Stephen Hawking Has Flawed Ideas About Alien Life, According to Former SETI Scientist

by Christianna Reedy

NASA/Paul. E. Alers

{ https://futurism.com/ }

24-09-2017 om 15:23 geschreven door peter  

SETI lists seven places in our Solar System that could harbour microbial life

We are more likely to find microbial life 'sooner than' intelligent extraterrestrials.

By Immanuel Jotham

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute believes that our Solar System could possibly harbour life forms in the microbial level and have listed seven places that are the likely candidates.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with SETI, in an interview with Futurism has said that there are "at least seven other places in our own solar system, so kind of next door places you could get to with a rocket, that could have microbial life," adding that it is likely that microbial life is found before intelligent life.

1. Mars

The red planet is one of the first candidates for finding life, notes the report. With more and more information coming out about the planet's chemical and environmental makeup, it might not be too unrealistic to expect to find life there. Nasa recently uncovered a "key ingredient for life" in a fascinating chemical discovery on Mars as they found Boron.

2. Jupiter's moons

Europa is a prime candidate for finding a life within its sub-surface oceans. There are hot spots at the bottom where "little mini volcanoes and that would give you energy for life," said Shostak.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the entire Solar System, notes the report and could support life in its ocean beneath the thick ice sheets on the surface.

Callisto is another moon that even has an atmosphere apart from its ocean, says the report.

3. Saturn's moons

Recently it was reported that chemical "precursors" to life was confirmed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan as Nasa found the right chemical setup that can support cell membranes on that moon. According to the Futurism report, there are large liquid lakes that are filled with natural gas and these could be good places to start looking for life.

Another satellite of Saturn– Enceladus is another prime candidate in the search for life and according to Shostak, an even more favourable place for life to form. The report points out that it might be even easier to study life in Enceladus as it shoots plumes of ice into space. "You don't have to land. You don't have to drill," explained Shostak. "You just go grab some of those geyser gunk and bring it back to Earth and maybe you'll find aliens."

One of the reasons why Cassini spacecraft had to plunge into Saturn was because scientists believed that if there happens to be life on any of its moons, there is a possibility of contamination from Cassini that they needed to avoid.

4. Pluto

Pluto is believed to have pockets of liquid water under its surface and according to Shostak "any place [where] you have liquid water — liquid of any kind — maybe have microbes." It was reported that the New Horizons probe discovered blue skies and red "water ice" on Pluto as well as numerous small, exposed regions of water ice.

The report surmises that these seven places in the solar system have the right conditions –not just water– to support life. Shostak said: "You have something that gives you food, fundamentally, and the opportunity to create life, which after all is just organic chemistry."

In a previous report by Futurism, it was noted that there being life on alien planets and actually finding life on those planets are different aspects as humans might not even recognise life that is completely different in form. Earth's atmosphere allows for life that is carbon-based, but planets with atmospheres that have biosignatures made of different other gasses could possibly hold life that is completely unrecognisable to humans.

{ http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ }

24-09-2017 om 15:10 geschreven door peter  

How to Predict a Hostile Alien Invasion

It's hardly the most pressing concern for Earth, but there might be a way to forewarn ourselves

By Caleb A. Scharf 

Given the current state of our home planet, and indeed our species, it can seem a bit surplus to needs to speculate on whether extraterrestrials are going to one day come and eat us (or, well, you know, do anything equally unpleasant).

Nonetheless, the question of whether there's anyone or anything 'out there' that might ever show up to cause trouble does seem to come around again, and again, and again. For example, it's become a bit of a perennial topic for Stephen Hawking to mention, and he's not alone among serious scientists in speculating on the outcome of any such encounter.

As with any effort to decode the likely thought processes or intents of entirely hypothetical lifeforms, the options are - shall we say - fairly loosely constrained. 

I do agree with Hawking's general thinking that if a species goes to all the trouble of undertaking interstellar travel itself (rather than sending robotic scientific probes) the chances are that it wants more than a few nice anecdotes for the next edition of the Really Lonely Planet Guide to the Galaxy. 

But contrary to many Hollywood-style sci-fi tales, I doubt that what an alien species needs are most of the usual tropes: water (what, one of the most abundant compounds in the cosmos?), human slaves (seriously, you can traverse interstellar space and you need slaves?), or some mystical 'life-force' to be drained from us all (no, just no). 

A semi-plausible motivation would actually be the need for a functional biosphere, because an alien home-world has gone belly-up. Although here too, if you can sustain life on a mothership (for the sake of argument) for what would be at least decades, if not centuries of travel, would the need for a planet be quite so desperate? Maybe it would be. As anyone with half a cup of grey-cells in their head is painfully aware, a planetary ecosystem, replete with chemical recycling, photosynthesis, and moderately stable climate regimes, is actually pretty useful, hard to replicate, and possibly the very best life-support system money can buy.

Of course it's easier to set up a colony if the indigenous lifeforms don't include anything particularly intelligent, so the cost-benefit analysis has to include the effort of handling the locals who might get in your way. Option A is to try to be nice and hope you get asked to co-exist, Option B is to follow the template of what humans have successfully, and desplorably done to each other over the millennia: "I know you were here first, but now it's ours and we're going to make it GREAT (again)".

Which brings me to the real point of this post. If the single greatest motivation for a species to go interstellar, and to show up in a hostile fashion, is because their home system can no longer support them, we should be trying to find those nearby exoplanets where it looks like life is on its way out.

Being able to actually do this is a way off, so bear with me. Suppose though, in the not-so-distant-future, we do have the capability to confirm the presence of a biosphere on an exoplanet, and we have refined our techniques so that we can measure stuff like industrial pollution, climate change, and perhaps even the infra-red excess of active technology. In this case we might be able to gauge the odds that life has messed things up good and proper. 

With this information in hand we could go as far as assigning a probability that a technological species on one of these dismal worlds will pack up and come looking for a new home. And, given that this would tell us the best directions to be looking in, we might conceivably be able to pick up signs of an interstellar launch, or deceleration, or other activity.  

There you have it. The best way to avoid hostile alien invasion, or at least be forewarned, is to continue funding all that wonderful exoplanetary science; research that will answer a bunch of other critically interesting questions along the way.

{ https://www.scientificamerican.com/ }

24-09-2017 om 14:42 geschreven door peter  

24-09-2017 om 13:09 geschreven door peter  

24-09-2017 om 13:05 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Glowing Orb follows his own flight trajectory over London

The Orb phenomenon is still a mystery. While, some researchers have agreed that some orbs are the result from natural phenomena such as insects, dust, pollen, or water vapor there is no doubt that some orbs may well be representing something supernatural, a reality that is not yet understood by UFO and paranormal investigators.

Is such an Orb evidence of spirit presences representing the essence or soul of a departed person or is such a luminous sphere something that is under intelligent control of an extraterrestrial race?

While there is a lot that has yet to be explored about this phenomenon, it has been proven that authentic orbs have their own flight trajectory and they emit their own light and that is exactly what Gary Lowe has filmed when he was in his car through Dagenham, Greater London on September 23, 2017.

When Mr. Lowe noticed the object in the sky he then pulled his car over and started to film the glowing object, which erratically darting across the sky and was moving ‘too fast to be explained' without making a sound, reports dailymail.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

24-09-2017 om 12:59 geschreven door peter  

The Gurdon Light

A mysterious light floating in the trees of Gurdon, Arkansas may be a piezoelectric effect. 

24-09-2017 om 01:17 geschreven door peter  

Apocalypse Now? Doomsday Predictions Are Just Recycled Bogus Theories

24-09-2017 om 00:28 geschreven door peter  

THE DOMINANT LIFE FORM IN THE COSMOS IS PROBABLY SUPERINTELLIGENT ROBOTS

If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won’t look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It’s likely they won’t be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. While scores of philosophers, scientists and futurists have prophesied the rise of artificial intelligence and the impending singularity, most have restricted their predictions to Earth. Fewer thinkers—outside the realm of science fiction, that is—have considered the notion that artificial intelligence is already out there, and has been for eons.

Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, is one who has. She joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper “Alien Minds,” written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

“Most people have an iconic idea of aliens as these biological creatures, but that doesn’t make any sense from a timescale argument,” Shostak told me. “I’ve bet dozens of astronomers coffee that if we pick up an alien signal, it’ll be artificial life.”

With the latest updates from NASA’s Kepler mission showing potentially habitable worlds strewn across the galaxy, it’s becoming harder and harder to assert that we’re alone in the universe. And if and when we do encounter intelligent life forms, we’ll want to communicate with them, which means we’ll need some basis for understanding their cognition. But for the vast majority of astrobiologists who study single-celled life, alien intelligence isn’t on the radar.

“If you asked me to bring together a panel of folks who have given the subject much thought, I would be hard pressed,” said Shostak. “Some think about communication strategies, of course. But few consider the nature of alien intelligence.”

Schneider’s paper is among the first to tackle the subject.

I’m not saying that we’re going to be running into IBM processors in outer space. In all likelihood, this intelligence will be way more sophisticated than anything humans can understand.

“Everything about their cognition—how their brains receive and process information, what their goals and incentives are—could be vastly different from our own,” Schneider told me. “Astrobiologists need to start thinking about the possibility of very different modes of cognition.”

To wit, the case of artificial superintelligence.

“There’s an important distinction here from just ‘artificial intelligence’,” Schneider told me. “I’m not saying that we’re going to be running into IBM processors in outer space. In all likelihood, this intelligence will be way more sophisticated than anything humans can understand.”

The reason for all this has to do, primarily, with timescales. For starters, when it comes to alien intelligence, there’s what Schneider calls the “short window observation”—the notion that, by the time any society learns to transmit radio signals, they’re probably a hop-skip away from upgrading their own biology. It’s a twist on the belief popularized by Ray Kurzweil that humanity’s own post-biological future is near at hand.

“As soon as a civilization invents radio, they’re within fifty years of computers, then, probably, only another fifty to a hundred years from inventing AI,” Shostak said. “At that point, soft, squishy brains become an outdated model.”

Schneider points to the nascent but rapidly expanding world of brain computer interface technology, including DARPA’s latest ElectRX neural implant program, as evidence that our own singularity is close. Eventually, Schneider predicts, we’ll not only upgrade our minds with technology, we’ll make a wholesale switch to synthetic hardware.

“It could be that by the time we actually encounter other intelligences, most humans will have substantially enhanced their brains,” Schneider said.

Which speaks to Schneider’s second line of reasoning for superintelligent AI: Most of the radio-hot civilizations out there are probably thousands to millions of years older than us. That’s according to the astronomers who ruminate on such matters.

“The way you reach this conclusion is very straightforward,” said Shostak. “Consider the fact that any signal we pick up has to come from a civilization at least as advanced as we are. Now, let’s say, conservatively, the average civilization will use radio for 10,000 years. From a purely probabilistic point of view, the chance of encountering a society far older than ourselves is quite high.”

It’s certainly humbling to consider that we may be galactic infants of beetle-like intelligence compared with our cosmic brethren. But despite their superior processing power, there’s a fundamental aspect of cognition our interstellar neighbors may lack: Consciousness.

It sounds bizarre, but, Schneider writes, the jury’s still out on whether any artificial intelligence is capable of self-awareness. Simply put, we know so little about the neurological basis for consciousness; it’s almost impossible to predict what ingredients might go into replicating it artificially.

“I don’t see any good reason to believe an artificial superintelligence couldn’t possess consciousness, but it’s important to identify the possibility,” said Schneider.

Still, Schneider feels the assertion that artificial life simply can’t possess consciousness is losing ground.

“I believe the brain is inherently computational—we already have computational theories that describe aspects of consciousness, including working memory and attention,” Schneider said. “Given a computational brain, I don’t see any good argument that silicon, instead of carbon, can’t be a excellent medium for experience.”

You don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.”

I hope she’s right. Somehow, the notion of a galaxy teeming with soulless supercomputers is way creepier than introspective, WALL-E-like beings, or dry, sardonic Qs.

“It’s super creepy,” Schneider agrees. Indeed, Schneider, who has written extensively on the subject of brain uploading, urges that humans should reflect deeply on this potential consequence of cognitive enhancement.

The concept of superintelligent alien AI still sounds very speculative. And it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth consideration. Indeed, expanding our purview of alien intelligence may help us identify life’s fingerprints in the cosmos. “So far, we’ve pointed antennas at stars that might have planets that might have breathable atmospheres and oceans and so forth,” Shostak told me. “But if we’re correct that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is artificial, then does it have to live on a planet with an ocean?”

It’s a bit of a mind-bender to think that habitable worlds may hold false promise when it comes to advanced alien life, but that seems to be Shostak’s conclusion.

“All artificial life forms would need is raw materials,” he said. “They might be in deep space, hovering around a star, or feeding off a black hole’s energy at the center of the galaxy.” (That last idea has seen its way into a number of science fiction novels, including works by Greg Bear and Gregory Benford).

Which is to say, they could be, essentially, anywhere.

Begging a final question: How might superintelligent aliens view us? Will our cosmic cousins see us as nothing more than convenient biofuel, a la the Matrix? Or do they study us quietly from afar, abiding by a Star Trek-esque maxim of non-interference? Schneider doubts either. In fact, she reckons superintelligent aliens couldn’t really care less about us.

“If they were interested in us, we probably wouldn’t be here,” said Schneider. “My gut feeling is their goals and incentives are so different from ours, they’re not going to want to contact us.”

That’s a welcome divergence from Steven Hawking’s claim that advanced aliens might be nomads, looking to strip resources from whatever planets they can, and that all efforts to contact said aliens may end in our own demise.

“I’d have to agree with Susan on them not being interested in us at all,” Shostak said. We’re just too simplistic, too irrelevant. “You don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.”

So, if we want to meet our galactic peers, it looks like we’ll probably have to keep seeking them out. That may take thousands or millions of years, but in the meanwhile, perhaps we’ll upgrade our own intelligence enough to level the playing field. And as an early Christmas present, it seems we can all tick alien robots juicing us for energy off the list of likely apocalypses.

Source motherboard.vice.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

23-09-2017 om 23:55 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Deep Space Radio Bursts May be Surprisingly Common

{ http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/ }

23-09-2017 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

Verbaasde vader ziet gloeiend object door de lucht zoeven: “Het vloog te snel om het logisch te kunnen verklaren”

Verbaasde vader ziet gloeiend object door de lucht zoeven: “Het vloog te snel om het logisch te kunnen verklaren”

Een Britse man kon zijn ogen niet geloven toen hij ’s avonds op pad ging om een meeneemmaaltijd af te halen en een onverklaarbaar voorwerp door de lucht zag vliegen. De man haalde snel zijn smartphone tevoorschijn om het gloeiende licht te filmen en publiceerde de beelden op sociale media in een poging een verklaring te vinden. “Ik kan het gewoon niet verklaren en het was iets dat ik nog nooit eerder zag”, aldus de verbaasde vader.

Gary Lowe uit Dagenham in Oost-Londen zag naar eigen zeggen iets “dat hij nog nooit eerder had gezien” en beweert dat het mysterieuze voorwerp zonder geluid door de lucht zoefde. “Het was compleet onverklaarbaar”, vertelt de vader van drie. “Ik kan gewoon niet bedenken wat het zou kunnen zijn geweest. Ik veronderstel dat het dan om een ufo gaat.”

De 38-jarige man geeft zelf toe dat hij eigenlijk niet in ufo’s gelooft en zegt dat de meeste raadselachtige fenomenen op een rationele manier kunnen worden verklaard. “Maar dat voorwerp vloog te snel. Het gloeide beurtelings rood en wit, ik kan het gewoon niet verklaren.” Lowe deelde de video van de UFO op sociale media, in de hoop dat experts hem kunnen vertellen wat hij die avond zag.

Nadat Lowe het onverklaarbare tuig in de lucht had zien hangen, zette hij zijn auto onmiddellijk langs de kant, en hij was niet de enige. “Andere mensen moeten er ook getuige van zijn geweest”, beweert hij. “Er waren andere ooggetuigen in de buurt en het ding leek vlakbij te vliegen.”

Onverklaarbaar of gewoon een drone?

Hoewel er volgens de Brit nog een andere man uit een restaurant kwam gelopen om de ufo te bekijken, zijn andere mensen niet zo onder de indruk van het mysterieuze voorwerp. “Toen ik de video aan mijn vrouw toonde, was ze amper verbaasd”, zegt Lowe. “Net zoals enkele anderen denkt ze dat het gewoon een drone was.”

Die mening deelt Philip Mantle, de voormalige directer van de Britse UFO Research Organisation: “Het probleem is dat dergelijke video’s meestal door een smartphone worden gemaakt en dus van bedenkelijke kwaliteit zijn.” Mantle geeft toe dat het gloeiende licht “veel sneller naar beneden gaat dan een gewoon vliegtuig”, maar oppert dat het gewoon een drone was die “meer dan normaal werd verlicht door de zonsondergang”.

Gary Lowe is echter niet tevreden met die uitleg en wil verder graven om het mysterie te ontrafelen: “Ik weet niet wat het was, maar ik ben geen scepticus. Het is mogelijk dat het ding van een andere planeet kwam, ik weet het gewoon niet.” Hij hoopt nu dat online ufologen meer duidelijkheid kunnen scheppen.

{ http://www.nieuwsblad.be/ }

23-09-2017 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Majestic 12: the secret team set up by the USA to probe the Roswell UFO incident

Martin HannanJournalist

A black and white film said to show an autopsy on a Roswell alien was released in 1995. It was later said to be a reconstruction of actual footage

WHAT’S THE STORY?

TOMORROW marks the 70th anniversary of the start of what is either the longest-running hoax in modern history or the biggest cover-up the world has even known.

It was on September 24, 1947, that US President Harry S Truman allegedly – there will be a lot of words like that in this profile – signed a special classified executive order to establish a committee of 12 experts to carry out a “top-secret research and development/intelligence operation” into the supposed crash of an alien spacecraft some 75 miles north-west of Roswell Army Air Field base in New Mexico. They were given the code name Majestic 12.

SPACECRAFT?

MORE like an unidentified flying object, really. Something certainly did crash north of Roswell in the summer of 1947, and at first it was clearly identified as a “flying disc” which had been recovered by Roswell base personnel.

A press release was even sent out from the base announcing its recovery, and local newspapers proudly reported that the “disc” had been impounded with the help of the local sheriff’s office.

Local people reported seeing plastic-like substances and wires lying at the site. The world’s most famous UFO incident and the whole saga of Area 51 – the designation of the “secret” land and air space around Roswell – was under way.

WHAT WAS IT REALLY?

IN post-war America, a spate of UFO sightings and especially flying saucers had led the populace to believe that invasion from space was imminent, this on top of the growing paranoia about the USSR and the Communist threat to the good ole US of A.

The Roswell UFO incident, as it became known, started in fairly simple terms. The version of events put out by the military authorities was that the “disc” was a weather balloon, but no-one was buying that, and quite rightly so because the authorities were already colluding in a massive cover-up. The material actually came from a huge balloon that was involved in a top-secret spying mission known as Project Mogul which used balloons equipped with microphones to listen out for Soviet atomic tests. Or so the US authorities maintain to this day.

Had the US Government simply announced the truth, Roswell would probably never have featured in films such as Independence Day or television’s Dark Skies and the X-Files, but they couldn’t tell the public about something that didn’t officially exist. It’s always the cover-up that gets you …

WAS THAT REALLY THE TRUTH?

IT took the US Government until the 1990s to admit it, but the Project Mogul explanation fits the facts. The alternative version is Majestic 12, in which the president’s dozen specialists took possession of seven to nine – depending on who you believe – crashed flying saucers and the alleged remains of up to 27 alien life forms

According to an alleged leaked memo, we even know the names of the Majestic 12. They included Sidney William Souers, a former director of central intelligence; James Vincent Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense; Jerome Clarke Hunsaker, chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; General Nathan Farragut Twining, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957; Dr Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War; Detlev Bronk, internationally recognised as the developer of biophysics; Donald Howard Menzel, one of America’s greatest theoretical astronomers and astrophysicists; and General Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg, second chief of staff of the US Air Force after whom Vandenberg Air Force Base is named. None of the dozen has ever confirmed membership of Majestic 12, and let’s face it, would such men have been involved in the sort of experimentation that the “aliens” were supposed to have undergone?

SO WHY DID SO MANY PEOPLE TAKE IT SO SERIOUSLY?

THE ufologist community has been split by Majestic 12 for decades. The name only entered common usage after the allegations of a cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident emerged in the early 1980s.

Hey presto, up popped a series of “leaked” Majestic 12 documents including a memo allegedly written by Robert Cutler, assistant to President Dwight D Eisenhower, to the aforementioned General Twining, referencing Majestic 12.

More and more outlandish claims were made about Majestic 12 and allegations were made that the people who revealed the existence of the documents were involved in an elaborate hoax.

Documentaries have been produced that alternatively debunk or support the Majestic 12 theories, and one later claim was made that the whole story was an exercise in disinformation from the start, as the US Government wanted to conceal what was really going at time, namely experiments connected to the Cold War.

Both the FBI and the US Air Force have carried out lengthy inquiries and have concluded that the claims about Majestic 12 and Roswell were completely bogus. But then they would say that, wouldn’t they?

{ http://www.thenational.scot/ }

23-09-2017 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

FRB: Mysterious space signals are likely firing off every single second across the universe

Fast radio bursts continue to pose a mystery to scientists, with questions surrounding where they originate from.

By India Ashok

Researchers say that FRBs could help scientists unravel the origins of the universe

iStock

Ever since fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered in 2001, they have posed a mystery to scientists, with questions surrounding how and where they occur. Astronomers have spotted a few dozen FRBs over the past few years and even estimated the possible origin location of the mysterious signals.

However, what causes these signals still remains a mystery. Scientists now estimate that the mysterious radio signals may be firing off every second, all across the universe.

Most FRB sources are only detected once, given that the powerful bursts last just milliseconds. One particular burst, FRB 121102, which was first detected in 2002, has since fired a further 34 bursts over the years since.

This has allowed astronomers to pinpoint the location of the FRBs, which was discovered coming from a galaxy three billion light years away.

Now, two astronomers at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have estimated that FRBs are emitted at a rapid rate.

"If we are right about such a high rate of FRBs happening at any given time, you can imagine the sky is filled with flashes like paparazzi taking photos of a celebrity," said Anastasia Fialkov of the CfA, who led the study. "Instead of the light we can see with our eyes, these flashes come in radio waves."

Although the cause of the mysterious signals still remains a mystery, the new study indicates that FRBs may be not be as rare as previously thought. "In the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, hundreds of FRBs may have gone off somewhere in the Universe," said Avi Loeb, co-author of the study. "If we can study even a fraction of those well enough, we should be able to unravel their origin."

Researchers say that FRBs could help scientists unravel the origins of the universe. "FRBs are like incredibly powerful flashlights that we think can penetrate this fog and be seen over vast distances," said Fialkov. "This could allow us to study the 'dawn' of the universe in a new way."

The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

{ http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ }

23-09-2017 om 21:47 geschreven door peter  

Cassini captured mysterious 'glitch' on Saturn's rings before death dive

ARIS FOLLEY, AOL.COM

Cassini sent home one last batch of photos from Saturn before plunging to its death Friday and among them was an attempt to record a mysterious object embedded in the planet's rings, otherwise known as "Peggy."

Peggy lives along the edge of Saturn and is an anomaly from which researchers have been unable to unearth the source.

RELATED: Cassini crash lands on Saturn

Cassini sent home one last batch of photos from Saturn before plunging to its death Friday and among them was an attempt to record a mysterious object ...

Cassini captured mysterious 'glitch' on Saturn's rings before death dive. The bizarre disturbance was first noticed in 2013 by London researcher Carl Murray ...

Slideshow preview image

The bizarre disturbance was first noticed in 2013 by London researcher Carl Murray, who named it after his mother-in-law after making the discovery on her birthday. And its effects on dust particles and surrounding ice has been recorded ever since.

Murray believes Peggy is a moon forming within the planet's rings, though researchers have yet to receive a direct image of Peggy's form.

Based on the size of the disturbance, however, Peggy's mass is estimated to be quite large. Researchers speculate its current form is likely a large cloud of debris and that it's been quite active as it is predicted to have split into two several years ago.

“When Cassini came out of its ring plane orbit in early 2016, we went back to look where Peggy should be; and we found Peggy and we've been tracking it ever since,” Murray told BBC News earlier this year.

SEE ALSO: Photos: 10 breathtaking images from Cassini’s ground-breaking mission of studying Saturn

“But a few degrees behind we could also see another object, even fainter in the sense that it had an even smaller (disturbance) signature. And when we tracked back the paths of both objects, we realized that in early 2015 they would have met," Murray added. "So, probably, Peggy 'B', as we call it, came from a collision of the sort that causes Peggy to change its orbit, but rather than a simple encounter that deflected the orbit slightly, this was more serious.”

Now Murray and his team are using the data obtained by the NASA spacecraft before its plunge into Saturn. “I couldn’t find Peggy in the data though I’m still looking,” he told Gizmodo. “Peggy’s probably there, I just haven’t found exactly where yet.”

“I’m used to every day going to the computers when the images come down [to] just look for fun stuff, like Peggy!” Murray explained. “It’s going to take me awhile to get used not getting to see these images every day.”

More from AOL.com: 

• NASA is now receiving the last photos ever taken by the Cassini probe at Saturn 
• NASA’s Cassini spacecraft takes death plunge into Saturn after nearly 20 years in space 
• Photos: 10 breathtaking images from Cassini’s ground-breaking mission of studying Saturn

{ https://www.aol.com/news/ }

23-09-2017 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

23-09-2017 om 20:21 geschreven door peter  

Aliens in windows and globes of fire: Eight unexplained UFO sightings in Hull

200 years of strange objects appearing in the East Yorkshire skies.

BY DAVID SPEREALL

With the possible exception of ghosts, there are few supernatural subjects that divide opinion quite like unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

David Spereall chats to Mike Covell about strange and suspicious sights in the sky, and finds Hull has more than its fair share of stories.

Whether you believe it or not, the phenomena of UFOs has long been discussed and debated, with annual conferences held internationally on the subject.

But while many will associate UFO stories with places like Nevada, with its mysterious 'Area 51', Hull has had more than its fair share of UFO reports.

1. The 'Splitting Moon' of 1801

The earliest sighting of a UFO in Hull can be traced back to June 1801. The sighting of an unidentified object over the city featured in local and national press, as well as contemporary science journals.

Whatever it was came from the south west towards Hull and resembled an immense moon with a black bar across the middle.

It then split into seven smaller globes of fire which subsequently vanished over the Humber, before reappearing like the face of the moon and again split into five circular balls of light, not unlike stars.

At the time, Hull and the Humber was supposedly bathed in a mysterious blue light.

The event prompted much discussion. Could it have been a celestial object like a comet or meteorite or was it something more sinister?

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EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES FORGUS, WHO CLAIMS TO HAVE SEEN SOLDIERS HAULING AWAY A 'BIG CREATURE'

2. The 1909 Scareship

In 1909 a Mr Walker of Coltman Street in west Hull contacted police after an airship was seen over the city. This was part of a wave of similar independent sightings reported across the country that year.

3. Is it a bird, is it a train? Mystery at the Paragon

In 1913, crowds of residents and policemen stood in awe as a strange object complete with red and white lights hovered over Paragon Station.

Press reported that it was seen over the area for about an hour.

4. The Longhill Landing

One of the strangest cases came in 1967, when a UFO was said to have landed in an east Hull park in Longhill.

The story goes that on November 15, a group of children saw a cigar shaped craft descend and hover over the park, leaving burn marks on a hill.

Two police officers attended the landing site and found the marks but no sign of the aircraft. Initially it was thought the children were fibbing but their stories were too similar to one another.

Other eyewitnesses described seeing a similarly-shaped object flying over Hull but the dates did not appear to tally.

Another said it was a helicopter from the Yorkshire Electricity Board making an emergency landing, but the matter was never fully resolved.

5. Football match disrupted by UFO

In October 1986, 20 people in Bransholme saw a moon-shaped object with a curved cone on the top and red lights flying in the direction of East Park.

The group, who were playing football at the time reported the sighting to police, who in turn contacted RAD Binbrook.

But the event was never explained and remains unsolved. Such was the scale of the encounter, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) kept a file on it.

6. That aircraft, it has three corners

In July 1990, a Hessle woman claimed to have spotted a giant flying triangle in the sky. Seen for around 45 minutes, she and her son watched the extraordinary sight together through a pair of binoculars.

Three months later a teacher at Winifred Holtby School in Bransholme had a similar experience as he stood in the car park at 7pm. The object remained in the sky for several minutes before vanishing over the horizon.

7. The alien in the window

One of the strangest chapters in the region came in December 1994 when the Hull Daily Mail reported what appeared to be an alien photographed looking through a window of a property in Sproatley.

It was claimed that huge dents had been found in the grass outside the property. Weeks later, it was said the photo had been sent to NASA for an explanation. The case was taken up by the British UFO Research Association, but the trail ran cold and the outcome remains a mystery.

8. Rocky '09

In 2009, Mr Covell himself investigated the case of Peter Welton from west Hull, who had witnessed, with his wife and family, a large piece of hot rock hit his property and smash through the roof.

Mr Welton was in the bedroom of his home when he heard the loud bang, and on investigating, discovered the rock which weighed 4lbs. It was dark grey, round, and about the size of a football.

It was so hot it took an hour and a half to cool down and when it was removed the family used oven gloves.

Initially the MoD reported it could have come from an aircraft or satellite, prompting a media frenzy and the story being followed around the world.

Three months later, the MoD confirmed no military aircraft was near the property at the time and all those who had been nearby during the day were all intact after inspection.

They put forward the theory it was probably debris from space that had entered the atmosphere after its orbit decayed.

{ http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/ }

23-09-2017 om 19:35 geschreven door peter  

If we somehow survive the apocalypse of September 23rd, we still have to worry about the eventual albeit still theoretical arrival of Planet X, which may or may not destroy the Earth, split the U.S. in half or, if things go well, get blown to bits by a North Korean nuclear missile courtesy of Kim Jong-Un. However, if that doesn’t happen, we may be saved by our own Sun. Astronomers have discovered a star that has been eating some of its very large planets. Can the same thing happen in our solar system? Sorry, Jupiter and Neptune … we’d do the same thing for you (wink-wink).

Astronomer Semyeong Oh of Princeton University led a recent study of binary or twin stars HD 240430 and HD 240429, located 325 light years from the Earth and two light years apart. Her team found large amounts of heavy elements such as lithium, magnesium and iron on the surface of HD 240430 and few on HD240429. This was odd because other evidence indicated that the stars came from one star cluster and should have similar if not identical amounts of any elements.

This data was fed into a computer model and a few possible scenarios rose to the top: the stars aren’t twins but instead met and connected at a later date; the cluster made HD 240430 more well-endowed; HD 240430 got its heavy metal infusion from somehow devouring some of its rocky and metallic planets. Oh and her colleagues liked the third option and, anticipating they could prove it, nicknamed the star Kronos after the mythological Greek Titan who ate his own children to prevent them from overthrowing him. HD240429 by default became Krius, the weakest Titan who didn’t eat his children and was overthrown.

Based on the model, Oh determined that Kronos/HD 240430 contained the metallic equivalent of 15 Earths, a stellar amount in stellar terms. Because the metals were massed together and not separated by weight, this lends considerable credence to them coming from Kronos/H240430’s appetite for big planets.

However, it’s not proof. For one thing, how do they explain Kronos/HD 240430 eating planets and Krios/HD 240429 not having the same hunger? One thought is that their gravitational proximity caused Krios/HD 240429 to knock Kronos/HD 240430’s planets out of orbit and into its waiting hot mouth. Another theory is that a different star passed by and did the disrupting. Oh’s team is now looking for any remaining giant planets still around either star in an attempt to get closer to the cause.

The bad news is, this does not bode well for our own Sun stepping up to the dinner plate and eating Planet X before it eats us. For one thing, it doesn’t have a twin – unless you follow the theory that Planet X is orbiting a remote twin of the Sun that will hurl X into our path. Also, Jupiter and Neptune are still big entrees on the solar system plate and the Sun’s surface gives no metallic signatures indicating past planetary meals.

This did not end well for either one

Greek mythology says things may not bode well for Kronos/HD 240430 either. The Titan Kronos was overthrown in the Titanomachy war and either imprisoned for life or castrated by his son, Zeus.

There was no Kim to fire a nuclear arrow to save him either.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-09-2017 om 11:36 geschreven door peter  

The Hubble Space Telescope offers us an unprecedented close-up look at the many strange and wondrous objectsoccupying our solar system and even in some of the farthest reaches of observable space. Occasionally, Hubble detects objects that defy classification and scientists’ understanding. One such discovery was made this week, and astronomers aren’t sure what to make of it.

Our eye in the sky.

The object is actually a pair of objects orbiting around one another in an asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers have named the pair 288P and are at a current loss to explain and classify them. The pair is the first known set of objects which are both locked into orbit around one another while also ejecting trails of water vapor into space behind them. That second characteristic is usually only found in comets, but the 288P objects are locked into the asteroid belt unlike comets.

288P and their vapor trails.

Furthermore, the orbits of the objects are unique. They lie around 100 km (~62 miles) apart in an elongated orbit not usually seen in asteroid pairs.  Jessica Agarwal, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute who discovered the odd hybrid comet/asteroids (cometoids? astromets?), says that the 288P objects might be the first-known asteroids to eject water as comets do:

If that is the case, it basically can change our understanding of how asteroids evolve, so how fast they disintegrate and change their sizes. And this in turn can also change our understanding of how they have evolved in the past and our models of the initial distribution of asteroids in the asteroid belt.

Until astronomers find more objets like 288P to study, this odd couple will remain a mysterious anomaly.

The elongated, elliptical orbits of 288P.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-09-2017 om 11:30 geschreven door peter  

While using his telescope sky-watcher Bill Bryson recorded a possible UFO fleet crossing the moon.

Bill Bryson states that it is not unusual for him to see similar objects at least one per session but 14 objects that fly clearly in a formation is very unusual.

Bill: “Now I do not pretend to know really what they were - but it looks to me that either they are UFOs or Bats.”

Given that the camera was zoomed in on the moon, it is unlikely that the objects were bats, bugs or even birds as they would have been out of focus.

Besides, according to a commenter, birds fly at a speed of 25-35m.p.h. At that speed, to cross camera parallax then the birds must fly at an average altitude of 5,000 ft. But as Bill zoomed in on the moon, the camera was, say at 50,000 ft. in air, so then it is impossible that it was a bat or bird flight.

The first short (slow-motion) video of Streetcap1 shows the moment the fleet consisting of about 14 UFOs flying in formation from right to left across the screen. The second video is the longer original footage of Bill Bryson and shows the UFO fleet flying at high speed across the moon.

  

23-09-2017 om 11:20 geschreven door peter  

Majestic 12: the secret team set up by the USA to probe the Roswell UFO incident

Martin Hannan  Journalist

A black and white film said to show an autopsy on a Roswell alien was released in 1995. It was later said to be a reconstruction of actual footage

WHAT’S THE STORY?

TOMORROW marks the 70th anniversary of the start of what is either the longest-running hoax in modern history or the biggest cover-up the world has even known.

It was on September 24, 1947, that US President Harry S Truman allegedly – there will be a lot of words like that in this profile – signed a special classified executive order to establish a committee of 12 experts to carry out a “top-secret research and development/intelligence operation” into the supposed crash of an alien spacecraft some 75 miles north-west of Roswell Army Air Field base in New Mexico. They were given the code name Majestic 12.

Majestic 12 scientists experiment aliens Roswell UFO DIA leaked document

SPACECRAFT?

MORE like an unidentified flying object, really. Something certainly did crash north of Roswell in the summer of 1947, and at first it was clearly identified as a “flying disc” which had been recovered by Roswell base personnel.

A press release was even sent out from the base announcing its recovery, and local newspapers proudly reported that the “disc” had been impounded with the help of the local sheriff’s office.

Local people reported seeing plastic-like substances and wires lying at the site. The world’s most famous UFO incident and the whole saga of Area 51 – the designation of the “secret” land and air space around Roswell – was under way.

AZTEC 1948 UFO CRASH - Secret Recovery of Alien Technology | FULL Documentary - YouTube | Aliens and UFO Video and Pictures | Pinterest | UFO, Aliens and ..

WHAT WAS IT REALLY?

IN post-war America, a spate of UFO sightings and especially flying saucers had led the populace to believe that invasion from space was imminent, this on top of the growing paranoia about the USSR and the Communist threat to the good ole US of A.

The Roswell UFO incident, as it became known, started in fairly simple terms. The version of events put out by the military authorities was that the “disc” was a weather balloon, but no-one was buying that, and quite rightly so because the authorities were already colluding in a massive cover-up. The material actually came from a huge balloon that was involved in a top-secret spying mission known as Project Mogul which used balloons equipped with microphones to listen out for Soviet atomic tests. Or so the US authorities maintain to this day.

Had the US Government simply announced the truth, Roswell would probably never have featured in films such as Independence Day or television’s Dark Skies and the X-Files, but they couldn’t tell the public about something that didn’t officially exist. It’s always the cover-up that gets you …

WAS THAT REALLY THE TRUTH?

IT took the US Government until the 1990s to admit it, but the Project Mogul explanation fits the facts. The alternative version is Majestic 12, in which the president’s dozen specialists took possession of seven to nine – depending on who you believe – crashed flying saucers and the alleged remains of up to 27 alien life forms.

According to an alleged leaked memo, we even know the names of the Majestic 12. They included Sidney William Souers, a former director of central intelligence; James Vincent Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense; Jerome Clarke Hunsaker, chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; General Nathan Farragut Twining, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957; Dr Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War; Detlev Bronk, internationally recognised as the developer of biophysics; Donald Howard Menzel, one of America’s greatest theoretical astronomers and astrophysicists; and General Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg, second chief of staff of the US Air Force after whom Vandenberg Air Force Base is named. None of the dozen has ever confirmed membership of Majestic 12, and let’s face it, would such men have been involved in the sort of experimentation that the “aliens” were supposed to have undergone?

Majestic 12 scientists experiment aliens Roswell UFO DIA leaked document

SO WHY DID SO MANY PEOPLE TAKE IT SO SERIOUSLY?

THE ufologist community has been split by Majestic 12 for decades. The name only entered common usage after the allegations of a cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident emerged in the early 1980s.

Hey presto, up popped a series of “leaked” Majestic 12 documents including a memo allegedly written by Robert Cutler, assistant to President Dwight D Eisenhower, to the aforementioned General Twining, referencing Majestic 12.

More and more outlandish claims were made about Majestic 12 and allegations were made that the people who revealed the existence of the documents were involved in an elaborate hoax.

Documentaries have been produced that alternatively debunk or support the Majestic 12 theories, and one later claim was made that the whole story was an exercise in disinformation from the start, as the US Government wanted to conceal what was really going at time, namely experiments connected to the Cold War.

Both the FBI and the US Air Force have carried out lengthy inquiries and have concluded that the claims about Majestic 12 and Roswell were completely bogus. But then they would say that, wouldn’t they?

{ http://www.thenational.scot/ }

23-09-2017 om 01:40 geschreven door peter