Tom DeLonge Is Officially the Best at UFO Stuff

He's coming for Alex Jones' spot and we aren't ready.

The video below is DeLonge's acceptance speech for the award. It's actually not as insane as you'd think it would be, despite his saying that the Wikileaks business last year proved that he was on "some serious shit." But in case you doubted said seriousness, here are his credentials. 

I'm just like you guys. I spent 20 years up all night, reading about Roswell, Dulce, Serpo, Churchill, the crashes here, Nazis building craft there, Antarctica, what's on Mars, what's on the back of the moon, anomalous structures. I mean, I've done it all. I know it all.

Anomalous Structures would also have been a good name for Blink-182's 2011 album Neighborhoods, wherein the band tried to sound like Rush for skaters. DeLonge repeatedly says that his work on the UFO front has just begun, which... yeah, we already knew that. Don't waste your time on us Earthlings, dude, we're already the voices inside your head.

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{ https://noisey.vice.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 20:59 geschreven door peter  

The mysterious Piri Reis Map: Is this evidence of a very advanced prehistoric civilization?

The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis.

Approximately one third of the map survives; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan.

The historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used Columbus’s maps, otherwise lost, as a source.

It used ten Arab sources, four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese, and one map of Columbus. More recently, it has been the focus of pseudo historic claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast.

The map was discovered accidentally on 9 October 1929, through the philological work of the German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937). He had been commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Education to catalog the Topkapi Palace library’s non-Islamic items.

At Deissmann’s request to search the palace for old maps and charts, the director Halil Edhem (1861–1938) managed to find some disregarded bundles of material, which he handed over to Deissmann. Realizing that the map might be a unique find, Deissmann showed it to the orientalist Paul Kahle, who identified it as a map drawn by Piri Reis.

The discovery caused an international sensation, as it represented the only then known copy of a world map of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), and was the only 16th-century map that showed South America in its proper longitudinal position in relation to Africa. Geographers had spent several centuries unsuccessfully searching for a “lost map of Columbus” that was supposedly drawn while he was in the West Indies.

After reading about the map’s discovery in The Illustrated London News, United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson contacted the United States Ambassador to Turkey Charles H. Sherrill and requested that an investigation be launched to find the Columbus source map, which he believed may have been in Turkey.

In turn, the Turkish government complied with Stimson’s request, but they were unsuccessful in locating any of the source maps.

The Piri Reis map is currently located in the Library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, but is not usually on display to the public.

The map was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10 million lira banknote of 1999-2005 and of the new 10 lira banknote of 2005-2009.

The map is a portolan chart, as shown by the four compass roses (two large and two small) from which lines of bearing radiate. Some analyses assert that the map is an a zimuthal equidistant projection centered on Cairo, but a 1998 analysis by Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay shows a better fit with a point near the intersection of the present-day prime meridian and the equator.

There are extensive notes in Turkish around the edges of the map, as well as some interior detail which is mostly inaccurate and fanciful.

The Iberian peninsula and the coast of Africa are rendered accurately; as for the Americas, the northern portion of the South American coast is also fairly accurate and positioned correctly with respect to Africa. Much of the Caribbean is also mapped fairly accurately and appears to reflect Columbus’s maps of the area.

The area representing North America bears almost no resemblance to its real coastline (which is unsurprising, since by this time, it was still almost totally unexplored) except for one projection which might be Newfoundland; an island labelled “Antilia” may actually be Nova Scotia, since it has a note attached which refers to the legendary voyages of Saint Brendan.

There is some suggestion that this area may represent the Asian coast. Island groups in the east Atlantic are accurately placed, but are depicted out of scale.

Although there are frequent claims for the extreme accuracy of this chart, McIntosh, in comparing the Piri Reis map to several other portolan-style maps of the era, found that

The Piri Reis map is not the most accurate map of the sixteenth century, as has been claimed, there being many, many world maps produced in the remaining eighty-seven years of that century that far surpass it in accuracy. The Ribeiro maps of the 1520s and 1530s, the Ortelius map of 1570, and the Wright-Molyneux map of 1599 (‘the best map of the sixteenth century’) are only a few better-known examples.

There are two major discrepancies from known coastlines: the North American coast mentioned above, and the southern portion of the South American coast. On the Piri Reis map, the latter is shown bending off sharply to the east starting around present-day Rio de Janeiro.

A more popular interpretation of this territory has been to identify this section with the Queen Maud Land coast of Antarctica. This claim is generally traced to Arlington H. Mallery, a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist who was a supporter of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact hypotheses. Though his assertions were not well received by scholars, they were revived in Charles Hapgood’s 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings.

This book proposed a theory of global exploration by a pre-classical undiscovered civilization based on his analysis of this and other ancient and late-medieval maps. More notoriously, these claims were repeated in Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods (which attributed the knowledge of the coast to extraterrestrials) and Gavin Menzies’s 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (which attributed it to supposed Chinese voyages), both of which were roundly denounced by both scholars and debunkers of fringe works, but which attracted huge popular followings.

A more sober analysis of these claims was published by Gregory McIntosh, a historian of cartography, who examined the map in depth in his book The Piri Reis Map of 1513 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2000). He was able to find sources for much of the map in Columbus’s writings.

Certain peculiarities (such as the appearance of the Virgin Islands in two locations) he attributed to the use of multiple maps as sources; others (such as the errors in North American geography) he traced to the continued confusion of the area with East Asia. As far as the accuracy of depiction of the supposed Antarctic coast is concerned, there are two conspicuous errors.

First, it is shown hundreds of miles north of its proper location; second, the Drake Passage is completely missing, with the Antarctic Peninsula presumably conflated with the Argentine coast. The identification of this area of the map with the frigid Antarctic coast is also difficult to reconcile with the notes on the map which describe the region as having a warm climate.

It should be kept in mind that maps of the period generally depicted a large continent named Terra Australis Incognita of highly variable shape and extent. This land was posited by Ptolemy as a counterbalance to the extensive continental areas in the northern hemisphere; due to a lack of exploration and various misunderstandings, its existence was not fully abandoned until circumnavigation of the area during the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that if it existed, it was much smaller than imagined previously.

The first confirmed landing on Antarctica was not until 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began in 1891. In 1513, Cape Horn had not yet been discovered, and indeed Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation was not to set sail for another six years.

It is unclear whether the mapmaker saw South America itself as part of the unknown southern lands (as shown in the Atlas Miller), or whether (as Dutch thought) he drew what was then known of the coast with substantial distortion, but in any case, serious scholarship holds that there is no reason to believe that the map is the product of genuine knowledge of the Antarctic coast.

{ https://www.thevintagenews.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 20:45 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE

BY LAUREN FRUEN

A FORMER police detective who probed the 7/7 London terror bombings is aiming to crack Britain’s most famous UFO case.

Gary Heseltine who was heavily involved in major rail disasters including Hatfield and Great Heck, is now investigating the so-called Rendlesham Forest incident.

JONNY DILLON

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ALAMY

6The Rendlesham Forest incident took place in December 1980 and has been dubbed Britain's Roswell

The 56-year-old believes new evidence from two retired radar operators, who claim they tracked a UFO travelling 120 miles in eight seconds, should be taken seriously by the Ministry of Defence.

The MOD closed its 'UFO desk' in 2009 and no longer officially investigates reports.

But Gary, who retired three years ago after 24 years in the force, mainly as a detective constable, is calling on Defence Secretary Michael Fallon to reveal the truth.

He enlisted his local MP Jason McCartney to ask the defence chief to make a statement after new information came to light from Ike Barker and Jim Carey.

The two radar operators were on duty in the air traffic control centre at RAF Bentwaters, in Suffolk, when an unidentified target was tracked on radar during a spate of bizarre sightings between 26 and 28 December 1980.

On December 26, a small team of security police officers reported seeing a strange triangular shaped craft land in Rendlesham Forest, just outside the base.

Two nights later, the Deputy Base Commander Lt Col Charles Halt and several other USAF personnel observed strange flashing lights moving through the trees.

The military team were shocked when a beam of light hit the ground just a few feet away. And, even more bizarrely, there were reports that beams were being fired into the weapons storage bunkers at the NATO base.

Col Halt went on to write a memo detailing what happened which he sent to the MOD but defence chiefs said the incident was of "no defence significance".

GETTY IMAGES

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JONNY DILLON

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Colonel Charles Halt confirming UFO shone a beam at RAF Brentwaters

Charles Halt discusses the Rendlesham Forest incident 

Charles Halt, Perspective on The Rendlesham Forest Incident & More 12-14-2016

The UK and US government have always had a policy of neither confirming nor denying that weapons of mass destruction were at the base. If the base did have nukes, it could have contravened UK/US armament treaty obligations of the day.

But Gary claims Col Halt told him "there were more nuclear weapons in the Bentwaters Weapons Storage Area than anywhere else in Europe."

In a response to Gary's MP, the MOD stated it no longer investigated UFO reports adding: “All historic MOD files relating to UFO sightings, including Rendlesham Forest, have either been released, or are in the process of being released to The National Archives.”

The Rendlesham Forest incident: Britain’s most famous UFO sighting

The Rendlesham Forest incident took place in December 1980 over a series of at least two nights.
On December 26, 1980, military personnel at the twin bases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk saw a strange light in Rendlesham Forest, which lies between the two bases.
Three men were sent out to investigate where two of them encountered a small, triangularshaped craft.
One man, Jim Penniston, got close enough to touch the side of the object.
He and another of the airmen present, John Burroughs, made sketches of the craft for witness statements
Two nights later Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt and his team then encountered the UFO.
He said later: "Here I am, a senior official who routinely denies this sort of thing and diligently works to debunk them, and I'm involved in the middle of something I can't explain."
Despite an MOD investigation the Rendlesham Forest incident remains unexplained.

Gary, who lives in Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, thinks there is still a cover-up 36 years after the incident - dubbed the British Roswell.

He said: “For them it is clear the Rendlesham Forest incident is a closed issue despite whatever new information arises.

“The MOD’s response is a classic case of dismissing any legitimate questions about UFOs and in particular those about the Rendlesham Forest incident.

“How can it not be of defence significance that two radar controllers have come forward publically to say that they observed a UFO over the base, moving at fantastic speeds as well as being seen visually on the base radar?

“How can it be that people have confirmed that a UFO shone a beam down in the weapons storage area nuclear bunkers, that this act is not of acute defence significance? How can it be that the MOD are not interested when it is confirmed that there were ‘more nuclear weapons’ in the Bentwaters WSA than anywhere else in Europe?”

GETTY IMAGES

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NGN PICTURE LIBRARY

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Mr McCartney, who represents Colne Valley, Yorkshire, said: “All I’ve got to say is I asked the question of the Minister on behalf of my constituent as I do on many issues for those I represent.”

Since 2002, Gary has collected a database of more than 425 UFO cases involving 940 British police officers.

The MOD has been contacted for comment.

{  https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

28-02-2017 om 20:19 geschreven door peter  

Beyond Roswell - The Five UFO Crashes in New Mexico, July 1947.

For more detailed analysis of the story covered in this post, please read The Alien Enigma by JP Robinson.

One reason for so much conflicting evidence arising from the famous Roswell incident of 1947, is due to the remarkable fact that there seems to have been more than one crash which occurred during the same time frame of July 1947 and in the same state of New Mexico. 

Could there be a link between the separate incidents of which the well known Roswell crash was but one of them? According to researcher Chuck Wade, several craft were intentionally sabotaged during a three year period from 1945-1948 starting with a crash which occurred in August 1945, at San Antonio near the ‘Trinity’ nuclear test site where the world’s first atomic bomb test had taken place just weeks earlier in the July.

Putting that incident aside, along with an another which took place in March, 1948 in Hart Canyon, 9 miles north of Aztec where a craft that was 100" in diameter was found completely intact with 16 dead occupants, we shall now concentrate on the five different UFO crashes which all went down in New Mexico between the 1st and the 4th of July, 1947.

One UFO crash was on the plains of San Augustin, the night of July 1 or 2, 1947. This craft was 32" in diameter. Gerald Anderson and some family members claimed to have found the crashed object in which they saw four alien bodies: one was still alive, another was wounded and two were already dead. The discovery was verified by Barney Barnett who also witnessed the same downed craft, and also archaeologist Dr. Herbert Dick, a Harvard grad student. 

A second crash site is believed to be southwest of Roswell and happened possibly July 4, 1947. Frank Kaufmann claims to have witnessed an oval-shaped crashed UFO, 25 feet long. This incident is still under investigation by MUFON and UFO researchers, Chuck Zukowski and Debbie Ziegelmeyer.

A third crash was north of Roswell which was reported to the military by civilians. This incident also occurred July 4, 1947. Walter Haut described the crashed object as “12-15" long, not quite as wide and 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape.” Col. Philip J. Corso stated in his book The Day after Roswell that he had command of the artefacts from this UFO crash whilst working in the Pentagon.

Site four was found by Mac Brazel at the Corona debris field, located 75 miles northwest of Roswell and 40 miles southeast of Corona on the Foster ranch. The size of the craft is unknown but it scattered “truckloads” of debris over the site. This is the crash site referred to as 'The Roswell Incident', the one most researchers speak of, and the one which caught the imagination of the world.

The fifth UFO crash was reported by Jim Ragsdale and it also took place on the night of July 4, 1947. The site was 53 miles west of Roswell in the foothills of the Capitan Mountains. This craft was 20" in diameter. Four dead extraterrestrials were found inside. Ragsdale departed the scene as the military arrived in numbers.

Wade’s research continues to shed more light on the events surrounding the infamous Roswell crash, and the interconnection between seven possible crashes in a three year period, all of them in the same American state, does raise many questions. Many UFO researchers have focused their attention on the occurrence of one isolated incident located near Corona and about 75 miles northwest of Roswell, but it is clear from the information available that the remarkable events of 1947 lend themselves to a much wider perspective. Wade has a theory, which if proven correct would explain why so many separate incidents apparently occurred in one area, some of them on the same evening.

The Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) in New Mexico’s capital Santa Fe was constructed during the 1940’s as a facility to research and build atomic bombs. Chuck Wade’s theory revolves around the three high-powered radar units which were built simultaneously to watch the skies over Los Alamos to protect them from invasion and warn them of prying eyes. One radar site was at El Vado, near the Colorado border. The second radar was built in the south near the continental divide, close to the border of Arizona, and the third was a mobile unit stationed at Moriarty in central New Mexico. Wade suggests that it could have been the mobile radar unit that shot down all seven of the UFOs that crashed and were retrieved in New Mexico between 1945 and 1948.

Following the Arnold sightings in the June of ’47 and the ensuing publicity which the incident received via the national media, Wade believes that orders came from the highest authority to relocate the mobile radar unit from Moriarty to the San Augustin basin. From the bowl-like plains of San Augustin, the high-powered radar was employed to shoot down the next UFO that flew overhead.

The tracking radar would have enabled the military to locate the crashed object within twelve hours of impact, and organise a retrieval team to clear the site as efficiently as possible. From there, the mobile unit could have been transported to somewhere northwest of Roswell, according to Wade.

Author Art Campbell located a brother and sister who claim that they saw three huge flashes of light, about three seconds apart, occurring on the night of July 4, 1947. Driving with their mother that night between Carlsbad and Vaughn, NM, the siblings described the flashes as so brilliant that they lit up both the desert and the distant mountains. Chuck Wade put two and two together and theorised that the flashes were caused by the high-powered radar’s energy beam colliding with three electromagnetic vehicles from outer space causing three separate crashes. One crashed near Corona, reported by Mac Brazel. The second landed north of Roswell, as described by Walter Haut and Philip Corso. The third incident was witnessed by Jim Ragsdale and took place in the Capitan Mountains.

Ragsdale claims he was sat in the back of his pickup truck with a friend, looking up at the stars, when they saw a tremendous flash “as bright as a flame from a welder’s arc” occurring several miles to the north. The object was soon heading towards them “trailing flames” and making an incredibly loud noise before passing through the trees, and finally colliding with the mountain just a short distance from his truck. Wade believes that the loud noise and the flames were caused by the disabled craft’s electromagnetic systems shorting out. Not long after the collision, Ragsdale and his friend departed swiftly as military vehicles were fast approaching. Once again, the military’s ability to locate the site so efficiently, already prepared with recovery equipment, has to be due to the tracking radar locking onto and following the craft.

In a signed affidavit, James Ragsdale claimed that he personally witnessed a UFO crash into the north slope of the Capitan Mountains, southeast of Roswell near the Pine Lodge. Ragsdale also described the scattered debris on the mountainside as looking like “tin foil and would go back to its original shape when crumpled in your hand.”

He claimed that he and his friend had climbed down to get a good look at the crashed object saying that “When we looked into the craft, we saw four bodies of a type we had never seen before, and all were dead.” He then detailed his experience with the recovered occupants of the crashed disc which he described as “all about four feet or less tall, with strange looking arms, legs and fingers.” He continued, “They were dressed in a silver type uniform and wearing a tight helmet of some type. This is a positive because I tried to remove one of the helmets, but was unable to do so. Their eyes were large, oval in shape, and did not resemble anything of a human nature.”

It is apparent from the overwhelming array of evidence that something very extraordinary took place in New Mexico during the first week of July in 1947, only a matter of days after the Kenneth Arnold incident in Washington. A varied selection of people recall handling some rare and peculiar material believed to be crash debris, and a host of other witnesses claim to have seen non-human entities either on site or having being recovered from the scene of the crash.

It is of no surprise then, that if one or more of these events did actually take place, and the bodies found in the wreckage were indeed of an extraterrestrial origin, that the initial response of the authorities was one of panic which ultimately led to the implementation of some form of cover-up.

{ http://www.jp-robinson.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 19:44 geschreven door peter  

THE SECRET OF MALTA'S MISSING ALIEN BODIES

In 1902 workers on a construction site in Malta were stunned when they uncovered what was later identified as an incredibly ancient sanctuary buried beneath the earth. The story that then unfolded is one of the most bizarre and fascinating scientific and archaeological stories of recent times.

ELONGATED SKULLS DISCOVERED IN MALTA COULD BE FROM ALIEN CREATURES

RELATED ARTICLES

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Archaeologists assessed the site and found that it was a remarkable architectural construction. A number of rooms were uncovered, each of which appeared to have a very specific function. One of the most unusual of these was referred to by the investigators as the ‘Oracle Room’ where a speaker’s voice reverberates around the walls. In this room, archaeologists discovered an intricately carved statue of a sleeping women. Indeed, there were a number of statues – all depicting the female form – discovered in various places in the labyrinthine complex. The historians and archaeologists were only able to speculate about the purpose of these statues because almost nothing is known about the society that created them. It is believed that the sanctuary was constructed approximately 5000 years ago, making it the oldest known structure in the entire world. Given the implications of this building, it is perhaps surprising that it is not more widely known about giving rise to speculation that knowledge about the sanctuary has been suppressed. The reason why someone might want to cover up the discovery of the sanctuary may be linked to the 7000 bodies extracted from the site. These bodies had incredibly strange elongated skulls which evidently did not belong to human beings. While skull elongation is a common practice in many cultures throughout the world, skulls that have been lengthened artificially tend to portray tell-tale signs of physical manipulation. These skulls presented none of these signs. However, some of them did present with drill holes which suggest that these ancient people were trying to relieve pressure in their skull. The combination of these two factors led leading scientists to suggest that these skulls were not likely to be human.

Mysteriously, these bodies were all stolen from where they were being kept, and now the only records documenting their unusual features are from the scientists who initially studied them, Dr. Anton Mifsud and his colleague Dr. Charles Savona Ventura.

Skulls bearing these unusual signifiers have also been discovered in Egypt and in regions of South America. While some people have suggested that they may indicate that there was once another race of humanoid creatures who walked the earth that was loosely related to human beings, others have suggested that the secrecy surrounding these discoveries indicates that there is something more mysterious about them. Could these skulls be from an ancient alien race? And if so, why are some taking such pains to conceal their existence from the rest of the world?

RELATED ARTICLES

• Bodies Of Strange Creatures Were Found In The Basement Of An Old House In London
• Anunnaki created our bodies but did not create the soul 

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

28-02-2017 om 19:12 geschreven door peter  

28-02-2017 om 18:57 geschreven door peter  

Structures Found On Earths Moon In US Navy Archives, Feb 28, 2017, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: February 28, 2017

Location of sighting: Earths Moon

Source: https://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clm/

 I found these structures today. The structure above was the most fascinating to me. Its a long straight structure along what looks like a crater but is actually not. Its actually all one structure. No crater there, just structure. Hard to understand I know, but I got this from Karl Wolfs description...of giant fugus like structures. Also you see a few others below of interest. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 13:25 geschreven door peter  

How Far Will Aliens Go With Their Mind Control Abilities? Feb 28, 2017, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Heres something thats been on my mind this week. I remember two sightings where a calming effect happened to me. Something that felt more like a drug effect from Prozac or Zoloft than anything else. I have also read hundreds of UFO and alien contact reports that describe the same feeling of comfort, relaxation, love around aliens..all fears and worries temporarily taken away. 

This may be nice for aliens and even some human, but sure as hell not what I 'm looking for. I don't know if I could trust an alien that is using technology or telepathy to control my feelings, because that means the alien does not trust you enough to be yourself in its presence. Mind control...thats what I'm talking about. Its a weapon no matter how its used. Aliens have the technology to totally control you if they wanted and even make you forget about seeing a UFO...but it wears off depending on the size of the UFO. The larger, the more powerful the time frame of the control lasting. 

A good start for aliens would be to turn off all mind control technology when flying their ships around our planet. It would be a show of good faith by them. That they believe in us to not panic.

I think I speak for most humanity when I say if aliens want to contact us on earth, using mind control to manipulate our emotional state is not the correct or ethical way to do it. To the aliens out there who wish to make contact with humans and walk among our streets in the open...do not even think about using your mind control on humans. It will start a war between humans and aliens in the end. The one thing people hate more than all other things is to lose control to another person against their will. 

To the aliens out there, let us be ourselves.

Here is a full documentary about what I am talking about below.
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 13:20 geschreven door peter  

Potentially habitable exoplanets: Why haven't we found aliens yet?

What are the conditions needed in order for complex life to emerge and evolve on other planets?

• 

  By Hannah Osborne

There is a conundrum among scientists about why we have not found alien life elsewhere in the universe. Known as the Fermi Paradox, it says that – theoretically – life should be abundant beyond our own solar system. But if that is the case, why haven't we found it yet?

At present, astronomers have identified some 3,500 exoplanets across more than 2,600 planetary systems. It is estimated the Milky Way alone is home to 100 billion exoplanets, with far more Earth-sized planets than massive ones like Jupiter. As a result, there could be billions of 'potentially habitable' exoplanets out there – meaning they have the potential to have liquid water on the surface.

So what are scientists looking for in exoplanets when considering their potential to host life? Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director at the Royal Astronomical Society, tells IBTimes UK what is needed for life on another world:

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If you want a planet that's habitable – and potentially inhabited – you need a lot of very specific conditions. At least we think so.

You need a planet around a star that is relatively stable, that has a long lifetime because that allows life to evolve. You also want a star that doesn't vary too much, because if your star changes its brightness and heat output radically over say a few years or even centuries, that's not going to be good for life. It's going to make it very hard for complex life to adapt and survive.

You also need a world – we think – which is around a star with lots of metals in it. Metals in astronomy doesn't mean things like iron – it means everything heavier than helium. If you have those so-called metals, the heavier elements, you're more likely to be able to form rocky planets. The kinds of planets you could walk around on seem to be the sort of place where life could flourish based on our experience here on Earth.

You also need that planet to be in orbit around a star that is either single, or if it's a binary star – which is very common in the universe – that those stars are very close together, in which case a planet can have a stable orbit around them, or they're very far apart, in which the same thing applies. If these stars are separated by the same distance as the Earth and the Sun, it would be very hard for a planet to have a stable orbit. That would be quite bad for life as the planet might get thrown out of its star system or be subject to very extreme changes in climate.

Other factors include the famous 'Goldilocks zone' idea – that it has to be in the middle of the habitable zone. If the planet is outside of that it means it's either too cold for liquid water to form or it's too hot so it stays as water vapour and steam.

That again is not very good for advanced life evolving. Other factors beyond that include things like the planet not having extreme seasons. If you imagine a world like Uranus which is tipped right over so it has a tilt of more than 90 degrees, then its pole experiences 42 years of darkness and 42 years of daylight. That probably isn't going to be the kind of system that's good for life. There are ways around it – you could have a thick atmosphere that helps distribute the heat. But it probably isn't going to make life any easier.

Med on Mars: Ocean covered 20% of Red Planet surface long enough for life to thrive

It also helps if the planet is the right size. If a planet is too big and has too much mass it would have a strong gravitational field. That would mean it might end up like Jupiter in our own solar system with a very thick atmosphere, not much of a solid core, very hot in its interior. Very hard to imagine complex life surviving. Conversely if it's too small then it probably can't hold onto that atmosphere. If it's smaller than Mars, then that atmosphere would get stripped away very quickly.

Another related factor – one we benefit from on Earth – is a magnetic field. The advantage of that is it protects us from harsh radiation from the Sun and from interstellar space. High levels of radiation are very bad for life. We really don't want a planetary environment that is subject to that.

As well as having moderate seasons because the planet has a moderate tilt like Earth (so we don't get too many extreme seasons), it would also be very important the planet is not in an eccentric orbit. Now the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is roughly a circle. If you stretched it out too much you would have the issue that sometimes the planet would be very very cold, and potentially very hot. These extremes are not good for life. You want clement worlds. That means we need a circular orbits – at least for the kind of life we are familiar with to flourish.

The other thing to think about is that although a very massive planet is probably not a good place for life, if you look at a planet like Jupiter it has a big retinue of moons so it's almost like a mini solar system. It is just possible that some of those moons, even in our own solar system like Europa, might host life in deep oceans under an icy crust. So we shouldn't be too worried if we don't find precisely Earth-like planets around other stars because there are other ways that life could get a foothold.

Of course the real problem we have is that the only example we have of life in the Universe – the only one we're aware of – is right here on Earth. Until we actually find life elsewhere in the universe, all of this is quite moot. It's very much a theoretical discussion. It's a discipline looking for extraterrestrial life so far with no data.

Having said that, if we did find it, it would probably rank as one of, if not the most exciting scientific discoveries of all time.

{ http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ }

28-02-2017 om 01:15 geschreven door peter  

The UFO jellyfish and the venus fly trap anemone: Stunning collection of strange sea creatures spotted in Samoa

• NOAA expedition captured footage of 'cosmic jellyfish' that looks like a UFO 
• Finds also include a Venus flytrap anemone and an ‘alien-looking’ hydroid
• Researchers also spotted a fish ‘out for a stroll,’ appearing to walk on the seafloor

By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com

Breathtaking new footage from the first dives of the NOAA’s 2017 American Samoa Expedition has revealed a glimpse into the alien world of the deep sea.

A ‘cosmic jellyfish’ caught on camera looks remarkably like a UFO, spreading its opposing tentacles out like a disc as it floats through the water in eerie stillness.

The researchers have also observed a number of other enthralling creatures, including a ‘sinister’ pink anemone that looks like Venus flytrap, an ‘alien-looking’ hydroid, and a fish ‘out for a stroll’ on the seafloor.

Breathtaking new footage from the first dives of the NOAA’s 2017 American Samoa Expedition has revealed a glimpse into the alien world of the deep sea. A ‘cosmic jellyfish’

(pictured) caught on camera looks remarkably like a UFO

THE EXPEDITION 

NOAA researchers kicked off the 2017 American Samoa Expedition earlier this month.

It will span from February to April, exploring the little-known deepwater areas in American Samoa and Samoa.

Researchers will focus on Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa, and National Park of American Samoa.

Among the many priorities for the mission, it’s hoped that this will help scientists to identify and map vulnerable habitats – especially those with high density of deep-sea coral and sponge communities. 

It comes as part of the three-year Campaign to Address the Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean Needs , which aims to explore Pacific marine monuments sanctuaries, ‘last relatively pristine marine ecosystems on the planet.'

The first cruise leg of the 2017 American Samoa Expedition kicked off on February 16th, beginning a mission that will last until April, allowing scientists to explore the mysterious deepwater areas in American Samoa and Samoa.

It’s been less than two weeks since the expedition started, but the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) has already imaged a slew of creatures that are out of this world.

One of the most spectacular lifeforms they’ve seen so far is the cosmic jellyfish, spotted during the first dive on Utu seamount.

In the video, the glowing jellyfish is completely rigid as it appears to hover in the water, before taking on an entirely different form as it undulates to move away.

Then, like a UFO in the sky, it suddenly zips out of sight.

‘It has two sets of tentacles, some facing up and some facing down,’ the researchers explain in the footage.

NOAA finds bizarre looking deep-sea jellyfish with odd tentacles

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One of the most spectacular lifeforms they’ve seen so far is the cosmic jellyfish, spotted during the first dive on Utu seamount. In the video, the glowing jellyfish is completely rigid as it appears to hover in the water, before taking on an entirely different form as it undulates

‘You can see the yellow, likely reproductive organs. 

'In the center is the digestive system, with the mouth in red. It’s really amazing to see.’

The footage also reveals a stunning pink creature known as the Venus flytrap anemone.

Perched atop a dead coral – like a stem – it sits waiting with its mouth open, displaying an array of spike-like tentacles.

But, when the ROV approaches, the mouth closes up.

‘These are really beautiful creatures,’ the researchers say in the footage. ‘The tentacles of this anemone have stinging cells that have microscopic harpoons that inject venom'

This incredible sea anemone looks just like a Venus fly trap

These are really beautiful creatures,’ the researchers say in the footage.

‘The tentacles of this anemone have stinging cells that have microscopic harpoons that inject venom.

‘It can also use them just to grab and hold onto prey.’

At the Leoso seamount, on the boundary between the American Samoa Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the Cook Islands EEZ, the researchers spotted another bizarre specimen.

A lone hydroid sitting at a depth of roughly 3,770 meters appeared to dance on the seafloor, with countless tentacles covering its strangely shaped body.

Researchers find 'very alien-looking' hydroid under American Samoa

Hydroids are closely related to most jellyfishes, the researchers explain.

Its bottom portion blooms out with a full skirt of tentacles, and another group of tentacles surrounds its mouth. 

‘You can see the structures are very intricate and unusual,’ the researchers comment in the footage.

‘These are very alien looking lifeforms that we find in the deep sea.’

The team also spotted a fish that’s equipped with tiny leg-like structures that allow it to walk across the seafloor.

Hydroids are closely related to most jellyfishes, the researchers explain. Its bottom portion blooms out with a full skirt of tentacles, and another group of tentacles surrounds its mouth

The researchers observed a number of other enthralling creatures, including a ‘sinister’ pink anemone that looks like Venus flytrap, an ‘alien-looking’ hydroid, and a fish ‘out for a stroll’ on the seafloor (pictured). The fish has thickened rays that act like 'little thin legs'

The ROV captured footage of the strange armored searobin scuttling the bottom during a dive within the Ta'u Unit of National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.

Thickened rays at the front part of its pectoral fin – the fan-shaped feature at its side – act like ‘little thin legs’ so the fish can hunt for small invertebrate prey.

The exploratory dives have so far yielded remarkable findings, revealing the stunning creatures that live thousands of meters beneath the sea.

The expedition will continue on over the next two months, collecting information on this little-known region. 

This crab-like creature is actually a fish with leg-like fins

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

28-02-2017 om 01:02 geschreven door peter  

Jellyfish that looks like a flying saucer spotted in the Pacific

Audrey Browning

As if jellyfish didn't already resemble aliens.

Screengrab via the NOAA's Okeanos Explorer (Public Domain)

Some scientists have already theorized that space aliens could look like jellyfish, but maybe it's actually the other way around. 

A team of marine biologists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration captured footage of a jellyfish called the rhopalonematid trachymedusa, which looks like a flying saucer.

Cosmic Jellyfish NOAA

The Office of Ocean Exploration and Research’s project, called Okeanos Explorer, aims to gather environmental knowledge and discover the undiscovered from exploring the ocean. According to the team’s website, the office is the only federal department exploring the unknown parts of the deep sea.

A dive to “Utu,” a previously unexplored seamount of the American Samoa Exclusive Economic Zone, on Feb. 21 explored a volcanic crater. Starting at more than 3,000 meters below the surface, researchers were able to capture shots of many fantastic deep-sea creatures, including the UFO jellyfish.

As scientists state in the project's video, the translucent outer skin allows us to view their yellow reproductive organs and red digestive system. The team also points out the jellyfish has two sets of tentacles—a set facing upward and a set facing downward—but the purpose of this isn’t currently known.

According to Gizmodo, the team is using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to capture their explorations of the depths. This specific find, in the South Pacific, comes from protected waters and is home to a very diverse population of marine life.

H/T Gizmodo

{ http://www.dailydot.com/ }

28-02-2017 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

Aliens on the SUN? NASA to launch spacecraft looking for extraterrestrials on surface

NASA are launching their first ever mission to fly to the Sun to look for alien life.

By Jamie Micklethwaite

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

27-02-2017 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

I Went to the International UFO Congress to Learn the Truth About the Phoenix Lights

DANIEL OBERHAUS

 

20 years ago, dozens of people in Phoenix, Arizona experienced something… out of this world.

The mountaintop and what occurs there has played a central role in the mythologies of civilizations gone by, and these stories speak volumes about how the people telling them interpreted the world around them. The Ancient Greeks had Olympus, which was believed to host a pantheon populated by immortals. Jews and Christians have Mount Sinai, which they believe Moses ascended to receive the Ten Commandments. And Phoenix, Arizona has the Sierra Estrella—a mountain range that many Phoenicians believe is presided over by UFOs.

The story begins on March 13, 1997, when thousands of Arizonans from all across the state reported seeing strange lights in sky. It remains one of the largest UFO sightings ever, but the details of the Phoenix Lights story ultimately depends on who is telling it—some contend that it was actually a composite of two separate events occurring simultaneously over Arizona, and there is little consensus as to whether these lights were extraterrestrial in origin.

As a longtime resident of Phoenix and UFO agnostic, I've heard the story of the Phoenix Lights retold countless times, each retelling rife with contradictions and inconsistencies. So, tired of the hearsay, I decided to visit the International UFO Congress to see if I could discover the truth about one of history's most infamous UFO sightings.  

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

Each year, hundreds of people gather in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains outside of Phoenix, Arizona for the International UFO Congress. Presided over by Alejandro Rojas, an Arizona real-estate agent and the guy behind the online UFO hub OpenMinds , the congress has been going strong since it first started in 1991. The highlight of this year's congress was a panel of Phoenix Lights eyewitnesses who wanted to share new developments in the Phoenix Lights story on its 20th anniversary.

Among these witnesses was Lynne Kitei, a Phoenix area physician and perhaps the closest that anyone could come to being an expert on what occurred that March evening 20 years ago. She has written a book and produced a full-length documentary on the subject and also maintains the Phoenix Lights Network, a hub for people to meet up and discuss the phenomenon.

"I put my medical career on hold for four years afterwards to investigate the Phoenix lights and have dedicated my life for 20 years just to get information out there," Kitei told me at the congress. "Let me tell you, a day does not pass by that I don't get an email from somebody that saw a similar phenomenon."

The phenomenon in question began at approximately 7pm on the night of March 13, 1997 when people in northwestern Arizona reported seeing a massive craft pass overhead. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, one of the few organizations that bothered to keep an official record of Phoenix lights sightings, the first call it received on its UFO Hotline that night came from a retired police officer in Paulden, Arizona, a small town about 2 hours north of Phoenix. The man reported seeing a cluster of red-orange lights arranged in a V-formation.

According to the write up of the event, after the initial report, calls began "pouring into the Hotline" from locations south of Paulden, indicating that the craft was heading in a southeasterly direction. While some of the specifics from these reports were slightly different, as USA Today would report a few months after the fact, the reports were united by several key observations, namely: the craft was enormous (witnesses described it as a mile wide), it made no sound, and moved slowly over Arizona, often times stopping to hover in a single location.

Lynne Kitei signing books at the UFO Congress. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

According to USA Today, the craft traversed Arizona in 106 minutes based on witness reports. Interestingly, however, a second incident that same night occurred around 10pm Arizona time, about an hour after the last reports of the large V-shaped craft had come in from the southern portion of the state. This event, which is the subject of the few Phoenix lights photos that exist, consisted of an arc of blinking orbs that moved slowly over Phoenix before promptly disappearing as soon as they reached the Estrella mountain range southwest of the city.  

One of the most remarkable things about the Phoenix lights is how many people witnessed them. The reason for this, Kitei told me, was that many Arizonans were outside stargazing that night to observe Hale-Bopp, an unusually bright comet that was approaching its closest pass to the Sun on April 1. Interestingly, Hale-Bopp was also believed to have an extraterrestrial craft in tow by members of the Heaven's Gate UFO cult in California, which led 39 members to commit suicide just 11 days after the Phoenix lights sighting in Arizona, although the two incidents are unrelated.

In any case, despite the number of people who reported witnessing the lights pass overhead, there was no official acknowledgement of the event and no media coverage until USA Today picked up the story that June.

2017 International UFO Congress. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

The USA Today report brought international attention to the Phoenix lights phenomenon, and people began demanding answers. The most obvious explanation for the lights was that they were the result of military exercises being conducted in the area, which isn't so farfetched considering that Phoenix has two air force bases near the city. Indeed, subsequent reports in local newspapers such as The Arizona Republic and Phoenix New Times began stacking up the evidence that the Phoenix lights were just a military training exercise.

Read More: This Neuroscientist Wants To Know Why People Who See UFOs Feel So Good

According to the New Times, three months after the lights, a local television reporter filmed a flare drop by military planes at an Air Force gunnery range south of Phoenix, and the resulting footage "looked remarkably like the 10pm lights of March 13." Moreover, days after that report the Tucson Weekly reported that the Maryland Air National Guard had been in Arizona for winter training and had dropped flares from a few A-10 fighter planes at the gunnery behind the Estrella mountain range. While this may have accounted for the second event of the night, a spokesperson for the National Guard had said that the planes never went north of Phoenix, so the initial sightings remained unaccounted for.

"We know that that same night there was a whole bank of illumination flares put up by the Air Force over the Barry Goldwater test range," Jim Mann, director of the Arizona Mutual UFO Network, told me. "A lot of people say the Phoenix lights aren't real, that they're just military flares, but a lot of research has led us to realize that the Phoenix lights were just a small portion of this huge UFO event."

Jim Mann, director of the Arizona Mutual UFO Network. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

Indeed, many shared Mann's skepticism that the Phoenix lights were reducible to military flares. Aside from the reports that came from the far north of the Arizona, independent analyses of footage of the Phoenix lights were performed by videographers working at a special effects company in Phoenix, as well as Paul Scowen, a professor of astronomy at Arizona State University who also independently analyzed video footage of the lights and found that they disappeared as soon as they hit the Estrella mountain range.

Still, the incident was dismissed as fantasy. Shortly after the front page USA Today story that brought international attention to the event, the incumbent governor of Arizona, Fife Symington, held a press conference during which he claimed to have "found who was responsible" for the lights. During the conference, Symington trotted out someone dressed in an alien costume with their hands cuffed.

"They made a mockery of the whole thing and it was really disconcerting," said Kitei. "They were trying to make a joke out of it, but people were taking this seriously. They wanted to know what these things were and who was doing it."

Although Symington made light of the sightings at the time, on the 10th anniversary of the event, he claimed that he had in fact witnessed the phenomenon in 1997.

"I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies," Symington said. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it."

Ultimately, the story of the Phoenix lights blurs the line between delusion and reality, so it seems these UFO-observers must find equilibrium in a profound and righteous paranoia. In some ways, it is a matter of indifference whether it turned out the military behind the lights or it was the work of extraterrestrial beings—either way it is confirmation of a vast web of either military or extraterrestrial power that is hidden from sight, as well as the lies and omissions it requires to stay hidden. But despite all the ufologists who want to believe that the Phoenix lights were other worldly, many remain skeptical about the origin of the craft.

"I think it's a little premature to say it was an alien ship," said Mann. "This is a mystery. Something happened, we don't know what it was, we just know that it happened."

When the astronomer Josef Allen Hynek was enlisted by the US Air Force to conduct a number of studies on UFOs in the 1940s and 50s, he found that from the hundreds of reported sightings, only a couple of dozen seemed to lack a scientific explanation. This is what makes the Phoenix lights such a unique UFO case—to this day, it remains an unresolved phenomenon, one that was witnessed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people, many of whom had never taken UFOs seriously before that spring night in 1997.

In any case, when it comes to the Phoenix lights, conspiracy is to be found at every turn. Indeed, after my visit to the UFO Congress, the only thing I knew for sure was that the stories that create and define the UFO phenomenon were united by one detail: they are told by people who are inclined to look up.

{ http://c.newsnow.co.uk/ }

27-02-2017 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

UFOs: The Myth That Won’t Die?

by DAVID MACARAY

“Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.”

27-02-2017 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

1985-The Abduction of Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber is one of the most well known UFO researchers in the area of alien abduction, and alien implants. His well known book, "Communion" is a UFO classic. It was also made into a movie by the same name. In upper state New York over the 1985 Christmas holidays, Strieber was staying in his isolated cabin with his wife and son. At this time, Strieber was already a well know writer. He had become somewhat suspect of potential intruders, and had recently installed a high tech alarm system in the cabin. At approximately 11:00 PM on the 26th of December, he activated the system, and the family retired for the night. After a couple of hours, he was awakened by an unusual sound. He felt that the security of his cabin had been breached. He was soon shocked to see a creature in his bedroom. After this, the next thing he knew he was sitting in the woods which surrounded his cabin. His memories of what had occurred were fragmented. Eventually, to reestablish memories of that night, and understand what had really happened, he would undergo regressive hypnosis by Dr. Donald F. Klein. The hypnotic regression would uncover many of the details of his experience. He recalled that he had been "floated" out of his bedroom and into a waiting UFO. He would see four different types of alien beings, one a small, robot type of being, secondly, a short, stocky type, the third was very slender and weak looking. It had mesmerising black eyes that slanted, and the last being had black, button eyes. He was subjected to medical testing by these aliens. One of these was the insertion of a needle into his brain, and another involved an object being inserted into his rectum. The beings took a blood sample from him by making an incision in his finger. The recounting of the most bizarre facts, caused Dr. Klein to diagnose Strieber with "temporal lobe epilepsy." This condition can cause one to have hallucinations. Strieber did not accept the diagnosis, and recounted his abduction as a real event. He would eventually establish a foundation as a support group for alien abductees. source and references: { http://www.ufocasebook.com/ } Whitley Streiber, "Communion" hp://www.unknowncountry.com/

27-02-2017 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Egyptian Papyrus reveals extraterrestrials visited Egypt in the past

It is believed that the Tulli Papyrus is the best evidence of ancient flying saucers in the distant past, and for some reason, historians have questioned its authenticity and meaning. Like many other ancient texts, this ancient document tells an incredible story, one that could change the way we look at our past, our future and present.

It is believed that this ancient document, which in fact isn’t a papyrus actually, offers the earliest citation of flying saucers on the planet. The Tulli “papyrus” is a translation of a modern transcription of an ancient Egyptian document.

According to this ancient text, the Pharaoh that ruled over Egypt was Thutmose III, and this mass UFO sightings happened around 1480 BC. It was recorded in history as a day of great importance, a day that something unexplainable occurred.

Before going any further into the subject, here is the translation of the text according to R. Cedric Leonard:

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor. Its body was one rod in length and one rod in width. It had no voice. It came toward His Majesty’s house. Their heart became confused through it, and they fell upon their bellies. They [went] to the king, to report it. His Majesty [ordered that] the scrolls [located] in the House of Life be consulted. His Majesty meditated on all these events which were now going on.

After several days had passed, they became more numerous in the sky than ever. They shined in the sky more than the brightness of the sun, and extended to the limits of the four supports of heaven […] Powerful was the position of the Fiery Disks.

The army of the King looked on, with His Majesty in their midst. It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down from the sky: a marvel never before known since the foundation of the country. And His Majesty caused incense to be brought to appease the heart of Amun-Re, the god of the Two Lands. And it was [ordered] that the event [be recorded for] His Majesty in the Annals of the House of Life [to be remembered] for ever.”

This incredible and historical event was described as being silent, but with incredible views of mysterious flying disks highly reflective, shining like the sun. According to this ancient text, the departure of the otherworldly visitors was marked by a mysterious event, as fish rained down from the heaven.

Even though this ancient text does not mention whether the ancient Egyptians did in fact establish contact with the otherworldly visitors, it is nonetheless a very important day in history, both for humanity and the ancient Egyptian Civilization.

It is important to mention that it is very unlikely that the ancient Egyptians misinterpreted these “fiery disks” with some sort of astronomical or weather phenomena. The Ancient Egyptians were experienced and gifted astronomers, and by the year 1500 B.C., they were already experts in the field, meaning that they would have described an astronomical phenomena in a much different way. Also, in this ancient documents, the “fiery disks” are described as they changed directions in the sky, so we know that these objects didn’t fall, but remained in the Egyptian Sky.

To understand this ancient story and its history, the ancient text would need to be studied, regrettably, today, the original papyrus is gone. Researcher Samuel Rosenberg requested from the Vatican Museum an opportunity to examine this precious document to what he got the following reply: ” The Papyrus Tulli not property of Vatican Museum. Now it is dispersed and no more traceable.”

Is it possible that the Tulli Papyrus is in fact located in the archives of the Vatican Museum? Hidden on purpose from the people? If so, why?

Is it possible that this is one of the best recorded ancient UFO encounters in history? And if so, is it possible that these otherworldly visitors influenced the ancient Egyptian civilization as Ancient Astronaut theorists believe?

{ http://www.ancient-code.com/  }

27-02-2017 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

Inside NASA’s Space Farming Labs

 

DANIEL OBERHAUS

 

If astronauts are going to make it on long duration space missions, they’re going to need some veggies.

For the first time since the end of NASA's Apollo missions to the moon, there is serious talk of sending humans beyond low earth orbit. NASA has been courting ideas for journeys to the moon and eventually Mars, while SpaceX is hell bent on being the first to get boots on the Red Planet. These ambitious plans present a host of technical challenges, however, particularly when it comes to food. This is why researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida have turned themselves into space farmers—without leaving Earth.

Up until 2015, the fare for astronauts aboard the International Space Station was limited to the dehydrated, freeze-dried foods that would be delivered aboard cargo resupply missions. Not only are these foods lacking in the taste department, but at $10,000 per pound, it's also incredibly expensive to ship freeze-dried spaghetti to low earth orbit. The goal, then, is to figure out how to produce food in space. This idea had its first proof of concept in August of 2015, when astronauts aboard the ISS were treated to a rare delicacy: fresh lettuce that was grown in space.

That lettuce was made possible by NASA's vegetable production system, otherwise known as Veggie, one of the handful of approaches the agency is taking to offset food transport costs and provide astronauts with a nutritious diet on long duration space missions. During a recent visit to Kennedy Space Center to view the SpaceX launch to the ISS, I stopped by NASA's labs to see how researchers are continuing to develop techniques to farm in microgravity.

Onate shows off the clay chips that are used as a growing medium in NASA's Advanced Plant Habitat.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

My first stop was to visit Bryan Onate in his lab, where he is part of a team of researchers working on developing NASA's Advanced Plant Habitat. A prototype of the APH, which looks like a big, high-tech microwave, arrived at Kennedy last November and is basically the equivalent of MIT's food computer, but especially designed for the space requirements of the ISS.

Inside the habitat, a number of Arabidopsis, a type of flowering plant related to cabbage, were growing under an array of LED lights. The researchers are able to control a number of variables in the growing chamber, including oxygen and nutrient levels, and can even measure the temperature of the individual leaves of the plant. However the main perk of the APH is that the control of these variables is automated by a computer system the researchers have accurately, albeit awkwardly, named PHARMER—the Plant Habitat Avionics Real-Time Manager in Express Rack.

The APH is experimental—Onate described it as the "Veggie's big brother," and like the Veggie system that is currently on board the ISS, it is used to explore optimum growing conditions for various types of vegetables. The new advanced plant habitat will be sent to the ISS to take over for Veggie on two upcoming commercial resupply missions. According to Onate, one of the main goals of APH research on the space station is to recover some of the plants grown in space, bring them down to Earth, use their seeds to grow plants at Kennedy, and then ship seeds from those plants to the space station to see if they're still viable after the transition between terrestrial and microgravity environments.

Bryan Onate and the Advanced Plant Habitat Prototype.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

The next stop was Kennedy's large environmental control chambers. These look like sterile walk-in refrigerators and are used to replicate all the environmental variables found on-board the ISS, such as humidity or CO2 levels—the only variable that can't be replicated is microgravity. These chambers served as a ground control for the vegetables that were grown on the ISS as part of the Veggie program so that the researchers could compare how microgravity affects the plant growth when compared with terrestrial conditions. I visited during the final hours before Friday's harvest of the Chinese cabbage, the fifth and most recent vegetable crop to be grown aboard the ISS.

According to researchers I spoke with on site, the experiment has so far been a resounding success. The astronauts on the ISS have been able to grow enough lettuce to make a small salad and the Chinese cabbage will likely be greeted with enthusiasm by the astronauts because it has more flavor than the red lettuce that had previously been grown.

Read More: Space Vegetables are the Best Hope for Quality Martian Cuisine

"In microgravity, your taste sensation is dulled so astronauts like to have things a little bit spicier, sharper," one of the researchers told me. "So this is why we are growing Chinese cabbage: it grows fast, has great nutrient levels and also performed very well on our taste tests."

My final stop was to a small, unremarkable room with a metal work table in its center and potted plants crammed into small gaps of shelving space around the walls.

"What we're doing here is looking for the long duration aspects of food production, the next steps after veggie and APH," said Ralph Fritsche, the Kennedy food production project manager. "APH is really a research platform and Veggie was kind of the first steps of trying to grow crops, but the focus of the research in this room is to develop something that's actually going to supplement the crew's diet."

The ground control for the Chinese cabbage that was harvested on the space station on Friday.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

As Fritsche pointed out, growing small batches of lettuce on the ISS is great, but so far NASA hasn't managed to produce enough plant matter to really make eating lettuce anything more than a novelty for the crew. To actually produce vegetables that will supplement the crew's freeze-dried diet, both on the ISS and eventually on the surface of Mars, Fritsche and his colleagues have to figure out a way to mass produce vegetables in space.

This is trickier than it sounds for a number of reasons. In the first place, water flows differently in space. On earth, water will be pulled towards a plant's roots, but in space, water will ball up and not be distributed evenly for the plant. Also, since liquids tend to ball up in microgravity, this also prevents effective oxygen flow to the plant. According to Fritsche, NASA is working on a couple of solutions to this problem of oxygen and water systems for plants in microgravity. One is an active system which essentially pumps water to the desired locations within a grow area.

The other is passive and based on a 3D printed nylon substrate that NASA has developed with researchers at Utah State. This is basically a cube that is made up of a bunch of densely packed triangles. Seeds are then placed on top of this cube and water is allowed into the system. Nylon is hydrophilic so the structure attracts the water and because of the way the cube is designed, the water disperses to the corners of the triangles and is kept there by surface tension. This allows for even distribution of water droplets for the plant's roots, as well as allowing air to flow to the plant through the vacant space in the triangles that make up the substrate.

"If we get good results after testing this in parabolic or suborbital flight, we'll try to fly this to the space station," said Fritsche.

Some microgreens grown in Fritsche's long duration food production lab.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

According to Fritsche, growing vegetables on the surface of Mars will be slightly less problematic than growing them in orbit. Even though Mars only has about a third of the gravity found on Earth, for the purposes of space farming and figuring out things like water flow, it is essentially the same.

Still, Fritsche and his colleagues want the most bang for their buck, which means figuring out how to maximize the amount of plant matter that can be grown in confined areas like those that are found on the space station and eventually, Martian greenhouses. This has led them to explore microgreens, which is an umbrella term for regular vegetables that are eaten long before they're mature, usually just a few weeks after sprouting. Since these vegetables are so small, grow relatively fast, are nutritionally rich and full of flavor, they make the most sense for supplementing astronaut's diets.

Fritsche imagined a future in which technologies like the 3D printed plant substrate and the APH automated farming system are combined to provide future Martians with a buffet of fresh microgreens. But despite the promise of combining NASA's farming technologies, he said it is unlikely that astronauts will ever be able to entirely ditch freeze-dried cuisine.

"I don't think we're going to get to a point that you're going to be able to offset the bulk of your nutrition with something you make on the way to Mars or the Moon," Fritsche said. "The key is that there are certain nutrients that degrade over time to the point you kind of have to make them along the way. Really what we're looking at is nutritional support, but I think it's likely that astronauts will continue to bring the bulk of food with them."

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{  http://vice.cmail19.com/ }

27-02-2017 om 22:03 geschreven door peter  

Watch: Eerie footage of 'UFO' flying over Dublin suburb

The video was recorded by a Dublin Live reader

BY JOHN PATRICK-KIERANS

This video shows eerie footage of what some people are claiming to be a UFO flying over Leopardstown in Dublin this evening.

The video was recorded by a Dublin Live reader, who did not want to be named, but said he saw a green light flying over Leopardstown.

He said: "I was driving home and at Leopardstown I saw this bright light flying over me.

"I thought nothing of it but when I got home my Italian students who are staying with me told me they had seen a light flying beside Bray Head and they recorded it."

Despite claims it's an alien spacecraft, our reader added: "It's probably just a drone, but it does look very strange."

The Irish Aviation Authority were unavailable for a comment on Sunday.

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27-02-2017 om 21:46 geschreven door peter  

Whatever happened to ... UFO sightings

 Paul Wood

Photo by: ThinkStock.com

Whatever happened to UFO sightings in Champaign?

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Although UFO sightings are down from their peak years, voyagers from space are still among us, and there's video over Champaign to prove it.

The skies here have had decades of brightly lit flying objects, to go by News-Gazette clippings.

That flying saucer parked just south of Champaign? Sorry, that's the State Farm Center. But the Foo Fighters, who took their name from what Air Force pilots in World War II called UFOs, did play there in 2000 and 2005.

The big boom for UFO spottings started in 1947, said Mark Rodeghier, the director of the Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. There were many reports during the 1950s and 1960s, with some going back in Illinois to 1897.

Rodeghier, who said he's skeptical of many reports, has advanced degrees from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He started studying UFO events in college in the 1970s.

The sightings have changed in many ways, he said.

"Years ago, we had reports of objects looking like disks. That's much less common now. Reports have tended to come in on triangle-shaped objects since the 1980s," Rodeghier said.

"I can't tell you why there is this change to a triangle spottings. You don't hear of many flying squares, since they're not aerodynamic."

Also, abduction cases have declined somewhat, he said.

"People report lots of weird things that have happened to them: sleep paralysis, hidden trauma, dissociation," Rodeghier said.

"Just because things are unexplained does not mean they are caused by aliens."

Some of these feelings were so vague because "for many years people had experiences, but nothing to organize their thoughts around."

Then came books and movies about alien abductions.

"When abduction reports became prominent, people said, 'I literally didn't know what happened until I read this book.' It gave them an idea," Rodeghier said.

The News-Gazette hasn't reported on alien abductions, but the files are rich with stories of flying objects — sometimes with credible witnesses, as when Champaign police officers Richard Van Etta and John Hall both reported seeing lights hovering, in 1967.

They took a sceptical approach, guessing it was the moon — only to spot the moon in another part of the sky. Their reports were independently added to those from throughout Champaign that night.

Staerkel Planetarium Director David Leake said the night skies are full of lights.

"I talked several times with a lady who said a light was following her, but it was always right after sunset," he said.

"We assumed it was Venus, which is the third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon. When Venus passed between the sun and the Earth and ventured into the morning sky, the reports stopped."

He also viewed a "throbbing light" that someone captured on video.

"To me, it was pretty obvious that the point of light they were shooting was bright, but given it was dark around it, the camera's auto-focus was going back and forth trying to get a proper focus, hence the 'throbbing' light," Leake said.

If you search the words Champaign and UFOs, what comes up the most is a 1997 video, which can be seen at sites including youtube.com/watch?v=FmHZSSOwxO8.

The low-tech video, which has audio of viewers shouting in amazement, purports to be a series of inexplicable lights moving north from the Town Center apartments near Market Place toward Rantoul.

An archive called ufosonearth.com posted a description of the video as "A fleet of mystery UFO lights." The site often debunks reports, but did not offer commentary on the 1997 incident.

Sam Maranto, the state director for the Illinois chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, has looked at the video but doesn't have a conclusion.

"It is interesting, but I can't find anything more about it," he said.

Some video commenters argued that they were probably planes headed to Chanute Air Force Base, while others noted that even before the base closed in 1993, the runways had long been shut down.

Maranto and Rodeghier stress the level of research in their work; both organizations build databases from the sightings.

"We're not a bunch of crazies," Maranto said. "This is a scientific study."

He said he didn't go out looking to be in the unusual field.

"This interest found me. I had my first sighting in 1959, in the Fox Lake area, and it scared the bejeebers out of me," he said of the childhood sighting.

Robert Idleman saw something in 1969 — and lived to tell about it

1969 saw a Close Encounter of The Weird Kind.

A witness, Robert Idleman of Champaign, remembers the 1969 event as summer shocker, weeks before the first moon landing on July 20.

Many people saw the UFO, including a deputy sheriff on graduation night 1969, Idleman said:

Near Mahomet, "there were four of us. It was very dark. We noticed a blip in the sky, pulsating. We had the nervous Nelly of our group who freaked out saying it was a UFO. We laughed, but in watching it, it actually came closer," Idleman said.

"In one instance, it was blipping far away. Next it was blipping closer. We got out of there fast."

No beer was involved in this incident, he hastened to add.

Near some Mahomet gravel pits, the UFO returned, Idleman says.

"Again it was almost instantaneous. The thing was again right over us. We went about 90 (mph) to Champaign, hearts pounding. As we approached a farm (near First Street), we saw the thing again moving to the south. As soon as it left, the electricity came on at the farmstead."

Idleman said the UFO spotting was near the end of an era of multiple sightings:

"This was a good area for the UFO during the '50s. But by 1969, it had calmed. Anybody that would admit it was nuts. Especially long-haired ne'er do wells" like himself at the time.

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27-02-2017 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

UFO sightings have reached an all-time high

By: Emily Drooby, Buzz60

Statistician and PhD candidate Sam Monfort compiled all of the data from the National UFO Reporting Centre and found that more people than ever have spotted UFO's in the recent years.

The number, which has been rising since the 1980's, hit an all-time high in 2010 with about 45,000 yearly sightings.

Sightings between 1990 and 2000 rose dramatically by nearly 30 thousand yearly sightings.

The data also shows that USA has the most sighting by far at almost 300 times greater than the global median.

But these sighting are no longer all about the UFO's. Instead, according to Monfort, lights are now the most popular way these sightings take form with a saucer 'flying' into second place.

Now that NASA has found seven Earth-size planets that could actually have alien life, these sightings could possibly increase.

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27-02-2017 om 21:24 geschreven door peter