10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories About Extraterrestrial Beings

GREGORY MYERS

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

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

10. The Mass UFO Sightings Over Los Angeles Decades Ago

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

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

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

9. The Crawling Space Slug On Pluto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. The Alien Woman Supposedly Spotted On The Martian Landscape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Venus Was Once Host To Earth-Like Life

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

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

2. Jesus Christ Was An Alien-Human Hybrid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{ http://listverse.com/ }

12-03-2018 om 18:40 geschreven door peter  

Blue salt crystals on meteorites stoke conversation about extraterrestrial life

12-03-2018 om 18:20 geschreven door peter  

New Fast Radio Burst Detected: FRB 180301

Astronomers from the Breakthrough Listen initiative, the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of alien civilizations, have detected a new ‘fast radio burst,’ an extremely powerful radio signal from a distant galaxy.

An artist’s impression of a fast radio burst reaching Earth.

Image credit: Jingchuan Yu / Beijing Planetarium.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious and rarely detected bursts of energy from space. Scientists estimate that there are between 2,000 and 10,000 FRBs occurring in the sky every day.

These events have durations of milliseconds and exhibit the characteristic dispersion sweep of radio pulsars. They emit as much energy in one millisecond as the Sun emits in 10,000 years, but the physical phenomenon that causes them is unknown.

Less than two dozen FRBs have been detected to date. Most give off only a single burst and do not flash repeatedly.

“While astronomers don’t know all that much about FRBs, we can infer some intriguing details about them,” said Breakthrough Listen project scientist Dr. Danny Price, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley.

“Firstly, they exhibit a tell-tale sweep in frequency that suggests they are incredibly far away: billions of light years. FRBs travel billions of years to get to us, and only last a few milliseconds, suggesting the emission mechanism is short-lived. For us to detect them clearly after such a long journey, they have also to be insanely bright.”

“What can produce such bursts? We don’t know yet, but leading theories involve neutron stars and cataclysmic events,” he said. “There’s also a neat theory that they are due to interstellar extraterrestrial travel. We’d love that to be the case, but have to rule out all plausible astrophysical theories first.”

“There is no known astronomical source that generates radio bursts at such a high brightness, which is tens of billions of times brighter than the known population of pulsars, for example,” said Breakthrough Listen and Harvard physicist Professor Avi Loeb.

Detection of FRB 180301 with the Breakthrough Listen backend instrument at CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope: the top panel shows the de-dispersed pulse while the bottom panel shows the frequency structure with the pulse dispersed across 340 MHz of the observed band.

Image credit: Breakthrough Listen.

The Breakthrough Listen initiative is foremostly a search for technologically-capable life beyond Earth; however, a real-time search for FRBs runs in tandem.

The new burst, dubbed FRB 180301, was detected on March 1, 2018, at 7:34 a.m. UTC, during Breakthrough Listen observations with the 21-cm multibeam receiver of CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope.

The receiver was centered on J2000 coordinates RA 06:12:43.4, DEC +04:33:44.8.

This is not the first time that the Breakthrough Listen researchers have picked up one of these mysterious and fleeting bursts — in August 2017 FRB 121102, the only FRB known to repeat, was caught in the act by the team using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

But the FRB180301 event is the first new FRB source that Breakthrough Listen has discovered.

“During our observations at the Parkes Radio Telescope on March 1, 2018, we detected a mysterious and fleeting phenomenon known as a FRB,” Dr. Price said.

“As we did when we caught the only FRB known to repeat, FRB 121102, in the act, we’ve written up initial details in an Astronomer’s Telegram to encourage follow-up observations with other facilities.”

{ http://www.sci-news.com/ }

12-03-2018 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

Ancient civilisation used sound energy to 'LEVITATE and contact aliens' – shock claim

ARCHAEOLOGICAL findings suggest previous civilisations used circular structures as energy-generating devices to create man-made portals in time, according to boffins online

By Callum Hoare 

The research – which extended over a two-year period – suggested that human beings from thousands of years ago produced natural sound harmonic frequencies produced from the surface of the Earth.

The technology they apparently used is said to be similar to the way we use laser technology today.

Some of the frequencies recorded are believed to reach more than 380 gigahertz – much greater than any levels used today.

The discovery has left many confused as to what this previous society could possibly have done with the energy they created and whether they could have possibly known more about our planet than we do today.

The video was uploaded to YouTube channel UFOmania yesterday, and has already racked up more than 5000 hits.

And viewers suggested that previous societies have been in contact with extraterrestrial life.

One comment read: “Sound is one of the most abundant forms of free energy on the planet.

“It is the primordial source of all things and is the common denominator of all creation.

“With that being said, if an extraterrestrial race wanted to harvest energy from the planet, it could create such energy with sound.

“Sound was used as energy to levitate objects in order to create the monuments that opened vortices which allowed spacecraft to come and go."

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

12-03-2018 om 17:26 geschreven door peter  

UFO Seen Heading Out To The Ocean Over Texas, March 7, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 7, 2018
Location of sighting: Bangs, Texas, USA
Source: MUFON #90697

In Texas this week a glowing disk was seen appearing and disappearing over and over in the sky. You can see that this is not the sun, which is probably in the distance outside the range of the camera lens. This UFO is heading out over the ocean, which covers 75% of the earths surface. It must be heading to an underwater base. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states:

Teardrop/Meteor shape but hovering, slightly descending; appeared/disappeared materialized/dematerialized.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

12-03-2018 om 16:33 geschreven door peter  

White UFO Recorded Moving Near Chem Trail Raises Questions About Why? UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: 10-2-2017
Location of sighting: Killington, Vermont, USA
Source: MUFON #90707

UFOs are frequently seen near the chem trails of jets around the globe. They are sometimes seen flying in and out of the trail itself, taking samples, running statistics and analysis, to help predict future events. What global events? Aliens have AI which can make future predictions with a very low failure rate. These predictions could be anything from how far are we to the next level of aircraft, to how far we are from global extinction due to pollution. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states:

Planes were making chem-trails. I took some photos. I did not see the object until reviewing my photos 2 days later.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

12-03-2018 om 16:24 geschreven door peter  

An F/A-18 Hornet lands on the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier in the Atlantic ocean on Oct. 25, 2017.

(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

{ https://www.theepochtimes.com/ }

12-03-2018 om 01:17 geschreven door peter  

Military encounter with UFO revealed in 2015 footage

12-03-2018 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

'What the f*** is that'? UFO leaves US military jet pilot stunned in new footage

FASCINATING new declassified footage captures the moment a US Navy military jet pilot sees a UFO, leaving him speechless.

By Paul Harper 

A sensational two-minute clip documents the meeting off the East Coast three years ago.

“Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilisation?

“Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.”

Footage emerged last year of a sighting involving jets from the battleship USS Nimitz in 2004 off the San Diego coast.

Both the Nimitz and F/18 strange encounters were believed to have been investigated as part of the Pentagon’s top-secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

“Might they be evidence of some alien civilisation? Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.”

Ex Bush official Christopher Mellon

This groundbreaking programme, had a budget of £16.5million allocated to it annually by the Department of Defence.

Military intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who ran AATIP, recently made astonishing claims about how investigators believed they had been to understand how the UFOs fly.

Working with expert scientists, they believe the craft can effectively create their own time-space bubble, which allows them to fly at such incredible speeds.

While the US government said AATIP was closed in 2012, Elizondo claimed he worked on the highly-sensitive project until October last year until he resigned over “excessive secrecy and internal opposition”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

12-03-2018 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

Un OVNI sphérique repéré en orbite autour de la Lune (vidéo)

Il y a peu un OVNI rond et noir a été filmé alors qu’il passait à grande vitesse au-dessus de la surface de la Lune. Les images de cet objet extraordinaire ont été publiées sur YouTube.

Cette vidéo, qui a fait sensation, nous montre un engin non identifié se déplaçant très rapidement autour de la circonférence du seul satellite naturel de notre planète. Malgré le fait que la caméra zoome sur cet OVNI, il demeure impossible d’expliquer rationnellement son origine.

Au bout d’une poignée de secondes, il finit par disparaître sur le côté droit. Ces images ont été initialement mises en ligne sur la chaîne YouTube UFO Institute le 2 mars 2018.

Un description accompagne la vidéo : « Je filmais la pleine lune et j’ai capturé un disque sombre qui se dirigeait vers le sud en face de la lune. »

Et depuis qu’elle a été postée, elle a reçu beaucoup d’attention, puisqu’elle a été partagée sur divers autres canaux.

Un internaute avance : « Au début, je pensais que ça pouvait être quelque chose d’autre qui se trouvait dans l’atmosphère de la Terre, mais après avoir fait un zoom dessus, on pouvait vraiment voir qu’il semblait être en orbite autour de la Lune. »

Un autre a ajouta : « On dirait que cet (OVNI) va du côté obscur de la lune, est-ce le nôtre ou est-ce le leur ? »

Et un troisième a déclaré : « Super vidéo mon ami. Ils (les OVNIs) sont réels et ils sont là. »

Les observations d’OVNI font régulièrement la une de l’actualité ces derniers temps.

Source: Daily Star, le 9 mars 2018

Par Activité Paranormale

Dans le même registre:

1. Un Ovni doré MASSIF qui orbite la Terre. HD. Un Ovni d’un Kilomètre de long! 1er Août 2016 (vidéo)
2. Un Ovni géant au dessus de l’océan repéré dans une photo de la NASA (Vidéo)
3. Un Gigantesque OVNI apparaît durant la mise en orbite de la Tesla Roadster de SpaceX autour de la Terre le 6 février 2018 (vidéo)
4. Un Ovni géant a été repéré dans le ciel de Cleveland, 28 février 2018 (vidéo)
5. Un ovni en orbite près de l’ISS, 4 Mars 2015, (Vidéo de la NASA)

{ https://www.nouvelordremondial.cc/ }

11-03-2018 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

Solar Storms Can Crash Communications, But 3D Models Aid Prediction

In a new U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study, a scientific team used Earth data to calculate the voltages along power lines in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. They found that many of these measurements were significantly different from the results that the previous 1D model produced.

"Our study suggests that 3D data of the Earth should be used whenever they are available," Greg Lucas, research physicist at the USGS and lead author of the study, said in arecent statement about the new findings, which were published Feb. 26 in the journal Space Weather.

Using 3D modeling to gain a better understanding of the complex structures below the measurement sites, scientists can better determine which U.S. sites are most vulnerable to blackouts when powerful geomagnetic storms strike.

In their new study, the USGS looked at the geomagnetic storm event of March 1989 in which the Canadian city of Quebec suffered a blackout. By modeling this scenario in 3D, the USGS scientists found 62 vulnerable sites that the 1D model did not catch.

"This discrepancy between 1D- and 3D-based calculations of the 1989 storm demonstrates the importance of realistic data, rather than relying on previous 1D models, to determine the impact that a geomagnetic storm has on power grids," Lucas said in the statement.

The U.S. Geological Survey is a scientific agency in the Department of the Interior. It researches the environment to provide information about Earth, its processes and any potential hazards they present.

• Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin.
• Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+.
• Original article on Space.com .

{ https://www.space.com/ }

11-03-2018 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

Peering deep into the core of the Crab Nebula, this close-up image reveals the beating heart of one of the most historic and intensively studied remnants of a supernova, an exploding star. Celestial bodies like supernovae helped Riess’s team of astronomers gauge distances to determine how quickly the universe is expanding.

Image via Space Telescope Science Institute.

By Donna Weaver and Ray Villard/Johns Hopkins

Here’s the good news: Astronomers have made the most precise measurement to date of the rate at which the universe is expanding since the Big Bang.

Here’s the possibly unsettling news: The new numbers remain at odds with independent measurements of the early universe’s expansion, which could mean that there is something unknown about the makeup of the universe.

Is something unpredicted going on in the depths of space?

Adam Riess is a Nobel Laureate and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He said:

The community is really grappling with understanding the meaning of this discrepancy.

Riess leads a team of researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the expansion rate of the universe. He shared a Nobel Prize in 2011 for the discovery of the accelerating universe.

The team, which includes researchers from Hopkins and the Space Telescope Science Institute, has used the Hubble Space Telescope over the past six years to refine the measurements of the distances to galaxies, using stars as milepost markers. Those measurements are used to calculate how fast the universe expands with time, a value known as the Hubble constant.

Image via NASA, ESA, A. Feild (STScI), and A. Riess (STScI/JHU).

Measurements made by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which maps the cosmic microwave background, predicted that the Hubble constant value should now be 42 miles (67 km) per second per megaparsec (3.3 million light-years), and could be no higher than 43 miles (69 km) per second per megaparsec. This means that for every 3.3 million light-years farther away a galaxy is from us, it is moving 42 miles (67 km) per second faster. But Riess’s team measured a value of 45 miles (73 km) per second per megaparsec, indicating galaxies are moving at a faster rate than implied by observations of the early universe.

The Hubble data are so precise that astronomers cannot dismiss the gap between the two results as errors in any single measurement or method. Riess explained:

Both results have been tested multiple ways. Barring a series of unrelated mistakes, it is increasingly likely that this is not a bug but a feature of the universe.

Explaining a Vexing Discrepancy

Riess outlined a few possible explanations for the mismatch, all related to the 95 percent of the universe that is shrouded in darkness. One possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the cosmos, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater – or growing – strength. This means that the acceleration itself might not have a constant value in the universe but changes over time.

Another idea is that the universe contains a new subatomic particle that travels close to the speed of light. Such speedy particles are collectively called “dark radiation” and include previously known particles like neutrinos, which are created in nuclear reactions and radioactive decays. Unlike a normal neutrino, which interacts by a subatomic force, this new particle would be affected only by gravity and is dubbed a “sterile neutrino.”

Yet another attractive possibility is that dark matter – an invisible form of matter not made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons – interacts more strongly with normal matter or radiation than previously assumed.

Any of these scenarios would change the contents of the early universe, leading to inconsistencies in theoretical models. These inconsistencies would result in an incorrect value for the Hubble constant, inferred from observations of the young cosmos. This value would then be at odds with the number derived from the Hubble observations.

Riess and his colleagues don’t have any answers yet to this vexing problem, but his team will continue to work on fine-tuning the universe’s expansion rate. So far the team, called the Supernova H0 for the Equation of State – nicknamed SH0ES – has decreased the uncertainty to 2.3 percent.

Building a Better Yardstick

The team has been successful in refining the Hubble constant value by streamlining and strengthening the construction of the cosmic distance ladder, a series of interlinked measuring techniques that allow astronomers to gauge distances across billions of light-years.

Astronomers can’t use a tape measure to gauge the distances between galaxies – instead, they use special classes of stars and supernovae as cosmic yardsticks or milepost markers to precisely measure galactic distances.

Among the most reliable used to measure shorter distances are Cepheid variables, which are pulsating stars that brighten and dim at specific rates. Some distant galaxies contain another reliable yardstick, exploding stars called Type Ia supernovae, which flare with uniform brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively farther away. Using a basic tool of geometry called parallax, which measures the apparent shift of an object’s position due to a change in an observer’s point of view, astronomers can measure the distances to these celestial bodies independent of their brightness.

Previous Hubble observations studied 10 faster-blinking Cepheids located 300 light-years to 1,600 light-years from Earth. The latest Hubble results are based on measurements of the parallax of eight newly analyzed Cepheids in our Milky Way galaxy located about 10 times farther away than any studied previously, residing between 6,000 light-years and 12,000 light-years from Earth.

To measure parallax with Hubble, Riess’s team had to gauge the apparent tiny wobble of the Cepheids due to Earth’s motion around the sun. These wobbles are the size of just 1/100 of a single pixel on the telescope’s camera, which is roughly the apparent size of a grain of sand seen 100 miles (160 km) away.

To ensure the accuracy of the measurements, the astronomers developed a clever method that was not envisioned when Hubble was launched in 1990. The researchers invented a scanning technique in which the telescope measured a star’s position a thousand times a minute every six months for four years. The telescope slowly slews across a stellar target and captures the image as a streak of light. Riess said:

This method allows for repeated opportunities to measure the extremely tiny displacements due to parallax. You’re measuring the separation between two stars, not just in one place on the camera, but over and over thousands of times, reducing the errors in measurement.

Riess’s team compared the distances of galaxies in relation to Earth with the expansion of space measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies, using the apparent outward velocity of galaxies at each distance to calculate the Hubble constant. Their goal is to further reduce the uncertainty by using data from Hubble and the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which will measure the positions and distances of stars with unprecedented precision.

Bottom line: Scientists measuring the universe’s rate of expansion say their new numbers remain at odds with independent measurements of the early universe’s expansion, which could mean that there is something unknown about the makeup of the universe.

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

11-03-2018 om 23:24 geschreven door peter  

Latest Juno spacecraft results fill in details about Jupiter’s interior and polar storms

BY CHRISTOPHER CROCKETT 

 

STORMY SKIES  A quintet of cyclones encircles a sixth cyclone at Jupiter’s south pole in this mosaic of infrared images from the Juno spacecraft. Color represents heat coming from below: Yellow is where clouds are thin; red is where they are thick.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SWRI, ASI, INAF, IAPS

Bit by bit, Jupiter is revealing its deepest, darkest secrets.

The latest findings are in from the Juno spacecraft. And they unveil the roots of the planet’s storms, what lies beneath the opaque atmosphere and a striking geometric layout of cyclones parked around the gas giant’s north and south poles.

“We’re at the beginning of dissecting Jupiter,” says Juno mission leader Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. And the picture that’s emerging — still just a sketch — topples many preconceived notions. The results appear in four papers in the March 8 Nature.

Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since July 4, 2016, on a mission to map the planet’s interior (SN: 6/25/16, p. 16). The probe loops around once every 53 days, traveling on an elongated orbit that takes the spacecraft from pole to pole and as close as about 4,000 kilometers above the cloud tops.

As it plows through Jupiter’s gravity field, Juno speeds up and slows down in response to shifting masses inside the planet. By measuring these minute accelerations and decelerations, scientists can calculate subtle variations in Jupiter’s gravity and deduce how its mass is distributed. That lets researchers build up a three-dimensional map of the planet’s internal structure. At the same time, Juno snaps pictures in visible and infrared light. While other probes have extensively photographed much of the planet, Juno is the first to get an intimate look at the north and south poles.

“The whole thing is really intriguing, especially when you compare [Jupiter] to other giant planets,” says Imke de Pater, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “They are all unique, it looks like.”

Check out these four surprising new things we’ve learned that make Jupiter one of a kind:

1. Rings of cyclones

Parked at each pole is a cyclone several thousand kilometers wide. That part isn’t surprising. But each of those cyclones is encircled by a polygonal arrangement of similarly sized storms — eight in the north and five in the south. The patterns have persisted throughout Juno’s visit.

“We don’t really understand why that would happen, and why they would collect up there in such a geometric fashion,” Bolton says. “That's pretty amazing that nature is capable of something like that.”

Eyes of the storms

This highest-resolution-yet view of the south pole reveals temperature variation as well as intricate eddies and turbulence around the main cyclones. 

A. ADRIANI ET AL/NATURE 2018

2. More than skin deep

Researchers have long debated whether the photogenic bands of clouds that wrap around Jupiter have deep roots or just skim the top of the atmosphere. Juno’s new look shows that the bands penetrate roughly 3,000 kilometers below the cloud tops. That’s 30 times as thick as the bulk of Earth’s atmosphere. While just a tiny fraction of Jupiter’s diameter, that’s deeper than previously thought, Bolton says.

3. Weighty weather

Within those 3,000 kilometers lies what passes for an atmosphere on Jupiter. It’s the stage on which Jupiter’s turbulent weather plays out. The atmosphere alone is about three times as massive as our planet, or 1 percent of Jupiter’s entire mass, researchers estimate.

4. Stuck together

Below the atmosphere, Jupiter is fluid. But unlike most fluids, the planet rotates as if it’s a solid mass. Like kids playing crack-the-whip, atoms of hydrogen and helium figuratively link arms and spin around the planet in unison, scientists report. Earlier results from Juno also indicate there’s no solid core lurking beneath this fluid (SN: 6/24/17, p. 14), so anyone dropped into the planet can expect a terribly long fall.

Many of these results are preliminary, and it’s unclear what it all means for how Jupiter operates. But what’s been learned so far, Bolton says, “is quite different than anybody anticipated.”

Citations

• A. Adriani et al. Clusters of cyclones encircling Jupiter’s poles. Nature. Vol. 555, March 8, 2018, p. 216. doi:10.1038/nature25491.
• T. Guillot et al. A suppression of differential rotation in Jupiter’s deep interior. Nature. Vol. 555, March 8, 2018, p. 227. doi:10.1038/nature25775 .
• L. Iess et al. Measurement of Jupiter’s asymmetric gravity field. Nature. Vol. 555, March 8, 2018, p. 220. doi:10.1038/nature25776.
• Y. Kaspi et al. Jupiter’s atmospheric jet streams extend thousands of kilometres deep. Nature. Vol. 555, March 8, 2018, p. 223. doi:10.1038/nature25793.

Further Reading

• L. Grossman. Jupiter’s massive Great Red Spot is at least 350 kilometers deep. Science News. Vol. 193, January 20, 2018, p. 7.
• A. Yeager. Juno spacecraft reveals a more complex Jupiter. Science News. Vol. 191, June 24, 2017, p. 14.
• C. Crockett. Juno is closing in on Jupiter. Science News. Vol. 189, June 25, 2016, p. 16.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

11-03-2018 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

The radiation explosion from Proxima Centauri has scorched hopes for habitability nearby

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

TEMPER TANTRUM  Proxima Centauri released a gigantic flare on March 24, 2017, fizzling hopes that this nearby star’s Earth-mass planet is habitable.

ROBERTO MOLAR CANDANOSA/CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE, SDO/NASA, JPL/NASA

Proxima Centauri has a temper. Earth’s nearest planet-hosting neighbor released a gigantic flare in March 2017, a new analysis of observations of the star shows. And that’s bad news for the potential for life on the star’s planet, Proxima b.

The star got 1,000 times brighter over 10 seconds before dimming again. That can best be explained by an enormous stellar flare, astronomer Meredith MacGregor of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and colleagues report February 26 in Astrophysical JournalLetters.

Because Proxima b is so much closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, the flare would have blasted Proxima b with 4,000 times more radiation than Earth typically gets from the sun’s flares. “If there are flares like this at all frequently, then [the exoplanet] is likely not in the best shape,” MacGregor says.

Proxima b was one of the most sought-after sites for finding life outside the solar system. Just four light-years away, it has a mass about the same as Earth’s and probably has temperatures suitable for liquid water (SN: 12/24/16, p. 20). But its star is an M dwarf, a class of small dim stars notoriously prone to flaresthat could rip away their planets’ atmospheres (SN: 6/24/17, p. 18).

Peak energy

Proxima Centauri became 1,000 times brighter and then dimmed again over about two minutes (red lines). The black line refers to normal emission from the star, and the yellow and blue lines are smaller flares.

M. MACGREGOR

MacGregor and her colleagues reanalyzed data from a recent study led by astronomer Guillem Anglada of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. Anglada and his colleagues had observed Proxima Centauri with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array telescopes in Chile. The team saw extra light that it interpreted as a ring of dust analogous to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt, scattering the light in all directions, the team reported November 15  in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

But Anglada and his colleagues had averaged the amount of light over 10 hours of observations. That smeared out any short-term changes in the star’s brightness — such as a bright flare.

When MacGregor’s team reanalyzed the data, they found that all the excess light came from the same two-minute period on March 24. A massive flare explains all the extra light, she says — none of it was masquerading as a glittering dust ring.

Anglada says he and his colleagues are aware of the March 24 flare and are currently revising their original claim. But he says the flare can’t account for all the extra light, so the dust ring theory might still survive.

Citations

• M. MacGregor et al. Detection of a millimeter flare from Proxima Centauri. Astrophysical Journal Letters. Published February 26, 2018.
• G. Anglada et al. ALMA discovery of dust belts around Proxima Centauri. Astrophysical Journal Letters. Published November 15, 2017.

Further Reading

• C. Crockett. Year in review: A planet lurks around the star next door. Science News. Vol. 190, December 24, 2016, p. 20.
• C. Crockett. Life might have a shot on planets orbiting dim red dwarfs. Science News. Vol. 191, June 24, 2017, p. 18.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

11-03-2018 om 22:52 geschreven door peter  

Mogen we enkele verzegelde maanstalen openen?

{ https://www.eoswetenschap.eu/ }

11-03-2018 om 22:26 geschreven door peter  

My Alien & UFO Existential Crisis

I’m not kidding that a few years ago, I wholeheartedly believed aliens were visiting our planet. I believed that religions all bore a resemblance to each other because of aliens having visited the earth in ancient times. I even witnessed a UFO myself. But nowadays, I’m having a crisis. You see, I no longer believe that UFOs are alien-controlled ships. I no longer believe that we’ve been visited. I don’t believe those alien abductions are real. And I don’t believe aliens guided our ancestors in ancient times. So what the hell happened?

Science & Critical Thinking

First of all, I’m a science guy. I have a degree in engineering and I do IT work as a full-time career. As a result, my education and work experience have taught me the rules of critical thinking. They’ve taught me about drawing conclusions from evidence. They’ve also taught me the dangers of searching for evidence solely to support an existing conclusion. After writing about UFO encounters and researching alternative explanations for the past couple years, very rarely does something come up that isn’t explainable.

I’m not a closed-minded person, in fact, I’m open to the idea that we’re being visited. Unfortunately, a glowing ball in the sky that you can’t identify just isn’t enough to convince me. Alien abduction stories that are clearly cases of sleep paralysis simply don’t convince me. And the History Channel show Ancient Aliens definitely can’t convince me.

Witnesses Too Eager to Believe

The desire to believe is one thing consistent in all of my research on UFO sightings. This desire creates a bias in the witness that’s undeniable. I’ve seen witnesses who quickly come to a conclusion simply based on their existing beliefs.

When a vibrant and beautiful aurora borealis appeared over Siberia, one witness stated, “It’s a gap in the space-time continuum”. This witness didn’t take any measurements. He didn’t measure any gravitational changes. He didn’t check his watch speed to see if it changed. All he did was look up in the sky. He literally just made it up because he believed those things happen. His quote appeared in the Daily Mail which contained many such quotes from locals who observed this totally natural phenomenon.

Lots of Deliberate Hoaxes

The fact is I’ve found a ton of deliberate hoaxes when it comes to UFOs & aliens. While I love and appreciate a good mystery, deliberate hoaxes are the worst. Some of the best footage of aliens and UFOs has turned out to be fake. Remember the alien autopsy? Fake. The Adamski videos? Fake. Crop Circles? Fake.

I totally understand that the existence of hoaxes doesn’t mean there are no real mysteries out there. But their existence and predominance should make anyone take pause before assuming they’re reporting and sharing a real encounter.

The X-Files - I Want To Believe TV Poster Print

By BananaRoad

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UFO Community Not Policing Itself

This is a topic that’s always infuriated me. UFOlogists and researchers regularly share and propagate known hoaxes because they haven’t done their due diligence. It’s the single greatest detriment to the ‘science’ of UFOlogy. What’s worse is they aren’t even likely to call out others who do it either.

I’ve written about the issues with credibility in the UFO community before. I was attacked on social media and banned from certain UFOlogy groups on Facebook as a result. Yet, all I did was present facts. Real facts.

Wrapping it Up

The echo chambers created by the UFO community have made it very difficult to discern the truth from fantasy. If you don’t go along with the status quo, you will likely be ostracised. Consequently, I find myself much more critical of reports. My threshold for proof has become very high. But at the end of that day, when you want to talk about something as extraordinary as alien visitation, shouldn’t the standard for proof be very high? We are, after all, talking about our fate as a species.

So, can you convince me? I want your stories, your evidence, and your experiences.

---

Featured Image Credit | Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

{ https://alienufoblog.com/category/ufo-sightings/ }

11-03-2018 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

You know that Aliens are in control, we can hear their voices according to most of the popular and authetic physicists. One of the world’s most respected theoretical physicists Michio Kaku has predicted that humans will make contact with an alien civilisation within this century. While he doesn’t know if we’ll be able to talk back to them by then, Kaku thinks that humans will detect aliens before 2100 by listening in to their radio communications.

He gave the prediction on reddit last week during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) question-and-answer session. “Dr Kaku, if we make contact with alien civilizations, then what? And how will we talk to them?” asked redditor MalachiNorris.

Kaku responded: “Let me stick my neck out. I personally feel that within this century, we will make contact with an alien civilization, by listening in on their radio communications. But talking to them will be difficult, since they could be tens of light years away. So, in the meantime, we must decipher their language to understand their level of technology. Are they Type I, II, or III??? And what are their intentions. Are they expansive and aggressive, or peaceful.”

The “types” of civilisations he’s referring to represent the three categories in the Kardashev scale – a scale that measures a civilisation’s technological advancement based on the amount of energy they are able to use for communication. For reference, humans aren’t quite a Type I civilisation as yet, as that would require learning to harvest every ounce of energy from their home planet, including all solar, thermal, oceanic energy, and more.

As Kaku added to his response: “Another possibility is that they land on the White House lawn and announce their existence. But I think that is unlikely, since we would be like forest animals to them, i.e. not worth communicating with.”

Ooh, burn.

Kaku’s not the first scientist to suggest we’re not far off making contact with extraterrestrial life.

Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute has placed a wager we’ll find signs of alien life within just 20 years. Even Stephen Hawking recently said he’s “more convinced than ever that we are not alone” and warned humanity to stop reaching out to aliens before it’s too late.

Hawking is involved in the Breakthrough Listen project, which will scan planets around the nearest million stars for signs of life within radio signals – including Earth-like planet Gliese 832c. “One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back,” said Hawking.

Shostak, Hawking, and Kaku are all predicting that alien contact will come through radio waves, a narrow frequency band of electromagnetic waves that are often used for long-distance communication. Scientists are so focussed on this small part of the electromagnetic spectrum because it stands out from the naturally occurring background noise in the Universe, which typically extends across a much wider frequency range.

Radio telescopes around the world are constantly scanning the Universe for any signs of life, and although we’ve had some close calls, we haven’t seen anything as yet to suggest aliens are out there. But according to the Drake equation, based on the sheer number of stars out there, it’s highly unlikely that we’re the only life in the Universe.

Alternatively, another alien civilisation might end up detecting our radio wave communications first. If that’s the case, let’s just hope they’re friendly.

{ https://thesciencealert.com/category/science/ }

11-03-2018 om 21:43 geschreven door peter  

{ https://futurism.com/ }

11-03-2018 om 20:46 geschreven door peter  

We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating.

By Christopher Mellon 

Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science.

US Government releases footage of Super fast UFO captured by Navy Jet

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.  

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest .

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015.

Watch: Military jet video tracks high-speed UFO

(To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization? 

Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.

I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data. 

Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making. The current approach is equivalent to having the Army conduct a submarine search without the Navy. It is also reminiscent of the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA and the FBI before Sept. 11, 2001, when each had information on the hijackers that they kept to themselves. In this instance, the truth may ultimately prove benign, but why leave it to chance? 

(A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but in December, the military confirmed the existence of a program to investigate UFOs and said it had stopped funding the research in 2012.)

The military personnel who are encountering these phenomena tell remarkable stories. In one example, over the course of two weeks in November 2004, the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser operating advanced naval radar, repeatedly detected unidentified aircraft operating in and around the Nimitz carrier battle group, which it was guarding off the coast of San Diego. In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats.

On at least two occasions, F-18 fighters were guided to intercept these vehicles and were able to verify their location, appearance and performance. Notably, these encounters occurred in broad daylight and were independently monitored by radars aboard multiple ships and aircraft. According to naval aviators I have spoken with at length, the vehicles were roughly 45 feet long and white. Yet these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion. 

From my work with To the Stars Academy, which seeks to raise private funds to investigate incidents like the 2004 Nimitz encounter, I know they continue to occur, because we are being approached by military personnel who are concerned about national security and frustrated by how the Defense Department is handling such reports. I am also familiar with the evidence as a former Pentagon intelligence official and a consultant who began researching the issue after the Nimitz incident was brought to my attention. On several occasions, I have met with senior Pentagon officials, and at least one followed up and obtained briefings confirming incidents such as the Nimitz case. But nobody wants to be “the alien guy” in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue. This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress. 

If the origin of these aircraft is a mystery, so is the paralysis of the U.S. government in the face of such evidence. Sixty years ago, when the Soviet Union put the first manmade satellite in orbit, Americans recoiled at the idea of being technologically surpassed by a dangerous rival, and the furor over Sputnik ultimately produced the space race. Americans responded vigorously, and a little more than a decade later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. If these craft mean that Russia, China or some other nation is concealing an astonishing technological breakthrough to quietly extend its lead, surely we should respond as we did then. Perhaps Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s recent chest-thumping claims about propulsion breakthroughs are not pure braggadocio. Or, if these craft really aren’t from Earth, then the need to figure out what they are is even more urgent.

Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding “UFOs” and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators. 

Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability.

As with Sputnik, the national security implications of these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data? We cannot afford to avert our eyes, given the risk of strategic surprise. The future belongs to not only the physically brave but also the intellectually agile.

Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. 

{ https://www.washingtonpost.com/ }

11-03-2018 om 20:30 geschreven door peter  

On February 28 of this year, the FBI posted to its website, The Vault, its now-declassified file on Stanley Kubrick. He was the director of numerous movies, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, and Eyes Wide Shut. The file only amounts to four pages, so there isn’t that much said about him. We are told, however, that “…Kubrick was an old chess-playing friend of [Deleted] who has been the subject of a security-type investigation conducted by this Bureau. [Deleted] reportedly had a large circle of communist associates.”

What’s more intriguing, though, are the references in the file to a controversial movie of 1964, Seven Days in May. It’s an absorbing, thought-provoking story that tells of an attempted military coup to take control of the U.S. Government. The authors of the novel that the movie was based on were Charles W. Bailey II (who died in 2012 at the age of eighty-two) and Fletcher Knebel who, in 1960, wrote a chapter on JFK for a book titled Candidate 1960.

Seven Days in May starred a number of major movie-stars of that era, including Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Fredric March, Martin Balsam, and Edmond O’Brien. In the story, Lancaster’s character of General James Mattoon Scott secretly initiates a plan to take over the elected U.S. Government (run by President Jordan Lyman and played by March). General Scott sees President Lyman’s plans to enter into a nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union as weak and ineffectual and a danger to U.S. national security and to the American people. The battle is then on, with General Scott trying to ensure the coup succeeds and President Lyman doing his utmost to stop it. But, why is Seven Days in May referenced in the Kubrick file? Let’s see.

On March 20, 1964, the FBI recorded the following in a Confidential-level memo: “Admiral [Arleigh A.] Burke, U.S. Navy (Ret.), good friend of Bureau, has contacted Assistant Director Sullivan to state that movie ‘Seven Days in May,’ which tells of abortive plot of military clique to seize control of U.S. Government. Burke is in receipt of letters concerning recent attacks on military. One letter alleges communist connections of movie’s cast, namely, Fredric March, Burt Lancaster [deleted] and Ava Gardner.”

The document continues: “Another letter cites two new books, ‘The Passion of the Hawks,’ by Tristram Coffin, and ‘The Military Establishment,’ by John Swomley, and another new movie, ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,’ produced by Stanley Kubrick, all of which derogate military.” That’s how Seven Days in May came to be referenced in the Kubrick file. And, although there is little more on Kubrick, there is certainly more on Seven Days in May.

The FBI’s memo continues: “Fletcher Knebel, one of co-authors of ‘Seven Days of May,’ criticized Director in ‘Look’ magazine in 1955. Fredrick March and wife were subjects of closed security cases alleging them to have been Communist Party members and active in communist fronts in past…Burke stated that he had seen the film, which portrays every military and civilian leader in it as a man of great weakness, and he feels that the picture is detrimental to the Nation. His appraisal of the picture has appeared in the press, and, as a result, he said, he has received several letters.” The document also refers to one of Admiral Burke’s correspondents as stating that Burt Lancaster was a “zealous Moscow stalwart.”

The FBI concluded with these words: “It is entirely understandable why a military leader of Admiral Burke’s stature would find the theme of ‘Seven Days in May’ — even though it is pure fiction — offensive because it does tarnish the image of the American military.”

In some ways, at least, this kind of reminds me of how the military wasn’t too happy when Area 51 was portrayed in 1996’s Independence Day. This new file provides some interesting insight into the connection between Hollywood and government agencies.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-03-2018 om 20:07 geschreven door peter