Some Of The World’s Top Scientists Met Recently To Discuss How To Find Alien Life

A remarkable meeting of minds took place in California last month on April 20 and 21. Stanford University was the scene for the second annual Breakthrough Discuss, where scientists from a variety of fields came together to tackle arguably the greatest question we have ever faced – are we alone in the universe?

The event was part of Breakthrough Initiatives, a bold program started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to spark advancements in the search for life. This includes searching for alien signals via Breakthrough Listen and potentially traveling to Proxima b, the closest exoplanet to Earth, with Breakthrough Starshot.

The idea of Breakthrough Discuss was not only to talk about these ventures, but also to explore the broader search for life. This includes finding potentially habitable worlds around nearby stars like the TRAPPIST-1 system and more recent discoveries relating to Enceladus. There were also discussions on the possibility of finding signals from aliens, known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

“I’m just so delighted with this meeting,” Jill Tarter from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told IFLScience. “We want to know what our place in the universe is. Are we part of something that’s quite common, or are we totally separate and unusual and unique?”

^{A panel discussion at the event. Jonathan O'Callaghan/IFLScience}

Breakthrough Discuss began with a series of talks on red dwarf stars and their potential for hosting life. The idea has come to the fore recently, particularly with places like TRAPPIST-1 40 light-years away found to have multiple rocky planets in orbit. Red dwarfs are the most numerous stars in our galaxy, and their relative dimness compared to our Sun makes it easier to see and study the planets in orbit around them.

It’s still not clear if a planet in orbit around a red dwarf can be habitable; the stars are temperamental and prone to flaring. But they are undoubtedly attractive targets, and they may be some of the best places to look for life. Just the other day, a new planet was found around the red dwarf LHS 1140b, also about 40 light-years away, which has been heralded as a great place to look.

Guillem Anglada-Escudé from Queen Mary University of London gave the keynote talk of the conference, discussing how he and his team were going to study the nearest red dwarfs for planets. We already know Proxima Centauri 4.2 light-years away plays host to at least one – Proxima b – and it may have more. Now, Anglada-Escudé and his team will shift their focus to Barnard’s Star 6 light-years away, and other nearby red dwarfs, as part of a new project called Red Dots to find nearby planets. We should know by the end of the year if there’s anything there.

“We want to get more science done, look for more planets,” Anglada-Escudé, who was recently named one of Time’s 100 most influential people, told IFLScience. “You never know what’s there until you look for it.”

^{Anglada-Escudé presents his research at Breakthrough Discuss. onathan O'Callaghan/IFLScience}

Finding these planets is only the first part, though. A number of scientists are now investigating what techniques we can use to work out if they have any life on them. Direct imaging of the surfaces will be next to impossible, so instead we’ll need to examine the atmospheres of the planets by studying the light that comes through them from their host star.

Most of the work in this area focuses on a handful of molecules such as oxygen and methane, but in total there are 1,500 molecules that could be useful. Huge upcoming ground-based telescopes – known as Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) – like the upcoming Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii and the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile will help in this endeavor, as will NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

“I’m very excited about the planets around low mass stars,” Sir Martin Rees, the UK Astronomer Royal, told IFLScience. “And I think it’s very good to realize that the next-generation race to build giant ground-based telescopes is going to open up the possibility of getting real spectroscopic data on the nearest planets.”

The field has changed dramatically in just a few years. In 2009, when NASA launched its Kepler Telescope, we still weren’t sure how common planets were around other stars. Now we know of thousands, and we’re honing in on some that could be habitable. Every star is now thought to host at least one planet on average, and likely many more.

And the question of finding life is the driving factor of it all. We’ve got no idea if life like that on our planet is common, or if we’re a rare gem in a dead universe. We may be able to answer that question inside our own Solar System, with places like Enceladus and Europa looking like they may have the necessary conditions for life. But exoplanets carry an almost equal allure.

“It’s an amazing time to be involved in the search for life,” Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University in New York, told IFLScience. “This is the first time in human history we have the means to do it, and if we get really lucky and find life starts everywhere, we could actually have the proof that we’re not alone in hand pretty soon.”

^{Enceladus looks like a great bet for life in our Solar System. NASA/JPL-Caltech}

The idea that life might be common in the universe has also driven SETI for decades, with early pioneers like Frank Drake in 1960 suggesting we might be able to hear signals from advanced civilizations around other stars. SETI has struggled for funding over the years, but Milner’s injection of $100 million ensures the search will continue for at least 10 years as part of Breakthrough Listen.

“We’ll take funding from any source we can,” said Tarter. “If we discover a signal, or if we discover life beyond Earth, that information is not coming to California, it’s coming to the planet. These kinds of scientific explorations should be international and global.”

Truth be told, it was somewhat of an odd marriage seeing SETI discussed alongside more grounded science at Breakthrough Discuss. The prospect of finding a signal from an alien civilization is still far-fetched; in six decades of searching, we’ve found nothing. It’s often said that if we don’t look we’ll never know, but SETI remains somewhat fanciful.

“I’m working on the search for life on other planets, planets orbiting alien suns,” said Kaltenegger. “And at this conference, it’s the most conservative thing that’s being talked about!”

That’s not to say there might be nothing out there, and it might well be worth the search. Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, presented the first scientific results from the first year of the Breakthrough Listen project, on which he is also the lead. While nothing was found, this is one of the most extensive searches to date. If it draws a blank after a decade, well, that may force a rethink.

“At what point do we give up on SETI?” a panel of experts at Breakthrough Discuss was asked. “Not any time soon,” replied Tarter.

^{TRAPPIST-1 may have three potentially habitable worlds. NASA/JPL-Caltech}

And then there was the grand finale, the discussion about actually sending a spacecraft to a planet around another star. This project, called Breakthrough Starshot, was announced in April 2016 to considerable fanfare. Using a giant laser on Earth, a small chip with a massive sail would be accelerated to one-fifth the speed of light, reaching Proxima Centauri – and thus Proxima b – in just 20 years.

Breakthrough Discuss, however, highlighted just how difficult such a proposal might be. One attendee told IFLScience that they thought the project was now less likely to happen that it was a year prior, based on the huge number of challenges that have become apparent.

One is actually firing the laser at the spacecraft in the first place, laid bare by Zac Manchester from Harvard University in a fascinating talk titled “How to ride a laser beam”. He pointed out that the force of the laser hitting a flat sail could send it spiraling off course, so it may be necessary to use a spherical sail to stay on track for Proxima. This itself presents new challenges that have yet to be solved, such as how to spread the force of the laser over the whole sail.

Even if the spacecraft gets there, sending data back is also a huge issue. The chip at its center will be barely a gram in weight, with the sail mere atoms thick. Thus there will be no room for an antenna to transmit data – including images of the planet – back to our planet. Some novel ideas include using the sail itself as a giant antenna, although we don’t yet know if this is possible.

^{Will Starshot get off the ground? Breakthrough Initiatives}

And even if we get there, the flyby will be extremely brief. René Heller from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany said in a talk how, after 20 years of travel, the flyby would last just a matter of seconds. He instead proposed using Proxima’s companion stars, Alpha Centauri A and B, to slow down the spacecraft and enter orbit around Proxima b, something that would return much more data at the cost of a much longer mission. We’ve covered this interstellar roundtrip idea before if you want some more information.

But even if Starshot never gets off the ground, it is at least inspiring some critical thinking in the area of interstellar travel that has not been explored before. Even materials science stands to benefit, with Heller showing off a small piece of graphene that could be used to develop giant sails for traversing the Solar System and beyond.

And Yuri Milner himself seems anything but disheartened, explaining his ethos in a fascinating but sadly off-the-record discussion with IFLScience and other journalists. He remains committed to the cause though, and clearly wants to be part of a discovery that makes life on another planet a possibility, whether that’s humanity or an alien race.

“Breakthrough Discuss boldly demonstrated that we stand on the precipice of making one of the most amazing discoveries in the history of humanity,” Siemion told IFLScience.

For every speculative fantasy, the conference remained mostly grounded in science. If we are going to discover we are not alone, the people who'll find out were very likely present at this event.

{ http://www.iflscience.com/ }

09-05-2017 om 18:15 geschreven door peter  

The Search for Life on Mars Is about to Get Weird

Astrobiologists ponder sending gene sequencers, weather stations, drilling rigs and more to the Red Planet

By Leonard David

MESA, Arizona—Since the dawn of the space age NASA and other agencies have spent billions of dollars to reconnoiter Mars—assailing it with spacecraft flybys, photo-snapping orbiters and landers nose-diving onto its surface. The odds are good, many scientists say, for the Red Planet being an extraterrestrial address for alien life—good enough to sustain decades’ worth of landing very expensive robots to ping it with radar, zap it with lasers, trundle across its terrain and scoop up its dirt. Yet against all odds (and researchers’ hopes for a watershed discovery), Mars remains a poker-faced world that holds its cards tight. No convincing signs of life have emerged. But astrobiologists continue to, quite literally, chip away at finding the truth.

As the search becomes more heated (some would say more desperate), scientists are entertaining an ever-increasing number of possible explanations for Martian biology as a no-show. For example, could there be a “cover up” whereby the harsh Martian environment somehow obliterates all biosignatures—all signs of past or present life? Or perhaps life there is just so alien its biosignatures are simply unrecognizable to us, hidden in plain view.

Of course, the perplexing quest to find life on Mars may have a simple solution: It’s not there, and never was. But as the proceedings of this year’s Astrobiology Science Conference held here in April made clear, life-seeking scientists are not giving up yet. Instead, they are getting more creative, proposing new strategies and technologies to shape the next generation of Mars exploration.

A SLUMBERING BIOSPHERE?

Talk about looking for Martians and you inevitably talk about water, the almost-magical liquid that sustains all life on Earth and seems to have served as an indispensable kick-starter for biology in our planet’s deepest past. “It all started out with ‘follow the water;’ not necessarily ‘follow the life’…but ‘follow one of the basic requirements for living systems,’” says Arizona State University geologist Jack Farmer, referring to NASA’s oft-repeated mantra for Martian exploration. “There are many indications of water on Mars in the past, perhaps reservoirs of water in the near subsurface as well,” he says. “But what is the quality of that water? Is it really salty—too salty for life?”

Without liquid water, Farmer points out, one would naively think organisms cannot function. The reality may be more complex: on Earth, some resilient organisms such as tardigrades can enter a profound, almost indefinite state of hibernation when deprived of moisture, preserving their desiccated tissues but neither growing nor reproducing. It is possible, Farmer says, that Martian microbes could spend most of their time as inert spores “waiting for something good to happen,” only springing to life given the right and very rare conditions. Certain varieties of Earthly “extremophiles”—microbes that live at extremes of temperature, pressure, salinity and so on—exhibit similar behavior.

Farmer says there is as yet no general consensus about the best way to go about life detection on the Red Planet. This is due in no small part to the runaway pace of progress in biotechnology, which has led to innovations such as chemistry labs shrunken down to fit on a computer chip. These technologies “have been revolutionizing the medical field, and have now started to enter into concepts for life detection on Mars,” he explains. Things move so fast that today’s best technology for finding Martian biology may be tomorrow’s laughably obsolete dead-end.

But no matter how sophisticated a lab on a chip might be, it won’t deliver results if it is not sent to the right place. Farmer suspects that seriously seeking traces of life requires deep drilling on Mars. “I basically think we’re going to have to gain access to the subsurface and look for the fossil record,” he explains. But discovering a clear, unambiguous fossil biosignature on Mars would also raise a red flag. “We probably would approach the future of Mars exploration—particularly accessing habitable zones of liquid water in the deep subsurface—more cautiously, because life could still be there. So planetary protection would be taken very seriously,” he says. (“Planetary protection” is the term scientists commonly use for precautions to minimize the chance of biological contamination between worlds. Think of it not so much in terms of bug-eyed aliens running rampant on Earth but of billion-dollar robots finding “Martians” that prove to only be hardy bacterial hitchhikers imported from our own world).

THE MARTIAN UNDERGROUND

Like-minded about deep diving on Mars is Penelope Boston, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency’s Ames Research Center. “That’s my bias,” she says. “Given Mars’ current state, with all the challenging surface manifestations of dryness, radiation and little atmosphere, the best hope for life still extant on Mars is subsurface.” The subsurface, she says, might also offer better chances of preserving past life—that is, of fossils, even if only of single-celled organisms.

The planet’s depths hold the potential for harboring liquid water under certain circumstances, Boston thinks. But how far down might that water be? “I suspect it’s pretty far…and how we get to it, that’s a whole other kettle of fish,” she says. Over the years scientists have estimated the average depth of the planet’s possible liquid reservoirs as anywhere between tens of meters to kilometers. Then again, recent observations from orbiters have revealed mysterious dark streaks that seasonally flow down the sunlit sides of some Martian hillsides and craters. These “recurring slope lineae” could conceivably be brines of liquid water fed by aquifers very close to the surface, some researchers say.

Such lingering uncertainties emerge from the indirect and scattered nature of our studies of Mars, and ensure that any argument for life there is based solely on circumstantial information, Boston notes. “Each individual piece of evidence is, on its own merits, weak,” she says. Only by amassing a diverse suite of independent measurements can a well-built case for life on Mars be made, she says: “In my opinion, we can’t make that strong case unless we push to do all of those measurements on exactly the same precise spot. We don’t do that because it’s very difficult, but it’s something to aspire to.” Despite decades of sending costly hardware to Mars, Boston believes that what is still missing is a sense of harmony between instruments, allowing them to work together to support a search for alien life. “I think that the precise requirements of a really robust claim of life at the microscopic scale require us to push on further,” she notes.

Attendees at the astrobiology meeting in Arizona showcased an assortment of high-tech devices for next-generation exploration, ranging from microfluidic “life analyzers” and integrated nucleic acid extractors for studying “Martian metagenomics” to exquisitely sensitive, miniaturized organic chemistry labs for spotting tantalizing carbon compounds and minerals at microscopic scales. Missing from the mix, however, was any solid consensus on how these and other tools could all work together to provide a slam-dunk detection of life on Mars.

WHAT’S THE WEATHER?

Some scientists contend a new kind of focus is sorely needed. Perhaps the pathway to finding any Martians lurking in the planet’s nooks and crannies is to learn where exactly on Mars those potentially life-nurturing niches exist, and how they change over the course of days, months and years rather than over eons of geologic time. That is, to find homes for extant life on Mars today, researchers should probably not just be studying the planet’s long-term climate but also its day-to-day weather.

“Right now we’re sort of shifting gears. Once you’ve found out that a planet is habitable, then the next question is, ‘Was there life?’—so it’s a completely different ball game,” says Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. “On Mars you cannot look for life with the tools that have been looking for habitability of that planet,” she argues. “We should be looking for habitats and not habitable environments. You are dealing on Mars with what I call extremophile extreme environments on steroids,” she says, “and you don’t look for microbial life with telescopes from Mars orbit.”

Cabrol advocates making an unprecedentedly robust, high-resolution study of environmental variability on Mars by peppering its surface with weather stations. Sooner or later telltale signs of the possible whereabouts of extant life may emerge from the resulting torrents of data. “Today’s environment on that planet is a reflection of something in the past,” she says, and planting numbers of automated stations on Mars does not need to be expensive. “This is of interest not only to astrobiology but to human exploration. The first thing you want to know is what the weather is like,” she says, adding, “Right now we’re not equipped to do this and I’m not saying it’s going to be easy to look for extant life. I’m not saying what we’re doing now is wrong. Whatever we put on the ground we are learning. But there is variability on Mars. You go up or down one meter, things change. Habitats at a microscopic level can happen at the scale of a slope. It can happen at the scale of a rock!”

MIGHT WE BE MARTIANS?

“I think Mars offers us the highest chance of finding life” somewhere beyond Earth, says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a planetary scientist at Washington State University. But, like Boston and others, he maintains confirmation of life will only come from multiple “layers of proof” that have to be consistent with one another. “We really need at least four different kinds of methods,” he says. “My point is that there’s no slam-dunk. We need several instruments. You have to build a case, and right now we can do better…unless the biosignature through a microscope is waving hello.” The trouble, he adds, is that too-stringent planetary protection rules may preclude getting the evidence necessary for that proof. “We have the technology to go to places where there could be life,” he says. “But we can’t go to certain areas on Mars, like recurring slope lineae or…under patches of ice. It seems to be ridiculous.”

Indeed, Schulze-Makuch speculates planetary protection may be a lost cause for Mars—or at least a misguided endeavor. It may even be that any Martian microbes are actually Earth’s long-lost cousins. Or, conversely, Mars rather than Earth is really the sole site of biogenesis in our solar system. Both scenarios are possible, considering that single-celled organisms can likely survive world-shattering impacts and the subsequent interplanetary voyages if embedded in ejected shards of rock that could fall elsewhere as meteorites. Innumerable impacts of this scale battered the solar system billions of years ago, potentially blasting biological material between neighboring worlds. On balance, Schulze-Makuch says, “the chances are higher that we are Martians.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Leonard David

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades.

Recent Articles

• Red Planet versus Dead Planet: Scientists Debate Next Destination for Astronauts in Space
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09-05-2017 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

Esteemed UDel scientist Dr. Gizis talks space discoveries and aliens

09-05-2017 om 17:49 geschreven door peter  

Will truth about aliens soon be known? UFO sightings TRIPLE in just 16 years

THE number of reported UFO sightings across the United States has more than tripled since 2001, it has emerged.

09-05-2017 om 17:23 geschreven door peter  

Space expert claims trio of UFOs are hiding secret spacecraft which is invisible to the naked eye

Experts say the footage recorded through night vision technology show UFOs are hiding in plain sight above us.

BY KELLY-ANN MILLS

Space experts believe three UFOs spotted in the sky could be a sign of an invisible alien spaceship moving above us.

Footage shows three orbs of light moving in formation, which experts believe could be the three corners of a triangular-shaped spaceship.

The UFOs in the clip, shared by experts at Secure Team 10 in America, start as small dots but soon become brighter.

The footage was filmed in Kentucky in the USA and sent in for analysis.

Tyler from Secure Team said: "This was captured on a night vision camera of three distinct objects moving in a perfect triangular formation, orbiting the planet it would seem."

He adds: "This is an amazing sighting, we see that these three objects, and I've watched this entire clip, these things stay locked into their position.

"If you watch closely there are a couple of other UFOs moving in other directions.

"These UFOs are not able to be seen with the naked eye.

"It is only once you use these specialty devices that can actually detect things in this specific light, we start to realise just how many of these unknown objects are sitting above us in plain sight.

"And you would only know were there if you had some of these night vision goggles or tech." 

{ http://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

09-05-2017 om 17:08 geschreven door peter  

Mysterieus ruimtevliegtuig terug op aarde. Dit is waarom het is omgeven met complotten

Een experimenteel Amerikaans ruimtevaartuig is zondag na bijna twee jaar geland in Florida. Het toestel ging bij het dalen door de geluidsbarrière, waardoor Florida ’s ochtends werd opgeschrikt door een harde knal.

De onbemande Boeing X-37B bracht ruim 700 dagen door in een baan om de aarde, waar het een geheime missie uitvoerde.

Het vaartuig, dat eruitziet als een kleine versie van een spaceshuttle, landde bij het Kennedy Space Center. De X-37B bracht niet eerder zoveel tijd door in de ruimte.

Spionage

Het ruimtevaartuig van de luchtmacht is met raadsels omgeven. Het leger stelde in een e-mail dat de toestellen onder meer kunnen worden gebruikt om ruimtetechnologie te testen.

De activiteiten van de missie zijn topgeheim. Het mysterieuze karakter van de missie is voer voor complottheoretici.

Volgens sommigen is er sprake van spionage. Zo zou X-37B geavanceerde apparatuur aan boord hebben om gevoelige geopolitieke regio’s zoals het Midden-Oosten in de gaten te houden.

Zwijgt in alle talen

Anderen beweren dat de Verenigde Staten met de X-37B satellieten kunnen uitschakelen. Wat het vaartuig ook uitvoert daar hoog in de lucht, de Amerikaanse luchtmacht zwijgt in alle talen.

De VS beschikt over twee van deze onbemande toestellen, die zijn ondergebracht in hangars die ooit werden gebruikt voor spaceshuttles.

De luchtmacht is van plan later dit jaar weer een X-37B de ruimte in te sturen.

 Volgen

U.S. Air Force 

✔@usairforce

The #X37B #OTV4 is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Find out more about today's landing here: https://www.dvidshub.net/feature/otv4 

16:16 - 7 May 2017

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09-05-2017 om 15:45 geschreven door peter  

09-05-2017 om 15:36 geschreven door peter  

09-05-2017 om 15:36 geschreven door peter  

ENOCH: THE STORY OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL FALLEN ANGELS

Angels make frequent appearances in the holy scriptures and continue to play an active role in the popular imagination. While many people believe that these beings are either symbolic or supernatural figures, others believe that angels could be extra-terrestrials. The Book of Enoch gives an intriguing view on this controversial position. 

While most people associated angels with the Christian faith, they are actually a mainstay of many ancient cultural traditions. Many of the earliest known civilizations in the Near East, including the ancient Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians had their own narratives surrounding angelic beings. These beings tended to manifest themselves as beings with wings which served as the agents of higher gods. The higher gods utilized the angels as messengers and watchers who would visit the Earthly dimension at their behest.

One of the most explicit descriptions of angels serving in this capacity comes from the Book of Enoch in the Old Testament. The Book of Enoch describes a vast number of angels settling on the planet Earth who set out to teach Enoch various disciplines. These include meteorology, astronomy, and metalwork. This is a fairly unusual story, and it appears to chime with a theory known as the Ancient Astronaut theory. Many people believe that the ancients were lent a helping hand in the progression of human civilization on account of the fact that a number of ancient monuments and texts display extraordinary sophistication which is completely unexplained by the cultural and social circumstances of historical record. Could the Book of Enoch be confirmation of this controversial theory?

The Book of Enoch also describes ‘fallen angels’ arriving on Mount Hermon with the intention of living on Earth and assuming power over the planet. These angels are said to have eventually integrated into human society and even interbreeding with human beings to create human-angel hybrids. It was this action that incited the wrath of God.

For many people, this seems to indicate that human beings were unwittingly placed in the center of a power struggle between two distinct alien breeds – the masterful creator gods and their former servants who sought to take their own path with regards to the planet Earth. If this is the case, then it should be of some concern to human beings currently living on this planet. Both the Old and the New Testament make frequent references to a battle which is to come between opposing forces of good and evil. Could it be the case that this battle will involve an almighty struggle between two separate species of powerful alien beings? 

Image: wallpapersonthe.net

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09-05-2017 om 15:29 geschreven door peter  

NASA TO LAUNCH 'ALIEN HUNTING' WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE IN LATE 2018

A telescope is being tested by NASA in a vacuum that is freezing cold before it is launched into space with the hope of unlocking some of the mysteries of how the universe was formed after the big bang and if planets outside of the solar system have alien life.

NASA said that to make sure that the optics of the telescope will be able to operate in the frigid destination, which is 1 million miles in space; it must first go through some cryogenic temperature tests in a vacuum. 

The James Webb Space Telescope made its way carefully and slowly from its location at the Goddard Space Flight Center to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to take part in the tests. The tests are going to take place in the vacuum chamber that the Apollo spacecraft went through before it took the first humans to the moon. NASA said that the test was a critical one as it would verify the performance of the telescope end to end at cold temperatures that are extremely low.

Following the tests at Johnson the telescope, which is a project between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency, will move to California to be assembled and tested, it will then be launched in the latter half of 2018. The mission of the telescope is to explore some of the oldest galaxies in the universe along with being able to get a much closer look at planetary systems.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been likened to that of a flower blooming; however, it is, in fact, a very tough piece of technology. One of the solar systems the telescope will capture is the TRAPPIST-1 system, made up of seven planets that are orbiting a star around 40 light years away. Astronomers revealed their finding only recently and noted that three of the planets might be in the star's habitable zone. This is a region that is at the correct distance from the source of heat to be able to sustain liquid water. However, all seven of the planets may be habitable as they are so close together and the sun, which orbits closer than the scorched Mercury planet to the sun, something that is possible due to the star being smaller and cooler than that of our own.

A NASA exoplanet scientist said that if the planets have atmospheres, the James Webb Space Telescope should be the key that is needed to unlock the secrets. It is thought that the secrets include the makeup of the atmosphere, for instance, whether they contain oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and other compounds. The Webb telescope may be able to take a look at the LHS 114ob, which is located 40 light years away in a habitable zone of the star. Scientists are excited about the newly discovered planet as it shares a lot of similarities to Earth and it is said to be about the same age, even though it is heavier and bigger. 

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{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

09-05-2017 om 15:20 geschreven door peter  

Witness says hovering triangles were ‘enormous’

A Georgia witness at Savannah reported watching two large, triangle-shaped objects hovering over the city at 9:45 p.m. on April 25, 2017, according to testimony in Case 83466 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witness described two hovering triangle objects while driving down East Broad Street in Savannah, GA, pictured.

(Credit: Google)

The witness and a roommate were driving back into the city fromTybee Island when the incident occurred.

“I was sitting in the passenger seat, looking out of the window,” the witness stated.“We were headed south on East Broad when I saw two very large, triangular crafts hovering above the city. They were very dark (dark gray to black) in color. They were covered in large, round white lights. The crafts were parallel to each other and perpendicular to the ground. The widest part of the triangle was closest to the ground with the top pointing upward. They stayed stationary. I saw them above the city, fairly low, flying for any sort of air traffic.”

The objects were described as enormous. Pictured: East Broad Street, Savannah, GA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness could not judge the size of the objects.

“I can’t say exactly how large they were, except to describe them as enormous. The car windows were up, so I couldn’t hear anything, but I would expect something of that size to make a sound loud enough to be heard inside a nearby vehicle. I will note that on the way back from the islands, I did notice two or three seemingly stationary aircrafts in the distance. Unlike the triangles, these seemed to be either planes or helicopters, but they were too far away for me to give more details than that. The night was somewhat cloudy and the triangles were far below the clouds.”

The objects were quickly lost due to buildings and trees. Pictured: East Broad Street, Savannah, GA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness quickly lost sight of the objects due to buildings and trees.

“I lost sight of them for a few seconds, as a building obstructed my view of them. We drove past an alley, at which point I caught sight of them again. When we got to the next cross street, I asked my roommate to turn right. She did, but the street was lined with trees which obstructed the view of the sky. When we turned again, we had a clearer view of the sky, but we could not spot the triangles. Unfortunately, since my roommate was driving, she never saw them.”

Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County, population 145,674. Georgia MUFON State Director Ralph Howard is investigating. No images or videos were included with the MUFON report, which was filed on May 1, 2017. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

09-05-2017 om 15:06 geschreven door peter  

A message for Earth-visiting UFO aliens (if they're real)

Listen up all you UFO-piloting aliens from outer space, this Earth resident has a few reasonable demands.

by Amanda Kooser

A "UFO" as seen from my backyard.
Amanda Kooser/CNET

Dear UFO-flying aliens,

You're not as sneaky as you think you are. YouTube is full of shaky and fuzzy videos showing your mysterious lights, orbs and various flying blobs checking out our less-advanced civilization. We're onto you, but I have a few requests that would be a big help for some of us more-skeptical people:

1. Please hold still.

Camera technology has advanced at an incredible rate, but we still can't seem to get a decent video of your high-tech, space-faring, Earth-visiting crafts. Sure, we can photograph a single airplane from the International Space Station, but we can't seem to capture a clear video of one of your UFOs. I would appreciate it if you could come in low over a well-populated area and hover in good lighting for at least a few minutes. Just long enough for someone to get some solid footage is all I ask.

2. Land and say "Hi."

I can understand why you haven't bothered to introduce yourselves yet. Humans are kind of weird and scary. We tend to kill things we don't understand. But we're not all like that. I would suggest landing somewhere in New Mexico where we're used to the idea of space aliens thanks to all the tourism around Roswell and an alleged UFO landing there back in 1947.

I recommend aiming for the 2017 UFO Festival in Roswell this July. We're pretty chill. You will be greeted like an old friend and we'll give you a cool t-shirt and alien-eye-shaped sunglasses. Just imagine the vacation photos you'll get to show your buddies back on your home planet.

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/ufos-yetis-big-foot-nessie-sea-monsters-pictures/

Yetis and UFOs and sea monsters, oh my! (pictures)

3. Watch some Star Trek.

You may be hesitant to get in touch with us because you've seen our Earth productions like the "Alien" series and "Independence Day." Admittedly, the aliens don't come off very well. As an antidote, I suggest you binge-watch all of "Star Trek." See? Some of us dream of all getting along some day! We would love to start a real United Federation of Planets with you. And we have really cool conventions. You'll love it and nobody will judge you based on your alien looks.

More aliens

• Real search for aliens gets weird signal from a sci-fi world
• Alien faces on Mars? My search through NASA images
• Investigating New Mexico's less-famous UFO landing
• Internet spots UFO in SpaceX explosion footage

4. Step up your Mars-sculpture game.

We also know you've been hanging out on Mars, creating sculptures for whatever artistic or ritualistic endeavors you're into. I don't mean to come off like an art critic, but your efforts on Mars are a little too impressionistic. Please work on expressing yourself with a stronger sense of realism so we don't have to guess if some random stone is a statue or just a weirdly-shaped rock.

It would also help if you would sign your work, release an artist's statement and offer a price tag in case one of our rovers would like to purchase it.

5. Please don't eat us.

If I'm totally off track here and you're hovering above our cities and countrysides while you're working out the best way to cook and serve humans, I have a final request: Don't eat us. Also, please don't raise us on ranches, put us in zoos on other planets or probe us for any reason. Remember, we have Will Smith ready in case you try any hijinks.

Technically Literate: Original works of short fiction with unique perspectives on tech, exclusively on CNET.

Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/weird-objects-on-mars-pictures/

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09-05-2017 om 14:51 geschreven door peter  

Suffolk tops state for UFO sightings, according to new book

By Rachel Uda  rachel.uda@newsday.com

A sign marking the path leading to the supposed UFO crash site outside Roswell, N.M. According to "UFO Sightings Desk Reference," there were 554 compiled reports from Suffolk County from 2001 through 2015.

Photo Credit: Getty Images / iStockphoto / ElvisFontenot

{ http://www.newsday.com/ }

09-05-2017 om 14:24 geschreven door peter  

UFO Cloaked In Cloud Over Yorkshire, England On May 8, 2017, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: May 8, 2017
Location of sighting: Yorkshire, England
News source:

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4480240/Cloud-formation-looks-just-like-supersonic-jet-Concorde.html

This is a sleek UFO cloaked in this cloud which allows it to move low and slow over the surface of the ground. Notice that the center of the UFO has a hump spot, its really a transparent (glass-like) dome part of the ship for observing. 
Scott C. Waring

News states: 
It may have been grounded for more than 13 years but this picture shows the spirit of the Concorde lives on in the sky. This photograph, taken in the Yorkshire Dales, shows a cloud formation that looks eerily like the iconic supersonic jet flying over the Ribblehead Viaduct. It was snapped by Thomas Beresford, a Winter Maintenance operative for North Yorkshire County Council, who spotted the jaw-dropping sight at 5:30am. He said: 'I was took it on the way to work this morning. It was a phantom Concorde flying over Whernside.'

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

09-05-2017 om 13:59 geschreven door peter  

UFO Tentacles Sticking Up Out Of Clouds Over London, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting:  Feb 16, 2017

Location of sighting: Warsaw to London

Source: MUFON #82114

UFOs often hide inside clouds to escape from being seen by humans, so its not too unusual to see some odd tentacles or telescope like objects sticking out of the top of clouds. It obvious that the aliens needed to either absorb the sun for unknown reasons or to get their bering, but one thing I 'm sure they didn't expect was to get caught in someones photos. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states:

Flying from Warsaw to London Heathrow, looking out the window to my left. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw these dark, thin figures in the middle of a cloud. It definitely wasn't a building because we were too high up so I thought they were mini tornadoes There were 4 figures: 2 tall ones and 2 slightly small ones. They were very close together and they weren't moving at all. They were dark, had a thicker upper body and a thinner lower body. One of them looks like they had wings. I was in awe and shocked at how it was all deserted then there were these random weird objects just standing on top of a cloud. I took photos and showed my parents and brother the photo and they couldn't believe their eyes. I was also a little bit excited because I have never seen anything like this before. Flew past the object(s) then it disappeared.

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

09-05-2017 om 13:39 geschreven door peter  

Real search for aliens gets weird signal from a sci-fi world

An ambitious search for signals from aliens across space hasn't found much yet, but there was an odd blip from a star system popular with science fiction fans.

In the late 22nd century, a terraforming project is underway on the planet Selika, orbiting the star 107 Piscium some 24 light-years from Earth. Plans to bomb and remake the planet in the image of Earth have ignited controversy because they also threaten to destroy all native life there.

The Green Bank Telescope is scanning the dial for alien stations.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

That's part of the plot in award-winning science fiction author Jack McDevitt's 2013 novel "Starhawk." While the storyline is obviously imagined, 107 Piscium is a very real star, and scientists recently picked up intriguing signals when they pointed some of the world's most powerful radio telescopes in its direction.

Late last month, the Stephen Hawking-backed Breakthrough Listen initiative released its first set of alien-hunting data gathered from huge listening devices like the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to target a list of 692 different stars. Sophisticated software scanned billions of radio channels for unique signals that might be coming from a distant alien civilization.

While there were no obvious messages from E.T. in all the petabytes of data, the analysis did surface 11 "events" considered to be significant. I've just finished a little basic analysis of my own, digging into what's significant about those 11 stars. While I'm no astronomer, I can tell you that one of them is especially significant to sci-fi fans. Breakthrough Listen refers to it as HIP7981, but it's also known as 107 Piscium.

 

Best places in space to search for alien life

107 Piscium has also appeared in other noted works of science fiction like "Absolution Gap" by the Welsh author and former European Space Agency astronomer Alastair Reynolds. I also dig this cool poem called "The Best Western on 107 Piscium E" for the sci-fi journal Star Line.

To be clear, no one is saying Breakthrough Listen has picked up signals from a civilization on a distant terraformed planet. In fact, the researchers say it's far more likely they're picking up radio interference from our own human technology.

Still, they plan to gather more data and more rigorously analyze the data they've already gathered, including signals from 107 Piscium, which has already been tempting our imaginations for years now.

"Although the search has not yet detected a convincing signal from extraterrestrial intelligence, these are early days," Andrew Siemion from the Breakthrough Listen science team said in a statement.

The data from the project and the software used for the analysis is open source and available for anyone with serious skills to dig into and search for evidence that other franchises might turn out to be a little more science fact than science fiction.

May I suggest starting with the star system from "Babylon 5?" Good luck. The truth is out there, just be sure to report it back to me.

Technically Literate: Original works of short fiction with unique perspectives on tech, exclusively on CNET.

Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.

{  https://www.cnet.com/ }

08-05-2017 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

Planetary Protection: Contamination Debate Still Simmers

Scientists have long debated the best ways to minimize the threat of contaminating other worlds with Earth life — or vice versa — while still pursuing aggressive exploration goals.

On Sept. 15, 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will take a suicide plunge into Saturn to avoid contaminating the ringed planet's potentially habitable moons, Titan and Enceladus. 

Cassini's fate is tied to the issue of planetary protection, which refers to the measures scientists and engineers take to minimize that chances that life-forms from Earth make it to other worlds. And with NASA's Mars 2020 rover planning to cache samples to one day return to Earth's labs, planetary protection also means making sure that our own world is safe from contamination by possible alien life.

Planetary protection was the first item on the agenda at the Astrobiology Science Conference, which was held last week in Mesa, Arizona. Chemists, biologists, planetary scientists, astronomers and other researchers all vigorously discussed the issue at the meeting's first session on Monday morning (April 24). [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

"Planetary protection has never been more important to consider," said Andrew Maynard, a researcher at Arizona State University's Risk Innovation Lab, who led the discussion. 

Citing Mars sample return, an upcoming mission to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa and possible future probes that could visit other icy satellites, Maynard engaged the audience of scientists with the stated intent of changing how they think about the process. Maynard, who is not an astrobiologist but a physicist, turned the attention of the room to studies on risk assessment, urging researchers to consider risk not as something to be avoided but rather as "a complex landscape to be moved through to reach goals."

He also said that analyzing the risk of contamination, either of Earth or another world, isn't the exclusive purview of any particular group of scientists — or of scientists in general.  

"Everybody has got some stake," Maynard said.

Protecting the Earth

Concern about contamination has been part of exploration since the dawn of the Space Age. The first three sets of astronauts to land on the moon were kept in isolation on their return to Earth to ensure they hadn't brought any pathogens home with them. [NASA's 17 Apollo Moon Missions in Pictures]

Before NASA's Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers were sent to Mars to hunt for life, they were sterilized to minimize the odds that Earth microbes could contaminate their experiments. The robotic explorers that followed were similarly cleansed. And in 1967, the countries of the world agreed that their space missions would work to avoid contaminating Earth or other worlds, making planetary protection an international goal.

The moon rocks returned by Apollo astronauts soon revealed Earth's natural satellite as a barren, inhospitable place unsuitable for life. The comets and asteroids sampled by past and ongoing missions have already polluted Earth's surface, and NASA has deemed these objects unlikely to harbor life.

But Earth has received relatively few samples from Mars in the form of meteorites. While some scientists think that life could have started on the Red Planet and then hitched a ride to Earth, the issue is far from certain. So, when it comes to returning samples from Mars, space agencies will take great care not to infect Earth.

According to NASA procedural requirement NPR 8020.12: "Unless the sample to be returned is subjected to an accepted, approved, sterilization process, the sample container must be sealed after sample acquisition, and a redundant, fail-safe containment with a method for verification of its operation before Earth-return shall be required."

The requirement also states: "The mission and the spacecraft design shall provide a method to 'break the chain of contact' (BTC) with Mars. No uncontained hardware that contacted Mars, directly or indirectly, may be returned to Earth unless sterilized."

But scientists are still debating just what the biggest concerns are. Maynard's presentation, which involved randomly polling audience members and engaging them in debate, revealed that many of the scientists involved in studying how life could evolve beyond Earth disagree on just how much we need to worry about contamination. 

Although the Martian surface appears bereft of life, some researchers think microbes might still exist underground. A sample-return mission could therefore theoretically carry living organisms back to Earth along with rocks and dirt. Whether a Martian microbe could survive on our planet remains a subject of heavy debate.

For instance, during the discussion period, Vladimir Airapetian, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, argued that a living thing that evolved on Mars shouldn't be able to find a place on Earth because all of the planet's biological niches have been filled. 

But Benjamin Wolf of Washington University in St. Louis disagreed. "I don't like the argument that we think the niches are taken," he said, citing the success that many invasive species on Earth have had when pushing into previously occupied niches. 

"People didn't realize that kudzu would take over the entire South," Wolf said, describing the Japanese vine that has blanketed the southern United States since its 1876 introduction. "We need to understand that sometimes scientists don't know things."

Geochemist Stuart Bartlett, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology's Earth-Life Science Institute, also expressed concern about potentially bringing home organisms able to survive in the extreme conditions on Mars.

"Backwards contamination seems like a more natural candidate for spreading exponentially and invading," Bartlett said.

But Maynard doesn't think that scientists should be the only participants in the discussion. He encouraged opening a dialogue with the public, who would also be affected if a harmful organism were returned to Earth. With most of the world unversed in the potential hazards, Maynard encouraged scientists to do a better job of communicating potential issues, a process that would allow everyone to work together to make an informed decision.

He pointed to the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator along the France-Switzerland border whose activation some feared would create a microscopic black hole with the potential to destroy Earth. While this risk was considered marginal, Maynard pointed out that the improbable disaster would have a worldwide effect, and that scientists included society in the discussion in a reasonable fashion. (No black hole destroyed Earth when the accelerator was switched on, of course.)

When it comes to sample-return missions, scientists need to determine just how large the threat of extraterrestrial contamination might loom, Maynard said.

"It seems like we have a huge diversity of opinion whether alien life is able to survive on Earth," he said.

Contaminating Mars

During the April 24 discussion, scientists also debated the threat exploration missions pose to the pristine environment of Mars and other worlds. Red Planet rovers and landers are kept in strict isolation throughout their construction, which takes place in clean rooms around the world. Components are sterilized to the best ability of current technology, but researchers stress that it's impossible to kill every microbe aboard any craft.

The concern with carrying micro-organisms abroad is twofold. One issue involves the possibility of interfering with experiments designed to hunt for life on another world. If a terrestrial microbe hitched a ride, it could be picked up by the mission's tests, causing scientists to wrongly believe they had discovered alien life. [6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System]

Such a mistake, while disappointing in itself, could also affect how people around the world view scientists, participants in the April 24 session said.

"If NASA spent $5 billion on a life-detection mission and discovered life from Earth, then the loss of public trust would really shoot up," said Linda Billings, a researcher at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

A terrestrial organism traveling to another world via spacecraft also has the potential to infect that world, overwhelming or driving out any existing life. Many of the commenters who didn't think Martian microbes would flourish on Earth also seemed to believe that terrestrial life would be unlikely to thrive on the Red Planet, because of the considerable differences between the two worlds' environments.

But that's just speculation. And even if life from one world wouldn't last long on the other, it's important to keep things clean for the sake of understanding science, researchers at the session said.

"We need to save the Mars questions for Mars and the Earth questions for Earth," one person in the room said. 

The desire to keep Mars free from Earth-based contamination could have serious implications when it comes to sending people to the Red Planet. Humans don't live in isolation; we carry a fleet of micro-organisms everywhere we go, and these tiny creatures outnumber our own cells about 10 to 1. 

"If we send humans anywhere, we contaminate the planet, because we're dead if we're sterile," said one commentator. So, human exploration could lead to a conflict with planetary protection.

Not everyone agrees that humans would automatically contaminate the Red Planet, however. John Rummel, an astrobiologist at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and former NASA Planetary Protection Officer, told the room that he doesn't think there has to be a conflict. 

"I don't think it's an all-or-nothing game," Rummel told Space.com. Human exploration could be incremental, he said, with the first explorers making only the most cautious steps outside of their habitation.  

NASA and other government agencies aren't the only organizations that seek to put boots on Mars. For example, last September, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk unveiled his company's plan to help establish a million-person city on the Red Planet.

Even if such efforts succeed, they won't necessarily cause native Mars life to be swamped by microbes from Earth, Rummel said — especially if Red Planet organisms exist only underground, where they're shielded from harmful radiation. 

"Musk is not going to have tourists interfering with the deep Martian subsurface," Rummel said. 

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd Facebook 

or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Buzz Aldrin: How To Get Your Ass To Mars | Video
• Photos: Europa, Mysterious Icy Moon of Jupiter
• Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)

{ http://www.space.com/ }

08-05-2017 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

{ http://www.hindustantimes.com/ }

08-05-2017 om 23:11 geschreven door peter  

Author searches for truth in 'Fifty Shades of Greys'

By Tim Clodfelter Winston-Salem Journal

 

{ http://www.journalnow.com/ }

08-05-2017 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

Video: UFO Crosses Sky Over California Desert on Wednesday Afternoon, May 3, 2017.

"Frank Zappa" films clearest UFO video in years. Are they here because of DPRK's Atomic Program?

The clearest UFO video footage in years coincides with a study that says California is a UFO hotspot

One thing is for sure: This one is no fake. Who could create such a bright light in the sky for 2 minutes? Seeing is believing, and this is the clearest UFO video we have seen in years.

A UFO flying over head in the California Desert at 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday, has been posted to Youtube by a user calling himself Frank Zappa. The famous musician has been dead for ten years, so it seems unlikely that Zappa himself posted it. Though Zappa did name his daughter, the subject of "Valley Girl," Moon Unit. But I digress.

Meanwhile, California is reported to be the site of most UFO sightings. "UFO Sightings Desk Reference," a new book on reported UFO sightings, found that California had the most reports of visual encounters with unidentified objects in the United States. This includes hundreds of reported sightings, CBS San Francisco reports.

The book analyzed more than 120,000 reports of UFOs and found more Californians believed they'd come in contact with extraterrestrial life than anyone else in the country.

Was the appearance connected in anyway with international Star Wars day, May the 4th Be With You, celebrated Thursday? Ok, that one's a stretch. But nuclear weapons testing in North Korea may be connected, actually. After all, 1950's atomic bomb testing in Nevada attracted hundreds of alien spacecraft. The DPRK has accelerated it's program recently, with similar effect. Was the UFO a missile from Vandenberg, or even the DPRK?

"We found that UFOs were sighted in every county in the United States. Every county had at least one sighting sometime in the past 15 years," the book's co-author, Cheryl Costa, explained.

According to Costa, Santa Clara County topped the list in Northern California with 569 reported sightings. Alameda County was second with 518, while San Francisco trailed with 327, reports CBS News

So what happened to the Zappa UFO after it left visual range? Did it crash in the desert and create yet another crater?

Gargantuan craters are seen pockmarking the rest of the solar system other than Earth. Recent studies of such impact craters on the moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars suggested that meteor strikes could trigger volcanic activity.

Film of the Zappa UFO is embedded above and lasts for just over 2 minutes.

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.

As for Zappa: In May 1982, Frank Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No. 32 on the Billboard charts).

In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the patois of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon", "fer sure, fer sure", "grody to the max", and "barf out".

{ http://www.smobserved.com/ }

08-05-2017 om 22:59 geschreven door peter