Wetenschappers concluderen na DNA-studie: Octopussen ‘zijn aliens’ en hebben 10.000 meer genen dan mensen

Wetenschappers hebben ontdekt dat octopussen zo vreemd zijn dat je ze eigenlijk zou kunnen zien als aliens. Na de eerste volledige genoomsequentie blijkt dat de octopus in niets lijkt op andere dieren.

Het genoom van de octopus bevat liefst 33.000 eiwitcoderende genen, 10.000 meer dan mensen. Clifton Ragsdale van de Universiteit van Chicago zei: “De octopus is met zijn acht tentakels, grote brein en probleemoplossende vermogen zo anders dan andere dieren, zelfs andere weekdieren.”

“De Britse zoöloog Martin Wells (de kleinzoon van H.G. Wells) zei dat de octopus een alien is. Je zou dus kunnen zeggen dat ons paper de eerste genoomsequentie van een alien beschrijft,” aldus Ragsdale.

De octopus gebruikt een aantal genen om van kleur te veranderen en zich zo aan te passen aan de achtergrond. “We hebben honderden nieuwe genen gevonden die andere dieren niet hebben en die mogelijk betrokken zijn bij dit unieke camouflageproces,” zei Daniel Rokshar van de Universiteit van Californië in Berkeley.

Octopussen verschenen meer dan 400 miljoen jaar geleden in de oceanen. Pas 230 miljoen jaar later kwamen de eerste zoogdieren ten tonele.

De octopus blijkt vooral veel zogeheten protocadherine-genen te hebben, die een rol spelen bij de ontwikkeling van zenuwcellen en de wisselwerking tussen neuronen. Het genoom van de octopus bevat 168 van deze protocadherine-genen; dat is 10 keer zoveel als andere ongewervelde dieren en twee keer zoveel als zoogdieren. Het onderzoek is verschenen in Nature. Vond je dit interessant? Denk er dan aan het artikel te delen op Facebook.

[Metro, Independent]

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

13-08-2015 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

Is Banbury becoming an alien hotspot? Police deal with multiple extraterrestrial reports

Thames Valley Police has responded to 15 reports of aliens and UFOs in the last four years

It may sound out of this world but Thames Valley Police has dealt with 15 reports of aliens in just four years.

Residents have spotted little green men twice in Chipping Norton - and were so concerned they called the police force for help.

All of the cases were reported between 2011 and 2014 across the force area.

They also include three sightings in neighbouring Milton Keynes, two in Oxford, five in Reading, two in Slough and one in High Wycombe.

Back in 2007, local UFO expert Michael Soper claimed Banbury and the surrounding area was becoming an alien hotspot.

“Banbury is quite active,” he said.

“There are more paranormal events here in Oxfordshire than in any other part of the country and they can be dramatic.

“We have had a landing near Wallingford.

“I think we are being visited by dimensional craft.

“I don’t know whether they come from another race of humans from another dimension.”

But the number of UFO sightings reported to police has decreased, according to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Banbury Guardian.

In 2011, Thames Valley Police received seven calls concerning aliens.

Just three years later (in 2014), the number had dropped by more than a third with only two calls reporting aliens.

But Michael, of Contact International UFO Research based in Wheatley, is expecting a boom in reports soon.

He added: “I do expect reports of sightings of UFOs to pick up because we’re coming up to a period of change in the solar cycle.

“People do still informally report sightings to us.

“Our view is that these things are happening all the time, what varies is people ability to see them and inclination to report them.

“Generally speaking Oxfordshire is very remarkable for these lights that appear in the skies.”

Many sightings of UFOs have been logged across the county in recent years.

Back in November 2013, a resident in Banbury described seeing a metallic rectangular object with a large “shark” shaped fin and bright orange light around it flying in the skies over Banbury.

They added: “It was flying from my left to right on a straight path, however once it was past the boundary of the town (on the right) it increased in speed dramatically, pitched up and to the left then down to the right in an elongated ‘S’ shape and then I lost it behind the house adjacent to the garden.

“This is not something I can logically explain away, particularly the increase in speed and the way it turned in the sky.”

Another sighting was reported in May 2012, when a man spotted a “ball of light” over the M40 which split in two and flew off towards Banbury.

In 2007, a man spotted three “bright white lights in the form of a triangle” over Chipping Norton that “shot across the sky in perfect formation” towards Oxford.

{ http://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/ }

13-08-2015 om 01:54 geschreven door peter  

Want To Know What A Real ‘UFO’ Looks Like? These 7 Astonishing Pictures Will Give You An Idea

For somebody who has never seen a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), it can be hard to imagine what they look like. Reports of incidents from the military are quite detailed, and if one thing is absolutely clear, it’s that the UFO phenomenon is global and has included many military encounters. Personally, I’ve had multiple UFO experiences, some of which have been quite remarkable and breathtaking. I’ve even had a few alongside a couple of members here at Collective Evolution. These are objects that are performing maneuvers that should be impossible, and look like nothing that we have on this planet. I mention this because we are not alone in our experiences, there are many others who have seen the same thing.

“As the F-4 approached a range of 25 nautical miles it lost all instrumentation and communications… When the F-4 turned away from the object and apparently was no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all instrumentation and communications.” (source)

The above quote comes from a declassified United States defence agency report detailing a UFO encounter that occurred over Iran in 1976. It’s one of many examples outlined in thousands of pages of UFO documents that have been released by dozens of governments from all over the world. This type of occurrence is a common one, where UFOs are tracked on radar, as well as visually confirmed by military pilots, who are then sent out to take a closer look.

Another example of a common encounter occurred on December 16th, 1978, by the Chilean Air Force:

“Two pilots on a training mission, each flying an F5 fighter aircraft, tracked the object on their airborne radar. It gave a return equal to ten or more aircraft carriers – except this object was in the air, not floating on the water. Each pilot assumed his radar equipment was faulty, until he learned that the other pilot was also getting the same return. Not only this, but ground radar from a nearby airport also picked up the object and confirmed its huge size. The pilots also saw the object with their own eyes. One pilot later said that at a distance of twenty miles, it looked ‘like a plantain banana swathed in smoke.’ The pilots were frightened, having no missiles or weapons. As they approached the massive object, which had been motionless all this while, it took off at an unimaginable speed. All at once, it vanished from the three radar screens.” (Huneeus, J, Antonio, “A Chilean Overview,” MUFON UFO Journal, 6/86; Huneeus, J. Antonio, “A Historical Survey of UFO Cases in Chilie,” MUFON 1987 International Symposium Proceedings (MUFON, 1987.)

The list of encounters from these documents where pilots describe such objects literally goes on and on, and the pictures below are a good example of what various military pilots have described throughout the decades. This is something that has happened scores of times and continues to this day. 

The pictures below come from investigator/researcher Alex Mistretta, who can be contacted at: mistretta1020@gmail.com. Apparently, they are from a United States Navy submarine, taken in March of 1971. The Sumarine was the Navy’s USS Trepang (SSN 674). The submarine came upon the object by “accident,” as they were in the region on a routine joint military and scientific expedition. Officer John Klika was the one who initially spotted the object with the periscope.

I am not saying that these pictures are real, in fact, they might not be. The point here is to give readers a taste of what military pilots commonly describe, and what is commonly picked up on military radar. That’s why I wanted to show these pictures in the first place, to spark your imagination with what could be ‘fake’ pictures, of a very real phenomenon, and for those who have not had the experience of seeing something like this.

“Behind the scenes, high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” Former head of CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, 1960 (source)

“This thing has gotten so highly-classified… it is just impossible to get anything on it. I have no idea who controls the flow of need-to-know because, frankly, I was told in such an emphatic way that it was none of my business that I’ve never tried to make it to be my business since. I have been interested in this subject for a long time and I do know that whatever the Air Force has on the subject is going to remain highly classified.” – Senator Barry Goldwater, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (source)

For more verified quotes about the UFO phenomenon, please click HERE. For our most recent articles on the topic, please click HERE.

“In one of the cases during the cold war, 1961, there were about 50 UFOs in formation flying South from Russia across Europe. The supreme allied commander was very concerned and was about ready to press the panic button when they turned around and went back over the North Pole. They decided to do an investigation and they investigated for three years and they decided that with absolute certainty that four different species, at least, have been visiting this planet for thousands of years. There’s been a lot more activity in the past two decades, especially since we invented the atomic bomb. They are very concerned about that and if we will use it again, because the whole cosmos is in unity and it affects not just us but other people in the cosmos. They’re very much afraid that we might start using atomic weapons again and this would be very bad for us, and them also.” –Paul Hellyer, Former Canadian Defence Minister (source)

13-08-2015 om 01:45 geschreven door peter  

Aliens Might Weigh As Much As Polar Bears And Be Taller Than The Tallest Man Who Ever Lived

13-08-2015 om 01:36 geschreven door peter  

Scientists discovered the last lake on Mars, which might be preserving ancient life

.

(ESO/M. Kornmesser) 
Illustration of what Mars would look like with water. 

A trio of scientists says they've identified the best place to look for evidence of ancient life on Mars — one of the youngest lake-bearing basins ever discovered. 

Though Mars has no liquid water today, the Red Planet was submerged under vast oceans billions of years ago. And where there's water, there's the potential for life.

Scientists suspected that after the oceans evaporated, that was it for water — and life — on Mars. But a recent paper published in the journal Geology says that's not the case. 

Mars had a second wave of surface water about 3.6 billion years ago — 200 million years after scientists thought Mars had seen the last of its liquid water. This water, the researchers report, was located in a lake inside a basin near the Martian equator, about 100 miles from where NASA's Opportunity rover rests today.

It is one of the youngest lakes and therefore possibly one of the last liquid water sources to ever exist on Mars, the researchers report. 

The discovery is exciting for the prospect of ancient Martian life, explains lead author Brian Hynek who is a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at Colorado University-Boulder:

"Having a later stage of water on Mars is probably a good thing for the potential for life on that planet because it gave life more time to be conceived," Hynek told Business Insider. "There was life on Earth when this lake was active so by that analogy, we can say there's potential that Mars had microbial life and this was a great place where it could have resided."

Getting around a tricky problem

.

(NASA/JPL-caltech/University of Arizona) 
Crater in Meridiani Planum, where the researchers found evidence for one of the youngest lakes ever discovered. 

The researchers are investigating the age and origin of hundreds of salt deposits across Mars to map how much water existed on the surface.  

"Just like on Earth, when salts are left somewhere, that probably means that water was there," Hynek said. "So, these are indicators that water was there in some form."

Estimating the age of these salt deposits is tricky. The way scientists determine the age of anything on Mars is by counting the number and measuring the size of impact craters in that region. Then they compare this information to similar regions on the Moon, whose age we have a better handle on.

But wind has eroded the regions where these salt deposits are located, which makes it hard to estimate their age. This latest paper is the first time anyone has ever calculated with any confidence the age of one of these salt deposits, Hynek said. 

Using images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars since 2006, the team studied the terrain and geography around the basin. They found evidence to suggest that at one point, the lake grew large enough to spill over the rim of the basin, carving channels in its wake. 

The researchers traced these channels to neighboring volcanic plains hundreds of miles away that are about 3.6 billion years old. Because the water channels over-cut the volcanic plains, they must be younger. That means the lake must also be younger than 3.6 billion years.

Life locked in salt

.

(Promking at en.wikipedia) 
Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are similar to the salt deposits on Mars. 

Right now, there are no plans to visit this basin in search for the potential for life. But Hynek hopes that this latest paper will make the basin a more popular touch down point for the NASA Mars rover scheduled to launch in 2020.

Hynek has a pretty good idea of where he'd look first:

"I think you'd want to target the salt deposits," he told Business Insider. "As the water evaporates away a lot of organic matter and a lot of microbial evidence gets encased in salts and is preserved for long time periods."

Though there was liquid water in the basin, there are still other factors that would ultimately determine whether life could have existed there, Hynek cautions. The lake's salinity, acidity, oxygen levels, and available nutrients for food are all important. 

The lake had a relatively low salt content, which would have made it ideal for life, Hynek said. However, the other three factors are hard to measure without sending a rover there to scoop up the soil and analyze what's in it.

So far, this single lake is the only evidence for water on Mars around 3.6 billion   years ago. Hynek plans to continue studying these salt deposits to see if there's more evidence of water on a younger Mear

NOW WATCH: Matt Damon is left to die on Mars in first trailer for ‘The Martian’

More From Business Insider

• Tesla's cars and NASA's Mars rovers have this one mysterious material in common
• The husband of a volunteer Mars colonist is worried about saying goodbye to his wife forever — here's why he won't have to
• Here's why the author of 'The Martian' says he's never setting foot on a spaceship

{ http://finance.yahoo.com/ }

13-08-2015 om 01:07 geschreven door peter  

Octopuses ‘are aliens’, scientists decide after DNA study

Not to freak you out or anything, but scientists have just revealed that octopuses are so weird they’re basically aliens.

The first full genome sequence shows of that octopuses (NOT octopi) are totally different from all other animals – and their genome shows a striking level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes identified, more than in a human.

There we were thinking it was quite freaky enough when they learned how to open jam jars.

US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago, said: ;The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities.

‘The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.’

{ http://metro.co.uk/ }

13-08-2015 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

Many Witnesses To Alien Craft Over Necochea

(Before It's News)

 MANY WITNESSES TO ALIEN CRAFT  OVER NECOCHEA  
DECEMBER 26, 2014   ………..   NECOCHEA ARGENTINA  

On the evening of December 26 several witnesses — Marcelo Pintacuda among them, as he performed various duties at the Port of Necochea-Quequ he noticed a large strange circular object, yellow in color, that flew over the skies of Necochea.  The object vanished toward the west of the city after having been visible for several minutes.  Mr. Pintacuda was engaged in supervising the unloading of fuel oil from the Antares I vessel to the Necochea Power Station, property of Centrales de la Costa Atlantica SA, which employs this fuel for operating purposes.

The Necochea Power Station is located in the Port of Necoceha next to the Quequn River and facing the sea. Pintacuda is an agent for this branch and was engaged in fire watch activities at the time during the unloading of 8000 tons of fuel oil to the station.  The incident is currently under investigation and the images are being downloaded presently from his Motorola C650 cellphone. The month of December has been rich in UFO activity over Necochea. We should keep in mind the cases involving employees of the DYCASA company, who are working on the expansion of the breakwater in the port itself, which also faces the Necochea Power Station. 

A considerable number of people saw this large object that vanished over the sea and toward the south. The cases involving a Necochean family that saw a similar round object as they returned home along the coastal route, and another family that sew a similar object over the beach should not be discarded.  As we said, all cases are currently under investigation. 

NOTE: The above image is a rendering  
KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS 

WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG 

THANKS TO http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html

13-08-2015 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

Daily UFO Headlines 8/12/2015

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

• Fortney: Kananaskis UFO sighting a reminder of sightings past – Calgary Herald
• Budelman left mark as reporter, mayoral aide, UFO hunter – Milwaukee – Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
• After Hungerford UFO sightings, now it’s crop circles – Newbury Today
• ‘Peace-loving aliens tried to save America from nuclear war,’ claims moon mission astronaut Edgar Mitchell – Mirror Online
• How We Could Detect an Alien Apocalypse From Earth – io9

13-08-2015 om 00:29 geschreven door peter  

Ashland Nebraska UFO Abduction, 1967

(Before It's News)

http://spookscentral.com/

 In Ashland, Nebraska, on December 3, 1967, Herbert Schirmer, a 22 years young patrolman, was making his usual rounds. He had checked the Ashland Sales Barn, and several gas stations along Highway 6 when he noticed what he thought were red lights on top of a large truck. He had just passed through the intersection of Highways 6 and 63 at about 2:00 AM.

He drove the short distance down 63 and stopped with his headlights shining on the object. According to Schirmer, the object was definitely not a truck. The red lights that he had seen were blinking through the oval portholes of a metallic, oval-shaped object that was hovering at a height of about eight feet above the road’s surface.

The object appeared to have a polished, aluminum surface and had a sort of walk around it. It had a structure underneath, like a landing gear.

As he watched, the object rose into the air with flames coming from underneath. It passed almost directly over Schirmer’s patrol car, then quickly shot out of sight.

Schirmer returned to the police station, noting that it was now 3:00 AM., which surprised him because he felt that only ten minutes had passed. At the station, he made this entry into his logbook:

“Saw a flying saucer at the junction of highways 6 and 63. Believe it or not!”

Afterward, Schirmer developed a red welt on his neck, a headache, and he began to feel ill. Word of Schirmer’s sighting was related to the Condon Commission at the University of Colorado, which investigated UFO reports.

Schirmer was asked to come to Boulder, Colorado. At Boulder, on February 13, 1968, he was hypnotized 

Returning to Ashland, Schirmer was appointed Ashland’s Police Chief when Chief Wlaskin resigned. However, he resigned after two months, unable to concentrate on the job due to his UFO experience.

According to Schirmer, he was ridiculed by some of the townspeople, his car was dynamited, and his wife left him.

Further regression hypnosis sessions were conducted on June 8, 1968, by hypnotist Loring G. Williams and the results of those sessions were reported in two books: “Gods, Demons, and Space Chariots” and “Gods and Devils from Outer Space” by Eric Norman.

One odd fact that was brought out was that the aliens wore uniforms with an emblem of a winged serpent on the left breast, similar to the winged serpents that have appeared in mythology around the world.

references:

www.nicap.org

“Gods, Demons, and Space Chariots,” by Eric Norman

Conference where Herbert Schirmer discusses in detail his abduction experience (1967) Note the serpent emblem on the alien sketch that Herbert drew.

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13-08-2015 om 00:16 geschreven door peter  

NASA-astronaut: “Vredelievende aliens probeerden Amerika te behoeden voor kernoorlog”

Aliens zijn naar de aarde gekomen om een kernoorlog tussen Amerika en Rusland te voorkomen. Dat heeft NASA-astronaut Edgar Mitchell, de zesde man op de maan, gezegd. De Apollo-veteraan zegt dat UFO’s in vrede kwamen om te voorkomen dat de mensheid zichzelf zou vernietigen.

Hij vertelde aan de Daily Mirror dat hooggeplaatste militairen UFO’s zagen tijdens wapentests. De astronaut spreekt zich sinds het moment dat hij op het maanoppervlak is geland vaker openlijk uit over zijn geloof in aliens.

Insiders vertelden hem dat er vreemde vaartuigen werden gezien boven raketbases en de installatie in White Sands, waar ’s werelds eerste kernbom in 1945 werd ontploft. Mitchell groeide op in New Mexico, in de buurt van White Sands en Roswell, waar volgens velen een UFO is neergestort.

“Je kent het gebied niet zoals ik,” zei hij. “White Sands was een testgebied voor kernwapens. Daar waren de buitenaardsen in geïnteresseerd. Het is mij duidelijk geworden dat de aliens hebben geprobeerd ons te behoeden voor een oorlog en vrede op aarde nastreefden.”

Mitchell hoorde soortgelijke verhalen van mensen die tijdens de Koude Oorlog de raketbases bemanden. “Luchtmachtofficieren vertelden me dat UFO’s vaak werden gezien boven de basis en hun raketten uitschakelden,” zei hij. “Officieren van bases langs de kust zeiden dat hun testraketten vaak uit de lucht werden geschoten door buitenaardse ruimteschepen. Er was in die tijd veel activiteit.” Vond je dit interessant? Denk er dan aan het artikel te delen op Facebook.

[Daily Mirror]

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

12-08-2015 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

{ www.NIBURU.nl }

12-08-2015 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

Aug 2015 Sighting – Strange Black Object Seen By Fishermen

With all the UFO evidence at our disposal, with all the testimonies brought by eyewitness about encounters and abductions, one thing that everyone wants the most is to meet these humanoid extraterrestrial creatures. Recently, one strange object was seen by fishermen. The black object appears to be hiding from them. According to the witnesses, it is apparent that there is some intelligence who was controlling the precise object. They further added that it was afraid and does not want to be noticed. Later, the alleged object was being followed by the fishermen.

Iznik is a town and a directorial district in the Province of Bursa. The incident is not a sole occurrence because according to the villagers of the province, they have also seen a strange object at Lake Iznik. Yes! Not a single presence in the eyes of the fishermen where they alleged to have seen the black object in the morning. At Iznik Lake, Fehmi and his friends were on their boat fishing. At 6:00 am in Iznik coast guard, they heard a very strange sound in the village’s reeds and the place nearby the fishermen. According to them, the noise is very familiar, because it is like a huge bird being trapped between the reeds. But, they got up quickly and approached it. Concerned glances have made the fishermen to soar who was sailing under the foreign body; he recorded the strange object of his mobile phone. The mysterious object was being suspended in the air. In fact, it moved toward the Göllüce which happens to be the coast. According to the Fishermen, they followed the flying object only for a short period. The unidentified flying object watched as the UFO was hanging in on the air.

It is true that occurrences like this are unbelievable, but the mere fact that not only the fishermen who saw the strange black object, it makes sense that it could be real.

12-08-2015 om 22:55 geschreven door peter  

UFO Footage: Strange Metallic Orb Filmed Over Indonesia

When you are into extraterrestrial issues, you have to begin by attempting to refute a particular UFO case. Of course, this scenario is to see if it holds water to identify whether or not it is a mistaken, a genuine or just a hoax sighting. If you haven’t studied the case well, it could be a simple airplane hovering in the sky, a silver-painted, or a weather balloon Frisbee being tossed up for laughs.

When there are reports of extraterrestrial sightings, people often hear reasonable explanations such as an experimental aircraft, lights on airplanes, weather balloons, hoaxes, optical illusions, swamp gas, wild imagination, and many more. Such ideas may either come from the media, or by some infamous intelligence faction. Of course, exploring the most reasonable explanations is healthy, but if none of the general criteria can apply, you just may have a real alien spacecraft on your hands.

One witness living in North Jakarta, Indonesia has reported seeing a metallic orb hovering across the sky. The witness filed in the Mutual UFO Network database as Case 68460. According to the witness, he was staying in the outdoor basketball court together with his family at about 5:42 in the afternoon. On July 17, 2015, he saw the orb UFO flying at a height of about 500 meters northwest of the sky. Later on, it changed the course when it flew in a South West direction before disappearing from the sight.

Even though extraterrestrial vessels kept at a constant speed of 50 meters per minute, it changed its shape when it approached the witness. From an orb-like shape, it changed to squashed or flat vertically. The witness saw a metallic luster that imitated the light of an evening sun. As the object moved closer, he observed it more closely. Since he wanted to determine the nature of the object, He communicated with MUFON.

12-08-2015 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

Could Earth Defend Against an Alien invasion?

by Paul Schroeder

12-08-2015 om 01:20 geschreven door peter  

NASA Releases Ultra High Definition Videos From Space

Is NASA getting into the movie business? While the moon landing in July of 1969 held the world at the edge of their seats, watching it on tiny black and white televisions with grainy images and a wobbly video feed, today’s video being beamed back from space is literally light years ahead of those vintage images. 

A view of the Earth taken by a 4K video camera now onboard the ISS and operational

Image Credit: NASA

Most people are familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope and the amazing images it has captured in its 25-year history. Stars being born and dying, galaxies expanding and entire nebulas were brought to life with that instrument. But video is so much more exciting, right? Especially as it concerns the International Space Station. A lot goes on up there, astronauts come and go on a regular basis, they host live chats with school children, and there’s a ton of science work being done on board. 

NASA wants to share all those events, as well as the spectacular view outside the station. On the outside of the IShttps://youtu.be/ouv1Un1F36AS, there are cameras mounted that focus in all directions and stream video as part of the High Definition Earth Viewing System, or HDEV. It’s a live feed that can be viewed on NASA’s UStream page, live as it happens. The resolution of those images is the standard for live stream, 1080p. At that size, the ISS has enough online bandwidth to make that video available live. 

The mission of space though, is to go further and to do that NASA has just released the first video from a new system of cameras on board the ISS. The main difference is the picture quality. The video just posted online on NASAs ReelNASA YouTube channel is a whopping 3840×2160 pixels, a standard known as 4K or Ultra High Definition, UHD-1. It’s close to four times the pixel size of the 1080p streams and it makes images literally pop on screen. Because of this ginormous size, the film is edited down and then beamed to Earth and posted online, as opposed to streaming live. Even the ISS doesn’t have the bandwidth to stream video of that size.

Another difference is the focus of each camera. The HDEV cameras are set to a fixed wide-angle focus, which while they capture a larger area than the new 4K cameras, the HDEV process cannot bring in the details the UHD-1 cameras can. The high definition cameras are set to focus much like a telephoto lens does, providing enough detail to tell the make and model of cars in traffic. 

There are two of the High-Def cameras on board the ISS, one taking video at the 4K rate and another taking stills at 25MP. The video posted by NASA on June 15, 2015 shows video taken from the exterior of the ISS, including some stunning video of the polar ice caps, storm clouds of the ocean and even footage of the Space-X cargo ship docking at the station as well as the ISS astronauts going about their activities in a “day in the life” style of what it’s like on board. There is even footage showing how a cheeseburger is made in zero gravity 

Check out Reel 1 below to catch a Hi-Def glimpse of life onboard and outside the ISS. 

12-08-2015 om 00:55 geschreven door peter  

Salt flat indicates some of the last vestiges of surface water on Mars

A perspective rendering of the martian chloride deposit and surrounding terrain.

LASP/Brian Hynek

Mars turned cold and dry long ago, but researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered evidence of an ancient lake that likely represents some of the last potentially habitable surface water ever to exist on the Red Planet.

The study examined an 18-square-mile (47 square kilometers) chloride salt deposit in the planet’s Meridiani region near the Mars Opportunity rover’s landing site. As seen on Earth in locations such as Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, large-scale salt deposits are considered to be evidence of evaporated bodies of water.

Digital terrain mapping and mineralogical analysis of the features surrounding the deposit indicate that this one-time lakebed is no older than 3.6 billion years old, well after the time period when Mars is thought to have been warm enough to sustain large amounts of surface water planet-wide. Planetary scientists believe that the solar system formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago.

“This was a long-lived lake, and we were able to put a very good time boundary on its maximum age,” said Brian Hynek, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study. “We can be pretty certain that this is one of the last instances of a sizable lake on Mars.”   

Based on the extent and thickness of the salt, the researchers estimate that the lake was only about 8 percent as salty as the Earth’s oceans and therefore may have been hospitable to microbial life.

“By salinity alone, it certainly seems as though this lake would have been habitable throughout much of its existence,” said Hynek, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at CU-Boulder and director of the CU Center for Astrobiology. He noted, however, that other factors such as acidity levels were not included in the scope of the study.

{ http://www.astronomy.com/ }

12-08-2015 om 00:48 geschreven door peter  

Are we alone in the universe? Paul Davies on the search for extraterrestrial life

A huge investment into the search for intelligent alien life has renewed public interest in the question of whether we're alone in the universe. Paul Davies tells Late Night Live why he's sceptical of the current search, and why he thinks we should look for 'life as we don't know it' on our own planet.

Since the 1960s, radio telescopes have been sweeping the skies on a shoestring budget, hoping to stumble across a message from ET. That search is now set to be transformed by a high-profile, multi-million dollar initiative called Breakthrough Listen, which will use some of the biggest telescopes on Earth to probe far deeper into the universe.

At the initiative's launch, British cosmologist Stephen Hawking expressed the optimism of many in the scientific community, telling the media: 'In an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life. Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching.'

Does that mean we're bound to find something if we just keep looking long enough? Not necessarily, says astrophysicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies.

Professor Davies is a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)—in fact, he's chair of the SETI Post-Detection Science and Technology Task Group, the body charged with responding if Earth is contacted by aliens. However, he thinks we may need some radically new thinking to have a chance of finding anything other than 'eerie silence'.

'It's always possible to believe that if you spend more and look harder you're going to come across something,' he says of the $135 million investment announced in July.

'Suddenly, overnight, this hand-to-mouth project has been transformed into a serious scientific program, so that is of course very welcome.

'At this stage it's very unclear as to how the money will be spent. If it's just spent on doing more of the same, it's welcome, but I can't get very excited. I think we need some radically new thinking about what to look for and how to go about it.'

Read more: Australian scientist leads search for alien life forms

The major problem, Professor Davies says, is that the current strategy only picks up messages deliberately being sent to Earth—and that doesn't make sense.

'The strategy so far is to point a radio telescope at a hopeful star for maybe half an hour, and then hop from star to star in the hope of picking up a message,' he says.

'The question is, is ET on a planet, around a star, beaming a message at us? That's not credible. It's not credible that a civilisation 1,000 light years away would be beaming messages at Earth. Why should they?

'If they can see Earth, if they have super-duper advanced technology, they have the ability to see our planet and to figure that there is intelligent life on it—moderately intelligent life on it—but they see Earth as it was 1,000 years ago. There were no radio telescopes; there was no radio.

'In another 1,000 years they will hear the words I'm speaking now [and say], "Aha! There is intelligent life on Earth! We'll send them a message!" But it's too soon, and so we shouldn't be looking for deliberately directed messages, but looking for beacons instead.'

While some, including Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, are worried about the risks of contacting and potentially antagonising alien civilisations, Professor Davies thinks that's an unlikely scenario.

'I think this is a completely daft argument—the idea that by broadcasting into space we'd somehow bring an alien invasion on ourselves,' he says.

'If ET wants Planet Earth, it's been around 4.5 billion years. The aliens could have come here at any time. They don't need us to tell them about the planet.

'If they've got instruments capable of picking up our messages, and understanding them, then they know a lot about our planet already. We don't have to invite them in, they'd just come. And they haven't come for 4.5 billion years so why should they come just now?'

Read more: NASA discovers planet orbiting 'cousin' of sun

For Professor Davies, the big question is whether Earth-like planets are likely to have life on them. And that can only be answered, he says, if we understand how life began in the first place.

'Is it the case that a planet that is like Earth is likely to have life on it? We can only answer that question if we know the mechanism that turns non-life into life,' he says.

'If we knew what did it, we could estimate the odds. We don't know what did it and so we've got these two points of view: [either] it's a bizarre fluke, it won't happen twice, [or] somehow it's built into the nature of the universe, and life will pop up all over the place.'

He says the idea that needs to be tested is whether life is, in fact, 'a cosmic imperative', as Nobel prize-winning biologist Christian de Duve believed.

'If life does pop up obligingly in Earth-like conditions, no planet is more Earth-like than Earth itself, so shouldn't life have started many times over right here on our home planet? How do we know it didn't? Has anybody actually looked?' asks Davies.

'When I worked on these ideas with my friend Charley Lineweaver at the ANU some years ago ... [it] turned out that really nobody had even thought of this possibility.'

IMAGE: 'NO PLANET IS MORE EARTH-LIKE THAN EARTH ITSELF' ... EARTH SEEN FROM THE DEEP SPACE CLIMATE OBSERVATORY SPACECRAFT. (NASA)

He argues that the focus should be on examining microbes, since most life on earth is microbial. The right kind of investigation could unearth what scientists describe as a 'shadow biosphere'.

'You can't tell by looking what are microbes made of. You don't know how it ticks, you've got to delve into its biochemical innards to work that out, and if you go looking for life as we know it, you're not going to discover life as we don't know it,' he says.

'Those teeming microbes—of which probably only about less than 1 per cent have actually been characterised, let alone cultured and sequenced—we don't know what they are. There's plenty of room at the bottom for microbial life that would be radically alternative to known life.'

Listen: The Science Show on the possibility of life beyond Earth

If these microbes were found, it would be obvious from their biochemistry that they could not possibly have had a common origin with the rest of life on Earth, Professor Davies says.

'Then you could say, well, life has happened at least twice, and if it's happened twice, it surely will have happened all the way around the universe,' he says.

'Then there would be justification for the belief that we live in a universe that is teeming with life. But we have to find one microbe.'

Such a discovery would energise Professor Davies' enthusiasm for SETI. Even before that, though, he believes the search is worthwhile, despite his scepticism about the process.

'I've always been a supporter of SETI. You can tell that I'm sceptical of the strategy, but I think it's worth doing, and it's worth doing because it leads people ... to have conversations like this,' he says.

'It gets young people excited by science, it makes us think about big questions like what is life, what is intelligence, what are the laws of nature, what is our place in the universe. Even if we don't get the answers from SETI, it's really good that we think about those things.'

{ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ }

12-08-2015 om 00:36 geschreven door peter  

Here's The Truth About NASA's 'Woman On Mars'

We're not saying it's aliens.

 It's a god-awful small affair, to the girl who's not even there.  

A photo from the Mars Curiosity rover posted to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website has the Internet buzzing about the so-called "woman" on the Red Planet.

But if there is life on Mars, this image isn't evidence of it, one expert tells The Huffington Post. Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research, thinks that it's all in the eyes -- or, brain, rather -- of the beholder.

"The fact that so many people are adept at playing 'Where’s Waldo?' with rover photos is a testament to our brain’s ability to pick out creatures in the visual landscape," he told HuffPost. "It’s a talent that helped our ancestors avoid predators or catch prey, but it’s a poor strategy in the hunt for extraterrestrial life."

Yes, the human brain is hard-wired to look for patterns, meaning and even faces in images. It's a phenomenon called pareidolia.

Although it's hard to tell exactly what the first (second?) lady of Mars is made of without examining it, Shostak says that it's probably a rock. (Hey, it could have been dust or dirt.)

"I know that this may disappoint those who are convinced otherwise, but just because it looks like a duck is hardly proof of ducky-ness -- or in this case, evidence that a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty is welcoming NASA hardware to Mars," Shostak said. 

Here's a bunch of other cool-looking Mars rocks: 

When the Mars rover Spirit captured this image of a human-like figure in 2007, alien enthusiasts hoped it might finally be a sign of alien life on the red planet. Scientists' verdict? Rock.

"Mars Rat"

The "Mars rat" was found in a March 2013 image from the Curiosity rover. The rat took the Internet by storm -- and even got its own Twitter account. So, rock or tech-savvy rat?... It's just. A rock.

Thigh Bone

Last month, alien enthusiasts claimed to have found a "thigh bone" in an image taken on Mars. Again. We're going with rock.

Skull

Spooky! This skull-like object was spotted in an image taken by the rover Spirit in 2006. Similar "skulls" have been spotted in subsequent rover images -- including a bird and a T. rex. Even an "alien's skull" was spotted. The verdict? ALL ROCKS.

Mysteriously Appearing Donut

When a rock shaped like a jelly doughnutmysteriously appeared in front of the Opportunity rover in January 2014, everyone wondered how it got there. Was it dropped there by an alien cop on his coffee break? Nope. According to NASA, the rover flicked it into its own path.

Helmet

Bloggers spotted this "helmet" or "bowler hat" in a 2013 Curiosity photo. It's definitely a rock.

Door Handle

This mysterious metallic-looking object that showed up in a Curiosity photo in 2013 may look like it flew off an alien's door. But according to NASA, it's just a hard, fine-grained rock that was "polished" by the wind.

Flower

This "flower" was spotted in a 2012 Curiosity photo. It's definitely not biological, but planetary scientist Aileen Yingst did tell Space.com that she would "hesitate to say what it is."

MORE: Woman On Mars, Mars Woman, Life On Mars, Mars Photos, Woman Mars Photos, Woman Mars Nasa

{ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/section/science }

12-08-2015 om 00:25 geschreven door peter  

(Before It's News)

openminds.tv

• Is Banbury becoming an alien hotspot? Police deal with multiple extraterrestrial reports – Branbury Guardian
• ‘The ISS is being monitored by aliens’: Conspiracy theorists spot yet another UFO hovering above the space station – Daily Mail
• Google app lets UFO lover detect ‘politician’s face’ on Mars – RT
• Here’s The Truth About NASA’s ‘Woman On Mars’ – Huffington Post
• Are we alone in the universe? Paul Davies on the search for extraterrestrial life – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

11-08-2015 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

2.8-Billion-Year-Old Spheres Found In South Africa: How Were They Made?

(Before It's News)

2.8-Billion-Year-Old Spheres Found In South Africa: How Were They Made?

Spheres found in the mines of South Africa have piqued the curiosity of researchers for decades.

According to Michael Cremo and other researchers of prehistoric culture, these spheres add to a body of evidence suggesting intelligent life existed on Earth long before a conventional view of history places it here.

Cremo has traveled the world gathering information on out-of-place artefacts (ooparts); he compiled his findings in the popular book, “Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race.”

In 1984, while investigating the spheres, he contacted Roelf Marx, curator of the museum of Klerksdorp, South Africa, where some of the spheres are kept. Marx described the spheres as being about 2.8 billion years old, with a very hard surface and a fibrous structure inside. He found them quite strange and puzzling.

Marx wrote, according to Cremo: “’There is nothing scientific published about the globes, but the facts are: They are found in pyrophyllite, which is mined near the little town of Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal. This pyrophyllite … is a quite soft secondary mineral with a count of only 3 on the Mohs scale [a scale of 1 to 10 to rank the hardness of minerals] and was formed by sedimentation about 2.8 billion years ago.”

“On the other hand, the globes, which have a fibrous structure on the inside with a shell around it, are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel. The Mohs scale of hardness is named after Friedrich Mohs, who chose ten minerals as references points for comparative hardness, with talc the softest and diamond the hardest.”

Steel ranks about a 6.5 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale, so the spheres would be harder than that, according to Marx.

WERE THEY NATURALLY FORMED?

Some say the spheres were formed by a natural process of concretion. Concretions are masses of hardened mineral matter.

Some of the so-called Klerksdorp spheres are elliptical in shape with rough ridges around the center. But some are so balanced in shape and proportion, and the grooves around them look so straight and hand-carved, it seems unlikely they were naturally formed, say proponents of the theory that these spheres were made by intelligent beings.

In 2002, the Klerksdorp Museum posted a letter from John Hund of Pietersburg, South Africa, on its website. The claims made in this letter were not verified, according to geologist Paul V. Heinrich, and the letter was later removed. Hund stated that one of the spheres was tested at the California Space Institute, and scientists concluded that its balance “is so fine, it exceeded the limit of their measuring technology.” It was “within one-hundred thousandths of an inch from absolute perfection.”

Heinrich did not find the South African spheres he studied perfectly balanced and shaped…

Moqui Marbles of Utah

In Utah, similar spheres were found. They are about 2 million years old, and they are known as Moqui marbles or Moqui balls. Legend holds that the departed ancestors of the Hopi Native Americans would play games with the marbles and leave them as messages to their relatives that they are happy and well.

Moqui marbles have a sandy interior and a hard, round exterior made of iron oxide. Heinrich’s tests on one of the Klerksdorp spheres showed it to be made of hematite, a mineral form of iron oxide. He found another Klerksdorp sphere consisted of the mineral wollastonite along with hematite and geothite, a hydrated iron oxide.

Various theories for exactly how these spheres may have been made are presented by those who say they are natural phenomena. Dr. Karrie Weber at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is researching microbes that she has said may have helped form the spheres out of the by-products of its life processes. 

Geologist Dave Crosby, who has done research in Utah where the Moqui marbles are found, originally hypothesized that a meteor impact scattered molten spheres that then condensed on sand grains. Upon closer examination, as explained on RocksandMinerals.com, he found no evidence of a meteor impact. He then developed a theory that involves rainwater dissolving iron and other minerals and carrying them to the groundwater. As they flow through the groundwater, the ions are deposited around sand grains forming spheres.

Cremo, and others who hold that ooparts are evidence of advanced prehistoric civilizations, say mainstream scientists need to be more bold and more willing to acknowledge evidence that could contradict dominant views. 

The article ‘2.8-Billion-Year-Old Spheres Found in South Africa: How Were They Made?’ originally appeared on The Epoch Times and has been republished with permission.

Featured image: Top left, bottom right: Spheres, known as Klerksdorp spheres, found in the pyrophyllite (wonderstone) deposits near Ottosdal, South Africa. (Robert Huggett) Top right, bottom left: Objects known as Moqui marbles from the Navajo Sandstone of southeast Utah. (Paul Heinrich)

Source: http://ufothetruthisoutthere.blogspot.com/2014/10/28-billion-year-old-spheres-found-in.html

11-08-2015 om 23:52 geschreven door peter