Lost in Space: How Mars' Atmosphere Evaporated Away

Mars may have once possessed an atmosphere about as thick as Earth's, but then lost most of it to space due to solar wind and ultraviolet rays, a new study found.

The new finding could shed light on the habitability of not just early Mars, but also distant worlds, researchers said.

Mars is currently a frigid desert world with extremely thin air. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface is on average only about one-hundredth to one-thousandth that on Earth at sea level. (In comparison, the atmospheric pressure at the highest point on Earth's surface, the top of Mount Everest, is about one-third that on Earth at sea level.) [The Search for Water on Mars in Pictures]

In the thin air of Mars, water easily boils. Still, previous research has unearthed ample evidence that Mars was once covered in water, with features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that could have formed only in the presence of water. This suggests that the Martian atmosphere was once much thicker than it is today, with seas that could have supported life billions of years ago.

To learn more about how the atmosphere of Mars has changed over time, scientists in the new study analyzed data from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. They focused on argon, a gas that almost never chemically reacts with other elements.

The researchers examined two different isotopes of argon: the lighter argon-36 and the heavier argon-38. Each isotope of an element has different numbers of neutrons; for instance, argon-36 possesses 18 neutrons in its nucleus, while argon-38 has 20.

Argon-36 is more plentiful than its heavier counterpart, argon-38, at higher altitudes. This makes the lighter isotope more susceptible to getting stripped from the atmosphere by solar ultraviolet rays and by high-energy winds composed of particles from the sun.

The concentrations of the two argon isotopes at different heights in the Martian atmosphere suggest that 66 percent of Mars' argon has disappeared from there since the Red Planet formed, the researchers said. "The escape of gas to space might have played a major role, if not the major role, in changing the climate of Mars over time," said study lead author Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Using this data on argon loss, the scientists then estimated the amount of other gases that Mars had lost the same way. Their findings suggested that the Martian atmosphere was thick with carbon dioxide, with the atmospheric pressure of this gas on Mars about the same as the atmospheric pressure of air on Earth at sea level, the study said.

Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas," meaning it traps heat and can help warm planets. The loss of this carbon dioxide from the Red Planet may "tell us why the surface of Mars could have gone from habitable in ancient times to not being able to support life today," Jakosky told Space.com.

In addition, "we've identified a set of processes that might tell us more in general about the habitability of planets around other stars," he said.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on Space.com. 

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• How Did Mars Lose Its Atmosphere? MAVEN Aims To Find Out | Video
• Photos: NASA's MAVEN Mission to Mars
• Boron Found On Mars For First Time By Curiosity Rover | Video
• NASA's MAVEN Mission to Mars: 10 Surprising Facts

{ http://www.space.com/ }

31-03-2017 om 00:43 geschreven door peter  

Europe's ExoMars Rover Will Land in 1 of These 2 Spots on Mars in 2021

Mission managers have narrowed the landing-site candidates for the ExoMars 2020 rover down to two finalists, European Space Agency (ESA) officials announced today (March 28).

The life-hunting rover and its accompanying stationary platform will touch down at either Oxia Planum or Mawrth Vallis, two locations in Mars' northern hemisphere that harbor evidence of long-ago liquid water activity.

Neither site has been visited by a robotic explorer to date, though Mawrth Vallis was once a candidate for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. (NASA ended up selecting the huge Gale Crater, inside which Curiosity landed in August 2012). [Photos: Europe's ExoMars Missions to Mars in Pictures]

"Both candidate sites would explore a period of ancient Martian history that hasn't been studied by previous missions," Jorge Vago, ESA's ExoMars rover project scientist, said in a statement.

A third site, called Aram Dorsum, had been under consideration as well. But Oxia Planum was selected for further study back in 2015, and Mawrth Vallis emerged as the second finalist after a recent two-day meeting attended by ExoMars team members and other Mars experts from academia and industry, ESA officials said.

"While all three sites under discussion would give us excellent opportunities to look for signatures of ancient biomarkers and gain new insights into the planet's wetter past, we can only carry two sites forward for further detailed analysis," Vago said.

Mission team members will continue studying the two finalist sites, assessing them from both a scientific and engineering perspective. This latter work will attempt to ensure that the ExoMars 2020 rover comes down in a safe, flat spot free of dangerous boulders. (Mission managers aim to guide the rover down inside a landing ellipse 75 miles long by 12 miles wide, or 120 by 19 kilometers.)  

The final decision will likely be made about a year before the rover's planned 2020 launch, ESA officials said.

The rover and landing platform make up the second part of the two-phase ExoMars program, a project led by ESA with help from Roscosmos, Russia's federal space agency. The first part, which launched in March 2016, consisted of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli, a landing demonstrator designed to prove out technologies required for the rover's 2021 touchdown.

TGO made it to orbit safely on Oct. 19, but Schiaparelli crashed that same day.

The ExoMars 2020 rover will study the habitability of Mars and search for signs of past or present life. Part of its work will involve drilling up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) beneath the surface to collect samples shielded from the harsh Martian radiation environment.

Instruments aboard the stationary landing platform, for their part, "will provide context imaging at the landing site, and long-term climate monitoring and atmospheric investigations," ESA officials wrote in the statement.

TGO is currently working its way toward its final science orbit. Later this year, the orbiter should begin searching the Martian atmosphere for methane and other gases that could be signs of Red Planet life. The spacecraft will also serve as a communications link for the ExoMars rover and its handlers back on Earth.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)
• Deeper Drill Destined For Red Planet - ExoMars 2018 | Video
• ExoMars Going Forward - Continuing Mission and Lander Crash Explained | Video

{ http://www.space.com/ }

31-03-2017 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Father-of-two spots a fleet of incredible multi-coloured UFO-shaped clouds hovering in the skies above Swansea

• Miles Davis, 49, was driving when he spotted the UFO-shaped clouds in the skies above Morriston in Swansea 
• Lenticular clouds are more or less isolated clouds, which form in the lowest level of the Earth's atmosphere 
• On account of their shapes, lenticular clouds are often mistakenly identified as Unidentified Flying Objects

By Amie Gordon For Mailonline

A father-of-two chanced upon an unusual meteorological sighting - as he spotted a fleet of UFO-shaped clouds in the sky. 

Miles Davis was driving through the town centre of Morriston, Swansea, when he spotted the spaceship-shaped formations.

The 49-year-old stopped his car and grabbed a camera to capture the natural spectacle - which he says looked 'like something out of a 50s' sci-fi film'.

Miles Davis was driving through the town centre of Morriston, Swansea, when he spotted the spaceship-shaped formations

Mr Davis, a full time carer for his wife, said: 'We had had interesting clouds all day after blanket grey for days on end. 

'But these particular clouds didn't pop up until later on in the afternoon.

'I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 

'I was driving through town when I spotted them and I stopped as soon as it was safe so I could jump out my car and get some pictures.

'They do look very UFO like even if you don't have much of an imagination and the lighting was giving them this technicolour hue.

'They look like something out of a 1950s sc-fi B-movie with a limited budget, like a bad painting of UFOs. It was incredible.

'Trying to get my phone camera to focus on something thousands of miles away was tough but I'm really glad I got the photos. 

'Everyone I've shown them to has really liked them and my wife thinks they're great.

'I wasn't keeping an eye on the local news that day so I'm not aware of any claims but I wouldn't be surprised at all if some people thought they'd experienced a UFO sighting.

'One guy I spoke to said he saw the same clouds over the valleys which is 25 - 30 miles away. 

'They stuck around for a good few hours before they broke up or moved on.'

The lenticular clouds - lens-shaped clouds that form in the troposphere - are renowned for being confused for UFOs throughout history. 

The 49-year-old stopped his car and grabbed a camera to capture the natural spectacle - which he says looked 'like something out of a 50s' sci-fi film'

The clouds are a rare spectacle and a treat for Mr Davis, who is a keen cloud spotter.

He said: 'Some days I will take up to ten photos a day. As soon as the weather is nice, I can just sit and watch the clouds go by, changing from one moment to the next.

'I can lose myself for a good few minutes, getting a stiff neck looking up and people pass by wondering why that idiot is looking up.'

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html }

30-03-2017 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

Inventing tools for detecting life elsewhere

 by Whitney Clavin

Recently, astronomers announced the discovery that a star called TRAPPIST-1 is orbited by seven Earth-size planets. Three of the planets reside in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water is most likely to exist on the surface of a rocky planet. Other potentially habitable worlds have also been discovered in recent years, leaving many people wondering: How do we find out if these planets actually host life?

At Caltech, in the Exoplanet Technology Laboratory, or ET Lab, of Associate Professor of Astronomy Dimitri Mawet, researchers have been busy developing a new strategy for scanning exoplanets for biosignatures—signs of life such as oxygen molecules and methane. These chemicals—which don't naturally stick around for long because they bind with other chemicals—are abundant on Earth largely thanks to the living creatures that expel them. Finding both of these chemicals around another planet would be a strong indicator of the presence of life.

In two new papers to be published in the Astrophysical Journal and the Astronomical Journal, Mawet's team demonstrates how this new technique, called high-dispersion coronagraphy, could be used to look for extraterrestrial biosignatures with the planned Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which, when completed by the late 2020s, will be the world's largest optical telescope.

Using theoretical and laboratory models, the researchers show that this technique could detect biosignatures on Earth-like planets around M-dwarf stars, which are smaller and cooler than our sun and the most common type of star in the galaxy. The strategy could also be used on stars like our own sun, using future space telescopes such as NASA's proposed Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) and Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR).

"We've shown this technique works in theory and in the lab, so our next step is to show it works on the sky," says Ji Wang, one of the lead authors on the two new papers and a postdoctoral scholar in the Mawet lab. The team will test the instrumentation on the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii this year or next.

The new technique involves three main components: a coronagraph, a set of optical fibers, and a high-resolution spectrometer. Coronagraphs are devices used in telescopes to block or remove starlight so that planets can be imaged. Stars outshine their planets by a few thousand to a few billion times, making the planets difficult to see. Many different types of coronagraphs are in development; for example, Mawet's group recently installed and took initial images with its new vortex coronagraph on the Keck Observatory.

Once an image of a planet has been obtained, the next step is to study the planet's atmosphere using a spectrometer, an instrument that breaks apart the planet's light to reveal "fingerprints" of chemicals, such as oxygen and methane. Most coronagraphs work in conjunction with low-resolution spectrometers. Mawet's new technique incorporates a high-resolution spectrometer, which has several advantages.

One main advantage is in helping to further sift out the unwanted starlight. With high-resolution spectrometers, the spectral features of a planet are more detailed, making it easier to distinguish and separate the planet's light from the lurking starlight.

What this means is that, in Mawet's method, the coronagraph does not have to be as good at sifting out starlight as was thought necessary to characterize Earth-like worlds.

"This new technique doesn't require the coronagraph to work as hard, and that's important because we can use current technologies that are already available," says Mawet, who is also a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managed by Caltech for NASA. "With a high-resolution spectrometer, we can improve the sensitivity of our system by a factor of 100 to 1,000 over current ground-based methods."

Another advantage of using high-resolution spectrometers lies in the richness of the data. In addition to providing more detail about the molecular constituents of a planet's atmosphere, these instruments should be able to reveal a planet's rotation rate and provide rough maps of surface features and weather patterns. "It's a long shot, but we might even have the ability to look for continents on candidate Earth-like planets," says Mawet.

In the team's design, the coronagraph is connected to the high-resolution spectrometer using a set of optical fibers. Surprisingly, laboratory experiments revealed that the fibers also filter out starlight.

"This was completely serendipitous," says Garreth Ruane, co-author on the two new papers and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Mawet's group. "It's icing on the cake."

Next, the researchers will demonstrate their technique at the Keck Observatory. Although the instrumentation cannot yet study potential Earth-like planets—that will require the larger Thirty Meter Telescope—the system should be able to reveal new details about the atmospheres of larger gas exoplanets, including exotic varieties that are nothing like those in our own solar system.

"This new innovation of combining the coronagraph with a high-res spectrometer gives us a clear pathway to ultimately search for life beyond Earth."

 Explore further: Keck Observatory planet imager delivers first science

More information: Observing Exoplanets with High Dispersion Coronagraphy. I. The scientific potential of current and next-generation large ground and space telescopes. arxiv.org/abs/1703.00582

Observing Exoplanets with High-Dispersion Coronagraphy. II. Demonstration of an Active Single-Mode Fiber Injection Unit. arxiv.org/abs/1703.00583 

{ https://phys.org/ }

30-03-2017 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Chilean government releases video of disturbing UFO sighting

By JAKE ELLISON, SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM

• 

This is a screen grab from a YouTube videopublished by “ufosontherecord” taken on Nov. 11, 2014, by a Chilean Navy helicopter (Airbus Cougar AS-532) equipped with an infrared FLIR high-definition camera,

... more

A video from a helicopter flown by the Chilean navy showing an unidentified flying object releasing something into the atmosphere has been confirmed by an agency in the Chilean government to be official and unexplained so far.

"The incident remains open as we cannot be absolutely certain of its nature, contrary to other incidents whose nature has been proved," said Jose Patricio Lay Lagos, acting director of CEFAA, which is an agency within Chile's DGAC (an agency similar to the FAA but part of the Chilean Air Force).

According to the official report, translated here by Google:

On November 11, 2014, a helicopter from the Chilean Navy (Airbus Cougar AS-532), equipped with an infrared FLIR high-definition camera, was patrolling in the coastal sector between the port of San Antonio and Quinteros a At 16.48 UTC, when the camera operator detected an unknown object, apparently flying at a constant speed similar to that of the helicopter, and moving forward.

The sighting was visually confirmed by the two officers who made up the crew (pilot and camera operator) and lasted more than 10 minutes.

Officers questioned Air Traffic Control whose radar failed to detect the object.

They also received no response from the unknown traffic when trying to interrogate it in the frequency prepared for these cases.

The DGAC's radar control system failed to capture the object but confirmed, in turn, the absence of authorized traffic in the vicinity of the helicopter.

The video shot by the helicopter crew was released on Jan. 5, as reported in a lengthy exploration of the encounter in the Huffington Post. The videos below were published with that Huffington Post story, which Lay said was "the real version," and embedded from YouTube.

His agency, Lay said, is not seeing UFOs everywhere or jumping to wild conclusions when it runs into one.

"For your information," he wrote in an email exchange, "the Committee's scientific group, all doctorates in diverse disciplines, from Astronomy to Physics, they are all Skeptics. That is of great help for us to keep our feet firmly on the ground and not get carried away by ufologists at large."

Here are three videos clips of the main points of interest in the longer video above.

And,

"The incident did not cause any particular reaction," Lay said. "In Chile the phenomenon is regarded in a natural way, without fuzz or secrecy." He said the pilots didn't make any statements about the sighting. "They just handed over the video and described the situation as rather unusual," he said.

The journalist who broke the story on Huffington Post, Leslie Kean, wrote that several explanations of the UFO as an aircraft discharging water or other liquid waste have been shot down by the Chilean agency.

The agency wrote:

On two occasions, the object seems to throw a trail of some element that could not be specified.

Some analysts have suggested the hypothesis that it is a medium-sized line aircraft and that the stelae of the detachable element may be the reserve water inside the apparatus, thrown by the crew. However, meteorology asserts that neither the altitude at which the object moved, nor the ambient temperature of that moment, allowed such a wake of condensation.

The object disappeared lost in the clouds.

Kean added in her story "Groundbreaking UFO Video Just Released By Chilean Navy":

Data from the various reports eliminate other conventional explanations. Meteorologists determined that no weather balloons were in the sky at that time, and noted that a balloon would not move horizontally along with the plane because the wind was blowing from the west towards the shore. Comparing the footage to similar IR satellite imagery with known temperature values, they stated that the object's temperature must have been higher than 122 degrees F (50 C). The object was not a drone; all drones require registration with the DGAC and whenever flown, the DGAC is informed, just like it is with aircraft. Also, radar would register drones. CEFAA staff went up the chain of command to a Navy Admiral who informed them that there were no joint Naval exercises underway with the US or any other country. The Admiral confirmed that this could not have been a US drone, or any type of espionage or secret vehicle from a foreign country.

Whatever the craft was, it's fairly disturbing to wonder just what it was releasing into the atmosphere. Of course, there's no end of conspiracies about contrails ...

But hey, happy skywatching!

{ http://www.seattlepi.com/ }

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

30-03-2017 om 23:09 geschreven door peter  

Are mysterious 'aliens' on their way to Hertfordshire after being heard in Nottingham and the USA?

Have you spotted a UFO over Hertfordshire-

Hertfordshire residents should be on the look out for mystery 'alien' noises which have been heard in the UK.

READ MORE: UFOs in Hertfordshire - we reveal the calls made to police regarding aliens

The 24-year-old marketing worker sent the video to the Nottingham Post.

He told them: "I was amazed I actually managed to get it recorded.

"It was going on for about five or 10 minutes before I started recording and then it carried on for about another 30 minutes.

"It was coming from the direction of the Victoria Centre but from the sky. I was at home with my partner and we could both hear it - it was really weird."

The eerie sounds have been heard at all different times and locations for almost a decade.

The first video of the noise was in posted in 2008 when a user recorded the night sky in Belarus.

That same year, another anonymous user shared the 'ear-deafening' sounds that they insisted 'were not a hoax,' from a quiet neighbourhood believed to be in the U.S.

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

30-03-2017 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Rectangle-shaped UFO described over California town

A California witness at Eureka stepped outside after hearing a loud, jet-like sound, and watched a rectangular-shaped object with odd lighting configuration crossing the sky, according to testimony in Case 81992 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

Witness illustration.

(Credit: MUFON)

The witness moved outside at 10:35 p.m. on February 9, 2017, after hearing jet sounds moving overhead.

“I heard a very loud jet, similar to a common commercial jet sound, except it was much louder,” the witness stated.“I went out the back door onto the deck to take a look. At first I couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. I turned around and scanned the sky behind me toward the east. I then saw what at first I took for a really huge jet, like maybe a military cargo jet, until I realized it couldn’t be, as it looked at first like it had two sets of wings stacked one on top of the other like a bi-plane.”

The witness then noticed the object had a pulsing red light in the center and two big, orange lights that seemed too far behind it for it to be a plane.

“At that point, I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ My wife heard me and came out. I pointed at the object. She tells me to hurry and grab my binoculars, so I ran inside and grabbed them, which took about 10 seconds. I came out and the object was further away than I thought it should be, as if it was speeding up.”

The object appeared to be rectangle-shaped.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The witness the looked through his binoculars at the object.

“I saw a very large, square, or possibly a home plate-shaped object. I perceived it to be fairly flat. There were several orange lights on it configured in a sort of arrow shape, and it had a red pulsing light in the center. The orange lights on it were illuminating the surface of the object, which was a light color. My thought was that the light configuration looked like a swept wing bomber jet from the 40s, and that it might be trying to look like a plane, except with the binoculars, I could clearly see there was surface area to it, where there shouldn’t be if it was a plane. It was clearly rectangular.”

The object did not look like anything the witness could identify.

“The lights that would’ve been the tail of the plane were too far back, and too wide for a plane as well. Those lights were actually on the rear corners of the object. It travelled west to east in a straight line. As it got further away, it seemed to accelerate due to how fast it disappeared into the distance, as compared to the standard passenger jet flying by every so often.”

The object seemed to be flat. Pictured: Eureka, California.

(Credit: Google)

The witness has seen similar objects in the past.

“This is the second time I’ve seen this type of object in the last year and-a-half or so. This time it was a lot higher, different light configuration, and traveling much faster, but the flight path was the same. It is rare to see large jets flying west to east in this area. I checked the website flightaware.com and there were no flights in the area except for a local commuter coming into our little airport. That plane was still quite a ways away still.”

Eureka is the principal city and county seat of Humboldt County in the Redwood Empire region of California, population 27,191. MUFON California Assistant State Director Devlin Rugne 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/ }

30-03-2017 om 22:55 geschreven door peter  

Life Outside Our Solar System Might Exist on Exomoons

As some scientists search for habitable planets outside our solar system, other researchers are tackling a similar question for the moons of these planets. So-called exomoons have yet to be found outside our solar system, and a detection could be a decade away — or more.

But scientists, writing in a new research paper, theorize a Mars-sized exomoon of a gas giant planet and ask whether or not liquid water could be found on its surface.

In our own solar system, the closest analog is Jupiter's Ganymede, the biggest moon in the solar system and about five-sixth the size of Mars.

Do you believe alien life exists elsewhere in the universe?

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NASA confirmed in 2015 the presence of a liquid ocean on Ganymede after performing Hubble Space Telescope observations of the moon's auroras, which appear to rock back and forth less than expected with Jupiter's magnetic field. The space agency said the attenuation is likely due to a salty ocean under Ganymede's surface.

As for this theoretical Mars-sized exomoon, the picture is murky. The scientists considered energy sources such as stellar radiation (which changes as a function of distance to the star), the stellar reflected light from a Jupiter-sized planet on the moon, the planet's own thermal emission on the moon, and the tidal heating inside the moon that is generated due to the changing gravitational pull of the planet. (This tidal heating would be most pronounced if the moon had an eccentric orbit, like the volcanic moon Io has around Jupiter.)

RELATED: 'Habitable' Exoplanets Might Not Be Very Earth-Like After All

It's know that tidal heating rates decrease if a moon is molten inside, because lava creates an inherent negative feedback mechanism where the heating sort of switches off, and the moon cools down inside. This is called the "tidal thermostat effect," co-author of the paper Rene Heller said in an email. Heller is an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.

"We investigate, for the first time, the interplay of all the possible exomoon heat sources as a function of various distances from the host star," he added. "Actually, we even consider two possible types of host stars: a sun-like star, and a red dwarf star (an M dwarf)."

For a sun-like star, the authors found that any moon around a gas giant beyond three astronomical units, or three Earth-sun distances, would have a high enough energy flux to stop the tidal thermostat effect from happening. But if the moon is volatile enough, it could have global volcanism — just like what we see on Io.

Heller described this situation as "dangerous" for organisms.

"They might have lots of liquid surface water, but their surfaces could at the same time be blotched with devastating volcanoes," he wrote. "Nevertheless, we illustrate that they could be habitable given the right amount of tidal heating, and we show at which distances to their planets these moons would need to be."

M-dwarfs are a common target for exoplanet searches because they are smaller and dimmer, making it easier to see planets passing across their surfaces, or the effect of planets tugging on the star itself. But for exomoons, it's even less clear how habitable they would be in such a system. "Moons cannot be stable in the very inner regions of the stellar habitable zone," Heller said.

The best examples for tidally heated bodies in our own solar system are all moons: Jupiter's Io and Europa, as well as Saturn's Enceladus. While Europa and Enceladus are strongly suspected to have oceans underneath an icy surface, Heller pointed out his research is more focused on habitability on the surface of the moon. A better analog, he said, might be Saturn's moon Titan — but with a much warmer surface. Titan has a thick orange atmosphere, as well as liquid hydrocarbon lakes.

"Due to observational selection effects, which will prefer big moons around low-mass planets, I think the first exomoon will be unlike anything we know from the solar system," Heller said.

RELATED: What Cassini's Daring Ring-Dive Around Saturn Could Tell Us About Uranus

"It could be a Mars-like thing around an Earth-like planet, or an Earth around a Neptune, at a distance to their star that could be similar to Mercury's distance from the Sun (sufficiently close so that we have enough transits to find it). It'll probably be something that will be incredible at first glance, like a planet around a pulsar or a hot Jupiter. I'm really curious to know what this object will be like."

While there are several new planet-hunting telescopes joining astronomy in the next decade, Heller said they are not optimized for exomoons. Searching for exomoons is financially risky and the payoff highly uncertain, which means it is likely to remain a low priority for the astronomical community.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a multi-purpose telescope which launches in 2018, is expected to look at only a few exoplanets — so its chances of finding an exomoon are low, Heller said. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which also launches next year, will only observe very short-period transiting planets. "These planets will be so close to their stars that any moon around the planet would be immediately flung out of the system by the stellar gravitational perturbations," Heller said.

Better other chances could come with the European Extremely Large Telescope, which is currently under construction, or CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite), another European space telescope.

"I know that some people in the CHEOPS Science Team are actively compiling strategies to go and search for moons around transiting planets in wider orbits," Heller said. But he added the "ultimate weapon" would likely be PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), which will launch around 2024. It will conduct dedicated planet searches like the Kepler space telescope, but around more bright stars.

WATCH: We Found New Planets. No, You Can't Live There

Originally published on Seeker.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
• 5 Bold Claims of Alien Life
• 13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens

{http://www.space.com/ }

30-03-2017 om 22:41 geschreven door peter  

Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman

“I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phoney, fake. A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people …”

Donald Trump’s assault on “terrible, dishonest” journalists (“the lowest form of life”) has become one of the hallmarks of his fledgling administration. But as many have noted, this posturing echoes developments closer to home. It was Michael Gove, of course, who claimed during the Brexit campaign that “people in this country have had enough of experts”.

Scott Pruitt, the new chief of the US Environmental Protection Agency, certainly seems comfortable dismissing scientific consensus: “I believe that measuring, with precision, human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

From a certain perspective, this is knockabout political theatre. And a little scepticism is prudent, for sure. Blithely accepting whatever we’re told is clearly unwise. Information can be unreliable; cover-ups do occur. But if we dismiss everything we hear in the media, if we assume that scientists and scholars are untrustworthy, we leave ourselves vulnerable to manipulation, misinformation, and rumour. This makes us wonder: are we entering a golden age of the conspiracy theory?

Not that this type of cognitive error is new, of course. The idea that individuals or groups have conspired to commit some crime and then cover it up reaches back centuries — witness, for example, the belief that Jews were poisoning wells and killing Christians or that Roman Catholics were secretly plotting to undermine the Protestant English state. However, if we’re now living in a “post-truth” society, with traditionally trusted sources of information routinely undermined and informal communication possible like never before via the Internet, one of the dubious fruits of this febrile climate may be a growth in the power and reach of conspiracy theories.

What makes such ideas so credible for some people? Why, in the face of all available evidence and despite apparent public consensus to the contrary, would a person believe that the moon landings were faked, that the Aids virus was created by the US government, or that the British security services murdered Princess Diana to prevent a marriage to the Muslim Dodi Al-Fayed? Are some groups more likely to endorse conspiracy theories than others? And, if so, what do we know about the characteristics of these people?

As we discovered when we went looking for answers to these questions, specific scientific studies of conspiracy beliefs are few and far between. And so we began by seeing what we could discover from general epidemiological surveys, mining their findings in search of associations between particular social and psychological factors and a belief in conspiracy theories. With Richard Bentall of the University of Liverpool we turned to the rich dataset of one of the largest surveys of psychological health ever carried out: the US National Comorbidity Survey-Replication. The NCS-R is a few years old now: it was carried out in 2001-03, predating the current skeptical turn. But it was large, nationally representative, and scientifically robust. The results of our research are published today.

The NCS-R covers a lot of ground, but one of the statements participants were asked to consider was this: “I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy behind many things in the world.” More than a quarter of those who responded to the item felt that it was true – a statistic that provides food for thought in itself. And that was fifteen years ago.

These people had several things in common. They were, for example, more likely to be male and unmarried. But what really struck us were the above-average levels of social disadvantage. Here was a group with lower levels of education and income. They were more likely to be from an ethnic minority. They were more likely to carry a weapon. Religious attendance may help mitigate some of the effects of disadvantage; this group was far less likely to go to services regularly.

It wasn’t just demographic characteristics that the conspiracy theorists shared. They tended to report lower levels of physical and psychological wellbeing; and to see themselves as socially inferior, both in comparison to their local community and to the nation as a whole. They were more likely to have seriously considered suicide. Their social networks were weaker (they often felt, for example, that they couldn’t rely on friends and family in times of trouble) and they found it harder to maintain secure relationships.

Childhood relationships with parents had frequently been challenging. Often these individuals hadn’t lived with both biological parents; they’d spent extended periods away from home; or had experienced violence at the hands of their parents.

Finally, the conspiracy theorists were more likely to meet the criteria for all types of psychological disorder, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, and alcohol and drug problems.

What we see then is a clear association between a belief in conspiracy theories and a wide range of negative life circumstances and personal distress. So far an association is all it is. Do these types of problems make the people affected especially susceptible to conspiracy theories or is it the other way around? That research hasn’t been done. But our view is that the low self-esteem, smaller social networks, and marginalisation we see in so many of the US sample may play a key role at an early age, providing fertile ground for a distrust of authority: feeling that society has rejected them, they learn to reject the beliefs that society endorses.

Experiences like this in childhood may have a lasting effect on the way we make sense of the world. When an event occurs that doesn’t fit our expectations or that seems threatening, we feel anxious and disturbed. We want certainty and reassurance. Rather than thinking it through, we’re liable to jump to conclusions, to look for the answers that conform to our preconceptions rather than calmly weighing up the evidence.

The upshot of that process may be a conspiracy theory. In the short term, it’s a belief that brings benefits — in place of anxiety and uncertainty, we are soothed by what feels like knowledge. Our bruised self-esteem is boosted by the sense that we are one of the small minority who really know what’s going on. And thanks to the Internet we’re able to connect with these like-minded souls: suddenly we can feel part of a community.

Psychological models of conspiracy theories need testing, for sure. Indeed, we don’t know enough about conspiracy theories full stop. But given the current socio-political climate has this kind of research ever been more necessary?

Daniel and Jason can be found on Twitter as @ProfDFreeman and @JasonFreeman100.

{ https://www.theguardian.com/international }

30-03-2017 om 22:27 geschreven door peter  

AMAZING! MYSTERIOUS STATUE DEPICTING AN ALIEN UNEARTHED IN MEXICO!

One of most fascinating ancient civilizations can be found in the American continent and holds some of the most mysterious legends and myths.

The Mayan civilization had built vast cities and also erected monolithic structures during ancient times. They have left many artifacts, and relics behind that is desired among archaeologists and history enthusiasts.

But some of these treasures left behind by such a notorious civilization has a great deal of mystery behind them. 

Recently an ancient statue with the appearance of an Alien humanoid holding a human head was discovered in Mexico by public workers in the Maxtaloyan community. There's a snake surrounding the figure with the top head looking like the face of a Grey alien or some reptilian entity. 

Perhaps the statue represents a God figure that they worshiped at the time, probably of extraterrestrial origin, and the human head could be a symbol of them being above us as our creators.

Watch the following video to know more!

Originally published by:

http://www.ancient-code.com/experts-in-mexico-unearth-ancient-maya-statue-depicting-an-alien-figure/

RELATED ARTICLES

• Ancient Coins Depicting Aliens And UFOs Are The Proof Alien Lived Among Us
• 10,000 Year Old Rock Paintings Depicting Extraterrestrials & UFOs 

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

30-03-2017 om 21:29 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE: World is 'about to be told ALIENS EXIST and are HERE on EARTH'

GLOBAL governments are preparing the world for an imminent announcement that intelligent aliens exist and are already here on Earth, it has astonishingly been alleged.

{ http://www.express.co.uk/ }

30-03-2017 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

Aliens CREATED GOD… and now they want him back - shock claim of how religion began

RELIGIONS on Earth were created by aliens who visited Earth thousands of years ago, it has shockingly been claimed.

30-03-2017 om 20:53 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/ }

30-03-2017 om 20:28 geschreven door peter  

UFO Crash at Aztec – The Roswell Connection | 69th Anniversary

As a kid growing up in Aztec, NM in the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s, I had heard many rumors and talk about the UFO crash north of Aztec. The other kids at school would occasionally discuss the event and when and where it occurred. I also remember going outside at recess and looking at some of the mass UFO formations in the area about 1950.  For the old time Aztec folks, I attended Mrs. Martin’s 2nd grade class in the old 4 room, red brick, 2 story schoolhouse. There were big enclosed fire escape slides from the second floor. It was located on the site where the “new” high school was constructed in the mid-1950’s.

By Virgil J. Riggs The UFO Chronicles © 2004-2017

I had heard my Dad and other roughnecks in the oil “patch” discuss the crash and the “little guys inside!” I don’t think my dad seriously believed the event occurred, as he was not witness to the happenings. But the subject of the crash was the topic of many conversations at The Gas Cap Café, The Aztec Café; Bill’s Place Bar, and The Highway Lounge. I went to all of these places with my dad. While we were looked down upon as “oilfield trash,” the so-called “good” people of Aztec had no problem cashing my Dad’s oilfield paychecks.

I went into the US Air Force in March of 1960. Was stationed at Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C. and later at Kunsan AB, Korea. After the isolated tour of duty in Korea, I was allowed my choice of duty assignments. I opted for a consecutive overseas assignment, and I asked for Japan, England, France, or anyplace in Europe. In 1964, I was assigned to the U. S. munitions base at RAF Welford, Newbury, Berkshire, England.

Duty in England was good. I bought a little English car, a Morris Minor. My sister in Farmington, NM mailed me a NM State University window sticker, which I put in the window of the little car.

I was at work at the base motor pool one day when a fellow from the vehicle maintenance shop walked across the street and asked if I was from New Mexico, as he had seen the sticker on my car. We introduced ourselves. His family name was XXXX, with the nickname of “Sam.” We compared past duty stations, and realized that we had both been stationed in Korea about the same time! I was at Kunsan AB, and Sam had been at Osan, AB in 1963/1964, before we were both reassigned to RAF Welford in England.

I told Sam XXXX that I was from the 4-Corners area of New Mexico and he asked me if I ever lived in Aztec? I told Sam XXXX that I had indeed lived in Aztec and that I knew the area and town fairly well. Sam said that he had been in Aztec briefly in 1948. I assumed that he had been in the oilfield. Sam suggested that we meet at the Airman’s Club after dinner and talk. I agreed.

Our conversation was pretty much about Aztec. I asked Sam XXXX why he was so interested in Aztec, NM?

Sam asked me what all I knew about the UFO crash at Aztec in 1948? I told him that I had heard about it for most of my life, but that I had no direct knowledge about it. Sam XXXX then asked me if I thought we were alone in the universe? I replied that I thought there had to be intelligent life out there somewhere. Sam told me that he knew for a fact there was life from elsewhere, as he had seen some actual “little bodies” and that he had been involved with the UFO crash retrieval at Aztec, NM in March of 1948! He had been stationed at Roswell, NM and was flown with a group of USAF personnel to Durango, CO by C-47 (DC-3) aircraft, then driven on down to the crash site.

Sam told me that he had seen the bodies at the Aztec crash site, as they were loaded onto a truck. He did not tell me if the bodies were in body bags, caskets, or preserved in any way, but he thought they were placed in the cargo truck for protection from the elements and out of sight. He thought the bodies were eventually moved to Ohio by road transportation and that the craft was moved by road transportation to the new secure airport at Las Alamos, NM. Sam also related that a light, spring, snowstorm had occurred while the detachment was at the crash site before the craft was dismantled and removed. Sam was amazed that snow and ice accumulated on the military vehicles, but there was no accumulation on the craft’s surface.

I asked Sam XXXX about food and quarters for the troops while at Aztec. Sam said they were on the crash site 24/7 and never left. They were provided food rations and sleeping bags. Sleep in shifts was in, under, or in the cargo bed of some of the military vehicles. No tents or cots or hot chow was available. Latrine facilities were in the brush. Sam XXXX’ main duty was to provide perimeter security of the crash site, to keep unauthorized persons away. Sam XXXX was at the very bottom in the chain of command, and was a very young trooper at the time.

We carried on this conversation for the next three years in which Sam’s story was never changed, enhanced, or embellished. Sam XXXX warned me not to talk about the event at Aztec, as talking about the UFO crash had caused his US Air Force career to suffer badly. He was the only A/2C (E-3) with nearly 20 years of service that I had ever met. I was 22 years old, and Sam was in his late 30’s. Sam XXXX always looked over his shoulder, and always ended our conversations that perhaps “he had talked too much already.”

Sam XXXX and I both were advanced to A/1C (E-4) about the same time at RAF Welford. Sam and I both got married about the same time in 1965. We both moved into the married quarters on the base at RAF Welford, into trailer houses next to each other for nearly three years. Sam is a good friend, and I certainly hope that he can be located. I hope that he survived Vietnam!

I went back to the US for separation from the US Air Force and entry into the US Navy Seabees, in July of 1968. Repeated tours of Vietnam followed. Sam XXXX went directly to an air base in Vietnam, I think, about the same time. Have not seen or heard about Sam XXXX since. As I am now 63 years of age, Sam XXXX will be about 83 years of age or more.

I heard Stanton Friedman on a radio program one evening in 2003 talking about Scott Ramsey and his research into the 1948 UFO crash at Aztec, NM. Mr. Friedman asked for anyone with any knowledge of the event to e-mail him. I sent an e-mail and it was forwarded to Scott Ramsey. 

{ http://www.theufochronicles.com/ }

30-03-2017 om 20:15 geschreven door peter  

NASA/PHOTO BY SSPL/GETTY IMAGES

Only 12 individuals from Earth have been fortunate enough to actually walk on the surface of another world ― specifically, our moon.

The historic manned lunar landing in July 1969 gave us Apollo 11’s first moonwalkers, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, followed four months later by Apollo 12’s Pete Conrad and Alan Bean leaving their footsteps on Earth’s natural satellite.

Lunar module pilot Bean, now 85, became the fourth man to set foot on the moon, and he continued with the space program as a spacecraft commander on the 59-day Skylab Mission II, in 1973. He was later named backup commander for the 1975 joint American-Russian Apollo-Soyuz test flight.

When Bean retired from NASA in 1981, he became an excellent artist who paints the experiences of fellow astronaut-moonwalkers.

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Bean’s spacefaring experiences have given him plenty of time to think about the question of whether earthlings are alone in the universe, and specifically, whether aliens have discovered us.

“I do not believe that anyone from outer space has ever visited the Earth,” Bean told the Australian news site news.com.au. “One of the reasons I don’t believe they have been here is that civilizations that are more advanced are more altruistic and friendly ― like Earth, which is better than it used to be ― so they would have landed and said, ‘We come in peace and we know from our studies you have cancer that kills people, we solved that problem 50 years ago, here’s the gadget we put on a person’s chest that will cure it, we will show you how to make it.’

“Just like someday, say, 1,000 years from now, when we can go to another star and see a planet, that’s what we would do, because we will know how to cure cancer, cure birth defects, so we would teach them.”

Bean doesn’t think that we’re alone in the vast expanse of planets.

“There’s so many billions of stars, and these stars have planets around them, so there must be statistically many planets around many stars that have formed life,” he said.

But this raises the question of how Bean could assume that, if aliens have landed here, they would automatically offer to help with our problems. We can’t simply expect an extraterrestrial species to think the way we do, or to understand our thoughts and motivations. And why would he presume that when we are eventually able to travel to other planets, we would go out of our way to help aliens we may find with their problems?

Bean has obviously never heard of the United Federation of Planets prime directive, which forbids Starfleet explorers from interfering with any ET cultures.

Seriously, let’s be fair. Bean was a very accomplished astronaut and is certainly entitled to his opinion. And so is another, well-known astronaut.

In 2009, Apollo 14 moonwalker Edgar Mitchell spoke at a National Press Club news conference about UFOs and the possibility that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials.

”I don’t have firsthand experience with the ET effort, except the fact that I know there is no doubt we are being visited and I’m suggesting it is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence, and I call upon our government to open up,” Mitchell told the media.

A year earlier, Mitchell, who died in 2016, appeared on a British radio show, where he proclaimed he was “privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real, although it’s been covered up by our governments for the last 60 years or so. There’s more nonsense out there about this than there is real knowledge. I have been deeply involved in certain committees and research programs with very credible scientists and intelligence people that do know the real inside story, and I am not hesitant to talk about it.”

Mitchell was an Apollo astronaut whose opinion on whether aliens have been to Earth was the complete opposite of Bean’s. He showed the importance of keeping an open mind about what’s real and what isn’t. 

Just because an accomplished astronaut makes a claim about a controversial issue like UFOs or aliens doesn’t make it the truth.

{ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ }

30-03-2017 om 20:06 geschreven door peter  

30-03-2017 om 19:49 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Shadows Seen From Space Station, Possible UFO Docking At ISS, March 2017, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 2017
Location of sighting: International Space Station

Now this shadow really looks like a very large craft is moving behind the space station, blocking out the sun. I have looked at the video over and over again and just can't find any explanation for it other than something large was on the other side of the ISS and casted its shadow onto Earths atmosphere upper layer. Very cool, and if its a UFO...very freaking big. Awesome catch by Streetcap1 of Youtube. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states: 

This is the full real-time actual footage captured on the 19th March, 2017. I still do not have a clue as to what this is. No alterations to actual footage were made in this or the previous video. Streetcap1.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

30-03-2017 om 19:31 geschreven door peter  

Phoenix Forgotten | Official Trailer

On behalf of Cinelou Films, we’re excited to share the official trailer for PHOENIX FORGOTTEN. Don’t miss this thriller based on shocking untold true events of mysterious lights appearing above Phoenix, Arizona on March 13th, 1997. From the producers of The Martian & 300 and the creative team behind The Maze Runner, this sci-fi adventure will be in Theaters April 21st!

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

30-03-2017 om 19:22 geschreven door peter  

Agency in the Chilean Government Confirmed the Authenticity Of A Disturbing UFO Video

An agency in the Chilean government confirmed the video from a Chilean Navy helicopter showing a UFO releasing something into the atmosphere.

Jose Patricio Lay Lagos, CEFAA acting director, said that the incident has been open since they cannot be certain of its nature, unlike the other events where nature has been proved. CEFAA is an agency within Chile’s DGAC, can be compared to the FAA, but part of the Chilean Air Force.

According to the official report Airbus Cougar AS-532, a helicopter from the Chilean Navy mounted with an infrared FLIR HD camera was patrolling between the port of San Antonio and Quinteros at 4:48 pm UTC on November 11, 2014. The camera operator noticed a UFO moving forward at a constant speed, the same to that of the helicopter.

The pilot and the camera operator visually confirmed the sighting, which reportedly lasted more than ten minutes.

The two officers questioned the Air Traffic Control, but their radar failed to detect the mysterious flying object. They also tried interrogating it in the frequency designed for these cases, but they received no response from the unknown traffic.

The radar control system of DGAC also failed to capture the object.

The CEFAA acting director confirmed the video that made the rounds online in the first week of January to be the real version.

Lay explained that their scientific group, composed of people with doctorates in diverse disciplines, from Physics to Astronomy, are all skeptics and would not jump to wild conclusions.

Lay said that the two officers did not make any statements about the incident. They just instead handed over the video and described the content of it as rather unusual.

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

30-03-2017 om 19:17 geschreven door peter