The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
13-04-2019
3 Huge Questions the Black Hole Image Didn't Answer
3 Huge Questions the Black Hole Image Didn't Answer
An international network of radio telescopes has produced the first-ever close-up image of a black hole's shadow, which scientistsrevealed this morning (April 10). The collaboration, called the Event Horizon Telescope, confirmed decades of predictions of how light would behave around these dark objects, and set the stage for a new era of black hole astronomy.
"From a scale of zero to amazing, it was amazing," said Erin Bonning, an astrophysicist and black hole researcher at Emory University who was not involved in the imaging effort.
"That said, it was what I expected," she told Live Science.
The announcement, teased for about a week and a half in advance, managed to be both incredibly exciting and almost completely devoid of surprising details or new physics. Physics didn't break down. No unexpected features of black holes were revealed. The image itself was almost a perfect match for illustrations of black holes we're used to seeing in science and pop culture. The big difference is that it's a whole lot blurrier. [9 Weird Facts About Black Holes]
There were several important questions related to black holes that remained unresolved, however, Bonning said.
1. How do black holes produce their enormous jets of hot, fast matter?
On the left, an image taken using the CHANDRA X-Ray Telescope at the same time as the Event Horizons Telescope made its picture shows a relatavistic jet crossing the Virga A galaxy. On the right is the image of the black hole shadow from the Event Horizons Telescope.
All supermassive black holes have the ability to chew up nearby matter, absorb most of it past their event horizons, and spit the remainder out into space at near light speed in blazing towers astrophysicists call "relativistic jets."
And the black hole at the center of Virgo A (also called Messier 87) is notorious for its impressive jets, spewing matter and radiation all over space. Its relativistic jets are so huge that they can fully escape the surrounding galaxy.
A 1998 Hubble image shows the relatavistic jet escaping Virgo A.
And physicists know the broad strokes of how this happens: The material accelerates to extreme speeds as it falls into the black hole's gravity well, then some of it escapes while retaining that inertia. But scientists disagree about the details of how this happens. This image and the associated papers don't yet offer any details.
Figuring that out, Bonning said, will be a matter of linking up Event Horizons Telescope observations — which cover a fairly small amount of space — with the much bigger images of relativistic jets.
While physicists don't yet have answers, she said, there's a good chance that they'll come soon — especially once the collaboration produces images of its second target: the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of our own galaxy, which doesn't produce jets like Virgo A's. Comparing the two images, she said, might offer some clarity.
2. How do general relativity and quantum mechanics fit together?
Whenever physicists get together to talk about a really exciting new discovery, you can expect to hear someone suggest that it might help explain "quantum gravity."
That's because quantum gravity is the great unknown in physics. For about a century, physicists have worked using two different sets of rules: General relativity, which covers very big things like gravity, and quantum mechanics, which covers very small things. The problem is, those two rulebooks directly contradict one another. Quantum mechanics can't explain gravity, and relativity can't explain quantum behavior.
Someday, physicists hope to link the two together in a grand unified theory, likely involving some sort of quantum gravity.
And before the announcement today, there was speculation that it might include some breakthrough on the subject. (If general relativity's predictions hadn't been borne out in the image, that would have moved the ball forward.) During a news briefing from the National Science Foundation, Avery Broderick, a physicist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and a collaborator on the project, suggested those sorts of answers might be coming.
But Bonning was skeptical of that claim. This image was entirely unsurprising from a general relativity perspective, so it offered no new physics that might close the gap between the two fields, Bonning said.
Still, it's not crazy that people hope for answers from this sort of observation, she said, because the edge of a black hole's shadow brings relativistic forces into tiny, quantum-size spaces.
"We would expect to see quantum gravity very, very close to the event horizon or very, very early in the early universe [when everything was packed into a tiny space]," she said.
But at the still-blurry resolution of Event Horizons Telescope, she said, we aren't likely to find those sorts of effects, even with planned upgrades incoming.
3. Were Stephen Hawking's theories as correct as Einstein's?
The physicist Stephen Hawking's greatest early-career contribution to physics was the idea of "Hawking radiation" — that black holes aren't actually black, but emit small amounts of radiation over time. The result was hugely important, because it showed that once a black hole stops growing, it will start to very slowly shrink from the energy loss.
But the Event Horizons Telescope didn't confirm or deny this theory, Bonning said, not that anyone expected it to.
Giant black holes like the one in Virgo A, she said, emit only minimal amounts of Hawking radiation compared to their overall size. While our most advanced instruments can now detect the bright lights of their event horizons, there's little chance that they will ever tease out the ultra-dim glow of a supermassive black hole's surface.
Those results, she said, will likely come from the tiniest black holes — theoretical, short-lived objects so small that you might enclose their whole event horizon in your hand. With the opportunity for up-close observations, and much more radiation available compared to their overall size, humans might eventually figure out how to produce or find one and detect its radiation.
So what did we actually learn from this image?
First, physicists learned that Einstein was right, once again. The edge of the shadow, as far as the Event Horizons Telescope can see, is a perfect circle, just as physicists in the 20th century working with Einstein's equations of general relativity predicted.
"I don't think anyone should be surprised when yet another test of general relativity passes," Bonning said. "If they had walked on stage and said that general relativity had broken, I would have fallen off my chair."
The result with more immediate, practical implications, she said, was that the image enabled scientists to precisely measure the mass of this supermassive black hole, which sits 55 million light-years away at the heart of the Virgo A galaxy. It's 6.5 billion times more massive than our sun.
That's a big deal, Bonning said, because it could change the way physicists weigh the supermassive black holes at the hearts of other, more distant or smaller galaxies.
Right now, physicists have a pretty precise measurement of the mass of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Bonning said, because they can watch how its gravity moves individual stars in its neighborhood.
Robert McNees@mcnees
Good morning. Here are a bunch of stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole over a period of about 20 years. The star near the center passes within 20 billion km of the bh and reaches speeds of ~3% of the speed of light Image: ESO/MPE (doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05825-3)
But in other galaxies, our telescopes can't see the movements of individual stars, she said. So physicists are stuck with rougher measurements: How the black hole's mass influences light coming from different layers of stars in the galaxy, or how its mass influences light coming from different layers of free-floating gas in the galaxy.
But those calculations are imperfect, she said.
"You have to model a very complex system," she said.
And the two methods end up producing somewhat different results in every galaxy physicists observe. But at least for the black hole in Virgo A, we now know that one method is correct.
"Our determination of 6.5 billion solar masses ends up landing right on top of the heavier mass determination from [the light coming from stars]," Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist from the University of Amsterdam and a collaborator on the project said in the news briefing.
That doesn't mean that physicists will just move wholesale to that approach for measuring black hole masses, Bonning said. But it does offer an important data point for refining future calculations.
April 10, 2019: If you like solar minimum, good news: It could last for years. That was one of the predictions issued last week by an international panel of experts who gathered at NOAA’s annual Space Weather Workshop to forecast the next solar cycle. If the panel is correct,already-low sunspot countswill reach a nadir sometime between July 2019 and Sept 2020, followed by a slow recovery toward a new Solar Maximum in 2023-2026.
“We expect Solar Cycle 25 will be very similar to Cycle 24: another fairly weak maximum, preceded by a long, deep minimum,” says panel co-chair Lisa Upton, a solar physicist with Space Systems Research Corp.
The solar cycle is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between periods of high and low sunspot number every 11 years or so. Researchers have been tracking the cycle since it was discovered in the 19th century. Not all cycles are alike. Some are intense, with lots of sunspots and explosive solar flares; the Space Age began with a big booming solar maximum. Others are weak, such as the most recent, Solar Cycle 24, which peaked in 2012-2014 with relatively little action.
Researchers are still learning to predict the ebb and flow of solar activity. Forecasting techniques range from physical models of the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo to statistical methods akin to those used by stock market analysts.
“We assessed ~61 predictions in the following categories: Climatology, Dynamo, Machine Learning/Neural Networks, Precursor Methods, Spectral/Statistical Methods, Surface Flux Transport, and Other,” says Upton. “The majority agreed that Solar Cycle 25 would be very similar to Solar Cycle 24.”
“Here,” she says, “is a figure showing the last minimum and where we are with the current minimum.”
“As you can see – we haven’t quite reached the lowest levels of the last cycle – where we experienced several consecutive months with no sunspots. However, the panel expects that we should reach those levels [between now and the end of 2020].”
In recent years, the Internet has buzzed with the idea that a super-deep solar minimum such as the 70-year Maunder Minimum of the 17th century might cool the Earth, saving us from climate change. That’s not what the panel is saying, however.
“There is no indication that we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity,” says Upton. Solar minimum will be deep, but not that deep.
The panel predicts a “fairly weak” Solar Cycle 25. What does that mean? Saying that a solar cycle is “weak” is a bit like saying hurricane season will be “weak.” In other words, there may be fewer storms, but when a storm comes, you’d better batten down the hatches. “Weak” Solar Cycle 24 produced a number of intense X-class solar flares, strong geomagnetic storms, and even a Ground Level Event (GLE) when solar energetic particles reached Earth’s surface. An equally “weak” Solar Cycle 25 could do the same 3 or 4 years hence.
Meanwhile, we have solar minimum. This is a widely misunderstood phase of the solar cycle. Many people think it brings a period of dull quiet. In fact, space weather changes in interesting ways. For instance, as the sun’s magnetic field weakens, holes open in the sun’s atmosphere. Emerging streams of solar wind buffet Earth’s magnetic field, sustaining auroras even without solar flares and sunspots. Some observers believe that Solar Minimum auroras have a distinctive palette, pinker than during other phases of the solar cycle.
The sun’s weakening magnetic field also allows cosmic rays to enter the solar system. Energetic particles from deep space penetrate Earth’s atmosphere with a myriad of possible effects ranging from changes in upper atmospheric electricity to extra doses of radiation for people on airplanes.
Finally, the sun dims, especially at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. This, in turn, causes the upper atmosphere to cool and contract. Aerodynamic drag that would normally cause satellites to decay is reduced; space junk accumulates. This effect makes solar minimum a terrible time to blow up satellites–although people do it anyway.
The Solar Cycle Prediction Panel is comprised of scientists representing NOAA, NASA, the International Space Environment Services, and other U.S. and international scientists. Their April 5th prediction was preliminary, and they plan to issue a refined forecast by the end of 2019. Stay tuned.
Photo: Melinda Sue GordonHugo Weaving (links) als Agent Smith. Hij moet ervoor zorgen dat mensen niet uit de Matrix kunnen ontsnappen.
Technologische vooruitgang
Rizwan Virk onderzocht de hypothese voor zijn boek The Simulation Hypothesis. Een van de redenen waarom de theorie de laatste jaren zo aan populariteit wint, is de enorme technologische vooruitgang op vlak van computerspelletjes, zegt Virk. “In de jaren ’80 en ’90 waren computers niet krachtig genoeg om een wereld zoals World of Warcraft of Fortnite te renderen.”
Het is waarschijnlijker dat je een gesimuleerd wezen bent, omdat er veel meer gesimuleerde wezens dan biologische wezens bestaan.
Rizwan Virk, MIT
Daarnaast wijst Virk, zelf een ontwikkelaar van videospelletjes, op het statistische argument waarmee Oxford-professor Nick Bostrom al in 2003 op de proppen kwam. Hij vertrok van de veronderstelling dat een samenleving op een bepaald moment erg realistische “vooroudersimulaties” begint te creëren. Aangezien elke server miljoenen of triljoenen gesimuleerde wezens bevat, zal het aantal gesimuleerde wezens daarom veel groter zijn dan het aantal biologische wezens.
“Als slechts één samenleving ooit met dergelijke simulaties begint, dan is het waarschijnlijker dat je een gesimuleerd wezen bent, omdat er veel meer gesimuleerde wezens dan biologische wezens bestaan”, aldus Virk, die schat dat onze samenleving zelf over uiterlijk een honderdtal jaren met dergelijke simulaties zal aanvangen.
Ik denk dat het waarschijnlijker is dat we in een simulatie leven, dan niet.
Rizwan Virk, MIT
Rizwan wijst op grote vraagstukken uit de fysica die op dit ogenblik beter verklaard kunnen worden door de simulatiehypothese dan door de ‘aardse’ hypotheses die momenteel voorhanden zijn. “Als de wereld niet echt fysiek is, maar gebaseerd is op informatie, dan zou ik zeggen dat het een eenvoudigere verklaring kan zijn dat we leven in een simulatie die gebaseerd is op computerwetenschap en informatie”, stelt hij.
Voorspellingen
Waarom zou iemand al die energie stoppen in het creëren van een gesimuleerde samenleving, kan je je afvragen. “Het is best mogelijk dat wie onze simulatie creëert, wil te weten komen hoe het met een beschaving, die zelf keuzes kan maken, zal aflopen. Zouden we onszelf vernietigen? Zouden we kernwapens creëren? Zouden we onze eigen simulatie creëren?”, licht Virk toe.
Photo: Jasin BolandCarrie-Anne Moss als Trinity (links). Zij is Neo’s “love interest” in de trilogie.
“Ik denk niet noodzakelijk dat we in een simulatie leven die slechts één doel heeft, zoals kijken hoe we de klimaatverandering kunnen aanpakken. In de plaats daarvan, net zoals in een videospel met meerdere spelers, heeft elk personage zijn persoonlijke doelstellingen en de keuzevrijheid om te beslissen wat er gaat gebeuren.” Op die manier is ieder personage een experiment op zichzelf, stelt hij.
Na zijn onderzoek is Virk geneigd om zich bij de stelling van Elon Musk aan te sluiten. Hij schat de kans dat we in een simulatie leven tussen de 50 en de 100 procent. “Ik denk dat het waarschijnlijker is dat we in een simulatie leven, dan niet.”
RVWie meer wil weten over de simulatietheorie, kan daarvoor terecht in het boek van Rizwan Virk.
Since at least 1967,reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – slaughtered in bizarre fashion. Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone. While the answers to the puzzle remain frustratingly outside of the public arena, theories abound. They include extraterrestrials, engaged in nightmarish experimentation of the genetic kind; military programs involving the testing of new bio-warfare weapons; occult-based groups that sacrifice the cattle in ritualistic fashion; and government agencies secretly monitoring the food-chain, fearful that something worse than “Mad Cow Disease” may have infected the U.S. cattle herd – and, possibly, as a result, the human population, too. Cattle mutilations are a favorite topic of UFO researchers and conspiracy theorists. From the mid-1970s to the dawning of the 1980s, however, the phenomenon was of varying degrees of concern to another body: the FBI. But, how and why did the FBI get involved? It’s an important question that requires an answer.
From January to March 1973, the state of Iowa was hit hard by cattle mutilations. Not only that, many of the ranchers who lost animals reported seeing strange lights and black-colored helicopters in the direct vicinity of the attacks. That the FBI took keen notice of all this is demonstrated by the fact that, as the Freedom of Information Act has shown, it collected and filed numerous media reports on the cattle-mutes in Iowa. The next piece of data dates from early September 1974. That’s when the FBI’s director, Clarence M. Kelley, was contacted by Senator Carl T. Curtis, who wished to inform the Bureau of a wave of baffling attacks on livestock in Nebraska – the state in which Curtis resided and represented. At the time, the FBI declined to get involved, as Director Kelley informed the senator: “It appears that no Federal Law within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI has been violated, inasmuch as there is no indication of interstate transportation of the maimed animals.”
One year later, in August 1975, Senator Floyd K. Haskell, of Colorado, made his voice known to the FBI, on the growing cattle mutilation controversy: “For several months my office has been receiving reports of cattle mutilations throughout Colorado and other western states. At least 130 cases in Colorado alone have been reported to local officials and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI); the CBI has verified that the incidents have occurred for the last two years in nine states. The ranchers and rural residents of Colorado are concerned and frightened by these incidents. The bizarre mutilations are frightening in themselves: in virtually all the cases, the left ear, rectum and sex organ of each animal has been cut away and the blood drained from the carcass, but with no traces of blood left on the ground and no footprints.”
The senator had much more to say, too: “In Colorado’s Morgan County area there has [sic] also been reports that a helicopter was used by those who mutilated the carcasses of the cattle, and several persons have reported being chased by a similar helicopter. Because I am gravely concerned by this situation, I am asking that the Federal Bureau of Investigation enter the case. Although the CBI has been investigating the incidents, and local officials also have been involved, the lack of a central unified direction has frustrated the investigation. It seems to have progressed little, except for the recognition at long last that the incidents must be taken seriously. Now it appears that ranchers are arming themselves to protect their livestock, as well as their families and themselves, because they are frustrated by the unsuccessful investigation. Clearly something must be done before someone gets hurt.”
Again, the FBI declined to get involved in the investigation of the phenomenon. It was a stance the FBI stuck to (despite collecting numerous, nationwide newspaper and magazine articles on the subject) until 1978. That was when the FBI learned of an astonishing number of horse and cattle mutilations in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico – mutilations which actually dated back to 1976. They had all been scrupulously investigated and documented by Police Officer Gabe Valdez of Espanola. It was when the FBI was contacted by New Mexico Senator Harrison Schmitt (also the twelfth person to set foot on the Moon – in December 1972), who implored the FBI to get involved, that action was finally taken. In March 1979, Assistant Attorney General Heymann prepared a summary on the New Mexico cases for the FBI, and – for good measure – photocopied all of Officer Valdez’s files to the Bureau’s director. Things were about to be taken to a new level, files were about to be scrutinized, and investigations were soon to follow. And, for the FBI, that’s pretty much how it all began.
People are a lot more predictable than we like to pretend. Sociologists have a set of laws they use to predict how large groups of people will behave—how populations shift, how likely two people are to become friends, how population distribution between cities in a given country will shake out. One such law is called Zipf’s law which predicts the populations of cities in a given country with spooky accuracy. Zipf’s law says that populations of cities will be inversely proportional to the city’s rank. If the most populous city in a country has 10 million people, the second most populated city will have a population of 10 million divided by two, the third most populous city will have a population of 10 million divided by three, and so on and so on until you get to the city ranked 10 millionth on the list which is just a dude in a treehouse.
Zipf’s law has been accepted as true by sociologists, but until now there was no theoretical framework for why. It was simply based off what sociologists have observed. Well, now there’s a potential answer for why: it was written in the stars.
Or, more accurately, galaxies. A recent paper by Henry Lin and Abraham Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge proposes that there is a grand, unifying principal behind all scaling laws—like Zipf’s law—based on the way galaxies formed at the beginning of the universe. They write:
“We treat the population density as the fundamental quantity, thinking of cities as objects that form when the population density exceeds a critical threshold. The situation is therefore conceptually and mathematically analogous to the formation of galaxies in the universe.”
This is just a big old space-city.
Using publicly available population data and the decades of cosmological work done studying galaxies, Lin and Loeb showed that the models that determine the spread and makeup of galaxies can be used to predict human population scaling. Each time they used their galaxy-based model to predict population changes, they came to the exact equations that were already present in sociologists’ scaling laws.
And it wasn’t just city size. They found a galactic explanation for the laws governing whether two people become friends, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and other complex human interactions. They write:
”We derive a simple statistical model that explains all of these scaling laws based on a single unifying principle involving the random spatial growth of clusters of people on all scales.”
And this is just a little people-galaxy.
It’s pretty wild, but it’s hard to be surprised by it. After all, we’re made of star stuff, and whether you’re a person or a galaxy, math is math. And while this is hard science, it’s a principal that’s been espoused for very long time by people that don’t really understand what they’re saying: as above, so below. The math that governs galaxies is the same math that governs human populations. I don’t know if I’m awe-struck by that, or depressed. Maybe a little bit of both.
A new study conducted by Tel Aviv Universityproposes that Neanderthals and woolly mammoths shared the same climate adaptation traits. The elephant-like animals from around 600,000 years ago and the early humans from approximately 400,000 years ago seem to have the same molecular characteristics that helped them adapt to cold environments.
The relationship between the ancient Neanderthals and woolly mammoths from the Pleistocene epoch is that they shared the same living environments in Europe during the Ice Age. Ran Barkai and Meidad Kislev from TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures led the study.
“Neanderthals and mammoths lived together in Europe during the Ice Age. The evidence suggests that Neanderthals hunted and ate mammoths for tens of thousands of years and were actually physically dependent on calories extracted from mammoths for their successful adaptation,” explained Barkai, adding, “Neanderthals depended on mammoths for their very existence. They say you are what you eat. This was especially true of Neanderthals; they ate mammoths but were apparently also genetically similar to mammoths.”
In order to determine just how genetically similar they were, archaeologists studied three case studies of gene variants and alleles that are connected to the adaptation of cold climates and that were found in the genomes of both Neanderthals and woolly mammoths.
The first case study showed that they had the same appearance of the LEPR gene which is connected to thermogenesis as well as the fat storage and adipose tissue regulation in their bodies. Keratin protein genes in the species were examined in the second case study, while their skin and hair pigmentations in the MC1R and SLC7A11 genes were studied in the third case.
Kislev explained the studies, “Our observations present the likelihood of resemblance between numerous molecular variants that resulted in similar cold-adapted epigenetic traits of two species, both of which evolved in Eurasia from an African ancestor.” He went on to say, “These remarkable findings offer supporting evidence for the contention regarding the nature of convergent evolution through molecular resemblance, in which similarities in genetic variants between adapted species are present.”
The research also suggested that both species more than likely came from ancestors who left Africa to go to Europe and had to adapt to the frigid cold temperatures during the Ice Age. They also became extinct around the same time period.
Barkai offered a new theory about the connection between the two species, “Are there genetic similarities between evolutionary adaptation paths in Neanderthals and mammoths? The answer seems to be yes. This idea alone opens endless avenues for new research in evolution, archaeology and other disciplines.” He then added, “At a time when proboscideans are under threat of disappearance from the world due to the ugly human greed for ivory, highlighting our shared history and similarities with elephants and mammoths might be a point worth taking into consideration.”
Astronomers have unveiled the first ever image of a black hole
Astronomers have unveiled the first ever image of a black hole
A group of astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope have unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole.
The major announcement was made in simultaneous news conferences in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo as the European Commission, European Research Council, and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project detailed the findings of their mission.
They explained that they surveyed the Messier 87 galaxy in an effort to be able to picture the “supermassive black hole and its core.” This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth.
I was going through Wikileaks and found this info pertaining to a secret moon base that the United States had destroyed back in the late 1970s. The cable has only the document details, but not the full document because it was hand written and was never put onto digital format.
How would the US destroy an alien base on Earths moon without anyone suspecting? Thats easy. Do you remember the Apollo missions? Well there were suppose to be more 20 such missions to the moon, however NASA suddenly stopped at Apollo 17, so that they could do some covert black ops missions that involved alien tech recovery and reconnaissance of alien structures and ships and to detect any possible threats to America.
Actual photo of the alien base that was destroyed, credit to Apollo 20 astronaut William Rutledge.
I met a man named William Rutledge back in 2011 on Youtube when he uploaded a half dozen videos of the Apollo 20 mission that he took part in. Its was a US-Russia shared mission to the moon near Delporte Crater. William and the other astronaut recorded on film their activities on the moon. Including exploring a cigar ship in Delporte crater through a hole already cut in the side of the ship. Inside they found glass tubes along the walls with tiny bipedal skeletons (a few inches tall) inside the tubes. They also found a female pilot with hoses attached to her nose and she was in a coma state and appeared to be physically and mentally connected to the ship. She never did wake, but was taken back to Earth. He also recorded a beautiful but damaged alien city on the moon. I believe this is the alien base that was destroyed by the US. They probably destroyed it on a later mission after they had recovered all the possible alien tech that the could bring back.
Why would America destroy the alien base? To keep it out of the hands of other countries of the world. Imagine what would happen if Israel landed a probe on the moon and found the base, publicly claiming it and all its contents to be Isreali owned. It would suddenly make Israel a world power over night. America does not want to lose that title nor do they want to deal with the competition of other countries beating them to alien cities, worlds and exploring the universe. Although the US did share those covert Apollo missions with Russia at the time.
Apparently William Rutledge never leaned about the NASA destroying the alien base on the moon that he had once recorded. It would have broken his heart. He told me he was old, in his late 70s at the time I spoke to him. He said that he had some of the films converted into digital video so he could share it before he passed away. He was old and wanted to get this secret off his chest.
I will place a few of his video below for you to explore, but mind you, his channel was attacked by the NSA/CIA and they deleted all but one of his videos. He got scared and left Youtube never to return. He went by the Youtube name RetiredAFB and can still be found there. But he has disappeared in his old age. Probably passed away by now in his wifes home country of Rwanda. Scott C. Waring
There videos below were given to me by William Rutledge. They are 100% authentic. After he told me about the cigar ship in Delporte crater I began searching for photos of the crater. It took two weeks but I finally found it and the photo confirms Williams story. The cigar UFO is in Delporte crater. I shared the photos with him and he was amazed by what I found and thanked me for believing in him and trusting him. He was surprised that NASA accidentally released those photos (below) with the cigar ship he explored in it. Clearly they were top secret and were not meant to be released to the public.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Old Ship Wreak Found Near Bermuda On Google Earth Map, April 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Old Ship Wreak Found Near Bermuda On Google Earth Map, April 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Google coordinates: 25°26'26.99"N 78° 0'28.46"W I was deep in the Wikileaks docs and found a statement about how weather planes flying off Miami, Florida would sometimes photograph UFOs rising out of the ocean. So I was using Google Earth free online map for searching for the alien base in that area, but instead I found this ship wreak. The total length of the ship is about 55-65 meters. One half of the ship is upside-down while the other half is rightside-up. I made a short video of it, so you can find the shipwreck.
They can also survive without water for up to a decade by shriveling up and placing themselves in something resembling a state of suspended animation—and it is that trait that has scientists at Harvard Medical School, the University of Washington and MIT interested.
Their research is being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), having been awarded up to $14.8 million as part of the Biostasis program in December 2018. The aim of the program is to find a way to extend the “golden hour,” the period of time between a traumatic injury and medical intervention. This could apply to a soldier suffering a traumatic injury on the battlefield, someone suffering a stroke or heart attack, or cases of sepsis.
Biostasis interventions would not be a long-term fix; biological processes would return to normal after a short period. But it would buy doctors and medical personnel more time to get the patient the help they need.
Tardigrades offer a promising avenue for this area of research because of their ability to shut down their metabolic processes and enter a state of cryptobiosis, wherein the creature is sort of frozen in time, having slowed down its metabolic processes to almost undetectable levels.
“The idea is that tardigrades have proteins can slow [them down], so that they can survive extreme conditions such as dehydration,” Harvard’s Pamela Silver, principal co-investigator on the project, told Newsweek. “These are called IDPs: intrinsically disordered proteins. The functions of this class of proteins are under intense recent research, so our results play into the overall picture as well. Our idea is to design proteins that have similar action in human cells and tissues. The notion is that by forming a special state in cells, that the proteins then can become protective. It is of note that our new proteins could prove [to be] a basis for further drug design.”
DARPA’s involvement in the project was described as a “cooperative agreement” that will last for five years. In that time, the agency’s program manager can be involved with and influence how the research develops.
Tristan McClure-Begley, Biostasis program manager, told Newsweek: “Tardigrades are an excellent example of cryptobiotic organisms—that is, creatures that can reversibly enter a state where all outwardly observable signs of metabolic activity are effectively paused under conditions that are essentially incompatible with life … In order to survive extreme environmental challenges and reversibly enter that cryptobiotic state, they actually upregulate the production of certain proteins that have interesting properties, such as the lack of highly ordered structure and the ability to interact with many other proteins and promote vitrification within the organism. This effectively protects the organism’s cellular components until such time when conditions are more habitable.
“The discovery of these proteins and their roles in tardigrade survivability serves as good proof of concept for the application of novel unstructured proteins as inducers and supporters of cryptobiotic states.”
Tardigrades are being studied for their extreme survival abilities.
PLOS ONE
Current research indicates that tardigrades are able to deploy biochemicals, including proteins and sugar molecules, which protect cells from damage. These disordered proteins—the IDPs—are found across nature, including in humans. However, not all IDPs slow down cellular aging, so first the team must work out the structure of the proteins that helps tardigrades survive extreme conditions. After that, they will need to design a protein that can be turned into a “drug” for human benefit.
This is an extremely complicated task. The sequence of the amino acids that make up a protein determine its shape. The shape then determines its function. What the team has to do is find the right shape from an infinite number of possible amino acid combinations. To do this, researchers are going to use a computer model to run through possible candidates, then test them to rule them out or investigate them further.
“We have a design-build-test cycle where we test many proteins at once,” Silver said. “The first step is to use machine learning to design new proteins. Then we will test their ability to preserve activities of proteins. This is followed by cell-based tests for prolonging life under harsher conditions, followed by tests in organoids that mimic tissues and, lastly, in animal models.
“It is important to note that we are developing totally new designer proteins based on what nature has provided. Our ‘drug’ will be a protein. The proteins need to be delivered to cells—this is another part of the challenge of the project. For example, they could be delivered by a spray onto the wounded area.”
Silver said their work had just begun, but was confident in the “exceptional team” involved. Much more research will be needed before it gets to the point of human tests, something the Biostasis program is not funding at this point.
“Any designer peptides they create would be subject to the same preclinical regulatory evaluation for safety that any drug or compound destined for introduction into a human body receives prior to any study designed to test the products in humans,” said McClure-Begley, adding that the initial real-world applications could include the preservation of biological products without the need for refrigeration, such as vaccines, blood products and engineered cells.
“This is an example of DARPA funding high-risk research with broader impacts to all people,” Silver added.
The end goal of Biostasis is to “add a new class of tools to the human health toolbox” that can protect biological systems from collapse after damage, McClure-Begley said. “Medical professionals already have lots of ways to help the body cope with insult and aid in the elimination of infectious organisms, but we do not currently have any approaches that work by slowing down the types of cascading molecular events that ultimately lead to the collapse of the system.
“Biostasis is fundamental biochemistry research, but our hope is that the direction we’re taking and the types of technology being developed will provide new opportunities for improved care in the future.”
WHEN WILL WE ADVANCE TO A TYPE 1 CIVILIZATION ON THE KARDASHEV SCALE?
WHEN WILL WE ADVANCE TO A TYPE 1 CIVILIZATION ON THE KARDASHEV SCALE?
WHAT IS THE KARDASHEV CIVILIZATION SCALE?
The Kardashev Civilization scale is a hypothetical scale by which civilizations advance technologically, measured by the methods and quantities of energy they are able to harvest. Currently, we fall somewhere between a Type 0 and Type 1 Civilization on the scale.
WHAT IS A TYPE 0 CIVILIZATION?
A Type 0 civilization is one that has yet to harness all of the energy output of its planet. This type of civilization is still in the process of utilizing unsustainable energy sources like fossil fuels.
WHAT IS A TYPE 1 CIVILIZATION?
A Type 1 Civilization on the Kardashev scale can harness and store all of the energy from its home planet. We haven’t quite achieved this level yet, but it is believed we will probably reach it soon. Many consider humans to be somewhere around .07 or .08 on the scale.
NIKOLAI KARDASHEV’S THEORY
We like to believe our society is technologically advanced, we’ve mastered our environment and we’re progressing forward exponentially. And while Moore’s Law is holding up with the rate at which computing power has advanced, we barely rank on the Kardashev scale.
And yes, this scale is hypothetical, but it is plausible if we are to consider how we might inevitably ascend to the next level. That’s why Nikolai Kardashev devised his eponymous scale, ranking civilizations primarily on the ways in which they harness energy. And from there it goes on to assume a number of other intriguing possibilities.
Kardashev is a Russian astrophysicist, who developed this thought experiment in 1964. And though we haven’t quite reached the first level on his scale, we are a relatively new civilization by his standards The amount of time required to reach his successive stages often requires millions and even billions of years. If a civilization can survive long enough to ascend one level without self-destructing, its chances dramatically improve in continuing to further levels.
We’re currently considered a sub-global civilization, technically Type 0, but on our way to Type one. We’re in the process of finding a large source of sustainable energy, though we still depend on crude, organic sources of fuel, including wood, coal and oil. We also use this type of fuel for chemical propulsion in our rockets, making space travel slow and difficult. We are confined to our home planet and struggle with ecological issues, such as natural disasters and climate change. But the good news is that physicists like Michio Kaku believe we’re on the precipice of advancing, potentially within the next century.
2. TYPE 1 STELLAR CIVILIZATION
A stellar civilization is a few thousand years more advanced than we are. This level of society would be able to harness all energy from its local star. This is where things start to get interesting and technology of this proportion becomes harder to fathom. A theoretical model that parallels Kardashev’s scale comes from Freeman Dyson, who conceived of the Dyson sphere. He formulated his theory in a paper titled, Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation, proposing a search for infrared radiation which could potentially be seen in civilizations harnessing the energy of their star with a Dyson Sphere.
Dyson theorized a progression of levels in which a civilization could start to extract energy from its star ranging from a swarm of satellites to an actual spherical structure hovering around the star that could be inhabited. This method of extracting energy from a star in a controlled manner is called star lifting.
Civilizations of this stature would essentially have reached the level of immortality because they would have the ability to move planets and other astronomical bodies within its solar system. Imagine if we had the ability to block an inbound asteroid by moving Mars into its path.
3. TYPE 2 GALACTIC CIVILIZATION
Civilizations of this magnitude look very much like those in Star Wars. These civilizations would have the ability to harness the energy of any star in its galaxy, translating to roughly 10 billion times the energy harnessed by a level 2 civilization. At this point, a civilization this advanced would be essentially immune to extinction, barring some sort of universal catastrophe.
The inhabitants of a civilization this far advanced would most likely be cyborgs or fully artificial. The capabilities of a society that could harness such copious amounts of energy would be astounding. This civilization could possibly even create their own stars, merge stars or capture energy from gamma rays and quasars.
Galactic civilizations would likely be reaching a point, if it hadn’t already, where black holes at the center of galaxies would be considered as a potential resource. After draining the energy of billions of stars, these civilizations acting almost like black holes themselves, would potentially tap into energy released by supermassive singularities.
This is where Kardashev’s scale ends. It’s hard enough to perceive of a civilization capable of harnessing the luminosity of an entire galaxy. However, some have continued the extent of his scale to conceive of grander civilizations that sci-fi has rarely, if ever, delved into.
4. TYPE 3 UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION
Hence the name, these civilizations would span the entirety of a universe. While galactic civilizations seem farfetched, this level seems pretty abstract. The capabilities of this culture could be within the purview of manipulating space-time, or slowing entropy to immortalize themselves. These beings could likely harness dark energy and potentially live at the event horizon of a black hole.
5. TYPE 4 MULTIVERSE CIVILIZATION
If there are multiple universes, there may exist beings who have the ability to travel between them. These beings would have a comprehension of different levels of matter, physics and space-time than we could ever comprehend, unless of course we reach their hypothetical level in billions of years.
6. AND BEYOND…
Where does it end? Beings in further civilizations would have the ability to create multiple universes, a multiverse. Those who are not adamantly atheist might refer this as God, but beyond the original Kardashev scale all these civilizations are pretty godlike.
Some physicists currently rank us at about a 0.73 on the scale with the likelihood of advancement to level 1 occurring within 100-200 years. One of the biggest hurdles a civilization faces in order to progress on Kardashev’s scale is to create a Dyson Sphere or some equivalent. While a structure of this magnitude is hard to conceive, he imagined its precursor to consist of a web of satellites. With NASA sending a probe closer to the sun than ever before, we are inching closer to a day when a Dyson Sphere or some iteration might be feasible and we start our ascent to the next level on Kardashev’s scale.
Earth’s magnetic field is getting significantly weaker, the magnetic north pole is shifting at an accelerating pace, and scientists readily admit that a sudden pole shift could potentially cause “trillions of dollars” in damage. Today, most of us take the protection provided by Earth’s magnetic field completely for granted. It is essentially a colossal force field which surrounds our planet and makes life possible. And even with such protection, a giant solar storm could still potentially hit our planet and completely fry our power grid. But as our magnetic field continues to get weaker and weaker, even much smaller solar storms will have the potential to be cataclysmic. And once the magnetic field gets weak enough, we will be facing much bigger problems. As you will see below, if enough solar radiation starts reaching our planet none of us will survive.
Previously, scientists had told us that the magnetic field was weakening by about 5 percent every 100 years.
But now we are being told that data collected from the SWARM satellite indicate that the rate of decay is now 5 percent per decade…
It’s well established that in modern times, the axial dipole component of Earth’s main magnetic field is decreasing by approximately 5% per century. Recently, scientists using the SWARM satellite announced that their data indicate a decay rate ten times faster, or 5% per decade.
In case you didn’t quite get that, 5 percent per decade is 10 times faster than 5 percent per century.
If the rate of decay continues at this pace, or if it speeds up even more, we could be looking at a mass extinction event that is beyond what most people would dare to imagine.
However, if the magnetic field gets substantially weaker and stays that way for an appreciable amount of time Earth will be less protected from the oodles of high-energy particles that are constantly flying around in space. This means that everything on the planet will be exposed to higher levels of radiation, which over time could produce an increase in diseases like cancer, as well as harm delicate spacecraft and power grids on Earth.
Of course we are already seeing this. Cancer rates have been rising all over the world, and if you live in the United States there is a one in three chance that you will get cancer in your lifetime.
But as the magnetic field continues to weaken, things will get worse.
A lot worse.
The weaker the magnetic field gets, the amount of solar radiation that will reach us will rise, and eventually it would get so bad that the entire human race would be in jeopardy. The following comes from Futurism…
Radiation and cosmic rays are a real concern for NASA, especially when it comes to long-term spaceflight. Astronauts on a mission to Mars could undergo up to 1000 times the exposure to radiation and cosmic rays that they would get on Earth. If Earth’s magnetic field disappeared, the entire human race – and all of life, in fact – would be in serious danger. Cosmic rays would bombard our bodies and could even damage our DNA, increasing worldwide risk of cancer and other illnesses. The flashes of light visible when we close our eyes would be the least of our problems.
Without Earth’s magnetic field, solar winds — streams of electrically charged particles that flow from the sun — would strip away the planet’s atmosphere and oceans. As such, Earth’s magnetic field helped to make life on the planet possible, researchers have said.
So could such a scenario actually happen?
Well, some scientists are saying that our magnetic field “could be gone in as little as 500 years”, but they are telling us not to worry because Earth’s magnetic poles will “flip” and things will eventually return to normal…
The magnetic field surrounding Earth is weakening, and scientists say it could be gone in as little as 500 years.
The result? Earth’s magnetic poles could, literally, flip upside down.
Of course most scientists believe that a pole flip takes hundreds or thousands of years to happen, but they don’t actually know because they have never seen one take place.
They also believe that we would potentially be facing “trillions of dollars in damage”to our power grid and electrical infrastructure because the magnetic field would be so weak during a flip…
Storms far less powerful than these could cause much more damage if they happened to hit while Earth’s magnetic field was in the midst of a reversal, Roberts said. The result would likely be trillions of dollars in damage to our electrical infrastructure, and right now, there’s no plan for dealing with an event of that magnitude.
“Hopefully, such an event is a long way in the future and we can develop future technologies to avoid huge damage,” Roberts concluded. Keep your fingers (but not your magnetic-field lines) crossed.
Most of the experts also believe that a pole flip is still a long way off, but what everybody agrees on is that the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia at an accelerating pace…
But what’s really catching attention is the acceleration in movement. Around the mid-1990s, the pole suddenly sped up its movements from just over 9 miles (15 kilometers) a year to 34 miles (55 kilometers) annually. As of last year, the pole careened over the international date line toward the Eastern Hemisphere.
The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.
I know that I must sound like a broken record by now, but this is important. Our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and we are seeing things happen that we have never seen before.
Everyone agrees that the Earth’s magnetic field is rapidly getting weaker, and that is making us more vulnerable with each passing day.
Most of the experts are trying to put a happy face on things and are assuring us that everything is going to be okay.
Hopefully they are right, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Crash and Burn: Israel’s Moon Shot Ends in Disaster.
Crash and Burn: Israel’s Moon Shot Ends in Disaster.
With the settler state more divided than ever, and tensions between the native Palestinians as high as ever, this event was meant to be Israel’s “unifying moment” that would bring all Israelis (but not its Arab residents) and globally Jewry together with a shared purpose for one glorious moment.
The attempted moon landing by the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet was broadcast live last night, on the side of the spacecraft read the slogan, “Small country, big dreams.”
However, the Jewish state’s lunar dream crashed and burned, in spectacular fashion, as one of the craft’s main engines blew up on its final descent, crashing into the Moon.
The explosion is said to have marked the end of Israel’s fledgling satellite industry, effectively denying the Jewish state a seat in the elite global club of countries who’ve executed successful lunar landings.
The timing of this grand process – culminating at the exact moment when the Israeli election results were announced – was perhaps too much a coincidence for even the most ardent non-skeptic. Somewhat poetically, Israel’s shallow 2019 election campaign ended as it deserved: A farce.
Noa Landau from Haaretz summed the irony up as follows:
“This is why the loss of communications with the spacecraft, just a moment before the anticipated landing, and just a moment before the announcement of the final election vote results, which at the very last moment went awry – exactly like the landing – felt like one big metaphor. Like the country that could have been, but we have missed out on. In the high-tech superpower filled with traffic jams and embarassing trains, where it’s impossible to receive a package in the mail, and votes can’t be correctly counted, everything is so close, but not quite.”
Beresheet’s engine stopped working around 10 kilometers from the surface, with the vehicle crashing into the Moon at a speed of over 130 meters per second.
It looks like the #beresheet lander (the first private lander trying to land on the moon) hit the surface going 134 m/s (wayyyyyy too fast) after its main engine cut out around 10 km in altitude
The blunder occurred on a live feed in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, who arrived at the control center for the occasion.
Just received from SpaceIL communication team what appears to be the last image #Beresheet spacecraft managed to beam to earth before it crashed on the moons surface
However, the space explorers didn’t seem shaken by the setback as they all chanted a solemn song to show that getting so close to the goal was an achievement in itself.
Netanyahu has already promised that an Israeli spacecraft will be back to the Moon in the next two or three years.
Beresheet, which is Hebrew for the biblical phrase “in the beginning,” could have also become the first private spacecraft to land on the Moon. It was constructed by Israeli nonprofit space venture SpaceIL and state-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries. The $100 million needed for the ambitious project came from private investors.
Only Russia, the US, and China have so far managed to perform controlled “soft” landings on the lunar surface.
It’s time for the latest edition of “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”, the game show that pits seemingly unethical science against potentially catastrophic predictions. In today’s competition, scientists in China (one point already for the catastrophic team) announce they used gene-editing to place human brain genes in rhesus macaque monkeys and it made their brains smarter. Cue the music from every “Planet of the Apes” movie and let the game begin!
“The presented data represents the first attempt to experimentally interrogate the genetic basis of human brain origin using a transgenic monkey model, and it values the use of nonhuman primates in understanding human unique traits.”
China Daily reports that researchers from the Beijing-based National Science Review, the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of North Carolina (that’s in the U.S. – looks like it’s playing for the Seemingly Unethicals) edited human MCPH1 genes – a gene that is critical in fetal brain development because it controls brain size and rate of growth – and created 11 transgenic (a cloud word meaning “artificially carrying DNA from an unrelated organism”) monkeys. Eight of those monkeys were first-generation and three were second-generation, obliterating the ‘artificial’ part of ‘transgenic’ by getting their human genes from their monkey parents.
“According to the research article, brain imaging and tissue section analysis showed an altered pattern of neuron differentiation and a delayed maturation of the neural system, which is similar to the developmental delay (neoteny) in humans.”
In other words, the monkeys showed the human trait of slow brain development (neoteny) rather than the rapid growth of normal monkey brains. What was the benefit of this slow growth?
“The study also found that the transgenic monkeys exhibited better short-term memory and shorter reaction time compared to wild rhesus monkeys in the control group.”
To put it bluntly — even the monkeys could understand the results because the human genes made them smarter!
Ding-ding-ding! That bell means it’s time to play the lightning “What could possibly go wrong?” round.
Time-out called by the Potentially Catastrophics. In a shocking and somewhat honorable display of conscience, Martin Styner, a University of North Carolina computer scientist and coauthor of the Chinese report, told the MIT Technology Review that his role was merely to train Chinese student on how to extract brain volume data from MRI images and, after learning the true purpose, considered removing his name from the paper, which he claims could not find a publisher in the West. Styner then throws his “What could possibly go wrong?” pitch:
“I don’t think that is a good direction. Now we have created this animal which is different than it is supposed to be. When we do experiments, we have to have a good understanding of what we are trying to learn, to help society, and that is not the case here.”
Is this going to be a sequel to Planet of the Apes or Flowers for Algernon?
Unfortunately, that pitch didn’t strike out Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the research. He told the MIT Technology Review he is planning to create more smart monkeys and is planning to test another gene — SRGAP2C – which has been called the “humanity switch” and the “missing genetic link” because it appeared about two million years ago when Australopithecus (the Southern Ape) was being replaced by the smarter Homo habilis.
Putting the “humanity switch” in a monkey? What could possibly go wrong? This game isn’t over … it’s barely starting. Is this progress … or an unethical march down the field to unforeseen consequences?
If we’ve learned anything from “Planet of the Apes,” it’s that if this game goes into overtime, it won’t be a sudden death.
In the summer of 1997, one of the most controversial UFO-themed books ever written was published. Its title wasThe Day After Roswell. It was written by William Birnes (the editor of the now-defunct UFO Magazine and of History Channel’s also defunct UFO Hunters) and Philip Corso (the subject of the book). Specifically, he was Lieutenant Colonel. Philip J. Corso. U.S. Army. Corso’s story was both amazing and groundbreaking. But, was it true? That, quite possibly, was the biggest and most important question of all. While some in the field of Ufology firmly embraced the story, many certainly did not, preferring instead to view the book as either government disinformation – intended to confuse the truth of what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico back in the summer of 1947 – or nothing more than an elaborate and ingenious hoax designed to make money from the gullible and the “I want to believe” crowd.
According to Corso, in near-singlehanded fashion he spearheaded a top secret program designed to seed alleged alien technology and wreckage – recovered from the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico by the U.S. Army Air Force’s 509th Bomb Wing in July 1947 – into the private sector. As a result of this wholly clandestine operation, so Corso maintained, the United States was soon able to understand, and even back-engineer, at least some of the extraterrestrial materials found on the ranch. Fiber-optics, transistors, night-vision equipment, and computer chips, were all, allegedly, a direct outgrowth of the extensive studies of the Roswell materials. But, it’s not so much the technology reportedly found at Roswell that I’m focusing my attentions on. Rather, it’s the bodies of the beings allegedly found strewn around the crash site.
Contrary to what the UFommunity said or assumed at the time and since, Corso never explicitly stated that the Roswell corpses were extraterrestrial. In fact, what he really said was quite the opposite. In Corso’s story the so-called “Grey aliens” are actually created, built, or grown to perform specific tasks. As for the creators of the Greys, it was they, Corso repeatedly maintained, who were the real aliens. Corso also said that, as far as he was personally aware, no one has ever seen the real aliens, only ever their black-eyed, large-headed worker-drones that are so well known in the field of Ufology. As for Corso himself, he stated: “…perhaps we should consider the EBEs [Extraterrestrial Biological Entities] as described in the medical autopsy reports humanoid robots rather than lifeforms, specifically engineered for long distance travel through space or time.”
Corso expanded on this, outlining the profoundly weird nature of the Greys: “While doctors couldn’t figure out how the entities’ essential body chemistry worked, they determined that they contained no new basic elements. However, the reports that I had suggested new combinations of organic compounds that required much more evaluation before doctors could form any opinions. Of specific interest was the fluid that served as blood but also seemed to regulate bodily functions in much the same way glandular secretions do for the human body. In these biological entities, the blood system and lymphatic systems seem to have been combined. And if an exchange of nutrients and waste occurred within their systems, that exchange could have only taken place through the creature’s skin or the outer protective covering they wore because there were no digestive or waste systems.”
Today, more than two decades after The Day After Roswellsurfaced, the undeniably strange story of Colonel Corsocontinues to divide the UFO research field. It probably always will. Me? I’m sticking to the scenario laid out in my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy.
Studies of a solar flarerevealed something unexpected about the sun: its magnetic field is even stronger than scientists predicted.
Measuring that magnetic field within loops of material bursting out of the sun has been a tricky feat because of the interference of Earth's atmosphere. But a team led by David Kuridze, a solar physicist at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, got lucky when they caught sight ofa super-strong flare that the sun belched on Sept. 10, 2017.
The researchers spotted the flare using the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands. The solar telescope is a particularly powerful solar telescope, but its aperture (viewing area) allows researchers to examine only 1 percent of the sun at a time. Fortunately, the team was looking at exactly the right spot when a solar flare erupted.
This good luck allowed them to measure the flare's magnetic field strength high in the sun's corona, or atmosphere.
The sun is well-known for its magnetic activity, including periodic flares that rise from the surface when magnetic lines twist and "snap." Flares are associated with coronal mass ejections, which send streams of charged particles into space. If these particles are aimed toward Earth, they can disrupt satellites or cause colorful auroral displays.
The new finding could help scientists better understand what is happening in the corona, the superheated part of the sun's upper atmosphere that is visible to humans only during a total solar eclipse. The corona is being studied by a NASA spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe, which is zooming closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before it.
"Everything that happens in the sun's outer atmosphere is dominated by the magnetic field, but we have very few measurements of its strength and spatial characteristics," Kuridze said in a statement. "These are critical parameters, the most important for the physics of the solar corona. It is a little like trying to understand the Earth's climate without being able to measure its temperature at various geographical locations."
The research is described in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and that was posted to the preprint server arXiv.org in February.
CONNECTICUT — There must be something in the air in Newington as three of the 17 reported UFO sightings in 2019 have occurred there. UFOs were spotted in Newington on March 11, 17, and 19. As of right now, Newington is the only town in Connecticut that has had multiple reported sightings thus far.
Since Jan. 1, 2019 there have been 17 reported sightings: Greenwich on Jan. 6, Southington on Jan. 9, Storrs on Jan. 12, Stamford on Jan. 27, Waterbury on Jan. 28, Madison on Feb. 6, East Hartford on Feb. 22, North Branford, on Feb. 24, Killingworth on March 3, Newington on March 11, 17, and 19. Other sightings include: Rocky Hill on March 22, Windsor on March 23, and Hamden on March 27.
There were a total of 93 reported UFO sightings in Connecticut in 2018, according to the National UFO Reporting Center. And there were 70 reported UFO sightings in 2017.
Here are some of the reported accounts as recorded by the National UFO Reporting Center:
"Several blinking red, white, blue, and green objects in sky moving to one spot.I woke up a little after midnight. I looked out the bathroom window and a red and white blinking object was in the sky. t stayed in one spot for about 3 minutes and proceeded to move faster and blink red. It went towards the backyard.
"I looked out the back window and saw one white, another white, and red flashing lights light up the sky in a line. Looking around the sky, several more triangle shaped objects all oddly moved DOWN towards this line of flashing lights. Two were disc shaped and were fastly blinking red, white, blue, and even green. My mom and I also heard a powerful unordinary sound. Once ALL these objects made it to this line of flashing lights, we saw continued blinking but the objects seemed to vanish," reported in Hamden.
"2 bright greenish flashes illuminated the entire area greenish light. Second flash was very alarming and unnatural giving all three of us in vehicle a panicked bracing for impact feeling. No sounds at all heard. Silent," reported in Killingworth.
"Bright green slow flashes (2) one after another lasting 2-3 secs. through solid cloud deck. No aircraft heard in vicinity.Walking while looking directly north (clouds deck overhead no visibility of stars) first one slow 2 to 3 sec flash GREEN like maybe a meteor, but extremely bright to be able to see thru clouds, followed by a second slow 2-3 sec flash of equal brightness.
"Best guess 2 green meteors coming down. Both were lighting the sky from horizon up to 60' above north horizon and from northwest to northeast expansion. No sound or blast wave followed. But they did look close to be so bright through a solid cloud deck. I was standing just 50 yards north of highway 80 and totoket road intersection walking north in RV park. I am a pilot and amatuer astronomer and well versed in sky phenomenon.
"I only saw the flashes which were green and lit up the cloud deck above me as described above. No other visible indications. I waited but nothing followed. I can say by the color of flash etc... it was not a ground vehicle lights or any ground based lights causing this. Nothing to north but trees and countryside," reported in North Branford.
"On 91 ramp in (Windsor Locks) saw a flat disk with two bright lights hovering.I was on an on ramp to get onto 91 south in the Windsor Locks area and I saw a flat dark disk with two bright lights on it. I initially thought it was an airplane however when I pulled my car over to take a longer look it had disappeared. There were no trees or faulty sight lines blocking it--it was too high up in the air. It disappeared in less than ten seconds," reported in Windsor.
The NUFORC has existed since 1974 and investigates reported sightings around the world. There have been more than 90,000 reports made globally.
Check out all the Connecticut sightings dating back several decades as reported to the UFORC here.
Israel's first moon lander came up just short in its historic touchdown bid this afternoon (April 11).
The robotic Beresheet spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), aimed to become the first Israeli craft, and the first privately funded mission, ever to land softly on the moon. But the little robot couldn't quite make it, crashing into the gray dirt around 3:25 p.m. EDT (1925 GMT). Mission control lost communications with the spacecraft when it was about 489 feet (149 meters) above the moon's surface.
"We had a failure in the spacecraft; we unfortunately have not managed to land successfully," Opher Doron, the general manager of IAI, said during a live broadcast from mission control. "It's a tremendous achievement up 'til now."
"If at first you don't succeed, you try again," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who watched Beresheet's landing attempt from SpaceIL's control center in Yehud, Israel.
So the list of moon-landing nations remains at three, all of them superpowers — the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
But Beresheet accomplished plenty during its short life, as we shall see.
Beresheet's story begins in 2011, when the nonprofit organization SpaceIL formed to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize. The GLXP offered $20 million to the first privately funded team to put a robot down softly on the moon, move it at least 1,650 feet (500 meters) on the lunar surface and have it send high-resolution imagery home to Earth.
The runner-up would pocket $5 million. An additional $5 million was available for various special accomplishments, bringing the contest's total purse to $30 million.
The competition ended last year without a winner, but SpaceIL and IAI, the country's biggest aerospace and defense company, continued working on the 5-foot-tall (1.5 meters) Beresheet. (Some other former GLXP teams, such as Florida-based Moon Express, have kept going as well.)
Last month, the X Prize Foundation announced that SpaceIL could win a special $1 million Moonshot Award if Beresheet successfully landed on the lunar surface. Just minutes after the moon crash, X Prize founder and Executive Chairman Peter Diamandis and CEO Anousheh Ansari said SpaceIL and IAI will receive the award despite failing to land.
"I think they managed to touch the surface of the moon, and that's what we were looking for for our Moonshot Award," Ansari said.
"And also, besides touching the surface of the moon, they touched the lives and the hearts of an entire nation, an entire world, schoolkids around the world," Diamandis said.
Peter Diamandis✔@PeterDiamandis
XPRIZE to award $1 Million Moonshot Award to SpaceIL team for them to continue their work and pursue Beresheet 2.0. Space is hard!!! @xprize @TeamSpaceIL
The lander launched on the night of Feb. 21, soaring into Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Beresheet continued looping around our planet for the next six weeks, performing engine burns now and again to push its elliptical orbit closer and closer to the moon.
Beresheet ended up covering about 4 million miles (6.5 million kilometers) during this phase of the mission, team members said. No other spacecraft has taken such a long road to the moon.
Beresheet's slow-and-steady strategy paid off on April 4, when the moon's gravity captured the lander. Beresheet then lowered its lunar orbit via a series of burns, the last of which occurred yesterday (April 10). That 32-second maneuver shifted the spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit with a closest lunar approach of just 9 to 10 miles (15 to 17 kilometers) and a most-distant point 125 miles (200 km) from the gray dirt, mission team members said.
Surface plans
Today's landing was scheduled to occur autonomously, on a patch of the lunar near side known as Mare Serenitatis ("Sea of Serenity"). (All lunar surface craft to date have explored the near side, with one exception: China's Chang'e 4 mission touched down on the far side this past December.)
Beresheet was designed to make some measurements of the local gravity field around its landing site during its two or three Earth days of work on the moon. The craft also toted a small laser retroreflector array built by NASA, a technology demonstration that could increase the precision of future touchdowns on the moon and other celestial bodies. But Beresheet was not a science mission at heart.
The main goals, SpaceIL and IAI representatives have said, involved advancing Israel's space program, increasing the nation's technological knowhow and getting young people more interested in science, technology, engineering and math.
And the lander has certainly done all of that. It managed to make it to lunar orbit, after all, send back a photograph from near the moon's surface, and almost nail the landing. And Beresheet did all of this for a total mission cost of just $100 million, including launch.
In addition, project team members have met with more than 1 million Israeli schoolkids over the past eight years, taking the space-exploration message to the young masses. Some of those children will eventually become scientists — and perhaps help design, build or operate spacecraft themselves someday.
"Well, we didn't make it but we definitely tried," Morris Kahn, an entrepreneur who helped found the Beresheet mission, said shortly after the spacecraft's failed landing attempt. "I think we can be proud."
Space.com senior writer Meghan Bartels contributed to this report.
The orange speckles in a new image from NASA'sChandra X-ray Observatoryadd another dimension tothe first-ever image of a black hole. This supplemental picture offers a zoomed-out perspective of the same tremendously dense structure of the now-viral image, helping scientists learn more about what's happening in the black hole's neighborhood.
The supermassive black hole starring in both pictures is located in the elliptical galaxy Messier 87. It's a behemoth; this black hole boasts a mass several billion times greater than that of Earth's sun.
To offer a little more perspective about this structure and the powerful effect it has on the matter around it, scientists collaborating with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured a different view of this same target. They did so in tandem with EHT observations made in April 2017, according to a statementpublished the same day as the black hole picture.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spent 30,000 seconds watching the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 during the April 2017 observing run by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). These X-ray data, in combination with the new radio image from the EHT released April 10, will help scientists learn more about high-energy emission as well as the physics of accretion and ejection at the black hole's event horizon.
To capture the incredible image of a supermassive black hole's shadow, the EHT project gathered data from a global array of radio antennas. On Wednesday (April 10), the incredible feat of finally imaging this enigmatic structure astonished scientists and the public alike.
But another instrument in space, Chandra, has been gazing at the black hole's home galaxy over the last two decades, collecting data in a different wavelength: X-rays. Astronomers had Chandra stare at Messier 87 (M87) for about 30,000 seconds, or roughly 8.3 hours, as the EHT dish network took its observations from the ground.
The four ultrasensitive mirrors that Chandra carries in its orbit around Earth observed the X-ray radiation of multimillion-degree gas shrouding M87.
The National Science Foundation funded the Event Horizon Telescope project, which successfully captured this picture, the first-ever image of a black hole using radio waves.
These X-rays came from the high-energy particles the black hole was flinging into space. The material resulted in a jet shape which extends over 1,000 light years from the center of M87, Chandra representatives said in the statement. Viewers can observe the jet more clearly in the enlarged image inset.
Black holes are superdense structures with tremendous gravitational pull, and past a black hole's threshold, the event horizon, even light cannot escape.
Every galaxy is thought to host a supermassive black hole, like this one within M87, at its center.
Scientists used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to obtain data about the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87, an elliptical galaxy located 60 million light-years away from Earth, in the Virgo galaxy cluster.
Here are some glorious photos of rare lenticular clouds, sometimes called UFO clouds, plus a word about how they form.
Beautiful shot of lenticular cloud at sunset by Chris Walker in Dayton, Nevada.
Enjoy these photos of beautiful lenticular clouds taken in places around the world, and shared with us by our community atEarthSky Facebook and EarthSky Community Photos.
These lens-shaped clouds typically form where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains. When this happens, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the mountain’s downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. So lenticular clouds can appear and disappear relatively quickly. Plus they’re not familiar to people who live in low-lying or flat terrain. And, just to confound things, lenticular clouds have also been known to form in non-mountainous places, as the result of shear winds created by a front. For all of these reasons, lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs). Enjoy the photos! Thank you to all who posted.
Alba Evangelista Ramos, a Brazilian biologist, captured these rare images of a lenticular cloud from a moving vehicle, near the Haute-Provence Observatory, situated in southeastern France. In this particular case, the “UFO cloud” seems to have been produced by the cold mistral wind that strongly blows over southern France, as it was pushed up the 2,132-foot-high (650-meter-high) plateau of the observatory.
Jan Whiteman captured this photo at Lord Howe Island, a volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.
Shared with EarthSky by Jay Lundstrom, who caught this lenticular cloud near Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine.
Sarah Fischer wrote, “I came out of my apartment building, and these were right above my head.”
Lenticular cloud over Roque del Conde, on the island of Tenerife, via Roberto Porto.
“Lenticular cloud outside my window in Dublin, Ireland, this morning. I was surprised to see this as we don’t get them too often here,” said Anthony Lynch Photography.
View larger. | Lenticular cloud over Iceland by Anne Greschuk.
View larger. | Lenticular clouds over Sangre de Cristo mountains, New Mexico, by EarthSky Facebookfriend Geraint Smith.
Angela Mosley caught this lenticular cloud from Denver, Colorado.
Lenticular clouds by Richard T. Hasbrouck in Truchas, New Mexico.
David Marshall captured this lenticular cloud above the Alps in northern Italy.
John Lloyd Griffith in north Wales captured this lenticular cloud.
This photo comes from Michel Studinger of Operation IceBridge. It’s a lenticular cloud over Antarctica.
Radek Zek Photography caught this lenticular cloud.
Emilio Lepeley captured this lenticular cloud over Vicuña, Chile.
Jackie Phillips caught this lenticular cloud over Virginia.
Bottom line: Photos of lenticular clouds in various parts of the world, from the EarthSky community. Click here to submit your photo.
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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.
