open for sites like “Humanoids in Olavarría” to point to – what else – humanoids.
“We are witnessing “the great migration”, they (the humanoids) have infiltrated us for decades but now they are approaching en masse, the sounds registered in the city of Olavarria correspond to the opening of a portal in which it allows that these beings can invade us in a more crowded way.”
Meanwhile, in the U.S., strange sounds were recorded in Belton, Missouri (listen here), and South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (listen here), and probably heard in plenty of other places. Some blamed these on the latest villain-of-the-moment – 5G – but there’s no evidence that 5G towers are making any kind of noises at all.
Is it just the sound of construction carrying across the now-quiet landscape?
Those are just some of the latest sounds. The website Strange Sounds has more. Is there some sort of logical or scientific explanation for this wide variety of strange sounds around the world — airplanes, gunshots, plates scraping, construction, factories? Is it just because the noise level is down due to the coronavirus lockdowns, causing stir-crazy, locked-up humans who are going outside for a change to hear things they’ve never been able to before? There doesn’t seem to be a general cause and there are far too many to investigate each one individually, so they’re being ignored or dumped into when-we-get-around-to-it piles, never to be checked out. In the meantime, the general public wants answers or they’ll continue to turn to cover-ups, aliens, apocalyptic predictions and the like.
Will we ever find out? Go outside and listen for yourself. Maybe you will be the one to finally figure it out. If you do, will you tell anyone?
Waarom een (wazige) foto wetenschappelijke doorbraak van het jaar werd en wat we sindsdien leerden over zwarte gaten - HLN.be
Waarom een (wazige) foto wetenschappelijke doorbraak van het jaar werd en wat we sindsdien leerden over zwarte gaten - HLN.be
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WETENSCHAPPrecies een jaar geleden - op de vooravond van wat mogelijks de wetenschappelijke prestatie van de eeuw zou kunnen zijn - was het nagelbijten voor sterrenkundigen. Zouden ze voor het eerst een foto te zien krijgen van een zwart gat, een van de fascinerendste fenomenen in de kosmos? Het beeld dat volgde, werd dé doorbraak van het jaar 2019. Dit is waarom een (wazige) foto, die ook wel vergeleken werd met ‘het oog van Sauron’, zoveel betekende voor de astronomie én wat we nog meer leerden over zwarte gaten.
Dit is wat we al wisten over zwarte gaten voordat het internationale onderzoeksteam achter het Event Horizon Telescope Project (EHT) de eerste foto op 10 april 2019 onthulde: een zwart gat is een gebied in de astronomische ruimte waar de zwaartekracht zo sterk is dat niets eruit ontsnapt, zelfs geen licht. Er zijn weinig fenomenen zo abstract als een zwart gat, want hoe kan je iets waarnemen dat geen licht uitzendt of terugkaatst?
Messier 87 (M87) is het zwart gat waarvoor uiteindelijk gekozen werd, een monster dat wel 6,5 miljard keer zo zwaar is als onze zon. Het is zo’n 50 tot 55 miljoen lichtjaar van ons verwijderd. Daar een foto van nemen komt neer op het fotograferen van een mosterdzaadje in Washington DC vanuit Brussel, zo zeiden de sterrenkundigen van het EHT-project. Een tweede vergelijking die tot de verbeelding spreekt: vanuit een café in Parijs een krant in New York lezen.
Geen enkele telescoop is geavanceerd genoeg om zo’n foto te maken. Daarom werd het Event Horizon Telescope Project (EHT) opgezet: een internationaal netwerk van acht radiotelescopen op vier continenten en meer dan 200 mensen afkomstig uit minstens 18 landen. Het netwerk van telescopen – die via atoomklokken op elkaar afgestemd waren – was groot genoeg om de radiostraling van M87, het uitverkoren zwart gat, op te pikken. Uiteindelijk werden de verschillende beelden verzameld en laag per laag samengevoegd.
Het resultaat? Een foto van een zwarte lege ruimte waar een heldere ring – bestaande uit fotonen (of lichtdeeltjes) die door de sterke zwaartekracht in een baan rondom het gat gedwongen worden – brandt. De foto werd op persconferenties in zes verschillende steden voorgesteld, waaronder ook Brussel.
De oranje kleur van de ring moet overigens niet te letterlijk worden genomen. Het beeld komt immers voort uit radiosignalen: die hoor je wel, maar zie je niet. De frequenties van de radiosignalen werden door het internationale onderzoeksteam vertaald naar beeldmateriaal. Evengoed was het geen oranje, maar een blauwe gloed geweest. “We kozen voor een oranjeachtige gloed, gezien alles rondom het zwart gat ontzettend warm is”, legt de Amerikaanse astrofysicus Sera Markoff uit. Zij is hoogleraar astrofysica aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam en lid van het Event Horizon Telescope-team.
Een zwart gat is eigenlijk wat overblijft na de explosie van een ster, een ster die zwaarder is dan de zon. Tijdens zo’n explosie produceert de ster eventjes zoveel licht als het hele sterrenstelsel waartoe het behoort. Om daarna voor eeuwig zwart te worden. Daarom werden zwarte gaten voor 1964 ‘bevroren sterren’ genoemd. Verder nog wordt de kern van de explosie zo compact dat een zwart gat ontstaat. Omdat er niets aan de zwarte gaten kan ontsnappen - er kan alleen maar wat invallen – groeien ze doorheen de tijd in massa. Zo werd er in september 2019 nog een ster geregistreerd die door zo’n superzwaar zwart gat aan flarden werd gescheurd.
Zwarte gaten kunnen ontwaken
Het gaat hierboven steeds over M87, een zwart gat in het sterrenbeeld Maagd, 50 miljoen lichtjaar bij ons vandaan. Oorspronkelijk waren er echter twee kandidaten: M87 en Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), het zwart gat dat zich in het midden van ons sterrenstelsel bevindt en ‘slechts’ 26.000 lichtjaar bij ons vandaan ligt. De astronomen toonden uiteindelijk enkel de foto van Messier 87, met de belofte dat de foto van het zwart gat van ons sterrenstelsel nog zal volgen.
Een tweede foto volgde voorlopig niet, maar wel werd recent bekendgemaakt dat Sgr A* wakker lijkt te worden. Hoewel Sgr A* zich normaal erg rustig gedraagt, zijn de heldere uitbarstingen sinds 2014 toegenomen. Dat stelde een onderzoeksteam van Franse en Belgische wetenschappers. Hoe dat komt, is voorlopig onbekend.
AFPSagittarius A*
Kleinste zwart gat ooit
M87, het zwart gat dat gekiekt werd, is dan wel 6,5 miljard keer zo zwaar is als onze zon, maar dat is niet altijd geval. Zo werd in november 2019 het kleinste zwart gat ooit ontdekt, slechts 3,3 keer de massa van onze zon met een diameter van 20 kilometer. Dat is ongeveer de grootte van het New Yorkse eiland Manhattan, niets vergeleken met een zwaargewicht als M87.
De ontdekking bewees dat zwarte gaten kleiner kunnen zijn dan voorheen werd gedacht: groter dan neutronensterren en kleiner dan de kleinste zwarte gaten die we tot dan toe kenden. “We hebben mogelijk de eerste van een nieuwe klasse zwarte gaten ontdekt, met zulke lage massa waarvan wetenschappers voorheen het bestaan niet kenden”, aldus astronoom Todd Thompson van Ohio State University. “Die zouden ons veel kunnen leren over hoe zwarte gaten ontstaan: welke sterren imploderen en welke niet, bijvoorbeeld.”
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Unexplained Mysteries: Why Are The Latest UFO Footage Videos Getting Popular?
Unexplained Mysteries: Why Are The Latest UFO Footage Videos Getting Popular?
Unexplained Mysteries: Why Are The Latest UFO Footage Videos Getting Popular?
As you may have noticed, there is a whole new wave of UFO research taking place on the Internet. In the past few years, the UFO community has enjoyed a rebirth as new groups of enthusiasts have formed and had fresh ideas for the way the UFO movement should progress. A lot of this rebirth has resulted from these new groups’ own research efforts and in the last few years more people have been discovering UFO video footage that they never knew existed.
What makes this trend even more fascinating is that many of the most interesting new sightings involve extraterrestrial spacecraft. This trend in UFO research has resulted in some very interesting new videos being released that are getting some very high praise from both the skeptics and the believers. In fact, a whole host of UFO videos that come out of Brazil is already getting attention from serious researchers who don’t think they are replayed from the late 1960s.
Not only are the new UFO footage videos interesting to watch, but they can be used as proof of what the scientists are saying about UFOs. When one considers all of the many theories about UFOs, it’s easy to see why people want to prove them wrong. The majority of UFO videos that have surfaced over the years actually started out with professionals in the field that had no doubt whatsoever that UFOs were real. It’s easy to see how these professional skeptics became interested in UFO footage and turned it into their own evidence that they could use against the UFO believers.
A lot of the new UFO video footage comes from places that have not yet been thoroughly studied, so it’s easy to see how some would argue that all of these clips are simply a bunch of fan fiction. However, since all of these UFO sightings happen in completely foreign places where the locals do not speak English, it’s not hard to see how some of these clips could have gotten out of hand. On the other hand, there are plenty of well-respected scientists that believe that it is possible to come up with fresh UFO footage that has been taken in countries that have been settled by outsiders for centuries. The same goes for the many YouTube clips that include weird alien voices.
All of this new UFO footage might be difficult to believe, but since it’s being taken from places that have never been penetrated by modern technology, it can be taken seriously. Most of the videos that have been made recently were likely filmed on digital cameras or on small handheld video cameras. This does not mean that any of these videos are fake, but that they are all probably closer to real UFO sightings than the majority of UFO enthusiasts think.
Many of the new UFO footage videos have also been accompanied by some very convincing audio sounds. In some cases, when sound is combined with a UFO sighting video, the visual footage often has more impact than the video itself. Many of the best UFO enthusiasts understand that these kinds of effects make the UFO footage appear more real and more believable.
All of the latest videos are being looked at closely by UFO researchers because a lot of the videos are from territories that have never been surveyed or penetrated. As a result, a lot of the new footage is probably old footage that was just sitting around collecting dust before being rediscovered. No one knows for sure if the new footage is legitimate or not, but it certainly seems to have attracted some attention from professional skeptics who have been trying to discredit UFO skeptics for years. It’s hard to tell, but the next few years could see a resurgence in the UFO movement as more people start viewing UFO video footage for the first time.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of hot UFO research happening online, but these videos might just be the tip of the iceberg. With hundreds of new UFO sightings every year, there’s sure to be a lot more UFO footage available for study.
Mysterious Unknown Underwater Crafts and Disappearances of Submarines Reported by Ships Personnel!
Mysterious Unknown Underwater Crafts and Disappearances of Submarines Reported by Ships Personnel!
Ships personnel have been reporting UFOs at sea for many years which are seemingly being seen in the same locations, such as San Diego. Submarines have also mysteriously disappeared.
Over a period of 100 years, these strange occurrences have been tied in with UFO sightings. Is there something strange going on in these locations?
Alien Triangle Flies Over Two Military Bases In England
Alien Triangle Flies Over Two Military Bases In England
MARCH 30-31, 1993 …….DEVON/CORNWALL ENGLAND
There was a wave of sightings that occurred on the 30th and 31st of March, 1993. We had several hundred reports that came our way. Many of the witnesses were police. A lot of police in the southwest of the country, in Devon and Cornwall, saw something.
Now, as with all of these big waves of sightings, quite a lot of the reports were fairly mundane, lights in the sky.
But even so, it was quite late at night — most of these reports were between, say, 1:00 and 1:30 in the morning — and because there were police officers on night patrol, you’re dealing with more than average recognition training, and people used to being out and about, and used to seeing lights and other things in the sky.
Repeatedly, I heard the phrase, “This was like nothing I’d ever seen before in my life.” People were genuinely quite spooked by this.
What was generally reported was two lights, flying in a perfect formation, with a third, much fainter light — our old friend the flying triangle, really. The lights were described as being in a triangle formation. It’s difficult to say, of course.
It’s quite possible they could have been three separate things flying in formation, but the impression from talking to witnesses was that this was a triangular craft with lights mounted on the underside, at the edges. The most interesting reports, of course, were the ones which occurred at close distance.
There was a family in Staffordshire who apparently saw this thing so low — and they described it as either triangular or diamond shaped — that they leapt into their car and tried to chase it.
They didn’t succeed, although at one point they thought it was so low that it had actually come down in a field. It wasn’t there when they got to it. They described a low, humming sound, a very low-frequency sound. They said you didn’t just hear this sound, you felt it, like standing in front of a bass speaker.
The really intriguing thing was that this object, whatever it was, then proceeded to fly over two military bases. It was seen by the guard patrol at RAF Cosford, about three or four people, [who] made an instant report of this, obviously because it had flown over their base. They checked radar.
There was nothing on the screens, nothing at all, and there was nothing scheduled to fly. No military or civil aircraft should have been airborne in that area at all.
They phoned the nearby base at RAF Shawbury, about 12 miles away from Cosford. The meteorological officer there took the call. He was a man with about eight years experience of looking into the night sky and then doing the weather report for the next day.
So he knew his way around objects and phenomena. Now, to his absolute amazement, he saw a light in the distance, coming closer and closer. That light eventually resolved itself into a solid structured craft that he saw again flying directly over the base, but at much closer proximity than the guard patrol at Cosford had seen it.
He estimated that the height of the object was no more than 200 feet. Its size, he said, was midway between a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and a Boeing 747. He heard the low hum, too. He had not spoken to any other witnesses, except the Cosford people, who I don’t think had reported the sound. He reported this low-frequency hum.
Perhaps most disturbingly of all, he reported this thing throwing a beam of light down at the nearby countryside and fields just beyond the perimeter fence at the base. And this light was tracking backwards and forwards, he said to me, “as if it was looking for something.”
The beam of light then retracted, and the craft moved off. It was traveling very slowly, I should say, probably no more than 20 or 30 mph. Then it gained a little bit of height, and then it just shot off to the horizon in little more than a second. Needless to say, that was a description I had come across many times in other UFO reports, the virtual hover to the high-Mach accelerations in an instant.
Triangle UFO Found In Antarctic Island, Proof Of Ancient Aliens, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Triangle UFO Found In Antarctic Island, Proof Of Ancient Aliens, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: April 8, 2020 Location of discovery:Lavoisier Island, Antarctic region Method used: Google Earth map I was looking over an island in the Antarctic region when I came across a TR3B craft. The triangle craft has a hump in the middle and a thicker edge with three sides. It looks metallic and its sitting in an area which appears to be the location of an ancient alien base. This craft was revealed after warm years had melted the ice and snow revealing the secret craft below. This is 100% evidence that aliens have lived on Earth long before humanity ever made cites. Scott C. Waring
UFO Fleet Recorded Over Cincinnati, Ohio On 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Fleet Recorded Over Cincinnati, Ohio On 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:Taken 2019, but posted 2020 this week.
Location of sighting: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
A woman recorded a fleet of glowing UFOs over the city of Cincinnati, Ohio last year. The glowing lights baffled the spectators and even the people in the comment section could not explain away these amazing lights. As you see at the center of the video the four lights become three, as the fourth jumps into a new higher position for a few seconds. Remarkable footage of a UFO fleet over Ohio.
While sitting on the terrace of his house, the witness was filming a plane with a very powerful zoom camera. When he saw the video on the computer he noticed a strange object that rises on the left of the visual field.
It seems to rotate and is quite dark in color. The investigations of C.UFO.M. (centro ufologico mediterraneo in Italy) on this sighting recorded in Rome on April 2015 have made it possible to establish that it is probably not a balloon, nor a satellite and not even an atmospheric probe.
C.UFO.M states: For example, the UFO gives off lights sometimes on the right and other times on the left. The sun comes from the left. It also has a focus similar to that of the plane so they are at an approximately equal distance from the witness.
Rather then a real UFO, it is quite possible that the witness has filmed a secret military craft equipped with the newest technologies similar to the infamous tic tac UFOs.
This UFO video was filmed back in March 2017 but it was just published on MUFON’s website. It happened over Akron, Ohio.
Witness report:
Triangle shaped craft spotted from porch. I stepped out to smoke March 16th 2017. It was a mildly cold night but completely clear. I noticed a large stationary craft due south west of my residence. The craft appeared completely black like a void. It had 4 constant lights and 2-4 seemingly random flashing orange/red/yellow lights. I watched it for nearly 3 minutes with no changes and it just vanished. The craft made a very low hum almost like current.
Astronomers Observe Relativistic Jet from Two Merging Spiral Galaxies
Astronomers Observe Relativistic Jet from Two Merging Spiral Galaxies
Astronomers using the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope report the first unambiguous detection of a relativistic jet — a beam of charged particles that travels at nearly the speed of light — emerging from two colliding spiral-shaped galaxies.
This artist’s impression illustrates how high-speed jets from supermassive black holes would look.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Calçada, ESO.
Jets are the most powerful astrophysical phenomena in the Universe. They can emit more energy into the Universe in one second than our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime. That energy is in the form of radiation, such as intense radio waves, X-rays, and gamma-rays.
Jets were thought to be born from older, elliptical-shaped galaxies with an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is a super-massive black hole that resides at its center.
Astronomers theorize that the AGNs grow larger by gravitationally drawing in gas and dust through a process called accretion. But not all of this matter gets accreted into the black hole. Some of the particles become accelerated and are spewed outward in narrow beams in the form of jets.
“For the first time, we have found two spiral- or disk-shaped galaxies on path for a collision that have produced a nascent, baby jet that has just started its life at the center of one of the galaxies,” said lead author Dr. Vaidehi Paliya, a researcher with the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY).
Other teams of astronomers have already imaged galactic collisions many times. But Dr. Paliya and colleagues are the first to capture two galaxies merging where there is a fully formed jet pointing at us — albeit, a very young one, and thus not yet bright enough to blind us.
“Typically, a jet emits light that is so powerful we can’t see the galaxy behind it,” said senior author Professor Stefano Marchesi, an astronomer in the INAF — Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna.
“It’s like trying to look at an object and someone points a bright flashlight into your eyes. All you can see is the flashlight. This jet is less powerful, so we can actually see the galaxy where it is born.”
“Active galaxies which have jets are usually big, old elliptical galaxies which, according to the models, are formed by the merger of two or more smaller galaxies, so that we think that these mergers are the cause of the activation of the jets,” said co-author Dr. Rubén García-Benito, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC).
“A collision is a very efficient way to make large masses of gas fall to the centre of a galaxy, which feeds the supermassive black hole and can produce the emergence of the jet.”
TXS 2116-077 (seen on the right) collides with another spiral-shaped galaxy of similar mass, creating a relativistic jet in the center of TXS 2116-077.
Image credit: Paliya et al, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab754f.
The team used the Subaru Telescope to capture two galaxies: a Seyfert 1 galaxy called TXS 2116-077 and a Seyfert 2 galaxy of similar mass.
They performed subsequent observations with the Gran Telescopio Canarias and William Herschel Telescope, as well as with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
They believe that the galaxies were colliding for the second time because of the amount of gas seen in the image.
“Eventually, all the gas will be expelled into space, and without gas, a galaxy cannot form stars anymore,” Dr. Ajello said.
“Without gas, the black hole will switch off and the galaxy will lay dormant.”
The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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Vaidehi S. Paliya et al. 2020. TXS 2116-077: A Gamma-Ray Emitting Relativistic Jet Hosted in a Galaxy Merger. ApJ 892, 133; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab754f
Since March 14, ozone over Earth’s Arctic has decreased to what’s normally considered ‘ozone hole levels.’ Scientists expect this year’s Arctic hole – the largest ever seen over the Arctic – to close again around mid-April 2020.
This animation shows the daily ozone levels over the Arctic from March 9, 2020, until April 1, 2020.
When you hear about an ozone hole, it’s typically the one that forms over Antarctica each year in southern spring (northern autumn). But since about mid-March 2020, scientists using satellite data have been tracking a “mini” Arctic ozone hole. It’s small compared to Antarctica’s annual hole, but unusually large for the Arctic. Conditions in the air above the Arctic – including powerful westerly winds that trapped cold air in a polar vortex – caused this rare strong reduction of Arctic ozone.
Atmospheric scientist Martin Dameris at the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, who is tracking 2020’s Arctic ozone hole, was quoted in Nature as saying:
From my point of view, this is the first time you can speak about a real ozone hole in the Arctic.
Those freezing temps in the stratosphere over the Arctic, by the way, follow abnormally warm temperatures in the stratosphere over Antarctica last September and October. NOAA scientists said then that the abnormal warmth in the stratosphere dramatically limited ozone loss, resulting in the smallest Antarctic ozone hole observed since 1982.
Abnormally warm over Antarctica half a year ago. Abnormally cold over the Arctic in recent weeks. Is that a coincidence? Climate is complex, and Earth’s climate is changing, so it’s hard to know.
A comparison of ozone levels over the Arctic in March 2019, and in March 2020.
Here’s what scientists do know. They know that small ozone holes have been spotted over the Arctic in previous years, but that 2020’s Arctic ozone depletion is much greater.Diego Loyola of the German Aerospace Center said in a statement from ESA:
The ozone hole we observe over the Arctic this year has a maximum extension of less than 1 million square kilometers (400,000 square miles). This is small compared to the Antarctic hole, which can reach a size of around 20 to 25 million square kilometers (8 to 10 million square miles) with a normal duration of around 3 to 4 months.
Overall, the Arctic’s ozone depletion tends to be significantly less than that over Antarctica. Holes in Earth’s ozone layer above either pole are driven by extreme cold – stratospheric temperatures below -80°C (-112°F) – sunlight, powerful winds and substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). As reported in Nature, in 2020, powerful westerly winds flowed around the North Pole. They trapped cold air within a polar vortex. The report in Nature said:
There was more cold air above the Arctic than in any winter recorded since 1979.
ESA said:
By the end of the polar winter, the first sunlight over the North Pole initiated this unusually strong ozone depletion – causing the hole to form. However, its size is still small compared to what can usually be observed in the southern hemisphere.
Diego Loyola said:
Since March 14, the ozone columns over the Arctic have decreased to what is normally considered ‘ozone hole levels,’ which are less than 220 Dobson units. We expect the hole to close again during mid-April 2020.
ESA also explained:
The ozone layer is a natural, protective layer of gas in the stratosphere that shields life from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation – which is associated with skin cancer and cataracts, as well as other environmental issues.
In the 2018 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion, data shows that the ozone layer in parts of the stratosphere has recovered at a rate of 1-3% per decade since 2000. At these projected rates, the Northern Hemisphere and mid-latitude ozone is predicted to recover by around 2030, followed by the Southern Hemisphere around 2050, and polar regions by 2060.
This timelapse image shows the launch of a weather balloon at Earth’s South Pole in the southern spring (northern autumn) of 2019. Balloons like this one can carry ozone-measuring sondes that directly sample ozone levels vertically through the atmosphere. In the Arctic, weather balloons like this one are launched from observing stations in various places, including the Polarstern icebreaker, which is frozen in sea ice for a year-long expedition. Other scientists monitor Earth’s ozone hole from space via satellites.
Bottom line: The “ozone hole” commonly referenced is the hole over Antarctica that forms each southern spring (northern autumn). But beginning around mid-March 2020, satellite data revealed that ozone concentrations over the northern polar regions have plummeted, causing a “mini-hole” in the ozone layer over the Arctic.
At the same time the Event Horizon Telescope was gathering data to create the first-ever image of a black hole, it was also observing an even stranger object.
That object was a quasar, a pair of jets full of super-fast material shooting out from near a supermassive black hole. And the Event Horizon Telescope data suggested that those jets aren't working the way scientists had expected them to, with confusing kinks at their base.
"We knew that every time you open a new window to the universe you can find something new," Jae-Young Kim, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany who led the new research, said in a statement from the institute. "Here, where we expected to find the region where the jet forms by going to the sharpest image possible, we find a kind of perpendicular structure. This is like finding a very different shape by opening the smallest Matryoshka doll."
The quasar is known as 3C 279 and is located 5 billion light-years away from Earth. Astronomers identified the object as a quasar because of an incredibly bright point of light at its center. That point seems to mark jets of particles where the black hole — which contains about the mass of a billion suns — is spitting out material that it can't quite capture.
The Event Horizon Telescope studied the object over four days in April 2017. And the collaboration could study these jets at a resolution of less than one light-year. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles or 9.7 trillion kilometers.) That detail let astronomers on the new research analyze small details within the jets near their source. The scientists thought these jets would begin as they continued, as straight beams.
But what the team found was unexpected. According to this new view, at its base, a jet is a twisted structure that changes from day to day. The researchers don't yet know how any of this occurs, although they think it could have something to do with how the jets meet the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.
Scientists involved in the research also think that the jet's strange structure could help explain why the material in the jet appears to be moving toward us at a whopping 20 times the speed of light, a complex optical illusion.
The Event Horizon Telescope's successively magnified views of a quasar dubbed 3C 279.(Image credit: J.Y. Kim (MPIfR), Boston University Blazar program, and the EHT Collaboration)
Like the groundbreaking black hole image published last year, the new research relies on the Event Horizon Telescope's data-intense technique to turn a global array of instruments into one massive, Earth-size telescope. In 2017, eight observatories took part in the project; by next summer that number should be 11. The more facilities take part, the sharper the Event Horizon Telescope's results become.
"The EHT array is always improving," Shep Doeleman, founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope and an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy, said in a statement released by the EHT consortium. "These new quasar results demonstrate that the unique EHT capabilities can address a wide range of science questions, which will only grow as we continue to add new telescopes to the array."
However, the COVID-19 pandemic closed observatories within the network and forced the Event Horizon Telescope to cancel its annual observing campaign for 2020. Scientists affiliated with the project will spend this year focused on further analyzing the 2017 data that included these quasar results, as well as beginning to analyze data gathered in 2018.
The research is described in a paper published today (April 7) in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
NASA and the European Space Agency plan to haul pristine Mars samples to Earth in the near future, perhaps in the 2030s.
Receiving pieces of the Red Planet in this way is deemed to pose a low risk to ecological and public safety — but that risk is not zero.
The Mars samples, which will be collected and cached by NASA's Perseverance rover, could end up being biological "hot property." And the material might spark heated debate and public anxiety about creepy-crawlies from Mars chomping away at Earth's biosphere.
Hauling back the goods from the Red Planet resonates in some ways as a replay of Michael Crichton's 1969 novel "The Andromeda Strain," which dramatized the idea of alien organisms infecting Earth.
In the book, which was made into a film in 1971, alien germs are brought to Earth by a "Project Scoop" satellite. An elite team of secretive first responders, clad in protective hazmat suits, studies and battles the bug within a hush-hush, high-tech underground facility named Wildfire.
Will this scenario forever remain science fiction, or could it actually happen in real life? And does the ongoing coronavirus pandemic hold any clues about how to handle samples brought to Earth from Mars, a place that could potentially host extraterrestrial microbes?
Stringent containment
Michael Crichton's 1969 novel "The Andromeda Strain" was turned into a popular movie that captured dealing with a deadly extraterrestrial organism brought back to Earth. (Image credit: Universal Pictures)
The public certainly should pay more attention to plans for Mars Sample Return, said Cassie Conley, a former NASA Planetary Protection Officer.
"Since the beginning of space exploration, planetary protection has mandated that samples from Mars should be considered 'Restricted Earth Return,' Conley told Space.com. "This requires the most stringent containment to protect both the samples and the Earth."
However, NASA's Mars program has recently discussed lowering the planetary protection category for much of Mars' surface to Category II, which would eliminate any requirement for oversight or containment of samples returned from parts of Mars, Conley said.
"We really don't understand Earth biology very well and certainly don't know that much about Mars," Conley said. "So, it's premature to conclude there are no Martian biohazards."
Conley said that "the current pandemic demonstrates, tragically well, how overconfidence and short-term perspectives can cause catastrophic harm to people all over the Earth."
In the movie "The Andromeda Strain," a satellite transports an alien germ to Earth. (Image credit: Universal Pictures)
Molecular locks and keys
"It seems to me that public interest in Mars Sample Return safety issues would likely be sharpened by experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic," said J. Andy Spry, a senior scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California and a NASA planetary protection consultant.
This would hopefully occur "in the same way that the SARS epidemic sharpened the responses of many Asian countries to the COVID-19 hazard," Spry said. "That is, by allowing decision-makers to develop appropriate and timely responses to a microbial pathogen threat."
That said, Spry added, such pathogens usually develop by coexisting with life on Earth, with highly specialized outbreak adaptations as part of an ongoing host-pathogen interaction.
"We can think of pathogenicity as molecular locks and keys which are virtually impossible to develop without repeated contact," Spry said. "Thus, it is extremely unlikely for a biological entity evolving and adapting in an extraterrestrial environment to be able to take advantage of lifeforms on Earth.
Rocketing back specimens from Mars to our planet is now being detailed, including development of a biosafety level retrieval facility to intensively study Red Planet samples. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Containment facility
While major spacefaring nations share a common perspective on containment of Martian material returned to Earth by a spacecraft, Spry also underscored the international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) policy language that "no uncontained hardware that contacted Mars, directly or indirectly, shall be returned to Earth." However, implementation details — including those for a containment facility — have yet to be fully worked out, he said.
"This is only because the details of the current Mars sample return mission architecture are still being studied and refined by NASA and the European Space Agency right now," Spry told Space.com. "In the latest scheduling, we are still some 15 years from samples actually being returned to the Earth-moon system, which is still timely in terms of getting containment facility work done."
First things first
Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch at Washington State University has been a longtime advocate for having an on-the-spot life-detection mission on Mars first, before attempting sample return.
"We do have the technology to do so. That way we would also have a better idea what we might bring back," he told Space.com. (Perseverance, which will launch this summer, will hunt for signs of Mars life on the Red Planet's surface. But the rover will look for evidence of ancient, not extant, organisms.)
Schulze-Makuch said that a retrieval facility would have to have a high biosafety level, just in case. The chance that any life from Mars would be in any way harmful to us or Earth's biosphere at large is extremely low, he said. He thinks that chance is lower than 1%, but it cannot be totally excluded.
"So, I think the public and planetary protection guidelines would warrant a high biosafety level retrieval facility (3 or, better, 4), which, of course, has a very high price tag as well," Schulze-Makuch said. "And since samples can only be brought back once such a facility is in operation, it will also delay the schedule until we can bring samples back. And if so, we should bring rather 'fresh' samples back, not samples that have been in a box on Mars for years — as is the plan right now."
Heated discussion
One thing to keep in mind, Schulze-Makuch said, is that Earth has already gotten Mars samples — lots of them, in fact, over the eons. Many Mars meteorites have landed on Earth, after all, potentially bringing Martian microbes — if they exist — to our planet.
"Studies have shown that the interior, for example, of Mars rock ALH84001 was never heated above 40 degrees Celsius [104 degrees Fahrenheit], and if there would have been (dormant) microbes in it, they would likely have survived the journey from Mars to Earth," Schulze-Makuch said.
And, of course, there is a heated discussion about whether some Martian meteorites — most notably, ALH84001 — contain evidence of Martian microbial life.
"Either way, the point is that there is also a natural 'mechanism' to bring potentially Martian life to Earth … and if that didn't have detrimental consequences for life in the past, it is unlikely that it will have those in the future," Schulze-Makuch said. "But again, we have to admit that the risk is not zero."
Leonard David is the author of the book"Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter@SpacedotcomorFacebook.
One of the top priorities for scientists looking to find life beyond Earth is determining which icy worlds in the outer solar system hide massive global oceans under their frozen surfaces.
And a European Space Agency (ESA) mission scheduled to launch in 2022 will work to do just that. Called the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), the spacecraft will tour the Jupiter system, specifically observing three of the planet's largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Scientists aren't yet sure, but they suspect that all three might be hiding massive oceans.
"We have good reasons to believe that they host an internal subsurface ocean underneath the icy crust," Olivier Witasse, a planetary scientist at ESA on the JUICE project, said during a presentation coordinated by the National Academies of Sciences on March 31. The JUICE mission is designed to provide the data scientists need to determine whether those oceans exist.
The JUICE team aims to address that question using a few different methods.
One of the spacecraft's techniques is straightforward but only applies to one of Jupiter's moons. Scientists suspect, but haven't confirmed, that Europa may be shooting plumes out through its icy crust. If that is the case, JUICE may be able to fly through those plumes and study the liquid they contain during its two passes over the world. "We need to be lucky," Witasse said. "The plumes need to be there, it's still a matter of debate."
JUICE's other tactics are less subject to luck and are not limited to Europa, he said. Witasse walked through how the spacecraft's tactics will play out at Ganymede, the only moon that JUICE will directly orbit, as an example of the mission's methods.
First, there's a long-standing approach, which relies on measuring the magnetic field around a moon. If a bunch of liquid that conducts electricity is sloshing around inside a world, it interferes with the magnetic field of both the moon itself and Jupiter's in a way that should allow JUICE to measure it. However, with this method, JUICE will need to take measurements throughout its entire stay in the Jupiter system to produce enough data. A previous NASA mission, Galileo, which explored the Jupiter system between 1995 and 2003, carried a similar instrument.
JUICE will also measure how each of Jupiter's moons is stretched by tidal interactions with other worlds in the system. Jupiter is so massive that it tugs on all four of its large moons, and three of those moons orbit in such synchronized choreography that they exert serious pulls on each other.
And just as Earth's dance with the moon creates tides, all of this tugging around should distort Jupiter's moons. That should remain true whether or not these moons have oceans, but the magnitude of these tides would be different if they are ocean worlds or not — to the tune of tides just 3 feet (1 meter) high for an ocean-free moon compared to perhaps between 26 feet (8 m) and 33 feet (10 m) for an ocean world, Witasse said.
"That's a powerful technique to measure what is inside the icy moons," he said — although it will require the spacecraft to approach the moon quite closely and to map the full surface multiple times. These requirements mean that the Ganymede measurements will likely not be taken until the last phase of the mission, three months during which JUICE is in its lowest orbit around the moon.
JUICE's last technique for searching for alien oceans is perhaps also its strangest. This method relies on measurements of the auroras that ring, for example, Ganymede's poles. These dazzling lights don't circle the moon's poles totally symmetrically, instead, they are tilted like the brim of a hat perched askew, spinning around the moon.
According to scientists' models, the degree to which that ring wobbles will vary based on the moon's internal structure, influenced by the same magnetic field changes that the first technique will target. The band will wobble about three times more if no ocean is hidden below the moon's icy shell. And that technique should require fewer measurements than some of JUICE's other options.
None of these methods will quickly resolve scientists' questions about these distant worlds, of course, since deep-space exploration takes time. JUICE is currently scheduled to launch in 2022, then will take more than seven years to reach the Jupiter system. If the spacecraft launches on time, it will conduct the bulk of its observations between 2029 and 2033.
A Black Hole’s Energy Beam is Seemingly Breaking the Laws of Physics
A Black Hole’s Energy Beam is Seemingly Breaking the Laws of Physics
New observations reveal that an “extraordinary” optical illusion on a massive scale is making a jet from the galaxy 3C 279 appear to move 20 times faster than the speed of light.
One of the fundamental quirks of our universe is that nothing inside of it can be “superluminal,” or faster than the speed of light. That’s one reason why an explosive jet fueled by the supermassive black hole of a faraway galaxy that appears to be traveling at up to 20 times light speed has caught the eye of scientists.
New observations of this optical illusion are also “the sharpest-ever images” of a jet powered by a supermassive black hole, according to a study published on Tuesday in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Understanding how these jets are formed is “one of the major quests in modern astrophysics,” said the authors, who were led by Jae-Young Kim, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
The radiant jets are erupting from a galaxy called 3C 279, located five billion light years from Earth. Even across this immense distance, 3C 279 shines like a cosmic beacon because it is a “blazar,” which means its galactic core is among the brightest and most energetic objects in the universe.
At the center of 3C 279 lies a supermassive black hole that is about one billion times as massive as the Sun. When clumps of matter fall into the hole, they become super-hot and energetic, sparking the enormous jet explosion that scientists see blasting out of the blazar’s pole.
3C 279 is so bright that astronomers have been able to observe it, and its illusory superluminal jet, since the 1970s. But Kim’s team, which consists of hundreds of co-authors, has the advantage of a new type of ultrasensitive observatory: The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
The EHT collaboration is best known for capturing the very first image of a black hole almost exactly one year ago. The telescope consists of a global network of radio arrays that combine to form one ultra-sensitive observatory that is the size of Earth itself. These colossal dimensions enable the EHT to image distant objects in unprecedented detail.
Kim’s team observed 3C 279 with the EHT for four nights in April 2017 at an extremely high resolution of 20 microarcseconds, which is equivalent to spotting an orange on the Moon from Earth. The observations produced “new and more detailed maps of the core region of 3C 279” including the “finest details” of the base of one of its jets.
These observations reveal something so strange as to be impossible: the black hole’s jet appeared by all indications to be traveling faster than the speed of light. As it turns out, this curiosity is due to a mega-scale optical illusion in space.
This blazar jet shoots from the galactic center with so much force that it reaches 99.5 percent the speed of light, about as close to the cosmic speed limit as possible. However, because the jet is oriented toward Earth, it looks like it is traveling 15 to 20 times faster than light speed.
“This extraordinary optical illusion arises because the material is racing toward us, chasing down the very light it is emitting and making it appear to be moving faster than it is,” said co-author Dom Pesce, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a statement.
In other words, the blazar jet is not actually defying the laws of physics, though it does put on a pretty good show of it.
The observations also revealed that the jet appears to be twisted at the point where it emerges from the galactic center, which offers the first clear glimpse of a blazar jet’s base. The discovery suggests that the black hole somehow deforms the jet as it is emitted, perhaps into a helical structure that is distinct from the straight jet that forms further from the galactic center.
“Follow-up work combining the results from this paper with other multiwavelength data obtained close in time, will provide a more detailed understanding of the physical processes in the jet, allowing detailed tests of the potential curvature in the innermost jet, and possible jet acceleration and alternative physical scenarios,” the team said in the paper.
For decades, scientists have marveled over the ultra-luminous center of 3C 279 and puzzled over how such blinding amounts of light could be generated. The EHT collaboration has now brought the answer to that question one step closer to resolution.
There have been a surprising number of UFO crashes reported over the decades, and these can be pretty spectacular, indeed. Among these some of them take the weirdness up a notch, with Roswell-style scenarios of finding aliens among the wreckage, both alive and dead. There are also numerous reports of alien abductions out there, wherein helpless victims are beamed aboard these otherworldly craft and have a variety of experiences including the infamous examinations as well as sometimes more benevolent ones. This is all strange enough as it is, but what about when it gets even odder? Have you ever wondered if the two have ever come together? Have you ever thought about what if one of these UFOs crashed with an abductee aboard? Well, wonder no more, because there is at least one case where an alleged UFO crashed in the desert complete with aliens and a dazed human woman they had abducted.
It was a calm summer evening in 1971, when California resident Debbie Clayton was relaxing in her home just north of Edwards Air Force Base when she was startled by a deafening roar, followed by a thunderous noise like an explosion that reverberated through the air. Exiting her home, she found neighbors out on the street warily looking about and scanning the sky as a symphony of barking dogs played in the background. Then they saw it, a plume of smoke snaking up into the air from the direction of the base, accompanied by the flickering of what they assumed to be the flames of a fire. Something had happened, an airplane crash perhaps, and Clayton’s curiosity drew her and a few others towards the eerie glow and smoke in the distance. What they would find would be no normal aircraft, and would be an experience they would never forget.
Edwards Air Force Base
Just outside of the base, an area of scrubland was burned, and in the center of this charred earth was what Clayton described as a mushroom shaped craft of some sort, fashioned of what appeared to be a dull gray metal of some type, which had green flashing lights spaced out upon it. She noticed how smooth the texture of it all was, with no markings, noticeable seams, or doors or windows, seemingly made of one uniform piece of metal, although it did seem to be damaged from its plummet to earth. More bizarre than any of this was that she then noticed some smallish, thin gray humanoids strewn about on the ground, and more puzzling then even this was the sight of a woman who stumbled about in the fog of smoke, dressed in what looked like a tight-fitting pink jumpsuit. The mysterious woman looked dazed and confused as she meandered about the crash zone, but before Clayton could call to her or do anything at all the military from the nearby base were already descending upon the site. Helicopters buzzed over, searchlights pierced the gloom, and soldiers told the gathered, gawking witnesses to disperse or face the consequences.
After forcefully chasing off the civilian witnesses the military reportedly quickly covered the craft with a large canvas tarp and some of the personnel could be seen gathering the three still bodies of those strange entities, but after that the area was closed to further scrutiny. Curious as to what had happened, the baffled Clayton checked the newspaper first thing the following morning, but found no mention at all of the huge boom and the subsequent crash near the base. There was in fact no mention of any incident in the area at all. Turning on the TV also showed no news at all on the incident, and so concerned citizens began calling the base directly to demand what had happened. They all got the same, curt response, that it had been a crashed military vehicle that had gone down due to a technical malfunction and that it was a minor accident. Nothing to see here. Move along. There were no answers about what kind of vehicle it had been, and more importantly no clue given as to what those humanoid bodies were or who that woman in the pink suit had been. Amazingly, it all gets even stranger from here.
The whole thing might have remained hidden, covered-up, and forgotten to fade away into the mists of time forever if it weren’t for the intrepid UFO researcher Albert Rosales. He was able to track down the mysterious woman in pink, who was identified as Lorraine Dvorak Cordini. She admitted that she was the one in the wreckage, but that she had little memory of how she had gotten there or what had happened next, other than that she had been told she had been in an accident and dropped off at her home by military personnel, so Rosales convinced her to undergo hypnotic regression to try and salvage any memories that might be lurking in her subconscious. She agreed, and would have a very bizarre story to tell, indeed.
Under hypnosis, Cordini said that her ordeal had started when she was abducted by strange creatures from her home one evening, apparently being somehow phased right through the wall to be brought into a craft of some sort, which then brought her to an enormous “mother ship,” where she was dressed in the pink jumpsuit. The beings she was with were described as “short, thin, rather translucent” humanoids, and she also was able to remember that these creatures had visited her before when she was a child, and that she felt a sort of non-threatening familiarity with them. Although they seemed mostly androgynous, she would explain that they seemed to have either male or female “essences,” and that the one she took to be their leader was decidedly more human in appearance than the others, looking almost like a normal woman. Cordini also said that although they had mouths they spoke to her telepathically. She could not remember much of her time aboard the mother ship, but when says that she was aboard another, smaller transport craft on her way home when her memory would jump to the crash. She would explain:
I was physically on board a mother spacecraft working. When it was time to return to earth three “ETs” (short, thin, rather translucent in appearance like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), one female essence and two of male essence were the crew. We were either shot down or crashed near Edwards Air Force Base in California. I remember standing in the wreckage, suddenly in conscious memory, confused, disoriented and filled with sorrow as military personnel kicked the bodies of the two dead ETs. I remember hearing in my mind the captain of the mother ship saying how sorry she was that they could not help us for fear of being detected. The female crewman was standing to my left. I had on a pink body suit. I cried as the military cursed my dead comrades. I don’t yet remember what the parts of the ship looked like.
The next thing she would remember was being approached by the military, handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a black, unmarked limousine. After this they brought her to some sort of sterile military facility where there was another alien with them, apparently not one of the ones she had been with and apparently of a different species, with a seemingly different agenda. This one was described as being about 4 feet tall, with wet brown skin and a bulbous, oversized head. She has said of this surreal and terrifying experience:
At first I think they (military) might have thought I was a local witness who would not leave and so they arrested me. They handcuffed me and threw me in the backseat of a black limousine. I was taken to an empty hanger. I remember it was cold and had a hollow sound to the noise. I was placed on a cold metal table. Two military to my left, one military to my head along with an ET whom I call Mr. Pumpkin Head Man. The military were dressed in fatigue uniforms and the ET had on a blue kind of two-piece jogging suit with a thin red and white stripe going around the chest area and then another set of two thin lines going up and down on the jacket. At the intersection right above where the human heart would be was either a brooch or insignia. My first thoughts were “brooch”.
They drugged me. I was so confused and disoriented. I struggled to lift my arms and to get up, but I couldn’t, my speech was slurred. I tried to scream but could not. I felt drunk. I heard in my mind Pumpkin Head thinking how great he was and how important he was to these military men. The military man next to him was thinking “What an asshole.” They treated me with great disrespect. Eventually two of them grabbed me under the arms and yanked, pulled and tugged me off the table. They dragged me to the opening of the hanger. The light hurt my eyes.
She claims that after this her memories become murky again, and the next thing she remembers is being dumped in San Francisco, California, wandering around in a confused state and not sure how she had gotten there. It is unclear why she should be dropped off here, as she says she didn’t know anyone in the city and it is far from her own home in the Los Angeles area. She finally did manage to find her way home, and for years this was just an odd experience that constantly haunted her, but which she could not explain. Large portions of her memory were missing, and it was only when bits and pieces became coming back to poke through the surface and she found herself facing frequent nightmares that she knew something was wrong with her. After seeing a program on alien abductions by chance she reached out to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in 1995 and that was when she was approached by Rosales.
The story has leaked out over the years and Cordini has written her own accounts of the events that unfolded, but it has still managed to remain a relatively obscure case and even for those who know about it have often looked at it with raised eyebrows. It is at once a spectacular and unique, yet ultimately frustrating account for a variety of reasons. It is intriguing because it is probably one of the only accounts of a UFO crash involving an abductee that was onboard at the time, and what’s more was recovered alive. If the story is true than it is truly unique and rare. There is also the interesting suggestion that there are several different species of aliens visiting Earth that are perhaps at odds with each other and with different motivations. However, it is at the same time just a little bit too good of a story, and there is very little to corroborate it. There are no news reports of anything unusual near Edward’s AFB at the time, no physical evidence at all, and scarce few corroborating witnesses, which more or less in the end leaves us with Cordini’s own account of what happened.
So, what are we looking at here? Was this lady really snatched away from her home by aliens, only to be shot down along with her captors and then whisked away by the military? Was this perhaps some sort of military experiment that planted these memories in her head? Did she really indeed have some sort of accident and her mind conjured this up out of trauma? Or is this all just the delusional ramblings of a woman who has a tenuous grip on reality? It is all a pretty wild and outlandish report no matter what the case may be, and one wonder just what in the world was going on here.
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Komende woensdag grootste supermaan van het jaar te zien - HLN.be
Komende woensdag grootste supermaan van het jaar te zien - HLN.be
ShutterstockSupermaan.
WETENSCHAPMet het voorspelde heldere en wolkeloze lenteweer is komende woensdag aan de hemel de grootse supermaan van het jaar te zien. Het fenomeen doet zich die dag om precies 04.35 uur voor. Op dat tijdstip is de afstand tussen de maan en de aarde exact 363.595 kilometer.
De vorige supermaan was, zo blijkt uit de voor België geldende maankalender, op 9 maart te zien maar toen was de afstand iets langer: 363.972 kilometer.
Wil je dé supermaan van de eeuw zien dan moet je volgens de meteorologen van Weerplaza alvast 6 december 2052 in je agenda omcirkelen. Dan staat de volle maan op 356.426 km van de aarde. Het verschil zal je dan zeer waarschijnlijk niet met het blote oog waarnemen, maar je kunt wel zeggen dat je er bij was.
Wat is een supermaan?
Een supermaan is een volle maan die veel groter lijkt dan normaal. Ook is het maanlicht feller dan bij een gebruikelijke volle maan. Dat komt omdat de afstand tussen de maan en de aarde een beetje kleiner is dan normaal.
De afstand tussen de maan en de aarde verandert gedurende het jaar. Dat komt doordat de maan geen cirkelvormige, maar een elliptische baan om de aarde heeft. Om de 29 dagen bereikt de maan een minimale afstand tot de aarde. Als dat moment samenvalt met een volle maan, spreken we van een ‘supermaan’.
In ons land is zo’n maan maar drie à vier keer per jaar te zien.
It was around 9 am on the 14th August 1947 when R L Johannis was stood by the Chiarso creek in Villa Santina, painting as was his profession. It was as he was scanning his surroundings that morning that he would gaze upon something that would completely change his world view. There, in front of him, was a disc-shaped object at least 30 feet across.
What’s more, next to the object on the ground were two small humanoid figures, approximately three feet in height. Still a little in shock, he kept his focus on the scene unfolding in front of him. Each of the small figures had on a dark blue coverall-type suit which had a red belt around the waist, as well as a red collar. What’s more, although they were covered with a round helmet, their heads appeared to be significantly larger than one would expect when compared to their bodies.
He couldn’t see clearly, but the skin under the helmet and on their hands appeared to be a “greenish” color. This is an interesting detail in that while most would imagine these types of aliens to be grey in color (hence they are usually referred to as The Greys) many accounts exist that specifically state the color of the respective creature’s skin was a distinct green.
What’s more, and this sighting was before such descriptions of the Grey alien were in the public psyche as it is today, Johannis would describe their eyes as large, dark, and with no eyelashes or eyebrows. Very similar to descriptions given by many who would experience alleged close encounters over the decades that would follow.
Still very much in the moment, the painter then called out to the strange creatures, raising his arm as he did so.
A Welcoming Gesture Mistaken For Aggression And Hostility?
As soon as he gestured to the apparently alien visitors they appeared to react. And what’s more, it appeared as though they mistook the gesture by the artist as one of aggressiveness. In response, one of the creatures reached to his belt. A moment later, a “thin vapor” emanated from it and “hit” Johannis within seconds.
He immediately began to feel disorientated and confused. The next thing he knew, he was falling to the ground. As he hit the surface with a thump, he noticed the two creatures approaching him. They would stop at the painter’s easel, looking at it quite quizzically.
It is perhaps worth noting the files of the previously mentioned Bowen here, who would highlight how the descriptions of the belt in the incident were very similar to the occupant encounter of Antonio Villas Boas in Brazil a decade later in 1957.
As the artist struggled to his hands and knees, he noticed that the figures were now holding the painting before placing it back on the easel where it had been. They then, panting heavily Johannis recalled, turned around and walked calmly to the waiting, hovering disc-shaped object. It would rise slightly upon them first entering it. Then, after a moment or two, it shot directly into the sky and disappeared within seconds.
By the time the painter had fully come back to his senses, he realized that the easel was now missing. To the best of our knowledge, it wasn’t found.
The witness would ultimately gather himself. He would then return home where he would make notes of the encounter before ultimately forgetting the incident. At least publicly. When he arrived in America, as we will examine later, Johannis would begin to realize the gravity of what he had witnessed.
Further Reasons To Consider The Merging Of Space, Dimensions, And Time?
The witness would later recall that a “tremendous blast of wind” hit him within seconds of the craft vanishing. He would also recall that he believed the craft got smaller as opposed to disappearing into the distance.
This is an intriguing detail to consider. Did the craft actually disappear and it just appeared to get smaller to the witness? He was, after all, in a confused and disorientated state of mind at the time. Or might it really have grown smaller? Perhaps not physically but as it traveled through some kind of portal or wormhole? One artificially created by advanced technology.
While it is pure speculation on ours and other researcher’s parts, there are many theories that suggest UFOs are actually traveling here through these cosmic shortcuts from their world to ours. This, for example, would remove the need to travel at beyond astronomical speeds to traverse the vast reaches of space. NOTE: The above image is CGI.
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The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
‘The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch’ revealed: How a 420-acre patch of land in Utah became a ‘paranormal hotspot’
The series will have some never-before-seen footage of the ranch and what’s in it along with experts who will go through the massive 512-acre property in Utah
The series will have some never-before-seen footage of the ranch and what’s in it along with experts who will go through the massive 512-acre property in Utah. But what is it that makes this ranch such a mystery to tackle?
Mysterious Cigar-Shaped UFO is Back, and It’s Glowing in Nebraska Sky
Mysterious Cigar-Shaped UFO is Back, and It’s Glowing in Nebraska Sky
A strange cigar-shaped UFO has been seen again in the US, and this time it was over the city of Omaha, Nebraska. The long, slender mysterious object has frequently been observed in recent months in North America, including Washington, Wyoming, and New York. It has also spotted in other parts of the world, including Latin America and Europe.
However, the cigar UFO in Omaha City raced through the sky instead of floating in the air. Also, its colour was different. The past videos show black cigar UFO, but now it’s blue and glowing.
The latest incident was captured on video by an amateur astronomer, who passed the video to YouTube channel MrMBB333, which is famous for featuring mysterious events. The video then became viral with thousands of views.
Many viewers agree that the unusual thing in the sky is a sign of space alien life. One user believes that it’s not a meteorite. Another one suggests the cigar-shaped UFOs are different kind of extra-terrestrial vehicle or drone; instead of the typical round UFO’s.
One netizen says that aliens decided to check out the situation on Earth in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
Others claim they had seen similar objects in the sky in the South Mountain area.
Cigar-shaped or snake UFOs have been spotted quite often in recent months in the US, but they have also been observed in Scotland and Brazil recently, where it had a strange colour.
Beyond the Pyramid Ramp: Unravelling Egypt’s Most Elusive Enigma
Beyond the Pyramid Ramp: Unravelling Egypt’s Most Elusive Enigma
The mystery of how the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built continues to elude scholars, even in the 21 st century. As famed Egyptologist Flinders Petrie records in his The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh (1883): “The means employed for raising such masses of stone is not shown to us in any representations.” The brightest minds in the world still wrestle with competing ideas, offering educated guesses based on incomplete evidence.
Every theory begins with the inclined plane, or the pyramid ramp. This idea was first mentioned two millennia ago by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who recounted what the Egyptians told him about the pyramids: "It is said that … the construction was undertaken with the help of ramps of earth, since at that time cranes had not yet been invented." (Library of History 1. 63).
Many Theories for the Pyramid Ramp
By the end of the 19 th century, Petrie had carefully measured the Pyramids of Giza , particularly the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and determined that the likeliest manner of their construction was using a single, long ramp, with a smaller zig-zag ramp near the summit. Since then, this idea has largely been discredited due to lack of evidence, and other theories have taken its place.
Three types of single, straight pyramid ramps to build that could have been used in the construction of the ancient site.
Late German Egyptologist Uvo Hölscher believed the Egyptians employed a short ramp that zig-zagged all the way up the face of the pyramid, while Dieter Arnold, the German archaeologist who wrote the famous Building in Egypt (1991) believes a long ramp was used, but that it cut through the center of and was partially composed of the pyramid itself.
Meanwhile, Giza archaeologists Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner believe the material evidence most clearly points to a spiral ramp that would have twisted up the exterior of the pyramid, either resting against the structure or on a large earthen mound. They suggest that water or milk would have been used to lubricate wooden sleds strapped with stone blocks, similar to a scene from the Middle Kingdom tomb of Djehuti-hotep (~1900 BC).
Three different pyramid ramp proposals, by Uvo Hölsher (left), Dieter Arnold (center) and Mark Lehner (right).
Numerous recent experiments have confirmed this possibility, including a study in 2014 by Daniel Bonn and other scientists from the FOM Foundation and the University of Amsterdam that demonstrated the right proportion of water on sand could reduce the required people hauling a block by half. There is also a depiction on a New Kingdom stela showing six oxen pulling a block on a sled (~1575 BC), and many actual sleds have been recovered.
What About the Evidence?
Evidence of earth ramps do exist in Egypt. The best example comes from the Temple of Karnak at Thebes, where it can be found still leaning against the back of the towering First Pylon. Made of mud brick, it was never completely disassembled, and it stands today as testament to the manner in which these large stone structures were built and decorated. Further examples come from the abandoned step pyramid of Sinki at Abydos. Likely built by Huni, Sneferu’s father and Khufu’s grandfather, this pyramid has four construction ramps still in place, composed of two outer mud-brick walls with an interior fill of debris and stone chips.
Remains of an ancient mud-brick ramp at the Temple of Karnak at Thebes (First Pylon, New Kingdom).
Amazingly, the potential construction ramp of the Great Pyramid has already been discovered, and it was similar to these other ramps. In 1995, the Giza Inspectorate “excavated trenches through thick layers of limestone debris south of the southwest corner of Khufu’s pyramid. Remains of fieldstone walls were found running north-northwest that could have been the accretions or retaining walls of the foundation of (such) a supply ramp.” (Lehner, 2017; 440).
According to Hawass, this lower section of the ramp: “consisted of two walls built of stone rubble and mixed with “tafla” (a calcareous clay). The area in between was filled with sand and gypsum forming the bulk of the ramp.” (Hawass, 1998; 58). He calculated the ramp would have reached ~30m (98ft) above the pyramid’s base, or roughly 20% of the pyramid’s original total height of 146.7m (481.3ft). Beyond that he believes the ramp would have spiraled up the exterior of the structure.
Map of the Giza Plateau, showing newly-discovered ancient ramp in red line at southwest corner of Khufu’s pyramid, and quarry and authors’ proposed wooden scaffolding running up to the top (red and brown lines added by author).
In late 2018, the remains of a ramp were found in the ancient alabaster quarry at Hatnub, from the very time of Khufu. It reveals how the Egyptians could have moved tremendously heavy blocks of stone by using physics to aid them. Archaeologists from the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology and the University of Liverpool excavated a ramp with flights of stairs on either side, and with post-holes near the stairs running all the way up the ramp.
It has been suggested by the excavating team that by using ropes tied around wooden posts, ancient workers could have hauled large blocks much easier by using gravity to pull down rather than pulling up. They could also control the blocks better, which are imagined as having rested on wooden sleds attached to the ropes.
Ancient ramp discovered at Hatnub, Eastern Egypt, in 2018, similar in shape but smaller in dimensions than the pyramid ramps that could have been used to build the contemporaneous site at Giza.
The addition of ropes and wooden poles to change the direction of force could have effectively doubled the ramp grade, meaning any ramps on the pyramids would have only needed to have been half their projected size. This could have potentially doubled the grade of Khufu’s ramp, discovered in 1995, up to ~60m (197ft), or 40% of the pyramid’s original height (and most of the volume).
However, problems persist. A ramp that spiraled around the pyramid would be impractical because of the inability to back-sight each corner to remain true, its massive size (rivalling the pyramid itself), and the lack of any archaeological evidence. So if the builders did use a ramp, where was it? An ingenious architect named Jean-Pierre Houdin thought he had the answer.
A Hidden Ramp Inside
Perhaps no other theory in recent years has garnered as much attention as that of the Great Pyramid’s supposed ‘internal ramp’, an idea first proposed by the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin in 2005. Aided in his exploration by Egyptologist Bob Brier, they flew to Egypt to hunt for evidence of this proposed inside-ramp.
In essence, Houdin proposed that the Egyptians had built an internal ramp just inside the perimeter of the structure that wound its way up as the pyramid rose, composed of corbelled ceilings and corner notches in which the blocks would be rotated on rope cranes. This would seemingly eliminate the need for external ramps, levers, cranes or scaffolding.
Several lines of evidence jumped out at the researchers as proof of their idea. First, Houdin detected faint ‘phantom’ lines within the masonry of the pyramid that ran at ~7°, the exact angle he determined the internal ramp must run at.
Second, there is a mysterious ‘notch’ on the northeastern edge of the pyramid, where Houdin had predicted was an original ‘corner block-turning station’. This ‘notch’ was explored by Brier, who found a small irregular chamber (‘Bob’s Room’) but nothing more.
Third, in 1986 a French team completed a microgravimetric study of the pyramid, and the resultant CG-image of low- and high-density areas revealed an image consistent with an internal ramp.
Attractive Theory But Where is the Evidence?
Despite how attractive this theory seemed at first, many noted it was an unlikely scenario. Egyptologist David Jeffreys called it “far-fetched and horribly complicated,” for it proposed the pyramid is vastly more complicated than presently believed. Instead of having four internal chambers and corridors, it would actually have the equivalent of dozens of internal chambers. Instead of having one impressive and corbelled Grand Gallery, it would have the equivalent of over thirty grand galleries winding up through the monument, all corbelled corridors of impressive masonry.
It seems absurd, considering how amazing a feat the Grand Gallery itself was, that there would still be thirty more of them to discover somewhere inside the pyramid, all connected together. And despite much indirect evidence, Brier and Houdin have not found any specific hard data for their ramp. Even their much-lauded microgravimetric scan could be interpreted differently, such as via the model of internal ‘steps’.
The Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Houdin’s theory would require another 30 of these inside the pyramid.
Now, despite the difficulties with the idea, it remained a promising theory in need of independent verification. Fortunately, the ‘Scan Pyramids Mission’ ( scanpyramids.org) would be its ultimate test. Beginning in 2015, this study was based on the idea of using cosmic particles called muons to remotely scan the pyramid for void spaces, an idea first employed by famed physicist Luis Alvarez in the late 1960s on Khafre’s pyramid.
Large collectors were set up in the Great Pyramid and the muons that streamed through the structure were measured in the hopes of identifying any hidden chambers. The idea that a beautiful internal passageway snaking up through the structure would be revealed had millions of excited archaeology buffs on the edge of their seats. Then the results came in.
While a large void was detected above the Grand Gallery, no internal ramp was detected. Nada. This deflationary news was relayed by the theory’s first expert supporter, Bob Brier himself: “these data suggest that the ramp is not there. I think we’ve lost.” So if there was no internal ramp inside the Great Pyramid, then how was it actually built? How were the stones lifted skyward hundreds of feet, beyond the ramp?
New research looking at the density of particles called muons has found an empty space (shown in this illustration) more than 98 feet (30 meters) long right above the Great Pyramid's Grand Gallery, but no internal pyramid ramp was found.
Any theory based on ramps, whether internal or external, runs into problems near the apex of the pyramid. Lehner and Hawass admit that: “the fact that the four sides of the pyramid narrow towards closure at the top means that the builders ran out of room for ramps.” (Lehner 2017; 418), and that: “it is very possible that levering was the only means to raise the blocks of the highest courses, near the apex, once the builders had brought them as high as they could on ramps.” (Lehner, 2017; 417).
Other archaeologists have suggested a combination of ramps and levers, including Martin Isler in On Pyramid Building I & II (1985 & 1987).
The idea the ancient Egyptians used other technologies besides ramps was first put forth by Herodotus in 425 BC. He describes the construction of the Great Pyramid thusly: “This pyramid was made after the manner of steps, which some call ‘rows’ and others ‘bases’: and when they had first made it thus, they raised the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of timber, raising them first from the ground to the first stage of the steps, and when the stone got up to this it was placed upon another machine standing on the first stage, and so from this it was drawn to the second upon another machine.” (Histories 2. 125).
“Construction of the Great Pyramid According to Herodotus”, lithograph depicting multiple so-called ‘Herodotus Machines’ operating on the Great Pyramid
This description calls to mind a ‘liftjack’ tool, which uses levers and small shims, or wedges, to gradually lift a large block in many small increments. This was first suggested by Petrie in 1883: “for the ordinary blocks, of a few tons each, it would be very feasible to employ the method of resting them on two piles of wooden slabs, and rocking them up alternately to one side and the other by a spar under the block, thus heightening the piles alternately and so raising the stone.”
Several other scholars have noted this theory as well, including Isler, who actually tested this theory during a 1991 Pyramid building project filmed for NOVA. He discovered it was harder and took much longer than he anticipated, but mainly due to his lack of experience and the instability of his wooden support cribbing.
Assisting with this method may have been mysterious rounded wooden objects colloquially called “Petrie rockers”. Found by the famed Egyptologist at Thebes, he proposed these semi-circular wooden devices could have been used to help jack up heavy blocks by allowing them to tilt back and forth easier ( “rocking them up alternately to one side and the other”) , allowing successive planks to be inserted on either side and lifting the block.
Others like Paul Hai imagine the Egyptians actually “rolled” the large blocks by lashing a Petrie rocker to each side of the block, creating a cylinder. Again, there is no evidence for this, and there have never been found any of these wooden rockers near the pyramids.
A model wooden “rocker” device found by Flinders Petrie at Thebes, from the New Kingdom, ~1450 BC.
Alternatively, the Egyptians could have employed a counter-weight levering mechanism, similar to the shaduf, which has been used for millennia to lift water from the Nile. The machines described by Herodotus could have been composed of wooden beams with counterweights, used to see-saw the blocks up course-by-course.
Tomb painting showing an ancient Egyptian gardener using a shaduf (Tomb of the Royal Sculptor Ipuy, Deir el-Medina, 19th Dynasty, 1279-1213 BCE). The shaduf relies on the same principles of counter-weight leverage as the so called “Herodotus Machines” imagined by Goguet and other artists.
Other researchers such as Peter Hodges, Julian Keable, Louis Croon, and Robert Scott Hussey-Pailos have all made improvements on these designs, decreasing Isler’s original lifting time of over an hour down to only minutes. Whether the Egyptians used a rocker-shim-lever or counter-weight-lever method, they would have also needed some degree of wooden scaffolding.
We have no painting or material remains of any of these proposed lifting devices, but we do have evidence the Egyptians were familiar with wooden scaffolding. In a painted scene from the tomb of the Vizier Rekhmire in Thebes (~1450 BC), we can see several workers standing (and even sitting) on a scaffold while they polish and paint a large statue.
Depiction of wooden scaffolding from the Tomb of the Vizier Rekhmire, ~1450 BC.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art / Nina De Garis Davies / Public domain )
An earlier scene from the Fifth Dynasty Saqqara tomb of Khaemhesit shows a vertical wooden ladder with workers perched along it, and surprisingly wheels and an axle at its base! This is the only known Old Kingdom depiction of wheels, and the Egyptians did not use them to move the heavy pyramid blocks: wheels would have sunk into the ground, and there was no material strong enough for the axles.
Many researchers have suggested scaffolding was used to help build the pyramids, as far back as Somers Clarke and R. Engelbach in their classic Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture (1930). Hawass, Lehner, and Isler have likewise voiced limited support for the idea, along with James Frederick Edwards in his article Building the Great Pyramid: Probable Construction Methods Employed at Giza (2003). He notes in particular the likely use of scaffolding by the masons to dress the fine-white Tura casing stones, generally believed to have been the final stage of construction. Perhaps the most vocal supporter of the idea of wooden scaffolding is the Welsh structural engineer Peter James, who was called upon to save the Step Pyramid after being damaged in a 1992 earthquake.
As detailed in his 2018 book Saving the Pyramids, James and his team worked deep under the Step Pyramid in Djoser’s burial, using large air bags in conjunction with wooden scaffolding to prop up the sagging ceiling. They carefully drilled narrow holes into the superstructure, inserting steel rods and then cementing them in place, finally securing the 4,700-year-old building - the world’s oldest stone building - from collapse.
Modern wooden scaffolding set up around Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara
However, it was the abundant wooden scaffolding that was set up around the Step Pyramid to restore its crumbling façade that gave James an idea about its construction. He thought that similar scaffolding could have been used in the past, composed of pieces of timber lashed together: “In recent restoration work on the pyramids, traditional timber lashed together has been used as scaffolding, which demonstrates that it clearly would have been possible to use scaffolding to construct them in the first place.”
“We Have People, We Need Wood”
Most scholars dispute the notion that scaffolding served any primary construction role, relegating it to a minor function, such as dressing the casing stones or laying the very top courses of masonry. It remains an unpopular idea for one simple reason: most Egyptologists believe that the ancient Egyptians, with their dry and relatively treeless environment, had limited access to timber.
However, several scholars have demonstrated that the Egypt of the Old Kingdom, ~2550 BC, would have had more vegetation than today. Researchers have demonstrated that a major climate change accompanied or perhaps caused the end of the Old Kingdom of Egypt around 4200 years ago. For example, Jean-Daniel Stanley and his colleagues, using strontium isotopes and petrologic data, showed in their 2003 study that Nile levels, and consequently tree populations, dropped drastically between 2200-2000 BC.
As D.M. Dixon states in his article Timber in Ancient Egypt (1974), “in antiquity, Egypt possessed, and still does, a number of trees capable of providing timber.” These include the date palm, acacia, tamarisk, persea, willow, sidder, moringa, and sycamore-fig. These trees were used for boat construction, to make furniture, huge temple doors, coffins, bows, arrows, and ramps, as described on the Papyrus Anastasi I: “There is to be constructed a ramp … consisting of 120 compartments filled with reeds and beams.”
Left: acacia tree, similar to what would have been found in Egypt and across the Levant during Khufu’s time, Israel’s Negev Desert. (Mark A. Wilson / Public domain ). Right: avenue of acacia trees leading towards the pyramids in 19th century Cairo
Archaeological evidence of wood inside ancient ramps has been found at Lahoun, Lisht, and Deir el-Bahri. We also know that Egypt imported huge beams of cedar and cilician fir from Lebanon, confirmed by the discovery in 1954 of two deconstructed funeral boats of Khufu buried beside his pyramid.
Al Arzz above Bsharri (Forest of the Cedars of God), Lebanon.
Made of gigantic beams of cedar, they were lashed together with rope and would seal by swelling in the water. We know from the Palermo Stone inscription that Pharaoh Sneferu , father of Khufu, sent an expedition of forty ships to Lebanon to collect prized cedar beams: “Bringing forty ships filled [with] cedar logs … Shipbuilding [of] cedar wood, one ship, 100 cubits [long].” 100 cubits was roughly equivalent to 50 meters (164ft), even longer than Khufu’s boat at 43.6m (143ft).
The magnificent Boat of Khufu, Solar Boat Museum, Giza.
We can still see the massive fifty-foot (15m) cedar beams that Sneferu’s engineers wedged between the walls of the Bent Pyramid’s burial chamber to keep it from collapsing. He could have easily used similar beams to construct wooden scaffolding for the construction of his two pyramids at Dashur (and earlier structure at Meidum).
Ancient wooden beams still inside the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu at Dashur.
An interesting feature of the solar boats is that their beams were held together entirely with hemp rope, which was also preserved beside the boat. Having cedar beams and sturdy rope, the Egyptians could certainly have built a robust scaffolding capable of supporting large stone blocks and multiple workers.
I believe the secret to building the pyramids, beyond the ramps anyways, was actually very simple: a relatively narrow section of wooden scaffolding, lashed together with ropes and anchored securely at the base. This would have rendered unnecessary large external mud brick ramps, internal stone ramps, and the need to dress the stone from the top down. The entire structure could have been completed level-by-level, with the exterior stone dressed before the next layer was begun (or even in the quarry when first removed, when it is softer and easier to carve, as noted by Bob Brier).
I believe work gangs would have used a combination of levers, rockers, and wedges to lift the blocks up through the scaffolding to the active building surface, where other gangs would have taken over. The scaffolding itself would have had dedicated wood-working teams building it as the pyramid rose. Each level of scaffolding would have had separate teams, while the teams operating on the pyramid would have likely been divided again.
Most work gangs would have focused on the inner fill and less precise masonry of the interior, some would have focused on the core blocks and grout, while the most skilled would have been stationed around the exterior to set and finish the precisely-angled and highly polished Tura limestone casing blocks. I therefore imagine an assembly-line type of process, from quarry to pyramid, with teams remaining at their spots and the rocks moving between them.
There is no good reason the Egyptians couldn’t have built a narrow stretch of scaffolding up the south side of the Great Pyramid through which to lever-up all the necessary blocks for its construction. It could then have been removed very quickly and re-used at further pyramid projects or alternatively used for solar boats, coffins, etc. The re-use of wood was common in Egypt, as demonstrated by Pearce Paul Creasman in his article: Ship Timber and the Reuse of Wood in Ancient Egypt (2013).
The pyramids were built with the available technology during the Old Kingdom: ramps, bronze chisels, stone pounders, levers, ropes, poles, plumb bobs, cubit rods, mallets, adzes, wedges, and squares. To these primitive yet capable tools, I believe, we can add wooden scaffolding, the final missing piece to the puzzle of their construction.
It was more than this technology, however, that helped realize these massive building projects. It was the organization and hierarchy of workers, overseers, priests and scribes that helped to bring to fruition these huge state dreams. It was the skilled coordination of this hard-working society, all based on the careful measurements by priests of the seasons, sky and Nile, that ultimately built the pyramids. It was a nation-wide effort, one of the largest in our history, to serve the kings, the gods, and to preserve balance in the land, so that their names and works would last forever.
End Note
Interestingly, Welsh architect and pyramid rescuer Peter James does dispute the idea the Egyptians used poles and ropes to increase their ramp grades at pyramid sites, as suggested by the new ramp discovery at Hatnub. In a personal email communication he discusses several flaws he has identified with this model:
“The question of the size and diameter of the ropes needed to haul the heavy blocks is an issue and also their durability on the edges of square blocks. The method of attaching the ropes to the blocks that would avoid twisting the blocks as they are lifted would also be a problem.
How would you make sure that the two sets of operatives pulling up the blocks would be able to provide the same tension in the ropes to control the lift and not induce twisting and movement of the blocks, particularly as they are on temporary constructed steps? This would be a very dangerous operation.
The same goes for the temporary wooden post that may have been good in a permanent position in a quarry but would be prone to movement under load on unconsolidated substrate and again would cause difficulties controlling the blocks; also the leading edge of the block would dig into the soil and any force used to move it would rotate the block into the soil and prevent further movement.”
Saturn’s auroras may explain the planet’s weirdly hot upper atmosphere
Saturn’s auroras may explain the planet’s weirdly hot upper atmosphere
Data from Cassini’s final orbits could solve the gas giant’s ‘energy crisis’
Saturn’s northern aurora (shown glowing in ultraviolet light this composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope) and its southern counterpart could warm the planet’s upper atmosphere.
HUBBLE, NASA, ESA, A. SIMON/GSFC, THE OPAL TEAM, J. DEPASQUALE/STSCI, L. LAMY/OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS
Saturn’s auroras may heat its atmosphere like an electric toaster.
Measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s final orbits show that Saturn’s upper atmosphere is hottest where its auroras shine, a finding that could help solve a long-standing mystery about the outer planets.
Saturn’s upper atmosphere is much hotter than scientists first expected based on the planet’s distance from the sun. In fact, all the gas giant planets — Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune — were thought to have chilly upper atmospheres of around 150 kelvins (–123° Celsius). But data from the Voyager spacecraft, which flew past the outer planets in the 1970s and 1980s (SN: 8/7/17), showed surprisingly toasty upper atmospheres of 400 to 600 kelvins (125° to 325° C).
Planetary scientists dub this mismatch an “energy crisis.” Something injects extra energy into the gas giants’ atmospheres, but no one knew what. “Trying to explain why these temperatures are so high has long been a goal in planetary atmospheric physics,” says planetary scientist Ron Vervack of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Data from the Cassini spacecraft’s waning weeks might point to an answer, planetary scientist Zarah Brown of the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues report April 6 in Nature Astronomy.
After orbiting Saturn for 13 years, Cassini finished its mission with a daredevil series of dips between the planet and its rings before plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere in September 2017 (SN: 9/15/17). During those final orbits, the spacecraft probed the planet’s upper atmosphere by watching stars in the background. Measuring the amount of starlight that the atmosphere blocks told Brown and colleagues how dense the atmosphere is at different points, a clue to its temperatures.
Using 30 of these stellar measurements, 22 of which came from the last six weeks of Cassini’s mission, the team mapped Saturn’s atmospheric temperatures across the whole planet and at different depths. “For the outer planets, this is an unprecedented data set,” says planetary scientist Tommi Koskinen, also of the University of Arizona.
The atmosphere was hottest around 60° N and 60° S latitudes — roughly where Saturn’s glowing auroras show up (SN: 2/16/05). Auroras are brilliant lights that sparkle when charged particles from the sun interact with a planet’s magnetosphere, the region defined by a planet’s magnetic field. Unlike Earth’s visible auroras, Saturn’s auroras glow mainly in ultraviolet light.
The auroras’ light doesn’t emit much heat on its own, but is accompanied by electric currents that can generate heat like the wires in a toaster. This process, called Joule heating, also happens in Earth’s atmosphere.
If Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune’s auroras also coincide with extra heat, then auroras may solve the mystery of hot atmospheres across the solar system. The same process could even take place on exoplanets, Brown says.
Vervack, who has worked with the Voyager dataset but was not involved in the new work, thinks this study marks “a big step in our understanding” of these hot upper atmospheres.
“The real test of whether they’re right will be when you go out to Uranus or Neptune,” whose magnetospheres are more complicated than Saturn’s, he says. “Being able to see how our understanding from Saturn holds up when we get to these more complicated systems is going to be really key to knowing if we’ve licked this problem or not.”
GLORIOUS NASA PHOTO SHOWS “THIN BANDS” RUNNING ACROSS JUPITER
GLORIOUS NASA PHOTO SHOWS “THIN BANDS” RUNNING ACROSS JUPITER
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
VICTOR TANGERMANN
North Of Jupiter
NASA just released a dramatic image that its Juno spacecraft took of Jupiter’s “tumultous northern regions” during a close flyby in February. The image was taken from 15,610 miles (25,120 kilometers) away from the gas giant — a distance about twice the diameter of Earth, making this the planetary equivalent of a close-up shot of the gas giant.
The spectacular image shows “thin bands” that run from top to bottom, representing layers of “haze particles” that drift underneath a cloud cover. We still don’t actually know what exactly they are or how they are formed.
Jupiter is the largest and most massive planet in our solar system. You might not think of it as a place to learn about Earth's atmosphere and weather, but Jupiter, like our home planet, has cyclones (the Jovian equivalent of hurricanes) and anticyclones, along with fast-moving jet streams that circle its globe. Revealed in a sequence of black-and-white images taken by the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter are chevrons, dark V-shaped features that travel within a band of powerful winds near the equator. By tracking chevrons, NASA scientists were not only able to gauge the jet stream's speed, but also witness its subtle, wavelike movement as it zoomed around the planet—something never before seen. Studying this motion can help scientists better understand similar weather patterns on Earth. Learn more about this discovery and see footage of Jupiter's jet streams by watching the videos below.
In 2017, NASA scientists figured out that east-west jet streams on Jupiter tend to reverse course on a predictable schedule.
On Earth, jet streams are shifted by changing temperatures. Warmer temperatures force jet streams to flow eastwards, while cooler temperatures force it westwards. On Jupiter, a similar cycle takes about four Earth years and is mostly caused by gravity waves.
Top 15 Interesting Facts About Ancient Egypt That You May Not Know
Top 15 Interesting Facts About Ancient Egypt That You May Not Know
One of the greatest civilizations in our history belonged to the ancient Egyptians. It flourished in the fertile valleys of the world’s longest river - the Nile, where a magnificent civilization rose from the surrounding sands and lasted for roughly 3,000 years. Rising above beast and nature, these ingenious people became a unique culture of the world.
The ancient Egyptians brought to life a variety of gods and goddesses, and fashioned a colorful and natural mythology by which they governed their lives. As time went on and their advancements grew, the Egyptians pioneered some of the world’s first technologies - mathematics, papyrus making, writing systems, medicine and pyramid building. They gave us some of the finest achievements of humanity - which remain stunning and marvelous to this very day. And to celebrate this grand ancient civilization, we are going over the top 15 interesting facts about ancient Egypt!
Our List of the Top 15 Interesting Facts About Ancient Egypt
A civilization that flourished for approximately 3000 years had to be rich, well developed, vast and inspiring. And the ancient Egyptians were all this and more. To get better acquainted with this, we have assembled a list of the most amazing aspects of ancient Egypt.
From arts and entertainment, to religion and law, all the way to war and science - we will delve deeper into the most astonishing achievements of one of the world’s most amazing ancient civilization. Of course, it is difficult to put 3 millennia into a single article, but it should be enough to give you an idea that there are a lot of truly interesting facts about ancient Egypt, and that it definitely bears a passionate study.
The Pantheon
One of the most astonishing features of the ancient Egyptian civilization is their pantheon and in particular, the sheer amount of diverse deities and beings - today we know more than 1,500 of them by name.
Ancient Egyptian gods (Amun-Ra and goddess Mut can be seen to the right) and pharaohs found in the Khonsu Temple.
The Egyptian deities were closely entwined with the daily lives of the people, and were often the personification of everyday items, occurrences and natural phenomena. Moreover, they were for the most part the personification of animals that dominated the valleys of the Nile. And the minor deities were usually connected to seemingly trivial, everyday things.
The Mummification
Another unique and interesting fact about the ancient Egyptians is this astonishing part of their burial rites, mummification. Almost all of their burial practices and rites were connected to the belief in immortality. In the earliest days, the mummification was natural - bodies were desiccated by the harsh desert environment.
But as time went on, the mummification process became elaborate and to an extent artificial. Preservation of the bodies was often reserved for the wealthiest individuals, and involved organ removal, covering in natron salts and linen wrapping. The process took 70 days in its most advanced state.
The very age of the ancient Egyptian civilization and the timeline in which it spanned is a fact worthy of mention and awe. With its Early Dynastic Period having generally emerged around ~3000 BC, and the dynastic periods on the whole ending with Cleopatra in 30 BC, the age of this civilization came close to 3 millennia. And that in itself is incredible. It shows us the power and the importance of Egypt, and how it managed to persevere, for such a long time, through superiority and advanced technologies.
The Pyramids Everyone knows about the pyramids - the immortal heritage of ancient Egypt. These immense structures of stacked stone served as royal burial chambers, and exuded a great sense of power and royalty. Even today, the pyramids continue to baffle all visitors. They perfectly display the wealth and the sheer power of the ancient Egyptians and their industry, as well as a clear emphasis of their belief in afterlife. Here is another pyramid-related fact: Did you know that it took around 10,000 workers close to 30 years to build a single pyramid?
Some of the earliest medicinal advancements came from ancient Egypt. Surviving hieroglyphic writings detail some of the techniques and methods used in treating wounds and illnesses. Furthermore, some of the earliest medicinal specializations appeared in Egypt, with certain doctors focusing only on certain types of afflictions.
Amputation was common, as was wound stitching and infection prevention. Also, some of the oldest artificial limbs appeared in Egypt, where wooden carvings replaced amputated limbs. Although primitive by modern standards, medicine in Egypt was highly developed for its time and covered a broad area of expertise.
The Mathematics
Even in the Pre-Dynastic period in Egypt, early mathematical calculations appeared - with a fully functional numerical system. Four basic mathematical operations were well known to the Egyptians - addition, multiplication, division and subtraction. Alongside basic knowledge of algebra and geometry, fractions, volume and area calculation.
They also had knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem - in their own way - and their buildings usually displayed the golden ratio. Today, there are several surviving mathematical papyrus scripts, including the famous ‘ Rhind Mathematical Papyrus ’, and the astronomical chart of Senemut’s tomb.
The Egyptians were well known for their writing system - the hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic writing goes back as far as 3000 BC, and it consisted of several hundred symbols. But did you know that the hieroglyphs were not the only form of writing in ancient Egypt? They were usually only used in a formal way - as inscriptions on tombs and monuments.
But in fact, there was a simpler script, called hieratic, a cursive version, which was used in everyday situations, by scribes, priests and officials. It was much simpler and faster to write than the hieroglyphs. It was dominant until roughly 1000 BC, when the demotic script took over, perhaps an even simpler script.
The fact that the earliest peace treaty in history was made by the Egyptians is also very important and needs to be on our list. This treaty dates to around 1259 BC, and was made between the Egyptians and the Hittites, after almost two centuries of conflict and enmity. At that time, both sides had ample reasons to cease conflicts and sue for peace, since the Egyptians were under threat from the infamous ‘Sea Peoples’, and the Hittites from the encroaching Assyrian Empire. Both versions of the treaty text survive to this day, fully translated. This peace treaty is known as the Eternal Peace.
The Faience
Did you know that the Egyptians developed a unique style of ceramic that was known as faience? This was a sintered quartz ceramic that displayed vitrification, meaning it had a bright luster of several colors, mostly blue and green. This is somewhat similar to glazing, and was used in all forms of ceramic ware, from ornaments to jewelry and to monuments. It was also widely exported throughout the ancient world, and built locally throughout Egypt. It is often described as the first high technology ceramic, and today survives in numerous archaeological finds.
The Shipbuilding
Even by 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians had mastered fully their shipbuilding techniques. They used these both for sailing up and down the Nile - which was an immense part of their economy, and also for seafaring trade with neighboring nations. In their earliest form these were plank ships, but they developed steadily into unique barges and transport vessels.
Egyptians mastered the use of trennels (wooden pegs for connection) and also the use of pitch for caulking. Mortise and tenon joints were also used, showing their understanding and mastery of woodworking. The most famous fully intact surviving ancient Egyptian ship is the ‘ Khufu Ship ’, found sealed in the Pyramid of Giza. It measures almost 44 meters in length (143 feet).
The magnificent Boat of Khufu, Solar Boat Museum, Giza, Egypt.
There is a reason why the Egyptians managed to dominate the ancient Near East and create a vast realm for such a long time. And this reason was their skilled military. For the most part the soldiers were trained civilians from the general populace, but over time, many mercenaries also filled the ranks. These came from Nubia, Libya, Kush and other places.
The Egyptian military relied on the use of bows and arrows, but also on use of shields, spears, and unique khopesh swords. They were also well known for their use of war chariots, which they adopted from their Hyksos enemies.
The Diet
You might be surprised to know one unique fact about the Egyptian diet - it was simple. Most commonly it consisted of bread and beer, and also great amounts of vegetables - mainly onion and garlic, which the Egyptians believed was highly beneficial to health. Dates, figs, carobs and other fruits were also common.
For the common folk, meat was reserved mostly for festivities, while the upper classes had it more often. Fish and fowl were common foods, especially with the proximity of the Nile. Interestingly, Egyptian beer was the most common, staple part of their diet - consumed daily and often. But don’t be mistaken, it was far from today’s beer. It was rich and nutritious, quite similar to a mash or gruel.
Contrary to popular belief, the ancient Egyptians really knew how to have fun. They enjoyed music greatly, and mastered the use of cymbals, tambourines, drums and bells, while importing other instruments from afar, such as lutes and lyres. They also had their iconic sistrum instrument, which was like no other, and closely resembled a rattle.
Other than music, the Egyptians enjoyed boardgames. Many different types are known today, such as senet and mehen, which are boardgames where pawns were moved about. Another highly unique boardgame was “Hounds and Jackals,” which spread from Egypt to many far places. Did you know that senet is one of the oldest known board games?
Faience senet board and playing pieces inscribed with the name of Amunhotep III. Reportedly from Thebes, and possibly from his tomb.
Even though the early Egyptian writings were the inscriptions from tombs and monuments, dealing with religious aspects and afterlife, later on they became more complex, and slowly Egyptian literature began to develop. A sort of autobiographical writing became popular, and was incised on tomb walls. Another unique genre of ancient literature was developed, and was known as Sebayt (teachings, instructions), which documented ethical teachings for a true way of living.
One of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian literature is known as the Story of Sinuhe , written around 1800 BC. Its author is unknown, but is widely heralded as the “Egyptian Shakespeare.” The work is written in a form of verse, and can be performed as well. It survived in numerous fragments, which tells us that it was extremely popular in its time.
“Does a lowly man become loved when fate makes him a master? Does a marsh-reed flourish on the mountain-side?”
Ostracon CG 25216, one of the biggest ostracon ever found. Found in 1886 in the tomb of Sennedjem (Deir el-Medina, Tomb Nr. 1), today in the Egyptian Museum Cairo, it is broken into two pieces, one side contains the Story of Sinuhe and the other a private letter.
One important fact about the ancient Egyptians is that they had a well-developed legal system. At its head was usually the ruler - a pharaoh - who brought new laws, ensured order, and delivered justice. In all court cases that dealt with minor disputes and offenses, a special council of elders presided - it was known as kenbet. And when the cases were serious, a great kenbet presided, at whose head was the pharaoh.
A key part of this system was the scribes. They kept all records, assessed taxes and dealt with administration. Around the coming of the New Kingdom, oracles began to play a major role in the legal system. At this time, the gods were asked for justice, where an effigy of a god had to give an answer - yes or no - through various orchestrated means.
And thus ends our short list of 15 interesting facts about ancient Egypt. There is no doubt that this magnificent civilization truly left enormous marks on our world, and that they have remained even to this day. The tales of this era in history can keep us occupied for days on end, and the sheer amount of archaeological wonders will continue to intrigue us for generations to come. Because we are often unaware at just how advanced and marvelous these ancient people truly were - all those millenniums before us.
Top image: Top 15 interesting facts about ancient Egypt. Source: Maurizio / Adobe stock
Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe – Equations Predict
Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe – Equations Predict
Like part of a cosmic Russian doll, our universe may be perfectly nested inside a black hole that is itself part of a larger universe.
In turn, all the black holes found so far in our universe—from the microscopic to the supermassive—may be ultimate doorways into alternate realities.
According to a mind-bending new theory, a black hole is actually a tunnel between universes—a type of wormhole. The matter the black hole attracts doesn’t collapse into a single point, as has been predicted, but rather gushes out a “white hole” at the other end of the black one, the theory goes.
In a paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplawski presents new mathematical models of the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations suggest such wormholes are viable alternatives to the “space-time singularities” that Albert Einstein predicted to be at the centers of black holes.
According to Einstein’s equations for general relativity, singularities are created whenever matter in a given region gets too dense, as would happen at the ultra-dense heart of a black hole.
Einstein’s theory suggests singularities take up no space, are infinitely dense, and are infinitely hot—a concept supported by numerous lines of indirect evidence but still so outlandish that many scientists find it hard to accept. If Poplawski is correct, they may no longer have to.
According to the new equations, the matter black holes absorb and seemingly destroy is actually expelled and becomes the building blocks for galaxies, stars, and planets in another reality.
The notion of black holes as wormholes could explain certain mysteries in modern cosmology, Poplawski said.
For example, the big bang theory says the universe started as a singularity. But scientists have no satisfying explanation for how such a singularity might have formed in the first place.
If our universe was birthed by a white hole instead of a singularity, Poplawski said, "it would solve this problem of black hole singularities and also the big bang singularity."
Wormholes might also explain gamma ray bursts, the second most powerful explosions in the universe after the big bang.
Gamma ray bursts occur at the fringes of the known universe. They appear to be associated with supernovae, or star explosions, in faraway galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery. (Related: "Gamma-Ray Burst Caused Mass Extinction?")
Poplawski proposes that the bursts may be discharges of matter from alternate universes. The matter, he says, might be escaping into our universe through supermassive black holes—wormholes—at the hearts of those galaxies, though it's not clear how that would be possible.
There is at least one way to test Poplawski's theory: Some of our universe's black holes rotate, and if our universe was born inside a similarly revolving black hole, then our universe should have inherited the parent object's rotation.
If future experiments reveal that our universe appears to rotate in a preferred direction, it would be indirect evidence supporting his wormhole theory, Poplawski said.
Wormholes Are "Exotic Matter" Makers?
The wormhole theory may also help explain why certain features of our universe deviate from what theory predicts, according to physicists.
Based on the standard model of physics, after the big bang the curvature of the universe should have increased over time so that now—13.7 billion years later—we should seem to be sitting on the surface of a closed, spherical universe.
But observations show the universe appears flat in all directions.
What's more, data on light from the very early universe show that everything just after the big bang was a fairly uniform temperature.
That would mean that the farthest objects we see on opposite horizons of the universe were once close enough to interact and come to equilibrium, like molecules of gas in a sealed chamber.
Again, observations don't match predictions, because the objects farthest from each other in the known universe are so far apart that the time it would take to travel between them at the speed of light exceeds the age of the universe.
To explain the discrepancies, astronomers devised the concept of inflation.
Inflation states that shortly after the universe was created, it experienced a rapid growth spurt during which space itself expanded at faster-than-light speeds. The expansion stretched the universe from a size smaller than an atom to astronomical proportions in a fraction of a second.
The universe therefore appears flat, because the sphere we're sitting on is extremely large from our viewpoint—just as the sphere of Earth seems flat to someone standing in a field.
Inflation also explains how objects so far away from each other might have once been close enough to interact.
But—assuming inflation is real—astronomers have always been at pains to explain what caused it. That's where the new wormhole theory comes in.
According to Poplawski, some theories of inflation say the event was caused by "exotic matter," a theoretical substance that differs from normal matter, in part because it is repelled rather than attracted by gravity.
Based on his equations, Poplawski thinks such exotic matter might have been created when some of the first massive stars collapsed and became wormholes.
"There may be some relationship between the exotic matter that forms wormholes and the exotic matter that triggered inflation," he said.
The new model isn't the first to propose that other universes exist inside black holes. Damien Easson, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, has made the speculation in previous studies.
"What is new here is an actual wormhole solution in general relativity that acts as the passage from the exterior black hole to the new interior universe," said Easson, who was not involved in the new study.
"In our paper, we just speculated that such a solution could exist, but Poplawski has found an actual solution," said Easson, referring to Poplawski's equations.
Nevertheless, the idea is still very speculative, Easson said in an email.
"Is the idea possible? Yes. Is the scenario likely? I have no idea. But it is certainly an interesting possibility."
Future work in quantum gravity—the study of gravity at the subatomic level—could refine the equations and potentially support or disprove Poplawski's theory, Easson said.
A supermassive black hole sits inside the galaxy Centaurus A, as seen in a composite picture.
IMAGE COURTESY NASA/CXC/CFA/R.KRAFT ET AL., MPIFR/ESO/APEX/A.WEISS ET AL. AND ESO/WFI
Wormhole Theory No Breakthrough
Overall, the wormhole theory is interesting, but not a breakthrough in explaining the origins of our universe, said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, who was also not involved in the new study.
By saying our universe was created by a gush of matter from a parent universe, the theory simply shifts the original creation event into an alternate reality.
In other words, it doesn't explain how the parent universe came to be or why it has the properties it has—properties our universe presumably inherited.
"There're really some pressing problems we're trying to solve, and it's not clear that any of this is offering a way forward with that," he said.
Still, Albrecht doesn't find the idea of universe-bridging wormholes any stranger than the idea of black hole singularities, and he cautions against dismissing the new theory just because it sounds a little out there.
"Everything people ask in this business is pretty weird," he said. "You can't say the less weird [idea] is going to win, because that's not the way it's been, by any means."
Uranus likely got whacked by a body one to three times as massive as the modern Earth.
Uranus is uniquely tipped over among the planets in our solar system. Uranus' moons and rings are also orientated this way, suggesting they formed during a cataclysmic impact which tipped it over early in its history.
The impactor that knocked Uranus on its side long ago isn't quite so mysterious anymore.
Uranus is tipped over more than 90 degrees relative to the plane of the solar system, and so are the gaseous planet's ring system and the orbits of its 27 known moons. Astronomers think this unique configuration is evidence of a violent collision Uranus suffered shortly after it was born, which also apparently supercharged the planet's rotation. (Uranus spins around its axis once every 17 hours, significantly faster than Earth does.)
Details of that collision have remained elusive, however, because simulations have struggled to generate the Uranus system that we see today. For example, the mass of the post-impact debris disk tends to be quite big in these models — much bigger than it "should" be, given the total mass of Uranus' moons today.
Until now, that is. A team of researchers has had success with a novel modeling strategy devised to investigate the formation of moons around frigid planets, a new study reports.
The frigid part is key. Giant impacts in the cold and dark outer solar system have different consequences than smashups much closer to the sun, such as the long-ago collision that resulted in the formation of Earth's moon, the researchers found.
This latter encounter involved the proto-Earth and a Mars-size body called Theia, both of which were primarily rocky (rather than icy). The material blasted into space by the impact therefore solidified rather quickly, allowing the newborn moon to snare quite a bit of it gravitationally.
But the material liberated during the Uranus collision was much more volatile — stuff like water and ammonia — and remained gaseous longer. The growing proto-Uranus gobbled most of this gas up, leaving less of it around to form moons, according to the new study, which was published online last week in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The researchers' model, which takes all of this into account, suggests that the body that slammed into Uranus was icy and big, with a mass between one and three times that of the modern Earth.
"This model is the first to explain the configuration of Uranus' moon system, and it may help explain the configurations of other icy planets in our solar system such as Neptune," study lead author Shigeru Ida, of the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, said in a statement.
"Beyond this, astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets around other stars, so-called exoplanets, and observations suggest that many of the newly discovered planets known as super-Earths in exoplanetary systems may consist largely of water ice," Ida said. "And this model can also be applied to these planets."
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
According to a new study, scientists think that an exoplanet candidate may be shaped like an American football. The planet, named KOI 1843.03, orbits its red dwarf star at such a close proximity that the gravitational force is what’s causing its odd football-like shape. The discovery of the exoplanet was made public in 2013.
The red dwarf star KOI 1843 is located approximately 395 light-years away from Earth and is a little less than half the mass of our sun. The exoplanet KOI 1843.03 measures around 60% of Earth’s diameter and has about 44% of its mass. It’s also believed that the planet is more than likely made up of 66% iron (compared to Earth being made up of around 32% iron) because if it contained less iron it would be ripped apart being so close to its star. “KOI 1843.03 is one of the most iron-enhanced exoplanets discovered to date,” stated Leslie Rogers who is an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago as well as the senior author of the new study (which can be read in full here).
(Not KOI 1843.03)
And it has an extremely fast orbit – in fact, it makes its way around its star much closer than any other planet previously studied. Rogers went into further detail by explaining to Space.com, “Whizzing around its star in only 4.245 hours, a ‘year’ for this planet is just over one-sixth of a day on Earth.”
By conducting 3D simulations of the planet’s interior structure in order to find out what type of effects such a close orbit would have on KOI 1843.03, researchers discovered that it may very well be shaped like a football. “KOI 1843.03 is the most aspherical exoplanet discovered to date,” Rogers explained, adding, “Our models show that KOI 1843.03 is significantly elongated along the direction toward its star, having an aspect ratio of up to about 1.8.” For comparison, a wide-screen television has an aspect ratio of 1.7 while a chicken egg has a 1.3 aspect ratio.
(Not KOI 1843.03)
Another fact that the researchers mentioned was that they studied nine exoplanets with orbits that last less than an Earth day and they found that four of them are rich in iron. They also mentioned that the planets could possibly be more spherical-shaped than those with the same orbit that contain less iron. Ellen Price, who is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts as well as the lead author of the study, explained to Space.com, “We expect that more iron-rich compositions will lead to less distorted planets,” adding, “There is a trade-off between how extreme the shape of the planet is and how extreme its composition is.”
More research needs to be done on tidally distorted exoplanets, such as how they appear when they travel in front of their stars and if scientists will be able to determine if a planet is distorted based solely on how its shadow appears.
UFOs come in all sorts of shapes: flying saucers, cigar-shaped craft, flying triangles, and rocket-like vehicles. And that’s just the start of it. There is also the matter of the sizes of some of these craft. Indeed, there are a number of cases that suggest at least some UFOs are massive in size. And that’s what today’s article is all about. With that said, let’s take a look at some cases that fall into that giant-sized category. As its staff state: “The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is responsible for the regulation of aviation safety in the U.K., determining policy for the use of airspace, the economic regulation of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, the licensing and financial fitness of airlines and the management of the ATOL financial protection scheme for holidaymakers.” Over the years the CAA has received more than a few UFO reports, which is hardly surprising. Let’s take a look at one such CAA report that is focused on a UFO of huge proportions. The summary of the report reads as follows: “12 Jun 82 Dinkelsbuhi – Large translucent object 500 feet long at 41,000 feet. ATCC [Air Traffic Control Center] requested subject aircraft to investigate this object which was found to have the form of a double rectangle surmounted by a globe (egg shape) crowned by a silver cone. Object observed by all on board.”
Now, let’s take a leap back to the 1950s. On the morning of April 4, 1957 – according to now-declassified British Royal Air Force documents housed at the National Archive, Kew, England – radar operators at Balscalloch, Scotland reported to RAF West Freugh, Wigtownshire that they had detected a number of “unidentified objects on the screens of their radars.” And it quickly became apparent this was no Cold War penetration of British airspace by Soviet spy-planes or bombers. As the mystified radar-operators watched their screens, they were amazed to see a large, stationary object hovering at 50,000 feet that then proceeded to ascend vertically to no less than 70,000 feet. According to the files: “A second radar was switched on and detected the object at the same range and height.” Most significant of all at this stage was the assessment by the radar experts of the incredible proportions of the UFOs: “It was noted by the radar operators that the sizes of the echoes were considerably larger than would be expected from normal aircraft. In fact they considered that the size was nearer that of a ship’s echo.”
Consider this case from 1951, which is described in the files of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey: ““On September 20, Andrew J. Reid G-2 [Army Intelligence] Ft. Monmouth, NJ, provided following report of unconventional aircraft observed by radar at above Army installation. On Sept 10, fifty one], an AN/MPG-1 radar set picked up a fast moving low flying target, exact altitude undetermined at approximately 11:10 a.m., southeast of Ft. Monmouth at a range of about twelve thousand yards. The target appeared to approximately follow the coast line, changing its range only slightly but changing its azimuth rapidly. The radar set was set to full aided azimuth tracking which normally is fast enough to track jet aircraft, but in this case was too slow to be resorted to. Target was lost in the N.E. at a range of about fourteen thousand yards. “This target also presented an unusually strong return for aircraft, being comparable in strength to that usually received from a coastal ship. The operator initially identified target as a ship and then realized that it could not be a ship after he observed its extreme speed.”
In 1952, radar operator William Maguire had an extraordinary, radar-based UFO encounter in 1952. It was while he was stationed at Royal Air Force Sandwich in Kent, England. Of his experience, Maguire said: “The mechanics were being blamed for not calibrating the instruments properly; we were being blamed for not interpreting the readings properly. But the obvious answer staring us in the face, on every single instrument on the base, was the fact that there was sitting up at an unbelievable height, this enormous thing with the equivalent mass of a warship.” Similarly, there are the words of John Oliver, who had his encounter with a huge UFO in 1949. Once again, it was a radar-based encounter. He recalled: “The general consensus regarding its size, among the very experienced radar personnel engaged in the operations, was that the object offered an echo similar to that of a large passenger or freighter surface vessel, something in the region of 15,000 or 20,00 tons.”
Asteroid warning issued by the Bible. Scripture expert addresses claims of space rock
Asteroid warning issued by the Bible. Scripture expert addresses claims of space rock
Asteroid Apophis will come exceptionally close to our planet on April 13, 2029, giving astronomers a chance to study it in great detail. Although scientists have ruled-out any odds of impact, some Christians evangelists believe the 1,200ft-wide (370m) space rock is a biblical harbinger of doom
Anew sighting of a huge UFO flying in deep space. While recording with his telescope Viewfinder a sky-watcher caught an object moving from the Southern sky to Northern sky in the western part of Omaha, Nebraska.
He said that he is pretty familiar with most objects in the sky but this one just seems very strange to him.
The cigar shaped UFO that seemly leaves a blue trail behind, flies in deep space right though the Pleiades which is located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the star clusters nearest Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.
The first part of the video shows the UFO when it suddenly comes very quickly from left to the right, check it out.
Another mass UFO sighting: Cleveland, Ohio – 4-Apr-2020
Another mass UFO sighting: Cleveland, Ohio – 4-Apr-2020
This UFO video was submitted to me today through our Facebook page. It was recorded over Cleveland, Ohio on 4th April 2020. Similar footagewas recorded in the sky above Detroit on April 3rd.
Mass UFO sighting during coronavirus quarantine in Detroit, Michigan 3-Apr-2020
Ex-Military Medical Officer Reveals the Truth About Advanced Extraterrestrial Technologies
Ex-Military Medical Officer Reveals the Truth About Advanced Extraterrestrial Technologies
Does the U.S. government know more than they are saying when it comes to Extraterrestrial Technology? Ex-Military medical officer reveals the startling truth behind some of the incredible technology we now have in our possession.
Ex-Military Medical Officer Reveals The Truth About Advanced Extraterrestrial Technologies
Secret UFO Files! Modern Day Military UFO Footage and the Mystery of Long Island
Secret UFO Files! Modern Day Military UFO Footage and the Mystery of Long Island
Incredible military film footage of UFOs are becoming more commonly released to the general public. Strange crafts that defy all rational explanation are being sighted and are still being secretly investigated by the U.S. authorities. Key locations as to where such strange activity is reported include Long Island.
Secret UFO Files… Modern Day Military UFO Footage And The Mystery of Long Island
Presented by Joseph Flammer Filmed by MUFON MAINLINE
Astronomers using the CARMENES spectrograph at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain have discovered a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting an M-dwarf star in the binary system Gliese 338. The newfound planet orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is much more massive than Earth.
An artist’s impression of the super-Earth Gliese 338Bb and its stars.
Image credit: Sci-News.com.
Gliese 338 is a wide binary system located approximately 20.7 light-years away from Earth.
The stellar system is over one billion years old, and consists of two similar M0-type stars: Gliese 338A (also known as GJ338A or HD 79210) and Gliese 338B (GJ 338B or HD 79211).
The stars are between 64 and 69% the mass of the Sun. The projected separation between them is about 109 AU.
A team of astronomers led by Centro de Astrobiología’s Dr. Esther González-Álvarez explored the presence of small planets in tight orbits around Gliese 338A and B using the spectroscopic radial velocity technique.
They analyzed radial velocity data from the CARMENES spectrograph as well as ground-telescope photometry from Las Cumbres and Sierra Nevada observatories.
The planet they discovered orbits the smaller member of the system, Gliese 338B, once every 24.45 days at a distance of 0.14 AU.
Named Gliese 338Bb (GJ 338B or HD 79211b), the alien world has a mass of 10.3 times the mass of the Earth.
“Gliese 338Bb is one of the least massive planets ever discovered in one star of a binary system of relatively small separation,” Dr. González-Álvarez and her colleagues said.
They estimate the planet’s temperature to be between 27 and 117 degrees Celsius (81-243 degrees Fahrenheit).
“Gliese 338Bb lies inside the inner boundary of the habitable zone around its parent star,” the astronomers said.
“The masses, spectral types, brightnesses, and even the rotational periods are very similar for both stars, which are likely coeval and formed from the same molecular cloud, yet they differ in the architecture of their planetary systems.”
E. González-Álvarez et al. 2020. The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. A super-Earth planet orbiting HD 79211 (GJ 338 B). A&A, in press; arXiv: 2003.13052
This newly discovered fossil is a hugely important find, say scientists. It means that one of our earliest ancestors possibly originated in southern Africa. Read more
The Homo erectus cranium labeled DNH 134 and nicknamed “Simon” – from approximately 2 million years ago – from the Drimolen Fossil Hominin site in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind. Homo erectus is thought to be a direct ancestor of modern humans and the first human ancestor to spread widely across the world.
The human evolutionary path is complicated. It’s almost impossible to say exactly when we modern humans became “us.”
This quandary is best articulated by the famous naturalist Charles Darwin in his book “The Descent of Man“:
In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some apelike creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term ‘man’ ought to be used.
The understanding of modern humans’ own genus, Homo, has taken many turns over the last century. Homo erectus, one of our purported ancestors, was first discovered in Indonesia in 1891 by geologist and anatomist Eugene Dubois. Since then, representatives of both this species, and other Homo, have been found across the world; for instance, in 2015, a new species of Homo, Homo naledi, was discovered in South Africa. Another new Homo species, Homo luzonensis, was found more recently in the Philippines in 2019.
These discoveries, combined, have led scientists to set Homo erectus‘ emergence at about 1.8 million years ago – with the oldest known record coming from Dmanisi, Georgia, and an important slightly later record from the East African Rift valley.
But our new discovery in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind – located about 31 miles (50 km) northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, and one of the world’s most important paleoanthropological sites – suggests that Homo erectus actually emerged 200,000 years earlier than we thought. We were part of a team from South Africa, Australia, Italy and the U.S. that discovered a Homo erectus cranium which has since been dated to almost 2 million years ago. The work was published in Science on April 3, 2020.
This is a hugely important find. It reasserts that Homo erectus’ origins are in Africa, not Asia. Our discovery suggests, though, that Homo erectus likely did not evolve in eastern Africa as so often thought but perhaps somewhere else in Africa, or potentially in South Africa itself.
More evidence is needed before firm conclusions can be reached, of course. But the South African find means that the Drimolen fossil site – where we made the discovery – could represent an important shift in the simple narrative that all early species of human ancestry are East African.
A critical discovery
The Drimolen Fossil Hominin site in the Cradle of Humankind, northwest of Johannesburg, has been excavated since its discovery in 1992. The site is best known for its Paranthropus robustus, another ancient hominin species with massive teeth, as well as some early Homo fossils. The most famous specimen from Drimolen is the most complete skull of Paranthropus robustus ever discovered, DNH 7.
It was here that members of our team found the fossil cranium that has been named DNH 134. Its nickname is Simon, named for the site technician whose contribution to the team was immeasurable. Simon Mokobane sadly passed away in 2018, but his expertise, unwavering support and fossil knowledge will forever be remembered.
In 2015, during the Drimolen Field School, a student named Richard Curtis began excavating an intriguing, but highly fragmented specimen. At first, no one was sure what it was from but in-field reconstructions quickly revealed that it was a hominin cranium.
We used a battery of dating methods, including Uranium-lead dating on the flowstones, Uranium-Series Electron Spin Resonance on fossil teeth and Palaeomagnetism on sediments. Each of these complementary techniques helped to establish a very narrow age of 2.04-1.95 million years for the whole Drimolen Main Quarry and the fossils found in it, including DNH 134.
DNH 134 is extremely significant. Its discovery and dating means that the story of Homo erectus and its journey out of Africa is more complicated than previously thought. Also, we know too that South Africa played a seminal role in this key species that ultimately led to us.
Next steps
Work will continue at the Drimolen site. We aim to continue excavating using a new method where our efforts are focused along the breccia (fossilized rock with fossils in it). This has proved fruitful with not only the discovery of DNH 134, but also a male Paranthropus robustus skull (DNH 152; also discussed in the Science article) as well as a number of other hominin remains we are still studying.
The site also has a wide variety of animal fossils from both extinct and living species, all of whom add to the overall story that we aim to build about how our ancient ancestors lived.
We will also continue to encourage young paleoanthropologists from across the African continent to get involved in excavations. The site hosts an annual field school with international partner institutes and offers full scholarships exclusively to students from African countries (South Africans have first preference).
The idea behind this is to ensure that researchers from the continent and country are at the forefront of future discoveries that add to the human story.
NASA CASSINI MISSION'S FINAL MOMENTS REVEAL THE REASON WHY SATURN'S UPPER ATMOSPHERE IS SO HOT
NASA CASSINI MISSION'S FINAL MOMENTS REVEAL THE REASON WHY SATURN'S UPPER ATMOSPHERE IS SO HOT
Before it met its doom, the spacecraft gathered data that puts to rest a long-standing mystery about the sixth planet from our Sun.
After two decades in space, on September 15, 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft ended its life dramatically by plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere, disintegrating into nothingness.
But before it sacrificed itself, NASA’s mission to the ringed giant conducted 22 close orbits over a period of around five months, threading through the space between Saturn's main body and the planet's rings.
Dubbed Cassini’s Grand Finale, this final tour of Saturn revealed unprecedented detail about the planet's atmosphere, magnetic field, iconic rings, and opaque clouds. And now, almost three years on, this treasure trove of data have resolved yet another mystery about the planet and its curious climate.
In a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists used data from Cassini’s Grand Finale to create a map of temperatures of Saturn’s temperatures.
The findings suggest a resolution to the planet’s ENERGY CRISIS. Unlike on Earth, Saturn’s ‘energy crisis’ has nothing to do with a limited supply of natural resources. Instead, the crisis on Saturn refers to the inexplicably hot temperatures in the planet’s upper atmosphere.
In the past, scientists had observed strangely hot temperatures in Saturn's upper atmosphere — twice as hot as they should be. The new data support a long-standing hypothesis that the planet’s aurorae may be responsible for driving these extreme temperatures.
Ultimately, the findings could help scientists in their quest to find signs of habitability in exoplanets.
SATURN'S STRANGE CLIMATE— For years, scientists have tried to understand why Saturn’s upper atmosphere, known as the planet’s thermosphere, is much hotter than it should be.
Earth’s thermosphere is heated by the Sun. But the further you get away from the Sun in the Solar System, the less the intensity of the star’s radiation. That means objects further in the Solar System receive less heat from the star.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. It is about 10 times further away from the Sun than Earth. Based on this, the temperature of its upper atmosphere should be around 150-200 Kelvin, or between -190 and -100 degrees Fahrenheit. Freezing, in other words.
The ringed giant has posed an energy crisis in the Solar System. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Instead, the temperatures of Saturn’s upper atmosphere are between 350-600 Kelvin, according to the study. That's the equivalent of a positively boiling 170 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit.
“When I plotted all the temperatures up from pole to pole, I could see that the temperatures and polar regions were not doing what all the models were predicting,” Zarah Brown, a researcher in planetary atmosphere at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and lead author of the new study, tells Inverse.
Instead, the results reveal that Saturn’s upper atmosphere is at its hottest at the planet’s poles, where there are auroras. Similar to Earth’s Northern Lights, auroras take place when the Sun emits charged particles in the form of solar wind, exciting oxygen and nitrogen atoms in Saturn's ionized upper atmosphere.
The auroras generated by the charged solar wind connect Saturn’s thermosphere to its magnetosphere, a protective bubble of magnetic field that surrounds planets. This process results in electric currents that in turn heat the planet's thermosphere up. The extreme heating is a direct result of solar wind interacting with particles being emitted by Saturn’s moons and rings, the study suggests.
“The heat is coming from these processes associated with the aurora,” Brown says.
“The data supports that by just the fact that there’s sort of this ring of elevated temperatures right near the auroral regions, that is suggestive that that’s where the heat is being deposited.”
A view of Saturn, with its orbiting moon Titan, captured by Cassini.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Other giant planets in the Solar System like Jupiter and Uranus also experience inexplicable heating in their upper atmosphere, although whether the same auroral process is driving their strange temperatures can't be inferred from these data, Brown says.
But they do suggest new avenues for researchers to explore.
“No other giant planet has been studied in this kind of detail, this is really a great starting point,” Brown says.
CASSINI WONDERS—Cassini launched on October 15, 1997, and entered Saturn’s orbit on June 30, 2004. The intrepid satellite was originally slated for a four year mission, which was later extended twice.
During its 20-year mission, the spacecraft conducted nearly 300 orbits of Saturn, and took more than 453,000 images and sent back 635 gigabytes of data.
In April, 2017, Cassini began its final tour of the giant planet, diving further into the approximately 1,200-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its rings at a distance of about 1,000 to 2,500 miles above the planet’s clouds.
The team behind the mission were unsure if the spacecraft could even survive this close encounter with Saturn, and whether some of the material from the planet’s rings would ultimately destroy Cassini. But the risk paid off.
The reason for its dramatic death drop was to avoid crashing into Saturn’s moons and contaminating them, especially with Enceladus and Titan believed to contain some form of life.
“It was a risky procedure, we didn’t know if it would encounter impact,” Brown says.
“The Grand Finale data set is really unprecedented,” she says. “It was designed to give us this very special ability to have this snapshot of Saturn’s atmosphere.”
But even as the spacecraft plunged to its death, it was still sending data back to Earth.
EXPLORING OTHER WORLDS — The data not only help us better understand Saturn, but may also be useful in the quest to study exoplanets, and potentially find life outside the Solar System.
Most of the exoplanets scientists have found have been giant planets such as super-Earths or mini-Neptunes, and some of them had lost their atmosphere at some point during their existence.
Studying giant planets in our own Solar System may provide scientists with a more detailed model of what these faraway worlds look like than we could otherwise achieve with current technology.
“Understanding the planets in our Solar System is critical to understanding exoplanets in general,” Brown says.
Abstract:Temperatures of the outer planet thermospheres exceed those predicted by solar heating alone by several hundred degrees. Enough energy is deposited at auroral regions to heat the entire thermosphere, but models predict that equatorward distribution is inhibited by strong Coriolis forces and ion drag1,2. A better understanding of auroral energy deposition and circulation are critical to solving this so-called energy crisis. Stellar occultations observed by the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument during the Cassini Grand Finale were designed to map the thermosphere from pole to pole. We analyse these observations, together with earlier observations from 2016 and 2017, to create a two-dimensional map of densities and temperatures in Saturn’s thermosphere as a function of latitude and depth. The observed temperatures at auroral latitudes are cooler and peak at higher altitudes and lower latitudes than predicted by models, leading to a shallower meridional pressure gradient. Under modified geostrophy3, we infer slower westward zonal winds that extend to lower latitudes than predicted, supporting equatorward flow from approximately 70° to 30° latitude in both hemispheres. We also show evidence of atmospheric waves in the data that can contribute to equatorward redistribution of energy through zonal drag.
WATCH AS NASA'S JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE DEPLOYS ITS MASSIVE, HONEYCOMB-SHAPED MIRROR
WATCH AS NASA'S JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE DEPLOYS ITS MASSIVE, HONEYCOMB-SHAPED MIRROR
NASA’s James Webb Telescope is designed to peer back in time across the universe, observing distant galaxies that are over 13 billion light years away.
But to get a glimpse, the telescope needs a pretty massive mirror capable of revealing the cosmos in great detail. And now, you too can see it in all its golden, shimmery glory before it heads into space.
The telescope’s 21 feet-wide, 4-inch-thick mirror was unfurled in a video released by NASA this week.
When fully deployed on the telescope, it appeared like a great, golden, reflective honeycomb.
While beautiful, the video also demonstrates one of the critical, final tests that the James Webb Telescope has to undergo at the Northrop Grumman Space Systems in Redondo Beach, California. Once it passes these tests, it will be packaged up, and shipped to French Guiana for launch onboard an Ariane space rocket.
In the video, the telescope’s primary mirror is deployed to the same position that it will have when floating through space.
REFLECTIVE HEXAGONS — The large mirror is needed to reflect light from objects in space. Doing this essentially amplifies the light, enabling the telescope's instruments to better pick up on what it is seeing. But the James Webb Telescope requires a mirror so large, that it is too large to fit into the Ariane 5 rocket.
A mirror this large has never been launched into space, so the team of engineers behind the telescope had to get creative.
In order to fly the telescope into orbit, the mirror must be tucked away during the ride to space. The James Webb Telescope mirror was built in 18 separate segments on a structure that folds up, each of the segments is around 4.3 feet in diameter.
Engineers at the Northrop Grumman Space Systems performed the final deployment test for the telescope's massive mirror.NASA/Chris Gunn
The reason why the segments are shaped like hexagons is so that they could fit together with no gaps in between, according to NASA.
Once in orbit, the James Webb Telescope can fully spread its wings, deploying the segments to its sides and initiating detailed observations of our cosmos.
“Deploying both wings of the telescope while part of the fully assembled observatory is another significant milestone showing Webb will deploy properly in space,” Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.
“This is a great achievement and an inspiring image for the entire team.”
A HISTORY OF THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE
The James Webb Telescope has been in the works for more than a decade, since 1996. It is meant to be a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been feeding scientists with valuable data and imagery on the cosmos for 30 years.
Once it launches, the James Webb Telescope will be the most powerful telescope ever designed, with an unprecedented ability to observe objects that are far away in the universe and therefore unfold the history of the cosmos.
The James Webb Telescope in its full, shimmery glory.NASA
But it’s been a rather bumpy road to space for this large telescope.
As the novel coronavirus continues to threaten space agencies’ plans to carry on with space business as usual, the future remains uncertain for James Webb.
The final test was carried out by limited personnel at Northrop Grumman before NASA shutdown all testing or integration operations. The agency wants to limit the number of its employees on site to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
NASA will reassess the situation for both the James Webb Telescope and its other science operations within the next couple of weeks, and make decisions accordingly. We hope that — sooner rather than later — we might see this gigantic honeycomb make its way out into the cosmos.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover @NASAPersevere Some of you spotted the special message I’m carrying to Mars along with the 10.9+ million names you all sent in. “Explore As One” is written in Morse code in the Sun’s rays, which connect our home planet with the one I’ll explore. Together, we persevere. http://go.nasa.gov/33S5SCa
On March 30th, NASA let the world know via tweet that its next Mars Rover, Perseverance, will carry the names of 10.9 million people etched on three silicon chips, essays of the 155 finalists in NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest, and a small plaque with a picture of the Sun, Earth and Mars, and a message – “Explore as One” – written in Morse code. Morse code? Are Martians still in the telegraph age?
This isn’t the first cryptic message NASA has left for extraterrestrials. In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts carried a silicon disc the size of a 50-cent piece (ask your grandpa how big that is) containing goodwill messages from leaders of 73 countries (the U.S. and its Cold War allies) and the names of the leaders of Congress, the four committees of the House and Senate responsible for legislation related to NASA, and NASA’s current and past administrators. Buzz Aldrin dropped it on the lunar surface (after being reminded by Neil Armstrong) right before they left the Moon. It’s probably covered in dust by now.
Apollo 11 disk
Equally famous and easier to interpret were the Pioneer Plaques attached to Pioneer 10 and 11, the first Earth ships (that we know of) known to have left the solar system. They contained a picture of a naked human couple (designed by Carl Sagan and drawn by his wife), along with illustrations intended to show where Earth is. To show how times have changed, many newspapers printing photos of the plaque in 1972 had to hide the man’s penis and the woman’s nipples. Would ETs be offended? Everything was written in English so experts were still thinking any being who picks it up has been monitoring our radio and television broadcasts.
Pioneer plaque
Voyagers 1 and 2 went beyond radio and TV to record albums (ask your grandfather). Carl Sagan was again involved in the design and selection. The record contains audio signals for 115 images, a selection of sounds of nature, actual musical selections (from Bach to Chuck Berry), greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages (a definite improvement) and a Morse code depiction of the Latin phrase “per aspera ad astra” – “through harsdship to the stars.” Fortunately for any ETs picking up one of the Voyagers, the gold record has pictorial instructions of how to listen to it and translate the pictures from the audio signals. And yes, there’s drawings of an anatomically correct naked male and naked female.
Voyager Gold Record
The next spaceship to head out of the solar system was the New Horizons. It was originally supposed to complete its mission at Pluto and then receive a digital signal from Earth called the One Earth Message. Similar in concept to the Voyager Gold Records, the One Message would contain digital (not analog) images submitted and selected by people around the world. This crowd-sourced message could even be updated as long as there was contact with New Horizons. Unfortunately, NASA never fully approved the idea and it didn’t happen. Instead, ETs pulling New Horizons into their own cargo bay will find some really lame stuff – two CDs of photos of the mission team and human faces (but no instructions on how to read them), a piece of another space ship that was not involved in the mission (?), two U.S. postage stamps and quarters (so they can mail a message back?), a nylon American flag (but no instructions on how to salute), and the ashes Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto (but no instructions on how to scatter them).
Here’s a quarter — call if you find this spaceship
Does it seem the messages are going downhill?
That brings us back to Perseverance and its Morse code greeting.
When most people think of a “UFO”, any number of things may come to mind. In likelihood, the many will envision a disc-shaped “flying saucer” or something similar; it is an image that has indelibly shaped our attitudes about unidentified flying objects since 1947 when American newspapers first began calling them “flying saucers.”
Not all reports of UFOs involve disc-shaped objects, of course. In fact, far more often, reports of unidentified flying objects involve sightings of things that are far less distinct: often they are merely unusual lights seen at night which, appropriately enough, the late J. Allen Hynek referred to as “nocturnal lights.”
Even if an object seen by the cover of night is unidentifiable at the time of observation, there are a lot of things that can be discerned about what that object or aircraft is not, based on light color and patterns.
The following account was shared with me by an observer named Jen, who observed the object in question shortly after 4 AM while traveling to work.
“I was driving to work and it was about 4:30 in the morning. There’s not usually anyone else on the road at that time except for a handful of other drivers,” Jen said, “so usually I can be a little more laid back.”
The moment she first observed lights in the distance ahead of her, she was aware that something about their appearance seemed unusual.
“[A]bout halfway down the road, going East, I saw a dark, bright blue light,” she recalled. “I thought it was weird but thought I’d just watch it until I got to work and see what happens. Well, the single light, turned into two dark blue bright lights.
Many observers would probably agree that the appearance of such lights would seem unusual, namely because blue is not a color that falls within FAA regulations.
“As it got closer,” Jen continued, “I could tell that they were attached to the same craft but one was in front and the other was slightly behind.
“Then a third dark blue bright light appeared at the tail end of the craft, as well as white blinking lights on what would be the wings. Now, I didn’t see an outline of any shape of the craft which held the lights, but you could tell they were all a part of the same object.”
Despite never seeing the shape of the plane or object to which they were attached, this report is curious since the coloration does not conform to any known aircraft lighting patterns. Add to that, as mentioned before, the fact that it falls outside of legal lighting for aircraft around the world, and it seems highly unlikely that this would have been any kind of conventional aircraft.
“I was sure it had to be some plane,” Jen added, “but it wasn’t flying high enough, (it was half the height of the mountains) and it was flying directly south, not trying to gain any altitude but not coming down like to land.
“I really wouldn’t have given it much thought but it was unlike any plane I’ve ever seen,” she concluded, “and apparently it’s illegal to fly with blue headlights in a plane.”
The white blinking lights oriented near the wingtips that Jen described seeing do match the position of strobe lights that appear on many conventional aircraft. However, according to federal aviation regulations part 25, pertaining to “regulations for transport aircraft,” section 1385 states that:
(b)Forward position lights. Forward position lights must consist of a red and a green light spaced laterally as far apart as practicable and installed forward on the airplane so that, with the airplane in the normal flying position, the red light is on the left side and the green light is on the right side. Each light must be approved.
Based on Jen’s description, in addition to there only being blue lights observable on the aircraft she witnessed, there did not appear to be any green or red position lights visible.
This presents a problem, since according to federal aviation regulations part 121, section 323, “No person may operate an airplane at night under this part unless it is equipped with the following instruments and equipment in addition to those required by §§121.305 through 121.321 and 121.803,” after which the first item listed under item “a” is position lights.
So what was the aircraft Jen observed in the early morning hours during her commute to work? It’s anybody’s guess, but it would seem pretty clear that its lighting pattern doesn’t seem to match any known aircraft and their operations under FAA regulations… and that, by definition, would make it an unidentified flying object, whatever its actual purpose and origins might have been.
For a long time, calling someone a “Neanderthal” was considered an insult to their intelligence. No long. A news study has turned it around and now calling someone a Neanderthal is a compliment … to their libido! Is humanity the by-product of Neanderthals doing more than just walking erect?
“A new study supports this notion, finding that people in Eurasia today have genetic material linked to Neanderthals from the Altai mountains in modern-day Siberia.”
That may not seem like a big deal since scientists have found Neanderthal DNA in the human genome, but that was in Eurasians and the Neanderthals were linked to remains found in the Vindija cave in Croatia. Omer Gokcumen, a University of Buffalo biologist, reveals in a new study published in the journal Genetics that his team of researchers had found Neanderthal DNA in Eurasians that traces back instead to the Altai mountains in what is now Siberia. How did this happen … scientifically speaking, of course?
“The picture in my mind now is we have all these archaic hominin populations in Europe, in Asia, in Siberia, in Africa. For one reason or another, the ancestors of modern humans in Africa start expanding in population, and as they expand their range, they meet with these other hominins and absorb their DNA, if you will.”
“Absorbed their DNA.” That a scientifically nice way of saying they had sex that resulted in babies. However, the phrasing of Gokcumen’s revelation raises an interesting question: were the ancestors of modern humans really horny or were the Neanderthals? Conversely, were the early humans really sexy or were the Neanderthals? Or was prehistoric Eurasia just one big free-love orgy between homo sapiens and Neanderthals … and what about the Denisovans?
“The story is not as neat as it was before. Every single ancient genome that is sequenced seems to create a completely new perspective in our understanding of human evolution, and every new genome that’s sequenced in the future may completely change the story again.”
The research concludes that each interbreeding population was different. The amount of “absorbing of DNA” varied based on geography and time period. Were the early Neanderthals sexier? Did the later ones feel these invading humans were taking advantage of them? More research is obviously necessary and it’s a foregone conclusion that more Neanderthal-human ‘absorbing’ will be found.
Perhaps the answer to all of these questions will boil down to finding out which one paid for dinner.
I found two ancient pyramids on Mars today in a NASA photo. Both pyramids are close to one anther and they both have entrances facing the NASA rover camera. They look ancient but has survived the test of time. Both pyramids are about three meters tall by five meters wide. A smaller species than us humans for sure, but nevertheless...an intelligent species.
I found this strange part of a structure in a Mars sol 3 photo. The photo is on the NASA site Midnightplanets, an official site run by scientists working at NASA.
The object I found has smooth edges and is rounded at its ends, almost like part of a wing from an aircraft that has been perfectly sliced open. The object is too smooth and too perfectly proportioned to be a natural. There is a rock like substance that appears to have flowed out of the inside of the wing and solidified into a solid hard substance.
This is absolute proof that an intelligent civilization once thrived on Mars.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO near Moon? Montréal, France – 26-Mar-2020
UFO near Moon? Montréal, France – 26-Mar-2020
These three cylindrical UFOs were filmed flying near the Moon on 26th March 2020. Filmed from Montreal, France.
Author’s report:
I regularly film the Moon by day, at the time of the first and last crescent. I think that if hidden activity must be visible on the Moon, it is at this moment, when the population does not observe it, because it is day and the first or last crescent makes it more discreet in the sky.
Plymouth, UK – 4. April 2020 Hey, I’m not sure what I saw tonight above Plymouth here in the UK, I was wondering if you had any ideas? This was taken tonight at 8:30pm our time, the object slowed down then began to move up and down, then accelerated hard beforing vanishing into thin air.. The light to the top left is thought to be the iss, the other object was much lower, lower than air craft flight seemingly.. Not moving in a straight line..
United States – 2nd April 2020 Don’t know what this was. From 38 to 45 seconds you can see i lost it and then it came at me. In tomahawk Wisconsin corner of hwy 8 and cty rd L
Evansville, Indiana – 30 March 2020 I seen five star like objects moving in East- Western direction in Evansville, Indiana at around 9 pm tonight. They were moving slowly and in a unison pattern. I video taped it, but it is not visible on my phone. You can kind of make out a few of them.
Victoria, Australia – 30 March 2020 Last night narre warren South was actually two of them too far apart to capture both for a good 45 mins . I noticed it just before midnight .
Boise, Idaho – 3/26/2020 Starting at approximately 9:20pm Mountain Time I witnessed 30-40 lights that were clearly in formation and on the same trajectory pass overhead. When I saw the first object I thought it was the International Space Station but the ISS did not pass over until 10:14pm. Then multiple similar lights kept following the first. Each was spaced out almost perfectly 15-20 seconds behind the preceding one. The path was from SW to NE. There was no sound, and no flashing strobes. The Flight Aware app did not show them as airplanes, and no satellite tracker had that many object listed. They all seemed to be in a line and traveled a similar speed as the ISS. I called several friends and family in town who stepped outside and also saw the procession.
London, UK – 26 March 2020 There are cigar shaped craft flying over north london right now. Both myself and my brother have seen a pulsating light and when we lifted the phone to record it vanished and on the next night we saw it again and I flashed a torch back towards it and it vanished again we also saw five what look like stars crusing around, these are on a daily basis but usually only one maybe two.
Portugal – 25 March 2020
Johnson City NY – 8:30p to 9:30 pm 03/25/20 close up encounter Out my upper eastern bedroom window. I saw a huge close up of a: Hovering Triangle Oblong orange lites & red round lites on 3 points. Not more than 100 ft from window & not more than 50 ft above neighbour’s house. It was at least 75ft W & 5 ft tall. I dont really care if people belive me or not but would appriciate it if you would let me know if you heard from othets of this in Johnson City NY Broome Co. or not? Also changed size and speed at least 3 times during hour sighting.
Nelson county KY – March 21, 2020 Bright round objects in perfect formation headed from west to east bound – watched for about 10 minutes in amazement. These were not planes. Each were about 10 seconds apart. Same intervals each disappearing in the same area. Have never seen anything like this before. Two of us saw the same thing. One UPS plane flew under these objects / lights appearing to almost collide. You could hear the plane but no sound from the white lights. The white lights looked like the size & brightness of a star. Each moving swift across the sky with the same exact distance between them and they just kept coming and then each disappeared one by one as they reached the same area in the sky – all at once they each faded away in the same manner. This was something to see! We were so amazed – we didn’t go to get our digital camera. By the time we thought about it and went in to get the camera – went back out and all activity stopped. We estimate there was atleast 1 every 10 seconds. We watched long enough to see at least 40. My husband saw this first just happened to be outside and looked up – called me to come out of the house and look so I did. I would not have believed otherwise. Wanted to report! This siting is in Nelson County, KY and was 9:20PM – 9:30PM. Curious if anyone else has seen this! Not sure where else to report.
Calgary, Canada – 20 March 2020 Hey. My friend and I and our kids saw something unexplainable flying over Calgary airports control tower on March 20th around 7-8pm
Tagum, Philippines – 17 March 2020 Hi, this is the photo my neice took last night 0400 in Tagum in Philippines. They said it was so bright amd makes eerie noise above the rooves of their houses. All of tjem were surprised to see a strange phenomena and mostly had never experienced such. None of them thought of taking video coz 4am is too early to wake up. But since they were awaken by the noise, they just took photo and went to sleep again.
Qaulicum Beach, BC Canada – March 14 2020 Last night I was witness to a UFO sighting here in Qualicum Beach , BC. It was about 10:30 pm and my daughter and I where on our outside hotter when all of a sudden we saw the most amazing and longest shooting star we have ever seen, after seeing this, we started talking about UFO’s and my many experiences in Mexico before. After a few minutes she went indoors and I remained in the hotter, just lying down looking at the beautiful night sky full of stars… it was then that I saw a huge triangular shape, almost transparent, see- through , and it had small triangles within, it must have been at least 100 meters of the ground and it was slow and steady, I saw it fly above me and then just flew away… I felt mesmerized and amazed, I felt a little bit of fear , but it quickly went away ,and after a few more minutes I came back indoors and told my wife and daughter about the incident. I just wanted to leave some kind of report of my experience last night, thank you for taking the time to read this. I have had many more experiences with UFO’s in Mexico, but this was my first here in Canada after 9 years living here. Now , I know they’re here , for some reason… this is very interesting! location Qualicum Beach BC date March 14th 2020 time Aprox. 10:40 pm duration of the sighting 15 sec. behaviour of the object(s) Flying low & steady colour of the object(s) Transparent shape of the object(s) Triangular any souds heard None weather conditions Clear night 4 C and how you lost sight of the object(s) It flew over head and kept on going on the same direction
United States – 14 March 2020 Saw these 3 fireballs seemingly floating in triangle formation. Caught two in camera then the other two went lights out. Five minutes later an obvious helicopter came circling by that route
London, UK – 11 March 2020 Hi just thought I would share this with you. North London happened tonight. Was there for about 10 mins. Went back about 30 mins later and it was gone.
11th of March 2020 at Newton Abbot Devon England I had an incredible signing today. I was in the back garden sky watching and I had just zoomed in on a clear blue part of the sky with my Nikon P900 camera, when all of a sudden a saucer shaped craft flew directly into view. I was looking through the viewfinder at the time and I was very surprised by what I saw. I really wasn’t expecting to see any UFOs that close up. I was totally amazed. I could see that the surface of the saucer was very dirty looking like it was covered in soot, but what really caught my eye was the fact that I could see some sort of violet coloured energy being discharged from the back of the saucer shaped craft as it moved forwards through the air. I had never seen anything quite like it before. I could hardly believe what I was seeing… I quickly took a photograph of the saucer while moving the camera to follow the saucer as it flew across the sky. I was trying my best to hold the camera steady but it was almost impossible at such high magnification. The saucer then increased it’s speed and unfortunately I lost sight of it. I tried to reacquire the saucer in the viewfinder of the camera but it was no good it was gone. The saucer had been at a very high altitude and I definitely wouldn’t of seen it without my Nikon P900 camera. It was just sheer luck that I was already zoomed in to that part of the sky when the saucer had flown in to view. What on earth could this strange unidentified saucer craft be? The photograph was taken at 10:58 AM on the 11th of March 2020 at Newton Abbot Devon England. All the best John.
Pass-A-Grille, Florida – 27 November 2019 I took this video on my iPhone on Nov 27 at Pass-A-Grille, which is on the south end of St Petersburg Beach in FL. This is the second red object I saw, I watched the first one without taking out my phone, then saw this one and took the video. Sorry it is so poor quality. Each red object appears as it it took off maybe from the Clearwater beach area (you can see for beach for miles at the end where I was), and pretty much followed the beach toward my location, like it were a helicopter flying low…but it was going pretty fast. Then, nearly right in front of me, each too a sharp right turn, traveling out toward the open gulf, rapidly disappearing, no sound. You can see the object seems to be pulsating or rotating and it was red. That’s it. Steve
Panama – 2013 I looked through your site and did not see a UFO like the one I photographed quite by chance in The Republic of Panama 2013. It had to be enlarged of course but it is a UFO.
UFOs Show Up for History Channel's Livestream of Skinwalker Ranch
UFOs Show Up for History Channel's Livestream of Skinwalker Ranch
A night before the History Channel premier of "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch," viewers were encouraged to go to the network's YouTube page to watch a 12-hour live surveillance of the ranch.
I needed little encouraging.
Although I wasn't able to glue my eyes to the livestream for the full 12 hours (as I'm pretty sure that's not humanely possibly), I watched a lot of the livestream back later, skipping forward and backward through the hours, trying to find something intriguing.
I didn't find any gray aliens, shape-shifting witches, or Bigfoot. But I did find some UFOs.
I also found comments and reports from others who'd watched the livestream, and it seemed that I wasn't alone. Others had seen things, too! Lots of things!
In fact, so many things, that I don't have the time to share it all in this story today. So, here are just a handful of the UFOs caught on camera over Skinwalker Ranch the night of the History Channel livestream (March 30th, 2020)... do you think you can explain these videos? Were you watching the livestream as well? Did you see anything weird? Comment below!
Star-like object slowly descends behind pole:
Start watching at the 6:28:49 mark in the video and see screenshots below:
Bright spherical light with green triangle overtakes camera:
(Possible explanation: a lens flare caused by the camera being adjusted...or a UFO shining its lights, of course.)
Start watching at the 3:07:10 mark in the video and see screenshots below:
Strange sounds can be heard before a single bright flash of light:
(Possible explanation: thunderstorm...or an alien spaceship, naturally.)
Start watching at the 3:44:59 mark in the video and see screenshots below (thanks to Twitter user, e2_Hawkeye, for this one):
If you missed the 12-hour livestream, it's still available for playback. You can also catch the History Channel series "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" Tuesday nights at 10/9 central.
Early Mars Had Multiple Water Sources, New Study Shows
Early Mars Had Multiple Water Sources, New Study Shows
An analysis of two Martian meteorites — Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 and Allan Hills (ALH) 84001 — shows that Mars likely received water from at least two vastly different sources early in its history; the variability implies that Mars, unlike Earth and the Moon, never had a global ocean of magma.
This computer-generated view depicts part of Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight. At top right is NWA 7034.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of New Mexico / Sci-News.com.
“These two different sources of water in Mars’ interior might be telling us something about the kinds of objects that were available to coalesce into the inner, rocky planets,” said Dr. Jessica Barnes, a researcher at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
“Two distinct planetesimals with vastly different water contents could have collided and never fully mixed. This context is also important for understanding the past habitability and astrobiology of Mars.”
Dr. Barnes and colleagues were able to piece together Mars’ water history by looking for clues in two isotopes of hydrogen: light hydrogen and deuterium.
The researchers analyzed samples they knew were originated from the Martian crust: NWA 7034 (also known as the Black Beauty meteorite) and ALH 84001 meteorites.
Black Beauty was especially helpful because it’s a mashup of surface material from many different points in Mars’ history.
“This allowed us to form an idea of what Mars’ crust looked like over several billions of years,” Dr. Barnes said.
The isotopic ratios of the meteorite samples fell about midway between the value for Earth rocks and Mars’ atmosphere.
When the team’s findings were compared with previous studies, including results from NASA’s Curiosity rover, it seems that this was the case for most of Mars’ 4 billion-plus-year history.
“We thought, ok this is interesting, but also kind of weird. How do we explain this dichotomy where the Martian atmosphere is being fractionated, but the crust is basically staying the same over geological time?” Dr. Barnes said.
The scientists also grappled with trying to explain why the crust seemed so different from the Martian mantle, the rock later which lies below.
“If you try and explain this fairly constant isotopic ratio of Mars’ crust, you really can’t use the atmosphere to do that. But we know how crusts are formed. They’re formed from molten material from the interior that solidifies on the surface,” Dr. Barnes said.
“The prevailing hypothesis before we started this work was that the interior of Mars was more Earthlike and unfractionated, and so the variability in hydrogen isotope ratios within Martian samples was due to either terrestrial contamination or atmospheric implantation as it made its way off Mars.”
Illustration showing the present-day hydrogen reservoirs in and on Mars. The mass fractions (pie chart) of Martian water are based on the mass of water in the bulk crust (C), the mantle (M) and the combined inventory (A) of the atmosphere and polar ice deposits (PID). The mantle mass fraction is the combination of depleted shergottites (DS) and enriched shergottites (ES).
Image credit: Barnes et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0552-y.
The idea that Mars’ interior was Earthlike in composition came from one study of a Martian meteorite thought to have originated from the mantle — the interior between the planet’s core and its surface crust.
“However, Martian meteorites basically plot all over the place, and so trying to figure out what these samples are actually telling us about water in the mantle of Mars has historically been a challenge,” Dr. Barnes said.
“The fact that our data for the crust was so different prompted us to go back through the scientific literature and scrutinize the data.”
The study authors found that two geochemically different types of Martian volcanic rocks — enriched shergottites and depleted shergottites — contain water with different hydrogen isotope ratios.
Enriched shergottites contain more deuterium than the depleted shergottites, which are more Earth-like, they found.
“It turns out that if you mix different proportions of hydrogen from these two kinds of shergottites, you can get the crustal value,” Dr. Barnes said.
“We think that the shergottites are recording the signatures of two different hydrogen — and by extension, water — reservoirs within Mars. The stark difference hints to them that more than one source might have contributed water to Mars and that Mars did not have a global magma ocean.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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J.J. Barnes et al. Multiple early-formed water reservoirs in the interior of Mars. Nat. Geosci, published March 30, 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0552-y
Homo erectus Existed 200,000 Years Earlier than Previously Thought
Homo erectus Existed 200,000 Years Earlier than Previously Thought
An international team of paleoanthropologists has unearthed a 2-million-year-old skull of Homo erectus, the first of our ancestors to be nearly human-like in their anatomy and aspects of their behavior, in the fossil-rich Drimolen cave system north of Johannesburg, South Africa.
This is an artist’s reconstruction of female Homo erectus from Dmanisi, Georgia. Image credit: Elisabeth Daynes, via tabula.ge.
Homo erectus is one of our direct human ancestors and is best known for migrating out of Africa into the rest of the world.
They walked upright and were a more human-like species than the other hominins found in the Cradle of Humankind.
Homo erectus had shorter arms and longer legs. They could walk and run for longer distances over the African grasslands than the others.
“The Homo erectus skull we found shows its brain was only slightly smaller than other examples of adult Homo erectus,” said Professor Andy Herries, a researcher at La Trobe University and the University of Johannesburg and corresponding author of a paper published in the journal Science.
“It samples a part of human evolutionary history when our ancestors were walking fully upright, making stone tools, starting to emigrate out of Africa, but before they had developed large brains.”
The 2-million-year-old fossil, designated DNH 134, was reconstructed from more than 150 individual fragments recovered from the Drimolen site over a five-year period.
“The newly-discovered fossil demonstrates that Homo erectus, our direct ancestor, clearly evolved in Africa,” added co-author Jesse Martin, a Ph.D. student at La Trobe University.
The DNH 134 Homo erectus cranium from South Africa.
Image credit: Jesse Martin / Reanud Joannes-Boyau / Andy I. R. Herries.
The age of the DNH 134 skullcap shows something else — that at least three hominins lived in southern Africa at the same time.
“Unlike the world today, where we are the only human species, two million years ago our direct ancestor was not alone,” Professor Herries said.
“We can now say Homo erectus shared the landscape with two other types of humans in South Africa, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus.”
“This suggests that one of these other human species, Australopithecus sediba, may not have been the direct ancestor of Homo erectus, or us, as previously hypothesized.”
“The new crania offered an unparalleled insight into how three different human species, with quite different adaptations, shared a changing environment together,” said co-author Angeline Leece, a Ph.D. student at La Trobe University.
“The discovery raises some intriguing questions about how these three unique species lived and survived on the landscape,” said co-author Dr. Justin Adams, a researcher at Monash University.
“One of the questions that interests us is what role changing habitats, resources, and the unique biological adaptations of early Homo erectus may have played in the eventual extinction of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa.”
“Similar trends are also seen in other mammal species at this time. For example, there are more than one species of false saber-tooth cat, Dinofelis, at the site — one of which became extinct after two million years.”
“Our data reinforces the fact that South Africa represented a truly unique mixture of evolutionary lineages — a blended community of ancient and modern mammal species that was transitioning as climates and ecosystems changed.”
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Andy I.R. Herries et al. 2020. Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa. Science 368 (6486): eaaw7293; doi: 10.1126/science.aaw7293
Key point: Some assert human errors, but these pilots say this is what they saw...
By now you’ve probably read the New York Times article detailing a UFO research program run by the Pentagon which received $22 million — a tiny amount by Defense Department standards — from 2007 to at least 2012. The disclosure of the program is the biggest such reveal since Project Blue Book of the 1950s and 1960s and the French government’s 1999 COMETA Report.
If that wasn’t strange enough, the article included declassified footage from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter’s AN/ASQ-228 sensor display as it trailed a still-unidentified flying object over the Pacific near San Diego on Nov. 14, 2004.
In the footage, the Super Hornet pilot, while traveling at 252 knots at nearly 20,000 feet, switched between his display’s infrared and visual modes as the sensor tried to lock onto the blurry, oblong or pill-shaped object. The flying object appeared white in IR mode, and black in TV mode — indicating that whatever it was, the sensor had picked up on the object’s emission, temperature or reflection.
The video comes from the same incident when Cmdr. David Fravor, a veteran Navy pilot assigned to the USS Nimitz carrier fighter squadron VFA-41 Black Aces, was on a training mission off San Diego. “It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” Fravor told the Washington Post. Telling the paper that he believes it was “not from the Earth.”
During an exercise, commanders ordered Fravor to intercept an object that was appearing at 80,000 feet — above the range of Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Princeton’s SPY-1 air-search radar — before dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet. “Officials told they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks,” the paper reported.
The story that followed has circulated in the military aviation world and fighter community for several years, including this write-up by former Navy F-14A Tomcat pilot Paco Chierici at Fighter Sweep. With orders to intercept the object, Fravor in his jet — callsign FASTEAGLE 01 — headed toward with aid from an E-2 Hawkeye early warning and control plane.
The Hawkeye’s sensors, however, couldn’t detect the object and vector him toward it, so Princeton directed FASTEAGLE 01 and Fravor’s wingman, FASETEAGLE 02 to the location, and even asked Fravor whether he was carrying weapons — he wasn’t. He just had two training missiles. Below the jets, Fravor saw whitewater sloshing in the blue ocean.
All four aircrew were eyes out from this point forward. The first unusual indication Dave picked up was the area of whitewater on the surface that Cheeks was looking at over his shoulder as he flew away. He remembers thinking it was about the size of a 737 and maybe the contact they had been vectored on had been an airliner that had just crashed. He maneuvered his F-18 lower to get a better look. As he was descending through about 20K he was startled by the sight of a white object that was moving about just over the frothing water. It was all white, featureless, oblong and making minor lateral movements while staying at a consistent low altitude over the disk of turbulent water.
[…]
In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier. They described it as uniformly white, about 46 feet long (roughly fighter-sized), having a discernible midline horizontal axis (like a fuselage) but having no visible windows, nacelles, wings or propulsion systems.
There was no apparent exhaust or rotor wash, either. The pill-shaped object then “oriented one of its skinny ends towards him,” and rose in a “right 2-circle flow” — fighter speak for when each aircraft have their noses pointed at each other’s tails. The object then accelerated away at “multi-Mach” speed.
The video of the AN/ASQ-228 sensor display occurred later in the day with a different set of fighters. The object at this point appeared stationary before taking off.
This is consistent with a U.S. Navy report obtained by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a UFO research company which published the footage. The Navy pilots, apparently, first believed the object could have been a classified missile test from a submarine. The Navy report cited a source who indicated the object maneuvered in a manner “that seemed to defy the laws of physics” and “‘tumbled’ into nonsensical angles that made any engagement by the F-18 impossible.”
So what was it? A secret U.S. test project? A classified drone or hypersonic weapon? A maneuverable reentry vehicle or something like DARPA’s Falcon Project? Naval Air Systems Command, which tests airborne weapons, has 36,000 square miles of controlled sea and airspace off the Southern Californian coast. And the Falcon Project’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 has reached Mach 22 — albeit six years after the 2004 object sighting in the Pacific.
Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.
Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.
Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.
Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.
I was on board the USS Princeton (2001-2005) when this all went down. We actually went to GQ (General Quarters) for about 4 hours as all if this was going down. I’ve been telling everyone about this even, but have gotten the usual “yeah right” look when I tell them about it. I saw the video after it happened, but didn’t think that it would somehow make it’s way to the public, considering all of the “security” that surrounded the issue.
Crazy how the world turns, isn’t it?!
Thank you for giving this event life! I no longer look like a tin foil hat wearing idiot!
It's possible that the story of the Men in Black, the mysterious figures that would become the subject of fascination in UFO conspiracy circles and eventually break into mainstream popular culture, can be traced back to one day: June 27, 1947. It's quite possible that it all started with a man, a boy and a dog on a boat.
As the story goes, Harold Dahl was on a conservation mission on the Puget Sound near the eastern shore of Washington’s Maury Island, gathering logs, when he saw six donut-shaped obstacles hovering about a half a mile above his boat. Before long, one of them fell nearly 1,500 feet, followed by raining, metallic debris, some of which hit Dahl’s son, Charles, on his arm, as well as the family dog, who didn’t survive the ordeal. Dahl was able to take some pictures of the aircraft with his camera, which he later showed to his supervisor, Fred Crisman. A skeptical Crisman went back to the scene to look for himself and saw a strange aircraft with his own eyes.
The following morning, Dahl was visited by a man in a black suit. They end up at a local diner, where the man was able to recount in extraordinary detail what Dahl had just experienced. “What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said, according to author Gray Barker’s 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Dahl was told not to speak of the incident. If he did, bad things would happen.
The supposed events of Maury Island have continued to fuel conspiracy theories to this day, even though a U.S. government investigation deemed it a hoax after Dahl and Crimson later admitted as much. In particular, the mention of the man in the black suit would evolve into a key obsession for UFO enthusiasts and spread into American popular culture, thanks to a comic-book series and a blockbuster movie trilogy.
In all of their different incarnations, the Men in Black (MIB) usually have one main purpose: to muzzle witnesses of strange, paranormal phenomena. They almost always wear black suits and hats with dark sunglasses, drive black cars and arrive in groups of two or three. Some describe them as one would an FBI agent, while others recall the MIB as having strange appearances, sometimes with supernatural features like glowing eyes and strange complexions.
So how did we get from Harold Dahl to Will Smith?
"The transformation of the story from a first press report to a folkloric tale to a comic book and now to a film illustrates how the myth is transformed,” wrote Phil Patton in The New York Times around the time the first Men in Black movie was released in 1997. “That process is not unlike the children's game of 'telephone' or what the literary critic Harold Bloom calls 'innovation by misinterpretation.' "
Sticking with the telephone analogy, the first call was made to Kenneth Arnold, a pilot who had his own alleged UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington. Though it happened three days after the Maury Island incident, it was the first widely reported sighting and it “touched off the saucer sensation,” as was written in a 1949 government report on “Flying Saucers.”
The report states that Dahl and Crimson reached out to a Chicago magazine in an attempt to sell their story, and the magazine editor then contacted Arnold, hoping he could help verify their account. Arnold then “summoned two officers of Army A-2 Intelligence to aid in the investigation of Dahl and Crisman's claim,” according to the report.
In July 1947, two Army A-2 Intelligence officers came to investigate. After leaving in their B-25 the next day, the plane caught fire and crashed, killing both officers and doing nothing to quiet UFO conspiracists.
But the Maury Island story gained little notice in the UFO community until Barker’s 1956 book, in which he wrote of his “file on the Maury Island case” that largely consisted of the writings by Ray Palmer, the Chicago magazine editor referred to in the government’s report. Barker went on to connect the dots between “the man, who wore a black suit” who took Dahl to breakfast and three similarly dressed men who allegedly visited a young UFO enthusiast named Albert K. Bender in 1953.
It was Bender who “almost single-handedly ushered in the plague of the Men in Black—just as Arnold inaugurated the era of the UFO,” Ufologist Nick Redfern wrote in his book The Real Men in Black. But it was Barker’s book that told Bender’s story, thus introducing the concept of the MIB to a much wider audience.
(The telephone-game analogy is still holding.)
Kenneth Arnold, center, looks at a photo of an unidentified flying object they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington with pilots E.J. Smith and Ralph E. Stevens.
“It still has an important legacy,” said Robert Sheaffer, a UFO researcher. “Before its publication, nobody outside a very narrow group of subscribers to flying-saucer newsletters had ever heard of Bender, or his MIB.”
Barker described Bender’s visitors as: “Three men in black suits with threatening expressions on their faces. Three men who walk in on you and make certain demands. Three men who know that you know what the saucers really are!”
Bender, in his own 1962 book Flying Saucers and the Three Men, described the MIB in much more frightening language.
“They floated about a foot off the floor… They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style. The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them… The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs… They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable,” wrote Bender.
Barker would go on to write several more books related to the paranormal and UFOs, including 1970’s The Silver Bridge, which helped spread the story of another popular paranormal figure, the creature known as Mothman. But how much of his writing was done in good faith has been called into question by many in the UFO-research community.
“Barker made it clear to me that he did not take the MIB or Mothman very seriously,” says Sheaffer, who corresponded with Barker on occasion. “However, he believed that there was still 'something mysterious' about the whole UFO and paranormal thing.”
Regardless of Barker’s motives, countless MIB encounters have been reported since They Knew Too Much was published nearly 60 years ago, and at least one more movie is on the way.
It's possible that Mercury once held the ingredients for life.
In 1974, NASA's Mariner 10 probe flew by Mercury and observed a cracked, cratered landscape. Now, according to one new theory, Mercury's fractured "chaotic terrain" could've been formed by volatiles — elements and compounds that can easily jump from a gas to a liquid or solid — under the surface.
Volatiles, a chemical category that includes water, are essential for sparking and supporting life as we know it here on Earth. So, their potential presence on Mercury is an intriguing development. The study, led by Alexis P. Rodriguez, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, took a closer look at Mercury'schaotic terrain and the possibility that volatiles once shaped a planet with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, a planet that has forever been thought of as "completely inhospitable."
For decades, scientists have studied Mercury's chaotic terrain — a landscape made up of the planet's cracked and ragged surface, complete with jagged, broken-up rocks, sharp peaks and craters.
Mars has chaotic terrain as well, but the Red Planet features connect much more obviously to outflow channels on the Martian surface. With no such channels on Mercury, researchers instead tied the terrain to a powerful asteroid impact that left the Caloris basin, a massive crater still visible on the planet's surface. Until now, it was thought that Mercury's chaotic terrain was created by earthquakes that ravaged Mercury following the impact.
But in the new study, researchers suggest that this couldn't be possible because the timing just doesn't make sense.
"A key to the discovery was the finding that the development of the chaotic terrains persisted until approximately 1.8 billion years ago, 2 billion years after the Caloris basin formed," co-author Daniel Berman, also of the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement.
This was the "first, kind of, smoking gun," Rodriguez told Space.com. The researchers were able to date these features using data and images from NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft, which studied Mercury from orbit from 2011 to 2015. The team determined the ages of surface features including the chaotic terrain and the crater formed from the asteroid impact.
Additionally, as Rodriguez explained, the scientists noticed that there were many small features like tiny craters still intact in these terrains. With such a massive asteroid impact, "think about the worst earthquakes you could ever imagine," Rodriguez said. "Instead of bringing down buildings you're bringing down mountains … entire mountain ranges."
The researchers reasoned that, if earthquakes following the impact caused the chaotic terrain, then those smaller features wouldn't have been preserved. These observations informed the team/s findings that this previous notion about the chaotic terrain's formation was flawed.
Missing material
But observations have also shown that some parts of the surface features have dropped, as if something below the surface simply gave way. And, as Rodriguez put it, when earthquakes cause buildings to fall, that matter spreads out over the surface. But in this case, they found that there was a whole bunch of matter that should've been in the chaotic terrain that seemed to be missing.
Keeping the conservation of matter in mind, the team suggests in this study that, instead of an impact and earthquakes causing the planet's surface to crack, volatiles under the surface created these features.
"In this case, we're seeing very clear drops in elevation, very, very abrupt surface losses that indicate that the materials were removed somehow," Rodriguez said.
Illustration of the solar system, showing the paths of the eight major planets as they orbit the Sun, plus the asteroids and comets. The four inner planets are, from inner to outer, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The four outer planets are, inner to outer, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
They concluded that it's much more likely that volatiles underneath Mercury's surface were heated by magma even farther down. Because of this heating, the volatiles became gaseous and sublimated.
"Maybe these materials were volatile and they were transported away, and they could've condensed in other parts of the planet, or maybe they were entirely removed from the planet by solar winds," he added.
The sudden loss of this material is what the scientists think caused the planet's surface to crack and fall apart, creating the chaotic terrain we see today.
So how could volatiles, which are essential to life here on Earth, survive on a planet whose daytime temperatures soar to 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius) and drop to minus 290 degrees F (minus 180 C) at night?
While the planet's surface swings wildly between temperature extremes, just below the surface, temperatures are milder, Rodriguez explained.
Rodriguez said that it's "likely that there was some sort of water that formed" in part of Mercury's crust. But the team cannot yet tell exactly what volatiles were present when the planet's surface broke apart.
However, not only are the researchers continuing this work to find an answer to that question, they are also working to understand a much more recent phenomenon.
The future on Mercury
While these events happened billions of years ago, "there is evidence of recent volatile removal within the chaotic terrain … maybe ongoing right now," Rodriguez said.
Mercury planet solar lens flare. Elements of this image furnished by NASA
He explained that, following this study, researchers will be working on "the possibility of selecting a landing site where we could potentially sample these volatile-rich materials using some type of lander."
This work was published March 16 in the journal Scientific Reports
As unlikely as it may sound, Mercury may have once been able to support subsurface microscopic life, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute.
Mercury – closest planet to the sun in our solar system – as seen during the first flyby of the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008.
When it comes to the possibility of life elsewhere in our solar system, Mercury is easily one of the last places you’d think of. Being the closest planet to the sun – with no true atmosphere – it is a broiling, uninhabitable place of desolation. But was it always like that? As unlikely as it seems, a new study announced by researchers at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) suggests that some regions in Mercury’s subsurface might have once been hospitable enough for prebiotic chemistry or – perhaps – even simple microscopic lifeforms.
The intriguing findings were published in a new peer-reviewed paper in Scientific Reports on March 16, 2020.
The study focuses on Mercury’s chaotic terrain (aka its weird terrain): vast, cratered and “knobby” landscapes first seen by the Mariner 10 flybys in 1974. There are evolving ideas on how it came to be, but – according to the new study – this terrain was created by the removal of massive amounts of volatiles – chemical elements and compounds with low boiling points – in Mercury’s upper crust (and not simply seismic disturbances from the Caloris Basin impact as long thought).
The chaotic terrain studied is antipodal – on the direct opposite side of the planet from – the Caloris Basin. The new analysis is based on much higher-resolution images taken later by the MESSENGER spacecraft. From the paper:
Mercury’s images obtained by the 1974 Mariner 10 flybys show extensive cratered landscapes degraded into vast knob fields, known as chaotic terrain (AKA hilly and lineated terrain). For nearly half a century, it was considered that these terrains formed due to catastrophic quakes and ejecta fallout produced by the antipodal Caloris Basin impact. Here, we present the terrains’ first geologic examination based on higher spatial resolution MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging) imagery and laser altimeter topography. Our surface age determinations indicate that their development persisted until ~1.8 Ga, or ~2 Gyrs after the Caloris Basin formed.
Furthermore, we identified multiple chaotic terrains with no antipodal impact basins; hence a new geological explanation is needed. Our examination of the Caloris Basin’s antipodal chaotic terrain reveals multi-kilometer surface elevation losses and widespread landform retention, indicating an origin due to major, gradual collapse of a volatile-rich layer. Crater interior plains, possibly lavas, share the chaotic terrains’ age, suggesting a development associated with a geothermal disturbance above intrusive magma bodies, which best explains their regionality and the enormity of the apparent volume losses involved in their development. Furthermore, evidence of localized, surficial collapse, might reflect a complementary, and perhaps longer lasting, devolatilization history by solar heating.
Map of a chaotic terrain on Mercury (white outline). This region is on the antipode – the opposite point on the sphere of the planet – from the Caloris basin.
Illustrations depicting the formation of chaotic terrains on Mercury. (A) A perspective cross-sectional view of Mercury’s cratered terrains undergoing structurally controlled upper crustal devolatilization and collapse. (B) Chaotic terrain landscape following large-scale volatile losses from the upper crust.
The findings mean that Mercury had a thick volatile-rich – possibly but not necessarily water-rich – crust in this location. Mercury’s surface temperature reaches a scorching 430 degrees Celsius [800 degrees Fahrenheit] during the daytime, and in the absence of an atmosphere, it plummets to -180 degrees Celsius [-290 F] at night. So, its surface environments have rightfully been out of scientific consideration as a possible host of life. However, the paper raises the prospect that some subsurface regions of Mercury have shown capacity for hosting life.
The materials in the chaotic terrains were once part of geologic deposits deep underground, where crustal volatiles would have been protected. Those volatiles could have included water or water ice. PSI coauthor Daniel Berman said:
The deep valleys and enormous mountains that now characterize the chaotic terrains were once part of volatile-rich geologic deposits a few kilometers deep, and do not consist of ancient cratered surfaces that were seismically disturbed due to the formation of Mercury’s Caloris impact basin on the opposite side of the planet, as some scientists had speculated. A key to the discovery was the finding that the development of the chaotic terrains persisted until approximately 1.8 billion years ago, 2 billion years after the Caloris Basin formed.
Another coauthor, Gregory Leonard at the University of Arizona, said:
We identified multi-kilometer surface elevation losses within the chaotic terrains located at the Caloris Basin’s antipode. This finding indicates that enormous volumes of crustal volatiles turned into gas and escaped the planet’s upper crust over a surface area slightly larger than that of California, approximately 500,000 square kilometers [200,000 sq miles].
It has been thought that Mercury’s chaotic terrain was formed by the impact that created the Caloris Basin, but the new research suggests it may have been formed by the removal of crustal volatiles instead.
Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Carnegie Institution of Washington.
As Rodriguez also noted, the chaotic terrains on Mercury appear to be global, and might be found elsewhere as well, on Mercury-like exoplanets:
Our investigation also shows that there are also numerous extensive chaotic terrains in other regions of the planet, which have latitudinal distributions ranging from equatorial to subpolar. Hence, Mercury’s volatile-rich crust appears to be greater than regional, perhaps global, in extent, and it is most likely made up of compositionally diverse volatile compounds. The apparent compositional diversity suggests that the planet’s upper crust might effectively be comprised of a large number of compositional and thermal conditions, some perhaps habitable, existing in Mercury-like exoplanets.
But just how did the crustal volatiles get released from the subsurface? According to PSI scientist Kevin Webster, it was most likely due to volcanoes:
Vast lava fields formed soon after the development of the chaotic terrains, so volcanic heat could have destabilized and released the apparently vast volumes of crustal volatiles.
As for how Mercury obtained its volatiles in the first place, PSI scientist and coauthor Jeff Kargel added:
We also observe evidence of surficial devolatilization, probably caused by solar heating. If so, we have an opportunity to infer the range of Mercury’s volatile properties and compositions. A possibility is that Mercury’s volatile-rich crust was delivered via impacts from the frigid confines of the outer solar system or the main asteroid belt. Alternatively, volatiles were outgassed from the interior.
The battered surface of Mercury, as seen by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Bright rays radiate outward from Hokusai Crater in this view.
Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The researchers also noted that volatiles could have still been escaping from Mercury’s subsurface even much more recently, perhaps even still going on to this day. As Rodriguez noted:
Evidence of recent, and perhaps on-going, volatile losses from within near-surface geologic materials on Mercury has been previously documented through the investigation of small depressions known as hollows, which kind of resemble melt pits in terrestrial permafrost. However, an unresolved issue remains the age disparity between these hollows and their volatile-bearing geologic units, which are thought to be billions of years old. Our results suggest that some hollows might represent the locations where lavas or sublimation lags covering these ancient geologic materials underwent collapse. This is exciting because their distribution might highlight areas where we can effectively access volatile-rich material, that after billions of years existing in the subsurface, have been finally been exposed to the surface.
If Mercury’s early volatiles did include water or ice – something still unknown – then conceivably the planet could have had habitable niches in its subsurface. According to Kargel:
While not all volatiles make for habitability, water ice can if temperatures are right. Some of Mercury’s other volatiles may have added to the characteristics of a former aqueous niche. Even if habitable conditions existed only briefly, relics of prebiotic chemistry or rudimentary life still might exist in the chaotic terrains.
Alexis Rodriguez at PSI, lead author of the new study.
We also know that water ice still exists on Mercury today, in deep polar craters that are always in permanent shadow, and therefore much colder since there is no atmosphere to distribute heat from the sunlit regions. As PSI scientist Mark Sykes said:
If these results are confirmed, this and other similar areas of collapse on Mercury could be important considerations for future landing sites to investigate the origin of the planet’s volatile-rich crust and, perhaps, even its astrobiological potential.
The idea that Mercury could have supported life, or at least prebiotic chemistry, sounds outlandish at first thought, but – just maybe – this scorching, airless little world wasn’t always as inhospitable as it is now, at least underground.
Bottom line: Habitable conditions may have once existed in Mercury’s subsurface, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute.
Cette vidéo n'est pas de moi. Un ami me l'a transmis. Filmé vers Montréal en fin d'après midi avec un Nikon P1000
Il me raconte:
Je film régulièrement la Lune de jour, au moment du premier et dernier croissant. Je pense que si une activité cachée doit être visible sur la Lune, c'est à ce moment la, quand la population ne l'observe pas, parce qu'il fait jour et que le premier ou dernier croissant la rend plus discrète dans le ciel. Et après des centaines de vidéos, le 26 mars...
Here’s a question for all you stargazers out there: what can you see passing through the sky at night that resemble stars or satellites, but all moving in a row?
Many people have been asking this question recently, in light of unusual sightings of things in the night sky seen in a variety of locations across the globe.
One such report was shared with me by a pilot back in November, who gave the following description of an unusual looking string of lights he observed in the sky:
“Earlier this evening, at 35,000 feet and 2300z/7 pm Atlantic Standard time, I and my copilot saw a string of lights, high enough to be single points and not resolvable into objects, all irregularly strung out but in a perfect line and all with constant distances, covering in distance maybe 1/8 to 1/6 the arc of the sky, moving from roughly 335 degrees to 155 degrees on the compass and visible for 20-30 seconds.
“At the time we were near 23N, 74W or roughly due south of San Salvador island,” he recalled.
The time of the sighting was just after sundown, and the pilot (who requested that his name not be used) and his co-pilot observed the moon rising east of them.
“All told there were probably 15-20 points strung out irregularly but in a perfect line, with no ionization trails or burning visible.”
The pilot was perplexed by what they had seen and was unable to recall observing anything similar in the past. He also explained that he was familiar with the sorts of things common to the night sky on any clear night, which ranges from meteors to commercial satellites.
“I’ve seen a lot of meteors up here as most of my flying is at night, and these were not meteors. I checked my satellite tracking app on my phone, but it showed nothing.”
So what were the objects these pilots observed in the sky while flying near San Salvador Island back in November?
Recent reports indicate that similar observations have continued into 2020, particularly by witnesses in the southwest from states like California, to as far south Mexico. General descriptions given liken the objects to a “strange row of lights” seen passing through the night sky, usually just after sundown.
Although the pilot who contacted me in November was unsure of what the objects were that he and his co-pilot observed, he did have one idea about what could account for the lights they saw.
“I assume this is a string of low earth orbit satellites, or space junk,” he wrote to me, “but I honestly have no idea where to start.”
This is an excellent guess, especially on account of the fact SpaceX had just launched a series of satellites into space around the same time of the San Salvador sighting.
According to Gizmodo, “SpaceX launched 60 satellites into orbit back in May and another 60 in November 11 as part of the Starlink satellite constellation, meant to increase satellite internet access.”
Starlink satellites as seen from space shortly after launch in May 2019
(Credit: Starlink / Wikimedia Commons).
The satellites, according to Ryan F. Mandelbaum in his Gizmodo piece, “are also producing bright trains of lights across the sky, stoking UFO fears for those unaware of the satellites and distracting astronomers.”
Although the deployment of these satellites may increase the availability of satellite internet in some locales, not everyone is thrilled about SpaceX’s new project. Many astronomers worry that having a “night train” of satellites drifting through the sky poses the risk of “obscuring our natural view of the cosmos,” as well as causing interference with “important astronomical observations,” George Dvorsky writes.
Will SpaceX’s Starlink satellites prove to be beneficial in the long run, or simply a nuisance to astronomers and night sky “purists”? Although this remains to be seen, what’s for certain is that the Starlink array will become a common sight in the years to come for anyone who spends enough time looking at the night sky.
Russia is in many ways still mysterious land that many in the West consider to be rather murky and misunderstood. Buried within the files of the strange and paranormal there are numerous cases from Russia and the former Soviet Union that for whatever reasons have managed to slip through the cracks and remain forgotten conundrums that few people have ever even heard of, and some of these revolve around UFOs and alien beings in the frigid waters of this mysterious land. Here we will take a look at some remarkably odd accounts of UFOs and strange entities that orbit bodies of water in this secretive realm.
One very intriguing and spectacular account supposedly occurred in 1959 in what was then Soviet-controlled Poland. In February of that year, several witnesses in the area of a place called Gdynia observed a glowing light fall from the sky to go plunging into the frigid waters of the harbor, which was choked up with ice floes at the time. It apparently created quite a commotion at the time, and thinking that perhaps an aircraft had gone down there was a search and rescue effort launched with a team of divers. It was there down through the icy waters in the muck at the bottom that the divers would allegedly uncover a piece of shiny metal that had not rusted and was assumed to be part of whatever it was had come down out of the heavens.
According to the account, this metal piece was turned over to the Polish Navy, who made a preliminary examination of it before sending it off to the Polytechnic University of Gdynia, where it apparently vanished into the mists of time. In the meantime, the Navy closed the whole area down and restricted access, but the weirdness was only just beginning. A few days after the object had come down into the harbor, it was reported that several military personnel came across what was described as a “strange silhouette humanoid” that appeared to be wearing a uniform of some sort and was apparently injured, with burns on its face and crawling along the beach in exhaustion, wet and seeming to have crept out of the water. The soldiers tried to communicate with the strange humanoid, which appeared to be male, but they were not familiar with the language he spoke. As he was obviously seriously injured, it was arranged to bring this being to the hospital, where it would get even stranger still.
Once at the hospital it was immediately clear that this humanoid was weirder than anyone had thought. His uniform was made of some sort of strange metallic material that no one recognized, and no matter what medical staff did they seemed to be unable to remove it. The uniform had no discernible buttons, zippers, or any way to put it on or take it off, and the material it was constructed of apparently could not be cut or torn. In overall appearance he appeared to be almost identical to a human being, although there were anomalies, such as extra digits on his fingers and toes, and other minor differences that marked him as being not human. Doctors tended as well as they could to the burns on the being’s face, but when they removed an armband on the uniform he apparently went into some sort of cardiac arrest and died.
The body was sent in for an autopsy, and they purportedly needed specialized equipment to remove that odd uniform. When the body was examined, the humanoid was purportedly found to have a completely different circulatory system than human beings, as well as different organs. Unbelievably there was another of these creatures found on the same beach in the meantime, and this one apparently fell into a coma-like state and was placed in some sort of frozen stasis, the body whisked away and hidden somewhere. What happened to these two bodies and that piece of what is assumed was their crashed ship? No one seems to know. The case has been picked up by UFOlogists over the years and has been written of at length by UFO researcher Arthur Shuttlewood and others, but there seems to be very little to verify the story, no witnesses that have been interviewed, and it has the feel of being almost urban legend rather than anything else. However, one does wonder just what happened here, if anything.
An even earlier account of a similar type of apparent UFO crash into a body of water comes to us from November of 1928, at remote Lake Vedlozero, near Shuknavolok, in Russia’s Yaroslavl province. One evening an incandescent object spewing flames was seen to crash into the lake, and while this may sound like it surely must have been a meteor there would be a series of very strange sightings that suggested otherwise. Shortly after this object came down, people would begin to report seeing what they called “water goblins” in the lake or wandering along the shore, described as dwarfish beings with hairless rounded heads and long thin arms and legs. In some reports they were described as wearing metallic shiny one-piece suits of some sort. It is possible that these were misidentification of the seals that occasionally appear in the lake, but with very little other information on this case it is hard to say.
These are bizarre cases to be sure, but perhaps not quite as much so as what happened to a Russian submariner and diver named Nikolay M., as he was diving one day in 1997 in the Bay of Finland, in the Saint Petersburg region of Russia. Nikolay allegedly was diving in shallow water when he saw an elongated object on the bottom which was reminiscent of a cucumber. He at first took it to be a part of some sort of wreckage, and tried to get it to the surface by tying some old rope around it, but he was ultimately unable to budge the odd object. Undeterred, he decided to actually haul it out with his car, which was on shore and not that far away. He retrieved a pneumatic drill in order to drill holes in the thing to attack a sling to it, but when he started drilling into the object it began to issue forth streamers of a thick dark liquid like oil, which crept out into the water. In spite of this startling development, he kept pressure on the drill to go deeper, after which it stopped upon hitting something within. At this point the object reportedly split open to regurgitate a bubble containing a humanoid creature with porcelain white skin and a bleeding wound where the drill had apparently hit it.
The creature did not seem pleased, and fixed the diver with a malevolent gaze, after which it lashed out with taloned hands to grab his arm and cut into his flesh. Nikolay then supposedly used the drill to bore into his attacker, after which it let go and he lost consciousness. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged from the water by rescuers. It was found that he had sustained deep cuts on his arm and lost a piece of his hand, but there was no sign of the strange cucumber object or its bizarre, unearthly occupant. What did this man see? Was it some sort of cocoon? If so, for what? Nobody knows.
Of course when talking about weird alien and UFO activity in Russian waters it is only natural that Lake Baikal comes into it at some point. Lake Baikal lies in the Russian region of Siberia, between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast. At 5,387 feet (1,642 meters) deep and with a surface area of 12,248 square miles (31,722 square kilometers) it is the deepest lake in the world and the seventh largest by surface area. The lake is so large and so deep that it is estimated to hold 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water. The area has long been known for its UFO related weirdness as well. There have long been numerous reports of strange lights and alleged alien spacecraft over the lake, but perhaps the most interesting stories come from declassified Soviet era documents compiled on unexplainable incidents by the Russian navy under the command of deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov. Although the documents are not completely focused on UFOS or even Lake Baikal in particular, the two make regular appearances and the documents mention numerous UFO related incidents and sightings around Lake Baikal nevertheless.
Lake Baikal
One such account describes how in 1958, a Russian TU-154 plane crashed into the lake’s frigid waters after allegedly being pursued by a UFO. Other reports come from various fishermen, who have seen strange lights hovering over the lake, cruising underwater or even spectacularly erupting from below the waves to shoot into the sky above. People have also reported UFOs rapidly descending from the heavens only to gently alight upon the surface of the lake and float like a boat. One of the most bizarre accounts related to aliens and UFOs at Lake Baikal allegedly happened in 1982, when navy divers in the lake reported encountering humanoid creatures that were dressed in silvery suits about 164 feet (50 meters) underwater. The report claims that three of the divers were killed when they tried to pursue the creatures and four divers were seriously injured. The Russian government denies that any of the accounts in their documents stem from otherworldly sources and maintains that everything described must have some natural explanation.
The reports of lights and humanoid creatures in Lake Baikal’s depths have, perhaps not surprisingly, led to theories that aliens could have underwater bases here, and there are other bizarre reports of strangeness in the lake that seem to somewhat support this far out notion. In 1977, a deep water submersible called Paysis was involved in scientific research operating at a depth of 1,200 meters in the dark, frigid water. At one point, the vehicle’s spotlight turned off and it was in complete darkness until a sudden bright beam shone upon it from an outside source. The blinding light reportedly remained fixed on the submersible for several seconds before flickering out and once more leaving the sub in cold blackness. It has never been satisfactorily explained what the source of the light was.
These are just a few of the many reports to come out of the secretive nation of Russia, where a lot of paranormal and UFO related accounts seem to just disappear before anyone has a chance to really look at them. It seems to be largely believed that for as elusive as many seem to think the West is with such reports, the former Soviet Union is perhaps even more so, such reports mostly confined to very murky waters indeed. What are we looking at with these accounts of underwater UFOs and beings that have been coughed up from the depths? Are these simply sensationalized accounts, hoaxes, or something more? It is hard to say, and as long as such accounts find their way to the light of day there will undoubtedly be discussion and speculation.
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After 4,400 Years Ancient Comet Atlas Arrives Again, Something to Worry About?
After 4,400 Years Ancient Comet Atlas Arrives Again, Something to Worry About?
Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, was discovered on Dec. 28, 2019, by the survey Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System and it will become one of the brightest objects in the night sky and potentially the 'comet of a generation'.
The comet's tail, which is about 3.3 million km, or more than twice as wide as the sun, is dust and gas while according to Lyudmila Koshman, astronomer at the Moscow Planetarium, the comet's core contains poisonous chemical compound called cyanogen.
ATLAS makes it's close approach to the Earth on May 23, 2020 and according to official statements it poses no danger to Earth as even at its closest point it will be more than 72 million miles away from our planet.
Now this ancient comet visited our solar system approximately 4,400 years ago when the great pyramids were being built in Egypt.
Just a coincidence that the 'Great Biblical Flood' began approximately 4,359 years ago? According to Sir Isaac Newton a comet was the cause of Noah's flood.
We've seen many different reasons why so many different cultures throughout so many different periods of history have looked at comets as harbingers of doom and disaster so the arrival of 'Atlas' in our skies in April and May with this covid-19 outbreak hitting full stride during the same time period is something to think about writes Allnewspipeline in an in-depth article on this issue.
Besides the comet ATLAS there are also potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. According to NASA, five asteroids including 2 city-killer NEOs approaching Earth this weekend and for example Asteroid (1998 OR2). This asteroid has an estimated diameter of 1.1 to 2.5 miles (1.8 to 4.1 kilometers), or about the width of the isle of Manhattan and on it's closest approach on April 29 it will be 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km) from Earth.
While they say that comet ATLAS and or other approaching asteroids or comets pose no threat to earth, with the asteroid impact in Nigeria last week still in mind, with the whole world in lockdown, we may wonder whether there is more going on then that they tell us.
The Hubble Space Telescope is tracking down a suspected black hole that shredded a wayward star that came too close for comfort.
The famed space observatory made the find while hunting down the source of a powerful burst of X-rays caught in 2006 by two other cosmic telescopes: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton).
At the time, astronomers weren't sure if the X-rays had come from inside or outside of the Milky Way galaxy, but new high-resolution photography by Hubble shows that the X-ray source (known as 3XMM J215022.4−055108) is located in a star cluster at the edge of another galaxy. That's exactly where an intermediate-sized black hole (IMBH) may lurk — at least, according to theory.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the location of an intermediate-mass black hole named 3XMM J215022.4−055108 (in the white circle). Hubble's high-resolution imagery revealed that the black hole resides inside a dense star cluster far beyond the Milky Way galaxy, in the outskirts of another galaxy pictured at the center of this image. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Lin (University of New Hampshire))
The team's work further suggests the star cluster may have been the core of a small dwarf galaxy disrupted long ago, when the dwarf galaxy strayed too close to the larger galaxy that currently hosts the star cluster. Gravitational interactions with the larger galaxy may have ripped the dwarf galaxy apart, leaving only a small cluster of stars in its wake. In much the same way, astronomers believe that the gravitational pull of the black hole inside this cluster shredded a star that got too close, thereby producing the X-ray flare detected in 2006.
If the X-rays indeed came from a black hole, astronomers suspect the object is about 50,000 times the mass of our sun. That's a featherweight compared with the supermassive black hole that lies in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which has a mass four million times greater than that of the sun.
"IMBHs have been particularly difficult to find because they are smaller and less active than supermassive black holes; they do not have readily available sources of fuel, nor as strong a gravitational pull to draw stars and other cosmic material which would produce telltale X-ray glows," NASA officials said in a statement. "Astronomers essentially have to catch an IMBH red-handed in the act of gobbling up a star."
An artist's impression of an intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Player (STScI))
IMBHs are believed to be a "missing link" in our understanding of how black holes evolve. Astronomers have seen many examples of small black holes that are similar in size to a star, and other examples of much larger black holes that typically reside in the centers of galaxies.
But IMBHs remain difficult to confirm as astronomers struggle to understand how supermassive black holes got so darn big, compared to stellar-sized black holes. Hubble and other observatories have found other IMBH candidates in the past, but this newest observation is considered the strongest evidence yet for this class of black hole, according to NASA.
"Intermediate-mass black holes are very elusive objects, and so it is critical to carefully consider and rule out alternative explanations for each candidate. That is what Hubble has allowed us to do for our candidate," Dacheng Lin, a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire and principal investigator of the new study, said in the statement.
One other theory for the X-rays was that a neutron star — the dense remnants of an exploded supernova star — may have been responsible. Based on the X-ray glow of the chewed-up star, however, astronomers calculated that the black hole's mass was 50,000 solar masses, which is far more massive than a neutron star (typically about the size of a small city). The mass was calculated using both the X-ray luminosity — the inherent brightness of the X-rays — and the shape of the spectrum.
Hubble also helped track down another possible IMBH in 2009. The object, called HLX-1, was spotted on the edge of a galaxy known as ESO 243-49 — and also resides in a star cluster that could have been a dwarf galaxy in the ancient past. The X-rays spotted in the case of HLX-1, however, likely came from the accretion disk surrounding the black hole. The accretion disk is considered the point of no return for light or other objects to escape a black hole's gravity.
"The main difference is that our object is tearing a star apart, providing strong evidence that it is a massive black hole, instead of a stellar-mass black hole as people often worry about for previous candidates including HLX-1," Lin said.
A NASA astronaut works outside the International Space Station. NASA received more than 12,000 applications in March 2020 from people wanting to become astronauts.
The results are in and, no surprise, a lot of people want to be a NASA astronaut.
More than 12,000 people have applied to join what NASA is calling the "Artemis Generation," a new class of astronauts to help the agency return humans to the moon and reach outward to Mars. It's the second highest number of applications the agency's astronaut corps has ever received, NASA officials said.
"We've entered a bold new era of space exploration with the Artemis program, and we are thrilled to see so many incredible Americans apply to join us," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement today (April 1). "The next class of Artemis Generation astronauts will help us explore more of the moon than ever before and lead us to the Red Planet."
When NASA put out the call for a new astronaut class in February, anticipation was already high. After decades flying in low Earth orbit, NASA is again shooting for the moon with its Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. The agency hopes to continue on to Mars in the 2030s.
NASA began taking applications on March 2 and stopped on Tuesday (March 31). The space agency received applications from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories. The sheer number of applications is second only to the record 18,300 applications NASA received in 2016 for its most recent astronaut class (which graduated in January).
"For this round of applications, NASA increased the education requirement for applicants from a bachelor's degree to a master's degree in a science, technology, math, or engineering field," NASA officials said in the statement. "In addition, the application period was shortened from two months to one."
Now comes the hard part: winnowing down the massive applicant pool to just a handful of candidates with the "Right Stuff" to fly in space.
"We're able to build such a strong astronaut corps at NASA because we have such a strong pool of applicants to choose from," said Anne Roemer, NASA's manager of the Astronaut Selection Board and director of human resources at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It's always amazing to see the diversity of education, experience and skills that are represented in our applicants."
NASA is expected to announce its final selections for the new astronaut class in mid-2021. Once selected, the astronaut candidates will spend the next 2.5 years training for spaceflight and will then have to wait to be selected for a space crew. That timeline would likely mean they may not fly until after 2024, NASA's current target for a moon return.
But the new astronauts are sure to train to fly on NASA's new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System megarocket (the centerpiece for NASA's Artemis missions), as well as for missions to the International Space Station on private spacecraft like SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner capsule.
NASA currently has 48 active astronauts and has trained 350 astronauts since the agency began training space travelers in the 1960s.
DE KOMEET ATLAS IS BINNENKORT MOGELIJK MET HET BLOTE OOG TE BEWONDEREN!
DE KOMEET ATLAS IS BINNENKORT MOGELIJK MET HET BLOTE OOG TE BEWONDEREN!
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De komeet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) kan de komende maanden wel eens voor spektakel gaan zorgen.
De komeet werd eind vorig jaar ontdekt en stevent momenteel af op onze zon. Hoewel je dan mag verwachten dat de helderheid van de komeet toeneemt, gaat het bij C/2019 Y4 wel vrij snel op het moment. De helderheid neemt zelfs zo snel toe, dat het zomaar zou kunnen dat deze eind april met het blote oog te bewonderen is.
Toename in helderheid “Het is wel een beetje verrassend dat de helderheid zo snel toeneemt,” vertelt onderzoeker Karl Battams, verbonden aan het US Naval Research Laboratory, aan Scientias.nl. “Dit is een komeet die al een paar duizend jaar niet meer in het binnenste van ons zonnestelsel is geweest, dus waarschijnlijk bevat deze nog veel bevroren gassen. Nu de komeet dichter bij de zon in de buurt komt – ongebruikelijk dichtbij zelfs voor een komeet – beginnen deze snel te verdampen en dat zorgt ervoor dat de komeet helderder wordt.”
Op dit moment is de komeet al vrij helder. “Je kunt de komeet nog niet met het blote oog zien, maar je kunt hem zeker zien met een verrekijker of kleine telescoop. We denken dat de komeet tegen het einde van april ’s nachts met het blote oog zichtbaar kan zijn.”
Omvang kern Of dat ook daadwerkelijk gaat gebeuren, is afhankelijk van een aantal factoren. “Het hangt af van de omvang van de komeet (we weten niet precies hoe groot deze is), hoeveel bevroren gassen deze nog bezit en hoe goed de komeet om kan gaan met de geringe afstand tot de zon,” vertelt Battams. “Als de komeet een grote kern heeft en veel bevroren gassen, dan is het mogelijk dat deze tegen het eind van mei zelfs zichtbaar is op klaarlichte dag. Als de komeet een kleine kern of een wat zwakkere kern heeft, is het mogelijk dat deze uiteenvalt nog voor perihelium (het punt waarop de komeet het dichtst bij de zon is, red.) is bereikt.” Welk scenario straks bewaarheid wordt, is koffiedik kijken. “We weten het gewoon niet.” Battams vertelt dat hij lang dacht dat het aannemelijker was dat de komeet uiteen zou vallen dan dat deze heel helder zou worden. Maar inmiddels is hij daar niet meer zo zeker van. “Tot op heden houdt de komeet zich vrij goed, dus ik ben wel steeds optimistischer dat de komeet standhoudt, maar ik denk niet dat deze straks bij daglicht met het blote oog te zien zal zijn.”
Bijzonder Als de komeet eind mei wel overdag te zien is, zou dat heel bijzonder zijn. De laatste keer dat een komeet ook overdag te bewonderen was, was in 2007. Komeet McNaught gaf toen een fraaie show weg. “Het is heel zeldzaam dat kometen dat doen en ik denk niet dat C/2019 Y4 het gaat doen. Maar ik hoop dat ik het mis heb.”
Onderzoek Onderzoekers houden de komeet ondertussen goed in de gaten. Want terwijl de komeet de zon nadert, kan deze heel wat geheimen prijsgeven. “Alle kometen hebben een verhaal te vertellen en dat geldt ook voor deze,” aldus Battams. “Ze kunnen ons meer vertellen over de samenstelling van het jonge zonnestelsel, want ze bevatten relatief ongerepte materialen uit de periode dat ons zonnestelsel ontstond. Wanneer ze dichter bij de zon in de buurt komen en dat materiaal sublimeert, kunnen we iets meer over de samenstelling van zo’n komeet te weten komen. En wanneer ze heel dicht bij de zon in de buurt komen, kunnen we ook bestuderen hoe hun stof en gassen de interactie aangaan met de zonnewind en dat vertelt ons weer meer over de zon.”
Maar wetenschappers hebben nog een reden om juist C/2019 Y4 op de voet te volgen. “Deze komeet is met name heel interessant, omdat het een broertje ljkt te zijn van komeet C/1844 Y1: een heel heldere komeet die in 1844 werd gezien. Ooit, duizenden jaren geleden, maakten deze kometen deel uit van hetzelfde object dat later uiteen is gevallen. Dat gebeurde waarschijnlijk nabij de zon.” Of komeet ATLAS dat kunstje nu, in 2020, gaat herhalen, blijft in nevelen gehuld. “Dat moeten we afwachten.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interview met Karl Battams Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Buddy_Nath (via Pixabay)
They’re called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. Astronomers analyzed data from the Dark Energy Survey – which just completed 6 years of observations – to find over 100 new little worlds in the cold outer reaches of our solar system.
Computer-generated concept of the rotation of a trans-Neptunian object, in this case the small world we call Haumea. This little world is egg-shaped because of its fast rotation; its “day” is just under 4 hours long. Meanwhile, its “year” – or orbit around the sun – lasts about 285 Earth-years. Haumea is also known to have a ring and 2 tiny moons.
Objects like Haumea, depicted above, are minor planets, called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. They orbit in the cold outer reaches of our solar system, out beyond Neptune, taking hundreds of years to orbit the sun once. There are estimated to be perhaps 70,000 TNOs, each at least 60 miles (100 km) across. This month, astronomers at the University of Pennsylvania announced that they’ve successfully pinpointed over 100 new TNOs. As with all known planets, moons and minor planets in our solar system, each one of these little worlds is sure to be unique. The new study also outlines a new approach for finding even more of these far-off worlds.
The updated peer-reviewed findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on March 10, 2020.
The results come from data obtained by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which just completed six years of observations this past January. DES’s focus, as the name implies, is to study dark energy, but it is also well-suited to finding TNOs and other smaller solar system objects beyond Neptune. DES typically looks at galaxies and supernovas, so the researchers needed to devise a new way to track movements of much smaller and closer objects. Grad student Pedro Bernardinelli, who led the study, said in a statement:
Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and it’s easy to track them down. One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements.
Locations of the new TNOs discovered in the DES dataset from the first four years. The outline shows DES’s search range and the color of each dot shows how far away the object is in astronomical units (one AU is the sun-Earth distance, 93 million miles or 150 million km). Two of the detections were more than 90 AU, over 8 billion miles (13 billion km) away.
The number of TNOs you can find depends on how much of the sky you look at and what’s the faintest thing you can find.
So how did the researchers find all of these TNOs?
Images from the first four years of DES data contained about 7 billion “dots” that are all of the possible objects able to be detected by the DES software. But many of those would be data errors or larger objects like stars, supernovas or galaxies, which are actually much farther away. Bernardinelli removed any objects that were visible in the same locations on multiple nights, narrowing down the list to about 22 million candidates. He then looked at those objects to see if any of them formed pairs or triplets. That would help the researchers see where those objects might appear on subsequent nights.
That process whittled down the list of candidates much further still, down to about 400 objects. Bernardinelli said:
We have this list of candidates, and then we have to make sure that our candidates are actually real things.
Size comparison of the largest TNOs, including Pluto.
Some of those candidates might still not be actual TNOs, however. So how to figure out which ones are, if any?
The researchers looked for additional images of the objects of interest. According to Bernstein:
Say we found something on six different nights. For TNOs that are there, we actually pointed at them for 25 different nights. That means there’s images where that object should be, but it didn’t make it through the first step of being called a dot.
Another method to ferret out any real TNOs was to stack the images, creating a sharper view. This helped to further sort out real objects from false ones. Bernardinelli said:
The most difficult part was trying to make sure that we were finding what we were supposed to find.
In the end, 316 confirmed TNOs were found in the DES data. Of those, 145 are new objects, not previously discovered. These TNOs range from 30 to 90 times the distance of Earth from the sun. By comparison, Pluto, the best-known TNO (and dwarf planet), is 40 times that distance.
The Blanco Telescope dome at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The telescope used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) for the Dark Energy Survey.
Finding over 300 TNOs overall is impressive, especially for a survey that isn’t even intended to look for them as a primary goal. The researchers think that as many as 500 may be found in the DES data once they rerun their analysis on the entire dataset. Also, the same techniques can now be used in additional astronomical surveys, such as by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Bernardinelli said:
Many of the programs we’ve developed can be easily applied to any other large datasets, such as what the Rubin Observatory will produce.
These kinds of datasets could even help scientists finally find the long-sought-after Planet Nine, a hypothetical giant planet about the size of Neptune that may orbit the sun in the extreme outer fringes of the star system, much farther than Pluto. By studying the orbits of additional newly-found TNOs, researchers might finally be able to determine Planet Nine’s location, if it does indeed exist. As Bernstein said:
There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the solar system and aren’t there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet. Making the catalog is the fun discovery part. Then when you create this resource, you can compare what you did find to what somebody’s theory said you should find.
Pedro Bernardinelli at University of Pennsylvania, who led the new TNOs study.
Even if Planet Nine isn’t found, however, the datasets of these intriguing little worlds will provide a wealth of new information about how they – and other planets, moons, asteroids and comets – first formed in the early history of our solar system.
Bottom line: Researchers using the Dark Energy Survey have found over 100 new minor planets beyond Neptune. They’re called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs.
Image captionArtwork: The presumed black hole revealed itself by tearing apart a star that ventured too close
A team of astronomers has found what it says is the best evidence yet for an elusive class of black hole.
They say the presumed "intermediate-mass" black hole betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that ventured too close.
These medium-sized objects are a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of the cosmos.
Researchers used two X-ray observatories, along with the Hubble telescope, to identify the object.
"Intermediate-mass black holes are very elusive objects, and so it is critical to carefully consider and rule out alternative explanations for each candidate, said Dr Dacheng Lin, from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, US, who led the study.
"That is what Hubble has allowed us to do for our candidate."
The nature of the X-ray flare meant that it could be explained by just two scenarios, according to Dr Lin. It was "either a distant (outside our galaxy) intermediate-mass black hole disrupting and swallowing a star or a cooling neutron star in our own galaxy", he told BBC News.
Neutron stars are the crushed remnants of an exploded star.
What is a black hole?
Image copyrightNASA GSFC/JEREMY SCHNITTMANImage captionArtwork: Black holes come in different sizes, but mid-sized ones have proved elusive
A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape
Despite the name, they are not empty but instead consist of a huge amount of matter packed densely into a small area, giving it an immense gravitational pull
There is a region of space beyond the black hole called the event horizon. This is a "point of no return", beyond which it is impossible to escape the gravitational effects of the black hole
In order to distinguish between the two scenarios, the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at the X-ray source to resolve its precise location. The telescope provided strong evidence that the X-rays emanated not from an isolated source in the Milky Way, but a distant, dense star cluster on the outskirts of a different galaxy.
This was just the type of place astronomers expected to find a mid-sized black hole. Dr Lin said the Hubble data made this the "most likely" explanation.
So-called supermassive black holes are commonly found at the centres of galaxies; for example, our own Milky Way hosts a massive central black hole called Sagittarius A*.
Image copyrightNASA / ESA / D. LIN (UNH)
Image captionThe black hole (circled) lies on the outskirts of a large galaxy
Image copyrightESAImage caption
Artwork: The X-ray flare was found among thousands of observations taken by the XMM-Newton orbiting observatory
But intermediate-mass black holes have been particularly difficult to find because they are smaller and less active than the massive types. In addition, they don't have as much nearby cosmic material to act as fuel, and lack the strong gravitational pull required to draw stars inwards to produce X-ray flares.
Astronomers effectively had to catch a mid-sized black hole red-handed - in the act of gobbling up a star.
Dr Lin and his colleagues had to comb through thousands of XMM-Newton observations to find one candidate.
Image copyrightNASAImage captionThe Hubble Space Telescope was used for resolve the location of the X-ray source
The X-ray glow from the shredded star allowed astronomers to estimate the black hole's mass at 50,000 times the mass of the Sun.
This isn't the first candidate for a mid-sized black hole. But seeing the object tearing a star apart makes this detection the most persuasive yet, according to Dr Lin's team. A Nasa video has visualised how the black hole might have consumed the star:
Intermediate-mass black holes are key to many questions about black hole evolution. For example, does a super-massive black hole grow from a mid-sized one?
Astronomers also want to understand how mid-sized black holes form and whether they tend to reside in dense star clusters, such as this one.
"Studying the origin and evolution of the intermediate-mass black holes will finally give an answer as to how the supermassive black holes that we find in the centres of massive galaxies came to exist," said team member Dr Natalie Webb, from the University of Toulouse, France.
A FARMER may have become the first person in the world to be killed by a UFO, according to astonishing claims made in a new book.
Brazilian Luis Barroso Fernandes died from a mysterious illness after he claimed he was "zapped" by "small aliens" he said came out of a strange "disc".
Luis just a few days before his deathCredit: Philip Mantle
Brit investigator Philip Mantle now believes Brazilian Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person to die following a close encounter with a UFO - and has published the bizarre claims for the first time in a new book.
Luis says he heard a strange buzzing sound and spotted the object in the sky a few kilometers outside the city of Quixadá, according to the book.
He later claimed that the disc landed 30 meters away from him and two small alien beings emerged, one holding some sort of "flashlight". He said the "unknown entity" then zapped him and his donkey in the face, apparently leaving them both paralysed.
Luis was said to be in perfect healthy before the alleged sightingCredit: Philip Mantle
When he woke up he says he was several meters away, he felt dizzy, was trembling, had burn marks on his face, trouble breathing and an intense headache.
A cowboy found the shaken farmer and took him home to his wife who called in top doctors, who apparently could not diagnose his mysterious condition.
He was examined by Dr Antônio Moreira Magalhães, who listened to Fernandes's account and, although he did not believe in flying saucers at the time, did concede that something very serious happened to the farmer.
The doctor recorded all the information in the medical records and prescribed an anti-allergy drug, a tranquilizer and absolute rest for Luis following the alleged incident in 1973.
Luis's hair apparently became grey the day after the alleged sightingCredit: Philip Mantle
But Fernandes continued to feel ill, with severe pain throughout his body, burning eyes and the left side of his body was still red.
According to the book, a few days after the encounter his hair turned grey and he had lapses of memory.
Those around him claimed he was perfectly fit before the alleged incident but then his health rapidly deteriorated, and he began to regress mentally until he was like a child.
His relatives even took him to a psychiatric hospital in Fortaleza, in the São Geraldo neighborhood, where he was examined by 16 doctors - all of whom also failed to make an accurate diagnosis, the book claims.
Dr. Magalhães also began to follow the health of Fernandes and was able to verify his worsening medical condition and mental capacity.
Before his death in April 1993, Fernandes could only mutter the words: "Mom", "give" and "fear."
The claims are being made in new book UFO Contacts in BrazilCredit: Philip Mantle
Two students, military personnel and a local radio broadcaster also reported seeing the UFO over the city on the same date.
Philip Mantle, a former director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association, has published the account in a new book UFO Contacts in Brazil.
He told The Sun: "Many people claim to have come into direct contact with a UFO and some even claim that it has hurt them as a result.
"A bruise here, a small cut there, but Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person ever killed after his encounter with a UFO."
The book author Thiago Luiz Ticchetti added: "Contact with a UFO is not common at all but when the UFO in question shoots a beam of light at you, a light that hits you full in the face is extremely rare.
"This is what happened to Luis Barroso Fernandes.
"The illnesses that followed his immediately after this encounter is bizarre to say the least and went undiagnosed by a number of different doctors.
"Did the beam of light that hit him cause these illnesses and eventually his death? We will probably never know but this is one of the most bizarre and rarest such close encounters on record, of that there is no doubt."
When you think of how an alien abduction might play out, what do you imagine? Many of us might immediately conjure up thoughts of a person out in the middle of nowhere, far from home in some remote setting, where the weirdness begins. This might seem to make sense, as why would UFOs do it any other way? Yet, there are many supposed encounters that have happened in decidedly more mundane circumstances, with people being whisked away in familiar environments and even from their own homes, and here is a selection of some such very odd cases of abductions from the last places you might suspect.
Some of the stranger UFO abductions do come from the outdoors, but not necessarily under the kind of circumstances one would expect for such spectacular encounters. One of these supposedly happened one summer evening in 1995, when a group of friends was out having a casual BBQ party right in the suburban yard of a home in Derbyshire, in the East Midlands of England. They had all been talking and having a blast until 10:30 PM rolled around and things took a turn for the decidedly bizarre. The witnesses would later claim that a very large, disc shaped craft had descended from the sky to hover over their party, after which they all suddenly fell violently ill, displaying nausea and uncontrollable vomiting. The strange UFO would then float off into the distance, but something was obviously not right.
It seemed as if there was some missing time involved, as one of the witnesses noticed that the BBQ itself had gone from glowing coals to dead ash, and the food that had sat upon it was burned to a charred crisp. When they realized all of this and looked at their watches, it would turn out that a full 90 minutes had passed, which none of them could recall. In the following days they would all be plagued by strange nightmares and feelings of inexplicable, crippling anxiety, and they then agreed to be hypnotized to try and dredge up any memories of what had happened during that lost 90 minutes. In separate sessions, they would all recall under hypnosis that they had been brought aboard that weird craft and examined in some sort of room that looked reminiscent of an operating theater but with walls that were “round, but divided into squares.” A few of them would even recall having been to other planets, and it leaves one to wonder just what happened during this otherwise normal BBQ.
More well known than this is the 1969 case of a José Antonio da Silva, in Bebedouro, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He was just out for a leisurely day of fishing not far from his home on one calm day when he realized that there was someone moving about behind him and whispering. This was odd enough as it was, but then he says he was suddenly struck by a sudden paralysis, which sent him sprawling to the ground unable to move. He was then approached by several figures speaking an unfamiliar language and dressed in helmets and suits that seemed to be fashioned of aluminum foil, who roughly grabbed him and dragged him aboard a nearby cylindrical metallic craft of some sort. Once aboard, one of the beings slapped a helmet on him and things would quickly graduate from the weird to the utterly bizarre.
The UFO sped away as he was brought to some sort of large, sterile looking room. There before him was allegedly a humanoid being covered with hair and with reddish hair on its head that flowed down to its waist, and it was surrounded by several other, smaller dwarfish beings. They had in their possession all of his fishing equipment and tackle, which they seemed to be intently examining with great interest. As the frightened and startled Da Silva looked around this bizarre room, he claimed that he had seen other people in there, kept upon a shelf of some sort and awake but seemingly paralyzed much as he was. One of the smaller, hairy dwarf-like creatures approached him and made him drink some sort of dark green concoction, after which they spoke with him about human civilization and during this time one of the creatures snatched away his crucifix. After that, Da Silva was apparently taken back to Earth, where he would awaken outside of the town of Vitoria, a full 200 miles from where he had started. When he later got back to the nearby town, he would realize that he had been gone for nearly 5 days. Whatever happened to this man, it wasn’t your typical leisurely day out fishing.
Even weirder than these accounts are those abductions that have supposedly occurred within rather residential or even urban areas. In march of 1988 there was one such account from a witness by the name of Helen Thomas, who was out along with her mother Carol near Birmingham, England when they took a trip down a residential alleyway on their way to work at a nearby mill. As they went through one alleyway as they always did, they became aware of a strange humming sound that reverberated around them, followed by a blinding light from above. Both of the women reportedly felt extremely dizzy and nauseous at this time, and just as they felt they could not bear it anymore the light was simply gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
They soon realized that several hours had passed which they could not account for, and Helen’s jacket was oddly very wet, despite the fact that it had not been raining and everything around them was dry. Over the coming days both of them would experience their skin breaking out in blisters and welts for no apparent reason, and they also had frequent nosebleeds and a strange discharge from their navels. They would eventually tell of what had happened to UFO researcher Tony Todd, who was convinced that they had been abducted and arranged to have them hypnotized. Under hypnosis it would all get stranger still, as they described what had happened to them in that alleyway during their missing time.
They claimed that after the light had enveloped them they had found themselves in a bright, white room, lying atop tables next to each other and with “wet netted cloths” over them. Around them were several odd beings with large heads, very thin, long arms, and “wet, wrinkled skin.” In the corner was another, different being, who looked almost human and had blonde hair, blue eyes, and was dressed in some sort of silver uniform with an insignia upon it. These creatures then pushed glass tubes into their belly buttons, and they both had the instinctive feeling that the beings were “taking eggs” from them. One of the creatures examined Helen’s leather jacket, rubbing it upon its body and seemingly fascinated with the texture of the leather. When the examination was complete the two women were shown a display covered with strange symbols and images of violence and war. They had then been dropped off back into the alleyway from which they had been taken.
It is another weird case among many, and our next one comes from a woman who was allegedly just innocently out hanging out her wash. The woman known only as a “Mrs. G” was purportedly out on her balcony hanging out clothes when a bright light suddenly swept down from the sky to hover right above her. She says the UFO shot down a beam of light that brought her up into a craft of some sort, upon which were strange beings dressed in “tight, shiny metallic suits.” She then felt some sort of strike from behind and woke up again in her own yard, where it became apparent that several hours had passed. She apparently then went about finishing the chore she started with, and it is unclear how this story really ends.
Perhaps even spookier than these accounts we have looked at so far are those in which people have been abducted by otherworldly forces from right out of the comfort of their own homes. A stunning example of this is the apparent abduction of a woman by the name of Betty Andreasson, in the city of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in the United States. On the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was in the kitchen of her home while her seven children, mother, and father were right nearby in the living room. It would have seemed to be just a normal evening if it wasn’t for the weirdness that was about to unfold.
At around 6:30 PM, the lights flickered, followed by a thin beam of reddish light projecting down through the kitchen window, and that was when Betty’s father looked outside to see five strange humanoid creatures approaching the home. These creatures apparently “hopped” towards the home and phased right through the door, after which the entire family was supposedly frozen in time. The creatures were described as being about 5 feet tall, with pear-shaped heads, wide eyes, and small ears and noses, their mouths mere slits. They were dressed in blue one-piece suits of some sort, and each hand had only three fingers. All of them travelled about by levitating, and they seemed to be particularly interested in Betty, who they led outside to a large, metallic craft outside. Betty would later relate how she had been brought aboard this ship and subjected to examinations, as one of the creatures apparently stayed behind to look after her paralyzed family. After they were done, they were all released with lost time. Hypnosis would uncover some of this, and it would be actively investigated by UFO researcher Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who found the family to be perfectly sane and reliable witnesses. Just what happened here? Who knows?
Lastly, we have a case from a witness in the Houston suburb of Pearland, Texas, who says this happened right as he was taking a nap on the sofa in his own home. He says he woke to what he though at first to be vivid hallucinations, as if he had been drugged, but it would soon prove to be far stranger. He says of his harrowing experience:
I looked to my right and saw something in my bathroom. It was small, I thought maybe a squirrel or raccoon had gotten in the house. I closed the door to trap it, but upon a closer inspection, nothing was there. I heard what I thought were voices and strange noises coming from my neighbors’ yard. From my window, it looked like my neighbors were building a very large tall bench swing, there was a red color coming from this area. I thought that the neighbors were maybe playing with lights of some sort and that this may have been the reason for the strange colors in my bedroom. This all happened around midnight. I wanted to find out what was possibly happening next door so I went downstairs.
As I was reaching the stairs I noticed an unrecognizable symbol on the wall that seemed to be made of blue light. When I touched it, it felt warm. This light also cast a blue reflection on the white enamel paint of the bannister. I realized that this could not have been a reflection from next door because of the lack of windows in my staircase. When I got outside, it was quiet. I asked “hello” and didn’t get an immediate response. The air felt staticy and it felt as though if I touched anything that I’d receive a shock. When I peered through the fence I saw ten black spheres; Four on top, three below, then two and one, like an inverted triangle. It rose slightly, then the top left sphere broke away from the others and came towards me. At first I panicked and could not move. As I looked into this sphere, it had an iridescence to it that made me feel calm when I looked at it. I do not remember going back to my room, I just remember being there. I noticed the clock said 1:45am. I also noticed some dried crusty blood around my right nostril. The room still had those two strange colors moving all around the surfaces of the walls and ceiling.
Not understanding what was happening, I jumped into bed and buried my face in the pillows. I woke the next morning with the distinct feeling that this was real and not a dream. There were still bits of dried blood in my nostril and for a few days after, the area just to the side of my nostril still hurt. Deep under the skin like when a pimple is coming up. Then it went away. I know this happened to me, everything inside me says it was real. I have no way of explaining it and I have no real way of filing it away in my mind like you would with a normal experience.
Looking at such cases as we have here, it would seem that UFO abductions are a phenomenon far from just those people wandering about on the fringes of civilization. It seems that this is something that can happen to anyone at any time, which makes it all even creepier and more unsettling than it already is. What are we to make of such reports? Are these truly visitations from creatures from beyond our world and understanding, or is there something more to it all? Whatever one may think, these certainly remain up there with some of the stranger UFO abduction cases there are, and are certainly worthy of further discussion.
In modern accounts of UFO sightings, one variety of unidentified flying objects remains particularly prevalent: the so-called “black triangles,” which denote large, dark-colored and slow-moving three-sided aircraft. Reports of the objects have maintained a remarkable degree of consistency over time, and involve massive objects that fly at low altitude, and are generally observed moving at night.
Reports of sightings of these objects began to become prevalent in the 1980s and even saw some coverage in American periodicals like Popular Mechanics, where sightings of vast “flying wings” were likened to being the next generation of American stealth aircraft.
Despite their appearance over places like California’s Antelope Valley—a locale that has been long associated with sightings of experimental aircraft produced by the Lockheed Corporation—many of the reports were difficult to bite off and chew. Greg Pope’s reporting on sightings of what he dubbed “the big wing” in Popular Mechanics in late 1991 noted that some of the descriptions of these aircraft by California residents “simply strains credulity.”
Sightings continued throughout the 1990s, and not just in America, but elsewhere around the world. A “wave” of such reports occurred over Belgium in the early 90s and similar sightings that have continued over the UK and Canada seemingly rule out the possibility that experimental aircraft of U.S. origin can account for such reports.
Sightings in the U.S. aren’t relegated solely to the southwest, either. A report I received from one individual (who preferred not to be named) occurred when he was a youth growing up in northern Kentucky. The period would have been between 1994 and 1995, and one Saturday evening during an outdoor gathering at his parent’s home, he and around ten others observed, “a completely silent, black triangle fly south to north directly over our heads.”
The witness estimated that the aircraft was flying at an altitude of approximately 100 to 150 feet “and moved silently.” The object appeared to have three lights on the bottom, and subsequent phone calls made by the mother of the witness to the control tower at the nearby Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport indicated that no unusual objects were observed, nor detected on radar.
Sightings of a similar object occurred over southern Illinois in January 2000, when police began receiving phone calls in the early morning hours about a massive object observed flying at low altitude over St. Clair County. The aircraft was followed by several officers, and dispatch recordings gave real-time descriptions a massive, triangle-shaped object.
“I couldn’t find a single significant difference between the St. Clair object and an advertising blimp in transmit, which is exactly what the FAA told the Riverfront Times,” noted Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast in 2014. It is fair to ask, in light of this explanation, why an advertising blimp would have been operating at approximately 4 AM over southern Illinois, and why no flight logs were ever disclosed to account for the craft in question being a conventional blimp.
Reports of similar objects have continued in recent times, too. In 2020, KLAS reporter George Knapp wrote of a sighting by journalist Cateland White, who described seeing a large, slow-moving triangular object as it passed over her home in 2019.
White gave the following description of the object:
“It was triangular shaped, and there were rectangular reflectors,” White said. “There was no interior light coming out of it at all. And by the time it got out of sight, I bet it was five to eight minutes. It was really slow. And I couldn’t figure out how it was staying in the air.”
Such accounts beg the question of not only whether experimental aircraft may be operating in the skies over America, but also whether they have been deployed for service here and in other countries around the world. Then there is the other possibility, of course, that they are not part of the current inventory of the United States, or that of any other nation.
Whatever their source, the so-called “black triangles” have reached near-mythical status among aviation buffs, and represent some of the most perplexing modern cases involving large unidentified aircraft in our skies.
Nibiru - Dr Sam.. Do Nibiru and Comet Atlas have something in common ?
Nibiru - Dr Sam.. Do Nibiru and Comet Atlas have something in common ?
The comet Atlas looks as if it’s coming in from the direction of Ursa Major, dipping down and will go through Perseus, Taurus and Orion during the months of May and June (sky map link below). And Dr Sam is right, a lot of the links are exaggerating the size of the core of Comet Atlas, when in fact they are measuring the coma of gas, “the envelope” as Dr Sam calls it, which surrounds the core.
commentary by Dr. Sam
Recently, there was much conversation about comet Atlas (C / 2019 Y4), which should appear at the end of this month. Some took advantage of this natural astronomical event to amplify, to intimidate and to provoke terror. And link it to the Carona virus, and its dissemination. And it is a bad omen, and frighteningly will clash with Earth, and that it is the very planet-comet which will end the world … !!!! ….
I don’t know … what is the interest of these people in causing terror among people … ?? !! … Is it not enough for them, the situation of people now of fear and anxiety, and they lack resources beyond by the general paralysis in all aspects of life … until things get worse ?? !!! …. Or maybe the intention of them is only to gain admiration, and fame at the cost of capturing the ideas and thoughts of the people, and spreading panic among them … !!! …
Gentlemen, Here are some facts about this comet with the small core formed of ice how they made of it a giant with their ignorance. The core of this comet is made of carbon ice with two atoms (one molecule) … which gives it the green, which is something common in the formation of comets. The dimensions of these cores extend (for a few miles) … However, when the icy comets approach the sun, they generally interact with the solar wind. In this way, they evaporate and extend and mix these vapours of carbon with the dust to form a very large envelope of gas, depending on the activity of the core and its interaction with the wind coming from the sun.
On this basis, the diameter of the (envelope of the comet) reached about 450,000 miles, or that is, five times the diameter of Jupiter. Please pay attention … I said that the envelope of the comet is not its core … The diameter of the Earth at the equator is about 12750 km. As for the length of its field which flows, with the solar wind it extends for about 6,000,000 km. Notice the difference !!!
This comet needs to have a solid and coherent core at the points of perihelion … and for that to happen, its carbon ice must be firmly maintained in front of the sun. If it passes the sun and withstands the strong solar winds during the period of perihelion … we will witness a spectacular view of it, it will be breathtaking … and with brilliance that passes the (5 mag) barrier, which means a brilliance greater than Venus’, and a tail long and clear … And if the core disappears, the fate of this comet will be the same as comet ISON 2013, which disintegrated and faded, and nothing was left of it. To see this natural astronomical phenomenon, we must look towards the northwest of the terrestrial sky at the end of this month, according to the most recent studies …
I repeat … that this comet has nothing to do with the planet-comet, or with what is happening on the Earth, and it will not represent any danger, because it is distant by tens of millions of kilometers from Earth, and it has only a small core of ice, ..and enough to intimidate and frighten the people, and have pity on the minds of the people. Instead of this, we must educate the people, and introduce them to what is happening, and give to the scientific phenomena their natural size in a manner simple and easy for them to understand. God is the guardian of all things. And the peace and the mercy and blessings of God be with you.
Really fast UFO shown on Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs
Really fast UFO shown on Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs
This really fast and bright unidentified flying object was shown on Dirty Jobs series on Discovery Channel. It was noticed by the viewer that uploaded this clip on MUFON’s website.
When Three Species of Human Ancestor Walked The Earth
When Three Species of Human Ancestor Walked The Earth
An international team including ASU researcher Gary Schwartz, has unearthed the earliest known skull of Homo erectus, the first of our ancestors to be nearly human-like in their anatomy and aspects of their behavior.
Years of painstaking excavation at the fossil-rich site of Drimolen, nestled within the Cradle of Humankind (a UNESCO World Heritage site located just 40 kilometers or around 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa), has resulted in the recovery of several new and important fossils. The skull, attributed to Homo erectus, is securely dated to be two million years old.
Homo erectus cranium from Dimolen, South Africa.
Credit Angeline Leece.
In a paper published this week in Science, the team of nearly 30 scientists from five countries share details of this skull — the most ancient fossil Homo erectus known — and other fossils from Drimolen and discuss how these new finds are forcing us to rewrite a part of our species’ evolutionary history.
The high-resolution dating of Drimolen’s fossil deposits demonstrates the age of the new skull to pre-date Homo erectus specimens from other sites within and outside of Africa by at least 100,000 to 200,000 years and thus confirms an African origin for the species.
The skull, reconstructed from more than 150 separate fragments, is of an individual likely aged between three and six years old, giving scientists a rare glimpse into childhood growth and development in these early human ancestors.
A 3D laser scan of Drimolen main quarry showing the discovery location of the new Homo erectus (DNH 134) and Paranthropus robustus (DNH 152) crania relative to the major site features and the position of the original fossil find the site (DNH 7).”
Credit: David Strait
Additional fossils recovered from Drimolen belong to a different species — in fact, a different genus of ancient human altogether — the more heavily built, robust human ancestor Paranthropus robustus, known to also occur at several nearby cave sites preserving fossils of the same geological age. A third, distinctive species, Australopithecus sediba, is known from two-million-year old deposits of an ancient cave site virtually down the road from Drimolen.
“Unlike the situation today, where we are the only human species, two million years ago our direct ancestor was not alone,” said Andy Herries, project director and lead researcher from La Trobe University in Australia.
Gary Schwartz, a paleoanthropologist and research associate with ASU’s Institute of Human Origins, participated in the excavations and recovery of the new cranium, and as an expert in the evolution of growth and development, is continuing his work with the research team to analyze the many infant and juvenile specimens found at the site.
“What is really exciting is the discovery that during this same narrow time slice, at just around two million years ago, there were three very different types of ancient human ancestors roaming the same small landscape,” said Schwartz, who is also an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.. “We don’t yet know whether they interacted directly, but their presence raises the possibility that these ancient fossil humans evolved strategies to divvy up the landscape and its resources in some way to enable them to live in such close proximity.”
Drimolen excavation site. Gary Schwartz is in the red hard hat.
Credit: Andy Herries and Giovanni Boschian
The ability to date Drimolen’s cave deposits with such a high degree of precision, using a range of different dating techniques, allowed the team to address important broader questions about human evolution in this region of Africa.
Paper co-author Justin Adams from Monash University (Australia), a specialist in reconstructing paleohabitats based on the animals preserved at fossil sites, said the discovery now allows us to address what role changing habitats, resources, and the unique biological adaptations of early Homo erectus may have played in the eventual extinction of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa.
“The discovery of the earliest Homo erectus marks a milestone for South African fossil heritage,” said Stephanie Baker, project co-director and University of Johannesburg doctoral student.
Fieldwork will continue at Drimolen, expanding the excavations to include even more ancient components of the cave and to provide a more in-depth glimpse at the forces shaping human evolution in this part of the African continent.
Contacts and sources:
Julie Russ - Arizona State University
Publication:
Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa. Andy I. R. Herries, Jesse M. Martin, A. B. Leece, Justin W. Adams, Giovanni Boschian, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Tara R. Edwards, Tom Mallett, Jason Massey, Ashleigh Murszewski, Simon Neubauer, Robyn Pickering, David S. Strait, Brian J. Armstrong, Stephanie Baker, Matthew V. Caruana, Tim Denham, John Hellstrom, Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi, Simon Mokobane, Paul Penzo-Kajewski, Douglass S. Rovinsky, Gary T. Schwartz, Rhiannon C. Stammers, Coen Wilson, Jon Woodhead, Colin Menter. Science, 2020; 368 (6486): eaaw7293 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw7293
A team of scientists drilled into the ground near the South Pole to discover forest and fossils from the Cretaceous nearly 90 million years ago, which is the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, as the BBC reported.
The frozen continent was once home to a swampy rainforest and had average temperatures around 53 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the new study published in the journal Nature. The world than was much warmer and sea levels were 550 feet higher than they are now, according to Newsweek.
The discovery of preserved roots, pollen and spores in west Antarctica shows that the world at that time was a lot warmer than previously thought. For vegetation to grow in Antarctica during that period, the Earth needed a greenhouse climate and carbon dioxide levels much higher than scientists had estimated they were. It also means, the continent did not have glaciers then, as The Guardian reported.
In fact, the vegetation was probably similar to what is found New Zealand’s South Island today, according to the BBC.
“We didn’t know that this Cretaceous greenhouse climate was that extreme,” Dr. Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and a co-author of the research said to The Guardian. “It shows us what carbon dioxide is able to do.”
Speaking to Newsweek, he said, “We didn’t expect anything like this. An entirely terrestrial record of Antarctic forest soil at 82 degrees south!”
The research took place about 550 miles away from the South Pole. The discovery and analysis were conducted out by an international team of researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and included Imperial College London scientists.
They scientists found traces of the preserved forest in a sediment core drilled from the seabed in West Antarctica, near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. They noticed an odd color in one section that would have once been on land. color. “We just saw that we probably found something very special and it turned out to be true during our analyses of the following two-and-a-half years,” Klages told Newsweek.
According to a statement from Imperial College London, the team used a CT-scan to analyze the section of the core and discovered a dense network of fossil roots, which was so well preserved that they could make out individual cell structures. The sample also contained many traces of pollen and spores from plants, including from flowering plants — the first ever found at these high Antarctic latitudes.
“The preservation of this 90-million-year-old forest is exceptional, but even more surprising is the world it reveals,” Professor Tina van de Flierdt, from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering at Imperial College London and a co-author on the paper, said in the statement. “Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected.”
The researcher reconstructed the environment of this preserved forest, by analyzing descendant plants, as well as temperature and precipitation indicators within the sample. They created an animated movie of their discovery.
“We have a really nice X-ray movie through the sediment core,” Karsten Gohl, who spearheaded the expedition on Germany’s Research Vessel Polarstern, said to the BBC. “It’s like we’ve drilled into a modern swamp environment and you’re seeing the living root system, small plant particles and pollen – but this is all preserved from 90 million years ago. It’s amazing.”
One remarkable aspect of the plant fossils is that the plants had to adapt to three to four months of darkness.
“Probably these plants, they had a much more effective way of shutting down for a much longer amount of time and then come back successfully,” Klages said to the BBC. “That was quite an interesting adaptation, which is not present right now on the planet, but which can evolve.”
The discovery of plant fossils has lessons for today as the climate crisis bears down on us. Dr. James Bendle, an expert in organic geochemistry from the University of Birmingham in the UK, told The Guardian that the Antarctic ecosystem holds clues for our future since the unabated use of fossil fuels use could push concentrations of carbon dioxide to levels similar to those from 90 million years ago by the start of the next century.
“Ultimately, if we have an atmosphere of more than 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide, we are committing ourselves to a future planet that has little to no ice, and ultimately an Antarctic continent that would be vegetated and wouldn’t have an ice cover,” he said.
After centuries searching for extraterrestrial life, we might find that first contact is not with organic creatures at all.
We have a problem. In a 10-billion-year-old galaxy there should have been ample opportunity for at least one species to escape its own mess, and to spread across the stars, filling every niche. That this species doesn’t seem to have come calling leads to Fermi’s Paradox – if life isn’t impossibly rare, then where is everyone? Efforts to scan the skies for signs of intelligent life have come up blank too, adding to the puzzle. Perhaps the vast gulfs of interstellar space and the narrow windows of time for communicative species to exist within shouting distance of each other are to blame. Intelligences might be like small ships passing in the night in a vast ocean. Actual close encounters of any kind could be exceedingly unusual.
Another explanation for the great silence of the galaxy is that any surviving intelligence out there is so different from us, so radically evolved, that we can’t even conceive of its forms or behaviours. As a consequence, actually detecting and recognising it could be next to impossible. That’s a bit of a downer.
But there is also a possibility that lies between such extremes and it might be the most probable of all. When our first encounter or detection finally occurs, it could be a machine intelligence that appears in our sights.
The idea is not truly new. Back in the 1940s, the mathematician John von Neumann explored the possibilities of non-biological, self-replicating systems steeped in computation but requiring no operating minds. Later on, in the 1980s, others expanded on this concept by considering the real engineering needs for autonomous, replicating, space-faring devices; these machines would be able to roam the Universe, finding raw materials to build more and more of themselves, creating the infrastructure for energy from space or human settlement among the stars.
It would require a more complex mission still for such devices to have true artificial intelligence (AI). What would that purpose be, and what kind of AI is such a machine likely to have? An encounter with an alien machine could help us unravel this puzzle.
One possibility is that this machine is super-capable, exceeding our human capacity for cognitive or analytical tasks. Such an AI might be exceedingly hard to understand, either in terms of its underlying motivation or because of practical barriers of communication bandwidth. For this device, talking to us might be like talking to an infant. Or trying to discuss the collected works of Shakespeare using pictographs. An alien system optimised for processing vast data streams might not even be able to downgrade its pace enough to notice that we’re trying to talk, whether we use technology or not.
An extraterrestrial (ET) AI could also be seriously intimidating and scary simply because of its machine nature: a thing animated from non-living pieces, just like the classic tale of the golem moulded from clay or mud. By comparison, while a biological alien might be shocking, it would surely have some traits in common with us. We could convince ourselves that evolution leads to recognisable, even sympathetic behaviours and intentions. An artificial entity need not follow all of those evolutionary rules, taking alienness to a whole other level.
Encountering an alien AI would not only point to our own possible future, but also prompt a curious shift in our worldview. When Nicolaus Copernicus proposed in the 1500s that the Earth was not central in any way to the Universe, he set in motion the development of a critical scientific idea: that there is nothing cosmically special or significant about us. But meeting an ET-AI could turn that realisation on its head: if the only intelligence we meet is machine in nature, then we would be special, after all.
If we do meet an AI in our cosmological jaunt, it probably won’t be conscious in the full sense of the word. In fact, I think we’d find ourselves facing something akin to a ‘savant’ intelligence – a whiz at specific tasks, but otherwise extremely limited in its capacities.
A recent example right here on Earth is Google’s AlphaGo Master, a system that plays the board game Go, and learns some of its skills by exposure to vast catalogues of human-played games. Within a year of its inception, it began outdoing the world’s highest-ranking human Go players. Next came an evolved system called AlphaGo Zero. In 40 days of training, without recourse to data from historical games, this new AI made itself better than its silicon ancestor, and better than any living human. Now, yet another variant, AlphaZero, has taken a mere 24 hours to train itself and beat a modestly trained iteration of AlphaGo Zero – as well as topping other systems at playing both chess and Shogi, sometimes known as Japanese chess. If you read interviews with expert players, you’ll see that these machines don’t even play like humans, their strategies are alien and seemingly unfathomable.
These Alphas are the epitome of a savant machine. Such AIs will help us answer a host of scientific problems that are presently on the hairy edge of tractability. The researchers behind the Alpha systems are already talking about the puzzle of protein-folding – how chains of amino acids twist, gyrate and fold into structures with essential biological utility. The underlying molecular rules are understood but predicting what a particular recipe will give you is currently extremely difficult. It certainly sounds like a job for some future AlphaFold Zero.
Or take other pieces of modern science. Cosmological simulations or climate and weather predictions are all driven by physics phenomena such as gravitation, fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. Computer codes digitise these phenomena, calculating billions of iterations of forces and movements. But these computations are still hemmed in by processor speeds and precision. Deep-learning self-taught AIs might turn out to do better as quantitative soothsayers than those intense numerical simulations – presently bounded by their comparatively plodding, systematic approaches. A machine’s savant intuition might be able to skip across compute cycles, ‘seeing’ what the answer will be in a probabilistic sense, rather than painstakingly reproducing a pixelated version of it. Similarly, a machine’s savant intuition might be applied to the root process of scientific deduction and discovery itself. The possibilities are yet to be much explored, but they could be extraordinary. Savant machines could turn out to be simply so useful, so revolutionary in expanding our capacity for discovery and exploration, that there’s little initial motivation to seek anything fancier.
A cosmos filled with worlds offers millions, billions, even trillions of natural test tubes.
If this pattern of machine development is happening for us, it could represent a pattern that happens across the cosmos to influence the nature of cosmic exploration itself. Savant AIs would become the ultimate tools for allowing biological life to reach across interstellar distances: more robust than biology, and not smart enough to raise ethical concerns about being sent off to roam the cosmos according to our scientific whims. Propelling millions of these investigators into space would be an inevitable step. They could be sent to other stars and planetary systems, and designed to recognise the most interesting characteristics of these places, from astrophysics to the presence of life. These machines would reflect the motivations of their biological creators; perhaps simple curiosity, perhaps something more.
Another compelling reason for savant machines to be roaming the cosmos arises from thinking about how to build more general, more powerful AIs. It might be that a general AI system can be built out of lots of smaller savant AIs, each taking on some specific, difficult cognitive task, but linked together. That linkage could be very localised or quite spread out like the architecture of biological neural circuits. There’s the face-recognising savant, the natural-language savant, the calculus-savant, the tax-evading savant. One could then imagine an AI whose job is to learn how to combine savant AIs into something akin to a general intelligence – establishing a nursery for machine consciousness run from on-high.
The most challenging task for a nursery-room AI would be how to expose its collective of savants to the complexity of the real-world environment. Nature isn’t just about meeting fixed goals; it’s full of noise, randomness and trillions upon trillions of interacting pieces. For example, from the very instant an embryo forms, it is exposed to constant variation. First just a few cells, it senses the world purely from a molecular point of view. As the embryo develops organs to register light, sound, touch and smell, the portals to experience – and their complexity – expand.
In short, the way for a species to make a better AI is to let that AI and its components explore the messy Universe. As complex and nourishing as a single planet can be, a cosmos filled with worlds offers millions, billions, even trillions of natural test tubes, each with its own tale of natural selection and chance. Spreading savant AI pieces across the stars offers a way to exploit these endless natural experiments and sensory inputs.
The path towards better AI might parallel biological evolution only in superficial ways. Consider the raw development of a human brain. The core process appears to be a one-shot effort. It starts with stem cells racing up an initial structure called a neural tube at a rate of 15 million every hour and hooking together in a developing embryo. That prodigious assembly of the brain is followed by learning – the brain is shaped and pruned as experience creates our unique path through life. Although we’re incredibly flexible, and capable of absorbing and mastering all sorts of skills and knowledge, as individuals we are also, sadly, constrained by whatever genetic hand we were dealt. And, in truth, while we can all keep learning and changing, we seldom develop any miraculous new talents during our lifetimes.
A machine might not be as constrained, especially if critical pieces are out exploring the cosmos and have been designed to evolve into something new. Savant components of a larger intelligence might come and go in an ever-changing pick-and-mix. Some cognitive skills might be useful in certain contexts but could simply get in the way in other situations. In other words, machine-based intelligence could be highly fluid, changeable and, most of all, rapidly evolvable. As a consequence, what could be lurking out there in the cosmos is a vast and diverse zoo of AIs.
We might be incapable of registering the presence of billion-year-old machine savants.
In a sense, such AIs parallel the microbial machines that are at the core of life on Earth – forming the smallest units of intelligence to traverse the Universe, and ultimately combining together, as the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis posed, to create multicellular creatures, larger entities and consciousness itself. In fact, long after a biological species has faded away amid the relentless torrent of natural selection, or self-destruction, this type of machine will remain.
AI beyond Earth might be hard to recognise. Just as someone living on the steppe in 12th-century Mongolia would find a self-driving car both magical and meaningless, we might be quite incapable of registering or interpreting the presence of billion-year-old machine savants. Equally, savant machines might not be actively seeking to talk to us, or any other intelligences.
But a recognisable encounter with even one savant machine would indeed change everything. It would tell us that the galaxy is awash with intelligence, and could suggest that our future might be one of a vestigial, fading biological presence. Most of all, this discovery would tell us that we might currently be the only natural minds consciously aware of these facts. That’s because the biology that could produce AI explorers would likely evolve or go extinct on timescales far shorter than the persistence of these interstellar machines, and we already live in a galaxy that is 10 billion years old.
Finding an AI-ET could unlock our own cosmic exploration by lighting a path forward. It might also offer insight into the nature of its creators, those ancestral intelligences, presumably in biological form. Exactly what this investigative process would look like is extremely hard to imagine. Even a single savant AI might not come in one physical package but rather a swarm of tinier components incredibly hard to digest. However, let’s assume that by interrogation or literal disassembly we eventually solve the mystery of the AI-ET’s origins. We might find evidence of an organic species like us – or we might discover only machines all the way down.
Caleb Scharf is director of astrobiology at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology (2009), which won the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award. His latest book is The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing (2017).
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Investigators reveal the secret history of several U.S. Presidents and their connection to the UFO phenomenon. Starting with FDR, researchers examine the startling discoveries of unidentified flying craft facing a president preoccupied by WWII.
What happens to your religion if we find extraterrestrial life?
What happens to your religion if we find extraterrestrial life?
How will humankind react after astronomers hand over rock-solid scientific evidence for the existence of life beyond the Earth? No more speculating. No more wondering. The moment scientists announce this discovery, everything will change. Not least of all, our philosophies and religions will need to incorporate the new information.
Searching for signs of life
Astronomers have now identified thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. At the current rate of discovery, millions more will be found this century.
Having already found the physical planets, astronomers are now searching for our biological neighbors. Over the next fifty years, they will begin the tantalizing, detailed study of millions of planets, looking for evidence of the presence of life on or below the surfaces or in the atmospheres of those planets.
And it’s very likely that astronomers will find it. Despite the fact that more than one-third of Americans surveyed believe that aliens have already visited Earth, the first evidence of life beyond our planet probably won’t be radio signals, little green men or flying saucers. Instead, a 21st century Galileo, using an enormous, 50-meter-diameter telescope, will collect light from the atmospheres of distant planets, looking for the signatures of biologically significant molecules.
Astronomers filter that light from far away through spectrometers – high-tech prisms that tease the light apart into its many distinct wavelengths. They’re looking for the telltale fingerprints of molecules that would not exist in abundance in these atmospheres in the absence of living things. The spectroscopic data will tell whether a planet’s environment has been altered in ways that point to biological processes at work.
If we aren’t alone, who are we?
With the discovery in a distant planet’s light spectrum of a chemical that could only be produced by living creatures, humankind will have the opportunity to read a new page in the book of knowledge. We will no longer be speculating about whether other beings exist in the universe. We will know that we not alone.
An affirmative answer to the question “Does life exist anywhere else in the universe beyond Earth?” would raise immediate and profoundly important cosmotheological questions about our place in the universe. If extraterrestrial others exist, then my religion and my religious beliefs and practices might not be universal. If my religion is not universally applicable to all extraterrestrial others, perhaps my religion need not be offered to, let alone forced on, all terrestrial others. Ultimately, we might learn some important lessons applicable here at home just from considering the possibility of life beyond our planet.
In my book, I investigated the sacred writings of the world’s most widely practiced religions, asking what each religion has to say about the uniqueness or non-uniqueness of life on Earth, and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe.
Extrasolar sinners?
Let’s examine a seemingly simple yet exceedingly complex theological question: could extraterrestrials be Christians? If Jesus died in order to redeem humanity from the state of sin into which humans are born, does the death and resurrection of Jesus, on Earth, also redeem other sentient beings from a similar state of sin? If so, why are the extraterrestrials sinful? Is sin built into the very fabric of the space and time of the universe? Or can life exist in parts of the universe without being in a state of sin and therefore without the need of redemption and thus without the need for Christianity? Many different solutions to these puzzles involving Christian theology have been put forward. None of them yet satisfy all Christians.
Mormon worlds
Mormon scripture clearly teaches that other inhabited worlds exist and that “the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doctrines and Covenants 76:24). The Earth, however, is a favored world in Mormonism, because Jesus, as understood by Mormons, lived and was resurrected only on Earth. In addition, Mormon so-called intelligences can only achieve their own spiritual goals during their lives on Earth, not during lifetimes on other worlds. Thus, for Mormons, the Earth might not be the physical center of the universe but it is the most favored place in the universe. Such a view implies that all other worlds are, somehow, lesser worlds than Earth.
Bahá’í without bias
Members of the Bahá’í Faith have a view of the universe that has no bias for or against the Earth as a special place or for against humans as a special sentient species. The principles of the Bahá’í Faith – unifying society, abandoning prejudice, equalizing opportunities for all people, eliminating poverty – are about humans on Earth. The Bahá’í faithful would expect any creatures anywhere in the universe to worship the same God as do humans, but to do so according to their own, world-specific ways.
Light years from Mecca
The pillars of the faith for Muslims require the faithful to pray five times every day while facing Mecca. Because determining the direction of Mecca correctly could be extremely difficult on a quickly spinning planet millions of light years from Earth, practicing the same faith on another world might not make any sense. Yet the words of the Qu’ran tell us that “Whatever beings there are in the heavens and the earth do prostrate themselves to Allah” (13:15). Can terrestrial Muslims accept that the prophetically revealed religion of Muhammad is intended only for humans on earth and that other worlds would have their own prophets?
Astronomers as paradigm-shatterers At certain moments throughout history, astronomers’ discoveries have exerted an outsized influence on human culture. Ancient Greek astronomers unflattened the Earth – though many then chose to forget this knowledge. Renaissance scholars Copernicus and Galileo put the Earth in motion around the Sun and moved humans away from the center of the universe. In the 20th century, Edwin Hubble eliminated the very idea that the universe has any center at all. He demonstrated that what the universe has is a beginning in time and that, bizarrely, the universe, the very fabric of three-dimensional space, is expanding.
Clearly, when astronomers offer the world bold new ideas, they don’t mess around. Another such paradigm-shattering new idea may be in the light arriving at our telescopes now.
The ConversationNo matter which (a)theistic background informs your theology, you may have to wrestle with the data astronomers will be bringing to houses of worship in the very near future. You will need to ask: Is my God the God of the entire universe? Is my religion a terrestrial or a universal religion? As people work to reconcile the discovery of extrasolar life with their theological and philosophical worldviews, adapting to the news of life beyond Earth will be discomfiting and perhaps even disruptive.
But this doesn't mean the object is breaking apart in a meaningful way.
Imagery of interstellar Comet Borisov captured by the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that a piece broke off the object’s nucleus between March 23 and March 28, 2020. (The middle photo was taken with a different filter than the two on the sides, explaining its different appearance.)
Our solar system's second known interstellar visitor doesn't seem to be in one piece anymore.
Photos of the interstellar Comet Borisov taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on March 28 and March 30 show an elongated nucleus that appears to have two distinct components, astronomers announced in a note Thursday (April 2). That's a very different situation than the one Hubble observed on March 23, when the nucleus was a single entity.
"Actually, it turns out almost never to be that case," Jewitt told Space.com, referring to similar observations of native-born comets.
"Usually, the main nucleus drops off a piece, and the piece is small compared to the main nucleus — it contains a tiny fraction of the total mass," he said. "But, because it was just plucked out of the nucleus, it's pretty icy. And the ice fizzes and sublimates like crazy, making it a good producer of dust."
Dust is what Hubble is picking up in these photos. So, it's unlikely that Borisov is breaking apart in a significant way, Jewitt added. He estimated that Borisov may have just lost 0.1% to 1% of its total mass, comparing the probable scenario to a car that just dropped a side mirror.
Still, the researchers don't know for sure that this is the case; it's possible that something more dramatic just happened. Jewitt and his colleagues hope to figure it out, and additional Hubble observations could do the trick.
For example, further Hubble imagery could show researchers how fast the shed fragment is accelerating away from the main nucleus and how long it remains observable. Both of these data points would provide clues about the size of the newly liberated shard, Jewitt said.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of the interstellar object Comet 2I/Borisov on Oct. 12, 2019. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt (UCLA))
Comet Borisov was detected in August 2019 and made its closest approach to the sun in December. It's not necessarily surprising to see a chunk fly off the comet now, four months after this perihelion passage, Jewitt said; the timeline is consistent with two prominent models of comet shedding.
In one of those models, comets begin spinning faster after close solar approaches because the heating they experience causes significant, and asymmetrical, mass loss. It may take several months for the spin-up to get dramatic enough for pieces to go flying off into space, Jewitt said.
In the other model, this same heating causes pressure to build up inside comet nuclei. Eventually, the pressure reaches a pocket of supervolatile ice, such as carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, resulting in a blowout. And, again, this may take some time. (But comets may be too leaky for this explanation to be viable in most circumstances, Jewitt said.)
There's also the possibility that Comet Borisov got hit by something. But an impact is unlikely to be the explanation, Jewitt said, given how empty space is and how strange Borisov's orbit is compared to objects that were born in our solar system.
Borisov is the second known interstellar body ever spotted in our solar system. The first was the mysterious object 'Oumuamua, whose multilayered weirdness has prompted speculation that it may be an alien spacecraft of some sort.
'Oumuamua was already barreling toward the outer solar system when it was detected. Borisov had not yet rounded the sun in August 2019, meaning astronomers have been able to track it for longer stretches and in greater detail.
"It's entirely possible that the virus is going to kill the comet for most astronomers," Jewitt said.
But Hubble is still operating despite the outbreak, and this iconic eye in the sky is well suited to observe Borisov. Indeed, even the biggest ground-based scopes don't have the resolution required to detect the recent shedding event, Jewitt said.
"So, really, only [the Hubble] Space Telescope can see this sort of thing," he said.
A scarlet fan spread across the skies over Japan 1,400 years ago, and it's been puzzling astronomers ever since.
According to historical records, on Dec. 30, 620, a "red sign" shaped like "a pheasant tail" appeared in the sky. At the time, the sign was considered a bad omen. Modern scientists looking back at the report have wondered whether the spectacle may have been caused by an aurora or a comet, but neither of those explanations quite made sense.
Ryuho Kataoka, who studies space weather at the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan, and his colleagues decided they wanted to investigate what could have caused the scarlet phenomenon, according to a statement.
They began by comparing the historical description with a modern understanding of auroras. Although these celestial dances are often green, they can appear in other colors, including red, depending on which elements in Earth's atmosphere are being activated by charged particles spit out by the sun.
The team tracked down more recent observations of auroras that were visible over Japan in a fan shape with a red background. That matches the "pheasant tail" description of the 620 event. The researchers also mapped what Earth's changing magnetic field would have looked like at the time, suggesting that Japan would have been around 33 degrees of magnetic latitude in 620, as opposed to 25 degrees today, according to the statement.
A pheasant with its tail fanned out, below. (Image credit: Hiromichi Nakagawa)
The researchers also analyzed another hypothesis about the "red sign" — that it was caused by a comet. But such spectacles usually aren't tinged red, and the team determined that there should have been a low probability of a comet streaking by at the time.
"This is an interesting and successful example that modern science can benefit from the ancient Japanese emotion evoked when the surprising appearance of heaven reminded them of a familiar bird," Kataoka said.
The research is described in a paper published March 31 in the Sokendai Review of Culture and Social Studies.
In the world of the paranormal there are a variety of different types of encounters with seemingly humanoid entities. Some of these are of course of ghosts, while others can be of lesser defined phenomena, and some of these truly leave us scratching our heads. Among such reports are scattered accounts of encounters with what seem to be pitch black entities of some sort, which seem to appear anywhere and which have origins and machinations that are inscrutable to us. Here is a selection of such strange encounters with black humanoid entities from beyond our understanding.
Some of these strange encounters happen out in the wilds where things are already dark and scary enough as it is without having to worry about pitch black, possibly demonic entities. One such story comes to us from Reddit user “Justinf10000,” who says he had his spooky experience in the woods of Camp Tommy, in Fishkill, New York. He says he had been working as a camp counselor at the time of the incident, and that on this evening he was sneaking out to go meet up with his girlfriend in one of the other cabins. He wasn’t supposed to be out, as the cabins were supposed to be locked down after 10PM, but he had done this often and there was no reason to think anything strange would happen this time, but it did anyway. He explains of what happened as he cut through the forest:
Suddenly I heard rustling in the woods, and stopped to investigate it. There are bears/other animals so I was expecting something like that. This 3 foot humanoid type thing suddenly jumps out of the bushes spooked and looks at me. It’s too dark for me to make out any of its features, other than it was standing on 2 feet, had 2 arms, and basically looked just like a miniature person without any features (just looked solid black, if it had clothes on, I would have been able to notice that).
I was really curious what it was so I started walking towards it, and it must have got more spooked because it bolted back into the woods. I’ll never forget how mechanical it looked as it took off running too. It’s whole body basically shifted 90 degrees (like if someone was doing the robot dance) and it just took off. I have never seen anything on 2 legs run that quickly so I was pretty confused about what it was. I’m a pretty fast runner and fit person in general, but this thing was on another level of fast. As much as I try to make sense of it, I still to this day have no idea wtf it was. It was very human, but too short to be a human (3 feet tall is about accurate) and i really don’t know how a human could run that fast anyways. I have no freakin idea but it’s always bugged me! Maybe one day I will go back to try and find this creature again!
Strange, indeed. Another such account comes to us from the wilds of the state of Alabama, where Reddit user “AMpwrs” says she had a rather bizarre experience just after an evening riding around in his 4×4 truck through a wooded area. On their way back they apparently ran out of gas and were forced to push the truck to a secluded parking area, where they decided to sit and take a rest before deciding what to do next. It was as they sat there that the witness looked up and saw something strange in the solitary security light of the parking lot. He says of what happened next:
Standing there no more than 10 ft in front us and directly in clear view under the security light was a horrible creature. I froze up and just remained as silent as I could, then my buddy screams out loudly. That’s when this thing noticed us and jumped, turning in our direction. It immediately ran off in an awkward lanky fashion and ducked behind a tree. It then peeked around the tree back toward us then sprinted off towards the woods where it disappeared. That’s when I said, “did you see that”?
My friend immediately described exactly what it was that I had just witnessed down to detail. A solid black bipedal creature with shiny tight skin. It had an elongated head and no face. It did have facial bone structure but no orifices. No mouth, no nostrils and no eyes. You could see every bone in its body and it was slightly hunched. It had long dangling pointy fingers.
The creature apparently then ran off into the night and was not seen again. What was this thing? Who knows? Not all of these encounters happen out in the middle of nowhere. Another tale comes to us from a soldier in the U.S. Army, who at the time was at the sprawling, 94,000-acre Fort Sill, in Lawton, Oklahoma, for training exercises. He says that on this evening he was on firewatch duty, which was basically a pretty boring detail according to him. However, on this evening it would prove to be anything but boring. The witness says:
One Saturday I had firewatch. Not a big deal i decided I’d chill in my room for most of it and make myself been seen every now and then. We had a gym below the main floor. We would spend a lot of time in that gym. Firewatch was sometimes tasked with cleaning it up. There was a small walled off section though. It used to contain an electric chair. I’m still unsure on the history of the building we we’re at but it was next to a large cemetery. We would hear the occasional creepy story about the building and the electric chair.
Anyway, I digress. That night I was asked to clean the gym and then to mop 3rd deck. At the time no one lived on 3rd deck. My buddy and I cleaned the gym then walked up the stairs to mop. He mopped from the end to the middle and I proceeded to mop the rest of the way to the stairs. We finished mopping my friend went to go skate in his room while I told duty we we’re done. I walked back up the stairs to grab the mop bucket. I got up there and I realized someone had walked all over the floor that we just mopped. So I looked down the hallway.
When I did I saw a human like figure. Except it was black. The blackest black I have ever seen. I felt this wave of uncertainty and fear wash over me. Something I have never felt before. I sprinted down the stairs ran to my room waking my roommate up. He thought I was messing with him when I told him what happened. After that I never saw the figure again while I was there. It was honestly one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.
What in the world was going on here? Was this a ghost, his imagination, or something else altogether? On occasion, such entities are seen around more residential areas or even more creepily within homes. One account from Your Ghost Stories supposedly happened in 2008 in the U.S. state of Connecticut, with the witness saying that the strangeness began when he woke up one evening to find a strange presence in his room. He explains of what happened next:
A few seconds after awaking I felt the sensation of something gripping my heart and squeezing it to the point where it was painful. For me to admit pain, actual pain, with what I’ve gone through in terms of getting hurt playing sports, means that it was really something bad. Also, I don’t wake up at those hours of the morning anymore without a reason I’m aware of, a dream, having to go to the bathroom, or something along those lines. When I woke up for this, there was no immediate cause that I can remember that forced me to wake up… All I remember is waking up.
In the corner of my bed room, there was a black shadow, darker than my room that appeared to be humanoid, but somehow didn’t really have a shape. I never looked directly at it, but only looked at it out of the corner of my eye, which is unusual because I ALWAYS look at unusual objects/things. I do remember it seeming to reach out toward me at one point. All I did was curl up into a ball and started praying. A minute or 2 after I started praying, I felt the pressure in my chest release, and with it came a profound calmness I’ve never had before, and I’ve managed to maintain a piece of that calmness ever since. My house is not haunted, nobody has ever died in it, and there’s no ancient Indian Graveyard underneath it. I have no explanation for what happened.
This sounds like it could almost be a case of the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, wherein the witnesses will find themselves in a sort of limbo state between sleep and wakefulness and experience extremely vivid dream-like hallucinations, but it is hard to say. Another witness, Reddit user “Hhandholmes,” says that he and several acquaintances were plagued by a string of sightings of these types of black entities in the vicinity of where he lived, at an undisclosed location within the United States. He says that within a month he and several others spotted petite black humanoids standing only around 4 feet tall lurking about the area, and he explains:
In most of the cases we all witnessed the same style of humanoid, around 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall and pitch black, meaning that no features were even seen on the things. They would walk/run extremely fast and were only seem at night time, sometimes even passing through street lights yet their bodies got no lighter than what they were in the dark, they were always a pitch black.
They were spotted all in the same two blocks of each other, mostly standing in the alleys, once sitting in a tree, on someones front porch and even in a bedroom. The most seen together was only two, meaning that they mostly traveled alone? Most of them seemed to simply be watching, there was one incident where the being was slightly different. it was probably a foot and half taller but hunched over and could drop on all fours and sprint away faster than any animal or person I have ever seen.
There are cases along these lines reported from countries other than the United states as well. One comes to us from a Reddit User “is_no_good,” who says he had this experience while living in a small rural village in Germany in 2003. At the time he was on his way back from a church service when he saw something very outlandish standing in a side alley. He says of his encounter:
In a sidestreet under a lighted street lamp stood this thing, it was completely black had no face and no clothes, was very tall, like about 2m and the creature’s arms reached below its knees. It just stood there in silence and as I saw it and realized that it can’t be a human, I was frozen to fear and couldn’t stop looking at it, till it made a step in my direction. In this moment I ran like hell to the house of my parents without turning around. It didn’t get me or something but I was in extreme fear. I never talked to anyone about this because I feared that people would laugh about me. But I saw it and it still haunts my thoughts now and then. Fortunately, I never saw it again. In Summary: The thing was completely black it had no details. There was no face, no colors, no nose shape, no eyes. It had normal proportions except the knee long arms. It was very thin and approximately 2m tall. It made no sound. And I have the feeling that it was a ‘he.’
Another account is from a witness on Your Ghost Stories who lives in the Philippines. She explains that this happened when she was in college living with 4 housemates at an apartment near the university. It was here where they would all be menaced by a very strange entity indeed. The witness says:
One afternoon at around 4 or 5, one of our housemates (which was also my classmate and batchmate) was eating her dinner while I was sitting in the middle of the living room facing the mirror and my sister was in the living room watching TV. So as the area is an open space and is just divided by some sort of study table or chairs (I can’t remember the divider we used), all 3 of us are basically within the same room and can clearly see each other. After a while, I saw a tall dark figure sort of peeping at us from the kitchen sink area. There is a thick supporting foundation just before the sink (L-shaped area) and there was this tall dark thing hiding by it. I can see its face, hair, one arm and left leg and foot but the other parts are not visible as it seems to be hiding (like when a kid is shy but is still curious to see something kind of pose). So it took me a few seconds before I was able to talk because my mind can’t comprehend what I was seeing so my immediate question was, “is there anyone at the sink”? Which I know is quite odd and impossible as I know there are only 3 of us.
My housemate, being a scaredy cat suddenly stood up looking at me in disbelief asking me to stop teasing her but I told her that there is something by the column going to the sink looking at us. My sister then said there are only 3 of us in the house right now and it can be a burglar as we are just on the 2nd floor of the entire apartment building. But I told them that is not possible as the exit staircase is no longer there due to weather and rusting. I also told them that it is not person based from what I see.
They then asked me what I see and I told them that aside from the white of the eyeballs, everything was just black. I told them it was black as a charcoal and the hair is like that of an afro and the it is almost as tall as the ceiling. It stayed there for a good 2 to 3 minutes as if it was observing someone or something from the house (my guess is that it was looking at the TV as it was the direction of its gaze) before it disappeared. I think all the hairs on my body were standing up during the entire time I was seeing this thing and then everything went back to normal as soon as it disappeared. The funny thing is I think my sister and our housemate were even more afraid of the thing than I was even though I was the only one that can see it. I didn’t feel any scary aura coming from it. I guess my goosebumps were just due to the fact that I don’t know what I was seeing and I can’t believe what I was seeing. And more than ten years from that event, I still don’t know what that tall dark thing was.
With such an eclectic mix of truly bizarre reports we are left to wonder what it is we might be dealing with in such encounters. Are these examples of ghosts, demons, or even aliens or interdimensional interlopers of some sort bleeding over into our reality? Are they just fanciful fictionalized accounts or the product of the imagination? There is no way to really know for sure, and such cases as these serve to really fuel speculation and wonder as to what might be going on.
Everybody loves a murder mystery – including the space scientists at NASA. Spoiler alert: they already figured out the murderer in this whodunit and they’re calling it officially a “cosmic homicide.” If you know anything about space and astronomy, you won’t be surprised to learn that the culprit is a black hole. However, this one is a type that has been theorized to exist but has eluded detection and proof … until now. Is this really a murder mystery or more of a Stephen King horror thriller?
“Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as “intermediate-mass,” which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close.”
NASA’s press release on the discovery of the first known intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) opens like a murder case, but quickly switches to sounding like an archeological study.
“These so-called intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are a long-sought “missing link” in black hole evolution.”
And then it becomes a horror monster thriller.
“It took the combined power of two X-ray observatories and the keen vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to nail down the cosmic beast.”
This is getting interesting.
While the movie doesn’t have a title yet, the plot opens with the Hubble telescope, that workhorse responsible for so many stellar discoveries. According to the NASA press release for the study published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomer Dacheng Lin of the University of New Hampshire pointed the Hubble telescope at a strange X-ray flare detected but not identified previously by other space telescopes. The first clue this was something completely different was the startling discovery that it wasn’t coming from our galaxy nor from the center of another galaxy – which meant it wasn’t a supermassive black hole. Being on the edge of a galaxy made 3XMM J215022.4−055108 and its strange galactic home something new yet familiar.
“The star cluster that is home to 3XMM J215022.4−055108 may be the stripped-down core of a lower-mass dwarf galaxy that has been gravitationally and tidally disrupted by its close interactions with its current larger galaxy host.”
The cause of the X-ray flare was the cosmic homicide of a star by this strange black hole in a strange location in a strange galaxy. Using the glow, the astronomers estimated the size of the black hole at 50,000 solar masses – the perfect size to be an intermediate-mass black hole. That proves it’s both the murderer in the cosmic homicide tale and the missing link between small and supermassive black holes.
Like good homicide detectives, the astronomers will use this new knowledge to look for other cosmic killer IMBHs. They’ll also keep their eye on 3XMM J215022.4−055108 – there’s no way to bring it in and lock it up for life, so it’s still lurking in a dark corner of a mysterious galaxy … waiting for an unsuspecting star to sashay by. Yes, it’s a true “cosmic beast.”
Killer Cosmic Beast. Homicide: Life on the Galactic Edge. Law & Order: Intermediate Black Hole Unit. The movie and TV series possibilities are intriguing. Maybe it’s time for a channel that caters to astronomers. Andromeda Prime? Netflux? Starz Encore Murders?
Film-making has got to be among the most difficult careers in the world. More so if the topic of your film is something as mercurial and controversial as the UFO phenomenon. If you’re going to make a movie about tigers then you know that if you travel to the jungles of Southeast Asia (or Oklahoma) chances are you’ll be able to film some tigers. If your movie is about mount Everest you can book your plane ticket to Nepal with full confidence that the mountain isn’t going anywhere. But with UFOs, you will always be two steps behind them, so filmmakers need to follow a ‘cold case’ approach: visit the ‘crime scene’, interview the witnesses and the experts, perhaps even analyze trace evidence, if any; but the chances of capturing with your camera a bonafide flying saucer –or at the very least a fuzzy orange orb– are close to nil.
Yet that does not exclude the possibility of really weird things happening during the production of a UFO film. Nietzche’s famous quote, “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” is often invoked in paranormal circles, to illustrate how showing an active interest in these mysteries can often carry some unforeseen circumstances…
Take for instance the documentary Witness of Another World (Testigo de Otro Mundo) released originally in 2018 (last year with English subtitles) by Argentinian filmmaker Alan Stivelman. The film focuses on the story of Juan Pérez, who in 1978 was a very young ‘gaucho’ (a South American cowboy) who had an incredible close encounter of the third kind; a case so remarkable it merited the personal investigation by none other than Dr. Jacques Vallee. WoAW shows, among other things, how Juan’s experience forced him to isolate himself from society and even from his own family; living as a recluse in a small cabin with no electricity or even running water, with no other company than his animals with whom he claims to be able to communicate. For you see, like many other UFO experiencers, Juan developed what can only be described as psychic abilities, including the gift –or is that a curse?– of prophetic dreams.
[Minor Spoilers Ahead] In the film there’s a scene in which Dr. Néstor Berlanda –a professional psychiatrist who’s been treating Juan for many years– is shown conducting a sort of hypnotic regression therapy on him, in order to reveal more information of what happened on that fateful morning of September 6th, 1978, when the (then) 12-year-old boy who was sent by his father to fetch their herd of horses, found himself instead face to face with a shiny object which his juvenile mind first mistook for a ‘tractor’ or a ‘barn’, and inside the ‘barn’ he encountered two non-human entities (a very tall humanoid, and a smaller being which looked like a robot). On a podcast interview that my friend Greg Bishop and I recorded with Alan, among our many questions for him we asked about that scene in particular, because we’re both keenly aware of the backlash generated by the use of hypnosis in abduction research due to the potential risk of implanting false memories in the witness.
Berlanda and Juan
Alan explained to us the procedure Dr. Berlanda had applied on Juan carried no such risk, because was different from the typical hypnosis performed by therapists, and that it was more a method of ‘relaxation’ than an actual trance-like state –of course, critics could argue that relaxation is the whole point of hypnosis, so I guess Dr. Berlanda could be the only one able to explain the difference in detail. Another aspect of the therapy scene Greg had found very interesting was how, at one point in the session, Berlanda suggests Juan to ‘ask’ questions to the tall humanoid –like “why are they here?” or “why did you choose me?”– to which he apparently received some surprising answers.
Illustration depicting the tall being encountered by Juan
“What would be the point of asking such questions,” Greg asked Alan, “if they hadn’t really taken place during the original event of 1978?” Was Berlanda trying to help Juan attain some sort of closure by way of filling the gaps of his encounter using his own imagination?
“No,” Alan said to us. In what would seem as a total departure from causality and logic, Berlanda had discovered that by taking Juan in the proper state of mind, he was apparently not only able to remember what had taken place to him in the past, but also he was able to communicate with ‘them’ as if they were there during the session in the present time!
As incredible as this may sound, there is at least another example in the UFO literature in which similar interactions with alleged alien intelligences while in the presence of independent researchers have been documented: I’m talking here of course of the hypnotic sessions with Betty Andreasson Luca, as described by author Raymond E. Fowler in his classic book The Andreasson Affair.
Betty Andreasson and her husband, Bob Luca
According to Fowler, during the 12th regression session which was conducted on July 16, 1977, the MUFON investigators were attempting to extract more details about the event that happened to Betty and her family on January of 1967 –when she was taken from her home and led by a group of ‘gray aliens’ to a circular craft, and from there to another realm in which she received visions of a mystical nature– when suddenly Betty’s mind spontaneously ‘shifted’ from her past memories to the present, and she found herself unable to move her arms and legs. She also felt as if someone or something was controlling her words, and suddenly, to the amazement of everyone present, she began to talk with a mechanical tone in an unknown language –this “star language” was later determined to be very similar to ancient Gaelic.
At one point it seemed as the hypnosis with Andreasson had turned into a mediumship session, and the investigators were trying to ask direct questions to the intelligence or intelligences controlling Betty, who was answering them in plain English –although the meaning of the replies still remained too cryptic. At other times, the flow of the communication and the messages in the “star language” were interrupted by meaningless bursts like “Base 32 — Base 32 — Signal Base 32,” and it was later suggested messages from a truck driver using a CB radio was messing with the ‘alien transmission’ hijacking Betty’s mind.
Could it be that electromagnetic signals generated by human technology could actually interfere with the ‘superior technology’ of UFOs? Although no one is able to answer that question, basically every UFOlogist accepts that the opposite is true –based for example on the many cases in which automobile engines have been shut down by the close proximity of a UFO, which is attributed to the tremendous magnetic field surrounding these objects affecting the car’s alternator.
Which brings us back to Witness of Another World, and two other fascinating incidents occurring during the filming of that intriguing hypnotic session between Dr. Berlanda and Juan, which Alan shared with Greg and I during our interview (despite the fact that they were not mentioned in his documentary): During the shooting of that scene –which took place inside’s Juan humble house in the middle of the Argentinian pampa– all the lights in the camera crew’s equipment began to flicker all at once; an inexplicable phenomenon, given how they were being powered with independent batteries.
Alan Stivelman
Even more fantastic still, is that every single member of Alan’s team –with the exception of himself and Dr. Berlanda– fell asleep at the exact moment when Berlanda told Juan to ask the questions to the tall humanoid, and they didn’t wake up until the session ended.
Both Greg and I were totally dumbfounded when Alan told us these things via Skype, in October of 2019. It goes without saying that to this day he doesn’t have an explanation to why these things happened while he was making his movie, and neither have I. Perhaps part of the answer lies in what Betty Andreasson told to the MUFON investigators while she was in hypnotic trance in 1977: That, to these beings –whatever they are wherever they come from– “the future and the past are the same as today.”
Superzwaar zwart gat in centrum Melkweg begint wakker te worden
Voorstelling van links onze Melkweg en rechts Sagittarius A*, het zwarte gat in het centrum met sterren die er omheen cirkelen.
ESA/C.Carreau
Superzwaar zwart gat in centrum Melkweg begint wakker te worden
In het centrum van de meeste sterrenstelsels ligt een superzwaar zwart gat en dat is ook met onze Melkweg het geval. Sagittarius A*, zoals dat zwarte gat heet, staat niet bekend als een erg actieve kern, het slokt niet veel materie op uit de buurt en stoot dus ook niet veel straling uit. Maar daar lijkt verandering in te komen. Een nieuwe studie bevestigt dat Sagittarius A* sinds augustus 2014 drie keer meer energierijke uitbarstingen kent in het röntgenspectrum dan daarvoor. Hoe dat komt is voorlopig nog onduidelijk.
Luc De Roy
Door hun enorme zwaartekracht oefenen zwarte gaten, en zeker de superzware met een massa van enkele miljoenen tot enkele miljarden keer de massa van onze zon, een sterke aantrekkingskracht uit op alles in hun buurt. Sommige zwarte gaten slokken daardoor materie uit hun buurt op, en dat zorgt voor wrijving en een enorme hitte waardoor er elektromagnetische straling vrijkomt, röntgenstraling, visueel licht, infrarood en radiostraling. Ook kunnen ze jets uitstoten uit hun beide polen, 'fonteinen' van elektronen en geladen deeltjes materie.
Sagittarius A*, het zwarte gat in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel, is echter een vrij rustig exemplaar, ook al fluctueert de helderheid ervan wel zowat dagelijks in de verschillende elektromagnetische spectra. Maar de laatste tijd lijkt daar verandering in te komen.
Een studie uit 2017, waaraan ook astrofysicus Enmanuelle Lossoux van de Université de Liège meewerkte, stelde dat uit observaties van 1999 tot 2015 met de röntgenobservatoria XMM-Newton, Chandra en Swift bleek dat de helderste uitbarstingen in het röntgenspectrum sinds augustus 2014 toegenomen waren, terwijl de zwakste en minst energierijke uitbarstingen sinds augustus 2013 net iets minder talrijk waren geworden.
Om na te gaan of die tendenzen nog steeds aanhielden, heeft een Belgisch-Frans team onder leiding van Lossoux nu opnieuw de gegevens van 1999 tot 2015 bekeken en ook de data van 2016 tot 2018 van de drie telescopen.
Een voorstelling van het stellaire, niet superzware, zwarte gat Cygnus X-1 dat materie wegzuigt en opslokt van de nabijgelegen blauwe reus-ster..
NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
121 opflakkeringen
In de gegevens die verzameld werden tussen 1999 en 2015 hadden de onderzoekers 107 opflakkeringen in het röntgenspectrum gevonden, in de nieuwe gegevens die tussen 2016 en 2018 verzameld werden door de observaties van de Chandra-telescoop vonden ze 9 nieuwe opflakkeringen en in die van de Swift-telescoop nog eens 5, zodat het totaal op 121 komt.
De onderzoekers gebruikten nieuwe, betere algoritmes om de gegevens te analyseren en ze kwamen tot de conclusie dat de minst heldere en minst energierijke opflakkeringen stabiel waren gebleven. Hun aantal was dus niet gedaald sinds augustus 2013, zoals in de studie uit 2017 was gesteld.
De meest energierijke uitbarstingen waren daarentegen wel degelijk talrijker geworden, zo konden ze bevestigen. De telescopen zijn niet constant op Sagittarius A* gericht, zodat de opflakkeringen die wel geobserveerd werden, tot 2014 zowat overeenkwamen met één per dag. Sinds augustus 2014 is hun aantal in het röntgenspectrum zowat verdrievoudigd.
En dat is niet het enige spectrum, ook in andere golflengten is er een opflakkering geweest: verleden jaar zag de Keck telescoop op Hawaï in het nabij infrarood, het deel van het infrarode spectrum dat het dichtst bij zichtbaar licht ligt, Sagittarius A* op 13 mei gedurende twee uur 75 keer helderder worden dan gewoonlijk. Dat is dubbel zo helder als het vorige record. Nog verleden jaar vertoonde Sagittarius A* in totaal op drie nachten een verhoogde activiteit in het nabij infrarood, wat nog nooit eerder gezien was in de data die we hebben, volgens de onderzoekers die deze gegevens geanalyseerd hebben.
Voor 2019 zijn de data nog niet allemaal bekend, die komen dit jaar nog, maar uit korte berichtjes van verschillende astronomen blijkt alvast dat Sagittarius A* ook in 2019 erg actief is gebleven in het röntgenspectrum, zoals blijkt uit observaties met de Swift- en de ARTXC-telescopen.
De onderzoekers analyseerden al wel de gegevens van Swift en vonden 4 nieuwe opflakkeringen, het hoogste aantal dat ooit geobserveerd werd in een enkele campagne.
Duidelijk is dus in elk geval voor de onderzoekers dat de activiteit van Sagittarius A* sinds 2014 toegenomen is in verschillende golflengten van het elekromagnetische spectrum.
Een combinatie van beelden van de omgeving van Sagittarius A* in infarood licht (groot beeld) en een close-up in röntgenstraling (inzet).
X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al. IR: NASA/STScI
Oorzaak nog niet bekend
De oorzaak van de verhoogde activiteit van Sagittarius A* is nog niet bekend.
Mogelijkheden zijn een toegenomen accretie, dat er meer materiaal uit de ruimte wordt aangezogen en in de accretieschijf rond het zwarte gat belandt en daar meer straling veroorzaakt, een zogenoemde "getijdenverstoring" door passerende asteroïden of een verandering in het magnetisch veld van het zwarte gat.
Om daarover uitsluitsel te krijgen, is het wachten op de data voor 2019 van Chandra en XMM Newton, maar om zekerheid te verkrijgen over de toegenomen activiteit en de oorzaak te achterhalen zijn er ook meer gegevens nodig uit andere golflengten, het nabij infrarood en radiogolven. De onderzoekers zijn nu de beschikbare gegevens uit die spectra aan het bestuderen.
Wat de oorzaak ook is, Sagittarius A* ligt op 26.000 lichtjaar van de aarde, zo'n 245 biljoen kilometer. Naar astronomische normen mag dat dan wel een boogscheut zijn, het is in elk geval ver genoeg om uit te kunnen sluiten dat we er enige hinder van zouden ondervinden.
AFPSagittarius A*, in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel.
WETENSCHAPSagittarius A* is een zwart gat dat in het centrum van onze Melkweg ligt. Superzwaar, maar niet actief wat betekent dat het zwart gat niet superveel materie in zijn omgeving opslokt waardoor de kern niet bijzonder helder gloeit. Maar sinds 2014 lijkt daar verandering in te komen: Sagittarius A* lijkt wakker te worden. Dat stelt een Belgisch-Frans onderzoeksteam in het * vaktijdschrift Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Eerst dit: een zwart gat is een gebied in het heelal waar de zwaartekracht zo’n kracht uitoefent dat niets eruit kan ontsnappen, zelfs licht niet. Vandaar de naam zwart gat. Wanneer zo’n zwart gat materie in zijn omgeving opslokt, komt er evenwel energie vrij. Dat uit zich in elektromagnetische straling, röntgenstraling, visueel licht, infrarood en radiostraling. Door die energie, die af en toe vrijkomt, fluctueert de helderheid van het centrum van ons sterrenstelsel dagelijks. Dat is niet eigenaardig.
Wél bijzonder: hoewel Sgr A* zich normaal erg rustig gedraagt, zijn de heldere uitbarstingen de afgelopen jaren toegenomen. Dat stelt een onderzoeksteam van Franse en Belgische wetenschappers, onder leiding van astrofysicus en onderzoeksleider Enmanuelle Lossoux van de Université de Liège.
Eerder observeerden ze wat het zwart gat deed tussen 1999 en 2015. Daaruit bleek dat de heldere uitbarstingen sinds augustus 2014 toenamen. Om te controleren of het om een nieuwe tendens ging, vergeleek het onderzoeksteam de resultaten nogmaals met data van 2016 tot 2018, afkomstig van drie verschillende telescopen. Het vermoeden werd bevestigd met 14 nieuwe heldere uitbarstingen: negen opflakkeringen werden waargenomen met de Chandra-telescoop en nog eens vijf met de Swift-telescoop. Dat brengt het totaal aantal opflakkeringen tussen 1999 en 2018 op 121. De activiteit van Sgr A* is duidelijk toegenomen.
Hoe het komt dat het zwart gat in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel wakker wordt, is voorlopig onbekend. Maar tot de oorzaak gevonden wordt, moeten we ons alvast geen zorgen maken. Omdat het zwart gat Sagittarius A* 25.640 lichtjaar van de aarde verwijderd is (zo’n 245.000 biljoen kilometer) zullen we niet meteen hinder ondervinden van de activiteit.
Joseph SchuberEen Maratus noggerup toont zijn dansmoves.
DIERENSpinnen zijn nu niet meteen ’s werelds meest geliefde dieren, maar voor deze schattige gastjes maken we toch graag een uitzondering. Dit zijn pauwspinnetjes en in Australië werden er zopas maar liefst zeven nieuwe soorten van ontdekt.
De nieuwe soorten worden beschreven in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Zootaxa door Joseph Schubert, een 22-jarige pauwspinnenexpert van het Australische Museum Victoria. Hij was zelf ooit bang van spinnen en hield hen als huisdier om zijn fobie te overwinnen en is nu door de diertjes gefascineerd. “Ik zou pauwspinnen omschrijven als kleine, kleurrijke kittens”, vertelde hij aan de Australische zender ABC. “Ze hebben hun eigen persoonlijkheid en zijn bijzonder klein: ongeveer zo groot als een rijstkorrel.”
Pauwspinnen behoren tot de familie van de springspinnen en zijn gekend voor het erg flamboyante achterwerk van de mannetjes en voor hun charmante paringsdans. Ze leven enkel in Australië en hoewel ze giftig zijn, zijn deze spinnetjes compleet onschadelijk voor de mens: ze jagen op minuscule vliegjes en andere insecten.
Joseph SchuberMaratus laurenae
Schubert heeft tot nu toe al 12 van de 85 gekende soorten pauwspinnen beschreven, inclusief uitgebreide details over hun paringsdansen. Hij krijgt vaak staaltjes toegestuurd ter identificatie, maar verricht ook veldwerk. “Sommige van deze soorten werden ontdekt door amateurwetenschappers die de lokale soorten documenteren en me foto’s opstuurden: hun hulp is erg belangrijk voor dit soort onderzoek”, legt hij uit.
Schuberts favoriete pauwspin is de Maratus constellatus, die zijn naam dankt aan zijn kleurrijke buik die gelijkenissen vertoont met het schilderij De Sterrennacht van Vincent Van Gogh. “Het is zo een mooie soort”, aldus Schubert.
Joseph SchuberMaratus constellatus
Jurgen Otto werkt voor het Australische ministerie van Landbouw en is eveneens gefascineerd door pauwspinnen. Hij is verantwoordelijk voor de identificatie van een hele reeks soorten en heeft een volledige website aan de kleurrijke spinnetjes gewijd.
De voorbije jaren werden er verscheidene nieuwe soorten ontdekt en gezien hun populariteit zullen er vermoedelijk nog nieuwe soorten aan het licht komen.
De pas beschreven zeven nieuwe soorten zijn Maratus azureus, Maratus constellatus, Maratus laurenae, Maratus noggerup, Maratus suae, Maratus volpei en Maratus inaquosus.
Onderstaande video toont de bijzondere paringsdans van een mannelijke pauwspin.
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Disclosure! They Are Out There!
Disclosure! They Are Out There!
With the on going UFO activity above earth captured on the ISS live feed for the last two months, now Gina Colvin Hill from Salem, Indiana wants to share some images taken on March 24, 2020 showing numerous ufo ships in the sky.
Gina has used different filters to capture these ships otherwise you don’t see them since most of them are cloaked.
Multiple UFOs seen and filmed over Utica, New York 1-Apr-2020
Multiple UFOs seen and filmed over Utica, New York 1-Apr-2020
This footage was just uploaded to MUFON website. It shows 5 UFOs/ORBs flying over Utica, New York on 1st April 2020.
Witness report:
5 UFO Orbs Video Witnessed By Group Of People April 1 2020. Witnessed By Group Of People In Utica NY April 1 2020 We been recording ufos in central ny for a 2 year period
Rare phénomène au Brésil: 2 grosses météorites apparaissent en l'espace de 2 jours
Rare phénomène au Brésil: 2 grosses météorites apparaissent en l'espace de 2 jours
Deux météorites de grande ampleur sont tombées au Brésil en moins de deux jours : un phénomène qui n’était plus arrivé depuis 2016. Elles ont été capturées par les détecteurs et les webcams de surveillance d'un observatoire de Taquara, dans la région métropolitaine de Porto Alegre. La première est tombée dans la nuit du 29 au 30 mars, l’autre le soir du 31 mars.
"Les météores sont des phénomènes naturels, explique Carlos Fernando Jung, professeur et directeur à l’observatoire. Ils se produisent depuis le début de notre planète, donc ces événements continueront de se produire et nous espérons également que ces météores n'auront pas une magnitude si élevée qu'ils seraient capables de détruire notre civilisation".
Massive Fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station
Massive Fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station
More and more people around the world are starting to notice the massive formations of UFOs flying past our planet.
So also Gorden Mckenna, while checking NASA's live feed cam on April 2, he noticed a fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station.
As we have reported before, a first wave of UFOs and unknown space anomalies/debris appeared in February through the first week of march. This fleet of UFOs is part of the second wave that started a week ago and is just one of the many formations that fly by.
Just like the first wave, this second wave also comes from the same direction, indicating that there is something going on in deep space that forces all these UFOs to move to other locations.
It is of course difficult to determine what could be the reason for the displacements of all these UFOs but one reason could be that there is a space war going on.
Another reason could be that a huge devastating celestial body is the cause of the UFO displacements, since the live cam also shows countless unknown anomalies what looks like debris that fly by, which suggest that these anomalies may come from such a celestial body.
Fleet of UFOs flying alongside unknown anomalies/debris.
Whatever the reason, it's something to keep an eye on.
SpaceX is about to start putting the latest prototype of its Starship Mars-colonizing vehicle to the test.
Starship SN3 (short for "Serial No. 3") has been stacked and hauled to a launch stand at SpaceX's South Texas facilities near the seaside village of Boca Chica, photos tweeted recently by company founder and CEO Elon Musk show.
The stage is thus set for the SN3's test campaign, which will start with a pressure trial and end with short test flights into the South Texas sky. That's if all goes according to plan, of course, and there's no guarantee that it will. Two previous Starship prototypes, for example, didn't make it past the pressure-test hurdle.
The Starship transportation system consists of a 100-passenger vehicle called Starship and a giant rocket named Super Heavy. SpaceX is developing this reusable duo to carry people and payloads to a variety of destinations, especially Mars. Indeed, Musk has repeatedly said that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help colonize the Red Planet, making humanity a multiplanet species.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted this photo of the company’s SN3 prototype on the launch stand, getting readied for testing, on March 30, 2020. (Image credit: Elon Musk via Twitter)
SpaceX is building its way up to the final Starship design via a series of prototypes that will go beyond the SN3. For instance, SN4 will likely perform the first high-altitude test flights, which will get up to about 12 miles (20 kilometers) above Earth, Musk has said.
Such milestone tests might be just around the corner, for the billionaire entrepreneur wants to get Starship and Super Heavy up and running soon. SpaceX representatives have said the first operational Starship missions — likely launches of communications satellites to Earth orbit — could happen as early as next year.
SpaceX has one crewed Starship mission on the docket. In 2018, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa booked the vehicle for a round-the-moon voyage, with launch targeted for 2023.
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
ANTARCTICA scientists made a stunning discovery 3,500 metres below the ice, leading one to state they had "never seen anything like this before," a documentary revealed.
Expedition Antarctica took to the waters for a 50-day journey across the Southern Ocean and beyond the icy continent earlier this year. On board New Zealand’s research vessel RV Tangaroa, an international team used state-of-the-art technology to scan the seabed. The Aegis imaging system allowed scientists to capture fascinated images like nothing seen before.
While the mission is still ongoing, “The Secrets of Antarctica” documentary was released on YouTube in July revealing the amazing finds to date.
The narrator explained: “Having braved ice storms, broken equipment and rough seas for almost two months, the team braces itself for the most high-pressured assignment of them all.
“They will delve 3,500 metres into the abyssal plain, a depth almost as high as the Swiss Alps.
“It will endure 300 times more pressure than we experience every day.
Antarctica scientists were stunned by the creature
(Image: YOUTUBE)
The expedition traveled through the Southern Ocean
(Image: YOUTUBE)
I have never seen anything like this before
Kareen Schnabel
“Suddenly the abyssal plain reveals itself, it looks barren, like the surface of Mars, but a closer look reveals life that no one has ever witnessed in Antarctica at all.”
However, the scientists could not leave it there.
They wanted a closer look at some of the marine life and so sent down a fishing net.
The narrator added: “The team take the opportunity to trawl the bottom, having set up more than 5,000 of cable into the sea.
“The beam trawl finally comes aboard at 2:00am and, after six hours of waiting, the team gets its reward.
He said last month: “This is why I came to Antarctica, to see things like this.”
Dr Stewart held the creature up to the camera.
He then exclaimed: “I have to look at such features as the shape of the teeth, the jaws, the shape of the gill rakers, as well as counts of the vertebrae [to determine what it is].
“Now I have no idea what species this is.
“The colour pattern on the fins is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft sailed past Pluto in 2015, it captured animageof the dwarf planet’s heart-shaped geography. But while it was there, New Horizons also caught a glimpse of Pluto’s dark side.
An image of the back of the dwarf planet shows black ripples of rock exactly opposite Sputnik Planitia, the basin that makes up the left lobe of Pluto’s heart. Now, researchers report that those ripples could be evidence that Pluto has a 93-mile-thick ocean sandwiched between its crust and its core. The findings were presented the virtual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which had its in-person event canceled due to the new coronavirus pandemic.
The impact that carved the Sputnik Planitia basin could have sent shock waves around Pluto that ripped up the landscape on the other side, according to the results first pre-published in October, which have not yet been peer reviewed. Signs a similar event on Mercury are also apparent where a 950-mile-long impact crater sits at the exact opposite side of the planet to a region of chaotic geography, reports Robin George Andrews for Scientific American.
“If the impact is large enough, the planet itself can act like a lens, and focus the wave energy at the exact opposite point on the planet from the impact,” Purdue University planetary scientist Adeene Denton tells Science News’ Lisa Grossman.
When a large projectile—250 miles wide, in Denton’s simulations—crashes into a dwarf planet like Pluto, it creates a shock wave followed by a stress wave. As the pair ripple across the surface of the distant world, the waves also travel through its center. But waves would move at different speeds in different materials: quickly through the dwarf planet’s dense core, slowly through the icy crust, and slowest through a liquid ocean.
For Brigham Young University planetary scientist Jani Radebaugh, who wasn’t involved in the study, the research shows how insightful New Horizons’ brief visit to Pluto has been. “It’s amazing how we squeeze every little bit out it,” she tells Scientific American.
The model is still in early development, but it adds to a growing collection of hypotheses that suggest there could be water on Pluto. In 2016, analyses of its surface fissures and spherical shape pointed experts to conclude that a subsurface ocean might be to blame. And research published last year suggested that the impact on Sputnik Planitia may have broken through Pluto’s crust and brought the ocean to the surface, where it froze and tipped Pluto into its current orientation.
The images of Sputnik Planitia’s antipode is relatively low resolution, so it’s difficult to tell what exactly they’re showing. And other explanations have been offered for its chaotic state.
“There’s a lot of weird stuff on that far side of Pluto,” says James Tuttle Keane, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was not involved with the study, to Scientific American. “And there are a lot of different ways that you can imagine creating some of those odd patterns that we see.”
For example, it’s possible that volatile ices, made of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, could have dug up the landscape by cycling between gaseous and solid states.
The New Horizons spacecraft is now exploring further into the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects including Pluto, so evidence needed to confirm or deny theories about Pluto’s subsurface ocean will have to wait for another mission.
But if it’s true, “we might need to think a little differently about the Kuiper belt itself and all of these distant worlds in it and maybe look at them a little bit closer. They could all host such incredible, rich geologic histories,” Denton tells Scientific American. To Science News, she says, “It’s certainly not exactly a smoking gun. But it’s exciting.”
66-Million-year-old Deathbed Linked to Dinosaur-Annihilating Meteor
66-Million-year-old Deathbed Linked to Dinosaur-Annihilating Meteor
Fossilized fish piled one atop another, suggesting that they were flung ashore and died stranded together on a sand bar after the wave from the seiche withdrew.
The beginning of the end started with violent shaking that raised giant waves in the waters of an inland sea in what is now North Dakota.
Then, tiny glass beads began to fall like birdshot from the heavens. The rain of glass was so heavy it may have set fire to much of the vegetation on land. In the water, fish struggled to breathe as the beads clogged their gills.
The heaving sea turned into a 30-foot wall of water when it reached the mouth of a river, tossing hundreds, if not thousands, of fresh-water fish -- sturgeon and paddlefish -- onto a sand bar and temporarily reversing the flow of the river. Stranded by the receding water, the fish were pelted by glass beads up to 5 millimeters in diameter, some burying themselves inches deep in the mud. The torrent of rocks, like fine sand, and small glass beads continued for another 10 to 20 minutes before a second large wave inundated the shore and covered the fish with gravel, sand, and fine sediment, sealing them from the world for 66 million years.
Fossilized Graveyard
This unique, fossilized graveyard -- fish stacked one atop another and mixed in with burned tree trunks, conifer branches, dead mammals, mosasaur bones, insects, the partial carcass of a Triceratops, marine microorganisms called dinoflagellates and snail-like marine cephalopods called ammonites -- was unearthed by paleontologist Robert DePalma over the past six years in the Hell Creek Formation, not far from Bowman, North Dakota.
The evidence confirms a suspicion that nagged at DePalma in his first digging season during the summer of 2013 -- that this was a killing field laid down soon after the asteroid impact that eventually led to the extinction of all ground-dwelling dinosaurs. The impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period , the so-called K-T boundary, exterminated 75 percent of life on Earth.
Fossilized fish piled one atop another as they were flung ashore by the seiche, at the 66-million-year-old meteor impact fossil site.
"This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary," said DePalma, curator of paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida and a doctoral student at the University of Kansas. "At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day."
In a paper to appear next week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , he and his American and European colleagues, including two University of California, Berkeley, geologists, describe the site, dubbed Tanis, and the evidence connecting it with the asteroid or comet strike off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. That impact created a huge crater, called Chicxulub , in the ocean floor and sent vaporized rock and cubic miles of asteroid dust into the atmosphere. The cloud eventually enveloped Earth, setting the stage for Earth's last mass extinction.
"It's like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick," said Mark Richards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of earth and planetary science who is now provost and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington.
Richards and Walter Alvarez, a UC Berkeley Professor of the Graduate School who 40 years ago first hypothesized that a comet or asteroid impact caused the mass extinction, were called in by DePalma and Dutch scientist Jan Smit to consult on the rain of glass beads and the tsunami-like waves that buried and preserved the fish. The beads, called tektites, formed in the atmosphere from rock melted by the impact.
It's like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous period, in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick, at the meteor impact fossil site.
Richards and Alvarez determined that the fish could not have been stranded and then buried by a typical tsunami, a single wave that would have reached this previously unknown arm of the Western Interior Seaway no less than 10 to 12 hours after the impact 3,000 kilometers away, if it didn't peter out before then. Their reasoning: The tektites would have rained down within 45 minutes to an hour of the impact, unable to create mudholes if the seabed had not already been exposed.
Instead, they argue, seismic waves likely arrived within 10 minutes of the impact from what would have been the equivalent of a magnitude 10 or 11 earthquake, creating a seiche (pronounced saysh), a standing wave, in the inland sea that is similar to water sloshing in a bathtub during an earthquake. “Though large earthquakes often generate seiches in enclosed bodies of water, they're seldom noticed,” Richards said. The 2011 Tohoku quake in Japan , a magnitude 9.0, created six-foot-high seiches 30 minutes later in a Norwegian fjord 8,000 kilometers away.
"The seismic wavesstart arising within nine to 10 minutes of the impact, so they had a chance to get the water sloshing before all the spherules (small spheres) had fallen out of the sky," Richards said. "These spherules coming in cratered the surface, making funnels -- you can see the deformed layers in what used to be soft mud -- and then rubble covered the spherules. No one has seen these funnels before."
The tektites would have come in on a ballistic trajectory from space, reaching terminal velocities of between 100 and 200 miles per hour, according to Alvarez, who estimated their travel time decades ago.
The seismic shockwave would have triggered a water surge known as a seiche.
"You can imagine standing there being pelted by these glass spherules. They could have killed you," Richards said. Many believe that the rain of debris was so intense that the energy ignited wildfires over the entire American continent, if not around the world.
"Tsunamis from the Chicxulub impact are certainly well-documented, but no one knew how far something like that would go into an inland sea," DePalma said. "When Mark came aboard, he discovered a remarkable fact -- that the incoming seismic waves from the impact site would have arrived at just about the same time as the atmospheric travel time of the ejecta. That was our big breakthrough."
At least two huge seiches inundated the land, perhaps 20 minutes apart, leaving six feet of deposits covering the fossils. Overlaying this is a layer of clay rich in iridium, a metal rare on Earth, but common in asteroids and comets. This layer is known as the K-T, or K-Pg boundary, marking the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Tertiary Period, or Paleogene.
Iridium Found in 66 Million-year-old Rock
In 1979, Alvarez and his father, Nobelist Luis Alvarez of UC Berkeley, were the first to recognize the significance of iridium that is found in 66 million-year-old rock layers around the world. They proposed that a comet or asteroid impact was responsible for both the iridium at the K-T boundary and the mass extinction.
The impact would have melted the bedrock under the seafloor and pulverized the asteroid, sending dust and melted rock into the stratosphere, where winds would have carried them around the planet and blotted out the sun for months, if not years. Debris would have rained down from the sky: not only tektites, but also rock debris from the continental crust, including shocked quartz, whose crystal structure was deformed by the impact.
The iridium-rich dust from the pulverized meteor would have been the last to fall out of the atmosphere after the impact, capping off the Cretaceous.
"When we proposed the impact hypothesis to explain the great extinction, it was based just on finding an anomalous concentration of iridium -- the fingerprint of an asteroid or comet," said Alvarez. "Since then, the evidence has gradually built up. But it never crossed my mind that we would find a deathbed like this."
Key confirmation of the meteor hypothesis was the discovery of a buried impact crater, Chicxulub, in the Caribbean and off the coast of the Yucatan in Mexico , that was dated to exactly the age of the extinction. Shocked quartz and glass spherules were also found in K-Pg layers worldwide. The new discovery at Tanis is the first time the debris produced in the impact was found along with animals killed in the immediate aftermath of the impact.
"And now we have this magnificent and completely unexpected site that Robert DePalma is excavating in North Dakota , which is so rich in detailed information about what happened as a result of the impact," Alvarez said. "For me, it is very exciting and gratifying!"
Tektites Covered in Amber
Jan Smit, a retired professor of sedimentary geology from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in The Netherlands who is considered the world expert on tektites from the impact, joined DePalma to analyze and date the tektites from the Tanis site. Many were found in near perfect condition embedded in amber , which at the time was pliable pine pitch.
"I went to the site in 2015 and, in front of my eyes, he (DePalma) uncovered a charred log or tree trunk about four meters long which was covered in amber, which acted as sort of an aerogel and caught the tektites when they were coming down," Smit said. "It was a major discovery, because the resin, the amber, covered the tektites completely, and they are the most unaltered tektites I have seen so far, not 1 percent of alteration. We dated them and they came out to be exactly from the K-T boundary."
Dating the tektites gave the age for the impact – 65.76 million years ago, at the meteor impact fossil site. ( Robert DePalma / The University of Kansas)
The tektites in the fishes' gills are also a first.
"Paddlefish swim through the water with their mouths open, gaping, and in this net, they catch tiny particles, food particles, in their gill rakers, and then they swallow, like a whale shark or a baleen whale," Smit said. "They also caught tektites. That by itself is an amazing fact. That means that the first direct victims of the impact are these accumulations of fishes."
Smit also noted that the buried body of a Triceratops and a duck-billed hadrosaur proves beyond a doubt that dinosaurs were still alive at the time of the impact.
"We have an amazing array of discoveries which will prove in the future to be even more valuable," Smit said. "We have fantastic deposits that need to be studied from all different viewpoints. And I think we can unravel the sequence of incoming ejecta from the Chicxulub impact in great detail, which we would never have been able to do with all the other deposits around the Gulf of Mexico."
"So far, we have gone 40 years before something like this turned up that may very well be unique," Smit said. "So, we have to be very careful with that place, how we dig it up and learn from it. This is a great gift at the end of my career. Walter sees it as the same."
Robert DePalma is a University of Kansas doctoral student in geology.
Source: University of California - Berkeley. "66-million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor: Fossil site preserves animals killed within minutes of meteor impact." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 March 2019. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190329144223.htm
Discovery a new species is usually a reason for celebration, especially in the ocean, where up to a million species live and two-thirds of them may still be undiscovered. Nevertheless, the expansion of microplastics in the water in recent years has changed things a bit.
Credit Newcastle University
A group of researchers from Newcastle University discovered a new species of a marine creature, a type of crustacean called an amphipod. Their glee was short-lived, however, as they quickly found plastic in its body, showing the large scale of plastic pollution across the globe.
The crustacean was found in the Marina Trench at a depth of roughly 6,000 meters (20,000 feet). But even animals that live in such extreme and ostensibly remote areas of the world are affected by plastic pollution.
Inside the body of the previously unknown amphipod, the researchers found little pieces of plastic debris, called microplastics. The material was identified as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — a kind of plastic used broadly, in both drink and food packaging.
Consequently, the team at Newcastle decided to call the species Eurythenes plasticus, to forever remind the world about the grim state of the global environment from the effects of pollution. Urgent action needs to be taken to “stop the deluge of plastic waste into our oceans,” said lead author Alan Jamieson in a statement.
“We have new species turning up that are already contaminated and so we have missed the window to understand these species in a natural environment,” said Jamieson to Newsweek. “This discovery exemplifies the extent of the plastic problem. Species in remote and extreme marine environments are suffering as a result of human activity.”
Plastic waste is now found throughout all the world’s oceans. A 2015 study showed that roughly 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every single year. Once there, it begins to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics — that are subsequently eaten by animals.
Microplastics appeared in nature at the same time as plastics, more than 50 years ago. As the world is producing more and more plastic, the number of microplastics continues to grow dramatically. Researchers from several countries are working to understand their distribution and impacts.
The finding by the Newcastle researchers and the decision to name the species linked to plastics was welcomed by environmental organizations. It was a “bold and necessary move,” said the Vice President of Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Lauren Spurrier.
“There can be no disputing the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our environment and its impact on nature,” she said to Newsweek, via a statement. “We now are seeing even more devastating impacts of plastic pollution; in that it is infecting species science is only just now discovering.”
For the last forty years or thereabouts, Roswell has been Ufology’s number-one case. It’s a field of research that is always looking for proof that UFOs exist. And, by proof, I mean hard, solid evidence that can be examined and studied – if, of course, “they” would only “tell us the truth.” As I write this, more than seventy years have gone by since Kenneth Arnold kicked off the flying saucer controversy – after encountering a squadron of unidentified aerial vehicles near Mt. Rainier, Washington State. And, although we have masses of material, eye-witness testimony, photos, declassified files, etc., the fact is that we still don’t have hard evidence of – or definitive answers for – what UFOs actually are. Roswell, however, UFO researchers say, theoretically offers us those answers. If only, that is, we could uncover the bodies, the wreckage, the old files, and so on. And presuming, of course, that Roswell was an alien event and not something else. Such as something down-to-earth and which still has to remain hidden at all costs.
The fact is that Ufology is not just looking for hard, undeniable proof that UFOs exist. Much of Ufology is desperate to find pro-E.T. evidence for Roswell, chiefly so that all those decades of research won’t be seen as a waste of time. Those UFO researchers now in their sixties, seventies and eighties are faced with meeting the Grim Reaper before they get to see the doors to the “secret Roswell hangar” opened wide. For those researchers, the answers have to come, before it’s all too late. And they have to come soon. Roswell is to them what Moby Dick was to Captain Ahab. So, for those who conclude that aliens crashed back in July 1947, the Roswell affair – with its large number of first-, second-, and third-hand witnesses, and with the government having changed its stance on what happened more than a couple of times – is the one that could really tip the scales. And, with the scales tipped, the world would know that the UFO community was right all along and it was all worth it. All thanks to Roswell.
There is very little doubt in my mind that when Ufologists see the word “Roswell” prominently referenced in a new online article, there’s an immediate sense of “Maybe, this time, we really have it nailed.” I saw just such a thing happen when the fiasco known as “the Roswell Slides” surfaced a few years back. For those who don’t know the pathetic saga, it revolves around a photograph of a mummified child which was, for a while, touted as one of the bodies from the Roswell crash. The whole thing was a shitty embarrassment, one that is best forgotten. There’s another reason why Roswell is so important, but from a very different perspective. If, one day, Roswell is conclusively proven not to have been an extraterrestrial event – maybe, instead, some dark and murky experiment of the kinds I have suggested – then I firmly believe that the UFO community will have a collective breakdown / meltdown of epic proportions and from which it will never recover. Shaking knees, breathing slowly into paper bags, stomach ulcers, antidepressants, and uncontrollable bladders will be commonplace. Don’t even get me started on out-of-control bowel movements.
In that sense, Ufology is desperate to see Roswell confirmed as an extraterrestrial event. Ufology can barely consider Roswell as anything else. For many, such a situation is utterly unthinkable. So, again, whenever Roswell pops up – and particularly so amid rumors that “something big” is coming – there is a dire and pressing need, and a desperate yearning, for something tangible. And, everyone clicks on the link, praying for the definitive breakthrough that has consistently failed to surface; the breakthrough that only “Saint Roswell” can (maybe) deliver into Ufology’s eager hands. Roswell has been elevated and championed as an E.T. event to such an incredible degree that it can – in single-handed fashion – completely make or break Ufology. Forever. However you look at the case – and whatever your personalopinion on what happened in ’47 on the Foster Ranch – that’s why the incident remains so incredibly important.
It has been seen time and time again that UFO encounters and alien abductions seem to happen to people from all walks of life, and are far from confined to just weirdos out in the middle of nowhere. On occasion there have been such reports from very famous people or those in high standing, and these are the ones that tend to really resonate and catch people’s attention to get them talking. One of these is the chess-playing Russian Federation president who not only claims to have been abducted by aliens, but that they invented the game he loves most.
Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov is not a name many people will probably be familiar with, but he has had a rather impressive and colorful career. He burst onto the political scene from the private sector, where he was the president of SAN Corporation in Moscow, to be elected as the first president of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Kalmykia in 1993, a position in which he would serve until 2010, constantly re-elected unopposed. His stint as president is mostly notable for allegations of corruption, misappropriation of funds, and his wild and unorthodox ideas while in office, such as offering a free mobile phone to every shepherd, paying $100 dollars out to everyone who voted for him, and an almost obsessive compulsion to build religious buildings, such as a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic church, 22 Orthodox churches, and 30 Buddhist temples, as well as his assertion that he was able to psychically subconsciously influence and mind control people, once saying:
Irrespective of what I tell people, I give them instructions on a subconscious level, a code. I do the same thing when I communicate with Russian citizens from other regions. I am creating around the republic a kind of extra-sensory field and it helps us a lot in our projects.
He was also a completely hopeless chess geek. A lifelong avid chess player, after winning the regional championship as a child, he went on to become a master player, defeating former world chess champion Garry Kasparov to go on to become the head of the International Chess Foundation (FIDE), which he would remain until 2018 and which was every bit as colored by scandal as his presidency. He has played chess against some of the best, and has also had bizarre matches against an ecclectic mix of celebrities and other politicians such as the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in the process pouring millions of government dollars and from his own personal fortune into chess related projects and promoting chess in schools all over the world. Make no mistake about it, Ilyumzhinov really, really likes chess. He also has been abducted by a UFO and thinks chess was created by aliens from outer space. Wait, what?
Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov
The whole bizarre tale begins in September 1997, when one evening Ilyumzhinov claims he was at home at his flat in Moscow when a UFO swept down, piloted by beings in “yellow spacesuits” of some sort, and whisked him away. As soon as he was aboard their ship he says he was provided with a spacesuit similar to theirs in order to help him breathe, and that they spoke to him telepathically. Ilyumzhinov would describe being the abduction and being aboard their ship thusly:
It was from my apartment. They flew in and picked me up. They were wearing yellow spacesuits. I remember this moment exactly. We went off to their interplanetary ship, and I started to feel a lack of air, a lack of oxygen. They gave me a spacesuit as well. One of the aliens pointed to his chest and indicated that the oxygen supply could be regulated by turning a dial. So this is what I did.
The ship was absolutely enormous. One of its chambers was the size of a large football pitch. We landed on one of the planets and picked up some piece of equipment. They told me everything in detail. I asked them to take me back to Earth as quickly as possible, because in two days I had to conduct Youth Government Week. And then they brought me back and everything was normal again. A few days later I was walking along thinking: ‘Why did they take me?’ And I was cursing myself for not asking them any questions. But it is possible that it is still not the time for us to meet these extraterrestrial civilizations.
He describes coming back to find that he had an hour of missing time, and he would soon discover that while he had been gone members of his staff had been searching his apartment for him but had found no trace of where he had gone. He describes these entities as being very similar to us, with the same ways of thinking and same visions for the future. He believes that they were also responsible for many inventions here on Earth, and of course since this is Ilyumzhinov we are talking about here this includes chess. He says of this:
My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules — 64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa — the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.
Considering his high political position and reputation at the time, and that he was well into his presidency, it seems as if this might have been a bizarre experience he’d want to keep to himself, but in interviews and with the media he was very open and candid about what had happened to him, and this led to many of his fellow countrymen wondering if he was fit to lead. In particular, one Russian parliament member by the name of Andre Lebedev was very outspoken about his concerns that Ilyumzhinov was perhaps not in his right mind and fit to govern, and not necessarily because he admitted being taken up on a spaceship or claiming that they had invented chess, mind you, but rather because he was worried that the leader had given the aliens state secrets. Others just flat-out thought he had lost his mind, and others still commended him for his willingness to openly disclose his experience. For his part Ilyumzhinov thinks he did the right thing to bring people’s attention to the presence of UFOs and aliens, and has said of all of this:
I’m not a crazy man, but after I gave the first interview to Radio Freedom in Russia … thousands — not hundreds — thousands of people wrote me letters and called on the phone, saying, ‘Oh, Kirsan, you are a politician and you are not afraid to talk about it?’
Whether he was crazy or not, he still managed to stay in office for many years after this story hit, and it is either a good example of a politician coming clean about UFOs or more eccentric ramblings from a decidedly eccentric man. It goes to show that not all of those who claim such encounters are nutjob nobodies, and sometimes people in high places have them as well. This one was just perhaps a bit stranger than most.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
OOK PILOTEN VRAGEN ZICH AF WAT ER GEBEURT IN DE LUCHT...
OOK PILOTEN VRAGEN ZICH AF WAT ER GEBEURT IN DE LUCHT...
De vreemde patronen die worden gevlogen door vliegtuigen, ook boven ons land, blijven maar aanhouden. Het begint dermate op te vallen dat ook piloten nu vragen beginnen te stellen.
Misschien is er een heel simpele verklaring voor al die vreemde vliegbewegingen boven ons land. Misschien zijn ze er altijd al wel geweest en is het nooit iemand opgevallen omdat normaal gesproken het luchtruim vol is met commercieel vliegverkeer hetgeen op dit moment uiteraard niet het geval is.
Wel hebben we eerder laten zien dat er opvallend vaak vreemde patronen worden gevlogen boven gebieden waar zich veel coronagevallen voordoen.
Tijdens het opstellen van dit artikel kregen we in die zin ook weer een bevestiging hierover binnen via een lezer (dank!):
Hi redactie,
Jullie schreven laatst over propeller vliegtuigjes met vreemde vluchtroute. Ik heb het nieuws in Heerde en Gorré Overvlaké gevolgd en vind het zeer opvallend idd dat deze 2 gebieden nu ernstige Corona bezwijkingen hebben .
Nu vandaag sinds 12 uur is hier omgeving Nieuw vennep Hoofddorp en Hillegom een vliegtuigje al uren aan het cirkelen het is nu inmiddels rond 1500 uur en net hoorde ik m nog . Ik denk mocht er wat komen dat door de wind vooral nieuw vennep en Hoofddorp bereikt zijn.
Mtvrgrt
Er is tot nu toe ook summier aandacht aan besteed in de mainstream media, waar men eigenlijk ook niet verder komt dan de aanname dat het wel zal gaan om luchtfoto’s voor Google en dat die nu gemaakt worden omdat het mooi helder weer is.
Waar de opnames exact voor worden gebruikt is niet bekend. Het vliegtuigje boven de Veluwe is van het Belgische bedrijf Eurosense, dat gespecialiseerd is in ‘geo informatie’. Zij staan 365 dagen per jaar paraat om de lucht in te gaan, maar het heldere weer van vandaag maakt dat de omstandigheden ideaal zijn voor luchtopnames. In België nemen ze echter niet de telefoon op om uitleg te verschaffen.
En dan gaan ze verder met te zeggen dat de omgeving van Zwolle ook recentelijk door Google opnieuw in kaart is gebracht
Echter, dan blijft het totaal onverklaarbaar waarom er ook gewoon in het donker wordt doorgevlogen. Dat kan weinig te maken hebben met foto’s voor Google, dus moet er een andere reden zijn.
Hier is een voorbeeld van een screenshot dat we ontvingen van een lezer (dank!) betreffende een vlucht ’s avonds rond half tien boven Rotterdam.
En zo zijn er inmiddels meerdere binnengekomen (dank allemaal).
De volgende opname is ook een bijzondere; het gevlogen patroon is heel rommelig. De reden zou kunnen zijn dat het vliegtuig een Aero L-39 Albatros van het bedrijf Skyline Aviation is en niet een propellorvliegtuig zoals al die anderen. Maar op deze wijze foto's maken voor het in kaart bregen van het land (Google) kan niet en we kijken hier dus naar iets anders. Maar wat. Voor een holding patroon lijkt het ook veel te onregelmatig.
Skyline Aviation is gespecialiseerd in het trainen van luchtmachten. Hoewel het civiele toestellen zijn die zij vliegen, werkt men nauw samen met diverse Europese luchtmachten om de rol van aggressor te spelen. Voor dit doel heeft men een aantal Aero Albatrossen en een Learjet 35.
Opvallend is dan weer wel dat dit toestel wederom vliegt boven één van de zwaarst getroffen coronagebieden in Nederland.
Dan ontvingen wij de volgende email van een lezer (dank!) die dat eveneens bevestigt, maar ook nog iets anders.
Ook onder piloten wordt er nu gesproken en gespeculeerd over de nog immer voortdurende vliegbewegingen. Dit terwijl het belgische vliegruim gesloten is voor VFR verkeer! (Redactie: VFR betekent dat er "op zicht" gevlogen wordt in plaats van op instrumenten)
Zelf ben ik ook heel benieuwd naar de achterliggende reden van deze vluchten. (Genoemd worden Aerodata, foto's, etc)....
Ik heb recentelijk in het oosten van het land een vliegtuig zien gaan in de avond, afkomstig uit Duitsland. Deze heeft urenlang boven Arnhem gevlogen.
Hiermee blijft vooralsnog dit raadsel voortduren en wij blijven hopen dat er toch binnenkort een harde verklaring komt voor dit alles.
Eerder publiceerden wij de volgende foto, een Amerikaanse treinwagon met het opschrift covid-19.
Deze opname schijnt volgens sommigen niet echt te zijn, want de/een originele treinwagon zou er als volgt uitzien.
Als dat inderdaad klopt, dan is de wagon met covid-19 een photoshop product en dat zal dan ook weer niemand verbazen in een wereld waar zo goed als alles tegenwoordig nep is.
Blijf scherp en laat ons weten of er zich meer vreemde dingen voordoen.
Defense Intelligence Agency Employee's Bizarre UFO Sighting and Missing Time
Defense Intelligence Agency Employee's Bizarre UFO Sighting and Missing Time
COAST TO COAST AM -
Dr. Irena Scott, who has worked in institutions involved in the UFO field including the DIA and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, discussed her very unusual UFO sighting which included possible missing time, something that made her car interior light up in a strange way, and a stranger who chased her during the encounter. Scott related the 1968 sighting that she had while on an East Coast road trip with her sister.
At the time, she was working on classified satellite technology for the Defense Intelligence Agency and couldn’t admit anything about the sighting to anyone because she thought she’d “just gone crazy.”
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.
I was looking over the Mars Google online map when I discovered some structures. This one is not downloaded and it has better detail in the infrared photo. The first structure is a long tall building that enters the side of a crater like an arrow hitting a target. At its end it has a small tower on its slope. The other structure is a four sided pyramid with a huge six sided doorway in its side. This doorway is big enough for ships to enter and exit. But what looks like a door may be a tinted window for a city that may exist inside this pyramid. The pyramid is about 5km across and 4km wide. The long structure is closer to 10km long. Watch the video for more details.
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UFO Disk Seen During Daytime Over Colorado, Feb 2020, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Disk Seen During Daytime Over Colorado, Feb 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: February 7, 2020
Location of sighting: Colorado, Montezuma County, USA
Source: email report.
I was going through my email and received a photo from a person in Colorado that saw a UFO shaped cloud coming over the mountains. He stated, this thing was hiding in plain sight. I have to agree, when UFOs create clouds and hide in them, they do assume that humans are not intelligent enough to know the difference, but we are learning fast. The dark disk outline on the bottom of the cloud really gives it away. Also notice that far above are some waves in the cloud ceiling above it...possible disturbed from the alien craft moving through it not long ago. From the looks of it, I would estimate it to be 1.5 to 2km across.
Alien Craft Seen Over Fairview, Texas Road During Day, March 31, 2020 Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Craft Seen Over Fairview, Texas Road During Day, March 31, 2020 Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:March 31, 2020
Location of sighting: Fairview, Texas, USA
Source: MUFON #107397
This UFO was reported to MUFON today. A black craft flew over a persons car as he was waiting for the stop light. He took two photos of clouds and in one of them caught a dark UFO. The UFO must have been traveling very fast, because he didn't notice it. But many UFO researchers believe that UFOs are all around us on this planet, but they jump from location to location fast, traveling so fast the human eye cannot see them, but the camera lens can. Looks like alien visitors in Texas.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
The UFO was in my picture of the sky. I took 2 pictures of the clouds seconds apart. Clouds looked odd. In the first picture the UFO is clear. 2nd photo snapped immediately after does not show it. Time stamped 5:41pm on both pictures. It looks like a black millenial falcon. I did not notice it in the picture until I posted it on Instagram. It's definitely not something on windshield or camera lens. It would have been on both.
With the on going UFO activity above earth captured on the ISS live feed for the last two months, now Gina Colvin Hill from Salem, Indiana wants to share some images taken on March 24, 2020 showing numerous ufo ships in the sky.
Gina has used different filters to capture these ships otherwise you don't see them since most of them are cloaked.
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Netizens Baffled After Watching UFO With Wings in the Sky Above Arizona
Netizens Baffled After Watching UFO With Wings in the Sky Above Arizona
Netizens were out of words to describe a UFO with wings hovering in the skies above Arizona. YouTube user Ballee18 posted the UFO sighting video to YouTube on 22 March. According to the video uploader, the sighting happened near Ahwatukee urban village in Phoenix. Conspiracy channel mavi777 shared the video, and it eventually went viral.
The sighting comes after multiple UFOs were observed in different areas of the US. In one such event, YouTube username Denspion caught video of three red orbs hovering over Washington.
Social media users have made various explanations, with some saying that the so-called UFO in the sky could be a human who’s practicing extreme social or physical distancing to avoid contracting the COVID-19. Other netizens suggesting the video shows a flying human-made possible with a jet pack.
However, other social media users believed that the hovering human figure could be a sign of space alien life. A few users thought it was an alien drone, but many others thought it was some kind of hovering craft, suggesting that we’re not alone.
What do you think of the mysterious hovering figure? A kite, jetpack, or extreme social distancing? Let us know in the comment section.
Want to build the largest radio telescope to fly in space? Here's an easier technique: Design sixtiny satellites to fly in formation and work together.
That's the approach of a NASA's new Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2023. SunRISE aims to help scientists understand the complex relationship between the sun's activity and a host of dangerous phenomena around Earth called space weather. The mission selection comes amid a burst of solar science and an emphasis on missions that incorporate space-weather prediction into plans for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit.
"We are so pleased to add a new mission to our fleet of spacecraft that help us better understand the sun, as well as how our star influences the space environment between planets," Nicky Fox, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, said in a NASA statement. "The more we know about how the sun erupts with space weather events, the more we can mitigate their effects on spacecraft and astronauts."
Scientists have watched the sun fling energy and material toward Earth in outbursts, and they have also seen the impacts that such events can have on orbiting satellites, particularly on communication and navigation instruments. But scientists don't yet understand the nitty-gritty details of the connection between solar outbursts and space weather phenomena well enough to predict space weather.
If all goes well, the $63-million SunRISE mission should help to bridge that gap.
The six telescopes that make up the mission are tailored to study the radio waves that the sun ejects during solar particle outbursts. In particular, SunRISE will target outbursts called coronal mass ejections, which can throw massive amounts of plasma, the soup of charged particles that makes up the sun, across the solar system.
The toaster-sized satellites will spread out across about 6 miles (10 kilometers), orbiting Earth at an altitude of 22,000 miles (35,000 km). That orbit will keep SunRISE well above the ionosphere, which blocks radio waves of the relevant frequencies from reaching Earth.
An artist's depiction of one of the SunRISE satellites. (Image
credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
From that perch, the flock of cubesats should be able to map the influence of the sun's magnetic field across space. They should also be able to gather the data scientists need to understand how different parts of a coronal mass ejection dramatically speed up and which such events are accompanied by bursts of radiation, which are vital clues for space-weather prediction.
"We can see a solar flare start, and a coronal mass ejection start lifting off from the sun, but we don't know if it is going to produce high energy particle radiation, and we don't know if that high energy particle radiation is going to reach Earth," Justin Kasper, a space scientist at the University of Michigan who leads the mission, said in a university statement. "One reason why is we can't see the particles being accelerated. We just see them when they arrive at the spacecraft, which isn't much of a warning."
That situation is inconvenient when it comes to satellites, but downright dangerous when it comes to humans venturing beyond the safety of Earth, hence the impetus to better understand space weather.
"Knowing which part of a coronal mass ejection is responsible for producing the particle radiation will help us understand how the acceleration happens," Kasper said. "It could also result in a unique warning system for whether an event will both produce radiation and release that radiation towards Earth or spacefaring astronauts."
In episodes 7 and 8 of "Cosmos: Possible Worlds," host Neil deGrasse Tyson explores themes of science as an instrument of hope and tenacity, and as a means by which the human race can realize its true potential.
Episode 7, titled "Search for Intelligent Life," focuses specifically on first contact and the search for intelligent life in the vastness of the cosmos. Are humans ready to make first contact with other intelligent beings? Is our technology even sophisticated enough to detect communication signals from another world?
Beneath China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) teems an underground network, the product of enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria and animals: the mycelium. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
Tyson points out that we've only had the technology to detect radio signals for a little over a century, making FAST a truly monumental achievement. FAST has already detected a number of pulsars — or compact stellar corpses — and will continue to search for gravitational waves and signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, among other data it collects.
However, there's an intricate global communications network hidden here on Earth that we've only just become aware of. Tyson turns our attention to a "hidden matrix … the creation of an enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria and animals." He's referring to the mycelium, a complex network of threadlike filaments that forms the functional structure of a fungus and extends to other species, such as trees. These hauntingly beautiful hyphae, or the branching filaments that make up the mycelium, illustrated in the show by special effects to interweave in the soil beneath our feet, reveal the forests' complex and interlinked nature.
"Who are we to search for alien intelligence when we can't even recognize or respect the consciousness all around us, or even beneath our feet," Tyson says, strolling through the forest on top of the soil that's protecting the mycelium beneath his feet. Still, conversations with different worlds, Tyson says, will be done in the language of science.
"Cosmos" host Neil deGrasse Tyson enters the Palace of Life, an imaginary place of ancient towers hidden by the mists of time and enshrouded in myth. Here, he moves into its largest, most ancient realm, to walk among the life at the bottom of the sea. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
"The symbolic language of the scientist, mathematician and engineer avoid those things that are lost in translation from one culture to another," Tyson says, explaining that this type of language is more precise and less open to misinterpretation. If we find extraterrestrial intelligent life, will we be communicating with them in a language that resembles a computer programming language, built on the binary code?
"First contact" with intelligent life (on Earth)
Humans have actually already made "first contact" with other intelligent life that communicates through equations and a symbolic language, Tyson points out: bees. Insects in general have played an instrumental role in the development of the natural world, mostly by spreading pollen. Each grain of pollen has been"sculpted differently by evolution — each a novel strategy for survival, sharpened by vast expanses of time, " Tyson says.
Insects are as much a part of the Earth's history as the earth itself; The "great Ordovician biodiversity event," when our world began to change as plants and insects left the sea and began to make the land their home, occurred approximately 480 million years ago (or Dec. 20 on Tyson's "cosmic calendar," where the Big Bang marks New Year's Day). The world Tyson describes is an alien one; giant mushrooms tower over trees that only grew a few feet tall, and insects ruled the skies, undisturbed by other winged creatures.
In the Palace of Life, "Cosmos" host Neil deGrasse Tyson encounters Saccorhytus coronarius. When it lived, 550 million years ago, the species was microscopic. But now, it looms large. This creature is the earliest common ancestor we've yet found, a physical connection we share with almost every animal on Earth. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
It was Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch who unlocked the secrets of bee behavior in the early 20th century. "For thousands of years, bees have been symbols of mindless industry … shackled to the dreary roles assigned to them by nature," says Tyson, but von Frisch found in his studies that bees lead much more complex lives. They communicate through mathematical equations expressed in their movements, appearing to the untrained eye to be little more than a waggle, but in reality can be an incredibly accurate set of coordinates to a food source meters away.
Tyson calls this a "first contact story" because bees and humans evolved on very different trajectories, and yet both species risked everything and chose the unknown; it's as if there were an unwritten code common to bees and human beings driving those ambitions. This echoes the work of legendary scientist Charles Darwin, who realized if all life is related, certain philosophical implications had to follow. Darwin realized we are "surrounded by other ways of being alive and conscious," Tyson says, and that science had the potential to expand our capacity for empathy and compassion.
"The Sacrifice of Cassini"
Building on those themes of compassion and ambition, episode 8, "The Sacrifice of Cassini," chronicles tales of sacrifice and reveals the little-seen sentimentality and emotion that often accompany our greatest scientific endeavors. The episode honors the efforts and sacrifices of scientists Giovanni Cassini, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, and Alexander Shargei, among others.
The episode opens with Tyson's recap of the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency that launched Oct. 15, 1997. The spacecraft would embark on an epic voyage that would last more than two decades and culminate in a final, fatal mission of self-destruction by flying itself into Saturn's atmosphere in 2017.
Spacecraft sent to the outermost regions of our solar system, like Cassini, have brought back valuable data. Researchers are especially interested in any information about the mysterious ringed planets, which puzzled early planetary scientists like Galileo. These ring systems have been notoriously difficult to detect; Galileo's early research on Saturn had him believe the planet had two symmetrical moons, which we now know to be Saturn's rings. What would Galileo say if he could see Saturn as we see it now through the eyes of powerful scientific instruments?
Why do some worlds have rings, and others don't? Here, we imagine what our own planet would look like with a ring system. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and Cassini also sent back valuable data about the atmospheres and other physical properties of our cosmic neighbors, like the elusive Uranus. Without Voyager 2, we wouldn't know about the planet's long summers and winters, or that while Uranus doesn't generate any internal heat and the outer edges of its atmosphere is hotter than 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius), Uranus also has the coldest clouds in the solar system, nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit (240 degrees Celsius) below zero.
Interestingly, as Tyson reviews Giovanni Cassini's early life in what is now Italy, he notes that the Italian scientist began his career as an astrologer; a pseudoscientist. Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King," who would be the first monarch to recognize the power of science and the opportunities it afforded national security, would play a pivotal role in Cassini's career development. It was Louis XIV, who established the Paris Observatory — a scientific powerhouse — and who gave Cassini the tools he needed to pursue his research.
Gravity has a big bag of tricks, none lovelier than the ring systems of worlds. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
Cassini's observations of Saturn and its moons would have an enduring effect on the scientific world among his other accomplishments, like having discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot (independently from Robert Hooke) and having calculated the length of a day on Mars; he was only off by 3 minutes.
Cassini's work on Saturn also greatly furthered human beings' knowledge on the planet at the time; he was the first to know Saturn's rings were composed of natural satellites orbiting the planet, and that there were gaps between them. Decades later, a bus-size 12,000-lb. (5,400 kilograms) spacecraft, sent on a years-long voyage to that same celestial body, would be named in his memory.
The scientists who worked closely with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, some of them since the very beginning, undoubtedly became emotional as it completed its final mission, as did spectators around the world who witnessed its final moments.
The probe's travails, however, cannot compare to the pain and tragedy of scientist and visionary Oleksandr Shargei, a forgotten pioneer of spaceflight. Shargei was orphaned at a young age and, while studying engineering at a university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was drafted to the army to serve the Russian Empire in World War I. After the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, he changed his name to Yuri Kondratyuk out of fear for his life.
In 1926, Kondratyuk self-published a manuscript on rocket motion and space colonization, which would end up capturing the attention of an engineer working on the Apollo program, John Houbolt, decades later. Houbolt's updating of Kondratyuk's theories convinced NASA to select the lunar orbit rendezvous flight plan for Apollo, and to win the Space Race.
NASA engineer John Houbolt, as seen in 1962, shows on a blackboard his lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) concept for landing on the moon. (Image credit: NASA)
Seeing footage from Apollo 11 in the episode elicits a sentimental feeling as it dawns on us that we're witnessing Kondratyuk's dreams become reality, and that his dreams are still coming true to this day; even the Cassini mission used gravity assist maneuvers, also conceived by Kondratyuk, to explore the Saturn system.
The final scene of the episode is of Kondratyuk's childhood home — a place where he endured much tragedy in his early years, and sought refuge in physics books. It was also here that Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong made a pilgrimage after his historic flight to the moon, to honor the man who made that voyage possible.
"There are all kinds of stories in the struggle to understand the cosmos," Tyson reflects. "Sometimes your dreams die with you, but sometimes the scientists of another age pick them up and take them to the moon, and far beyond."
"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.
Mars Curiosity sends back one giant Martian panorama…and (maybe) a clue of past life
Mars Curiosity sends back one giant Martian panorama…and (maybe) a clue of past life
The Curiosity rover’s extended stay on Mars has proven to be one of NASA’s biggest recent success stories. More than seven years after its arrival at the Bradbury landing site on the Martian surface, Curiosity has just sent back the largest, most detailed panoramic image ever of the Red Planet’s landscape … along with an intriguing new discovery that could yield fresh insights into whether Mars has ever harbored microbial life.
Between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1 of last year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory captured what the agency describes as the “highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface,” compositing more than 1,000 individual images taken by the telephoto zoom lens on Curiosity’s Mast Camera. The image below is actually the lower-resolution version of the two that NASA has made available; a higher-res version (which omits the rover from the picture, thanks to the extra zoom on the telephoto) is available as 2.43-gigabyte download on the NASA/JPL host page.
NASA also shared a super-informative video highlighting just how much landscape detail the new image contains, zooming in on deep-field features like the rim of the crater that Curiosity calls home; as well as the exposed remnants of the Greenheugh Pediment — “a vast sheet of rock draped over the side of a mountain.”
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on YouTube
Early chemical analysis of another Curiosity discovery — the presence in Martian soil of organic compounds called thiophenes — also has researchers speculating that the compounds could suggest that living bacteria once had a foothold on the Red Planet. According toWashington State Universityastrobiologist Dirk Schulze‑Makuch, part of an international team assessing the data, scientists typically associate thiophenes here on Earth with the breakdown of once-living organisms, though their presence on Mars may have other explanations that can’t yet be ruled out.
“We identified several biological pathways for thiophenes that seem more likely than chemical ones, but we still need proof,” he explained. “If you find thiophenes on Earth, then you would think they are biological, but on Mars, of course, the bar to prove that has to be quite a bit higher.”
Researchers speculate that Mars’ warmer, wetter conditions 3 billion years ago may have harbored the conditions necessary for microbes to thrive, although they say the data are still insufficient to rule out other explanations for the thiophenes’ presence — including chemical reactions from past meteor impacts, or other super-hot events that might have caused the “thermochemical sulfate reduction” process required for the unique compounds to form.
While Curiosity’s data-collecting abilities limit researchers’ ability to pinpoint the still-elusive answer, this year’s scheduled launch of the Rosalind Franklin rover should end up offering more details. The new rover “will be carrying a Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA, which uses a less destructive analyzing method that will allow for the collection of larger molecules,” reports WSU News.
Interview with HISTORY's Travis Taylor: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Interview with HISTORY's Travis Taylor: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Photo by History Copyright 2020
For the first time ever, HISTORY is gaining full, unprecedented access to one of the most infamous and secretive hotspots of paranormal and UFO-related activities on earth, Skinwalker Ranch, in a new one-hour nonfiction series, "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" premiering Tuesday, March 31 at 10PM ET/PT. Few have ever gained official access to Skinwalker Ranch, and none have ever been able to bring cameras onto the property for a television series, until now.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Travis Taylor, the lead astrophysicist of "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" about his journey and his experience investigating the unexplained phenomena in Utah's Uinta Basin. Scientific research, tribal legends, and the unexplained converge at Skinwalker Ranch that you must see to believe.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Why and how were you chosen for this project?
Dr. Travis Taylor: Well, first of all for the why and the how I don't know what you know about me or how much you've read of my bio and that sort of thing. I have a PhD and a dual disciplinary degree in electrical engineering and physics called optical science of engineering - it's basically quantum physics. I have another PhD in aerospace engineering, building and designing spacecraft and rockets. I have a Master's degree in astronomy. I have a Master's degree in physics. I have a Master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. I have a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Since I was 17, I'm 51 now, I've published about two dozen referee journal articles and well-respected peer review physics, and optics and military defense type journals.
As far as I know, I'm the only person besides my co-author of the book who has taken the idea seriously and written a textbook and a detailed examination on how we would defend the planet if we were actually invaded by aliens. Different types of invasions and what our military approach should and could be. In fact, I'm the only one who teaches from that text on the topic to the Air Force officer's space school at Maxwell Air Force base. Now, I do that pretty much yearly and have for a while.
My background has been building spacecraft, rockets and high-energy laser weapons and things like that for DOD for a long time. I also am a science fiction writer and have written twenty-something best-selling science fiction novels, mostly military hard science fiction. With that background in mind, I was invited to start doing TV shows in the early 2000s which led to the next TV show and the next TV show and so on. When HISTORY and Prometheus were approached by the new billionaire owner of the Ranch to do an investigation, they said, "Well you need someone who is an experimentalist and who also is experienced with talking on TV and we recommend this guy."
And that's how that happened.
WATM: What was the first thing that stuck out to you about this investigation when you joined the team of researchers?
Travis Taylor: Well, when the invitation came to me to become a part of the investigation team and to lead the experiment portion of the research, at first I was very skeptical of the phenomena on the ranch being real or being some natural phenomena that maybe causes hallucinations, or unnatural phenomena that causes actual phenomena like lights in the sky or maybe there was a classified defense project. At no time did I think that I was going to find strange, unexplainable physical phenomena at least from the start. That was my philosophy or my thought going into it. But I did have an open mind that, hey, what if I find something that is unexplainable?
WATM: How was evidence gathered of the phenomena at the Ranch?
Travis Taylor: The way we approached it is, we had scientific instrumentation and sensors -- as many as we could afford based on the budget we had -- spread about the ranch that were collecting data continuously, 24/7. We also had security cameras placed in certain locations to give us as much of a full view of the ranch as possible that were running 24/7. Plus we had game cameras placed in locations that we could move if we thought there was a need to move them. We collected all this information and we went through the video and data pretty much on a daily basis. Plus, there was also multiple cameramen, camera crews and camera sites set up continuously throughout the investigation.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Based on the evidence that you have gathered, what are your thoughts on why this phenomena specifically happens at Skinwalker Ranch?
Dr. Travis Taylor: That is an excellent question and we ask ourselves this all the time. Now, the first thing that I will say is that when the team and I talk about this, in no way do we believe that our man-made farming fences along the border of the 500 acres is keeping out any super, you know, physics hyper paranormal -- whatever you guys want to call it, phenomenon within the borders of the ranch. In fact, people in the local in Fort Duchenne, Roosevelt and the other town that's nearby, are all the time reporting phenomena occurring outside of the boundaries of the ranch. Now, that being said, if you look at the Uintah Basin on Google Earth, to me it looks like an ancient meteor impact crater. It looks like it came from the east to the west at a low inclination. And that's what splattered the salt flats to the west of the Uintah Basin.
There's Gilsonite all around the Uintah Basin which typically is only found in a meteor impact crater, plus all of the petroleum that is underneath the Uintah Basin. There are a lot of geologists and natural physicists now beginning to think that impact craters cause a phenomena that creates petroleum. If you look at this impact crater, the ranch is dead center give or take but it's pretty much dead center. Perhaps [it has] something to do with the bowl shape of the basin or whatever caused the basin, made this the central or the nexus for whatever the activity might be.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Would the government hide the evidence of extraterrestrials? What impact would that have on the population if they did or did not disclose evidence?
Dr. Travis Taylor: I honestly don't believe the Brookings Report. I don't think that people are going to go nuts. What does an invasion of something that's invisible do to society? Well guess what it makes it's all go hide in our houses and be afraid to touch anybody. That's exactly what's happening right now, as an alien invasion, with this COVID-19. Well I'm not saying the virus is from outer space.
What I'm saying is it's alien to us and we're having to defend it in the way that we figure out how to defend it. If there were an alien invasion, we'd have to figure out what type of invasion it were and then how to - what type it was and then go from there. It could be a bazillion possibilities on the type of invasion.
I don't believe in big conspiracies. There's no way that humans are adept enough and trust each other enough to create conspiracies so large it would take hundreds and hundreds of people to maintain it. Now there is the possibility that things have been classified for national security reasons.
At such time when it could be disclosed and not reveal a national security advantage, then I could see that taking place but what's it going to do to the general public? Most people, the general public, believe there are aliens anyway. I don't think it's going to do anything except assure them -- I'll tell you what it will do to politics: it will improve the funding for programs to do research like the AATIP program, or like advanced spacecraft technology or like advanced spacesuit technology. Why all of our soldiers don't have Iron Man suits I can't explain that. We should be - that should be one of the biggest defense projects we have.
But we don't spend any money on it. So that's the things that will change is where we're spending our money based on what we think the threats are. That's all I think disclosure will do. The everyday person, I think, they'll just say 'I knew it all along, I told you so.'
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Is it possible that the phenomena observed is man-made, such as Top Secret weapons testing?
Dr. Travis Taylor: So, as a person who does weapons testing for his day job, I can tell you that would be so highly crazy illegal [and] that it's nonsense. There would be people in jail. What I observed the first day on the ranch, we had a long discussion that if what we were observing was man-made. [What if] someone was violating federal laws and [what we would do] - we needed to alert the authorities if we could prove it was man-made. Then from that point on I realized what we were measuring was impossible even for mankind to make. At that point is when I dropped that line of discussion because I realized just flat out mankind was not doing what we are doing and it's probably a skeptics coping mechanism because I did it too.
The first conclusion to an odd strange thing is 'Oh that's a classified government program' and 'Oh they're doing human testing' honestly like, you know, there were programs that the CIA did back in the 60s and 70s that I don't think they're proud of and where people were involved in those experiments. [So, if] you look at it nowadays, we realize now that you can't do that and you won't get away with it forever and somebody will go to jail. I just am thoroughly convinced that this is not some top-secret weapons testing program on people or whatever. Number one: there's no site nearby that is doing that type of work and number two: they would eventually get caught and go to jail. There is oversight committees on classified programs in Congress and in the Senate. Eventually somebody would say, 'Wait a minute you all can't do that.'
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Okay, so now that we know that there isn't a government conspiracy or illegal weapons testing -- What is happening at Skinwalker Ranch?
Dr. Travis Taylor: So I'm not going to tell you what evidence was observed and what phenomena were observed because and, you know, it would be spoilers for the show. What I will tell you is yes, when you watch the show and you see the evidence we acquired that is scientifically verifiable, you're going to be blown away because I was. I'm still amazed to this day and still have a hard time believing what I saw.
You can watch the new one-hour nonfiction series "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" premiering Today, Tuesday, March 31 at 10PM ET/PT.
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
An ancient sediment core revealed a shocking discovery: pollen and spores, indicating a long-lost rainforest that was shrouded in perpetual darkness for months at a time.
Antarctica is the most remote and barren continent on Earth; a land where only the hardiest creatures can survive the punishing year-round conditions. But dial the clock back by 90 million years to the age of dinosaurs, and this icy landscape transforms into a lush temperate rainforest that somehow braved months of perpetual darkness.
The story of this ancient Antarctic rainforest is written in sediment buried 25 meters under the seafloor off Pine Island Glacier, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature. The fossils preserved in an ultra-rare core represent the first glimpse of Cretaceous ecosystems at latitudes this far south, just 500 miles from the South Pole.
“It is definitely the southernmost Cretaceous evidence ever recovered on the planet,” said lead author Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in a call. “We were the first ones to ever drill there in that environment.”
Klages and his colleagues obtained the core during a 2017 expedition of the research vessel Polarstern, but the extraction process was not easy. The specialized drilling machine used to penetrate the seafloor required several days to pull out each new core, and all it seemed to be reaching was quartzitic sandstone layers bereft of fossils.
THE MEBO SEABED DRILLING SYSTEM ON RV POLARSTERN.
IMAGE: JP KLAGES, AWI
Meanwhile, ice sheets from the nearby island began advancing toward the sample site, threatening to slice the cord between the drill and the vessel. Before evacuating the area to prevent the loss of expensive equipment, Klages and his colleagues decided to take one last three-meter core.
Unlike the light-colored sandstone, this core was dark, suggesting it was rich in organic materials. “We immediately saw that something special was going on,” recalled Klages. “We saw these amazing, pristine, complete, dense networks of fossil roots in the core connected down to the core base.”
“If you go to the forest in front of your house, or somewhere, and you drill a hole, you would get something very similar,” he said. “It was full of pollen and spores and really diverse assemblages.”
Over the past three years, the team has meticulously examined the core and unraveled incredible new details about the rainforest that once blanketed Antarctica. The pristine condition of these plant fossils demonstrates that this was a swampy ecosystem of conifer trees that may have looked like the rainforests of modern New Zealand.
Based on comparisons with similar Cretaceous biomes found much farther north, dinosaurs may well have roamed through this biodiverse Antarctic landscape. “It’s very likely that there were insects and dinosaurs and all of that there too,” Klages said, “but we can’t say for sure because we did not find anything like that. We only can say a lot of stuff about the paleobotany that we found in the core.”
Remarkably, these forests were located at a southern latitude of 82°, which means they would have been plunged into total darkness for about four months of each year. Modern rainforests rely on perpetual sunlight to survive, but this bygone ecosystem had to switch to another source of energy for the long, black winter.
ARTIST CONCEPT OF ANCIENT RAINFOREST.
IMAGE: ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT/J. MCKAY
That fuel may have been supplied by extraordinarily high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which could have staved the forests over until the return of the Sun. In fact, the discovery of this rainforest strongly suggests that CO2 levels in this era were higher than previously assumed, perhaps reaching 1,680 parts per million (ppm). For reference, our current CO2 levels are just above 400 ppm, though they are rapidly rising due to human activity.
These high CO2 levels imply that Cretaceous Earth was warmer than expected, and that no ice cover existed at the South Pole. Klages and his colleagues estimate that the mean annual temperature in the rainforest was about 12°C, with summer temperatures averaging around 19°C.
“It really was that warm,” Klages said. “That amazed us, of course, but also the climate modelers because no one expected such extreme values very close to the South Pole."
"We are quite confident now in saying that there was no ice present, that Antarctica was completely vegetated, and that we had very high CO2 concentrations.”
The research offers a rare chance to imagine this strange Antarctic forestland, but it also contains lessons for our modern warming world. For instance, Klages and his colleagues modelled what would happen if the current version of Earth had the same CO2 levels, and found that our planet’s polar ice cover reflects too much sunlight to result in the same high global temperatures.
“The presence of an ice sheet makes a huge difference, even if you have very high CO2 concentrations,” Klages said. “That is really important for us to know, and to think about how we can better preserve ice sheets.”
“We need to look into these extreme climates that happened on the planet already, because they show us what a greenhouse climate looks like,” he concluded. “We are definitely in an interesting time because if we continue what we’re doing right now, then it could lead into something that we can’t control anymore.”
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Wetenschappers hebben sporen van coniferen en boomvarens ontdekt op dieptes tot 30 meter onder de oceaanbodem dicht bij West-Antarctica - de overblijfselen van een regenwoud van 90 miljoen jaar geleden. Het woud groeide in het midden van het Krijt, het tijdperk van de dinosaurussen, zei het in Duitsland gebaseerde Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI), verwijzend naar een studie die woensdag in het vakblad Nature verscheen.
“We waren heel verrast door de ontdekking”, zei de hoofdauteur van de studie, AWI-geoloog Johann Klages. Volgens de bevindingen lag de gemiddelde jaartemperatuur op Antarctica in die tijd rond de 12 graden Celsius. “Dit bevestigt dat Antarctica ijsvrij moet zijn geweest”, aldus Klages. Tot dusver was dit enkel een veronderstelling. “We weten enkel dat het Krijt een van de warmste periodes ooit was, maar we hadden geen bewijs van het gebied bij de Zuidpool.”
Uit analyses bleek dat de concentratie aan koolstofdioxide in de atmosfeer veel hoger was dan aanvankelijk verondersteld. “De studie illustreert het grote potentieel van het broeikasgas kooldioxide als energieleverancier en de afkoelende eigenschappen van de ijslagen van vandaag”, benadrukte Klages. Waarom het klimaat later afkoelde, trachten de vorsers nog uit te zoeken.
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A Lake Full Of Human Bones - Thats Pretty Scary
A Lake Full Of Human Bones - Thats Pretty Scary
If there is one thing that anybody can assure you of, it is this. When it comes to travelling within India, you will never ever complain of boredom. This is one country that is filled to bursting with lots of fun experiences, some of which border on the bizarre! Yes, since India is steeped in superstition, there are a couple of things that may seem strange or bizarre to a non-residential citizen. However, there are other fun and unusual places in India things that you will see when you choose to travel across the country. The Taj Mahal and the Konark temple are all definite must-visits. But those are places everybody visits in India. So, why not veer off the beaten track sometimes?
Possible meteor impact leaving huge crater and destroys over 100 houses in Akure, Nigeria
Possible meteor impact leaving huge crater and destroys over 100 houses in Akure, Nigeria
Earlier in March, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that an asteroid would fly over Earth. This asteroid is referred to as large and potentially dangerous.
The asteroid named 2012 XA133 was set to pass Earth on Thursday March 26th (March 27th in Nigeria) at a speed of 53,000 mph. However, with a note of confirmation, NASA said the Earth would not be affected.
“When objects close to the Earth revolve around the sun, near-Earth objects can come close to Earth.
Note that the "astronomical" corridor can be very far away from a human point of view: millions or even tens of millions of kilometers.
However, the Nigerians in Akure were on alert in the early hours of March 28, after hearing a loud explosion which shook the entire town of Akure, which led to the destruction of over 100 buildings, school, churches in the city's Eleyowo community located 1 km from Accor airport.
Amid speculation about the noise, the governor said that it was a truck carrying explosives that exploded, but experts led by Adepelumi Adekunle, a professor of geophysics and earthquake engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, said the explosion was caused by a natural phenomenon, possible a meteor or at least a part of an asteroid or meteor which impacted the location from “an angle of 43 degrees leaving a crater 21m diameter and 7.8m depth.
Adekunle added there was no evidence of a buried vehicle, buried ordinance or explosives from the site, and that “foreign rocks and strange metallic objects” were found within the crater.
The fact that' strange metallic objects' have also been found within the crater, the question arises whether it was indeed a meteor or something extraterrestrial.
DAYTIME VIDEO: UFO caught on tape over Sacramento, California 29-Mar-2020
DAYTIME VIDEO: UFO caught on tape over Sacramento, California 29-Mar-2020
Check out this amazing new footage of a bright unidentified flying object hovering in the sky above Sacramento, California. It was recorded on 29th March 2020 and submitted to us through our Facebook page.
Glowing orbs over Laguna beach, California 31-Mar-2020
Glowing orbs over Laguna beach, California 31-Mar-2020
Here’s one new footage of a bright orbs hovering in the sky above Laguna beach, California on 31st March 2020.
Witness report:
set of four glowing orbs that became seven appeared in a straight line above the water offshore. Out walking our dogs on the streets of North Laguna Beach. Very quiet out with most observing the stay at home rules. Looked out to the water and notice 4 bright glowing objects above the water. The slowly the number increased one by one until at one point there were seven. Then they started to fade out one by one until there were none left. I thought at first that someone had shot some flares off from a boat but all the objects matinee a straight line. We observed them for around 10-15 minutes and then walked back home. We took pictures and have video.
Stratolaunch plans to provide hypersonic test flights for a variety of customers.
Stratolaunch's Talon-A, shown here in an artist's concept, is one of several new hypersonic vehicles to be launched from the company's massive carrier plane, the world's largest aircraft.
Stratolaunch has found another use for the biggest airplane ever built.
The company, which Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen established in 2011, originally planned to launch satellites using the aircraft, which has a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters). But Allen died in October 2018 and Stratolaunch was sold last year, raising questions about the company's future.
Some of those questions have now been answered. Stratolaunch's website now reveals that the company has reinvented itself as a builder, tester and operator of hypersonic vehicles — those that can travel at least five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5.
"Our hypersonic testbeds will serve as a catalyst in sparking a renaissance in hypersonic technologies for our government, the commercial sector and academia," Stratolaunch CEO W. Jean Floyd said in a statement on the company website.
The huge plane is key to this new mission, hauling vehicles aloft to test various payloads in the extreme environments imposed by hypersonic flight. Those vehicles will include Stratolaunch's Talon-A, a 28-foot-long (8.5 m), 6,000-lb. (2,722 kilograms) reusable craft capable of reaching Mach 6.
Stratolaunch's rocket carrier plane, the largest aircraft ever built, takes off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California during its first test flight on April 13, 2019. (Image credit: Stratolaunch Systems)
Talon-A "will conduct long-duration flight at high Mach, and glide back for an autonomous, horizontal landing on a conventional runway," Stratolaunch'sdescription of the craftstates. "It will also be capable of autonomous takeoff, under its own power, via a conventional runway."
The huge dual-fuselage plane — which used to be called Roc, but is now apparently known as the Stratolaunch Carrier — will be able to haul three Talon-As aloft at a time, allowing the collection of lots of data, company representatives said.
Talon-A isn't the end of the envisioned road for Stratolaunch, however. The company is also developing the Talon-Z, about which it divulges little on the website, and another vehicle called Black Ice, which could end up flying some very interesting and ambitious missions, if everything goes according to Stratolaunch's plan.
"Black Ice is a fully reusable space plane that enables advanced on-orbit capabilities and cargo return," the company's website reads. "Initial designs optimized for cargo launch, with a follow-on variant capable of transporting crew."
Black Ice doesn't come completely out of left field. In August 2018, before Allen's death, Stratolaunch announced plans to use four different satellite-launching vehicles with the huge aircraft, including an orbital space plane.
The Stratolaunch Carrier has just one flight under its belt, a 2.5-hour test flight that took place in April 2019.
The water buried deep within Mars likely came from at least two very different sources long ago, a new study suggests.
"These two different sources of water in Mars' interior might be telling us something about the kinds of objects that were available to coalesce into the inner, rocky planets," Jessica Barnes, an assistant professor of planetary sciences in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement.
"This context is also important for understanding the past habitability and astrobiology of Mars," Barnes added.
The famed Mars meteorite ALH84001. (Image credit: NASA)
Barnes and her colleagues analyzed two Mars meteorites: Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, also known as Black Beauty, and Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001), probably the most famous Red Planet rock of all time. In the mid-1990s, a team of researchers announced that they'd found compelling evidence of Martian life in ALH84001. Most other scientists were not convinced, and the claim remains controversial, and debated, to this day.
Barnes and her team determined the hydrogen-isotope compositions of Black Beauty and ALH84001, which interacted with water in the Martian crust about 1.5 billion years ago and 3.9 billion years ago, respectively.
Isotopes are versions of an element that have different numbers of neutrons in their atomic nuclei. For example, the hydrogen in "normal" water has no neutrons in its nucleus, whereas the hydrogen in deuterium, or "heavy water," has one.
Studies of Mars meteorites over the years have found a wide variety of hydrogen-isotope ratios. But, in the new study, which was published online Monday (March 30) in the journal Nature Geoscience, Barnes and her team found that Black Beauty and ALH84001 have very similar amounts of normal versus heavy hydrogen.
That ratio is roughly the same as that observed for much younger rocks, suggesting that not much has changed, hydrogen-isotope wise, for the past 4r billion years or so on Mars. In addition, the isotope ratio is about halfway between that seen in crustal rocks here on Earth and the ratio observed in the Martian atmosphere, which has a lot more heavy hydrogen.
The Martian atmosphere is so "fractionated" because charged particles from the sun have preferentially blown the lighter normal hydrogen into space, scientists say.
"We thought, OK, this is interesting, but also kind of weird," Barnes said of the new results. "How do we explain this dichotomy where the Martian atmosphere is being fractionated, but the crust is basically staying the same over geological time?"
Researchers have long thought that Mars' mantle — the thick rock layer beneath the thin crust — sports a similar hydrogen-isotope ratio to that of Earth. So, the variability in isotope ratios seen in Mars meteorites was chalked up to terrestrial contamination or alteration by the Red Planet's atmosphere as the rocks, blasted free by powerful impacts, barreled outward toward space, Barnes said. (Crustal rocks should be similar to mantle rocks, after all; the crust is made of material from the interior that made it to the surface, cooled and solidified.)
But the presumed mantle similarities between Mars and Earth are inferred from one study of a meteorite thought to originate in the Red Planet's mantle, the researchers said. And it may be time for a rethink.
"Martian meteorites basically plot all over the place, and so trying to figure out what these samples are actually telling us about water in the mantle of Mars has historically been a challenge," Barnes said. "The fact that our data for the crust was so different prompted us to go back through the scientific literature and scrutinize the data."
This analysis revealed that two different types of Martian volcanic rocks, enriched shergottites and depleted shergottites, have different hydrogen-isotope ratios. These rocks probably represent different source material, the researchers said — different reservoirs of water in the Martian interior.
"Consequently, these features may have been inherited from the primary building blocks that constructed Mars, implying that the Martian mantle has almost always been heterogeneous because it was poorly mixed during accretion, differentiation and its subsequent thermochemical evolution," the researchers wrote in the new study.
If this is true, then, unlike Earth and the moon, Mars probably did not feature a global ocean of liquid rock shortly after its birth. A global magma ocean would have mixed everything together, erasing the distinct isotope signatures, the researchers said.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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Bird-brained: Parrots and crows have evolved 'truly...
Wing structure of prehistoric flying reptiles that lived...
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Nizar Ibrahim, Paul C. Sereno, David J. Varricchio, David M. Martill, Didier B. Dutheil, David M. Unwin, Lahssen Baidder, Hans C. E. Larsson, Samir Zouhri, Abdelhadi Kaoukaya 
.jpg "Kevin Randle")
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![A few terms contributing to the zero-point energy in quantum electrodynamics. Although we frequently... [+] assume the value of these contributions to the quantum vacuum sum to zero, there's no solid footing for that assumption.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F07%2FZPE.jpg)
![A scalar field φ in a false vacuum. Note that the energy E is higher than that in the true vacuum or... [+] ground state, but there is a barrier preventing the field from classically rolling down to the true vacuum. Note also how the lowest-energy (true vacuum) state is allowed to have a finite, positive, non-zero value. The zero-point energy of many quantum systems is known to be greater than zero.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F01%2FFalsevacuum.jpg)
![Countless scientific tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity have been performed,... [+] subjecting the idea to some of the most stringent constraints ever obtained by humanity. The presence of matter and energy in space tells spacetime how to curve, and that curved spacetime tells matter and energy how to move. But there's a free parameter as well: the zero-point energy of space, which enters General Relativity as a cosmological constant. This accurately describes the dark energy we observe, but does not explain its value.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F01%2Fligo20160211e-1-1200x674.jpg)
![Today, Feynman diagrams are used in calculating every fundamental interaction spanning the strong,... [+] weak, and electromagnetic forces, including in high-energy and low-temperature/condensed conditions. They can be drawn not only for particles that enter-and-leave an interaction, as shown here, but for the quantum vacuum as well.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F06%2FFour_Point_Vertex_two_loops_01.jpg)
![Whether the expansion of the Universe accelerates or decelerates depends not only on the energy... [+] density of the Universe (ρ), but also on the pressure (p) of the various components of energy. For something like dark energy, where the pressure is large and negative, the Universe accelerates, rather than decelerates, over time. This was first indicated by supernova results, but has since been corroborated by large-scale structure measurements, the cosmic microwave background, and other independent methods of measuring the Universe.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2020%2F02%2Fopo9919k-1200x878.jpg)
![The blue "shading" represent the possible uncertainties in how the dark energy density was/will be... [+] different in the past and future. The data points to a true cosmological "constant," but other possibilities are still allowed. As matter becomes less and less important, dark energy becomes the only term that matters. The expansion rate has dropped over time, but will now asymptote to around 55 km/s/Mpc.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F09%2F1-U_vIXRWu1Jratsv-wwcv1Q.jpg)
![Instead of adding in a cosmological constant, modern dark energy is treated as just another... [+] component of energy in the expanding Universe. This generalized form of the equations clearly shows that a static Universe is out, and helps visualize the difference between adding a cosmological constant and including a generalized form of dark energy.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F10%2F400022709-1-1200x674.jpg)
![Visualization of a quantum field theory calculation showing virtual particles in the quantum vacuum.... [+] (Specifically, for the strong interactions.) Even in empty space, this vacuum energy is non-zero, and what appears to be the 'ground state' in one region of curved space will look different from the perspective of an observer where the spatial curvature differs. As long as quantum fields are present, this vacuum energy (or a cosmological constant) must be present, too.](https://blogs-images.forbes.com/startswithabang/files/2018/03/leinie.gif)
![Quantum gravity tries to combine Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.... [+] Quantum corrections to classical gravity are visualized as loop diagrams, as the one shown here in white. It is possible that the quantum gravity contributions to the zero-point energy of space are responsible for the dark energy we see in our Universe today, but that is just one of many viable possibilities.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F10%2FLoop-Diagram.jpg)
![On a fundamental level, even purely empty space is still filled with quantum fields, which affect... [+] the value of the zero-point energy of space. Until we know how to perform this calculation, we must either make an assumption about the value we arrive at or admit that we do not know how to perform this calculation.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fstartswithabang%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F12%2Fquantum_ill-1200x573.jpg)
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