Documentary About UFO Sightings Throughout NWT Sets To Finish This Spring

Canadian filmmaker Raymond Yakeleya has not seen alien UFO but believes in extraterrestrial existence. Born in Tulita, a hamlet in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories, Yakeleya plans to make a documentary regarding UFO sightings in the North.

N.W.T. has been flooded with reports of UFO sightings and encounters over the years, including one earlier in January 2015 in Fort Smith.

Yakeleya believes there’s a UFO connection and evidence in Dene legend. The legend tells the story on extraterrestrial visitations where the chief of their kind requested a Dene wife, which did happen.

He says that he often wondered about the legend, asking himself how it is possible that they have alien beings in their legends. Yakeleya firmly believes that their people don’t lie and don’t make any stories like that.

Yakeleya states that he can’t discount many stories from elders who reveal that they have seen UFOs on the area even though he has never experienced alien encounters.

He plans to call his film “UFOs, Aliens and First Nations.” Yakeleya thinks that it’s important to talk about alien sightings and abductions to understand these phenomena.

According to Yakeleya, he and other children in residential schools were hesitant to talk about their culture’s legends. Now, he wants to change it and hopes that people open up about their experiences.

Yakeleya hopes to finish his film this spring and currently working on finding drawings and some photos. He is filming in Albert at the moment and plans to visit the N.W.T. later this month.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

06-02-2015 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

Coyne Helicopter Incident 

Mansfield, Ohio, United States

October 18, 1973

UFO Evidence

The Coyne case (or "Army helicopter incident") stands out as, perhaps  the most credible (in the "high strangeness" category) of the 1973 wave.  An Army Reserve helicopter crew of four men encountered a gray, metallic-looking, cigar-shaped object, with unusual lights and maneuvers, as they were airborne between Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio.

                      

Classification & Features

Type of Case/Report: MajorCase        
Hynek Classification: CE1        
Special Features/Characteristics: Pilot/Aircrew, Military         

Full Report / Article

Source: Jennie Zeidman, CUFOS       
[go to original source]                

        The Coyne case (or "Army helicopter incident") stands out as, perhaps  the most credible (in the "high strangeness" category) of the 1973 wave.  An Army Reserve helicopter crew of four men encountered a gray, metallic-looking, cigar-shaped object, with unusual lights and maneuvers, as they were airborne between Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio. The crew won the NATIONAL ENQUIRER Blue Ribbon Panel's $ 5,000 award for "the most scientifically valuable report of 1973."  

On October 18, 1973, at approximately 10:30 PM a UH-1H helicopter of the United States Army Reserve left Port Columbus, Ohio, for its home base of Cleveland Hopkins airport, ninety-six nautical miles to the north-northeast.  In command, in the right-front seat, was Captain Lawrence J. Coyne, thirty-six, with nineteen years of flying experience. At the controls, in the left-front seat, sat First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, twenty-six, a chemical engineer.  Behind Jezzi sat Sergeant John Healey, thirty-five, a Cleveland policeman who was the flight medic, and Coyne was the Crew Chief, Sergeant Robert Yanacsek, twenty-three, a computer technician. The helicopter was cruising at 2,500 feet above sea level at an indicated airspeed of ninety knots, above mixed hills, woods, and rolling farmland, averaging 1,200 elevation.  The night was totally clear, calm, and starry.  The last quarter moon was just rising.  

About ten miles south of Mansfield, Healey noticed a single red light off to the west, flying south.  It seemed brighter than a standard aircraft port-wing light, but it was not considered relevant traffic, and he does not recall mentioning it. An estimated two minutes later, at approximately 11:02 PM, Yanacsek noted a single red light on the south-east horizon.  He assumed it was either a radio-tower beacon or an aircraft port-wing light - most likely an aircraft, since it was not flashing - and he watched it "for a long time, a minute to ninety seconds" before calling it to Coyne's  attention.  Coyne, smoking, relaxing, glanced  over, noted the light, assumed it was distant traffic, and told told Yanacsek casually to "keep an eye on it."  

After an estimated additional thirty seconds, Yanacsek announced that the light had turned toward the helicopter and appeared to be on a converging flight path. Coyne verified Yanacsek's assessment, grabbed the controls from Jezzi, and put the UH-1H into a powered descent of approximately 500 feet per minute.  Almost simultaneously, Coyne established radio contact with Mansfield control tower, ten miles to the northwest.  Coyne thought the flight was an Air National Guard F-100 from  Mansfield.  After an initial acknowledgment ("This is Mansfield Tower, go ahead Army 1-5-triple-4"), radio contact failed.  Jezzi then attempted transmission on both UHF and VHF frequencies without success. Although the channel and keying tones were both heard, there was no response from Mansfield; and a subsequent check by Coyne revealed that Mansfield had no tape of even the initial transmission, the the last F-100 had landed at 10:47 P.M.  

The red light continued its radial bearing and increased greatly in intensity.  Coyne increased his rate of descent to 2,000 feet per minute and his airspeed to 100 knots. The last altitude he noted was 1,700 feet. Just as a collision appeared imminent, the unknown light halted in its westward course and assumed a hovering relationship above and in front of the helicopter.  "It wasn't cruising, it was stopped.  For maybe ten to twelve seconds - just stopped,"  Yanacsek  reported. Coyne, Healey, and Yanacsek agree that a cigar-shaped, slightly domed object substended an angle of nearly the width of the front windshield. A featureless, gray, metallic-looking  structure was precisely delineated against the background stars. Yanacsek reported "a suggestion of windows" along the top dome section. The red light emanated from the bow, a white light became visible at a slightly indented stern, and then, from aft/below, a green 'pyramid shaped" beam equated to a directional spotlight became visible.  The green beam passed upward over the helicopter nose, swung up through the windshield, continued upward and entered the tinted upper  window panels.  At that point (and not before), the cockpit was enveloped in green light.  Jezzi reported only a bright white light, comparable to the leading light of a small aircraft, visible through the top "greenhouse' panels of the windshield.  After the estimated ten seconds of "hovering," the object began to accelerate off to the west, now with only the white "tail" light visible.  The white light maintained its intensity even as its distance appeared to increase, and finally (according to Coyne and Healey), it  appeared to execute a decisive 45 degree turn to the right, head out toward Lake Erie, and then "snap out" over the horizon.  Healey reported that he watched the object moving westward "for a couple of minutes." Jezzi said it moved faster than the 250-knot limit for aircraft below 10,000 feet, but not as fast as the 600-knot approach speed reported by the others.  There was no noise from the object or turbulence during the encounter, except for one "bump" as the object moved away to the west.  After the object had broken off its hovering relationship, Jezzi and Coyne noted that the magnetic compass disk was rotating approximately four times per minute and that the altimeter read approximately 3,500 feet; a 1,000 foot-per-minute climb was in progress.  Coyne insists that the collective was still bottomed from his  evasive descent.  Since the collective could not be lowered further, he had no alternative but to lift it, whatever the results, and after a few seconds of gingerly  maneuvering controls (during which the helicopter reached nearly 3,800 feet), positive  control was achieved.  By that time the white light had already moved into the Mansfield area.  Coyne had been subliminally aware of the climb; the others not at all, yet they had all been acutely aware of the g-forces of the dive.  The helicopter was brought back to the flight plan altitude of 2,500 feet, radio contact was achieved with Canton/Akron, the night proceeded uneventfully to Cleveland.  

Apparent ground witnesses to this event have been found by William E. Jones and  Warren Nicholson, independent UFO researchers from Columbus, Ohio.  

Mrs. E. C. and four adolescents were driving south from Mansfield to their rural home on October 18, 1973, at approximately 11 P.M., when they were attracted to a single steady bright red light. flying south "at medium altitude."  They watched for perhaps half a minute until it disappeared to the south over the trees.  

Approximately five minutes later, now driving east on Route 430, approaching the Charles Mill Reservoir, the family became aware of two bright lights - red and green - descending rapidly toward them from the southeast.  When first seen, the angular distance between the lights was about 2 degrees; the red light appeared to be leading. Mrs. C. pulled over to the shoulder of the deserted road and kept the engine and car lights running.  The lights - bigger than point sources - slowed and moved as a unit to the right of the car and the family became aware of yet another group of lights - some of these flashing - and "a beating sound, a lot of racket"  approaching from the southwest.  Two of the children (cousins, both age thirteen) jumped from the car and observed both a helicopter and the object, which they described as "like a blimp," "as big as a school bus," "sort of pear shaped."  The  object at that point subtended an angle equivalent to "a 100-mm cigarette box held at arm's length."  The object  assumed a hovering position over the helicopter, an estimated 500 feet back from the road and 500 feet above the trees. (The ground elevation at the site is almost exactly 1,000 feet above sea level; thus at the noted 1,700-foot altimeter reading, the helicopter was actually about 650 feet above the trees.)  The object's green light then flared up.  "It was like rays coming down," the witnesses said. The helicopter, the trees, the road, the car - everything turned green."  The kids scrambled with fright back into the car and Mrs. C. proceeded apace.  Their estimated total time outside the car was "about a minute."  Neither ground witnesses nor aircrew are sure at what point the two aircraft disengaged; the ground witnesses reported that the unidentified object crossed to the north side of the road behind the car, appeared to move eastward for a few seconds, then reversed its direction and climbed toward the northwest towards Mansfield - a flight path which correlates perfectly the motion of the object established through analysis of the aircrew's report.  

Any theory of the object's being a meteor (UFO skeptic Philip Klass maintains that the object was a "fireball of the Orionid meteor shower") can readily be rejected on the basis of:  (1) the duration of the event (an estimated 300 seconds); (2) the marked deceleration and hard-angle maneuver of the object at closest approach; (3) the precisely defined shape of the object; and (4) the horizon-to-horizon flight path.  

The possibility of a high-performance aircraft likewise is untenable when one examines the positions and colors of the lights with respect to the flight path of the object.  To have presented the reported configurations, and been in accordance with FAA regulations, an aircraft would have had to be flying sideways, either  standing on its tail, tail-to to the helicopter, or upside-down head-on.  Other arguments against aircraft hypothesis are:  (1) a fixed-wing aircraft moving across  the line of sight would appear to move most rapidly when passing directly in front of the observer; (2) a fixed-wing aircraft would not have the capability of decelerating from high velocity to "hover" within a few seconds time; (3) a helicopter would have the capability  of hovering, but would not be capable of the high forward speeds reported; (4) a conventional aircraft, if within 500 to 1,000 feet, would have produced noise audible inside the helicopter; (5) the FAA requires either a strobe or a rotating beacon on either the top or bottom of the fuselage, (6) FAA requires that no aircraft shall fly below 10,000 feet msl at  speeds above 250 knots; (7) some of the features of a conventional aircraft would have been seen, e.g., wings, engine pods, windows, empennage,  numbers, logo.  

Coyne reported that the Magnaflux/Zygio method of nondestructive testing was applied to the rotors the following day and that there was no indication that they had been subjected to fatigue-producing stresses.  Comparable times/distances/directions support the possibility that the red light first seen by the C. family, Healey's red light, and the object of the encounter were all one and the same.  Yanacsek's red light on the eastern horizon was under continuous observation and was unequivocally the object of the encounter.  

The case has maintained its high "strangeness-credibility" rating after extended investigation and analysis.  

Jennie Zeidman 
CUFOS 

Case ID: 104

{ ufoevidence.org }

06-02-2015 om 12:42 geschreven door peter  

UFO mania: Fisherman Records UFO Unexpected Encounter

This UFO was recorded In a remote area of Transnistria (also called Trans-Dniestr or Transdniestria) which is a breakaway state located mostly on a strip of land between the River Dniester and the eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine. The object was recorded in November, 2014 in a place where the witnesses say they love to fish. The UFO appears to be a light orb object and it was recorded by a fisherman while heading back home from a fishing trip. The video was being recorded on a phone, they reported that the smartphone battery dies when the video stops. At times you can see the UFO seemingly hovering, and at the end of the video, the UFO appears to speed up as it flies away from the motorboat. 

06-02-2015 om 12:30 geschreven door peter  

Le nombre estimé de planètes "habitables" dans notre galaxie devient vertigineux

Le nombre estimé de planètes "habitables" dans notre galaxie est encore revu à la hausse ©THE PICTURE DESK/AFP

Dans une nouvelle publication basée sur les dernières données récoltées par le télescope Kepler, des chercheurs estiment qu'elles se compteraient en "centaines de milliards". C'est bien plus que les dernière estimations.

En juin 2014, une équipe internationale de chercheurs estimait, à partir d'un "indice de complexité biologique" qu'il existait dans notre galaxie environ 100 millions de planète potentiellement habitables.

Les nouveaux calculs tablent désormais sur un chiffre 1000 fois plus élevé que cette précédente estimation, puisque les chercheurs de l'Australian National University (ANU) estiment désormais que les planètes "habitables" de notre galaxie pourrait désormais se compter en centaines de milliards.

Pour obtenir cet ordre de grandeur, les chercheurs se basent sur plusieurs éléments. Le premier est le nombre toujours plus important de planètes au delà de notre système solaire, en orbite autour d'autres étoiles. Le télescope spatial a en effet fêté en janvier 2015 la découverte de sa millième exoplanète. Ils constatent ensuite que les observations du télescope spatial Kepler comportent un biais puisque le télescope est particulièrement performant lorsqu'il s'agit de repérer les planètes relativement proches de leur étoile, mais l'est moins pour débusquer celles, plus nombreuses, qui gravitent un peu plus loin. Et notamment celles situées dans la zone "habitable" de leur étoile, c'est à dire une zone dans laquelle la quantité d'énergie reçue par la planète permet à l'eau d'exister sous forme liquide. De ce fait, l'équipe considère que le nombre d'exoplanètes estimé dans notre galaxie est bien plus important que ce que supposaient les études précédentes.

Enfin, ils basent une partie de leurs travaux sur la "loi de Titus-Bode". Une loi empirique uniquement basée sur l'observation et qui permet de prédire approximativement à quelle distance du soleil se calent chacune des orbites des planètes qui composent un système solaire. Une loi qui ne correspond à aucune théorie et qui ne peut être démontrée mathématiquement, mais qui a tout de même une valeur prédictive. Par exemple, elle a permis de déduire la période d'Uranus, ainsi que pour découvrir la planète naine Cérès, rappellent les chercheurs. 

Dans leurs travaux publiés dans la revue Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, ces derniers expliquent être partis d'un échantillon de systèmes planétaires découverts par Kepler, contenant au moins 3 planètes (soit 151 systèmes). Les mesures réalisées au sein de cet échantillon ont été extrapolées grâce à la loi de Titus-Bode de manière prédire la période de 228 planètes supplémentaires et de déduire, de manière statistique, qu'il se trouve, autour de chaque étoile, en moyenne deux planètes situées dans la zone habitable.

Zone habitable (en vert) autour d'une étoile. D'après les auteurs de l'étude, deux planètes en moyenne se trouvent dans cette zone par système solaire. © Australian National University

Dans notre système solaire, la Terre est située dans une telle zone et reçoit environ 1000 Watts par mètre carré d'énergie rayonnée par le soleil. Si l'on s'approche du soleil et que l'on dépasse Vénus, la quantité d'énergie reçue est trop importante et l'eau se vaporise. Si on s'en éloigne et que l'on dépasse Mars, alors l'eau n'existe plus que sous forme de glace. Or, seule l'eau liquide permet à la vie d'exister sous la forme que nous lui connaissons.

Ces conditions physico-chimiques sont un préalable indispensable à l'émergence de la vie. Toutefois, ce n'est pas parce qu'une planète répond à ces critères qu'elle abrite pour autant une vie extraterrestre.

"L'Univers n'est pas forcément rempli d'alien avec une intelligence semblable à la nôtre, capable de construire des radiotélescopes ou des vaisseaux spatiaux analyse Charley Lineweaver, l'un des auteurs de la publication. Si tel était le cas, nous aurions sans doute eu vent de leur existence. Il est possible qu'il y ait d'autres goulets d'étranglement à l'émergence de la vie, à moins que ces civilisations intelligentes n'aient évolué puis disparu" commente-t-il dans un article d'analyse.

{ http://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/ }

06-02-2015 om 12:03 geschreven door peter  

Sightings Of Flying Saucers From The 1950s

(Before It's News)

I was having a backwards look at UFOs to when they were known as flying saucers. My time machine stopped at 1950 and this is what was being reported.

Not too much detail from the Pittsburg Press above, but they did include a map of recent [1950] sightings as seen below:

Other Random UFO Posts:

The UFO Travellers From Ancient Egypt
The Alien Visitation And UFO Sighting
Ezekiel: The Alien Abduction Of The Bible

For more interesting and unusual stories like this go to 67 Not Out – coincidences, synchronicity, UFOs, reincarnation and many other mysteries.

Source: http://www.67notout.com/2015/02/sightings-of-flying-saucers-from-1950s.html

06-02-2015 om 11:49 geschreven door peter  

Metallic Object Flying Over San Antonio, Texas Jan-2015 (Video)

(Before It's News)

This interesting UFO video of a metallic sphere-like object was filmed over San Antonio in Texas on 27th January 2015.

Witness report: This day was clear no clouds in sight..I notice this bright glowing light traveling at high speeds..So i grabbed my camcorder for a closer observation..When zooming in a Metallic Orb can be observed to be traveling in a Southeastern direction..It appear to reflect the suns rays with a shadow underneath..When zooming out you can clearly see as it travel at high seeds.It seemed to be under some sort of controlled. .You can see it as it travels Horizontal and in a Constant Speed….I did not hear any noise coming from this U.F.O…In my opinion this is a UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT clearly no weather balloon/aircraft or satellite.

Author (SAUFOTX @ youtube)

06-02-2015 om 11:44 geschreven door peter  

Massive Ufo Craft Seen Hovering Over Warton’s Aerodrome

(Before It's News)

MASSIVE UFO CRAFT SEEN HOVERING OVER WARTON’S AERODROME
OCTOBER 14, 2015    ……..    PRESTON  ENGLAND

06-02-2015 om 11:41 geschreven door peter  

Alleged UFO video purportedly documents ET contact in Florida

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

http://vimeo.com/118627585

A group attempting to contact extraterrestrials using “coherent thought and meditation practices” has captured dramatic lights over the ocean on video (seen above). They believe the event was extraterrestrial contact, other UFO researchers believe the objects are merely flares.

According to the video’s description, the sighting took place at Vero Beach in Florida on January 27, 2015 between 9:10 and 9:15 pm. In the video, you can see several people are present when a bright orange light appears below the clouds offshore. Soon after, a second object can be seen. After a few minutes, the lights fade out.

Close-up of lights caught on video by CSETI in Florida. (Credit: CSETI)

The group had several cameras ready to film any UFOs they may spot. In fact, the group believes they can call in extraterrestrial spacecraft using what they call the CE-5 Protocol.

The alien spotting event was held by the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), which was founded by Dr. Steven Greer, a retired medical doctor. They hold what they call “Ambassador Training” several times a year throughout the country. As the website describes, at these events “Dr. Greer will provide in-depth training  in meditation and Remote Viewing and explain how the Science of Consciousness and ET communication, travel and even manufacturing are connected.”

The training lasts a week and costs $2500. This may or may not include the price of the hotel rooms for the week.

In the video, once the UFOs are spotted, you can hear the excitement in the participants’ voices. Greer tells everyone to thank the aliens for coming. It is assumed that he means by sending them thoughts. He then instructs the group to “Open your heart chakra and send them the beauty of humanity.”

“You connect with your palms out, like this, with your third eye and your heart making like a tetrahedron radiating our pureness and love towards them, ” Greer continued.

Although the lights in the video are dramatic, the UFO researchers I contacted for analysis of the video felt that the lights were obviously flares.

Marc Dantonio, the chief photo analyst for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) said this:

“The facts are this. You see one appear in another way they appear is from right to left. The way they go out is from right to left as expected, with the first one to light up being the first one to go out. Not only that but you can actually see as you scrub through the video that they drift to the right and sink lower in the sky. It is at that point where the first flare that lit up then goes out as expected. This is absolutely consistent with aerial parachute flares.”

A screenshot from the CSETI video. Ricky Butterfass can be seen on the far right. (Credit: CSETI)

I also contacted Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist who used to work for the U.S. Navy at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. He also was of the opinion that the lights in the video are flares.

Ricky Butterfass, a long time CSETI member who was there to witness the UFOs in Florida first hand says he disagrees.  He argues that the winds were high. He says, “If the objects were flares they would not have maintained the relative same altitude and tandem position for the time period.”

“There was not any smoke observed or parachutes.  We have seen flares before doing field work,” says Butterfass. Butterfass also says they did not see any aircraft dropping the flares.

“My CE-5 team buddy is former Navy and was aircraft maintenance on an aircraft carrier during the gulf wars. He did not think they were flares,” says Butterfass.

Furthermore, Butterfass says he and other witnesses saw disk shaped objects several times during their trip. On one occasion one kept pace with their rental car.

Alleged alien that appeared in a photograph during a CSETI outing near Joshua Tree, CA in 2009. (Credit: CSETI)

Butterfass says this isn’t the first time they made contact. “We also know the ET race that operate these type craft.  We call them Arcturans and they have confirmed that assumption.  Although other ET races work with them on board some of these and larger craft,” says Butterfass.

Greer has posted on their website a photo of what he believes to be an extraterrestrial that visited one of their training sessions in the area of Joshua Tree, California in November of 2009.

Butterfass says they have had several visitations by extraterrestrials while they are in their meditation circle. However, humans cannot see them.  He says they sometimes can see the aliens’ auras, but mostly have to communicate with them using their “field electronics.”

As for the Vero Beach video, most of the UFO researchers I have contacted agree that it is definitely flares that CSETI caught on video. I contacted the Coast Guard who said they did not have any operations in the area involving flares. I also reached out to the Navy who said they would get back to me, but as of the posting of this story, I have not heard anything from them. The Florida MUFON chapter says their investigation is ongoing, and they will release their conclusions when their investigation is complete.

Here is a video of some military flares I filmed in Arizona for comparison…

The post Alleged UFO video purportedly documents ET contact in Florida appeared first on Openminds.tv.

Source: http://www.openminds.tv/alleged-ufo-video-purportedly-documents-et-contact-florida/32104

06-02-2015 om 11:36 geschreven door peter  

Geheimen Roswell eindelijk in mei 2015 onthuld...

Er vindt op 5 mei 2015 een conferentie plaats in Mexico waar geheimen zullen worden onthuld waardoor de geschiedenisboeken kunnen worden herschreven.

In het Nationaal Auditorium in Mexico City zal ten overstaan van 10.000 bezoekers bewijs worden gepresenteerd dat er in Roswell wel degelijk buitenaardsen zijn neergestort.

Misschien geen toeval dat Mexico is uitgekozen als het land waar in mei dit jaar bewijsmateriaal zal worden gepresenteerd wat de loop van de geschiedenis zullen veranderen.

Op 5 mei 2015 zullen in Nationaal Auditorium ten overstaan van zo’n 10.000 bezoekers een aantal wereldberoemde onderzoekers zoals Thomas J. Carey en Donald R. Schmitt een presentatie aan het publiek geven die wordt genoemd: Eén van de meest belangrijke zaken in de afgelopen 1.000 jaar.

Naast de genoemde onderzoekers zal ook NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell aanwezig zijn. Hij was de 6e man die op de maan heeft gelopen en heeft altijd gezegd dat hij gelooft dat wij niet alleen zijn in dit universum.

Er zal op die dag ook een persconferentie worden gehouden voor zowel de nationale als de internationale pers.

De zaak die zij zullen presenteren en die de loop van de geschiedenis zal veranderen, heeft alles te maken met Roswell en buitenaardsen.

Er zijn natuurlijk al talloze opnames verschenen van buitenaardse wezens die zouden zijn gefotografeerd of zelfs op film gezet na de crash bij Roswell. Het grote probleem bij al die opnames is altijd geweest dat meestal niemand weet waar ze vandaan komen, door wie ze zijn gemaakt en of ze wel echt zijn.

Nu zijn er wat men noemt de Kodachrome dia’s.

Enkele jaren geleden werd er ergens in Arizona een zolder opgeruimd en daarbij kwam een kist tevoorschijn, vol met Kodachrome dia’s. De kist behoorde ooit toe aan een kinderloos echtpaar uit Sedona in de Amerikaanse staat Arizona.

Hier volgt in het kort het verhaal:

Talloze onderzoeken hebben uitgewezen dat de Kodachrome dia’s echt zijn.

Het volgende is wat Thomas Carey erover heeft te zeggen:

En Donald Schmitt:

Zoals je hebt kunnen horen wordt 5 mei 2015 een dag waarop de geschiedenisboeken voorgoed kunnen worden herschreven.

De dag dat er wordt aangetoond dat er buitenaardsen aanwezig zijn op onze planeet en dat wij definitief niet alleen zijn.

Bron:  Ufo Chronicles

{ www.NIBURU.nl }

06-02-2015 om 11:24 geschreven door peter  

British Rail Managed To Patent A Flying Saucer

British Rail has been hit with the issue of trains not running on time. Perhaps, a simple form of technology and system could solve this problem. But it seems that British Rail has a hard time to get the job done. One might wonder, how did it ever consider it would be able to initiate space travel?

In 1970s, British Rail’s aspiration was to build a patented flying saucer. With a patent granted in March 1973, Charles Osmond Frederick designed a craft that utilises nuclear fusion for its energy source. Charles planned to stabilise the vehicle with laser beams that are generated in pulses.

Charles developed magnetised subatomic particles to give lift and thrust to the flying saucer. Passengers would get protection from radiation with a thick metal shield in the hull.

Based on the law of physics, the idea would be quite difficult to put into a reality. Also, the patent lapsed in 1976 with just a slim likelihood the craft be ever getting made.

Was the idea worth patenting? YouTube famous personality Tom Scott says any ideas that are original can be worth patenting even if they are the most insane ones.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

06-02-2015 om 11:17 geschreven door peter  

Border Zone UFO Festival ditches UFOs

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

This year will mark the fourth year for a UFO festival in Presidio, Texas. But 2015 is also the year that festival organizers are shifting focus away from UFOs.

(Credit: Yuan Yufei/Wikimedia Commons)

Presidio’s Border Zone International UFO Festival began in 2012. As the name suggests, the event was filled with UFO related presentations from researchers including Stanton Friedman, Noe Torres, and Gilberto Rivera.

Subsequent years continued with UFO-centric programming, featuring lectures by UFO conference regulars like Travis Walton and Nick Pope.

UFO researchers Ruben Uriarte, Gilbert Rivera, Carlos Guzman, Noe Torres, and Travis Walton at the 2013 Border Zone International UFO Festival. (Credit: Border Zone International UFO Festival/Noe Torres)

But now, festival organizers have decided it’s time to get away from the UFO topic.

Presidio Municipal Development District executive director Brad Newton told local media outlet Big Bend Sentinel that he “hopes to orient the festival toward a more science-based event, and has even been in touch with representatives at NASA, who, according to Newton, have expressed willingness to send an astronaut for the October festival.”

Newton apparently sees a stigma attached to the term “UFO.” He points to an issue with NASA, stating, “[T]hey won’t send you an astronaut if you have UFO in your name.”

Although former NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover recently spoke at the International UFO Congress, former NASA astronaut Story Musgrave recently spoke at the Mutual UFO Network’s symposium, and former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell will be presenting a lecture (via Skype) at the upcoming Contact in the Desert event, Newton seems to think that scientists and astronauts are deterred by the term “UFO.”

Organizers have even gone so far as to remove “UFO” from the event’s title, which is now the Texas Border Zone Dark Skies Festival. According to Big Bend Sentinel, this refers to “the Dark Skies Program at Big Bend Ranch State Park, which strives to reduce light pollution and promote stargazing within the state parks.”

Photo taken as part of Texas Parks & Wildlife Department’s Dark Skies program. (Credit: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department)

“We want to concentrate more on the music, more on the science and astronomy,” Newton says, clarifying the new focus of the event.

The embarrassing topic of UFOs might not be completely gone from the festival though. Newton claims, “The paranormal will always be part of the mystery of the Big Bend and we don’t want to forget that, but it’s not the main focus.”

The reworked Texas Border Zone Dark Skies Festival takes place October 30-31.  

The post Border Zone UFO Festival ditches UFOs appeared first on Openminds.tv.

Source: http://www.openminds.tv/border-zone-ufo-festival-ditches-ufos/32092

05-02-2015 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

Hovering pyramid UFO still haunts NY witness

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

The Hyde Park, NY, witness recalls looking out a bedroom window during the summer of 1976. Over the trees at the far side of the house was a bright white, perfect pyramid craft. Pictured: Hyde Park, NY. (Credit: Google)

A New York witness at Hyde Park recalled a UFO incident from the summer of 1976 when a pyramid-shaped object hovered over her home, according to testimony in Case 62997 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witness recalls getting out of bed and moving toward a window in her home when the object was first seen in the summer of 1976 during the late night or very early morning hours.

“Over the trees at the far side of the house was a bright white, perfect pyramid craft,” the witness stated. “My first thought was it was a two-man ship.”

The witness became afraid and hid in a closet. Pictured: Hyde Park, NY. (Credit: Google)

The witness described the object.

“The main body of it was bright white and it spun rapidly, but it flew straight. On one point was a blue light; on one tip a green light and on the other tip was white light. Part of me remembers a red light somewhere.”

The witnesses’ room was on one end of the home and the object appeared to be near the opposite end of the home.

“I remember touching my eyes to make sure I was awake. It was maybe 20 to 25 feet off of the ground and maybe10 feet away from the side of the house slowly flying parallel to the second floor of the house. There was no sound.”

The witness became afraid thinking that the object could also see her.

“At first I was amazed and then I thought – if I can see it, they can see me. Then I had an overwhelming feeling of dread and fear. I ran to the closet and hid.”

But hiding in the closet did not block the witness from the object.

“I remember seeing the bright light under the door and then I’m in my mom’s room crying and she’s telling me to go back to sleep. My Dad walked me back to my room and my friend who was sleeping over said she saw something in the neighbor’s driveway. Next thing I know I’m coming home from school the next day. Then when my Dad got home, he told my Mom that she should have believed me because in the paper was an article that said the town about 30 minutes away saw the same thing I saw.”

The following day, the witnesses’ father saw an article in a local newspaper that described a similar object being seen in a nearby town. Pictured: Hyde Park, NY. (Credit: Google)

The newspaper article convinced her parents.

“After that she always looked at the sky as she wanted to see them too. I was 13 when that happened. I’m 51 now and I can’t talk about it without crying even after all these years. I don’t know what happened to make me cry when I think about it still. I do have a lot of dreams about ships in the sky and I see the tall shining, blonde, beautiful people. But I had to tell someone about my sighting even though it was a long time ago. I’m still a little scared that the ‘men in black’ will come to the door.”

Hyde Park is a town located in the western portion of Dutchess County, New York, population 21,571.

No images or videos were included with the MUFON report, which was filed on January 31, 2015. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

The post Hovering pyramid UFO still haunts NY witness appeared first on Openminds.tv.

Source: http://www.openminds.tv/hovering-pyramid-ufo-still-haunts-ny-witness/32099

05-02-2015 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

Fast UFO filmed over Sydney, Australia Jan-2015 (Video)

(Before It's News)

New video of a very fast and huge UFO flying and making maneuvers over Sydney, Australia. This footage was taken on Saturday, 31st January 2015.

05-02-2015 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

UFO Case Review: O’Hare Airport UFO, 2006 (Video)

(Before It's News)

Every so often, a UFO sighting occurs that is more interesting for what it tells us about our own government than for what it tells us about the UFO itself. The UFO event over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 2006 in one such example. The short encounter was rather unremarkable, as UFO sightings go, but the reaction of the airline and the FAA was anything but ordinary, suggesting some type of cover-up between the implicated authorities. What’s more, the sighting reminds us that even nearly 40 years after the US government disavowed all responsibility for investigating UFOs, there are still many parties secretly involved in keeping UFO activity out of the public eye.

Thanks http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/

05-02-2015 om 23:32 geschreven door peter  

The truth about UFOs and aliens is out there

05-02-2015 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

Hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets may host alien life

A team of scientists estimates that there may be hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy that can support alien life.

New studies and new projections are frequently published by researchers because incredible space tools, like NASA’s Kepler space telescope, are providing scientists with more data than has ever been available. For example, in 2012, astronomers analyzed data from the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) planet-hunting telescope, and concluded that there could be tens of billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy. And, in 2014, a research team evaluated the list of confirmed exoplanets, leading to the conclusion that the Milky Way is home to one hundred million planets that could support complex alien life.

Artist’s illustration of Kepler. (Credit: NASA Ames/ W Stenzel)

For this recent study, scientists applied an idea known as the Titius-Bode hypothesis to the exoplanets detected by Kepler. Science World Report explains, “The Titius-Bode relation is a hypothesis that the bodies in some orbital systems, including the sun’s, orbit at semi-major axes in a function of planetary sequence.”

Kepler’s observation method makes it biased towards detecting planets that are very close to their stars. So scientists applied the 200-year-old Titius-Bode idea to Kepler’s data. “We used the Titius-Bode relation and Kepler data to predict the positions of planets that Kepler is unable to see,” says Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver from The Australian National University.

The results lead researchers to conclude that “the standard star has about two planets in the so-called goldilocks zone, the distance from the star where liquid water, crucial for life, can exist.”

Habitable zone predictions. (Credit: ANU)

Lineweaver states, “The ingredients for life are plentiful, and we now know that habitable environments are plentiful.”

But he speculates, “However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them. It could be that there is some other bottleneck for the emergence of life that we haven’t worked out yet. Or intelligent civilisations evolve, but then self-destruct.”

The team’s findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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05-02-2015 om 22:54 geschreven door peter  

Mystery of the Universe's Gamma-Ray Glow Solved

by Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer 

Five years of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope paint a picture of the universe in gamma-rays. Scientists with Fermi think the flux of gamma-rays can be explained by known sources.

Credit: mma ray sky, gamma ray universe, fermi telescope, blazars, radio galaxies, gamma ray emitters, gamma ray sources, milky way gamma rays

The steady glow of high-energy gamma-ray light that spreads across the cosmos has puzzled astronomers for decades. One team of researchers thinks it has the best explanation yet for the source of this strange emission.

After observing the universe with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope for six years, scientists with the mission say the majority of the gamma-ray glow they have seen can be explained by objects already known to science. If there are any as-yet unknown sources out there, their contribution to the glow would be very small, scientists say.

"We have a very plausible story. We're not 100 percent confident that this is the final answer, but it really constrains what other exotic possibilities could be out there," said Keith Bechtol, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and a member of the Fermi collaboration who worked on the analysis. [Fermi's Gamma-Ray Universe in Images (Gallery)]

Fermi: a gamma-ray gumshoe

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope snaps pictures of the entire observable universe — from end to end — in gamma-rays, which are some of the highest-energy photons in nature.

While that wide view of the universe is useful, it can make it a challenge to pinpoint the exact sources of these gamma-rays. Instead, Fermi sees a diffuse glow coming from the universe. This glow is technically known as the extragalactic gamma ray background, or the EGB. Previous gamma-ray telescopes have also seen this light that fills the background of the cosmos.

"We've known about this gamma-ray background since the late 1960s," Bechtol said. "It's a very-long-standing mystery, and each generation of gamma-ray telescopes has given us a little more information."

With help from other telescopes, the Fermi telescope can identify where some of this high-energy background light is coming from. There are very energetic galaxies called blazars, for example, that give off a high flux of gamma-rays. The Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET), which preceded Fermi, broke records by detecting some 300 gamma-ray sources. So far, the Fermi telescope has identified more than 3,000 sources.

But 3,000 is only a drop in the ocean of gamma-ray sources in the entire universe, scientists say. [Top 10 Gamma-Ray Sources in the Universe]

"We think every galaxy is producing gamma-rays at some level," Bechtol said. "The vast majority are too faint to be seen individually and instead their collective emission is blurred together." (Many galaxies radiate high levels of optical light, and can be seen by telescopes like the Hubble. But their gamma-ray emission is too faint to be detected.)

"It's frustrating not to know the answer, but the fact that there's a mystery — I think that's what attracted a lot of us to this problem," Bechtol said. "At least for me, I like being on the edge of that discovery space where there's still blank parts on the map."    

http://www.space.com/20979-record-breaking-gamma-ray-burst-captured-by-fermi-video.html#ooid=ZhMjh5cDpko04lcbOCSE0bcvfgCjzJbI      

Cracking the mystery

The Fermi telescope can't see most of the objects that radiate gamma-ray light, so the scientists have to try to estimate how many gamma-ray objects are out there.

In an analysis first made public in September 2014, members of the Fermi collaboration took the known sources of gamma-rays and added them together with models that predicted the frequency and location of unseen sources. The scientists calculated how much gamma-ray light both the detected and modeled sources would produce together.

This calculated output of gamma rays matches closely with the actual gamma ray-background that Fermi observes — the entire EGB. 

The final estimate shows that roughly 50 percent of the gamma-ray background comes from extremely energetic galaxies known as blazars. Ten to 30 percent of the gamma ray background emanates from star-forming galaxies like the Milky Way, which can collectively contain many smaller gamma-ray sources, like supernovas. Another 20 percent is from radio galaxies, which are blazars, but are pointed away from the Earth, and thus cannot be seen as easily by Fermi.

"There could definitely be new gamma-ray sources out there," Bechtol said. "It's just that their total contribution would have to be relatively small."

It's also possible that dark matter — the mysterious material that makes up 80 percent of all the matter in the universe — is producing gamma-rays, and the Fermi results may help scientists figure out what kind of particle (or particles) make up dark matter.

Two large uncertainties remain in Fermi's estimation. First, it is difficult to measure the gamma-ray glow of the universe to begin with, and Bechtol said he and his collaborators put a lot of time into improving that measurement.

Second, the scientists are making estimates about objects they cannot directly observe, most of which are located beyond the Milky Way galaxy (or extragalactic).

"When [scientists] first discovered the gamma-ray background, it was largely a mystery as to what created it," Bechtol said. "And now it seems like everything is fitting together very well. Right now, the simplest explanation involving known astrophysical sources seems to be doing just fine."

Light from back in time

Fermi's success at decoding the gamma-ray background had depended largely on its increased sensitivity to gamma-rays and its detection of more gamma-ray sources than previous telescopes. In addition, Fermi scientists have worked to gain a better understanding of how gamma-ray emissions have changed throughout the history of the universe. This is valuable because when Fermi looks at sources of gamma-rays, it is actually looking into the past.

Light travels at a finite speed — the light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach Earth, which means humans actually see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. By the same logic, objects that are billions of light-years away from Earth are seen by Fermi as they were billions of years ago.

"We're literally measuring the light output over the history of the universe, and for me, that's what makes this exciting," Bechtol said. "We're seeing all different time periods in the universe at the same time. All of the light from all those different periods is added together to form the gamma ray background."

Having a historical perspective makes a big difference for Fermi because the cosmic output of gamma-rays has likely been different at various times throughout the last 13 billion years. For example, the universe has seen periods when the population of blazars exploded and other times when the population growth slowed down. They also need to understand precisely how far away those blazars are, in order to accurately measure how long ago these bright sources burned.

The Fermi scientists have solved a long-standing puzzle, but Bechtol said there are still other mysteries in the gamma-ray universe. There are other gamma-ray telescopes that can detect even higher-energy gamma-rays than Fermi, and it's possible that in those energy ranges, there are sources of gamma-rays that scientists don't know about yet.

"We think this [result] is converging on the final answer, but history has shown us that, sometimes, there's more to the story," Bechtol said. "I certainly think that, as we start to look at higher energies […], there will start to be some surprises."

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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05-02-2015 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

What Would It Be Like to Live on Venus?

Venus would not be a pleasant place for people to live in the solar system. The planet's active volcanoes and rucraway greenhouse effect would make it a difficult place to survive.

credit : NSSDC Photo Gallery

Between its desiccated, red-orange landscape and surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is our solar system's analog to hell. Setting up a livable base on the planet is a feat far beyond our technological capabilities right now, but here's what life would be like if we could actually live on Venus.

Venus  is often thought of as Earth's twin sister because the size and composition of the two planets are similar. So it should come as no surprise that NASA, the Soviet space program, the European Space Agency (ESA) and others have sent numerous spacecraft to explore the planet second closest to the sun — more than 40 in all since the 1960s. [Living on Venus: Why It Would Be Tough]

In the early 1990s, NASA's Venus orbiter spacecraft, Magellan, used radar signals to map 98 percent of the planet (we can't see Venus's surface directly because of its thick cloud cover). After that, Venus was largely forgotten about until 2005, when the ESA launched its Venus Express spacecraft to study the planet's atmosphere, said Venus Express project scientist Håkan Svedhem.

The surface of Venus  is quite different from other planets in the solar system," Svedhem told Space.com. Radar images from Magellan showed that the Venusian surface is decorated with mountains; craters; thousands of volcanoes, some of which are much larger than Earth's; lava-borne canals up to 3,000 miles (5,000 km) in length; ringlike structures called coronae, or crowns; and odd, deformed terrain called tesserae.

The planet's defining surface characteristic, however, is its flat, smooth plains, which cover about two-thirds of Venus — these plains would, arguably, be the best places to set up a home base to live.

Walking around on Venus wouldn't be a pleasant experience. The Venusian surface is completely dry because the planet suffers from a runaway greenhouse gas effect. That is, its thick atmosphere is full of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that keeps the planet's surface temperatures at about 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius).

Venus' gravity is almost 91 percent of Earth's, so you could jump a little higher and objects would feel a bit lighter on Venus, compared with Earth. "You probably wouldn't notice the difference in gravity so much, but what you would notice is the dense atmosphere," Svedhem said. "The air is so thick that if try to move your arm quickly, you would feel resistance. It would almost be like being in water."

Likewise, it'd be hard to miss the change in atmospheric pressure. At sea level on Earth, the air presses down on our bodies at 14.5 pounds per square inch, or 1 bar; the surface pressure on Venus is 92 bar. To experience that pressure on Earth, you'd have to travel more than 3,000 feet (914 m) down into the ocean. [Photos of Venus: The Planet Next Door]

Venus takes 225 Earth days to revolve around the sun and 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis. "But the time from one midday to the next is 117 Earth days, because Venus rotates backwards," Svedhem said. This retrograde rotation also means that the sun would rise in the west and set in the east.

Though we see a blue sky on Earth, the sky on Venus would always appear reddish orange because of the way the carbon dioxide molecules scatter the sun's light. You wouldn't see the sun as a distinct point in this sky, but rather a hazy, yellowish tint behind the dense clouds, Svedhem said, adding that the nighttime sky would be a starless black.

High in Venus's atmosphere, winds travel up to 249 mph (400 km/h) — faster than tornado and hurricane winds on Earth. But on the planet's surface, the wind only travels at about 2 mph (3 km/h). And though the planet does have lightning, the blinding flashes never reach the surface. Additionally, the blistering heat prevents any rainstorms from touching ground on Venus.

The active volcanoes on Venus, however, may pose a danger, Svedhem said.

And unlike Earth, Venus likely doesn't have earthquakes because it lacks tectonic plate activity that releases heat from its interior. Instead, what may happen is that the heat builds to a critical point over millions of years, and then suddenly gets released from some kind of mechanism, such as large-scale volcanic activity that remolds the surface of the planet.

But if you wanted to complain to your friends back home about how lava destroyed your backyard, don't expect an immediate response — your message would take a few minutes to reach Earth when the two planets are at their shortest distance apart. And when Venus is on the other side of the sun from Earth, it could take almost 15 minutes for your message to get home.

Editor's note: This is Part 2 in Space.com's 12-part series "Living on Other Planets: What It Would Be Like" to see what an astronaut would see on other planets and moons of our solar system and beyond. Check back every Tuesday to see how humans would live on other cosmic bodies in the universe.

Follow Joseph Castro on Twitter. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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05-02-2015 om 22:27 geschreven door peter  

Life Might Thrive 12 Miles Beneath Earth's Surface

A beach outcrop at Davis Head on Lopez Island in Washington State, where researchers at Yale discovered veins of aragonite containing oddly light carbon isotopes suggestive of life's imprint.
CREDIT: Stoddard et al.

Life teems all over our planet's exterior and even down into the lightless oceanic depths. But just how far underground might life be able to hack it?

New research offers evidence of bacteria living as deep as 12 miles (19 kilometers) underground — quite possibly the deepest life has ever been glimpsed. Learning biology's terrestrial limits, though important in its own right, is critical to understanding life's rise on other planets with far less forgiving climates and surface conditionsthan the Earth's.

"Most studies report microbial life in the crust to no deeper than a few kilometers — just a mile or so," said Philippa Stoddard, an undergraduate in Yale University's geology and geophysics department. "Assuming our data are correct, this greatly expands our understanding of the extent of the Earth's biosphere." [Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]  

 Stoddard presented the research at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia in October.

Acting on clues from nearly two-decades-old field work, Stoddard and her Yale colleagues examined rocks on Lopez Island in northwestern Washington. An outcrop there containing veins of the mineral aragonite, dredged up to the surface scores of millions of years ago by geological processes, was found to contain weirdly high levels of a lightweight version of the element carbon. This carbon signature is usually produced by microbes that excrete the carbon-containing compound methane.

The likeliest explanation is that lifeforms, once buried deep in the Earth's crust, altered the ancient aragonite's carbon signature. These microbes were so far underground they would have had to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures — a dramatic demonstration of life's robustness that bodes well for an ability to take hold in unearthly environments.

"I think that results like ours are very encouraging for the possibility of life on other planets," said Stoddard. "The more we learn about extreme environments on our own planet, the more we realize how resilient life is."

Almost forgotten

The startling discovery initially cropped up in the 1990s. Fieldwork by J.G. Feehan for his 1997 doctoral dissertation with Yale professor Mark T. Brandon, who now is Stoddard's academic advisor, had identified the aragonite's very light carbon signatures.

Feehan suggested at the time that the signatures were the fingerprint of super-deep life. His focus, however, was on the geophysics of the rocks hosting the aragonite veins. So the subterranean life hypothesis sat, un-pursued, ever since.

Stoddard and Brandon, along with Yale professor Danny Rye, decided to pick up the thread. They recently returned to the scene in Washington State.

"Professor Brandon and I went back to the outcrop on Lopez Island where Feehan had done his isotopic measurements to see if we could corroborate his data and explore the suggestion of deep life more thoroughly," explained Stoddard. [The 7 Harshest Environments on Earth]

A vein of aragonite in the surrounding rock.

Credit : Stoddard et al

Telltale abundances

Specifically, as Feehan had done, Stoddard looked at the ratios of two carbon isotopes, or versions of an element containing different numbers of neutrons. The isotopes in question are carbon-12 and carbon-13, or C-12 and C-13. The former makes up the vast majority of carbon on the Earth. It has six protons and six neutrons in its atomic nucleus. C-13 has an extra, seventh neutron. 

Life alters the typical ratio of C-12 to C-13 because most biochemical processes—eating, growth, and so on — divide isotopes into lighter and heavier camps. The way this works is actually pretty simple. Lower-numbered isotopes, possessing less mass, are lighter than higher-numbered isotopes. Lighter objects, like an empty cardboard box, are of course easier to move than a loaded safe of the same size. Similarly, lighter isotopes have an easier time getting about in the push-and-pull of biological matter at Lilliputian scales, driven by energy and molecular interactions.

"Because carbon-12 is the lighter isotope, it is more thermodynamically mobile than carbon-13," said Stoddard. "It can actually move faster."

Methane, a common waste product of microbes, contains a single carbon atom plus four hydrogen atoms. When microbes consume carbon-rich molecules and excrete methane, the waste methane containing the lighter, faster isotope C-12 returns to the environment more readily than C-13-laden methane. The typical ratio of one carbon isotope to the other ends up skewed as a result in rocks, for example, as in the case of the Lopez Island aragonite.

"The methane produced by microbes has much less of the heavy isotope than the standard ratio," said Stoddard.

Some non-biological processes can segregate carbon isotopes as well, but they tend not to do as efficiently, noted Stoddard.

Mars Could Have Supported Life, NASA Finds | Video

The land down under

The San Juan Islands — including Lopez Island, site of the intriguing aragonite—only became islands as such about 100 million years ago, back in the dinosaurs' heyday. Before then, these sea-bottom rocks, located near what is now Vancouver Island, had subductedunder a neighboring chunk of rock, a geological process that often happens where tectonic plates meet at ocean and continental boundaries. 

Buried in the bowels of the Earth, pressures and heat metamorphosed the dark basalt rock, creating thin, whitish veins of aragonite. Over time, microbes on the scene then slowly altered the carbon signatures in this aragonite through the methodical excretion of methane gas in this pitch-black, hot, squeezed environment.

Subsurface water trapped with the microbes could have further enabled their subsistence in such a place. The temperatures would likely have exceed 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) — the known cutoff for even the hardiest of life to still function (in hot springs).

How would these microbes have survived? Counterintuitively, the exceedingly high pressure in a miles-deep habitat — in the neighborhood of 5,000 times the pressure exerted by Earth's atmosphere at sea level — could have helped. High pressures actually can stabilize biomolecules, such as DNA, offsetting the heat's destructive effects.  

Similar scenarios could still persist today around the globe, meaning Earth's biosphere might extend many milesbelow the planet's surface.

"We've seen over the past couple decades of exploration that life can survive in an incredible diversity of ecosystems, even in deep-sea vents and glacial ice," said Stoddard. "If the deep earth was survivable for specialized microbes 100 million years ago, those same strategies could still work today." [Gallery: Creatures of Deep-Sea Vents]

The Utopia Planitia region on Mars as seen by the Viking 2 lander. Although life on Mars' surface today is very unlikely, it could persist miles below the Red Planet's surface.
Credit: The Viking Project, M. Dale-Bannister WU StL, NASA

Subsurface refuges

A similar approach could allow extraterrestrial life to get by under the desolate surfaces of worlds such as Mars.

Despite some of the obvious drawbacks of living deeply, microbes that have evolved to persist in such conditions would have advantages over life attempting to take hold aboveground in hostile environments.

Take Mars again as an example. Its surface gets bombarded with hundreds of times more cosmic radiationthan Earth's surface. Mars lacks a shielding magnetic field, so life developing on its surface would have substantially greater exposure to damaging radiation. Deep under the surface, that risk diminishes, along with other risks posed by, say, scalding or freezing temperatures. 

"Underground environments would potentially be favorable locations for extraterrestrial life because they are more shielded from harmful surface conditions like cosmic radiation and insulated from extreme surface temperatures," said Stoddard. "It's definitely something we should keep in mind as we explore other planets."

Stoddard and colleagues intend to further study the long-buried Lopez Island rocks to glean more information about how, and if, life had indeed called them home.

"Although our isotope data is highly suggestive of deep life, there are still lots of things we don't know about this environment that could impact our conclusions," said Stoddard. "We're hoping to be able to construct a pretty detailed portrait of this deep ecosystem in the next couple of months."

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.

{ http://m.space.com/ }

05-02-2015 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

Speck of Interstellar Dust Obscures Glimpse of Big Bang

Scientists will have to wait a while longer to find out what kicked off the Big Bang.

Last spring, a team of astronomers who go by the name of Bicep announced that they had detected ripples in space-time, or gravitational waves, reverberating from the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time — long-sought evidence that the expansion of the universe had started out with a giant whoosh called inflation.

The discovery was heralded as potentially the greatest of the new century, but after months of spirited debate, the group conceded that the result could have been caused by interstellar dust, a notion buttressed by subsequent measurements by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite that the part of the sky Bicep examined was in fact dusty.

Now a new analysis, undertaken jointly by the Bicep group and the Planck group, has confirmed that the Bicep signal was mostly, if not all, stardust, and that there is no convincing evidence of the gravitational waves. No evidence of inflation.

Scientists are seeking clues from the Bicep2 telescope, foreground, which is based in Antarctica.

Steffen Richter / VagabondPix.com, via Associated Press

“This analysis shows that the amount of gravitational waves can probably be no more than about half the observed signal,” Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota said Friday in an interview.

“We can’t say with any certainty whether any gravity wave signals remain,” Dr. Pryke added. “Obviously, we’re not exactly thrilled, but we are scientists and our job is to try and uncover the truth. In the scientific process, the truth will emerge.”

When the galactic dust is correctly subtracted, the scientists said, there was indeed a small excess signal — a glimmer of hope for inflation fans? — but it was too small to tell if it was because of gravitational waves or just experimental noise.

The Bicep/Planck analysis was led by Dr. Pryke, one of the four Bicep principal investigators. Brendan Crill, of the California Institute of Technology and a member of Planck, acted as a liaison between the groups. They had planned to post their paper Monday, but the data was posted early, apparently by accident. It was soon taken down, but not before it set off an outburst of Twitter messages and hasty news releases.

A paper is to be posted to the Bicep website and has been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters.

But it will be far from the final word. A flotilla of experiments devoted to the cause are underway, studying a thin haze of microwaves, known as cosmic background radiation, left from the Big Bang, when the cosmos was about 380,000 years old. Among them is a sister experiment to Bicep called Spider, led by Bill Jones of Princeton and involving a balloon-borne telescope that just completed a trip around Antarctica, as well as Bicep’s own Keck Array and the recently installed Bicep3.

At stake is an idea that has galvanized cosmologists since Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented it in 1979. Inflation theory holds that the universe had a violent and brief surge of expansion in the earliest moments, driven by a mysterious force field that exerted negative gravity. It would explain such things as why the universe looks so uniform and where galaxies come from — quantum dents in the inflating cosmos.

Such an explosion would have left faint corkscrew swirls, known technically as B-modes, in the pattern of polarization of the microwaves. So, however, does interstellar dust.

The Bicep group — its name is an acronym for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization — is led by John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Jamie Bock of Caltech; Dr. Pryke; and Chao-Lin Kuo of Stanford. They have deployed a series of radio telescopes at the South Pole in search of the swirl pattern.

Their second scope, Bicep2, detected a signal whose strength was in the sweet spot for some of the most popular models of inflation, leading to a sensational news conference attended by Dr. Guth and Andrei Linde, two of the founding fathers of inflation.

But that was before critics raised the dust question. Moreover, that result was contrary to a previous limit on the strength of gravitational waves obtained by the Planck satellite, which has scanned the entire microwave sky in search of the Big Bang’s secrets.

Planck observed the microwaves in nine frequencies, making it easy to distinguish dust. Bicep2 had only one frequency and lacked access to Planck’s data until last fall, when the two groups agreed to work together.

Dr. Bock of Caltech, in an interview at the end of what he called a long, stressful day, characterized the result as “no detectable signal.”

“I’m not discouraged,” he went on. “We’re going to have to have better data to get a definitive answer.”

In an email, Paul J. Steinhardt, a Princeton cosmologist who was a founder of inflation but turned against it in favor of his own theory of a cyclic bouncing universe, said the new results left cosmologists back where they were before Bicep.

But Dr. Linde noted that there was evidence in the new analysis for a gravitational wave signal, albeit at a level significantly lower than Bicep had reported. “This is what all of us realized almost a year ago, and it did not change,” he said in an email.

The earlier Planck result limiting gravitational waves, he said, had inspired a firestorm of theorizing, in which he and others produced a whole new class of theories relating not just to inflation, but to dark energy as well.

“So yes, we are very excited, and no, the theory did not become more contrived,” he said.

Max Tegmark, an M.I.T. expert on the cosmic microwaves, said, “It’s important to remember that inflation is still alive and well, and that many of the simplest models predict signals just below this new limit.” The next few years will be interesting, he said.

Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said he could appreciate the frustration of his colleagues, who have been wandering in the wilderness for nearly four decades looking for clues to the Beginning.

“Inflation is the most important idea in cosmology since the hot Big Bang,” he said. “It is our Helen of Troy, launching a thousand experiments.”

05-02-2015 om 20:36 geschreven door peter