Will the World's Largest Supercollider Spawn a Black Hole? (Op-Ed)

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, the United States' biggest Large Hadron Collider research institution. He also writes about science for the public, including his recent "The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow Your Mind" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). You can follow him on Facebook. The opinions here are his own. Lincoln contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Cutting-edge science is an exploration of the unknown; an intellectual step into the frontier of human knowledge. Such studies provide great excitement for those of us passionate about understanding the world around us, but some are apprehensive of the unknown and wonder if new and powerful science, and the facilities where it is explored, could be dangerous. Some even go so far as to ask whether one of humanity's most ambitious research projects could even pose an existential threat to the Earth itself. So let's ask that question now and get it out of the way.

Can a supercollider end life on Earth? No. Of course not.

But it's not really a silly question for people who haven't thought carefully about it. After all, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, is explicitly an instrument of exploration, one that is designed to push back the frontiers of ignorance. It's not so unreasonable to ask how you know something isn't dangerous if you've never done it before. So how is it I can say with such utter confidence that the LHC is completely safe?

Well, the short answer is that cosmic rays from space constantly pummel the Earth with energies that dwarf those of the LHC. Given that the Earth is still here, there can be no danger, or so the reasoning goes.

And that could well be the final story, but the tale is much richer than that short (but very accurate) answer would lead you to believe. So let's dig a bit deeper into what makes some suspect a danger, and then explore a fairly detailed description of the point and counterpoint involved in delivering a solid and satisfying answer to the question.

Can the LHC create an Earth-killer black hole?

Skeptics have proposed that the LHC would produce many possible dangers, ranging from the vague fear of the unknown to some that are strangely specific.

The most commonly mentioned is the idea that the LHC can make a black hole. In popular literature, black holes are ravening monstrosities of the universe, gobbling up everything around them. Given such a depiction, it's not at all unreasonable for people to then wonder if a black hole created by the LHC might reach out and destroy the accelerator, the laboratory, then Switzerland, Europe and finally the Earth. This would be a scary scenario, were it credible — but it's not.

What immediately follows are the weaker (but still compelling) reasons why this possibility is, well, not possible, and in the next section you will see the cast-iron and gold-plated reasons to dismiss this and all other possible Earth-ending scenarios.

The first question is whether a black hole can even be created at the LHC. Alas, when looking at all of the scientific evidence and using our most modern understanding of the laws of the universe, there is no way that the LHC can make a black hole. Gravity is simply too weak for this to occur.

Some skeptics protest that one explanation for the weakness of gravity is that tiny extra dimensions of space exist. According to that theory, gravity is really strong and just appears to be weak because gravity can "leak" into the extra dimensions. Once we start probing those tiny dimensions, the strong gravity could perhaps make a black hole. Sadly for black hole aficionados, no one has found evidence for the existence of extra dimensions, and if they don't exist, the LHC can't make black holes.

So the entire underlying idea of that particular possible danger is built on a long shot. Yet, even in the unlikely case that extra dimensions are real and a black hole can be created, there is a good reason to not worry about black holes damaging the Earth.

The shield against that hypothetical danger is Hawking radiation. Proposed in 1974 by Steven Hawking, Hawking radiation is essentially the evaporation of a black hole caused by its interactions with particles created in the vicinity of the hole. While black holes will absorb surrounding material and grow, an isolated black hole will slowly lose mass.

The mechanism is a quantum mechanical one, involving pairs of particles being made near the surface of the hole. One particle will go into the hole, but the other will escape and carry away energy. Since, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, energy and mass are the same, this process has the effect of very slowly decreasing the mass of the black hole. Even though one particle enters the hole, the loss of the other results in the hole slowly evaporating. This is a tricky point. Most people think of a black hole as the mass at the center, but it's actually both the mass at the center and the energy stored in the gravitational field. The particle zooming down to the center is just moving around in the black hole, while the particle that moves out escapes the black hole entirely. Both the mass of the escaping particle and the energy it carries are lost to the black hole, reducing the energy of the entire black hole system.

And the rate at which a hole evaporates is a strong function of the hole's size. A large black hole will lose energy very slowly, but a small one will evaporate in the blink of an eye. In fact, any black hole the LHC could possibly make, via any possible theory, will disappear before it can get near any other matter to gobble up.

Strange strangelets

Another proposed danger is a thing called a strangelet. A strangelet is a hypothetical subatomic particle composed of roughly an equal number of up, down and strange quarks.

Mind you, there is zero evidence that strangelets are anything other than an idea born in the fertile imagination of a theoretical physicist. But, if they exist, the claim is that a strangelet is essentially a catalyst. If it impacts ordinary matter, it will make the matter it touches also turn into a strangelet. Following the idea to its logical conclusion, if a strangelet were made on Earth, it would result in the entire planet collapsing down into a ball of matter made of strangelets … kind of like turning the Earth into an exotic version of neutron star. Essentially a strangelet can be thought of as a subatomic zombie; one that turns everything it touches into a fellow strangelet zombie.

But there is no evidence that strangelets are real, so that might be enough to keep some people from worrying. However, it's still true that the LHC is a machine of discovery and maybe it could actually make a strangelet … well, if they really exist. After all, strangelets haven't been definitively ruled out and some theories favor them. However, an earlier particle accelerator called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider went looking for them and came up empty.

Those are but two ideas for how a supercollider could pose a threat, and there are more. We could list all of the possible dangers, but there remains something more unsettling to keep in mind: Since we don't know what happens to matter when we start studying it at energies only possible with the LHC (that is, of course, the point of building the accelerator), maybe something will happen that was never predicted. And, given our ignorance, maybe that unexpected phenomenon might be dangerous.

And it is that last worry that could have potentially been so troubling to the LHC's creators. When you don't know what you don't know, you … well … you don't know. Such a question requires a powerful and definitive answer. And here it is…

Why the LHC is totally safe

Given the exploratory nature of the LHC research program, what is needed is an ironclad reason that demonstrates that the facility is safe even if no one knows what the LHC might encounter.

Luckily, we have the most compelling answer of all: Nature has been running the equivalent of countless LHC experiments since the universe began — and still does, every day, on Earth.

Space is a violent place, with stars throwing off literally tons of material every second — and that's the tamest of phenomena. Supernovas occur, blasting star stuff across the cosmos. Neutron stars can use intense magnetic fields to accelerate particles from one side of the universe to another. Pairs of orbiting black holes can merge, shaking the very fabric of space itself.

All of those phenomena, as well as many others, cause subatomic particles to be flung across space. Mostly consisting of protons, those particles travel the lengths of the universe, stopping only when an inconvenient bit of matter gets in their way.

And, occasionally, that inconvenient bit of matter is the Earth. We call these intergalactic bullets — mostly high-energy protons — "cosmic rays." Cosmic rays carry a range of energies, from the almost negligible, to energies that absolutely dwarf those of the LHC.

To give a sense of scale, the LHC collides particles together with a total energy of 13 trillion (or tera) electron volts of energy (TeV). The highest-energy cosmic ray ever recorded was an unfathomable 300,000,000 TeV of energy.

Now, cosmic rays of that prodigious energy are very rare. The energy of more common cosmic rays is much lower. But here's the point: Cosmic rays of the energy of a single LHC beam hit the Earth about half a quadrillion times per second. No collider necessary.

Remember that cosmic rays are mostly protons. That's because almost all of the matter in the universe is hydrogen, which consists of a single proton and a single electron. When they hit the Earth's atmosphere, they collide with nitrogen or oxygen or other atoms, which are composed of protons and neutrons. Accordingly, cosmic rays hitting the Earth are just two protons slamming together — this is exactly what is happening inside the LHC. Two protons slamming together.

Thus, the barrage of cosmic rays from space have been doing the equivalent of LHC research since the Earth began — we just haven't had the luxury of being able to watch.

Now one must be careful. It's easy to throw numbers around a bit glibly. While there are lots of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere with LHC energies, the situations between what happens inside the LHC and what happens with cosmic rays everywhere on Earth are a bit different.

Cosmic ray collisions involve fast-moving protons hitting stationary ones, while LHC collisions involve two beams of fast-moving protons hitting head-on. Head-on collisions are intrinsically more violent; so to make a fair comparison, we need to consider cosmic rays that are much higher in energy, specifically about 100,000 times higher than LHC energies.

Cosmic rays of that energy are rarer than the lower energy ones, but still 500,000,000 of them hit the Earth's atmosphere every year.

When you remember that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, you realize that the Earth has experienced something like 2 billion billion cosmic ray collisions with LHC-equivalent energies (or higher) in the atmosphere since the Earth formed. In order to make that many collisions, we'd need to run the LHC continuously for 70 years. Given that we're still here, we can conclude that we're safe.

But to be absolutely sure ...

The cosmic ray argument is fantastic, as it is independent of any possible LHC danger, including ones we haven't imagined yet. However, there is a loophole that potentially reduces the argument's strength. Because cosmic ray collisions are between a fast-moving and a stationary proton, the "dangerous" particle (whatever that might be) gets produced at high velocity and may shoot out of the Earth before it has time to damage it. (It's like in billiards when a cue ball hits another ball. After the impact, at least one, and often both, go flying.) In contrast, the LHC beams hit head-on, making stationary objects. (Think of two identical cars with identical speeds hitting head-on.) Maybe they will stick around and wreak carnage on the globe.

But there is an answer to that too. I picked the Earth because it is near and dear to us, but the Earth isn't the only thing being hit by cosmic rays. The sun gets hit as well; and when a cosmic ray hits the sun, it might make a high-energy "dangerous" product, but that product then has to travel through a much larger amount of matter. And this doesn't take into account that the sun is much larger than the Earth, so it experiences many more high-energy collisions than our planet does.

Further, we can expand the number of cosmic targets to include neutron stars, which consist of matter so dense that whatever potentially dangerous thing we might consider will stop dead in the neutron star right after it is made. And yet the sun and the neutron stars we see in the universe all are still there. They haven't disappeared.

Safety assured!

So that argument is the bottom line. When you ask if the LHC is safe, you have to realize that the universe has already done the experiments for us.

Cosmic rays hit the Earth, the sun, other stars and all the myriad denizens of the universe with energies that far exceed those of the LHC. This happens all the time. If there were any danger, we would see some of these objects disappearing before our eyes. And yet we don't. Thus, we can conclude that whatever happens in the LHC, it poses exactly, precisely, inarguably, zero danger. And you can't forget the crucial point that this argument works for all conceivable dangers, including those that nobody has imagined yet.

So having established the ironclad safety of the LHC, what then? Well, we absolutely hope that we do make black holes in the LHC — as explained, they would be tiny and not gobble up the planet. If we do see tiny black holes, we'll have figured out why gravity seems so weak. We'll probably have established that extra dimensions of space exist. We'll be that much closer to finding a theory of everything, a theory that is so persuasive, simple and concise that we can write its equation on a T-shirt.

While we are now assured that the LHC is utterly safe, it is absolutely true that the safety question was important for scientists to investigate. In fact, the whole exercise was a satisfying one, as it used the best scientific principles to come to a definitive conclusion that all can agree is valid. So now we can push back the boundaries of our ignorance, with only our increasing excitement of the prospect of a discovery to distract us.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Hawking Wants to Power Earth With Mini Black Holes: Crazy or Legit?
• How Do Monster Black Holes Form? New Find May Provide 'Missing Link'
• Earth Is Safe: No Black Holes Spun Out of Atom Smasher, Yet

{ http://www.space.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 23:37 geschreven door peter  

NASA Maps Geology of Pluto's 'Heart'

A newly created geological map of Pluto's famous heart-shaped region shows just how varied and complex the distant dwarf planet is.

Scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission, which performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto on July 14, have put together a color-coded geological map of Sputnik Planum, the huge nitrogen-ice plain that occupies the left side of Pluto's heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio.

The map covers an area that stretches 1,290 miles (2,070 kilometers) from top to bottom and features a resolution of at least 1,050 feet (320 meters) per pixel, NASA said. (Some parts of the map are even sharper than that.)

The newly released map allows researchers to see variations in Pluto's terrain, which, in turn, can provide insight into the geological history of the dwarf planet.

For example, the bright yellow regions on the map are impact craters, which are notably absent from Sputnik Planum proper. This suggests that this portion of Pluto has been resurfaced recently; there hasn't been time for craters to pepper the surface there, scientists have said.

Other colors show different kinds of terrain, which are defined by their texture and form. One area coded with a greenish hue is defined as "featureless plains," while very light blue denotes "bright, cellular plains."

The black lines are troughs, which delineate "cells" of nitrogen ice on Sputnik Planum that are thought to form as a result of convective processes.

The red area at the southern tip of the map shows the 2.5-mile-high (4.0 km) Wright Mons, which might be a volcano that spews ice rather than lava. Scientists aren't sure why the material around it, which looks reddish-brown in New Horizons' "true color" photos, isn't more widespread on the surface, NASA officials said.

To make this map, New Horizons team members used the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taking pictures at a distance of 48,000 miles (77,300 km) from Pluto on July 14. At the time, New Horizons was less than 2 hours away from its closest approach, which brought the probe within just 7,800 miles (12,550 km) of Pluto's surface.

You can Follow Jesse Empsak @Mad_Science_Guy. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• How NASA's New Horizons Mission to Pluto Works (Infographic)
• Ice Volcanoes On Pluto? New Imagery Points To It | Video
• New Horizons Probe's July 14 Pluto Flyby: Complete Coverage

{ http://www.space.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

A New Era in Physics: Gravitational Waves Finally Detected

IN BRIEF

After decades of searching, scientists have succeeded in detecting gravitational waves from the violent merger of two massive black holes.

After months of speculation, and decades of continuous effort and hard work, scientists at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) have finally snagged their first confirmed gravitational wave detection.

Remarkably, the waves were even powerful enough to break the Internet, bringing down both the LIGO and American Physical Society websites.

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Physical Review Lett @PhysRevLett

Until our servers are back online (we're adding more capacity now) here is figure one from the paper #LIGO

5:12 PM - 11 Feb 2016

“A WINDOW ONTO THE UNIVERSE”

“My reaction was ‘Wow, I couldn’t believe it!,” said David Reitze, Executive Director of the LIGO Laboratory. “I think we’re opening a window onto the universe, a window of gravitational wave astronomy.”

The detection was made on September 14, 2015. The ensuing months were spent in the arduous task of actually confirming a signal that was, at first, considered too good to be true.

But the researchers finally verified the findings.  “It was definitely not a blind injection,” said Gabriela González, spokeswoman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, referring to false signals occasionally injected into the data to ensure accurate detections.

The signals emanated from a point in the sky somewhere in the southern celestial hemisphere, in the rough direction of the Magellanic clouds. Ultimately, they were emitted roughly 1.3 billion years ago (which means the source was located about 1.3 billion light years away).

The waves resulted from the collision, and subsequent merger, of two black holes. These black holes were 29 and 36 solar masses respectively and about 150 kilometers in diameter. Notably, they collided at half the speed of light.

According to theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech, a co-founder of LIGO and pioneer in the field of gravitational wave detection, the colliding black holes “created a violent storm in the fabric of spacetime.”

This storm was very brief—lasting only 20 milliseconds—and unleashed an amount of energy equivalent to 50 times the total power output of all the stars in the universe. The two black holes merged to form a single, 62 solar mass black hole. 3 suns worth of gravitational energy was annihilated in the coalescence, releasing the gravitational waves that were detected last September.

Artist’s representation of the merger. Credit: Phys Review Letters

EINSTEIN’S GREAT CONTRIBUTION

The signals exactly matched predictions from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity regarding what would happen when two black holes collide and merge. In fact, the nature of the event was made clear by running computer simulations and finding which ones produced a signal that coincided with the September 14 event.

“Einstein would be beaming, wouldn’t he?” enthused France Córdova, Director of the National Science Foundation.

The LIGO detectors are some of the most sophisticated, and some of the most sensitive, instruments in the world.  Both are located in the United States, with one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana.  A third detector, the VIRGO experiment in Cascina, Italy, is expected to become operational shortly. Once it is online, it will be possible to triangulate gravitational wave sources in the sky.

The interferometers operate by shining laser beams along two perpendicular “arms” that are each 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long; gravitational waves are registered by minute discrepancies in the distance traveled by the laser light—discrepancies caused when the passing waves “stretch” spacetime.

The discrepancy detected in the September 14 event amounted to about 1,000th the size of an atomic nucleus.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

The new discovery has enormous implications, many of which will require decades to be worked out.  It’s an astonishing independent confirmation of the fundamental truth and power of Einstein’s equations, but more importantly, it opens up to human understanding an entirely new dimension of astronomical observation.  Whereas before we were restricted to electromagnetic radiations alone, we can now observe the very ripples of spacetime itself.

Thorne expects that further gravitational wave detections will be made in the coming year; when the VIRGO instruments come online, astronomers will be able to pinpoint the sources with greater precision and accuracy.

And there are designs in the works for new detectors that can register gravitational waves with periods, not merely in the millisecond range (as with LIGO), but in the range of minutes to hours, years to decades, and even billions of years.

And there’s likely much more to come.

“As we open a new window in astronomy, we may see things we’ve never seen before,” David Reitze predicted.

You can read the paper, which was published in Physical Review Letters, here. In the event that the peer review article is not accessible, as the website may go down again, the results and abstract are copied below:

Phys Review Letters

Phys Review Letters

15-02-2016 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

PROJECT REDSUN: THEY WENT TO MARS WITHOUT TELLING US

How much do we know about Mars? Or is it “how much we don’t know about it” a better question to ask?

 

According to several sources, the distant Red Planet meant an important deal to NASA ever since the late 1950s. As the Apollo program was coming to an end, and with the entire population bathed in excitement because of the huge step humanity took towards progress and innovation, the space agency already had bigger plans for the near future.

 

Apparently, at that time (in 1970s more precisely) NASA focused more on a manned mission to Mars. As crazy as this sounds, it might prove to be true, and here is why: 50 years ago from now, in the summer of 1965, Mariner 4 became the first successful mission to come near the surface of the Red Planet. The photos returned by the space module caused an immense stir among NASA’s personnel, as it revealed never before seen features of the bizarre “red dot” that could be observed from Earth. 

 

 

What they learned in 1965 made the agency want to send astronauts there ASAP in order to colonize the Red Planet and who knows what other reasons they had. Therefore, NASA secretly funded a project similar to the Apollo missions which they codenamed Project REDSUN. Its aim was apparently to colonize the planet, but after analyzing the case, it seems that they had some other thoughts as well. Is it possible that NASA encountered some form of intelligent life on Mars? 

 

 

In 1971, one year before the final Apollo mission, Mariner 9 was orbiting Mars and managed to photograph the entirety of its surface, thus providing conclusive images with ancient riverbeds, a 3,000 mile-long grand canyon, gigantic volcanoes, and other artificial-like structures that we can also see for ourselves today.

 

What seems rather interesting is the fact that NASA had a free hand to operate under the ongoing lunar exploration hysteria. Another curious thing to note is the fact that the agency was overly prepared to send a second mission to Mars, as Richard Zurek, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s leading scientist revealed:

 

It was a good thing we had other spacecraft ready, as it might have stopped Mars exploration for a while. The pace of exploration would have slowed – we certainly wouldn’t have had anything as ambitious as the mission in 1970s.

 

 

Mariner 9’s photo of Nirgal Vallis, the largest valley network on Mars

It was a planet that seemed similar enough to the Earth that you could imagine it having supported life in the past… We still don’t know for sure if life did develop there.”

 

In the years that followed, several exploration modules were sent to Mars, probably because of the unimaginable discoveries that were previously unearthed. However, first photos from the actual surface of the planet were taken by the Viking 1 mission and were revealed on July 20, 1976. One day later, the first color picture taken by the Viking 2 lander was available. Considering all the above, we can’t help but wonder what happened between 1970 and 1976, and why the space agency didn’t officially admit the landing of a module on the Martian surface until then?

 

On August 28, 1973, a secret mission funded by NASA and the US Department of Defense was to depart towards the distant planet Mars under the name of Project Redsun. According to recently leaked documents, the crew consisted of American astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and a fellow comrade from the USSR named Vladimir Ilyushin.

 

The video below was supposedly leaked from a collection of 16mm archived footage used in the training of NASA astronauts and Air Force pilots. The video reveals how astronauts aboard a spacecraft considered to be the ISV Columbus, are slowly leaving behind Earth’s view to welcome a new, more dusty sight of planet Mars. Some features of the Red Planet are clearly visible during the orbital flight, including the famous South Pole of Mars.

 

 

Mission control was established at Cocoa Beach, Florida and it coordinated Project Redsun’s first three launches. All subsequent missions were relocated and administrated from Area 51.

 

After the video was made public, people begun to question its authenticity, and as usual, NASA denied any form of implication in a manned mission to Mars, considering the footage to be a ridiculous forgery. While people couldn’t accept the agency’s potential for such a quest, seeing as it was 1970 back then, the above footage didn’t receive too much attention. However, it all changed in April 2011 when more evidence was brought to light by an Italian journalist and UFO researcher Luca Scantamburlo. During a press conference, they presented a testimony revealing the details of project Redsun.

 

I introduce to you a press-release testimony I have written to discuss the presumed existence of a hush-hush military space program called “Project Redsun”, carried out in the 70s of the last century to build a stationary base on Mars, the Red Planet. My source of information – named by me ‘bravoxsierra24’ – had contacted me by email. It is possible to reproduce the pages of the press release, and the picture here presented as well.

 

 

 

The below documents back up this seemingly crazy but not at all impossible hypothesis of an early manned mission to Mars. If this happened indeed, we can think of so many reasons why NASA would engage in such a secret mission. What could NASA had encountered there? Was there an ancient alien base or did they met with intelligent beings who still inhabit the planet? Considering many other possibilities, the reason might exceed all our earthly expectations, and who knows, maybe one they we will find out. Are we prepared for this kind of disclosure? 

 

 

( via ufoholic.com ) 

{ http://7tales.net/index.php }

 

15-02-2016 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

Pandora's box

Credit: Image via Shutterstock

In 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin is said to have pronounced: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Within three decades, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity had revolutionized the field. Today, no physicist would dare assert that our physical knowledge of the universe is near completion. To the contrary, each new discovery seems to unlock a Pandora's box of even bigger, even deeper physics questions. These are our picks for the most profound open questions of all.

Credit: NASA

No matter how astrophysicists crunch the numbers, the universe simply doesn't add up. Even though gravity is pulling inward on space-time — the "fabric" of the cosmos — it keeps expanding outward faster and faster. To account for this, astrophysicists have proposed an invisible agent that counteracts gravity by pushing space-time apart. They call itdark energy. In the most widely accepted model of dark energy, it is a "cosmological constant": an inherent property of space itself, which has "negative pressure" driving space apart. As space expands, more space is created, and with it, more dark energy. Based on the observed rate of expansion, scientists know that the sum of all the dark energy must make up more than 70 percent of the total contents of the universe. But no one knows how to look for it.

8. What is dark matter?

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Evidently, about 84 percent of the matter in the universe does not absorb or emit light. "Dark matter," as it is called, cannot be seen directly, and it hasn't yet been detected by indirect means, either. Instead, dark matter's existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation and the structure of the universe. This shadowy substance is thought to pervade the outskirts of galaxies, and may be composed of "weakly interacting massive particles," or WIMPs. Worldwide, there are several detectors on the lookout for WIMPs, but so far, not one has been found. [If Not Dark Matter, then What?]

7. Why is there an arrow of time?

Credit: Image via Shutterstock

Time moves forward because a property of the universe called "entropy," roughly defined as the level of disorder, only increases, and so there is no way to reverse a rise in entropy after it has occurred. The fact that entropy increases is a matter of logic: There are more disordered arrangements of particles than there are ordered arrangements, and so as things change, they tend to fall into disarray. But the underlying question here is, why was entropy so low in the past? Put differently, why was the universe so ordered at its beginning, when a huge amount of energy was crammed together in a small amount of space? [What's the Total Energy in the Universe?]

6. Are there parallel universes?

Credit: Image via Shutterstock

Astrophysical data suggests space-time might be "flat," rather than curved, and thus that it goes on forever. If so, then the region we can see (which we think of as "the universe") is just one patch in an infinitely large "quilted multiverse." At the same time, the laws of quantum mechanics dictate that there are only a finite number of possible particle configurations within each cosmic patch (10^10^122 distinct possibilities). So, with an infinite number of cosmic patches, the particle arrangements within them are forced to repeat — infinitely many times over.  This means there are infinitely many parallel universes: cosmic patches exactly the same as ours (containing someone exactly like you), as well as patches that differ by just one particle's position, patches that differ by two particles' positions, and so on down to patches that are totally different from ours.

Is there something wrong with that logic, or is its bizarre outcome true? And if it is true, how might we ever detect the presence of parallel universes? 

5. Why is there more matter than antimatter?

Credit: Image via Shutterstock

The question of why there is so much more matter than its oppositely-charged and oppositely-spinning twin, antimatter, is actually a question of why anything exists at all. One assumes the universe would treat matter and antimatter symmetrically, and thus that, at the moment of the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced. But if that had happened, there would have been a total annihilation of both: Protons would have canceled with antiprotons, electrons with anti-electrons (positrons), neutrons with antineutrons, and so on, leaving behind a dull sea of photons in a matterless expanse. For some reason, there was excess matter that didn't get annihilated, and here we are. For this, there is no accepted explanation.

4. What is the fate of the universe?

Credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported | Bjarmason

The fate of the universe strongly depends on a factor of unknown value: Ω, a measure of the density of matter and energy throughout the cosmos. If Ω is greater than 1, then space-time would be "closed" like the surface of an enormous sphere. If there is no dark energy, such a universe would eventually stop expanding and would instead start contracting, eventually collapsing in on itself in an event dubbed the "Big Crunch." If the universe is closed but there is dark energy, the spherical universe would expand forever.

Alternatively, if Ω is less than 1, then the geometry of space would be "open" like the surface of a saddle. In this case, its ultimate fate is the "Big Freeze" followed by the "Big Rip": first, the universe's outward acceleration would tear galaxies and stars apart, leaving all matter frigid and alone. Next, the acceleration would grow so strong that it would overwhelm the effects of the forces that hold atoms together, and everything would be wrenched apart.

If Ω = 1, the universe would be flat, extending like an infinite plane in all directions. If there is no dark energy, such a planar universe would expand forever but at a continually decelerating rate, approaching a standstill. If there is dark energy, the flat universe ultimately would experience runaway expansion leading to the Big Rip.

Que sera, sera.

3. How do measurements collapse quantum wavefunctions?

Credit: John D. Norton

In the strange realm of electrons, photons and the other fundamental particles, quantum mechanics is law. Particles don't behave like tiny balls, but rather like waves that are spread over a large area. Each particle is described by a "wavefunction," or probability distribution, which tells what its location, velocity, and other properties are more likely to be, but not what those properties are. The particle actually has a range of values for all the properties, until you experimentally measure one of them — its location, for example — at which point the particle's wavefunction "collapses" and it adopts just one location. [Newborn Babies Understand Quantum Mechanics]

But how and why does measuring a particle make its wavefunction collapse, producing the concrete reality that we perceive to exist? The issue, known as the measurement problem, may seem esoteric, but our understanding of what reality is, or if it exists at all, hinges upon the answer. 

2. Is string theory correct?

Credit: Creative Commons | Lunch

When physicists assume all the elementary particles are actually one-dimensional loops, or "strings," each of which vibrates at a different frequency, physics gets much easier. String theory allows physicists to reconcile the laws governing particles, called quantum mechanics, with the laws governing space-time, called general relativity, and to unify the four fundamental forces of nature into a single framework. But the problem is, string theory can only work in a universe with 10 or 11 dimensions: three large spatial ones, six or seven compacted spatial ones, and a time dimension. The compacted spatial dimensions — as well as the vibrating strings themselves — are about a billionth of a trillionth of the size of an atomic nucleus. There's no conceivable way to detect anything that small, and so there's no known way to experimentally validate or invalidate string theory.

1. Is there order in chaos?

Credit: Image via Shutterstock

Physicists can't exactly solve the set of equations that describes the behavior of fluids, from water to air to all other liquids and gases. In fact, it isn't known whether a general solution of the so-called Navier-Stokes equations even exists, or, if there is a solution, whether it describes fluids everywhere, or contains inherently unknowable points called singularities. As a consequence, the nature of chaos is not well understood. Physicists and mathematicians wonder, is the weather merely difficult to predict, or inherently unpredictable? Does turbulence transcend mathematical description, or does it all make sense when you tackle it with the right math?

15-02-2016 om 21:37 geschreven door peter  

Quantum Entanglement: Love on a Subatomic Scale

When talking about love and romance, people often bring up unseen and mystical connections.

Such connections exist in the subatomic world as well, thanks to a bizarre and counterintuitive phenomenon called quantum entanglement.

The basic idea of quantum entanglement is that two particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space; a change induced in one will affect the other. [How Quantum Entanglement Works (Infographic)]

In 1964, physicist John Bell posited that such changes can occur instantaneously, even if the particles are very far apart. Bell's Theorem is regarded as an important idea in modern physics, but it seems to make little sense. After all, Albert Einstein had proven years before that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

Indeed, Einstein famously described the entanglement phenomenon as "spooky action at a distance."

In the last half-century, many researchers have run experiments that aimed to test Bell's Theorem. But they have tended to come up short because it's tough to design and build equipment with the needed sensitivity and performance, NASA officials said.

Last year, however, three different research groups were able to perform substantive tests of Bell's Theorem, and all of them found support for the basic idea.

One of those studies was led by Krister Shalm, a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. 

Shalm and his colleagues used special metal strips cooled to cryogenic temperatures, which makes them superconducting — they have no electrical resistance. A photon hits the metal and turns it back into a normal electrical conductor for a split second, and scientists can see that happen.

This technique allowed the researchers to see how, if at all, their measurements of one photon affected the other photon in an entangled pair.

The results, which were published in the journal Physical Review Letters, strongly backed Bell's Theorem.

"Our paper and the other two published last year show that Bell was right: any model of the world that contains hidden variables must also allow for entangled particles to influence one another at a distance," co-author Francesco Marsili, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

There are practical applications to this work as well. The "superconducting nanowire single photon detectors" (SNSPDs) used in the Shalm group's experiment, which were built at NIST and JPL, could be used in cryptography and in deep-space communications, NASA officials said.

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere Dust and Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which orbited the moon from October 2013 to April 2014, helped demonstrate some of this communications potential.

LADEE's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration used components on the spacecraft and a ground-based receiver similar to SNSPDs. The experiment showed that it might be possible to build sensitive laser communications arrays that would enable much more data to be up- and downloaded to faraway space probes, NASA officials said.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• 8 Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life
• Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings
• The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics

{ http://www.space.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

Farewell, Philae: Hunt for Rosetta's Lost Lander Ends

The European Space Agency is giving up on trying to contact the lost Philae comet lander, which had an unexpectedly rough touchdown after its release 16 months ago from the orbiting Rosetta mothership.

Rather than harpooning itself onto the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Philae bounced several times before coming to a rest against a cliff wall.

The probe ran through an automated three-day series of science experiments and relayed the results back to Earth before its batteries lost power.

NEWS: Wake Up Philae! Last-Ditch Effort to Find Rosetta's Lander

Ground control teams tried to re-establish contact with the lander in hopes of a follow-on mission. Philae was designed to analyze materials on the comets surface and subsurface so they could be compared with data collected by Rosetta, which remains in orbit around 67P today.

Scientists were excited when they picked up Philae's signal last summer, but control teams were never able to maintain communications long enough to put Philae back to work, most likely due to a failure of the lander's transmitter, ESA said.

The last contact from Philae was on June 13.

With the comet now well past the orbit of Mars, temperatures on the surface dip down to almost minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-180 degrees Celsius) at night. The lander was designed to withstand temperatures as low as about minus-58 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-50 degrees Celsius).

If Philae had touched down on its original landing site, it would have had much more sunlight available to recharge its batteries. But it's also likely Philae would have overheated as the comet approach the sun last March.

NEWS: Philae's Comet May Host Alien 'Life': Astronomers

"Unfortunately, the probability of Philae re-establishing contact with our team is almost zero, and we will no longer be sending any commands,"said project manager Stephan Ulamec, with the German Aerospace Center.

"At the moment, we plan to keep the receivers on the orbiter on, as long as there is no power constraint for Rosetta, no reason to switch them off," Ulamec wrote in an email to Discovery News.

"Chances are very low that we will hear again from the lander... but we keep listening," he added.

As far as Philae's contributions to the mission, Ulamec said that only the lander could provide the "ground truth" for the comet's composition. Philae discovered organic molecules on the surface of 67P, and returned high-resolution pictures that allowed scientists to assess the physical properties of the surface materials.

"You cannot do this from orbit," Ulamec said.

NEWS: Philae Rises! What's Next for Rosetta's Comet Lander?

Philae's radar instrument was able to measure the internal structure of the comet, which turned out to be highly porous. Even Philae's unplanned hops on the surface of 67P provided valuable scientific insight, such as that the comet lacks a magnetic field.

Philae was not able to complete all of what scientists had hoped, including digging out subsurface samples for a chemical analysis.

Analysis from both Philae's mission and the ongoing Rosetta expedition continue.

Scientists are hoping to get a look at the lander on the comet's surface this summer when Rosetta moves in for another round of close flybys.

"We will ... finally locate Philae and understand its attitude and orientation," Rosetta spacecraft operations manager Sylvain Lodiot said in a press release.

ANALYSIS: Philae to Attempt Risky Comet 'Hop' for Survival (Update)

Understanding how and exactly where Philae is positioned will help scientists interpret some of the data relayed by the lander during its 60-hour mission.

Philae eventually will be joined on the comet's surface by Rosetta, a permanent testimony to an unprecedented journey.

Originally published on Discovery News.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Wake Up Philae! Last-Ditch Effort to Find Rosetta's Lander
• Comet Comes to Life in Amazing Rosetta Spacecraft Photo Montage
• Comet 67P: Target of Rosetta Mission

{ http://www.space.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 18:23 geschreven door peter  

UFO terror as screaming family flees ‘flying saucer’ which 'appeared ABOVE them'

A FAMILY claimed they were left terrified after a UFO appeared over a road bridge.

15-02-2016 om 18:14 geschreven door peter  

Lenticular clouds in Eastern Russia

The Lenticular clouds that form over Eastern Russia's Kamchatka mountains and volcano are easily mistaken for UFO's because of their strange formations.

A mysterious Lenticular cloud, easily mistaken as a space ship is seen forming over the Kamchatka volcano in Eastern Russia

The serene Lenticular clouds, formed to align with the wind direction over the Kamchatka volcano in Eastern Russia

Lenticuar clouds hrom over Kamchatka's iconic mountains, easily mistaken for a UFO

A Lenticular cloud forms over Kamchatka's iconic volcanos in Eastern Russia, easily mistaken for a UFO

Lenticular clouds swirl around Kamchatka mountains in Eastern Russia as the sky turns a ethereal shade of purple

A lenticular cloud forms over Kamchatka's iconic volcanos in Earstern Russia

{ http://www.express.co.uk/ }

15-02-2016 om 17:59 geschreven door peter  

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto

15-02-2016 om 17:32 geschreven door peter  

Roswell’s Unanswered UFO Questions

(Before It's News)

Something crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, 68 years ago. The first military authorized press release stated, “RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region.” That’s right, the military was the first to indicate it was a flying saucer.

Then, they quickly said that was a mistake. It was just a weather balloon. But UFO researchers were never satisfied with that answer, even decades later, and the controversy only grew.

The military later revealed that this wasn’t a simple weather balloon, but an aircraft used for clandestine purposes — part of the Army’s top secret “Project Mogul”– to monitor atomic weapon testing in the old Soviet Union. The military also claimed that crash test dummies may have been mistaken for ETs. But that explanation only stirred the controversy.

The central figure surrounding the events of the 1947 Roswell UFO issue was Maj. Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field. He was assigned the initial task of going out to the debris field to collect some of the material, described as shiny wreckage, including pieces of rubber, super-resistant tinfoil, wooden sticks and metallic-looking I-beams.

Here’s an excerpt from a 35-year-old interview conducted by this writer with Marcel, when he finally felt comfortable talking about the Roswell case more than 30 years after it happened:

To mark the crash anniversary, Michael Donovan of OuterPlaces.com joined us on the HuffPost Weird News Podcast to discuss Roswell’s unanswered questions.

Two years ago, Donovan was standing in the Roswell crash debris field along with Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., a highly decorated military flight surgeon.

“It was a moving experience because we’re out on the site and this large thunderstorm was moving toward us — you could see lightning flashing — and he’s standing there with his Iraq war veteran hat on and said, ‘This is amazing. Sixty-six years ago, my father was standing on this very site,’” said Donovan.

“His father had loaded debris into his car, drove back to Roswell, stopping at his house, and showed his wife and son, Jesse Jr., the material after spreading it out on the kitchen floor,” said Donovan. “Here’s a guy — a doctor, a flight surgeon — why would he make up an experience he had in the middle of the night when he was 11 years old? So, when we were standing there at the crash site, I asked him, ‘When they loaded that plane up and flew it to Fort Worth, what happened to it?’ And he said, ‘You know what? I don’t know.’ But he said the base commander’s secretary, a few years ago before she retired, showed somebody a box of stretchy stuff that, if you crushed it, it would pop open. Jesse Jr. said to me, ‘I think that stuff must still be somewhere around, in the military’s possession.’”

Donovan says his belief in UFOs and a possible cover-up surrounding the Roswell UFO incident never gets in the way of his work — which includes co-designing the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“No, not at all. It goes back to the idea of being on a quest, being a problem-solver, and that’s what designers do. We solve problems. In the reading of science fiction, you begin on a path to discovery. That’s what we do every day and it’s really that kind of interest — learning new things — that put me on the path that I’m now on, relative to OuterPlaces.com.

“In my own mind, I keep trying to create some kind of balance between what I think is a certain appropriate level of secrecy. We’re adults in this country, by and large, and I think the government owes us as much information and let us make up our own minds.”

Here are some unanswered questions that continue to surround the 1947 Roswell UFO crash incident:

• What exactly crashed there in 1947? Was it a weather balloon, high altitude spy device, extraterrestrial craft?
•  Did the military switch materials that Maj. Marcel brought back from the debris field and, instead, allow the press to take pictures of an actual battered weather balloon?
•  If the crash site debris wasn’t really a weather balloon, where did the real stuff end up?
•  Why would the military decide to even issue a press release about a captured flying saucer?
•  Related to the above question, why would the military suddenly change the story from flying saucer to weather balloon?li
•  Why did the military hire a local Roswell mortician to make child-sized caskets following the UFO debris retrieval?
•  Why did Jesse Marcel Sr. wait more than 30 years before finally revealing his part in the Roswell UFO events?
•  If true, why would the U.S. government want to cover up such a monumental event as the crash of an alien ship?

This weekend’s 20th Roswell UFO festival takes off full blast today with speakers giving their presentations at different locations simultaneously. If lectures don’t fit your fancy, there’s always the alien pet and alien costume contests and a UFO festival light parade to check out.

It’s fair to say that something happened outside Roswell in 1947 that literally put the town on the map. The debris is long gone, but the reverberations have never stopped.

Whatever it was, after almost 70 years, it still depends on whom you ask or what you read, and whether you believe them.

A 1997 CNN-Time poll showed that 80 percent of Americans think the government is hiding information about the existence of alien life forms, and nearly two-thirds of the poll respondents believed that a UFO crashed outside Roswell in 1947.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/02/roswell-ufo-crash-unanswered_n_7716828.html

Have you captured something paranormal with your camera? Send them to us at kurt.barlow@mail.com

Follow us: https://twitter.com/spookscentral | SpooksCentral on Facebook

http://spookscentral.com

15-02-2016 om 16:41 geschreven door peter  

Myths and Legends giants, dragons, mermaids, centaurs, angels.

(Before It's News)

Myths and Legends giants, dragons, mermaids, centaurs, angels.

15-02-2016 om 16:28 geschreven door peter  

Les USA testent un drone chasseur de sous-marins

L'exploitation de ce navire sans pilote coûte la bagatelle de 20.000 dollars par jour.

Les Etats-Unis lanceront le 17 avril prochain les essais d'un navire sans pilote baptisé ACTUV et destiné à chasser les sous-marins ennemis, rapporte le site Gizmodo.

Voir l'image sur Twitter

 Suivre

Russell Belden @russellbelden

Looks good @DARPA But sensors are going to be covered in salt…http://gizmodo.com/darpa-s-new-autonomous-submarine-hunter-could-change-na-1758778455 … #SprayRail #DARPA#ACTUV

04:15 - 13 Févr 2016

PRESS-SERVICE OF JSC "PO "SEVMAS

Les robots sous-marins russes et américains, qui dominera sous les mers?

Les tests dureront 18 mois. L’ACTUV n'est pas doté d'armements, mais peut accomplir des missions de reconnaissance d'une durée allant de 60 à 90 jours. L'exploitation de ce petit navire (140 tonnes, 40 m de long) coûte entre 15.000 et 20.000 dollars par jour (entre 13.300 et 17.700 euros par jour).

D'ailleurs, l'ACTUV est moins performant que les robots sous-marins dont les travaux de conception devraient aboutir en 2016. Equipés d'armes et largués par un sous-marin, ces submersibles sans pilote pourront donner l’illusion de la présence d'un vrai sous-marin voire attaquer un ennemi.

Voir l'image sur Twitter

 Suivre

Sputnik France 

✔@sputnik_fr

Les #USA testent un #drone chasseur de#sousmarinshttp://sptnkne.ws/aCxb #ACTUV

L'Agence américaine pour les projets de recherche avancée de défense (DARPA) a annoncé en 2010 la création d’un ACTUV capable de détecter les sous-marins à propulsion diesel-électrique. L'ACTUV fait partie de la 3e Stratégie de compensation du Pentagone censée garantir la prédominance militaire des Etats-Unis dans le monde. Les Etats-Unis comptent débloquer 18 milliards de dollars (15,9 milliards d’euros) pour la réalisation de cette stratégie. 

{ http://fr.sputniknews.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 16:17 geschreven door peter  

WHAT PODESTA KNOWS

   By Albert Venczel 

Photo courtesy: The Wasington Post

WHAT PODESTA KNOWS...

by Albert Venczel

(Copyright 2016, Albert Venzel - All Rights Reserved) 

Never before in human history has “Official Disclosure” -- meaning government confirmation of the existence of intelligent, alien life beyond that which is found on our own small planet -- been so tantalizingly close to fruition.

It is imperative to the ultimate success of this endeavour that White House insider John Podesta, who has apparently been made kind of a “point man” in this effort, carefully and deliberatively do everything in his power to make sureOfficial Disclosure is done right.

So what has Podesta been doing in the name of Soft Disclosure, also known as “disclosure with a small-d”? First and foremost, he has “tapped” a small but elite group of notable reporters, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg Politics.

Whichever investigative reporter ends up being the one who breaks the story of the reality of exopolitics, that person will go down in history as deserving every journalistic prize and award that there are to give. The same goes for POTUS (President f the United States).  His or her legacy will be set in stone as being the Disclosure President.  

William Jefferson Clinton came close, but on the big day that was to have been "Clinton’s Disclosure Moment," the media -- and most of the world -- allowed themselves to be distracted by that infamous blue dress.

Obama Advisor John Podesta Speaks Out on UFOs ...

... In "I Know what I saw"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL574D16C379439373&v=smwQau3HtKM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/john-podesta-regrets-no-ufo-disclosure_n_6699646.html

Currently, one of the biggest obstacles Podesta is grappling with is the fact that, in order to maintain the cover-up, the Shadow Government committed many crimes for which they will eventually have to be charged, once the truth comes out. Crimes such as the “murder by suicide” of whistleblower Phil Schneider, former government employee stationed at Dulce base and a prima facie witness to ETs working directly with the United States government. And then there’s the case of Dr. Shafica Karagulla, who was electrocuted by a CIA assassin because she knew too much. No wonder ufologists have begun declaring that progress is made one death at a time. The deaths of these martyrs and many others like them cry out for justice.

Beyond crimes against individuals, heinous as those may be, perhaps even worse are the crimes against humanity involved in hoarding and suppressing the potentially civilization-elevating benefits of various alien technologies, such as free energy, the lengthening of lifespans, the eradication of poverty, disease and hunger, etc.  At an even higher layer of meaning and deeper level of Truth, a spiritual battle is going on for the soul of man which affects everything on the planet.

One interesting phenomenon about experiencers is that many of them exhibit psychic powers.  

There is, after all, a psychic/alien connection.  Therefore, I would like to extend an open invitation to John Podesta, offering transport to another planet. Another high level disclosure advocate, Ben Rich of Skunkworks, leaked classified material showing that they are in possession of a very unique alien vehicle, indeed.  The leap in technology involves mind-controlled vehicles.  The bottom line is that we can transport to another inhabited planet with this exotic ship and a psychic pilot, and return to Earth with Free Energy and the benefit of being part of the Galactic Federation. With the completion of this mission, we will have successfully lifted humanity out of quarantine.  Contact will have been made and established.

The metaphysical aspect psychics provide of the mind over matter connection to transport human diplomats in a UFO iskey to breaking the impasse.

Small-d "disclosure" has already happened, as aliens are the higher power, above POTUS.  They don’t need thePresident to speak for 6 billion people. They know what many in the general public already know to be true. That benevolent extra terrestrials are engaging humanity.

Overnight AM Talk Radio has been the last safe haven, which has been doing the heavy lifting of raising publicawareness in regards to the UFO Agenda. I urge Podesta to come on The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett and give a full length live-to-air interview about what he knows and what the general public can do in the next steps towardsDisclosure with a capital “D”.

Albert Venczel 

Toronto , Canada

 

Febuary 10th, 2016

 

***********************************************************

 { http://ufodigest.com/ }

15-02-2016 om 15:52 geschreven door peter  

President Obama tegen 6-jarige: Nog geen ‘direct contact met aliens’

15-02-2016 om 15:42 geschreven door peter  

Britain's Roswell: the truth behind the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident

Did an extra-terrestrial craft land in a Suffolk forest during the winter of 1980? The maker of a new film, The Rendlesham UFO Incident, believes so

The truth is out there? Photo: Eyevine

By Rupert Hawksley

Dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”, the Rendlesham Forest incident, which took place over a series of nights in December 1980, continues to fascinate UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists. It is easy to understand why. Consider the following three statements, for example:

1) “This was not some vague ‘lights in the sky’ sighting – the UFO actually landed.” – Nick Pope, a Ministry of Defence employee from 1985 to 2006.

2) “When I arrived [at the scene], it was going in and out through the trees and at one stage it was hovering.” – Sgt. Adrian Bustinza, a security police commander who investigated the incident at the time.

3) “Okay, we’re looking at the thing; we’re probably about two to three hundred yards away. It looks like an eye winking at you... And the flash is so bright to the starscope that it almost burns your eye.” – Taken from the Halt tape, recorded on December 27 1980 by United States Air Force lieutenant colonel Charles Halt.

Only last month, a dog walker uploaded fresh footage of unidentified lights in the sky above Rendlesham Forest, while a new film on the subject, produced by long-time Suffolk resident and Rendlesham Forest incident expert Daniel Simpson, has recently been released. There is even an official UFO trail for walkers to follow through Rendlesham Forest. But what actually happened? And, 35 years after the event, are we any closer to unravelling the mystery?

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^{The start of the Rendlesham Forest UFO trail}

As the years have passed, the facts have become increasingly hazy, as statements change and new witnesses come forward. But what we do know for sure is that, in the early hours of December 26 1980, US military personnel (sections of the US Air Force were temporarily stationed at RAF bases in Woodbridge and Bentwaters) spotted strange lights above Rendlesham Forest.

One of these men, John Burroughs, accompanied by his supervisor and one other individual, went to investigate the blue, red, orange and white lights. In his subsequent witness statement, published in 1981, Burroughs explains: “As we went down the east-gate road and the road that leads into the forest, the lights were moving back and they appeared to stop in a bunch of trees... Also, the woods lit up and you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises, and there was a lot of movement in the woods. All three of us hit the ground and whatever it was started moving back towards the open field… We got up to a fence that separated the trees from the open field. You could see the lights down by a farmer’s house. We climbed over the fence and started walking toward the red and blue lights and they just disappeared.”

Jim Penniston, who accompanied Burroughs into Rendlesham Forest on December 26, claims to have encountered a craft, covered in hieroglyphic-like characters. “I estimated it to be about three metres tall and about three metres wide at the base,” Penniston later explained. “No landing gear was apparent, but it seemed like she was on fixed legs. I moved a little closer. I had already taken all 36 pictures on my roll of film. I walked around the craft, and finally, I walked right up to the craft. I noticed the fabric of the shell was more like a smooth, opaque, black glass.”

Burroughs does not recall this. Indentations on the forest floor, as well as damage to the trees in the area where the lights had been spotted, were found the following morning, however. Radiation levels recorded at the site of the indentations were also unusually high.

In the book Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, which was published last year, Penniston writes: “I left the forest a different man… I was in awe of the technology and yes, a knowing that it was not an aircraft which could have been manufactured in 1980 or even now.” Both Penniston and Burroughs have since suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Two nights later, a different set of military personnel experienced a similar series of events. On this occasion, when the lights were spotted, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was prepared. A pragmatic character, Halt intended to disprove the wild rumours swirling around RAF bases Woodbridge and Bentwaters. Arming himself with a recording device, he set out to investigate. The subsequent audio tape is now considered one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in the Rendlesham Forest incident.

The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident - Top Documentary Films

https://youtu.be/yWsfbFPwPJM

Rendlesham Forest : did a UFO really land at US Airbase ? [FULL VIDEO]

https://youtu.be/3Td168X5Gbc

The transcript of the tape runs to some 18 minutes but includes statements from Halt such as: “I see it too... it’s back again... it’s coming this way... there’s no doubt about it... this is weird... it looks like an eye winking at you... it almost burns your eyes... he’s coming toward us now... now we’re observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground... one object still hovering over Woodbridge base... beaming down”. Halt has since given interviews in which he claims that these occurrences were picked up by British radar. “I didn’t know this until recently,” he told AOL News. “Because people have come forward after they’ve retired. There were two radar confirmations.”

The following night, December 28, one final group of men claim to have encountered something out of the ordinary in Rendlesham Forest. Larry Warren, an 18-year-old soldier who was not even at either RAF base on the night of the first incident, was sent out on patrol with Sgt Adrian Bustinza and a number of other military personnel. Sometime after 11pm, the men departed their trucks and headed towards the field where lights had been seen on the previous two nights.

There, Warren claims to have seen “disaster preparedness officers out here with geiger counters, going in an almost half-clockwise motion around this thing on the ground.” A small red light was then seen approaching from the direction of the coast. “It moved in a downward arc, so fast. [It] stopped and hovered about 20 feet off the ground,” said Warren. “It was the size of a basketball, [an] American basketball. [It was] self-illuminated, not quite red, yet that’s the closest I can describe it.”

Things were about to get even stranger, though. This red light suddenly exploded and a craft appeared on the forest floor. According to Warren, it had “no windows, no markings, no flag or country of origin. Nothing. You could hardly look at it head on, and if you looked at it through the side of your peripheral vision you’d get a shape of it… and there it was, clear as a bell.”

_{A 1983 News of the World headline about Rendlesham sightings (Ian Ridpath/NoW)}

At this stage, Warren and Bustinza were asked to retreat by a senior man. From a distance, they then claim to have witnessed Wing Commander Gordon Williams approach the craft and encounter some alien being with “what looked like eyes, facial features, bright clothing and some other device.” Warren is clear that a “silent stand-off”, rather than any communication, took place.

At around 4.30am, Warren returned to his base but Bustinza claims to have seen the craft depart. “When it took off, it was, like, hovering. It went up and, like, took off at about a forty-five-degree angle, and if you would have blinked, you would have missed it… And we got a cold draft of air that lasted about a good ten seconds. You know, like when you get a good blow of dust or wind. No noise though; I do remember that.”

It is understood that almost half of all UFO correspondence directed at the Ministry of Defence relates to the Rendlesham Forest incident. Despite claims of a cover-up, the MoD’s stance has never wavered. It states: “No evidence was found of any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom, and no further investigations were carried out. No further information has come to light which alters our view that the sightings of these lights was of no defence significance.”

Daniel Simpson takes a different view, however. The director of The Rendlesham UFO Incident, a fictionalised account of the story set in the modern day and filmed on location in Rendlesham Forest, is convinced that either there has been a military cover-up or that something extra-terrestrial occurred in December 1980. And moreover, he believes he has uncovered further evidence to prove it. While filming in Rendlesham Forest – “It does have a very strong atmosphere of something strange” – he asked the Forestry Commission to investigate a series of hatches, which Simpson describes as “mysterious”.

“I got the Forestry Commission to tow one of those hatches off with a four wheel drive and there’s a ladder going down,” he explains, as we discuss his film. “Now, they will tell you that those are drainage systems for the airfield but it’s a very elaborate drainage system.”

_{A drawing from Jim Penniston's original witness statement}

Simpson believes that “the twin bases [RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters] are connected by tunnels underneath, which isn’t that far out a thing to suggest, because a lot of these bases do have an underground facility, especially as it’s a nuclear facility. You don’t keep nuclear weapons on ground level, they have to drop down.”

He continues: “I recently heard a very interesting story of a guy that went up to the Bentwaters air base and, because it’s privately owned, some of those buildings are rented out to people. A company up there wanted to have their internet sorted out and this guy dug down and – he was a telecom guy – he came back and he was sheet white. He couldn’t believe it. He said he’d just come across these cables, two foot down, and they were cables delivering such a powerful internet connection – but they were cables from 1980. I haven’t ever told anyone that story. They [the cables] were from 1980 and yet they were so in advance of what we’ve even got now. I’m told that all the time what we get [technologically] is much behind what they [the military] actually know.”

So what, I wonder, is the truth? Simpson appears conflicted about whether this is a military cover-up at a nuclear facility or something even more alarming. “I honestly believe something very strange went on there and I believe that somewhere is the evidence to prove it but that’s hidden away. I think it’s an extra-terrestrial encounter. I do.”

I put a series of theories to Simpson, which I hope might explain away the idea that extra-terrestrial life landed in a forest in Suffolk 35 years ago. But he bats them all away. Could the lights have come from nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, for example? “The lighthouse theory is rubbish,” he scoffs. “Lighthouses don’t fly down into forests, split up into five different lights and zap off into space at Mach-3. They don’t move through the trees and get mistaken by up to 20 witnesses from the United States Air Force.”

^{Daniel Simpson's film, The Rendlesham UFO Incident, was shot on location in Rendlesham Forest}

The Rendlesham UFO Incident is out now on DVD

{ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ }

15-02-2016 om 00:50 geschreven door peter  

Extraordinary UFO sightings from the US Air Force's Project Blue Book

Four remarkable stories from the new online database of 130,000 pages of UFO sightings

A photographic negative allegedly showing a fleet of unidentified craft in the skies above Lubbock, Texas 

15-02-2016 om 00:33 geschreven door peter  

Where Did Those Gravitational Waves Come From? There's a Map

With today’s historic and incredibly exciting announcement of the first ever detection of gravitational waves came the news that these waves were generated by two merging black holes approximately 1.3 billion light-years away — an astrophysical event that is mind-blowing in its own right. So the next question that comes to mind is, unsurprisingly, in which direction did this black hole merger occur?

As it turns out, scientists of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) already have an answer, albeit a very general one.

ANALYSIS: We Just Heard the Spacetime 'Chirp' of Black Hole Rebirth

{ http://www.space.com/ }

14-02-2016 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

Image © TheObjectReport.com | Reposting is allowed so long as a link to the original source is provided.  Note: image above is a computer generated composite used to help illustrate the content of the article.

I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't have their own theory about what these enormous "black delta" craft might be. We've all heard about them by now and these craft have become the subject of quite a few UFO documentaries, books and internet articles. A quick search of youtube yields dozens of surprisingly clear videos from multiple states, but they seem to be concentrated in Pennsylvania, New York state (the Hudson Valley region), Illinois and of course, southern California. Seeing giant delta shaped and boomerang shaped craft near Bakersfield, CA is at the very least unsurprising given the plethora of black budget aerospace companies that call the area home. However, NY, PA and IL make much less sense if these craft are indeed 'ours.'

This leads me to several important questions that anyone researching this topic should ask:

1) IF there are indeed delta craft in excess of 300 feet in diameter flying low above the heads of stunned onlookers in the Hudson Valley, where exactly are these craft based out of? Upstate NY and PA do not have any operational airbases. The nearest candidate would be Andrews, home of Air Force One. The problem here is that aside from the AF1 hangar, there aren't any hangars at Andrews capable of stowing such a craft. Additionally, the base is surrounded on all sides by residential areas including schools and neighborhoods. Not an ideal base to store an ultra secret black budget aircraft.

2) IF these craft are military in nature, WHY on earth would you fly slowly and at times treetop-level above rural areas such as Pine Bush, NY and Harrisburg, PA? This makes zero sense from a logical standpoint. The first rule of black budget aircraft is to keep them as hidden as possible. Clearly, these delta and boomerang-shaped craft have no problem being seen, and in some cases seem to intentionally draw attention to themselves.

3) WHAT is the story with the utterly insane lighting patterns and non-FAA regulation navigational lights? I can picture a craft such as this needing to pass over a rural area en route to another destination. If so, would it not make sense to go completely dark? No lighting whatsoever? A black craft in a black sky with no lights would very likely not be noticed by the average person, yet the lighting configuration of almost all of these craft go completely against the normal pattern of military thinking. 

Clearly, this phenomenon isn't a figment of people's imaginations. There have been far too many sightings in far too many states by qualified eyewitnesses to dismiss this as just one craft, or a flight of daredevil ultralight pilots in formation, or a military spy blimp. Multiple police officers observed and followed this type of craft during the now infamous Highland, Illinois incident in January of 2001. There's a great deal of data available regarding this incident which I'll go into later.

So let's take a look at some possible theories...

 TR-3B "Astra"

There has been much talk of this so-called TR3B anti-gravity craft originally brought to light by the controversial Edgar Fouche. I won't go into too much detail about his credentials and questionable background, you can research that on your own here. In a nutshell, this supposedly triangular craft meets most of the criteria of a 'nearly silent, giant black delta' craft. But again, WHY would the military knowingly and willingly reveal this craft to the populace, even if it's at night, and even if it's in a rural area? Is it accidental? Is it a remotely piloted craft not responding to commands? Can you imagine the fallout if one of these craft were to crash in a populated area?  None of these possibilities make any rational sense. Furthermore, the description of this craft given by Fouche and others in the aerospace industry do not exactly match descriptions given by the eyewitness's in NY, PA, IL and CA. 

Military Spy Blimp

It's no secret that the military has had a distinct need for a very large low-observability surveillance platform with a long loiter time over target. A lighter-than-air vehicle with stealth capabilities would make perfect sense, and Lockheed, Boeing and Northrup Grumman have all explored this avenue (with as yet unknown results). The only military blimp to make it into the 'white world' is the U.S. Army’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) which flew for the first time from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, NJ on August 7th. The only problem with the airship theory is that it rules out the majority of the sightings due to the sheer speed and acceleration characteristics. A blimp cannot accelerate from a near standstill to 600+ mph "like ice on a hotplate" as one Highland, IL police officer vividly described his sighting. The slow speed and 'faint humming' sound is certainly in line with the airship theory, but the acceleration and lighting characteristics are not.

Another Type of Military Anti-Gravity Craft?

Almost all of these sightings have the earmarks of an electrogravitic craft. Extremely slow speed combined with extreme acceleration. Silent operation, aside from a low 'humming' sound. Some witnesses even describe an electrostatic charge in the atmosphere: hair standing up on their arms and heads, and even overwhelming feelings of serenity and calm which in the past have been associated with exposure to intense electromagnetic fields. 

This still begs the question--why on earth would the military be flying quite possibly the most advanced piece of technology in it's inventory through the Hudson Valley, or above a series of small towns east of St. Louis? Well, in thecase of the southern Illinois incident there's always the possibility that this craft was being tested out of the Boeing Phantomworks facility located at Lambert field in St. Louis, or even out of nearby Scott AFB. A close friend of mine was stationed at Scott AFB in a senior management position during the Highland sighting. I questioned this person regarding that event and they had no recollection of any unusual activity around the base at that time. Would this person have given up any details if there HAD been activity? Perhaps... or perhaps not. Regardless, the Highland incident would have been a major black eye for the military. Having multiple law enforcement officers communicating with eachother across multiple jurisdictions about an enormous, well-lighted delta shaped craft is the last thing the military--or an aerospace manufacturer--wants. 

Clues to The Origin?

One possible clue to the origin of these black triangles may be found in the testimony of Dennis Bossack, a Rhode Island resident:

Dennis reports that on February 15, 1999, a triangle passed overhead heading west to east while he was driving on Route 138 north of Woodville. He lost sight of it due to the trees. A few days later, on February 20, he and his wife were sitting in their sunroom at 11:40 PM. They were watching a fox feed on bread they had put outside, when a craft appeared heading in a southerly direction. They stepped out on the porch for a closer look. Dennis states, "The craft passed over us silently, slowly, steadily and very low. The underside of it was dimly lighted by a hazy white light, thus making it possible to see the logo. The logo was a triangle edged in yellow containing the Earth being struck by two lightning bolts with the number '1' in the right hand corner. As it approached, a feeling of serenity and calm came over us making it a wonderful feeling to watch as it passed overhead. I estimate the speed of the craft at five to ten miles and hour.The size was approximately 40 feet in length and forty feet wide at the rear of the craft with the nose of the craft forming a point. The craft looked similar to a Stealth fighter, however it was a much larger plane.* The altitude of the craft was about one hundred feet, I repeat there was not a sound from the craft and it did not even create a breeze. I would appreciate any answers you might have to as what this craft is or who it belongs to." Thanks to Dennis Bossack. Editors Note: I have spent several hours on the phone interviewing Dennis who states the logo or insignia was five feet in diameter and at the front was the Omega symbol. The two lightning strikes that penetrate Earth begin at the 11 and 1 o'clock position. A similar lightning symbol was used by Roman soldiers conquering ancient Britain. The lightning strikes could infer a discharge of atmospheric electricity or perhaps intentions of colonizing Earth. We are also receiving strange communications from someone claiming to be Robert Omega. The Bossack's are respectable home owners mystified by this sighting.

*Note: The F-117 Nighthawk 65 feet in length with a 43 foot wingspan, so my guess is that Dennis' estimates on the size may have been slightly off or it may have been higher than 100 feet (which is incredibly low). When untrained observers witness something very unusual their sense of size and distance tends to be compromised. I suspect this craft was larger than 40 feet in diameter and very likely higher than 100 feet in altitude. But his detailed description of the craft's insignia is what's most important here. 

Interestingly enough, his description of the insignia on this craft closely matches that of the US Space Innovation & Development Center out of Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado. IF these craft are US military, then it would make sense that they are involved in space warfare and would be under the command of this division of the military.

Doing a bit more digging around I discovered several other military patches that match elements of Dennis' description, one of them (interestingly enough) being a Cadet Squadron at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Are we starting to see a pattern of triangular shapes, lightning bolts, the globe, yellow numerals and ties to Colorado? I certainly am.

David Wilcock wrote an excellently in-depth and informative piece entitled "US Space Command: The Proof is in The Patches" which delves further into the symbology of military insignias. I highly recommend reading the article as it is truly a 'rabbit hole' worthy of falling into. We can only begin to guess at the origin and meanings behind patches such as these (note the #1 in the patch to the left). Trevor Paglen wrote a book about patches of the clandestine world which is also worth checking out.

But my main point here is that all of these elements point toward a man-made craft likely operated by the military in a space warfare/defense role. So WHY reveal these craft to people in areas of the country that make little sense? If these craft were routinely being seen in and around areas such as Nellis AFB, southern California and Tonopah, Nevada it would make perfect sense. But they're not only being seen there. Why the Hudson river valley? Why Pennsylvania? Why southern Illinois? WHY? There is a serious logic problem with all of this and it bothers me on multiple levels. These sightings make zero rational sense. Either the military has gotten extremely sloppy (unlikely) or one or more aerospace manufacturers have gotten extremely sloppy (equally unlikely).

This leaves us with our final possibility--that these craft are not military.

 

https://youtu.be/KmQb5HfnINY

https://youtu.be/n6Ki0teMTyk

What if They're Not Ours?

So let's assume for the sake of this article that these craft are extraterrestrial in origin as many people believe (excluding Dennis' sighting). Well, that opens up a whole new can of worms, doesn't it? But I still question what their interest was/is in these particular areas. It could be anything.

• Were they searching for something or someone?
• Was this part of a sequence of abductions?
• Were they interested in our nuclear power plants?
• Or were they having some technical problems with no real intention of ever being spotted?

We simply don't know. But what we DO know is that these giant black triangles andenormous boomerangs don't seem to be fading into the background. In fact, they're being seen more and more not just in North America, but all over the globe. This fact alone starts to lend more credence to these things not being of earthly origin. The military has no need to spy on some kid in the countryside. Is this a system of acclimation on the part of the military if they're ours? Or conversely, visitors slowly getting people used to the idea of seeing a giant black delta craft in the skies above them? We don't have all the answers yet, but I do think we're getting closer.

Note: For further research into this topic, check out the report on "The Enigma of the Black Triangles" published by the National Institude of Discovery Sciences (NIDS) in 2004. NIDS no longer exists, but I managed to pull this report from Archive.org and placed it on the TOR server for download.

{ http://theobjectreport.blogspot.be/ }

14-02-2016 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

10 Strange And Plausible UFO Sightings

MIKE FLOORWALKER 

The debate about the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrial intelligence can be an exhausting one. Regardless of whether or not it can be proven, there are any number of strange stories that make the existence of E.T. visitations seem plausible. Some of them are so well-recorded and inexplicable that they might just have been genuine close encounters.

10. McMinnville Incident

In Oregon, in May of 1950, a farmer named Mr. Trent saw a UFO at his farm outside McMinnville. According to Mr. Trent, his wife Evelyn first spotted the object, a silvery, metallic disk. She was outside feeding her rabbits when it appeared in the early evening sky. She called out to her husband, who came outside and watched for a couple of minutes. He then went and got a camera, and took two pictures before the object sped off to the west.

The most striking thing lending credence to the story is the Trents’ behavior. They never made any money off the photographs, and actually had to be convinced to let them be published by a local reporter—apparently, they were afraid of getting into trouble with the government.

There are disagreements as to the veracity of the photos. The Condon Report, a 1967 study into UFO phenomena conducted by the University of Colorado, concluded that relative photographic densities of objects in the photos suggested that the subject was distant, meaning they were somewhat likely to be genuine. A much more recent examination concluded that the object’s geometry was consistent with a small model hanging from a wire. But that wire has never been spotted in either photo, and Evelyn and Paul Trent earnestly insisted, until their deaths in 1997 and 1998, respectively, that the photos were of an actual UFO.

9. Mariana Incident

In 1950, on the night of August 15, minor league baseball manager Nick Mariana became the first person to capture film footage of a UFO. It happened as he was inspecting the diamond before a game in Great Falls, Montana, which has since become a hotbed of UFO sightings, and is close to a US Air Force Base.

Mariana was able to capture two bright dots streaking across the sky on his 16mm movie camera, which he says he routinely kept in his car. After sending the film to be developed, he began to contact local newspapers—significant, as he had not yet seen the developed film and so would not have known if any fakery looked convincing. In October, he wrote a letter to the Air Force and was interviewed at Malstrom Air Force Base.

After examining the film, the Air Force concluded “possible aircraft” and dropped it. While two fighters were on record as having landed at Malstrom at around the time of the sighting, Mariana insisted that he saw those, too—in a different part of the sky. He also claimed that upon his film’s return, several frames that showed the spinning discs more clearly were missing—presumably cut by the Air Force. While the debate has never been resolved, the incident kicked off decades of over 100 sightings in Great Falls, and prompted the renaming of the minor league baseball team to the Voyagers.

8. Chicago O’Hare Incident

When several people state flatly that they observed a saucer-shaped aircraft hovering around before bolting into the sky at incredible speeds, it is tempting to assume that they don’t know much about aircraft. But when just such an incident occurred in Chicago in 2006, it was pretty difficult to make that case—it took place at O’Hare International Airport, and most of the people who saw it were United Airlines employees.

No airline officials, air traffic controllers, or radar records indicated anything out of the ordinary, though a United supervisor did call the tower to ask if any saucers were hovering nearby. The FAA has declined to investigate, which has proved irritating to those who insist that they witnessed the incident. Officials have tossed out the usual balloons, optical illusions, and weather phenomena as possible explanations.

As for the witnesses, they counter that none of those could explain the hole that the craft punched in the clouds while making its quick ascent, which lingered for several minutes. All witnesses agreed that the craft was dark gray, didn’t have any lights or markings, and maintained its position steadily before blasting off.

7. Edwards Air Force Base Sighting

One can’t blame the US Air Force for being sensitive about matters involving UFOs—in 1957, one supposedly landed at Edwards Air Force Base. If that sounds like an insane myth, keep in mind that it was allegedly caught on film and was reported by Gordon Cooper, a test pilot and astronaut in the United States’ first manned space program. He was at Edwards supervising the installation of a new precision-landing system at the time, and his account of the incident was pretty unambiguous.

“I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed. These guys were all pro cameramen, so the picture quality was very good. The camera crew managed to get within 20 or 30 yards of it, filming all the time. It was a classic saucer, shiny silver and smooth, about 30 feet across. It was pretty clear it was an alien craft. As they approached closer, it took off.”

The camera crew reported this incident to Cooper and turned over the film. Cooper says that he reported the incident to his superiors, and was told to develop the film and send it to Washington, which he did after watching it and finding it to be exactly as described. He says that, after that, the film vanished and didn’t come to light even when the Air Force began Project Blue Book. He suggested using it as evidence and was told it had been lost—not that it would have mattered much. According to Cooper, “Blue Book was strictly a cover-up anyway.”

6. Socorro Encounter

On April 24, 1964, several witnesses in different parts of Socorro, New Mexico, reported different sightings of the same event. Some saw a low-flying object in the sky, some heard loud sounds reminiscent of the takeoff and landing of a powerful craft. But one man swears he actually saw it land and that it could only have been an alien spacecraft. His name was Lonnie Zamora, and it was such an astonishing encounter that it distracted him from the high-speed chase he had been engaged in when he first caught sight of the craft—at the the time of the sighting, Mr. Zamora was an on-duty Socorro police officer.

What grabbed Officer Zamora’s attention was a gigantic cone of blue light rising thousands of feet into the air, which he took to be flames. Abandoning his pursuit, he went in the direction of what was presumably a crash or a miners’ shack explosion—and that was when his day got really intense. He spotted a vehicle in a gully, then two small humanoids glimpsed from the corner of his eye seemed to “jump” at his approach before disappearing. He parked the vehicle and got out, then heard a series of metallic clangs coming from the gully. The source was a huge, metallic oval object standing on girder-like legs. Immediately, a bluish flame shot out of the bottom of the vehicle, and it rose before taking off quickly and silently, vanishing into the distance as the officer got on his radio to report what he had just seen.

A fellow officer responding to his call also saw evidence of the incident—angular indentations where the “landing gear” had made contact and burned foliage from its takeoff—and several witnesses in the area reported either an egg-shaped craft or a blue flame in the sky, some immediately afterward and independently of Zamora’s report. Several who have interviewed the officer about the incident, including journalists and Air Force officials, have similar conclusions to draw, such as former Project Blue Book head Hector Quintanilla Jr. “There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora’s reliability. He is a serious police officer and a man well-versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw, and frankly, so are we.”

5. The Westall UFO

On April 6, 1966, in Melbourne, Australia, witnesses say a silver, disc-shaped craft was spotted whizzing around, and that it then landed in a paddock near a high school and took off again. It would be a somewhat typical report of the type that is normally just a prank or misidentification of something else—except that this incident was observed by over 200 people in broad daylight, and no explanation has ever been offered.

Though eyewitness accounts vary, that is not unusual even in non-paranormal events when so many people are involved. What witnesses agreed on was that a large group of students were finishing their physical education class when several of them pointed out a silver or silvery-green craft about twice the size of a car, buzzing and hovering around a group of pine trees behind the school. After some time it landed among the pines. By that time, more students had come outside to see what was going on and some witnesses claim that private aircraft were approaching to investigate. In full view of this crowd, the craft rose from the trees, tilted at a 45-degree angle, flew into the sky at a rate of speed the private planes were unable to match, and vanished.

The nearest airport reported no private planes taking off in the area at that time, and neither did the military confirm any activity. Those who propose conventional explanations for this event are confounded by the fact that the object was in full view of hundreds of people for over 20 minutes, and was clearly not a plane or weather balloon—yet, no photographic or film evidence exists, and no pilot has ever claimed to have participated in the “chase.” The Westall incident remains one of Australia’s most debated unsolved UFO cases.

4. The Portage County Chase

According to Project Blue Book and the aforementioned Quintanilla, half a dozen or so police officers chased a communications satellite—and then, after losing sight of that, the planet Venus—into the Ohio wilderness and across the state line into Pennsylvania in the pre-dawn hours of April 17, 1966. When this official report was released, the police officers involved had a less-than-receptive response—in fact, they were infuriated by the insinuation that they could be that stupid. Especially considering this statement, signed by Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur, one of the first to observe the object.

“We found an abandoned car on the berm on Rt. 224 between Atwater and Randolph. We left our car to routinely investigate this vehicle. Spaur noticed a light over the trees on the hill next to the berm, and called Neff’s attention to it. As we watched, the light came closer and a large, self-illuminated object was seen as its source. The object came directly overhead and hovered above us. Its light lit up the ground where we were standing, and our cruiser, P-13. It was too bright to look at without hurting the eyes.”

After they understandably retreated to their patrol car and called it in, at least five more officers assisted them in pursuing the object for over half an hour before finally losing sight of it. But it gets stranger still—shortly before Spaur and his partner’s encounter, Police Chief Gerald Buchert saw a saucer-like, illuminated object hovering near his yard at home and snapped a picture of it. While he kept the original photo, he was persuaded to send the negative to Quintanilla, who dismissed the image as a processing defect. The negative, of course, was never seen again.

3. Trans-En-Provence Incident

The French version of NASA documents UFO sightings a little more diligently than its American counterpart. The incident that took place at Trans-en-Provence in January 1981 has been called the most carefully documented sighting of all time. While the incident doesn’t seem spectacular at first glance, its simplicity leaves little room for interpretation.

Retired farmer Renato Nicolai was working in his garden when he heard a sudden whistling sound, accompanied by the appearance of something that he immediately took to be an experimental aircraft. In broad daylight, he watched as a saucer-shaped craft between five and six feet in diameter dropped out of the sky, stopping to hover for half a minute about two meters (six feet) off the ground. Then it rose into the sky, a plume of dust in its wake. Nicolai was about 30 meters (100 ft) away.

The French government’s study found evidence of compacting and heating of the soil near the landing site, depleted chlorophyll in plants around the site, and “black material” that was not oil or residue from combustion, but metallic in nature. A technical report stated, “It was not the aim of the author to identify the exact nature of the phenomenon observed on January 8, 1981 at Trans-en-Provence. But it can reasonably be concluded that something unusual did occur that might be consistent, for instance, with an electromagnetic source of stress.”

2. Warren Air Force Base

Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has been the site of a number of alleged UFO visitations since 1965, when red and green flashing lights reported by civilians in the area had local missile sites like Warren on high alert. That’s right—Warren’s UFO problem is part of a troubling larger trend of instances where nuclear missile armories are visited by unexplained objects, and it’s happened several times there.

In a famous 1976 incident reported by retired Minuteman missile launch officer Bruce Fenstermacher, a bright white object with flashing red and blue lights was seen to the North. Guards stationed at the base observed the object, a cigar-shaped craft a little under 20 meters (65 ft) long, moving near the missile silos. Military and police personnel frantically converged on the site, by which time the craft had disappeared. The craft kept switching positions, with the police experiencing car trouble every time they started to get close. Finally, more than two hours after the incident began, the craft departed at blinding speed, becoming a bright white speck on the horizon.

Though several witnesses agreed on this account, it was not included in any official report. None of the other other alleged sightings at the base have been either. As recently as 2010, a power failure to 50 intercontinental nuclear warheads at the base meant that over 10 percent of the US nuclear arsenal was offline for nearly an hour, prompting renewed speculation from UFO enthusiasts.

1. Piney Woods Incident

One December night in 1980, friends Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum, along with Vickie’s grandson, Colby, were driving along a lonely highway through the Piney Woods of Texas when they saw something none of them would ever forget. It was an encounter that left its mark on them all—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

The three came up on a water tower–sized, glowing, diamond-shaped object in the middle of the highway, blocking their way. Flames periodically shot from its underside, making it rise slightly before settling back down. It radiated intense light and heat. The two women, who exited the vehicle to examine the object—the seven-year-old boy wanted nothing to do with it—would later say that they had to use their coats to avoid being burned on the door handles when they re-entered their vehicle, and the plastic dashboard was soft enough to leave a handprint in. As they watched the UFO ascend, one to two dozen military-style helicopters buzzed overhead, surrounding it—a Dayton police officer also confirmed seeing helicopters of this type near the same area at the time. The women drove on, watching the craft and helicopters recede into the distance.

All three suffered bizarre symptoms reminiscent of radiation poisoning or chemical contamination for some time afterward—weakness, nausea, and the feeling of having been sunburned. Betty Cash’s symptoms were bad enough for her to be hospitalized, and as such the Cash-Landrum encounter is one of very few UFO incidents to result in litigation. Citing the presence of the helicopters, the family sued the US government for $20 million—and lost. The military denied deploying any helicopters to that area, or possessing a gigantic, diamond-shaped UFO, and the judge ruled in their favor.

{ http://listverse.com/ }

14-02-2016 om 21:22 geschreven door peter