{https://www.theguardian.com/international }

17-12-2017 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

For most people, any mention of the term “UFO” inevitably conjures up imagery of all-things airborne and saucer-shaped. In reality, however, unidentified flying objects come in a dizzying array of shapes – and have done so for decades. In other words, the classic Flying Saucer is merely one facet of an infinitely larger puzzle, as will now become graphically apparent. On numerous occasions throughout the latter stages of the Second World War, military pilots from Britain, Germany, Japan, Poland, and the United States reported seeing strange, seemingly intelligently-controlled, aerial globes of light that furiously pursued their aircraft, and at times even engaged in dogfights with the mystified aircrews. They were the Foo Fighters.

A Royal Air Force report of 3 February 1944, from the crew of a Lancaster bomber, describes a typical encounter: “It was a ball of red fire on port side 2 miles away at same height with yellowish red flame coming out behind and black smoke. It was 30/40 mph faster than the Lancaster. It went like this for a period of ¾ to 1 minute. It did not explode at any time. Fizzled out and not seen again. The smoke was very black and showed up well against grayish night background. It followed when Lancaster went into a dive and again on corkscrewing. It seemed to go out once but sprang into life again when Lancaster changed from dive to starboard into a corkscrew.”

As the following statement – extracted from an article that appeared in the 13 December 1944 issue of the South Wales Argus newspaper – makes clear, initial theories were focused upon the idea that the Foo Fighters were the work of the Nazis: “The Germans have produced a “secret” weapon in keeping with the Christmas season. The new device, which is apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the glass balls which adorn Christmas trees. They have been seen hanging in the air and are apparently transparent.”Problematic with the theory that the Foo Fighters were weapons of the Nazis, however, is the revelation that Hitler’s minions were having their own encounters with such objects, and assumed that Allied forces were responsible for their creation! Needless to say, the matter was never fully resolved and the Foo Fighters ultimately vanished as mysteriously and as quickly as they had first appeared.

The Ghost Rockets were curious missile-like objects that were predominantly seen in Scandinavian skies in 1946: one year after the Foo Fighters vanished, and only twelve months before the Flying Saucer burst forth onto the world’s stage. Astonishingly, somewhere in the region of two thousand sightings were made between May and December of that year, with August 9 and August 11 seeing the largest volume of encounters – including some that were corroborated on radar.

Search for “ghost rocket” seen crashing July 19, 1946, in Lake Kölmjärv, Sweden. by Swedish Air Force officer Karl-Gösta Bartoll (pictured).

Interestingly, the August 1946 encounters fell directly within the peak of the annual Perseid meteor-shower. Problematic when it comes to dismissing the whole affair as a case of mistaken identity, however, is the fact that most of the Ghost Rocket incidents fell firmly outside of the time-frame of the Perseid shower. And the fact that some of the witnesses reported seeing the devices changing direction in the sky would seem to effectively eliminate meteors as the culprits.

Another conventional theory addressed at the time was the possibility that the Ghost Rockets were the work of the Russians, who were capitalizing upon the rocket research of German scientists stationed at Peenemünde in the 1940s. It is a historical fact that a number of such scientists were indeed employed by the Russians after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and did expand upon the work that had led to the production of the deadly V-1 and V-2’s that caused considerable damage to the British Isles during the War. As a result of this potentially worrying scenario, the Swedish military quickly issued a directive requesting that newspapers not report on the estimated speeds of the objects, or their trajectories; since this information would be vital to those test-flying the machines.

Nevertheless, as with the theory that the Ghost Rockets were meteors, a possible Russian connection to the puzzle was never confirmed either. Twelve months later, however, the Ghost Rockets were eclipsed by a new, and much more famous, breed of UFO.

The saga of the Flying Saucer began with the pilot Kenneth Arnold, whose 24 June 1947 encounter at the Cascade Mountains, Washington State, kicked off the modern era of UFO sightings. At approximately 3.00 p.m. on the afternoon in question, Arnold was searching for an aircraft that had reportedly crashed on the southwest side of Mt. Rainier. At the time of its occurrence, Arnold’s encounter attracted the keen interest of not just the public and the media, but also that of the all-powerful Federal Bureau of Investigation. The following is a verbatim statement made by Arnold himself, and taken from previously Secret FBI records of 1947:

“I hadn’t flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn’t find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier, where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 feet elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees.”

Arnold stressed that the objects were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly and he was puzzled by their physical appearance: “I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn’t find their tails but assumed they were some type of jet plane. The more I observed these objects, the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. The chain of these saucer-like objects [was] at least five miles long. I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw [sic].”

And from that day forth, the world was forever changed: that most mysterious of all aerial intruders, the Flying Saucer, was well and truly born. For the next three decades, countless sightings of such objects were reported all across the planet; making the subject truly one of global proportions. In the 1980s, however, the Flying Saucer was firmly elbowed out of the picture by a new player in town: the Flying Triangle.

For more than two decades, sightings of large, triangular-shaped UFOs, usually described as being black in color, very often with rounded – rather than angled – corners, and that make a low humming noise, have been reported throughout the world. he sheer proliferation of such reports has led some ufological commentators to suspect that the so-called Flying Triangles are prime examples of still-classified aircraft, the development of which was secretly begun in the 1980s by elements of the United States’ Department of Defense and Air Force. Not everyone is so sure that this particular theory has merit to it, however. Consider the following.

On the night of 31 March 1993, an event occurred that was personally investigated by the Ministry of Defense’s then-UFO-investigator, Nick Pope. Reportedly, it involved the sighting of a huge Flying Triangle seen in the early hours of the morning in the direct vicinity of RAF Shawbury, Shropshire. Pope was able to speak with the chief witness to the Flying Triangle – namely, the Meteorological Officer at Shawbury – and offers his recollections on the intriguing conversation:

“Military officers are very good at gauging sizes of aircraft and they’re very precise. His quote to me was that the UFO’s size was midway between that of a C-130 Hercules and a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.” Pope continues: “He had eight years worth of experience with the Royal Air Force; and a Met. Officer is generally much better qualified than most for looking at things in the night sky. And there were other factors too: he heard this most unpleasant low-frequency hum, and saw the craft fire a beam of light down to the ground. He felt that it was something like a laser beam or a searchlight. The light was tracking very rapidly back and forth and sweeping one of the fields adjacent to the base. He also said – and he admitted this was speculation – that it was as if the UFO was looking for something.

“The speed of the UFO was extremely slow – no more than twenty or thirty miles per hour, which in itself is quite extraordinary. As far as the description is concerned, he said that it was fairly featureless – a sort of flat, triangular-shaped craft, or possibly a bit more diamond-shaped. He also said that the beam of light retracted into the craft, which then seemed to gain a little bit of height. But then, in an absolute instant, the UFO moved from a speed of about twenty or thirty miles per hour to a speed of several hundreds of miles per hour – if not thousands. It just suddenly moved off to the horizon and then out of sight in no more than a second or so.”

Although the Flying Saucers, Ghost Rockets, Flying Triangles and Foo Fighters are all integral parts of the UFO puzzle, long before each and every one of them appeared in our skies, there was yet another unknown, aerial intruder whose presence still creates controversy to this day: the Phantom Airship. Very much the product of the latter years of the 19th Century, the Phantom Airships were, as their name suggests, often Zeppelin-like devices that were seen on countless occasions during the years in question; and particularly so in the night-skies of the United States.

Interestingly, even back then, theories abounded that the Airships were piloted by extra-terrestrials. For example, in 1897, none other than the Washington Times reported on the theory that the mysterious vehicles represented “a reconnoitering party from Mars.” Similarly, in the same time frame, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch speculated that “these may be visitors from Mars, fearful, at the last, of invading the planet they have been seeking.”

One of the most famous – or, rather, infamous – incidents of the Phantom Airship variety allegedly occurred at the little Texas town of Aurora on 17 April 1897. So the wild story goes, on the day in question, an Airship slammed into a windmill owned by a local man, Judge J.S. Proctor, practically destroying the craft, and killing its diminutive alien pilot. Strange wreckage, described as being a combination of aluminum and silver, and adorned with hieroglyphics, was rumored to have been scooped up by the locals, and the body of the alien visitor was said to have been buried in the local cemetery. Whether true, a hoax, a practical joke, or something else, the town of Aurora still to this day attracts those curious about this early Roswell-style event.

Quite clearly, UFOs are forever changing. While we could speculate endlessly upon the issue of what type of UFO will one day replace the now-ubiquitous Flying Triangle, only the intelligence behind the phenomenon know the answer to that intriguing question.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-12-2017 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

Which news is bigger: Tom deLonge’s To The Stars Academy (TTSA) releasing what it calls “The first official UAP footage ever released by the USG” or The New York Times and Politico both releasing reports revealing a secret multi-million-dollar Pentagon program set up 10 years ago by a leading senator to look into unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena? How about the news that both happened on the same day? Circle the date – this could be a big one.

“Presented here is the first official evidence released by the US government that can be rightfully designated as credible, authentic confirmation that unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are real.”

That’s how TTSA announced not one but three videos of US military planes encountering unidentified aerial phenomenon. (The first two videos can be seen here). The so-called GIMBAL video was captured by a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod and includes commentary of the pilots being amazed by what they’re seeing and trying to determine what it is. The so-called 2004 Nimitz FLIR1 video is described as “the only official footage captured by a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet present at the 2004 Nimitz incident off the coast of San Diego.” Both videos come with detailed commentary and additional data.

At the same time, The New York Times and Politico reported that now-retired Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev, helped the Pentagon establish The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, a non-classified yet extremely secret program that received its appropriation (i.e. taxpayer money which ultimately totaled $20 million) in 2007 to research UAPs/UFOs encountered by pilots out of concern (at least publicly) that they may be secret aircraft being tested by China or Russia.

“I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going. I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Harry Reid

Harry Reid told this to the Times, which also confirmed that former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo was responsible for overseeing the program until 2012, when the funding ran out. and that while its congressional funding dried up in 2012, somehow the program is still active with the CIA and the Navy. Meanwhile, Politico said what everyone has been thinking:

“The revelation of the program could give a credibility boost to UFO theorists, who have long pointed to public accounts by military pilots and others describing phenomena that defy obvious explanation, and could fuel demands for increased transparency about the scope and findings of the Pentagon effort, which focused some of its inquiries into sci-fi sounding concepts like “wormholes” and “warp drives.”

Is the released of the videos by the To The Stars Academy related to The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program? Well, Luis Elizondo resigned from the program to become one of the principles of TTSA. Does this vindicate Tom deLonge, who has been accused of not coming through on his big promises of big revelations? That remains to be seen.

Whatever the case, December 16, 2017, could some day be remembered as the start of government UFO disclosure.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-12-2017 om 20:56 geschreven door peter  

HIER ZAGEN WE UFO’S HET VAAKST VLIEGEN

Elk jaar publiceert het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt opnieuw haar cijfers in een jaarverslag. Het aantal UFO-meldingen is in 2016 bijna gehalveerd in vergelijking met het vorige jaar. Het hoogste aantal meldingen is in 2016 afkomstig uit Oost-Vlaanderen en Antwerpen.

Er werden vorig jaar 143 meldingen genoteerd. Dat betekent een daling van 89 waarnemingen in vergelijking met 2015 toen 232 meldingen binnenkwamen. De aanzienlijke daling van het aantal meldingen in Vlaanderen komt deels doordat het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt vanaf februari 2016 gebruik maakte van een nieuwe werkmethodiek.

Zo wordt aan de ‘waarnemer’ gevraagd om alleen nog verschijnselen te melden waarvan de mogelijke verklaring niet terug te vinden is op hun pagina 'verklaringen'. Daarnaast kwamen er ook 51 meldingen binnen die als 'gegevens onvoldoende' werden geëvalueerd.

Vooral in Antwerpen en Oost-Vlaanderen
Het grootste aantal meldingen voor 2016 was afkomstig uit Oost-Vlaanderen (33 meldingen). In Antwerpen werd met 7 meldingen het hoogste aantal meldingen voor een stad of gemeente genoteerd. De grootste piek aan meldingen was in augustus en september, mogelijk door het mooie weer.

Bekijk ook:

Vuurbal boven Landen.

‘UFO’ boven De Pinte 

{ https://nieuws.vtm.be/ }

17-12-2017 om 20:45 geschreven door peter  

VS POMPTE JAARLIJKS 22 MILJOEN IN GEHEIM UFO-ONDERZOEK

Het ministerie van Defensie van de VS bevestigt dat het in stilte onderzoek deed naar onverklaarbare luchtfenomenen. Het programma liep van 2007 tot 2012 in het Pentagon. Dat schrijft de New York Times.

Het zogenaamde 'Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme' kostte jaarlijks 22 miljoen dollar. Volgens de krant kwam het programma tot stand onder impuls van Harry Reid, de senator uit Nevada, die de Democratische fractie in het hogerhuis leidde van 2005 tot januari dit jaar, toen hij het Congres verliet. De linksere Democraten verkregen een meerderheid in de Senaat nadat ze de parlementsverkiezingen in 2006 hadden gewonnen.

Bigelow Aerospace
Het merendeel van de 22 miljoen dollar die het programma kostte, ging naar Bigelow Aerospace, dat gevestigd is in Reids thuisstaat. Het bedrijf, dat nog steeds federale contracten heeft, ook met de NASA, is eigendom van multimiljardair Robert Bigelow, die de NY Times omschrijft als vriend van Reid.

Op het nummer van Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas nam niemand op. De voicemail op het nummer was buiten werking.

De NY Times bericht dat de officier die het programma sinds 2007 leidde, Luis Elizondo, zegt dat het doorliep nadat de financiering was stopgezet in 2012. Elizondo verliet het Pentagon in oktober.

{ https://nieuws.vtm.be/ }

17-12-2017 om 20:27 geschreven door peter  

17-12-2017 om 20:21 geschreven door peter  

17-12-2017 om 20:15 geschreven door peter  

First Official UFO Footage Released By The U.S. Government

A paradigm shift is happening. The first official USG footage of UFO’s has been released to the public and brought to you by To The Stars Academy.

Gimbal is the first of three US military videos of unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) that has been through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release.

This footage, and all official USG footage you will see on TTS Academy’s community of interest (COI), comes with essential chain-of-custody documentation validating that it is received in its original and unaltered form and is authentic.

The US Department of Defense uses this process in order to meticulously ensure that information and material retain their integrity without revealing sources and methods.

This footage is apart from anything else that has made its way to the public domain, by establishing its authenticity and thereby giving it enormous historical significance.

Read the full analysis of what you are observing in the video HERE.

FLIR1 is the second of three US military videos.

It is the only official footage captured by a US navy F/A-18 Super Hornet present at the 2004 Nimitz incident off the coast of San Diego.

Like Gimbal, this footage comes with crucial chain-of-custody (CoC) documentation because it is a product of US military sensors, which confirms it is original, unaltered, and not computer generated or artificially fabricated.

The CoC establishes the authenticity and credibility that this version is the original footage taken from one of the most advanced sensor tracking devices in use.

Read further analysis of what is being observed in the video HERE.

17-12-2017 om 20:07 geschreven door peter  

17-12-2017 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

17-12-2017 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program

WASHINGTON — In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.

Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.

For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.

The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.

Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee — Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat — also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.

While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”

James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”

Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.

In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email, referring to the Department of Defense.

But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.

“Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.

U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.

Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”

Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.

Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.

“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.

The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized.

The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”

He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)

During the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his plane for miles.

None of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.

Contracts obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under $22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011. The money was used for management of the program, research and assessments of the threat posed by the objects.

The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program.

Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.

“We’re sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.”

The program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.

“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.

Mr. Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.

In the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”

But, he said, “we have to start someplace.”

{ https://mobile.nytimes.com/ }

17-12-2017 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

NASA Kepler event RECAP: Space agency used Google's artificial intelligence to find new alien planet -  PART I

The space agency has used Google's 'neural network' to find a brand new alien planet

By Jeff Parsons Tech/Science Reporter

19:28JEFF PARSONS = And we're done

Thanks for following along tonight’s NASA news conference with us.

Here’s a brief rundown of what was announced:

Scientists have found, for the first time, an eighth planet (called Kepler 90i) in the Kepler 90 system - tying that solar system with our own for the most known planets in any one system.

The Kepler team made the discovery through the use of a “neural network” artificial intelligence program developed by the search giant Google.

“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 miniscule 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.

“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.”

19:12JEFF PARSONS = The conference is over

NASA has finished up its conference surrounding its discovery of an eighth exoplanet in another solar system which ties it with our own for the most number of known planets.

The space agency is starting an “Ask Me Anything” segment over on Reddit to discuss the discoveries in more detail.

19:07JEFF PARSONS = Last question

Finishing up the Q&A is a bit of an overview of the announcement - what are neural networks and how does the Kepler 90 solar system differ from ours.

Loosely, a neural network is a type of algorithm that can classify inputs by learning through example. It’s modelled on the human brain and can be “trained” to get better over time.

And the second part of the question hinges on Kepler 90 being “squished” when compared to our own solar system. As in, the planets exist closer to each other than our own.

That’s what the signals seem to suggest but, unfortunately, we only have minimal data on the Kepler 90 system. It’s too early to say too much about how its makeup is similar or different from our own.

“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,” said Jessie Dotson.

18:57JEFF PARSONS = Google's CEO aiming for 'hyperspace'

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has tweeted out his reaction to this evening’s news:

Sundar Pichai

✔@sundarpichai

1/2 Google AI working w/ @UTAustin used machine learning to look for exoplanets in @NASAKepler data. Our models were trained on 15,000 signals to recognize patterns caused by actual planets vs those caused by other objects, and performed w/ 96% accuracy for planet detection.

7:02 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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14 Dec

Sundar Pichai

✔@sundarpichai

1/2 Google AI working w/ @UTAustin used machine learning to look for exoplanets in @NASAKepler data. Our models were trained on 15,000 signals to recognize patterns caused by actual planets vs those caused by other objects, and performed w/ 96% accuracy for planet detection.

Sundar Pichai

✔@sundarpichai

2/2 So excited to share 2 newly-discovered planets ID’d by Google AI models: Kepler-80 g, and Kepler-90 i -- which is in the first 8-planet system outside our own! Amazing example of how AI can help w/ new scientific discoveries. Next stop, hyperspace:) http://goo.gl/4fuWG2  pic.twitter.com/nOjecR57zD

7:03 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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18:46KEY EVENT = Kepler is NOT able to confirm alien life

The inevitable question about finding aliens has been asked - and received a pretty comprehensive reply: NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is not able to tell if the alien planets have life on them - all it can do is confirm the planets are there.

“Searching for bio-signatures will be something that has to be done with more specialist equipment,” Hertz said.

If we’re going to find aliens, chances are we’ll have to use the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope which is taking over from Hubble.

18:40JEFF PARSONS = Tied for the lead

One questioner has asked whether this discovery will set off an arms race between the Kepler 90 solar system and our own when it comes to finding a ninth planet.

The answer? Quite possibly.

Meanwhile, check out this image NASA has released showing how the planets in our solar system stack up against those of Kepler 90:

18:37JEFF PARSONS = Soon anyone will be able to start Googling for planets

Google will release the code needed to use the neural network tools to the public. No special hardware will be required and, since the Kepler data is all public, anyone can comb through the data.

The research paper reporting these findings has also been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

“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.”

18:32JEFF PARSONS = "Sizzling hot, rocky planet"

Here’s a brief rundown of what NASA has announced this evening:

 http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasas-kepler-space-telescope-makes-11696975

18:29JEFF PARSONS = Will Google's Kepler tech put astronomers out of work?

The artificial intelligence will “absolutely work alongside astronomers,” confirms Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center when asked about whether the automation will replace human jobs.

So, don’t let this put you off a career in astronomy. The robots aren’t coming for their jobs yet.

18:24JEFF PARSONS = Could the planet have been found without AI?

The first question from the Q&A session is whether or not NASA would have found this planet without Google’s help?

“If humans were to have looked at a much larger set of signals it would have been possible using the previous technique...the key contribution of machine learning was that it was able to search a much higher range of signals that humans would have been able to do in the same amount of time,” explains Paul Hertz.

So there you go, turns out you can even use Google to search for alien planets.

18:18JEFF PARSONS = There could be more...

Finding a planetary system that rivals our own is a big step in planetary science.

But the NASA engineers believe there may even be solar systems with more than that.

There could well be systems out there with ten or more exoplanets orbiting their parent star.

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

Researchers using data from our planet-hunting @NASAKeplermission and machine learning from @Google discovered an 8th planet orbiting a distant star. With this discovery, our solar system is now tied for most number of planets around a single star! Info: https://go.nasa.gov/2zcJtS6 

7:13 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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18:15JEFF PARSONS = Kepler 90i - no signs of alien life

Kepler 90i is one of two planets discovered in the Kepler 90 solar system that orbits its star every 14 days.

It’s likely got a “scorching hot” surface and is not somewhere we’d like to go and visit.

It’s proximity to its parent star means it’s extremely unlikely to support any kind of alien life.

18:11JEFF PARSONS = Neural networks

Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California, is explaining how neural networks are computer programs that can be trained to recognise patterns and differentiate between objects.

Turning the technology onto Kepler’s findings means that the researchers are picking up on planets they might otherwise have missed.

“To train our neural network we used 15,000 signals from Kepler data that had already been examined,” Shallue said.

Searching 672 stars, the AI program was able to pick up signals of two new planets.

18:05KEY EVENT = An eighth planet has been found in a distant solar system

Scientists have found, for the first time, an eighth planet (called Kepler 90i) in the Kepler 90 system - tying it with our own solar system for the most known planets.

Kepler has confirmed that other stars can have large amounts of planets orbiting it, just like our own sun.

This discovery was made through the use of a “neural network” AI program developed by Google.

18:02JEFF PARSONS = The conference is underway

The NASA conference has just kicked off in the US.

Panellists are to be introduced and then we will hear the main announcement.

As usual, you can ask questions yourself on Twitter using the askNASA hashtag.

17:24JEFF PARSONS = What is an exoplanet?

In case you were wondering what an exoplanet actually is - it’s simply the name given to any planet orbiting a star that’s not our own sun. So, any planet outside of our solar system.

Since the first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star in 1995, and with only a few, narrow slices of our Milky Way galaxy so far surveyed, the astronomical community has already struck many rich veins. A recent statistical estimate places, on average, at least one planet around every star in the galaxy. That means there’s something on the order of a trillion planets in our galaxy alone, many of them in Earth’s size range.

“Right now we know, for the first time, that small planets are very common,” said Sara Seager, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an exoplanet research pioneer. “It’s phenomenal. We had no way to know that before Kepler. We’ll just say, colloquially: They’re everywhere.”

17:05= How long has Kepler been up there?

Kepler launched back in March 2009, and it’s become one of NASA’s main pieces of kit.

When it launched, scientists didn’t know how common planets were beyond our solar system. Thanks to the discoveries it’s made, astronomers now believe there may be at least one planet orbiting every star in the sky.

NASA explains: “Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012 and went on to collect data for an additional year in an extended mission. In 2014, the spacecraft began a new extended mission called K2, which continues the search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomena.”

16:15 =Google getting involved

This is the first time we’ve heard of Google joining in with the planet-hunting Kepler mission.

A representative for the search giant will be present on the panel today and we’re expecting to hear about how Google’s software has helped NASA zero in on potential exoplanets.

“The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analysing Kepler data,” it said in a brief press statement.

Using computers and artificial intelligence could help with some of the grunt work, and free up time for the researchers at NASA to delve deeper into the results.

Could we soon be seeing Google Earth-style simulations of Kepler’s alien planets? 

15:44 = How does Kepler find alien planets?

Here’s a really quick explanation of how the Kepler space telescope actually discovers a planet.

Basically, it uses a technique called the “transit method” of planet finding. That means, it spots the tiny blockage of light that occurs when a planet passes in front of the star. It’s called transiting and if the telescope spots repeated transits at regular times it must mean an orbit and therefore a planet.

“From the brightness change we can tell the planet size. From the time between transits, we can tell the size of the planet’s orbit and estimate the planet’s temperature,” explains NASA.

“These qualities determine possibilities for life on the planet.”

16-12-2017 om 23:53 geschreven door peter   0 1 2 3 4 5 - Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen)
Categorie:ASTRONOMIE / RUIMTEVAART

NASA Kepler event RECAP: Space agency used Google's artificial intelligence to find new alien planet - PART II

The space agency has used Google's 'neural network' to find a brand new alien planet

By Jeff Parsons Tech/Science Reporter

15:30 JEFF PARSONS = Twitter's incisive questioning

Twitter loves a good bit of space news.

The social network has been having a chatter about the upcoming announcement and throwing the usual questions at the space agency.

Rabidus Umbra @Rabidus_Umbra

#askNASA 

3:42 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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Lishan Karki@klishan007

Are you revealing about alien planet? #AskNASA

3:24 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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Chris Jarmics@Chris_The_Dj

@NASA #askNASA What do you hope to gain by this discovery or will you not do anything right now?

3:22 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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Nik@Nickinackynoo

Why am I a bit excited about the @NASA announcement at 6pm? We may get the answer to the question: Are we alone in the universe?  #askNASA #lifeonmars #Extraterrestrial

6:08 PM - Dec 14, 2017

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14:54 JEFF PARSONS = What was Kepler's last big find?

Back in February, astronomers detected no less than seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting a cool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, located in the constellation Aquarius.

Three of these planets lie within the star’s “habitable zone” where surface temperatures range from nought to 100 degrees centigrade.

All seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

Cambridge astronomer Dr Amaury Triaud said: “Here we have the right target to start the search for life.

“Within the next decade we could know if we are alone in the universe. And that is quite incredible.”

“We’ve made a crucial step toward finding if there is life out there.”

No other star system known to man contains such a large number of Earth-sized and probably rocky planets. 

14:44JEFF PARSONS = Who will be giving the announcement?

The hosts of today’s announcement will be a panel of experts including:

• Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California
• Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin
• Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

If the conference follows the same route as previous Kepler announcements, it will start with a brief overview of the mission and an update on the status of the craft and its progress.

Then we’ll get to the meat of the space sandwich and a big reveal of what it’s found. After that, you can expect some more interstellar chatter on the implications of the findings and finally some Q&As.

Members of the public will be able to submit questions through Twitter by using the hashtag #askNASA.

14:35JEFF PARSONS = What to expect from today's event

NASA’s Kepler space telescope is the space agency’s dedicated planet-hunting piece of equipment. It scans the stars looking for alien worlds and has - so far - found over 2,000 exoplanets.

Today we might be adding to that number.

NASA has said it will begin the announcement at 1pm Eastern Time - which is 6pm here in the UK. Even though it’s staying tight-lipped until then, plenty of space fans have been speculating about what the announcement could be.

Finding another exoplanet is all well and good, but many will be hoping for a discovery within the so-called “Goldilocks zone”. That is, a planet the right size and distance from its parent star to hold liquid water and - potentially - alien life.

Has NASA finally found aliens? Stick with us to find out.

View image on Twitter

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

Tune in tomorrow at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET to http://nasa.gov/live  to hear about our planet-hunting @NASAKepler mission’s latest discovery, which was made by researchers using machine learning from @Google. Have questions? #askNASA Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2yPr9hZ 

7:00 PM - Dec 13, 2017

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{ http://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

16-12-2017 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

Everybody lookin’ at you crazy (crazy!)
What you gonna do? (what you gonna do?)
Lift up your head and keep moving (keep moving)
Or let the paranoia haunt you (haunt you)?

If those lyrics from the song “i” by Grammy Award winning rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar make you wonder if he’s being haunted by seeing a UFO and possibly from being abducted by extraterrestrials, you’re obviously not familiar with his works … or you heard him talk about those personal experiences on the radio this week. Who do you think was more scared … Kendrick or the aliens?

“Nobody believed me then and [nobody] believes me now. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it… [but] I’m going to stand my ground. It’s just something I can’t really describe, because it just sounds like, ‘OK, you just saw a dart go past.’ That shit don’t make sense … I remember this. Words just can’t describe – it was just a surreal moment.”

Directions for UFOs?

The discussion took place on The Howard Stern Show. Kendrick revealed to co-host Robin Quivers that he saw a UFO as a 6-year-old in Compton (this is starting to sound like a movie plot) and, while it may not have haunted him, it has stuck with him in a “surreal” way. How surreal? He speculated that, although he doesn’t remember it, he may have been abducted and it influenced his career choice.

“That’s probably why I’m doing music right now. Who knows. They probably gave me the energy.”

This could be chalked up as another instance where guests say strange things just because they’re on the Howard Stern Show … except it’s not the first time Kendrick has talked about his close encounter. In late 2014, he told the same story to another radio host, JoJo Wright, but apparently no one believed him then either, so he was back two years later on a different show with the same story and plea to be believed.

Alien rapper?

Kendrick is a spiritual artist who talks about having a greater purpose. Did that belief come from religion or his alien encounter? Or did it come from the influence of his name? Kendrick was named after Eddie Kendricks, an original member of The Temptations, who sang about being on “Cloud Nine.” Then again, they also sang about what they saw out their window being “Just My Imagination.”

Do artists like Kendrick Lamar attract extraterrestrials or are they just more open to seeing them? Is it time to believe Kendrick?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-12-2017 om 18:22 geschreven door peter  

Cosmic Photobomb! Monster Black Holes Turn Up in New View of Andromeda Galaxy

16-12-2017 om 18:11 geschreven door peter  

UFO? Cigar-shaped interstellar space object baffles scientists who DEMAND further tests

MORE tests on the first interstellar asteroid ever discovered in our solar system are to be conducted after an initial search for artificial life returned mysterious results.

16-12-2017 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

BY SEAN HUTCHINSON

COLUMBIA PICTURES

We are not alone. Here are a few facts about Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO classic, on its 40th anniversary.

1. IT WAS INITIALLY A VERY DIFFERENT FILM.

Spielberg’s initial story outline involved UFOs and shady government dealings following the Watergate scandal, which became a script entitled “Watch the Skies.” The idea involved a police or military officer working on Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s official study into UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s, who would become the whistleblower on the government cover-up of aliens. There were numerous rewrites—Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader even took a crack at it, penning a political UFO thriller titled “Kingdom Come” that Spielberg and the movie studio rejected—before the story we know today emerged.

2. IT’S NAMED AFTER LEGITIMATE UFO RESEARCH.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Spielberg partly based his idea on the research of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a civilian scientific advisor to Project Blue Book who eventually admitted that 11 percent of the study’s findings about unidentified flying objects could not be explained using science.

The title (which is never specifically explained in the movie) is actually derived from Hynek’s own alien close encounter classification system: A close encounter of the first kind is sighting of a UFO; the second kind is physical evidence to prove the existence of an alien; and the third kind is actual contact with alien life forms.

3. THERE’S A CAMEO FROM THE GODFATHER OF UFO RESEARCH.

Hynek, who also served as a technical advisor on the movie, makes an uncredited cameo in the final scene of the movie. You can spot him pretty easily—he’s the goateed man smoking a pipe and wearing a powder blue suit who pushes through the crowd of scientists to get a better look at the aliens.

4. NOBODY WANTED THE STARRING ROLE.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

The director first offered the part of Roy Neary to actor Steve McQueen, who turned it down because he said he couldn’t cry on cue, something he saw as essential to the character. Spielberg then went to Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, and James Caan who all turned him down as well before asking his friend Richard Dreyfuss, who previously worked with Spielberg on Jaws, to take the part.

5. BUT IT WASN'T THE MOST DIFFICULT ROLE TO CAST.

Spielberg approached French actors like Lino Ventura, Yves Montand, and Jean-Louis Trintignant to play Claude Lacombe—who was based on famous UFO researcher Jacques Vallée—before settling on director and sometimes-actor François Truffaut. The initially skeptical Truffaut, who was nervous about appearing in a big budget Hollywood movie, accepted the role because he wanted to compile research for a book about acting (he never did write the book).

6. MERYL STREEP COULD HAVE PLAYED ROY'S WIFE.

Many actresses—including a then-unknown Yale Drama School grad named Meryl Streep—auditioned for the part of Roy’s wife Ronnie, but he ultimately cast actress Teri Garr because he saw her in a coffee commercial and loved the way she was able to convey a wide range of emotions in a 30-second clip.

7. THEY SHOT IN A DISUSED AIR FORCE HANGAR.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Spielberg wanted to shoot in real suburban locations rather than studio backlots, but the production had trouble finding locations. The biggest question: Where could Spielberg shoot the climactic canyon sequence with the mothership?

The production looked for huge indoor enclosures that would allow for the massive scale of the scene, though they only found ones with center support dividers that spoiled the openness Spielberg wanted for the UFO runway. The only location producers found without center dividers was a 300 foot by 300 foot disused hangar that had been used for dirigibles during World War II at Brookley Air Force base in Mobile, Alabama.

8. THE TEAM BOUGHT A HOUSE FOR THE PRODUCTION—AND SOLD IT FOR A PROFIT.

The Nearys' house, which is located at 1613 Carlisle Drive East in Mobile, was actually purchased by the production for $35,000 so they could do whatever they wanted with the interiors. It was later sold for $50,000 after production wrapped, netting a $15,000 surplus that went back into the film’s budget.

9. THE MEMORABLE 5-NOTE TONES TOOK A LONG TIME TO FIGURE OUT

Composer John Williams worked with Spielberg to come up with the movie’s distinct five-note musical method of communication between humans and aliens—which Spielberg partly based on the Solfège system of musical education—a year before shooting began.

Williams initially wanted a seven-note sequence, but it was too long for the simple musical “greeting” Spielberg wanted. The composer enlisted a mathematician to calculate the number of five-note combinations they could potentially make from a 12-note scale. When that number proved to be somewhere upwards of 134,000 combinations, Williams created 100 distinct versions, and they simply whittled the combinations down one by one until they had a winner.

10. SPIELBERG USED TRICKS TO GET THE PERFORMANCE OUT OF HIS CHILD ACTOR.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Cary Guffey, who plays little Barry Guiler, had never acted before, so Spielberg set up ways to coax a performance out of the 3-year-old. To get a shot of Guffey reacting to the aliens first approaching the Guiler house, Spielberg slowly unwrapped a present for the young actor just off camera, making him smile. Guffey even exclaims “Toys! Toys!” in the final take.

To get the boy to react to the aliens offscreen, Spielberg had Guffey walk up to his mark where—unbeknownst to the little actor—two crewmembers were dressed as a gorilla and a clown standing behind cardboard blinds. When Guffey entered the kitchen, Spielberg dropped the first blind revealing the clown to scare him, and then dropped the other blind to reveal the gorilla, which scared him even more. The gorilla then took off his mask, revealing the film’s makeup man, Bob Westmoreland, who Guffey recognized, causing him to laugh and smile in the final take.

11. THE MOVIE NEARLY FEATURED VERY EARLY CGI.

Spielberg originally toyed with the idea of using computer generated images to create the aliens and their ships, even going so far as to have animator Colin Cantwell create a CGI test of three UFOs floating over a stadium. The single-shot test, which took three weeks to complete and was one of the first computer generated images ever created for a film, proved to be unfeasible for the whole movie—so the idea was dropped.

12. THERE WERE SOME UNORTHODOX IDEAS FOR CREATING THE ALIENS.

Spielberg wanted the aliens to be non-human beings that glided instead of walked, and he had a weird idea to pull it off: An orangutan dressed in a specially-made suit. For a screen test, the production team outfitted an orangutan in grey spandex and strapped it into roller skates. The orangutan immediately took off the skates and crawled to its owner, so a full test couldn’t be completed, and the team scrapped the idea. The majority of the small aliens in the final movie were played by local elementary school girls from Mobile in specially made grey suits and masks who were heavily backlit to create the final alien silhouette effect.

13. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS FEATURES A PRECURSOR TO E.T.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

To create the alien who bids farewell using the musical hand signals at the end of the film, Spielberg enlisted the help of Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi, who designed a fully articulated steel, aluminum, and fiberglass animatronic puppet that Spielberg nicknamed “Puck.” Puck’s expressions were based on photos of Guffey. The puppet was operated by a crew of seven puppeteers, with Spielberg himself controlling the final articulation before the alien leaves to go to the mothership.

Puck would help inspire E.T. after Spielberg asked himself, “What if this little guy didn’t get back on the mothership?” Rambaldi would also go on to design the character of E.T.

14. SPIELBERG BET AGAINST HIS OWN MOVIE—AND REALLY CASHED IN.

Spielberg and his buddy George Lucas both had new movies coming out in 1977; Lucas’s was a little movie called Star Wars. Lucas thought his ramshackle space movie wouldn’t make back its budget, and he knew his friend’s new movie would break box office records just like Jaws had done, so he offered Spielberg a friendly wager. Both agreed to give the other 2.5 percent of the profits of their respective films. Lucas grossly underestimated his movie, which went on to become the second highest grossing movie of all time if adjusted for inflation (in comparison, Close Encounters is #71). The difference ended up being $40 million.

15. SPIELBERG DIDN'T LIKE THE VERSION THAT WAS INITIALLY RELEASED.

Spielberg wanted to release Close Encounters in the summer of 1978, which would have given him ample time to edit the film and finish its special effects—but Columbia Pictures, which was going through major financial troubles, insisted he have it ready for a November 1977 release, leaving the director with a final cut on a movie he didn’t feel was completely ready. 

Three years later, the company allowed Spielberg to “finish” the movie under one condition: That he show the inside of the mothership, which would give the studio’s marketing department an angle to sell this new version. The director capitulated, adding new scenes and cutting others to create a “Special Edition.” The director was unhappy with the scene, though, and later cut it for the “Collector's Edition” home video release.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

• Blu-ray special features; Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg’s Classic Film; Close Encounters of the Third Kind Diary.

{ http://mentalfloss.com/ }

16-12-2017 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

‘Alien probe’ asteroid is dead quiet, but is that good news or bad news?

A couple of months back, a really, really weird asteroid flew through our Solar System. It looked nothing like any object humanity had ever spotted in space, and was moving might fast. First it was identified as a comet, then an asteroid, and most recently scientists have been wondering if maybe it was actually an alien spacecraft. Now, after spending hours listening to the strange visitor with powerful radio telescopes, scientists say they haven’t heard a peep.

The object, named Oumuamua, is shaped like a cigar. If it’s really an asteroid it would be the very first interstellar asteroid — that is, a rock that originated outside of our Solar System — to be observed by humans, but its bizarre form and speedy entry and exit gave alien hunters reason to believe it might actually be otherworldly technology. Now, it seems, that question will have to wait a little longer to be answered.

Earlier this week scientists from the Breakthrough Listen project pointed their ears towards Oumuamua in the hopes of hearing something, anything, that couldn’t be explained by some natural process. After a preliminary review of the data, they haven’t found anything that would suggest the object is actually an alien probe, but whether or not we should be happy about that is up for debate.

Humanity has been hastily attempting to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations for decades now. We’ve sent spacecraft out of our Solar System with directions on where to find us, and shot radio wave messages to distant stars in the hopes that someone is listening. If we’re going to meet aliens, these are probably our best shots at making first contact, but should we even be trying?

Every scientist with an itch to find alien life has a counterpart who fears what that meeting may bring. Many astronomers and physicists, including Stephen Hawking, have warned that contact aliens could result in the utter destruction of mankind. We simply don’t know whether intelligent beings living elsewhere in the universe will see us as a friendly neighbor, a threat, or simply a nuisance that should be wiped out simply because we’re annoying them.

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach,” Hawking famously said. “If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships so they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?”

For now, it appears that the strange object that just visited us isn’t relaying messages with alien handlers on a distant star system, and maybe that’s for the best.

{ http://www.puredailynews.com/  }

16-12-2017 om 16:50 geschreven door peter  

Boy Remembers His Past As An Extraterrestrial Being & Provides Startling Details

You might not know it, but children remembering their past lives is nothing new. Reincarnation is no doubt a fascinating subject, even within the scientific community. 

Carl Sagan, American astronomer and astrobiologist, even acknowledged the fact that reincarnation deserves serious study, stating that: “children sometimes report details of a previous life, which, upon checking, turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.” (source)

There are some great examples, many of which have been uncovered by University of Virginia psychiatrist Jim Tucker, who is arguably the world’s leading researcher on this topic.

In 2008, he published a review of cases that were suggestive of reincarnation in the journal Explore.

A typical reincarnation case, described by Jim, includes subjects reporting a past life experience. The interesting thing is that 100 percent of subjects who report past life remembrance are children. 

The average age when they start remembering their past life is at 35 months, and their descriptions of events and experiences from their past life are often extensive and remarkably detailed. 

These children remember things that would be impossible to know about the person they claim that they were. They’ve been taken to their families, confirmed addresses, professions, and various other details of the lives of the people that they used to be.

We recently published an article of 6 great examples that go into more detail; you can read that article here. Again, these are truly astounding, and there would be no other way for these children to know these details.

I personally believe that reincarnation is real, but I don’t think it’s the only option for what takes place after death. I believe it is one of many possible paths for the soul. I believe some souls can reincarnate, as we’ve seen above, into another life. 

I also believe some can reincarnate onto other planets, as beings we would consider to be alien. Furthermore, I believe reincarnation is just one option for a soul. 

Other possibilities include the option to travel to other dimensions and experience a life there, or to completely forgo reincarnation and experience life in the non-physical realm, free from a physical body. 

Perhaps a soul must continue to reincarnate until certain lessons are learned to move to another ‘level?’ Who knows. Perhaps there is an origin from which all souls stem from? So many questions, so many possibilities, and reincarnation could be one of many.

Below is a a video of Boriska in an interview conducted by Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot. If you went through the cases in the link above, this one is very different, as this one involves a previous life on the planet Mars. 

This is no ordinary boy. His mother states that he began speaking at just four months, and pronouncing full words shortly after. At eight months he was speaking in sentences, and at the  age of two he could read. 

He become a local celebrity for being so intelligent, and when he turned three he could name all of the planets in the Solar System, how many galaxies there were, and a lot more. He knew so much about astronomy that would be impossible for a child of his age.

He also remembers one of his past lives on Mars, where his incarnation apparently took place millions of years ago. In the interview, he made a number of statements such as:

“People from Mars traveled in many galaxies and planetary systems.”

“There were ships of an airplane type. They were triangular. There were ships like a drop.”

He said that these ships used “plasma power, ion power. If they used gasoline the fuel ran out too fast, the engines were too powerful.”

He also talked about teleportation, saying that “portal is the same like teleport. It slows down time and opens a kind of a portal where time is speeding up fast…I can’t say exactly. 

“I don’t remember. It opens on one side and in a few seconds or even minutes if the transfer is far away it opens another area of space.”

“Not all ships had the same principle. Ships with plasma engines were limited to travel only in the Solar System on high speed. The ships in a shape of a drop were carrying other ships.”

“Each race had its own technology and innovations. For example, if we had plasma and ion engines others had energy engines.”

He spoke about other people from other planets, planetary cooperation, and wars as well. He also spoke on people that still live on Mars, but who live beneath the surface and inside of the planet. According to him, they breath CO2.

The interview is very detailed and if this interests you, you can watch the whole interview below.

Here is the link to the original interview. Unfortunately, it was not working when we attempted to upload it, but wanted to give credit to the original YouTube channel as it (this particular interview) has amassed almost 2 million views.

Information To Further Validate Some Of Boriska’s Claims

It wasn’t long ago when NASA called for a press conference to announce a major discovery regarding the planet Mars. During the meeting, they revealed some pretty shocking information, completely changing what we once thought about the “red” planet that, suddenly, doesn’t seem so red anymore. 

They announced that Mars actually contains rivers of flowing water. What we once believed to be an arid and rocky desert of a planet is actually seasonal, not unlike our own planet Earth.

Lujendra Ojha, a planetary scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, made the discovery by using images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The quotes below are from this press conference if not otherwise sourced.

“Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past … [and] liquid water has been found on Mars.”

– James Green, NASA director of planetary sciences

Obviously, with the announcement that there is water on Mars, the possibility of life near the surface becomes ever more plausible. The press conference also goes into more details about the atmosphere and condition of Mars, and how the planet could have supported life in the past.

“We are going to Mars, our journey to Mars is a science led expedition right now, but soon I hope we’ll be sending humans to the red planet to explore and science will lead the way. 

“And today’s announcement of a really fascinating result about current water on Mars is one of the reasons why I feel it’s even more imperative that we send astrobiologists and planetary scientists to Mars to explore the question of, ‘Is there current life on Mars?’”

 – John Grunsfeld, five time space flown astronaut, Associate Administrator Head of NASA Science Mission Directive

Here is an interesting quote, given that Boriska said even today, people are living underneath the planet.

“The possibility of life in the interior of Mars has always been very high. There’s certainly water somewhere in the crust of Mars … It’s very likely, I think, that there is life somewhere in the crust of Mars.” – Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator, HiRISE, University of Arizona

Below are some more interesting quotes, because the boy also said that the planet went through some massive climate shifts.

“The more we observe Mars, the more information we’re getting that it really is a fascinating planet, from the Curiosity Rover we now know that Mars once was like a planet very much like Earth, with long salty seas, with fresh water lakes, probably with snow capped peaks and clouds and a water cycle just like we’re studying here on Earth… Something has happened to Mars, it lost its water.”

– John Grunsfeld, five time space flown astronaut, Associate Administrator Head of NASA Science Mission Directive

John also goes on to discuss the high likelihood that Mars previously sustained life, before whatever happened to the planet that led to its change in climate. Scientists are still struggling to work out what exactly that event or series of events may have been.

“Mars is the planet most like Earth … [and in the past,] Mars was a very different planet, it had an extensive atmosphere, and in fact it had what we believe was a huge ocean, perhaps as large as two thirds the Northern Hemisphere. 

“And that ocean may have been as much as a mile deep. So Mars indeed three billion years ago had extensive water resources. But something happened. Mars suffered a major climate change and lost its surface water.”

– James Green, NASA director of planetary physics

These scientists emphasized the fact that something happened to cause major climate change. In the interview above, the boy also speaks to that.

According to Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD, and plasma physicist, life on Mars was eradicated by nuclear war. 

He believes that a couple of intelligent civilizations from ancient history were responsbile for this, and in his published works, argues that the coloration and composition of Martian soil points to a series of “mixed-fission explosions” that led to nuclear fallout on the planet. (source) (Life And Death On Mars: The New Mars Synthesis)

Like the astronauts quoted above, Brandenburg is no crackpot. He was involved in the Clementine Mission to the Moon, which was part of a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO) and NASA. The mission discovered water at the Moon’s poles in 1994. He was the deputy manager of that mission. (Source: page 16 of 18) (source) (source)

General Stubblebine is a retired United States Major General. He was also the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), and one of America’s most distinguished soldiers and Chief of U.S. Army Intelligence, with 16,000 soldiers under his command, said this about Mars:

“There are structures on the surface of Mars. I will tell you for the record that there are structures underneath the surface of Mars that cannot be seen by the Voyager cameras that went by in 1976. 

“I will also tell you that there are machines on the surface of Mars and there are machines under the surface of Mars that you can look at, you can find out in detail, you can see what they are, where they are, who they are and a lot of detail about them.”

- (Dolan, Richard. UFOs And The National Security State: New York: Richard Dolan Press)

Stubblebine was a major proponent of the U.S. governments StarGate Project & remote viewing.
By Arjun Walia

{ http://humansarefree.com/ }

16-12-2017 om 16:40 geschreven door peter  

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