02-12-2016 om 14:12 geschreven door peter  

China Space Station Being Upgraded To Fly To Mars. Dec 2016, UFO Sighting News.

News source: 

http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/105542/20161108/china-testing-emdrive-tiangong-2-really.htm

Its been widely reported that the Chinese are testing the new Emdrive propulsion on the Chinese space station currently in orbit around Earth. What this means is that the space station could be built look like a space station, but  could also be used to fly to Mars in 10 weeks! Thats right, the Chinese may be about to colonize Mars and claim it as their own in the not so distant future. 

The Emdrive is already installed on the space station and has been for awhile...but why? To keep it in orbit perhaps, but what about the long term...what about the future of the space station changing into a space station transport to Mars and back? 

Well, the more space transportation out there the better, because there is more opportunity for aliens to bump into humans and become friends...where on Earth, aliens have to respect humanity and their rules. In space...its humanity that needs to respect the aliens rules of conduct, and no government on Earth can change that. It looks like China may be the first country to get humans transported to mars...publicly. I'm sure NASA has already done it with several of their secret projects...but its kept the public in the dark far too long. 
Scott C. Waring

{http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-12-2016 om 13:37 geschreven door peter  

UFO Entering Mexico Volcano On Live Cam Dec 1, 2016, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting:  December 1, 2016
Location of sighting: Poocatepetl volcano, Mexico
Source photo: 

http://webcamsdemexico.net/colima1/2016-12-01/0940.jpg

While looking over a mexican volcano cam, I found one photo that had a UFO in it. The UFO was near the side of the mountain and was not seen in any other photos before and after that. This make me think that it entered the top of the volcano to enter an alien base 4km below the volcano. 

On top of the UFO you see a small dome, which is also on the bottom of the UFO. This is a classic UFO design. 
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-12-2016 om 13:21 geschreven door peter  

UFOs Might Be Feeding Off The Sun

Many hunters believe some UFOs might be using the energy from the Sun. In the video uploaded to YouTube, a massive UFO is supposed to be feeding off sun energy.

The uploader of the video, who claimed to be a former unbeliever of the plasma energy theory, the massive UFO that appears to be different color and shape to the rest of the connected lines has got him thinking.

Experts believe that cosmic rays can penetrate deep in the Earth and living things deep in the bowels of Earth where water is present could be dependent on cosmic rays to survive. Such situation may also take place on Mars and Europa.

Some UFO chasers believe the UFO may have been using the energy from the sun to fuel or recharge itself. They describe the UFO as a glowing white near a yellow Sun’s plasma, which makes them believe that the craft is made from a different material than the surface of the Sun.

In another NASA image taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), giant UFOs can be seen apparently rotating around the sun.

 Some UFO researchers believe there are UFOs that almost as big as the Earth.

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

02-12-2016 om 13:12 geschreven door peter  

UFO Emerges From Portal Over Hollywood Hills

UFO investigators are examining two pictures that show a strange beam of light from the sky and an unidentified flying object. The photos were taken simultaneously over the Hollywood Hills in California.

The unnamed photographer said he did not see anything bizarre at the time of snapping the two pictures, but he spotted anomalies when reviewing the images later.

In a report to MUFON, the witness said that he took some photos and noticed something strange on them. The pictures were taken a day before the witness sent them to the organization dedicated to the investigation of alien and UFO phenomena.

The first image shows a portal-like beam of blue light, which appears to distort the trees as it passes above them. A small dark UFO can be seen to the right of the beam.

The second picture apparently shows a slightly different part of the hills and seemingly in a closer zoom. It shows a translucent jelly-like UFO that somewhat has three dots inside it.

Some UFO believers suggest that it could be a living entity that travels through portals without needing spacecraft. However, there’s no scientific explanation to support this conspiracy theory.

Meanwhile, skeptics would say that strange light anomaly on pictures often due to the result of sunlight refracting inside a camera lens pointed towards the sun.

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

02-12-2016 om 13:10 geschreven door peter  

The Secret Life of J. Allen Hynek

John Franch

Skeptical Inquirer Volume 37.1, January/February 2013

According to legend, the astronomer J. Allen Hynek was a skeptic before becoming an outspoken UFOlogist, but is the legend true? This article takes a look at Hynek’s unusual life and career.

It was a “road to Damascus” experience for the Mad Men era. In 1966, the respected astronomer J. Allen Hynek had gone—seemingly overnight—from a determined debunker to an ardent apostle of the UFO gospel. A longtime consultant to Project Blue Book noted for his skeptical stance toward UFOs, Hynek suddenly began telling anyone who would listen that the UFO phenomenon merited serious scientific scrutiny. The great director Stanley Kubrick was among the many who listened. In a 1968 Playboyinterview promoting his science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick spoke approvingly of what he termed Hynek’s “belated but exemplary conversion” (Phillips 2001, 58).

In fact, the professor’s apparent trans­formation from skeptic to UFO proponent was not quite the conversion event that it appeared on the surface. Since his teens Hynek had been an enthusiastic though closeted student of the occult. The French-born Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist and UFO author, was one of the few persons who knew Hynek’s secret. Hynek once told Vallee that he had become an astron­omer in order to discover “the very limitations of science, the places where it broke down, the phenomena it didn’t explain” (Vallee 1996, 232). Nonethe­less, the scientist’s public U-turn gave a big boost to the UFO movement, lending it a measure of credibility, and made Hynek into a celebrity as the nation’s “foremost expert on flying saucers” (O’Toole 1966). For two decades people could point to Hynek and say, “He’s a trained scientist, an astronomer no less: if even he believes in this UFO stuff then there must be something to it.”

Who was Josef Allen Hynek? He was born on Chicago’s West Side on May 1, 1910, only a little over a week after Halley’s Comet had swung around the sun. Hynek’s Czech-born father made cigars for a living while his mother, Bertha, taught at a local grammar school. Josef credited his mother for his early interest in astronomy.

“When I was seven, I had scarlet fever and was quarantined with my mother in our apartment at 15th and Ayers,” Hynek explained. “There was nothing to do except read, and since I was so young, my mother read to me. Pretty soon we ran out of children’s books and she started reading textbooks. Among them was a high school astronomy book. I guess it interested me the most” (Berland 1962).

Maybe astronomy textbooks didn’t give him the answers he wanted, and so, as a bookish teenager, Hynek began to study what he called “esoteric subjects.” After reading widely in the occult, he developed a particular fondness for the writings of the Rosicrucian secret societies, with their tantalizing promises of hidden ancient knowledge, and those of the so-called hermetic philosophers, especially Rudolf Steiner.¹The high schooler spent over $100—roughly $1,300 in today’s dollars—to purchase the Canadian mystic Manly Hall’s massive, richly illustrated tome An Encyclo­pedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy: Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings Concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of All Ages, better known simply as The Secret Teachings of All Ages. “All my student friends thought I was crazy: why didn’t I buy a motorcycle instead, as they all did,” Hynek later told Jacques Vallee (Vallee 2010, 64–65).

Hoping to discover “the very limitations of science,” Hynek decided on a career as an astronomer. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the Uni­versity of Chicago in 1931, Hynek went on to pursue a doctorate in astron­omy. He worked on his doctoral thesis—“A Quantitative Study of Cer­tain Phases of F-Type Spectra”—at the Yerkes Observatory, a Romanesque temple of astronomy on the serene shores of Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.

“The whole thing had a sort of mystical quality,” Hynek would later revealingly refer to his monastic existence at Yerkes. “One shouldn’t say that in connection with science, I guess, but I was so utterly absorbed in the life of the observatory that I had hardly heard of Hitler” (Ridpath 1973, 423).

Shortly after receiving his PhD in 1935, Hynek obtained a position as an instructor at Ohio State University and four years later became a professor there. He was still teaching at Ohio State in 1948 when a trio of Air Force officials approached him: They were looking for a scientist to help them with a puzzling problem that had recently cropped up (Ridpath 1973, 422–24).

On June 24, 1947, a salesman by the name of Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a formation of shiny objects pass in front of Mount Rainier while he was flying his private plane. In the weeks following Arnold’s alleged sighting, hundreds of persons claimed to observe similar “flying saucers.” Fearful that that these so-called “saucers” might be Soviet aircraft, U.S. Air Force officials formed Project Sign early in 1948 to investigate the phenomenon. Hynek was recruited to be the project’s astronomical consultant.

In his role as Project Sign’s scientific advisor, Hynek made periodic trips from Columbus to Wright Patterson Air Force Base (where Project Sign and its successors, Projects Grudge and Blue Book, were based) to examine the UFO case files. He proved to be a shrewd and relentless debunker, a Sherlock Holmes of sky phenomena. “I’d go through them and say, ‘Well, this is obviously a meteor,’ or ‘This is not a meteor, but I’ll bet you it’s a balloon,’” he recalled in 1985. “I was a thorough skeptic, and I’m afraid I helped to engender the idea that it must be nonsense, therefore it is nonsense” (Weintraub 1985, 74).

One of Hynek’s earliest efforts at debunking—and one of his most famous—concerned the 1948 case of Cap­tain Thomas Mantell, an Air Force pilot who, while investigating a UFO, died when his P-51 Mustang crashed. In his report of the incident Hynek suggested that the UFO may have been Venus, even though, as he later admitted, the planet would have been too faint to be seen in the bright daylight sky (Ruppelt 1956, 41–47). The astronomer had another—probably correct—theory on that case: the UFO Mantell observed and pursued too high was a Skyhook balloon (Vallee 1987, 72).

Hynek at first figured flying saucer sightings were merely “a post-war craze that would disappear as quickly as the hula-hoop” (Hall and Connors 2000, 240). But the UFO reports kept on coming as Project Sign turned into Project Grudge in 1949 and then into Project Blue Book in 1952. During the latter year a wave of UFO sightings prompted Hynek to begin reconsidering his views on the subject. He openly speculated that UFOs might be a new kind of natural phenomenon he dubbed “nocturnal meandering lights” (Swords and Powell 2012, 191). The astronomer’s change of mind was so apparent that Captain Edward Rup­pelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, judged Hynek to be “very much pro-UFO” (Hall and Connors 2000, 205, 212).

Hynek later attributed this shift in his thinking to two things:

One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. . . . Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I still thought they weren’t going about it in the right way. Secondly the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this. (Stacy 1985)

As early as 1960, Hynek had begun to argue behind the scenes that UFOs deserved serious scientific scrutiny. “I need only remind you,” he wrote to an Air Force official that year, “that less than two centuries ago the entire province of meteorites was kept out of legitimate astronomy because stories of ‘stones that fell from the sky’ were regarded as old wives tales. Had these accounts been given careful attention by the scientists of that day, the productive branch of astronomy which we now know as meteoritics would have been born well over a century earlier than it was” (Hynek 1960). Hynek would often cite this incident from the history of astronomy to justify himself when he later became an outspoken UFO proponent.

Hynek’s true views on UFOs were still unknown to the public when the astronomer, now teaching at North­western University, first met Jacques Vallee in the fall of 1963. Taking a job as a computer programmer at North­western, Vallee became a close friend of Hynek and soon they formed a UFO discussion group: The astron­omer would eventually nickname this group “the Invisible College” (Vallee 1996, 270)—a term first used by the Rosi­crucians in the early 1600s. Vallee began prodding Hynek to break with the Air Force and publicly admit that the UFO phenomenon was real and worthy of serious scientific investigation. Project Blue Book’s longtime scientific consultant—still known as a staunch UFO de­bunker—stubbornly resisted this ad­vice (Vallee 1996, 80–94).

Hynek had a lot to lose. He enjoyed a respectable reputation in the astronomical world: while he had a sizeable number of journal articles on stellar astronomy to his credit, he was better known for his work behind a desk than for his labors in front of a telescope. He had been a director of the McMillin Observatory in Ohio, a co-director of the Operation Moonwatch satellite tracking program, secretary of the American Astronomical Society, and the guiding force behind the Project Sky Gazer balloon astronomy program (Ridpath 1973, 422–24). He understandably wasn’t eager to risk his name—and his career—in the interest of UFOs. The astronomer was waiting, in Vallee’s words, for “the single big case that no one would be able to deny because the evidence would be overwhelming” (Vallee 1996, 96).

And then, on April 24, 1964, the single big case arrived, or so it seemed. In Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeder in his squad car when he suddenly heard a roar and noticed a flame in the sky. Investigating, Zamora spotted an egg-shaped, “aluminum white” object with legs that extended to the ground, and he noticed two white-cloaked figures nearby. As the officer cautiously approached it, the object began to bellow, and Zamora high-tailed it back toward his car. The UFO then ascended into the sky and soon disappeared from view (Hynek 1972, 144–45).

Badgered by the news media, Major Hector Quintanilla, Project Blue Book’s director, reluctantly dispatched Hynek to Socorro to investigate the alleged sighting. At the landing site Hynek examined charred plants and four impressions that had been left in the ground and persuaded Zamora to reenact the events (Huyghe 2001, 317–18). The astronomer left New Mexico “more puzzled now than I arrived,” he confessed to a reporter, but he was convinced that Zamora had in­deed seen something (Chicago Tribune 1964).²

Hynek and Vallee frequently discussed the Socorro case, but the astronomer was still unwilling to publicly come out as pro-UFO (Vallee 1996, 118). Things changed in the spring of 1966. On March 20 of that year, dozens of persons reported viewing glowing objects hovering over a swamp near Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the following night, eighty-seven students at Hillsdale College, also in Michigan, claimed to have seen strange red, white, and blue lights. The Michigan sightings received massive media coverage, and Major Quintanilla once again sent Hynek out into the field. The professor rushed out to Michigan and conducted his investigation in an atmosphere of “near-hysteria,” dogged almost every step of the way by reporters and cameramen. After interviewing thirty-two witnesses and conferring with several University of Michigan professors, Hynek concluded that at least two of the Michigan UFOs may have been manifestations of swamp gas (Hynek 1966a, 20).

On March 26, Hynek announced his findings at a packed press conference in Detroit—supposedly “the largest in the history of the Detroit Press Club” (House of Representatives 1966, 6006). After suggesting swamp gas as a likely explanation for some of the Michigan UFOs, Hynek stressed that he could not prove “in a court of law that this is the full explanation of these sightings” (Los Angeles Times 1966). The media mostly ignored this qualifier and Hynek immediately became a national laughingstock for his swamp gas theory, lampooned in cartoons and lambasted in editorials as a puppet of the Air Force (Huyghe 2001, 9–10).

Hynek’s swamp gas theory also attracted the notice—and the ire—of Gerald Ford, the powerful Republican congressman from Michigan and future president. In response, Ford promptly requested the U.S. House Armed Services Committee to investigate the UFO phenomenon, believing that “the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force”—meaning the explanation given by Hynek (House of Representatives 1966, 6047). The wish of the House minority leader was equivalent to a command and so the UFO hearing took place only one week after Ford had made his request.

On April 5, 1966, Hynek made his first public break with the Air Force, boldly using the occasion of his testimony before the Armed Services Com­mittee to do so. Stung by the “swamp gas” criticism, the astronomer apparently wanted to show that he wasn’t the Air Force’s or anyone else’s puppet. In a statement not cleared by Major Quin­tanilla, the Project Blue Book director, Hynek told the sitting congressmen that there were aspects of the UFO phenomenon “worthy of scientific attention,” and he called for the creation of a panel of physical and social scientists to seriously analyze what he termed the “UFO problem” (House of Representatives 1966, 6007–6008).

“The swamp gas episode boom­eranged like hell on me and the Air Force,” Hynek later explained his about-face. “I began to feel guilty about my skeptical attitude. And once you open the gates to the possibility that all these people can’t possibly be mistaken, then you see a lot of other cases in a totally different light” (Huyghe 2001, 33). As we have seen, Hynek’s “skeptical attitude” was in fact a façade for public consumption. A longtime student of the occult, he happened to be very open to outré notions: he, for example, believed that there were planes of existence beyond the physical, and he even endorsed alleged instances of “psychic surgery” and “psychic photography” (Vallee 1996, 240, 306). But it took the media furor over the “swamp gas episode” for an angry and embarrassed Hynek to publicly air his long-held views on UFOs.

It was a risky move for Hynek but not as risky as it would have been a few short years before. Since then his astronomical career had stalled in a big way.³ In 1957, Hynek launched in collaboration with the Air Force a program for balloon-based astronomy—later named Project Star Gazer. The plan was to send telescope-equipped balloons high above the image-distorting lower layers of the atmosphere. Un­fortunately, a series of failed test launches prompted the Air Force to scrap Project Star Gazer in 1963. The decision was devastating for Hynek, who seems to have bet his professional career on the success of the project. In a scathing final report to the Air Force the astronomer didn’t hold back. “In any event,” he wrote, “the setting aside of a project which had engaged so many for such a length of time, at a time when success seemed assured, can only be listed in the scientific annals as a criminal act, and one carried out in a callous, cavalier manner without regard for the desires, objectives and ideals of the people involved” (Hynek 1966b). Was Hynek’s emergence into the open as a pro-UFO crusader partly an at­tempt, whether subconscious or not, to get back at the Air Force for torpedoing Project Star Gazer?

As Hynek had recommended during his congressional testimony, the Air Force soon funded a scientific study of UFOs and the renowned physicist Edward U. Condon, of the University of Colorado, was chosen to direct it. After three contentious years, the Condon Com­mittee concluded in 1969 that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be ad­vanced thereby” (Hynek 1972, 192–93). Hynek predictably dismissed the committee’s report, calling it “a waste of time” (Kotulak 1969), but the Air Force went ahead anyway and closed Project Blue Book later that year. The professor was now on his own as a UFO investigator.

Back in 1966, Hynek had chosen the biggest megaphone he could find to announce his new career as a UFO advocate: He sent a bombshell letter to the prestigious and widely read journal Science in which he argued that UFOs merited scientific investigation. The Science editors grudgingly published the letter but only after the astronomer had leaked its contents to the Chicago Sun-Times (Vallee 1996, 222). Hynek subsequently wrote articles on UFOs for such national publications as The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, and even Playboy, and he became a ubiquitous presence on television and radio shows. “Media men hire Allen as they would hire a guitar player,” Jacques Vallee wrote in his journal. “He rushes wherever he sees a spotlight, and if the spotlight moves, he moves with it” (Vallee 1996, 259).

Hynek’s fame came at a great cost: he lost the respect of his peers in the scientific community. “His colleagues’ attitude towards him is changing to the point of contempt, and this pains him,” Vallee noted in 1968. “He is no longer taken seriously among astronomers” (Vallee 1996, 339).

Determined to prove his colleagues wrong, Hynek began working on a book that he said would take a scientific approach to the study of UFOs. Pub­lished in 1972, The UFO Experi­ence: A Scientific Inquiry argues for the reality of the UFO phenomenon in a dry, matter-of-fact manner. The book is most noteworthy for its classification of certain UFO reports into Close En­counters of the First Kind (sightings), the Second Kind (sightings with physical effects), and the Third Kind (sightings of UFO occupants) (Hynek 1972, 86).

Unfortunately for Hynek, The UFO Experience did further damage to his academic standing. According to an astronomer friend of Vallee, Hynek’s book “created antagonism among the (Northwestern) Faculty and made him a controversial figure. In spite of a fair review in Science Magazine, many professors have felt that the reputation of the school was tainted” (Vallee 2010, 156). Indeed, speaking for his faculty colleagues in 1982, the dean of North­western’s College of Arts and Sci­ences categorically declared to a University official: “We are not, have not been, and will not be proud of Hynek’s UFO affairs. There are many who think that what he’s up to has nothing to do with research” (Wein­gart­ner 1982).

Hynek may have genuinely wanted to restore his scientific standing, but his behavior during the 1970s certainly didn’t help matters. The bespectacled, goateed astronomer was a familiar sight to television viewers of the era, pontificating on the “UFO problem” on programs ranging from The Dick Cavett Show to In Search Of. Late in 1973, he endorsed the alien abduction claims of two Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard workers, saying the men had “a very real experience” (Los Angeles Times 1973). He joined a UFO panel formed by the National Enquirer: $50,000 was to be awarded to “the first person to prove to the panel that UFOs are from outer space and are not natural phenomena” (Dick 1972). Near the end of the decade Hynek even made an eight-second cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Huyghe 2001, 32). He was also a popular figure on the lucrative college lecture circuit. He later boasted to a friend “that each one of my lectures brings me more than my monthly pay from Northwestern” (Hynek 1978).

Hynek’s extracurricular activities did not endear him to the Northwestern University administration. In the fall of 1973, following a wave of alleged sightings, the astronomer formed the Center for UFO Studies to serve as a clearinghouse for UFO reports. He hoped that the Center could be located on the North­western campus, but university officials adamantly rejected this idea. School administrators insisted that there be no connection whatsoever between Northwestern and the UFO center; Hynek was not even allowed to use his Northwestern mailing address for any Center-related correspondence. Eventually protesting, the professor fired off a series of angry letters. “Frankly, I am quite embarrassed to have to say that the University has been so conservative as to not see the potential here, both for science and for publicity,” he raged in one letter. “And, of course, I personally resent the implication that the subject is sheer nonsense and that anyone connected with it is a crackpot (speaking bluntly!)” (Hynek 1974).

After he retired from Northwestern in 1978, Hynek devoted much of his time to the Center for UFO Studies. Despite having a good track record as a fundraiser—he had obtained money from private donors for Northwestern’s Lindheimer Astronomical Research Cen­ter—Hynek struggled to put his UFO center on a secure financial footing: Wealthy would-be benefactors frequently tantalized him with offers of monetary support only to let him down in the end. Finally in 1984, Hynek packed up his research files and relocated his UFO center to Scottsdale, Arizona, having been lured there by a rich Englishman with promises of money and the use of his “quite luxurious” home (Witt 1984). Once again the astronomer was doomed to disappointment: this particular patron “was only interested in keeping a few scientists in his entourage to promote his personal theories about the (UFO) phenomenon,” Jacques Vallee maintained (Vallee 1996, 423).

Hynek was often evasive when asked to give his own theories on the nature of UFOs. Despite his cameo in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he had by then rejected the notion that UFOs were “nuts and bolts” spacecraft piloted by extraterrestrials (Gardner 1997, 247). His occult studies had pointed him in a very different direction. As early as 1967, he speculated that UFOs might be “observational devices that are materialized into our world by the denizens of another” (Vallee 1996, 306). He later offered a variation on this theory: UFOs as “psychic projections” created by an “extradimensional intelligence in some parallel reality” (Gardner 1997, 253). Speaking to the UFOlogist Jerome Clark, Hynek was more specific. The astronomer allegedly told Clark that he believed “elementals”—nature spirits—were behind the UFO phenomenon (Clark 1998).

It is easy to question the veracity of Clark’s startling claim, but it makes sense when one realizes that Hynek was strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian mystic. Steiner argued that the hard sciences merely offer human­kind “a vast amount of popular information.” By employing sense-free thinking, the enlightened individual, on the other hand, could “pierce the veil” and discover what lay behind the material world revealed by science. In Steiner’s view, elementals—spirits of air, earth, water, and the ether—dwelled in this hidden realm inaccessible to the senses. If Hynek did indeed believe that UFOs were nature spirits, he may have specifically identified them with this last class of elemental—the etheric “beings of the higher elements.” Steiner claimed that “what exists in the sky is not merely the physical sun, but that with the sun’s warmth and light etheric beings stream down to earth” (Steiner 1922). Did Hynek suspect that UFOs were Steiner’s “etheric beings” streaming down to Earth?

For those very few who knew of Hynek’s fascination with the occult, his 1975 piece on Johannes Kepler—the great seventeenth-century astrono­mer—in the journal Vistas in Astronomy had an extra meaning. In this eye-opening, one-page article Hynek argued that science historians are wrong to dismiss Kepler’s practice of astrology as merely something he did to keep alive. “Both his [Kepler’s] astrology and astronomy grew out of and partook in large measure of his deep mystical outlook,” Hynek (1975) wrote. He went on to assert that modern astronomy, with its exotic concepts like quasars, pulsars, and black holes, offered “a broad playing field for the metaphysicist.” According to Hynek, there was a “tenuous bond” linking present-day astronomy’s metaphysical thinking and Kepler’s brand of metaphysics, with both systems of thought being “the repository of fundamental questions not entertained on the present playing field of physical science” (Hynek 1975, 455). Hynek apparently saw Kepler as a kindred spirit, and, in this article, he was defending not only Kepler’s beliefs but his own.

“I have never stopped thinking about what must lie beyond all this,” Hynek once remarked to Vallee in Colorado as he sweepingly gestured toward the Rockies and the Great Plains (Vallee 1996, 232). For the professor, UFOs represented the “beyond,” that point where science could not reach. Having become an astronomer in order to discover the limits of science, Hynek wanted, maybe even needed, to believe in UFOs. It was a case of wishful thinking.

Hynek died of a brain tumor at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale, Ari­zona, on April 27, 1986 (Folkart 1986). Halley’s Comet was then making its return appearance after a seventy-six-year journey through the solar system. Like Mark Twain, Josef Allen Hynek came into the world with the great comet, and he went out with it as well.

Notes

1. Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) was an Austrian-born mystic who propagated a belief known as anthroposophy or spiritual science. According to Robert McDermott, the purpose of anthroposophy was “to bring to humanity an entirely new capability—knowledge of the spiritual world by conscious sense-free thinking” (McDermott 1984, 3). In his classic Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Martin Gardner called Steiner’s Anthroposophical Society “the fastest growing cult in post-war Germany” (Gardner 1957, 169).

2. In a recently unearthed 1968 letter, the then-president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology indicated to the chemist Linus Pauling that the Zamora episode was in fact a hoax perpetrated by a student (Sheaffer 2010, 25).

3. According to the SAO/NASA Astro­physics Data System, out of the over 100 astronomical publications Hynek had to his credit, only about a dozen appeared after 1966. Nearly one-half of these dozen articles related to Image Orthicon—a ground-breaking system using television technology to boost the light grasp of telescopes that Hynek helped develop in the 1950s and 1960s (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observ­atory/National Aeronautics and Space Admin­istration, N.d.).

References

Berland, Theodore. 1962. New look at the stars. Chicago Tribune (December 9).

Chicago Tribune. 1964. Probe flying object reports in 2 states. (May 1).

Clark, Jerome. 1998. UFO UpDates Mailing List, December 1. Online at http://www.cohenufo.org/Hynek/clark_re_hynk2.htm.

Dick, William. 1972. Letter to J. Allen Hynek dated February 11. J. Allen Hynek Papers. Northwestern University Archives, Evanston.

Folkart, Burt. 1986. J. Allen Hynek dies; led AF investigation of UFOs. Los Angeles Times (May 1).

Gardner, Martin. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications.

———. 1997. The Night Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938–1995. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Hall, Michael David, and Wendy A. Connors. 2000. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt: The Summer of the Saucers—1952. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Rose Press International.

House of Representatives. Armed Services Com­mittee. 1966. Unidentified Flying Ob­jects. 89th Cong., 2nd sess., Committee Print No. 55.

Huyghe, Patrick. 2001. Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat. New York: Paraview Press.

Hynek, J. Allen. 1960. Letter to Brigadier B.G. Holzman dated February 17. J. Allen Hynek Papers. Northwestern University Archives, Evanston.

———. 1966a. Are flying saucers real? Saturday Evening Post (December 17).

———. 1966b. Scientific Report on Project Star Gazer: Final Technical Report. July. J. Allen Hynek Papers. Northwestern University Archives, Evanston.

———. 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

———. 1974. Letter to John E. Fields dated November 18. J. Allen Hynek Papers. North­western University Archives, Evanston.

———. 1975. Kepler’s astrology and astronomy. Vistas in Astronomy 18: 455.

———. 1978. Letter to John E. Fields dated September 7. J. Allen Hynek Papers. Northwestern University Archives, Evanston.

Kotulak, Ronald. 1969. U.F.O. report rapped as ‘waste of time.’ Chicago Tribune (May 18).

Los Angeles Times. 1966. Air Force investigator blames swamp gas for ‘flying saucers.’ (March 26).

———. 1973. Recent UFO sightings: reports, answers—and a few mysteries. (October 18).

McDermott, Robert A., ed. 1984. The Essential Steiner: Basic Writings of Rudolf Steiner. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

O’Toole, Thomas. 1966. Can’t shrug off UFOs, says saucer expert. Washington Post(October 26).

Phillips, Gene D., ed. 2001. Stanley Kubrick: Inter­views. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.

Ridpath, Ian. 1973. The man who spoke out on UFOs. New Scientist 58 (May 17): 422–24.

Ruppelt, Edward. 1956. The Report on Unidenti­fied Flying Objects. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

Sheaffer, Robert. 2010. Famous Socorro ‘UFO landing’ a student prank? Skeptical Inquirer 34(2): 25–27.

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/National Aeronautics and Space Administra­tion Astrophysics Data System (ADS). N.d. Online at http://adswww.harvard.edu/.

Stacy, Dennis. 1985. Close encounter with Dr. J. Allen Hynek. CUFON: The Computer UFO Network. Online at http://www.cufon.org/cufon/hynekint.htm.

Steiner, Rudolf. 1922. The elemental world and the future of mankind. May 28. Rudolf Steiner Archive. Online at http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19220528p01.html.

Swords, Michael, and Robert Powell. 2012. UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry. San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books.

Vallee, Jacques. 1987. UFO’s in Space: Anatomy of a Phenomenon. New York: Ballantine Books.

———. 1996. Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969. New York: Marlowe & Company.

———. 2010. Forbidden Science: Journals 1970–1979. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Docu­matica Research.

Weingartner, Rudolph. 1982. Letter to Chuck Loebbaka dated May 11. J. Allen Hynek Papers. Northwestern University Archives, Evanston.

Weintraub, Pamela. 1985. Interview: J. Allen Hynek. Omni 7(5): 70–76, 108–114.

Witt, Howard. 1984. UFO expert moving to Arizona. Chicago Tribune (August 21).

{ http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ }

02-12-2016 om 01:39 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers Observe Strange Quantum Distortion in Empty Space for the First Time Ever

 

Henning Dalhoff/Science Photo Library

IN BRIEF

• Vacuum birefringence has been observed by a team of scientists for the first time ever using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT).
• The team observed neutron star RX J1856.5-375, which is about 400 light-years from Earth, with just visible light, pushing the limits of existing telescope technology.

A LITTLE LESS STRANGE

Vacuum birefringence is a weird quantum phenomenon that has only ever been observed on an atomic scale. It occurs when a neutron star is surrounded by a magnetic field so intense, it’s given rise to a region in empty space where matter randomly appears and vanishes.

This polarization of light in a vacuum due to strong magnetic fields was first thought to be possible in the 1930s by physicists Werner Heisenberg and Hans Heinrich Euler as a product of the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED). The theory describes how light and matter interact.

Now, for the first time ever, this strange quantum effect has been observed by a team of scientists from INAF Milan (Italy) and from the University of Zielona Gora (Poland).

Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), a research team led by Roberto Mignani observed neutron star RX J1856.5-375, which is about 400 light-years from Earth.

Neutron stars are rather dim, yet they are 10 times more massive than our sun. As such, they have extremely strong magnetic fields permeating their surface and surroundings.

Vacuums are supposedly empty spaces (according to Einstein and Newton, at least) where light can pass through uninhibited or unchanged. But, according to QED, space is full of virtual particles continually popping in and out of existence. Very strong magnetic fields, like those surrounding neutron stars, can modify such spaces as vacuums.

Using the FORS2 instrument on the VLT, the researchers were able to observe the neutron star with just visible light, pushing the limits of existing telescope technology.

BETTER TELESCOPES

Studying VLT data on the star, the researchers saw linear polarization occurring at a significant degree of around 16%. This is very likely due to vacuum birefringence in the area surrounding RX J1856.5-375.

“The high linear [polarization] that we measured with the VLT can’t be easily explained by our models unless the vacuum birefringence effects predicted by QED are included,” said Mignani.

Given the limited technology used, Mignani believes that future telescopes can discover more about similar strange quantum effects by studying other neutron stars. “[Polarization] measurements with the next generation of telescopes, such as ESO’s European Extremely Large Telescope (EELT), could play a crucial role in testing QED predictions of vacuum birefringence effects around many more neutron stars,” he said.

“This measurement, made for the first time now in visible light, also paves the way to similar measurements to be carried out at X-ray wavelengths,” researcher Kinwah Wu said.

The study was published by the ESO.

References: 

• Eso,
• ESO Journals, 
• Physical Review Letters, 
• Science Alert

{https://futurism.com/ }

02-12-2016 om 01:13 geschreven door peter  

The Biggest Space Stories of 2016: The Good, the Bad and the Weird

Concept art of SpaceX’s upcoming Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX

Fifty years after the debut of Star Trek, space is still the final frontier. This year scientists continued to explore the possibility of life on other planets, confirmed a 100-year-old theory about black holes and even intercepted possible extraterrestrial signals. Here are six of the biggest stories from the year in space:

1. Any conversation about modern space exploration has to begin with SpaceX. The aerospace manufacturer had another busy year, test firing an engine powerful enough to take humans to Mars and successfully landing part of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship (proving that landings be just as successful on water as on Earth). As always, however, the company made its biggest headlines after a tragedy—the Falcon 9 exploded in midair while carrying a $200 million Facebook satellite. But SpaceX CEO Elon Musk didn’t dwell on the bad news: he was too busy outlining his plan for a human colony on Mars—the idea might not be too off base, given that just last month researchers at Arizona State University unearthed evidence of ancient life on the Red Planet.

2. Musk isn’t the only person interested in the possibility of life on other planets: this year Bill Nye advocated searching for extraterrestrial life on Jupiter’s moon Europa, which has twice as much seawater as the Earth— the Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor venting off the moon’s vast, unseen (for now) ocean. Nye actually thinks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket (currently in development) would be ideal for launching a probe toward Jupiter. The mission likely won’t occur until the 2020s, but that gives us something to look forward to.

3. Things got extra weird in August, when a team of scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began investigating alien signals from deep space. The signals were seemingly beamed directly at our solar system from a civilization 95 light years away that can harness solar energy. There’s a good chance aliens are even closer than that, however—NASA’s director of planetary science echoed Musk and Nye, saying in a TED Talk that Mars, along with moons on Saturn and Jupiter were also probable sources of extraterrestrial life.

Obama Announces Plan For Life On Mars

 

4. While the government hasn’t offered an official stance on aliens, it’s still plenty interested in space as a whole: in October President Obama unveiled his “Interplanetary Frontiers Directive,” aiming to expand human presence throughout the solar system. He encouraged NASA to focus on deep space exploration, with the ultimate goal of getting humans to Mars by the 2030s. The Obama administration also directed NASA to work with the commercial space industry and develop habitats which could safely house astronauts during long trips through deep space. President-elect Donald Trump actually has a similar plan for deep space research—the main directive he’s outlined for NASA is human exploration of the entire solar system by the end of this century.

5. The National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) took an important step in this regard in February, when researchers announced the first direct detection of a gravitational wave. This ripple in spacetime in which two black holes merge was first proposed by Albert Einstein in his 1916 theory of relativity. Scientists also discovered this year that black holes can produce cosmic rays, space radiation which enters the atmosphere and bombards the Earth (though not to a harmful extent).

Illustration of the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. LIGO/T. Pyle

6. If any radioactive or otherwise alien force ever does attack our planet, however, we could always escape to Asgardia. A group of scientists at Vienna’s Aerospace International Research Center launched a crowdfunding campaign for their pacifist nation state in October—over 500,000 people signed up for it. The new country “will offer an independent platform free from the constraint of a land-based country’s laws,” its website reads. Asgardia plans to launch its first satellite late next year, and hopes to one day be recognized by the United Nations.

How many of these planned missions will actually blast off? How will Trump’s space initiatives pan out? And is there actually life on other planets? Here’s hoping these interstellar issues, and many others, will continue to start conversations in 2017.

Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.

02-12-2016 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

02-12-2016 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

Roswell UFO BREAKTHROUGH? 'Welder at crash site saw TWO dead ALIENS in flying saucer'

EXCLUSIVE: A PAIR of dead aliens WERE found in the wreckage of a crashed flying saucer discovered by the US military at Roswell in 1947, it was sensationally claimed yesterday.

02-12-2016 om 00:28 geschreven door peter  

Family’s Alien Abduction In Ping Wu China

(Before It's News)

{ http://beforeitsnews.com/ }

02-12-2016 om 00:09 geschreven door peter  

Chinese Astronaut Hears Alien Knocking On His Spacecraft Walls In 2003, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: 2003
Location of sighting:  Earths orbit
News source: http://www.bbc.com/news/38153623

The first Chinese astronaut has said he heard mysterious knocking sounds on his spacecraft and I believe it may have been an intelligent biological entity trying to establish contact with him. Sadly, he didn't make a similar knocking noise to make this alien contact, but instead was both puzzled and worried at what it could be. But he knew, as you can hear in his own words below. He knew.

Another astronaut John Glenn, was interviewed and I have it in an old 1960s UFO magazine, but he saw fireflies...white glowing tiny insect size objects swarming around his module while in orbit. He banged on the metal sides and it sent the little buggers up swarming again around his windows. Here is also a video below about it that I found. 
Scott C. Waring

BBC News states: 
Imagine you're alone in a tiny spacecraft - it's your first time up there, all alone in endless space. Then suddenly - a knocking sound.

That's what happened to Yang Liwei, China's first man in space, on his maiden flight in 2003.
In a recent interview, he has now recalled hearing "someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer".

"It neither came from outside nor inside the spaceship."

Naturally, he got a bit nervous and had a peek out the porthole but failed to spot any explanation for the eerie knock.

He's not been able to figure out what it was, neither up in space nor after returning to earth. He has even tried - but failed - to recreate the sound so that experts could help him identify it.
Unsurprisingly, the story about unexplained mystery sounds in space has garnered quite a bit of attention.

What - or who - was knocking on Mr Yang's spacecraft as he was all alone miles from the safety of the earth?

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

01-12-2016 om 23:50 geschreven door peter  

Cloaked UFO Revealed On Camera Over Ottawa, Canada On Nov 28, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Nov 28, 2016

Location of sighting: Ottawa, Canada

 

This is a cloaked UFO that is partly revealed due to the angle of the sun, the eyewitness and the fact that the cloud the UFO makes is not made up of a normal cloud substance, but more holographic in nature. The holographic cloak gets lit up especially much by added light from the sun, but must be at the right angles for it to happen...like a sunset. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states: 

I was working like usual day to day business and the sky got my attention. This is weird, and I never saw this before! This is raw footage. 

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

01-12-2016 om 23:46 geschreven door peter  

UFO Moves Over Mexico Volcano On Live Cam, Nov 29, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News

Date of sighting: Nov 29, 2016
Location of sighting: Popocatepetl Volcano, Mexico

This UFO was caught by Marte Salas of Youtube this week and it shows a bright orb UFO that changes direction to hover over the mouth of the volcano, then it suddenly turns and leaves...moving far away as it becomes smaller in the distance. This UFO is very similar to the one that flew over Temple Mount at the holy place of Dome of Rock back in 2011.

This UFO seems to slow down just when its over the volcano mouth before it leaves. At this moment it probably beamed someone or something up or down from the alien base below the volcano. 

There is no way that this is a helicopter or plane, because this is a live volcano that has massive bursts of burning lava shoot out every few day...its off limits to all low air traffic. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

01-12-2016 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

The Missing Universe: CERN Has Started Searching for “Dark Photons”

 

An overview of the NA64 experimental set-up at CERN. NA64 hunts down dark photons, hypothetic dark matter particles. (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

01-12-2016 om 00:49 geschreven door peter  

WHY NASA'S FIRST GOOD LOOK AT MARS ALMOST ENDED ITS EXPLORATION

{ http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/ }

01-12-2016 om 00:30 geschreven door peter  

01-12-2016 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

Multiple Timelines In Parallel Universes Could Make Time Travel Possible

A team of researchers has made a controversial claim that challenges the conventional knowledge of space and time.

According to Howard Wiseman, from Griffith University's Center for Quantum Dynamics, and colleagues, there are parallel universes with multiple timelines. If this theory, which was presented in a paper published in the journal Physical Review X, is correct, time travel would be a possibility.

Many Worlds Interpretation

The idea is based on the Many Worlds interpretation theory in quantum mechanics, which has been around since 1957. It posits that each universe branches out to a new universe once a quantum measurement is made. The theory was formulated by Hugh Everett but Bryce Seligman DeWitt popularized it in the 60s and 70s dubbing it "many worlds."

Time Travel Possible With Multiple Universes

If there are indeed multiple universes that interact with each other, it would make time travel possible. It also means that every imaginable scenario is possible in a parallel universe at some point such that in some universes, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed the Earth and Texas could be a sovereign nation and not a part of the United States.

If the theory of parallel universes with multiple timelines is correct, time travel would be a possibility. The idea could mean that in some universes, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed Earth.   ( Alexander Gerst / ESA via Getty Images )

Governed By The Same Law Of Physics

The researchers who proposed the new theory explained that parallel universes are governed by the same laws of physics with the particles in the individual universe giving a subtle push against those in other universes, which can explain the quantum weirdness experienced in our universe.

Wiseman said that the best way to describe parallel universes is to consider them as ghost universes that exist in the same space as the universe that we know of. These universes, however, are invisible since they interact with our universe under strict conditions.

Wiseman explained that the interactions between the universes are very minute and use a force that interacts between similar particles in each of the universes. This explains why we cannot feel or notice them albeit these are enough to provide explanation for quantum mechanics.

The researchers mathematically demonstrated the theory using the classic double slit theory where individual photons are each fired at different times at a screen that served as a detector. There is black material with two slits in it that absorbs the photons and is placed between the screen and the source.

If photons are mere particles, the researchers said they will spread evenly in space but instead, they piled up together in strips with a particular pattern. The same thing would occur if the photons would pass through both of the slits as a wave, providing evidence that the photon is both a wave and a particle.

{ http://www.techtimes.com/ }

01-12-2016 om 00:17 geschreven door peter  

UFO filmed over Torquay harbour during worldwide spate of sightings

By ColleenSmith  

image: http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276409/Article/images/29946671/15714815-large.jpg

The mystery light over the Pavilion car park

FILM of a bright, mystery object over Torquay harbourside on Tuesday night was recorded as the internet across the world went into panic mode about UFOs.

Herald Express reader Mike Collins and his wife Erich were walking around the harbour towards the Pavilion Marina car park at just after 5pm when they spotted the strange, eliptical shape hovering.

They watched the light for about 10 minutes before Mike realised he should film it.

Later Mike discovered from his daughter that his film was one of thousands across the world being shared on social media, starting on Sunday night with the Twitter hashtag #ufoattacktoturkey which became the number one trending subject.  

"I went to bed really spooked," Mike said. "People may laugh but I know what I saw.

Although he says the zoomed-in video is shaky, he is clear that it was not a helicopter, Chinese lantern or light aircraft.

"My only regret is that I didn't film it sooner. It was much brighter to start with and we kept walking towards it but it didn't move. I saw a light aircraft with red lights fly under and that was much, much smaller. By the time I got to the Marina car park and decided to film it the lights were much much dimmer."

Mike said: "We had been Christmas shopping and were walking from Debenhams to Marine Car Park.

"We were just coming up to The Offshore Pub at around 5.10 to 5.15pm.

"My wife and I spotted this very, very bright light that just stayed stationary - although my video is a little shaky where I zoomed in -but I know what I saw wasn't an helicopter (totally no noise) and certainly not a Chinese Lantern (was stationary).

"It seemed brighter to start with and seemed elliptical shape!

"One of my Daughters then sent me a link on Facebook about multiple UFO sightings in Turkey on 28 November which I found a little worrying!.

"I wonder how many other people saw it. One of my friends on Facebook said he saw something but thought it must have been a helicopter."

It happened the day after social media all over the world went into panic mode with similar videos of lights being spotted over Turkey on November 27. The sightings were feared to be either an invasionary force or a fleet of UFOs.

image: http://images.hngn.com/data/thumbs/full/242843/650/0/0/0/fleet-of-ufos.jpg

Fleet of UFOs spotted over Turkey

Hundreds of people shared pictures and videos and soon the news was followed by similar sightings in Denver and Texas, and then in Canada and Mexico and the Twitter hashtag "#ufoattacktoturkey" quickly became the number one global trending topic.

A video posted by UFO hunters secureteam10 was seen hundreds of thousands of times.

One user, Eren Dogan uploaded a video of the UFO sighting that was followed by a loud bang.

Another YouTube user, 1 Mn görüntülenme, uploaded a video and wrote: "Alright, I'm trying to zoom in to show you now. It is November 28, 2016, Sunday night. It's around 2:20 a.m. right now. The object you're seeing is in the skies of Esenler (Istanbul). I'm recording it right now. Many people like me have crowded here. We've informed the authorities and they've told us they're dealing with the situation. It is a yellow object. We suspect it's a UFO. It gives off a light and is in motion. Right now it's stationary actually but it moves position every few minutes. Very interesting."

One Tweeter commented: "So many photos being posted! Very compelling stuff!"

A second wrote: "Objects are seen in all cities of Turkey, UFO invasion in Turkey!"

Another added: "What is this? Is it really UFO? I am so afraid. I hope this is a joke."

While the strange lights were not given any official confirmation, many people suggested that the lights might be drones.

{ http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/ }

30-11-2016 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

FOI request for reports of pilot UFO sightings over Runcorn and Widnes turned down

CAA 'neither confirms nor denies' existence of unidentified aerial phenomena reports but hints that requests on safety grounds may be considered

BY OLIVER CLAY

The CAA will neither confirm nor deny whether it has reports on UAP sightings in airspace above Halton and surrounding areas filed under the Mandatory Occurrence Reporting Scheme. 

(Photo: Getty)

{ http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/ }

30-11-2016 om 23:46 geschreven door peter