Is this the crappiest government cover-up ever?

Jordan Pearson

Images: Shutterstock. Composition: Author

Let’s get the sordid details out of the way.

On May 9, Susan Allan of Kelowna, British Columbia, was driving home with her son after having lunch with her mother in nearby Peachland. The Weather Network’s historical records say that it was a mild 18 C (64 F) that day. While stopped at a red light near a local golf course Allan happened to look up through her car’s open sunroof. This, she and her boy would realize moments later, was a very bad and very smelly mistake.

Allan and her son were inundated with feces that she believes fell from a plane. The material was cold to the touch, blue-brown in colour, grainy, and smelled of chlorine and feces, “Like a clean poop smell if that’s possible,” Allan told me.

The human waste on Susan Allan’s car

Courtesy of Susan Allan

“I’m telling you: When this hit our vehicle, there was so much that it felt like a whole pile of mud falling from the sky,” Allan recounted over the phone. “You could see it hitting the vehicle. And when it was hitting our faces, the first thing my son said to me was that it felt freezing cold and that it smelled like, pardon the pun, shit.”

“My son threw up, and we had so much in our faces,” she continued. “Both of us, our faces were covered in poop.” Her eyes burned immediately, she told me, and she drove a couple blocks to a car wash to get hosed down. Allan sent me a photo of a signed letter that she said came from her doctor, which stated that she had conjunctivitis in both eyes—that is, a double serving of pink eye.

Allan’s story is not unique in Canada. This year alone, there have been well over a dozen reported cases of poop mysteriously falling from the sky, and not just in British Columbia. On Wednesday, the CBC reported that a family in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, was sitting out on their deck when they and their home were sprayed with poop from above.

“I believe that this is a cover-up by the government"

Transport Canada, the government department that oversees federal transportation policy and regulations, has received 18 reports of people or their vehicles being struck by "a substance" from above and has investigated all of them, a spokesperson told me, including Allan’s.

Allan received an apology from Transport Canada after she reported the incident in early May (“I’m truly sorry that this happened,” a spokesperson told Allan in an email shared with Motherboard), but no answers for what rained down on her that day.

There has been no explanation, official or otherwise, for the seemingly random sprayings. The intuitive answer to this puzzle is that the poop is coming from airplanes flying overhead, a phenomenon known as “blue ice”—named for the colour of the disinfectant that airplane bathrooms use—as Allan believes.

Susan Allan was hit by the debris as she was sat in the car with her son

(Picture: Castanet News)

She said the substance felt cold, smelt like chlorine and poo, and was a blue-brown colour

(Picture: Castanet News)

But Transport Canada says none of the 18 cases were aviation-related. “The department’s review has concluded that these incidents do not meet the description of blue ice and are therefore not aviation-related (i.e. the substance did not come from passing aircraft),” a Transport Canada spokesperson wrote me in an email.

Allan, who told me that she has spends a lot of time researching her incident—looking up flight patterns and other victims on social media, for example, and now she is seeking a private investigator. She does not believe Transport Canada’s assessment. “I believe that this is a cover-up by the government,” she said.

Blue ice gets its name from the blue disinfectant that’s added to human waste in airplane bathrooms. Waste from airplane passengers is supposed to be safely locked away in the air and only disposed of by ground crews, but mistakes happen.

“Blue ice incidents occur when the aircraft lavatory servicing hatch is not correctly closed and locked,” Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, wrote me in an email. “Employees are trained in the proper procedures, and may also be provided with checklists, but sometimes the doors are not correctly closed and locked.”

Susan reportedly wants her car to be cleaned by Transport Canada because it still smells like poo

(Picture: Castanet News)

Transport Canada also admits that blue ice incidents are possible, but noted they are uncommon.

“In rare cases, malfunctions can cause leakage from the holding tank,” a spokesperson wrote me in an email. “At high altitudes (low temperatures), this leakage could freeze on the outside of an aircraft. As the aircraft descends, temperatures rise and the blue ice melts; pieces may detach themselves from the aircraft. These pieces of blue ice will either melt or remain in their solid state before hitting the ground.”

• Read More: The Canadian Military Is Investigating a Mysterious Noise In the Arctic

Why don't Allan’s story and the many others that have been reported in the media meet Transport Canada’s description of a blue ice incident? The department has only said that after reviewing the reported details, assessing local radar, and following up with local pilots and airports, it concluded that they “do not meet the description of blue ice.” A department spokesperson added in an email, “Blue ice incidents are very rare and distinct due to their blue colour.”

If a correct shade of blue is the issue, one expert that I spoke to wasn’t convinced. “Transport Canada is dismissing the idea that an aircraft is involved, largely based on the absence of the blue-tinged solution used in privies,” Robert Young, an associate professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of British Columbia, said in an email. “I wonder though, if a malfunctioning system could also be cutting off the supply of the solution.”

If you take Transport Canada at its word, another, possibly even more complicated question arises: If planes aren’t spraying swaths of the country with flecks of poop, well, what is?

Diligent scientific work is needed to determine the real source of the feces falling from the sky, Young said. In the spirit of scientific inquiry and keeping an open mind, samples need to be collected and the DNA analyzed and compared against different species. It could be birds, Young suggested.

“Different species have different poop compositions; for example, Canada geese leave semi-solid remains, but I think eagles, osprey, and herons have similar diets that could lead to similar waste discharges,” he wrote me in an email.

The bird theory was also floated by an employee at an appliance store in Kelowna that was sprayed with material from above in May. When I spoke to them over the phone, they requested that the business name be kept anonymous so as not to impact business due to association with this story.

“What I have is marks on the side of the building,” the employee said. “I don’t know what they’re from. I can absolutely attest to the fact that there’s funny-looking marks on the side of the building coming from above, but I don’t know more than that."

“We had a discussion with one of the other tenants in the area, and the thought was maybe it’s geese,” the employee told me, describing the marks as being "sort of a browny colour."

Allan doesn’t buy that theory. “To say that there are 30 or 40 birds that all poop at the same moment, and they’ve done it a dozen other times? And it’s a bluish grey? Their poop is white," she told me.

To get a better handle on the bird theory’s plausibility, I reached out to Peter Arcese, a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Arcese leads a lab that studies the evolution of small populations and the indirect effects of humans on the conservation of birds and other animal species.

“It is hard to see what the volume was, but given the descriptions, hard to believe birds were involved,” Arcese wrote me in an email. “Geese eat grass for the most part; fish-eating birds do stink, but hard to imagine a formation of them given the volume implied.”

Transport Canada’s denial that planes were involved in Allan’s incident and others has made the experience more emotionally taxing for her, as she remains convinced that it was a plane.

“How can I prove that it actually happened?” Allan told me. “I’m fighting against the government, and chances are that I’m not going to get anywhere because it is the government; that’s the way I look at it.”

Poop is still falling from the sky in Canada

It’s unlikely that Allan, or anybody else, will get answers from Transport Canada any time soon. When asked about the department’s investigation procedure for these complaints, or if it could go into more detail about the reasoning for its conclusion, a spokesperson politely told me that Transport Canada is not offering any more comments on the matter.

Poop is still falling from the sky in Canada, as the recent incident in Yellowknife illustrates, and Susan Allan isn’t giving up. 

• Listen to our podcast about the world’s greatest mysteries that were solved by science.

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04-07-2018 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

Hills abduction: what's behind Zeta Reticuli case

Written by Luca Praderio

Tags: Unsolved mysteries, Alien abductions, Aliens

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04-07-2018 om 16:43 geschreven door peter  

10 Amazing Technologies Used By Ancient Civilizations That Were Ahead Of Their Time

Ancient civilizations had access to technology that should never have existed at that time.

Discoveries revealed the ancients Romans, Greeks along with the Egyptians had technology allowing them to accomplish the building of monuments and buildings that should not have been possible for them to accomplish.

1. Persian Engineers Were Able to Store Ice in the Desert during summer in 400 B.C

People think of freezers being something of a modern technology that allows homes to store food for some time. However, crude forms of freezers existed in 400 B.C as Persians brought ice down from the mountain regions then stored it in a “Yakhchal”, an ice pit.

The ice pit was a large dome the Persian people made from mud bricks about 60 feet tall. Under the dome was a space for excess storage about 5, 00 cubic meters. This space has a wind catch, which was made up of many wind catchers, these helped to bring down the temperature to ensure the levels remained frigid in the summer. They were designed with two meter thick walls, with the walls being heat resistant thanks to them having mortar made from clay, sand, goat hair, ash and egg whites, mixed in specific amounts. Any ice that did melt was captured in a trench at the bottom where it would freeze up again during the cold winter nights.

2. The Archimedes Screw

The Archimedes Screw was designed to be used for irrigation, featuring a large screw inside a pipe that is hollow. This simple design was operated by hand during ancient times then powered by wind later on. This is technology that is still in use today; however, today a motor is used to power the machine. When the shaft turns the bottom of the device takes water up inside the pipe, which is pushed to the top of the screw thanks to the helicoid rotating, while the water poured out of the end of the device.

3. Ancient Mexican Masonry Technology for Building Roof Domes with Only a Trowel

Masonries in Tequisquiapan in Mexico are known as “bovederos”, they are able to use just a trowel to build roof domes along with vaults. They are able to do so without using any form of support in an act that defies gravity. The masons do not use ceiling mounts or formworks, with it being a skill and technology that has been passed throughout generations, which is still used today.

4. Ramps Were Invented By Ancient Egyptians for Construction

The building of the ancient pyramids is something that has always intrigued many people. How did they get the huge blocks of stone up to the top of the structures? It is thought that the Egyptian people were among the first to use ramps while constructing the pyramids. They found they could make an inclined plane that allowed them to overcome resistance. The Egyptian people were well ahead of their time in construction.

5. The Greeks Invented the Antikythera Mechanism – A 2,000-Year-Old Computer

Many say IBM invented the first personal computer; others suggest it was Bill Wozniak from Apple. However, the Greeks actually invented the Antikythera mechanism, which was essentially the first computer, 2,000 years old. The computer was used to predict planets and stars along with their position within the universe depending on the month.

The old computer was found by divers searching a shipwreck off the coast of a Greek Island. They found a strange item of gears in brass along with dials on something resembling a mantel clock. A detailed analysis of the device was finally made in 1959 by Derek J. de Solla Price, he said: “The mechanism is like a great astronomical clock … or like a modern analog computer which uses mechanical parts to save tedious calculation.”

6. The Lycurgus Cup

Nanotechnology actually dates back to 1,600 years when artisans in Rome impregnated glass used in the Lycurgus Cup with particles of silver and gold of only 50 nanometres in diameter. The cup was something that scientists puzzled about for many decades with the mystery not solved until 1990 when particles of just one-thousandth the size of a salt grain were found. The cup might have been the first example of a pregnancy test as when the different liquid was poured into it electrons behaved differently, changing in color.

7. A Programmable Robot Was Invented By Heron of Alexandria

Heron of Alexandria devised creations that blew the mind of people. It is said he created the first programmable robot, along with the vending machine, force pump, fountain, and syringe, to name just a few. He constructed a mechanical device that was used to entertain people, with it being able to play for around ten minutes, taking power from a unique system of knots, ropes, along with simple machines. It was operated by a cogwheel that rotated in a cylindrical shape.

8. The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum Built In Malta With Incredible Acoustic Properties

An underground burial chamber was built by the people of Malta and was given the name “Hal Saflieni Hypogeum”. The structure consisted of a huge network of corridors along with cavities, with it having unique acoustic properties that were amazing thanks to a chamber called the Oracle Chamber. This chamber magnified sound a hundred times, possibly being the first loudspeaker.

9. Romans Invented Concrete More Durable and Environmental Friendly Than Todays

2,000 years ago Romans invented concrete with it being more durable and environmentally friendly than the concrete of today. Structures built using the concrete have remained standing for more than 2,000 years.

10. Tough Damascus Steel Made by the Crusaders

Damascus steel made by crusaders has a reputation for being tough, while the blades cut through a hair that was dropped across it. The steel became legendary when the Crusaders made their way to the Middle East during the 11th century. The blades were so sharp they could split a feather that had been thrown in mid-air. They were distinguished by the damask pattern embedded into their blades.

READ NEXT

• Humans and Dinosaurs Lived Side-by-Side Evidence Suggests

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04-07-2018 om 01:52 geschreven door peter  

Ex-NASA physics professor claims 'many governments' have covered up alien encounters and says humanity must 'face the possibility' UFO sightings really ARE alien craft

• A physics professor from University at Albany, State University of New York and former NASA researcher believes there is 'plenty of evidence to support UFOs'
• He believes skepticism around UFOs prevents serious scientific research
• Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008 

By KEVIN KNUTH FOR THE CONVERSATION

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. 

To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. 

On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying. 

Scroll down for video 

A 1990 picture of a 'UFO' taken in Wallonia, Belgium. A physics professor from University at Albany, State University of New York and former NASA researcher believes there is 'plenty of evidence to support UFOs'

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. 

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. 

But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. 

In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. 

A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. 

At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders reaches to a question about UFOs in the White House Press Briefing Room in Washington, DC, USA 19 December 2017. The question was in response to the Pentagon's secret UFO program, recently revealed in the New York Times

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. 

I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there's plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. 

In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, 'Where is everybody?' 

He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. 

While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions, Knuth claims.

Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. 

Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.

With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. 

Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? 

This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.

Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' 

The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. 

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. 

A black and white colored video from a 2004 encounter shows fighter jets closing in on an unidentified object (circled red) before it quickly accelerates out of sight

But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.

When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. 

UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.

While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. 

A declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil. Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008

WHAT ARE SOME REPORTED UFO SIGHTINGS?

Among the sightings were reports from pilots of two U.S. Navy Super Hornet fighters who spotted a UFO on a training mission.

They were 100 miles from San Diego in the Pacific when a call on their radios asked if they were carrying weapons.

The unusual request, that day in 2004, came from a naval cruiser, the Princeton, that had spent two weeks tracking unidentified aircraft.

Commanders David Fravor and Jim Slaight had only dummy missiles, but were directed to investigate objects that appeared suddenly at an altitude of 80,000ft, then plunged towards the sea. 

Hovering erratically 50ft above that spot was some sort of flying craft, around 40ft long, oval-shaped and whitish.

As the pilot descended towards it, it rose to meet him, but suddenly peeled away at an immense speed that he admits left him feeling 'pretty weirded out'. 

The craft 'had no plumes, wings or rotors' but, seemingly travelling at a mile a second, easily outran America's fastest military jets.None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

And no aliens have visited Earth.

Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. 

UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.

I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. 

A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. 

In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.

The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can't possibly be true. 

But there are credible witnesses and encounters.

I am often asked by friends and colleagues, 'Why don't astronomers see UFOs?' The fact is that they do. 

In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. 

He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.

As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock's respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. 

More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.

Pictured: An example of a 'UFO' triangle formation that the UK government investigated as part of its report into alien sightings

UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope's field of view. 

Further sightings are documented in the book 'Wonders in the Sky,' in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.

Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. 

Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.

The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. 

The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. 

They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. 

WHAT MAKES SOMEONE BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES?

Over the course of three online-based studies, researchers at the University of Kent showed strong links between the belief in conspiracy theories and certain psychological traits.

Narcissism and self-esteem levels have a large impact on a persons belief in conspiracy theories.  

The results showed that people who rated highly on the narcissism scale and who had low self-esteem were more likely to be conspiracy believers.

However, while low self-esteem, narcissism and belief in conspiracies are strongly linked, it is not clear that one - or a combination - causes the other.

But it hints at an interesting new angle to the world of conspiracy and those who reinforce belief. 

There are widely believed to be three main reasons as to why people believe in conspiracy theories. 

• The desire for understanding and certainty - Seeking explanations for events is a natural human desire.
• The desire for control and security - Conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security.
• The desire to maintain a positive self-image - People who feel socially marginalised are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and it gives them a sense of worth in the UFO community.

These three things tie in with the previously stated qualities and combine to create an avid conspiracy theorist. 

Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call 'CIA drones' which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. 

Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.

In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. 

Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. 

Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. 

In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. 

Pictured: A 1948 Top Secret US Air Force UFO extraterrestrial document. In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs

While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: 'Disclosure has happened. … I've got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who've come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?'

There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. 

While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.

Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. 

This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. 

If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. 

Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.

• Kevin Knuth, Associate Professor of Physics, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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04-07-2018 om 01:32 geschreven door peter  

Uranus may have collided with a cosmic body twice the size of Earth, explaining its unusual tilt

BY TIBI PUIU 

A cataclysmic collision with an enormous cosmic body twice the size of Earth may have caused Uranus to tilt and could explain its freezing temperatures.

The collision with Uranus of a massive object twice the size of Earth caused the planet’s unusual spin.

Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University.

Uranus’ spins on its side, its axis pointing almost at right angles relative to all the other planets in our solar system. This behavior suggests that the planet almost certainly got knocked over by some giant impact, so the real questions astronomers have been asking are how all of this panned out and how else such a violent impact affected the planet.

Jacob Kegerreis and colleagues at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology performed over 50 different high-resolution computer simulations of massive collisions with the gas giant in order to answer these questions.

The conditions that lead to outcomes that most closely resemble what Uranus is doing right now suggest that the planet was most likely impacted by a young proto-planet mode of rock and ice during the solar system’s chaotic formation about 4 billion years ago. Since Uranus is so massive — it has about 14 times the mass of Earth and is around four times larger in radius — whatever hit the planet was huge, and scientists think it used to be between two and three Earth-masses.

According to the same simulations, the impact could have also released debris that formed a thin shell around the edge of the planet’s ice layer, trapping heat emanating from the planet’s core. This can partly explain Uranus’ ungodly cold temperature in the outer atmosphere, which averages around -216 degrees Celsius (-357 degrees Fahrenheit). Some of Uranus’ 27 moons — including 13 so-called ‘inner moons’ — might have formed as a result of the spewed debris.

“Our findings confirm that the most likely outcome was that the young Uranus was involved in a cataclysmic collision with an object twice the mass of Earth, if not larger, knocking it on to its side and setting in process the events that helped create the planet we see today,” Kegerreis said in a statement.

The collision wasn’t head-on. The cosmic body grazed Uranus instead, allowing the planet to retain the majority of its atmosphere. However, it was enough to affect the planet’s tilt.

2004 infrared composite image of the two hemispheres of Uranus obtained with Keck Telescope adaptive optics. The planet is tilted at almost a 90-degree angle with respect to the other planets in the solar system.

Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory.

The impact could have created molten ice and lopsided lumps of rock inside the planet, explaining not only Uranus’ excentric tilt but also its off-center magnetic field.

Such planetary collisions, dramatic as they may sound, used to be quite common in the early solar system. Earth’s moon, for instance, is thought to have formed following a violent impact with a Mars-sized body.

Besides helping astronomers better their understanding of Uranus, the new study might also offer valuable clues as to how planets outside the solar system — called exoplanets — form and evolve.

The findings appeared in the Astrophysical Journal. 

Uranus collision with huge cosmic body twice size of Earth (simulation)

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04-07-2018 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

Most objects in the asteroid belt come from a handful of wrecked ancient planets

BY TIBI PUIU 

Most people think of asteroids as scary, cold, and lifeless blobs of rock hurtling around the solar system. That’s a pretty accurate description, but that doesn’t mean that asteroids don’t get to have families. According to a new study, 85% of all objects in the asteroid belt can trace their origin to five or six planetoids (small planets) that turned to smithereens in the early days of the solar system. Accordingly, there are five to six families of asteroids tracing their lineage back to these larger parent bodies.

Illustration of an asteroid belt. Credit: NASA.

About four to five billion years ago, the solar system was a chaotic, crowded mess. Many of today’s planets had yet to form in their current configuration and collisions between massive planetary bodies were quite routine. Eventually, all this colliding gave rise to many of the solar system’s moons and to the countless asteroids that litter the outskirts of the system. For instance, the main asteroid belt — located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter — is estimated to contain millions of objects, although only hundreds of thousands have actually been observed.

While these parent bodies fragmented into thousands of smaller bits and pieces, it is possible to piece them back together based on their trajectories. In 1918, Japanese astronomer Kiyotsugu Hirayama was the first to notice that asteroids had similar elements, such as eccentricity and inclination, to their orbit. Suddenly, asteroids were no longer randomly zipping through the solar system but rather groups sharing orbital elements.

Based on Hirayama’s ideas, for the past 100 years, astronomers have grouped asteroids into families and non-families, with only half of all the asteroids that we know of being classed in families. However, this division into families and non-families is not productive, according to researchers led by Stanly Dermott, a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida.

Dermott and colleagues found that there’s a relationship between the orbital elements of asteroids and their sizes. By analyzing the dimensions of asteroids and their distribution within the inner asteroid belt, the team was able to classify 85% of the asteroid into about six families, each named after the biggest object in the family. They are Vesta, Flora, Nysa, Polana, Eulalia, and Hungaria. In 2011, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft visited Vesta.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually trace the origins of all asteroids in the main asteroid belt, not just those in the inner belt, to a small number of known parent bodies,” Dermott said.

The other 15 percent may also trace their origins to the same group of primordial bodies. What astronomers had previously thought of as ‘non-family’ asteroids were likely part of one of the six families, as well — just that they had become estranged due to the gravitational pull of Jupiter or Saturn, which changed their orbits ever so slightly.

The team only analyzed 200,000 asteroids, all found in the inner asteroid belt, which is closer to Earth and more studied than the middle or outer asteroid belt. A NASA survey tracked over 780,000 asteroids in the belt as a whole. This means there’s a lot of room to learn about asteroids. Perhaps there are more families, for instance. What’s more, there’s a similar ongoing analysis, only this time of meteorites, which are the bits of asteroids that survive atmospheric entry and reach Earth. This kind of information could prove essential to protecting the Earth and ourselves from killer asteroids of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs. 

 “These large bodies whiz by the Earth, so of course we’re very concerned about how many of these there are and what types of material are in them,” Dermott said. “If ever one of these comes towards the Earth, and we want to deflect it, we need to know what its nature is.”

Scientific reference: 

• The common origin of family and non-family asteroids, Nature Astronomy (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0482-4.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

04-07-2018 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

Asteroid Day 2018: 5 Ways Scientists Plan to Deal With Near-Earth Objects

The problem isn't going away.

By Mary von Aue

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

04-07-2018 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

04-07-2018 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

03-07-2018 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

‘Time warp’ ontdekt bij Area 51. Deze onderzoeker baart opzien in Las Vegas

Een paranormale onderzoeker claimt de eerste persoon op aarde te zijn die een zogeheten ‘time warp’ heeft ontdekt, een plek waar de tijd wordt vervormd. Dat meldt Fox 5 Las Vegas.

Joshua Warren heeft overal in het zuiden van Nevada gemeten hoe snel de tijd verstrijkt. Onlangs ontdekte hij dat de tijd net buiten Las Vegas heel even vertraagde.

Hij zei dat hij op meerdere plekken metingen had verricht tussen Las Vegas en Area 51.

Opzienbarende ontdekking

“We hebben met een splinternieuw apparaat iets vreemds opgepikt,” zei Warren. Hij gebruikte een zogeheten DT-meter, die recentelijk is ontwikkeld door ingenieur Ron Heath.

Het signaal dat het apparaat uitzendt zou overal op aarde op ieder gegeven moment gelijk moeten zijn en zou alleen moeten veranderen als er een zwart gat of iets soortgelijks op onze planeet afstevent.

In de woestijn net ten noorden van Las Vegas deed Warren een opzienbarende ontdekking. “Op deze plek heb ik op 18 juni gemeten dat de tijd 20 microseconden lang vertraagde.

Onbekende technologie

Warren zei dat dit volgens de natuurkundige wetten niet zou mogen gebeuren.

“Zoiets kan alleen gebeuren als er een onbekende technologie in de buurt wordt getest die de omgeving beïnvloedt of als er op de aarde plekken bestaan die af en toe ‘flikkeren’,” zei hij.

Hij voegde toe dat het erg interessant is dat deze onregelmatigheid zich heeft voorgedaan op een plek die wordt gezien als één van de populairste UFO-hotspots in de regio.

Andere realiteit

De grote vraag is nu wat de oorzaak is deze onregelmatigheden. “Is het iets wat ons toegang verschaft tot een andere wereld of een andere realiteit? Of is dit het effect van een vreemde technologie die is ontwikkeld door mensen of door aliens?”

Warren zei dat hij rond Las Vegas metingen zal blijven verrichten om te kijken of hij een patroon kan ontwaren.

Kathleen Jacob FOX5@Kathleenjjacob

A researcher says he’s discovered the first measurable TIME WARP right outside of Las Vegas! Details tonight on @FOX5Vegas at 4 and 5!

8:42 PM - Jun 26, 2018

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[Fox 5 Las Vegas] 

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

03-07-2018 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

03-07-2018 om 23:47 geschreven door peter  

AANTAL UFO-MELDINGEN DAALT AANZIENLIJK ( VIDEO )

Uit recente cijfers blijkt dat het aantal UFO waarnemingen in Amerika drastisch is gedaald, zodanig dat men zich afvraagt of ET weer naar huis is gegaan. 

Dat ze er wel degelijk zijn, maar manieren hebben gevonden om zich beter te vermommen, blijkt uit een prachtige nieuwe waarneming uit Engeland. 

{ http://niburu.co/ }

03-07-2018 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

Shadowy Human-Like Figure Walking Among The Clouds Over Alabama

During the Facebook live stream, Solo Dolo, the person who was filming the extreme weather conditions over Tuscaloosa, Alabama can be heard saying: "Hey, we've got a storm over here, we got no power, everything blowing over here, boxes, trees."

Image credit: Solo Dodo.

"Look at that hole right in the sky, that's who's got the power. "He got us covered at least, we're alright."

Yet it was not until uploading the video where a friend pointed out the strange shape which resembled a human body in the clouds, which some people are claiming to be God.

Viewers were quick to point out a shadowy figure which looks like it has arms and legal walking between the bright patch in the clouds.

Skeptical observers who point to more prosaic possibilities such as that the 'apparition' is just a weird weather effect.

They are pointing only to one figure walking across the sky but if you look closely you can see two figures, the taller figure is following a shorter figure.

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

03-07-2018 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Flying Saucer UFO Filmed In The Middle Of The Skies Of Las Vegas May 2018

STUNNING FOOTAGE OF A FLYING SAUCER SHAPED CHARIOT/UFO ON A SOMEWHAT RECONNAISSANCE MISSION SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SKIES SCOPING OUT THE SIN CITY OF LAS VEGAS MAY 2018!!!

Red UFO Recorded Travelling At High Velocity...Romania May 2018

{ https://www.reddit.com/ }

03-07-2018 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

Does anyone have an idea of what this might be? p.s. not a lenticular cloud...

{ https://www.reddit.com/ }

03-07-2018 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

Secret dossier reveals British spies spent half a century trying to catch a UFO so they could use its alien technology to build SUPERWEAPONS

• Declassified documents reveal Government spent 50 years trying to catch a UFO
• Reports reveal British spies feared China or the Soviet Union had captured one  
• UFO desks closed in 1997 after fears it was 'distracting' spies from other work

By KATIE FRENCH FOR MAILONLINE

A secret dossier reveals British spies spent half a century trying to catch a UFO so they could use its alien technology to build superweapons. 

Declassified files reveal the Government was concerned the Soviet Union or China had impounded a UFO and were harvesting its secrets to develop super-fast warplanes.

The cache of documents reveal between 1947 to 1997, intelligence services ran two UFO desks - one was a public-facing desk where people could phone in sightings. The real work was carried out in the background by spies set to investigate. 

The UFO desks ran until 1997 by which time word had come from Whitehall that security services 'investigating 'X files stuff such as alien abductions' had become a diversion from their main duties.   

A secret dossier reveals British spies spent half a century trying to catch a UFO so they could use its alien technology to build superweapons

(stock image) 

A review was ordered to confirm the desk should be shut down, but also to determine whether anything had been learned over the years which could be useful to military.

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Now a report called UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) in the UK Air Defence Region is part of three files running to more than 1,000 pages set to be released after being declassified. 

They were held back from the UFO records earmarked for transfer to the National Archives as part of the Open Government project from 2008 to 2013.

Declassified files reveal the Government feared the Soviet Union or China had impounded a UFO and were harvesting its secrets to develop super-fast warplanes

(stock image)

But earlier this year, a complete set of redacted copies was sent to Dr Clarke ahead of their release to the National Archives, which is imminent. 

The documents reveal the RAF expressed great interest in finding an UFO to help them come up with an innovative way of beating enemies during the Cold War.  

An air chief wrote the RAF was 'particularly interested in any novel technologies which might be useful to their programmes'.

Another air force commander feared the enemy may have already seized a UFO, writing: 'Monitor all reports in case in the future the hitherto unknown/not understood underlying phenomena is being exploited by another nation.

'An actual - or potential enemy - could develop a flying device with the characteristics that these phenomena seem to have.' 

Spies were given given tips on what to look out for when identifying foreign objects. The unnamed commander wrote particular attention should be paid to any aircraft behaving 'like a UFO'.

He said: 'Look out for high velocities, sharp manoeuvre, stationary 'flight', and few radar returns.'   

Dr Clarke said: 'MoD have been desperately trying to delay the release of these formerly secret and highly sensitive papers for more than a decade. 

'Even though they have been partly censored they can't conceal the fact the UK military were interested in capturing UFOtechnology - or what they coyly refer to as 'novel weapon technology'.

'And the files reveal they were desperate to capture this technology - wherever it came from - before the Russians or the Chinese got hold of it first.

'Although this was 1997, Russia was still regarded as undefeated enemy with a weapons programme regarded as a threat to the West.'  

 Share or comment on this article: 

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

03-07-2018 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

JOURNÉE MONDIALE DES OVNI, ON NE POUVAIT PAS PASSER À CÔTÉ !

Flo Corvisier Duchesne

{ http://fr.ubergizmo.com/ }

02-07-2018 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers capture first images of an exoplanet forming

BY ALEXANDRU MICU

Astronomers have snapped the first pictures of a planet forming.

This is the first clear image of a planet forming around the dwarf star PDS 70.
Image credits ESO / Müller et al., 2018, A&A.

Researchers led by a group at the Max Plank Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, are spying on a baby planet. The object of their attention is a still-forming planet that orbits around PDS 70, a young dwarf star. This is the first time we’ve captured clear images of a forming planet and its travels through the dust cloud surrounding young stars.

Far-away spheres

The images were captured using the SPHERE instrument installed on Unit Telescope 3 of the European Southern Observatory (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope (VTL) array in Chile. SPHERE, the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument, is one of the most powerful planet-finding tools astronomers have at their disposal today. What makes SPHERE stand out in the field of exoplanet exploration is that, unlike the majority of its contenders, it relies on direct imaging — SPHERE takes actual photographs of planets millions or billions of kilometers away.

SPHERE relies on a technique known as high-contrast imaging to produce such amazing shots. The device uses complex observation techniques and powerful data processing algorithms to tease out the faint traces of light incoming from planets around bright stars. Astronomers draw on the Earth’s rotation to help them better observe such planets — SPHERE continuously takes images of the star over a period of several hours, while keeping the instrument as stable as possible. This creates images of a certain planet taken from slightly different angles and at different points in the stellar halo, giving the impression that it’s slowly rotating or moving about. The stellar halo, meanwhile, appears immobile. The last step is to combine all the images and filter out all the parts that do not appear to move — blocking out signals that don’t originate from the planet itself.

The new planet, christened PDS 70b, stands out very clearly in the images SPHERE recorded. It appears as a bright point to the right of that blackened blob in the middle of the image. That blob is a coronagraph — a mask that researchers apply directly onto the star, lest its light blocks out everything else in the image.

Some examples of how such images from different angles helps astronomers tease out the light incoming from exoplanets.
Image credits Müller et al., 2018, A&A.

PDS 70b is a gas giant with a mass several times that of Jupiter. It’s about as far from its host star as Uranus is to the Sun. Currently, PDS 70d is busy carving a path through the planet-forming material surrounding the young star, the researchers note, making it instantly stand out.

“These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them,” explains Miriam Keppler, who lead the team behind the discovery of PDS 70’s still-forming planet. “The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc.”

PDS 70d is already drawing a lot of attention from astronomers. A second paper, which Keppler also co-authored, has followed-up on the initial observations with a few months of study. The data from SPHERE also allowed the team to measure the planet’s brightness over different wavelengths — based on which they estimated the properties of its atmosphere. The planet is blanketed in thick clouds, the team explained, and its surface is currently revolving around a crisp 1000°C (1832°F), which is much hotter than any planet in the Solar System.

The findings also helped researchers make heads and tails of a structure known as a transition disc. This is a ring-like protoplanetary (meaning it is involved in early planetary formation) structure. Transitional disks roughly resemble a stadium, with a clean area in the middle (from which planets drew their matter), surrounded by a ring of dust and gas. While these gaps have been known for several decades now and speculated to be produced by the interaction between forming planets and its host star’s disk, this is the first time we’ve actually seen them.

“These objects represent […] disks whose inner regions are relatively devoid of distributed matter, although the outer regions still contain substantial amounts of dust,” explains a paper published by Strom et al. in 1989.

All this data helps flesh out our understanding of the early stages of planetary evolution — which are quite complex and, up to now, “poorly-understood”, according to André Müller, leader of the second team to investigate the young planet.

“We needed to observe a planet in a young star’s disc to really understand the processes behind planet formation,” he explains.

The findings further help improve our overall knowledge of how planets form. By determining PDS 70d’s atmospheric and physical properties, astronomers now have a reliable data point from which to extrapolate — which will help improve the accuracy of our planetary formation models.

Not bad for a bunch of photographs.

The first paper, “Discovery of a planetary-mass companion within the gap of the transition disk around PDS 70” has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The second paper, “Orbital and atmospheric characterization of the planet within the gap of the PDS 70 transition disk,” has also been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

02-07-2018 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

02-07-2018 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

On June 18, 2018 at about 9.20 pm a massive possible partially cloaked UFO appeared in the sky of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, UK.

The witness describes the object as follows: This thing appeared over the sky's of Barnsley about 9.20pm, thought it looked out of place as there wasn't a single cloud in the sky all day.

When I went back in my kitchen about a hour later it was still in exactly same place as it was a hour ago, more I looked at it the object seemed to reflect light so I went up stairs to shoot this video. It stayed there till it was too dark to see about 11:30pm.

Often lenticular clouds are explained as UFOs, especially those clouds that resemble a flying saucer, but in the case of the black UFO-like object in the sky over Barnsley, it doesn’t seems to be a lenticular cloud or other cloud formation as there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky all day making it very possible that it is a partially cloaked Unidentified Flying Object.

  

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

02-07-2018 om 22:48 geschreven door peter