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.
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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
Spikes of Methane on Mars May Be Proof of Life and Pointers to its Locations
Spikes of Methane on Mars May Be Proof of Life and Pointers to its Locations
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first … Spikes of Methane would make a great name for a band. However, it would have to play really well to produce the excitement that real spikes of methane are generating amongst the space exploration community over an announcement by NASA that its Curiosity rover has detected definitive proof of methane on Mars with the discovery of two distinct surges of the life-related gas and it has pinpointed their locations for future missions to sniff, study and solve. Is this the missing stink?
“Here, we report a firm detection of 15.5 ± 2.5 ppb by volume of methane in the Martian atmosphere above Gale Crater on 16 June 2013, by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer onboard Mars Express, one day after the in situ observation of a methane spike by the Curiosity rover.”
In a report published this week in Nature Geoscience and reviewed by Space.com, lead author Marco Giuranna of Rome’s Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Rome announced that Curiosity found the methane in the large (96 mile (154 km) wide) Gale crater that many scientists believe was once a Martian lake. When the spike was confirmed in the atmosphere by the Mars Express orbiter a day later, this was the first ever multiple detections of a single methane presence on the planet.
But wait … there’s more! Another spike was detected in the Gale crater in late 2013 which lasted into 2014, and the researchers were able to pinpoint the location of the June 2013 spike to a region about 310 miles (500 km) east of the Gale crater. All of these discoveries are the result of a new technique developed by Giuranna for analyzing data collected by the Mars Express’ Planetary Fourier Spectrometer instrument (PFS), which has been sniffing Martian air since 2003 but whose discoveries have been doubted previously due to errors and malfunctions.
When Curiosity landed in the Gale crater in 2012, Giuranna began coordinating its sampling of Martian air with that of the Express. He and his team then divided the area in and around Gale into 250 km (155 miles) wide squares and used computer simulations to compute the probabilities of each one as the source of any methane plumes. In addition, they looked for geological features like faults that could have released the methane.
“Remarkably, we saw that the atmospheric simulation and geological assessment, performed independently of each other, suggested the same region of provenance of the methane, which is situated about 500 km east of Gale. This is very exciting and largely unexpected.”
Did cows beat humans to Mars?
But … is this a sign of life on Mars? Being a good scientist, Giuranna admits this methane isn’t the smoking gas. It could still have been the result of a chemical reaction and there’s no way to determine if it was created recently or has been trapped underground for millions of years … yet. Curiosity and Mars Express have teamed up with the ExoMars methane-sniffing Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to collect and compare even more Martian methane data. Nothing is as easy as Elon Musk wants us to believe, says Giuranna.
“Follow-up is very important to better understand methane on Mars. We are collecting pieces of a puzzle and need more pieces to understand better what is going on.”
In the meantime, the Spikes of Methane should continue practicing their covers of Bowie songs.
There can be absolutely no doubt at all that one of the most controversial of all the various whistleblowers who have come forward with startling revelations concerning Area 51 was aman named Boyd Bushman. He revealed data that was not just controversial, but arguably beyond controversial. You’ll soon see what I mean by that. Although many of Bushman’s claims stretched credibility to the absolute max, the intriguing fact is that he really was plugged into the secret world of Area 51 and advanced technologies. As we shall now see. Bushman, who died on August 7, 2014, left an amazing and controversial legacy behind him. It was a filmed statement from him on what he knew about an alien presence at Area 51, anti-gravity technology in the hands of personnel at the base, one on one contact with ETs, and much, much more. Was Bushman telling the truth? Was he nothing but an outright liar? Or, was he spreading disinformation on behalf of those who run Area 51 – and as a means to muddy the waters of what really goes on there? Or, do all three scenarios have some degree of validity attached to them? Let’s take a look at the life and work of Bushman and his incredible revelations – if that’s what they really were.
First, it’s important to note that Bushman was no fantasist. He was a respected figure in the world of aviation, having worked as a senior scientist with Lockheed Martin. He also had more than a few patents to his name. He also claimed to have worked on top secret anti-gravity-based programs for the U.S. Government. To a degree this has been confirmed, since his heavily redacted, declassified FBI file references his research in the field of anti-gravity. Magnetic drives and a thermally energized electrical power source were also patented by Bushman. Bushman made a number of claims that sounded plausible, but he also revealed to the UFO research community and to the world’s media tales that were downright bizarre. In 2007 – which was seven years before he passed away – Bushman was filmed speaking about what he knew (or what he claimed to know) about all things alien, and a great deal about Area 51.
According to Bushman, aliens were both working and living at Area 51. We’re not talking about just dead aliens recovered from crashed UFOs – such as those allegedly recovered from outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. This, to a degree, you may know, echoes a brief aside made by Bob Lazar back in 1989, when he claimed to have very briefly seen a small, humanoid figure at the S-4 site. It’s important to note that Lazar himself suspected that this may have been a deliberate, fabricated, stage-managed incident, designed to make Lazar think there were aliens at Area 51. Obviously, this has a bearing on the Bushman story, too, specifically in relation to the possibility that Bushman may also have been deliberately fed faked data by disinformation specialists at Area 51. Still on the matter of Bob Lazar, it’s intriguing to note that – to a degree – Bushman backed up Lazar’s claims of having worked on the anti-gravity systems of the alleged UFOs held at S-4. According to Bushman, such research was indeed actively and secretly underway at Area 51. Interestingly, Bushman also asserted that both the Chinese and the Russians had been brought into the fold, to a certain degree, anyway. This too mirrors the words of Bob Lazar, way back in the 1980s, when he said that while working at Area 51 he heard whispers of the Russians having been invited to work on the program, but who at some point were slung off the project.
As for the aliens themselves, this is where Bushman’s story got really weird. He claimed they came from a planet called Quintumnia (on some occasions he called it Quintonia), which is said to be around sixty-eight light years away. Incredibly, Bushman maintained that the aliens were able to make the journey from their world to ours in less than an hour. Their lifespan, said Bushman, was far in excess of ours. Indeed, he said that the average Quintumnian lived on average to around 230 of our years. They were not too dissimilar to us, with hands and feet like ours. As for their height, it was around five-feet. They didn’t speak English, though. Or, in fact, any Earth-based language. They didn’t need to. They communicated solely by telepathy. Certainly, one of Bushman’s most controversial claims (and there were many of them…) was that he had interacted with the ETs personally, and to the extent that he said he gave them a camera so that the aliens could take pictures of their home planet and bring the pictures back to him! Whether Bushman preserved those priceless pictures in a dedicated photo album is anyone’s guess. He also maintained that the Quintumnians were the alien race responsible for the ongoing cattle-mutilation phenomenon on our world.
Certainly, the most outrageous aspect of the Bushman affair came when he revealed a color photo of what was said to have been one of the Quintumnians. In no time at all, the UFO research was able to offer a definitive “Gotcha!” The photo which Bushman touted as proof of alien visitations to Earth in general and to Area 51 specifically, was not evidence of anything of an extraterrestrial nature at all. It was actually a picture of a quite sophisticated alien doll sold by none other than Wal-Mart! For many people in the field of Ufology, the issue of the “Wal-Mart alien” (as it quickly and inevitably became known) was enough for them to walk away from the controversy and brand Bushman as either a liar, a joker, or someone descending into a state of senility. Maybe, one of those scenarios was indeed the correct one. On the other hand, though, one has to give some thought to the distinct possibility that Bushman was still highly astute and not suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Significant thought must be given to a theory that cannot be ruled out. In fact, we might very wise to rule it in. It goes as follows.
Let’s say that Area 51’s overlords were concerned by the ever-increasing attention paid to the secret base. After all, it had appeared in The X-Files, in Independence Day (something which senior personnel at the Pentagon were far from happy about), and in the movie, Area 51, which was released in 2015. Add to that, the growing number of people who have been detained and fined for getting too close to Area 51 and one can see that the personnel at Area 51 might have come up with an intriguing plan. Perhaps, a “plot” would be a far better term to use. It’s not at all unlikely or implausible that Bushman was groomed by personnel at Area 51 to divulge an amazing and astounding faked story of aliens at Area 51, of crashed UFOs, of cattle mutilations, and even of alien-human interaction at the installation. The staff at the secret facility would surely know how the UFO research community works. They could have made a good guess that certain elements of the more gullible and paranoid side of Ufology would be jumping up and down with excitement. More importantly, those same ufologists would likely spread the story here, there and everywhere on social-media and radio shows. Which is exactly what happened. But, then when the Wal-Mart angle surfaced, for many people in Ufology (if not the vast majority) the entire saga collapsed. The result? Ufologists were laughed at and derided by fellow ufologists. And, the mainstream media poked fun at the field of UFO research. That just may have been the desired result.
All we can say for sure is that the Boyd Bushman revelations surfaced for a reason. Whether that reason was designed to shed further light on a genuine extraterrestrial presence at Area 51, or if the plan was to give Ufology a solid punch in the face – and to make the domain of UFO research look stupid – is still open to debate. Whatever Boyd Bushman really knew about Area 51 and its UFO links went with him in 2014. Just perhaps, this was Bushman’s “last hurrah,” still secretly working for his Area 51 masters to the very end – to confuse the truth of what really goes on at Area 51.
A Mysterious Cavern in Africa and its Giant Snake Guardian
A Mysterious Cavern in Africa and its Giant Snake Guardian
Located within the country of South Africa, near an inhospitable, scrub land matted place called Richtersveld, is a deep cave and cavern system that meanders down into the murk beyond where light reaches and which is as mysterious as the surface of some forsaken unknown planet. Often called the the “Wonder Hole” or the “Bottomless Pit,” the cave and cavern system supposedly connects to the ocean, and has long been thought to harbor within it a trove of diamonds and other treasures. It is also according to legend prowled by an ancient, spiritual guardian long feared by locals and explorers alike, which jealously protects its glittering treasure and by some accounts seems to be more than mere myth.
The monster in question is known popularly as the Grootslang, or sometimes the Grote Slang, meaning “big snake” in Afrikaans and Dutch, as well as a variety of other regional names, and it has its origins deep in regional mythology. The Grootslang is said to measure about 40 to 50 feet long, sometimes even more, with scales as black as night, an elephantine body, and a long, serpent neck and tail, although it is often described as being merely a colossal serpent. It was apparently created by the gods with the features of both elephants and snakes, but proved to be so powerful and fearsome that it was torn apart into two different animals; elephants and snakes. However, one of these abominations was said to have escaped and remained whole, going on to hide in the cave to spawn more of its kind and devouring whatever it could lure into its dank pit. According to the legends, it is not an unreasonable beast, and values gems over killing, offering to bargain for people’s lives in exchange for these treasures. Woe be to anyone who tried to take these gems, though, as the Grootslang will tear them to shreds. It is also known to leave its cave lair from time to time and prowl the rivers and lakes of the area as well, in particular the Orange and Vaal Rivers of South Africa.
The Richtersveld region, South Africa
While it seems to be nothing more than mere myth on the surface, there are a few sightings of this beast over the centuries that have cast wonder on whether it may actually exist or not. In 1867 explorer Hans Sauer spotted an enormous black snake nearly a hundred feet long making its way through the Orange River near Aliwal North, Eastern Cape Province. There was another account from 1899, in which a merchant named G. A. Kinnear was crossing the Orange River near Upington, Northern Cape Province, when 8-10 feet of the head and neck of a gigantic black serpent crashed up from under the waves near his boat.
Some very interesting sightings were made by the South African adventurer and prospector Lt. Fred C. Cornell, who had his first brush with the monster in 1910 during an expedition near Augrabiesvalle, Northern Cape Province. On this occasion an American expedition member named Kammerer came back to their camp in a terrified panic, claiming to have seen a serpent lift itself 12 feet out of the water as he had been bathing in a nearby pool. The second sighting would happen in 1920, and Cornell would write of it in his unwieldy titled book, The Glamour of Prospecting: Wanderings of a South African Prospector in search of copper, gold, emeralds, and diamonds, in which he would write:
It was dark when we floundered out of it, and we steered straight for a wide thicket of willows, made a big fire, and were only too glad to turn in. It seemed an excellent camp, with wood, water, and shelter from the cold wind, but it was plain that the “boys” were uneasy, and they crouched close to our fire instead of building one apart as they usually did. After some food Ezaak suggested that we might perhaps trek on a little farther, and this, coming after a most arduous day, was decidedly strange. We asked him why, and after beating around the bush for a bit he told me that in the middle of the river, and exactly opposite where we were camped, was a big rock in which the huge snake (the “Groot Slang”, in which every Richtersfeldt Hottentot firmly believes) had his home, and that it was not safe for us or for our horses.
We had long heard of this snake; many reputable Hottentots and a few white men claim to have seen it, many more have seen its huge spoor in the sand or mud – a foot and a half wide. It is believed to take cattle from the banks, and the natives fear it mightily. There are no crocodiles in the Orange, and besides, there are never any traces of feet with the spoor, but it is a remarkable fact that the Hottentot name for this huge python – or whatever it may be – is “Ki-man” which is very like the Eastern name for an alligator. Anyhow, we were far too tired to care for snakes, and of course stayed where we were, the only thing to annoy us being the huge long-legged tarantulas that kept running with incredible swiftness into the fire, where they sizzled, squirmed, and smelt unpleasantly.
In the morning we found that the river here was a long, wide, still, and apparently very deep stretch of water, and that a big rock rose from the centre, as the guides had said. It appeared to be of granite, and was riven in half by a big cleft. The steep mud banks of the river should have shown a trace of anything coming up from the water, but we found no spoor. So we made up some dynamite cartridges with fuse and detonator, and flung them out as far as we could, and stood by with the “arsenal” handy in case the “Groot Slang” was at home and objected. The dynamite made a big upheaval, but no snake materialised; only a few small springers and barbel flapped round in the muddy water.
Then I saw something moving in the crack in the rock, and let drive with my rifle. I was in a hurry, and I heard my bullet hit the landscape somewhere in German territory; but Ransson had seen that movement too, and was emptying his magazine into the crack without undue loss of time. When we’d finished a very flustered and indignant old wild-duck squatted out of that crack and went away unhurt and quacking most derisively. No luck again with our “big game” shooting.
Cornell would apparently actually attempt to go on and use dynamite to try and kill the creature, without success, unless by success you mean tearing a new hole in the river. Interestingly, in 1917 there is the story of a prospector who launched an expedition to the cave by the name of Peter Grayson in search of diamonds, famously stating “I am determined to return to England as a very rich man or a dead man.” Apparently his team did not have a good time of it, many of them dying or turning back before they even got to the cave, but Grayson went on ahead. It is said that he walked off toward the cave and went it to never come out, and local lore has it he was killed by the Grootslang.
In later years there was an interesting claim in a book by journalist Lawrence G. Green in his 1945 book Where Men Still Dream, in which he recounts how the local tribes of the area refused to go any where near the pit where the Grootslang is said to dwell. All that is except one unnamed prospector who apparently made many forays into the cave looking for the riches said to be down there. Green would write of this enigmatic man and the Grootslang in general:
The cavern, they say, is connected with the sea forty miles away. If you lean over the edge of the pit and listen carefully, there comes at intervals a deep boom like surf on a distant shore. I know one tough prospector who took a winch and cable to the spot and explored a little of the “Wonder Hole”. He is, I believe, the only man to attempt this feat. It was dark and extremely hot when his feet touched a ledge far down. The ragged circle of daylight seemed small. Bats flew in his face, and he dropped his electric torch. Before they hauled him to the surface he observed tunnels leading out of the shaft. There was a smell of sulphur in the air. He never descended again.
The “Great Snake” of the Orange River is something more than a legend. Cornell described it in his books. Scores of other men living near the river have sent letters to the newspapers declaring they had seen the monster. Native stories that the snake has enormous diamonds in the eye-sockets, and that a strange and evil influence is felt by all who behold it, may be politely dismissed. White eyewitnesses state that the snake is forty feet long, leaving a track on the muddy river banks about three feet wide. This spoor was followed by one party of prospectors for many miles before it disappeared into the river. The truth probably is that exceptionally large pythons have been seen in the river from time to time, and their sizes exaggerated. Pythons up to twenty-five feet in length have been shot; their powers of swallowing a buck whole are well known. But in the native mind there remains only one Great Snake, greatly feared.
Sightings and accounts went on, when in 1947 there was a report from a John Clift, who saw a black crocodile near an abandoned mine crater, and such sightings have continued on into even more modern times, with strange footprints often found near the water. There are numerous stories of people being chased off by some large reptilian monster down in the caves, and locals claim that many people have gone missing, the pit swallowing them up to never return. It certainly makes one wonder what might be behind all of the stories, and there are plenty of ideas, including that it is just outsized pythons or monitor lizard, a new species of reptile, a surviving dinosaur, some sort of long-necked seal, or just pure folklore. The generally harrowing terrain of the remote area itself, as well as the dangerous, unexplored nature of the cavern system, would probably go far to explaining why people may go missing. In the end we are left with another creature anchored in folklore which may or may not have some basis in reality, although as to what that reality might be we have no idea, and likely never will.
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.
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.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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.