UFO spotter films a mysterious black disc travelling across the face of the full Moon

• Footage of a dark shape passing over the Moon has been claimed as a sighting
• The unexplained shadow was seen travelling over the lunar surface on March 2
• It was seen by a 'witness' capturing the full Moon in Dearborn Heights, Michigan

By Tim Stickings For Mailonline

This footage of a dark disc passing over the moon has been claimed as a UFO sighting. 

The unexplained shadow was apparently seen travelling quickly across the moon earlier this month and has been shared by a UFO channel on YouTube.

The short footage was filmed from Dearborn Heights, near Detroit, Michigan, on March 2.

A 'witness' said they had been filming the full moon when they noticed the dark shape seeming to move across the lunar surface.  

The unexplained shadow was apparently seen travelling quickly across the moon earlier this month and has been shared by a UFO channel on YouTube

The disc can be seen entering the shot from the left-hand side and standing out against the Moon's illuminated surface. 

It purportedly travels straight across the top of the Moon as seen from the camera's point of view. 

The 'witness' told the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON): 'I was filming the full moon and captured a dark disk traveling southbound in front of the moon.'

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But one debunking expert said it was more likely to have a natural explanation, according to the Daily Express. 

'I think it's a small object crossing the lunar disc like a mylar balloon. There are many similar footages like this,' said Scott Brando of ufoofinterest.org 

It comes after the pilot of a US Navy jet was shocked after he witnessed a mysterious object streak across the sky just above the Atlantic Ocean.

It comes after the pilot of a US Navy jet was shocked after he witnessed a mysterious object streak across the sky just above the Atlantic Ocean 

The pilot yelled 'What the f*** is that thing?' as his sensors locked in on the mysterious object.

Earlier this month some UFO spotters claimed another sighting when an unexplained silver sphere was seen hanging in the sky above upstate New York on Google Street View.

But many viewers were not convinced, saying the orb was nothing more than a splash of water on the camera lens.  

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-03-2018 om 19:23 geschreven door peter  

Two linked UFOs over Phoenix, Arizona 14-Mar-2018

New footage of a bright orbs in the sky above Phoenix, Arizona filmed on 14th March 2018.

Witness report:

 I looked out my window and seen a red dot orb moving where I usually see activity. I went out and captured the red dot breifly, but then noticed an orb that seemed to possibly morph into plane.

I looked out my window and seen a red dot orb moving where I usually see activity. I went out and captured the red dot briefly, but then noticed an orb that seemed to possibly morph into plane.

I have been wondering if they are morphing into planes, but this maybe some evidence. After if morphed it came over my APT and did have sound, but as you can see it moved in one place for a while then changes into 2 lights.

Author (source: MUFON)

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

15-03-2018 om 18:44 geschreven door peter  

Mars 2020: The Red Planet's Next Rover

15-03-2018 om 18:31 geschreven door peter  

Given the vastness of space, it has to be highly improbable that we’re alone. Still, if there are other intelligent civilizations out there, we have to detect them or their transmissions some day, right? That question been one of the biggest conundrums of astrophysics for years, and unfortunately we might never know the answer. Still, given the age of the known universe, the Earth and subsequently humankind are pretty young, cosmologically speaking. If there are (or were) any technologically advanced alien civilizations out there, we should be able to detect the various signals emitted by their technology – even if those aliens have been dead for ages. In fact, a new study claims that our galaxy could be filled with “ghost” signals from long-gone alien civilizations. Long-gone is better than never-was though, right?

I call dibs on their stuff.

The claim about ghost signals comes fom a team of astronomers and mathematicians from the SETI Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz who have recently published a new calculation of the Drake equation. The authors include Frank Drake, author of the original Drake equation which is aimed at calculating the likelihood of discovering an alien civilization in our own galaxy. In a nutshell, the equation factors in the average rate of star formation per year observed in the Milky Way, the numbers of stars which host presumably habitable planets, and several hypothetical or currently unknowable variables like the fraction of habitable planets that actually go on to develop intelligent life. Since many of the variables aren’t able to be precisely calculated due to the limits of our knowledge and technology, the Drake equation is unsolvable.

And yet he got it published?

This new iteration of the equation seeks instead to calculate the probability that signals from any hypothetical alien civilizations might pass through our galaxy in a timeframe in which they can be discovered by humans. The new Drake equation factors in the speed of light, radio waves, and other electromagnetic radiation and assumes advanced civilizations only last for 100,000 years or less. With those new variables factored in, the odds are, well…

Wait for it…

Still astonishingly low. Terrifyingly low. Think about it: humanity has only been broadcasting (and therefore scanning for) radio transmissions for less than 100 years. Given the speed of radio waves, that means our transmissions are only detectable by the nearest 0.001 percent of the Milky Way. Given the sheer size of the galaxy, not to mention the universe, SETI has its work cut out for it. While the authors note that the likelihood is pretty slim that we will detect a technologically advanced alien race before human civilization comes crashing to a halt, some “ghost” signals from long-dead civilizations likely haunt the galaxy and could possibly even be discoverable right now. How bittersweet would that be, discovering our galactic neighbors only through their cosmic obituary? Sounds like a great premise for a one-shot Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. 

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-03-2018 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

A Tale of (Possible) Alien Intruders in Antarctica

Red Pill Junkie

There are many ways to portray an alien invasion in Science Fiction: The conspicuous in-your-face massive landings of extraterrestrial spacecraft –favored by summer blockbusters like Independence Day— or the more insidious form of a ‘silent invasion’, by way of infiltrating aliens that are indistinguishable from us into our communities or sensible military and/or civilian installations, so that these invaders can slowly but surely defeat us from within. This is undoubtedly the most disturbing form of alien invasion, because it could be happening right before our eyes and we wouldn’t even realize it… until it’s too late.

Some of the best examples of UFO-themed films make use of the alien infiltration plot: John Carpenter’s The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live, etc. My friend and colleague Robbie Graham treated the subject at length on his seminal book Silver Screen Saucers. He also mentions how historians tend to treat these films as examples of the Cold War paranoia that spilled into many aspects of American culture —“anyonecould be a Commie traitor!”— and yet the reason why aliens are the ultimate ‘5th columnist’ in the popular imaginarium, is because since the beginning of the modern era of UFOs there were those who claimed contact with the occupants of those shiny flying saucers, and those UFOnauts looked just like usaccording to the excited accounts of the Contactees. Indeed, it would be later when we would get reports of ‘alien-er’ visitors sporting all sort of anomalous body lengths and features: from big-headed dwarves to spindly giants, with hairy trolls and goblins in-between.

Let’s take for example John Carpenter’s The Thing, which we mentioned earlier: The reason the movie is so particularly thrilling is not only because anyone –or anything!— could be the shapeshifting alien parasite, but also because the story takes place in one of the most alien environments in our own planet –a base in the middle of Antarctica. A place so inhospitable you can literally freeze just by taking a stroll outside if you’re not wearing the right gear. The landscape itself becomes another predator chasing after the movie heroes once they lose communication with the outside world, making the situation even more claustrophobic. You die if you leave, and you die if you stay.

Yep, The Thing is probably one of the few horror movies I actually like and rewatch regularly. “But let’s be serious here,”one might say: “The Contactees were all hoaxters and charlatans (Venusians? Gimme a break!) Besides, invaders that look like us and infiltrate sensitive facilities happen only in the movies and TV shows, right?”

“…Right?“

Well, that’s what I used to think, but once listened to the account of Mikey Kampmann, I’m not so sure anymore…

Now, you might not be familiar with the name of Mikey Kampmann, and there’s a good reason for that. He’s not part of any UFO lecturing circuit trying to peddle crazy stories about the Galactic Federation, or all the benevolent races trying to raise our ass to the 5th dimension and stuff. No, Mikey is just one of those adventuring types who felt the need to leave the small enclosures of his hometown and travel to the farthest reaches of the planet. And by “farthest” I mean “end-of-the-freaking-world” farthest!

On episode 166 of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, Mikey explains how he managed to get a job at the American south pole station for four months to fulfil a long-time dream. He doesn’t have any scientific or technical degrees, therefore he ended up as breakfast cook in charge of feeding 250 hungry base personnel each morning all by himself –so I guess in a John Carpenter-like scenario Mike would be Nauls, though I don’t know if he actually spent his tour roller-skating through the base’s corridors, at the beat of Stevie Wonder.

Mikey then goes to explain to Duncan the hurdles and steps he took in order to apply for that position at the station (the physical examinations, making sure you don’t have any cavities, etc.). He also discusses the type of scientific work they conduct there (astronomy-related stuff) and other aspects of the daily life at the base, like the fact that during the summer months the sun is always up; which, although fascinating on some level, makes the listener think this is going to be a pretty ordinarychat –even for a DTFH show, which will ALWAYS be filled with philosophical and metaphysical ponderings.

But then, Mikey drops a bombshell of Cosmic Watergateproportions…

At around 36 minutes into the recording, the conversation veers toward the strange lore circulating around the base with regards to ‘aliens’: How his boss at the base told Mikey on his very first day how ‘the grays’ are not often seen during the summer “because they mostly come out in the winter.” Was the comment part of some sort of weird initiation ritual in order to have some fun and break the tedium at the expense of the ‘ice rookies’, or is this an indication of what psychologists would describe as ‘cabin fever syndrome’? Given the quirkness of human nature, one would tend to think it was perhaps a bit of both.

And yet Mikey then proceeds to recount one personalexperience he had inside the base, which would suggest perhaps there was something truly anomalous going on inside this remote station. The incident involved a couple (a man and a woman) who worked together in the kitchen with him; he explains how although they were a very lovable people and he got along great with them, there was something odd about these individuals he couldn’t quite put his finger on: Despite their claim that they came from Colorado “they had these accents that were bull$#!t” Mikey says, that made them sound foreign to him. The couple also said they had waited 3 whole years trying to get a job in Antarctica, whereas his own application only took a week at the most. Who spends 3 years of their lives waiting to go to Antarctica to become… a dishwasher??

One day the couple were at the dishpit and Mikey was bringing in some dirty dishes from the mess hall. The woman was standing right in front of the man, and as Mikey got closer he could hear they were having some sort of conversation; but he soon realized the man and a woman were not talking in anylanguage he’d ever heard before!

“It wasn’t English or Spanish, and I didn’t recognize it (…) it sounded DIGITAL, truly!” he explains to Duncan, who asks Mikey to try and imitate the sounds he heard. Mikey’s recorded rendition of the ‘language’ –which I encourage anyone to hear– does sound like clicks and ‘tsk tsk’ snaps made out with the tongue, but he claims they had a mechanical quality to them.

The woman –who had her back toward Mikey and therefore could not see him as he was approaching them– was the one speaking to her husband in those robotic squeaks; the man eventually saw Mikey out of the corner of his eye, then looked at her wife who was still ‘talking’ and said to her “stop!”.

Mikey does not explain what he exactly did after he finally reached out to where they were standing at the dishpit. My guess is he probably left his load of dirty dishes by the sink and walked out of there without saying a word to them –the way most of us would’ve reacted in such an awkward situation.

To this day Mikey has no clue as to what was going on between this dishwashing couple from Colorado and their bizarre form of communication. The ‘legends about the grays’ he and his co-workers used to engage in —“who do you think is an alien?”— were mostly fun to him and didn’t take them too seriously. But could the man and woman he worked in that kitchen day in and day out be actual alien infiltrators?

In truth, the evidence supporting that outlandish claim is rather tenuous a best. We only have the testimony of a single man who, as sincere and honest as he sounds in the recording as he retells the event, remains as fallible and prone to making mistakes as the rest of us. We also have to take into consideration the unusual circumstances in which the event took place (i.e. in the middle of the south pole!) which would surely take its toll even among the most stable of individuals. Mikey also doesn’t shy away from the fact that life inside the base could be pretty hectic –lots and lots of wild parties where excess of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity were the norm. Maybe Mikey was recovering from a bad hangover and imagined the whole thing up?

There are also other avenues to consider, of course: Duncan proposes to him during the episode that instead of being scouts of an alien invading force, that perhaps these guys were human agents at the service of a foreign power, using some sort of secret language in order to pass sensitive information covertly. Although that seems a more reasonable assumption, it is not without logical holes either –wouldn’t it be easier to communicate through other means that wouldn’t raise suspicions among your co-workers, like using numbers or code-words in English that would sound innocuous to any bystander casually listening in?

Here I could propose a third possibility: What if these people were actually agents working for some American intelligence group, who were conducting a covert test meant to study the reactions of the personnel stationed at the base when faced with non-ordinary situations? Something akin to what is popularly referred to as gaslighting?

One thing’s for sure, and that is that after that bizarre incident at the kitchen Mikey started to closely watch the movements of the dishwashing couple, trying to learn more about them. He would casually spy on the man and woman during their free time, as they would wander off visiting the areas of the station which weren’t restricted, just like everybody else; but he never observed them doing anything unusual, or caught them off guard while they were taking off their human skin to groom their reptilian scales.

And Mike turned out to be not that casual in his espionage hobby, as he nonchalantly started out a rumor around the base about the possible alien nature of the couple! By the end of the summer season during his last week at the base, he was eventually confronted by them during one of the farewell parties. But instead of being mad or assimilating him into the Borg for blowing their cover, they acted as if they were amused by his suspicions!

“You think I’m an alien?” the woman teasingly asked Mikey point blank.

“I… I don’t know!” was the only thing he could blurt out as a reply. He did bring up the event at the dishpit, but didn’t have the nerve to actually ask her about the weird clicks. The three of them just kept drinking, laughing and enjoying the party –now I LOVE this anecdote because it’s so ambiguous: Ultimately the woman never denied Mikey’s suspicions; she just deflected him in the most ingenious way and at the most appropriate time. If these were aliens, they were surely masters in human psychology.

Mikey ends up the account by saying how, in some sort of symbolic gesture and as a compulsory way to express their feelings of fondness for each other at that moment, the three of them –Mike, the wife and the husband– leaned over and dry-kissed.

…And that’s it. No further mention of a hot human/reptilian menage-a-trois (Sorry, Ben and Aaron!). A few days later Mikey packed up his bags and left the station, never to see the odd couple again. He was only left with an ineffable sense of love and unity with two beings… who may or may not have been from this Earth.

Because even if they were from another world, why feed our fears into thinking they are among us for nefarious purposes? As much as I am a fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, I prefer stories like K-Pax or Starman, in which the alien is visiting us out of a sense of sheer curiosity, and a desire to reach out to without freaking us out with their sole presence.

Who knows, maybe there’s another parallel universe in which washing human dishes is considered the ultimate form of extreme resort. Think about that next time you eat at your local diner –and be sure to be generous with the tip.

15-03-2018 om 17:34 geschreven door peter  

One of the most significant UFO movies of the 1950s was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), which was very loosely based on Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 non-fiction book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space. In the movie, the last of a dying species of aliens arrive on Earth seeking a new home. The aliens request a meeting with world leaders to discuss their plans for occupation, but the US military, assisted by one America’s top scientists (played by Hugh Marlowe), formulates a plan of attack involving the use of sonar canons mounted on trucks to be fired at the alien saucers—the sonar supposedly interfering with their propulsion and navigation systems, and disabling their force fields.

Conspiracy writer Kenn Thomas has noted that the fictional battle strategy in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers seems to have been directly inspired by real-life UFOlogical events which occurred just one year prior to the release of the movie when legendary scientist Wilhelm Reich claimed to have used his “cloudbuster” invention to attack UFOs (which he believed were hostile) by sucking the energy out of them. Reich’s cloudbuster was an atmospheric device constructed from two rows of 15-foot aluminium pipes mounted on trucks and connected to cables that were inserted into water. Its appearance and functionality were strikingly similar to that of the sonar cannons in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. Reich believed that his cloudbusters served to unblock cosmic ‘orgone’ energy in the atmosphere, which he said would be beneficial to human health. Apparently, Reich also found them handy for shooting down alien spacecraft in what he described as a “full-scale interplanetary battle” in Tucson Arizona in 1955.

The cloudbuster cannon.

The production history of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is intriguing. In 1955, Donald Keyhoe, then a jagged thorn in the side of the US government’s UFO secret-keepers, was approached by a group of Hollywood producers seeking to buy the rights to his aforementioned non-fiction book. The producers told Keyhoe their film was to be a serious documentary about UFOs. Although initially suspicious, Keyhoe eventually went along with the deal. Big mistake. Upon its completion in 1956, the “documentary” turned out to be the schlock sci-fi B-movie of our discussion. Keyhoe was outraged and demanded that his name be removed from the film’s credits, to no avail. Someone, it seemed, had it in for this outspoken advocate for government transparency on UFOs (perhaps the same “someone” who, two years later, censored Keyhoe’s statement on live TV that flying saucers were “real machines under intelligent control”).

Donald Keyhoe.

Keyhoe’s book, despite its pulpy title, was a serious examination of UFOs that drew extensively from the USAF’s own investigations into the phenomenon. The movie that the book inspired, however, was an outlandish affair, depicting scientists and the military as combating ridiculous rubber-suited aliens with plans to occupy the Earth. This deviation into kitsch fantasy is especially frustrating because the film also retained a considerable amount of fact-based UFOlogical detail from Keyhoe’s source material. The film’s saucers, for example, designed by Ray Harryhausen with a stationary central dome and a rotating outer-rim with slotted vanes, were based exactly on real-life descriptions collated by Keyhoe. Harryhausen also sought advice on his saucer design from UFO “contactee” George Adamski. The shrill sound emitted by the movie’s saucers also has been a common feature in UFO close encounter reports from the 1940s to present day, with witnesses often associating high-pitch whirring, humming, or hissing sounds with UFOs.

Particularly interesting is a scene in which Foo Fighters make a casual appearance. The scene in question sees heroic scientist Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe), his wife Carol (Joan Taylor), and the latter’s father, General Hanley (Morris Ankrum), having a family lunch while discussing their work on Project Skyhook—an American space program that launches research satellites into orbit. Suddenly, two glowing balls of light appear above their house, hovering silently. “Look! What are those lights?” asks the General. “They’re what the pilots call ‘Foo lights,’” Carol replies, “there have been so many around the project the last couple of days we all just take them for granted.” This is an unmistakable reference not only to Foo Fighters, but also to the many anomalous fireballs reported by military personnel around sensitive government facilities in the late-1940s which resulted in Project Twinkle, a two-year study program at Holloman Air Force Base tasked with solving the mystery.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers even has echoes of Roswell in the form of its alien invaders, not as they appear in their cumbersome spacesuits, but in their true form underneath. When the protagonists remove the space-suit from one of the dead aliens, the being bears an uncanny likeness to the alleged Roswell beings as described by firsthand witnesses from 1947, but these testimonies would not come to light until more than twenty years after the release of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. How do we account for this apparent cinematic prescience? Were the Roswell witnesses influenced after the fact by Hollywood, or was Hollywood influenced by intelligence operatives with knowledge of the Roswell Incident?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-03-2018 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

Glowing UFO Comes Out Of Side Of Colima Volcano And Shoots Away On Live Internet Cam! March 12, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 12, 2018

Location of sighting: Colima Volcano, Mexico

Source: Live Internet Cam

I have been watching Colima live cam for over 5 years and have recorded over 40 UFOs myself, but this one really takes the cake. Youtube user Tenshi Mex saw and recorded this UFO. 

The UFO appears from below the ground through a hidden passage in the lower center of the volcano. The UFO hovers for a little bit as it exits the side of the volcano, then gets its engines or what ever propulsion set up and prepared, making a hard 180 degree turn flying over and past the mouth of the volcano! 

This is hard evidence and needs to be acnowledged by the governments of the world. Colima is clearly a UFO hotspot with an alien base 4-5km below its surface. How do I know? I have said that for over 5 years! This UFO came from within the volcano, the evidence is undeniable. 

Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 17:07 geschreven door peter  

Angelic Winged Sun Seen During Sunset In Florida, Video, March 2018, UFO Sighting News.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 17:02 geschreven door peter  

ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Co-author: Abby Moore (superhero theorist). Are myths of ancient astronauts filling the voids left behind in the exodus from the myths of religion? Perhaps the popularity of the Ancient Aliens television series parallels the decline of traditional religious belief in 21st-century America. After all, twice as many Americans believe in ancient aliens visiting humans on Earth (35%) than believe in the pure evolution of human life on Earth (19%). Maybe TV shows about ancient aliens and Hollywood movies about superheroes provide the big cosmic narratives that once belonged almost solely to theology. Think about it: ancient aliens and superheroes both have superpowers once reserved for Gods, prophets, and miracle makers.

For the record, I am an existentialist without the angst, influenced by Sartre, Sagan, and others. In a vast and ancient universe of two trillion galaxies and three sextillion stars stretching across 100 billion light years, I am not a cosmic narcissist who believes a Creator has a special plan for me or my species on a speck of a planet in a remote part of one galaxy. Yet, the cosmic vastness gives me hope that— to quote the astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) in Planet of the Apes (1968)— there has “to be something better than man. Has to be.” As explained in my most read essay in Medium, these better-than-human extratrerrestrials have never visited Earth (though I wish they would). Instead, we are witnessing the electronic birth of a new religion based in the myths and imaginary legends of extraterrestrial reality-TV stars—the “ancient aliens” who star in every episode, but have yet to appear.

21st Century Non-Belief

Much has been written about the decline of religious belief in 21st-century America, as documented in various surveys by the Pew Research Center. Americans who have no religious belief and/or no religious affiliation rose to 22.8% in 2014, up from 2% in the 1950s. While religious writers blamed the decline on the usual suspects (the breakdown of society, the decay of traditional values, and so on), the atheists and humanists tweeted their cheers of hope, apparently overlooking the possibility that a decline in traditional religious belief does not automatically equate to a rise in reason, science, and enlightenment. Given the increasing paranormalism in America, it could be the opposite. Make no mistake, something will fill the void.

According to the United States Census, the current US population is an estimated 327 million people. If indeed 22.8% of Americans are non-believers, that total equals about 75 million people. Age is definitely a factor in non-belief. Over 33% of millennials claim no religious belief, while GenX non-believers are at 23%, Baby Boomers are 17%, and those born before 1945 are 11%.

TABLE 1. Source: Pew Research Center website (2014); accessed November 11, 2017.

According to Pew, about 50% of the unaffiliated are disenchanted with religion or don’t need religion because of their beliefs in “science” and the lack of evidence for a Creator. Another 20% have a beef against organized religion, while 18% are unsure of their beliefs and 10% are inactive.

What’s most interesting to me is not the increase in atheists and agnostics, but the 15.8% who believe “nothing in particular.” 15.8% equals just over 50 million people. Since I doubt all of these people are nihilists, I wonder what they believe about the origins and destiny of the human species.

Are they merely disinterested in religion? Have they outgrown religion, with no need to replace it with any other worldview or cosmology? Do they believe in evolution or that the observable universe is indeed 13.7 billion years old and contains two trillion galaxies? Do they believe in human-caused climate disruption or the Anthropocene? Do they believe we got here via the advice and interventions of ancient aliens? Or do mobile phones, cool threads, hipster restaurants, and Netflix subscriptions provide the needed daily dope—such that they do not need a cosmology for themselves or for our species?

GRAPH 1. Beginning in the late 1960s, we can see the post-Apollo rise of the nones. Source: Gallup and National Public Radio, 2013.

The Apollo Effect

According to Gallup surveys and National Public Radio, the “nones” stayed below 5% until the Apollo program in the late 1960s. The rise of the nones began with the launch of rockets to the moon and continued long after the Apollo program was shut down. For readers who might not know, Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968 and took the famed Earthrise image, with Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969 and Apollo 17 marking the last journey to the moon in 1972.

GRAPH 2. The post-1990 rise of the internet and rise of nones. Source: MIT Technology Review (“How the Internet is Taking Away America’s Religion,” April 4, 2014) and Allen Downey (“ “Religious Affiliation, Education, and Internet Use,” March 21, 2014).

The Internet Effect

According to computer scientist Allen Downey, the rise of the internet correlates with the rise of non-belief from 1990 to 2010. During that period, the increase in non-believers jumped from 8% to 18% of Americans. In a study of four decades of survey data trends regarding demographics, socioeconomics, religious affiliation, and internet usage, Downey concluded that:

• Religious upbringing increases the chance of religious affiliation as an adult. Decreases in religious upbringing between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 25% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

• College education decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in college graduation between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 5% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

• Internet use decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in Internet use since 1990, from 0 to nearly 80% of the general population, account for about 20% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

Please keep in mind that “correlation” does not equal “causation.” Correlations show patterns that we must connect to other knowledge, evidence, and observations.

What Accounts for the Other 45%?

Given there are 75 million non-believers, what other trends might account for the startling growth in numbers? If we follow Downey’s study and assume upbringing, education, and the internet can account for 55% of the increase, what else accounts for the other 45% (33.7 million people)?

Is it the growth of the scientific outlook? That’s possible, given that only 9% of Americans believed in pure evolution in 1982 and the total has more than doubled to 19% in 2014 (according to Gallup). However, it is likely a good chunk of that 19% is accounted for in the 55% of Downey’s study?

Could the increases be attributed to the various “New Atheist” books published in the past few years? Recent works include: Sam Harris’ The End of Faith (2004), Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004), Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (2006), Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great (2007), and Victor Stenger’s God: the Failed Hypothesis (2007). These books might have had marginal influence on creating more non-believers, but my guess is that most of the readers of these books were already atheists. Plus, the sales of these books are dwarfed by the audience size of Ancient Aliens.

As dramatized in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith was the indisputable artifact left on Earth by advanced extraterrestrials. Ancient Aliens hijacked this concept and dumbed it down to the lowest possible level, while filling the intellectual void left by the death of philosophy long divorced from cosmology.

The Rise of Ancient Alien Theory: Hijacking the 2001 and Apollo Narratives

Published at the pinnacle of the space age in 1968, Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? hijacked the space narrative from Apollo and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 appeared in 1968, along with Planet of the Apes, Apollo 8 (the first journey to the moon), and Chariots of the Gods?. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 as von Daniken’s book was becoming popular around the world. Chariots of the Gods? did what few other works tried (outside of a few episodes of the original Star Trek): it connected human destiny on Earth to the stars we were beginning to explore with the Apollo program. As I wrote in my previous essay about ancient-alien theory:

“The ancient-astronaut theory draws upon two valid cosmological concepts: 1) the reality of the immensity of space and time; and 2) the possibility of advanced civilizations somewhere in the cosmos. Given that the scale of the observable universe is immense and that NASA’s Kepler telescope suggests there may be billions of planets in the Milky Way, there is almost certainly life elsewhere in the cosmos, perhaps including intelligent civilizations.”

“Given that the observable universe is 13.7 billion years old and it took 4 billion years for intelligent life to emerge on Earth, then it is possible the remaining 9 billion years produced civilizations that may have existed for millions or billions of years. If so, they may have developed space travel technologies that allow them to traverse the great distances with relative ease…Such a possibility is one reason why 2001 offers such a compelling vision of human origins and destinies. After all, it would be an epochal moment to find a black monolith somewhere on Earth or the moon, beaming out a radio signal to an alert and curious species.”

Such a possibility is attractive, at least in theory. If ancient aliens have visited our planet, they would have possessed highly advanced sciences and technologies. They would have been viewed as gods, angels, and miracle makers by premodern humans, who would have looked upon the beings and technologies with awe, wonder, and fear.

A 1970s-style Captain Kirk got in on the ancient alien narrative, too.

Since Chariots of the Gods? was a huge best-seller, it was made into a documentary film, Chariots of the Gods (1970). Creator of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling even narrated a one-hour TV version called In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973). A copycat version of the film, Mysteries of the Gods, was released in 1976—hosted by none other than William Shatner, a.k.a. Captain Kirk, looking rather hip in a green turtleneck and black velour blazer, while sporting a 1970s-style toupée. With films and TV shows as publicity, Chariots of the Gods? sold over 40 million copies during the 1970s.

Without a doubt, 2001, Planet of the Apes, and von Daniken’s book and films were trying to account for human origins and destiny at the pinnacle of the space age and the Apollo program. When I first encountered Chariots of the Gods? as a boy in the suburbs of Texas in the 1970s, it seemed like a plausible counter-narrative to the self-righteous evangelicals in my school and neighborhood. As explained here, I eventually began to question the validity of the assertions and realized the ancient-alien theory was bogus pseudoscience. To be frank, I was kinda bummed out. But, logic and evidence mattered more to me. Still do.

Of course, there were mainstream media efforts to debunk Chariots of the Gods? These included a 1976 Skeptical Inquirer article, a book entitled The Space Gods Revealed that featured a forward by Carl Sagan, and a BBC-PBS production of Nova (the episode “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts”). Nevertheless, the book’s pseudoscientific ideas continued to circulate around the world in the decades that featured the rise of non-belief in the wake of Apollo. Given that Chariots of the Gods? sold 40 million copies, can we assume it had zero impact on traditional religious beliefs?

In 2009, a two-part episode of Ancient Aliens appeared on the History Channel. So popular was the show that the History Channel programmed the Ancient Alien series, which began in 2010 and is still running every season—134 episodes and counting! As point of comparison for the atheist programs, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 2014 Cosmos reboot only had 13 episodes and seems to appear on TV far less often than Ancient Aliens. I have seen both series listed in Netflix. Why would Ancient Aliens far outstrip Cosmos if the issue was merely a scientific outlook?

The prime-time episodes of Ancient Aliens draw well over one million viewers, plus there are endless repeats during days and evenings. These audiences are far larger than anything on the Science Channel. Who knows how many millions of viewers have seen the various episodes of Ancient Aliens? Among the 45% and 33 million non-believers unaccounted for in Downey’s study, how many millions might be fans of Ancient Aliens? I don’t know but it is a question worth considering. I bet the total is far from zero. After all, recent surveys show that 35% of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth in the ancient past (see the Chapman surveys below).

Still going strong almost 50 years after Chariots of the Gods?.

The Ancient Aliens series features fanciful storytelling, with many scenes shot at the various remote sites where “evidence” of ancient aliens supposedly exists. Still, it’s all pseudoscientific nonsense—simply because there are no proven artifacts of extraterrestrial origin. There is no academic conspiracy against the ancient-alien theorists as implied in the narration and comments of the talking heads. What’s needed is proven evidence, as cleverly suggested by the monolith in 2001. But we haven’t discovered a monolith or the “chariots.” I wish we had.

In Chariots of the Gods?, Mysteries of the Gods, and Ancient Aliens, virtually all of the so-called evidence and arguments provided by the theorists are myth, superstition, hearsay, anecdotal, or involve an inference or conclusion that is fallacious, implausible, or unknowable. The “evidence” and arguments also contain inaccuracies, mistaken assumptions, unrelated facts, and false similarities. The few remaining pieces of “evidence” — which are a tiny fragment of the absurd claims — are simply mysteries yet to be solved or mysteries that will never be solved. One might say this is also a key point in the cultural emergence of “alternative facts.”

Ancient Aliens: A New Cosmic Religion

But the pseudoscience, endless fallacies, and alternative facts have not prevented the multi-season programming of the television series. Even if the History Channel decided against renewing the series, it would run for decades in syndication and for eternity online, at least until real extraterrestrials arrived or we finishing wrecking the planet.

According to Chapman University, the belief in ancient aliens is growing rapidly: from 20% in 2015 to 35% in 2017.

Chariots of the Gods? and Ancient Aliens have given birth to new cosmic religion narrative, with von Daniken as the great prophet and his followers serving as the scribes—Giorgio Tsoukalos, Graham Hancock, David Childress, and others. Like God and his prophets, the unseen aliens have superpowers and have shaped our past and perhaps our destiny, especially if they return. The ancient alien narrative is like the standard Creator narratives, in that it assumes most everything humans have done follows from pre-ordained grand plans, with mysterious or hidden purposes, effected by an all-powerful force from the sky, a force that has yet to return to prove it exists. Like the Creator narrative, we humans must have been special beneficiaries. After all, the ancient aliens have taken the time to visit our tiny planet, thus caring enough to allegedly build stone structures, design ancient batteries, create cool statuettes, and paint pictographs before cruising to the next galaxy or star system.

Despite (or because of) the pseudoscience, the ancient alien theorists are doing a far better job of connecting humanity to the cosmos than Hollywood filmmakers and contemporary philosophers. The ancient-alien theorists have a fervant audience of followers who feel the theory connects our origins and destinies to the stars. Meanwhile, Hollywood merely sends us into space to wage Star Wars and battle Alien monsters.

All of the above is why I predict the ancient-alien narrative will continue to grow over time, precisely because it is filled with mystical and magical beliefs that mirror religious mythologies. Ancient Aliens makes us feel special—just like Jesus, ETs came to visit us and advise us. After hijacking the 2001narrative, von Daniken and his scribes have built the ancient-astronaut theory into a new religion, a new cosmic narrative filling the void left by contemporary philosophy as it shrinks before a massive and expanding universe. Meanwhile, secular society provides us with mobile phones and IMAX movies, and says we and our tribes are special—so super-special that superheroes will save us in case the aliens don’t make it back in time.

Superheroes: Our Secular Gods

Born of Nietzsche’s 19th century “Ubermensch,” the superhero emerged to counter horiffic “supermen” of the 20th century — the Marxist New Man and the Nazi Aryan man. By the early 20th century, the Soviet Union promised to create the Marxist New Man, the new human supposedly liberated from capitalism and united via communism and “scientific” materialism, supposedly destined to operate on an international scale. Countering the Marxist New Man, Nazi Germany concocted a racist Aryan Man, a mythical superman from the past supposedly destined to rule Europe and much of the world. Of course, both of these visions of a “new man” resulted in genocide and mass slaughter in totalitarian societies, culminating in World War II and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people before, during, and after the war.

In America’s land of a mythic “Democratic Man,” the only “superman” would be Superman, Batman, and subsequent legions of superheroes to save us in comics and movies. Though superheroes are fictional, their stories draw on real world events, such as nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. Superheroes function like secular gods providing stories about humanity’s survival and redemption in the face of apocalypse. In the end credits for The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), we see a giant sculpture of the Avenger superheroes, as if they are a pantheon of gods from Ancient Greece or Rome.

Pantheon of Secular Gods. Above: Statue of The Avengers from The Age of Ultron. Below: Justice League Superheroes

Superhero films have proven especially popular in the 21st century, with a trendline that mirrors the rise of non-belief in America.

Well into the 21st century, the superhero films just keep coming from Hollywood. Be it Superman, Batman, X-Men, Wonder Woman, or The Avengers, it seems almost all superhero films feature superheroes confronting a doomsday scenario for humanity. The superheroes must “save the world” because we can’t do it. Just as ancient-aliens fills the void left by philosophy divorced from science, superheroes fill the void left because industrial society has become divorced from nature, yet it is utterly reliant on the resources we are depleting. Oceans are acidifying, sea levels are rising, and nuclear war is still a possibility, while terrorism, exploitation, and endless tribal warfare plague secular society. Superheroes are needed to save us from ourselves because we know we have no answers, no real solutions for our problems, no leaders or institutions left to trust. It’s the same thing, over and over again, as illustrated in presidential elections.

In the 21st century, Americans expect their presidents to be superheroes battling the doomsday scenarios of the other party—thus we give the presidents ever-expanded political and legal powers, as if we are trying to give them superpowers and make them into superheroes with super solutions. Both major parties do it. Don’t deny it. When the dictator arrives in America, it will be in the guise of a presidential superhero with political superpowers. As Trump has shown, the superhero prez won’t even need to be rational or coherent or even sane. They just need to be superheroes who zap the bad guys. This is what happens when religion and nationalism merge with Hollywood and the 24/7 media spectacle.

In superhero movies and sequels, the superheroes must return to save us, again and again. Ancient-alien theorists claim extraterrestrial visitors shaped our past, present, and perhaps our future when they return. The return of aliens and superheroes echoes the promised return of Jesus and Nietzsche’s cycle of the eternal return, the superhero feedback loop. Ancient aliens and superheroes have superpowers beyond anything humans have, not unlike the Gods and prophets in religions. In the end, superheroes are our secular Gods and fulfill functions formerly reserved for religion, while ancient-alien theory claims to offer a secular narrative that connects us to the stars, yet ends up as another religion—a merger of the space age and new age.

Superhero stories and ancient-alien theory now stand in for contemporary philosophy, divorced from 21st century cosmology and declared “dead” by Stephen Hawking. In the absence of a science-based popular philosophy that offers us hope, meaning, and purpose (beyond tribalism, consumerism, and strip-mining other planets) amid the cosmic vastness, the ancient-alien theory provides hope and meaning by connecting our origins and destiny to a story that begins in the stars—even it is in a universe of alternative facts.

How much of the decline of traditional religious belief can be attributed to the rise of ancient alien theory? I don’t know, but given this analysis, I bet it is far from zero. This possibility is why the traditional religions will try to colonize the ancient-alien theory. Already, one prominent religious leader suggests we baptize extraterrestrials upon meeting them. If the ancient aliens do show up and don’t believe in a Creator, we might well need the superheroes to save us from a religious war in space!

_____________

• Barry Vacker is author of the new book, Specter of the Monolith (2017), which explores the meaning of Apollo and films like 2001 and Interstellar, while outlining a new and entirely original space philosophy for the human species. The book is available in Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble (here), and Amazon (here).

Source medium.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 12:44 geschreven door peter  

Meet 'Steve,' the Aurora-Like Mystery Scientists Are Beginning to Unravel

15-03-2018 om 12:26 geschreven door peter  

Magnesium from passing comets could be a key part of the Red Planet’s cloud-starter kit

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

HEAD IN THE CLOUDS  The rover Opportunity snapped this picture of wispy clouds drifting through the Martian sky in 2006. New findings suggest the clouds might have condensed around particles of dust from comets.

JPL-NASA, CORNELL UNIV.

The seeds for Martian clouds may come from the dusty tails of comets.

Charged particles, or ions, of magnesium from the cosmic dust can trigger the formation of tiny ice crystals that help form clouds, a new analysis of Mars’ atmosphere suggests.

For more than a decade, rovers and orbiters have captured images of Martian skies with wispy clouds made of carbon dioxide ice. But “it hasn’t been easy to explain where they come from,” says chemist John Plane of the University of Leeds in England. The cloud-bearing layer of the atmosphere is between –120° and –140° Celsius — too warm for carbon dioxide clouds to form on their own, which can happen at about –220° C.

Then in 2017, NASA’s MAVEN orbiter detected a layer of magnesium ions hovering about 90 kilometers above the Martian surface (SN: 4/29/17, p. 20). Scientists think the magnesium, and possibly other metals not yet detected, comes from cosmic dust left by passing comets. The dust vaporizes as it hits the atmosphere, leaving a sprinkling of metals suspended in the air. Earth has a similar layer of atmospheric metals, but none had been observed elsewhere in the solar system before.

According to the new calculations, the bits of magnesium clump with carbon dioxide gas — which makes up about 95 percent of Mars’ atmosphere — to produce magnesium carbonate molecules. These larger, charged molecules could attract the atmosphere’s sparse water, creating what Plane calls “dirty” ice crystals.

At the temperatures seen in Mars’ cloud layer, pure carbon dioxide ice crystals are too small to gather clouds around them. But clouds could form around dirty ice at temperatures as high as –123° C, Plane and colleagues report online March 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Citations

• J.M.C. Plane et al. Meteoric metal chemistry in the Martian atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Published online March 6, 2018. doi:10.1002/2017JE005510.

Further Reading

• M.M.J. Crismani et al. Detection of a persistent meteoric metal layer in the Martian atmosphere. Nature Geoscience. Published online May 22, 2017. doi:10.1038/ngeo2958.
• A. Yeager. Mars has nighttime snow storms. Science News Online, August 21, 2017.
• A. Yeager. Extreme gas loss dried out Mars, MAVEN data suggest. Science News. Vol. 191, April 29, 2017, p. 20.
• C. Crockett. Martian aurora, high-altitude dust clouds surprise scientists. Science News. Vol. 187, April 18, 2015, p. 15.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

15-03-2018 om 12:06 geschreven door peter  

Waterlogged minerals and changing ice add to evidence that Ceres is geologically active

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

FOLLOW THE ICE  A wall of ice in the shadows of Ceres’ Juling crater, shown here in an image taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, grew by about 50 percent over the course of six months.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA

Ceres may be regularly coughing up briny water or slush onto its surface.

The discovery of waterlogged minerals and a growing ice wall suggests that the dwarf planet could harbor underground liquid water or slushy brine, which has escaped through cracks and craters in the recent past and may still be seeping out today. The findings, reported in two papers published online March 14 in Science Advances, add to a growing realization that Ceres is geologically active — and may point to new signs of the dwarf planet’s potential to host the ingredients for life.

“We thought of Ceres as a dead body like our moon,” says Andrea Raponi, a coauthor of both studies and a planetary scientist at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome. The growing body of evidence “means that Ceres is geologically alive, active, in our days.”

Since 2015, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has orbited Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The mission has previously revealed Ceres has water ice in shadowed regions of its craters and a few meters below the surface (SN: 1/21/17, p. 8). The dwarf planet also has what look like cryovolcanoes, which spew slushy water instead of magma.

Now, scientists have used data from Dawn to make the first global map of surface carbonate minerals, which form in the presence of liquid water. In one of the new papers, the team reports finding hydrated sodium carbonate — versions of the minerals that still have water molecules attached.

Observations of Ceres have detected recent variations in its surface, revealing that the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system is a dynamic body that continues to evolve and change. "This is the first direct detection of change on the surface of Ceres," said Andrea Raponi of the Institute of Astrophysics and Planetary Science in Rome.

Small patches

Data taken by the Dawn spacecraft show that Ceres’ surface is covered in carbonate minerals that formed with water. Blue and magenta show widespread magnesium and calcium carbonates, while green and red show hydrated sodium carbonates. The hydrated carbonates are found in craters and on mounds, suggesting briny water or slush is reaching the surface in those zones.

F.G. CARROZZO ET AL/SCIENCE ADVANCES 2018

Because the dwarf planet has no atmosphere, that water can’t hang around more than a few million years, says study coauthor Filippo Giacomo Carrozzo, also a planetary scientist at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome. With no protective shield, cosmic radiation breaks the water’s bonds to other molecules, and the water evaporates relatively quickly into space. The presence of so much hydrated sodium carbonate on the surface means something must be replenishing it.

Previous research had found other hydrated minerals called phyllosilicates on Ceres’ surface (SN: 10/1/16, p. 14). Finding more lingering water molecules further supports the idea that “the process of hydration is ongoing today,” Carrozzo says.

The hydrated sodium carbonates are particularly concentrated near craters and domes, suggesting that briny water or slush wells up from the subsurface in an ice volcano. Or impact craters may excavate rock and soil, exposing the brine, the researchers say.

Both ideas are “viable mechanisms,” says Lucy McFadden of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is a member of the Dawn team but was not involved in the new papers. “It’s all pretty exciting stuff.”

In the second study, Raponi, Carrozzo and colleagues report that a wall of water ice in a crater called Juling grew from about 3.6 square kilometers to 5.5 square kilometers from April to October 2016. “We see, under our eyes, a change in the cover of water ice in a period of six months,” Raponi says. The change took place as the dwarf planet’s 4.6-year orbit was taking Ceres closer to the sun, the equivalent of moving from winter to spring, she says.

Some of the ice could have been buried beneath dirt, which sloughed off as the ice beneath it warmed and revealed fresh ice as the seasons changed, the team argues. Or freshwater or brine could have welled up from below and froze in the shadowed crater wall. Features on the crater floor seem to support this upwelling idea, Raponi says.

If water is upwelling from below, it’s hard to explain how it stays fluid beneath the surface, Raponi admits. Icy moons with subsurface oceans, like Enceladus and Europa, get a constant influx of heat from the gravity of the giant planets they orbit, Saturn and Jupiter. But Ceres has no such heat source.

But if Ceres does have a stable layer of subsurface liquid, that could increase its potential to be habitable, Raponi says. Previous studies have found organic molecules on Ceres’ surface, too (SN: 3/18/17, p. 8). “If we have all the ingredients of life in a geologically active body, that can be very interesting,” Raponi says.

Citations

• F.G. Carrozzo et al. Nature, formation, and distribution of carbonates on Ceres. Science Advances. Published online March 14, 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1701645.
• A. Raponi et al. Variations in the amount of water ice on Ceres’ surface suggest a seasonal water cycle. Science Advances. Published online March 14, 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aao3757.

Further Reading

• E. Eaton. Ceres harbors homegrown organic compounds. Science News. Vol. 191, March 18, 2017, p. 8.
• C. Crockett. Dawn spacecraft maps water beneath the surface of Ceres. Science News. Vol. 191, January 21, 2017, p. 8.
• C. Crockett. Water plays a big role in shaping dwarf planet Ceres. Science News. Vol. 190, October 1, 2016, p. 14.
• C. Crockett. Pluto’s icy landscape comes into view. Science News. Vol. 188, August 8, 2015, p. 6.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

15-03-2018 om 11:56 geschreven door peter  

Here Are 3 Of The Best Recorded UFO Sightings Witnessed In Ancient Times

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head…It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south…”

Despite the fact that millions of people around the globe are convinced that mankind has been visited and is being visited by beings not from Earth, the evidence remains unconvincing for skeptics.

Even though we can find hundreds of mysterious videos filmed both by ordinary people and by astronauts and military personnel, it is a common belief that ‘contact’ with alien life has never been made.

If we take a look at history, we will find a number of interesting documents which ‘prove’ that ancient cultures like the Egyptians, or people living in Europe some 500 years ago, witnessed something in the sky which they could not properly explain.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

They saw something in the heavens that was strange, but they knew it wasn’t weather related and thought of the mysterious phenomenon as a sign of the Gods.

One of the most discussed ancient documents that suggest the ancient Egyptians witnessed UFOs in the distant past is the so-called Tulli Papyrus.

This document offers the earliest citation of flying saucers on the planet.

The Tulli “papyrus” is a translation of a modern transcription of an ancient Egyptian document.

As noted in this ancient text, during the rule of Pharaoh Thutmose III a mass UFO sighting occurred over Egypt. The event was recorded in history as a day of great importance, a day that something unexplainable occurred.

The translation of the text, according to R. Cedric Leonard:

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor. Its body was one rod in length and one rod in width. It had no voice…

…It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down from the sky: a marvel never before known since the foundation of the country.”

In addition to this document, many other accounts of strange ‘ships’ in the sky have been recorded throughout the years.

In 1561, the inhabitants of Nuremberg (modern-day German) witnessed a battle in the sky.

This event is considered as one of the best recorded UFO sightings in the history of man.

The day was April 14th, 1561, people left their homes to go about their everyday activities, but when they looked towards the sky, they saw something terrifying and unexplainable, as dozens of strange crafts were flying above the city.

The local newspaper from Nuremberg gave the following description of the events over the city:

“In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates, and in the country – by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides, the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen. By Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg”.

(Source: Colman S. Von Kevicsky, “The Ufo Sighting Over Nuremberg in 1561” Official Ufo January 1976, pp. 36-8, 68. The translation is by Ilse Von Jacobi.)

But there’s more.

In 1665, hundreds of people witnessed another battle of ships in the sky, above the sky of Barhöfft.

Shortly after the battle had ended, the inhabitants of Barhöfft witnessed a dark, disk-shaped object overflying the area where the battle had taken place.

The event:

“After a while out of the sky came a flat round form, like a plate, looking like the big hat of a man… Its color was that of the darkening moon, and it hovered right over the Church of St. Nicolai. There it remained stationary until the evening. The fishermen, worried to death, didn’t want to look further at the spectacle and buried their faces in their hands. On the following days, they fell sick with trembling all over and pain in head and limbs. Many scholarly people thought a lot about that,” 

wrote Erasmus Francisci in “Der wunder-reiche Ueberzug unserer Nider-Welt/Oder Erd-umgebende” in 1689.

{ https://ancient-code.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 11:39 geschreven door peter  

What Will Future Space Robots Look Like?

 

Michael Karrer / Emily Cho

15-03-2018 om 11:31 geschreven door peter  

Stephen Hawking’s Most Dire Predictions for the Future

by Alexandra Ossola

 

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

{ https://futurism.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 11:20 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Beams of Light appear in the Sky over Ohio

While driving on March 13th, 2018 in Ohio, Justin saw lights coming from the upper right side of the screen.

At first Justin thought it was a reflection but realized it wasn’t because the light was being blocked by the trees.

Indeed it is not a reflection and again an orange glow in the sky that surrounds the beams of light before the mysterious phenomenon disappears and the night sky turns to normal again.

The strange sky phenomenon starts at the 0.48 mark in the video.

  

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

15-03-2018 om 11:07 geschreven door peter  

Galactic clockwork: Astronomers find all galaxies rotate once every billion years

Credit: Pexels.

Our planet spins around its own axis, with each completed cycle corresponding to the length of a day. The Earth also orbits the Sun, coming full circle every ~365 days, which we call a year. But now, researchers have found that not only do all galaxies spin around their core like cosmic clocks, they also all take just as long to complete a full revolution, regardless of their size. That’s about one billion years or so. Can we call it a galacton? What about a galaxium? I want more ideas in the comments.

Like clockwork

“It’s not Swiss watch precision,” said Professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

“But regardless of whether a galaxy is very big or very small, if you could sit on the extreme edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you about a billion years to go all the way round.”

The researchers investigated numerous galaxies of all shapes, sizes, and rotational velocity, ranging from small dwarf irregulars to massive spirals

Meurer and colleagues found there were some persistent regularities such as that all galaxies of the same size also have the same average density of stars. “You won’t find a dense galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the same size but lower density is rotating more slowly,” Meurer said.

The astronomers thought they would find dispersed populations of young stars and gas at the edges of galactic disks. But instead, the models revealed that older stars exit through the outer edge of galaxies, too. This finding is of significant practical importance since it tells scientists where a galaxy ends, allowing them to limit observations and not waste time and computer processing power.

When the next generation of radio telescopes comes online, such as the massive Square Kilometre Array (SKA), these will generate a flood of new data, so knowing how to accurately identify a galaxy’s edge can save astronomers a lot of headaches.

By far, the most striking finding was that, no matter how big they are, all galaxies rotate once every billion years.

“So because of this work, we now know that galaxies rotate once every billion years, with a sharp edge that’s populated with a mixture of interstellar gas, with both old and young stars,” Professor Meurer said.

“When the SKA comes online in the next decade,” Meurer said, “we’ll need as much help as we can get to characterize the billions of galaxies these telescopes will soon make available to us.”

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

15-03-2018 om 01:21 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Biblical Texts Tell Of Civil War Between Ancient Astronauts

BY CHET DEMBECK 

Ancient carved pipes of the mysterious ‘Mount Builders’,

Credit: Unknown

The Book of Enoch and Extraterrestrial Watchers

The controversy surrounding the Old Testament “Book of Enoch” will always be with us as more theologies reject this unique chronicle than accept it as part of the cannon of the Bible. This is understandable because when interpreted literally, it makes little sense.

R.H. Charles translated the ancient text in 1912. In 1948 more pieces of this ancient puzzle came together with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Soon after, fragments of the Greek text were also discovered.

True Events

It is my belief that Enoch was writing about true events and real experiences using the language and belief system of his ancient times to describe what he perceived as supernatural spiritual beings at war with one another.

In truth, I believe Enoch really was witnessing two groups of space travelers from a civilization eons ahead of man’s technologically, who were fighting over whether such an advanced civilization had the right to interfere, intermarry and conquer a primitive species.

In my opinion it is only when we view the so-called “Watchers” or “angels” Enoch chronicles in this context that this prophet’s epic account makes any sense at all.

Shipwrecked or Observation Post

I am going to give you my interpretation of Enoch’s writings first, with his text immediately following.

My interpretation of Chapter six and seven of the Book of Enoch is as follows:

An expedition of extraterrestrials either crashed or was shipped down to earth to observe mankind and watch its progress — thus the term “Watchers.” This is no different than what some of our scientists do in the wild with animals or secluded Amazon tribes. They observe, tag and try to learn as much as they can about their subjects without destroying their culture or interfering with their affairs. Again, I am speaking of today and not during the period of past European colonialism.

Gap in Time

Whether these visitors had crashed or had been transported to the ancient Middle East is not known. But according to Enoch’s account, the 200 of them, who had become residents of the area, started to find earth women quite attractive. My best guess is that a long period of time has passed between when this crew had been dropped off or crashed on earth; therefore, as a group they decided it was time to procreate with the natives because they weren’t sure if their fleet would ever be returning for them.

Or this action could have been purely a matter of survival. Perhaps their women had died, or perhaps they were dwindling in numbers and believed it was necessary to take action to preserve themselves. Or, perhaps they were just horny.

Interesting, Enoch writes that their leader Semjâzâ openly expressed great concern about such a move; in fact, he told his fellow extraterrestrials that he would be held responsible and pay a heavy price for allowing such sexual copulation.

At this, his crew assured the leader that they had his back, which appeared to ease Semjâzâ reservations enough to give them the final O.K. — and even join in.

Broke the Prime Directive

Using a Star Trek term, it was soon after that the 200 visitors descended Mount Hermon, a place with so-called angels and God often communicated with the prophets, and took themselves human wives.

In the next passage, Enoch begins to outline the consequences of these extraterrestrials mating with local women. Immediately, the visitors began to teach their wives advanced chemistry and later they would teach their offspring the advantages of technology as applied to warfare with other humans.

Instantly, these extraterrestrials had sowed the seeds for the disaster that followed.

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15-03-2018 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

Here Are 10 Of The Most Remarkable Ancient Temples Ever Built On Earth

Thousands of years ago, ancient cultures around the globe erected some of the most amazing structures on the surface of the planet.

Using incredible knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and architecture, ancient people created truly wonderous monuments to stand the test of time.

Some of these structures are engulfed in mystery, as they defy everything we have been taught about ancient cultures.

From laser-like cuts to supermassive blocks of stone weighing up to one hundred tons, these incredible ancient structures prove that our ancestors were far more advanced than what we are crediting them for.

Join me on this journey while I explore ten of the most remarkable temples ever built on Earth.

The Konark Sun Temple. 

This ancient temple located in Orissa, India was built by King Narasimhadeva I of Eastern Ganga Dynasty in 1255 CE.

I find this temple beyond stunning as it features a number of intricate design details that will make your jaw drop.

The temple itself was shaped like a gigantic chariot, but its breathtaking design elements are the smaller ones, like the elaborately carved stone wheels, pillars, and walls. A major part of the structure is now in ruins.

Another temple, perhaps equally stunning is the so-called Brihadeeswarar Temple dedicated to Lord Shiva and commissioned by Raja Raja Chola I. The temple was completed in 1010 CE. This temple is located in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. One of its most prominent features is the massive 40-meter-high Vimana—one of the largest in the world. The entire temple was built out of granite, and scholars have calculated that the ancients used more than 130,000 tons in its construction.

The Prambanan temple compound, home to 240 rocket-like structures. This ancient temple compound is believed to have been erected during the 9th century under the Sanjaya dynasty of the first Kingdom of Mataram in the Central Java region. Prambanan is considered the most significant Hindu temple site in Indonesia, and one of the biggest in Southeast Asia. The stunning rocket-like structures are characterized by its tall and pointed architecture style, which, according to historians, are typical of Hindu architecture and by a towering 47-meter-high central building inside a large complex of individual temples.

One of my favorite ancient temples is located in Ellora, Maharashtra, India. This ancient wonder of the world is considered the largest rock-cut temple on the surface of the planet.

The Kailasanatha temple (Cave 16) is one of the 34 cave temples and monasteries are known collectively as the Ellora Caves.  Its construction is generally attributed to the 8th-century Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in 756-773 CE.

From India, we travel to Egypt. There, in the land of the Pharaohs, we come across the Temple of Dendera, an ancient monument built to honor the Goddess Hathor.

Curiously, this temple, located a mere 2.5 km southeast of Dendera, is one of the best preserved Egyptian complexes, especially its central temple, thanks to which it remained buried by sand and mud until it was unearthed by Auguste Mariette in the middle of the 19th century.

The Temple of Dendera features a mysterious relief that some authors claim depicts a massive lightbulb used by the ancients Egyptians, suggesting that thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians had access to advanced technologies like electricity.

Egypt has a number of ancient temples that are worth mentioning, and I can’t exclude Khafre’s Valley Temple from this article.

This ancient temple is one of the most curious temples in Egypt mostly because of the enigmatic ‘bent’ stones that lie inside the temple. It features supermassive blocks of stones, some exceeding 150 tons in weight, and design elements that eerily resemble elements found halfway around the world, in Peru.

The Giant Pyramid-temple of Borobudur. This magnificent ancient structure is considered the largest Pyramid-shaped Buddhist monument in the world, but it is also one of the most intricately designed structures on the surface of the planet. mainstream scholars have no idea who erected it, what its original purpose was, nor how on earth it was built.

A few people are aware of the fact that hidden deep inside the desert region in Peru, more than 5,000 years ago, an ancient civilization erected magnificent temples and pyramids.

An Aerial view of Caral. Image Credit: Turandino

The Pyramids and temples of Peru are believed to predate the Pyramids of the Giza plateau by at least 500 years and were erected by the Caral people.

From Peru me journey to the Temple of the Sun or (Coricancha, Koricancha, Qoricancha or Qorikancha), the main Inca Sanctuary. Its internal walls, embedded and molded with millimetric precision, surprise even more when it is known that during the Inca Empire they were not ‘naked’, but that all the walls of the temple, according to Garcilaso de la Vega who wrote about Coricancha in the late sixteenth century, “were covered from top to bottom with massive gold planks.”

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The Temple of the Sun (Coricancha) is part of a beautiful complex composed of several temples.

And last but not least, we travel to Cambodia.

There, in the city of Angkor Thom lie the ruins of the temple complex of 200-smiling-faces: The Bayon Temple.

Built at the end of the 12th century, it was completed during the reign of Jayavarman VII. It was created in Buddhist style. The temple is oriented towards the east, and so its buildings are set back to the west inside enclosures elongated along the east-west axis. It is best known for its 54 towers and more than two hundred Buddha faces which give off a sensation as if they were staring at you with a relaxed, calm, and beatific look.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

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15-03-2018 om 00:56 geschreven door peter  

Here Are NASA’s Unreleased Apollo Mission Images They Don’t Want You To See

The idea that NASA has encountered Alien life during the Apollo missions has aroused the curiosity of thousands of experts in the field for decades.

Ever since NASA successfully landed on the moon, people have wondered whether or not the astronauts on the lunar surface—and during their trip to the moon—witnessed things they couldn’t rationally explain.

In other words; Alien spaceships and structures on the moon’s surface.

These questions were quickly turned into a conspiracy theory, and people who argue that the Apollo astronauts witnessed inexplicable things during their trip to the moon were called out as conspiracy nuts.

To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the surface of Moon, with the last Apollo mission departing the lunar surface in December 1972.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

Image credit: NASA

For nearly half a century—46 years to be precise—space agencies around the globe have avoided going to the moon.

But why?

Was it due to extremely high costs? Risks? Or is it that the moon is simply not an interesting place?

The truth is that today, 46 years after the last successful moon landing we have much better technology than we had 46 years ago.

Money isn’t an issue, for we always find money for things we want and need.

The moon is perhaps one of the most interesting places in the solar system, and numerous experts have claimed it is imperative for humans to establish a colony on the lunar surface.

So, what’s keeping us from landing on the moon?

A man called Bob Dean may answer the above question.

Mr. Dean is retired US Army Command Sergeant Major who served for 28 years.

He has given a number of interesting lectures, providing a wealth of information about not only the moon landings, Apollo missions, but also corroborating what numerous whistleblowers have said in the past.

During the Barcelona Exopolitics Summit, on July 25, 2009, Mr. Dean released a set of amazing images. He also explained the Apollo missions, and what astronauts encountered unlike anyone before him.

During the summit, Mr. Dean released to the public a set of fascinating images supposedly captured by astronauts of the Apollo 12 mission, including an image showing mysterious spacecraft several hundred feet in diameter.

During the lecture, Mr. Dean recounts how on the morning of the 2nd of February 1961, World War III almost began, and a fleet of unidentified flying objects were to blame:

“It appears that on the morning of the 2nd of February 1961, World War III almost started. It was involved in the flyover of large numbers of circular metallic craft, flying in formation, very obviously under intelligent control,” said Mr. Dean during the lecture.

Mr. Dean continued: “They would fly out of the Soviet sector in the Warsaw Pact toward the U.S. in formation at a high speed and at a very high altitude. They would turn north over the English Channel over the southern coast of England and then they would disappear off of NATO radar over the Norwegian Sea.”

“The Soviets went on red alert. The NATO forces went on red alert. Everybody was, you know … fingers on their triggers, thumbs poised above those red buttons. And World War III was just moments away,” explained Mr. Dean. “Within 20 minutes, it was all over. The objects flew, turned north and disappeared off of radar.”

Soon after the mysterious sighting that nearly triggered WWIII, a study of the occurred took place.

Experts concluded how “…planet Earth and the human race had been under some kind of survey or observation going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. They concluded, in 1964, that there were at least four different groups coming here, observing us, surveying us, analyzing us, closely watching us, what we were up to, what we were doing. They concluded that it did not appear to be a military threat involved, because their repeated demonstrations of incredibly advanced technology demonstrated to us that, if they had been hostile or malevolent, there was absolutely nothing we could do. If they were evil in their intent and they were hostile toward us, it would have been over a long time ago.”

“…the conclusion was there were four different groups involved,” explained Mr. Dean.

This image comes from the Apollo 12 mission, Apollo Systems 12, roll number 50, negative number 7348. A mysterious object was sighted by Apollo astronauts as they were orbiting the moon.

The image seen below was taken by Astronaut Neil Armstrong. While the astronauts were looking out of the window of their little craft, this cigar-shaped object flew by.

The next image, says Mr. Dean, shows a mysterious disc-shaped object with several hundred feet in diameter. It was snapped while astronauts made their way to the surface of the moon.

The next two images were taken by Apollo Astronauts when they were overflying the so-called Lansberg crater. According to Mr. Dean; “The astronauts in orbit above the Moon were particularly fascinated by the Lansberg crater. They had been given a special designation to take pictures of Lansberg, because the crater, which they named as the Lansberg, had things going on that were very anomalous. There was construction going on. There were gigantic facilities in the crater up there. So they were specifically delegated and assigned to photograph Lansberg to see if they could figure out what the hell was going on down there. While they were looking at Lansberg, this object happened to express interest in them and flew by. Now this line is an artificial line that was drawn to show you the … it gave the direction that this object was going. This is a good-size object flying past the Apollo Lander.”

Are these mysterious spots alien structures on the lunar surface?

Mr. Dean continued showing evidence gathered by astronauts from the Apollo 13 mission. The below image, says Mr. Dean, where taken as Apollo 13 astronauts were traveling to the moon when a number of things began happening. Some strange objects were appearing outside the windows of the spacecraft, so the Apollo 13 Astronauts grabbed their Hasselblad cameras and started taking pictures of what they had seen.

This photograph below shows three different objects.

Another image of the Apollo 13 ‘UFO’ encounter, as noted by Mr. Dean.

Read the entire transcript and view more images here.

Source: Bob Dean: Barcelona Exopolitics Summit, 25 July 2009, Transcript

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15-03-2018 om 00:38 geschreven door peter