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 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
09-01-2019
Inquest Opened in Mysterious Death of Conspiracy Theorist Max Spiers
Inquest Opened in Mysterious Death of Conspiracy Theorist Max Spiers
In October 2016, the UFO and conspiracy theory worlds got a shock when news broke that speaker and writer Max Spiers, 39, had been found dead under suspicious circumstances. In the weeks before his death, Spiers grew increasingly suspicious that he was being targeted by unknown individuals or groups, warning his mother Vanessa Bates that “your boy’s in trouble” and that “if anything happens, investigate.” Days later, eyewitnesses say, Spiers vomited a few liters of an unidentified black liquid before being found dead on a colleague’s sofa in Poland.
Spiers’ credibility was sometimes questioned by other members of the conspiracy theory community, and Spiers made some pretty bold claims, including claiming to have been made into a supersoldier during his childhood. Nevertheless, Spiers made a career out of investigating conspiracies, unidentified aerial phenomena, government cover-ups and the like. Shortly before his death, Spiers embarked on a project that led him to investigate politicians, celebrities, and prominent business magnates – you know, the kind that can get away with murdering someone. If they wanted to.
The circumstances surrounding Spiers’ death have been said to suggest some sort of cover-up.
Whether or not a shadowy cabal of Very Important People had anything to do with Spiers’ death has yet to be seen. It certainly appears that there are a lot of suspicious events surrounding Spiers’ death and the resulting investigation, though, including the researcher’s laptop being allegedly wiped clean after Polish police refused to perform an autopsy and ruled his death due to natural causes. Did Spier’s work get him murdered?
Depends on who you ask. His mother told reporters that Spiers’ most recent investigation was “going to expose black magic” among politicians and celebrities. Spiers’ girlfriend, meanwhile, said he would expose “enemies within other realities.” Not to be outdone, Spiers’ colleague and friend Miles Johnson told the BBC that aliens were of course somehow involved:
We have now got an unthinkable situation. Max has died for his country and the people on this planet. We’re dealing with aliens. We’re dealing with a predator within humanity, a fifth column, which has been successful so far in causing us a great deal of damage and harm. People like Max were involved in exposing that fifth column. He knew he was going to die. He knew he was in a trap. He told his mother that.
Was Max Spiers’ death a homicide? If so, committed by whom and for what end? Could it have had anything to do with his death? What was the black liquid Max Spiers could have vomited before his death? Are aliens from a hidden dimension of reality using politicians and celebrities to harvest young children for use in sacrificial interdimensional rituals?
Spiers was a popular speaker on the UFO and conspiracy theory circuits.
To get at as many of these questions as possible, a British court will hear an inquest opened to investigate Spiers’ death. The inquest will be held at the Guildhall in Sandwich, Kent and will last four days. During that time, Polish investigators are expected to present evidence and statements taken from witnesses in Poland including Monika Duval, the friend with whom Spiers was staying at the time of his death. On the first day of the inquest, a Polish pathologist declared that Spiers’ death was caused by pneumonia and drug intoxication. According to testimony given on the first day of the inquest, Spiers was apparently a known drug user and consumed a large quantity of a Turkish version of Xanax shortly before his death. Will this inquest help us discover the truth behind Max Spiers’ death, or will we finally put this mystery to rest?
On December 24, 2018 SOHO Lasco C2 and Lasco C3 captured a huge spherical object leaving the sun. Once again, on January 7, 2019 both satellites have captured another spherical object that leaves the sun.
According to some UFO researchers these spherical objects are alien spacecraft since similar spherical objects have been spotted near the sun which were clearly not coronal mass ejections while others believe that the phenomenon is a plasma discharge.
Currently we are in a solar minimum which is the period of least solar activity in the 11 year solar cycle of the sun. During this time, sunspot and solar flare activity diminishes, and often does not occur for days at a time, which makes us wonder whether the spherical object was indeed a plasma discharge or not.
The video below shows the moment the phenomenon leaves the sun.
Ancient Face Found On Mars Using Google Mars Map, Jan 9, 2019, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Ancient Face Found On Mars Using Google Mars Map, Jan 9, 2019, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Jan 9, 2019 Location of discovery: Mars Google coordinates: 32°36'10.74"N 62°38'25.45"E I was fiddling around with Google Mars map, a free program that allows you to see the surface of Mars, when I noticed a face. I measured it with Google ruler and found that from the top to the bottom it was 3.4km long and across the forehead it was 1.69km wide. The face closely resembles the ancient Mesopotamians carvings in walls here on Earth. The face is part of a bigger drawing of two figures. You can see the line dividing the two figures which are wearing robes. You can also see a foot of the other person sticking out. The drawing was actually made from walls that stand very tall. These two figures look to be man and wife, and are raised higher than the surface around them...like a mound. It looks as if those walls are of an ancient city that once was there. For some unknown reason the second figures face and body has been covered up...as if to hide it from being seen. I think this may be a discrimination case between aliens where one species tried to cover up the other species art work. The art is also a message...that this species lived here and these two leaders cannot be forgotten. But another species evidently felt differently and covered half of it up. That half looks much more recent than that of the drawing. Scott C. Waring
Here is a fun photo fact. I found this photo of our sun creating a solar burst that is big enough to wipe out all life on earth, stripping earth of its atmosphere, water and life...cooking it at the same time. You didn't need to know about that? Probably not, sometimes ignorance is bliss. In 2015 NASA made a statement that just such an occurnace happened to Mars and was responsible for its devastation, wiping out the Mars atmosphere and oceans. So...Mars is farther from the sun than Earth and still Mars was destroyed by the sun...so this is proof that this can happen to Earth too, which is much closer to the sun than Mars.
In the photo above you see an image of the earth near the solar explosion. This is just for size comparison. The explosion was big enough to destroy every planet in the solar system had they been hit. Its like tying a shotgun on a spinning top and seeing what happens.
The photo is dated May 3, 2013 and yet NASA tried hard to to publicize this information in order to keep the public from panicking. Eventually the solar explosion will head towards earth, but would NASA even tell the public it if knew of such a cataclysmic event? Probably not, it would only create more panic and fear.
Antarctica has become one of the most mysterious places on Earth. Maybe it always has been, but scientists are finally beginning to discover and explore these mysteries thanks to recent technological advances.Lost continents, mysterious space sounds,andunexplained sources of radioactivityare just some of the weirdness currently afoot on the southernmost continent – and that’s just the weirdness we know about.
The latest mystery to develop in Antarctica is the exploration of a long “lost” ancient lake lying over a kilometer below the continent’s ice sheet. Lake Mercer is referred to as a ‘lost’ lake because it exists below the surface of the ice, cut off from the rest of the world. It’s been that way for tens of millions of years, meaning this “lost lake” is a veritable time machine into prehistory. Even more exciting is the possibility that this isolated body of water could contain a unique, untouched ecosystem unlike anything else on the planet. What might we find at the bottom of Lake Mercer?
Scientists with the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) project drilled down to a depth of 1,084 metres (3,556 feet) in December 2018 using a tiny drill nozzle that sprays hot water. In order to ensure that the waters of Lake Mercer weren’t contaminated by the project, the drill water was sterilized with UV light and hydrogen peroxide using 500 tonnes of equipment that had to be shuttled for two months across the glacial surface from McMurdo Station.
McMurdo Station
Scientists plan to soon analyze sediments collected at the bottom of the lake in the hopes of discovering new organisms which might have been cut off from the rest of the world. Who knows what could have evolved down there over tens of millions of years? Whether or not we find life in space, the life we find in these super-remote corners of our own planet should be enough to rewrite the boring chapters of the biology books – if we ever find them before it’s too late. Let’s face it: contamination is inevitable, either in space or at the bottom of an Antarctic lake. It’s what we do best.
Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte. In this Hello World short, Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.
“Project Blue Book” UFO Series Premieres January 8, 2019 (Promo Trailer)
“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.
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:
After joining Project Blue Book, Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aiden Gillen) is drawn deeper into the mysterious world of UFOs.
Credit: Copyright History 2019
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have long inspired curiosity and speculation, but when did our fascination with UFOs really take off? A new television drama explores the origins of the UFO phenomenon, drawing from the incredible true story of the U.S. government’s decades-long investigation of reported UFO encounters.
The secret program — dubbed Project Blue Book — launched in 1952 and was monitored by the U.S. Air Force until the project's termination in 1969. During that time, experts investigated more than 12,000 reports of UFO sightings, of which over 700 remain unexplained, according to records in the National Archives.
Now declassified, the most intriguing of these unsolved cases are revisited in the History Channel series "Project Blue Book." Premiering tonight (Jan. 8) at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT., the show offers UFO aficionados and skeptics alike a peek at how it all began. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]
Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger on HBO's "Game of Thrones") stars as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the real-life professor and astrophysicist who acted as the science adviser for Project Blue Book, and who is known to many as the "father of UFOlogy," show creator and executive producer David O'Leary told Live Science.
In the series, Hynek joins Air Force officials to investigate and explain sightings of peculiar lights in the sky, mysterious glowing fireballs, "flying saucers" and even purported extraterrestrials, History Channel representatives said in a statement.
"The government had to respond to the fact that military pilots, commercial airline pilots, police officers — people with trained eyes — were seeing objects in the sky that they couldn't understand," O'Leary said.
But as "Project Blue Book" unfolds, Hynek comes to an unpleasant realization: His scientific curiosity about UFOs may run counter to a government agenda that wants to bury events that prove unthreatening, but nonetheless truly defy explanation, O'Leary said.
National security
During the period in U.S. history that gave rise to Project Blue Book, global superpowers were testing the boundaries of military technology, the likes of which had never been seen before. For obvious reasons, the U.S. Air Force wanted to keep tabs on all UFO sightings — which could represent previously unknown weapons — in the interests of national security, according to O'Leary.
However, hundreds of the UFO sightings investigated by Project Blue Book proved impossible to explain at all.
An incident that took place Sept. 12, 1952 (and is featured in the series), involved three boys in Flatwoods, West Virginia, who witnessed a fiery red light streaking overhead, followed by a loud crash. A local newspaper reported at the time that when the boys approached the scene, they glimpsed "a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow," later dubbed "The Flatwoods Monster," the History Channel recounted.
Another unexplained sighting was documented in Lubbock, Texas, on Aug. 30, 1951; a teenager photographed a V-shaped arrangement of lights in the sky, now known as the Lubbock Lights, according to the History Channel.
Among the many reports of so-called flying saucers, one of the most unexplainable phenomena is the "Lubbock Lights," photographed at Lubbock, Texas, by 19-year old Carl Hart, Jr., on August 30, 1951.
Credit: Bettmann Archive
Other unnerving encounters with UFOs were directly observed midair by pilots, who are trained to recognize unexpected sights that may appear during challenging flight conditions. This makes their descriptions of UFOs harder to dismiss as delusional, and fueled Hynek's efforts to get to the bottom of these baffling events, O'Leary explained.
Credible witnesses
Case reports dramatized by the show feature a range of witnesses, from lone civilians, to individuals representing the military and law enforcement, to groups of people all reporting the same sighting, executive producer and showrunner Sean Jablonski told Live Science.
"By the time you get to the finale, there's a mass sighting by credible witnesses that actually prompts the president to get involved. So you go, 'Well, that's just undeniable.' And it's historically accurate," Jablonski said.
The cast of the new UFO drama series "Project Blue Book" (from left to right: Laura Mennell, Aidan Gillen, Neal McDonough, Michael Harney, Michael Malarkey, Ksenia Solo).
Credit: Copyright History 2019
Though the real Project Blue Book ended decades ago, interest in UFOs has scarcely dimmed. In fact, the U.S. government has continued to monitor and analyze UFO reports to this day, Live Science reported in 2018. The work took place under a secret program called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), and it spanned decades despite official statements that federal UFO investigations ended with the demise of Project Blue Book in 1969.
"UFOs are a mystery that's still unsolved at this point," Jablonski said. "Once you open your mind up to the idea of the UFO phenomenon, then you have to ask 'Who's flying them?' And then you have to talk about alien life. It unmoors you from a reality that most people live in their whole lives."
The first episode of "Project Blue Book" airs tonight (Jan. 8) on the History Channel at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT.
NASA’s Future Spaceships Will Travel At 1 Million Miles Per Hour
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.
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.
The pair, who do not wish to be named, took a picture of a low flying red object near Peel Street, offSpring 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.
"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.
There has been a suspected UFO sighting in Hull(Image: PA/National Archives)
"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.
A suspected UFO sighting near Spring Bank
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."
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.
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.
“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.”
‘Project Blue Book’ TV series chronicles UFO research of former NU scientist
‘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.
Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Triggered Mile-High Tsunami That Spread Through Earth's Oceans
Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Triggered Mile-High Tsunami That Spread Through Earth's Oceans
By Laura Geggel, Live Science Senior Writer
Credit: Shutterstock
When the dinosaur-killing asteroid collided with Earth more than 65 million years ago, it did not go gently into that good night. Rather, it blasted a nearly mile-high tsunami through the Gulf of Mexico that caused chaos throughout the world's oceans, new research finds.
The 9-mile-across (14 kilometers) space rock, known as the Chicxulub asteroid, caused so much destruction, it's no wonder the asteroid ended the dinosaur age, leading to the so-called Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction.
"The Chicxulub asteroid resulted in a huge global tsunami, the likes of which have not been seen in modern history," said lead researcher Molly Range, who did the research while getting her master's degree in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. [Image Gallery: Ancient Monsters of the Sea]
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.
"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 shockwaves 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.
Mass extinction only occurred when the asteroid having 9-km diameter hit the orange areas.
“Here we show that the probability of significantglobal cooling, mass extinction, and the subsequent appearance of mammals was quite low after anasteroid impact on the Earth’s surface. This significant event could have occurred if the asteroid hit thehydrocarbon-rich areas occupying approximately 13% of the Earth’s surface. The site of asteroid impact,therefore, changed the history of life on Earth.”
A spooky new series of photos of theasteroid Bennushow the diamond-shaped space rock approaching the camera and receding into the distance during a trio of flybys by a NASA spacecraft.
The video animation of the asteroid imagescomes courtesy of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which arrived at the little world on Dec. 3. After flybys such as this one, OSIRIS-REx used the data to enter orbit around the asteroid on Dec. 31.
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) has an ambitious goal of scooping up material from Bennu and returning the sample to Earth for analysis. But before the spacecraft can descend to the asteroid's surface, mission planners must look at pictures and data and other information to give the spacecraft the best chance of a safe landing. [The Greatest Asteroid Encounters of All Time!]
Even before that, there was the challenge of getting into orbit.
"During the month of December, the spacecraft performed a preliminary survey of Bennu, conducting three flyovers of the asteroid's north pole and one each of its equator and south pole," OSIRIS-REx researchers said in a statement. "The data gathered during these flybys allowed the mission team to more precisely estimate Bennu's mass so that the spacecraft could go into orbit around the asteroid."
This still image of the asteroid Bennu comes from an animation of pictures taken by the NavCam 1 instrument on NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, showing the spacecraft's asteroid view from Nov. 30, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2018.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin Space
The images were taken by NavCam 1, a black and white imaging system that is one of three cameras in OSIRIS-REx's Touch and Go Camera System. This suite of instruments will be crucial to help the spacecraft with its guidance, navigation and control in the coming months.
OSIRIS-REx's orbital maneuver set a record, as the asteroid is the smallest body ever orbited by a spacecraft. Bennu is only 1,640 feet (500 meters) wide, roughly the length of five U.S. football fields. The spacecraft also performs the closest orbit ever of a small body, achieving a preliminary orbit of 1 mile (1.6 km) from the surface.
OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 with the overarching goal of helping scientists better understand the formation of the early solar system, including carbon-rich asteroids that may have brought water and organic molecules to the Earth's surface and helped spark life. The probe is scheduled for a parachute landing in the Utah desert in September 2023, when it should arrive with a precious load of materials scooped up from Bennu's surface in mid-2020.
Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in our solar system. The Juno spacecraft – now orbiting Jupiter – has now gazed across a distance to acquire new images and insights about the “fires of Io.”
Meet Io, Jupiter’s innermost large moon. The red dots – nicknamed the “fires of Io” – are active volcanoes. December 2018 image via NASA’s Juno spacecraft (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/INAF). Read more about this image.
Jupiter’s moonIois the most volcanically active world in the solar system – even more active than Earth – with hundreds of volcanoes erupting at any almost given time. The Voyagerspacecraft discovered that Io has active volcanoes, back in the late 1970s, and – in the late 1990s and early 2000s – theGalileomission provided more stunning images of the “fires of Io.” Now, NASA’s current mission at Jupiter – theJunoorbiter spacecraft – has sent back new photos of a volcanic plume on this molten little world (image below). The news wasannouncedby the Southwest Research Institute on December 31, 2018.
The new images and other data were taken on the winter solstice in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere – December 21 – by various instruments such as the JunoCam camera. The Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) and the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVS) also observed Io for over an hour, to study the moon’s polar regions as well as look for evidence of any current active eruptions.
Juno isn’t designed to study the moons of Jupiter up close, as Galileo or Voyager did. Rather, Juno’s focus is on Jupiter itself. But Juno can and now has still made important observations from a distance. The observations of Io paid off, according to Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission and an associate vice president of Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science and Engineering Division:
We knew we were breaking new ground with a multi-spectral campaign to view Io’s polar region, but no one expected we would get so lucky as to see an active volcanic plume shooting material off the moon’s surface. This is quite a New Year’s present showing us that Juno has the ability to clearly see plumes.
JunoCam image showing a volcanic plume illuminated beyond the terminator of Io, taken on December 21, 2018.
Image via NASA/SwRI/MSSS.
Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) image of Io taken on December 21, 2018. Io is softly illuminated by moonlight from another of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The brightest feature on Io is suspected to be a penetrating radiation signature from an erupting volcano, and several of Io’s other volcanos can also be seen, including a plume circled in the image.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI.
The images were taken during the 17th flyby of Jupiter by Juno. Juno orbits Jupiter, although it never comes very close to any of the moons. The first images were obtained on December 21 at 12:00, 12:15 and 12:20 coordinated universal time (UTC; translate to your time zone), before Io entered Jupiter’s shadow. Io itself is seen as half-illuminated, with an eruption visible as a bright spot just past the edge of the terminator. As explained by Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, the JunoCam lead from the Planetary Science Institute:
The ground is already in shadow, but the height of the plume allows it to reflect sunlight, much like the way mountaintops or clouds on the Earth continue to be lit after the sun has set.
Io’s eruptions are so powerful they can be seen even from a long distance away from the moon. In this case, reflected light from the moon Europa also helped to make the plume more visible, as seen in images from the SRU, according to Heidi Becker, lead of Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
As a low-light camera designed to track the stars, the SRU can only observe Io under very dimly lit conditions. Dec. 21 gave us a unique opportunity to observe Io’s volcanic activity with the SRU using only Europa’s moonlight as our lightbulb.
A volcanic eruption on Io seen by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997.
Image via NASA/JPL/DLR.
Another view from Galileo – Io’s surface is very colorful and mottled, due to ongoing volcanic deposits.
Image via NASA/JPL.
Juno’s JIRAM instrument is even more versatile, able to see volcanic hotspots on Io in both daylight and at night. According to Alberto Adriani, a researcher at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics:
Though Jupiter’s moons are not JIRAM’s primary objectives, every time we pass close enough to one of them, we take advantage of the opportunity for an observation. The instrument is sensitive to infrared wavelengths, which are perfect to study the volcanism of Io. This is one of the best images of Io that JIRAM has been able to collect so far.
While the new Juno images were taken a lot farther away from Io the the previous ones, there is still a lot of information that scientists can obtain from them. For instance, they can provide new insights into how Jupiter interacts with its five moons – causing phenomena such as Io’s volcanic activity or the freezing of the moon’s atmosphere during an eclipse. Even though Io is very small, its gravitational interaction with Jupiter drives the moon’s volcanoes, which produce huge umbrella-like plumes of sulfur dioxide gas and extensive lava fields. That “stretching” causes friction and intense heat in Io’s interior, sparking massive eruptions across its surface.
A closer view of volcanic plains near Io’s south pole, taken by Voyager 1 in 1979.
Image via NASA/JPL/USGS.
Io’s volcanoes were first seen by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1979, with the plumes arcing over the mottled and very colorful surface which made the moon look like a giant pizza. The eruptions continuously coat the surface with silicates and sulfur compounds. Io also has an extremely thin atmosphere consisting mostly of sulfur dioxide.
Juno – which orbits Jupiter every 53 days – is approximately halfway through its primary mission, and is scheduled to complete its mapping of Jupiter in July 2021.
Bottom line:
Io’s volcanic eruptions are an incredible sight, surprising for a small moon so far from the sun. The earlier Voyager and Galileo missions imaged them in beautiful detail, and now the Juno spacecraft – even though much farther away from Io – has also seen them, providing new observations and data about this geological wonder orbiting Jupiter.
This massive 780-foot (238 meters) crop circle appeared in 2001 in the remote area of Milk Hill in Wiltshire, England. The elaborate design is composed of 409 circles that form a pattern called a double, or six-sided, triskelion, which is a motif consisting of three interlocking spirals.
Credit: Handy Marks | public domain
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.
A woodcut pamphlet that some claim represents an early crop circle.
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.
People inspect crop circles within a golden wheat field in Switzerland. The photo was taken on July 29, 2007.
Credit: Jabberocky public domain
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.
Another triskelion crop circle. The symbol can be used to represent cycles, progress or competition.
Credit: Thomas J. Sutter, Jr. public domain
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.
This design of three flying birds was created on Aug. 3, 2003, in the county of Wiltshire in southern England. The birds, which resemble swallows, have ever-diminishing circles trailing behind their wing tips.
Credit: public domain
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.
Astronomers estimate 100 billion habitable Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, 50 sextillion in the universe
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.
Harold White’s possible Alcubierre warp drive, and star ship
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”
10 Unsettling Astronomical Incidents and Phenomena (Video)
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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 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.
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