13-08-2018 om 17:04 geschreven door peter  

Earth From Space: 15 Amazing Things in 15 Years

The view of Earth from orbit is never the same – from minute to minute, day to day, year to year.

In December of 1999 NASA launched a satellite that opened up a new era in our ability to see, measure and understand Earth. The satellite called Terra rocketed to space on Dec. 18, 1999. (And while it was designed for a five-year mission life – Terra is still up there, collecting invaluable data on Earth’s land, atmosphere and oceans.) In 2002 and 2004, satellites named Aqua and Aura followed. These are often called the three flagship satellites of NASA’s Earth Observing System -- which began in earnest with Terra and now comprises a fleet of 18 Earth-observing satellites that have revolutionized our ability to observe our home planet from space.

NASA and other space agencies had launched satellites to study Earth before. But the past 15 years have produced a more comprehensive look at Earth from space than any other period in history. At a time when our planet is undergoing critically important changes, this global view offers not only stunning imagery but also vitally important information about how Earth is changing.

To celebrate 15 successful years of the Earth Observing System, we’ve collected 15 impressive, awe-inducing or simply just plain interesting images gathered by NASA’s three flagship Earth orbiters since the Terra launch.

Enjoy. And here’s to the next 15.
 

1. Blue Marble 2002

Taking a full photograph of Earth from space takes some doing. In 1972 the crew of Apollo 17 took a camera to the moon to get far enough away to bring the full sphere into view. In 2002, NASA scientists and visualizers stitched together strips of brand new data, in natural color, collected over four months from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument aboard Terra. They added a layer of clouds to create this composite Blue Marble that became one of the most iconic Earth images of the new century when Apple selected it as their default background for the iPhone in 2007. A version of the MODIS Blue Marble is now used as the base layer in many visualizations of NASA Earth science data.

2. Collapse of An Ice Shelf

A mountain range runs up the spine of the Antarctic Peninsula, while ice shelves flank it on either side. Over a period of several months in early 2002, the MODIS instrument on Terra observed one of these ice shelves collapse and disappear, giving scientists and the world a birds-eye view to “see” this dramatic phenomenon. In January, the surface of the Larsen B Ice Shelf – a mass of ice measuring 1,250 square miles, larger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined -- appeared pockmarked with ponds of water from melting ice. In mid-February, the front edge of the ice shelf had retreated by about six miles, and large icebergs were splintering off and floating away to sea. By March 7 the shelf had collapsed.

3. Ozone Measurements Out on a Limb

Detecting gas molecules where they occur at different heights in the atmosphere requires going out on a limb – Earth's limb. From orbit, Earth's limb is the fuzzy blue halo that appears above the surface. Instruments like the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Aura satellite observe the limb to get a side view of the atmosphere from the ground to where it thins out into space. This perspective allows scientists to measure atmospheric chemistry layer by layer – essential for monitoring the gases that contribute to the hole in the ozone layer and for evaluating the impact of clouds on climate change. The Microwave Limb Sounder was the first to measure, from space, all the gases that are part of the ozone depletion cycle, giving scientists the first observations that revealed the full chemical process of ozone depletion as it occurs.

4. Global Vegetation Cycle

The view of Earth from a satellite can give us pictures of where plants and trees grow. But the data from satellite instruments can tell us even more – including how much carbon dioxide plants are absorbing from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. The MODIS instruments on Aqua and Terra measure this carbon absorption, allowing scientists to compare plant productivity around the world. This animation shows what that cycle looks like over the course of the year – the darker green colors show higher rates of carbon absorption, somewhat mimicking the seasonal growth and decline of green vegetation across the planet.

5. Arctic Heating

One of the key concerns about the decrease of summer sea ice in the Arctic is the loss of a white, reflective surface that repels the sun’s energy back to space. Instead, as ice melts and exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb the sun’s energy, potentially enhancing the warming pattern in the Arctic – where temperatures are rising two to three times faster in recent decades than anywhere else on the planet. The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy Systems, or CERES, instruments on Terra and Aqua have now been measuring the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth since the year 2000. And in the Arctic this absorption has increased by 5 percent in that time – a number that may not seem like much, except when you consider that the absorption rate has been essentially flat across the rest of the globe, and no other region on Earth shows a pattern of change.

6. Breathing Cleaner in the U.S.

It may come as a surprise, but in many parts of the United States, the quality of the air we breathe has been improving in recent years. As new cars with stricter emissions regulations hit the roads, and as power plants and industry also adhere to tighter pollution limits, some of the key pollutants that can cause health problems have declined significantly in the past 15 years. In more recent years, NASA scientists have figured out how to measure the concentrations of one pollutant – nitrogen dioxide – using the OMI instrument on the Aura satellite. Watch the visualization to see how air quality in the U.S. improved from 2005 to 2011.

7. Burning Planet

Each year about one third of Earth's land surface is touched by fire. We didn't know this fact until the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites together began scanning Earth four times a day to pinpoint every active fire on the planet. In the fifteen years since they began creating this global fire map, they have observed more than 40 million actively burning fires and revolutionized scientists' understanding of where fires occur and how they affect ecosystems, carbon released into the atmosphere that contributes to climate change, and air quality that affects human health. The real-time fire map is one of the most in demand products for fighting wildfires in the United States and across the globe.

8. Smoke Plumes From Space

The sensors on the flagship satellites can not only detect the heat given off by wildfires, and “count” the number of active fires around the globe at any given time. They also have provided a decade and a half of imagery of active fires and measurements of their smoke plumes. These views of wildfire from space have now become commonplace, but the sensors have provided scientists with real data on how far smoke travels from its source and how high into the atmosphere. The MISR instrument (Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer) on Terra has been instrumental in learning more about how wildfire smoke plumes get “injected” high into the atmosphere and how the plumes mix with clouds.

9. Sea Ice Moves

The Aqua satellite was by no means the first to observe sea ice from space. But it was the first to give us such high-resolution data that we could see how something like the Arctic ice cap – a floating layer of sea ice larger than the continental U.S. – moves and changes on a daily basis. Sea ice shrinks in summer and expands in winter – and every day during this cycle it takes on a slightly different shape. The AMSR-E instrument – Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS – showed us how beautiful a sight this could be. It has also measured the continued decline in summer sea ice in the Arctic.

10. Carbon Dioxide Waxes and Wanes

Ground-based sensors told us that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises and falls in sync with winter and summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This cycle is linked to the photosynthetic activity of plants, trees and phytoplankton. But without a global view from a satellite, we’d never seen a picture of what these fluctuations would look like. The AIRS – Atmospheric Infrared Sounder – instrument on Aqua measured carbon dioxide a few thousand feet above the surface. And a visualization of that data gave us a glimpse of exactly how the greenhouse gas is distributed around the globe and how its concentrations change with the seasons.

11. The Mysteries of Clouds and Aerosols

The two variables that still create the most uncertainty about how future climate change will unfold are clouds and tiny airborne particles called aerosols. Some clouds reflect the sun’s rays while others trap outgoing heat that would otherwise be emitted to space. Likewise, some aerosols scatter light and cause a cooling effect while others absorb light and cause a heating effect. Aerosols can also seed clouds, further complicating the picture. Scientists have used the MODIS instruments on Terra and Aqua to begin a continuous, long-term record of clouds and aerosols that will ultimately help the science community better understand their mysterious ways. In more recent years, other NASA satellites have been launched to fly in tight formations with Terra and Aqua – providing complementary views of clouds and aerosols from different types of instruments.

12. Top that Topo Map

Explorers have long gone forth and mapped the terrain of unknown territory, producing detailed topographic maps of mountains, rivers, hills, and plains. The Global Digital Elevation Models produced by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard Terra, however, takes it to a whole new level. Among its capabilities, ASTER collects pairs of slightly offset images of Earth's surface. The image pairs work like our eyes – the slightly offset images give information about depth and allow scientists to visualize the Earth's terrain in 3D. The first Global Digital Elevation Model was released in 2009, stitched together from of 1.3 million scenes of the land surface. No more piecing together maps made by different people in different eras, it was the highest resolution topographic map, which covered 90 percent of Earth's surface consistently from nearly pole to pole. Scientists use elevation data to understand how the land changes over time, especially from natural disasters like landslides, earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis.

13. Dance of the Plankton

When tiny plants in the ocean bloom, they bloom for hundreds of miles. Phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, explode in population when cold, nutrient-rich waters from rivers or the deep ocean rise and mix with sun-lit surface waters. Globally, phytoplankton blooms account for about half of the net photosynthesis on Earth and are major players in taking carbon out of the atmosphere and transferring it to the ocean. With the bloom comes a feeding frenzy, as fish and marine mammals flock to the microscopic feast that supports their populations that in turn support the human demand for fish. Daily ocean color measurements from the MODIS instruments aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites have dramatically changed scientists' understanding of the complex biological and physical relationships between phytoplankton, marine ecosystems, and the global carbon budget.

Mapping Carbon Monoxide

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless pollutant that emerges from wildfires, vehicle tailpipes and other human sources. Once in the atmosphere it is one of the ingredients for ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant that contributes to smog – sometimes thousands of miles from where the carbon monoxide originated. An instrument on Terra called Measurements of Pollutants in the Troposphere, or MOPITT, was the first dedicated to tracking sources of carbon monoxide and following the gas across the globe. And the news is good. With MOPITT data, combined with data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, or AIRS, on Aqua and the Tropospheric Emissions Spectrometer, or Tes, on Aura, as well as European satellite data, scientists have found that carbon monoxide emissions have declined at a rate of one percent per year since 2000.

15. Repairing the Ozone Hole

The 1987 Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-depleting chemicals and was a landmark moment for the international community to come together and tackle a serious environmental threat. The ozone layer, high in the atmosphere, acts like sunscreen for Earth, protecting every living thing on the surface from the sun's harmful radiation. Satellite measurements of stratospheric ozone have been essential for monitoring the seasonal appearance of the ozone hole over Antarctica. Continuing measurements begun by NOAA satellites, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on the Aura satellite has witnessed the stabilization and earliest signs of shrinking that signal the hole in the ozone is on the road to recovery.

15 Wonders Of Earth Recorded From Space In 15 Years

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

13-08-2018 om 16:46 geschreven door peter  

There are plenty of giant pyramids in Egypt, but there’s only one Great Sphinx of Giza … or anywhere else for that matter. While there have been rumors of a second Sphinx buried near the Great One, possibly facing in the traditional opposite direction as seen in statues or depictions of smaller sphinxes, none have ever been found to match the size of the original. Now, the Ministry of Antiquities has announced that a second giant sphinx was accidentally discovered by workers digging a road and, while it hasn’t been removed from the ground, there’s enough showing to confirm its existence and potential greatness.

Archaeologists Have Discovered A Second Hidden Sphinx In Egypt

While the discovery was heralded by Egypt Today and other media sites and Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani is encouraging tourists to come and see it, not much is known about this sphinx and few pictures seem to be available. As with the recent giant sarcophagus filled with sewage water discovery, Egypt seems to be catering to tourism over archeology.

Would the Ministry be disappointed if the new sphinx looked like this one?

What we do know is that the sphinx was discovered on Al Kabbash Road by workers on the Al Kabbash Project, whose goal is to connect the Luxor Temple with the Karnak Temple by the end of 2018, allowing tourists easier and quicker access to both while facilitating electricity and water for both visitors and residents. The site is just six miles from the Valley of the Kings burial site, home of the tomb of King Tut among others. Perhaps the most exciting and unusual part of the discovery is that this sphinx is of the “classic” style like the Giant Sphinx – the head is of a lion rather than a ram or something else.

Despite the uniqueness of this sphinx and the excitement of Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani and local plastic sphinx vendors, director-general of Antiquities Muhammad Abdul Aziz is slowing things down. He has stopped all road construction and is urging archeologists to proceed cautiously out of fears that the statue will crumble when exposed to new above-ground climate conditions … does anyone remember seeing the nose on the Great Sphinx?

Before you get too excited and plunk down your hard-earned cash on a trip to see the next big sphinx, keep in mind that the same Ministry of Antiquities which is promoting it as a tourist attraction also prohibited any photos being taken. That may be a sign this new sphinx is not the same as the old Sphinx and may not be 240 feet long, 66 feet high and date back to 2500 BCE. Sure, it could be bigger and older, but it’s probably not. There’s also a big road project being held up by its discovery – a project that’s nearly complete and can’t easily be diverted … although a roundabout with a sphinx in the middle might be an even greater tourist attraction that the Great One.

Perhaps it’s time to turn the entire country into a tourist attraction – nothing else seems to put an end to Egypt’s many other problems.

Discovery of 2nd Sphinx! GIZA LOCATION, etc! Let's excavate!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-08-2018 om 12:57 geschreven door peter  

The year was 1876, and Charles Conrad Abbott was not only well-known among his colleagues in the anthropological community: he also believed he was poised to initiate a paradigm shift, as far as our ideas about the first people to arrive in North America.

Abbott, a naturalist and career surgeon from New Jersey, was one of the first anthropologists to engage in well-documented archaeological fieldwork anywhere in the Delaware Valley. He had been inspired by the controversial discoveries in France’s Somme Valley, where artifacts found in a gravel pit suggested an earlier arrival of humans in Europe than once thought; at least by several thousands of years. Abbott himself had found stone artifacts that were similar to these, produced from a gravel bed he had worked near Trenton, New Jersey. Although the insinuation here hadn’t necessarily been that there were connections to Europe, he nonetheless believed that the artifacts he had discovered might be evidence of humans in North America before the end of the last ice age.

Abbott, as depicted in Popular Science Monthly, circa 1887

(public domain).

It was not a popular idea at the time, and while the anthropological community didn’t overlook Abbott’s claims entirely, they were readily dismissed. Leading the charge against Abbot were famed geologist William Henry Holmes and John Wesley Powell, the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology. Aleš Hrdlička, who later became curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, eventually joined his colleagues in their criticism, based on three well-thought criteria he proposed at the time.

First, Hrdlička argued, Abbot’s discoveries failed to provide indisputable evidence of human remains, or human-made artifacts (Holmes had suggested that Abbot’s “artifacts” were actually natural formations instead). Hrdlička further argued that no stratigraphic sequence was discernible at the place of Abbot’s discovery, which reliably told their age. Finally, as with the discoveries at the Somme Valley, plant or animal remains must be found alongside any proposed artifacts to help indicate the era from which they hailed; Abbot’s discoveries met none of these criteria.

At the time they were proposed by Hrdlička, they weren’t bad rules for anthropologists to follow. All of these things helped provide important information about the temporal and spatial relationships between any proposed artifacts, the people who made them, and the era in which they were created. So it wasn’t unreasonable for Hrdlička and his colleagues to offer critiques of discoveries by the likes of Abbot. The lacking evidence for claims of “Glacial Man” in the Americas had further fueled the notion at that time that Humans had not existed on the North American continent much longer than 3000 years.

As time has shown, the problem had been that the status quo that these men upheld had been right in principle, based on the criteria they had established, but factually wrong based on information they simply hadn’t managed to find yet. While Abbot’s discoveries may not have been reliable proof for the idea he espoused, better examples that would challenge the existing archaeological paradigms would soon follow.

Enter Folsom, New Mexico, and the discoveries made there by an African American cowboy named George McJunkin in 1908. McJunkin found not only whitewashed bones of megafaunal bison protruding from a bank near Wild Horse Arroyo, but also flint clippings that were consistent with ancient human stone tool manufacture. It wasn’t until 1926 that these discoveries came to the attention Jesse Figgins at the Museum of Natural History, but the ensuing excavations at Folsom clearly established the presence of humans that hunted megafauna in North America at least 9000 years ago, possibly even earlier.

It wasn’t long before similar discoveries made by James Whiteman, a boy of Native American heritage attending college and studying archaeology in New Mexico, found what he called “Warheads” at Black Water Draw near Clovis. Like Folsom had done just a few years beforehand, discoveries at Clovis pushed back the timescales on human occupation of the Americas even further, to as much as 13,000 years.

During the early part of the Twentieth Century, archaeology was still fairly new in North America, and the lack of both resources and manpower often slowed the pace of what otherwise might have been a continuing boom in such archaeological discoveries. More Clovis sites would turn up over the ensuing decades, and on occasion, certain archaeological sites would also produce curiosities: things which didn’t seem to fit the known “paradigm,” and could possibly suggest even earlier heritage for America’s first inhabitants.

Such ideas were no more popular by the 1970s than they had been for men like Charles Abbot a century earlier, and were met with the same customary resistance that past generations of American antiquarians had once seen. Even when reliable radiocarbon dating at sites like Monte Verde, Chile, and Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania began to shatter the widely accepted “Clovis First” paradigm, many in American archaeology were still resistant to the idea of change.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, Pennsylvannia

(photo by the author)

With the arrival of the new millennium, the evidence for “Pre-Clovis” was nearly impossible to ignore, and now it is widely accepted that people were indeed here earlier than 13,000 years ago. Recent discoveries at locales like the Gault site in Texas have continued to push the existing timescales back to arrivals in North America by people at least 16,000 years ago, although there are cultural remains that are now turning up in reliably-dated strata as old as 21,000 years.

The aforementioned dates that were determined in relation to artifacts from the Gault site would have seemed impossible only a few years ago. However, the accumulation of evidence is now showing us that people were in the Americas much earlier than previously thought, and seemingly by several thousands of years. Nonetheless, as with many similar “paradigm shifts” that have occurred over the last century or so, today there appear to be limitations to how far modern archaeologists are willing to go with their reconsiderations about the past.

The Topper site in Allendale County, South Carolina is one such site which, despite reliable archaeology that has been done there over the years, has been treated cautiously by the archaeological community. In the video below, my own visit to the Topper site in early 2018 is documented; in it, my colleagues and I were joined by Dr. Albert Goodyear, who led the excavations there over several seasons that produced discoveries that, in our opinion, are truly remarkable in the context of modern archaeology: possible evidence for people in North America between 25,000 and 50,000 years ago.

These discoveries may seem dubious, if not impossible in the context of modern archaeology… perhaps even when giving consideration to the recent discoveries at Gault (at least for the most skeptical among us). Granted, less than a century ago it would also have seemed unlikely that humans were in North America before the end of the last ice age, and only in the last two decades has the broader archaeological community finally warmed up to the reality that there were people here before Clovis. Now, sites like Gault in Texas are showing us that digging deeper often does reveal evidence of much earlier habitation than once believed.

Perhaps it’s time we acknowledge that having a mindset to “dig deeper” would have yielded such results much sooner, had people been doing like Albert Goodyear was already doing as far back as the 1990s. As I noted in 2016 about media coverage of the Topper Site, archaeologist Michael Collins with the University of Texas at Austin told CNN in 2004 that, “[Goodyear] has a very old geologic formation, but I can’t agree with his interpretation of those stones being man-made.” Collins is now a Research Professor at Texas State University in San Marcos and Chairman of the Gault School of Archaeological Research and co-authored the recent paper in Science Advances which detailed the 16,000 to 21,000-year-old discoveries in Texas.

Obviously, there would have to be an eventual boundary beyond which any similar “paradigm shifting” discoveries could be made in American archaeology. However, history has already shown that the tendency to place caps on the earliest arrivals in the Ancient Americas has been premature in every instance. Every attempt to set boundaries for how far back we can push the timetables on early human occupations has been met with new, even earlier discoveries, which challenge our attitudes about who was here, and how long ago they arrived.

Until we can reliably establish when the very earliest arrivals in the New World occurred, it might be best for the anthropological community to adopt a new, and resoundingly simple mantra for future field work: Dig Deeper! 

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-08-2018 om 12:49 geschreven door peter  

Alien Entity Recorded Over Island In Australia On Aug 12, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: August 12, 2018
Location of sighting: Russell Island, Australia
Source: MUFON #94063

This is fantastic and very, very rare. A light being. Yes I said it right. How do I know...I and my family once witnessed a dozen of them circling above us a few years ago at midnight here in Taiwan. 

Light beings are very intelligent, and curious creatures. They cannot be recorded on video so well and are extremely hard to get on photos...which I too have tried. They are 90% transparent and change shape...they are long looking when they are flying...bigger in the front and smaller at the tail area. No head, no arms are visible, but if you happen to look up and see them...a few might turn around, come back over you and circle you...maybe out of curiosity that you saw them, or maybe they can read your thoughts and are trying to see themselves how you see them. Either way, this is an incredible photo. It came with two videos, however the alien entity was not visible...which is the same as the video I took when I saw them. If I myself had not witnessed such and event with my own family as witness...I might not believe it either. Your day will come. You will see...if you look up from your phone at the night sky. 

Want to see my video of my experience...its so-so, because they are light beings, hard to record on video. I will include my video below.
Scott C. Waring- Taiwan

Eyewitness states: 

Glowing object obscured by smoke/ clouds? Much larger than brightest largest stars but smaller than moon which was only fingernail waxing crecent and not visible at that time.

Below is my video, please jump to 1:38 to see light entity. 

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

13-08-2018 om 12:41 geschreven door peter  

UFOs Near Sun Recorded In SOHO NASA Images, Aug 11, 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 11, 2018

Location of sighting: Earths sun

Source: NASA/SOHO images

 

Here is an extraordinary video of UFOs near our sun. A triangle UFO and several others that are mind boggling. 

 

Long ago about in 2005, Russian scientists reported hundreds of moon size UFOs moving at impossible speed around our sun, making hard right turns and sudden direction changes. That evidence has been purged from the Internet, but I still remember it, and so do many others. Since then, I and other have been reporting UFOs...hundreds of which still visit our sun daily, but NASA will never report this so that they will not cause a panic. 

 

This is a great video by a UFO researcher I have known over the years and well respect...UFOnearsun-Myunhauzen74 of Youtube. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

13-08-2018 om 12:39 geschreven door peter  

This Week's Top Space Stories!

Photo Credit: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty

Photo Credit: White House/DoD News

Photo Credit: Alder Planetarium/NASA

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL

Photo Credit: APL/NASA GSFC

Photo Credit: TASSTASS via Getty Images

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty

Photo Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

13-08-2018 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

US government storing ‘ALIEN spaceship materials at secretive Las Vegas hangar’

THE US Government is storing captured materials from UFOs in a huge heavily-guarded hangar near Las Vegas, it’s claimed.

By Paul Harper 

We May Not Be Alone, Former Pentagon UFO Investigator Says

The former Pentagon investigator praised Bigelow as an a “extremely intelligent patriot” who has put his “own reputation on the line”.

Elizondo, whose impeccable credentials have been confirmed by US media, told the publication that most of the sightings were easily explainable – but not all of them.

He said: “There are absolutely cases that defy anything we can definitely look at and say, that is an aircraft, that is a drone, that is a missile, because the performance parameters are way off the chart.”

Jaw-dropping footage emerged last year of a sighting involving the battleship USS Nimitz in 2004 in the Pacific off the San Diego coast.

Ex-UFO program chief: We may not be alone

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

13-08-2018 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

Scientists first discovered the Ediacaran organisms in 1946 in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills. To date, researchers have identified about 200 different types in ancient rocks across the world. Almost all appear to have died out by 541 million years ago, just before fossils of familiar animals like sponges and the ancestors of crabs and lobsters appeared in an event dubbed the Cambrian explosion. One reason these creatures have proved so tricky to place in the tree of life is that some of them had an anatomy unique in nature. Their bodies were made up of branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, have now found key evidence that the Ediacaran organisms were animals. They analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena. Paleontologists had previously concluded that the 10-centimeter-tall species was some sort of animal—in part, says Hoyal Cuthill, because it was found alongside other known animals, and all of the fossils are preserved in a similar way. Hoyal Cuthill and Han argue S. psygmoglena was also an Ediacaran organism, a rare “survivor” that somehow clung on through the Cambrian explosion.

The Stromatoveris fossils, which were all unearthed in Yunnan province in southwestern China, are beautifully preserved, Hoyal Cuthill says. As she examined specimen after specimen she became increasingly excited. “I began thinking: My goodness, I’ve seen these features before.” Like some of the strange Ediacaran organisms, Stromatoveris was made up of several radially repeated, branched fronds with a fractal internal architecture.

To find out what sort of animals Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms were, Hoyal Cuthill and Han ran a computer analysis that uses anatomical features to reconstruct evolutionary relationships. They found that Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms don’t belong to any living animal group or “phylum.” Instead, they cluster on their own branch in the animal evolutionary tree, between the sponges and complex animals with a digestive cavity like worms, mollusks, and vertebrates, the team reports today in Palaeontology. “This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants,” Hoyal Cuthill says.

“It looks very likely [the Ediacaran organisms] are animals,” says Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, who worked with Han on the first description of Stromatoveris in 2006, but who was not involved in the current study. At that point there were just a handful of known Stromatoveris fossils. The researchers argued that they were similar to some Ediacaran organisms, although others later questioned that link. Conway Morris says the new study “extends the story very nicely” by exploring the Ediacaran nature of Stromatoveris in more detail.

Geobiologist Simon Darroch at Vanderbilt University in Nashville is also comfortable with the idea that the Ediacaran organisms were animals and that a few survived into the Cambrian. But on a first look he is not convinced that Stromatoveris was one such survivor; he thinks the evidence that it had the fractal architecture of an Ediacaran organism isn’t strong—yet he’s open to persuasion.

If the new conclusion settles one mystery, though, it introduces another. The Ediacaran organisms represent the first major explosion of complex life on Earth, and they thrived for 30 million years. Their demise has been linked to the appearance of animals in the Cambrian Explosion, Hoyal Cuthill says. But that simple explanation doesn’t work as well if Ediacaran organisms were animals themselves, and some were still alive tens of millions of years later. “It’s not quite so neat anymore,” she says. “As to what led to their eventual extinction I think it’s very hard to say.”

Figure 1 — Major events during the Ediacaran period, and the main palaeontological Ediacaran field localities. A, Key tectonic, geochemical and extraterrestrial events during the Ediacaran period (635 million to 541 million years ago), and the approximate ranges of the Avalon, White Sea and Nama biotic assemblages of soft-bodied Ediacaran macrofossils. The Shuram excursion is the largest recorded change in the carbon-isotope record in Earth history, and indicates a substantial shift in the global carbon cycle. However, the precise timing of this event is unclear. B, Notable Ediacaran fossil localities. All are macrofossil sites, except Weng’an, which houses the well-known Doushantuo microfossil assemblages. Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 2 — Fossils discovered between 1840 and 1957 in rocks of ‘Azoic’ age. A, Charnia masoni, discovered by schoolchildren in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, UK, in the 1950s. This specimen is the holotype (type specimen) of Charnia masoni, and is housed at the New Walk Museum, Leicester. B, Aspidella terranovica, from St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada. C, ‘Ring fossils’ from the ‘ring pit’, Charnwood Forest, first documented in the 1840s. These disc-shaped fossils are now recognized to be the anchoring holdfasts of frond-like organisms. Scale bars, 10 mm (A–B) and 50 mm (C).

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 3 — Ediacaran fossils from the Ediacara Member, South Australia. All specimens reside at the South Australia Museum. A, Dickinsonia, SAM P40135. B, Parvancorina, SAM P40695. C, Two specimens of Spriggina, SAM P29802 and P29803. D, Kimberella, SAM P48935. Scale bars, 10 mm.

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

Figure 4 — Further soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms from the Ediacara Member, South Australia. All specimens reside at the South Australia Museum. A, Funisia, SAM P40726. B, Tribrachidium, SAM P12898 (holotype). C, Palaeophragmodictya, SAM P48140. D, Eoandromeda, SAM P44349. E, Arkarua, SAM P49266. F, Palaeopascichnus, SAM P36854d. G, Nemiana, SAM P49342. Scale bars, 10 mm.

Credit: F. Dunn and A. Liu.

{ http://science.sciencemag.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 23:40 geschreven door peter  

This meteorite from Siberia contains tiny, so far completely unknown crystals

The extremely rare quasicrystal has been found in the Siberian Khatyrka meteorite. 

Luca Bindi et al

Created under extreme heat and almost as hard as a diamond: A meteorite from Siberia contains tiny, so far completely unknown crystals.

A previously unknown mineral that does not occur on Earth was found in a meteorite by a Russian team led by Viktor Sharygin from Novosibirsk State University.

The new material "uakitite" is a nitride, forms cube-shaped crystals and consists of vanadium, nitrogen and small amounts of iron and chromium. According to the Russian working group, the crystals form only tiny inclusions of a few micrometers in diameter in the Uakite meteorite found in Siberia in 2016, which consists of an iron-nickel alloy. Because the particles are so small, the team was only able to directly determine the composition and structure of the mineral; the researchers have deduced other physical properties from comparisons with vanadium nitride. Thus Uakitite together with other nitrides is one of the hardest known minerals, only surpassed by diamond.

The composition of the meteorite shows that uakitite must have formed under extreme conditions - many of the minerals found there only form at well over 1000 degrees Celsius.

A grain of the Khatyrka meteorite, in which the quasicrystal was found 

http://www.news.com.au/Luca Bindi et al

The newly discovered mineral is surrounded by a slightly larger mass of iron and chromium sulphides, which separated from the original iron-nickel melt at such high temperatures. The mostly undisturbed form of the Uakitite crystals indicates that the material crystallized out of the melt very early and is an independent mineral - other nitrides with similar composition are far and wide nothing to be seen. Because of its extreme formation conditions, uakitite can only occur in space in iron-nickel asteroids that once melted at high temperatures.

{ http://www.news.com.au/ }

12-08-2018 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

Ice Deposit As Big As Lake Superior Found On Mars

This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has discovered an impressive underground ice deposit beneath Utopia Planitia on the Red Planet that is estimated to contain as much water as Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes of North America.

These two images show Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument data from two tracks in a part of Mars' Utopia Planitia region where the orbiting, ground-penetrating radar on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected subsurface deposits rich in water ice.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Rome/ASI/PSI

By using the Italian-built SHARAD (Shallow Radar) instrument, the team was able to estimate that the deposit is between 80 and 170 meters (260 and 560 feet) thick, and it lies under a layer of soil up to 10 meters (33 feet) deep. The results are published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The deposit is believed to be less than 1 percent of all the water present on Mars, but its impressive features and relative abundance in a single location at mid-latitudes makes it an ideal target for exploration.

"This deposit is probably more accessible than most water ice on Mars, because it is at a relatively low latitude and it lies in a flat, smooth area where landing a spacecraft would be easier than at some of the other areas with buried ice," said co-author Jack Holt, from the University of Texas, Austin, in a statement.

Utopia Planitia is a basin bigger than New Mexico, with a diameter of about 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles). The formation of such a large reservoir at this relatively low latitude is due to the erratic behavior of the Martian axis.

"This deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted than it is today," added lead author Cassie Stuurman, also from the University of Texas.

The axial tilt is currently at 25 degrees, close to Earth’s own 23.5 degrees. But unlike our planet’s axis, the Martian axis varies between zero and 60 degrees over cycles 120,000 years long. During the Red Planet's mysterious past, Utopia Planitia might have been where the current North Pole is.

^{Altitude map of Utopia Planitia with the ice deposit marked by oblique lines.}

^{NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Rome/ASI/PSI}

“We know early Mars had enough liquid water on the surface for rivers and lakes. Where did it go? Much of it left the planet from the top of the atmosphere,” said Leslie Tamppari, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “But there's also a large quantity that is now underground ice, and we want to keep learning more about that."

Massive frozen water deposits found on Mars - SpaceTime with Stuart Gary S19E84

{ http://www.iflscience.com/ }

12-08-2018 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

NASA Announces Plans To Send Astronauts To Mars In Mid-2030s

NASA’s Orion spacecraft will launch Thursday morning, performing an unmanned test flight for the machinery that will eventually bring humans to asteroids, before ultimately transporting them to Mars. While “eventually” has always been sort of a given, NASA has finally announced projected dates. 

OMG! Manned Mission to land on Mars in 2030!

During a press conference today on NASA TV, it was announced that Orion will bring four astronauts at a time to asteroids between Earth and Mars by 2025, and the first humans will reach the red planet in the mid-2030s. This venture into deep space will be the farthest humans have gone since Apollo 17 went to the moon in 1972. (David Paliwoda and Jesse Williams have made a fantastic website that illustrates Earth’s relative distance from the Moon and from Mars. Spoiler: it’s a heck of a lot further than you’d think)

With the first goal date only about 10 years away, the importance of Thursday’s test flight has been heightened. The Orion spacecraft will be unmanned, but the cabin will be filled with 1,200 sensors to collect information about radiation and heat, as well as testing different systems, including the launch abort system. At the time of this writing, the launch is still currently a ‘go’. Assuming no problems, Orion will launch on Thursday at 7:05 am EST from Kennedy Space Center. It will orbit the Earth at a distance 15 times greater than that of the International Space Station, and deploy 11 parachutes upon reentry, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean right around 11:30 am EST.

Following the announcement, Mark Geyer, Todd May, and Mike Bolger—program managers of the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System, and Ground System Development, respectively— participated in an AMA session on reddit. It’s a pretty good read about what the future of this mission and space exploration in general holds, as well as how young scientists can get involved.

The press briefing will be replaying at 10 pm EST on NASA TV, and you can tune in right here:

• Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

{ http://www.iflscience.com/ }

12-08-2018 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 22:30 geschreven door peter  

Un OVNI filmé dans le Var le 5 août 2018

Le dimanche 5 août 2018, à 22h30, une famille en vacances a observé un objet volant non identifié dans le ciel, au-dessus de la ville de Carqueiranne, dans le sud de la France.

Les témoins étaient en train de terminer leur repas en extérieur quand ils ont remarqué la présence d’un étrange objet lumineux au-dessus de la presqu’île de Giens.

Lamia, une parisienne âgée de 34 ans, raconte :

« C’était plus gros qu’une étoile, mais bien moins grand que la Lune. Ça changeait de couleur, du rouge à l’orange, mais aussi de forme comme le ferait une méduse. Et ça bougeait légèrement, mais en restant dans le même endroit du ciel. »

La totalité des témoins ont confirmé les dires de la jeune femme. Impressionnée par ce mystérieux engin, Lamia et sa belle-mère se sont rendues au jardin Beaurivage de Carqueiranne afin de mieux pouvoir l’observer.

Au final, l’observation a duré une quarantaine de minutes et s’est terminée à 23h10. Lamia a réussi à le filmer et à le photographier grâce à son smartphone.

« À l’œil nu, on voyait une grosse étoile, mais en zoomant au maximum, on pouvait observer deux cercles rouges et une traînée. Il y avait aussi un petit point lumineux qui accompagnait la forme principale. »

A la suite de cette expérience traumatisante, elle avoue avoir perdu le sommeil.

Le journal Var-Matin a soumis les différents éléments au MUFON, dont l’antenne française se trouve à Valensole. Pour Pascal Fechner, l’explication la plus plausible est qu’il s’agissait de la planète Mars.

Il pense qu’il pourrait aussi s’agir du vol TDR558 Perpignan – Rome qui a survolé Hyères à 22h53.

« Les smartphones ont des objectifs inadaptés à l’astronomie. Ils ne sont tout simplement pas faits pour ça. L’effet de surbrillance, le point qui essaie de se faire sans y arriver, peuvent générer les cercles et traînées que l’on voit sur les photos. », poursuit Pascal Fechner.

« Je ne suis pas catégorique, mais pour moi, c’est Mars. »

Il conclut :

« Regardez une lumière fixe dans le ciel. Au bout d’un moment, vous la verrez bouger par effet d’optique. Sans compter que, sur une demi-heure d’observation, Mars aussi évolue dans le ciel. »

Var Matin, 08 août 2018

{ https://www.nouvelordremondial.cc/ }

12-08-2018 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

Two Pilots Saw a UFO. Why Did the Air Force Destroy the Report?

GREG DAUGHERTY

(Credit: Sharply Done/Getty Images)

Whatever occurred at 2:45 a.m. on the morning of July 24, 1948 in the skies over southwest Alabama not only shocked and stymied the witnesses. It jolted the U.S. government into a top-secret investigation—the results of which were ultimately destroyed.

The skies were mostly clear and the moon was bright in the pre-dawn hours as pilot Clarence S. Chiles and co-pilot John B. Whitted flew their Eastern Air Lines DC-3, a twin-engine propeller plane, at 5,000 feet, en route from Houston to Atlanta. The aircraft had 20 passengers on board, 19 of them asleep at that hour. It was a routine domestic flight, one of many in the skies that early morning.

Until suddenly, it wasn’t. What the two pilots and their wide-awake passenger saw in the skies about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, did more than startle them. It would reportedly become the catalyst for a highly classified Air Force document suggesting that some unidentified flying objects were spaceships from other worlds—a tipping point in UFO history.

Chiles described what he saw in an official statement about a week later: “It was clear there were no wings present, that it was powered by some jet or other type of power, shooting flame from the rear some 50 feet. There were two rows of windows, which indicated an upper and lower deck, [and] from inside these windows a very bright light was glowing. Underneath the ship there was a blue glow of light.” He estimated that he’d watched the ship for about 10 seconds before it disappeared into some light clouds and was lost from view.

Whitted offered a similar description in his official statement: “The object was cigar shaped and seemed to be about a hundred feet in length. The fuselage appeared to be about three times the circumference of a B-29 fuselage. It had two rows of windows, an upper and a lower. The windows were very large and seemed square. They were white with light which seemed to be caused by some type of combustion…. I asked Capt. Chiles what we had just seen and he said that he didn’t know.”

The passenger who was awake at the time, Clarence L. McKelvie of Columbus, Ohio, corroborated the pilots’ account that an unusually bright object had streaked past his window, but he wasn’t able to describe it beyond that.

Chiles’ interpretation of what he saw on the night of July 24, 1948.

(Credit: The Project Blue Book Archive)

Both pilots also made drawings of the craft they believed they had seen and provided further details in newspaper and radio interviews, some just hours after the sighting. The Atlanta Constitution headlined its July 25 account, “Atlanta Pilots Report Wingless Sky Monster.” In that article, Chiles described what sounded like an uncomfortably close encounter, as the object appeared to be coming at them. “We veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about 700 feet to our right and about 700 feet above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds.”

Chiles and Whitted weren’t the only ones baffled by what they’d seen.

Asked for comment, William M. Allen, the president of Boeing Aircraft told the United Press he was “pretty sure” it was “not one of our planes,” adding that he knew of nothing being built in the U.S. that matched the description. General George C. Kenney, the chief of the Strategic Air Command, which was responsible for most of America’s nuclear strike forces during the Cold War, told the Associated Press: “The Army hasn’t anything like that. I wish we did.”

Whatever Chiles and Whitted witnessed, theirs was far from an isolated incident. There had been scores of reported UFO sightings in the years just previous. But Air Force investigators took this one more seriously than most. For one thing, both men were highly regarded pilots who had served as Air Force officers during World War II. (McKelvie was also a solid citizen and an Air Force veteran, as well.) For another, the pilots had gotten what seemed to be an unusually close look at the strange object they described.

For all of those reasons, the Chiles-Whitted encounter, as it came to be known, reportedly caused the Air Technical Intelligence Center to draft a top-secret document with the deceptively bland title “Estimate of the Situation.” Edward J. Ruppelt, an Air Force officer and the first head of its famous Project Blue Bookstudy of UFO phenomena, claimed to have seen a copy. “The ‘situation’ was the UFOs,” he wrote, “the ‘estimate’ was that they were interplanetary!”

According to Ruppelt, the report traveled up the Air Force chain of command all the way to General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the chief of staff. “The general wouldn’t buy interplanetary vehicles,” Ruppelt wrote. “A group from ATIC went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the Chief of Staff couldn’t be convinced.”

Ruppelt continued, “The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely declassified and relegated to the incinerator.”

Whitted’s interpretation of what he saw on the night of July 24, 1948.

(Credit: The Project Blue Book Archive)

One reason for Vandenberg’s skepticism, apparently, was that another faction within the Air Force had a competing theory: UFOs weren’t interplanetary at all, but the handiwork of America’s Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union. In another top-secret report dated December 1948, the Air Force suggested a variety of reasons the Soviets might be behind such a scheme, including photographic reconnaissance, testing U.S. air defenses and undermining U.S. and European ally confidence in the atom bomb as the ultimate weapon. The Soviets wouldn’t have their own atom bomb until late August 1949.

The suppression of the “Estimate of the Situation” and the rejection of any extraterrestrial explanation was the start of “a long period of unfortunate, amateurish public relations” on the part of the Air Force, astronomer J. Allen Hynek claimed in his 1972 book, The UFO Experience. Hynek, who had worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory tracking space satellites and later became a professor at Northwestern University, was the official astronomical consultant to Project Blue Book as well as the man who developed the UFO-sighting classification system that originated the phrase “Close Encounters of Third Kind.”

“The insistence on official secrecy and frequent ‘classification’ of documents was hardly needed since the Pentagon had declared that the problem really didn’t exist,” Hynek wrote.

Ruppelt maintained that bureaucratic bungling rather than deliberate deception was the Air Force’s main problem. “But had the Air Force tried to throw up a screen of confusion, they couldn’t have done a better job,” he added.

In part because of this lack of transparency, the Chiles-Whitted incident remains one of the most controversial UFO sightings—and a favorite of conspiracy theorists even now.

So, what did Chiles and Whitted actually see? Some suggested a weather balloon, others a mirage. Hynek believed it was a fireball, or very bright meteor, an opinion that eventually became the official Air Force verdict. As to the lighted windows both pilots claim to have seen, some experts suggest that might have been a phenomenon called the “airship effect,” where observers who see a group of unrelated lights in the sky are fooled into thinking they’re part of the same object.

But Chiles and Whitted stuck to their story. James E. McDonald, a University of Arizona physicist and UFO expert, said he interviewed them in 1968, some 20 years after the event. The two were now jet pilots for Eastern Air Lines, and they continued to believe that what they had seen was some sort of airborne vehicle, McDonald reported.

What’s more, Whitted added a new and puzzling detail to the story. Although reports at the time said the object had disappeared into the clouds or simply out of their view, he supposedly told McDonald that wasn’t what really happened. Instead, the object had vanished instantaneously, right before their eyes.

No wonder the Chiles-Whitted case continues to baffle and intrigue, even 70 years later.

{ https://www.history.com/ }

12-08-2018 om 21:35 geschreven door peter  

Space Rock in the Crosshairs! Japanese Probe Snaps Close-Up Images of Asteroid Ryugu

12-08-2018 om 21:25 geschreven door peter  

Jupiter's Largest Moon Ganymede Produces Powerful Plasma Waves

12-08-2018 om 21:10 geschreven door peter  

On July 26, 2018, Youtube user “pdgls” uploaded a video of two F-117 flying from Tonopah Test Range, the first testing grounds for the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawks in 1981 and the major operations center for the top secret aircrafts until it became the major “retirement” storage center for them starting in 2008. The video shows the jets – call signs Night (or Knight) 17 and 19. After what seem to be normal maneuvers. David Cenciotti at the Aviationist blog notes that Night 17 returns to the base while Night 19 changes its callsign to Dagger 17, making some long, low approaches before finally landing.

The Aviationist and other aviation and military blogs reporting on the sighting of the F-117s all seem to agree that the purpose of their flights is a mystery. A previous sighting in 2017 showed a suspicious hump behind the cockpit which some suspected was equipment to convert the jet to an autonomous pilot-less drone. Another theory is they’re testing new stealth gear or stealth sensors for current aircraft. That seems strange – why not test it on the aircraft it’s designed for? A more sinister theory is that the F-117s are pretending to be enemy aircraft to test simulators or perhaps even real response systems, although no other planes were seen in this particular operation.

In our continuing quests to find alien ships or super-secret futuristic military aircraft at Area 51, are we ignoring what’s actually happening there? Is it a good sign or a bad sign that 40-year-old jets are still being maintained and tested there? Are these operations merely a smokescreen? If so, what are they hiding – new technology or the fact that we have no new technology?

Is this the real reason why we’re getting a Space Force?

F-117A

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 20:39 geschreven door peter  

What’s the best way to get the inside scoop on Area 51, that most mysterious of military bases and cultural touchstone for people bad at parties the world over? It’s not 12 hour stretches spent staring at Google Earth, convincing yourself that some dirty old RV parked on the side of a desert highway is advanced alien tech or secret mind-controlling super weapon powered by children’s tears and the frozen heart of Lyndon B. Johnson. That way lies madness, friend. Here’s what you have to do if you want to know what’s really going on: get a job you lazy bum, this is America! What would Henry Ford say if he saw you right now? Get out there, pound the pavement, and go tell the secret shadow government that you’re just the person they’ve been looking for. You’re in luck too, because they’re hiring.

The SECRET PASSENGER PLANE FLYING TO AREA 51||Incredible News

If you’re a licensed pilot in the Las Vegas area without too many skeletons stuffed in your closet to prevent you from getting Top Secret clearance, you might just have a shot at working at Area 51. Defense contractor AECOM is looking for a First Officer/Co-Pilot to join the so-called “Janet airlines,” the secretive service operated by the US Air Force to ferry employees from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas to Area 51 and other military bases. Qualifications include having 3,000 hours flying fixed wing aircraft, ability to qualify for and maintain Top Secret security clearance, and be willing to live in Las Vegas. Although not stated, further qualifications are assumed to include a character relatively unwilling to promise potential one-night-stands that you’ll “show them some aliens” when you’re ripped on scotch at the Bellagio at 4 AM.

Las Vegas: where no one ever says anything stupid.

Assuming you’re not me and you can land this gig, you’ll be flying unmarked red and white passenger jets from a private terminal at McCarran International Airport. The unofficial name for this air transport service is Janet airlines, which refers to the callsign used by these planes when they’re flying in civilian space. As soon as the planes enter into military space, the callsigns change from Janet to names far more fitting like Maple, Colt, Racer, and Bones. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about our secret shadow government, they have an impeccable sense of cool.

Pictured: probably not the runway at Area 51.

If you’re a pilot and you think you’ve got what it takes, you can apply on AECOM’s website. Of course, if you’re reading this you’re probably already disqualified, but hey it’s worth a shot, right?  Just don’t forget who gave you the tip-off when you get that sweet, sweet inside scoop.

If you happen to be AECOM’s hiring manager and you’re reading this: I do not envy you right about now, and I’m sorry, but you knew what you signed up for.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-08-2018 om 20:22 geschreven door peter  

Huge “Cloaked” Triangle Craft captured over Kansas City, Missouri

On Aug 8, 2018 the witness was driving south (east) on I-35 just outside of Kansas City, Missouri at 6 pm. It was a cloudy day so he was checking out the formations when he noticed a darker triangular shape, just, hanging out.

So he pulled out his phone and recorded what he could. The triangle stayed there from what he observed to be at least 3 minutes. That time span being from when he noticed it until he eventually got off the highway and headed north to then be obscured by the tree lines.

The witness states: What do I think it is? Well ether some sort of physical vessel that is "cloaked" and is interacting with the atmosphere to still show form. Or something that was big triangle shape that had passed through the clouds leaving a "trail" Or "foot print".

The witness has submitted a video and images to Mufon, case 94009. Credit to the photographer cloaked UFO/Mufon. Video link:

• https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/94009_submitter_file1__VID83020502152335219.mp4

12-08-2018 om 20:13 geschreven door peter