UFO mania: NASA Secrets Revealed - Alien Ruins on the Moon

“I have nothing to lose. I have quarreled with NASA and I got fired,” Ken Johnston said.

26-02-2015 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

‘Onmogelijk groot’ zwart gat ontdekt in ons piepjong heelal - Nieuwsblad.be

archiefbeeld zwart gat

Foto: shutterstock

Astronomen hebben in de ruimte een ‘onmogelijk groot zwart gat’ ontdekt. Het is het grootste zwarte gat dat ooit in ons heelal werd aangetroffen.

Het zwarte gat is zo groot, dat de massa ervan even groot is als die van twaalf miljard zonnen samen. Ter vergelijking: onze eigen Melkweg heeft een zwart gat met een massa van ‘slechts’ vier miljoen zonmassa’s.

Zo’n groot zwart gat relatief kort na de oerknal kan volgens de theorieën die nu heersen over het ontstaan van het universum, niet verklaard worden. ‘Hoe kan zo’n massief zwart gat zich zo vroeg in de geschiedenis van het universum gevormd hebben, in ons piepjong heelal?’, vragen de onderzoekers zich af. Een internationaal onderzoeksteam, onder leiding van de Universiteit van Peking en de Universiteit van Arizona, probeert nu meer te weten te komen over het grote zwarte gat.

Evenveel licht als 420 biljoen zonnen

Het zwarte gat bevindt zich in het centrum van een quasar, een extreem heldere wolk materiaal die in een zwart gat aan het verdwijnen is. Door de warmte die vrijkomt van het materiaal dat zich naar het zwarte gaat beweegt, komt er een enorme hoeveelheid licht vrij. Met optische telescopen lijkt zo’n quasar op een ster, maar het bevindt zich eigenlijk op nog een veel grotere afstand van miljarden lichtjaren. Door die grote afstand en de eindige snelheid van het licht, zien wij zo’n quasars zoals ze er miljarden jaren geleden, toen het heelal nog jonger was, uitzagen.

‘Deze quasar is uniek’, zegt Xiaohui Fan van het onderzoeksteam. ‘Je kan het beschouwen als de helderste vuurtoren in het verre heelal. Het licht dat de quasar geeft, zal ons meer leren over het vroegere universum.’ De quasar geeft evenveel licht als 420 biljoen zonnen samen.

26-02-2015 om 15:26 geschreven door peter  

By Professor Pan | charm.net/~profpan

Jacques Vallee with Anton LaVey and Aime Michel.

From an interview with Jacques Vallee by Jerome Clark (FATE magazine, 1978):

Vallee: I think that's exactly what we have to do with UFOs. We have to do something that will cause them to react. And I don't mean building landing strips in the desert and waiting out there to welcome the space brothers.
Clark: But what do you mean?
Vallee: I hesitate to be too specific. I'm speaking, as I'm sure you understand, of the attempted manipulation of UFO manifestations.

I know a little something about that subject. And I'm about to go out on a very long, creaky limb by telling this little story. In the past decade or so, the bizarre nexus of UFOs and the paranorma has emerged from the dustbin of Ufology, thanks to pioneers like Vallee, John Keel, and a rapidly growing group of researchers (see references at the end of this article). In some ways, the UFO/Occult nexus has become a cottage industry, and has occasionally broken through into the mainstream. But when my particular incident occurred, Ufology was primarily entrenched in the "nuts-and-bolts spaceships" extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) camp.
But on with my particular piece of this puzzle.

In early September of 1990, I spend a few days at Ocean City, Maryland, a resort town on the Atlantic. I went to the beach with a few friends, and we passed the time making sand sculptures. Since I was reading a lot about UFOs at the time (it was the 90s, after all), I sculpted the head of a prototypical "gray" alien in the sand, with his arm raised above his head as if waving hello.

A couple of weeks later, I returned to Ocean City for the weekend. One evening, I had a very vivid dream about a television panel discussing UFOs. One expert was a Phil Klass styled skeptic/debunker, another was a Jacques Vallee-type, the third was a Stanton Friedman nuts-and-bolts ETH proponent, and the final panel member was a raving paranoid "the lizards in their underground bases are eating our children!" conspiratologist. The panelists bantered back and forth until the paranoid guy started ranting: "They're cooperating with the government! They're stealing our children and the government knows it! The Men in Black are demons!" The other panelists chuckled and rolled their eyes.

I awoke from the dream, disturbed. I seldom had dreams related to UFOs, and this one was particularly realistic. I found that my thoughts kept returning to the dream throughout the day.
That evening, at approximately 7:30pm, I decided to take a walk on the beach with my girlfriend. It was a very clear, starry night, and we were the only two on the beach. My girlfriend walked along the surf, while I lingered away from the water. I looked down in the sand and saw what looked like a humanoid face sculpted in the sand, though part of it had been obliterated by footprints.

I remembered the alien head I had sculputed in the sand weeks before, miles from the spot on which I was standing. Just another synchronicity, I thought to myself.

I looked up into the starry night, thinking about my dream and the face in the sand. I said, mentally, If you're out there, now is the perfect time to show yourself. I guess part of me secretly wished something would appear, but I certainly did not expect anything to happen.
I walked closer to the water and joined my girlfriend.
A few minutes later, she pointed to the sky. "What are those?" she asked.

Two orange-red blobs of light were bobbing up and down next to each other far above us. When I looked at them, they shot off across the sky (over the ocean), flying erratically -- almost playfully, changing direction frequently. At one point, they merged, flying as one unit, then split apart again. We watched them, stunned, until they vanished on the horizon amidst the light pollution from Ocean City's boardwalk.

"Oh, my God," I said, over and over, as we followed them. I couldn't say anything else but "Oh, my God." I was simultaneously awed and frightened. When the lights disappeared, we both returned to the car and drove home, elated but also unnerved by what we had seen. I can only think of a couple of theories to explain what happened.

One is that I was part of a lucky train of coincidences, a chain of synchronicity -- sculpting a face of an alien in the sand, dreaming about the UFO panel, stumbling upon a similar face in the sand weeks later, asking for an appearance, and getting much more than I could have imagined.

The other possibility is much more intriguing, but raises all sorts of troubling questions. It suggests that UFOs are a multidimensional phenomena (bending time and space), that they interact with human consciousness on an intimate level, and that they can potentially be summoned. Far more frightening is the possibility that whatever it is, it observed, drew upon, or manipulated my consciousness, my dreams, and my perceptions leading up to the sighting.

If it wasn't for my girlfriend sighting the objects first, I would concede the possibility that it was a hallucination. She knew nothing of my silent request to show me something, and pointed out the objects before I saw them.

One of the foremost researchers into the fringes of Ufology is my friend who goes by the name of Blue Resonant Human, or Brother Blue. Although he dropped out of sight in the late 90s, his prodigious postings to USENET made him a Net celebrity, and his unconventional (and funny) writings made him the object of scorn of hardnosed skeptic and harebrained new ager alike. One of his missives is archived here. I will pull out some pertinent bits, but I strongly recommend reading the entire article.

Here he quotes Jacques Vallee:

There are certainly occult groups that claim they can invoke or evoke beings that do some of the things that UFO entities do. I've looked. I've contacted a number of those groups...

Robert Anton Wilson describes meeting Vallee in his excellent Cosmic Trigger:

"Where do you think they come from?" I asked.

Doctor Vallee gave the Gallic form of the classic scientific Not-Speculating-Beyond-The-Data head-shake. "I can theorize, and theorize, endlessly," he said, "but is it not better to just study the data more deeply and look for clues?"

"You must have some personal hunch," I insisted.

He gave in gracefully. "They relate to space-time in ways for which we have, at present, no concepts," he said. "They cannot explain to us because we are not ready to understand."

I asked Grady McMurty if Aleister Crowley had ever said anything to him implying the extraterrestrial theory which Kenneth Grant, Outer Head of another Ordo Templi Orientis, implies in his accounts of Crowley's contacts with Higher Intelligences.

"Some of the things Aleister said to me," Grady replied carefully, "could be interpreted as hints pointing that way." He went on to quote Crowley's aphorisms about various of the standard entities contacted by Magick. The Abramelin spirits, for instance, need to be watched carefully. "They bite," Aleister explained in his best deadpan am-I-kidding-or-not? style. The Enochian "angels," on the other hand, don't always have to be summoned. "When you're ready, they come for you," Aleister said flatly.

Crowley and LAM

Crowley also figures in one of the seminal (ahem) incidents in this murky, bizarre field. The most discussed episode is Crowley's alleged contact with an entity known as LAM (illustration above) as part of his "Amalantrah Working" -- an occult process designed to facilitate "the establishment of contact with non-human intelligences."

Instead of rehashing this story here, I will point the reader to this article. Googling Crowely and LAM will yield many variations of what is essentially the same account.

The concept of UFOs as egregores is also worthy of exploration. The following defintion is excerpted from Gaetan Delaforgem's article in Gnosis:

An egregore is a kind of group mind which is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose. Whenever people gather together to do something and egregore is formed, but unless an attempt is made to maintain it deliberately it will dissipate rather quickly. However if the people wish to maintain it and know the techniques of how to do so, the egregore will continue to grow in strength and can last for centuries.

An egregore has the characteristic of having an effectiveness greater than the mere sum of its individual members. It continuously interacts with its members, influencing them and being influenced by them. The interaction works positively by stimulating and assisting its members but only as long as they behave and act in line with its original aim. It will stimulate both individually and collectively all those faculties in the group which will permit the realization of the objectives of its original program. If this process is continued a long time the egregore will take on a kind of life of its own, and can become so strong that even if all its members should die, it would continue to exist on the inner dimensions and can be contacted even centuries later by a group of people prepared to live the lives of the original founders, particularly if they are willing to provide the initial input of energy to get it going again.

I offer this information as food for thought, not because I can assert that it is truth, or even partially true. But I cannot deny my own experience, which has convinced me that, at least in part, the UFO phenomenon interacts with humans on a psychic (i.e. non-physical) level -- the level of dreams, synchronicity, and consciousness.

Some references for those interested in pursuing this line of thought are listed below. Caveat emptor.

Jacques Vallee

Strange Encounters: An Interview with Jacques Vallee (from Green Egg)

Brother Blue (aka Blue Resonant Human)

John Dee, George Adamski, and the Magickal Space Brethren

Aleister Crowley and LAM

Aleister Crowley and the LAM Statement

A Statement of the Typhonian O.T.O

Ritual Magic, Mind Control and the UFO Phenomenon (Adam Gorightly)

Brother Aleister Crowley (Brother Blue)

Jack Parsons and the Babalon Working

John Whiteside Parsons: Anti-Christ Superstar (several excellent articles on this site)

The Book of Babalon

Paranormal/Occult/UFO Nexus

Wikipedia on paranormal and occult hypotheses about UFOs

A Critique of the Paranormal UFO Theories of Vallee and Keel

The Philip Experiment

Tulpa

Selected blogs and sites (in no particular order):

Rigorous Intuition (Jeff Wells)

The John E. Mack Institute

Pop Occulture

Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country

Magonia

And this only scratches the surface...

Article from: http://www.charm.net/%7Eprofpan/2005/10/attempted
-manipulation-of-ufo.html

Related: Jacques Vallee Discusses UFO Control System

Aleister Crowley's Lam & the Little Grey Men

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

Ordo Templi Orientis, The Book of the Law, Crowley, Pike & The Bloody Sacrifice (WWI - III)

666: What's in a Number?

Jack Parsons, an Occult Rocket Scientist

{ www.redicecreations.org }

26-02-2015 om 15:22 geschreven door peter  

Chris Hadfield: "Mars heeft grijze wortels onder zijn rosse kop" - HLN.be

Bron: twitter 

© NASA.

Marsjeep Curiosity heeft nieuwe boringen uitgevoerd op de rode planeet. Rood, zo heet Mars inderdaad te zijn. Maar wat blijkt? Dat onder die rode stoflaag de rotsachtige bodem eerder de grijze kleur heeft. Dat ontging uiteraard ook Chris Hadfield niet, de voormalige bevelhebber van het Internationaal Ruimtestation ISS.

26-02-2015 om 15:08 geschreven door peter  

Wetenschap staat voor raadsel: mysterieus licht op dwergplaneet Ceres - HLN.be

Bron: NASA, Mashable 

© nasa.

Sterrenkunde Twee mysterieuze lichtjes, of lichtgevende vlekken, op de dwergplaneet Ceres zijn bron van enige opwinding bij wetenschappers van de NASA. Nu de ruimtesonde Dawn stilaan Ceres nadert, krijgen wetenschappers beelden doorgestuurd waarvoor ze nog geen eenduidige verklaring hebben.

Plots bleek het te gaan over twee lichtjes: "Dit is echt onverwacht en nog altijd een mysterie voor ons"

Een dwergplaneet die eerst één grote lichtvlek, als een grote spot die de ruimte in schijnt, lijkt te hebben. Fascinerend toch? Nog spannender wordt het als die planeet vervolgens nog een tweede, iets zwakker lichtje herbergt, in de buurt van de grotere lichtvlek. Dat is vandaag de situatie met Ceres, een dwergplaneet die op gemiddeld zo'n 428 miljoen kilometer van de aarde rond de zon draait.

Nu de NASA-ruimtesonde Dawn Ceres langzaam maar zeker begint te naderen - op 6 maart moet de sonde eindelijk vlakbij zijn - krijgen de wetenschappers van het Amerikaanse ruimteagentschap die opmerkelijke beelden doorgestuurd. En een verklaring hebben ze er nog altijd niet voor.

Het eerste mysterieuze lichtje werd al eerder opgemerkt. Maar vorige week nam Dawn een nieuwe foto van dezelfde zijde van Ceres, van op een afstand van ongeveer 46.000 kilometer. Plots bleek het te gaan over twee lichtjes. "Dit is echt onverwacht en nog altijd een mysterie voor ons", vertelt Andreas Nathues van het Max Planck-instituut in het Duitse Göttingen, die zich over de camera van Dawn ontfermt. "De felste vlek van beide blijkt te klein om haar met de camera te verklaren. Maar ondanks haar omvang is ze feller dan eender wat op Ceres."

Lees ook

• Sonde Dawn vliegt naar dwergplaneet Ceres
• Sonde Dawn neemt afscheid van asteroïde Vesta
• Berg van twintig kilometer hoog ontdekt op asteroïde

Vulkanen?

Artistieke impressie van de Dawn-ruimtesonde. © nasa.

Hoe verleidelijk het beeld van groene mannetjes met zaklampen ook is, wetenschappers denken eerder in de richting van bepaalde geologische structuren. Mogelijk gaat het om ijs. Niet zo ondenkbeeldig, aangezien wetenschappers al eerder waterdamp opmerkten in de buurt van het oppervlak van Ceres en ze ervan uitgaan dat het oppervlak van Ceres uit een mengsel van ijs en gesteente bestaat. Ook een grote zoutvlakte, die licht weerkaatst, is een optie. Chris Russell, hoofdonderzoeker van de Dawn-missie suggereert echter een "vulkanische oorsprong", aangezien de twee vlekken in hetzelfde dal liggen. Toch zou lava een pak meer licht moeten geven, dus wordt gedacht in de richting van ijsvulkanen.

Om het eensluidend antwoord te krijgen, zit er niks anders op dan geduld te oefenen. Volgende week belandt Dawn in de ideale positie om de komende 16 maanden gedetailleerde beelden van Ceres door te sturen. De ruimtesonde is intussen al een kleine 8 acht jaar onderweg. In 2011 en 2012 bezocht de sonde al de planetoïde Vesta. Het eigenlijke doel van het bezoek aan beide protoplaneten is om meer te weten te komen over het ontstaan van het zonnestelsel.

{ http://www.hln.be/ }

26-02-2015 om 15:02 geschreven door peter  

Strange lights on dwarf planet Ceres have scientists perplexed

  by Chris Taylor

Two strange reflective patches spotted on Ceres.

A dwarf planet is shining two bright lights at a NASA spacecraft right now, and our smartest scientists are unsure what they are.

As bizarre as that sentence sounds, that's the situation with Ceres — the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, officially designated as a dwarf planet (the same category as Pluto).

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres ahead of a March 6 rendezvous. The picture above was taken February 19, from a distance of just under 29,000 miles, and shows two very shiny areas on the same basin on Ceres' surface.

See also: NASA's Dawn spacecraft starts its approach toward dwarf planet Ceres

Previous Dawn images from further away showed a single light on Ceres, which was just as mysterious. Then, to the amazement of every astronomy geek, the one light turned out to be two — reflecting roughly 40% of the light hitting them.

  

Image: NASA/Associated Press

"This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, in a NASA statement. "The brightest spot [of the two] continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres."

So what could the bright spots be, other than alien castaways signaling at us with flashlights?

The most obvious contender is ice, although ice would reflect more than 40% of all light hitting it. The difference may be accounted for by the resolution limit of Dawn's camera at this distance. Scientists have previously detected water vapor coming from the surface of the dwarf planet, making ice — a more likely option.

Scientists have also suggested the bright areas could be patches of salt. On the other hand, the location of the two bright spots so close together may be an indication that they have a geologic origin, such as some sort of volcanic process, possibly even ice volcanoes.

According to Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, the positioning of the bright spots within the same area may indicate "a volcano-like origin of the spots," but scientists will have to wait for higher resolution images before making such interpretations. Scientists don't think the spots comprise lava similar to that seen on Earth, since that would shine more brightly.

We'll find out more as Dawn approaches Ceres next week and more imagery comes in during the next 16 months, according to NASA. In the meantime, here's more on Dawn and its eight-year mission:

http://mashable.com/2014/12/30/dawn-ceres/

26-02-2015 om 14:48 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers find massive BLACK HOLE the size of 12 billion suns that CONTRADICTS SCIENCE

February 25, 2015 - Some 12.8 billion light years away, astronomers have spotted an object of almost impossible brightness — the most luminous object ever seen in such ancient space. It's from just 900 million years after the big bang, and the old quasar — a shining object produced by a massive black hole — is 420 trillion times more luminous than our sun.

That brightness and size is surprising in a black hole from so close to the dawn of time. In a new study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers describe a cosmic light that defies convention. It was even detectable with a relatively small telescope, though researchers in China did have to ask for help from astronomers in Chile and the United States  to get a higher-resolution look.
"How could we have this massive black hole when the universe was so young? We don't currently have a satisfactory theory to explain it," said lead author Xue-Bing Wu of Peking University and the Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

For the black hole to grow to such a staggering size in less than a billion years, the astronomers posit, it must have been pulling in interstellar mass from its surroundings at the maximum rate the whole time. Even so, the radiation of the quasar formed by the black hole should have started to limit that mass accumulation before such a size was reached.

So there are puzzles left to be solved. But for now, Wu said, his team is using the brilliant quasar as a beacon to find other space objects.

Just like a lighthouse sitting in a dark, distant universe," he said, "it gives us a chance to see things in between our own planet and the black hole by illuminating them. It provides a unique chance to understand things between the distant galaxy and ours."

Wu and his team have many follow-up observations planned for the coming year, including projects using space telescopes like the Hubble to get an even better look at things in and near this impressive quasar's galaxy.

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

26-02-2015 om 14:40 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Extraterrestrial Anomaly In The Western Skies (Video)

(Before It's News)

News lines and websites lite up as an unidentified flying objects was seen in the skies of Utah, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, California and Canada on February 24 2015.

Patrick Wiggins, NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador to Utah, said that the object was a rocket body used in the launch of Yaogan Weixing-26, a Chinese satellite, which was launched in December 2014,

It’s hard to believe the strange anomaly is the rocket body or a part of it. If you compare the Chinese rocket body entering the atmosphere with this anomaly we see two completely different objects in the sky.

See HERE the videos of the rocket body entering the atmosphere.

Could this be extraterrestrial in nature or possibly a dimensional anomaly such as a wormhole? Or is there a logical explanation? One thing is for sure, it’s not a meteor..

KSL-TV photographer Mark Wetzel captured amazing footage of the anomaly as it passed over northern Utah.

  

Thanks http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

26-02-2015 om 14:32 geschreven door peter  

26-02-2015 om 14:27 geschreven door peter  

Skyline cam catches UFO over Donetsk, Ukraine 24-Feb-2015

An unidentified light hovered over Donetsk’s skyline on Tuesday evening. Earlier in the day, anti-Kiev forces withdrew heavy artillery 50 kilometres (31 miles) away from the line of engagement in the Donetsk region, line with the latest Minsk peace agreement.

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

26-02-2015 om 14:20 geschreven door peter  

Witness describes hovering cigar UFO over Olympia

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

The witness first saw the UFO as he was driving near the post office along Jefferson Street, Olympia, WA, about 11 a.m. on February 23, 2015. (Credit: Google)

A Washington witness at Olympia reported watching a white, hovering, cigar-shaped craft that made sharp turns and fired bright light flashes beginning about 11 a.m. on February 23, 2015, according to testimony in Case 63541 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witness spotted the hovering object with no wings, tail or rotors that made no sound and had no condensation trail behind it.

“The movement of the cigar-shaped, white object was so slow that it appeared to be simply floating along at perhaps about 30-40 mph,” the witness stated. “There’s a possibility it may have been a drone – I’ve not seen all the types of drones the military has these days, and there is a base nearby, so who knows? It could have been ours, but maybe it wasn’t.”

The witness had just pulled out of a post office parking lot on Jefferson Street and turned right heading north.

As the object moved away, it appeared to release bright flashes of light. Pictured: Olympia, WA, as seen from the International Space Station. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“After one block Jefferson Street makes a curve to the northwest and as I was looking ahead during the curve – first gorgeous blue sky day we’ve had in a while – a white cylindrical shape in the distant sky caught my attention.”

The witness aid the object did not “look like a normal airplane.”

“It was long, cylindrical, no wings, tail or rotors, no windows as far as I could tell. It was hard to tell how far away it was – I would guess perhaps anywhere from 1.5 to 2 miles away. Elevation (guessing again) may have been ono-half to one mile high. It’s really hard to tell as there was nothing to triangulate it with.”

The witness is a pilot, but has not flown in years. He pulled over to the side of the road for a better look. The witness was able to see the object for about three to five minutes.

“From my viewpoint it was to my west-northwest, and was headed south, maybe a tweak to the southwest, moving very slowly, silently, for about one minute of my watch time, when suddenly it veered sharply to its right – due west – so now all I could see was the dot of its circumference.”

The witness then noticed flashes of light coming from the object.

“The whiteness of the object was getting dimmer as it moved further west, and suddenly I noticed a bright pomegranate-colored flash below it to the south, and then another less brilliant flash a little further away, and then a third even dimmer and further still away. They were like light flashes, nothing exploding, not flares, and were all in a single southern and lower trajectory from the craft.”

The witness continued to watch the object as he drove along Washington Street where it makes a loop in a northwest direction. (Credit: Google)

Then the craft moved again.

“A few seconds later the craft made an abrupt turn and was longwise to my view again, pointing south. It seemed to just hover there for maybe 10 seconds, and did not proceed further south. Then it abruptly turned west again and within a few seconds there was another brilliant flash off the side of the craft – a brilliant whitish-green, electric colored flash – white on the far side, greener closer to the craft. That flash was fan-shaped, different that the burst of round light previously seen. The fanned-out part of the white-green flash was away from the craft, while the narrow part of the fan-shape was right near the craft.”

The longer the witness watched at this point, the object moved further away until it was out of sight.

Olympia is the capital of the State of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County, population 46,478.

Washington is currently a UFO Alert Level 5 – with 0.87 sightings per million population based on MUFON January 2015 statistics. Washington received a total of six UFO reports in January.
The UFO Alert Rating System is based on five levels – 1 through 5 – where states with 4.01 or higher reports per million residents are rated an Alert 1; 3.01 – 4.0 reports are an Alert 2; 2.51 – 3.0 are an Alert 3; 2.01 – 2.5 are an Alert 4; and those states with 2.0 or lower are rated an Alert 5.

Please remember that most UFO sighting 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 Witness describes hovering cigar UFO over Olympia appeared first on Openminds.tv.

Source: http://www.openminds.tv/witness-describes-hovering-cigar-ufo-olympia/32315

26-02-2015 om 01:07 geschreven door peter  

Family Alien Abduction In Massachusetts         

(Before It's News)

 

FAMILY ALIEN ABDUCTION IN MASSACHUSETTS
 1966  …….   SHEFFIELD MASSACHUSETTS

 It’s 1966, and 6-year-old Thomas Reed is in his bedroom on his family’s horse farm in the Berkshires when the encounters begin.  Strange lights. Strange figures in the hallway. Suddenly, he’s in the woods near his home looking at a UFO. Then he and his younger brother, Matthew, are inside the craft. He’s shown a projection of a willow tree.  The following year, there is another incident at their home on Boardman Street in Sheffield. More strange lights. The sound of doors slamming. Then the boys are back inside the vessel. The next thing Thomas knows, he’s in his driveway being scooped up by his mother, who has been searching frantically for the boys on horseback.  Two years later, the family is driving on Route 7 when they see strange lights in the sky. Their car stalls, and then Thomas and his brother and mother and grandmother find themselves in a giant room. He is brought to meet two strange, ant-like figures, then placed in some sort of cage. Next thing, he’s back near the car.  Reed has told these stories many times, and it has not always gone well. But recently, his tale had found recognition in an unlikely place. The Great Barrington Historical Society & Museum has formally inducted the UFO story. 
 

What does that mean? “It means that we believe it is true,” said Debbie Oppermann, the director of the society.  “I know we’re going to get a lot of backlash. We’re going to get hammered,” she said. “But we have given it an awful lot of thought, and, based on the evidence we’ve been given, we believe this is a significant and true event.”  The historical society believes it is the first time a “mainstream” historical society or museum in the United States has declared a UFO encounter to be historical fact. But the decision was far from unanimous; of the nine members of the historical society’s board, three were “strongly opposed” to the decision, Oppermann said, but “it passed with consensus.”  The Reed case already has its own display in the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.; now, it’s about to get one in Great Barrington, about 2 miles from where the alleged encounters took place.  That most interests the historical society is the 1969 encounter, because dozens of people in the area reported seeing an unidentified flying object around that time, typically described as a disk-shaped craft performing acrobatic maneuvers in the sky. Many of those eyewitnesses called the local radio station, WSBS, which covered the sightings. (The radio station has provided documentation to the historical society, which interviewed one of those eyewitnesses. They have also examined a polygraph test taken by Thomas Reed.)
Director Debbie Oppermann says the Great Barrington Historical Society believes the Reed family story of having been abducted by aliens in 1969 is true, in part because dozens of people reported seeing a UFO at that time.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS
WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG
WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG
THANKS TO WWW.BOSTONGLOBE.COM AND BILLY BAKER

Source: http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=9429

26-02-2015 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

Whitby Councillor Reveals An Alien Race Influences President Putin’s Decisions In The Ukraine Conflict

Alien race known as Nordics influences Putin, according to Councillor Simon Parkes during his talk in Wallsend.

Labour councillor Simon Parkes told a group of around 30 people in Wallsend, North Tyneside that there’s extraterrestrial intervention in Eastern Europe’s recent hostilities.

Coun Parkes, who previously made headlines after claiming that he had hundreds of alien encounters in his life, blamed a race of aliens he called the Nordics for Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine.

The North Yorkshire councillor said that Putin has gotten support from Nordics against perceived U.S. influences in the area.

He revealed that Putin had been one of those people advised by reptiles, but Nordics made a counter offer to the Russian president.

Parkes further claimed that Nordics’ technology is equal with the U.S. The Nordics, according to Parkes, told Putin that he doesn’t need to grant anymore what the Americans requested him to do.

The Whitby councillor also made another shocking claim to the audience at The Vault when he said that his legal father (in the eyes of the universal law) is a reptile.

Ahead of the session, Coun Parkes, who represents Stakesby, had made a comment about the video reportedly taken on Tyneside. It apparently shows a UFO hovering above the North Sea.

Parkes said that the video appears very genuine and the UFO looks like a diamond-shape alien craft to him.

Referring to the video, he said that it’s weird the aircraft remained there for so long. For him, the craft wanted to be seen. Looking at the video, Parkes believes it depicts alien life.

Coun Parkes also actuated controversy in 2013 when he claimed that he lost his virginity to an extraterrestrial at the age of five. But Parkes further claimed that this was not the first time he experienced alien life. The councillor said that when he was in his mother’s womb, he first experienced extraterrestrial life, and he has sexual dealings with an alien group at a maximum of four times a year.

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

26-02-2015 om 00:57 geschreven door peter  

Navy Veteran Observes Large Cigar-Shaped UFO in Exeter, NH

Date: July 20, 2005

Location: Exeter, New Hampshire, United States

There was something odd in the sky last week, something that caused a Navy veteran with 10,000 hours of flight experience to have his own close encounter.   While preparing to mow his lawn, "David" saw a large cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky.  He said it was about the size of two USS Nimitz aircraft carriers.

                                

An artist's rendering of the reported UFO sighting in Exeter. Image courtesy of Angela Gram (printed in Exeter News-Letter)

                                  

An artist's rendering depicts what "David" saw in the sky on Wednesday, July 20, from his Exeter home. The picture shows a large object shaped like a "silver cigar," as David says it appeared just before the object vanished - twice the size at which he first viewed it, with flames billowing underneath.  Image courtesy of Angela Gram (printed in Exeter News-Letter)

Classification & Features

Type of Case/Report: PressReport        
Hynek Classification: DD        
Shape of Object(s): Cigar         
Special Features/Characteristics: Portholes/Windows         

More Articles on this Case

UFO saga continues

Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, New Hampshire), July 29, 2005

  There has been a considerable response to Tuesday’s article in the News-Letter about a recent UFO sighting. Interested local residents and skeptics joined UFO enthusiasts commenting from throughout the nation. R              

‘Odds are there’s intelligent life outside of Earth’

Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, New Hampshire), July 31, 2005

  There’s been a flurry of responses to the Exeter man who witnessed what he described as a silver-cigar shaped object in the day’s sky on July 20.  R              

Filer's Files: 'New Hampshire UFO Mother ship'

National UFO Reporting Center / Filer's Files

  An Instructor Flight Engineer on the P3 Orion and EP-3 Reconnaissance aircraft with 10,000 hours of flight time called Peter Davenport to report, "An enormous silver cigar shaped object in the sky at about a 40 degree angle above the horizon about 3:15 PM, on July 20, 2005." R              

East Kingston woman reports second UFO sighting

Adam Dolge, Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, New Hampshire, USA), August 2, 2005

  It’s happened again. An East Kingston resident said she saw a "silver-cigar" shaped object in a daytime sky last week.  This report comes about a week after a 48-year-old Navy veteran claimed to have seen a similar object. R              

Man Reports Seeing UFO Over Exeter - Artist Makes Drawing Based On Man's Description

WMUR News 9, New Hampshire

  Artist Angela Gram met with the man who said that he saw the object on a recent afternoon.  Gram created a rendering of the object based on the man's description. She said that his story was believable. R              

Original Witness report filed with National UFO Reporting Center

NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center), Peter Davenport,d Director

  "I’ve flown over the entire globe and never have I ever seen anything like I saw on the afternoon of July 20, 2005 at approximately 3:15 PM." R

Full Report / Article

Source: Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, New Hampshire), July 26, 2005       
[go to original source]                

        "UFO sighting in Exeter - again"

Exeter News-Letter, July 26, 2005
By Adam Dolge 

EXETER - There was something odd in the sky last week, something that caused a Navy veteran with 10,000 hours of flight experience to have his own close encounter. 

The former flight engineer, who wished to be identified only as "David," said of the experience, "this was like nothing I’ve ever seen before." 

What the retired Navy chief petty officer said he saw last Wednesday could only be classified as a UFO, an unidentified flying object. 

It was a bright and sunny afternoon, about 3:15 p.m., and David was outside preparing his lawnmower. He had filled the mower with gas, checked the oil, and took a sip from a glass of water he had poured. When he tilted his head back to get the final sip, through the bottom of the glass he saw a large cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky. 

David said windows were equally spaced around the object, however he didn’t see anyone or anything inside. The size of the object was enormous. By comparison, he said, consider what an ultralight plane would look like next to a Boeing 747. He said it was about the size of two USS Nimitz aircraft carriers. 

At first glance, through his empty glass of water he thought it could have been the Hood blimp. "But, the instant I put my glass down, I said, ‘that’s not a blimp.’" 

The object moved from west to east, very slowly for something that size, he said. His initial instinct was that the object was moving at about 100 knots, but something that big shouldn’t be able to stay in the air if it’s going that slow, he said. 

The object began changing colors from a bright silver to an orange-ish red. A strange cloud of red and orange flames began surrounding the object, and before he knew it the object stretched out like a rubber band. It grew to about twice its original size, and then it was gone. 

The entire incident lasted about 10 minutes, he recalled Monday morning, but he is unaware of the specific time because, "it felt like time stopped." 

He went into his house and first thought to call the police. He decided not to because he didn’t think they’d take him seriously. So he went on the Internet and searched for "report UFO," and found the Web site for the Seattle-based National UFO Reporting Center. 

Peter Davenport, director of the UFO reporting center, said David’s report was astonishing because of his history with flight. "I have no question on his reliability." 

He said he gets several accounts each year, but this one stood out. The report was well written and scientific, Davenport said. 

"In my view, that’s one of the cardinal rules of an account," he said. 

The center was founded in 1974 by UFO investigator Robert Gribble. The center’s Web site, www.nuforc.org, has a large list of UFO sightings. According to the site, the center’s primary function is to receive, record, and to the greatest degree possible, corroborate and document reports from individuals who have witnessed possible UFOs. David’s report, which will soon be on the Web site, will be among dozens of documented sightings to be formally reported to the center. 

Not the first time 

The Exeter area is no stranger to UFO sightings. In 1965, two Exeter police officers and hitchhiker Norman Muscarello, who was with them, gained national attention after seeing a UFO hovering over Route 101 in Kensington. The sighting was documented in a book called "The Incident at Exeter." 

And then there was the incident involving Barney and Betty Hill, a husband and wife from Portsmouth who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. The couple was driving from a vacation in Canada in 1961 when they saw a UFO. 

The object moved directly over their car, and before they knew it they grew drowsy. They later claimed to have been abducted by aliens and gave identical accounts while they were hypnotized. 

But for this recent sighting, David said he believes that there is life beyond Earth. He said the galaxy is so enormous, it’s hard to believe humans are the only intelligent life. 

"To the point of not being obnoxious, it’d be egocentric to think there is no other life out there." 

Case ID: 361

{ www.ufoevidence.org }

26-02-2015 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

Fort Dix / McGuire AFB Case

Date: January 18, 1978
Location: Fort Dix/McGuire AFB, New Jersey, United States

The primary eyewitness in the case, Jeffrey Morse, alleged (i) that he had been working as a security policeman at McGuire AFB when he was notified about UFO activity over Fort Dix army base. (ii) Morse alleged that he heard that a non-human entity had been shot and he later saw the dead body of the entity lying on the ground on a disused runway at McGuire AFB.

                                

Reconstruction of the Fort Dix incident. (credit: Michael Hesemann)

                                  

Eyewitness sketch of the dead extraterrestrial. (credit: Hesemann)

                                  

Eyewitness sketch of the base. (credit: Hesemann)

Classification & Features

Type of Case/Report: MajorCase        
Hynek Classification: CE3        
Special Features/Characteristics: Military, Humanoid/Occupant, Witness Sketch         

More Articles on this Case

Alien Being Shot Dead by MPs - Fort Dix/McGuire Case Directory

NICAP website (Francis Ridge)

Preliminary Investigation into the Alleged Fatal Shooting of a Non-Human Entity at Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base

NIDS, National Institute for Discovery Science (Roger Pinson & Eric Davis)

  NIDS conducted a preliminary investigation into the alleged January 18, 1978 fatal shooting of a non-human (?alien?) entity at Fort Dix/McGuire AFB in New Jersey.               

The Fatal Encounter at Fort Dix/McGuire: A Case Study (Status Report IV)

Leonard Stringfield

  The source, a sergeant in the Air Force Security Police at McGuire AFB, adds substantive information relative to the reported fatal encounter on January 18, 1978, between an alleged alien entity and a Ft. Dix MP and relates his firsthand observation, while on duty, when the slain entity was found on an abandoned runway at McGuire AFB.               

Running Code: The Night the Alien Died

Richard Hall

  Here is the story of the incident that literally changed the life of a conscientious young air policeman who was carrying on a family tradition of police service.              

Alien Being Shot Dead by MPs

Richard Hall

  Brief overview / summary of the case.

Full Report / Article

Source: NIDS, National Institute for Discovery Science        

        The primary eyewitness in the case, Jeffrey Morse, alleged (i) that he had been working as a security policeman at McGuire AFB at 03.00 on January 18, 1978 when he was notified about UFO activity over Fort Dix army base that adjoined McGuire AFB. (ii) Morse alleged that he heard that a non-human entity had been shot and he later saw the dead body of the entity lying on the ground on a disused runway at McGuire AFB. (iii) The scene was rapidly cordoned off and the body was crated and flown to Wright-Patterson AFB (WPAFB) for examination. (iv)Morse himself, two days after the shooting incident, was allegedly summoned to WPAFB and interrogated about the event. He was warned to keep quiet and shortly thereafter was transferred to Okinawa, Japan. 

(NIDS - National Institute for Discovery Science)

----------------------------------------------

Letter from sergeant Morse summarizing his experience and the incident:

In January of 1978, I was stationed at McGuire AFB, NJ. One evening, during the time frame of 0300hrs and 0500hrs., there were a number of UFO sightings in the area over the air field and Ft. Dix Army camp. I am a security policeman and was on routine patrol at the time. N.J. State Police, and Ft. Dix MPs were running code in the direction of Brownsville, NJ. A state trooper then entered gate #5 at the rear of the base requesting assistance and permission to enter. I was dispatched and the trooper wanted access to the runway area which led to the very back of the air field and connected with a heavily wooded area which is part of the Dix training area. He informed me that a Ft. Dix MP was pursueing (sic) a low flying object which then hovered over his car. He described it as oval shaped, with no details, and glowing with a blueish (sic) green color. His radio transmission was cut off. At that time in front of his police car, appeared a thing, about 4ft tall, grayish (sic), brown, fat head, long arms, and slender body. The MP panicked and fired five rounds from his .45 Cal into the thing, and one round into the object above. The object then fled straight up and joined with eleven others high in the sky. This we all saw but didn?t know the details at the time. Anyway, the thing ran into the woods towards our fenceline and they wanted to look for it. By this time several patrols were involved. 

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AF OSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but it wasn?t constent (sic) in the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more was said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court martialed. 

---------------

Morse, in subsequent conversations, revealed that two days after the incident he and others on duty at the scene were summoned to Wright Patterson AFB for interrogation, and each was transferred promptly to a separate base overseas. 

The Fort Dix/McGuire case was also of interest because a prominent UFO investigator, George Filer, claimed to have been present at McGuire AFB on the morning of January 18, 1978. Mr. Filer told NIDS that he witnessed a commotion with red lights on one of the disused runways at McGuire when he arrived on the base at 4:00 AM. He further claimed that he heard from a Senior Master Sergeant at McGuire command post on the same morning that (i) UFO activity had been sighted by the control tower and on radar at neighboring Fort Dix and (ii) an alien had been shot that morning and that it had been found dead on the runway at McGuire.  

Case ID: 317

{ www.ufoevidence.org }

26-02-2015 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Top 10 Ancient Gadgets! # 6 you probably already recognize

February 25, 2015 - Nowadays, we are extremely proud of the existent technology and we have come to rely on it for various things. But what was it like hundreds of years ago? What was technology for the cultures existent back then? Well, as history and archeological findings have shown us, they did have technology and, of course, ancient gadgets. Let’s check out the top 10 gadgets of the ancient world.

#1 Antikythera Mechanism

Made almost 2000 years ago, the Antikythera Mechanism is believed to be one of the oldest computers in the world. Found in the ruins of a ship, it was considered for a long time to be clock but recent discoveries have demonstrated it could do so much more. Originating from Greece, this ancient gadget had the ability to predict when a solar eclipse would happen and even could organize the calendar in cycles of four years.

#2 The Coso Artifact

The fact that you would find a spark plug is nothing special. But what happens when that spark plug is actually embedded in hard rock, one that dates from as long as 500.000 years ago? The Coso Artifact has disappeared and it is not to be studied using modern technology. There are three suppositions however when it comes to its origins: one, that it was made by an extremely intelligent ancient civilization such as Atlantis; two, that it came from the future and three, that it is of alien origin.

#3 Baigong Pipes

Located on top of Mountain Baigong, the Baigong pipes lead directly into a pyramid. The interesting thing about these rusty pipes is that no signs of civilizations in the area has ever been unearthed there. This means that the reason for which these have been made is still unknown. However, they are of an uniform size and they do have a special pattern, a salt lake being situated in their close vicinity.

#4 Ancient Sandstone Xylophone

 The link between humans and music is older than any of us can imagine. In the early 20th century, scientists have discovered these ancient sandstones and they believed them to have been used for grinding grains. It took a lot of time and a fortunate accident before their real purpose was discovered; it seems that this ancient gadget is actually a musical instrument, this being discovered by accident by an archaeologist.

#5 Roman Dodecahedra

 While there are many fascinating Roman artifacts that can easily pose as ancient gadgets, this is by far one of the best. Amazingly enough, it was found in several countries, including Germany, France and Switzerland. Even though many archaeologists have tried to study it, no clear purpose was identified. They were able to identify certain symbols on it there are related to the Zodiac but they are not certain whether it was used for surveying or it just had a decorative purpose.

#6 Mystery airplanes

 Discovered in Columbia, these figurines are believed to have been made by a tribe named Quimbaya, somewhere around 1000 CE. The resemblance to an airplane is uncanny, as they have tails, landing gears and wings just like any modern day plane. Scientists have rebuilt models after them only to prove that they worked. There are some scientists who say that these are only stylized fish or insects.

#7 The Phaistos Disc

 This ancient gadget is made from clay and it is believed to date back to the second millennium. Just like other ancient gadgets, its origin is unknown and so is the meaning or the intent purpose. The disc has been unearthed in Crete and it has a wide array of symbols imprinted on it, some of which have been identified as people, animals, tools or plants.

#8 Byzantine Tablet

While we rely on modern tablets for a lot of things, so did the people from Byzantine culture rely on their ancient gadgets. This tablet is comprised of five panels that are stacked together and each of them has a frame and a wax coating. It is believed that they were used for making note on inventories or appraisals.

#9 Baghdad Battery

Perhaps this is one of the strangest ancient gadgets to have ever been discovered. While it is clearly a battery, it does not explain why would people who lived in the ancient world need it. It was found in Iraq in 1936 and ever since then scientists have constructed replicas in order to prove that it actually works.

#10 Dropa Stones

These stones are unique ancient gadgets and many people have said they belong to an ancient or alien culture. They were discovered on a burial site in the Himalayan mountains and each of these stones is actually a one-foot wide disc, with a simple hole in the center. The interesting thing about these is that they are extremely old; scientists have placed them to have existed as far as 12.000 years ago.

Modern day gadgets are extremely useful for us. And maybe it was just like that for ancient cultures, relying on the gadgets presented above for every day living. 

{ http://m.disclose.tv/ }

25-02-2015 om 23:32 geschreven door peter  

Demonic Alien Abductions 

              by Paul Schroeder

25-02-2015 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

Should Humanity Try to Contact Alien Civilizations?

Some researchers want to use big radio dishes like the 305-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to announce our presence to intelligent aliens.

credit: Arecibo Observatory/NSF

Is it time to take the search for intelligent aliens to the next level?

For more than half a century, scientists have been scanning the heavens for signals generated by intelligent alien life. They haven't found anything conclusive yet, so some researchers are advocating adding an element called "active SETI" (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) — not just listening, but also beaming out transmissions of our own designed to catch aliens' eyes.

Active SETI "may just be the approach that lets us make contact with life beyond Earth," Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said earlier this month during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Jose. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

Vakoch envisions using big radio dishes such as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to blast powerful, information-laden transmissions at nearby stars, in a series of relatively cheap, small-scale projects.

"Whenever any of the planetary radar folks are doing their asteroid studies, and they have an extra half an hour before or after, there's always a target star readily available that they can shift to without a lot of extra slough time," he said.

The content of any potential active SETI message is a subject of considerable debate. If it were up to astronomer Seth Shostak, Vakoch's SETI Institute colleague, we'd beam the entire Internet out into space.

"It's like sending a lot of hieroglyphics to the 19th century — they [aliens] can figure it out based on the redundancy," Shostak said during the AAAS discussion. "So, I think in terms of messages, we should send everything."

While active SETI could help make humanity's presence known to extrasolar civilizations, the strategy could also aid the more traditional "passive" search for alien intelligence, Shostak added.

"If you're going to run SETI experiments, where you're trying to listen for a putative alien broadcast, it may be very instructive to have to construct a transmitting project," he said. "Because now, you walk a mile in the Klingons' shoes, assuming they have them." 

Cause for concern?

But active SETI is a controversial topic. Humanity has been a truly technological civilization for only a few generations; we're less than 60 years removed from launching our first satellite to Earth orbit, for example. So the chances are that any extraterrestrials who pick up our signals would be far more advanced than we are. [The Search for Intelligent Life: 4 Key Questions (Video)]

This likelihood makes some researchers nervous, including famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach," Hawking said in 2010 on an episode of "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking," a TV show that aired on the Discovery Channel. "If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships so they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?"

Astrophysicist and science fiction author David Brin voiced similar concerns during the AAAS event, saying there's no reason to assume that intelligent aliens would be altruistic.

"This is an area in which discussion is called for," Brin said. "What are the motivations of species that they might carry with them into their advanced forms, that might color their cultures?"

Brin stressed that active SETI shouldn't be done in a piecemeal, ad hoc fashion by small groups of astronomers.

"This is something that should be discussed worldwide, and it should involve our peers in many other specialties, such as history," he said. "The historians would tell us, 'Well, gee, we have some examples of first-contact scenarios between advanced technological civilizations and not-so-advanced technological civilizations.' Gee, how did all of those turn out? Even when they were handled with goodwill, there was still pain."        

Out there already

Vakoch and Shostak agreed that international discussion and cooperation are desirable. But Shostak said that achieving any kind of consensus on the topic of active SETI may be difficult. For example, what if polling reveals that 60 percent of people on Earth are in favor of the strategy, while 40 percent are opposed?

"Do we then have license to go ahead and transmit?" Shostak said. "That's the problem, I think, with this whole 'let's have some international discussion' [idea], because I don't know what the decision metric is."

Vakoch and Shostak also said that active SETI isn't as big a leap as it may seem at first glance: Our civilization has been beaming signals out into the universe unintentionally for a century, since the radio was invented.

"The reality is that any civilization that has the ability to travel between the stars can already pick up our accidental radio and TV leakage," Vakoch said. "A civilization just 200 to 300 years more advanced than we are could pick up our leakage radiation at a distance of several hundred light-years. So there are no increased dangers of an alien invasion through active SETI."

But Brin disputed this assertion, saying the so-called "barn door excuse" is a myth.

"It is very difficult for advanced civilizations to have picked us up at our noisiest in the 1980s, when we had all these military radars and these big television antennas," he said.

Shostak countered that a fear of alien invasion, if taken too far, could hamper humanity's expansion throughout the solar system, an effort that will probably require the use of high-powered transmissions between farflung outposts.

"Do you want to hamstring all that activity — not for the weekend, not just shut down the radars next week, or active SETI this year, but shut down humanity forever?" Shostak said. "That's a price I'm not willing to pay."

So the discussion and debate continues — and may continue for quite some time.

"This is the only really important scientific field without any subject matter," Brin said. "It's an area in which opinion rules, and everybody has a very fierce opinion."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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25-02-2015 om 23:05 geschreven door peter  

What Do Gene Sequencing, Radio Astronomy And Particle Physics Have In Common?

Modern scientific discovery is driven by one thing, without which breakthroughs like gene sequencing, the search for the Higgs boson and dark matter and huge telescope arrays wouldn’t be possible – High Performance Computing (HPC).

With the computational might to blitz through millions of bytes of data, calculations and statistical possibilities, scientists were able to posit the existence of particles like the Higgs boson and campaign for expensive projects like the Large Hadron Collider – because they could show what they were looking for.

The same kind of processing power is what’s allowing the UK’s version of the Genome Project, attempting to sequence whole genomes rather than just excerpts known as exons, to go ahead.

Cambridge University has had HPC in one form or another for 18 years, from the old 80s supercomputer sitting in the middle of a room, to its modern new server facility, which is based on a large Dell Dell server cluster made up of 9.600 cores and four petabytes of storage running on a Hadoop platform and is currently getting its finishing touches after a £20m investment.

Cambridge University’s new HPC system, used for particle physics, radio astronomy, gene sequencing and other big data, big science projects. (Credit: Cambridge University)

The university has one of the largest research and development budgets in the UK education sector, devoting 40 per cent of its £1438m annual revenue to funding advances in the fields of astronomy, genomics, medicine, physics and many more.

But its HPC time is also hired out to businesses in the nearby science and technology park, helping the university to pay for top IT support, while providing a valuable niche service to firms

Just a few years ago, that kind of commoditisation of HPC wouldn’t have been possible, Dr Paul Calleja, director of HPC Service at Cambridge, told visitors in a talk attended by Forbes.

“It used to be that a small number of users were eating up all the HPC power,” he said. “But now we have a long tail in HPC usage – modest amounts of HPC are now useful to many more people.”

That change is down to how much more computational power is available, but despite the value of Moore’s Law in increasing processor power, the growth in data volumes far outstrips it. Massive global science projects like CERN’s particle physics experiments and the Genome Project are creating a demand revolution that’s going to drive ever-increasing HPC, Dr Calleja reckons.

“I believe that the change now will be more fundamental than the change in the late 90s that ushered in the commoditisation of HPC,” he said.

Cambridge’s new data centre has 96 cabinets that can take a 1000kW to 2000kW IT load, but the university sees it as sufficient just for a two to five year growth plan. It’s going to have to be fast enough and powerful enough to process data from what is currently the world’s most ambitious IT project – the Square Kilometre Array.

This is the next generation radio telescope project to be built in Australia and South Africa, which will be 50 to 100 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument and require long-haul network links with a capacity greater than the current global Internet traffic as well as very high powered computing.

At the same time, Cambridge’s HPC Service will be catering to projects like the Bridge Genome Project, an attempt to study the gene sequencing of 10,000 people with rare genetic diseases.

According to Willem Ouwehand, professor of experimental haematology at the university, genomics medicine is a multi-disciplinary field, employing physicists and mathematicians alongside nurses and biologists. In fact, a third of the people involved in gene research are actually working on the computational side.

From left to right, the structures of A-, B- and Z-DNA – Scientists will use Cambridge University’s HPC to seqence whole genomes. (Credit: Richard Wheeler, Wikipedia)

The Bridge project is hoping to help advance the study of rare genetic diseases, which affect more than 300 million people in the world, but are extremely difficult for on-the-ground medical staff to diagnose.

Professor Ouwehand foresees a time when computers could help to support doctors’ diagnoses by holding a bank of data on diseases learned from gene sequencing. And this project can afford to sequence whole genomes instead of exons because of the commoditisation of the HPC Service at Cambridge, which has opened up the university’s budget.

And on top of that, Cambridge’s processors will also be continuing to run the mathematical models that predict the next particles that accelerators like the LHC might glimpse. Ron Horgan, professor in theoretical and mathematical physics, explained that the same sort of computational power needed to explore the far reaches of the Universe through astronomy are also needed to examine the most fundamental and smallest particles.

“The LHC has more than enough energy to prove the Standard Model of Physics and even go beyond that, but we believe there’s still more after that – that’s where HPC comes in,” he said.

Supercomputers run the mathematical models that predict where particles might appear and with enough verification, scientists can then start the search in the real world, as the LHC did with the Higgs boson.

“Understanding physics using computers is a third discipline of the scientific method in addition to theory and experiment,” Horgan added.

This is all possible using Cambridge’s HPC Service now, but even more will be done as demand drives further innovation in HPC in the future, according to Dr Calleja.

“Tomorrow there will be large public data sets in the fields of science, linked to computing power and analytical methods and open to a broad research base of experts and non-experts alike,” he said.

“This democratisation of data will be what transforms the research process and this technological wonderland is on the horizon, I think.”

For more on big science using big data, follow me on Twitter and Google +.

{ http://www.forbes.com/ }

25-02-2015 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

Russia plans to create own space station by 2024

The International Space Station from Above. (Credit: STS-130 Crew, NASA)

Russia has been looking at the possibility of creating its own space station by 2024. The country’s space agency, Roscosmos, says it is committed to the International Space Station until then, but then will unlock the modules to create its own base.

  The proposed Russian space station would give the country’s space  agency a platform to further its goals to explore the Moon, which  is a priority for Roscosmos. The agency will look to study the  Moon, using robotic equipment over the next decade with the goal  of sending manned missions to the moon by 2030, Tass news agency  reported the Science and Technology board for Roscosmos as  stating. It will be partly built from segments from the old  station, as well as adding new ones.

“Piloting cosmonauts is part of our general space strategy  and today with have decided upon our main trajectory,” said  Yury Koptev, a representative of the Science and Technology  board, Tass reported. “This is through the International  Space Station and working towards a lunar program in the Earth’s  orbit and in deep space.”

The International Space Station (Credit: STS-122 Shuttle Crew, NASA)

Koptev added that the space agency will continue its research  into the Moon and further space exploration in March, leading up  to the board’s next meeting.

“The configuration of a multi-purpose laboratory module, a  [docking] node module and a scientific power module [would]  create a promising Russian space station to meet the challenges  of providing secure access to space,” a statement from the  agency read, according to Tass.

  Roscosmos's Science and Technology board have been looking at the  possibility of piloting astronauts till 2030.

  The possibility of creating a Russian stand-alone space station  was first confirmed by Oleg Ostapenko, the head of Roscosmos, in  December.

“There is this option. We are making calculations at the  moment,” Ostapenko said, when asked about the possible  project.

The International Space Station Over Earth. (Credit: STS-128 Crew, NASA)

  He added that a national space station would be “a step  forward” for Russia and may serve “a number of different  purposes,” for instance as a transfer point for the Russian  lunar exploration program.

  Russia has had its own space station in the past. This was until  2001, when the Mir space station was deorbited, splashing down  into the Pacific Ocean after spending more than 5,500 days in  space. Russia cited the age of the station and the high  operational costs as the reasons for the decision.

Out of ISS: Russia going solo with space station?

  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises  defense-related policies, has said Moscow could discontinue its  segment of the International Space Station (ISS) after 2020. He  added that “the Russian segment [of the ISS] can exist  independently from the American one, but the American segment  cannot exist without the Russian.”

Russia’s decision to continue its cooperation with the  International Space Station will come as a relief to the other  partners involved in the program. There had been uncertainty  whether Russia would continue following western sanctions  introduced against the country. Russia is currently the only  nation capable of getting astronauts to and from the ISS,  following the disbanding of NASA’s space shuttle program.

  The US stated over a year ago that it will continue to back the  ISS and keep it operational at least until 2024, with the  possibility to extend its mission to 2028, the 30-year  anniversary of the launch of the outpost’s first module.

{ http://rt.com/ }

25-02-2015 om 22:19 geschreven door peter