In December 2018, a strange radar anomaly appeared over the Midwestern United States. Civilian weather radar showed a massive, stationary blob that hovered near Evansville, Indiana for over ten hours in a relatively tight formation. Months later, similar anomalies appeared on radar systems in Sydney, Australia and near Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Many aviation insiders quickly floated the theory that these anomalies were caused by a new type of chaff, a type of aircraft countermeasure which involves launching clouds of metallic fibers into the air to confuse enemy radar systems. If that’s the case as has been assumed, why test it over civilian areas, though?

A pair of B-1B Lancers deploy chaff and flares during a military exercise.

Now, three months after the New Mexico incident, another strange radar anomaly has appeared in the United States, this time over Southern California. Meteorologists throughout the area spotted a dense blob on weather radar covering some 80 square miles (130 sq km). As in previous cases, the anomalous formation appeared on a clear day without any cloud cover. “It was very strange because it was a relatively clear day and we weren’t really expecting any rain or thunderstorms,” National Weather Service meteorologist Casey Oswant told NPR. “But on our radar, we were seeing something that indicated there was something out there.”

Residents of America’s western deserts are no stranger to aerial mysteries and curiosities given the region’s numerous military aerospace and weapons development facilities, but the explanation offered for this most recent radar mystery is odd. According to the National Weather Service in San Diego, this radar anomaly was caused by a massive swarm of ladybugs flying miles above the ground.

This particular phenomenon is known as a “bloom” and occurs whenever large populations of ladybugs all migrate at once to seek food or warm weather in winter. Still, experts say the timing is odd; these blooms typically appear earlier in the year as winter gives way to spring. “It’s not exactly clear why we’re seeing this big swarm now that we haven’t before,” says Cornell University entomologist John Losey. “Is that just sort of a random effect of what happened in the weather and the prey populations? Is it having something to do with climate change that’s sort of condensing when they all are going to fly?”

Not all ecologist and entomologists are buying the ladybug bloom story. James Cornett, senior scientist with the aptly-named James W. Cornett Ecological Consultants, says a ladybug swarm that size would have darkened the skies and created a panic. “There would have been unbelievable numbers of telephone calls to the police,” Cornett said. “It merits some investigation.” The San Bernardino County Fire Department received no reports of massive ladybug swarms.

Apparently, the ladybug theory was put forward by a single weather service spotter who reported a high number of ladybugs in the area at the time of the swarm. Could these ladybugs be a convenient scapegoat? This is only the latest in several strikingly similar radar anomalies, yet insects were not cited in any of the other incidents.

Judging from radar footage posted to Twitter by the National Weather Service, this alleged ladybug swarm was spotted moving south from what suspiciously seems to be either Edwards Air Force Base or the Fort Irwin National Training Center, one of the U.S. Army’s premier training centers. The Fort Irwin site houses mock cities and villages designed to resemble urban areas around the world and frequently uses both live and simulated unmanned aerial vehicles to prepare units to face these threats in the field. Edwards AFB, meanwhile, is home to all manner of Air Force testing and research centers which develop black budget aerospace projects and the most bleeding edge aircraft technologies. Much of the airspace surrounding the area where the “ladybug swarm” was spotted is restricted to military use.

According to the radar images shared by the NWS, the swarm appeared to originate from a point just northwest of Barstow. Hmm…

The location of this anomalous radar blob pretty coincidental, and the fact that nobody saw or photographed an 80-mile wide swarm of insects flying just a few thousand feet off the ground is pretty weird. Could this ladybug bloom have actually been a swarm of tiny drones, a test of some radar-spoofing electronic warfare technology, or something far spookier? It wouldn’t mark the first time the military has tested a swarm of micro-drones over California. Which seems more likely, particularly given that some ecologists doubt the ladybug story?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-06-2019 om 20:11 geschreven door peter  

The following reports have been submitted to Mufon and show strange objects in the sky over Estrella Mountain and Globe, Arizona.

On April 16, 2019 two cigar-shaped UFOs flying at an enormous speed over the Estrella Mountain in Arizona.

The witness who was filming the landscape accidentally caught the two UFOs on tape. He says "These crafts are very fast I have to slow down for you to see."

The UFOs appeared in only two frames.

On May 29, 2019 another high speed object appears over the Estrella Mountain, Arizona.

The photographer said that the object was gone in a flash. Given the very high speed of the object it doesn’t seem to be a drone.

The black objects in the image are birds.

On May 18, 2019 once again a strange winged object has been photographed and this time over Globe, Arizona.

The photographer says: Was fast caught it on slow motion camera zoomed in on the square object.

It is not clear whether the objects are secret military vehicles or UFOs.

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

07-06-2019 om 19:17 geschreven door peter  

Want Full Disclosure? This Is What You Have To Do To Make It Happen, UFO Sighting News.

Literally the most important and most asked question in UFO research is...how to bring about full disclosure?  I thought about that over the last decade and came to realise that there was only one way. We need to nominate and win a Nobel Peace Prize. 

A Nobel Peace Prize would make scientists, historians, professors and professionals around the world take UFO and aliens research seriously, as a whole new area of science that needs serious consideration. 

Yeah, you heard me right. We need to find a person from the UFO community that is worthy of such a prize. Someone that cares nothing about fame, about money, but only wants the truth. Someone who has risked everything and received nothing in return. That person of course is UK hacker Gary McKinnon. 

I see a lot of people in the UFO community, dozens making a living doing it, others making more than doctors from donations, movie making, TV shows, views and such. Gary asks for nothing but the truth, and guess what? He found it in US military computers. He found evidence of off world officers in US military computers and fought the NSA and CIA for years who tried to extradite him to the USA and put him in prison. Gary is not a national hero, he is a world hero. He cared nothing of himself, but only seeked to improve the life of everyone everywhere through knowledge.

To nominate Gary McKinnon for the award, the nominator needs to qualify in one of the below areas.

1. Members of national assemblies and national governments (cabinet members/ministers) of sovereign states as well as current heads of state. 

2. Members of The International Court of Justice in The Hague and The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague,

3. Members of l'Institut de Droit International 

4. Members of the Executive Committee of the international board of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 

5. University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes

6. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 

7. Members of the main board of directors or its equivalent of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

8. Current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (proposals by current members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after 1 February) 

9. Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee

Do you qualify in one of the above 9 categories? Then click here to nominate our champion...Gary McKinnon. 
https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/Nomination/Nominator-application-form

And thats all it takes. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

07-06-2019 om 18:10 geschreven door peter  

Historical Event: Alien Captured On Film In 1930'S Alaska, Eyewitness Killed, UFO Sighing News.

Date of sighting: 1930s
Location of sighting: Alaska, USA

This is a historical account of an alien that was photographed in the 1930s in Alaska and how the eyewitness was targeted and killed to hide the sighting. Watch the video to learn more. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

07-06-2019 om 17:58 geschreven door peter  

Antarctica's Origins Update – Part One: Deglaciation Reveals More Amazing Secrets

Rapidly gaining all the elements to create a truly groundbreaking and newsworthy discovery, Guest Author, Satellite Archaeologist, and pioneering Independent Researcher, William James Veall, is poised to enter the history books as he slowly and surely lifts the lid off the icy tomb that has encapsulated the Continent of Antarctica for the past million years or so.

[Read Previous Report]

New Inscriptions and Legends

I have tabulated just a few more of the inscriptions and legends exposed by the remote sensing, NASA, and DigiGlobe platforms.

Discoveries of significance follow the table in separate entities, as each needs to be supported by explanatory text and satellite photographs. All symbols, characters and imagery are interpreted within the limitations of the workpiece, which may have been subjected to severe environmental distortions leading to occasional unavoidable misinterpretations.

• Ancient Pyramids in an Icy Landscape: Was There an Ancient Civilization in Antarctica?
• Scientists Find 280-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Forest…in Antarctica
• The Buache Map: A Controversial Map That Shows Antarctica Without Ice

A selection of newly exposed symbols: Marambio Is. Antarctica. 

(Author provided)

Additional to the original hominin portrait from Nelson Island, (see Figure 2(a) below). I have added two new hominin images discovered on Marambio Island. Hominids include all modern and extinct great apes. Hominins are any species of early human that is more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees; this also includes modern humans.

Hominin images, left - right: Figures 2(a), 2(b), and 2(c) – Lucianna.

(Author provided)

An obvious question: do these images, whomsoever carved them, record the remnants of an indigenous population living on Antarctica long before the first emigre's arrived - whether they came 'Out of Africa', or were Minoans, Tamils, Hindus, Egyptians, or Sumerians from Bolivia, et al?                          

Many of the human head and animal portraits I have exposed are either individually marked with legends or closely associated with inscriptive material, thus, as I have already pointed out in the past, general epigraphy enables a reasonably realistic and logical chronological time frame to be constructed for the artifact in question.

The Hominin with Flowers

Let us study Figure 2(a); without doubt a hominin. Observe the headware - garlanded with a flowered headband, another flower in the hair, and even the associated script is embellished with a flower! See also figure 4(a).

Figure 2(a) (left) and Figure 4(a) (right) - a hominin.

(Author provided)

This is no primitive hominid, but a socially organized Homo sapiens many generations advanced from its ancestors of, say, 100,000 years before. A species that evolved cognitively either by cross breeding or natural selection.

According to current anthropological and genealogical thinking, such hybridization between, for example, the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon would have an overlap time frame of 50,000 - 30,000 years ago, after which time the Neanderthals gradually died out - to be replaced by the artistic, cave painting, Cro-Magnon - who struck and used tools, wove cloth, made jewelry, and may have had an elementary form of speech. The Cro-magnon spanned the era 35,000-10,000 years ago, i.e. about 8,000 BC.

If the headbands worn by Figures 4(a) and 4(b) are accepted as a signature of group identity then, in my humble opinion, one can hypothesize that they fall into the category: homo sapiens australiopithecus (southern apes).

Figures 4(a) (left) and 4(b) (right) – note the headbands.

(Author provided)

A Very Strange, Almost Alien-Like Humanoid

Figure 3(a) is, indeed, a very strange, almost alien-like humanoid with a long elongated skull, large eye sockets set with rather globular eyes - each partially closed by epicanthic eye lids. A light cranial ridge is visible, and the large mouth exposes the same crude and irregular incisors as Figure 2(a).

• Astonishing Human Heads: Do Satellite Photographs Now Prove Existence of Humans on Antarctica…6000 Years Ago? – Part I
• A Message on the Shore: Do Satellite Photographs Now Prove Existence of Humans on Antarctica…6000 Years Ago? – Part II

Figure 3(a) (left) – a strange, almost alien-like humanoid, similar to the elongated skull shown in Figure 3(b) (right). (Author provided) The photograph of the elongated skull, Fig. 3(b) is reproduced with the kind permission of Fine Arts and Facial Reconstruction Artist, Marcia K Moore, Ciamar Studio, USA. Her skeletal silhouette is used as a comparison piece with the unique sculpture discovered on Mariambo Island, Figure 3(a).

There is no visual evidence that the nose is other than flat or non-existent; the profile has a typical receding chin and jawline. Most noticeable is the lack of hair either on the face or over the skull. The fact that there are none of the usual sutures caused by cultural deformation to the cranium, suggests the elongated head is completely natural.

Original examination of the figure showed no obvious facial adornment, however, light highlighting, to improve printout, exposed a familiar 'star' marking on the left cheekbone, thus elevating this hominid into the ranks of hominin.

Additionally, carved into the same workpiece (lower right of the image) is a very indistinct legend, implying by its closeness that it might relate directly to the hominin itself; these two features, the 'star' and the legend, when translated, might help construct a provenance.

Although 'writing' was invented circa 3500 BC, i.e. about 6000 years ago, in Mesopotamia, current thinking suggests simple inscribed trading tokens were in wide use as 'proto money'  by the 8th Millenium BC. Also believed by some scientists to be the basic symbols from which the very system of 'writing' evolved. If associated, then Figure 3(a) could date somewhere between 8000 to 7001 BC.

For comparison, the earliest known elongated skulls are Early Neolithic, circa 10,000 BC. Other skulls have been discovered in Egypt, Australia, and Iraq. Elongated skulls from Brazil, for example, are dated circa 7500 BC. (after Dr R. Louise. PhD.)

Example of the Paracas elongated skulls.

( Public Domain )

Many skulls and bones have been discovered over time, but, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time sculptures depicting what hominins actually looked like 'in the flesh' have been discovered anywhere in the world.

Anthropologically speaking, I have some doubts about hominin, Figure 3 (a), which is certainly not of the 'great ape' lineage with its gentle, amphibian-like, globular eyes, epicanthic eyelids and elongated head - great ape heads are rather rounded with small piggy eyes and heavy cranial ridges.

However, both have the ragged protruding incisors in common. Does this suggest a new and different hybrid lineage? If so, what was the original parentage?

Any attempts to untangle the 'Out of Africa' theory and its multiple global migrations and connotations of integration effect is beyond the scope of this update. Satellite imagery can only introduce a suspect situation; it cannot replace a full and proper 'on the ground' forensic evaluation.

‘An Almost Child-Like Quality’

From the many new satellite portraits I have taken over Marambio Island, I have chosen to publish Figure 4(b); this dark toned image has an almost child-like quality. It has a small globular head with short black hair, large expressive eyes, a small round mouth and pointed chin, and, like the hominin in Figure 4(a), it sports a headband carrying a small flower motif.

Left-right: Figure 4(a), Figure 4(b) normal exposure, Figure 4(b) overexposed.

(Author provided)

My visual description, however, may be misleading: 'child-like quality' could also infer that the hominin is small of stature after the likes of the hominid 'Lucy', an Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Ethiopia 40 years ago.

Lucy was a rather lightly built hominid with a small, globular skull, thin brow ridge, large eye sockets, small mouth with neat teeth, and a short jawline. Her skeletal DNA recorded an age of 3.2 million years.

A reconstruction of a female A. afarensis.

( Public Domain )

Is it possible that 'Lucy' and Figure 4(b) are from the same ancestral line, albeit 'Lucy's skeleton was discovered in Ethiopia and the portrait of 'Luciana' (well, why not?) was sculptured from a rock in Antarctica?

There is an alternative hypothesis: Figure 4(a) and Figure 4(b) are each located on the Antarctica Peninsula and wear the same garlanded headband. Could this infer the same group identity, same species and same provenance? The fact that 'Luciana' appears the more 'delicate' of the two might even suggest 'she' is the female of the species, Homo sapien australiopithecus.

• Tamils and Sumerians Among the FIRST to Reach Australia and Antarctica? PART I
• History’s Lost Transoceanic Voyages: Tamils and Sumerians Among the FIRST to Reach Australia and Antarctica?— PART II

Anthropologists believe at one point in time Homo sapiens became socially organized, may have developed a 'closed' form of simple speech, and had symbolic behavior (art) which they used for group identity or communication, e.g. painting themselves with black or red ochre mineral pigments and wearing simple shell 'jewelry' adornment.

If this hypothesis is to be sustained, we must not forget that the creation of a notation system and figurative art could not be achieved without the leap made in the Middle Stone Age (MSA) from the old fashioned Acheulean tool kit to the Mousterian era - which made available, amongst other tools, extremely sharp stone chisels, sometime between 100,000 BC and 40,000 BC.

Example of a Mousterian stone biface tool.  ( CC0)

Who Were the Early Explorers to Antarctica?

Hence is it fair to speculate that the indigenous population on Antarctica created their own rock-cut intaglios to which they added a system of 'written' notation? If so, did a colored race of homo sapiens bring this knowledge with them 'Out of Africa'?

The fascinating account of finding two near identical human head portraits; Figure 5(a) and 5(b), one rock carved on Marambio Island, Antarctica, the other standing as a monument far across the oceans on the Yala Beach front, Sri Lanka, as demonstrated in the photo-strip below, placed the Tamils among the earliest explorers to touch down on the Continent of Antarctica more than 6000 years ago.

Left – Right: Figure 5(a), carved on Marambio Island, Antarctica, and 5(b), a monument on the Yala Beach front, Sri Lanka. Figure 5(c) is a drawing of 5(a).

(Author provided)

This important discovery strengthened my hypothesis that the Tamils established a trans-oceanic trading route from Sri Lanka, south along the coastlines of Indonesia to Papua New Guinea, and across the Torres Strait directly on to Australia's Cape York Peninsula.

READ PART II

Space archaeologist and independent researcher, William James Veall is Director of Nascodex and Consultant to Nascodex Publications , and author of Portraits of the Gods .

Top Image: Craggy mountain landscape in Antarctica ( Public Domain ). Insert: Hominin image Figure 2(a). (Author provided)

By William J Veall

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

07-06-2019 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

FBI geeft analyse van haren van vermeende Bigfoot uit jaren 70 vrij - HLN.be

Bron: CNBC

Peter Byrne komt uit Oregon. Hij gelooft al tientallen jaren in het bestaan van mythische figuren die we kennen als Bigfoot, Sasquatch, yeti of de verschrikkelijke sneeuwman. Op 24 november 1976 schreef hij de FBI aan met de vraag om 15 haren op een stukje huid te analyseren. “Het gebeurt niet vaak dat we haren tegenkomen die we niet kunnen thuisbrengen”, schreef hij in de correspondentie die de FBI nu publiek heeft gemaakt. “Het is het eerste haar dat we konden bemachtigen in zes jaar tijd waarvan we vermoeden dat het belangrijk is.”

In een eerdere brief had hij de FBI gevraagd of ze haar van “vermoedelijk een Bigfoot” - en waarvan hij meende te weten dat het naar de FBI was gestuurd - hadden getest. Byrne benadrukte dat het “om een ernstige zaak ging waarop een antwoord zou moeten komen”. Eind 1976 antwoordde de FBI dat ze normaal alleen “fysiek bewijs voor politiediensten in verband met criminele zaken” onderzochten.

Hertenhaar

Adjunct-directeur Jay Cochran Jr. voegde er wel nog aan toe dat uitzonderingen mogelijk zijn. “We zullen het haar en het weefsel waarvan u gewag maakt in uw brief onderzoeken”, schreef Cochran. Al in februari 1977 maakte Cochran de conclusies van het labo bekend: “De haren zijn afkomstig van een hertachtige”.

De 93-jarige Peter Byrne herinnert zich de correspondentie met de FBI niet meer. Maar hij is wel altijd blijven zoeken naar bewijs van het bestaan van Bigfoot. Hij droomt er nog altijd van een Bigfoot of een yeti te vinden, al heeft hij er zelf nooit een gezien, geeft hij toe. “Tien dagen geleden zag een betrouwbare, goeie vriend van mij een Bigfoot”, beweert Byrne. En zeven houthakkers beweerden dat ze vorig jaar een vermoedelijke Sasquatch hebben gespot.

De interesse van Peter Byrne voor Bigfoot dateert van zijn kindertijd, toen zijn vader hem verhaaltjes over de yeti in het Himalayagebergte voor het slapengaan vertelde. In 1946 kreeg hij een eerste kans om op zoek te gaan naar de yeti. Hij zat toen bij de British Royal Air Force in Bombay in India. Eind jaren 50 ondernam hij drie grote expedities in Nepal.

Sociale fraude

De afgelopen 50 jaar beweert Byrne twee of drie paar mogelijke voetafdrukken van de yeti te hebben gevonden in de Himalaya, op een hoogte van meer dan 4,5 km. Maar aan CNBC gaf hij toe dat die mogelijk van sadhoes waren, hindoeïstische asceten die hij zelf op die hoogte blootsvoets in de sneeuw heeft zien wandelen. In de Pacific Northwest vond hij ooit een “enorme voetafdruk” van wat een rechtopstaand zoogdier moet zijn geweest met vijf tenen aan elke voet en met een “stap van 117 centimeter”.

Vandaag is Byrne nog altijd actief in zijn zoektocht, maar “het is een hobby voor mij geworden”, zegt hij.

Peter Byrne is overigens niet onbesproken. In augustus 2013 werd hij tot drie jaar voorwaardelijk veroordeeld voor sociale fraude. Voor de overheid had hij zijn buitenlandse tripjes tussen 1992 en 2012 verzwegen en om onterecht 70.000 euro aan onterechte uitkeringen te kunnen toucheren. Hij liet ook de royalty’s van zijn boeken op de rekening van zijn vriendin storten.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

07-06-2019 om 00:49 geschreven door peter  

07-06-2019 om 00:33 geschreven door peter  

Guy Uses Telepathy To Call UFOs To Him On TV News, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of video: October 2009

This is an old TV news video, but it really has stuck in my head over the years. Meditation...something I easily dismissed as being possible, but after decades of UFO research I have found that it is a factual skill and a useful one when trying to summon an UFO orb to record. You don't have to be a religious or special, just realise a few things...and then put the effort in. 

1.  Understand everything is energy. You, me, the sky, trees, UFOs, planets, space. So there is no distance between us, we are connected already.

2. Silence your mind. Block out all problems, stresses and focus purely on your friends in the sky.

3. Get emotionally involved. If you don't feel message, then it wont be delivered. Emotions are the fuel that delivers telepathy. The stronger the emotions, the faster its delivered. 

I've done this and about 30% of the time got responses instantly. From a baseball size UFO 2 meters from me, to having an alien approach me saying the secret message in my head in front of my whole family in a museum, to even creating a 5.0 earthquake that almost made me fall while running in the park and telepathically sending messages to aliens. So...if I'm brave enough to tell you about my experiences, maybe you can be brave enough to try. It only takes one minute to 5 minutes to get a response. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 20:37 geschreven door peter  

UFO Disk Found On Mountain Top In Arizona, Could It Be Ancient Tech? UFO Sighting News.

Location of object: Black Mountains, Arizona, USA

I think this disk stone object could possibly be an actual UFO. Let me explain. The weight of a UFO means nothing. The alien propulsion system could make an solid gold elephant fly. But I feel that some UFOs were made to withstand destruction. They were made to work remotely without occupants. They were used in war and needed to be strong...so they made them solid with the nano tech built into it, much like a 3D printer creates an object with is software and hardware all built into it so it cannot be damaged. Now you have the ultimate war machine. One that can really take a beating. This one seems to have landed on top of this mountain in Arizona and sat there ever sine. Maybe millions of years and the tough material blends into the environment and people assume its part of the mountain. Its not the only stone-like UFO disk ever found...there have been hundreds discovered worldwide.

Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

06-06-2019 om 20:15 geschreven door peter  

The Pentagon’s UFOs 

How a Multimedia Entertainment Company created a UFO news story

BY ROBERT SHEAFFER

On December 16, 2017, the New York Times published “Glowing Auras and Black Money—The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” a now-famous article about the previously unknown Pentagon UFO study program, as reported by To The Stars Academy (TTSA). It was founded by a rock musician named Tom DeLonge, formerly of the band Blink-182, who describes TTSA as an “independent multimedia entertainment company.” This set off a media UFO frenzy that still continues.

To show how little TTSA’s people understand about what they are doing, the so-called “glowing auras” surrounding the objects in the widely circulated video shot by a military jet represent nothing more than a processing artifact of the infrared image. But TTSA’s “experts,” as well as those who look up to them, don’t realize that obvious fact and think instead that it represents something deeply mysterious.

Most people didn’t notice that Leslie Kean, one of the authors of this piece, is a dedicated UFO promoter who has written a popular UFO book. She is also very gullible, at one point promoting a video of a fly buzzing around as if it were some great proof of high-performance UFOs. (And she still has not admitted that she was fooled by the fly.) Another author of the article, Ralph Blumenthal, has also been a UFO believer for years. So this was not the customary news article written by New York Times journalists assigned to investigate a mystery and write an objective story. Instead, it was crafted by UFO believers to appear neutral and objective when it is anything but.

Now the other shoe has dropped. On May 26, 2019 the New York Timescarried another article by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean—the same three authors as the earlier piece—headlined “Wow, what is that?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects.” They write:

The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. “These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years.

One seriously wonders why, if unknown objects were supposedly seen “almost daily” for nearly a year, and hung around “all day,” we don’t have overwhelming video, photographic, and instrumental evidence of them, removing all doubt about their appearance and behavior? In reality, all we see are the same three blurry infrared videos promoted by TTSA, over and over again. This makes no sense at all. Doesn’t the Navy have any cameras, radar and other surveillance equipment?

As for the so-called “Tic Tac” video of 2004 (see image below), serious fault lines are starting to appear in the differing accounts of various persons involved. David Fravor is the pilot who was vectored to the supposed location of the Tic Tac UFO but didn’t see anything in the air at that location. Looking down, he saw a disturbance in the water, which he presumed was caused by the object that apparently had just been airborne. Of course, it is a big assumption that the two must necessarily be the same.

Fravor spoke at the recent UFO Fest in McMinnville, Oregon (held annually to honor the famous Trent UFO Photos, taken just outside that town). Reporter George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell were also on the panel. Fravor sharply criticized the accounts of certain other people who were involved and have been speaking about the incident. He seemed to be singling out the account of the radar operator, Kevin Day, as being non-factual. He dismissed claims of Air Force personnel coming on board the Nimitz and confiscating evidence as being untrue. Fravor also referred to Dave Beaty’s “Nimitz UFO Encounters” documentary as a “cartoon.” This prompted Knapp to say to Fravor, “I guess you’re being diplomatic, but some of the stories and claims that have been made by people, who may have been on those ships, are just bullshit.” When people began commenting about these remarkable disagreements, Corbell pulled the video off YouTube.

There was little that was new or unexpected in the long-anticipated May 31 premiere of the series “Unidentified” on the History Channel. Produced by Tom DeLonge, whose efforts have more or less dominated UFO news for the past two years, it repeated the same claims that I and others have have already written about many times. Sandwiched between episodes of “Ancient Aliens,” the first of six episodes of “Unidentified” concentrated on the “Tic Tac” UFO. Here are a few things about that episode that I found to be misleading or incorrect:

• Much is made of the fact that reports were generated by highly trained military pilots, some with combat experience. The implication is that their observations are far more credible than those of just ordinary folks. But longtime UFO researchers recall that Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the former U. S. Air Force Project Blue Book scientific consultant, wrote “Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses” (The Hynek UFO Report, 1977, p. 271). The pilot is, and must be, focused on keeping the aircraft safely aloft, and not on watching some strange-looking object.
• The Pentagon did not “disclose” or “release” anything about UFOs. This whole “disclosure” line came about from statements by TTSA’s Luis Elizondo and others, and not from any internal Pentagon activity. The Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) came about because multimillionaire investor (and longtime UFO believer) Robert Bigelow, a frequent campaign contributor to Sen. Harry Reid, prevailed upon Reid, then the Democratic leader in the Senate, to set up the AATIP program. AATIP then funneled $22 million in contracts to Bigelow’s company (because that’s how things are done in Washington). The only thing that AATIP is known to have produced are 38 papers in weird physics, like anti-gravity, wormholes, and negative mass propulsion.

• TTSA has claimed from its inception that the Pentagon released the three blurry infrared videos that they ceaselessly show us. They claim to have “chain of custody” documentation for the videos, but nobody has ever seen this documentation. Elizondo recently released to George Knapp, a reporter friendly to TTSA (and it seems to anybody else making UFO claims) a copy of a document purporting to show the videos’ release. But a careful analysis by John Greenewald of The Black Vault shows beyond any doubt that the document does not prove what Elizondo claims it does. Greenewald notes,

we have no proof of any [official Pentagon] release, let alone what is being touted [the videos] is even the same evidence connected to this DD Form 1910. If we see a blatant disregard for the truth by Mr. Elizondo on display with this DD Form 1910, and we see the same disregard for the truth by To The Stars Academy as they have touted documents proving a public release—how can we believe everything or anything else from the same sources?

In the first episode, Luis Elizondo spoke again about his “five observables”, which I wrote about September of 2018. One of them was “Instantaneous acceleration,” supposedly shown by the Tic Tac UFO’s rapid disappearance from the IR video. In a preview segment from “Unidentified” shown on Fox News, TTSA’s Chris Cooke attributes this movement to the object itself. Elizondo has made this claim in his lectures many times. In reality, back in December, 2017 Mick West of the excellent site Metabunk showed that the “sudden acceleration” of the object was, in fact, due to a change in the zoom factor of the camera at that point. Surprisingly, Cooke’s comment about “acceleration” was cut from the final show; instead, Cooke is heard to say “Somebody changed the zoom.” But Elizondo repeated the ‘instantaneous acceleration’ claimon Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox news just a few hours before the series premiere. As for the other four “observables,” they are more accurately called “assumables” than “observables”.

One recent development that is significant, and is not mentioned on the program or by TTSA: According to an article in The Drive by Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway:

the Times’ story doesn’t mention that between 2014 and 2015, Graves and Accoin, and all the other personnel assigned to Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as everyone else in the associated carrier strike group, or CSG, were taking part in series of particularly significant exercises. The carrier had only returned to the fleet after major four-year-long overhaul, also known as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH), in August 2013. This process included installing various upgrades, such as systems associated with the latest operational iteration of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and its embedded Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture. This is a critical detail. When the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered the Tic Tac in 2004, it was in the midst of the first ever CSG-level operations of the initial iteration of the CEC.

In other words, in 2004 the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group got its radar upgrade, and soon was reporting “unidentified objects”, including the Tic Tac. In 2014-15, Carrier Air Wing One got its radar upgrade, and soon they, too, were reporting UFOs galore. One could interpret this to mean that the radars had finally gotten powerful enough to detect the UFOs that had long been knocking about. But a more prudent interpretation is that the radars had gotten powerful enough to begin detecting birds, small balloons, insect clouds, ice crystals, windborne debris, and various other things found in the atmosphere. Arguing in favor of the latter interpretation is that these radars are apparently no longer detecting anomalous objects, which itself is extremely significant. It suggests that, in all likelihood, after being puzzled by anomalous objects appearing on the new radar, the operators finally figured out what was happening, and no longer are troubled by anomalies.

And in a last-minute bombshell, reporter Keith Kloor finally did what reporters are supposed to do, and ask tough questions about persons in the news making claims. Writing in The Intercept on June 1, Kloor’s piece is headlined “The Media loves the UFO expert who says he worked for an obscure Pentagon program. Did he?” Kloor writes…

there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.

Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”

That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.

Kloor adds that the only supposed confirmation of Elizondo’s involvement with AATIP comes from Bryan Bender of Politico:

“Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to Politico that the program existed and was run by Elizondo,” Bryan Bender wrote in December 2017. (Earlier this year, White, a Trump administration political appointee, resigned amid an internal probe into charges of misconduct.) But Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me that he “cannot confirm” White’s statement.

As it happens, Bender, who is Politico’s defense editor, had a recurring role in the first episode of “Unidentified.” He appeared on camera numerous times as a kind of authoritative character witness for Elizondo, Mellon, and their UFO investigations.

So Bender cannot be considered an objective reporter on TTSA, and Elzondo’s supposed involvement with AATIP is supported only on his own word. Kloor further notes that Elizondo will not respond to his inquiries, but obviously has no difficulty being interviewed by other reporters who give him softball questions. I have seen this behavior time and again among UFOlogists who are peddling dubious claims.

Not everyone is happy about Kloor’s expose. “Disclosure” advocate Stephen Basset of the Paradigm Research Group writes:

It is the most egregious hit piece directed at the extraterrestrial presence issue and Disclosure I have ever read in 22 years. It measures up to some of the worst such articles written by Phil Klass, the most vicious debunker on record. Stanton Friedman presented a cogent case that Klass was in the direct employ of the CIA during his disgraceful career.

Note that Basset does not point out anything wrong in what Kloor has written, but he just knows it’s got to be wrong. Clearly the piece has hit a nerve with E.T. proponents. As for Phil Klass, I knew him well, and what Basset says about Klass is Loony Tunes. 

About the Author

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds. He is one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, and wrote the “Psychic Vibrations” column in the Skeptical Inquirer for almost 40 years. His book Psychic Vibrations reprints some of those columns. His most recent book is Bad UFOs (2016), which is also the name of his Blog that casts a skeptical eye on claims about UFOs. He is also the author of “UFO Sightings” (1998), and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others. He is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics’ group in the San Francisco Bay area. Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California. He has worked as a data communications engineer in the Silicon Valley, and sings in professional opera productions.

TAGS: skepticism, UFOs

{ https://www.skeptic.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 20:05 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Parker Solar Probe May Solve 500-Year-Old Sun Mystery

NASA's Parker Solar Probe is on its way to another close encounter with the sun, where investigators hope the spacecraft will solve a long-standing solar mystery: Why is the sun's outer atmosphere millions of degrees hot (Fahrenheit or Celsius), while the surface is only about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,300 degrees Celsius)?

One theory says that this spectacular heating comes from small magnetic wavesmoving back and forth between the sun's surface and upper atmosphere. New research based on a previous NASA mission suggests that the key lies in a region of the sun called the zone of preferential heating.

"Whatever the physics is behind this superheating, it's a puzzle that has been staring us in the eye for 500 years," Justin Kasper, lead author on the new research, a University of Michigan professor of climate and space sciences, and principal investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) instrument onboard the probe, said in a statement. "In just two more years, Parker Solar Probe will finally reveal the answer."

• Related: NASA's Voyager 2 Went Interstellar the Same Day a Solar Probe Touched the Sun

Image and lightcurves of the HXR and SXR emissions. a, HXR (above ~3 keV) emission observed by FOXSI-2 on 11 December 2014, 19:13:47–19:14:25 ut (cyan contours) overlaid on SXR (below ~3 keV) images (see colour scale) of two active regions taken with Hinode/XRT (sensitive to >2 MK). Active region 12234, shown in the yellow box, exhibited no individual flaring activity during the time interval, and was selected for the analysis. b, GOES/XRS (top), Hinode/XRT (middle) and FOXSI-2 (bottom) lightcurves. The GOES lightcurve is for the full Sun, and the XRT and FOXSI lightcurves are for 12234. The error bars in the FOXSI-2 lightcurve show 1σ standard deviation statistical errors. The gaps in the FOXSI-2 lightcurve show the intervals for pointing changes. The blue box shows the integration time for the FOXSI-2 image in a. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0269-z

From what scientists know so far about this superheating, it's a strange process. Some individual chemical elements warm up to different temperatures, and some heavy ions (or charged particles) get even hotter than the sun's core. 

All this heating makes the solar atmosphere, also known as the corona, balloon above the sun's surface. That atmosphere is visible during total solar eclipses, when the moon passes in front of the sun. For a few moments during those events, the corona shines brightly in the sky.

Also embedded in the zone of superheating is a phenomenon known as Alfvén waves, which are small magnetic waves in an electrically conducting fluid (such as plasma) inside a magnetic field. At the edge of this superheating zone, the solar wind (a constant stream of charged particles emanating from the sun) moves fast enough to escape the waves. But below that, the solar wind particles pingpong and accelerate due to waves pummeling the particles from every direction.

What scientists really want to know is just how far above the sun's surface this heating extends. While Parker isn't close enough to the sun to have reached that point yet, the researchers looked for it using decades of solar wind observations from NASA's Wind spacecraft, which launched in 1994 and is still working. Specifically, the scientists focused on observations of helium, a common element in the sun.

The scientists tracked the temperature of helium at different altitudes above the sun. The rate of temperature rise in that element diminishes as ions in the solar wind collide with each other. Scientists found that the superheating zone ends somewhere between 10 and 50 solar radii above the surface of the sun.

Further analysis, however, suggested that the outer edge might be connected with the Alfvén point, the distance above the surface at which particles in the solar wind escape the sun. Previous research has shown that the Alfvén point can rise and fall as the sun gets more or less active. 

So, Kasper and his co-author examined Wind's data year by year. What they found surprised them: The outer boundary for the superheating zone and the Alfvén point "moved in lockstep in a totally predictable fashion, despite being completely independent calculations," Kasper said. 

Both those lines will continue to move as Parker Solar Probe sneaks closer and closer to the sun, so the researchers also calculated when the spacecraft would intersect with those boundaries. That moment, when the probe can send back data from these crucial regions, should happen in 2021 — giving scientists a whole new look at our sun.

A paper based on the research was published Tuesday (June 4) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

•  What's Inside the Sun? A Star Tour from the Inside Out 
•  NASA's Parker Solar Probe Is Headed to the Sun. So, What's Next? 
•  NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to the Sun in Pictures 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.  

{ https://www.space.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 19:52 geschreven door peter  

Why Mars Lightning Is Weak and Rare

By Charles Q. Choi 

If it exists at all, that is.

Artist's illustration of Mars' thin atmosphere.

(Image: © NASA)

If lightning exists on Mars, it may be less energetic and frequent than lightning on Earth, all because of the Red Planet's thin air, a new study finds.

Scientists announced the first evidence of lightning on Mars in 2009, after they detected microwave emissions from a 2006 dust storm on the Red Planet that the researchers suggested came from sudden, huge electrical discharges. 

However, subsequent research failed to find radio evidence of lightning in Martian dust storms, despite five years of data collected by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft and three months of data from the Allen Telescope Array in California.

• RELATED: The 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars

To investigate why thunderbolts are rare on Mars, scientists focused on the kind of lightning that dust storms could generate. Sand grains and other particles in these storms can build up electric charge through the "triboelectric effect," the same effect behind everyday static electricity. When two objects repeatedly collide with or rub against one another, the surface of one material can steal electrons from the surface of the other, accumulating charge.

In the new study, scientists experimented with grains of basalt, a dark volcanic rock common in the crust of Mars. The researchers placed spherical grains about 1 to 2 millimeters wide on a plate that vibrated for 30 minutes to generate triboelectric charge. Scientists extracted grains from a hole in the center of the plate to measure their level of electric charge.

The researchers varied the air pressure in the chamber in which the experiment took place from 0.03 millibars to 80 millibars. In comparison, the average atmospheric pressure on Mars is 6 millibars, ranging from less than 1 millibar at the highest Martian volcanic peaks to more than 10 millibars in the Red Planet's deep valleys. On Earth, the average atmospheric pressure is about 1,000 millibars at sea level.

The scientists found that electric charge had difficulty accumulating on the basalt grains at low air pressures. All in all, the electric charge on the grains at Martian air pressure was at least five times smaller than at the highest pressure tested, and it was smaller still compared to the average atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth. Essentially, at the atmospheric pressure on Mars, "tribocharging works the least for sand-sized grains," study lead author Gerhard Wurm, a planetary scientist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, told Space.com.

On Earth, other phenomena, such as cosmic rays from deep space or ultraviolet radiation from the sun, can also generate the electric charge needed for lightning. However, these mechanisms are likely not strong enough on Mars to help generate lightning there, Wurm said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the October 2019 issue of the journal Icarus.

• Surprise! Jupiter's Lightning Looks a Lot Like Earth's
• Photos: Earth's Lightning Seen from Space
• Photos: Red Planet Views from Europe's Mars Express
• Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.
• Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 19:39 geschreven door peter  

D-Wave is a category of quantum machine created by D-Wave Systems, Inc., in Canada. The company seeks to exploit the potential quantum effects inherent in their processing systems.

Currently, D-Wave machines can only handle specific tasks. While they’re a long way from exponential speed dominance over classical computers, a recent paper suggests that D-Wave’s 2000Q computer can return solutions 2600 times faster than known algorithms.

D-Wave quantum machine via nature.com

{ https://www.gaia.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 19:24 geschreven door peter  

A MYTHICAL FORM OF SPACE PROPULSION FINALLY GETS A REAL TEST

SINCE THE BIRTH of the space age, the dream of catching a ride to another solar system has been hobbled by the “tyranny of the rocket equation,” which sets hard limits on the speed and size of the spacecraft we sling into the cosmos. Even with today’s most powerful rocket engines, scientists estimate it would take 50,000 years to reach our closest interstellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If humans ever hope to see an alien sunrise, transit times will have to drop significantly.

Of the advanced propulsion concepts that could theoretically pull that off, few have generated as much excitement—and controversy—as the EmDrive. First described nearly two decades ago, the EmDrive works by converting electricity into microwaves and channeling this electromagnetic radiation through a conical chamber. In theory, the microwaves can exert force against the walls of the chamber to produce enough thrust to propel a spacecraft once it’s in space. At this point, however, the EmDrive exists only as a laboratory prototype, and it’s still unclear whether it’s able to produce thrust at all. If it does, the forces it generates aren’t strong enough to be registered by the naked eye, much less propel a spacecraft.

Over the past few years, however, a handful of research teams, including one from NASA, claim to have successfully produced thrust with an EmDrive. If true, it would amount to one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of space exploration. The problem is that the thrust observed in these experiments is so small that it’s hard to tell if it’s real.

The resolution lies in designing a tool that can measure these minuscule amounts of thrust. So a team of physicists at Germany’s Technische Universität Dresden set out to create a device that would fill this need. Led by physicist Martin Tajmar, the SpaceDrive project aims to create an instrument so sensitive and immune to interference that it would put an end to the debate once and for all. In October, Tajmar and his team presented their second set of experimental EmDrive measurements at the International Astronautical Congress, and their results will be published in Acta Astronautica this August. Based on the results of these experiments, Tajmar says a resolution to the EmDrive saga may only be a few months away.

Many scientists and engineers dismiss the EmDrive because it appears to violate the laws of physics. Microwaves pushing on the walls of an EmDrive chamber seem to generate thrust ex nihilo, which runs afoul of the conservation of momentum—it’s all action and no reaction. Proponents of the EmDrive, in turn, have appealed to fringe interpretations of quantum mechanics to explain how the EmDrive might work without violating Newtonian physics. “From the theory point of view, no one takes this seriously,” Tajmar says. If the EmDrive is able to produce thrust, as some groups have claimed, he says they have “no clue where this thrust is coming from.” When there’s a theoretical rift of this magnitude in science, Tajmar sees only one way to close it: experimentation.

In late 2016, Tajmar and 25 other physicists gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, for the first conference dedicated to the EmDrive and related exotic propulsion systems. One of the most exciting presentations was given by Paul March, a physicist at NASA’s Eagleworks lab, where he and his colleague Harold White had been testing various EmDrive prototypes. According to March’s presentation and a subsequent paper published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power, he and White observed several dozen micro-newtons of thrust in their EmDrive prototype. (For the sake of comparison, a single SpaceX Merlin engine produces around 845,000 Newtons of thrust at sea level.) The problem for Harold and White, however, was that their experimental setup allowed for several sources of interference, so they couldn’t say for sure whether what they observed was thrust.

Tajmar and the Dresden group used a close replica of the EmDrive prototype used by Harold and White in their tests at NASA. It consists of a copper frustum—a cone with its top lopped off—that is just under a foot long. This design can be traced back to the engineer Roger Shawyer, who first described the EmDrive in 2001. During tests, the EmDrive cone is placed in a vacuum chamber. Outside the chamber, a device generates a microwave signal that gets relayed, using coaxial cables, to antennas inside the cone.

• LEARN MORE

THE WIRED GUIDE TO ALIENS

This isn’t the first time the Dresden team has sought to measure nearly imperceptible amounts of force. They built similar contraptions for their work on ion thrusters, which are used to precisely position satellites in space. These micro-newton thrusters are the kind that were used by the LISA Pathfinder mission, which needs extremely precise positioning ability to detect faint phenomena like gravitational waves. But to study the EmDrive and similar propellantless propulsion systems, Tajmar says, required nano-newton resolution.

Their approach was to use a torsion balance, a pendulum-type balance that measures the amount of torque applied to the axis of the pendulum. A less sensitive version of this balance was also used by the NASA team when they thought their EmDrive produced thrust. To accurately gauge the small amount of force, the Dresden team used a laser interferometer to measure the physical displacement of the balance scales produced by the EmDrive. According to Tajmar, their torsion scale has a nano-newton resolution and supports thrusters weighing several pounds, making it the most sensitive thrust balance in existence.

But a really sensitive thrust balance isn’t much use unless you can also determine whether the detected force is in fact thrust and not an artifact of outside interference. And there are plenty of alternate explanations for Harold and White’s observations. To determine whether an EmDrive actually produces thrust, researchers must be able to shield the device from interference caused by the Earth's magnetic poles, seismic vibrations from the environment, and the thermal expansion of the EmDrive due to heating from the microwaves.

Tweaks to the design of the torsion balance—to better control the EmDrive's power supply and shield it from magnetic fields—took care of some of the interference issues, Tajmar says. A more difficult problem was how to address “thermal drift.” When power flows to the EmDrive, the copper cone heats up and expands, which shifts its center of gravity just enough to cause the torsion balance to register force that can be mistaken as thrust. Tajmar and his team hoped that changing the orientation of the thruster helped address that issue.

Over the course of 55 experiments, Tajmar and his colleagues registered an average of 3.4 micro-newtons of force from the EmDrive, which was very similar to what the NASA team found. Alas, these forces did not appear to pass the thermal drift test. The forces seen in the data were more indicative of thermal expansion than thrust.

All hope is not lost for the EmDrive, however. Tajmar and his colleagues are also developing two additional types of thrust balances, including a superconducting balance that will, among other things, help to eliminate false positives produced by thermal drift. If they detect force from an EmDrive on these balances, there’s a high probability that it is actually thrust. But if no force is registered on these balances, it likely means that all the previous EmDrive thrust observations were false positives. Tajmar says he hopes to have a final verdict by the end of the year.

But even a negative result from that work might not kill the EmDrive for good. There are many other propellantless propulsion designs to pursue. And if scientists ever do develop new forms of weak propulsion, the hyper-sensitive thrust balances developed by Tajmar and the Dresden team will almost certainly play a role in sorting science fact from science fiction.

{ https://www.wired.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 19:05 geschreven door peter  

Amazon shows off new delivery drone that flies like a helicopter and a plane.

by ALAIN SHERTER

• Amazon's new electric delivery drone is designed to ferry light packages to customers' homes in less than 30 minutes.
• The ecommerce company says the unmanned aircraft uses AI and other advanced tech to safely fly and avoid obstacles.
• The FAA has certified both Amazon and a service being developed by Google-parent Alphabet to introduce commercial drone deliveries in 2019.
• Amazon also touts "Prime Air" as good for the air itself. Its drones are electric, which the company said will help reduce the carbon emissions that come with delivering packages by truck or car.

What can hover like a helicopter, fly like a plane and deliver household goods practically right to your door in under an hour? No, it's not Superman side-hustling for a few extra bucks — try Amazon's latest AI-powered drone, which the ecommerce company unveiled on Wednesday at its conference in Las Vegas.

As YouTube footage of the machine shows below, the Amazon unmanned aircraft does vertical takeoffs and landings, like a chopper, before shifting into airplane mode. The drone uses sensors, stereo optics and other software to avoid crashing into chimneys, power lines or other urban obstacles. It can also detect moving objects in the air, Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, said on the company's blog, which will come as a relief to paragliders.

"A customer's yard may have clotheslines, telephone wires or electrical wires. Wire detection is one of the hardest challenges for low-altitude flights," he wrote. "Through the use of computer-vision techniques we've invented, our drones can recognize and avoid wires as they descend into, and ascend out of, a customer's yard."

The demonstration is part of an Amazon project, dubbed Prime Air, that aims to enable drone delivery of small packages in less than 30 minutes. Wilke said the company expects the service to be up and flying "within months."

While that timeline sounds ambitious, the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday certified Prime Air to operate drones for deliveries, according to Yahoo! Finance. The agency in April gave Google's drone service the green light to start making commercial deliveries this year.

Amazon also touts Prime Air as good for the air itself. Its drones are electric, which the company said will help reduce the global-warming carbon emissions that come with delivering packages by truck or car, as well as cut back on short consumer trips to the store.

"With a service like Prime Air, we'll be able to order from home and stay home. This saves tremendously on fuel usage and reduces emissions," Wilke said.

Amazon, which has been criticized for not doing more to fight climate change, earlier this year announced plans to make half of all its shipments carbon-neutral by 2030. Along with using drones, it plans to reach that goal by using more solar power and shifting to electric delivery vehicles, among other measures.

{ https://www.cbsnews.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 18:50 geschreven door peter  

06-06-2019 om 18:37 geschreven door peter  

Flying saucers: Why Roswell was just the tip of the iceberg

By New York Post Video

For decades after a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, eerily similar flying saucer sightings dominated headlines around the globe. In this episode of “The Basement Office,” Nick Pope, formerly of the UK’s Ministry of Defence, joins us to connect the dots between those sightings and analyze the most credible reports.

Check out the last episode of “The Basement Office” here, and subscribe to our YouTube!

{ https://nypost.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 18:27 geschreven door peter  

‘Stortbui’ op weerradar blijkt gigantische zwerm lieveheersbeestjes te zijn - HLN.be

Bron: Los Angeles Times

Volgens weerman Joe Dandrea hadden de lieveheersbeestjes zich verspreid over een gebied van 130 km op 130 km - op een hoogte tussen 1,5 en 2,7 kilometer - maar was de grootste concentratie kevertjes zo’n 16 km breed.

Toen Dandrea het bizarre fenomeen op de radar spotte, belde hij een waarnemer in de bergen van San Bernardino ten noordoosten van Los Angeles om te vragen wat ze nu precies aan het waarnemen waren. Hij zei dat hij “kleine stipjes voorbij zag vliegen”, aldus Dandrea.

The Times suggereert dat het om de ‘hippodamia convergens’ ging, een van de 200 soorten die in Californië voorkomen. Deze lieveheersbeestjes paren in de lente en zoeken dan grotere hoogtes op om te migreren van de Sierra Nevada naar valleien, waar ze zich tegoed doen aan bladluizen en waar ze hun eieren leggen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

06-06-2019 om 16:17 geschreven door peter  

FBI releases Bigfoot files of brief probe into mythical creature

The FBI on Wednesday published the findings of their short-lived 1970s investigation into the existence of Bigfoot — the elusive mythical creature that’s rumored to have stalked the North American wilderness for decades.

The anticlimactic results of its 1976-1977 probe, however, determined the hair samples it examined were not from Bigfoot — but from “a member of the deer family.”

The feds released the 22-page investigation from the FBI Records Vault, which publishes department files requested through the Freedom of Information Act.

The probe kicked off at the behest of Peter Bryne, who at the time was the director of the now-shuttered Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in Oregon.

The center obtained a hair sample attached to a piece of skin — which it couldn’t identify and believed belonged to the furry Bigfoot.

Byrne in 1976 mailed the sample to the FBI, asking it to test it.

“We do not often come across hair which we are unable to identify and the hair that we have now, about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin, is the first that we have obtained in six years which we feel may be of importance,” Byrne wrote.

The FBI told the group its labs are typically used for research related to criminal investigations but consented to test the hair sample “in the interest of research and scientific inquiry.”

The feds closed out their Bigfoot investigation in 1977 once they traced the hairs to the “deer family” — but since then that hasn’t stopped the Bigfoot believers and their speculative sightings.

• Indian army claims expedition team found 'Yeti' footprints

• Shocked hunters film 'Bigfoot' stalking the mountains of Utah

• Hunter reportedly shot at person he thought was Bigfoot

• SUNY spent $750K on 'unwatchable' low-budget Bigfoot comedy

{https://nypost.com/ }

06-06-2019 om 15:52 geschreven door peter