Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
Wednesday’s Super Blue Blood Moon was seriously showing off this morning, and rightfully so. The tangerine spot in the sky delighted many stargazers, as evidenced by some unreasonably gorgeous photos of it on social media.
Sure, the moon wasn’t “blue,” as its name suggests. Its color comes from the careful arrangement of the sun, moon, and Earth during a lunar eclipse. As Inversepreviously reported, when the moon passes through Earth’s shadow, our atmosphere scatters more blue light than red, causing observers on our planet to see a copper moon.
No matter what color it is, one things for sure: the Super Blue Blood Moon is pure internet magic. Gaze upon the moon’s splendor in these spectacular photos, unless you have actual stuff to do, like work, or feeding your cat:
A recycled Falcon 9 carrying GovSat-1 awaits launch in Florida.
SpaceX
SpaceX has some routine business to take care of this week before the long-anticipated debut of Falcon Heavy, its newest and most powerful rocket yet.
Elon Musk's commercial space venture on Tuesday scrubbed the scheduled launch of a recycled Falcon 9 rocket set to lift the GovSat-1 satellite into orbit. The mission was called off so SpaceX can swap out a sensor on the rocket. Weather conditions had also been less than ideal for launch much of Tuesday. The launch will now be attempted again from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Wednesday during a window starting at 1:25 p.m. PT.
GovSat-1 is a communications device built for a public-private partnership involving the government of Luxembourg and satellite operator SES. The Falcon 9 that the satellite sits atop is one of a handful that SpaceX has flown on a previous mission, landed, recovered and reconditioned for further launches. This particular rocket is the same one that carried a spy satellite to space for the US National Reconnaissance Office last year.
Two missions will apparently be all that this reused rocket will see, however, as SpaceX has no plans to recover it again after GovSat-1 is launched.
This fairly routine mission happens against the backdrop of the planned demonstration launch of Falcon Heavy, currently scheduled for Feb. 6. If it succeeds, Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in use since the Saturn V that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon, and it will also send Musk's red Tesla Roadster on a journey toward Mars because, well, Elon thinks that'll be cool.
The Falcon 9 GovSat-1 launch has nothing to do with the Falcon Heavy launch, but if Wednesday's mission were to fail for some reason, it's possible it might lead to the Falcon Heavy debut being pushed back as well. SpaceX postponed all launches for several months when a Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad in 2016.
It's also interesting that SpaceX won't attempt to recover the rocket's first stage on Wednesday. After Falcon Heavy's launch, it will attempt to land all three of the powerful system's first stage rockets.
You can watch the GovSat-1 mission live or replay it afterward via the embed below:
Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.
Solving for XX: The tech industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."
3 Ancient Underground Cities You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
3 Ancient Underground Cities You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Thousands of years ago, for reasons unclear to scholars, ancient cultures around the globe decided to escape from the surface of our planet, and seek shelter deep within Earth.
Somehow, ancient cultures managed to create incredible underground cities that feature many rooms, living quarters, religious centers, underground farms, and shelters.
Since the Middle Ages, building tunnels was necessary to survive, even to practice pagan rituals without being seen, plan a revolution, attack unexpectedly or connect two peoples.
Some of these cities we are are about to explore even came to be declared a World Heritage Site.
The underground city of Derinkuyu.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
1. The ancient underground city of Derinkuyu
Derinkuyu in Cappadocia in Turkey is probably the largest underground city that has been discovered to date.
It extends for more than eight levels as deep as 80 meters with more than 600 entrances to the surface.
Although the date the original city was built is unknown, the Turkish Department of Culture believed the underground city was built during the 8th century BC.
It is believed to have been built by the Phrygians, ancient Indo-European people, who worshiped the “great mother,” Cybele.
The Phrygians developed an advanced culture, famous for its music and the legend of King Midas, a king of Phrygia, who turned into gold everything he touched.
It is estimated that Derinkuyu, based on the storage capacity of food and resources, had about 10,000 inhabitants and that it could shelter 30,000 in case of need.
The city had a communications network with the outside of the city and was connected to the city of Kaymakli.
Derinkuyu, with an area of 4 square kilometers, is built on a soft and easily worked surface. The terrain is composed of smooth volcanic stone; mixed with mud and ash from volcanic eruptions.
2. The underground city of Naours
This ancient settlement is located in northern France where ancient cultures build two miles of tunnels, featuring more than 300 underground rooms, hidden around 100 feet beneath the surface. It is believed that Naours was first built as a Roman quarry during the third century A.D. and was later expanded into a fully functional underground city after local inhabitants started using it as a shelter during the wars and raids of the Middle Ages.
Archaeologists estimate that at its peak the underground city of Naours provided shelter for more than 3,000 inhabitants, and included its own chapels, stables, wells, and bakeries.
3. The underground city of Kaymakli
The underground city of Kaymakli.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Kaymaklı is one of several underground cities (Derinkuyu, Mazi, and Özkonak) located in the Cappadocia region, in Central Anatolia, Turkey.
It is thought that it was probably built between the fifth and the tenth centuries.
Although the lack of decoration and documentation make it difficult to date, the ancient city has been occupied by various cultures over the centuries.
Its main function was to shelter the inhabitants of the region in case of invasions.
Its strategic position in the center of the Cappadocia region (20 kilometers south of Nevşehir), made it a refuge easily reachable by the inhabitants.
The ancient city only has one entrance; but once underground, it extends for 2.5 km².
In the interior, there are areas for storing food, stables, cisterns, cellars, kitchens, churches and even graves arranged in a maze of tunnels and stairs.
In the kitchens, it is appreciated that the walls and ceiling are impregnated with soot. In the churches, there are remains of the Byzantine frescoes that adorned them.
Like many other ancient underground cities in the region, this city too has a number of ventilation shafts.
The entrance is protected by a disk-shaped stone that was placed to block the passage of enemies entirely, and that could only be moved from within.
A second disc protects the city, a few meters further on the entry tunnel: as “double insurance” in case the first entry was broken into.
There is an underground tunnel in the direction of the neighboring underground city of Derinkuyu (9 km to the south), although the tunnel has not been completely excavated.
Scientists from all over the world use astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, archaeology and other sciences to investigate the Earth’s formation as well as the emergence and extinction of life on Earth.
Around 13.8 billion years ago, an enormous explosion that scientists call the Big Bang spurred the formation of our planet. The explosion produced increasingly dense, cloud-like masses of hydrogen dust; the biggest turned into our sun, while smaller ones became planets. One of those planets is our Earth.
Some scientists believe around 600 to 700 million years later, meteor showers bombarded the earth, carrying with it large volumes of water and amino acids. Life, in the form of single-cell bacteria, began.
Since then, bacteria has evolved into more complex forms, though different beings have also become extinct.
2. Geological eras
Geologists divide the periods from the Earth’s formation up until now into a number of eras based on the changes that happened in each of them.
We are currently in the Holocene era, which started around 11,700 years ago when the Ice Age ended.
More recently though, a number of scientists have argued that because of the nuclear bomb testings of the 1950’s and population explosion, humans have entered a new era, called the Anthropocene.
They argue that with more than seven billion people, human activity has drastically influenced nature and the extinction of a number of wildlife.
The Earth is no stranger to disappearing life forms. There are have been many periods of extinction, from when the first organism emerged on Earth until today.
However, according to fossil records, only five eras have drastically reduced the population of living beings on earth to warrant the label of mass extinction.
3. First period of extinction
Entering early to mid period of the Ordovician Era, the Earth was still warm with an ideal humidity level for living. However, towards the end of the period – around 443 million years ago – everything changed suddenly, when the old continent Gondwana reached the South Pole. The temperature dropped drastically and ice formed everywhere, lowering the water level.
Subsequently, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the sea dropped, causing the number of plants to decrease dramatically and an ecosystem chaos ensued because certain plants, used as sources of food, became scarce.
Some 86% of the population of living beings disappeared within three million years. Some of the organisms affected by the first extinction were Brachiopods, Conodonts, Acritarchs, Bryozons, and also Trilobites that lived in the ocean.
4. Second period of extinction
The second period of extinction, during the Devon Age, happened around 359 million years ago. A relentless meteor shower is believed to be one of the causes of mass extinction. Other causes include a drastic decrease in oxygen levels globally, the increased activity of tectonic plates, and climate change. These changes caused around 75% of living creatures to die.
Extinction in this period impacted life in the sea which, at the time, was dominated by corals and stromatoporoids.
5. Third period of extinction
The third period of extinction, around 251 million years ago, during the Permian Age, was the biggest and worst that ever happened on Earth.
The formation of the giant continent Pangea caused immense changes in geology, climate and the environment. Volcanic eruptions that continued for 1 million years released around 300 million square kilometres of lava while more than 1750 metres of sediment was formed in the Siberian Traps.
The eruptions burned forests four times the size of Korea. It produced large volumes of carbon dioxide that caused global warming. As a result, frozen methane below the sea melted, producing a global warming effect 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
The global warming lasted for approximately 10 million years. A terrible mass extinction was inevitable. Only 5% of the population of life on Earth survived and 95% perished from massive drought, lack of oxygen and acid rain that made plants unable to survive.
6. Fourth period of extinction
The fourth period of extinction happened around 210 million years ago, during the Late Triassic Age.
The slow splitting of Pangea caused volcanoes to form in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. After a spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming started again, with scientists speculating it lasted as long as eight million years.
This caused coral and conodonts, an eel-like ancient sea creature to face serious crisis. Coral-based creatures did not survive.
A meteor rain also hastened the destruction in this period: Around 80% of living creatures, including reptiles died, with some 20% of the creatures that became extinct sea-based lifeforms.
Additionally, a number of creatures that lived on land that died in this period were pseudosuchia, crocodylomorphs, theropods and several large amphibians.
7. Fifth period of extinction
The fifth period of extinction happened around 65 million years ago and is more popularly known as Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. It was the fastest period of mass extinction, occurring over one to 2.5 million years.
It’s possibly the most known period of mass extinction because this was when dinosaurs were wiped out from the face of the earth. Scientists believe a meteor fall in today’s Gulf of Mexico compounded with high volcanic activity which produced a significant amount of carbon dioxide, killed half of the earth’s living population.
8. How does the future look?
Some scientists believe that we have entered the sixth period of extinction since 2010. The massive emission of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels has affected the lives of many plants and animals. Scientists predict that this will affect many life forms on Earth in the next three to four decades. Who knows?
De magnetische polen van onze aarde gaan “binnenkort” omslaan. Wat zijn de gevolgen?
De magnetische polen van onze aarde gaan “binnenkort” omslaan. Wat zijn de gevolgen?
(themabeeld)FOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Meerdere zaken wijzen erop dat de magnetische polen van onze aarde “binnenkort” zullen omslaan. Lees: noord wordt zuid en zuid wordt noord. Een publicatie van één wetenschapper daarover was genoeg om het internet te doen gevolgen dat het einde der tijden nu echt wel nabij is. Maar moeten we ons echt zorgen maken? Zijn we echt met z’n allen gedoemd? Een expert van National Geographic geeft meer uitleg.
De eerste vraag: gaan we met z’n allen sterven?
“Ja.”
Wat?
“We gaan allemaal sterven, uiteindelijk toch. De kans dat we allemaal tegelijk en wel meteen zullen vergaan als de magnetische polen omslaan, is echter klein. Onbestaand zelfs.”
FOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Oef. Maar wat is zo’n geomagnetische ommekeer eigenlijk?
“Als de geologische geschiedenis zichzelf herhaalt, zullen de magnetische polen van onze aarde uiteindelijk omslaan. Eenvoudig gezegd: de Noordpool wordt de Zuidpool en de Zuidpool wordt de Noordpool. Het is zeker geen nieuw fenomeen. Uit de magnetische vingerafdrukken in oude gesteentes kunnen we afleiden dat zo’n ommekeer de voorbije 20 miljoen jaar al meermaals voorgevallen is. Gemiddeld om de 200.000 à 300.000 jaar zelfs.”
“De vorige ommekeer dateert wel al van zo’n 780.000 jaar geleden. Je zou dus kunnen stellen dat een nieuwe al lang over tijd is. Het klopt inderdaad wel dat sommige gegevens erop wijzen dat er binnenkort opnieuw een ommekeer zit aan te komen. Maar dan is binnenkort wel op te vatten in de geologische betekenis. Het is niet zo dat de Noordpool morgen plots de Zuidpool zal zijn. Onze gok is dat alles wel nog een tijdje zal blijven zoals het nu is. Al kan niemand zo’n ommekeer met enige precisie voorspellen.”
En wat zijn de gevolgen van zo’n ommekeer?
“Ook dat is nog heel onduidelijk. Wetenschappers menen dat de vorige flips nogal traag verlopen zijn. Dat wil zeggen: het duurde duizenden jaren voordat noord zuid werd en omgekeerd. Dat is zowel goed als slecht voor wie bezorgd is over hoe zo’n ommekeer het leven op aarde zal beïnvloeden.”
“De trage verandering is enerzijds goed, omdat het betekent dat we tijd hebben om ons voor te bereiden en om ons best te doen om alle mogelijke nadelige effecten te voorkomen. Anderzijds is het ook slecht, want het magnetische veld rond onze aarde beschermt ons ook tegen schadelijke stralingen van de zon en uit de kosmos. Na een ommekeer zal dat veld, dat schild, minder krachtig zijn.”
Vogels zullen na een magnetische ommekeer opnieuw hun weg moeten zoeken.FOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Zal de gewone sterveling er iets van merken?
“De enige grote opmerkbare verandering, is dat na een ommekeer je kompasnaald Antarctica als het noorden zal aanduiden en de Noordpool als het zuiden. Daardoor zullen de namen van het Amerikaanse continent tijdelijk (tot de volgende ommekeer, nvdr.) een beetje verwarrend zijn aangezien Noord-Amerika dan ten zuiden van Zuid-Amerika zal liggen”
“Een ander interessante gevolg is dat dieren die het magnetische veld van de aarde gebruiken om te navigeren - zoals bijvoorbeeld vogels, zalmen en zeeschildpadden - verdwaald kunnen raken tijdens hun routine-uitstapjes. Uiteindelijk zullen ze de verandering wel onder de knie krijgen en zal het leven opnieuw z’n gangetje gaan. Heel wat einde-der-tijden-profeten hebben geprobeerd om zo’n magnetische ommekeer te koppelen aan massale uitstervingen, maar de gegevens bevestigen dat gewoonweg niet.”
We moeten ons dus helemaal geen zorgen maken?
“Niet bepaald. Het klopt wel dat het magnetische veld rond de aarde zwakker wordt na een ommekeer. Al is dat op zich niet zo ongewoon, want ook nu is de kracht van dat veld aan hevige veranderingen onderhevig. Volgens de NASA wijst niets er ook op dat het veld volledig zal verdwijnen. Waarom? Omdat dat nog nooit gebeurd is.”
“Als het veld echter substantieel zwakker wordt en een hele tijd zwak blijft, dan zullen we minder beschermd zijn tegen de hopen hoog-energetische deeltjes die voortdurend rondzweven in de kosmos. Dat betekent dat alles en iedereen op aarde blootgesteld zal worden aan hogere stralingsniveaus, wat na een tijd kan leiden tot een stijging in ziektes als kanker en mogelijk ook een invloed zal hebben op ons elektriciteitsnetwerk en op ruimtereizen. Maar dat zijn gevolgen waarop we ons kunnen voorbereiden. En we hebben ook nog altijd een dikke laag atmosfeer om ons te beschermen, natuurlijk.”
“Op dit moment doen we zelf al heel goed ons best om kankerverwekkende gifstoffen te introduceren in onze omgeving en om onze natuurlijke ecosystemen van functie te veranderen… We hebben op korte termijn dus belangrijkere zaken aan ons hoofd.”
“Tot slot nog één pluspuntje: een zwakker magnetisch veld betekent dat de aurora’s (zoals het bekende Noorderlicht, nvdr.) op veel meer plaatsen te zien zullen zijn. Onze nachten zullen dus nog epischer worden.”
Het magnetische veld rond de aarde beschermt ons onder meer tegen zonnestraling.FOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
WETENSCHAP Dat de magnetische polen op aarde van positie zouden wisselen, lijkt op zich straf. Toch gebeurde dat al vaker en zál het ook blijven gebeuren. Er zijn aanwijzingen dat we nu weer in zo’n lange overgangsperiode zitten. Op zich geen ramp - sorry, aanhangers van doemscenario’s - maar toch kan zo’n switch mogelijk chaotische gevolgen hebben, als licht, gsm’s en computers zouden uitvallen.
De omkering van het aardmagnetisch veld betekent op dit moment dat de naald van een kompas niet langer naar het noorden zou wijzen maar naar het zuiden. Niet ongewoon: pas sinds zo’n 780.000 jaar bevindt de magnetische zuidpool zich op de geografische noordpool, wat dus daarvóór niet het geval was.
Zo’n switch gebeurt heel langzaam en kan zelfs duizenden jaren duren. Volgens experts zitten we er mogelijk op dit moment in. Dat zien ze onder meer aan het aardmagnetisch veld dat de laatste 200 jaar met 15 procent afgezwakt is. Een wetenschappelijk rapport op de site Undark waarschuwt ervoor dat de bescherming die het aardmagnetisch veld normaal biedt tegen allerhande schadelijke zonne- en kosmische straling, door die verzwakking vermindert en dat zo meer van die “onzichtbare krachten die levende wezens schade kunnen toebrengen of doden” onze aarde kunnen bereiken.
Satellietsystemen die de elektrische en elektronische netwerken op de aarde regelen kunnen verstoord geraken en zo licht, computers en gsm’s doen uitgaan. Zelfs het doorspelen van de wc wordt dan problematisch, beweert het verslag, dat Daniel Baker aanhaalt, directeur van het Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics aan de University of Colorado. Hij vreest ook dat “delen van de planeet onbewoonbaar worden tijdens de omwisseling”.
EPA
Doorheen de geschiedenis van onze planeet keerden de magnetische polen elke 200.000 à 300.000 jaar om. Omdat de laatste magnetische ompoling dateert van 780.000 jaar geleden, zijn we al even ‘overtijd’. Soms mislukt zo’n poging tot poolshift overigens. Die laatste keer was 40.000 jaar geleden.
De magnetische ompoling is een van die klassieke fenomenen die in bepaalde middens aangezien worden als het inluiden van het einde der tijden. Maar daar zijn helemaal geen wetenschappelijke aanwijzingen, laat staan bewijzen, voor. Het enige dat vaststaat, is dat na de omkering je kompas het noorden op Antarctica zal situeren en het zuiden ergens in de buurt van Canada. En ook dat vogels, zalmen en zeeschildpadden, die gebruik maken van het magnetisch veld om zich te oriënteren, zich zullen moeten aanpassen.
Een van de beste redenen om aan te nemen dat het magnetisch veld, dat dus wel kan verzwakken, niet helemáál zal verdwijnen, komt van de NASA: omdat het in het verleden ook nog nooit gebeurd is.
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Magnetisch veld aarde kan ieder moment omkeren. Worden delen van de wereld hierdoor onbewoonbaar?
Magnetisch veld aarde kan ieder moment omkeren. Worden delen van de wereld hierdoor onbewoonbaar?
Het magnetisch veld van de aarde is de afgelopen 200 jaar met 15 procent afgezwakt. Wetenschappers zien dit als teken van een aanstaande magnetische omslag.
Volgens Daniel Baker van de Universiteit van Colorado in Boulder zijn er duidelijke aanwijzingen voor een omkering.
Als zoiets gebeurt zullen sommige gebieden op aarde onbewoonbaar worden, voorspelt hij.
Ieder moment
Historisch gezien keert het magnetisch veld van de aarde eens in de 200.000 tot 300.000 jaar om.
Het is nu wachten op de volgende omslag, aangezien het magnetisch veld 780.000 jaar geleden voor het laatst is omgekeerd.
Uit de nieuwste satellietgegevens van de Europese ruimteorganisatie ESA blijkt dat een omkering ieder moment kan plaatsvinden.
Onophoudelijke activiteit
Wetenschappers spreken van ‘onophoudelijke activiteit’ die erop wijst dat het magnetisch veld op het punt staat om te keren.
Bij een omslag worden we blootgesteld aan de zonnewind, die gaten in de ozonlaag kan veroorzaken.
Ook kunnen elektriciteitsnetwerken uitvallen, kan het klimaat drastisch veranderen en kan het aantal ziektegevallen stijgen.
Ernstige zaak
“Dit is een ernstige zaak,” zei professor Richard Holme van de Liverpool University.
Onderzoekers voorspellen dat er na een omslag jaarlijks honderdduizenden mensen zullen sterven als gevolg van blootstelling aan straling uit de ruimte.
170 jaar
Maar ze voegen toe dat ze niet met zekerheid kunnen zeggen wanneer het magnetisch veld precies zal omkeren.
“We bestuderen het veld nog maar zo’n 170 jaar,” zei dr. Colin Forsyth van University College London.
WETENSCHAPCuriosity, de Mars-verkenner van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA, heeft na maanden klimmen eindelijk de flanken bereikt van de bergkam Vera Rubin. Daar maakte de verkenner zestien foto’s die samen een prachtig panorama van de Gale-krater vormen, waar Curiosity in 2012 landde. Het is de eerste keer ooit dat er zo’n groot overzichtsbeeld vanop de planeet werd gemaakt.
De Mars-verkenner heeft sinds de landing meer dan vijf jaar geleden in totaal 18 kilometer afgelegd, en pas nu, na een maandenlange klimtocht, kon het staaltje toptechnologie even terugkijken op zijn tocht en prachtige foto’s maken van het dal waarin het geland is. Het resultaat vormt een van de mooiste panoramabeelden ooit van de rode planeet. Een hogeresolutiebeeld kan je hier downloaden.
Curiosity schoot de beelden al op 25 oktober vorig jaar, vanop een hoogte van 327 meter. Pas deze week liepen ze echter bij de ruimtevaartorganisatie binnen, nadat de Maven-satelliet erin geslaagd was een recordhoeveelheid data in één keer door te sturen. NASA plakte de zestien beelden aan elkaar en veranderde de witbalans, zodat de kleuren overeen zouden komen met daglicht op aarde.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSEen detail van het panorama. Curiosity landde in 2012 op de Bradbury landingsplaats, en legde sindsdien een tocht van 18 kilometer af, hier deels weergegeven met een grijze lijn.
154 kilometer breed
Op de beelden is goed te zien hoe groot het dal is van de krater waarin Curiousity landde. In totaal is de Gale-krater 154 kilometer breed. De afstand vanop de bergflank waar de foto’s zijn genomen tot aan de tegenoverliggende bergen is ongeveer 30 kilometer. NASA toonde zich bijzonder verheugd over de beelden. “Hoewel Curiousity al vijf jaar aan het klimmen is, is het de eerste keer dat we konden terugkijken en een volledig beeld te zien kregen van de missie die achter ons ligt”, aldus projectleider Ashwin Vasavada. “Vanop ons terras op de Vera Rubin-bergkam toont de bodem van de krater zich in al zijn glorie tot aan de spectaculaire bergkam die de noordelijke rand vormt van de Gale-krater.”
Curiousity bereidt zich nu voor op nieuwe boorwerkzaamheden in de ondergrond, waarna de stalen in de verkenner zelf geanalyseerd zullen worden. Het is al meer dan een jaar geleden dat de verkenner nog nieuwe boorstalen heeft genomen.
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA maakte ook dit beeld van bovenaf. De ster is waar Curiosity in 2012 landde, en de zwarte lijn het pad dat de verkenner sindsdien aflegde.
REUTERSCuriosity maakte vorige week nog dit zelfportret vanop de bergkam waar hij zich momenteel bevindt. Links in beeld is de krater die op de panoramafoto te zien is.
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Footage of a UFO passing the Blue Blood Moon
Footage of a UFO passing the Blue Blood Moon
The USAToday live feed were showing the Griffith Observatory live broadcast of the Lunar Eclipse Blue Blood Moon event on January 31, 2018 when suddenly a UFO comes into view travelling at a very high rate of speed going down the left side of the moon and downwards to the left until it was out of the frame.
Trailing behind the object was a pulsating/flashing light that seemed to flash at regular interval.
Not only people in Australia saw it with their own eyes, a resident of Los Angeles, California recorded the portion of the UFO at the moment it passing the Moon. Mufon case 89921.
What has the U.S. government been hiding about UFOs?
What has the U.S. government been hiding about UFOs?
Dom Armentano
From mid-September to Dec. 28, 2017, the Army Corps of Engineers sent about 192 billion gallons of contaminated Lake Okeechobee water to the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon. Although there were no toxic algae blooms like the year before, the discharges sent a plume of chocolate-brown water through the river and into the Atlantic Ocean, devastating the estuary's oyster and sea grass populations.Wochit, Wochit
On Dec. 16, three experienced journalists posted a bombshell story on the New York Times website: The Pentagon had authorized a secret research project (2007-2012) to study unidentified flying objects.
Even more importantly, Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon project coordinator and a career intelligence officer, later asserted that in his opinion some UFOs were real objects and appeared to demonstrate a technology that the U.S. did not have and did not understand. To highlight that point, the Pentagon also released “gun camera” film of a Navy pilot’s 2004 close encounter with an objectthat displayed wildly unconventional flight characteristics.
The mainstream media was caught completely off guard by the sensational Pentagon revelations, although they should not have been. Some breathlessly opined that never before had a U.S. intelligence agency acknowledged UFOs were solid objects that defied conventional explanation. Well, not exactly. While that assertion is true in some narrow sense, the belief that the U.S. intelligence community had been unaware of the exotic nature of UFOs until the recent Pentagon study is just totally bogus.
In point of fact, they have known about the unconventional nature of the phenomenon for decades and have chosen to hide the bulk of that information (dozens of military gun camera films, for example) from Congress and especially from the American people.
Contrary to the media coverage of the Pentagon story, the U.S. defense and intelligence communities actually have known about the exotic nature of UFOs since at least 1947. There exists, for example, a once-secret document (dated Sept. 23, 1947) written by Gen. Nathan Twining (Air Material Command) that acknowledges reported flying discs “are real and not visionary or fictitious” and that the discs “must be considered evasive when sighted ... which lends belief to the possibility that some of the objects are (intelligently) controlled.”
And since the U.S. military had dozens of reports from experienced military pilots and FAA controllers and ground personnel that the discs could hover, turn on a dime and then accelerate at incredible speeds — unlike any technology that existed then or now — it was implicit even in 1947 that these flying objects were not ours.
In short, the deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real; yet it has chosen to keep the information in support of that conclusion either confidential or simply denied that it even existed. But a decades-long public policy of secrecy and denial on a subject as important and mind-bending as UFOs is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk.
If any of this commentary sounds familiar, it should since I first raised these issues in a series of articles published by TCPalm in 2008. In those articles, I pointed out there was substantial evidence gathered over many decades that some UFOs were likely extraterrestrial; the intelligence community was withholding that information; and the reasons for the secrecy likely related to fears of a public panic or to national security concerns since many important UFO sightings had occurred in the vicinity of U.S. defense installations and nuclear weapon storage facilities.
Despite any possible national security concerns, several prominent public figures, most notably Hillary Clinton, have called for more increased transparency on the subject of UFOs. Curiously, my call for disclosure in 2008 went over like a lead balloon. Most of my professional colleagues in law and economics thought I had lost my mind (even though I had studied the phenomenon for almost 40 years); and the Cato Institute abruptly ended its 20 year affiliation with me (as an adjunct scholar) one day after my first UFO article appeared. So much for courage and open inquiry in the academy.
The good news is these perverse attitudes are changing somewhat. The New York Times' Pentagon project revelations have created an important opportunity for more serious media coverage of past and current government UFO research. We must take advantage of that opportunity now and push for open Congressional hearings and full disclosure.
Dom Armentano is professor emeritus in economics at the University of Hartford (Connecticut). He lives in Vero Beach.
Daytime UFO sighting filmed over Miami, Florida on 28th January 2018.
Witness report:
On January 28th, my family went for a afternoon of carnival fun at st rose Catholic Church in Miami Florida . Upon arrival we noticed two silver white object just sitting in the sky like a pin on a board. My aunt took her camera and took a picture and I took my iPhone plus 7s and started to film. After a few minutes my phone died which was surprising since it was fully charged. I took her camera which was a new camera for professionals and when I aimed towards the ufos. The camera would not work but as soon as I put the camera towards a level in which I can take a pictures of a family member it would work. I did this several times and others tried as well with the same outcome. Maybe 10 minutes later I can see fighter jets in the distance which suddenly the object just vanished .No one really noticed which was seared and at the beginning we thought it was a ballon but it didn’t move
Britain’s Area 51: Paranormal hotspot for UFO and ghost sightings REVEALED
Britain’s Area 51: Paranormal hotspot for UFO and ghost sightings REVEALED
ONE of the most haunted places in Britain and a hotbed for sightings of ghosts and UFOs has been identified – as a leafy stretch of the A30.
SWNS
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: Windwhistle Hill has had strange goings on report for over 400 years
Experts say the eight-mile section of the Somerset route from Chard to Crewkerne has been the centre of repeated reports of scary goings on dating back 400 years.
They include a constant series of sightings around Windwhistle Hill of "strange, unusual and eerie lights, sounds, figures and shapes''.
Locals have even started to dubbed the road as "Area-oohh-aarr 51".
Gloria Dixon, of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), says the Somerset road is liniked to years of spooky tales.
She says the the scary sightings on the mysterious hill are connected with the area's history of highwaymen, smugglers and witches.
BUFORA researchers have investigated the stretch of A30 road connecting Crewkerne and Chard and have found "mystical" reports dating back to 1662.
“Windwhistle Hill is steeped in the traditional folklore of strange lights, visions and figures with ghostly highwaymen and galloping horses”
Gloria Dixon
Gloria wrote on the BUFORA website: "Reports of strange visions and incidents have continued to date.
"According to the literature, during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Windwhistle [Hill] had a history of highwaymen and smugglers in this area.
"The A30 used to be a coaching route from London to the West Country and highwaymen could hide in the beech trees waiting for the carriages with their cargoes of valuables.
"It has been suggested that the Windwhistle Inn near the summit was the central point for these highwaymen.
"They would use the wells and caves all around the area to hide their treasures and also the bodies of those they had robbed.
"The story goes that some skeletons have been discovered in these hideouts.''
GETTY
CREEPY: Area 51 is famous among UFO and alien stories in America
Mrs Dixon's research focuses particularly on two separate experiences encountered by a local mother, Kate Walker, when she was travelling between Yeovil and Chard with her family.
"As they came to the top of the hill Kate and her family all observed a huge orange light diffused by cloud, to their left-hand side and at the far end of Windwhistle Hill," wrote Mrs Dixon.
"It seemed to be right beside the road, not very high up, and partially obscured by cloud, but they did not feel any alarm as there was a power station and pylons further along.
"However, as they drove nearer to the light, it was easier to observe and Kate states it was massive and totally static and very low and bright.
"She describes it as being cigar shaped and vast in size, maybe 200-300 feet, and she estimates the light to be approximately 800-1000 feet above them.
"As they got closer she noticed that the pub on the right hand side of the road, The Windwhistle Inn, was almost in total darkness, except for a light in a small upstairs window."
Mrs Dixon writes that Kate looked up again at the light, which by that time was almost on top of the family.
It is then said that Mrs Walker "lost" around half an hour, a space of time that was unaccounted for in her memory.
And just a few days after the "puzzling incident", the family encountered another altogether more chilling experience in virtually the same spot.
They are said to have seen two people in front of them, on the left hand verge, with one appearing to be lying down, and the other standing.
She wrote: "Their initial thoughts were that someone had been injured and went to slow down.
"But to their astonishment, the person standing took one step out in front of them, with one foot remaining on the grass verge at the roadside, while the other was right over the centre of the road.
"Kate described the figure as being abnormally tall with legs that were horrendously long and thin.
"Her husband swerved to the far side of the road, around the figure, and they kept on driving and did not look back.
"They all agreed that there was no one who could possibly have legs that long."
Mrs Dixon also notes that, in a book on East Somerset, Alan Holt comments that Whindwhistle Hill – named for the winds whistling through its tall treetops – is haunted by a witch.
Holt alleges that the woman was knocked down by a stage coach many years ago.
A number of further reports from the archives of the Yeovil Weekly News tell of other strange incidents experienced over the years.
One witness reports that in 1991 herself, her husband and her grandson perceived a tall strange figure looking through their farm window.
This was followed a few days later by their observations of a "saucer-shaped object".
Another witness tells how he was driving a lorry on Windwhistle Hill in 1976 or 1977, when he claims his lorry went out of control as though by some "strange force".
He says he felt as though the lorry was hovering over the road.
And a final witness tells how she and her husband observed a very large unidentified object, silver and shaped like a humming top, near Windwhistle Hill in November 1959.
They watched it as though “hypnotised" from about 11pm to 9am the next day and for some reason felt unable to tell anyone.
Mrs Dixon writes: "It appears that there is a history of odd occurrences in this area.
"Certainly Windwhistle Hill is steeped in the traditional folklore of strange lights, visions and figures with ghostly highwaymen and galloping horses. It's tantalising stuff."
Millions of years of evolution may have rendered us Earth-locked, a Canadian-Russian research team reports. Zero- and microgravity conditions seem to severely impair our immune systems’ ability to function, so much so that they’d struggle to deal with even minor viruses like that of the common cold.
Image credits BagoGames / Flickr.
A team of Russian and Canadian researchers have analyzed the protein make-up in the blood of 18 Russian cosmonauts to get an idea of their immune system health. They report that the crew, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station, showed signs of significantly weakened immune systems that would struggle to deal even with minor pathogens.
No gravity, no service
“The results showed that in weightlessness, the immune system acts like it does when the body is infected because the human body doesn’t know what to do and tries to turn on all possible defense systems,” said Professor Evgeny Nikolaev of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and paper coresponding author.
Our bodies, like those of all other organisms on Earth, have been tailored by evolution to adapt to specific conditions. It makes perfect evolutionary sense to adapt to the place you’re living in, but humans are now trying to do something that no life before us ever tried — we want to leave the planet. That’s quite problematic since it takes us out of the set of conditions we’re designed to function in.
Environmental factors associated with spaceflight, most notably microgravity and radiation exposure, tend to mess up our bodies’ inner workings. Our metabolism, heat regulation systems, heart rhythm, muscle tone, bone density, vision, our respiratory systems, they all go a bit haywire once you take us off the planet.
It all adds up to take a toll. Astronauts who went on deep space or lunar missions were five times more likely to die from cardiovascular diseases than their counterparts who stayed in low orbit, or people who never left Earth (around 43% compared to under 10% for the latter). And that’s considering that astronauts are way fitter than the average Joe and have access to the best medical care available.
To get a better idea of how space travel impacts human physiology, the team looked at the level of 125 proteins in the blood of astronauts who spent six months aboard the ISS. Proteins underpin virtually all complex tasks inside the body, so by looking at their state in the blood researchers could infer the state of the crew’s immune systems. Samples were first taken from the cosmonauts 30 days before they left for the ISS to establish a baseline. To track changes in their immune systems, the team also took blood samples immediately after the cosmonauts returned to Earth, and seven days later. Individual proteins were counted using a mass spectrometer.
The results aren’t very encouraging at all
”When we examined the cosmonauts after their being in space for half a year, their immune system was weakened,” said Dr Irina Larina, the first author of the paper, a member of Laboratory of Ion and Molecular Physics of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
“They were not protected from the simplest viruses. We need new measures of disorder prevention during a long flight.
It doesn’t bode well for future explorers, as our immune system is what’s literally keeping us alive all day, every day. The effects were manageable, although severe, after only six months. But future missions are likely going to take much longer. A one-way trip to Mars, our closest viable candidate for a colony, would take around six to eight months — and colonists wouldn’t have the medical means and infrastructure available on Earth, meaning they’ll have to rely on their now weakened immune systems much more than the cosmonauts. So it can become a problem. {However, we can get to work on understanding and then address these changes before we start poking around the final frontier.
“We must understand the mechanism that causes disorders. If we find the pathways that are affected by the weightlessness, we will be able to find the target for the remedy and we’ll be able to offer new pharmaceutical products that will prevent these negative processes.”
The paper “Protein expression changes caused by spaceflight as measured for 18 Russian cosmonauts” has been published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
A pole reversal is always preceded by a weakened magnetic field, meaning more cosmic radiation will hit Earth’s surface.
Credit: NASA.
Throughout its history, Earth’s magnetic poles have flipped regularly. The last time this occurred was around 786,000 years ago, and judging from the paleomagnetic data which researchers studied, we’re in for a new pole reversal soon. According to scientists operating the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Swarm trio, clusters of molten iron and nickel are ‘on the run’, draining the dipole. There’s a revolution shaping up, and if precautions aren’t taken, the consequences could be dire for modern human civilization.
The Earth’s magnetic field looks like that which would be produced by placing a bar magnet at the center of the Earth, with the North Magnetic Pole corresponding to the South Geographic Pole and vice versa. The Earth’s magnetic dipole originates in swirling currents of molten iron deep in the Earth’s core, and extends more than 10 Earth radii, or 63.7 million meters out into space on the side facing the Sun, and all the way to the Moon’s orbit, at 384.4 million meters on the opposite side. Magnetic field lines loop out of the South Geographic Pole and into the North Geographic Pole.
Credit: NASA Cosmos.
There are currents that guide the molten iron inside the planet’s core and, consequently, the magnetic poles can move or shift over time, losing or gaining strength. Scientists not only know that the magnetic field’s intensity changes over time, but they also know when dramatic shifts in intensity or pole reversal occurred. That’s because such events are recorded in the “frozen” ferromagnetic (or, more accurately, ferrimagnetic) minerals of consolidated sedimentary deposits or cooled volcanic flows on land.
It’s from these records that geologists learned that the last magnetic reversal took place 786,000 years ago. It happened very quickly, too, having occurred in less than 100 years.
Polar mood swings
“It’s amazing how rapidly we see that reversal,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Courtney Sprain. “The paleomagnetic data are very well done. This is one of the best records we have so far of what happens during a reversal and how quickly these reversals can happen.”
In 2014, Sprain and colleagues performed a study on the magnetic field alignment in layers of ancient lake sediments that are now exposed in the Sulmona basin of the Apennine Mountains east of Rome, Italy. This study allowed them to determine the age of the last reversal as well as other novel insights, like how Earth’s magnetic field can sometimes weaken only to snap back into place (the last time this happened was 40,000 years ago).
Right now, Earth’s magnetic field is decreasing 10 times faster than normal, which is why many scientists believe this century could see a pole reversal. The latest satellite imagery data from ESA suggests the north magnetic pole is especially turbulent and unpredictable.
In the last 50 years, the north magnetic pole has already moved considerably — so much so that satellites orbiting right above the South Atlantic, which is near the geographic South Pole, are now bombarded by charged particles from the sun and interstellar space.
The planet’s magnetic field acts like a shield against this sort of radiation but since pole reversal implies a temporary weakening of the field first, radiation exposure is bound to increase.
So what does this all mean for us? Not anything good, unfortunately.
Because the field’s intensity is bound to decrease considerably, much more radiation from space will be able to reach the planet’s surface than it does today. However, life on Earth shouldn’t be affected too much by this directly — humanity has lived through several pole reversals and we’re still here. Likewise, there were no mass extinction events coinciding with a pole reversal that scientists could find.
However, much has changed since the last time the planet’s magnetic field weakened by this much. For one, much of our existence is predicated on not only electrical power but also satellite-based communications, which nowadays are synced so much with the power grid that the two are basically inseparable. If our fleet of satellites was to suddenly come offline, much the world could suffer blackouts which could last for years. In the ensuing chaos, it’s anyone guess what would happen next.
Now, we know for sure that a pole reversal is going to happen relatively soon at a geological timescale and we also know there’s a big risk such an event will scramble our satellites. What we don’t know is when exactly this will happen. It could happen anytime from a generation from now to a couple hundred years. What’s certain is that we have to prepare for the inevitable. For this reason, many space-based firms as well as public institutions are collaboration not only to develop new standards for how to build and deploy tomorrow’s satellites — which are much sturdier in the face of cosmic radiation — but are also working on informing the public and other important stakeholders of the potential consequences.
Modern civilization is becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Here at ZME Science, you frequently read about artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Such stories will only become mundane but as we increasingly leave duties for AIs to handle, vulnerabilities in theface of power and comm-link loss will only become worse.
A pole reversal is always preceded by a weakened magnetic field, meaning more cosmic radiation will hit Earth’s surface.
Credit: NASA.
Throughout its history, Earth’s magnetic poles have flipped regularly. The last time this occurred was around 786,000 years ago, and judging from the paleomagnetic data which researchers studied, we’re in for a new pole reversal soon. According to scientists operating the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Swarm trio, clusters of molten iron and nickel are ‘on the run’, draining the dipole. There’s a revolution shaping up, and if precautions aren’t taken, the consequences could be dire for modern human civilization.
The Earth’s magnetic field looks like that which would be produced by placing a bar magnet at the center of the Earth, with the North Magnetic Pole corresponding to the South Geographic Pole and vice versa. The Earth’s magnetic dipole originates in swirling currents of molten iron deep in the Earth’s core, and extends more than 10 Earth radii, or 63.7 million meters out into space on the side facing the Sun, and all the way to the Moon’s orbit, at 384.4 million meters on the opposite side. Magnetic field lines loop out of the South Geographic Pole and into the North Geographic Pole.
Credit: NASA Cosmos.
There are currents that guide the molten iron inside the planet’s core and, consequently, the magnetic poles can move or shift over time, losing or gaining strength. Scientists not only know that the magnetic field’s intensity changes over time, but they also know when dramatic shifts in intensity or pole reversal occurred. That’s because such events are recorded in the “frozen” ferromagnetic (or, more accurately, ferrimagnetic) minerals of consolidated sedimentary deposits or cooled volcanic flows on land.
It’s from these records that geologists learned that the last magnetic reversal took place 786,000 years ago. It happened very quickly, too, having occurred in less than 100 years.
Polar mood swings
“It’s amazing how rapidly we see that reversal,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Courtney Sprain. “The paleomagnetic data are very well done. This is one of the best records we have so far of what happens during a reversal and how quickly these reversals can happen.”
In 2014, Sprain and colleagues performed a study on the magnetic field alignment in layers of ancient lake sediments that are now exposed in the Sulmona basin of the Apennine Mountains east of Rome, Italy. This study allowed them to determine the age of the last reversal as well as other novel insights, like how Earth’s magnetic field can sometimes weaken only to snap back into place (the last time this happened was 40,000 years ago).
Right now, Earth’s magnetic field is decreasing 10 times faster than normal, which is why many scientists believe this century could see a pole reversal. The latest satellite imagery data from ESA suggests the north magnetic pole is especially turbulent and unpredictable.
In the last 50 years, the north magnetic pole has already moved considerably — so much so that satellites orbiting right above the South Atlantic, which is near the geographic South Pole, are now bombarded by charged particles from the sun and interstellar space.
The planet’s magnetic field acts like a shield against this sort of radiation but since pole reversal implies a temporary weakening of the field first, radiation exposure is bound to increase.
So what does this all mean for us? Not anything good, unfortunately.
Because the field’s intensity is bound to decrease considerably, much more radiation from space will be able to reach the planet’s surface than it does today. However, life on Earth shouldn’t be affected too much by this directly — humanity has lived through several pole reversals and we’re still here. Likewise, there were no mass extinction events coinciding with a pole reversal that scientists could find.
However, much has changed since the last time the planet’s magnetic field weakened by this much. For one, much of our existence is predicated on not only electrical power but also satellite-based communications, which nowadays are synced so much with the power grid that the two are basically inseparable. If our fleet of satellites was to suddenly come offline, much the world could suffer blackouts which could last for years. In the ensuing chaos, it’s anyone guess what would happen next.
Now, we know for sure that a pole reversal is going to happen relatively soon at a geological timescale and we also know there’s a big risk such an event will scramble our satellites. What we don’t know is when exactly this will happen. It could happen anytime from a generation from now to a couple hundred years. What’s certain is that we have to prepare for the inevitable. For this reason, many space-based firms as well as public institutions are collaboration not only to develop new standards for how to build and deploy tomorrow’s satellites — which are much sturdier in the face of cosmic radiation — but are also working on informing the public and other important stakeholders of the potential consequences.
Modern civilization is becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Here at ZME Science, you frequently read about artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Such stories will only become mundane but as we increasingly leave duties for AIs to handle, vulnerabilities in theface of power and comm-link loss will only become worse.
Despite an observable universe sprinkled with several trillion galaxies, each stuffed with a trillion planets, we see no evidence of anyone. No signals, no megastructures, no interstellar rockets. While astronomers routinely uncover puzzling objects in the sky, these always turn out to be manifestations of natural phenomena.
Without mincing words, we can state that the cosmos has offered us no hint of the presence of beings as clever as, or cleverer than, Homo sapiens.
It’s tempting to jump from this observational fact to a disappointing conclusion: There’s no one out there. That’s not to say that the universe is sterile. Most astrobiologists seem comfortable with the premise that life might be widespread. But their optimism doesn’t always extend to complex, intelligent life.
It’s possible that we inhabit a universe whose occupants are mostly pond scum. After decades of seeing semi-humanoid aliens strut across the silver screen, it would be more than a little disappointing to think that the actual cosmic bestiary largely consists of plants and animals that are microscopic, or at best, no smarter than cane toads.
That situation would make humans very special, a circumstance that seems at odds with the enormous amount of real estate available for life, as well as the billions of years since the Big Bang during which intelligence could arise.
So, could there be a plausible explanation for why the universe seems so short on keen-witted company?
Filtering Out Intelligent Life
Economist Robin Hanson has suggested that life inevitably encounters a barrier on its evolutionary path to thinking critters – a Great Filter that keeps down the average IQ of the universe.
What could this barrier be? Perhaps life itself is rare because it’s difficult to cook up in the first place. Maybe the transition from single-celled to multi-celled organisms is a bridge too far for most ecosystems. Possibly the emergence of intelligence is a fluke, like winning the Powerball, or perhaps all thinking beings inevitably engineer their own destruction shortly after developing technology.
The idea that there are insurmountable hurdles in the path to intelligence leads to an interesting corollary. Consider the possibility that we’ll someday find microbes under the dry surface of Mars, or beneath the frozen ice of a moon like Enceladus or Europa. That would tell us that one hurdle – the origin of life – can be removed from the list. After all, if biology began on both Earth and another nearby world, then it’s a safe bet that it’s commonplace. No strong filter there.
If we were to discover more sophisticated life somewhere, perhaps equivalent to trilobites or dinosaurs, that would also eliminate some of the postulated filters. Indeed, Nick Bostrom, at Oxford University, has said that it would be horrifyingly bad news to find such complex organisms on another world. Doing so would tell us that the Great Filter is in our future, not our past, and we are doomed. Homo sapiens will come up against a wall that keeps us from extending our dominion beyond Earth. Our species, as lovely and promising as it is, would would have a destiny that is short and dismal.
The appeal of the Great Filter idea is that it takes a fairly limited observation – we don’t see any evidence of aliens in the night sky – and draws an astounding (if dystopian) conclusion about humanity’s destiny.
Could the Great Filter Theory be Full of Holes?
One could argue whether the various hurdles that have been suggested are really all that daunting. For example, the claim that the evolutionary step from insensate creatures to thinking beings could be incredibly unlikely.
A premise of the Rare Earth hypothesis, put forward in a book by Peter Ward and Don Brownlee, published nearly two decades ago, is that the physical conditions of our planet are both finely tuned for our existence and seldom encountered elsewhere. Yes, smart creatures arose on Earth, but that’s because our planet is really special. However, the recent detection of thousands of planets around other stars suggests that terrestrial worlds are hardly in short supply. If there is a Great Filter, it’s not likely to be lack of suitable habitats.
Other suggested barriers to intelligence are less easily dismissed because they depend as much on sociology as on astronomy. Many people seem almost proud to bray that humanity is going to Hades in a handbasket. If nuclear war doesn’t do us in, climate change will. But given that we have at least a chance of being smart about these threats and avoiding total self-destruction, it seems pretty clear that some reasonable fraction of alien societies will also be able to keep themselves alive and kicking for the long term.
Indeed, it’s my opinion that the Great Filter idea falters not on the merits or otherwise of the proposed filters, but on the initial premise: Namely that, because we don’t see any evidence for other intelligence, we require some general mechanism to keep the cosmos short on sentience. Sure, it’s amusing to enumerate some of the difficulties in going from murky chemical soup to space-faring beings, but it seems far more likely that the problem here is a too-hasty conclusion about the prevalence of cosmic confreres.
The efforts to find radio and light signals from other worlds, known as SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), has so far failed to uncover any hailing signals from aliens. But these experiments are both underfunded and still in their early days. Even if the universe is chock-a-block with transmitting societies, SETI could easily miss them, simply because of inadequate instrument sensitivity or the fact that only a small number of star systems have yet to be searched.
A common, and regrettable, error is committed when people note that the SETI scientists have been toiling for more than 50 years without a discovery, as if that suggests that intelligence is rare. It doesn’t. Throughout most of that period, observations were restricted by the lack of telescope time or by receivers that could only examine small slices of the radio dial.
In addition, it’s worth remarking that humanity is in the process of developing artificial intelligence, a technological trajectory that other sophisticated societies could very well follow. Unlike biological intelligence, AI can self-improve at tremendous speed. Also, there aren’t obvious limitations to the spread of machines throughout the cosmos. The implication of this observation is that the majority of the intelligence in the universe is likely to be synthetic. And machine intelligence might be small, localized, and cryptic.
The absence of evidence would hardly qualify as evidence of absence. The Great Filter theory, in other words, could be no more than an appealing solution looking for a problem.
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31-01-2018
5 Ancient Sites Many Believe Were Built By Aliens
5 Ancient Sites Many Believe Were Built By Aliens
The idea that early mankind was influenced by beings, not of Earth has widely spread in modern society.
With the emergence of the so-called Ancient Astronaut Theory, people have started questioning whether it is possible that in the distant past, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, ancient mankind was visited by otherworldly beings, by spacefaring civilizations, which came to earth and helped instigate humankind.
On Earth, evidence of alien contact is, according to many, vast.
Many ancient sites on Earth defy explanation. For centuries have experts tried unraveling the mysteries how some of these sites were built. Scholars have wondered about how ancient civilizations had the ability to move supermassive blocks of stones, for hundreds of kilometers, from their quarries to the construction sites. They have tired solving the mystery of how they quarried some of these rocks, and with what kind of tools.
The more they searched, the more questions arose.
Since many questions were left unanswered, some people have started wondering whether some of these sites may have actually been built by aliens?
1. Sacsayhuaman—an ancient alien fortress?
Stones at Sacsayhuaman.
Located outside of Cusco is a massive ancient fortress called Sacsayhuaman. This ancient site was built with supermassive stones that have been chiseled and put into place like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. The ancient fortress walls are composed of Andean rocks that weigh more than 300 tons each, and were carried—transported—from more than 50 kilometers away. Furthermore, somehow these massive stones were lifted and fitted into place with laser-like precision.
Many people argue that cutting, transporting and fitting 300-ton-stones is something that the ancients could have achieved, but only with the help of interstellar visitors.
While personally, I believe that the builders of Sacsayhuaman were of terrestrial origin, I believe they had in their possession advanced ancient technologies that allowed them to achieve such incredible feats.
2. Teotihuacan—the city of Gods
A view of Teotihuacan. Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Teotihuacan is a massive ancient city best known for it massive pyramid complex and incredible astronomical alignment.
The city of the Gods was created thousands of years ago, and its design, architecture, and mysterious characteristics have led many people to believe it was built not by human hands.
One of the most massive structures in Teotihuacan is the Pyramid of the Sun. Interestingly, this structure is also one of the largest such constructions in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, the pyramid’s curious alignment is believed to be based on calendrical cycles.
3. The Pyramids of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
How the Pyramids of the Giza plateau were built remains an unsolved mystery. Despite the fact that there is written evidence which explains how some of the blocks were transported to the pyramid, archaeologists really don’t know how the pyramid was built. How did the ancient Egyptians stack the massive blocks of stones? How did they move them as the pyramid grew? What was the true purpose of the pyramid? Why is it that the three main pyramids are aligned with Orion? Why haven’t experts found a mummy inside the pyramid, if it was built as a resting place? Why are there still undiscovered chambers inside it? How is it possible that the builders placed the Great Pyramid at the exact center of Earth’s landmass, more than 4,500 years ago?
All of these questions have led to numerous theories which suggest that the Pyramids were built not by human hands, but by an otherworldly influence.
4. Puma Punku
At a distance of around 45 miles west of La Paz Bolivia we find one of the most magnificent ancient sites on the surface of our planet.
The sheer number of megalithic stones found at Puma Punku are amongst the largest found on the planet. Puma Punku shatters all traditional views on ancient cultures. The incredibly precise stones, precision cuts, and polished surfaces have defied explanation for centuries. The andesite stones used in the construction process of this megalithic site were cut with such precision that they fit together perfectly, and are interlocked with each other without the use of mortar. This ancient site continues to defy the countless theories put forth by mainstream scholars, historians, and scientists. Many people argue that this ancient site was not the product of man, but of the gods who came down from heaven, thousands of years ago.
5. Stonehenge—an ancient alien landing pad?
Located outside of Salisbury we find a massive circle composed of stones, ranging in weight between 30 and 60 tons. Believed to have been built during the Neolithic, this fascinating ancient site inspired great authors like Erich von Däniken to ponder whether it’s a massive model of our solar system and whether it may have been used as a landing pad for alien spacecraft.
Today, modern scholars are still unable to decipher the mystery behind Stonehenge. Experts are unable to figure out how the ancient transported the massive stones, nor why they are positioned like they are.
Featured image credit: Leon Tukker. Freelance concept/environment artist and Illustrator.
Since its epic touchdown on the Red Planet in 2012, Curiosity has driven an 11-mile (18-kilometer) route from its landing site inside Gale Crater to the huge crater’s northern rim. Perched from this vantage point, the rover captured this astonishing panoramic view that not only features the whole enterprising route but also shows much of the crater’s horizon view.
A detailed look of Gale Crater horizon as seen by Curiosity from its “Vera Rubin Ridge” viewpoint.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
The component images of the panorama were shot three months ago by the rover’s Mastcam from the northern edge of the Vera Rubin Ridge. Meanwhile, the rover has approached the southern edge of the ridge, examining outcrops along the way.
Clear skies typical of Martian winters allowed the rover to shoot distant details, such as a hill on the northern horizon which was strikingly 50 miles (85 kilometers) away from the rover. The tall mountains you can see surrounding the rover are actually the crater’s walls, some as tall as 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). One can only imagine the size and the force of the impactor that formed the 96-mile basin around 3.8 billion years ago.
Thought your holiday panoramas were cool?
“Even though Curiosity has been steadily climbing for five years, this is the first time we could look back and see the whole mission laid out below us,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
“From our perch on Vera Rubin Ridge, the vast plains of the crater floor stretch out to the spectacular mountain range that forms the northern rim of Gale Crater.” The rover photographed the scene shortly before northern Mars’ winter solstice, a season of clear skies, gaining a sharp view of distant details.
Curiosity’s Mastcam took the component images on Oct. 25, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
In case you notice something weird about these pictures, according to NASA, the panorama “has been white-balanced so the colors of the rock materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.”
In the annotated version featured below you can see Curiosity’s plotted route from its landing site to Yellowknife Bay (where the rover found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment), all the way through Darwin, Cooperstown, and then Kimberly, Namid Dune, Murray Buttes, Ireson Hill, before crossing the tricky Bagnold Dunes to reach Vera Rubin Ridge.
The Curiosity team received the new images from a relay-link with NASA’s MAVEN orbiter, which beamed back over a gigabit of data in one single relay session — that’s the first time in history that much data has been sent in one go from Mars. And to think, all that data was sent from millions of miles away. Take that, Comcast!
“MAVEN definitely has the potential to move lots of data for us, and we expect to make even more use of it in the future,” said JPL’s Roy Gladden, manager of NASA’s Mars Relay Network Office.
Next, the Curiosity mission is scheduled to drill samples from Vera Rubin Ridge before proceeding to Clay Unit. Curiosity’s drill has been suspended due to a hardware malfunctionsince 2016 so it will be very exciting how the mission pans out.
Aliens zijn al 4000 keer op aarde geland. Steven Greer onthult in tv-interview waarom men dit geheim wil houden
Aliens zijn al 4000 keer op aarde geland. Steven Greer onthult in tv-interview waarom men dit geheim wil houden
Het UFO-onderwerp ligt verscholen onder een mantel van geheimhouding en dat heeft te maken met de technologie waarop deze vliegende voorwerpen zijn gebaseerd. Dat heeft Steven Greer gezegd op RT America.
De financiële kartels eisten vanaf de jaren vijftig dat alle informatie over dit onderwerp geheim zou blijven, omdat ze niet wilden dat mensen erachter zouden komen dat we al heel lang zonder olie en gas kunnen, aldus Greer.
“Het heeft weinig te maken met groene of grijze mannetjes,” zei hij tegen voormalig gouverneur Jesse Ventura. “Het heeft alles te maken met machtsmisbruik.”
Geheimen
Als mensen ontdekken dat we niet alleen zijn zal dat de financiële kartels biljoenen kosten omdat wetenschappers dan gelijk de vraag gaan stellen hoe de aliens hier naartoe zijn gereisd.
Met andere woorden: als naar buiten komt dat UFO’s geen olie of gas nodig hebben stort het systeem van de petrodollar in elkaar en loopt de elite honderden triljoenen aan olie-inkomsten mis.
Greer merkte op dat het leger deze geheimen naar buiten wil brengen, maar dat de inlichtingendiensten en grote corporaties hier een stokje voor steken.
4000 gedocumenteerde gevallen
Op de vraag hoe diep dit gaat antwoordde hij dat zelfs de president, stafchefs en CIA-directeur geen toegang hebben tot de geheime UFO-projecten binnen de Amerikaanse overheid.
Volgens dr. Greer zijn er minstens 4000 gedocumenteerde gevallen waarbij UFO’s op het aardoppervlak zijn geland.
Maar waarom lees je dit dan niet op de voorpagina van alle kranten? “De media zijn onderdeel van het probleem.”
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
: @the415guy
