MAJESTIC-12: A FORBIDDEN STORY ABOUT THE SECRET U.S. UFO COMMITTEE

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02-05-2017 om 21:31 geschreven door peter  

Alien Russia ( KGB VIDEO )

{ http://7tales.net / }

02-05-2017 om 21:24 geschreven door peter  

Siberian Taiga UFO (VIDEO)

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02-05-2017 om 21:20 geschreven door peter  

RIDLEY SCOTT : ' ALIENS EXIST AND THEY'RE A LOT SMARTER THAN US. DON'T CHALLENGE THEM! '

02-05-2017 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

Stof-vrije ruimte tussen planeet Saturnus en zijn ringen - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

De Cassini zweeft boven het noordelijke halfrond van Saturn voordat hij een van zijn "duiken" tussen Saturnus en zijn ringen maakt. 

© photo news.

De ruimte tussen de planeet Saturnus en zijn kenmerkende ringen lijkt "relatief stof-vrij" te zijn, zo heeft het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartbureau NASA gisteren meegedeeld.

{ http://www.hln.be/ }

02-05-2017 om 20:55 geschreven door peter  

NA ITALIË IS BEROEMDE GRONINGSE UFO NU BOVEN INDIA GEZIEN...

Het begint er langzamerhand op te lijken dat een bijzonder soort UFO onze planeet bezoekt. 

Nadat deze UFO voor het eerst in Groningen werd waargenomen, volgen er nu meer plaatsen, waaronder Italië en India. 

Het begon in de zomer van 2015 toen deze UFO voor het eerst werd waargenomen in Groningen waarvan het beeld vervolgens de wereld rondging. 

Daarna werd dezelfde UFO onlangs gezien in Italië en nu komt er bij Mufon een melding binnen van een groepje kampeerders die een bijzondere foto hebben gemaakt. 

Ze geven er geen details bij, behalve dat de foto is gemaakt in het Dang District in Gujarat, India. 

De waarneming staat bij Mufon geregistreerd onder nummer 83441. Wat we niet weten, is of deze waarneming ook met het blote oog te zien was, waardoor het in theorie een soort lensflare zou kunnen zijn. 

Het is een bijzondere foto:

Rechts bovenin de foto zie je iets wat in eerste instantie een vallende ster lijkt, maar niets is minder waar. 

Want, wanneer het beeld iets wordt uitvergroot, komt er een bekende vorm tevoorschijn.

Een vorm die we eerder tegenkwamen in Groningen en Italië. 

Ter vergelijking, hier een deel uit een eerder artikel en dan zie je dat we hier duidelijk te maken hebben met hetzelfde soort object. 

Een object dat voor zover ons bekend voor Groningen niet eerder op onze aarde is waargenomen. Mocht er iemand zijn die denkt dat dit niet zo is en dat er eerder dit soort waarnemingen zijn geweest, dan horen we dat graag. 

UFO liefhebbers zullen zich het voorval van enkele jaren geleden nog wel kunnen herinneren, maar voor hen die het niet meer weten, hierbij, uit een eerder artikel, wat er in Groningen gebeurde:

Perton is een Groninger die nogal nuchter blijft onder dit soort dingen en denkt dat de vreemde foto te maken heeft met lichtval of iets dergelijks, wat best zou kunnen.

Het gaat om deze foto die wij al eerder publiceerden:

Echter, ook internationaal is deze foto niet onopgemerkt gebleven en zijn er mensen die zich afvragen of we hier de eerste echte afbeelding hebben van een portaal naar een andere dimensie. 

Het was een stormachtige dag in ons land en op het moment dat Perton de foto nam, spreekt hij over een flits: 

Opeens flitste er iets. Ik dacht eerst mijn toestel, maar de flitskap stond niet omhoog. Ook zat er geen druppel op mijn lens. Ik besloot dat het een bliksem moest zijn geweest. Maar thuis zie ik wat vreemds op een van de foto’s die ik aan het eind van het bomenlaantje maakte. 

We zijn nu twee jaar later en iemand maakte op 3 april 2017 een vergelijkbare foto, maar nu in het noorden van Italië. 

De getuige die de opname maakte, heeft het voorval gemeld bij Mufon en zegt dat een vriend op dezelfde plek ook een waarneming had in 2008. 

Hoe dan ook, dit is net zoals in Groningen, een bijzondere opname die weinig of geen overeenkomsten vertoond met een natuurlijk fenomeen.

Maar, net zoals het KNMI een verklaring heeft voor vliegtuigstrepen, zo hadden ze dat ook voor het verschijnsel in Groningen. 

Perton is geen sterrenkundige, dus heeft hij voor de zekerheid Theo Jurriëns (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) ook nog ingeschakeld. 'Hij belde met het KNMI en die zei dat het een drone was. Maar dat vind ik vreemd. Want wie laat nou zo'n kostbare drone tegen onweer aanvliegen?' 

En ongetwijfeld zal het object uit Italië worden geclassificeerd als een nieuw soort drone wolk door onze weerexperts.

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

02-05-2017 om 20:44 geschreven door peter  

ESA’S JUICE SPACECRAFT COULD DETECT WATER PLUMES ERUPTING ON EUROPA

ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission to the Jovian system could easily confirm the presence of water on Europa, a new study finds. According to the research, it is feasible to detect water molecules (H₂O) and water ions (H₂O+) from the moon’s plumes during a flyby mission.

The suspected water vapor plumes erupting on Jupiter’s moon Europa are still baffling scientists in the search for habitable environments in our solar system.

It is assumed that Europa harbors a vast subsurface liquid ocean and these plumes could be an indicator of water erupting from the moon’s interior. Hence, they offer a great opportunity to gather samples originating from under the thick layer of ice, where many mysteries of extraterrestrial life may await to be unraveled.

These composite images show a suspected plume of material erupting two years apart from the same location on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. The images bolster evidence that the plumes are a real phenomenon, flaring up intermittently in the same region on the satellite.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and W. Sparks (STScI)

Recent observations of Europa with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) show a plume rising about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. Researchers estimate these plumes could rise even 125 miles (200 kilometers) before raining material back down onto the icy surface.

According to a new study conducted by a team of European scientists, these plumes should be thoroughly investigated by a future flyby mission like JUICE in order to confirm the presence of water.

In a recent paper, the researchers studied the feasibility of in-situ measurements of Europa’s plumes, by modeling the trajectories of neutral and ionized plume particles and the respective measurements by neutral and ion mass spectrometers.

“Instead of using ‘photons’ as Hubble does, we will use in-situ particle data,” Yoshifumi Futaana, Co-Investigator of the JUICE/PEP instrument at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics told Astrowatch.net. “This means that we will validate the presence of water independently using the in-situ data. JUICE is the mission that can do this as it will be equipped with the Particle Environment Package (PEP) instrument suitable for this measurement.”

PEP is a plasma package with six sensors to characterize the plasma environment. It will measure density and fluxes of positive and negative ions, exospheric neutral gas, thermal plasma, and energetic neutral atoms.

The package will include the Jovian plasma Dynamics and Composition (JDC) sensor, measuring water ions, and the Neutral gas and Ions Mass spectrometer (NIM) sensor, measuring water molecules.

Futaana and his colleagues are convinced that the particles of the low mass flux plumes (1 kilogram per second) can be detected by PEP with large margins. Furthermore, the results of their study suggest the plume signal is recognizable as a temporal signal enhancement of one order of magnitude in the H₂O count rate during six minutes. This means the detection of water plumes during a flyby is indeed feasible.

Jupiter’s moon Europa and its icy surface.

Photo Credit: NASA

“Our paper shows that the plumes can be detected from the JUICE flybys with particle instruments that detect [water] particles in the vicinity of the spacecraft,” Hans Huybrighs of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, one of the co-authors of the paper, told SpaceFlight Insider. “This is the case even if the plume is significantly smaller than what has been observed. With this, we mean that the plumes in our work only release one kilogram of water per second, while the very first plume observation indicated 7,000 kilograms of water is released per second.”

The authors of the study underline that even in the case of relatively very small water plumes, the water atoms dissociating from the molecules, as well as their ions, make significant signals. So far, Hubble observations of the plumes detected only atomic oxygen. Given the amount of oxygen and other considerations it was concluded these oxygen atoms must arise from dissociated water molecules.

“This would also explain the observed spatial features, which were interpreted as a plume,” Peter Wurz of the University of Bern in Switzerland told Astrowatch.net. “Even though it is all very plausible, and is not contested in the scientific community, it is an interpretation. PEP on JUICE will be able to confirm this interpretation and provide a lot of additional data to understand the nature of the plume, its composition, and its relation to the subsurface of Europa’s ice shell, which is mostly water ice.”

The researchers have also shown the geometry of the plume source does not influence the density distributions, therefore it will not affect their detectability when using PEP. They said that it makes no difference whether it is a point source or a several-hundred-mile-long crack.

All in all, JUICE, equipped with the PEP instrument, has the potential to take a peek at Europa’s subsurface ocean without drilling into the moon’s icy shell. This ocean could hold many clues to mysteries of life beyond Earth.

“What is so interesting about this ocean is that it has probably been there for a long time,” Huybrighs said, “and that there could be sources of energy for life in it, like geothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean, making Europa’s ocean a very interesting environment that is possibly habitable for some form of life.”

The JUICE mission is planned to be launched in 2022. The spacecraft will perform two flybys of Europa in early 2031. During these flybys, JUICE is expected to approach Europa up to a height of about 250 miles (400 kilometers).

Video courtesy of Airbus Defence and Space

TAGGED: ESA EUROPA JUICE JUPITER THE RANGE

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

02-05-2017 om 20:37 geschreven door peter  

Ridley Scott Thinks Aliens Are Real and They'll Probably Kill Us

Beth Elderkin

{ http://io9.gizmodo.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 20:28 geschreven door peter  

TRIANGLE UFO SENSATION: Craft built by US government using alien technology says expert

EXCLUSIVE: A SPATE of bizarre triangle UFO sightings could be top secret craft built by the US government using technology recovered from crashed flying saucers, an expert has claimed.

02-05-2017 om 20:09 geschreven door peter  

Why President Trump has been INUNDATED with calls about UFOs

A NEW hotline demanded by President Donald Trump has been besieged with calls about suspected UFO sightings.

02-05-2017 om 19:54 geschreven door peter  

UFO Caught Near Space Station, Classic Saucer On NASA camera! April 29, 2017, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 29, 2017
Location of sighting: Space Station
Source: MUFON #83465

This is a classic disk style craft that an anonymous person reported this week. Caught on the live NASA space station cam, UFOs are seen every few hours, and even every few minutes during space walks. NASA has become so paranoid about it that they often cut to blue screen or maintenance screen in an attempt to hide these UFOs, but there are just too many. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states:

On april 29th at around 21:06 g.m.t for around 10-15 seconds during a live stream of the international space station I observed a faint light which got lighter before appearing as two whitish lights before materialising into what I can only descibe as a "flying saucer" the event (which I was hoping would happen) only lasted 10-15 secs which i managed to screenshot the photos on my iphone I know what this wasnt and would hope somebody else has this footage on video.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 19:33 geschreven door peter  

Jellyfish UFO Over Angeles City, Philippines On May 1, 2017, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: May 1, 2017
Location of sighting: Angeles City, Philippines
Source: MUFON #83456

This jellyfish style UFO was seen over the Philippines this week. The UFO has long tendrils which are probably landing legs, but may be arms. The Philippines is a diverse and old cultural area where aliens may find it unique compared to the rest of the world. The person reported three photos, but only two were semi focused. 
Extraordinary evidence that aliens are observing the Philippines. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states: 

First I will state that being a U.S. Marine, I'm a trained observer. I had already been well awake by 3am and had coffee and was on the computer, when approximately 5:40am I heard my dogs carrying on outside and went to investigate. At first I thought they had barked at nothing, when I suddenly caught sight of the object, I watched it only for 30 seconds or so before realizing that it wasn't a plane, helicopter, or hot air balloon and ran into the house and grabbed my cell phone as it was the closest camera available. The object first appeared to be about 700 ft high, but as the object had moved into the background of my house it appeared to be gaining altitude and I snapped three photos as it passed beyond the peak of the roof over my bedroom, moving in a South or South East direction towards Manila. The object made no sound at all, and it had no visable lights of any kind, it seemed to be moving about the same speed as a small plane at first and was completely out of sight in about 3 minutes or less, apparently gaining speed. When I first looked at the pics, I though I missed it, as it looked like a speck of dust or dirt, I then downloaded them to my desktop computer and cropped the photos, and then I could see better detail. I was a bit stunned when saw it, as I had never seen any craft like this before, and it clearly had a some type of leg structure for landing. Three pics were taken, and numbered in the order taken, the best being the first pic. 

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 19:28 geschreven door peter  

Aliens may have existed on Earth. Here's why they left

by Harriet Marsden in discover 

Picture: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Do aliens exist? Are humans the only sentient species in the universe? Is there extra-terrestrial life? Are we alone?

It's one of humanity's most all-consuming questions, fascinating scientists, governments and pop culture alike.

But now, one US space scientist is claiming that advanced life forms may be a reality - but that they disappeared long ago.

Professor Jason Wright, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at Pennsylvania State University, published a paper in arXiv entitled 'Prior Indigenous Technological Species'.

He claims that ancient 'technological species' may have lived on Earth billions of years before the human race.

Well, either Earth, or a "pre-greenhouse Venus," or "a wet Mars". He's not 100 per cent sure.

However, Wright claims:

Given that it is known to host complex life, the most obvious origin for a prior species of any sort is Earth.

He pulls no punches when he explains that:

Present-day Venus would seem to be a terrible candidate for a technological species, with a surface temperature over 700K, although when it comes to alien life we should keep an open mind about even this.

Wright believes that the ancient species has disappeared, but that in the past we could have found found traces of them underground, called "technosignatures".

However, he claims that most of the physical evidence would now be lost.

On Venus, for example, the global greenhouse arrival may have resulted in a resurfacing of the planet, while on Earth the movement of tectonic plates and subsequent erosion could have erased any lingering traces.

Nevertheless, he writes, it might still be possible to recognise these technosignatures even if the physical evidence is all but destroyed.

He explains:

Structures buried beneath surfaces might survive and be discoverable as long as they do not suffer a collision so severe that their artificial nature is obliterated.

Merely destroying them would render them nonfunctional, but they might still be recognisably technological.

We might conjecture that settlements or bases on these objects would have been built beneath the surface for a variety of reasons, and so still be discoverable today.

Wright proposes that we might find traces on more undisturbed surfaces such as the Moon and Mars.

Of course, the idea that humans are not the only sentient species is nothing new.

Indeed, he writes, "the idea of indigenous Martian civilisations pervades science fiction to the point of cliche".

However, the proposal that the alien species is already extinct is comparatively unexplored in the scientific field.

But why does Wright think they disappeared?

Wright says that "the most obvious answer" is a cataclysm, "whether a natural event such as an extinction-level asteroid impact, or self-inflicted, such as a global climate catastrophe".

However, in the case of a species which had settled in the Solar System, Wright explains:

...Such an event would only permanently extinguish the species if there were many cataclysms across the Solar System closely spaced in time (a swarm of comets, or interplanetary warfare perhaps), or if the settlements were not completely self-sufficient.

Alternatively, an unexpected nearby gamma ray burst or supernova might produce a Solar-System-wide cataclysm.

Even without a cataclysm, the species may have simply died out, or become permanently non-technological at some point, or [...] abandoned the Solar System permanently for some reason.

HT Daily Mail

More: UFO sightings are at an all-time high

More: Aliens might be trying to tell us something

{ https://www.indy100.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

Life could jump between TRAPPIST-1's Earth-like planets in decades

 Michael Irving 

Back in February, NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1. With three of those planets orbiting within the star's Habitable Zone (HZ), the system is one of our best bets for finding life beyond Earth, and new research from the University of Chicago suggests that if it is there, life could jump between the tightly-packed planets in a matter of decades.

At a distance of 40 light-years away, the TRAPPIST-1 system's planets aren't our closest possible homes-away-from-home – that honor goes to Proxima b, a galactic stone's throw away at just four light-years. But what makes TRAPPIST-1 such an attractive prospect for extraterrestrial life is the fact that all seven planets are in extremely close proximity to each other, so if life arises on one planet, it could spread to the others relatively quickly.

"Frequent material exchange between adjacent planets in the tightly packed TRAPPIST-1 system appears likely," says Sebastiaan Krijt, lead author of the study. "If any of those materials contained life, it's possible they could inoculate another planet with life."

While Earth is the only planet we know for sure is home to life, it didn't necessarily start here. The seeds of life, in the form of microscopic organisms, may have been brought to our planet by asteroids or comets – a hypothesis known as panspermia. On the other hand there's lithopanspermia, the idea that chunks of rock carrying tiny organisms could be thrown into space by these cosmic collisions, spreading that life to other planets.

But for this to work, a few factors need to be considered. The pieces of rock ejected into space would need to be large enough to protect the organisms from cosmic radiation, and even then, the journey to their new home would need to be relatively short, to keep the space travellers alive. And the speed at which the rocks are flung into space also needs to be just right: too fast and the lifeforms wouldn't survive the trip, too slow and the rocks would fall back to the planet's surface.

Running a series of simulations on these events, the researchers set out to determine how likely the scenario could be in the TRAPPIST system. The team found that rocks large enough to protect any hitchhiking organisms during space travel and re-entry would also tend to leave their home planet at a speed just above the minimum required to break free. Given how close together the system's planets are, the researchers concluded that this process could take place pretty quickly, seeding life from one world to another in as little as 10 years.

"Given that tightly packed planetary systems are being detected more frequently, this research will make us rethink what we expect to find in terms of habitable planets and the transfer of life — not only in the TRAPPIST-1 system, but elsewhere," says Fred Ciesla, co-author of the study. "We should be thinking in terms of systems of planets as a whole, and how they interact, rather than in terms of individual planets."

The research was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Source: University of Chicago

02-05-2017 om 01:31 geschreven door peter  

The Monthly Pattern of UFOs

By Cheryl Costa

{ https://www.syracusenewtimes.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 01:26 geschreven door peter  

British witness photographs sphere UFOs following jet

A British witness at London reported watching and photographing multiple objects that appeared to be following an aircraft, according to testimony in Case 82822 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

Witness image.

(Credit: MUFON)

The witness was in the Fulham section of London walking to a café when the incident occurred.

“I looked up and saw a star-like object about seven aircraft widths to the left of the passenger aircraft,” the witness stated.“Then noticed several lights to the right of the aircraft. As I looked up: about 7, 12 and 15 aircraft widths to the right. They followed the aircraft and continued to follow it, keeping the same relative distance, as it banked gently toward a more northerly path.”

Cropped and enlarged witness image.

(Credit: MUFON)

The witness first thought the objects were balloons.

“At first I thought they were balloons reflecting bright sunlight. I’ve seen some rarely. But these lights remained at a constant speed, had a smooth direction and all turned relative to each other, and at same distance from each other. Also, they seemed to emit a constant light and not reflect it, whereas balloons change intensity as they tilt relative to me/observer and the sun. The aircraft wasn’t landing at a London airport, those are only a few thousand feet above observer-point and the aircraft had a vapor trail and I should imagine it was over 15-20,000 feet above me. Aircraft and light were obscured by city housing then.”

Cropped and enlarged witness image.

(Credit: MUFON)

MUFON Great Britain is investigating. 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/ }

02-05-2017 om 01:17 geschreven door peter  

WHAT’S THAT STRANGE GLOWING MOLD? ASTRONAUTS WILL SOON BE ABLE TO SEQUENCE UNKNOWN SPACE ORGANISMS

by Matt Williams

Seeking to understand more about space-born microbes, NASA has initiated a program known as Genes in Space-3 – a collaborative effort that will prepare, sequence and identify unknown organisms, entirely from space. For those who might be thinking that this sounds a lot like the film Life – where astronauts revive an alien organism on the International Space Station and everyone dies! – rest assured, this is not the setup for some horror movie.

In truth, it represents a game-changing development that builds on recent accomplishments, where DNA was first synthesized by NASA astronaut Kate Rubin aboard the International Space Station in 2016. Looking ahead, the Genes in Space-3 program will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to collect samples of microbes and study them in-house, rather than having to send them back to Earth for analysis.

The previous experiments performed by Rubin – which were part of the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation – sought to demonstrate that DNA sequencing is feasible in an orbiting spacecraft. The Genes in Space-3 seeks to build on that by establishing a DNA sample-preparation process that would allow ISS crews to identify microbes, monitor crew health, and assist in the search for DNA-based life elsewhere in the Solar System.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins became the first person to sequence DNA in space and sequenced more than a billion bases during her time aboard the ISS.

Credits: NASA

As Sarah Wallace – a NASA microbiologist and the project’s Principal Investigator (PI) at the Johnson Space Center – said in a recent press release:

“We have had contamination in parts of the station where fungi was seen growing or biomaterial has been pulled out of a clogged waterline, but we have no idea what it is until the sample gets back down to the lab. On the ISS, we can regularly resupply disinfectants, but as we move beyond low-Earth orbit where the ability for resupply is less frequent, knowing what to disinfect or not becomes very important.”

Developed in partnership by NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Boeing (and sponsored by the ISS National Lab), this project brings together two previously spaceflight-tested molecular biology tools. First, there is miniPCR, a device which copies targeted pieces of DNA in a process known as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to create thousands of copies.

This device was developed as part of the student-designed Genes in Space competition, and was successfully tested aboard the ISS during the Genes in Space-1 experiment. Running from September to March of 2016, this experiment sought to test if the alterations to DNA and the weakening of the immune system (both of which happen during spaceflight) are in fact linked.

Student Anna-Sophia Boguraev, winner of the Genes in Space competition, is pictured with the miniPCR device.

Credits: NASA

This test will be followed-up this summer with Genes in Space-2 experiment. Running from April to September, this experiment will measure how spaceflight affects telomeres – the protective caps on our chromosomes that are associated with cardiovascular disease and cancers.

The MinION, meanwhile, is a handheld device developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Capable of analyzing DNA and RNA sequences, this technology allows for rapid analysis that is also portable and scalable. It has already been used here on Earth, and was successfully tested aboard the ISS as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation earlier this year.

Combined with some additional enzymes to demonstrate DNA amplification, the Genes in Space-3 experiment will allow astronauts to bring the lab to the microorganisms, rather than the reverse. This will consist of crew members collecting samples from within the space station and then culturing them aboard the orbiting laboratory. The samples will then be prepared for sequencing using the miniPCR and sequenced and identified using the MinION.

As Sarah Stahl, a microbiologist and project scientist, explained, this will allow crews to combat the spread of infectious diseases and bacteria. “The ISS is very clean,” she said. “We find a lot of human-associated microorganisms – a lot of common bacteria such as Staphylococcus and Bacillus and different types of familiar fungi like Aspergillus and Penicillium.”

In addition to being able to diagnose illnesses and infections in real-time, the experiment will allow for new and exciting research aboard the ISS. This could include identifying DNA-based life on other planets, the samples of which would be returned to the ISS via probe. In addition, if and hen microbes are found floating around in space, they could be returned to the ISS for swift analysis.

Another benefit of the program will come from Earth-based scientists being able to access the experiments going on aboard the ISS in real-time. And scientists here on Earth will also benefit from the tools being employed, which will allow for cheap and effective ways to diagnose viruses, especially in parts of the world where access to a laboratory is not possible.

Once more, the development of systems and tools for use in space – an environment that is not typically conducive to Earth-based technologies – is offering up applications that go far beyond space travel. And in the coming years, ISS-based genetic research could help in the ongoing search for extra-terrestrial life, as well as provide new insights into theories like panspermia (i.e. the cosmos being seeded with life by comets, asteroids and planetoids).

Be sure to enjoy this video titled “Cosmic Carpool”, courtesy of NASA’s Johnson Space Center:

Further Reading: NASA

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 01:08 geschreven door peter  

Cheryl Eddy

Earth can be shitty. Sometimes, being whisked away by a passing starship sounds like a pretty good idea. However—it completely depends on who’s behind the controls. Hanging with the Arrival heptapods would be pretty chill. Being shanghaied by any of the following kidnap-happy aliens, however, would not.

1) The Predator in Predators

Military badass Adrien Brody is alive at the end of the movie... but for how long? Image: YouTube screen grab

In the earlier movies, Predators came to Earth to conduct their hunting rituals (and/or brawl with the Alien aliens). But in 2010's Predators, we finally learned what it would be like to be spirited away to a far-flung planet, having been deemed vicious enough to become designated prey for Predators-in-training. No surprise, it’s an almost immediate death sentence... unless you are a crafty scavenger played by Laurence Fishburne. Even if you manage to survive, you’re still stuck on a Predator playground that’s constantly being restocked by killer creatures cherry-picked from across the universe, with very, very little chance of escape.

2) The Klowns in Killer Klowns from Outer Space

In this campy horror comedy, aliens who look like Pennywise’s bratty younger brothers beam to Earth in a flying circus tent, wielding guns that spray cotton-candy cocoons and other ghoulish weaponry. Though the Klowns don’t necessarily seem interested in snatching any humans to their homeworld, imagine what a teeth-rottingly terrible journey that would be, full of freaky balloon animals and “pranks” that are actually designed to decapitate you. Developing a debilitating case of coulrophobia would be the least of your worries.

3) The Greys in Communion

In this nightmarish tale, a man teeters on the edge of sanity after becoming convinced that he’s being targeted by alien visitors. Whitley Strieber, who penned the film’s best-selling source material, claimed the tale was based on his own real-life experiences. Christopher Walken’s typically passionate performance as Strieber suggests just how traumatizing spending time with the Greys would be—especially with the side effect of everyone around you assuming you’re a complete wack job.

4) The Sumerian-Speaking Aliens in The Fourth Kind

The Fourth King is mostly remembered for its gimmick of producing fake “archival footage” to make its “dramatizations” (starring Milla Jovovich and others) feel more authentic. Still, its aliens—who make late-night bedside visits to communicate threats in ancient languages, and are fond of snatching children as well as snapping the necks of their adult targets and/or framing them for hideous crimes—are a nasty bunch, to be avoided at all costs.

5) “Them” in The Forgotten

Grieving mother Telly (Julianne Moore) is already mourning the loss of her son in a plane crash when she awakes one day to find that nobody besides her remembers he even existed... and everyone’s acting like she’s completely nuts. Fortunately, her motherly love is enough to set things right in the end—but the aliens who grabbed her child, faked a plane crash, wiped the memories of seemingly everyone in Telly’s orbit, and have various Earthbound government agencies under their control—are definite contenders for cruelest kidnappers in the galaxy.

6) The Grays in Dark Skies

A suburban family attracts the unwholesome interest of extraterrestrials who take sadistic delight in putting them through a series of Horror Movie 101 terrors. After they consult an expert (an excellently-cast J.K. Simmons), the family goes into full anti-alien-abduction mode to protect the young son who appears to be the chosen target—only to see their other kid ripped away right before their eyes. If you were gonna grab the boy, aliens, why not just go ahead and take him without all the sinister build-up? Making matters worse, mom and dad are blamed for their son’s disappearance, along with everything else.

7) The aliens in “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,’” The X-Files

This third-season entry is a fan favorite for a reason—despite the show’s recurring alien themes, it’s a stand-alone monster-of-the-week episode with plenty of trademark quirkiness (exhibit A: Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek cameo as Men in Black). As is tradition, it’s not entirely clear if the aliens in this particular episode are real or part of a government conspiracy (or both), but many of the people involved in the tale end up dead or just thoroughly confused. No good for them... but great for the scifi author who pens a book about the incident, and excellently fun (if, again, a little confusing) viewing for us.

8) The Scowling Extraterrestrials in Fire in the Sky

Like Communion before it, Fire in the Sky is based on a purportedly true story of alien abduction. Unlike Communion before it, Fire in the Sky contains maybe the single most terrifying close encounter in cinema. The aliens in Communionwere scary, sure, but the creatures in Fire in the Sky are goddamn merciless, and so is this flashback scene.

9) The Martians in Mars Needs Moms

We’ve covered the various unpleasantries of this movie before, but it still stands that being abducted by Martians who want to suck out your “mom-ness” so it can be used by child-rearing robots would be abundantly shitty, if not as terrifying as the other aliens on this list. (Reminder: Mars Needs Moms is not a horror movie, it’s an animated comedy for the kiddies.)

10) The Martians of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Again, these spandex-wearing green men are more obnoxious than scary, but that doesn’t make hanging around them any less unpleasant. In this Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic, the Martians realize their American TV-watching kids are all dead inside, and kidnap Santa to bring them joy and consumer products. Along the way, they reveal themselves to be belligerent, like the sullen anti-happiness Voldar, or deeply annoying, especially “comic relief” Dropo. The good news is that these Martians seemed solely interested in Santa, so unless you put on a fake white beard and work at the mall during the holidays, you’re probably safe.

More Uncomfortably Close Encounters

• 

  Alien Abduction Comedy People of Earth Succeeds by Focusing on the Humans

• 

  The First Reported Alien Abduction Is Finally Getting The Movie It Deserves

• 

  Does This Convince You That Aliens Exist?

{ http://gizmodo.com/}

02-05-2017 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

George Dvorsky

The science world is all in a tizzy this week about the supposed discovery of an alien megastructure. It’s an intriguing theory, no doubt, but one deserving hefty amounts of skepticism. As we’ve learned before, inexplicable observations are all too often confused for aliens. Here are some classic examples.

A strange star located about 1,500 light-years from here is confounding astronomers. As reported by Ross Andersen in The Atlantic, the star, dubbed KIC 8462852, appears to be surrounded by “a strange mess of objects,” compelling scientists involved in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence “to get a closer look.” 

A likely explanation for the anomaly is a massive and irregular cloud of debris left over from a celestial collision. But Jason Wright, an astronomer who studies exoplanets and astrobiology, suspects it may be a Dyson Sphere—an alien-built megastructure consisting of solar panels placed in orbit around a star.

There’s much more to this story than my summary, so I highly recommend Phil Plait’s post at Slate. As Plait himself admits, this star’s behavior is indeed difficult to explain and it’s “clear something weird is happening there.” To be clear, it’s probably not ET, but the suggestion that aliens may somehow be involved is not completely outrageous. As I’ve said before, the search for alien artifacts—or what’s called Dysonian SETI—may be our best route to finally detecting signs of an extraterrestrial civilization. 

This issue brings to mind previous instances in scientific history when a “God is in the gaps” explanation gets invoked for inexplicable phenomenon. There seems to be a tendency—and again, not a completely unwarranted tendency—among some astronomers to attribute extraterrestrial intervention when they observe something unexpected or seemingly outside the bounds of established knowledge. But in virtually every instance, these initial deliberations have been superseded by more reasonable explanations, as these following examples attest. 

Canals on Mars

Back at the turn of the 20th century, American astronomer Percival Lowell posited the theory that an advanced alien civilization had irrigated crops on the surface of Mars with water drawn from the Red Planet’s poles via an elaborate canal network.“That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be,” wrote Lowell in 1906. 

Since the time of Lowell, however, closer inspection of the surface has shown that Mars does indeed feature a complex and dynamic surface, one carved by the ravages of time rather than an alien civilization. 

Pulsars

Another example is the discovery of pulsars, those freakishly precise flashes of electromagnetic radiation produced by highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars.

(Credit: NASA)

Because they flash at such steady and rapid intervals, some astronomers speculated that pulsars are actually beacons set up by advanced alien intelligences. When they were first described in 1967, one of the scientists involved in the discovery, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, said that

we did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem—if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe, how does one announce the results responsibly?

Despite their initial skepticism, they named the pulsar LGM-1, which stands for “little green men.”

The Wow! Signal

There’s also the infamous Wow! signal— a 72-second-long radio burst that initially appeared to good to be true. It was. 

Patrick J. KIger from National Geographic explains:

[Jerry] Ehman, a volunteer researcher for Ohio State University’s now-defunct Big Ear radio observatory, perused data from the telescope’s scan of the skies on August 15, a few days earlier. In those days, such information was run through an IBM 1130 mainframe computer and printed on perforated paper, and then laboriously examined by hand. But the tedium was shattered when Ehman spotted something surprising—a vertical column with the alphanumerical sequence “6EQUJ5,” which had occurred at 10:16 p.m. EST. He grabbed a red pen and circled the sequence. In the margin, wrote “Wow!”

Ehman’s excitement over that bit of arcane information stemmed from the Big Ear’s mission at the time, which was searching space for radio signals of the sort that might be emanated by extraterrestrial civilizations, if they were attempting to make contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. To Ehman, this signal, which had come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, looked an awful lot like it could be such a message. Observatory director John Krauss and his assistant Bob Dixon, who subsequently examined the data, were similarly astonished by it.

The signal, which lasted 72 seconds, was never detected again, even during follow-up studies. Though never fully explained, the signal was likely a natural, continuous signal, or some human-caused artifact. 

Perytons

More recently, astronomers at the Parkes Observatory in Australia detected mysterious radio signals known as perytons.

(Credit: CSIRO)

These brief but intense bursts, which appeared to emanate from deep space, were so strange that some scientists thought they might be coming from, what else, aliens. But a follow-up study ruined the party by showing that the signals were coming from—get this—microwave ovens used in the observatory to re-heat coffee. Ouch. 

UFOs

Of course, supposed signs of aliens need not be limited to space.

Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, are often associated with alien visitations, though empirical evidence for such claims are completely lacking. In virtually all cases, however, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for these observations. 

Keep an Open Mind

The strange behavior of KIC 8462852 may never be explained. Our inability to posit a more reasonable explanation may be due to our limited technologies, insufficient science, or lack of imagination. 

In time we may discover what’s really going on, and it’ll probably be a really fascinating explanation. Until then however, we should seek out the simplest solution, while keeping an open mind to other, more radical possibilities. Failure to do both would be a terrible disservice to the scientific process.

{ http://gizmodo.com/ }

02-05-2017 om 00:16 geschreven door peter  

Rae Paoletta

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is the latest target in the perennial excitement around finding extraterrestrial life. Its warm subterranean ocean is thought to contain all the right ingredients to harbor alien microbes, which would arguably be the biggest scientific discovery in human history. While finding microbes—even biosignatures on places like Mars—would be incredible, perhaps we’re overlooking something critical in the search for life in our solar system, specifically intelligent life. Take that, tiny microbes.

A new paper from astronomer Jason Wright, Prior Indigenous Technological Species, poses the question: Have we exhausted our options in searching for signs of extremely old, intelligent life? Contrary to what this outlet or this outlet or this outlet claims, Wright’s paper does not offer any evidence or proof of an ancient alien civilization—instead, it ruminates on whether or not there’s a chance we’re overlooking some critical clue in our hunt.

“There is zero evidence for any prior indigenous technological civilizations,” Wright told Gizmodo. “My paper asks, have we completely foreclosed the possibility, or is there a chance that there could be some evidence we overlooked? [And] if we have overlooked something and we find it in the future, what are the chances it could have come from a prior indigenous technological species versus an interstellar one?”

Wright suggests the idea of looking for “technosignatures” within our solar system—traces left behind from life that hypothetically would have existed millions to billions years ago. While Mars has long been a favorite in the hunt for signs of extinct life, there’s growing evidence that Venus could have been habitable in the very distant past—some models suggest that in the distant past, the planet had liquid water oceans for up to 2 billion years, which is long enough for life to evolve.

Technosignatures, however, are a bit different from the “biosignatures” astronomers will be looking for on places like Mars or eventually, within the TRAPPIST-1 system.

“A ‘biosignature’ is any sort of indication that life exists somewhere,” Wright explained. “Astrobiologists hope to look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of other planets on on Mars or Europa, things like oxygen or other products of biology and metabolism. A ‘technosignature’ is evidence of technology.” An example of a technosignature would be an artificial radio signal from a distant star. In our own solar system, Wright suggests it might be worth looking for signs of alien space mining activity, or even underground settlements. “We might conjecture that settlements or bases on [rocky moons or asteroids] would have been built beneath the surface for a variety of reasons, and so still be discoverable today,” he writes.

Because we’re living in the era of Ancient Aliens, it might seem natural to compare this to the “ancient astronaut” idea the show explores. For those who have not seen a meme in the last five years, the idea is that a group of intelligent extraterrestrials visited Earth thousands of years ago and helped them achieve various feats of science and engineering. But according to Wright, his paper suggests “quite the opposite.”

“‘Ancient’ means something very different to an astronomer than to a historian,” he said. “We think ‘billions of years,’ but in history ‘ancient’ means “thousands of years.” These aliens, if they ever truly existed, would not have influenced humanity at all, since they would have gone extinct long before our ancestors roamed Earth.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

So if technosignatures from intelligent life are somewhere out there in the solar system, where could they be? Unfortunately, searching here on our Pale Blue Dot would be pretty inefficient because, well, people. And plate tectonics.

“The Earth (and humanity) destroys evidence of technology very efficiently in most cases,” Wright explained. “Millions of humans lived and used tools on the Earth for tens of thousands of years but archaeologists can only recover and recognize tiny fraction of their tools. If such a species lived millions of years ago very little of their technology would be detectable today.”

Still, not all hope is lost for finding technosignatures of past alien civilizations on Earth. In his paper, Wright suggests studying the oldest rocks on Earth and looking for unnatural isotope ratios—something that would provide us with even the smallest hint of technologically adept life that existed before humans. And while finding technosignatures on our planet might be tricky, places like the Moon or Mars might offer a more pristine record of the distant past.

“Work on Earth could show that there has never been a prior tree of complex life, that there are no signs of recognizable technology in the geological record (say, evidence of prior fossil fuel burning or nuclear reactions), and that we would have seen such evidence if it existed,” Wright said. “The surfaces of the Moon and Mars are ancient, so if we can show that there is nothing on or just beneath them that would indicate technology that would make it pretty unlikely anything was ever there.”

In short, if we’re going to embark on an alien scavenger hunt, we might as well pursue all our options.

{ http://gizmodo.com/ }

01-05-2017 om 23:58 geschreven door peter