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...
15-12-2017
Sirius in many colors
Sirius in many colors
By Deborah Byrdin ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS | TODAY'S IMAGE|
When you see the sky’s brightest star – Sirius – low in the sky, you’re seeing it shine through an extra thickness of Earth’s atmosphere. At such times, its colorful flashing might surprise you.
View larger. | A sequences of images of the star Sirius, via Amanda Cross.
Amanda Cross in Euxton, Lancs, UK caught the images above ofSirius – the brightest star in Earth’s sky, sometimes called the Dog Star – on December 11, 2017.
She wrote:
This is the star Sirius early in the morning. I used a high ISO and 1/320 shutter speed. The colour flashes are picked up by the camera as the atmosphere splits the light from the star. No color enhancements were made to this image. This is how the camera picked up the colors.
Thank you, Amanda!
It’s true. When you see this very bright star low in the sky, it appears to flash in many different colors. These colors aren’t intrinsic to the star, but instead result from refraction, which splits starlight into the colors of the rainbow. Atmospheric refraction causes all kinds of strange optical effects, like bent crescent moons, and flattened suns. And it causes the brightest stars – like Sirius – to shine in many sparkling colors!
When you see Sirius higher in the sky, where you’re looking at it through less atmosphere, this star appears to shine more steadily and with a whiter color.
“These professional astronomers are claiming the exclusive right to give ‘approved’ names to the stars. But the stars – and the sky – belong to all of us.”
Star map painting by Senior Wardaman Elder Bill Yidumduma Harney, featuring the Milky Way, the moon, and ancestor spirits. The IAUincluded this image with its announcement of new star names.
There’s been a debate among professional astronomers about who should have the right and/or obligation to name stars and other space objects. The visible stars have had many names, because they were named over time by many different people and in many cultures. But, around the 1930s, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) took it upon itself to divide the sky – “officially” – into 88 constellations, and since then the IAU has been naming all sorts of space objects. In recent years, bowing to pressure from outside groups that allow individuals and non-astronomers to name stars (for a price), the IAU ran a global competition to let non-professional astronomers participate in naming stars. It announced 227 star names a year ago, which were chosen in that semi-public process. This week (December 11, 2017), the IAU announced it had formally approved names for 86 more stars, without asking for public input.
These new names have now been added to the IAU’s stellar name catalog, and thus the IAU’s catalog now contains “approved” names for 313 stars. Many of the names are what we amateur astronomers have been calling these stars all along. Most of the 313 are, after all, among the brightest stars in our skies. But some are entirely new names.
The new star names are for somewhat fainter stars than those announced last year. The brightest one in this new batch is a 2nd-magnitude star known as Delta Velorum, which has been given the name Alsephina, stemming from the Arabic name al-safinah meaning the ship. Delta Velorum is part of the constellation Vela the Sails, which used to be one large constellation called Argo Navis, the ship of the Argonauts. The IAU got rid of Argo Navis when it “officially” named constellations in the 1930s, dividing the great celestial ship into several smaller constellations. But I digress … easy to do when speaking of names for stars and constellations.
Traditionally, most star names used by astronomers have come from Arabic, Greek, or Latin origins. [The 86 new names are] drawn from those used by other cultures, namely Australian Aboriginal, Chinese, Coptic, Hindu, Mayan, Polynesian, and South African.
… Modern star catalogs contain millions or even billions of objects, most of which are identified by designations — strings of letters and numbers indicating their position or ordering. The IAU reviews the names of the brightest and most interesting stars rather than assigning designations using merely strings of letters and numbers. Some bright stars have accumulated dozens of names and spelling variations over the years.
This time, the naming has been done exclusively by the IAU Working Group on Star Names. Eric Mamajek, chair and organiser of this sub-committee within the IAU, said the astronomers had been:
… researching traditional star names from cultures around the world and adopting unique names and spellings to avoid confusion in astronomical catalogues and star atlases. These names help ensure that intangible astronomical heritage from skywatchers around the world, and across the centuries, are preserved for use in an era of exoplanetary systems.
Unless you know the stars well, perhaps the only star name you’ll recognize on the IAU’s most recent list of named stars is Barnard’s Star. It’s not a bright star but is one of the nearest stars to our sun. It was discovered by astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in 1916 and for decades was suspected of having a planet. The IAU said that the name Barnard’s Star – which has been in common use for a century – can stay.
I enjoyed reading about the IAU’s new Chinese star names for 11 stars. Three of those names came from the Chinese idea of lunar mansions, vertical strips of sky that act as markers for following the nightly progress of the moon, providing a basis for a lunar calendar. There’s a logic and history to that that’s very appealing, to me.
And certainly there must be equally good reasons for the IAU’s new star names from other cultures, as well. It’s a thoughtful and careful list.
Astronomer Alan Stern. The New Horizons mission to Pluto was his brainchild, and he has also founded a private company in an attempt to give the public more access to naming and defining things in space. The company is called UWingU.
Still, it rankles me and some others in astronomy that the professional astronomers of the IAU are claiming the exclusive right to give ‘approved’ names to the stars. The stars – and the sky – belong to all of us. Other organizations have popped up that will also name these features for you, for a price.
EarthSky doesn’t take an “official” view on any of this, but, personally, I don’t like fences. I’m always wishing my neighbors would agree to remove the fences in our backyards, for example (although I know they never will), so it’d be like one big yard. That’s just my mindset, and I know many of you will disagree; I’m just a person who likes wide open spaces. So you won’t be surprised to know I feel a touch of sadness about these new “approved” names. It’s like these stars now have little fences, of sorts, around them.
As for the companies that offer to name stars for a price … it’s a fact that many people enjoy having stars or exoplanets or planetary features named for themselves. Where’s the harm? If it makes your mom, or your sweetheart, or anyone you love feel good, I say … do it!
Bottom line: Astronomers often know multiple names for stars, or call them by their Greek letter names. Now, the International Astronomical Union has chosen “approved” star names for 86 more stars.
Interstellar Visitor Stays Silent But Researchers Aren't Done Analyzing
Interstellar Visitor Stays Silent But Researchers Aren't Done Analyzing
Oumuamua, the first interstellar asteroid to have been found in the solar system of Earth has remained silent up to now and not shown any sign of life. The asteroid went past Earth two months ago and scientists have been searching for artificial signals coming from it but up to now have not found any.
$100 Million Funding In Search for Alien Life
The scientists have $100 million funding and they made the announcement that Oumuamua has remained silent on December 14. However, the researchers have not yet finished analyzing data from the West Virginian Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The scientists also have plans on undertaking three more blocks of observation according to the team members.
The director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center in California revealed that it was good seeing the data come in from what is an interesting source. He went on to reveal that all the team had been extremely excited to learn what future analyses are going to reveal.
Shape of Oumuamua Caused Speculation of It Being An Alien Spacecraft
The asteroid Oumuamua has been causing a stir in the world of astronomy and planetary science along with SETI communities ever since the asteroid first came onto the radar in the middle of October 2017. The trajectory of the object revealed that the asteroid had arrived from another solar system, while the strange shape, which is elongated, sparked a great deal of talk about it being an alien spaceship.
Of course, this was something of a long shot, but still, there were many astronomers that believed the object was well worth looking into. The SETI Institute scientists in California used the Allen Telescope Array to search for any signals that were coming from Oumuamua but up to now the search for alien life has failed.
People are not giving up though and the Breakthrough Listen Project have studied Oumuamua, which is said to be about 400 meters in length using four radio bands which spanned over many billions of individual channels on December 13 when they made use of the 330 foot Green Bank dish.
The observation went on for 6 hours and managed to capture 90 terabytes of data throughout the 2-hour observation of the huge asteroid. Of course, looking through so much information is going to take a great deal of time. The Breakthrough Listen team plan on using three more observation blocks in the future as they continue their search for alien life.
This is the job I want. The researchers who recently used cosmic rays to find a massive previously-unknown “void” inside the Great Pyramid are now planning to drill a hole, shove a deflated micro-blimp drone through it, inflate it and send it around the insides of the pyramid. Can a blimp outrun a mummy with a dagger?
The idea for this great movie plot comes from the folks at ScanPyramids, a group of engineers from the Heritage Innovation Preservation (HIP) Institute in Florida and the University of Cairo. They’re the researchers who used “cosmic ray imaging” to measure subatomic particles from space as they passed through the Great Pyramid to map its insides and possibly find unknown voids and chambers. As revolutionary as that is, all it gives is a type of x-ray image of the insides. Since Egypt’s government blocks humans from entering the pyramid, there has to be another way to see inside the real thing.
Enter Dr. Jean-Baptiste Mouret (a perfect movie name for a pyramid explorer). A senior researcher at Inria (“Inventors for the Digital World”), Mouret studies “machine learning and evolutionary computation as a means to design highly adaptive robots.” In a recent interview with Digital Trends, he first describes how he would get a robot inside the pyramid.
“The main challenge is to insert a complete exploration robot in a hole that is as small as possible. It is important to use a hole as small as possible because we want to leave as few traces as we can. This what we call ‘minimally invasive robotics.’ We chose a diameter of 1.5 inches because it is a good trade-off between the size of the hole, the kind of machines that can bore holes, and the current robotics technologies.”
Assuming he or the people at ScanPyramids can get permission to drill a 1.5 inch (3.5 cm) hole into the pyramid (two monumental tasks), Mouret would then send in his specially-designed micro-blimp drone through the hole and self-inflate it once inside.
“[These robots] can touch obstacles without crashing and without risking damage to the monument. They are, moreover, intrinsically stable, which is important for taking pictures in low-light conditions, and they are more energy-efficient than multi-rotors.”
The blimp-bot would be remotely-controlled, but it will have autonomous capabilities to find its way back to its docking port and entry/exit hole should it lose communications.
Why would it lose communications? Can robots be affected by mummy curses? Would the curse be passed on to the robot’s inventor, owner or operator? Would the movie based on this be a thriller or a comedy?
Those are points to ponder while Dr. Jean-Baptiste Mouret waits for the proper permits to be approved by Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquity. Meanwhile, he plans to use the technology at other buildings or archaeological sites that can’t be explored by humans.
To add to the seemingly increasing strangeness overhead in our skies, reports of so-called megacryometeors have been increasing lately. These anomalous balls of ice are believed to either fall from aircraft overhead or be the result of some unknown atmospheric activity. In many cases, however, aviation authorities claim no aircraft had overhead at the time of megacryometeors falling. Case in point: two California homeowners got the scares of their lives this week as anomalous massive chunks of ice fell from the skies, crashing through their homes and generally scaring the pants off of everyone. Like in most cases, the Federal Aviation Administration claims it knows nothing. The first case happened in San Bernardino, California at the home of 82-year-old Claudell Curry. Curry and his wife were enjoying a quiet evening at home on Sunday, December 10 when a horrible crashing sound came from their bedroom.
Luckily, no one was injured in either case.
Upon entering their bedroom, the Currys found chunks of clear ice lying and debris from their ceiling littering the room. Had they been in bed, Curry told the San Bernardino Sun, the result would have been quite different:
That terrible noise, I never heard a noise like that before. We shiver every time we think we could have been in bed. The wife is still nervous, but we are doing OK. It was quite a traumatic experience.
It probably would have been more traumatic had the ice been blue, indicating it came from an airplane lavatory. Since it was clear like in other unexplained megacryometeor cases, its origin isn’t so easily identified. A similar case happened just a month prior only a few dozen miles away when another deadly chunk of ice fell through a home in Chino, California. The FAA hasn’t been able to identify a source for either case, as there were no commercial flights in the area on either date. The nearby March Air Reserve Base, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, and Camp Pendleton also deny responsibility, stating there are no planes kept on those bases.
A Spanish megacryometeor which fell in 2007.
Whatever the cause may be, something weird is going on in the skies lately. Unexplained booms have been rocking the skiesover North America, sometimes accompanied by unexplained debris. In a few cases, tight-lipped federal agents have shown up to whisk the debris away before onlookers and journalists get a good look. Could these booms and ice chunks indicate some off-the-books or clandestine aerospace activity?
Within the specific genre of science-fiction, fantastic tales of time-travel to the far-flung future or to the distant past are hardly rarities. Take, for example, H.G. Wells’ epic novel of 1895: The Time Machine. The book tells the story of a brilliant, London, England-based scientist, inventor and adventurer who journeys to the year A.D. 802,701 where, to his complete and utter dismay, he finds that the Human Race (in the form that we understand it, at least) no longer exists. In its place are the Eloi and the Morlocks. The former are relatively human-looking beings (albeit of smaller stature), yet they utterly lack vitality, imagination, and any desire to learn or advance. The Morlocks, meanwhile, are fearsome, savage and nightmarish beasts who dwell in darkened underground lairs and who use the Eloi as we use cattle: namely, as a source of food.
Then there is The Philadelphia Experiment: an entertaining Hollywood film allegedly based on real events, and which tells the story of two sailors – David Herdeg and Jim Parker – who are propelled through time from 1943 to the Nevada Desert, circa 1984.
And we should not forget the BBC show, The Flipside of Dominick Hide, in which the main character travels through time from A.D. 2130 to London, England in 1980. Ostensibly there to observe the transportation systems of the past, Hide subsequently finds himself on a quest to locate one of his distant ancestors.
Although these three tales of fictionalized time travel are very different in nature, they all have one thing in common: the time travel that all of the characters experience is achieved via the use of highly advanced (albeit sometimes unreliable) technology: In Wells’ The Time Machine, the chief character (whose name we never actually get to learn) builds his own device to traverse the centuries. In The Philadelphia Experiment, Herdeg and Parker take part in a secret U.S. Navy operation. And Dominick Hide undertakes the journey from 2130 to 1980 via nothing less than his very own flying saucer. However, there are countless reports on record where people – in the real world – seem to have crossed the time-barrier entirely at random, and without the means of sci-fi-style machine-based technologies. Such cases have become known as Time-Slips.
One of the most famous examples of what some researchers think may have been a definitive Time-Slip involved two British women: Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, who, it has been suggested, traveled through time while visiting the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France. It was August 10, 1901 when the pair paid a trip to the Palace of Versailles. While walking through the grounds, both Moberly and Jourdain were overcome by distinctly oppressive feelings of gloom and uneasiness. They would later claim to have met with a wide variety of individuals, all garbed in 18th Century clothing, and who they came to believe had been members of the court of none other than Marie Antoinette. More controversially, the pair said they saw a figure they thought may very well have been Marie Antoinette herself.
Did Moberly and Jourdain really cross the time-barrier into centuries-past? To this day, the story has as many believers as it does detractors. But there is one important factor of which to take careful note: their amazing story does not stand alone. Indeed, there are numerous reports on record of people apparently passing through time – entirely at random, and without the benefit of any form of out-of-this-world technology.
A key event of the First English Civil War, the Battle of Hopton Heath (a small village in south Shropshire) was fought on Sunday, March 19, 1643 between Parliamentarian and Royalist forces. The battle ended at nightfall, with the actual victory and outcome still remaining matters of very much personal opinion. The Royalists, for example, had succeeded in capturing eight enemy-guns; while the Parliamentarians believed that their successful killing of the enemy commander, the Earl of Northampton, was of equal – if not even greater – significance.
But, without doubt of even more significance was a startling event that occurred at some point in the winter of 1974. It was late at night and then-thirty-six-year-old John ‘Davy’ Davis, a Lichfield, Staffordshire-based house-painter at the time, was driving near Hopton Heath when he began to feel unwell: an ominous tightness developed in his chest, he felt lightheaded, and, as he succinctly put it, “my left ear hurt and felt hot.”
Quickly pulling over to the side of the road, Davis was amazed to see the night-sky suddenly transform into daylight, while the road in front of him no longer existed: instead, it had been replaced by a mass of fields, heath-land and tangled trees. And, in front of him, countless soldiers adorned in what was clearly Civil War-clothing waged harsh war upon one another. Notably, Davis said that although at one point he was “nearly bloody surrounded” by the soldiers, it was almost as if they could neither see him nor his vehicle. This afforded Davis a degree of relief, as he was practically frozen to the spot, and “couldn’t have run if I had wanted to.” As it transpired, Davis didn’t need to run anywhere: just a few seconds later, the bizarre scene suddenly vanished, and Davis found himself sat at the edge of the road, with his car squashed against a large line of hedge, and with complete and utter normality returned.
Horning is an old village in Norfolk, England situated between Wroxham and Ludham, on the River Bure. The village’s Ferry Inn is typical of the many old taverns that dominate the area, and the 13th Century church of St. Benedict can be found half-a-mile to the east of the village. On a summer’s afternoon in either 1978 or 1979, the Margolis family was enjoying a stroll around the picturesque village when, like so many before them and since, they were overcome by a feeling of distinct uneasiness and unreality – as well as total silence, and a slight dizziness.
That uneasiness quickly mutated into concern, fright, and overwhelming disorientation as the landscape became “fuzzy” (“like a big heat-haze”), the houses were replaced by ancient cottages, and the road ahead of them became little more than a muddy track. As for the cars that had been in sight, they were no more. Instead, a battered and bruised cart appeared – that was being pulled by a large cart-horse. A thin man dressed in brown walked alongside the horse; yet appeared not to notice any of the family in the slightest.
Suddenly, however, the modern-day sounds of cars and voices began to echo all around them, and the strange spectacle was now utterly gone. Notably, it seems that Mrs. Margolis may very well have been exposed to the odd scene for slightly less a period of time than was her now-late husband and their 11-year-old son. “I looked at them when I came out of it,” recalled Mrs. Margolis in a 1997 interview, “and it was like they were in a trance: their mouths were hanging down, and their eyes looked funny. Then they looked like they woke up and we were all back together again.”
Interestingly, odd and unsettling feelings and sensations, such as those referenced in each of the cases above, were also referred to by author Andrew Mackenzie in his book Adventures in Time: Encounters with the Past. Such events, reported Mackenzie, are “often accompanied by feelings of depression, eeriness and a marked sense of silence, deeper than normally experienced.” Similarly, Jenny Randles’ book, Time Storms: Amazing Evidence for Time Warps, Space Rifts, and Time Travel firmly demonstrates that whatever we may think we know about the nature of time, in reality we may not even know the half of it.
The scanning for signs of life inside the interstellar asteroid and possible interstellar spacecraft known as Oumuamua has barely started and already a leading astronomer is claiming that the space rock/space ship is possibly a Von Neumann probe. Coupling that name with its cigar shape makes this sound like an unpleasant German medical procedure, but this is the same astronomer who declared that the dimming of Tabby’s star was caused by a Dyson sphere being built around it, so it’s time to do what we did back then and find out what the heck a Von Neumann probe really is.
The astronomer is Dr. Jason Wright from Penn State University and the Von Neumman probe theory appeared in his blog in a discussion over the idea that this may be not lone craft but one of thousands:
“Why would there be so many of them? Part of the argument that it is possible to settle the entire Galaxy is that exponential growth is possible, because the only limiting resource is the stars (and the material around them) themselves. Exponential growth can be achieved via Von Neumann probes: self-replicating spacecraft that go to a system, make lots more of themselves, and then go to more systems.”
John von Neumann
The concept is named after Hungarian American mathematician (sometimes called the last great mathematician), physicist and pioneering computer scientist John von Neumann, who spent time researching the concept of self-replicating machines or “Universal Assemblers,” which were capable of creating exact copies of themselves. These became known as “von Neumann machines” and, when the theory was applied to spacecraft, “von Neumann probes.” These probes could create new models to continue traveling long distance through space, or they could be programmed to make copies of life forms they encounter.
One physicist and mathematician who liked the idea of the von Neumann probe is none other than Freeman Dyson, theorizer of the Dyson sphere. Dyson used inspiration from the von Neumann probe to imagine a small 1 kg (2.2 lb) craft that would be taken into space by another ship and then released like an egg. The “egg” would “hatch” a solar-powered probe that traveled the solar system, collecting data and samples and powering itself with chemical “nutrients” it picked up. Dyson presented the idea during a lecture in Adelaide, Australia, where an audience member blurted out the name “Astro-chicken” and Dyson liked it enough to use it. While not as well-known as the Dyson sphere, Astrochicken is a concept (small robotic space probes) that is popular among space scientists.
Freeman Dyson, father of the Astrochicken
What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah, the interstellar space probe. Dr. Wright proposes that Oumuamua could be a “derelict craft” with broken engines that is slowly tumbling through space without attitude control. However, it could still have a communications system, possibly still capable of replicating itself, that could be generating signals that the astronomers closely observing it this week might pick up. As of this writing, they haven’t heard anything.
Maybe they can’t hear it over the laughter every time someone says “Astrochicken!” or asks if the von Neumann probe is heading for Uranus.
Something is terrorizing a Sunshine Coast community in Queensland, Australia. Something large. Whatever it is, it has so far ripped open animal enclosures, devoured pets and livestock, and left little traces behind. The Sunshine Coast Daily reports that locked gates were destroyed by something capable of leaving behind “huge paw prints.” One local resident and eyewitness, Kay McCullock, described her near-encounter with the creature while it tore apart her neighbor’s poor defenseless guinea fowl:
When I looked into the neighbour’s yard, I could see the guinea fowls getting attacked by – you’re gonna’ love this – an unseen predator… As if the birds were being thrown around by something invisible. When I found three lots of clumped feathers there was no blood and no bodies.
Unseen predator? Invisible monster ripping birds apart like gore-filled piñatas? Yes, you’re right, Kay, I am gonna love it. Especially given McCullock’s description of her second encounter with the beast:
I heard ‘it’ again and went out with my sword and yelled at it. I heard growling and a kind of snorting. It was quick and by the time I got to the gate I couldn’t see anything.
Too bad. Slaying a phantom big cat with a sword would have made a great story to share at that boring holiday office party. Sure beats Linda from HR’s same old story about that time she found the bowling ball in the soup. McCullock says that so far, locals believe the only two remaining possible suspects are black panthers and Yowie. Given that large feline species aren’t indigenous to Australia, could this be another case of the ever-elusive phantom big cat? Or has Bigfoot’s inbred down-under cousin developed a taste for poultry?
“Who ya callin’ inbred?”
Unfortunately for those of us who want to believe in what goes bump in the night, there’s likely a much more benign explanation. Over the last couple of years, packs of feral wild dogs have reached what some are calling “epidemic” levels throughout Queensland. One local rancher told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2016 that the animals have become increasingly bold and terrifying in recent years:
I grew up with dingoes up north…but never experienced the pack attitude that we have here. Most of the time we see them in groups of four, up to nine, and that is what makes us feel unsafe. They are dangerous, they are not scared of us anymore, and you just feel outnumbered.
Could a large feral dog be responsible for killing these animals? It’s much more likely than a phantom cat or even Yowie. Everyone knows he prefers eating garbage.
Today, scientists led by Stephen Hawking are using high-tech scanners to discover if a huge, cigar-shaped 'comet' is in fact, an alien probe.
Now, one astronomer claims that the space rock, named Oumuamua, could be an alien spacecraft with broken engines that is tumbling through our solar system.
Dr Jason Wright from Penn State University suggests that a broken alien spacecraft move in exactly the same way as the interstellar comet.
Scroll down for video
Last month, a mysterious cigar-shaped asteroid sailed past Earth, marking the first time an interstellar object has been seen in the solar system
OUMUAMUA
A cigar-shaped comet named 'Oumuamua sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system.
It was first spotted by a telescope in Hawaii on 18 October, and was observed 34 separate times in the following week.
Travelling at 44 kilometres per second (27 miles per second), the comet is headed away from the Earth and Sun on its way out of the solar system.
The comet is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated - perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide.
That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date.
But the comet's slightly red hue — specifically pale pink — and varying brightness are remarkably similar to objects in our own solar system.
Oumuamua is about a quarter of a mile long, 260ft wide and currently travelling at 196,000mph.
Rather than moving through space like other space rocks, astronomers believe that it is 'tumbling' through our solar system.
Writing in his blog, Dr Wright, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, says: 'Such derelict craft would, if they are not travelling so fast that they escape the Galaxy, eventually 'thermalize' with the stars and end up drifting around like any other interstellar comet or asteroid.
'In fact, since they (presumably) no longer have attitude control, one would expect that they would eventually begin to tumble, and if they are very rigid that tumbling might distinguish them from ordinary interstellar asteroids… and in fact, just because their propulsion is broken doesn't mean that their radio transmitters would be broken.'
Dr Wright suggests that the object could be a 'Von Neumann probe' - a theoretical self-replicating spacecraft that visits star systems.
He added: 'Such a discovery would imply that there are lots of these things in the solar system at any given moment (even if they are deliberately targeting the sun, they are hard to spot and we'll miss most of them), and so lots of opportunities to study them.'
Dr Wright previously suggested the mysterious dimming of star KIC 8462852 – also known as Tabby’s Star – could be caused by an alien megastructure called a Dyson Sphere.
His latest comments come ahead of a project later today in which scientists will use high-tech scanners to discover if Oumuamua was sent by an alien civilisation.
The cigar-shaped object, named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers, sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system
WHO IS DR JASON WRIGHT?
Dr Wright is an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University.
Dr Wright achieved global fame after suggesting that the dimming of star KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star, could be caused by an alien megastructure called a Dyson Sphere.
This is a hypothetical structure that could be used by an advanced alien race to harness the energy of a star.
First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, the sphere would be a swarm of satellites that surrounds a star.
They could be an enclosed shell, or spacecraft spread out to gather its energy - known as a Dyson swarm.
If such structures do exist, they would emit huge amounts of noticeable infrared radiation back on Earth.
But as of yet, such a structure has not been detected.
The team of scientists, called Breakthrough Listen, will use the world's largest directable radio telescope, at Green Bank in West Virginia, to follow it for ten hours today at 3pm ET (8pm GMT).
They are listening for electromagnetic signals, no stronger than those emitted by a mobile phone, that cannot be produced by natural celestial bodies.
If they find them, it would be proof that extraterrestrial forces really could be at play.
For the moment, they are trying to contain their excitement. But the name they have given this bizarre object betrays their optimism.
Oumuamua is a Hawaiian term meaning 'a messenger from afar arriving first'.
Most intriguingly, it is the wrong shape for an asteroid — they are typically round.
Professor Hawking and his colleagues at Breakthrough Listen report: '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.'
Scientists led by Stephen Hawking, pictured, are today using high-tech scanners to discover if a huge, cigar-shaped space object currently hurtling through our solar system was sent by an alien civilisation
Another oddity is that Oumuamua is flying very 'cleanly', without emitting the usual cloud of space dust that astronomers observe around asteroids.
Experts say this suggests it is made of something dense: probably rock, but possibly metal.
It was first detected on October 19 by a long-running research programme called Pan-STARRS, which uses powerful telescopes to photograph and monitor the night sky at the University of Hawaii.
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Most comets follow ellipse-shaped orbits around the sun.
But this comet appears to orbit at an angle, and doesn't circle the sun.
Its orbital path suggests it entered our solar system from the direction of the constellation Lyra, looped around the sun, and will never return.
But others have suggested that the comet did come from Earth, but interacted with Jupiter or another planet, which changed its orbit.
Its amazing speed has led some experts to conclude it is the first such object to have come towards us from outside our solar system.
Analysts also say its faintly red colour indicates it has been subjected to interstellar cosmic radiation which is harsher than we experience in our solar system.
The fact that it doesn't seem to have engines or show signs of propulsion may wreck the interplanetary-spacecraft theory.
If a radio signal does come back from the object, Professor Avi Loeb, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, suggests that we will need to proceed with caution.
Speaking to MailOnline, he said: 'My recommendation, as in any dialogue, is that we first listen and do our best to understand what we are hearing.
'Once we figure this out, we can decide how to respond.
'Overall, I am an optimist. I believe that a very intelligent civilisation will be peaceful, and we could save ourselves millions or billions of years by learning from it.
'But there is also the possibility that such a civilisation will have hostile intentions and risk our existence, so we should deliberate carefully in any future contact with them.'
Is sigaarvormige asteroïde Oumuamua een buitenaardse sonde met kapotte motoren? Deze topastronoom denkt van wel
Is sigaarvormige asteroïde Oumuamua een buitenaardse sonde met kapotte motoren? Deze topastronoom denkt van wel
Wetenschappers onderzoeken momenteel of een enorm sigaarvormig object in ons zonnestelsel een buitenaardse sonde is.
Eén astronoom claimt dat de ruimterots, genaamd Oumuamua, een buitenaards ruimteschip met kapotte motoren kan zijn.
Dr. Jason Wright van de Penn State University suggereert dat een kapot buitenaards schip op precies dezelfde manier zou bewegen als de interstellaire ‘komeet’.
Tuimelt
Oumuamua is ongeveer 800 meter lang, zo’n 80 meter breed en raast met honderdduizenden kilometers per uur door ons zonnestelsel.
Volgens astronomen beweegt het niet zoals andere stukken rotsen door de ruimte, maar ‘tuimelt’ het object door ons zonnestelsel.
Zo’n wrak zou, als het niet zo snel beweegt dat het uit het sterrenstelsel kan ontsnappen, uiteindelijk net als andere interstellaire kometen of asteroïden rondzwerven in de ruimte, aldus professor Wright.
Von Neumann-sonde
Hij denkt dat het object een Von Neumann-sonde kan zijn, een zelfreplicerend ruimteschip dat zonnestelsels aandoet.
“Zo’n ontdekking zou impliceren dat er op ieder moment veel van dit soort dingen in het zonnestelsel zijn (zelfs als ze doelbewust op de zon afkomen zijn ze moeilijk te spotten en zullen we de meeste ervan missen) en dat er dus ook veel kansen zijn om ze te bestuderen,” voegde hij toe.
Dr. Wright stelde eerder dat het mysterieuze gedrag van de ster KIC 8462852 veroorzaakt kan worden door een buitenaardse megastructuur.
Eerste bezoeker
Normaal gesproken worden asteroïden vergezeld door een karakteristieke stofstaart, maar die ontbreekt bij Oumuamua.
Dit suggereert volgens experts dat het object, de eerste bezoeker van buiten ons zonnestelsel, mogelijk bestaat uit metaal.
De duivel is veel intelligenter dan wij. Paus waarschuwt in dit interview dat satan een echt persoon is
De duivel is veel intelligenter dan wij. Paus waarschuwt in dit interview dat satan een echt persoon is
“De duivel is slecht. Hij is niet zoals de mist. Hij is niet iets diffuus, hij is een persoon. Als je eenmaal met hem aan de praat raakt, ben je verloren. Hij is intelligenter dan wij.” Die woorden gebruikte paus Franciscus in een zondag uitgezonden interview met de Italiaanse tv-zender Tv2000.
Als je contact zoekt met de duivel, dan laat hij je vallen, hij verdraait je kop, zei de paus. Het kwade, de duivel, heeft een voor- en achternaam, hij komt bij ons thuis.
“Hij doet of hij beschaafd is. Tegen ons priesters en bisschoppen gedraagt hij zich beschaafd. En als je het niet tijdig in de gaten hebt, loopt het slecht af,” zei de paus.
Tegengewerkt
Franciscus heeft het regelmatig over satan of de duivel. Zo meent hij dat de boze werkzaam is telkens als er minderjarigen seksueel worden misbruikt.
Ook wanneer de paus zelf als hoofd van de Katholieke Kerk wordt tegengewerkt bij zijn hervormingen, is dat het werk van de duivel.
Vermomd
Met het kwade ga je geen dialoog aan, waarschuwde de paus in het vraaggesprek.
Franciscus verwees enkele jaren geleden ook naar satan. In 2013 zei hij tijdens een toespraak op het Sinter-Pietersplein dat de duivel vaak verschijnt ‘vermomd als een engel die ons gewiekst toespreekt’.
MYSTERIEUZE COMMUNICATIE MET VERDWENEN ARGENTIJNSE ONDERZEEËR ?
MYSTERIEUZE COMMUNICATIE MET VERDWENEN ARGENTIJNSE ONDERZEEËR ?
Sinds half november 2017 wordt een Argentijnse onderzeeër met 44 opvarenden vermist die onderweg was vanuit het zuidelijk gelegen vuurland naar Mar del Plata, ongeveer 400 kilometer ten zuidoosten van Buenos Aires.
Op 2 december zijn een aantal mensen getuige van hoe mannen in vreemde doorschijnende pakken via lichtflitsen communiceren met iets op zee, precies in het zoekgebied van de verdwenen onderzeeër.
Het zoeken naar de vermiste Argentijnse onderzeeër ARA San Juan die je op de volgende afbeelding ziet in de haven van Buenos Aires, is inmiddels gestaakt en er is geen enkele hoop meer op overlevenden.
De laatste keer dat er contact is geweest met de onderzeeër is geweest in de Golf van St. George en dat is op het volgende kaartje aangegeven als zoekgebied.
Ons verhaal speelt zich af op een onherbergzame plaats aan de Argentijnse kust, Mazaredo, en op de volgende kaart aangegeven met een rode cirkel. Pal tegenover het gebied waar voor het laatst contact was met de verdwenen onderzeeër.
In dat onherbergzame gebied bij de baai van Mazaredo zagen een aantal getuigen heel merkwaardige dingen, wat begon op 2 december 2017. Ze hebben een verslag ingediend bij Mufon die dat hebben geregistreerd onder nummer 88710.
De hoofdgetuige vermeldt in zijn verslag dat ze een trip maakten via de N281 naar Puerto Deseado nabij de kust. In plaats van rechtdoor rijden naar hun bestemming zijn ze op een gegeven moment linksaf geslagen en kwamen ze via de N68, N70 en N14 in de buurt van Mazaredo. De reden dat ze dit deden, was omdat ze een oud postkantoor en telegraafinstallatie uit 1905 wilden bezoeken dat gevestigd is aan de Mazaredo baai.
Ze kwamen 's avonds laat aan, gingen slapen en togen de volgende morgen te voet naar de kust die op ongeveer zeven kilometer afstand lag, omdat ze op die manier mooie natuurfoto's konden maken.
Op een gegeven moment konden ze niet verder omdat hun pad werd afgesneden door een klein ravijn en aan de overkant op een soort hoger plateau zien ze vijf witte Range Rovers, met aan de zijkanten een symbool dat eruit zag als een oranje cirkel met een lijn erdoor. Ook zagen ze mensen rondlopen die gekleed leken te zijn in een soort doorzichtige kleding. Verder zagen ze drie torens van ongeveer tien meter hoog en een groot object in de vorm van een kegel.
Het kegelvormige object wees in de richting van de zee en maakte een geluid zoals walvissen dat doen, een zogenaamde whale song. Ongeveer tien seconden later zien ze flitsend pulserend licht dat in de richting van de horizon op zee schijnt en dan plotsklaps komt er een antwoord vanaf zee, keer op keer. Dit is dus exact dezelfde positie waar de verdwenen onderzeeër voor het laatst is gezien.
De getuigen zwaaien naar de mensen in de vreemde kleding, roepen "hallo" en er wordt teruggezwaaid met een begroeting. Wanneer ze later bij de kust aankomen, treffen ze daar nog twee mensen die hen vragen of ze op bezoek gaan naar het oude postkantoor.
De mannen vertellen vervolgens wat bijzonderheden over het oude postkantoor en geven hen aanwijzingen over hoe ze moeten lopen. De getuigen stellen vragen over de voertuigen en de torens die ze hebben gezien en zij antwoorden dat ze iets zoeken, iets wetenschappelijks dat voor hen van groot belang is zonder verder te vertellen wat het is.
Ze blijven daar nog een dag of drie en zien die vreemde mensen nog een keer of tien, maar gaan er nooit naartoe. Toen ze weggingen en de door hen gemaakte foto's wilden bekijken, bleek dat alle foto's blanco waren; er stond niets meer op.
Verder hebben ze geen nadelige gevolgen ondervonden en voelen ze zich goed.
Wie waren die mannen in vreemde, bijna doorzichtige kleding in auto's met een oranje symbool op de zijkant? Wat was die vreemde kegel, waarmee ze duidelijk communiceerden met iets op zee? En bovenal natuurlijk, wie of wat antwoordde er vanaf zee?
De plek ligt pal tegenover de plaats waar de onderzeeër is verdwenen en waar tot voor kort het zoekgebied was. Misschien allemaal toeval, maar daar lijkt het niet op en moet men zich misschien gaan afvragen of die onderzeeër wel werkelijk is verdwenen zoals in de media wordt gerapporteerd.
Wij weten uiteraard het antwoord ook niet, maar zijn er wel van overtuigd dat hier hoogst waarschijnlijk heel andere dingen spelen.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
Be aware of the beams from the sky - They are in full swing!
Be aware of the beams from the sky - They are in full swing!
What are the chances that 3 of the largest avionics military laser companies are located in the same exact area as the Santa Rosa, CA fires occurred, yet none got torched?
L-3 technologies, Keysight, AEG Industries and Sonoma Design Group are all in Santa Rosa and are held by some of the largest weapons manufactures in the world!
Additionally, over two weeks now, and no official 'story' about how so many fires self ignited all at once in the middle of the dark of night.
5G, Pacific Gas and Electric? Climate Change w/ Diablo Winds? Are all being talked about but none come close to explain the hell fires that occurred and torched metal, glass, rubber, granite, etc. to the ground in minutes, yet left trees and other buildings in tact.
The second video shows Debora Tavares' interview with Jeff Rense in 2015 conclusively provides documented proof of premeditation of fire destruction of Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, in Northern California using microwave weaponry.
Additionally, RFID trackers are being used to locate victims in the vaporized rubble that is left of former residences.
Part II will cover the logging companies efforts to provide massive fuel for West Coast forest fires using the hackn' squirt tree destroying methods of the Fischer Brothers, of Levi Strauss Jeans and GAP Stores fame.
This is all part of Agenda 21, which we will show is in full swing directly after the fires.
Nostradamus, famous for his accurate predictions, left behind a creative legacy-the quatrain, which has for centuries commentators see something quite amazing that goes beyond simple coincidence. Time passes and a new generation discovers a new understanding of the previously described phrases.
It happened at this time, there was a Mr. Chase, who saw in the book of revelation the great Nostradamus, the alien attack in 2017. In the opinion of the interpreter of the quatrain, the aliens are preparing for a major assault on Earth within the next year. Mr. chase claims that he was able to decipher the prophecies of Nostradamus the book of revelation.
According to the author as soon as I start the third world war, then come to Earth by aliens. This event is timed in prophecy for the second coming of Christ to be true until 2020. Putin will win the alien army and take over the planet that people lived peacefully. Aliens, posthouses on the Ground will change our DNA and make us more relaxed, for a long and happy life. Putin is described in the prophecy as the man responsible for starting world war III.
Mr. Chase, said, “In Revelation 19 speaks about UFO invasion – “I saw the heavens open and the armies of heaven followed on white horses””. White horses could well be a UFO or Christ and his fleet arrived to defeat the Antichrist at the battle of Armageddon,” muses Mr. chase. He also says that “the description of the creation of the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21, most likely, a giant alien city, who came to earth from another dimension as a base.
The prehistoric origins of life on Earth may have begun in space, a new study published in the Journal of Chemical Physics suggests.
Researchers at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada created a simulated space environment in which thin sheets of ice containing methane and oxygen were irradiated by electron beams, in a similar manner to what happens to objects in space. The chemical reaction caused a number of small organic chemicals to form on the icy films in a space-like environment.
The new molecules included ethanol, acetic acid, acetylene, formaldehyde and ethane, some of which are key molecules or building blocks needed for early organisms.
The research opens the possibility that our origins are extraterrestrial.
The first life on Earth began around 4 billion years ago, but this finding suggests the building blocks needed for this to happen may have come from space, strengthening the theory that life may have begun outside our planet.
The study was carried out under vacuum conditions, which mimics outer space conditions, according to the journal Astrobiology. The ice films were used as various types of ice form around dust grains in molecular clouds in space, and similar icy environments exist on asteroids, comets and moons.
A tiny ‘plasmid’, a circular strand of DNA used in genetic engineering, was sent into space from Sweden in 2011 on the exterior of a TEXUS-49 rocket. After enduring 1,000C heat it was found to still be intact and with its biological properties when it returned to Earth.
If DNA can remain ‘alive’ in space and back to the Earth, it means that it is a pretty solid material, able to resist a cocktail of extreme conditions. As a matter of fact, scientists have, in the past, proposed that DNA from outer space might have reached us while we remain oblivious of it. DNA materials might be preserved in dust and meteorites that hit our planet’s surface.
Life on Earth has its origins in the cosmos
Scientists in the UK and Japan launch in 2014 the ISPA (Institute for the Study of Panspermia and Astroeconomics) which seeks to prove life on Earth originated from Space.
Mainstream science and institutions have fought against theories which expound these beliefs but now evidence from meteorites, from samples of bacteria from space and from space observation is making resistance more difficult. Research into this area is not being adequately funded by governments or institutions. Proving that the Earth is in a constant exchange of matter with the larger cosmos would have implications not only in terms of our identity, but could also give us insight into alien viruses which may be important for our group identity, evolution and survival itself.
Scientists Found Microorganisms in Antarctica that were Thought to be Unable to Live on Earth
Scientists Found Microorganisms in Antarctica that were Thought to be Unable to Live on Earth
Source: Twitter
Australian and New Zealand scientists have discovered two new types of bacteriapreviously believed to be impossible to live on Earth, the Tape reported.
In order to maintain the metabolism of the WPS-2 and AD3, the atmosphere is sufficient to supply hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, he said. "We assume that atmospheric hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide provide such colony-based organisms with reliable sources of energy and carbon, so that atmospheric sources of energy supported by solar and geological sources can serve as an alternative to the functioning of ecosystems," they noted scientists.
WPS-2 and AD3 were found in surface layers in two polar deserts in the eastern part of Antarctica. In these areas, scientists have traces of several microorganisms. Experts managed to restore genomes to 23 of them, including WPS-2 and AD3. Scientists' discovery confirms the possibility for organisms to live even in the most extreme conditions, including the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
The 500m diameter FAST radio in September 2017 upon the first anniversary of being switched on.
CNS
China's FAST radio telescope has discovered three new pulsars, the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) announced this week, taking its discovery total to nine.
FAST, which stands for Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, is the world's largest single aperture radio telescope and came online in September last year.
FAST made its first confirmed finds earlier this year. The pulsars PSR J1859-01 and PSR J1931-02 were detected on August 22 and 25, confirmed by the Parkes telescope in Australia on September 10, and announced in October.
The giant facility has since been discovering pulsars 'almost every night', with six being internationally certified before this week.
Speaking after the formal announcement of FAST's first pulsar discoveries, director of NAOC Yan Jun said, "The two new discovered pulsars symbolize the dawn of a new era of systematic discoveries by Chinese radio telescopes".
Details of the pulsar #1 discovered by China's 500m FAST radio telescope. µ
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Trials and pulsars
Pulsars, discovered 50 years ago as a mystery space signal, are rapidly rotating remnants of formerly massive stars and are sometimes referred to as 'lighthouses' of the universe due to their regular rotational periods and focused electromagnetic radiation emissions.
The telescope is still going through trial operations, but when it comes fully online in 2019, it is expected to discover around 100 pulsars each year.
"We can detect high-quality pulsar candidates almost every night," Li Di, chief scientist of the Radio Astronomy Division of the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told Xinhua in October.
FAST is located in Guizhou Province and operated by NAOC, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Construction of the gargantuan project began back in 2011 in a karst depression in Guizhou Province in southwest China, which has largely now been made a radio-quiet area.
FAST is made up of 4,600 panels giving it a collecting area of 196,000 square metres, dwarfing the next largest single dish radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which at 305 metres across has a 73,000 square metre collecting area.
Placing one of the 4,600 panels during the construction of the FAST radio telescope in Guizhou Province, China. CNS
FAST science goals
Viewing the universe by collecting radio frequency radiation, FAST will be capable of detecting very weak signals from space, and could make contributions in areas such as large-scale physics of the universe and understanding the nature of dark matter.
As well as seeking to confirm the existence of gravitational radiation and black holes, FAST will be used to detect molecules such as long-chain carbon molecules in the interstellar medium - the space between stars - and survey hydrogen levels in the Milky Way and other galaxies.
It will also contribute to the international search for intelligent extraterrestrial life (SETI) by listening for signals from exoplanets and could also be used to track spacecraft involved in China's space program, such as the 2020 mission to Mars.
The stamp issued to commemorate the 500 metre FAST radio telescope.
For as long as us Earthlings have been gazing into the sky, we’ve been obsessed with the potential for life outside of the planet we call home. Countless films have teased out where extraterrestrial life might be hiding, but all of those have been the creation of directors on a silver screen.
Now, thanks to the efforts of the NASA scientists behind the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), we might have a better idea of where aliens could be by using data collected from one of Earth’s planetary neighbors.
MAVEN doesn’t get the same kind of press as the Pluto-visiting New Horizons or the dearly departed Cassini, but its three years of work in orbit around Mars have provided invaluable data. This underrated space probe has helped reveal how Mars lost its initial carbon dioxide atmosphere around four billion years ago.thathas been gathering information about Mars’s atmosphere since November 2014.
That atmospheric data has let the NASA scientists study whether other planetssimilar to Mars could sustain life if they were orbiting not at 1.5 times Earth’s distance from our sun but rather close in around a red dwarf, which would be much warmer. Their years of research will be presented at the American Geophysical Union Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana this week.
“Habitability is one of the biggest topics in astronomy, and these estimates demonstrate one way to leverage what we know about Mars and the Sun to help determine the factors that control whether planets in other systems might be suitable for life,” Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement.
MAVEN has been keeping an eye on how the radiation from the sun has been whittling away at Mars’ atmosphere during its time in orbit. This gives the team insights on how quickly the ebbing and flowing radiation from stars degrades the atmosphere of rocky planets.
With this information in hand, the scientists ran simulations to see what kind of effects the energy from a red dwarf — the most common type of star in our galaxy — would have on Mars-like planets.
While the research possibilities presented by the MAVEN data are exciting, the findings of these simulations weren’t as much. Red dwarfs radiate some pretty potent ultraviolet rays, and that’s seriously bad news for life. Specifically, this simulated planet would get hit with five to ten times more UV radiation than Mars has been. These levels of radiation could blast the atmosphere off of this hypothetical planet way faster than the Sun did for Mars, making it not so safe for living.
Even though this experiment ended on a bit of a sad note, MAVEN has given scientists of ton of data that can be used on the hunt for alien life in the future.
'Close Encounters' at 40: How Spielberg Made Sci-Fi's Mothership Connection
'Close Encounters' at 40: How Spielberg Made Sci-Fi's Mothership Connection
Four decades ago, the director bet everything on an intimate science-fiction epic – and bridged the gap between two eras of moviemaking
How do you follow up a record-breaking blockbuster about a killer shark? For starters, you get out of the ocean. And then maybe you look up.
A longtime watcher of the skies, young Steven Spielberg had already been kicking around an idea involving alien visitation, spacecraft "sightings" and government cover-ups – some sort of story, in the gentleman's own words, about "UFOs and Watergate" – before he had started turning Peter Benchley's novel Jaws into a movie. One three-men-and-an-apex-predator hit later, he was a hot Hollywood director who had folks ready to sign on for whatever he did next. That included Columbia Pictures, as well as Taxi Driver producers Michael and Julia Phillips, who gamely took the director's extraterrestrial-visitors story and got him a greenlight. The result both delighted his patrons – Fox had opened a space opera earlier that year, hence the company was thrilled to have their own science fiction movie on deck – and worried them, given this expensive project was supposed to have come out the previous summer before production problems caused delays. Now, the film was going to make or break the nearly bankrupt studio.
So, in a moment of bet-hedging, Columbia decided to give Spielberg's movie with the screwy name – what the fuck was a Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and why are you driving our marketing department to drink, Steven? – a mid-November opening in two theaters, the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and the Ziegfeld in New York. Screenings kept selling out. Their confidence had been restored thanks to these two reconnaissance runs. Now it was time to land the mothership.
It was 40 years ago today that Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in wide release and, in quick succession, proved that Jaws was not a fluke, helped put the financially ailing Columbia firmly back into the black, established the filmmaker as someone with a knack for directing kids and grounding the fantastic, dropped that title phase into the popular lexicon and made John Williams' communicative musical motif famous. (Hum those first three notes – Dun-DUN-duuun – then check out the number of people who chime in with the two-note resolution: DUUUNNN-dun.) You could argue that, while Spielberg would go on to make more notable works involving wonderment, aliens, families, paranoia and suburbia, respectively, there are few that distill everything that's great about his filmmaking in such a pure, well-wrapped package. And seen four decades after it first hit theaters en masse, Close Encounters now feels like an incredibly pivotal American movie – the bridge between the intimate, grungy movies of the Seventies and the spectacular eye-candy blockbusters of the Eighties.
Seriously, when was the last time you watched this spirit-of-'77 sci-fi touchstone in any of its iterations? (We recommend the "Director's Cut," which blends the best parts of the theatrical cut and the "Special Edition," minus the latter's Pink-Floyd-laser-light-show ending. More on that in a minute.) If it's been a while, the first things that come to mind are probably the climactic interstellar meet-and-greet, the sculpted mound of spuds on Richard Dreyfuss's dinner table, the iconic visual of five-year-old Cary Guffey opening his front door and basking in an unearthly orange glow – an image that Spielberg claimed was one of the first conceptual sparks he'd imagined for the project.You remember the bigger moments, the ones in which those bright lights are whizzing through the air and Gregory Jein's mothership model, hovering over Devil's Tower, inspires awestruck faces framed in the director's customary low-angle shots.
It's no wonder these scenes are burned into your memory: Time has been particularly kind to Close Encounters, even if the special effects occasionally carbon-date the movie to the Carter era. What you might not remember, however, are the atmospheric things that Spielberg scatters throughout the movie, the ones that add immensely to its texture. Most of us had probably forgotten that the film starts in the Sonora desert in Mexico, with barely visible figures wandering through dust storms – the same sort of feint that The Exorcist used by kicking off at an archeological dig in Iraq before getting around to the head-spinning money shots. You can practically smell the stale coffee and flop sweat in the air-traffic control tower sequence, and the panic as people pitch coal-mine canaries in the evacuation sequence. Never mind the toys coming to life in a kid's bedroom; it's the extraordinary close-up on Guffey's face that follows, in which he expresses first dawning wonder then outright joy upon meeting his new alien friends, that makes the scene work. Go to the two-minute mark in the clip below. Those 15 seconds are the director's equivalent of the end of Chaplin's City Lights.
The gritty touches and grace notes are what really stick out now, the same way that Roy Scheider and his son crushing the Dixie cups in a faux-manly manner in Jaws adds so much humanity to the sound and fury while barely breaking a cinematic sweat. No one does this anymore, not in big movies. Spielberg told Sight & Sound magazine at the time that he wanted Close Encounters to be "about people and not about events," which feels like a very Seventies/New Hollywood conceit. (He also said that the film "does to UFOs what The French Connection said about crime in the street and narcotics and New York City," so keep that grain of salt handy.)
And for all of what the director termed "cosmic entertainment" epicness on display, this is also a movie takes place in a very recognizable America, one filled with ratty nightgowns and station wagons and instant mashed potatoes, of harried moms and frayed marriages. Yes, the scene in which our otherworldly visitors try to get Melinda Dillon's son, ending with a tug of war in a doggie door, is terrifying. So is Richard Dreyfuss' melting down in the shower, his son screaming "Crybaby" at him, which Spielberg later admitted came from his own life. No aliens there, just a nervous breakdown. You do not need a Great White or a T. Rex to present audiences with a nightmare.
It's those scenes in Roy Neary's house, the arguments and clucking neighbors and the manic episodes that end with men crawling through their broken kitchen window, that offset and compliment the hugeness of the rest of the film – a mix made explicit when Spielberg puts the giant homemade Devil's Tower in the living room right next to the real one miniaturized on TV. (So much brilliant visual wit in this movie.) They never feel like filler until the main event happens, i.e. the first-contact moments that still give you goosebumps. And even that monument to the breaching of our world and the outer limits of the universe is still rife with the sort of faces you'd see at your local gas station and drug store. They just happen to have their jaws dropping.
The climax, however, also seems to anticipate what will come next in blockbuster movies: the idea of wowing someone into submission. It's common knowledge that Spielberg didn't want to film the "special edition" scenes of Dreyfuss entering the ship; in an interview recorded for the movie's 30th anniversary, he insisted that what lay inside that gigantic vessel should be "the province of the viewer's imagination." While it's great to think of Douglas Trumbull's hallucinogenic take on Noah's Ark as a time-capsule piece – see what cutting-edge FX once looked like, kids! – they are completely superfluous. We've been given everything we need to supply our own wonderment already. And we were about to enter a whole era where such overwhelming spectacle reigned supreme.
Some of those big, blow-out-the-Dolby-speakers movies would come from Spielberg, of course, as well as the generation of filmmakers who cut their teeth studying his work. He'd expand on the ideas embedded in Close Encounters with E.T., in which the idea of friendly intergalactic ambassadors turns into, per the director, "a foreign-exchange program." He'd also embark on a career based on balancing multiplex rollercoaster rides with becoming America's cinematic civics professor. As with any feature filmography that spans nearly 50 years and counting, results will vary: If we have to sit through Amistad and The Terminal to get Munich and Lincoln, we'll take the lumps. But it's this near-perfect blend of the epic and the everyday that remains a testament to what Spielberg, at his very best, can accomplish. His ability to give science fiction a sense of emotional resonance – right at the moment between the genre's cerebral and bombastic chapters – with such a large canvas and yet such an attention to the heartbeat underneath it still feels like a major accomplishment. Who knows whether Close Encounters is his "best" movie. It remains my favorite.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.