What’s happened to the Sun? Video shows rare phenomenon in the sky

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 21:41 geschreven door peter  

Atmospheric methane on Mars changes with the seasons — and we don’t really know why

 BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Methane, a substance which goes hand in hand with life on Earth, has also been found on Mars. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in New Orleans, Louisiana, NASA scientists reported that atmospheric methane on Mars exhibits a surprising variation. Its causes are still unknown.

How the surface of Mars looks like.

Image credits: NASA / JPL.

Red Methane

Many things on Earth, from wetlands to permafrost, and from plants to animals themselves, generate methane. Researchers have been closely monitoring this substance as it is the most potent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, albeit much more short-lived than CO2, for instance. But researchers were surprised to see any methane at all on frigid, barren Mars. Even more surprising was the large variation of the gas.

“The thing that’s so shocking here is this large variation,” said Chris Webster, who leads the methane-sensing instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover. “We’re left trying to imagine how we can create this seasonal variation,” says Webster, who is at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Scientists analyzed data from the Curiosity Rover. Since it landed on the Red Planet, the rover sampled Martian air 30 times, reporting extremely small background levels of the gas: around 0.4 parts per billion (ppb), compared with Earth’s 1800 ppb. But even small quantities need to come from somewhere. To make things even more mysterious, methane levels have been cycling from 0.3 ppb and 0.7 ppb over just two Martian years.

Some seasonality is, of course, to be expected. However, the mechanisms we’re currently aware of don’t even get close to explaining a variation of this magnitude. It could be that whatever is generating the methane has a temperature variation, which could translate to seasonality, but this is mere speculation at this point.

Diving into the realm of speculation, there’s also another possibility — “one that no one talks about but is in the back of everyone’s mind” — biological activity, says Mike Mumma, a planetary scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “You’d expect life to be seasonal.”

Life on Mars

Most of the methane on Earth was generated by microbes. There’s a good chance that the same process is, or was, happening on Mars. If this is the case, we would be dealing with either contemporary or ancient microbes. But ancient microbes wouldn’t really explain the seasonal variation, so going on this train of thought, it would appear more likely that we’re dealing with active microbial life on Mars. Yet this isn’t the only possible explanation.

Methane observations on Earth, showing the seasonal variations and the difference between northern and southern hemispheres. There’s a much lower variation than what was observed on Mars.

Image credits: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

Methane can also be generated through geological processes which have nothing to do with biology. Methane can be produced through hydrothermal reactions, especially ones involving olivine-rich rocks. It can also appear when carbon-containing meteoroids are bombarded by ultraviolet (UV) light, and dust falls down on the planet. This particular theory could also help explain the large variation.

Basically, the same chemical that produces methane from interplanetary dust at the surface level would be power-charged by UV light at high altitudes. As meteorite or comet dust particles fall down on the planet, they’re vaporized at tens of kilometers high in the air, producing significant quantities of methane. Since Curiosity’s reported variation can be somewhat correlated to meteor showers, Marc Fries, the cosmic dust curator at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, believes this might explain the seasonality. But not everyone is convinced, and Fries himself concedes that meteor showers are highly variable and a causation is difficult to establish.

However, the good news is that Fries will have a chance to test his hypothesis: on 24 January, Mars will have a close encounter with comet C/2007 H2 Skiff — the comet is set to pass at less than a tenth of the Earth-moon distance. Even skeptics agree that this is a good opportunity to test the theory.

To make things even better, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will start observations on Mars, mapping methane distributions across the planet. But if neither of these tests confirms Fries’ theory, it’s back to the drawing board.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 21:23 geschreven door peter  

Chinese space station will come crashing down in March, but it probably won’t hit anyone

BY ALEXANDRU MICU

Sometime in March, China’s first manned space station, Tiangong-1, is set to come crashing down on Earth. We don’t know precisely when, and we can’t tell exactly where either. But don’t start spending money on hardhats just yet — there’s an extremely small chance that the ship or any debris from it will actually hit anyone.

Reentry of Cygnus resupply ship Janice Voss on 17 Aug. 2014.

Image credits ESA / NASA.

Launched back in September of 2011, Tiangong-1 — full name Tiāngōng yīhào, “Heavenly Palace” — was China’s first manned space station. The craft represented this country’s first steps in space station technology, serving its maiden year as an unmanned craft, a platform on which the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) could test hardware and practice docking. Crews moved in in 2012 and 2013, including the country’s first female astronauts.

It was actually only meant to stay in operation until 2013 and then be replaced. After the last crew was brought back planet-side, however, CNSA decided to extend the operational life of Tiangong-1 by a further two years. The station was put in ‘sleep mode’ on a spin around the planet so that engineers could collect data on the longevity of key components while its orbit slowly decayed.

As far as decommissioning is concerned, however, Tiangong-1 certainly plans to go out with a bang.

Blaze of (uncontrolled) glory

Back in 2016, CNSA announced that it lost contact and control capabilities over the station. Still bleeding altitude, it will ultimately make an uncontrolled re-entry (fancy way of saying ‘crash down’) sometime this March. Several countries have been keeping tabs on the vessel, and according to estimates, it should end up somewhere between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South — an area that’s mostly water.

Satellites and spacecraft fall on Earth all the time — mostly because we do such a poor job of not littering in space. All the junk, decommissioned craft, and other bits flying around Earth eventually drop to a low orbit, where atmospheric drag brings them down. But while most of that is small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, Tiangong-1 stands apart from all this mess due to its sheer size.

As a rule of thumb, engineers estimate that around 10% to 40% of a falling spaceship will make it through the atmosphere unburnt. Tiangong weighs in at around 8,506 kilograms (18,753 lbs) of heat-shield-covered goodness, so we’re potentially looking at around 850 to 3400 kilograms (1,873 to 7,495 lbs) of incoming spaceship. Compounding the problem is that China can’t nudge the station any longer, as controllers generally do with thruster-equipped vessels during an uncontrolled re-entry, and thus we have no power over where it eventually crash-lands. The station itself is quite compact, just 10.5 by 3.35 meters (34.4 by 10.9 ft), but it’s very difficult to tell how wide any debris will spread.

Asteroid P/2013 R3 seen breaking apart in outer space. Tiangong-1 can have a similar fate as it braves Earth’s atmosphere.

Image credits NASA, ESA / D. Jewitt (UCLA).

Now, while this may sound unpleasantly apocalyptic, it’s important to note that it’s not the first time a craft made an uncontrolled re-entry. It’s neither the biggest ship to do so, nor, arguably, is it the most dangerous one — in 1987, for example, a malfunctioning Soviet reconnaissance satellite crashed and spread nuclear material from its fission reactor all around Canada’s Great Slave Lake. Tiangong relies on solar panels, the clean energy that is clean even after it crash-lands.

It’s also important to note that the debris won’t necessarily stay in one piece and place — that 2,000 to 8,000 pounds of craft could very well be spread across a range of several square miles. Much larger and bulkier ships crashed without causing any real damage. Phobos-Grunt, a 13,600 kg (30,000 lbs) Russian spacecraft aimed at Mars safely crashed into the Pacific in 2012. Skylab, the largest ship to make an uncontrolled reentry with its 72,500 kg (160,000 lbs) frame, fell in the Australian Outback, damaging some buildings, killing a cow, and incurring a littering fine for the US.

So if you were planning on getting hit by Tiangong, your chances don’t look good. The Verge’s Loren Grush says there’s a 1 in 10,000 chance for anyone to be hit by a fragment — which is about as much as your odds of catching a lightning bolt sometime in your life, according to NOAA.

In fact, there’s only one person ever known to have probably been hit by space debris in the 50 or so years we’ve been launching rockets. Her name is Lottie Williams, and in 1997, while out for a walk, she was hit in the shoulder by a 15.2 (6 in) long metal fragment. It wasn’t ever identified as having come from a rocket, but NASA says the incident happened around the time and place of the re-entry and breakup of a second-stage Delta rocket.

So the odds, as they say, look solidly in your favor. And hey, if you do get unlucky and catch a piece of Tiangong-1, you’ll at least be famous. But maybe that’s not really worth it.

In the meantime, virtually all state agencies will be watching and learning all they can from the re-entry. A group of such agencies, the IADC, will be working together to track and record the station’s fall and use the data to refine our prediction models — meaning we’ll have a much better idea of how stuff crashes down in the future. Sadly, right now they won’t be able to offer any type of warning — they’ll likely be able to say when it comes down with some degree of accuracy a few hours before it happens, but all bets are currently off for ‘where’.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 21:03 geschreven door peter  

UFO in the sky above Australia 3-Jan-2018

UFOs recorded over Warnbro, Western Australia on 3rd January 2018.

Witness report: 

Object seen above the N/W it started off as an incredibly fast pulsation a real quick flickering pattern. As I looked up it immediately caught my gaze.

Author (AustralianPhenomena @ youtube)

 { http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

04-01-2018 om 20:39 geschreven door peter  

USAF Plane Personnel Noticed A UFO On Radar Tailing Them Across the Atlantic Ocean

A bizarre UFO encounter has gotten details in the wake of the secret Pentagon UFO investigations’ exposure. A US Air Force man has come forward with information on the encounter that he reportedly failed to report in December 1980 for fear of destroying his career.

The loadmaster, who has yet to be named, reported the unusual case to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) on December 26, 2017, just days after the details about a top-secret US Department of Defense five-year investigation into the threat posed by UFOs made headlines across the world.

The details of the £16.5million secretive programme of the Department of Defense Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification were exposed after the American Government claimed for years it had not interested in unidentified flying objects, something that many UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists refused to believe.

MUFON is the most extensive organisation in the world dedicated to alien and UFO research and keeps a database of UFO sightings and reports across the globe.

Loadmasters are responsible for getting personnel and cargo onto a plane.

The unnamed man explained in his report to MUFON that he did not report the sighting officially for fear of ruining his career, because of the perceived ridicule surrounding unidentified flying object sightings.

He claimed that he was a loadmaster on a C-141 transport aircraft. They took off from Charleston Air Force Base to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, when their radar picked up the UFO. The mysterious object was pacing their aircraft, according to the report.

The reporting witness said that they reported the incident to the tower. Once they landed at Dover, the technicians checked out their radar and found no problem, the report stated.

The loadmaster said the plane then set off again from Dover to Ireland, but halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, the object appeared back and continued to pace them the rest of the way across the ocean.

He said they contacted the tower again to report the encounter. Interestingly, the tower reportedly had the object on the radar as well.

The crew was asked if they wanted to file a UFO report. They discussed it and decided it would be bad for their careers, so no report was submitted, according to the reporting witness.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

04-01-2018 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

Sky-Watcher caught pulsating disk-like object in the vicinity of the constellation Canis Minor

Witness report: I went out to view and photograph the super moon visible on the night of January 2, 2018 in Eastern Pennsylvania and I noticed an unusual, rapidly pulsating star to the lower right of the moon, in the south west portion of the sky.

This was not a plane or a satellite. It remained very bright and maintained it's position in the sky for hours. It was in the vicinity of the constellation Canis Minor.

I used an amateur Meade telescope to get a better look at here. Through a strong lens, it appeared to be a disk of rapidly rotating lights that flashed as well.

These lights constantly changed color. There was a dark void in the center, though at times I noticed some specks of light in the center. Mufon case 89298.

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 20:30 geschreven door peter  

Are aliens to blame for mutilated wild boars found along Florida Road?

Witness states: At 9:45 am on the morning of January 2nd 2018, my wife Tina and I were traveling along Moore rd in Polk City, Florida. We were looking for bald eagles, which my wife had seen earlier that morning along the same stretch of road.

At 11191 Moore rd we pulled our car over, got out and began observing the area for eagles. We did not find any, however, something else caught our attention.

Two dead wild boars on the side of the road and the bodies presented in typical cattle mutilation conditions.

There was very little decomposition and the animal’s skin looked to be almost surgically removed. Perhaps even stranger than the presence of the bodies, was the fact that there were two, lying right next to each other.

We both agreed that it was highly unlikely that two wild boars would be hit at the exact same time in the exact same place.

Upon further investigation of the seen we detected no unusual smells, or observed anything else out of the ordinary.

There was no blood in the road and the animals did not appear to have been dragged to their final positions. It looked as if they had been drained and dropped there. Mufon case 89301. 

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 14:57 geschreven door peter  

 The Alien Observatory --"China's Astronomers Aim to Be First to Discover Existence of an Advanced Technological Civilization" (WATCH Video)

04-01-2018 om 01:47 geschreven door peter  

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04-01-2018 om 01:36 geschreven door peter  

UFO hovers over home in Santa Clarita Valley, CA

Posted by: Michael Schratt 

Note: This UFO sighting is being reproduced exactly as it was reported by the primary eyewitness who sent this sighting to Open Minds via email. Source: Ed Towers

Illustration of UFO by Michael Schratt

My wife and I had a very close up experience while living in Santa Clarita Valley. This occurred in 1978 but the memory lives in our minds as it were last night. We feel highly appreciative for the experience and are not afraid to openly discuss it without any intentions of financial gain. You may publish this account and we would be most willing to discuss it in public.

It was the summer of 1978. Santa Clarita Valley is located north of the San Fernando Valley and north of Los Angeles. Santa Clarita was a small and laid-back community mostly referred to as Valencia. We recently relocated back from a two-year international management assignment followed by a two-year management assignment in Arizona. We then were transferred to California and chose Santa Clarita because of the open spacious country living, low crime statistics, no smog, and nice neighborhoods. I purchased a two-story corner house with a swimming pool.

One Friday evening, I was using a long pole with an attached brush designed to sweep the walls of the pool. Our children would probably swim early the following morning and I wanted the pool to be clean. As I reached upwards on the pole to push downwards I saw a craft approaching. The craft was at a distance equivalent one or two short blocks away and not flying parallel to streets but at an angle on a southeastern direction. It was immediately obvious to me that the craft was not a helicopter nor airplane since these would not normally fly that low and the physical characteristics did not match these. At that distance the craft seemed wider, with luminous lights in the circumference area of the frontal section (referred to as leading edge). I stared at it for a brief perplexed moment. After realizing that it was something out of the ordinary, I ran down the steps from the poolside deck platform where I had been standing. The platform was about four to five feet higher than the pool water and the opposite surrounding pool deck area. It was about 15 fast running steps from there to the backyard entry to the family room. My wife and two children were watching television there. I yelled for them to come outside and see, but only my wife Gloria came out. We both walked fast towards the side of the pool opposite the platform side where I had been standing. By that time the craft was right over our pool area at an altitude of no more than 50-75 feet and perhaps even less.

The craft had come to a stop in proximity to our pool area as we stood bellow it. The craft made no sound whatsoever. It wobbled slightly as if it were moved by the wind, but there was no noticeable wind at that moment. The craft leaned forward and downwards and then we saw a large forward angled window, located bellow the leading edge that was perhaps 8 feet in length and 3-4 feet in height. We could see an orange bluish glow from inside but no occupants or controls. As the craft leaned forward I could see light emanating from its upper section and not from the pool lights reflection since the pool lights would be unable to reflect on the upper section. The craft seemed to be manufactured as one solid piece. There were no visible seams or rivets. The bottom of the craft was concave towards the center. In the deepest section of the concave center two rectangular objects were visible, which ran the length of the deep concaved section and seemed to be a few feet apart from each other. The craft had an upper dome with porthole like windows but no internal visibility. The upper dome was round and centered in relation to the lower part of the craft with no visible seams. The total height of the craft appeared to be the equivalent of a one and half story typical track residence or less.  I calculated the height by comparing it to our two-story house. The diameter was approximately 50-75 feet or less. There were no visible markings, insignias or identification on the craft.

Under the front leading edge of the circular craft was some ski like devices with two side-by-side configurations. The design I cannot replicate even though I always scored high in I.Q, tests where design progressions (similar to mathematical progressions) had to be decided from multiple drawing choices. I also remember thinking they were too far forward from the crafts center of gravity something we studied in Group Propulsion in relation to the length and loading of aircraft. The ski-like devices were similar to the letter “S” with the top of the S facing forward but with more elaborate details filling the gaps. At the time my conclusion was they were some type of hanging or anchoring device.

Diagram of UFO description by Michael Schratt (click image to enlarge)

During the entire experience lasting some 45 seconds or a bit longer, my wife kept repeating “Oh my God!” over and over again. I tried to concentrate on details and in my mind kept repeating “take me with you.”  We were both frozen in awe and disbelief. It was like seeing a large bus that I previously described as a Greyhound bus floating over your house.  Both of us looked upwards and did not speak to each other during the sighting. There was no fear, an unprompted paralysis, and a high respect to what we were seeing.  We both had the sensation of being watched primarily because the craft maneuvered downwards at an angle towards us, and then regained a level position parallel to the ground.  As a part of my analysis during the experience I listened for other engines, other craft, or the possibility that this craft was being suspended from another craft as a hoax but concluded there were no other man-made craft in the vicinity. The craft then began to move at a very slow speed of around 20 miles per hour. I jumped on a wall that surrounded our backyard so that I could see the trajectory. I saw it between houses as it continued at that speed for at least 7 miles from our house, and heading in a southeast direction from Santa Clarita over a mountainous section of eastward Los Angeles County. I instructed my wife not to discuss it but to try to draw what she saw and then we would compare drawings. My drawings had more details. Then we began comparing the experience and both had seen the very same details.

My conclusion is that the craft wanted us to observe it or perhaps was examining us. I am 100% sure this was not a man-made craft or technology. I am also convinced by the event that U.S. Government intelligence agencies know we are being visited by extra-terrestrials and are hiding facts. To me, the only rationale reason is because they lied once about their existence (perhaps Roswell and others) and the complex structured secretive system is not able to reverse course, or that disclosure may cause the loss of statutory governmental powers as citizens realize that borders, religions and global federal governments are meaningless and helpless. My conclusion leads me to think that the visitors do not wish to work with a single government as they are roaming global skies making their presence known. There were lingering questions in my mind after the sighting. Since the craft must originate from an advanced civilization why do they need windows? My technical assumption is that an advanced civilization would have cameras on the exterior which are able to duplicate exactly what is visible outside of the craft. Why were we allowed to see the interior through the large window but not the occupants? After reporting the experience to the local Sheriff, he said they had no additional reports.  Years later after writing the experience on the internet, someone who claimed he was with NASA automated airport sciences called me and said that his call was unofficial.

The only somewhat related experience was during a father daughter overnight camping event. The event was prior to our sighting experience. Several of my neighbors were FBI agents. During the outing two of the agents who had daughters were standing close to each other looking at the visible stars. One of them whispered to the other that he heard that strange crafts were often visible in the area. I was standing a few feet away from them and could hear them. During my earlier education, I graduated and was certified in Group Propulsion Systems and had a choice to either continue studies as a Flight Engineer or Aeronautical Engineering. I selected Aeronautical Engineering and attended Northrop Institute of Technology. In Group Propulsion Systems we became highly familiar with aircraft, mechanical and electrical systems and all flight disciplines, flight and design configurations and propulsion sciences.  I am still more familiar with aircraft functions than an automobile. After two years of study I switched to business management at another university, was an early participant in IT as a systems analyst followed by executive positions in the computer and software industry eventually forming my own international management consulting and international business services integration organization. I am now an active portfolio investor and international business but retired.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

04-01-2018 om 01:26 geschreven door peter  

10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories About Extraterrestrial Beings

GREGORY MYERS 

The idea of other intelligent beings has long been fascinating to us. Ancient myths have us interacting with gods and all kinds of strange, mythical creatures such as centaurs. The stars have also played an important role in cultures around the world. Over time, ancient myths became nothing more than legends, while technology and scientific discovery started to destroy our belief in strange nonhumans.

This made us look further to the stars for our hopes, and all-new theories have been born since. Many of today’s theories about intelligent, nonhuman life are not only bizarre but try to trace everything back to ancient days. Modern conspiracy theorists believe that everything is connected and that the events of Roswell were not even close to the beginning.

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10. The Mass UFO Sightings Over Los Angeles Decades Ago

Before Roswell, a strange incident happened that might have gotten way more attention in history books if not for the fact that it happened in the middle of World War II. In 1942, several years before the infamous Roswell incident, the city of Los Angeles was in an extremely tense mood. The Japanese had only recently bombed Pearl Harbor, so anything strange in the sky was immediately assumed to be a Japanese air raid.

On the night of February 24, 1942, residents of Los Angeles saw many unidentified aircraft in the sky. Everyone started panicking, thinking that the aircraft were Japanese bombers. However, despite the city launching an all-out, coordinated attack against these strange objects in the sky, there’s no physical evidence that they managed to hit anything, nor is there any evidence that the UFOs attempted to fire back or interact in any way.

Some witnesses claimed to have seen objects shaped like lozenges. Poor-quality pictures taken from that night make it look like there’s a stereotypical alien ship ominously hovering over Los Angeles. To add fuel to the fire, the Navy and Air Force gave contradicting reports on the incident. The incident may seem very mysterious, but there was a massive war going on. It may simply have been experimental technology of some kind. We may never know.

9. The Crawling Space Slug On Pluto

Recently, NASA made history by making brand-new, color photos of Pluto that we had never seen before and getting close enough to make interesting, new observations. Before long, people were speculating about what NASA may have covered up and what it may have “leaked” to the public about alleged alien life. One photo in particular caught the eye of conspiracy theorists, who insisted that it showed a gigantic alien space slug slowly moving across the surface of the planet. While the gigantic moving object does look vaguely like a slug, it—unfortunately—is not an example of alien life.

However, the explanation given by NASA is still pretty interesting. The folks at NASA claim that what people saw was a gigantic chunk of nitrogen-rich ice that floated to the surface of Pluto only to slowly melt and sink below again. Experts say that this behavior on the surface of Pluto is very similar to that of a lava lamp. The “slug” people saw was a block of this ice floating temporarily on the surface before slipping beneath the waves. It may not be alien life, but a vast part of an entire planet’s surface acting like one giant lava lamp is pretty cool, too.

8. The Giant People Who Live Under The Earth’s Crust

Most people look to space in the hopes of finding alien life; others search among us for those who may be “hybrids.” Yet there are also those who are convinced that much of the world above us is a sham and that the true secrets are beneath our feet—beneath the Earth. With the advent of social media, conspiracies that suggest that the Earth is nothing like people think are becoming more popular.

While many theorists like to claim that the Earth is flat, others say that it is hollow and that there is a completely separate world inside of it, which somehow has its own, functioning Sun despite being inside our Earth. According to these conspiracy claims, Admiral Byrd did not actually fly over the North Pole in the 1940s—he flew inside it. He discovered another world inside the Earth’s crust, and the government has been doing its best to cover up the story ever since.

Some conspiracy theorists also take seriously an old legend from a group of Scandinavians who were sailing and ended up near the Pole. The Scandinavians thought it strange that it started to get warmer instead of colder, and they suddenly found themselves sailing inside the Earth. They found a fantastic land full of rich bounty and kind, giant people who ate similarly giant fruits and vegetables. According to the conspiracy theorists, these beings are much smarter than we are and sometimes communicate through intermediaries in order to try to better steer humanity’s fate. Some even claim they secretly talk to the Dalai Lama.

7. The Secret Reptilian Aliens Who Control The World’s Governments

Most of us are already well aware of the theory about reptilians dreamed up by David Icke. The claim is that long ago, alien beings seeded themselves among us and held on to their power through the ages by keeping it in the family. Whether they have managed to keep all knowledge of their original roots or ways depends on the theory, but the claim is that these people are at least hybrids, are aware of it, and are using their connections and power to control the world. However, what many people don’t realize is that the main point of this theory is even more ridiculous than that.

The truth is that many details about the prior history of these reptilians were added to this theory much later to make it sound more plausible. The theory’s actual main evidence is simply that most people who are royalty or have spent time in a higher office are distant cousins or otherwise related. At the very least, people suggest that this is some kind of a conspiracy, even if it is not an extraterrestrial one.

However, all those people being related is not really that strange. Anyone who’s played the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” knows the theory that no two people are more than six people away in terms of introduction. Seeing how back in the day, many royal families married for political expediency, it doesn’t seem very odd that people in royalty or politics are distantly related or at least connected by marriage.

6. The Alien Woman Supposedly Spotted On The Martian Landscape

With the advent of the Internet, the community of conspiracy theorists has grown at an accelerated rate. These theorists are able to go through thousands of publicly available photos from NASA in the hopes of finding alien life or some evidence of suspicious government activity and quickly affirm the most bizarre theories inside their echo chamber of unreason and paranoia. Others are simply obsessed with the idea of finding alien life and will often convince themselves of its existence when there is no reason to think so.

A good example of this is the “Martian woman” story that popped up in 2015. People were sharing a photo taken by the Mars Curiosity rover that showed what some claimed to be an alien woman on Mars. As you might imagine, the photo was extremely unclear. Many people compared calling the image a person to seeing shapes in the clouds: the stirrings of imagination and nothing more. Others went so far as to claim that a rock in the picture might be the alien’s “house.”

CNET followed the story and could not get an explanation from NASA beyond their spokespeople saying it was likely people’s overactive imaginations. However, while they didn’t hear back from NASA, the folks at CNET did analyze the other photos from Mars Curiosity. They pointed out that, based on the rover’s scale, if the “woman” were an alien being, she would be an incredibly small fraction of our size.

5. The Real Men In Black May Be Our Government Messing With Us

While many suspect that the government is trying to hide the existence of alien life, some people think that it may actually be more complicated than that. According to them, there is evidence that former government agents have infiltrated UFO enthusiast circles and fed them fake information about UFOs, even going so far as to suggest that there was more government information to spill than there actually was.

Sometimes, these agents allegedly had full institutional help in order to fool gullible UFO enthusiasts. They even helped plant fake evidence to get people more riled up about the subject. This also gave the agents a way to monitor UFO groups to see if they were getting close to figuring out any of the actual military projects the government was working on, which was especially important at the time because they didn’t want the Russians to get wind of it.

This conspiracy theory suggests that the vast majority of alien lore is actually the government trying to intentionally confuse us in order to keep us and the Russians away from the truly important projects. This was also a great way for the government to explain away any strange things that happened due to experiments that didn’t go as planned.

4. Governments Are Aware Of More Than 80 Distinct Alien Species

Many theorists claim that governments around the world have already made contact with at least one alien species. Usually, the claims are that these aliens are benign and wish to help us or work with us in some way. There have also been stories about government officials coming out and saying there’s more going on than the public is being told. However, one particular story is unique in that its claims are far beyond the usual.

The theory goes that a high-up Canadian official confirmed that we contacted multiple alien species and worked with several different ones over the years. Where it gets even more insane is when the theorist claims that—thanks to information gleaned from government officials—we know there are at least 80 distinct, intelligent species of aliens.

Of course, the theory is somewhat hurt by the descriptions of these “alien” races. The vast majority of them look a lot like humans and read more like descriptions of different races in a video game than they do actual alien species. The more unique-looking ones are supposedly able to shift forms and move through different dimensions. For what it’s worth, the theorist emphasizes multiple times that he or she is “not just making this up.”

3. Venus Was Once Host To Earth-Like Life

Venus has long been known as Earth’s sister planet, despite the fact that Venus spins its own way in the universe and has an atmosphere that is incredibly toxic to those who live on our planet. The reason for the “sister” status is that scientists believe that Venus may have once been very much like Earth. It’s believed that Venus once had a lot more water on it and lost it over time. Some theories have suggested that Venus ended up with a runaway greenhouse gas effect on a level way worse than anything we are dealing with on Earth. Eventually, these greenhouse gases ended up causing Venus to lose its water and turned its atmosphere into something inhospitable to human life.

In recent years, studies have further confirmed this, suggesting that Venus was once a water-rich planet and may have been capable of supporting intelligent life of the human variety. This has led conspiracy theorists to wonder if perhaps Venus once was home to human-like species or if some Venusians managed to survive the cataclysm and evolve into a new breed of intelligent beings. The idea of intelligent life so close to Earth is very exciting to alien theorists.

2. Jesus Christ Was An Alien-Human Hybrid

For the longest time, most alien conspiracy theories focused on the time period between the Roswell incident and the present day. Recently, we have seen a rash of theories about alleged ancient alien visitors who came to our planet millennia ago and changed our culture and history forever. These theories tend to claim that if something done by ancient people can’t be explained with our knowledge of their technology, it was therefore done by alien visitors with technology far superior to ours. Many of these theorists believe that aliens lived among us through the early days of recorded history, and that some of them, or at least their hybrids, might still be alive today.

One of these theories suggests that Jesus Christ was actually an alien-human hybrid. The theorist points out that there are great similarities between the dream visits Mary receives and some of the strange stories you hear of people being abducted by aliens. They also suggest that the virgin birth was possible because the aliens artificially inseminated Mary during one of their abduction experiments.

The theorist goes on to point out all the important people in history who have similar origin stories of either a virgin birth or some kind of hybrid birth involving a so-called “god.” The suggestion is that many of our important figures were designed by aliens in order to influence the path of humanity. These figures would include the vast majority of early religious thinkers and philosophers.

1. Human DNA Has Been Irrevocably Tampered With And Altered By Past Alien Visitors

The same people who believe that ancient alien visitors are responsible for the pyramids, Jesus, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, all of the Mayan ruins, the Easter Island heads, and anything else made by early man, are also convinced that humans themselves could not have achieved their place in the world without the help of ancient aliens. Essentially, such theorists have decided to replace the traditional God with a group of nebulous sentient beings with vague motivations and advanced technology that might as well be magic, as far as our understanding is concerned.

Many not only believe in alien-human hybrids but think that human DNA was at one point greatly altered by alien visitors, either to jump-start our evolution, make us into better worker drones for the aliens’ purposes, or just to experiment on us to see what would happen. Recently, conspiracy theorists went crazy at the news that human DNA appeared to have foreign DNA in it, which couldn’t have occurred through natural evolution.

The explanation from scientists is that the foreign DNA is from microorganisms that were present in the same environment as developing humans, but the theorists are convinced that it is the result of deliberate tampering by ancient alien visitors.

{ http://listverse.com/ }

04-01-2018 om 01:16 geschreven door peter  

No Alien Megastructure: Star's Weird Dimming Likely Caused by Dust

03-01-2018 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

Mystery of 'Alien Megastructure' Star Has Been Cracked

Twinkle, twinkle, Tabby’s Star: Dips in brightness so bizarre. Could it be we’ve found ET? No, not yet! It’s dust we see.

By Nadia Drake

In what will almost certainly be disappointing news for alien aficionados — or at least those hoping for signs of E.T. — scientists have concluded that the deeply erratic twinkling of the most perplexing star in the sky is not the work of aliens, but dust.

For years, this enigmatic star in the constellation Cygnus baffled astronomers with its seemingly random dips in brightness. Larger and brighter than the sun and nicknamed Tabby’s Star, the stellar weirdo stepped into the spotlight when scientists proposed that alien-built megastructures could be sporadically causing it to darken as they crossed its face.

But new observations suggest the real culprit is dust — perhaps the remains of a planet or moon the star recently destroyed. So, even though plain old dust is considerably less exciting than crafty aliens, there’s still some cosmic sleuthing to be done.

“I love a really good mystery, and I especially love it when all our best ideas just go out the window. It means we get to have more fun,” says Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University. “The fact that it turned out to be boring old dust, as some would put it, is what everyone expected. But I’m gratified that we still have a nice healthy mystery to crunch on.”

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MYSTERY BLIPS

The mystery began in 2011, when citizen scientists with the Planet Hunters projectwere sorting through data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which spotted the signatures of more than 2,300 planets during its four years of primary observations. As planets pass between their stars and Earth, they cause brief and predictable blips in their stars’ light.

But the dips Kepler recorded from Tabby’s star didn’t correspond to anything remotely like a planet’s shadowy fingerprint. Instead, they appeared to be more intense and almost entirely random. Once alerted to the star, formally called KIC 8462852, astronomers couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for what they saw.

It just wasn’t behaving like any other star in the sky — and the strange dimming events were only part of the puzzle.

TIL: THAT'S NO MOON. IT'S ALIENS. (MAYBE.) 

In 2015 when alien megastructures were first proposed for Tabby's Star, the SETI Institute monitored the dimming star for signs of transmissions from alien life.

Hypotheses ranged from a swarm of comets orbiting the star, to a dusty debris disk surrounding a black hole between the star and Earth, to material within our own solar system, stellar fluctuations in Tabby’s Star, and finally, alien megastructures.

That idea, published by Wright in 2015, blasted the star into public consciousness, with news story after news story addressing the idea and each new clue fueling yet more coverage.

“I think the connection with SETI is absolutely the reason why the public interest in Tabby’s Star is so great,” says Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “We all wonder the same thing when we look up at the night sky: Is there anybody out there?”

STELLAR SLEUTHING

Motivated by the burgeoning mystery, teams of scientists combed through data spanning more than a century, looking for patterns that could reveal the source of the star’s enigmatic dimming. At first, it seemed as though the dips in starlight happened in roughly 800-day and 1,500-day increments, which might point to orbiting debris (now, scientists are not so sure about that). Other data suggested that independently of the individual blips, the star is consistently getting dimmer (now, scientists are not so sure about that, either).

Astronomers even pointed one of the planet’s most sensitive radio telescopes at the star, hoping to hear murmurs from a civilization intelligent enough to craft structures so large they sometimes block a substantial portion of the star’s light. They heard nothing.

In short, no explanation fit the available observations.

So astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, for whom the star is now informally named, launched a Kickstarter campaign that pulled in more than $100,000 and harnessed the power of a variety of ground-based instruments. Her goal? The catch the star in the act of dimming and get a better look at what might be blocking its light — in real time.

Observations began in March 2016 and continued through December 2017. And in May of last year, Boyajian got lucky: Her star began to dim. Almost immediately, nearly a dozen telescopes on Earth swiveled to stare at it, with scientists furiously collecting data in nearly every wavelength of light. After many months and four distinct dips (named Elsie, Celeste, Scara Brae and Angkor), the star was no longer visible to telescopes in the northern hemisphere.

“It was kind of surreal in a way to watch it happen in real time and be able to do what we have been saying we wanted to do for years: observe it in a dip,” she says.

Now, Boyajian and more than 200 collaborators have analyzed data from the last 22 months and report in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that dust is responsible for the dip — and that alien megastructures definitely are not.

The team knows this because whatever’s causing the dips is not a solid structure.

“If a solid, opaque object like a megastructure was passing in front of the star, it would block out light equally at all colors,” says Boyajian, at Louisiana State University. “This is contrary to what we observe.”

LISTENING FOR ALIENS 

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why unexplained radio signals from outer space shouldn't automatically be attributed to extraterrestrial life.

Instead, the dust filters different colors of light differently; put simply, it’s more like looking at starlight through a gossamer fabric than a rigid framework of Quadanium steel.

“Megastructures were always a long shot, but the history of how that came into the picture is valid. It had to be floated out there,” says Pennsylvania State University’s Steinn Sigurdsson, who proposed the idea of a debris-shrouded black hole.

DEATH STAR?

The source of the dust shrouding Tabby’s Star is still a mystery. Its behavior — producing dips of varying intensity and timing — is not what scientists would expect for clumps of material regularly circling the star, which should darken the star at predictable intervals as they swing around in orbit. As well, there are no indications that the dust is warm, which means it must be very far from the star. And the dust grains are incredibly small, much smaller than those in cigarette smoke, and so fine they should be blown outward by the star’s light.

That last observation means there must be some reservoir from which the dust is continually replenished — a hint that perhaps something catastrophic happened, or is still taking place, around Tabby’s Star. That is, if the dust is circumstellar, or surrounding the star.

“If it is circumstellar, we have to understand why a boring F star is doing this and how common it is,” Sigurdsson says. “Could be more than 10 percent of stars to account for us catching one in the act, which is also curious.”

In 2016, Columbia University’s Brian Metzger proposed that perhaps Tabby’s Star had recently pulverized a rocky planet or woebegotten moon that came too close, leaving a dusty, disconnected corpse in orbit. Or perhaps it shredded a swarm of icy objects like those that live beyond Neptune and were pushed in by the next star over, a small red dwarf.

The truth is that, even though scientists now know that Tabby’s Star’s mysterious behavior is not the work of aliens, they’re only marginally closer to explaining the interstellar puzzle.

“A lot of these things are tantalizing hints, and we’re not sure if they’re red herrings or the key to the puzzle,” Wright says. “It kind of feels like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. You’re not sure which clues are going to end up mattering in the end and which are a big waste of time.”

{ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ }

03-01-2018 om 23:13 geschreven door peter  

Astronauts identify microbes in space for the first time

BY MIHAI ANDRE

The International Space Station is becoming more and more independent. Now, astronauts can carry out microbial DNA sampling, which opens up exciting avenues for practical research.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins poses for a picture during the first sample initialization run of the Biomolecular Sequencer investigation.

Credits: NASA.

Space Germs

The mere idea of identifying microbes in space, without sending a probe back to Earth, was only a dream a few years ago. Now, thanks to the Genes in Space-3 project, NASA astronauts and biochemists have the ability to not only identify and treat microbial ailments in outer space but also potentially identify life on other planets. This also means that they can carry out a number of practical experiments in outer space — which they’ve already started.

The identification process has two parts: first, astronauts gather the microbial samples and subject them to Polymerase Chain Reaction — a technique commonly used in modern molecular biology to amplify copies of DNA segments across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence — then, they sequence and identify the microbes.

The first batch they sampled turned out to be regular microbes, like the ones commonly found in houses or anywhere that humans live. We truly tend to contaminate everything, and outer space seems to be no exception. What was somewhat surprising though was the sheer number of microbes they found on the space station.

“We have had contamination in parts of the station where fungi was seen growing or biomaterial has been pulled out of a clogged waterline, but we have no idea what it is until the sample gets back down to the lab,” said Sarah Wallace, NASA microbiologist and the project’s principal investigator at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“On the ISS, we can regularly resupply disinfectants, but as we move beyond low-Earth orbit where the ability for resupply is less frequent, knowing what to disinfect or not becomes very important,” said Wallace.

Independent sampling

The need for on-site germ sampling became even more evident after the Johnson Space Center was damaged by Hurricane Harvey. The ISS was unable to send samples back to Earth — including microbial samples. Furthermore, as future manned missions are expected to be longer and longer, monitoring microbial activity aboard a shuttle will be much more important.

However, that’s still far off. For now, the most exciting prospect is studying microbial behavior and distribution in microgravity. Previous research has shown that floating in microgravity can give some microbes an unexpected genetic boost. Basically, researchers have found an increase in expression of virulence factors in Salmonella Typhimurium and increased biofilm production in Staphylococcus aureus. However, it’s unclear if this stays true for other microbes, or if different species behave in different ways. Bacterial response to microgravity is an increasingly useful area of study, and it’s one which NASA is tackling head-on.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

03-01-2018 om 22:20 geschreven door peter  

KAART. Hier werden in 2017 ufo’s gespot in België - HLN.be

rvl 

Bron: Belga, Belgisch UFO-meldpunt

Het grootste aantal meldingen kwam uit de provincie Antwerpen (36), gevolgd door Oost-Vlaanderen (23) en West-Vlaanderen (22). Drie meldingen bleken vals en in 48 gevallen waren er onvoldoende gegevens. Er was in 2017 een uitzonderlijk hoog aantal ufo-waarnemingen die door een meteoor of ruimteschroot verklaard konden worden.

Het meldpunt ontving vorig jaar naar eigen zeggen veel foto- en filmmateriaal. Zo kreeg een video uit de Vlaams-Brabantse gemeente Weerde, gemaakt op 11 januari, in Nederland veel aandacht. Op de beelden is het vurige spoor van een meteoorsteen te zien die teruggevonden werd, nadat hij een gat door het dak van een schuur in het Nederlandse Broek in Waterland had geboord. Hiermee was de zesde meteoriet die ooit op Nederlandse bodem kon worden gerecupereerd een feit.

Sinds de oprichting in 2007 zijn door het meldpunt meer dan 2.000 meldingen verzameld, met als topjaar 2011 (342 waarnemingen). Voor de meeste werd een verklaring gevonden, maar er blijft volgens het meldpunt een handvol goed gedocumenteerde waarnemingen over waarvoor geen uitleg werd gevonden.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

03-01-2018 om 21:20 geschreven door peter  

Wetenschap verklaart waarom 374 miljoen jaar geleden bijna al het leven uitstierf - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

De vermoedelijke oorzaak van de massa-extinctie was een dramatische daling van het zuurstofgehalte in de oceanen. Die daling werd veroorzaakt door een samenloop van omstandigheden. De aarde kende toen, - in de geologische periode die we het Devoon noemen - een snelle verspreiding van landplanten door een warm en tropisch klimaat. Daardoor kwamen immense hoeveelheden plantenmateriaal in de oceaan terecht. De afbraak van die biomassa slorpte zoveel zuurstof op, dat het oceaanleven quasi onmogelijk werd.

Bovendien viel de massa-extinctie samen met een tijd waarin de aarde in een bijna perfect circulaire baan rond de zon draaide. Hierdoor waren er lange tijd geen extreme seizoenen en vielen verticale zeestromingen grotendeels stil door het gebrek aan temperatuurverschillen. Ook langs die weg kwam er dus geen vers zuurstof in het zeewater terecht.

“De massa-extinctie werd bespoedigd door de circulaire baan van de aarde rond de zon”, verduidelijkt De Vleeschouwer, die nu postdoctoraal vorser aan de universiteit van Bremen is. “Maar de oorzaak van het massaal verdwijnen van soorten is toch met grote waarschijnlijkheid de oververzadiging van de oceanen met plantenmateriaal op datzelfde moment.”

Mooie fossielen

De geologische bewijzen daarvan zijn terug te vinden in twee lagen zwarte schalie, een sedimentair gesteente dat ook in België te vinden is. Er werden geologische lagen bestudeerd in verschillende werelddelen, van Canada over de Verenigde Staten tot in China. Bij ons zijn de bewuste schalies onder meer te vinden in Sinsin, nabij Ciney. De donkere kleur geeft aan dat de gesteenten werden gevormd in een zuurstofarme omgeving. Bovendien zitten de gelaagde schalies vol met goed bewaarde fossielen en ander organisch materiaal, omdat het rottingsproces door gebrek aan zuurstof niet op gang kwam.

“De vorming van de jongste zwarte schalielaag valt volledig binnen een cyclus van 405.000 jaar”, aldus De Vleeschouwer. “Deze laag geeft de zwaarste extinctiegolf aan. Daarna recupereerden de oceanen stilaan. In de laatste 374 miljoen jaar is dezelfde circulaire baan van de aarde al meer dan duizend keer opnieuw voorgekomen, maar telkens zonder een massa-extinctie tot gevolg. Dat betekent volgens mij dat de oorzaak niet in de veranderende aardbaan, noch in de afstand van de aarde tot de zon gezocht moet worden. De astronomische omstandigheden hebben de massa-extinctie wél bevorderd en voor de ideale omstandigheden gezorgd.”

Uitsterfrondes

De massa-extinctie in het Devoon was overigens niet de eerste, noch de laatste die onze planeet te beurt viel. Ook tijdens het Ordovicium, omstreeks 450 miljoen jaar geleden, was er al eens een grote uitsterfronde op aarde. De volgende was de dubbele massa-extinctie in het Devoon, met de zwarte schalies als geologisch bewijs. 250 miljoen jaar geleden, tijdens de overgang van het Perm naar het Trias, volgde er nog eentje. Op het einde van datzelfde Trias kwam er zelfs nog een tweede uitstervingsgolf, zo’n 200 miljoen jaar geleden.

Daarna duurde het tot in het Krijt, ongeveer 66 miljoen jaar geleden, toen een meteorietinslag het einde inluidde van de dinosauriërs. Toekomstig onderzoek zal moeten uitwijzen welke rol de baan van de aarde rond de zon gespeeld heeft tijdens deze andere massa-extincties.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

03-01-2018 om 20:55 geschreven door peter  

What would Stephen do?

When it comes to scientific mysteries, sorry Neil deGrasse but that’s the question most people ask … what would theoretical physicist and recognized smartest person on the planet Stephen Hawking do, think or predict? On the other hand, when it comes to UFO mysteries … who ya gonna call?

“They should be talking to Stephen Hawking. He’s a brilliant man, I would like to hear his thoughts on it. They said they’re talking to some other theoretical physicists like him about the possibilities.”

Retired US Navy pilot commander David Fravor has been the go-to guy for UFO comments ever since Luis Elizondo revealed he ran a UFO research department at the Pentagon named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and released two videos of US military pilots chasing UFOs, one of whom is Fravor. The Sun Online reported this week that he wants more investigation of the Stephen Hawking kind.

“I honestly don’t think humans have that technology to do what that thing did. Nor could the human body withstand accelerations like that. It’s an incredible technology to be able to go up to space, and back down and hang over the water. We physically saw and chased it and are the only ones that have actually got close to one of these things.”

While Stephen Hawking wasn’t there and can’t go up in a fighter jet today, he’s still smart enough to watch the video and use his genius powers to discern what Commander David Fravor and the other pilots saw, right? Or has he already stated his case?

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

Hawking said that in 2010. Commander Fravor saw his UFO in 2004 and he as well as the rest of us are still around and not on a reservation in the Kuiper Belt.

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

Hawking is concerned about alien encounters but he’s doing more than just thinking. He’s involved with the Breakthrough Listen project, which supports listening for alien signals – an activity Hawking believes is safer for the human race than sending signals into space in hopes aliens hear us – and supported monitoring Oumuamua, the interstellar asteroid that some proposed was actually a spaceship.

What would Stephen Hawking think after viewing Fravor’s UFO video? Would his theoretical physicist side see evidence that identifies what it really is? Would his alien-fearing side issue a warning that chasing sophisticated alien aircrafts with fighter jets is like Native Americans throwing tomahawks at armed European ‘explorers’? Would he tell us to leave him alone so he can watch the “Big Bang Theory” marathon?

Your move, Professor Hawking.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

03-01-2018 om 20:37 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX to launch Top-Secret “Zuma” Satellite this Friday - What are they monitoring in Space?

As we have reported, from December 22 to December 26, 2017 four superpower Nations; US (SpaceX), Russia, Japan and China have carried out rocket/missile launches, all carrying satellites and on January 1, 2018 the NASA HD camera on board the International Space Station recorded a cigar-shaped objectat the moment it is leaving the atmosphere.

Yet another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch these week!

The mysterious Zuma payload sits atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A.

Credit: SpaceX/Space.com.

The liftoff which was originally planned for mid-November is now scheduled for January 5, 2018 between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. EDT Friday (Jan. 5; 0100 to 0300 GMT Jan. 6) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, according to Space.com.

The payload which sits atop the Falcon 9 rocket is a top-secret government satellite named Zuma and built by defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

The Zuma mission only became public in October, when NASASpaceflight.com reported on documents that SpaceX had filed with the Federal Communications Commission, requesting authorization for a mysterious “Mission 1390" reports TheVerge.com.

Northrop Grumman has confirmed that it procured Zuma's launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the U.S. government but has not released any further information on the spacecraft except that the Falcon 9 will deliver Zuma to low-Earth orbit, a range of altitudes that extends up to about 2,000 kilometers above the planet, reports Space.com.

So far, it's unclear which agency is in charge of the Zuma project and the NRO, (National Reconnaissance Office) which usually announces the launches of its spy spacecraft, said that Zuma doesn’t belong to the agency, according to TheVerge.com.

With all the questionable launches before and now the classified Zuma mission which is really shrouded in mystery we ask ourselves again “Is there “Something” in space that needs to be monitored?”

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

03-01-2018 om 20:05 geschreven door peter  

Just a few days from now we will be marking the 10th anniversary of the Stephenville, Texas wave of UFO activity and encounters. It was a wave which caught the attention of not just UFO researchers, but also much of the world’s media – and the U.S. military, too. There is no doubt that the case was – and still is – steeped in intrigue and mystery. And, as the tenth anniversary looms large on the horizon, there’s also no doubt that there are still enough weird leads and strange aspects to the story to allow for a new investigation of the case. Let’s take a look at the timeline and how things went down.

It was on January 7 that matters really kicked off in Stephenville – and in big-time fashion, too. Consider the following, from Associated Press, on January 14: “…In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO. Several dozen people – including a pilot, county constable and business owners – insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.”

Steve Allen, the owner of a freight company was quoted as saying: “People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times.” No wonder Allen was so vocal: he said he saw a massive craft in the skies above, somewhere in the region of one-mile in length and half-a-mile in width. He said that the object was “positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.”

Intriguingly, witnesses claimed to have seen military F-16 aircraft pursuing the gigantic aerial vehicle. This, however, was denied by staff at the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, Texas. Major Karl Lewis stated with respect to this issue, on January 15, that no F-16 aircraft were in the skies of Stephenville on the night of the 7th. The military suggested that they were “90 percent sure this was an airliner. With the sun’s angle, it can play tricks on you.”

Needless to say, the local media were quick to report on the matter. The Fort Worth-based Star Telegram newspaper told its readers the following, also on January 15: “Stephenville’s latest close encounter is weirder than any light in the sky. Stephenville is under assault – not by Martians, but by people hunting them. The phones haven’t stopped ringing at Steve Allen’s trucking company in nearby Glen Rose. He’s the guy who was out Jan. 7 watching the sunset at a friend’s house near Selden when they all saw some weird flashing lights. Now he can’t work for all the calls from London and around the world. Some of the callers are scarier than space aliens.’I’ll be OK,’ he joked Tuesday, ‘as long as I don’t get abducted.'”

Also on the 15th, The Raw Story had its say on the mysterious matter: “Dozens of eyewitnesses have reported seeing a mile-long UFO being pursued by fighter jets last week in the small town of Stephenville, Texas. ‘It was very intense bright lights…and they spanned a wide area,’ said one woman. NBC News spoke with County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan, who offered a somewhat different description. ‘I saw two red glows,’ he said. ‘I never seen anything like that, never.'”

Just over a week later, specifically on January 24, things turned both intriguing and strange. Staff at the Dallas Morning Newsexplained exactly why: “The U.S. military has owned up to having F-16 fighters in the air near Stephenville on the night that several residents reported unusual lights in the sky. But the correction issued Wednesday doesn’t exactly turn UFOs into Identified Flying Objects. Several dozen witnesses reported that they had seen unusual lights in the sky near Stephenville shortly after dusk Jan. 8. One sighting included a report that the lights were pursued by military jets. Military officials had repeatedly denied that they had any flights in the area that night.”

The Air Force stated of this new and eye-opening development: “In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affair realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft. Ten F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron were performing training operations from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday January 8, 2008, in the Brownwood Military Operating Area (MOA), which includes the airspace above Erath County.” It had all been down to an “internal communications error.”

Even more controversial were the claims that (a) the United Nations had gotten involved in the investigation and (b) the Stephenville affair was secretly orchestrated by New World Order-types to give the impression of an alien invasion – and for those behind the ruse to then sit back and watch the reaction. In other words, the people of Earth were being deceived into thinking that we were being invaded, when, in reality, it was a sinister program designed to allow for a further erosion of our rights and freedoms – and to achieve this by claiming that an alien attack was imminent. Of course, no-one should be surprised to learn that these two issues were never proved to be true.

As all of the above shows, there is enough data – including conflicting data and controversial claims – to warrant a new investigation, now that the 10th anniversary is upon us.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

03-01-2018 om 01:37 geschreven door peter  

It’s a common scene in many science fiction movies – a giant alien spaceship shows up, opens a door and releases thousands of tiny aircraft that attack and destroy everything that moves until someone finds a glitch in their software or a way to stop them from returning to mama for refueling and saves humanity until Jeff Goldblum is ready to do a sequel. Why don’t humans ever use this mothership-baby drones strategy? Get ready for a new movie plot because it’s coming soon from DARPA and the tiny terrors will carry the sinister name “Gremlins.”

“To help make that technology a reality, DARPA has launched the Gremlins program. Named for the imaginary, mischievous imps that became the good luck charms of many British pilots during World War II, the program envisions launching groups of UASs from existing large aircraft such as bombers or transport aircraft—as well as from fighters and other small, fixed-wing platforms—while those planes are out of range of adversary defenses. When the gremlins complete their mission, a C-130 transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.”

That description of a flying aircraft carrier full of tiny-but-deadly unmanned air systems (UASs) comes from DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) itself in an announcement that Dynetics, a private defense contractor, and General Atomics, the maker of the ubiquitous Predator drones, will be competing to build the best Gremlin ‘full-scale technology demonstration system’ to be ready for testing by 2019. To win, the Gremlins must be able to be deployed, returned and reused at least 20 times. The mothership/flying aircraft carrier is currently a massive Air Force C-130 transport plane but that is expected to be replaced by a stealth bomber, enabling it to invade enemy airspace invisibly before opening its doors and dropping the drones.

DARPA depiction of the Gremlins

And what exactly will the drones do next?

‘Within this concept of operations, a Gremlins system would provide options for delivering small Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and other non-kinetic payloads to the battlespace in a manner that is robust and responsive. Responsiveness is achieved through the use of conventional aircraft hosts to transport and launch a volley of gremlins from stand-off ranges. Furthermore, by scaling up the number of systems engaged in operations, the impact of a loss of any individual gremlin is reduced.’

The “official” word is that the drones will initially act as cheap, disposable spy aircraft. That’s it?

Of course not. The Gremlins will undoubtedly be expected to live up to their original RAF reputation – using their small size and large quantity to sneak into dangerous territories, annoy and attack enemy pilots and escape before being detected to return to their stealth mothership for fuel, more weapons and further orders.

We’re back, baby!

Is the Gremlin-bearing invisible flying aircraft carrier the future of aerial warfare? No question about it – as long as the enemy doesn’t figure out how to hack the system and turn our own Gremlins against us. Unfortunately, that’s not just a great movie plot.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

03-01-2018 om 01:16 geschreven door peter