UFO Over Santa Monica Pier Sunday--Unidentified Flying Object of Alien Origin?

An expression of displeasure with FAA decision to close Santa Monica airport?

By Stan Greene
Observer Staff Writer

An Unidentified Flying Object was seen to hover over the Santa Monica pier early Sunday afternoon. It was reported by hundreds of onlookers and photographed by many.

Witnesses said the UFO moved up and down, and left and right at a rapid speed, more rapid than conventional human aircraft are capable of flying. After appearing for half an hour, the craft seemed to disappear into the cliffs.

Alien spacecraft transport themselves not just across space but also through time, so the 110-year-old pier is especially interesting as a landmark to time travelers. Parts of it can be seen across 3 centuries, which is important in the space/time continuum.

Appearing the day after the US Federal Aviation Administration and the City of Santa Monica agreed to close the Santa Monica airport in 2029, the UFO was theorized by some to be a sign of alien displeasure. The airport is an important fueling station for aviation now, will be a principal refueling spot for alien aircraft in the future. Others say it was a sign of displeasure with Donald Trump era policy on illegal aliens.

The FAA did not return our call asking for commentary on the story.

{ http://www.smobserved.com/ }

01-02-2017 om 18:57 geschreven door peter  

Zuurstof van de aarde belandt op de maan - HLN.be

  Bron: Nature Astronomy; Science Alert

© rv.

Japanse wetenschappers hebben ontdekt dat grote hoeveelheden zuurstof van de aarde op de maan belanden. Wanneer de aarde precies tussen de maan en de zon komt te staan, nemen zonnewinden zuurstof mee naar het maanoppervlak. De resultaten van het onderzoek werden gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature.

Gedurende vijf dagen in de maancyclus komt de aarde precies tussen de maan en de zon te staan. In die periode draait de maan door de magnetostaart van de aarde, het gebied achter de aarde dat bereikbaar is voor zonnewinden. Een zonnewind kan dan zuurstof van de aarde naar de maan stuwen. 

Op deze figuur zien we hoe het magnetisch veld van de aarde zich in traanvorm uitstrekt rond de maan wanneer die perfect in lijn staat met de aarde en de zon.

Lees ook

• 5 wereldrampen die alle leven op aarde zouden vernietigen
• Ingenieuze schoonmaker die ruimteschroot rond onze planeet moet opkuisen in de problemen

© NASA.

{ http://www.hln.be/ }

01-02-2017 om 18:32 geschreven door peter  

"Lost continent" found under Mauritius

Lava-covered piece of continent is an ancient remnant, left over from the break-up of the supercontinent, Gondwana, which started about 200 million years ago.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of a “lost continent” under the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius that was left-over by the break-up of the supercontinent, Gondwana, which started about 200 million years ago.

The piece of crust, which was subsequently covered by young lava during volcanic eruptions on the island, seems to be a tiny piece of ancient continent, which broke off from the island of Madagascar, when Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica split up and formed the Indian Ocean.

“We are studying the break-up process of the continents, in order to understand the geological history of the planet,” says Wits geologist, Professor Lewis Ashwal, lead author on the paper “Archaean zircons in Miocene oceanic hotspot rocks establish ancient continental crust beneath Mauritius”, published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. 

By studying the mineral, zircon, found in rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic eruptions, Ashwal and his colleagues Michael Wiedenbeck from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and Trond Torsvik from the University of Oslo, guest scientist at GFZ, have found that remnants of this mineral were far too old to belong on the island of Mauritius.

“Earth is made up of two parts – continents, which are old, and oceans, which are “young”. On the continents you find rocks that are over four billion years old, but you find nothing like that in the oceans, as this is where new rocks are formed,” explains Ashwal. “Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island. However, by studying the rocks on the island, we have found zircons that are as old as 3 billion years.”

Zircons are minerals that occur mainly in granites from the continents. They contain trace amounts of uranium, thorium and lead, and due to the fact that they survive geological process very well, they contain a rich record of geological processes and can be dated extremely accurately.

“The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent,” says Ashwal.

This is not the first time that zircons that are billions of years old have been found on the island. A study done in 2013 has found traces of the mineral in beach sand. However, this study received some criticism, including that the mineral could have been either blown in by the wind, or carried in on vehicle tyres or scientists’ shoes.

“The fact that we found the ancient zircons in rock (6-million-year-old trachyte), corroborates the previous study and refutes any suggestion of wind-blown, wave-transported or pumice-rafted zircons for explaining the earlier results,” says Ashwal. 

Ashwal suggests that there are many pieces of various sizes of “undiscovered continent”, collectively called “Mauritia”, spread over the Indian Ocean, left over by the breakup of Gondwanaland.

“According to the new results, this break-up did not involve a simple splitting of the ancient super-continent of Gondwana, but rather, a complex splintering took place with fragments of continental crust of variable sizes left adrift within the evolving Indian Ocean basin.”

Gondwanaland

Gondwanaland is a super-continent that existed more than 200 million years ago and contained rocks as old as 3.6 billion years old, before it split up into what are now the continents of Africa, South America, Antarctica, India and Australia. The split-up occurred because of the geological process of plate tectonics. This is the process where the ocean basin is in continuous motion, and moves between 2 cm and 11 cm per year. Continents ride on the plates that make up the ocean floor, which causes the movement of the continents.

Mauritius

Known as a tropical holiday destination, Mauritius is a volcanic island, formed by the eruption of volcanoes starting at about nine million years ago. The island forms part of a string of islands, formed by a stationary hotspot (volcano), presently located at Réunion Island. Originating from deep within the earth, the hotspot stays stationary while the ocean’s tectonic plates move across it, creating a string of volcanic islands.

{ https://www.wits.ac.za/ }

01-02-2017 om 18:22 geschreven door peter  

01-02-2017 om 18:10 geschreven door peter  

01-02-2017 om 18:03 geschreven door peter  

FIRST CONTACT KAN OOK LEVENSGEVAARLIJK ZIJN VOOR DE MENSHEID ( VIDEO )

Veel mensen kijken uit naar het eerste open contact met buitenaardse beschavingen en staan dan klaar om hen met open armen te verwelkomen. 

Maar, misschien is het wel helemaal geen goed idee om vol vertrouwen dit contact tegemoet te zien op een planeet die wel echt lijkt, maar dat waarschijnlijk niet is.

Wat opvalt, is dat steeds meer mensen zich gaan bezighouden met buitenaardse zaken. Mensen die normaal gesproken hele andere dingen aan hun hoofd hebben, schijnen opeens erg geïnteresseerd in leven buiten onze planeet. 

Misschien hebben de recente ontdekkingen op Antarctica daar iets mee te maken of misschien met het fenomeen tijd, waarbij grenzen tussen dimensies steeds vaker lijken te verdwijnen. 

Zelfs Mike Adams van de website Natural News begeeft zich plotsklaps op buitenaards terrein en is van mening dat wij als mensheid helemaal niet verlangend uit hoeven te kijken naar contact met buitenaardsen. 

In zijn denkwijze gaat hij ervan uit dat er op dit moment nog geen contact is geweest met buitenaardse beschavingen en dat wanneer dit zal gebeuren dit ook wel eens het einde van de mensheid zou kunnen zijn. 

Hij zegt dat zijn mening hetzelfde is als die van Dr. Stephen Hawkins en wel dat de meest succesvolle beschavingen in de kosmos agressieve oorlogszuchtige rassen zouden zijn die op pad gaan om andere planeten te koloniseren en te veroveren. 

Vanuit die invalshoek bekeken, zou het contact met vredelievende, niet agressieve buitenaardsen zo goed als nul zijn volgens Adams, omdat vredelievende buitenaardse beschavingen niet op pad gaan om andere planeten te veroveren, maar gewoon lekker blijven waar ze zijn.

De meest logische verklaring volgens hem is dan ook dat de kosmos vol zit met vergevorderde beschavingen die bepaalde dingen nodig hebben van andere planeten en hun succes te danken hebben aan het feit dat ze van planeten die ze in de kijker hebben, zoals bijvoorbeeld onze aarde, gewoon pakken wat ze willen. 

Mike Adams noemt de mensen die denken dat buitenaardsen hier komen in vrede en ons goede dingen zullen brengen, irrationele optimisten. Wij denken dat ze natuurlijk ook best een helpende hand zouden kunnen toereiken, maar dat is niet gebaseerd op persoonlijke ervaringen net zoals die van Mike dat niet zijn. Hij denkt dat we er als mensheid beter aan doen om te zorgen dat we hier op aarde de middelen scheppen om onszelf in de nabije toekomst te kunnen verdedigen tegen agressieve buitenaardse beschavingen. 

In de volgende video licht Mike zijn zienswijze verder toe. 

 

Maar, misschien is dit alles helemaal niet zo belangrijk als wij denken, want nieuw wetenschappelijk onderzoek toont aan dat wij misschien in een holografische 3D illusie leven. 

Het idee is niet nieuw, al in het begin van de jaren negentig kwamen een aantal wetenschappers met die gedachte, maar nieuw onderzoek door geleerden van de universiteit van het Engelse Southampton, in samenwerking met Canadese en Italiaanse collega’s, heeft nieuwe aanwijzingen/bewijs opgeleverd van een holografisch universum. 

Ze kwamen tot hun conclusie nadat ze onregelmatigheden hadden onderzocht in de kosmische microgolf, ook wel bekend als het nagloeien van de Big Bang. 

Volgens professor Kostas Skenderis van de Southampton universiteit is ons leven vergelijkbaar met het kijken naar een 3D film in de bioscoop. Voor ons gevoel heeft de film hoogte, breedte en diepte, maar in feite zijn de beelden afkomstig van een plat scherm. 

Het verschil met een 3D universum is volgens professor Skenderis dat we daar in staat zijn om voorwerpen aan te raken en dat de projectie “echt” lijkt, hoewel het een illusie kan zijn. 

“Holografie is een enorme stap vooruit in de manier waarop wij denken over de structuur en creatie van het gecodeerde universum”, zei de professor. 

En verder: “De relativiteitstheorie van Einstein verklaart bijna alles wat grootschalig is in het universum heel goed, maar die theorie valt een beetje uit elkaar als je naar haar oorsprong en mechanisme kijkt op kwantumniveau. Al jarenlang zijn wetenschappers bezig de theorie van Einstein over de zwaartekracht te combineren met de kwantumtheorie. Sommigen denken dat het concept van een holografisch universum de mogelijkheden biedt om de twee samen te voegen en ik hoop dat ons onderzoek hiertoe kan bijdragen”. 

Het bovenstaande ondersteunt de theorie van David Icke die al heel lang zegt dat wij in een holografische illusie leven. 

Als je dat allemaal beseft, dan is het ronduit hilarisch hoe mensen elkaar bijvoorbeeld in de haren vliegen over de vraag of de aarde nu rond is of zo plat als een dubbeltje. 

Dan is het eigenlijk vermakelijk om te zien hoe gemakkelijk mensen volledig opgaan in hun rol en doen alsof zij werkelijk hun avatar op deze planeet zijn. Hoe snel mensen vergeten dat ze in werkelijkheid eeuwig bewustzijn zijn en hier op aarde om een menselijke ervaring mee te maken, waarschijnlijk in een hologram. Een hologram, gemaakt door een IT specialist die velen plegen God te noemen. 

{ http://niburu.co/ }

01-02-2017 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

UFO Seen Parked At Jet Propulsion Laboratory, New Mexico, Feb 1, 2017, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: February 1, 2017
Location of discovery: Jet Propulsion Labs, New Mexico
Google Coordinates: 34°12'18.59"N 118°10'13.12"W

Here is a eye brow raising discovery found on Google Earth map by Youtube userName Shame. He found an actual flying saucer parked near the secret military laboratory on the mountain top. He states,  "A spacecraft spotted at the end of the runway on mesa rd JPI. Is NASA playing games.. ufo captured? What it is!" 

This disk is low to the ground. So much so that it doesn't cast a shadow, even when the nearby car does. So this disk is about 3 meters big at its center, and about 1.5 meters at its edge from the ground. That is way too low to be a water tower. A water tower would be 5-10X taller! But there is no shadow, so this is not a water tower.

Now, the amazing thing is that if you hit the date bar, you can view photos of the same area in the past, and this disk moves around from place to place. Its in the perfect position where no one would be able to see it since its on a hilltop at the highest point in the city with mountain walls on all sides and a military fence around the facility. 

So, what we see here is an alien craft being experimented on at Jet Propulsion Labs and since its parked outside, its probably parked there because its too much trouble to move it back and forth nightly for test flights. As you can see, its on a road track that goes into the building, then later its off the track hidden near the bushes. 
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

01-02-2017 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

UFO Hiding On Clouds Over Lake In Australia, Jan 2017, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: January 2017

Location of sighting: Lake Proserpine, Australia

 

This was just sent into me on Twitter from one of our readers. He only said a friend who found it shared it with him and his friend said, "Took this photo whilst on lake Proserpine. There were several like it and am wondering what causes them Gavin??" The person told me that he believes his friend has spotted a UFO hiding in the clouds. I agree totally. There is a high possibility since you see see the ring, and the lower middle area that has been forcibly pushed away from the ship. Australia is well known for its UFOs over Australia's outback and here is an example of one trying to hide in plain sight.

Scott C. Waring

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

01-02-2017 om 17:44 geschreven door peter  

By: David Russell Schilling 

Robot Training

(Image Courtesy Wikipedia: https://goo.gl/images/nrN7Nz)

According to reports, automation replaced 17,000 “roles” in back office processing at Accenture, a professional services and tech firm over the past year and a half. Thankfully, in this case, no jobs were lost. According to Accenture, automation eliminated menial work, allowing the company’s workforce to do more productive work on behalf of the company.

Robots & Automation Penetrating Businesses Everywhere

A team from PolyU in Hong Kong studied the design of precision tools created for space exploration, and with these insights created a new motorized, minimally invasive robotic system for single incision surgery. In India, at the World Laparoscopy Hospital in Gurgaon, more than 1,500 robotic surgeries have taken place over the past six years.

Tech campuses around the world, such as Texas A&M, are leading the development and commercialization of robotics across a wide range of industries. Robotics is so popular today that training is occurring in elementary, middle, and high schools, and in community centers such as East Palo Alto, where disadvantaged youth participate in competitions.

Robotics & Automation to Change Employment Forever

This thirst and interest for robotics is occurring around the world. Countries including China and India have found that importing developing advanced technologies is expensive and it’s better to have a homegrown robotics industry. At the recent World Economic Forum that just wrapped up in Cologny, Switzerland, Manpower Group, one of the world’s largest employment agencies with 400,000 clients in 80 countries, presented a report explaining how the technological revolution, especially robotics, is going to change employment forever.

Following is a video from Manpower Group: “Learnability: The only way to stay relevant in the future workplace.”

David Russell Schilling

David enjoys research and writing about cutting edge technologies that hold the promise of improving conditions for all life on planet earth.

{ http://www.industrytap.com/ }

31-01-2017 om 23:48 geschreven door peter  

By: David Russell Schilling 

Robot Training

(Image Courtesy Wikipedia: https://goo.gl/images/nrN7Nz)

According to reports, automation replaced 17,000 “roles” in back office processing at Accenture, a professional services and tech firm over the past year and a half. Thankfully, in this case, no jobs were lost. According to Accenture, automation eliminated menial work, allowing the company’s workforce to do more productive work on behalf of the company.

Robots & Automation Penetrating Businesses Everywhere

A team from PolyU in Hong Kong studied the design of precision tools created for space exploration, and with these insights created a new motorized, minimally invasive robotic system for single incision surgery. In India, at the World Laparoscopy Hospital in Gurgaon, more than 1,500 robotic surgeries have taken place over the past six years.

Tech campuses around the world, such as Texas A&M, are leading the development and commercialization of robotics across a wide range of industries. Robotics is so popular today that training is occurring in elementary, middle, and high schools, and in community centers such as East Palo Alto, where disadvantaged youth participate in competitions.

Robotics & Automation to Change Employment Forever

This thirst and interest for robotics is occurring around the world. Countries including China and India have found that importing developing advanced technologies is expensive and it’s better to have a homegrown robotics industry. At the recent World Economic Forum that just wrapped up in Cologny, Switzerland, Manpower Group, one of the world’s largest employment agencies with 400,000 clients in 80 countries, presented a report explaining how the technological revolution, especially robotics, is going to change employment forever.

Following is a video from Manpower Group: “Learnability: The only way to stay relevant in the future workplace.”

David Russell Schilling

David enjoys research and writing about cutting edge technologies that hold the promise of improving conditions for all life on planet earth.

{ http://www.industrytap.com/ }

31-01-2017 om 23:48 geschreven door peter  

The exceptional discovery: the body of King Anunnaki for 12,000 years completely intact.

FIND human giants in suspended animation 12000 YEARS
This discovery is done completely by chance in the spring of 2008, and if we know happened is no doubt thanks to the Russian media, and television premsa. This occurs in Kurdistan, Iran, a country rather closed to the world, at least in the Western world, but it has good relations with Russia. Although hidden until today, 2015, we managed to know by what has published the Russian press (thanks Google Translator), that the discovery occurs in a work, when digging the ground to make the foundations of a house.

Then appear a mausoleum containing three coffins, and after more concise excavations, a layer of ground containing the remains of an ancient civilization and the ruins of a city. By the stratum in which it was found, but also thanks to the artifacts found inside, archaeologists determined that the monument and the city were built Sometime between 10 000 and 12 000 years old, a date quickly reviewed by the Islamic authorities after publication of the finding in the Russian press, the Iranian authorities publicly said that the ruins had a 850 years old, which obviously does not correspond to the facts and is, again, an official lie.

Of the three sarcophagi found in the mausoleum, we only have video evidence of the first two. We know nothing of the third, or their content, or who was inside.

{ http://ufomania.cz/ }

31-01-2017 om 23:40 geschreven door peter  

31-01-2017 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

What Is the Likelihood That Europa’s Oceans Harbor Alien Life? We May Soon Find Out.

An artist's concept of water plumes erupting from the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Credit: G. Bacon (STScI)

IN BRIEF

• Most enthusiasm in exoplanet searches is reserved for so-called "Earth-like" planets —approximately Earth-sized worlds within their star's habitable zone.
• But speculation about the life-bearing potential of some of the icy moons of the outer planets may help broaden this narrow, provincial outlook; and proposed missions to Jupiter's moon Europa aim to answer the question of whether there might be life beneath its icy mantle.

DEFINING THE HABITABLE ZONE

It’s one of the most pressing questions in science: is there alien life somewhere out there within the great wide demesnes of the universe—beyond the homely, terrestrial sort that we’re all familiar with?

We’re still searching for the answer, but it seems that each day brings word of some new exoplanetary discovery that may at last resolve the issue—our technology has evolved to the point where we can now detect Earth-sized (note the distinction between “Earth-sized” and “Earth-like”) exoplanets residing in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

But are we restricting ourselves—unnecessarily—with the fetters of a geocentric prejudice? The circumstellar habitable zone (HZ) merely represents that part of a planetary system where temperatures are conducive to the existence of liquid water—in other words, precisely where the Earth currently resides in the Solar System. Certainly, with everything being equal, a planet with these conditions in a star’s HZ would be habitable to terrestrial life as we know it—but whoever said that’s all we’re looking for? Furthermore, we know that the HZ isn’t static in time; as a main sequence star evolves, its temperature increases, and the zone of habitability sweeps further outward—which is something to consider for highly-evolved, red giant stars, as a recent study has shown.

Putting aside the question of completely alien life, founded upon chemical organizations radically unlike anything we know, it’s not even clear that terrestrial-type life could only evolve upon an Earth-like planet within its star’s HZ. That’s where studying the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn becomes important.

Ever since the Voyager probes winged their way galaxy-ward, there’s been a great deal of speculation that Jupiter’s second moon, Europa, might harbor a warm, liquid ocean beneath its piebald shell of red-and-white ice; recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope even suggest some of that water is escaping into space, in the form of geysers—akin to what we see on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

THE ICE-COVERED OCEAN

The existence of such an ocean on Europa is attributable to the intricate celestial mechanics of the Galilean Moons; this remarkable dance—choreographed across billions of years between Io, Ganymede, Europa and the prodigious mass of Jupiter—has squeezed and warmed Europa’s mysterious innards through the action of tidal flexure. It’s a bit like what’s happened to twisted, volcanic little Io—only with a far happier and less Dantean result.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily follow that a motley assortment of marine monsters has evolved in Europa’s putative subglacial world-ocean—though we all prefer to believe that’s exactly the case. But there’s certainly reason enough to be hopeful.

Life on Earth, for instance, needs water and a source of energy—the Sun, in most cases. But it’s also true that certain organisms, particularly in the deep oceans, derive their energy from purely non-solar sources; it’s even possible that the earliest life on Earth was of just such a type, at a time when the Sun’s radiation was far weaker than it is today.

A recent study has shown that an exothermic chemical reaction known as “serpentinization,” whereby saltwater reacts with rocky minerals to produce heat and hydrogen, may be as common on Europa as in terrestrial oceans. Furthermore, the blistering radiation of Jupiter may be enough to separate oxygen atoms from water molecules in the moon’s icy mantle, with the oxygen then cycling deep into the interior. If correct, it means all the ingredients for a thriving ecosystem are theoretically in place; all that’s needed is the spark of life—unfortunately, ascertaining the likelihood of that happening is beyond our statistical models.

But plans are already afoot to loft a space probe toward distant Europa, this time equipped with a chemical tongue so the probe can pass through any water ice geysers the moon is discharging and “taste” the composition of its inner ocean.

“Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Regardless of what the probe discovers, it’s about time we start expanding our definition of what the “habitable zone” really means—in our own Solar System, as in the myriad exoplanetary systems swimming daily within our ken.

References: 

• Space.com, 
• NASA's Mission to Europa, 
• Cornell University

{ https://futurism.com/ }

31-01-2017 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Release Incredible Image of a Four Planet System

 

Gemini Observatory/Lynette Cook

IN BRIEF

• A short video shows the movement in a system of planets about 129 light-years away from ours. The planets' orbits seem to be in resonance, producing a wonderful visual effect.
• The star system presents an opportunity for more exoplanet research, including the planet-formation process.

Located about 129 light-years from Earth in the direction of the Pegasus constellation is the relatively young star system of HR 8799. Beginning in 2008, four orbiting exoplanets were discovered in this system which – alongside the exoplanet Formalhaut b – were the very first to be confirmed using the direct imaging technique. And over time, astronomers have come to believe that these four planets are in resonance with each other.

In this case, the four planets orbit their star with a 1:2:4:8 resonance, meaning that each planet’s orbital period is in a nearly precise ratio with the others in the system. This is a relatively unique phenomenon, one which inspired a Jason Wang – a graduate student from the Berkeley arm of the NASA-sponsored Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) – to produce a video that illustrates their orbital dance.

Using images obtained by the W.M. Keck Observatory over a seven-year period, Wang’s video provides a glimpse of these four exoplanets in motion. As you can see below, the central star is blacked out so that the light reflecting off of its planets can be seen. And while it does not show the planets completing a full orbital period (which would take decades and even centuries) it beautifully illustrates the resonance that exists between the star’s four planets.

As Jason Wang told Universe Today via email:

“The data was obtained over 7 years from one of the 10 meter Keck telescopes by a team of astronomers (Christian Marois, Quinn Konopacky, Bruce Macintosh, Travis Barman, and Ben Zuckerman). Christian reduced each of the 7 epochs of data, to make 7 frames of data. I then made a movie by using a motion interpolation to interpolate those 7 frames into 100 frames to get a smooth video so that it’s not choppy (as if we could observe them every month from Earth).”

The images of the four exoplanets were originally captured by Dr. Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. It was in 2008 that Marois and his colleagues discovered the first three of HR 8799’s planets – HR 8799 b, c and d – using direct imaging technique. At around the same time, a team from UC Berkeley announced the discovery of Fomalhaut b, also using direct imaging.

These planets were all determined to be gas giants of similar size and mass, with between 1.2 and 1.3 times the size of Jupiter, and 7 to 10 times its mass. At the time of their discovery, HR 8799 d was believed to be the closest planet to its star, at a distance of about 27 Astronomical Units (AUs) – while the other two orbit at distances of about 42 and 68 AUs, respectively.

It was only afterward that the team realized the planets had already been observed in 1998. Back then, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) had obtained light from the system that indicated the presence of planets. However, this was not made clear until after a newly-developed image-processing technique had been installed. Hence, the “pre-discovery” went unnoticed.

Further observations in 2009 and 2010 revealed the existence of fourth planet – HR 8799 e – which had an orbit placing it inside the other three. Even so, this planet is fifteen times farther from its star than the Earth is from the Sun, which results in an orbital period of about 18,000 days (49 years). The others take around 112, 225, and 450 years (respectively) to complete an orbit of HR 8799.

Ultimately, Wang decided to produce the video (which was not his first), to illustrate how exciting the search for exoplanets can be. As he put it:

“I had written this motion interpolation algorithm for another exoplanet system, Beta Pictoris b, where we see one planet on an edge-on orbit looking like it’s diving into its star (it’s actually just circling in front of it). We wanted to do the same thing for HR 8799 to bring this system to life and share our excitement in directly imaging exoplanets. I think it’s quite amazing that we have the technology to watch other worlds orbit other stars.”

In addition, the video draws attention to a star system that presents some unique opportunities for exoplanet research. Since HR 8799 was the first multi-planetary system to be directly-imaged means that astronomers can directly observe the orbits of the four planets, observe their dynamical interactions, and determine how they came to their present-day configuration.

Astronomers will also be able to take spectra of these planet’s atmospheres to study their composition and compare this to our own Solar System’s gas giants. And since the system is really quite young (just 40 million years old), it can tell us much about the planet-formation process. Last, but not least, their wide orbits (a necessity given their size) could mean the system is less than stable.

In the future, according to Wang, astronomers will be watching to see if any planets get ejected from the system. I don’t know about you, but I would consider a video that illustrates one of HR 8799’s gas giants getting booted out of its system would be pretty inspiring too!

 Read more articles from Universe Today

References: Universe Today

{ https://futurism.com/ }

31-01-2017 om 23:09 geschreven door peter  

31-01-2017 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Earth just narrowly escaped being hit by an asteroid...AGAIN!

This asteroid is dubbed 2017 BH30, it is equal to a pickup truck's size and the closest encounter of the asteroid with Earth occurred at 0459 GMT on January 30, 2017 (2359 EST on January 29 2017)

Nupur Jha

Asteroid Lutetia at closest approach.

[Representational image]ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

On the night of January 29, 2017, a small asteroid, narrowly missed colliding with the Earth.

Also Read: UFO Sighting: Mysterious flying objects spotted along US-Mexico border [VIDEO]

This asteroid, 2017 BH30, was the size of a pickup truck and at 0459 GMT on January 30, 2017 (2359 EST on January 29, 2017), it came the closest to Earth, said astronomers from the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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{ http://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }

31-01-2017 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

UFO Spotted: A couple reveals seeing cops and a jet plane following a UFO in California!

According to the woman's statement to Mutual UFO Network investigators, the movement of the UFO was being tracked by the police from the ground, while an air force plane followed the UFO in the sky

Nupur Jha

Snapshot of the video shot by the woman in Santa Rosa, California.MUFON

Another mysterious UFO sighting took place last weekend in Santa Rosa, California and a couple were spectators. 

Also Read: UFO Sighting: Mysterious flying objects spotted along US-Mexico border [VIDEO]

According to the woman's statement to Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) investigators, the movement of the UFO was being tracked by the police from the ground, while an air force plane followed the UFO in the sky.

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This strange incident occurred at 6:45 pm local time, when the couple was on their way back home in their car. They spotted a luminous object in the sky getting closer to them, as reported by Daily Express.

"Before we knew it, it was flying directly over our car and it was so close we could see details underneath the craft," the woman said, as quoted by Science World Report.

This bizarre incident left the woman baffled, she first thought that the object was a missile. She and her boyfriend tried to figure out what just happened, but were clueless.

They could still see the UFO from their house, along with police cars and a jet plane tracking the unidentified craft.

"When we got home we could still see the craft hovering in the sky from our house. It seemed to go higher in the sky. It hovered in the same spot for about 10 minutes, then it started going back in the direction it initially came from," she said.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing and both of us still can't comprehend what happened. We finished driving home and saw some police cars headed towards the direction of the scene. It was then the plane became involved," she added.

It's not clear why the information regarding the incident has not been conveyed to the public as yet. Some instances of UFO sightings have been covered up on social media, which has infuriated conspiracy theorists.

These strange happenings are likely to remain a mystery till space agencies such as NASA say they didn't happen, a Daily Star report stated.

Do check out these latest UFO sightings in 2017:

YouTube/PARALLEL reality of UFOs

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{ http://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }

31-01-2017 om 22:22 geschreven door peter  

From UFOs and spy tricks, you can now read the CIA's once-secret files online

By Glenn Garvin Miami Herald

OLIVIER DOULIERY, SIPA USA

Millions of pages of once-classified CIA documents are now available for the first time on your home computer after the agency moved one of its databases online.

MIAMI – If you ever wanted to know the CIA’s secret recipe for invisible ink, how to spot spy messages hidden in suspicious fruit, or which top American spy was asked to appear in Penthouse magazine, you’re in luck. Millions of pages of once-classified agency documents are now available for the first time on your home computer after the agency moved one of its databases online.

The documents run the gamut from classic espionage (a Cold War mission to tunnel into East Germany to tap the Soviet Union’s military telephone system) to borderline-goofball research (trying to see whether “psychic” Uri Geller could read the minds of intelligence officers half a mile away) to tediously mundane housekeeping tasks (the opening of the agency’s new child care center).

Most of the documents have been declassified for decades or even longer. But they were available for viewing only on a handful of computers at an outpost of the National Archives, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. After years of wrangling with open-government advocates, ranging from lawsuits to a mocking Kickstarter campaign to pay for photocopying that was intended to shame the CIA, the agency finally relented this month.

“Now you can access it from the comfort of your own home,” Joseph Lambert, the CIA’s longtime director of information management, said grandly as the database — known as the CIA Records Search Tool, or CREST — went online.

That may sound a bit overblown, but researchers across the United States saluted Lambert. “I’ve been using that database for years, but it’s not easy flying to Washington and driving out to Maryland to get on their computers,” said Jeffrey T. Richelson, the Los Angeles-based author of several well-regarded academic studies of intelligence. “The last few days, I’ve been finding all kinds of things on it that I didn’t even know existed.”

None of them, at least so far, have been blockbusters, though the bits of intelligence run from the oddly fascinating (East Germany, in the summer of 1973, faced a daunting shortage of barbers) to the monumentally incorrect (a breezy pronouncement that Iran’s Muslim clergymen didn’t constitute “a well-organized threat to the regime,” made barely years before they toppled the government and put the country on a disastrous collision course with the United States that persists to this day).

There are even tantalizing hints of James Bondish bang-bang. Who drew that hand-drawn map of an explosives plant in Romania, including a diagram of the wiring of its electronic security gate, and why? Will an answer turn up as journalists and academics plow through the 12 million pages on the database?

But a few days spent sifting random documents reveals a couple of unexpected things. One is the indefinably vast expanse of the CIA’s interests. There are large numbers of documents about UFOs, psychic research and any number of other subjects that would excite a New Age Wiccan priestess.

Some are so peculiar as to defy comprehension. What on Earth prompted a CIA officer to even pick up a leaflet advertising the (now defunct) Buffalo Bill Wax Museum and its “107 life-size wax figures” of Bill, Wyatt Earp and Butch Cassidy’s Hole in the Wall gang (“in living wax!”) — much less to preserve it in an agency file — will likely remain a cryptic secret for generations to come.

What is very clear is that the CIA’s declassification team has the come-on coquetry of a striptease dancer and the piquant sense of humor of the editors at the Onion. The title of one document — “Clarifying Statement to Fidel Castro Concerning Assassination” — sent journalistic hearts pounding across the world. It turns out to be an unremarkable 1977 exchange of notes between then-CIA director Stansfield Turner and an agency press public affairs officer about getting a transcript of a television interview of Fidel Castro by Barbara Walters.

At the bottom of the 26-page file, though, is a payoff of sorts: a letter from the porn magazine Penthouse, requesting an interview. Four decades later, the idea of Turner — a legendarily straight-laced Christian Scientist who didn’t drink, smoke or swear — agreeing to an interview to be sandwiched between Penthouse’s nakeder-than-naked photo displays still makes CIA veterans giggle four decades later. “It would have been hysterical, if he had done it, which I’m sure he didn’t,” said one former agency official. Apparently not; the letter got no reply.

Another wisecrack title is attached to a package of files on the CIA’s interest in UFOs: “Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On,” a reference to Fox Mulder, the FBI agent on TV’s The X-Files who believes the world is secretly governed by space aliens.

Those files, and many others, detail an interesting trajectory in CIA attitudes toward UFO reports. The minutes of a secret 1952 meeting of senior agency officials — conducted at a time when reports of flying saucer-sightings were popping up all over the world — recount a discussion about directing the CIA’s physics and electronic division to investigate.

CIA spies complied enthusiastically, filing report after report about flying saucer sightings around the world, including behind the Iron Curtain, where an East German defector reported having seen a UFO crew poking around on the ground — though, technically speaking, it was really a flying “frying pan” by his account.

But by the next year, a group of distinguished physicists convened by the CIA was dismissing tales of flying kitchen accoutrements of all types, arguing in a report that even talking about UFOs would result in “mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare.”

Anyway, the report added, even if space aliens were prowling the skies and streets of the United States, so what? “Extraterrestrial artifacts, if they did exist, are not cause for alarm.” The report conceded that at least one member of the panel disagreed, arguing that any verified evidence of space invaders would be “of immediate and great concern not only to the U.S. but to all countries.” But the report dismissed him as a paranoid war hawk: “Nothing like a common threat to unite peoples!”

The real threat, concluded the report, was not from flying saucers but the people who reported seeing them, who might be pursuing “subversive purposes.” Groups that urged more serious government investigation of UFOs, the report added, “should be watched.”

The CIA’s interest in flying saucers, and even the minutes of the two meetings, have long been known to UFO researchers, said Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. But he’s happy the documents are finally available on the internet where they can be easily accessed.

UFO researchers — for decades among the most aggressive users of the federal Freedom of Information Act to force government documents out into the open — have been eagerly combing the new database, Rodeghier added, but so far they’ve found no blockbuster revelations, and don’t really expect to: “One of the things the CIA is really good at is never releasing anything that means anything.”  

{ http://stmedia.startribune.com/ }

31-01-2017 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

X-COM: UFO Defense free for a limited time at the Humble Store

By Boyd Chan

Deviating from the racing-oriented offerings we've seen given away for free on the Humble Store in the form of DiRT Showdown and GRID, we now find ourselves offered a game plucked out of the strategy genre from the stable of MicroProse Software.

X-COM: UFO Defense was originally released in the early 1990s for PC as a DOS title but was later re-released with support for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Given the game's age, formal game reviews on the web are somewhat scarce compared to modern releases, however, X-COM: UFO Defense for PC still pulls off an admirable GameRankings score of 93.6%.

Normally, the game goes for $4.99 on both the Humble Store and Steam but you can put your wallet away and grab the game for nothing for a limited time.

As always, with Humble Store purchases, head on over to the website and click on the 'Get it Free!' button. You'll then be prompted to log in with your Humble account credentials (or go through the process to create one) before completing the transaction.

Once checkout has been completed, you can click through to obtain your complimentary Steam key which you can then instantly redeem via the Steam client. However, don't wait too long as the offer to obtain X-COM: UFO Defense for free remains available for roughly the next 34 hours. Furthermore, your key must be redeemed by 10:00 am Pacific on Wednesday, February 15th, 2017 otherwise it will disappear from your Humble Store account.

Source: Humble Store

{ https://www.neowin.net/ }

31-01-2017 om 21:41 geschreven door peter  

The science of alien encounters: Researchers reveal what really happens during an 'abduction'

By Neil Dagnall, Ken Drinkwater

Accounts of mysterious flashing lights in the sky, spacecrafts and encounters with 'real' aliens reflect high levels of public interest in UFOs and the belief that there is "something out there".

However, many psychologists are less convinced, and think they can provide more down-to-earth, scientific explanations.

Belief in aliens has increased steadily since the birth of modern alien research in the 1940s and 1950s, following the news surrounding a classified US military project at Roswell Air Force Base, New Mexico.

Surveys in Western cultures estimated belief in aliens to be as high as 50 per cent in 2015.

And despite the fact that it is considered rare, a significant number of people also believe they have experienced alien abduction.

Present day awareness of alien abduction dates to the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill, who witnessed odd lights and experienced 'missing time' and 'lost memories' while driving.

The reported consequences of abduction are often loss of memory, missing time, and problems such as sickness, sleepwalking, nightmares and psychological trauma.

Following their experience, Betty and Barney experienced psychological problems and subsequently sought therapy.

Although the accuracy of the numbers is questioned, a poll by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research conducted 30 years after this account said that around 3.7m Americans believed that they too had experienced alien abduction.

Sceptics argue that alien-related encounters are merely hoaxes created for financial gain or social advantage.

Perhaps Roswell is the most famous example.

Initial reports from the 1940s left sufficient gaps of explanation for Ray Santilli to release in 1995 what he claimed was film footage showing an alien autopsy from the time, further confusing the issue.

He later admitted it was a hoax.

The incident sparked controversy and prompted claims that an alien craft had crash-landed in the New Mexico desert and that US authorities were involved in a cover-up.

The theory that alien abductions are hoaxes may be true in a few cases, but there is no reason to assume that the majority of 'experiencers' are frauds.

In fact, psychologists have come up with a number of plausible, scientific explanations for people's supposed alien encounters.

One explanation is that when people believe they have had an experience of alien abduction, they have misinterpreted, distorted and conflated real and imagined events.

Hence, sceptics of alien encounters explain them away in terms of psychological processes and personality characteristics.

Several studies report that experiencers do not typically differ from non-experiencers on objective psychopathological measures - those that assess psychological well-being and adjustment - and have no history of mental instability.

However, one characteristic that is associated with abduction experiences is a proclivity for fantasy.

Mixed evidence supports the theory that fantasy-prone people engage in elaborate imaginings and often confuse fantasy with reality.

There are also other psychological explanations, such as dissociation - where an individual's mental processes detach from each other and from reality, often in response to extreme or stressful life events.

A tendency towards being fantasy-prone and dissociation has been linked in studies to childhood trauma and hypnotic suggestibility.

Psychologists argue that hypnosis encourages the creation and recall of detailed fantasies.

For example, Betty and Barney Hill's account was typical of reported alien encounters: medical examinations or procedures, communication with alien captors, a powerful, mystical feeling, tours of spaceships and journeys to other planets before being returned to the car.

And it was under hypnosis that these 'missing memories' were 'recovered'.

It's for these reasons that it's believed alien abduction experiences may arise from a combination of personality characteristics and susceptibility to false memories.

Studies suggest that neuropsychological theories, particularly sleep paralysis and temporal lobe sensitivity, also could explain claims of alien abduction.

Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move, which occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep.

Experiencers' claims share characteristics with sleep paralysis: a sense of being awake, not dreaming, and realistic perceptions of the environment.

The inability to move, a feeling of fear or dread, and the sense of another presence - perhaps evil or malevolent - are common symptoms.

Also common are a feeling of pressure on the chest and difficulty breathing, and of being held or restricted to a lying position: most sleep paralysis attacks occur while the individual is lying on their back.

Sceptic Michael Shermer once collapsed from sleep deprivation following an 83-hour bike race and his support team rushed to his aid.

Shermer was caught in a 'waking dream' and so perceived them as aliens from the 1960s television series The Invaders.

It also explains some ghost sightings, such as the 'night hag', often experienced by those who suffer from sleep paralysis.

Temporal lobe sensitivity is a theory that suggests the temporal lobes of some people's brains are more vulnerable to influence from low-level magnetic frequencies.

Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Canada, is among those who believes that increased temporal lobe activity can explain paranormal experiences such as alien abduction.

His theory is that magnetic fields stimulate the temporal lobes, resulting in hallucinatory experiences similar to those reported by alien abductees.

None of this is to say that many people who believe they have experienced alien abduction are liars, merely that their accounts and experiences can be explained through recourse to theories with a scientific basis.

There are many logical, plausible scientific explanations, none of which rely upon the existence of aliens.

However, it should also be noted that not all reported alien abduction experiences can be easily explained by any of these scientific theories - and this throws up many more questions.

- Daily Mail

{ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ }

31-01-2017 om 21:32 geschreven door peter