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 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 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...
On October 17, 2017, NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of an unusual cloud pattern off the coast of southern Australia.
According to Paul Lainio, a meteorologist at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, the pattern was caused by a phenomenon in the atmosphere called gravity waves. Similar to a boat’s wake, which forms as water is pushed upward by the boat and pulled downward again by gravity, these clouds are formed by the rise and fall of air columns. As the wave moves along the cloud band, the wave peaks appear cloudy and the troughs appear cloud-free. In this case, the gravity waves developed as a result of instability on the flank of a strong jet stream moving ahead of the cold front. Lainio said:
This type of effect is relatively unusual since it requires a strong anticyclonic-curved jet that develops gravity waves of sufficient magnitude. The gravity waves are the atmosphere’s way of restoring balance, and they usually don’t last for lengthy periods.
Bottom line: Satellite image of cloud pattern off southern Australia.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way and a beautiful night-sky gem for those in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. Here it is in the light of atomic hydrogen. Whoa!
Atomic hydrogen gas in the Small Magellanic Cloud, via the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder
Astronomers at Australian National University (ANU) said on November 28, 2017 that they’ve created the most detailed radio image yet of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a famous sky-sight from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere and a dwarf galaxy orbiting our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The image shows the galaxy not in terms of its stars and dust, as optical images do, but in terms of its hydrogen gas. ANU astronomer Naomi McClure-Griffiths, who co-led the study, said:
Hydrogen is the fundamental building block of all galaxies and shows off the more extended structure of a galaxy than its stars and dust.
She said the image reveals distortions to the Small Magellanic Cloud, which likely occurred because of its interactions with the larger galaxies and because of its own star explosions that push gas out of the galaxy:
The outlook for this dwarf galaxy is not good, as it’s likely to eventually be gobbled up by our Milky Way.
Together, the [Large and Small] Magellanic Clouds are characterised by their distorted structures, a bridge of material that connects them, and an enormous stream of hydrogen gas that trails behind their orbit – a bit like a comet.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds by Justin Ng of Singapore.
The astronomers said their new radio image helps them understand how the Small Magellanic Cloud – and presumably the several dozen dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way – formed and evolved.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) – the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia – acquired the image via its new radio telescope, called the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Naomi McClure-Griffiths said:
The new image … reveals more gas around the edges of the galaxy, indicating a very dynamic past for the Small Magellanic Cloud. These features are more than three times smaller than we were able to see before and allow us to probe the detailed interaction of the small galaxy and its environment.
The new image (top of post) was created as part of a survey that aims to study the evolution of galaxies.
Philip Mantle Interview, discussing his involvement in ufology over many...
Philip Mantle Interview, discussing his involvement in ufology over many...
Alejandro Rojas live with UFO Updates and guest, Philip Mantle discusses several very interesting UFO cases in the UK, some fascinating unknowns, abduction accounts, recent book releases that he has published and what in the world the British tabloids are doing with the UFO topic.
Philip Mantle has been involved in four decades of UFO research and been at the forefront of British ufology since the first meeting of the Yorkshire UFO Society organised by Graham and Mark Birdsall. Their humble YUFOS newsletter eventually became the respected and much missed UFO Magazine in the UK.
His UFO research saw his investigate many strange cases in and around the Yorkshire region in northern England and he held the position of Director of Investigations with BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) for a number of years.
He is now very much active in the field of ufology and is an established author and publisher with Flying Disk Press.
In this interview conducted by Pierre Sabak and Anthony Beckett he talks candidly about his years of UFO research and his view on the phenomenon and the state of ufology now and in decades past.
Philip Mantle is an international UFO researcher, lecturer and broadcaster. His books have been published in six different languages around the world. He is the former Director of Investigations for the British UFO Research Association and former MUFON representative for England. Philip has written articles and features for numerous publications around the world and has been both editor and assistant editor of high street UFO publications. He lives in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England
It’s finally here. The trailer for Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War has arrived, and to call it a big one is an understatement. First things first, yes, this is an entirely different trailer than the one that was screened at San Diego Comic-Con this past July. Some shots are reused, notably Spider-Man swinging around in his snazzy new spider-suit, but this trailer is all-new. Alan Silvestri’s signature Avengers theme has been redone, with bleaker notes, to emphasize just how apocalyptic Thanos will be when he comes looking for the Infinity Stones.
As the 19th film in the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe, Infinity Warunites all the major movie superheroes (sorry, Defenders) to fight Thanos, who ravages New York, Wakanda, and who knows where else on planet Earth to wield ultimate power in his Infinity Gauntlet.
With so much going on in the trailer, here’s a breakdown of all the most important things to remember about the MCU and how they’re changing in Infinity War.
18. “There was an idea…”
If the opening narration sounds familiar, it’s Nick Fury’s “There was an idea…” speech redone by a few Avengers, each of them taking a line. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Vision (Paul Bettany), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) all provide an ominous voice-over of Nick Fury’s inspiring pre-battle speech, which has a darker hue now as Thanos is here on Earth.
17. Bruce Banner Is Back
The big tension for the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in Thor: Ragnarok was whether or not Bruce Banner could turn back after being Hulked out for so long. Ragnarok ended with Bruce as the Hulk, leaving it in doubt whether or not the big green guy could transform back into mild-mannered Bruce. Well, the first five seconds of the trailer answers that question, with a stunned Bruce looking up at two familiar faces: Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Wong (Benedict Wong).
16. Human Vision
Vision’s got some upgrades. The synthesized android appears in a more “human” form with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). And just like in the comics, his relationship with her has blossomed into something romantic.
Years after the Battle of New York in The Avengers, New York is the target for an invasion once more. As Thanos arrives on Earth, Manhattan erupts into chaos. People panic outside Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum while Peter Parker (Tom Holland) experiences a severe form of his spider-sense.
13. Loki and the Space Stone
As seen in the Comic-Con preview, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) hands the Space Stone to a mysterious figure, who in all likelihood is Thanos. At the end of Ragnarok, Loki was in Odin’s vault when he took a second to gaze at the Space Stone, hinting that he took a great power with him.
12. Evil Has Never Looked So Good
Say hello to Thanos, played by Josh Brolin.
11. New Spidey Suit
As seen in the Comic-Con preview and promotional posters, Peter suits up with the new costume Tony Stark offered him at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming. The footage seen in the trailer is roughly the same shots seen in the Comic-Con footage.
10. “Get this man a shield.”
The most kick-ass line in movie history has now been set. T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, is telling someone to get ol’ bearded Captain America — presumably under the name Nomad — a shield. Note that Cap doesn’t have his stars and stripes anymore.
9.Thanos’s Henchman
Speaking of, the person throwing a spear at Captain America seems to be one of Thanos’s cronies. We haven’t gotten a great look at any of them yet, but this appears to be Proxima Midnight.
8. HULKBUSTER RETURNS!
The Hulkbuster is back! Of course Tony Stark would bring out his biggest guns.
7. Look at These Big Spiky Things
In true Marvel fashion, big alien structures appear in Infinity War. While it’s unclear what Thanos’s exact game plan is, it’s safe to say that the big purple guy won’t invade Earth without some help. These spiky structures could be troop transports, satellites, or some terraforming tech to make Earth easier to conquer. Either way, they’re going to be everywhere.
6. Vision Gets Wrecked
Because Vision is powered by the Mind Stone, it was curious how Thanos would take it from him. Seems that answer is simple: He’s going to rip it out of his head. Man, Infinity War is going to hurt.
5. Bucky Marches With Wakanda
Also seen in the Comic-Con footage, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) leads an entire sect of Wakandan soldiers against Thanos. If you recall, Bucky is a prisoner of Wakanda at the end of Captain America: Civil War, but it’s all hands on deck when it comes to something as big as this.
Just before Infinity War will be Marvel’s Black Panther, hitting theaters in February, starring Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa as he deals with an insurrection in his kingdom. It’s going to be awesome, but the extra reason one shouldn’t skip Black Panther is because of how integral T’Challa will be in Infinity War. It seems Wakanda makes up the bulk of the army for the good guys. A lot of good people are going to die.
3. Your New Avengers Shot
Each of the Avengers movies has that one shot that defines the status quo. In Infinity War, it’s this: Cap (wearing new gauntlets?) reunited with War Machine, Hulk, Falcon, and Black Widow, who have all teamed up with Black Panther, Okoye (Danai Gurira), Bucky, and the Wakandan forces. We told you this would be a big one.
2. Yup, Thor’s Still Got an Eye Wound
The Comic-Con trailer featured heaping doses of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but this trailer keeps them until the very end. And it’s here where Thanos is introduced, showing he’s still missing an eye from fighting Hela.
1. The Guardians of the Frickin’ Galaxy
What a bunch of A-holes.
See the trailer for Avengers: Infinity War below.
Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War will be released on May 4, 2018.
There were 1,800 UFOs tracked by NORAD radar over five years.
That equates to around 360 UFOs officially tracked by radar each year.
And as many as 75 - 15 EACH YEAR - have been intercepted as a result, according to information released by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
UFO investigators have hailed the statistics proof that the UFO phenomena is real and taken seriously by military leaders.
But there remains a veil of secrecy over what happened when they were intercepted or if any have been confined as not coming from Earth, with national security reasons being cited.
The figures were revealed to UFO investigators following a Canadian Access to Information Act request.
But officials refused to reveal any further data or specific details about individual UFO interceptions.
Candian UFO expert Victor Viggiani requested information on the tracking and intercepting of UFOs by NORAD after obtaining secret documents which detailed a case of jets being scramble to "three UFOs".
A response from NORAD said that requests for "unknown track reports" are classified and cannot be released on grounds of national security and espionage.
It said the information was not to be released to the public or media because they do not have a "valid need to know".
But the response did confirm the extent of UFO activity caught on radar.
It said: "The NORAD commander has approved the release of the following information regarding tracks of interest (TOI) and unknown tracks.
"The yearly average in the past five years has been 1,800 TOIs and 75 intercepts."
Intercepts are when NORAD scrambles a pair of fighters, which are on alert at sites around the US, to locate and attempt to identify the unknown object.
The fighters are armed and ready to take off within minutes of receiving a scramble order.
NORAD has refused to detail any of the 75 intercepts in the five year period, so it is unclear if any went off to be identified.
Although Mr Viggiani received some of the information using access to information laws, he claimed he was not permitted to share it or release it publicly and he had threatened with indictment if he did so.
The Canadian documents…indicate the Canadian government has been and remains vitally concerned about the unauthorised incursion of unidentified flying objects within Canadian airspace.
ZlandCommunicationsNewsNetwork website
And, in a public snub at the national security implications, he said: "I have here in front of me 11 documents…they are directly from NORAD and indicate that over the last five years an average of 1,800 tracks of interest, with 75 intercepts have been made, this is directly from the commander in NORAD.
"In reference to the NORAD documents, I have been threatened with indictment if I release that file.
"I am hereby releasing it to you and I dare the US government to charge me."
On the ZlandCommunicationsNewsNetwork website, which Mr Viggiani is involved with, it says the documents are proof the UFO phenomena is real.
It said: "The Canadian documents…indicate the Canadian government has been and remains vitally concerned about the unauthorised incursion of unidentified flying objects within Canadian airspace.
"All of the above raises serious and unacknowledged questions.
"What kind of craft are able to elude NORAD’s most sophisticated aircraft?
These and other questions bring into sharp focus substantial historical, on-going and covert discussions and documentation about the UFO phenomenon among Canadian government agencies - none of which has ever been openly addressed by bureaucrats, military officials or elected representatives."
It went on to state that the documenters "may represent" sufficient evidence - if not proof - that:
*Unidentified flying objects are real;
*Both Canada and the US have put in place mechanisms for tracking, reporting on, and pursuing unidentified flying objects;
*The Canadian and American governments consider these objects as authentic;
*No attempt has been made by government, NORAD or Canadian Air Force officials to inform the general public about these concerns.
It added: "Factual evidence exists that the UFO phenomenon is of sufficient authenticity as to be of a real and on-going concern to the Canadian government and its joint NORAD operations with the USA."
The website now wants an open inquiry into why this information is not shared with the public.
It added: "This lack of transparency surrounding a national security issue suggests that either Canadian government officials are totally ignorant of the facts surrounding the UFO matter or - they and the infrastructure of government and its military have something to hide with respect to the existence of UFOs."
Jurassic Park in China: een waar prehistorisch paradijs - HNL.be
Jurassic Park in China: een waar prehistorisch paradijs - HNL.be
Bob van Huet
REUTERSEen impressie van hoe de visetende Hamipterus tianshanensis leefde.
WETENSCHAPHet doet denken aan Jurassic Park of een andere ‘prehistorische’ kaskraker uit Hollywood. Wetenschappers hebben in de Noord-Chinese regio Xinjiang Uygur 215 gefossiliseerde pterosaurus-eieren gevonden. Het zijn de eieren van het fameuze reptiel dat ooit heerste in het luchtruim. Het visetende reptiel behoort tot de grootste vliegende dieren die deze planeet ooit heeft gezien.
De vondst zorgt voor opwinding onder paleontologen. Een Chinese onderzoeker sprak zelfs van een pterosaurusparadijs. Mogelijk liggen er nog meer eieren verborgen. Er werden wel eerder pterosaurus-eieren gevonden, onder andere in Zuid-Amerika en China, maar nooit zoveel tegelijk. Waarschijnlijk zijn ze tijdens heftige stormen op drift geraakt in een meer en naar eenzelfde punt langs de oever gestuwd voordat ze zonken. Elk ei meet ongeveer zeven centimeter in doorsnede.
De ontdekking werd gedaan in een blok zandsteen van ruim tien meter. Bijzonder is niet alleen het aantal maar ook de zestien complete embryo’s die in de eieren werden gevonden. Daaruit zou blijken dat de baby’s zeker niet meteen konden vliegen en waarschijnlijk jaren zorg nodig hadden van de ouders alvorens ze konden opstijgen, melden de wetenschappers in het vakblad Science.
REUTERSPterosaurussen hadden een spanwijdte van wel tien meter, een succesverhaal.
Vers uit het ei
“Dat ze eerst een tijd gevoed moesten worden, vind ik niet zo opmerkelijk. Als vogels vers uit het ei komen, hebben pa en ma ook nog wat werk voor de boeg”, zegt de Nederlandse onderzoeker Anne Schulp van het natuurhistorisch museum Naturalis in Leiden.
Zoveel eieren op een plek vindt hij intrigerend. Volgens Chinese en Braziliaanse onderzoekers die aan de vindplaats onderzoek deden, kan het wijzen op broedplaatsen van kolonies pterosaurussen. Hoe dan ook, net als de grote dino’s spreken de vliegende reptielen tot de verbeelding. Schulp: “Ze zijn het grote succesverhaal uit de tijd van de dinosauriërs. Ze waren heer en meester van het luchtruim, voordat de eerste vogels kwamen.”
Voordat de eerste vogels kwamen, waren ze heer en meester van het luchtruim
Anne Schulp, natuurhistorisch museum Naturalis
Vliegen niet bijzonder
Overigens plaatst Schulp daarbij wel een aantekening. Vliegen lijkt bijzonder, maar is een kunstje dat inmiddels best veel dieren voor elkaar hebben gekregen. “Na de vliegende reptielen had je de vogels, daarna de vleermuis, maar ook vliegende eekhoorns, er zijn hagedissen met flapjes en natuurlijk bij de insecten allerlei vliegers. Vliegen is meerdere malen ontstaan in de geschiedenis van het leven. Pterosaurussen hebben wel een heel bijzonder hoofdstuk geschreven. Vooral omdat sommige exemplaren uitzinnig groot konden worden met een spanwijdte van meer dan tien meter.”
In Jurassic Park worden de ontdekte dino-eieren tenslotte uitgebroed dankzij nieuwe technieken. Gaan we ze ooit terugzien, die machtige pterosaurussen? Schulp: “Nee hoor, prachtige fossiele eieren zijn het. Die doen het echt niet meer.”
EPA
Zoveel eieren van de Pterosaurus op een plek vinden is een unicum.
EPA
In het noordoosten van China troffen onderzoekers ruim 300 eieren aan. De grootste vondst ooit.
AFP
De gefossiliseerde resten van een Pterosaurus in een museum in Hami.
EPA
Uitbroeden van de versteende eieren kan alleen in films.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
Alles is met elkaar verbonden en er is iets groters dan dit lichaam. Deze film is een bedreiging voor overheden en religies
Alles is met elkaar verbonden en er is iets groters dan dit lichaam. Deze film is een bedreiging voor overheden en religies
The Reality of Truth is een zeer provocerende film waarin wordt gekeken naar de mysterieuze relatie tussen spiritualiteit en kruidengeneeskunde.
Het doel van de controversiële documentaire is het doorbreken van de ‘illusie van realiteit’ en kijkers te helpen een betekenisvoller bestaan te leiden.
“We zijn allemaal zenders en antennes,” zegt de Amerikaanse actrice Michelle Rodriguez in de film. “Je kunt je frequentie aanpassen. Niet alleen met je ademhaling, maar ook met je bewustzijn.”
Ontwaking
Te zien is hoe ze in Peru ayahuasca tot zich neemt. “Het vernietigde alles wat ik ooit heb geweten,” vertelt ze. “Ik heb een ontwaking gehad.”
Rodriguez kon dankzij haar ervaringen met het drankje naar eigen zeggen beter omgaan met het verlies van haar vriend en collega Paul Walker, die in 2013 om het leven kwam bij een auto-ongeluk.
Psychedelische drugs kunnen vaak leiden tot mystieke ervaringen, inzichten en positiviteit. Spiritualiteit en psychedelische drugs worden al heel lang met elkaar geassocieerd.
Verbonden
Sjamanen gebruiken in Zuid-Amerika al duizenden jaren psilocybine, paddo’s, peyote en ayahuasca.
We zijn allemaal met elkaar verbonden en er is een frequentie die ervoor zorgt dat je kunt leven op een manier dat je ontwikkeld bent, aldus Rodriguez.
“Uiteindelijk kun je mogelijk in dit leven een niveau van verlichting bereiken dat ertoe leidt dat je wellicht niet terug hoeft te komen,” licht ze toe.
Bedreiging
“Alles is met elkaar verbonden en er is iets groters dan dit lichaam,” stelt de actrice.
De makers van de documentaire zeggen zelf dat hun productie een ‘bedreiging is voor overheden, religieuze instellingen en grote corporaties’.
Barack Obama will share secret files on Aliens if you support him in the fight against AIDS
Barack Obama will share secret files on Aliens if you support him in the fight against AIDS
In the November 2017 Jimmy Kimmel show President Barack Obama talks about the fight against AIDS and the great progress that has been made towards getting rid of the disease once and for all.
During his speech he comes to the point that he is asking the people to join his fight against AIDS and says “If you do, I’ll share our files of Aliens.”
On which Jimmy Kimmel says “you can’t do that”
Obama:
“No?” “We can’t do that either?” “But I have them” “They’re in my desk right now” “Classified”
Kimmel again: “All right, Fine”
While in the 2015 Jimmy Kimmel show, President Barack Obama denies knowledge of Aliens now he suddenly states that he has secret classified UFO and Alien files right in his desk!
It is well known that White House officials and even US Presidents are kept in the Dark about any information on classified government programs involving UFOs and Aliens.
Nobody outside DoD, including the Secretary of State, is deemed to have a need to know about the country’s alleged secret UFO and alien database, including Area 51 in Nevada, so we may assume that even Obama, besides information on a "need to know basis", did not have access to any information on classified government programs involving UFOs and Aliens during his presidency.
So at least Obama’s statement is very unusual and we may wonder whether he really has such UFO and Alien files in his desk.
Besides, the fight against AIDS is reasonable even without the publication of the UFO and Alien files or it must be that he has a valid reason to connect classified UFO and Alien files with AIDS, from which it is said that it isn't caused by a virus at all, according to conspiracy theorists.
Weird Colored Cloud and Black Sphere Suddenly Appear Over Fields in Ontario, Canada
Weird Colored Cloud and Black Sphere Suddenly Appear Over Fields in Ontario, Canada
Early evening of August 29, 2017 between 6:30 and 7 pm approximately, I was driving home from Williamstown, Ontario, Canada. I had to take country roads to get home. Less than 5 minutes in my drive I noticed a strange colored bit of cloud that had some rainbow colors but the other clouds were not affected.
It was still daylight and the sun was showing up, a blue skies and sections with many clouds. There was no rain at all on that day. No signs of rain in my area, no thunder or lightning. Then, within a few minutes that weird cloud completely detached itself from the surrounding clouds and dropped below them.
Once fully detached the colors became very sharp. The colored piece of cloud was so weird and beautiful that I ended up stopping by the side of the road to take several pictures with my iPhone.
At some point that "cloud" was completely detached and was not moving as like the other clouds. It stood still, hanging low in the sky.
After, I had errands to run and forgot about this event until my memory card was almost full... That is 3 months later. So, on November 27th I went into my pictures to clear some in order to create more space on my phone's memory card. Seeing how cool that cloud was on the pictures I decided to send them to a friend of mine to have a look at that cool event.
Looking at the photos on my phone I only thought the round thing was a bird flying by. I am into UFOs and did not want my enthusiasm to make me see only what I wanted to see. So I rationalized it at the time.
But my opinion changed when my friend was looking at them on her computer and she mentioned that there were some things in the sky that were unusual.
So, looking at my pictures on a computer screen we both think there is at least one UFO on a few of the pictures with that weird colored cloud. I never noticed anything but the bizarre cloud while I was taking the pictures. I wish I had, but I was very focused on it.
We are pretty sure that there is at least one UFO on the pictures. As it is round, a perfect circle within another circle. This one we are pretty certain is NOT a bird flying by. Also, it appears that there were two others that were in formation farther away and maybe 2 more.
This weird cloud was a real oddity in itself as it was not moving like the other clouds and I may never know what all these objects were but I can say that I found this very unusual and very cool. I have submitted the pictures to the Mutual UFO Network under file 88479 for further investigation.
Clinical Trials of a New “Cancer Vaccine” Show That It May Actually Work
IN BRIEF
A new personalized cancer vaccine has been designed to target 20 mutated proteins unique to each patient's tumors. The vaccine seems to have prevented early relapse in 12 patients with skin cancer, keeping them cancer free for more than 2 years.
A THERAPY FOR EACH PATIENT
Cancer comes in many different forms, and it is not unusual for diagnosed patients to endure multiple kinds of treatments before one that is effective against their particular form of cancer is found. If it takes too long for doctors to find the right treatment, the consequences can be fatal.
Physicians and scientists led by Catherine Wu at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston just presented their results of their new cancer therapy to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Washington, D.C. Their personalized vaccines have prevented early relapse in 12 patients with skin cancer, while also boosting patient immunity when combined with a cancer drug.
While earlier cancer vaccines targeted a singular cancer protein found ubiquitously among patients, these personalized vaccines contain neoantigens, which are mutated proteins specific to an individual patient’s tumor. These neoantigens are identified once a patient’s tumor is genomically sequenced, providing physicians with the information they need to pinpoint unique mutations. Once a patient’s immune system is provided a dose of the tumor neoantigens, it can activate the patient’s T cells to attack cancer cells.
NEOANTIGENS TO THE RESCUE
Unlike previous attempts towards cancer vaccines, which did not produce conclusive evidence in halting cancer growth, Wu’s team made their personal vaccine much more specific to each patient’s cancer, targeting about 20 neoantigens per patient. The vaccines were injected under the patients’ skin for a period of five months and indicated no side effects and a strong T cell response.
All of Wu’s patients who were administered the personal vaccine are still cancer-free more than 2.5 years after the trial. However, some patients with an advanced forms of cancer also needed an some extra punching power to fend off their diseases. Two of Wu’s patients who did relapse were administered an immunotherapy drug, PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, in addition to the personalized vaccine. Working in conjunction with the enhanced T cell response from the vaccine, the drug makes it difficult for the tumor to evade the immune cells. The fusion of the two therapies eliminated the new tumors from both patients.
But we can’t get too excited yet. While these results are promising, the therapies are relatively new and require much more clinical testing. Many physicians around the world are working together to test the potency of neoantigens in order to verify if the vaccine works better than current immunotherapy drugs over a sustainable period of time. Personalized vaccines are costly and take months to create, a limiting factor in providing care to patients with progressing cancers.
Still, this study is an encouraging sign for many oncologists who are interested in using the immune system to fight cancer. More than a million new patients are diagnosed with cancer each year in the U.S. alone, and even in situations where the cancer is treatable, the available chemotherapy agents themselves can be very toxic. If proven safe and effective, this personalized cancer vaccine could give patients around the world hope for powerful treatment with fewer side effects.
In its early life, the Earth would have been peppered nearly continuously by asteroids smashing into our young planet. These fiery collisions made our world what it is today. It may seem like things have changed since then, given the vast assortment of life and wide blue oceans—and things have indeed changed. At least in some respects. However, Earth still receives thousands of tons of matter from space, but this is in the form of microscopic dust particles (as opposed to recurrent, energetic collisions).
Fortunately, in modern times, a large asteroid colliding with the surface of the Earth happens only very rarely. Nevertheless, it does happen from time to time.
As most are probably already aware, it is widely believed that an asteroid initiated the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago. And more recently, the Russian Chelyabinsk meteor hit our planet in February of 2013. It entered at a shallow angle at 60 times the speed of sound. Upon contact with our atmosphere, it exploded in an air burst. The size of this body of rock (before it burned up and shattered) is estimated to be around 20 meters (across) and it weighed some 13,000 metric tons.
This isn’t large by any means, but it was enough to injure over a thousand people and damage nearly 20,000 buildings.
But what would happen if we were faced with a truly major threat today? Could we survive?
Well, it depends on the size of the object and where it hits, but in short…no. Unless an asteroid was very small, we wouldn’t be able to destroy it or vaporize it—this is simply beyond our technological capabilities (at the moment). We also don’t have the technology necessary to deflect the asteroid or veer it off course.
WHY WE NEED TO LEAVE EARTH
This is a bit of a problem because, assuming that humanity plans on sticking around for awhile, it is almost inevitable that we will have to face a large asteroid at some point. Of course, asteroids aren’t the only threat. There are a host of deadly diseases, volcanic eruptions, or other catastrophes that could bring about the end of civilization as we know it (and maybe even all life).
This is why it makes sense to transition into a multi-planet species as soon as possible. Blogger Tim Urban recently had a rather apt metaphor to illustrate why we need to leave our planet and venture out into the cosmos: Picture the Earth as a kind of hard drive. And on this hard drive we have saved everything. Every song. Every book. Every thought that has been thought and every word that has been uttered. Every memory.
And that’s not all: It also houses every single species. All of it is stored in a word document saved on that hard drive.
Oh, and the hard drive has broken before, and when it happened, we lost nearly everything. It got a virus and…that’s it, two-thirds of the population gone. It smashed into something and, alas, there goes another batch of data.
Blank pages. File corrupted.
So it makes sense to make a backup. As Urban puts it, “Now—if you owned a hard drive with an extraordinarily important Excel doc on it, and you knew that the hard drive pretty reliably tended to crash every month or two, with the last crash happening five weeks ago—what’s the very obvious thing you’d do? You’d copy the document onto a second hard drive.”
That is why we need to leave Earth. We need to have another plan. A safeguard.
Of course, we should also do it for exploration and discovery, but we need to do it for life itself. And that is one of the primary reasons that Elon Musk wants to head to the Red Planet. It is a way of ensuring humanity’s continued existence (assuming that we think the document is worth saving). And ultimately, it’s why he doesn’t want to go with just a select set of scientists and experts.
He wants to take a significant portion of the data on our hard drive—Musk would like to send 1 million people to Mars.
At the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference in 2013, Musk explained his feelings, stating, “Either we spread Earth to other planets, or we risk going extinct. An extinction event is inevitable and we’re increasingly doing ourselves in. The goal is to improve rocket technology and space technology until we can send people to Mars and establish life on Mars.”
Of course, this will be no simple task. Mars is, currently, a wasteland of dirt and sand.
“Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet,” Musk said. “But we could make it work.” And honestly, even if we can’t make it work, it seems that we have no real choice but to try. Musk concludes, “I agree this is an unlikely outcome, but if we don’t keep improving technology every year, we won’t get there.”
Later this year, via his rocket firm SpaceX, Musk plans to disclose a spacecraft designed to transport as many as 100 people at a time to Mars.
Google's AutoML project, designed to make AI build other AIs, has now developed a computer vision system that vastly outperforms state-of-the-art-models. The project could improve how autonomous vehicles and next-generation AI robots "see."
An AI That Can Build AI
In May 2017, researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of AutoML, an artificial intelligence (AI) that’s capable of generating its own AIs. More recently, they decided to present AutoML with its biggest challenge to date, and the AI that can build AI created a “child” that outperformed all of its human-made counterparts.
The Google researchers automated the design of machine learning models using an approach called reinforcement learning. AutoML acts as a controller neural network that develops a child AI network for a specific task. For this particular child AI, which the researchers called NASNet, the task was recognizing objects — people, cars, traffic lights, handbags, backpacks, etc. — in a video in real-time.
Image Credit: Google Research
AutoML would evaluate NASNet’s performance and use that information to improve its child AI, repeating the process thousands of times. When tested on the ImageNet image classification and COCO object detection data sets, which the Google researchers call “two of the most respected large-scale academic data sets in computer vision,” NASNet outperformed all other computer vision systems.
According to the researchers, NASNet was 82.7 percent accurate at predicting images on ImageNet’s validation set. This is 1.2 percent better than any previously published results, and the system is also 4 percent more efficient, with a 43.1 percent mean Average Precision (mAP). Additionally, a less computationally demanding version of NASNet outperformed the best similarly sized models for mobile platforms by 3.1 percent.
A View of the Future
Machine learning is what gives many AI systems their ability to perform specific tasks. Although the concept behind it is fairly simple — an algorithm learns by being fed a ton of data — the process requires a huge amount of time and effort. By automating the process of creating accurate, efficient AI systems, an AI that can build AI takes on the brunt of that work. Ultimately, that means AutoML could open up the field of machine learning and AI to non-experts.
As for NASNet specifically, accurate, efficient computer vision algorithms are highly sought after due to the number of potential applications. They could be used to create sophisticated, AI-powered robots or to help visually impaired people regain sight, as one researcher suggested. They could also help designers improve self-driving vehicle technologies. The faster an autonomous vehicle can recognize objects in its path, the faster it can react to them, thereby increasing the safety of such vehicles.
The Google researchers acknowledge that NASNet could prove useful for a wide range of applications and have open-sourced the AI for inference on image classification and object detection. “We hope that the larger machine learning community will be able to build on these models to address multitudes of computer vision problems we have not yet imagined,” they wrote in their blog post.
Though the applications for NASNet and AutoML are plentiful, the creation of an AI that can build AI does raise some concerns. For instance, what’s to prevent the parent from passing down unwanted biases to its child? What if AutoML creates systems so fast that society can’t keep up? It’s not very difficult to see how NASNet could be employed in automated surveillance systems in the near future, perhaps sooner than regulations could be put in place to control such systems.
Thankfully, world leaders are working fast to ensure such systems don’t lead to any sort of dystopian future.
Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and several others are all members of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, an organization focused on the responsible development of AI. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEE) has proposed ethical standards for AI, and DeepMind, a research company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, recently announced the creation of group focused on the moral and ethical implications of AI.
Various governments are also working on regulations to prevent the use of AI for dangerous purposes, such as autonomous weapons, and so long as humans maintain control of the overall direction of AI development, the benefits of having an AI that can build AI should far outweigh any potential pitfalls.
There was a time when women were not allowed to fly any kind of airplanes, let alone be test pilots for military fighter jets. Marina Popovich, who passed away on November 30 at the age of 86, changed all of that. After enlisting in the then Soviet Air Force, she broke the sound barrier in a MiG-21 supersonic jet fighter and went on to log over 6,000 flight hours in 40 different planes and helicopters, setting 102 aviation world records. She came close to becoming a cosmonaut but married one instead — Pavel Popovich, the 4th cosmonaut in space and the 6th person to orbit the Earth. With that kind of experience, it’s not surprising that people listened when “Madam MiG” talked about her UFO encounters and research and her Bigfoot sighting.
“We had been researching UFOs for 25 years and talking about it in small groups, but underground. People who tried to talk in public about UFOs were either fired or put in psychiatric hospitals.”
Marina Popovich
In reports of Marina Popovich’s passing, both RT and TASSmention her strong commitment to UFO research and the search for evidence of extraterrestrials, even when it was dangerous to do so. She claimed to have three encounters herself, beginning in 1962, but had to keep her findings quiet until Mikhail Gorbachov introduced transparency or glasnost, and the Soviet Union eventually broke up. That transparency inspired the title of her book, “UFO Glasnost,” in which she claimed that Soviet military and civilian pilots reported over 3,000 UFO sightings and that the KGB had the debris from five crashed spaceships hidden somewhere.
In a 1991 interview reported in the Los Angeles Times, Marina Popovich also revealed that she believes in intelligent extraterrestrials and gives this explanation why they haven’t contacted us (in their words):
“’We are not going to give you our technological information until you raise your spiritual and moral levels on Earth. And the only way to raise them is with unity, as one Earth together to reducing negative feelings, pollution and other detrimental-based energies.”
Other interesting thoughts from this interview with Marina Popovich:
Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury received messages and directions from aliens.
Soviet President Gorbachev could also have been an extraterrestrial medium because “he’s an epoch-making phenomenon.”
90% of UFO sightings are due to hallucinations, space debris, marsh gas, weather balloons, first ascendancy stars and Friday-night vodka parties.
She may have been right about that last one. However, she gave no indications that vodka was involved in her encounter with a Bigfoot in the Pamir Mountains in 1982.
Test pilot, ufologist, environmentalist. Marina Popovich was truly an interesting and influential woman.
Growing evidence points to a once-habitable world—and recent findings suggest that life could exist on Mars today.
By Diana Kwon
MARTIAN MISSION: Since landing on the Red Planet on August 5, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has roamed the environment collecting samples and taking photos in search of signs of life, both past and present.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This September, tech mogul Elon Musk unveiled his updated plans for colonizing Mars. By 2024, he said, his aerospace company SpaceX plans to deliver people to our neighboring planet in massive rocket ships, which he hopes to start constructing within the next year. Although perhaps the boldest declaration yet (outside of science fiction) of intent to actually spearhead extraterrestrial habitation, Musk’s ambition reflects an age-old curiosity: Can the Red Planet support life? Has it ever before?
In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 set down on Mars with the primary mission of answering those questions. While the two landers discovered no clear signs of living microorganisms on the planet’s barren surface, photographs taken from orbit revealed geological features that suggested a once-watery environment—dry valleys that resembled those created by rivers on Earth. “If you assume that liquid water is all life needs, then this could count as the first evidence that life might have been possible on Mars in the past,” says Alfonso Davila, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California.
Subsequent missions to the planet started to paint a clearer picture of its potential biological history. For example, in the early 2000s, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered sediments and minerals that couldn’t have formed without water, as well as materials, such as patches of silica, typically found in hot springs and steam vents, where extremophiles thrive on Earth. Most recently, the rover Curiosity, which landed on the planet in August 2012, has detected simple carbon-based organic compounds in the Gale Crater, a large cavity near the Martian equator.
Despite growing evidence that Mars might have been teeming with life eons ago, exploration of the planet has painted a bleak image of its contemporary environment.
Despite growing evidence that Mars might have been teeming with life eons ago, exploration of the planet has painted a bleak image of its contemporary environment. Because it lacks a thick atmosphere and a magnetic field, which are essential for making Earth a hospitable place to live, Mars is exposed to harmful ultraviolet (UV) light and ionizing radiation from cosmic rays. Those features, along with low temperature and pressure, “make the environment pretty hostile to life as we know it,” says Manish Patel, a senior lecturer in planetary sciences at the Open University in the U.K.
Nevertheless, scientists are uncovering aspects of the planet that indicate Mars could still be harboring isolated pockets of life. Although the chances may be small, these findings have major implications for continued missions to the Red Planet—and, of course, its potential future colonization by humans. (See “A Hostile Planet.”)
Remnants of a wet Mars remain the clearest hint that the planet once could have harbored life. Data gathered by Curiosity point to the existence of a massive freshwater lake in the Gale Crater billions of years ago, and scientists’ analyses suggest this environment had habitable conditions: a relatively neutral pH, low salinity, and elements that make up the building blocks of life—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, and phosphorus.1
Curiosity has also detected evidence of simple organic molecules in this region, including methane,2chlorobenzene,3 and hints of longer-chain molecules resembling fatty acids4—all of which have primarily biological origins on Earth. “The consensus is that Mars had a lot of water in its ancient past, and that life could have existed and grown then,” Patel says. (See “Ancient Microbes on Mars.”)
Nowadays, however, confirmed sources of Martian water exist solely as ice, primarily in the planet’s polar regions, with very recent evidence pointing to the possibility of ice patches at much lower latitudes, near the planet’s equator.5 And life—at least as we know it—needs liquid water to survive.
In 2000, scientists detected Martian gullies, channels traversing the landscape that appear similar to those created by flowing water on Earth.6 Images that the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft captured along the sides of craters, pits, and valleys suggested that these formations are relatively young, as they lack geological features such as impact craters or dusty dunes. These images hinted at the possibility that liquid water might have existed in the planet’s recent past—and might still sometimes be present on the planet’s surface. More evidence for this idea emerged a few years later when researchers reported that new, light-colored streaks in the form of fingerlike branches had appeared in some of the gullies, further signaling recent activity.7
Subsequent analyses, however, revealed that the streaks could have been produced through other processes. In 2010, based on images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), scientists reported that the streaks appeared only during the Martian winters. During that time of year, water stays frozen and dry ice builds up on the planet’s surface, meaning that carbon dioxide, a gas that makes up more than 90 percent of the planet’s atmosphere, may have been the cause.8
Sure enough, when Patel and his colleagues tested this hypothesis last year, they found it to be a likely explanation. In the Open University’s Mars Chamber, which simulates the temperature, pressure, and atmospheric composition of the Red Planet, the researchers deposited carbon dioxide frost onto the surface of soil, then warmed the chamber with a heat lamp to mimic what happens when the sun rises. The resulting process of sublimation—where a solid transitions directly into gas—was enough to create very similar formations.9 And in another 2016 study, an independent group of researchers reported that data from MRO supplied no evidence of minerals associated with flowing water in those structures.10
Meanwhile, another feature of the steep Martian slopes, dubbed recurring slope lineae (RSLs), has provided more-tantalizing evidence that the planet could occasionally host liquid water. Unlike gullies, RSLs are dark streaks that appear during the warmest parts of the year, growing in the summer, when ice is most likely to melt, and fading in the winter.11 And although scientists have never directly detected liquid water, it may not take as much of it as some researchers expect to generate these features. In another Mars Chamber experiment, published last year in Nature Geoscience, Patel and colleagues placed a block of ice in the simulated Martian environment and found that a small amount of water, which boiled at much lower temperatures due to low pressure, was able to kick up the soil to create streak-like features.12 “That showed that if there is water, you need a lot less than originally [thought],” Patel says. Altogether, the presence of liquid H2O on the planet remains up for debate.
Two features of Mars’s surface suggest that water may, at times, flow on the planet. Channels known as gullies (top two images) that appear on steep slopes look comparable to formations created by flowing water on Earth, although recent analyses indicate that these were likely formed by other processes. More recently, researchers have identified recurring slope lineae (RSLs; lower two images), seasonal streaks also suggestive of flowing water. The primary theory, based on the identification of perchlorates, is that RSLs are formed by brine, or very salty water. Where the water would come from is still a mystery, and alternative theories challenge the idea that water is needed to form such structures. For example, some scientists have posited that dry sand avalanches could result in the same streaking pattern.NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIV OF ARIZONA
Salty surfaces
The case for contemporary water on Mars has been bolstered by signs of perchlorates, a type of salt, in the seasonal streaks.13 Perchlorates lower the freezing point and evaporation rate of water, which would allow H2O to exist as a liquid in Martian conditions. On Earth, perchlorates also act as an energy source for some microorganisms.
“People were getting really excited because they were thinking, well, bacteria can metabolize perchlorates, so perhaps these are potential habitats that we could maybe explore on future missions,” says Jennifer Wadsworth, a PhD student in astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. “So we thought, okay, well let’s look at perchlorates and see [whether] bacteria could survive under Martian conditions.”
As it turned out, when bathed in UV light, these salts can actually be lethal. When Wadsworth and her advisor exposed the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis to perchlorates while irradiating the cells with UV levels typical for the Martian surface, the microbes died within minutes.14 “Perchlorate seems to be quite abundant everywhere, and the radiation penetrates quite a few meters [beneath the planet’s surface], according to models,” Wadsworth says. “So it could mean that the top few meters of soil are in fact uninhabitable.” However, she adds, this finding does not rule out the possibility that there might be extremophiles that could survive these conditions, or that more-conventional microbes live farther underground.
Deep below the surface, UV and ionizing radiation are significantly reduced, while pressure and temperature begin to increase. “You can reach a point where you’re shielded from all the nasty things, and the temperature and pressure could be high enough to allow a habitable environment,” Patel says. “The evidence is piling up that if we want to find these signs of life on Mars, we really need to get down below the surface to get away from nasty oxidants and environmental influences.”
Experiments in the Open University’s Mars chamber, which simulates the environment on the planet, could help determine the conditions that form these geological structures.MANISH PATEL/OU
A LIVING LAKE?: More than 3 billion years ago, a massive meteor hit Mars, creating an approximately 155-km-wide crater in the planet’s surface. Data from NASA’s Curiosity rover suggest that this area, known as the Gale Crater, was once filled with water, and may even have hosted life. Analysis of the sediments also points to once-habitable conditions, with evidence of simple organic molecules that may have originated from biological sources.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSSThe chances of finding life on Mars today may be slim, but many scientists believe that the planet hosted living organisms at some point during its history. One of the most promising regions for ancient Martian life is the Gale Crater, a large region near the planet’s equator. Data gathered from the crater by rovers and orbiters have revealed evidence both of past (and possibly present) water and of simple organic molecules—two essential ingredients for life.
Recently, while examining data collected by the rover Curiosity, a group of researchers discovered boron, a chemical element that can stabilize the sugars used to make RNA (Geophys Res Lett, 44:8739-48, 2017). Some scientists believe that this element may have even contributed to the origin of life on Earth. “Boron, when it’s dissolved in water, has very special properties—it can react with organic molecules to form other types of organic molecules,” says Patrick Gasda, a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “We found boron in this area [that used to have] lots of water; if there were organics there, that could actually mean that you could do these types of reactions on Mars.”
Scientists currently only have speculative estimates about when the Red Planet was last amenable to life. For example, NASA researcher Alfonso Davila and his colleagues have proposed that parts of Mars may have been habitable as recently as 5 million to 10 million Earth years ago (Astrobiology, 13:334-53, 2013). They estimate that during that period, the planet was tilted at an angle that may have provided polar regions with enough solar energy to melt the subsurface ice. After completing additional analyses, the researchers also posited that the water composition in the atmosphere during these periods was similar to that seen in the driest parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where microbes have been found living in extremely arid soil (Astrobiology, 16:159-68, 2016).
“While this does not necessarily mean that Mars was as habitable as the Atacama during those periods, it does suggest that the habitability window near the surface might have closed not billions of years ago, but perhaps tens of millions to several hundred million years ago,” Davila says. And the current conditions on the planet, while probably not conducive to modern microbial activity, are promising for researchers searching for signs of living organisms in the planet’s history, he adds. “Those same conditions, extreme dryness and extreme cold, that prevent life from being active in the environment are also very good at preserving evidence of life.”
Curbing contamination
Of course, the most definitive way to confirm life on Mars would be to collect live or previously living specimens. ExoMars, a rover that the European Space Agency plans to send to Mars in 2020, will be equipped with a drill that can extract soil samples from depths down to two meters, the deepest of any Mars sampling to date. The robot’s onboard laboratory will carry out tests on collected specimens. Another upcoming rover expedition, NASA’s Mars 2020, plans to collect samples to set aside for future missions to ferry back to Earth.
Without knowing exactly what life-forms, if any, exist on our red, dusty neighbor, it is difficult to predict what people might encounter when they eventually get there. “How do you look for something that you don’t know [about]?” Patel asks. “It’s a real problem that we face. All we can do is look for what we do know—and even then, it’s incredibly difficult to measure everything.”
Directly probing for life on the Red Planet takes some finesse, as scientists must ensure that they do not accidently misidentify organisms that hitched a ride from Earth as Martian. Although it is not possible to reduce the risk of contamination to zero, researchers can take measures to lower the chances that they will introduce Earthly organisms into their experiments. Curiosity, for example, is barred from exploring the RSLs, due to concerns that the rover, which was not completely sterilized prior to launch, might contaminate the suspected water in those regions.
The evidence is piling up that if we want to find these signs of life on Mars, we really need to get down below the surface to get away from nasty oxidants and environmental influences.—
Manish Patel, Open University
“Being able to clean [spacecraft] well enough to identify Mars microbes if they might be present and distinguish them from the residual contamination from Earth is an extremely challenging problem,” says Cassie Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer. Future rovers will be subjected to various sterilization strategies before launch, including wiping down surfaces with sterilizing solutions, baking heat-resistant components at high temperatures, and using highly sensitive biosensors to identify the presence of microbes.
Researchers are also trying to ensure that the human explorers NASA plans to send to Mars by the 2030s do not contaminate the planet—a much more difficult task, as most of the methods used to clean spacecraft cannot be applied to people. “We can be confident about how much contamination we sent on [robots], because we can measure it before launch and be confident that it won’t increase,” Conley says. “Once humans start landing on Mars, there will be associated microbes that come along.”
Monitoring microbial migrants within astronaut communities is also important for managing human health. In a study published earlier this year, Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is involved in the Planetary Protection Program, and colleagues found that after four people spent 30 days in an enclosed habitat that mirrored conditions on the International Space Station, the diversity of certain fungi—including those associated with allergies and asthma—in their surroundings increased.15 In another recent investigation, researchers reported that bacterial communities in a simulated spacecraft changed after hosting six crew members for 520 days.16In this case, cleaning agents were able to keep the microbial populations under control, pointing to the importance of maintaining strict sterilization protocols in space.
Keeping any potential life-forms native to Mars from hitching a ride back to Earth is another concern. Scientists and policy makers want to ensure that samples brought back by rovers or human explorers—or living organisms that accidently hitch a ride—will not endanger species on Earth. Such Mars-to-Earth contamination, Conley says, presents “a much more complicated set of questions about public health and the potential for invasive species.”
NASA hopes to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, and private companies, such as SpaceX, Mars One, and Lockheed Martin, have grand plans to establish human settlements on the planet. But big questions remain about the plausibility and safety of such missions.
People who land on the Red Planet will face harsh conditions, such as frigid temperatures, low pressure, and an atmosphere with precious little oxygen. Micron-size dust particles may also be a major factor, as they could cause respiratory problems and contain toxic materials. In addition, Martian soil contains abundant amounts of perchlorates, a type of salt that can impair the functioning of the human thyroid, which could be hazardous to scientists digging in the dirt.
On the other hand, perchlorates might actually be extremely useful during a mission to the Red Planet. Not only are they a component of rocket fuel, the compounds could also be a source of oxygen for human consumption: many microbes metabolize perchlorates, generating this element as a by-product, and some scientists have proposed prototypes of portable emergency systems that exploit these microbial pathways to generate breathable air (Int J Astrobiol, 12:321-25, 2013).
A much more serious concern about living on Mars is radiation. Without a protective magnetic field like that surrounding the Earth, the surface of the Red Planet is constantly bombarded with galactic cosmic rays—high-energy particles from space that can lead to a variety of health problems. At the doses of cosmic radiation that humans would receive on a trip to the Red Planet, one of the primary problems they will face is cancer. According to analyses by Francis Cucinotta, a radiation biologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, astronauts on the International Space Station can exceed their lifetime limits of radiation, based on NASA’s radiation standards, in just 18 months for women and two years for men (PLOS ONE, 9:e96099, 2014). And radiation levels would likely be even higher on a trip to Mars, which is far beyond the Earth’s protective magnetosphere. (The cancer risk is slightly higher in women because they have the added concerns of breast and ovarian cancer plus a greater risk of developing lung cancer, although the latter association is not well understood, Cucinotta says.)
Rodent experiments have revealed that exposure to radiation akin to that experienced on Mars can lead to an increased risk of cancer in “bystander” cells close to those damaged by radiation, which can release “oncogenic signals” (Sci Rep, 7:1832, 2017). Radiation exposure can also alter the tumor microenvironment in ways that promote cancer. Using mouse models of breast cancer, Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, a radiation oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues discovered that when healthy epithelial cells were transplanted into an animal that had been exposed to Mars-like radiation, tumors developed from those unirradiated cells (Cancer Cell, 19:640-51, 2011). “You create the seed of the cancer with mutations, but they still have to be in the appropriate soil for the cancer to actually develop,” Barcellos-Hoff says. “[We’ve found that] the kind of radiation found in space likely perturbs [the tumor microenvironment] in a more profound way than radiation that’s found on Earth.”
More recently, scientists have amassed evidence suggesting that cosmic radiation may have worrisome effects on the brain. Specifically, Charles Limoli of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues have shown in animal experiments, mostly with rodents, that these galactic particles can cause deficits in learning and memory, reduce the complexity and density of dendritic spines, and lead to persistent neuroinflammation (Sci Adv, 1:e1400256, 2015; Sci Rep, 6:34774, 2016). “The data suggests that the irradiated brain is never normal,” says Limoli. “Now, how precisely these cognitive deficits will manifest and impact astronaut performance is another important question that’s very difficult to pinpoint.”
While radiation risks are concerning, they are not deal breakers for future Mars travel, Limoli says, and researchers are now working on ways to mitigate these issues. For example, NASA is exploring ways to protect astronauts from radiation with compounds that repair damaged DNA. One such compound is nicotinamide mononucleotide, which scientists recently reported could reverse aging in mice by activating processes involved in DNA repair (Science, 355:1312-17, 2017).
In addition, Limoli and his colleagues are developing drugs that could help alleviate radiation effects in the brain. “We’re working on a variety of pharmacologic interventions,” Limoli says. “[And] we can always hope that our engineering colleagues come up with better and better shielding.”
Diana Kwon is a freelance science journalist living in Berlin, Germany.
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1J. Wadsworth, C.S. Cockell, “Perchlorates on Mars enhance the bacteriocidal effects of UV light,” Sci Rep, 7:4662, 2017.
1A. Blachowicz et al., “Human presence impacts fungal diversity of inflated lunar/Mars analog habitat,” Microbiome, 5:62, 2017.
P. Schwendner et al., “Preparing for the crewed Mars journey: Microbiota dynamics in the confined Mars500 habitat during simulated Mars flight and landing,” Microbiome, 5:129, 2017.
Former SETI director Jill Tarter: ‘An alien signal isn’t coming to the US, it’s coming to planet Earth’
Former SETI director Jill Tarter: ‘An alien signal isn’t coming to the US, it’s coming to planet Earth’
During her career at SETI, Tarter thought she had made first contact with alien life on three occasions. As the search continues, she reflects on what first contact will mean... if it ever comes
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
The search for space aliens just hit a speed bump
The search for space aliens just hit a speed bump
Spotting signs of life in an exoplanet’s atmosphere may be tougher than we thought.
by Mike Wall, Space.com
Artist's illustration of the Earth-size planet TRAPPIST-1d and its red-dwarf host star.
MPIA Graphics Department
Spotting signs of life in an alien planet's atmosphere may be tougher than scientists had thought.
One prominent such "biosignature" target, ozone, may get trapped near the equators of Proxima b, TRAPPIST-1d and other potentially habitable worlds that orbit close to their host stars, making the gas hard to detect from afar, a new study suggests.
"Absence of traces of ozone in future observations does not have to mean there is no oxygen at all," study lead author Ludmila Carone, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, said in a statement. "It might be found in different places than on Earth, or it might be very well hidden." [Exoplanet Discovery: The 7 Earth-Sized Planets of TRAPPIST-1 in Pictures]
Ozone is an unstable molecule that consists of three oxygen atoms. Here on Earth, the stuff is generally produced in the atmosphere after ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun splits "normal" diatomic oxygen (O2).
The vast majority of Earth's O2 is generated by living organisms — plants and photosynthetic microbes — so ozone serves as a sort of secondary biomarker, at least for Earth-like life.
Earth's atmospheric flows distribute most ozone relatively evenly into our planet's famous ozone layer, which helps shield life from harmful UV radiation. So hypothetical aliens studying Earth from afar with powerful telescopes would have a good chance of detecting the gas.
Earth's atmosphere has a "transportation belt" of air flows that move ozone trappfrom the main production areas near the equator toward the poles. This mechanism is important for creating Earth's global ozone layer. MPIA (L. Carone And Graphics Dept.)
But the situation is likely different on Proxima b, TRAPPIST-1d and other tidally locked worlds — those that always show the same face to their parent stars, and therefore have a "dayside" and a "nightside" — according to Carone and her colleagues. (Tidal locking is a consequence of a very tight orbit; TRAPPIST-1d and Proxima b complete one lap around their stars every four Earth days and 11 Earth days, respectively.)
Modeling work performed by the researchers indicates that, on planets with orbital periods of 25 Earth days or less, airflows tend to concentrate ozone (and other photochemically produced molecules) in an equatorial band.
"We all knew from the beginning that the hunt for alien life will be a challenge," Carone said. "As it turns out, we are only just scratching the surface of how difficult it really will be."
The new results also suggest that worlds like Proxima b don't have a global ozone layer. That may or may not have a significant negative effect on their habitability, Carone said.
Tidally locked exoplanets could have air flows that trap ozone in the equatorial regions, presenting a previously unforeseen complication for the search for traces of life on these planets. MPIA (L. Carone And Graphics Dept.)
"Proxima b and TRAPPIST-1d orbit red dwarfs, reddish stars that emit very little harmful UV light to begin with," she said in the statement. (Tidally locked planets pretty much have to orbit dim dwarf stars to be habitable; worlds that orbit so close to sunlike stars are far too hot to host life as we know it.)
"On the other hand, these stars can be very temperamental, and prone to violent outbursts of harmful radiation, including UV," she added. "There is still a lot that we don't know about these red dwarf stars. But I'm confident we will know much more in five years."
In five years, astronomers will have a lot more data — from telescopes such as NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in early 2019 — to inform their inferences about the habitability of red-dwarf planets. And advances in modeling techniques over this time span should help as well, study team members said.
Pluto, whether or not you want to call it a planet, is really, really far away from the sun—40 times farther than Earth is—which means it's really, really cold. Its surface may be as cold as minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit. But according to a recent paper published in the journal Icarus, deep inside Pluto, and other distant worlds like it, there may be a surprisingly balmy refuge for possible life.
“These objects need to be considered as potential reservoirs of water and life,” lead author Prabal Saxena, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press release. “If our study is correct, we now may have more places in our solar system that possess some of the critical elements for extraterrestrial life.”
Eris seen with its moon Dysnomia, with the distant sun in the background.
NASA
Trans-Neptunian objects already have a couple of ways of staying warm despite the lack of sunlight. Certain forms of elements like uranium and potassium can decay radioactively, releasing a little heat as they do. Saxena and his colleagues wanted to look at another potential form of heating, caused by tidal forces.
Yes, that tidal, as in ocean tides here on Earth, produced by the gravitational interaction of the planet and its moon. Earth and moon have a pretty stable relationship at this point: The moon's orbit is circular, and paced with its rotation so that the same side of the moon always faces Earth. It's the sort of interaction that takes a lot of time to build as two celestial bodies iron out the irregularities in their orbits.
Pluto's texture in this photo is due to giant spikes of ice.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
A side effect of this organized pattern is that the moon's gravitational tug pulls at Earth—but since the planet's surface is covered in liquid water, it simply sloshes over to appease that tug, creating tides.
Other worlds with moons are still finding their way to that stable relationship, but as it does develop, tides will start to develop there as well. That typically manifests as both bodies stretching and compressing each other as the moon orbits, creating friction that turns into heat.
So Saxena and his colleagues calculated how much heat would be produced between pairs of trans-Neptunian objects, like Pluto and its largest moon, Charon; Eris and its moon Dysnomia; and a handful of other distant pairs. Those calculations showed that tidal heating is strong enough that it could allow water to remain liquid under the surface of those objects.
We have accomplished a lot in our (relatively) short time on Earth. We’ve sent humans to the Moon and to live in space, developed massive and sophisticated telescopes to see the farthest reaches of the cosmos, and even rocketed rovers to Mars and probes to the edge of our solar system. However, a number of organizations have taken humanity’s voyage into the final frontier a step farther. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the research collective behind the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have been working tirelessly to find out if we are alone, once and for all.
Already, a number of projects exist that scan the stars for signs of intelligent life. And despite the fact that many of them have been looking to the skies for decades, we have yet to make contact. And that’s a bit of a problem.
0. The Paradox That Started It All
To put it mildly, our solar system is very old. In fact, scientists are still figuring out just how old — clues gathered from meteorites suggest it is almost 5 billion years old, and surrounding star systems are likely billions of years older. While interstellar travel still seems to be a distant dream, new technology is born every year that allows us to scan the skies for signals from civilizations in the most distant corners of the cosmos. The number of known alien worlds and star systems discovered through these technologies continues to rise, but our creative methods of listening to space have not yet revealed anything that resembles extraterrestrial communications or civilizations.
Given the size and age of our universe, it seems like we should have made contact. We, of course, have not.
In the early 20th century, physicist Enrico Fermi asked himself a now-famous question: Given the scope of our universe, why haven’t we found intelligent extraterrestrial life yet (or why haven’t they found us)? This is sometimes called the Fermi Paradox or the Great Silence. Scientists have floated many possible answers in the century since Fermi first asked this question. Here are some of the most plausiblereasons why he haven’t made first contact.
Basic probability asserts that alien life must exist. Since we haven’t made contact yet, one theory goes, there must be something barring life from interstellar travel or, at least, barring it from communicating with other alien species. This barrier is known as the “Great Filter,” and it is a force or event that stops a civilization from getting to the aforementioned point of interstellar travel or communication.
If the theory holds true, there are two primary reasons that we haven’t made contact: Because societies kill themselves off before they reach a state advanced enough to explore the stars or interstellar travel is simply not possible on a technological scale. Neither option is particularly pleasing.
And according to the experts behind the work, the filter event is of equal or greater probability than the existence of alien life itself. This is the point argued by Robin Hanson, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, in his discussion of the topic.
No alien civilizations have substantially colonized our solar system or systems nearby. Thus among the billion trillion stars in our past universe, none has reached the level of technology and growth that we may soon reach. This one data point implies that a Great Filter stands between ordinary dead matter and advanced exploding lasting life.
Since we have not been able to detect alien life (or leave the solar system much, for that matter), how far are we from being caught up in some event that would bar us from ever finding aliens? “The easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are,” Hanson writes. In other words, the more life there is in the cosmos, the greater the likeliness that we are about to reach a cataclysmic, life-ending event or reach the cosmic limits of technological advancement.
2. Do Not Disturb the Aliens
Another hypothesis asserts that alien civilizations certainly exist, but they’re simply inactive. That’s the “aestivation hypothesis” (aestivation refers to an organism’s state of prolonged inactivity, similar to a bear hibernating or a frog that buries itself in sand during hot weather), which was put forth by researchers from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade.
The theory, published in a paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in 2017, states that aliens may be “hibernating” until the environmental conditions are just right to become active and build their super society. The researchers argue that the laws of thermodynamics directly limit computation, as computing technologies need to be cooled in order to function. This makes it exceedingly difficult to create advanced technologies, as keeping them cool at scale quickly becomes prohibitively difficult. So the aliens are falling into a dormant until, to be blunt, the universe cools.
But distilling the development of a civilization to the kinds of conditions that our current, and somewhat imperfect, models can predict could be reductive. What if intelligent extraterrestrial life has found a way around the thermodynamic conditions that limit its ability to compute? “What if there are other forms of value that can be generated?” the study authors write. If they’re wrong about the relationship between thermodynamics and technology, the aestivation hypothesis would be moot. In this case, perhaps one of the other ideas here holds true.
According to the “Gaian Bottleneck” hypothesis, life needs particular environmental conditions to develop, and they’re not so common. Astrobiologists at the Australian National University penned their explanation to the Fermi Paradox in 2016.
Extinction is “the cosmic default for most life that has ever emerged on the surfaces of wet rocky planets in the Universe,” the researchers wrote. That’s because a planet has to be actually inhabited for it to be habitable, because organisms change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Catch-22 emerges: no life without habitability, no habitability without life.
For alien life to persist, the researchers write, it must hang on: “like trying to ride a wild bull. Most life falls off.” Life can only take place with the presence of an unlikely feedback loop. In this case, Earth is the exception to the rule.
4. Trapped in Deep Oceans
In 2015, after nearly a decade in transit, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first to do a close flyby of Pluto. It offered humanity its first look at its icy surface and raised questions about the possibility of subsurface oceans of water, and lots of methane and nitrogen. These questions put Pluto on a short but growing list of worlds with buried oceans trapped under a thick crust of ice and rock (some of the other worlds are Saturn’s moons Europa, Callisto, Enceladus and Ganymede, as well as Jupiter’s moon Titan).
Those oceans figure prominently into another theory of where life might be lurking, one that Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons, touches on. Since buried oceans form a much more stable ecosystem than flowing surface streams, changes such as altering tides and dissipationtake place over a longer time period. A hard outer shell protects hypothetical life in the oceans from a harsh climate and a lethal mix of gases on the surface. “Impacts and solar flares, and nearby supernovae, and what orbit you’re in, and whether you have a magnetosphere, and whether there’s a poisonous atmosphere — none of those things matter,” Stern told Space.com.
Any intelligent alien life that forms in these deep oceans would have to overcome a big hurdle to reach inhabitants of other worlds: drilling through that thick, protective crust. All that work would only get them to the surface — sending signals to other planets become even more unlikely.
For the past eighty years or so, we’ve been listening for signs of extraterrestrial life with radio technology. The Allen Telescope Array, situated 470 km (290 miles) northeast of San Francisco, is one of the biggest — since 2007, 42 dishes have stood at the ready to scan the skies regularly in the hope of receiving radio signals from extraterrestrial life.
But what if extraterrestrial life doesn’t operate on those frequencies? Attempts at contact could simply be passing us by simply because we don’t comprehend the right wavelengths.
Instead of using telescope arrays and scanning the skies for radio signals, Duncan Forgan at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland suggests creating a galactic communications network. The same way we blink our high beams to send a signal to other drivers, we could use the shadow that Earth creates when it passes in front of the Sun to send a message to our fellow inhabitants of the universe. Forgan suggests that we build powerful lasers that contain those encoded messages, which are sent out as we pass in front of the Sun.
“If you want to communicate with someone on the other side of the galactic centre, there’s lots of stuff in the way – dust, stars, a big black hole – so you can take the long way around using the network,” Forgan tells New Scientist. Rather than letting intergalactic messages get lost in the vastness of space, civilizations in different galaxies could agree to use this “galactic communications network” to ensure their messages get to their intended recipients – a unified system to cut through the chatter.
6. We are Being Impatient
We’ve only been actively reaching out for alien life for about a century — a mere blip in the long history of the solar system and of the universe overall. Evan Solomonides, an astrophysics and mathematics undergrad and researcherat Cornell University, suggests that it could take a while — about 1,500 years from now, to be precise — before we hear from any extraterrestrials.
In a paper submitted to the American Astronomical Society, Solomonides examines the probability of finding life. “We predict that under 1 percent of the galaxy has been reached at all thus far, and we do not anticipate to be reached until approximately half of the stars/planets have been reached.” Solomonides believes that we will have explore around half of the Milky Way galaxy before we hear anything, which will take a while since we’ve barely explored our own galactic neighborhood.
Solomonides is careful to note that the 1,500 years is not a deadline. “This is not to say that we must be reached by then or else we are, in fact, alone. We simply claim that it is somewhat unlikely that we will not hear anything before that time.”
Does a bright moon means you can’t see the northern lights? No. Here’s awesome proof that, for photographers at least, moonlight can enhance the view.
A composite of 6 overhead photos of the aurora and a bright moon – just 3 days past full – from Doug Short in Anchorage, Alaska. November 7, 2017.
Auroras are beautiful natural phenomena, whose primary cause is activity on the sun. They happen when charged particles from storms on the sun strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere. The charged solar particles excite those earthly atoms, causing them to light up, creating the aurora. This sort of activity in Earth’s atmosphere happens during geomagnetic storms, and a full moon has absolutely no effect on either solar storms or geomagnetic storms. Still, as every astronomer knows, a full moon casts a lot of light in the sky. Can that light drown an aurora from view?
The answer depends on the strength of the aurora. A weak auroral display might be drowned in bright moonlight, just as bright moonlight can drown faint stars from view.
But, as the photos on this page show, a strong auroral display can withstand bright moonlight. AndyOz, who wrote a particularly good article on this subject, which you can access here, wrote:
If you get a moderate to high level of [auroral] activity … you should still get a good view of the northern lights. In some cases when there has been a solar storm and the level of activity is very high, the moon can actually enhance the viewing and make the display look even more magical. So it all really depends on how strong a display you are witnessing.
Aurora borealis and rising moon on February 14, 2013 from EarthSky Facebook friend Stigs Netrom in northern Norway.
Some photographers say they actually prefer to capture the aurora when there’s a moon in the sky. Todd Salat at the website AuroraHunter.com wrote of shooting the aurora in moonlight:
I personally like moonlight because it lights up the foreground and makes the sky a deep blue instead of pitch black like with no moon. I watch the lunar phase very carefully.
View larger. | Aurora and a full moon. Photo by Antti Pietikainen via the Aurora Zone. Antti created this mosaic from 10 images, taken from his backyard. He said the weather was good, no clouds and very cold. The moon was high in the sky, and it illuminated the whole landscape. “You could read a book outside!”
Bottom line: Contrary to what you might have heard, it is possible to see the aurora borealis, or northern lights, when there’s a bright moon, even a full moon, in the sky. The key is that the auroral display itself be moderate to strong. A weak display of the aurora might be drowned in bright moonlight.
Legendary Soviet first class test pilot Marina Popovich, dubbed “Madam MIG” for going supersonic in the cockpit of a MiG-21 fighter jet, has died at the age of 86. The aviatrix developed a passion for the extraterrestrial, claiming to have encountered UFOs and a Big Foot.
Born in 1937, Popovich enlisted in the Air Force in the post-war years to revenge the fascist killings in her native village in Smolensk Region. She would tell the Russian media her family was to repeat the fate of many others burned or shot dead by fascists on a killing spree in the village if it was not saved by local militias.
The horrific experience left a deep imprint on her. Popovich was only 16 when she wrote a letter to Soviet Minister of Defense Voroshilov asking to let her become a professional pilot, a career then closed to women. She would add several years to her age to pursue her dream, pretending she was 22 at the time she started training.
Since Popovich claimed she was six years older than she really was, and that deception was reflected in official documents, her “official” age differed from her actual one and caused confusion over the years.
In 1961, Popovich became the only Soviet first class test pilot and in 1964, a military test pilot. A year later, she broke the sound barrier reaching the speed of 2,320 km/h on a MiG-21, a supersonic jet fighter and interception aircraft.
During her long career in aviation, she flew 40 different planes and helicopters, setting 102 aviation world records.
Ten of these records were set on the Antonov An- 22 Antei heavy military transport aircraft, which remains the world’s largest turboprop-powered airplane to date. She retired in 1984, having flown nearly 6,000 flight hours.
After her retirement, Popovich focused on her other long-time passion, the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. She was outspoken about her own experiences with UFOs, claiming to have witnessed them herself three times, first in 1962, and collected numerous accounts of sightings around the world.
She also claimed to have met the mythical Bigfoot creature during a trip to the Pamir Mountains in 1982.
In her book "UFO-Glasnost" she even wrote that Soviet military and civil pilots have reported some 3,000 UFO sightings and that the KGB had the debris of five crashed UFOs hidden away, claims she reiterated in public interviews.
“I believe UFO do exist, its behavior is logical, its behavioral motives are sensible, its origin is artificial…I made another conclusion for myself, a warning – you need to be cautious and vigilant when encountering UFOs, as sometimes these meetings can be tragic,"she wrote in her other book, "UFOs over Planet Earth," in 2003.
Popovich was awarded one of the highest state honors in the Soviet Union, the Hero of Socialist Labor, the Order of Courage in 2007, and other decorations.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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