Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
20-06-2019
Mysterious Man-Made Islands Are Even Older Than Stonehenge
Mysterious Man-Made Islands Are Even Older Than Stonehenge
Ancient artificial islands in Scotland are much older than previously thought. In fact, the islands are thousands of years older which was determined by pottery that was found in Scottish lochs.
All across Scotland, there are hundreds of small man-made islands (or crannogs), specifically in the islands of the Outer Hebrides which are located off the north-west coast of the country. Previously, archaeologists thought that the oldest man-made island dated back to 800 B.C. during the Iron Age and that it was used for approximately 2,500 years.
Crannog
However, a crannog located on the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist has been determined to date back to around 3700 B.C. during the Neolithic Period. This suggested that numerous other islands could also date back to that time period – thousands of years older than previously thought. And now it has been confirmed.
Well-preserved pots from the Neolithic Period located near a different crannog on the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis were discovered in 2012 by Chris Murray who was a former Navy diver. With the help from Murray, several other crannogs in the Outer Hebrides were then examined by Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading, UK, as well as one of his colleagues.
They used radiocarbon dating to determine how old the structural timbers and residue from the pots were and they concluded that they were from 3640 to 3360 B.C. Stones and wood were used to create the small islands. In fact, one of the islands that measured 26 by 22 meters was constructed with stones that each weighed up to 250 kilograms. It is believed that these crannogs were used for social gatherings, funerals, or ritualized feasting.
Crannog
Of the hundreds of Neolithic pots that were discovered – some were found on the small islands, while the majority of them were discovered in the water – several of the pieces were surprisingly well preserved. Garrow wrote that the ceramics were intentionally put in the water based on how they were positioned and how many of them were discovered. Additionally, he mentioned that the ceramics pretty much remained in the same spots where they were left since the waters were so calm and stable – just waiting to be discovered over 5,000 years after they were put there.
To put this into an even better perspective, Stonehenge first started being built around 3100 B.C., several hundred years after the man-made islands of Scotland were created.
Missing Helicopter Found Crashed on UFO Hot Spot Catalina Island
Missing Helicopter Found Crashed on UFO Hot Spot Catalina Island
Strange coincidences surrounding recent To the Stars Academy (TTSA) and Navy disclosures keep adding up – although coincidences are often just that: a remarkable concurrence of events without any causal connection. Or at least any obviousconnection.
For those of us who have been watching the long-awaited History Channel and TTSA series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation know that the show has mainly rehashed and repackaged accounts that have been in circulation for some time. Still, it’s been interesting to see these individuals on screen after reading about them endlessly for the past two years. While the show’s contributions to ufology are still being debated, one of the more interesting revelations the series has presented so far has been its focus on a pair of islands just off the west coast of California and Baja California: Guadalupe Island and Catalina Island.
Santa Catalina Island, more commonly referred to as simply Catalina Island.
Guadalupe Island is home to a tiny Mexican military installation called Campamento Militar Isla Guadalupe featuring a 1,200-metre-long (3,900 ft) runway. Other than that, the island boasts less than 150 permanent residents, most of whom only live on the island during fishing season.
Catalina Island, meanwhile, has for years been considered somewhat of a UFO (and USO) hot spot due to the numerous sightings that have occurred on or around the island throughout its history. The waters surrounding the island are also the site of unusually large craters and several gravitational and magnetic anomalies believed to be the result of volcanic and seismic activity along fault lines. During World War Two, the U.S. Maritime Service U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army Signal Corp, the Office of Strategic Services, and the U.S. Navy all either conducted training or operated facilities on the island. Today, Catalina Island boasts UFO tour companies to capitalize on the tiny island’s somewhat storied history.
According to the testimony of USS Nimitz radar operator Gary Voorhis, the infamous Tic-Tac UFOs were first detected in the vicinity of Catalina Island and later disappeared while heading south near Guadalupe Island. The significance of these islands to the developing Navy UFO story, if any, remains unknown. Now, just two weeks after Unidentified aired episodes featuring Luis Elizondo traveling to and around the island, a strange and unsolved aircraft crash has been reported on Catalina Island.
The resort town of Avalon on the island has long been a popular getaway for residents of Southern California.
According to local news reports, a helicopter that had been missing for over 20 hours was suddenly discovered on the island by Coast Guard and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department personnel. Footage taken from nearby waters shows the wreckage of the helicopter lying atop a hill still smoldering. The pilot was found dead at the scene. How could a helicopter go missing for 20 hours on a populated island?
Details are still scarce, and both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are conducting an investigation. The pilot was known to take recreational flights around the island, so it’s likely this was just an unfortunate accident. Still, it’s strange to see Catalina Island pop up in the news for an unexplained aircraft crash so shortly after the island was featured by To the Stars Academy as a UFO hot spot. Was this crash due to a mechanical failure or pilot error, and is the timing pure coincidence? Most likely, if not almost certainly. Or, perhaps far at the other end of the plausibility spectrum, could the unidentified aerial phenomena reported on the island for decades have anything to do with the crash? What about those magnetic anomalies?
White Tube UFO Seen Over Wichita USA June 16 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
White Tube UFO Seen Over Wichita USA June 16 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: June 16, 2019 Location of sighting: Wichita, USA This UFO has some similar movement and color to some that were seen about 7 years back over New York and caught on video, seen on TV news. As this UFO notices the jet passing overhead, it seems to nervously slow down and dip down and then up slightly. The movement of the UFO shows me it is not a balloon or remote control toy. This is an alien craft. Scott C. Waring
Two UFOs Over Egyptian Pyramids, Ancient Aliens? Video, UFO Sighting News.
Two UFOs Over Egyptian Pyramids, Ancient Aliens? Video, UFO Sighting News.
Here is an interesting UFO seen by an asian tourist while visiting the pyramids in Egypt. The UFO streaks across the sky like a meteor, but then part of it shoots out another white orb and that orb travels in the opposite direction. It looks to me like the people who built the pyramids were doing a flyby to check on it.
UFO Over Dayton Ohio Filmed 18 June 2019 een For 3 Hours! Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Over Dayton Ohio Filmed 18 June 2019 Seen For 3 Hours! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: June 18, 2019 Location of sighting: Dayton, Ohio, USA This white UFO was seen over the Wright Patterson military base area. The UFO is said to have hovered there for over three hours, then suddenly turns orange and disappears. This looks really big, about ten meters, so I imagine there are a lot of others who saw this UFO. The UFO doesn't resemble anything I can think of and makes me wonder why it was at the military base and not being confronted by jets? Scott C. Waring Video states:
Got an alert from a client who "got a call" from a friend. As you know, Wright Patterson Airforce Base is in Dayton, Ohio. If they had a radar, they'd know if there was something odd. I filmed this personally. Here is the entire video. It goes from blurry to focused because on the small screen I could not tell whether it was focused right, so I kept going back and forth to make sure that I got at least some clear footage -- and I did. Pause it. Very odd. It stayed in place, or moved VERY slowly for about an hour. It did not seem to change in size. Then the clouds came. This is posted as of 8pm, day of, filmed about 30 minutes ago. Weather balloon? Why is it reflective on two or more sides, then?
Bob Lazar And George Knapp Talk About Area S4 And Much More! UFO Sighting News.
Bob Lazar And George Knapp Talk About Area S4 And Much More! UFO Sighting News.
Here is a great interview with the world famous Bob Lazar and George Knapp as they discuss element 115, raids, warrants, Area S4, the UFO Bob worked on, and so much more. Something that really hit me is when he was talking about the inside of the UFO. It has no seems, no right angles of any kind. He said the only way to turn off the UFOs engines is to take one of them ad tilt it 180 degrees until it shuts itself off. Absolute amazing, I really wish I had been there to do the interviews. But I'm sure every question Bob has ever been asked has probably been answered by him a thousand times.
The white UFO was seen in the most recent photo taken by the NASA rover. The UFO in the distance is watching the Mars rover...studying this primitive device. I wonder if this is the closest they have come to the rover, or have they actually physically touched it in any way. I have seen many white glowing lights on Mars, but never one hovering and never one the shape of disk. This is new to me. I need to dig deeper into the photos to see if its been caught in any other photos. I would love to see this closer and at a different angle. Scott C. Waring
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Are UFOs a Threat to National Security? This Ex-U.S. Official Thinks They Warrant Investigation
Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
Are UFOs a Threat to National Security? This Ex-U.S. Official Thinks They Warrant Investigation
Chris Mellon believes the government should more aggressively gather intel on military UFO sightings, some of which were captured on video.
Throughout his distinguished government career, Chris Mellon has been keenly focused on the prospect of unconventional national threats. Now he works with a civilian group called To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, trying to prod the U.S. defense and intelligence communities to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs—also known as UFOs) that maneuver in ways that have no known precedent.
He’s inspired, he says, by the growing number of such sightings in sensitive military contexts—reported by highly trained, highly credible witnesses and corroborated by some of the world’s most sophisticated technology, including several infrared videos shot from fighter jets. He doesn’t claim to know what these unusual crafts might be, nor does he assume they bring “aliens” from afar. To him, they signal a potential high-level strategic threat of unknown origin—one the nation would be foolish to ignore.
Chris Mellon (left) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Photo by Andrew Cagle
Mellon is uniquely qualified to assess such threats. Having served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and later as Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was heavily responsible for reviewing agencies and budgets involved in top-secret “black programs” related to things such as special operations and nuclear weapons. Mellon is now an integral part of the investigative team featured on HISTORY's “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.” We talked to him about what’s happening—and what he thinks should be done.
Why raise the alarm now about UFOs/AAVs?
What is really motivating me right now, what really has accelerated and solidified my interest, is the [2004] USS Nimitz case—when I learned of that and began to talk to the military personnel involved. We had multiple naval aviators [reporting] what they saw [wingless UFOs, with extraordinary capabilities] in broad daylight, over an extended period of time. It was corroborated by the most sophisticated air-defense sensor systems on earth, and on multiple platforms operated by multiple independent individuals. So when you start talking about that level of evidence, I think any reasonable person would have to say—this is real, and we should proceed accordingly.
Which means what? Intelligence gathering? Risk assessment?
From a national security standpoint of course, you’re paid to be paranoid, to think about risk. So you do inevitably wonder: Why are these things currently in these locations at these times? Have we been technologically leapfrogged? Could it be the Russians or Chinese—or someone else? And what else may be going on?
There are craft that are violating our airspace with unknown intentions and extraordinary capabilities. And until we get some answers to the questions about the technology involved and the capability, the intentions, we shouldn't rest easy.
I have lived through and survived intelligence failures, including the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, and the Iraq war. Some of those problems are manifest in the situation again today. And that's part of what concerns me—people are not paying attention or not engaging, and the data is extremely compelling. We don't want to have to relive mistakes we've seen in the past, like in Pearl Harbor, where radar blips were observed and nobody paid attention.
When the Nimitz pilots got back to the aircraft carrier, no one took their report seriously.
It was extraordinary that when the [Nimitz] pilots landed, that they were ridiculed. There was no interest expressed on the part of the intelligence personnel on board, in terms of documenting this, running this up the chain. It was the inverse of what you would normally expect. We spent $50 billion a year and have an intelligence apparatus, in large part to avert strategic surprise. And here we have a case where incredible technology is manifesting itself, intelligently controlled vehicles operating in and around the carrier battle group—and the system doesn't react. It shuts down. It tries to suppress the information.
I think a large part of the reason is because people have a hard time processing something so radical; there's no frame of reference for it.
There's a great deal of agitation on the part of our combat personnel who are encountering these objects—and understandably so. Their concerns are what we're trying to relay. We respect the uniform, we respect those personnel, and we're deeply concerned that the information they’re trying to provide is not being acted on.
If one of these craft bore a Russian insignia, do you think the response would be different?
One of the things that I've often pointed out—and I've never found anyone who disagreed with this—is that if any one of these objects had a Russian insignia on it, the entire system would be electrified and would spring into action.
Sixty years ago, the public was rightly agitated to learn that the Soviet Union had beaten us to space, had deployed the first man-made satellite in orbit. That capability and the momentum they were achieving with their space program understandably generated a lot of concern here in the context of the Cold War. I would hope that people, when they get this information, would react now as the public did then, which is to raise questions about what we are doing in response to that.
How has that question-raising gone for you inside the Beltway?
When you're talking to people about this issue in the Pentagon, you're going to draw blank stares. Even from very high-ranking officials, very, very few of them have any exposure to the actual underlying information and the empirical data. So there's a propensity for people to say, "Well if this were real, I'd know about it, because I'm well plugged in, I've got all these security clearances, and I get access to all this information."
Well, the fact is, the information has not been disseminated through normal channels.
Didn’t the U.S. government investigate UFOs during the Cold War?
In the 1940s, shortly after the war, the military began to encounter an increasing a number of UFOs, and the number of incidents spiked enormously. They recognized the need to try to understand the phenomenon, which resulted in series of investigations culminating in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a program that lasted until the late ’60s.
Ultimately, the government determined it needed to tamp down the public concern, in part because during the Cold War, this could create some kind of hysteria. The government concluded, behind the scenes, that it needed to discredit this phenomenon—not due to a lack of compelling information. It was actually the result of compelling information. When the Air Force undertook this study, they examined 12,000 cases. Of those, 700 were unexplained.
The first question all of us have asked when we've seen the information is: Could this possibly be one of our own programs, a highly classified U.S. test program?
I served in a capacity in which it was my job to conduct oversight of our black programs, and never saw anything of this kind on the books. Moreover, I was once actually specifically asked to determine whether we had a capability along these lines, in response to a query from the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Bobby Byrd.
I ran that all the way up the flagpole with the Air Force and others, and believe me, everyone respected Senator Byrd. No one was going to lie to him and risk his wrath. And the answer was, “Absolutely not. We don’t have a super-secret black triangle that can go at hypersonic speeds and all that sort of thing.”
Secondly, a technology like this is so radical, it can't just appear out of nowhere. There have to be facilities, there has to have been research and development, a prototype. We don't see any evidence of that anywhere.
Thirdly, these aircraft are being observed operating in and around carrier battle groups that are armed with air-to-air missiles and so forth. We never, to my knowledge, put at risk those personnel—or test personnel—by flying them in an uncoordinated manner against carrier battle groups. That's just not how we operate.
Chris Mellon (right) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Photo by Andrew Cagle
Talk about To the Stars Academy, where you work with Tom DeLonge and Luis Elizondo. What’s the mission?
They are not necessarily asserting that these are alien craft or anything of that kind. They are people like me who see this as an incredible mystery and enigma that that needs to be resolved.
We’re helping to change the climate, I think, and establish that there are reasonable level-headed, patriotic people who are willing to speak about this.
My goal, personally, in my role within the organization, is to help break down the bureaucratic walls that are preventing this information from reaching Congress and the American people. I'm not trying to drive any particular agenda. I want to ensure, if possible, that people who have responsibility for national security are informed and have the facts and the data.
Is anyone else exploring these questions?
One of the things that's really exciting to me is that we are one of only three efforts in the world that are [currently] in a position to potentially answer the profound, timeless question “Are we alone in the universe?”
Today, NASA is spending about $20 billion a year. A small portion of that is directed toward trying to uncover, identify exobiology—alien life. They're looking for microbial life on Mars, and they want to use the next generation of space telescopes to examine the atmospheres of different planets for molecules that would be consistent with life. Not necessarily intelligent life, just some kind of life. So that's a very slow-moving, wonderful program—exquisite science, but not likely to answer the question anytime soon.
There's a Russian billionaire who has self-funded a program listening for signals from space that might reveal alien communications. It's a very worthwhile effort. But so far they've had no success. We probably don't even know what to look for. We probably wouldn't recognize the signals. So it's a difficult proposition.
The third effort, that we're associated with, is trying to convince our government to use the capabilities it already has to understand the UFO phenomenon. And if we find out it's the Russians or Chinese or others, then we've done a great thing for the country and for national security.
What are those capabilities? What are you suggesting?
The U.S. government has an extraordinary network of sensors—from geosynchronous orbit 22,500 miles away to the depths of the ocean—and many places in between. And that fairly exquisitely sophisticated and calibrated sensor network is acquiring data that could help answer these questions that no one is even bothering to look at.
We've already paid for it. It’s just sitting there at a computer and no one is even interested enough to say, “Gee, during that period when this carrier battle group was engaging these unknown vehicles in the Pacific… What other signatures are we seeing in that area?” Nobody's analyzing it, no one's pulling it together.
So the first step is to convince the Congress, the executive branch, to simply use the apparatus the taxpayer has already bought and paid for to try to answer the question.
Robotic fighter jets could soon join military pilots on combat missions. Here's why.
Robotic fighter jets could soon join military pilots on combat missions. Here's why.
The fast-flying drones would scout enemy locations and draw fire that otherwise would be directed at human pilots.
The Boeing Airpower Teaming System is the company's first unmanned system developed in Australia and designed for global defense customers.Boeing
By Jeremy Hsu
Military pilots may soon have a new kind of wingman to depend upon: not flesh-and-blood pilots but fast-flying, sensor-studded aerial drones that fly into combat to scout enemy targets and draw enemy fire that otherwise would be directed at human-piloted aircraft.
War planners see these robotic wingmen as a way to amplify air power while sparing pilots' lives and preventing the loss of sophisticated fighter jets, which can cost more than $100 million apiece.
"These drone aircraft are a way to get at that in a more cost-effective manner, which I think is really a game-changer for the Air Force," says Paul Scharre, director of the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
Unlike slow-moving drones such as the Reaper and the Global Hawk, which are flown remotely by pilots on the ground, the new combat drones would be able to operate with minimal input from human pilots. To do that, they'd be equipped with artificial intelligence systems that give them the ability not only to fly but also to learn from and respond to the needs of the pilots they fly alongside.
"The term we use in the Air Force is quarterbacking," says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the U.S. Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and one of the experts working to develop the AI wingmen. "So the pilot is calling a play and knows how the systems will respond, but doesn't have to run the play for them."
Training a robotic wingman
Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory took an important step in the development of the AI wingmen by announcing its Skyborg program focused on developing the AI necessary to control the drones. As part of the program, Air Force pilots are already flying simulated missions alongside the drones. Roper says drones like the XQ-58A Valkyrie, a 652-mph drone built by Sacramento-based Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems with a projected manufacturing cost of $2 million apiece, could be AI-enabled and ready to fly within the next three years.
The XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator, a long-range unmanned air vehicle, completed its inaugural flight on March 5, 2019 at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.Senior Airman Joshua Hoskins / US Air Force
"I wouldn't be surprised if the AI becomes tailored to individual pilots," Roper says. "They're actually training their own AI that augments their strengths and weaknesses."
The U.S. military isn't alone in working to develop fighter drones. The Future Combat Air System is a $74-million, two-year deal between Germany and France aimed at building a next-generation fighter that would act as a flying command center for swarms of the fighter drones.
The latter program plans for the first test flight to take place in 2020, with the goal of eventually selling the system worldwide.
Partners or replacements?
Given the rise of drones and AI, some experts question whether it makes sense to continue sending human pilots into harm's way. Why not have people on the ground or in an airborne command center give orders to swarms of combat drones — and let them carry out the mission on their own?
"If you just make the human go fly in combat and their wingman is a drone, it doesn't change their risk profile at all — it only adds to their workload," says Missy Cummings, director of the humans and autonomy laboratory at Duke University and a former fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy.
Scharre says the military still needs humans "forward in the fight" to guide combat drones. But he too sees a coming shift in the role of combat pilots — from flying a fighter jet and controlling its weapons systems to acting as a "battle manager" who decides what actions need to be taken by piloted and drone aircraft. That will likely include deciding when drones should use deadly force and selecting specific targets — decisions that the U.S. military is hesitant to hand over entirely to AI in part because research suggests AI is less skilled than humans at adapting to changing or uncertain situations.
"A country that does not have pilots trained as good as we do might see appeal in shifting more and more of their mission to autonomous systems," Roper says. "Well, if they do that, I think we will have the advantage, because those autonomous systems acting alone will never be able to do what people teamed with machines are able to do."
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
19-06-2019
The True Story Behind Project Blue Book: When The United States Government Actually Hunted For Aliens
The True Story Behind Project Blue Book: When The United States Government Actually Hunted For Aliens
By Katie Serena
For centuries, humans have wondered if they are alone in the universe. In the early 20th century, the US government set out to figure it out once and for all.
Photograph of the supposed Westall UFO. More than 200 students and teachers at two Victorian state schools allegedly witnessed this UFO, 1966. Project Blue Book would have sought to explain this such incident.
In their new drama series, the History Channel dives into the murky world of UFO sightings and explores a very real, but now defunct, project funded by the US government known as Project Blue Book. The project was responsible for separating fantastic myths from real-life mysteries.
Since man first walked the earth – and especially since he first walked the moon – one question has plagued humankind; are we really alone in this wide, unending universe? In ancient times the appearance of shooting stars sparked interest in extraterrestrial life forms. Now, the so-called signs are much more advanced – floating lights, drone photographs, and first-hand accounts of actual abductions.
But where does the fantasy end and the reality begin? Just how many of those floating lights or grainy photos or wild accounts are real? And if they are, is the government hiding it all from us? Project Blue Book hoped to answer each of these questions.
The Birth Of Project Blue Book
While extraterrestrial enthusiasts are the butt of many a joke, especially where aliens are concerned (looking at you, Guy From Ancient Aliens), it may surprise you to know that they were once taken seriously.
In fact, there was once a very official project, run by the United States Air Force, that specialized in pinpointing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and determining their purpose. This endeavor was known as Project Blue Book.
It all began in 1947, when an army general named Lt. General Nathan Twining sent a classified memo to the Pentagon. Titled “Flying Discs,” the memo detailed an encounter Twining had had with a group of disc-like aircraft. He claimed that the discs demonstrated “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.”
Getty Images
A picture of a flying saucer photographed by farmer Paul Trent shown flying over his farm, May 11, 1950, in Minnville, Oregon.
Per Twining’s memo, Project Sign was started at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Project Sign was later replaced by Project Grudge, though neither collected sufficient data or turned out any viable conclusions. Thus, Project Blue Book was born.
According to government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, Project Blue Book ran officially from 1952 to 1969. Even though the facts of Project Blue Book have been released to the public, there remains a certain amount of mystery surrounding the events, fueling conspiracy theories and casting a veil of doubt over any real facts that stand out.
To sort out fact from fiction is, depending on who you ask, impossible. However, in any mention of the project, two things are consistently conveyed as fact: that the project aimed to a.) determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and b.) to scientifically analyze any and all collected UFO-related data.
With those two aims in mind, the project was born. Though it wasn’t the first of its kind it was the first to be run effectively and collect usable conclusive data.
Under the guidance of a handful of Air Force generals, the operatives working for the project spent their time essentially on the lookout for UFOs. Cold War panic had instilled in the American public the fear of all things unknown – especially things that came from the sky, and from the general direction of Russia.
Project Blue Book was, in part, supposed to dispell some of this panic and to debunk theories that the Russians were colluding with aliens, or that the United States was under attack from yet another foreign foe.
The Players
Maj. Gen. John A. Samford’s Statement on ‘Flying Saucers,’ Pentagon, Washington, DC, 1952.
The first head to Project Blue Book was Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, an experienced airman and was decorated for his efforts in World War II with the Air Corps. He officially coined the term “Unidentified Flying Object” and was dedicated to scientifically and genuinely researching each UFO sighting. He looked into such popular cases as the Lubbock Lights, which was a UFO in Texas, and a 1952 radar case over Washington D.C.
Ruppelt’s lead scientific consultant was J. Allen Hynek, a prominent astronomer from Chicago. In the TV series, Hynek is be played by Aidan Gillen, a.k.a Little Finger from Game of Thrones.
As a scientist, Hynek’s participation legitimized the project in a way; it wasn’t just a bunch of soldiers searching the sky for mysterious lights, it was now a scientific study of life beyond earth.
PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images
J. Allen Hynek, UFO expert circa 1977 in New York City.
Most of Hynek’s job involved explaining away mysterious lights as a natural phenomenon or attributing flying objects to planes, asteroids, or sometimes simply clouds. Hynek went into the project a self-proclaimed skeptic and admitted that sometimes he tried too hard to explain the strange phenomenon away with implausible reason.
However, there were a few events that took place during the project that sparked Hynek’s interest enough for him to continue his own UFO studies long after Project Blue Book shut down. In fact, it was Hynek who would go on to coin the infamous alien term “close encounters.”
Of his change of heart, Hynek once told an interviewer that “You can’t assume that everything is black no matter what…the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this.”
Several Army generals oversaw Project Blue Book during the almost two decades it ran. Each general had a different regime, different goals and different interpretations of what they were looking for, and sometimes, their findings disputed those of their predecessors.
Perhaps the most change-ridden era in Project Blue Book was that of Major Hector Quintanilla. Under Major Quintanilla’s watch, the project underwent changes, some of which were performed under suggestion from outside forces, something that had rarely been done under previous generals.
One of the first changes to the project was the verification of several lights that had been popping up for years in the same place. Quintanilla’s officers found that many previous researchers had been mistaking Jupiter for UFO lights for several years. He found several similar misidentifications as well.
Perhaps the most important event that happened under Major Quintanilla was a congressional hearing.
Wikimedia Commons
Members of Project Blue Book in 1962, Major Hector Quintanilla is seated at the center.
In 1966, the northern area of New England began to experience a string of potentially extraterrestrial encounters. Lights flashed across the sky in patterned formations and residents reported flying discs hovering in the air.
It got to the point where a congressional hearing was ordered by the House Committee on Armed Services. The lights were explained away as a flying billboard and an airforce training exercise, but speculation still abounded. It took Hynek testifying that he had “not seen any evidence to confirm” extraterrestrial existence to put the matter to bed, but many believe that Hynek may have been fibbing.
Major Quintanilla also oversaw the suggestion of other changes at Project Blue Book. Under direction from Hynek, the project intended to improve upon communication between the scientific community and the researchers. Hynek believed that there was less attention to scientific detail being paid than there was to the public relations aspect of the project.
In other words, Hynek wanted to find real UFOs, while the army was focused on making sure that the public knew that UFOs weren’t real. While the changes were almost implemented, and some of the focus started shifting to real science, the payoff wasn’t what Hynek expected. Before much further research could be done, the project began to come to an end.
“The entire Blue Book operation was a foul-up based on the categorical premise that the incredible things reported could not possibly have any basis in fact.”
Indeed, Hynek would later admit that many of his investigations simply defied explanation, though he publicly went along with the skeptical sentiments of the Air Force. Hynek would later reveal that Quintanilla’s “method was simple: disregard any evidence that was counter to his hypothesis.” He added that under Quintanilla, “the flag of the utter nonsense school was flying at its highest on the mast.”
The Findings
Throughout the 17 years that it operated, Project Blue Book collected 12,618 UFO reports. 11,917 of them were explained away as the result of cloud coverage obscuring aircraft lights, classified Airforce training exercises, or mirages in the deserts of the southwestern United States.
However, to conspiracy theorists delight, 701 of those cases remain “unsolved.” Whether the researchers didn’t have time to solve them, or whether they really were aliens flying overhead remains unknown.
Getty Images
This UFO hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico. The object was photographed by a government employee and was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization after careful study. There is no conventional explanation for the object.
In late 1969, Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr. announced that Project Blue Book was coming to an end, as there was no further scientific evidence to prove that UFOs were a matter of national security. The project officially ceased to exist on Dec. 17, 1969, though some research efforts continued until January of the following year.
The official findings of Project Blue Book claimed that four things influenced UFO sightings:
1. Mass hysteria among the American people. 2. Individuals hoping to propose a hoax to seek fame. 3. Psychopathological persons. 4. Misidentification of conventional objects.
The findings also provided a firm response to the existence of UFOs claiming the following:
1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security. 2. There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge. 3. There has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles.
In short, Project Blue Book, while sparking interest in the existence of UFOs, claimed to have solved the mystery once and for all by chalking it up to natural phenomenon.
Hynek went on to continue his own investigations and established the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973. Of the myriad investigations CUFOS undertook, roughly 80 percent of them can be explained. 20 percent remains a mystery.
But, while the US Airforce may believe the final report of Project Blue Book to be true, the question still lingers in the minds of skeptics and experts alike today: Are we really alone in the universe?
Any intelligent aliens that humans manage to contact probably won't look much like you or me, or the squid-like creatures in the new film "Arrival."
If an extraterrestrial species becomes advanced enough to send signals Earthlings can pick up, it will likely shed its traditional biological trappings and become a form of machine intelligence in rather short order, said veteran alien hunter Seth Shostak.
To make his case, Shostak pointed to the path that humanity appears to be on. The human species invented the radio around 1900 and the computer in 1945, and it's already manufacturing relatively cheap devices with greater computing power than the human brain. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
The development of true, strong artificial intelligence (AI) is therefore not too far off, experts have said. The famous futurist Ray Kurzweil, for example, has pegged 2045 as the year this world-changing "singularity" will hit.
"But maybe it takes to 2100, or 2150, or 2250. It doesn't matter," Shostak said in September during a presentation at the Dent:Space conference in San Francisco. "The point is, any society that invents radio, so we can hear them, within a few centuries, they've invented their successors. And I think that's important, because the successors are machines."
AI will interface with people's bodies for a while, but eventually humans will abandon the wetware and go fully digital, Shostak predicted.
"It'll be like — you build a four-cylinder engine. You put it in a horse to get a faster horse. And pretty soon you say, 'Look, let's get rid of the horse part and just build a Maserati,'" said Shostak, an astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California. "So that's probably what's going to happen."
Humans' machine selves will get smarter and more capable incredibly quickly, he added. Humanity's present intelligence is the result of 4 billion years of Darwinian evolution, which uses random variation as its raw material and is not directed toward any particular goal. But the evolution of machine intelligence will be engineered and efficient, Shostak said.
"Once you invent a thinking machine, you say, 'Invent something better than you are,' and you build that. 'Design something better than you are,' and you build that, and so forth," he said.
This idea has serious implications for the search for intelligent alien life. Unlike Earth organisms, super-advanced extraterrestrial machines would not require water or other chemicals to survive, so they would not be tied to their ancestors' home worlds tightly at all, Shostak said. And journeying tremendous distances would not be a big deal to these machines, provided they could access enough energy and raw materials to keep repairing themselves over the millennia, he said.
"We continue to look in the directions of star systems that we think have habitable words, that have planets where biology could cook up and eventually turn into something clever like you guys," he told the Dent:Space audience. "But I don't think it's going to be that way."
Shostak said he isn't counseling his fellow SETI astronomers to stop investigating potentially Earth-like planets such as Proxima b, a recently discovered world that lies just 4.2 light-years away. (And simple life-forms could still inhabit such worlds even if their most intelligent inhabitants went digital and departed long ago, Shostak said.) But it may be a good idea to expand the search to regions of space that would seemingly be attractive to digital life-forms, he said — for example, places with lots of available energy, such as the centers of galaxies.
"That may be where the really clever beings are," Shostak said.
"Maybe what we ought to do is look at places on the sky that connect two places where there is a lot of energy," in an attempt to intercept communications between alien machines, Shostak added.
"This is my message to you: We're looking for analogues of ourselves, but I don't know that that's the majority of the intelligence in the universe," Shostak concluded. "I'm willing to bet it's not."
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Dark Forest theory: A terrifying explanation of why we haven’t heard from aliens yet
Dark Forest theory: A terrifying explanation of why we haven’t heard from aliens yet
The Fermi paradox asks us where all the aliens are if the cosmos should be filled with them. The Dark Forest theory says we should pray we never find them.
The Milky Way galaxy has 200 billion stars and perhaps 100 billion planets. If even a small fraction of those planets harbored life, and even if only a pathetic scattering of those planets had lifeforms which became intelligent, our galaxy would be teeming with alien civilizations, some of whom would be either looking for us or discoverable for at least a little while.
The number of alien civilizations the galaxy should have can be determined by an equation, the Drake equation, that turns the above factors into variables. When you plug them into the formula, you find that there should be at least 20 civilizations in our cosmic neighborhood.
This makes the fact that we have yet to find any other life in the cosmos almost shocking when you think about it. This seeming discord between how many advanced civilizations ought to be in space and the lack of evidence for any is known as the Fermi paradox. It has lead to dozens of hypotheses and potential solutions over the last few decades.
Many of the solutions aim at one of the variables in the Drake equation and try to make the supposed number of civilizations lower so it is more reasonable for us to not have met anybody yet.
Some propose that life starting at all is rare, others suggest that the development of intelligence is the bottleneck, others still posit that most civilizations would live for a short time before blowing themselves up or, conversely, never even manage to invent the radio.
One solution, however, is a bit darker than the others
The Dark Forest solution explains why we haven't heard from aliens by positing that they are purposefully keeping quiet.
The reasoning is laid out best in the science fiction novel The Dark Forest, by Liu Cixin. The plot of the book, the second in a series, concerns questions of how to best interact with potentially hostile alien life.
In the novel, the argument is laid out like this:
All life desires to stay alive.
There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance.
Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same.
Since all other lifeforms in the novel are risk-averse and willing to do anything to save themselves, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. This leads to all civilizations attempting to hide in radio silence.
The reasoning behind the paranoia is explained in this paragraph from the novel:
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds another life—another hunter, angel, or a demon, a delicate infant to tottering old man, a fairy or demigod—there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them.
Is there a non-literary approach to this solution? Or is it just an idea that is good for a story?
It was also put forth by scientist David Brin as a potential solution to the lack of radio evidence for alien life. While the variant he describes relies on robotic probes carrying out the task of killing off civilizations other than the one that created it, the core concept remains the same. In this excerpt, he explains why this solution an attractive one for scientific purposes and terrifying for existential reasons:
“It is consistent with all of the facts and philosophical principles described in the first part of this article. There is no need to struggle to suppress the elements of the Drake equation in order to explain the Great Silence, nor need we suggest that no ETIS anywhere would bear the cost of interstellar travel. It need only happen once for the results of this scenario to become the equilibrium condition in the Galaxy. We would not have detected extraterrestrial radio traffic- nor would any ETIS have ever settled on Earth- because all were killed shortly after discovering radio."
He then reminds us that broadcasts of I Love Lucy are racing across the cosmos, ready to reveal our location and sense of humor to anybody who can pick them up.
How plausible is this theory?
This theory has the advantage of only affecting one of the variables in the Drake equation and affecting the one that is the most open to speculation. It also doesn't require us to make broad assumptions about how all alien civilizations behave; a single advanced race that acts this way would be enough to cause the observed situation.
This would also explain why we haven't found any mundane alien radio signals despite a century of being able to pick them up. Just as we accidentally send our radio signals, meant for us, out into space, another civilization would be likely to as well. One possible reason for this is that other civilizations are so fearful of being detected that they purposely avoid sending out any radio evidence of their existence.
It does, however, assume that other species have a similar risk aversion level and reasoning process as we do or that there really is one civilization out there killing off anybody they think can harm them. This is a big assumption.
Why is this theory dark?
We've been screaming our existence to the cosmos for almost one hundred years now. Any aliens within a one hundred light year radius of us would be receiving a barrage of radio signals from our direction. If we had reason to avoid letting aliens know about us, as Stephen Hawking thought we did, we might have a problem.
Why haven't we heard from aliens yet? If this solution is correct, they are purposely hiding in the darkness of space for fear of death. Should we stop broadcasting our existence to the universe too then? Or would alien life be a little nicer than we've been in our history?
Scientists have discovered a massive subsurface deposit of dense material – probably metal – beneath the largest crater on the moon. Did it result from a huge asteroid impact or a former lunar ocean of molten rock?
The South Pole-Aitken Basin (outlined) on the far side of the moon. The unusual mass is beneath the surface in this area.
What is hiding beneath the largest crater on Earth’s moon (in fact, the largest crater in our solar system)? That’s what scientistssaid they’d like to find out after an unusual large mass of material was discovered lurking underneath the lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.
The intriguing peer-reviewed findings were first published in the April 15, 2019, issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. From the abstract:
The South Pole-Aitken Basin is a gigantic impact structure on the far side of the moon, with an inner rim extending approximately 2,000 kilometers [1,200 miles] in the long-axis dimension. The structure and history of this basin are illuminated by gravity and topography data, which constrain the subsurface distribution of mass. These data point to the existence of a large excess of mass in the moon’s mantle under the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This anomaly … likely extends to depths of more than 300 km [about 200 miles].
False-color map of the far side of the moon, showing the location of the unusual massive subsurface deposit beneath the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Image via NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/ University of Arizona/ Baylor University.
So what is this mysterious mass?
It is most likely metal of some kind, given its density and the fact that it is weighing the crater basin floor down by more than half a mile (0.8 km). An ancient asteroid impact would be a logical solution. Computer simulations of large asteroid impacts suggest that, under the right conditions, an iron-nickel core of an asteroid might be lodged into the upper mantle of the moon (the layer between the moon’s crust and core) during an impact, in this case the impact that created the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Researchers analyzed data from spacecraft used for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to measure very small changes in gravity around the moon. As James explained:
When we combined that with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), we discovered the unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin. One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the moon’s mantle. We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the moon’s mantle until the present day, rather than sinking to the moon’s core.
The South Pole-Aitken Basin is estimated to have been formed about 4 billion years ago. The solar system was a very chaotic place back then, with collisions occurring between rocky and metallic bodies such as asteroids and young protoplanets – planetary embryos – on a pretty much regular basis. It seems quite feasible, then, that this is how the dense subsurface mass on the moon got there.
One other plausible theory, however, is that the mass might be a concentration of dense oxides associated with the last stage of lunar magma ocean solidification. It is theorized that the moon once had an ocean of sorts – not of water, but of magma, or molten rock – which then cooled and solidified. In the process, the oxides could have been deposited in this region, forming the large mass.
These scientists say an asteroid impact is still the leading hypothesis, however, and James referred to the South Pole-Aitken Basin as one of the best natural laboratories for studying catastrophic impacts in the early solar system.
Topographic map of the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the moon.
The South Pole-Aitken Basis is the largest known crater in the solar system. Measured from outer rim to outer rim, it’s about 1,600 miles (2,500 km) in diameter and 8.1 miles (13 km) deep. It was named for two features on opposite sides of the basin: Aitken Crater on the northern end and the lunar south pole at the other end. The basin’s existence had been suspected since 1962, based on data from the Luna 3 and Zond 3 orbiters, but was not confirmed until the mid-1960s by the Lunar Orbiter program.
On January 3, 2019, China’s Chang’e 4 spacecraft landed within this basin, in the smaller and younger Von Kármán Crater. This was the first time that any spacecraft has landed on the far side of the moon. It has studied samples of material thought to have come from deeper within the moon’s mantle, excavated during the impact that created the crater. This is a unique opportunity to explore in detail not only the crater, but a small portion of the larger basin as well.
Bottom line: The massive dense deposit below the largest crater on the moon is a very interesting discovery, and may be metal left over from a huge asteroid impact 4 billion years ago.
Water levels were only sitting at six to 10 inches on average, according to Back Bay resident Andrew Kotaska.
(Ingrid Wood/Facebook)
The phenomenon was as quick as it was dramatic.
Water levels dropped in Yellowknife's Back Bay dropped by approximately 25 centimetres in about the space of an hour, exposing large swaths of lake bed (and all the detritus littered on it) for about 30 minutes, before shooting back up.
Buffalo Airways' Mikey McBryan shared photos of the event on his official Facebook page Tuesday, garnering dozens of comments and more than 250 shares.
People raised theories that ranged from aliens, to lunar tides to meteorological events.
In the absence of reported UFO events in the Yellowknife area last night, the sudden drop in water levels did at least resemble something celestially caused.
Was it the moon?
While the National Ocean Service doesn't have tidal data on Great Slave Lake, it does have information about tides in similarly sized bodies of water.
"True tides … do occur in a semi-diurnal [twice daily] pattern on the Great Lakes," says a fact sheet from the organization.
"Studies indicate that the Great Lakes spring tide, the largest tides caused by the combined forces of the sun and moon, is less than five centimetres in height."
Theories about what happened have ranged from lunar tides to high winds pushing water out. (Ingrid Wood/Facebook)
Other fluctuations in lake levels are big enough to mask this effect, which means the Great Lakes are considered to be non-tidal.
How about glaciers?
Andrew Kotaska, who has lived near Back Bay for 13 years, points to another phenomenon that affects water levels. The land around Yellowknife is rising.
During the last ice age, Yellowknife was buried below a giant glacier, and the effects of that glacier can still be seen on the land to this day in a process called isostatic rebound.
"It's, you know, a thousand or two thousand metres of ice," he said. "The weight is incredible — a quadrillion tons pushing down on the Earth's crust. Now that it's all melted, the Earth's crust is slowly rebounding back up."
The effect is measurable. According to research done by Natural Resources Canada, lake level recession in the Yellowknife area has marched on unabated at an average rate of five millimetres a year for the past 8,000 years.
It's a bit of a head-scratcher.-
Terri Lang, meterologist, Environment Canada
Kotaska says isostatic rebound wouldn't cause the Earth's crust to suddenly spring up 25 centimetres in one night, but it does explain why, on average, Back Bay is getting shallower.
So if it wasn't glaciers, what was it?
Is the answer in the wind?
"It's a bit of a head scratcher," said Terri Lang, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.
Another popular theory is high winds could have blown the water out of Back Bay in a weather event called a seiche (pronounced "say-sh").
"It seems to me if it was caused by very, very strong winds, then those winds probably would have needed to come from the southwest," explained Lang. "And usually they have to be sustained winds as well for a long period of time."
Lang said the Yellowknife airport reported gusts of only 10 km/h at around midnight Monday evening. Any lightning strikes in the area — to indicate a storm was passing through — were to the north, and had ended hours before.
Water Survey of Canada data show water levels rose and dropped dramatically between 8 p.m. June 17 and 4 a.m. June 18. (Water Survey of Canada)
But this doesn't kill the seiche theory.
Hydrometric data from Yellowknife Bay show water levels rose and fell dramatically between 8 p.m. Monday evening and 4 a.m. Tuesday morning — the biggest oscillation being about 25 centimetres just before midnight.
This sloshing water effect was indeed caused by wind, according to Nathen Richea, director of water management and monitoring with the N.W.T. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
"When winds are from a particular direction for a sustained period and wind direction aligns with a lake's orientation … increased water levels can occur," he stated in an email to CBC.
"Once the winds recede or reverse, water levels rebound or can drop for a short period of time until the water levels equalize on the lake."
The effect was dramatic in Back Bay simply because water levels have been extremely low this season anyway. Kotaska estimates they have ranged from six to 10 inches near the docks this season.
The naked metallic core of a dead, early planet should soon get a visitor. Orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, the bizarre space rock is the target of a NASA mission that just entered its final design phase this week.
The space agency has targeted the date of Jan. 31, 2026, for the arrival of a spacecraft in the neighborhood of Psyche, a 125-mile-wide (200 kilometers) object in the asteroid belt. Planetary scientists have long suspected that Psyche — named after the nymph who married Cupid in Greek mythology — made up almost entirely of iron and nickel, might be the exposed core of a long-dead protoplanet from the early days of our solar system. The planet could have once boasted a girth similar to that of Mars before ancient collisions ripped its outer, rocky shell from its relatively dinky core.
Workers on the Psyche mission hope that their probe might provide more conclusive evidence for that theory and reveal new information about the swirling cloud of matter from which our ancient neighborhood first formed. [Black Marble Images: Earth at Night]
"With the transition into this new mission phase, we are one big step closer to uncovering the secrets of Psyche, a giant mysterious metallic asteroid, and that means the world to us," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, an Arizona State University planetary scientist and principal investigator on the Psyche mission, said in a statement. [Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End]
Psyche has a mass of about 49 billion billion lbs. (22 billion billion kilograms), making it 0.03% the mass of our moon. While it's the eleventh most massive known asteroid in the solar system — a few hundredths of the mass of monsters like Ceres and Vesta — those even-larger asteroids are made up primarily of rock and ice. Psyche is by far the largest known object of its nearly-pure metallic type orbiting our sun.
The Psyche probe should orbit the metal object for a couple weeks, collecting data about its age and how it formed. During this final design phase, engineers will draw up final plans for and build many of the parts that will make up the final spacecraft. (They won't be assembled into one piece until the next phase, in 2021.)
If everything goes according to plan, the mission should launch in August 2022, swing by Mars in 2023 and approach Psyche three years later.
On June 30th, 1908, the boreal forests of Tunguska, Siberia, were shaken (and subsequently flattened) by a massive explosion. It wasn’t man-made — an asteroid pierced our planet’s atmosphere and exploded before hitting the surface.
Artistic rendering of a meteorite. Image via Pixabay.
This explosion, known as the Tunguska event, would make history. It was the largest impact event humanity has ever witnessed first-hand and would lead the UN to declare June 30th the International Asteroid Day.
While definitely awe-inspiring, the event didn’t lead to the massive loss of life that, say, the Chixulub Impactor caused (that’s the pebble that killed the dinosaurs). So why did one space-rock kill off the largest beasts to ever roam the Earth, while another merely flattened 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) of forest without causing a single human death? Well, the secret is all in the definition. Today, we’ll take a look at that simple yet oh so important distinction between an asteroid and a meteorite.
What is an asteroid?
The word itself gives us a glimpse into the nature of asteroids. “Aster” is the ancient Greek word for ‘star’, and the suffix “-oid” is used to show an incomplete or imperfect resemblance to the root word. “Asteroid”, therefore, means ‘star-like’ or, taken more literally, ‘star-like, but not quite’.
Keep in mind that for the ancient Greeks looking up into the night sky, planets and stars all looked the same; ‘aster’, therefore, can be understood as both ‘star’ and ‘planet’.
Artist’s concept of an asteroid belt around the star Vega. Oumuamua, the first object to pass through our solar system that was confirmed to come from outside it — originates from this system. Image credits NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Asteroids are chunks of space rock ranging from one meter to almost a thousand kilometers in diameter. The larger ones may rightfully be considered minor planets (or dwarf planets/planetoids). Ceres is a good example of this latter category, and the largest known asteroid. These large ones closely resemble planets: they’re roughly spherical and have at least partly-differentiated core structures. They’re generally considered baby planets that didn’t quite make it to adult status.
Most asteroids, however, are quite petite. They also don’t seem to prefer a particular shape. To the extent of our knowledge, they either formed from the primordial matter of a stellar system or via subsequent impacts between its first rocky bodies. Most asteroids in our neighborhood today make a home in the asteroid belt (surprising, I know).
So, to recap: asteroids are chunks of rock or metal (or both) in space. They’re mostly made up of telluric elements (such as carbon, metals, and silica), which tend to be quite resilient. They’re either planets that couldn’t grow large enough or their shattered remnants. Most known ones hang out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but they can take on all sorts of orbits (or none at all!)
What is a meteorite?
The Hoba meteorite in Grootfontein, Namibia, is the largest meteorite known to have landed on Earth. Estimated to weigh around 60 tonnes, it has never been moved from the spot it was discovered in. Hoba is currently a very visited touristic attraction. Image credits Sergio Conti / Wikimedia.
A meteorite is any space-borne body that enters a planet’s or moon’s atmosphere, survives the violent trek through it, impacts the surface, and leaves behind solid pieces of material. The name comes from the ancient Greek words “meta” and “aerio”, which put together roughly translate to ‘something hanging up in the air’.
Meteorites start their life as meteoroids (small meteors) or asteroids. On contact with an atmosphere, meteorites experience immense friction, causing them to spontaneously combust (at up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1,649 degrees Celsius). These fireballs — colloquially called shooting or falling stars — are meteors.
The life of a meteor is short — and hellish. The friction they experience is enough to raise surface temperatures beyond the material’s boiling point, vaporizing it layer by layer. In fact, it’s enough to break apart its (and the atmosphere’s) constituent molecules into ionized particles (basically plasma), which then recombine, releasing energy as light. This is the tail you see on a shooting star.
Meteor over Sardinia, seen on the 8th of May 2016. Image credits Migebuff / Wikimedia.
The extreme violence of the final impact generally shaves off much of a meteor’s mass — the remaining kernel is our meteorite. Keep in mind that geologists generally call impactors large enough to create a crater ‘bolides’, while astronomers tend to prefer ‘meteorite’.
Depending on chemical composition, angle and speed of atmospheric entry, as well as sheer happenstance (whether it breaks apart or not), a meteor needs to range in size between a marble and a basketball for even a tiny portion of it to reach our planet’s surface.
Meteorites under 2mm (0.07in) in diameter are called micrometeorites. Meteorites that impact celestial bodies apart from Earth (and thus don’t necessarily pass through an atmospheric layer, such as those hitting the Moon) are called extraterrestrial meteorites.
As a side note, these burning chunks also spawned the associated term ‘meteorology’, or ‘the knowledge of things happening up in the air’, the branch of atmospheric sciences involved heavily in the study and forecasting of weather events.
So… what’s the difference between them?
As a general guideline, most meteorites are asteroids — but very few asteroids are meteorites.
Ceres, for example, is a moon and an asteroid. We do NOT want it to be a meteorite, too! Image credits NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA/ MPS / DLR / IDA.
The definitions tend to overlap a little. Let’s take size, for example. An astronomer will call any of these space projectiles ranging between a molecule and a chunk several hundred feet wide (usually up to 100m / 330ft in diameter) a meteoroid. Anything larger than that, generally, is considered an asteroid.
However, that leaves out chemistry, which is also a hard delineator for what is (and isn’t) an asteroid. Comets are globs of ice and dust formed in the freezing corners of the cosmos (i.e. outside of solar systems). They also have a little pocket of atmosphere around them (a distinctive feature for comets), generated by evaporation from this ice. Their interactionwith heat and particles generated by stars is what creates those long, elegant plumes that are quintessentially comet-y.
Comets can and do fly towards planets and moons. The beefier ones also generally make it through any atmospheric layer and impact the surface. What makes comets generally fall short of being termed ‘meteorites’ is that they’re made up of volatile materials that don’t survive post-impact. However, some do — and also leave behind traces of their impact in the form of impact glass or diamonds. While definitely traces of impact, it can be seen as a technicality to consider such elements remnants of the impacting body itself. I personally do. So, following the impact-and-debris definition, I’d consider comets impacting the surface to be meteors as well.
And herein lies the difference. To be a meteorite, one needs to impact a planet or moon and leave behind solid debris. To paraphrase Iain Banks (my favorite author) the meteorite only lives as it is falling. For asteroids, it’s sufficient to be. Have the right chemical make-up, don’t be too tiny, don’t sublime too much when around stars, and voila! You’re an asteroid.
Most asteroids are nice and never impact any planets or moons. The overwhelming majority of them, actually, are content to orbit around in their asteroid belts or on whatever path they’re set on. But we should never take their absence for granted; it only takes one to come visiting for humanity to become a thing of the past.
Mars has clouds too — but some are formed by falling meteorites, not rain.
Rendering of Mars produced using MOLA altimetry data. Image credits Kevin Gill / Flickr.
Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder have obtained new insight into the clouds that dot the Red Planet. While these clouds have long been documented in Mars’ middle atmosphere (which begins about 18 miles or 30 kilometers above the surface), little was known about how they form in the thin, dry ‘air’ there.
New research shows that these wispy bodies are actually accumulations of “meteoric smoke”, the icy dust thrown up when meteorites or space debris break up in the planet’s atmosphere.
Dust rain
“We’re used to thinking of Earth, Mars and other bodies as these really self-contained planets that determine their own climates,” said Victoria Hartwick, a graduate student in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences (ATOC) and lead author of the new study.
“But climate isn’t independent of the surrounding solar system.”
The most peculiar fact about Mars’ clouds is that they exist. The Big Bang notwithstanding, you can’t make something out of nothing, and clouds subscribe to this rule as well. Down here on Earth, low-lying clouds form on the backs of tiny particles — things like grains of sea salt or dust that get blown high into the air. These act as anchors of sorts for water vapor to condense on, growing into larger and larger drops, forming the large puffs of white or gray you can see from the ground.
To the best of our knowledge, however, that same mechanism doesn’t exist on Mars. There’s no sea salt to be blown up, and even if there was, the atmosphere is less dense so it’s less able to hold particles aloft. So Hartwick’s team turned their attention to meteors.
Around two to three tons of space debris rain down on Mars, on average, every single day, the authors explain. As this material, ranging from meteorites to space dust, comes into contact with the planet’s atmosphere, it starts to burn and break apart. In essence, a torrent of space dust ‘rains’ down on Mars.
So far, the theory seemed plausible — now the team needed to test it. To find out if this dust could generate Mars’ mysterious clouds, the team employed massive computer simulations that attempt to mimic the flows and turbulence of the planet’s atmosphere. After introducing meteors into the simulations, clouds started to appear.
“Our model couldn’t form clouds at these altitudes before,” Hartwick said. “But now, they’re all there, and they seem to be in all the right places.”
The findings are supported by previous research showing that a similar mechanism may help seed clouds near Earth’s poles (where the magnetic shield is weakest), the team explains. However, we shouldn’t expect to see enormous, roiling thunderstorms of cosmic dust above Mars: the clouds Hartwick’s team studied are very thin, “cotton candy-like clouds” explainsSpace.
“But just because they’re thin and you can’t really see them doesn’t mean they can’t have an effect on the dynamics of the climate,” Hartwick said.
Depending on the area, these clouds could cause temperature swings of up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), the team’s model shows. The findings flesh out our understanding of Martian clouds and could help us better understand how ancient Mars regulated its climate, and how it was able to hold liquid water on its surface.
The paper “High-altitude water ice cloud formation on Mars controlled by interplanetary dust particles” has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The Formative Years: Giant Planets vs. Brown Dwarfs
The Formative Years: Giant Planets vs. Brown Dwarfs
It appears more and more likely that large planets and brown dwarfs have very different roots. That’s based on preliminary results from a new Gemini Observatory survey of 531 stars with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI),
Animation showing the 617 observations conducted during GPIES from November 2014 to April 2019 (right) and the location of the stars in the southern sky (left). Open circles indicate system (like 51 Eri at 2 o’clock) which have been visited multiple times. Stars indicated by a red dot have a disk of material. Blue dots are planetary systems (with one planet at least). Brown dot are binary systems with a brown dwarf.
Credits: P. Kalas, D. Savransky, R. De Rosa and GPIES.
The GPI Exoplanet Survey (GPIES), one of the largest and most sensitive direct imaging exoplanet surveys to date, is still ongoing at the Gemini South telescope in Chile. “From our analysis of the first 300 stars observed, we are already seeing strong trends,” said Eric L. Nielsen of Stanford University, who is the lead author of the study, published in The Astronomical Journal.
In November 2014, GPI Principal Investigator Bruce Macintosh of Stanford University and his international team set out to observe almost 600 young nearby stars with the newly commissioned instrument. GPI was funded with support from the Gemini Observatory partnership, with the largest portion from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF, and the Canadian National Research Council (NRC; also a Gemini partner), funded researchers participating in GPIES.
Imaging a planet around another star is a difficult technical challenge possible with only a few instruments. Exoplanets are small, faint, and very close to their host star — distinguishing an orbiting planet from its star is like resolving the width of a dime from several miles away. Even the brightest planets are ten thousand times fainter than their parent star. GPI can see planets up to a million times fainter, much more sensitive than previous planet-imaging instruments. “GPI is a great tool for studying planets, and the Gemini Observatory gave us time to do a careful, systematic survey,” said Macintosh.
GPIES is now coming to an end. From the first 300 stars, GPIES has detected six giant planets and three brown dwarfs. “This analysis of the first 300 stars observed by GPIES represents the largest, most sensitive direct imaging survey for giant planets published to date,” added Macintosh.
Credit: NASA
Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets, but not massive enough to fuse hydrogen like stars. “Our analysis of this Gemini survey suggests that wide-separation giant planets may have formed differently from their brown dwarf cousins,” Nielsen said.
The team’s paper advances the idea that massive planets form due to the slow accumulation of material surrounding a young star, while brown dwarfs come about due to rapid gravitational collapse. “It’s a bit like the difference between a gentle light rain and a thunderstorm,” said Macintosh.
“With six detected planets and three detected brown dwarfs from our survey, along with unprecedented sensitivity to planets a few times the mass of Jupiter at orbital distances well beyond Jupiter’s, we can now answer some key questions, especially about where and how these objects form,” Nielsen said.
This discovery may answer a longstanding question as to whether brown dwarfs — intermediate-mass objects — are born more like stars or planets. Stars form from the top down by the gravitational collapse of large primordial clouds of gas and dust, while planets are thought — but have not been confirmed — to form from the bottom up by the assembly of small rocky bodies that then grow into larger ones, a process also termed “core accretion.”
Artist’s conception of how WISE 0855, a brown dwarf, might appear if viewed close-up in infrared light.
Artwork by Joy Pollard, Gemini Observatory/AURA.
“What the GPIES team’s analysis shows is that the properties of brown dwarfs and giant planets run completely counter to each other,” said Eugene Chiang, professor of astronomy at the University of California Berkeley and a co-author of the paper. “Whereas more massive brown dwarfs outnumber less massive brown dwarfs, for giant planets the trend is reversed: less massive planets outnumber more massive ones. Moreover, brown dwarfs tend to be found far from their host stars, while giant planets concentrate closer in. These opposing trends point to brown dwarfs forming top-down, and giant planets forming bottom-up.”
More Surprises
Of the 300 stars surveyed thus far, 123 are at least 1.5 times more massive than our Sun. One of the most striking results of the GPI survey is that all hosts of detected planets are among these higher-mass stars — even though it is easier to see a giant planet orbiting a fainter, more Sun-like star. Astronomers have suspected this relationship for years, but the GPIES survey has unambiguously confirmed it. This finding also supports the bottom-up formation scenario for planets.
One of the study’s greatest surprises has been how different other planetary systems are from our own. Our Solar System has small rocky planets in the inner parts and giant gas planets in the outer parts. But the very first exoplanets discovered reversed this trend, with giant planets skimming closer to their stars than does moon-sized Mercury. Furthermore, radial-velocity studies — which rely on the fact that a star experiences a gravitationally induced “wobble” when it is orbited by a planet — have shown that the number of giant planets increases with distance from the star out to about Jupiter’s orbit. But the GPIES team’s preliminary results, which probe still larger distances, has shown that giant planets become less numerous farther out.
“The region in the middle could be where you’re most likely to find planets larger than Jupiter around other stars,” added Nielsen, “which is very interesting since this is where we see Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System.” In this regard, the location of Jupiter in our own Solar System may fit the overall exoplanet trend.
But a surprise from all exoplanet surveys is how intrinsically rare giant planets seem to be around Sun-like stars, and how different other solar systems are. The Kepler mission discovered far more small and close-in planets — two or more “super-Earth” planets per Sun-like star, densely packed into inner solar systems much more crowded than our own. Extrapolation of simple models suggested GPI would find a dozen giant planets or more, but it only saw six. Putting it all together, giant planets may be present around only a minority of stars like our own.
In January 2019, GPIES observed its 531st, and final, new star, and the team is currently following up the remaining candidates to determine which are truly planets and which are distant background stars impersonating giant planets.
The next-generation telescopes — such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and WFIRST mission, the Giant Magellan Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, and Extremely Large Telescope — should be able to push the boundaries of study, imaging planets much closer to their star and overlapping with other techniques, producing a full accounting of giant planet and brown dwarf populations from 1 to 1,000 AU.
“Further observations of additional higher mass stars can test whether this trend is real,” said Macintosh, “especially as our survey is limited by the number of bright, young nearby stars available for study by direct imagers like GPI.”
Background:
GPI is specifically designed to search for planets and brown dwarfs around other stars, using a mask known as a coronagraph to partially block a star’s light. Together with adaptive optics correcting for turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere and advanced image processing, researchers can search the star’s neighborhood for Jupiter-like exoplanets and brown dwarfs up to a million times fainter than the host star.
In our Solar System, Jupiter is the largest planet, being about 318 times as massive as the Earth and lying about five times farther from the Sun than does the Earth. Brown dwarfs range from 13 to 90 times the mass of Jupiter; and while they can be up to a tenth the mass of the Sun, they lack the nuclear fusion in their core to burn as a star — so they lie somewhere between a diminutive star and a super-planet.
An early success of GPIES was the discovery of 51 Eridani b in December 2014, a planet about two-and-a-half times more massive than Jupiter, that orbits its star beyond the distance that Saturn orbits our own Sun. The host star, 51 Eridani, is just 97 light-years away, and is only 26 million years old (nearby and young, by astronomy standards). The star had been observed by multiple planet-imaging surveys with a variety of telescopes and instruments, but its planet was not detected until GPI’s superior instrumentation was able to suppress the starlight enough for the planet to be visible.
GPIES also discovered the brown dwarf HR 2562 B, which is at a separation similar to that between the Sun and Uranus, and is 30 times more massive than Jupiter.
Most exoplanets discovered thus far, including those found by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, are found via indirect methods, such as observing a dimming in the star’s light as the orbiting planet eclipses its parent star, or by observing the star’s wobble as the planet’s gravity tugs on the star. These methods have been very successful, but they only probe the central regions of planetary systems. Those regions outside the orbit of Jupiter, where the giant planets are in our Solar System, are usually out of their reach. GPI, however, endeavors to directly detect planets in this parameter space by taking a picture of them alongside their parent stars.
The Gemini results support those from these other techniques, including a recent study of exoplanets discovered by the radial velocity method that found the most likely separation for a giant planet around Sun-like stars is about 3 AU. The finding that brown dwarfs occur with a frequency of only about 1%, independent of stellar mass, is also consistent with previous results from direct imaging surveys.
COAST TO COAST AM. Earthfiles investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe discussed details of a “Planet Nine” in our solar system. The announcement, a year ago, of a 9th Planet, ten to twenty times the mass of Earth, is one of the greatest astronomical mysteries as we enter 2017.
She spoke with the discoverer of the planet, Prof. Michael Brown, an astronomer at Caltech, who ironically was responsible for knocking Pluto out of the 9th planet category, and into dwarf planet status. Brown shared that he’s using telescopes in Hawaii to nail down Planet Nine’s location.
He believes it was once near Uranus and Neptune, but its orbit was jostled and it was thrown out much further in a slingshot effect. Further, he explained, the new planet’s mass is so large that it causes our entire solar system, including the sun, to tilt at 6 degrees.
Clif High: UFOs, Alien Encounters, & Secret Space via Richard Dolan
Clif High: UFOs, Alien Encounters, & Secret Space via Richard Dolan
Clif High and Predictive Linguistics. PL is the process of using computer software to aggregate vast amounts of written text from the internet by categories delineated by the emotional content of the words and using the result to make forecasts based on the emotional ‘tone’ changes within the larger population. A form of ‘collective sub-conscious expression’ is a good way to think of it.
Predictive linguistics can be used to forecast trends at many different levels, from the detail of sales to individuals, all the way up to forecasts about emerging global population trends. Richard Dolan is one of the world’s leading researchers and writers on the subject of UFOs and believes that they constitute the greatest mystery of our time. He is the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and the National Security State, both ground-breaking works which together provide the most factually complete and accessible narrative of the UFO subject available anywhere.
He also co-authored a speculative book about the future, A.D. After Disclosure, the first-ever analysis not only of how UFO secrecy might end, but of the all-important question: what happens next?
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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.
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