The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
15-03-2018
Daytime UFOs caught on tape over Lachine, Quebec, Canada
Daytime UFOs caught on tape over Lachine, Quebec, Canada
Here’s one new footage of a bright unidentified flying objects in the sky above Lachine in Quebec, Canada. This was filmed back in September 2016 but it was just submitted to MUFON.
Witness report:
I can only describe those objects as these reflective and glowing. Flying in one path never changing direction. The sun that day was pretty bright, bright enough to make my eyes water, which made it difficult to record them.
New Horizons passed Pluto in 2015. With public input, the mission team has nicknamed the spacecraft’s next target – on the fringes of our solar system – Ultima Thule.
This image shows New Horizons’ current position along its full planned trajectory toward MU69, now nicknamed Ultima Thule. The green segment of the line shows where the spacecraft has traveled since launch; the red indicates the spacecraft’s future path.
Some 115,000 people from around the world recently suggested some 34,000 possible nicknames for the distant object 2014 MU69, the next target of the New Horizons spacecraft, whose historic sweep past Pluto took place in July 2015. The New Horizons mission team announced on March 13, 2018, it has selected the name Ultima Thule – pronounced ultima thoo-lee – for New Horizon’s next target, a Kuiper Belt object officially named 2014 MU69. New Horizons will sweep closest to Ultima Thule on January 1, 2019.
The mission team describes the object as:
… the most primitive world ever observed by spacecraft, in the farthest planetary encounter in history.
In a statement, the team explained their reasons for their choice:
Thule was a mythical, far-northern island in medieval literature and cartography. Ultima Thule means “beyond Thule” – beyond the borders of the known world – symbolizing the exploration of the distant Kuiper Belt and Kuiper Belt objects that New Horizons is performing, something never before done.
Alan Stern (@AlanStern on Twitter) of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, is New Horizons’ principal investigator. He said:
MU69 is humanity’s next Ultima Thule. Our spacecraft is heading beyond the limits of the known worlds, to what will be this mission’s next achievement. Since this will be the farthest exploration of any object in space in history, I like to call our flyby target Ultima, for short, symbolizing this ultimate exploration by NASA and our team.
View larger. | Artist’s conception of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69 – now nicknamed Ultima Thule – on January 1, 2019. This object orbits a billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto. Evidence gathered from Earth suggests it might be a binary (double) or multiple object.
NASA and the New Horizons team launched the nickname campaign in early November. Hosted by the SETI Institute of Mountain View, California, and led by Mark Showalter, an institute fellow and member of the New Horizons science team, the online contest sought nominations from the public and stipulated that a nickname would be chosen from among the top vote-getters.
The campaign wrapped up on December 6, after a five-day extension to accommodate more voting. Of the 34,000 names suggested, 37 reached the ballot for voting and were evaluated for popularity. This included eight names suggested by the New Horizons team and 29 nominated by the public.
The team then narrowed its selection to the 29 publicly nominated names and gave preference to names near the top of the polls. Names suggested included Abeona, Pharos, Pangu, Rubicon, Olympus, Pinnacle and Tiramisu. Final tallies in the naming contest posted here.
About 40 members of the public nominated the name Ultima Thule. This name was one of the highest vote-getters among all name nominees.
Showalter said:
We are grateful to those who proposed such an interesting and inspirational nickname. They deserve credit for capturing the true spirit of exploration that New Horizons embodies.
After the flyby, NASA and the New Horizons team say they’ll choose a formal name to submit to the International Astronomical Union, based in part on whether MU69 is found to be a single body, a binary pair, or perhaps a system of multiple objects.
Astronomers found evidence that compounds on Ceres formed from liquid water in the recent geologic past.
Distribution and intensity of the carbonate absorption in VIR data.
Image credit: Carrozzo et al., Sci. Adv. 2018;4: e1701645
In a way, Ceres is both big and small. It’s the largest object in the asteroid belt, but it’s still a dwarf planet — and it’s much too small to be really considered a planet. About four times smaller than the moon, Ceres has a diameter of approximately 945 kilometers. It was first discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi and considered a planet, but was then relegated to asteroid status. But this doesn’t mean that Ceres isn’t exciting in its own right.
The NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015, allowing astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail. In a new study, authors report that Ceres is still evolving.
Using the visible-infrared mapping spectrometer aboard Dawn, they observed significant quantities of magnesium-calcium carbonates covering most of the dwarf planet. Finding carbonates — a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3) — is extremely important since it is usually a sign of water. Judging by the current analysis, astronomers now believe water amounts to about 30% of the dwarf planet’s mass.
Carbonates are abundant and ubiquitous across the surface, but variations in the strength and position of infrared spectral absorptions indicate variations in the composition and amount of these minerals. Also, not all carbonates are hydrated, and therefore not all of them can be connected to water.
Some carbonate patches featured sodium carbonate in its hydrated form — which is a clear indication of liquid water. Pictured is the distribution of water ice (left), sodium carbonate (center) and hydrated sodium carbonate (right) in a crater on Ceres.
Credits: Carozzo et al.
Ceres appears to have differentiated rocky core and an icy mantle. Researchers have known for quite a while that Ceres probably had liquid water in its recent history (and perhaps still has), but the wide distribution of carbonates, and therefore, the water, is surprising.
“The different chemical forms of the sodium carbonate, their fresh appearance, morphological settings, and the uneven distribution on Ceres indicate that the formation, exposure, dehydration, and destruction processes of carbonates are recurrent and continuous in recent geological time, implying a still-evolving body and modern processes involving fluid water,” the researchers write.
Patches of hydrated sodium carbonate (green and red) were found around craters with domes or mounds by the team.
Image credits: Carozzo et al.
The authors suggest that the connection between carbonates and extrusive surfaces implies that carbonates are possibly brought to the surface by rising subsurface fluids. This could indicate that beneath a frozen surface, there is an ocean of liquid water. The carbonate mapping indicates active geological processes such as upwelling, excavation, and exposure of salts.
Ceres doesn’t get nearly as much love as Pluto does, but given recent findings, perhaps it should.
Déjà vu, pronounced ‘day-zhaa voo’, is French for ‘already seen.’ It describes the eerie sensation of familiarity in a seemingly new setting and environment. For instance, you may have found yourself in the middle of a conversation thinking to yourself that this exact exchange has taken place before. Or you may have walked into a totally new environment, and said to yourself “I’ve been here before!”. It’s all strangely familiar, but you can’t quite wrap your mind around the whole thing. In a sense, it’s a bit like seeing into the future.
Déjà vu is commonly featured in pop culture. Inthe movie The Matrix, adéjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix — a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us under control while a cybernetic organism farms our bodies. But despite most people (60-80%) reporting that they have experienced the unsettling feeling at least once in their lifetimes, déjà vu has been startling understudied. To researchers’ credit, the fleeting, uncontrollable nature of déjà vu has made it difficult to study.
Scientists have proposed various hypotheses for déjà vu formation in the brain. According to one theory, the phenomenon might arise due to some sort of “mismatch” in how we’re simultaneously sensing and perceiving the world around us. Another theory suggests that the brain may occasionally take a short-cut to long-term memory storage, bypassing short-term working memory, evoking the sensation that of experiencing something in the distant past. The mainstream line of thinking is that déjà vu is a product of false memories — glitches in our neural matrix.
“[Déjà vu] is certainly related to false memory in the sense that it is a memory dissociation kind of effect. It dissociates reality from your memory,” said Valerie F. Reyna, a psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and an expert on false memory and risky decision making.
“There’s all kinds of different dissociative experiences that can happen. Sometimes you cannot be sure, for example, if you dreamed something or experienced it, if you saw it in a movie or it happened in real life.”
But in 2016, Akira O’Connor, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Britain, found that the phenomenon might be the result of front regions of the brain ‘fact checking’ our memories and sending signals when it encounters a sort of error. This error generates a conflict between what we’ve actually experienced and what we think we’ve experienced. By this explanation, déjà vu represents a mechanism that ensures that we don’t form false memories, or at least keeps them to a minimum, and is not the product of false memories themselves. This may also explain why the phenomenon is far more common in younger people, since memory deteriorates with age.
“Déjà vu is characterized by having a false sensation of familiarity, alongside the awareness that that sense of familiarity cannot possibly be correct,” O’Connor said. “It’s a memory clash where there’s false familiarity, together with an objective awareness that it can’t be real.”
O’Connor and colleagues enlisted 21 volunteers, who each were exposed to a list of words related to sleep — such as bed, pillow, night, or dream — but not the keyword itself that links all of them together. The participants were then asked whether they had heard the word ‘sleep’. Those who responded affirmatively were then asked whether they had heard any word from the previous list start with the letter “s”, to which they responded negatively. The resulting confusion triggered déjà vu in two-thirds of participants.
The next step was to scan the brains of the participants with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to see which brain regions lit up when the experience took place.
“What we found was that it wasn’t memory-linked regions that are driving déjà vu,” he said. “Traditionally, researchers thought déjà vu was being driven by false memories. What it actually is is that the cognitive control, error-monitoring conflict-checking frontal brain regions are the ones which show greater activity in people reporting the experience.”
What does this mean for people who have never had déjà vu? Well, it may mean that these people don’t reflect on their memory system. On the other hand, people who don’t have déjà vu might simply have a better memory than the general population, so there’s no risk of triggering memory errors.
As to why people have déjà vu in the first place, the jury isn’t out yet. It may be an evolutionary product that makes people more cautious when memory is playing tricks on us, but there’s no evidence backing this idea up yet.
We can never enter into contact with extraterrestrial civilizations
We can never enter into contact with extraterrestrial civilizations
While signals from alien civilizations have reached the Earth, there is a high probability that by this time all the aliens have long been dead. To such conclusions came a group of American astronomers led by the Swiss researcher Claudio Grimaldi, who decided to turn again to the famous Drake equation, a formula designed to determine the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, with which humanity has a chance to come into contact.
In their work, the researchers calculated the area of that region of the galaxy through which the extraterrestrial signals must pass. According to Drake himself, civilizations are born and die at a constant rate. With the death of civilization, the transmission of messages also ceases. However, already sent signals continue their journey through the galaxy, as the circles diverge on the water. As a result, most of the galaxy is filled with messages from dead aliens.
The Milky Way’s diameter is one hundred thousand light-years, while the solar system is located about 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. Scientists believe that most developed civilizations capable of sending radio signals do not exist for more than one hundred thousand years. Therefore, the chances of receiving a message from aliens still broadcasting at the moment are very small. The same mankind sends signals to space for about 80 years, so radio waves from Earth have covered less than 0.001 percent of the area of the galaxy. “If a civilization living on the other side of the galaxy sends a message, then by the time this message reaches us, this civilization is already going to die out,” says physicist Claudio Grimaldi of the Lausanne Federal Polytechnic School.
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.
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.
Another artist's concept showing NASA's Mars 2020 rover exploring Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's next Mars rover won't just explore the Red Planet; it will, the space agency hopes, make it so a little bit of Mars might make it to Earth. Known as Mars 2020, the upcoming rover will hunt for signs of habitable environments on Mars while searching for signs of past microbial life. The robotic traveler will also cache a series of samples that can be returned to Earth with a future mission.
The mission is currently slated to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in July or August 2020, when Earth and Mars are positioned to require the least amount of power for interplanetary travel. It is scheduled to land in February 2021, with an initial mission duration of at least one Martian year, or 687 Earth-days.
The car-sized rover is about 10 feet long (not including the arm), 9 feet wide, and 7 feet tall (about 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters tall). At 2,314 lbs. (1,050 kilograms), it weighs less than a compact car.
Mixing old and new
If photos and sketches of the Mars 2020 rover look familiar, that's because the robotic explorer is largely based off its predecessor, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)'s Curiosity rover. Roughly 85 percent of the new rover's mass is based on this "heritage hardware."
"The fact that so much of the hardware has already been designed — or even already exists — is a major advantage for this mission," Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said in a statement. "It saves us money, time and most of all, reduces risk."
Like Curiosity, Mars 2020 will have a rectangular body, six wheels, an arm and hand, cameras and instruments, and a drill for sampling rocks. But the new rover has different goals that require a suite of cutting-edge instruments. Using an X-ray spectrometer and an ultraviolet laser, Mars 2020 will seek out bio-signatures from the past on a microbial scale. A ground-penetrating radar will be the first instrument to look under the surface of Mars, mapping layers of rock, water and ice up to 30 feet (10 m) deep.
"Our next instruments will build on the success of MSL, which was a proving ground for new technology," said George Tahu, NASA's Mars 2020 program executive. "These will gather science data in ways that weren't possible before."
These upgrades will kick in before the rover ever touches the surface of Mars. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is developing and managing the mission for the space agency, is developing a new landing technology called terrain-relative navigation. As the mission hardware approaches the Martian surface, it will use a computer to compare the landscape with pre-loaded terrain maps, guiding the descending mission to a safe landing site and making corrections on the way down.
A related feature, known as a range trigger, will use location and velocity to determine when to open the spacecraft's parachute, narrowing the landing ellipse by more than half.
"Terrain-relative navigation enables us to go to sites that were ruled too risky for Curiosity to explore," said JPL's Al Chen, the Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing lead. "The ranger trigger lets us land closer to areas of scientific interest, shaving miles — potentially as much as a year — off a rover's journey."
Cameras on the spacecraft will film the final journey, capturing the opening of the parachute and the slow drift to the Red Planet for the first time. That information will be sent back to Earth, where it will provide not only awe-inspiring imagery but also scientific data about the planet's atmosphere. [VIDEO: Watch Mars 2020 Rover's Parachute Successfully Unfurl in Test Flight]
"It is quite a ride," Ian Clark of JPL, the test's technical lead, said in a statement. "The imagery of our first parachute inflation is almost as breathtaking to behold as it is scientifically significant. For the first time, we get to see what it would look like to be in a spacecraft hurtling towards the Red Planet, unfurling its parachute."
Illustration depicting the science instruments slated to be carried aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Improved eyesight
Mars 2020 will boast nearly five times as many cameras as the first Mars rover. Sojourner carried only five cameras, and the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity were designed with 10 cameras apiece. Curiosity has 17.
The new rover will carry 23 cameras. Some will provide more color and 3D imaging than on Curiosity, according to Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, the principle investigator for 2020's Mastcam-Z. "Z" stands for "zoom," one of the improvements on Curiosity's high-definition Mastcam.
The engineering cameras for planning drives and avoiding hazards on Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity all captured 1-megapixel images in black and white. 2020's engineering cameras will acquire high-resolution, 20-megapixel color images. Their wider field of view means that, instead of spending time taking multiple images to be stitched together on the ground, the new cameras can capture the same view in a single snapshot. The cameras can also reduce motion blur, so they can snap images while the rover is traveling.
More detailed images mean more data to beam through space.
"The limiting factor in most imaging systems is the telecommunications link," Maki said. "Cameras are capable of acquiring much more data than can be sent back to Earth."
Smarter rover cameras are helping to reduce the load. On Spirit and Opportunity, compression was done on the onboard computer. Mars 2020, like Curiosity, will have its compression performed by electronics built into the camera.
Data will be beamed back to Earth through spacecrafts already orbiting Mars: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), MAVEN and the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter was the first orbiter to send rover data home from Spirit and Opportunity.
"We were expecting to do that mission on just tens of megabits each Mars day, or sol," Bell said. "When we got that first Odyssey overflight, and we had about 100 megabits per sol, we realized it was a whole new ballgame."
Mars 2020 will also carry a microphone, which can relay the sounds of the Red Planet back to Earth.
"There's a lot of good science that can be done by having a microphone on Mars," Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, told Space.com. He and his colleagues investigated the possibility of pairing a microphone with a laser that will be used to vaporize rocks on the Martian surface.
In addition to gathering science, a microphone would represent a public relations coup, Maurice said.
"It will be the first time we can listen to a sound on Mars," he said.
NASA has decided on three potential landing sites for the upcoming Mars 2020 mission: Northeast Syrtis, Jezero crater and Columbia Hills.
Credit: NASA
Landing on Mars
As of March 2018, the final landing site for Mars 2020 had not yet been selected. In February 2017, a team of scientists narrowed down the list to three: Columbia Hills, Jezero Crater and Northeast Syrtis.
One site has been explored before. Starting in 2004, the Mars exploration rover Spirit explored Gusev Crater and Columbia Hills, where the rover discovered evidence of past water, the only place it found water in the enormous crater. Later data analysis suggested that the crater may have once hosted a shallow lake.
The Jezero Crater is an ancient lakebed where microbial life could have developed, NASA officials said in a statement. The river delta structure suggests that water filled and drained from the site at least twice, and MRO has identified minerals that have been chemically altered by water.
An ancient volcano in Northeast Syrtis could have led to hot springs and melting ice, creating the ideal conditions for past microbial life. The edge of the Syrtis Major volcanoes exposes 4-billion-year-old bedrock, as well as many minerals altered by the encounter during the Red Planet's early history.
The final selection of the landing site should come during a workshop in either 2018 or 2019, the researchers said during a 2015 meeting.
"In the coming years, the 2020 science team will be weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each of these sites," Mars 2020 project scientist Ken Farley said. "It is by far the most important decision we have ahead of us."
Bringing samples home
Unlike previous rovers, Mars 2020 will prepare samples to return to Earth. The rover will try to drill at least 20 rock cores, and possible more than 30 or 40. Samples will be secured in sample tubes and deposited at select locations for return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission. Such a mission has not yet been selected, so the samples may have to wait for years to hitch a ride back to Earth.
"The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth," Geoffrey Yoder, then-acting associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a 2016 statement. "This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA's Journey to Mars — to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet."
Assuming the samples make it to Earth, scientists will be able to use powerful instruments to provide a more in-depth examination than can be carried on the car-sized rover.
The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) laser instrument will be the first instrument on Mars to use Ramen and fluorescence spectroscopies, techniques familiar to forensics experts. When an ultraviolet light shines over certain carbon-based chemicals, they glow much like material beneath a black light. The glow can help scientists to detect chemicals that form in the presence of life. SHERLOC will photograph the rocks it studies, then maps the chemicals it detects across the images.
"This kind of science requires texture and organic chemicals — two things that our target meteorite will provide," Rohit Bhartia of JPL, SHERLOC's deputy principal investigator, said in a statement.
The rover will carry a small bit of the Martian meteorite known as Sayh al Uhaymir 008 (SaU008) to help calibrate SHERLOC. Previous rovers have included calibration targets, but none of them have ever relied on Martian meteorites. (A meteorite has, however, ridden to Mars aboard the Mars Global Surveyor, which continues to orbit Mars now that its mission has ended.)
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.
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.
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?
Glowing UFO Comes Out Of Side Of Colima Volcano And Shoots Away On Live Internet Cam! March 12, 2018, UFO Sighting News.
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.
Angelic Winged Sun Seen During Sunset In Florida, Video, March 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Angelic Winged Sun Seen During Sunset In Florida, Video, March 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: March 2018 Location of sighting: Jacksonville, Florida, USA This inspirational look at a pair of angelic wings seen during a sunset in Florida last week was reported by MRMBB333 of Youtube. Science has never been able to fully explain the phenomenon caused by the sun, like rings and wings, but they seem to be messages from angelic beings. There is however a legend of a planet that comes around every 10,000-20,000 years that is a winged planet...this could be a sign that is nearing, for us to prepare for Nibiru. Scott C. Waring Many comments below the video state similar thoughts.
1. Sign of the times. Great pic! 2. The angel wing phenomenon would not be possible unless there was a very large round object behind the sun. 3. Angel wings at Angel point . Wow !! That is Awesome 💜 Nothing is a Coincidence with Our Heavenly Father. He is Amazing. 💜💜 4. Nibiru - The Winged Planet !!!
ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF
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 featureda 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).
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Meet 'Steve,' the Aurora-Like Mystery Scientists Are Beginning to Unravel
Meet 'Steve,' the Aurora-Like Mystery Scientists Are Beginning to Unravel
By Sarah Lewin, Space.com Associate Editor
New work helps to codify the cause and properties of "Steve," an aurora-like phenomenon documented by citizen scientists as it streaked across the sky in western Canada.
As of a new paper's release today (March 14), the phenomenon has been dubbed STEVE, a backronym that matches the name originally given by aurora watchers. (STEVE is short for "Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.") According to the new work, the distinctive ribbon of purple light with green accents — which can occur at lower latitudes than normal auroras do — gives scientists a glimpse into the interactions of Earth's magnetic field and upper atmosphere.
"It's exciting because this might be a kind of aurora that more people can see than any other kind, because when it shows up, it shows up over more populated areas that are further to the south," Elizabeth MacDonald, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and lead author of the new work, told Space.com. And scientifically, "it's an aspect related to [auroras] that's further south than we ever had recognized … It tells us that the processes creating the aurora are penetrating all the way into the inner magnetosphere, and so that's a new aspect of it." [Amazing Auroras: Photos of Earth's Northern Lights]
The majestic aurora-like phenomenon "Steve," now given the official acronym STEVE, shines with the Milky Way over Childs Lake, Manitoba in Canada.
Credit: Krista Trinder
Researchers first became aware of STEVE after members of a Facebook group called the Alberta Aurora Chasers (which refers to the province in western Canada) began posting photos of unusual purplish-greenish streaks oriented nearly vertically in the sky. Scientist collaborators coordinated with the aurora chasers to combine the dates and times of the phenomenon's appearance with data from the European Space Agency's Swarm satellites, which precisely measure variation in Earth's magnetic field, to work out what conditions caused the phenomenon.
The better-known auroras — also referred to as the northern and southern lights — form when Earth's magnetic field guides charged particles propelled from the sun around the planet and toward the upper atmosphere at its poles. These solar particles hit neutral particles in the upper atmosphere, producing light and color visible in the night sky.
STEVE, on the other hand, seems to form a different way.
"There's an electric field in those regions that points poleward and a magnetic field that points downward, and those two together create this strong drift to the west," MacDonald said. The flow in Earth's ionosphere pulls charged solar particles westward, where they hit neutral particles along the way and heat them up, producing upward-reaching streaks of light moving west.
STEVE ripples over Helena Lake Ranch, BC, Canada in the early evening. The feature was visible for about an hour.
Credit: Andy Witteman —@CNLastro
STEVE is the first visible indicator of that ion drift, which researchers had been investigating via satellite for around 40 years, she added.
Because the phenomenon was occurring outside the usual geographic range for frequent auroras, citizen scientists played a particularly valuable role in understanding STEVE, MacDonald said. It's at the farthest reaches of dedicated scientific cameras, and it appears on wavelengths different from the usual auroras, which those cameras might not be prepared to document. And the improvement in camera technology available to the public means such records are increasingly valuable to scientists' understanding of auroras in general. (Plus, crowdsourcing platforms like Aurorasaurus, which MacDonald founded, help aggregate the observations to help with prediction and analysis.)
Scientists understand a lot about auroras, but not everything — "so there's the discovery aspect," MacDonald said. "And there's the less-exciting aspect of the citizen science observations," which are equally scientifically valuable. "All these observations in aggregate help us to build better models of aurorae," she added. "That's useful for people who want to see it, and it's also useful for people who are concerned about the effects of space weather and currents in the upper atmosphere on communication and things like that."
STEVE ripples across Lake Minnewanka in Alberta, Canada.
Credit: Paulo Fedozzi
It's hard to get an overall view of auroras with the current slate of satellites, MacDonald said, which either can't see an entire hemisphere or don't observe each spot often enough as they orbit — once every 90 minutes — to track how auroras evolve in the short term. People on the ground can provide a more nuanced view.
"Through these kinds of projects, we can get more people than we would have thought — than they would have thought — who actually have captured a scientifically valuable observation," she said. "And it's not scary; it's just STEVE."
The new work was detailed today (March 14) in the journal Science Advances.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains.
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.
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.
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.
Here Are 3 Of The Best Recorded UFO Sightings Witnessed In Ancient Times
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.
The Star Wars saga is peppered with adorable space robots. NASA engineer W. Kris Verdeyen thinks that future space bots will have the capabilities of droids like BB-8, with humanoid frames like C-3PO.
Astronauts need a lot of help from robots. Whether it’s the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) or future recruits on missions exploring the depths of the Solar System, robots help us to complete tasks beyond our human capabilities. But what type of robots are best suited for these cosmic jobs? One NASA engineer thinks that we should turn to Star Wars for inspiration.
In the popular saga, Astromechs are repair droids that act as autonomous mechanics aboard ships. They are also capable of fighting, piloting spacecraft, and just about everything else. You might recognize astromechs like BB-8 or R2-D2. At NASA, these types of robots are called caretaker robots. In Science Robotics, NASA engineer W. Kris Verdeyen recently argued that the ideal robot for missions in space would have the capabilities of an astromech (or caretaker robot), but with a less problematic body.
Even on a film set, Verdeyen observed, rolling droids like BB-8 are not ideal for difficult, desert terrain. NASA has tested out humanoid robots like Robonaut and Robonaut 2, which flew to the ISS, but so far they have not been able to compete with the enormous variety of functions of astromechs. Still, because of its humanoid frame, “Robonaut, either the original or Robonaut 2, has demonstrated use of drills, torque wrenches, surgical equipment, air-quality testers—an impressive array of hand tools that may be necessary for an on-orbit repair,” Verdeyen wrote. He suggests that the ideal robot for such missions would have the capabilities of an astromech, or caretaker robot, but with a humanoid frame.
One of the primary functions that make astromechs so useful is their “creativity” — something that has been sorely lacking in NASA’s humanoid robots. They can autonomously solve problems that they haven’t been preprogrammed to handle. When in space, things never go exactly as planned, and an inability to respond quickly will threaten the safety of a mission. The ideal robot would be able to adapt to unexpected situations.
Verdeyen says that, to try to combine a physically capable robot with these qualities, NASA has been exploring what it calls “embedded intelligence.” They want to take robots like Robonaut 2 and equip them with artificial intelligence (AI) and a hefty database of basic knowledge to kickstart them.
It is unclear whether or not these ideal space robots would be as charismatic as their on-screen counterparts, but it’s possible they will be just as handy. “Star Wars got a lot of the functions of space robots right. NASA’s space robots will need to be able to repair spacecraft semiautonomously, just like R2D2 and BB-8,” Verdeyen said. “They will need to solve problems in and store knowledge about their spacecraft, just like R2D2 and BB-8. But, at least for the time being, they will look a lot more like C3PO and K-2SO.”
Stephen Hawking was a brilliant astrophysicist who inspired and awed. He pushed our understanding of, curiosity about, and excitement for the universe around us. He made us laugh. He made us curious. He made us imagine.
He also, at times, made us afraid.
Hawking, who died this morning at the age of 76 after 52 years of living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease), will leave behind a deeply important legacy. But his paranoia about the future of humanity, especially in his later years, may prove to be one of the most lasting (and pertinent) aspects of that legacy.
These are a few of his most dire predictions:
1. AI Takeover
“The genie is out of the bottle. We need to move forward on artificial intelligence development but we also need to be mindful of its very real dangers,” Hawking said last year in a Q&A with WIRED. “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans.”
As AI permeates more of our daily lives, Hawking isn’t the only one to fear a robot takeover.
But there are other threats.
2. Self-Destruction
“Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing… I would not be optimistic about the long-term outlook for our species.”
Hawking said this in 2016 at an event at Cambridge University, attesting his pessimism in part to the recent referendum for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union. In a 2017 documentary, he said humanity has just a century left on Earth, down from the 1,000 years he predicted the year before.
That’s in part because of climate change and environmental destruction that, he feared, may make the Earth uninhabitable. Since he became president, Donald Trump had become a favorite target of Hawking’s:
“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s action [pulling out of the Paris Agreement] could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid,” Hawking told BBC News.
“Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children.”
Fortunately, though, he sees a solution.
3. Planetary Colonization
“If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before,” Hawking said at a festival in Norway last year.
“We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems,” he continued. “Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth.”
“I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all… A new and ambitious space program would excite [young people], and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology.”
He laid out a fairly comprehensive series of benchmarks: nations should send astronauts to the Moon by 2020 (and set up a lunar base in the next 30 years). And we should get to Mars y 2025.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
'What the f*** is that thing?' Shocking moment Navy pilot...
The day Google Earth stood still! UFO hunters are sent into...
