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...
11-12-2017
NEWS A Dangerous asteroid capable of destroying a city skims past Earth without being detected by NASA
A Dangerous asteroid capable of destroying a city skims past Earth without being detected by NASA
A massive Asteroid recently flew dangerously-close to Earth. Despite the fact that the asteroid—which could have destroyed a city the size of New York—missed us, NASA didn’t see the space rock coming.
An asteroid skimmed barely past Earth recently. If it had crashed into Earth, it could have ‘erased’ a city the size of New York.
The city-killer asteroid flew past Earth at speeds close to 9 kilometers per second. NASA astronomers only detected it a day later.
If it had crashed into Earth, it could have ‘erased’ a city the size of New York.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
The space rock, called 2017 VL2, is the size of a blue whale it skimmed past Earth at a distance of only 117,480 kilometers- a third of the distance between Earth and the Moon.
The space threat was first observed by the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii at 11:24 UTC on November 10.
However, this was too late, as the asteroid had already passed near Earth at that time, having achieved its closest approach at 9:50 on November 9.
Had it impacted a city on Earth, the asteroid would have left a 6 km crater and wreaked havoc.
“The space rock measures between 16 and 32 meters in diameter, and belongs to the group of Apollo asteroids,” explains The Watchers site. It will not pass near Earth again until the year 2125.
Currently, astronomers have identified more than 8,000 Apollo-type asteroids.
According to reports, around 1,500 Apollo asteroids are large enough and may get extremely close to Earth to be considered as potentially dangerous asteroids that could impact our planet.
Astronomers say that in theory, all NEOs or Near Earth Asteroids, are considered by NASA in order to predict potential impacts.
NASA says that all NEOs that are greater than 100 meters in diameter and pass within 4.6 million miles are classified as PHAs or potentially hazardous asteroids.
However, another eery encounter is set to occur just before Christmas when a massive asteroid dubbed as 3200 Phaethon is due to pass near Earth on December 17, Russian astronomers have revealed.
It is this asteroid which is believed to be responsible for the Geminids meteor shower which occurs between December 13 and December 14, resulting in hundreds of bright meteors to illuminate the sky as they are consumed by Earth’s atmosphere.
Researchers find that Earth’s inner ocean is much larger than previously thought
Researchers find that Earth’s inner ocean is much larger than previously thought
Scientists have found a massive volume of water 1,000km inside of our planet, around a third way to Earth’s core: “This water is much deeper than ever found before, at a third of the way to the edge of Earth’s core.”
A research published by scientists at the French University Jean Monnet has shown what for many years only appeared in science fiction books: oceans of water to unimaginable depths in the interior of the Earth, reports New Scientist.
For Steve Jacobsen, one of the members of the team of researchers, the discovery shows the existence of a reservoir of water much larger than previously believed located inside of our planet.
The Diamond found in Juína, Brazil.
Mederic Palot
In addition, it is the deepest aquatic deposit ever found, since it is located a third of the distance between the outer layer of our planet and its core, a thousand kilometers deep.
This amazing discovery was made possible thanks to a strange diamond expelled by a volcano more than 90 million years ago and found near the São Luiz River in the municipality of Juína, in Brazil.
The rock has an imperfection in its structure produced in the first moments of its formation. This natural defect shows an unusual accumulation of “sealed” minerals inside the diamond, which contain hydroxyl ions, a functional group that comes from water.
In addition, the presence of minerals characteristic of the lower terrestrial mantle has allowed scientists to determine the depth of the water deposit.
An illustration of the internal composition of our planet.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Scientists believe that this finding will allow us to understand why our planet has tectonic plates and what has been the role of water in its formation and conservation.
“If it were not there [the water], we would probably all be submerged,” believes Jacobsen, who also believes that this type of discovery will help understand how the oceans and Earth’s atmosphere formed.
According to Jacobsen, this study may help us better understand why Earth is the only planet we know to have plate tectonics.
“If there were no water inside the Earth, the convection of the Earth’s mantle would be inefficient and eventually cease,” explains the researcher.
“The expression on the surface of the convection of the mantle is the movement of plates, the process by which volcanoes are created; and volcanoes have a fundamental role in generating the crust in which we live. Ergo, if the volcanic activity stops, then so will the formation of the crust, generating a chain reaction that would end all planetary activities. ”
The enigmatic ancient ‘city’ of Midas, built by the Phrygians almost 3,000 years ago
The enigmatic ancient ‘city’ of Midas, built by the Phrygians almost 3,000 years ago
It’s an ancient—3,000-year-old city—that isn’t a city. It is said to be the eternal resting place of King Midas, the mythical character remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
Located in the Turkish province of Eskisehir there is an archaeological site dubbed as Yazilikaya—which literally means engraved rock. However, it is also referred to as the City of Midas.
It is believed that the Phrygians built it sometime between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, although archaeologists suspect that it may be much older.
The most curious thing is that, although it is called a city, there were never houses there.
Rather, it was an ancient religious center of the time.
The so-called Ancient city of Midas.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Looking back in history
The Phrygians were an ancient Indo-European people who, according to Herodotus, inhabited the south of the Balkans.
In the 8th century, they emigrated to Anatolia, where they founded their capital at Gordio (in which centuries later the famous episode of the cut of the Gordian knot by Alexander the Great took place).
The oldest mythical king of the Phrygians was Midas, a character from whom there is no archaeological evidence, but who appears in later Greek myths as the man who everything he touched, turned to gold.
However, there are references to a king that ‘fits his descriptions’ in Assyrian sources from the eighth century BC, which portray him as an ally of Sargon II in 709 BC.
Interestingly, successive Phrygian kings were called Midas or Gordias, which may indicate that Midas may have been a title, and not a name.
Around the same time, the Phrygians built their capital in Gordio they installed their religious center in Yazilikaya.
It is not known for sure if when they arrived, the caves, galleries, and stairways were already there.
Scholars are unable to verify it was already a sacred place when the Phrygians got there, or if that aspect was given by the new inhabitants.
The fact is that they turned it into a kind of sanctuary and began to adorn it with new constructions, excavating and inscribing new elements into the surrounding rocks.
Phrygia Yazilikaya and the cave houses in ancient Midas City, Eskisehir, Turkey.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
The Tomb of ‘Midas’
One of the best-known monuments of the site is the so-called Tomb of Midas.
It is a monument, which has never been proven to be a tomb, and is composed by a facade dug in the rock 20 meters high by 16 wide.
It features a false door, today partially destroyed by looters, who must have thought that something had to be behind it, and an inscription on the upper part, perfectly legible and consisting of a dedication.
Written in ancient Phrygian, the inscription says; “by Ates, son of Arkias, to Midas.”
On the walls of the lower niche, there is also a small inscription that says Matar (mother) and probably refers to the goddess Cibeles, whose image may have once stood there.
Just a legend?
What the world Midas refers to remains a mystery today.
If we pay attention to the sources, Midas was buried under a massive tumulus near Gordio.
Interestingly, excavations carried out in the 1990s did not find a single trace of burials there, nor in any other place in the area for that matter.
However, one of the most fascinating, and weird things is that, if you ascend all the way to the highest point of the city, you’ll see hundreds of stairs dug into the surrounding rocks, leading to dead ends or simply disappearing under the ground.
Archaeologists have found a number of scattered altars and stepped thrones.
Many scholars believe these are ceremonial paths, which played an important role in the religious cult of the area.
The stairways that were crafted leading literally into the ground point towards tunnels and underground chambers, interconnected among themselves, which some archaeologists consider were used as ‘cisterns’ to store water, although several authors believe they had a different, more profound reason.
Most of these passageways are blocked by land and rocks which have accumulated over the centuries and have never been excavated.
Underground cities?
The ancient ‘tunnels’ which lead to the underground.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Despite the fact that there are numerous authors who believe there may be some kind of connection to the numerous underground cities found in Turkey in recent decades, let us not forget that the Phrygians—like many other ancient cultures—believed that their gods lived inside the mountains, or inside of the Earth, and the tunnels leading inside were passages to the divine underworld.
Mankind before Religion: what was society like before we started believing in the supernatural?
Mankind before Religion: what was society like before we started believing in the supernatural?
Have you ever wondered about what society—early society—was like before religion appeared?
The Family Tree of the ancient Anunnaki—those who came down from heaven
Thanks to many discoveries made in the past few decades, we have come to understand that mankind has existed on earth much sooner than written history—and religion for that matter—tells us.
So, before humanity started dividing and worshiping different Gods, what where we really like?
We must distinguish the historical origins of religion from its psychological or sociological roots.
The first religious behavior that appears in the course of human evolution is likely to be relatively recent—researchers say the Middle Paleolithic—and constitutes an aspect of behavioral modernity that it seems surely at the same time as the origin of the language.
Many researchers note how evidence of religious behavior in the first humans pre-Homo sapiens is irrefutable.
Scholars point to intentional burials, particularly those that include a series of artifacts buried together with an individual, which can be considered as one of the first detectable forms of religious practice, since, it may illustrate a “concern for the deceased that transcends daily life.”
What was society like before religion appeared on Earth?
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Evidence suggests that the Neandertals were the first hominids to intentionally bury the dead.
Examples of this are the Shanidar in Iraq, the Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia.
Some scholars claim, however, that these bodies may have been manipulated for secular reasons, despite the fact, there is no evidence whatsoever to support this claim.
Archaeologists propose that Middle Palaeolithic societies, such as Neanderthal societies, may have practiced a form of totemism or zoolatry, apart from their burials, which many believe were religious in nature.
However, scientists note that while religious behavior varies widely among different cultures around the globe, in a broad sense, religion is a universal cultural identity found in all human populations.
But, where did it all start?
Image Credit: Simon E. Davies.
Oxford Study: mankind is ‘hardwired’ to be religious, and the cause of this is EVOLUTION
A study by Oxford University experts suggests that mankind is ‘hardwired’ to be religious, and the cause of this is EVOLUTION. As noted by Dominic Johnson, an expert in evolutionary biology and in international relations from Oxford University fear of gods could have helped shape mankind into what we are today. This means that Religion could very well be the result of evolution.
Storytelling, myths, and bonding, as foundations to complex religions?
A new—fresh insight—is offered by experts from the UK, who suppose that the exchange of traditional tales among ancient peoples served as a “universal” instrument for the establishment of relations between different tribes.
They call it ‘the diplomacy of prehistory.’
Anthropologists at University College Londonreveal that the stories and myths of ancient peoples served as a means of uniting the population, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Many anthropologists accept the theory that religions appeared with the objective of maintaining social order and strengthening the links between members.
However, according to a new study, the ancient peoples had other ways to establish relationships, since the first religions appeared some 13,000-15,000 years ago.
One of the co-authors of the study of the British university, Andrea Migliano, looked into the life of an indigenous tribe of the Philippines, the Agta: they are hunters and gatherers and live oblivious to new technologies, and modern society.
The research explored the impact of storytelling on hunter-gatherer cooperative behavior and the individual-level fitness benefits to being a skilled storyteller.
In order to understand the behavior of society and religion, researchers from the UK asked the Agta to tell them stories and traditional fables of their tribe and noticed that most of the stories centered around the value of cooperation, the importance of social norms, gender equality and the prohibition of the use of violence as an instrument for the solution of conflicts.
Furthermore, the best narrators of stories, both men, and women, have advantages within their tribe.
The other members respect them especially and have on average 0.5 children more than the others.
Also, scientists estimate that the tradition of storytelling served as a prototype to the religions that would appear later.
The researchers concluded how“skilled storytellers are preferred social partners and have greater reproductive success, providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviors, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection.”
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Newly found Antarctic ‘air-eating’ bacteria could change the way we search for aliens
Newly found Antarctic ‘air-eating’ bacteria could change the way we search for aliens
Scientists have made yet another bizarre discovery in Antarctica as they have discovered a new type of bacterium that can survive solely off the chemicals in the air. The discovery is important because it could completely revolutionize the way we think about alien organisms living on different planets in the cosmos.
The newly found organisms are able to survive on a basic diet of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, which allows them to survive under the most extreme conditions where other sources of energy and food are scarce, or nonexistent.
This discovery raises a number of questions related to the search for alien life in the universe. Is it possible that low-level lifeforms on other distant planets and moons are able to survive on a diet of scarce gasses available in the atmosphere?
This is a new possibility we should consider according to a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Antarctica is one of the most extreme habitats on Earth,” says lead researcher Belinda Ferrari. “Yet the cold, dark and dry desert regions are home to a surprisingly rich diversity of microbial communities.”
dubbed WPS-2 and AD3, the new types of bacteria can stay alive in extreme conditions.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
“The big question has been how the microbes can stay alive when there is little water, the soils are very low in organic carbon and there is a very little capacity to generate energy from the Sun via photosynthesis during the winter darkness.”
The fact is that there are places which are home to extreme, freezing temperatures, offer very little or no water at all. These places also remain in darkness for months, or are exposed to extremely strong ultraviolet radiation, in addition to the weathering of freeze and thaw cycles. All of these facts make it hard for life—as we know it—to exist.
However, studies have demonstrated that nonetheless, life finds a way to thrive in such extreme environments.
This raised an important question among scientists: How can different organisms stay alive without energy sources, like carbon being turned into sugar via photosynthesis?
To answer this question, scientists took soil samples from two ice-free parts in Antarctica.
Researchers reconstructed the genomes of 23 microbes by studying the soil’s microbial DNA with a shotgun sequencing method. Scientists used small sections of DNA to recreate the whole, and were able to identify two groups of previously unknown bacteria they dubbed WPS-2 and AD3.
WPS-2 and AD3 have no issue whatsoever to stay alive with little sunlight, no geothermal energy, and few nutrients.
It’s a revolutionary find as it is the first air-eating life form we’ve encountered yet.
“This new understanding about how life can still exist in physically extreme and nutrient-starved environments like Antarctica opens up the possibility of atmospheric gases supporting life on other planets,” says Ferrari.
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UFO Encounter Created Strange Light Phenomenom In Michigan
UFO Encounter Created Strange Light Phenomenom In Michigan
A post on Reddit was brought to the attention of Christopher Connelly on January 12, 2017, and it talked about a guy who was having a drink with his boss, who proceeded to tell him a story about a UFO incident.
This incident came to be known as the North Michigan strange light phenomenon.
Large Bright Lights Appeared In Sky Over Glen Arbor
At first, the guy thought that his boss was joking around, but then he got serious and began to tell him a very strange story. He said that when he had been driving along in his car some 20 years back in north Michigan close to Glen Arbor at around 2.30am his entire car had suddenly lit up even though he was in the middle of nowhere.
He said that the light was insanely bright and there was a shrieking type noise that actually hurt his ears. The many had been out taking photographs of the region as he was a keen photographer and his camera was in the passenger seat of the car. At this point, he described getting out of the vehicle and seeing a strange craft that was hovering above him and it remained there for what seemed to be a very long time. He then reached into his car and grabbed his camera and began to take photographs.
Man Captured Photographs Of The Strange Lights
At this point, the man went over to a filing cabinet and started rustling around in some folders. He then showed his friend the photos and at this point, the hairs rose on the back of his neck and his jaw just dropped open as he realized that his friend was not joking.
The photographs seem to have come from a camera that is an older model than the ones on the market today. The only images that were available for investigation were photographs that had been taken of the original photographs and of course this was not the best for analyzing.
The photographs had been taken at night time and they showed snow on the ground, so the temperature would have been cold. The photographs did not reveal if there were clouds around or if there were any other types of meteorological formation. However, they do show that the ground is very heavily illuminated and this created almost complete coverage of the region. The light formations look like pillars that are rising up from the center of the area that is illuminated. The light seems to have a bluish tinge to it and no animals, vehicles or humans can be seen in the pictures.
There does seem to be a signpost in the lower right-hand side of the photo, which is seen on the opposite side of the road and this could indicate that there is a side road leading off the main one. The strange lights do seem to be behind trees but the distance cannot be judged from the person taking the photograph.
An anonymous user had posted the photos on Reddit, who was said to be the co-worker of the person who witnessed the event. The date of the actual event is unknown but it was said to have taken place some twenty years previously.
Analysis Of Photos Was Unclear
The photograph was analyzed and no craft was seen in the picture. What can be seen is that there appears to be a valley and this is where the lights are coming from. The lights also seem to be hitting a small cloud or fog that is low lying. It is possible that the site may be a construction or fracking site or it could be a city. The lights do seem to look like the light that a site or small town might make.
The pillars of light could be explained away by ice crystals or maybe light pillars. Light pillars are an atmospheric optical phenomenon that seems to extend below or above the light source. The effect comes from the reflection of the light from many small ice crystals that are suspended in the clouds or the atmosphere. The light might come from the Sun if it is close to the horizon or below it. It is also possible that it might come from streetlights or the Moon. Light pillars are commonly found in colder climates, including in Michigan, where the photo was taken.
The Original Reddit post
“Was having a drink with my boss in his office today. I’m a conspiracy theorist and he picks at me from time to time regarding some of the stuff I share with him. So he goes “did I ever tell you my ufo story?”
I was like hahahahaha ok thanks for making fun of me, his face got serious and he goes “listen to this story…”
So he said “20 or so years ago I was driving in northern Michigan near Glen Arbor (sic) at 2:30am in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden my entire car lit up”.
He described this insane light and shrieking noise that hurt his ears… and he’s going on and on and im waiting for him to laugh and be all like gotcha!!
He had been taking pictures of northern Michigan cuz photography is his hobby, so he had a camera on the passenger seat of his car.
He said he got out and this craft was hovering over him for what seemed like a very long time, he was afraid. Then he remembers he had his camera, so he took it out and said he took pictures.
Still I’m waiting for him to laugh. I gave him a “ya ok” look…then he rolled his chair over to his file cabinet and started rustling around folders…
See the photos attached to this post…the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and my arms. My jaw dropped.
Kazakhstan Lines - Were The Gods Supposed To Land Here?
Kazakhstan Lines - Were The Gods Supposed To Land Here?
Most people know about the Nazca lines in Peru. These are a series of large ancient geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert, in southern Peru. These pictures of animals and abstract figures are only visible from high altitude. Their only function seems to be to be visible from the sky, probably by their godlike observers.
Did you know that these signs were also made in Kazakhstan? Someone made the effort of creating a certain design of these ground paintings, but it’s not clear what their real purpose was.
Remember, these signs were created in an age where humans were only supposed to hunt animals for food. Their only occupation was to make sure there was enough food for the tribe to make it to the next day. However, archaeologists assume that pre-modern people made these sightings for religious beliefs…
The real question in these cases remains the same, why were people in the stone age period obsessed with visitors from the sky?
The eerie picture was posted to online discussion forum reddit by a poster who claimed to have been given a set of images by their boss, who said he saw a craft hovering above his car before he began snapping.
The poster, a confirmed conspiracy theorist, claimed the pictures were taken around 20 years ago in a remote area near Glen Harbour in northern Michigan, USA, at 2.30am.
It was after the boss's car "suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree", he claimed.
The pictures show what look like beams of light either coming down into or rising up from an area of white smoke of mist behind some trees set back from a road.
Getty*Reddit
The mysterious light beams (left) compared to a CGI of a UFO with light beaming down.
The poster wrote: "He described this insane light and shrieking noise that hurt his ears and he’s going on and on and I'm waiting for him to laugh and be all like gotcha!
"He said he got out and this craft was hovering over him for what seemed like a very long time, he was afraid.
"Then he remembers he had his camera, so he took it out and said he took pictures."
The boss explained that the "craft" had moved away from above his car by the time he started snapping.
No craft is visible in the image, but the poster says the boss suggested it was above the beams of light in the night sky.
The poster described their reaction to seeing the pictures, saying: "The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and my arms. My jaw dropped.
He said he got out and this craft was hovering over him for what seemed like a very long time, he was afraid.
Reddit poster
"I asked him 'you sure it was not a helicopter?' He said 'no f’ing way, this stood still with ZERO movement and sounded like a screaming banshee'.
"He said that it was a huge flat bottom craft.
"The light from the craft was blinding.
"He said that initially it was over his car, which lit the entire inside up like a Christmas tree. "When he got out of the car he saw the flat bottom and the lights were positioned around the perimeter of the craft and one larger light in the centre.
"As soon as he grabbed the camera and started snapping flash and photos it zig zagged away."
Some posters who responded seemed convinced it may have been an alien event.
One said: "In 1976 or 77 I was living in that area and one night my girlfriend and I watched a very large unlit object at low altitude slowly pass directly over us. It wasn't a plane. And it made no noise."
Another said: "If these are genuine pictures I would say this is the most convincing evidence of a UFO I’ve ever seen."
A third added: "From my understanding we are looking only at crazy bright lights emitted down to the ground from a craft somewhere above and the craft itself couldn't be photographed because it was pitch black darkness out there.
"But the lights seem weird enough for it to be one of the most interesting photos posted here, if you ask me."
However, many others were less than convinced.
One said: "So he takes a picture or two of the light emitted from the craft, but not the actual craft itself?
"I would be snapping madly away at the source of the light, even if the thing would come out indistinct."
A believer tried to explain why, adding: "He said that he took a picture of the craft, although it's very overexposed and you cant see anything due to bright lights."
However, many people had what appeared to be a plausible natural explanation... that there was no craft and the image shows "pillar lights."
Pillar lights are caused when ice crystals in the air reflect light from the ground, creating what appear like pillars of light shooting up.
One poster said: "They happen in very particular conditions. Cool pic, cheesy story."
Another said: "Frozen light pillars. A light phenomenon that happens in very cold temps. Nothing extraterrestrial about it."
Some provided confirmed pillar light pictures which appeared similar to the pictures in question.
However, this did not stop the conspiracy theorists who argued the lights on the UFO could have caused the pillar lighting, even though it was said to be in the air and the light source needs to be on the ground.
Reddit
DEBUNKED? An example of light pillars uploaded by a Reddit user.
One said: "So it could be light pillars from a UFO."
Another said: "Hey, I thought light pillars too... but something has to be creating the light for the pillars to appear.”
Scott Brando is a debunker behind website ufoofinterest.org.
He believes the image is another example of light pillars.
Caroline Cook was 16 years old when she attempted suicide. Traumatised by her parents’ divorce and struggling to cope with her mother’s mental illness, she swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills.
After spending three days in hospital in a coma, she awoke to a shockingly vivid memory that has never faded.
Now aged 63, Caroline says: ‘I suddenly found myself standing in a beautiful, lush, green forest, looking out over pastures filled with flowers with snow-capped mountains in the distance, all beneath a brilliant blue sky.
I was taken to the hospital where I worked as a neurosurgeon. The doctors discovered I’d contracted a type of meningitis, and very soon the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down as the bacteria ate away at my brain.
Pictured: Dr Eben Alexander
‘The colours were vivid, yet everything was bathed in a white light, even the sky. I felt joyful and happy to be there.’
An old man appeared beside her, with white robes and a white beard. He, too, was bathed in white light.
‘You cannot stay here,’ he told Caroline. ‘It is not your time yet. Go back and finish living your life.’
Another woman, Alison Leigh Sugg, had an experience that was both similar and surprisingly different.
During a difficult labour with her second baby, in 1999, she suffered a severe haemorrhage. Bleeding profusely, she lost consciousness. Her heart rate slowed and then flatlined.
The emergency doctor in charge was Dr Margaret Christensen. Alison lay dying on the operating table, but she could not be operated on until enough blood had been pumped back into her veins to let the heart start beating again. Unable to begin surgery, Dr Christensen decided to lead the medical team in a short prayer instead.
‘Please guide us to heal Alison’s body,’ she prayed. ‘Please guide her spirit back into her body.’
Caroline, who had a near-death experience, says: ‘I suddenly found myself standing in a beautiful, lush, green forest, looking out over pastures filled with flowers with snow-capped mountains in the distance, all beneath a brilliant blue sky'
Alison was unconscious, but still somehow aware that her vital energy was leaving her body through two areas simultaneously: her nose, mouth and throat; and the point between her eyebrows.
This energy seemed to flow together at a point above her body, until she was looking back down at herself, with both indifference and compassion.
Other energy seemed to swirl around her, in a spiral of light that propelled her up and away. She drifted into inky blackness, before what she described as ‘a wondrous being of light and sound’ appeared in front of her, emanating profound love.
She had no language for what she was experiencing. The ‘being’ communicated with her, seeming to project a thought: ‘You have a choice.’ Realising that it would be a mistake to turn away from this overwhelming sense of serenity, Alison knew what she must choose. She had to return to her body. Her children needed her.
Both these women confided their deeply personal stories after reading my 2012 book Proof Of Heaven, in which I detailed my own near-death experience.
What happened to me was different — but just as vividly recollected. I’d woken up at 4.30am with a splitting headache. As my then wife frantically tried to massage away the pain, it spread to my back. Within 15 minutes, the agony was so bad I could barely take a step.
I was taken to the hospital where I worked as a neurosurgeon. The doctors discovered I’d contracted a type of meningitis, and very soon the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down as the bacteria ate away at my brain.
After being placed on a ventilator, a light came slowly down from above, throwing off marvellous filaments of living silver and golden effulgence.
It was a circular entity, emitting heavenly music that I called the Spinning Melody. The light opened up like a rip, and I felt myself going through the rip, up into a valley full of lush and fertile greenery, where waterfalls flowed into crystal pools.
There were clouds, like marshmallow puffs of pink and white. Behind them, the sky was a rich blue-black, with trees, fields, animals and people. There was water, too, flowing in rivers or descending as rain. Mists rose from the pulsing surfaces of these waters, and fish glided beneath them.
More than half of people who have near-death experiences are astonished by their highly intense perceptions. It is as if reality has become more real, and yet none of it is as truly real as their memories of the afterlife
Sceptics would say that, because of the many differences in our accounts, we must all be wrong. But as a scientist, a neurosurgeon and an academic who taught brain science at Harvard Medical School, I am fascinated to know how we all perceived these versions of the hereafter — so vivid in the memory but so difficult to describe.
The evidence for near-death experiences is overwhelming. But the evidence for how they occur is virtually non-existent.
How were our minds conscious when our bodies were effectively dead and, in my case at least, the brain had ceased to function? And where are these bright, unfading memories stored?
To explore these questions takes courage and a thirst for knowledge. In the nine years since I first awoke from my coma, my mantra has been ‘believe in it all, at least for now’.
My advice to you, dear reader, is to do the same: suspend disbelief for now, and open your mind as broadly as possible.
I was in a coma for a week, suffering from meningoencephalitis — a brain infection — of such severity that my odds of survival were estimated at 2 per cent. After a week, my doctors gravely told my family that it was time to let me die. Hearing this, my ten-year-old son ran into the room, pulled open my eyelids and started pleading with me.
‘Daddy,’ he cried, over and over again, ‘you’re gonna be OK.’
Across the vast reaches of the spiritual realm, I felt his presence very clearly . . . and began to wake.
Physicist Albert Einstein would sometimes drift in a small sailing boat, staring into the sky as his imagination wandered, and new possibilities for explaining reality came to him. Pictured: The light at the end of the tunnel
In the early weeks of recovery after my coma, I experienced a constant crackling energy, a hyper-sense of life itself — a sizzling body sensation.
Just two days after I came round, my older son, who was majoring in neuroscience at college, saw me and was struck by this intense energy.
‘You are so clear, so focused, so much more present than ever before,’ he said. ‘It is as if there is a light shining within you.’
Bizarre phenomena happened all around me. Street lights would blink as I walked beneath them. My laptop seemed prone to crashing. I went through three wristwatches before I found one that would work. And I had great difficulty sleeping, though this turned out to be a blessing because it granted me the time I needed to read, study and reflect on what had happened.
The shift in my perceptions brought difficulties, too. Studies show around 80 per cent of marriages break up after one partner has a near-death experience. For my then wife and me, it became clear that our life together was not meant to last for ever.
Our marriage had been struggling in the years before my coma, and my significant change brought us to an amicable parting.
My newly awakened energy sometimes seemed out of control, though it also never harmed me. While I was writing Proof Of Heaven, a massive branch tore itself away from the oak tree outside my study window and landed parallel to one outside wall.
No sooner had my sons and I sawed it up for firewood, baffled as to why a healthy tree should lose a limb, than another giant branch fell — this time along the adjoining wall of the house, at a 90-degree angle to the first.
That alarmed me so much that I called a tree surgeon . . . only to be told the tree was in fine condition, with no rot or insect damage.
There was no good reason why those branches fell. It was as if some giant hand had snapped them off. But one thing was certain: if either one had hit the house, it would have smashed down to the foundations.
Little wonder that, around this time, one friend told me: ‘You are sitting on a maelstrom of energy!’
Just as my senses were heightened, so were my memories — at least those rooted in my near-death experience.
This is common: more than half of people who have near-death experiences are astonished by their highly intense perceptions. It is as if reality has become more real, and yet none of it is as truly real as their memories of the afterlife.
In order to bring this whirling energy under control, I began to explore other ways to understand the brain than the merely medical.
In the Eighties, I discovered, the Dalai Lama — the Buddhist spiritual leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — began working with Western doctors to combine everything that science, mysticism and religion can teach us about the mind. He calls this ‘contemplative neuroscience’.
For me, one of the most effective Buddhist practices is a form of meditation called mindfulness.
I find I can accomplish it by placing all my attention on whatever activity is taking place, whether it is walking, sitting quietly or just drinking a cup of coffee.
Mindfulness involves the constant awareness of the breath and the body, to move the mind’s attention away from negative or distressing thoughts.
As my attention remains focused only on the present moment, my mind eventually becomes free of all other distractions.
Looking back, I realise I did this instinctively when I was practising neurosurgery. I saw the operating theatre as a sanctuary where I could focus exclusively on my task. Time appeared to contract in this state, and a procedure that lasted hours might seem to be over in a matter of minutes.
By getting the brain ‘out of the way’, we can explore the world of universal consciousness.
Many of the world’s greatest geniuses have understood this, and achieved it in individual ways.
Physicist Albert Einstein would sometimes drift in a small sailing boat, staring into the sky as his imagination wandered, and new possibilities for explaining reality came to him.
Inventor Thomas Edison learned to work for days on little sleep. He would sit, with weights in his hands, and when he began to nod off, the weights would fall . . . waking him up. At these moments, between sleep and wake, some of his most brilliant ideas would come to him, and he would be ready to write them down.
The novelist Robert Louis Stevenson used another technique, travelling to the edge of dreams to harvest ideas for his stories.
All of these men were active participants in the pursuit of inspiration through free-form daydreaming, a level of awareness known as hypnagogia — the borderline of sleep.
Meditators, prophets and mystics have done this since the dawn of time. Perhaps this receptive state of being is the ultimate foundation of all our great religions. After reading my book Proof Of Heaven, the Dalai Lama invited me to join him to discuss modern scientific views on reincarnation.
He said there were three sorts of phenomena. The first was the most obvious — events that we perceive with our ordinary five senses.
The second was more subtle: hidden phenomena which go unobserved but which can be deduced from other evidence.
The third was the most tantalising — hidden phenomena, which can only be experienced personally, such as a dream, a secret wish, or a near-death experience.
These can be told but they might not be believed.
Unless you’ve had such an experience yourself, you can’t know with certainty that it took place, and so cannot investigate it using conventional scientific methods.
But first-hand experiences are vital to our understanding. We have to trust the experiences of others while cultivating our own, so that we can compare them.
And that’s what I, as a scientist, am most interested in. Mysteries are around every corner — we just need to learn to pay attention.
Adapted from Living In A Mindful Universe by Dr Eben Alexander and Karen Newell, published by Piatkus Books at £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99 (20 pc discount, valid until December 16), go to www.mail shop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. P&p free on orders over £15
Hersenchirurg vertelt over zijn bijna-doodervaring. Dit is wat hij meemaakte in het hiernamaals
Hersenchirurg vertelt over zijn bijna-doodervaring. Dit is wat hij meemaakte in het hiernamaals
Niemand weet wat er precies gebeurt als je sterft. Sommige mensen claimen echter een glimp te hebben opgevangen van het hiernamaals.
Eén van hen is dr. Eben Alexander, een hersenchirurg die in 2008 een week in coma lag. Hij vertelt wat hij daar heeft meegemaakt.
In een boek dat hij eerder dit jaar publiceerde schrijft hij: “Ik lag een week in coma en leed aan een vorm van meningo-encefalitis – een hersenaandoening – die zo ernstig was dat er een kans van twee procent was dat ik het zou overleven.”
Cirkelvormige entiteit
“Na een week vertelden artsen mijn gezin dat het tijd was om me te laten sterven,” vervolgde hij.
De 63-jarige Alexander zag terwijl hij in coma lag een ‘licht dat langzaam omlaag kwam’. “Het was een cirkelvormige entiteit waar hemelse muziek uit kwam,” zei hij.
“In het licht vormde zich een opening, waar ik doorheen ging,” aldus de arts. “Ik kwam terecht in een groene, vruchtbare vallei, waar watervallen uitkwamen in kristallen poelen.”
Overweldigend
“Er waren witte en roze wolken,” legde hij uit. “Daarachter een blauwe lucht met bomen, velden, dieren en mensen.”
Alexander zag water dat in rivieren stroomde of omlaag kwam als regen. Boven het water, waarin vissen zwommen, hing mist.
De arts stelt dat er steeds meer bewijs komt voor het hiernamaals. “Het bewijs voor bijna-doodervaringen is overweldigend,” zei hij. “Maar er is bijna geen bewijs waaruit blijkt hoe ze ontstaan.”
In Na de Dood ontmoeten we bijzondere mensen die allemaal één ding met elkaar gemeen hebben: de dood.Na de Dood is een onderdeel van het televisieprogramma Over Mijn Lijk. Meer afleveringen: http://overmijnlijk.bnn.nl.
They Are Here: Huge Alien Craft In Our Solar System
They Are Here: Huge Alien Craft In Our Solar System
The Washington PostFriday, May 11, 2001.
The U.S. Government has been covering up evidence of extraterrestrial visits for more than 50 years an array of 20 retired Air Force, F.A.A. and intelligence officers said…
The 20 witnesses were a fraction of the 400 who are willing to testify under oath and under congressional immunity…
Image: Moon UFO - Anomaly.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1
December 2017; nothing has changed, the U.S. Government and NASA still cover-up evidence of the existence of interstellar alien spacecraft in our solar system and extraterrestrial visits to our planet.
Image: Moon UFO - Anomaly.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1.
Even the Cassini probe made clear images of Saturn’s moons, like Promethius, Atlas, Pan, Daphnes and a Trojan follower of Thethys. Moons that may not be moons at all but huge extraterrestrial space craft cloaked as moons, like the Martian moon Phobos which is probably also a cloaked alien satellite.
Image: Saturn's Moon Promethius.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1.
Image: Saturn's Moon Atlas.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1.
Image: Saturn's Moon Pan.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1.
More and more individuals are no longer accepting the UFO and alien cover-up!
TheRealJimmyRoberts1 is one of the persons who not accept any longer the silence of the U.S. Government and NASA and has started his own investigation to bring out the truth.
Image: Saturn's Moon Daphnes.
Credit: TheRealJimmyRoberts1.
In the excellent video below he presents strong pictorial evidence of alien spacecraft from the 1972 Apollo16 Mission to the moon as well as from the Cassini probe images of Saturn's moons.
The skies over Gloucester became the centre of attention after a bright red object was observed moving erratically last week.
Luke Kane spotted a moving object in the sky over Gloucester Quays around 6:30 pm on November 28. He saw the bright red object moving in different directions in a strange movement that he has never seen before. The UFO also would pulsate, according to Kane.
Kane believed that he could not have been the only person to witness the strange bright red.
No official explanation to the mystery at the moment and there is a big possibility it would remain an unsolved case forever.
Some experts in drone say that the flying object seems familiar to them. They say it could be a drone taking excellent photos of the city. They explain that the erratic movements could be due to the operator losing control of the drone after maybe the battery suddenly died.
They say that people in Gloucester have nothing to be afraid as Martians are not coming just yet. The UFO could be a drone taking amazing photos of Gloucester from above.
This year's one and only supermoon rises, scientists spot 72 galaxies in a patch of sky, slippery ice could add power to landslides on Mars, cosmonauts come across bacteria from space and a government agency stops a flat-earther from flying in a homemade rocket in some of the top stories from Space.com this week.
Photo Credit: ESO/MUSE HUDF Collaboration
1. 72 potential galaxies spotted for the first time
Astronomers have now added 72 galaxies to their sky maps! Using the MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, researchers found the celestial bodies hiding in plain sight. The newly-discovered galaxies will help researchers understand the motions of stars, and are also interesting subjects of scientific study in and of themselves.
This year's one and only supermoon will rise this Sunday night (Dec. 3), and will be completely full at 10:47 A.M. EST (1547 GMT). The moon's orbit around the Earth is not perfectly circular, and if a full moon coincides with the moment the moon is closest to Earth, the moon appears slightly bigger and brighter than normal.
Photo Credit: Missile Defense Agency/U.S. Department of Defense
3. Can the US stop a nuclear weapon?
Some experts believe that the potential for nuclear war is greater than it's been in years, and that the United States currently lacks a reliable defense system. The Pentagon announced on Nov. 28 that North Korea conducted a nuclear test launch of a far-reaching missile, and decades of American research on defense strategies may not be sufficient to combat a possible threat.
4. Martian landslides gain power from slippery ice
Two Italian researchers found that ice on Mars helps produce powerful landslides on our neighboring planet's slopes. By modeling the dynamics of Martian sediment flow, they found that slippery ice might produce landslide speeds of up to 450 mph (725 km/h).
Registration has opened to enter Phase 3 of the space agency's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, in which participants will develop ways to build shelters on Mars and the moon using materials likely found on those celestial bodies.
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
6. Cosmonaut announces discovery of bacteria in outer space
Upon analysis by researchers on Earth, cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov announced that living bacteria has been detected on material collected from the exterior of the International Space Station. During his announcement on Russia's state-owned TASS news agency, Shkaplerov suggested that the bacteria "came from outer space."
7. 'Monkey King' satellite seeks to 'understand the void'
China's first space observatory is nicknamed "Wukong" after the shape-shifting Chinese hero, Sun Wukong (aka the Monkey King). This satellite launched in 2015, and is now looking at cosmic rays to seek evidence of the origins of dark matter, the invisible substance that seems to make up most of the matter in the universe.
8. Roscosmos rocket payload fails to make contact with Earth
Nineteen satellites that launched into orbit on Nov. 28 aboard a Soyuz rocket are now presumed to be lost. Although initial reports signaled a successful launch, the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos later stated that it could not contact the main weather satellite aboard the vehicle because the rocket was probably off its planned course.
9. US government stops flat-earther from attempting homemade rocket launch
A flat-Earth conspiracy theorist announced a Nov. 25 launch to disprove the widely-accepted scientific notion that the Earth in round. The Bureau of Land Management, however, stepped in to shut down Mike Hughes' launch, which he intended to attempt aboard a homemade rocket above California's Mojave Desert.
10. Can Enceladus support life? Scientists develop lab tests
Scientists continue discovering evidence that oceans exists on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Laboratory experiments can now simulate the environment under which Enceladus — an icy Saturnian moon — could harbor alien life.
Once theorized as visions of a future society, technology like automation and artificial intelligence are now becoming a part of everyday life. These advancements in AI are already impacting our economy, both in terms of individual wealth and broader financial trends.
It’s long been theorized that a readily available machine workforce will make it more difficult for humans to keep their jobs, but automation may, in fact, offer up more even-handed consequences. Major changes are coming, but there’s reason to believe these changes could benefit a broader range of stakeholders — not just corporations who no longer have to worry about paying living wages (just parts and servicing).
“It is far more an opportunity for growth,” said Joshua Gans, holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll chair of technical innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “At the moment, while some jobs have been replaced by automation, this has also led to job creation as well. So while there may be short-term disruption, the longer-term potential is very strong.”
While jobs that rely on manual labor may increasingly fall to machines, everything from the design of these systems to their upkeep has the potential to create new jobs for humans. There’s also the capacity for technology to augment the human workforce, allowing them to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible. For instance, imagine a robotic suit that could allow a factory worker to lift objects so heavy they could never perform the task with their human strength alone (at least not without incurring injury). In a more general sense, these technologies stand to increase productivity, which would have far-reaching benefits.
“I don’t think they are going to disrupt the economy but instead make individuals and firms more efficient,” said Gans. “In other words, they are productivity enhancing.”
Automation might even allow some of us to escape the traditional work week. If you have access to a self-driving car, you could use it as a taxi service, collecting profits without having to be behind the wheel. This isn’t dissimilar to the basic concept of cryptocurrency mining, which puts the hardware to work in order to earn money for its human owners.
Assuming that individuals aren’t priced out of buying new hardware, this could make a huge shift in how we earn money. A basic income could be accrued from ownership of a machine that performs a task for others. Of course, a scenario like this would prompt questions of disparity in access: how could we ensure the rich won’t simply get richer, while the less wealthy are left behind?
MONEY MAKERS
The days of a standard 40-hour work week seem to be coming to an end. In an ideal world, we’d all be able to provide for ourselves by leveraging a robotic workforce on a personal scale to earn money. In practice, it’s much more likely that corporations are going to be able to invest in this infrastructure well before individuals can do so.
Universal basic income (UBI) has been touted as one solution to decreased job opportunities for humans. Automation could even foot the bill via a tax on robotic workers – though, critics of this idea have suggested it could discourage widespread adoption.
Proponents have argued that UBI could foster entrepreneurship, and even have a positive impact on the economy. It would be a huge shift in its own right, and there could be smaller changes to be made in the meantime that would ease the transition toward a greater reliance on automation and AI.
“In countries with a well established social safety net and non-employer related health insurance, the transition will be much easier,” said Gans. “That said, there are few companies that have good programs for mid-career retraining. So this is an area that could use some significant public policy effort.”
This much is clear: these technologies are already beginning to change the way we work. It’s of crucial importance that we start preparing for greater changes as soon as possible. Automation and AI could have a positive effect on wealth disparity and quality of life for the average person. However, if they aren’t employed with the proper care and consideration, they also have the potential to bring about the opposite effect.
In the months running up to the 2016 election, the Democratic National Committee was hacked. Documents were leaked, fake news propagated across social media — the hackers, in short, launched a systematic attack on American democracy.
Whether or not that’s war, however, is a matter for debate. In the simplest sense, an act of cyber warfare is defined as an attack by one nation on the digital infrastructure of another.
These threats are what Samuel Woolley, research director of the Digital Intelligence Lab at Institute for the Future, calls “computational propaganda,” which he defines as the spread of disinformation and politically motivated attacks designed using “algorithms, automation, and human curation,” and launched via the internet, particularly social media. In a statement to Futurism, Woolley added that these attacks are “assailing foundational parts of democracy: the press, open civic discourse, the right to privacy, and free elections.”
Attacks like the ones preceding the 2016 election may be a harbinger of what’s to come: We are living in the dawn of an age of digital warfare — more pernicious and less visible than conventional battles, with skirmishes that don’t culminate in confrontations like Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
Our definitions of warfare — its justifications, its tactics — are transforming. Already, there’s a blurry line between threats to a nation’s networks and those that occur on its soil. As Adrienne LaFrance writes in The Atlantic: an act of cyber warfare must be considered an act of war.
A War of 0s and 1s
A little over a decade ago, the United States Cyber Command began developing what would become the world’s first digital weapon: a malicious computer worm known as Stuxnet. It was intended to be used against the government of Iran to stymie its nuclear program, as The New York Times reported. In the true spirit of covert operations and military secrecy, the U.S. government has never publicly taken credit for Stuxnet, nor has the government of Israel, with whom the U.S. reportedly teamed up to unleash it.
Stuxnet’s power is based on its ability to capitalize on software vulnerabilities in the form of a “zero day exploit.” The virus infects a system silently, without requiring the user to do anything, like unwittingly download a malicious file, in order for the worm to take effect. And it didn’t just run rampant through Iran’s nuclear system — the worm spread through Windows systems all over the world. That happened in part because, in order to enter into the system in Iran, the attackers infected computers outside the network (but that were believed to be connected to it) so that they would act as “carriers” of the virus.
As its virulence blossomed, however, analysts began to realize that Stuxnet had become the proverbial first shot in a cyber war.
Like war that takes place in the physical world, cyber warfare targets and exploits vulnerabilities. Nation-states invest a great many resources to gather intelligence about the activities of other nations. They identify a nation’s’ most influential people in government and in general society, which may come in useful when trying to sway public opinion for or against a number of sociopolitical issues.
image credit: pixabay
Gathering nitty-gritty details of another country’s economic insecurities, its health woes, and even its media habits is standard fare in the intelligence game; figuring out where it would “hurt the most” if a country were to launch an attack is probably about efficiency as much as it is efficacy.
Historically, gathering intel was left to spies who risked life and limb to physically infiltrate a building (an agency, an embassy), pilfer documents, files, or hard drives, and escape. The more covert these missions, and the less they could alarm the owners of these targets, the better. Then, it was up to analysts, or sometimes codebreakers, to make sense of the information so that military leaders and strategists could refine their plan of attack to ensure maximum impact.
The internet has made acquiring that kind of information near-instantaneous. If a hacker knows where to look for the databases, can break through digital security measures to access them, and can make sense of the data these systems contain, he or she can acquire years’ worth of intel in just a few hours, or even minutes. The enemy state could start using the sensitive information before anyone realizes that something’s amiss. That kind of efficiency makes James Bond look like a slob.
In 2011, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the imminent threat of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” in which an enemy state could hack into digital systems to shut down power grids or even go a step beyond and “gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals.” In 2014, TIME Magazine reported that there were 61,000 cybersecurity breaches in the U.S that year; the then-Director of National Intelligence ranked cybercrime as the number one security threat to the United States that year, according to TIME.
Computer viruses, denial of service (DDS) attacks, even physically damaging a power grid — the strategies for war in the fifth domain are still evolving. Hacking crimes have become fairly common occurrences for banks,hospitals,retailers, and college campuses. But if these epicenters of a functioning society are crippled by even the most “routine” cybercrimes, you can only imagine the devastation that would follow an attack with the resources of an enemy state’s entire military behind it.
image credit: pixabay
Nations are still keeping their cards close to their chest, so no one is really certain which countries are capable of attacks of the largest magnitude. China is a global powerhouse of technology and innovation, so it’s safe to assume its government has the means to launch a large-scale cyber attack. North Korea, too, could have the technology — and, as its relationship with other countries becomes increasingly adversarial, more motivation to refine it. After recent political fallout between North Korea and China, Russia reportedly stepped in to provide North Korea with internet— a move that could signal a powerful alliance is brewing. Russia is the biggest threat as far as the United States is concerned; the country has proven itself to be both a capable and engaged digital assailant.
The Russian influence had a clear impact on the 2016 election, but this type of warfare is still new. There is no Geneva Convention, no treaty, that guides how any nation should interpret these attacks, or react to them. To get that kind of rule, global leaders would need to look at the ramifications for the general population and determine how cyberwar affects citizens.
At present, there is no guiding principle for deciding when (or even if) to act on a perceived act of cyberwarfare. A limbo that is further complicated by the fact that, if those in power have benefitted from, or even orchestrated, the attack itself, then what incentive do they have to retaliate?
If cyber war is still something of a Wild West, it’s clearly citizens who will become the casualties. Our culture, economy, education, healthcare, livelihoods, and communication are inextricably tethered to the internet. If an enemy state wanted a more “traditional” attack (a terrorist bombing or the release of a chemical agent, perhaps) to have maximum impact, why not preface it with a ransomware attack that freezes people out of their bank accounts, shut down hospitals and isolate emergency responders, and assure that citizens didn’t have a way to communicate with their family members in a period of inescapable chaos?
As cybersecurity expert and author Alexander Klimburg explained to Vox, a full-scale cyber attack would result in damage “equivalent to a solar flare in terms of damaging infrastructure.” In short, it would be devastating.
A New Military Strategy
In summer 2016, a group called the Shadow Brokers began leaking highly classified information about the arsenal of cyberweaponry at the National Security Agency (NSA), including cyber weapons actively in development. The agency still doesn’t know whether the leak came from someone within the NSA, or if a foreign faction infiltrated Tailored Access Operations (the NSA’s designated unit for cyber warfare intelligence-gathering).
In any case, the breach of a unit that should have been among the government’s most impervious was unprecedented in American history. Aghast at the gravity of such a breach, Microsoft President Brad Smith compared the situation “to Tomahawk missiles being stolen from the military,” and penned a scathing blog post calling out the U.S. government for its failure to keep the information safe.
The last time such a leak shook the NSA, it was in 2013, when Edward Snowden released classified information about the agency’s surveillance practices. But as experts have pointed out, the information the Shadow Brokers stole is far more damaging. If Snowden released what was effectively battle plans, then the Shadow Brokers released the weapons themselves, as the New York Times analogized,
Earlier this year, a ransomware attack known as “WannaCry” began traversing the web, striking organizations from universities in China to hospitals in England. A similar attack hit IDT Corporation, a telecommunications company based in Newark, New Jersey, in April, when it was spotted by the company’s global chief operations officer, Golan Ben-Oni. As Ben-Oni told the New York Times, he knew at once that this kind of ransomware attack was different than others attempted against his company — it didn’t just steal information from the databases it infiltrated, but rather it stole the credentials required to access those databases. This kind of attack means that hackers could not only take that information undetected, but they could also continuously monitor who accesses that information.
WannaCry and the IDT attack both relied upon the cyber weapons stolen and released by the Shadow Brokers, effectively using them against the government that developed them. WannaCry featured EternalBlue, which used unpatched Microsoft servers to spread malware (North Korea used it to spread the ransomware to 200,000 global servers in just 24 hours). The attack on IDT also used EternalBlue, but added to it another weapon called DoublePulsar, which penetrates systems without tripping their security measures. These weapons had been designed to be damaging and silent. They spread rapidly and unchecked, going undetected by antivirus software all over the world.
The weapons were powerful and relentless, just as the NSA intended. Of course, what the NSA had not intended was that the U.S. would wind up at their mercy. As Ben-Oni lamented to the New York Times, “You can’t catch it, and it’s happening right under our noses.”
“The world isn’t ready for this,” he said.
The Best Defense
The average global citizen may feel disenfranchised by their government’s apparent lack of preparedness, but defending against the carnage of cyber warfare really begins with us: starting with a long overdue reality check concerning our relationship with the internet. Even if the federal agencies aren’t as digitally secure as some critics might like, the average citizen can still protect herself.
“The first and most important point is to be aware that this is a real threat, that this potentially could happen,” cybersecurity expert Dr. Eric Cole told Futurism. Cole added that, for lay people, the best defense is knowing where your information is being stored electronically and making local backups of anything critical. Even services like cloud storage, which are often touted as being safer, wouldn’t be immune to targeted attacks that destroy the supportive infrastructure — or the power grids that keep that framework up and running.
“We often love going and giving out tons of information and doing everything electronic,” Cole told Futurism, “but you might want to ask yourself: Do I really want to provide this information?”
Some experts, however, argue that your run-of-the-mill cyber attack against American businesses and citizens should not be considered an act of war. The term “war” comes with certain trappings — governments get involved, resources are diverted, and the whole situation escalates overall, Thomas Rid, professor and author, recently told The Boston Globe. That kind of intensity might, in fact, be counterproductive for small-scale attacks, ones where local authorities might be the ones best equipped to neutralize a threat.
As humans evolve, so too do the methods with which we seek to destroy each other. The advent of the internet allows for a new kind of warfare — a much quieter one. One that is fought remotely, in real time, that’s decentralized and anonymized. One in which robots and drones take the heat and do our bidding, or where artificial intelligence tells us when it’s time to go to war.
Cyber warfare isn’t unlike nuclear weapons — countries develop them in }and, should they be deployed, it would be citizens that suffer more than their leaders. “Mutually assured destruction” would be a near guarantee. Treaties mandating transparency have worked to keep nuclear weapons in their stockpiles and away from deployment. Perhaps the same could work for digital warfare?
We may be able to foretell what scientific and technological developments are on the horizon, but we can only guess at what humanity will do with them.
Humans made airplanes. These allowed them to fly above the clouds…and they used it to drop bombs on each other.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
The Exoplanet Most Likely to Support Alien Life Might Not Be Habitable After All
The Exoplanet Most Likely to Support Alien Life Might Not Be Habitable After All
By Elizabeth Howell, Seeker
Image of starlight on exoplanet.
µCredit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The closest potentially habitable planet may not be so habitable after all. The atmosphere of Proxima Centauri b could have been whisked away from strong winds blowing from its star. It is just one of dozens of rocky planets known to exist in the habitable zones around stars — the regions that scientists believe could provide the conditions for liquid water on the surface of orbiting planets.
But habitability depends on so much more than water. Two papers in Astrophysical Journal Letters consider one metric that has a huge influence on a planet's climate — its parent star.
Models described in these papers show the influence of the stellar wind, or the charged particles a star emits. If a star has strong periods of activity, the particles could erode the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years and make it impossible for life as we know it to exist on the surface. A similar process may have happened on Mars, with many scientists saying the planet once had a thick atmosphere, but the sun eroded it over time.
"Traditional definition and climate models of the habitable zone consider only the surface temperature," lead author Chuanfei Dong of Princeton University said in a statement. "But the stellar wind can significantly contribute to the long-term erosion and atmospheric loss of many exoplanets, so the climate models tell only part of the story."
The first paper examines how long an atmosphere would survive on Proxima Centauri b, which is only four light-years from Earth and was discovered in 2016. The second paper looks at a type of planet called "water worlds" and questions how long oceans could survive. Because life takes billions of years to evolve, the research has broad implications for understanding of planet habitability.
The researchers concluded that the atmosphere of Proxima Centauri b would only be retained if the pressure from the stellar wind is low and the planet has a magnetic field to deflect the particles. Otherwise, they wrote, over time the stellar wind would strip the planet's atmosphere, which would become so thin that evaporated water in the atmosphere couldn't fall as rain.
"Our results indicate that [Proxima Centauri b] and similar exoplanets are generally not capable of supporting an atmosphere over sufficiently long timescales when the stellar wind pressure is high," Dong said.
Even worse is what happens to the type of star that Proxima Centauri b orbits. The planet is nearby a red dwarf star, which is smaller and produces less energy than our sun. The habitable zone around these stars could change as the star evolves. Specifically, when a red dwarf is young, it is prone to producing high stellar winds. This means a young, nearby planet could lose much of its atmosphere before life has a chance to develop.
"In addition, such close-in planets could also be tidally locked like our moon, with one side always exposed to the star," Dong said. "The resultant weak global magnetic field and the constant bombardment of stellar wind would serve to intensify losses of atmosphere on the star-facing side."
The second paper asked how the oceans on water worlds would fare under different stellar wind conditions. It considered three scenarios. The first was an environment similar to the winds Earth experiences. The second one considers the stronger stellar winds believed to be present in young stars. And the third evaluates what would happen in the case of a huge "Carrington event" solar storm, which refers to an incident in 1859 on Earth when auroras disrupted telegraph service.
Unfortunately for life prospects, the simulations showed that the stellar wind from young stars would produce greater atmospheric loss on young planets, causing the oceans to dry up. And Carrington-type events — believed to be frequent in these young stars — would cause even more damage.
The researchers said these findings could alter the famous Drake equation, which estimates how many civilizations there might be in the Milky Way. One of the factors in the equation is the number of planets in a given star system with an environment suitable for life. But how that environment is determined to be suitable for life remains a matter of debate.
The authors say more observations, including from the James Webb Space Telescope that NASA will launch in 2019, are necessary to better estimate how many planets could support life.
While the case for life looks pessimistic on Proxima Centauri b, the scientists did note another recently discovery could have a better chance for life. Ross 128b, first announced in November, is just 11 light-years from Earth. It is rocky and in the habitable region of its star. But unlike Proxima Centauri b, the red dwarf star near Ross 128b appears to be quieter, without eruptions that could disrupt life on its surface.
Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,500 confirmed alien planets to date.
Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel
NASA is about to announce some more big alien-planet news.
The agency will hold a news conference Thursday (Dec. 14) at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) to reveal a new discovery made by its prolific Kepler space telescope, which has been searching the heavens for alien worlds since 2009. Space.com will air the briefing live, courtesy of NASA.
"The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google," NASA officials wrote in a media advisory. "Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data." [7 Ways to Discovery Alien Planets]
The following people will participate in the news conference:
Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics division at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California.
Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin.
Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
Kepler spots alien worlds by noticing the tiny brightness dips they cause when they cross the face of their host star from the spacecraft's perspective. Kepler is the most accomplished planet hunter in history. It has found more than 2,500 confirmed alien worlds — about 70 percent of all known exoplanets — along with a roughly equal number of "candidates" that await confirmation by follow-up observations or analyses.
The vast majority of these discoveries have come via observations that Kepler made during its original mission, which ran from 2009 to 2013. Study of these data sets is ongoing; over the past few years, researchers have used improved analysis techniques to spot many exoplanets in data that Kepler gathered a half-decade ago or more.
Kepler's first mission, which involved staring continuously at about 150,000 stars, ended in May 2013, when the spacecraft lost its second orientation-maintaining "reaction wheel." But the telescope's handlers soon figured out a way to stabilize Kepler using sunlight pressure. It is now on a second mission, called K2, during which it's hunting for exoplanets on a more limited basis and making a number of other observations.
The man behind the message (for a planet that could possibly, maybe have life, transmitted as music along with a few math equations), was Douglas Vakoch, a psychologist and SETI researcher. Vakoch chose one of Luyten’s Star’s planets (called GJ 273b) chiefly based on its proximity. The message—which combines music and math—works like a clock, setting a rhythm for the music, then broadcasting it through two different tones to create a binary message, he told Wired.
“Sending intentional signals and waiting for a reply requires tremendous patience, and with Luyten’s Star we have the prospect of getting a response in just a quarter of a century—a blink of the eye on galactic timescales,” Vakoch said. At 12.36 light years, a civilization could receive the message in 2029-2030 and get one back to us by 2042—barely any time at all in cosmic terms.
The message wasn’t without controversy. There are plenty of critics of METI, or Active SETI as the practice is frequently also called, as opposed to the more “passive” listening of other SETI programs. But while sci-fi or any stray Stephen Hawking thought might provoke fears of an alien invasion, critics of METI fall more frequently into a different camp: Who should be making the call to our neighbors?
Shelley Wright, a physicist at the University of California-San Diego, began working on SETI initiatives in 1999. Despite their similar sounding names, METI and SETI are separate organizations. While the movie Contact made the popular image of a SETI researcher one hunting for radio signals, Wright has been looking for light beacons coming from other civilizations (a process known as optical SETI).
She also co-signed a 2015 statement urging researches to think long and hard about sending messages to other planets. The list includes a “who’s who” of SETI and exoplanet researchers alongside a few science writers and, of course, Elon Musk. The possibility of a millions-Earth-year-more-advanced civilization is raised in the letter, but the last point is perhaps the central thesis to the letter. “Intentionally signaling other civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy raises concerns from all the people of Earth, about both the message and the consequences of contact,” the letter says. “A worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent.”
“My primary concern is that individual rogue voices are representing humanity without our collective consent and given an opportunity to join the discussion,” Wright said.
By “rogue voices,” she may very well mean Vakoch’s stream of thought. She wasn’t particularly impressed with Vakoch’s musical math message, telling The Daily Beast, “I enjoyed learning about their signal and it seemed like a fun activity for those involved, but the majority of these activities have to do with the thrill factor of sending a beacon, and for gaining exposure for that particular organization and/or facility.”
But Vakoch’s message isn’t the first—nor will it be the last.
The most famous signal is one drawn up by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake in 1974 and blasted out of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It featured information on DNA, the numbers one through 10, a human figure, a crude guide to our solar system, and a pixelated radio dish, all encoded as a very simple bitmap that could be reconstructed in binary.
Vakoch staunchly believes his message is different from the rest.
“Past interstellar messages have tried to talk about everything, at the risk of communicating nothing,” Vakoch said. “Instead, we focus on communicating a few key mathematical and scientific principles needed to explain radio waves themselves.”
Wright pointed to the Pioneer Plaque, a simple plate aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 craft, as an example of an Active SETI message that seemed right to her. The plates featured a map of radio-loud compact stars called “pulsars” that would help point back toward Earth. It also featured a neutral hydrogen atom diagram and a drawing of a nude man and woman, and a diagram of our solar system. The spiritual successors to the Pioneer missions, the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts, had a similar plate placed over a phonographic record made of gold. That record featured music, encoded images, dozens of languages, and more. (Drake and Sagan were instrumental in the creation of both the record and the plaque.)
Wright says the right way to go about it is to let a consortium of organizations examine what we should send, how the message should be encoded, and what kind of power is needed. She says the exploration of this idea is important to SETI research, in fact. But also, that just because we could send something out doesn’t mean that we should.
“Before sending a message I believe there needs to be extensive international based endeavor, potentially United Nations level,” she says. “The involvement should include scientists, politicians, and the general public that is 100% transparent.”
This surprisingly echoes Vakoch’s sentiments, even if in the views of some researchers he jumped the gun a little.
“My dream is that António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, would put this at the top of his agenda, so we could get the sort of broad based international discussion this topic deserves,” he says. But there’s a big point of difference between he and Wright. While Wright wants to wait for this conversation, Vakoch says that, “Until then, organizations with interests in interstellar communication have a special obligation to promote that discussion.”
Vakoch convened a group in May of this year to discuss what that message would take. Input from that meeting went into the Luyten’s Star message sent in October, which is music encoded with bits of science and physics knowledge. In April 2018, METI will send out some follow-up messages getting a little bit more in the weeds with a music lesson meant to teach melody, put together by 33 artists at the electronic 2018 Sónar Festival.
“That will allow us to introduce the fundamentals of musical melodies by turning the transmitter into a musical instrument itself, and demonstrating music through the structure of the radio signals and their relationship to one another,” Vakoch said.
If other Active SETI groups want to join in similar efforts, he urges them to keep exact records to help out researchers receiving any reply decades later. Eventually, he hopes for an optical beam of METI’s own. But for right now, he’s just ready to get things underway.
“[We] may need to repeat these transmissions to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of stars before we get a response,” Vakoch said. “And that will require a fundamental shift of mindset that views science as a multigenerational project. So METI will continue to transmit to other stars in the coming months and years, starting with the stars closest to Earth and methodically moving outward.”
But to Wright and others, the impatience may have the peril of misrepresenting our species.
“The process of METI I believe is really important for the world to jointly think about what our message would be for first contact with another alien civilization,” she said.
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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