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 NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
29-03-2019
5 UFOs in the sky above Miami, Florida 27-Mar-2019
5 UFOs in the sky above Miami, Florida 27-Mar-2019
This UFO sighting was just submitted through our Facebook Page.
Witness report:
We see this yesterday in Miami at 7:45 pm. A big mother sphere shot out 5 smaller spheres and they hovered for some time.
How can we get an inkling of what existed before our universe began? Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest a way.
Artist’s concept showing the patterns of signals generated by primordial standard clocks in different theories of the primordial universe. Top: Big Bounce. Bottom: Inflation.
Can we get an inkling of what existed before our universe began? Some theories suggest that, before the Big Bang, whatever existed was contracting, rather than expanding, as our universe is today. Perhaps what was contracting was an earlier universe, for example. If so, what we perceive as a Big Bang was actually a part of aBig Bounce. But a popular theory of our universe, called theinflation theory, doesn’t call for the idea of a previously contracting universe.
So what if inflation theory could be proven false? If so, the door would open to other theories, some of which do suggest a state of contraction before our universe began. If inflation theory could be proven false, we’d have some potential to probe – via these other theories – the universe before the Big Bang.
Now a team of scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has laid out a method that might be used to falsify inflation experimentally. The study will appear in the physics journal Physical Review Letters as an Editors’ Suggestion.
Let’s start from the beginning here … literally. Inflation is the theory that speaks of a time immediately after the Big Bang. It describes a universe that dramatically expanded in size for a fleeting fraction of a second. Inflation theory solves some important mysteries about the structure and evolution of our universe. But, according to the CfA scientists, other very different theories – including those that do allow for a previously contracting universe and a Big Bounce – can also explain these mysteries. These scientists said in a statement:
To help decide between inflation and these other ideas, the issue of falsifiability – that is, whether a theory can be tested to potentially show it is false – has inevitably arisen.
Some researchers, including Avi Loeb of CfA – who is a part of the new study – had previously raised concerns about inflation, on the grounds that it was difficult, if not impossible, to falsify. Loeb said:
Falsifiability should be a hallmark of any scientific theory. The current situation for inflation is that it’s such a flexible idea, it cannot be falsified experimentally. No matter what value people measure for some observable attribute, there are always some models of inflation that can explain it.
A team of scientists led by the CfA’s Xingang Chen, along with Loeb, and Zhong-Zhi Xianyu of the Physics Department of Harvard University, have applied an idea they call a primordial standard clock to the non-inflationary theories, and laid out a method that may be used to falsify inflation experimentally.
In an effort to find some characteristic that can separate inflation from other theories, the team began by identifying the defining property of the various theories – the evolution of the size of the primordial universe. Xianyu said:
For example, during inflation, the size of the universe grows exponentially. In some alternative theories, the size of the universe contracts. Some do it very slowly, while others do it very fast.
The attributes people have proposed so far to measure usually have trouble distinguishing between the different theories because they are not directly related to the evolution of the size of the primordial universe.
So, we wanted to find what the observable attributes are that can be directly linked to that defining property.
According to these scientists, the signals generated by the primordial standard clock can serve such a purpose. They explained:
That clock is any type of heavy elementary particle in the primordial universe. Such particles should exist in any theory and their positions should oscillate at some regular frequency, much like the ticking of a clock’s pendulum.
The primordial universe was not entirely uniform. There were tiny irregularities in density on minuscule scales that became the seeds of the large-scale structure observed in today’s universe. This is the primary source of information physicists rely on to learn about what happened before the Big Bang.
The ticks of the standard clock generated signals that were imprinted into the structure of those irregularities. Standard clocks in different theories of the primordial universe predict different patterns of signals, because the evolutionary histories of the universe are different.
Chen said:
If we imagine all of the information we learned so far about what happened before the Big Bang is in a roll of film frames, then the standard clock tells us how these frames should be played. Without any clock information, we don’t know if the film should be played forward or backward, fast or slow, just like we are not sure if the primordial universe was inflating or contracting, and how fast it did so. This is where the problem lies. The standard clock put time stamps on each of these frames when the film was shot before the Big Bang, and tells us how to play the film.
The team calculated how these standard clock signals should look in non-inflationary theories, and suggested how they should be searched for in astrophysical observations. Co-author Xianyu said:
If a pattern of signals representing a contracting universe were found, it would falsify the entire inflationary theory.
Chen added that the success of this idea lies with experimentation. He said:
These signals will be very subtle to detect, and so we may have to search in many different places. The cosmic microwave background radiation is one such place, and the distribution of galaxies is another. We have already started to search for these signals and there are some interesting candidates already …
As always, they said, more observational data is needed to bear out these theoretical ideas.
Bottom line: We don’t know what happened before the Big Bang, but some cosmological theories suggest a contraction prior to it. Perhaps an earlier universe was contracting. Unfortunately, the most popular cosmological theory of today – inflation theory – doesn’t call for this idea. Now scientists at CfA have devised a way that inflation theory might be falsified. If it were falsified, the door would be open to some of the other theories that hint at a pre-Big-Bang contraction.
A Strange Harvest (1980): Creepy documentary about aliens and cattle mutilation
A Strange Harvest (1980): Creepy documentary about aliens and cattle mutilation
A Strange Harvest (1980) is a documentary about unexplained cattle mutilations that were widespread in the American West in the 1970s and 1980s. (From a Wikipedia article on cattle mutilation: "A 1979 FBI report indicated that, according to investigations by the New Mexico State Police, there had been an estimated 8,000 mutilations in Colorado, causing approximately $1,000,000 damage.") Many instances of cattle mutilations can be attributed to predation, but others appear to be the result of unexplained human activity.
This well-made documentary, which runs about 1.5 hours, is a masterpiece of low-budget creepiness. The synthesizer soundtrack is ominous and weird, and the cinematography is hallucinatory. I don't buy the argument that space aliens are responsible, but it's still a compelling movie.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Pre-Columbian Amazon Was Not So Virgin After All
Pre-Columbian Amazon Was Not So Virgin After All
Archaeologists are discovering that the Amazon region was not a pristine place before European contact. In fact, a new study suggests that there was quite a large population living there. What evidence can we see for their villages today? The outlines of their settlements and a few hardy artifacts.
Just over a year ago, large geometric earthworks (geoglyphs) in the southwestern Amazon made international headlines as both an unexpected discovery and for the resemblance of some sites to the famed Stonehenge. They are estimated to be at least 2,000 years old.
Called the Geoglyphs of Acre because most of them are located in the Brazilian State of Acre, nearly 500 locations were identified. They come in various shapes: squares, circles, U-forms, ellipses, and octagons; but researchers believe that they all enhanced the connection between humans and nature. Their very existence shows that humans were in the Amazon much earlier than once believed – although the impact they had certainly is nothing compared to the levels of destruction seen today.
Examples of geoglyphs and mounded ring villages in the Amazon: a. LiDAR digital terrain model of the Jacó Sá site. b. Aerial photo of one of the structures at Jacó Sá site. c. Aerial photo of Fonte Boa site. (CNPq research group Geoglyphs of Western Amazonia/ Denise Schaan )
Now there is mounting evidence that humans ventured into other parts of the Amazon as well. The Chicago Tribune reports that 81 geoglyphs have been found in the upper Tapajós Basin, a “transitional zone” where Brazil borders Bolivia. This area receives less rainfall than lower regions and is also called terra firme. It is a place that rarely floods and a location which archaeologists have largely ignored in favor of more fertile regions closer to large rivers.
Jonas De Souza of the University of Exeter, UK collaborated with other scientists Britain and Brazil to explore a terra firme region which has been forgotten, despite being bordered on the east and west with archaeological sites. According to The Guardian , the new sites were first noted in deforested areas by satellite imagery.
The newly identified earthworks show signs of ditch enclosures, sunken roadways, and earth platforms and vary from small 30 meter (98.43 ft.) wide villages to immense 19-hectare settlements.
The possibility was too exciting to leave at satellite image analysis, so researchers set off to explore 24 of the sites on the ground. De Souza told The Guardian, “Everything that we identified on satellite imagery that we tested was an archeological site.” The results published in Nature Communications shows that the trip was worthwhile. The authors write :
“The results of our predictive model of ditched enclosures show that, despite the enormous distances covered, earthworks are found across areas of notable environmental similarity, with pronounced seasonality in rainfall and temperature […] The seasonal drought of the transitional forests of this region probably facilitated clearance for the construction of earthworks. The easy-to-clear vegetation and the more fertile/less weathered soils of seasonally-dry forests are factors that made them attractive to Pre-Columbian farmers.”
De Souza said that the team found artifacts such as ceramics and polished stone axes, and also dark fertile earth which comes with extended human habitation. No buildings have been detected, but that’s not surprising because they were probably made of wood. Charcoal found near the ceramics at the sites has been carbon dated to 1410 - 1460 AD, in line with sites in the southern part of the Amazon, which were most active between 1250 and 1500.
One of the most startling results of the research is the claim based on models that 500,000 to a million people were living in that part of the Amazon and they may have built some 1,000 to 1,500 enclosures! De Souza clarified , “It's probably the case that some areas of the Amazon were sustaining large populations and others were not. Because there is so little research, we are slowly discovering what was happening in each.”
That large of a population would have certainly meant modification to the rainforest, but de Souza pointed out ,
“The forest is an artifact of modification. It has nothing to do with the kind of practice we are seeing nowadays - large-scale, clearing monoculture. These people were combining small-scale agriculture with management of useful tree species. So it was more a sustainable kind of land use.”
Amazon Rainforest, Brazil. (Ben Sutherland/Darren and Sandy Van Soye/ CC BY NC SA 2.0 )
Although the numbers may appear high at first, they seem to fit with accounts given by the first Europeans who entered the Amazon. Those reports were mostly discredited by historians as fantasy. Now archaeological evidence is giving the early travelers some support.
But the European arrival meant devastation for many of the settlements, as de Souza said , “We know that diseases travelled much faster than people and probably this population was already weakened by diseases brought by Europeans even before the Europeans set foot on the area.”
Top Image: Archaeologists used satellite imagery to find archaeological sites in the Amazon’s upper Tapajós Basin. Source: University of Exeter/PA
The supposed alienUFO was seen on March 6 this year over the German capital city. Popular UFO-hunter Scott C Waring said he came across the UFO photos on the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). The conspiracy theorist, who runs the website UFO Sightings Daily, bizarrely said UFOs have been appearing over airports in great numbers in recent years. He now shared the unusual sighting in a bid to raise awareness of the issue.
UFO sighting: The picture was snapped on March 6 this year in Berlin
(Image: SCOTT WARING)
UFO sighting: Mr Waring believes this was a UFO over Germany
(Image: SCOTT WARING)
“Then this UFO is 30 percent the diameter of the jet, making the UFO 22.89m across.
“Notice how the UFO takes on the colour of the sky behind it?
“The ship’s outer hull reflects the colours around it.”
However, what is more likely is Mr Waring fell for the effects of a peculiar psychological trick known as pareidolia.
Pareidolia causes people to see shapes, faces and patterns where they do not exist, often leading to claims of UFOs and aliens.
Dr Steven Novella explained the phenomenon in his book The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.
He wrote: “Your brain connects the dots. It’s amazing how few details are needed to suggest a face, and even an emotional expression, to our pattern-seeking brains.
“Even as little as a couple dots for eyes and some kind of line for a mouth is enough for our brains to see Elvis or the Pope.”
August 25, 1951 was a quiet summer night in Lubbock, Texas. That evening, a handful of scientists from Texas Technical College were hanging out in the backyard of geology professor Dr. W.I. Robinson, drinking tea and chatting about micrometeorites. It was quite the brain trust: chemical engineering professor Dr. A. G. Oberg, physics professor Dr. George and Dr. W. L. Ducker, head of the petroleum-engineering department.
Which made the story of what they witnessed that night all the more curious.
“If a group had been hand-picked to observe a UFO, we couldn’t have picked a more technically qualified group of people,” wrote U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt later in his definitive 1956 casebook, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.In the early 1950s Ruppelt served as lead investigator for Project Blue Book, the official Air Force investigations into UFO sightings, after working on its precursor effort, Project Grudge.
Around 9:20 p.m., the university colleagues saw something otherworldly in the expansive Texas sky: a V-shaped formation of 15 to 30 blueish-green lights passing overhead. Stunned, but still using their trained scientific reasoning, they figured the lights would reappear. And they did, about an hour later, in a more haphazard formation. The scientists were all in agreement: They had witnessed something fantastic—but what was it?
The professors weren’t the only credible witnesses to the mysterious blue-green lights that night. At dusk, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (about 350 miles away from Lubbock), an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission’s top-secret Sandia Corporation—a man with a high-level “Q” security clearance—had been sitting outside with his wife. According to Ruppelt:
They were gazing at the night sky, commenting on how beautiful it was when both of them were startled at the sight of a huge airplane flying swiftly and silently over their home… On the aft edge of the wings, there were six to eight pairs of soft, glowing, bluish lights.
An hour or so after, according to a retired rancher from Lubbock, his wife had seen something terrifying in the night sky. Ruppelt described it this way:
Just after dark, his wife had gone outdoors to take some sheets off the clothesline. He was inside the house reading the paper. Suddenly his wife had rushed into the house…“as white as the sheets she was carrying.” The reason his wife was so upset was that she had seen a large object glide swiftly and silently over the house. She said it looked like “an airplane without a body.” On the back edge of the wing were pairs of glowing bluish lights.
By the time Ruppelt flew into Lubbock to investigate the sightings in late September, hundreds of residents had seen the lights over a period of two weeks.
But not everyone had waited for the government to start looking into the matter. After alerting local papers like the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the Texas Tech professors started their own informal investigation. In the weeks after their initial August 25sighting, they and their friends observed the lights 12 more times. They measured the lights’ angles, roughly calculated their speed and noted that they always traveled from north to south. Armed with walkie-talkies, the scientist-sleuths and their friends formed two teams and attempted to measure the UFO’s altitude, with little success.
As the days went on, more and more Lubbock residents claimed to have seen the lights. And when the professors cross-checked these reports against what they themselves had seen and recorded, many of the facts lined up, Ruppelt wrote. Of course, few if any had recorded the phenomena with the same level of detail as the professors.
But while many observers offered incomplete or poorly expressed recollections, there’s little doubt that whatever people were seeing was something real. UFO sightings are usually one-off events, but these blue-green lights were observed multiple times, by hundreds of people.
Plus, for many, there was physical proof: black-and-white photos taken by a Texas Tech freshman named Carl Hart, Jr. On August 31—the same night an Air Force wife and her daughter claimed to have seen a UFO while driving northwest from Matador, Texas, to Lubbock—Hart was keeping vigil in his bedroom, looking out for the infamous lights. According to Ruppelt:
It was a warm night and his bed was pushed over next to an open window. He was looking out at the clear night sky, and had been in bed about a half hour, when he saw a formation of the lights appear in the north… cross an open patch of sky, and disappear over his house. Knowing that the lights might reappear as they had done in the past, he grabbed his loaded Kodak 35, set the lens and shutter at f 3.5 and one-tenth of a second, and went out into the middle of the backyard. Before long, his vigil was rewarded when the lights made a second pass. He got two pictures. A third formation went over a few minutes later, and he got three more pictures.
These hotly debated images, which show a cluster of dim lights in a V-formation moving through the night sky, are the only visual representation of what hundreds were now claiming they saw.
Was it birds? Or planes? The government's investigator goes coy
As Ruppelt began his formal investigation, he found that the lights had affected all who saw them, including a hardened old man from Lamesa, who had witnessed them with his wife. “He broke off his story of the lights and launched into his background as a native Texan, with range wars, Indians and stagecoaches under his belt,” Ruppelt recalled of their interview session. “What he was trying to point out was that despite the range wars, Indians and stagecoaches, he had been scared. His wife had been scared, too.”
The old Lamesa man had suggested that the lights were actually plover birds, a theory to which Ruppelt would lend some credence. But just like many people Ruppelt interviewed, the old man admitted he and his wife had been looking for the lights after reading about them in the paper. This was a common thread tying together many of the witnesses. “One point of interest was that very few claimed to have seen the lights before reading the professors’ story in the paper,” Ruppelt wrote. “But this could get back to the old question, ‘Do people look up if they have no reason to do so?’”
So, what exactly did all these people witness? In The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt—by all accounts an honorable and fair man who oversaw what many describe as the “golden age” of the government’s official UFO investigations—offers a strangely evasive explanation:
I thought that the professors’ lights might have been some kind of birds reflecting the light from mercury-vapor street lights, but I was wrong. They weren’t birds, they weren’t refracted light, but they weren’t spaceships. The lights that the professors saw…have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon…I can’t divulge exactly the way the answer was found because it is an interesting story of how a scientist set up complete instrumentation to track down the lights. Telling the story would lead to his identity and, in exchange for his story, I promised the man complete anonymity... With the most important phase of the Lubbock Lights “solved”—the sightings by the professors—the other phases become only good UFO reports.
And so, the mystery of the Lubbock Lights remains unsolved.
“The Lubbock Lights incident persists in the memory of many older citizens, and to this day captivates researchers from across the country,” Dr. Monte L. Monroe, Southwest collection archivist at Texas Tech University told Texas Highways Magazine. “Mention the event, and everyone has an opinion. Some believe the bright, semicircular, so-called ‘string of beads’ crossed the sky at great speed, high in the stratosphere. Few agree with the streetlight-illuminated, migratory duck-bellies theory ventured at the time by skeptics or in the Air Force report.”
According to Monroe, the professors and other witnesses—tired of explaining themselves and what they saw—almost totally ceased giving interviews by the 1970s. In a rare informal interview, more than 40 years after the sightings, Carl Hart, Jr. reportedly told author and UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle he still had no idea what he had photographed that pleasant August night many moons ago. But like hundreds of others witnesses in and around Lubbock that strange Texas summer, he saw something he would never forget.
Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault. Start your free trial today.
NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge that kicked off in 2015 has challenged teams around the U.S. to render, prove the structural integrity, and construct a model of a habitat that could one day shelter humans on the surface of the Moon or even Mars.
And yesterday, NASA crowned the top three winners of the Challenge’s latest round, challenging the participating teams to “complete a virtual construction level.” The top three teams, which split a prize of $100,000, hail from New York, Arkansas, and New Haven — and their designs are bold visions of off-world habitation.
First Place
The winner of this round of the Challenge is team SEArch+/Apis Cor for a vertical habitat design that can be continuously reinforced with additional 3D printing. Light enters through circular ports around the outside and the top.
Second Place
Second place goes to Team Zopherus for a design that would be constructed by a roving 3D printer.
Third Place
Team Mars Incubator was awarded third place. Its pods are made out of hexagonal pieces of 3D printed plates consisting of polyethylene, fibers, and locally sourced regolith, could one day house a team of astronauts.
It’s a fascinating competition that paints an incredibly detailed picture of what the future of Moon or even Mars exploration could look like one day — and we’ve never been closer to that future.
Mission to Europa Gets New Instrument to Look for Signs of Habitability
Mission to Europa Gets New Instrument to Look for Signs of Habitability
Amid technical and political hurdles, a veteran planetary scientist takes charge of a key part of Europa Clipper, a spacecraft targeted at the solar system’s most intriguing moon
NASA is changing one of the key scientific instruments on Europa Clipper, its next major mission to the outer planets of the solar system, and has brought in a scientific luminary to lead it, project leaders announced today. Clipper is set to orbit Jupiter and study Europa, the icy Jovian moon, across multiple flybys. Earlier this month, NASA headquarters terminated the mission’s ICEMAG magnetometer instrument, citing overruns in its estimated budget. The move left the spacecraft without an essential tool to study Europa’s interior ocean, where astrobiologists hope extraterrestrial organisms might be found.
Margaret Kivelson, a professor emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles, will lead the effort to develop a simplified magnetometer to replace ICEMAG. The instrument will measure Europa’s magnetic field and gather data on the ocean’s depth and salinity. Kivelson previously ledthe magnetometer team on the spacecraft Galileo, which orbited Jupiter in the 1990s. She is credited with discovering the ocean beneath Europa’s ice shell.
ICEMAG’s estimated cost had grown to $45 million—nearly three times its proposed price—according to NASA headquarters. Sophisticated internal sensors had vexed the ICEMAG science team and led to much of the extra expense. The new magnetometer will do away with those sensors, using simplified components instead. The downside is that the new sensors will likely lose calibration over time and drift in response to temperature variations. The team is now devising strategies to compensate for these effects.
Robert Pappalardo, the project scientist of the Europa Clipper mission, made the announcement earlier today at the spring meeting of the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science in Washington, D.C. “I recommended to NASA that we immediately stand up a team leader from within the team, and with established magnetometry expertise,” Pappalardo said. “I have the pleasure of announcing that Dr. Margaret Kivelson has accepted that role.”
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
NASA headquarters officially signed on to the Clipper mission in 2015. The spacecraft is due to launch in 2023, and upon entering Jupiter’s orbit, will collect data on Europa by making multiple close encounters with the icy moon. Today, Clipper is in the middle of perhaps the most critical part of its development. By the end of the year, decades of dreams by hundreds of people should finally begin manifesting as physical realities, in the form of instrument and spacecraft components. Next year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which is leading the spacecraft’s design and construction, will begin putting the pieces together.
Everyone who has ever held a science textbook is familiar with some of the results of famous space missions—big, beautiful images of Saturnfrom the Cassini orbiter, for instance, or the famous Pale Blue Dot portrait of Earth by the Voyager 1 probe. But the long road to launch is less understood. Todd May, the former director of Marshall Space Flight Center, noted in a talk several years ago that journalists tend to describe the “real work” as beginning once the spacecraft has left Earth. But, he asserted, getting through development—bringing a spacecraft from PowerPoint to the launchpad—is the real challenge. “The first inch off the ground is the hardest part,” he said. The Clipper science and engineering teams have for years honed and tested every aspect of design, implementation and operation of the spacecraft. The only thing they have not done is build the thing.
Europa presents unique challenges and potential rewards. The moon is located in Jupiter’s radiation belts, a punishing environment similar to the aftermath of a nuclear bomb detonation. Moreover, the spacecraft’s energy source—its solar panels—requires scientists to carefully map its trajectory to collect every available photon so far from the sun. When it reaches the far side of Jupiter, the spacecraft must be able to survive sunless, cryogenic temperatures. The prize for overcoming these challenges is a global saltwater ocean beneath its ice shell hypothesized to have the chemistry and energy necessary to sustain life. If there is non-Earth life anywhere in the solar system, it is there, experts say.
“We are gearing up for one last review needed for confirmation of the mission by NASA,” Pappalardo says. “That is where NASA says that you are ready and cleared to go build the instruments and spacecraft.” In April, the project will go through its “delta preliminary design review” (PDR)—a reevaluation of certain elements of the spacecraft that had given NASA pause. An independent board will assess whether the spacecraft’s designs match up with the mission’s requirements, and that cost, risk and schedule correspond to reality. Once completed successfully, the project will go through another review at NASA headquarters called “key decision point C.” The agency will commit to the calendar and cost determined during the PDR, and the process of finalizing design and fabricating the hardware can begin. “It’s a really fascinating part of the process seeing how everything fits together,” says Zibi Turtle, principal investigator of the Europa Imaging System investigation. “Everybody builds their own instrument, and when they stick them all on the spacecraft, you have to make sure there aren’t any unexpected interactions.”
One of the issues troubling NASA has been the marriage of Clipper’s solar panels with its ice-penetrating radar, called REASON. Originally, the massive radar antennas—used to study the structure of the ice shell, locate lakes within it and find interfaces between the ice and the ocean—was to be mounted on the spacecraft like any instrument. But the radar team and JPL engineers determined that building the radar into the solar array would prevent interference between the two components, while taking up less physical space. This was a fairly radical design in a business where “heritage”—the use of proven technologies—customarily carries the day. In January, REASON passed its “integrated wing review”—an evaluation of its integration with the solar arrays, following separate preliminary design reviews of each. “They showed me off the steps of the scaffolding,” says Don Blankenship, REASON principal investigator, joking that he avoided execution.
But perhaps the greatest unknown for the mission is its ride to space. According to the law funding the spacecraft, Europa Clipper must launch in 2023 on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket currently under development. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that this rocket will not be ready in time, which means Clipper might have to ride on a smaller commercial rocket. Such a change would require altering the law—something easier said than done—and would also add a delay, as the heavy-lift SLS would be able to send the spacecraft on a direct, 28-month flight to Jupiter. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a backup commercial option, is not powerful enough for such a trajectory and would require a six-year tour of the solar system to deliver Clipper to its target.
THE BENEFACTOR
Another challenge for Clipper is the recent loss of its benefactor in Congress. As chair of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee of the House of Representatives, John Culberson, the former Texas Republican representative, proved to be Europa’s protector. Unlike every other mission in NASA’s portfolio, he put Clipper not in “report language” that accompanies an appropriations bill (but is not legally binding), but rather, for several years now, into the actual bill. Accordingly, he has been known to boast, by federal law Clipper and Europa Lander (a follow-on mission that would use Clipper data to touch down on the surface and dig around for evidence of life) are the only two missions that it is illegal for NASA not to fly.
When Culberson was defeated for reelection last year, things looked grim. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve, however. “Before I left,” he says, “I won the support of a number of my House colleagues to be sure that they would protect those missions.” And tying Clipper to SLS should help. The rocket is being built in Alabama, home of the powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as the ranking member of the House appropriations subcommittee responsible for NASA. Those representatives have a vested interest in keeping SLS alive and giving it something to do. Clipper will be ready to launch long before any other payloads for the rocket, such as major missions to the moon or Mars.
In the fiscal year 2019 budget that passed Congress, Culberson directed $545 million to Clipper—enough to get the project over its peak funding year, keeping the team on track for an on-time launch. Moreover, because Congress in recent years has passed continuing resolutions in lieu of full budgets, the record $2.8 billion planetary science allocation will likely remain in force beyond 2019.
After the April design review, Clipper will likely enter the final design and fabrication phase in August. If all goes well, it will lift its first inch from the launchpad in 2023.
When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?
Within hours, however, Barbeaux's colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: "The Blob."
In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United States, formed in the Gulf of Alaska and began to spread. A few months later, Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, dubbed it The Blob. The name, with its echo of a 1958 horror film about an alien life form that keeps growing as it consumes everything in its path, quickly caught on. By the summer of 2015, The Blob had more than doubled in size, stretching across more than 4 million square kilometers of ocean, from Mexico's Baja California Peninsula to Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Water temperatures reached 2.5°C above normal in many places.
By late 2016, the marine heat wave had crashed across ecosystems all along North America's western coast, reshuffling food chains and wreaking havoc. Unusual blooms of toxic algae appeared, as did sea creatures typically found closer to the tropics (see sidebar). Small fish and crustaceans hunted by larger animals vanished. The carcasses of tens of thousands of seabirds littered beaches. Whales failed to arrive in their usual summer waters. Then the cod disappeared.
The fish "basically ran out of food," Barbeaux now believes. Once, he didn't think a food shortage would have much effect on adult cod, which, like camels, can harbor energy and go months without eating. But now, it is "something we look at and go: ‘Huh, that can happen.’"
Today, 5 years after The Blob appeared, the waters it once gripped have cooled, although fish, bird, and whale numbers have yet to recover. Climate scientists and marine biologists, meanwhile, are still putting together the story of what triggered the event, and how it reverberated through ecosystems. Their interest is not just historical.
Around the world, shifting climate and ocean circulation patterns are causing huge patches of unusually warm water to become more common, researchers have found. Already, ominous new warm patches are emerging in the North Pacific Ocean and elsewhere, and researchers are applying what they've learned from The Blob to help guide predictions of how future marine heat waves might unfold. If global warming isn't curbed, scientists warn that the heat waves will become more frequent, larger, more intense, and longerlasting. By the end of the century, Bond says, "The ocean is going to be a much different place."
The Blob begins
Even as ominous headlines warned of what National Geographic dubbed "The blob that cooked the Pacific," researchers scrambled to decipher what was happening. They consulted satellite readings; crisscrossed the Pacific on research ships, sometimes dredging the depths with nets; picked through the carcasses of birds and whales; and huddled over microscopes and lab aquariums.
The Blob was spawned, experts say, by a long-lasting atmospheric ridge of high pressure that formed over the Gulf of Alaska in the fall of 2013. The ridge helped squelch fierce winter storms that typically sweep the gulf. That dampened the churning winds that usually bring colder, deeper water to the surface, as well as transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere—much like a bowl of hot soup cooling as a diner blows across it. As a result, the gulf remained unusually warm through the following year.
But it took a convergence of other forces to transform The Blob into a monster. In the winter of 2014–15, winds from the south brought warmer air into the gulf, keeping sea temperatures high. Those winds also pushed warm water closer to the coasts of Oregon and Washington. Then, later in 2015 and in 2016, the periodic warming of the central Pacific known as El Niño added more warmth, fueling The Blob's growth. The heat wave finally broke when La Niña—El Niño's cool opposite number—arrived at the end of 2016, bringing storms that stirred and cooled the ocean.
Satellites and instrumented buoys made it relatively easy for scientists to track The Blob's bloom and fade. But the vast sweep of its ecological impact was harder to see.
That story starts with some of the ocean's tiniest inhabitants, which sit at the base of the marine food chain. In the Gulf of Alaska, phytoplankton blooms shrank during the warm years, a trend scientists trace to a lack of the nutrients that the winds usually churn to the surface with colder, deeper water. The decline in phytoplankton appears to have rippled out to copepods—fat-rich crustaceans the size of a sesame seed—that feed on the algae, says Russell Hopcroft, a zooplankton ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. During Blob years, the copepods grew leaner at the same time as phytoplankton ebbed and water temperatures climbed, he says. When warmer water moved north to Alaska, it also carried in different, less nutritious copepod species.
Krill—tiny shrimp that, like copepods, are a key food for many fish—felt the heat, too. In 2015 and 2016, as The Blob engulfed the coasts of Washington and Oregon, the heat-sensitive creatures vanished from biologists' nets.
As the base of the food chain crumbled, the effects propagated upward. One link higher, swarms of small fish that dine on copepods and krill—and in turn become food for larger animals—also became scarce as warm waters spread. On a remote island in the northern gulf, where scientists have tracked seabird diets for decades, they noticed that capelin and sand lance, staples for many bird species, nearly vanished from the birds' meals. In 2015, by one estimate, the populations of most key forage fish in the gulf fell to less than 50% of the average over the previous 9 years.
Of the fish that remained, some offered little nourishment. Sand lance caught in 2016 were so stunted that Yumi Arimitsu, a fisheries ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Juneau, thought she was holding fish that had recently hatched. But a check of their ear bones showed they were a year old. The fish had so little fat that each one provided just a tenth of the energy content of one average fish from other years.
Finger-length juvenile cod that spend their first summer feeding in the gulf 's shallow waters also disappeared. In 2014, when NOAA researchers on an annual survey cast their nets into two bays off Kodiak Island in Alaska, they came up almost empty. There were "no fish around," recalls Ben Laurel, a NOAA fisheries ecologist based at the agency's lab in Newport, Oregon. "There's just this big hole."
Even as these food stocks declined, the warmer water delivered a second blow to the cold-blooded creatures there, from copepods to adult cod. The heat dialed up the metabolism of the animals, forcing them to eat more to keep their bodies fueled—just as prey became scarcer.
Barbeaux thinks that one-two punch is what did in Pacific cod, gray-flanked fish that can grow to more than a meter. After his initial shock at discovering the 2017 cod crash, he started to assemble a picture of a creeping underwater famine. Looking back, researchers noticed adult cod caught in 2015 and 2016 were skinnier than normal. The stomachs of cod caught in 2015 were half-empty compared with boom years, and contained few energy-rich capelin and tanner crabs.
Despite their ability to go months without eating, the cod could not withstand this double whammy. Computer simulations developed by federal scientists suggest that, as warm waters lingered, the fish ran a deep caloric deficit. Barbeaux suspects the weakened fish became more vulnerable to disease and predators, such as salmon sharks.
A wave of death
The cod's demise wasn't easily observed. But other changes occurring in the ocean's depths became visible in sudden, morbid convulsions on beaches and in bays. In late 2014, thousands of starved Cassin's auklet seabirds began to wash ashore in Washington and Oregon. On New Year's Day 2016, a retired bird biologist in Whittier, Alaska, stumbled across the white and gray bodies of 8000 common murres lining a beach, like so many abandoned buoys. In the following days, people found the normally hardy seabirds—known for their ability to fly hundreds of kilometers in a day to find fish—dead and dying across much of southern Alaska. They piled up on beaches and staggered along highways like little zombies. As many as half a million died, scientists estimate.
Then there were the disappearing whales. In the summer of 2015, 2 years into The Blob, just 166 humpback whales returned to Alaska's Glacier Bay from their winter calving grounds near Hawaii and Mexico, a 30% drop from 2013. All the humpback calves seen in Glacier Bay that year disappeared later and are presumed dead. And the bodies of 28 humpback and 17 finback whales washed up on beaches in Alaska and British Columbia in Canada.
It’s getting warm in here
The portion of the world’s oceans experiencing moderate to extreme marine heat waves has been growing since the 1980s.
Toxic algae blooms that stretched along much of the west coast in 2015 might have played a role in the seabird and whale deaths. But some of the animals might have simply starved because competing predators had vacuumed up available forage fish. The seabird die-off, for example, peaked in the winter of 2015–16, just as warmer waters would have revved up the appetites of fish like cod, notes John Piatt, a USGS marine ecologist based in Port Townsend, Washington. "If murres and whales are dying en masse everywhere, what does it tell you?" Piatt asks. "That there's no food anywhere."
Researchers are still puzzling over many Blob mysteries. Even as common murres suffered, for example, tufted puffins that feed on the same fish showed few problems, notes Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Homer, Alaska. And although the cod story seems to fit together neatly, there are still unknowns, such as exactly how warmer water temperatures affected baby cod. Laurel hopes some answers will emerge from ongoing laboratory experiments that involve raising young cod in aquariums with different water temperatures. The findings could help illuminate how tiny temperature shifts influence growth and survival, particularly during crucial winter months when the fish live largely on fat reserves.
Other clues could come from the bodies of baby cod that researchers have collected from Kodiak Island beaches every year since 2006, then packed into lab freezers. Laurel has long wanted to study the collection to see how climate, ocean conditions, and diet shape development. Now, the urgency of understanding The Blob has unlocked money for that work.
Lingering signs
Although the blob has dissipated, its impact lingers. Of five common murre colonies in the gulf surveyed in 2018, only two seem to be breeding at normal levels. Just 99 humpback whales returned to Glacier Bay last year, with only one new calf in tow, far below the 3-decade average of more than eight calves per year. Cod numbers this year are projected to be even lower than they were last year. That means more tough times for cod fishers. Federal officials cut the allowable catch by 80% after the 2017 collapse, and the 2019 limits are even lower.
But a recovery may be in the offing. With cooler waters, tiny cod filled the bays at Kodiak Island in the summer of 2018. Larger, high-fat copepods showed an uptick, as did forage fish. Seabirds have resumed breeding in some places. Krill have rebounded off the west coast. "It indicates that to some extent the ecosystem is able to restabilize once [more typical] conditions return," says Janet Duffy-Anderson, a NOAA fisheries ecologist based in Seattle.
Now, scientists are ramping up efforts to study similar firestorms that are gathering strength in other corners of the ocean. Warmer temperatures are threatening corals in the Red Sea, kelp forests in southern Australia, and fisheries off the coasts of New England and eastern Canada. Rising temperatures are also affecting ecosystems near New Zealand, the Mediterranean, and the coast of Argentina. In northern Australia, record air temperatures late last year sparked warnings of more damage to the Great Barrier Reef. Back-to-back marine heat waves in 2016 and 2017 are estimated to have killed half the reefs there.
"Marine heat wave" became a common part of scientific parlance in just the past decade. Now, research on the waves "is kind of taking off," says Eric Oliver, a physical oceanographer and marine heat wave expert at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. In 2016, he and a group of Australian, U.K., and U.S. scientists moved to give the field some common metrics by proposing that a marine heat wave be defined as a string of five or more days in which ocean water temperatures are in the top 10% compared with the previous 3 decades. Last year, recognizing that ocean warming might soon get public attention like other natural disasters, some of the same scientists suggested ranking their severity much like hurricanes, ranging from Category I to Category IV. They also proposed naming marine heat waves based on their location and year—so The Blob might have been called Northeast Pacific 2013.
Each heat wave has its own constellation of causes. But there is one common and increasingly potent factor, researchers say. As oceans soak up more heat from a warming planet, heat waves are becoming more common and more intense. The number of days with a marine heat wave somewhere on the globe has doubled since 1982, according to a 2018 study by Swiss scientists published in Nature. Those researchers warned that, if warming continues on the current trajectory, marine heat waves will become 41 times more frequent by the end of the century. They will also be longer and bigger. Heat waves would typically last more than 100 days, with maximum temperatures 2.5°C above average. The western tropical Pacific and Arctic oceans would be the hardest hit. The changes, the authors wrote, would probably push "marine organisms and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience."
That scenario fits with what Bond foresees for the northeast Pacific. The climate and ocean models he uses produce sobering scenarios. By 2050, without major curbs on planetary warming, average ocean temperatures in that region will likely be between 1°C and 2°C above historic levels—meaning Blob-like temperatures will become typical. As a result, Bond says, "When we have a marine heat wave in 2050, it's going to be way out there—in the uncharted territory."
Other tastes of that future might be just around the corner. Even as researchers close the book on The Blob, they are keeping a close watch on new heat waves off Alaska. In the winter of 2017–18 the northern Bering Sea was devoid of ice for the first time on record. And last summer, a warming trend that started in 2014 turned feverish. Water temperatures in the Bering Sea, where walleye pollock support one of the world's biggest fisheries, hit 4°C above normal in some regions. Already, the heat appears to be having an impact. Late last year, researchers found that numbers of fatty copepods—a favorite of young pollock—were 90% below average. The big question is what impact the copepod shortage will have on fish trying to survive their first winter, Duffy-Anderson says. That won't be known until later this year.
Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Alaska, calm, warm weather this past fall has spawned a new patch of unusually warm water, one that is eerily like the baby Blob. In October 2018, Barbeaux logged into Facebook to share a news story warning The Blob might have a sequel. His comment succinctly captured what many scientists are thinking as they probe the effects of the last heat wave: "Oh, crap."
*Correction, 11 February, 3:05 p.m.:The credit for the image of Earth’s temperatures has bee updated.
Onderwaterhittegolven: ook de oceaan kreunt onder toename tropische dagen
Onderwaterhittegolven: ook de oceaan kreunt onder toename tropische dagen
Onderwaterhittegolven? Wij hadden de term zelf nog nooit gehoord, terwijl het natuurlijk de logica zelf is. Want waarom zou de opwarming van de aarde zich ook niet manifesteren onder de zeespiegel? Misschien zelfs nog significanter dan aan land, geven twee recente studies aan.
Onderwater is er sprake van een hittegolf wanneer, vergelijkbaar met op het vasteland, de maximumtemperatuur vijf dagen op een rij significant hoger ligt dan normaal. ‘Normaal’ varieert dan, ook net zoals aan land, van watermassa tot watermassa.
Eerst wees een onderzoek onder leiding van kwantitatief ecoloog Christopher M. Free (Rutgers University) in Science op een afname van het visbestand met 4% tussen 1930 en 2010, als gevolg van de klimaatopwarming. Kort daarna stelde de meest uitgebreide studie van maritieme hittegolven tot nu toe een forse toename vast van zowel het aantal consistente temperatuurpieken als hun heftigheid.
Het meest indicatieve cijfer uit de publicatie in Nature Climate Change: het aantal hittedagen onder de oceaanspiegels lag tussen 1987 en 2016 maar liefst 54% hoger dan in de periode 1925-1954. Het meest sprekende voorbeeld dat onderzoeksleider en benthisch bioloog Dan Smale (Marine Biological Association) aanhaalt, is ‘The Blob’.
Die ‘Klodder’ is een gigantische massa veel te warm water voor de Amerikaanse Westkust die zich op haar voorlopige hoogtepunt in de periode 2014-2016 uitstrekte over zo’n 5,6 miljoen vierkante kilometer. Van Mexico tot Alaska, om dat op zich misschien abstract grote cijfer hallucinant tastbaar te maken.
NASAEen meanderende bedding van een oude rivier op Mars. De foto werd ingekleurd om hoogteverschillen aan te duiden: blauw is laag, geel is hoog.
WETENSCHAP Mars is vandaag koud en droog, met een ijle atmosfeer. Maar ooit - en minder lang geleden dan gedacht - stroomden er grote, woeste rivieren op de rode planeet. Ze waren dubbel zo breed als de rivieren op aarde, ontdekten wetenschappers van de universiteit van Chicago.
De conclusies maken het niet makkelijker voor onderzoekers die Mars’ drastische transitie van de natte naar de droge periode bestuderen. Die zou tot later in de geschiedenis van de planeet hebben geduurd dan tot nu toe gedacht. Met andere woorden: er was tot minder lang geleden dan gedacht water op Mars, tot het allerlaatste moment van de natte periode. Tussen 3,6 en 1 miljard jaar geleden stroomde dagelijks 3 tot 20 kg water per vierkante meter door de rivierbeddingen over de hele planeet verspreid. De nieuwe studie schat het nu op 1 miljard jaar geleden en zelfs nog later. Of: minstens 1 miljard jaar recenter dan vorige berekeningen.
Edwin Kite en zijn team onderzochten meer dan 200 oude, al lang opgedroogde rivierbeddingen op Mars aan de hand van foto’s gemaakt met NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), die rond de planeet cirkelt. De diepe geulen op de foto’s bevatten informatie over het water dat er ooit doorstroomde en over de klimatologische omstandigheden waarin dat gebeurde. De grootte van de beddingen wijst op een continue eerder dan op een tijdelijke waterstroom enkel ’s middags.
AP
De gemiddelde dagtemperaturen lagen dus boven het vriespunt, wat dan weer een sterk broeikaseffect suggereert. “Maar dat wordt niet gestaafd door de bestaande modellen van Mars’ klimaatveranderingen”, zegt de studie. De atmosfeer van Mars was vroeger zo dik dat er maar een derde van zonnestralen die wij nu op de aarde ontvangen doorkwam. Onvoldoende voor vloeibaar water.
Als de vooropgestelde periodes van stromende rivieren op Mars kloppen, dan zou dat kunnen betekenen dat de atmosfeer van de rode planeet sneller verdween dan eerder werd gedacht. Uit vorige studies bleek dat de verdunning 4 miljard jaar geleden zou zijn ingezet en zo zou hebben geleid tot het geleidelijk uitdrogen van de rivieren. De nieuwe studie plaatst dat uitdunnen van de Martiaanse atmosfeer nu miljarden jaren later.
Kite schuift nog een andere optie naar voren: mogelijk versprong het klimaat op Mars herhaaldelijk als een op/aan-knop van droge naar natte periodes.
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Poolse oud-president Walesa zorgt voor verrassing met uitspraken over aliens. Zijn er andere intelligente beschavingen geweest op aarde?
Foto: Sicherlich Wikimedia Commons
Poolse oud-president Walesa zorgt voor verrassing met uitspraken over aliens. Zijn er andere intelligente beschavingen geweest op aarde?
De Poolse oud-president Lech Walesa heeft voor verrassing gezorgd door in het openbaar te spreken over UFO’s en buitenaardsen.
Walesa, die tussen 1990 en 1995 president was, deed zijn uitspraken tijdens een bijeenkomst in de stad Krosno.
De gepensioneerde politicus, die eerder voor de geheime dienst werkte, zei te geloven dat intelligente buitenaardsen bestaan en een bedreiging kunnen vormen voor de aarde, schrijft website NaTemat.pl.
Drie verschillende niveaus
Walesa zei dat er drie verschillende niveaus van intellectuele ontwikkeling zijn in sterrenstelsels en dat de mens zich op het laagste niveau bevindt.
“Als we ingaan tegen de buitenaardsen hakken ze ons in de pan. De aarde zal vergaan,” zei hij, toevoegende dat we dan weer van voren af aan moeten beginnen.
Vier of vijf keer
Walesa suggereerde dat dergelijke scenario’s zich al eens hebben afgespeeld op aarde. “Men zegt dat er vier of vijf keer een beschaving was zoals de onze en dat zij dezelfde fouten hebben gemaakt die wij nu maken – ze konden niet communiceren,” klonk het.
Hij wees op verschillende archeologische mysteries, waaronder de piramides, als mogelijk bewijs voor hoogontwikkelde menselijke rassen die in een ver verleden zijn uitgeroeid.
YouTube
“We hebben geen idee waar ze vandaan komen!” zei hij over de piramides.
De voormalige president zegt zijn informatie vooral van YouTube te halen.
“Volkomen glad omhulsel van een schip.” Beroemdste UFO-hacker aller tijden geeft voor het eerst in jaren een interview: bekijk het hier
“Volkomen glad omhulsel van een schip.” Beroemdste UFO-hacker aller tijden geeft voor het eerst in jaren een interview: bekijk het hier
De Brit Gary McKinnon is de beroemdste UFO-hacker aller tijden. Hij werd in 2002 gearresteerd en dreigde uitgeleverd te worden aan de Verenigde Staten.
McKinnon stuitte op bewijs voor een geheim ruimteprogramma en verwijzingen naar ‘niet-aardse officieren’.
Hij ontdekte ook dat er schepen werden bevoorraad die officieel niet bestonden.
Majestic 12
De schepen die onderdeel uitmaakten van de vloot waren voorzien van namen, maar op internet kon de hacker daar niets over vinden.
Enkele namen van de schepen hadden betrekking op leden van Majestic 12, een verondersteld geheim genootschap.
Ongefilterd
Hij opende daarnaast een foto van een glad, sigaarvormig schip die in de ruimte was gemaakt.
De foto stond op een computer van de NASA en was opgeslagen in een map genaamd ‘ongefilterd’.
Straf
Gary praat met onderzoeker Richard Dolan over de straf die de Amerikaanse overheid hem wilde opleggen, zijn depressie, suïcidale gedachten en nog veel meer.
Reptilians on Earth: The Secret 70,000 Year Old History
Reptilians on Earth: The Secret 70,000 Year Old History
There is evidence from as far back as 70000 BC, in Africa, of a serpent race living on Earth. There is an inter-dimensional aspect to this phenomena, considering space is very quiet, they must be getting here another way, maybe through portals.
There are certain ways these doorways can be opened, humans were the ones opening these doorways 7000 years ago. Are the pyramids a portal?
What were our ancestors doing and what about the reptilians connection to gold? What is the value of this gold, as Barry Fitzgerald explains, its more to do with mono-atomic elements.
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New Insider Reveals His Incredible Experience Within the Secret Space Program
New Insider Reveals His Incredible Experiences Within the Secret Space Program
This refers to an existing organization known as the “Secret Space Program”. Jason Rice, has provided a disclosure of that program, what he revealed means that the Secret Space Program is not a secret any more.
Jason Rice was a member of a Secret Space Program. He has stated that he is coming forward now to disclose that there are thousands of other people who are also involved with this program that is known as “20 and Back”.
He feels that the stories of some who gave their lives for humanity and have not come back need to be told.
A small asteroid has been caught in the process of spinning so fast it’s throwing off material, according to new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories.
Images from Hubble show two narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris streaming from the asteroid (6478) Gault. Each tail represents an episode in which the asteroid gently shed its material — key evidence that Gault is beginning to come apart.
The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), O. Hainaut
(European Southern Observatory)
Discovered in 1988, the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) asteroid has been observed repeatedly, but the debris tails are the first evidence of disintegration. Gault is located 214 million miles (344 million kilometers) from the Sun. Of the roughly 800,000 known asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, astronomers estimate that this type of event in the asteroid belt is rare, occurring roughly once a year.
Watching an asteroid become unglued gives astronomers the opportunity to study the makeup of these space rocks without sending a spacecraft to sample them.
This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the gradual self-destruction of an asteroid, whose ejected dusty material has formed two long, thin, comet-like tails. The longer tail stretches more than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long. The streamers will eventually disperse into space.
Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), and O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory)
“We didn’t have to go to Gault,” explained Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory in Germany, a member of the Gault observing team. “We just had to look at the image of the streamers, and we can see all of the dust grains well-sorted by size. All the large grains (about the size of sand particles) are close to the object and the smallest grains (about the size of flour grains) are the farthest away because they are being pushed fastest by pressure from sunlight.”
Gault is only the second asteroid whose disintegration has been strongly linked to a process known as a YORP effect. (YORP stands for “Yarkovsky–O’Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack,” the names of four scientists who contributed to the concept.) When sunlight heats an asteroid, infrared radiation escaping from its warmed surface carries off angular momentum as well as heat. This process creates a tiny torque that can cause the asteroid to continually spin faster. When the resulting centrifugal force starts to overcome gravity, the asteroid’s surface becomes unstable, and landslides may send dust and rubble drifting into space at a couple miles per hour, or the speed of a strolling human. The researchers estimate that Gault could have been slowly spinning up for more than 100 million years.
Piecing together Gault’s recent activity is an astronomical forensics investigation involving telescopes and astronomers around the world. All-sky surveys, ground-based telescopes, and space-based facilities like the Hubble Space Telescope pooled their efforts to make this discovery possible.
The initial clue was the fortuitous detection of the first debris tail, observed on Jan. 5, 2019, by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Hawaii. The tail also turned up in archival data from December 2018 from ATLAS and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescopes in Hawaii. In mid-January, a second shorter tail was spied by the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and the Isaac Newton Telescope in Spain, as well as by other observers. An analysis of both tails suggests the two dust events occurred around Oct. 28 and Dec. 30, 2018.
Follow-up observations with the William Herschel Telescope and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Optical Ground Station in La Palma and Tenerife, Spain, and the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in India measured a two-hour rotation period for the object, close to the critical speed at which a loose “rubble-pile” asteroid begins to break up.
“Gault is the best ‘smoking gun’ example of a fast rotator right at the two-hour limit,” said team member Jan Kleyna of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
An analysis of the asteroid’s surrounding environment by Hubble revealed no signs of more widely distributed debris, which rules out the possibility of a collision with another asteroid causing the outbursts.
The asteroid’s narrow streamers suggest that the dust was released in short bursts, lasting anywhere from a few hours to a few days. These sudden events puffed away enough debris to make a “dirt ball” approximately 500 feet (150 meters) across if compacted together. The tails will begin fading away in a few months as the dust disperses into interplanetary space.
Based on observations by the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope, the astronomers estimate that the longer tail stretches over half a million miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long.
Only a couple of dozen active asteroids have been found so far. Astronomers may now have the capability to detect many more of them because of the enhanced survey capabilities of observatories such as Pan-STARRS and ATLAS, which scan the entire sky. “Asteroids such as Gault cannot escape detection anymore,” Hainaut said. “That means that all these asteroids that start misbehaving get caught.”
The researchers hope to monitor Gault for more dust events.
The team’s results have been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
Contacts and sources:
Donna Weaver / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
When a current or former world leader professes a belief in UFOs, the public ponders about their sanity and about what they might really know concerning the cause of unidentified flying objects. When that world leader also warns about potentially catastrophic extraterrestrial invasions, ears and antennas both go up. That was the case last week in Poland, when former Polish president and head of the Solidarity movement Lech Walesa pontificated on UFOs, aliens and their role in the potential demise of Earth as we know it.
Lech Walesa
“There are three levels of intellectual development on other galaxies. We are the lowest. And the higher civilization comes as a UFO and others, and looks at what they are doing here. If we threaten to destabilize here with Macron, Putin there, they will interrupt us, cut us in half, the Earth will collapse, everyone will crush.”
Multiple Polishmedia sources reported on a speech Walesa made to a civic club in Krosno, an ancient city in southwestern Poland. While not there to talk about UFOs, Lech wandered off the script (as world leaders seem to do a lot these days) and worked UFOs and “higher civilizations” into the conversation. While he doesn’t seem to have spoken publicly about his belief in UFOs and aliens, his comments suggest he’s of the opinion that they’re the type that’s observing us without interference (the ‘zoo’ theory) but will move in if they feel the need. Then he warns that actions by current politicians (French president Emmanuel Macron and Russian president Vladimir Putin) could trigger just such a decision by a higher civilization of watchers. Walesa believes their interference would not be benevolent and the consequences would be long-lasting. (If you understand Polish, you can watch the entire speech here. The UFO comments begin at 1h 04m 56 sec.)
“(The higher civilization (can hold us that way for five thousand years. They will send Adam and Eve and we will build the world again.”
It also appears from his comments that Walesa at least considers the possibility that an alien civilization has interfered with humans before.
“People find things, dig in stones, these pyramids … no answer, where did it come from?”
Why didn’t the higher civilization interfere with this?
Does Lech Walesa know something we don’t? While there’s no indication that he himself has had a UFO or alien encounter, Poland has had a number of them. The most famous is the so-called Emilcin incident in 1978 when a farmer from that eastern Polish town allegedly met olive-skinned aliens who took him onboard their ship. Polish UFO researcher and author Piotr Cielebiaś says there were plenty of reports of alien encounters by military pilots until Poland joined NATO in 1999. Walesa was president from December 1990 to December 1995 so he undoubtedly was aware of these reports.
Why did Lech Walesa feel the need to talk about UFOs and extraterrestrial invasions now? What does he REALLY know?
Another month has passed, and the mystery boom phenomenon continues without a definitive explanation. Throughout March, several incidents of unexplained explosion noises have added to the already large and still growing body of evidence suggesting either an unknown natural occurrence or some type of unidentified man made activity is leading to these loud, powerful, and anomalous noises. I’ve collectedhundreds of reports of these mystery boomsover the past few years in an attempt to discover what may be behind the phenomenon, but so far an explanation remains elusive. Are these separate events actually related? And why aren’t they receiving more attention?
On March 7, residents of Block Island in the U.S. state of Rhode Island were rattled by what was described as an “unexplained boom” early in the morning of Friday, March 1. Sound familiar? Some Block Islanders reported the noise was so loud that they thought something could have exploded inside of their own homes. While scores of residents reported being terrified by the noise, The Block Island Times reports that theories put forth on local social media sites “were mostly whimsical,” with most eyewitnesses choosing to crack jokes about the sky-splitting noise. As has been noted throughout ufology circles for years, joking about something being “aliens” is a great way to discredit those who take the phenomenon seriously. Could someone be leveraging social media to actively discourage serious research into mystery booms?
A few days later on March 6, another eerily familiar boom shook the northern Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. The U.S. Geographical Survey said the event was not an earthquake, while meteorologists with the National Weather Service reported that there were no weather conditions that could explain the boom. According to the Coastal Review Online, the boom was heard over a broad area, making it unlikely that a singular sonic boom from an aircraft overhead could have caused it. As in many other cases, some type of unknown atmospheric temperature inversion was cited as a possible cause, although there is little hard evidence to support that speculation.
The next day on March 8, another mysterious boom described as a “loud explosion” was heard throughout Liberty, Ohio. “You could feel it like a shock wave,” one Liberty resident told emergency dispatchers after calling 911. “It knocked me out of bed.” Fire crews at the Liberty Fire Station also felt the boom, reporting that the entire fire station shook. So far, the cause of the boom has not been found.
No further booms were reported until March 22, when several cities near Birmingham, Alabama were rattled by a massive explosion in the sky. Like in North Carolina, the U.S. Geological Survey and National Weather Service were baffled. The typical hypotheses were put forward, after which the story was buried by the news cycle as in so many other cases.
In Sacracmento, California, residents of Fair Oaks reportthey’ve have been shaken from their beds at night in recent months by powerful, unexplained booms strong enough to set off car alarms. With no official explanation, people are throwing around all sorts of theories including weather phenomena and secret SpaceX launches. Meanwhile, local police believe the booms are being caused by illegal fireworks.
On March 26, a loud boom shook southern Idaho, the latest in a recent spate of similar booms. According to local radio station KEZJ, the booms are being caused by munitions testing at the nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base.
Also on March 26, North Carolina experienced another mysterious event, but this time whatever happened was powerful enough to register on seismographs. Several counties in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina were rattled by an eerily familiar boom. “I’ll tell you right now, that was the loudest — it shook the whole damn house partner,” one frightened caller told police dispatchers as emergency services in the area were inundated with calls about the boom.
Shortly thereafter, the USGS reported recording two separate 2.6-magnitude earthquakes throughout the state, one of which was not far from the site of several other mysterious booms heard throughout 2018 for which conflicting explanations were offered. While this most recent boom could possibly be explained by seismic activity, there is always the possibility that whatever caused the boom wasn’t an earthquake per se but was powerful enough to rattle the ground and register on seismographs.
Many aerospace agencies and military branches have been researching hypersonic craft and weapons over the last several years. Could they have anything to do with the phenomenon?
While I normally wouldn’t jump to conclusions without evidence, the spate of other similar events in recent weeks makes this earthquake explanation seem incomplete to me. Then again, sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy, seeing things in the cracks between seemingly disparate news stories and trends which may not really be there. Whatever the case may be, I and other Mysterious Universe writers have been tracking these reports week after week for years, and we’re not alone. Many readers have reached out to me in recent months with their own experiences with mystery booms or their own theories on the phenomenon. Are these incidents in fact related, or could many separate phenomena or forces be causing these booms? If that’s the case, why are so many reports so similar, and why are they occurring with such frequency lately?
So many questions. Are unknown seismic events violently rattling the Earth, or could unknown aircraft be wantonly breaking the sound barrier over residential areas? Is an unknown atmospheric or meteorological forces causing ‘skyquakes’ or other anomalous disturbances, or could industrial operations be to blame? Meteors? Psychological warfare? Aliens? Anybody’s guess is as good as anyone else’s at this point (but it’s likely not aliens).
Although it’s great news that these species have been rediscovered, the question still remains: why are these supposedly “extinct” animals suddenly reappearing? Were they even extinct in the first place? According to the IUCN Red List, a species is only listed as extinct when “…there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” It’s also required that “…exhaustive surveys in known and/or expected habitat, at appropriate times… throughout its historic range [which] have failed to record an individual. Surveys should be over a time frame appropriate to the taxon’s life cycle and life form.”
Galápagos giant tortoise
The last time that people see a certain species is often calculated in the decision on whether it is in fact extinct or not, and that’s not entirely correct, as many species are very elusive and prefer to stay away from populated areas and people in general. So, just because they haven’t been seen in several years, doesn’t mean that they are extinct. Sightings can come in many forms, from actually seeing the species face-to-face, or capturing a picture of it, t more indirect evidence like footprints or people retelling stories of their encounters.
What’s even more confusing is the fact that the word “rediscovered” means that someone or something was lost or forgotten about, but we also interpret it as returning from the dead. As for the Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise, although it hadn’t been spotted since the early 1900s, footprints, bite marks on pear cacti, and tortoise faeces had been discovered as recently as 2013. In 2015, it was declared “Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct), and apparently species are presumed extinct until it is proven that they are still living.
And while Wallace’s giant bee hadn’t been seen in 38 years, it was listed as “Data Deficient” and more recently as “Vulnerable”, but never as an extinct species. One of the species, however, that was listed as Extinct was the Formosan clouded leopard, as many hunters said they hadn’t seen the animal and no footage was ever captured from the several cameras in the area.
Clouded leopard
The giant tortoise and bee were declared alive after living specimens were discovered, but the clouded leopard’s existence is still uncertain as there have only been eyewitness testimonies so far and no solid proof.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before several more “extinct” species are suddenly “rediscovered”. Since pretty much everyone nowadays has a cell phone with video/photo options, and many others fly drones in wooded areas, it’s very possible that more eyewitnesses will come forward with video and/or photographic proof. And maybe not, since some species just want to be left alone in their secret locations, safely hidden away from humans.
On December 9, 2014, in Capilla del Monte Argentina, a woman named Cele who was on vacation near a site called the clods 9 km from the chapel of the Argentine mountain when she captured with her cell phone a sphere of light following the car in the back.
Although the amazing video was shot in 2014, this phenomenon is still something that is not understood.
The video comes from the well known UFO researcher Maussan and is subtitled in English.
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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 74 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.