“Project Blue Book” UFO Series Premieres January 8, 2019 (Promo Trailer)

Project Blue Book chronicles the true top secret United States Air Force-sponsored investigations into UFO-related phenomena in the 1950’s and 60’s known as “Project Blue Book.” The series follows Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a brilliant college professor recruited by the U.S. Air Force to spearhead this clandestine operation that researched thousands of cases, many of which were never solved. Each episode will draw from the actual files, blending UFO theories with authentic historical events from one of the most mysterious eras in United States history.

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

08-01-2019 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

Project Blue Book and Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Paul Hynek has worked in tech and entertainment and is currently a business consultant. Paul is also a former adjunct professor at Pepperdine University, and is presently a consultant for HISTORY’s new series Project Blue Book, based on a real project to investigate UFOs from 1952 to 1969. Paul is the son of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked with the U.S. Air Force investigating UFO cases from 1948 to the end of Blue Book in 1969. A character based on J. Allen Hynek is the lead character in the series. Paul’s father began his investigation with USAF as a skeptic, but by the time Blue Book ended, he was convinced some UFO cases posed a real mystery. The HISTORY series is not sticking strictly to the facts, but it is attempting to portray the people and events as accurately as possible. In this interview, we talk to Paul about the production of the new series, his father’s UFO work, and how he hopes the show will affect viewers and perceptions of the UFO phenomenon. Project Blue Book premieres January 8, 2018.

Visit the HISTORY Project Blue Book website for more:

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

08-01-2019 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

Top-Secret UFO Program Revealed in TV's 'Project Blue Book'

08-01-2019 om 22:28 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s Future Spaceships Will Travel At 1 Million Miles Per Hour

NASA could be on the verge of a breakthrough. Currently, NASA is working on an advanced propulsion engine, that if cracked, can elevate our space travel to the next level. For decades, spacecraft have been stuck traveling at low chemical speeds, limiting our ability to research and explore space. However, now speeds of over one million miles per hour before 2050 are possible. The NASA institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding two high potential concepts.

There are new ion drives being developed right now that could have power levels that are tens thousand times higher. Antimatter propulsion and multi-megawatt ion drives are being developed. The current speeds of spacecraft are quite low in space terms. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is moving at 38,000 mph (61,000 km/h). This speed was achieved mostly by a chemical rocket but also with the assistance of gravity, using it to slingshot the spacecraft out of orbit. Juno, Helios I and Helios II managed to reach speeds of around 150,000 mph using gravitational boosts also. The recently launched Parker Solar Probe will reach 430,000 mph using the Sun’s gravity.

Gravitational boosts are our current best way of achieving higher speeds for our spacecraft. However, this method is also detrimental to our research and exploration as it takes a lot of time to work. It can take many months before the desired speed is achieved and the real mission starts.

via Gfycat

The new methods will use 50000 ISP lithium ion thrusters, the first of which will be tested in 4 months. This is part of a NASA NIAC phase 2 study to use lasers to beam 10 megawatts of power into new ion drivers. The recent progress of lasers is largely unknown to the public. The US military is developing lasers that can produce a whopping 100 kilowatts within the next two years.

Laser beam powered ion drives will be up to ten times faster than any previous ion drive. A spacecraft with this technology would take less than a year to get to Pluto.

Jet Propulsion Lab is building and ironing out the many components used in this system. The sail and the ion drives are finally coming together. The hardest part will be creating and sustaining the phased array lasers. Testing voltage will be boosted up to 6000 volts. This will allow the ion drives to be directly driven, which eliminates the need for a lot of electronics and weight. These type of ion drives do have many technical challenges, but predictions show a well-funded project could be successful before 2040.

{ http://aliensdocs.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 22:12 geschreven door peter  

Women's shock as they 'see UFO' hovering over Hull

A woman and her aunt saw what they believe to be a UFO on Peel Street this evening

By Anna Riley

A suspected UFO sighting near Spring Bank

A woman and her aunt say they have spotted a potential UFO in Hull whilst heading to the shops.

The pair, who do not wish to be named, took a picture of a low flying red object near Peel Street, off Spring Bank, above an astro-turf pitch. They were unsure of what the light was, but speculated that it could be a UFO, which they say they viewed at 5.40pm on Sunday.

The sighting left them in a state of shock, and has made them wonder whether extra-terrestrial life may be present in the city.

"We were walking towards the shops when we saw a big red ball in the sky that was really low down and wasn't moving that looked like it may have rings around it," said the woman.

"It didn't seem to be moving and it just seemed really weird as it definitely wasn't a laser, a helicopter or another light that was supposed to be there - it was just stationary in the sky and we thought it could have been a UFO.

"As soon as we saw it, we took a picture of it on the phone, and when we were walking back from the shop, the red ball was still there - it was really freaky and shook us up a bit as it made us think that something else is out there."

The two family member's showed a picture of the "UFO" to the woman's partner, and he went out to try and get a video of the object, but by the time he got back to the spot where it was sighted, the light was no longer there.

Even though he did not see the light in person, he is convinced that the object was something sinister, and indeed a UFO.

"I've never seen anything like it before," said the man, who did not wish to be named.

"It wasn't a drone, a streetlamp, a helicopter or anything that could be reasonably explained - it wasn't human and definitely something different.

"We can't prove it, but we think that it was a UFO, an we'd like to know if anyone else saw what it was."

{ https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/ }

08-01-2019 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

Burrell: In this time of tension and anxiety, UFOs are back in the news

by Hedley Burrell  (www.heraldtribune.com)

• Stories of UFOs have ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind. Today mainstream news outlets featuring heavily credentialed experts weighing in on the ongoing UFO phenomenon. In December (2017), CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a … government program to research potential UFOs said … he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.”
• The New York Post summarized events: “… The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with… a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.” “The report explains in great detail how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”
• Then there was a Washington Post story describing how a rock star had “mustered a team of credentialed experts to put mysterious incidents on your radar.” “UFOs”, the headline said, “are suddenly a serious news story.” The rock star, the Post reported, was former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who launched To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. It will investigate the “outer edges of science.”
• Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the academy who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote a Washington Post opinion piece that carried this headline: “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?”
• What we have today are heavy-duty experts taking UFOs seriously. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” declared Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official in the CNN interview.
• It is intriguing to think of a new generation of journalists having to decide what attention, if any, should be given to new assertions that “the truth is out there,” to borrow a tagline from “The X-Files.”

Long ago, as a young reporter, I was well aware of UFO stories.

Out of curiosity, I read mainstream media pieces as well as tabloid tales. What repeatedly struck me was this: As with much else in life, we were reluctant to simply accept that we didn’t immediately know the answer to the mystery of the moment.

In any event, I would not have imagined that some six decades later, UFO stories would still be around, with heavily credentialed experts weighing in.

The stories ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind.

In the past, I suspected that reports of sightings were likely to increase when popular entertainment featured space sagas, but I also thought they were a reflection of universal tensions and anxiety.

Given that these are truly tense and anxious times, I started to look around for UFO-type talk — or, rather, the reporting of same. I searched for some indication of renewed and perhaps more intense attention.

I found it, and it even had a new spin — namely an assertion that the subject was “serious.”

In December, CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a ... government program to research potential UFOs said ... he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.” Other media outlets also weighed in. What was going on?

Last month, The New York Post summarized and updated events:

“UFO sightings are a dime a dozen ... but back in December, The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with something totally wild. It was a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.”

The account continued: “The report explains in great details how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”

So there was all this.

Then I discovered a Washington Post story describing how a rock star had “mustered a team of credentialed experts to put mysterious incidents on your radar.”

UFOs, the headline said, “are suddenly a serious news story.”

The rock star, the Post reported, was former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who launched To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. It will investigate the “outer edges of science.”

Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the academy who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote a Washington Post opinion piece that carried this headline: “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?”

In the past, we have seen UFO reports gain substantial international attention — originating from such locations as Roswell, N.M., the Exeter, N.H., area, Shag Harbour, N.S., Rendlesham Forest, which has been dubbed Britain’s Roswell, and many others. The British site even offers a UFO Trail.

I suppose it’s not exactly surprising that in times of uncertainty, many might wish for intelligent and caring aliens to arrive and show us how we lost our way.

What we have today, though, are heavy-duty experts taking UFOs seriously.

“My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” declared Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official in the CNN interview.

And Britain’s Telegraph newspaper quoted Elizondo, who is also involved with DeLonge’s academy, as saying: “In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ I hate to use the term UFO, but that’s what we’re looking at.”

Now, I came across all kinds of accounts involving UFOs in my day. So it is intriguing to think of a new generation of journalists having to decide what attention, if any, should be given to new assertions that “the truth is out there,” to borrow a tagline from “The X-Files.”

Meantime, as the stories pick up in the mainstream media, I can only quote Leah Crane writing in New Scientist: “The most ambitious search so far for extraterrestrial intelligence has released its first data – and there are no aliens yet.”

• Hedley Burrell is a former editor and writer for The Washington Post and The Associated Press and media adviser for U.S. government agencies. He lives in Manatee County.

{ https://exonews.org/ }

08-01-2019 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

WATCH: Former Pentagon official calls for big UFO reveal after secret investigation

 By Michelle Basch | @MBaschWTOP

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — If evidence proving that extraterrestrials visited Earth has been squirreled away behind locked doors in Nevada, a former Pentagon official is calling for a big reveal.

Shea holds a comical sign that used to hang in his office. It was given to him by a journalist and UFO skeptic Phil KLASS.

( WTOP / Michelle BASCH )

Related Stories

• Investigating ‘what the heck is going on’: Science, evidence at center of Md. UFO conferenceANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD NEWS
• Pentagon’s mysterious project breathes new life into UFO researchGOVERNMENT NEWS

“Show it to the National Academy of Sciences. Don’t hide it. Show it! We’ve been waiting for it! We’ve been waiting for it forever,” retired Air Force Col. David Shea said, raising his voice. “But so far, that hasn’t happened, and I don’t know why.”

Shea, 80, was the Air Force’s press spokesman on UFOs at the Pentagon from 1967 to 1971. He considers himself an “agnostic” when it comes to whether some unidentified flying objects are ships piloted by intelligent beings from faraway worlds.

( WTOP / Michelle BASCH )

“I would believe if I saw some evidence that showed we were visited by alien spacecraft, but there hasn’t been evidence to my mind of such,” he said in an interview at his Northern Virginia home.

In 1969, Shea wrote the news release that announced the end of Project Blue Book, an Air Force investigation of more than 12,000 UFO reports.

It concluded that there was no threat to national security, no sign of advanced technology and no evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial.

And with that, it appeared to the public that the government had washed its hands of UFOs.

Shea wrote the newsrelease in 1969 that announced the end of the Air Force's  Project Blue Book. It studied more than 12.000 UFO reports, and is now the basis op an upcoming Historiy Channel drama series. 

( WTOP / Michelle BASCH )

But in December, almost 50 years after Project Blue Book ended, came explosive news.

The New York Times reported that Bigelow Aerospace had been storing material recovered from “unidentified aerial phenomena” in its buildings in Las Vegas as part of a secret Pentagon UFO investigation project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

Shea was not surprised by news of the project’s existence, but he thinks if more people were aware of the government’s history with UFOs, they would better understand why, in his opinion, the government should not get involved again.

“The UFOs never seem to go away,” he said.

The inscriptions on the back on that sign show how is was initially given to Klass, and than along passed to Shea.

( WTOP / Michelle BASCH )

Government investigations and scientific studies

What is considered the modern UFO era began as Americans’ Cold War fears of the Soviet Union were heating up.

In 1947, a veteran pilot flying near Mt. Rainier in Washington reported seeing nine strange objects flying in formation at incredible speeds.

The sighting made national news, and the same year, the Air Force (still the Army Air Forces at the time) began investigating — with intelligence officers in charge — reports of UFOs.

“They really weren’t sure what was going on. But by the end of ’49 they quickly became convinced that there was no threat, and there was no visitation, there was no advanced technology, and that was a good time to get out of the business, but they didn’t,” Shea said.

The work went on under several code names including “Project Sign,” “Project Grudge” and “Project Blue Book.”

{ https://wtop.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 21:35 geschreven door peter  

‘Project Blue Book’ TV series chronicles UFO research of former NU scientist

Aidan Gillen (left) stars on "Project Blue Book" as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who works with Capt. Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey) on a study of UFO sightings. | History

J. Allen Hynek began his life as just “a little Czech boy from Chicago,” according to his son. He later became one of the country’s leading astronomers and the chairman of Northwestern University’s astronomy department.

Now, Allen is about to be featured on his own TV show, a drama called “Project Blue Book” premiering at 9 p.m. Tuesday on History, and named for Hynek’s study of UFO sightings for the U.S. government in the 1950s and 1960s.

The show centers on Allen (Aiden Gillen), a self-described “eccentric” scientist, who really comes off more intelligent than eccentric. He is recruited by the Air Force to prove that UFOs don’t exist. Partnered up with Air Force Capt. Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), Hynek travels the country to talk to people who claim to have had encounters with UFOs. The men work together, with some contention, to determine what actually happened during the supposed UFO sightings.

At first the sighting claims seem outlandish, but Allen, a scientist, is determined to uncover the truth.

J. Allen Hynek (Aiden Gillen ) discovers what appears to be an alien on “Project Blue Book.” | History

The show is based on real events but has a little bit of Hollywood embellishment. Writer and executive producer Sean Jablonski estimated that about 75 percent of the show is factual and 25 percent is dramatized. He said the characters on the show were based on real people, but that some of the names were changed.

“It’s not about accuracy so much as it is authenticity,” said Allen’s son Paul Hynek, who serves as a consultant on the show. He helps the cast and crew more accurately capture his parents on screen. He said he gave the actors who play his dad and mom some clothing and knick-knacks that actually belonged to his parents.

Episodes focus on real UFO sighting claims that Hynek evaluated. Even though the series takes place during the UFO-obsessed 1950s, Jablonski said he thinks it will resonate with contemporary viewers.

“Blue Book — why I think it’s so relevant right now, it was the beginning of fake news,” he said. “It’s literally what the government crafted to say: ‘What you saw is not what you saw.’”

Paul said he believed his dad would think the show is “a rollicking good adventure” and his mom, Mimi Hynek, would think it is “a bunch of nonsense.”

Hynek said he believed when his father came to work at Northwestern in 1960, the university was more interested in his mainstream science research than his work with Project Blue Book.

“Northwestern never really liked very much their chairman of the Department of Astronomy galavanting around the world studying UFOs,” he said. “It was his mainstream science that they were interested in, and they just sort of begrudgingly put up with the UFO crap.”

His mother, meanwhile, was president of the Cook County League of Women voters. He said she was always in touch with racial and gender issues and also tried to help black families get around segregated housing policies.

{ https://chicago.suntimes.com/section/news/ }

08-01-2019 om 20:55 geschreven door peter  

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Triggered Mile-High Tsunami That Spread Through Earth's Oceans

Range and her colleagues presented the research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting on Dec. 14 in Washington, D.C. And the research, first reported by EOS, is novel. "As far as we know, we are the first to globally model the tsunami from impact to the end of wave propagation," Range told Live Science.

The idea for the project got started when Range's two advisors — Ted Moore and Brian Arbic, both in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan — realized there was a glaring gap in the Chicxulub research field. Mainly, no one had published a global simulation of the tsunami the asteroid created.

"It wasn’t until starting this project that I realized the actual scale of this tsunami, and it’s been a fun research story to share," Range said.

Satellite views of the Chicxulub impact site in the Yucutan Peninsula, southern Mexico.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

Getting to work

The researchers knew that the asteroid hit shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico. But to correctly model its huge impact, they needed a model that could compute "the large scale deformation of the [Earth’s] crust that formed the crater, as well as the chaotic waves from the initial blast of water away from the impact site, and waves from ejecta falling back into the water," Range said. So, the group turned to Brandon Johnson, an assistant professor who studies impact cratering at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Johnson ran a model detailing what happened in the 10 minutes following the impact, when the crater was nearly a mile deep (1.5 kilometers) and the blast was so powerful, there wasn't any water in the crater yet. "At this point, some water was moving back toward the crater," Range said. According to the model, "this water will then rush into the crater and then back out, forming the 'collapse wave.'"

In a second model, the team studied how the tsunami propagated through oceans around the world. They did this by taking the results from the first model (particularly the crater shape) and the impact's waves with respect to resting sea level and water speeds, Range said. They then used data sets on the ancient terrain of the ocean, and used that to determine how the tsunami would have played out.

The results show the effects of the tsunami were felt all around the world. [In Pictures: Japan Earthquake & Tsunami]

"We found that this tsunami moved throughout the entire ocean, in every ocean basin," Range said. In the Gulf of Mexico, water moved as fast as 89 mph (143 km/h), she found. Within the first 24 hours, the effects of the tsunami's impact spread out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the Atlantic, as well as through the Central American seaway (which doesn't exist anymore, but used to connect the Gulf to the Pacific).

After the initial nearly mile-high (1.5 km) wave, other huge waves rocked the world's oceans. In the South Pacific and North Atlantic, waves reached a whopping maximum height of 46 feet (14 m). In the North Pacific, they reached 13 feet (4 m). Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico saw waves as high as 65 feet (20 meters) in some spots and 328 feet (100 m) in others.

To put that in perspective, the largest modern wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere was a "measly" 78 feet (23.8 m) tall, which struck near New Zealand in May 2018, Live Science previously reported.

When an asteroid struck the Yucatan region about 66 million years ago, it wiped out the dinosaurs, and most of life on Earth. If it had hit elsewhere, the dinosaurs might well have survived.

Credit: NASA/Don Davis

Hard evidence

There's evidence that supports the models, Range said. According to the second model, fast-moving water from the impact likely caused erosion and sediment disruption in South Pacific, North Atlantic and Mediterranean ocean basins.

In a separate study (which also has yet to be published), Moore examined sediment records across the ocean. His findings agree with the tsunami model, Range said.

It can be hard to imagine such a cataclysmic tsunami, so the researchers compared it to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed at least 225,000 people. The two tsunamis were as different as night and day, they found. "Over the first 7 hours of both tsunamis, the [Chicxulub] impact tsunami was 2,500 to 29,000 times greater in energy than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami," Range said.

Of course, the giant tsunami wasn't the only event that did in the non-avian dinosaurs. The asteroid also triggered shock waves and sent a vast amount of hot rock and dust into the atmosphere, which rubbed together with so much friction that they started forest fires and cooked animals alive. These particles also hovered in the atmosphere and blocked the sun's rays for years, killing plants and the animals that ate them.

Originally published on Live Science.

Mass extinction only occurred when the asteroid having 9-km diameter hit the orange areas.

“Here we show that the probability of significant global cooling, mass extinction, and the subsequent appearance of mammals was quite low after an asteroid impact on the Earth’s surface. This significant event could have occurred if the asteroid hit the hydrocarbon-rich areas occupying approximately 13% of the Earth’s surface. The site of asteroid impact, therefore, changed the history of life on Earth.”

Credit: Kunio Kaiho

{ https://www.space.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 20:40 geschreven door peter  

Zoom! Asteroid Bennu Slips Past in OSIRIS-REx Flyby View

08-01-2019 om 20:14 geschreven door peter  

08-01-2019 om 16:20 geschreven door peter  

The Crop Circle Mystery: A Closer Look

Crop circles — strange patterns that appear mysteriously overnight in farmers' fields—provoke puzzlement, delight and intrigue among the press and public alike. The circles are mostly found in the United Kingdom, but have spread to dozens of countries around the world in past decades. The mystery has inspired countless books, blogs, fan groups, researchers (dubbed "cereologists") and even Hollywood films. 

Despite having been studied for decades, the question remains: Who — or what — is making them? 

Early crop circles

Many people believe that crop circles have been reported for centuries, a claim repeated in many books and websites devoted to the mystery. Their primary piece of evidence is a woodcut from 1678 that appears to show a field of oat stalks laid out in a circle. Some take this to be a first-hand eyewitness account of a crop circle, but a little historical investigation shows otherwise.

The woodcut actually illustrates what in folklore is called a "mowing devil" legend, in which an English farmer told a worker with whom he was feuding that he "would rather pay the Devil himself" to cut his oat field than pay the fee demanded. The source of the harvesting is not unknown or mysterious; it is indeed Satan himself, who — complete with signature horns and a tail — can be seen in the woodcut holding a scythe. 

Some claim that the first crop circles (though they were not called that at the time) appeared near the small town of Tully, Australia. In 1966, a farmer said he saw a flying saucer rise up from a swampy area and fly away; when he went to investigate he saw a roughly circular area of debris and apparently flattened reeds and grass, which he assumed had been made by the alien spacecraft (but which police investigators said was likely caused by a natural phenomena such as a dust devil or waterspout). Referred in the press as "flying saucer nests," this story is more a UFO report than a crop circle report. 

As in the 1678 mowing devil legend, the case for it being linked to crop circles is especially weak when we consider that the impression or formation was not made in a crop of any kind but instead in ordinary grass. A round impression in a lawn or grassy area is not necessarily mysterious (as anyone with a kiddie pool in the back yard knows). Indeed, mysterious circles have appeared in grass throughout the world that are sometimes attributed to fairies but instead caused by disease. 

Modern crop circles

In fact, the first real crop circles didn't appear until the 1970s, when simple circles began appearing in the English countryside. The number and complexity of the circles increased dramatically, reaching a peak in the 1980s and 1990s when increasingly elaborate circles were produced, including those illustrating complex mathematical equations. 

In July 1996, one of the world's most complex and spectacular crop circles appeared in England, across a highway from the mysterious and world-famous Stonehenge monument in the Wiltshire countryside. It was astonishing fractal pattern called a Julia Set, and while some simple or rough circles might be explained away as the result of a strange weather phenomenon, this one unmistakably demonstrated intelligence. The only question was whether that intelligence was terrestrial or extra-terrestrial.

Making the design all the more mysterious, it was claimed that the circle appeared in less than an hour and during the daytime — which, if true, would be virtually impossible for hoaxers to accomplish. The circle became one of the most famous and important crop circles in history. 

It was later revealed that the circle had in fact been made in about three hours (by three hoaxers) very early that morning. It simply hadn't been noticed until the following afternoon when spotted from an airplane overhead. 

Theories & explanations

Unlike other mysterious phenomenon such as psychic powers, ghosts, or Bigfoot, there is no doubt that crop circles are "real." The evidence that they exist is clear and overwhelming. The real question is instead what creates them — and there are ways to investigate that question.

We can look at both internal and external evidence to evaluate crop circles. Internal information includes the content and meaning of the designs (is there anything that indicates that any information contained in the "messages" is of extraterrestrial origin?), and external information, including the physical construction of the crop designs themselves (is there anything that indicates that the designs were created by anything other than humans?)

Crop circle enthusiasts have come up with many theories about what create the patterns, ranging from the plausible to the absurd. One explanation in vogue in the early 1980s was that the mysterious circle patterns were accidentally produced by the especially vigorous sexual activity of horny hedgehogs. Some people have suggested that the circles are somehow created by localized and precise wind patterns, or by scientifically undetectable Earth energy fields and meridians called ley lines. 

Others, such as molecular biologist Horace Drew, suggest that the answer lies instead in time travel or alien life. He theorizes that the patterns could be made by human time travelers from the distant future to help them navigate our planet. Drew, working on the assumption that the designs are intended as messages, believes he has decoded crop circle symbols and that they contain messages such as "Believe," "There is good out there," "Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises," and "We oppose deception" (all, presumably, in English).

However, these odd, pseudo-biblical messages undermine the credibility of the crop circles, or at least the meaning read into them. Of all the information that an extraterrestrial intelligence might choose to convey to humanity — ranging from how to contact them to engineering secrets of faster-than-light travel — these aliens chose to impart intentionally cryptic messages about false gifts, broken promises, and hope for mankind (along with what seems to be a reference to a popular "The X-Files" slogan).

Many who favor an extraterrestrial explanation claim that aliens physically make the patterns themselves from spaceships; others suggest that they do it using invisible energy beams from space, saving them the trip down here. Still others believe that it is human, not extraterrestrial, thought and intelligence that is behind the patterns — not in the form of hoaxers but some sort of global psychic power that manifests itself in wheat and other crops. 

While there are countless theories, the only known, proven cause of crop circles is humans. Their origin remained a mystery until September 1991, when two men confessed that they had created the patterns for decades as a prank to make people think UFOs had landed (they had been inspired by the 1966 Tully UFO report). They never claimed to have made all the circles — many were copycat pranks done by others — but their hoax launched the crop circle phenomena. 

Most crop circle researchers admit that the vast majority of crop circles are created by hoaxers. But, they claim, there's a remaining tiny percentage that they can't explain. The real problem is that (despite unproven claims by a few researchers that stalks found inside "real" crop circles show unusual characteristics), there is no reliable scientific way to distinguish "real" crop circles from man-made ones. 

Crop circle features

While there are always a few exceptions, virtually all crop circles share a set of common characteristics. 

• Circles. 

Crop circles, as the name implies, almost always involve circles — rarely triangles, rectangles, or squares, though some designs contain straight or curved lines. Perhaps not coincidentally, a circle is the easiest pattern for hoaxers to create. 

• Nocturnal creation. 

Crop circles are formed overnight, often sighted by farmers or passersby the next morning. Though there seems no logical reason for extraterrestrials or earth energies to only create patterns at night, it is obviously a great advantage for hoaxers to create the designs under the cover of darkness; full moon nights are especially popular. 

• Camera shyness. 

Crop circles have never been recorded being made (except, of course, for those created by hoaxers). This is a very suspicious trait; after all, if mysterious earthly forces or aliens are at work, there's no reason to think that they wouldn't happen when cameras are recording. 

• Access to roads. 

Crop circles usually appear in fields that provide reasonably easy public access, close to roads and highways. They rarely appear in remote, inaccessible areas. Because of this, the patterns are usually noticed within a day or two of their creation by passing motorists. 

There are many theories about what creates crop circles, including aliens, mysterious vortices, time travelers and wind patterns, but they all lack one important element: good evidence. The only known cause of crop circles is humans. Perhaps one day a mysterious, unknown source will be discovered for crop circles, but until the perhaps they are best thought of as collective public art.

Additional resources

• Ken Amis (Lock Haven University): The Truth About Crop Circles
• Smithsonian magazine: The Art of the Crop Circle
• Weather Channel: 30 Incredible Photos of Crop Circles

08-01-2019 om 15:56 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers estimate 100 billion habitable Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, 50 sextillion in the universe

Featured image is an infrared image of the core of the Milky Way, captured by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope. Infrared imaging allows you to see many stars which are normally obscured by intergalactic dust.

Astronomers at the University of Auckland claim that there are actually around 100 billion habitable, Earth-like planets in the Milky Way — significantly more than the previous estimate of around 17 billion. There are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning there is somewhere in the region of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×10²²) habitable planets. I’ll leave you to do the math on whether one of those 50 sextillion planets has the right conditions for nurturing alien life or not.

The previous figure of 17 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way came from the  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in January, which analyzed data from the Kepler space observatory. Kepler essentially measures the dimming (apparent magnitude) of stars as planets transit in front of them — the more a star dims, the larger the planet. Through repeated observations we can work out the planet’s orbital period, from which we can usually derive the orbital distance and surface temperature. According to Phil Yock from the University of Auckland, Kepler’s technique generally finds “Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars,” and are therefore “generally hotter than Earth [and not habitable].”

The University of Auckland’s technique, called gravitational microlensing, instead measures the number of Earth-size planets that orbit at twice the Sun-Earth distance. This results in a list of planets that are generally cooler than Earth — but by interpolating between this new list, and Kepler’s list, the Kiwi astronomers hope to generate a more accurate list of habitable, Earth-like planets. “We anticipate a number in the order of 100 billion,” says Yock.

Gravitational microlensing, an effect theorized by Einstein back in 1936, is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially, light emitted by a star is bent by the gravity of massive objects, ultimately allowing astronomers to work out just how large those objects are. Gravitational microlensing has been used in recent years to detect planets the size of Neptune or Jupiter, and now Yock his colleagues at the University of Auckland have proposed a new method for detecting Earth-sized planets. The astronomers hope to use this new microlensing technique with a huge suite of telescopes — located in Chile, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Texas — to confirm their estimate of 100 billion Earth-like habitable planets.

Suffice it to say, if the Milky Way contains 100 billion Earth-like planets, and there’s somewhere in the region of 500 billion galaxies, then there’s an extremely high chance of other planets harboring life. As for how we’ll get to those planets, though — or, alternatively, how the residents of those planets will get to us — remains a very big question. The nearest probably-habitable planet is Tau Ceti e, which is 11.9 light years from Earth. The fastest spacecraft ever, Helios II, traveled at 43 miles per second (70km/s), or 0.000234c (the speed of light). At that speed it would take 51,000 years for a spacecraft to reach Tau Ceti e.

It gets worse: Helios II was only travelling that fast because it was orbiting close to the Sun; Voyager, for example, travels at just 8 miles per second (so, about 200,000 years to reach Tau Ceti e). To reach another star within a reasonable time period (say, 50-100 years) we would need a propulsion system that’s capable of around 0.1c (10% light speed). There are a few proposed methods for reaching such insane speeds (antimatter rockets, fusion rockets), but nothing that’s being immediately (and seriously) considered for interstellar travel. Who knows, maybe NASA’s warp drive will pan out? If they can work out the whole annihilating-the-star-system-upon-arrival issue, that is…

Gravitational microlensing unlocks the secret of alien life

Research paper: doi: 10.1093/mnras/stt318 – “Extending the planetary mass function to Earth mass by microlensing at moderately high magnification”

Source www.extremetech.com

{ https://ufo.webstynx.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 15:31 geschreven door peter  

10 Unsettling Astronomical Incidents and Phenomena (Video)

An exploration of ten of the most unsettling astrophysical events including Dyson Sphere candidates, a star containing plutonium, the Wow! Signal and others.

Author and futurist John Michael Godier explores the universe in weekly documentary videos released randomly.

These videos center on science, future technology and the mysteries of the universe. Additionally, John releases irregular videos covering breaking news on important developments in space science and technology as they happen.

08-01-2019 om 14:53 geschreven door peter  

Diepste deel van Stille Oceaan koelt af en ondervindt niets van klimaatopwarming - HLN.be

Bron: Scientas

Enkel het diepste gedeelte van de Stille Oceaan loopt enkele eeuwen achter. Datzelfde diepe gedeelte is eigenlijk nog bezig met het verwerken van de Kleine IJstijd: die duurde van de vijftiende tot en met de negentiende eeuw en het was tot wel twee graden kouder dan de gemiddelde temperatuur van vandaag. Al lijkt twee graden niet veel, in werkelijkheid is dat een behoorlijk groot verschil. Zeker wat klimaatverschijnselen betreft.
De bovenste laag van de oceaan stijgt overigens wel gewoon in temperatuur. Sinds 1971 is de oceaantemperatuur om de tien jaar 0,1 graden Celsius warmer geworden. Die stijging in temperatuur zou gelden voor het water tot op een diepte van minstens 3.000 meter. 

Lees ook

Jaarlijks rapport kaart slechte staat van noordelijk poolijs aan: pijnlijk nieuws voor ijsberen, walrussen en rendieren

Maar hoe kan het dan dat een deel van de oceaan zich nog steeds in de Kleine IJstijd waant? Krachtige zeestromen zorgen dat het water in de oceaan circuleert. Die ondoordringbare zeestroom zorgt ervoor dat de onderste laag  tot zelfs duizenden jaren lang niet in contact komt met ook maar een streepje zonlicht. Bijgevolg is er geen sprake van een temperatuurstijging.

Veranderingen in het klimaat
“Ons doel was om een model te ontwikkelen dat laat zien hoe de diepere oceaan reageert op veranderingen in het klimaat”, aldus Peter Huybers, een van de onderzoekers. Het resultaat is een model dat suggereert dat de dieper gelegen delen van de oceaan nog bezig zijn met afkoelen.

Klimaatopwarming

De oceaan speelt een belangrijke rol bij de klimaatopwarming. Doordat er zulke grote verschillen blijken te zijn tussen de bovenste en onderste laag van de oceaan stellen de onderzoekers zich nu de vraag hoeveel warmte de oceaan in werkelijkheid absorbeerde. Die vraag dient beantwoord te worden door bijkomend onderzoek. 

{ https://www.hln.be/wetenschap-planeet }

08-01-2019 om 14:47 geschreven door peter  

08-01-2019 om 14:34 geschreven door peter  

How much do conspiracy theorists mistrust, doubt and even hate NASA? A warning issued in 2002 that a killer asteroid had a remote chance of hitting the Earth in early 2019 was quickly retracted, yet suspicions of a cover-up appeared immediately and never went away. In fact, they seem to be growing because, duh, it’s January 2019! Are we all gonna die, breath a sigh of relief or something in-between?

On July 9, 2002, MIT astronomers discovered a 2 km (1.2 mile) wide asteroid-ish space rock that was on an odd 42-degree tilted orbit around the Sun. Named 2002 NT7, the rock was tracked to make a 2.29 year out-of-sync trip around the solar system. That didn’t concern them as much as a simulation they ran a week after its discovery which showed that 2002 NT7 was possibly on a collision course with Earth in February 2019, making it the first near-Earth object to be assigned a positive rating on not just one but two impact scales both the Torino Scale and the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale, with the approximate date for a low-but-not-no possibly impact on February 1, 2019.

Then things got scary. On July 25, 2002, the low probability of a February 2019 impact was raised to 1-in-250,000. That’s more likely than the odds of getting hit by lightning, getting bitten by a shark, getting injured on an amusement park ride or winning a major lottery, which all happen a few times every year. At that point, some people started to panic.

“Asteroid Could Wipe Out a Continent in 2019”

That was just one of the headlines which caused the scientists to run the simulation again (and probably again and again) until they got a better number. On August 1, 2002, it was announced that there was no chance that 2002 NT7 would hit Earth at any time in 2019 nor for the next 100 years, and the asteroid was removed from the Sentry Risk Table. NASA attributed the new probability to new data and promptly forgot about it. Conspiracy theorists attributed it to a cover-up and never forgot.

Which brings us to 2019, when we’ll finally find out who is right. NASA suspiciously did some new calculations, changing the date 2002 NT7 would be closest to Earth to January 13, 2019, and the distance to .4 AU (61,010,000 km; 37,910,000 mi) from us or farther away than Mars.

“NASA killer asteroid ‘COVER UP’ as 60,000mph space rock ‘due to hit Earth NEXT MONTH’”

That new prediction did nothing to kill the conspiracy theorists, as this Daily Star headline attests. Are they right? A good way to find out is to ask them what they’re plans are for Super Bowl Sunday on February 3rd.

If we’re still here on January 14th, get ready to read this story again in 2021 … you know those NASA cover-up conspiracy theorists don’t give up THAT easily.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/}

08-01-2019 om 14:27 geschreven door peter  

What would be the weirdest thing you could possibly imagine seeing in deep space? If you guessed a Tesla roadster, you’re probably right – although NASA occasionally spots some truly anomalous or curious things out the cold expanse of airless blackness surrounding us. The latest strange find comes thanks to NASA’s New Horizons space probe which last week found an odd “snowman world” in the Kuiper belt at the distant edges of our solar system.

Composite image of Ultima Thule.

The world’s nickname comes from the irregular shape of Ultima Thule, an icy minor planet at the far end of our cosmic neighborhood some 6.5 billion kilometers from Earth. Ultima Thule consists of two separate lobes seemingly joined together which give the impression of a simple snowman. The New Horizons probe was able to fly within 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) of Ultima Thule and gather several different types of images of the curious world.

New Horizon’s flyby of Ultima Thule marks a new record for the most distant object explored in our solar system. “This flyby is a historic achievement,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “Never before has any spacecraft team tracked down such a small body at such high speed so far away in the abyss of space. New Horizons has set a new bar for state-of-the-art spacecraft navigation.”

The two lobes of Ultima Thule appear to have similar composition.

According to Stern, the data collected by New Horizons is a “treasure trove” for him and other NASA scientists to pore over in the coming months as the space agency slowly downloads the data over the next two years. The odd binary minor planet could reveal new secrets about the process of planetary formation and the early days of our solar system.

While a couple of neat pictures of a weird snowman world aren’t exactly likely to draw major headlines, this new discovery shows just how close we are getting to being able to fully explore the strange, distant worlds of deep space. Who knows what kind of weirdness we’ll uncover in just a few more decades?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-01-2019 om 14:08 geschreven door peter  

Long UFO Over Asian Temple In Vietnam During Overcast Day On Jan 2019, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: January 1, 2019

Location of sighting: Hue, Vietnam

Source: MUFON #97520

 

A person in Vietnam this week was at a temple when they noticed something strange having over the building. A long cigar shaped UFO having long ways. When the UFO was noticed it moved off and seemed to become less and less visible as the photo evidence already shows. I enlarge the UFO and added contrast so that we can see it in more detail, so each photo from the eyewitness has a close up of the craft. 

 

UFOs are frequently seen over temples and old structures, because they too have a high interest in human history and what we prefer to preserve. 

 

As you can see the cigar UFO is thinner at its top and then the same width all the way down the craft until it reaches the bottom which is a half circle. This is absolutely a solid object that suddenly realised its been spotted and tried to cloak itself as it moved away. Proof that aliens do make mistakes, because they got caught. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states: 

Interesting find out. 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 13:56 geschreven door peter  

Dark side of the Moon: Music, myths and aliens

A Chinese robot has started exploring the far side of the Moon.

The Chang'e-4 probe will explore the surface and carry out geological experiments. China plans to follow this up with further missions to return Moon rock to laboratories on Earth.

But it's not just scientists who are fascinated with the Moon's hidden face.

Musicians, film-makers and, of course, conspiracy theorists have all been inspired by that secret, barren landscape.

'There is no dark side of the Moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark.'

For music fans, the phrase Dark Side of the Moon will forever conjure up Pink Floyd's 1973 concept album.

In reality, the far side of the Moon is not dark - we never see it because the Moon orbits the Earth at around the same rate it spins. All parts of the Moon receive sunlight.

It's likely that the members of Pink Floyd weren't referring to this phenomenon of Tidal Locking with their album title, though.

The Dark Side of the Moon, here, is a metaphor for mental illness.

Image copyrightNSSDC

Image captionOne of the first pictures of the far side of the moon.

The Moon has been thought to have an effect on events - and moods - here on Earth for thousands of years.

Ancient Babylonians recorded the phases of the Moon on clay tablets.

But it wasn't until Isaac Newton identified gravity in the 18th Century that we began to understand its effect on tides.

In 1959 a Russian probe took the first photographs of the Moon's hidden face, and it was first seen by the naked eye almost ten years later when American astronauts flew past.

The 'Castle' on the Moon

There seems to be something tantalising about the hidden side of the Moon, though. The thought that it's always there, circling the Earth, yet just out of reach.

And that's sparked several conspiracy theories over the years.

There have been claims that astronauts saw a secret lunar base there - even some kind of castle. And some have even gone so far as to suggest aliens were encountered on the lunar surface.

Nasa, unsurprisingly, says there's no truth to any of these theories.

It does seem possible, though, that at the height of the Cold War between the USA and Russia, both sides considered using the far side of the Moon for a show of force.

Reports claim there were plans to detonate a nuclear bomb there as a show of strength. Thankfully even if that's true, the idea never got anywhere close to lift-off.

Soul-eating aliens?

Writers and film-makers have been inspired by the far side of the Moon, too, though none seem to have produced anything with the longevity of Pink Floyd's masterpiece.

A 1990 horror film entitled The Dark Side of the Moon tells the story of a group of astronauts who discover an abandoned shuttle there. They later discover it went missing in the Bermuda Triangle and is home to an alien which feeds on human souls.

We haven't had the chance to watch, but its average score of 2.6 on Rotten Tomatoes seems about right.

In literature, the website Goodreads returns more than 200 results for books entitled Dark Side of the Moon, including a 1976 tale from children's author William Corlett about the journey of a lonely, troubled astronaut.

So whatever the Chang'e-4 probe tells us about rock formations and craters, it seems certain that the hidden face of the Moon will continue to exert a gravitational pull on imaginations here on planet Earth.

• Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

{ https://www.bbc.com/ }

08-01-2019 om 00:18 geschreven door peter