By Shannon Hall

The discovery of alien life would be revolutionary. But what if we uncovered it on two—or even seven—planets all orbiting the same star?

That’s the tantalizing possibility offered by the cosmic grouping called TRAPPIST-1, where seven Earth-size worlds circle a star roughly 39 light-years away. According to a new study, those planets are packed so tightly around their stellar host that the seeds of life could be hopping between them with ease.

The study, conducted by Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is based on a theory known as panspermia, which in turn is based on the fact that planetary debris can be swapped between the worlds in our solar system. This is especially true for neighboring rocky planets—for instance, asteroid strikes have sent fragments of Mars crash-landing onto Earth.

Panspermia takes this a step further and suggests that life could catch a ride on that debris, hitchhiking from one planet to the next. It might sound wild, but recent research shows that some extreme forms of life can survive conditions akin to an interplanetary journey. Some scientists even argue that the seeds of life on Earth could have come from Mars.

In the TRAPPIST-1 system, all seven planets are nestled within a region that’s more than 20 times smaller than the distance between Mars and Earth. Such close proximity raises the tantalizing possibility that panspermia could take place in this system with ease.

PLAYING HOPSCOTCH

Now, Lingam and Loeb have calculated that exact probability. Comparing the TRAPPIST-1 planets to Earth and Mars, they found that the travel time between one planet and the next is shorter by a factor of a hundred. This boosts the chance that life can survive such a harrowing journey. They also found that the likelihood of one planet’s debris landing on another is larger by a factor of 20 or so.

Altogether, the possibility that life can play hopscotch from one planet to the next is a few thousand times higher among the TRAPPIST-1 worlds than the possibility that it did the same from Mars to Earth.

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“In a single planetary system, like TRAPPIST-1, the interchange of bacterial life is almost inevitable,” says the University of Buckingham’s Chandra Wickramasinghe.

Even better for the imagined aliens, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets can potentially host life, given the right conditions.

Three of the worlds orbit in the star’s habitable zone, the region where they receive the perfect amount of heat for liquid water to flow on their surfaces. The rest of the worlds are temperate, meaning they might be equally warm if they have the right internal temperatures and atmospheric blankets.

“We might find forms of life that survive under conditions that we haven't anticipated,” says Loeb. “That's why it's exciting. We shouldn't have any prejudice, but should look at all seven planets in TRAPPIST-1.”

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

Of course, right now there’s no direct evidence that panspermia happens in our solar system or beyond. And some astronomers are doubtful that hitchhikers could survive such a traumatic journey.

First, the building blocks of life would have to endure extreme heat and pressure from the impact that spewed them into space. Out in the open void, they would be subjected to harsh ultraviolet radiation from their host star for potentially millions of years. Finally, they would once again face blazing temperatures as they fell from the sky and crash-landed in yet another violent impact.

“The poor organism would be fried twice and would be radiated by ultraviolet photons,” says Brice-Olivier Demory of the University of Bern, a co-author on the study that announced the TRAPPIST-1 discovery last month.

Amaury Triaud, a University of Cambridge astronomer who also co-discovered the TRAPPIST-1 planets, is on the fence: “I'm a skeptic about this,” he says. “But I also have to remind myself that life has managed to survive in extreme conditions.”

Bacteria have persevered inside nuclear reactors and on the outer rim of the International Space Station. Tardigrades—tiny water-dwelling invertebrates that look like chubby bears—have endured the vacuum of space for up to 10 days. And organisms frozen in Antarctic ice for centuries have been revived in labs. (Also see “Weird Life Found Trapped in Giant Underground Crystals.”)

VIEW IMAGE

Wickramasinghe also points out that not every cell flung between worlds needs to survive: “It's like throwing seeds in the wind,” he says. “Most are destined to be destroyed. But a very few could take fruit—and that's all that's needed.”

Already, the discovery team is planning to turn the Hubble Space Telescope toward the seven siblings, along with the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2018. If the TRAPPIST-1 planets have atmospheres, these powerful instruments will be able to discern some of the molecules in the air and potentially find the fingerprints of life.

Should astronomers find signs of life on one planet, that will motivate them to scour its neighbors for similar signatures—even if the search comes up empty-handed at first. And if they find a match, it will suggest that the planets are indeed swapping life.

“That’s a golden opportunity to study panspermia,” Loeb says.

And if they find the right evidence, that would imply life doesn’t necessarily have to start over again on each new planet. Instead, it might spread like wildfire throughout a planetary system—and maybe even the cosmos.

Follow Shannon Hall on Twitter.

{ http://nationalgeographic.com/ }

23-03-2017 om 00:39 geschreven door peter  

LOS ANGELES •Eight decades after Flash Gordon hinted that aliens might not have humans' best interests at heart, mankind still risks destruction in the movies to make contact with extraterrestrial life.

From Frederick Stephani's 1936 big-screen serial through the US$1.2-billion Alien franchise to last year's Independence Day: Resurgence, the heroes of more than 500 space invasion films have been lining up to die in new and inventive ways.

This year's first sci-fi blockbuster is Life, a claustrophobic game of cat-and-mouse between the crew of the International Space Station and a rapidly evolving life form that caused extinction on Mars and now threatens all life on earth.

Set in the near future, Daniel Espinosa's breakneck-speed thriller hits theatres on Friday with an international cast led by A-listers Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds.

"The script, pacing-wise, was blistering and terrifying. I mean, when I was reading it, you get to a couple of moments in the script, I was legitimately anxious, which is a very good sign," Gyllenhaal said.

The film reunites Reynolds with his Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, although this white-knuckle suspense horror is short on the snarky humour that marked the 2016 superhero movie.

"There's nothing scarier than something that's just trying to survive and knows a little more than you do," Reynolds said at the world premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, last Saturday.

"I think people love that and people love a claustrophobic thriller too. Hitchcock started doing it and now it's been around forever."

Comparisons with Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror Alien - in which a deadly extraterrestrial stalks the crew of a spaceship - are inevitable, especially when Alien: Covenant, the sixth instalment in the iconic series, is fast approaching.

"I can see why people will compare it with Alien, but science fiction came from an old idea of noir cinema. I wanted my movie to play into that old American tradition," Espinosa said.

"Another big difference is the time, the era, when Alien was made. It was a post-atomic age when everyone was very much looking into the future. Young people today live in such a chaotic world that they don't think so much about what might happen in the next 10 years, let alone 100 years."

The point of Life, said Espinosa, was to make a thriller that would be entirely plausible today - a rover discovering a single-cell organism on Mars and bringing it back to the International Space Station, only for it to grow powerful and turn hostile.

In keeping with the "science reality" approach, the production team consulted British geneticist Adam Rutherford, who has published influential books on the use of genetic modification to make new life forms.

Espinosa worked with Rutherford to create an entirely original being made up of cells that can each perform any bodily function, and is structurally superior to humans.

The Life crew created a shape- shifter creature that adapts to its environment and can mimic whatever it comes into contact with, growing ever bigger, stronger and more threatening.

"We don't think that a life form would survive on the surface of Mars. The atmosphere is too thin and it would be sterilised by ultraviolet radiation," Rutherford said.

But he managed to come up with an idea for a creature that had survived for millennia by protecting itself from the Red Planet's harsh conditions. "The idea was that the alien has been in hibernation, protected from the radiation beneath the surface of the planet," he said.

Early reviews have been mixed, with the Hollywood Reporter predicting that the "underwhelming" movie may "suffocate in the anticipatory atmosphere surrounding Alien: Covenant".

Other critics have been kinder, however, pointing to its lean directing and refreshingly multicultural cast boosted by actors: Japanese Hiroyuki Sanada, Briton Ariyon Bakare and Belarusian Olga Dihovichnaya.

"Life is a thrill when it's smart, but it's even more exciting when the characters are dumb - which is ultimately a paradox the film wears proudly, to the possible extinction of the human race," concluded Variety magazine.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

{ http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore }

23-03-2017 om 00:30 geschreven door peter  

Watch Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Control a Giant Mech Robot

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos got to live out every 6-year-old's fantasy when he got behind the controls of a giant "mech" robot.

The Verge reports that Bezos tried out the 13-foot-tall (4 meters) robot yesterday (March 19) at his company's private Machine Learning, Home Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS) conference. Video of the bot, developed by Hankook Mirae Technology in South Korea, first surfaced in December in promotional clips. Live Science was skeptical of the robot's existence and functionality at the time. 

But the new video reveals that the robot does, indeed, exist. However, it's far from clear how much the mech (a term for piloted, humanoid robots) can really do. Bezos flails the arms around using controls in the robot's torso cockpit, but the robot does not take any steps and is tethered to the ceiling, presumably for safety reasons. [The 6 Strangest Robots Ever Created]

Giant mech

The robot does not pick anything up in the video, either, which is notable because its developers say that one of their goals is to create piloted robots for real-world jobs, like cleaning up the Fukushima nuclear power plant that was damaged in 2011 when a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. So far, none of the footage of the mech has shown it manipulating objects. The massive bot also runs on external power, which means that, so far, it's unable to work untethered.

Such limitations could be overcome. Roboticists have already developed robots that can navigate uneven terrain, including Boston Dynamics' intimidating "Big Dog" and the bipedal "Atlas" humanoid robot. Atlas can open doors, lift boxes and even right itself when pushed, and operates with an internal power source. Those bots are much smaller than the giant mech Hankook Mirae is trying to develop, however, and don't present the same safety challenges as a piloted robot. According to Hankook Mirae's website, the mech robot, nicknamed Method 2, weighs a minimum of 1.6 tons.  

Sci-fi fantasy

A designer affiliated with Hankook Mirae, Vitaly Bulgarov, told Live Science in December that the giant mech has been under development for several years and is a prototype made to show off particular technologies, like the human-machine interface that controls the arms.

In that case, the mech may never be used for more than demonstration purposes, while the individual technologies used to make it might be redirected to more practical designs.

Whatever the ultimate function of the robot, it certainly taps into human fantasies of what robots should be. Mechs like the Method 2 design appear in the 2009 film "Avatar" as well as in "Starship Troopers" (1997) and in "Pacific Rim" (2013). The character of Ripley (played by actress Sigourney Weaver) also uses one in the classic sci-fi film "Aliens" (1986), which Bezos referenced during his ride in Method 2.

"Why do I feel so much like Sigourney Weaver?" Bezos quipped.

Original article on Live Science.

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{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

23-03-2017 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

Mars Volcano Died at Same Time As Dinosaurs

Around the same time that the dinosaurs became extinct on Earth, a volcano on Mars went dormant, NASA researchers have learned.

Arsia Mons is the southernmost volcano in a group of three massive Martian volcanoes known collectively as Tharsis Montes. Until now, the volcano's history has remained a mystery. But thanks to a new computer model, scientists were finally able to figure out when Arsia Mons stopped spewing out lava.

According to the model, volcanic activity at Arsia Mons came to a halt about 50 million years ago. Around that same time, Earth experienced the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out three-quarters of its animal and plant species, including the dinosaurs. [Photos: Mars Volcano Views Revealed by Spacecraft]

Jacob Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and co-author of the new study, presented the findings today (March 20) at the 48th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas.

"We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago — the late Jurassic period on Earth — and then died out around the same time as Earth’s dinosaurs," Richardson said in a statement. "It’s possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms."

Richardson and his team identified 29 volcanic vents on Arsia Mons. These vents are located inside the caldera — the crater-shaped depression on top of the volcano. Calderas form when volcanoes collapse under their own weight as lava accumulates on top. The caldera on Arsia Mons, which is big enough to hold at least all the water in Lake Huron, measures 69 miles (110 kilometers) across. 

To figure out when the volcano was last active, Richardson and his team used high-resolution images from Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map lava flows around the 29 vents. Tallying craters around the volcano helped them to determine how long the lava flows had been there. Combining this data, the researchers determined that the most recent volcanic activity occurred 10 to 90 million years ago. The oldest lava flows are about 200 million years old.

"Think of it like a slow, leaky faucet of magma," Richardson said. "Arsia Mons was creating about one volcanic vent every 1 to 3 million years at the peak, compared to one every 10,000 years or so in similar regions on Earth."

The results of the study were published in January in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

23-03-2017 om 00:10 geschreven door peter  

VIDEO: Mystery blue fireball lights up Swedish night sky

A meteor camera captured the bright light. Photo: Swedish Allsky Meteor Network/Uppsala University

A bright, blue light which flashed across the night sky in eastern Sweden on Monday followed by a loud bang was most likely a huge bolide.

People in several towns in Sweden, including Uppsala, Stockholm and Örebro, reported seeing the strange fireball at around 9.30pm on Monday. One reader told The Local she saw it as far north as Piteå.

But an expert from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University has explained that it was a so-called bolide, a very bright meteor that explodes in the atmosphere.

"This is something that happens a few times a year," Eric Stempels, who also manages the Swedish Allsky Meteor Network project, a network of meteor cameras across Sweden, told The Local.

"Because it can happen during the day, when it is cloudy or far from populated areas, these events usually don't get much attention," he said, adding that this one fell in the north-eastern Uppland region.

Experts believe that this particular bolide may have been unusually large and Stempels estimated to Aftonbladet that it is possible it was between the size of "a fist and a football".

Bolides usually burn up at an altitude of 30-50 kilometres, but regional newspaper UNT reports that Monday's fireball may have made it as far as 25 kilometres from the Earth's surface.

One of the Swedish Allsky Meteor Network's cameras in Uppsala managed to capture the bright light. Watch the short video below.

{ https://www.thelocal.se/ }

22-03-2017 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

22-03-2017 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

Triangle UFO dips low over Pennsylvania witness

A Pennsylvania witness at Dauphin reported watching a low flying, triangle-shaped object with a metallic-like appearance that “simply disappeared,” according to testimony in Case 82087 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

Illustration of the triangle object.

(Credit: MUFON)

The witness was driving near home at 8:30 p.m. on February 14, 2017, when the incident occurred.

“My attention was drawn to a triangular object in the sky quickly flying toward me,” the witness stated.“It was low and had a couple of alternating, brightly flashing, white lights with a red light. There were several other smaller, flashing white lights that outlined the rectangular shape.”

The object moved directly over the vehicle. Pictured: Dauphin, PA.

(Credit: Google)

The object then shifted direction toward the witness.

“I was drawn to watch it, so I stopped in the middle of the road. It descended and flew directly over my car. When I looked up through my sunroof, I could see it had a metallic-like appearance (but it wasn’t smooth) and an irregular light pattern. It quickly started a slight ascension, made a quick 90-degree direction change and simply disappeared. The entire event was only a couple of minutes in duration. It happened so quickly, it was difficult to take pictures.”

Dauphin, PA, is about 8 miles north of Harrisburg.

(Credit: Google)

Dauphin is a borough in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, population 791. Pennsylvania MUFON State Section Director Julia Weiss closed this case as an Unknown. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

{  http://www.openminds.tv/ }

22-03-2017 om 23:46 geschreven door peter  

UFO 'moving lights' seen in Derby over Chaddesden

By George_Allen

Reader Josephine McMullan sent in these pictures of "moving lights in the sky" over Chaddesden in Derby.

Bizarre "moving lights in the sky" over Chaddesden have left one reader and her neighbours grasping at straws as to what could be behind the UFO sighting.

Josephine McMullan sent in this picture and said she had seen the lights on Monday and Tuesday night this week - but she couldn't come up with an explanation.

Readers have also been searching the Derby Telegraph website using the keyword 'UFO' but until now the reason was unclear.

---

Unfortunately - or fortunately if you're terrified of the unknown - there may be a rather simple explanation for this particular close encounter.

{ http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/ }

22-03-2017 om 21:43 geschreven door peter  

Bright orb hovering above Parksville, Canada 19-Feb-2017

Check out this interesting footage of a huge bright orb that was hovering in the sky above Parksville in British Columbia, Canada. This was filmed on 19th February 2017.

Witness report: 

Had diner at resort went to beachfront parking lot after diner and my wife observed a strange white/blue object below cloud cover it was over cast and raining. i video tape object for 52 sec then got in car went home. I did a 10 zoom of object then panned camera to left HWY 4 and right to the ocean so the experts can determine exact location along with gale each coordinates. the was Feb 19 at 7:02 pm. Object appeared to be moving but mostly hovering. I don’t believe in UFO but none the less this is what I saw and recored. Video and Google map location provided.

Author (source: MUFON)

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

22-03-2017 om 21:33 geschreven door peter  

Two UFOs caught on tape over Tijuana, Mexico 14-Mar-2017

These two UFOs were caught on tape over Tijuana in Mexico. This was recorded on 14th March 2017.

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

22-03-2017 om 21:29 geschreven door peter  

Canadian witness says object entered home

A Canadian witness at Bathurst recalled events from 1991 when a “round, white ball, fist sized,” entered her living room at a window and made a clacking sound, according to testimony in Case 82075 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The witness stated that the events happened very quickly on November 30, 1991.

“We were sitting in my livingroom in Bathurst one evening with my three teens and pre-teen daughter watching TV,” the witness stated. “Something – it seemed mechanical – a small, round, white ball, fist sized, with black eyes, or a lens, moved the old plastic vertical blinds we had in those days. Made a clacking noise that both he and I heard. First on the left of the window, then directly in front of where William and I were sitting on the couch, moving the hard, plastic slats twice at the front picture window, slipping into the room; and seemed to maybe take a picture of us.”

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The witness watched the object.

“We heard a clicking noiseand it seemed to have eyes or a lens that opened and closed. Both William and I saw it come through the closed window and closed window shade slats; and move the blind – but the kids did not see it or hear it. He and I immediately turned to each other with huge eyes and said, ‘Did you see that,’ but the kids laughed at us, as all four of them were just watching TV on the floor.”

The two jumped up and asked the kids again, but they laughed.

“He and I went to see if the window was open and neither of the two side windows, maybe sliders on the bottom, don’t remember, were open. There was nothing outside and the blinds had hardly moved when this object seemed to come through them to take a look at us.”

(Credit: Google)

The two went out the front door next to the window and still did not see anything to give them a clue as to what had happened.

We recently covered two cases where witnesses said the object was inside the house – Case 82001 and 82021. Canada MUFON Field Investigator Paul Bedard closed this case as an Unknown. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

22-03-2017 om 01:16 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Aliens Debunked? What do you think??

Few pseudo scientific ideas have captured the imagination like ancient astronaut “theory”. The idea has become almost it’s own religion as it often uses religious myth as a source of so-called evidence. Assisting its popularity is a host of documentaries including a series called Ancient Aliens specifically dedicated to the ancient alien hypothesis (hereby referred to as AAH).

In this thread I hope to dissect the first episode of the History Channel show Ancient Aliens in an effort to more or less debunk the claims presented. My hope is that this attempt will further discussion and get those who believe in AAH to take a closer look at what they believe and why and what they are prepared to call evidence. I hope that everyone will take the time to watch the video either before or during reading. I am going to describe much of what is talked about in the video in an attempt to make viewing it non-essential however.

This is gonna be a long one folks.

After the intro they begin by introducing Erik Von Daniken, author of Chariot of the Gods. He talks about the inception of AAH and how he scoured religious texts from all over the world. Daniken than says that no matter where you go the story is always the same. God’s descended from the heavens. The problem is that not all mythologies involve the gods descending from the Heavens. Daniken is taking the myths out of context. And often times gods that do descend do so because they are lightning, sun or moon gods that would naturally be associated with the sky.

It is no doubt that many gods do indeed dwell in the heavens. It is also true that many gods aren’t associated with heaven at all. There are underworld gods, sea gods, wind gods, Earth gods, etc. To suggest that the story is always the same Daniken must ignore VAST quantities of mythology and choose only bits and pieces to accept as accurate. He must then rob those of their mythical context and impose aliens upon them to see if they “fit”.

Daniken admits that he starts with the presupposition of aliens AND THEN looks for proof. This generally isn’t the way science works. Usually you want to collect evidence before coming to a conclusion, not come to a conclusion and then procure the necessary evidence. This section is also filled with lot’s of appeals to the popularity of Daniken’s book. This is a logical fallacy. It’s popularity has no correlation to whether or not it’s true.

At 8:29 George Noory is right when he says that people want answers to these ancient mysteries. It’s perfectly understandable for people to want answers. But using aliens to explain away mysteries is just an argument from ignorance, it doesn’t get us any closer to the truth.

Planting ideas, the insinuation that the Nazca lines “look like airstrips”. Considering that many of them are pictographs I fail to see how its possible for them to be airstrips. But of course he’s likely referring to the rectangular ones. Why exactly would the aliens land their high-tech interstellar craft on some lines in the dirt? More insinuations soon follow about how it’s an airport despite showing images of the so-called “Airstrips” crisscrossing in ways that would undoubtedly cause collisions or confusion of any aircraft attempting to land. They are sure to label the more down-to-Earth explanations as “disputed” while doing no such thing for the airstrip idea.

Dave Childress keeps stressing “WHAT IS THE REASON.” But he apparently refuses to leave the mystery. Yes the Nazca lines are a mystery but that doesn’t mean we insert aliens into that gap in our knowledge.

The Bible

Source www.biblegateway.com

The next book we go to is Enoch. Daniken is allowed to assert without challenge that the ANGELS described by Enoch were aliens. He calls Enoch an “eye witness” as if that lends the story credibility as an actual event. People see wild things all the time, eye witness reports do not count as evidence. Of course in this case we’re not just dealing with an eye-witness, we’re dealing with a religious text filled with all sorts of fanciful material such as angels interbreeding with humans to create a race of giants. This is mythology being read as fact and then aliens being added to it for no reason.

Our next two speakers are both skeptics, one a Biblical archeologist, one a Professor of Spirituality studies. They point out several good flaws in AAH interpretation of Ezekiel. They are offered only about a minute of time to voice their opinions before we return to the believers. Giorgio Tsoukalos then asserts that religious stories might be “true after all”. What he actually means is the opposite. He’s not proposing that these myths are to be taken in their original context or even LITERALLY, he suggesting they be reinterpreted out of context to uphold AAH. He reinforces this only with the assertion that because writing was rare people would write down things that actually happened to them.

Vimana

They open this section with an image that should instantly cast doubt on the claim that Vimana’s are UFOs. Notice anything from the photo above? How about the horses and elephants and chariots? Does this look like a depiction of a UFO war in the sky? Or does it look like a fanciful mythological tale being retold in artwork? A man then makes some claims about how being made of metal, appearing in two places at one and having a motion similar to a butterfly is CONSISTENT with modern UFO reports. Flight pattern of a butterfly? Well two out of three ain’t bad.

David Childress returns at around 29:00 comparing the descriptions of flying machines in Indian mythology to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Funny, I thought he was in favor of AAH not against it. Come to think of it why can’t these descriptions simply be a case of science fiction from ancient times? They follow this up with Giorgio making a few appeals to popularity by pointing out repeatedly that these stories are widely accepted in India. Of course he quotes no pole or statistic and shows no evidence of any kind to reinforce this assertion.

Artifacts and Cave Paintings

Ready for some more desperate attempts to reinterpret things and steal them out of any historical or archeological context? Check out this photo that is apparently flashed up on screen as some kind of physical evidence of aliens.

Notice anything about the headdress in the center? Looks like it’s made to appear animal to me. Why are they showing this? Do they think that seriously resembles a space helmet? This image betrays the issue with the vast majority of supposed “astronaut” figurines and paintings. Headdresses were common in tribal times, helmets aren’t a new technology.

While the photo above is up George Noory plants the idea of astronauts in the audience’s head never leaving room for it to be anything else. A helmet, a headdress, a halo, the depiction of someone’s head being on fire. The list of plausible possibilities would stretch for miles before aliens would be an option without some other evidence aside from a drawing. What will people who come across superman comic books in 10,000 years say about us, will they claim we could only draw superman because he was real and we must’ve seen him?

The quite obviously tribal headdress above is labeled as “eerily similar to a modern astronaut”. In what world are these people living in? This thing looks nothing like an astronaut. If it is anything out of the ordinary it looks more like a diving helmet (and even that is WAY pushing it).

This has become an iconic artifact amongst AAH proponents. If this is a plane as they suggest where are the engines? Where’s the cockpit? Why are there clearly two EYES? And why exactly does ancient foreknowledge of the plane logically lead one to ALIENS? We humans invented the plane, not aliens, why would we credit them with this artifact? A civilization capable of crossing interstellar space wouldn’t likely have need for such things and according to AAH proponents themselves ancient mythical accounts describe flying saucers NOT airplanes.

There is an assertion that the upright tail-fin is not intrinsic to nature. That is, of course, only true if you discount ALL FISH, guess those aren’t part of nature . Even if it were not found on any animals it most certainly could have been created with creative license, the sculptors own creative decision. The idea that this is evidence of aliens is insulting to people’s intelligence.

Mayans

Our one stop is Pacal’s Tomb and I’m honestly still curios as to why this one is so popular amongst ancient astronaut believers. Nothing about this carving looks remotely like an alien craft without stretching the imagination. Of course like most of these things we must first rob it of it’s widely understood historical/cultural context and RE-interpret it (for no reason). When looking at the image in detail the symbolic and widely accepted meaning makes more sense.

“The widely accepted interpretation of the sarcophagus lid is that Pakal is descending into Xibalba, the Maya underworld. Around the edges of the lid are glyphs representing the Sun, the Moon, Venus, and various constellations, locating this event in the nighttime sky. Below him is the Maya water god, who guards the underworld [4]. Beneath Pakal are the “unfolded” jaws of a dragon or serpent, which Pakal is escaping from, ascending towards the world tree. This is a common iconographic representation of the entrance to the underworld”

Source wikipedia.org

Piri Reis Map

This is another one that truly baffles me. What does this have to do with aliens? If aliens were helping out Piri in creating the map or in creating the source maps he used why weren’t they flawlessly accurate? Why did they not depict the ENTIRE world? The map clearly shows the tip of South America wrapped around at the bottom often asserted to be Antarctica’s coast. If this were true, for sake of argument, why exactly would this logically lead to aliens? Quite simply there is no link that can be built logically other than by STARTING with the conclusion of aliens and just lumping the map in as possible evidence because its mysterious.

 

Pyramids and Monuments

 

So it begins. This is going to be aggravating for me as person after person will no doubt belittle the ancients by claiming they were too stupid to devise ingenious ways to put stones on top of other stones. Even within the first few minutes of this section the narrator himself asks how the Egyptians could have possibly done this on their own. Mysteries, ignorance, does not mean you can insert whatever idea you want.

 

Jason Martell, so called “Alien Investigator” (there’s an official title for you) provides a backhanded compliment claiming that the ancients were strong enough to build these monuments but not smart enough and that some kind of “intervention” was necessary. This sort of thing is very frustrating for me – these baseless assertions made without any sort of evidence at all are far too common in the arguments made for AAH. Martell even go so far as to say “they couldn’t have just come up with it on their own” … WHY NOT?

 

What exactly do the aliens gain from the building of a pyramid? Why spread knowledge about how to build them? Why not spread, oh I don’t know, the cure for cancer?

 

The assertions begin that pyramids are “all over the world” and that means something weird. This is a common and downright stupid claim. It’s like asking why so many cultures built rectangular homes. What we’re dealing with is a fairly simple shape to build in, a pyramid. And contrary to assertions often made by AAH proponents cultures did not all begin building pyramids at around the same time. In fact some pyramids were built after 1 AD while others such as those at Giza are over 2,000 years older. They talk about Teotihuacan for instance and the pyramid of the sun even comparing it to Giza. The Pyramid of the sun was built around 100 AD. The great pyramid was built well over 2,000 years before that. So aliens paused for 2,000 years before passing on the knowledge to the builders at Teotihuacán?

 

Most of this monument section can be glanced over. It’s mostly comparing ancient sites and making the claim that the stones are too big or well placed for humans to do it. Giorgio even goes so far as to say that the site Puma-Punku is the best evidence of AAH available. If that’s the case we can toss out AAH right now. Is Puma-Punku a mystery? YEP. Does that mean we get to call it aliens and walk away? ABSOLUTELY NOT. To do so is just another in a long list of arguments from ignorance. The fallacious logic never seems to cease. A mystery is not evidence of aliens, end of story.

 

We’re about an hour in and we finally get another skeptic, this time an anthropologist named Todd Disotell who correctly points out some of the flaws that I’ve gone over in the AAH claims.

Mechanisms, Math and Electricity

Next up is the Antikythera Mechanism. Again I find it strange that this is picked out to SUPPORT AAH when it does no such thing. The device is indeed hi-tech for it’s time but then it’s nowhere near something that would be invented by aliens capable of crossing interstellar space. This is clearly a work of man. The Mechanism was found in Greece, Greece was a well-known scientific center in it’s day. Stories of Archimedes and other inventors inventing some pretty crazy stuff exist in that area.

 

We transition from Antikythera to a well-known Egyptian carving of an plant of some sort misconstrued as a giant light bulb by way of some imaginative Pareidolia. You can even see the quite plant-like stem and leaves just before the “bulb”. Giorgio claims that this carving is in an area that no one was allowed into, a secret room, yet he then claims that lightbulbs were a tool used to light the tombs as they carved. Even if, for sake of argument, we accept these as lightbulbs how in the hell does one get from lightbulbs to ALIENS? What sort of jump of logic is that?

 

The Baghdad Battery is up next. This, as per usual, has zero to do with aliens. It’s an interesting discovery if indeed it is intended as a battery but it’s clearly an ancient homegrown design, not something imparted from beyond the stars. Honestly how any of this manages to convince anyone of aliens astounds me. Is there a reason the ancients couldn’t have developed this on their own?

Eventually a skeptic comes up and says what all critical thinkers are probably screaming at their TVs “we shouldn’t think of the ancient people as dummies!” The narrator soon asks the audience why the ancients were so obsessed with the sky? Well put yourself in their shoes for half a second, strip away all knowledge you have of astronomy. If you were entirely ignorant of what you were looking up at you would marvel at it too. Hell people still marvel at the beauty of the sky today, amateur astronomy is a fairly popular hobby and we know what we’re looking at better than the ancients did.

Conclusion 

The show wraps up with Giorgio pretending that skeptics have the burden of proof, that we have to prove him wrong in order for him to set aside AAH. The ones making the claim hold the burden of proof. The skeptics do not need to show evidence that you are wrong. AAH doesn’t need to be debunked, it certainly helps but it’s not necessary. To quote Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 

The lapses in logic and the fallacious reasoning used by AAH proponents should really say it all. The fact that the vast majority of their so-called evidence is actually explainable better with human ingenuity and mythology also speaks volumes on the subject. In the end ancient aliens are another argument from ignorance like a God used to fill gaps and mysteries in our past. There simply is no reason to believe in ancient aliens. Although we cannot rule out the possibility of alien visitation without conclusive evidence of it there simply is no reason to believe. I say it is better to leave ancient mysteries a mystery until a real answer can be found.

Source www.abovetopsecret.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

22-03-2017 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

8 Cave Paintings depicting Aliens

All over the world there are unexplained cave paintings that archeologists struggle to explain. Here are 8 cave paintings depicting aliens / UFOs. It is believed that prehistoric caveman used to draw whatever he used to see, hence the existences of the images of UFOs and aliens in the various cave drawings certainly prove that aliens and UFOs are not the yield of creative minds only.

Sego Canyon, Utah, USA

Sego Canyon alien pictographs ?

Large eyes and missing limbs of the creatures would certainly remind you of visitors from the outer space. These paintings are found to be 7,500 years old.

Val Camonica, Italy

Dating back to 10,000 B.C., there are several strange depictions in this Italian caves. It appears to depict two beings in protective suits holding strange implements. Notice the halo looking objects over their heads, which is very similar to other early cave drawings and paintings.

Niaux caves, France

What looks exactly an outline diagram of a spaceship as seen in sci-fi movies is actually a cave drawing that is found in the Niaux caves of France. This Paleolithic cave painting was drawn some time between 13,000 B.C. and 10,000 B.C.

Tassili, Sahara desert, Algeria

This figure also does not look human. Notice the same halo-looking object around the head that we see in some of the other paintings from other parts of the world. This cave painting is from Tassili, Sahara Desert in North Africa. It dates back to 6000 B.C. The figures do not look human. Notice the flying disk in the sky.

Itolo, Tanzania

Several disc shaped objects are seen in the cave drawings of Itolo, in Tanzania that dates back to 27,000 B.C.

Cave of Pech Merle, France

The drawings in the cave of Pech Merle near Le Cabrerets in France depict a field of different wild animals, amidst which there is a strange looking humanoid structure that has limbs and a tail as well. There is no reason to believe that this figure was imaginative as all the other animals seen in the drawing can be recognized. Three flying objects are also seen in this drawing that was drawn about 17000 to 19000 years ago.

Kimberly, Australia

These cave paintings date back to approximately 3,000 B.C and are from Kimberley, Australia. These are more ancient paintings of what the local Aborigines call the Wandjina.

Notice how these also possess the same dominate characteristics: the eyes and the halo-type object around the heads. Most of these also possess the bulbous head which the famous “greys” are said to possess.

Chhattisgarh, India

We already write about this one here. These paintings which are about 10,000 years old depict humanoid figures that do not have nose or lips and are characterized by large bulging eyes only.

Source ancientufo.org

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

22-03-2017 om 00:49 geschreven door peter  

Alien: Covenant unleashes intense new international trailer

Fox has unleashed an intense new international trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.

The new two-minute trailer doesn’t show an awful lot of new footage, but does give us a bit more Xenomorph attack action as one stalks the unfortunate crew of the titular colony ship Covenant.

Basically, they’re probably all screwed.

The new trailer uses the same tagline of “the path to paradise begins in hell” that was in the trailer unveiled earlier this month.

That clip gave us a bit more of an idea how the crew of the Covenant find themselves in danger as they come across what they think is an unexplored nirvana, only to discover it’s actually a Xenomorph-filled nightmare.

Whoops.

At least we now know where the Xenomorphs came from as a preview this week answered a long-standing question about the origin of the aliens.

It seems that it was all android David’s (Michael Fassbender) fault. After his meddling in Prometheus, it looks like in the intervening years, he has perfected the creatures seen at the end of that movie into the familiar facehuggers we know.

Back in January, we were lucky enough to get a glimpse of the carnage in store with three scenes from Alien: Covenant and it looks like it’ll be very violent, very scary and very Alien.

Alien: Covenant bursts into UK cinemas on May 12 and US cinemas on May 19.

Source www.digitalspy.com

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

22-03-2017 om 00:14 geschreven door peter  

Film Arrival – reviewed by a UFO expert

 by Nick Pope

A scene from the sci-fi thriller Arrival

What does Arrival have to say about our readiness to deal with aliens? Nick Pope, who was responsible for investigating UFO sightings during his time with the Ministry of Defence in the 1990s, watched the new sci-fi blockbuster

Extraterrestrials arrive on Earth in giant spaceships, and the world holds its breath as we wait to see if they’ll be friendly, or whether this is the beginning of an alien invasion. So far, so Hollywood.

But what if we can’t figure out what they want – how would we communicate with them? This intriguing question forms the central premise of Arrival, and to help figure things out the military call in a linguist, Dr. Louise Banks, superbly played by Amy Adams. Her backstory involves the death of her daughter, but while this is a plotline that has the potential to take us into clichéd territory, it’s deftly handled and turns out to be relevant.

“I’ve often been asked if there’s a government contingency plan for dealing with extraterrestrial visitation. There isn’t.”

This is a movie that resonates with me personally. I worked for the Ministry of Defence for 21 years and for much of the early Nineties I was posted to a section where my duties included researching and investigating the UFO phenomenon.

I’ve often been asked if there’s a government contingency plan for dealing with extraterrestrial visitation. There isn’t, but director Denis Villeneuve’s film may have you thinking it might not be such a bad idea to draw one up.

Communication and the potential for miscommunication are central themes, as illustrated by a clever discussion about the potential confusion between a tool and a weapon. There’s enough technical material about the theory and structure of language to make us appreciate the problem, but not so much that the movie gets bogged down in over-technicality.

This is definitely a movie with a message. In parallel with the struggle to establish meaningful communication with the extraterrestrials, it’s clear that with alien craft hovering over a variety of different terrestrial powers and superpowers, perhaps the biggest danger comes from our failure to properly communicate with each other: astrophysicists with linguists, military with scientists, East with West. Amy

Adams as Dr Louise Banks in Arrival

Cleverly, the military are neither eulogised nor demonised in this film, and this entire aspect of the movie is focused on the character of the senior officer in charge of the US response, Colonel Weber.

Weber’s character is played with considerable sensitivity by Forest Whitaker – the steel is clearly there, but there’s a counter-intuitive quietness about him, that helps us steer clear of sci-fi clichés and get to the deeper and more thoughtful core.

• Arrival review: a refreshingly intelligent slice of sci-fi

In a similar vein, the spaceships and the aliens are well-designed, but never threaten to take over the movie.

Arrival is sci-fi at its best: visually stunning for sure, but with such a good story at its heart that it never needs to rely on special effects to bail it out.

It seems that hardly a week goes by now without some new exoplanet being discovered, coupled with speculation that it’s only a matter of time before we discover alien life.

Arrival made me look back fondly at my old MoD job, and did make me wonder whether it wouldn’t be prudent to draw up a plan for what to do if any of this ever happened for real.

Arrival is in cinemas now

{ https://inews.co.uk/ }

21-03-2017 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

How Urine Could Help Astronauts Grow Food in Space

If you want to be one of the first human beings to visit Mars, you better have a strong stomach. Scientists in Germany are testing ways in which urine and sweat could help astronauts grow food on the Red Planet.

Most food for missions to the International Space Station are brought as cargo from Earth. However, longer-duration space missions, such as those to Mars, will need a self-sustaining food supply, scientists have said. Jens Hauslage, a plant physiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), is researching how to grow food in space, including a test system that involves a tank of urine and a tomato plant, the BBCreported.

"The Earth is a closed biological system with plants producing oxygen and food; then you have the animals and the microbes to produce all the degradation processes in the soil," Hauslage told the BBC. "Without these systems, no sustainable long-term life-support system will be viable." [Sending Humans to Mars: 8 Steps to Red Planet Colonization]

Using both synthetic and human urine, Hauslage is conducting lab experiments to re-create this cycle in a way that could be useful for space fliers, the BBC reported. For example, the scientists filled columns of urine with pumice stones, the hole-covered stones that form when lava mixes with water. Within the pumice stones' holes are colonies of bacteria that feed on the urine, converting the ammonia in the urine into nitrites and nitrate salts (a fertilizer).

Most water on the International Space Station — including that from urine, sweat and wastewater from washing — is recycled aboard the orbiting lab. Hauslage's research at the DLR is investigating other applications for this water, which is already efficiently captured and recycled, for growing food in space.

The lab research will launch into space later this year on DLR's Eu:CROPIS (short for Euglena and Combined Regenerative Organic-food Production in Space) mission, a satellite containing two miniature greenhouses, Space.comreported. The satellite will simulate lunar gravity for the first six months, to test the potential of growing vegetables on the moon, and then will simulate Martian gravity.

While the satellite orbits, 16 cameras will document the onboard tomato seeds that will germinate and grow automatically under. Just as in the lab experiments, the satellite growing environment will use bacteria to feed on synthetic urine, producing fertilizer for the tomatoes as they grow, the BBC reported.

"Ultimately, we are simulating and testing greenhouses that could be assembled inside a lunar or Martian habitat to provide the crew with a local source of fresh food," Hauslage said in a statement about the mission last year.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

• 7 Everyday Things that Happen Strangely In Space
• In Photos: Finding Mars on Earth
• 5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions

{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

21-03-2017 om 23:13 geschreven door peter  

Could We Really Be Living in the Matrix? Here’s What Science Has to Say

 

freepik

21-03-2017 om 23:03 geschreven door peter  

DENNISVDW/ISTOCKPHOTO

Scientists have been listening to space for decades, hoping to pick up alien signals. Now some have proposed we try broadcasting a welcome call. Not everyone, though, thinks that is a good idea.

This is the first in a three-part series on the search for extraterrestrial life.

Ever been to a party and wondered why no one was talking to you? That’s kind of how SETI scientists feel — but on a cosmic level.

For more than half a century, astronomers have been listening to space. They use powerful radio telescopes, hoping to pick up signals from civilizations in distant space. They call this project the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. The trouble is, they’ve never heard a single ping, beep or “howdy.” The number of aliens who want to talk to us seems to be exactly zilch.

So how can we get the conversation started? Scientists disagree.

Some want to follow your mom’s advice: Introduce yourself nicely. They think Earthlings should start beaming signals out into the universe. Maybe it would improve our chances of hearing back from aliens if we let them know we’re friendly and want to chat.

This so-called “active SETI” would deliberately beam signals out in hopes of reaching space beings. Seth Shostak is an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. He supports the idea. He also concedes that it is “extraordinarily controversial.”

Indeed, some scientists question the wisdom of advertising our presence. After all, maybe the aliens aren’t exactly what you’d call warm and cuddly. Do we really want to shout out to whomever will listen: “Here we are! Come invade our planet!”? At the very least, these scientists argue, people should discuss the idea and decide as a species whether we should try to actively put ourselves onto the radar screen of more technologically advanced beings.

“There are some people who think it’s dangerous, because you don’t know who’s out there,” Shostak says. “Maybe the aliens are just into yoga and poetry. But it could be that one percent of them are aggressive Klingons.”

Shostak doesn’t share these fears. But some people worry that if the aliens are not peaceable travelers, their response to even a friendly “hello” could be downright hostile. Some worry that instead of a friendly chat, those aliens might, as he puts it, “launch an attack and obliterate the Earth.”

David Brin doesn’t appreciate the Klingon jokes. He’s a scientist and science fiction writer. He also is one of those people who argues that Earthlings should proceed with caution. It’s not a matter of being afraid of some alien invasion, he says. “I know how unlikely those scenarios may be.” Instead, he thinks of active SETI almost like a potential environmental hazard.

Broadcasting powerful signals would change the nature of our planet. It would make Earth more observable from space. Other projects must go through an environmental review, he says, and this should too. “What’s so hard about that to understand?”

As an astrobiologist, David Grinspoon studies the possibilities of life throughout the universe. He works for the Planetary Science Institute in Washington, D.C. Whatever Earthlings do, Grinspoon thinks it’s important for them to decide as a group.

“The more I think about it,” he explains, “the more it seems almost anti-human to say, ‘I’m just going to be the ambassador for the whole human race and start broadcasting to aliens on my own.’”

Alien life is likely, many scientists suspect

Inviting contact with space aliens might sound like the plot of one of Brin’s sci-fi novels. Yet plenty of researchers are taking this idea quite seriously. Even though we haven’t found extraterrestrials yet, many scientists believe that it’s quite likely that life exists on other worlds.

The discovery that there are actually billions of other planets in the universe led many scientists to believe that extraterrestrial life probably exists.

den-belitsky/iStockphoto

For one thing, science recently has shown that planets are much more common than astronomers had once thought. There are probably billions of them in the universe.

Biology also has turned up plenty of life on Earth that can survive and thrive in extreme environments — conditions that once were thought uninhabitable. These include places that are very hot, very cold, very dry or even bathed in acid.

“Everything we’ve learned about other planets and the diversity of life on Earth points us in the direction of believing there is abundant life elsewhere in the universe,” argues Grinspoon.

What’s more, even if life truly needed many of the same conditions found on our world, planets have been turning up that may host Earth-like temperatures, atmospheres — and perhaps even water. Such worlds exist in what’s known as “Goldilocks” zones. These are not too hot or too cold — but just right to sustain liquid water somewhere.

Whatever such alien life might be like — even if most of those organisms are just algae or worms — some would likely be intelligent, Grinspoon suspects. “It’s not just a fantasy that someone might pick up a signal if we broadcast it,” he says. “It’s my belief that there probably are creatures out there. And some of them probably have much more advanced technology than we do.”

Striking up a conversation

So how would people try to contact other worlds? Scientists have a few ideas. Like a message in a bottle, people could put something into a capsule and shoot it into space. Or scientists could flash lights at the aliens, training the beams of super-powerful lasers at nearby star systems. Think of it like Boy Scouts waving their flashlights at girls who might be camping on the other side of a lake. Researchers would send radio broadcasts out across the vast expanses of space.

Douglas Vakoch is president of METI International in San Francisco, Calif. (METI stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) In addition to other ideas for sending out signals, he recommends beaming radio messages at other stars with huge radio telescopes, like the Arecibo (Air-eh-SEE-boh) observatory in Puerto Rico.

Right now, Arecibo uses radar to probe our solar system. The telescope sends out a pulse of radio waves. How long it takes those signals to bounce off things, such as asteroids, tells us how far away those things are. Under Vakoch’s plan, the telescope would send out those same radar pulses. But he’d aim them at nearby star systems. If all went well, intelligent aliens would notice those radio tweets and answer our “beep” with a “boop.”

Some researchers want to use large radio telescopes like the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico to beam radio messages to the stars.

IsaacRuiz/iStockphoto

“Maybe some civilizations out there are doing what we’re doing,” Vakoch says. “They’re listening, but they’re not transmitting.” If they are, “we just wouldn’t discover them,” he notes. Active SETI, he explains, “is an attempt to let any civilization out there know not only that we’re here, but also that we’re interested in making contact.”

So why do we even want to talk to aliens? The search for extraterrestrial intelligence — or ETI — is part of humanity’s larger quest to explore the universe, and understand the nature of life, Vakoch says. “Perhaps more importantly, it holds a mirror up to ourselves.”

Throughout human history, any time civilizations have met, they have exchanged ideas, knowledge and technology. Meeting a more advanced culture could give our species a new perspective about life on Earth, says Vakoch. It might also show us new tools to solve Earthly problems, he adds.

Brin sees it a bit differently: “It’s worth bearing in mind that every time human civilizations that didn’t know about each other came into contact, there was pain.” Think about what happened to Native Americans or Africans when European explorers arrived on the scene, he says. Europeans coming to the “New World” brought along never-before-seen diseases. And their advanced technology, such as guns and metal, led to the destruction of the Native Americans’ way of life.

That’s one reason Brin thinks scientists and government leaders should not act too quickly. He advises that they think and talk it over before deciding what to do next. If we do contact aliens, studying our own history might give us ideas about ways to keep our interactions peaceful.

“Why did some contact situations [in history] go better than others?” Brin asks. “It turns out, there were some commonalities in the ones that were less painful. This should be something we study, not something we avoid.”

E.T. may already know about us

It’s probably too late to hide from advanced space civilizations, many scientists observe. Supporters of active SETI point out that FM radio and television signals both emit a high enough frequency that they could be picked up in space. Then there are all of those signals flying around between satellites, and those powerful radar pings from telescopes like Arecibo.

While people debate the issue, maybe the aliens are already watching our TV shows and listening to our music, says Philip Lubin. He’s a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “When someone says we shouldn’t transmit,” he notes, “you kind of have to say, ‘Okay, what planet do you live on?’ Because we’ve been transmitting for 100 years.”

Active SETI would take those transmissions to the next level. It would beam out more powerful signals, focusing them on the closest star systems. “The real question,” Lubin asks, “is should we transmit with the intention of being understood?”

Another way to send messages into space could be to flash bright lights, like lasers, at nearby star systems.

MarcelC/iStockphoto

Any civilization so advanced that it could visit Earth would already have the technology to pick up our signals, Vakoch agrees. So it would likely already know we’re here. In that case, he cautions: Maybe it’s in the best interest of the people of Earth to offer a peaceable greeting before those aliens pay us a visit. “There’s the idea that doing something is more dangerous than doing nothing,” Vakoch says. “But maybe it’s more dangerous not to say anything.”

He doesn’t want to wait to start active SETI. He does, however, agree that society should talk openly about the search for extraterrestrial life — and decide what to do if aliens respond. Most scientists have agreed to the “Protocols for an ETI Signal Detection.” This is a plan for what to do if aliens make contact with us. (Step one: Tell other scientists so they can confirm the discovery.) But Vakoch would like to see those policies debated and agreed to by the United Nations.

He concedes, though, “So far, we haven’t convinced [U.N. officials] that this should be at the top of their list.”

Grinspoon does think we should debate the issue before we broadcast messages into space. But it’s not because he’s afraid of ET. Discussing the welfare and future of our planet “is the kind of thing we humans need to get better at,” he says. In fact, the biggest threat to human civilization isn’t alien invasion, he argues. It’s things like climate change, war and pollution.

The only solution to those problems is to learn how to think and act not as different races and countries, but as one species, he says. “It’s actually more important to try to have a conversation with our fellow human beings than it is to have a conversation with aliens,” he says. “That is our survival challenge.”

Power Words

(for more about Power Words, click here)

aggressive     (n. aggressiveness) Quick to fight or argue, or forceful in making efforts to succeed or win.

algae     Single-celled organisms, once considered plants (they aren’t). As aquatic organisms, they grow in water. Like green plants, they depend on sunlight to make their food.

alien     A non-native organism. (in astronomy) Life on or from a distant world.

asteroid     A rocky object in orbit around the sun. Most orbit in a region that falls between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers refer to this region as the asteroid belt.

atmosphere     The envelope of gases surrounding Earth or another planet.

biology     The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

broadcast     To cast — or send out — something over a relatively large distance. A farmer may broadcast seeds by flinging them by hand over a large area. A loudspeaker may send sounds out over a great distance. An electronic transmitter may emit electromagnetic signals over the air to a distant radio, television or other receiving device. And a newscaster can broadcast details of events to listeners across a large area, even the world.

climate     The weather conditions prevailing in one area, in general, or over a long period.

climate change     Long-term, significant change in the climate of Earth. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.

cosmic     An adjective that refers to the cosmos — the universe and everything within it.

culture     The sum total of typical behaviors and social practices of a related group of people (such as a tribe or nation). Their culture includes their beliefs, values, and the symbols that they accept and/or use. Culture is passed on from generation to generation through learning. Once thought to be exclusive to humans, scientists have recognized signs of culture in several other animal species, such as dolphins and primates.

diversity     (in biology) A range of different life forms.

environment     The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or some device and the condition those things create for that organism or device. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature, humidity and placement of components in some electronics system or product.

E.T.      (n.) An abbreviation made famous by the 1982 Universal Pictures movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The main character was a charming space alien called E.T. His most famous line from the movie was “E.T. phone home.” E.T. has since come to be used as a colloquial term for any intelligent and potentially friendly space alien.

extraterrestrial     Anything of or from regions beyond Earth.

frequency     The number of times a specified periodic phenomenon occurs within a specified time interval. (In physics) The number of wavelengths that occurs over a particular interval of time.

intelligence     The ability to collect and apply knowledge and skills.

laser     A device that generates an intense beam of coherent light of a single color. Lasers are used in drilling and cutting, alignment and guidance, in data storage and in surgery.

Native Americans     Tribal peoples that settled North America. In the United States, they are also known as Indians. In Canada they tend to be referred to as First Nations.

observatory     (in astronomy) The building or structure (such as a satellite) that houses one or more telescopes.

organism     Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

physicist     A scientist who studies the nature and properties of matter and energy.

planet     A celestial object that orbits a star, is big enough for gravity to have squashed it into a roundish ball and has cleared other objects out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. To accomplish the third feat, the object must be big enough to have pulled neighboring objects into the planet itself or to have slung them around the planet and off into outer space. Astronomers of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created this three-part scientific definition of a planet in August 2006 to determine Pluto’s status. Based on that definition, IAU ruled that Pluto did not qualify. The solar system now includes eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

planetary science     The science of planets other than Earth.

protocol     An accepted or agreed-upon procedure for doing something.

radar     A system for calculating the position, distance or other important characteristic of a distant object. It works by sending out periodic radio waves that bounce off of the object and then measuring how long it takes that bounced signal to return. Radar can detect moving objects, like airplanes. It also can be used to map the shape of land — even land covered by ice.

radio     To send and receive radio waves; or the device that receives these transmissions.

radio waves     Waves in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum; they are a type that people now use for long-distance communication. Longer than the waves of visible light, radio waves are used to transmit radio and television signals; they are also used in radar.

satellite     A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.

scenario     An imagined situation of how events or conditions might play out.

science fiction     A field of literary or filmed stories that take place against a backdrop of fantasy, usually based on speculations about how science and engineering will direct developments in the distant future. The plots in many of these stories focus on space travel, exaggerated changes attributed to evolution or life in (or on) alien worlds.

SETI     An abbreviation for search for extraterrestrial intelligence, meaning life on other worlds.

society     An integrated group of people or animals that generally cooperate and support one another for the greater good of them all.

solar system     The eight major planets and their moons in orbit around our sun, together with smaller bodies in the form of dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids and comets.

species     A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.

star     The basic building block from which galaxies are made. Stars develop when gravity compacts clouds of gas. When they become dense enough to sustain nuclear-fusion reactions, stars will emit light and sometimes other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The sun is our closest star.

technology     The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry — or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

telescope     Usually a light-collecting instrument that makes distant objects appear nearer through the use of lenses or a combination of curved mirrors and lenses. Some, however, collect radio emissions (energy from a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) through a network of antennas.

terrestrial     Having to do with planet Earth, especially its land. Terra is Latin for Earth.

tool     An object that a person or other animal makes or obtains and then uses to carry out some purpose such as reaching food, defending itself or grooming.

transmit     (n. transmission) To send or pass along.

tweet     Message consisting of 140 or fewer characters that is available to people with an online Twitter account.

universe     The entire cosmos: All things that exist throughout space and time. It has been expanding since its formation during an event known as the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years).

Readability Score:

8.0

Further Reading

Protocols for an ETI signal detection. SETI Institute.

Questions for "Should we call out to space aliens?"

Word Find (click here)

21-03-2017 om 22:52 geschreven door peter  

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Europa's icy surface covers an ocean.

Sometime in the early 2030s, NASA hopes to attempt a landing on Jupiter’s moon Europa. A four-legged spacecraft would descend towards the icy surface, ready to hunt for signs of alien life in a buried ocean.

But Europa could be a treacherous place to land. Its surface may be unexpectedly hard — or so porous that the probe might sink into it. And giant crevasses threaten to swallow any visitor. With an extremely thin atmosphere, low gravity, and bone-chilling temperatures of just 100 kelvin (–176 °C), Europa poses formidable challenges to spacecraft engineers.

“We really just don’t know enough,” says Cynthia Phillips, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She and others are discussing ideas for a Europa lander this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

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Prompted by the US Congress's enthusiasm for visiting icy worlds, NASA is working on a pair of spacecraft concepts for exploring Europa, to launch in the 2020s. The first, an ongoing project named Clipper, would fly to the Jupiter system and loop past Europa multiple times, photographing it and creating a new high-resolution map of the world. The second spacecraft — not yet formally approved, and left out of President Donald Trump's recent budget proposal for NASA — would follow perhaps several years later and land on the moon.

Safe landing

One challenge is finding a suitable landing site. Europa’s surface is riven by crevasses, possibly with geyser-like plumes of water occasionally spurting up through the cracks. One of the top candidates for a landing site is an area called Thera Macula, where iceberg-like blocks jostle against one another in what is evocatively known as “chaos terrain”.

Arriving there could be like trying to touch down on a glacier in Greenland spawning ice chunks, says Catherine Walker, a planetary scientist at JPL. “I don’t know if you really want to land on that,” she says.

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The Thera Macula region is one site where NASA could one day send a Europa lander.

But scientists want to get as close as possible to areas where water could be squirting up from beneath Europa’s icy shell — possibly carrying extraterrestrial microbes. Chaos terrains like Thera Macula may lie above shallow liquid water¹, making them the best chance of finding direct connections between the buried ocean and the surface. “If we’re right about those areas, maybe things weren’t alive recently but the record of organisms could be more intact,” says Britney Schmidt, a planetary scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

If there are at least 100 cells of extraterrestrial organisms in every millilitre of Europan ice, the lander’s instruments could detect them, according to a NASA report released last month. That’s comparable to the number of microbes in the ice overlying Antarctica’s buried Lake Vostok.

“For the first time in the history of humanity, we have the tools and capability to go and do this great experiment of seeing whether or not biology works beyond Earth,” says Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at JPL. He co-chaired the new report, which is being discussed this week at the Texas meeting.

But so little is known about the surface properties of Europa that planning a lander is like planning the first Moon landings, Phillips says.

Cold effect

Temperatures are so cold that ice grains on Europa behave very differently from on Earth. Phillips and her colleagues, led by Jamie Molaro at JPL, have been studying how Europan ice grains might 'sinter' or merge together, becoming more dense. Theoretical modelling and lab experiments, intended to grow tiny chunks of Europa-like ice, show how the ice grains begin to stick together over time. That process will affect how the lander's footpads interact with the surface, Phillips says.

The lander has to survive intact enough to burrow 10 centimetres into the ice, collecting five samples in 20 days and then analyzing them for signs of life. Current mission designs call for a four-legged lander with a flat belly, able to land on rough ice with unknown properties. It would be the first touchdown in the outer Solar System since 2005, when the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe parachuted onto Saturn’s moon Titan.

“When Huygens was built, we had no idea if Titan had a liquid or a solid surface,” Phillips notes. “That was a crazy engineering challenge.”

Europa engineers are facing much the same thing today.

{ http://www.nature.com/ }

21-03-2017 om 22:33 geschreven door peter  

Triangle UFO sensation deepens: Two MORE bizarre craft caught on camera

A TRIANGLE UFO sensation which is sweeping the US has intensified after two more mystery craft were apparently caught on video camera.

21-03-2017 om 22:25 geschreven door peter