The Maury Island UFO Sighting: History or Hoax, or Does it Even Matter?

By Steve Dunkelberger

What has come down through history as the “Maury Island Incident” remains a matter of investigation, speculation and debate through the retelling of the story in pop culture, investigations and beer-fueled discussions.

The incident involved a reported sighting of flying saucers zooming in the skies off the shores of Commencement Bay’s Maury Island on June 21, 1947, and has fueled conspiracy theories, dives into government archives in search of lost evidence, provided the basis for a movie and is mentioned during walking tours around Tacoma largely because the story is just too juicy to not to be repeated.

“I talk about it all the time,” Tacoma Ghost Toursoperator Andrew Hansen said, noting that while some walking tour attendees sometimes know tidbits of the legend, he tries to tell just what is known rather than what is believed. “I try to stick with as many of the facts as I can.”

That can be a tough job since the conspiracy-filled tale makes for a great story that raises more questions than answers.

The most common retelling of the story has it that Howard Dahl was captaining a boat on the afternoon of June 21, 1947. He was searching the waters for floating logs that he could salvage from the water and sell to the local mills that lined Tacoma’s tideflats. It was an otherwise normal day, when he and his son spotted six flying discs in the sky. Two reportedly collided, damaging one of them. It began to sputter and emit smoke. Chunks of the craft fell from the sky, either splashing in the water or peppering the deck of his salvage boat. Dahl’s son Charles was burned by the falling bits of metal, and his dog was reportedly struck and killed. The mysterious aircraft then flew away and disappeared.

There were other local “sightings” of flying saucers that summer as well. A businessman and avid pilot Kenneth Arnold, for example, then told a story of his own saucer sighting. He reportedly saw nine saucers while flying around Mount Rainier. Stories of flying saucer sightings were in the news, both mainstream newspapers and pulp publications, all with varying degrees of conspiracy and coverup with little evidence to support their claims.

In the story of the sightings by Dahl and Arnold, federal investigators interviewed the two, collected samples of the “saucer slag” the damaged disc had dropped onto Dahl’s boat and left with a warning against telling their stories anymore. Their accounts were later retold in Gray Barker‘s book “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers,” and gave rise to the term “men In black” in mainstream culture as a reference to secretive government agents setting out to hide evidence and coverup alien encounters because Dahl stated the investigators wore the standard “G-man” black suits.

“Paris in Orbit” was the theme of a rollerskating dance party in 1959 at the Tacoma Roller Bowl along South Tacoma Way.

Further fueling the fire of conspiracy was “the fact” that the investigators would later die in a plane crash while transporting the evidence for analysis at Hamilton Field in California. As fate would have it, the crash outside of Kelso was the first plane disaster of the newly formed Air Force, following its separation from the Army to be its own branch of military service.

Here’s where the story begins to fall apart, however. No damage to Dahl’s boat could be found. His son showed no sign of injuries. No evidence that a dog even existed was ever found. The fragments of the saucer that were reportedly recovered were traced back to the nearby copper smelter. The mysterious “men in black” could have easily been investigators calling the whole thing a hoax and warning against Crisman and Dahl retelling the story or face fraud charges for wasting their time. Cap that with the fact that the story wasn’t widely known until after the more famous “Roswell Incident” in New Mexico made national news a few weeks later.

To make the story even weirder, Crisman would later be questioned about him being one of the men on the “grassy knoll” at John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He would later reinvent himself as “Dr. Jon Gold,” an ultra-rightwing talk show host on KAYE Radio that aired in Tacoma in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“We referred to it as radio hate,” former Tacoma Mayor and president of the Tacoma Historical Society Bill Baarsma said of Crisman’s style of radio commentary. “Everything was ‘fake news’ that promoted conspiracy theories about local government and secret deals that were based on secret sources and tips rather than facts and logic.”

What actually happened in 1947 remains a matter of speculation and research to this day. Facts are few and stories are plenty, but whatever the case the Maury Island proves to provide colorful characters, tales of missing evidence and a twist of fantasy wrapped around truth – all the making of a great mystery that will never be solved.

{ http://www.southsoundtalk.com/ }

26-01-2018 om 19:38 geschreven door peter  

Award-Winning UFO Sighting Movie Comes to Yelm

Triad Theater Will Screen ‘The Maury Island Incident’ About Mysterious Happenings Just North of Tacoma Above Puget Sound

By Nisqually Valley News

 

26-01-2018 om 19:26 geschreven door peter  

Book Review: UFO Contacts in Italy

Posted by: Brian Allan 

As an example of the fact that UFOs and ufology are a world-wide phenomenon, the redoubtable Philip Mantle and Flying Disk Press (one of the very few publishers still keeping the public informed about the history of ufology) takes us to what has to be the golden age of subject. This time the revelations come from Roberto Pinotti and the files of ‘Centro Ufologico Nazionale’ (CUN) the leading Italian society who still investigates the phenomenon. Translated from the Italian language, this book is volume one in a series that, in this case, covers the years from 1907 until 1978 and 1958 was especially productive.

The book, which is profusely illustrated with some remarkable images, is an absolute treasure trove of information and the reader can open it at any page and is guaranteed to find something of interest. That said, rather that outright examples of visitations from ETs, the vast majority of examples presented here appear to be ‘high strangeness’ encounters rather than anything else, which are of course still valid and perhaps even more interesting, but not proof of anything extraterrestrial. In fact the book takes a ‘no questions asked’ approach and a refreshingly literalist view of the subject and has obviously been compiled and written by a true believer.

Italian UFO Researcher and Author Robert Pinotti

The author was a friend of, and collaborated with the late Gordon Creighton who was the long time editor of the UK’s Flying Saucer Review (FSR) and his influence becomes clear as one reads the book. Some of the images are astonishing and there are a few of what is claimed to be the inside of a UFO (pages 96 & 97) which also show the pilot who is human looking and is wearing what look like wrap-round sunglasses. There is also a report of analysis carried out on metallic residue left at a landing site, and surprisingly the residue comprises only earthly constituents in various proportions. This is encouraging if, for no other reason, than it seems the elements in the periodic table are universal. There is no doubt that for the dedicated ufologist this book is an essential part of their library and deserved to be read and if anyone is interested the CUN website is:

The book is now available on Amazon in paperback and kindle. You can contact the author and the publisher via the FLYING DISK PRESS blog at:
http://flyingdiskpress.blogspot.co.uk/

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

26-01-2018 om 19:04 geschreven door peter  

Five UFOs Moving In Formation Above Basingstoke

Claims of UFOs surrounded Basingstoke after five mystery lights were recorded on video appearing to fly in formation above the town.

The unnamed man said that he and a colleague noticed the lights in the sky while at work.

In a witness report to MUFON, he said he went outside with a workmate to get something out of the van, and saw one light slowly moving around the back of a building.

Then another one became visible to them from behind the building at a constant distance. Seconds later, another three came to view as if they were already there but were not lit up.

The witness said that after around a minute, they started to swing around slowly and turned around 220 degrees.

After another around a minute, two lights got further away. One stopped, and one appeared to carry on barely being a visible light source.

At this point, he said, they seemed to swing around again in formation.

To get a better view, they decided to run back inside the building and get into the roof.

Unfortunately, they could not see anything because of the fog. They decided to run back down, but those mysterious objects were nowhere to be found.

He said they did not hear noise and see flashing lights, ruling out helicopters and civilian aircraft.

He also ruled out searchlights shining up from the ground as they could clearly see the surface area of the lights getting wider as it shone down, which could entail that the light source was in the sky.

The sighting reportedly lasted around 30 minutes, and the witness had managed to take roughly four minutes of video.

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

26-01-2018 om 18:58 geschreven door peter  

Doemdagklok weer minuut dichter bij Apocalyps: “Het is twee voor twaalf” - HLN.be

Bron: Washington Post, CBC

De klok, die in gebruik is sinds 1947, is een metafoor die aangeeft hoe dicht we staan bij de vernietiging van de aarde. Een groep wetenschappers en nucleaire experts die zich gezamenlijk het ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ noemen, komen op regelmatige basis samen om de tijd op de Doemdagklok te bespreken.

Lees ook

Waarom het einde van de wereld echt nabij is, volgens deze wetenschapper

“Met grote bezorgdheid passen we de Doemdagklok vanaf vandaag aan,” zegt Rachel Bronson, voorzitter en CEO van het Bulletin: “Het is nu twee minuten voor middernacht”.

Nucleaire en klimaatbedreigingen

De organisatie doet de nieuwe aanpassing omdat “president Trump en andere wereldleiders er niet in slagen om de op de loer liggende bedreigingen van een nucleaire oorlog en de klimaatverandering aan te pakken,” luidt het.

“De wereld is nu niet alleen gevaarlijker dan een jaar geleden: het is van Wereldoorlog II geleden dat de situatie nog zo dreigend was,” schrijven Lawrence M. Krauss en Robert Rosner, twee medewerkers van het Bulletin in The Washington Post. “De Doemdagklok staat in feite even dicht bij middernacht als in 1953, toen de vrees om de Koude Oorlog mogelijk op haar hoogtepunt was.”

De oplopende spanningen tussen de VS en Noord-Korea dragen volgens de wetenschappers bij tot de aanpassing van de Doemdagklok. “Zeggen dat de nucleaire toestand van de wereld schrijnend is, is een onderschatting van het gevaar en de hoogdringendheid,” zeggen Kraus en Rosner.

Nog slechter dan een jaar geleden

Vorig jaar stelden de wetenschappers de klok nog met een halve minuut bij, van 23:57 naar 23:57:30. “De waarschijnlijkheid van een globale catastrofe is erg hoog en de acties die nodig zijn om de risico’s op een ramp te verkleinen moeten erg dringend genomen worden,” stelde het Bulletin toen.

De eerste keer dat de Doemdagklok werd bijgesteld na haar ingebruikname in 1947, was twee jaar later, nadat de Sovjet-Unie met succes haar eerste atoombom testte. Toen schoof de wijzer van de klok van 23:53 uur naar 23:57 uur.

Het gebeurde nog maar één keer dat het alarmpeil even hoog stond als vandaag: in 1953 gaf de klok aan dat het twee voor twaalf was nadat zowel de VS als de Sovjet-Unie succesvolle proeven met kernbommen hielden binnen een tijdsspanne van amper zes maanden.

In 1991 leek de wereld er het best voor te staan, toen stond de wijzer op 17 minuten voor middernacht.

Verkiezing van Trump

“Telkens wanneer de klok wordt aangepast, beantwoorden we twee vragen,” zei Rachel Bronson vorig jaar in een interview: “Is de wereld veiliger? Of loopt ze een groter risico dan een jaar geleden? En is het veiliger of een groter risico dan ooit eerder in de geschiedenis van de klok?”

Met de aanpassing vragen de wetenschappers aandacht voor wereldwijde crises die volgens hen het bestaan van de mensheid in gevaar brengen. Daarbij richten de wetenschappers de aandacht op de beschikbaarheid van kernwapens en de bereidheid van de wereld om ze te gebruiken. De laatste jaren brengen ze ook de dreigende klimaatverandering mee in rekening.

De organisatie haalde vorig jaar ook de verkiezing van Donald Trump aan als een belangrijke factor, “omdat hij beloofd heeft de vooruiting op beide fronten (kernwapens en klimaatverandering, red.) te verhinderen,” schreven twee leden van het Bulletin vorig jaar. “Nooit eerder heeft het Bulletin beslist om de klok vooruit te zetten voornamelijk omwille van de stellingen van slechts één persoon. Maar wanneer die persoon de nieuwe president is van de Verenigde Staten, dan doen zijn woorden ertoe.”

Symbolisch

Het Bulletin beklemtoont dat de klok symbolisch is en enkel dient als “dringende waarschuwing voor globaal gevaar”.

“We hopen dat de bijstelling van deze klok geïnterpreteerd zal worden zoals ze bedoeld is: als een dringende waarschuwing voor globaal gevaar. De tijd voor wereldleiders om het op de loer liggende nucleaire gevaar en de voortdurende opmars van de klimaatverandering aan te pakken, is al lang voorbij. Het is nu de tijd voor wereldburgers om dringende maatregelen te eisen. Het is tijd om de Doemdagklok terug te draaien,” stellen ze.

{ https://www.hln.be/ } 

26-01-2018 om 18:47 geschreven door peter  

In het geheim gelanceerde discobal schijnt als helderste ster aan de hemel -  HLN.be

BRON : The Guardian

Het nieuwe ruimtevaartbedrijf Rocket Lab breidde onze sterrenhemel vorige vrijdag een beetje uit. De start-up lanceerde toen in alle stilte een raket in een baan rond de aarde. Dat deed het vanop een schapenboerderij op het schiereiland Mahia in Nieuw-Zeeland.

De lancering zorgde voor veel gejubel en trots in Nieuw-Zeeland. Peter Black, oprichter en CEO van het opkomende Rocket Lab, sprak van een bijna ongeëvenaarde stap in de commerciële verkenning van de ruimte.

Discobal

Wat er zo spectaculair is aan de raket, is dat ze naast de klassieke conventionele raketten ook de ‘Humanity Star’ draagt. Die nagemaakte ster bestaat uit een drie meter brede bol en is gemaakt van koolstofvezel. Verder is ze uitgerust met 65 sterk reflecterende panelen en draagt ze daardoor de bijnaam ‘discobal’.

Volgens het bedrijf zal de bol de stralen van de zon naar de aarde weerspiegelen en een knipperlicht creëren dat overal ter wereld zichtbaar is. Er wordt zelfs verwacht dat hijvoor negen maanden lang het helderste object aan de sterrenhemel zal zijn en pas zijn helderheid zal verliezen wanneer hij opnieuw de aardse atmosfeer bereikt.

Volgens Rocket Lab moet de ster een herinnering zijn aan onze kwetsbare plek in het universum. Black voegt daar aan toe dat de bol harmonie en een gedeelde ervaring voor iedereen op de wereld zal creëren.

Lichtvervuiling

Toch blijkt de functie van de spectaculaire uitvinding niet geheel rozengeur en maneschijn. Omdat het hun onderzoek belemmert, vormt lichtvervuiling nu al een enorm probleem voor astronomen. De introductie van een glinsterende discobal in de ruimte wordt dan ook niet overal toegejuicht.

Over de hele wereld uiten astronomen zich op zowel gefundeerde als minder diplomatieke manieren over de Humanity Star. Zo vertelde professor Richard Easter aan The Guardian dat Rocket Lab onbedoeld zijn beroep bijzonder zwaar getroffen heeft en ook zijn collega’s winden er op Twitter geen doekjes om.

Wat er nu gaat gebeuren met de lichtgevende discobal in de ruimte en of hij al dan niet verwijderd zal worden, is nog niet duidelijk. Voor wie de bol nog zou willen waarnemen kan op een online map steeds contoleren waar de bol zich precies bevindt en in welke richting moet worden gekeken om hem goed waar te nemen.

View image on Twitter

Science Insider@SciInsider

For the next 9 months, the brightest object in the night sky will be a tiny, disco-ball-like satellite http://read.bi/2DIApYc 

7:33 PM - Jan 24, 2018

•  33 Replies
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26-01-2018 om 18:33 geschreven door peter  

Flying Saucer becomes visible in the sky over Jamaica

A strange phenomenon appeared in the sky over St. Ann, Jamaica on January 25, 2018.

Stoney Vill, who has filmed the phenomenon, wonders what the strange ring of lights in the clouds could be.

The video shows sun rays shining from behind a cloud formation, but light from the sun seems to be bending around a disk at the top of the cloud

When zoomed in on the disk, it clearly shows the solid contours of a UFO, a cloaked flying saucer that became temporarily visible. (See video 0.06sec).

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

26-01-2018 om 18:17 geschreven door peter  

LSU professor debunks alien megastructure myth

26-01-2018 om 00:07 geschreven door peter  

• A professor from Spain says we’re not ready to meet extraterrestrial life
  
• Gabriel De la Torre surveyed 116 students from the US, Italy and Spain
• He found that many had a lack of knowledge in a number of areas
• They also had religious beliefs that would make finding ET a ‘big shock’
• We also focus too much on daily problems than bigger things like Earth
• He concludes we need to improve our ‘global consciousness’

Finding extraterrestrial signals has been dreamed about for decades.

But a researcher from the University of Cádiz in Spain says we shouldn’t be looking – because we’re not ready to meet aliens.

Gabriel De la Torre revealed to MailOnline how his survey of students showed the general level of ignorance and influence of religion would leave us shocked if we made first contact.

A study by Professor Gabriel De la Torre from the University of Cádiz in Spain claims that we’re not ready to make first contact. He claims we’re not prepared mentally or ethically to meet beings unlike ourselves and we should try to improve our ‘global consciousness’

Since 1984 the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute has been looking for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

To date nothing has been found, although the search continues unabated.

Members of the project are now going further by sending out messages from Earth (Active Seti) to try and contact other lifeforms.

But De la Torre, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cádiz and participant in previous projects such as Esa’s Mars 500 (a simulated mission to Mars on Earth), has carried out a study that he claims indicates we are not ready to make contact.

In the study he sent a questionnaire to 116 students in Spain, the US and Italy.

De la Torre tells MailOnline he used students because they ‘will be the future politicians, scientists, the people in charge, so I wanted to know what their knowledge was.’

THE RESULTS AT A GLANCE

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute was established in 1984. Since then it has used a number of observatories around the world, like the Allen Telescope Array (pictured), to try and find alien signals from another world, but so far nothing has been found.

The questions were split into five sections: religious beliefs, the environment, space-related knowledge, their daily activities and their opinions on life issues.

‘In all those areas I defined a different type of question based on other studies that I think related to Seti research,’ De la Torre says.

These included questions such as how likely they thought life was to exist on other planets, what year man first walked on the moon and what the largest planet in the solar system is.

The results were somewhat disconcerting for De la Torre. For example only 82 per cent of the students knew the first moon landing was in 1969.

‘The conclusions were that scientific knowledge, especially the knowledge related to space among college students, is not good,’ he continues.

‘So I think space agencies should increase education efforts.’

On 16 November 1974 the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (pictured) was used to send out a signal called the Arecibo message, a ‘calling card’ from Earth to potential alien races. However De la Torre says we shouldn’t perform ‘Active Seti’ like this as we aren’t ready to make contact

But ultimately it is our lack of appreciation for our own planet and our place in the universe that would be our downfall, he says.

‘We’re not ready to talk to extraterrestrials because global consciousness is not developed enough in the population,’ he concludes.

‘People have daily life problems and the government doesn’t pay attention to global issues like the planet and the environment.

‘That makes us a species too focused on daily life problems, we don’t have an awareness of our surroundings.

‘It’s like when a meteor falls in some place on the planet, it’s big news. But that’s a regular real possibility.

‘If we have a more global consciousness about our situation on the planet, how fragile the planet is, maybe that’s a step in the evolution of our consciousness as a species.

‘There could be other intelligent life out there and it could be really different from us physically, mentally, socially and even morally.

‘They could maybe not even be biological, they could be robots.

‘Right now I don’t think as a species we are ready.

‘Of course some people are ready, but as a species I think it would be a big shock.’

Source www.dailymail.co.uk

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/category/aliens/ }

25-01-2018 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Bold Plan to Save Earth From Killer Asteroids - Alien UFO Sightings

Just beyond Earth’s home in the solar system, about 94 million miles from the Sun, a coal-black asteroid slowly rotates as it orbits our star. It’s about 1,650 feet across, with a slight bulge around the middle, like a spinning top. Its low density means it’s not solid, but instead it’s likely a crumbly pile of carbon-rich rocks held together by gravity.

The asteroid is called Bennu, and every six years, its egg-shaped orbital path brings it just 185,000 miles from Earth — roughly 53,000 miles closer than our moon. In about 200 years, there’s a 1-in-2,700 chance it could sail close enough for Earth’s gravity to reel it in. That would be very bad.

The impact would excavate a crater nearly three miles wide and 1,500 feet deep. Locations three miles away would be buried under 50 feet of rock raining down. It would trigger a 6.7-magnitude earthquake. But the real damage would come from the air burst, caused by the meteor hurtling through the atmosphere, which could collapse buildings and tear down trees up to 30 miles away.

Luckily for us, asteroids the size of Bennu, and giant asteroids like the one that helped kill the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, don’t cross Earth’s path often. But smaller ones do all the time. They enter our atmosphere as meteors, where many blow up in mid-air; some make their way to the ground or sea. The good news is that we’re getting better at finding them — but we’re still unprepared if one does make its way to Earth.

Partly to help with this, a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx is on its way to Bennu, where it will collect several pounds of asteroid samples and return them to Earth. By baking those samples and melting them down, scientists will learn what the asteroid is like, how the solar system’s rocky worlds were made, and how to protect Earth from these errant rocks — whether by pushing them away, breaking them up, or using the sun’s warmth to nudge them a different direction.

In that way, Bennu may become the asteroid that saves us all.

NASA is on an asteroid binge these days. Earlier in January, the space agency announced it is planning two more missions to these solar system crumbs over the next few years. The Lucy spacecraft will fly to Jupiter and study its Trojan asteroids, which trail behind the giant planet. The Psyche mission will travel to an iron asteroid thought to be a leftover planetary core, whose mantle and crust were lost to time and fiery collisions.

These explorations will provide planetary scientists with a wealth of new information, says Bill Bottke, who studies asteroids at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

“Locked in asteroids are stories that are telling us what was going on when the planets formed, when the solar nebula was still around,” he says. What processes does it take to form a planet?”

Fortunately, asteroid studies also tell us what it takes to wreck a planet.

This artist’s rendering shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu using a mechanical arm to touch the asteroid’s surface.

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Via AP

As Bennu whirls around its axis, its inky surface absorbs sunlight like asphalt on a hot day. As it rotates into the dark, that warmth radiates into space and it cools down again. This temperature change gives the asteroid a tiny nudge, called the Yarkovsky effect, which over time will change its orbit.

One of OSIRIS-REx’s main goals is to measure this phenomenon, says Daniel Scheeres, an astronomer at the University of Colorado who works on the project.

“After the mission, we should be able to update all these impact probabilities, and hopefully it will go down,” he says. “Just by testing the theory and validating it with more precise measurements, that can help all of our other predictions of the Yarkovsky effect for all other asteroids.”

Right now we know of about 723,367 asteroids in the solar system, and astronomers from universities and observatories around the world discover new ones almost every day. Based on statistical analysis and detailed searches, scientists think they’ve found more than 90 percent of asteroids about half a mile wide or larger, each of which would cause global extinctions if they impacted earth.

Dedicated searches have also found about 25 percent of the asteroids that measure at least 460 feet across, or roughly the size of a football stadium. But more than a million small asteroids — like one the size of a city bus that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, three years ago — are thought to be out there.

Last year, NASA consolidated its asteroid-hunting efforts under a new program called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which finds and tracks new objects and will issue warnings about possible impacts. Its budget for the current fiscal year includes $50 million for near-Earth asteroid observations and planetary defense, which is a tenfold increase since the beginning of the Obama administration.

But NASA isn’t the only one hunting asteroids. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has already brought back bits of one asteroid, and has another mission en route to a second. The privately funded B612 Foundation, named for the asteroid in the French children’s story “The Little Prince,” is still looking for a cash infusion of $450 million to send its telescope into space to look for near-Earth asteroids.

But all this work to find asteroids and to visit them won’t mean much if we can’t do anything about it. There are a few ways to save Earth from an asteroid. We could push it out of the way, essentially using celestial mechanics to ensure it won’t get pulled in by Earth’s gravity, or we could try to destroy the asteroid before it has a chance to destroy us.

The decision depends on how much time we have and what the asteroid is like, says Jason P. Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Some asteroids might be easy to crumble into pieces; some could break apart into smaller stones that hit Earth in multiple places. Others might require a really big shove.

“If it was up to me, I would send a rocket with some titanium dioxide on it and paint it white, and have that Yarkovksy effect accelerate, and move it away from the Earth,” Dworkin says. Titanium dioxide is a common ingredient in sunscreen, and it looks chalky white. A spacecraft could fly to a dangerous asteroid, enter orbit around it, and spray-paint it.

“If you have something like 50 years, that could deflect it enough, and it might be a whole lot simpler than sending up nuclear weapons,” Dworkin says.

Radar images of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet from 2003. Didymos will be the target of AIDA’s test of a kinetic impact on a small asteroid. 

NASA

If that doesn’t work, a nudge might do the trick. NASA and ESA plan to study this with a mission called the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), which will slam a satellite into an asteroid in 2020.

If we don’t have 50 years or a fast enough battering ram, we might need to break up an asteroid instead. Catherine Plesko of Los Alamos National Laboratory uses supercomputers to study how to break up asteroids using nuclear explosions and “kinetic impactors,” essentially giant space cannonballs.

“Cannonball technology is actually very good technology, because you’re intercepting the object at very high speed, so it ends up being more effective than conventional high explosives,” Plesko said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December. “If you really need a lot of energy, though, a nuclear burst is the way to get the largest amount of energy out to the object in the smallest possible container.”

Her simulations include equations that describe how fluids flow; the boiling and melting points of rocks depending on their densities; how light and energy propagates; and other physics. Then she can slip in a model for a given asteroid, and see how it responds to a cannonball.

If Earth decides to nuke it instead, the blast wouldn’t have to blow up the asteroid from within. The plan would entail launching a rocket with the bomb as its payload (a risky prospect, should it blow up on the launchpad) and aiming right for the asteroid. Exploding the bomb at the asteroid’s surface could disrupt its interior enough to break it apart, shifting its course and limiting the threat to Earth.

“For nuclear deflection, it really is the best idea to do an intensive load of these calculations before we even need to contemplate doing anything real,” Plesko says.

If we do need to do something real, it won’t happen overnight. It takes at least five years to design, build and launch a spacecraft that can deflect or destroy an asteroid or comet, according to astronomer Joseph Nuth of Goddard. He says humans would be wise to build a spacecraft now, and ideally two: an observer that could be quickly dispatched to learn more about the asteroid, and an interceptor that could deflect it.

“If we build it now on a normal schedule, and put that interceptor into storage, we can launch it in less than a year,” he explained at the AGU meeting. “This could mitigate the possibility of a sneaky asteroid coming in from a place that’s hard to observe, like toward the sun.” (The Chelyabinsk meteor was one such asteroid.)

No space agency has a deflector mission yet, but scientists know a lot more today than they did even 15 years ago, Bottke says.

“There was a time where we didn’t have a program to look for objects, and it was done privately. You had guys like [astronomer Eugene] Shoemaker driving out every month to Palomar Observatory to look for them,” Bottke says. “Now we have $50 million annually to look for them. Now we’re getting serious science missions to look at these.”

Bottke and others say the increased awareness of asteroid threats has also been a boon for science, and for the people who study asteroids not only as harbingers of doom, but as messengers from Earth’s creation.

“The probability that any large asteroid is going to hit is in the near future is pretty low,” Bottke says. “So I tend to focus on the more uplifting parts of asteroids.”

Source www.nbcnews.com

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

25-01-2018 om 23:32 geschreven door peter  

ALIEN LIFE: WEIRD 'BIOSIGNATURES' HELP SCIENTISTS HUNT FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS

25-01-2018 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

"Mordor Under the Sea" Images Would Terrify Even Sauron

The submarine volcanic wasteland exists off the coast of Australia.

By Peter Hess

We all know Mordor, the volcano-peppered wasteland where Sauron dwells in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is a fantasy land, right? … Right? Don’t be so sure. As fortune would have it, geologists have discovered a landscape that bears an uncanny resemblance to Mordor — under the ocean.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

25-01-2018 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

In some ways, the Voynich Manuscript is one of the most mysterious texts known to historians. The text is filled with fantastic, surreal imagery depicting plants, astronomical drawings, strange creatures, and a variety of dreamlike scenes. The origin of the text is unknown, but radiocarbon dating of the vellum it was written on puts its date of creation somewhere in the early 15th century. The book has changed hands numerous times throughout the centuries, passing from alchemists to rare booksellers and even to the King of Hungary. Today the Voynich manuscript resides in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The 240-page manuscript is written in an unknown language and script and has so far proven undecipherable even by the world’s most skilled cryptographers.

The manuscript is also full of these strange scenes of “nymphs.”

Every year or two, however, someone claims to have deciphered at least part of the manuscript, with most of the clues suggesting it was some type of pharmacopoeia or botany manual. Of course, one could surmise as much just by looking at the pictures. Just this week, however, a pair of Canadian artificial intelligence researchers claims to have developed an AI algorithm capable of deciphering the entire manuscript. Has the mystery of the Voynich manuscript finally been solved?

Curiously, many of the plants depicted in the manuscript resemble no known plants or flowers. Known on Earth, anyway.

Well, not exactly. But we might be getting close. The University of Alberta’s Greg Kondrak and Bradley Hauer claim to have developed an AI algorithm capable of deducing the language a text was written in with 97% accuracy. According to their algorithm, the Voynich manuscript was likely written in Hebrew and then encrypted using a substitution cipher in which letters are shifted, and the vowels have been removed from words. Kondrak and Hauer’s algorithm found that the first sentence of the text translates as “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.” In its analysis of the first 72 words of the manuscript, the algorithm has identified “farmer,” “light,” “air” and “fire” as the four most common words, with “covfefe” coming in a close fifth.

I knows gobbledygook when I sees it.

While this development is being hailed as a breakthrough in the quest to decipher the Voynich manuscript, the researchers themselves note that their work is far from complete and that hours and hours of human research are still needed to interpret the syntax and meaning behind the words. Will we ever really decipher the Voynich manuscript? What if it was written in gibberish and filled with curious images as a hoax or practical joke? Personally, I find that to be the most likely of all scenarios. And how hilarious would that be, writing a book of nonsense that gets pored over by learned men for centuries? If that’s the case, the author was a comic genius.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

25-01-2018 om 22:16 geschreven door peter  

It allegedly happened over 60 years ago and at least one government official was a witness to extraterrestrials and their spaceship, which was visited and photographed by two other people. No, this isn’t about the event you’re thinking of … and not that other one you’re thinking of either. According to a new book about UFOs set to be published next month, this occurred in Italy in October 1957 and, while known in that country, has photos that have never been revealed outside of Italy until now. Do you want to believe?

“These rare and extraordinary photographs, as well as two photographs of the alleged extraterrestrial pilot… have been published here for the first time.”

The book is called “UFO Contacts In Italy: Volume One : 1907 – 1978” and it’s described as “a limited selection of some of the most impressive and interesting events from over 12,000 UFO Italian cases CUN has in its files and occurred in Italy during the 20th century.” CUN is Centro Uufologico Nazionale, the National UFO Center of Italy. A nonprofit founded in 1966 to collect information on UFO and alien encounters. The book devotes chapters to specific incidents (“1936: Italian Air Force idroplane formation intercepts a UFO over the Thyrrenian Sea”; “1951: A CE3 with six UFO entities near Ferrara”), time periods (The early Sixties: 1961-1964”; 1957-1958 Strange Sightings) and similar groups (“WWII UFOs”). In addition to detailed reports, the book includes a number of cases that have photographic evidence.

The author of “UFO Contacts In Italy: Volume One : 1907 – 1978” is Dr. Robert Pinotti, the founder of the National UFO Center (CUN) who is considered to be a leading expert in European UFO sightings. In that capacity, he has acted as a UFO consultant for the Italian government and claims to have seen secret documents on encounters from the Italian Department of Defense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about the photos of aliens and the inside of their ship?

Pinotti claims the photographs (seen here) were taken in October 1957 in Francavillia, where humanoid aliens began making periodic visits and interacting with the local residents starting in 1956. The pictures were allegedly taken by two men who boarded the 24-meter (79-ft) spacecraft at the invitation of one of the humanlike ETs, who wore sunglasses as he (it appears to be a he) showed them around the 10-meter (31-ft) cabin and allowed a picture of him wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes. Pinotti claims the photos first appeared in 1958 in a book called “Sono Extraterrestri” by Alberto Perego and have never been seen outside of Italy.

Some ufology experts will recognize this story as the so-called “Friendship case,” a decades-long series of alien encounters in and around Pescara, Italy, from 1956 through the 1970s that was covered in a 2009 documentary, “The Friendship Case,” which contained photographs (although apparently not the ones in the book) and interviews with some of the alleged hundreds of witnesses, many of whom were said to belong to Italian high society and some in government positions.

It appears that Dr. Pinotti is promoting the release of “UFO Contacts In Italy: Volume One : 1907 – 1978” to various media outlets and they have picked up on this particular story and its grainy photo of an alleged alien. However, the rest of the book looks like it will be pretty interesting and promises at least a second volume with additional sightings from 1978 to the present.

It may not be time to believe just yet, but it’s definitely time to read.

UBR- UFO Report 89: Photos of ET and Interior of Craft

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

25-01-2018 om 22:09 geschreven door peter  

Talk Radio with James Gilliland NEW

20th January 2018 – James has been at the forefront of the UFO Community and Conscious Contact for over three decades. Owner of the ECETI Ranch on Mt Adams – where UFOs are spotted on an ongoing basis – James continues to raise the Disclosure conversation to the Highest Vibration. James tells it like it is – uncontrolled, uncensored.

Topics include:

* The Real “Disclosure”

* An Uncensored, Uncontrolled Narrative

* Update on the Transdimensional War

* End of Tyranny

* The Deep State

* State of Denial and Ignorance

25-01-2018 om 21:52 geschreven door peter  

UFOs seen and recorded over Santiago, Chile – January 2018

These multiple UFO lights were seen and recorded in the sky above Santiago in Chile recently (in January 2018).

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

25-01-2018 om 21:48 geschreven door peter  

Falcon Heavy: Big SpaceX rocket lights 27 engines

SpaceX

✔@SpaceX

First static fire test of Falcon Heavy complete—one step closer to first test flight!

7:44 PM - Jan 24, 2018

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The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together.

But the triple-booster configuration has demanded a number of specific alterations, including a strengthening of the central core booster.

The 27 Merlin engines at the base of the rocket should be capable of generating almost 23,000 kilonewtons of thrust - slightly more than double that of the world's current most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, which is operated by US competitor United Launch Alliance.

25-01-2018 om 18:21 geschreven door peter  

Several strange phenomena have led some to believe that the eternal companion of the Earth; the Moon is, in fact, some sort of a huge spaceship. Crazy theory? Well, here’s why.

A curious video taken from a backyard telescope, which showed an alleged UFO fleet over the moon, caused a stir worldwide. This makes us wonder about what could possibly hide in that celestial body. Is it possible that there are civilizations living there if so what is their purpose? and what is its real origin of the moon?

Those who believe in the Alien Moon theory state that the moon had to be created by a highly developed civilization, much more than ours. Under this unusual logic, our artificial satellite would have to be hollow inside so that, within it, the aliens could place fuel for machinery, materials and accessories that would be used to repair working instruments, navigational instruments, observation equipment and all kinds of machinery, but most importantly, it could actually be used as a gigantic underground base or even as a giant spaceship.

If to all of the above we add the fact that there are some astronauts, those who went on NASA’s missions such as the “Apollo”,the now retired astronauts, have publicly said they have had contact with UFO’s and aliens, and that are even extraterrestrial beings living there having that said, for some, this does not sound so crazy after all.

Google Moon Photographs used in the Sea of Muscovy ( were several mysteries have been spotted) come from the Japanese probe Kaguya, also known as SELENE (selenological and Engineering Explorer), which for nearly two years was analyzing various aspects of our satellite, the distribution of elements on its surface, the magnetic and gravitational field, etc. The interest in this particular area is very big, ugolofists claim that this specifica area is very attractive when looking for anomalies thus it is a very interesting part of the moon that holds the answer for several questions that have been postulated throughout the years.

Recently triangular objects have been spotted on the surface of the moon, leading ufologists to speculate about the purpose of the odd objects but sceptics argue that the mysterious objects are actually simple pixels that do not appear in the original image. In addition, they argue that if you look closely you can see a set of other points “scattered” by other areas of the Moon.

The answer to this is that Google stores multiple image frames in various resolutions, using filters that create noise  along the boundaries between light and dark regions, creating curios spots that some might interpret as out-of-place-objects. But the pixel theory does not explain geometrical patterns in these objects, if you take in count the pixelation theory, then you would expect the pixels to create random dots not connected, but the objects that have been identified on the moon follow specific geometrical patterns; like triangles and rectangles. Here are some interesting images that can debunk the pixel theory about the lunar bases/objects.

Science might one day provide conclusive evidence of alien beings on the moon, bases, vehicles etc. But the truth is all of us can only wonder and propose theories at this point. Skeptics that debunk the alien moon base theories do not have the slight idea what is going on up there, or why human beings have not traveled to the moon even though it is a point of interest for us not only because of its proximity but also because of the exploitable natural resources present on the moon.

The truth is that the mystery of UFO’s continues, reports of anomalies appear again and again and will probably continue to do so. We can only form our own opinion about these mysterious objects and their origin and purpose.

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

25-01-2018 om 17:38 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Explain What Would Happen If The Earth Was Really Flat

What Would Happen If The Earth Was Really Flat?

Despite the fact there is ample evidence by which we know our planet is in fact round, there are many people who argue against these facts.

The Flat Earth Society, for example, contends that our planet is, in fact, flat and that the images and videos made available through NASA, ESA, Roscosmos and other space agencies are the results of Computer Generated Images (CGI).

In fact, more than 2,300 years ago, ancient Greek philosophers and Geographers managed to calculate the circumference of our planet and conclude the Earth was round. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist, and the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria calculated the circumference of the Earth.

Eratosthenes was visiting Syene (now Aswan), he observed a phenomenon that caught his attention: at midday, on the summer solstice, no vertical shadows were being cast down. This happened because the Sun was directly overhead.

Upon returning to his city, Alexandria, the mathematician tried to prove if the same thing happened there. He stuck a stick in the ground to see if, at noon, it generated shadows or not.

And of course, there was a shadow, of 7 degrees to be precise. The conclusion that Eratosthenes drew from this phenomenon was the right one: The Earth must be spherical.

Now, scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, from Columbia University explain how a Flat Earth simply can’t exist.

Despite the fact there is evidence which proves our planet is round, many people claim it’s not, and that we live on a Flat Earth.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

That’s great but… what would happen if the Earth was in fact FLAT?

The belief in a flat Earth refuses to disappear from the curious mind of ‘flat-earthers.’

However, and despite the beliefs of the Flat Earth Society, a revealing blog from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University explains what would happen if our planet was flat.

First, a ‘flat Earth’ as the one that the Flat Earth Society defends may not have gravity. It is not clear how gravity would work or be created in such a world, says Lamont Doherty geophysicist James Davis.

This is a huge problem since gravity explains a wide range of terrestrial and cosmic observations.

The same measurable force that causes an apple to fall from a tree also causes the moon to orbit the Earth and all the planets orbit around the sun.

People who believe in a flat Earth assume that gravity acts directly, but there is no evidence to suggest that it works that way.

What we know about gravity indicates that it would pull toward the center of the disk that forms the so-called flat Earth.

That means that it would only pull down at a point in the center of the disk.

As it moved further and further away from the center, gravity would pull more and more horizontally.

This would have some strange impacts, such as sucking up all the water towards the center of the world and causing the trees and plants to grow diagonally, as they develop in the opposite direction to the pull of gravity.

The Sun

Then we have our mighty and beautiful Sun.

In the scientifically supported model of the solar system, the Earth revolves around the sun because the latter is much more massive and has more gravity.

However, the Earth does not move towards to the Sun because it travels in an orbit.

In other words, the sun’s gravity is not acting alone.

The planet is also traveling in a direction perpendicular to the gravitational pull of the star; if it were possible to deactivate that gravity, the Earth would shoot in a straight line and speed out of the solar system.

Gravitation on Flat planet Earth.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

In contrast, the linear pulse and the sun’s gravity combined, result in a circular orbit around the sun.

The Flat Earth theory places our planet at the center of the universe but does not suggest that the Sun orbits the Earth.

On the contrary, the sun rotates on the upper side of the world like a carousel, emitting light and heat downwards like a desk lamp.

Without the linear and perpendicular impulse that helps generate an orbit, it is not clear what force would prevent the Sun and the Moon from hovering above the Earth, says Davis, instead of impacting it.

Satellites: A no go for a Flat Earth

Furthermore, if our planet was, in fact, flat, artificial satellites would probably not be possible.

How would you orbit a plane?

“There is a series of satellite missions that society depends on that simply would not work,” says Davis.

For this reason, he says: “I can not think how GPS would work on a flat Earth.”

If the Sun and Moon simply revolve around one side of a flat Earth, there is likely to be a procession of days and nights.

But it would not explain the seasons, the eclipses and many other phenomena.

A Flat Earth surrounded by a Massive wall made of Ice, according to the Flat Earth Society.

Image Credit: Wiki Commons

The Sun should also, presumably, be smaller than Earth as to not burn up or crash into our planet or the Moon.

We know that the Sun is more than 100 times the diameter of the Earth.

Deep beneath our planet, the solid core of the Earth generates the magnetic field of the planet.

But on a flat planet, that would have to be replaced by something else.

Maybe a sheet of liquid metal.

That, however, would not rotate in a way that would create a magnetic field.

Without a magnetic field, charged particles from the sun would fry the planet.

This means we would not have an atmosphere, as it occurred on Mars after our neighboring planet lost its magnetic field, causing the air and oceans to escape into space.

Contrary to popular belief, and what is written all over the internet, it is a mistake to think that many societies and educated people believed in the theory of the flat Earth.

“With few extraordinary exceptions, no one educated in the history of Western civilization since the third century of our era believed that the Earth was flat,” noted historian Jeffrey Burton Russell in 1997.

“A round Earth appears at least since the VI century before Christ with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others, observing that the earth was a sphere,” explained Davis.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

25-01-2018 om 16:05 geschreven door peter  

Study Finds TRAPPIST-1 Star System Contains Two Potentially Habitable Planets

An extraordinary discovery has been made by scientists in the Trappist-1 solar system. Astronomers say that two of the planets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 star may have ideal conditions for life as we know it to flourish on their surface.

Astronomers have identified that two exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are more likely to be habitable, according to the eccentricity of their orbits and the consequent tidal heating.

The TRAPPIST-1 system has been of great interest to planetary observers and scientists because it seems to contain seven planets that are approximately the size of Earth.

Amy Barr, a researcher from the Planetary Science Institute, and co-authors Vera Dobos and Laszlo L. Kiss have examined the implications of internal structures and tidal warming on these planets, in a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The TRAPPIST-1 system.

“Because the TRAPPIST-1 star is very old and dark, the surfaces of the planets have relatively cold temperatures according to planetary standards, ranging from 400 degrees Kelvin, which is colder than Venus, to 167 degrees Kelvin, which is colder than the poles of the Earth,” Barr said in a statement.

“The planets also orbit very close to the star, with orbital periods of a few days, since most of their orbits are eccentric, not entirely circular, these planets could experience tidal heating as well as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.”

“Assuming that the planets are composed of water ice, rock and iron, we can determine how much of each element could be present, and how thick the different layers could be, because the masses and radii of the planets are not very well restricted, it shows the entire range of possible interior structures and interior compositions,” said Barr.

This graphic compares the distance of planets from the host star in the TRAPPIST-1 system and the solar system.

The team’s results have shown that improved estimates of the masses of each planet can help determine if each of the planets has a significant amount of water.

The planets studied are named by letter, planets b to h, in order of distance from the star.

The analyzes carried out by co-author Vera Dobos show that planets D and E are the most susceptible to being habitable due to their moderate surface temperature, moderate amounts of tidal heating and because their heat fluxes are low enough to avoid entering a state of greenhouse runaway.

A plot of diameter versus the amount of sunlight hitting the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, scaled by the size of the Earth and the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. F. Marchis, H. Marchis

An ocean of global water probably covers the TRAPPIST D.

The team calculated the balance between tidal warming and convective heat transport in the mantles of each planet.

The results show that planets b and c probably have partially melted rock layers.

The document also shows that planet C probably has a solid rock surface, and could have eruptions of silicate magmas on its surface driven by tidal warming, similar to Jupiter’s moon Io. 

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

25-01-2018 om 15:49 geschreven door peter