Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
15-01-2018
A wolf has been spotted in Belgium for the first time in 100 years
A wolf has been spotted in Belgium for the first time in 100 years
At the beginning of the 20th century, the wolf disappeared from most areas of Western Europe. They were seen as dangerous pests and were actively hunted or restricted by industrialization and landscape fragmentation. However, the tides have turned and the wolf is viewed as an important protected species. Its return to Europe has been accordingly encouraged.
Wolves are back
Wolves are important keystone predators. They control prey species populations, like deer, which then causes positive effects that trickle down to other animals, plants, and even the landscape. The largest documented success has been in Yellowstone Park, where the recent reintroduction of wolves has the caused the increase of a large number of unexpected species, such as trout, birds of prey, and the pronghorn.
The Bern Convention in 1979 was fundamental in changing the way that wolves are viewed. They are now considered “a fundamental element of our natural European heritage” andgiven protection and there are strategies in place to aid their re-colonization of Europe.
A European grey wolf.
Image credits: Katerina Hlavata.
The last country in continental Europe to have wolves return is Belgium. Now a wolf has been spotted earlier this month in Flanders, a region in the north of the country. It had an electronic tracking collar and was thus identified as coming from Germany. It had previously been touring in the Netherlands around Christmas time. A camera may have captured night footage of a wolf in southern Belgium in 2011, but it was never confirmed and therefore not considered an official spotting.
“Our country was the only one in continental Europe to have not been visited by a wolf,” since the animal began recolonizing the continent, the environmental group Landschap said.
Coexisting
Environmental groups have welcomed the news and are asking the government to further encourage the wolves’ return and to implement a system where farmers whose livestock is killed by wolves are compensated. Indeed, the social aspect is a very important one to consider when bringing back large predators to Western Europe.
The greatest conflicts since the return of wolves have been with farmers. In areas that have always had wolves, like Romania and Poland, a livestock attack is considered an unfortunate accident. However, in areas where wolves are newly returning to, farmers are unhappy with their presence. In France, wolves killed over 8,000 farm animals (mostly sheep) in 2017 alone. The government responded by ordering a wolf cull of up to 40 wolves by July 2018. It is a careful balance between supporting farmers and wolves. It is critical to include the social aspect in making wolf introduction plans to aid their success.
This is an opinion post by Justin Curmi and does not necessarily represent the position or opinion of ZME Science.
The Fermi’s Paradox explores the idea of how there are is a virtually limitless number of stars, but you don’t see much life floating around. What is the reason for this paradox?
Perhaps Enrico Fermi, the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, addressed this matter incorrectly. There could be two other explanations for this: firstly, the way we conceptualize space might be incorrect. We might be a part of a larger whole — just like some indigenous groups are still isolated from advanced technology around them, we might be unaware of the broader picture.
Alternatively, space might be at a specific phase of its development. In this case, the question should be “In what phase are we in space’s development?” Let’s elaborate.
Planetary systems emerge at different times but they can be viewed in a similar light as the inhabitants of Earth, in a sense. Evolution tends to leave clues of its work (for example neanderthal DNA in humans), which can be an indication of the rate that a sentient life takes time to form, as well as the other random variables that influence it. So, if a planetary system has the potentiality of supporting life, one should consider these inner and outside (meteorites, radiation, gravity, and so on) influences that affect life.
In addition, life has so far been the process of surpassing different spatial dimensions, therefore one needs to calculate why one life form transcends and another does not. Moreover, it seems that sentient life forms, like humans, tend to want to surpass these spatial dimensions. Would it be possible to go breach the current three spatial dimensions? That is still an open question.
A diagram of the geological timescale.
Image via Wikipedia.
In a way, geological formations also follow a similar path as evolution, though the rate for geological formations is much slower than life’s evolution; th
s one could speculate that space must have variables and a rate influencing its development. The only thing to figure is the rate at which space develops. This rate might be much slower than geological formations. Once we found this rate out, it could have large implications on human society in general. For instance, spaceships may be viewed as the wheel of our time because we are just learning how to probe the vast depths of space and traverse it. In addition, what does this mean for humans? Will we start developing around these new discoveries and technologies we are creating as earlier humans did for math?
It’s not just about practicality. If humans are able to conceptualize different worlds through math, this could also lead to revolutions in the arts. Artist could utilize simple maths to design their works. Future humans might employ a more advanced system of mathematics to create their art, and an advanced structure to construct it. All the arts they may create would be beyond current human comprehension due to the fact their senses will develop around this new form of thinking. Ultimately, art will increasingly become more advanced as our brains continue to develop new systems of conceptualizing our world.
Almost everything else will become increasingly more complex: interstellar infrastructure, universal agriculture, planetary currency, and so on. Mankind is continually in the process of dominating their surroundings, which will lead us to model our different collective belief and philosophical systems around the new information and thoughts we develop.
The humanities and science are pointing towards this direction of progress, and if we stagnate as humans have before one must consider the ramifications. There will be times of great anguish and jubilance, as history has demonstrated. Life will find a way as it has for eons.
A new artificial intelligence (AI) developed by the Alibaba Group has humans beaten on their own turf — the software has outperformed humans in a global reading comprehension test.
Image credits herval / Flickr.
China’s biggest online commerce company is making big strides in the field of artificial intelligence. The Alibaba Group has developed a machine-learning model which scored higher than human users on the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQAD), a large-scale reading comprehension test with more than 100,000 questions. On January 11, the AI scored 82.44 on the test, compared to 82.304 scored by humans.
It’s the first time an AI has outperformed people in this task and has done so in style — SQAD is considered one of the world’s most authoritative machine-reading gauges.
Computer speak good now
Computers have shown they can gain the upper hand against human players in all sort of complex tasks now — most strikingly in games such as chess. However, all these tasks had one common feature: they were all structured in such a way that a sharp memory and awesome computing capability represented huge assets.
Up to now, however, languages were always seen as a human field par excellence. So this win might be a bit more nerve-wracking than those before. Looking towards the future, the win has huge implications in society, especially in the customer service sector.
These jobs were traditionally insulated from the effects of automation, relying on armies of call-center employees even while factories swapped workers for robots. As someone who has had the distinct misfortune of working in a call center, I can only wish the robots good luck, endless patience, and a blanket apology. However, the advent of this AI points to profound shifts to come in the sector, and many people, unlike me, actually like/need those jobs — for them, this does not bode well.
It’s also a nerve-wracking to see AIs make such huge strides since, just two months ago, another Chinese AI passed the medical exam.
The Alibaba Group has worked closely with Ali Xiaomi, a mobile customer service chatbot which can be customised by retailers on Alibaba’s online market platform to suit their needs. Si Luo, a chief scientist at Alibaba’s research arm, said that the result means simple questions, such as “why does it rain?”, can be answered with a high degree of accuracy by machines.
“We believe the underlying technology can be gradually applied to numerous applications such as customer service, museum tutorials, and online response to inquiries from patients, freeing up human efforts in an unprecedented way,” Si said.
Ali Xiaomi was designed to identify the questions raised by customers and then look for the most relevant answers from pre-prepared documents. This made it a suitable platform for the new AI, as the processes that Ali Xiaomi uses are, in broad lines, the same ones that underpin the Stanford test.
Still, despite its superhuman result, Alibaba researchers say that the system is still somewhat limited. It works best with questions that have clear-cut answers; if the language is too vague, or the expression too ungrammatical, the bot likely won’t work properly. Similarly, if there’s no prepared answer, the bot will likely malfunction.
It’s easier than ever to contribute to science, and this study proves it best. Amateur astronomers using an online platform have discovered five rocky planets orbiting a far-off star.
To make things even more exciting, the planets are orbiting in an interesting mathematical relationship called a resonance chain — every planet takes 50% longer to orbit than the previous one.
Artist’s concept of a top-down view of the K2-138 system discovered by citizen scientists, showing the orbits and relative sizes of the five known planets. Orbital periods of the five planets, shown to scale, fall close to a series of 3:2 mean motion resonances. This indicates that the planets orbiting K2-138, which likely formed much farther away from the star, migrated inward slowly and smoothly.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Citizen scientists
In March 2017, the initial prototype of Exoplanet Explorers was set up on Zooniverse, a citizen science web portal headquartered at Oxford University. Exoplanet Explorers had amateur astronomers analyze data from NASA’s Kepler telescope trails — it was data which had never been analyzed by astronomers. Just 48 hours after the project was launched, researchers had received 2 million classifications from more than 10,000 users.
“People anywhere can log on and learn what real signals from exoplanets look like, and then look through actual data collected from the Kepler telescope to vote on whether or not to classify a given signal as a transit, or just noise,” said co-author Dr Jessie Christiansen, from Caltech in Pasadena.
The system required several people to look at the data and indicate an interesting objective.
“We have each potential transit signal looked at by a minimum of 10 people, and each needs a minimum of 90 percent of ‘yes’ votes to be considered for further characterization,” Christiansen.
After going through the entire dataset, scientists analyzed the demographics of the discovered planets: 44 Jupiter-sized planets, 72 Neptune-sized, 44 Earth-sized, and 53 so-called Super Earth’s — rocky planets larger than Earths but smaller than Neptune.
An artist’s depiction of K2-138. This is brutally inaccurate, as all five planets are in close proximity to the host star. There’s no way water would exist on the surface, as portrayed here. Come on NASA, you’re better than this.
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech).
Astronomers were thrilled to see that among the finds there was a system of five planets, all of which were slightly larger than Earth, ranging between 1.6 and 3.3 times the radius of Earth. The planets are locked in a phenomenon called orbital resonance. This means that there’s a simple mathematical relationship between the planets’ orbital periods. In this case, it’s 3:2 — each planet’s orbit is 50% longer than the previous one. This resonance chain of five planets is the longest one ever discovered, though other chains have also been discovered.
“The clockwork-like orbital architecture of this planetary system is keenly reminiscent of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter,” says Konstantin Batygin, assistant professor of planetary science and Van Nuys Page Scholar, who was not involved with the study. “Orbital commensurabilities among planets are fundamentally fragile, so the present-day configuration of the K2-138 planets clearly points to a rather gentle and laminar formation environment of these distant worlds.”
Space music
This unusual relationship gets even more interesting. Data also revealed a sixth planet, still in resonance, but which it skips two slots in the resonance chain. This might indicate a missing planet, or it might indicate another, unknown process.
It’s even more intriguing that this resonance coincides with a perfect fifth, an interval found commonly found in music. However, the interval isn’t exactly perfect. Instead of the ratio being exactly 1.5 (3:2), it’s 1.513, 1.518, 1.528, and 1.544 respectively. This yields another similarity to music, where musicians often tune their instruments just slightly off from a perfect-fifth to avoid the annoying “beat” that occurs when the tuning is too perfect.
The planets are locked in orbital resonance — like a musical perfect fifth.
Image via Wikipedia.
Even so, the most interesting thing about these planets is the way they were found. Nowadays, there’s just too much available data and not enough researchers to look at it. Algorithms are also limited in their scope. Having the sheer brain processing power of thousands of volunteers is simply irreplaceable.
“It’s really hard to tell the computer to find everything that looks like a blip, but not ‘that’ kind of blip or ‘that’ kind of blip or ‘that’ kind of blip. So we just tell the computer to find all the blips and we’ll check.”
“We just uploaded 55,000 new potential planetary signals,” Christiansen says. “We would never be able to get through all of the signals we have without our volunteers.”
WASHINGTON - The US military has begun testing AI brainimplants that can change a person’s mood on humans. These ‘mind control’ chips emit electronic pulses that alter brain chemistry in a process called ‘deep brainstimulation.’
If they prove successful, the devices could be used to treat a number of mental health conditions and to ensure a better response to therapy.
The chips are the work of scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the USDepartment of Defense which develops new technologies for the military.
Researchers from the University of California (UC) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) designed them to use artificial intelligence algorithms that detect patterns of activity associated with mood disorders.
Once detected, they can shock a patient’s brain back into a healthy state automatically. Experts believe the chips could be beneficial to patients with a range of illnesses, from Parkinson’s disease to chronic depression.
Speaking to Nature, Edward Chang, a neuroscientist at the University of California, said: ‘We’ve learned a lot about the limitations of our current technology.
‘The exciting thing about these technologies is that for the first time we’re going to have a window on the brainwhere we know what’s happening in the brain when someone relapses.’
The chips were tested in six people who have epilepsy and already have electrodes implanted in their brains to track their seizures. Through these electrodes, the researchers were able to track what was happening in their brains throughout the day.
Older implants are constantly doing this, but the new approach lets the team deliver a shock as and when is needed.
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Government UFO Disclosure Begins
Government UFO Disclosure Begins
Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell said after his Apollo 14 Moon flight in 1971 that UFOs are real and all humanity should ask is where do they come from.
The prospect of UFOs has indeed raised countless questions for centuries. Many are afraid of the occupants as they may be hostile, but others think they may be friendly. Others argue that those UFOs have no occupants at all.
Researchers have been finding ways to communicate them, but so far no result or not yet disclosed. It is not yet determined what power these travelers are using. There have inquiries if aliens believe in God. Questions about UFOs and alien occupants are seemingly endless.
However, one question has been finally answered. UFOs exist as the world now knows. The Pentagon had spent $22 million on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program up until 2012. The program tested theories about alien craft interfering in the airspace and even reportedly collected physical evidence from them.
According to the billionaire investor of the project Robert Bigelow, who is also a longtime UFO researcher, his company collected audio and video recordings of reported UFO incidents for the American military. Among the videos was the one that involved a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet surrounded by a radiant glow moving at high speed and gyrating as it moved. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are witnessing.
Interestingly, Bigelow also claims that his company stored different materials recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena, including metal alloys. He further states that he is convinced of the existence of aliens and that UFOs have visited Earth.
The Department of Defense has never before announced – in collaboration with major news corporations and private sector – with such intentional solemnity that unidentified flying objects are real. It may be just logical to assume that official disclosure is coming or when the public is ready to accept what happened entirely. The speculation and denial of this subject for much too long may be coming to an end and that everything is about to change. The disclosure will most likely a paradigm shift in the way humanity perceives our place in the universe.
This UFO sighting video was filmed over Memphis, Tennessee on 24th December 2017.
Witness report:
I saw two objects in the sky which seemed to be orbs floating in sky
I was headed back home after Christmas celebrations with my brother. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful sunset. I grabbed my phone and took a few pictures. I decided to get closer to get better pics. I was headed West on I40 when i got to the Sycamore View exit is when I saw these two objects. Turned on video on phone and headed toward these things. Found a safe space to pull over and began recording. These glowing orbs would set real still when a plane would pass and after plane was past them they seemed to move close to each other and what seemed to me tried to communicate with each other. You can see on video that one hides behind a cloud as a plane passes. The clouds seemed not to be moving. I was thrilled to see these things because I kept my wits this time.(saw the UFO ya’ll did a show on from a UFO that was seen in Memphis back in 77 and i freaked out and was scared because I was only 17 which I would love to tell about also cause i was less than 500 yards from that UFO even seeing the top of that UFO). I finally lost sight when I tried to readjust my camera
Vliegende schotel hangt minutenlang boven vliegveld, maar onderzoek blijft uit. Rara, hoe kan dat?
Vliegende schotel hangt minutenlang boven vliegveld, maar onderzoek blijft uit. Rara, hoe kan dat?
Onlangs publiceerde de New York Times een artikel over het geheime UFO-programma van het Pentagon. Eén van de auteurs van dat artikel, Leslie Kean, was donderdag te gast in Tucker Carlson Tonight op Fox News.
Het programma hield zich bezig met waarnemingen van vliegende objecten die niet konden worden verklaard en het verzamelen van onbekende materialen uit UFO’s.
“We weten dat er objecten in de lucht – en soms ook in het water – zijn die in staat zijn tot buitengewone dingen,” zei Kean. “Dingen waarvan experts zeggen dat ze op aarde niet mogelijk moeten zijn.”
Weigerde
Ze voegde toe dat UFO’s al vele jaren in de Verenigde Staten en in andere landen worden bestudeerd en dat er veel meer van dit soort programma’s zijn.
Carlson verwees vervolgens naar een waarneming op 7 november 2006 op O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, waar een piloot op klaarlichte dag een vliegende schotel boven zijn vliegtuig zag.
Hij vroeg zich af waarom de Amerikaanse luchtvaartautoriteit FAA weigerde een onderzoek in te stellen, terwijl het object werd gezien door tientallen mensen.
Schokkend
“Dit is schokkend,” zei Kean. “Ik denk dat ze het niet hebben onderzocht omdat ze zoiets niet kunnen verklaren.”
“Ze zeggen niet graag dat er iets boven het vliegveld heeft gehangen waarvan ze niet weten wat het was,” voegde ze toe.
“En dus bedenken ze andere verklaringen voor dit fenomeen, dat het een weerfenomeen of iets dergelijks was,” aldus Kean.
Belediging
Dat is een belediging voor de piloot en anderen die duidelijk zagen dat het geen weerfenomeen was, zei ze. “Het was een metaalkleurig, schijfvormig object dat vijf minuten bleef hangen.”
“Vervolgens schoot het recht omhoog de wolken in,” zei Kean. “Dit is een zeer indrukwekkend aspect van de waarneming omdat er een gat in de wolken was ontstaan.”
Voor zover bekend hebben wij geen machines die zoiets kunnen doen, besloot ze.
Mysterieuze signalen uit ver sterrenstelsel trekken aandacht van alienjagers. Dit hebben ze ontdekt
Mysterieuze signalen uit ver sterrenstelsel trekken aandacht van alienjagers. Dit hebben ze ontdekt
Alienjagers doen momenteel onderzoek naar radiogolven afkomstig uit een sterrenstelsel op grote afstand van de aarde.
In augustus vorig jaar zijn wetenschappers van het Breakthrough Listen-project een object genaamd FRB 121102 gaan analysren.
Het object is één van de minder dan 40 bekende voorbeelden van snelle radioflitsen, zeer heldere flitsen die slechts een fractie van een seconde duren.
Antwoord
Wetenschappers weten nog niet hoe ze worden veroorzaakt en om die reden zijn ze dan ook erg geïnteresseerd in FRB 121102.
Vishal Gajjar, één van de wetenschappers van Breakthrough Listen, is sceptisch en denkt persoonlijk niet dat de flitsen afkomstig zijn van een buitenaardse intelligentie.
Hij gelooft niet dat een beschaving zo’n krachtig signaal zou creëren omdat het dan buitengewoon lang zou duren voordat je antwoord krijgt.
Extreem
De radiogolven van FRB 121102 hebben er drie miljard jaar over gedaan om de aarde te bereiken. De beschaving die de boodschap heeft verstuurd is misschien al lang dood, denkt Gajjar.
Daarnaast komt het signaal uit een omgeving met een extreem krachtig magnetisch veld. Gajjar zei tegen Space.com dat deze omstandigheden waarschijnlijk te extreem zijn voor een buitenaardse beschaving.
Uitsluitsel
De onderzoekers ontdekten dat sommige van de radioflitsen tussen 0,00003 en 0,009 seconden duurden. Op basis daarvan schatten ze dat het object een doorsnee heeft van ongeveer 10 kilometer.
On January 7th, a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral on a classified mission called Zuma which involved deploying a mysterious Northrup Grumman satellite for an undisclosed U.S. government agency. As usual, SpaceX broadcast the launch live on its website … until the satellite was about to be launched. Then, according to what was later described as standard procedure for secret payloads, the video feed was shut down. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell called the mission a success … sort of.
“For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night. If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately.”
That statement was in response to claims by media outlets,including ABC News, that satellite trackers could not find the Zuma satellite and that its deployment may have malfunctioned, causing its demise and fatal plunge into the Indian Ocean … an event which was covered up for security reasons.
Or was it?
The degrees of secrecy and finger-pointing surrounding Zuma are unusual, even for the government, defense contractors and the military. Tim Paynter, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman Corp., said, “we cannot comment on classified missions.” Army Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, the Pentagon spokesman for space policy, referred questions to SpaceX. SpaceX is sticking by its story that it did nothing wrong on its part.
So where is Zuma?
One theory by space experts is that there was a problem with the payload fairing — the protective nose cone that covers the payload during the launch. There was some talk that payload fairing issues had been the reason the flight was delayed. Another theory is that payload adapter – the device responsible for launching the satellite – malfunctioned and destroy the payload. The third theory is that SpaceX is telling the truth (sort of) and the satellite (or whatever the payload was) malfunctioned after launch.
And yet, no party involved is willing to confirm or deny any of these possibilities, so … crank up the conspiracy mill.
Could it be possible that Zuma is so far advanced in stealth technology that it’s actually in orbit but even the most sophisticated ground trackers can’t detect it? Was the crash faked to cover this up? Could it be that Zuma’s secret mission was so top secret and brief that whoever owned it intentionally destroyed it? Could it be that Zuma was not a satellite but some sort of space plane or vehicle that was never intended to be placed in orbit but instead flew to the ground? Was it an emergency escape vehicle?
We already distrust the government and traditional defense contractors. Is it time to seriously question the true missions of launches by SpaceX and Elon Musk?
Over the last several years, the search for alien life has been heating up thanks to discoveries made both in space and here on Earth, prompting one top SETI researcher to predict that we’re only a decade or two away from finally discovering we’re not alone. While we all wish humanity’s first contact will resemble Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the truth is we are likely going to discover microbial life in space long before we make contact with intelligent bipedal aliens. But hey, microbes are cool right? They’re certainly a lot less frightening than green men with ray guns.
If only.
Two discoveries this week may further add the likelihood that our first cosmic neighbors will be of the microscopic variety. First, a new study found that Jupiter’s moon Europa displays evidence of active plate tectonics, indicating there is likely a subsurface ocean beneath the moon’s surface. Plate tectonics could also mean that the salts on Europa’s surface could potentially be reaching such an ocean and creating nutrients that any alien ocean life would need to survive. So, while not quite a discovery of life, it’s a discovery of a possibility of sustaining life. That’s hopeful.
The icy surface of Jupter’s moon Europa could be hiding a nutrient rich ocean. Or nothing.
Next, a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales in Australia have discovered a form of life unlike anything they’ve seen, and it might indicate that life in space could be more common and robust than we think. The team gathered soil samples from some of the most barren, ice-free parts of Antarctica, and traces of microbial DNA were found in some of the These environments are extremely hostile to life and offer almost no capacity to produce energy even through photosynthesis, so the team was quite surprised to find that any microbes could live there.
Adam’s Flat, Antarctica, where one of the samples was taken.
Study senior author and UNSW scientist Associate Professor Belinda Ferrari says all the evidence points to the bacteria essentially “eating” air, offering us new possibilities for how and where life can be found:
We found that the Antarctic microbes have evolved mechanisms to live on air instead, and they can get most of the energy and carbon they need by scavenging trace atmospheric gases, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This new understanding about how life can still exist in physically extreme and nutrient-starved environments like Antarctica opens up the possibility of atmospheric gases supporting life on other planets.
Their findings have been published in Nature. The discovery of these bacteria builds on similar findings which have been showing that microbes can sustain themselves just about anywhere, using whatever resources are available – even eating radiation. Life could be lurking almost anywhere in space, clinging to the surfaces of asteroids or lying at the bottom of deep craters on seemingly barren moons. I mean, to think Earth somehow is unique because it sustains life is kind of narcissistic, right? We’re not that special.
It has been thirty years since the original, so-called “MJ12 documents” surfaced. In 1987, Timothy Good’s bestselling book Above Top Secret was published. One of the most-talked-about aspects of Good’s book was the mention of a supposed top secret research and development group established in 1947 to deal with highly classified UFO data. Referred to as either Majestic 12 or MJ12, it was said to have been created in the wake of the notorious events at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. It was said to have been comprised of military personnel, scientists, and the elite of the U.S. Intelligence community. Not only that: Good published copies of what were said to be leaked MJ12 documents that told of (a) the establishment of the group; (b) the apparent crash of a UFO, complete with alien bodies, at Roswell; and (c) a briefing given in 1952 on the matter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Shortly after Good’s publication of the documents, additional copies surfaced in the United States. They came from the then research team of well-known ufologist Stanton Friedman, William Moore (the co-author, with Charles Berlitz, of the 1980 book The Roswell Incident) and Jaime Shandera (a television producer). Moore had been working quietly with a number of intelligence insiders who had contacted him shortly after publication of The Roswell Incident. From time to time various official-looking papers were passed onto Moore, the implication being that someone in the U.S. Government, military or Intelligence Community wished to make available information on UFOs that would otherwise have remained forever outside of the public domain.
It was as a result of Moore’s insider dealings that a roll of film negatives displaying the MJ12 documents was delivered in the mail to the home of Shandera in December 1984. Moore, Friedman and Shandera worked carefully and quietly for two and a half years in an attempt to determine the authenticity of the documents. With Timothy Good’s release, however, it was decided that the best course of action was to follow suit. As a result, a controversy was created that still continues to this day. At least, it continues to a small degree. Most people in Ufology have moved on from the MJ12 documents. But, they still occasionally cause a brief raising of eyebrows, such as when the latest batch surfaced earlier this year. Who remembers them now? I try not to.
Jacques Vallee, UFO author, investigator, and former principal investigator on Department of Defense computer networking projects-stated in his book Revelations that the FBI turned away from the MJ12 documents in “disgust” and professed no interest in the matter. Papers and comments made to me by the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, however, reflect a somewhat different scenario. It was in 1988 that the FBI’s investigation began – after the late UFO skeptic/debunker Philip Klass contacted the FBI and told them all about the supposedly leaked, highly-classified documents and who had put them in the public domain.
We also know – thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act – that what was possibly a separate autumn 1988 investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Foreign Counter-Intelligence division (operating out of Washington and New York). Some input into the investigation also came from the FBI office in Dallas, Texas – the involvement of the latter confirmed to me by the Dallas office in the early 1990s.
On September 15, 1988, an agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations contacted Dallas FBI and supplied the Bureau with a copy of the original MJ12 papers. This set of the papers was obtained from a source whose identity, according to documentation released to me by the Bureau, AFOSI has deemed must remain withheld. As a result, on October 25, 1988, the Dallas office transmitted a two-page Secret Airtel to headquarters that read as follows:
“Enclosed for the Bureau is an envelope which contains a possible classified document. Dallas notes that within the last six weeks, there has been local publicity regarding ‘OPERATION MAJESTIC-12’ with at least two appearances on a local radio talk show, discussing the MAJESTIC-12 OPERATION, the individuals involved, and the Government’s attempt to keep it all secret. It is unknown if this is all part of a publicity campaign. [Censored] from OSI, advises that ‘OPERATION BLUE BOOK,’ mentioned in the document on page 4 did exist. Dallas realizes that the purported document is over 35 years old, but does not know if it has been properly declassified. The Bureau is requested to discern if the document is still classified. Dallas will hold any investigation in abeyance until further direction from FBIHQ.”
Partly as a result of the actions of the Dallas FBI Office, and partly as a result of the investigation undertaken by the FBI’s Foreign Counter-Intelligence people, on November 30, 1988 an arranged meeting took place in Washington D.C. between agents of the Bureau and those of AFOSI. If the AFOSI had information on MJ12, said the Bureau, they would very much like to know. A Secret communication back to the Dallas office from Washington on December 2, 1988 read: “This communication is classified Secret in its entirety. Reference Dallas Airtel dated October 25 1988. Reference Airtel requested that FBIHQ determine if the document enclosed by referenced Airtel was classified or not. The Office of Special Investigations, US Air Force, advised on November 30, 1988, that the document was fabricated. Copies of that document have been distributed to various parts of the United States. The document is completely bogus. Dallas is to close captioned investigation.”
At first glance, that would seem to lay matters to rest, once and for all. Unfortunately, it does not; at least, not quite. The FBI was assured by AFOSI that the MJ12 papers were fabricated. The Chief of the Information Release Division at the Investigative Operations Center with the USAF, admitted to me on April 30, 1993 that AFOSI was not maintaining (nor ever had maintained) any records pertaining to either MJ12, or any investigation thereof. This begs an important question. How was AFOSI able to determine that the papers were faked if no investigation on their part was undertaken? I was also advised that while AFOSI did “discuss” the MJ12 documents with the FBI, they made absolutely no written reference to that meeting in any shape or form whatsoever. This is indeed most odd: government and military agencies are methodical when it comes to documenting possible breaches of security.
The Deputy for Security and Investigative Programs with the U.S. Air Force advised me similarly on October 12, 1993: “The Air Force considers the MJ12 (both the group described and the purported documents) to be bogus.” He, too, conceded, however, that there were “no documents responsive” to my request for Air Force files on how just such a determination was reached. Moreover, there is the fact that AFOSI informed the FBI that, “copies of that document have been distributed to various parts of the United States.” To make such a statement AFOSI simply must have conducted some form of investigation or have been in receipt of data from yet another agency. So, there are a few issues that still require answers. Today, however, the FBI’s investigations into MJ12 are in “closed status.” While I agree with the Air Force that the documents are bogus, I would still very much like to see how the determination was made. Was it just an opinion based on the unlikely nature and content of the documents? Very possibly, yes – and which is both understandable and reasonable.
On a final note, I have heard rumors that the FBI got involved again in the 1990s, when Timothy Cooper surfaced with literally hundreds of pages of questionable MJ12-related papers. But, rumors do not amount to evidence or facts. As for the latest MJ12 papers, I have heard nothing about agencies taking an interest in them. Time, methinks, for the rotted corpse to be laid to rest, once and for all.
Incredibly Advanced Secret Technology That They Said Did Not Exist
Incredibly Advanced Secret Technology That They Said Did Not Exist
Find out why a lot of advanced technology is being hidden from us but used in secret and black projects around the world.
First you will be introduced to the basics and a case for a “Secret Space Program” will be made.
The TR-3B is a secret "black project" craft that can be flown into space. The allegations are that these crafts are created at top-secret military bases like Area 51 in Nevada, by reverse engineering alien technology.
In this presentation, we will look at the evidence that indicates that a secret space program really does exist.
We will touch on the alleged Nazi Bell project and we will mention disclosures by John Maynard, Edgar Fouche.
We will discuss the research of Nick Cook and mention William Hamilton - what they found suggests there is indeed a hidden space program.
We will also consider what Gary McKinnon said and ask if things like the Apollo and chemical rocket programs are simply a distraction that have the effect of discouraging people from considering there might be far, far more advanced "Black Programs" in existence and in use.
According to Native American folklore, these creatures, strange upright standing thin creatures with no arms, have existed for hundreds of years and have lived along-side humans peacefully.
Despite there is very little evidence to prove that these so-called Nightcrawlers are real undiscovered cryptids, in 2011, there have been multiple CCTV camera sightings of strange upright standing thin creatures with no arms walking endlessly at night.
The first appearance of a Nightcrawler took place in Fresno, California and the second appearance took place in Yosemite National Park.
Five-Exoplanet System Discovered Thanks to Citizen Scientists
Five-Exoplanet System Discovered Thanks to Citizen Scientists
By Calla Cofield, Space.com Senior Writer
An artist's illustration of the K2-138 system, which contains at least five planets orbiting closely around their parent star.
Credit: R. Hurt (IPAC)/NASA/JPL-Caltech
A family of four planets orbiting a distant star was discovered last April, with the help of citizen scientists around the world. In a new paper, researchers reveal some fascinating features of this alien solar system, including the presence of a fifth planet.
The planetary system K2-138 is home to at least five "sub-Neptune" planets, meaning they are between the size of Earth and that of Neptune, according to the new study. The planets all orbit extremely close to their parent star, even closer than Mercury orbits the sun.
K2-128 was discovered using data from the K2 mission, which has observed over 280,000 stars in three years, according to a statement from the California Institute of Technology. The mission utilizes the Kepler space telescope, which suffered a series of hardware failures and could no longer operate the way it was initially intended. The K2 mission allowed Kepler to continue operating in another way.
Software programs can sort through the initial K2 data and select those stars that might be home to planets, but those programs aren't yet good enough to independently confirm the presence of a planet around a star in the K2 data. That leaves thousands of stars that need to be analyzed by the K2 scientists, which is far more than those researchers can handle in a reasonable amount of time, according to Jessie Christiansen, a K2 collaboration member and staff scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who spoke at a news conference at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Washington, D.C. yesterday (Jan. 11).
To try and sort through the K2 data faster, the mission scientists initiated a crowdsourcing project. In this effort, members of the public would be able to review the data that the K2 software had sifted out and help identify the systems that host planets. The result was the Exoplanet Explorers citizen scientist project, developed by Christiansen, along with Ian Crossfield, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The program was launched in April and hosted on Zooniverse, an online platform for crowdsourcing research.
(Another citizen scientist project hosted on Zooniverse, called Planet Hunters, was started during the Kepler telescope's primary mission and allowed citzen scientists to search through telescope data for exoplanets before the data had been filtered by software.)
"People anywhere can log on and learn what real signals from exoplanetslook like, and then look through actual data collected from the Kepler telescope to vote on whether or not to classify a given signal as a transit or just noise," said Christiansen. "We have each potential transit signal looked at by a minimum of 10 people, and each needs a minimum of 90 percent of 'yes' votes to be considered for further characterization."
Project beginnings
The Exoplanet Explorers program got a big boost in publicity two weeks after it launched, when it was featured on the Australia Broadcasting Company's television series "Stargazing Live," co-hosted by celebrity physicist Brian Cox, for three consecutive nights. Within 48 hours of the program's debut, more than 10,000 people had participated in Exoplanet Explorers and classified over 2 million systems, according to the statement.
Following the first night of the program, the researchers watched the results roll in, as citizen scientists helped sift through the data. On the second night, enough people had participated that the researchers were able to share the demographics of the planet candidates that had already been flagged and were undergoing additional analysis: 44 Jupiter-size planets, 72 Neptune-size planets, 44 Earth-size planets and 53 sub-Neptunes (larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune).
On the third night, the scientists announced the detection of the K2-128 system, although at the time they could identify only four planets around the star. The researchers said in the statement that K2-128 is the "first multiplanet system of exoplanets discovered entirely by crowdsourcing."
An artist's concept of the K2-138 planets, showing their orbits and sizes, to scale. (The size of the parent star is not to scale).
Credit: R. Hurt (IPAC)/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Resonance
Some of the major findings reported in the new paper are the discovery of a fifth planet and hints of a possible sixth planet in the data.
The star at the center of this system is slightly smaller and cooler than our sun. While the innermost planet might be rocky like Earth, the other four known planets are gaseous, like Neptune. All five planets orbit around the star with periods shorter than 13 days. (Mercury's orbit around the sun is 88 days.) That close proximity means the planets have temperatures ranging from 800 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (425 to 980 Celsius), so even the rocky planet is not habitable for life as we know it.
All five of the confirmed planets, which are lettered a through e, orbit their star in resonance with each other, meaning the length of each planet's orbit is related to the next planet's orbit in the same way. More specifically, dividing the length of one planet's orbit by that of the next nearest planet produces nearly the same ratio each time: 3:2 or 1.5. In each case, the exact ratio of two orbital lengths is slightly higher or lower than 1.5, but by less than 0.1. The TRAPPIST-1 system, which contains seven planets orbiting very close to their star, also displays orbital resonances but the ratio does not work out to whole integers. Resonances with whole integers are called "fundamental" resonances.
This planetary resonance indicates that the orbits of the planets are influencing each other and have probably been influencing each other for a long time, according to the statement. Some planetary-formation theories predict that these relatively large planets formed at locations farther awayfrom their parent star than they are now, and the resonances indicate that they moved in toward the star together, in a relatively calm manner, Christiansen said at the news conference.
"Some current theories suggest that planets form by a chaotic scattering of rock and gas and other material in the early stages of the planetary system's life. However, these theories are unlikely to result in such a closely packed, orderly system as K2-138," Christiansen said in the statement. "What's exciting is that we found this unusual system with the help of the general public."
Konstantin Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech who was not involved with the study, agreed that the resonances of the five planets indicated a calm migration period, according to the statement.
"Orbital commensurabilities among planets are fundamentally fragile, so the present-day configuration of the K2-138 planets clearly points to a rather gentle and laminar formation environment of these distant worlds," Batygin said.
The government keeps lots of secrets, including its UFO program and its plans for terrifying disaster scenarios. Only a little less outlandish? The secret airline, called JANET, that the government uses to covertly ferry people around. As it turns out, this secret airline not only flies under the radar, but also flies in and out of commercial airports.
Read on for all the most facts about JANET, including where the airline flies, who it transports, and the measures it takes to keep its mission a secret.
1. The airline is called JANET, but nobody knows why
It hasn’t been made public what JANET stands for. | Alan Wilson/Wikimedia Commons
As Business Insider reports, the government’s secret airline is called JANET. And that’s how pilots identify their aircraft over air traffic radio. But nobody knows exactly what JANET stands for. It may mean “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.” Or possibly “Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation.” But nobody — at least not anybody who’s spoken to the press — knows for sure.
Next: This is who owns the airline’s planes.
2. JANET’s planes are owned by the U.S Air Force
The planes are owned by the Air Force. | Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images
Interestingly enough, Business Insider reports that the U.S. Air Force owns JANET’s planes. Defense contractor AECOM operates them. The JANET fleet consists of six Boeing 737-600s and five Beechcraft turboprops. According to Popular Mechanics, the Air Force doesn’t hide the fact that it owns these aircraft. You can go to the FAA website and search for the planes’ registration numbers. Then, the website will tell you that the plane is owned by the U.S. Air Force.
Next: These planes look different from other aircraft in one key way.
3. The planes don’t have the usual markings
The planes are left blank. | Beer Root/Wikimedia Commons
When you fly with a commercial airline, you’ll board a plane that bears the airline’s logo in several places. After all, it’s free advertising for the airline, so why wouldn’t they take advantage of it? But as Business Insider notes, JANET’s planes don’t carry identifying markings like the aircraft that belong to other airlines. Instead, they just bear a horizontal red stripe (for the Boeing aircraft). Or, they have blue trim stripes (for the Beechcraft planes), plus their registration numbers. But even those markings are pretty distinctive, and have made the airline’s aircraft recognizable around the Las Vegas airport.
Next: This is the airline’s home base.
4. The airline operates out of a private terminal at McCarran in Las Vegas
They operate out of the Las Vegas airport. | littleny/iStock/Getty Images
Business Insider reports that the secret airline operates out of a private terminal at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Popular Mechanics reports that JANET’s area of the airport bears the codename, “Gold Coast Terminal.” The publication notes that each morning, the parking lot for the terminal “fills up with hundreds of cars.” Then, planes take off to shuttle people to their destinations. (More on those in the coming pages.) In the evening, “the planes come back, and the cars leave.”
Next: We aren’t certain about this key information on the Gold Coast Terminal.
Though it’s been reported that AECOM operates JANET’s aircraft, Popular Mechanics reports that we’re not 100% sure who runs the Gold Coast Terminal. That used to be the job of a defense contractor called EG&G (which helped to develop nuclear weapons). EG&G originally operated the terminal, but the Carlyle Group acquired the contractor in 1999. Then, the URS Corporation acquired Carlyle in 2002. And finally, AECOM acquired URS in 2014. As far as we know, AECOM currently operates the terminal — and the flights.
Next: Even flight attendants need this to work for JANET.
6. Even flight attendants have to have top secret security clearance
Everyone aboard needs Top Secret security clearance. | Tomás Del Coro/Wikimedia Commons
Not many people get to fly with JANET. And we’d guess that even fewer work for the secret airline. As Business Insider reports, even flight attendants who work for the airline have to qualify for and maintain a Top Secret security clearance. Getting that clearance — the highest level — can be a pretty arduous process. The application requires you to divulge “nearly every bit of information about yourself relating to personal and business finances, residences, employment history, criminal behavior, prior military service, citizenship, and criminal behavior.” An investigator also interviews your employers, neighbors, spouse, and acquaintances. And you have to take a polygraph exam. That’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get a job as a flight attendant!
Next: But the airline does do this like a normal company.
7. But the airline makes a splash every few years when it publishes a job posting
It would be pretty interesting to work for them. | Tomás Del Coro/Wikimedia Commons
Not everybody can qualify for or obtain a Top Secret security clearance — a clearance that allows access to sensitive information that affects national security. But JANET makes a splash every few years by publishing a job posting, such as for flight attendants or pilots. Everybody speculates about what it would be like to work for the secretive airline, and what the requirements of the job reveal about JANET. Even if you don’t like heights or wouldn’t want to live in Las Vegas, you can probably see the appeal of getting an up-close-and-personal look at some of the most secretive government facilities in the United States.
Next: JANET flies to this fascinating location.
8. JANET transports employees to Area 51
They fly to several top secret locations. | Tim1337/Wikimedia Commons
Curious where the airline actually flies? It reportedly shuttles employees and contractors to Area 51, the most famous of the U.S. government’s top secret military bases. (Conspiracy theorists have posited that the government is hiding everything from aliens to a moon landing movie set on the base.) But the remote Air Force facility isn’t the only mysterious destination that the airline services. JANET aircraft also fly to the Tonopah Test Range, Air Force Plant 42, the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, and the Edwards Air Force Base.
Next: Here’s how flights to Area 51 stay under the radar.
9. Many JANET flights turn off their transponders and disappear from trackers
Many of them disappear from the radar. | Eddie Maloney/Wikimedia Commons
Popular Mechanics reports that “most of the time,” JANET’s planes take off from Las Vegas, head north, then turn off their transponders and disappear from trackers after spending just 15 minutes in the air. The U.S. government still maintains that Area 51 doesn’t exist. So according to Popular Mechanics, “every sign would point to these JANET flights being the Area 51 employee shuttles for personnel living in Las Vegas. The airspace around Area 51, known as Airspace 4808 North, qualifies as some of the most protected airspace in the world, with fighter jets on duty to shoot down intruders. But JANET’s aircraft regularly go in and out of Airspace 4808 North without incident.
Next: JANET even does this as an aircraft approaches the protected airspace.
10. The airline even changes the plane’s callsigns in the airspace over Area 51
They change the names once they’re over Area 51 airspace. | PD/Wikimedia Commons
Jalopnik reports that when JANET flights take off from Las Vegas, they communicate with McCarran Departure Control using a callsign such as “Janet 210” or “Janet 301.” Once airborne, flights that go to Area 51 check in with Nellis Control, which supervises the airspace across southern Nevada. Then, when the airline continues into the airspace over Area 51, the flight switches to a different frequency — and also changes its callsign. Jalopnik explains, “It’s no longer ‘Janet 210’ or ‘Janet 301,’ it’s now something else entirely, like ‘Racer 25’ or ‘Bones 58.’ It’s flying inside the most restricted airspace on Earth, heading directly towards a veritable black hole of information.”
Next: But not every JANET flight needs to stay so secretive.
11. But not all of the airline’s planes turn off their transponders, even when going to some secretive facilities
We do know some places they fly for sure. | Tomás Del Coro/Wikimedia Commons
We don’t actually know for sure that the airline flies to Area 51, since the flights suspected to go there turn off their transponders. But we can track other JANET flights that don’t turn off their transponders, even when they fly to secretive facilities. Popular Mechanics reports that we know without a doubt that the airline flies to Tonopah, where the U.S. military develops and tests many of its weapons. JANET planes also go to China Lake, a Navy research and development site. We also know for certain that they go to Plant 42, where the Air Force builds its planes. And the airline also flies to Edwards Air Force Base, home of classified research and development projects.
Next: These probably aren’t the only places where the airline flies.
12. JANET likely flies to other destinations, too
There are undoubtedly plenty of destinations we don’t know about. | Eddie Maloney/Wikimedia Commons
Jalopnik notes that though we know about the destinations where the airline flies regularly, JANET “may serve other locations throughout the military and intelligence apparatus, and very likely make unique visits to atypical destinations under special circumstances.” As the publication explains, “Some of these places are in or near southern Nevada, and others are many thousands of miles away.” JANET flights likely go to destinations in New Mexico, California, Utah, and beyond.
Next: Many, many people fly with JANET each day.
13. The airline transports hundreds or maybe thousands of people per day
Popular Mechanics reports that though many facts about the secret airline are up for debate, we do know that JANET must fly hundreds of even thousands of people per day. As Jalopnik explains, “Circulating key people among the litany of bases and ranges is the reason why Janet flights exist.” We may not know who all these people are. But we do have some idea of what they’re doing. When the airline boards its aircraft each weekday morning, its casually-dressed passengers are on their way to “places where some of the most advanced development work in all of aerospace is occurring.”
Next: You may be able to spot a JANET plane.
14. You can see the airplanes if you travel through Las Vegas
Have you booked a flight in or out of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas? Then Popular Mechanics reports that you may be able to see JANET’s aircraft in plain sight. You’d think that if the U.S. governments want to keep JANET secret, then it would keep its aircraft away from curious onlookers. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, and you may be able to spot a JANET plane the next time you fly through MacCarran.
Next: The airline’s planes have also been spotted at this major airport.
15. The planes undergo maintenance in Atlanta
They’ve been seen receiving maintenance in Atlanta. | Tomás Del Coro/Wikimedia Commons
Similarly, you may spot a JANET aircraft if you fly through Atlanta. Though the secretive airline is based in Las Vegas, Jalopnik reports that JANET’s planes are occasionally seen undergoing maintenance in Atlanta. They head to Delta Air Lines’ TechOps maintenance facility, the same place where USAF C-40 Clipper jets — a military version of the Boeing 737-700 — also undergo maintenance. Additionally, JANET 737s reportedly get serviced at Paine Field in Everett, Washington.
Next: Many of JANET’s planes have an interesting history.
16. JANET’s current planes used to belong to a Chinese airline
Many used to belong to Air China. | Twistedpictures1/Wikimedia Commons
The airline has owned numerous aircraft over the years, and some have an interesting history. Jalopnik reports that JANET became official in 1972 with a Douglas DC-6B. The airline added an additional C-6B in 1976. The two aircraft served until 1981. Then, the government replaced them with Boeing 737-200 Advanced jets. Six 737-200s eventually joined the fleet. Of the six, five had been converted from prior service as USAF T-43A trainers. The sixth had flown for Western Airlines before the government acquired it. The airline upgraded its fleet sometime between 2008 and 2009 — but bought pre-owned instead of new. The Boeing 737-600 airliners that fly for JANET today were all previously in service with Air China.
Next: Many things about JANET remain a mystery.
17. Plenty of information about the airline remains a mystery
Even though the secret airline’s planes may be in plain sight at the Las Vegas airport, there are still plenty of things that we don’t know about JANET. As Popular Mechanics notes, we can’t say with 100% certainty where — or whom — these planes fly. And while it seems safe to guess that thousands of people have flown with JANET over the years, we certainly don’t know who they all were or what they’ve been working on.
Puzzled drivers were left wondering if they had captured evidence of ALIENS visiting Earth as the footage went viral and was quickly picked up by conspiracy theory websites.
"You can see that the tubular UFO is flying vertically over the city" wrote UFO expert Pedro Ramirez who described it as the "first sighting of 2018".
The sighting occurred in the city of Mexicali in the state of Baja California in Mexico.
The upright shape remains suspended in the air and is distinctly different from rounded "flying saucer" UFOs that are conventionally thought of as evidence of alien visitors.
The unusual object is clearly visible in the recording, silhouetted against the dramatic skyline.
Ramirez says that the increased space activity in recent years from the likes of NASA and SpaceX have led to an increased interest in Earth from alien visitors.
"Aliens are aware that we have made a number of space launches recently and have identified that we have been sending up 'war material'," he claimed to the CEN news agency.
"Concerned by our activity, they have been increasingly monitoring our planet. This year will be very important for those of us who follow this phenomenon closely."
The video of the mysterious UFO has been shared over 50,000 times online and other theories have emerged about what it could be. One of which is that it's a pilot testing a jet pack.
A Chinese Long March 3B rocket booster may have fallen from the sky and exploded near a town in southwest China today (Jan. 12) following a successful satellite launch, GBTimes reports.
The article features video and photos shared on social media by people who apparently saw the strap-on booster, one of four that helped launch the Long March 3B, fall from the sky and explode, as well as images of the burning booster on the ground. There are no reports of injuries due to the fall at this time, as the booster does not appear to have hit any buildings or people, according to the article.
The Long March 3B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwest Sichuan Province at 7:18 p.m. local time (1118 GMT; 6:18 a.m. EST), successfully carrying two Beidou-3 GNSS satellites into orbit, according to a statement from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (which uses the acronym CASC), which oversaw the launch. That statement does not mention the fallen booster.
In the GBTimes article, author Andrew Jones wrote, "Minutes after launch as the rocket flew downrange, four strap-on boosters separated from the core, with one dropping near the town of Xiangdu in Tiandeng Country, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, around 700 kilometers [435 miles] from the launch site."
"With Tiandeng County being within the designated drop zones for debris for the launch, some locals were evidently ready to capture footage in the case that discarded rocket boosters fell from the sky," Jones wrote.
The Xichang Satellite Launch Center is near China's southern border with Myanmar, and more than 500 miles (800 km) from the ocean.
In addition to today's launch, China has reported two other successful rocket launches in 2018. Most recently, a Long March 2D rocket successfully launched two new Earth-observing satellites into orbit for Beijing Space View Technology in China on Tuesday (Jan. 10). The Long March 2D lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China's Shanxi Province.
China is anticipating that its uncrewed Tiangong-1 space laboratory will fall to Earth sometime in mid-March. It's possible that pieces of debris from that event will reach the ground intact. The Chinese space agency lost control of the orbiting spacecraft in early 2016.
Researchers Probe Origin of Superpowerful Radio Blasts from Space
Researchers Probe Origin of Superpowerful Radio Blasts from Space
By Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributor
The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico recorded highly polarized signals from the fast radio burst source FRB 121102, twisted by an extreme region of magnetized plasma.
Credit: Image design: Danielle Futselaar - Photo usage: Brian P. Irwin/Dennis van de Water/Shutterstock.com
New work probes the extraterrestrial source of incredibly powerful explosions of radio waves, investigating why that spot is the only known location to repeatedly burst with these blasts.
These repeating bursts may come from a dense stellar core called a neutron star near an extraordinarily powerful magnetic field, such as one near a massive black hole, the study finds.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense pulses of radio waves lasting just milliseconds that can give off more energy in a fraction of a second than the sun does in hours, days or weeks. FRBs were discovered only in 2007, and while researchers have detected 20 or so FRBs in the past decade, they estimate that such flashes might occur as many as 10,000 times a day across the entire sky, researchers wrote in the study. [Inside a Neutron Star (Infographic)]
Much remains a mystery about the origins of FRBs, because their brief nature makes it difficult to pinpoint where they come from. Among the possibilities that prior work suggested are cataclysmic events such as the evaporation of black holes and collisions between neutron stars.
A 3D-printed depiction of one of FRB 121102's radio bursts detected with Arecibo shows how bright the burst was as a function of observed radio frequency and time.
Credit: Anne Archibald/University of Amsterdam
However, in 2016, scientists discovered that a fast radio burst known as FRB 121102 could release multiple bursts. "It is the only known repeating fast radio burst source," study co-lead author Jason Hessels, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, told Space.com.
That FRB 121102 can explode over and over again suggests it does not come from some one-time cataclysmic event, Hessels said. "A key question in the field is whether this repeating fast radio burst source is fundamentally different compared to all the other apparently nonrepeating sources," he said.
To learn more about this FRB, scientists used the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to analyze data on 16 bursts from object. FRB 121102 is located in a star-forming region of a dwarf galaxy found about 3 billion light-years from Earth, Hessels said. Because astronomers can see it from such a great distance, the amount of energy in a single millisecond of each of these bursts must be about as much as the sun releases in an entire day, Hessels and his colleagues said in a statement.
In studying these emissions, the researchers focused on a feature of radio waves known as polarization. This property occurs because all light waves, including radio waves, can ripple up and down, left and right, or at any angle in between. The radio waves from FRB 121102 were short in duration and strongly polarized (with most of the radio waves all rippling in the same direction), similar to radio emissions from young energetic neutron stars previously seen in the Milky Way galaxy, Andrew Seymour, co-author on the study and a researcher at the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Arecibo Observatory, said in the statement.
The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia measured a complicated structure in a fast radio burst from the source FRB 121102. The telescope detected the burst using a new recording system from the Breakthrough Listen project.
When radio waves pass through a magnetized plasma, or cloud of electrically charged particles, the direction in which they are polarized can twist, an effect known as Faraday rotation. Hessels and his colleagues found that FRB 121102's radio bursts were more than 500 times more twisted than those from any other FRB to date. Gorgeous New Hubble Photo Reveals 'Beating Heart' of Crab Nebula
"I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw the data. Such extreme Faraday rotation is extremely rare," Hessels said in the statement.
This extreme twisting suggests that FRB 121102's bursts passed through an extraordinarily hot plasma with an extremely strong magnetic field. Such plasmas might exist near either a black hole more than 10,000 times the mass of the sun or the remnant of a supernova, the researchers said.
"Myself and many others would love to know whether this fast radio burst phenomenon has a single or multiple physical origins," Hessels said. "There is a whole host of telescopes coming online in the next few years that promise to discover many more such sources and to answer these questions."
The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 11 issue of the journal Nature.
The company's Arkyd-6 satellite rode to space last night (Jan. 11) atop an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). If all goes according to plan, the cereal-box-size Arkyd-6 will set up shop in a sun-synchronous polar orbit, where it will prove out technology needed for Planetary Resources' next spacecraft, an asteroid prospector known as Arkyd-301.
"One of the things that we are most excited about is our onboard midwave infrared imager, which will not only be able to produce interesting images of our planet but also generate valuable scientific data," Arkyd-6 Project Lead Eric Blood wrote in a blog post last month. [Gallery: Planetary Resources' Asteroid-Mining Plans]
"We are maturing this remote-sensing capability for use on the Arkyd-301 platform with a more advanced scientific imager that will enable the collection of calibrated spectral data for use in detecting water signatures on other planetary bodies," he added.
Artist's illustration of Planetary Resources' Arkyd-6 spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Credit: Planetary Resources
Off-Earth water is the key resource needed to spur exploration of the solar system on a grand scale, Planetary Resources representatives have said. That's because water can be split into its constituent atoms, hydrogen and oxygen — which are also the chief components of rocket fuel. Asteroid mining (and moon mining) could therefore lead to the establishment of in-space propellant depots, which would allow voyaging spacecraft to top up their tanks on the go, advocates have said.
Planetary Resources aims to launch multiple Arkyd-301 spacecraft atop a single rocket in 2020. Each spacecraft will visit a different asteroid, measuring the object's water content from afar and with the aid of piggyback miniprobes, which will deploy from the mothership and burrow into the space rock's surface for up-close looks.
A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launches the Cartosat-2F Earth observing satellite and 30 other smaller payloads into orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota for the Indian Space Research Organisation. Liftoff occurred on Jan. 12, 2018 local time.
Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation
The most-promising asteroids will then be targeted by bona fide mining craft in follow-on missions.
Previously, Washington state-based Planetary Resources successfully lofted one other satellite: Arkyd-3R, which was even smaller than Arkyd-6. Arkyd-3R launched to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon capsule in April 2015, then was deployed into Earth orbit on a technology-demonstration mission in July of that year. (The "R" in the name stood for "reflight"; the original Arkyd-3 was lost when Orbital ATK's Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff in October 2014.)
Arkyd-6 was one of several dozen secondary payloads on last night's PSLV launch. The primary payload was the Indian Earth-observation satellite Cartosat 2ER.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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