ientists discover 8000-year-old hand prints in ancient cave were NOT made by humans

Anthropologists probing the discovery of tiny 8000-year-old hand prints in the eerie Egyptian Cave of Beasts say they were not made by human hands.

Explorers stumbled across the tiny hand imprints after unearthing more than 5000 images carved into the stone in Egypt's southwest border with Libya 14 years ago.

A study of the hand prints show that not only are they not human - but that they are believed to belong to tiny lizards.

The cave, which is also known as Wadi Sura II, has been the focus of study for Emmanuelle Honoré of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research for years.

She said she was stunned when she saw the shape of the small prints. "They were much smaller than human baby hands, and the fingers were too long," she told National Geographic.

The scientists took measurements of the stencils and compared them to those of newborn human infants under a year, including newborn premature babies that were 26 to 36 weeks old. But came to the startling conclusion that the prints were not human and instead were created by lizards.

But while Honoré is sure the prints were made by tiny crocodiles or lizards - she is unsure of the reason why they are there. Or why any civilization would want to draw or use the legs of animals on their cave walls.

Even though the fingerprints are interesting, the figures depicted are much more interesting.

A closer look at the several images show besides many different human-like species also human looking lizard creatures.

I have highlighted three figures: Two human-like species and a human-like lizard creature or reptilian humanoid.

Reptilian or Reptoid is a word mixed from reptilians and humanoids and are human looking lizard creatures. It is said that these reptilians are living inside the earth.

The dessert is the world's largest and is the size of Western Europe and goes from Egypt into Libya, Sudan and Chad. It is one of the driest places on earth - but wouldn't have necessarily been so when the images were made - since there would have been water to sustain life.

  

02-03-2016 om 14:02 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Triangular Objects Spotted Over Newcastle, UK (Photos)

(Before It's News)

Two unknown objects flying in formation over Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Witness states: I was driving on the A19 and it was a sunny clear day and blue skies on January 11, 2016 when I noticed which I thought was a military aircraft very high altitude making big swooping turns it had a contrail so I took a picture of it on my Iphone.

I then took a second picture of it and then carried on driving and just watched it until I could no longer see it I then continued to my destination and thought nothing of it.

Second Picture.

It was then I got home and was scrolling through my pictures and on the second picture I took I noticed on the far right of the picture there was something which looks like a twin diamond shape or triangle with a sort of faint contrail coming from it which I did not see on the day I took the pictures.

I have added the two original pictures for you to take a look at to see if anybody can figure them out.
 

I am a very open minded person however this could be something completely rational but it seems very strange that I did not notice it at the time of taking the pictures of the military craft?

Hopefully somebody can explain what this was. Mufon case 74879.

Note: Could it be the infamous TR3B, a craft as shown in the image below or is it a type of craft of unknown origin?

Image craft bottom right is the new secret B-21 Stealth bomber. The US Air Force has unveiled the first image of its next-generation bomber. The all-black plane has a distinctive, zigzagging shape and a low profile designed to make it hard to spot on radar.

According to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James the new stealth bomber has yet to be built, but she provided the world with the first glimpse of the project using an artist’s rendering. 

Thanks http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

Check out more contributions by Jeffery Pritchett ranging from UFO to Bigfoot to Paranormal to Prophecy

02-03-2016 om 13:58 geschreven door peter  

Pilots Close Encounter Over Ontario Canada

(Before It's News)

02-03-2016 om 13:30 geschreven door peter  

MYSTERIOUS NAZI SUBMARINE FROM WWII DISCOVERED IN GREAT LAKES

Niagara Falls| Divers from the U.S coast guard took part this morning, in a delicate wreck recovery operation to bring to the surface a Nazi submarine discovered two weeks ago  at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

 

The U-boat was spotted for the first time by amateur scuba divers in late January and they had contacted the authorities. Archaeologists associated with Niagara University of  and master divers from the U.S Coast Guard were mobilized on site to determine what it was, and they soon realized that they were dealing with a German submarine that sank during World War II.

 

A wreck recovery vessel  of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society was mandated to refloat the ship and bring it back to Niagara Falls, where it must be restored before becoming a museum ship. The delicate recovery operation took nearly 30 hours to complete, but the submarine was finally brought down on the bank with relative ease.

 

 

 

The submarine was identified as the UX-791, a unique experimental German submarine, based on the U-1200 model, and known to have participated in the “Battle of the St. Lawrence”. It  was reported missing in 1943 and was believed to have been sunk near the Canadian coast.

 

 

Professor Mark Carpenter, who leads the team of archaeologists, believes that the U-boat could have traveled up the St-Lawrence River, all the way to the Great Lakes, where it intended to disturb the American economy.

 

A report from the dated from February 1943 suggests, that the ship could have attacked and destroyed three cargo ships and two fishing vessels, even damaging the USS Sable (IX-81), an aircraft carrier of the U.S. navy that was used for training in the Great Lakes, before finally being sunk by anti-sub grenades launched by a Canadian frigate.

 

“We have known for a long time that the Nazis had sent some of their U-boats in the St-Lawrence River, but this is the first proof that they actually reached the Great Lakes,” Professor Carpenter told reporters. “This could explain the mysterious ship disappearances that took place in the region in 1943, and the reported “Battle of Niagara Falls” which had always been dismissed as a collective hallucination caused by fear.”

 

The restoration of the submarine could take more than two years, but oncecompleted, the museum ship is expected to become one of the major touristattractions of the region.

 

Source: http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/

 

Watch also

 

---

{ http://7tales.net/index.php }

02-03-2016 om 01:35 geschreven door peter  

Biggest ‘ Flock ’ of UFOs Filmed While ‘ Playing ’ Over Kazakhstan

02-03-2016 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

Russia Army Officer Eugene Gavrilov Reveals Antarctic Secrets

02-03-2016 om 01:24 geschreven door peter  

Reports of bright white light and rumbling in sky over north of Scotland

Fireball/Meteor over Inverness, Scotland, 29th Feb 2016

https://youtu.be/QegbDEMYnqg

Meteor over Scotland 29 02 2016

https://youtu.be/RSh5hrxD3-8

A flash of light has been spotted in the skies above the north and north-east by dozens of social media users tonight.

A member of the Aberdeen Astronomical Society explained it was likely to have been an exploding meteor.

The internet was awash with reports of a “big white flash” at about 7pm.

Witnesses across the Highlands and Aberdeenshire said they had seen the explosion – but said that it was not accompanied by any thunder.

Facebook user Wayne MacDonald was first to post CCTV footage of the massive flash online from Inverness.

And videos were uploaded by many people to a popular Facebook group called Scotland by the Roadside.

Picture of moment white light illuminated Scottish skies. From video by Jenni Morrison posted to Facebook

Inverness: CCTV captures moment white light illuminated night sky

Aberdeenshire: Dashcam shows moment huge light lit up Scottish sky

Highland councillor Ken Gowans told the Press and Journal he had witnessed the flash.

“I was standing in my upstairs room on the phone, blethering away and the next thing there was this big flash. It was a fair size, and a light, greeny colour.

“I phoned the police. They said they had received numerous reports of it.

“It was almost due south from where I am in Westhill. This thing was massive – but there was no sound.”

Social media erupted as people took to Twitter to debate what caused the flashes – with several tweeting the Royal Astronomical Society.

Did you see the flashes or hear a rumbling? Let us know and send in your pictures/video to webpix@ajl.co.uk

{ https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/ }

02-03-2016 om 01:19 geschreven door peter  

UFO’S AND THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE

“We are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon which is largely indigenous to planet Earth.”

Brad Steiger [cited in] Blue Book Files Released in Canadian UFO report, vol 4, no. 4, 1977, pg 20

Firstly, I am currently working on research that looks at the abduction phenomenon within ufology and its similarities to old school demonic possession. Now before you all start building a stake and pile of wood to burn me on let me say this…there are very little differences in the experiences of abductees and victims of demonic possession and rituals. You may just be surprised.

Remember the case of 21 year old Elisa Lam? She could have been influenced by an inter-dimensional entity or even a cloaked alien being, and how on Earth could she open that water tank by herself?

Secondly, this is my first article to U.I.P so let’s get out of the starting blocks by establishing where I want to go with the idea I stated above.

Scientific knowledge is essential in many aspects of investigating UFO’s. These include identifying “terrestrial” reasons to explain sightings first and obviously being reasonable in that approach is paramount to maintaining a level of trust not only with the witness but to keep credibility within the communities of Ufology and academic science at the same time. This however is a practice that is seriously lacking and even if you find it in most cases isn’t consistent. This undermines the topic, puts off serious researchers and scientists and scares highly trained witnesses such as airline pilots for example into just not wanting to report anything in the first place. What is also needed is a working knowledge of being able to interpret the data that goes along with sightings such as radar, weather and astronomical read outs. Scientific knowledge is also crucial in understanding other topics related to UFOs such as propulsion systems, genetics, astronomy, geology, biology and many more aspects up to and including history, psychology and even politics. Nonetheless, an individual whose foundation of knowledge is primarily scientific will still confront some serious limitations in his or hers approach to the UFO subject.

I’d like to quote a few paragraphs from a relatively unknown UFO book, translated from French to English in1958 called “Flying saucers and the straight line mystery” by Aime Michel. The book has a highly sympathetic preface by General L.M. Chassin, the then General Air Defence Coordinator of Allied Forces in Central Europe (NATO). Right in the beginning of the book Michel talks about the Limits of the scientific method of studying UFO’s. He argues:

“… Non reproducibility has held back progress in saucer investigations undertaken throughout the world for ten years, in spite of the time, competence and money expended…it is this non reproducibility that inspires the scepticism and distaste for the whole subject felt by most scientists. Nothing could be more legitimate than this negative attitude toward flying saucers generally adopted by science for there can be no science where there is no generalization. An isolated phenomenon, one that evades not only systematic experiment but even scientific observation. It cannot be the subject of scientific enquiry. It is at best historical fact. And if its truth is in question it’s not even that.”

Other books by Michel, some contain incredible shots of a flying saucer, taken in 1952, when Photoshop did not exist:

The study of saucers has been an analysis of reports by witnesses after sightings but this is not the scientific method. The analysis of testimony belongs to the law courts and history which attempts to weigh human uncertainties. Science has still not been able to apply methods here properly. This isn’t a refusal to do so but just an acknowledgement of limitations. Michel’s thoughts on the limits of science were clear and in my opinion are still almost values today some 50 to 60 years later.

Its useful to separate what we know about UFO’s and what is speculate about.

WHAT WE KNOW, through

(A) Possession of many first hands and credible UFO accounts

(B) Numerous available! Plausibly witnessed sightings

(C) First hand accounts by insiders and researchers (like my own!)

(D) Released FOIA documents

These four sources are certainly not comprehensive but lets accept them for a start. From them we know with certainty that:

1. UFO’s exist

2. Key branches of governments have taken them seriously as well as the E.T hypothesis itself.

3. Over the last 50 years there has existed a consistently strong link between UFO researchers and elite intelligence agencies.

4. That (most) governments publicly deny interest in UFO’s

5. That thousands of individuals worldwide have claimed to have had an ”abduction” experience, and have been willing to say so even after intense ridicule and even ostracism.

U.I.P Summary:

What we do not know:

1. What UFO’s actually are. (THIS IS FUNDAMENTALLY WHERE IM GOING WITH MY FUTURE POSTS AS I PRESENT MY THEORY AND IDEAS ON OUR CURRENT POSITION WITHIN UFOLOGY TODAY)

2. The exact relationship between, if any, between human power entities and UFO’s.

3. What technologies, again if any, at responsible for UFO’s.

4. How long have they been around

There is a lot more we can add to both groups especially the second one. What we do not know is still a valid and essential area for speculation and investigation. Even from this cursory overview it should’ve obvious that, not withstanding the great gaps in our knowledge of UFO’s, that there’s enough to warrant further investigation.

This ends part 1. More to follow.

DEFCON 1

{

02-03-2016 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Finally Prove ‘Invisible Alien Entities ARE Here On Earth’

Top leading SCIENTISTS who have been seeking evidence of anti-matter in space have recently claimed to have stumbled across a previously unknown “invisible life form” here on Earth, which could quite possibly be SPYING on us all!  Could this be the proof that we need to confirm that we are not alone and being visited by Alien Beings?  Quite possibly.

It is a successful corporation called Thunder Energies, which is an optics, nuclear physics and energy company, who have claimed to have detected “invisible entities” living in Earth’s atmosphere and watching over us all!

Harvard-educated Italian-American nuclear physicist Dr Ruggero Santilli is the controversial guy that runs the corporation.

Dr Ruggero Santilli is actually dismissed by many mainstream scientists as a “fringe scientist” but he has in turn branded the rejection of his work as a conspiracy against “novel science” which often conflicts with established thinking, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity – sadly the masses of this planet are too brainwashed to realise sometimes that there may be more than meets the eye to ‘what’s really going on!

Please check out the video to their exciting find (actually a rather interesting video):

The nuclear physicist says the discovery was ‘accidentally’ made using the Santilli Telescope he has developed to try to discover proof of theoretical anti-matter galaxies, anti-matter cosmic rays and anti-matter asteroids.

The research team are concerned that the previously unknown micro-lifeforms may be carrying out covert surveillance on Earth because of where they have been discovered.

Mr Santilli uses a concave lens, which is actually the opposite to the convex lenses of standard telescopes.  His telescope is still pending a trade mark and patent, but Mr Santilli is convinced it has been able to pick up a life form which cannot be seen by the naked eye – but sadly it is not a surprise at how much negative feedback Mr Santilli has received from the mainstream media.

Mr Santilli recently said:

“This is an exciting discovery. We do not know what these entities are, they’re completely invisible to our eyes, our binoculars, or traditional Galileo telescopes, but these objects are fully visible in cameras attached to our Santilli telescope. 

“Since the dawn of our civilisation, all the way to the time of this breaking news, we humans have believed that everything that exists up there is only what we can see with our eyes and with our optical instruments.

The TRUTH is coming! Art by Raphael Terra

 “Well things have changed now because we have established the existence of entities that are existing in our terrestrial environment – these are invisible to our eyes and optical instruments, but are fully visible with new instruments, therefore dramatically enlarging our conception of the perceivable universe with far reaching possibilities of future developments and discoveries that are perhaps beyond our imagination at this time.” He said.

Mr Santilli has claimed to have detected “at least two types” of Invisible Terrestrial Entities (ITEs), which leave a dark image in a bright background of a digital cam attached to the telescope, and bright ITEs which do the opposite.

Santilli has claimed that the findings, which were published as “Apparent Detection via New Telescopes with Concave Lenses of Otherwise Invisible Terrestrial Entities (ITE),” in the American Journal of Modern Physics, have been “independently verified” by unnamed US astronomers.

But in the video released by his corporation on YouTube, Dr Santilli gave his findings a more sinister twist.  He said:

“The question of what those entities are must be answered by our government because these entities appear to be conducting unauthorised surveillance of rather sensitive civil, industrial and military installations.”

Dr George Gaines, president of the corporation, is also fully backing the research.  He went on to say:

“What we have learned is reality is much bigger than we originally supposed. “Things we can see and things we can’t see with our eyes or standard telescopes.

“The Santilli telescope allows us to see things that we have never seen before.”

The corporation are pushing this important find out into the public domain and are determined to try and discover exactly it is they witnessed on their powerful/clever telescope.  Santilli said that it is “nothing to do with money, its about discovering the truth!”

U.I.P SUMMARY – It was only a matter of time until somebody somehow discovered a way of highlighting what is going on out there above planet earth and it appears that this could be the beginning of something huge!

We have all seen many report and photographs of what appears to be cloaked craft in the skies above earth, could this be the new way of getting confirmed footage of what’s going on? Well to us guys at U.I.P YES most definitely! We are trying our hardest to arrange an interview with Mr Santilli to ask him some very straight talking questions – watch this space!

Perhaps footage like this is something that we can now look at in more detail with this technology –http://www.ufointernationalproject.com/latest-news/cloaked-ufo-caught-on-camera-coming-out-of-the-pacific-ocean/

MWV

{ http://www.ufointernationalproject.com/ }

02-03-2016 om 00:16 geschreven door peter  

I'm Terrified by the New Star Trek Series

Katharine Trendacosta

I love Star Trek above all other franchises. But it’s a twisted, painful sort of love. A love that, with a new TV series on the way, may actually kill me.

When it comes to many other things that I love, I feel like I have a healthy relationship with them. Star Wars, for example, has used up my outrage and now I happily pick and choose what I consider to be canon and what can be ignored. Disney can do whatever it wants with the old Expanded Universe, but I’m still going to pretend that the X-Wing pilots exist, and continue to be awesome. Similarly, I can deal with Chris Carter’s horrible vision of The X-Files,and continue to enjoy the rest.

That is not how I approach Star Trek.

Star Trek is, in Tumblr parlance, my “problematic fave.” I have massive issues with pretty much every iteration of the franchise, but I cannot distance myself from any part of it. And Star Trek gets every free pass I can give it. For every other movie, play, book, or television show, I insist that the story be good first. Not Star Trek. I let Star Trek be preachy and bad and I’ll defend the attempt.

But with that all-in commitment comes a nerd rage at Star Trek’s failure, that nothing else matches. I need Star Trek to be good, to justify all the time and energy I’ve put into it. I need people to recognize how groundbreaking and brilliant this franchise can be—because to understand Star Trek is, to an uncomfortably large extent, to understand me.

Star Trek was the first thing I ever watched that included people like me in its vision of the future. It was the first thing I ever experienced that articulated philosophy in a pop culture way. So, I love Star Trek in a deep, irrational, way.

But a series of disappointments mean that I also approach any new Star Trek in much the same way my cats do me after I’ve been away for a long time. I’m going to follow it from room to room, meowing plaintively until it does something. But I’m also not going to sit in its lap and purr until it’s proved it’s not going away again.

...This metaphor got weird. But the point still stands.

All of this brings me the the new Star Trek series. I am so afraid of this show. I am absolutely terrified that it cannot live up to my expectations. And I’m even more terrified it’s going to be successful, while failing to provide the thought-provoking storytelling that I expect from Star Trek. I would almost rather watchStar Trek fail while telling interesting allegories than succeed at being mindless pop fluff. If it’s just action adventure, but popular action adventure, that will be the final, crushing letdown.

I have precedent for my feelings. I have Star Trek: Nemesis, which I was unreasonably excited for when I was in junior high. Finally another Star Trekmovie! And an even-numbered one, that means its going to be good, right? Plus, Janeway had a cameo, I—also completely unreasonably, I know—love her. This should have been everything fourteen-year-old me dreamed of.

Cue Sarah Mclachlan singing “I Will Remember You,” as I stare sadly into the camera, locked in a cage of my own disappointment.

I also have Enterprise, which was so bad for so long, no amount of rehabilitation in later seasons can wash down the initial bad taste. I also have J.J. Abrams. I was fine with 2009's Star Trek, on the understanding that it was an introduction to a new timeline and a new set of adventures. It was fun enough, and popular enough, that we’d surely get something deeper and closer to “real” Trek in the next one, right?

I was, in a way, both right and horribly, horribly wrong.

 So I am constantly in need of more Star Trek, but also positive it is going to break my heart. This new series has Bryan Fuller and Nicholas Meyer on board, which is everything I could ever want. So of course, it must be a horrible prank pulled on fans by the universe. There haven’t been unambiguously good Star Trek choices, pretty much ever. In the new show’s case, my bet’s on Alex Kurtzman’s influence, tainted by Into Darkness, causing me endless pain.

I want Fuller’s Star Trek to be everything that Star Trek has been missing for years. I want it to look good, while also being innovative and interesting. I believe that, if anyone is capable of it, Fuller is. I also believe that if he succeeds, my heart won’t be able to take it and I will die of shock as the bedrock foundation of my world—Star Trek is the best and it always hurts me—cracks.

{ http://io9.gizmodo.com/ }

---

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

02-03-2016 om 00:09 geschreven door peter  

01-03-2016 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

Strange lights were filmed over Stara Zagora, Bulgaria 29-Feb-2016

These strange unidentified flying object was caught on tape over Stara Zagora in Bulgaria yesterday.

Witness report: I was walking down Ivan Vazov street, and looked in the direction of the football field, it’s a construction site at the moment for some large store. 
I looked at the sky and saw those lights, yellow-orange, pretty big (maybe 5-10 times bigger than the biggest star), slowly appearing and disappearing, as if the object was rotating, or just switching the lights on/off. 
I dont know if it was a single object with lights or multiple objects. Overall I observed about 4 cycles of the lights slowly appearing and slowly disappearing. At some point the object started moving slowly. I shot a video with my 5 megapixel phone camera. 
Then the light slowly faded and never appeared again. I waited for a couple of minutes and walked away. 
I immediately thought it is a UFO, as I’ve seen something similar in the area a few years ago (tho it was a single light of similar size and color), and my father has seen the same. 
I felt kind of calm and even disconnected while taking the video, but afterwards I felt pretty excited and a little scared. I was amazed and there were shivers running down my spine and trough my body.

Author (source: MUFON)

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

01-03-2016 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

Fast UFO filmed over Harstad, Norway

This older UFO video was filmed on 26th August 2015 and just yesterday reported to MUFON. It shows very wast object flying above Harstad in Norway.

Witness report: object changed green / red lights, moved fast above mountains and sea
I looked out over the sea from my balcony. First I saw this object standing still in the sky and I thought it could be a drone, but then it suddely moved very fast up into the sky in a straight line way to north. I run as fast as I could inside and looked out my kitchen-window while I at the same time told my girlfriend to come see this strange object. We have never seen anything like this before. The object suddenly moved fast back to where it came from, and we ran back to the balcony where I recorded this object on my iPhone. Then we saw this happening: The object moved very fast from high up in the sky above the mountain. Bright lights changed from red to green while it moved fast down toward the sea. Then it suddenly dissapeared behind the building. We stood there like paralyzed, not knowing what to say or feel.

Author (source: MUFON)

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

01-03-2016 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

Aitkin County Resident Claim To Have Seen The Same UFO Everyday

A witness in Aitkin County, Minnesota reported seeing similar UFO every night and sent a video with a report to MUFON to prove her case. The report, which is filed in Case 50785 of the network’s witness reporting database, only has a few details as the witness primarily reveals that she saw the same unidentified flying object on a daily basis.

According to the report, the sighting took place at 7:18 p.m. on September 12, 2013. The case was also reported on the same date to MUFON.

The witness described the object to have the size larger than a basketball if measured at arm’s length. It hovered, descended while blinking and pulsing, according to the witness’ report. The witness estimated it to be at an altitude higher than 500 feet and a distance of over a mile.

Aitkin County, MN has more than 16,000 residents.

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

01-03-2016 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Unidentified flying objects filmed over Los Angeles, Nevada.

Here’s one new video of a bright lights flying across the sky above Las Vegas, Nevada. This was filmed on Thursday, 25th February 2016.

Witness report: It was a great night for the night vision camera. I began filming a light to the south before it was fully dark. Initially, I wasn’t sure what it was but know to film just in case. It turned out to be an interesting capture because it ended up being a minimum of four lights which ultimately disappeared below a nearby rooftop. The second set of lights were to the north and I knew immediately that they were special and began filming them because I have filmed similar lights many times before in the same location. What’s so interesting about them is the formations they were flying in and how slowly they were moving. The most interesting thing of all is that this time I know their destination because the camera followed them to Nellis Air Force Base. They also flew to a very strange area I have filmed on many occasions. It is a location where hundreds of lights seemingly appear out of thin air. I could visually see the lights to the south but the lights to the north did not reveal themselves visually. Finally, in both the north and south videos you will also see airplanes flying through the scene. The aircraft that were flying in the video from the north are very likely military because they appeared to be flying in restricted airspace. You can tell when you are looking at an airplane because the flashing beacon is much stronger and more pronounced.

Author (Steven Barone @ youtube)

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

01-03-2016 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

01-03-2016 om 17:28 geschreven door peter  

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, thinks that mankind's next big objective in space should be to colonize Mars. Speaking at an event at the Science Museum in London, Aldrin projected that by 2040, Earthlings will set foot on the Red Planet, making way for an eventual space colony.

"To take the step, to take the movement, to take the action to begin to occupy -- is there anything bigger that humans could do on Earth than to leave and begin to occupy?" Aldrin said.

The astronaut, who set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, said that getting to Mars would be the "easy part." Actually being able to sustain human life and establish a fully functioning colony would be the real challenge.

"I look at where we were 47 years ago, leading the world in space exploration, having six landings on the moon -- no one has done anything like that ever since," Armstrong said, lamenting the drop-off in human space exploration in the past few decades.

This isn't the first time that Aldrin has predicted that Mars colonization is next great frontier in space exploration. In fact, he has been advocating for sending humans to Mars since 1969. He's written about it in his book "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration" and children's book, "Welcome to Mars." Last fall, he told CBS News' Face the Nation that "growing public apathy" and the enormous cost required to send humans to Mars have contributed to stalled efforts to send people to the Martian surface.

At the event in London on Sunday, Aldrin (wearing a "Destination: Mars" t-shirt) proposed a "perpetual, continuous cycling between Earth and Mars ... it gets more economical that way." The goal, he said, is "to occupy Mars -- not just visit and come back, but to keep Mars occupied. You go and you stay, and other people go, and you may come back."

He also discussed the mental toll that colonizing the planet could have on future space explorers. He said it would take a specific kind of individual to commit to settling on another planet for the rest of his or her life.

"I can see people making that decision. That's the most important thing," he said. "But I can also see things getting a little tough and they regret the decision and their functioning going down and that being disruptive to people."

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Buzz Aldrin 

✔‎@TheRealBuzz

Got your #DestinationMars Tshirt yet? proceeds benefit@ShareSpaceOrg http://Represent.com/buzzaldrin  @ProfBrianCox

9:42 AM - 29 Feb 2016

01-03-2016 om 17:24 geschreven door peter  

Giant statues called moai stand atop a stone platform called an ahu on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). Credit: Dan Ruby, University of Nevada, Reno View full size image

Thousands of small, sharp, spearlike objects scattered throughout Easter Island have long been presumed to be evidence of massive warfare that led to the demise of its ancient civilization. But new evidence from archaeological investigations suggests that these objects, called mata'a, were not used as weapons at all.

Easter Island is a tiny landmass located about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) off the coast of Chile. The remote volcanic island, also known as Rapa Nui, has been at the center of fierce debates in both academia and popular culture.

Polynesians first arrived on the island in the 13th century, and Rapa Nui's early inhabitants were famous for the enormous stone statues (called moai) that they built and placed on the coastline. More than 900 of these majestic statues were found on the island — so many that scholars have argued that there must have been tens of thousands of residents on Easter Island at one point — but so far, scientists and historians have not been able to agree on what caused the collapse of its society. [Image Gallery: The Walking Statues of Easter Island]

Popular belief held that massive internal warfare led to the population's catastrophic collapse. This grim outcome became a cautionary tale of the overuse of limited resources and eventual self-destruction. But, in the past decade or so, this understanding has been challenged by archaeologists whose research points to a different story — in which disease and slavery introduced by Europeans were the more likely cause of the Polynesian society's decline.

By carefully examining more than 400 mata'a, collecting photographs and analyzing their shape using a technique known as morphometric analysis, researchers have added new evidence to this line of thinking.

"The mata'a have lots of different shapes," said lead study author Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University in New York. "Some of them are roundish, some of them are square and some are kind of triangular."

The mata'a would not have made good weapons, Lipo said. For one, they are not sharp, and not all of the mata'a are pointed. They are also too thick and asymmetrical for piercing lethal wounds, and the wear patterns on these objects suggest that they were used to scrape and cut things, rather than puncture vital organs, he said.

These are images of various mata'a.
Credit: Carl Lipo, Binghamton University

View full size image

Moreover, other evidence of systemic warfare on the island is mysteriously absent, according to the researchers. For instance, archaeological digs on Easter Island have not uncovered traces of lethal skull trauma, severed limbs or mass graves, Lipo said. Nor did scientists find defensive fortlike structures common on other islands in the Pacific with a history of warfare, such as Fiji and New Zealand.   

"There's no question that there's going to be competition on the island," Lipo told Live Science. "It is an island with finite resources. But the interesting thing is that it doesn't appear to have led to lethal violence."

All of this evidence suggests that the small population of 3,000 that was living on the island when Europeans first arrived in 1722 wasn't a relic of a much greater civilization. In fact, the Rapa Nui society probably flourished until well after initial European contact, according to Mara Mulrooney, an anthropologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, who also studies the Rapa Nui civilization but was not involved with the new research.

The researchers' "morphometric analysis of mata'a lends further empirical support to the notion that Rapa Nui is an example of success rather than 'collapse,'" Mulrooney told Live Science in an email.

The Rapa Nui mata'a were probably general-purpose tools used for agricultural practices such as lithic mulching, ritual sacrifice and tattooing, Lipo said. These peaceful activities actually make more sense in an archaeological context because on such a small, isolated island, people would have had to learn to deal with their problems and mitigate group-level competition, he added.

"You can't afford to escalate to killing because there's no way to escape the cost of killing," Lipo said. "Warfare would have killed everybody."

If the Rapa Nui civilization was successful on the remote island, the next question archaeologists need to answer is how these people created a sustainable community, Lipo said. "The mystery is actually more interesting now," he said, "because now, we have something to learn."

The new study was published online Feb. 17 in the journal Antiquity.

Follow Knvul Sheikh on Twitter @KnvulS. Follow Live Science@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

• The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth
• Album: The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World
• 14 Strangest Sights on Google Earth

{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

01-03-2016 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

Monthly Statistical MUFON Report - for February 2016:

CMS continues to amass sighting reports from around the globe. In February 2016 there were 611 sightings reported to MUFON through CMS from the following countries; 

Within the United States the distribution by State was as follows;

If you are getting more sighting reports than listed here, please be sure to enter them manually into CMS. To make this happen automatically, make sure your local MUFON Website is pointing to the CMS Reporting form on www.mufon.com and direct all calls you get to the MUFON website so that witnesses can enter their own report directly into CMS.

ALL sighting reports received by CMS are already filled in by the witness, saving you and your investigators time. Each report is automatically sent to YOU, the State Director and Assistant State Director, for you to assign someone to follow-up and complete the report.

If a UFO sighting comes in over the phone, or by e-mail, and you want to enter it yourself, simply go to CMS at http://mufoncms.com (once logged in) and click on "ADD CASE" in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This gives you a blank sighting reporting form that you can fill out while the witness is on the phone. Once the report is filled out be sure to click "SAVE" and you will have easily added your NEW report to CMS.

Other interesting data points in CMS during February 2016 are the shape of the UFOs reported which were as follows; 

as well as the distance from the observer;

Most impressively there were 26 Landings, Hovering, or Takeoffs reported and 0 Entities observed.

To review the CMS data yourself go to www.mufon.com and click on "UFO Case Files" to 1.) Easily look at the Last 20 Sightings, or 2.) Do a customized search of the CMS database by date and/or location, or 3.) Logon to CMS for even more detailed UFO sighting information about your State and the World.

I hope you are enjoying our new internet based Sighting and Reporting System. For questions regarding its use please refer to the User Guide available on your CMS main menu screen. Please send your questions and/or suggestions to Jan Harzan atjanharzan@hotmail.com.

Thank you!

01-03-2016 om 16:56 geschreven door peter  

Pluto's North Pole Carved Up by Long Canyons (Photo)

A series of canyons snakes across Pluto's frigid north polar region, a gorgeous, newly released photo of the dwarf planet reveals.

The enhanced-color image, which was captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its historic Pluto flyby last July, shows a region informally named Lowell Regio, after Percival Lowell, the founder of Arizona's Lowell Observatory and the person who began the search that led to Pluto's discovery in 1930 (by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh).

Several canyons run parallel across Lowell Regio, the photo reveals. The widest one measures about 45 miles (75 kilometers) across;. smaller, parallel canyons to the east and west of it are each about 6 miles (10 km) wide.

"The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image, which was released Thursday (Feb. 25). "These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics."

The photo also depicts a number of reddish pits, the largest of which are about 45 miles (70 km) across and 2.5 miles (4 km) deep. These mysterious features may indicate where subsurface ice melted and the ground fell in, NASA officials said.

The composition of Lowell Regio is intriguing and unusual. Some of the area's higher elevations show up in a yellow color not seen elsewhere on Pluto. The bluish-gray terrain in the image represents lower elevations and latitudes.

New Horizons' measurements revealed that Lowell Regio contains lots of methane ice and little nitrogen ice, mission team members said.

"One possibility is that the yellow terrains may correspond to older methane deposits that have been more processed by solar radiation than the bluer terrain," Will Grundy, New Horizons composition team lead from Lowell Observatory, said in a statement published with the image description.

New Horizons took the image on July 14 from a distance of 21,000 miles (33,900 km) from Pluto's surface, about 45 minutes before the probe's closest approach to the dwarf planet.

The spacecraft is now speeding toward a small object called 2014 MU69, which lies 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto. New Horizons will study 2014 MU69 up close on Jan. 1, 2019, if NASA approves and funds a proposed extended mission.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures
• Ice Volcanoes On Pluto? New Imagery Points To It | Video
• Pluto Quiz: How Well Do You Know the Dwarf Planet?

{ http://www.space.com/ }

01-03-2016 om 16:44 geschreven door peter