NASA

By Leah Crane

It’s just a wee moon, but Saturn’s icy satellite Enceladus is one of the most promising places in the solar system in the hunt for alien life. Examining how spaceships vent urine could help us understand the small moon’s jets of water, which may spew out signs of life along with liquid.

At Enceladus’s south pole, plumes of liquid water spurt up from an ocean hidden under a thick sheath of ice made of varying sizes of tiny shards. Despite the pictures we have of this region from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, we don’t know much about the inner workings of the plumes because the probe could only detect one size of ice grain at a time, leaving scientists to guess at the overall distribution.

But Ralph Lorenz at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland says that we could use other jets of water in space – the ones formed as spacecraft release astronaut pee and waste water from fuel cells – as an analogue to better understand that distribution. He presented this work at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences on 17 October.

Whizzing water

When water whizzes out into the cold vacuum of space, some of it freezes instantaneously. In 1989, researchers at a telescope in Hawaii observed this process as the Discovery space shuttle dumped water from its fuel cells.

“There was a population of ice grains that were basically the size of the vent, but there’s a second population of much smaller grains that were interpreted as basically recondensing from the vapour,” says Lorenz. “That is probably the type of distribution that we’ll see on Enceladus.”

The plumes on Enceladus are far bigger and likely less uniform on the inside than a simple metal tube spraying out water, though. On the space shuttle, water being dumped formed long icicles on the outside of the nozzle in some cases, so the same may happen at Enceladus and change the structure of the vents over time, Lorenz says.

Urine vented from the space shuttle left a residue when tiny particles of wee ice hit the craft’s panels, so he suggests that future missions to Enceladus could have detectors that look for signatures of life in the miniscule dents left by ice grains there.

A bit of a stretch

“It seems like a stretch to me,” says Hunter Waite at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. “The temperature of the water reservoir and how the liquid interacts with the ice walls that are several kilometres thick are important factors, and they don’t seem to have an analogue in this system.”

Lorenz says that even though the spacecraft water-dumping process is much simpler than Enceladus’s vents, it could still help us validate our models of the moon’s jets.

“These observations don’t tell us directly what’s happening on Enceladus, but they provide a sort of anchor for our interpretations of what we’re seeing on Enceladus and our designs for a new mission to go there,” says Lorenz.

Read more: Enigmatic plumes from Saturn’s moon caused by cosmic collision

{ https://www.newscientist.com/ }

18-10-2017 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Star Trek creator’s son discusses UFO and aliens (VIDEO)

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas

In a newly released interview, Gene Roddenberry’s (creator of Star Trek) son, Eugene Roddenberry, discusses UFOs and aliens with investigative documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. Eugene says neither he or his father, who passed away in 1991, saw a UFO, that he is aware of. However, he does believe in “life on other planets,” and he believes one day those who are searching for life elsewhere will find it.

EUGENE RODDENBERRY / speaks about Star Trek, extraterrestrial life, UFOs, advanced technologies and alien life forms from JEREMY KENYON LOCKYER CORBELL on Vimeo.

Eugene is a television producer and keeps his father’s work alive as the CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment. He is an executive producer of the franchise’s news series Star Trek: Discovery on CBS’ streaming service CBS All Access.

Gene Roddenberry listening to fans after his lecture at the Student Union of the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States.

(Credit: Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0)

“I believe there’s life on other planets. I hope that they are super evolved and highly intelligent; and have chosen, not to interfere because there letting us evolve and make our own mistakes,” Eugene told Corbell. “I don’t have any fears about it. So many people will be like, oh, ‘I shouldn’t say anything because that UFO thing it’s shrouded in all this sorta like… all these crazy people talk about it.’ For me it’s very scientific and matter of fact.”

Although Eugene says he nor his father have seen a UFO, when asked if he would like to, he responded, “Are you kidding me? I’d wanna fly in one.”

Either way, he encourages those researching UFOs and alien life.

“The only thing I would wanna say to the people in this particular audience [those interested in UFOs] is, I am a believer that there is some sort of life out there, and my preference is intelligent life that’s evolved beyond ours. And I appreciate everyone who’s been out there, trying to find it, who’s been digging deep.” Eugene continued, “I do appreciate that there’s people out there who keep asking the question and keep knocking on those doors, and keep discovering things. I am excited, for you all to be vindicated. For us to meet that alien life form, or whatever it is. And for how ever many millions of you are out there, ‘See, we’re not crazy. There is life.'”

The first contact between humans and an advanced intelligent extraterrestrial species (Vulcans) portrayed on Star Trek: First Contact.

Watch the interview, and let us know what you think below. For me, I can’t help think about the scene when humans met extraterrestrials for the first time in the Star Trek franchise, which I believe was first portrayed in the Star Trek movie First Contact.

Some of you may believe such a meeting has already taken place. I am not so sure, but when it does I hope to be there. If there is any justice in the universe, one or more of us in the UFO field will be, and that will be one hell of a selfie!

For more about Jeremy Corbell, visit his website at ExtraordinaryBeliefs.com. 

{http://www.openminds.tv/ }

18-10-2017 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

Searching for ET in our Solar System requires methodical approach

David Warmflash

Space agencies and planetary scientists around the globe are combing through data from big, multi-instrument probe missions in a careful step-by-step search for extraterrestrial life — with an emphasis on environment habitability. They’re seeking a better understanding of the chemical and physical nature of various planets and moons that could be targeted for future life-searching missions. This is happening at a time when NASA’s car-sized Curiosity rover is easing gradually up a Martian hill with no end in site, and in the aftermath of the end of a 20-year voyage of the Saturn-exploring Cassini probe.

Though one craft is still going and the other has said farewell, the work at Mars and Saturn is fairly similar. In both instances, exploration craft have been operating for many years, producing major discoveries of astrobiological import. Scientists are hoping to find life as we know it — meaning organisms that depend on organic (carbon-based) chemistry, and that require water — somewhere in our Solar System. Nobody expects intelligent life. Instead, the search is focused on the prospect for single celled life. And maybe in the oceans of an ice-covered world, like Saturn’s moon Enceladus, multicellular life forms are plausible.

One big difference between the Martian and Saturnian missions, however, is that native life discovered in the latter case is likely to be unrelated to life on Earth. Deep down in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Enceladus, or in the ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa, the presence of life would represent an independent origin from the web of life that inhabits Earth. In contrast, when it comes to Mars, it’s quite plausible that we’ll find that native life forms there will be distant cousins of Earth’s organisms, that the life of both planets began from a common origin from non-living chemistry. That’s because rock material — tons of it– transfers each year between the surfaces of Earth and Mars in a process that has been happening for billions of years. It’s also plausible that Martian life, if it exists, represents an independent origin from that of Earth, but we won’t know until we find such life and analyze it.

What NASA’s Curiosity rover told us

Curiosity

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)mission includes, Curiosity, the largest and most capable robotic rover ever landed on the Red Planet. Curiosity is exploring the Gale crater, which held liquid water for long periods between 3.3 billion and 3.8 billion years ago. Evidence that the crater was home to rivers and streams came in a couple of years ago. What’s new is a study, published in the journal Science, by researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Numerous data from Curiosity‘s instruments have been accumulating for the taking, and the Stony Brook team set out to extract information on specific minerals within the rocks at different locations and depths in the crater zone, and the oxidation states of those minerals. The Stony Brook analysis revealed climate change — from warmer wetter conditions in the distant past to dryer colder conditions, which adds weight to the possibility that the region has been a home to microorganisms.

The analysis also revealed redox stratification –differences in oxidation states between different levels, specifically more oxidized along the crater’s edges and less oxidized lower down. The researchers are interpreting the find to mean that far in the past, when the Gale crater held a large lake, the upper regions of the water constituted a high oxygen zone that would have been friendly to aerobic life forms, while the deeper parts of the lake would have be favorable to anaerobic forms. This means there could have been a diversity of different types of life, which is to say a healthy ecosystem.

Cassini: The mission that went into double overtime

Launched in 1997, the Cassini mission was operated jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The mission’s full name was Cassini-Huygens, because it included two craft. Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712), who discovered four of Saturn’s moons and the divisions between the planet’s rings, is the namesake of the larger craft, which orbited Saturn from 2004-2017. The mission also included the ESA Huygens probe. It was named for Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch astronomer who discovered Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, where the probe landed successfully in 2005.

Huygens

The original mission plan for Cassini was to last until June 2008 — four years after entering orbit around Saturn. However, since all systems were go, with plenty of fuel for propulsion and plutonium for electricity, the mission was extended to 2010, but it wouldn’t end there either. With mountains of discoveries about Saturn and its moons in the rear view mirror and numerous data still to be analyzed, and still plenty of propellant in the fuel tanks, mission planners gave Cassini the green light for an additional seven years.

In terms of the engineering, the design requirements needed only to enable the original projected mission duration to 2008, but not until nine years later, this past September, did controllers steer Cassini into Saturn’s atmosphere to end the mission. That was simply because the fuel was about to run out, but everything was still working just fine. (One can’t help but wonder if some sort of “Scotty Effect” was operating, wherein the engineer –accidentally on purpose– underestimates how well, or how long, something that he designed will work, so that everyone will be amazed later.)

Habitability of the environment

Like the MSL on Mars, the mission of Cassini-Huygens in the Saturn system has included characterization of the chemistry of the environment, and the physical conditions affecting it. In the case of Saturn, the spotlight for the search for extraterrestrial life is not the planet itself, but the planet’s moons. In 2005, during its descent to the surface of Titan, the Huygens probe detected hydrocarbons in the moon’s thick atmosphere, including methane rain, and lakes and seas of methane and ethane. These things had been suspected prior to the mission, and in making such finds, the Huygens’ instrument package provided evidence for the idea that Titan’s environment is like that of Earth billions of years ago, just before the origin of life. Titan has what astrobiologists call prebiotic chemistry.

Like Huygens, the Cassini probe also studied Titan’s prebiotic chemistry. During its thirteen years orbiting Saturn, Cassini also flew by Saturn’s other moons, including Enceladus, a world that is covered in water ice. Cassini confirmed the presence of a global ocean under that ice, and also discovered plumes of liquid spewing up from cracks in the ice at the south pole, like the geysers at Earth’s Yellowstone Park. At Enceladus, however, the geyser plumes shoot far into space. Taking measurements of the plumes, Cassini demonstrated that they consisted of water, plus, over the years, the craft’s instruments have been able to tell us that those plumes contain organic molecules — called the “stuff of life” by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. Based on this finding, scientists knew that Enceladus had two major requirements to support life — water and material from which to make organisms and food.

Along with water and organic matter, a world that harbors life also needs an energy source that organisms harness to synthesize food and energy molecules. Vital to that requirement, Cassini detected very tiny rocks in the water plumes, suggesting that hot water is flowing somewhere down in the ocean, like the hot water in the hydrothermal vents that support life forms at the bottom of Earth’s oceans in the absence of sunlight. And last but not least, something that happened earlier this year, just a few months before Cassini was sent to burn up in Saturn’s atmosphere, the instruments detected in the plumes the energy source itself: hydrogen.

Enceladus

Putting all of this together, we can say that Enceladus is “habitable;” it has all the ingredients for life. We found this out through a long, patient process. And so now, with more confidence than would have made sense before, there is a major target in the outer solar system for more sophisticated chemistry instruments, but also a direct life search. The latter means instruments designed to be flown through the plumes of Enceladus and to analyze the water directly for the presence of organisms.

As for Mars, something similar is happening as analysis of the environment is pointing increasingly to the idea that the planet could support life. Back in 1976, a NASA mission called Viking, delivered twin landing probes to two locations on the Martian surface. Each lander carried several instruments designed to study the chemical and physical environment, but also a “biology package” consisting of three experiments to test for the presence of microorganisms in samples of Martian dirt. At both landing sites, the biology experiments gave ambiguous results.

But ambiguity often exists along a spectrum. In science projects that depend on big, expensive ventures such as space missions, it’s common to view and discuss discoveries and insights from a linear perspective. First, one thing was discovered, then something else that built on top of that earlier discovery, and so forth. Of the three Viking biology experiments, one experiment, known as the Labeled Release (LR), produced results that seemed to indicate the presence of microorganisms, but then were dismissed, largely because a positive finding looked inconsistent with various findings about the chemical and physical environment on the Martian surface. To be sure, the LR principal investigator, Gilbert Levin, has maintained for the past 41 years that his experiment actually detected Martian life. Some fraction of the science community has some to agree with some or all of his reasoning. The consensus is still that the LR results of the 1970s are too ambiguous to be counted as evidence of life, but it’s notable that our understanding of the Martian environment and its suitability for life has evolved substantially in the past four decades, because of MSL and other missions that have been on Mars since Project Viking.

Now that we know that the Martian chemical environment could be friendly to living forms, the scientific payoff from sending a direct life search experiment to Mars could be far less ambiguous compared with the Viking experience. But, perhaps due to the Viking experience — and also to the possibility that any ambiguity about an issue as game-changing as the discovery of life on another planet could endanger public support for such missions — space agencies around the planet have been taking a careful approach, both in the inner and outer Solar System.

David Warmflash is an astrobiologist, physician and science writer. BIO. Follow him on Twitter @CosmicEvolution.

{ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/ }

18-10-2017 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

50 Years Later, Wanaque Reservoir UFO Photographer Identified

 Jerry DeMarco

PHOTO BY (INSET): Claude Coutant Photo Credit: COURTESY: Anthony Bragalia (UFOExplorations.com)

WANAQUE, N.J. – A once-anonymous photographer who 50 years ago snapped a shot of what observers called a UFO over the Wanaque Reservoir has been identified.

“Claude Coutant was the name of the individual who took at least five photos of the Wanaque Reservoir craft in late December 1966, including the ‘beam’ shot,” Anthony Bragalia reports onUFOExplorations.com .

Bragalia said he got previously-unreleased images taken by Coutant , along with his identity, from a woman who once worked for the Star-Ledger – who said she got it from a woman who’d been engaged to the 46-year-old factory worker.

Coutant, who worked for a rubber mill in Butler, died in 1986, Bragalia wrote.

Other sightings had been reported in the months leading up to the photo, the story says .

“The strangest part is that there was no noise attached to this object. None whatsoever. It was absolutely silent,” then-Wanaque Reservoir Police Chief John Casazza was quoted as saying at the time.

“It was a bright white light. It was funnel-shaped. It seemed to come out of some object, like a funnel,” Casazza reportedly said. “In other words, it spread out as if it were focused through a telescope. It was narrow at one end in the sky and spread out into a very wide beam at it approached our upper gate house at the Dam.”

The photo shows a beam stopping before hitting the water and a cube-like area beneath the surface.

ALSO SEE:

• Witness to Wanaque: The Greatest Mass UFO Sighting Never Told
• Returning to Wanaque: The Greatest Mass UFO Sighting in History

{ http://northpassaic.dailyvoice.com/ }

18-10-2017 om 23:01 geschreven door peter  

First aliens humans encounter will be immortal robots, billions of years old: scientist

Rob Waugh

Mysterious 'UFO' has been captured on video

VIDEO A mysterious 'UFO' has been captured on video circling over a remote country town. Source: SWNS

Will aliens be delicate, hairless creatures with big almond eyes, as UFO fans believe – or big slimy, green blobs with eyes on stalks?

Probably neither, scientists say – the first aliens we encounter are likely to be machines, and they’ll be almost unimaginably old.

Susan Schneider of the University of Connectict and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton says that alien AI may already be out there, and could be billions of years old.

Schneider says, "I do not believe that most advanced alien civilisations will be biological. The most sophisticated civilisations will be post-biological, forms of artificial intelligence or alien super-intelligence."

Ancient aliens and ancient AI aliens have been well explored by science fiction.

Photo: Getty Images

Schneider said in a Daily Galaxy report, ‘all lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that the maximum age of extraterrestrial intelligence would be billions of years, specifically ranges from 1.7 billion to 8 billion years.’

Many researchers believe that the first aliens we encounter will be robots.

• Voyager's maps 'could lead hostile aliens to Earth'
• 'I visit extra-terrestrials on a Greek Island like ship': Brisbane woman says she's 'half-alien'

The reason? It’s all about probability – and how long it takes alien civilisations to evolve from developing radio communications to becoming immortal cyborgs.

Many scientists believe that the period from the discovery of radio waves, to organisms turning themselves into immortal robots will be relatively brief.

The upshot of this is that it’s far, far more likely that we’ll meet aliens after they’ve turned into machines, according to experts.

Tech luminary Elon Musk has recently warned that man made AI could prove a big risk to humanity.

Photo: Getty Images

Seth Shostak of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence says, "Consider the fact that any signal we pick up has to come from a civilisation at least as advanced as we are.

"Now, let’s say, conservatively, the average civilisation 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."

{ https://au.news.yahoo.com/ }

18-10-2017 om 22:39 geschreven door peter  

18-10-2017 om 22:25 geschreven door peter  

Study finds ancient Hydrothermal vents on Mars ‘cradle for alien life’ on Red Planet

Have we found indirect evidence that in the distant past, the red planet met all the necessary conditions for life?

According to experts, these results indicate that it is possible that a Martian basin once hosted life as well.

Mars continues to surprise. Researchers have found ancient hydrothermal vents that could have been ‘a cradle for life’.

The study of data obtained by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) led to the finding of evidence of ancient hydrothermal deposits on the seabed on Mars, something that could be instrumental in obtaining clues about the origin of life on earth.

Based on studies of the Eridania basin, a Martian region with ancient geological formations, experts were able to identify various minerals that show a pattern backing the existence of hydrothermal deposits.

According to Paul Niles, one of the authors of the research, the region on Mars suggests that there was a sea of hydrothermal activity and that the combination of water and volcanic activity created conditions “probably similar” to that which occurred on Earth, precisely at the moment when life began to evolve.

The study, titled “Ancient Hydrothermal Seafloor Deposits in Eridania Basin on Mars“, recently appeared in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

“It is very similar to the hydrothermal environments of the Earth: without a pleasant atmosphere, with only rocks and water,” explains the expert. According to the study, the so-called Eridan Sea is likely to have emerged some 3.7 billion years ago.

The Eridania basin of southern Mars is believed to have held a sea about 3.7 billion years ago, with seafloor deposits likely resulting from the underwater hydrothermal activity.

Credit: NASA

“Even if we never find evidence that there’s been life on Mars, this site can tell us about the type of environment where life may have begun on Earth. Volcanic activity combined with standing water provided conditions that were likely similar to conditions that existed on Earth at about the same time — when early life was evolving here.”

Even though Mars today may seem a lifeless, cold planet, around 3.7 billion years ago, it was a very different place with water and even volcanic activity. Evidence of that is the vast fluvial deposits and sedimentary basins NASA has discovered on the surface of the planet.

One of the best examples of this is the Gale Crater, once believed to have been a major lake bed, and one of the main study area for NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

Illustrates showing the origin of some deposits in the Eridania basin of southern Mars resulting from seafloor hydrothermal activity more than 3 billion years ago.

Credit: NASA

Due to the fact that we now know that Mars once had surface water and volcanic activity, experts are able to conclude that it also experienced hydrothermal activity—something that occurs when volcanic vents open into bodies of water willing them with hydrated minerals and heat.

“This site gives us a compelling story for a deep, long-lived sea and a deep-sea hydrothermal environment,” Niles said. “It is evocative of the deep-sea hydrothermal environments on Earth, similar to environments where life might be found on other worlds — life that doesn’t need a nice atmosphere or temperate surface, but just rocks, heat and water.”

Basically, what we found on Mars is the type of hydrothermal activity responsible for the emergence of life on Earth. So if this may have kicked off life on Earth, who says the same did not happen on Mars, billions of years ago?

Source: Ancient hydrothermal seafloor deposits in Eridania basin on Mars

 { https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

18-10-2017 om 22:09 geschreven door peter  

The truth is out there: the history of Edinburgh’s UFO hotspot

The skies over Edinburgh have been home to many mysterious UFO sightings over the years

(Photo: Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)

Andrew Hennessey

The area around Edinburgh has more reported UFO sightings than anywhere else on earth.

I was born into a family originally from Gorebridge, the ‘hotspot’ of alien activity in Scotland today.

With a mother who passed on to me at an early age her knowledge of the Scottish psychic tradition of ‘second sight’, I had a natural attraction to the subject – beginning with the supernatural, but moving very quickly on to the entities of alien encounters.

Unidentified objects and mysterious encounters have been reported in the ‘Falkirk Triangle’

(Photo: Andrew Hennessey)

Since the 1980s I have been researching UFOs, conspiracies and the paranormal, documenting my own observations and conclusions – some of which are controversial.

1. The Robert Taylor Incident

In Central Scotland, the skies always seem to be busy, and not just with the landing lights of jets on their way into our airports.

To quote one Falkirk Triangle alien abductee, G Wood, who was lifted from his car on the A70 road in 1992:

“They’re here and they’re [still] coming here.”

Modern tales of UFO close encounters in Scotland really begin with the so-called Robert Taylor Incident, which took place in 1979 at Dechmont Woods, near Livingston.

Later recorded by the police as a criminal assault by an unknown or alien entity, Robert Taylor, a local forester, was accosted at night by a UFO as it was scouting over his area of the wood.

According to Taylor, he saw a large flying dome hovering above the forest floor. He then smelled a foul odour, and smaller spheres began dragging him towards the larger dome, before he lost consciousness. 

Several similar incidents were to follow in this central region of Scotland, stretching from Stirling to Falkirk and back to the southern fringes of Edinburgh. The area has since become known as ‘The Falkirk Triangle’.
 

2. The folklore of Gorebridge

Gorebridge is a small, ex-coal mining town about 15 miles south of Edinburgh.

My family originally comes from this area, and like so many others, its men had been miners.

Drafted to fight in both world wars, they returned to a community undergoing change.

This photo shows and alleged sighting of a ‘grey’ alien at Gowkshill near Gorebridge

(Photo: Andrew Hennessey) 

For, in amongst the hustle and bustle of these human affairs and operating the deepest mines in Scotland, there had also been a long-simmering, non-human agenda of secret meetings and whispered stories of the ‘others’ amongst us. 

This excerpt from poem The Ballad of the Gore, dating back to 1916, alludes to the supernatural ‘auld races’.

“… Proud Arniston; in ‘fairs o’ state

for ages Laird and son

Soldiers, Lawyers, Statesmen great

richt sterlin’ work has done,

Wae on the day shouldt frae’t be gone

The auld race o’ Dundas;

May that ne’er be, but lang there reign

its Leddy and its Lass ….”

The Gorebridge story with its ‘auld races’ started within stone-lined tunnel networks, allegedly linking archaic stone circles and underground cities.

These faerie stories have been woven together into a rich tapestry of local folklore by local collectors, such as Mary Macleod Banks in the 1930s.

But the Edinburgh area doesn’t just have a historic link to folklore and the supernatural – incidents are still happening to this day.

3. Alien encounters in Scotland

Gorebridge, today, continues to display all the hallmarks of an active alien presence and occupation zone.

Many of the encounters there can only be described as intimidating or surreal, which Dr J A Hynek (the father of Ufology) characterised in his 1978 speech to the UN as ‘high strangeness’, an extreme ‘oddness’, symptomatic of alien encounters.

The Gorebridge ‘camp’ is the site of what is believed to be an operational alien base near an abandoned mine, and nearby is Dalhousie Castle, the location of a well-documented alien abduction.

Edinburgh and the surrounding area is one of the most active alien hotspots in the world (Photo: Andrew Hennessey)

Both historically and more recently, there have been regular UFO sightings above and over the area of an extensive cavern system that also takes in Rosslyn to the west, and Gifford and Goblin Halls to the east.

Reports from this area have spoken of:

– observing/filming massive low-level ships, many shapes and sizes

– alien use of small glowing UAVs which can vanish

– seeing operational stargates near the cavern systems

– time slip

– harassment and interception from Men in Black-

– over-flying ships and 40 spherical, black drones above Barleyknowe Road at rooftop height

– black choppers, under 200 feet

– cattle mutilations on film

– lights at the old mine

– alien materialisation

– greys and alien equipment photographed in the woods

– holographic shape-changing hardware that mimics military vehicles and aircraft

These incidents are still on-going in east-central Scotland, including the capital itself, which adds greatly to the lore of ancient secrets being enacted today before our cameras and our eyes.

Andrew Hennessy is an experienced ufologist and folklorist.

{ https://inews.co.uk/ }

18-10-2017 om 21:56 geschreven door peter  

UFOs in Glasgow which have left people across the world baffled

Here we examine four of the strangest UFOs captured on film in the city.

Julie Gilbert

UFO spotted over Glasgow skyline 

(Image: MUFON)

Glaswegians are not easily led by tall tales of creatures from other worlds, but sometimes things happen which we just can't explain.

Around 20 UFO sightings across the city have been reported to international UFO logging site MUFON in the past eight years.

And some of the spotters were even able to grab pictures of the UFOs.

Here we examine four of the strangest captured on film.

1. The rapidly moving ball in the sky

This picture was uploaded in March this year but related to an incident which happened around on Christmas day 2009.

The spotter says they were with a friend in a town near Glasgow and walking towards a residential area when a round, glowing object overhead began moving rapidly towards them.

They say it moved too fast to be a Chinese Lantern and was not a star or a comet.

They posted to MUFON: "It was like nothing we had seen. Much too big to be a star, definitely not a comet, too fast to be a Chinese lantern.

"As it became closer overhead it slowed down and descended before ascending very rapidly and vanishing into the clouds.

"We were both quite scared by it and shaking a little, even though we did not see it close up we both thought because of the direction and speed it was going it may land on top of us.

"We uploaded the photographs that were taken to our computer and they turned out pretty blurry, mainly because the zoom on the camera was not so good and possibly because of the speed of the object.

'It was not a windy evening, quite still and the object made no noise, and had no wings or anything like that."

2. Seasoned stargazer spots UFO through binoculars

A seasoned Glaswegian stargazer, who regularly surveys the heavens through his telescope and binoculars, spotted something very out of the ordinary back in August 2009.

He was examining the skies with his binoculars, when he saw a perfect cube appear, move, accelerate backwards and then disappear.

The spotter said: "I saw a perfect cube appear right before my eyes! I was looking at Zubeneschamali, which is the beta star in Libra, when the cube just came out of nowhere

"Speechless, I quickly spotted it with the binoculars, through which I saw a brilliant perfect cube with an illuminated border.

"It changed colour from blue to aqua-green and stopped cold.

"People have told me it was a satellite but know satellites have a very smooth consistent speed and direction, satellites do not just appear in the sky at a single spot, then progressively drift, speed up, slow down and stop, they definitely do not change colour and noway can they change direction.

"If anything in the sky can reverse directing at sharp angles "instantly" its a fair to say its not man made, the force on the object would rip it apart."

3. Craft with row of lights hiding in the clouds

If you look towards the left side of this photograph, at the bottom of the clouds, you can see a row of lights which arguably could be a UFO.

The spotter of this craft above the skyline did not notice the lights themselves in the first instance.

It was only later when clearing out his camera that he came saw them and uploaded them to MUFON in 2012.

The spotter said: "On finding these shots I put the image into Photoshop as I wanted to get a clearer look at the image on the left hand side in the clouds.

"I can say there is no way it could be an known aircraft.

"First thing is the size, then the faint out line and the order of the lights are not what I am aware of as standard configurations.

"It had me more than a little shocked."

4. Ball of light over the Kingston Bridge

The sighting, which took place in October 2015, appeared to show a glowing ball, which the spotter likened to a 'smaller sun' hanging over the Kingston Bridge.

{  http://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/ }

18-10-2017 om 21:19 geschreven door peter  

CLASSIFIED PHOTOS FROM NASA OF BIG EXTRATERRESTRIAL VEHICLES TAKEN BY ASTRONAUTS & ROBOTIC PROBES

Above is an excerpt of a lecture given by Robert (Bob) Dean, a retired US Army Command Sergeant Major who served for 28 years. In the lecture below, he provides a wealth of mind-altering information that corroborates with what many other whistleblowers have shared.

The lecture was given in July 2009 at the European Exopolitics Summit, which took place in Barcelona and was filmed by Project Camelot.

Dean is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of people with verified credentials coming forward to share what they have experienced during their military careers. With regards to the statement above, former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer has also mentioned the same report that Dean refers to, stating in an interview with RT news that “they decided to do an investigation, and they investigated for three years, and they decided that, with absolute certainty, that four species, four different species, at least, have been visiting this plant for thousands of years.” He also mentions “there’s been a lot more activity in the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb.” (source)

Recommended Book: Unacknowledged: An Exposé of the World’s Greatest Secret

“Yes there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered. . . . We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time. I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is

— Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell (source)(source)(source)

The fact that hundreds of such people, many of whom hold high-ranking positions, have been speaking up about this topic for decades is fascinating. It’s pretty hard to believe that so many people with verified credentials would all lie about something that could so easily damage their careers.

Image of the infamous Phoenix Lights sighting.

Although there is no definitive way to prove to the ‘mainstream’ world that ET is real, we now have hundreds of thousands of documents from multiple countries putting to rest the question “Do UFOs exist?” We know they do from these documents, which show objects are tracked on radar, spotted by the pilots sent to intercept, and in some cases, simultaneously tracked on ground radar.

Information like this, particularly the fact that agencies are working to uncover the truth, shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

The CIA has a long history of putting resources toward studying this phenomenon, in fact, as well as investigating what other countries know about it as well. For example, another unclassified document outlines:

Scientists of the PRC and the Soviet Far East have begun joint study of UFO’s. The first meeting of ufologists of the two countries has ended in the small maritime townlet of Dalnegorsk. The Soviet and Chinese specialists on anomalous phenomena have mapped out a program for investigating incidents that are already known and have also arranged to directly exchange video and photographic materials on new similar phenomena. Dalnegorsk has not been chosen by chance as the place for such acquaintance. In the last few years the number of cases of visual observation of UFO’s has noticeably increased there. In just the last four years alone no less than 10 UFO’s have been recorded. Specialists link their heightened interest in places here with the variety and wealth of useful minerals in Maritime Kray. Similar, incidents have also occurred in mountainous regions in China whose climatic conditions and natural landscape resemble our own.

In many cases, these testimony are given by the people involved in the incident, the military personnel mentioned in the actual files.  For example, here is one dealing with an incident that took place over the Atlantic, and here is the witness testimony to match it from Graham Bethune, a retired Navy commander pilot.  You can read more about that story here.

Related CE Article: This is What Happens When A “UFO” Is Tracked On Military Radar

Dean also had some choice words for NASA:

Ladies and gentlemen, my government, NASA, which many of us in the United States say stands for Never A Straight Answer, proceeded to erase 40 rolls of film of the Apollo Program — the flight to the Moon, the flight around the Moon, the landings on the Moon, the walking guys here and there. They erased, for Christ’s sake, 40 rolls of film of those events. Now we’re talking about several thousand individual frames that were taken that the so-called authorities determined that you did not have a right to see. Oh, they were ‘disruptive,’ ‘socially unacceptable,’ ‘politically unacceptable.’ I’ve become furious. I’m a retired Command Sergeant Major. I was never famous for having a lot of patience.

Listen to the full lecture below. Where you will see the photos.

Who’s Really in Control of Space?

This thing has gotten so highly-classified . . . it is just impossible to get anything on it. I have no idea who controls the flow of need-to-know because, frankly, I was told in such an emphatic way that it was none of my business that I’ve never tried to make it to be my business since. I have been interested in this subject for a long time and I do know that whatever the Air Force has on the subject is going to remain highly classified.”

– Senator Barry Goldwater, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (source)

According to Herman Oberth, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, “flying saucers are real and . . . they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our Earth for centuries.”

If all of this information is true, it’s quite clear that “Never A Straight Answer” is indeed an appropriate name for NASA. I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again — the United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret for years. The National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, but its existence was hidden until the mid 1960s. The National Reconnaissance Office, too, was founded in 1960, but remained completely secret for 30 years.

Recommended Book: UFOs for the 21st Century Mind: A Fresh Guide to an Ancient Mystery

The same is probably true for space affairs….

In the interest of a short read, and given that there is a long lecture presented within this article, I’m going to link to some other related articles that go into more detail regarding the secret space program, as well as the moon landing and film/footage from the moon, which Dean refers to above.

Related CE Articles:

“They’re Parked On The Side of the Crater, They’re Watching us!” – When Neil Armstrong Landed on the Moon

Extraterrestrial Technology & The Secret Space Program: What We Haven’t Been Told For Nearly A Century

The United States Tried To Detonate A Nuclear Weapon On The Moon & Somebody Responded When We Did

New Study: Strange Structures & Passageways Leading Underground Discovered On Far Side of the Moon

Another Interesting Leak: A Second NASA Scientist Tells Us That ‘Somebody Else’ Is On The Moon

U.S. Defence Physicist Spills The Beans On What’s Really Happening On The Moon

What Really Happened When NASA Went To The Moon? Why The Official Story Is Very Questionable

Russian Government Cals For International Investigation Into U.S. Moon Landings & For Good Reasons

Ex NASA Scientists Share Concealed Information About The Face & Pyramid Found On Mars

The US Just Split Their Air Force To Create A Space Corps. Is The Militarization of Space Here? 

Lockheed Executive Blows Lid off of Secret Government Space Travel (Quantum Entanglement) 

18-10-2017 om 21:00 geschreven door peter  

Châteauneuf-du-Pape, located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in southeast France, is one of the most celebrated wine producing villages in all of France. It also has one of the wackiest wine laws in the world, one borne out of 1950s UFO hysteria.

The village and its vineyards have an interesting history that dates all the way back to 1308. Châteauneuf-du-Pape translates to The Pope’s new castle — which is exactly what Pope Clement V had in 1309 when he moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, a city just down the road from Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Popes of Avignon and their Court were actually fans of Burgundian wine, as the local stuff was pretty lousy 700 years ago.

They, did however, make some major improvements to the local viticulture, figuring they might be there for a while (only 67 years in the end). Fast forward a few centuries, and we see that the contributions the Popes of Avignon made resulted in wines of such increased quality that the region was the first to seek out and receive protected AOC status.

Here’s where the story takes a turn for the bizarre. In September of 1954, a railway worker in northern France named Marius Dewilde claimed that late one evening his dogs started to bark, so eventually he followed them outside to the train tracks (he lived near the local train station). What happened next is best summed up by a New York Times dispatch a few days after the incident:

PARIS: A spate of reports of extraterrestrial visitors to France, coming from regions where the wine is more noted for its strength than its vintage, spread yesterday [Sept. 14] with the speed of a space-cadet. Marius Dewilde, a metal worker who lives at Quarouble (Department of the Nord), made known yesterday that he had seen what seemed to be two Martian visitors at his garden gate last Friday night. They alighted from a cigar-like machine which came to rest on the railway just outside his domicile. M. Dewilde described the visitors as of small stature, clad in something resembling a deep-sea diver’s costume. They had the appearance of human beings, M. Dewilde continued, but when he approached them the machine in which they had arrived set forth with a green beam of light which paralyzed him. When he recovered his sensibilities the cigar was taking off and the two beings had disappeared. The authorities have since noted unusual marks on the cross ties of the railway as though they had been made by the tail skid of some flying machine.

That “spate of reports” that spread across France “with the speed of a space-cadet” quickly made their way hundreds of miles south to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Many of these reports were about objects that bore a cylindrical cigar-like appearance, rather than the typical saucer shape. Soon the French were in a panic about the threat of an encounter with a cigare volant, a “flying cigar.”

Marius Dewilde showing the train tracks where he encountered an alien for a French newspaper article.

What happens when you combine proud, provincial winemakers with a penchant for passing laws and a bout of pre-Space Age UFO hysteria? The local mayor, Lucien Jeune, and the village council sprung into action — to protect their vines, of course. They quickly passed a municipal decree to keep aliens out of the local skies and the vineyards. Yes, overflights were even banned:

Article 1. — The overflight, the landing and the takeoff of aircraft known as flying saucers or flying cigars, whatever their nationality is, are prohibited on the territory of the community.

Article 2. — Any aircraft, known as flying saucer or flying cigar, which should land on the territory of the community will be immediately held in custody.

Article 3. — The forest officer and the city policeman are in charge, each one in what relates to him, of the execution of this decree.

Whether the mayor was actually serious about the law or merely seeking publicity for his region’s wines — a result that definitely ensued — we can say one thing: The law worked. Châteauneuf-du-Pape has been alien and flying cigar-free ever since. At least as far as we know.

—

If Cigare Volant sounds familiar that’s because you’ve probably seen a bottle of Bonny Doon’s wine that carries the name. Randall Grahm, the winemaker and founder of Bonny Doon, earned the nickname the Rhône Ranger for championing Rhône varieties in California. Paying homage to the region, Grahm named one of his wines after the municipal decree and the events that inspired it.

18-10-2017 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

JUST SOME LEAKED NASA UFO PHOTOS

Sightings of UFOs by astronauts that you really should see.

There have been many photos of supposedly UFOs shown online but these photos were taken by astronauts when they were in space.

OBJECT FROM APOLLO 13 MISSION 

A photo was said to have been taken from the Apollo 13 mission and it seems to show strange objects that appear travelling alongside them while they were travelling to the moon. One theory is that NASA sent an SOS to aliens to come and help the ship that was in trouble. The photo was shared on the Project Camelot website of Bob Dean.

PHOTO TAKEN FROM APOLLO 14 MISSION  

This photo was said to have been taken during the Apollo 14 mission and it was said to have been taken during the investigation of the Langberg crater on the Moon. The photo was on the Project Camelot website and Bob Dean said that strange things were happening in the crater and the astronauts were taking photos. While doing so a strange craft flew past them. Dean is a retired Command Sergeant Major in the Army who now devotes his life to UFOs.

CIGAR SHAPED UFO BY NEIL ARMSTRONG  

A photograph that was said to have been taken by Neil Armstrong has been revealed and for a lot of years, it has been said that Armstrong saw UFOs while he was going to the Moon and on the surface. The Apollo crew is said to have seen flashing lights pacing them, which was then suggested were lights of the Saturn 5 launch vehicle.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION PHOTO  

A photo recently got a lot of attention after it was posted from the International Space Station and Scott Kelly posted it on twitter. A strange object can be seen in the upper right-hand corner and it has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Some people think that it might be a UFO while others have said that it is just a part of the Space Station.

APOLLO 12 MISSION UFO PHOTO  

A photo taken during the Apollo 12 mission might look innocent enough but a UFO hunter thinks that the speck that is distant in the background is a UFO. He said that it wasn’t a problem with the photo as the same object was seen in over 30 images. He said that it might be an alien drone.

EUROPEAN EXOPOLITICS SUMMIT PRESENTATION  

MORE LEAKED IMAGES

RELATED ARTICLES

• TOP-Secret UFO Files LEAKED: UFO Found in Canada
• Leaked NASA Footage Proves Man Already Walked On Mars

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

18-10-2017 om 17:33 geschreven door peter  

UFOS, ANOMALIES, AND MORE: 20 MINUTES NASA FOOTAGE

We are not alone. The best 20 minutes today.

This is a compilation of the best shots of unknown objects and unexplained phenomena in space. All this was filmed by NASA or the Russian Space Agency.

What a nice video to watch!

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

18-10-2017 om 16:57 geschreven door peter  

Now that privately-owned aerospace firms are refining and researching new state-of-the-art rocket technologies, we can expect all sorts of new levels of intrigue and secrecy surrounding space flight. Publicly-funded NASA and other government agencies have to (allegedly) disclose certain amounts of information to the public, but commercial space firms have no such obligation. The undisputed leader in private spaceflight, SpaceX, is no stranger to secrets and conspiracy theories. Elon Musk’s revolutionary company has taken that secrecy even deeper this month with the under-the-radar addition of a shadowy rocket mission under the code name “Zuma.”

I like to believe (or hope) that Elon’s got humanity’s best interests in mind, though. I’m sure we’ll be fine.

The secretive SpaceX mission was noticed by aerospace watchdog site NASASpaceFlight.com which tracks commercial and government launches. The site noticed a last-minute change to SpaceX’s launch schedule for November, adding a mission numbered 1390 with the code name Zuma. Whatever the Zuma payload is, it be launched from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the LC-39A launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket will then perform a RTLS (Return To Launch Site) landing at LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral after delivering its mysterious payload.

Although of all the people alive on Earth today, Elon Musk probably has the most potential to be a real-life Bond villain.

The only information available to the public concerning the Zuma launch is that the payload belongs to American aerospace and defense corporation Northrop Grumman and is labelled as governmental in nature. Some speculate that this could be what’s known as a “black commercial” mission, a type of shadowy joint project between private commercial firms and government agencies. The payload is likely some new type of reconnaissance satellite, but with all of the weirdness going on in space and new focus on space warfare, there’s no telling what Northrop Grumman might be launching.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-10-2017 om 16:46 geschreven door peter  

Waste flushed from space shuttle simulates the plumes of icy moons, one scientist suggests

BY 

LISA GROSSMAN

SPACE SPEW  The same process that forces water out of flushed toilets on the space shuttle also applies to the gushing vents on Saturn’s moon Enceladus (shown).

SSI/JPL/NASA, EMILY LAKDAWALLA (MOSAIC)

The search for life may get an assist from the call of nature. Astronomers can learn how to study the plumes of subsurface ocean water spewing from icy moons like Saturn’s Enceladus from an unlikely source: Space toilets.

Future spacecraft might scoop up samples of Enceladus’ plumes. Figuring out what to expect is tricky: It’s hard to replicate the plumes in Earth-based labs. But astronauts have already done natural experiments in venting water to space, Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University, pointed out October 17 at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Provo, Utah.  

Candid discussions of space waste are scarce in the scientific literature. “It’s very hard to find this stuff written down,” says Lorenz, who is designing future missions to Saturn’s moons. “I don’t know if the human spaceflight community is squeamish about it.”

KNOCK IT OFF An ice crystal that formed from venting fuel cells during the first flight of the space shuttle Discovery in 1984 grew so long it had to be knocked off with a robotic arm.

NASA

But there are clues. For instance, during the 1984 flight of the space shuttle Discovery, a 60-centimeter icicle grew from a fuel cell vent. That process could hint at how big ice particles in plumes can grow.

And dents on the Japanese Space Flyer Unit, retrieved from orbit by the space shuttle Endeavour in 1996, revealed traces of phosphorus and sulfur. Those may have been from urine ice particles flushed from Endeavour that rained on the spacecraft, an analysis published in 2000 in Advances in Space Researchsuggested. That might be good news for finding biosignatures at Enceladus — molecules associated with life could be preserved in ice from the plumes.

Citations

R. Lorenz. Space toilets and ocean worlds: What spacecraft water dumps tell us about plumes on Enceladus and Europa. American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences Meeting, Provo, Utah, October 17, 2017.

H. Yano et al. Origins of micro-craters on the SFU spacecraft derived from elemental and morphological analyses. Advances in Space Research. Vol. 25, 2000, p. 293. doi: 10.1016/S0273-1177(99)00947-3.

Further Reading

M. Rosen. The ice of a distant moon. Science News. Vol. 185, May 2, 2014, p. 20.

A. Yeager. Food for microbes found on Enceladus. Science News. Vol. 191, May 13, 2017, p. 6.

{ https://www.societyforscience.org/ }

18-10-2017 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

Life on Mars CONFIRMED? Aliens could be living UNDERNEATH surface in shock discovery

AFTER years of looking for aliens on Mars, it has been discovered they could actually be living UNDERGROUND.

By Nicholas Bieber 

Boffins have made the shock discovery that alien life could be living underneath the surface of the Red Planet.

Scientists carried out experiments that mimicked conditions on Mars, in which they created “mimetic Martian water”.

They then included an unusual salt – magnesium perchlorate – which was found in soil on Mars by the Phoenix Lander craft in 2009.

“With an average surface temperature of -55° Celsius, water itself cannot exist as a liquid on Mars, but concentrated solutions of perchlorate could survive these low temperatures.

“The magnesium perchlorate is clearly a major contributing factor on the freezing point of this solution and paves the way for understanding how a fluid might exist under the sub-freezing conditions of Mars.”

The finding could back the claim by conspiracy theoriests that underground alien cities lie underneath the surface of Mars.

And the scientist adds it does raise interesting questions about the possibility of life on Mars.

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

18-10-2017 om 00:11 geschreven door peter  

The View points out the shocking similarity between Kellyanne Conway and ‘nutty’ UFO-abducted candidate

17-10-2017 om 23:50 geschreven door peter  

If you listen closely, you may hear motorcycles approaching from the distance. Or maybe it sounds more like bees swarming. Perhaps it just sounds like a sci-fi background tone, meant to build tension. Whatever you think two neutron stars sound like as they spiral closer and closer together, though, it’s hard to deny that that final bloop isn’t startling — and even a bit silly.

On Monday, astronomers announced that they had observed gravitational wavessent out by two merging neutron stars for the very first time.

This is perhaps the most exciting discovery yet from the international collaboration between the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory — LIGO — and the Italian Virgo observatory.

And even though this colossal merger didn’t make any sound, we can listen to a simulation of what it sounded like. It may seem strange that two ultra-dense neutron stars — each the size of our sun or larger — merging 130 million light-years away didn’t make noise. In the process, these merging stars produced massive amounts of gamma radiation and even created elements like gold and platnum.

But, perhaps most importantly, they also produced ripples in spacetime. These ripples, which we know as gravitational waves, occur at various frequencies, which scientists can translate into sound. Without further ado, here’s what this merger “sounded” .

As you can see, the previous merger measured by LIGO and Virgo were much briefer. The reason for this is the fact that this merger involved neutron stars, not black holes.

“While earlier detections of the black holes that we’ve made … only lasted for us a couple of seconds, or much less, this neutron star in-spiral lasted for over a minute,” LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker told reporters on Monday. Inversereported on how this affects the merger:

The reason for this longer detection is that neutron stars, the smallest, densest stars known to exist, are much lighter than black holes. Whereas the merging black holes that created earlier gravitational wave detections were many times larger than the sun — the first detection in 2015 involved black holes of 29 and 36 solar masses — the neutron stars involved in this latest detection were only about the mass of the sun or maybe twice the mass of the sun.

So as the neutron stars spiraled in toward one another, they emitted high-frequency gravitational waves that fell within the range that Earth-based detectors could record.

“The result is that we can see the system for some 1,500 complete cycles of these two objects around each other,” said Shoemaker.

And that final bloop? That’s when the stars finally merged. By converting the frequency of gravitational waves into audio, the astronomers created what could potentially be the sickest hip-hop beats of all time.

---

If you liked this article, check out this video on what would happen if an asteroid hit the middle of the ocean.

Photos via NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

{ https://www.inverse.com/science }

17-10-2017 om 23:41 geschreven door peter  

Microbes leave 'fingerprints' on Martian rocks

Scientists around Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna are in search of unique biosignatures, which are left on synthetic extraterrestrial minerals by microbial activity. The biochemist and astrobiologist investigates these signatures at her own miniaturized "Mars farm" where she can observe interactions between the archaeon Metallosphaera sedula and Mars-like rocks. These microbes are capable of oxidizing and integrating metals into their metabolism. The original research was currently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

At the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Vienna, Tetyana Milojevic and her team have been operating a miniaturized "Mars farm" in order to simulate ancient and probably extinct microbial life – based on gases and synthetically produced Martian regolith of diverse composition. The team investigates interactions between Metallosphaera sedula, a microbe that inhabits extreme environments, and different minerals which contain nutrients in form of metals. Metallosphaera sedula is a chemolithotroph, means being capable of metabolizing inorganic substances like iron, sulphur and uranium as well.

To satisfy microbial nutritional fitness, the research team uses mineral mixtures that mimic the Martian regolith composition from different locations and historical periods of Mars: "JSC 1A" is mainly composed of palagonite – a rock that was created by lava; "P-MRS" is rich in hydrated phyllosilicates; the sulfate containing "S-MRS," emerging from acidic times on Mars and the highly porous "MRS07/52" that consists of silicate and iron compounds and simulates sediments of the Martian surface.

"We were able to show that due to its metal oxidizing metabolic activity, when given an access to these Martian regolith simulants, M. sedula actively colonizes them, releases soluble metal ions into the leachate solution and alters their mineral surface leaving behind specific signatures of life, a 'fingerprint," so to say," explains Milojevic. The observed metabolic activity of M. sedula coupled to the release of free soluble metals can certainly pave the way to extraterrestrial biomining, a technique which extracts metals from ores, launching the biologically assisted exploitation of raw materials from asteroids, meteors and other celestial bodies.

Using electron microscopy tools combined with analytical spectroscopy techniques, the researchers were able to examine the surface of bioprocessed Martian regolith simulants in detail. Cooperation with the workgroup of chemist Veronika Somoza from the Department of Physiological Chemistry was valuable to achieve these results. "The obtained results expand our knowledge of biogeochemical processes of possible life beyond earth, and provide specific indications for detection of biosignatures on extraterrestrial material – a step further to prove potential extra-terrestrial life," says Tetyana Milojevic.

 Explore further: Mimetic Martian water is under pressure

More information: Denise Kölbl et al. Exploring Fingerprints of the Extreme Thermoacidophile Metallosphaera sedula Grown on Synthetic Martian Regolith Materials as the Sole Energy Sources, Frontiers in Microbiology (2017). DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.01918 

{ https://phys.org/ }

17-10-2017 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

Spaceship-shaped cloud spotted over Boulder identified as lenticular cloud

Mark Belcher

Rebecca Dolmon

Rebecca Dolmon

BOULDER, Colo. — No, aliens are not invading Boulder, but excellent cloud formations may be. 

Dozens of eagle-eyed cloud hawks spotted a formation over the foothills that was interpreted by many to be spaceship-shaped. 

According to experts, the cloud can be clearly identified as an Altocumulus lenticularis — more commonly known as a lenticular cloud. 

The clouds, according to Denver7 Chief First Alert Meteorologist Mike Nelson, are formed when wind flows from west to east over the mountains. Moisture from the air drops as air falls rapidly into the foothills, leading to the interesting formation. 

Some scientists suggest the cloud formations can be attributed to many unexplained sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The cloud spotted over Boulder — while conveniently shaped — was easily identified in the morning light. 

When spotting a lenticular cloud, especially during the weekend, you might notice few planes nearby. They tend to avoid the turbulence, although glider pilots sometimes seek out the cloud formation for the swift air current, which can help them achieve speed and altitude gains. 

{ http://www.thedenverchannel.com/ }

17-10-2017 om 22:53 geschreven door peter