Just Amazing! Polar stratospheric clouds over Peru that looks like an alien spacecraft

The aliens have arrived in their spacecraft?

Not really, David Alvarado captured the following amazing images of what is called, polar stratospheric clouds over lamas, Peru on January 18, 2018.

Credit image above and images below: David Alvarado - iLMeteo

Polar stratospheric clouds also known as nacreous clouds or mother of pearl, due to its iridescence, are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 meters (49,000–82,000 ft.

Due to their high altitude and the curvature of the surface of the Earth, these clouds will receive sunlight from below the horizon and reflect it to the ground, shining brightly well before dawn or after dusk.

Just Amazing!

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

23-01-2018 om 21:43 geschreven door peter  

'I'M NOT A MOLE' - Former MoD man's shock statement amid claims 'he covers up UFO truth'

A FORMER ministry of Defence (MoD) insider has gone on record to deny being a Government mole used to try to "cover up the truth about UFOs and aliens".

23-01-2018 om 18:16 geschreven door peter  

Are these world's first pictures of an 'alien taken inside UFO?' - Shock images revealed

THESE images, which include an alleged alien, were photographed inside a real alien flying saucer, according to sensational new claims.

23-01-2018 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

The Afterglow of a Neutron Star Collision Continues to Brighten Months After the Event

Image Credit:

• Artist’s impression of two neutron stars – the compact remnants of what were once massive stars – spiralling towards each other just before merging. via Wikimedia Commons

News Source:

• mcgill.ca
• newswee.com

{ http://www.unknowncountry.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 17:36 geschreven door peter  

23-01-2018 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

10 Principles That Govern Our Understanding Of Extraterrestrial Life

{ http://www.factnfact.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 17:04 geschreven door peter  

Ancient nuclear war between earthmen and aliens

{http://earth-chronicles.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 16:38 geschreven door peter  

Lost Continent? Scientists Find Parts Of North America In Australia

Georgetown, in northern Queensland (Australia), was once part of North America say, researchers.

That is what seems to suggest the finding and subsequent study of a series of rocks and fossils in the area.

If so, it would mean that Australia was connected to Canada about 1.7 billion years ago.

The idea that the two continents were once connected is not surprising.

Such Speculations have existed since the late 1970s, when scientists proposed that this connection dated back to the continent of Rodinia, about 1.13 billion years ago.

However, and even under that theory, a date was missing.

The findings in Georgetown, a small town in northeastern Australia, now seem to be a boost to that theory.

The rocks found in Georgetown are different from all other rocks on the Australian continent.

However, they show enormous similarities to ancient rocks found in Canada, in the exposed section of the continental crust called the Canadian Shield.

An unexpected finding, according to researchers at Curtin University, Monash University and the Queensland Geological Survey in Australia, which reveals something about the composition of the ancient supercontinent Nuna.

According to Adam Nordsvan, principal investigator: “Our research shows that about 1,700 million years ago, Georgetown rocks were deposited in shallow water when the region was part of North America. Georgetown separated from North America and collided with the Mount Isa region in northern Australia some 100 million years later. This was a fundamental part of the global, continental reorganization when almost all the continents on Earth came together to form the supercontinent called Nuna.”

The last time the continents were close to each other was the great supercontinent known as Pangea, which split about 175 million years ago.

However, before Pangea, the planet went through several configurations of supercontinents, one of which was Nuna, also called Columbia, which existed about 2,500 million to 1,500 million years ago.

The team of researchers came to this conclusion after examining sedimentological data, and new existing geochronological data from Georgetown and Mount Isa, another remote city in northeastern Australia, and comparing everything to rocks from Canada.

“Ongoing research by our team shows that this mountain belt, in contrast to the Himalayas, would not have been very high, suggesting the final continental assembling process that led to the formation of the supercontinent Nuna was not a hard collision like India’s recent collision with Asia,” said co-author Zheng-Xiang Li.

“This new finding is a key step in understanding how Earth’s first supercontinent Nuna may have formed, a subject still being pursued by our multidisciplinary team here at Curtin University.”

The research has been published in the journal Geology.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 16:13 geschreven door peter  

The good news is an epilepsy drug helps counteract the insect’s newly identified ‘spooky toxin’

BY 

SUSAN MILIUS 

RECIPE FOR DISASTER  Despite the lab mouse’s much greater weight, chemistry gives this centipede the decisive advantage.

Knocking out an animal 15 times your size — no problem. A newly identified toxin in the venom of a tropical centipede helps the insect overpower giant prey in about 30 seconds.

Insight into how this venom overwhelms lab mice could lead to an antidote for people who suffer excruciatingly painful, reportedly even fatal, centipede bites, an international research team reports the week of January 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In Hawaii, centipede bites account for about 400 emergency room visits a year, according to data from 2004 to 2008. The main threat there is Scolopendra subspinipes,an agile species almost as long as a human hand.

The subspecies S. subspinipes mutilans starred in studies at the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China and collaborating labs. Researchers there found a small peptide, now named “spooky toxin,” largely responsible for venom misery.

This toxin blocks a molecular channel that normally lets potassium flow through cell membranes. A huge amount of the biochemistry of staying alive involves potassium, so clogging some of what are called KCNQ channels caused mayhem in mice: slow and gasping breath, high blood pressure, frizzling nerve dysfunctions and so on. Administering the epilepsy drug retigabine opened the potassium channels and counteracted much of the toxin’s effects, raising hopes of a treatment for these bites.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

23-01-2018 om 16:09 geschreven door peter  

Water vapor gets sucked up to high altitudes, allowing its hydrogen to escape into space

BY DAN GARISTO 

 

DUSTUP A dust storm (right) captured by the Mars Global Surveyor in 2001 swirls over much of the Red Planet. These storms are helping hydrogen from water vapor escape from the Red Planet, a new study finds.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

23-01-2018 om 15:46 geschreven door peter  

Three different cosmic oddities could all have the same source

BY  LISA GROSSMAN 

 

HIT THE GAS  Jets from supermassive black holes, like the one shown in this artist’s illustration, could be ultimately responsible for three different types of enigmatic high-energy particles.   

It’s three for the price of one. A trio of mysterious high-energy particles could all have the same source: active black holes embedded in galaxy clusters, researchers suggest January 22 in Nature Physics.

Scientists have been unable to figure out the origins of the three types of particles — gamma rays that give a background glow to the universe, cosmic neutrinos and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Each carries a huge amount of energy, from about a billion electron volts for a gamma ray to 100 billion billion electron volts for some cosmic rays.

Strangely, each particle type seems to contribute the same total amount of energy to the universe as the other two. That’s a clue that all three may be powered by the same engine, says physicist Kohta Murase of Penn State.

“We can explain the data of these three messengers with one single picture,” Murase says.

First, a black hole accelerates charged particles to extreme energies in a powerful jet (SN: 9/16/17, p. 16). These jets “are one of the most promising candidate sources of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays,” Murase says. The most energetic cosmic rays escape the jet and immediately plow through a sea of magnetized gas within the galaxy cluster.

Some rays escape the gas as well and zip towards Earth. But less energetic rays are trapped in the cluster for up to a billion years. There, they interact with the gas and create high-energy neutrinos that then escape the cluster.

Meanwhile, the cosmic rays that escaped travel through intergalactic space and interact with photons to produce the glow of gamma rays.

Murase and astrophysicist Ke Fang of the University of Maryland in College Park found that computer simulations of this scenario lined up with observations of how many cosmic rays, neutrinos and gamma rays reached Earth.

“It’s a nice piece of unification of many ideas,” says physicist Francis Halzen of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, where the highest energy neutrinos have been observed.

There are other possible sources for the particles — for one, IceCube has already traced an especially high-energy neutrino to a single active black hole that may not be in a cluster (SN Online: 4/7/16). The observatory could eventually trace neutrinos back to galaxy clusters. “That’s the ultimate test,” Halzen says. “This could be tomorrow, could be God knows when.”

Citations

• K. Fang and K. Murase. Linking high-energy cosmic particles by black-hole jets embedded in large-scale structures. Nature Physics. Published online January 22, 2018. doi:10.1038/s41567-017-0025-4.

Further Reading

• L. Grossman. Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays come from outside the Milky Way. Science News. Vol. 192, October 14, 2017, p. 7.
• L. Grossman. Cosmic lens lets astronomers zoom in on a black hole’s burps. Science News. Vol. 192, September 16, 2017, p. 16.
• E. Conover. Rare triplet of high-energy neutrinos detected from an unknown source. Science News Online, March 3, 2017.
• E. Conover. Possible source of high-energy neutrino reported. Science News Online, April 7, 2016.
• A. Grant. Neutrinos from space rain down from all directions. Science News. Vol. 185, May 17, 2014, p. 8.

{ https://www.societyforscience.org/ }

23-01-2018 om 15:30 geschreven door peter  

Star Trek-Style Acoustic Tractor Beam Paves Way For Human Levitation

Engineers from the University of Bristol have shown that it is possible to levitate objects which are larger than the wavelength of sound.

Scientists have managed to levitate objects that were much larger when what we’ve ever achieved before, and the new technology paves the way for human levitation.

In 2015, Nature Communications published an article in which it reported the construction of the first sonic tractor beam in the world, capable of lifting and moving objects through the use of sound waves.

Using these sound waves, an acoustic hologram is generated which in turn allows for the movement of the small objects.

Acoustic tractor beams use sound, or better-said soundwaves, to hold—levitate—particles in mid-air.

The discovery made in 2015 opened the possibility of developing a sonic production line to transport objects and assemble them, without touching them.

Scientists thought beyond transporting objects and went further proposing that this technology could also be used in medicine, allowing doctors and surgeons to transport drug capsules and even surgical instruments inside living tissues.

Now, a recent study extends this discovery considerably: engineers at the University of Bristol have shown that it is possible to levitate objects which are larger than the wavelength of sound.

This discovery not only expands the possibility of manipulating drug capsules or microsurgical instruments within the human body, but it also allows the transportation of larger and more delicate objects without a container.

It could even lead to the levitation of human beings, according to a statement from the scientific team behind the discovery.

It was previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were limited to levitating only small objects; only those approximately the same size as a wavelength of the sound. Scientists believed that it was nearly impossible to levitate objects of a greater size without losing stability, causing the objects to spin uncontrollably.

However, engineers from the University of Bristol describe a new technique, to be published in Physical Review Letters.

Using a tornado-like structure that is extremely loud but has a silent core, scientists found that when changing the direction of the rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices that make up this structure, they were able to control the rate of rotation and stabilize the tractor beam.

Dr. Asier Marzo, the lead author on the paper from Bristol’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, said that “Acoustic researchers had been frustrated by the size limit for years, so its satisfying to find a way to overcome it.”

In the new study, scientists used waves at a pitch of 40kHz and create the acoustic vortices. As noted by experts, the structure’s silent core managed to hold in position a two-centimeter sphere made out of synthetic polymer. This is revolutionary as the sphere is two times the site of the acoustic wavelengths, which means that it is currently the largest object that has been usefully and stably held in a tractor beam.

Source: The world’s most powerful acoustic tractor beam could pave the way for levitating humans

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock

Image Credit: 500PX

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 15:12 geschreven door peter  

Here’s The Radio Transmission of Astronaut John Glenn, after dozens of UFOs surround him in space

“They’re all over the sky…”

This is Friendship Seven. I’ll try to describe what I’m in here. I am in a big mass of some very small particles, that are brilliantly lit up like they’re luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little; they’re coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by.

Check out this amazing audio file where we can hear the amazement of Astronaut John Glenn after his capsule is surrounded by countless, strange UFOs.

This audio transmission can easily be described as one of the most amazing pieces of evidence of a mysterious extraterrestrial presence during manned missions to space.

This old audio file lets you listen into a small part of the conversation between the Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) capsule piloted by John Glenn and CAPCOM, on the 20th of February, 1962, the first manned orbital mission of the United States.

Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., he completed a successful three-orbit mission around the earth, reaching a maximum altitude (apogee) of approximately 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Glenn’s “Friendship 7” Mercury spacecraft landed approximately 800 miles southeast of KSC in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island. Mission duration from launch to impact was 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds.

Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., pilot of the Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) spaceflight, poses for a photo with the Mercury “Friendship 7” spacecraft.

Image Credit: NASA

In the audio file, Mr. Glenn referred to his capsule as Friendship 7 and can be heard describing seeing a “brilliant blue horizon” coming up behind him as it approaches sunrise.

Then, he suddenly realizes something peculiar is happening all around him, as he is ‘intercepted’ by countless UFOs which engulfed his capsule.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 14:52 geschreven door peter  

Interdimensional beings, Aliens From “Dimensions” That Coexist Alongside Our Own?

The definition for interdimensional beings or interdimensional intelligence is usually described as a theoretical or ‘real’ entity that exists in a dimension beyond our own.

Despite the fact that such beings are believed to exist only in science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural, there are numerous Ufologists who refer to them as real beings.

The Interdimensional Hypothesis

The interdimensional hypothesis was proposed by a number of Ufologists like Jacques Vallée who suggests that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and related events (such as alien sightings) imply visits from beings from other “realities” or “dimensions” that coexist separately with ours. Some have referred to these beings as visitors from another universe.

In other words, Vallée and other authors suggest that aliens are real but exist not in our dimension, but in another reality, that coexists with our own.

This theory is an alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis which suggests that aliens are advanced spacefaring beings that exist in our universe.

The interdimensional hypothesis argues that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in earlier times was attributed to mythological or supernatural creatures—Ancient Astronaut theory.

What if Aliens are travelers from another dimension? Does that mean we are alone in the universe after all?

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

But despite the fact that modern Ufologists and millions of people around the globe believe we are not alone in this universe, many ufologists and paranormal researchers have embraced the interdimensional Hypothesis, suggesting that it explains the Alien theory in a much smoother way.

Paranormal investigator Brad Steiger wrote that “we are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon that is largely originating from planet Earth.”

Other ufologists, such as John Ankerberg and John Weldon, who also favor the interdimensional hypothesis argue that UFO sightings fit in the spiritualist phenomenon.

Commenting on the disparity between the Extraterrestrial hypothesis and the reports that people have made of UFO encounters, Ankerberg and Weldon wrote that “the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors.”

This Interdimensional Hypothesis took a step further in the book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse published in 1970, where author John Keel linked UFOs to supernatural concepts such as ghosts and demons.

Some advocates of the extraterrestrial theory have embraced some of the ideas set forth by the Interdimensional Hypothesisbecause it does a better job explaining how ‘aliens’ could travel in space across vast distances.

The distance between the stars makes interstellar travel impractical using conventional means and since no one has demonstrated an antigravity engine or any other machine that would allow a traveler to move across the cosmos at speed faster than light, the Interdimensional Hypothesis makes much more sense.

Are aliens, in fact, interdimensional travelers?

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

According to this theory, is not necessary to use any method of propulsion because it maintains that UFOs are not spacecraft, but devices that travel between different realities. However, they still need to get from one reality to the other, right?

One of the benefits of the Interdimensional Hypothesis according to Hilary Evans—a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena—is that it can explain the apparent ability of UFOs to appear and disappear, not only from sight but from radar; as the interdimensional UFO’s can enter and leave our dimension at will, meaning they have the ability to materialize and dematerialize.

On the other hand, Evans argues that if the other dimension is slightly more advanced than ours, or is perhaps our own future, this would explain the tendency of UFOs to represent technologies close to the future.

Declassified FBI document—beings from other dimensions exist

While all of the above may sound like something coming from a sci-fi movie, there is a peculiar declassified top-secret document in the FBI archives which speaks of interdimensional beings, and how their ‘spacecraft’ have the ability to materialize and dematerialize in our own dimension.

The document can be accessed here.

Image credit: FBI Archives.

Here is a transcript of some of the most important details of the report:

Part of the disks carry crews; others are under remote control

Their mission is peaceful. The visitors contemplate settling on this plane

These visitors are human-like but much larger in size

They are not excarnate Earth people but come from their own world

They do NOT come from a planet as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpenetrates with our own and is not perceptible to us

The bodies of the visitors, and the craft, automatically materialize on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter

The disks possess a type of radiant energy or a ray, which will easily disintegrate any attacking ship. They reenter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without trace

The region from which they come is not the “astral plane,” but corresponds to the Lokas or Talas. Students of osoteric matters will understand these terms.

They probably cannot be reached by radio, but probably can be by radar. if a signal system can be devised for that (apparatus)

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

23-01-2018 om 14:40 geschreven door peter  

Triangle-shaped formation recorded over Morrison, Colorado 17-Jan-2018

Here’s one new footage of a triangular formation hovering in the sky above Morrison in Colorado. Filmed on 17th January 2018.

Witness report: 

A triangular set of three lights were observed for approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute before vanishing. They were captured on video. They appeared to remain motionless.

Source: MUFON

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

23-01-2018 om 14:07 geschreven door peter  

Robot Fabio na een week al ontslagen in supermarkt: klanten ontweken hem - HLN.be

Bron: Daily Telegraph

Fabio was onderdeel van een experiment van de Heriot-Watt University voor de BBC-reeks Six Robots & US. De ShopBot werd geprogrammeerd om klanten met vragen te helpen. Zo kende hij de plaats van honderden producten in het grote Margiottafiliaal in Edinburgh.

Aanvankelijk kon Fabio de klanten charmeren met knuffels, high fives en grapjes. Maar de liefde bleef niet duren. Wie naar bier vroeg, kreeg als antwoord: “In de gang met alcohol”. Wie niet wist waar de kaas lag, moest het stellen met: “In de frigo”. Door achtergrondgeluiden begreep Fabio de mensen ook niet altijd goed.

De supermarkt verbande Fabio naar een rayon waar hij enkel nog gerookt varkensvlees mocht laten proeven aan de klanten. Daar viel hij mensen lastig die hem net probeerden te ontwijken. Hij kon in een kwartier tijd ook maar amper twee klanten overtuigen om te proeven, terwijl zijn menselijke collega er twaalf kon verleiden.

Luisa Margiotta van de gelijknamige keten, die naar eigen zeggen altijd openstaat voor vernieuwing, zag dat het ditmaal niet werkte. “Spijtig genoeg deed Fabio het minder goed dan we hadden gehoopt”, zei ze aan de Daily Telegraph. “Een van de problemen was dat hij erg beperkt is in zijn bewegingen. Hij kon zich niet vlot in de winkel verplaatsen om klanten tot bij de gezochte producten te brengen.”

De vader van Luisa, Franco Margiotta, bouwde zijn zaak van niks uit tot een grote supermarktketen. Hij zag zich genoodzaakt het contract van Fabio niet te verlengen. De reactie van de robot was verbazingwekkend. “Zijn jullie boos?” vroeg hij. Sommige collega’s pinkten zelfs een traantje weg, toen Fabio weer ingepakt en weggevoerd werd naar Heriot-Watt. “Dat hadden we niet verwacht, dat werknemers zo gehecht zouden raken aan de robot”, zei Oliver Lemon van Heriot-Watt. “Dat is ergens wel positief, want we dachten dat het tegenovergestelde zou gebeuren omdat ze zich in hun job bedreigd zouden voelen door zijn concurrentie.”

Luisa Margiotta ziet haar personeel nog niet meteen vervangen worden door robots. “Onze klanten hebben graag een persoonlijk contact en ons personeel is daar heel belangrijk in. Onze medewerkers kennen de vaste klanten heel goed en praten er dagelijks mee. Die functie kan een robot niet zomaar invullen.”

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

23-01-2018 om 13:54 geschreven door peter  

A WELL KNOWN CIA PILOT CLAIMS THAT THE MOON HAS 250 MILLION CITIZENS

23-01-2018 om 13:16 geschreven door peter  

23-01-2018 om 13:06 geschreven door peter  

In December 2017, the US government broke its almost-fifty-year silence on the UFO issue through its proxy-acknowledgement of a Top-Secret Pentagon UFO project called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The conclusions of the project, which ran from 2008 to 2012 at a cost of $22 million (and which continues quietly to this day), were that “aircraft” of apparently unearthly origin are routinely penetrating America’s airspace.

These aircraft, according the former head of the Pentagon project, Louis Elizondo, exhibit flight characteristics that defy the laws of our known physics. They do not belong to the United States of America, nor, apparently, to any other nation on Earth. Moreover, it emerged that the Pentagon has recovered “alloys” from UFOs which are currently being stored and studied behind lock-and-key in Las Vegas, Nevada with the oversight of billionaire aerospace industrialist Robert Bigelow.

The implications are startling, and the media are fast recognizing as legitimate a subject that for so long has served as little more than tabloid fodder. It is now (almost) official: UFOs are not only real, but potentially representative of non-terrestrial technologies. 2018 looks set to be a very big year for the UFO.

But we should proceed with our wits about us. Since 1947, US government engagement with the UFO phenomenon has been characterized almost exclusively by deception; by disinformation and perception management campaigns in service of agendas that remain as murky as ever.

Do the Pentagon’s recent UFO “disclosures” signal an imminent end to the to the decades of secrecy? Have the powers that be had a radical change of heart? Are they finally ready to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about their knowledge of the UFO enigma? If you’ve answered “yes” to any of those questions, it may be your belief speaking, rather than your logic.

Greg Bishop understands better than most that things are rarely, if ever, as they seem when it comes to UFOs and the US military/intelligence community. His book, Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth, tells the story of a sophisticated government campaign of disinformation perpetrated against one unsuspecting U.S. citizen, the effects of which rippled out across the UFO subculture and eventually reached the shores of pop-culture, significantly shaping our beliefs about flying saucers and the nature and agendas their potential occupants.

Here, Greg shares with me his thoughts on the recent Pentagon “disclosures,” and how we might better seek to solve the UFO riddle by removing government from the equation altogether and focusing instead on democratized, grassroots research.

RG: Summarise for us the disturbing case of Paul Bennewitz.

GB: In 1979, Paul Bennewitz was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, right on the border of Kirtland Air Force Base, which was home to many secret programs. He noticed strange lights moving in non-aircraft-like ways on the Base at night, and decided to tell the Air Force.

That was a mistake. He also had a keen interest in the UFO subject and no filters at all, so he was happy to ride his beliefs to their illogical conclusions. Instead of handing him a cease and desist order, the Powers That Be decided it would be more profitable to string him along, hoping in the process to learn how he had figured out much of a coded message transmission system that had been painstakingly developed (as he was a very skilled electrical engineer) and who he was talking to as well as who was trying to talk to him. They hoped that this would reveal foreign agents and infiltrators.

Later, they began to feed him disinformation, but he believed it because he thought that he was working closely with the Air Force to warn everyone about an alien invasion. For the most part, Bennewitz provided his own narratives and details, but when the Air Force (and possibly other agencies) realized that he was becoming dangerously unstable, they did nothing to disabuse him of these harmful ideas. Concerned for his well-being, in 1988 his family placed him in a mental health facility. He recovered fairly quickly and generally stayed out of the UFO arena for the rest of his life.

RG: To what extent did the disinformation campaigns of the 1970s/80s influence the UFO subculture during those decades? Are we still feeling the effects today?

GB: I think they mainly served to keep people away from secret programs and to keep chasing their own tails. I do not think that they were perpetrated to keep researchers away from any great secret. As I see it, the main effect today is that UFO fans place far too much emphasis on the government coverup angle, which may have been at least part of the point from the beginning.

RG: What if any parallels do you see between DeLonge’s ‘To the Stars’ initiative and historical perception-management efforts?

GB: To me, it has the earmarks of an operation that is designed to direct attention away from something, rather than to reveal anything of substance. The fact that the government knows something about the subject and has been studying it for many years should come as no surprise to those interested in UFOs. I don’t think that the wider culture (especially younger people) were surprised either. The more salient point is that there is some acknowledgment of it by both the media and some places in academia because the story was published in a paper of record, even though I see it as essentially a publicity release disguised as a news story.

RG: Would you care to speculate as to possible agendas behind this recent release of information?

GB: Generally, when the intelligence community decides to move in some particular direction, it is designed to achieve more than one goal. One possible effect was mentioned in the last answer: Media outlets and academics seem to no longer see UFOs as a subject for automatic ridicule. This may serve to bring more intelligent thought to bear on the issue, which may stimulate original approaches and research with practical applications. Another reason may be to direct attention away from less obvious issues, as well as a way to “smack the hornet’s nest” and see who might react.

RG: The recent “revelations” about the Pentagon UFO program… should we be excited or concerned? Why?

GB: I think we should do neither. I believe we should watch quietly and unemotionally, but with close interest. Reacting to the news is most likely part of the agenda of those who released it.

RG: What are your thoughts on “Disclosure” in general? Is this something the UFO community should be pursuing—truth through government—or should we be following different lines of enquiry entirely in our quest to unravel the UFO enigma?

GB: I find it troubling that those who least trust the power structure are more than willing to accept a story when it agrees with their preconceptions. That is when we should be the most discerning and vigilant. It is also interesting that the recent “revelations” are closely following the myth and agenda around the UFO subject that has existed in the culture since at least the mid-1990s, with antecedents from long before that.

We are fully capable of studying UFOs ourselves with no help or encouragement from the authorities. In fact, the very nature of the phenomenon is so antithetical to a top-down approach that we should actively democratize the process in order to throw the widest possible net at the issue and increase understanding of both UFOs and more importantly, our methods of experiencing, reporting, remembering, and studying its effects. There are many wise and creative individuals who have already made distinct and important contributions, but their work is not often reducible to simple sound bites. Anyone with an internet connection or a library card can access these lines of inquiry for themselves and perhaps contribute in their own way to further understanding. Finally, we should abandon the idea that there is a single “answer” to the enigma, as any goal-oriented quest seems to be doomed by the ambivalent character of the subject under study.

Greg Bishop’s most recent book is It Defies Language! Essays on UFOs and Other Weirdness. He is the host of Radio Misterioso, which can be heard live at radiomisterioso.com, with podcasts available for download. Interviews with fringe-topic researchers and weird music are the usual fare.

{  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-01-2018 om 12:07 geschreven door peter  

Last December, UFO enthusiasts around the world received quite a Christmas present: the apparent confirmation of a secretive Pentagon UFO program served up before the public by one of the most venerable American newspapers, the New York Times.

Details about the program remain somewhat scant, the man formerly in charge of the study group, Luis Elizondo, said shortly after the release that, “In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’”

“I hate to use the term UFO,” Elizondo told the Telegraph. “But that’s what we’re looking at. I think it’s pretty clear this is not us, and it’s not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they’re from.”

Elizondo’s claims, which were thoroughly vetted by the NYT, were accompanied by a pair of videos purporting to show unidentified objects that were observed and filmed by the U.S. government. These videos were released and highly publicized by former Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Acadamy (TTSA), of which Elizondo is a member.

Elizondo’s involvement in relation to UFO studies, while highly publicized following the NYT piece in December, was actually first announced back in October of last year, coinciding with a public statement that was live-streamed online by DeLonge with the formal launch of the TTSA. According to the group’s website, “For nearly the last decade, Luis also ran a sensitive aerospace threat identification program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies.” In other words, Elizondo’s involvement with the former Pentagon UFO project had already been disclosed well in advance of the NYT article.

Despite the vetting of the journalists like Leslie Kean and the NYT staff, now the government UFO footage released by TTSA has fallen under the critical eye of online skeptics, some of whom call into question the veracity of the videos, and the identity of the objects they showcase.

While some online have made the claim that one of the earlier photos released by TTSA is little more than a party balloon, the primary argument deals with one of two pieces of footage released coinciding with the December NYT article. According to Mick West, administrator for the skeptic website Metabunk.org, the footage alleged to be a UFO in what is popularly referred to as the “GIMBAL” footage is probably just a plane (note: this is not to be confused with a second video, featuring an object that has been likened to a bus-sized craft shaped like a “giant tic-tac”).

Posting at the Metabunk online forum, West wrote, “I’m thinking the black shape around the object is some kind of IR flare/glare. We know that the shape of a very bright IR source, like the engine of a plane, can be much bigger than the object itself.”

“If people try to describe this as some kind of ‘aura’ or ‘field’,” West wrote, discussing a halo-like haze that appears around the object in one of the Pentagon videos, “then they obviously have not done their homework.”

Admittedly, the nearly featureless objects shown in the Pentagon footage obtained by Elizondo leaves a lot to the imagination. However, there may be problems with the “it’s probably just a plane” argument. While West should be commended for attempting to narrow down what the object in the footage might have been, any conventional aircraft that had been operating nearby at the time of filming would presumably have had a transponder, making it easily identifiable; also, radar systems would likely have had little trouble detecting such an aircraft. Hence, it seems logical to presume that if the object in the video had displayed these conventional characteristics, it would not have been of interest to the pilots who were filming it (who initially described it as resembling a drone) in the first place.

While some estimates held that the object in the GIMBAL video had been as much as 120 miles away, according to an update on the Metabunk thread that appeared on December 24th, “Preliminary analysis of the angular motion of the clouds suggests that it’s a smaller object around 15 miles away.” Even at the longer distance, the object might have been able to be tracked on radar; while 100 miles is generally considered the “useful range” for most radar involving airplane traffic, if an object were as much as 150 miles away, it could still be tracked if it were flying at a minimum altitude of 15,000 feet (to account for potential obstruction by the curvature of the Earth itself at this distance). For more on this, see the table linked below for calculating minimum altitude and distance for radar.

There are other considerations as far as radar goes, but generally speaking, we can probably conclude based on the analysis provided by West and others that the “mystery object” was well within 120 miles at the time it was being filmed, and possibly as close as 15 miles away. It stands to reason that if this was a conventional object (i.e. a passenger plane), that it should have been fairly easily determinable at the time the footage was made.

One of the problems with the footage, of course, is that there is little to go off of. While there is a fair amount of technical data that can be ascertained from the GIMBAL footage, further details about the location, and other circumstances that might offer context, are not readily available. Hence, much is left open to interpretation, and arguments arise in the midst of ambiguity.

At the end of the day, the footage is still intriguing, even if the circumstances prevent it from being truly compelling. While we cannot fully discern what the object is in the video at this time, it is a bold leap in judgment to decry it as a hoax (which, we should note, Mick West has never said, instead merely pointing out that he believes that the object is a plane). Further answers about the Pentagon’s program are beholden somewhat to pending FOIA requests; for now, we can only anticipate whether additional information will be forthcoming–either from the Pentagon, or the DeLonge-Elizondo camp–and whether it will be any more conclusive than the last batch.

{  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-01-2018 om 12:00 geschreven door peter