Artists’s concept (montage) of our solar system.

Image via NASA/JPL.

Remember those Styrofoam models of the solar system we made in elementary school? The solar system is even cooler than that! Here are 10 things you might not know.

1. The hottest planet isn’t closest to the sun. 

Many people know that Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, well less than half of the Earth’s distance. It’s no mystery, therefore, why people would assume that Mercury is the hottest planet. We know that Venus, the second planet away from the sun, is on the average 30 million miles (48 million km) farther from the sun than Mercury. The natural assumption is that, being farther away, Venus must be cooler. But assumptions can be dangerous. For practical consideration, Mercury has no atmosphere, no warming blanket to help it maintain the sun’s heat. Venus, on the other hand, is shrouded by an unexpectedly thick atmosphere, about 100 times thicker than Earth’s atmosphere. This in itself would normally serve to prevent some of the sun’s energy from escaping back into space and thus raise the overall temperature of the planet. But in addition to the atmosphere’s thickness, it is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. The carbon dioxide freely lets solar energy in, but is much less transparent to the longer wavelength radiation emitted by the heated surface. Thus the temperature rises to a level far above what would be expected, making it the hottest planet. In fact the average temperature on Venus is about 875 degrees Fahrenheit (468 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt tin and lead. The maximum temperature on Mercury, the planet closer to the sun, is about 800 degrees F (427 degrees C). In addition, the lack of atmosphere causes Mercury’s surface temperature to vary by hundreds of degrees, whereas the thick mantle of carbon dioxide keeps the surface temperature of Venus steady, hardly varying at all, anywhere on the planet or any time of day or night!

New Horizons captured this image of Pluto on July 25, 2015, when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 km) from the planet.

Image via NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

2. Pluto is smaller in diameter than the U.S. 

The greatest distance across the contiguous United States – from Northern California to Maine – is nearly 2,900 miles (about 4,700 km). Thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, we now know that Pluto is 1,473 miles (2,371 km) across, less than half the width of the U.S. Certainly in size it is much smaller than any major planet, perhaps making it a bit easier to understand why, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union changed Pluto’s status from major planet to dwarf planet.

3. George Lucas doesn’t know much about asteroid fields. 

In many science fiction movies, spacecraft are often endangered by pesky asteroid fields. In actuality, the only asteroid belt we are aware of exists between Mars and Jupiter, and although there are tens of thousands of asteroids in it (perhaps more), they are quite widely spaced and the likelihood of colliding with one is small. In fact, spacecraft must be deliberately and carefully guided to asteroids to have a chance of even photographing one. Given the presumed manner of asteroid creation, it is highly unlikely that spacefarers will ever encounter asteroid swarms or fields in deep space.

4. You can make volcanos using water as magma.

 Mention volcanoes and everyone immediately thinks of Mount St. Helens, Mount Vesuvius, or maybe the lava caldera of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Volcanos require molten rock called lava (or magma when still underground), right? Not really. A volcano forms when an underground reservoir of a hot, fluid mineral or gas erupts onto the surface of a planet or other non-stellar astronomical body. The exact composition of the mineral can vary greatly. On Earth, most volcanoes sport lava (or magma) that has silicon, iron, magnesium, sodium, and a host of complicated minerals. The volcanoes of Jupiter’s moon Io appear to be composed mostly of sulfur and sulfur dioxide. But it can be simpler than that. On Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Neptune’s moon Triton, and others, the driving force is ice, good old frozen H₂0! Water expands when it freezes and enormous pressures can build up, just as in a “normal” volcano on Earth. When the ice erupts, a cryovolcano is formed. So volcanoes can operate on water as well as molten rock. By the way, we have relatively small scale eruptions of water on Earth called geysers. They are associated with superheated water that has come into contact with a hot reservoir of magma.

Artist concept of water volcano on Enceladus.

Via NASA/ David Seal.

5. The edge of the solar system is 1,000 times farther away than Pluto. 

You might still think of the solar system as extending out to the orbit of the much-loved dwarf planet Pluto. Today we don’t even consider Pluto a full-fledged planet, but the impression remains. Still, we have discovered numerous objects orbiting the sun that are considerably farther than Pluto. These are Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) or Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). The Kuiper Belt, the first of the sun’s two reservoirs of cometary material, is thought to extend to 50 or 60 astronomical units (AU, or the average distance of the Earth from the sun). An even farther part of the solar system, the huge but tenuous Oort comet cloud, may extend to 50,000 AU from the sun, or about half a light-year – more than 1,000 times farther than Pluto.

6. Almost everything on Earth is a rare element. 

The elemental composition of planet Earth is mostly iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, sulfur, nickel, calcium, sodium, and aluminum. While such elements have been detected in locations throughout the universe, they are merely trace elements, vastly overshadowed by the much greater abundances of hydrogen and helium. Thus Earth, for the most part, is composed of rare elements. This does not signify any special place for Earth, however. The cloud from which the Earth formed had a much higher abundance of hydrogen and helium, but being light gases, they were driven away into space by the sun’s heat as the Earth formed.

7. There are Mars rocks on Earth (and we didn’t bring them here).

Chemical analysis of meteorites found in Antarctica, the Sahara Desert, and elsewhere have been shown by various means to have originated on Mars. For example, some contain pockets of gas that is chemically identical to the Martian atmosphere. These meteorites may have been blasted away from Mars due to a larger meteoroid or asteroid impact on Mars, or by a huge volcanic eruption, and later collided with Earth.

8. Jupiter has the biggest ocean of any planet, 

albeit made of metallic hydrogen. Orbiting in cold space five times farther from the sun than Earth, Jupiter retained much higher levels of hydrogen and helium when it formed than did our planet. In fact, Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium. Given the planet’s mass and chemical composition, physics demands that way down under the cold cloud tops, pressures rise to the point that the hydrogen must turn to liquid. In fact there should be a deep planetary ocean of liquid hydrogen. Computer models show that not only is this the largest ocean known in the solar system, but that it is about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) deep – roughly as deep as the Earth is around!

9. Even really small bodies can have moons. 

It was once thought that only objects as large as planets could have natural satellites or moons. In fact the existence of moons, or the capability of a planet to gravitationally control a moon in orbit, was sometimes used as part of the definition of what a planet truly is. It just didn’t seem reasonable that smaller celestial bodies had enough gravity to hold a moon. After all, Mercury and Venus have none at all, and Mars has only tiny moons. But in 1993, the Galileo probe passed the 20-mile wide asteroid Ida and discovered its one-mile wide moon, Dactyl. Since then moons have been discovered orbiting many other minor planets in our solar system.

10. We live inside the sun. 

Normally we think of the sun as being that big, hot ball of light 93 million miles (150 million km) away. But actually, the sun’s outer atmosphere extends far beyond its visible surface. Our planet orbits within this tenuous atmosphere, and we see evidence of this when gusts of the solar wind generate the Northern and Southern Lights. In that sense, we definitely live inside the sun. But the solar atmosphere doesn’t end at Earth. Auroras have been observed on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and even distant Neptune. In fact, the outer solar atmosphere, called the heliosphere, is thought to extend at least 100 A.U. That’s nearly 10 billion miles (16 billion km). In fact the atmosphere is likely teardrop shaped due to the sun’s motion in space, with the “tail” extending tens to hundreds of billions of miles downwind.

This artist’s concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. NASA’s Voyager 1, humankind’s most distant spacecraft, is around 125 AU. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Bottom line: The solar system is cool. Here are 10 things you might not know.

{ http://earthsky.org/  }

29-03-2018 om 17:23 geschreven door peter  

Intermittent Fasting Is As Old As Mankind—And It’s The Key To Longevity

Even before the appearance of great ancient civilizations, hunter-gatherers across the globe reaped the benefits of intermittent fasting.

But if we take a peek back in history, we will notice that ancient civilizations across the globe were much more advanced than we credit them for.

In many areas, ancient civilizations like the ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks possessed knowledge that modern-day scholars struggle to understand.

Written sources exist which are evidence that humans have used ‘starvation’ in order to help their body recover and reap the health benefits it offered.

Regardless of territory or religion, different ancient civilizations used intermittent fasting and were fully aware of its effectiveness.

In ancient Indy, Greece, and Egypt, the ancients used intermittent ‘fasting’ to treat certain diseases, but also as prevention.

They used it to strengthen the body, as intermittent fasting kicks off a set of processes in the body, as the release of more Norepinephrine, an organic chemical in the catecholamine family that functions in the brain and body as a hormone and neurotransmitter, giving the person practicing the fast more energy, alertness, and focus.

Intermittent fasting remained popular thousands of years ago and spread across different parts of the planet. In the Middle Ages, intermittent fasting remained extremely popular as people continued reaping its benefits.

However, even before the ancient Egyptians, Greek and Hindu, due to food scarcity our ancestors, hunter-gatherers, practiced intermittent fasting. Before agriculture, people ate what they could hunt when they returned home empty-handed, and wild berries were nowhere to be found, periods of starvation took place, and this greatly strengthened hunter-gatherers.

This practice also played a key role in nearly all the world’s major religions since its associated with penitence and other forms of self-control.

Mahatma Gandhi undertook 17 fasts during the struggle for Indian independence.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

If we take a look at the history of different religions and their connection with intermittent fasting, we find how Judaism has several annual fast days including Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonements; in Islam, Muslims fast during the holy month of Ramadan, while Roman Catholics and Eastern orthodoxy observe a 40 day fast during Lent, the period when Christ fasted 40 days in the desert.

In recent times, scientists have started investigating intermittent fasting evermore.

A recent study by Harvard scientists has shown how intermittent fasting is not only healthy, but it also can help you live longer.

Experts from Harvard have found that by manipulating mitochondrial networks inside cells — either by dietary restriction or by genetic manipulation that mimics it — a person could increase their lifespan and help promote health.

The study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism details advances made in the research of mitochondrial connections and explains how intermittent fasting is crucial to increase lifespan. According to the researchers, dietary restriction and intermittent fasting have shown in the past to be able to help health during the years of old age, so understanding why this phenomenon occurs is a crucial step towards the therapeutic use of its benefits.

“Our work shows how crucial is the plasticity of the mitochondria for the benefits of fasting,” they explained but emphasized that it is necessary to investigate more deeply this complex biological process to reach definitive conclusions.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 17:09 geschreven door peter  

THE MOST SHOCKING EVIDENCE THAT EARTH WAS VISITED BY ANCIENT ALIENS

The very words give me the chills: ancient aliens. In the early 1970s, when Erich von Däniken first released Chariots of the Gods, he called them “ancient astronauts”—a name that’s equally creepy. The Apollo missions were still going on, and the image of astronauts was fresh in everyone’s minds. Could ancient alien beings have arrived on Earth in the distant past? Would they have worn spacesuits, like our own astronauts?

If they truly visited our planet in millennia past: why were they here? What did the aliens do while they were on Earth?

Researchers have spent a lot of time looking into the question of whether we were visited so many millennia ago. The popular television show Ancient Aliens, although well-intentioned, has muddied the water in their search of show material—did we really need an episode asking whether aliens interfered with the American Civil War? (C’mon, guys. You’re off the reservation.)

Although we may not be ever know for sure that we had extraterrestrial visitors thousands of years in the past, perhaps if they did come, they might have left us modern people some clues. Let’s take a look at some of the most clear—and startling—evidence for the existence of ancient aliens on Earth.

ANCIENT ALIENS VISIT THE DOGON TRIBE?

African Tribe Possessed Knowledge Science Had Yet to Discover

The Dogon tribe and the Sirius Mystery are amazing enough that we’ve covered them elsewhere.

This African tribe (whose name is pronounced “DOE-gone”) has known all sorts of specifics about the star Sirius for thousands of years, passed down from holy man to holy man. We’re talking details here, like how Sirius has a companion star (“Sirius B”), and that it circles the main star (“Sirius A”) every 50 years. Here’s the thing: it is absolutely true—but modern scientists didn’t know these things about Sirius until the middle of the 19th century. The Dogon knew a thousand years ago. Heck, the Dogon also knew that Sirius has a second companion star, and scientists didn’t discover it (“Sirius C”) until the 1990s.

How did the Dogon get this scientific information about Sirius B? If you ask them, they’ll tell you that the tribe was visited by the Nommos, an amphibian-like race that came from the Sirius star system in a noisy “ark” that spun and whipped up wind while it landed. It was the Nommos, a race of ancient aliens, who told the Dogon about their homeworld and its star cluster.

Knee-jerk skeptics like to invent reasons why all this can’t be true. Westerners must have stopped by and told them about Sirius, one denier said. There’s no way, though: the Dogon have artifacts that are thousands of years old, depicting Sirius and its companions. No one should have known this stuff that long ago, but the Dogon did.

This short video does a good job explaining the ancient Dogon knowledge. (I have no idea why the narrator pronounces Sirius as “SIGH-ree-us”, but we can give him a pass on that.)

THE PROPHET EZEKIEL DESCRIBES HIS ENCOUNTER WITH ANCIENT UFOS—IN THE BIBLE

Holy Scriptures Contain Account of Alien Contact?

Ask Erich von Däniken, the guy who pioneered the search for ancient aliens, and he’ll tell you his favorite evidence is in the Old Testament. It’s the story of Ezekiel and his bizarre encounter with UFOs.

Ezekiel was a prophet living in exile with the rest of the Hebrews in the land they called Babylon. Being a prophet was a highfalutin job back then, but Ezekiel’s life got even stranger—stranger than just being a guy who received special messages from the creator of the universe.

The prophet Ezekiel encounters a UFO and aliens 2,500 years ago

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings.

Ezekiel 1:1-6

Some people read this and think: the dude was taking drugs. Others (knee-jerk skeptics) say: oh, it’s just more Biblical mumbo-jumbo. Devout people may say that Ezekiel saw angels.

Maybe.

What if this was Ezekiel actually saw something, and he didn’t know what it was, or how to explain it? If he actually encountered ancient aliens, how would he describe them? We think he’d probably describe them just like he did.

Next Ezekiel describes the machine that the being had arrived in, the machine that landed in a rush of wind.

Ezekiel confronts the great wheels withinwheels. Did he meet ancient aliens?

I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz … each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went.

Ezekiel 1:15-19

Doesn’t that sound like a spacecraft to you? Why would a man living 500 years B.C. write a description that sounds so much like the landing and maneuvering of an alien ship? Surely this was not just random. Remember: Ezekiel was devoutly religious, and he would interpret amazing events as signs from God. If beings appeared, he would assume they were angels. But perhaps they were ancient aliens.

What about their technology? Ezekiel’s description was of an alien craft with advanced maneuverability.

This story of the machine that had wheels-within-wheels impressed NASA engineer Joe Blumrich a lot. A wheel that could move in any direction without having to turn—that sounded like something a planetary exploration vehicle could use. He went on to invent a wheel based on Ezekiel’s description, and called it the “omni wheel.” Joe received a US patent for it in 1972. Today, omni wheels are routinely used in robot vehicles. Blumrich also wrote a popular book, The Spaceships of Ezekiel, in which he explained that after starting out intending to disprove the idea, he’d become convinced that Ezekiel truly had been writing about an encounter with ancient aliens.

“THOSE WHO CAME FROM THE SKIES TO THE EARTH”

World’s Oldest Civilization Leaves Record of Alien Contact

The ancient Sumerians lived 5,000 years ago in what’s now the country of Iraq. They left behind humankind’s first writings, books older than the Bible and the Hindu Vedas.

The Sumerians wrote a lot about the Anunnaki, whose name means “those who came from the skies to Earth”. Modern scholars have assumed that the stories of the Annunaki were just myths about Sumerian gods—but the stories themselves sound more like tales of ancient aliens.

In the writings, the Annunaki came to Earth from a lost planet in our solar system—one with such a wide orbit that it rarely approaches us. They called the planet Nibiru.

The leaders of the ancient aliens were named Enki and Enlil. They were here for gold, a mineral they needed but did not have enough of. Mines were set up there in Sumer, but also in Africa as well. Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, a Zulu elder and author of Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophecies, and Mysteries, says that ancient tribal traditions speak of “visitors from the stars” who mined for gold.

After mining for some time, the Anunnaki realized that the local humanoids—Homo Erectus, our ancestors—might make useful slaves if they could make them smarter. After improving the proto-humans, presumably with DNA modification, they managed to create a hybrid race: part Anunnaki, part early human. These new beings, called the Adamu, were the first real humans. They were also the new slaves who would work in the gold mines.

Ancient Sumerian cylindrical seal shows an accurate map of our solar system

Our hybrid ancestors didn’t stand for this situation for long, though, probably because these newly created beings were far too smart. Who wants to be a slave? They eventually rose up and rebelled, and eventually, a new Adamu society formed, one which maintained an uneasy truce with the Anunnaki.

The Sumerians recorded this history after first inventing writing. They also made engravings and art of the Anunnaki along with knowledge they had received from them—for instance, an ancient Sumerian seal depicts the Sumerian “gods” along with an accurate representation of our solar system, with 11 planets. The planets have correct proportions (Jupiter is the largest, then Saturn, and so on), and the depiction also includes the asteroid belt. Remember that modern science only discovered Uranus and Neptune in the past 150 years, and that scientists are only now saying that there is gravitational evidence for a “lost” planet with a weird, oblong orbit. Are there truly 11 planets? It may be so.

Sumerian artwork always depicts members of the Anunnaki as having wings. Did they actually have wings? It seems unlikely—many researchers believe the wings are meant to show that the Anunnaki had the ability to fly, as in ships. Other strange and telling things appear in the artwork: the goddess Ishtar’s symbol, which stood for the concept of “life”, bears a striking resemblance to the entwined double helix of DNA. Could that be more than a coincidence?

We’ve been kind of critical of the show Ancient Aliens, but this segment from an early episode explains all this pretty well (below). We also very much like this documentary about the Anunnaki and the planet Nibiru.

ANCIENT ALIENS FIGHT WARS IN THE SKIES OF ANCIENT INDIA

Hindu Holy Books Called The Vedas Describe Alien Encounters

There is strong evidence that ancient aliens visited other places around the Earth. In India, for example, the ancient holy books known as The Vedas tell of a space war between ships and fought in the skies. The descriptions of the ships are remarkable—translated, it is difficult to imagine that they were describing anything except spacecraft.

The Vedas state that “strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material. Inside one must put the mercury engine with its iron heating apparatus underneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky. The movements of the Vimana are such that it can vertically ascend, vertically descend, move slanting forwards and backwards. With the help of the machines human beings can fly in the air and heavenly beings can come down to earth.”

Spacecraft as described in the ancient Hindu holy books called The Vedas

No, that’s not a spacecraft they’re describing. No way.

“Fifty years of researching this ancient works convinces me that there are living beings on other planets and that they visited Earth as far back as 4,000 BC. There is just a mass of fascinating information about flying machines, even fantastic science fiction weapons that can be found in translations of The Vedas, Indian epics and other ancient Sanskrit text.” That’s Dr. Vijaya Raghavan, speaking; he was head of the Sanskrit department of the University of Madras in India (now retired). His job, if it’s not obvious, was to study The Vedas; his conclusion was that they described real events in which aliens came to Earth.

In other parts of The Vedas, we get a description of something that can only be a nuclear explosion.

“Gurkha flying in his swift and powerful Vimana hurled against the three cities of the Vrishis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousands suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the Iron Thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas.”

So what do we make of that? Just ancient imagination that happens to sound exactly like nuclear devastation? Sure, you deniers and skeptics, sure. You’re probably right. It’s ancient nonsense. Right?

Hungry for more?

Check out Google searches about the Nazca lines, and the Mayan king Pakal at the pyramid of Palenque. We could go on; there’s a lot of strange evidence on our Earth that is dismissed far too easily by mainstream science. Because the universe is mundane, and it has to be mundane—that is, if you’re a knee-jerk skeptic addicted to the idea that the universe is mundane.

Now, if you want to see the original film that inspired all this hysteria, it’s below: Chariots of the Gods, from the early 1970s. Yes, sure, it’s cheesy—it’s from the ’70s! But it’s still pretty cool, we think.

{ http://www.area51.org/}

29-03-2018 om 16:36 geschreven door peter  

{ https://thetruthrevolution.net/ }

29-03-2018 om 16:17 geschreven door peter  

29-03-2018 om 16:09 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Found a Galaxy With Almost No Dark Matter. Here’s What That Means.

by Kristin Houser

{ https://futurism.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

Rare Dead Sea Scroll Describing Live Of Noah Exhibited For First Time

Referred to as the Apocryphal Genesis, the ancient text describes the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters from the book of Genesis, and most importantly, the passages are not narrated in the third person, but it is Noah himself who tells the story. Noah describes how the ark coming to rest on the peaks of Mount Ararat after the great Flood.

The Museum of Israel (Jerusalem) has exhibited, for the first time ever, a rare fragment of the enigmatic Dead Sea Scrolls discovered 70 years ago, describing the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters in the book of Genesis, written in the first person.

Noah’s Ark.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

The rare manuscript is the so-called “Apocryphal Genesis” the only known existing copy of an ancient Jewish text that tells stories of the first book of the Bible.

This manuscript, which is part of the Rolls of Qumran, dates from the 1st century BC and it was one of the first seven Dead Sea scrolls that were found in caves in the West Bank in the 1940s and 1950s.

The document, which will be shown to the public for three months, is written in Aramaic and describes the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters from the book of Genesis, and most importantly, the passages are not narrated in the third person, but it is Noah himself who tells the story.

The ancient manuscript is badly damaged.

Image Credit: AP/Oded Balilty

“This is the only copy of this book on Earth,” said Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book, where the scrolls are housed.

“In some way what we have are parallel stories that we don’t have in the Hebrew Bible, in which the patriarchs are presented in different ways than the ways we have today in the Pentateuch,” he said.

The ancient manuscript, which is badly damaged, deals with Noah’s ark coming to rest on the peaks of Mount Ararat after the great Flood.

Noah describes how “atoned for all the earth in its entirety” by offering up various animal sacrifices.

The Genesis Apocryphon scroll was already in a very damaged state when it was first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947.

“Today we have the opportunity to see it (the manuscript) for a few months and then it will go back to the cellars and will not see the light again for dozens of years,” said the director of the museum, Ido Bruno.

Source: AP

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock/AP

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ } 

29-03-2018 om 15:31 geschreven door peter  

Researchers Find The Oldest Human Footprints—From The Last Ice Age—in North America

The discovery implies that about 13,000 years ago the people who left the footprints were seafarers who used boats to get around.

The human traces found on an island along the coast of British Columbia, in western Canada, would be around 13,000 years old, making them the oldest discovered in North America. Archaeologists have uncovered a total of 29 footprints of at least three different sizes.

Photograph of one of the tracks next to the digitally enhanced image of it.

Image Credit: Duncan McLaren / CC BY-SA 4.0

This means a couple of things.

First of all, and obviously, humans existed in North America much sooner than what experts have suggested.

Secondly, the discovery indicates that during the Last Ice Age, human populations moved to America from Asia, across a land bridge that existed at the time.

Thirdly, say researchers, these footprints are the only ones ever discovered dating back at least 13,000 years. Experts explain that the prints may have been ‘recorded’ as these individuals disembarked from their boat, eventually moving to drier lands.

Using radiocarbon dating on sediment from the base of some footprint impressions, as well as two pieces of preserved wood found in the first footprint, Dr. McLaren lead author Duncan McLaren, a professor of anthropology at the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and his team found them to be 13,000 years old, reports the NY Times.

According to preliminary studies, digital photographic studies have revealed that the ancient footprints most likely belonged to two adults and a child who walked barefoot on clay soil on what is now a beach on Calvert Island, northeast of Vancouver Island, say the authors of the study published in the journal PLOS One.

The new find adds to evidence suggesting ancient cultures crossed over to North America from Asia during the last Ice Age, between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago. 

“A total of 29 footprints were found in the sediments during the excavation work carried out between 2014 and 2016,” said Duncan McLaren.

“As this island would only have been accessible by watercraft 13,000 years ago,” Dr. McLaren said, “it implies that the people who left the footprints were seafarers who used boats to get around, gather and hunt for food and live and explore the islands.”

The study suggests that humans were present on the Pacific coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago and that the region was then ice-free, long before the end of the last glacial period on the continent, which dates back to 11,700 years ago.

This discovery reinforces the hypothesis supported by a growing number of researchers according to which the first people who arrived in North America migrated from Asia through a land corridor along the coast, without ice, to finally reach British Columbia.

The footprints which are believed to date back to the last Ice Age.

Image Credit: Duncan McLaren CC BY-SA 4.0

Supporting this hypothesis has not been easy for researchers, since this area of Canada, very rugged and covered with dense forests, is only accessible by boat, they explained.

The researchers concentrated their excavations on an area on Calvert Island, where the water level was two to three meters lower than the current one at the end of the ice age, between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The authors believe that further excavations with more elaborate methods will allow discovering more traces, helping to reconstruct the history of the first human settlements along the west coast of North America.

“It’s not only the footprints themselves that are spectacular and so rare in archaeological context, but also the age of the site,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany who edited the paper for PLOS One but was not involved in the work. “It suggests an early entrance into the Americas.”

Source: PLOS ONE / Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada

Featured image credit: PLOS One CC BY-SA 4.0

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 15:18 geschreven door peter  

The ghostly galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 is exceedingly diffuse. See the distant galaxies behind it? The galaxy is missing most, if not all, of its dark matter. The Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys acquired this image, which is via NASA, ESA, and P. van Dokkum, Yale.

In recent decades, astronomers have believed that invisible, mysterious dark matter is the dominant aspect of any galaxy. Astronomers think that dark matter is needed to form galaxies. That’s why they are so surprised to find a galaxy with no (or very little) dark matter. The finding challenges astronomers’ ideas about how galaxies come to be. A Yale-led research team made the discovery while peering at the distant galaxy NGC 1052-DF2. These astronomers say their finding has broad implications for our understanding of the universe. A March 28, 2018 statement from Yale said:

It shows for the first time that dark matter is not always associated with traditional matter on a galactic scale …

Astronomer Pieter van Dokkum at Yale is lead author of the new study, which is published in the peer-reviewedjournal Nature. He said:

We thought that every galaxy had dark matter and that dark matter is how a galaxy begins.

To make this discovery, the team used a telescope invented by van Dokkum and built with co-author Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto. It’s called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. The galaxy had been cataloged previously, but these researchers said they noticed it looked very different in the Dragonfly images. Co-author Shany Danieli, a Yale graduate student, commented:

It looked like a diffuse blob sprinkled with very compact star clusters. I love working with the Dragonfly telescope, as it shows us faint structures that no one has even seen before.

The researchers then used the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to measure the motions of 10 very dense groupings of stars called globular clusters, orbiting this galaxy’s center. They found that the clusters were moving at relatively low speeds — less than 23,000 miles (37,000 km) per hour. Stars in galaxies containing dark matter move at least three times faster. Van Dokkum explained that, using the new motion measurements, the researchers were able to calculate NGC 1052-DF2’s mass. That’s when they realized that this galaxy was very, very different from other galaxies. Van Dokkum said:

If there is any dark matter at all, it’s very little. The stars in the galaxy can account for all the mass, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter.

I spent an hour just staring at the Hubble image. It’s so rare, particularly these days after so many years of Hubble, that you get an image of something and say, “I’ve never seen that before.” This thing is astonishing, a gigantic blob that you can look through. It’s so sparse that you see all of the galaxies behind it. It is literally a see-through galaxy.

Bottom line: The galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 appears to have no dark matter. It confounds astronomers’ theories of the universe, which says galaxies need dark matter to form.

Source: A galaxy lacking dark matter

Via Yale

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

29-03-2018 om 15:02 geschreven door peter  

Oncontroleerbaar Chinees ruimtestation valt zondag op Aarde -  HLN.be

China: “Mensen moeten zich helemaal geen zorgen maken”

Bron: Belga

Tot voorheen luidde het in Peking dat de terugkeer tussen 30 maart en 4 april zou plaatsvinden, terwijl het Europese Ruimtevaatbureau ESA het terugkeervenster naar 2 april vernauwde. Spaceweather.com zegt nu dat het zondag omstreeks 09.15 uur Belgische tijd zou gebeuren, met een onzekerheid van twintig uur. De terugkeer zal in een gebied tussen 43 graden noorderbreedte en 43 graden zuiderbreedte gebeuren. 

Lees ook

China is controle kwijt over ruimtestation dat binnenkort op Aarde terugvalt, maar er is geen reden tot paniek

Geciteerd door het officiële persburau Xinhua zegt het Chinese Engineeringbureau voor de Bemande Ruimtevaart (CMSEO) dat het tien meter lange ruimteschip wellicht helemaal zal opbranden in de atmosfeer. “Mensen moeten zich helemaal geen zorgen maken”, luidt het. “Het wordt geen vurige crash, maar meer iets als een meteorenstorm”. Tijdens zo een storm vallen 1.000 tot 20.0000 meteoren per uur uit de kosmos, maar de kans dat een meteoriet van meer dan 200 gram iemand raakt is 1 op 700 miljoen, zegt het CMSEO.

Drie fasen

Het legt uit dat zo een terugval gewoonlijk in drie fasen gebeurt. In de eerste fase zorgt de atmosferische wrijving ervoor dat zonnepanelen, antennes en andere externe delen op een hoogte van zowat 100 km worden afgerukt. Tijdens de verdere afdaling brandt tengevolge van toenemende hitte en wrijving de hoofdstructuur van het ruimteschip op of explodeert ze. De desintegratie gebeurt op zowat 80 km hoogte.

De fragmenten blijven branden tot ze niet meer bestaan. Enkel een heel kleine hoeveelheid schroot bereikt het aardoppervlak, tengevolge van de geringe massa aan een zeer lage snelheid.

Overblijvende brokstukken zullen heel waarschijnlijk in plaats van dichtbevolkte gebieden te raken in zee storten, want zeeën vormen zeventig procent van het aardoppervlak. Sinds de jaren zestig is meer dan 15.000 ton ruimteschroot teruggevallen. Nooit is iemand geraakt, zegt het CMSEO.

Extreem toxisch

De Facebookgroep ESA Fans Group roept niettemin mensen, die een uit de lucht gevallen verkoold object vinden, op dit niet aan te raken. De Tiangong-1 heeft nog steeds extreem toxische en bijtende brandstof aan boord. De vinders dienen de bevoegde autoriteiten zoals politie of brandweer op de hooge te brengen. Op 29 september 2011 lanceerde Peking zijn eerste ruimtestation, de Tiangong-1 (Hemels Paleis). Het is sinds 2013 niet meer operationeel en enkele jaren later verloor Peking de controle over het ruimteschip.

{https://www.hln.be/ }

29-03-2018 om 14:41 geschreven door peter  

Wetenschappers ontdekken “onmogelijk” sterrenstelsel dat alle huidige theorieën rond donkere materie in twijfel trekt -  HLN.be

Bron: Belga, Nature, Volkskrant

Toegegeven, over donkere materie is nog niet veel bekend: de deeltjes zijn onzichtbaar en niemand weet exact waar ze vandaan komen. Waar wetenschappers het tot nu toe wél over eens zijn, is dat het heelal bestaat uit vijf keer meer donkere materie dan gewone materie, zoals bijvoorbeeld van sterren, planeten en gassen. Daarnaast werd gedacht dat sterrenstelsels niet konden ontstaan zonder donkere materie. De ontdekking van een nieuw sterrenstelsel gaat lijnrecht in tegen die theorieën. Het stelsel, NGC 1052-DF2 of kortweg DF2, bevat namelijk zo goed als géén donkere materie. 

Het stelsel ligt op zo’n 65 miljoen lichtjaren van de aarde, en is ongeveer zo groot als onze Melkweg, maar heeft circa 200 keer minder sterren. Belangrijker: het bevat ongeveer 400 keer minder donkere materie dan verwacht. De ontdekking “stelt alle courante theorieën omtrent de vorming van sterrenstelsels op de proef”, schrijft Pieter van Dokkum, de Nederlandse astronoom verantwoordelijk voor de ontdekking. 

Traag draaien

De reden waarom DF-2 wordt geacht zo goed als geen donkere materie te bevatten, is omdat het stelsel trager draait dan het volgens de huidige theorieën zou moeten. Tot nu toe werd aangenomen dat donkere materie fungeert als de “lijm” die sterrenstelsels samenhoudt. Meeste zichtbare sterrenstelsels draaien te snel voor hun zichtbare massa - de sterren en gaswolken in het stelsel - waardoor werd gedacht dat een onzichtbare massa voor meer zwaartekracht zorgde: donkere materie. DF-2 draait echter op een heel normale snelheid voor zijn zichtbare massa. Wetenschappers concluderen daarom dat het stelsel bijna geen donkere materie herbergt.

Waarom het DF-2 ontbreekt aan donkere materie, blijft voorlopig een vraagteken. Voor nu zijn wetenschappers op zoek naar gelijkaardige stelsels om een mogelijke verklaring te vinden.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

29-03-2018 om 14:25 geschreven door peter  

Born just a couple of years before the 20th century began, Truman Bethurum was a man who had problems keeping a regular job. He was also someone who was hardly a success when it came to the matter of marriage. He was married and divorced twice and spent his old age with his third wife. Bethurum also happened to be one of the more well-known of the so-called “Contactees” of the 1950s. Bethurum claimed that while working as a maintenance mechanic on a new stretch of Nevada highway in the early 1950s, he met an über-babe from the stars named Aura Rhanes. She was the captain of the star-ship which descended before Bethurum on Mormon Mesa, in Nevada’s Moapa Valley. The home-planet of the ETs was Clarion, about which Bethurum learned a great deal. And Bethurum didn’t just meet with his space-chick once, but on more than a dozen occasions.

Bethurum’s entertaining experiences increased, as did his relationship with the flirty Captain Rhanes. For a significant period of time, Bethurum and Rhanes had clandestine meetings, usually late at night. They generally occurred in isolated desert locations in Nevada, where, after Rhanes’ huge ship landed, the pair had long and deep conversations about the state of the Earth, the Soviet threat, and the captain’s home world – to which she promised to take Bethurum, one day. While Bethurum did not explicitly say so, there are a few nuggets of data in Bethurum’s collective work that suggest on a couple of occasions the pair might have had just about the closest and most intimate encounters of all. It’s hardly surprising, then, that many UFO researchers outright dismiss Bethurum’s story as a hoax, or as a fantasy born out of Bethurum’s unhappiness with his private life.

I don’t think that Bethurum had real encounters with a genuine, hot, space captain from some faraway world. But, I don’t think it was just a case of Bethurum fantasizing or spinning a significant number of yarns to entertain the UFO enthusiasts of the 1950s. Remember that when Bethurum got that new work contract in Nevada, and he began talking about encounters with aliens (and one alien in particular…), his second marriage was already on the rocks. Clearly, he was looking for something (or, more correctly, someone) new.

It should be noted that a number of Bethurum’s encounters with the curvy captain occurred late at night and while he was out in the desert and just after taking a snooze. This latter point of Bethurum dozing off before Aura appeared is important, because his own words strongly suggest that he was in a hypnagogic state when he encountered the woman-who-probably-never-was. Psychonautwiki note of hypnagogia that it “…is the experience of transitioning from wakefulness to sleep. During this state, one usually experiences visual, auditory or tactile hallucinations, or sleep paralysis…Exceptionally, longer-lasting auditory hallucinations can also be heard, such as music. Some people report hearing very loud noises, like crashes, gunshots or explosions…”

Bethurum’s own words show that just before he woke up, and right before Captain Rhanes put in her appearances, he would often hear words spoken in a kind of “mumbling” fashion. Sometimes he could understand the words, but on other occasions he was unable to figure out what the voices were saying. This issue of strange mumbling is a classic aspect of hypnagogia. It’s worth noting too that Bethurum’s job in Nevada involved shift-work. Sometimes, he worked from the late afternoon/early evening and through to the early hours of the morning (when the Nevada heat was more tolerable than during the height of the day). Disturbed sleep (which Bethurum must have had to at least a certain degree) can make hypnagogia worse. Or, from Bethurum’s perspective, much better! On this matter of disturbed sleep, Mental Health Daily state: “Those that work night shifts or have an inconsistent sleep schedule may be more prone to hypnagogic hallucinations prior to bed.”

Although over the years I have admittedly swung back and forth on the matter of what really happened to Bethurum, I would suggest that, probably, the entire series of encounters occurred while Bethurum was in a hypnagogic state – a state in which Bethurum could have his ideal woman. With one marriage over and another one all but finished, Bethurum’s subconscious conveniently filled in the gaps and gave Bethurum exactly what he wanted. From his perspective, it was a beautiful woman from the stars. But, just like his relationships in the real world, even the one he had with super-hot Aura didn’t last. She finally bid him goodbye, climbed aboard her UFO and headed back to Clarion.

Bethurum’s story of how he almost (or may have..) nailed an extraterrestrial was told in 1954, in the pages of Aboard a Flying Saucer, which is a fine and entertaining romp filled with innuendos and suggestive snippets. But, Bethurum was not done. Other publications surfaced, such as 1957’s The Voice of the Planet Clarion; 1958’s Facing Reality (which, clearly, Bethurum never did), and The People of the Planet Clarion, which was published in 1970, one year after his death.

One of those who helped Bethurum on his 1970 book, The People of the Planet Clarion, was an artist named Columba Krebs. It’s notable that Krebs observed, and stated, that Bethurum had an overwhelming obsession with Rhanes, even years after she dumped him. He longed for her to return. She never did. But, it could be argued that such was Bethurum’s need to still have Aura in his life, he almost managed to achieve that – albeit in a very weird way.

In 1961, Bethurum married for a third time. And it all took place at the annual, California-based Giant Rock Space Convention, which was organized each year by fellow-Contactee, George Van Tassel. Bethurum’s new wife (and final wife, I should stress) was named Alvira Roberts. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence, but I find the name of wife number three to be very intriguing. Both “Aura” and “Alvira” begin with the letter “A.” Both first-names end with an “A” too. “Rhanes” and “Roberts” both begin with “R” and both end with “S.” Bethurum may have been missing Aura Rhanes to such an extent that he chose to marry someone whose name – to a degree – reminded him of the woman who he loved, but who he could never be with – because she never really lived.

Obsession, fantasy, yearning and failure, and all wrapped up in a saga filled with flying saucers and disturbed sleep patterns.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

29-03-2018 om 11:44 geschreven door peter  

Hear American Airlines Pilots Describe A UFO Over Arizona in FAA Tape, Feb 24, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Feb 24, 2018
Location of sighting: Arizona, USA
News source: 

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/american-airlines-pilot-spooked-by-ufo-over-arizona-1019615381

When not one pilot, but two pilots on two different jets both call a craft a UFO, then you sure as heck can bet they were right. Most pilots never see a UFO in their career, but a few do, and here is the original recording of their conversation with one another about what they saw. 
Scott C. Waring

News states: 

Two pilots flying on two separate planes reportedly claim to have witnessed an unidentified flying object over Southern Arizona and New Mexico. In audio shared with Inverse by the Federal Aviation Administration, pilots can be heard discussing about an "UFO" with the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center on February 24. "I don't know what it was. It wasn't an airplane but it was, the path was going in the opposite direction," the pilot of a Learjet said to air traffic control. Control then asked a nearby American Airlines plane lookout for any flying object going in opposite direction. Few minutes later the American Airlines pilot contacted the tower and said, "Something just passed over us, like a, don't know what it was, but it was at least two, three thousand feet above us." He added, "Yeah it passed right over the top of us." In a statement to KOB 4, the NBC station in Albuquerque, the FAA said, "We don't have any comment beyond what you hear. Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area. We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons."

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 11:36 geschreven door peter  

Large UFO Puzzles An Eyewitness in Ocala, Florida

Another UFO has just visited the U.S. at least according to the video of an unusual UFO in Florida this week. It seems to be made up of two round pontoon sections tied together, according to many commenters. It is something that no one has ever seen before. The UFO seems to reflect the colour of the background sky as if it partially uses a cloaking technology.

The witness described the UFO as the same size of a mid-size house. It was large enough for several people to fly. The witness further said that it was operating just at an average speed – not slow, not fast. It reportedly made a 90-degree directional turn.

Some believe that the UFO might come from their underwater base as it was spotted near the ocean. It is thought that many underwater UFOs moved over to the land to investigate the human activity.

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

29-03-2018 om 11:29 geschreven door peter  

The Enigmatic Nazca Lines—A Message To The Star People?

It was in 1927 when Airlines started operating over Peru when passengers described strange lines, figures, and shapes on the ground. Almost invisible from the ground, massive figures were etched into the desert of Nazca, almost as if they were welcoming those who observe from above.

Airplanes filled with tourists from all over the world quickly conquered the Nazca skies, and over 100 different designs were discovered in the region. These strange geoglyphs depict animals, interesting geometrical designs, and even humanoid figures.

Nazca lines, courtesy Simon E. Davies.

However, what is perhaps one of the most exciting things about Nazca is that these drawings are scattered over two hundred square miles.

These figures are massive, and you can only appreciate them from the sky. If you stand on the ground the drawings cannot be seen, you wouldn’t be able to make out anything, so what was the purpose of these drawings? There are over 150 geometrical shapes at Nazca, and you can only see what they are if you are flying.

The most massive figure found at Nazca is approx. 1000 feet and the longest one goes for 9 miles. Why Nazca? How were they built? To what purpose?

According to archaeologists, these mysterious drawings are believed to have been created by the Nazca people; which flourished in the region between the 1st and 8th century A.D.

The lines were formed by the careful removal of the reddish iron-oxide pebbles that make up the desert surface. Once exposed, the underlying dirt, which contains high amounts of lime, hardened and resistant to erosion.

The reason these lines survived so long is that of the weather conditions in the region, there is little rain and wind is almost nonexistent so if you go to Nazca today, and draw something on the ground it will remain there for quite some time.

The Hummingbird at Nazca.

The question we need to ask today is if the ancient Nazca people created these drawings,  to what purpose did they do it. You can truly appreciate the greatness of these figures from the sky, but at the time they created them, airplanes didn’t exist, so for who did they design this? They would have needed something or someone to guide them because these lines are precise, they are very accurate, and it’s hard to believe that the Nazca could achieve such accuracy in their drawings without having a way to observe what they were doing, they needed to be guided somehow.

You cannot just go ahead and draw a figure that is over 1000 feet large or over five miles long without making mistakes.

To draw something at Nazca isn’t the problem, you can draw anything on the ground and well… that’s about it; you remove the top layer and whatever you decide to draw will stay there, the question is how did they make these huge designs so accurately.

Could have extraterrestrials been the reason for the Nazca lines? The answer is YES because in that period in mankind’s history the only ones that could have had the ability to fly were extraterrestrial beings.

Some of the parts of Nazca have amazing designs highly accurate triangles that are a mystery. Some of the triangles look like they were made by something that pressed the ground down at least 30 inches with incredible force, now could the ancient Nazca have done this? With their feet? How would you press down a six-mile “perfect” triangle into the desert?

What is the purpose of these lines? Could they have been used as “navigational” markers for visitors from outer space? Where they created by the natives to commemorate the gods that visited them thousands of years ago?

Mysterious geometric patterns adorn the landscape.

According to legend, the mysterious Incan creator god Viracocha commissioned the Nazca Lines and glyphs in the past.

Some myths maintain that the Nazca lines are said to be created by Viracocha himself.

Viracocha was the great teacher God of the Andes, similar to Quetzalcoatl or Kukulkan.

Viracocha was one of the most important deities in the Inca pantheon and was seen as the creator of all things, or the substance from which all things are created, and intimately associated with the sea.

According to the myth recorded by Juan de Betanzos, Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca (or sometimes the cave of Pacaritambo) during the time of darkness to bring forth light.

Erich von Daniken’s controversial theories concerning the Nazca Lines have ignited hundreds of people to travel to Nazca and study the culture, the life, and history of the Nazca people.

There are some scholars that have found curious patterns in the numerous designs, and they infer that the Nazca may be one of the earliest known examples of applied geometry.

One of the most intriguing designs of Nazca, without a doubt,  is the one which represents a Spider.

The Spider has one leg extended way out. Curiously, if you take that geoglyph and if you were to flip and turn it, so it displays the mirror effect, what you would observe is that the Nazca spider is representing the Constellation of Orion, and the long spiders leg is representing the brightest star in the sky, Sirius which is also one of Earth’s nearest neighbors.

Weird, right?

What you have here is a depiction of a spider, which can only be seen from the sky, and that represents stars and constellations.

Whoever designed these intricate geoglyphs at Nazca had an excellent knowledge of Astronomy and geometry, and like many other ancient cultures around the world, the Nazca also knew that Orion and Sirius were important, almost as if the geoglyphs was their way of paying respect to the stars.

According to statements, experts from the University of Dresden studied the Nazca lines. They measured the magnetic field and found changes in the magnetic field under some of the geoglyphs at Nazca.

Electrical conductivity was also measured by scientists at Nazca where tests were performed at the Nazca lines, and next to them and the results showed that electric conductivity was 8000 higher on the lines than next to them.

Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru – collage (From top left: seabird, hand, pelican, condor, giant, whale, spider, monkey, dog, scorpion, hummingbird)

Eight feet beneath some of the lines there are magnetic field anomalies. There is something at Nazca that makes it unique, different from any other place on Earth but we simply do not know what it is.

What makes Nazca so special? Well, Nazca has everything. It is a mineral-rich environment. Nitrates and various things that we use in our modern propulsion are found in abundance. The Nazca were located in a nitrate-rich environment, but as far as research has shown, they did not need it.

The question might be, whether nitrate was of special importance to “otherworldly” visitors that could have visited Nazca in the past. In today’s technology, nitrate is used in a lot of interesting things; technology is perhaps number one as even today we have certain interest in nitrate because it is used in space travel.

Nazca holds infinite mysteries, but at the same time answers, the question is will we ever truly understand this gigantic display of creativity and geometry? One thing is certain, this area of Peru will continue to be an area of huge interest to archaeologists, scientists, and historians.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 01:53 geschreven door peter  

Archaeologists Find The Amazon Was Home To Ancient Civilization With A Million People

“Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” say researchers.

The distribution of the potential sites suggests an interconnected, advanced series of fortified villages spanning over 1,100 miles that flourished between 1200 and 1500 A.D.

According to recent studies, southern parts of the Amazon rainforest were covered by a vast network of ancient settlements and ceremonial centers long before the arrival of Columbus. Researchers have shown how complex societies—of around one million inhabitants—existed in the Amazon as early as 1250AD.

The National Geographic Society partially funded the new study published in the Journal Nature Communications.

Amazon Geoglyph photo. Credit: Jenny Watling

The study details parts of the Amazon rainforest thought to have been uninhabited to be home of a thriving ancient culture with more than one million inhabitants.

So far, researchers have discovered around 1,500 fortified villages in the Amazon rainforest, built far away from major rivers.

By excavating charcoal remains and pottery, archeologists have discovered an area of 1,800 kilometers in Southern Amazon that is believed to have continuously been occupied as early as 1250 AD.

This discovery contradicts earlier beliefs that ancient communities preferred to build villages near rivers and lakes.

Geoglyphs in the southern Amazon are evidence of a once-thriving population.

Image Credit: University of Exeter.

But most importantly, the new finding has helped scholars fill in a major gap in the history of the Amazon and its ancient inhabitants. Furthermore, it provides conclusive evidence that parts of the Amazon thought to have been untouched by human occupation were under heavily influenced by ancient cultures.

Many people have the image that it’s an untouched paradise,” says Jonas Gregorio de Souza, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter who collaborated on the project.

Much of the Amazon remains unexplored and is covered in dense forest, making it nearly inaccessible to archaeologists and other scholars interested in learning more about life away from the mighty river.

As noted by the National Geographic, “the distribution of the potential sites suggests an interconnected, advanced series of fortified villages spanning over 1,100 miles that flourished between 1200 and 1500 A.D.”

“We need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” said José Iriarte, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, National Geographic Explorer, and the paper’s primary author, in a press release.

Aerial photo of an archaeological site — a circular enclosure (140 m diameter) located on a hilltop.

Image Credit: José Iriarte.

“Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon. It certainly wasn’t an area populated only near the banks of large rivers, and the people who lived there did change the landscape. The area we surveyed had a population of at least tens of thousands.”

So far, archaeologists have revealed that there are around 1,300 geoglyphs and villages in a 154,000 square-mile swath of Southern Amazonia.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

29-03-2018 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

Here Are Five Of The Oldest Cities On Earth

Some of these cities existed before written history, and before mankind existed on Earth, at least according to the Bible. But before religion, and before written history, ancient cultures around the world built massive cities, extremely old cities.

And when we talk about the oldest cities on Earth, we mean the oldest continuously inhabited cities. Note that different sources have different dates for the cities.

Starting off with what many claim is to be the oldest city on the surface of the planet: Jericho.

Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”

 Joshua 6:2-5

Traces of habitation: 9000 BC.

The ruins of Jericho.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

Fortifications date to 6800 BC (or earlier), making Jericho the earliest known walled city on the surface of the planet.

Jericho is believed to have been continuously inhabited from 9,000 BC. Archaeologists have unearthed more than 20 remains of successive settlements, which are said to go back as far as 11,000 years. Jericho is mentioned in the biblical and is located on the banks of the Jordan River, at the bottom of the slope that leads to the mountainous plateau of Judah, about 8 km from the northern coast of the Dead Sea dry basin, almost 240 m below the level of the Mediterranean Sea and approximately 27 km from Jerusalem.

Some say it isn’t Jericho, but Damascus the oldest city on Earth.

This ancient city was established sometimes between 10,000 and 8,000 BC, and many authors argue Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth.

Consisting of a maze of narrow alleys, the walled city of Damascus characterized by stunning ancient doors leading into radiant courtyards and blank-faced houses.

Damascus is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed the “Jasmine City” it is the capital and the second largest city in Syria after Aleppo.

Byblos is believed to have been inhabited since 5,000 BC and is considered by many authors the third oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth. It is believed that it was founded around the year 5000 BC, and according to sources attributed to the Phoenician historian Sanjuniatón, was built by Crono, and was the first Phoenician city.

This ancient metropolis was founded by the Phoenicians, despite the fact that its name was given to it by Greeks, who imported large amounts of papyrus from it.

In fact, the English word ‘bible’ derives from Byblos.

Aleppo in Syria is another ancient city worth including in our list of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth.

Ruins of the Ancient city of Aleppo.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

According to scholars, this ancient city was inhabited from around 4,300 BC. It’s currently Syria’s most populated city with around 4.4 million inhabitants.

The ancient city was founded around 4,300 BC as Halab, and the ruins of the ancient city have not been excavated nor studied by experts.

History In Pictures@HistoryInPix

16th-c. Ottoman miniature by Matrakçi Nasuh depicting the city of Aleppo in Syria w historic citadel in center

8:08 AM - Sep 5, 2016

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During the city’s long history, Aleppo was under Hittite control until around 800 BV, after which it passed to Assyrian, Greek, and Persian hands. It was also occupied by the Romans, Byzantines and Arabs. The city of Aleppo was besieged by the Crusaders and was also invaded by the Mongols and Ottomans. In modern times, the city is a war zone, and most of its history has been lost in conflict.

The ancient city of Sidon, another wonder of the ancient world.

Considered as one of the most important ancient Phoenician cities, Sidon is located some 40 kilometers south of Beirut. According to experts, archaeological excavations have found evidence of human occupation since 4,000 BC. Before being captured by the Assyrians, this city was the capital of the Elamite Empire. It was also ruled by Cyrus the Great. It currently has a population of around 65,000 people.

Featured image credit:

Aleppo’s Citadel

https://twitter.com/historyinpix/status/772677650401943552http://en.alalam.ir/news/1864893

http://en.alalam.ir/news/1864893

Aleppo Syria depicted by the great Ottoman cartographer and artist Matrakçı Nasuh.

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29-03-2018 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

Reports: People are seeing something odd in the sky in Phoenix and in Yuma

We have been getting reports in our newsroom of something odd in the sky, as they look west. People are seeing it in Phoenix and in Yuma. We are working to get more information.

Meanwhile, if you have photos of what's going on, we'd love to see them

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FOX 10 Phoenix

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#BREAKING: We have been getting reports in our newsroom of something odd in the sky to the west. People are seeing it in Phoenix and in Yuma. We are working to get more information. Meanwhile, if you have photos of what's going on, we'd love to see them.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR: http://bit.ly/2GdcrCl

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29-03-2018 om 01:08 geschreven door peter  

PAUL GREENBERG: UFO-logists unite!You’ve nothing to lose but your delusions

By Paul Greenberg

Print Headline: UFO-logists unite!

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29-03-2018 om 00:50 geschreven door peter  

Bonney Lake crash and UFO mystery reveal hidden history

 

A diagram showing the final moments of a US Air Force C-118 that crashed near Bonney Lake on April 1, 1959. (U.S. Air Force)

LISTEN: UFO mystery in Bonney Lake

On the evening of Wednesday, April 1, 1959, an Air Force C-118 – that’s the military version of a DC-6 airliner – was on a training exercise. It was doing “touch and go” landings at McChord Air Force Base, or what’s now JBLM, taking off and landing, and then flying around the nearby countryside.

• RELATED: Secret room hidden in Seattle tunnel

At about 8:12 p.m. that night, the tower at McChord asked the pilots of the C-118 to delay their next return to the runway because several fighter planes were landing. The C-118 headed east toward Bonney Lake to fly in a holding pattern.

It was about five minutes later when something went terribly wrong. The C-118 went down.

And within a few days, some people were blaming a UFO. Some still aren’t sure what exactly happened.

The crash site

Lee Corbin is a retired military and airline pilot who for many years has been researching the story of what happened to the C-118. Last Friday, Corbin led a reporter on a hike to a wooded area not far from Highway 410, during an unusual bout of springtime snow.

The woods where Corbin walked are in Pierce County near Bonney Lake, south of Highway 410, and not far from the growing “master planned community” called Tehaleh. Corbin had parked his truck off the side of the road, near a dead end that will one day connect the east and west halves of the development, and then walked up a gentle slope and onto a woodsy plateau.

“At the time this happened, and this is where the UFO controversy comes in, is supposedly the [pilot] made a radio call saying ‘We’ve hit something or something has hit us,’” Corbin said, leading the way along an old logging or fire road leftover from when the land belonged to Weyerhaeuser.

“[And] you don’t find [mention of that] in any of the accident reports, interestingly enough, but several newspapers carried that story,” Corbin said.

That quote mentioned by Corbin – with the pilots reporting some kind of collision – was attributed to Colonel Robert E. Booth, commander of the 1705th Air Transport Group. It appeared in the Seattle Times on April 2, 1959.

What had happened, it was later reported by the Air Force, was that the pilot and co-pilot thought the tower at McChord was tracking the plane’s altitude, and the tower thought the pilot and co-pilot were tracking their own altitude.

It was dark, and there weren’t many houses or lights in that area in those days. As it turned out, the plane was flying too low to clear a place called “Spar Pole Hill” near Orting. The right wing of the C-118 struck the treetops there. The wing was badly damaged, and it caught fire, but the plane kept flying.

Six or so miles north of Spar Pole Hill, the damage from striking the trees proved to be too much.

“The right wing peels off the airplane, and about this same time the co-pilot makes a radio call saying ‘This is it,’ because they know they’re going in,” Corbin said.

The pilot was later credited with somehow steering the plane clear of the homes and businesses in and around downtown Orting.

“So the airplane loses its wing, rolls inverted, then just basically noses in right here,” Corbin said, pointing to a wooded area, dense with underbrush and 50-foot tall evergreens.

The plane crashed and exploded, and a huge fire consumed much of the wreckage and was still smoldering the next day. At the crash site on Friday, Lee Corbin easily found pieces of the wreckage – small chunks of thick and twisted aluminum, some with rivets still attached – just sitting on the forest floor.

All four men aboard the plane died in the fiery crash, including 1st Lieutenant Robert Roy Dimick, the pilot; 1st Lieutenant Thomas E. Lasater, co-pilot; and Technical Sergeant Guy J. Cunningham and Staff Sergeant Arthur T. Foote, both flight engineers.

Corbin has researched military aviation accidents around the Northwest, and he lives not too far from the site of the C-118 crash. He’d ultimately like to see some kind of monument to the crew of the C-118, maybe when the Tehaleh development reaches this, so far, relatively untouched piece of land.

Corbin has also been in touch with the developers and asked them to keep him apprised when work is set to begin in the area near where the C-118 crashed, so that he can help keep a lookout for artifacts that might turn up during any tree removal or excavation.

What actually caused the crash? Officially, the Air Force cited “operator error” and “supervisory error” in the downing of the C-118, pointing to the confusion over who was keeping track of the plane’s altitude.

But in addition to the crash that night, a series of sonic booms had been heard and felt around much of the Puget Sound, and a series of odd and seemingly inexplicable lights had been witnessed near Bonney Lake. This, combined with the news that the pilot had reported that they might’ve hit something, helped spawn theories that the crash was caused by a collision with a UFO.

These theories were collected and written about by a Seattle firefighter named Bob Gribble. Gribble was a pioneer in the amateur scientific study of UFOs – and sharing of information – going back to the 1950s. He’s in his 90s now, and reportedly suffering from dementia.

Gribble is best known in the UFO community for founding the National UFO Reporting Center and UFO hotline in Seattle in the 1970s. When Gribble stepped down from running the hotline, a UW fisheries school graduate named Peter Davenport volunteered to take over.

• RELATED: Logger long-ago found missing McChord bomber

Davenport had witnessed a UFO as a small child with his family in St. Louis back in the 1950s, and he wrote about UFOs for a local paper in New Hampshire as a teenager.

In July 1994, Davenport heard that Bob Gribble was thinking of closing down the hotline. So he called him up.

“We talked, and before I knew it, Bob said, ‘Would you like the hotline?’ He said, ‘If you’d like it, it’s yours,’” Davenport said by telephone late last week.

“I accepted the responsibility for the hotline in that conversation,” Davenport said. “There are many times when I wished I’d turned my back on the generous offer and not accepted it, because it has resulted in tens of thousands of hours of work, very interesting work in many instances, but work nevertheless.”

Davenport calls the hotline “work,” but it’s more of a volunteer project or labor of scientific love.

“Most of the expenses are met by me, out of my savings, in order to keep the process going. It’s a measure of my dedication to the field, but I’m convinced that we are being visited, frequently visited, by these objects we call UFOs,” Davenport said.

“The US government, is trying to convince people that it’s all a hoax and a fiction, but I don’t believe so,” Davenport said. “And I think it’s extremely important . . . that the American people know the truth about the UFO phenomenon.”

Peter Davenport was based in Seattle for more than 20 years and only recently moved his residence – and the hotline – to Eastern Washington. He’s heard as a guest, discussing recent UFO reports almost every week on “Coast to Coast AM,” broadcast nightly at 10pm on KIRO Radio.

As for the Bonney Lake crash, it’s not as famous as the time when Kenneth Arnold coined the term “flying saucer” near Mount Rainier in 1947 or the Maury Island Incident in the same year, but Peter Davenport had heard of it.

“I think Bob Gribble did mention this case to me once before,” Davenport said. “What triggered my memory was the fact that the plane appeared to have been pressed down vertically to earth rather than hitting, striking the earth at a slant angle.”

Gribble published an article in May 1959 in a publication called “A.P.R.O. Bulletin” – short for “Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.” Gribble’s piece detailed his investigations into the Bonney Lake crash. He described the odd sounds and lights that many witnesses had reported that evening, and what he described as the “silencing” of local officials in Orting – by the military – about what had really happened on the night of April 1, 1959.

UFO mystery years later

Nearly 60 years later, it doesn’t really help clear things up much to see that the crash investigation report prepared back then by the US Air Force still has about two pages of text redacted—even though Lee Corbin has tried for years to get the full report and has been denied multiple times.

All those details aside, it’s fascinating to hear Peter Davenport describe the big-picture, scientific and non-sensationalized national approach that Bob Gribble took to studying UFOs, from right here in Seattle.

“He set up the National UFO Reporting Center and the Aerial Phenomena Research Group, and he also formed a telephone hotline which is the hotline I run today,” Davenport said. “It’s been in continuous operation since October of 1974.” Gribble, Davenport says, also did mass mailings of information about the hotline to law enforcement agencies around the country, to make sure word got out that there was a place to call to report UFO sightings.

As it turns out, Bob Gribble was just one of several nationally influential people in this area who compiled information and studied UFOs for decades.

Dr. Marilyn Childs and her late husband Laurence Childs moved to Seattle in 1971 and were the first husband-and-wife team of UFO investigators. They were part of a local chapter of group called the Mutual UFO Network, or “MUFON” for short.

“What we did was, we kept the metaphysical part out of MUFON,” Childs said earlier this week. “There’s a lot of us who do believe in this stuff, but we want to keep it strictly scientific . . . because if it’s going to [be taken seriously], we’re going to have to do that.”

“So we concentrated on mainly education and scientific research, and we trained our people,” many of whom were engineers from Boeing and Fluke, Childs said.

The various groups also got along with each other, and the members of different organizations attended each other’s meetings and were supportive of their groups’ respective activities.

Marilyn Childs says this was unusual compared to what she heard about or saw in other parts of the country.

“I haven’t ever heard of anybody working together like we all did,” Childs said. “But we just loved each other and nobody was on a big ego trip, and it just worked out perfectly.”

The earlier era described by Childs sounds downright idyllic, and it also seems to have changed somewhat in recent years.

Meanwhile, Peter Davenport is not sure about who’s going to take over the hotline when he retires. He’s also not sure about what will happen to the decades of UFO reports that he and Bob collected. Aside from their value to UFO researchers, these records likely say much about broad aspects of American culture and the human psyche.

“I’ve approached the University of Washington to inquire whether they’d like to have my records, and they expressed disinterest,” Davenport said. “The library said, ‘Because we don’t have courses in the subject, we’re not interested in having the archives.’ Which makes sense, I guess. I might just burn it. There’s very little good that the archives would do if people are not going to pay attention . . . I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t have a solution to that problem.”

Davenport may also write a book about his experiences, but he says it likely won’t be strictly about UFOs.

“It will be about the peculiar facets of human psychology that I’ve been witness to as a UFO investigator,” Davenport said. “People do and say and believe strange things, some of which are true, most of which, in my opinion, are probably not true.”

“But it’s hard to know for sure.”

Have you seen or experienced a UFO? Peter Davenport wants to hear about it! Reach him via the National UFO Reporting Center.

29-03-2018 om 00:30 geschreven door peter