Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
23-10-2018
Controversy Ensues Over Possible Volcanic Eruption on Mars
Controversy Ensues Over Possible Volcanic Eruption on Mars
If it looks like a volcanic eruption and acts like a volcanic eruption, is it a volcanic eruption … even if it’s on Mars, which hasn’t had an eruption at this particular volcano in at least 50 million years and hasn’t had a lava flow anywhere in at least 2 million years? That question is currently being hotly debated by astronomers and conspiracy theorists after many people looking at recent pictures from the European Space Agency’s Mars webcam on board its Mars Express orbiter spotted what looks like a volcanic plume over Arsia Mons, a volcano on the Tharsis bulge near the Martian equator. Is it a volcano or is it something else? Is it being covered up or is it something else?
Let’s start by saying that no one questions that something DID happen on Mars over the Arsia Mons volcano and it WAS photographed by the webcam on the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. The pictures being referenced appear to be from 9-5-2018 to 10-20-2018. Further investigation by Forbes found that NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey mission also picked up clouds over Arsia Mons in September 2018. Those photos didn’t cause the same controversy in the conspiracy community since the looked more like fog than a volcanic plume.
Photo of plume
(ESA)
Speaking of the conspiracy community, multiplesites picked up the photographs, called it a volcanic eruption and speculated it was being covered up with their evidence being the recent shutdown of the solar observatory in New Mexico, shutdowns of other observatories and the conspiracy theorists’ inherent distrust of NASA. Those shutdowns have been explained (the one in New Mexico was due to a criminal investigation and possible threats) and one wonders why a ‘solar’ observatory would be shut down over a Martian eruption. The answer is point three – they don’t trust NASA.
For those who do trust NASA, at least occasionally, it sent Tanya Harrison, Director of Research for Arizona State University’s Space Technology and Science Initiative and a Science Team Collaborator on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity, to Twitter to explain the plume.
“It’s not a plume of smoke, but rather water ice clouds condensing out over the summit of the Arsia Mons volcano. We see them quite often over this particular volcano.”
She also showed another view of the Arsia Mons from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in October showing ice clouds and explained further:
“We see these clouds hang out over the summit of Arsia for weeks at a time during this time of year, every year. It’s a combination of its high elevation and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere at this time of year causing the clouds to form.”
Another view of Arsia Mons couds
(NASA)
A report about the plume in Forbes agrees with Harrison, referencing similar plumes in 2015 and a 2005 study in the Journal of Geophysical Research about “persistent water ice clouds on the flanks of Arsia Mons Volcano.” Jacob Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, gives the accepted volcanic history of Arsia Mons in a 2017 study:
“We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago—the late Jurassic period on Earth—and then died out around the same time as Earth’s dinosaurs. It’s possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms.”
And yet … the distrust of all things NASA leads to the current questioning of all things Arsia Mons. Perhaps the real question we should be asking is this: if this truly is the first recorded volcanic eruption on Mars in 50 million years, wouldn’t NASA and the ESA be shouting just as loudly … not to mention fighting over whose discovery it was?
One of the strangest cases in my files comes from a woman who, back in the 1990s, had a series of experiences that left her seriously ill, and which took her several months to fully recover from. Alison, of Texas was seventeen when, in late 1998, she began to feel ill. The first symptom was a rapid loss of weight: around ten pounds in less than a month – which is definitely not a good thing. Given her age at the time, it’s perhaps not unreasonable that Alison’s mother tactfully asked if all was okay with her. When her mother brought up the issue of her weight loss, Alison became noticeably defensive, but denied that she had anorexia or bulimia.
Nothing more was said: Alison continued to have a healthy appetite, despite continuing to steadily lose weight. It was around ten days later, however, that Alison’s mother became deeply worried: early on a Sunday morning Alison screamed for her mother, who quickly came running to her bedroom. To her horror, she saw Alison laying on the bed, her face deathly pale. When her mother tried to help Alison to sit upright, Alison’s eyes rolled into her head and she fainted. Luckily, the pair lived only a few minutes’ from the local hospital and so Alison’s mother got her into the car and raced to the emergency room. In no time, she was being examined.
As Alison – who regained consciousness in the car, but who felt weak and dizzy – rested, a doctor asked her mother about Alison’s general health. She explained that Alison had lost a lot of weight in the last few weeks. Maybe not surprisingly, the doctor too asked questions about anorexia and bulimia. When Alison recovered, the pair left the hospital, with the doctor suggesting to Alison’s mother that she keep a very close eye on her daughter, and – if she had any more fainting spells – to take her to their regular doctor. They were wise words: Alison fell sick on three more occasions, and as her weight began to plummet: a final total of approximately twenty pounds in around six weeks. She was admitted to hospital and watched very carefully.
Tests showed that, physically, Alison was exhibiting all the physical signs associated with early anorexia. But, there was always someone with her when she ate her meals in her hospital room – and at home, too. In fact, she was eating eagerly. On top of that, Alison’s mother sat with her for hours after eating each meal – on the suggestion of one of the doctors, to make sure she didn’t make herself ill, bulimia-style, by vomiting up her meals. Further tests were run but no answers were to be found. At least, not by conventional medicine.
At the height of her illness, when Alison even started to take on a jaundiced look, she confided in her mother that there was something she had not told her – or the doctors. Alison’s mother feared, initially, that her daughter was going to say she had been using and abusing hard drugs. But, no. Alison said that four or five days before she began losing weight, she woke in the dead of night to see a pale-faced woman, attired in a long and black, hooded robe, standing next to the bed. The woman was very tall – around six-foot-three or –four. Her skin was white, and her eyes were staring and bulging. Alison found herself unable to move as the woman closed in on her, looming over the bed as Alison struggled to move. The woman gave a loud, satisfying groan at the very same time that Alison suddenly felt ill and cold. The woman retreated into the darkness of the bedroom and vanished.
Alison put the whole thing to a bad dream – and told her mother that she didn’t think any more about it. That is, until the pale hag returned the next night, and the next night, and…well, you get the picture. Alison’s mother listened, in fear and dread, as her daughter told her how, every night for weeks, the woman appeared in the bedroom. And, all the time, Alison was getting sicker and thinner. Alison even claimed to have seen the woman in her hospital room – as if, said Alison, the Woman in Black knew where she was at all times. Alison confided one other thing in her mother: four or five nights before the woman first appeared, Alison and two of her friends had been playing with an old Ouija-board. Alison’s mother was more terrified than she was angry – after all, she only wanted to get her daughter well, not pass judgment when she was severely ill.
As luck, or fate, would have it, Alison’s mother had a friend, Jennifer, who worked in the field of alternative medicine and who also had deep knowledge of the world of the supernatural. Jennifer agreed to perform a cleansing of not just the family home, but also of Alison herself. Since the pale, supernatural woman only ever appeared at night, Jennifer said it would be a good idea for her to sit in the bedroom while Alison slept – to ensure that if the woman did appear she would be ready to deal with her.
Jennifer arrived the following evening, armed to the teeth with just about everything she needed to ensure that the evil entity in the home would be banished for good. Jennifer’s weapons included sea salt – which is said to have the ability to prevent supernatural creatures from crossing certain thresholds, including doorways to rooms. So, Jennifer scattered more than liberal amounts of sea salt at the front- and back-doors of the home, in front of Alison’s bedroom, and across the window-sill in her room. That was followed by the use of sage. Traditionally, and for centuries, sage has been seen as both a powerful protector and a cleanser. So, Jennifer did what she does best: she performed a lengthy cleansing program that went on for several hours, and ensuring that the smoke reached all corners of the home. Then, it was a case of watching and waiting.
Alison’s mother stayed in the living-room, at the suggestion of Jennifer – who sat by Alison’s bed, ready for just about anything. The black-garbed woman did not put in an appearance, but there were two inexplicable things that did happen that night: Alison’s bedroom was briefly filled with an odor like rotting meat, and, for a few moments, rapid scratching noises were heard on the walls of the bedroom. Alison and Jennifer held hands tightly, and prayed that the hideous thing would leave – and leave now. By all accounts, the rituals worked. The eerie woman was never seen again and over the course of five or six weeks Alison’s health returned to normal. Today, and now in her late thirties, Alison is convinced that whatever the woman was, she was feeding on her, something which led to the weight loss and anorexia-like side-effects and symptoms. To this day, Alison keeps both sea salt and sage in her home – which, today, is in Arizona.
If you’ve seen the movie “Titanic,” you know that icebergs are not ice cubes. Apparently, Netflix isn’t available in Antarctica because a plane operated by NASA to scan the ice photographed a berg that looks more like a tombstone or a sheet cake or a frozen Christmas present … in other words, it’s nothing like a chunk of the Larsen C ice shelf it broke off of. Is it real or are the scientists stationed in Antarctica killing time with picks, chainsaws and tape measures?
The iceberg suspected of sinking the Titanic
“What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square.”
In an interview with LiveScience, Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist with NASA and at the University of Maryland, described the block of ice spotted by a plane belonging to NASA’s Operation IceBridge fleet – a project whose purpose is to measure annual changes in the thickness of Antarctica’s ice and glaciers in order to predict future break-offs and meltings caused by climate change. The planes give a closer and quicker look at these occurrences than the IceSat satellites. Should we be worried that the ice is suddenly breaking off in such neat and precise rectangular cuboid bergs?
“We get two types of icebergs: We get the type that everyone can envision in their head that sank the Titanic, and they look like prisms or triangles at the surface and you know they have a crazy subsurface. And then you have what are called ‘tabular icebergs.'”
Despite the predictable Internet panic when NASA posted photos on its NASA ICE #IceBridge Twitter feed, Kelly assures the masses that this mass is rare but normal. For the non-scientists (much appreciated, Kelly), she likens the cuboid iceberg calving process to a long fingernail that cracks off with a clean, straight edge on at least three sides. Also like a fingernail, the tabular iceberg is much wider than it is thick. This one is a mile across and, while it probably looks like a fun place for Antarctic scientists to blow off frozen steam playing mobile hockey, she warns that it’s unstable and moving away from the Larsen C ice shelf into the Weddell Sea.
Drawing of a NASA IceBridge plane
(NASA)
That explanation sounds believable despite the dubious comments on various websites that it’s was actually caused by aliens, secret experiments or bored scientists. Whatever the case, let’s hope funding continues for cryospheric (ice-related) research projects like NASA ICE and Operation IceBridge. It may not be disaster movie-worthy but it’s critical to predicting how many of us will be underwater in a few years.
Last week, I was on Dave Schrader’s Darkness Radio show. Although the show was on alien abductions, we also touched on the matter of the Black Eyed Children. Dave asked me about some of the stranger and creepier BEC accounts I have in my files – which amount to quite a few. We discussed several such cases, but there’s one which I didn’t touch on, and that is one of the weirdest of all.. It’s the account of a man named Martin, who lives just outside of Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Martin’s encounter with a pair of Black Eyed Children went down in March 2011. Fortunately, I was able to interview Martin personally just a few weeks after his experience. Martin was at home alone when he had just about the worst encounter was possible.
In terms of Martin’s encounter, it occurred two days after he returned home. As a truck-driver, he had been on the road for two weeks and was looking forward to a few days of relaxation and fun. He got neither. On his first night back, Martin planned on watching a bunch of shows he had recorded while he was away on the road. The evening began in completely normal fashion: he made himself a big sandwich, cracked open a cold beer and watched his shows. Normality was about to go out of the window. Around 8:30 p.m., there was that knock on the door, the kind of which so many witnesses to the BEC have now experienced, but surely wished they hadn’t. Martin didn’t even bother looking through the spy-hole: he assumed it was his immediate neighbor, Rex, who would take in any packages from the likes of UPS, Amazon and FedEx that might have been left on Martin’s doorstep while he was away. Sadly for Martin, as he opened the door, he instantly realized it was not Rex.
Martin got the shock of his life when he was confronted by a boy and a girl – both around eleven or twelve years of age and with large, black, eerie-looking eyes. The girl was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black top, while the boy had the almost-ubiquitous black hoodie. Both looked sickly and scrawny and is if they needed a hearty meal in them. Little did Martin know that this was exactly what they were there for. Hardly a fan of the supernatural, Martin had never heard of the BEC phenomenon and could only stand and stare at their curious faces, assuming at first that this was some kind of joke. But, the Black-Eyed Children were certainly not laughing. They stood together, hand in hand, looking at Martin with expressions on their faces that were, paradoxically, lacking in emotion but which also gave off airs of highly charged malevolence.
Echoing Brian Bethel’s encounter back in the 1990s (which largely began the BEC phenomenon and debate) , Martin said that when the girl said they were homeless and needed something to eat, it all seemed very much like a ruse – as if they had spoken the words time and time again. It was like a carefully-crafted scheme on their part. Most disturbing of all, for a few moments Martin felt transfixed – almost hypnotized – by those large, black eyes. Indeed, he told me that he could not understand why he did not quickly shut the door at the sight of those terrible eyes. Martin could only say that it was if he was somehow being prevented from shutting the door on the pair. One might be justified in saying Martin had been placed in a state of full-blown mind-control.
The girl repeated: “We need to eat. May we come in?” Martin said that he recalls her words accurately, and he felt that the girl’s use of the term “may we?” (instead of “can we?”) sounded like “how people talked way back.” There is one missing portion from Martin’s story: he cannot recall how the pair got into his house. He recalls inviting them in – “it felt like I said it in a dream” – but, the next thing he remembers is seeing the pair standing in front of him, while he was sat on his living-room couch. The girl said just one word: “eat.”
At that point, Martin suddenly felt deathly ill. It was, he said, as if he “hadn’t eaten in days.” He explained that it was as if he himself was suddenly starving, but it was the children who needed to eat. The pair stared intently at Martin, who found himself getting weaker and weaker. And weaker still. “Crashing” might be a more ideal term to use: Martin found himself barely able to move. Not because he was being prevented from moving, but because physically-speaking he simply did not have the energy to even stand up. It was, Martin said, as if he was himself being eaten alive by the paranormal pair of ghoulish things in his midst.
After a few minutes, both the girl and the boy turned and left, still holding hands. Martin finally managed to crawl to his bedroom, where he lapsed into a deep sleep. He did not wake until well into the following afternoon. For the next three four or days, the overwhelming weakness – made worse by bouts of dizziness and a bad taste in his mouth – kept him in his bed. It was almost a week later before he finally felt fully back to normal. While Martin has no idea as to what the BEC were or are, he believes they were not human and, somehow, had drained him of energy.
UFO Probe Seen Flying Over Wild Pigs In Texas On Animal Cam, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Probe Seen Flying Over Wild Pigs In Texas On Animal Cam, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 1-1-2011, but reported today. Location of sighting: Texas, USA Source: Mufon #95803 Animal cams are awesome at catching fast glimpses into nature, but the fact that they also record in infrared makes it even more special, because the human eye cannot see in infrared without the technology. Here a donut shaped UFO is flying over a pig and the UFO clearly is round with a large hole inside of it. That donut shape does not fit any insect, bat, bird or animal known to man. Therefore it is a UFO. Small UFO probes often are used to come closer to the ground so that the chances of being seen are much smaller. Also they are sent to observe, record and learn about life on Earth...all life, not just us boring humans. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Lights seen over deer feeder shot beams down to the ground at some javelinas feeding.
The strange craft was seen moving over thew sky of Mexico City, and several people captured the sight on video.
As the UFO moves through the air, a few hundred metres off the ground, it emanates a blurry field which is commonly reported from alien enthusiasts.
Many believe this latest sighting is strong evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth and, had the camera quality been better, it “would be definitive proof of the existence of aliens”.
The video was originally captured by a YouTube user known as Carlos Sanchez, but was quickly picked up by conspiracy theorists around the internet.
Prominent UFO hunter Scott C Waring who believes it is a genuine sighting of an alien spaceship.
Mr Waring writes for his blog UFO Sightings Daily: “This dark craft came right out into the open and was seen when a worker came outside for his break.
“The UFO tilted some as it moved, which is what many UFOs do in order to control their direction.
“Just sad he had such a bad camera. Looks like he is using an old phone to record it.
UFO seen in clear daylight over Mexico is PROOF of aliens - shock claim
(Image: GETTY • YOUTUBE)
“Had it been an iPhone 7-8 this video would be definitive proof of the existence of aliens.
“I also notice that there is a blurry field around it, just as thousands of UFO reports also describe.”
Mexico is a hotspot for UFO sightings.
Earlier this year, a video showing a smoking crater next to a motorway lead to speculation it could be a UFO crash site.
The strange craft was seen moving over thew sky of Mexico City
(Image: YOUTUBE)
The huge 26 feet across burning pit was filmed by shocked onlookers as a thick mist rose into the air by the Torreón to Saltillo highway in the state of Coahuila in north east Mexico.
The pit was said to be as deep as it was wide and, according to reports, no evidence has been found as to what caused it.
Online theories have ranged from a crashed spaceship or a meteor falling to Earth.
One YouTube poster said: "Looks like a UFO landed and took off before anyone could see, leaving a crater.”
HERE’S WHAT EXPERTS THINK OF STEPHEN HAWKING’S POSTHUMOUS PREDICTIONS ABOUT AI, GENE HACKING, AND RELIGION
HERE’S WHAT EXPERTS THINK OF STEPHEN HAWKING’S POSTHUMOUS PREDICTIONS ABOUT AI, GENE HACKING, AND RELIGION
Hawking Claims
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his final book, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions,” only came out this week.
In it, Hawking makes a number of bold claims about the future of gene editing, artificial intelligence, and even religion. Here’s how experts evaluate his predictions.
Superhuman Overlords
Hawking raised eyebrows when he claimed that powerful people will hack their genes to become smarter, stronger, and longer-lived. Eventually, he writes in his new book, the rest of us will “die out, or become unimportant.”
Many geneticists already see this as inevitable. Some fear that people will use CRISPR to edit their genes before the technology is deemed safe, so they advocate new laws to protect non-augmented humans.
“We’re probably going to need new international oversight structures, so that we don’t realize these dystopian ‘Brave New World’ examples,” said George Daley, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing in 2015.
Killer AI
During his lifetime, Hawking was vocal about his fear of powerful AI. He reiterates his reservations in this book, writing that ignoring the threat of super-powerful AI could be humanity’s “worst mistake ever.” It could destroy us with weapons “we cannot even understand,” he wrote.
But others play it down. “[There’s] no reason right now to be worried about self-conscious AI algorithms that set their own goals and go crazy,” Stanford machine learning lecturer Richard Socher told Fortune. And a poll of AI researchers found that most believe it will take at least 25 years to create an AI superintelligence — so at least we have a little time to prepare.
No Gods, No Masters
Hawking also came out swinging at religion in the book. “Belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking,” he writes, adding that there’s “no possibility” of God.
Many scientists certainly agree with Hawking on this claim, though not all. A 2015 survey found that many researchers around the world are religious, but in most countries, scientists are by and large less religious than non-scientists.
The Next Battleground: What Do We Really Know About What Adversaries Do in Space?
The Next Battleground: What Do We Really Know About What Adversaries Do in Space?
By Sandra Erwin, SpaceNews Staff Writer
This article was first published in the SN Military.Space newsletter. If you would like to get our news and insights for national security space professionals every Tuesday, sign up here for your free subscription.
As the Pentagon moves to stand up a U.S. Space Command and Congress debates whether it makes sense to create a Space Force, a central focus is to defend satellites from orbital weapons that would seek to damage or destroy U.S. assets in space.
Washington policymakers are gripped by the prospect of enemies shooting missiles or lasers at U.S. systems. But that is only a small piece of the puzzle, says Jeffrey Gossel, senior intelligence engineer at the Space and Missile Analysis Group of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. [Trump's Space Force Plan Revealed by VP Mike Pence]
More attention should be paid to the larger space infrastructure that Russia and China are putting on orbit, Gossel argues. Many space systems are not weapons but still provide powerful capabilities for watching what the United States is doing and developing strategies to counter U.S. advantages.
"[A]s we think about space as a warfighting domain, it's not those weapons that are as important as what our enemies have on orbit," Gossel says during a recent Mitchell Institute event on Capitol Hill. His office is part of the intelligence community but supports the Defense Department. He anticipates that the future U.S. Space Command will be his largest customer.
"The sexy thing in Washington for years has been those offensive capabilities that our adversaries are building." Jeffrey Gossel, Space and Missile Analysis Group
His point is that if a military conflict extended into outer space, it's imperative the United States knows in precise detail the type of satellites and sensors that other countries have on orbit because those would be potential targets for the U.S. military.
'Know Everything About the Satellite'
The weapons "aren't the things that we are going to have to shoot down," Gossel says. "When we start to do military operations in space, the intelligence community has to spend more time looking at what enemies have on orbit in a forensic way, to understand everything about that satellite — the materials, the power source, every intricate little detail of the spacecraft, we need to know." [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Concepts Ever]
"If we wanted to put a cyber effect, shoot a laser, you only want to cause a specific effect and you don't want anyone to know you did it, you need to know a lot about that satellite and sensors. From an intelligence perspective we have to concentrate more on those things, not on the guns they're shooting."
The U.S. government also should have a deeper understanding of what intelligence foreign powers are getting from space that they provide their military operators, such as signals intelligence, optical and radar imagery, Gossel says. "That's what's important. We want to keep them from having that data."
Gossel cautions that he was only speaking generically about space threats as the specifics are classified.
'What Can They See and Hear?'
"The order of battle for space is greatly increasing, it has tremendously increased over the last decade," he explains. Order of battle is military-speak for how many weapons platforms adversaries have at their disposal. What this means in space is that enemies might have co-orbital weapons to destroy satellites but of greater concern is their deployment of satellites that collect intelligence.
"We need to know what they can see and what they can hear," Gossel asserts.
Space was militarized decades ago but it wasn't until China tested a weapon that shot down its own satellite in 2007 that Gossel saw any reaction in D.C. That event began the conversation about the national security ramifications of other countries moving to challenge the United States is space. The Pentagon since then has increased spending on space systems and technologies to defend U.S. satellites. But Washington's focus on the use of weapons in space misses the larger picture. "We need to shift our thinking to what our adversaries have on orbit. Understanding that might be what we should spend our money on."
This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Rocket Lab selects Wallops Flight Facility for US launch site
Rocket Lab selects Wallops Flight Facility for US launch site
by Staff Writers Wallops Island VA (SPX)
File image of Rocket Lab's current launch facility in New Zealand.
US orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has today confirmed it will build its first US launch pad for the Electron rocket at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, USA. The site will be Rocket Lab's second dedicated launch complex and builds on Rocket Lab's existing ability to launch up to 120 times annually from the world's only private launch site, Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, in New Zealand.
Launch Complex 2 will be capable of supporting monthly orbital launches and is designed to serve US government and commercial missions. The site brings Rocket Lab's global launch availability across two launch complexes to more than 130 missions per year. The option to select from two launch sites adds an extra layer of flexibility for small satellite customers, offering an unmatched ability to rapidly deploy space-based assets with confidence and precision from a preferred location.
"Accessing space should be simple, seamless and tailored to our customers' missions - from idea to orbit. Launching from a second pad builds on Rocket Lab's ability to offer the small satellite industry unmatched schedule and launch location flexibility," said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck.
"Having proven the Electron vehicle with a successful orbital launch this year, we're thrilled to expand on our ability to provide rapid, reliable and affordable access to orbit for small satellites.
"We've worked closely with the experienced and welcoming teams from Virginia Space and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops to design a pad and processes that will enable an agile and streamlined approach to small satellite launch on US soil," he added.
Rocket Lab will work with Virginia Space to construct dedicated pad infrastructure at the site, tailored to the Electron launch vehicle. In addition to the pad, Rocket Lab will develop a Launch Vehicle Integration and Assembly Facility in the Wallops Research Park to support the simultaneous integration of up to four Electron vehicles.
The facility will also contain a control room with connectivity to LC-2, as well as dedicated customer facilities. This new facility, combined with the purpose-built gantry located at LC-2, will provide significant and dedicated vehicle processing capability and flexibility to meet Rocket Lab's high launch cadence.
Through construction and day-to-day operations, Rocket Lab expects to create around 30 jobs immediately to directly support Launch Complex 2, with this number predicted to increase to approximately 100 as launch frequency increases. The development of Launch Complex 2 will also see Rocket Lab continue to expand Electron rocket production at the company's headquarters in Huntington Beach, California, to supply complete launch vehicles for government and commercial customers.
"We are honored to be Rocket Lab's selection for Launch Complex 2," stated Dale Nash, CEO and Executive Director of Virginia Space. "There is an incredible synergy between Virginia Space and Rocket Lab and we are proud to support their missions launching from U.S. soil. We'd like to thank Rocket Lab for their confidence in our team. Virginia Space and MARS employees are standing ready to do everything we can to ensure successful, safe and timely launch missions for Rocket Lab just as we do for every customer of the Spaceport."
Bill Wrobel, director of NASA Wallops, said, "Wallops has more than 70 years of experience successfully supporting missions using suborbital as well as small and medium-class orbital launch vehicles. We look forward, along with our partner Virginia Space and its Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, to supporting Rocket Lab's Electron missions and expanding commercial launch operations from Wallops."
Four spaceports were shortlisted to become Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, including Cape Canaveral, Wallops Flight Facility, Pacific Spaceport Complex - Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base. Wallops Flight Facility made the final cut thanks to high flight frequency available from the site, as well as rapid construction timelines that will see Rocket Lab target the first Electron launch from US soil Q3 2019.
Rocket Lab continues to assess additional launch sites in the US and internationally to provide additional launch flexibility for small satellite customers. The company also maintains agreements with Cape Canaveral in Florida and Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska to conduct launches from existing pads as required.
It started with a long-ago conversation with astronomer Carl Sagan, which awoke an abiding interest in UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life in Robert Zemeckis. That led in part to 1997’s “Contact,” which Zemeckis helmed, and, now, “Project Blue Book,” which he’s executive producing for A+E Studios.
The show bears more than a passing resemblance to “The X-Files,” from the tagline (“Over 12,000 UFO sightings. 1 government cover-up”) to the menacing presence of a shadowy figure in a hat and coat. Based on a real-life government operation called Project Blue Book, the series centers on the investigation by the U.S. Air Force into UFO sightings in the 1950s and ’60s. It stars Aidan Gillen as J. Allen Hynek, an astrophysics professor recruited to help with the investigation, and Michael Malarkey as the Air Force captain assigned to debunk the stories.
The first of 10 hourlong episodes of “Project Blue Book,” which bows this winter, was screened for press and other guests Tuesday at Mipcom.
The drama’s period detail is evident in the ’50s interiors and cars, a Flash Gordon comic book, a reference to the not-so-long-ago panic caused by Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds.” Inevitably, however, those involved insist on the show’s timeliness in today’s troubled, Trumpian, truth-challenged times.
“Project Blue Book was the original fake news,” said showrunner Sean Jablonski, calling it a government program created to discredit people’s sincere accounts of unexplained phenomena and to “give them alternative facts.”
“We didn’t just settle for case-of-the-week stories, but layered in the facts of a government cover-up that exposes the origin of fake news,” Zemeckis wrote in an e-mail read out at the screening. “Unfortunately, that feels as relevant today as it did back then.”
It’s clear that “Project Blue Book” is being shepherded by true believers, folks who have faith not just in the show but in the existence of life beyond Earth. Jablonski is in no doubt of that, recounting a solo trip he took to the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, in Peru, in the belief that aliens built it.
On stage with Jablonski in Cannes, Gillen (“The Wire”), Malarkey (The Vampire Diaries”) and Laura Mennell (“The Man in the High Castle”), who plays Hynek’s wife, Mimi, also professed themselves open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. “I have no reason to be a non-believer,” Malarkey said, in a Q&A conducted by series executive producer Barry Jossen, the head of A+E Studios.
“When you look at what we know about our vast universe, it’s impossible not to hope for the existence of worlds (and life) beyond our own,” Zemeckis wrote in his e-mail.
The cast also includes Ksenia Solo (“Orphan Black”) as a woman who befriends Mimi Hynek and is quickly revealed to be not all she seems, and Neal McDonough (“Minority Report”) and Michael Harney (“Orange Is the New Black”) as a pair of cabalistic air force generals. Whether little green men appear in “Blue Book” remains to be seen. The show was created and written by David O’Leary.
“The series is based in fact,” Jablonski said. “When you scratch the surface, the conspiracy and truth of what actually happened give you a lot of story to tell.”
Renewed US interest could produce some fascinating hearings, but the focus should be on the quality not just the quantity of reported sightings
The terms UFO and ‘flying saucer’ are both wrongly, regarded as being synonymous with ‘extraterrestrial spacecraft’. Photograph: Jim West/Rex/Shutterstock
There’s renewed interest in the UFO phenomenon and it’s coming from an unexpected source: the United States Congress.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into a 2004 incident where US Navy pilots flying with the USS Nimitz strike group encountered, chased and filmed fast-moving unidentified objects. Reliable sources say at least two of the military pilots involved have already been interviewed, and a radar operator was subsequently invited to get in touch.
In parallel, the House Armed Services Committee is taking an interest. Records from April show the committee received a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) briefing on the Pentagon’s UFO project, the cryptically-named AATIP. We know so little about AATIP that there’s even dispute over whether the acronym stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program or Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The very existence of the project caused a sensation, because until the New York Times broke the story in December 2017, the US government claimed it had not investigated UFOs since the 1960s when sightings were looked at in a study called Project Blue Book.
As noted in the Guardian recently, data from two civilian UFO research organisations show that the number of reported sightings has fallen in recent years. However, there’s no single, global focal point for reports (the Ministry of Defence stopped investigating UFOs in 2009) and statistics will never tell the full story.
It would be better if the phenomenon were assessed and judged not on numbers alone, but by focusing on cases where we have compelling evidence: independently submitted reports from pilots on different flights; visual sightings corroborated by radar; photos and videos regarded as genuinely intriguing by intelligence community imagery analysts. Irrespective of the methodology we use to assess the phenomenon, how can we do so in an even-handed way when the subject has so much pop culture baggage?
A first step in reframing the debate might be changing the language. The term “UFO” has become as obsolete and baggage-laden as the now largely-defunct “flying saucer”. Both are widely, but wrongly, regarded as being synonymous with “extraterrestrial spacecraft”, when self-evidently all the phrase should mean is something in the sky that the observer cannot identify. When the question “do you believe in UFOs?” is misinterpreted as “do you think we’re being visited by aliens?” then we clearly have a problem.
We addressed this in the MoD in the 1990s by replacing “UFO” with “UAP”, for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. It got us increased funding and made a few senior officials take the matter more seriously, because they felt we were looking at a science problem, not a science fiction mystery.
Years later, in 2011, I was one of the briefers at a private gathering in Washington DC, chaired by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta, who has a longstanding interest in the issue. It was reminiscent of an episode of The X-Files and there was even a former CIA director sitting at the back, playing no part in the discussion, but silently taking notes. I briefed attendees on the MoD’s use of the term “UAP” and the message clearly hit home.
During Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for which Podesta was the campaign chair, she occasionally discussed UAPs and in one interview on the Jimmy Kimmel show she corrected the host for using the term “UFO”. We have yet to learn what Donald Trump thinks about UAPs, but his enthusiasm for a Space Force has certainly created a few conspiracy theories.
When it comes to UAPs, truth really is stranger than fiction. It turns out that AATIP was largely the brainchild of the then Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and that much of the work was contracted out to Bigelow Aerospace, run by former budget hotel magnate (and believer in extraterrestrial visitation) Robert Bigelow. A 2009 letter from Harry Reid about AATIP reads like science fiction in places.
Now, some of the people formerly involved with the project – including the DIA official who ran it, Luis Elizondo – have joined a Public Benefit Corporation called To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, fronted by Tom DeLonge, the former vocalist/guitarist and founder of pop punk band Blink-182. Their mission statement talks about creating a consortium “to explore exotic science and technologies … that can change the world”.
If current US Congressional interest evolves into formal hearings, either specifically on AATIP, or on UAPs more generally, I hope they can get past debates about terminology, and avoid getting bogged down in statistical analyses. I have made clear my willingness to testify on the basis that my experience with the MoD might be relevant.
Focusing on the quality of reports and not simply the quantity should result in a far more meaningful assessment of the phenomenon. Irrespective of the outcome, these might turn out to be the most fascinating Congressional hearings in history.
•Nick Pope worked at the Ministry of Defence for 21 years. From 1991 to 1994 he was posted to a division where his duties included investigating UAP sightings to determine whether they had any defence significance.
Why We Might Miss Extraterrestrial Life Even If It's Staring Us in the Face
Why We Might Miss Extraterrestrial Life Even If It's Staring Us in the Face
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor
See anything unusual in this aerial image?
Credit: Modified photo of an original NASA picture
What do you get when you combine a classic psychology experiment with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
A gorilla on Mars.
OK, that one's not going to kill on the comedy circuit. Here's what's going on: Researchers from the University of Cádiz in Spain found that most people who were asked to look for signs of human-made structures on alien terrain completely missed a little, waving gorilla figure inserted into one of the images.
"We think [of] ETI as another form of humans, but much more advanced," study leader Gabriel G. De la Torre, a neuropsychologist at the University of Cádiz, told Live Science in an email. "We try to understand the world as [if] it was done to fit our beliefs, framework and senses. [In] reality, [it] could be much more different."
The limits of imagination
The limits of human imagination do likely constrain the search for extraterrestrial life, said Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, which uses radio and optical observations to hunt for brainy extraterrestrials. But that observation is "not exactly a call to action," he said.
Inside the Occator crater of the dwarf planet Ceres appears a strange structure that looks like a square inside a triangle.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
"I do get emails that say, 'Oh, well, you guys are just not being broad-minded enough," Shostak said. "That's a pretty easy thing to say, but it doesn't advance the search much."
In the new paper, De la Torre and his co-author, Manuel Garcia at the University of Cádiz, argued that extraterrestrials may not communicate using radio or light waves — the main mediums humans are using to search for signals from "little green men." Aliens might instead communicate through dark matter, the researchers wrote. That's the mysterious form of matter that should exist in order to provide enough gravitational force to keep galaxies from flying part, but which is not directly observable, because it doesn't interact with the electromagnetic spectrum. Aliens might even be dark matter, the researchers wrote. [7 Huge Misconceptions about Aliens]
In that sense, humans might be so focused on searching for aliens using the kind of technology familiar to us that we miss the communications all around us, the researchers wrote. To demonstrate human inattention, the researchers conducted an experiment inspired by a famous psychology protocol from 1999. In the original experiment, researchers asked participants to do a task (say, counting the number of passes in a pickup basketball game) while watching a scene in which the investigators had inserted something truly ridiculous (say, a guy in a gorilla suit strolling right through the middle of the game). The researchers found that hardly anyone noticed the gorilla.
The cosmic gorilla
To update these findings for the SETI age, the researchers asked 137 participants to scan aerial photos of interplanetary imagery and search for structures that appeared unnatural, built by humans (or aliens). In one image, the researchers inserted a small photo of a person in a gorilla suit waving.
Only 45 out of 137, or 32.8 percent, of the participants noticed the gorilla. The researchers also asked the participants to take some surveys to reveal whether they had a more intuitive cognitive style or a more analytical cognitive style. It might seem that the intuitive types would be less likely to scan the scene carefully, thus missing the gorilla, but that was the opposite of what the researchers found.
"Those with a more intuitive cognitive style detected the gorilla more compared with the more rational/analytical style," De la Torre said. It might be that the rational types were more focused on the task at hand, making them blind to unexpected phenomena like the gorilla.
Thus, De la Torre said, the current search for E.T. may be limited by humanity's preconceived notions.
Shostak agreed to some extent. If you'd been able to ask a trilobite 500 million years ago who it expected to run the Earth in another few hundred million years, it might have dreamed up a "really souped-up trilobite," Shostak said. The organism probably wouldn't have foreseen a couple of mass extinctions and the upheaval of all forms of life on Earth. Humans likely face that same sort of problem in imagining life on other planets, Shostak said.
On the other hand, Shostak said, SETI researchers have given the matter some thought. There are arguments, he said, that humans are actually a pretty good example of what an intelligent life-form might need to get by — opposable thumbs, stereovision — and thus looking for aliens who look like us isn't a bad strategy. There are also arguments that the most likely type of extraterrestrial intelligence won't be biological at all, but will be artificially intelligent machines created by biological, but less bright, creators, Shostak said.
The idea of dark matter as an alien being seems less likely, he said, given that intelligence requires some level of complexity. Dark matter is currently hypothesized to consist of some undescribed theoretical particle, possibly WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. A bunch of particles "isn't going to give you anything that's organized enough to get you intelligence," Shostak said.
For De la Torre, the lesson of the "cosmic gorilla" is that SETI researchers need to consult with psychologists and neuroscientists.
"Currently, all psychological work in this area has been majorly dedicated to look[ing] into the impact of contact [with aliens] in our society," he said, but psychology has more to offer. "If we want to find other intelligences, multidisciplinary work is needed, and psychologists are the experts for intelligence matters."
Extraterrestrial life may use purple pigments to harvest energy.
Credit: iStock/Getty Images Plus
Alien life might be purple.
That's the conclusion of a new research paper that suggests that the first life on Earth might have had a lavender hue. In the International Journal of Astrobiology, microbiologist Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and postdoctoral researcher Edward Schwieterman at the University of California, Riverside, argue that before green plants started harnessing the power of the sun for energy, tiny purple organisms figured out a way to do the same.
Alien life could be thriving in the same way, DasSarma said.
"Astronomers have discovered thousands of new extrasolar planets recently and are developing the capacity to see surface biosignatures" in the light reflected from these planets, he told Live Science. There are already ways to detect green life from space, he said, but scientists might need to start looking for purple, too. [7 Wild Theories on the Origin of Life]
Purple Earth
The idea that the early Earth was purple is not new, DasSarma and his colleagues advanced the theory in 2007. The thinking goes like this: Plants and photosynthesizing algae use chlorophyll to absorb energy from the sun, but they don't absorb green light. That's odd, because green light is energy-rich. Perhaps, DasSarma and his colleagues reasoned, something else was already using that part of the spectrum when chlorophyll photosynthesizers evolved.
That "something else" would be simple organisms that captured solar energy with a molecule called retinal. Retinal pigments absorb green light best. They're not as efficient as chlorophylls in capturing solar energy, but they are simpler, the researchers wrote in their new paper published Oct. 11.
Retinal light-harvesting is still widespread today among bacteria and the single-celled organisms called Archaea. These purple organisms have been discovered everywhere from the oceans to the Antarctic Dry Valley to the surfaces of leaves, Schwieterman told Live Science. Retinal pigments are also found in the visual system of more complex animals. The appearance of the pigments across many living organisms hints that they may have evolved very early on, in ancestors common to many branches of the tree of life, the researchers wrote. There is even some evidence that modern purple-pigmented salt-loving organisms called halophiles might be related to some of the earliest life on Earth, which thrived around methane vents in the ocean, Schwieterman said.
Purple aliens
Regardless of whether the first life on Earth was purple, it's clear that lavender life suits some organisms just fine, Schwieterman and DasSarma argue in their new paper. That means that alien life could be using the same strategy. And if alien life is using retinal pigments to capture energy, astrobiologists will find them only by looking for particular light signatures, they wrote.
Chlorophyll, Schwieterman said, absorbs mostly red and blue light. But the spectrum reflected from a plant-covered planet displays what astrobiologists call a "vegetation red edge." This "red edge" is a sudden change in the reflection of light at the near-infrared part of the spectrum, where plants suddenly stop absorbing red wavelengths and start reflecting them away.
Retinal-based photosynthesizers, on the other hand, have a "green edge," Schwieterman said. They absorb light up to the green portion of the spectrum, and then start reflecting longer wavelengths away.
Astrobiologists have long been intrigued by the possibility of detecting extraterrestrial life by detecting the "red edge," Schwieterman said, but they may need to consider searching for the "green edge," too.
"If these organisms were present in sufficient densities on an exoplanet, those reflection properties would be imprinted on that planet's reflected light spectrum," he said.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Argentijnse nieuwsuitzending onderbroken door aliens? Dit object verscheen plotseling in beeld
Argentijnse nieuwsuitzending onderbroken door aliens? Dit object verscheen plotseling in beeld
Een nieuwsuitzending op de Argentijnse tv werd afgelopen week onderbroken toen plotseling een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object in beeld verscheen.
Tijdens het programma Mananas Argentinas op zender C5N was de skyline van Buenos Aires te zien op een enorm scherm.
Zilveren bol
Terwijl presentatrice Mariela Fernandez praatte over het weer en de smog in de lucht, doemde opeens een UFO op.
Het leek te gaan om een zilveren bol, die van rechts naar links door het beeld bewoog en uiteindelijk uit beeld verdween.
Onder de indruk
Fernandez was zichtbaar onder de indruk van het object, dat hoger en hoger klom. Ze riep uit dat het geen vliegtuig was, terwijl haar collega Diego Angeli suggereerde dat het een UFO was.
De laatste tijd worden vaker UFO’s gezien tijdens nieuwsuitzendingen. Eerder werden tijdens uitzendingen in Oregon, Milwaukee en Buffalo onverklaarbare dingen gezien in de lucht.
Prince would love this news. A new study claims that the first life on Earth may have been (get ready, Oprah!) the color purple and the same science behind this indicates that alien life forms, if they exist, could be a matching hue. Sorry all you greys, tall whites and green Reptilian fans! Might this be linked to the mysterious purple skies recently in Ohio and Florida?
Microbiologist Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and postdoctoral researcher Edward Schwieterman at the University of California, Riverside, are the authors of the study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology with the self-explanatory title: “Early evolution of purple retinal pigments on Earth and implications for exoplanet biosignatures.” Their “Purple Earth” hypothesis is based on the proposition that the purple-pigmented molecule called retinal may have enabled early life forms to create energy from sunlight before they went green with chlorophyll and photosynthesis.
The key to the Purple Earth hypothesis is the Great Oxygenation Event which designates the planet’s atmospheric switch 2.4 billion years ago from carbon dioxide and methane to primarily oxygen. Prior to this, DasSarma and Schwieterman speculate that retinal, a purplish molecule that is simpler than chlorophyll, was the primary energy enabler, then retinal and chlorophyll existed together before chlorophyll and photosynthesis generated enough oxygen to convert the entire atmosphere over to one more suitable for green plants. If we could travel back to that time, we’d see that the plants were purple because retinal molecules absorb green and yellow light and emit a mix of blue and red light that appears purple.
If the Purple Earth hypothesis is true, then it could happen on other planets that may be similar to Earth. To find them, the study says that astronomers need to start looking for planets with a “green edge” — since retinal reflects green infrared light – rather the “red edge” they currently seek because chlorophyll molecules reflect infrared red light. That would mean that any alien life utilizing retinal would be purple, including human-sized life forms. Can we deal with real Smurfs?
An example of a purple sky?
Did aliens have anything to do with the purple sky seen last week in northern Ohio and in Florida after Hurricane Michael? Videos of both show definite purple sky that’s more than just purple rain. Fortunately, local meteorologists calmed panicky skywatchers by explaining that there was nothing alien about it – the purple sky was the result of a phenomenon called scattering. A red sunset hits the blue sky and scatters the shorter blue wavelengths, creating purple – a color we should see every night but don’t because of the way our eyes adjust to different minor wavelengths.
Will our purple alien friends have the same problem? What color will they see us? Let’s hope it’s not the same as their favorite food.
A new French film about alien abduction (among other things) was screened last week at the BFI London Film Festival. Directed by a man simply known as Quarxx, the film, All the Gods In the Sky, has yet to secure a distribution deal, but, when it does, audiences should be prepare to be disturbed. Apparently, it was inspired by a photograph of a boy who lay next to his dead sister for three weeks.
The official synopsis is as follows:
“30-year-old factory worker Simon lives a solitary existence on a decrepit farm in the remote French countryside. Devoting his time to caring for his sister Estelle, who was left severely disabled when a childhood game went horribly wrong, Simon is plagued by guilt and depression. But he sees a way out, looking to otherworldly forces as a means of liberating both himself and his sister from the corporeal prisons in which they are confined.”
Pretty vague. So where do aliens come into all of this?
In her review for SciFi Now, Katherine McLaughlin notes that the film’s protagonist, Simon (Jean-Luc Couchard), is “convinced he was abducted by aliens who are still trying to contact him.” These aliens are, we can infer, “all the gods in the sky,” of the title and are regarded by Simon as a force of potential salvation for he and his disabled sister who wish to be freed from the heavy shackles of their Earthly existence.
McLaughlin describes the film as “Genuinely bleak and upsetting in places [and] intent on both shocking audiences and inspiring awe.” Melanie Gaydos, in the role of Simon’s sister, Estelle, delivers a “superb and committed” debut film performance, writes McLaughlin in her review, and adds that first-time director Quarxx “ups the disorientation levels and adds wonder to all the melancholy, unpleasantness and despair with remarkable, otherworldly imagery.”
Ultimately, however, the weighty themes are spread a little too thin for McLaughlin’s tastes, as she concludes of the film:
“Touching upon trauma, the pressures of caring for someone, disability, poverty and stolen childhoods [and, yes, alien abduction] in an ambitious and imaginative way Quarxx occasionally reaches a bit too far. Some of the narrative threads feel a little undercooked and unnecessary even if they are affecting and visually intriguing.”
As previously stated, All the Gods In the Sky is yet to secure a distribution deal, but it seems likely that it will be available on some platform or another sometime in 2019. In the meantime, if you’re intrigued at the notion of UFOlogical themes being incorporated into an arthouse film, you should check out the brilliant Under the Skin, which I count among my favorite UFO movies.
Whenever we think we’ve got a good grasp on how things work out in space something comes along and tells us otherwise. In this case it’s our models of how planets and star systems form. Astronomers in Chile recently discovered four enormous gas giants in a star system that should be far too young to have formed these massive planets.
CI Tau is a baby. It’s only two million years old and still surrounded by its protoplanetary disk, the swirling mass of dust that will eventually form into planets as gravity and time continue to work their weird magic on the system. The strange thing is that in this protoplanetary disk are conspicuous gaps, and in those gaps are already-formed massive gas giants. Scientists have no idea how they got there.
Protoplanetary disk.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of the planets, the closest to CI Tau was already known to astronomers. This monster of a planet—known as CI Tau b— is about 10 times the size of Jupiter and orbits CI Tau once every nine days. When astronomers discovered CI Tau b, it was the first so-called “hot Jupiter” ever discovered around such a young star. Hot Jupiters are gas giants that orbit their star at very close distances and very high speeds. CI Tau b is closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours. Hot Jupiters already seem to defy assumptions about how solar systems form, and finding one around such a young star was even stranger. The other hot Jupiters found belonged to star systems hundreds of times older than CI Tau b. Now it turns out that this anomaly of a planet has three other neighbors that are even more surprising and strange.
What a hot Jupiter might look like.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/Principia College
The discovery of the three new planets was detailed in a new paper published in TheAstrophysical Journal Letters. The next planet out from CI Tau b is about the size of Jupiter, and orbits CI Tau at a distance of 13 AU (Astronomical Units, one AU is the distance from Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers). Further out are the two most mysterious planets in the system. These are both about the size of Saturnand they orbit at distances of 39 and 100 AU. Yet another thing that makes this system so strange is that the outermost planet is 1000 times further away that the innermost planet, a variance in distance that is hardly ever seen in star systems. At such extreme distances it’s supposed to take a very long time for Saturn-sized planets to form. According to Professor Cathie Clark, lead author of the paper:
“Saturn mass planets are supposed to form by first accumulating a solid core and then pulling in a layer of gas on top, but these processes are supposed to be very slow at large distances from the star. Most models will struggle to make planets of this mass at this distance.”
More observations of these bizarre planets will be required to even being to make sense of how they formed. Regardless of what we find,it will likely further challenge our assumptions of how planets are formed. Especially if we find an alien planet manufacturing factory hiding in the protoplanetary disk. Likely? No, not at all. But it would be pretty cool.
On Saturday, a young man found two distinctive drawings in the snow, but found no human footprints. At around 20:00 hours on Saturday, a youth from Moquehue (Neuquén) went out on his motorcycle to ride through a seldom-transited area along Route 117 and found strange drawings in the snow. "Their size and perfection were striking," said Rodrigo in a conversation with LM Neuquén regarding the spots. "I'd never seen anything like them." The young man said that after seeing the drawings, he alerted his family and they returned to the site to take photographs and inspect the designs. "I was surprised that there were no footprints nearby. This in an area that is rarely visited," he added. The ground marks were found on Route 11 heading toward Norquinco in an area that remains closed in winter and only recently reopened in the spring. Patches of snow often remain and that is where the marks were seen. Other local residents said that drawings similar in their size and perfection were found a kilometer distant from the site. "I believe UFOs exist. Perhaps it was them," Rodrigo concluded.
Steve Andrews Close UFO Encounter & Alien Abduction Incident in 1978
Steve Andrews Close UFO Encounter & Alien Abduction Incident in 1978
In 1978 Steve Andrews claims that he witnessed a close UFO encounter in Cardiff (Wales), and had been abducted and taken on board a spaceship by aliens. He was hypnotically regressed by Dave Coggins to recall his experience. Steve Andrews is also known as “The Bard of Ely”, was born in Canton, Cardiff in 1953 and lived in Ely for 25 years, a suburb on the outskirts of Cardiff in South Wales. He is a singer-songwriter, writer and journalist with a strong interest in botany and conservation. Andrews is known for having a brightly coloured beard and being a Welsh icon.
In an age of wild claims churned out by politicians, media and advertisers, perhaps people don’t care as much any more.
This month, the two major online sites for reporting UFOs – the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network – both documented steep drops in worldwide sightings. The declines started around 2014, when reports were at a peak. They have since reduced drastically to 55% of that year’s combined total, many UFO interest groups have folded, and numerous previously classified government documents have been disclosed.
Do these declines reveal that UFO interest is becoming a blip on the human cultural radar? Perhaps UFO and alien lore is seeming more like a reflection of human culture, tied to the space age, motivated by conquering new existential frontiers.
It might not be a coincidence that the term UFO (unidentified flying object) and some of the phenomena that surrounds it – abductions and impossible technologies – are relatively recent. Before the 1940s, reports of sightings of objects in the sky were extremely rare. Centuries of recorded history give no clear indication of any such activity. Then, at the predawn of the space-age, around the time of the Roswell conspiracy, UFO culture was born, giving rise to everything from Space Invaders to The X-Files.
Possible answers as to why sightings are decreasing are varied. A key factor, however, may be that more people simply don’t care any more. As we are accustomed to being inundated with wild claims churned out by politicians, media and advertisers, the next report of a UFO is no more believed than the long-range weather forecast.
Before home video, photographs were the staple of UFO evidence. Video evidence, during the height of the 1990s UFO mania, was regarded by many as even more substantial. Amateur footage of glowing objects in the sky, as mysterious as they seemed real, made the cut for appearing on television – they were meant to be taken seriously and they fed an audience hungry for amazement, helped by a healthy dose of conspiracy theorising. According to the cultural historian Stuart Walton, “Belief in UFOs is definitely in a state of decline, along with much else that could be classed as paranormal. Part of the reason is that the technology for providing documentary evidence of such matters is now widely available to everybody with a smartphone, and such purported evidence as there is on YouTube looks extremely threadbare.”
He adds: “It isn’t so much that belief can exist without proof; it’s that it must emphatically avoid proof to remain belief. We are in the process, paradoxically, of proving a negative hypothesis with UFOs: there never was any such thing.” Indeed, indisputable evidence of intelligent life coming to Earth could be the greatest news of all time. Yet, after thousands of anecdotal, photo, and video reports have accrued over decades, what are we to conclude? With the greatest balance of scepticism and “wanting to believe”, all that can confidently be asserted is that some objects, appearing in the sky on film or video, seem unidentifiable.
Furthermore, government disclosure of its own video footage isn’t helping to maintain belief. Joseph Baker, sociology professor at Tennessee State University, says: “It’s actually better for UFOs when ufologists can claim that ‘the powers that be know everything and are hiding it from us’ rather than seeing that the government appears to have basically the same info about UFOs as the public: namely grainy, inconclusive visual evidence.” Perhaps though, the declines in reported sightings may signify only an end to current trends in ufology. After all, from the 1940s aliens were originally characterised as saviours who could help humans transcend the cold-war paranoia of nuclear annihilation; especially marked at the time, after two world wars. But after events like Watergate and the Vietnam war fuelled distrust in government, UFOs came to be viewed more as a possible threat, and some came to believe their existence was verified in secret military documents.
Sharon Hill, a researcher on the paranormal and pseudoscience, says: “The ideas about UFOs and aliens continue to evolve as we project our social and cultural ideas on them. Since we have no single easy explanation for all these claims regarding the decline in sightings, the future vision of ufology seems rather open-ended. I don’t think it’s dead, just changing.” Sharon Hill, a researcher on the paranormal and pseudoscience, says: “The ideas about UFOs and aliens continue to evolve as we project our social and cultural ideas on them. Since we have no single easy explanation for all these claims regarding the decline in sightings, the future vision of ufology seems rather open-ended. I don’t think it’s dead, just changing.”
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.