The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
05-05-2018
Scientists create mutant enzymes that eat plastic bottles
Scientists create mutant enzymes that eat plastic bottles
Mutants exist and they’re helping to save the planet.
OK, not those kinds of mutants. But these are equally cool.
An international team of scientists has created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drink bottles, according to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (the link is down at time of writing).
The creation of the enzyme came by accident when the team, led by Professor John McGeehan at the University of Portsmouth, UK, tweaked a bacterium they had discovered in a waste dump in Japan in 2016. The bacterium had naturally evolved to eat plastic, and the scientists inadvertently made it even better at breaking down polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the plastic used for drink bottles. The break-down process starts in a matter of days, not the centuries it can take in the ocean.
“What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock,” McGeehan told the Guardian. “It’s great and a real finding.”
In 2017, researchers found 38 million pieces of plastic waste on an uninhabited South Pacific island. Figures from the same year showed that a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. That number is predicted to jump 20 percent by 2021.
“What we are hoping to do is use this enzyme to turn this plastic back into its original components, so we can literally recycle it back to plastic,” McGeehan said. “It means we won’t need to dig up any more oil and, fundamentally, it should reduce the amount of plastic in the environment.”
Titled “A smooth exit from eternal inflation?” discusses how our universe is one in a “multiverse” of infinite parallel universes.
In his final scientific study, Professor Hawking spoke about the universe, its beginning, the multiverse, and parallel universes.
The latest theory on the origin of the universe of Stephen Hawking, developed in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog, of the University KU Leuven (Belgium), was initially submitted for publication shortly before the death of Hawking.
Then a group of reviewers gave their approval for the publication of the full version.
Modern Big Bang Theories, and how they all may be wrong
Modern theories about the Big Bang postulate that our “local universe” appeared after a brief outbreak of “inflation,” reports Phys.org.
In other words, a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe expanded at an exponential rate.
It is generally believed that once “inflation” begins, there are regions where it never stops. It’s a never-ending inflation.
It is considered that the quantum effects can prolong inflation forever in some regions of the universe, so, generally speaking, inflation is eternal.
But they also present, within these regions, a kind of stable pockets (as would be our own universe) where inflation has ended, and stars and galaxies have formed.
Each of these bubbles would then be a unique universe, within a larger and always inflated multiverse.
Kinda’ makes sense
“The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean,” Hawking said in an interview last autumn, according to the University of Cambridge.
“The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse. But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite, the theory can’t be tested.”
A simplified Version, easy to process
In their latest study, Hawking and Hertog argued that this explanation of eternal inflation, like Big Bang theory, is wrong.
Therefore, they created a simplified model of this behavior and a mathematical approach that could severely restrict the number of possible multiverses.
What would remain would be universes with physics similar to ours.
Both scientists used their new theory to derive more reliable predictions about the global structure of the universe.
They predicted that the universe that emerges from eternal inflation, at the limit of the past, is finite, holographic, and much simpler than the infinite fractal structure of the old theory of eternal inflation.
Proving the theory
For the theory to be proven, however, it will be necessary to develop it to the point of making concrete predictions about the gravitational waves emitted in the initial stages of the universe.
One could predict, for example, what kind of irregularity the gravitational waves should have left in the cosmic background radiation.
If the experimental observations coincide with the predictions derived from the theory, they could even offer indications of the existence of parallel universes.
If we can detect the evidence, we’ll better understand how our own universe and its laws came into existence after the Big Bang – and it could help us understand whether other universes are really out there.
NASA’s InSight Mars is slated to launch tomorrow morning from Vanderberg Air Force Base, in California, atop an Atlas V rocket at approximately 7:05 AM EDT.
If all goes according to plan, InSight should reach our dusty red neighbor by November 26th, 2018. Once on Mars, the lander has a packed two-year itinerary of science to conduct. Unlike other Mars rovers like Curiosity, InSight will stay in one place — a site close to the equator called the Elysium Planitia, close to where Curiosity landed in 2012 — for its entire mission. That’s because its focus is not on the features of the planet’s surface, but instead what’s going on beneath it.
An artist’s rendering of the InSight Mars lander carrying out surface operations. Image Credit: NASA-JPL
The Mars lander’s suite of instruments will include: a probe that will burrow 16 feet into the planet intended to determine how much heat is moving through Mars’ interior, and a seismometer that will look for vibrations of meteorites hitting the planet’s surface, along with the tremblings of “marsquakes.” Together, these tools will hopefully provide new insight about Mars’ composition. The research team hopes to learn more about the formation of Mars and other rocky planets in the neighborhood — including the spinning blue marble we live on.
“Earth has plate tectonics, so its initial crust is essentially gone, it’s all been recycled,” InSight deputy principal investigator Suzanne Smrekar told The Washington Post. “Mars gives us an opportunity to see the materials, the structure, the chemical reactions that are close to what we see in the interior of Earth, but it’s preserved from the first 10 million years [of the solar system]. It gives us a chance to go back in time.”
Two small satellites, each about the size of a briefcase, will launch alongside the InSight Mars lander. These two little satellites, officially dubbed CubeSats because of their shape and small size, are set to detach from the Atlas rocket and go their separate ways from InSight once they all leave Earth’s atmosphere. Once they arrive at Mars, CubeSats will go into orbit around the planet to monitor InSight for a short period around its landing. They’re not needed to communicate with the InSight mission (for that, the lander will use the larger communications satellites already orbiting the planet), but will test how CubeSats fare as they travel through deep space and have to communicate back to Earth from another planet (so far, CubeSats have only ever been put into orbit around Earth).
If InSight succeeds, it will help us answer one of the most fundamental questions we have about our solar system: how did this all get here? And as our species pushes towards becoming multi-planetary, learning more about where our solar system has been could help us, no matter where we’re going.
The Kumburgaz, Turkey UFO incident vouched for its authenticity
The Kumburgaz, Turkey UFO incident vouched for its authenticity
"In conclusion, even though a detailed analysis of the footage is conducted, it might still remain unidentified. Hence, other reference objects need to be recorded in the same frame with the disputable object and further shootings need to be done by ourselves with special equipment in the same location and conditions.
Accordingly, the term “UFO” (Unidentified Flying Object) which has been used for these sort of dubious objects can also be used for these objects. But, this definition does not mean that these objects are from extraterrestrial (flying saucer etc.) origin."
Finding a 475-million-year-old fossil intact is a rare achievement even for top paleontologists. That’s why Dr. Colin Sumrall, Associate Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Tennessee, was shocked to see a long-extinct trilobite with all of its pieces unscathed and even more surprised by who discovered it: an 11-year-old.
Ryleigh Taylor was walking .along the Douglas Lake in Dandridge, Tennessee, when she stumbled upon the fossil, Time reported on Thursday. Not exactly sure what the artifact was, Taylor’s family reached out to Sumrall, who explained that they had discovered something extremely rare.
Trilobite Metacryphaeus
“Typically when we look at fossils of trilobites, they molt when they grow. So what happens is, when the trilobite skeleton just crumbles into hundreds of little pieces,” Sumrall told local news WATE-TV. “To find one where all the pieces are intact, it’s actually a pretty lucky find.”
Trilobites belong to a group of marine arachnomorph arthropods that once thrived as scavengers in Earth’s waters back in the day. The earliest records of Trilobites are from 521 million years ago during the Early Cambrian period, but they really hit their stride (er, sea-bed crawl) during the Paleozoic era. Because they had such a vast geographic reach during their glory days, fossilized trilobites have made important contributions to the studies of biostratigraphy, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and plate tectonics.
Taylor hopes her rare discovery will contribute to such research. The noble 11-year-old said she doesn’t plan to keep the fossil but does intend to donate it to a public museum so that others may enjoy it.
Sumrall was thrilled with Taylor’s choice, seeing as a fossil this old is so infrequently found intact. “To find something like that, it could spark this youngster into a whole career,” Sumrall said. “Maybe she’ll become a great paleontologist one day.”
Nasa to land spacecraft on plain of Mars where online oddballs saw an ‘alien city’ and ‘crashed UFO’
Nasa to land spacecraft on plain of Mars where online oddballs saw an ‘alien city’ and ‘crashed UFO’
Jasper Hamill
Nasa is preparing to send a robotic craft on a mission to Mars, where it will drill deep into the crust of the Red Planet and measure ‘Mars-quakes’ for the first time.
The InSight probe will zoom into the heavens just before dawn on Saturday aboard a beefy, mega powerful 19-storey-high Atlas 5 rocket.
Nasa launches spacecraft bound for Mars Scientists want to explore the rumblings of Mars in a bid to uncover the secrets of its ancient history.
But the wild minds of the internet are likely to be interested in the fact it will land in a place where alien hunters claim to have spotted a ‘crashed UFO’ and an ‘extraterrestrial city’.
Although this was claimed to be a crashed UFO, it is probably the site of an asteroid impact
(Picture: Nasa)
It will touch down on a flat, smooth plain close to the planet’s equator called the Elysium Planitia.
Once settled, the solar-powered InSight will spend one Martian year (two Earth years) plumbing the depths of the planet’s interior for clues to how Mars took form and, by extension, how the Earth and other rocky planets came into being.
‘The science we want to do with this mission is really the science of understanding the early solar system,’ said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator.
Alien hunters previously claimed to have seen ‘walled cities’ on the Elysium Planitia as well a ‘crashed UFO’.
This picture was hailed as evidence of ‘walled cities’ on Mars
(Picture: Nasa)
But it turns out the truth about this Martian plain could be wilder than the fiction.
The European Space Agency discovered signs of a huge ‘frozen ocean’ that’s about the same size as the North Sea.
‘The water that formed the sea appears to have originated beneath the surface of Mars, and to have come out through a series of fractures known as the Cerberus Fossae, from where it flowed in a catastrophic flood,’ ESA wrote in 2005.
‘It collected in a vast area about 800 kilometres long and 900 kilometres wide with a depth of about 45 metres. As the water started to freeze, floating pack ice broke up into rafts. These became later covered in ash and dust from volcanic eruptions in the region.’
InSight will complete its 301 million mile journey to Mars in about six months time.
Nasa’s InSight spacecraft snapped at Vandenberg Air Force Base on April 6, 2018
(Photo: Reuters)
While Earth’s tectonics and other forces have erased most evidence of its early history, much of Mars – about one-third the size of Earth – is believed to have remained relatively static for more than 3 billion years, creating a geologic time machine for scientists.
InSight’s primary instrument is a French-built seismometer, a device designed to detect the slightest ground motion from marsquakes, even those on the opposite side of the planet.
Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes over the course of the mission, producing data that will help them deduce the depth, density and composition of the planet’s core, the rocky mantle surrounding it and the outermost layer, the crust.
InSight is not the first attempt to measure Martian seismic activity. The Viking probes of the mid-1970s were equipped with seismometers, too, but they were bolted to the top of the landers, which swayed in Martian winds on legs built with shock absorbers.
Banerdt joked: ‘We didn’t do seismology on Mars – we did it 3 feet above Mars.’
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
04-05-2018
NASA successfully tested a nuclear reactor that works in space
NASA successfully tested a nuclear reactor that works in space
Hail Krusty! (NASA)
If space is an ocean, the International Space Station is a raft tethered to the shore. The moon is a nearby island that we’ve visited briefly. To go any further or stay any longer, humanity needs more power.
Now, NASA may have the source: A tiny nuclear reactor called KRUSTY, for Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology. (If you’re wondering if this is may be a reference to a popular animated series, its predecessor was known as DUFF).
The reactor uses nuclear fission—the energy released by splitting uranium-235 in a reactor core about the size of a paper towel— to produce 10 kilowatts of power for about ten years, which NASA says is enough energy to power several houses. Four of the reactors could power an outpost on the lunar surface.
Nuclear energy sources can be controversial because of the deadly radioactivity they can emit in accidents or malfunctions. Yet they remain the most efficient, light-weight source of long-lasting energy, which counts for a lot when you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram of mass brought into space.
While long-running satellites use radioactive isotopes to generate power without nuclear fission, solar panels and batteries are the most common way of generating power in space. However, the energy needs required to keep humans alive far outstrip those of robotic explorers. Keeping humans at the right temperature in the vacuum of space, while providing them with air to breathe and water to drink, takes a great deal of energy. And then there’s the work humans might do in space, like mining ice and converting it into hydrogen and oxygen.
Besides demonstrating their small reactor could produce power, the NASA researchers put it through stress tests to ensure that it would operate safely even if systems failed or astronauts had to shut it down.
There are no immediate plans to send KRUSTY into space for now, butifa version ever leaves earth’s surface, it won’t be the first nuclear reactor in space.
There are dozens still in orbit thanks to experiments with nuclear powered satellites during the Cold War space race. The US launched one that remains in orbit, while the Soviets launched dozens; none of them were powerful enough to generate the energy needed for long-term space habitation. One of these fell to earth in far northern Canada, resulting in radioactive contamination and an expensive settlement, while another released a cloud of nuclear liquid that still floats in orbit.
Besides powering the infrastructure of human space survival, some forward-thinking engineers believe that nuclear energy is the only way to make a rocket engine powerful enough to efficiently explore the solar system. The US tested systems until 1975, before we understood just how deadly nuclear tests were to the civilian population. NASA did non-nuclear tests of such propulsion systems as recently as 2013, but since rocket engines tend to explode at least once during testing, the nuclear version will likely have to wait until humans have enough experience in space to develop them there.
More Than 20 People In Yukon, Canada Saw This Impressive UFO In The Sky!
More Than 20 People In Yukon, Canada Saw This Impressive UFO In The Sky!
More Than 20 People In Yukon, Canada Saw This Impressive UFO In The Sky!
What was seen by Many!
Here’s one fantastic example of strange objects that are commonly seen in the sky comes from the Yukon, a province in Canada situated on the Northwest side of the country. Yukon is a very remote area, nowhere near any major cities or populated areas. This incredible reported sighting happened on December 11th, 1996 near a place called Fox Lake. It’s extremely freezing cold in this part of the country at this particular time of year which is not too from Alaska, and again, it is hundreds of miles from any populated public area!
SO What Was Seen And Who Saw It?
Well, according to more than 20 witnesses, a very large aerial object with extremely bright lights hovered near the lake (Fox Lake) between 8pm and 9pm!
The picture we put as the cover for this article was done by a Canadian Engineer called Martin Jasek, who wrote a rather detailed account of the event after he had actually taken the effort himself investigated this strange incident.
“Two of the witnesses were cousins, driving in separate vehicles. Each saw it over the lake, slammed on their brakes, and got out of their vehicles. They watched the huge object as it slowly drifted towards one of them and was soon almost directly overhead. It then moved slowly across the highway and over a hill to the east, whereupon it was lost to view.”
“While the two cousins were observing this object, a married couple with their baby were a bit farther to the south along the same highway, driving toward them. They too saw the object. By the time they caught up with the cousins and pulled over, the object had moved off. The married couple continued driving until they arrived at a lodge farther ahead. There, they told the owner about what they had seen. He promptly recounted a sighting from an earlier witness, who had gotten very close to this object.
“At the nearby village of Pelly Crossing, other people described the same object. In one case it seemed to respond to a man’s flashlight by accelerating towards him. When he turned off his flashlight, the object stopped. By then it had gotten quite close to him, filling much of the sky. It also emitted several beams of light, including one that swooped along the ground. They ran across a clearing, perhaps to get to a better view. When he turned to look for the object, it was gone.”
Just imagine how incredible it would be seeing something as spectacular as this. How AMAZING would that be hey???
This superb case has been investigated by many people, and the majority of the interviews with the witnesses are available online.
Here’s a video that has a few of them describing their experience in person, but again, more are available online:
This is particular story one out of many extraordinary sightings that has occurred all around the world, and by looking back at ancient artwork and history, it seems to have been happening for a very long time. One example would be, the aboriginal community in Canada. Their stories have not been passed down through documentation, but through an oral storytelling tradition. These stories often speak of spiritual beings from another world.
“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving, and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.”
– Richard Wagamese, Ojibway Author
If you put all of these teachings and stories from multiple cultures around the world together with the evidence that is available today, things start to seem quite strange – and very real.
This particular case included various drawings and detailed interviews with many of the people who witnessed the object.
A Serious Issue That Deserves Serious Attention.
For MANY years, UFOs have received rather “serious attention” from government/military agencies and more, but it’s only now, thanks to the declassification of files, that people have been allowed to see the truth – that yes, something important is going on here, and has been for a very very long time!!
Documents released by the National Security Agency (NSA) reveal what is recorded when a UFO is being tracked on radar. Here is one example. Also HERE is a four page U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and NSA report describing a particular encounter in brilliant detail:
“As the F-4 approached a range of 25 nautical miles it lost all instrumentation and communications. When the F-4 turned away from the object and apparently was no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all instrumentation and communications. Another brightly lighted object came out of the original object. The second object headed straight toward the F4. ”
“Yes there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered. We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time.”
– Apollo 14 Astronaut, Air Force Captain and Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Edgar Mitchell
Please see an intriguing video of Dr. Edgar Mitchell:
“Today we cannot produce machines that fly the same as UFOs do. They are flying by means of artificial fields of gravity. (I’d like to mention that there is a video of Dr. Brian O’leary, NASA astronaut and Princeton physics professor alluding to this same idea, you can view it here) We cannot take credit for our record advancement in certain scientific fields alone, we have been helped by people from other worlds.” – 1954, Professor Herman Oberth, NASA Space Scientist, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and aeronautics.
U.I.P Summary
And if anybody ever wants even more proof then look no further than the highly publicized case of the “Phoenix Lights” – you can read more about that here – or check out the crazy incident in Ruwa, Zimbabwe where more than 60 school children witnessed something spectacular. You can read more about that here also from our website.
There is also out now thousands upon thousands of declassified documents released pertaining to this phenomenon, as well as some remarkable statements by “people in high places.” things like this cannot EVER be ignored or shunned!
These types of amazing mass sightings should leave no doubt in readers’ minds as to the reality and seriousness/excitement of this issue, one that has been ignored and ridiculed for decades….But not anymore!
By the way don’t you think the UFO in this particular story looks a lot like the Mothership UFO in the fantastic film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (U.I.P)
The UFO from the fantastic film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
The AATIP, Targeting Pod Videos and the DOPSR Process
The AATIP, Targeting Pod Videos and the DOPSR Process
This guest article is written by Roger Glassel, a researcher and writer for the Swedish quarterly magazine UFO-Aktuellt. Roger was a member of the Roswell Slides Research Group (RSRG, who exposed the claim that two Kodachrome photographs showed a space alien from the alleged Roswell crash - proven instead to be of a child's remains on exhibition at Mesa Verde Museum). He was also a member of the Puerto Rico Research Group, focused on the Aguadilla infrared video case. Roger is from Sweden and works as an IT architect specializing in system integrations and communications.
It has now been some months since The New York Times (NYT) revealed that the US Department of Defense (DOD) had run a program called the Advanced Aerospace (sometimes; Aviation) Threat Identification Program (AATIP) - reportedly studying the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, also known as the "UFO phenomenon." Roger Glassel has started looking into the matter of the release of the targeting pod videos.
By Roger Glassel
Project Blue Book, the United States Air Force's study of Unidentified Flying Objects, was closed in 1969, and that was - the public was told - the end of the government’s interest in UFOs. As Dr. Edward U. Condon concluded at the time, further study of UFOs would have no scientific interest, and the phenomenon itself was no threat to national security. So imagine everyone's surprise when the NYT revealed such a government study was being conducted once again - a study that not only included scientific interest in the matter, but held it as national security concern. For some in the UFO community - who over the years have disagreed on these two points made by Dr. Condon - this was like winning the lottery. Almost too good to be true.
Though the Pentagon has not characterized the nature of the AATIP as a UFO study, they have confirmed the existence of the program - a program they refer to as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The videos released - that are said to be connected with the program - also conform with the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting system used in the US military’s F/A-18 dual purpose fighter craft. So the videos do appear to be genuine.
What is also interesting with this story is that a former DOD employee named Luis Elizondo, who resigned his position and joined the staff of Tom DeLonge's company To The Stars Academy of Art and Science (TTSA), has openly stated that he was the head for the AATIP. The program was reportedly contracted to the company Bigelow Aerospace, the Las Vegas company created by Robert Bigelow - a billionaire with a long-time interest in UFOs and the paranormal. Others, such as Dr. Eric Davis and Dr. Hal Puthoff, have also stated that they have worked for the program.
Although Mr. Elizondo is a new player in the game, both Dr. Davis and Dr. Puthoff are well known and have done theoretical studies for the US Government in the past - discussing subjects such as advanced propulsion (laser propulsion), wormholes, and teleportation. Also, the AATIP has been connected with the infamous Skinwalker Ranch (formerly owned by Bigelow) and studies of exotic materials, but these various associated curiosities are beyond the scope of this article. The focus here is the military targeting pod videos now made public. More specifically, examining questions about the release of the videos.
The New York Times story and all the subsequent media attention for the AATIP has been driven by the videos, which so far are the only evidence provided that the program was studying UFOs. Videos from a ATFLIR system would of course have originated from the US military, but that does not equate with them being connected to a DOD program allegedly investigating the UFO phenomenon. Also, one of the targeting pod videos referred to as FLIR1, or Tic Tac, that TTSA is connecting with the AATIP, was leaked by a Navy technician and have been available on the Internet since 2007. There could be a possibility that the other videos have been available on the Internet as well (military forums, veteran groups, interest groups, promotional videos, etcetera) and that TTSA is depicting them for something they are not. Remember that TTSA is not AATIP. Therefore, as evidence, the authenticity of the videos - both the provenance and the events they depict - need to be carefully verified. Looking into how the videos were released would be a first natural step in such verification.
Conflicting claims
A while after the first NYT story came out, another article drew my attention. It was an article written on February 17, 2018 by science writer Sarah Scoles for the online magazine Wired. In that article it is stated by Major Audricia Harris, who is a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (OSD PA), that the targeting pod videos were not approved for released by the Pentagon. She stood firm that the DOD did not release those videos.
A bit after that, on February 25, 2018, Luis Elizondo himself explained in the second hour of a radio interview on Coast to Coast AM that the targeting pod videos were prepared for release by the DOD in accordance to DoDD 5230.09 and DoDI 5230.29 by sending in the videos along with DD Form 1910 to Defense Office for Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), and that the videos were cleared for unrestricted release to the public. Mr. Elizondo also mentioned there were emails sent back and forth, so he seemed to have been involved in the process.
So now we have a firm standpoint from the Pentagon that the videos were not released by them, and detailed information from Mr. Elizondo on how the videos were released. I thought the best way to sort this out would be to contact Maj. Harris.
After reaching out by email to Maj. Harris she explained in a response to me that the DOPSR process will only render in a recommendation for releasability, and that this recommendation does not equate to approved for public release. She also told me that OSD PA is the sole release authority for DOD information, however, they have no record of a request for clearance of these videos.
Maj. Harris’ firm standpoint became even firmer. But had these videos gone through the DOPSR process as claimed? What better way to find out than to contact the Defense Office for Prepublication and Security Review - so I did.
Questions leads to a request
I directly contacted the DOPSR by the only email address I could find - their public inbox for sending in unclassified information for review. This was, as I was quickly told, not the right way to contact them. This did however take an unexpected and fortunate turn, as I was given a personal Point of Contact (POC) at the Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Staff Freedom of Information Act Office (OSD JS FOIA) by the Security and Review Specialist who answered my email. With this lead, I sent my questions on.
My POC was able to provide clarifying details and valuable advice. First, he explained to me that while Maj. Harris was correct about that the DOPSR process will only render in a recommendation for releasability, she was not correct in stating that the OSD PA is the sole release authority for DOD information. The 34 FOIA offices releases large amount of information that does not get reviewed by the PA office.
He continued to explain that almost every information request related to Mr. Elizondo has been transferred to the DIA FOIA office for their processing and direct response to the requester. But for requests regarding the DOPSR review process, that I was asking for, he said would fall under their (OSD JS FOIA office) purview. As my letter to him was worded as questions, he asked me to resubmit it, structured as a proper request for information under the Freedom of Information Act - which I did.
Besides the background story pointing out which videos I was referring to, my request was worded as following.
"Under the Freedom of Information Act, I am seeking all documents related to DOPSR's review of these videos, to include who submitted the request and the results of such review."
Review and Release
In going through this search, I found out about the different channels that information goes through when subjected for release. As I have learned, there is a review process and a release process.
The release process is divided between different release authorities. To find out from which authority information was released, you must file an FOIA request to every authority. In this instance, I am not actually interested in which authority that released them, or who initiated them for release, as I am just seeking verification that the videos came from DOD.
The review process, on the other hand, is handled by a single office, the DOPSR, and it is mandatory that information is reviewed and cleared by this office before going through the release process. So for me to understand if the videos came from DOD, I only had to file a single request to the FOIA office that the DOPSR falls under to find out who submitted them and what the result was. Or if they even went through this process.
After about a week I received the interim response with the name of the action officer assigned to my case and my case number: 18-F-0724. My request was registered March 26, 2018. Finally, the search for the provenance of the UFO videos was properly submitted and officially underway.
Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications
Going back a bit to March 21, 2018, I woke up and saw a message from my friend and fellow researcher Curt Collins, urging me to take a screenshot of a Twitter posting by Tom DeLonge. As Mr. DeLonge is a well known serial deleter of tweets, I took the screenshot and did not think much about it. After my request was registered, I thought I should have a look what the tweet was all about. In the tweet, DeLonge stated that TTSA was negotiating a deal with EarthTech to get the rights to Dr. Puthoff's laser beam energy propulsion (which I though was invented by Leik Myrabo in the 1980s, but never mind). DeLonge also seemed to insinuate that Puthoff's work on this matter was done as part of the AATIP. This drew my attention to the EarthTech website.
What was most interesting on the EarthTech website was not the things about Dr. Puthoff, but about Dr. Eric Davis, also connected with the AATIP. The site listed various publications written by him. Under "U.S. Government Program Contract Reports" he has listed six theoretical studies that he conducted for the Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Warning Office (DIA DWO) between the year 2010 and 2011, within the same time frame the AATIP was contracting studies.
Conducting a web search, combining "DWO" and the titles of the reports, I found that two of them - "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy" and "Warp Drive, Dark Energy and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions" - were available for download on the Internet.
In these two reports it is stated that, "the report is a product of a series of advanced technology reports produced under the DIA DWO Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program (AAWSA)". The content of the two reports also correlates with the content of the study topics that Dr. Davis has openly stated he wrote for the AATIP. Basically, the same content that Dr. Davis wrote for the Air Force Research Laboratory (back in 2004) that is now available for download through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC).
By searching on the AAWSA name I also found a LinkedIn profile of a person in the Nevada area that had worked for Bigelow Aerospace between 2009 and 2010. More specifically, he was employed "in a interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers studying advanced aerospace weapon system applications including lift, propulsion, control, power generation, signature reductions, materials and armament".
AAWSA, if not the same, would seem to be closely related to AATIP, so close I thought it would be worth adding it to my FOIA request about the videos. It was important to have this information added because if, and I say if, the AAWSA program turns out to be the true name of the AATIP, without it, my request might be returned with a "no records found".
I forwarded the information to my POC at the OSD JS FOIA office to be added to my request. At first, he thought I was seeking information about the DIA program itself and directed me to their FOIA office. After explaining that I only wanted to use that name as a search phrase to be added to my request, the answer from him was that the videos themselves are very specific, and the DOPSR office does not review many videos, so it will be very easy for them to identify them, with or without the added information. However, he said he would pass on the information to the action officer for her action to pass onto DOPSR.
Now starts the waiting game, and it could be a long wait. In the interim response from my action officer, it was explained that due to unusual circumstances and an extensive backlog of 2600 open cases, my request was placed in a complex processing queue. I heard that others have got the same same kind of reply when filing their requests. The majority of the other requests are however general inquiries rather than targeted inquiries, so I have some hope about this one. Realistically, I am not expecting a response any time soon. But when I receive it, I will let you all know the outcome.
Share 'em if you got 'em
It should be noted that none of the research I have done would have been necessary if both TTSA and NYT would share the release documents they say they have.
I have reached out to Leslie Kean - who was the co-author for the original NYT article about the AATIP - asking her to make the release documents public. Her answer to me was that the NYT has the documents that say that the videos was cleared for public release, but that background documents provided to the NYT by their sources are confidential until their sources say otherwise. Of course journalists have the right to protect their sources, but I told her that I did not fully understand how documents from an official release authority or review office could be considered as a source that need to be protected. Her answer was however the same.
I have also tried to reach out to TTSA asking them for the release documents. I first contacted Mr. Elizondo directly by email using an address that he left on a discussion forum, but with no success. I then contacted Dr. Garry Nolan - who I find to be both honest and sincere. He answered the he rarely interacts with TTSA and is not a representative for the company, but simply acts as an advisor. Dr. Nolan said that he have been instructed not to give out email addresses, and to direct anyone with questions to use the contact form on the TTSA website. However, he did say that he forwarded my email to relevant persons, giving them the opportunity to contact me with their reply. I did not hear from them, so I contacted TTSA through their contact form and got the response that I must contact the New York and Beverly Hills based PR company B|W|R with my questions. I sent my questions - directed to Mr. Elizondo - to the two persons provided to me, but up to this day I have not received a response of any kind from neither them nor Mr. Elizondo.
A short encore
To those of you who have followed the story up to this point - listening to me go on about these utterly boring bureaucratic procedures and wonder why it is important, I will say; Processes are to be followed. You can work pragmatically within a process, but you can not work outside of the process. These DOD processes are made for the protection of information. So if they did review these videos before their release, there are records of it. If there are no records, the DOD did not release them. If the videos was not released as claimed, that would raise serious questions about the story being told about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
Could Maj. Audricia Harris be right after all? Time will tell...
Link section
Warp Drive, Dark Energy and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, Dr. Eric Davis, DIA DWO, 2010
A new space force could be created in the US to fight the extraterrestrial wars of the future, President Donald Trump has claimed.
Legislators and military experts have envisioned a possibility of war in space for at least the past several decades.
Until recently, that issue has been cast aside as other more pressing matters - including war and terrorism - have taken centre stage.
Now, addressing the prospect of an armed encounter above the Earth appears to be an increasing priority for the world's super powers.
Russia and China are already claimed to be developing armaments that can strike in space, including missiles that can target satellites.
Trump's comments suggest America is prioritising its own offensive and defensive capabilities, to ensure its supremacy in the theatre of space conflict.
Previously revealed US space weapons include the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle and hypersonic missiles under development that could be used to strike objects in orbit.
Scroll down for video
A new space force could be created in the US to fight the extraterrestrial wars of the future, President Donald Trump has claimed. His comments suggest addressing the prospect of an armed encounter in space is an increasing priority for the world's super powers
President Trump made the comments while presenting the annual Commander-in-Chief's Trophy to the US Army's Black Knights football team at the White House.
During his speech, the Trump said that his administration is 'seriously thinking' about creating a space force as part of his efforts to build up the nation's military.
Trump listed the 'five proud branches of the United States Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Coast Guard'.
According to reports in The Times, he paused for a moment before adding: 'And we're actually thinking of a sixth, and that would be the Space Force. Does that make sense?
'Because we're getting very big in space, both militarily and for other reasons. And we are seriously thinking of the Space Force.'
This is not the first time that Trump has raised the prospect of a new Space Force, telling a crowd of Marines in March he may want to start one.
Previously revealed US space weapons include the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. This image shows The Air Force working on the reusable spacecraft after it landed at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2017
The US Air Force's unmanned X-37B space plane has flown a number of secret missions to date. Each time it has carried a mystery payload on long-duration flights in Earth orbit. Staff are seen testing the Air Force's first unmanned re-entry spacecraft in 2010
WHAT IS THE MYSTERIOUS X-37B ORBITAL TEST VEHICLE?
The US Air Force's unmanned X-37B space plane has flown a number of secret missions to date.
Each time it has carried a mystery payload on long-duration flights in Earth orbit.
The spacecraft looks similar to Nasa's space shuttle but is much smaller. The X-37B is about 29ft (8.8m) long and 9.5ft (2.9 m) tall.
Like a shuttle, X-37B is blasted into orbit by a rocket. However, it lands using a runway like a normal aircraft. The X-37B is too small to carry people onboard, but does have a cargo bay similar to that of a pickup truck, which is just large enough to carry a small satellite
It has a wingspan of just less than 15ft (4.6 m). At launch, it weighs 11,000lbs (4,990kg).
The craft is taken into orbit on a rocket but lands like the space shuttle by gliding down to Earth.
Its main mission payload is a mystery, although Nasa has revealed it has a hauled a number of materials experiments aboard into space.
Positioned in front of a Marine F/A-18 Hornet, Trump called space a 'war-fighting domain', and talked up both its military importance and the merits of private ventures.
'Space is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air, and sea,' he said on March 23, as he spoke to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, nicknamed the Red Devils, at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
'We may even have a Space Force, develop another one – Space Force,' Trump added. 'We have the Air Force, you'll have the Space Force.'
In April, a new report outlined concerns that a space war may be approaching faster than many anticipated and that world leaders are woefully unprepared.
Other potential space weapons include hypersonic missiles under development in the US, Russia and China that could be used to strike objects in orbit. This artist's impression shows Boeing's hypersonic X-51A Waverider cruise missile currently under development
WHAT ARE HYPERSONIC MISSILES AND HOW DO THEY WORK?
Aircraft and missiles are said to be hypersonic once they exceed speeds of Mach 5 and above, or five times the speed of sound.
This occurs at 1,715 metres per second (3,836mph / 6,174kmh).
The latest class of hypersonic missiles would be smaller, guided and designed to carry conventional explosives for time-sensitive, rapid response in theatre operations.
There are two kinds of approaches to solving the hypersonic challenge in missiles: 'scramjet' and 'boost glide.'
The air-breathing scramjet relies on high speed for its power.
As it accelerates, more air and fuel is pushed into the engine, allowing it to accelerate even more - to hypersonic speeds.
The boost glide model rides a reentry vehicle to extremely high altitudes, where it skips across the Earth's upper atmosphere.
Traditional ballistic missiles already travel at hypersonic speeds.
Built to carry nuclear and conventional warheads, these weapons are capable of reaching outer space in the course of their flights, but they can't manoeuvre.
The US Department of Defense warned that the US isn't ready for a space war, while Russia and China have developed technologies that could destroy satellites that are crucial for many everyday tasks, ranging from ATMs to apps like Uber Eats.
The satellites are also used for reconnaissance and guiding precision bombs, missiles and drones.
'We are now approaching a point where "Star Wars" is not just a movie,' Steve Isakowitz, CEO of think tank Aerospace Corp, told Politico at the time.
The Pentagon has already set aside billions to 'harden' its defences against anti-satellite weapons and training troops to survive in space.
Congress also floated the idea last year of a new 'Space Corps', set to be modelled after the Marines.
It would be tasked with keeping the US ahead of its superpower rivals in the event of a war.
Russia and China are already claimed to be developing armaments that can strike in space, including missiles that can target satellites
If a US satellite is blown up by enemies in a war in space, it can create thousands of piece of dangerous space that can float around forever (artists' impression)
The idea of creating the first new branch to the US military in 70 years encountered significant resistance, however, and was scrapped in December 2017.
Alleged restriction of funds to the other armed forces squashed the idea.
US Air Force chief, General David Goldfein, has also claimed space warfare is a real possibility 'within a matter of years'.
The US will need new tools, specialist training and billions of dollars in funding to prepare for combat in orbit, he has said.
General Goldfein made the comments while speaking at the Air Force Association's 34th annual Air Warfare Symposium and Technology Exposition in Orlando in February.
'[It's] time for us as a service, regardless of speciality badge, to embrace space superiority with the same passion and sense of ownership as we apply to air superiority today,' General Goldfein said at the time.
General Goldfein argues that the US Air Force is best placed to protect American interests in space.
He added: 'I believe we're going to be fighting from space in a matter of years.
'We are the service that must lead joint war fighting in this new contested domain. This is what the nation demands.'
If a conflict breaks out between major powers in the future, it could be fought in the final frontier - space, according to US Air Force Chief of Staff General David L. Goldfein (pictured)
HOW CAN WE STOP SPACE WARS?
A group of more than 40 international experts are conducting a multi-year research project that will culminate in a Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space.
MILAMOS Project is to ensure space activities are conducted in accordance with the rule of law.
This will involve a consideration of the existing international rules on outer space.
It will also involve integration with international humanitarian law and the rules prohibiting the use of force.
The drafting of the rules will involve many meetings, heated discussions and compromises.
It is envisaged that at the end of the project the applicable rules will be agreed on the basis of consensus.
The MILAMOS Project is not an effort to condone warfare in outer space.
On the contrary, it seeks to prevent armed conflict and minimise the devastating impact that space technology and military operations may have on the long-term and peaceful use of outer space.
The Outer Space Treaty, which was signed in 1967, was agreed through the United Nations, and today it remains as the 'constitution' of outer space.
The space treaty states that celestial territory is not subject to 'national appropriation' – in other words, no country can lay claim to them.
In the fifty years the treaty has existed, it has yet to be violated.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
THE 4.5 BILLION YEAR OLD FUKANG METEORITE
THE 4.5 BILLION YEAR OLD FUKANG METEORITE
Back in the year 2000, a 1,003 kilogram (2,211 lbs) meteorite was discovered near Fukang, a city located in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, China. Named the ‘Fukang meteorite‘, it was identified as a pallasite, a type of stony–iron meteorite, with striking olivine crystals throughout.
Pallasites are extremely rare even among meteorites (only about 1% of all meteorites are this type) and Fukang has been hailed as one of the greatest meteorite discoveries of the 21st century.
The Fukang pallasite is believed to originate from deep inside intact meteors created during the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago and very few specimens are thought to have survived their descent throug Earth’s atmosphere.
An anonymous group of collectors currently holds the largest portion which weighs 419.5 kg (925 pounds). In 2008 they attempted to sell it at auction at Bonham’s in New York for approximately $2 million but did not receive any biddhers. A total of 31 kilograms (68 lb) of the specimen is on deposit at University of Arizona’s Southwest Meteorite Laboratory.
SCIENTISTS PROJECT HOLOGRAMS INTO THE BRAIN TO CREATE EXPERIENCES
SCIENTISTS PROJECT HOLOGRAMS INTO THE BRAIN TO CREATE EXPERIENCES
One day soon you may be filling your lungs with crisp ocean air, your arms bathed in warm light as the sun sets over softly lapping waters and you may wonder, is this real? Or are scientists projecting holograms into my brain to create a vivid sensory experience that isn’t actually happening? A group of researchers at University of California, Berkeley are in the early stages of testing their ability to create, edit and scrub sensory experiences from our brains, both real-time and stored experiences–memories.
Using light to make us see what isn’t there.
Different sensory experiences show up in brain imaging as patterns of neurons firing in sequence. Neuroscientists are trying toreverse-engineer experiences by stimulating the neurons to excite the same neural patterns. At present, the steps to accomplish this are a little invasive. Scientists genetically modify neurons with photosensitive proteins so they can gingerly manipulate neurons using light. The process is known as optogenetics. Also, a metal head plate gets surgically implanted over the targeted area.
Then there’s the challenge of finding a way to bull’s-eye each individual, microscopic cell body without exciting neighboring neurons. Enter computer generated holography (CGH) to create three-dimensional floating light shapes. The diffracted light-forms are projected into the brain, sailing through a gossamer layer of brain tissue at the surface of the cortex and triggering just the right pattern and rhythm of neural activity to generate specific sensations and perceptions. The holograms can stimulate, edit and suppress patterns of neurons that correlate with the brain activity of actual experiences.
“The major advance is the ability to control neurons precisely in space and time,” says Nicolas Pégard, one of the first authors of a paper in Nature Neurosciencetoday. “In other words, to shoot the very specific sets of neurons you want to activate and do it at the characteristic scale and the speed at which they normally work.”
Development of the device required imagination and a confluence of emergent technologies. “This is the culmination of technologies that researchers have been working on for a while, but have been impossible to put together,” says another of the first authors, Alan Mardinly. “We solved numerous technical problems at the same time to bring it all together and finally realize the potential of this technology.”
The team published a paper last year in the journal Nature Communications, dubbing their holographic brain modulator The 3D-SHOT: a three-dimensional scanless holographic optogenetics with temporal focusing.
Illustration of NASA’s InSight quake-monitoring lander. 7Credit: NASA.
NASA is gearing up for one of its most anticipated launches of the year. On Saturday, a one-of-a-kind Mars explorer called InSight is destined to launch for the Red Planet. Its mission: to study the slight rumbles and tremors produced as the planet wobbles. Just like ‘earthquakes’, these are ‘marsquakes’ — and whatever waves the lander’s instruments will pick up might help scientists gain unprecedented insights about Mars’ interior, from its crust to its very core.
“How we get from a ball of featureless rock into a planet that may or may not support life is a key question in planetary science,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We’d like to be able to understand what happened.”
Like earthquakes, marsquakes are vibrations of the ground. However, while an earthquake is produced by the movement of tectonic plates, scientists believe that marsquakes occur when the planet cools and contracts, causing the crust to ruck up slightly. Scientists believe that all planetary bodies experience quakes, ranging from those that vibrate fast to those that rumble low. In the 1970s, NASA’s Viking lander tried to measure quakes on Mars but its instruments weren’t sensitive enough. However, during the Apollo missions, seismometers measured thousands of tiny quakes on the moon.
The new lander, called InSight, was supposed to leave for Mars two years ago but at the last minute, mission engineers found that the lander’s most crucial instrument — the vacuum-encased seismometer — had a leak that let air through. The instrument is extremely sensitive and even the slightest bit of air can ruin its measurements. The seismometer has since been fixed and, now that our planet and Mars are aligned again, it will soon launch for its mission.
Technicians inspect InSight instruments.
Credit: NASA.
Marsquakes could teach scientists a great deal about Mars’ interior, how it formed, and what kind of changes it has incurred throughout its geological history. When a quake travels through a material, its vibration changes. Therefore, the vibrations picked up by a seismometer can be decoded to reveal information about the various layers the quake has passed through. The lander is also carrying radio antennas that will help scientists estimate the size of Mars’ core. Another instrument, a nail-like device, is designed to insert itself into the ground in order to measure the planet’s internal temperature — the kind of information that can help scientists figure out what fueled Mars’ ancient volcanoes.
InSight scientists hope to record hundreds to thousands of small Martian quakes. Perhaps InSight will be able to answer some very important questions like why Earth is a habitable paradise and Mars is a cold and barren rock. So far, we’ve learned a lot about the Martian surface — now, it’s time to probe its deep interior.
Insight is set to launch on an Atlas V rocket, which will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5th at 7:05 AM ET.
In February of 2017, a team of European astronomers announced the discovery of a seven-planet system orbiting the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Aside from the fact that all seven planets were rocky, there was the added bonus of three of them orbiting within TRAPPIST-1’s habitable zone. Since that time, multiple studies have been conducted to determine whether or not any of these planets could be habitable.
In accordance with this goal, these studies have focused on whether or not these planets have atmospheres, their compositions and their interiors. One of the latest studies was conducted by two researchers from Columbia University’s Cool Worlds Laboratory, who determined that one of the TRAPPIST-1 planets (TRAPPIST-1e) has a large iron core – a finding which could have implications for this planet’s habitability.
The study – titled “TRAPPIST-1e Has a Large Iron Core“, which recently appeared online – was conducted by Gabrielle Englemenn-Suissa and David Kipping, a senior undergraduate student and an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University, respectively. For the sake of their study, Englemenn-Suissa and Kipping took advantage of recent studies that have placed constraints on the masses and radii of the TRAPPIST-1 planets.
These and other studies have benefited from the fact that TRAPPIST-1 is a seven planet system, which makes it ideally suited for exoplanet studies. As Professor Kipping told Universe Today via email:
“It’s a wonderful laboratory for exoplanetary science for three reasons. First, the system has a whopping seven transiting planets. The depth of the transits dictates the size of each planet so we can measure they sizes quite precisely. Second, the planets gravitationally interact with one another leading to variations in the times of the transits and these have been used to infer the masses of each planet, again to impressive precision. Third, the star is very small being a late M-dwarf, about an eighth the size of the Sun, and that means transits appear 8^2 = 64 times deeper than they would if the star were Sun-sized. So we have lots of things working in our favor here.”
Together, Englemann-Suissa and Kipping used mass and radius measurements of the TRAPPIST-1 planets to infer the minimum and maximum Core Radius Fraction (CRF) of each planet. This built on a study they had previously conducted (along with Jingjing Chen, a PhD candidate at Columbia University and a member of the Cool Worlds Lab) in which they developed their method for determining a planet’s CRF. As Kipping described the method:
“If you know the mass and radius very precisely, like the TRAPPIST-1 system, you can compare them to that predicted from theoretical interior structure models. The problem is that these models generally comprise of possible four layers, an iron core, a silicate mantle, a water layer and an light volatile envelope (Earth only has the first two, its atmosphere contributes negligible to mass and radius). So four unknowns and two measured quantities is in principle an unconstrained, unsolvable problem.”
This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Their study also took into account previous work by other scientists who have attempted to place constraints on the chemical composition of the TRAPPIST-1 system. In these studies, the authors assumed that the planets’ chemical compositions were connected to that of the star, which can be measured. However, Englemann-Suissa and Kipping took a more “agnostic” approach and simply considered the boundary conditions of the problem.
“We essentially say that given the mass and radius, there are no models with cores smaller than X that can possibly explain the observed mass and radius,” he said. “The core might be bigger than X but has to be at least X since no theoretical models could explain it otherwise. Here, X would therefore correspond to what we could call the minimum core radius fraction. We then play the same game for the maximum limit.”
What they determined was that the minimum core size of six of the TRAPPIST-1 planets was essentially zero. This means that their compositions could be explained without necessarily having an iron core – for instance, a pure silicate mantle could be all that’s there. But in the case of TRAPPIST-1e, they found that its core must comprise at least 50% of the planet by radius, and at most, 78%.
Compare this to Earth, where the solid inner core of iron and nickel and a liquid outer core of a molten iron-nickel alloy comprise 55% of the planet’s radius. Between the upper and lower limit of TRAPPIST-1e’s CRF, they concluded that it must have a dense core, one which is likely comparable to Earth. This finding could mean that of all the TRAPPIST-1 planets, e is the most “Earth-like” and likely to have a protective magnetosphere.
As Kipping indicated, this could have immense implications when it comes to the hunt for habitable exoplanets, and might push TRAPPIST-1e to the top of the list:
“This gets me more excited about TRAPPIST-1e in particular. That planet is a tad smaller than the Earth, sits right in the habitable-zone and now we know has a large iron core like the Earth. We also know it does not possess a light volatile envelope thanks to other measurements. Further, TRAPPIST-1 appears to be a quieter star than Proxima so I’m much more optimistic about TRAPPIST-1e as potential biosphere than Proxima b right now.”
This is certainly good news in light of recent studies that have indicated that Proxima b is not likely to be habitable. Between its star emitting powerful flares that can be seen by the naked eye to the likelihood that an atmosphereand liquid water would not survive long on its surface, the closest exoplanet to our Solar System is currently not considered a good candidate for finding a habitable world or extra-terrestrial life.
In recent years, Kipping and his colleagues have also dedicated themselves and the Cool Worlds Laboratory to the study of possible exoplanets around Proxima Centauri. Using the Canadian Space Agency’s Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars (MOST) satellite, Kipping and his colleagues monitored Proxima Centauri in May of 2014 and again in May of 2015 to look for signs of transiting planets.
While the discovery of Proxima b was ultimately made by astronomers at the ESO using the Radial Velocity Method, this campaign was significant in drawing attention to the likelihood of finding terrestrial, potentially-habitable planets around nearby M-type (red dwarf) stars. In the future, Kipping and his team also hope to conduct studies of Proxima b to determine if it has an atmosphere and determine what its CRF could be.
Once again, it appears that one of the many rocky planets orbiting a red dwarf star (and which is closer to Earth) might just be a prime candidate for habitability studies! Future surveys, which will benefit from the introduction of next-generation telescopes (like the James Webb Space Telescope) will no doubt reveal more about this system and any potentially habitable worlds it has.
Het universum is een hologram. Dit is de allerlaatste theorie van Stephen Hawking
Het universum is een hologram. Dit is de allerlaatste theorie van Stephen Hawking
Vlak voor zijn dood heeft Stephen Hawking zijn laatste theorie gepresenteerd: dat het universum een hologram is.
De kosmoloog, die op 14 maart kwam te overlijden, schrijft over zijn theorie in een nieuw artikel dat is gepubliceerd in het Journal of High Energy Physics.
Samen met zijn Belgische collega professor Thomas Hertog werkte professor Hawking zijn ideeën over een holografische realiteit uit.
Verbijsterend
De nieuwe theorie stelt dat het universum een gigantisch en complex hologram is. Met andere woorden: de realiteit is een illusie en de fysieke wereld om ons heen wordt geprojecteerd door middel van informatie die is opgeslagen op een plat tweedimensionaal oppervlak.
Professor Hertog, verbonden aan de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, lichtte toe dat het begrip holografie de afgelopen jaren is voortgekomen uit de snaartheorie, die nog niet volledig begrepen wordt en die verbijsterend is.
Holografische wijze
De nieuwe theorie suggereert dat tijd en ‘het begin’ van het universum op holografische wijze zijn ontstaan vanuit een onbekende staat buiten de oerknal.
Hawking en Hertog stellen dat het universum redelijk gelijkmatig en ook eindig is. Dat betekent niet dat er één enkel, uniek heelal is, maar zij suggereren wel dat het aantal mogelijke universa beperkt is.
Wat er buiten het eindige heelal te vinden is, laten ze in het midden.
On January 6, 2016 I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “UFO TV: A Show Worth Watching.” While I’m not a fan of the likes of Star Wars, Star Trek, etc., etc., I do like some sci-fi, mainly when it’s got a lot of conspiracy attached to it. My article was focused on what is without doubt one of my all-time favorite shows, The Invaders, which ran from 1967 to 1968. It starred actor Roy Thinnes as David Vincent, a man who – after a UFO encounter in the dead of night – tries to warn the world of an alien menace and to wipe out the extraterrestrial presence in our midst. I said in that article:
“A great combination of the best parts of The Fugitive, The Twilight Zone, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Invaders was a show years (actually, decades) ahead of its time. It easily eclipsed the simplistic, mindless and cheap to make, “shoot ’em up”-style science-fiction output that seemed (and still seems) so popular on certain TV channels. It oozed a high degree of menace, a sinister atmosphere, thought-provoking plot lines, and – at the heart of it all – human-looking hostile aliens bent upon the infiltration of our society and the ultimate destruction of the Human Race.
“I recall first watching the show as a young kid in the mid-1970s [thinking back, it may have been a bit later], utterly enthralled by David Vincent’s near-solitary quest to expose to the world the dark truth of the alien threat among us – while all the time pursued by definitive Men in Black-style extraterrestrial assassins. I thought: this is great! The show was then repeated some time in my teens, and prior to purchasing the DVD set a couple of years ago, I was probably in my late-twenties when I last watched the show. And, I’m pleased to say that The Invaders still stands the test of time, now close to 50 years after it first aired (the show ran for two-seasons: from January 1967 to March 1968).”
Roy Thinnes continued to make supernaturally-themed shows, such as The Horror at 37,000 Feet and Satan’s School for Girls. And, then, there’s The Norliss Tapes. Like the two aforementioned movies, The Norliss Tapes was also made in 1973. And, it was largely brought to life on American television by Dan Curtis – the man behind The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler (both starring Darren McGavin as journalist Carl Kolchak) and Dark Shadows.
The Norliss Tapes – a pilot for a show that never took off – is, in many ways, very much like The Invaders (and The Night Stalker, too). In The Invaders, Roy Thinnes was the alien-hunting David Vincent. In The Norliss Tapes, he was David Norliss, an author investigating the world of the supernatural. The approach was actually quite a good one. The plan is for Norliss to write a book that debunks paranormal phenomena. But, he gets far more than he bargained for and admits to being too frightened to write the book. So, instead, Norliss chronicles each adventure on a series of cassette tapes, hence the title of the show. Of course, because the TV movie didn’t get picked up as a series, we only get to see, and hear, what went on with the first case.
In the pilot, Norliss goes missing from his home – after investigating a strange affair involving a man back from the grave and a demon called Sargoth. It’s up to a friend and colleague, Sanford Evans (actor Don Porter), to go through the first tape and try and figure out what has led to Norliss’ disappearance. It’s easy to see Dan Curtis’ touch in all of this. And, it’s safe to say, if you are a fan of the exploits of Carl Kolchak, you’ll enjoy this too. Co-starring Angie Dickinson, The Norliss Tapes is a show I like a lot. I guess, that’s because I first watched it as an excited kid, as I did with the likes of other 1970s-era movies, such as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Gargoyles, Race with the Devil, Something Evil, and the TV mini-series, Salem’s Lot – all of which I still watch a couple of times a year. A nostalgia kick? For sure, but they’re good too!
You can find The Norliss Tapes on DVD, but the prices are pretty outrageous, and most of the available copies are used. The good news, though, is that you can watch the whole thing on YouTube (see above). Maybe, one day, The Norliss Tapes will be resurrected with a new cast. But, this time around, cassette tapes ain’t gonna cut it!
Is a new type of UFO appearing across the globe? Last month, Mysterious Universe reported on a floating “humanoid” UFO seen in Brazil, that had strange similarities to other “humanoid” UFO’s filmed and photographed in different parts of the world. A new video has just surfaced, this time in Houston, Texas, that shows a ‘floating tower’ shaped UFO in steady flight across the night sky. While there is no mention of a humanoid nature to this UFO in the video, the shape is undeniably similar.
The video, as reported by the Daily Star, was shared to MUFONand picked up by the YouTube channel TexasUFOs. It shows a shape longer than it is wide, floating perpendicular to the ground. It moves at a constant, steady rate. The object doesn’t seem to be making any sound, but it is hard to tell over the ambient noise with no knowledge of distance from the camera. According to the Star, the witness described the UFO like this:
Object was moving north-northwest and was keeping the same elevation and didn’t move like balloons.
Much larger, vertical structure like a floating tower with a pointed tip at the top.
Some comments suggested that the object is a drone carrying some sort of “contraption”, though what that could be is hard to say. The Daily Star headline suggests that it’s some sort of top secret military drone. Other than YouTube comments, however, there doesn’t seem to be any base for those claims.
Pareidolia is the recognizing of familiar patterns, like a humanoid shape, where they’re not. Rorshach inkblot tests are a great example.
A similar sighting was also reported earlier in April, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Filmed on a beach, the video shows another ‘floating tower’ or ‘humanoid’ UFO hovering in the sky. When compared with the Brazil ‘humanoid’ case or the Sydneyand Abu Dhabi cases it’s easy to see the similarities between these and the two recent sightings in the USA. It’s impossible to say with any certainty what these objects are. The ‘humanoid’ shape is almost certainly a case of pareidolia, but because of that it’s even easier to see the similarities.
Certainly we can say that, in the last 12 months, there have been at least five sightings of UFOs that share a strange tower shape. There have been comparisons drawn between these and the fabled “Black Knight” satellite of UFO lore. We have to be careful, however. As our drone technology increases, it will become increasingly more common to see unidentified things in the sky, and just as there’s a divide between interpreting classic flying saucer UFOs as either alien spaceships or top-secret military craft, so too will there be a divide between seeing UFOs like these as mysterious and unexplained or as previously unseen drones, either military or civilian.
The Black Knight satellite picture that was captured by NASA
Then there’s that supremely strange possibility that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, it changes how it presents itself based on the culture and expectations of the present day, demons and fairies become little green men, become grays, become floating humanoids. Maybe our species will always see strange things in the sky, ever slightly out of the reach of explanation.
Recently, a group of planetary scientists announced that they intend to save the world. However, their focus wasn’t on concerns over climate change, nor the perils of mutually assured self-destruction at the hands of nuclear devices… their concern has to do with a far less easily predictable terror: catastrophic asteroid impacts.
Perhaps most chilling of all is that the team of scientists, working together with former astronauts, warn of serious gaps in our current defensive strategies that would attempt to offset such a threat, and warn that as things currently stand, Earth “will be hit.”
Earth has a long history of run-ins with massive space rocks. The geological record shows us today not only that massive impacts with space objects have occurred, but also that mass extinctions have been associated with them, as evidenced by the extinction of dinosaurs coinciding with an asteroid impact nearly 66 million years ago. Known today as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K–T) extinction, this event resulted in die-offs of nearly 75% of all plant and animal species existent on Earth at the time.
Enter the B612 Foundation, whose focus is assessing and planning for the eventual threat of asteroid impact. The group is comprised of former astronaut Ed Lu, along with his colleague Rusty Schweickart, as well as a number of scientists and others with relevant professional backgrounds. Danica Remy, president of the B612 organization, is also head of the organization’s Asteroid Institute program.
New Zealand Herald reports that “NASA was directed by Congress in 2005 to find 90 percent of asteroids that were at least 140m in diameter and has since determined that, of those so far observed, none pose an immediate threat.” However, only several tens of thousand asteroids are presently being tracked around Earth, while millions of others exist that aren’t presently the subject of any tracking or monitoring.
Experts say that Earth might be able to successfully deflect or break apart a significantly large asteroid with nuclear weapons, or in some cases using other systems that would include spacecraft to deflect or remove the object from Earth’s path or even a system of powerful lasers to neutralize the threat.
According to B612 President Remy, it’s not a matter of whether we’ll be hit, noting that, “It’s 100 percent certain we’ll be hit, but we’re not 100 percent certain when.”
There is some evidence that suggests a similar event may have occurred more recently, though on a far smaller scale. In 2017, a paper titled “Widespread platinum anomaly documented at the Younger Dryas onset in North American sedimentary sequences,” examined deposits where concentrations of rare-earth elements were documented along the Younger Dryas boundary, which dates to roughly 12,800 years BP. The presence of an unusual platinum spike is similar to an iridium anomaly found along the Cretaceous boundary; platinum, iridium, and certain other elements, while uncommon here on Earth, are more abundant in asteroids. Hence, the paper’s authors argue that this could indicate an extraterrestrial source for the platinum, consistent with an impact. While the impact theory of the Younger Dryas event 12,900 years BP remains controversial, the accumulation of supporting data in recent years does lend itself to the theory’s credibility.
Aerial view of Pingualuit crater in Nunavik, northern Quebec, Canada.
Other notable examples in modern times include the famous Tunguska incident of 1908, where what is believed to have been a massive space rock exploded in midair over Siberia. Even without a direct impact, the resulting blast over the Siberian tundra leveled trees over an area spanning more than 750 miles, which would easily have decimated any major population center.
If what history has shown is any indication, the threat presented by asteroid impacts is all-too-real. The widespread dangers associated with such an event are justifiable grounds for raised awareness and a renewed focus, as far as how catastrophic effects associated with such an impact might be mitigated. The future of humanity–and all life on Earth–may depend on it.
The only thing bigger than this news would be that Stephen Hawking recorded one last appearance on “The Big Bang Theory,” but a paper on the multiverse written and finished just weeks before his passing qualifies as a close second.
“The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude of different geometries of the threshold surface in the no-boundary state. Its local and global behavior in dual toy models shows that the amplitude is low for surfaces which are not nearly conformal to the round three-sphere and essentially zero for surfaces with negative curvature. Based on this we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth.”
That’s the abstract from “A smooth exit from eternal inflation?”, a paper authored by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog and published this week in the Journal of High-Energy Physics. It attempts to resolve a complicated conundrum of Hawking’s own creation – the possible existence of an infinite number of universes. This idea – named the Hartle-Hawking theory after Hawking and his previous partner-in-multiverses, physicist James Hartle – messes with the idea of parallel universes by proposing that other universes are far different than our own, with some being similar variations with minor alterations in developmental paths while other looking nothing like ours – no planets, no creatures, etc. While that sounds like an infinite number of fun places to visit, it implies that each has its own laws of physics, which makes it impossible to predict what universal variation we live in.
“Neither Stephen nor I were happy with that scenario.”
Or as Hawking more poetically put it:
“The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes separated by an inflating ocean.”
Thomas Hertog told the BBC that this is a mess which only the brain of Stephen Hawking could get us out of. Even so, it took both of them 20 years of work and the development of new mathematical techniques from string theory to reach their conclusion that there exists a finite number of universes and they all share the same laws of physics. That would eliminate the previous idea of “eternal inflation” mentioned in the paper’s title, which theorized that the real big bang was followed by an exponential expansion of space (cosmic inflation) into an infinite number of unique “pocket” universes – an inflation that occurred a mere seconds after the Big Bang, was rapid at first and now slowly and infinitely continues.
This may not be a big deal to you, but Hertog points out that it will make the work of physicists much easier by explaining why our universe, despite pockets of chaos (we’re looking at you, Washington), is surprisingly orderly.
“This paper takes one step towards explaining that mysterious fine tuning. It reduces the multiverse down to a more manageable set of universes which all look alike. Stephen would say that, theoretically, it’s almost like the universe had to be like this. It gives us hope that we can arrive at a fully predictive framework of cosmology.”
It sure would be nice to see Stephen saying it on an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” called “The Eternal Inflation” and watch Sheldon’s head explode from the inflation one more time.
I found this black dome city on one of Jupiters moons today. Its located on the moon Ganymede and is called Khensu crater, but clearly it is not a crater, but a semi-transparent domed city. Much like the black eyelids of the grey aliens, this material is made this way to allow some light to pass through, but to filter dangerous radiation from the sun and universe. Also, it may have been created by the greys themselves.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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