Maak kennis met Asgardia, de allereerste ruimtenatie. Ze heeft net voor het eerst een object in een baan om de aarde gebracht - HLN.be

Koen Van De Sype

Bron: Asgardia, CNN

WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Asgardia – de allereerste natie in de ruimte – heeft deze week een satelliet gelanceerd en daarmee bracht ze voor het eerst een object in een baan om de aarde. Het bevat digitale data van 18.000 van haar inwoners, een voorstelling van de vlag, het wapenschild en de grondwet.

Het was Russisch wetenschapper Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli (53) die Asgardia stichtte in oktober 2016. De onafhankelijke natie werd genoemd naar de plaats waar volgens de Noorse mythologie de goden wonen. Ze telt intussen meer dan 133.000 inwoners uit meer dan 200 landen en daar zijn ook 881 Belgen bij. Iedereen die meerderjarig is, een e-mailadres heeft en de grondwet aanvaardt (die deze zomer werd goedgekeurd), kan het staatsburgerschap aanvragen.

Lees ook

We hebben net boodschap verstuurd naar mogelijk buitenaardse leven op ‘superaarde’ en over 26 jaar kunnen we al antwoord hebben

Vredevol

Doel is volgens Ashurbeyli om een vredevolle samenleving te stichten in de ruimte, los van afkomst, taal, huidskleur, religie, geslacht of leeftijd. Maar ook om de toegang tot ruimtetechnologie makkelijker te maken en de aarde te beschermen voor bedreigingen vanuit de ruimte, zoals asteroïden en ruimtepuin dat door de mens werd gecreëerd.

Hoewel de inwoners nu dus nog op aarde wonen, heeft de lancering van de Asgardia-1 de natie weer een stapje dichter bij haar ultieme doel gebracht: in de ruimte wonen. De satelliet – die de grootte van een brood heeft – werd meegenomen door een cargoschip van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA met als bestemming het internationaal ruimtestation ISS. Ergens in de komende weken zal het toestel daar uitgepakt worden door de zes astronauten die daar momenteel verblijven.

Ruimtereis

Daarna kan hij zijn eigen ruimtereis beginnen in een baan om de aarde. Het tuig zal tussen de 5 en 18 maanden rondcirkelen - de normale levensduur van zo’n satelliet - waarna het zal opbranden. Het is dus eerder een symbolische tocht, maar daarmee houdt Ashurbeyli zich wel aan een belofte die hij maakte bij de oprichting van Asgardia: om de inwoners aan de hand van hun data dit jaar al een eerste keer de ruimte in te brengen. “Ik had een lancering beloofd. Die is er gekomen”, zegt hij.

Ashurbeyli is overigens niet de eerste de beste. De raketwetenschapper en bedrijfsleider – die het project naar verluidt ook zelf financiert voor een niet nader bepaalde som – is een zwaargewicht in de wetenschapsindustrie. Hij richtte onder meer het Aerospace International Research Center op in Wenen en is de voorzitter van het Comité voor Wetenschap en Ruimte van UNESCO.

Vlucht

Het team achter de nieuwe natie hoopt op termijn bewoonbare platformen te creëren in een lage baan om de aarde, een eerste op ongeveer dezelfde hoogte als het ISS. De eerste vlucht daarheen met mensen aan boord wordt verwacht over 8 jaar. In afwachting daarvan zullen wel nog andere satellieten worden gelanceerd, maar wanneer precies is nog niet duidelijk.

Een van de ambitieuze plannen van Asgardia is om lid te worden van de Verenigde Naties. Daarvoor moet de VN Veiligheidsraad eerst de natie erkennen. Criteria zijn onder meer een permanente populatie hebben, een vast grondgebied, een regering en de mogelijkheid om relaties te onderhouden met andere naties. Andere naties moeten het land ook erkennen als dusdanig. Vervolgens moet het lidmaatschap nog worden goedgekeurd door twee derde van de leden van de VN.

Regering

Bedoeling is dat Asgardia een democratisch verkozen regering krijgt en ook alle andere gangbare overheidsinstellingen, zoals een Openbaar Ministerie. De departementen zullen voorlopig worden geleid door de verkozenen in de landen waar ze nu wonen. De administratieve zetel is Wenen. Nog tot 29 maart kunnen inwoners zich kandidaat stellen voor een zitje in het parlement. Na de verkiezingen zullen de overheidsinstellingen gevormd worden. 

Interesse? Dan kan je hier alle info vinden.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

19-11-2017 om 20:31 geschreven door peter  

We haven’t reached Black Friday yet but fans of Doc Brown, Mr. Peabody and Doctor Who may have have already received the present they’ve wanted since they were kids.

“But thanks to some very interesting properties of space and time in Einstein’s General Relativity, traveling back in time may be possible after all.”

In a recent post on his Forbes blog, Starts with a Bang, theoretical astrophysicist and science writer Ethan Siegel lays out the parts and the plans for traveling backwards in time. Siegel claims this ‘time machine’ abides by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and will not destroy the universe as we know it. Yes! Tell us how to build one, Professor Siegel, so we can all go back change the answer on the test that kept us from getting into Harvard. Or one questionable election vote.

“The place to start is with the physical idea of a wormhole.”

Sigh. You skipped right over that part about Dr. Siegel being a “theoretical” physicist, didn’t you? Wormholes can exist theoretically – we just haven’t found one yet. Siegel starts with the accepted idea that positive/negative energy fluctuations can create a curve space wormhole that a particle could travel through from one point in spacetime to another. Who cares about particles, Dr. Siegel? We want to transport ourselves and possibly a cool-looking but poor-performing sports car back in time.

“If we want to scale that up, however, to allow something like a human being through, that’s going to take some work. While every known particle in our Universe has positive energy and either positive or zero mass, it’s eminently possible to have negative mass/energy particles in the framework of General Relativity. Sure, we haven’t discovered any yet, but according to all the rules of theoretical physics, there’s nothing forbidding it.”

With that assumption in mind, Siegel proposes a sort of reverse wormhole. Instead of the conventional “travel 40 light years out at nearly the speed of light, come back and you’ve aged 2 years while everyone else is 82 years older,” he proposes a wormhole with one fixed end and one that moves around at nearly the speed of light. The wormhole is created, you wait a year and then enter the end that has been in motion. When you come out at the fixed end, it’s 40 years prior. That means if you entered this wormhole today, you could travel back to 1978 …

I’m right again!

… provided someone in 1977 had created this wormhole. So Dr. Siegel’s time machine wormhole is dependent on a previous Dr. Siegel-type with his theoretical physics knowledge and more. What if that person was your grandfather? Could you go back in time to meet him and prevent your own birth?

“Satisfyingly, we discover that this form of time travel also forbids the grandfather paradox! Even if the wormhole were created before your parents were conceived, there’s no way for you to exist at the other end of the wormhole early enough to go back and find your grandfather prior to that critical moment. The best you can do is to put your newborn father and mother on a ship to catch the other end of the wormhole, have them live, age, conceive you, and then send yourself back through the wormhole. You’ll be able to meet your grandfather when he’s still very young — perhaps even younger than you are now — but it will still, by necessity, occur at a moment in time after your parents were born.”

So Dr. Seigel is satisfied that he’ll never be able to prevent his own birth, but are we satisfied that we’ll ever be able to travel back in time through one of these strange theoretical (for now) wormholes?

Anyone? Doc Brown? Mister Peabody? Einstein? Bueller? Anyone?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

19-11-2017 om 20:16 geschreven door peter  

How Traveling Back In Time Could Really, Physically Be Possible

 Ethan Siegel , Contributor

Ed g2s of Wikimedia Commons

The idea of traveling back in time has long fascinated humans, such as in Back To The Future's Delorean DMC-12. After decades of research, we may have hit upon a solution that's physically possible.

It's one of the greatest tropes in movies, literature, and television shows: the idea that we could travel back in time to alter the past. From the time turner in Harry Potter to Back To The Future to Groundhog Day, traveling back in time provides us with the possibility of righting wrongs in our own past. To most people, it's an idea that's relegated to the realm of fiction, as every law of physics indicates that motion forward through time is an absolute necessity. Philosophically, there's also a famous paradox that seems to indicate the absurdity of such a possibility: if traveling backwards through time were possible, you'd be able to go back and kill your grandfather before your parents were ever conceived, rendering your own existence impossible. For a long time, there seemed to be no way to go back. But thanks to some very interesting properties of space and time in Einstein's General Relativity, traveling back in time may be possible after all.

NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

An illustration of the early Universe as consisting of quantum foam, where quantum fluctuations are large, varied, and important on the smallest of scales. Positive and negative energy fluctuations can create minuscule, quantum wormholes.

The place to start is with the physical idea of a wormhole. In our known Universe, we have tiny, minuscule quantum fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime on the smallest of scales. These include energy fluctuations in both the positive and negative directions, often very close by one another. A very strong, dense, positive energy fluctuation would create curved space in one particular fashion, while a strong, dense, negative energy fluctuation would curve space in exactly the opposite fashion. If you connected these two curvature regions together, you could — for a brief instant — arrive at the notion of a quantum wormhole. If the wormhole lasted for long enough, you could even potentially transport a particle through it, allowing it to instantly disappear from one location in spacetime and reappear in another.

Wikimedia Commons user Kes47

Exact mathematical plot of a Lorentzian wormhole. If one end of a wormhole is built out of positive mass/energy, while the other is built of negative mass/energy, the wormhole can become traversible.

If we want to scale that up, however, to allow something like a human being through, that's going to take some work. While every known particle in our Universe has positive energy and either positive or zero mass, it's eminently possible to have negative mass/energy particles in the framework of General Relativity. Sure, we haven't discovered any yet, but according to all the rules of theoretical physics, there's nothing forbidding it.

If this negative mass/energy matter exists, then creating both a supermassive black hole and the negative mass/energy counterpart to it, while then connecting them, should allow for a traversible wormhole. No matter how far apart you took these two connected objects from one another, if they had enough mass/energy — of both the positive and negative kind — this instantaneous connection would remain. All of that is great for instantaneous travel through space. But what about time? Here's where the laws of special relativity come in.

John D. Norton, via

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Special_relativity_clocks_rods/

A "light clock" will appear to run different for observers moving at different relative speeds, but this is due to the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein's law of special relativity governs how these time and distance transformations take place, but it means that the stationary and the moving parties age at different rates.

If you travel close to the speed of light, you experience a phenomenon known as time dilation. Your motion through space and your motion through time are related by the speed of light: the greater your motion through space, the less your motion through time. Imagine you had a destination that was 40 light years away, and you were able to travel at incredibly high speeds: over 99.9% the speed of light. If you got into a spaceship and traveled very close to the speed of light towards that star, then stopped, turned around, and returned back to Earth, you'd find something odd.

Due to time dilation and length contraction, you might reach your destination in only a year, and then come back in just another year. But back on Earth, 82 years would have passed. Everyone you know would have aged tremendously. This is the standard way time travel physically works: it takes you into the future, with the amount of travel forward in time dependent only on your motion through space.

Wikimedia Commons user Kjordand

Is time travel possible? With a large enough wormhole, such as one created by a supermassive black hole connected to its negative mass/energy counterpart, it just might be.

But if you construct a wormhole like we just described, the story changes. Imaging one end of the wormhole remains close to motionless, such as remaining close to Earth, while the other one goes off on a relativistic journey close to the speed of light. You then enter the rapidly-moving end of the wormhole after it's been in motion for perhaps a year. What happens?

Well, a year isn't the same for everyone, particularly if they're moving through time and space differently! If we talk about the same speeds as we did earlier, the "in motion" end of the wormhole would have aged 40 years, but the "at rest" end would only have aged by 1 year. Step into the relativistic end of the wormhole, and you arrive back on Earth only one year after the wormhole was created, while you yourself may have had 40 years of time to pass.

Twin Paradox, via http://www.twin-paradox.com/

Moving close to the speed of light will cause time to pass appreciably differently for the traveler versus the person who remains in a constant frame of reference.

If, 40 years ago, someone had created such a pair of entangled wormholes and sent them off on this journey, it would be possible to step into one of them today, in 2017, and wind up back in time at the mouth of the other one... back in 1978. The only issue is that you yourself couldn't also have been at that location back in 1978; you needed to be with the other end of the wormhole, or traveling through space to try and catch up with it.

NASA / Digital art by Les Bossinas (Cortez III Service Corp.), 1998

Warp travel, as envisioned for NASA. If you created a wormhole between two points in space, with one mouth moving relativistically relative to the other, observers at either traversible end would have aged by vastly different amounts.

Satisfyingly, we discover that this form of time travel also forbids the grandfather paradox! Even if the wormhole were created before your parents were conceived, there's no way for you to exist at the other end of the wormhole early enough to go back and find your grandfather prior to that critical moment. The best you can do is to put your newborn father and mother on a ship to catch the other end of the wormhole, have them live, age, conceive you, and then send yourself back through the wormhole. You'll be able to meet your grandfather when he's still very young — perhaps even younger than you are now — but it will still, by necessity, occur at a moment in time after your parents were born.

A great many unusual things become possible in the Universe if negative mass/energy is real, abundant, and controllable, but traveling backwards in time might be the wildest one we've ever imagined. Owing to the oddities of both special and general relativity, time travel to the past might not be forbidden after all!

{ https://www.forbes.com/science }

19-11-2017 om 01:32 geschreven door peter  

19-11-2017 om 01:13 geschreven door peter  

Inspired by the crop circle phenomenon, the 2002 movie Signsdraws broadly from the UFO mythos and, in one of its more comical scenes, has three of its characters huddled together in tinfoil hats, wracked by paranoia. Beyond such cliché, however, M. Night Shyamalan’s film exhibits a deeper—perhaps subconscious—awareness of the UFO phenomenon and of the effects of its mass-mediation in the post-modern world.

In the film, a Pennsylvanian farming family—headed by old-fashioned priest and widower Reverend Graham Hess (Mel Gibson)—is thrown into turmoil when a crop formation appears overnight in their corn field. From TV news coverage we learn that hundreds of similar crop ‘signs’ have appeared suddenly and simultaneously around the world, baffling experts. Graham is quietly concerned and seeks to distance his family from the inexplicable events unfolding around them by refusing them access to the media circus now spoon-feeding the hungry masses. “See, this is why we’re not watching TV,” says Graham, “people get obsessed.” For Graham, despite the undeniable physical reality of the sign in his corn field, and his own gut instinct that something strange is afoot, it is only through their mediation by TV news reports that the bizarre events can assume a sense of the ‘real.’

Discussing Jean Baudrillard’s notions of hyperreality, John Storey notes that, “Representation does not stand at one remove from reality, to conceal or distort it, it is reality”; implicitly aware of this, Graham opts to sever his own access to media imagery, leaving him free to interpret the outside events as he chooses and to continue to inhabit his own secure, albeit emotionally stagnant, reality. It is only when Graham catches a glimpse of an alien in his corn field one night that he submits to his family’s desire to be mediated (“Okay, let’s turn on the TV”). It is Graham’s submission to television that plants him firmly in the “present age” to which Feuerbach refers in The Essence of Christianity: an age “which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence…” For Graham, the grieving widower and priest faced with an incomprehensible threat to his family, now, more than ever, “Illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”

The reality of the situation is unpalatable for Graham, so he opts to filter it through the lens of television.

As the family watch live footage of numerous UFOs over Mexico City, Graham’s brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) quips: “the nerds were right”—a reference to the generic UFO believers he had mocked in an earlier scene. Shyamalan’s decision to have the alien craft arrive over Mexico City was inspired by the real-life mass-sightings of UFOs over this same locale during the solar eclipse of July 11, 1991 when hundreds of people witnessed what appeared to be a number of hovering, metallic, disc-shaped objects. Signs again draws from the UFO mythos during a scene in which Merrill reacts with horror as the TV news runs grainy, daylight footage of an alien prowling the backstreets of Paso Fundo, Brazil. This is an oblique reference the famous “Varginha incident” of 1996 in which three teenage girls claimed to have been traumatized by a daylight encounter with an unearthly entity in the Brazilian city of Varginha.

M. Night Shyamalan directs Abigail Breslin.

Several scenes later, the whole family has succumbed entirely to the mystical power of their television as they stare passively at the numerous “lights” now hovering over Washington DC and over hundreds of cities worldwide. Such is the magnetism of their TV screen that, rather than driving to the nearest city in an attempt to see the lights for themselves, or even simply stepping outside to glance up at the sky, the family considers it more natural to watch the events on television and, most importantly, to record them. “We have to tape this,” urges Graham’s son, Morgan, “this is very important… the history of the world’s future is on the TV right now,” telling his younger sister Bo (Abigail Breslin), “We need to record this so you can show your children this tape and say you were there.” Clearly, the Hess family understand, as theorist John Fiske does, that the postmodern media do not simply provide, “secondary representations of reality; they affect and produce the reality that they mediate,” and that, “all events that ‘matter’ are media events.”

Glued to the screen.

As the saucer-shaped lights twinkle overhead, the anchorman informs viewers that “This image has not been adjusted or enhanced in anyway. What you’re seeing is real. It’s unbelievable.” Later in the film, Graham asks himself, “Is this really happening?” Such dialogue points to an awareness on Shayamalan’s part that the literal existence of UFOs is difficult to accept, not because of what UFOs might represent (otherworldly intelligences), but because of how the phenomenon has been mediated (i.e. ridiculed) for over sixty years. Shayamalan’s concerns along these lines are expressed subtly in his decision to confine his UFOs and aliens securely to his characters’ TV screen as objects of media scrutiny for all but a few seconds of the film’s total running time.

“What you’re seeing is real. It’s unbelievable.”

The extent to which the family’s perception of UFOs has been historically mediated is also effectively illustrated through their inability to envisage what horrors might be unfolding beyond the four corners of their TV screen. When both their television and radio cease to function as a result of the unseen invasion outside, in the total absence of media to guide their perceptions, the Hess family are lost, as demonstrated when a terrified Merrill asks: “What’s going on out there?” A question to which Graham can only respond: “I can’t even imagine.” Indeed, in an earlier scene, when Merrill does attempt to make use of his imagination, he can’t help but fall back on iconographic imagery conjured by classic UFOlogical fiction, describing the scenes on TV as being “like War of the Worlds.”

During the film’s climax in which an alien intruder holds Morgan hostage in the Hess family’s living room, Shyamalan again chooses to objectify the aliens through television—this time quite literally. When Graham finally sees the alien up close it is in the form of a reflection in his TV screen, and, again, when the creature is defeated and lies dying on the floor, we see only its reflection in the glass of the television. Are aliens real, or do they exist purely as media constructs? In Signs, Shayamalan seems to answer the question with a question: “in today’s hyperreal society, does it even matter?”

One of several shots in ‘Signs’ in which the image of the alien is distorted quite literally through the televisual medium.

Signs is an anomaly in the UFO subgenre. Consciously or not, it engages with the UFO subject through the intellectual framework of spectatorship and hyperreality. As a meditation on UFOs as a media abstraction (viewed most comfortably through the filter of television), the film serves as a reflection of popular attitudes towards the phenomenon today, demonstrating that, when it comes to UFOs, even Hollywood in its mass-mediation of the phenomenon is acutely aware that there is no longer a clear distinction between a ‘real’ event and its media representation.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

19-11-2017 om 00:57 geschreven door peter  

There are serious questions being pondered and actions being taken by our top minds these days and there’s no reason why the thought process shouldn’t be open to all humans, especially since the end result could potentially put all humans in danger of being destroyed by aliens … especially aliens who don’t like techno-pop music. The questions? Would you broadcast radio signals at a planet that may contain alien life? If you say yes, would you send music or words? If you chose music, what songs would you send? Space Oddity? Rocket Man? The 1812 Overture? Space Cowboy?

GeekWire reports that a group of scientists and artists calling themselves Sónar Calling GJ273b didn’t bother to ask us before transmitting signals on three successive days, Oct. 16-18, from the EISCAT radio antenna in Tromsø, Norway. The transmissions were aimed at GJ273b, a planet twice the mass of Earth, orbiting GJ273 or Luyten’s Star, a red dwarf in the constellation Canis Major. GJ273b is in a habitable zone orbit and could harbor life, so it’s a prime target for messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) according to METI International, a co-sponsor of Sónar Calling GJ273b.

Can’t they already hear this?

The other sponsors are the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, Spain, and the Sónar music festival in Barcelona. So the inhabitants of GJ273b will someday be tapping their toes (or whatever appendages they’ve developed) to flamenco, opera, Spanish jazz and classical guitar songs – right?

“We will turn the EISCAT transmitter into a musical instrument, sending basic melodies by transmitting pulses at a series of different radio frequencies that maintain the same sort of intervals between one another that we see in the intervals between musical notes.”

What is that … polka? (Sorry, polka fans). Do we want them to like us or hate us? Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, says those “pulses” were composed especially for this project by people like sound artist Holly Herndon, French composer Jean-Michel Jarre and the experimental electronic-music duo Matmos.

That might not be too bad … except the Sónar Calling pieces are only 10 seconds long and transmitted as binary code at two frequencies, 929.0 MHz and 930.2 MHz. The signal will also contain some sort of ‘cosmic clock’ to help ETs figure out our concept of time … which will help them know when to clap to the music.

People like Stephen Hawking think METI is a bad idea, but this musical cat is out of the bag, man, so we should have some input into what’s being sent to other life forms. This could be an exercise that brings us all together. Then again, have you ever been involved in picking out music for a DJ to play at a wedding?

Would aliens request Freebird?

What could possibly go wrong? It’s worth a shot. My vote is for some New Orleans jazz like When the Saints Go Marching In. Even aliens should like that. And if they don’t, they can play it at our funeral after they destroy Earth.

What music would you send to an extraterrestrial civilization?

19-11-2017 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

Fast Moving Meteor-Like Object from Space Captured by ISS Astronaut

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured a meteor-like object slam into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up over the Atlantic Ocean on November 5, 2017 from the International Space Station.

The space object, traveling at roughly 24 miles per second (40km/s), was sighted over the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of South Africa.

Several lightning flashes were also recorded by Nespoli as the Space Station flew from the southern Atlantic Ocean over to Kazakhstan.

  

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

19-11-2017 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Does Astronaut’s Visor Reflection Shows A Mysterious Figure On The Moon?

Many people believe that the Apollo moon landings were one of the biggest hoaxes in human history. They believe that NASA has created this hoax. They actually never traveled to the moon and that everything was staged and filmed here on earth.

Personally I believe that the moon landings were real but if you look at a particular moon landing image showing one of the astronauts and you look at a close-up view of the astronaut’s helmet then in the visor reflection you see a mysterious figure that doesn’t really look like an astronaut.

Now conspiracy theorists suggest that the mysterious figure could be a member of the film crew who has filmed the so-called moon landing here on earth.

Rather than a member of the film crew maybe the strange figure in the visor reflection is just the second astronaut with his camera strapped to his chest of his astronaut’s space suit aimed towards the first astronaut as seen in the image or the image was taken from a steady, tripod-mounted camera using the camera timer before taking the image?

Maybe but then again, if you compare the astronaut in his astronaut’s space suit with the strange figure as seen in the visor reflection then indeed the figure doesn’t really look like an astronaut but more like a person sitting on a square-like box.

Image above: Left - astronaut in space suit, Middle – figure in visor reflection, Right – same figure “sitting on a square-like box” but in negative image.

Here is the original NASA link and decide for yourself whether the figure in the visor reflection is the second astronaut, a member of the film crew on earth or something else.

Link: https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-141-21608HR.jpg

  

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

19-11-2017 om 00:32 geschreven door peter  

Eyewitness Illustrations of UFOs From Declassified Drawings

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the British Government had a UFO desk and telephone hotline that collected around 11,000 cryptic sightings between 1962 and 2009 from across the UK. The formerly classified files have been made accessible to the public. Among reports on UFOs and mysterious lights are drawings that attempt to describe the sightings.

Book author David Clarke said that sketches of UFOs might appear naïve or worthless if viewed from a purely aesthetic viewpoint. However, they are uniquely valuable historical documents in their own right and give light on how popular culture of the age and events imprinted on the imaginations of the people.

Among the most exciting drawings on declassified witness reports are the elementary school children’s crude crayon on construction paper drawings. The children claimed to have witnessed a flying saucer in 1977 altogether. Another notable illustration is a beautiful painting of bright white object spotted above a roof in Harborne in 1975.

The drawings depict the incredible diversity of movement, colours, and shape of the UFOs, ranging from soaring discs to dark triangular ships, and large hovering eggs. Each sketch and painting is with a personal account.

The MoD desk may be closed for good, but the visual record of these personal experiences will remain the evidence of a widespread, mysterious event.

{www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

19-11-2017 om 00:17 geschreven door peter  

Police Receives A Lot of Reports On The Strange Fireball From Anxious Germans

A bizarre fireball in a dramatic appearance was observed speeding through the sky over Germany. Citizens in Italy and Switzerland had also seen the UFO getting brighter and giving out the blue and green light. German police speculated that it was a celestial body.

The UFO sighting video shows the bright aerial thing speeding over the town of Hoeschen, sparking speculations about aliens. It then faded into the distance.

The fireball resulted in the number of calls received by the police. A police spokesman said that they could not tell what the bright light was.

Christian Hoppe, German air traffic control spokesman, said they could not tell anything other than saying that it was not an aircraft.

Anxious witnesses took to Twitter to share their thoughts about what they had observed.

Aliens spacecraft, a meteor, or a crashing Chinese space stations are just among the possibilities being put forward on the social media.

Most witnesses of the UFO came from the German states of Saarland, Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as the southern part of Hesse. However, the same UFO was also spotted in Switzerland and Italy, particularly on the other side of the Alps at Lake Garda.

19-11-2017 om 00:14 geschreven door peter  

Villagers Worry About Mysterious Lights In The Sky Staying In A Formation

Rumours of an alien invasion started to spread after seven lights that stayed in one formation as if linked appeared in the sky above the village of Novogradovka in Odessa Oblast, Ukraine. The bizarre sights raised suspicions of UFO invasion or visitation. One social media user went as far as likening the flying shapes to a variation of the Starfleet insignia utilised in the Star Trek television shows and movies.

Ivan Rusev, who posted the footage online, claimed that the objects just appeared suddenly in the sky and remained visible for about 12-15 minutes.

There have been reports that the lights were used as targets for Ukrainian marines for their training, but no details were released, including what they were made of.

Residents were worried about the incident, but an army spokesman came out to assure them that there was no reason for any concern.

However, social media users aired out their views. One user posted that those UFOs came to claim what is theirs while another said that it looks like something is bound to happen.

Another witness added that it appears like massive fireballs making a formation at high altitude and wondered why do those things appear now, what triggers them and why no reports on them before.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

19-11-2017 om 00:09 geschreven door peter  

OVNIS : la guerre de la conscience

EN EXCLUSIVITE pour OVNIS-DIRECT par Philippe SOLAL, Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie

I. Le matérialisme des neurosciences

Le titre de cet article reprend celui d’une conférence Tedx (Whitechapel), donnée le 12 janvier 2013 par l’écrivain britannique Graham Hancock, conférence intitulée « La guerre de la conscience » (« The War on Consciousness »), entendue comme une guerre contre la conscience. Le propos qui y est développé est admirable, il touche du doigt la nouvelle interprétation du phénomène OVNI que je développe avec les auteurs de l’ouvrage Ovnis et Conscience, et comme on pouvait s’y attendre, la vidéo de cette intervention  fut ensuite bannie de la chaine des Tedx, car jugée bien trop subversive par rapport à la science officielle matérialiste.

On nous explique désormais que tous les témoignages d’OVNIS reposent sur un mécanisme cérébral qui génère des faux souvenirs dans le présent. Les rencontres rapprochées ? Des hallucinations liées aux paralysies du sommeil, vu que, comme chacun sait, c’est vers 6h du matin que les RR3 se produisent le plus fréquemment et que c’est aussi à cette heure que se produisent en majorité de telles paralysies. Les NDE ? Une molécule dans le cerveau dont l’excitation, selon des conditions spécifiques, produit une vision hallucinatoire, toujours identique, avec tunnel, lumière blanche etc. On pourrait même, parait-il, en provoquer sur commande !

Mais il y a plus : la conscience n’existe pas.  Les neurosciences nous disent que tout est cérébral, matériel. Grâce aux IRM et autres moyens technologiques dont la science s’est dotée, on a expliqué ce qu’est la conscience : un « espace de travail global », comme l’écrit Stanislas Dehaene dans son ouvrage très remarqué, Le Code de la conscience. Celui-ci a pu distinguer par résonance magnétique fonctionnelle les territoires du cortex cérébral mobilisés par un traitement conscient et non conscient de l’information. Quand, nous dit-il, le sujet traite un stimulus visuel, un mot, de façon non consciente, seules quelques aires, essentiellement postérieures, « s'allument ». Au contraire, quand il y a accès à l'espace conscient, les territoires corticaux mis en activité sont beaucoup plus vastes et incluent en priorité le cortex frontal.

Les travaux de Stanislas Dahaene sont d’une remarquable précision et il faudrait être sot pour ne pas en saluer la valeur.  Ils se situent dans la cadre de l’approche matérialiste de la conscience comme l’ont fait avant lui Jean-Pierre Changeux (L’homme neuronal) ou plus récemment François Anceau (Vers une étude objective de la conscience) et bien d’autres avec eux.  Là où se situe la contestation, de nature philosophique, concerne les conclusions auxquelles aboutissent leurs travaux respectifs : le réductionnisme de la conscience à des fonctions cérébrales, c’est-à-dire la naturalisation de la conscience.  On confond ici la perception consciente et la conscience, le traitement de l’information par le cerveau (qu’il soit global, séquentiel ou hyper-parallèle) et la saisie conjointe du monde extérieur et de sa propre identité par la conscience. La conscience est une connaissance immédiate irréductible à toute modélisation à partir des concepts issus de l’univers de l’intelligence artificielle, car elle transcende toute description en termes de schéma fonctionnel. 

Stanislas Dehaene, dans la vidéo suivante, se réfère de manière très pertinente, à Descartes et à sa théorie des animaux-machines :

Nous ne sommes plus seulement des « machines désirantes » (comme l’écrivait Gilles Deleuze) mais aussi désormais des « machines pensantes », des ordinateurs sur pattes mais faits de chair et de sang. Nous sommes désormais « de la viande » comme le dit Graham Hancock dans la vidéo donnée plus haut.  Exit la spiritualité, fini le Bouddhisme, terminé la transcendance. Les NDE ? Des Hallucinations. Les expériences shamaniques ? Un dérèglement du cerveau. La vie de l’esprit ? Une computation, etc.

Philippe Guillemant a tout à fait raison d’écrire que cette voie nous conduit tout droit au transhumanisme, forme d’étape ultime de l’asservissement de l’homme par le matérialisme scientifique qui règne en maître et sans partage depuis la fin du XIXe siècle.  Ce matérialisme est à la Connaissance ce que le matérialisme dialectique fut à l’action et à la politique : un totalitarisme et une source d’oppression. Il a « désenchanté » le monde, en le vidant de toute spiritualité, de tout sens, de toute liberté.

J’ose à peine imaginer la tête d’un Stanislas Dehaene, couvert d’honneurs et de toutes les distinctions officielles qu’on peut imaginer depuis 1999, si on lui signalait que certains essaient de réenchanter le monde à partir de l’étude du phénomène OVNI. Il se gondolerait de rire, avec toute la suffisance qui est celle de la science matérialiste officielle, oublieuse du fait que ses principaux pères fondateurs, Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, étaient tous dualistes et donc spiritualistes.

II. Les trois axes

Désormais c’est sur le terrain des neurosciences que la recherche ufologique doit se développer, si tant est qu’il y ait eu jusqu’à présent une recherche ufologique digne de ce nom, je veux dire, une recherche doté d’un cadre théorique cohérent capable de produire des modèles d’explication précis. La physique de l’information et de la conscience n’est qu’une promesse, mais elle pourrait en fournir un, le plus puissant et, à mes yeux, le plus satisfaisant jamais proposé. Si la conscience était « naturalisée » et annexée par le matérialisme scientifique, ce cadre tomberait de lui-même, et le psycho-réductionnisme des sceptiques deviendrait un neuro-réductionnisme. L’enjeu est là, et il nous permet de distinguer désormais trois axes bien différents en ce qui concerne la question des OVNIS :

1. L’axe exobiologique, qui rejette la réalité du phénomène OVNI et se concentre sur la recherche d’exoplanètes habitées et l’écoute de signaux intelligents (programme SETI). Cette recherche subit le fameux « paradoxe » de Fermi (silence radio sur toute la ligne) et, selon moi, ils vont pouvoir attendre longtemps un signal.

2. L’axe « ufologie interplanétaire » (aussi appelée « tôle et boulon ») qui repose sur une méconnaissance de l’étrangeté du phénomène et sur la variété de ses manifestations (polymorphisme). Cette méconnaissance est due au phénomène lui-même qui, comme l’écrivait Carl Jung, entretient un « mythe moderne », celui du vaisseau spatial venant nous visiter d’outre-espace. Cette voie est bouchée car elle tombe « dans le panneau » du simulacre, qui sollicite et flatte notre rêve de conquête spatiale par la technologie.

3. L’axe d’une ufologie spiritualiste, qui est celui que je défends, dans la lignée d’auteurs comme Keel ou Aimé Michel, qui avaient compris, sans être eux-mêmes compris car trop en avance, que le phénomène nous met devant les yeux nos propres fantasmes (monstres, cryptides) et nos propres rêves (merveilleuses soucoupes, êtres angéliques, etc.).  Ces auteurs avaient compris que nous poursuivons nos propres chimères mais que derrière ce théâtre d’ombres, se révèle un univers des consciences, une noosphère, l’univers réel, où toute communication et toute matérialisation utilise le canal de la conscience et le jeu sur l’information. On comprend pourquoi il devient dès lors stratégique pour les sceptiques de couper court aux recherches sur la conscience en affirmant que seule la matière existe et que la conscience n’existe pas.

III. Conclusion

Pour terminer je voudrais revenir sur ces deux personnalités : Hancock et Dehaene. L’un parle de notre liberté, l’autre formalise notre asservissement.  Le premier est banni des TedX, le second est couvert d’honneurs. La statue de la connaissance humaine, qui a la tête a l’envers, aura décidément bien du mal à être remise à l’endroit. Et pourtant, quand nous serons des milliers, des millions à dire et à penser comme Graham Hancock, dans la vidéo signalée en ce début de cet article,  nous commencerons à mettre fin à l'imposture du matérialisme scientifique et un palier de conscience aura été franchi.

Philippe Solal

{ http://ovnis-direct.com/ }

19-11-2017 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

BOSTON DYNAMICS UNVEILS STUNNING ROBOT THAT CAN RUN, JUMP AND EXECUTE THE PERFECT BACKFLIP

Boston Dynamics unveils stunning robot that can run, jump and execute the perfect backflip

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18-11-2017 om 02:04 geschreven door peter  

Scientists have just sent out a message an Alien world

Scientists have just sent out a message towards two potentially habitable worlds, and experts hope Aliens will reply.

Astronomers have just sent out a message to TWO potentially habitable alien worlds located 12 light years away. If those two planets are home to an alien civilization, the aliens could respond and the answer would arrive back to earth by 2042.

Another effort in contacting aliens has been made by scientists who have just beamed a message to two planets that according to data, may be capable of sustaining life as we know it.

The message was sent out to GJ273, a red dwarf star located around 12 light years from Earth.

Scientists chose GJ273 as it is believed to be home to two potentially habitable worlds, and is located relatively close to Earth.

The message is part of a project called Sónar Calling, led by the Sónar organization, who sought the help of METI International (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), as reported by IFLScience.

The GJ273 system.

Image Credit: Sonar Calling

In an interview with Space.com, Mr. Douglas Vakoch, president of METI, said:

‘It is a prototype for what I think we would most likely need to do 100 times, or 1,000 times, or 1 million times. To me, the big success of the project will come if, 25 years from now, there’s someone who remembers to look [for a response]. If we could accomplish that, that would be a radical shift of perspective.’

The message to ET carried a scientific and mathematical tutorial, and 33 short musical excerpts created by various artists from the Sonar music festival.

The message was beamed towards the stars in a binary code at two different radio frequencies on October 16, 17 and 18, using the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association radio antenna in Tromsø, Norway.

If aliens actually spot our message identify open, and decide to answer, we could receive it by 2042.

And while this may be a revolutionary era for humans, not everyone agrees this is such a good idea.

Professor Stephen Hawkins has heavily criticized scientists for sending out messages into space, saying that it was too risky as we don’t know whether or not aliens are friendly.

Professor Hawking is worried that if aliens see our message, they would be able to trace it back to Earth and may want to conquer and colonize our planet.

Speaking about the dangers of sending out our location in the universe, Professor Hawking compared the arrival of aliens to Earth to the arrival of Columbus in America:

“If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

But despite these warnings, Mr. Vakoch is convinced that sending a message to the stars, specifically the star GJ273, aka Luyten’s star, isn’t a risk for our civilization.

“It’s really hard to imagine a scenario in which a civilization around Luyten’s star could have the capacity to come to Earth and threaten us, and yet they’re not able to pick up our leakage radiation.”

Scientists are planning on sending out another message to aliens in April 2018, at different radio frequencies.

Source: Sónar Calling

Featured image credit: Danielle Futselaar / METI 

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

18-11-2017 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

Time travel ‘Technically possible’ says expert—but only if you are going back in time

‘…nothing is forbidding it’ in the laws of theoretical physics.” We would basically need to create a wormhole in such a way that one end of it remained almost entirely motionless, while its other end moves at speed almost equal to the speed of light.

Time travel has only been possible in science fiction books, and conspiracy theories. Both genres are filled with stories and theories on how to travel in time.

And despite the fact that time travel is a concept familiar to modern society, the truth is that tales of time travel can be traced back thousands of years back to ancient civilizations from Asia, to the Americas.

Despite the fact that we have made an incredible technological advancement in the last couple of decades, we have still been unable to explain and demonstrate how time travel would be possible.

Some scientists have argued it’s not.

However, we might be able to travel in time after all, according to an astrophysicist who says its theoretically possible, and there are no limitations.

The rules of theoretical physics have certain conditions that would allow for the creation of ‘wormholes’ which would eventually allow ‘humans’ to travel back to different areas.

Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel of Lewis & Clark College wrote the Forbes blog Starts With A Bang:

“While we still haven’t discovered the conditions we need to travel back in time and find the necessary means by which we can create a large enough system for humans to do so, ‘nothing is forbidding it’ in the laws of theoretical physics.”

Is time travel possible?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

As explained by the expert, traveling backward in time would rely on the baffling equivalent to positive energy / positive or zero mass particles found across the cosmos, the negative mass/energy particles, which have long been theorized by experts but never yet identified.

“If this negative mass/energy matter is real, then building both a supermassive black hole and the negative mass/energy equivalent to it, while then connecting them, should make it possible for a traversable wormhole to become reality,” Siegel explains.

“No matter how far apart you took these to connected objects from one another, if they had enough mass/energy – of both the positive and the negative kind – this instantaneous connection would remain.”

The theory sounds just like science fiction.

We would need to build a wormhole in such a way that one end of it remained almost entirely motionless, while its other end moves at speed almost equal to the speed of light.

We would need to create an elaborate system of wormholes in order to travel back in time.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

A piece of cake, right?

If we were to create such a system, theoretically a person may be able to travel backward in time.

So how would we travel back in time, if we were to build such a complex system?

Dr. Siegel explains it in a scenario with a destination located 40 light years away.

After one year has passed, the fast-moving end of the wormhole would have gone through 40 years, while the other end would have only experienced a year go by.

“If 40 years ago, someone had created such a pair of entangled wormholes and sent them off on this journey, it would be possible to step into one of them today, in 2017, and wind up back in time at the mouth of the other one… back in 1978,” Siegel writes.

“The only issue is that you yourself couldn’t also have been at that location back in 1978; you needed to be with the other end of the wormhole, or traveling through space to try and catch up with it.”

Source: How Traveling Back In Time Could Really, Physically Be Possible

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18-11-2017 om 01:31 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers find the Milky Way has a ‘Twin’ Galaxy that looks just like our own

Located 180 light years away, astronomers have spotted a supermassive spiral galaxy that seems to be the Milky Way galaxy’s twin. But, not only does this galaxy look like our own, it also has two satellite galaxies, just like the Milky Way. The discovery caught experts by surprise. They say such an arrangement is extremely rare.

Dubbed NCG 2718, the mystery galaxy not only looks like our galaxy, but it also contains a pair of orbiting galaxies that look just like the two satellite galaxies interacting with the Milky Way.

An extremely rare discovery

To understand more about the Milky Way’s twin galaxy, researchers will further study it hoping to learn more about it.

But as experts note, it’s an extremely rare discovery.

If we take a look at the Milky Way Galaxy and the two orbiting galaxies—the large and small Magellanic Clouds—we will notice how these two still have enough gas to spawn NEW stars, unlike many other galaxies which have run out of material.

 

The spiral Galaxy BGC 2718.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are located 160,00 and 200,000 light years away from Earth.

And this is precisely what caught experts by surprise. The arrangement of a giant spiral galaxy like the Milky Way and two orbiting satellite galaxies like the Large and Small Magellanic cloud is extremely rare.

This is why researchers from the Yonsei University wanted to see if they could spot the pattern anywhere else in the universe.

To their surprise, they did after going through images of around 20,000 smaller galaxies in hopes of spotting a similar cosmic layout.

Their search revealed that the massive spiral galaxy referred to as NGC 2718, located in the constellation Hydra eerily resembles the Milky Way Galaxy, and just as our galaxy, has two orbiting galaxies called UGC 4703 and UGC 4703B.

We show the SDSS r−band image of an area around NGC 2718 and its satellites with a field of view of Rain 90×50.

Image Credit: arXiv

Experts wrote in their study: ‘Based on the comparison of physical and morphological properties with that of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC), we report that the UGC 4703 pair-NGC 2718 system is probably an LMC-SMC-MW analogue.’

This discovery follows a study from 2011 which found that galaxies with the layout resembling our own are extremely rare in the universe.

Speaking about the study in 2011, Dr. Philip James, a physicist at Liverpool John Moores University who led the study told New Scientist: ‘They have definitely found a better analogue than any of the cases we presented.’

Source: New Scientist

Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1710.09040

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

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18-11-2017 om 01:15 geschreven door peter  

A Stable Plasma Ring Has Been Created in Open Air For the First Time Ever

by Dom Galeon

 

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18-11-2017 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

There’s an abundance of antimatter in our atmosphere, and dark matter decay might be to blame

BY TIBI PUIU 

Crab nebula.

Credit: NASA.

In 2008, physicists found that the number of high-energy positrons — the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron — hitting Earth was three times greater than the Standard Model predicted. Some scientists have suggested that nearby pulsars, which expel copious amounts of positrons as they spin erratically, could account for the extra positions. One new study, however, proposes that this antimatter may be the result of decaying particles of dark matter. 

Stranger than fiction

Dark matter is an elusive and hypothetical substance that is supposed to comprise roughly 5/6 of all matter in the universe. Scientists have never been able to directly observe dark matter, which seems to be invisible to current means of observation, but they do have good reasons to believe dark matter exists judging from the gravitational effects it exerts on ordinary matter.

Though not as weird as dark matter, antimatter is also another exotic physical quirk. You’ve likely heard a lot about antimatter in the science fiction universe. Star Trek’s starship Enterprise uses matter-antimatter annihilation propulsion for faster-than-light travel and in the famous book Angels and Demons, (spoiler alert) Professor Langdon tries to save Vatican City from an antimatter bomb. Unlike dark matter, though, we know for sure that antimatter is real.

Every particle of ordinary matter has an antimatter counterpart which is equal in mass but opposite in charge. When the two kinds of particles meet, they annihilate each other while releasing energetic photons called gamma rays.

There are many unsolved riddles surrounding antimatter. For instance, antimatter should have annihilated all ordinary matter during the Big Bang. Scientists think the reason why galaxies, stars, and eventually we exist in the first place is that there was one extra matter particle for every billion matter-antimatter pairs.

Antimatter is closer to us than most people think. Small amounts of antimatter — at a rate ranging from less than one per square meter to more than 100 per square meter — constantly rain down on the Earth in the form of cosmic rays, energetic particles from space. Antimatter can be found closer yet.  The average banana (rich in potassium) produces a positron roughly once every 75 minutes. That’s because potassium-40 will occasionally split out a positron in the process of radioactive decay.

When researchers working with the space-based instrument PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) detected an overabundance of positrons hitting Earth’s atmosphere, things got weird. For a long time, scientists have thought that all of this extra positrons are sourced from pulsars.

A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star which emits electromagnetic signals. These objects are also very dense, concentrating the mass of the sun in a diameter comparable to that of a large city. Pulsars radiate two steady, narrow beams of light in opposite directions from their poles. Although the light from the beam is steady, pulsars appear to flicker because they also spin really fast, and so constantly spin these polar rays around. For this reason, pulsars have earned the nickname of ‘cosmic lighthouses’.

But now, writing in a recently published paper in the journal Science, a team of researchers claims these candidates —  a pair of pulsars less than a thousand light-years away — aren’t the likely culprit.

“When I started this work, I really believed it was pulsars,” lead author Rubén López Coto of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics told National Geographic. “But these two pulsars actually cannot provide enough positrons in order to account for this positron excess.”

A new suspect: dark matter

HAWC detector consisting of 300 large water tanks, each with four photodetectors.

Credit: Jordan A. Goodman

Coto and colleagues refer to observations made at the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC), a science laboratory nestled at the base of a volcano four hours away from Mexico City. When gamma rays from annihilated positrons interact with the atmosphere, they generate showers of particles that hit the planet’s surface. Inside HAWC, scientists have placed 300 corrugated steel tanks filled with water. When the extremely high-energetic particles strike the tanks, they generate flashes of light which can be used to distinguish the signature and origin of the gamma rays that triggered the particle cascade.

By back-tracking from the gamma-ray observations, the HAWC team found that the pulsars’ positrons were not moving fast enough to arrive on Earth. This implies that the interstellar medium between the two pulsars and Earth is likely murky, preventing the positrons from reaching Earth.

“HAWC scans about one third of the sky overhead, giving us the first wide-angle view of high-energy light from the sky,” says study co-author Jordan Goodman, a particle astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Before HAWC there were observatories that were highly sensitive to high-energy gamma rays, but they had relatively limited fields of view. With HAWC, we can see how gamma rays are diffusing from these pulsars across wide regions of sky.”

If the two pulsars, called Geminga and Monogem, aren’t the source of positron overabundance in Earth’s atmosphere, then “other pulsars, other types of cosmic accelerators such as microquasars and supernova remnants, or the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles” must be considered.

Not everyone is convinced that dark matter could be the source, though. Since dark matter is literally everywhere, it follows that the signature generated by dark matter particles annihilating one another should be ubiquitous — but they’re not. It could be that the positrons are sourced from even more unconventional sources such as high-energy particles produced by black holes.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

18-11-2017 om 00:17 geschreven door peter  

L’armée de l’air américaine tente d’intercepter un ovni

Un avion non identifié a été vu en train de voler parmi d’autres avions de ligne dans le ciel de l’Oregon, aux États-Unis. Inquiète, l’armée de l’air a même envoyé des avions de chasse à sa recherche, en vain.

Le 25 octobre dernier, un mystérieux ovni a semé la panique dans le ciel de l’Oregon. Un avion sans aucun plan de vol, ni transpondeur d’identification, bref, sans aucun appareil permettant de l’identifier et de reconnaître sa trajectoire. Les stations de contrôle aérien ont déclenché l’alarme après l’échec des tentatives de communication avec l’appareil.

Tout de suite après, l’Agence fédérale de l’aviation des États-Unis (FAA) a demandé l’aide du Commandement aérospatial de l’Amérique du Nord (NORAD) pour traquer l’ovni. Entre 10 000 et 12 000 mètres, là où volent habituellement les vols commerciaux, aucune trace de l’appareil. L’US Air Force (l’armée de l’air américaine) a même envoyé plusieurs chasseurs intercepteurs F-15C pour tenter de repérer le mystérieux avion, décrit simplement comme un « objet volant de couleur blanche ». Mais toujours rien.

Quelques témoins et beaucoup de rumeurs

Les rumeurs ont rapidement fusé sur internet. Certaines évoquent même un possible trafic de drogue. Les rares informations collectées sur cet appareil non identifié concernent sa vitesse : celle d’un avion de ligne classique. « Quelques équipages ont pu le suivre visuellement. Mais personne n’a pu le voir d’assez prêt pour reconnaître de quel type » d’avion il s’agissait, selon un des pilotes.

Quelques pilotes ont pu le repérer brièvement sur leur radar, mais impossible de le suivre pour autant. « Le dernier avion à le voir devait descendre à l’aéroport de Portland et l’a perdu de vue. » C’était au-dessus de la vallée de Willamette, direction nord.

« Les chasseurs ont volé un certain temps, mais ne l’ont pas trouvé. Et c’est tout. » Pourtant, ce vol pourrait constituer une violation de l’espace aérien, et constituer une menace pour la sécurité des États-Unis.

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18-11-2017 om 00:07 geschreven door peter  

Scientist Has Performed a Human Head Transplant, But There's a Catch

"A full head swap between brain dead organ donors is the next stage."

By Peter Hess

The controversial Italian doctor Sergio Canavero claims he’s successfully performed a human head transplant, demonstrating that the technique is ready for prime time. At a press conference on Friday morning, the Italian neurosurgeon reported that, in an 18-hour surgery, he transplanted a head onto a corpse in China, proving that it’s possible to connect blood vessels, nerves, and the spine. Canavero, the director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, has talked a big game for years about his plans to transplant human heads, and he says this latest achievement proves it can be done.

In the Telegraph on Friday, Canavero said that an operation on a living human will happen very soon.

“The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain dead organ donors is the next stage,” he said. “And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.”

There’s plenty of reason not to believe Canavero, who has been making these outrageous claims for years, much to the chagrin of the global medical and scientific community. This latest announcement builds on his previous claim, in January 2016, that he’d transplanted a monkey head. Then as now, however, he never provided enough proof to convince the scientific community. When Inversepreviously reported on Canavero, reporter Ben Guarino called his goal of transplanting a living human head onto the body of a brain-dead person “not fucking likely,” and this latest announcement does little to adjust our assessment.

The 18-hour surgery took half as long as Canavero previously estimated, which he attributes to time-saving techniques from his team of Chinese colleagues, led by Dr. Xiaoping Ren. Once again, Canavero did not provide evidence of the successful operation, though he did say a paper would be made public in the next few days.

So far, the papers linked to his research that he has managed to publish in peer-reviewed journals include only a handful in Surgery, which were carefully editedto focus specifically on Canavero’s treatments for traumatic spinal cord injury, and a series published in the controversial journal Surgical Neurology International, in which he lays out his idea of “head anastomosis venture” — or HEAVEN, for short.

Subsequent procedures will be performed in China, said Canavero, since the “Americans did not understand.” Canavero, whose work continually pushes the boundaries of medical ethics, seems to envision himself as a modern version of Copernicus or Galileo, someone who is so far ahead of his time that he appears heretical. But it’s more likely that he’s simply selling snake oil.

In 2015, when Canavero first came on the scene, outspoken medical ethicist Arthur Caplan told Forbes that the doctor is out of his mind, and that his goal was unattainable and irresponsible. “It is both rotten scientifically and lousy ethically,” wrote Caplan.

Arthur Caplan @ArthurCaplan

Head transplant carried out in monkey, claims maverick surgeon | New Scientist

 #b.s. #head transplant https://www.newscientist.com/article/2073923-head-transplant-carried-out-in-monkey-claims-maverick-surgeon/ …

6:51 PM - Jan 19, 2016

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Inverse reported earlier this year that Canavero said he’d be able to thaw cryonically preserved brains in 2018. Now, just as then, Canavero has done nothing to inspire any confidence in his claims.

Nonetheless, he’s found a willing subject in a Russian computer scientist named Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease, a muscle condition that leaves him wheelchair-bound. Spiridonov’s condition is debilitating, and he deserves a chance at life if he can get one, but this procedure is not likely to give him more than an accelerated and gruesome death.

If Canavero wants to prove himself to the medical community, he should make incremental advances, like connecting nerves in people with severed spinal cords. But instead, he’s setting his goal at the very peak of what could be achievable, and as such, he’s likely to fall flat.

17-11-2017 om 23:57 geschreven door peter