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...
14-12-2017
Bloke claims to have snapped REAL alien proof from his back garden
Bloke claims to have snapped REAL alien proof from his back garden
COULD this be the best UFO photo you’ve seen ever?
µUFO SIGHTING: Ed Walters claims to have taken a photo of alien proof
This startling image could finally prove the existence of aliens at last.
The eerie sighting was snapped up over the Gulf Breeze in Florida, by building contractor Ed Walters.
He claims to have taken the photos from his back garden before handing them to the local media in the area, Pensacola News Journal reports.
YOUTUBE
ALIEN PROOF? The eerie image was taken over the Gulf Breeze in Florida
The discovery sparked a year-long skywatching campaign for further evidence by excited locals and visitors, in what became known as the “Gulf Breeze Sightings”.
Ed claims to have taken the pictures on November 11, 1987, and 30 years on, it still sparks a debate about whether they were real or hoaxed.
George Williams, state section director of the Florida Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), said: “I really don’t have a good opinion on whether they’re faked or not.
“There was so much controversy about it and MUFON went back and forth about it for years.”
Talking about how the area has had a lot of sightings, George added: “We still get reports of interesting stuff in the area.
“And in 1987, you had hundreds of people besides Walters reporting sightings. It’s always been an interesting area.”
“I think they’re real”
Bruce Maccabee
“There was so much controversy about it and MUFON went back and forth about it for years.”
Talking about how the area has had a lot of sightings, George added: “We still get reports of interesting stuff in the area.
“And in 1987, you had hundreds of people besides Walters reporting sightings. It’s always been an interesting area.”
Though some people claimed the sighting was fake, Ed wrote his own book on the case, called “Gulf Breeze Sightings”.
He had some supporters, including UFO hunter Bruce Maccabee, who said: “I think they’re real.”
Bruce added: “You had politicians reporting seeing objects.
“There were so many sightings that you have to account for, unless you believe there was massive collusion on the part of the residents of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola.”
Google Maps UFO: The suspected spacecraft has been spotted via a satellite camera
The suspected UFO is surrounded by lights in a cross formation, with strong beams extending out in four directions.
The huge beam of light makes it difficult to see the exact shape of the aircraft, although it appear to have at least one point jutting out of it giving it a triangular appearance.
Previous UFO sightings in Belgium have reported the same triangle like shape for UFOs.
However, a user comment posted on the social sharing forum Imgur – where the Google Maps image was featured – offers another possible explanation for the suspected UFO.
Google Maps
Google Maps UFO: Unidentified Flying Objects are commonly associated with alien life
Countless UFOs have been spotted around the world in recent history
“It’s a reflective sheet on the roof or the porch, this was on an off the grid show the other day,” wrote the user.
What is a UFO?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, UFO is an acronym for an “unidentified flying object”, and is also known as a flying saucer.
This word has commonly been used to refer to spacecrafts carrying aliens from other planets.
Countless UFOs have been spotted around the world in recent history, including in notable sightings in Canada, France, Italy, Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Google Mapsµ
Google Maps UFO: Conspiracists think an alien base is hiding below this floating lake
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Chilling moment UFO 'follows' a plane before dipping suddenly from view as puzzled passenger films the bizarre sighting over Britain
Chilling moment UFO 'follows' a plane before dipping suddenly from view as puzzled passenger films the bizarre sighting over Britain
An airline passenger filmed what appears to be a UFO high in the skies over Britain when a small, bright object seemed to follow alongside the plane before suddenly dipping out of view
By Liz Dunphy
An airline passenger filmed what appears to be a UFO high in the skies over Britain when a small, bright object appeared to follow alongside the plane before suddenly dipping out of view.
The chilling video tracks the plane's journey above the clouds when the object, which resembles a very large, inflated plastic bag suddenly appears in the distance.
It is not clear what the object really was or whether the footage, captured in 2015, was doctored but it comes amid a surge in reported UFO sightings across Britain.
Eerie lights that resembled a flying saucer were seen hovering in the sky over Kent last week, prompting locals to say that it must either be aliens or Santa Claus scouting the area before Christmas Day.
The chilling video tracks the plane's journey above the clouds when the object, which resembles a very large, inflated plastic bag suddenly appears in the distance
It is not clear what the object really was or whether the footage, captured in 2015, was doctored but it comes amid a surge in reported UFO sightings across Britain
Grant Brendan filmed the eerie illumination that resembled a flying saucer as it moved silently forwards and backwards in the sky near his home in Ramsgate.
Kent is a popular destination for UFOs according to the Kent Unidentified Flying Objects Research Group which claims that the coastlines around East Kent and South Kent are major UFO areas.
In February, Kent made the headlines again for possibly hosting alien life }a group of six mysterious lights were seen hovering in the sky for half an hour over Hythe and Folkestone.
The Ministry of Defence, which runs training ranges nearby, denied any involvement with the strange airborne apparitions and their origin remains unknown.
On Tuesday, Kendrick Lamar sat down with radio host Howard Stern for a chat. Fresh out of an all-night recording studio session, Lamar dropped by the Stern Show for the first time ever to discuss his album DAMN., which was recently nominated for seven Grammys, growing up in Compton, and, most remarkably, a UFO sighting.
Lamar says he was six years old when he saw something in the sky that looked like “a dart go past.” “I’m going to stand my ground to this… Nobody believed me then and [nobody] believe me now. It’s just something I can’t really describe, because it just sounds like, ‘Okay, you just saw a dart go past.’ That shit don’t make sense… It was just a surreal moment.”
Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers then asked if Lamar was abducted by aliens, and he played along. “I probably did. That’s probably why I’m doing music right now. Who knows. They probably gave me the energy.”
Listen to the full interview here, where he also talks about collaborating with Prince, how his To Pimp a Butterfly song “Alright” has becoming a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, and much more.
Revisit Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.” below.
In other music news, Brockhampton just dropped a new song and video “BOOGIE” and a 22-minute trailer for their upcoming film. Watch them right here.
Artificial Intelligence, NASA Data Used to Discover Eighth Planet Circling Distant Star
Artificial Intelligence, NASA Data Used to Discover Eighth Planet Circling Distant Star
Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
With the discovery of an eighth planet, the Kepler-90 system is the first to tie with our solar system in number of planets.
Credits: NASA/Wendy Stenzel
Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers “learn.” In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.
Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
“Just as we expected, there are exciting discoveries lurking in our archived Kepler data, waiting for the right tool or technology to unearth them,” said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington. “This finding shows that our data will be a treasure trove available to innovative researchers for years to come.”
The discovery came about after researchers Christopher Shallue and Andrew Vanderburg trained a computer to learn how to identify exoplanets in the light readings recorded by Kepler – the minuscule change in brightness captured when a planet passed in front of, or transited, a star. Inspired by the way neurons connect in the human brain, this artificial “neural network” sifted through Kepler data and found weak transit signals from a previously-missed eighth planet orbiting Kepler-90, in the constellation Draco.
While machine learning has previously been used in searches of the Kepler database, this research demonstrates that neural networks are a promising tool in finding some of the weakest signals of distant worlds.
Other planetary systems probably hold more promise for life than Kepler-90. About 30 percent larger than Earth, Kepler-90i is so close to its star that its average surface temperature is believed to exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit, on par with Mercury. Its outermost planet, Kepler-90h, orbits at a similar distance to its star as Earth does to the Sun.
“The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer,” said Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin
Shallue, a senior software engineer with Google’s research team Google AI, came up with the idea to apply a neural network to Kepler data. He became interested in exoplanet discovery after learning that astronomy, like other branches of science, is rapidly being inundated with data as the technology for data collection from space advances.
“In my spare time, I started googling for ‘finding exoplanets with large data sets’ and found out about the Kepler mission and the huge data set available,” said Shallue. "Machine learning really shines in situations where there is so much data that humans can't search it for themselves.”
Kepler’s four-year dataset consists of 35,000 possible planetary signals. Automated tests, and sometimes human eyes, are used to verify the most promising signals in the data. However, the weakest signals often are missed using these methods. Shallue and Vanderburg thought there could be more interesting exoplanet discoveries faintly lurking in the da
First, they trained the neural network to identify transiting exoplanets using a set of 15,000 previously-vetted signals from the Kepler exoplanet catalogue. In the test set, the neural network correctly identified true planets and false positives 96 percent of the time. Then, with the neural network having "learned" to detect the pattern of a transiting exoplanet, the researchers directed their model to search for weaker signals in 670 star systems that already had multiple known planets. Their assumption was that multiple-planet systems would be the best places to look for more exoplanets.
“We got lots of false positives of planets, but also potentially more real planets,” said Vanderburg. “It’s like sifting through rocks to find jewels. If you have a finer sieve then you will catch more rocks but you might catch more jewels, as well.”
Kepler-90i wasn’t the only jewel this neural network sifted out. In the Kepler-80 system, they found a sixth planet. This one, the Earth-sized Kepler-80g, and four of its neighboring planets form what is called a resonant chain – where planets are locked by their mutual gravity in a rhythmic orbital dance. The result is an extremely stable system, similar to the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
Their research paper reporting these findings has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. Shallue and Vanderburg plan to apply their neural network to Kepler’s full set of more than 150,000 stars.
Kepler has produced an unprecedented data set for exoplanet hunting. After gazing at one patch of space for four years, the spacecraft now is operating on an extended mission and switches its field of view every 80 days.
“These results demonstrate the enduring value of Kepler’s mission,” said Jessie Dotson, Kepler’s project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “New ways of looking at the data – such as this early-stage research to apply machine learning algorithms – promises to continue to yield significant advances in our understanding of planetary systems around other stars. I’m sure there are more firsts in the data waiting for people to find them.”
Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. This work was performed through the Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship Program executed by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.
Massive Black Hole Has Surprisingly Weak Magnetic Field
Massive Black Hole Has Surprisingly Weak Magnetic Field
By Harrison Tasoff, Space.com Staff Writer
Material loses angular momentum as it spirals toward a black hole, transferring energy through the magnetic field into the black hole's corona.
Credit: Michael McAleer/UF News
The region around a black hole is a playground of immense forces and energies. Now, astronomers have measured the magnetic field surrounding a black hole located roughly 8,000 light-years away, and found it was thousands of times weaker than they had thought it would be. The results confirmed decades-old models of black holes and revealed new puzzles in need of explanation.
The black hole V404 Cygni is relatively small, only 10 times the mass of our sun. Black holes can reach millions or billions of solar masses. The object is also located relatively close to Earth. "If you think of the galaxy as a metropolitan area, it's not in our neighborhood, but it's in our suburb," University of Florida astronomer Steve Eikenberry, who led the study with his doctoral student Yigit Dallilar, told Space.com. The team of scientists discovered that the magnetic field surrounding V404 Cygni measures only 500 gauss. They were expecting field strengths four orders of magnitude larger. For reference, the Earth's magnetic field is around 0.5 gauss, and a typical refrigerator magnet ranges from 50 to 100 gauss. The research is detailed in the journal Science today (Dec. 7).
V404 Cygni is siphoning material from a companion star that is slightly smaller than Earth's sun. The material forms what scientists call an accretion disk, which rotates around the black hole at high speeds and temperatures of millions of degrees. At these energies, the atoms lose their electrons and form a vortex of charged particles, a dynamo that generates strong magnetic fields. [Related: Magnetic Fields Nudge Matter into Black Holes]
Similar to the processes at work in our sun, this magnetic field supercharges particles in the wispy corona that surrounds the black hole. This essentially turns the system into a cosmic particle accelerator, whipping particles in the corona to relativistic energies, Eikenberry said. These are speeds so fast that mass and energy begin blurring. The corona serves as the base for huge jets of matterthat shoot away along the black hole's axis of rotation.
"We think that it's all really part and parcel of the same phenomenon — that a magnetized corona, we think, is necessary to make a jet," Eikenberry said.
Predicting a black hole outburst
In 1989, V404 Cygni erupted with X-ray activity for several weeks, leading to a flurry of research. Chris Done, at Durham University in England, came up with a model of the system that predicted the black hole would flare again in 25 to 30 years. This would happen when built-up material in the outer part of the accretion disk flooded inward, her model said. And in June 2015, she was proven right.
"She did a very rare thing for theorists and actually made a prediction, and it came true," said Eikenberry.
Based on Done's predictions, scientists were ready when V404 Cygni reawakened. They aimed a litany of instruments toward the black hole, including NASA's NuSTAR space telescope, the William Herschel Telescope and the 34-foot Gran Telescopio Canarias in the Canary Islands, using the Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment, which was designed and built by the university's graduate students and postdocs.
This artist's rendering illustrates how a black hole's corona (depicted in wispy purple) may spin up to form a high-energy jet that shoots away from the system.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On June 25, about one day into the two-week event, the process energizing the corona abruptly stopped for a few minutes, and the particles in the corona began to lose energy. Dallilar noted to Eikenberry that the light emissions were fading at the same rate they would in a powered-down particle accelerator here on Earth. Namely, higher-energy particles lost their energy more quickly, doing so by emitting higher-energy light, Eikenberry said.
A synchrotron in space?
Inside scientists' largest particle accelerators, called synchrotrons, a strong magnetic field keeps charged particles whizzing around the circular machines. The strength of this field determines how quickly the particles radiate energy. So, when V404 Cygni suddenly quieted down, Eikenberry and Dallilar used these same equations to determine the black hole's magnetic field. They used the time it took for light in different parts of the spectrum to fade away to calculate the strength of the black holes' magnetic field. The precision was astounding, the researchers said.
"Over a factor of 100,000 in energy, and [across] five different bands, [the measurements] give you exactly the same number every time," Eikenberry said. "I've never seen anything that clean in my life." [Black Hole Quiz: Test Your Space Knowledge]
Ultimately, this finding confirms that the model scientists have used for decades is accurate, Eikenberry said. The accretion disk and corona function as a synchrotron, with the disk energizing the corona. And this all contributes to the formation of jets.
But scientists still don't understand the exact mechanism by which this happens, Eikenberry said. What's more, he and Dallilar discovered that V404 Cygni's magnetic field measures a mere 500 gauss overall. "Most of the theories that I know of invoke magnetic fields of a million gauss, or 10 million or 100 million gauss," Eikenberry said.
The energy of a black hole's jet is proportional to its magnetic field squared, so even a small error in the strength of the field would lead to a huge discrepancy between the power scientists observe in the jets and the numbers they calculate, Eikenberry said. He added that he speculates something is amplifying the corona's magnetic field in the center, right at the base of the jets, raising it to the strengths that scientists expect are required for the jets to launch.
"That's exactly what we're in the middle of [testing] right now," said Eikenberry. "Stay tuned to that in another six months."
Email Harrison Tasoff at htasoff@space.com or follow him @harrisontasoff.
A cigar-shaped interstellar object that was spotted travelling through our solar system could in fact be an alien spacecraft, suggest scientists.
The astronomers from SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) are so serious about their theory that they will be pointing a giant telescope at the object to find out.
What is this mysterious object?
Known as “Oumuamua”, the object piqued the interests of scientists last month when it became clear that this was our first known example of an object arriving from interstellar space.
ESO/M KORNMESSER
With its elongated dimensions the object is travelling at around 196,000mph and is expected to pass straight through the solar system without being drawn in by the Sun’s gravity.
What has piqued SETI’s interest of course is the shape of the object. While not unheard of, an asteroid of this shape is extremely rare. In addition to that SETI believes that its dimensions fit very neatly into what they believe extra-terrestrial vehicles could look like.
A statement from the 100 million dollar (£75 million) SETI project Breakthrough Listen, launched by Russian digital tech mogul Yuri Milner in 2015, said:
“Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimise friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust.”
How will we find out what it is?
To determine once and for all what this object actually is, the Breakthrough Listen team will point the giant Green Bank radio telescope at the object and listen our for the ‘sounds’ that it makes.
HO NEW / REUTERSGreen Bank: A radio telescope so massive the Statue of Liberty, including the pedestal, could lie down on it dish with room to spare.
From 8pm UK time on Wednesday, December 13, the giant dish – the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world – will “listen” to the object across four radio frequency bands spanning one to 12 gigahertz.
Within less than a minute the telescope will be able to pick up any communications equipment even something with as little power as a mobile phone.
Lead scientist Dr Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley Seti Research Centre in California, said:
“Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects.
Could it really be an alien spacecraft?
SETI itself isn’t claiming that at all, they’re simply asking the question and then using their own equipment to find out for certain.
As their own statement says: “While a natural origin is more likely, there is currently no consensus on what that origin might have been, and Breakthrough Listen is well positioned to explore the possibility that Oumuamua could be an artefact.”
As renowned physicist Professor Brian Cox rightly points out on Twitter, there’s literally nothing to lose here and everything to gain.
“Although it’s highly unlikely (to say the least) that we’ll hear anything, we’d be crazy not to have a go. It’s not everyday that we get access to a visitor from interstellar space.”
One of SETI’s alternative theories is that rather than being an alien spacecraft the object could be the shard from a long-exploded planet from another solar system.
That interstellar asteroid could be a shard of a shredded planet - Institute scientist Matija Cuk thinks it may have been born when a planet about 10 times the size of Earth got too close to its small, dense star and was shredded to bits. Read more: https://buff.ly/2BCa2Tm
Even if it does turn out to be nothing more than a chunk of rock it’s arguably the most interesting chunk of rock you’ll see all year.
Not only is it the first example of an interstellar visitor in recorded history, but it’s an object that has been wandering through the galaxy for hundreds of thousands of years.
Preliminary calculations suggest that it may have come from the bright star Vega within the constellation of Lyra.
However, even if it been travelling at high-speed it would have taken 300,000 years for it to reach us. 300.000 years ago Vega was in a completely different place suggesting that Oumuamua may well have been wandering the universe for hundreds of millions of years before finally reaching a solar system, and in this case, ours.
Whatever it is, we should have our answer by the end of the week.
Scientists have made a significant advancement in shaping DNA — they can now twist and turn the building blocks of life into just about any shape. In order to demonstrate their technique, they have shaped DNA into doughnuts, cubes, a teddy bear, and even the Mona Lisa.
New DNA origami techniques can build virus-size objects of virtually any shape.
Image credits: Wyss Institute.
Scientists have long desired to make shapes out of DNA. The field of research emerged in the 1980s, but things really took off in 2006, with the advent of a technique called DNA origami. As the name implies, it involves transforming DNA into a multitude of shapes, similar to the traditional Japanese technique of origami. The process starts with a long strand placed on a scaffold with the desired sequence of nucleotides, dubbed A, C, G, and T. Then, patches of the scaffold are matched with complementary strands of DNA called staples, which latch on to their desired target. In 2012, a different technique emerged — one which didn’t use scaffolds or large strands of DNA, but rather small strands that fit together like LEGO pieces.
Both techniques became wildly popular with various research groups. Scientists started to coat DNA objects with plastics, metals, and other materials to make electronic devices, electronics, and even computer components. But there was always a limitation: the size of conventional DNA objects has been limited to about 100 nanometers. There was just no way to make them bigger without becoming floppier or unstable in the process. Well, not anymore.
New DNA origami techniques can make far larger objects, such as this dodecahedron composed of 1.8 million DNA bases.
Image credits: K. Wagenbauer et al, Nature, Vol. 551, 2017.
Groups in Germany, Massachusetts, and California all report that they’ve made dramatic breakthroughs in DNA origami, creating rigid modules with preprogrammed shapes that can assemble with other copies to build specific shapes — and they have a variety of shapes to prove it.
A German team, led by Hendrik Dietz, a biophysicist at the Technical University of Munich, created a miniature doughnut about 300 nanometers across. A Massachusetts team led by Peng Yin, a systems biologist at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute in Boston, created complex structures with both blocks and holes. With this technique, they developed cut-out shapes like an hourglass and a teddy bear. The third group led by Lulu Qian, a biochemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, developed origami-based pixels that appear in different shades when viewed through an atomic microscope. Taken together, these structures represent a new age for DNA origami.
Furthermore, it’s only a matter of time before things get even more complex. Yin’s group actually had to stop making more complex shape sbecause they ran out of money. Synthesizing the DNA comes at the exorbitant price of $100,000 per gram. However, Dietz and his collaborators believe they could dramatically lower the price by coaxing viruses to replicate the strands inside bacterial hosts.
“Now, there are so many ways to be creative with these tools,” Yin concludes.
The technique isn’t just about creating pretty DNA shapes. Someday, this approach could lead to a novel generation of electronics, photonics, nanoscale machines, and possibly disease detection, Robert F. Service writes for Science. The prospect of using DNA origami to detect cancer biomarkers and other biological targets could open exciting avenues for research and help revolutionize cancer detection.
Journal References:
Klaus F. Wagenbauer, Christian Sigl & Hendrik Dietz. Gigadalton-scale shape-programmable DNA assemblies.doi:10.1038/nature24651.
Grigory Tikhomirov, Philip Petersen & Lulu Qian. Fractal assembly of micrometre-scaleDNA origami arrays with arbitrary patterns. doi:10.1038/nature24655.
Luvena L. Ong et al. Programmable self-assembly of three-dimensional nanostructures from 10,000 unique components. doi:10.1038/nature24648.
Florian Praetorius et al. Biotechnological mass production of DNA origami. doi:10.1038/nature24650.
NASA released a new batch of stunning images of Jupiter for Earthlings to enjoy, via its Juno spacecraft, so let’s take a look at how these ephemeral landscapes form.
Back on August 5th, 2011, NASA launched a probe to peer into the secrets of Jupiter. Christened Juno, after the mythological goddess wife of Jupiter in the ancient Roman pantheon, the vessel was equipped with a wide range of instruments aimed at teasing away every last secret of the gas giant’s characteristics, including its atmosphere, magnetic force field, and dense cloud coverage. Which goes to show that even scientists enjoy a nice turn of irony now and again.
Luckily for us, NASA also slapped a high-quality camera onto Juno, which it used to capture the giant’s stunningly beautiful masses of swirling gas. And a new series of such high-fidelity, close-up photos was just recently released by NASA. Aren’t we spoiled?
So let’s sit back and enjoy the sky god’s mastery with the cloud brush while taking a look at how he does it.
Wow, it looks so fluid!
That’s because it is. Jupiter is, essentially, one huge atmosphere.
Its main ingredient is hydrogen, which is also the bulk material in the sun. Hydrogen accounts for around 90% of the Jovian atmosphere, with almost all of the remaining 10% being composed of helium (by volume). By mass, its around 75% hydrogen and 24% helium.
What’s left are compounds such as ammonia, sulfur, methane, and water vapor, along silicon-based compounds and traces of benzene and other hydrocarbons. Carbon, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, and phosphine also float around in there.
We don’t know whether it has any ‘dry land’, so to speak, although scientists suspect that below a 50 km (30 miles) thick cover of gas lies a 21,000 km (13,000 miles) thick layer of hydrogen and helium. Pressed by the crushing weight of all that ‘atmosphere’ above, this layer goes from gas to liquid the further down you delve. Magnetic field recordings beamed back by Juno also suggest that Jupiter has a solid core generating its magnetic field — but even this is an exotic substance known as metallic hydrogen.
So in effect, the gas giant has only a tiny kernel we’d call firm, but even that isn’t a traditional ‘firm’ as in the case of rocks or soil. It’s a gas pressed so ungodly hard that it became metal. The giant composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, a property that extends to its liquid and solid components.
The colors are primarily a function of chemistry. Jupiter’s outer atmosphere consists mostly of hydrogen and helium with small amounts of water droplets, ice crystals, ammonia crystals, and other elements at the same pressure as Earth’s atmosphere — 1 bar. These elements create clouds in shades of white, orange, brown, and red.
The origins of the other colors are easiest to tease out by judging from the other gas giants. Yellow-brown Saturn’s atmosphere has traces of ammonia, phosphine, water vapor, and hydrocarbons. Uranus gets its green-blue hue from the methane gas mixed into its hydrogen- and helium-rich atmosphere. Neptune, also rich in methane with a predominantly hydrogen- and helium-based atmosphere, is an even truer shade of blue.
The swirling patterns are produced by the relative movement of these gasses throughout the atmosphere, goaded on by insane windspeeds of up to 384 miles per hour. The round spots, some of which could fit the entire Earth with room to spare, are immense and immensely violent storms.
The US$ 1 million craft entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016. The data it beamed back proved invaluable in our efforts to understand the origin and evolution of the gas giant, look for solid planetary core, map its magnetic field, measure water and ammonia levels in its deep atmosphere, and for the observation of its auroras. Juno is currently swinging around Jupiter in a wide arc to keep safe from its monumental outpouring of radiation, which could fry the vessel’s electronics.
Back in October, NASA planned to fire Juno’s thrusters to increase its speed but had to cancel such plans due to an unforeseen malfunction of its engine valves. Juno will have to more lazily swing around the object of her interest, which means more time to snap quality pictures — and I’m all for that. Even more so since Jupiter’s fluid nature means that its surface is never the same, not even mere moments apart.
This series of close-ups were taken within the last year and can be seen on Juno’s mission page (hosted by NASA), along with others taken previously. You can also submit your own processed images from Juno’s raw image files, or view those submitted by others.
The video, which shows a woman walking on a frozen lake, is paired with some eerie audio.
Listening carefully, you can hear the sound change from loud to quiet, as well as altering in pitch slightly, although an object is moving around.
The noise is reminiscent of the type of sound effects often used for UFOs in Sci-Fi movies.
SG/YOUTUBE
CHILLING: The weird sounds were heard over a frozen lake
“The mournful howling sounds made me really feel aliens must be close by”
Svetlana Kuzina
Photographer Svetlana Kuzina recorded the extraordinary haunting noises while walking on a frozen lake in the Altai Mountains.
She said: “The mournful howling sounds made me really feel aliens must be close by.
“Finally – I thought, ‘I am on the verge of contact with extraterrestrial minds'!
“In day time the acoustics are louder and sharper."
At first Svetlana was frightened by the “alien-like” sounds that she heard in the middle of the night, but eventually she summoned up the courage to explore the lake.
Experts believe the strange sounds are a result of ice expanding and contacting.
This natural shifting is known to produce a range of high and low sound frequencies.
But there has been an increase in alien reports recently. Just earlier today it was reported that a spaceship-like object was spotted in the sky.
It was released by building contractor Ed Walters along with others of what looked like circular UFOs over Gulf Breeze, Florida.
Mr Walters claimed he snapped the pictures from his back garden before handing them to local media in the area Pensacola News Journal reports.
It sparked a year-long skywatching campaign for further evidence by excited locals and visitors alike, in what became known as the "Gulf Breeze Sightings".
More than 30 years on the subject still sparks debate about whether they were real or hoaxed.
Mr Walters claimed to take the pictures on November 11, 1987.
George Williams is state section director of the Florida Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a national organisation which records and investigates UFO sightings.
We still get reports of interesting stuff in the area. And in 1987, you had hundreds of people besides Walters reporting sightings. It's always been an interesting area.
George Williams of MUFON
He said: "I really don't have a good opinion on whether they're faked or not. There was so much controversy about it and MUFON went back and forth about it for years.”
He said the area had had a lot of sightings though.
He added: "We still get reports of interesting stuff in the area.
"And in 1987, you had hundreds of people besides Walters reporting sightings. It's always been an interesting area."
Many are convinced they were hoaxed.
After Mr Walters moved home in 1990, the new owner claimed to find a model of a "flying saucer," made of foam pie plates, cardboard, paper and tinted plastic gel, wrapped up in the loft.
YouTube
'HOAX' This image shows the model found in the loft compared to the images
Mr Walters has always insisted the pictures were real, and wrote his own book on the case, called "Gulf Breeze Sightings."
He has some supporters, including UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee.
He said: "I think they're real.
"I think the model is a hoax. Hoax squared."
Mr Maccabee said there were too many other witnesses who claimed to see UFOs in the Gulf Breeze area.
He added: "You had politicians reporting seeing objects.
"There were so many sightings that you have to account for, unless you believe there was massive collusion on the part of the residents of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola."
In the video, you can see a saucer-shaped object appearing to float in the night sky.
The man recording, who has not been identified, can’t quite believe what he has discovered and exclaims “oh my God” while filming the mysterious phenomenon.
“What the f*** is that?” he adds.
SG/YOUTUBE
ALIEN LIFE: Is this a UFO in the sky?
He then tries to chase the object down the road to get a better look, but it appears to fade into the sky.
The skateboarder claims that he could see something operating the craft before it turned blue and disappeared.
“It’s not as bright anymore,” he explains in the footage.
The clip, recorded in Arizona, US, was uploaded to YouTube and has since sparked a number of comments from users convinced this is evidence of extraterrestrial life.
One said: “Awesome proof of an alien UFO!”
While another asked: “What more do we need to know that we're not the only ones?”
This video comes just a week after self-proclaimed space boffins believed they had caught the moment “something huge” entered our atmosphere – and it wasn’t a meteor.
A UFO appears to fire a red laser beam toward Earth from outside the International Space Station, in a video excerpted from the live NASA online video feed from the ISS on December 5. But what does NASA have to say about this latest bizarre UFO sighting at the space station?
The red laser incident marks the third time since mid October that the NASA video feed has captured what UFO watchers believe to be an alien craft in close proximity to the International Space Station. But while in the previous two sightings the supposed UFO appeared to be merely observing the space station in operation, this time, whatever the entity is — or is not — seems to be taking aggressive action toward our planet.
Or is it?
NASA has what appears to be a very interesting explanation for the red laser. But first, what do the UFO watchers think they see in the video?
“Although red UFOs have been seen near the ISS, witnessing a beam of light from one of then has never been recorded before,” wrote Scott Waring on his popular UFO Sightings Daily site. “Lucky for us, Streetcap1 of Youtube caught this anomaly while watch the NASA cams. He keeps a watchful eye out for any UFOs near the station. The question is, what is that beam and should we be worried about it?
“I watch the ISS all the time and almost every day I see something strange that is unexplainable and this is definitely one of them,” wrote one commenter on the site, while another claimed to suffer headaches as a result of sighting an earlier UFO shooting a laser beam.
The laser beam was actually a test firing of the new Optical Payload for Laser Communcation, or OPALS, system run in part by NASA from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The purpose of OPALS is to create a new, ultra-high speed communications link between Earth and spacecraft such as the space station.
But UFO Sightings Daily editor Scott Waring is not convinced. He says that he is familiar with OPALS, and the laser beam in the video is not it.
“I built a laser communicator before DARPA did and I have some experience with it. This laser is not hitting the space station. The lasers I saw were purple, which has a better frequency and higher sound quality than red laser,” Waring wrote on his site. “I have see OPALS at work at the ISS live cam. What I saw was not one, but many lasers hitting the ISS solar panels in a row at the same time.”
But if Waring is correct and the laser in the December 5 UFO video is not the NASA OPALS project in action — then what is it?
ESPECTED EX-NASA SCIENTIST SAYS GIANT SPHERE’S ‘WITHIN RINGS OF SATURN’ ARE MULTIPLYING. HE CALLS THEM “THE RINGMAKERS”
ESPECTED EX-NASA SCIENTIST SAYS GIANT SPHERE’S ‘WITHIN RINGS OF SATURN’ ARE MULTIPLYING. HE CALLS THEM “THE RINGMAKERS”
The video below is a clip of Project Camelot’s Kerry Cassidy interviewing Dr. Norman Bergrun about what’s really going on in space. A mechanical engineer, Dr. Bergrun has worked for Ames Research Laboratory, NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, now known as Lockheed Martin. He then went on to found Bergrun Engineering and Research.
You can view some of his publications for NASA, where he worked for more than a decade, here.
Coming from such a distinguished background, we can make several basic assumptions about him, not least of which is that he is highly intelligent. We can also assume that he knows and has worked with other intelligent and powerful people, and that he has had access to extremely sensitive data, which he himself makes clear in the below interview and in his book, The Ringmakers of Saturn.
What makes Norman’s story so intriguing is not only his impressive background, but the fact that hundreds of other scientists, politicians, and high-ranking military personnel have also shared information like this. He is just one of many insiders exposing the reality of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrial beings.
When former NASA astronaut and Princeton Physics Professor Dr. Brian O’Leary said that there is “abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been visiting us for a very long time,” he wasn’t joking. There are now officially declassified documents that verify a long history of military encounters with these objects; objects which are performing maneuvers that no known aircraft can perform, all while traveling at speeds no known aircraft can travel. Not only that, but at the same time that pilots visually confirm their sightings, these objects are being tracked on both air and ground radar.
Dr. Jacques Vallee, notable for co-developing the first computerized mapping of Mars for NASA, and for his work at SRI International on the network information center for ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet, published a paper in the Journal of Scientific Explorationtitled “Estimates of Optical Power Output in Six Cases Of Unexplained Aerial Objects With Defined Luminosity Characteristics.” (source)(source) There you can see some pictures taken by military pilots of the objects they encountered.
When entering into the vicinity of these objects, it’s not uncommon for critical electrical equipment to go ‘dead.’ UFOs have also been seen hovering around global nuclear missile facilities, at which time these facilities completely shut down and the nukes within go offline. You can learn more about that here.
According to Herman Oberth, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, “flying saucers are real and . . . they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our Earth for centuries.” (Oberth, Hermann: “Flying Saucers Come from a Distant World,” The American Weekly, October 24, 1954) (source 1)(source 2)
There are literally hundreds of shocking quotes from people of such reputable backgrounds, and thousands of documents pertaining to the UFO phenomenon, which lends even more credibility to the video below.
“What I found out is, these things inhabit Saturn, that’s where I first discovered them, and they’re proliferating.”
By the way, the ships Norman Speaks of around the rings of Saturn, they’re humungous.
He is also one of many x scientists who have accused the agency of “garbling” photos to hide things they do not want the public to see.
Suppose we woke up tomorrow to learn that extraterrestrial life had been discovered. What difference would that make? Set aside the extreme scenarios of popular fiction. The truth will probably be more mundane – not massive spaceships suddenly filling the sky but, instead, microorganisms found deep inside an ice-covered Moon, a non-random radio signal from a distant star system, or the ruins of a long-dead alien civilisation. What difference might those discoveries make? Would they strengthen or weaken our faith in God, or science, or humanity? Would they force us to re-evaluate the importance of our own lives, values and projects?
In academic philosophy today, an interest in extraterrestrial life is regarded with some suspicion. This is a historical anomaly. In Ancient Greece, Epicureans argued that every possible form of life must recur infinitely many times in an infinite universe. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as modern astronomy demonstrated that our Earth is just another planet and our Sun just another star, the default hypothesis among informed observers was that the Universe is filled with habitable planets and intelligent life. One principal argument for this ‘pluralism’ was philosophical or theological: God (or Nature) does nothing in vain, and therefore such a vast cosmos could not be home to only one small race of rational beings.
My goal here is to explore some unexpected implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial life, and my conclusions are very speculative: extraterrestrial life would lend non-decisive support to several interesting and controversial philosophical positions. The discovery of life elsewhere would teach us that, while the Universe does have a purpose, human beings are irrelevant to that purpose. Aliens might well worship a God who is indifferent to us.
We know that life has emerged once. Why should it be so momentous to learn that it has emerged twice? The reason is that finding life elsewhere would radically change our picture of the Universe. At any point in time, humans will have explored only a tiny fraction of our galaxy, let alone the whole Universe. If life has emerged only once in that small sample, then it is possible that life on Earth is unique. (We might then use anthropic reasoningto explain why we inhabit the Universe’s only inhabited planet: where else could observers find themselves?) But suppose we discover that life has emerged twice within our tiny sample – once on Earth, then again somewhere else. It would follow that life must have emerged a vast number of times across the galaxy. The discovery of independently emerging life would thus teach us that life is ubiquitous. And that discovery could have very significant implications. (The restriction to ‘independently emerging’ life is necessary because life found on meteors, asteroids, Mars or the Moon might have the same origin as life on Earth.)
One perennial set of philosophical questions concerns the nature of values, norms and reasons. Are they objective, universal, mind-independent realities, or merely subjective, relative, mind-dependent human constructions? Normative non-naturalists claim that there are universal, objective, mind-independent facts about value, reason and morality that are not specific to any particular human culture, nor even to human nature in general. Any suitably sophisticated moral agent would perceive the same moral facts and be motivated by them. This strong objectivism is a minority position in contemporary ethics, but one that is gaining respectability – thanks in particular to recent work by the philosophers Thomas Nagel, T M Scanlon and the late Derek Parfit.
Normative non-naturalism combines several distinct claims. Moral statements assert facts; those facts are not reducible to the natural facts discovered by science; and some moral statements are true. When I say that murder is wrong, I claim that murder has the non-natural property of wrongness. If murder is wrong, then it does possess that property.
The normative non-naturalist position is anomalous within a purely naturalist worldview that recognises only the natural facts and properties postulated by science. Secular non-naturalists argue that normative non-naturalism is not as anomalous as it seems, because we already need non-natural facts to explain logic, mathematics or the normativity inherent in good scientific practice itself. Theists argue instead that normative non-naturalism makes much more sense if we already acknowledge a God who transcends the natural world. Either God creates the moral facts along with everything else, or God creates the Universe in response to independently existing normative facts. We will return to the link between theism and non-naturalism.
My central claim is that the discovery that life is ubiquitous would support normative non-naturalism. This is because, if life is ubiquitous, then we need non-naturalism to explain an otherwise puzzling fact. Given the vast number of potentially inhabited planets in the Universe, we would expect at least one extraterrestrial species to have either visited us or transformed the galaxy in ways that were clearly visible. Yet we see no one. Where is everybody? This is the Fermi Paradox, named for the physicist Enrico Fermi who posed the question in 1950.
In his bookIf the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … Where Is Everybody?(2002), the science writer Stephen Webb lists 75 answers to Fermi’s question. Some are jokes or variations on a theme. But most are distinct solutions that are not obviously crazy. I group those into four categories:
Rarity of life: the specific conditions that make life on Earth possible are very rare.
Rarity of intelligence: even if life is relatively common, the evolution of intelligent tool-making species requires very specific conditions that are extremely rare.
Cantian(from can’t): even if intelligent tool-making species are relatively common, a feasibility barrier prevents the emergence of starfaring civilisations. Promising species inevitably destroy themselves or encounter resource constraints before they can conquer the stars.
Wontian(from won’t): even if intelligent tool-making species are relatively common, a motivational barrier prevents the emergence of starfaring civilisations. Every intelligent species who could conquer the stars chooses not to.
Drawing on anecdotal evidence, Webb suggests that physicists, impressed by the vastness of the Universe, typically assume that life is ubiquitous, and therefore favour Cantian or Wontian solutions; meanwhile, biological scientists, impressed by the complexity of life, typically prefer solutions based on the rarity of life or intelligence.
The discovery that life is ubiquitous would obviously rule out any explanation based on the rarity of life. And if we found evidence of intelligent life elsewhere, we would be forced to conclude that intelligence was not rare either. Of course, if we discovered life elsewhere, then in one sense the Fermi Paradox would simply be dissolved; there is no need to explain why we see no evidence of life elsewhere once we do see it! But the deeper puzzle would remain: if life is ubiquitous, why don’t we see much more evidence of alien civilisations? We must still explain what the astrophysicist and science fiction writer David Brin in 1983 called ‘the Great Silence’.
By ruling out rarity-based solutions, the discovery that life is ubiquitous thereby raises the probability of other credible solutions, especially Cantianism and Wontianism. In so doing, it also supports normative non-naturalism.
Even if some species eschew visibility, why should we expect every intelligent species to do so?
Why would intelligent species choose not to make themselves visible? Webb lists 25 distinct Wontian solutions that have been seriously defended. Here are some of them: advanced extraterrestrials keep us isolated in an intergalactic zoo, as subjects of laboratory experiments, or because any inhabited planet is a non-renewable source of information; extraterrestrial environmentalists are either not interested in colonising or transforming the galaxy, or else they believe that this would be wrong; cautious aliens are hiding because they fear that the Universe is silent because some genocidal species destroys anyone who becomes visible; extraterrestrials are postbiological machines with no interest in stars, planets, biological life or communicating with us; aliens have passed through the ‘Singularity’ and disappeared into black holes, transcended to a higher dimension, created a new universe, or migrated to a virtual reality; advanced aliens congregate around black holes where energy is most abundant, or in the cold outer reaches of the galaxy where computational processing is most efficient; and so on.
Any Wontian solution faces one obvious objection. One non-Wontian species – or even one maverick group or individual – could do things that would be clearly visible for a very long time. To solve the Fermi Paradox, Wontian motivations must be universal, not merely very widespread. But surely that degree of uniformity is simply implausible. Even if some species or individuals eschew visibility, why should we expect every intelligent species to do so? Wontians are open to an accusation of anthropomorphism or parochialism – projecting their own individual preferences onto all intelligent beings.
Of course, Cantianism faces a parallel objection. Even if most intelligent, tool-using species face a feasibility constraint, why should we believe they all do? Cantians must defend a universal feasibility barrier. And that naturaluniversality seems as suspect as the Wontian’s motivational one. Isn’t it more likely that, sooner or later, one lucky species will have sufficient time and resources to escape the feasibility constraint? If Wontians can dissolve theirparochialism objection, that will give them a significant advantage over Cantians.
Wontians need universal motivations that are not specific to species or individuals. This is where normative non-naturalism comes in. Armed with non-naturalism, Wontians can argue as follows. Objective values are built into the fabric of the Universe; the discovery of those values is essential if one is to understand the Universe sufficiently well enough to manipulate it successfully on a large and lasting scale; and that discovery transforms any rational being’s motivations. Aliens smart enough to conquer the stars will inevitably abandon their previous plans and follow those universal values.
I call this solution to the Fermi Paradox Kantian Wontianism, because the idea that knowledge of universal values is intrinsically motivating for all rational beings is associated with the 19th-century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant. (One can be a Kantian in this sense without endorsing any other details of Kant’s philosophy. In particular, Kant himself was not a normative non-naturalist.) Although it is very controversial, this strange view might be our best solution to the Fermi Paradox, especially if we discover life elsewhere.
Wontians need normative facts that reliably motivate all suitably intelligent beings – whatever their biological species. This rules out normative naturalism, where normative facts are reducible to natural facts, and human ethics is derived from our specific evolved human nature. Alien species might have very different natures, and therefore their moral facts would be quite different from ours. Wontians cannot limit their ontology to natural facts. They need non-natural normative facts that transcend biological differences. In the contemporary intellectual landscape, this is controversial but not absurd. While naturalism is the dominant worldview in analytic philosophy, non-naturalism is becoming increasingly philosophically respectable.
Kantian philosophers claim only that the motivations of rational agents should converge insofar as they behave rationally. They admit that actual agents invariably fall short. Wontians must therefore go beyond Kant and argue that, beyond a certain threshold of knowledge or understanding, all rational agents reliably will behave rationally. This might seem simply absurd. Humanmotivations obviously do not converge. And beings no more sophisticated than ourselves, armed with current technologies such as radio waves or nuclear weapons, surely could attract the attention of very distant observers. Doesn’t our own existence refute the Kantian Wontian claim that all beings who could become visible will reliably respond to non-natural normative facts?
In reply, Kantian Wontians would say that fleeting visibility is not enough to disturb the Great Silence. Even if short-lived alien civilisations were common, the age and size of the Universe are so great that observers in any particular place and time would almost certainly see nothing. The Fermi Paradox arises because we assume that, if there really are vast numbers of aliens out there, then sooner or later one of them will have built a civilisation that lasts. We expect to see that lasting civilisation, and we are puzzled by its absence.
This offers a strange vision of aliens with radically different evolutionary histories converging on values that humans reject
Kantian Wontians can then argue that maintaining a lasting visible civilisation demands a level of understanding of the nature of the Universe that inevitably delivers knowledge of objective and intrinsically motivating values. This is not absurd if one is already sympathetic to normative non-naturalism. If objective values are built into the fabric of the Universe, then perhaps agents can understand that Universe well enough to manipulate it successfully on a large and lasting scale only if they also find those values intrinsically motivating.
But Kantianism alone is not sufficient to save Wontianism. Many possible values would encourage the creation of a visible galactic civilisation. Consider total utilitarianism, which seeks to maximise the welfare of sentient beings. Aliens who recognised this value would seek to transform the galaxy by creating as many happy beings as possible. We would notice if someone had done that!
Kantian Wontians must defend very different values. As we saw earlier, one possibility is environmentalist non-interference – a quietist desire to contemplate the Universe without imposing one’s will on it. Other possibilities include maximising complexity by living unobserved at the edge of a black hole, transcending to a higher dimension, or even a nihilist conviction that nothing is worth doing. These are minority values in contemporary culture, of course, but they are not unintelligible. Kantian Wontians can remain agnostic about the precise content of non-natural values. Anything that rules out lasting visibility will do.
The Kantian Wontian solution to the Fermi Paradox offers a strange vision, where aliens with radically different evolutionary histories converge on values that many actual humans reject. If we are already committed to expansionist values such as welfare maximisation, then we might struggle to take these Wontian values seriously.
The philosopher Robert Nozick suggested in 1981, in a different context, that ‘someone who proposes a non-strange answer shows that he did not understand this question’. (Nozick’s question was: why is there something rather than nothing?) Philosophical questions often call for strange or disturbing answers. Once we discover life elsewhere, Wontianism could be the least strange explanation left on the table. How else can we solve the Fermi Paradox or explain the Great Silence?
If we discovered that life was ubiquitous, then Kantian Wontianism would be the least unsatisfactory solution to the Fermi Paradox, and normative non-naturalism is essential to any successful Kantian Wontian story. Once we grant these conclusions, it then follows that the discovery of independently originating life supports normative non-naturalism – in the modest sense that this new information raises the probability that normative non-naturalism is true. Philosophical claims can be supported by empirical facts in surprising ways.
Normative non-naturalism and Kantianism both seem very anomalous against the background of an otherwise purely naturalist metaphysic. They are much less anomalous if we instead endorse a theist metaphysic. Kantian Wontian theists can argue as follows. Physicists seek a physical ‘theory of everything’ to explain, not only how the Universe works, but why it exists. For all anyone knows, future (or alien) scientists who complete the theory of everything might need to posit God, cosmic purpose or cosmic value. Belief in divine values is exactly the sort of thing that would reliably transform one’s motivations. Aliens who discover why the Universe exists will abandon their previous inclinations, and embrace the purposes of God.
Theism and Kantian non-naturalism are mutually supporting. Both are independently plausible, and each supports the other. If there is a God, then knowledge of God’s purposes might be enough to transform the motivations of all rational beings. Conversely, many arguments for the existence of God implicitly rely on evaluative claims that cannot be reduced to natural facts about this particular Universe. For instance, many theists argue that we must posit a creator God because the existence of this Universe cries out for explanation. This argument is much more compelling if theists can argue that, out of all the possible universes, this one is strikingly valuable. If there is nothing independently special about this Universe, then why not accept its existence as merely a cosmic brute fact? But comparing the value of possible universes makes sense only if we presume non-natural values that transcend those physical universes.
A theme of contemporary philosophy of religion is that our Universe is religiously ambiguous. It can reasonably be interpreted in radically different ways: realist or idealist, naturalist or non-naturalist, theist or atheist. Our currently available evidence radically underdetermines our metaphysics. Religious ambiguity itself might be peculiar to our present human condition. We inevitably and reasonably disagree, but perhaps everyone capable of establishing a galactic supercivilisation will agree. In our present state of religious ambiguity, we have no idea what they will agree about. Atheists take it for granted that space-faring aliens will have outgrown religion. But the Great Silence points in another direction. Kantian Wontian solutions work best if all sufficiently advanced aliens converge on belief in God.
Theism supports Kantianism. By supporting Kantian Wontianism, the discovery that life is ubiquitous thus indirectly supports theism. But what kind of theism? What sort of universe would a Kantian Wontian God create? Could the God of traditional theism create a universe where life was ubiquitous?
Many theist religions stress the cosmic uniqueness of human beings – or even particular events in human history. This suggests that theists must insist that we are alone in the Universe. But another perennial strand of theist thinking points in the opposite direction. If we are alone, then this cannot be the best possible world. If humanity is valuable, then a possible world containing many other rational God-loving species would be better. If life is good, won’t God create a Universe teeming with every possible kind of life? Leibniz thought so, and argued that this best of all possible worlds isinfinitely filled with life. (He supported this claim by citing the world of microscopic organisms revealed by the recently discovered microscope.)
If the Universe teems with life, then there are other candidates for the cosmically decisive role previously held only by humans
If life turns out to be ubiquitous, then theists must obviously re-evaluate humanity’s place in the divine plan. But many theists, throughout the centuries, have been confident that this challenge can be met. After all, theists already believe that God has infinite love for every individual creature, and that this does nothing to diminish God’s love for me. Why should it matter that God’s love also extends to innumerably many alien individuals as well?
The discovery of extraterrestrial life would thus support theism in two ways. We saw earlier that independently originating life would raise the probability of two other hypotheses that support theism, namely Kantianism and normative non-naturalism. We now see that ubiquitous life would also allow theists to agree with Leibniz that God has, indeed, created the best of all possible worlds.
However, ubiquitous life would also create new and unexpected problems for theism, by undermining some traditional arguments for divine benevolence and thus making it harder to believe that God cares about us. Theists argue that the best explanation for the existence of this Universe is that it was created by a benevolent God. One prima facie counter-example is offered by widespread, apparently gratuitous evil. This suggests instead a creator who is indifferent to the fate of individual human beings. Theists reply that, unless we suppose that God cares about rationality, knowledge or intelligibility, we cannot explain why this Universe is governed by regular intelligible mathematical laws. The Universe appears to be designed to be understood by its own inhabitants. So far as we know, we are the only inhabitants who could possibly understand it. So we must be essential to God’s plan.
The discovery that life is ubiquitous weakens this argument. If the Universe is teeming with life, then there are many other candidates for the cosmically decisive role previously occupiable only by human beings. Perhaps God cares that there be some rational beings, but is indifferent to their species, identity or numbers. Or perhaps God cares only for creatures who reach some threshold of wisdom or intellect that humans could never attain. God cares for beings who are sufficiently rational, intelligent, free or lovable. But it is human arrogance to assume that we are among them!
The intelligibility of the Universe is prima facie evidence that God cares for us. Human suffering is prima facie evidence that God does not. The discovery of ubiquitous life tips the balance against divine benevolence, by opening up alternative explanations for intelligibility.
In my bookPurpose in the Universe (2015), I defend a new alternative to both atheism and (traditional) theism. Ananthropocentric purposivism (AP) holds that the Universe has a purpose and that humans are irrelevant to that purpose. If there is a God, then God cares about what matters, but we do not matter to God. Western theism has always combined both God-centred and human-centred elements. While we are created in God’s image, there is a vast distance between our feeble human concerns and God’s incomprehensible divine plan. AP pushes God-centred theism to extremes, abandoning divine benevolence altogether.
If aliens converge on a metaphysical view, it could be something like ananthropocentric purposivism. Perhaps all advanced civilisations are Wontians because they are simply indifferent to anything we care about, including communication with beings such as us. If life is ubiquitous, this might be the best solution to the Fermi Paradox. But it paints a very unsettling picture of our place in the cosmos.
This artist's concept depicts the interstellar visitor known as 'Oumuamua as a battered metallic space rock. Some astronomers, however, speculate that 'Oumuamua may be something far stranger. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Ever since its discovery in mid-October as it passed by Earth already outbound from our solar system, the mysterious object dubbed ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “first messenger”) has left scientists utterly perplexed. Zooming down almost perpendicularly inside Mercury’s orbit at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour—too fast for our star’s gravity to catch—‘Oumuamua appeared to have been dropped in on our solar system from some great interstellar height, picking up even more speed on a slingshot-like loop around the sun before soaring away for parts unknown. It is now already halfway to Jupiter, too far for a rendezvous mission and rapidly fading from the view of Earth’s most powerful telescopes.
Astronomers scrambling to glimpse the fading object have revealed additional oddities. ‘Oumuamua was never seen to sprout a comet-like tail after getting close to the sun, hinting it is not a relatively fresh bit of icy flotsam from the outskirts of a nearby star system. This plus its deep red coloration—which mirrors that of some cosmic-ray-bombarded objects in our solar system—suggested that ‘Oumuamua could be an asteroid from another star. Yet those same observations also indicate ‘Oumuamua might be shaped rather like a needle, up to 800 meters long and only 80 wide, spinning every seven hours and 20 minutes. That would mean it is like no asteroid ever seen before, instead resembling the collision-minimizing form favored in many designs for notional interstellar probes. What’s more, it is twirling at a rate that could tear a loosely-bound rubble pile apart. Whatever ‘Oumuamua is, it appears to be quite solid—likely composed of rock, or even metal—seemingly tailor-made to weather long journeys between stars. So far there are few if any wholly satisfactory explanations as to how such an extremely elongated solid object could naturally form, let alone endure the forces of a natural high-speed ejection from a star system—a process thought to involve a wrenching encounter with a giant planet.
These bizarre characteristics have raised eyebrows among professional practitioners of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, who use large radio telescopes to listen for interstellar radio transmissions from other cosmic civilizations. If ‘Oumuamua is in fact artificial, the reasoning goes, it might be transmitting or at least leaking radio waves.
So far limited observations of ‘Oumuamua, using facilities such as the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, have turned up nothing. But this Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time, the Breakthrough Listen project will aim the West Virgina-based 100-meter Green Bank Telescope at ‘Oumuamua for 10 hours of observations in a wide range of radio frequencies, scanning the object across its entire rotation in search of any signals. Breakthrough Listen is part of billionaire Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives program, a collection of lavishly-funded efforts aiming to uncover evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Other projects include Breakthrough Starshot, which intends to develop and launch interstellar probes, as well as Breakthrough Watch, which would use large telescopes to study exoplanets for signs of life.
“With our equipment at Green Bank, we can detect a signal the strength of a mobile phone coming out of this object,” Milner says. “We don’t want to be sensational in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial, but because this is a unique situation we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis.” Besides being simply a search for signs of aliens, Breakthrough Listen’s efforts could also narrow down the possibilities for ‘Oumuamua’s composition by looking for signs of water vapor sublimating from any sun-warmed ice lurking beneath the object’s red, desiccated surface.
Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist and Breakthrough advisor at Harvard University who helped persuade Milner to pursue the observations, is similarly pessimistic about prospects for uncovering aliens. There are, he says, arguments against its artificial origins. For one thing, its estimated spin rate seems too low to create useful amounts of “artificial gravity” for anything onboard. Furthermore, ‘Oumuamua shows no sign of moving due to rocketry or other technology, instead following an orbit shaped by the gravitational force of the sun. Its speed relative to the solar system (about 20 kilometers per second) also seems rather slow for any interstellar probe, which presumably would cruise at higher speeds for faster trips between stars. But that pace aligns perfectly with those of typical nearby stars—suggesting ‘Oumuamua might be merely a piece of galactic “driftwood” washed up by celestial currents.
Then again, Loeb says, “perhaps the aliens have a mothership that travels fast and releases baby spacecraft that freely fall into planetary system on a reconnaissance mission. In such a case, we might be able to intercept a communication signal between the different spacecraft.”
Several years ago Loeb and two colleagues performed a speculative calculation estimating the interstellar abundance of ‘Oumuamua-sized space rocks based on the density of stars in the Milky Way and the vagaries of planet formation. That calculation, Loeb says, suggests the number of such space rocks is at least a hundred thousand times too low to account for ‘Oumuamua’s detection. Simply put, objects like ‘Oumuamua should be far too rare for our current telescopes to have any reasonable chance of spotting one. Newer studies gauging the odds find that for ‘Oumuamua’s detection to not be an astronomically unlikely fluke, there must be a sizeable population of such objects continuously passing through our solar system. This in turn suggests that more-capable future observatories, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will find many more when they begin operations in the 2020s.
“Typically in astronomy we don’t see things that are rare—if we see one, that means there’s a lot more out there,” says Breakthrough Listen’s lead scientist Andrew Siemion, who is also director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “So, while this is most likely a natural object, if we don’t eventually see any more, that would indeed be very strange and would increase interest from a SETI perspective.”
Either way, Siemion says, “‘Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects. Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target.”
And if, against all odds, the Green Bank Telescope detects signals from this mysterious interstellar interloper—what happens then? Breakthrough Listen’s leaders assure us they would keep no secrets. First, the team at Green Bank would immediately re-observe ‘Oumuamua to confirm the signal. Next, they would reach out to astronomers around the world who could target the object with other radio telescopes. “We quite literally have a little Rolodex just for that,” Siemion says. “And at that moment this would become public. There’s no way to keep something like this a secret, because it requires us calling everyone we can. We tend not to ‘cry wolf’ about these things.”
Space is often touted as the last frontier, the final wilderness that we have yet to tame or understand, and in many ways this is very true. We have only within the last century really begun to comprehend some of its secrets to any appreciable degree, and there are certainly wonders beyond our imagination for us yet to behold. Yet some mysteries that have been encountered out there in the cold dark of space go well beyond conventional understanding, to propel out into the world of the paranormal and the universe of the truly bizarre. Certainly ranking among these mysteries is a curious close encounter between some of the first people in space and, well, something else.
In April of 1982, the Soviet Union launched its ambitious Salyut 7 space station as part of the Soviet Salyut Programme, which started in 1971 and had the aim of eventually sending up a total of four crewed scientific research space stations and two crewed military reconnaissance space stations. The last to be launched in the program and a precursor to the Mir space station, the Salyut 7 was the 10th space station ever put into orbit by mankind, and was designed to serve as a sort of test of a new system of modular space stations, which entailed the ability to attach new modules to expand the station or adapt it to whatever functions were required, as well as an outpost for various off-planet experiments. The Salyut 7 would end up staying in orbit for a total of 8 years and 10 months, which up until that time was the longest such a station had ever remained in continuous orbit. It is also known for a very bizarre series of bizarre, unexplained events witnessed by the crew.
The Salyut 7 space station
In July of 1984, the Salyut 7 was on the 155th day of its mission and things were going in a routine fashion until there was a sudden transmission from cosmonauts Commander Oleg Atkov, Vladmir Solovyov, and Leonid Kizim in which they claimed that the space station had suddenly been surrounded by an oppressive, blinding orange light. The crew of three aboard the Salyut 7 all then allegedly looked out of the portals to try and see what was causing this inexplicable brilliant glow. At this point they would witness probably the last thing they had expected to see out there.
There hovering in space in front of the space station were what the crew would describe as seven enormous winged humanoid beings estimated as being around 90 feet in height and with calm, smiling faces, and it was from these bizarre entities that the ethereal light was apparently emanating. They were also claimed to exude a feeling of calm and peacefulness, and oddly the cosmonauts felt no fear during the encounter, merely wonderment. According to the witnesses, the colossal apparitions, which they described as “angels,” matched the speed of the space station, remaining in the same position for around 10 minutes before fading away. Baffled by what they had all just seen, the three cosmonauts had a heated discussion on what the beings were and what rational explanation could account for it, but they could come up with nothing. In the end, although they had all seen exactly the same thing, they chalked it up to the stresses and rigors of being in space for so long, resigning themselves to the explanation that their minds had simply been playing tricks on them.
They may have gone on forever convinced that this was some sort of mass hallucination and a bout of temporary insanity, but it would not be their last encounter with these otherworldly beings. On Day 167 of the mission, the Salyut gained an additional three cosmonauts in the form of Svetlana Savitskaya, Igor Volk and Vladimir Dzhanibekov. Not long after these new crew members boarded, the station was once again bathed in that potent, bedazzling light, and this time all six of the crew looked out of the portholes to see several of the massive angelic beings swimming through the blackness of space outside, again with their benevolent smiling faces. Considering that this time they had again all seen the same thing, it appeared that there was perhaps something more going on beyond simple hallucinations.
When the Salyut mission was concluded and the cosmonauts returned to Earth, their strange experiences were allegedly covered up and swept under the carpet by the Soviet government, and the witnesses told in no uncertain terms that they were never to discuss what they had seen up there. Interestingly, intensive rounds of physical and psychological tests performed on the space station crew supposedly showed nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. They were perfectly sound of body and mind.
Considering the thick secrecy surrounding the odd events, the story did not really get any wider coverage until after the Cold War, but when it did get out it immediately ignited a firestorm of debate and speculation as to what the cosmonauts had really seen. The most rational and scientific answer is that these cosmonauts experienced what they had suspected in the beginning, which is some sort of mass hallucination or madness brought on by the demanding stresses, fatigue, and the harsh conditions of space. After all, no one had ever really spent this much time continuously in space before, and so it should be only natural that they should have such visions.
Indeed, such surreal visual phenomena have been reported by other astronauts and cosmonauts who have been in space for long periods of time, and even earthbound pilots on long, demanding flights. The problem with this explanation is that six seasoned, experienced cosmonauts all saw the same thing at the same time, and all of them were given clean bills of mental and physical health afterward, making it seem rather unlikely that this could all be in their heads. It also seems rather implausible that a group of six highly trained, well-respected cosmonauts would get together and make up such a story as a hoax.
Another fairly rational explanation is that they witnessed some strange, unexplained natural phenomenon and simply misidentified what they were seeing, but even if this were true, why would they all give the exact same description of winged, angelic entities with smiling faces? Getting into more fringe ideas is that these were actual, literal angels, and that their appearance heralded some sort of prophetic information, or that it was even a portent of the Biblical end of the world. There have also been all sorts of claims that everyone from NASA to world governments, to the Illuminati and even the Vatican itself know the truth about the existence of these “space angels,” and that it is all being covered up and kept from the public, with conspiracy theorists routinely producing photographs from space stations and the Hubble Telescope that purportedly show photographic evidence of such entities.
Alleged NASA photo of “Space Angels”
So what in the world did the cosmonauts of the Salyut 7 see? Unbelievably, there have been other accounts of being visited by similar apparitions in space, with some cases coming even before the Salyut 7 sightings. Supposedly the very first human to go into space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, had his own encounter with such a creature in April of 1961. At two points during his spaceflight aboard the Vostok-1, Gagarin inexplicably went silent and lost contact, and when he was asked about it later he was not sure what had happened, thinking he may have just briefly lost consciousness. During hypnotic regression, Gagarin claimed that he could remember seeing an enormous, mysterious figure floating in space in front of him, and that he had heard a voice in his head saying, “Do not worry, everything will be fine. You’ll come back to Earth,” before the apparition vanished into thin air right before his eyes. Hallucination or not?
More recently, in 2008 a former member of the Space Shuttle Fleet named Clark C. McClelland came forward to claim that he had years earlier observed a similar being while looking over some monitors of a space shuttle mission at the Kennedy Space Center while on duty at the Launch Control Center (LCC). He claims that over one of the 27-inch monitors he not only observed an enormous entity between 8 to 9 feet tall in the space shuttle’s payload bay, but also that it was actually interacting with the astronauts. He would say of what he saw thus:
The ET was standing upright in the Space Shuttle Payload Bay having a discussion with TWO tethered US NASA Astronauts. I also observed on my monitors, the spacecraft of the ET as it was in a stabilized, safe orbit to the rear of the Space Shuttle main engine pods. I observed this incident for about one minute and seven seconds. Plenty of time to memorize all that I was observing.
McClelland claimed that others had seen the incident too, and that they had been told to keep quiet about what they had seen, meaning that he had sat on this hauntingly bizarre experience until after he retired. He also claims that the government has regular dealings with these creatures and that it is all kept top secret. In this case the entity mentioned is certainly described as an alien of some type, but its sheer size makes it interesting in relation to the space angel phenomenon, and makes one wonder just what it really was this man saw, if anything. Does this story have any credibility at all or is he just a loon?
So there you have it. Angels. In space. This last frontier has a lot of strange stuff in it, but perhaps not much that is as strange as this. Just what is going on here? Was this hallucinations seen by all of these crew members? Was it something else? Who knows? Considering the original news reports of the phenomenon have been quietly relegated to the background and are only really discussed on Internet forums by people who have noticed just how outlandish the story is, we may never know for sure. It remains just one more anomaly on perhaps a whole road of anomalies just waiting fir us as we delve ever deeper into the reaches of our universe.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
'Earth Must be Warned!' - French Astronaut's Chilling Warning Resurfaced This Week
'Earth Must be Warned!' - French Astronaut's Chilling Warning Resurfaced This Week
Claudie André-Deshays Haigneré is at the center of an enormous mystery. In 2008, the talented and highly intelligent Frenchwoman issued a hysterical warning to the people of Earth after attempting to commit suicide. No one at the time knew what the warning meant and since Dr. Haigneré has recovered she has refused to clarify the matter.
She was working on researching involving human and alien DNA
Dr. Haigneré is an extraordinarily accomplished woman who has enjoyed a storied and multi-faceted career. She is a rheumatologist and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and certificates in biology, sports medicine, aviation and space medicine. In 1993, she traveled to space for the first time and became the first European woman to visit the International Space Station along with her husband who is also an astronaut.
After her travels in space, Dr. Haigneré entered French politics and served as a minster for Research and New Technologies between 2002 and 2004. She was also the minister for European Affairs between 2004 and 2005. Despite her efforts, while she was in office the budget for scientific research in France were cut. Disillusioned, she cut her political career short and went to work in a biology lab at the prestigious Pasteur Institute.
Sources have reported that Dr. Haigneré’s work at the Pasteur Institute was of a rather esoteric nature. Some have even claimed that she was working on researching involving human and alien DNA. After several years at the Pasteur Institute, it was widely reported that Dr. Haigneré was taken to hospital after taking a huge overdose of sleeping pills. She was conscious upon arrival but had to be forcibly restrained as she fought against doctors, screaming “Earth must be warned!” Shortly after that, she lapsed into a coma.
Immediately after this extraordinary scene, it was reported that there was a mysterious fire which has never been properly explained by workers at the Pasteur Institute which has raised suspicions that Dr. Haigneré came across something groundbreaking and deeply disturbing in the course of her research. However, if this is the case, Dr. Haigneré is not willing to speak publicly about it anymore. She has blamed her suicide attempt on ‘burnout syndrome’ and has now moved on to the directorship of the largest science museum in Europe, the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie
It might sound unbelievable, but we’re currently living in an era that’s birthed the disclosure of some very sensitive information. So sensitive that despite all of the evidence, it’s still hard for many people to think about, let alone accept. And that’s the fact that there are now dozens of governments who have confirmed the existence of UFOs. We’re talking about mysterious objects performing maneuvers that defy our laws of physics. Apart from having both visual and radar confirmations, there are hundreds of military officers from all ranks, politicians and academicians speaking out and providing evidence that suggests some of these UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial.
One of the people responsible for this movement is Dr. Steven Greer, MD and founder of The Disclosure Project and The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), who has been on a mission for decades to shed light on the fact that we’re not alone, that we’ve never been alone, and that an ET presence is currently engaging our planet and the human race.
This person has been able to organize and bring forth hundreds of military whistleblowers with verified backgrounds, who have given some shocking witness testimony. Colonel Ross Dedrickson is one example; here is an interview Dr. Greer conducted with him over a decade ago.
Another example would be former Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who confirmed that himself and Greer did in fact have multiple meetings within the Pentagon about this issue.
One thing is for sure: Greer has some interesting connections that have allowed him to do what he does. He’s known as the father of the disclosure movement, for one person to bring forth hundreds of defence employees is quite eye-opening.
Out of all those who support him that come from different fields and verified backgrounds, Dr. Greer has amassed a great deal of credibility. Being in contact with, and referenced by astronauts, colonels, generals and more who have agreed to participate in the disclosure movement is what gives his project a special kind of credibility, because all those who agree to an interview do indeed come from where they say they do, within the military industrial complex. Never before have we seen such a large gathering, all with verified backgrounds.
Which is why, when he conducts an interview where the name remains anonymous, it’s that much more interesting. Sure, we can’t verify this person’s identify, but the hundreds of others who have been a part of his disclosure project, as well as all of the big names who have verified multiple stories from Greer, it’s probably best to give this one the benefit of the doubt.
“There is considerable knowledge as far as the actual being of UFO and ET phenomena that we’re aware of today.”
The clip from Greer was a cut clip from his recent film, one that broke records, titled “Unacknowledged.“
Other Information That Lends Credibility To This Story
According to Author and UFO researcher Dr. William Lester, the CIA released documents to him under the Freedom of Information act after he made a request while researching for his new book at the time, A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier. The document and story was brought forth by the Daily Mail, pertaining to a letter written by John F. Kennedy to the head of the CIA demanding to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs just 10 days before his assassination.
According to the Daily Mail, “the secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.”
It’s understandable that a Daily Mail article and a claim from a UFO researcher isn’t really considered credible, but what’s even more fascinating about the story is the fact that it also appears within some Wikileaks Cables.
February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files; over five million emails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The emails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques, and psychological methods.
From these emails, we have one that details information that documents by a gentleman named Timothy S. Cooper, who, according to many, leaked the supposed “MJ-12” documents that dealt with the cover-up of UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon.
In the email, it states that “Soon after Kennedy became President, he began to needle the CIA for information on UFOs” and that “President Kennedy fired off a top secret memorandum to him outlining a previous discussion concerning a classification review of all CIA UFO files that could affect national security. Dated 12 November, 1963, just ten days before he would be gunned down in the streets of Dallas, Texas, Kennedy informed Angleton that he was setting things in motion to actually share sensitive CIA UFO intelligence data with the Russians through the director of NASA.”
The question to ask here is why is a company like Stratfor sending emails within the company regarding this topic?
Definitely interesting to think about.
Perhaps the most interesting fact is that JFK was President right around the time a massive cover-up regarding this topic ensued. Only a couple of terms before his own, President Harry Truman went on national television stating that this topic is discussed at every single conference they have with the military. The topic of flying saucers and “other things.” He stated that “there are always things like that going on” (source).
There are even claims that President Eisenhower held a meeting with extraterrestrials. His great granddaughter Laura is one who has spoken about the incident. You can read more about that specific story and where it comes from, here.
Today, Presidents don’t really know much. In fact, based on my research, when they do inquire they’re not told much and they don’t really have access nor a need to know information about UFOs and extraterrestrials. So who does?
Here are a couple of related CE articles that will give you an idea of who we’re referring to here:
Here’s another interesting clip from Greer’s documentary that pertains to the subject. You can find out more about the documentary and how to watch it HERE.
It seems, based on my research, that presidents don’t really have access to this type of information, and it’s not an easy thing to inquire about.
“The results suggest that certain mediums can anomalously receive accurate information about deceased individuals. The study design effectively eliminates conventional mechanisms as well as telepathy as explanations for the information reception, but the results cannot distinguish among alternative paranormal hypotheses, such as survival of consciousness (the continued existence, separate from the body, of an individual’s consciousness or personality after physical death) and super-psi (or super-ESP; retrieval of information via a psychic channel or quantum field).”
That’s right, over decades, and even over thousands of years, intellectuals have been interested in those who claim, or are seen by others, to have “supernormal” type of abilities which cannot really be explained by our current knowledge of science. That being said, just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it’s not real, and studies like the ones above have shown, multiple times, that there are people on the planet who can do some extraordinary things that completely defy belief, logic and reason. This is often why we see such a harsh response to it, because it contradicts and conflicts with most people’s idea of what can and can’t be achieved.
It’s something that’s been claimed to be done for thousands of years. Be it through Oracles of the past, Yogi’s with superhuman abilities that are described in ancient Eastern texts, or modern-day mediums, it seems something is going on here, which is evident by the amount of research put into it and how many “intellectuals” and “scholars” continue to study it and vouch for its validity.
There is usually, however, a response that this type of thing is a result of complete delusion.
You can find links to a few more studies on the subjecthere.
The Woman Who Visited Mars
Helene Smith was a 19th century French medium. She is noted for popularizing the concept of automatic writing, that is, writing down information while in a trance like state, doing so in a type of unconscious manner.
In the 50’s and 60’s, all the way up to the present day, the field of ufology is filled with supposed off-world contactee’s, who usually receive their information in similar ways. These people were quite popular and received a lot of serious attention many decades ago, and some of what they said sharply correlates with what’s been happening today.
In 1954, an ordinary citizen by the name of George King was also one of many who was/had been contacted by extraterrestrial intelligence, this one was from Mars as well, and supposedly part of an alliance of several intelligences from other planets.
Now, if you think this is impossible given what we know about those planets, well, it turns out we don’t know as much as we thought we did. For example, Mars is not the dry arid planet we once thought it to be. NASA scientists recently held a press conference revealing some astonishing facts about extraterrestrial life on Mars.
Here is an article we published about three NASA scientist discussing extraterrestrial life on Mars, hinting that some strange things are going on there right now.
Here is another one that goes into detail about extraterrestrial life on or around the rings of Saturn.
He also made some comments about how these extraterrestrial alliances were concerned about our nuclear weapons. Decades later, we have documents and confirmed testimony from high ranking intelligence people, and actual events that have occurred at military bases.
To see an interview with him and read more about his story, you can refer to the article linked below:
If you want to learn about UFO/Extraterrestrial encounters over Nuclear Missile Facilities, you can read the article linked below as it goes into more detail about that:
As far as Helene, her contacts name was ‘Leopold,’ and she become popular when a Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva, Theodor Flournoy, published a book titled “Des Indes a la planete Mars.” The book documented her experiences.
Multiple linguists were also brought in to translate the words that were channeled through her, and they seemed to be a mix of multiple languages, and not the easiest to understand.
She used to write out supposed Martian speech onto paper and then translate it into French when she was in her trance like state.
It featured her paintings of Martian landscapes and documented her “experiences” on Mars, of humanoid type beings and certain social ways of greeting each other, their homes, etc…
Now, if you read the articles linked above about Mars, and what modern day, ‘credible,’ people have said about what’s going on up there, it’s interesting to think about to say the least.
Below is another interesting case regarding a supposed past life from Mars, the article goes into more detail:
Below is one of several drawings Helen made regarding her visions.
Personally, I like to look into topics with skepticism. The more research I’ve done about Mars, contactee’s and channellers, it’s not uncommon to find multiple consistencies that come through in the form of channeling and automatic writing.
I’ll lave you this quote to give you something to think about:
“Now, how do I feel about secrecy in Government? …Secrecy in government is a evil which is sometimes necessary, but I think it’s a good thing that this cover up on Mars is ending and, hopefully at some point we can have a frank conversation not about what happened on Mars 250 million years ago but what is happening right now.”
– John Brandenburg, deputy manager of the Clementine Mission to the Moon. Spoken at the Secret Space Program conference. You can watch the full lecture here.
These are the characters of the letters and communications that she was translating into French.
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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.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.