Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
19-10-2017
Als je sterft weet je dat je dood bent. Dit is wat mensen meemaakten nadat ze waren doodverklaard
Als je sterft weet je dat je dood bent. Dit is wat mensen meemaakten nadat ze waren doodverklaard
Wetenschappers zeggen dat mensen bewust meemaken dat ze dood zijn omdat hun brein actief blijft nadat hun lichaam geen teken van leven meer vertoont.
Theoretisch gezien kan iemand dus zelfs horen dat hij of zij wordt doodverklaard door dokters.
De claim is gedaan door dr. Sam Parnia van het Langone Medical Center van de New York University.
Hele gesprekken
Samen met zijn team onderzoekt hij mensen die een hartstilstand hebben gehad, technisch gezien dus zijn overleden, maar later weer zijn gereanimeerd. Het is de meest omvangrijke studie in zijn soort.
Sommigen zeiden dat ze hele gesprekken konden horen en dingen zagen die om hen heen gebeurden, zelfs nadat ze waren doodverklaard.
Dit werd later ook bevestigd door het verplegend personeel dat op het moment van de hartstilstand aanwezig was.
Wetenschappers vinden bewijs voor 'leven na de dood'
Energie
De dood wordt gezien als het moment waarop het hart stopt met kloppen en er geen bloed meer naar de hersenen stroomt.
“Het is allemaal gebaseerd op het moment waarop het hart stopt,” zei dr. Parnia. “Er is echter bewijs waaruit blijkt dat er energie vrijkomt in het brein wanneer iemand sterft.”
“We proberen precies te begrijpen wat mensen doormaken op het moment dat ze overlijden,” voegde hij toe. “Het zal ons helpen inzicht te krijgen in de ervaring die we uiteindelijk allemaal zullen hebben als we sterven.”
Mystery Of UFO Sighting In Welsh and Strange Series of Events That Followed
Mystery Of UFO Sighting In Welsh and Strange Series of Events That Followed
Schoolchildren claimed to have seen a UFO in a nearby field in 1977, but their teacher did not believe them. They did not have an idea then that it was the beginning of a series of events that stay unexplainable until today.
The lovely sandy beach of the small Pembrokeshire village of Broad Haven in South West Wales has been the favorite spot to enjoy for most visitors to the area. Some find enjoyment in passing through on the Puffin Shuttle bus. Looking at the small village from the outside, the place is just a traditional Welsh seaside resort.
But going into below the surface, there’s confusion, uncertainty, and many questions – just like the classic television science fiction series The X-Files.
Just this week, locals gathered at the village hall to finally attempt in finding answers that have eluded them for 40 years.
Flashback to la1977, something had made the children at the local school to come running all of a sudden into their classroom with their hearts probably pounding with fear.
The children outside claimed to have seen a mysterious silver object hovering over a field beyond their playground.
Headmaster Ralph Llewellyn did not believe the pupil’s claims and dismissed it without going outside to check the reason. Little did he know, it was a decision he would regret in his entire life.
Today, those children, who already adults, maintain there was only one depiction of what they had witnessed – an unidentified flying object.
Schoolboy David Davies was on the playground when the incident took place that February Friday afternoon. He stood looking at something that would leave him with a fascination and drive to dig in the truth of what was that thing.
He says that it was pearlescent silvery-grey with about 40 feet long and a shape of a torpedo, cigar-shaped. He adds that it had an upper domed section that covered the central third of the UFO and topped with a pulsating red light.
However, their claims were being ignored and David, along with his classmates, passed a petition to the police station.
The headmaster separated the schoolchildren and asked them to draw the UFO they had just seen, and he was amazed to see their drawings were almost the same to each other.
UFO enthusiasts formed a pilgrimage to Broad Haven to celebrate the 40th anniversary of an event in a place known as The Welsh Triangle.
The incident has brought a media frenzy to the tiny farming community in what became the beginning of a series of sightings.
Weeks later after the incident, couple Pauline and Billy Coombes saw a seven-foot humanoid figure in a silvery suit at the windows when they were watching television in their isolated farmhouse late at night. They did not see the face as it was just a black space.
The police investigators who were called to the scene later confirmed that the family couple was so frightened that they did not want to go outside their house. Later in the same year, it was reported that the entire herd of cattle disappeared only to reappear in a faraway field.
The number of sightings continued to grow as well as the interest on them. Rosa Granville, a hotelier residing close to the school, claimed that she saw an apparent upside down saucer late at night when she was awakened by a light coming from it in the field next to her hotel. The object was said to emit flames with two humanoid creatures without faces, but with pointed heads.
Rosa reported the incident to the authorities and a Squadron Leader from nearby RAF Brawdy visited her. The Squadron Leader told her that nothing was unusual on the field and there was nothing that could cause someone to see the strange craft. However, he also asked her not to tell anyone what she had witnessed.
Close to the area of the sightings were high-security military bases, including RAF Brawdy. In the height of the Cold War, RAF Brawdy was believed to be the facility where a top secret US-Soviet submarine listening station was situated but disguised as an oceanographic research center.
The Ministry of Defence did not admit that time that they were carrying out an official inquiry into the affair. It was later reported that the RAF in West Wales was tasked to perform a discreet probe on UFO and alien reports while telling the media and the public that it was no defense significance.
Forty years later and the Broad Haven people are still seeking answers. Recently, a public meeting was held to address questions about what took place back in 1977.
Mr. Davies, the former schoolboy, is now in his fifties and still maintains he observed what he saw. He described what he witnessed during the meeting.
ANCIENT: The aliens are said to be robots who are billions of years old
Susan Schneider, advanced studies professor at Princeton University, said alien artificial intelligence is probably already out there and is older than mankind itself.
She said: “I don’t not believe that most advanced alien civilisations will be biological.
“The most sophisticated civilisations will be post biological, forms of artificial intelligence or alien superintelligence.”
GETTY
BRANIAC: Stephen Hawking has warned against contacting aliens
“I don’t not believe that most advanced alien civilisations will be biological”
Susan Schneider
She added: “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.”
Her claims are backed by other brainiacs who say the period between the discovery of radio waves and cyborgs will be incredibly brief.
Google chief Ray Kurzweil has predicted man will become one with machine in the year 2050.
But scientists say once we have become high-tech beings we’ll be more likely to meet aliens.
GETTY
OUT THERE: There have been many reported sightings of aliens
GETTY
FAR AWAY: The aliens are said to live in galaxies many light years from Earth
Some people, however, have said they have already encountered aliens and reported they had more human features than Schneider suggested.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
The Scientific Quest to Explain Kepler’s Most Enigmatic Find
The Scientific Quest to Explain Kepler’s Most Enigmatic Find
Some 1,500 light years from Earth, a mystery of stellar proportions is playing out. A singular star out there captured scientists’ and the public’s imagination in September 2015 with its strangely fluctuating brightness. Ever since then, the scientific community has been observing this enigmatic character and sifting methodically through the data in search of an answer. Certain explanations are eliminated, while other likely suspects come to the fore. Meanwhile, the world has the chance to watch, as the scientific process and the mystery continue to unfold.
The star under scrutiny is officially known as KIC 8462852, but was nicknamed “Tabby’s Star,” for its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian, an assistant professor of astrophysics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. It first became famous when data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope revealed that sudden and significant dips in its brightness had occurred in 2011 and 2013. The star’s light dimmed by as much as a whopping 22 percent for days at a time. No other star out of more than 200,000 that Kepler measured during its original, four-year mission behaves in exactly this way.
“This [dimming] behavior was not something we were looking for or had trained our algorithms to find,” Boyajian said. "In fact, we were first alerted to the star’s unique activity by citizen scientists participating in the Planet Hunters program."
A Stellar Detective Story
The internet’s favorite theory to explain the strange phenomenon was that this could be a Dyson sphere—a hypothetical structure built by an advanced alien civilization to collect energy from its star. However, new data from NASA’s Spitzer space telescope and the Swift mission, along with a Belgian observatory used by amateur astronomers, provide strong evidence against such a “megastructure"
These observers were looking at another type of enigmatic behavior from Boyajian’s star: a less extreme, long-term dimming that is also difficult to explain. What they found tells us something about the sudden dips in the star’s light, too: Their results show that a large, solid object like the hypothesized structure would not cause starlight to dim in the precise way the telescopes observed.
The scientific community has actually favored a number of more plausible explanations all along. These scenarios are subjected to the same rigorous assessment: a group of researchers leans toward a particular idea, they make observations of the star, analyze the data, compare their proposed scenario against the findings of other researchers worldwide, and see how it all adds up.
The most recent findings, based on the new data from Spitzer and Swift, point the finger at an uneven dust cloud orbiting the star to explain the long, slow dimming of the star, which may prove related to the short dips in brightness. As for the latter, one study has suggested that a star orbited by a ringed planet and clusters of asteroids could exhibit the same strange dimming behavior. Yet another has considered a planet being pulled apart and swallowed up by the star. These relative newcomers to the mystery have followed other explanations previously put on trial by scientists for the strange behavior of Boyajian’s star. Here are a few of the “accused,” and the evidence that exonerated them.
Could it be a swarm of comets?
One explanation for Boyajian’s star’s mysterious short-term dimming behavior could be a swarm of comets – hundreds of them, at least – passing in front of the star. Such a large amount of debris could be capable of blocking enough light to dim the star considerably, and at irregular intervals, but here, too, it has thrown scientists a curve ball. The temperature of all the dust and debris associated with a horde of disintegrating comets should make it glow in the infrared – something the Spitzer telescope would be able to see. Spitzer, however, found no excess infrared radiation.
What about an object eclipsing the star?
Could it be a large object passing in front of the star? This is the type of dimming that Kepler was designed to detect in its hunt for exoplanets: like a mini-eclipse, a planet crossing the face of its star will cause a tiny, but observable, decrease in the brightness. In this case, though, the extreme dimming events would require a star-sized object, and the gravitational force exerted on Boyajian’s star by such a companion would be obvious in follow-up observations. Nothing has been detected so far.
“When I first saw the data, I was immediately reminded of the eclipsing triple-star systems discovered by Kepler – systems like KOI-126, which show similar patterns of irregular, eclipse-like dimmings,” said Natalie Batalha, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. But, again, a star engaged in such a complicated relationship would feel the gravitational pull of its partners, bringing a strange rhythm to its dance: a systematic wobble of the center of mass of the system. “I was very surprised to learn that follow-up measurements with ground-based telescopes revealed no evidence of a stellar-mass companion.”
Is the star just burning out?
Despite the subtle, long-term dimming observed, this is not a matter of the lights simply going out at Boyajian’s star. Astronomers have determined this is a type of star that is fusing hydrogen into helium in its core. Given that fact and where it is in its expected lifetime, it should be gradually brightening, not growing fainter.
Apart from its long-term evolution, a star’s magnetic activity – which produces sunspots – does go through shorter cycles, creating some ups and downs in brightness. However, the extent of those changes and the timescale on which they occur are not comparable to this one’s sudden, dramatic dips. For example, the brightness of our sun may decrease periodically, but that’s a change on the order of just one-tenth of one percent over its 11-year solar cycle.
Was there simply an instrument glitch?
Some observers questioned if an instrument glitch could be responsible for the strange data on Boyajian’s star. No, says Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute researcher and instrument scientist for the Kepler mission at Ames—for two reasons. First, the results are the same, regardless of which of the telescope’s detectors were observing the star, ruling out a defect on the lens of the photometer, or the on-board camera. Second, the enormous drops in brightness were already visible in every single pixel attributed to this star in the Kepler images. Usually, all those pixels need to be added together and the total brightness of a star measured, in order to detect a change; if any pixels belonging to another star are mistakenly included, this can create a false positive. That was clearly not the case here.
So far, no warrant has yet been issued for any one explanation’s arrest, and so the hunt goes on.
Keeping Many Eyes on the Star
With the case of Boyajian’s star still open, scientists continue to ask What if…?, and adjust their ideas according to what the data reveals. Some proposed solutions could even come back into fashion as more measurements are made, revealing more definitively whether the star has any companions and how they might interact. Using telescopes around the world to analyze the star’s light at all wavelengths and with greater resolution, astronomers are picking out more details of its characteristics.
They’re also monitoring the star over the long term.
“To learn more, we needed to catch it in action again. It just comes down to that,” Boyajian said. "We can't rule anything out completely until the evidence warrants it."
In May 2017, and again in June, August and September, the star obliged with new performances of unexplained dimming, and astronomers were ready for it. The dips in brightness were smaller this time, and the four events lasted between five days and two weeks. Scientists are now processing this new data, wondering if it will hold the key to understanding this remarkable star.
"This kind of patiently executed, coordinated monitoring at multiple wavelengths will unlock this mystery eventually," Batalha said.
Until that time, the public and scientists alike can follow the investigation’s progress online with the hashtag #TabbysStar, checking for new clues or new dimming events from the star, and watching as researcher-detectives work hard to crack the case.
Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Work on this study was performed in part under contract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory funded by NASA through the Sagan Fellowship Program executed by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.
***
For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:
Couple Notice Metallic Blue UFO After Looking Back Over Holiday Snaps
Couple Notice Metallic Blue UFO After Looking Back Over Holiday Snaps
A British couple has released fantastic photos that baffled them much. The pair claims that they captured a UFO moving above the Cape Verde coast.
The two claim they noticed a metallic blue shape UFO on the pictures they snapped during their holiday. They have no idea it was there at the time. They just saw the unidentified flying object when looking back over holiday snaps.
The man describes the scenery at that time as beautiful, so they were taking pictures. When he looked back through their photos after the holiday, he noticed the unusual thing that they cannot identify.
The woman says that she was too busy looking out into the sea when the UFO was caught on their pictures. She adds that they saw no sign of overhead aircraft when the strange event took place. She notes that it was a bright day and if the UFO was there, it must have been swift because she did not notice anything flying in the sky.
The UFO was spotted while the couple were on the island of Sal enjoying the scenery. The object can be likened to a Lockheed SR-71 Jet, which was a Cold War-era jet but retired in the 1990s. According to conspiracy theorists, the supersonic feature of the fastest aircraft in the world was from an alien technology hidden by the American government.
The Venus Project Plans to Bring Humanity to the Next Stage of Social Evolution. Here’s How.
The Venus Project Plans to Bring Humanity to the Next Stage of Social Evolution. Here’s How.
Roxanne Meadows/The Venus Project
IN BRIEF
The Venus Project is the culmination of Jacque Fresco’s life’s work to present a sustainable redesign of our culture.
The project lays out a sustainable world civilization where technology and science are applied to redesigning our social system with the prime concern being to maximize quality of life rather than profit.
Since 1975, Roxanne Meadows has worked with renowned futurist Jacque Fresco to develop and promote The Venus Project. The function of this project is to find alternative solutions to the many problems that confront the world today. She participated in the exterior and interior design and construction of the buildings of The Venus Project’s 21-acre research and planning center.
Daniel Araya: Roxanne, could you tell me about your background and your vision for The Venus Project? How was the idea originally conceived?
Roxanne Meadows. Credit: The Venus Project
Roxanne Meadows: My background is in architectural and technical illustration, model making, and design. However, for the last 41 years, my most significant work has been with Jacque Fresco in developing models, books, blueprints, drawings, documentaries and lecturing worldwide. We are the co-founders of The Venus Project, based out of Venus, Florida where we have built a 21-acre experimental center. The Venus Project is the culmination of Jacque Fresco’s life’s work to present a sustainable redesign of our culture.
In our view, The Venus Project is unlike any political, economic or social system that’s gone before it. It lays out a sustainable world civilization where technology and the methods of science are applied to redesigning our social system with the prime concern being to maximize quality of life rather than profit. All aspects of society are scrutinized – from our values, education, and urban design to how we relate to nature and to one another.
The Venus Project concludes that our social and environmental problems will remain the same as long as the monetary system prevails and a few powerful nations and financial interests maintain control over and consume most of the world’s resources. In Jacque Fresco’s book The Best That Money Can’t Buy, he explains “If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems, we must ultimately declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all of the world’s people. Anything less will result in the same catalogue of problems we have today.”
DA: One of the more interesting aspects of The Venus Project vision is itsfuturistic design. Have you been approached by companies or governments interested in using The Venus Project as a model? Doyou foresee experiments insmarturban design that mirrorJacque Fresco’sthinking?
RM: No company or government, as yet, has approached The Venus Project to initiate a model of our city design, but we feel the greatest need is in using our designs to usher in a holistic socio-economic alternative, not just our architectural approach itself. As Jacque very often mentions, “Technology is just so much junk, unless it’s used to elevate all people.”
We would like to build the first circular city devoted to developing up-to-date global resource management, and a holistic method for social operation toward global unification. The city would showcase this optimistic vision, allowing people to see firsthand what kind of future could be built if we were to mobilize science and technology for social betterment.
I have not seen what is called smart urban design mirror Jacque Fresco’s thinking. I see smart cities as mainly applying technology to existing and new but chaotically designed, energy- and resource-intensive cities without offering a comprehensive social direction or identifying the root causes of our current problems. Our technology is racing forward but our social designs are hundreds of years old. We can’t continue to design and maintain these resource- and energy-draining cities and ever consider being able to provide for the needs of all people to ensure that they have high-quality housing, food, medical care and education. Smart cities within a terribly dysfunctional social structure seem contradictory to me.
DA: My understanding is that technological automation forms the basis for The Venus Project. Given ongoing breakthroughs inartificial intelligenceand robotics, do you imagine that we are moving closer to this vision?
RM: Our technological capacity to initiate The Venus Project is available now, but how we use artificial intelligence today is very often for destructive purposes through weaponry, surveillance, and the competitive edge for industry, often resulting in technological unemployment. In the society we are proposing, nothing is to be gained from these behaviors because there is no vested interest. In our project, we advocate concentrating on solving problems that threaten all of us— climate change, pollution, disease, hunger, war, territorial disputes, and the like. What The Venus Project offers is a method of updating the design of our society so that everyone can benefit from all the amenities that a highly advanced technologically-developed society can provide.
DA: I know The Venus Project is envisioned as a post-capitalist and post-scarcity economy. Could you explain what you mean byresource-based economics?
RM: Money is an interference factor between what we want and what we are able to acquire. It limits our dreams and capabilities and our individual and societal possibilities. Today we don’t have enough money to house everyone on the planet, but we do still have enough resources to accomplish that and much more if we use our resources intelligently to conserve energy and reduce waste. This is why we advocate a Resource Based Economy. This socio-economic system provides an equitable distribution of resources in an efficient manner without the use of money, barter, credit or servitude of any kind. Goods and services are accessible to all, without charge. You could liken this to the public library where one might check out many books and then return them when they are finished. This can be done with anything that is not used on a daily basis. In a society where goods and services are made available to the entire population free of charge, ownership becomes a burden that is ultimately surpassed by a system of common property.
When we use our technology to produce abundance, goods become too cheap to monetize. There is only a price on things that are scarce. For instance, air is a necessity but we don’t monitor or charge for the amount of breaths we can take. Air is abundant. If apple trees grew everywhere and were abundant you couldn’t sell apples. If all the money disappeared, as long as we have the technical personnel, automated processes, topsoil, resources, factories and distribution we could still build and develop anything we need.
DA: I know that thescientific methodforms the basis for decision making and resource management within your project. Could you explain how this approach is applied to social behavior? For example, what is the role of politics in The Venus Project?
RM: Today, for the most part, politicians serve the interest of those in positions of wealth and power; they are not there to change things, but instead to keep things as they are. With regard to the management of human affairs, what do they really know? Our problems are mostly technical. When you examine the vocations of politicians and ask what backgrounds they have to solve the pressing problems of today, they fall far short. For instance, are they trained in finding solutions to eliminating war, preventing climate change, developing clean sources of energy, maintaining higher yields of nutritious, non-contaminating food per acre or anything pertaining to the wellbeing of people and the protection of the environment? This is not their area of expertise. Then what are they doing in those positions?
The role for politics within the scientific and technologically organized society that The Venus Project proposes would be surpassed by engineered systems. It is not ethical people in government that we need but equal access to the necessities of life and those working toward the elimination of scarcity. We would use scientific scales of performance for measurement and allocation of resources so that human biases are left out of the equation. Within The Venus Project’s safe, energy-efficient cities, there would be interdisciplinary teams of knowledgeable people in different fields accompanied by cybernated systems that use “sensors” to monitor all aspects of society in order to provide real-time information supporting decision-making for the wellbeing of all people and the protection of the environment.
DA: In your view, is abundance simply a function of technological innovation? I mean, assuming we get the technology right, do you believe that we could eventually eliminate poverty and crime altogether?
RM: Yes, if we apply our scientists and technical personnel to work towards those ends. We have never mobilized many scientific disciplines giving them the problem of creating a society to end war, produce safe, clean transportation, eliminate booms and busts, poverty, homelessness, hunger, crime and aberrant behavior. For instance, one does not need to make laws to try and eliminate stealing, when all goods and services are available without a price tag. But scientists have not been asked to design a total systems approach to city design, let alone to planetary planning. Scientist have not been given the problem to develop and apply a total holistic effort using the methods of science, technology and resource management to serve all people equitably in the development of a safe and sustainable global society. Unfortunately, only in times of war, do we see resources allocated and scientists mobilized in this way.
DA: I assume schooling and education are important to Jacque’s vision. How might schools and universities differ from the way they are designed today?
RM: The education and values we are given seem to always support the established system we are raised in. We are not born with bigotry, envy, or hatred – we do pick them up from our schools and culture. In fact, even our facial expressions, the words we use, notions of good and bad, right and wrong, are all culture bound. A healthy brain can, in fact, simply become a Nazi faster in a Nazi society. It has no way of knowing what is significant or not, that is all learned by experience and background. The manipulation is so subtle that we feel our values come from within. Most often we don’t know whom our values are really serving.
Yes, education will differ considerably from that of today. As Fresco explains in his book The Best That Money Can’t Buy “The subjects studied will be related to the direction and needs of this new evolving culture. Students will be made aware of the symbiotic relationship between people, technology, and the environment.”
DA: I can only assume that critics routinely dismiss The Venus Project as a kind of hopeful utopia. How do you respond to that criticism?
RM: Critics very often reject or dismiss new ideas. What is utopian thinking is to believe that the system we are living under today will enable us to achieve sustainability, equality or a high standard of living for all when it is our system which generates these very problems in the first place. If we continue as we are, it seems to me that we are destined for calamity. The Venus Project is not offering a fixed notion as to how society should be. There are no final frontiers. It does offer a way out of our dilemmas to help initiate a next step in our social evolution.
Many are working at going to other planets to escape the problems on this one, but we would be taking our detrimental value systems with us. We are saying that we have to tackle the problems we face here on the most habitable planet we know of. We will have to apply methodologies to enable us to live together in accordance with the carrying capacity of Earth’s resources, eliminate artificial boundaries, share resources and learn to relate to one another and the environment.
What we have to ask is, what kind of world do we want to live in?
DA: My last question is about the challenges ahead. Rather than taking the necessary steps to reverseclimate change, we seem to be accelerating our pollution of the Earth. Socially, we are witnessing a renewed focus on nativism and fear. How might thevaluesof The Venus Project manage against these negative tendencies in human beings?
RM: The notion of negative tendencies in human beings or that we possess a certain “human nature” is a scapegoat to keep things as they are. It’s implying that we are born with a fixed set of views regarding our action patterns. Human behavior is always changing, but there is no “human nature,” per se. Determining the conditions that generate certain behaviors is what needs to be understood.
As Jacque elaborates, “We are just as lawful as anything else in nature. What appears to be overlooked is the influence of culture upon our values, behavior, and our outlook. It is like studying plants apart from the fact that they consume radiant energy, nutrients, require water, carbon dioxide, gravity, nitrogen, etc. Plants do not grow of their own accord, neither do humans values and behavior.”
All social improvement, from the airplane to clean sources of energy undergoes change, but our social systems remain mostly static. The history of civilization is experimentation and modification. The Free Enterprise System was an important experiment and tremendous step along the way that generated innovation throughout our society. What we now advocate is to continue the process of social experimentation, as this system has long outlived its usefulness and simply cannot address the monumental problems it is facing today. We desperately need to update our social designs to correspond with our technological ability to create abundance for all. This could be the most exciting and fulfilling experiment we as a species could ever take on; working together cooperatively to deal with our most pressing problems which confront us all and finding solutions to them unencumbered with the artificial limitations we impose upon ourselves.
Daniel Araya is a researcher and advisor to government with a special interest in education, technological innovation and public policy. His newest books include: Augmented Intelligence (2016), Smart Cities as Democratic Ecologies (2015), and Rethinking US Education Policy (2014). He has a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is an alumnus of Singularity University’s graduate program in Silicon Valley. He can be found here:www.danielaraya.com and here: @danielarayaXY.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Bizarre Pacific Ocean Red Lights Suggest Underwater Alien Presence
Bizarre Pacific Ocean Red Lights Suggest Underwater Alien Presence
What was supposed to be a routine flight over the North Pacific Ocean turned into something really unexpected. Heading from Hong Kong to Nome, Alaska, Dutch pilot J.P.C. van Hejst and his co-pilot saw a powerful flash of light on the horizon that was leading into the ocean.
Their plane was flying near the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka when this strange light looking like a lightning bolt appeared up in the distance, scaring them both. The unexplained light was directed vertically over a circular portion of water up ahead, intersecting with their flightpath. They received no reports of thunderstorms on their route, so they knew the light had to come from elsewhere. So what was the cause of this mysterious phenomenon?
The pilots first thought of a fishing boat fleet trying to catch squids at night using bright LED lights in order to attract them, although they’ve crossed this route before and saw nothing more except water.
When they reached the place where the lightning occurred, the two pilots witnessed the most unique and unfamiliar event. Bright red lights were glowing from within the ocean and were spread over a big, round surface. Captain van Hejst couldn’t believe his eyes.
Last night over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere South of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka I experienced the creepiest thing so far in my flying career, van Hejst said. The bright lights had different colors but a dominant red was visible more than the rest.
The pilots couldn’t explain the cause, they only witnessed it and took as many photos as they could.
Strange lights have been spotted near the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka (image by Dutch pilot JPC van Heijst). The sighting was made by pilots flying from Hong Kong to Alaska. The glow came about 20 minutes after a vertical lightning bolt was seen
The closer we got, the more intense the glow became, illuminating the clouds and sky below us in a scary orange glow, in a part of the world where there was supposed to be nothing but water.
Pilot van Hejst and his colleague felt really unsafe when they flew over the bizarre glowing red dot because they could not understand what was happening and there were no other aircrafts nearby to check or confirm the sighting. They were flying in the middle of nowhere, and no possible explanation came to their minds.
The only cause of this red glow that we could think of, was the explosion of a huge volcano just underneath the surface of the ocean, about 30 minutes before we overflew that exact position.
The strange lights (shown at the pink dot) were spotted south of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka during a flight from Hong Kong to Anchorage, Alaska (flight path in blue)
His supposition proved to be wrong however, as he was expecting to encounter an ash-plume as a result of the eruption, but nothing like that ever happened. They eventually landed safe in Nome, Alaska and filed a full report to the Air Traffic Control who promised a full investigation of the strange bright area the two pilots depicted.
As the authorities failed to give any conclusive explanations whatsoever, theories involving the strange red lights have surfaced, and they range from an unknown marine species to an underwater alien base harbored near the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the red lights being caused either by more submersible objects (USOs), or by an underwater structure.
‘The closer we got, the more intense the glow became, illuminating the clouds and sky below us in a scary orange glow, in a part of the world where there was supposed to be nothing but water,’ said van Heijst
Considering this wasn’t the only case of unusual sightings which occurred on the same Hong Kong – Nome, Alaska route, and that more witnesses spoke about underwater alien-like encounters, also submersible crafts not far from this place, backed up by some NASA photos showing similarities, we tend to believe that this recent event had more to do with extraterrestrials rather than natural phenomenon.
Van Heijst ruled out squid-fishing-boats as the origin. He says the cause may have been an underwater volcano. An ongoing investigation is taking place to find out what happened
Unfortunately, we cannot efficiently explore this underwater world, most of it remaining in darkness and full of mysteries, which is why plenty of room is left for speculating about underwater beings living undisturbed underneath the vast surface of water – probably the best hideout in the world.
Around the Pacific Ocean is a region known as the Ring of Fire, where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur that may have been the origin of glow. The horseshoe shape is 25,000 miles (40,000 km) and, with 452 volcanoes, is home to more than 75 per cent of the planet's active and dormant volcanoes
One reflection in the International Space Station window caused by a light? Believable. Two reflections? Possible. Three reflections? Those are UFOs. That’s the conclusion arrived at by many looking at a video taken this week from the ISS live camera which shows what appears to be three unidentified objects hovering outside the station.
UFO spotted during recent spacewalk.
The UFOs were spotted by a YouTubeuser named Streetcap1, who has posted a number of similar videos of anomalies seen through the window of the ISS. The video was taken on October 21 and shows two large flat lights and one small round one slowly approaching the station. It doesn’t appear that any residents of the ISS noticed the objects because no one zoomed the camera (or can be seen waving).
These sightings make October a banner month for UFO visitsto the ISS. A glowing orb was seen in the video feed on October 2nd and another appeared in a video of two astronauts on a spacewalk on October 7th. In October 2nd video, the camera cuts away and goes to blue shortly after the appearance of the UFO, a common phenomenon that many believe is NASA’s way of saying “Nothing to see here … move along.”
If you believe aliens operate on a different calendar than we do, you can throw in a sighting on September 15th of a moving white glowing ball and add it to a long list of sightings in about a 30 day period.
Why all of this UFO activity around the ISS in October? Is work there being monitored? Are aliens getting an early start on intergalactic Halloween trick-or-treating? If it’s reflections, why doesn’t NASA do something about them? If it’s space junk, wouldn’t this sudden increase in frequency be cause for concern? As always, more questions from us than answers from NASA.
A team of researchers from NASA and Binghamton University have identified boron nitride nanotubes as a material that could be used to boost aircraft travel to hypersonic speeds. The problem, however, is that a gram of the material costs $1,000.
GOING HYPERSONIC
Within the next decade, planes could be capable of traveling across the country by hypersonic flight in less than an hour—all it would take is some boron nitride.
A key factor for a vehicle to maintain extremely high speeds is the intense amount of heat generated during travel; for example, the now-retired supersonic Concorde aircraft experienced temperatures of up to 260°F at its lazy cruising speed of 1,534 miles per hour. As such, the materials used to build these aircraft must also be able to withstand very high heat, in addition to being structurally stable and lightweight. A study conducted by researchers from NASA and Binghamton University investigated the properties of nanotubes made using boron nitride, a combination of boron and nitrogen. The study revealed it could potentially be used to make hypersonic travel—speeds above 4,000 miles per hour—possible.
Currently, carbon nanotubes are used in aircraft due to their strength and ability to withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius (752 degress Fahrenheit). Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs), however, can withstand up to 900 degrees Celsius (1652 Fahrenheit). They can also handle high amounts of stress, and are much more lightweight than their carbon counterparts.
THE PRICE OF AIR TRAVEL
The problem with using BNNTs is their cost. According to Binghamton University Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Changhong Ke, coating an aircraft with BNNTs would run a very high price tag.
“NASA currently owns one of the few facilities in the world able to produce quality BNNTs,” said Ke. “Right now, BNNTs cost about $1,000 per gram. It would be impractical to use a product that expensive.”
Despite the high production cost, it’s possible prices will decrease, and production increase, after more studies detail the material’s usefulness. Carbon nanotubes were around the same price 20 years ago, but are now between $10 and $20 per gram. Ke believes something similar will happen with BNNTs.
That said, don’t expect the first application of BNNTs to be for commercial aircraft. They’ll probably be used for military fighter jets first, with commercialized flights to follow after. Hopefully by then, we’ll other other ways to travel quickly: be it by hyperloop, Elon Musk’s BFR rocket, or China’s plans to build the fastest “flying train.”
UFO fever started after World War II, when Kenneth Arnold claimed to spot nine high-speed flying objects near Mount Rainier Washington in 1947. This fever hasn’t seemed to calm down, even though academic interest in UFOs has pretty much been shut down since then.
UFO sightings have been on the rise since the 1980s.
No, we haven’t suddenly become a sightseeing hotspot for intergalactic aliens. More likely, it has something to do with new technology that may be mistaken for UFOs or spread conspiracy theories about aliens. Next time you see some conspiracy theorist post a video about the latest UFO sighting, keep these three things in mind.
These flying objects can easily be mistaken from the distance as alien spacecrafts touching down into our atmosphere. Back in the day, UFO sightings often turned out to be objects like weather balloons, satellites, meteorites, planets, airplanes, and weather anomalies.
But now, enter the drone. These flying mechanical objects zipping through the air may even be deliberately created to look like UFOs, causing unsuspecting viewers to mistake them for out-of-the-world machines. In 2014, some drone enthusiasts even organized a night to strap LED lights to drones and fly them to prank the public and get them to think they’re UFOs.
2. If there are no pics, did it really happen?
Back then, if you claimed to see a UFO, unless you had an expensive camera, there was really no way of verifying whether you saw one or not. But now that people are equipped with smartphone cameras, pictures of UFO sightings can quickly go viral on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, or anywhere else on the internet. What’s more, people can edit their photos digitally to make the UFO look more like an alien spacecraft — leading to more “UFO sightings.”
3. The internet.
With the internet, it’s easier to figure out how to report sightings. Just type “report UFO sighting” and the NUFORC’s website will pop up. Even if you don’t officially report it, as said before, it’s easy for photos and videos of your “UFO sighting” to go viral. There are conspiracy blogs and websites all over the internet about UFOs and aliens.
What’s more, countries like the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Scandinavian nations report more UFOs. It doesn’t necessarily mean aliens are visiting those countries more — it probably just means people have more access to the internet. The same goes for countries that report less UFO sightings — likely meaning less widespread internet access.
Sam Monfort compared Internet access and UFO sightings per country.
The U.S. is especially obsessed with reporting UFOs, as Americans report UFO sightings 300 times greater than any other nation. And when we’re feeling patriotic, we report even more UFOs. UFO sightings in the U.S. spike on, you guessed it, July 4. It’s probably just fireworks and strange lights, although conspiracy theorists will likely disagree.
400 Mysterious Ancient Stone Structures Discovered in Saudi Arabia
400 Mysterious Ancient Stone Structures Discovered in Saudi Arabia
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor
Mysterious stone structures that archaeologists call "gates," due to their loose resemblance to old-fashioned field gates, have been discovered in Saudi Arabia.
Credit: Google Earth
Almost 400 mysterious stone structures dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Saudi Arabia, with a few of these wall-like formations draping across old lava domes, archaeologists report.
Many of the stone walls, which archaeologists call "gates" because they resemble field gates from above, were found in clusters in a region in west-central Saudi Arabia called Harrat Khaybar.
The smallest gates are 43 feet (13 metres) in length while the longest are
Long and mysterious
Discovered mainly through satellite images, a few of the gates are actually located on the side of a volcanic dome that once spewed basaltic lava, researchers found.
The gates "are stone-built, the walls roughly made and low," David Kennedy, a professor at the University of Western Australia, wrote in a paper set to be published in the November issue of the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. The gates "appear to be the oldest man-made structures in the landscape," Kennedy noted, adding that "no obvious explanation of their purpose can be discerned."
The smallest of the gates extends about 43 feet (13 meters), while the longest is 1,699 feet (518 m) long, or longer than an NFL football field. Many have multiple stone walls that, in some instances, form a rectangular design; some of the others, called "I" type gates, have only one stone wall with heaps of stone at each end.
"Gates are found almost exclusively in bleak, inhospitable lava fields with scant water or vegetation, places seemingly amongst the most unwelcoming to our species," Kennedy wrote. Thousands of years ago, he noted, the landscape was more hospitable to human life. Other types of stone structures — such as "kites," which were used to hunt animals, and "wheels," named for their shape — have also been discovered in these lava fields.
The kites, wheels and other types of stone structures were typically found to be built on top of these gate-like walls, suggesting that the gates predate these stone structures, Kennedy said. The remains of lava flows are also sometimes found on top of the gates, indicating that the gates are also older than some of the flows, Kennedy said.
Older than dirt
Picture of two more gates taken by Vic Camp in the "Harret Khaybar" region in the 1980s. The remains of a lava flow can be seen very close to them. The lava flow may be partially covering a third gate. Camp notes that the lava flows tend to cover the gates and other stone structures something which suggests that the gates are older than the lava flows.
This picture of the lava dome that has gates on it was taken in the 1980s by Vic Camp. The taller lava dome behind it is called "Jabal Abyad" a name which means "white mountain" in Arabic. The lava domes are no longer active although in the past basalt lava poured from them.
Need for fieldwork
Most of the gates were discovered through satellite surveys, and no archaeological fieldwork has been conducted on them. However, in the 1980s, before the gates were discovered, volcanologists Vic Camp and John Roobolmapped an area of the Harrat Khaybar that included a lava dome festooned with gates and other stone structures. This lava dome is located near a taller lava dome, called Jabal Abyad,which means "white mountain" in Arabic.
The lava domes are no longer active, Camp said, adding that in the past, basaltic lava covered some of the stone structures, including the gates.
"We see several areas where the younger lavas are devoid of such [stone] structures, although surrounded by several [stone structures]," Camp told Live Science. One of the stone structures is partially covered in hardened lava, photographs show. Camp estimates that some of the gates around the lava dome were built around 7,000 years ago.
Archaeological fieldwork is necessary to determine what the gates are and when, exactly, they date to, Kennedy said.
Travis Hearn, a research assistant with the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East, contributed to the journal article; and Kennedy also worked with members of the Desert Team, a group of Saudi Arabian citizens who were the first to map some of the stone structures and visit some of the sites.
Urgency
The study of gates has taken on some urgency as modern day development is threatening or has already destroyed some of them. This gate still existed in February, 2012, but was destroyed by the end of 2015. In addition to the satellite survey archaeological fieldwork needs to be done to determine exactly how old the gates are and what purpose they may have had.
Honderden onverklaarbare bouwwerken ontdekt in Saoedi-Arabië. Wat was het doel hiervan?
Honderden onverklaarbare bouwwerken ontdekt in Saoedi-Arabië. Wat was het doel hiervan?
In Saoedi-Arabië zijn bijna 400 mysterieuze stenen bouwwerken ontdekt die vele duizenden jaren oud zijn, zo hebben archeologen aangekondigd.
Veel van de structuren zijn gevonden in een regio die Harrat Khaybar wordt genoemd. Dit is een vulkaanveld ten noorden van Medina.
De archeologen die betrokken zijn bij het onderzoek hebben geen idee welk doel de bouwwerken hadden of hoe oud ze precies zijn.
Oudst
Sommige van de bouwwerken, die zijn ontdekt met behulp van satellietbeelden, bevinden zich op een vulkanische koepel waar ooit lava uit kwam.
Het lijkt te gaan om de oudste door mensen gemaakte structuren in het landschap,” zei professor David Kennedy van de University of Western Australia.
Hij voegde toe dat hij niet weet welk doel de bouwwerken precies dienden.
Rechthoek
Het kleinste bouwwerk is 13 meter lang, terwijl het grootste maar liefst 518 meter lang is. De meeste zijn voorzien van meerdere stenen muren die in sommige gevallen een rechthoek vormen.
“Ze worden vrijwel alleen gevonden in onherbergzame lavavelden waar bijna geen water of vegetatie is, plekken die voor onze soort niet echt uitnodigend zijn,” schreef Kennedy.
Bovenop verschillende structuren zijn resten van lava gevonden, wat betekent dat ze ouder zijn dan sommige lavastromen.
Veldwerk
Veldwerk is nu nodig om vast te stellen met wat voor bouwwerken we te maken hebben en hoe oud ze precies zijn, aldus Kennedy.
Het onderzoek zal verschijnen in het tijdschrift ArabianArchaeology and Epigraphy.
Mysterieus skelet verschenen in weiland China. Wat in vredesnaam is dit?
Mysterieus skelet verschenen in weiland China. Wat in vredesnaam is dit?
Inwoners van Zhangjiakou in de noordoostelijke Chinese provincie Hebei keken raar op toen ze in een weiland een skelet aantroffen van een lang, onbekend wezen.
Ze dachten in eerste instantie op de resten van een draak te zijn gestuit, schrijft de Britse Daily Mail.
Het vreemde dier is ruim 18 meter lang en heeft twee korte armen. Het hoofd ziet eruit als dat van een koe.
Met opzet
Op beelden is te zien hoe nieuwsgierige mensen om het mysterieuze wezen heen staan. Sommigen zeggen op sociale media dat het skelet er met opzet is neergelegd en dat het is gebruikt voor een film.
Traditionele Chinese draken hebben geen vleugels en vliegen door te ‘zwemmen’ door de lucht. Een beetje zoals slangen over de grond kronkelen.
Geen verklaring
Er zijn ook foto’s opgedoken van lokale bewoners die op het skelet zitten, wat er volgens sommigen op wijst dat het gaat om een grap.
De lokale autoriteiten van Zhangjiakou hebben nog geen verklaring naar buiten gebracht over het bizarre skelet.
Het skelet ging viral in China nadat een filmpje van de botten meer dan 10 miljoen keer was bekeken.
Bekijk de beelden die de New York Post op YouTube zette hieronder:
The Mystery Of The Loudest Underwater Sound Ever Recorded
The Mystery Of The Loudest Underwater Sound Ever Recorded
In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded from deep in the ocean one of the loudest sounds ever detected. The mysterious ‘Bloop’ was heard at listening stations underwater over 5,000 km apart and no known animal could make it and no man-made source was ever found.
But after an in-depth research NOAA and Oregon State University seismologist Robert Dziak suggested that the frequency and time-duration characteristics of the ‘Bloop’ signal are consistent and essentially identical, to icequake signals.
Despite Dziak’s explanation that the possible source of the ‘Bloop’ was an icequake, many people are not convinced and believe that the mysterious deep ocean signal was more likely coming from something from another world.
The sound starts at 5:03 for those who want to skip the first 5 minutes.
The “moonlets” are forming out of the rings in the same way planets are created around a star – giving a breakthrough insight into the origin of Earth.
These new moons also appear to contain methane – a red flag space boffins look for when hunting extraterrestrial life.
GETTY/NASA
PROBE: Scientists are hopeful of finding more information about Saturn
“There are whole careers to be forged in the analysis of data from Cassini”
Cassini had been probing Saturn for years but scientists have now begun combing through the data collected.
And what they have found is astonishing.
Linda Splicer, one of the mission’s project scientists, said: “There are whole careers to be forged in the analysis of data from Cassini.
“In a sense, the work has only just begun.”
UNCLASSIFIED: Extraterrestrial objects spotted on the Moon and Mars
Fellow scientist Matt Tiscareno revealed that the team found “propellers” in the rings created by small moonlets.
The team unveiled their new discoveries at the latest American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Science.
Cassini was able to capture images of six such baby planets – now known as Bleriot, Earhart, Santos-Dumont, Sikorsky, Post and Quimby.
NASA now hopes they can determine the age and origin of Saturn’s famous rings.
NASA
BREAKTHROUGH: The team left open the prospect the new baby planets could be harbouring life
Experts decided to obliterate Cassini on September 15 rather than leaving it to drift around the planet.
NASA explained: “In order to avoid the unlikely possibility of Cassini someday colliding with one of these moons, NASA has chosen to safely dispose of the spacecraft in the atmosphere of Saturn.”
Following Cassini’s last crash, NASA tweeted: “Every time we see Saturn in the night sky, we'll remember. We'll smile. And we'll want to go back. Goodbye Cassini.”
The spacecraft was launched in 1997 but did not arrive at the ringed planet until 2005.
Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong of the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, working with Milan Ćirković of the University of Novi Sad in Serbia and Montenegro, recently offered a new way to link the Fermi Paradox—the odd fact that we’ve never heard from an alien civilization—with matters of computation. While I’m in no position to judge the technical merits of their new proposal, it’s good fun to think about, so I’d like to summarize it here. Before I do that, though, let me first explain a bit more about what the Fermi Paradox is and what computing has to do with it.
The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. Space is awfully big, so it might seem just too hard to detect some distant alien civilization. But if the evolution of life and intelligence isn’t immensely improbable, lots of technologically advanced civilizations should have developed elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy long ago. And although the galaxy is vast, the time that’s elapsed since its creation is even vaster, so those alien civilizations should have had plenty of time to reach our corner of space already. In the words supposedly uttered by Enrico Fermi when he came to this realization one day in 1950 while lunching with colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory: Where is everybody?
The Fermi Paradox is misnamed, because Fermi was not the first person to consider this issue; nor did he formally analyze the question and explore answers. Others have done that since, but the paradox is far from resolved. There are plenty of intriguing theories, though. And some of them hinge on computation.
Perhaps the most outlandish one in this family is that the universe that we think we know is really just some sort of computer simulation. If the cosmic tweens who are running this simulation wanted us to encounter intelligent life elsewhere, they’d arrange that. If they wanted human beings to be the only highly intelligent species there is, they’d leave us to strut and fret all alone in their simulated universe. Or maybe they had to buy the paid version of the game to get civilizations evolving on multiple planets and they are running the free, one-intelligent-race version.
In 1999, Anders described another possible solution to the Fermi Paradox involving computers. He noted that technologically advanced civilizations may not go gallivanting around the galaxy and instead might prefer to spend their time building giant computing machines of planetary scale, something others had earlier dubbed “Jupiter brains.” The late Robert Bradbury took this idea even further, proposing that advanced civilizations would construct what he called “Matrioshka brains”—essentially giant supercomputers that surround stars in a series of shells and use the energy of the central star to perform calculations, perhaps for the purpose of keeping the digitally preserved souls of their builders up and running in some post-singularity paradise. Or maybe they’re doing something else with all those gigaflops. In any event, distant Matrioshka brains would be hard to detect.
In 2006, Bradbury and Ćirković proposed yet another explanation that assumes advanced civilizations just want to compute. Like datacenters today, those of advanced spacefaring civilizations would need to dump the waste heat of their computations. The late AI pioneer Marvin Minsky suggested in 1971 that advanced civilizations would likely use space itself as a heat sink for their computing. Bradbury and Ćirković refined Minsky’s idea, pointing out that the best place to do this practically would be at the edge of the galaxy. So maybe that’s where the little green men are hiding out.
This brings us to the latest theory, that of Sandberg, Armstrong, and Ćirković, which is described in a paper titled “That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox.” That title is more than a little cryptic, so let me try to unpack things here for those who don’t want to read their paper.
First, those of you who are rusty at Latin need to know that “aestivation” is kind of like hibernation, but it’s something done by certain animals (crabs for example) to survive the heat of summer, not the cold of winter. You also need to understand that the amount of energy required for computation can only be reduced so far. When you erase a bit, the loss of information is translated into some increase in entropy, which typically manifests as heat. Yes, you can make your computing apparatus more efficient, but only so much—at some point you run up against a fundamental barrier called the Landauer limit. The key point in this context is that the Landauer limit is a function of the temperature at which the bit erasure happens.
Advocates of quantum computing and reversible computing will point out that it’s possible to breach that barrier. But Anders argues that it’s unlikely that calculations done on reversible quantum computers will entirely eliminate heat-generating operations, if only for things like error correction. Thus even if the limit turns out to be smaller than what Landauer calculated, there will always be some limit.
So if you are the master of some technologically advanced civilization keen to do huge amounts of computation with your alien technology, you’ll surely conclude that it would be best to carry out those calculations at low temperatures. And if you tried to create those low temperatures with some futuristic refrigerator, you’d just be using energy to run it. What you really want to do instead is to take advantage of the coldness of space.
In that sense, the new proposal is a little like the one that Bradbury and Ćirković offered in 2006 when they suggested that the cold edge of the galaxy would be the place to go. The new explanation takes this concept to a whole new dimension: time. You see, space is only so cold—limited to 2.7 kelvins by the cosmic background radiation. Or rather, it can get only that cold now. Wait several billion years, though, and the universe will have expanded enough to reduce the temperature of the cosmic background radiation considerably. So if you’re seeking serious cold for doing calculations, best to wait—to “aestivate”—until conditions are better.
The notion of going to sleep for many billions of years certainly seems odd, but that may be because our puny biological selves have a hard time thinking about the passage of time being so malleable. Perhaps we’ll one day figure out how to freeze-dry ourselves or upload our noggins into those computers that we’ll be so keen to keep running. If that’s possible, then maybe an advanced civilization can choose what clock speed it wants to run at. Or maybe the strategy will be to turn off everybody’s clock and just run a low-power wake-up timer set for the year 1,000,000,000,000.
You might think that if waiting 1,000 billion years is good, waiting 2,000 billion years would be better. Anders and his colleagues say no: The universe doesn’t just get colder and colder forever. Eventually some exotic physics comes into play that limits the ultimate cold to 2.6 x 10-30 kelvins. And that should happen in 1,400 billion years, give or take. So any advanced civilization pursuing this aestivation strategy would know when it’s time to end the big sleep.
Could this be the answer to “Where is everybody”? Could they all just be snoozing? It seems preposterous, but Anders and his co-workers take pains to explore the possibility in great detail. They consider, for example, competition from other civilizations. They write: “If a civilization merely aestivates it may find its grip on its domain supplanted by latecomers. Leaving autonomous systems to monitor the domain and [prevent] activities that decrease its value would be the rational choice.” Let me translate: An advanced civilization that put itself to sleep would leave some sort of automated mechanism in place to detect and squash any young upstart civilization that threatened to elbow into its territory. So maybe that’s something to think about before we start launching interstellar probes.
Personally, I prefer what seems a simpler explanation to all this: that the evolution of technologically advanced life is just so improbable that humans represent the sole occurrence in our galaxy. Maybe one day, we’ll spread ourselves through its spiral arms testing that surmise. Or perhaps we’ll just put our energies into figuring out how to build one of those grand cosmic computers to surround the sun and then command it to hibernate—or rather, aestivate—maybe by closing its grand cosmic lid.
Dubai police have announced they will soon have officers buzzing around the skies on Star Wars-style electric hoverbikes capable of speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour.
The police hoverbike can fly at up to 40mph
Alexander Atamanov via Facebook
The Hoversurf Scorpion was unveiled at the Gitex Technology Week conference, Gulf News reported.
The Russian-made craft can fly at a height of five metres and carry a police officer over congested traffic in emergency situations, First Sergeant Ali Ahmad Mohammad told Gulf News.
GIF: A pilot flies the Hoversurf Scorpion
"The bike can also fly without a passenger and can go up to six kilometres," he said.
"It can fly for 25 minutes and can carry up to 300kg of weight at a speed of 70kph."
Hoversurf CEO Alexander Atamanov posted on Facebook to say the company and Dubai police had signed a memorandum of understanding to mass produce the craft in the Dubai area.
Police also unveiled a smart electric motorbike that has multiple cameras to spot reckless drivers, and small driverless robotic vehicles equipped with biometric soft
Some 5,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus, a spooky object is illuminating the skies: The Boomerang Nebula.
This ghost-like cloud of gas is a planetary nebula, which, contrary to the name, is not actually a planet. These cosmic objects are formed when a red giant star runs out of hydrogen fuel, causing the core to collapse. Eventually, the outer layers are spewed out into the surroundings, resulting in a newly-formed white dwarf encased in a shell of luminescent gas. This will ultimately be the beautiful fate of 95% of all stars in the Milky Way; the rest will end their lives in spectacular explosions known as supernovae.
The Butterfly Nebula.
Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble
Alongside looking somewhat like a Halloween costume gone wrong or Kenny from South Park, the Boomerang Nebula, or the Bow Tie Nebula, is actually the coldest known object in the universe. Measurements of the cloud were taken last year by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is located in northern Chile. Incredibly, it was found to be -272oC (–458oF), or a mere 1 degree Kelvin. That’s chillier than the remnants of the Big Bang, or the cosmic microwave background.
In visible light, the object has an odd hourglass shape. This is because a dense strip of tiny dust grains surround the star in the middle, masking a portion of it. This means that light is seeping out only in a narrow window, but in opposite directions through the cloud.
“This ultra-cold object is extremely intriguing and we’re learning much more about its true nature with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array,” said NASA’s Dr. Raghvendra Sahai. “What seemed like a double lobe, or boomerang shape, is actually a much broader structure that is expanding rapidly into space.”
The Boomerang Nebula is still young, so it’s not quite reached the stage of planetary nebula evolution where intense UV radiation emitted from the white dwarf causes the gas cloud to glow, emitting a wonderful array of colors.
While it might be extremely cold at the moment, researchers found that its edges are gradually beginning to warm. This is possibly due to something called the photoelectric effect, which is where solid objects emit electrons after absorbing light.
“Using ALMA, we were quite literally and figuratively able to shed new light on the death throes of a Sun-like star,” said Sahai.
Astronaut wee could show us how the plumes on Enceladus work
Astronaut wee could show us how the plumes on Enceladus work
A little like wee
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.
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 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!
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
