Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
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 In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
18-05-2017
Could Cryoconites Hold the Secrets to Extraterrestrial Life?
Could Cryoconites Hold the Secrets to Extraterrestrial Life?
Posted by Sarah Kai Zhen Toh
In recent years, scientists have found other locations on planets, moons and exoplanets where life might exist. Different animals and organisms like tardigrades (eight-legged microscopic animals commonly known as water bears) have also been sent into space to explore the conditions for survival away from Earth. However, a recent paper published in the journal Contemporary Trends in Geoscience argues that we can look closer to home to understand survival strategies of extraterrestrial life.
More concretely, the authors propose we look to glacier cryoconites, which are granular or spherical mineral particles aggregated with microorganisms like cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, tardigrades and rotifera (another type of multicellular, microscopic animal). Glaciers are among the most extreme environments on Earth due to the high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation received and the permanently cold conditions. These factors make them analogous to icy planets or moons.
(Clockwise from top left) An ice sheet in Greenland, cryoconite holes, cryoconite granules, and cryconite granules in high resolution
The associations of cryoconites and microorganisms on glaciers are held together in biofilms by extracellular polymeric substances (natural polymers of high molecular weight) secreted by cyanobacteria. They exist as sediment or in cryoconite holes (water-filled reservoirs with cryoconite sediment on the floor) on glacier surfaces.
Cryoconites have been found on every glacier where researchers have looked for them. Cryoconite holes form due to the darkening of color (also termed a decrease in the albedo, or reflectivity of solar radiation) of cryoconite-covered surfaces. The darker color leads to greater absorption of radiation, with an associated warming and increasing melt rates.
“Today we think that simple life forms might have survived on Mars in glacial refugia or under the surface. They can and could have evolved on Saturn and Jupiter’s icy moons,” Krzysztof Zawierucha, the lead author from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, shared with GlacierHub. “Imagine a multicellular organism, even a microscopic one, which is able to live and reproduce on an icy moon… It is a biotechnological volcano.”
Earth’s glaciers could be analogous to environments like floating ice on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons
Organisms that live in glaciated regions are adapted to survive in extreme conditions and could provide insights into the survival strategies of extraterrestrial life. Some possess lipids (organic compounds that are not water-soluble), and produce proteins and extracellular polymeric substances that protect them from freezing and drying. Others are able to enter cryptobiotic states in which metabolic activity is reduced to an undetectable level, allowing them to survive extremely harsh conditions.
The microorganisms in cryoconites cooperate and compete, affecting each other’s survival responses. Therefore, previous astrobiological studies, which have only been conducted on single strains of microorganisms, may not reflect the true survival mechanisms of these microorganisms.
Tardigrades can undergo cryptobiosis and survive in the vacuum of space
In addition, previous astrobiological studies involving some of these microorganisms used terrestrial or limno-terrestrial (moist terrestrial environments that go through periods of immersion and desiccation) taxa, such as moss cushions, which are less likely to be well-adapted to icy planets than their glacier-dwelling cousins.
Tardigrades found in cryoconite have black pigmentation, which probably protects them from high UV radiation. Along with tardigrades, glacier-dwelling rotifera, specifically Bdelloidea, also possess a great ability to repair DNA damage, which confers high resistance to UV radiation. Both may also be better adapted to surviving in constantly near-freezing conditions than terrestrial forms.
“So far, a number of processes analogous to those on Mars and other planets or moons have been found in the McMurdo Dry Valley as well as other dry valleys or brines in sea ice, both of which were considered to be extraterrestrial ecosystem analoguos. There is a great body of evidence that some bacteria and microscopic animals like tardigrades may survive under Martian conditions,” Zawierucha explained.
“Of course, to survive does not mean to be active and to reproduce. Undoubtedly, however, it triggers consideration regarding life beyond Earth, especially in close proximity or connection with permafrost or ice,” he added.
As such, further research about cryoconites could provide insight to mechanisms that enable organisms to survive such extreme conditions. At the same time, cryoconites could also be used in future astrobiological studies to understand how life on other planets functions.
California UFO witness describes six hovering triangles
California UFO witness describes six hovering triangles
A California witness at Escondido reported watching six groups of multi-colored lights in vertical triangular shapes hovering about 500 feet over nearby tree tops, according to testimony in Case 83262 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
Witness Illustration.
(Credit: MUFON)
The witness was looking north from a fourth-story balcony at 8:40 p.m. on April 15, 2017, when the objects were seen.
“One large, vertically-oriented triangular arrangement of multi-colored lights was seen hovering about 500 feet above the tree tops between one-half mile to one mile away,” the witness stated.
Cropped portion of the witness illustration.
(Credit: MUFON)
But there was more than one object.
“Five more smaller, triangular arrangements of multi-colored lights were seen to the west at a lower altitude, just above the tree tops. The five smaller triangles slowly moved to the west during this 15-minute observation, until they disappeared into clouds.”
Cropped portion of the witness illustration.
(Credit: MUFON)
Escondido is a city located in San Diego County’s North County region, 30 miles northeast of downtown San Diego, CA, population 143,911.
California MUFON Field Investigator Gary Buzel is investigating. The witness included one illustration with the report, which was filed on April 21, 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.
A spokesman for the hotel said: "We have had spotlights lighting up the majority of the hotel, they are moving spotlights – it's purely because we have a private event on site for a large corporate client.
"These lights were all pointing upward, and moving, but mainly shining on our building."
Despite this explanation, some witnesses were adamant that the lights appeared to be coming from above, and not below the thick cloud which has cloaked Croydon over the past couple of nights.
This is a public domain image showing the planet Mercury crossing our sun.
Whenever a story comes out claiming to show real pictures or video of UFOs, hope springs eternal that maybe, just maybe, this might be that elusive smoking-gun evidence of alien technology.
Not a day goes by, either, without something in the news questioning the honesty of certain Americans or Russians. Now it seems that UFOs have been added to that media storm.
The innocent image above is from a collection called Pixabay, which offers many free stock photos to use for practically anything you’d like. This one shows our sun with a circular black dot, reportedly the planet Mercury, making a transit across our home star.
Still, how would Pixabay feel if a Russian news site, Pravda.ru ― ironically, the name means “truth” ― took that same picture, added two more black dots, called them all UFOs and claimed this was, in fact, a picture captured by a NASA “STEREO spacecraft”?
Wow!
If you compare the two images, it doesn’t take long to figure out that the sun in the two pictures is identical and all that Pravda.ru did was finish it off with two more “UFOs” and a headline that reads: “NASA spacecraft captures three huge UFOs silhouetted against the Sun.”
That deserves another “Wow!”
When HuffPost reached out to a NASA spokesman to comment about all of this, he said, “I’m not aware of this photo being released. Certainly not from NASA. There is no official or unofficial NASA posting of the image.”
For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time that UFO charlatans have tried to convince the public that extraterrestrial ships are getting a little too close to our sun.
Here’s a video of an alleged alien ship refueling, according to a source that is definitely not NASA:
NASA generally has well thought-out explanations for these types of “UFO” incursions into our solar system.
For its part, Pravda.ru, which is separate from the Communist Party paper, has a history of extremely creative “journalism.” But the truth is out there.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
Underground Catacomb Filled with Mummies Discovered in Egypt
Underground Catacomb Filled with Mummies Discovered in Egypt
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor
The Archaeologists and others can enter the catacomb at the site of Tuna el-Gebel in Egypt only through this narrow shaft leading underground.
Credit: اليوم السابع TV station
Archaeologists have discovered an underground catacomb containing numerous mummy-filled corridors at an ancient cemetery at the site of Tuna el-Gebel in Egypt.
The catacomb can be entered only through a narrow shaft which leads underground. At the bottom of the shaft, archaeologists found that "there are many corridors and many burial places for mummies," said Mohamed Salah bn Mohamed Ahmed El-Kholy, a professor at Cairo University, at a press conference held this morning (May 13) at Tuna el-Gebel. Archaeologists with Cairo University have been excavating at Tuna el-Gebel for about 80 years, El-Kholy said.
Excavations are ongoing and, in his English language comments, El-Kholy didn't provide an estimate for the number of mummies in the newly discovered catacomb. Images of some of the artifacts were broadcast on the Egyptian TV station اليومالسابع(a name that translates to "Video Youm7"). An online video posted by the TV station shows ancient lamps, coins and colorfully decorated coffin remains from the catacomb. Additionally, archaeologists found numerous long, slender pieces of pottery that could have held liquids, according to video shown on the TV station. The largest examples appear to be about 3 feet (0.9 meters) long. [See Photos of Mummies Discovered at Another Ancient Egyptian Cemetery]
El-Kholy did not say when the mummies date to in his English language remarks. However, the presence of coins, which in Egypt started appearing around 2,500 years ago, means that at least some of the mummies must date to after this time, possibly after Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Greator even later, when the Roman Empire ruled Egypt.
Currently, officials are leading reporters, one by one, down into the catacomb, through the narrow shaft. The shaft is only large enough for one person at a time to climb down, making it hard for reporters to bring TV cameras and photo equipment into the catacomb. Dozens of reporters could be seen lining up for an opportunity to venture underground.
Scientists have identified strange light flashes emanating from Earth. First noticed in images taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993, but overlooked since then, these glints were recently rediscovered in photos taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) since its 2015 launch. Researchers have now figured out that the flashes are sunlight bouncing off of ice crystals high in the air, and that they might even be able to help us find other habitable planets.
EPIC photographed hundreds of the flashes over the course of a year. After studying the images, researchers realized that the glints only appeared when the camera was at the same angle to Earth as the sun was to Earth. That meant that they had to be reflections of sunlight (as opposed to a light source originating from Earth, like lightning); but off of what were they reflecting?
At first, scientists suspected that the light was reflecting off ground water sources, like lakes. But ultimately EPIC data showed that the flashes were coming from a high altitude, around cirrus clouds, so researchers decided that the culprit had to be ice particles.
“It’s definitely ice, and most likely solar reflection off of horizontally oriented particles,” Alexander Marshak of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said in a press statement.
One of the flashes coming from East Africa, seemingly Tanzania.
Beyond the satisfaction of finally figuring out what the heck these light flashes are, this new information yields assets for future space research. If spacecraft can detect lights like these coming from exoplanets, that may indicate that ice particles exist in their atmospheres, too, and maybe even that the planets could be habitable for humans.
Researchers plan to look more into this phenomenon to figure out whether it has a perceptible effect on the amount of sunlight that can enter Earth’s atmosphere; in that case, they would also affect the process by which our planet gets most of its heat.
NASA released a short video describing these findings. Check it out below.
Update! – More Confirmation of Bigelow Aerospace Involvement In The Lake Erie Mass UFO Sightings!
By Michael Lee Hill, Wes Penre, and various other sources.
I try to give credit & names of each source, the actual person the info came from at the end paragraphs that apply, so if you begin wondering why I am writing about myself in 3rd person so just hang on until the end of the info please. I have never written about myself EVER in 3-rd person so if my name comes up it’s not me
“Whatever this is, it’s far more complex than we ever anticipated” Col. John Alexander
“The dimensions of physics are such that I would be quite surprised that in the lifetime of people who are no older than 30 here, we don’t discover some form of life in another universe. -Bill Clinton 2005
“People have been killed. People have been hurt. It’s more than observational kind of data.” Bob Bigelow, following shortly after physicist Stephen Hawking’s warning to avoid the alien extraterrestrials at all cost
“Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity should contact a UFO/ unexplained phenomena reporting data collection center, such as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.” FAA advises Air Traffic Controllers
“Mr. Bigelow did not fund MUFON’s work for BAASS, instead “sponsors” that Bigelow revealed to John Schuessler but not to the other MUFON Board Members put up the money.” James Carrion Former Director of MUFON
“…Mr. Bigelow hired Mufon to try and capture a UFO on the ground so he can back engineering it to transport people in space…This is the truth and no exaggeration!” Denise M. Stoner, Chief Investigator Florida – Mufon State Section Director
WOW!
The following recent article is interesting because regardless of peoples personal opinions regarding my ET Contact, parts of my story such as being contacted by Bigelow Aerospace, the owners of the now famous Skinwalker Ranch are now being confirmed by the UFO Community and being reported by the likes of the famous “Filer’s Files”. In this new Filer’s Files. It is proven Gery Hernadez did work for Bigelow Aerospace and he’s exactly who I said he was. I find it strange there are people out there thinking I am making this stuff up. I couldn’t make this stuff up if a tried.
“Michael Lee Hill has made some extraordinary claims on many Ufology blogs, web community pages and TV shows but one is very interesting and somewhat plausible. He claims that in 2010 an investigator for Bigelow Aerospace Corporation named Gary Hernandez contacted him concerning his orb sightings requesting that Michael divulge the coordinates of his orb sighting locations. A search of Linkedin.com reveals that indeed a Gary Henandez with an extensive law enforcement background did work for Bigelow as an investigator on “Classified Projects” from 2010 till 2011. The point of all this is that we have a billionaire aerospace tycoon apparently interested in the coordinates in the Lake Erie Orange Orb sightings. If they are just airplanes like MUFON says – why? If Michael Lee Hill is a charlatan – why?” – Robert Spearing, publisher of http://www.worldufowatch.com (Filer’s Files December 3, 2014)
If the claim is true it casts Orange Orbs in a whole new light. Robert Bigelow is a billionaire real estate developer from Nevada that made his fortune with his hotel chain holdings. His aerospace company has launched two modules for the International Space Station. He sees a future for his company in space tourism. Mr. Bigelow also has an interest in UFOs. It stems from childhood when his grandparents were almost killed in their car evading an Orange Orb in their path. His now defunct National Institute for Discovery Science collected UFO sightings (especially Black Triangle sightings) until 2004. In 2009, Mr. Bigelow entered into a much maligned and ill-fated financial partnership with MUFON (a non-profit) which quickly came undone. Mr. Bigelow also owns the infamous Skinwalker Ranch which is a hot bed of cattle mutilations and Orange Orb sightings. And an even more telling fact is that the Federal Aviation Administration now defers UFO sightings by pilots to Bigelow Aerospace. The point of all this is that we have a billionaire aerospace tycoon apparently interested in the coordinates in the Lake Erie Orange Orb sightings. If they are just airplanes like MUFON says – why? If Michael Lee Hill is a charlatan – why? – – Robert Spearing, publisher of http://www.worldufowatch.com (Filer’s Files December 3, 2014)
Thanks to Robert Spearing, publisher of www.worldufowatch.com
The following information regarding Bigelows involvement in the Lake Erie UFO’s was revealed by writer Wes Penre
BAASS means ‘Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies’, and sounds like a government organization. However, it is not. It is a company, owned by real estate billionaire Robert Bigelow of Las Vegas, Nevada.[12] In late 2009, Robert Bigelow made a deal with MUFON (the ‘Mutual UFOs Network), which is officially a non-profit organization which investigates UFO sightings. It is one of the largest and oldest UFO organizations in the United States. Bigelow has promised to provide MUFON with whatever they need to find actual hardcore proof of the existence of alien spacecraft (and of course, alien beings). This means, foremost, alien debris of crashed UFOs etc. For many UFO enthusiasts, this is met with both positive and negative responses. Positive in the sense that MUFON now have the funding they need to expand their investigations, and negative in the sense that some feel that MUFON is now owned by Bigelow. And MUFON has been working as an independent research group, allegedly.
However, the above debate is probably not even what is the most relevant. In a policy from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Order JO 7110.65U with effective date, February 9, 2012, it says under Section 8. Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Reports:
9-8-1. GENERAL
a. Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity should contact a UFO/ unexplained phenomena reporting data collection center, such as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) (voice: 1-877-979-7444 or e-mail: Reporting@baass.org), the National UFO Reporting Center, etc.
b. If concern is expressed that life or property might be endangered, report the activity to the local law enforcement department.[13]
This should be quite concerning for the serious UFO enthusiast and researcher, because it shows a definite link between Robert Bigelow’s BAASS and the Federal Government. So the FAA, as of February 2012, wants us to report UFO sightings to a private company, under the disguise of a very government sounding name (similar to the ‘Federal Reserve’, which is not Federal at all, but privately owned by International bankers, such as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers). And of course, if we follow the trail, we find MUFON on the other side, collecting funds from Bigelow, who has his government connection. So, privacy and integrity is therefore most likely to go out the window, although I’m sure MUFON hasn’t been working in public interest for many, many years. This is all, as usual, just the tiniest tip of the iceberg.
So, how does Robert Bigelow come into the picture in regards to the Eastlake UFOs?
which is the story line for this paper?
Well, in the midst of all happenings in Michael Lee Hill’s life, he was contacted by Investigator Gary Hernandez, who said he was looking into the Lake Erie phenomenon. In August of 2010, Hernandez sent a message on Michael’s facebook page, inquiring about what Michael knew about the Eastlake UFOs. In short, they communicated some back and forth, and Michael was sharing some information with the investigator, because he wanted the story to come out in the open as much, and as soon as possible.
In November, curiously enough, Investigator Hernandez, in a facebook message I have in my possession, told Michael there were certain things he couldn’t tell him due to the nature of a contract Hernandez had signed. He added, “I don’t want to disappear now!”, indicating that he was at great risk if he told Michael about classified things. A few days after that he wrote: “In regards to BAASS I am the only investigator who has been revealed through the Isles of Capri, Fla., Niagara Falls, Canada , the Lake Erie incident and the skin walker ranch .org website [Wes’ emphasis] under whos [sic] involved (it just so happened that I was an aggresive [sic] investigator and was written about often). If the report is viewed by the screeners I will be identified. I would like to speak about it but we must keep BAASS out of it for it is a keyword in the system.”
Apparently, Hernandez wanted to keep the Skinwalker Ranch in low profile as well, breaking up the web address in several parts (see bold emphasis above). We will discuss that place a little bit as well in a moment, but first, let’s see what he meant when he was telling Michael about being the ‘aggressive investigator’. Let’s back up a little bit.
Eugene Ehrlikh of Cleveland, Ohio, had filmed some UFOs over Lake Erie, and the media got involved in the case, just like it had with Michael Lee Hill. So MUFON thought they should get involved as well, and sent an investigator named Tom Wertmen to the sighting spot. MUFON’s conclusion over what they saw was planet Venus, but they changed their minds saying that what Ehrlikh had filmed was aircraft coming in and out over Lake Erie from Hopkins-Cleveland International Airport. Investigator Wertmen allegedly had spoken to traffic controllers at the airport, but no references or names were disclosed. This event has been documented by Lon Strickler on his blogspot.
MSNBC contacted the FAA and all local Cleveland Airports who said These objects are not in normal flight paths, that none of these objects were anything they were doing and these objects were not showing up on any of the airports radar as well!
Here is that MSNBC News Clip…
Strickler continues to report that both Ehrlikh and Hill simultaneously had filmed the same UFO event over the lake, without any knowledge of each other. Both were then presenting their material on ‘The Alien Agenda’ radio show. A few days later, on April 8, 2010, Ehrlikh was called by someone who introduced himself as an investigator from BAASS, something which was later confirmed as being correct. The caller introduced himself, and although Strickler doesn’t mention him by name, the investigator was Gary Hernandez. Hernandez then demanded that Ehrlikh gave him the exact coordinates where the sighting had taken place, and when Ehrlikh started questioning the caller, Hernandez told him that these lights were not of terrestrial origin, but alien, and that there was big money involved in trying to get this technology. Ehrlikh then hung up the phone. Ehrlikh didn’t have any particular problem, allegedly, to talk to MUFON or some other UFO investigative organization, but like Strickler says, when someone calls, beings quite ‘aggressive’, and demanding information from the witness, it is indeed time to question the motives of the caller.
So, Hernandez is calling both Ehrlikh and Hill to investigate the sighting, and he reveals to the first that this is alien technology that we are seeing in the skies above the lake (and if he is correct, in other parts of the world, too), and that there is a lot of money invested in this. And indeed, although he seems to have had more cold feet when talking to Michael, in the beginning of their communication he hinted at the same thing, saying (and I quote): “In Regards to the Lights over Lake Erie I am not absolutely convinced that they are coming from conventional aircraft. As an investigator I must be completely objective with any UFO reports which has had multiple witnesses. BAASS employees are paid professionals, all the investigators are formal Law enforcement detectives who have a higher level set of skills and experience. MUFON Takes anyone who pays the money and passes the test and works for free. That does not make them a credible source for information for me to except [sic] they’re [sic] conclusion.”
However, as time went by and he apparently got more confident with Michael, he told Michael that they knew what the Lake Erie phenomenon is, because it is the exact thing that is happening in Hessdalen, Norway. But not only there; these object were also flying over Utah Skinwalker Ranch, which is owned by Robert Bigelow! He said that his conclusion regarding these orbs is not that they are what people think and expect, which would be ‘physical metal, nuts & bolts UFOs’, as he put it, but instead more like portals and have to do with time travel. These were Hernandez’ own words, according to Michael Lee Hill. – writer Wes Penre
“In Regards to the Lights over Lake Erie I am not absolutely convinced that they are coming from conventional aircraft. As an investigator I must be completely objective with any UFO reports which has had multiple witnesses. BAASS employees are paid professionals, all the investigators are formal Law enforcement detectives who have a higher level set of skills and experience. MUFON Takes anyone who pays the money and passes the test and works for free. That does not make them a credible source for information for me to except they’re conclusion.” –
Gary Hernandez Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies Investigator
UFOs have been appearing in our skies for thousands of years.
But now something new is happening. It is the “Orb Triangle” phenomena.
Orbs of light in a triangle formation are appearing above cities all over the world.
These lights are not airplanes, helicopters, or RC planes. Nor are they balloons with lights, flares, Chinese lanterns, or any sort of freely floating object.
This is clear because they always form a perfect triangle. They are individual “orbs” of light which can and do move independently. Yet often three of them will move into a triangular formation. Other individual orbs will somtimes accompany the triangle.
The Orb Triangles have appeared above New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, El Paso…
To start with, wouldn’t it be nice to know how much the government know about these Orbs of Light UFOs that they often are so quick at explaining away as military experiments, illusions, chinese lanterns, flares, etc?
In fact, we do know a few things about how much the government knows! First of all, we know that they are aware of that the Lake Erie UFO orb phenomenon is not local for the Great Lake, and secondly, we know that they have been hiding their knowledge about these kinds of UFOs from the public for quite a long time.
How do we know that? We know, because in 2006, the British ‘Ministry of Defence’ (MOD) released some classified UFO files to the public, which can be viewed here:
When we open up the link, the best thing we are perhaps expecting to find is some general UFO document that doesn’t say much, just like it usually is when the government releases information of this nature. However, when opening up the first PDF file, the image hits us right in the face; it’s the exact same orbs that have been sighted, photographed and filmed over Lake Erie!
So the phenomenon is not isolated only to the Great Lakes! And moreover, we can see that there has been a big cover-up in the United States regarding the orbs over Lake Erie, where so-called ‘experts’ have expressed their ‘informed’ opinions about that this can be, when in fact, their knowledge on the subject was there all the time. Instead, they try to make reliable witnesses look like fools.
In the MOD report it says, amongst a lot of other things that are indeed noteworthy:
“That Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP or UFO) Exist is indisputable. Credited with the ability to hover, land, take off, accelerate to astonishing velocities and vanish. They can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamics characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile – either manned or unmanned.
The Conditions for the initial formation and sustaining of what are apparently buoyant charged masses (of Plasma), which can form, separate, merge, hover, climb, dive, and accelerate are not completely understood.
Dependent on a color’s temperature and aerosol density, it may be seen visually, either by it self generated plasma color, by reflected light, or silhouette by light blockage and background contrast.
Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems a field with, undetermined characteristics can exist between certain charged buoyant objects in loose formation, the intervening space between them forms an area, viewed as a shape, often Triangular, from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently been called black “Craft”, often triangular and up to hundreds of feet in length. –
The UK Ministry of Defence”
This report is interesting in many ways. Although these lights show up clearly in many videos now posted on YouTube, I wanted to ask Michael Lee Hill how he would describe them. He told me:
“They are beautiful! Imagine a house sized ball of Light/plasma that is pulsating with what seems like the brightest most intense multidimensional colors I have ever seen. They usually appear as a single Orb. Then sometimes that Orb will “divide”, or another 2nd Orb will appear next to the first. Sometimes a third Orb will appear and then all three Orbs will join into a huge triangle formation and create what seems to be one solid Triangular craft. Amazingly enough, the UK Ministry of Defense actually has detailed the behavior of these Lake Erie Orbs of Plasma/Light perfectly!” – Michael Lee Hill
Hessdalen is a central Norwegian small village located in a 9.3 miles (15km) long valley. We find it approximately 75 miles south of a larger Norweigian city, Trondheim. Normally, it would have been quite an insignificant little village, with only 120 people living there, and few people in the world would have known it even existed. However, Hessdalen has been quite well known internationally for occasional occurrences of a “sometimes ominous luminous phenomena called the ‘Hessdalen Lights’. The phenomena is monitored by the ‘Hessdalen AMS [Automatic Measurement Station, editor’s note]
These unusual lights have been reported in Hessdalen since at least back in the 1940s. However, there was a great increase in these sightings over the period of December 1981 until the summer of 1984, when people could apparently see the lights as often as 15-20 times a week. Then the amount of sightings decreased again to a relatively steady amount of 10-20 sightings a year, in average.
The light people see is often bright white or yellow (compare the Eastlake UFOs) and of unknown origin to the villagers and scientists. These lights are “standing or floating above the ground level.”[3] And these are not just flashing lights; they can be seen, sometimes for hours at the time!
Due to the increased sightings in the early 1980s, a research team nick-named ‘Project Hessdalen'[5] was initiated by Dr. Erling Strand in 1983. In 1988, the ‘Hessdalen AMS’, which basically is a research station, was built in the valley. It registers and records the appearance of these lights. Later, the EMBLA program was initiated. It brings together established scientists and students into researching these lights. Leading research institutions are Østfold University College (Norway) and the Italian National Research Council.[4] So it’s obvious that these lights can’t be easily explained. In fact, these research institutions, after almost 30 years of steady research, have no clear idea of what these lights are. In Wikipedia, it gives us a number of bullet points, showing us what some scientists are guessing that it is. However, none of these explanations includes that the lights has some kind of higher consciousness, which is quite apparent to anyone who has ever seen them. Nothing artificial can make loops and patterns like that. There are those who would object and say that nothing we know of could make patterns like that, but the thing is that anyone who is objective to start with will see that these lights are moving around by consciousness. I haven’t watches them on site, but it’s enough to watch them on videos to be able to tell.
But to make sure, let’s see what local eye witnesses think about the lights in Hessdalen: Multimedia A-3
Youtube link –
One of the remarks a professor does is “where is the power cord; where is the fuel?” And he is nailing it down right to the point; these lights are not moving around with assistance from any known energy source, at least not to mainstream science.
The video presentation, ‘The Portal’ (Multimedia A-3 above) is a 47 minutes long video, filled with very reliable eye witnesses that have all seen similar things. The light phenomena are changing speed, indicating no mass by physical means, and “seems to be able to take on pieces of plasma or energy from the ground while passing by”.[6] The same thing has been reported regarding the Eastlake UFOs. ‘The Portal’ continues the presentation by saying, “The phenomenon seems to radiate energy, due to the light and frequent change of color”.[7] But also, some eye witnesses have, in connection with the sightings, felt the foul smell of sulphur. Apparently, in 2004 the scientists detected the light phenomenon several times, directly above a specific sulphur mine outside the village. “So this mine must be very special”, says one of the interviewed locals of Hessdalen.[8] Although these lights have been seen hovering above the sulphur mine, it’s just another theory, they add. The lights do not follow any fixed pattern, and certainly don’t always hover over sulphur mines.
Figure A-11. The Light Phenomenon over Hessdalen in 2007, around the time of the aurora borealis (snapshot from ‘The Portal’). The exposure time in this photo was 30 sec, and according to the Hessdalen researchers, the best photo ever taken of this phenomenon.
A spectral study has been done as well of the phenomenon, and it’s been shown to contain oxygen, nitrogen, and silica, which in reality means air and dust. But there were also traces of the rare element of scandium, which can only be found in Scandinavia! Scandium is an extremely hard substance which can be found in the production of Soviet hydroplanes. This material is strong enough to cut through ice caps![9] The same material was used in Soviet fighters (and perhaps still is?) The Soviets had developed high-strength weldable aluminum alloys using Scandium. Now, that is interesting, because it’s exactly what has been reported in the Eastlake UFO sightings! Eye witnesses have sometimes heard, sometimes seen (or both), how the UFOs have cut through the ice cap, making a massive sound. The Norwegian research team has now, as mentioned above, expanded their staff to include college students and others, because they need much more manpower to go to the bottom with this interesting phenomenon. It should be mentioned for research purposes that this phenomenon has also been observed in combination with the aurora borealis, starting out around 9:30 in the evening (fig. A-11).
What we’re seeing in the picture is the light starting out with the glowing orb to the left, moving all the way to the right, and back all the way to the left, past the start point. The distance between the far left and far right is estimated to be 10-15km, which is about 5-7 miles. The exposure time from the camera was 30 seconds. What surprises the scientists is when they look at the spectrum at the bottom (made on purpose by the camera lens) it’s continuous over the spectra, from red to violet. The way the spectrum shows up indicates there is no gas or fuel that’s running the ‘engine’ (if any), but it certainly looks like it could be a solid object, they say, or from plasma with high density, or molecular chemical compositions.
At the same time, the phenomenon is registered on radar. The interesting thing with the radar readings is that the object was only seen for a few minutes, but on the radar it registered for 4 hours!
A scientist that’s interviewed in the video is quite curious about the phenomenon, because it acts like a ball of fire, but it doesn’t expand, and in the combustion process, it should expand according to today’s scientific norms. So something must be able to hold that ball of fire together, he says, like a magnetic field; like a plasmoid; a magnetic field that ‘traps’ plasma and keeps it inside the volume of the orb. They are therefore looking for the mechanism that stores the energy, and why this power source is so incredibly powerful in its intensity. And what’s really curious about it is that the orb can keep this plasma trapped and in a powerful density over a long duration of time. This is mainly what the scientists are now trying to find the solution to. The scientist in the interviews ends off on a positive note, saying that this mysterious way of storing energy could be something we humans may be able to use in the future instead of petrol (gas), and nuclear power. He thinks there may be in the atmosphere, a natural storing mechanism not yet understood by science. Can this become the energy source of the future? they speculate.
The idea of extracting energy from thin air (or vacuum), is not new. Already in the 1920s, Nikola Tesla had discovered enormous energy potentials in what he called the ‘flux field’, or the ‘vacuum field’, by some scientists called the ‘plenum’ (in other words, the 96% dark matter and energy, which in alien term is called the ‘KHAA’, meaning ‘breath’). Today, we hear about this as ‘Zero-Point-Energy’. At this point, the narrator in the video says, there is no known way to extract this kind of energy, but suggests that this may be what we are seeing over Hessdalen; someone, or something is able to do just that, and whatever it is, it’s showing us that it’s doing it!
Lastly, the film producer is elaborating on that this could potentially be even bigger than that. Is Hessdalen perhaps a portal to another world, or another reality?
So, what is known so far about the pulsating orbs of light UFOs showing up worldwide? The following is the conclusions from over 25 years of research and after Italian SETI scientists got involved with much more sophisticated equipment:
The phenomenon is identified as a bright flying object with special characteristics making it unique to science.
The phenomenon is more complex and diverse than expected, indicating more than 1 single kind of phenomenon.
The phenomenon is sometimes made up of separate units that may depart and fly away.
The speed varies from still to 8km per second.
The phenomenon changes course in speeds indicating no mass by physical means.
The phenomenon seems to be able to take on pieces of plasma or energy from the ground whilst passing by.
The phenomenon seems to radiate energy due to the light and frequency change of colour.
Many interesting spectra in the optical and radio frequency range have been detected but more data is needed to draw proper conclusions.
These scientific data are quite sensational! We are dealing with a real existing phenomenon which can be observed even though this is difficult.
For a layman it would be convenient to brush these phenomena off as atmospheric balls of light, which do exist and is an atmospheric phenomenon, and therefore moving back and forth on some atmospheric ‘current’, but this is not logical when we observe how the orbs move and the typical, precise formations they are taking. It’s easy to see that it’s not random, and therefore most likely is something controlled by some perhaps higher intelligence.
Listen to what Army Colonel John Alexander says about the conclusion that the Bigelow Skinwalker group have come to regarding who is behind the Skinwalker Ranch phenomenon and the Lake Erie UFO’s?
The Trickster (The Anunnaki)
The Trickster = In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
Solar Warden: The Secret Space Program Built with Alien Technology
Solar Warden: The Secret Space Program Built with Alien Technology
We now have the technology to take ET home.” –
Ben Rich, CEO of Lockheed Skunk Works, 1993
The story behind this quote is an interesting one. At a lecture held in 1993 at the UCLA alumni center, Ben Rich, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works held a speech about the advancements in space engineering during the previous 40 years. He concluded with the quote about taking ET home while the final image in his slide presentation showed a “black disk zipping out into outer space.”
Was this merely a joke or was he hinting at something?
Over the years, the Skunk Works division of Lockheed has designed and built a number of high-tech aircraft such as the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-22 Raptor and the F-117 Nighthawk. Taking this into account, some have drawn the conclusion that Rich alluded to advanced technology being secretly developed and it might be responsible for some of the flying disks we see today.
Seems too far-fetched? We’re on the same page but wait, it gets better.
In 2001, British systems administrator Gary McKinnon hacked his way into 97 U.S. military and NASA computers. He intended to find top-secret files regarding free energy but stumbled upon something bigger. McKinnon claimed to have uncovered a spreadsheet containing names and information about “non-terrestrial officers” and transfers between fleets. He cross referenced these names with a database of all U.S. Navy and military personnel but was unable to find any of the officers. McKinnon therefore concluded they were not of this world and labeled them as “Space Marines”.
In an interview with the BBC, he said he had been motivated by The Disclosure Project because “they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extraterrestrial in origin and they’ve captured spacecraft and reverse engineered them.”
McKinnon was discovered just as he was examining the image of a UFO stored in a NASA computer in Johnson Space Center’s Building 8. Caught in 2002, he was facing up to 70 years in prison and several million dollars in fines. However, the U.K. never extradited him to the U.S. and McKinnon managed to avoid prison. Some say that he was able to do so because he had amassed sensitive information that he used as leverage.
He maintains his claim that extraterrestrial spacecraft have been captured and reverse-engineered and now the alien technology is being used by entities in our own figurative backyard.
This brings us to Solar Warden. According to conspiracy theorists, Solar Warden is an ultra-secret project that maintains a fleet (or several fleets) of spaceships that are operating within our solar system. Some say they’re defending us against alien threats. Others say they’re involved in the covert colonization of space.
Shh, nobody on Earth has to know!
Such a fleet would require technology way ahead of what we’ve currently got. In order to send manned missions into the far reaches of our solar system we’d need exotic materials and propulsion systems. But there are some who claim we already do.
I suspect that in the last 60 years or so, that there has been some back-engineering and the creation of this type of equipment, that is not nearly as sophisticated yet as what the apparent visitors have.” -
Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth astronaut to walk on the Moon
Even so, who would have the coin required to fund such a venture?
The United States’ black budget for 2014 amounted to some $52.6 billion and they plan on spending around $58.7 B this year. But even this astronomical sum isn’t enough to fund or maintain a secret space fleet. And that’s when conspiracy voices start mentioning the deep black budgets. Whether these programs are myth or reality is hard to tell.
As it turns out, there might be UFOs that were built on Earth, based on technology that originated elsewhere in the universe. And we might have a space fleet without knowing it. Leave a comment telling us what you think about this idea.
Nazi’s bouwden ongelooflijke UFO’s. Zijn dit de geheimzinnige ‘foo fighters’ die vaak in Amerika in Amerika rondvlogen?
Nazi’s bouwden ongelooflijke UFO’s. Zijn dit de geheimzinnige ‘foo fighters’ die vaak in Amerika in Amerika rondvlogen?
Halverwege de jaren veertig werden er talloze keren onverklaarbare objecten waargenomen in het luchtruim, meldt zender Gaia.
Tegen het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog werden militaire toestellen ’s nachts gevolgd door snel bewegende objecten.
De piloten zeiden dat deze objecten in staat waren om snel van koers te veranderen, hun toestellen konden afschudden en zich gedroegen alsof ze werden bestuurd door een intelligentie.
Foo fighters
Er werden onder meer witte objecten en rode en oranje bollen gezien, die de piloten deed denken aan kerstverlichting.
Bemanningen van bommenwerpers spraken van ‘foo fighters’, lichtgevende bollen die opeens verschenen, een poosje hardnekkig hun vliegtuigen volgden en meestal even plotseling weer verdwenen.
Overheidsagentschappen probeerden het fenomeen af te doen als massahysterie en hallucinaties, een hoax of een verkeerde interpretatie van bekende objecten.
Thule-Gesellschaft
Desondanks bleven de waarnemingen binnenstromen en is er tot op heden geen verklaring voor de UFO’s.
Sommige onderzoekers stellen dat de objecten vliegende schotels waren die door nazi-Duitsland werden gebouwd.
Aan de wieg van de Deutsche Arbeiterspartij (DAP), de voorloper van Adolf Hitlers NSDAP, stond het Thule-Gesellschaft, een occulte organisatie die in 1918 werd gesticht in München.
Vril
Prominente leden van dit genootschap waren Hans Frank, de hoofdjurist van nazi-Duitsland, en Rudolf Hess, de plaatsvervanger van Hitler.
Hess, de op twee na machtigste nazi, was ook verbonden aan een ander genootschap, genaamd Vril.
Dit genootschap bestond voornamelijk uit jonge, aantrekkelijke vrouwen die claimden op telepathische wijze te communiceren met buitenaardse wezens.
Handleidingen
De leider van het geheime genootschap, Maria Orsic, nam contact op met Hess om informatie te delen over de wezens waarmee ze naar eigen zeggen in contact stond.
Ze had haar boodschappen opgeschreven in twee talen, een taal die werd gebruikt door de Tempeliers en een taal die historici hebben gelinkt aan een Duitse occulte groep die bekendstond als de ‘Thule’.
De informatie werd vertaald in het Duits en bleek handleidingen te bevatten voor het bouwen van vliegende schotels.
Aldebaran
Nadat de schotels waren gebouwd verdween de Vril plotseling en liet Orsic een brief achter waarin stond: “Niemand blijft hier.”
Onderzoekers denken dat zij de vaartuigen hebben gebruikt om de planeet te verlaten. Orsic claimde namelijk te communiceren met buitenaardsen uit het stelsel van Aldebaran in sterrenbeeld Stier.
NIEUWE BEELDEN MONSTER VAN LOCH NESS, SCHOTLAND ( VIDEO )
NIEUWE BEELDEN MONSTER VAN LOCH NESS, SCHOTLAND ( VIDEO )
Eens in de zoveel tijd is het weer raak en duiken er weer nieuwe beelden op van wat misschien wel het meeste beroemde meer ter wereld is, Loch Ness.
Al in de 7e eeuw verschenen de eerste verhalen over een monster in Loch Ness en anno 2017 is er niet veel veranderd.
Het is een tijdje stil geweest rond Loch Ness, waar eigenlijk ieder jaar wel een aantal vreemde dingen worden waargenomen.
De laatste waarneming dateert inmiddels alweer van acht maanden geleden, maar daar is ongeveer een week geleden verandering in gekomen.
Op zondag 7 mei 2017 maakte de 35-jarige Rob Jones uit Wales filmopnames van het meer. Rob reed in zijn bestelauto langs de weg boven het meer, toen hij in het water iets vreemds ontdekte.
Het object bewoog in de richting van een boot en Rob stopte de auto en begon te filmen. Ook een groep toeristen die langs de weg liep, kreeg belangstelling en begon ook met het maken van foto’s.
Het vreemde was dat de boot gewoon verder voer en niets bijzonders scheen op te merken, maar duidelijk is dat het object wel degelijk bewoog in het water.
Het zag er van een afstand zo uit.
En wat uitvergroot, zie je dit:
Rob zegt dat hij eigenlijk niet in het verhaal van het monster gelooft, maar dat hij toch wel heel erg nieuwsgierig is naar wat hij nu eigenlijk heeft gefilmd.
Gary Campbell die het officiële register van waarnemingen van het monster van Loch Ness bijhoudt, is blij, want hij begon zich na acht maanden toch wel wat zorgen te maken over het monster.
Vorig jaar was een record met 18 waarnemingen, het beste jaar sinds 2000, maar de laatste dateert alweer van augustus vorig jaar.
De door Rob Jones gemaakte opname lijkt veel op die werd gemaakt in 1934 waar wij in een eerder artikel het volgende over schreven:
De meest bekende foto van het monster is waarschijnlijk onderstaande foto. Hij is genomen in1934 door een gynaecoloog uit Londen, Robert Kenneth Wilson. Deze foto werd gepubliceerd in de Daily Mail van 21 april 1934. Op de foto zie je het monster met een lange nek en het hoofd boven water.
Echter… het was een grap. De foto was niets meer dan een speelgoed onderzeeër, gekocht bij een warenhuis. Daarbovenop was een hoofd en nek gemaakt van hout door ene Marmaduke Wetherell. Deze was zwaar gepikeerd omdat hij belachelijk gemaakt werd door de kranten in verband met zijn zoektocht naar het monster en besloot op deze manier wraak te nemen.
De oudste verhalen van een monster in Loch Ness dateren van de 7e eeuw. St. Columba, een Ierse monnik, stuurde één van zijn volgelingen het water in om te bewijzen dat er geen monster was.
Maar, helaas, het monster was er wel, kwam uit het water en beet in de hielen van de man. Gelukkig was er St. Columba. Deze bleef onverschrokken staan en verjoeg het verschrikte monster door het teken van het kruis te maken en te commanderen: “Kom niet verder. Raak die man niet aan. Ga onmiddellijk terug”.
Tja, en daar had het monster natuurlijk niet van terug, zodat hij tot de dag van vandaag waarschijnlijk maar besloten heeft om onder water te blijven.
The natural geological formations with at least strange shapes or perhaps the oldest pyramid on Earth posed by human hands, the complex of pyramids in Bosnia and Herzegovina have for years numerous discussions in the contradictory. The dispute continues to this day, though, of which they have researchers investigated, most claim they are nothing more than relief forms polished natural erosion factors. The story behind them, however, is an especially interesting, with scandals, extreme nationalism, tourism at any cost and countless studies whose results not irreconcilable.
Semir Osmanagić was dubbed the Indiana Jones of those in the Balkans, because of its passion for archeology, prehistory and the mysteries surrounding the extinct archaic civilizations. Semir Osmanagić was able to shatter the scientific world in early 2006, when he announced that he had discovered the oldest pyramids in the old Continent, somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Self-confessed researcher, technician in steel construction, Osmanagić turned the world's attention towards the Visočica Hill, a pyramid-shaped clear formation, located near the town of Visoko, 30 kilometers Northwest of the capital Sarajevo. Visoko, itself, is the former capital of the Medieval Kingdom of Bosnia and holds, among other things, numerous and varied historical vestiges, from the ruins of the Illyrian settlements, Roman forts, plus many artifacts from the Neolithic period.
For more details, you can watch the video or read the article from the following link:
STEPHEN HAWKING: WE WILL LIVE IN CITIES ON THE MOON IN 50 YEARS
STEPHEN HAWKING: WE WILL LIVE IN CITIES ON THE MOON IN 50 YEARS
Stephen Hawking is one of the most well-known scientists in this day and age. The British astrophysicist was recently featured in a movie a few years back which was highly acclaimed and allowed his name to appear and raise awareness about his theories among the general population, and not just the scientific community.
The movie features highlights of his life, especially highlighting the part where he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an extremely rare degenerative neural disease that causes one to lose control of their own body. The 72-year-old scientist now moves around in a wheelchair and speaks to others through a keyboard and voice synthesizer. His extraordinary feat of achieving success even with this disease hindering him has inspired many around the world.
However, Stephen Hawking's personal trials and tribulations are not the only things that got people to notice him. He is famed in the scientific community for his theory on black holes, and "Brief History of Time", his bestseller book that has caused him to be famous worldwide. Recently, Dr. Hawking was featured on Channel 4's "Live from Space: Lap of the Planet", a documentary and live series that shows real-time broadcasts from astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS). On the live broadcast, Dr. Hawking claimed that in order to prevent the extinction of the human species, humankind has to colonize other planets. This is because Mother Earth is an "old world" with a finite number of resources that is being depleted too quickly because of overpopulation.
He suggests humankind venture out into the never-ending cosmos, being the true generation that carries the name of "Space Age". He further added that this would be achieved when humankind will be able to live on the Moon, and then moving on to colonize Mars in the next 50 years.
LIFE ON THE MOON?
This really sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but what Dr. Hawking claims about our Earth not being able to sustain us is true. Fossil fuels are running out, our forests are being destroyed more and more, and our ozone layer is being depleted. Perhaps his solution is the one that will truly save us all at the very end, and is sustainable for thousands of years, ensuring the survival of our kind.
FATHER AND SON FILMED STRANGE UFO OVER VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
FATHER AND SON FILMED STRANGE UFO OVER VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Well now..what the hell was that? If this is fake? It's a really good one. At 1:55 there appear to be some strobing lights under the main orb light. The combination of all the lights makes it seem like it has the classic saucer shape.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
NASA DETECTS HUNDREDS OF UNEXPLAINABLE FLASHES REFLECTING OFF PLANET EARTH
NASA DETECTS HUNDREDS OF UNEXPLAINABLE FLASHES REFLECTING OFF PLANET EARTH
NASA has filmed hundreds of huge flashes reflecting off Earth and in doing so they have helped to put an end to a mystery that had Carl Sagan and others mystified more than two decades ago.
The mysterious flashes are so big that they could be seen from space and originally they had been thought to have been caused by the sun reflecting off the ocean’s surface. However, NASA then captured them on land and no-one seemed to know where they had come from and what caused them.
Alexander Marshak said that they saw bright flashes over land and at first they assumed that there was a lake or large body of water and the sun had reflected off it. However, the glint was too big for that to have been behind it.
SAGAN SAW HUGE FLASHES IN 1993 ON IMAGES TAKEN BY GALILEO SPACECRAFT
Astronomer Carl Sagan also saw huge flashes in 1993 on photographs that had been taken by the Galileo spacecraft of Earth. The probe had been launched four years prior so that they could study Jupiter and the moons, however, Sagan used it when it was making a flyby past Earth to look for signs of life on Earth. He said that if he could find signatures of life from up in space, extraterrestrial neighbors would be able to do the same and they would realize that Earth was inhabited.
In the photographs large glints of light, light reflections on mirrors were seen, however, they were only seen in areas that were covered by water. The team said that the large expanse of ocean and coastlines had been present and when looking at them closely the photographs revealed a region of mirror-like reflection in the ocean but it wasn’t seen on land.
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER MORE STRANGE GLINTS APPEAR OVER LAND
Twenty-four years later NASA found 866 light bursts between June 2015 and August 2016 and strangely all of them happened to be coming from the land, not the ocean. The footage was captured by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera that was on-board NOAA Deep Space Climate Observatory.
The team from NASA then got the photos from the Galileo and compared them and then realized that Sagan had forgotten about one thing, a detail that was, in fact, crucial, the reflections had occurred on land too in that survey years ago. Marshak along with his team then had to explain the phenomenon and they set about cataloging all flashes seen over land from the EPIC and Galileo images and then mapped their locations. They suggested that if the glints had been caused due to the sunlight being reflected then only some parts of the globe would have them. They found a pattern and this led to the elimination lightning. The team still thought that water was behind it, but water in the atmosphere instead of on the surface.
GLINTS FROM ICE CRYSTALS HANGING HORIZONTALLY
They used the EPIC data and mapped out exactly where the huge glints were coming from and found in was a source 3 to 5 miles above the surface where there were cirrus clouds that were full of ice crystals hanging. They modeled the sunlight direction reflecting of the hypothetical ice crystals floating on a horizontal angle and the numbers matched with the images from the Galileo and EPIC photographs.
Marshak said that the source of the glints was not on the ground and that it was due to ice, more than likely solar reflections off particles that were horizontally oriented. Their research has not been reviewed by peer just yet; this means that some aspects of their findings may change when it has been verified independently.
Researchers are looking into how common ice crystals that hang horizontally are and whether they have any impact that is significant on how much of the sunlight is reflected through the atmosphere. One thing that is known is that the flashes of light are not the signs of extra-terrestrial life that Carl Sagan had been looking for.
Reports claim UFO whizzes past International Space Station
Reports claim UFO whizzes past International Space Station
(Credit: SecureTeam 10 YouTube channel)
A mysterious object appeared to have hovered past the International Space Station, according to new video footage from UFO researchers.
SecureTeam 10, who in recent days has posted videos about a supposed alien tank and a cigar shaped disc over Paris, claims that a disc-shaped object whizzed past the ISS "at a very high rate of speed."
NASA, who did not respond specifically to the latest video, has often said that the objects are "distortions in a lens" and do not signify the presence of extraterrestrial life.
Tyler Glockner, the voice heard on the video from SecureTeam 10, said that the object in the video moved "as if it knew the camera was watching."
Below is the video in its entirety:
UFO sightings have become more frequent in recent years. A book entitled "U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference" said that U.S.-based sightings rose to 11,868 in 2015, up from 3,479 in 2001.
A synopsis of the book on Amazon states that it presents "data and analysis for 100,000+ sightings of unidentified flying objects reported by individuals during the first 15 years of the 21st century."
SecureTeam 10 has nearly 900,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel, despite openly running conspiracy-theory based videos.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
Stranger danger: Extraterrestrial first contact as a political problem
The movie Arrival illustrated the difficulties of communicating with an alien intelligence, but even that may have been an oversimplification of the real challenges.
(credit: Paramount Pictures)
Stranger danger: Extraterrestrial first contact as a political problem
by John Hickman and Koby Boatright
The 2016 film Arrival is simultaneously smart science fiction and wildly optimistic about the outcome of first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Smart because the extraterrestrials appear credible as the products of an extraterrestrial evolutionary process; wildly optimistic both because the extraterrestrials are benign in the way humans have always wanted their gods to manifest themselves and because humans are ultimately able to decode their language.1Arrival’s heptapods sudden appear on Earth aboard interstellar spacecraft but then wait for humans to pass a difficult but not impossible language examination. Testing humans to determine their worth is a common trope in mythology and religion, and its presence in the film betrays an appeal to magical thinking.
Getting it wrong because decision-making was freighted with unreasonable expectations might result in consequences that range from the merely amusing to the deeply frustrating to the existentially threatening.
The 2017 film Life is even smarter science fiction because it doesn’t require interstellar travel, benign extraterrestrials, or communication between species with symbolic language. Instead, it is brutally pessimistic about the outcome of human encounters contact with extraterrestrials, intelligent or otherwise. The test portrayed in Life—biological survival—is far more fundamental and far more plausible. Viewed in succession, Arrival and Life evoke the better angels of our nature and then challenge the reasonableness of our expectations. What follows is a thought experiment, an effort to “game” the test in the most probable presentation of a first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, hereinafter referred to simply as First Contact.
If there is a consensus scholarum on the most probable scenario for First Contact, it would begin with human detection of a radio signal with sufficient structure to suggest symbolic language that had been broadcast from an exoplanet. Such an event would present the most formidable of language problems and confront national decision-makers with extraordinarily important choices, which would be made under extraordinary uncertainty.2 Deciding to respond to such a radio signal would be tempting. Lacking all but the most basic information about the transmitting extraterrestrial entity, buffeted by intense public excitement about the discovery of an intelligent extraterrestrials, and fearing that rival national decision-makers might preempt their decision by being the first to respond, national decision-makers might feel compelled to act based on assumptions that are revealed as incorrect only after the momentous encounter has begun. Getting it wrong because decision-making was freighted with unreasonable expectations might result in consequences that range from the merely amusing to the deeply frustrating to the existentially threatening. So this thought experiment is justified under the cautionary principle.
We proceed by first assessing possible risks and benefits of First Contact. The daunting language problem serves as the linchpin between possible risks and benefits. We then examine the underlying political problem before offering some conclusions about optimal public policy making.
Possible risks
For First Contact pessimists, the Fermi Paradox captures a crucial observation: a universe that ought to be noisy with the radio evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations is instead utterly silent. Searches have yet to detect radio signals operating as distant beacons announcing “we’re here.”3 Silence can be given an optimistic interpretation: Douglas Vakoch suggests that reflects a norm of respect for the wishes of other creatures that requires a species to announce its desire to communicate by broadcasting their wish to do so and proposes broadcasting such an invitation. “Maybe it takes an audacious young civilization like ours to do that.”4
What worries pessimists is the possibility that silence is motivated by rational existential fear. A preference for survival as a species and extraordinary uncertainty about possible risks attending contact between different intelligent technological species may have persuaded most species to avoid alerting others to their own existence.5 Thus, David Brin rejects the idea of broadcasting an invitation as, “seeing my children’s destiny gambled with.”6 Clearly, that proposition must be qualified with “most” because humans have been violating the proposed norm for decades with radio and television broadcasts. Perhaps we have been fortunate that Earth’s atmosphere bounces back most radio transmissions and that mass communication is increasingly transmitted by means other than broadcasting.
When Stephen Hawking warned against alerting any extraterrestrial civilization to our existence he offered as a familiar cautionary example the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.7The resulting series of first contacts resulted in population collapse of up to 90 percent of native populations across the Western Hemisphere, followed by brutal conquest and colonization by Europeans. The results of first contacts between Europeans and other peoples across the insular South Pacific were similarly tragic. Kathryn Denning critiques this and other historical analogies as a poor model for first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and notes that the historical encounters of the early modern era may be perceived less negatively over the longer term because they resulted in vibrant hybrid societies of value in their own right.8 That there are no Guanches, Tasmanians, or members of many other extinct indigenous peoples available to dispute Denning’s blithe reassurance ought to give one pause before accepting it.9
It follows that silence is thus a plausible strategy for a risk-averse species because the result for any other species that might be listening is indistinguishable from a universe empty of species with technological civilizations.
Given that First Contact would occur between our species and another, as yet unknown, entity, there are analogies that merit consideration. For example, the fate of large animal species after the irruption of humans in virgin soil environments can be seen as tragic. Paleoindians exterminated most of the megafauna in the Americas, including mastodons, dire wolves, giant sloths, giant armadillos, giant beavers, and glyptodonts, soon after their arrival.10 The moose and bison alone survived. Polynesian ancestors of the Maori exterminated all 13 species of the Moa, giant flightless birds, soon after their arrival in New Zealand. The remorseless encounters between native and invasive non-human species competing for the same ecological niches is similarly tragic, at least from the perspective of those of us who prefer a biosphere with more species diversity. Pathogen transfer due to contact between previously isolated wild and commercial populations of the same non-human species has resulted in population crashes.
Examples of the resulting negative outcomes are displayed in Table 1.
Table 1. Tragic Encounters
same species
closely related species
unrelated species
both populations possess human level intelligent
Western Europeans and Native Americans in the Americas11
modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia12
no data
only one population possesses human level intelligence
no data
modern humans and chimpanzees in sub-Saharan Africa13
Paleoindians and megafauna in the Americas14
neither population possesses human level intelligence
wild and commercial bumble bees, salmon, pigs15
roof rats and rice rats in the Galapagos16
brown rats and tuatara on Whenuakura Island17
That all of those encounters ended badly for one party, frequently involving population crashes and extinction, should not be ignored by policy makers. We note, however, that the analytic value of these analogies is constrained by three considerations. First, there are no data for the cell in the upper-right-hand corner of encounters between populations of intelligent but unrelated species, which would encompass First Contact. Second, all of the analogies involve encounters between terrestrial fauna. First Contact might be with a species that evolved amid much less aggressive life forms than those found on Earth. Indeed, First Contact might be with an entity that emerged in an entirely non-competitive environment. Third, all of the analogies involved physical contact between different populations. None were limited solely to long distance communication as is expected in First Contact.18
What matters here is that terrestrial analogies to encounters between populations offer the only empirical information for assessing the risks of First Contact. It follows that silence is thus a plausible strategy for a risk-averse species because the result for any other species that might be listening is indistinguishable from a universe empty of species with technological civilizations. Even if every intelligent entity would be benevolent towards other intelligent entity given the opportunity to interact, an implicit silence norm might be self-reinforcing as species choose to interpret the uncertainty inherent in the result as possible evidence of the rational behavior by other species. If you do not hear anyone else speaking, then either there is no one to talk to or they may know to be quiet for a very good reason.
Language
Before surveying possible benefits of First Contact, it is important to examine what is likely to be the most daunting aspect of the encounter. Will humans be able to do more than simply recognize that a radio signal is from an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and actually establish mutually intelligible communications?
When we conceive of extraterrestrial minds, they often inhabit entities with radically different body plans: planet-wide unitary organisms or populations of machine successors to biological organisms. Contrawise, similar body plans are expected to produce similar minds. Optimistic assessments of the possibility of communicating abstract ideas other than perhaps mathematics are typically premised on convergent evolution, as in Don Lincoln’s 2013 Alien Universe.19 John C. Baird’s 1987 The Inner Limits of Outer Space compared the problem of communicating with an intelligent extraterrestrial species with translating ancient hieroglyphics without benefit of a Rosetta Stone.20
Even that may be much too optimistic. Egyptian hieroglyphics were the work of human minds, merely separated in time by five millennia.21 The problem is that even if intelligent extraterrestrials resemble humans, their minds may be radically different. Our current understanding is that humans possess an innate capacity for learning and using a language and associated culture.22 Although language and mind are inextricably linked in humans, they might not be so for an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, no matter how similar in appearance. Their minds may resemble the plastic Standard Social Science Model that dominated social science thinking during the last century and that continues to influence thinking about language among proponents of SETI.23 Alternatively their minds might be organized with comparable but different innate capacities, perhaps even greater rigidity than our own.
The problem is that even if intelligent extraterrestrials resemble humans, their minds may be radically different.
The language problem is daunting in part because although linguists are reliable sources for questions about human language, the film Arrival notwithstanding, they are likely to have little to offer in translating messages from extraterrestrials. Experts in foreign tongues are likely to be flummoxed by efforts to communicate with entities without tongues. First Contact would present multiple “firsts,” at least in the annals of humanity. That newness means nothing should be taken for granted, and certainly not the intent to communicate simply because an extraterrestrial radio signal has been detected.
If extraterrestrials communicate via something similar to human language, it would be necessary to determine which, if either, of the two types of intentional, signification-based communication that we employ: ‘”natural language” like English, Italian, or Proto-Indo-European; or “code” like C++, syntax for expressing an architecture such as Zermelo-Fraenkel, or binary. There are several differences between a code and a natural language, but their similarities are often a source of confusion. An exacting description of these relationships is beyond the scope of this paper, so we will merely point to a few that shed light for the present strategic darkness.
First, a natural language is the product of unintentional evolutionary processes, much the same as the species that makes use of it. It is for this reason that most natural languages have irregularities in structure or spelling which have seemingly no rational basis—sometimes to the great frustration of those attempting to use such a language. A code, by contrast, is formed somewhat deliberately. This usually encourages uniformity in how it is presented and restricts its ad-libbed modification.
Second, natural language has ambiguities that codes do not. Sentence structure, tone, pitch, and a hundred other things all come together to provide variation in significance. Often, we have to simply say that it’s a matter of circumstance. These matters of circumstance cut down on the time it takes to communicate immensely. Codes are, by contrast and by design, unambiguous. A message is to be interpreted only one way, and the very grammar of the code is usually tailored in such a way that it can be deciphered purely mechanically—and let us not miss the importance of the term “decipher” here. This means that every relevant detail has to be spelled out, so if there are a lot of details, a message can quickly become enormous.
Third, along similar lines, natural language is multi-contextual. This means that it is conveyed in situations where more than one medium gives relevant information as to how the communication is to be interpreted. The ability to detect a tone of sarcasm or earnestness is immensely helpful to truly understanding each other, and it is in these areas of subtext that artificial intelligence interactions with humans find their great challenges. Codes, by contrast, contain everything in the letter. The form of the communication itself is expected to be sufficient to extract everything of relevance. This is necessary to program computers, or write out proofs of mathematical concepts that can be carried out by brute logical operation.
To sum up these differences, code operates in highly restricted circumstances on barebones prior information, making it unambiguous but not usually efficient. Natural language operates in situations where multiple external details can be taken into account to clarify, and whole separate channels of information are available, like gesturing or intoning. Humans are so accustomed to dealing with natural language situations that it is easy to mistake any communication with conscious beings for being just that simple. But with so much between us as whole star systems, and little more than a glorified two-way radio, this may be far from the case.
“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.” This statement by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein illustrates partially why the cryptanalyst will likely be more useful to understanding far-flung communication than the linguist. There is little that can be said about the aliens’ “form of life” that isn’t assumption, and though they may have language, this will not be the artifact we pick up when our radios start squawking. We shall merely have a code.
The inability to understand the language of the other would likely engender frustration and suspicion.
Once we have our code, we may think that the problem is merely decryption. However, there is cause to think that the limitations we’ve just discussed not only render the situation more difficult, they may well put sharp boundaries on just what sort of information can be transmitted, and hence on what can be inferred for questions of strategy. The two problems, intertwined, are whether there is sufficient information for deciphering and whether worthwhile information can be transmitted.
The first problem doesn’t seem too difficult, because the message can be expected to provide clues to its interpretation by its form alone. Binary messages, either based on a dot-dash system or an on-off system, allows the transmission of sequences of numbers. Variation of tone around a baseline could simplify this into something like a hexadecimal system. Sequences of numbers that illustrate geometric ratios of importance could thus be a relatively simple matter to transmit and receive. Repeated series like so, replacing an element with a blank or nonsense value, might serve to indicate the variables and operations in equations.
The door of mathematics, it seems, is open to us, though interpreting even this enough to get at “interesting” information could take an incredibly long time. Such messages would not only be very long sequences as the operations became more advanced, but would take a long time to respond to indicating understanding. Further, the messages would likely have to be repeated more than once, and any part of the message that didn’t get through could seriously hamper the decryption process. Messages intended to be reinterpreted through another medium, such as pictures described dot by dot through binary, would both be immense, and a gamble, presuming that the far-flung interlocutor has a means of processing visual information.
Here is where the second difficulty comes in. Mathematical truths can be transmitted in this way because the form of the message itself bears some kind of direct relationship to the matters being conveyed, in the way that the structure of a code-message bears similarity to the structure of the “meaning.” The only comparative measurements that are needed are provided internally, and little reference to external standards, except perhaps the rules of logic, is needed. This is where the univocal nature of radio communication may put a damper on things.
Natural language requires context and the available context is likely to be very thin. Advances in astronomical observation might provide information about the gravity and composition of the atmosphere if a planet is the source of the radio signal. Beyond recognition that mathematics and the natural sciences are shared, radio signals might contain sufficient information to assemble images from binary code. Such communications, if they are to convey much detail, would also have to be quite large, potentially suffering the same difficulties as regards interference as the above-mentioned mathematical operations. After that, however, interpretation is likely to be slow going and perhaps prove impossible.
Those who are pessimistic about the possibility of establishing communication will find philosophic support in the work of the mature Ludwig Wittgenstein as it was articulated in his Philosophical Investigations. His general argument is that the meaning of words is derived from linguistic conventions that permit no external justification and are unconcerned with empirically verifiable reference points. What a word means is determined by what everyone who speaks the same language knows it to mean. Moreover, because our access to reality, facilitated by language, is overwhelmingly social in nature, the common sense meanings of words offer as firm a reflection of reality—what Richard Rorty called a “Mirror of Nature”—as is possible. If the view of the mature Wittgenstein is correct, we may be faced with an impassible barrier for translation between human and extraterrestrial languages because they simply cannot belong to the same type of society and therefore there exists no way to construct commonsense meanings.
Comparing Chinese with German, Christian Helmut Wenzel notes how the tendencies of (human) languages derived from their cultural evolution create habits of thought.24 For example, Chinese language requires Chinese speakers to be more context sensitive than German language requires of German speakers, both in text and in speech. In another example, Chinese speakers use vertical spatial metaphors to reference time—for example the future is described as “down”—while German speakers use horizontal spatial metaphors to reference time.25 The differences in such largely unconscious habits of thought between humans and any intelligent extraterrestrial entity are likely to have more causes deeper than culture. Physical sense-organs are likely to differ. One of the authors of this article is visually impaired and thus aware of the frequency with which visual metaphors are used to reference processes of cognition: “Do you now see what we mean?” The degree to which an intelligent extraterrestrial entity is social might differ. Human sociality lies midway on a spectrum between that typical of arachnids at one extreme and that typical of hymenoptera at the other extreme. The sociality of an intelligent extraterrestrial entity might lie elsewhere along that same spectrum. Thus their capacity for some affect that is equivalent to trust may be less or more than our own.
The human mind is designed for communicating with fellow humans. There is no guarantee that we would ever achieve more than the most rudimentary communication with creatures even very similar to ourselves.
As Table 2 shows, successful communication and Babelian confusion are not the only possibilities for attempted communication in First Contact. A great deal must be achieved by both parties to this encounter for successful communication to be achieved without frustration and suspicion by one or both of the two parties. The everyday human experience is that all that is necessary for communication between speakers of different languages to be moderately successful. Limited shared language may be sufficient to carry out important exchanges of information. That would not be true of communication between humans and an extraterrestrial entity. Instead, such exchanges would more closely resemble the negotiations between political or business decision-makers, who struggle to define their terminology in both languages so as to maximize value by avoiding future confusion or betrayal. Neither an intelligent extraterrestrial entity capable of calculated deception nor humans would be able to trust that they had properly understood the meaning of messages if they were unable to translate back from the language of the other. The inability to understand the language of the other would likely engender frustration and suspicion.
Table 2. Possible communications outcomes
Human Language Intelligible by Extraterrestrial Entity
Human Language Unintelligible by Extraterrestrial Entity
Extraterrestrial Entity’s Language Intelligible by Humans
Communication (Shared Fluency)
Human Understanding coupled with Frustration and Suspicion by Extraterrestrial Entity
Extraterrestrial Entity’s Language Unintelligible by Humans
Extraterrestrial Entity Understanding coupled with Frustration and Suspicion by Humans
No Communication (Babelian Confusion)
Some consequences of unsuccessful communication in First Contact are foreseeable. Humans tend to interpret the “known unknown” with imagined forces and creatures, often elaborated from familiar myths.26 Fantastic beliefs and desperate action based on those beliefs is a possible result. The urge to project theories of mind appropriate to humans onto non-human animals or natural phenomena is well known. That humans do so with the creatures that we know best—dogs—is telling. Across cultures, humans will attempt to reason with dogs using symbolic logic and dogs will mimic understanding because they are rewarded for doing so. This exchange is noteworthy because it may have begun between 15,000 and 150,000 years ago and might represent a form of co-evolution. What matters here is that incomplete understanding between two utterly familiar terrestrial species endures despite its significance for humans as the best possible opportunity to cultivate an ethical practice with “significant otherness.”27 Given such failure, is it altogether reasonable to expect the successful exchange of information with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity that presents absolute otherness?
What does this mean for the possibility of successful communication between humans and an intelligent extraterrestrial entity? The human mind is designed for communicating with fellow humans. There is no guarantee that we would ever achieve more than the most rudimentary communication with creatures even very similar to ourselves. Perhaps we might succeed in checking our math but the possibility of exchanging much beyond that is limited. Moreover that might be fortunate if the intelligent extraterrestrial entity possesses ideas that might be released among our species as destructive memes.
Benefits
Carl Sagan, icon of the First Contact optimists, prophesied that humans might benefit immensely from access to the “scientific, logical, cultural and ethical knowledge to be gained from tuning into galactic transmissions.”28 Sagan was confident that the consequent cultural shock would be relatively small and that the decoding of signals would be possible though perhaps requiring decades or centuries.29 Albert A. Harrison anticipates encountering peaceful and cooperative intelligent extraterrestrial species flourishing in the interstellar equivalent to the Kantian Peace.30 He pictures a Galactic Club of such species operating on broad principles with experience at enrolling new member species such as our own. Alas, several decades of searching now suggests that intelligent extraterrestrial entities broadcasting invitations to communicate by radio must be exceedingly rare or occur at distances so great from Earth as to be functionally non-existent.
Simply being exposed to different and radically alien minds might have a pacifying effect on our behavior by permitting further moral development. That effect is of course dependent on actually communicating in something close to natural language.
What benefits might be derived from communicating with an extraterrestrial entity? We already know that intelligence has arisen multiple times on Earth but have yet to converse with any of the terrestrial species exhibiting intelligence about anything other than naming food, identifying predator threats, claiming territory, and expressing affection.31 To that extent humans already know they are not alone in the universe. Alas, we are unable to compare notes with any terrestrial intelligent species about more abstract matters. That is what we might achieve if we are able to translate messages from an intelligent extraterrestrial entity.
Proponents of attempting to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial entities typically assume that our mathematics reflects something universal and would thus serve as the basis for the development of a common terminology. They might be mistaken. The mathematics we know might simply reflect the thinking of our species, centered on performing the sort of operation that is useful to us. Even ostensibly “pure” mathematics may simply be applied mathematics applied to itself, rendering the divide a case of degrees of removal rather than a difference in substance. An important benefit of First Contact would be to determine whether we know what we think we know about mathematics, both in content and scope. Discovering that mathematics is not shared might however foreclose use of the most promising means for achieving translation of messages. Not recognizing this, if it is so, may mean we toil in vain at an impossible task for a very long time.
Another benefit would be that we could “avoid re-inventing the wheel” by adopting much of the scientific and engineering advances made by other species. However we cannot assume that the science and engineering of an extraterrestrial entity would be of any practical use.32 Humans might also benefit from exposure to new examples and benefit by recognizing value in what we already possess. Thus we might be in a situation analogous to the pre-contact Inca, who were aware of the wheel but did not put it to use in transportation. An extraterrestrial entity might possess philosophic or spiritual insights as yet unimagined by our species.
Even if the extraterrestrial entity has nothing to offer that we do not already possess, would there be any benefit to communication? Donna Haraway argues that the relationships we develop with domesticated animals, creatures with different minds, is crucial to human moral development.33Steven Pinker argues that mass communications, which has resulted in greater exposure to the minds of humans and other animals unlike ourselves, is in part responsible for our increasingly peaceful behavior.34 So simply being exposed to different and radically alien minds might have a pacifying effect on our behavior by permitting further moral development. That effect is of course dependent on actually communicating in something close to natural language.
What do political decision-makers know about the benefits attending First Contact? The answer is that they know very little. Indeed, the claimed benefits appear to reflect wishful thinking.
The political problem
The search for radio signals from extraterrestrial entities has been ongoing for decades despite the absence of an unambiguous public policy consensus about the wisdom of doing so. Instead, enthusiasm about the possibility of detecting intelligent extraterrestrial life has been assiduously cultivated in popular culture. It sometimes seems as a means of inoculating the public against xenophobia about human Others.35 Belief in the benign character of any extraterrestrial entity is sufficiently common among members of the attentive public that The Planetary Society uses it to raise money. Thus an August 15, 2014, fundraising e-mail message ends with the following promise: “If an alien civilization broadcasts our way, it would be a major discovery in human history. And you’d like to be part of it. Please help keep the search alive.” The appeal for contributions makes no mention of the risks attending detection or response to such a message. Nor is there a mass membership lobby comparable to The Planetary Society opposing the effort. There is dissent from this but it fails to resonate strongly in public opinion.36
What do political decision-makers know about the risks attending First Contact? The answer is woefully little, and what they do know is decidedly woeful.
Scientific experts are divided about the advisability of responding to any detected entity and of unprompted signaling of our species’ existence as an intelligent technological entity.37 Unfortunately, much of the public, which might be in opposition, ignores expert opinion in favor of more entertaining conspiracist narratives of the sort offered up by The Discovery Channel.
What do political decision-makers know about the risks attending First Contact? The answer is woefully little, and what they do know is decidedly woeful. The tragic encounters detailed in Table 1 do not bode well even for encounters confined to radio transmissions. Memes, in the original sense that Richard Dawkins coined the term, could be demoralizing and disruptive in the same manner as pandemics.38 As we are discovering in the 21st century, information itself may be weaponized.
Given the worrisome “cat-killing” curiosity common to our species, some may be tempted to respond to a radio signal before it is deciphered and before it is determined whether humans are the intended audience. Mounting popular and scientific enthusiasm driven by curiosity might be difficult for political decision-makers to resist. Frustration at the inability to derive a message from the radio broadcast is likely to feed conspiracist suspicion that decision-makers are concealing information that they do not possess. The temptation to respond will probably be strengthened by what are, in human perception, very long time periods between sending and receiving radio messages. The time horizons for decision makers are typically much shorter. Long-term consequences of even the most momentous policy making may be discounted in favor of near-term advantages that can be reckoned in public opinion polls and election outcomes.
Decision-makers are no less prone than anyone else to errors of misperception that are the product of a human proclivity to tell one another stories in which missing information is replaced with supposition. Several of the hypothesized misperceptions involved in nuclear deterrence identified by Robert Jervis are relevant here: the tendency to accept or reject new information based on existing beliefs or theory, the tendency to successfully assimilate new information only if it is received piecemeal, the tendency to believe that messages received are in response to messages sent, the tendency to overestimate the clarity of messages sent, and the tendency to believe that message recipients share common interests and perspectives.39 These tendencies to misperception may be reinforced by both the “groupthink” syndrome identified by Irving Janis40 and the competition between bureaucratic organizations even during existential crises identified by Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow.41
In his discussion of conceptualization in international relations, Robert Jervis notes that the most basic perceptual thresholds are also the most difficult to correct: whether or not decision-makers possess a concept for a category of thought.42 Thus the inaccurate image of the West employed by Chinese decision-makers in the mid-19th century delayed their learning about their challengers and rendered their response to those challenges inadequate. They thought they were interacting with a power comparable to 16th century Portugal when in reality they were dealing with 19th century Britain. One hundred years of violence and humiliation were the consequence.
The political problem is initially one of choosing between non response and delayed response. As displayed in Table 3, any response to the message should be delayed at least until the message has been deciphered and the intended recipient identified. Potential existential threats warrant decision making patience born of extreme caution.
Table 3: Optimal near-term decision-making
Intended Recipient
Unintended Recipient
Decipherable
Delay Response
No Response
Undecipherable
No Response
No Response
Unless the message can be determined to have been intentionally transmitted and that humanity is its intended recipient rather than some other extraterrestrial entity, then not responding remains the optimally rational decision.
Non-response will require official messaging to dampen both public and scientific enthusiasm. As the experience of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War reveals, news audiences can be persuaded to accept the strategic logic of preparation coupled with inaction. What that is likely to require are periodic official reports on progress in deciphering the message together with a narrative emphasizing the possible existential threat. Although it rubs against the grain of thinking since the beginning of the Modern Era, humans are proficient at living in a state of fear. Indeed, traditional societies are characterized by hostility to strangers, finding in that antipathy a source of social unity.
The longer-term political problem involves decision making with respect to messages that have been sufficiently deciphered. The choices are displayed in Table 4.
Unless the message can be determined to have been intentionally transmitted and that humanity is its intended recipient rather than some other extraterrestrial entity, then not responding remains the optimally rational decision. The value of not responding would be reduced, though not entirely eliminated, if it is determined that humanity is the intended recipient because that would indicate knowledge of our location in space and perhaps other information. Not responding to a message would deny the extraterrestrial entity additional information that might render humanity even more vulnerable. If the message evidenced some malign intent in the form of a threat or weaponized meme, then not responding remains the optimally rational decision.
There are possible advantages to listening in on communications between extraterrestrial entities without their knowledge. Given prophylactic measures to avoid releasing a weaponized meme, the intelligence collected through covert monitoring could be used in deciding whether and how best to respond to a message. Indeed, such monitoring might provide the benefits of First Contact without incurring the risks.
Conclusion
The relatively high probability of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has led to conversation about the possibility of prolonged communication with such distant intelligences. A number of logistical details beset and make problematic any attempt to engage in the communication between Earth and whatever lies in the great beyond that might speak back to us. That engaging in such communication will be advantageous is by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, there are good reasons to suspect that the encounter will be either non-advantageous or disadvantageous, and very possibly extraordinarily dangerous.
What a national political decision-maker is likely to seek upon encountering an extraterrestrial radio signal will depend on both their relative risk acceptance and on their willingness to act in concert with other national political decision-makers who are in possession of the same information. At present, the bureaucratic scientific apparatus for detecting such is still limited to a handful of countries, but as that number grows a coordinated response becomes more difficult, not the least because of the temptation to defect from a policy of restraint by seeking an advantage in establishing communication.
Michael A.G. Michaud. “Ten Decisions That Could Shake the World.” Space Policy. (2003) 19, 2: 131-136.
Bruce Jakosky. The Search for Life on Other Planets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 289–290.
Stephen Battersby. “We’re From Earth. Hi There!” New Scientist (2010) 205, 2744: 29.
Stephen Webb. Where is Everybody: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Copernicus Books, 2002) pp. 108–115; Richard A. Posner.Catastrophe: Risk and Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) pp. 40–41.
Stephen Battersby. “We’re From Earth. Hi There!” New Scientist. 205, 2744: 28–31; BBC News. “Hawking Warns Over Beings.” April 25, 2010.
Kathryn Denning, Kathryn. “Impossible Predictions of the Unprecedented: Analogy, History, and the Work of Prognostication” in Douglas Vakoch, ed., Astrobiology, History and Society: Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeographics (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2013) pp. 301–312.
Alfred W. Crosby. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) pp. 71–94; Jared Diamond. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992) pp. 278–283.
Shepard Kech III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999) pp. 33–34.
Henry F. Dobyns. “Disease Transfer at Contact.” Annual Review of Anthropology (1993) 22: 273–291.
Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, pp. 51–52.
Paul Marchesi, et al., “Census and Distribution of Chimpanzees in Côte D’Ivoire.” Primates (1995) 36, 4: 591–604.
Krech, The Ecological Indian, pp. 29–43.
Sheila R. Colla, et al., “Plight of the Bumble Bee: Pathogen Spillover From Commercial to Wild Populations.” Biological Conservation (2006) 129, pp. 461–462; X.J. Meng, et al., “Wild Boars As Sources for Infectious Diseases in Livestock and Humans.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2009) 364, 2697–2698.
Franck Courchamp, et al., “Mammal Invaders in Islands: Impact, Control and Control Impact.”Biological Review (2002) 78, p. 356.
Ibid.
John Hickman. “Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade.” Astropolitics (2008) 6:95–104.
Don Lincoln. Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2013).
John C. Baird. The Inner Limits of Outer Space. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 190–191.
Ancient Babylonian could be read for the first time in the modern era not only because of the discovery of inscriptions in three languages on a cliff face in Bisitun, Iran but also because the creatures who wrote it and who read it were both human.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Perennial Classics, 2000) pp. 419–448.
Ibid, pp. 421-422.
Christian Helmut Wenzel. “Chinese Language, Chinese Mind?” From ontos verlag: Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, New Series (2013) 1–18, 3.
Ibid.
David Gordon White. Myths of the Dog-Men. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Donna Haraway. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. (Chicago: Prickly Paragon Press, 2003).
Carl Sagan and Jerome Agel. The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. (New York: Anchor Press, 1973) p. 218.
Ibid, pp. 218–219.
Albert A. Harrison. After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life. (New York: Plenum, 1997) pp. 194–195.
Angela Dassow and Michael Coen. “Join the Conversation.” New Scientist (2015) 225, 3003: 1–5.
Nicholas Rescher. “Extraterrestrial Science,” in Edward Regis, ed., Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 83–116.
Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto.
Steven Pinker. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) pp. 588–592, 641–642.
Erich Goode. The Paranormal: Who Believes, Why They Believe and Why It Matters (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012) pp. 242–245.
Popular culture is instead rife with risible pseudo-scientific “ancient astronaut” conspiracy theories that are easily dismissed by national political decision-makers. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are not theories at all but collections of “questions, suspicions and allegations” that counter “conventionally available narratives.” See Jody Dean. How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) p. 51.
Christian Enemark. Biosecurity Dilemmas: Dreaded Diseases, Ethical Responses, and the Health of Nations. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017) pp. 97–98.
Robert Jervis. “Hypotheses on Misperception.” World Politics (1968) 20, 3: 454–479.
Irving Janis. Victims of Groupthink. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd Ed. (New York: Longman, 1999).
Jervis, pp. 466–467.
John Hickman (jhickman@berry.edu) is Professor of Political Science in the Berry College Department of Government and International Studies in Rome Georgia.
Looking Back at the Varginha UFO Incident In Brazil
Looking Back at the Varginha UFO Incident In Brazil
The Varginha town of Minas Gerais in Brazil is not particularly known for tourist attractions. It could be normal to expect the small town could very well cross history without ever being noticed by the rest of people in Brazil and the world. However, that situation suddenly changed on January 20, 1996, when the town became the center of attention as it staged one of the most famous Brazilian UFO incidents.
Three teenagers claimed they observed a strange, short creature with V-shaped feet, red eyes, and horns. They were certain that it was not a man or an animal as it was something different. All of the sudden the three young women put Varginha on the center stage.
Reports of strange creatures, UFOs, strange coincidences, military operations and even mysterious deaths followed the incident. In fact, many questions are still unanswered.
The UFO incident in Varginha started with two sisters and a friend seeing a strange being. The encounter had been followed by a series of events and hysteria as Brazilian media picked up mysterious happenings in the area. Even the Brazilian Army jumped into the case doing a costly operation to investigate it.
The Army operation did not help as more reports on UFOs were spreading. A couple of farmers claimed they spotted something like a gray spaceship flying above their cattle. One farmer said that the cows were running from the silent and no light UFO, which was surrounded by fog.
Furthermore, there were reports about the presence of a strange creature next to the city’s zoo. Mysteriously, the animals in that zoo started to die without explainable reason.
Brazilian ufologist Marco Petit said that the government cover-up operation has made all these incidents to remain unproven. Petit said that the case is more important and bigger than most people think.
There were reports that then the leading forensic expert in Brazil Doctor Badan Palhares examined the bodies of extraterrestrials that were recovered from the spaceship found by the military. However, Palhares has always denied the rumor, calling it utter nonsense.
While all the claims remain unproven, the event made the small town the focus of public attention. Varginha is now described as the hot spot in the intergalactic search for the intelligent alien.
U.S. Military Reveals Instructions On How To Photograph UFOs
U.S. Military Reveals Instructions On How To Photograph UFOs
The manual on how to snap UFOs was recently declassified in the U.S. Department of Defense files. The document “DoD Instruction 5040.6, Life-Cycle Management of DoD Visual Information (VI)” contains 27 pages, including data from 2002.
In Section 21 of Chapter 5, the document shows a table concerning imagery that records unidentified flying objects and other aerial phenomena not clearly identifiable as missiles or conventional aircraft. The table also shows a list of priority assigned to each category of imagery along with appropriate handling instructions. It instructs the military to make digital copies of the media and send them to the Defence Visual Information Center.
UFO researcher and blogger Paul Dean uncovered the document through the Freedom of Information Act. Dean said that the table of what to photograph and not to photograph lays out entirely both UFOs and aerial phenomena with descriptors.
The document proves that the U.S. did not stop documenting and researching UFOs after the 1960s, contrary to what is widely believe.
Dean notes that the files in the document don’t link UFOs to aliens. However, he adds that the government obviously keep a straight face on the UFO issue when they clearly state it in plain English for the military to digest.
Witness says diamond-shaped object was ‘humongous’
Witness says diamond-shaped object was ‘humongous’
A Pennsylvania witness at York reported watching a “humongous” object fly directly overhead after a smaller object was ejected from it at a distance, according to Testimony in Case 83329 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
York is about 26 miles southeast of Harrisburg, PA.
(Credit: Google)
The witness was inside watching television when two bright lights were noticed at a distance.
“I thought, oh, a new tower with two huge lights attached. But no tower,” the witness stated.“Went outside. The lights did not move at all and a light came off the top right corner and a small craft came off the light and hovered below.”
The larger object then moved toward the witness.
“The big UFO took off towards me and went right over my home extremely low. It was diamond-shaped and had a rectangular light underneath it. In that rectangle was a red light, then a white light, and then a green light. The lights were not flashing. The UFO was humongous, and made a humming noise.”
A smaller object was emitted from the larger object. Pictured: York, PA.
(Credit: Google)
Both object then began to move.
“When it took off, the small thing that came out of it went straight up. When the light came out of the right corner or what would have been the right corner (the only thing I could see at that point were the two huge lights) it seemed that the small thing came off that light. Almost like it was poured out of that light.”
The witness was afraid of the sighting.
“Anyway, it scared me a lot, and I have looked for a hovering jet picture on the net, but did not see any that looked like it. And why would a hovering jet be spitting out a small craft like that? Before it took off, it had stayed unmoving at least 10 minutes, maybe longer, before I noticed it. In relationship to its size, it was huge. I watch planes in the distance from my backyard and the little thing that came out of the big UFO would have been the size of a commercial airplane like I see all the time going toward Harrisburg Airport. So, the big UFO was really, really, big.”
The larger object then flew directly over the witness. Pictured: York, PA.
(Credit: Google)
Pennsylvania MUFON Field Investigator Larry Shaak is investigating. York is the city serving as the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, population 43,718. 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.
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...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
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 73 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.