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 ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
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...
06-08-2019
US Congressman Warns UFOs Could Pose a Serious Threat on National Security
US Congressman Warns UFOs Could Pose a Serious Threat on National Security
A US Congressman warns that UFOs could pose a severe security risk in a letter written to the Navy. North Carolina Republican Representative Mark Walker also asked if investigators had recovered physical evidence of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
These pictures show ‘tic-tac’ UFOs caught on camera by US Navy pilots
After hearing dozens of reports of strange encounters between highly advanced UFOs and naval aviators, the former pastor wrote to US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.
In the past two years, information of unexplained sightings has been leaking out after details of Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was a secret government programme, leaked into the public domain.
This is the letter Mark Walker wrote to Richard Spencer, Secretary of the US Navy
A declassified document which gives details of some of the research papers produced by AATIP investigators
This project was involved in investigating and exploring UFO encounters and exotic technologies such as antigravity, wormholes, cloaking, high energy laser weapons, and warp drives.
In his letter, Walker wrote: ‘Based on pilot accounts, encounters with UAPs often involved complex flight patterns and advanced manoeuvring, which demand extreme advances in quantum mechanics, nuclear science, electromagnetics and thermodynamics.
‘If the accounts are true, the unidentified crafts could pose a serious security risk to our military personnel and defence apparatus.
‘They could also represent a tremendous opportunity for advancements in science and technology that can contribute to the public good.
’ The letter also noted ‘reports of significant investments in advanced aerospace technologies’ by China and asked: ‘Does the department have any information regarding private companies or foreign nations who have made significant advancements in aerophysics?
In his letter, Walker believes too that details on encounters with UAPs are vital to the national security and scientific research as well as to public interest.
A number of US Navy pilots have reported encounters with mysterious UFOs which had no visible engine and produced no exhaust plumes but were capable of travelling at hypersonic speeds and soaring to incredible heights.
Nick Pope
We asked Nick Pope, former UFO investigator at the British Ministry of Defence, for his theories about the origins of these craft.
He said: ‘Even if the US government doesn’t have all the answers, somewhere in the system there will be a “best assessment” of the situation.
‘Even if much of it is classified and can’t be released, the assessment probably gives an indication of the official view on these encounters.
‘There are probably only four viable theories.
‘Firstly, the sightings and the videos we’ve all seen of US Navy jets chasing UFOs are attributable to some combination of pilot misperceptions, radar glitches and FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) system anomalies.
‘Secondly, we’re dealing with US black project technology. We hear a lot, for example, about drone swarms and hypersonic missiles. Is it possible that such technology is being ‘blind tested’ against the US Navy?
‘Thirdly, we’re dealing with foreign military aircraft, missiles or drones. Realistically, only Russia or China are likely to possess such technology and risk using it in this way.
‘The fourth and final option is that this is extraterrestrial. It would be interesting to know if this theory has been considered and forms part of any official assessment. Conversely, if it can’t be confirmed, has it at least been eliminated?
‘When I was working on this issue at the Ministry of Defence, we gave the extraterrestrial hypothesis serious consideration and while we didn’t have proof this was what we were dealing with, we didn’t rule it out – as some of the recently-declassified MoD UFO files show.
‘In relation to my list of options, if the first or second ones are the answer, this would be troubling on many levels, but if the third or fourth options turn out to be the solution, the defence and national security implications are staggering and frightening.
‘The fourth, of course, would take us into new and game-changing territory.’
Nick Pope greets fans and supporters at an AlienCon event
Nick Pope, a former investigator at the British Ministry of Defence, said the letter from Congressman Mark Walker is a sign of the growing political pressure for answers about UFOs and is consistent to the reports that many US Senators have received a classified briefing from Pentagon on the situation. Nick Pope also believes that Walker’s letter comes on the heels of the revelation from President Donald Trump that he had a meeting on the issue.
Pope said the newly-released letter from Congressman Mark Walker is a ‘hugely significant development and a sign of the growing political pressure for answers about UFOs’ which ‘comes on the heels of the revelation that a number of US Senators have received a classified Pentagon briefing on the situation, and the statement from President Trump that he had a meeting on the issue’.
He continued: ‘It’s a welcome sign that the taboo about discussing UFOs is less of a problem than it used to be. It wasn’t very long ago that politicians avoided the subject altogether, because of the perceived stigma and the fear of ridicule. It’s yet more proof that the subject has come out of the fringe and into the mainstream.
‘Mark Walker mentioned the US Navy’s recently-issued guidance to its pilots, telling them what to do if they encounter what the Navy refers to as “unidentified aerial phenomena” – UAP is the recognized government, military and intelligence community term for what the media and the public call UFOs. The Navy has refused to make this guidance public because it contains classified information, and while I understand this, I hope the Congressman will be able to press for the release of a redacted version, that might give people at least an indication of what we’re dealing with here.
‘I hope Congressman Walker will publish the reply he receives, will stay involved, and will encourage other members of Congress to get involved. And I hope he’ll write to the Secretary of the US Air Force too – it’s inconceivable that the USAF wouldn’t have something to add to all this. It would also be helpful to get some clarity over who’s leading on this topic in Congress: the Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security Committee or the Intelligence Committee.
‘I hope that Congressman Walker will stay alongside this issue and I’d be happy to use my own official knowledge and experience of handling this issue to work with him – and anyone else in Congress – to try to get some clarity here. I know from my own experience in the MoD that information about military capabilities, intelligence assessments of other nations’ technology, and methods and sources of gathering intelligence must remain classified.
‘But it might be possible to find a way of producing an unclassified summary that would at least indicate whether the current best assessment is misidentification, US black project technology, foreign military activity, or extraterrestrial visitation.
‘Given that other Senators have already received classified briefings on the situation from US Navy officials, one obvious strategy would be for Congressman Walker to request the same briefing, after which he could give people an unclassified summary of what was discussed.’
That's the argument advanced by a pair of Japanese astrophysicists, who wrote a paper proposing a new search for millions of "isolated black holes" (IBHs) that likely populate our galaxy. These black holes, lost in the darkness, sip matter from the interstellar medium — the dust and other stuff floating between stars. But that process is inefficient, and a great deal of the matter gets expelled into space at high speeds. As that outflow interacts with the surrounding environment, the researchers wrote, it should produce radio waves that human radio telescopes can detect. And if astronomers can sift out those waves from all the noise that's in the rest of the galaxy, they might be able to spot these unseen black holes.
"A naive way to observe IBHs is through their X-ray emission," the researchers wrote in their paper, which has not yet been formally peer reviewed and which they made available July 1 as a preprint on arXiv.
Why is that? As black holes suck the matter from space, that matter at its fringes accelerates and forms what’s known as an accretion disk. The matter in that disk rubs against itself as it spins toward the event horizon— a black hole's point of no return — spitting out X-rays in the process. But isolated black holes, which are small compared to supermassive black holes, don't emit a great deal of X-rays this way. There simply isn't enough matter or energy in their accretion disks to create large X-ray signatures. And past searches for IBHs using X-rays have failed to produce conclusive results.
"These outflows can possibly make the IBHs detectable in other wavelengths," the researchers, Daichi Tsuna of the University of Tokyo and Norita Kawanaka of Kyoto University, wrote in their paper. "The outflows can interact with the surrounding matter and create strong collisionless shocks at the interface. These shocks can amplify magnetic fields and accelerate electrons, and these electrons emit synchrotron radiation in the radio wavelength."
In other words, the outflow sliding through the interstellar medium should get electrons moving at speeds that produce radio waves.
"Interesting paper," said Simon Portegies Zwart, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in Tsuna and Kawanaka's research. Portegies Zwart has also studied the question of IBHs, also known as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs).
"It would be a great way to find IMBHs," Portegies Zwart told Live Science. "I think that with LOFAR [the Low-Frequency Array in the Netherlands], such research should already be possible, but the sensitivity may pose a problem."
IBHs, Portegies Zwart explained, are thought of as a "missing link" between the two types of black holes astronomers can detect: stellar-mass black holes that can be two to possibly 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes, the gargantuan beasts that live at the cores of galaxies and are hundreds of thousands of times the size of our sun.
Stellar-mass black holes are occasionally detectable in binary systems with regular stars, because the binary systems can produce gravitational waves and companion stars can provide fuel for large X-ray bursts. And supermassive black holes have accretion disks that emit so much energy that astronomers can detect and even photograph them.
But IBHs, in the midrange between those two other types, are far more difficult to detect. There are a handful of objects in space that astronomers suspect might be IBHs, but those results are uncertain. But past research, including a 2017 paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which Portegies Zwart co-authored, suggests millions of them could be hiding out there.
Tsuna and Kawanaka wrote that the best prospect for a radio survey of IBHs probably involves using the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a multi-part radio telescope due to be built with sections in South Africa and Australia. It's slated to have a total radio-wave collecting area of 1 square kilometer (0.39 square miles). The researchers estimate that at least 30 IBHs emit radio waves that the SKA will be able to detect during its first, proof-of-concept phase, which is scheduled for 2020. Down the road, they wrote, the complete SKA (scheduled for the mid-2020s) should be able to detect up to 700.
Not only should SKA be able to spot radio waves from these IBHs, they wrote, it should also be able to precisely estimate the distance to many of them. When that time comes, finally, all these missing black holes should start to come out of hiding.
Ground zero for the impact that caused a Marsmega-tsunami more than 3 billion years ago may have been found.
The meteor that spawned that ancient flood probably blasted out Lomonosov Crater, a 75-mile-wide (120 kilometers) hole in the ground in the icy plains of the Martian Arctic, a new study reports.
Lomonosov's large size suggests that the impactor itself was big — similar in scale to the 6-mile-wide (10 km) asteroid that hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, sparking a mass extinction that killed off 75% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs.
Such big space rocks don't hit the Red Planet (or Earth) very often. So, the new study provides some important clues about Mars' ancient northern ocean, and the planet's past potential to host life as we know it, team members said.
"The implication is that the ocean would have retained a liquid component for a very long time," study co-author Alexis Rodriguez, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, told Space.com. He offered 4 million to 5 million years as a representative figure, but stressed that the number is just an estimate.
A cold and mysterious ocean
Mars' big, salty northern ocean likely formed about 3.4 billion years ago. The ocean's existence is widely accepted by Mars researchers, Rodriguez said, but there is considerable debate about its nature.
For example, some scientists believe the ocean was relatively long-lived, if quite cold. But others don't think the ancient Martian climate could have supported stable bodies of surface water for long, and therefore argue that the ocean froze over very quickly — perhaps in a few thousand years or less.
Thenew study, which was published in late June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, bolsters the former viewpoint.
Rodriguez and his colleagues, led by François Costard of the French National Center for Scientific Research, built upon several years of previous research into the ocean and its imprints on the landscape of ancient Mars.
For example, Rodriguez led a 2016 study that identified huge lobes in the northern plains — features that strongly resemble marks left by tsunamis here on Earth. The team determined that the lobes were carved out by two different mega-tsunamis, which flooded the region more than 3 billion years ago.
Mars does not have significant plate-tectonic activity, so the big waves were probably unleashed by impacts. So, Costard, Rodriguez and their colleagues hunted for craters left behind by the cosmic culprits, narrowing the search over the next few years.
That search may now be over, at least for one of the two impactors. Multiple lines of evidence point to Lomonosov, the scientists report in the new study. For example, Lomonosov is in the right place, it's the right age (as determined by crater counts), and it looks a lot like marine craters here on Earth.
Lomonosov fits the bill in other ways as well. For instance, the crater is about as deep as scientists think the shallow northern ocean was at the time of impact. And part of Lomonosov's rim is missing, which is consistent with a mega-tsunami; the displaced water may have knocked this big chunk free as it raged.
While this evidence is suggestive, however, it does not yet rise to the level of a smoking gun, Rodriguez said.
"This crater is a candidate," he said. "I would not go so far as to say this is definitely the crater that produced the tsunami."
That tsunami, by the way, is probably the first of the two big floods that Rodriguez and his colleagues identified back in 2016. That earlier mega-tsunami featured both runoff and backwash flows, the latter of which are caused by water returning to the sea. Lomonosov seems to have been carved by both types of flows.
The second mega-tsunami caused runoff but not backwash, suggesting that Mars, and the ocean, may have been colder at the time. It's possible the northern ocean had a significant amount of ice cover when this other impactor came crashing down, he added.
Lomonosov is interesting enough on solely geological grounds.
"This is possibly the first time that a potential marine crater associated with a tsunami has been investigated outside Earth," Rodriguez said.
And then there are the astrobiological implications. As noted above, Lomonosov's size suggests the northern ocean — a potentially habitable environment — persisted for a relatively long time. It's statistically unlikely, after all, that the Lomonosov impact occurred right after this liquid ocean formed.
And even if the ocean were largely frozen at the time, the impact would have created an environment favorable to life as we know it: The tremendous energy unleashed would have melted lots of ice and created a hydrothermal system at Lomonosov, Rodriguez said.
The crater is therefore a tantalizing target for future life-hunting missions. Robotic explorers probably aren't up to the task, however, because the Lomonosov area is covered by an ice layer about 33 feet (10 meters) thick, Rodriguez said.
But human explorers could probably drill down through the ice and access sediments on the crater floor. And these pioneers could use the abundant water ice for life support, providing an exploration twofer.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
VIDEO. UFO-meldpunt onderzoekt waarneming in Bevingen - HLN.be
VIDEO. UFO-meldpunt onderzoekt waarneming in Bevingen - HLN.be
Dirk Selis
RVEen omwonende zag enkele vreemde lichtpunten aan de hemel. Mogelijk gaat het om drones.
SINT-TRUIDEN Afgelopen maandag werd boven een graanveld in Bevingen een unidentified flying object (ufo) waargenomen. Ooggetuigen filmden enkele vreemde lichtflitsen, die even snel alweer verdwenen. “Het zouden gewoon drones kunnen zijn”, aldus het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt. “Maar of we daar zeker van zijn? Dat niet, nee.”
“Ik heb geen idee wat het was”, zegt Mathieu Helleputte. “Maandagavond omstreeks 22.10 uur zagen we plots drie zeer felle lichtpunten boven een graanveld in Bevingen tijdens het dassenspotten. Heel ongewoon, ze bewogen razendsnel. Ik heb net op tijd mijn gsm op ‘filmen’ kunnen zetten. Vier seconden later waren ze weg. We hebben nog dertig minuten staan wachten, maar er kwam niets meer. Vrienden van mij raadden mij aan het te melden bij het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt, wat ik ook gedaan heb.”
Lichtkogels
Frederick Delaere, coördinator van het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt, vertelt wat er mogelijk te zien is op de beelden: “Na het ontvangen van deze waarneming en het bekijken van het bijhorende foto- en videomateriaal, konden de onderzoekers van het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt voorlopig twee mogelijke verklaringen naar voren schuiven. Het uiterlijk en gedrag van het fenomeen doet in verschillende opzichten denken aan lichtkogels. Dergelijke kogels worden wel vaker ingezet in de omgeving van luchthavens om bijvoorbeeld vogels af te schrikken en zo het luchtverkeer veilig te laten verlopen.”
Het fenomeen doet op meerdere vlakken denken aan lichtkogels, al meldde de regionale luchthaven alvast dat die niet van bij hen kwamen
Frederick Delaere
De regionale luchthaven (Limburg Regional Airport bvba) liet echter weten dat er op dat moment geen lichtkogels werden afgevuurd. Delaere: “Dit sluit evenwel niet uit dat iemand anders buiten de luchthaven dergelijke kogels heeft afgeschoten. Wel werd door de luchthaven bevestigd dat er op het moment van de waarneming verschillende drones met ledverlichting in het luchtruim aanwezig waren.”
Getuige ondervragen
Dergelijke toestellen worden volgens Delaere regelmatig vanaf de desbetreffende luchthaven opgelaten. Bovendien strookt de kijkrichting van de waarneming met de richting waarin de drones op dat moment vlogen. Maar voorlopig kan niet met zekerheid worden meegedeeld of hier lichtkogels of drones te zien zijn. “Verder onderzoek en eventuele ondervraging van de getuige zullen hier binnenkort misschien uitsluitsel over geven. Momenteel is het nog te vroeg om een definitieve uitspraak over de herkomst van het verschijnsel te doen”, aldus Delaere.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
3 mysterieuze lichtbollen verschenen boven graanveld in België. Check hier de beelden
Foto: YouTube/Dirk Selis
3 mysterieuze lichtbollen verschenen boven graanveld in België. Check hier de beelden
Vorige maand is boven een graanveld in het Belgische dorp Bevingen een onbekend vliegend object vastgelegd op camera. Dat schrijft nieuwssite HLN.
In onderstaand filmpje zijn drie vreemde lichten te zien in de lucht.
Mathieu Helleputte zag op maandagavond 15 juli rond 22.10 uur plotseling drie felle lichten boven het graanveld verschijnen.
Razendsnel
“Heel ongewoon,” zei hij. “Ze bewogen razendsnel. Ik heb net op tijd mijn gsm op ‘filmen’ kunnen zetten. Vier seconden later waren ze weg.”
Helleputte besloot de waarneming op aanraden van vrienden te melden bij het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt.
Het meldpunt liet weten dat de mysterieuze bollen aan lichtkogels doen denken. Die worden soms ingezet in de omgeving van vliegvelden om vogels af te schrikken.
Niet met zekerheid
De enige luchthaven in de buurt liet weten dat er op dat moment geen lichtkogels werden afgevuurd.
Wel zouden er op het moment van de waarneming drones in de lucht aanwezig zijn geweest.
“Maar voorlopig kan niet met zekerheid worden meegedeeld of hier lichtkogels of drones te zien zijn,” aldus coördinator van het meldpunt Frederick Delaere.
Potentially habitable 'super-Earth' discovered just 31 light-years away
Potentially habitable 'super-Earth' discovered just 31 light-years away
Follow-up research could reveal if the planet is rocky or has oceans.
The GJ 357 system has three planets that we know of. One, named GJ 357 d, sits within the star's habitable zone and could sustain liquid water on its surface.
Jack Madden / Carl Sagan Institute; Cornell University
By Denise Chow
Astronomers announced Wednesday that they had discovered the nearest potentially habitable planet outside our solar system.
The newfound exoplanet — a so-called super-Earth named GJ 357 d — lies 31 light-years away from our solar system. It’s about six times more massive than our planet and orbits in its host star’s habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form on the surface.
There’s no evidence at this point that life exists on the exoplanet, only that conditions there could support life as we know it.
“It’s a distance from the star that is not too hot and not too cold,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, an associate professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The findings, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, were presented Wednesday at an exoplanet conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Kaltenegger, who co-authored a study about the newfound exoplanet, said the discovery was totally unexpected. “It was like a freebie, because it was discovered in the follow-up,” she said of an analysis of observational data obtained from NASA’s planet-hunting TESS satellite and ground-based telescopes. “I was on vacation at the time, and I was completely surprised.”
Using TESS, a $337-million spacecraft that was launched in April 2018, the astronomers had detected another planet orbiting the same star, known as GJ 357. When they used ground-based telescopes at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna to conduct follow-up research on that planet, known as GJ 357 b, the scientists found two more planets in the system, including GJ 357 d.
The other two known planets in the star system, GJ 357 b and GJ 357 c, are not thought to be habitable because surface temperatures on the two worlds would be scorching. The surface of exoplanet GJ 357 c, for instance, is estimated to be about 260 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Kaltenegger.
Little is known about the potentially habitable planet, which takes almost 56 days to orbit its host star at a distance roughly one-fifth of the distance between Earth and the sun. Kaltenegger said a pair of next-generation telescopes — the James Webb Space Telescope that is scheduled to launch in 2021 and the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile that is expected to begin operating in 2025 — should reveal more, including whether the planet is rocky or has oceans.
“This is definitely going to be one of the best targets for these telescopes because it’s so close and so bright,” Kaltenegger said. “This means we can collect that light and analyze it further to see the chemical composition of the atmosphere, or if we see signs of liquid water or oxygen. The closer the better and the brighter the better, and this one happens to be both.”
Elisabeth Adams, an associate research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Somerville, Massachusetts, called the discovery of GJ 357 d “really exciting” — especially because the alien world is relatively close by in astronomical terms.
“This is going to be one of the best ones to go look at with the James Webb Space Telescope,” Adams said. “It’s a really good candidate to get atmospheric measurements, and that would tell us the composition or if there’s oxygen, and from there, that would tell us how habitable it is.”
Since GJ 357 d is so much more massive than Earth, Adams said any life that exists there would likely be very different from life on our planet. The planet’s mass suggests it could support a giant ocean, she added, “so it could have aquatic life.”
Kaltenegger said she and her colleagues plan to study the exoplanet more closely in the coming months, and will conduct additional observations of GJ 357 to look for other planets in the star system.
Editor's note:An earlier version of this article misstated Lisa Kaltenegger's role in the research. She was a co-author of the study in Astronomy & Astrophysics, not the study's leader.
That is the biggest bs description that I have ever heard in my life what a lousy excuse don’t believe your eyes that city is there as sure as I’m standing here this is got to be part of CERN the big Collider bringing another dimension in to ours!
Let me ask all the people that watch this one question how do you make a mirage of a giant generating fan spinning especially with photos as clear as those we’ve all seen the shimmering roads out in the distance where you can see the heat off the road.
An entire city with buildings roofs and a spinning fan? Not creepy at all is it? Why are government scientists out there already? G.M.
Bewoonbare superaarde ontdekt waar vloeibaar water kan bestaan. Deze spannende ontdekking kwam totaal onverwacht
Bewoonbare superaarde ontdekt waar vloeibaar water kan bestaan. Deze spannende ontdekking kwam totaal onverwacht
Astronomen hebben aangekondigd dat ze de meest nabijgelegen bewoonbare planeet buiten ons zonnestelsel hebben ontdekt.
De nieuwe exoplaneet, een zogeheten superaarde met de naam GJ 357 d, staat op 31 lichtjaar van ons af.
Hij is ongeveer zes keer zo groot als onze planeet en bevindt zich in de bewoonbare zone, wat betekent dat er water in vloeibare vorm kan bestaan.
Totaal onverwacht
Er is op dit moment geen bewijs dat er leven is, maar theoretisch gezien kan er leven bestaan zoals wij dat kennen.
“Het is er niet te warm en niet te koud,” zei Lisa Keltenegger van de Cornell University in New York.
Ze voegde toe dat de ontdekking totaal onverwacht kwam.
De planeet werd pas ontdekt toen telescopen op het aardoppervlak werden gericht op een planeet die met behulp van NASA’s TESS-satelliet was gevonden. “Ik was op dat moment op vakantie en totaal verrast,” klonk het.
Weinig bekend
Met behulp van TESS ontdekten astronomen de planeet GJ 357 b. Toen ze telescopen op de planeet richtten, ontdekten ze nog twee andere hemellichamen, waaronder GJ 357 d.
De andere planeten zijn waarschijnlijk niet geschikt voor leven. Op GJ 357 c bedraagt de temperatuur bijvoorbeeld gemiddeld 126 graden Celsius.
Voor nu is er nog weinig bekend over de bewoonbare planeet, die in 56 dagen een rondje om zijn ster maakt.
Keltenegger zei dat telescopen de komende jaren meer moeten gaan onthullen. Zo moet onder meer worden uitgezocht of de planeet rotsachtig is en of er oceanen zijn.
Hele spannende ontdekking
Elisabeth Adams van het Planetary Science Institute in Massachusetts sprak van een ‘hele spannende’ ontdekking.
“Op basis van de massa van de planeet kunnen we opmaken dat er mogelijk een gigantische oceaan kan zijn,” zei ze. “Er zou dus zeeleven kunnen zijn.”
UFOs aren’t so hampered. There isn’t a great deal of in between when it has to do with UFOs. Take for instance the significant number of photographs that have been published of UFOs. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the very same place.
UFO sightings are reported throughout history. They are not a modern phenomenon, they are not a US-only phenomenon. Usually once you speak about UFO sightings, most folks feel that I mistook it for something else or they may think that it is merely a crap. UFO sightings are now able to easily be captured on video, while it’s through a telephone or video camera. In any event, UFO sightings aren’t something which’s new to society. They have become an ever-popular subject. During February in Minnesota, for instance, only 69 UFO sightings are reported since the start of the 21st century.
The evidence might have been much more compelling, in the event the very first recorded incident was not revealed as a hoax. The overwhelming evidence of UFO’s from previous civilizations on Earth is really the most convincing proof I can imagine. There are also a number of witnesses. It is difficult to understand what’s real evidence and what’s fake evidence. If you’re still not convinced or want to read more evidence an Arizona UFO might not be a laughing matter, you might delight in seeing for yourself, more UFO Evidence. There are not many excellent explanations for the majority of the Hudson Valley sightings. Among the arguments that scientists use to debunk UFO sightings is that our planet has existed for at least four billion decades, hence the odds are really small that the aliens would just chance to arrive here during the few decades that we’ve got technology.
The video has become the fodder for several arguments and debates about the authenticity of the same. It was suppose to show a glowing object racing across the video feed. It shows three different sightings of suspected UFOs in three different parts of the world. Take a look at the pictures and videos and you decide by yourself. Some video footage implies that the objects move quickly. What earns the video footage even more credible is there is footage taken by different individuals in various areas of town. Which made the story of what it is that they witnessed that night even more curious.
The phenomenon lasted about two seconds. Anyway, there’s a danger in conspiracy thinking since it may obfuscate the borderline of authentic wisdom and fantasy or projection. There’s very little doubt that the web has played a part in the development of UFO reports in the past few years, though most can be explained by natural or human-caused phenomena. Nearly all UFO sightings were reported in the usa, with 26 sightings happening during November. Countless quantities of images and videos pop up online everyday, and it is challenging to distinguish what’s reliable. So, there’s no need to be concerned about the 156,353 UFO sightings and warnings. UFO sighting levels depend on not only the presence of unrecognizable objects, but in addition, needless to say, on the chance of actually reporting such observations.
Loch Ness may not have exotic dancers(although the idea has now been planted) nor the marketing effort behind its Storm Loch Ness event as compared to the big one at Area 51, but it does have one thing – plenty of sightings of something not easily explained away that could make 2019 a record-breaking year for Loch Ness monster encounters. Would an Inverness Strippermobile and a Watching For Nessie’s Head and Tailgate Party bring the creature up from the depths – not to mention plenty of other creatures with currency to rain on the dancers? Or is the real cause for the increase in sightings in 2019 the unusually hot weather in the area making the loch too warm for this cold-blooded (unless it’s a mammal?) creature?
“It was a dead calm, warm night and this thing broke the surface a few hundred yards away. I couldn’t make out a head or anything – but there was something in the middle that was different to the rest of it. I watched it for about 90 seconds. It was moving and disappeared. I don’t believe Nessie is a dinosaur or anything like that – but there is something in there for sure.”
New eyewitness Richard Cobb from Bradford, England, told the Daily Record he was staying at the Craigdarroch Inn in the Highland village of Foyers (“spectacular views over Loch Ness, the perfect place to sit, relax and do a spot of Nessie hunting”) on July 25th when he saw something is the water at about 9:30 pm that he couldn’t explain. (Picture here.)
Nessie sighting by Richard Cobb
(Image: Western Isles News)
“I’ve been coming to Loch Ness since 1992 and I know what a boat wake looks like. But there were no boats around when this thing surfaced. I never believed in Nessie – but now I’m not so sure. What I saw was just weird.”
Boat wake
Well, that account plus a photo (which definitely looks like a boatless boat wake) was good enough to add Cobb’s sighting to the list maintained by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, which puts it at 2019 sighting #12 after adding a photo taken by Tracy Power (see picture here) on July 13 of a dot on the surface that, as a geomorphologist, she’s sure was not a buoy. That followed two sightings by armchair CCTV watcher Eoin O’Faodhagain and the rare sonar sighting by boat captain Mike Bell
Tracy Power's sighting of Nessie
(Image: Western Isles News)
Speaking of CCTV, that camera is managed by Mikko Takala, head of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and a longtime researcher and scientist, who thinks Nessie is heating up the local tourism trade and sightings business because it’s hot.
“There has been a slight increase in surface temperatures in Loch Ness due to climate change. It is possible that a cold blooded creature like Nessie may be encouraged to return and or stay longer in the warming waters of Loch Ness.”
Back just a few years ago when there were no sightings, Takala blamed Nessie’s disappearance on cold weather, excess road salt in the loch and noise from wind farms. He obviously prefers more sightings, but not at the expense of the climate.
Is weather or climate change the reason for this one-more-and-it’s-a-record year for Loch Ness monster sightings? Is it more tourists with more cellphones and more brief pictures of wakes, logs, fish and other things that can be mistaken for a monster?
Would a Strippermobile bring more sightings or distract the boat captains from watching their sonar for monsters, underwater logs, sand bars and piers?
There has long been an intriguing theory on our reality, that of the concept that we do not exist in a vacuum, and that far from the only universe there are countless others coexisting side by side. It is a notion known as the “multiverse,” and it really opens a lot of mind-bending possibilities and spins on what we think we know. The idea is that there are literally infinite versions of realities and different timelines all simultaneously existing in tandem, perhaps only separated by a thin curtain through which others may on occasion bleed through to each other. What this might entail is left open for debate, but one often talked about consequence of such a merging or opening between alternate dimensions is that people or other creatures from those realities might cross over into our own, strangers in a strange land that temporarily visit only to once again vanish without a trace.
A very strange encounter was included in the book Mysterious Disappearances: And Other Strange Tales, by Robert Quinn, and allegedly took place in the state of Utah in 1977. The two witnesses, called Ben and Steve, were out hiking and photographing sandstone formations in the wilds and set up camp for the night near some sandstone outcroppings, before continuing their adventure the next morning. It was on this day as they hiked along that a strange wind kicked up out of nowhere, growing in intensity and sending swirls of sand and dust spinning through the air. The winds were reaching gale force, and were so ferocious that the two men decided to take shelter in a sandstone cave, and this was when they would have their strange experience.
Utah sandstone formations
As they looked out into the fierce winds, they allegedly spied a figure running at full speed across the open desert landscape right through the gusts of wind, and looking through their binoculars they could see that this was no ordinary person. The man they saw was very tall and well-built, with long hair whipping about and dressed in a bright red loincloth, some sort of multicolored beaded headdress, and with curious metal rings wrapped around his arms. Who was this strangely dressed individual and why was he running about in the storm? The book gos on to explain what happened next:
As the runner moved along something resembling a small dust devil was seen moving along with him as if it had intelligence. If the man slowed, so did the dust devil. If he changed direction, so did the whirling dust cloud. It resembled a race between two cross-country runners. At one time, the man paused and looked around, as if he didn’t know where he was. The dust devil circled him until he once again moved on. It was the craziest thing both had ever witnessed. The two friends noticed the strong wind had diminished when the stranger first appeared. By now the “two” had covered some four hundred yards as they moved north. Reaching a high rise both disappeared over its edge and disappeared.
After this the wind stopped altogether to leave silence in its wake, just as suddenly as it had appeared. Was this some lost wayward wanderer from some other reality? This book has a few other equally strange encounters of what can only be described as some creature falling through the cracks between dimensions, and another happened to a woman called Grace, who is from New Mexico but at the time was visiting family in Connecticut. One day she was apparently out doing some chores in the biting cold of a December day, and she looked up at a hill on the rural property and saw what she at first took to be an animal rummaging about near a gazebo her son had built near the top of the hill. She looked into her binoculars and soon realized that it was no animal, but something far stranger.
She could see that it was in fact a diminutive little man just over a foot in height, who appeared to look rather bewildered and confused “like he didn’t know where he was,” and was shivering with the cold. The little man then stepped into some snow and disappeared. When Grace’s son and his wife returned she told them of what she had seen, and they went to investigate, finding a hole in the snow but no tracks leading away and no sign of the little man. The book goes on to offer an idea of what might have happened, which could be a very similar explanation for all of these sorts of cases:
In theory, this might have occurred: he fell through a slip in time and space from another world or dimension by accident. One morning he was standing in his world, then BINGO. He drops into ours on a snow-covered hill. The poor guy can’t realize how he arrived there. Seconds later, BINGO, he’s back to his world, telling a fantastic yarn nobody believes. They might have thought differently if he had arrived covered in snow.
Perhaps even odder is a case from July of 1975, which also revolves around some sort of “little person.” The report comes from an area of the Adirondack Mountain Range, in upstate New York, where a couple by the names of Mike and Janice lived. The couple one day returned from weekend trip to visit relatives in Long Island, when Janice realized that their rock garden looked off somehow, as if someone had gone around and rearranged some of the stones, flowers, and decorations. Since no one lived around them and this was a rural area, they could not figure out why this should be, but sort of just put it out of their minds as no damage had been done.
A few weeks later, they went out to find that overnight the whole garden had been rearranged and altered yet again. As they looked around, thinking this must surely be someone playing a rank on them, they found what appeared to be tiny human footsteps in the earth, which had been muddied by a rain the previous evening. A few nights after this they looked outside to see a soft white light emanating from the garden, and when they looked they could both see that the light was perfectly circular, yet even stranger than the light itself was what was moving about within it. There within the mysterious light was allegedly a tiny woman standing around a foot tall, with long hair and dressed in a long white dress. She didn’t seem to realize she was being watched, and went about rearranging rocks and flowers, looking almost annoyed, and then one day the little woman just vanished and never returned. One wonders if this was a gardener in some dimension that had become intertwined with ours temporarily, and if perhaps she was the one wondering who was messing with her garden.
One of the oddest and well-circulated stories of some sort of person appearing from what seems to be another dimension allegedly took place in 1954 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. In July of that year, a Caucasian looking man dressed in a suit stepped off a plane that had originated in Europe and causally made his way to customs. When customs asked him the purpose of his visit, he told them that he was there on business, and had indeed been to Japan several times before for the same reason. In fact, the man was conversant in Japanese, as well as French and Spanish. Indeed, his wallet contained currencies from a few European countries. At this point, he seemed to be just an intelligent, well-traveled business man, and there was no reason to be suspicious. Yet then they asked him where he was from and things got strange.
When asked his country of origin, the man matter-of-factly stated he was from Taured, as if it was the most natural answer in the world. The problem is, there is no such country, and when the suspicious customs officer informed him of this the man looked baffled, presenting his passport and insisting that this was indeed where he was from and that it was a country lying between France and Spain. The official-looking passport was indeed issued from a country called Taured, and held customs stamps from several European countries, as well as three previous stamps from Japan, just as the man had said. The man even had a valid-looking driver’s license from Taured. At this point the enigmatic stranger was starting to arouse suspicion, and he was ushered away for further questioning.
He was shown a map of Europe and asked to point out where Taured was, yet he seemed genuinely bewildered when he could not locate it there where he claimed it should have been. The only country that was in the location he indicated was the tiny nation of Andorra, and the frustrated man claimed that it was Andorra that was the made-up country and that in its place should be Taured; a country he claimed had existed for over 1,000 years. The skeptical customs officials asked him where he was headed for work, and when they tried the number that the man provided the company on the other end of the line stated that they had never heard of him. A call to the hotel where he claimed to be staying likewise turned up no evidence that he had ever booked a room there, and furthermore the bank information he gave turned out to be from a bank that no one had ever heard of and which could not be contacted. Baffled authorities decided to book him into a hotel under observation as they tried to figure out what to make of his story, yet the following day the man was nowhere to be found in his room, despite the fact that authorities had been outside the whole night. He had simply vanished. Later, when police went to the airport to retrieve the man’s passport and driver’s license for an investigation, they were found to be mysteriously gone without a trace as well.
It is hard to know what to make of this account. Although it has appeared in many Internet articles, as well as mentioned as a factual account in several books, such as The Directory of Possibilities and Strange But True: Mysterious and Bizarre People, there seems to be a lack of any solid original source to verify it all, giving it more the distinct air of an urban legend. Nevertheless, there have been numerous theories posed for who the mysterious stranger could have been, ranging from a time traveler to a visitor from some parallel dimension who had somehow pushed through the veil that separates our realities. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to prove or disprove this amazing story, and it remains a curious mystery.
Similarly there was a case from the mid 1950s in the State of New Jersey at an unspecified town. Here there was one day found an elderly lady who was just sort of wandering about in the street dressed in period clothing from the 1800s. The lady drew quite a crowd, but she seemed to be too disoriented and confused to pay much attention to the onlookers. She called out in what was described as a strange accent, and when someone finally approached her the lady supposedly ran down an alleyway. When she was followed it was found that the woman had just vanished, even though there was no known exit from this particular alleyway. Who was this lady? Had she just sort of wandered in from another dimension and then wandered back out?
There is also a phantom dimensional traveler tale from 1851, when a man calling himself Joseph Vorin was found wandering about a village in the rural German district of Lebas, near the town of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Thinking he was a vagrant drifter, authorities approached the stranger and asked him where he had come from. The stranger, who appeared to be Caucasian, answered in broken German that he was from a faraway country called “Laxaria,” which he claimed could be found out over the seas in a region he identified as Sakria, neither of which were real places that anyone had ever heard of. When he was detained and brought to Frankfurt for further questioning, things got more bizarre still.
Vorin was found to be unfamiliar with any other European language except German, of which he had only a rudimentary grasp, but he claimed to be a native speaker of two unintelligible languages which he said were called Laxarian and Abramian, with one being the written language of the “Clerical Order of Laxaria” and the other the common language of his people. The stranger was apparently very persuasive, explaining the geography of his country and even his religion, which he called Ispatian, in great detail. Vorin further claimed that he had been searching for his missing brother, but that he had become shipwrecked on his journey and had ended up in Germany. It seems that in the end, the baffled authorities came to the conclusion that he was telling the truth and released him, after which he seems to have just disappeared from history and perhaps from our reality as well.
Along these lines is a case that was related to me directly by a reader who says he believes he had an encounter with someone from another dimension during his days as a security guard at an unspecified airport. He claims that they had to respond to a call for a man who was wandering about babbling nonsensically and scaring other passengers in the airport. When they approached him he seemed to be very panicked and confused, wild-eyed and seemingly on drugs, and he was unable to respond to questions directed at him. He was brought in to be questioned and calmed down somewhat, but his speech was unintelligible. On his person was found a passport for the United States, but the design of it was all wrong, and it looked almost like a really bad, cheap forgery. He also had a driver’s license on him that was written in some sort of gibberish that resembled English, but which made no sense. When the man was supplied a pen and a paper he wrote down a number, and it was assumed that this was his flight number, but no such flight number was registered by any airline in the airport for that day. Things got pretty bizarre when the stranger gestured that he needed to go to the bathroom, but when he didn’t come out for some time the doors were open to find he was just gone, even though there was no other exit. It is hard to know how much veracity this account holds, but if it is true at all one cannot shake the feeling that this was possibly a confused temporary visitor from an alternate reality who was scared and had no idea where he was.
In every one of these cases we have people or other strange figures that seem to have stepped into our reality from some other place, seemingly quite by accident considering their reactions to being here in many instances. It brings up a very strange theory that our reality as we known it perhaps brushes up against and even bumps into others, all separated by some veil that normally keeps us separated, but at certain times is porous enough to allow something or someone to slip through for some time, only to have them fall back out to wherever they came from. Is this what is going on in these cases? Are we living in some sort of multiverse with cracks in the borders that we can fall through from time to time? Or is this something else? There is currently no way to know, and such tales of these strange visitors serve to merely stir the imagination, a fascinating glimpse at a perhaps groundbreaking revelation on reality as we know it.
Even though the man who first announced it admitted it was a hoax and the corporate sponsors keep lining up faster than you can say “Two million people? We’ll bring the beer, beef and music!”, the ‘Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us’ event has managed to keep some modicum of reality with serious warnings by the U.S. military to stay away and recent appearances by UFOs to remind the masses what they’re actually supposed to be storming about. However, the proverbial ‘line in the deserted desert dust’ may have been crossed this weekend with the announcement that the event will now feature “exotic dancers” – the too-modest-to-say-it-out-loud code name for strippers. Will this push the attendance to three million? Will they recruit some tall, skinny, pale dancers with big heads for the aliens?
“Come September 20th, we’ll be there. We know what most Americans know – that strippers make any event better – and this one will be no exception.”
The extraterrestrials probably know it too, but Ryan Carlson, Director of Operations for Déjà vu Services, reminds everyone that Rachel, Nevada, is not just near Area 51 but it’s also right down the road from Las Vegas, the city which made the company’s Strippermobile famous. If the name Déjà vu Services sounds familiar, it’s the company which last year named Stormy Daniels (yes, THAT Stormy Daniels) as its corporate spokesperson. So why isn’t the event being called “Stormy Area 51”? Probably fearing that name might draw the wrong crowd, Déjà vu Services is instead bringing about a dozen of its regular dancers and calling it the “Ultimate Alien Tailgate Party.”
“We don’t know if there’s aliens at Area 51, but if there are, they’ll be entertained upon their rescue, along with any party-goers that attend. After all, if an iconic institution like the American strip club isn’t a way to welcome our extraterrestrial friends, then we don’t know what is.”
Will the Strippermobile strippers perform for free? Maybe for aliens with proper ID and proof of age, but everyone else is encouraged to bring plenty of U.S. dollar bills to ‘make it rain’ on the dancers (look it up – like you don’t already know what it means). There’s no mention of “VIP rooms” or alien probing, so you might want to check with the official Deja Vu Strippers website for any special packages for the event.
Make it rain?
While it’s kind of obvious what “Storm Area 51” attendees will think of the Strippermobile, what about the poor residents of Rachel – all 50 or so of them — who are being stormed? Those not planning to stay and cash in have been invited by the Belize Tourism Board to enter its “Belize Tourism Board “Rachel Retreat” Official Sweepstakes” for a chance to win one of ten prize packages of airfare and accommodations for a three-day two-night stay in Belize for one person (valued at up to $2,000 USD) on the weekend of September 20th. That’s one-fifth of the town, so good luck finding someone to give you directions to the nearest gas station (it’s 50 miles away).
Is the “Ultimate Alien Tailgate Party” a great addition to the Storm Area 51 extravaganza? A distraction designed to give people something to do besides storming? A clever way to get the aliens to come out on their own?
There’s still plenty of time to find out … and make your plans.
1976 was a historic year for Americans. A contentious U.S. election was underway between incumbent Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, his Democratic challenger. It was also the year of the bicentennial, as the United States celebrated two centuries since its founding. And like NASA had done less than a decade before by putting men on the moon, in September of that year the space agency would seek to make history again, as the Viking 2 mission went speeding toward the Red Planet in an attempt to place an unmanned lander on Martian soil.
In the humid summer months preceding the successful Viking 2 mission, its predecessor, Viking 1, had already been in orbit around Mars, sending back a constant stream of photographs which NASA scientists planned to use to help them locate a suitable landing site for Viking 2. On July 25th, the usual batch of images were being received and processed, when a peculiar geological feature of the planet began to reveal itself.
One of the photos depicted a sloping prominence, befitted with a number of depressions and rock formations that, casting hard shadows and observed under the sharp contrast of Viking 1’s photography, bore an obvious likeness to a human face.
Some thought little of it, chalking the ghostly visage staring back at the orbiting Viking 1’s cameras as being merely an instance of pareidolia—the natural tendency of the human eye to assemble familiar shapes and images from random features in nature.
Most who observed the area depicted in the photograph probably thought this, in fact. Although it is hard to imagine that there weren’t some, at least—or perhaps even several—who hadn’t cautiously entertained the other possibility: what if there had been a civilization on Mars at one time? And if so, what if this gloomy face befitted upon an odd, polygonal mountain in the Cydonia region, might actually be some remnant of that civilization?
It wasn’t long before NASA determined that the “face” on Mars was, in fact, a natural formation. In their own words, upon releasing the image publicly just days later, the space agency described a “huge rock formation in the center… which resembled a human head.”
The famous photograph from Viking 2 in 1976, which spurred debate over a “Face on Mars”
(Credit: NASA).
The image was, of course, enough to get people talking, whether or not they believed NASA’s determination about the photograph. Many found it impossible to believe that the likeness of the curious features in the photograph to a human face could be pure coincidence. The hope for discovery of life on Mars had already been a source of great anticipation: now an eager public was nearly sold on the idea, but instead of microbes, hoped that within the coming months there would be irrefutable evidence of life on the planet in the form of archaeological traces of a civilization that once lived there.
Interestingly, some scientists were concerned about the emphasis being placed on the search for life on Mars. “There is also a fear that if too much emphasis is placed on the possibility of life and none is then found, as still seems likely, the public will consider the mission a futile failure,” a New York Times article reported on July 22, 1976, just three days before the photos of Cydonia returned to Earth depicting what many believed to be a face.
However, if the famous “face on Mars” had indeed been such, it would raise a number of hard questions. Chief among them is: how could a feature like this—if artificial, as many claimed—have lasted for the untold amounts of time that passed before Viking 1 arrived… especially considering how much it appears to have weathered in the few decades since that time?
While the 1976 photographs remain the most famous ones of the region depicting an alleged face, NASA has released numerous additional photos of the location over the years, captured during ensuing missions (which is interesting in itself, since it shows that there was at least a modicum of interest in the unusual collection of features). However, as we can see in the photos below, NASA’s infamous face didn’t appear to age very well:
By 1996, the “face” looked a lot more like a pile of rocks
(Credit: NASA).
Arguably, the more perplexing element to the region where the Martian “face” appears is not the rocky places that form what many liken to eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but the odd, almost geometric shape of the outcrop itself. According to Space.com, “The rocky outcropping that creates the illusion is approximately a mile across and bears a resemblance to buttes or mesas from the American West. It likely formed from a combination of landslides and collected debris.”
Additionally, the differences between the 1976 and 1998 photos are actually greater than those between the first photos, and some of the most recent, in which the face-like details appear to have returned, although only slightly:
Perhaps what is most fascinating about all of this is people’s desire to look for unusual things on barren, alien worlds. Rather than aliens, or simply a desire to believe in them, people’s interpretations of Martian “anomalies” seems to say an awful lot about us.
I’m reminded of a story my grandmother told me once as a child. Often at night, she and her siblings would become very frightened by the sound of loud crashes that came from the back of their family home. Occurring only at night, they would emanate from the back of the home, the portion facing the forest at the edge of their property. Naturally, they began to believe that an animal—or perhaps something else—had been appearing and pounding on the house at night. Several years later, she laughed about how she finally learned that the thick slabs of pine in the walls would creak and pop as they cooled at night, no monsters necessary.
In much the same way that some people interpret random, natural events as evidence of “supernatural” happenings, people seem to both enjoy, and at times even display a need to look for structured things in environments where none should exist. In years since, similar “anomalies” have continued to appear on Mars, which range from odd structures and other alleged “manmade” features, to sightings of Bigfoot.
So let’s face it: that famous “face on Mars” was never really a face at all. Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t other “faces” that have been spotted on the Red Planet…
Thirteen years ago, mysteriously looking glass beads were discovered inside of ancient clam shells and now new evidence has revealed their origin. Researchers believe that the glass pearls are microtektites which are byproducts of a meteor impact. This is, however, the first time that they’ve been found inside of old clam shells.
A pair of microtektites found inside ancient clam shells.
Image: Kristen Grace, Florida Museum
While more research needs to be conducted on these celestial pearls, it is believed that they were created when a meteorite smashed into the Florida coast approximately 2 or 3 million years ago. “This is the first report of microtektites in Florida and one of only a few findings of space debris found in the state,” Mike Meyer, who is a researcher at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, explained to Gizmodo. He is also the lead author of the study that was published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
So how exactly were they formed? The glass beads were created during the impact of when a meteor struck the planet. “When a large enough impact occurs, the impactor – a meteorite or comet or what not – mostly vaporizes, but so does the rock and soil it hits,” Meyer explained, adding, “Most rocks are composed of minerals that contain silica, so there is a lot of it to melt. That melted debris flies away from the impact site and cools as it travels through the air, usually giving it an aerodynamic shape of some sort.”
Microtektites look like pearls but are clear
After the materials cool off in the atmosphere, they drop back to the ground. While the larger pieces (tektites) are mostly in the shape of teardrops, the smaller pieces (microtektites) are round. The pieces eventually end up in the water and they get collected inside of clam shells where they remain preserved.
Interestingly enough, it was Meyer and his classmates that originally found the glass beads at a Sarasota County quarry thirteen years ago. They found a total of 83 of the tiny glass pearls that measured just 200 micrometers in diameter.
Now, over a decade later, he and his colleagues decided to analyze the glass pearls. They studied them using scanning electron microscopy, back-scatter imaging, and x-ray spectroscopy in order to find out what they were made from. They even compared them to other microtektites, cosmic spherules (micrometerorites), and volcanic rocks.
(Not microtektites)
They ruled out volcanic rock because the shape and composition wasn’t right and they concluded that there was no way that a human could have contaminated the beads as they were closed off inside of fossilized clams for millions of years. The only possible explanation is that they were microtektites that were formed from “the debris created by an impact event,” Meyer stated.
What’s even more interesting is that the microtektites were discovered at four different sedimentary depths which could suggest that several impacts occurred there. The researchers plan on conducting more studies on these incredible otherworldly glass beads as well as searching for more of them along the coast of Florida. Pictures of the microtektites can be seen here.
Scientists Just Built a Mini Sun - See What Happened!
Scientists Just Built a Mini Sun - See What Happened!
The sun’s solar wind affects nearly everything in the solar system. It can disrupt the function of Earth’s satellites and creates the lights of the auroras.
A new study by University of Wisconsin–Madison physicists mimicked solar winds in the lab, confirming how they develop and providing an Earth-bound model for the future study of solar physics.
Scientists constructed a 3-meter-wide (10 feet) aluminum vacuum chamber, which they dubbed "the Big Red Ball," to re-create some of the solar physics that take place in and around the sun.
I found some ancient walls and a fallen monolith today in a gigs-an photo. The walls have a lot of perfect right angles and layered stones which sometimes are seen in nature, but most often seen in ancient structures here on earth. There was also giant arrow head like fallen statue with half of it covered in years of mars dirt. Finding one object suggests we have evidence, but finding three geometrically perfect shapes tells me this is 100% real...the site of an ancient civilisation. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Mars and Oklahoma might share a surprising seismic bond.
The fracking boomhas spurred a surge of tremors across the Sooner State and neighboring Texas, scientists say. These quakes are caused by the injection of wastewater underground, which increases pressure and leads to the slippage of tectonic faults.
Michael Manga, a planetary scientist at the University of California Berkeley, and his colleagues propose that compressed aquifers can trigger marsquakes. The compression comes courtesy of the Red Planet's frigid temperatures, which freeze the aquifers' upper layers. (Water expands as it freezes, you may recall.)
But the compression alone probably isn't enough to get the red ground shaking, according to the researchers. Their computer simulations identified two likely triggers — tidal tugs from Phobos, the larger and closer-orbiting of Mars' two moons, and changes in barometric pressure caused by the warming and cooling of the planet's thin atmosphere.
Further observations by InSight may reveal whether this interpretation is correct, the researchers said. If it is, future Mars explorers could use quakes to find groundwater, then access the stuff simply by drilling down. No pumping would be required; the pressurized water would come bubbling to the surface on its own.
And this general process may not be restricted to Earth and Mars. The compression of subsurface water may give rise to ice volcanoes, ridges and other features on the icy moons of the outer solar system, according to Manga.
He and his colleagues detailed the research earlier this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
NASA's $800 million InSight mission touched down on the Red Planet in November 2018. The lander is using a suite of supersensitive seismometers and other gear to map the Martian interior in unprecedented detail.
Not everything is going smoothly, however. InSight's burrowing heat probe has not dug as deeply as desired, and mission team members are still trying to figure out what halted its progress.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
The space agency announced today (June 27) that the next mission in its New Frontiers line of medium-cost missions will be Dragonfly, a rotorcraft designed to ply the skies of the huge, hazy and potentially life-hosting Saturn moon.
If all goes according to plan, Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and land on Titan eight years later, NASA officials said. The probe will then spend at least 2.5 years cruising around the 3,200-mile-wide (5,150 kilometers) moon, making two dozen flights that cover a total of about 110 miles (180 km).
The 10-foot-long (3 meters) Dragonfly will gather a variety of data at each of its stops. Such work will help scientists learn more about Titan, the only solar system body other than Earth known to host stable bodies of liquid on its surface.
Titan's surface lakes, rivers and seas aren't composed of water, however: The frigid moon's climate system is based on hydrocarbons, in particular methane and ethane.
The mission is geared toward characterizing Titan's chemistry in detail. Complex organic molecules are known to swirl in the moon's thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere, and some scientists think its hydrocarbon seas could host exotic forms of life.
Titan also hosts another potentially habitable environment — a buried ocean of liquid water, which sloshes beneath the moon's icy crust.
Dragonfly could conceivably find evidence of Titan life, if the moon is indeed inhabited. And, because Titan is very similar to the early Earth, the mission's observations may shed light on the chemical processes that helped life get going on our planet, NASA officials said.
"Titan is unlike any other place in the solar system, and Dragonfly is like no other mission," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
"It's remarkable to think of this rotorcraft flying miles and miles across the organic sand dunes of Saturn's largest moon, exploring the processes that shape this extraordinary environment," he added. "Dragonfly will visit a world filled with a wide variety of organic compounds, which are the building blocks of life and could teach us about the origin of life itself."
Dragonfly will land among Titan's dunes, then make its way toward its final destination, the 50-mile-wide (80 km) Selk Crater. Selk is a particularly good place to study prebiotic chemistry and look for signs of life, NASA officials said. That's because the three ingredients necessary for life as we know it — liquid water, organic molecules and energy — mixed during the impact that created the crater. (Titan's bedrock is water ice.)
Dragonfly will be nuclear powered, like NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, the New Horizons Pluto probe and many other deep-space explorers.
Dragonfly will be the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program, following New Horizons, the Juno probe to Jupiter and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission. Dragonfly's development costs are capped at $850 million, though the mission's total price tag, including launch, will probably top $1 billion.
The other finalist for the mid-2020s New Frontiers launch slot was the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission, which proposed snagging bits of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — the same icy wanderer studied up close by Europe's Rosetta mission.
Dragonfly won't be the first craft to land on Titan. That honor belongs to Europe's Huygens probe, which touched down on the moon in January 2005. Huygens traveled to the Saturn system with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the ringed planet from mid-2004 through September 2017.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
A fisherman from Murmansk, Russia, is sharing snaps of his grotesque and fascinating fishy finds online, much to the horror of the internet.
Roman Fedortsov, 39, spends a lot of his time on fishing trawlers, coming into contact with a wide variety of sealife.
The trawlers he works on are tasked with catching commercial fish such as cod, haddock and mackerel, but the bizarre critters pictured below make an appearance too.
This pale toadfish, a foot-long (30cm) fish which lives on the continental shelf around New Zealand between 140 and 550 fathoms (250m-1,000m) depth, is one of Russian fisherman Roman Fedortsov's bizarre catches
The stoplight loosejaw fish, related to the viperfish, is so-named for the red and green photophores or luminescent organs under its eyes, which it uses like headlights to find prey in the darkness of the deep ocean. Its oversized lower jaw hinges out from its head to a quarter of its body length, and can snap shut like a trap
Bright orange blobs, slug-like lumps, fish with teeth and bulging eyes; His discoveries may look more like aliens than fish to the untrained eye, but Roman is apparently interested and impressed by what he encounters.
These aquatic curiosities were mainly found in the Norwegian and Barents seas while some of them came ashore from the Atlantic Ocean.
Roman went to Marine University in Murmansk and is an expert on processing and preparing fish.
He has set up his social media accounts to share these pictures with people who otherwise might not get to see them.
Screamadelica! This orange sea anemone, which dwells on the bottom in shallow waters, gives the illusion of having two huge eyes. Although they resemble flowers, sea anemones are predatory animals
This deep-sea horror, apparently a viperfish, is among the collection of marine freaks. Viperfish, whose serpent-like body measures one to two feet in length (30-60cm), use a luminescent lure to attract prey up to their own size, which they spear with their needle-like teeth before swallowing whole
Roman previously told the Press Association: 'All kinds of fish are beautiful in their own way.
'I can not say that they are 'scary' or 'ugly'.'
'People are very interested in unusual sea creatures,' he added
'I think the reason for such popularity was the fact that an ordinary sailor can face life with unusual 'fantastic creatures'.'
This anglerfish is one of the deep-sea monsters caught by the Russian trawler. The anglerfish uses a glowing lure, seen here protruding from its snout, to attract prey in the darkness of its deepwater habitat. Its jaws and stomach can extend to swallow prey twice its own size
Frilling! This frilled shark shows its unusual teeth. The species has been called a 'living fossil' since it shows features of primitive fossil sharks. Its mouth is positioned at the front of its head, rather than underneath like most sharks. Its slender, eel-like body can grow to six feet (2m) long
'Readers have the impression that with each trawl we bring aboard unusual fish specimens,' the fisherman added.
'In fact, this is far from the case. It is a rarity.
'On the other hand, even a famous fish can be photographed so that it will seem to be a 'monster'.'
'Most of the raised fish do not survive due to the difference in pressure,' he added.
'Commercial fish is processed, non-food bycatch is used for the production of fish meal.'
This red snapper's stomach has burst out of its trumpet-like mouth as a result of the rapid pressure change caused by being brought up too quickly from the depths
A wolffish, a species that lives on the continental shelf to depths of 2,000 feet (600m), where they eat shellfish that they crush with their strong canine and molar teeth
Another wolffish, also known as the sea wolf. Some species grow to over six feet (2m) in length
This Sunfish, or Mola, may be the largest sea creature landed by the Russian trawler. These huge fish, found far out to sea near the surface, can grow to up to 15 feet (4.5m) and weigh up to 5,000lb (2,300kg)
Googly eyes: This cusk (left) and another, unidentified fish (right) have huge, bulging eyes like many deep-sea species. The cusk is a cod-like fish found in the north atlantic
A sea spider, part of a group of marine species related to land-dwelling insects and spiders. Like a spider, it sucks nutrients from soft-bodied invertebrates through a proboscis. Its stomach extends into its legs
Swashbuckling: A black scabbardfish, a species of the piratical-sounding cutlassfish family, shows off its needle-like teeth. The species is named for its dark steely blue colour and long, slender body. This fast-swimming predator can grow more than 3 feet (1m) in length, and lives in very deep water from 600 to 5,600 feet (180m to 170m)
This weird, unidentified fish bears a disturbing likeness to the monster from the 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien
Alien species? This sea creature looks like the 'facehugger' from Ridley Scott's Science Fiction film Alien
Another big-mouthed predator caught in the nets of the trawler
This toad-like fish is among the odd-looking sea creatures trawled up in the boat's nets
The bug-eyed beauty is one of the weird fish caught by a fisherman from Murmansk
Russian fisherman Roman Fedortsov shows off a jade-coloured fish caught in the nets of his trawler
A remora, which attaches itself to the undersides of sharks and rays to scavenge scraps that fall from their mouths
Lifting the snout of this blob-like fish reveals a crustacean it was devouring at the moment it was caught
A king crab, a north Pacific species which can grow up to six feet (2m) across, and is heavily fished for its meat.
A sea anemone (left) and another unidentified sea creature (right). Sea anemones look like flowers but are in fact predatory animals. They are related to both jellyfish and coral polyps
A close-up view of the unidentified bug-eyed fish caught in the trawler's nets
An unidentified fish, possibly a blobfish. Blobfish, realated to toadfish, live in very deep water, where they hunt by ambush. Their metabolism is very slow, which gives them a lifespan of up to 130 years
This toothy specimen of a puffer fish is one of many unusual sea creatures caught by the russian trawler. They puff themselves up, exposimg the sines on their skin, when threatened. The four large teeth are used to crush their mollusc prey
This horrifying unidentified cyclops may be a species of flatfish
A squid, one of many sea creatures caught in the nets of the Murmansk-based Russian trawler
Brown psolus, a U-shaped relative of the sea cucumber, which attaches itself to rocks with the rectangular sole seen on the left, and extends its tentacles to feed
The brown psolus in the centre, a relative of the sea cucumber, shows its feeding tentacles
Russian trawlerman Roman Fedortsov displays an unidentified life-form from his collection
An unidentified bottom-dwelling sea animal caught in the nets of the russian trawler from Murmansk
Russian fisherman Roman Fedortsov holds a Brown Psolus, a sedentary species of sea cucumber
Four bottom-dwelling invertebrates, likely some species of sea cucumber. The sea cucumber lives on the bottom, where it eats detritus and keeps the marine environment clean. Its leathery skin covers a protective endoskeleton
Scientists often kill animals — that’s just a grisly fact of biological research.
But it’s a bit more complicated in the theoretical future where we’ve made first contact with extraterrestrial life. At that point, science author Guy Harrison argues in a Psychology Today op-ed that biologists may have to come to terms with killing alien life in the name of scientific progress — which raises a difficult question: at what point does scientific inquiry outweigh the value of life?
Litmus Test
Harrison suggests guidelines that future biologists may find helpful. For instance, any extraterrestrial life that shows signs of intelligence ought to be spared. In that case, we may be able to learn about the alien lifeform by using our words instead of our scalpels.
Otherwise, scientists might consider collecting individual aliens to store in a museum’s archive, or to cut open and study. But Harrison argues in Psychology Today that the issue is too complex and ambiguous to draw up any binding rules in advance.
Superior Life
This all assumes that we would even be able to kill an extraterrestrial. It’s possible that any life out there is vastly superior to humanity, making the whole debate moot.
“If we do find life out there somewhere,” Harrison writes, “maybe it will be contemplating the moral implications of killing us for further study.”
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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