The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
06-05-2017
Astrophysicist: ETs May Have Already Lived And Died In Our Solar System
Astrophysicist: ETs May Have Already Lived And Died In Our Solar System
The big question: Did they leave artifacts behind for us to find?
There’s more than one way to look for signs of life from the distant past in our solar system.
As science continues to search the cosmos for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrials and, at the very least, for habitable planets that might harbor even non-intelligent life, one scientist is raising another eye-opening question: Was there a time in the far distant past when an advanced civilization actually lived on one of the planets of our solar system, long before earthlings evolved?
Pennsylvania State University astrophysicist Jason T. Wright suggests that ancient aliens may have lived on nearby planets hundreds of millions of years ago, before vanishing without a trace.
In a new scientific paper, “Prior Indigenous Technological Species,” published in Cornell University’s research archive, ArXiv, on April 24, Wright speculates:
One of the primary open questions of astrobiology is whether there is extant or extinct life elsewhere in the solar system. Implicit in much of this work is that we are looking for microbial or, at best, unintelligent life, even though technological artifacts might be much easier to find.
But if a prior technological, perhaps spacefaring, species ever arose in the solar system, it might have produced artifacts or other technosignatures that have survived to present day.
Here, I discuss the origins and possible locations for technosignatures of such a prior indigenous technological species, which might have arisen on ancient Earth or another body, such as a pre-greenhouse Venus or a wet Mars.
HuffPost asked Wright how far back in time he thinks aliens might have lived in our solar system and if some of them may still be lingering out there.
“It seems pretty clear there aren’t any now. That’s become more clear as we’ve explored the solar system robotically. In terms of large, intelligent, technological civilizations, that seems pretty case closed,” he said in an interview Friday.
While Wright pays tribute to the imaginations that created tales of Martians and moon dwellers in his paper, he remained cautiously open-minded about what’s possible in time and space. “While the applications of this idea in science fiction are usually fanciful, it is unclear to what degree the existence of such species in reality is allowed or disallowed by evidence,” he wrote.
In the interview, he said he thinks it’s interesting to wonder if there could have been a previous species on Earth that used technology like we do and if there’s any room in the geological or fossil record for that, or have we completely foreclosed it?
“My guess is that we can rule out big swaths of the Earth’s history. The farther back you go, the harder it is to rule something like that out. If they’re very old, there may not be any traces. Things don’t last long. If you put something in orbit around the sun, it’ll be subject to collisions with asteroids and meteors.
“So, anything, including planetary surfaces in the solar system, just gets constantly hit with these things. When you’re on the surfaces of objects, like asteroids or moons or planets, those surfaces can also completely turn over, given enough time.”
NASA defines astrobiology as “the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. This multidisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our solar system and habitable planets outside our solar system.”
Wright told HuffPost of two important ingredients in looking for signs of life somewhere in space.
“In the field of astrobiology, we talk about what are called biosignatures. If you look at a planet or a moon that has life on it, how would you know? What is the signature ― the signal ― that says this is life and not a completely sterile object? So, that’s a biosignature.
“A technosignature is the same idea but not for any life ― it’s for the technology that’s been engineered and constructed and designed by life. For instance, a radio transmitter would be one of our most obvious technosignatures. And we build large structures. The Empire State Building is a technosignature.”
According to Wright, it’s important to keep searching.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST
New Super-Earth Discovered 39 Light-Years From Earth In April 2017 researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics CfA announced the discovery of a new super-Earth designated LHS 1140b orbiting the habitable zone of a small red dwarf star LHS 1140 about 39 light-years away Its 42 light-years from our sun to the nearest star Proxima Centauri This is an artist impression of the star LHS 1140 and the possible super-Earth planet which shows early indications of habitability
Geslaagde test met ontsnappingssysteem Orion-capsule
Geslaagde test met ontsnappingssysteem Orion-capsule
Tim Kraaijvanger
Als een toekomstige Space Launch System-raket in de problemen komt, kunnen astronauten in de Orion-capsule ontsnappen dankzij het Launch Abort System. Ingenieurs hebben op 27 april een geslaagde test uitgevoerd met dit nieuwe ontsnappingssysteem.
De Orion-capsule bevindt zich straks boven op de raket. De eerste versie van de SLS-raket is zo’n 97,5 meter hoog. Toekomstige raketten worden nog groter. Het is voor astronauten onmogelijk om snel te ontsnappen als de raket bijvoorbeeld bijna explodeert. Dankzij het Launch Abort System kan de Orion-capsule de raket toch verlaten. De stuwkracht van dit systeem is groter dan de stuwkracht van de Atlas 109-D-raket, die John Glenn in 1962 in een baan om de aarde bracht. Daarbij moet wel gezegd worden dat het Launch Abort System maar korte tijd stuwt.
Belangrijke test Orbital Sciences nam in 2007 de opdracht aan om het Launch Abort System te ontwerpen, produceren en testen. Een belangrijke test vond vorige week plaats in Elkton (Maryland). De ingenieurs laten weten dat het een geslaagde test is. Hoewel het uiteindelijke Launch Abort System is uitgerust met drie motoren, werd vorige week alleen de attitude control motor getest. Deze motor bestaat uit een gasgenerator en acht kleppen. Dit gas kan door bepaalde kleppen gestuurd worden, waardoor de Orion-capsule verschillende richtingen op kan vliegen. Wel zo belangrijk, want als de situatie kritiek is, wil je niet dat de capsule onbestuurbaar rondom de raket dwarrelt.
Benieuwd naar de test? Bekijk hieronder de video!
En nu? De Amerikanen geven momenteel wat meer gas op de ontwikkeling van de Orion-capsule en het Space Launch System. Volgend jaar komen beide projecten samen tijdens de Exploration Mission-1. Tijdens deze missie zou SLS voor het eerst met een lege Orion-capsule gelanceerd worden. Pas drie jaar later – in 2021 – zouden astronauten in de Orion-capsule plaatsnemen en voor het eerst met behulp van SLS het luchtruim kiezen.
In UFO conspiracy theories, Majestic 12 (or MJ-12) is the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. PresidentHarry S. Trumanto facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) declared the documents to be “completely bogus”, and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film and literature.
The story of how the original MJ-12 papers came to light is an interesting look into the mindset of some of the leading UFO researchers, and an excellent example of the quality of UFO evidence that is acceptable to some people.
The concept of “Majestic Twelve” emerged during a period in the 1980s when ufologists believed there had been a cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident and speculated some secretive upper tier of the United States government was responsible. Their suppositions appeared to be confirmed in 1984 when ufologist Jaime Shandera received an envelope containing film which, when developed, showed images of eight pages of documents that appeared to be briefing papers describing “Operation Majestic Twelve”.
In December, 1984, Jaime Shandera, a Hollywood movie producer and UFO researcher, received an unusual package through the post. Inside was just one roll of undeveloped 35mm black and white film. There were no accompanying letter or return address, the only clue to where the package came from was by the postmark which was Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Once developed, the film contained negatives of what appeared to be an eight page briefing paper, prepared on 18th November, 1952, for president-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower. A warning on the first page read, ‘This is a TOP SECRET – EYES ONLY document containing compartmentalized information essential to the national security of the United States’. On page two was a list of 12 influential US scientists, military leaders and intelligence advisors. It was not until viewing page three that the subject of the papers became clear, ‘the recovery of a crashed flying saucer and alien bodies near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947’.
The final page of the briefing paper was a memorandum, dated 24th September,1947, from President Harry Truman to his secretary of Defence, James Forrestal. In it, Truman instructs Forrestal to proceed with ‘Operation Majestic-12’, but gives no hint at what that might be.
Alone, the Forrestal memo was meaningless. But when read next to the 1952 briefing paper, the story behind them became clear: in July 1947, a ‘flying disc-shaped aircraft’ crashed landed in Roswell, New Mexico, and ‘extra-terrestrial biological entities’ (EBEs) are recovered by the military. When President Truman is informed about the crash, he authorizes Defence Secretary Forrestal to set up a committee to investigate and deal with the situation.
In 1952, when Eisenhower becomes President-elect, he is briefed on Operation Majestic-12. The briefing paper lists the 12-man committee and gives details of the saucer crash. The final paragraph stresses the need to ‘avoid public panic at all costs’, confirming that the government is covering up the truth about UFOs.
The Majestic-12 documents consisted of an eight page briefing paper to President Eisenhower detailing a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, another crash at El Indio, Texas in 1950, and listing the members of the government’s special Majestic-12 or “MJ-12” UFO group. It was dated “18 November, 1952”, and it named “Admiral” Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter as the briefing officer. There was also a memo from President Harry S Truman to Secretary of Defense Forrestal that authorized the creation of the MJ-12 group.
However, what is often ignored, glossed over, or has just been lost to obscurity, is the fact that the first mention of MJ-12 was in a document that was alleged by Richard Doty, an ex-special agent for the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), to have been created as disinformation. He says he gave the document to UFO researchers while he worked for AFOSI, and was order to do so by his superiors. He says this was only one incident in a campaign that lasted years.
Hesitant to take his word for it, I requested documents related to his claims from AFOSI via the Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). The documents I received supported some of what he said, but told a different story. They do document the interactions with AFOSI and one UFO researcher, but do not include passing him disinformation. In fact, they say two New Mexico state senators requested information about the nature of their interaction with the UFO researcher, to which AFOSI replied they received his information, but did not engage in any sort of formal investigation.
The documents purported to reveal a secret committee of twelve, supposedly authorized by United States President Harry S. Truman in 1952, and explain how the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell in 1947 had been concealed, how the recovered alien technology could be exploited, and how the United States should engage with extraterrestrial life in the future.
Shandera and his ufologist colleagues Stanton T. Friedman and Bill Moore say they later received a series of anonymous messages that led them to find what has been called the “Cutler/Twining memo” in 1985 while searching declassified files in the National Archives. Purporting to be written by General Nathan F. Twining to President Eisenhower’s assistant Robert Cutler and containing a reference to Majestic 12, the memo is widely held to be a forgery, likely planted as part of a hoax. Historian Robert Goldberg wrote that the ufologists came to believe the story despite the documents being “obviously planted to bolster the legitimacy of the briefing papers”.
Moore, Shandera, and Friedman altered the appearance of the MJ-12 documents in their first release of the Focus newsletter to give the appearance of government censorship. They later had to admit that they did it themselves.
At the ON UFO Symposium Proceedings, “MJ-12 and Phil Klass: What are the facts?” by William L. Moore and Stanton T. Friedman: They included a reproduction of the mail packet addressed to Jaime Shandera. The bottoms of the postmarks were blackened out on all three postmarks. This would have shown the state and city that the mail packet was mailed in. In the presentation, Moore and Friedman stated the package “bore no return address”.
In reality, there was a return address. It was Albuquerque, NM! Guess who lived in Albuquerque, NM. Richard Doty- associate of William Moore! If the address had been shown, people might have started checking more on Doty. But Moore and Friedman stated that the package bore no return address.
Aside from the suspicious origins of the Majestic-12 papers, there are several problems with the documents themselves.
The Date: Military documents were formatted using strict guidelines, including the structure of dates. At the time the MJ-12 briefing was alleged to have been written, the format was day month year. No commas, no place-holding zeros. But the date in the MJ-12 document used a day month (comma) year format. This brief was supposedly generated at the very highest level of the military; a level that would not have made such a fundamental error in format.
Hillenkoetter’s Rank: The document refers to “Admiral” Hillenkoetter, when his true rank was REAR Admiral. In casual speech or among civilians this error might occur, but a military man would never make such an error. It was the military that wrote the brief.
Verbiage: Two terms used in the document were not in use during the 50’s. The word “media” to refer to the Press did not appear until the 70’s. Likewise the term “impacted”.
Security: The Cutler-Twining memo is stamped “Top Secret Restricted Information”. There was no such classification in 1954. Not until the Nixon era was this classification used.
Code Word MAJIC: This appears to be the code name assigned to this project. However, this would constitute a major violation of the code naming scheme used by the military for well over a decade.
Secure projects are assigned code names from a one-time use list that is shared by all parts of the military and civilian government bodies. Just prior to WWII, the code name MAGIC was assigned to the effort to break the high security Japanese diplomatic code. The project was still under the wraps of Top Secret in the early 50’s so it could not be “re-used”. Yet, here we have the term MAJIC being applied to the Majestic-12, an assignment that clearly could not happen.
MJ-12 proponents point to the different spelling, but the code list was constructed to avoid phonetic similarities that could cause confusion in oral communications. It would appear that the author(s) of the Majestic briefing papers were conscious of the newly de-classified story of the MAGIC operation when this was concocted.
There are several other points that one might accurately call minor, but when you take all these errors together in one set of documents, the coincidence level redlines.
The most spectacular new MJ-12 document was posted in 1994 to Don Berliner, a longtime UFO investigator and science writer. The anonymous roll of film contained 23 pages of a ‘Majestic-12 Group Special Operations Manual’, dated April, 1954. It was a detailed instruction manual entitled ‘Extra-terrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal’.
Because most of the MJ-12 documents are on film, the original paper or ink cannot be analysed. However there are many factual details that can be checked, such as the background of the 12 members of the committee, the dates of meetings, the style and format of similar documents, and the validity of the signatures. Clearly, MJ-12 had an all-star cast, as well as Secretary of Defence Forrestal, there were the first three Directors of Central Intelligence, an Air Force General, an Army General, the Secretary of the Army and five of the US’s most influential scientists. This was the cream of the US’s military, scientific and intelligence communities. If there was to be a top-secret government group investigating UFOs, this would have been it.
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Will we know alien life when we see it?
Will we know alien life when we see it?
This is the third in a three-part series on the search for extraterrestrial life.
In a 1967 episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk and his crew investigated the mysterious murders of miners on the planet Janus VI. The killer, it turned out, was a rock monster called the Horta. But the Enterprise’s sensors hadn’t registered any sign of life in the creature. The Horta was a silicon-based life-form. That made it different from any on Earth where everything is carbon-based.
Still, it didn’t take long to determine that the Horta was alive. The first clue was that it skittered about. Spock closed the case with a mind meld. He learned that the creature was the last of its kind, protecting a throng of eggs.
But recognizing life on different worlds isn’t likely to be this simple. It could prove especially hard if the recipe for life elsewhere does not include familiar ingredients. There may even be things alive on Earth that have been overlooked because they don’t fit standard definitions, some scientists suspect. The scientists that look for life outside Earth are called astrobiologists. They need some ground rules — with some built-in wiggle room — to know when they can confidently declare, “It’s alive!”
Among people working out those rules is Christoph Adami. He is a theoretical physicist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He has watched his own version of silicon-based life grow. That life wasn’t real, though. It was a computer simulation.
“It’s easy when it’s easy,” Adami says. “If you find something walking around and waving at you, it won’t be that hard to figure out that you’ve found life.” But chances are, the first aliens that humans encounter won’t be little green men. They will probably be tiny microbes of one color or another — or perhaps no color at all.
Scientists are trying to figure out how they might recognize those alien microbes. It could be really hard if the microbes are very strange. This has led researchers to propose some basic criteria for distinguishing living from nonliving things.
Many insist that certain features must be present for any type of life, including aliens. These include an active metabolism, reproduction and evolution. Others add the requirement that life must have cells big enough to contain protein-building machines called ribosomes (RY-boh-soams).
Defining “life” isn’t straightforward. A virus, such as this Ebola virus, by most definitions is not alive (although some scientists have argued that it is).
CDC/Wikimedia Commons
But such definitions can be overly strict. Making a list of needed criteria for life may give scientists tunnel vision, says Carol Cleland at the University of Colorado Boulder. That narrow vision could blind them to the diversity of life across the cosmos.
Some scientists, for instance, say viruses aren’t alive because they rely on their host cells to reproduce. But Adami has “no doubt” that viruses live. “They don’t carry with them everything they need to survive,” he acknowledges. “But neither do we.” What’s important, Adami argues, is that viruses transmit genetic information from one generation to another. And at its simplest, he contends, life is just information that reproduces itself.
Evolution should be off the table, too, Cleland says. After all, people would likely never be around long enough to tell whether something is evolving.
Even restrictions on cell sizes may squeeze the tiniest microbes out of consideration as aliens. Yet it shouldn’t, argues Steven Benner. He’s an astrobiologist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Fla. A cell too tiny to contain ribosomes may operate another way. Instead of proteins, it might use genetic material known as RNA to carry out biochemical reactions, he speculates.
Cells have been thought necessary because they separate one organism from another. But layers of clay could do that, Adami suggests. Cleland proposes that life might even exist as networks of chemical reactions — ones that don’t require any separation at all.
It’s fantastical thinking. But that may just be what it takes for scientists to recognize unusual types of life, should such aliens turn up.
Up close and personal
In recent years, more than 1,000 planets have been spotted outside our solar system. With their discovery, the odds favoring the existence of alien life are better than ever. But even the most powerful telescopes can’t image distant life, especially if its microscopic. Chances of finding such tiny life improves if scientists can reach out and touch it.
And that means looking within our solar system, says Robert Hazen. He’s a a scientist who studies minerals, working at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.
“You really need a rover down on its hands and knees analyzing chemicals,” he says. Such rovers are now sampling rocks on Mars. The Cassini space probe has bathed in the geysers spewing from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Such robot explorers may one day send back signs of life. But only subtle signs of life — what scientists call “biomarkers.” And it may be very hard to tell true biomarkers apart from just some mineral, he notes, especially at a distance.
“We really need to have life be as obvious as possible,” says Victoria Meadows. By obvious, she partly means Earth-like. She also partly means that this signal must be one that no chemical or geologic process alone could have left behind. Meadows is an astrobiologist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She heads its Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle.
This brick-sized meteorite from Mars is called ALH84001 (top). It contained what looked to some scientists like fossils of bacteria (bottom).
FROM TOP: JSC/NASA; NASA
Some scientists say life is an “I’ll know it when I see it” phenomenon, says Kathie Thomas-Keprta. But life also may be in the eye of the beholder. Thomas-Keprta knows this all too well from studying a Martian meteorite. She is a planetary geologist. She was part of a team at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston that studied a meteorite named ALH84001. (It was discovered in Antarctica’s Allan Hills ice field in 1984.)
The team was led by Thomas-Keprta’s late colleague David McKay. In 1996, the scientists claimed that carbonate globules embedded in the meteorite looked a bit like microscopic life on Earth. The researchers found large organic (carbon-based) molecules. That indicated they formed at the same time. Thomas-Keprta also identified tiny crystals of magnetite overlapping the globules. These iron-based crystals looked much like ones made by certain bacteria on Earth. Such bacteria use chains of the crystals as a compass as they swim in search of nutrients.
In the end, the scientists concluded they were looking at fossils of ancient Martians.
Other scientists disagreed. The globules and crystals might have formed through other processes, critics said — with no life needed.
That initial claim of fossil Martians has now been widely dismissed.
But you may not need to leave our planet to find aliens. There’s the possibility of shadow life on Earth. It could be so strange that it has so far gone unrecognized, posits Cleland at the University of Colorado. Consider, she says, “desert varnish.”
These are the dark stains on the sunny sides of some rocks in super-dry climates. Some scientists think certain bacteria or fungi might be responsible. Odd, communal microbes could be sucking energy out of the rocks. They might use this energy to fuel their creation of that hard outer coat of minerals. Such organisms might produce the varnish by cementing iron and manganese to clay and silicate particles.
Curious, some scientists have tried to re-create desert varnish in the lab. They used fungi and bacteria. And they failed.
In the wild, those varnishes form over millennia. Critics have argued that this is too slow to be something created by microbes. But how do we know, Cleland asks? “We have an assumption that life on Earth has a pace,” she says. Some shadow life may instead grow far more leisurely.
Mineral distortions
Desert varnish tints rocks a burnt orange or black (top, Angel Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah). It may be produced by unknown living organisms. Silicates make desert varnish shiny (bottom, central Australia).
FROM TOP: SARA A. FINKE/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0); MARK MARATHON/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
To find life, and classify it correctly, look for the odd thing out, suggests Hazen. He is looking for messages in minerals. Minerals do not occur evenly across the landscape. There are 4,933 recognized minerals on the planet, Hazen says. He and his crew have mapped the locations of 4,831 of them. And 22 percent of these exist in only one site. Close to 12 percent more occur in just two places.
One reason for this skewed distribution is that as life has evolved, it has used local resources, turning them into new minerals. Take for example hazenite. (Yes, it’s named for Hazen.) This phosphate-based mineral is found only in California’s Mono Lake. Microbes living there are its only source. Other species may have led to similarly rare pockets of some mineral, Hazen’s group suspects.
Finding such odd distributions of minerals on other planets or moons might indicate that life exists there, or once did. Hazen has advised NASA on how rovers might identify such mineral clues to life on Mars.
Mars was once wet. It still has occasional running water. That shows it may once have been capable of hosting life. This and other evidence in 2013 led Benner, of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, to suggest that Mars may have seeded the life now on Earth. Whether that idea holds up may depend on finding Martians.
But Benner doesn’t seem worried. “I would be surprised now if they don’t find life on Mars,” he says.
Missions could easily bring astronauts to Mars to confirm a suspected find, says Dirk Schulze-Makuch. He’s an astrobiologist at Washington State University in Pullman. “If someone with a microscope sees a microbe and it “is wiggling and waving back, that’s really hard to refute,” he jokes.
Going for the less obvious
But humans and even probes may have a harder time spotting life on more distant or exotic locales. Prime targets are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. E.T. hunters are attracted to Europa and Enceladus because their liquid oceans slosh beneath icy crusts.
Liquid water is thought to be necessary for many of the chemical reactions that could support life. But water is actually a terrible solvent for building complex molecules on which life could be based, Schulze-Makuch notes. Instead, he thinks really alien aliens might have spawned at hot spots deep in the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon. “Whether you can get all the way to life, we don’t know,” he says.
Life on Saturn’s moon Titan could exist within nitrogen-containing structures called azotosomes. This is an artist’s representation of what such virus-sized particles might look like, with a piece cut away to see its hollow interior.
James Stevenson
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Titanic life is the extreme cold, says Paulette Clancy. She’s a chemical engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. This moon is so frosty that its methane — a gas on balmy Earth — is a viscous, almost-frozen liquid. And water, she says, “would be like a rock.” Under those conditions, she notes, organisms with Earth-like chemistry wouldn’t stand a chance. For one thing, the membranes that hold in an Earth cell’s guts wouldn’t work on Titan.
But Clancy and her colleagues simulated experiments under Titan-like conditions. And certain short-tailed molecules could spontaneously create stable bubbles, they found. Those bubbles are similar to cell membranes.
Like desert varnish, life on Titan may grow slowly. There is little sunlight or heat. Its frigid temperatures would keep chemical reactions sluggish. So if life were to exist here, Schulze-Makuch imagines it would have lifespans perhaps millions of years long. Organisms might reproduce — or even breathe — just once every thousand years!
With so many options out there, Clancy predicts that there are several planets or moons with life on them. Many other researchers are also optimistic that life is out there to find. In the future, astrobiologists may come face-to-face with E.T. And when they do, they might even recognize it for what it is.
alien A non-native organism. (in astronomy) Life on or from a distant world.
Antarctica A continent mostly covered in ice, which sits in the southernmost part of the world.
arid A description of dry areas of the world, where the climate brings too little rainfall or other precipitation to support much plant growth.
astrobiology The study of life everywhere in the universe, including on Earth and in space.
atom The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.
bias The tendency to hold a particular perspective or preference that favors some thing, some group or some choice.
biochemical (adj.) Referring to something made and used within living things.
biology The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.
carbon The chemical element having the atomic number 6. It is the physical basis of all life on Earth. Carbon exists freely as graphite and diamond.
Cassini A space probe sent by NASA to explore the planet Saturn. Cassini was launched from Earth in 1997. It reached Saturn in late 2004. The craft included a variety of instruments meant to study Saturn’s moons, rings, magnetic field and atmosphere.
cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall.
cell membrane A structure that separates the inside of a cell from the outside of it. Some particles are permitted to pass through the membrane.
chemical A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (become bonded together) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H2O. Chemical can also be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.
chemical engineer A researcher who uses chemistry to solve problems related to the production of food, fuel, medicines and many other products.
chemical reaction A process that involves the rearrangement of the molecules or structure of a substance, as opposed to a change in physical form (as from a solid to a gas).
chemistry The field of science that deals with the composition, structure and properties of substances and how they interact with one another. Chemists use this knowledge to study unfamiliar substances, to reproduce large quantities of useful substances or to design and create new and useful substances.
clay Fine-grained particles of soil that stick together and can be molded when wet.
colleague Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.
cosmos (adj. cosmic) A term that refers to the universe and everything within it.
criteria (sing. criterion) The standards, rules, traits or other things used to make a judgment or determination about something.
diversity (in biology) A range of different life forms.
DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.
element (in chemistry) Each of more than one hundred substances for which the smallest unit of each is a single atom. Examples include hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, lithium and uranium.
Enceladus The sixth largest of Saturn’s more than 50 moons. Enceladus is bright white and covered with a thick shell of ice. Deep beneath that ice sits what appears to be a global ocean of salty liquid water. Enceladus is a round sphere, 500 kilometers (310 miles) across. It is a little less than one-third the width of Earth’s moon.
engineer A person who uses science to solve problems. As a verb, to engineer means to design a device, material or process that will solve some problem or unmet need.
environment The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or some device and the condition those things create for that organism or device. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature, humidity and placement of components in some electronics system or product.
E.T. (n.) An abbreviation made famous by the 1982 Universal Pictures movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The main character was a charming space alien called E.T. His most famous line from the movie was “E.T. phone home.” E.T. has since come to be used as a colloquial term for any intelligent and potentially friendly space alien.
Europa One of the moons of Jupiter and the sixth-closest satellite to the planet. Europa, 1,951 miles across, has a network of dark lines on a bright, icy surface.
evolution (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural selection. These changes usually result in a new type of organism better suited for its environment than the earlier type. The newer type is not necessarily more “advanced,” just better adapted to the conditions in which it developed.
fossil Any preserved remains or traces of ancient life. There are many different types of fossils: The bones and other body parts of dinosaurs are called “body fossils.” Things like footprints are called “trace fossils.” Even specimens of dinosaur poop are fossils. The process of forming fossils is called fossilization.
generation A group of individuals born about the same time or that are regarded as a single group. Your parents belong to one generation of your family, for example, and your grandparents to another.
genetic Having to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.
geology (adj. geologic) The study of Earth’s physical structure and substance, its history and the processes that act on it. People who work in this field are known as geologists. Planetary geology is the science of studying the same things about other planets.
geyser A vent (opening) in Earth’s surface that intermittently sends up a tall spray of steam or hot water. The sometimes explosive discharge of water and steam is propelled by the geothermal heating of water below ground.
hydrocarbon Any of a range of large molecules created by chemically bound carbon and hydrogen atoms. Crude oil, for example, is a naturally occurring mix of many hydrocarbons.
magnetite A gray-black iron-bearing mineral, the most magnetic known. As shown in its chemical formula, each molecule of magnetite (Fe3O4) consists of three iron (Fe) atoms and four oxygen (O) atoms.
manganese The chemical element of atomic number 25, a hard gray metal of the transition series. Manganese is an important component of special steels.
metabolism The set of life-sustaining chemical reactions that take place inside cells and bigger structures, such as organs. These reactions enable organisms to grow, reproduce, move and otherwise respond to their environments.
methane A hydrocarbon with the chemical formula CH4 (meaning there are four hydrogen atoms bound to one carbon atom). It’s a natural constituent of what’s known as natural gas. It’s also emitted by decomposing plant material in wetlands and is belched out by cows and other ruminant livestock.
microbe Short for microorganism. A living thing that is too small to see with the unaided eye, including bacteria, some fungi and many other organisms such as amoebas. Most consist of a single cell.
microscopic An adjective for things too small to be seen by the unaided eye. It takes a microscope to view such tiny objects, such as bacteria or other one-celled organisms.
mineral The crystal-forming substances, such as quartz, apatite, or various carbonates, that make up rock. Most rocks contain several different minerals mish-mashed together. A mineral usually is solid and stable at room temperatures and has a specific formula, or recipe (with atoms occurring in certain proportions) and a specific crystalline structure (meaning that its atoms are organized in certain regular three-dimensional patterns).
molecule An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O2), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).
moon The natural satellite of any planet.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (or NASA) Created in 1958, this U.S. agency has become a leader in space research and in stimulating public interest in space exploration. It was through NASA that the United States sent people into orbit and ultimately to the moon. It has also sent research craft to study planets and other celestial objects in our solar system.
network A group of interconnected people or things.
organic (in chemistry) An adjective that indicates something is carbon-containing; a term that relates to the chemicals that make up living organisms.
organism Any living thing.
phenomenon Something that is surprising or unusual.
phosphate A chemical containing one atom of phosphorus and four atoms of oxygen. It is a component of bones, hard white tooth enamel, and some minerals such as apatite.
physicist A scientist who studies the nature and properties of matter and energy.
planet A celestial object that orbits a star, is big enough for gravity to have squashed it into a roundish ball and has cleared other objects out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. To accomplish the third feat, the object must be big enough to have pulled neighboring objects into the planet itself or to have slung them around the planet and off into outer space. Astronomers of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created this three-part scientific definition of a planet in August 2006 to determine Pluto’s status. Based on that definition, IAU ruled that Pluto did not qualify. The solar system now includes eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
protein Compound made from one or more long chains of amino acids. Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and tissues; they also do the work inside of cells.
RNA A molecule that helps “read” the genetic information contained in DNA. A cell’s molecular machinery reads DNA to create RNA, and then reads RNA to create proteins.
sensor A device that picks up information on physical or chemical conditions — such as temperature, barometric pressure, salinity, humidity, pH, light intensity or radiation — and stores or broadcasts that information. Scientists and engineers often rely on sensors to inform them of conditions that may change over time or that exist far from where a researcher can measure them directly.
silicate A mineral containing silicon atoms and usually oxygen atoms. The majority of Earth’s crust is made of silicate minerals.
silicon A nonmetal, semiconducting element used in making electronic circuits. Pure silicon exists in a shiny, dark-gray crystalline form and as a shapeless powder.
simulation (v. simulate) An analysis, often made using a computer, of some conditions, functions or appearance of a physical system. A computer program would do this by using mathematical operations that can describe the system and how it might vary in response to various situations or over time.
solar system The eight major planets and their moons in orbit around our sun, together with smaller bodies in the form of dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids and comets.
solvent A material (usually a liquid) used to dissolve some other material into a solution.
star The basic building block from which galaxies are made. Stars develop when gravity compacts clouds of gas. When they become dense enough to sustain nuclear-fusion reactions, stars will emit light and sometimes other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The sun is our closest star.
subtle Some feature that may be important, but can be hard to see or describe. For instance, the first cellular changes that signal the start of a cancer may be visible but subtle — small and hard to distinguish from nearby healthy tissues.
theoretical An adjective for an analysis or assessment of something that based on pre-existing knowledge of how things behave. It is not based on experimental trials. Theoretical research tends to use math — usually performed by computers — to predict how or what will occur for some specified series of conditions.
unique Something that is unlike anything else; the only one of its kind.
universe The entire cosmos: All things that exist throughout space and time. It has been expanding since its formation during an event known as the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years).
viscous The property of being thick, sticky and hard to pour. Molasses and maple syrup are two examples of viscous liquids.
American Indians Have No Fear Of Aliens. Here’s Why
American Indians Have No Fear Of Aliens. Here’s Why
Deeply spiritual cultures remember a time when “people from the stars” freely interacted with members of the human species.
Before intrepid and greedy Europeans ‘discovered’ the Americas, the land was populated by a variety of cultures encompassing millions of souls. Sadly, the near-annihilation of Native Americans has also meant the disappearance of ancient knowledge that we might never win back.
Therefore, it is fortunate that the efforts of the survivors have included the passing down of stories from time immemorial and many of these talk about the “Star People”, a term that groups various beings who came from the sky to share a connection with humans who were worthy of their teachings.
The ancient world was in contact with a multitude of advanced extraterrestrials, as evidenced by the rich collection of stories detailing these interactions. Many cultures separated by thousands of years refer narratives of flying objects and technology so advanced it could have well been magic. These stories are particularly strong within the mythos of the Native American tribes.
“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago,” Richard Wagamese of the Wabaseemoong First People writes. “The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.”
He continues:
“If Star People did come to the Ojibway, where did they go? Where did they come from? Who brought teachings to them? What scientific magic did they own that allowed them to make such an incredible journey – and is it possible for us?”
The peaceful Hopi people believed their ancestors came from the Pleiades and the general demeanor of Pleiadian aliens is reflected in the Hopi lifestyle. Could this mean their genesis stories hold truth in them? It sure seems so
Dakota legends make reference to the same star cluster – Tiyami they called them – as being their ancestor’s primal home.
Similarly, the Cree believed that in a time before history, their ancestors arrived from the stars in spirit form, only to become humans on Earth.
Native legends of the Lakota people speak of mysterious celestial beings that manifested themselves as spheres of light and would often choose particular children to follow them on a journey through space and time.
Native Americans perceive the issue of alien visitation and even abduction in a more spiritual manner, as Plains Cree author Stephane Wuttunee explains in a UFO digest article:
[My people] “give far greater attention to the seeking of the spiritual understanding of things rather than going after “the truth” as people from dominant cultures do. This is part of the reason why we tend to stand back and view or listen at first rather than bare in with questions or take the hard, direct approach.”
Growing up in a tightly-knit community, Wuttunee listened carefully to the stories passed down by the Elders of his tribe. They told of “distant relations and Star People living amongst the stars many times, mainly around campfires and during traditional ceremonies.”
Far from being anything to be feared, Star People was just another term I grew up around,”Wuttunee writes. “I remember listening in awe and fascination at the thought of us having relations that lived off and outside our world, and sometimes spoke to them in my silent moments at night. I wanted to know who they were and what they looked like, if they had families like us etc.[…] It wasn’t until my later teens that I discovered that people from the dominant cultures were talking about the same “people” as my elders did, though each side’s sense of perception of these people seemed radically different from one another.”
Do you suspect these words to be the result of ancient traditions tainted by the recent ancient alien phenomenon? Congrats for being a critical thinker, but Native Americans have been mentioning “flying shields” for a long time.
Black Elk (1863-1950), an Oglala Sioux holy man who toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when he was young described one of his experiences, way before the UFO phenomenon had become bastardized by mass-media:
“So when I went to vision quest, that disk came from above. The scientists call that a…Unidentified Flying Object, but that’s a joke, see? Because they are not trained, they lost contact with the wisdom, power and gift.”
“So that disk landed on top of me. It was concave, and there was another one on top of that. It was silent, but it lit and luminesced like neon lights. Even the sacred robes there were luminesced, and those tobacco ties lying there lit up like little light bulbs.”
“Then these little people came, but each little group spoke a different language. They could read minds, and I could read their minds. I could read them. So there was silent communication. You could read it, like when you read silent symbols in a book. So we were able to communicate…They are human, so I welcomed them. I said, “Welcome, Welcome…”
Here we have the written, unambiguous testimony of pivotal figure in the Sioux culture, a legendary man who was the cousin of Crazy Horse, telling us about his interaction with extraterrestrial beings aboard their luminous UFO.
Without exception, all Native American tribes foster an umbilical connection with Mother Earth. They see themselves as the “original caretakers” of our planet and lament the path to destruction we’re currently on. Many tribal figures see this as the primary reason behind the weakening of the bond between humanity and the Star People.
But at the same time, this implies that a global shift in our attitude towards the place we call home could rekindle this dwindling connection.
So maybe that’s where all the good aliens are: out of sight, waiting for us to come into our senses.
Getting your science fiction fix can be tricky without Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or that thing called basic cable. After some digging, we found streaming services aren’t the only ones with a plethora of sci-fi films available; YouTube has a selection of free movies for your viewing pleasure.
1. The Mars Underground
Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer and founder of The Mars Society, had some wild ideas for getting humans to Mars back in 2007, which 10 years later makes much more sense. Once we’ve landed, Zubrin discusses civilization and how humans will use the soil to build tools, plant crops, produce oxygen, and eventually populate the planet with the first true martians.
2. I’ll Follow You Down
Erol, played by Haley Joel Osment (yeah, the kid from The Sixth Sense, Forrest Gump, and Pay It Forward), learns that his father time travelled to 1946 to meet Albert Einstein and never came back. As the title suggests, the son follows his dad through time to bring him home. Thrilling, chilling, and probably more heartwarming than your usual sci-fi film, the story will make you think about what it means to exist in this multidimensional universe we call home.
3. The Machine
Two computer programmers engineer a humanoid machine that may just be “too human.” Of course, the Ministry of Defense steals and weaponizes the technology, setting it off on a killing spree. This part sci-fi, part thriller won a slough of awards, including a few BAFTA awards for Best Film, Best Original Music, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup and Hair.
4. Battle Beyond the Stars
In this 1980 fantasy, a farmer on a fictional planet called Akir forms an army to fend off Sador, who is basically an evil mutant warlord. The infamous B-movie is a cross between Star Wars and something really bad, but it has gained a cult following in the past decade, mostly for the nostalgia of horrible special effects and cheesy one-liners.
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still
Now this is a true classic. The 1951 blockbuster is a futuristic twist on the Cold War era. An alien and a robot visit Earth to tell humans to stop being so destructive, or their planet will be destroyed. The epic film won a Golden Globe in 1952 for Best Film Promoting International Understanding — discontinued by the Academy in 1964 — and continued on to gain a slot at the OFTA Film Hall of Fame.
6. Algorithm
The tagline for this film says it all: “The geeks have inherited the Earth… the rest of you just don’t know it yet.” A hacker stumbles upon a secret government computer program and is incidentally sucked into the revolution. Although the plot seemed genius, the execution was not. The movie got terrible reviews and ratings. It’s a wonder why hackers haven’t gone in to change it yet.
7. The Drift
This one gets credit for being super low budget and for faster-than-light space crystals, which allow humans to travel the stars effortlessly. Eventually a “dark wave” wipes out the power of the crystals, leaving humans drifting (get it?) aimlessly around the universe. 20 years later, a vessel with alive humans arrives at a spaceship graveyard where they find some pretty spooky things. Understanding it was made for only 5000 pounds, you might grow to appreciate it.
8. Lost: Black Earth
This Australian indie flick took five years to make because all of the actors were volunteers and could only work on the weekends. After total destruction by an alien empire, Earth is failing to revive itself via terraforming technology. Then four rebels join forces to take down the alien overlords. In addition to being available on YouTube, this 2004 film’s success also boasts an award for Best Sound at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
9. Avalon: Beyond the Abyss
If you thought the Mayan calendar was foretelling doomsday in 2012, then this movie is perfect for you. When a remote island blows up and begins leaking a poisonous black algae into the ocean, marine biologists come to the rescue. Melding ancient history and science into one, this sci-fi thriller will have you fearing the apocalypse all over again.
10. The Darwin Conspiracy
In The Darwin Conspiracy, a scientist discovers a frozen humanoid who is unexpectedly advanced and whose DNA could potentially start a super-human race. Despite being written by Glen A. Larson (Battlestar Galactica, Magnum, P.I.), this 1999 film is situated on the better end of the YouTube scale.
11. Attack of the Giant Leeches
In this black-and-white classic, produced in 1959, a doctor and a drunken game hunter discover giant leeches eating humans in a local swamp. It takes rounding up the entire police force before they can do anything about it. The movie is funny nowadays but was a real horror back then.
12. Zombie Night
The whole point of zombie movies is to laugh at how dumb the living are and to look at the great make up/special effects, and this movie has both. There is really no plot but for the characters to survive. Topped off with star-quality screams and a mediocre script, this is the perfect zombie movie for a Friday night in.
13. Alien Uprising
This sci-fi thriller follows a group of friends into the alien apocalypse. Huge spaceships descend onto earth, shutting down power and communication and sending humans into a frenzied panic. The reviews are pretty awful, but special effects and a love of chaos might be all you need to get into this film.
14. Battlespace
This movie was ahead of its time with a female protagonist leading the show. Sure, the acting isn’t great, the cinematography is truly awful, and the sound effects are horrendous, but seeing a lady kick butt and save the human race is pretty cool.
15. Darkening Sky
Boy Meets World’s Rider Strong stars in this sci-fi meets horror movie. Following a dream about an alien abduction, he wakes up to find his girlfriend missing. Oddly enough, he is a grad student studying UFOs and mythology, so he uses ~brain power~ to solve the mystery.
On April 26, NASA’s Cassini space probe took a bold dive toward the surface of Saturn, getting closer than any spacecraft had before. Scientists have already learned a lot from Cassini’s plunge, such as the fact that the gas giant’s ring gap is completely empty. That’s pretty cool, but here’s something even more astounding: You can now watch Cassini’s descent in a video made from the images it took.
That’s right, you can see what it’s like to fly toward the face of Saturn.
The photos were captured over the course of an hour as Cassini moved both toward the planet and southward over it. The first pictures are of Saturn’s whirling north pole vortex; next they show the probe moving over the edge of Saturn’s famous hexagon-shaped cloud pattern (which is wider than the diameter of two Earths, and is formed by a jet stream around the pattern’s perimeter) and further down the planet.
“I was surprised to see so many sharp edges along the hexagon’s outer boundary and the eye-wall of the polar vortex,” said Kunio Sayanagi of the Cassini imaging team in a press release. “Something must be keeping different latitudes from mixing to maintain those edges.”
Now, you may think the pixelation isn’t great, but that’s just because you’re used to footage from cameras that shoot objects at a much closer range. At the start of the video, Cassini is 45,000 miles higher than Saturn’s clouds, and even by the end it’s still 4,200 miles above them. The smallest resolvable features in the shot are 5.4 miles per pixel at the start of the video and 0.5 miles per pixel at the finish.
But Andrew Ingersoll of the Cassini team did note that the camera settings used by the space probe this time were “conservative,” and added, “We plan to make updates to our observations for a similar opportunity on June 28 that we think will result in even better views.”
So, if you thought this video was neat, just wait for the images from Cassini’s next dive through the rings in late June.
'Star Wars' Tech: 8 Sci-Fi Inventions and Their Real-Life Counterparts
'Star Wars' Tech: 8 Sci-Fi Inventions and Their Real-Life Counterparts
By Edd Gent, Live Science Contributor
Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm
INTRO: 'Star Wars' Tech
A long time ago in a studio far, far away, filmmaker George Lucas created one of the seminal works of science fiction: the "Star Wars" movie series.
Nearly 40 years later, the ideas introduced by the films are still staples of the genre, and with new installments of the series set to hit theaters in the coming years, fans will be pleased to see lightsabers, hyperdrives and speeders in abundance.
While the science and technologies behind the franchise are firmly rooted in fantasy, their enduring appeal has served as inspiration for many real-life scientists and engineers. Here are some of the most notable attempts to turn "Star Wars'" science fiction into science fact.
Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm
1. Lightsabers
The most iconic piece of "Star Wars" technology is the lightsaber, but it's also probably the most far-fetched, experts say. The photons that make up light have long been considered massless particles that don't interact with each other, which makes the prospect of clashing beams of light in epic lightsaber duels unlikely.
In 2013, however, researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated that when pairs of photons were fired through a cloud of supercooled atoms, the photons emerged as a single molecule. Talking about the interaction between the particles to the Harvard Gazette, Mikhail Lukin, a professor of physics at Harvard, said, "It's not an inapt analogy to compare this to lightsabers." [Infographic: Secrets of the Jedi Lightsaber]
But Eric Davis, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, in Texas, said re-creating the effect in real life is a whole other ball game. "Lightsabers are purely fictional and will never be developed," he said. "Using the contraptions and cryogenic equipment to produce trapped quantum gases 2 feet [0.6 m] from the end of a lightsaber emitter is impractical."
But all is not lost when it comes to light-based weapons: Scientists are close to developing weapons similar to the blaster guns featured in "Star Wars." In fact, the U.S. Navy has already demonstrated a ship-based laser weapon capable of shooting drones out of the sky and disabling small boats. And this summer, the U.S. Air Force began testing another laser-based weapon that is five times as powerful as the Navy's version, and small enough to be fitted to fighter jets and Humvees.
Credit: LucasFilms
2. Hyperspace
In the films, spaceships like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon are able to jet between solar systems that are light-years apart. According to "Star Wars" canon, these "hyperdrive" propulsion systems let intergalactic travelers jump into a shadow dimension called "hyperspace," which provides shortcuts between points in real space.
While the movies are hazy on the details, the idea of hyperspace and faster-than-light (FTL) travel has a basis in real science, said Davis, who researches the possibility of FTL travel.
While it's impossible to travel faster than light, the curved nature of space-time proposed by Albert Einstein suggests space could be distorted to shorten the distance between two points. One way of doing this would be a warp drive that contracts space in front of a ship and expands it behind the vessel. Another would be to create a wormhole, or a section of space that curves in on itself to create a shortcut between distant locations. Creating these kinds of distortions would require exotic matter with so-called "negative energy," Davis told Live Science, a phenomenon that has been demonstrated in the lab using the Casimir effect, which can be measured as the force of attraction or repulsion between two parallel mirrors that are placed just tiny distances apart in a vacuum. [Warped Physics: 10 Effects of Faster-Than-Light Travel]
Earlier this year, a lab called Eagleworks, based at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, claimed to have created a warp drive that appears to exploit this effect to create spatial distortions in a vacuum. But, sadly for sci-fi fans, the lab's unpublished findings have been met with skepticism. And Davis, an FTL optimist, called the claims "bizarre and questionable."
"These remain as speculative theoretical concepts at present because they remain under further theoretical study and also because there is no technology envisioned that can implement them," he said. "It might take between 50 and 300 years to develop the technology that produces traversable wormholes or warp drives."
Credit: Aerofex/Screengrab via YouTube
3. Speeders
A less conceptually troublesome mode of transport featured in "Star Wars" is likely a lot closer to being realized. A number of firms are currently trying to create working versions of "hoverbikes," known as "speeders" in the films.
Aerofex, a California-based startup company, developed the Aero-X vehicle, which is described as "a hovercraft that rides like a motorcycle," and can fly at 45 mph (72 km/h) up to 10 feet (3 meters) off the ground. For speed demons, U.K.-based Malloy Aeronautics' Hoverbike is projected to reach speeds of more than 170 mph (274 km/h) at the same altitude as a helicopter.
Both Aerofex and Malloy Aeronautics' hoverbikes use standard gasoline, but environmentally conscious "Star Wars" fans could soon have futuristic transportation alternatives, too. Bay Zoltan Nonprofit Ltd., a Hungarian state-owned applied research institute, has created an electric battery-powered tricopter called the Flike. Before you get your hopes up, though, all three vehicles are still firmly in the design phase.
"To me, the most important thing about 'Star Wars' is the idea that humans' future is in space,” said British science communicator Mark Brake, who put on a show called "The Science of Star Wars" last year. "Effectively, what it's all about is trade and imperial development in a series of solar systems, and actually now we are beginning to discover these solar systems."
More than 2,000 exoplanets have now been found, and in 2011, NASA's Kepler space telescope discovered the first planet orbiting around two suns, just like Luke Skywalker's fictional home planet Tatooine. The planet, dubbed Kepler-16b, is an uninhabitable gas giant, but in 2012, the telescope was used to discover two more planets in binary star systems that are extremely close to the so-called habitable zone. (This is the region around a star in which liquid water could flow on a planet's surface.)
Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm
5. Droids
Another ever-present feature of the "Star Wars" universe are droids, which are robots that act as personal servants, pilots, technicians and even soldiers. Today, there are a growing number of analogies in the real world, ranging from automated military drones to Google's driverless cars and robotic surgical assistants. [The 6 Strangest Robots Ever Created]
This summer, robots competed in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge Finals. The humanoid robots tackled complex challenges, including driving a vehicle, opening a door, climbing steps and turning off a valve.
The majority of the bots performed well in the competition, but these machines were only semiautonomous, meaning a human operator was almost constantly in control of the robot. So, while the machinery of modern robotics can match the clunky "Star Wars" droids, there's a long way to go in making real robots as smart, said Jerry Pratt, an expert in algorithms for bipedal walking and co-leader of the Florida-based Institute for Human and Machine Cognition's team, which competed in the Robotics Challenge Finals, winning second place.
"The hard part is the artificial intelligence," Pratt told Live Science. "We're getting to the point where sensory-input devices are nearly as good [as], if not better than human sight. But [having the robots] actually understanding what [they] are looking at is what's difficult. It's small things like being able to look at a cup and understand what a cup is and understand that it's something you put liquid in. Unless it is hand-coded by a human, we are pretty much nowhere at this point, and it's hard to say what needs to happen."
Credit: Lucasfilm
6. Tractor beams
Light could also help replicate another interesting technology from the "Star Wars" franchise: the tractor beam, which is an invisible energy field that can grab, trap and move objects. Since the early 2010s, scientists have been creating lasers with unusual beam-intensity profiles that allow them to attract and repulse tiny particles.
Just last year, researchers from the Australian National University broke the distance record for tractor beams by using a doughnut-shaped laser to drag hollow, glass spheres for up to 7.8 inches (20 centimeters), roughly 100 times further than in previous experiments.
And just a couple months ago, a team from the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, showed that sound could rival light as the source of future tractor beams. The researchers used a precisely timed sequence of sound waves from an array of tiny loudspeakers to create a region of low pressure that effectively counteracts gravity, levitating tiny balls of polystyrene in midair. The balls could then be pulled, pushed and spun using only sound waves.
Credit: Hewlett-Packard
7. Holograms
When you're trapped in the tractor beam of an Imperial Star Destroyer and facing certain doom, there's no better way of sending a mayday message than via hologram. But while specially designed glasses have been used to create the illusion of 3D images for decades, free-standing holographic videos have been hard to reproduce.
In recent years, an old stage trick invented by John Pepper in the 19th century to give the illusion of a ghostlike apparition on stage has been revived, most notably to seemingly resurrect deceased rapper Tupac Shakur at the Coachella music festival in 2012. The method relies on a superthin sheet of foil hung at a 45-degree angle from the stage that is invisible to the naked eye but reflects images from a projector. The trick gives the illusion of a 3D image but only if you are standing in front of it.
Closer to the mark is the Voxiebox "swept surface volumetric display" made by Voxon, the result of a merger between two groups of Australian and American inventors. 3D models are sliced into hundreds of horizontal cross sections before a superfast projector beams them onto a flat screen that rapidly moves up and down. The human eye blends these projections together to create a 3D image that can move and be viewed from any angle, just like during Princess Leia's message to Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope."
Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.
8. The Force
Binding the entire "Star Wars" universe together is the concept of the Force, which gives Jedi knights their magical powers and provides the backdrop for the battle between good and evil.
Earlier this year, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider announced they had discovered the first unequivocal evidence for the phenomenon, with a certain diminutive green spokesperson remarking, "Very impressive, this result is." Sadly for those aspiring Jedi out there, it was an elaborate April Fools' Day prank.
But, with the Force due to awaken later this month, there may be hope for them yet.
Dark Matter Is the Real Guardian of the Galaxies (Video)
Dark Matter Is the Real Guardian of the Galaxies (Video)
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
Step aside, Star-Lord – there's another superhero in the universe, and it's "guarding" far more galaxies than you can even fathom.
In honor of the release of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" in movie theaters today (May 5), scientists with the Hubble Space Telescope have released gorgeous new images of all the galaxies in our universe. The abundance of galaxies in Hubble's view illustrates that, in the grand scheme of things, the fictional Marvel galaxy is pretty insignificant.
Not only does the real universe have far more galaxies (an estimated 2 trillion of them) but it also has a much bigger, darker and mysterious guardian of those galaxies: Dark matter, according to Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer Dan Coe. Space.com spoke with Coe about all those galaxies in Hubble's latest images, and Coe explained how dark matter is really holding the universe together. [Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe]
Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster Abell 370.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)
"So dark matter is this mysterious stuff that makes up most of the stuff in the universe. It's all around us, but we don't know what it is yet," Coe said. "We can start to map it out and see it with gravitational lensing." (Gravitational lensing is the warping of light around objects in space that have a strong gravitational pull.)
These images from the Hubble Space Telescope's Frontier Fields program features massive galaxy clusters that act as gravitational lenses in space, magnifying and stretching images of distant objects in the background that would otherwise be too small and faint for Hubble to see.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and the HFF team
"If it wasn't for this dark matter – this extra mass that holds [galaxies] together – they would all fly apart. And so you could call dark matter really the guardian of the galaxies," Coe said.
Of course, dark matter won't be able to battle any supervillains with diabolical plans to take over the galaxies Hubble has spotted, but, thankfully, scientists have found no evidence that Thanos, Ronan or any other evil characters could possibly exist in our universe.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience.
Ancient Meteor Strike Triggered Eruptions Lasting Up to a Million Years
Ancient Meteor Strike Triggered Eruptions Lasting Up to a Million Years
By Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributorµ
A huge meteor that hit Earth about 2 billion years ago was responsible for explosive and long-lived volcanic eruptions, scientists have found.
Credit: solarseven/Shutterstock
A giant meteor impact on Earth nearly 2 billion years ago triggered more explosive and long-lived volcanic eruptions than previously thought, a new study finds.
This finding sheds light on how meteor bombardment may have dramatically shaped the evolution of the early Earth, researchers in the new study said.
Gargantuan craters are seen pockmarking the rest of the solar system as well. Recent studies of such impact craters on the moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars suggested that meteor strikes could trigger volcanic activity.
However, over the course of millions of years, geological activity has eradicated the vast majority of ancient impact craters on Earth. This has limited research into whether meteor strikes could also set off volcanism on Earth, said study senior author Balz Kamber, a geochemist in Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and his colleagues.
To see what effects giant impacts might have had on the surface of the Earth, the researchers analyzed one of the oldest meteor craters on the planet, the 1.85-billion-year-old Sudbury basin in Canada. It's also the second-largest and best-preserved crater on Earth, measuring about 93 to 161 miles (150 to 260 km) in diameter. A 2015 study estimated that the crater may have been created by a comet about 9.3 miles (15 km) wide.
From 2013 to 2014, the scientists in the new study collected samples from the 0.93-mile-thick (1.5 km) layer of rock that filled the Sudbury crater. Although the crater is easy for researchers to get to, "there are lots and lots of blackflies in the spring, and later mosquitoes, and in the summer, there are a lot of blueberries, and so a lot of black bears," Kamber said.
The scientists examined 139 samples from 15 locations in the crater. Their analysis suggested that this material not only consisted of rock that had melted from the heat of the impact, but was also peppered with tiny fragments of volcanic rock.
The researchers noted that these volcanic rocks often had very distinctive angular shapes resembling crab claws. These shapes form when gas bubbles expand in molten rock that then catastrophically explodes, a feature of violent eruptions involving water, such as those seen under glaciers in Iceland, the researchers explained. They said these angular Sudbury volcanic rocks likely arose when seawater flooded the crater floor, either gradually or suddenly.
In addition, the scientists found that the composition of these volcanic-rock fragments varied in nature, with some originating from molten crust and others from "a deeper magma source," Kamber said. These findings suggested that the volcanic activity that created these rocks changed over time and was therefore prolonged, he said.
How long might this meteor-triggered volcanism have lasted? "I think 1 million years would have been an upper limit," Kamber said. "Hundreds of thousands of years is a more reasonable estimate."
These findings shed light on how meteors could have influenced the evolution of early Earth, Kamber said.
"About 3.8 billion to 4 billion years ago, we know the inner solar system experienced heavy bombardment from impactors," Kamber said. The oldest rocks on the planet coincide with the last peak of this bombardment, suggesting that "the older rocks on Earth were somehow destroyed by this bombardment," he said. "The bombardment alone would not have done sufficient damage to have caused the comprehensive loss of primordial rocks on Earth, but if that bombardment also triggered additional eruptions, that could have buried the primordial rocks and plowed them back into the mantle."
The scientists said they are now investigating whether the deep magma they detected in the crater came from the deep crust or from the mantle layer just beneath Earth's crust. They detailed their findings April 22 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Paging Star-Lord! Hubble Spies Hundreds of Galaxies That Need Guarding
Paging Star-Lord! Hubble Spies Hundreds of Galaxies That Need Guarding
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
As Star-Lord and his team head to the big screen this weekend to guard a galaxy in the Marvel universe, new images from the Hubble Space Telescope remind us that there are far more galaxies in our own universe without any superheroes to protect them from evil villains.
"Much like the eclectic group of space rebels in the upcoming film 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2', NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has some amazing superpowers, specifically when it comes to observing innumerable galaxies flung across time and space," NASA officials said in a statement that was published along with some incredible new views of galaxies in deep space.
A gorgeous galaxy cluster named Abell 370 stars in the images, which NASA released on Thursday (May 4). The cluster contains hundreds of galactic neighbors bound together by their own gravitational pull. Abell 370 lies about 4 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Sea Monster). But you can also see more distant galaxies that lie behind the cluster. [The 10 Must-Read 'Guardians of the Galaxy' Stories]
Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster Abell 370.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)
The background galaxies in appear cloudy and distorted due to an effect called gravitational lensing. All that gravity from the hundreds of galaxies inside the cluster bands the light that comes from the other side, causing those distant objects to appear warped.
"These far-flung galaxies are too faint for Hubble to see directly, NASA officials said in the statement. "Instead, the cluster acts as a huge lens in space that magnifies and stretches images of background galaxies like a funhouse mirror." One of these warped galaxies seen in Hubble's new images is nicknamed "the Dragon" for its shape and size.
These images from the Hubble Space Telescope's Frontier Fields program features massive galaxy clusters that act as gravitational lenses in space, magnifying and stretching images of distant objects in the background that would otherwise be too small and faint for Hubble to see.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and the HFF team
Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble telescope has provided the deepest views of the cosmos we've even seen. Unlike the superpowers of the heroes in the Marvel realm, Hubble's superpower is far from science fiction. So if and when you decide to go see "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (which hits movie theaters Friday, May 5), maybe you'll take a moment to stop and think about the countless defenseless galaxies in the real universe that Hubble is keeping an eye on.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience.
Verborgen, extra dimensies in het heelal. Dit is hoe we ze kunnen vinden
Verborgen, extra dimensies in het heelal. Dit is hoe we ze kunnen vinden
Verborgen dimensies in het heelal kunnen rimpelingen teweegbrengen in onze realiteit. Het waarnemen van deze extra dimensies kan enkele van de grootste mysteries in het universum helpen oplossen.
Natuurkundigen vragen zich al lange tijd af waarom de zwaartekracht in vergelijking met andere fundamentele krachten zo zwak is.
Dit komt mogelijk omdat een deel ervan weglekt naar extra dimensies die buiten de drie ruimtelijke dimensies bestaan die wij kunnen zien.
Grote uitdaging
Het waarnemen van extra dimensies is echter een grote uitdaging. Wetenschappers hopen dat ze opduiken tijdens experimenten met de Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Ze hebben hun hoop ook gevestigd op zwaartekrachtgolven, rimpelingen in de ruimtetijd die worden veroorzaakt door de beweging van enorme objecten.
“Als er extra dimensies zijn in het heelal, kunnen zwaartekrachtgolven zich naar iedere dimensie begeven, zelfs de extra dimensies,” zei Gustavo Lucena Gomez van het Max Planck Instituut in Duitsland.
Niet waar te nemen
Hij heeft berekend hoe extra dimensies de zwaartekrachtgolven zouden beïnvloeden. De extra dimensies bleken de ‘normale’ zwaartekrachtgolven te veranderen, waardoor de ruimte op een specifieke manier vervormde.
Lucena Gomez hoopt deze vervormingen op te pikken met behulp van detectoren.
De extra dimensies bleken ook een ‘enorme toren’ van extra zwaartekrachtgolven te genereren, maar met huidige technologieën zijn deze golven niet waar te nemen, aldus Lucena Gomez.
Flitsende UFO gezien in Parijs. Hoe kan het dat deze UFO ook in deze andere verre landen gezien werd?
Flitsende UFO gezien in Parijs. Hoe kan het dat deze UFO ook in deze andere verre landen gezien werd?
UFO-jagers maken melding van oplichtende objecten die in de lucht boven Frankrijk, China en Australië zijn gespot.
Beelden uit de buurt van de Franse hoofdstad Parijs tonen felle lichten in de lucht en een sigaarvormig, knipperend object.
Enkele jaren terug werd een soortgelijke UFO waargenomen, zo blijkt. In 2010 werd een belangrijke luchthaven in China gesloten vanwege een onbekend vliegend object.
Omgeleid
Het platte, sigaarvormige object zweefde een tijdje rond boven een luchthaven in Binnen-Mongolië en verdween uiteindelijk plots.
Een aantal vluchten werd omgeleid omdat de luchtverkeersleiding bang was dat het anders tot een botsing met de UFO zou komen.
Verband
In juli 2010 ging de internationale luchthaven Hangzhou Xiaoshan ook al dicht nadat een vreemd object op de radar was verschenen. Ook vanaf de grond werd het knipperende object waargenomen.
Er zou in 2013 een soortgelijke UFO-waarneming zijn gedaan in Gold Coast in Australië. Is er misschien een verband tussen de waarnemingen?
DE ORANJE EN/OF WITTE BOLLEN ZIJN WEER TERUG ( VIDEO )
DE ORANJE EN/OF WITTE BOLLEN ZIJN WEER TERUG ( VIDEO )
De laatste jaren zijn er door talloze mensen overal ter wereld oranje/witte bollen waargenomen die dikwijls in formaties door de lucht vliegen.
Een kenmerk is altijd dat ze geen geluid maken en hoewel het enige tijd vrij stil is geweest rondom deze objecten, duiken ze nu weer op.
Door de jaren heen hebben wij talloze meldingen ontvangen en ook artikelen geschreven over de mysterieuze oranje of soms witte bollen die mensen in de lucht waarnemen.
Het zijn niet echt de bekende UFO’s, dat wil zeggen een soort platte schijf met een koepel en ook zijn het niet de ook vaak voorkomende sigaarvormige.
Het zijn gewoon mysterieuze bollen die soms alleen worden waargenomen en soms in bepaalde formaties, maar altijd zonder geluid.
Misschien is er een reden dat er het afgelopen jaar relatief weinig meldingen zijn geweest van dit fenomeen, maar ze zijn in ieder geval nu weer terug en enkele dagen geleden waargenomen in Canada.
De getuige heeft het voorval aangemeld bij Mufon onder nummer 83517 en omschrijft de waarneming als volgt:
Op donderdag 27 april 2017 reed ik rond half acht ’s avonds met mijn drie dochters naar huis in West Kelowna in Brits Columbia in Canada.
Opeen zei mijn 6-jarige dochter: “Papa, wat zijn dat voor flikkerende lichten in de lucht?”.
Ik reed in zuidwestelijke richting en ik keek naar links toen ik verschillende (ongeveer zes) flitsende lichten zag die als het ware rond dansten in de lucht. Eerst had ik geen idee wat het was, maar dacht dat het misschien vuurpijlen waren of zelfs militaire vliegtuigen die bezig waren met een oefening.
Maar, omdat ik in de Okanagan vallei woon en er helemaal geen luchtmachtbasis in dat gebied is, wist ik dat we niet te maken hadden met een conventioneel militair toestel.
De objecten die ik waarnam, waren helemaal stil. Foor de manier waarop ze door de lucht bewogen, besefte ik dat wat ik zag niet een normaal of gemakkelijk te verklaren gebeurtenis was en hoogstwaarschijnlijk buitenaards.
Ik stopte snel langs de kant van de weg, greep mijn telefoon en ging naar buiten om de lichten te filmen. Toen merkte ik dat er plotseling een tweede groep (ongeveer vier of vijf) lichten verscheen, onder de eerste groep.
Het leek alsof deze lager vlogen bij het Okanagan meer voordat ze omhoog gingen en zich bij de eerste groep voegden. Deze twee groepen vormden samen twee verschillende formaties en gingen verder in oostelijke richting naar Kelowna.
Ik had mijn camera ingezoomd op beide groepen en bleef filmen toen ze wegvlogen. Of, tenminste, dat dacht ik. Na ongeveer 20 tot 30 seconden van “opnemen”, besefte ik dat ik de opname knop niet had ingedrukt. Ik deed dit alsnog en kon nog inzoomen op de objecten terwijl ze wegvlogen voor nog ongeveer 30 seconden voordat ze uit het zicht verdwenen.
Alhoewel het vroeg in de avond was en de zon aan het ondergaan was, was er nog steeds voldoende daglicht buiten. De objecten waren heel erg fel in de lucht. Ik ben er absoluut zeker van dat het geen vliegtuigen waren of wat voor soort vogels dan ook.
Toen ik de objecten voor het eerst zag, bevonden ze zich onder het wolkendek en lager dan de toppen van de bergen. De tweede groep scheen nog lager te vliegen in de vallei in de buurt van het meer.
Ik zou wat ik zag, willen omschrijven als oranje gloeiende bollen, omdat ik niet duidelijke lijnen kon waarnemen van een metalen object of iets dergelijks. Alleen maar lichten.
De objecten die ik zag maakten geen geluid.
Ook boven ons land zijn dit soort objecten regelmatig waargenomen, maar ook hier is het de laatste tijd relatief rustig geweest, althans wij hebben er weinig van gemerkt in de vorm van meldingen of berichten.
"Omstreeks 23.15-23.30 uur gisteravond, thuis, maandag 8 juli, was ik buiten een luchtje aan het scheppen. Naar de lucht kijkend zag ik een onverklaarbaar verschijnsel. Iets wat ik nog nooit eerder zo heb meegemaakt. Ik heb op het punt gestaan om de buren er bij te halen, maar vond het te laat om ze nog te storen.
Het betrof een serie helder verlichte objecten, constant licht, kleur geel-oranje, die zich met grote snelheid in een baan van Noord naar Zuid bewogen. Ik schat enkele tientallen stuks.
Ze bewogen zich met een constante snelheid in een strak formatieverband, dat onderweg qua verband en snelheid niet waarneembaar veranderde. De onderlinge afstand was naar ik schat een tot een paar honderd meter, de hoogte schat ik op 1 tot 2 km. De formatie was niet in lijn maar zat binnen een baan van enkele honderden meters. De eerste objecten waren al aan de Zuidelijke kant uit zicht verdwenen, terwijl nieuwe nog enige tijd vanaf de Noordkant in zicht kwamen.
Het was donker en een heldere, onbewolkte hemel. Het geheel voltrok zich in absolute stilte. Geen enkel motorgeluid was te horen. Het fenomeen duurde minuten lang.
Ik heb geen foto's genomen omdat de geloofwaardigheid ervan even discutabel is als mijn verhaal. Bovendien hechtte ik meer aan de analyse er naar kijkend dan aan de fotografische opname. Gezien de duisternis was er buiten het lichtverschijnsel eigenlijk niets te zien. De doorsnee van de lichtvlek per object was optisch 2-3 centimeter, wat op die hoogte een object van een aantal meters in doorsnede zou moeten betreffen. Een fenomeen als afgeleide van laserbeams lijkt me onmogelijk.
Ik heb verder verschillende mogelijkheden figuurlijk tegen het licht gehouden, maar kan er geen sluitende verklaring voor vinden. Wat er als optie over blijft is raadselachtig. Intussen heb ik de politie gebeld om te kijken of er andere meldingen waren. Bovendien heb ik het Radarcentrum in Nieuw Millingen van de Luchtmacht, dat in het kader van luchtverdediging 7 dagen per week, 24 uur per dag het NL luchtruim bewaakt, gebeld. In beide gevallen was er geen bevestiging van waarnemingen of meldingen hunnerzijds".
Is het inderdaad stil geworden in het Nederlandse luchtruim voor wat betreft oranje en/of witte bollen? Laat het ons weten.
Alien expert and private investigator D Sims discusses his latest work attempting to track down Men in Black (MIBs). He also attempts to uncover the truth behind abductions, alien implants and DNA.
Sims shared details of an encounter with an alien as well as his own abduction experiences, expounding on how the last event involved negative entities. These beings purportedly find their human subjects via neural imprints and often abduct people from the same family tree, he explained, stating that his son is also an abduction victim.
A witness in London had taken photos of a UFO that seemed to have been tailing a commercial airline.
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.
Here is a great capture of a UFO shooting past the Mars Curiosity Rover. The UFO is long and and well lit up from one of the Mars moons. At least, it looks like a moon, except for the beam of light coming from it. The UFO passes just below it and the sunlight bouncing off the moon hits the UFO. Rovers don't lie, they just record what they see and transmit to Earth. They have no feelings, no emotions, no reservations, just pure tech. Terrific find by Streetcap1.
Scott C. Waring
Streetcap1 states:
There is a whole batch of these but only one shows the ufos.
Small Dark Disk Appears Over Mexico City During Sunset, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Small Dark Disk Appears Over Mexico City During Sunset, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: March 5, 2017
Location of sighting: Mexico City, Mexico
This dark disk was seen over Mexico city two months back. The disk is very dark, which could be because the sun on the other side of it. These dark UFOs have been seen before. Once back in 2010 a professor at a university here in Taiwan took a similar photo of a craft, motorcycle size, dark that was holding position near a power line. (Click here to view that post).
This is a awesome capture, but I really wish the person had tried to hold the video more still, but it must have been far away, because the farther the object is, the harder it is to hold it in the view finder without jiggling the camera.
UFO-crash Roswell veranderde de hele wereld zonder dat we het wisten. Wat weet deze expert ons te vertellen?
UFO-crash Roswell veranderde de hele wereld zonder dat we het wisten. Wat weet deze expert ons te vertellen?
Berichten over neergestorte buitenaardse schepen werden na de vreemde gebeurtenissen bij Roswell in 1947 snel onder het tapijt geveegd.
Ingewijden begonnen zich uit te spreken en boden ons een glimp in de schimmige wereld van geheimhouding en doofpotten.
De Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournaliste Linda Moulton Howe kwam erachter dat er in de jaren veertig nog meer UFO’s zijn gecrasht in Amerika.
Drie crashplekken
In het programma Truth Hunter op Gaia vertelt ze dat ze in de jaren zeventig met dit onderwerp in aanraking kwam toen ze onderzoek deed naar gevallen van veeverminking.
Een sheriff en andere politieagenten zeiden tegen haar dat ‘de daders wezens uit de ruimte waren’.
Over het Roswellincident zegt ze: “We weten nu dat er tijdens een onweersbui in de nacht van 3 op 4 juli 1947 drie onbekende objecten op de radar verschenen, waarna drie crashplekken gemeld werden.”
Lichamen
In een rapport uit 1952 van Majestic 12, een geheime commissie samengesteld door president Truman, valt te lezen dat er vijf lichamen zijn geborgen bij de crash.
Twee lichamen werden gevonden in een zwaarbeschadigde ontsnappingscapsule, de resterende drie op enige afstand van de capsule.
Een andere overheidsgroep, de Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, schreef in een rapport dat er ‘andere lichamen waren gevonden die eruitzagen alsof ze waren ontleed als een kikker’.
Resten van dieren
In één van de gecrashte vaartuigen zijn naar verluidt resten van dieren gevonden, aldus de groep.
De schepen crashten bij Roswell, even ten zuiden van Socorro en het derde object kwam neer in het reservaat van de Mescalero.
In zijn boek MO41: The Bombshell Before Roswell schrijft Paul Blake Smith dat al in 1941, zes jaar voor het Roswellincident, een UFO was gecrasht in Amerika, vlak bij Cape Girardeau.
Geheim
Het leger zou toen drie identieke lichamen geborgen hebben ‘van wezens die niet van deze planeet kwamen’.
In een Amerikaans overheidsdocument valt te lezen dat de atoombom is voortgekomen uit de technologie die tijdens die crash is buitgemaakt.
“Dat betekent dat presidenten Roosevelt en Truman al tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, nog vóór de Roswell-crash, wisten van een buitenaardse aanwezigheid,” aldus Howe.
Gigantische cover-up rond ultrageheim ruimteprogramma. Hebben wij andere planeten gekoloniseerd?
Gigantische cover-up rond ultrageheim ruimteprogramma. Hebben wij andere planeten gekoloniseerd?
De Anunnaki kwamen zo’n 430.000 jaar geleden naar de aarde om te zoeken naar goud, zegt de Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijver en politicus Michael Tellinger in het programma Secret Space Program op Gaia.
Deze ‘luchtgoden’ zouden volgens Soemerische teksten de mens hebben gemaakt om te helpen het goud uit de bodem te halen.
Door de jaren heen zijn er vele vreemde schedels opgegraven. Zo deed de Amerikaanse schrijver Lloyd Pye onderzoek naar wat hij de Starchild skull noemde. Hij claimde dat de schedel toebehoorde aan een buitenaardse hybride.
Geheim ruimteprogramma
Veel culturen kennen verhalen over de luchtgoden. Zo denken de Dogon uit Mali dat hun voorouders van Sirius komen. Ook de Aboriginals en Azteken spraken van de ‘goden uit de lucht’.
Experts stellen dat aliens nog altijd hier zijn en dat er een geheim ruimteprogramma is waar de meeste mensen geen weet van hebben.
Laura Eisenhower, de achterkleindochter van president Dwight Eisenhower, claimt dat er al bases op Mars zijn.
De Amerikaanse sergeant Clifford Stone heeft openlijk gezegd dat hij naar locaties werd gestuurd waar onbekende vaartuigen waren neergestort.
Solar Warden
“Wij zagen lichamen van entiteiten die niet op deze planeet waren geboren,” verklaarde Stone, die toevoegde dat hij ook levende aliens heeft gezien.
William Tompkins onthulde dat hij voor vliegtuigbouwer Douglas ruimteschepen voor de Amerikaanse marine moest ontwerpen. Dit project werd Solar Warden genoemd.
De grotere schepen hadden een omvang van één tot zes kilometer, verklaarde Tompkins.
Slot en grendel
Deze ruimteschepen werden volgens hem in de jaren zeventig daadwerkelijk gebouwd in een ondergrondse installatie in Utah.
Al deze technologieën worden achter slot en grendel bewaard zodat de rest van de wereld ze niet kan ontwikkelen, legde schrijver en onderzoeker Richard Dolan uit.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
