21-04-2018 om 12:35 geschreven door peter  

When we think about the reality of meeting an extraterrestrial race, we often think about the difficulty, and sometimes supposed impossibility, of communicating or even recognizing that communication was being attempted. We wonder, also, how we could recognize a culture completely outside of our frames of reference. Could we even identify alien artwork, let alone appreciate it? Could we recognize alien music, if they indeed had a concept of music? A paper published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that humans would be able to recognize and appreciate alien music due to our ability to process language, provided that it follows a couple of rules, and suggests that we might have an easier time understanding a completely alien culture than we’ve previously thought.

OK, music nerd time. Sorry. The rules in question aren’t specifically musical rules, or even specific grammatical rules, but sort of “meta rules” of structure and coherence. Alien musicwould need to be built on local and non-local dependencies. Dependencies, in terms of music, are the commonalities that make a song sound like one coherent piece. A local dependency binds two adjacent things together—something like a drum pattern repeating every four bars—and non-local dependencies bind non-adjacent things together. Non-local dependencies can be understood in terms of pop-music: the classic verse-chorus structure. The two verses are non-adjacent, because they’re separated by a chorus, but the second verse follows a rule set up by the first. This is used to create anticipation, resolution, emotional resonance and all the things that make music awesome. It’s not confined to pop-music at all, you’ll find local and non-local dependencies throughout all human music from classical, to punk rock, to non-western music like that from India or the Arab peninsula, that use completely different scales and rhythmic figures,  but pop’s simplicity makes it a very easy example.

Right, got that out of my system. That explanation is important, though. Essentially, as long as alien music had some sort of internal structure, we’d be able to recognize it even if it followed exactly zero musical rules that our culture had prepared us for.

Music is just emotional math, and instruments are human-powered calculators.

To figure this out, Vincent Cheung and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences wrote some “alien” music of their own. Their description of the alien music is “randomly generated combinations of tone-triplets that were combined in a palindrome-like manner.” They brought in musicians of different levels of expertise and played for them their “alien music,” in a composition alongside random sequences with no internal grammatical rules. The musicians were tasked with determining which sequences followed randomly generated grammatical rules local dependencies, and which sequences had no grammatical rules. The team found that they could, and that they could identify non-local dependencies within the compositions as well.

Sequences of repeating electronic tones that only follow a weird internal logic? Now you’re speaking my language.

Repeating the tests with the musicians in an MRI machine, the team found something surprising. An area of the brain on the right hemisphere was lighting up, which mirrored “Broca’s area.” Broca’s area—named for anatomist Paul Broca—is part of the cerebral cortex on the left side of the brain and it’s responsible for our understanding of dependencies in language. It’s what flips out when you hear grammatical mistakes in language. What the researchers found is that we have a twin area on the other side of the brain that understands grammar in more ethereal and subjective things like music. It seems we might be hard-wired to understand structure itself, regardless of our cultural frameworks.

There are so many works of fiction that deal with the obvious communication and cultural barriers that would be between us and any alien species. The 2016 film Arrival, and the short story it was based on, dealt with that question and cast a linguist as the hero figure who deciphers an alien language that doesn’t even conform to our sense of time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind involved communication through music specifically. It seems reasonable to imagine that any species that can travel through space would base their culture and communication on some internal set of rules, even if it doesn’t resemble ours in the slightest. This research could suggest that we’d be able to easily recognize that there are rules, not just chaos, which would eliminate the very first barrier to understanding.

Of course, we already know what alien music sounds like.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

21-04-2018 om 12:23 geschreven door peter  

Let’s get a few things out of the way right up front. The Exploding Ants would be a great name for a band. The Suicidal Exploding Ants would be even better. A collection of exploding ants in one of those plastic ant farms would provide some people with hours of sadistic fun, even if they’re not using recreational mood enhancers. And, for those who are wondering, exploding ants are real but exceedingly rare creatures and researchers in Borneo have just discovered a new species of them living in treetops. Depending on how big they are, the people of Borneo probably appreciate them staying up there.

According to a new study published in ZooKeys, Colobopsis explodens is the latest entry on the list of 15 known species of exploding ants, which were first discovered in 1916, live (and apparently die violently) mainly in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, and haven’t added a new name to the species catalogue since 1935. That changed recently when researchers from the Natural History Museum Vienna, Technical University Vienna and other institutions traveled to Borneo, Thailand, and Malaysia to survey ants. (How did they explain to their parents that their goal in life was to climb trees in jungles to count ants? Asking for a friend.)

One, two, three … is that one big ant or two mating?

What they found high in the trees were bloated ants which, when confronted with dangers like predators or scientists, self-erupted and sprayed a sticky yellow and highly toxic goo everywhere as their final dying act for the ant collective. Myrmecologists (people who study ants) have a less descriptive name for this suicidal behavior – autothysis – and report seeing it in a few species of termites, but nothing like the horror movie plot-ish display these ants put on in Borneo.

The team confirmed that not all of the ants had the ability to become tiny suicide bombers, finding that only a minor class of workers were exploders. They’re born with large, poison-filled glands and extra-strong abdominal muscles that contract under stress, bursting the glands to release the poison … killing the brave exploding ant (although the whole action is probably reflexive and involuntary) and either killing the predator or wounding it enough that in never visits that treetop again. The chemical in the sticky goo is an irritant and corrosive – entangling, immobilizing and painfully torturing the invader. Is this going to make a great movie or what? (A short documentary video on the exploding ants can be seen here.)

Which ones are the exploders?

If that’s not enough, the other castes in the colony have their own non-exploding quirks. There are so-called “doorkeepers” which have huge heads that they use to block the entrance to the ant nest. For the first time ever, the researchers witnessed a male and female ant mating in flight – yes, they can fly too and do it while airborne, putting them in an ant version of the mile high club. And, because no other species want to mess with them, they feast on whatever they want, including fruit, other insects and fish.

Now, all we need is for some of these Colobopsis explodens to be exposed to a high level of radiation – maybe a disabled space station loaded with toxic fuel crashes in the jungle – and we’ve got a reason for them to grow to monstrous sizes and destroy entire cities until a character played by Chris Pratt figures out how to build a giant magnifying glass to fry them into extinction. Revenge of the Ant Farm – coming soon to a theater near you.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

21-04-2018 om 12:11 geschreven door peter  

Unknown satellites in the solar system. Are they extraterrestrial? Videos.

In our solar system there are many objects such as asteroids, comets or planets that astronomers have documented and described in detail. Of course, there are also satellites and satellites made by humans or larger space debris, such as burned rocket launchers.

In space, however, there are objects that astronomers can not identify, and some even consider them non-Earth satellites. What are they actually?

1. We do not know the celestial body
Astronomers in space are constantly searching for unknown asteroids that could also endanger our planet Earth. That is why, in 1999, in the American state of New Mexico, the Linear Satellite project was created, where scientists searched by means of an automatic telescope to search for unknown or unidentified asteroids.

Over the course of this project, they discovered an unknown body with a diameter of 30 to 50 meters, which runs around the Sun on a nearly circular path with a circulation period of 1.09 years. This object, which was named 1999 CG9, is about 158 ​​million kilometers from the Sun, about 9 million kilometers away from our planet Earth. The greatest mystery for astronomers is its atypical orbit, which is almost circular. All other celestial bodies move along the elliptical path.

Brain Marsden of the Harward Smithsonian Center is convinced that due to the size of the object, it can not be the burning degree of a carrier rocket. Therefore, he believes that this object could come from a moon that has a small gravitational force when it was thrown into space in the event of a larger meteorite.

However, a detailed analysis of the composition of the 1999 CG9 satellite would be required to confirm this assumption. Some scientists, however, are skeptical about this, because it would be a really good piece of the Moon that was thrown into the universe, and its circular path, which scientists have not explained yet.

2. Unknown Celestial Body
Even in November 1991, however, astronomers from the Kitt Peak Observatory in the US discovered a body that behaved similarly to the 1999 CG9 object. The Sky & Telescope magazine, which has been named the 1991 VG even referred to as a “true UFO,” because its orbit almost exactly copies the orbit of our blue planet, and it also features light effects.

The biggest mystery for astronomers is the fact that the 1991 VG does not reflect the radar waves at all, which is quite a matter of fact for other cosmic bodies. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of scientists consider the possibility that the natural body would behave as absolutely excluded.

Some scientists think it could be the remains of an earlier probe or rocket, but later it was found that such a orbit does not correspond to the calculated orbit of missiles and satellites so far. At the beginning of December 1991, this body traveled only 450,000 kilometers from the Earth

There is the possibility that this mysterious object is in fact some non-Earth probe or satellite, as was said by Australian astronomer Duncan Steel of the University of Adelaide. Later, however, he took his words back and said he was not convinced that this body was of extraterrestrial origin.

In the summer of 2017, the 1991 VG spacecraft can be seen from the southern hemisphere, and astronomers believe they can identify the satellite that is copying the Earth’s orbit. It will be just one of the burnt levels of the carrier rocket than most scientists think, or it may be a non-Earth probe, which does not exclude British astronomer Duncan Forgan. Let’s surprise you.

NOSTRADAMUS IS QUOTED AS SAYING MANKIND WOULD DISCOVER A MACHINE IN SPACE THAT WAS SENT TO US BY THE WATCHERS! IN 2018-2019!

{ https://dailymysteries.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 01:53 geschreven door peter  

Hypersaline lakes could help search for extraterrestrial life

There are roughly 400 known subglacial lakes around the world.

{ https://thespacereporter.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 01:38 geschreven door peter  

In a series of papers, Professor Loeb and Michael Hippke indicate that conventional rockets would have a hard time escaping from certain kinds of extra-solar planets.

Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle

THE CHALLENGES OF AN ALIEN SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM: ESCAPING SUPER EARTHS AND RED DWARF STARS

 

by Matt Williams

Since the beginning of the Space Age, humans have relied on chemical rockets to get into space. While this method is certainly effective, it is also very expensive and requires a considerable amount of resources. As we look to more efficient means of getting out into space, one has to wonder if similarly-advanced species on other planets (where conditions would be different) would rely on similar methods.

Harvard Professor Abraham Loeb and Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory, both addressed this question in two recently–released papers. Whereas Prof. Loeb looks at the challenges extra-terrestrials would face launching rockets from Proxima b, Hippke considers whether aliens living on a Super-Earth would be able to get into space.

The papers, tiled “Interstellar Escape from Proxima b is Barely Possible with Chemical Rockets” and “Spaceflight from Super-Earths is difficult” recently appeared online, and were authored by Prof. Loeb and Hippke, respectively. Whereas Loeb addresses the challenges of chemical rockets escaping Proxima b, Hippke considers whether or not the same rockets would able to achieve escape velocity at all.

Artist’s impression of Proxima b, which was discovered using the Radial Velocity method.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

For the sake of his study, Loeb considered how we humans are fortunate enough to live on a planet that is well-suited for space launches. Essentially, if a rocket is to escape from the Earth’s surface and reach space, it needs to achieve an escape velocity of 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h; 25,020 mph). Similarly, the escape velocity needed to get away from the location of the Earth around the Sun is about 42 km/s (151,200 km/h; 93,951 mph).

As Prof. Loeb told Universe Today via email:

“Chemical propulsion requires a fuel mass that grows exponentially with terminal speed. By a fortunate coincidence the escape speed from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is at the limit of attainable speed by chemical rockets. But the habitable zone around fainter stars is closer in, making it much more challenging for chemical rockets to escape from the deeper gravitational pit there.”

As Loeb indicates in his essay, the escape speed scales as the square root of the stellar mass over the distance from the star, which implies that the escape speed from the habitable zone scales inversely with stellar mass to the power of one quarter. For planets like Earth, orbiting within the habitable zone of a G-type (yellow dwarf) star like our Sun, this works out quite while.

This infographic compares the orbit of the planet around Proxima Centauri (Proxima b) with the same region of the Solar System.

Credit: Pale Red Dot

Unfortunately, this does not work well for terrestrial planets that orbit lower-mass M-type (red dwarf) stars. These stars are the most common type in the Universe, accounting for 75% of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. In addition, recent exoplanet surveys have discovered a plethora of rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars systems, with some scientists venturing that they are the most likely place to find potentially-habitable rocky planets.

Using the nearest star to our own as an example (Proxima Centauri), Loeb explains how a rocket using chemical propellant would have a much harder time achieving escape velocity from a planet located within it’s habitable zone.

“The nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is an example for a faint star with only 12% of the mass of the Sun,” he said. “A couple of years ago, it was discovered that this star has an Earth-size planet, Proxima b, in its habitable zone, which is 20 times closer than the separation of the Earth from the Sun. At that location, the escape speed is 50% larger than from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. A civilization on Proxima b will find it difficult to escape from their location to interstellar space with chemical rockets.”

Hippke’s paper, on the other hand, begins by considering that Earth may in fact not be the most habitable type of planet in our Universe. For instance, planets that are more massive than Earth would have higher surface gravity, which means they would be able to hold onto a thicker atmosphere, which would provide greater shielding against harmful cosmic rays and solar radiation.

Artists impression of a Super-Earth, a class of planet that has many times the mass of Earth, but less than a Uranus or Neptune-sized planet.

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

In addition, a planet with higher gravity would have a flatter topography, resulting in archipelagos instead of continents and shallower oceans – an ideal situation where biodiversity is concerned. However, when it comes to rocket launches, increased surface gravity would also mean a higher escape velocity. As Hippke indicated in his study:

“Rockets suffer from the Tsiolkovsky (1903) equation : if a rocket carries its own fuel, the ratio of total rocket mass versus final velocity is an exponential function, making high speeds (or heavy payloads) increasingly expensive.”

For comparison, Hippke uses Kepler-20 b, a Super-Earth located 950 light years away that is 1.6 times Earth’s radius and 9.7 times it mass. Whereas escape velocity from Earth is roughly 11 km/s, a rocket attempting to leave a Super-Earth similar to Kepler-20 b would need to achieve an escape velocity of ~27.1 km/s. As a result, a single-stage rocket on Kepler-20 b would have to burn 104 times as much fuel as a rocket on Earth to get into orbit.

To put it into perspective, Hippke considers specific payloads being launched from Earth. “To lift a more useful payload of 6.2 t as required for the James Webb Space Telescope on Kepler-20 b, the fuel mass would increase to 55,000 t, about the mass of the largest ocean battleships,” he writes. “For a classical Apollo moon mission (45 t), the rocket would need to be considerably larger, ~400,000 t.”

Project Starshot, an initiative sponsored by the Breakthrough Foundation, is intended to be humanity’s first interstellar voyage.

Credit: breakthroughinitiatives.org

While Hippke’s analysis concludes that chemical rockets would still allow for escape velocities on Super-Earths up to 10 Earth masses, the amount of propellant needed makes this method impractical. As Hippke pointed out, this could have a serious effect on an alien civilization’s development.

“I am surprised to see how close we as humans are to end up on a planet which is still reasonably lightweight to conduct space flight,” he said. “Other civilizations, if they exist, might not be as lucky. On more massive planets, space flight would be exponentially more expensive. Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission, or a Hubble Space Telescope. This should alter their way of development in certain ways we can now analyze in more detail.”

Both of these papers present some clear implications when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). For starters, it means that civilizations on planets that orbit red dwarf stars or Super-Earths are less likely to be space-faring, which would make detecting them more difficult. It also indicates that when it comes to the kinds of propulsion humanity is familiar with, we may be in the minority.

“This above results imply that chemical propulsion has a limited utility, so it would make sense to search for signals associated with lightsails or nuclear engines, especially near dwarf stars,” said Loeb. “But there are also interesting implications for the future of our own civilization.”

Artist’s concept of a bimodal nuclear rocket making the journey to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations in the Solar System.

Credit: NASA

“One consequence of the paper is for space colonization and SETI,” added Hippke. “Civs from Super-Earths are much less likely to explore the stars. Instead, they would be (to some extent) “arrested” on their home planet, and e.g. make more use of lasers or radio telescopes for interstellar communication instead of sending probes or spaceships.”

However, both Loeb and Hippke also note that extra-terrestrial civilizations could address these challenges by adopting other methods of propulsion. In the end, chemical propulsion may be something that few technologically-advanced species would adopt because it is simply not practical for them. As Loeb explained:

“An advanced extraterrestrial civilization could use other propulsion methods, such as nuclear engines or lightsails which are not constrained by the same limitations as chemical propulsion and can reach speeds as high as a tenth of the speed of light. Our civilization is currently developing these alternative propulsion technologies but these efforts are still at their infancy.”

One such example is Breakthrough Starshot, which is currently being developed by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation (of which Loeb is the chair of the Advisory Committee). This initiative aims to use a laser-driven lightsail to accelerate a nanocraft up to speeds of 20% the speed of light, which will allow it to travel to Proxima Centauri in just 20 years time.

Artist’s impression of rocky exoplanets orbiting Gliese 832, a red dwarf star just 16 light-years from Earth.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org).

Hippke similarly considers nuclear rockets as a viable possibility, since increased surface gravity would also mean that space elevators would be impractical. Loeb also indicated that the limitations imposed by planets around low mass stars could have repercussions for when humans try to colonize the known Universe:

“When the sun will heat up enough to boil all water off the face of the Earth, we could relocate to a new home by then. Some of the most desirable destinations would be systems of multiple planets around low mass stars, such as the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1which weighs 9% of a solar mass and hosts seven Earth-size planets. Once we get to the habitable zone of TRAPPIST-1, however, there would be no rush to escape. Such stars burn hydrogen so slowly that they could keep us warm for ten trillion years, about a thousand times longer than the lifetime of the sun.”

But in the meantime, we can rest easy in the knowledge that we live on a habitable planet around a yellow dwarf star, which affords us not only life, but the ability to get out into space and explore. As always, when it comes to searching for signs of extra-terrestrial life in our Universe, we humans are forced to take the “low hanging fruit approach”.

Basically, the only planet we know of that supports life is Earth, and the only means of space exploration we know how to look for are the ones we ourselves have tried and tested. As a result, we are somewhat limited when it comes to looking for biosignatures (i.e. planets with liquid water, oxygen and nitrogen atmospheres, etc.) or technosignatures (i.e. radio transmissions, chemical rockets, etc.).

As our understanding of what conditions life can emerge under increases, and our own technology advances, we’ll have more to be on the lookout for. And hopefully, despite the additional challenges it may be facing, extra-terrestrial life will be looking for us!

• Professor Loeb’s essay was also recently published in Scientific American.
• Further Reading: arXiv, arXiv (2), Scientific American

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 01:33 geschreven door peter  

What Is ‘Intelligent Life?’

21-04-2018 om 01:22 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Say an 8-Mile-Deep Italian Cave May Be the Key to Finding Life on Mars

Chris Mahon

 

Image credit: YouTube

• Trappist-1 Can't Support Life: Scientists Discover Exoplanets Have Too Much Water

{ https://www.outerplaces.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

What if we’re not the first advanced civilization on Earth — How would we know?

BY MIHAI ANDREI

A new study raises an intriguing question: are we really the first ones to develop a civilization on Earth? Before you start thinking about aliens or wacky conspiracy theories, think about it this way: if another civilization had developed on the planet at some point in the geological past, how would we know about it? The new research explores that avenue; they call it “The Silurian hypothesis.”

Ancient life

Homo sapiens as we know it evolved some 315,000 years ago. You might think that’s a very long time and in one sense, it is. But at a geological scale, it’s nothing. Primates, as a group, emerged some 55 million years ago, while mammals came to be over 200 million years ago. Reptiles have been on this planet for more than 300 million years ago, and fish popped up more than 500 years ago. The history of life on Earth is so incredibly long it’s difficult to comprehend it at the human scale.

What we know about these ancient living creatures, we know through fossils. Sure, we complement findings with computer models and the ecological principles we’ve discovered, but fossils are still the pillar of our knowledge of ancient life. But it takes special conditions for a fossil to form, and the results we’ve discovered so far are few and far between compared to the mind-blowing diversity our planet has witnessed.

To make matters even worse, our planet is an active environment and tectonic movement (and other geological processes) can destroy fossils and other clues about ancient environments. So to sum it up, remnants of life are rare, and even those rare bits are often destroyed by the Earth’s geology. Now, think about it this way: wouldn’t the same thing happen to evidence of an ancient civilization?

Remnants of a civilization

If humanity went extinct tomorrow, what would be left of us? The buildings, roads, and all the infrastructure — for a while. They would be engulfed by vegetation in a few years, and almost everything would be destroyed in a few centuries. After a million years, you probably won’t see any evidence that mankind ever existed — at the surface, anyway.

A diligent scientist one million years in the future might be able to tell that a civilization once existed. He’d find isotopic evidence of atomic explosions, an unnatural rise in CO2 emissions, perhaps even some remnants of former structures — but all these have essentially happened in the past century. In their new study, Gavin A. Schmidt (a climatologist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and Adam Frank (an astronomer from the University of Rochester) address this conundrum: are we the first civilization on Earth, and what does this mean for finding life on other planets?

Based on recent astronomical findings, we know that there is a huge number of stars in the galaxy, many of them harboring stars in the habitable zone. The number of planets capable of hosting life might be very high, thus also increasing the chances of intelligent life forms emerging. Scientists are looking for extraterrestrial life more and more — but what about here on Earth, what if there is a previous civilization we’ve still yet to discover? What if we are the scientists million of years in the future, hunting for an ancient industrialized civilization, what would we find?

You’d start with the air, researchers write.

“Since the mid-18th Century, humans have released over 0.5 trillion tons of fossil carbon via the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, at a rate orders of magnitude faster than natural long-term sources or sinks. In addition, there has been widespread deforestation and addition of carbon dioxide into the air via biomass burning.”

You’d move on to geomorphological features, like increased rates of sediment flow in rivers and its deposition in coastal environments, as a result of agricultural processes, deforestation, and the digging of canals. Then, you’d move on to biology, looking for evidence of domesticated animals. But the biggest smoking gun would be synthetic materials. The presence of synthetic materials, plastics, and radioactive elements (caused by nuclear power or nuclear testing) could also leave a significant mark on the geological record, and isotopes could last for millions of years. Finally, you’d look for extinctions caused by the rise of said civilization.

“The clearest class of event with such similarities are the hyperthermals, most notably the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (56 Ma), but this also includes smaller hyperthermal events, ocean anoxic events in the Cretaceous and Jurassic, and significant (if less well characterized) events of the Paleozoic,” researchers continue.

A comparison between the Earth and Mars.

After tightening these constraints for Earth, they move on to what we might potentially see on other planets. Mars and Venus might have been habitable millions of years ago, and if we want to see if this was the case, we need to know what to look for.

“We note here that abundant evidence exists of surface water in ancient Martian climates (3.8 Ga), and speculation that early Venus (2 Ga to 0.7 Ga) was habitable (due to a dimmer sun and lower CO2 atmosphere) has been supported by recent modeling studies,” they state. “Conceivably, deep drilling operations could be carried out on either planet in future to assess their geological history. This would constrain consideration of what the fingerprint might be of life, and even organized civilization.”

Journal Reference: The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record? arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

The Megalithic Stones Of Carnac—An Ancient Cosmic Map?

The megalithic stones of Carnac are a set of stones intricately positioned in Brittany. It is the most extensive prehistoric monument in the world. This megalithic site is believed to have been erected during the Neolithic, probably around 3300 BCE, but some may date to as early as 4500 BCE.

Like extensive lines of penitents, the enigmatic stones of Carnac were positioned in a straight line across the rough territory of Brittany, keeping guard in front of the waters of the Bay of Biscay

Local tradition has yielded a number of interesting legends about the menhirs.

Although their presence and configuration are truly mysterious, the peasants of the region found a way to explain them. According to a deep-rooted belief, the megaliths are Roman soldiers petrified by God to protect Saint Cornelius, patron of Carnac.

Another one suggests that, at night, the stones come to life and advance towards the sea to bathe or to drink.

The famous neolithic menhirs near Carnac, Brittany, France.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

They have been credited with healing powers, and it was believed that they could provide fertility and help people who seek love.

The Stones of Carnac are not only one of the most extensive prehistoric monument in the world, they were seeming just as important when they were erected, and evidence of that is the number of stones that were present in the area.

According to experts, when the stones were erected, there were as many as 10 thousand.

Today, after thousands of years, only 3,000 remain, in four large groupings: Le Menéc, Kermario, Kerlescan and Le Petit Menéc.

Next to the village of Le Menéc is where the most numerous alignment begins.

There are 1,099 stones in eleven rows placed mimicking soldiers or schoolchildren, in order of height: the largest measure 3.7 meters and the smallest only 90 centimeters.

They were positioned facing northeast in gentle undulations along a slightly curved line.

The Kermario megaliths are larger, with megaliths exceeding 7 meters in height and decrease in size over an area of 1,200 kilometers.

The other two groupings are smaller, but Kerlescan differs by a square configuration of the 540 stones that compose it.

Kermario stone rows, Karnag, Morbihan, Brittany.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

A Snakeish megalithic monument

Jerome Penhouet proposed, in 1826, that the four alignments of Carnac were part of the body of a massive snake that was depicted on the lands of Brittany.

However, different eras produced different theories trying to explain the mystery behind the stones.

During the nineteenth century, it was suggested that these were places dedicated to the solar and lunar cult, while other authors thought that they were avenues that led to the temples that have now disappeared from sight.

Atlantean remains?

Hans Hirmenech suggested that the rows of menhirs were the tombs of Atlantean soldiers who had died during the Trojan War.

Also, James Fergusson proposed that the erection of these monuments should commemorate a sort of great battle that took place in ancient times.

Other scholars who studied the megalithic stones went further and proposed that they were true tombs and believed they found support for this reasoning in the meaning of the names of some places: in Breton, a language of Celtic origin, Kermario means “city of the dead”.

However, when formulating the last theory, it seems that exerts ignored the fact that the menhirs are much older than the appearance of the Celts in this region.

Cosmic map?

The first to allude to the “celestial map theory” of Carnac was André Cambry, who maintained that the stones of Carnac mimick the stars, the planets, and the zodiac.

After Chambry, other authors took up the idea and, in 1970, the English engineer Alexander Thom followed the footsteps of Gerald Hawkins in his studies on Stonehenge and applied them to Carnac.

According to Thom, the great fallen menhir of Locmariaquer was the center of an immense astronomical observatory capable of predicting eclipses.

Their measurements indicate that from this supermassive gigantic menhir it was possible to observe the eight extreme positions of the Moon.

He also proposed that the Carnac alignment were solar calculators, used to correct the irregularities observed in the movements of the Moon.

The immense fallen menhir of Locmariaquer, known as Er Grah (the Stone of the Fairies), measured more than 20 meters in height and is believed to have existed with a combination of other menhirs that are now gone. This massive menhir has an estimated weight of 280 tons.

It remains a profound mystery as to how ancient people managed to move this, and other menhirs to their current positions, without the use of advanced technology.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

21-04-2018 om 00:50 geschreven door peter  

STUNNING RADIO TRANSMISSION OF ASTRONAUT JOHN GLENN WHEN DOZENS OF UFOS SURROUND HIM (VIDEO)

John Glenn: “ UFOs are all over the sky.” “This is Friendship Seven. I will try to describe what I am living at this moment. I am in the middle of a large mass of very small, bright particles, as if they were luminescent. I never saw anything like that. They are rounded up a bit; They come through the capsule and look like little stars. A whole rain of  UFOs I see.  “

John Glenn

Take a look at this incredible audio file where we can hear the astonishment of astronaut John Glenn after his capsule was surrounded by countless strange UFOs.

This audio transmission can easily be described as one of the most surprising evidence of a mysterious extraterrestrial presence during manned space missions. This old audio file allows us to hear a small part of the conversation between the Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) capsule piloted by John Glenn and CAPCOM, on February 20, 1962, the first manned orbital mission in the United States.

Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, it completed a successful three-orbital mission around the Earth, reaching a maximum altitude of approximately 162 land miles and an orbital speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. The Mercury spacecraft “Friendship 7” landed in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island. The duration of the mission from launch to impact was 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds.

John Glenn

In the audio file, Mr. Glenn referred to his capsule as “Friendship 7” and can be heard describing what a “bright blue horizon” looks like behind him as the sun rises. Then, suddenly he realizes that something peculiar is happening around him, since he is “intercepted” by innumerable UFOs that wrapped his capsule. Here is the transcript of the event and below the video: 

John Glenn : This is Friendship Seven. He is blinded by the clear range. It started just when I gave that mark; I go to the dark filter to see it appear.

CAPCOM : Roger.

John Glenn : This is Friendship Seven. I will try to describe what I am seeing here. It looks like a large mass of very small particles, which are brightly lit as if they were luminescent. I never saw anything like that. They are rounded up a bit; They come through the capsule and look like little stars. A whole rain of them coming towards me.

John Glenn : they revolve around the capsule, they go in front of the window and they are all brightly lit. Probably averaging maybe 7 or 8 feet away, but I can also see them all below me.

Intrigued by events, CAPCOM asked Glenn to describe the objects and if they were impacting his spaceship.

CAPCOM : Roger, Friendship Seven. Can you hear any impact with the capsule? Short.

John Glenn : negative, negative They are very slow; they will not drive me further than 3 or 4 miles per hour. They are going at the same speed that I am approximately. They are only way below my speed. Short.

John Glenn : Yes, they have a different movement, from me, because they swirl around the capsule and then move away along the path I’m looking for.

John Glenn : Are you receiving? Short. There are literally thousands of them.

After describing the objects, Glenn receives no response from CAPCOM and wonders if he is in contact with anyone while continuing to talk about the strange objects around his spaceship.

John Glenn : This is Friendship Seven. Am I in contact with someone? Short.

Eventually, almost five minutes after describing the events, CAPCOM responds, saying that Glenn sounded a bit “confusing”, and was asked what his oxygen levels were. Strangely, CAPCOM did not address the strange events with Glenn, who explains that the mysterious particles are still around the spacecraft. After realizing that CAPCOM does not respond, Glenn decided to photograph the mysterious objects. Then, CAPCOM asks how large the particles were and if they moved or floated with it.

CAPCOM suggested that the particles may have come from the spacecraft, but Mr. Glenn said that this was not the case. Interestingly, after the successful orbit of “Friendship 7”, another astronaut aboard the capsule “Aurora 7”, named Scott Carpenter, also saw mysterious objects in space. NASA scientists eventually observed the mystery and concluded that the objects seen in space were just ice particles trapped by sunlight.

NASA claimed that ice had accumulated on the outside of the capsule and that what the two astronauts saw was ice particles floating freely. However, Mr. Glenn was not convinced by the explanation. During his second orbit, he reported seeing the objects again in miles in each direction.
What do you think? Did Glenn have a sensory experience, or was it really Ice? As always, we will never know … or what?

Watch the Video : 

Source www.livingist.com

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

20-04-2018 om 18:21 geschreven door peter  

A Scientific Study Examining Extraterrestrial Origin Of Asteroid Oumuamua Is Finally Revealed

Astronomers launched a bid to know the origin of the strange cigar-shaped asteroid floating in the heavens when they noticed it earlier in 2018.

After a thorough study for signs of extraterrestrial civilisations on Asteroid Oumuamua, the latest results have now been released.

The asteroid has about 400 meters long, which is two times longer than the Gherkin skyscraper. It is the first space rock monitored in our Solar System.

The discovery raised speculations that it could be an alien reconnaissance spaceship seeking life and civilisations on Earth.

Unfortunately, official research reveals that the rock is either a space vehicle with a broken-down engine or natural in origin as it appeared to be tumbling through space.

Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, said earlier this year that there is a small chance the asteroid could reveal whether there’s extraterrestrial life.

Loeb explained that aliens likely have a mothership travelling at tremendous speed and releases small spacecraft free falling into planetary systems to do research. In such case, according to Loeb, scientists might intercept a communication signal between the different spaceship.

A team of scientists used the Murchison Widefield Array, a telescope in Western Australia, to examine the asteroid and the result might bring disappointing news to UFO hunters.

They checked the object if it had signals or transmissions to know if it was an alien spacecraft. Unfortunately, they found nothing with non-terrestrial origins. They say that Oumuamua is most likely a cometary fragment and cosmic rays’ bombardment during its long travel through interstellar space almost lost its surface water.

However, the researchers noted that if ever there is an advanced civilisation elsewhere other than Earth, they may have spacecraft that can travel interstellar distance and that they may use radio waves to communicate.

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

20-04-2018 om 18:11 geschreven door peter  

What Were The Mysterious Foo Fighters Seen By Fighter Pilots Around the World?

A Royal Airforce Pilot flying a Hurricane interceptor reported in December of 1942 that he witnessed two lights shooting from the ground toward his 7,000-foot cruising altitude while he was flying over France. He first thought it was tracer fire, but realized soon after that this wasn’t the case, as the mysterious ‘lights’ followed him, mimicking every evasive maneuver he made.

The appearance of the so-called Foo Fighters began to be documented during the Second World War when German and allied warplanes began encountering mysterious flying objects without wings.

The numerous Foo fighter sightings left pilots awestruck.

The first sighting occurred in November of 1944 when fighter pilots reported seeing fast-moving, glowing objects following their aircraft as they were patrolling over Western Europe.

The objects were usually described as being fiery, glowing in a variety of colors including red, orange and white. They had no problem flying in formation, and most importantly, they never showed up on the radar.

Some pilot accounts describe the enigmatic objects as flying Christmas light, playing around with pilots, performing incredible wild turns, before disappearing.

There are several accounts of Foo Fighters flying in formation together with allied pilots, who reported that the mysterious objects seemed as if they were under intelligent control.

The mysterious UFO’s never displayed a hostile behavior towards the pilots. Reports indicate that it was impossible to outmaneuver of shoot down any of the foo fighters.

Allied forces thought that the Foo Fighters were top-secret aircraft developed by either the Japanese or Germans. However, it was later revealed that both the Germans and Japanese hat witnessed the enigmatic objects in the sky.

Foo Fighters quickly became a widespread phenomenon.

One of the most famous Foo Fighter encounters was reported by Charles R. Bastien of the Eighth Air Force. According to Bastien, he reported seeing “two fog lights flying at high rates of speed that could change direction rapidly” over Belgium and the Netherlands.

After Bastien was debriefed, his intelligence officers reported that two additional RAfightersrs had reported the same thing over Europe.

In addition to the sighting made by Bastien and the two RAF fighters, another Royal Airforce Pilot flying a Hurricane interceptor saw two lights shooting from near the ground toward his 7,000-foot cruising altitude in December 1942 over France.

The pilot first thought that what he had seen as tracer fire, but realized soon after that this wasn’t the case, as the mysterious ‘lights’ followed him, mimicking every evasive maneuver he made.

• The Time Magazine wrote about the enigmatic objects in 1945:

“If it was not a hoax or an optical illusion, it was certainly the most puzzling secret weapon that Allied fighters have yet encountered. Last week U.S. night fighter pilots based in France told a strange story of balls of fire which for more than a month have been following their planes at night over Germany. * No one seemed to know what, if anything, the fireballs were supposed to accomplish. Pilots, guessing that it was a new psychological weapon, named it the foo-fighter.”

As the phenomena was widespread and not localized, The postwar Robertson Panel theorized whether it was possible that Foo Fighters were, in fact, electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo’s fire, electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals.

Tachikawa-Kawasaki KI-36 fighters side by side with two Foo Fighter “bogies.”

There are other theories that Foo Fighters were in fact ‘alien drones’ that were part of larger UFO’s. The enigmatic objects would supposedly dock off from the UFOs, in order to perform surveillance mission.

Neither German nor allied pilots had seen anything like them before which is why the mystery behind the objects spread quickly around the world.

Were they top-secret weapons developed by the Germans or Japanese?

Or, is there a possibility, as some UFO researchers suggest, that the so-called Foo Fighters were actually visitors from another world?

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

20-04-2018 om 17:39 geschreven door peter  

Proof of Aliens? Alien hunter spots UFO resting inside a lunar crater (Video+)

Many conspiracy theorists believe that NASA already knows that aliens do exist, however, the news is still under wrap and hasn’t been publicly announced yet. There are speculations on the moon landings that it could be fake.

A new video has popped up on the Internet sparking conspiracy that there is an alien life on the lunar surface. The YouTube channel named StreetCap1 which is notoriously known for uploading images and videos showing anomalies in the lunar surface has uploaded a new video that shows a saucer-like structure inside a crater on the moon. According to the UFOlogist and conspiracy theorist, George Graham, the image shot by Lunar Orbiter-3 shows a saucer-shaped structure inside a crater in the background which has sparked a row of claims regarding the anomaly and what it could be.

Since StreetCap1 has a high subscriber base and his videos has been viewed millions of times collectively, this new video titled “Huge Spacecraft in Lunar Orbiter 3 Photograph” racked up hits and soon become viral over the internet with thousands of people watching and sharing it across various social media platforms. Following the release of the video, it received a number of comments with users trying to explain what the structure could be and that is where the news of this saucer-shaped structure with perfectly smooth edges and Windows-shaped structure inside it, people soon connected it with the space shuttle which has a similar shape. While others claim that it could be an alien ship residing in the crater when it was photographed by the Lunar Orbiter 3.

A user stated that NASA has been covering any signs of extraterrestrial life for years and it won’t provide a satisfactory explanation of such sightings. Many conspiracy theorists believe that NASA already knows that aliens do exist, however, the news is still under wrap and hasn’t been publicly announced yet. There are speculations on the moon landings that it could be fake. On the other hand, speculations are that the reason why NASA hasn’t sent any manned mission to the moon after the end of Apollo and Gemini missions is that they were warned by aliens not to come back. NASA advocated itself many times that there is nothing like alien life and at least nothing that has been detected and discovered yet.

20-04-2018 om 17:17 geschreven door peter  

20-04-2018 om 17:12 geschreven door peter  

WAT VEROORZAAKT DEZE VREEMDE LICHTSTRAAL OP ANTARCTICA ( VIDEO )

Er is op het mysterieuze continent Antarctica opnieuw een ontdekking gedaan waarvan eigenlijk niemand precies weet wat het is. 

Het is een lichtstraal, afkomstig van een kunstmatig object en vastgelegd door een satelliet uit de ruimte. 

Je hebt van die mensen die niets anders doen dan de hele dag naar een computerscherm staren en op zoek gaan naar vreemde dingen op allerlei plekken zoals Mars of Antarctica.

Wat via Google Earth zijn soms hele bijzondere zaken te ontdekken, hetgeen de maker van de video onderaan dit artikel ook overkwam.

Hij speurt met behulp van dit programma Antarctica af en daar opeens, letterlijk in the middle of nowhere, ziet hij iets bijzonders.

Het ziet er zo uit:

Je ziet aan de bovenrand van wat lijkt een gebergte, een donker object, van waar heel duidelijk een lichtstraal komt. Wat het ook moge zijn, het is absoluut niet iets natuurlijks, maar een kunstmatig object.

De maker van de video heeft het over iets dat op de grond ligt, maar wanneer je de beelden wat draait op Google Earth, dan lijkt het er meer op alsof het een object is dat in de lucht hangt en een lichtstraal naar beneden laat schijnen.

Wat het precies is weten we niet, maar misschien hebben we hier een voorbeeld van één van de Duitse UFO's die veelvuldig in verband worden gebracht met Antarctica.

Iedereen kan dit object ook zelf onderzoeken via Google Earth en daarbij de volgende coördinaten intoetsen:

71°45'42.59"S 168°40'11.33"E

Hierna de video van de man die het allemaal heeft ontdekt: 

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

20-04-2018 om 17:06 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2018

The man who put an electric car in space and lands rockets to be reused over and over is at it again. Elon Musk tweeted that he wants to try bringing upper stage rockets – which can’t be landed like lower stage rockets – back to Earth by using large balloons based on “party balloons” that are constantly being mistaken for UFOs. This is either a genius move or a multi-stage prank – both of which Musk is capable of. Which one is it?

Musk doesn’t give any details on what kind of “party balloon” he has in mind. While the standard bunch of balloons on strings was the inspiration for many cartoon, daredevil and guy-in-a-lawn-chair flights, a mylar or foil balloon would probably be a stronger, better idea. However, real rocket scientists speculate he’s referring to something with a cartoon name but real potential – a ballute. Developed in 1958 by Goodyear (possibly to prove they’re more than just blimp people), the ballute is a cone-shaped combination balloon-and-parachute with an extra halo-shaped balloon circling its widest part to provide stability. While it looks like something a birthday party balloon artist might make, the design is perfect for decelerating objects from supersonic to subsonic speeds.

If that non-poodle balloon shape sounds familiar, it’s been tried before. Small ballutes have been used to slow the fall of bombs dropped from planes, it helped the Gemini space capsules land safely and it appeared in the movie “2010: The Year We Make Contact” (ironically, only the balloon part of that prediction has come true).

Ballute concept (Wikipedia)

SpaceX would not be the first private space company to test this type of giant party balloon for saving rocket components. Armadillo Aerospace used one somewhat successfully in 2012 and the crowd-funded nonprofit (hear that, NASA?) Danish aerospace organization Copenhagen Suborbitals also tested with them. However, SpaceX will probably be the first to use a ballute on an actual mission.

If that’s what Elon Musk is referring to with “giant party balloon.” If it is, it would have to be truly giant to decelerate the upper stage rocket fast enough and early enough to keep it from being damaged by the heat of a fast reentry. In an interview with Universe Today, University of Maryland Aerospace Engineering Professor Dave Akin estimated it would have to be “120 ft. in diameter, and made of a high-temperature fabric, so it’s not going to be all that easy.”

That’s the type of challenge Musk seems to thrive on and the idea of bringing upper stage rockets back to Earth instead of leaving them in orbit with the estimated 29,000 pieces of space junk already there is a noble and practical goal.

Wow – a billionaire who’s both noble and practical … what a concept. But remember, this is Elon Musk we’re talking about, so you never know what to expect … as he proved in a later tweet.

And then land on a bouncy house
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2018

Oh, Elon.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-04-2018 om 16:55 geschreven door peter  

If it’s true that wormholes exist and that it’s only a matter of time before we find one or more of these tunnels through spacetime, that time may have just gotten a little shorter. A physicist in India claims that wormholes should cast a shadow just like the ones black holes cast and, once we get better at finding those, the same technique will help locate the similar but slightly distorted shadows of a wormhole. Are you ready for faster-than-light travel?

In a paper submitted to the Physical Review D journal arXiv  but not yet peer-reviewed, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research physicist Rajibul Shaikh first looks at black holes, which we can’t see directly yet, and their shadows, which are actually dark spots made by matter that’s being pulled into the black hole passing over the bright event horizon – the light that hasn’t yet been sucked into the black hole’s darkness. Astrophysicists around the world have teamed up to build a network of individual radio dishes that will work together as a giant Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) that can, for the first time, pick up an image of a black hole. A picture of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way was taken in April 2017 and they’re currently analyzing the data.

Depiction of a black hole

Shaikh proposes that wormholes cast a similar yet distinguishable shadow.

“In the observer’s sky, the scattered photons form bright spots, whereas the photons captured by the wormhole form dark spots. The union of the dark spots in the observer’s sky constitute the shadow.”

While prior models have calculated the shadow of a wormhole before, Shaikh adds data from the throat or connecting center tunnel of a particle type of fast-rotating wormhole. According to his calculations, the shadow of this type of wormhole would be distorted in comparison to that of a black hole, which would be a well-formed disc.

“In other words, the results obtained here indicate that, through the observations of their shadows, a wormhole having reasonable spin, can be distinguished from a black hole.”

Should we start the engine on the starship, Dr. Shaikh?

“However, our conclusions are largely based on the types of wormholes we have chosen to
work with. It will be interesting to see whether or to what extent the conclusions drawn here carry over to a broader class of rotating wormholes.”

It’s still all theoretical and based on massive, fast-rotating wormholes. Wormholes are predicted to exist in microscopic sizes and it’s also just a theory that the expansion of the universe may have stretched some wormholes to a size where they could be detected by the same means black holes might someday be detected. However, even skeptical physicists aren’t saying no … yet.

In the meantime, we can all agree that “Shadows of a Wormhole” would be a great title for a progressive rock song. Yes?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-04-2018 om 16:49 geschreven door peter  

The old saying “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” can very adequately describe an obsessed UFO student such as yours truly. No matter how unrelated to the topic an article or news story may appear, you never know when you might stumble upon a juicy tidbit of information that could be indirectly related to a given case or report. That’s why you always need to leave your Fortean antenna fully raised.

Take for example this 2016 article from Business Insider titled“Apple employees break their vow of secrecy to describe the best — and worst — things about working for Apple.” At first glance, one would imagine the piece would be nothing but an inside look at what it is like to work for one of the biggest and most popular tech companies in the world; all the many sacrifices Apple employees are demanded to do, the super-long hours, the secrecy they have to conduct themselves with in order to safeguard their precious industrial secrets –and the severe penalties those who break that silence end up facing…

But then I found this paragraph:

Apple makes grammar and punctuation changes in its internal documents in order to track leaks.

After Business Insider obtained a couple of leaked memos from retail chief Angela Ahrendts, the company began making changes to its internal communications to help it figure out where the leaks came from. It now sends differently worded memos to different sections of the company in hopes of tracking leaks back to the source when those memos are quoted in the media.

This instantly grabbed my attention, because it reminded me of one of the most infamous –and fascinating– stories in the recent history of UFOlogy: Project Serpo.

Serpo –for those of you not familiar with the story– was the name of a supposed exchange program between aliens from Zeta Reticuli and the United States government. It wasn’t just every nuts-and-bolts UFO buff’s wet dream, but it was also the literal real-life version of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind: Remember how in the final scenes of the movie we see a crew of men and women carrying a black duffel bag on their shoulder and wearing a weird red jumpsuit with a triangular badge on their arm that said “Mayflower Project”? Despite the lack of clear explanations in the film, eventually the viewer deduces that these men and women volunteered to travel aboard the ET spaceship. In the end, though the aliens pick their own chosen one –the indomitable Roy Neary, who left everything behind (including his whole family) in pursuit of his vision– and the camera shows him being gently led by a swarm of spindly arms inside the mammoth craft, confidently stepping and fully accepting his fate as envoy to humanity… perhaps never to return.

Well, if you believe the anonymous source(s) sending emails to a UFO discussion group administered by former US government employee Victor Martinez in 2005, that is exactly what happened when the sole survivor of the Roswell saucer crash in 1947 was assisted by the US military in re-establishing contact with its homeworld: a planet named Serpo, orbiting the Zeta Reticuli binary star system. The Ebens –acronym given to the ETs in the emails following proper MJ-12 parlance, which were your stereotypical gray aliens– finally returned to Earth in 1965 to retrieve their comrade, and 12 specially-trained US military personnel went along with them. The group stayed on Serpo until 1978, and only 8 of them (seven men and one woman) returned to Earth, because 2 of them died on the alien world while the rest decided to stay and live among the peaceful Ebens, despite the fact the radiation levels on Serpo were higher than on our planet.

Notice I wrote “if you believe,” because there’s plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t…

For starters, the first red flag one encounters in the Serpo story is that it dutifully ticks almost all the boxes of the modern UFO mythos, which have been gradually added throughout the years: Roswell and the crash at the Corona site –proposed by researcher Stanton Friedman on his homonymous book Crash at Corona; the rumors of survivors to the crash which may have been utilized by the government in order to learn about the extraterrestrials and their intentions; the Reticulan origin of the aliens, firstly speculated from Marjorie Fish’s interpretation of Betty Hill’s star map; the idea of a secret arrangement or deal between the US military and the aliens, just as the infamous MJ-12 papers posit; the supposed landing of an alien ship at Holloman AFB; the conspiracy theory that Spielberg is a ‘Hollywood insider’ who’s been given the task to disseminate bits and pieces of the truth through his movies, in order to acclimatize the public (it’s not that Serpo borrowed its imagery from Close Encounters, it’s the other way around!); and lastly the concept of a secret space program, although in this case the humans are mere ‘tourists’ piggybacking a ride to the alien homeworld. The only ‘classical’ element missing in the Serpo narrative are alien abductions, which was probably meant to please the hardcore ‘nuts-and-bolts’ crowd among UFO circles, who were always annoyed by the rude disruption caused by the stories published by Hopkins and Jacobs in the first place in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

There’s also the all-too convenient element that everybody directly involved is dead –according to the anonymous sources, all the crewmembers who returned to Earth have since died due to the radiation they were exposed to– so there’s no-one who could personally confirm or deny the story, thus no chance of someone being exposed for making up outlandish fabrications (*cough* Basiago *cough*).

What’s interesting about the Serpo story is that it does have a certain whiff of plausibility, if you adhere to a certain narrative you seek to confirm –in this case, the extraterrestrial nature of the UFO mystery. Which is precisely why you should be wary of someone who is all too willing to tell you EXACTLY what you want to hear (TTS/AAS anyone?). Like I mentioned above, almost all the elements surrounding Serpo were already present in the contemporary UFO lore, and the illusion of confirmation can easily be engineered in retrospect, because hindsight is always 20/20.

Indeed, there’s been quite a number of researchers and UFO aficionados who have refused to bite this slithering bait (to his credit, Michael Salla was among those who were skeptic of the story) and have pointed out to a number of inconsistencies in the story handed down to Martinez by his anonymous sources –the scientific data about the alien home planet and its binary star system as depicted in the emails, didn’t pass the smell test when scrutinized by actual astronomers.

But perhaps the hottest red herring in the Serpo controversy was the involvement of one Richard Doty in it. Doty, for those of you still studying for your UFOlogy 101 exam, is a former AFOSI agent directly involved in some of the shadiest passages in the annals of this field; Greg Bishop’s Project Beta and Mark Pilkington’s documentary Mirage Men are indispensable in order to fully grasp the extent of Doty’s influence in the seeding of disinformation among the UFO research community, and the public at large.

All of this combined should raise enough alarms to conclude Project Serpo was either a flat-out hoax, or perhaps a disinformation campaign carried out at the behest of one or two intelligence organizations.

Which brings us to the Business Insider article and Apple’s practice to change the grammar and punctuation of their memos in order to track leaks, and its connection to the anonymous emails received by Victor Martinez. Greg Bishop has pointed out on several occasions on his podcast Radio Misterioso how the Serpo letters contained several typos and basic spelling errors which initially Martinez tried to correct before posting them on his UFO discussion group, and later on the Serpo website managed by UFO researcher Bill Ryan (.e.g. ‘hostel’ instead of ‘hostile’). Martinez had once been a teacher so perhaps he couldn’t help himself when dealing with these apparent transcript mistakes in order to make them more presentable, until ‘Anonymous’ ordered him to stop changing the text of the e-mails and publish them exactly as he had received them.

To Greg, who is quite familiar with the tactics utilized by intelligence operatives, this was clear indication that the typos were not mistakes, but deliberately planted into the released texts in order to track who was talking to who about Serpo.

When I recently mentioned this connection between Apple and Serpo’s anonymous source on the Radio Misterioso Facebook page, UFO scholar Aaron Gulyas offered another interesting piece of information: turns out that back in high school he used to be a huge fan of Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games novels, where he learned about this technique for the first time; Clancy had a very close relationship with the CIA and his books were full of accurate descriptions of espionage tactics, so it’s fair to assume the spelling technique was indeed standard practice among spooks of the time. Were the Serpo hoaxers and Apple executives also inspired by these novels, or is this little detail a clue that the anonymous emails were not just solely intended to build a ‘UFO fanfiction’ for the amusement of Martinez’s forum members?

My own personal yet-unconfirmed speculation on the matter, is that perhaps Serpo was a prototype specifically designed to test and calibrate the computerized surveillance programs Edward Snowden warned us about in 2013. It is definitely not unreasonable to assume that by 2005 (when Serpo went public) these spying systems were already in existence, but perhaps they were not mature enough yet to detect electronic communications on a global scale. So what better way to check the NSA system than by setting its net on a smaller, more contained pond instead of the whole ocean? A pond like the small community of online UFO researchers, in which you’ve already placed a hashtag term that’s easier to track down than ‘terrorism’ or ‘jihad’? A hashtag in the form of a made-up word that’s not totally foreign-looking, yet it will be only used in the communications you are focusing on?

A hashtag word like… Serpo.

Like the story of an alien/human exchange program, my Serpo/Snowden scenario has enough plausibility to be tantalizing. Yet I’m the first one to admit it’s just an speculation on my part. Still, Serpo remains a cautionary tale than when it comes to the UFO mystery, you ALWAYS need to be wary of unsolicited gifts handed out by anonymous sources –because they may turn up to be poisoned apples.

{http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-04-2018 om 12:27 geschreven door peter  

Three Mysterious Light Anomalies In The Sky Appear Out Of Nowhere

Blop02 noticed strange flashes/light anomalies in the sky at approximately 8:40 pm on April 18, 2018 from an unknown location and Blop02 has no idea what this phenomenon exactly is and how it was caused.

The light anomalies are best described as a series of 3 plasma balls which simultaneously light up into a big flash, then dim and disappear.

The strange appearance happened several times in a row and it looks like something is shooting some sort of plasma balls from an unknown location in the sky or space.

  

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

20-04-2018 om 12:15 geschreven door peter