Tabby’s Star Mystery: ‘Alien Megastructure’ Star Dims Again

Just when we thought the mystery behind Tabby’s star was finally solved, the ‘alien megastructure star’ has given experts a run for their money.

A team of astrophysicists studying the star called KIC 8462852, popularly known as Tabby’s star, has reported that the star recently dimmed again, and did so quite dramatically. As noted by experts, the star’s brightness dropped abruptly, recording the biggest change in KIC 8462852 since 2013.

Just a few days later, the light returned to normal.

The light curve recorded for Tabby’s Star.

Credit: Where’s the Flux?

This star, better known as “the Tabby star” in honor of its discoverer Tabetha Boyajian, faded at least 5% last month, reported this week Boyajian, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University (USA), who has been studying the star KIC 8462852 for years now.

As noted by Universe Today, on March 19^th, Tabetha and her team started reporting how the brightness of Tabby’s star started fading again.

Using data obtained by the Las Cumbras Observatory‘s Teide, McDonald and Haleakala Observatories (in Spain, Texas, and Hawaii, respectively), Tabetha and her colleagues began posting regular updates on its light curve. As they wrote on their blog at the time:

“On Friday (2018 March 16) we noted the last data taken were significantly down compared to normal. Due to poor weather conditions at all 3 sites, we weren’t able to observe the star again until last night…  This is the deepest dip we have observed since the Kepler Mission in 2013!  WOW!!”

Six days later, astronomers provided an update saying how the star was returning rapidly to its normal brightness.

They wrote: “The profile of the new dip having a slow decline with a more rapid increase is again reminiscent of that of a backward-comet.”

Confirmations of the star returning rapidly to normality were obtained on March 23^rd, after observations by the Catalonia Institute for Space Studies‘ (IEEC) Montsec Astronomical Observatory.

Then, on March 26^th, an update indicated how the star’s flux had dropped by a total of 5%, a discovery later confirmed by John Hall – an astronomer with the American Association of Variable Star Observers.

As noted by experts, this constituted the greatest dip since the 22% reported in 2015.

Its mysterious dimming patterns are considered atypical since it is a star that slightly exceeds the size of the Sun and should have a more or less constant brightness.

In Kepler’s observations of 2011, it decreased by up to 22%.

Throughout 2017 there were also important changes in its attenuation.

Among the theories about this strange dimming pattern, one suggests the existence of an alien megastructure orbiting the star.

However, a recent investigation led by Tabetha points out that the luminosity changes in KIC 8462852, which is more than 1,000 light years from Earth, would be due to dust particles blocking some wavelengths of light, and not as a result of blocking a giant object.

However, not everyone is convinced by the ‘dust’ explanations, and UFO hunters will certainly see the new dimming pattern as a hope that a mighty alien structure may still exist orbiting Tabby’s star.

Source: Where’s The Flux

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02-04-2018 om 17:29 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Warn—Our Universe Could Be Destroyed Abruptly

According to a new study, the universe we reside in could be abruptly destroyed in a cataclysmic collision with a bubble of ‘negative energy’ say, Harvard scientists, warning that this process may have even already begun without us even noticing.

Scientists explain how a fundamental particle that gives mass to all mater held within the universe could one day cause its destruction.

Astrophysicists warn that our universe may be abruptly destroyed, as it started in a bubble of negative energy, thought to have been created by the Higgins Boson, aka the God Particle. The famous Higgs boson particle, discovered in 2012 after more than fifty years of scientific persecution, has the power to end the existence of the Universe in which we live.

Not only that, but the process could have already started without us even noticing it.

In fact, there is a possibility that this particle has collapsed on itself in a far corner of the cosmos, producing an expanding vacuum energy bubble that would end up swallowing us all.

This authentic cosmic apocalypse is described in a recently published article in Physical Review.

The end of space and time is not a concept alien to Physics.

The observable universe.

The Standard Model, in effect, the theory that describes all known forces and particles, predicts that, just as the Universe had a beginning, it will also have an ending.

As the dark energy continues to accelerate the expansion of the Universe, the matter in it will become increasingly dispersed and move further and further away, until the last star is extinguished and the entire cosmos is nothing more than an unfathomable, cold and black abyss bigger and scarier than ever, where nothing shines anymore.

The most accurate calculated estimate for the cosmic doomsday, based on the logical development of the four fundamental interactions of Nature, tells us that the end of the Universe will occur in around 10×139 years.

The new model of the “killer Higgs” developed by a team of researchers at Harvard University is much more unpredictable and dramatic.

In it, the Universe would end with a bang, and it would do so in a much shorter period of time.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI), via http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0805c/.

“We wanted to correct all previous approaches and obtain a date as accurate as possible,” says Anders Andreassen, Harvard University and lead author of the study.

To achieve this, he and his colleagues used everything we know about the masses and interactions between particles, including the mass of the Higgs boson, the carrier of the force that confers its mass to all other particles, and which turned out to be 125 gigaelectronvolts.

And it is here, say researchers, in the mass of the Higgs boson, where the problem resides in.

The reason is that the mass recorded for the boson might not be the lowest possible for that particle, but simply a temporary value, which remains stable at present but could change one day.

The most careful calculations, in effect, suggest that our Universe could actually be a “false vacuum”, very different from the “true vacuum” that we would have in the lowest possible energy configuration.

To understand this concept, you can think of the Higgs as a ball that is trapped in the bottom of a shallow valley that represents its mass.

But on the other side of the hill, there is another much deeper valley that corresponds to a mass with less potential.

As the Higgs can not roll up the hill, it is “stuck” in its current configuration.

The image covers about 1/20th of the sky, a slice of the Universe 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high, and 500 million light-years thick. Color indicates the distance from Earth, ranging from yellow on the near side of the slice to purple on the far side. 

Image credit: Daniel Eisenstein and the SDSS-III collaboration.

However, all subatomic particles, the Higgs boson among them, have the possibility of behaving like waves, and therefore do not have well-defined positions.

And there is always the possibility that the Higgs creates a “tunnel” through the hill and reaches the lower valley, which would result in a mass lower than what scientists have observed.

It would be precisely here where things would start to get really ugly, say experts.

In fact, due to the fact that the Higgs field provides mass to all other particles, a change in their properties would wreak havoc on the “building blocks” of our universe.

Chemistry, and therefore life, depends on these values, so that our current way of being would be completely nullified by this reorganization.

Since the universe we can observe from Earth is only a small portion of the total, the likelihood of extremely improbable things happening in places we cannot see increases considerably. And in such a large and hidden Universe, there exists the possibility of this “Higgs collapse” having happened in a place beyond our visibility, producing a bubble of negative energy that expands rapidly and in whose interior is a universe of crazed properties, according to our point of view.

This bubble can travel across the universe.

And one day, that bubble could reach us and also swallow our region of the cosmos.

According to Einstein’s theory of Relativity, information can not move faster than light, so it would be impossible for us to realize its arrival.

In the words of Andreassen “we would not even see it coming”.

As the physicist writes in his article, “it is very worrying to imagine this bubble, with its wall of negative energy, throwing itself at us at the speed of light”. For the researcher, instead of a slow stretch towards nothingness, our Universe could be on its way to an abrupt collision with one of these destructive bubbles.

The full findings were published in the journal Physical Review D.

Reference: New Scientist

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.

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02-04-2018 om 16:45 geschreven door peter  

Chinese Space Station RE-ENTRY confirmed - "Heavenly Palace" makes big splash!

China Space Station disintegrates when entering the Pacific Ocean as we can see in these incredible images that look like fireworks.

See Article https://world.onlinegratis.tv/astrono...

TIANGONG-1 FIRST REENTRY VIDEO | china chinese Space Station falling April 1st || LIVE 2018 || Tiang

It's almost crash time for China's falling space station Tiangong-1. As school bus-sized space station began what should be its last day in orbit today (April 1), experts weighed in on the possibilities of space debris – and whether this situation should have happened in the first place

China says space station burns up over South Pacific

Farewell, Tiangong-1: Chinese Space Station Meets Fiery Doom Over South PacifiC

An artist's concept of China's Tiangong-1 space station prototype burning up in Earth's atmosphere during its fiery fall back to Earth overnight on April 1-2, 2018.Tiangong-1 is no more.China's prototype space station, whose name translates as "Heavenly Palace 1," met a fiery end in Earth's atmosphere today (April 1), breaking apart and burning up in the skies over the southern Pacific Ocean at about 8:16 p.m.EDT (0016 April 2 GMT), according to the U.S.Strategic Command's Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC)."The JFSCC used the Space Surveillance Network sensors and their orbital analysis system to confirm Tiangong-1's re-entry," U.S.Air Force officials wrote in a statement.[Tiangong-1: China's Falling Space Station in Pictures] Some pieces of the school-bus-size Tiangong-1 almost certainly survived the fall, but the odds that they caused any damage or injury are extremely small: You had a less than 1-in-1-trillion chance of getting hit by a flaming chunk of the heavenly palace, according to experts with the Aerospace Corporation.By the way, if you do manage to find such a chunk of Tiangong-1, don't pick it up or breathe in any fumes emanating from it.The space junk may be contaminated with hydrazine, a toxic rocket fuel, experts have said.Tiangong-1 was about 34 feet long by 11 feet wide (10.4by 3.4meters), and it weighed more than 9 tons (8 metric tons).

The space lab consisted of two main parts: an "experimental module" that housed visiting astronauts and a "resource module" that accommodated Tiangong-1's solar-energy and propulsion systems.The craft launched without anyone aboard on Sept.29, 2011, to an orbit about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth.That's slightly lower than the orbit of the much larger International Space Station, whose average altitude is 250 miles (400 km).Tiangong-1's main mission was to help China master the technologies required to assemble and operate a bona-fide space station in Earth orbit, a goal the nation aims to achieve by the early 2020s, the country has said.On Nov.2, 2011, the robotic Shenzhou-8 spacecraft visited Tiangong-1, executing China's first-ever orbital docking.Another big milestone came in June 2012, when a crew of three spaceflyers linked their Shenzhou-9 vehicle to the heavenly palace and came aboard for a spell.Three more "taikonauts," or Chinese astronauts, visited in June 2013, traveling on the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft.Each of these crewed missions lasted about two weeks.Tiangong-1's design lifetime was just two years, and the space lab's work was mostly done after Shenzhou-10 departed.The empty space lab continued to do some Earth-observation work, however, and researchers and engineers kept in touch with it until March 2016, when data transmission between Tiangong-1 and its handlers stopped, for reasons that China never explicitly specified.At that point, an uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry was apparently inevitable.This is the view of outside researchers.But Chinese space official

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02-04-2018 om 14:43 geschreven door peter  

NASA-Funded Study Says There Could Be Alien Life On Venus

As noted by a recent report, extraterrestrial could inhabit our solar system, and they could be living within the acid clouds of Venus, notes a NASA-funded study, recently published in the Journal Astrobiology.

The study backed by NASA indicates that Aliens (although not fully developed aliens, but bacteria) could call the hazardous clouds on Venus their home.

Scientists believe the sulfur dioxide-rich upper atmosphere of Venus may be where tiny Venusian aliens are hiding.

The surface of Venus.

Image Credit: NASA

Exerpts came to this conlcusion after using space probes to detect dark areas around the rust-colored body, which resemble the light-absorbing properties of bacteria here on Earth.

As noted by experts, these mysterious dark spots on Venus could be blooms of alien bacterial, similar to those found on Earth in lakes and ponds.

Because the clouds of Venus are composed of sulfuric acid, they reflect around 75 percent of the sunlight that hits them, causing them to appear nearly entirely opaque.

Venus has been dubbed as Earth’s Evil twin by a number of astrophysics and astronomers because of the hazardous, and inhospitable conditions reigning on its surface, where it rains Acid, and the temperature is around 462 degrees Celsius.

PLANET-C.

The research, suggesting tiny Venusian alien may inhabit the clouds of Venus, was recently published in the Journal Astrobiology, and it infers how alien microbes may survive by being blown around by extreme winds in the cooler cloud tops of Venus.

“On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid,” says Rakesh Mogul, a professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a co-author on the new paper.

The researcher explains that the cloudy, highly reflective and acidic atmosphere of Venus is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and water droplets containing sulfuric acid.

However, this isn’t the first time someone has suggested there may be life on Venus.

In fact, the habitability of Venus’ clouds was first raised in 1967 by noted biophysicist Harold Morowitz and famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Following this theory, the idea that Venus’ clouds may bear alien life was expanded by planetary scientists David Grinspoon, Mark Bullock and their colleagues.

“Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30–40 percent in the ultraviolet and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be scale dependent,” says Limaye.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

Source: University Of Wisconsin-Madison

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

02-04-2018 om 14:22 geschreven door peter  

Metallic UFO Near Space Station On Live Camera! April 2, 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

 

Date of sighting: April 2, 2018

Location of sighting: Space Station, ISS

NASA Video: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/113923005

 

I was recording the glitch, which is a 10-30 second cycle that varies in time, but was made by NASA to deliberately cause frustration to the public so the viewers would give up watching the space station. However, as I was recording, I was surprised to see a UFO come from behind the station. I forgot to turn on my mic, so I had to remake the video again. This looks like a round disk. The disk flips at one point in the video, which was cool to see. This does look like an alien craft to me. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Also, please click here to check out my video I made today about HTMLcoin.  If you bought the coin two weeks ago at 5sat, then you  made a 20% profit this week. SCW

 

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-04-2018 om 13:59 geschreven door peter  

Multiple UFOs seen from the ISS live stream March 31st 2018

The stills in this video were taken from a brief 30 minute recording from the ISS live stream. The objects show for a split second, appearing as a small flash of light but when zoomed in more details become visible.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

02-04-2018 om 00:16 geschreven door peter  

Countdown: Burning space station to hit Earth in ‘next 12 hours’

A Chinese space station that is spiraling out of control is predicted to hit Earth in only half a day. It is also understood that Scientists tracking the space station are unsure of the landing spot once it hits Earth. This is in contradiction to previous analysis that claimed to understand of the landing spot of the out of control space station.

Burning Space Station Predicted to Hit Earth in Twelve Hours

The space station is known as Tiangong-1 and was put into orbit in 2011. Tiangong-1 was the first space station to be put into space by the Chinese. Tiangong-1 was originally put into space as a guide mission in preparation for Tiangong-2, which was to be a laboratory space for the Chinese. Problems with Tiangong-1 had delayed those plans since 2016 when Tiangong-1 started losing altitude due to malfunctions within the space station in 2016.

View image on Twitter

Tony Rice

✔@rtphokie

The deorbit of #Tiangong1 is expected to look something like this. First, the solar panels will rip off, then the body will break apart. Most will burn up in the atmosphere but some debris could make it to the ground. We'll know better about when and where tomorrow.

1:56 AM - Apr 1, 2018

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In November, European scientists believed that Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, and Greece were among countries that represented possible crash sites for Tiangong-1. This is assuming the space station does land indeed, as scientists have stated that it could burn up in the atmosphere before crashing into the Earth. However, updates on April first have confirmed less certainty concerning the site of the crash. The area of the crash is now predicted to encompass a much larger zone. Included in possible crash sites for Tiangong-1 are now the continents of Africa, Australia, South America, and the whole Indian subcontinent.

Space engineering entities for the Chinese seem certain that Tangong-1 will not cause severe damage. It is expected that the space station will disintegrate at an altitude of 80km. Aerospace Corporation has set up a tracking center for Tiangong-1. This tracking center currently reveals that Tiangong-1 has a current orbit above the South Atlantic Ocean. Authorities for the United States Air Force are making claims that a portion of Tiangong-1 will re-enter the Earth within the next twelve hours.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

02-04-2018 om 00:10 geschreven door peter  

CLOUDS OF VENUS COULD HOST EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FORMS

BY MELISSA MATTHEWS 

In the quest to answer whether we’re alone, scientists have found that the clouds of venus may help solve the mystery of whether life outside of Earth exists.

Published March 30 in the journal Astrobiology, a new paper says the clouds of Venus may host extraterrestrial microbial life. As the authors state in the paper, whether Venus’ clouds could support life has been discussed for decades, spurred by research indicating that its chemical and physical properties, moderate temperatures and pressure could make it possible for life to exist.

The team was intrigued by dark patches found on the planet's clouds that are made of sulfuric acid and light-absorbing particles similar to those found on Earth. In fact, they theorized the patches could be similar to algae blooms found in our lakes, noting that particles in the patches have similar dimensions to bacteria here on Earth.

The team believes this could make Venus vital in the search for other life forms, however, the planets’ clouds would need to be sampled and tested first.

{ http://www.newsweek.com/ }

01-04-2018 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

Het Afrikaanse continent splitst zich stilaan in tweeën - HLN.be

Bron: AD.nl

Vorige week stortte in het zuidwesten van Kenia een deel van de drukke Mai Mahiu Road deels in nadat er een vulkanische breuklijn ontstond. Door de scheur zijn delen van de weg verzakt en ontstond een groot gat dat het water opslokte. Dat leidde vervolgens tot nog meer barsten. Op sommige plaatsen is de breuk inmiddels meer dan 50 meter diep en 20 meter breed.

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The Star, Kenya

✔@TheStarKenya

Large crack in East African Rift is evidence of continent splitting in two http://ow.ly/RXUR30jfM4N 

7:38 AM - Apr 1, 2018

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Wetenschapper Lucia Perez Diaz, verbonden aan de Royal Holloway universiteit van London, ziet hierin het bewijs dat het oostelijk deel van Afrika een nieuw continent zal vormen. Kenia, Tanzania, Somalië en een deel van Ethiopië zullen uiteindelijk worden afgescheiden, schrijft The Mirror naar aanleiding van haar publicatie in het blad Conversation.

In het artikel beschrijft ze hoe dit geologisch proces zich voltrekt diep in de aarde. Afrika bestaat nu nog uit één tektonische plaat: de zogeheten Afrikaanse plaat. Alleen, die wordt in het oosten geleidelijk uit elkaar gespleten, ter hoogte van Somalië.

BBC

✔@BBC

It's still growing

1:28 PM - Mar 31, 2018

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Riftvorming 

Daardoor zullen er op termijn twee platen ontstaan: de Somalische plaat (de oostelijke plaat) én de Nubische plaat (de westelijke plaat). Het uit elkaar schuiven van (nieuwe) tektonische platen wordt ook wel ‘riftvorming’ genoemd. Doordat breuken in ondergrondse platen in tegenovergestelde hellingsrichting bewegen, ontstaat een soort van vallei tussen twee hooglandgebieden of bergketens.

Die ‘vallei’, ook wel een slenk genoemd, wordt verder uitgediept door erosie én door hitte die gevormd wordt door vulkanische activiteit die uit de kern van de aarde naar de oppervlaktekorst komt. De breuk gaat heel langzaam: jaarlijks gaat het om een verschuiving van zo’n 45 millimeter.

Geschiedenis 

Over zo’n 10 miljoen tot 50 miljoen jaar zal Oost-Afrika zich daardoor hebben afgescheiden van de rest van Afrika, zegt wetenschapper Diaz. In de geschiedenis van Afrika is zoiets overigens wel eerder gebeurd. Zo heeft Madagaskar zich zo’n 110 miljoen jaar geleden losgemaakt van Somalië door middel van een zeer brede slenk.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

01-04-2018 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

This Week's Top Space Stories

Photo Credit: The Aerospace Corporation/CORDS

Photo Credit: National Institute of Aerospace/Lunar and Planetary Institute

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA

01-04-2018 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

We May Have Uncovered the First Ever Evidence of the Multiverse

For many years, scientists have been very much baffled by a weird anomaly far away in space: a mysterious “Cold Spot” about 1.8 billion light-years across. It is cooler than its surroundings by around 0.00015 degrees Celsius (0.00027 degrees Fahrenheit), a fact astronomers discovered by measuring background radiation throughout the universe.

Previously, astronomers believed that this space could be cooler simply because it had less matter in it than most sections of space. They dubbed it a massive supervoid and estimated that it had 10,000 galaxies fewer than other comparable sections of space.

But now, in a recently published survey of galaxies, astronomers from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) say they have discovered that this supervoide could not exist. They now believe that the galaxies in the cold spot are just clustered around smaller voids that populate the cold spot like bubbles. These small voids, however, cannot explain the temperature difference observed.

To link the temperature differences to the smaller voids, the researchers say a non-standard cosmological model would be required. “But our data place powerful constraints on any attempt to do that,” explained researcher Ruari Mackenzie in an RAS press release.

While the study had a large margin of error, the simulations suggest there is only a two percent probability that the Cold Spot formed just randomly.

 “This means we can’t entirely rule out that the Spot is caused by an unlikely fluctuation explained by the standard model. But if that isn’t the answer, then there are more exotic explanations,” said researcher Tom Shanks in the press release. “Perhaps the most exciting of these is that the Cold Spot was caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe.”

If more detailed studies support the findings of this research, the Cold Spot might turn out to be the first evidence for the multiverse, though far more evidence would be needed to confirm our universe is indeed one of many.

Via Futurism

{ http://www.thespaceacademy.org/ }

01-04-2018 om 22:17 geschreven door peter  

Pilots Who Saw UFO Over Arizona Speak Out: 'It Didn't Look Anything Like an Airplane'

RAY STERN

Blenus Green, a retired B-1 pilot who now flies for American Airlines, sounded amazed and couldn't seem to help smiling as he described seeing a UFO last month over Arizona.

News coverage of the astonishing sight blew up this week, a few weeks after Phoenix New Times — following a TheDrive.com story — published an article and Federal Aviation Administration audio recordings on March 9.

On Wednesday, the first interview of the Abilene, Texas, pilot aired on his hometown TV station, KTAB/KRBC-TV, describing what he saw from his American Airlines cockpit. New Times also interviewed the vice president of Phoenix Air Group, whose Learjet pilot also saw the weird object.

RELATED STORIES

• Hear American Airlines Pilot Discuss UFO Sighting Over Arizona in FAA Tape

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• Air Traffic Controllers Who Saw UFO Muzzled by FAA

As reported previously, the Learjet pilot reported to Albuquerque Center air traffic control on the afternoon of February 24 that he saw something bright and inexplicable fly over him, which would have put the object at about 40,000 feet.

After that, as Green told "Big Country" news reporter Pheban Kassahun in her exclusive interview, Albuquerque Center "asked us if we could just be on the lookout, see if we see anything."

Kassahun reported that Green has been flying for 20 years and displayed a photo of him in an Air Force uniform. On that day, American Airlines Flight 1095 was flying from San Diego to Dallas. Somewhere over the Sonoran Desert between Picacho and Mammoth, Green saw what the Learjet pilot had seen.

"So sure enough, I was looking out the windscreen to see if it was there, and yeah, I did. I saw it!" Green said in the interview. "It was very bright, but it wasn't so bright you couldn't look at it. You almost really wanted to look at it, to try to figure out what it was. It didn't look anything like an airplane."

In the FAA tape, an Albuquerque Center official asks Green to describe the object. He said it was flying several thousand feet above his Airbus and going "in the opposite direction."

Someone then asked the pilot if it was a "Google balloon."

EXPAND

Blenus Green, a pilot for American Airlines, describes the weird and bright object he saw over Arizona on February 24 in an interview with Texas TV news reporter Pheban Kassahun.

BigCountryHomePage.com

"Doubtful," Green replied on the FAA tape.

"What was weird about it, (is) normally if you have an object, you know, and if the sun's shining this way, the reflection would be on this side," he told Kassahun, using his hands to help him describe the object. "But this was bright all the way around. It was so bright, you couldn't make it out, what shape it was."

Earlier this week, American Airlines spokeswoman Katie Cody said she could add no further details about the incident.

However, Bob Tracey, vice president of Phoenix Air Group, Inc., which is based in Atlanta, said on Thursday that after receiving a "full debriefing" from the pilot of the Learjet, he's left wondering, "what the hell was it?"

Phoenix Air uses Learjets for a variety of contract work, including as air ambulances for the military's Air Mobility Command. That's what the Learjet pilot and his co-pilot were doing on February 24. Tracey couldn't say if a patient was on board at the time, but assumed it had no passengers because it was on its way back to Georgia from California.

The pilot realizes the public is interested in his story, but he and the company are worried he'll be overwhelmed by the publicity.

"I'm not naming him," Tracey said. "He's going to get buried with phone calls."

The pilot is a 15-year veteran with Phoenix Air, and is a "seasoned captain" with more than 14,000 hours of flying time.

At about the same time that afternoon, the pilot and his co-pilot noticed something flying outside and above them.

"What's that — what the hell is that?" the pilot remembered both of them saying.

Like Green, they mostly noticed the intense bright light of the object. The Learjet pilot described it as "like you woke up in the morning and stared at a bright light," Tracey said.

The brightness didn't fill the whole windshield, though — it was definitely a spot of light, and seemed to come from a source that was flying west at high speed, toward the eastbound Learjet but high above it.

The pilots put their fingers on the window to estimate how high in the sky it was. They concluded it might have been flying at nearly 50,000 feet, or more than 10,000 feet above them.

Then it raced past them. The pilot, knowing that another airplane likely would be coming near the area soon, put in his call to Albuquerque Center to alert air traffic controllers.

The pilot was concerned that "someone's going to whack into this thing."

When the pilot got back from the trip, he gave a casual briefing of the incident to the company's flight operations.

"He didn't think much of it," Tracey said. The pilot has seen many balloons in sky, he said. Sometimes they're sent up by amateurs with expendable GoPros. Like a balloon, it wasn't tracked by radar, and the Learjet's Traffic Collision Avoidance System didn't sound any alarms.

Yet in his full debriefing, he described something that didn't sound at all like a balloon, Tracey acknowledged.

"He said that it passed him at maybe a similar speed that an airliner would," Tracey said. That would be roughly 500 mph each, for a combined speed of "well over Mach 1," or the speed of sound.

Balloons, of course, may travel at high speeds on a vertical line, but not very fast horizontally.

Tracey summed up the incident as a "mystery."

"Everybody's got a theory on it," he said.

{ http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/ }

01-04-2018 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

Chinese space station Tiangong-1 hurtling toward Earth for reentry

By Christopher Carbone | Fox News

China’s out-of-control, defunct space station is hurtling toward Earth and currently expected to enter the atmosphere sometime in the next 24 hours.

The 8.5-ton space lab, known as Tiangong-1, is likely to burn up upon re-entry, which is expected to happen about 37 miles above ground, so it only poses a small risk to people and property.

However, the exact timing of when the craft, which is about the size of a school bus, will fall back to Earth is uncertain due to how quiet the sun has been. The European Space Agency says it will happen between today and early Monday, while the Chinese Space Agency extends the potential landfall window to Wednesday.

A rogue Chinese space station that weighs 8.5 tons is hurtling toward Earth.  

(European Space Agency)

According to Space.com, if the sun is active, its energy pushes more strongly against Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere then balloons and becomes denser at higher altitudes, and the density impacts the drag against Tiangong-1’s orbital speed.

Most of the U.S. appeared to be outside the likely landfall area, but a senior member of Aerospace Corp. told Space.com that all predictions are subject to change based on new information.

In this June 13, 2013, file image released by China's Xinhua News Agency, the Shenzhou-10 manned spacecraft is seen while conducting docking with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space module.  

(AP)

Although the Chinese station has received intense media coverage, each year around 1,000 large objects such as lost satellites and rocket stages fall back to Earth. These numbers are projected to increase over the coming years as more and more satellites are placed into orbit.

Experts say there is also an economic risk that Tiangong-1 could present to air traffic as it hurtles toward Earth.

This undated file photo shows researchers installing China's first space station module Tiangong-1 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province prior to its launch on Sept. 29, 2011.  (AP)

“The problem here is less the probability for an aircraft to be directly hit by space debris (which is low, but not zero), but the difficulty to predict precisely the area of possible impacts and their exact time of occurrence, because of uncertainties resulting from variations of solar activity,” Dieter Isakeit, chair of the information and communication committee for the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, told Fox News in a statement.

Air traffic controllers could take a more conservative approach, Isakeit says, and “totally close” large areas to air traffic for several hours if they don’t have more reliable data about where the station is headed.

That type of closure has happened during other events, such as volcanic eruptions.

In this June 18, 2012, file image released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese astronauts, from left, Liu Wang, Liu Yang and Jing Haipeng wave while aboard the orbiting Tiangong-1 space station.  

(Xinhua News Agency/AP)

The good news is that it’s very unlikely that anyone will be hit with debris from the rogue space station.

• CHINA'S TIANGONG-1 SPACE LAB SET TO FALL TO EARTH: WHAT TO EXPECT

“When considering the worst-case location, the probability that a specific person will be struck by Tiangong-1 debris is about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot,” the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation told the Sun. “In the history of spaceflight, no known person has ever been harmed by re-entering space debris.”

Video

• Chinese space station heading to Earth

Indeed, only one person is known to have been hit by falling space debris: American woman Lottie Williams, who was struck but not injured by a falling piece of a U.S. Delta II rocket while exercising in an Oklahoma park in 1997.

Most famously, America's 77-ton Skylab crashed through the atmosphere in 1979, spreading pieces of wreckage near the southwestern Australia city of Perth, which fined the U.S. $400 for littering.

• The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

{ http://www.foxnews.com/ }

01-04-2018 om 21:55 geschreven door peter  

WE COULD ALL BE PETS IN AN ELABORATE ALIEN ZOO, CLAIMS NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

Planet Earth could be an elaborate zoo created by a hyper-intelligent alien civilisation, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has claimed. And such aliens, he added, might even be inflicting “weird politics” on us as a form of entertainment.

Tyson, who was among the guests at the Starmus conference in Tenerife, Spain, said he remained pessimistic about humanity making contact with intelligent alien life, arguing our relative lack of intelligence could either be bad news for discovery or allow us to exist in blissful ignorance.

“I fear the day we come upon a species such as that. Maybe I don’t fear it, I just hope that all they would do for us is create a zoo where we are happy. And maybe that is what they call Earth.”

Tyson was in part responding to statements made by Stephen Hawking in July last year. At the time Hawking said the discovery of alien life could destroy humanity but we should keep searching for it anyway.

But Tyson said the likelihood of that happening were low. “A sufficiently intelligent civilisation would have positively no interest in us at all,” he said. “In the same way as when you’re walking down a street and there’s a worm there.”. And even if you wanted to kill all the worms, he continued, you’d soon get bored and do something else.

“Maybe our biggest protection against being killed by alien civilisations is their conclusion there’s no intelligent civilisation on Earth,” Tyson continued. “Suppose in fact intelligence has come to the galaxy. Who are we to then decide that we are intelligent? We define our intelligence. Of course we’re intelligent because we define it.” he said.

“The microbes in our lower gut would think of humans as dark, anaerobic pockets of faecal matter in the service of their life. That’s the purpose of human life to them.”

Tyson also argued the tiny genetic difference between a human and a chimp made it likely alien intelligence, if it does exist, is already way beyond our on. “We would not be able to comprehend their simplest of thoughts any more than a chimp can understand ‘Let’s go have dinner at the buffet later I’m going to have some carbohydrates and protein because I’m on a low fat diet’. What would that sentence mean to a chimp?” he joked. To a hyper-intelligent alien race, Tyson continued, Stephen Hawking’s intelligence might be the equivalent of an alien toddler.

He also had a word of warning for those that would have humanity become an interplanetary species. “Yes, being a multi-planet species I think that looks good on paper. Put your eggs in more than one basket. If one basket gets smashed the species is preserved. In practice it is completely unrealistic. Let’s terraform Mars, turn Mars into an Earth-haven, ship four billion people there,” he said.

“Are we really going to do that?” It would be far cheaper and easier, he added, to work out how to deflect the asteroid or defeat the pandemic that could spell our early demise. “It plays well as a news headline,” he continued. “I want the solar system to be our backyard, but the motivation should not be to stop everyone dying from a cosmic event.”

Tyson isn’t the only one making bold claims about the reality of life on Earth. Earlier this month Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said there was only a “one in a billion” chance we weren’t living in a simulation. His proof? Advancements in gaming since Pong was released in 1972.

“Now, forty years later, we have photo-realistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality,” said Musk.

Source www.wired.co.uk

{ https://www.tidiochat.com/ }

01-04-2018 om 21:27 geschreven door peter  

'It's a space WAR' Alien ‘battle’ near Area 51 baffles UFO hunters

ALIEN hunters were left in a frenzy when they spotted what they believed to be a UFO ‘battle’ in the skies above a city in Nevada which is just a two hour driver from Area 51 – an alleged extraterrestrial hotspot.

01-04-2018 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

With UFO reports and sightings continuing to mount, one must wonder what reason Aliens would have to visit earth. There are plenty of theories out there, so I want to collect them all here as well as give my opinion on the subject. Read through all the theories and be sure to comment on which one you think makes the most sense. If you have something in mind not mentioned here be sure to let me know.

 

1. Simple Curiosity

The easiest to understand and most logical reason why aliens would visit earth is simple curiosity. We humans have spent countless hours out in the wild exploring our planet - observing, hunting, photographing, and cataloging its species. It’s not hard to imagine that alien visitors are doing the same. Curiosity seems to be innate to every living creature, the dog sniffing around wondering what’s in your hand, the deer scouting your back yard, etc. Perhaps these extraterrestrials are on a quest to explore the universe and catalog its inhabitants. Now there are good and bad sides to this proposition, just like some who go out in search of elephants and zebras are peaceful and simply want to carefully watch from a distance, others are hunters intent on bringing down the animal and mounting it as a trophy. The one positive we have as humans is that it seems we would be rather easy prey for a hunter, especially a race of aliens with such technological advancements as space travel. We would be equal to hunting ants, which doesn’t sound very appealing.

2. Claiming the Planet

Now there are a couple theories under the umbrella of what I will call “claiming the planet”. One is that it was their original home and they want it back. To me this one is a little far out there, but I have seen this theory online. Basically those who propose this idea tend to also believe the hollow earth theory, and that at the center of the earth lives all sorts of races. Included among them are the reptilians. In short, alien visitors are scoping us out for an upcoming battle to take back their rightful home land. 

In the 2013 Superman movie Man of Steel, Kryptonian's have run out of resources and need to flee from their planet to ensure survival. Clark Kent, one of the last of an extinguished race disguised as an unremarkable human, is forced to reveal his identity when Earth is invaded by an army of survivors who threaten to bring the planet to the brink of destruction.

Another theory is that they need a new home. In this scenario our alien visitors are searching out a new place to live because their old planet just doesn’t cut it anymore. It may be a lack of resources (see below) or they have devastated their own planet and need a new one, which ties into the hippie theory that they want to prevent us from doing the same. Others have suggested that they are fighting with an enemy species that calls earth home. 

The Hippie Theory: To save us from Ourselves. Some UFO researchers out there see aliens as benevolent creatures out to save the universe from harm. For Earth, as we race towards Nuclear Armageddon, space people hope to prevent us from reaching a catastrophic end. They seem to have a non-interventionist strategy apparently, since we have no concrete evidence of Alien visitation. This is a popular theme of movies like Arrival, and some books. To me this is nonsense. It’s the hippy spiritual outlook, from the same people who are sitting in the middle of a field chanting and trying to summon star beings. Yes, this really happens. 

3. They Need Food

If other planets are dry, barren, and desert like, or cold and icy then chances are that very few animals or plants could survive those conditions, which would make food supply scarce. Perhaps that’s why aliens are so darn skinny. Now that is a bit of a joke, but seriously - evolution would no doubt adapt alien physiology to require a smaller caloric intake, but still any living being will still require sustenance. If Aliens really are in search of food, the question becomes does earth even offer the food that aliens would want? Assuming that their biology would process the same components that we do – protein, fats, and carbohydrates - the earth has plenty to offer. It’s doubtful that we are being hunted as food, but the possibility exists. As I mentioned earlier, humans hunt animals as they catalog species, so an alien race might do the same thing.

4. Water

There are plenty of UFO sightings near and around water. This makes it easy to guess that aliens want our water… and again it looks like a lot of those planets they may come from are pretty dry. I can’t imagine a scenario where a biological entity could completely evolve beyond the need for water, so if you are short on supply and NEED water, it makes sense that you are going to look for it.  Obviously, Earth has a huge supply of it being made up of approximately 70% H2O. Remote viewer Ingo Swan, a member of the top secret Stargate Program, claimed to have witnessed a UFO near water. He described his sighting in his book Penetration:

Dawn arrived, and Swann saw a fog developing over the lake. This went on for five minutes, until the fog developed a luminous neon-blue color. Then, according to Swann, the color changed to an “angry purple” Axelrod and one of the twins each placed a hand firmly on Swann’s shoulders while “a network of purple, red, and yellow lightning bolts shot in all crazy directions through the ‘cloud.’ Swann said he would have jumped if the two had not held him down. He saw an object, almost transparent at first, but then “solidly visible over the lake.” It was triangular or diamond-shaped, growing in size.”

Swann, in terror and amazement, heard a strong wind moving past, rustling the pine trees so much that some cones and branches fell on them.  The object then began to shoot out ‘ruby red laster-like beams’ as it continued to grow even more in size while maintaining its position on the lake. Very quietly, one of the twins said, ‘Shit! They’re enveloping the area. They’re going to spot us.”

As Swann later recalled the event, some of the red laser beams from the object were ‘blasting’ pine trees, and he could hear low frequency pulsations. Axelrod whispered to Swann that the beams were probably honing in on deer or other forest creatures, as they sense biological body heat. ‘They’re sure to hone in on us,’ he told Swann. Just then, one of the twins literally lifted and dragged Swann away, but not before Swann noticed the water of the lake surging upward, ‘like a waterfall going upward, as if being sucked into the ‘machine.'” 

The four ran quickly and at great length, sustaining minor cuts and bruises. Eventually they stopped, breathing hard, and waited for more than thirty minutes, until one of the twins said all was clear.”

Now the skeptic is going to say if alien explorers have the technology to travel light years away, you would think they have an invention that can condense air into water. I mean we can do that here on planet Earth already. (For a little bit more on that kind of stuff read Magnus Marrissink’s article on Weather Control) I think it’s more likely our celestial visitors are being seen around water for another reason:

5. Toxic and Hazardous Waste Dumping

In economics, there is a term called rent seeking. It basically means to increase ones own wealth by limiting access to that which is lucrative. In college, I wrote a paper arguing that the developed world practiced a form of rent seeking by passing its problems onto the third world so that they are restrained from advancing. So an alien presence could do such a thing by waste dumping, or polluting, our planet as a way of forcing Earth to need the resources they have brought. So if this is the case, aliens may be a form of space pirates traveling the galaxy, dumping their toxic trash on foreign planets and preserving their own planet, while trading their interstellar goods for other useful items. 

6. Biological Material: DNA Collection, Science Experiments, and Cross Breeding

Humans have truly pushed the boundaries in science, and we are capable of engineering humanity itself. The Nazis first delved into eugenics, and now today we do the same under other guises. We take fetal tissue and repurpose it, extract cartilage and all sort of other nutrients from one source and infuse it into our food supply and other places. Degenerative joints are treated with stem cells …. athletes receive platelet rich plasma injections. Eggs are plucked from ovaries and stored next to sperm for future use. So why wouldn’t that material hold value to an alien species? Is it all that difficult to imagine a scenario where aliens would attempt to cross breed with a human? We have done the same with lions and tigers in creating the liger. The problem with the liger is that it's parents, the lion and tiger, though closely related are far enough apart in terms of genetics that any offspring are sterile. From PBS: 

 Lions and tigers are two different species. They look different, they have different lifestyles, they vocalize differently, and they generally live on different continents. Yet when they are brought together artificially, they can interbreed. Such hybrids are called tions and ligers. 

Do they challenge the definition of species? Not really. The key words are "interbreed successfully"; tigons and ligers generally are sterile and short-lived -- an evolutionary dead end. 

If species exist, why? And what maintains them over time? Biologists are still wrestling with these questions, which some call the "species problem" or the "species crisis." 

Biologist Ernst Mayr sees the species as a small gene pool protected from too much variability by a reproductive barrier. In other words, the species is a population adapted to a certain niche, and if the members of different species could interbreed with each other, too much genetic variability would occur, reducing the success of the adaptation. "The basic biological purpose of the species," says Mayr, "is the protection of a harmonious gene pool." To bolster his argument, he points out that hybrids between species are usually less successful and are often sterile. 

This may be the case with a hybrid alien-human creature as well, thus necessitating the constant need for new biological material to produce "children". Humans may share some genetic similarity with our Alien Visitors, or may even have been engineered at some point if you believe the Ancient Alien theories or have studied topics such as bloodlines of the Annunaki.  

Obviously we get into some dark subject matter here, but if you dare to search out the stories of alien abduction, babies implanted and then stolen from wombs, human experimentation in the deepest parts of the Dulce Base….the idea of aliens looking for biological material becomes a lot easier to believe, and a lot more scary. Perhaps such an experiment is taking place on a cosmic level, with a cross bred race serving as workers and slaves to a master race. Since they can’t reproduce, the need for biological material would never end. Are these sightings a search team looking for targets specimens?  

7. Material Resources

This I find to be the most plausible reason we would be visited. We are exploring our solar system and excite over the possibility of harvesting minerals from other planets. A NASA supported scientist, chemical engineer Ken Debelak of Vanderbilt University, is learning how to use carbon dioxide (the main gas in Mars' atmosphere) to harvest rocket fuel and water from the red planet. Among the other resources present inside martian rocks and soil lies a bounty of useful elements: magnesium and hydrogen for rocket fuel, oxygen to breathe, water to drink.

8. Gold and Minerals

Perhaps there is something to the idea that UFO's were in search of gold in ancient times. Gold is inert and doesn't react with other substances, it is an excellent conductor of electricity, and reflects infrared energy. According to Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer and Planetarium Director for the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, "you can use gold blankets to protect spacecraft against the intense heat of a star or any sort of heat source." It helps that gold can be hammered into extremely thin sheets: one ounce of gold can be beaten out to 300 square feet. That would allow a space craft to receive its many benefits without the burden of significant weight. 

 

We all know about ancient astronaut theory, the pyramids, and the connection to gold, but how about mercury?

 

Now on the flip side of things, minerals that are valuable here on earth may not serve any purpose on an alien planet. What ever the reason Aliens may be visiting us, it is a scary proposition. While some of the more far out theories like biological material theft may one day prove true, the skeptic in me says it has to be a simper answer: That's why I am sticking to the idea that UFO's, if real, are dumping their trash here and picking up some valuable mineral resources to take home.  

 Which of the theories above do you think makes the most sense?

Why do you think aliens are visiting earth?

Do you have your own theory or explanation? Let me know!

{ http://www.blackdiamondsocialclub.com/blog/}

01-04-2018 om 21:05 geschreven door peter  

{ https://alienufoblog.com/category/ }

01-04-2018 om 20:44 geschreven door peter  

Shock claim Great Pyramid constructed by ALIENS - and they left THIS vital clue

CONSPIRACY theorists believe they have unearthed definitive proof that aliens constructed the Great Pyramid.

By Tom Towers 

The photo of the strange structure was brought to light by Tyler Glockner, who runs

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

01-04-2018 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF

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

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

21st Century Non-Belief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Apollo Effect

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

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

The Internet Effect

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

• Religious upbringing increases the chance of religious affiliation as an adult. Decreases in religious upbringing between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 25% of the observed decrease in affiliation.
• College education decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in college graduation between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 5% of the observed decrease in affiliation.
• Internet use decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in Internet use since 1990, from 0 to nearly 80% of the general population, account for about 20% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

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

What Accounts for the Other 45%?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ancient Aliens: A New Cosmic Religion

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

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

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

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

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

Superheroes: Our Secular Gods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source medium.com

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

01-04-2018 om 18:18 geschreven door peter