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
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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...
02-04-2019
Bright fireball that flared up in the night sky surprising northern Florida turns out to be a meteor
Bright fireball that flared up in the night sky surprising northern Florida turns out to be a meteor
A bright object falling out of the sky that surprised social media users in Florida turned out to be meteor on Saturday night per the National Weather Service
People throughout the Sunshine State captured the blueish glowing meteor light up the night sky and posted their surprise and delight online
The National Weather Service said it there were unconfirmed reports of the meteor landing near Perry, Florida, about 55 miles southeast of Tallahassee
Just before midnight on Saturday night, people in northernFloridawere treated to a surprising bright light in the sky that turned out to be a meteor.
'Did you see it? A meteor was caught on GOES Lightning Mapper (GLM) around 3:52Z or 11:52 PM ET!' confirmed the National Weather Service out of Tallahassee onTwitter.
The meteor's flash was captured on the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, a satellite taking hundreds of images per second to map lightning storms, according to CNN.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida, tweeted the GLM imagery tracking lightning storms that caught a quick blip of the meteor over the state pointed out by the small green arrow in the frame
Just 20 seconds into this YouTube video posted by Eve Pro Guides, a ball of light appears
The YouTube user noted that the dashcam footage was not normally what he would post to his channel, but he thought it was 'something pretty crazy'
'Meteors coming into the Earth's atmosphere happen fairly often but we don't always get to see them,' said CNN meteorologist Haley Brink.
'Nowadays we have so many satellites in space and cameras on the ground that these events are becoming more and more visible to the general public.'
Social media users in Florida captured the flare-up late Saturday night with various posts that registered their surprise.
'This isn't normally what I post on my channel, but tonight I was out on my way home, and I saw something pretty crazy,' said a user who runs EVE Pro Guides - EVE Online PVP and ISK Guides YouTube channel. 'Luckily my dashcam caught it, so I'll let you watch right here.'
Eve Pro Guides user took the time to do a slow motion portion of the meteor's fall as well as provide some closeups
At about 19 seconds into the video posted on the video game guide channel, a glowing blue-ish orb enters the frame the top of the screen. It then flares even more brightly before disappearing over the horizon.
The video then repeats in slow motion and even provides a closeup of the meteor
Twitter user Jeffrey Cardona who captured the glowing space rock on his dash cam captioned his video 'Can Somebody Explain This!' while tagging numerous news organizations and hashtags referring to meteors, UFO's and Area 51.
Cardona exclaims 'dude, did you see that!' from inside his vehicle as other voices can be heard saying 'what?' and 'yeah!'
It is uncertain if the meteor was able to reach the ground without burning up, but the National Weather Service said there were unconfirmed reports of a landing near Perry, Florida, about southeast of Tallahassee.
There's a stark difference between knowing that the conditions for life exist and actually finding some form of life, and that difference is at the heart of the Europa Lander mission concept that NASA could one day send to Jupiter's moon.
Once proposed to fly with NASA's planned Europa Clipper mission, which is due to launch as soon as 2023, the lander would now be its own separate successor spacecraft, assuming NASA decides to sign on. But access to the icy surface of the moon would offer scientists a much more powerful analysis of a world that they consider one of the most tantalizing prospects for finding extraterrestrial life.
"You can do habitability pretty well from Europa Clipper, but if you actually want to look for biosignatures, if you want to look for signs of life, you've got to touch the surface," Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Space.com last month at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Texas.
In hopes of getting just that opportunity, scientists are already thinking through which instruments should be on board and how they would identify signs of life. Such a mission could follow behind the Europa Clipper mission, using its data to find a promising landing site. Once it arrives, the lander would be prepared to dig about 4 inches (10 centimeters) into Europa's icy shell in order to sample material that hasn't been fried by the harsh radiation environment around Jupiter.
Then, the hard part begins: analyzing that ice in just the right way to determine whether there's anything alive on Europa. "We don't have a single way of detecting life," Phillips said. Instead, the team needs a broad suite of instruments, including a microscope, a seismic package, a camera and a host of devices for chemical analysis.
But making sure all of those different instruments can work together is tricky. "The instruments are really the biggest challenge," Phillips said. "What happens when those samples are ingested into the instrument vault? How are those samples processed, do they have to be kept cold and frozen, do they have to be melted, do they have to be concentrated or filtered?"
That's the team's focus this year. But the scientists and engineers aren't sure whether NASA will keep them at work on the project. "We're at the stage where NASA's considering how it fits into their budget priorities," Phillips said. "We don't have any idea if there's going to be funding in the future for it."
Of course, she's biased in the project's favor, and in Europa's as well. "It's my favorite place in the solar system," Phillips said. And finding life there could be among the most profound discoveries possible, she argued — much more profound than finding life on Mars would be.
"Mars, it's an old, cold, dead kind of world, so any life on Mars, we're probably looking for old, dead, fossilized life, life that survived 2 billion years ago when Mars was warmer and wetter," Phillips said. "When we talk about life on Europa, we're talking about the potential for life that's living there today, that's surviving, that's thriving, and that's really exciting." And whereas Mars is close enough to potentially be contaminated by Earth, Europa is not.
"If we find life on Europa, that's life 2.0; that is not just one but two origins of life in our solar system," Phillips said. At such a great distance, there's no chance it's contamination from Earth. "If life can start not just once but twice in our own little solar system … there's life out there, there's got to be, and that right there, I think, is the revelation that's going to change everything. It's going to change our whole conception of how we fit into the galaxy."
The U.S. Army is developing tanks and drones armed with laser weapons. The Army’s stock of armored Stryker tanks may soon get a laser cannon upgrade, as well as the capability to launch “hunter-killer” drones, according to Defense Maven.
The laser-equipped vehicles and drones would be able to autonomously target, track, and disable targets with invisible lasers, which are becomingincreasinglyprevalent in militaries around the world — a futuristic upgrade to the U.S. military’s ground combat capabilities.
Drone Hunting
The laser weapon is expected to be combat-ready within the next few years — the army has successfully used it to target and shoot down drones during tests. It’s also been able to successfully disrupt communications and block drones’ signals, Defense Maven writes.
Congress wants these lasers to speed up the process of warfare and combat, giving the U.S. military the edge it needs to beat its enemies to the draw.
“[Directed energy] weapons have the potential to change the very nature of warfare,” reads a February report from the Congressional Research Service. The report also said the laser systems “could be used as both a sensor and a weapon, thereby shortening the sensor-to-shooter timeline to seconds. This means that U.S. weapon systems could conduct multiple engagements against a target before an adversary could respond.”
Tactical Deployment
General Dynamics Land Systems, the company behind the Stryker and its new lasers, told Defense Maven that the lasers may be suitable for crowded areas, where they could detect and target threats.
“It will go out in an urban environment and it will sense and find your shooter or incoming RPG,” said General Dynamics Land Systems’ Michael Peck.
But for now, the Army will continue testing its new lasers to make sure that they’re ready to be deployed in the next few years.
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The Mystery of the Gods “half fish” that came from Space(Dogon tribe)
The Mystery of the Gods “half fish” that came from Space (Dogon tribe)
One of the most important mysteries of antiquity is the Dogon tribe, a people that has maintained for centuries a complex knowledge about the universe and especially the existence of the star Sirius, from where a highly developed civilization would come who contacted them in the past.(half fish)
The town or Tribe Dogon inhabits in the Republic of Mali, – African country located in the border of the Sahara with the savannas of Western Africa, and to about 1,500 kilometers of the Atlantic – specifically in the plateau of Bandiagara and the Mounts Homburí. According to an oral tradition, they arrived in Mali some 600 years ago and built the houses on the cliffs to protect themselves from the attacks of the tribes that already inhabited the region.(half fish
The practically uncultivable zones raise a rocky sector where almost 450,000 Dogons live, each family has a unique care with the approach of foreigners since they are generally not accepted. For them, life has a sacred nature, so that any conflict is solved peacefully.
Knowledge of the Dogon culture has been taken to pictograms that are printed on plates, but the largest archive is still cultivated orally, trying not to distort its history and worrying that this is the purest possible.
According to the tradition of the Dogon people, about a thousand years ago you reached the area of the plateau of Youga Dogurou in broad daylight a very bright star which they called “ie-pelu-tolo”: the star of the tenth moon. This object was covered by a very reddish light that they related to the blood. After this great star came a second that turned on itself, was large and emitted a deafening noise.
The curious thing is that when arriving at earth, this star no longer had a circular shape, but it looked like a large basket or pyramid with a square base, and on each of its faces a staircase with six steps was opened. Its color changed from red to bright white. The people -according to the Dogones- ran away since the landing of that “ark” had generated a lot of fear in them.
For example, eight Nommos “di-tigi” who had the body of a fish, although some traditions mention some snake characteristics, would have descended from ie-pelu-tolo. They had 40 very sharp teeth, which explains why the Dogons used to sharpen them. The contact with these beings that supposedly were sacred, generated an approach of the Dogon people, with a great amount of knowledge of the universe, which until today cannot be explained rationally.
According to the belief, the Nommos had come down to Earth to evangelize the people, helping them and teaching them techniques to cultivate the savanna, to fish, in addition to brewing beer and making the outbreak of tree fruits simpler. However there are reports that present the Nommos as murderers and not as teachers of goodwill, it is even believed that there were hundreds of Dogons who perished because of the evil of this race that supposedly came from space. However, it is important to keep in mind that oral narration is always distorted through the passage of time.(half fish)
Within the information poured by the Nommos to the Dogon tribes, is the existence of the star Sirius, from which they came. “Sigi Tolo” is the name given to the brightest body in the sky and according to these beings was the star of the foundation. The funny thing is that they did not present it alone, since they claimed it was triple, that is, they were three stars far from each other. Astronomy at that time had no notion of a second star on Sirius, and less than a third.
In 1995 the French Diventy and Benest discovered a third body in the Sirius system. According to the Dogon, the fish men told him about Sirius B as “po tolo” and said that it was a small star but of a very heavy mass called “sagala”. For the first time, in the year 1862, the American astronomer Alvan Clark managed to see in the star of Sirius, that it was not only one, but two stars. With a goal of 47 cm. in diameter he could distinguish the one that was known from that moment as Sirius B.
Today it is known that this body is a white dwarf very inferior in size to Sirius and in which a cubic meter can weigh more than seventy thousand tons. Then there is the Sirius C star which they know as “emme ya” and it would be four times lighter than Sirius B, it would have a satellite spinning around it called “nyan tolo”: the star of women. Its orbit is 50 years, which coincides with the party of “Sigui”, which is held to remember the arrival of the gods of Sirius (according to official science his calculations are estimated at present in 50,040 years).
In spite of the isolation in which this town lives and the little culture they receive from civilization, the information they handle about certain cosmic themes is really incredible, especially considering that they have dominated them for many centuries, which undoubtedly has put in check to the most orthodox science, which is not explained as this is possible, but for the actual manifestation of certain extraterrestrial beings in the past have contacted this African culture.
The Dogons knew about the spiral structure of the Milky Way, and they claim that there are more than a billion solar systems equal to ours in the universe. They also knew Jupiter and its four inner satellites, Saturn and its rings, many centuries ago. They even speak with much authority about the Moon, presenting it as a dead star unlike the Sun, which is the most important manifestation of life in our system. They propose that our system does not have nine planets, if not eleven, besides the existence of only one omnipresent God which they call “Amma”.
It is necessary to emphasize that the strange coffers and their main characteristics have a lot of relation with what we know today of the UFO phenomenon since the changes of color and the forms used are part of the continuous sightings of this striking phenomenon.(Dogon tribe)
Nowadays, important investigations are being carried out that would lead to a deeper unraveling of data related to the presence of the Nommos in the history of the Dogon people, which would confirm that in the past there was an extraterrestrial manifestation on Earth, and not only with this African tribe, if not with many other cultures of the world.
Nasa plots mission to explore Neptune’s moon Triton – solar system’s coldest object ‘may have ocean harbouring alien life’
Nasa plots mission to explore Neptune’s moon Triton – solar system’s coldest object ‘may have ocean harbouring alien life’
This icy moon could be hiding extraterrestrials...
By Harry Pettit, Senior Digital Technology and Science Reporter
NASA is planning a mission to the coldest known object in our solar system in its hunt for alien life.
The legendary space agency wants to send a high tech probe to Neptune's icy moon Triton, which some believe holds an ocean hidden under its surface.
Water is one of the key ingredients for life, meaning if Triton has an ocean it could harbour tiny extraterrestrial microbes.
Scientists from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory put forward plans to explore the moon at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
The mission would involve developing a new kind of spacecraft known as Trident.
It would fly to Triton and take photographs of the icy object, while also studying its atmosphere and chemical makeup for signs of an underground ocean.
If water is found, then Nasa would mark Triton – the largest of Neptune's 13 moons – as a key target for future alien hunting missions.
Trident would also give scientists a chance to visit Neptune and its moons for the first time since the 1980s, as well as explore an object from the Kuiper belt.
The belt is a ring of icy lumps that sits well beyond Neptune, and scientists believe Triton is a Kuiper object that got knocked into Neptune's gravitational pull billion of years ago.
"Triton shows tantalising hints at being active and having an ocean," Nasa scientist Dr Amanda Hendrix told the New York Times.
"It is a three-for-one target, because you can visit the Neptune system, visit this interesting ocean world, and also visit a Kuiper belt object without having to go all the way out there."
Little is known about Triton, and the only images we have of the moon were captured by the Voyager 2 probe in 1989.
During that flyby, space boffins spotted geysers on Triton that spewed out nitrogen gas. Nasa earmarked it for further research.
The moon is thought to be similar to Pluto in many ways, and is the coldest known object in the solar system, with surface temperatures plummeting to a frigid -235°C.
That makes it two and a half times colder than the coolest temperature ever recorded on Earth – a frosty -89.2°C logged at a Soviet weather station in Antarctica in 1983.
The proposed mission to Triton hinges on its pricetag.
Launching Trident would cost less than £380million – about the same as a small mission to the moon.
That could make the difference as the team push for funding from Nasa's highly competitive Discovery program.
Nasa's goal is to deploy these missions once every two years, and Trident is up against three other potential missions for the next free slot.
They include trip's Earth's moon, as well as Jupiter's moon Io and a return to Venus.
According to Louise Prockter, chief investigator for Trident, now is the time to launch a Triton mission as it's vital to find out if the moon hosts alien life.
Dr Hendrix added that objects like Triton could help us gain fresh insights into how ocean worlds form and hold water.
For example, Triton's temperatures are way below freezing, but could contain ammonia that keeps its ocean in a liquid form.
Clues like this could help us find and explore other ocean worlds in future as we explore whether or not we're alone in the universe.
Neptune's moonTriton is one of the strangest worlds in the solar system — and that's why scientists are exploring mission concepts that could give them a detailed look at it.
It's a large moon, the seventh largest in our solar system, and scientists think it was born in the Kuiper Belt before falling into its current location in orbit around the most distant planet. But that journey took its toll on Triton: Neptune's gravity pulls on it so strongly that the moon's icy surface may hide a subsurface liquid ocean. And the glimpse Voyager 2 offered of its surface suggests that Triton was geologically active as recently as 10 million years ago.
"They said the magic word, Triton, and I said, where do I sign up?" Louise Procktor, a planetary geologist and director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas and a scientist working on a mission concept called Trident, told Space.com. "We know enough [about Triton] to be dangerous. We know a little bit about it, but there's so much we don't know."
And of course, the best way to learn more about any object in the solar system is to visit it. Within the constraints of just a flyby mission launching in 2025 and arriving in 2038, Procktor and her colleagues believe they can photograph the moon's entire surface in a single pass.
That would happen through a careful trick. On its way past Triton, the spacecraft's flight would be timed in order to see in sunlight the 60 percent or so of its surface that Voyager 2 couldn't see. After the initial approach, the spacecraft would turn its camera back to recapture the 40 percent of the surface Voyager already imaged, this time in the faint light reflected off the planet, called Neptune-shine.
"People are so captivated by the idea of going to Triton, and I think one of the really big draws is the public seeing a body for the first time," Procktor said. "Just the sheer excitement of exploration is also what this mission is going to do."
The feat would also mean that scientists could make real progress understanding one of the oddest worlds out there. "It's just such a weird, alien landscape," Procktor said. "It's so strange and exotic. We just think of it as this exotic, ocean world — it's a real outlier compared to the others."
Triton is an outlier in a multitude of ways. It orbits the wrong way and at an unusually steep angle. Then, there's the apparently very young surface, which seems to have formed about 10 million years ago in a way scientists can't really explain to date. And much of that surface is covered in what geologists have dubbed the "cantaloupe terrain" — a phrase inspired by the melon's rough texture. Voyager 2 also spotted large plumes rising off the moon's surface and dark marks that could have been the remains of old plumes.
That weirdness in part reflects Triton's complicated history in the solar system. Scientists believe that the moon was first formed in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of planetary debris orbiting in the outer solar system, before migrating to the Neptunian neighborhood.
That's where it became such an active, dramatic world, on account of its interaction with Neptune's gravity. "This is definitely not yet another Kuiper Belt object; we're not doing New Horizons again," Procktor said. Instead, they'd be able to study its geology, pin down what compounds make up its surface, confirm whether a suspected ocean lurks inside and more.
If Trident becomes a real mission, it also won't be doing New Horizons again in terms of cost. That mission cost NASA about $720 million; Trident is proposed to fall below the level of a $450 million, cost-capped program. "What's beautiful about this mission and the reason it fits in [that budget tier] is we're almost not doing anything fancy except the science," Procktor said. "We don't need to do anything mind boggling to get this off the ground."
Not so for another mission concept being explored for Triton, which would build a spacecraft that launches in 2029 and touches down on the icy moon in the early 2040s. Then, it would hop across Triton's surface, sampling both its ice and atmosphere.
To be fair, the Triton Hopper concept is still firmly within the purview of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which specializes in mind-boggling ideas. "Their charter is changing the possible, so they are looking for kind of the crazy, wacky, just far-out-type concepts to invest small amounts of money," Hartwig said. Far out like, you know, a hopper designed to traverse territory humans have never even seen.
Hartwig and his colleagues are about a quarter of the way through a two-year grant from the program, working to design a robot that could get to Triton, then feed itself on the moon's nitrogen stores and hop across its surface, looking both up and down as it does. "Because the mission was driven to do both surface and atmosphere [sampling], that really kind of pushed us toward this hopper design," Hartwig said.
Using fuel found at Triton keeps costs down and extends the mission's life. But it also complicates matters. The hopper needs to take in gaseous or solid nitrogen, convert it to a pressurized gas, then expel it like a balloon to lift itself into a hop. But planning for solid nitrogen in particular is challenging for the team to design from afar. "Snow is a solid as much as ice is," Hartwig said. "Something like snow, piece of cake: We can just scoop it up in the tank. Something like solid ice — how is the system going to behave?"
Although the two Triton mission concepts are independent of each other, there's a chance they may not remain that way, thanks to the vagaries of scientific conferences. When three posters from the two mission concepts were arranged next to each other at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, the would-be Triton explorers got to chatting with each other.
Coincidentally, the hopper design is currently just heavy enough to fit on board the current Trident design, Hartwig said. The pairing would pose as many challenges as it addresses, and adding the hopper would certainly push the price tag dramatically higher. But, still. "I love that they're thinking big," Procktor said of the hopper idea, "because one day we will be hopping around on the surface of Triton."
A Hubble Space Telescope view of asteroid 6478 Gault, showing two comet-like tails of debris.
Credit: European Southern Observatory.
Almost 214 million miles (344 million km) from the sun, an asteroid is doing its best comet-like impression. Astronomers at the University of Hawaii have discovered anasteroid that is spinning itself into pieces, generating two debris tails of dust in the process.
First discovered in 1988, the first signs that the asteroid was self-destructing came on January 5. Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, along with a variety of ground-based instruments in Hawaii, Spain, and India, astronomers found two debris tails trailing 6478 Gault in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
“This self-destruction event is rare,” Olivier Hainaut, of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, and co-author of the report said. “Active and unstable asteroids such as Gault are just now being detected because of new survey telescopes that scan the entire sky, which means asteroids that are misbehaving such as Gault cannot escape detection anymore.”
The observations are the first pieces of evidence of Gault’s misbehavior and suggest that asteroids are dynamic and can ultimately disintegrate due to the long-term subtle effect of sunlight, which can slowly spin them up until they begin to shed material. In Gault’s case, the asteroid is doing a speedy rotation every two hours, so fast that Gault is flinging material off its surface and into the void.
“Gault is the best ‘smoking-gun’ example of a fast rotator right at the two-hour limit,” said the University of Hawaii’s Jan Kleyna. “It could have been on the brink of instability for 10 million years. Even a tiny disturbance, like a small impact from a pebble, might have triggered the recent outbursts.”
Hubble revealed the tails to be narrow streamers, indicating 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. One tail was found to be approximately 500,000 miles (800,000 km) long by 3,000 miles (4,800 km) wide. The smaller tail spans about 125,000 (200,000 km) long.
Watching an asteroid come unglued like Gault gives astronomers the opportunity to study the makeup of asteroids without sending a spacecraft for samples. Analyzing an asteroid’s ingredients as they are spread out into space can offer astronomers a glimpse into planet formation in the early solar system.
“We didn’t have to visit Gault,” explained Hainaut. “We just had to look at the image of the streamers, and we can see all of the dust grains sorted neatly 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) are the farthest away, because they are being pushed fastest by pressure from sunlight.”
Enceladus' hidden ocean sets it apart from the pack — but why?
A view of Saturn's moon Enceladus taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. New models help explain why this moon ended up with a subsurface ocean while others nearby didn't.
New answers for mysteries concerning Saturn's moons could shed light on whether one, Enceladus, could support life, researchers say. For example, researchers may now know why Enceladus harbors a hidden ocean while many of its siblings do not.
Saturn not only has extraordinary rings, but it also boasts more than 60 moons. These natural satellites range in size from tiny moonlets less than 1000 feet (300 meters) wide to the enormous Titan, which is larger in diameter than the planet Mercury. Many of these moons orbit far from the ringed planet, but others are embedded within the rings.
Much has remained a mystery about the origins and evolution of Saturn's larger innermost moons: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea (listed in order of increasing diameter, mass and distance from the planet). Scientists had expected the densities and structures of these moons to depend on their mass or distance from Saturn, but spacecraft analyzing them have unexpectedly proven that this is not the case.
Previous research suggested that these moons coalesced from rings of debris around Saturn. According to this idea, the gravitational pull from the planet would cause powerful tides on these moons that would result in churning and melting, forces that would lead heavier rock to sink into the moons' cores and lighter ice to dominate their shells. Such tidal effects would prove stronger when the moons were closer to the planet and weaker as they moved farther away over time.
Mimas shows no geological activity, even though it is the innermost of these five moons and thus subject to the strongest tides from Saturn. In contrast, Enceladus is farther from Saturn and experiences 30 times weaker tides than Mimas. However, somehow tidal forces melt ice within this moon's interior, leading to a giant underground ocean and "cryovolcanoes" that spew water.
Furthermore, Rhea is the largest moon and thus the one most likely to retain heat that would help melt its rock and ice and separate its interior into layers, but prior work suggested that this moon may be a mixed jumble of rock and ice. In contrast, Mimas, Enceladus and Dione, which are smaller than Rhea, do have structures of rocky cores and icy shells.
Understanding more about the origins of the geological activity of these moons could help answer questions such as whether Enceladus' hidden ocean could support life. "Fundamentally, what excites me is the search for life beyond Earth," study lead author Marc Neveu, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland, told Space.com.
To solve the puzzles these moons pose, scientists would like to model the effects of tides on the moons' geology. However, simulations of the orbits that cause tides operate on daily scales, whereas simulations of geology typically operate on scales of millions of years. So, prior work generally chose one approach or the other, modeling tides or modeling geology.
In the new study, however, researchers designed computer models that simulated both the geological changes and simplified orbital effects these moons might have experienced over Saturn's roughly 4.5-billion-year life.
The scientists found that tidal forces would lead to enough geological activity for past or present oceans to exist in the interiors of Enceladus, Tethys and Dione. Enceladus likely still has an underground ocean, because its gravitational interactions with other moons such as Tethys and Dione keep its orbit relatively oblong. And the resulting continual variation in the strength of the gravitational pull from Saturn regularly alters the level of distortion of Enceladus' shape, flexing and heating the moon's interior.
"This is the first explanation consistent with data returned from NASA's Cassini spacecraft for how a tiny moon such as Enceladus, which is only about as big as Washington state or the British Isles, has a subsurface ocean when other sibling moons that are bigger or closer to Saturn, and therefore more likely to have such oceans, do not," Neveu said.
The researchers also found that Mimas likely formed only 100 million to 1 billion years ago; if it were older, interactions between Mimas and Saturn's rings would have led that moon to a higher orbit than it currently occupies. Mimas' young age means that the moon would have formed after all the radioactive material present at the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago had already decayed. As such, its innards would have started off too cold and hard for tidal forces to heat much.
"When ice is warmer and squishier, it becomes more responsive to tidal forces that deform it," Neveu said. "Mimas lacked the minimum amount of heat to start with to get tidal forces to trigger runaway heating."
As to why Rhea's innards might not be separated into layers, "the measurements from the Cassini spacecraft of the interior of Rhea have a degree of uncertainty in them, so it's possible the deeper layers of its interior are rockier and the near-surface layers are icier," Neveu said.
All in all, these findings suggest that Enceladus' hidden ocean is about 1 billion years old. "One billion years is enough for life to emerge — 1 billion years after Earth was born, there was life," Neveu said. At the same time, "1 billion years means there may still be enough chemical activity between Enceladus' rocky core and its ocean to provide energy for any potential microbial life, similar to the chemical energy in Earth's seafloor that helps sustain ecosystems there. Enceladus' ocean is not too young and not too old. It may be just the right age for life."
Neveu cautioned that a key limitation of this research was that it made simplifications that could have affected its accuracy. "We didn't compute the high tides and low tides that each of the five moons experienced at the same time every few hours for 4.5 billion years — to do that right, it would take about 20 years on a desktop computer," he said.
In the future, the scientists want to simulate more-complex scenarios, incorporating more features about Saturn and its satellites, such as how the planet may have gained moons that got hurled away or that collided with other moons, Neveu said.
The scientists detailed their findings online April 1 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
But now, Italian Sergio Canavaro and Xiaoping Ren, from China, claim to have repaired "irreversible" spinal cord injuries in animal experiments.
Two studies, published this week, show monkeys and dogs were able to walk again after their spinal cords were severed, and successfully repaired.
The pair said their new findings are "unprecedented" and should pave the way for the first human trials.
Canavaro told USA Today the findings "completely reject the view... that a severed spinal cord cannot be mended in any way, a mantra uncritically repeated over and over".
Human trials 'next step'
Xiaoping said the breakthrough is proof that human trials should be given the go-ahead.
The studies, the findings of which are published in the journal Surgical Neurology International, took place at Harbin Medical University in China.
In 2015, Prof Canavaro announced he wanted to transplant the head of a paralysed man, Valery Spiridonov, onto the body of a dead donor.
The procedure, he explained, would involve cooling the bodies to a state of deep hypothermia, before severing the spinal columns using a diamond blade.
The next step would be to reattach the blood vessels and nerves, connecting those from Valery's head to those of the dead donor's body.
HOW HE PLANS TO TRANSPLANT A HUMAN HEAD
Dr Sergio Canavero has previously explained how the transplant procedure would work.
The 36-hour operation involves decapitating both donor and patient.
The Italian neurosurgeon will then use a glue like substance named polyethylene gylcol to fuse the head to the donor body.
After the spinal cords are fused the muscles and circulatory systems will be stitched up before the body is placed into month long coma to recover (when it is done on a live person).
Canavero believes the procedure could revolutionise medicine, giving paralysed people the ability to walk again and people to transport their ever older heads onto younger bodies.
Canavaro said: "For too long nature has dictated her rules to us.
"We're born, we grow, we age and we die.
"We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands. It will change everything.
"The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done.
"Everyone said it was impossible, but the surgery was successful.
"A full head swap between brain dead organ donors in the next stage.
"And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition, which is imminent."
'Gory, Frankenstein' op is 'criminal'
Canavaro's plans to perform the first human op on Valery was dealt a blow, when the 33-year-old Russian announced last year he was no longer on board.
He dropped out after his wife gave birth to the couple's "miracle" son.
And Canavaro and Ren's work has been met with harsh criticism by the scientific and medical community.
Attempting such a thing would be nothing short of criminal... I would really like the general public to be reassured that neither I nor any of my colleagues think that beheading people for extremely long-shot experiments is acceptable
Professor Jan Schnupp, From The University Of Oxford
Professor Jan Schnupp, from the University of Oxford, said the procedure conjures up "gory, Frankenstein imagery", and described the proposals as "disturbing".
"The chances that a person who has their head transplanted onto another body will be able to gain any control over it, or benefit from that grafted body are completely negligible," he added.
"The expected therapeutic value for the patient would be minimal, while the risks of graft rejection-related side effects, or simply death as a consequence of a mishap during the operation, are huge.
"Attempting such a thing given the current state of the art would be nothing short of criminal.
"As a neuroscientist, I would really like the general public to be reassured that neither I nor any of my colleagues think that beheading people for extremely long-shot experiments is acceptable."
Dr James Fildes, of the University of Manchester, said the idea is "morally wrong", if the scientists cannot first prove the procedure improves the life of a large animal.
Professor Catherina Becker, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "Actual success of a head transplant must be measured by long term survival of head and body with the head controlling motor function.
"This can obviously not be assessed in a corpse and for all we know, would also not occur in a living human."
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
Valery Spiridonov is the 30-year-old terminally ill man who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease had volunteered to be the first human to have the controversial procedure - but pulled out last year
In previous experiment he Professor Canavero has attached the head of a rat to another rat
SCMP/CANAVERO
Canavaro is working with Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University in China
“The first heart transplant, hand transplant, facial transplant: all were met with serious reservations. There are also regulatory concerns. China does not have the same ethical standards and requirements that the United States and Europe have.”
Any guesses where this story originates from? TheSouth China Morning Postreports that this observation by Howard University biomedical ethicist Assya Pascalev is true with the news that the world’s two top head transplant doctors working in China have fully repaired severed spinal cords in animals and are looking for a suitable head and headless body to connect. Have they found the missing ‘link’ to connect two complex bundles of nerve endings in humans? Will it happen soon in China as they predict? Is either one named Frankenstein?
“Our study shows that a membrane sealant/fiber fusogen polyethylene glycol (PEG) applied immediately on a sharp section of the spinal cord can mend the cord and lead to exceptional levels of motor recovery, with some animals almost normal.”
“We show that dogs whose dorsal cord has been fully transected recover locomotion after immediate treatment with a fusogen (PEG). No pain syndrome ensued over the long term.”
“This study proves that a form of irreversible spinal cord injury (SCI) can effectively be treated and points out a way to treat SCI patients.”
In two new papers published in Surgical Neurology International, Xiaoping Ren of China and Turin’s Sergio Canavero, the world’s most well-known and most controversial proponent and experimenter of head transplants, revealed that they have successfully tested their unique glue (membrane sealant/fiber fusogen polyethylene glycol) on the “fully transected” (completely severed) spinal cords of monkeys and dogs and the animals were able to walk again without long-term pain. The tests were done at China’s Harbin Medical University, which is known for pushing both the medical and ethical envelopes.
“(Neurological surgeons have) stuck to the view that a severed spinal cord cannot be mended in any way, a mantra uncritically repeated over and over.”
Sergio Canavero believes he and Xiaoping Ren have proven the rest of the neurological world wrong by allegedly reconnecting fully severed spinal cords in monkeys and dogs – animals with complex spinal cords. Is this enough to connect the dots associated with connecting a human head to a human body? This latest test appears to have joined the heads to their original bodies and fairly quickly after they were separated – still a complex task but nowhere near as challenging as attaching a human head to someone else’s body.
“This study shows that a membrane sealant/fiber fusogen (PEG) applied immediately on a sharp section of the spinal cord can re-establish anatomical continuity (and lead to behavioral recovery).”
Canavero and Ren tout the benefits of their PEG glue for repairing spinal cords but point out that the severing must be sharp for the fusing to be successful, which eliminated the most common spinal cord cuts caused by accidents. It still seems far too early to abandon perfecting that obviously needed process and skipping way ahead to putting the head of someone with a failing body on the healthy body of someone who had no brain activity. Their previous volunteer on the head side backed out after his wife gave birth to a child conceived from his sperm.
Is this technique ready for human head transplant trials?
Are we?
HOW HE PLANS TO TRANSPLANT A HUMAN HEAD
Dr Sergio Canavero has previously explained how the transplant procedure would work.
The 36-hour operation involves decapitating both donor and patient.
The Italian neurosurgeon will then use a glue like substance named polyethylene gylcol to fuse the head to the donor body.
After the spinal cords are fused the muscles and circulatory systems will be stitched up before the body is placed into month long coma to recover (when it is done on a live person).
Canavero believes the procedure could revolutionise medicine, giving paralysed people the ability to walk again and people to transport their ever older heads onto younger bodies.
Surgeons planning world's first HEAD transplant claim they repaired 'irreversible' spinal cord injuries in monkeys and dogs - which they say is proof they can start human trials
Surgeons planning world's first HEAD transplant claim they repaired 'irreversible' spinal cord injuries in monkeys and dogs - which they say is proof they can start human trials
Sergio Canavero, of Italy, and Xiaoping Ren, of China, published two studies on Wednesday
In the studies, they claim to cure 'irreversible' spinal cord injuries in monkeys and dogs
The papers were published in the peer-reviewed US journal Surgical Neurology International
Describing their findings as 'unprecedented', Canavero and Ren say this shows they are ready to conduct human trials
The surgeons aspiring to perform the world's first human head transplant claim they have made indisputable progress towards their controversial goal.
Sergio Canavero, ofItaly, and Xiaoping Ren, ofChina, published two studies on Wednesday in which they claim to cure 'irreversible' spinal cord injuries in monkeys and dogs.
According to the papers, published in the peer-reviewed US journal Surgical Neurology International, the animals were able to walk again after their spinal cords were severed then successfully repaired.
Describing their findings as 'unprecedented', Canavero and Ren say this shows they are ready to conduct human trials.
Sergio Canavero, widely seen as a rogue in the West, claims China is giving him space to innovate
Canavero, based in Turin, told USA Today, his studies 'completely reject' the view that 'a severed spinal cord cannot be mended in any way, a mantra uncritically repeated over and over.'
It's not clear where the trials would be conducted.
Their recent animal studies were done in China, at Harbin Medical University, where researchers across the country have been pushing the envelope scientifically and ethically, sending pulses racing across the world.
Until 2018, they had a candidate - 33-year-old Russian computer science student Valery Spiridonov, who has a fatal muscle-wasting disease.
But Spiridonov dropped out because his new wife gave birth to their 'miracle son', which gave him pause.
That does not mean their aspirations are hampered - a lesson the medical community learned from China in November, when geneticist Dr He Jiankui revealed he had genetically edited twin girls, despite widespread global agreement that the technology and its implications were too risky to use on humans.
Reports later claimed the Chinese government funded Dr He's work, sparking more ire and concern among Western biomedical ethicists.
Canavero, widely regarded as a rogue in the Western medical community, has accused his European and US peers of 'patronizing' China.
'Western bioethicists needed to stop patronizing the world,' he told the South China Morning Post. 'Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to restore China to greatness.'
Biomedical ethicists point out that there are 'a number of problems' with their venture.
One pertinent one: they will likely need to obtain the patient's consent to be killed, which could be drafted in a similar way as 'patient assisted death' (PAD), or euthanasia - though that is illegal in China.
But researchers are concerned that the law won't get in the way. There is strong evidence that Chinese prisoners have been forced to donate organs.
Writing for the British Medical Journal, bioethicist Michael S Dauber said: 'While these are certainly serious issues, the real problem with this picture is with international regulations: none of the laws and policies designed to protect patients and human research subjects have been able to stop them Canavero and Ren, nor are they likely to do so.'
Dr. Sergio Canavero predicts head transplantation is possible
A small asteroid – now designated as 2019 FC1 – flew closer to us than the moon on March 28, 2019. Astronomers detected it 1 day later. It’s the largest of 14 asteroids to pass closer to us than the moon since 2019 began.
In 2013,a small asteroidentered Earth’s atmosphere above the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. Its shock wave broke windows and knocked down parts of buildings in six Russian cities and caused some 1,500 people to seek medical attention for injuries, mostly from flying glass. Can a Chelyabinsk-type event occur again? Definitely.
A newly discovered asteroid designated 2019 AS5 flew past Earth at a very close distance of 0.04 LD / 0.00010 AU (14 959 km / 9 295 miles) on January 8, 2019. This is the 1st known asteroid to flyby Earth within 1 lunar distance this year and the closest since February 24, 2018.
Late last week (March 29, 2019), astronomers at Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, discovered a fast-moving space rock. After calculations of its orbit, it was realized that the asteroid had made its closest approach to Earth one day earlier, on March 28. The asteroid has been designated as 2019 FC1. According to The Watchers website, this is the 14th known asteroid to fly past Earth within one lunar distance since the start of 2019. It is the sixth this month. With an estimated size of around 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter, it’s the largest asteroid to pass closer to us than the moon since 2019 began.
It passed closer to us than the moon, at around 26.8 percent of the Earth-moon distance, or 64,102 miles (103,162 km) from our planet. According to NASA, closest approach occurred on March 28, 2019, at around 05:46 UTC (1:46 a.m. ET); translate UTC to your time.
The asteroid that buzzed Earth on March 28 was travelling really fast. Its speed has been estimated at 57,973 miles per hour (93,298 km/h), or 25.9 km per second, relative to Earth.
Although most of the mass of an asteroid of its size would disintegrate during the passage through Earth’s protective atmosphere, it’s worth noting that this space rock was almost twice as wide as the asteroid that penetrated the atmosphere over the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013. For comparison, the Chelyabinsk asteroid was estimated to be 55 feet (17 meters) in diameter, before entering our atmosphere.
The Apollo-type asteroid has an orbit that brings it close to Earth’s orbit every 3.3 years, but, according to astronomers’ calculations, the 2019 approach was the closest for this particular asteroid for at least the next 89 years.
The green line indicates the object’s apparent motion relative to the Earth, and the bright green marks are the object’s location at approximately half-hour intervals. The moon’s orbit is gray. The blue arrow points in the direction of Earth’s motion and the yellow arrow points toward the sun.
Bottom line: A small asteroid – now designated as 2019 FC1 – flew closer to us than the moon (64,102 miles or 103,162 km) on March 28, 2019. Astronomers detected it one day later and calculated its orbit backwards. With an estimated size of around 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter, it’s the largest of 14 asteroids to pass closer to us than the moon since 2019 began.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Boven de stad Gainesville, in de Amerikaanse staat Florida, is een groene vuurbal gespot. Heel wat bestuurders slaagden erin om het tafereel met hun dashcam te filmen.
Het nationale weerstation in Tallahassee pikte de meteoor op via een toestel om lichtflitsen te detecteren. Dat wordt normaal gebruikt om bliksemschichten te zoeken tijdens een storm.
Het weerstation onderzoekt nog waar de meteoor geland is en of er schade is. Het is mogelijk dat de meteoor tijdens de afdaling in stukken is afgebrokkeld en dus geen impact meer had.
NWS Tallahassee✔@NWSTallahassee
Did you see it? A meteor was caught on GOES Lightning Mapper (GLM) around 3:52Z or 11:52 PM ET!
Het is niet uitzonderlijk dat er een meteoor neerstort in de Verenigde Staten. Wat wel zeldzaam is, is dat de meteoor zo felgekleurd is. Eerder in maart werd nog een vuurbal boven Tennessee gespot. De lichtflits was in de hele regio te zien.
Begin februari explodeerde nog een meteoor boven Cuba. Enkele brokstukken stortte neer op de aarde, maar niemand raakte gewond. De explosie was tot in het zuiden van Florida te horen.
tblue@tbluegator
I didn't catch the Florida fireball directly, but my cameras did catch the flash #meteor
Archaeologists from New York discovered an Egyptian palace at the same site as the adjoining Temple of Ramesses II. The palace and temple are located at the ancient site of Abydos, Egypt, where numerous kings are also buried.
Archaeologists were excavating in and around the temple when they discovered the palace. They first found a walkway made from stones at the southwest entrance to the temple and they ended up finding a new entrance to a different building that had the markings of Ramesses II.
Ramesses II
When the researchers excavated the cornerstones of the temple, they noticed very similar royal symbols. The newly found symbols and the discovery of the palace give archaeologists more information regarding temples from that period of time. In fact, for the first time in around 160 years, the floor plan of the temple will have to be changed because of these new discoveries.
Ramesses II was also known as Ramesses the Great, and is considered to be one of the most important rulers in Egypt’s ancient times. It is believed that he ruled from 1279 B.C. to 1213 B.C. He is said to have built huge temples and put cartouches (an oval engraving that represents the name and title of a monarch) on several of the monuments.
Professor Joann Fletcher from the University of York informed Newsweek that King Ramesses III’s Luxor funerary temple also included a palace.
The ancient city of Abydos is located about 300 miles south of Cairo and is where pharaohs from the dynasties of the earliest times are believed to be lying in tombs. These early dynasties include Qaa from the first one ever, as well as Peribsen from the second dynasty.
Ramesses II
The city also includes temples that are dedicated to the god Osiris and the Pharaoh Seti I. In fact, around the years 2025 B.C. to 1700 B.C. (also known as the Middle Kingdom), many people went to the city to worship Osiris.
Fletcher stated, “The new discovery will certainly emphasize the way Ramesses II, like his father Seti, saw Abydos as the origin of royal power,” adding, “The fact Ramesses II required a palace at Abydos also reveals that he didn’t just order a new temple at the site but was spending enough time there to warrant such accommodation.” She went on to explain that the discovery “begins to balance out Abydos’ role as purely a cemetery and temple site. To have a building in which people lived their lives is always a fascinating thing to find.”
Special hieroglyphic symbols denote the name of Ramesses II at a temple at the ancient site of Abydos. Ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos lie roughly 300 miles south of Cairo, in low desert to the west of the Nile.
EGYPTIAN MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES
Archaeologists discovered evidence of a structure to the southwest of a temple dedicated to Ramesses II in the ancient city of Abydos, in Egypt.
US Air Force says 'it's not ours' after UFO seen falling to Earth in Alaska
US Air Force says 'it's not ours' after UFO seen falling to Earth in Alaska
Air force bosses have intervened after an unidentified flying object was filmed seemingly plunging to Earth.
In the footage, taken in Anchorage in the US state of Alaska, what looks like two plumes of black smoke are seen trailing a mysterious object.
A variety of military aircraft operate out of the nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, but spokeswoman Erin Eaton said the sighting was nothing to do with them.
“That doesn't look like any of our planes,” she said. Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration added that the object in the video was not an aircraft, and that it hadn’t received any reports of aviation issues at the time.
But some experts still think a plane is the likeliest explanation. Peter Davidson, director of the Washington-based National UFO Reporting Center, said that the video showed “a high-altitude jet airliner, with a contrail behind it, t is in level flight, but because it is flying away from the camera, it appears to be ‘falling' he wrote.
Adonus Baugh, who shot the video, was not convinced. The 18-year-old said the object looked like something coming into the atmosphere.
“Me and my mom were just coming in to the parking lot of our house and that's when I noticed that something was falling from the sky,” he said.
“I thought it was a meteor or something coming into the atmosphere. “I actually never saw something like this before.”
Another witness, Bebe Kang, agreed. “It didn’t look like an airplane or one of those jets. It was big, super slow and red,” said Bebe.
Earler today I talked about alien structures and their colors. Here is a white reflective structure. The structure doesn't look white because I had to add shadow to get it to become visible, otherwise it would just be a white shiny area. In the above close up you can see a towering structure, similar in shape to the Space Needle in Seattle Washington, yet its the moon. Connected to it are many other white structures.
Now how do I know this is a white reflective structure? Easy, just look at the original photo and you will see that these white structures sit in the center of a dark shadow area. Yet...they reflect light either from itself or from far away sources. This is an entire city area of about 20 miles across. I have never seen this one before, but its complexity and beauty is absolute breathtaking.
I found this black structure on Earths moon today in a NASA lunar photo. The photo is dated 1965 and was one of the earlier scout craft to survey the moons surface. This building is a simplistic design. Just six large black domes. On main, one medium size front and four small. The design seems to have been inspired by a turtle, because thats what it looks like.
As I have said before in other posts over the years, there are three dominate types of buildings found out there.
1. Non reflective black structures...most commonly found and easily blend into the shadows and get ignored.
2. White highly reflective structures. These are nearly impossible to get a decent focused photo, but can still be identified with only about 60% of the structure visible while the other 40% is bright spot and unidentifiable reflection.
3. Grey metallic structures. Most often these are smaller than the above structures and are most commonly seen around the edges of the black structures. How small? Usually about 3% the size of the black structures they sit near. Oh, and often found in nebulas.
Other structures I have found.
4. I found many transparent glass like structures, but so reflective difficult to get focused close up. Several were pyramids, not published.
5. I found a 24K gold ship, shaped like a wide coffin and had 4-6 deep grooves cut from front to back. I believe it was a ship not a structure. Never did publish it. Lots of things I find, I just keep to myself. I do this to learn, to teach myself whats out there. And I make posts to share some of them.
The Eden Experiment: Aliens, Archons & the Associative Universe
The Eden Experiment: Aliens, Archons & the Associative Universe
In the timeless library of human myths and legends, perhaps none are more primal and disturbing than the biblical story of the Fall. Responsible for everything from the demonisation of women to the Church’s pious horror for nature, sex and the body, there is scarcely a life-hating ideology or barbaric practice it hasn’t been used to justify.
For all that, this strange and unsettling story has lost none of its melancholy power over the centuries, remaining as enigmatic and haunting as a dimly remembered nightmare – and almost no closer to being understood today than the day it was first told.
If “God” is all-powerful, then why did He need to test Adam and Eve at all? Wouldn’t a real supreme being already know what was going to happen? Why did the serpent seem like the only one who really understood what was going on? And who was God talking to when he fretted that Adam had become “like one of us”1?
Observes libertarian “anti-psychiatrist” Thomas Szasz:
Adam’s apple is so named because a piece of the biblical forbidden fruit is supposed to have stuck in his throat… Perhaps this is why the Forbidden Truth so often appears ‘chewed up’, transformed into metaphor, humour, satire, slang (or dream and myth, of course).2
In this essay I’d like to take the unusual step of examining the Eden myth, not through the lens of traditional theology or atheist reductionism, but instead from the perspective of a few fringe phenomena it isn’t usually associated with: alien abductions and the occult “serpent power” of Eastern mysticism.
As we shall discover, these apparent discrepancies aren’t mistakes at all, but instead represent the sole surviving keys to uncovering its true meaning – for the legend of Adam and Eve originally had nothing to do with human sin or divine punishment.
Instead, the story of the “Garden Eden” comes to us as a distorted version of primitive man’s first recorded encounter with uncanny beings from the stars – a botched abduction attempt culminating in the spontaneous illumination of two very confused cavemen.
What this means for religion in general, and monotheism in particular, I shall leave for the reader to divine on their own.
We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight. We shall see these things, and other things which no breathing creature has yet seen. We shall overleap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation. – H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond
UFOs – A Modern Problem?
Since the dawn of the space age, man’s dreams have been haunted by strange visions of cigar or saucer shaped aircraft bearing vaguely foetal (or insectoid) passengers who kidnap, brainwash and even impregnate their human captives before erasing their memories and vanishing into the ether.
Like “out of body” experiences or spirit possession, the UFO phenomenon stands as one of those baffling “psychic” anomalies which seems to exist for the sole purpose of mocking human reason. Claims one “victim”:
I woke up in the middle of the night and everything looked odd and strangely lit. At the end of my bed was a 4 feet high grey alien. Its spindly, thin body supported a huge head with two enormous, slanted, liquid black eyes. It compelled me, telepathically, to follow and led me into a spaceship… examination room [where]… I was forced to lie down while they… implanted something in my nose. I could see jars containing half-human, half-alien fetuses and a nursery full of silent, sickly children. When I eventually found myself back in bed, several hours had gone by.3
French astrophysicist Jacques Vallee studied the alien abduction phenomenon for decades, wondering continually at the arbitrary and illogical nature of most such reports. Why do these supposed “wise explorers from the stars” behave so bizarrely? If they have the advanced technology necessary for interstellar travel, why would they use it to visit this planet, let alone kidnap housewives, farmers and convenience store clerks for the purpose of anal probing? Observed Vallee’s mentor, J. Allen Hynek:
To me, it seems ridiculous that super intelligences would travel great distances to do relatively stupid things like stop cars, collect soil samples, and frighten people. I think we must begin to re-examine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home.4
Vallee’s Rejection of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis of Alien Contact
Researching hundreds of “contactee” testimonials, folkloric narratives and world mythologies, Vallee eventually concluded that UFOs aren’t what they seem to be. They don’t hail from the Zeta Reticula galaxy, they aren’t here to explore or conduct genetic experiments and their presence on this planet isn’t a recent development at all. Instead, notes Vallee:
Reports of uncanny visitors from the sky have plagued mankind for thousands of years – enough to rule out short-term exploration as a motive.
Witnesses typically describe the “aliens” as humanoid bipeds able to breathe our atmosphere and see in our light spectrum – but wouldn’t genuine extraterrestrials be adapted to a completely different type of environment?
The aliens’ supposedly “scientific” experiments are “crude to the point of being grotesque…. often accompanied by sadistic sexual manipulation [and] reminiscent of medieval encounters with demons” – not the sort of behaviour we might expect from an advanced civilisation!5
Finally, since UFOs seem able to appear and disappear at will, they are probably “not just a bunch of spacecraft” but instead represent “a much more interesting technology that manipulates dimensions. It manipulates space-time. And if it can do that, then [the aliens could] be from anywhere and anytime.”6
Frustrated with the unquestioned assumptions and cultish insularity of contemporary ufology, Vallee instead suggests three alternatives to the “Extraterrestrial Hypothesis” (EH) based on “second level” readings of the UFO phenomenon – speculative scenarios notable less for what they say about UFOs than about the structure of physical reality itself:
The Inter-Dimensional Hypothesis
One possibility is that aliens are not from another planet, but instead represent “evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime”7 – extradimensional entities hailing from an uncanny world which overlaps but only occasionally intrudes upon our own, beings from the future (or a perhaps a ghostly copy of our own earth) using “four-dimensional wormholes for space and even time travel”8 through the “multiverse which is all around us.”9
This “multiverse” could consist of parallel worlds existing alongside each other in different dimensions of space, alternate past and future worlds following one another in time, or even computer-generated “virtual worlds” stored in some vast cosmic database (as in the film ‘The Matrix’); if this latter instance is true, hints Vallee, then the seemingly stable and predictable world in which we find ourselves could be a much more magical (or even whimsical) place than we normally realise:
If there is no time dimension as we usually assume there is, [then] the human brain may be traversing events by association… If we live in the associative universe of the software scientists rather than the sequential universe of the spacetime physicist, then miracles are no longer irrational events… [and the] illusion of time and space would be merely a side effect of consciousness as it traverses associations. In such a theory, apparently paranormal phenomena like remote viewing and precognition would be expected, even common, and UFOs would lose much of their bizarre quality…10
The Electromagnetic Connection
Another promising vein of inquiry originates with the work of Dr. Michael Persinger, a cognitive neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Canada whose 1975 “Tectonic Stress Theory” holds that UFOs, out-of-body experiences and mystical visions of saints and angels are the byproducts of electrical microseizures (i.e., epileptic episodes) resulting from exposure to electromagnetic fields generated by shifting plates in the Earth’s crust.
Persinger’s experiments include the construction of the “God helmet,” a specially modified motorcycle helmet which uses weak EM fields to stimulate the parietal and temporal lobes of the brain. Shockingly, almost 80% of the 900 subjects thus tested report altered states of consciousness, visions of God and dead loved ones, and even full-blown alien abductions.11
More radical still is Paul Devereux’s 1989 “Earth Lights” hypothesis, in which UFOs appear as some sort of “previously unrecognised terrestrial phenomenon” (think Will O’ the Wisps) which either rely upon or are attracted to the EM fields generated by seismic stress.
Devereux notes that the strange balls of light which appear and hover near or around earthquake fault lines behave at times almost like “inquisitive animals” and speculates that they may be intelligent “macro-quantal” blobs of plasma energy capable of telepathy, mimicry and hypnosis.12
Both theories in turn anticipate the research of Johnjoe McFadden, an English neuroscientist at the University of Surrey whose Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory (CEMI) locates human thought outside the wet, grey labyrinth of the brain, identifying it instead with a weak electromagnetic field which surrounds and penetrates the skull.13
If McFadden is correct, then the entire sensory environment we perceive all around us could be nothing more than an extremely sophisticated communications broadcast of some sort – perhaps just one of many “channels” available to the human nervous system.
The Control System Hypothesis
Vallee’s final alternative to the EH is his “Control System” Hypothesis, a fringe view in which aliens (or UFOs) appear as a non-human intelligence closely linked to the Earth, but not bound by it – not little green men from far-flung planets but hallucinatory imps from a dreamlike hyperspace who always seem to appear in just about the form we expect to see them.
Once upon a time these interacted and appeared to us as gods, spirits and angels, accepting sacrifices, sending dreams and inspiring mankind’s great religions; then as fairies, goblins, elves and spirits, spreading fear and wonder in the lives of medieval peasants; and finally as space-faring “greys,” reptilian humanoids and noble “Plaeaidian” scientists, bearing cryptic warnings about the environment and seeding new mythologies for the Information age.
So why have these protean tricksters chosen to visit us? Perhaps Vallee’s most controversial claim is that these mysterious visitors are themselves mere epiphenomena, shadows and reflections of a vast (and very ancient) “control system” which has been operating in the background to manipulate human belief systems since time immemorial, guiding our species towards some unknown purpose. Notes Vallee:
If UFOs are having an action at [the level of myth] it will be almost impossible to detect it by conventional methods… because they are the means by which man’s concepts are being rearranged. All we can do is trace their effect…14
This “control system,” Vallee hypothesises, could represent a projection of the collective unconscious, the activity of an unknown species or even some sort of ecosystemic feedback loop.15
Vallee’s Control System and the Origins of Western Religion
If mankind’s long flirtation with gods, ghosts, goblins and grays is anything to go by, Vallee’s alien “control system” has been with us since the very beginning – and for evidence of its influence, we need look no further than the origins of Abrahamic monotheism.
Take, for example, the story of the Garden of Eden, an eerie tale which – with only a little imagination – can easily be read as a coded account of an alien abduction, an extraterrestrial interlude in which speaking primates are tested for obedience and adaptability:
Omniscient keeper(s) create a man (or remove him?) from the “earth”;
Test subject is anesthetised;
Keepers produce a female specimen supposedly cloned from his “rib”;
Test subjects are placed in a controlled environment and forbidden from eating a certain type of food;
A writhing hologram appears (the “shining serpent”) and encourages them to violate the Keepers’ directives;
Subjects are punished and returned to the wild to digest their encounter.
Now, is this all there is to the story – ancient astronauts tampering with primitive man? Admittedly, that would be incredible if true – but wouldn’t alien scientists have been able to conceal even the most elaborate breeding and colonisation program from a pair of cavemen?
What if the real agenda behind the Eden incident was not creation (or obedience testing) but something else entirely?
Remarks Vallee:
If the phenomenon is forcing us through a learning curve, then it has no choice but to mislead us. When Skinner designs a machine that feeds a rat only when the right lever is depressed, this is extremely misleading for the rat. But if the rat doesn’t depress the correct lever, he becomes extremely hungry. Man is hungry for knowledge and power, and if there is an intelligence behind the UFOs it must have taken this fact into account…16
Perhaps instead of looking at the biblical “Fall” as a failed experiment, we should instead think of it as what Vallee calls an “open control system” – a metalogical labyrinth whose participants “graduate” to the next level when the correct sequence of stimuli are triggered – in this case, eating the “forbidden fruit.”
In other words, “Adam” and “Eve” didn’t fail the test when they ate from the “Tree of Knowledge” – they passed it.
Open Control Systems and Mythological Mashups
This alternate reading of the Eden creation myth is reinforced in the scriptures of the ancient Gnostics, an unorthodox (some say “heretical”) movement in early Christianity that competed with the infant Catholic church for several centuries after the birth of Christ.
Often dismissed as a primitive heresy that fell under the weight of its own obscurantist tendencies, Gnosticism was instead a sophisticated system of occult hermeneutics whose acolytes employed special neurolinguistic trance-inducing techniques to engage in a sort of memetic sabotage, splicing, remixing and mutating of biblical stories in a manner seemingly calculated to cause maximum offense and psychological discomfort. But why? Notes one literary critic:
Drugs, sex, and power control the body, but “word and image locks” control the mind, that is, “lock” us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking, and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and the reader of the text.17
For the Gnostics, the biblical creation stories weren’t divine revelations, but the shattered fragments of a monstrous and malevolent spell – the control system. By rearranging and retelling Judeo-Christian myths, the Gnostics sought clues that might allow them to reprogram creation itself, changing the past, seizing control of the heavens, and overthrowing the phony god of the Bible.
The Gnostic Version(s) of the Eden Myth
In the Gnostic view, Eden was not a paradise, but a jungle laboratory where an opportunistic race of alien parasites conducted a series of bizarre experiments in an attempt to produce a compliant strain of biped slaves.
Banished from the stars at the dawn of time, these “archons” (Greek for “rulers”) fled to the Earth where they abducted a caveman named “Adam” and sexually assaulted his mate “Eve,” implanting both with false (or screen) memories:
When they [the archons] saw Eve speaking with [Adam], they said to one another… “Come, let us seize her and let us cast our seed on her, so that… those whom she will beget will serve us. But let us not tell Adam that she is not derived from us, but let us bring a stupor upon him, and… teach him in his sleep as though she came into being from his rib…18
Feared and worshipped as “gods” and “angels,” the Archons depend for their very existence on the energy captured and siphoned from the human nervous system via various control systems – biological and memetic thermostats which allow them to regulate the flow of information and energy through words and images, pleasure and pain:
They say that the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers without which they cannot live, because she is of the dew from above and gives them strength…19
Adam and Eve “fell” when the archons programmed them with prohibitions and commandments, changing them from primates living in the eternal “now” to “soft machines” – biological automata at war with their own instincts, parasitised by selfish replicators and paralysed by double-binds:
….when the Rulers saw [Adam] and the woman who was with him, erring in ignorance… they rejoiced greatly… They came to Adam… [and] said to him, “Every tree which is in Paradise, whose fruit may be eaten, was created for you. But beware! Don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge…” [T]hey gave them a great fright….20
Unfortunately for the archons, this strange prohibition seems to have provoked its own violation – for, as the Gnostic scriptures inform us:
[the archons] do not understand what they have said to [Adam]; rather… they said this in such a way that he might in fact eat…21
Pushed to the brink by a mysterious talking serpent, Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and convulsed with ecstasy as the walls of the Garden fell away to reveal the larger world outside the Garden. Like lab rats suddenly lifted out of a maze, Adam and Eve could now perceive their own situation clearly for the very first time:
Then their mind opened. For when they ate… they saw that they were naked, and they became enamoured of one another. When they saw their makers, they loathed them since they were beastly forms. They understood very much…22
Serpent Power Rising
A few more details complete this curious picture: Adam, we learn, was created with “seven souls”23; the “serpent” was actually a “hidden Mother” goddess named “Sophia” who fought against the archons from her secret location inside Adam’s “intestines”(!)24; and finally, when Eve fled from the archons, she took refuge inside the “Tree of Knowledge”25 (in biblical Hebrew, the word for “tree” can also mean “spine.”).
If any of this sounds familiar, it should – for as countless researchers have noted, the entire story seems to be nothing more than an allegorical description of the Kundalini serpent of Buddhist and Hindu yoga:
A Tantric yogi sees the great Mother present within his human body as the Kundalini. She lies hidden by her self-created ignorance, like a snake, coiled and fast asleep… at the bottom of the spinal cord. Through [meditation], the Tantric awakens the Mother and rouses her to go upward… [until he] becomes illumined…26
Theories about the Kundalini Serpent
Frequently misunderstood as an exotic oddity unique to Eastern mysticism, the kundalini instead represents a cross-cultural phenomenon of great antiquity (and plasticity) which (like the UFO phenomenon) has many features in common with OBEs, NDEs, spirit possession and shamanic initiation.
In short, the belief is that the human body possess seven (sometimes more) energy centres called “chakras,” roughly located near or in the anus, genitals, stomach, heart, throat, brow and crest of the skull. Normally clogged with the traumata of everyday life, these “chakras” open when stimulated by a serpentine energy which normally lies sleeping and coiled at the base of the spine.
In dreams, this serpent takes the form of a sleeping goddess who projects the illusion of the world; awakened, she climbs the spine to open the “third eye” at the crown of the head, bringing explosive emotional, psychological and spiritual growth, even ecstasy, enlightenment and the acquisition of occult powers.
Although the scientific study of the kundalini is still in its infancy, there do exist many plausible theories which might some day explain how it works. Here are a few of them:
Reichian/Bioenergetic
Wilhelm Reich was a renegade disciple of Freud’s who discovered a type of libidinal energy called orgone which flows throughout the “seven segments”27 of the body, resembling nothing so much in its “slow undulation[s]” as “the movement of an intestine or snake.”28
In most of us, social and cultural programming cause this elusive life force to become blocked in early childhood so that it pools up in the muscles and hardens into a rigid “body armour.” Thus diverted from life, the stagnant energy becomes a machine-like parody of itself which stunts and distorts human emotions, turning healthy expressions of love and sexuality into addiction, resentment and fear.
In the long term, the suffocating obstacles imposed by this invisible exoskeleton cause untold misery by exacerbating the mind/body split and creating the conditions necessary for the emergence of cancer (in individuals) and fascism (in societies).
Unimpressed with the slow pace and ineffectiveness of traditional talk therapy, Reich favoured a direct, hands-on approach designed to weaken the body armour itself. Over time, Reich and his followers found that unplanned events of great emotional intensity could trigger the orgone to ascend through the seven body segments spontaneously, purging vast reserves of repressed emotional energy and causing the body to vibrate uncontrollably as the noxious “body armour” crumbled once and for all.
Mechanical
Czech inventor Itzhak Bentov dedicated years to the study of human consciousness, eventually developing what is today known as the “holographic model” of the human brain.
In Bentov’s view, the “kundalini experience” is primarily a mechanical phenomenon which arises when the brain begins to vibrate in sympathetic resonance with the heartbeat (7.5 hz), releasing terrific amounts of stored musculoskeletal stress as the nervous system is temporarily transformed into a polarised loop.
This in turn causes the spinal column to oscillate like a tuning fork, allowing it to receive and transmit information directly from the ionosphere – the same part of the atmosphere responsible for bouncing electromagnetic waves back to Earth.29
The Pineal Gland and the Third Eye
Finally, former New Mexico University psychiatrist Rick Strassman hypothesises that kundalini yoga somehow stimulates the pineal gland to secrete larger than normal amounts of naturally-occurring DMT into the brain – making it the true “third eye.”30
DMT is a powerful hallucinogen, also found in ayahuasca, the “vine of souls” used by Amazonian shamans to induce mystical visions; the pineal gland, meanwhile, has its own surprising analog in the photosensitive “third eye” found in many species of reptiles, a vestigial organ with full lens and retina buried under the skin in the centre of the forehead.31
The connections to biblical myth here are many and obvious, so what does it all mean?
Seeking to understand the roots of human religious experience, Strassman injected over 60 volunteers with high doses of DMT, conducting over 400 such sessions from 1990-1995; perhaps unsurprisingly, just over half his test subjects reported blissful visions of timeless, cosmic unity, communion with benevolent deities and “classic near-death experiences” which included flying through tunnels of “radiant light.”32
The other 47% were not so lucky, reporting nightmarish beings drawn straight from the twilight horror-world of the Gnostic counter-Eden: menacing “clowns, elves [and] robots” who threatened and even attacked their human victims. Strassman finally ended his experiments ahead of schedule when one of his subjects reported being “eaten alive” by giant insects.
Dragons in the Darkness
Strassman’s findings here echo the eerie experiences of Michael Harner, an American anthropologist who penetrated the Amazon rainforest forty years earlier to experiment with the “vine of souls” potion himself.
Harner reported seeing “giant reptilian creatures” dwelling in and around his own brain stem, “dragon-like” beings from deep space who colonised the Earth millennia ago; chillingly, these dark beings claimed to have seeded the Earth with life for the sole purpose of creating various host species they could hide themselves in.
“I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man,” claims Harner. “They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but [their] receptacles and servants…”33
True to form, when Harner demanded an explanation from the medicine man who gave him the potion responsible for this ominous vision, the old man just laughed and explained that, “…they’re always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness…”34
Conclusion
Clearly Harner is speaking here of beings very much like the archons of Gnostic myth or the manipulative “greys” of modern Ufology – but are these entities nothing more than symbolic projections of the reptilian brain, as Harner’s narrative seems to imply?
Do aliens and archons hail from outer space or inner space? Why is “contact” with aliens (or archons) so often accompanied by vibrations or tremors, either muscular or tectonic? How should we think about the “serpent” now that we know it is probably a dormant evolutionary mechanism of some sort? And are the “big three” Abrahamic religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity really nothing more than hallucinatory control mechanisms employed by alien parasites to enslave and manipulate us?
German Historian Klaus Theweleit has written what would seem to be the last possible word on the subject, noting that:
…[T]he ‘fall of man’ depicts a failed revolution from the victor’s standpoint. For attempting to put into practice their slogan ‘Our bodies belong to us,’ the rebels were sentenced to a life of forced labor… ‘Your bodies belong to your Ruler!’ – that was the response. (The ‘paradise’ they were driven out of was the blissful state of being ruled without realising it. Even today, being driven out of ‘paradise’ is the penalty for trying to create a paradise.)35
Whether the Eden story is really about UFOs or the kundalini, and whether such phenomena are electromagnetic or chemical in origin, I can’t say for sure (I’ve never even seen a UFO!), but I do know this:
I have taken mushrooms and seen great, flying black mantas which pursued me across the desert floor, telepathically overwhelming me with thoughts of paranoia and despair. I’ve taken DMT and left my body to enter a crystalline world of euphoric decahedrons and four-dimensional pyramids, spread out beneath a great vaulted membrane which breathed, and knew at that instant that this membrane was the threshold between time and eternity.
I’ve practiced tantric yoga with a dakini and been bruised and battered as I hyperventilated under the tutelage of a Reichian therapist; and I’ve been in dark rooms lit only by flickering candles, watching friends and family members pant as their eyes rolled back in their heads and their limbs shook uncontrollably, “mounted” by the spirits of the dead and personified forces of nature known to witch doctors the world over.
Whatever the origins of these and related “psychic” phenomena ultimately prove to be – genetic memories, autonomous archetypal complexes, glitches in the Matrix or even the intrusive activities of extraterrestrial civilisations – nothing will change for our species until we finally rise to our feet, shake off the chains of superstition and ignorance and claim our inheritance – not as childlike “test subjects” to be ordered about and punished, but as adults striding forth into the cosmos with eyes wide open, ready to take responsibility for our own evolution.
The Eden myth, like all myths, is meant to be lived; not studied but experienced – so let us treat the Bible with its endless commandments and airless authoritarianism not as the final authority on human life, but as a leaping off point for the rediscovery of the human body as a sacred text in its own right, a flesh and blood book with its own sounds, smells and textures and even wisdom too – for in the end, it may be the only thing we can ever really know anyway.
Or, as the Gnostic scriptures put it:
You are the Tree of Knowledge, which is in Paradise, from which the first man ate and which opened his mind, so that he became enamoured of his co-likeness, and condemned other alien likenesses, and loathed them.36
7. Vallee, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, p.253, pub. 1988
8. Vallee, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception, p.255, pub. 2008
9. Vallee, Dimensions, p.253
10. Ibid, p.257
11. BBC – Science & Nature – Horizon – God on the Brain, www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml
12. Paul Devereux, “Earth Lights: Abstracted from a presentation given at the Dana Center of the London Science Museum,” December 9, 2003, www.pauldevereux.co.uk/new/html/body_earthlights.html
13. JohnJoe McFadden, The Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory, www.surrey.ac.uk/qe/cemi.htm
14. Vallee, Dimensions, p.246
15. Vallee, Revelations, p.254
16. Vallee, Dimensions, p.246
17. Jenny Skerl, William S. Burroughs, quoted in “William S. Burroughs Cut-ups,” languageisavirus.com
18. Willis Barnstone (editor), The Other Bible, “On the Origin of the World,” p.70, pub. 1984
19. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p.169, pub. 1958
20. Barnstone, Ibid, p.71
21. Barnstone, Ibid, “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” p.77
22. Barnstone, Ibid, “On the Origin of the World,” p.71
23. Marvin W. Meyer, The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels, “The Secret Book of John,” pp.69-70, pub. 1986
24. Barnstone, Ibid, “The Sethian-Ophites,” p.664
25. Willis Barnstone (editor), The Other Bible, “On the Origin of the World,” p.70, pub. 1984
26. Elizabeth U. Harding, Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar, pp.70-71, pub. 1993
The attitude control motor for the Orion capsule goes through its first test.
An emergency motor designed to steer future NASA Orion capsule crewmembers to safety ignited during a recent 30-second test and produced over 7,000 lbs. of thrust, according to the space agency.
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is currently slated to sit atop the Space Launch System (SLS), a superheavy-lift launch vehicle that could one day bring humans back to the moon. The evolving project might even bring the first crew to Mars. For now, Orion will travel on SLS, but there's a possibility it will fly atop a commercial carrier, instead, for its first test flight around the moon — Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) — if SLS won't be ready for the June 2020 flight.
No matter the vehicle, Orion needs a backup plan if the rocket malfunctions upon exiting low Earth orbit. To prepare for a worst-case scenario, propulsion engineers need to have a keen awareness of the three dimensionality of a launch. So, having the right attitude is important.
Attitude is the orientation of a spacecraft in three-dimensional space. It's an element that's essential to navigation, and errors in precision have been known to cause mission failure, like the case of Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander.
"This test was the first in a series of evaluations aimed at qualifying the attitude control motor for crewed missions," NASA officials said in an agency statement March 25.
The eight valves that recently lit up at the Northrop Grumman facility in Elkton, Maryland, are part of the attitude control motor that could orient the Orion crew capsule and guide its trajectory moving away from the rocket in case of an emergency. Rather than just speeding up faster than the rocket accelerating below it, the eight valves around the motor's cylindrical body would jettison the crew off to one side and away from a dangerous situation.
Elishabet Lato, propulsion engineer at Northrop Grumman, and astronaut Randy Bresnik of Expedition 52/53 to the International Space Station, spoke during a Facebook Live event on March 20 to explain the Orion Launch Abort System attitude control motor test.
Each valve is positioned on one-eighth of the cylindrical body, and depending on which direction they need to take, the valves will ignite in milliseconds as hot gas comes out each of those valves to pivot Orion in the opposite direction, according to Lato.
If launch is successful, the Launch Abort System won't be needed any longer. In that case, it would be discarded by the launch vehicle so the spacecraft doesn't have to use its propellant to push unnecessary weight as it continues on its journey.
NASA also reported that the crew module uprighting system (CMUS), which ensures the Orion capsule re-enters Earth right side up, underwent testing last week off the coast of North Carolina, agency officials said in the statement.
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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.