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 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
23-06-2017
The Mysterious Disappearance of Australian Pilot Frederick Valentich in 1978 - FindingUFO
The Mysterious Disappearance of Australian Pilot Frederick Valentich in 1978 - FindingUFO
Published on Apr 4, 2017
The Disappearance of Australian Pilot Frederick Valentich in 1978.
⇩⇩ READ THE DESCRIPTION ⇩⇩ ----------------------------------------------------------
Australia's greatest aviation mystery. Frederick Valentich was a 20 year old pilot who vanished along with his light airplane, somewhere over Bass Strait one Tuesday evening in 1978.
No trace has ever been recovered of pilot or aircraft. But what deepens the mystery is what Valentich reported seeing from his plane, in communications with Melbourne air traffic control just minutes before he disappeared forever.
“With the passage of more than 50 years since my incident in Minot and 70 years since the incident in Roswell, NM, there can be no ethical, moral or critical reason to keep the secret of humanity any longer and my other colleagues agree thereby.”
A Minuteman missile at Malmstrom Air Force Base in the 1960s
Photo: AP/USAF
Here’s another one of those old-is-news-again stories that keeps people suspicious of what governments may be hiding about UFOs. On December 6, 1966, the Minot Daily News in Minot, North Dakota, carried a front page story about recent UFO sightings in the area, especially around the Minot Air Force Base, home of a number of nuclear missiles poised to be launched if the Cold War heated up. That story is back on the front page again 50 years later with the release of It Never Happened, Volume 1, a tell-mostly-all-before-I-die memoir of the incident by Captain David D Schindele, a Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile launch crew commander at the base on that day. Schindele claims that nothing more was reported about the UFO sightings because the Air Force ordered everyone there to never in their lives speak about what happened next … the unexplained change in status of 10 ICBMs to ‘off-alert’ – meaning that they could not be launched.
“I remember that when we were relieved the next morning and arrived topside, I attempted to query the Flight Security Controller, who told me he could not speak about the incident. It was then that my commander also informed me that he had received word, during my rest break below, that we were to never speak about the incident.”
Schindele kept silent until 2010, when he first revealed his experiences to Robert Hastings, author of UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. Why did Schindele finally disobey that order?
“During that time in Minot, many of us experienced unworldly incidents at Minuteman facilities but we were all individually instructed to keep silent. We never realized at the time that others among us were also experiencing incidents, but now the truth is becoming known. About 35 years after my Minot incident and learning about an identical incident experienced by another missileer (Capt. Robert Salas) connected to Malmstrom AFB in Montana, which was during the same general timeframe as my incident, I then contemplated coming forth with the ‘truth’.”
David D Schindele
These old “missileers” liked to get together to reminisce and commiserate and it seems that Schindele and Salas discovered they had something more than their service time in common. Schindele found additional officers from the base who would admit that they were individually ordered “to keep our ‘lips zipped’” but many took the secret to their graves and more refuse to disobey the order to this day.
This is ‘old news’ in that there have been many reports of UFOs at nuclear missile sights and nuclear plants around the world, ranging from UFO activity at the plant where plutonium was processed for the first atomic bomb to UFO sightings at nuclear plants in France to documents from Russia indicating similar unexplained missile shutdowns in the Soviet Union after UFO sightings.
It’s ‘new news’ that eyewitness David Schindele put his experiences in a book and, as the title indicates, has more to tell. Is he doing it for the money?
“From the beginning, I’ve been conflicted with the goal of bringing truth to as many people as possible, while having no appetite for bringing attention to myself or receiving monetary benefit. But I also realize the fallacy in that.”
Schindele says he will donate proceeds from the book to the Seattle Chapter of the Air Force Association where he still meets with fellow veterans.
Are the claims in the book true? If so, will the government release any supporting documents or will the book suddenly go ‘off-alert’ too?
Bizarre ontdekking in Peru. Waar komt dit mensachtige wezen met drie vingers en groot hoofd vandaan?
Bizarre ontdekking in Peru. Waar komt dit mensachtige wezen met drie vingers en groot hoofd vandaan?
Gaia.com heeft informatie naar buiten gebracht over de ontdekking van een gemummificeerd lichaam in Peru. Het heeft drie vingers aan elke hand en drie tenen aan elke voet.
Gaia werkt samen met een aantal wetenschappers om de herkomst van de mummie te achterhalen.
De Mexicaanse onderzoeksjournalist Jaime Maussan spreekt alvast van ‘één van de belangrijkste ontdekkingen van de 21e eeuw’.
Verbazing
“We hebben een hele belangrijke missie hier in Peru,” zei professor Konstantin Korotkov van de ITMO University in Rusland.
“Ik ben hier naartoe gekomen vanwege deze groep wetenschappers, professionals en journalisten,” voegde hij toe.
Toen het lichaam uit de kist werd gehaald, was iedereen stil van verbazing, aldus dr. Korotkov.
Nazcalijnen
De mummie is ontdekt in de nabijheid van de Nazcalijnen, enorme geogliefen die in de Peruaanse Nazcawoestijn zijn gevonden. De grootste figuren zijn tot wel 370 meter lang.
De tientallen figuren van dieren, honderden geometrische vormen en duizenden lijnen zijn in het woestijnzand lang bewaard gebleven.
Fossielenbestand
Op het eerste gezicht lijkt het te gaan om een soort die niet voorkomt in het fossielenbestand, weet Gaia.
Gaat het om het vervormde lichaam van een primitieve mens of is dit bewijs voor het bestaan van een niet-menselijke soort?
Bekijk hieronder een reportage over de mummie:
Bekijk hieronder een interview dat Collective Evolution had met Jaime Maussan:
Vreemde zwaartekrachtsvelden in zonnestelsel trekken objecten uit hun baan. En dat kan maar één ding betekenen
Vreemde zwaartekrachtsvelden in zonnestelsel trekken objecten uit hun baan. En dat kan maar één ding betekenen
Astronomen zeggen Planeet Tien op het spoor te zijn. Uit onderzoek naar banen van objecten in de Kuipergordel blijkt dat zich daar nog een planeet ter grootte van Mars moet schuilhouden.
Het object staat volgens onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Arizona ongeveer twee keer zo ver van de zon als Neptunus.
De banen van veel objecten in de Kuipergordel maken een hoek van ongeveer acht graden met het hoofdvlak van ons zonnestelsel.
Nieuwe planeet
De wetenschappers hebben dit gelinkt aan de zwaartekrachtsinvloed van een grote planeet in het buitenste deel van ons zonnestelsel.
“Dit is niet wat je verwacht te zien als je alleen de bekende planeten in ons zonnestelsel meetelt,” zei Kathryn Volk van de Universiteit van Arizona over de afwijkende banen.
“Dat betekent dat je er een nieuwe planeet bij moet halen – Planeet Tien, ervan uitgaande dat Planeet Negen bestaat,” voegde ze toe.
Nog verder weg
De planeet moet op ongeveer negen miljard kilometer van onze zon staan. Planeet Negen zou zich op een nog grotere afstand bevinden.
“Alles wijst op [het bestaan van] een extra planeet,” zei Volk.
10 keer groter
Afgelopen jaar voorspelden wetenschappers van het California Institute of Technology het bestaan van een negende planeet die 10 keer groter is dan de aarde en op 700 AE (astronomische eenheden) van de zon staat.
Het onderzoek zal worden gepubliceerd in The Astronomical Journal.
An official government UFO dossier that’s referred to as “Britain’s X-Files” has finally been released.
The National Archive has opened up a cache of 15 files from the Ministry of Defense that divulge details of mysterious incidents in British skies.
They include material relating to an unsolved encounter that’s been likened to the Roswell UFO incident in America.
The incident took place in December 1980, when three military personnel claimed to see flashing bright lights and a triangular object near a Royal Air Force base in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, about 100 miles northeast of London.
An investigation was opened but the mystery remains unsolved.
But alien hunters will have to wait a little longer to find out the truth, thanks to the process that’s been put in place to read these newly released files.
They have not been digitized, so enthusiasts must join a line to inspect the paper records at the National Archive’s reading room in London.
The UK’s most notorious UFO incident happened in the Rendlesham Forest Getty Images
What’s more, there are an additional three files which have still not been released, according to Nick Pope, a former civil servant who worked for the Ministry of Defense.
Pope, who ran the defense ministry’s UFO project from 1991 to 1994, said: “The lack of a smoking gun and the fact that these files seem to have been slipped out without a formal media announcement is bound to start some conspiracy theories, and I know that many people believe the ‘good stuff’ is being held back.”
“Furthermore, the fact that some files haven’t been digitized, can’t be downloaded, and can only be viewed in person at the National Archives will doubtless also generate conspiracy theories.”
“After this, there are only three more UFO files still to be released, and they should be made public later this year, so there’s still more to come.”
“This is a good day for open government and for freedom of information.”
Last year, an American airman involved in the incident won a legal bid to force military health chiefs to pay for the treatment of injuries he claimed to have sustained at Rendlesham Forest.
“In citing the [MoD radiation documents] and in granting John Burroughs full disability for his injuries in Rendlesham Forest, the US Government has by de facto acknowledged the existence of unidentified aerial phenomena which, in John Burroughs’ case, resulted in physical injury,” his lawyer Pat Frascogna said.
The Rendlesham Forest incident: Britain’s most famous UFO sighting
The Rendlesham Forest incident is so famous that there is an official “UFO Trail” in Suffolk, England.Getty Images
The Rendlesham Forest incident took place in December 1980 over several nights.
On Dec. 26, 1980, military personnel at the twin bases of Royal Air Force Bentwaters and Royal Air Force Woodbridge in Suffolk saw a strange light in Rendlesham Forest, which lies between the two bases.
Three men were sent out to investigate and two of them encountered a small, triangular craft.
One man, Jim Penniston, got close enough to touch the side of the object.
He and another of the airmen present, John Burroughs, made sketches of the craft for witness statements.
Two nights later a deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, and his team encountered the UFO.
He said later: “Here I am, a senior official who routinely denies this sort of thing and diligently works to debunk them, and I’m involved in the middle of something I can’t explain.”
Despite a Ministry of Defense investigation, the Rendlesham Forest incident remains unexplained.
RELATED VIDEO
We visited a town right out of 'The X-Files' and saw a UFO … maybe
Bij Wim Post aan de Kappellenweg in Lochem, buurtschap Nettelhorst, zijn graancirkels aangetroffen. In een gedeelte van zijn veld met zomertarwe zijn de cirkels te zien.
Wim merkte zelf de cirkels pas maandagochtend op terwijl zijn buren er zondagavond al druk mee waren. Buurman Freek van Asch fietste die avond een rondje toen hij vreemde vormen zag in het gewas.
Hij trommelde wat buren op en die wilden het bijzondere fenomeen van boven filmen. Via een bevriende hovenier regelden ze een hoogwerker en maakten ze foto's en filmpjes die op dit moment veel gedeeld worden op Facebook.
Dan duurt het niet al te lang voordat het mysterie van deze graancirkel is opgelost, want een paar jongelui zouden dit in een dronken bui op hun geweten hebben.
Nu is er op Facebook een filmpje opgedoken waarin buurtbewoner prins Stef wordt geïnterviewd. Hij legt in de video een complete bekentenis af, 'want het liep een beetje uit de hand'.
'We hadden een boog gemaakt voor een bruiloft. Er gingen een paar biertjes in, het werd gezellig....toen waren we aan het ouwehoeren en dachten we: kom, we gaan graancirkels maken,' gaat Stef door het stof.
Naar aanleiding van de bekentenis van Prins Stef ontvingen wij de volgende mail:
Waarom komen die dronken jongeren dan niet in beeld die dat gedaan hebben? Waarom komt er geen nieuwsbericht dat er een groepje jeugd is aangehouden vanwege het beschadigen van een graanakker?
Hoe denkt Niburu.co over dit nieuwsbericht, is het echt of inderdaad mensenwerk?
Laten we eerst even kijken wat boer Post heeft te vertellen over de actie van Prins Stef en vrienden:
Boer Wim Post gelooft er helemaal niks van. 'Ik denk dat het om een grap gaat', laat hij telefonisch weten. Volgens Post zijn er experts bij geweest die geen enkel spoor hebben kunnen vinden. 'Ze kunnen er dus nooit dronken doorheen hebben gelopen, dan zouden we sporen moeten kunnen zien.' Hij beraadt zich nu op vervolgstappen. 'Als ze claimen schade te hebben aangericht mogen ze ook betalen, maar ik geloof het niet', aldus de boer.
Boer Post gebruikt zijn gezonde verstand en komt tot de conclusie dat een aantal dronken jongelui dit echt niet gedaan kunnen hebben zonder sporen achter te laten. En dat alles dan waarschijnlijk ook nog een keer in het donker, hetgeen helemaal onmogelijk is.
De enige conclusie kan dan ook alleen maar zijn dat Prins Stef liegt. Waarom hij dat doet, is niet duidelijk, misschien om aandacht te trekken of misschien omdat hij bang is dat er dingen zijn die hij niet begrijpt.
Bij deze dagen wij Prins Stef dan ook uit om te demonstreren, en dat mag nuchter dit keer, hoe hij dit soort graancirkels maakt. Hij beschikt naar eigen zeggen over een ronde boog, dus dat moet een koud kunstje zijn voor hem om dit artistieke hoogstandje dan nog eens te herhalen.
Als het hem lukt om precies dezelfde graancirkel te maken zonder sporen achter te laten in een veld, dan zullen wij publiekelijk onze excuses aanbieden.
Wij weten ook niet wie of wat deze cirkel heeft gemaakt, maar als er weer iemand bekent, laat deze dan direct even aantonen hoe ze dat precies hebben gedaan.Waar Omroep Gelderland in ieder geval nog de reactie van boer Post plaatst, zo maakt het voor de Telegraaf allemaal niet uit, want die nemen alles klakkeloos aan. Zolang het maar in het mainstream kader past.
Succes met de graancirkel Prins Stef en keep us posted!
Europe approves deep-space ‘PLATO’ project to hunt for alien life
Europe approves deep-space ‘PLATO’ project to hunt for alien life
PARIS – Europe has approved the launch of a deep-space observatory to sniff out habitable planets in other star systems, along with any life forms they may host.
“The PLATO mission will address fundamental questions such as ‘how common are Earth-like planets?’ and ‘is our solar system unusual or even unique?’ ” the University of Warwick, whose scientists will take part in the project, said on Wednesday.
The multimillion-euro undertaking “could eventually even lead to the detection of extraterrestrial life,” it added.
A committee of the European Space Agency (ESA), meeting in Madrid, green-lit the mission on Tuesday, meaning “it can move from a blueprint into construction,” the university said in a statement.
When the candidate project was first announced three years ago, its cost was estimated at some €600 million ($668 million).
With 26 onboard telescopes, PLATO will join NASA’s Kepler observatory in a dedicated search for exoplanets revolving around stars other than our sun.
Kepler has so far found more than 3,400 confirmed exoplanets.
Of these, 30 are less than twice the size of Earth and orbiting within the so-called habitable zone of their star — not so close that water evaporates and not so cold that it freezes.
Liquid water is a key requirement for life as we know it.
This illustration shows Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. The ESA's PLATO space telescope will join NASA's Kepler observatory in a dedicated search for exoplanets revolving around stars other than our sun. | AFP-JIJI
PLATO — whose acronym derives from PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars — will be launched 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) into space, monitoring thousands of stars over a large area of sky.
Telescopes search for slight dips in light when a planet “transits” between the star it orbits and the telescopes watching it.
Planets do not emit their own light. Had they been visible to the naked eye, they would appear as dark dots tracking across their bright stars.
PLATO is due for launch in 2026, the ESA said.
Other projects that have contributed to the exoplanet search, though it was not their exclusive mission, include NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, as well as several dozen ground-based observatories.
The search for a planet capable of hosting life remains a distant pursuit — there is no solar system close enough for mankind to ever reach it, unless we develop time travel.
ESA also gave provisional approval for a project called LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), tasked with observing gravitational waves — created when black holes collide — from space.
Predicted in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, gravitational waves were first observed with Earth-based instruments last year.
LISA will comprise free-floating detectors on three craft, separated by 2.5 million km in a triangular formation, following Earth in its orbit around the sun.
Launch is expected in 2034. But final approval will depend on the availability of technology and money, the ESA said.
The estimated mission cost is about a billion euros. Warwick University is based in central England.
Could a dedicated mission to Enceladus detect microbial life there?
Could a dedicated mission to Enceladus detect microbial life there?
by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net
Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is best known for its numerous geysers ejecting plumes of water and ice. These eruptive fountains perplex researchers searching for signs of microbial life beyond Earth. A dedicated spacecraft designed to study the plume-like features spewing from Enceladus could definitely tell us whether or not they contain alien microorganisms.
"We need a spacecraft to travel to Enceladus, fly through a geyser plume, and analyze the water that is immediately accessible," Geoffrey Marcy, a retired professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, told Astrowatch.net.
Marcy is a renowned exoplanet researcher who discovered many extrasolar worlds. He was one of the co-investigators of NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission that detected more than 4,000 exoworlds. He was also involved in studies focusing on detecting signals from extraterrestrial civilizations and was the principal investigator of the Breakthrough Listen project. The program, funded by billionaire Yuri Milner, is looking for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations by searching stars and galaxies for radio signals and laser transmissions.
Marcy emphasizes that when it comes to searching for signs of microbial life in our solar system, assistance from billionaires investing in space projects could be helpful.
"The NASA missions, as currently planned, will require at least 20 years before a detection of microbial life will happen, at the earliest. However, a brilliant team of billionaires could work with NASA to fund a spacecraft to Saturn's moon, Enceladus. It could capture the water spurting out the geysers and use conventional microscopes to detect any microbial life there," Marcy said.
While a future mission to Enceladus would address complex questions about the origin of life, the spacecraft itself will be relatively easy to build and operate. According to Marcy, it would only require a dedicated probe equipped with a set of well-suited science instruments, capable of flying through the plumes and able to perform required measurements.
"The remarkable aspect of the search for microbes in the water spurting from geysers is that the spacecraft only needs to fly through the plume, well above the surface of Enceladus. No lander is needed—just a succession of flybys through the plumes as it orbits Enceladus," Marcy said.
He noted that such spacecraft should be fitted with a mass spectrometer to detect organic compounds that could be signs of microbial life. The spectrometer will look for amino acids and the structure of any organic molecules, especially fatty acids such as those composing cell membranes. It could also measure the relative amounts of isotopes of carbon (12 and 14) to detect non-natural anomalies due to biological processes.
Moreover, the mission to Enceladus would measure the properties of the water such as pH, oxidation and temperature, therefore assessing its suitability for organic life.
Marcy added that besides a spectrometer, the proposed spacecraft should also have an optical imaging system capable of capturing microscopic images in order to better examine microorganisms on this icy world.
"The mission should also include a microscope and camera to image directly any organisms in the water that are as small as a few microns in size," Marcy said.
Discovered in 1789 by William Herschel, Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn with a diameter of about 310 miles (500 kilometers). First detailed pictures of this moon were acquired in the early 1980s by NASA's two Voyager probes. Since 2005, Enceladus is continuously studied by NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft, which detected the water plumes erupting from the moon's south polar region.
ET PHONEY HOME Crackpot conspiracy claims ALIEN MUMMY has been found Near Peru’s Nazca Lines
ET PHONEY HOMECrackpot conspiracy claims ALIEN MUMMY has been found Near Peru’s Nazca Lines
The viral footage was posted online by a conspiracy website which pays curious users to view their paranormal content
By Mark Hodge
A CRACKPOT video created by conspiracy theorists purports to show a mummified ALIEN body.
Supposedly filmed in the ancient city of Nazca, Peru, the ridiculous footage has went viral despite users pointing out the “corpse” looks like it is a half-finished cardboard creation.
The ‘mummified alien’ body is inspected in Peru in a viral video which has divided the internet
Many social media users have said the creature looks like it was made out of plaster
The video was posted by website Gaia.com which charges curious users money to view their exclusive paranormal content.
The clip shows a three-fingered creature curled up in a ball.
The site claims the extraterrestrial beast’s body was dug up during an excavation of the mysterious caves.
The Daily Star reports that the “humanoid” has long legs and is around five feet five inches tall.
But many social media users are not convinced.
One viewer commented: “Something seems off. The corpse looks like it was made of plaster,” reports the Daily Star.
While one YouTube viewer writes: “Just grabbed my tin foil hat, now I can properly watch this s**t.”
But some users seem to like the preposterous clip.
One believer wrote: “Looks cool. Waiting for DNA sampling. I want to believe but with that guy at the helm it’s unlikely. Nice video.”
OSHAWA — Wildlife photographer Ken Rice was out shooting photos in Oshawa on June 17 when something unusual suddenly appeared in his camera lens. June 21, 2017. - Ken Rice Photo
OSHAWA — Wildlife photographer Ken Rice was out shooting photos in Oshawa on June 17 when something unusual suddenly appeared in his camera lens. June 21, 2017. - Ken Rice Photo
OSHAWA — Wildlife photographer Ken Rice was out shooting photos on Saturday when something unusual suddenly appeared in his camera lens.
“It came out of no where, this thing,” said the Oshawa resident, who was at the marsh area near the General Motors of Canada headquarters on Colonel Sam Drive at about 7:45 p.m. on June 17 when he noticed the object off in the distance.
“I was walking back to my car and I just saw something pop out of no where, way up high, far away in the sky,” he said.
“I thought it was a big turkey vulture so I just took a picture of it anyway and then it kind of hovered, sat there for a minute and then it took off.”
After returning home, Rice took a closer look at the image and said he has no idea what it could be.
“A balloon wouldn’t go that fast and disappear No. 1, and it was too high. Nobody would be flying a kite there because it’s just railroad tracks and the road and there was nobody around there. I didn’t see anybody, and where did it go?”
He’s shown the photo to several people and even posted it on Facebook but no one has been able to identify it.
“It’s just really odd; I’ve never seen anything like that. I looked on the Internet to (find) weather balloons and that kind of thing and see what it might be but none of them looked anything like this,” he said.
“You hear people all the time with the UFO stuff but a UFO just stands for unidentified flying object — it doesn’t mean aliens — and to me, it’s an unidentified flying object. I don’t know what it is.”
US pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of peculiar flying objects sparked the UFO craze
Pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine UFOs near Mount Ranier, Washington, on June 24, 1947.
US pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of peculiar flying objects sparked the UFO craze
Troy Lennon, History editor, The Daily Telegraph
THE late 1940s through to the ’50s was the golden era of the UFO. It was a time when Cold War paranoia was just kicking in but, instead of fearing Soviet infiltration, people began seeing strange things in the skies. It was also when the terms “flying saucer” and “UFO” were coined and popularised, fuelling the public imagination.
But this alien spaceship craze can be traced largely to an incident that happened 70 years ago tomorrow.
Kenneth Arnold saw something in the skies on June 24, 1947, that caused millions of people to wonder if we were not alone in the universe. Arnold was born in Sebeka, Minnesota, in 1915, but grew up in Montana and North Dakota. He went to the University of Minnesota (although some sources say Iowa) where he showed himself to be a keen sportsman, going out for the university swimming team and contemplating a football career before a knee injury forced him to rethink his options.
After university he got a job with a company that sold fire fighting equipment and in 1940 started his own company, Great Western Fire Control Supply. A lot of his business involved visiting remote areas of the US so he decided that rather than relying on chartering aircraft he would fly his own. He took flying lessons, gained a pilot’s licence and bought a plane.
Gen. Roger M. Ramey with Colonel Thomas J. Dubose from the US air force identify metallic fragments found near Roswell, New Mexico, on August 7, 1947, as a high-altitude sounding device used by the air force and weather bureau.
Arnold had logged thousands of hours of flight time before his alien encounter. It happened in June 1947, while on a business trip in the state of Washington. He had taken off from Chehalis and was helping out with the search for a lost military transport plane. While flying over the Cascade Mountains, near Mt Rainier, he was startled by a flash of light.
“I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south” near Mt Rainier, he later said. It was about 3pm and Arnold watched the aircraft for two or three minutes.
When he landed at Yakima he told a friend who didn’t believe him.
The story soon got around and Arnold was sought out by reporters who asked for an account of what he saw.
At first he described the aircraft as like a “pie pan” but never mentioned that they were flat discs. In fact his description suggested they were shaped like a crescent or a boomerang. But when he said the aircraft moved “like saucers skipping on water” reporters started calling them flying saucers.
Not long after, in early July, a farmer named Mack Brazel found strange debris from something that dropped out of the sky on his farm about 60km northwest of Roswell in New Mexico. The remains consisted of sticks, metal pieces and a silver foil that, when crumpled, quickly regained its shape.
Brazel got in touch with the Walker Air Force Base at Roswell, thinking it might have been one of their aircraft.
Unidentified flying objects sighted over Yunnan province, in China in April 1981.
The base sent out Major Jesse Marcel who issued a press release on July 8 that they had recovered a flying disc from the farm. Newspapers reported that a “flying saucer” had been found on a ranch near Roswell.
The next day the air force base issued a new press release saying that the disc had been a weather balloon. But now that the “flying disc” story had been released nobody wanted to believe that it was just a weather balloon.
In reality it wasn’t a weather balloon but an experimental high altitude sounding balloon, codenamed Project Mogul, the US military hoped to use to monitor Soviet bomb tests. When one of the balloons crashed and people began talking about flying saucers it provided the perfect cover for the real story.
The Roswell incident fired up the public imagination and the number of sightings of strange aircraft soared.
This was also useful for the military because people were reporting suspicious aircraft or letting the military know when their top secret experimental aircraft were being indiscreet. In 1948 the US air force established Project Sign (later renamed Project Blue Book) to investigate all sightings.
Hollywood soon jumped on the bandwagon. In 1950 it released the film The Flying Saucer, the first time an alien ship was depicted as a flying disc. In 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still depicted a saucer landing to warn humanity about nuclear annihilation.
In 1952 the USAF coined the term Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO, to describe any aircraft of unknown origin. It was meant to refer to any unidentified aircraft but over the years the acronym UFO has come to be indelibly associated with alien visits.
A Washington witness at Sunnyside reported a slow-moving, triangle-shaped object that followed his vehicle along a rural roadway, according to testimony in Case 83989 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
Witness illustration of the scene.
(Credit: MUFON)
The witness had just gotten off work and was driving home at 10:50 p.m. on May 25, 2017, when the incident began.
“I take the back roads home and got on Factory Road outside of Sunnyside, Washington,” the witness stated.“After about three minutes or so traveling down the road, I noticed an orange light near two red lights in a triangular pattern. The orange light was blinking.”
Thewitness immediately thought the object was a Chinook helicopter.
“I found it strange how low it was to the ground and the lack of sound. I also noticed it was traveling a bit fast to be a helicopter. It flew from south to north.”
The witness then thought that the object might be a drone.
“My speed was about 50 mph, though I was slowing down not wanting to get too close to the object. It crossed the road in front of me and then I proceeded to pass it. I found it to strange – it grabbed my curiosity. An oncoming car passed me, and once it did I pulled into a dirt driveway and turned around – doing a U-turn. I quickly drove back and found that it was out in the same area I had left it.”
The witness then slowed down in the middle of the road with no place to pull over.
“I simply stopped in the middle of road – now able to see a mile infront of me and behind me. I was facing west with my back to the east. It seemed to stop flying south and began to fly west.”
Witness illustration of the craft.
(Credit: MUFON)
The witness quickly reached for his smartphone and pulled up the camera app.
“I began to record as I drew closer. This was when I noticed a white light, much like a star starting to fly down from above it and near the object. It quickly got my attention as it quickly stopped again and turned 90-degrees and flew south across the road again. Once it had done this, it began to fly west.”
The object was then flying parallel to the road and began to make the witness afraid.
“Though it stopped and then began to fly northwest from its location towards me, I became overwhelmed with fear knowing this wasn’t a plane or a helicopter. Having both my windows down, I would have heard something. I threw my phone in the passenger seat and began to speed off. As I began to pass it, I came as close as I ever was to the object.”
The witness described the object.
“It was a gray triangle, with three orange lights and one red, glowing light in the middle with two small, green lights near the rear. It was hovering. I am now driving back from where I had come from. Heading into Sunnyside on Factory Road. I reached a speed of 97 mph and quickly began to slow down. I felt safer near town, though, now that it was nearly 11 p.m. and no one would be around.”
But that safe feeling quickly dissolved.
“I turned left onto Handford Road, and before getting to Vakima Valley Highway, I turned left onto another road that was near a car dealership and stopped again to see if I could see the object. It was flying west again and was in the same light configuration as when I first saw it – with one blinking, orange light and two red ones. I watched it fly for a short time before it began to fly southwest and I didn’t want it getting too close again. I got back onto Handford Road and onto Yakima Valley Highway driving towards Grandview.”
Cropped piece of witness illustration from the scene.
Credit: MUFON)
But once the witness arrived home and got of his vehicle, he saw the craft again.
“It had followed me approximately six miles and was flying southeast, though, I did not turn and I watched it fly in that direction until it was out of sight. I thought about following it, but didn’t want to push my luck as I began to feel afraid again. When I reviewed the video I recorded, the object was not captured due to it being too dark outside, and had stop recording without me pressing pause as I passed the object.”
Sunnyside is a city in Yakima County, Washington, population 15,858.Washington MUFON State Director James Clarkson investigated and closed this case as an Unknown.
“I would point out this case was near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation,” Clarkson stated in his report. “Given the highly unusual shape and lighting configuration, and the lack of sound when the witness had parked his car with all of the windows down, I am classifying this case as a true UAV with a highly credible witness.”
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.
Iowa witness recalls late night UFO close encounter
Iowa witness recalls late night UFO close encounter
An Iowa witness at Millerton recalled a UFO incident from the early 90s where the object moved over his vehicle at one point and beamed light onto the vehicle, according to testimony in Case 83673 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
The witness first thought the object was a helicopter. Pictured: Rural area near Millerton, Iowa.
(Credit: Google)
“I can’t remember the exact year and day, but I know that it was between 1990 and 1992,” the witness stated.“It occurred in rural Wayne County, Iowa. I had two young sons at that time. One was around 2 or 3 and the other was 4 or 5 at the time. That’s why I can narrow down the time that it happened. I had been at some friend’s house in the Corydon area that evening. They had two sons the same age as mine and the kids played while we played cards for awhile.”
The hour was late and past the kid’s bedtime, so the witness left to go home.
“The boys fell asleep in the car not far down the road.I was driving eastbound on a county highway east of Millerton. It was between 9-10 p.m. I believe. I noticed a bright flash of light to my left. It was maybe 10 or 15 miles directly north of me hovering low in the night sky. It would flash a bright light every second.”
The witness watched the object instantly jump from one area of the sky to another. Pictured: Rural area near Millerton, Iowa.
(Credit: Google)
The witness first thought the object was a helicopter – possibly life flight on its way to Corydon Hospital.
“I soon realized it wasn’t. I continued to glance over at it as I drove another mile or two. It just seemed to hang in the same spot. And the flashing light was just brilliant. Much brighter than any plane or helicopter.”
The witness decided to pull over on the shoulder to see what this object was.
“I drove a Pontiac Sunbird at that time and had the window rolled down while watching it. I shut off the lights and killed the engine. After a few minutes, I noticed the light was a bit brighter as if it had moved closer, yet I never saw it move. Then after another minute, it changed locations again. It was several miles closer to me. This thing moved so fast. It would hover motionless for a short while and then in the blink of an eye it would change locations. In a matter of minutes, it was approximately a half-mile north of me 50-75 feet above a crop field.”
At this point, the witness could see that the flashing light was actually a beam of light shining downward from the craft at about a 75-degree angle and making a full rotation approximately every second.
“I still couldn’t see the craft itself. Then it was suddenly a hundred yards due north hovering over the field. The brilliant beam of light shined all the way to the ground as it rotated in a wide circle. I’d never seen anything like it. It lit up the ground beneath it like daylight. You could see what looked like little dust particles in the light. It was weird. I thought for a moment that I should try to get out of there. But I was really intrigued with this thing. I still couldn’t make out the craft itself.”
The object eventually moved overhead and shown a beam of light into the witnesses’ vehicle. Pictured: Rural area near Millerton, Iowa.
(Credit: Google)
Then in the next moment, the witness realized the craft was no longer there.
“No more beam of light, nothing. Before I could even think about it, the car filled with a brilliant flash of light for just a moment. It was almost blinding. There was a peculiar feeling in the air like static electricity that seemed to wash over me.”
The witness then craned his head out the window and looked up.
“Above me was a large area of blackness and I knew it was above me. It was silent. The light wasn’t shining from it. Then for just a little bit, the underneath of it lit up with a bunch of smaller, blinking lights.”
At this point the witness was able to make out the shape and size of it.
“It was larger than I thought. Probably 40-50 feet in diameter and hovered about 40-50 feet above me at maybe a 75-degree angle. If it had tilted to a vertical position, I think I could have touched it. It was the shape of a disc. I thought to myself, “My God. I can’t believe I’m seeing this.’
Then in an instant, the craft was a half mile away.
“With the light beam rotating back down at a 75-degree angle as before. And in the same way that it came to me it left. Hovering for short intervals before zipping to another spot miles away, leaving only a faint streak of light between the two points. It was going east and slightly north. At one point, I estimated it as being probably in the Ottumwa area. Eventually it got far enough away that I couldn’t distinguish it from a star. The last time I could see it flashing I would guess it was perhaps in the Fairfield/Mt. Pleasant area headed in the direction of Burlington.”
The witness was upset over the incident.
“I was pretty shaken by this whole thing and watched it go away partly because I wanted to be certain the thing wasn’t going to turn around and come back. It scared the crap out of me to be honest. The boys didn’t wake up, so they never knew it even happened. When I got home, I called my friend whose house I had been to earlier. He didn’t believe me. Then awhile later, he heard that others had seen something too and had called the sheriff and reported it. They were told that it was a helicopter. I explained to him that it wasn’t, and he sternly replied, ‘I don’t know what you saw, but don’t be telling people about it. They’ll think you’re nuts and throw you in a padded room.’ So I haven’t. For the past 25-plus years.”
Millerton is a city in Wayne County, Iowa, population 45. Iowa MUFON Assistant State Director Beverly Trout investigated this case and closed it as an Unknown. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.
This week at the Starmus Festival, Stephen Hawking talked about his ongoing work to build a spacecraft capable of true interstellar travel. He explained that this unmanned space probe would be crucial to extending humanity's reach into space.
BETTING HIS CHIPS
Stephen Hawking isn’t content to just warn humanity about its dwindling potential for longterm survival — he’s determined to do something about it. In April 2016, the renowned physicist announced he was developing a spacecraft that could facilitate moving our species to a “second Earth.” This proposed spacecraft, named Star Chip, is part of an initiative called the Breakthrough Starshot.
While speaking at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway, this week, Hawking explained why his work is more important now than ever. He told the audience that he’s convinced we need to leave the Earth and migrate to a second planetary home. Building a base on the Moon by 2020 to serve as a jumping off point and finishing Star Chip as soon as possible are two important steps to making this happen.
This small space probe would be equipped with a lightsail weighing just a few grams. Powered by an array of Earth-based lasers, Star Chip would travel “on a beam of light,” reaching about a fifth of the speed of light, roughly 160 million k/h (100 million mph), on its journey to the Alpha Centauri solar system.
Such a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager in under a week, and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years. Once there, the nano craft could image any planets discovered in the system, test for magnetic fields and organic molecules, and send the data back to Earth in another laser beam. This tiny signal would be received by the same array of dishes that were used to transit the launch beam.
Since it could reach Alpha Centauri, it could make a fly-by to Proxima b, the exoplanet many consider the most similar to Earth. Star Chip would complete a true interstellar itinerary but without humans on board:
Of course, this would not be human interstellar travel, even if it could be scaled up to a crewed vessel. It would be unable to stop. But it would be the moment when human culture goes interstellar, when we finally reach out into the galaxy. And if Breakthrough Star Shot should send back images of a habitable planet orbiting our closest neighbor, it could be of immense importance to the future of humanity.
This is all very long-term thinking, with Hawking predicting humans wouldn’t be ready for interstellar travel for at least t wo more centuries. However, any knowledge we could glean from Star Chip’s mission could help us understand the nature of space, and perhaps help us find a new home before the “doomsday” Hawking predicts will befall humanity just 100 years from now. It’s worth a shot.
Did Researchers Find a Mummified, Three-fingered Alien in Nazca, Peru?
Did Researchers Find a Mummified, Three-fingered Alien in Nazca, Peru?
The purported discovery is backed by individuals with a history of making false, pseudoscientific claims.
CLAIM
A corpse found in Nazca, Peru, is that of an alien.
RATING
FALSE
ORIGIN
On 20 June 2017, the web site Gaia.com published a video purporting to show the excavation and examination of a mummified body in Nazca, Peru:
In the spring of 2017, Gaia filmmakers joined researchers and scientists just outside of Nazca, Peru to investigate an unearthed mummified body. Independent scientists and universities are currently analyzing findings, with initial examinations suggesting the possibility of material that is unlike anything found in the fossil record.
Could this be a primitive human with an intentional or developmental deformity, or undeniable evidence that a non-human species exists?
Although Gaia.com at least posed the idea that the mummy was an alien as a question, the Disclose.tvweb site definitively reported the headline “New Alien Mummy Discovered in Peru Near Nazca Lines.”
The Nazca Lines are a set of geoglyphs (lines drawn by removing rocks and digging up earth) near Nazca, Peru. Some are drawn in the shape of animals (biomorphs) and are between 50 and 1,200 feet long, according to National Geographic. The absence of a single definitive explanation for their origins has prompted speculation that aliens were somehow involved in their creation.
However, no evidence has ever definitively proved the existence of alien life, and countless “alien” discoveries have later been shown to be hoaxes or to have far more mundane explanations.
In 2015, Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan, who reported the existence of the Nazca mummy to Gaia and is featured in the video, led an event called Be Witness, at which a mummified body — purportedly that of an alien — was unveiled. Later, though, that “alien” discovery was debunked, and the mummified corpse was shown to be that of a human child.
Forensic scientist José de Jésus Zalce Benitez was one of the lead researchers behind the (debunked) 2015 discovery, presenting his findings at the Be Witness event. Benitez also took part in Gaia’s Nazca project and can be seen in the video claiming that the three fingers of the mummy “makes us think that this does not belong to a human species.”
The previous discovery of mummies with elongated skulls in Peru, like that shown in the Gaia video, has prompted similar wild speculation about alien species. But anthropologists have explained that elongated skulls are the result of an ancient practice of artificial cranial deformation, in which young children had their heads bound in cloth, rope, or even wooden boards, possibly as part of a religious ritual.
Dr Konstantin Korotkov, who says with certainty in the Gaia video that the Nazca mummy “belongs to another creature,” also claims to have invented a camera that can photograph the soul and has previously made a host of pseudo-scientific pronouncements about the measurement of “auras,” such as this one:
If we send positive emotions, if we send love to each other, then we increase not only the other person’s energy field, but our own energy field.
Finally, Gaia.com (formerly known as Gaiam) web site has a long history of providing a platform for false and spurious pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, and paranormal claims. The company charges $95.40 per year for unlimited access to videos about remote viewing, contact with angels, alien abduction, crop circles, and the like.
It remains to be established whether the Nazca “mummy” is actually an excavated corpse or simply a hoax, what its origins are, and how its apparent deformities came about. But we are willing to say with certainty that it will not succeed where thousands of previous “discoveries” have failed, and present definitive, scientifically verifiable proof of alien life.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved the launch of a deep-space observatory to hunt down habitable planets in other star systems and any alien life forms that may reside there.
An ESA committee approved the PLATO Mission on Tuesday during a meeting in Madrid, according to Warwick University, whose scientists will be taking part in the project.
“This means it can move from a blueprint into construction,” a university statement reads.
The launch, due to take place in 2026, will see PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) and its 26 onboard telescopes launched into the ‘L2’ virtual point in space, located 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) beyond Earth.
Once it has reached its destination in space, PLATO will “monitor thousands of bright stars over a large area of the sky, looking for regular dips in brightness as planets pass by them.”
It will also investigate seismic activity in some of the host stars, determining their masses, sizes, and ages “with unprecedented accuracy."
“The launch of PLATO will give us the opportunity to contribute to some of the biggest discoveries of the next decade answering fundamental questions about our existence, and could eventually lead to the detection of extra-terrestrial life,” PLATO Science Coordinator and Professor of Physics at Warwick University Don Pollacco said.
PLATO’s mission is similar to that of NASA’s Kepler observatory, which has so far confirmed 3,400 exoplanets, only 30 of which are less than twice the size of Earth and orbiting within the ‘habitable’ zone of their star.
Habitable zones are defined by being not so close to the star that water evaporates, and not so cold that it freezes, as water is a requirement for life as we know it.
Meanwhile, the ESA has also given provisional approval for the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) on Tuesday, which will be tasked with observing the gravitational waves created when black holes collide. Launch is expected in 2034.
Headquartered in Paris, the ESA is a collaborative agency with 22 member states. Canada also takes part in some projects under a cooperation agreement.
Europe has approved the launch of a deep-space observatory to sniff out habitable planets in other star systems, along with any life forms they may host.
"The PLATO mission will address fundamental questions such as 'how common are Earth-like planets?' and 'is our solar system unusual or even unique?'," the University of Warwick, whose scientists will take part in the project, said on Wednesday.
The multi-million-euro undertaking "could eventually even lead to the detection of extra-terrestrial life," it added.
A committee of the European Space Agency (ESA), meeting in Madrid, green-lit the mission on Tuesday, meaning "it can move from a blueprint into construction," the university said in a statement.
When the candidate project was first announced three years ago, its cost was estimated at some 600 million euros ($668 million).
With 26 onboard telescopes, PLATO will join NASA's Kepler observatory in a dedicated search for exoplanets revolving around stars other than our Sun.
Kepler has so far found more than 3,400 confirmed exoplanets.
Of these, 30 are less than twice the size of Earth and orbiting within the so-called "habitable" zone of their star—not so close that water evaporates and not so cold that it freezes.
Liquid water is a key requirement for life as we know it.
PLATO—PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars)—will be launched 1.5 million kilometres (932,000 miles) into space, monitoring thousands of stars over a large area of sky.
Telescopes search for slight dips in light when a planet "transits" between the star it orbits and the telescopes watching it.
Planets do not emit their own light. Had they been visible to the naked eye, they would appear as dark dots tracking across their bright stars.
PLATO is due for launch in 2026, the ESA said.
Other projects that have contributed to the exoplanet search, though it was not their exclusive mission, include NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, as well as several dozen ground-based observatories.
The search for a planet capable of hosting life remains a distant pursuit—there is no solar system close enough for mankind to ever reach it, unless we develop time travel.
ESA also gave provisional approval for a project called LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), tasked with observing gravitational waves—created when black holes collide—from Space.
Predicted in Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, gravitational waves were first observed with Earth-based instruments last year.
LISA will comprise free-floating detectors on three craft, separated by 2.5 million kilometres in a triangular formation, following Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
Launch is expected in 2034. But final approval will depend on the availability of technology and money, the ESA said.
The estimated mission cost is about a billion euros. Warwick University is based in central England.
Is It Time to Rethink How We Search for Alien Life?
Is It Time to Rethink How We Search for Alien Life?
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer
This artist’s impression shows an imagined view from the surface of a planet that was part of a star system found recently using the TRAPPIST telescope at the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. These worlds' sizes and temperatures are similar to those of Venus and Earth, and are the best targets found so far in the search for life outside our solar system.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
WASHINGTON — From the lovable, candy-munching E.T. to the deadly Xenomorphs from the "Alien" movies, science-fiction stories are bursting with all kinds of alien encounters. But in reality, we've yet to achieve contact — though not for lack of trying.
Plenty of scientists are looking for signs of extraterrestrial life — intelligent or not — using a variety of methods, Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, told an audience here on June 18 during a talk at Future Con, a festival that highlights the intersection between science, technology and science fiction.
But the more our own technology moves forward and the more humans explore the rapidly evolving concept of synthetic intelligence (smart machines), the more experts suspect that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be advanced in ways that would stymie current efforts to find them, Shostak said. [Greetings, Earthlings! 8 Ways Aliens Could Contact Us]
However, perhaps the first question to ask is why people are so fascinated by the idea of alien life — particularly alien invaders, Shostak suggested. This preoccupation with an unseen extraterrestrial threat may be an echo from our distant past, when early humans learned that survival frequently depended on being able to imagine and prepare for attacks from predators or enemies that you couldn't see, he said.
What we now know about the universe suggests that it's very unlikely that humanity is the only form of life in it.
"Work from the last 20 years shows that there are planets all over the place," Shostak said. In fact, NASA announced yesterday (June 19) that the Kepler Space Telescope mission has discovered 219 more exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our sun), bringing the total of planets discovered by Kepler to 4,034, Space.com reported.
Most stars — 70 to 80 percent of them, by some estimates — probably host planets, Shostak added. With an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy, that gives us around 1 trillion planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Data from Kepler suggests that about one in five of these planets is Earth-like — rocky and capable of supporting liquid water and possibly life, "so now you have 100 billion planets in our galaxy that are sort of like Earth," Shostak said.
And with recent studies hinting that there may be as many as 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, that adds up to a lot of planets that might host some form of life.
When you look at it that way, "saying, 'I don't believe in aliens' is a daring position to take," Shostak said.
Signs of life
There are three methods most commonly used by scientists to search for alien life, according to Shostak. The first is straightforward enough — and is also the one that's most popular with sci-fi writers: "Just go out and find it," he said. This includes missions to send spacecraft to destinations such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, where probes would sample water vapor from surface plumes to see if they hold anything interesting. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens]
SETI astronomer Seth Shostak explains the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life, at the Future Con panel "Are We Looking for the Wrong Aliens?"
Credit: M. Weisberger/Live Science
The final method — and the one practiced by Shostak and his SETI Institute colleagues — is eavesdropping on radio signals that an alien civilization might broadcast.Another method is to image distant planets with very large space telescopes capable of detecting enough detail to provide scientists with data about their atmospheres. Big telescopes — such as the James Webb Space Telescope, expected to launch in October 2018 — could allow astronomers to analyze the spectrum of light surrounding a far-off planet for evidence of atmospheric oxygen or methane, both of which are known to sustain life on Earth.
"That's how you find intelligent life," Shostak said.
Alien A.I.?
All of these parameters offer scientists a reasonable range of variables for discovering life — but only as long as that life is "the soft, squishy kind, like us," Shostak said. However, a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilization could theoretically have advanced far beyond that, creating forms of artificial intelligence housed in machinery, which simply don't have the same requirements as organic life.
"Machines live forever, and they can go anywhere — they don't care about oceans and atmospheres," Shostak said.
With that view, many of the factors that are currently thought to be indicators of life on other worlds, such as liquid water and a breathable atmosphere, are rendered irrelevant. As such, researchers would need to identify other signals to pinpoint which planets might harbor aliens, Shostak said.
But Shostak also offered reassurances, telling the Future Con attendees that at least they won't need to worry about scientists or the government concealing the news when alien life finally does appear — the story would be too big for them to hide it for long, he said.
"Will we all start singing 'Kumbaya' and just get along when that happens? I don't think so," Shostak said at Future Con. "But it'll change things. Forever after, you will know — as amazing as you are — that you're not the only miracle, you're not the only kid on the block. And I think that'll be very interesting to learn."
Parkes' search for aliens receives a boost with new high-tech receiver at the Dish
Parkes' search for aliens receives a boost with new high-tech receiver at the Dish
By Gavin Coote
The search for extraterrestrial life in Australia receives a boost, with US scientists installing high-powered receivers at the Parkes Dish.
The search for extraterrestrial life receives a boost with new equipment installed at the Dish.
(Credit: ABC)
Australia's role in the biggest-ever search for alien life is set to dramatically expand, with a new high-powered receiver to ramp up observations in the sky.
The Parkes CSIRO Telescope, known as The Dish, is the only facility in the southern hemisphere taking part in the Breakthrough Listen Initiative.
The $100 million program is the largest scientific research endeavour aimed at finding evidence of civilisations beyond Earth.
It is the stuff of films and space novels but The Dish, which was the star of the 2000 movie of the same name, has been playing a crucial role in the search for other intelligent life.
It has been using a single-pixel receiver to scan the skies since last October, but researchers involved with the Initiative from the United States have arrived to install new equipment to boost the search.
It will include a 13-pixel receiver, giving the Dish an unprecedented capacity to survey the galactic plane, which is where the majority of the Milky Way's disk-shaped mass lies.
University of California Berkeley researcher Daniel Price said they wanted to take advantage of the latest technology to help solve one of life's biggest mysteries.
"It's at the end of the day quite a philosophical question, I mean we're trying to answer one of the oldest questions that humanity has — are we alone in the universe?"
"It's not an easy question to answer and we have to get as much data as we possibly can and as much evidence as we possibly can before we come to a conclusion."
Dish will have unrivalled view of galactic plane
Dr Price said Parkes' widening scope in the project would complement work being done at the Green Bank Telescope in the United States.
"And that is a very powerful telescope, but it doesn't have access to the southern portion of the sky," he said.
"Parkes is great, in that it's in the southern hemisphere, and also this multi-pixel receiver means that we can do a very fast survey of the galactic plane and cover it in a reasonable amount of time."
CSIRO Parkes system scientist Jimi Green said the installation was proceeding smoothly so far.
"This is just the kind of collaboration that we're looking for in CSIRO, so it helps to build a sustainable model that we want to run for the telescope and it also brings in the exciting science that the team from UC Berkeley and Breakthrough are doing," he said.
"At the same time we can run our own equipment, so this is something that we've just been exploring and we hope to run our equipment at the same time as their equipment."
Technology upgrades to have other spin-offs
Mr Green said CSIRO would be able to use the new technology for other important work, such as discovering more fast radio bursts (FRBs).
The mysterious FRBs, which are an energetic radio pulse lasting only a few milliseconds and appear as flashes in the sky, have only been detected 24 times in the last 10 years.
The Parkes Dish discovered the first FRB in 2007, and the CSIRO said the facility had since been responsible for more than half of all detections globally.
Mr Green said the Dish was also at the forefront of the search for aliens.
"We can see a different part of the galaxy from the southern hemisphere than from the northern hemisphere," he said.
"You can see more of the galactic centre, where there's a lot of exciting stuff going on, and you can see right out to the outer galaxy."
The new equipment is expected to be completely installed at the Parkes Dish over the next week.
Dr Price said they would continually upgrade the technology in line with new innovations in astronomy.
"Every two years or so, the computing capacity doubles and because of that, it means that the amount of sensitivity or the amount of bandwidth you can process also increases," he said.
"We are looking at parameters of space that we've never looked at before, we are a lot faster, our surveys are a lot more sensitive, and we are covering large portions of the sky."
An illustration of Bigelow Aerospace’s expandable spacecraft.
In an eye-opening interview on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, aerospace mogul and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow said he was ‘absolutely convinced’ there were alien visitors to Earth.
Most of the segment focused on how NASA and the Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace are in a partnership to develop an expandable craft for humans to use in space. Bigelow’s far-reaching vision puts him right in the middle of a new privatization of space, a race that includes billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
In the following video, Bigelow describes a typical expandable system to be used on future space flights.
However, during the “60 Minutes” interview with correspondent Lara Logan, the conversation shifted to Bigelow’s reported obsession with UFOs and aliens.
Logan: “Do you believe in aliens?”
Bigelow: “I’m absolutely convinced. That’s all there is to it.”
Logan: “Do you also believe that UFOs have come to Earth?”
Bigelow: “There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence. And I spent millions and millions and millions ― I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.”
Logan: “Is it risky for you to say in public that you believe in UFOs and aliens?”
Bigelow: “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.”
Logan: “You don’t worry that some people will say, ‘Did you hear that guy, he sounds like he’s crazy’?”
Bigelow: “I don’t care. It’s not gonna make a difference. It’s not gonna change reality of what I know.”
Bigelow wouldn’t elaborate on what kind of results he had achieved from his well-funded UFO research. When asked if he thought future space missions would result in any encounters between humans and aliens, Bigelow said, “You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s just like right under people’s noses.”
While Bigelow declined to describe his personal UFO encounters, he offered more elaborate details about UFOs, extraterrestrials and the private space industry during an interview on the national radio program, “Coast to Coast AM.”
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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.
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