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...
NASA scientists recently discovered an enormous crater in Greenland that was likely caused by a meteorite or some other unidentified object. Bigger than Washington DC or even Paris, the crater is hiding under the deep snow of Greenland. What caused the impact is unknown. Though, it could be the very same UFO that brought us the sand that we use nowadays to make our glass.
What NASA Knows About UFO
NASA has being studying ETs for many years now. The agency managed to discover secret planets in multiple different solar systems and flying objects that could easily be alien ships. Although there were no official statements, it is no secret that aliens likely exist. And these very aliens have been helping humanity for many years.
Aliens Who Brought Us Glass
In recent discoveries, NASA outlined the idea of a star that hit our planet millions of years ago. This unidentified object could represent the resources that aliens tried to send to help sustain life on Earth. When you put together recent events, it is possible to believe that intelligent species sent ancient objects to Earth.
If Aliens Knew How to Make Artificial Stars
Chinese scientists have recently managed to create their very own mini sun, which is artificial. This artificial sun can reach a temperature of one million degrees Celsius. This makes one think that intelligent creatures might be able to harness artificial stars. If they are more intelligent than us, they could have learned how to create artificial suns millions of years ago. If they did, they might be millions of steps ahead of our innovations. They might even treat humans in a similar way to how humans treat lab rats. Meaning, there is a possibility that these outer space civilizations are keeping us alive for the purpose of running experiments on us.
There’s Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” R2-D2 and C-3P0 from “Star Wars,” and of course the super-scary HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But space bots aren’t just science fiction anymore: Russia has sent a robot to space to learn how to help cosmonauts and astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Model Skybot F-850, nicknamed “Fyodor” — short for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research — is shaped like a human and designed to perform tasks that humans can do, like using a screwdriver or a wrench. It blasted off from Kazakhstan late Wednesday aboard an unmanned Russian Soyuz MS-14 rocket, and will arrive at the ISS Saturday and spend five days aboard.
The spaceship that Fyodor flew on usually carries a crew of three into space. But Fyodor had the whole ship to itself. The robot might be sitting in the driver’s seat, but it’s not flying the rocket. The ship is on autopilot, using its own internal navigation system — another non-human helper — called Kurs.
Дмитрий Рогозин
@Rogozin
Робот платформы F.E.D.O.R. показал навыки стрельбы с двух рук. Идёт работа над мелкой моторикой и алгоритмами принятия решений
The Russians want to be clear: Fyodor isn’t a killer robot, though it canshoot guns. It’s designed to be used in all sorts of high-risk scenarios, including gunfights and space. It’s nimble, able to administer first aid with its metal, hinged, human-like fingers, which can also pull a gun’s trigger.
“We are not creating a terminator but artificial intelligence which will have a great practical importance in various fields,” said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in a tweet in 2017, referring to the sci-fi film about a time-traveling murderous android played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Rogozin also praised the robot’s “decision-making skills.”
Video of the launch shows the robot sitting in the pilot’s seat, holding a small Russian flag. Beside Fyodor sat a small toy Russian cosmonaut, which floated into the air as the rocket left the Earth’s atmosphere and entered into low-gravity space.
Robots like Fyodor, which stands at 5-foot-11 and weighs about 350 pounds, have been around for about five years, and other models have been used to drive cars and conduct rescue work, according to Space.com.
And though Russia’s never sent a humanoid robot into space before, the primary purpose of the flight was to test the rocket Fyodor was on, NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during the launch broadcast. This was the first time that this particular capsule-rocket combination has been used for a flight of this type, and researchers want to be sure the flight is safe for humans before sending actual people up to space on them.
Fyodor’s good for figuring that out. The android is equipped with a bunch of sensors that will help give a sense of just how comfortable — or uncomfortable — a flight on this ship will be for human astronauts.
The spacecraft is also bringing up nearly 1,500 pounds of supplies and food for the station's six-person crew.
Fyodor isn’t the first robot to visit the ISS. The U.S. sent up Robonaut 2 back in 2011, specially-equipped with (very goofy-looking) “climbing legs” for zero-gravity mobility. It was designed to help astronauts in high-risk situations, and was sent back to Earth in 2018 after experiencing some technical difficulties.
Japan also sent up Kirobo, a friendly Japanese-speaking robot modeled on manga character Astro Boy, designed to keep astronauts from getting lonely in space. The robot got lonely in space after his buddy, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, went home to Earth.
"I'm a little tired, so I think I'll rest awhile, but I hope you'll look up at the sky sometimes and think of me,” Kirobo said in a video messageafter Wakata left the ISS.
Cover: Humanoid robot Fyodor prepares for the Soyuz MS-14 orbital flight to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrier. Roscosmos State Corporation/TASS (Photo by TASSTASS via Getty Images)
ONDERZOEKERS TREFFEN STERRENSTOF AAN IN ANTARCTISCHE SNEEUW
ONDERZOEKERS TREFFEN STERRENSTOF AAN IN ANTARCTISCHE SNEEUW
Vivian Lammerse
De sneeuw bevat de zeldzame isotoop ijzer-60 die ontstaat bij enorme stellaire explosies.
Elk jaar dwarrelt er kosmisch stof op aarde neer. De hoeveelheden kunnen variëren van enkele duizenden tot wel tienduizend ton. Het meeste hiervan bestaat uit hele kleine deeltjes afkomstig van planetoïden of kometen in ons zonnestelsel. Maar nu zijn onderzoekers op iets heel bijzonders gestuit. De sneeuw op Antarctica blijkt namelijk de zeldzame sterrenstof ijzer-60 te bevatten die mogelijk uit de interstellaire buurt afkomstig is. De bevindingen zijn gepubliceerd in Physical Review Letters.
Meer over ijzer-60 IJzer-60 is een onstabiele radioactieve isotoop van ijzer, een overgangsmetaal. Deze isotoop komt niet van nature op aarde voor en ontstaat uitsluitend als gevolg van supernova-explosies of door reacties van kosmische straling met kosmisch stof. Vervolgens bereikt maar een hele kleine hoeveelheid de aarde.
Diepzee Het is niet voor het eerst dat wetenschappers de zeldzame isotoop op aarde aantreffen. Zo’n twintig jaar geleden vond een onderzoeksteam ijzer-60 in afzettingen afkomstig uit de diepzee. Het zette onderzoeker Gunther Korschinek, destijds deel van het onderzoeksteam, aan het denken. Want zouden er ook sporen van stellaire explosies terug te vinden kunnen zijn in pure, onaangeroerde Antarctische sneeuw?
Sneeuw Om deze hypothese te verifiëren reisde een nieuw team af naar Antarctica en verzamelde zo’n 500 kilogram sneeuw, dat vervolgens naar München werd getransporteerd. Daar werd de sneeuw gesmolten en het smeltwater van de vaste componenten gescheiden. Met behulp van verschillende chemische methoden vonden de onderzoekers uiteindelijk vijf ijzer-60-atomen. “Door onze analyses konden we uitsluiten dat de ijzer-60 afkomstig was van kosmische straling, kernproeven of reactorongevallen,” vertelt onderzoeker Dominik Koll. “Omdat de radioactieve isotoop niet van nature op aarde voorkomt, wisten we dat de ijzer-60 afkomstig moest zijn van een supernova.”
Wanneer Hoewel dit al een ontdekking op zich is, kon het onderzoeksteam ook nog eens relatief nauwkeurig bepalen wanneer de ijzer-60 op aarde is afgezet. Zo was de geanalyseerde sneeuwlaag niet ouder dan 20 jaar. Bovendien konden de onderzoekers uitsluiten dat de isotoop van een hele verre stellaire explosie afkomstig is, omdat de deeltjes in dat geval tijdens hun reis door de barre omstandigheden in de ruimte zouden zijn verzwolgen. Koll gaat er daarom vanuit dat de gevonden isotoop afkomstig is uit de interstellaire buurt, bijvoorbeeld uit de gaswolk waarin ons zonnestelsel zich momenteel bevindt.
“Ons zonnestelsel is ongeveer 40.000 jaar geleden deze wolk binnengegaan en zal deze binnen een paar duizend jaar weer verlaten,” legt Korschinek uit. “Als onze hypothese correct is, zou materiaal uit ijskernen ouder dan 40.000 jaar geen ijzer-60 bevatten.” Vervolgonderzoek kan eigenlijk niet uit blijven. “We zouden hiermee de overgang van het zonnestelsel naar de gaswolk kunnen verifiëren,” gaat Korschinek verder. “En dat zou een baanbrekende ontdekking zijn.”
India's Chandrayaan-2 mission captured this photograph of the moon on Aug. 21, 2019, days after the mission entered lunar orbit. It's Chandrayaan-2's first photo of the moon.
(Image credit: ISRO)
India'sChandrayaan-2 mission is in orbit around the moon, and its view is spectacular.
The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Aug. 19 (Aug. 20 local time at mission control in India), about a month after its launch, on July 22. In order to make the journey more feasible with a smaller rocket, the spacecraft took a long road to the moon, with about seven weeks between launch and the scheduled touchdown of the mission's lander and orbiter.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which runs the Chandrayaan-2 mission, has now released the spacecraft's first image of the moon taken from orbit. That image was snapped from about 1,650 miles (2,650 kilometers) above the lunar surface on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The photograph shows part of the far side of the moon, including Apollo crater and Mare Orientalis.
But that region is not Chandrayaan-2's destination. An orbiter will separate from the Indian mission, and then the lander, with a rover tucked onboard, will head toward a location much closer to the moon's south pole, with landing scheduled for Sept. 6 (Sept. 7 local time at mission control).
The ISRO chose that destination in part based on the findings from the mission's predecessor, which carried the instrument that spotted water ice frozen in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar south pole. And so India built a second mission, adding a landed component this time, to follow up on that discovery.
If the lander safely touches down, India will become the fourth country to complete that feat, after the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China. The lander and rover would operate for one lunar day but are not designed to withstand the frigid lunar nights.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct a description of the region shown in the photograph. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
A video taken just before 4 a.m. on August 11th over Jackson Hole in Wyoming appears to show an unidentified flying object emit a flash of light before streaking away. A second, larger flash occurs after it is off-screen.
The object was spotted on the webcam at Spring Creek Ranch by an anonymous witness who was trying to keep an eye out for the Perseid Meteor Shower.
The witness sent the video to Buckrail the same morning it was shot.
Buckrail released two versions of the video.
The original is three minutes and thirty five seconds long and shot frame-by-frame, wherein the camera only records one image every second.
A sped up version shows a much smoother flight.
The object is too bright and moving too slowly to be a meteor, and, according to the flight log database on the US Department of Transportation website, no flights were in that airspace at the time the video was recorded.
“My coworker thought something was broken on the camera,” the witness said. “I checked online, there weren’t any flights that I could find at that time.”
“It would totally be a plane in my mind if there weren’t a weird, bright flash in the end," she added.
Historical weather data does not show any meteorological explanation, such as lightning, for the flash.
A drone or fighter jet have both been lobbied as possible explanations for the object.
Samuel Singer, former Executive Director of Wyoming Stargazing, speculated that the object could be a drone, and local photographer and drone pilot Sam Cook agreed, since FAA guidelines require drone lights to be visible for at least three statute miles.
That's "pretty bright," said Cook.
Michael Brotherton, a professor of Astronomy at the University of Wyoming, also agreed that a drone is a valid hypothesis.
The flash of light could have been a relatively dim flash exaggerated by the webcam's low-light sensitivity, he said.
“There does seem to be a flash of light from the object partway through that is likely artificial,” Brotherton wrote in an email to Buckrail.
A former Air Force turned commercial pilot asked about the video said it could be a fighter jet pilot “showboating over the valley with an afterburner and flares.” While there is a jet route matching the object's path in the video, there is no military training airspace in that area, and most fighter jets fly in pairs unless they're moving from base to base. The early morning hour, too, would have been an unusual time for a fighter jet to be flying solo.
So far, the object remains unexplained.
To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.
Look out, aliens, because human scientists are about to start snapping some photos of you.
The Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Lab has finished construction on the 3.2-gigapixel sensor array for the world’s largest camera, which is ready to take photos of life, the universe, and everything that cosmology, physics, and astronomy can create. The camera will be used in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a massive telescope that will observe the universe like never before.
“This is the biggest charge-coupled device (CCD) array that has ever been built,” Paul O’Connor, senior scientist at Brookhaven Lab’s instrumentation division, said in a press release. “It’s three billion pixels. No telescope has ever put this many sensors into one camera.”
Now that the array is done, work can continue on the massive telescope that is currently under construction on a mountaintop in Chile. I’m not going to pretend to understand the technology that is involved with this massive camera (Gizmodo has you covered on that front), but the digital sensor array is an important part of the project—a collaborative effort involving more than 30 institutions from around the world. Once complete, it will be used to create a time-lapse movie of the complete visible universe accessible from Chile.
And rest assured, photography technology has improved since the days when they had to build a train-size camera just to photograph a train, so while the telescope is large, it’s not as big as the universe it hopes to capture on film.
Riddle as Himalayan skeleton lake is found to contain remains of hundreds of people who died thousands of years apart, including bodies from as far away as Greece
Riddle as Himalayan skeleton lake is found to contain remains of hundreds of people who died thousands of years apart, including bodies from as far away as Greece
Roopkund Lake on Indian side of the Himalayas thought to be site of catastrophe
Mystery first emerged amid WW2 when British guard found lake full of skeletons
Now, scientists believe Greeks were among hundreds of those who died at site
This suggests that the lake drew visitors from across the globe not just locals
DNA from remains found high in the Himalayas suggest that Greeks were among hundreds of people who died at a mysterious location known as Skeleton Lake.
Roopkund Lake on the Indian side of the Himalayas was once thought to be the site of an ancient catastrophe that left several hundred people dead.
But the first ancient whole genome DNA data from India shows that several different groups of people died at the lake in several incidents up to 1,000 years apart.
The mystery first emerged during the Second World War when a British guard discovered the frozen lake full of skeletons some 16,000 feet (5,000 metres) above sea level.
Study senior author Doctor Niraj Rai, of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in India, said: 'Roopkund Lake has long been subject to speculation about who these individuals were, what brought them to Roopkund Lake, and how they died.'
DNA from remains found high in the Himalayas (pictured) suggest that Greeks were among hundreds of people who died at a mysterious location known as Skeleton Lake
WHAT HAPPENED AT SKELETON LAKE?
Theories ranging from a landslide to a mass suicide were put forward to explain the deaths, but it is only recently that researchers believe they know what caused the cracks in their skulls.
A 2004 expedition to the site concluded the group was killed by cricket ball-sized hailstones during a sudden storm.
This, they decided, was the only way to explain why the skulls and shoulder bones of the dead had all been hit by rounded objects directly from above.
As there was nowhere to shelter in the valley, the group was at the mercy of the storm.
Their bodies lay in the lake, which regularly freezes, for the next 1,200 years until their wartime discovery
Researchers say that analysis of DNA obtained from the skeletons reveals that they derive from at least three 'distinct' genetic groups.
The first group was made up of 23 people with ancestries that are related to people from present-day India, who do not appear to belong to a single population, but instead derived from many different groups.
The second largest group is made up of 14 individuals with ancestry that is most closely related to people who live in the eastern Mediterranean, especially present-day Crete and Greece.
A third individual has ancestry that is more typical of that found in South East Asia.
Stable isotope dietary reconstruction of the skeletons also supports the presence of multiple distinct groups.
Study first-author Éadaoin Harney, from Harvard University, said: 'We were extremely surprised by the genetics of the Roopkund skeletons.
'The presence of individuals with ancestries typically associated with the eastern Mediterranean suggests that Roopkund Lake was not just a site of local interest, but instead drew visitors from across the globe.'
Radiocarbon dating indicates that the skeletons were not deposited at the same time, as previously assumed.
Instead, the study showed that the two major genetic groups were actually deposited around 1,000 years apart.
The first ancient whole genome DNA data from India shows that several different groups of people died at the lake in several incidents up to 1,000 years apart. Pictured: Snow covered bones at Roopkund Lake
First, during the 7th to 10th Centuries, individuals with Indian-related ancestry died at Roopkund, possibly during several distinct events.
But it was not until sometime during the 17th to 20th Centuries that the other two groups, likely composed of travellers from the eastern Mediterranean and South East Asia arrived at Roopkund Lake.
Ice melting revealed even more skeletal remains, floating in the water and lying around the lake's edges.
The first assumption was that they were the remains of Japanese soldiers who had died of exposure while trying to invade British India. But it soon became apparent that the bones were much older.
Many theories were put forward as to how so many people had died at such a remote location - including an epidemic, landslide, and ritual suicide.
One popular theory was that the people whose remains were found there had been killed by giant hailstones.
Roopkund Lake (pictured) on the Indian side of the Himalayas was thought to be the site of an ancient catastrophe that left several hundred people dead
The Mystery of the Himalayas’ Skeleton Lake Just Got Weirder
The Mystery of the Himalayas’ Skeleton Lake Just Got Weirder
Every summer, hundreds of ancient bones emerge from the ice. A new genetic study helps explain how they got there.
Roopkund Lake, in the Indian Himalayas, is frozen for much of the year. But in warmer months it delivers a macabre performance, earning the nickname Skeleton Lake.CreditCreditAtish Waghwase
By Robin George Andrews
Nestled in the Indian Himalayas, some 16,500 feet above sea level, sits Roopkund Lake. One hundred and thirty feet wide, it is frozen for much of the year, a frosty pond in a lonely, snowbound valley. But on warmer days, it delivers a macabre performance, as hundreds of human skeletons, some with flesh still attached, emerge from what has become known as Skeleton Lake.
Who were these individuals, and what befell them? One leading idea was that they died simultaneously in a catastrophic event more than 1,000 years ago. An unpublished anthropological survey from several years ago studied five skeletons and estimated they were 1,200 years old.
But a new genetic analysis carried out by scientists in India, America and Germany has upended that theory. The study, which examined DNA from 38 remains, indicates that there wasn’t just one mass dumping of the dead, but several, spread over a millennium.
The report, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, has led to a “far richer view into the possible histories of this site” than previous efforts provided, said Jennifer Raff, a geneticist and anthropologist at the University of Kansas who was not involved with the work.
Anthropologists have known about Roopkund Lake for several decades, but little was known about the provenance of its skeletons. Rockslides, migrating ice and even human visitors have disturbed and moved the remains, making it difficult to decipher when and how the individuals were buried, much less who they were. “In a case like this, that becomes impossible,” said Cat Jarman, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Bristol in England who was not part of the research team.
Genetic analysis has helped make some sense of the jumble of bones. The researchers, led in part by Niraj Rai, an expert in ancient DNA at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in India, and David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, extracted DNA from the remains of dozens of skeletal samples, and managed to identify 23 males and 15 females.
Based on populations living today, these individuals fit into three distinct genetic groups. Twenty-three, including males and females, had ancestries typical of contemporary South Asians; their remains were deposited at the lake between the 7th and 10th centuries, and not all at once. Some skeletons were more ancient than others, suggesting that many were interred at the lake lifetimes apart.
Human skeletal remains at Roopkund lake. A new genetic study partially identified some of the individuals: young and old, some interred long before others, none of them related.
CreditHimadri Sinha Roy
Then, perhaps 1,000 years or so later, sometime between the 17th and 20th centuries, two more genetic groups suddenly appeared within the lake: one individual of East Asian-related ancestry and, curiously, 14 people of eastern Mediterranean ancestry.
How all these individuals met their end is anyone’s guess. There’s no evidence of bacterial infections, so an epidemic was probably not to blame. Perhaps the challenging high-altitude environment proved fatal.
The earlier study, of five skeletal samples, found three with unhealed compression fractures, perhaps inflicted by huge hailstones, although that conclusion is open to debate. In any case, across a range of centuries “it’s hard to believe that each individual died in exactly the same way,” said Éadaoin Harney, a doctoral student at Harvard and the lead author on the study.
The individuals included children and elderly adults, but none were family relatives. Chemical signatures from the skeletons indicate that the individuals had significantly different diets, adding support to the notion that several distinct population groups are represented.
If accounts of their journeys exist somewhere, none have been uncovered so far. “We have searched all the archives, but no such records were found,” said Dr. Rai.
The researchers note that Roopkund Lake is situated on a route known to modern-day Hindu pilgrims, so perhaps some of the South Asian individuals died while taking part. But that is less likely to explain the presence of individuals from the distant eastern Mediterranean.
Perhaps they weren’t actually Mediterranean migrants, Dr. Jarman said. Their genetic ancestry resembles that of present-day people from Greece or Crete, but current distribution may not apply to ancient populations. Regardless, this group came from somewhere far from Roopkund Lake, for reasons unknown.
Maybe the site held significance for groups with various religious beliefs, said Dr. Jarman. Maybe some of the skeletons were brought for burial, possibly to be left in the lake. Or maybe there were ill-fated explorers — driven by a desire to see a spectacular mountain range, killed by their own curiosity.
A few answers have begun to emerge, at least. Archaeology is full of such enigmatic sites, Dr. Reich said, and when science comes along and digs in, “it enriches the story in immeasurable ways.”
View of Skeleton Lake, where hundreds of bodies appear when the snow melts. Researchers have now discovered the bodies belonged to distinct groups and were deposited there over 1,000 years.
PRAMOD JOGLEKAR
Skeletons at the lake in the Himalayas. Researchers do not know why people from the Mediterranean ended up there.
Area 51is a region of the southern Nevada desert owned and operated by the US Air Force, within their larger Nellis Air Force Base and Nevada Test Site, a huge swath of land stretching from the Indian Springs Auxiliary Field to the Tonopah Test Range. Just a few hours from Las Vegas, this site has entered conspiracy theory and general cultural folklore as an alleged secret containment area for the US government to house either extraterrestrials, captured extraterrestrial spaceships, reverse-engineered technology from aliens, or some mixture of related alien spookery.
Area 51 shares this honor with other sites maintained by the US government in the American southwest, to wit Roswell Army Air Field in Roswell, New Mexico, and more recently, a supposed Dulce Base in Dulce, New Mexico. All three of these sites have been the focus of theories about the US government hiding evidence of aliens and their ships there. We’ll get into the give-and-take of theory and fact on all three of these sites, because even if we don’t find flying saucers, the answers are pretty mind-blowing anyway!
In any case, Area 51 is a site related to the US military and a matter of national security, so aliens or not, the USAF tends to keep mum about what exactly they do there. Area 51 is at least part of a secrecy designation of some sort, official or unofficial. This fans the flames of conspiracy theories, of course.
In July of 2019, Area 51 suddenly spiked in popularity again when a Facebook event titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” proposed a mass charge on foot by the general public to raid the Area 51 facility and discover once and for all whether it is housing any aliens. The original poster, Matty Roberts in California, later recanted that the post was just a joke. But despite this, the meme went viral, with some 3 million people signing up. Even a number of celebrities weighed in, including Elon Musk, which is the threshold for crazy ideas reaching critical mass on the Internet.
For the record, the USAF has released a statement saying the facility will be protected from a mass raid like any military base would. And yes, indeed, the world’s largest and most expensive military force can “stop all of you” with some ammo to spare if it comes to that, although the most likely outcome of a civilian breech is getting arrested by the Lincoln County Sheriff.
But let’s back up here: First off, is Area 51 really worth storming at all?
WHAT WE CAN CONFIRM ABOUT AREA 51
Area 51, and the surrounding Nellis Air Force Base and Nevada Test Site, has a history going back to the Cold War. It started out being used as a testing grounds for nuclear weapons, and yes, we mean the kind that make mushroom clouds. Along with being such a remote location handy to test bombs, the flat, virtually featureless desert of Nevada also makes a good airport location, so they threw in the air force base too.
Now, when you have a remote airport where you’re already keeping off-limits because it’s a nuclear test range, it’s also a handy place to fly something when you need a little privacy. And that, it turns out, is exactly what was going on when a 2013 declassified documentrevealed that Area 51 was a testing site for US spy planes, including the U-2 and OXCART aerial surveillance programs. Beyond that, the area has served as a proving ground for numerous Lockheed craft, and nearby Tonopah Test Range has served as a reverse-engineering arena for captured foreign aircraft. Yes, we do this! Over the years whenever US armed forces get their mitts on aircraft from another country, particularly from less-than-friendly neighbors, they take it out to Tonopah to see what she can do. Some of these exercises include simulated dogfights between the foreign craft and our own equipment. Cool job, isn’t it?
Photo: Finlay McWalter / CC by SA-3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
A 1966 CIA diagram of Area 51, found in an untitled, declassified paper, showing the runway overrun for OXCART (Lockheed A-12) and the turnaround areas.
As for Roswell, the supposed crash of a UFO there in 1947 was explained as a weather balloon. Buy it or not, that’s the story. As for Dulce, there are Cold War missile installations there, but no air base confirmed. But when it comes to Area 51, we have a whole list of interesting US military airborne activity that’s come and gone or is rumored to be ongoing now.
Strictly speaking, we have indeed confirmed “UFOs at Area 51”! Just remember that “UFO” just stands for “Unidentified Flying Object,” and anybody sighting a strange airplane swooping by, which is still part of a top-secret military experiment, can definitely say they saw a flying object they could not identify. Furthermore, there’s even a kernel of truth in the “reverse-engineering foreign technology” part, if you just substitute “foreign governments” for “aliens.”
REALITY CHECK
Before we ask if there’s aliens at Area 51, we have to define what we mean. Surely the first thing we have to throw out is our popular concept of “aliens.” If you’re talking about little green men from Mars in those 1950s-style flying saucers that look like an orange wearing a tutu, then no, they don’t exist. But any living organism originating from any point but planet Earth does qualify as an alien!
If we were to discover and confirm extraterrestrial life, it would automatically be the most shattering news ever in recorded history. That applies even down to the smallest bacteria. As it is, the collective human race has been busily scouting for the tiniest nit of alien life. We have rovers on Mars, probes in space, SETI scanning the skies, telescopes probing the farthest reaches of the universe. The 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing has just passed, and we’re more interested in off-Earth exploration than ever before.
Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S flag on the Moon / NASA / Neil A. Armstrong
So it’s highly unlikely that if we were to actually uncover alien life forms of any kind, that we would keep it a secret. Just think, the first person to confirm extraterrestrial life guarantees themselves a place in the history books! They’d have a career for life just giving TED talks after that. Their name would be celebrated in science alongside Galileo, Einstein, and Hawking. There is an informal global competition underway to discover extraterrestrial life.
The motivation to keep it a secret is minimal. But… suppose there was something dreadful about this extraterrestrial life form? What if it had some Lovecraftian evil power, what if it was intelligent and demanded secrecy on threat of invasion, or what if it presented some health threat to the human race in some other way, such as an infection vector? You can never say “never” when dealing with the unknown!
Conclusively, we’d have to move that scenario to “implausible,” but not “impossible.”
IS THERE A CONSPIRACY TO SPREAD A CONSPIRACY?
Keep in mind, any military operation involving flying things you want to keep a secret isn’t hurt at all by UFO rumors. And it’s not like the US government hasn’t enjoyed a convenient smokescreen provided by a conspiracy theory obfuscating what it’s really up to before. Just look at these official mission patches for US spy satellite launches by the CIA / NSA / DOD. Come on, they’re messing with our heads on purpose here!
So whether you want to believe or not, there’s government on one side and commerce on the other who both benefit when you go chasing flying saucers. Which still doesn’t mean there are no aliens anyway, but, as usual, does indicate that the truth is always far more complex than we first assume.
A robot deployed on one of the darkest asteroidsin the solar system may now shed light on the origins of some of the oldest, rarest meteorites, a new study finds.
These findings suggest that this asteroid formed during a collision of two very different space rocks, the scientists said. The research also suggests that dust may float off this asteroid, possibly driven by electric fields.
In 2018, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu, a 2,950-foot-wide (900 meters) near-Earth asteroid that is one of the darkest celestial bodies in the solar system. Its name, which means "dragon palace," refers to a magical underwater castle in a Japanese folktale.
One reason scientists may want to learn more about Ryugu is because its orbit brings it close — potentially dangerously close — to Earth.
"Knowing the composition and geological structure of asteroids and comets is essential to [developing] mitigation strategies in the case of potential collision scenarios," study lead author Ralf Jaumann, a planetary scientist at the Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, told Space.com.
In addition, previous research suggested Ryugu may contain primordial material from the nebula that gave birth to the sun and its planets. Hayabusa2 is designed to return samples from the asteroid to shed light on the formation of the solar system.
The first image captured by the MASCOT rover during its descent to Ryugu's surface.
(Image credit: Jaumann et al., Science (2019))
To investigate Ryugu's surface, Hayabusa2 deployed the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander. This shoebox-size robot took photos both as it dropped from the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft onto Ryugu and after it landed on the asteroid's surface, where it operated for a little more than 17 hours before its batteries ran out.
"To have this small lander reaching the surface and providing detailed images of the surface was very exciting," Jaumann said.
MASCOT found Ryugu was covered with two kinds of rocks and boulders — one dark with a cauliflower-like, crumbly surface and the other bright with smooth faces and sharp edges. Both types are nearly evenly distributed on the surface of the asteroid, suggesting Ryugu was a pile of rubble that coalesced after two parent bodies crashed into one another, "indicating a violent history of asteroid collision," Jaumann said.
Close-up images of Ryugu's dark, rough stones revealed they often seem to possess small, colored inclusions similar to those found in one of the most primitive and rare types of meteorites, known as carbonaceous chondrites.
"Carbonaceous material is the primordial material of the solar system, from which all planets and moons originate," Jaumann said. "Thus, if we want to understand planetary formation, including the formation of Earth, we need to understand its building parts." He said the new findings support long-standing speculation that carbonaceous chondrites come from C-type asteroids — dark-gray, carbon-rich space rocks such as Ryugu.
Unexpectedly, the MASCOT images of Ryugu showed no fine dust, which scientists had expected would accumulate on the asteroid's surface due to micrometeoroid impacts and other forms of weathering. The mission's predecessor, Hayabusa, found that another rubble-pile asteroid, Itokawa, also seemed dust-free.
The researchers suggested that some as-yet-unknown force removes dust from Ryugu's surface. Electric fields on the asteroid might cause dust to float away, Jaumann said, or micrometeoroid impacts and seismic vibrations could be responsible.
The scientists detailed their findings online on Aug. 22 in the journal Science.
We don't have optimum ocean-circulation patterns, it would seem.
The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.
Alien planets with more favorable ocean-circulation patterns might support life in even greater abundance and variety than our own world does, the study determined.
"Life in Earth's oceans depends on upwelling (upward flow), which returns nutrients from the dark depths of the ocean to the sunlit portions of the ocean where photosynthetic life lives," study leader Stephanie Olson, of the University of Chicago, said in a statement.
"More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity," added Olson, who presented the new research today (Aug. 22) at the Goldschmidt Conference in Barcelona, Spain. "These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets."
The new study provides a step in this direction. Olson and her team used computer models to determine which types of alien worlds have the most efficient ocean upwelling and are therefore probably especially good places for life as we know it to thrive.
"We found that higher atmospheric density, slower rotation rates and the presence of continents all yield higher upwelling rates," Olson said.
"A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable — and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own," she added, describing this conclusion as "surprising."
"We expect oceans to be important in regulating some of the most compelling remotely detectable signs of life on habitable worlds, but our understanding of oceans beyond our solar system is currently very rudimentary," Chris Reinhard, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in the same statement.
"Dr. Olson's work represents a significant and exciting step forward in our understanding of exoplanet oceanography," added Reinhard, who was not involved in the new study.
Oceans are probably incredibly common across the Milky Way galaxy. After all, observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope and other instruments suggest that about one in four stars hosts a potentially Earth-like planet — a rocky world at the right orbital distance to host liquid water on its surface.
And our own solar system hosts multiple ocean worlds, though most of them are very different from Earth. Jupiter's moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede are all thought to harbor big oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells, for example, as does Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The oceans of Europa and Enceladus are thought to be in contact with the moons' rocky cores, making possible complex chemical reactions that may well have led to life, scientists say.
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.
Pentagon Finally Admits They Investigate UFO Sightings
Pentagon Finally Admits They Investigate UFO Sightings
The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them.
In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”
And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft.
“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” Sherwood said.
“The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.”
Nick Pope, who secretly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, called the DOD’s comments a “bombshell revelation.”
Pope, a former UK defense official-turned-author, said, “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed.
“This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said.
“It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’ ”
John Greenewald Jr. — whose website The Black Vault archives declassified government documents on UFO reports, “Bigfoot” sightings and other subjects — also called the Pentagon’s use of the term “unidentified aerial phenomena” unprecedented in its frankness.
“I’m shocked they said it that way, and the reason is, is they’ve seemingly worked very hard not to say that,” he said.
“So I think that’s a pretty powerful statement because now we have actual evidence — official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.’”
Greenewald said he hopes that the Pentagon will release more information about the AATIP, either by voluntary disclosure or through requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
“But at least we’re one step closer to the truth,” he said.
The existence of the AATIP was revealed in 2017, along with a 33-second DOD video that shows an airborne object being chased by two Navy jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
At the time, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took credit for arranging $22 million in annual funding for the AATIP, telling the New York Times that it was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”
Reid’s home state of Nevada hosts the top-secret military installation known as “Area 51,” long rumored to be the storehouse for an alien craft which crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Reid, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
De geheimen van de piramides onthuld. Kijk deze fascinerende documentaire
De geheimen van de piramides onthuld. Kijk deze fascinerende documentaire
Al eeuwenlang spreken de zeven wereldwonderen tot de verbeelding van de mensen. Eén daarvan springt eruit: de Grote Piramide in Egypte.
Men veronderstelt dat de piramide diende als grafmonument voor farao Cheops. Was dat ook echt zo? Er is immers nooit een sarcofaag, een mummie of een spoor van grafschatten gevonden.
Regisseur Patrice Pooyard is ook gefascineerd geraakt door dit monumentale bouwsel dat al zoveel eeuwen onze aarde siert.
Twijfel
Hij was onder de indruk van het feit dat de Egyptenaren dit enorme aardbevingbestendige bouwwerk in slechts 20 jaar gemaakt zouden hebben met als enige gereedschap een hamer en beitel.
Toch begon Pooyard te twijfelen aan deze aannames, die al jaren vanzelfsprekend zijn. Ook trok hij in twijfel dat de piramide van Gizeh een grafmonument was.
Door een ingewijde werd hij aangespoord om op onderzoek uit te gaan, en niet alleen in Egypte.
Heel andere conclusie
Hij raadde hem aan om ook andere archeologische plaatsen van betekenis verspreid over de hele wereld te bezoeken.
Het werd een reis van Paaseiland naar Peru, van China naar Mexico en uiteindelijk bracht het onderzoek hem opnieuw naar Egypte. Daar kwam Pooyard tot een heel andere conclusie dan de egyptologen.
Plek van kennis
De Grote Piramide van Gizeh was geen graf, maar een plek van kennis en die plek was en is wereldwijd van belang.
Pooyard legde zijn bevindingen vast in een fascinerende documentaire waarin hij ook zijn conclusies toelicht.
Ving Nikola Tesla buitenaardse signalen op? Dit is wat hij ontdekte
Ving Nikola Tesla buitenaardse signalen op? Dit is wat hij ontdekte
In juli 1899 claimde Nikola Tesla tijdens onderzoek naar onweersbuien in Colorado Springs een onbekend signaal te hebben opgevangen.
Tesla vermoedde dat de signalen uit de ruimte afkomstig waren, onder meer van Mars.
Eens in de 1,8 jaar staat Mars dichter bij de aarde dan normaal en tijdens één van die close encountersdacht Tesla dat hij signalen van Mars had opgepikt, aldus natuurkundige John Brandenburg in het programma Ancient Aliens.
Buitenaardse aanwezigheid
In 1901 schreef hij in een artikel voor magazine Collier’s Weekly getiteld ‘Praten met de planeten’ over zijn geloof in buitenaardsen.
Hij raakte geobsedeerd door de signalen van andere planeten, merkt schrijver Tim Schwartz op.
“Gebaseerd op de signalen die hij ontving, ontwikkelde hij een theorie dat er al tenminste 1000 jaar een buitenaardse aanwezigheid op aarde was, die de mensheid vanaf het begin controleerde,” zegt Schwartz.
Diskrediet
In dezelfde periode kreeg Tesla het aan de stok met J.P. Morgan en Thomas Edison, indertijd twee machtige figuren, stelt Brandenburg.
“Hij wilde signalen sturen naar de planeet Mars en zijn vijanden gebruikten dit om hem in diskrediet te brengen,” vervolgt hij.
In 1910 werkte Tesla al aan ontwerpen van vliegtuigen gebaseerd op antizwaartekracht. Die zouden er nooit komen.
One thing you can say about Elon Musk – he’s always thinking. (OK, there’s a lot of things you can say about Elon Musk, but we don’t have that kind of bandwidth.) Take, for example, his ideas about terraforming Mars, which came from his idea that people living inside of artificial environment enclosures on the planet might not do too well physically and mentally (think Biosphere 2), which came from his idea of colonizing Mars, which … you get the idea – Elon is always thinking. How could humans live on Mars without airtight habitats? By turning the planet into a junior Earth, and the best way to do that is by creating an ultra-fast evolution from barren dirt to bountiful rainforests … or at least enough food and atmosphere to live, work and survive outside. And his original idea for doing that was …
This goes back to 2015 when Musk first said his solution for raising the temperature on Mars to make it habitable for humans would be to “Drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” Once the smoke cleared, Musk figured enough trapped CO2 would be released from Martian soil to create an instant Earth atmosphere and kickstart an evolution. Scientists – both environmental and rocket – as well as ethicists and other humans have been objecting to this idea ever since, but busy idea-man Elon has just gotten around to coming up with a new one.
“Might make sense to have thousands of solar reflector satellites
to warm Mars vs artificial suns (tbd)”
That’s a mighty big ‘to be determined’ – starting with how does one get thousands of solar reflector satellites into Martian orbit – but it’s less radioactive (both literally and figuratively) so it has generated some consideration and reflection. Not because Elon said it but because Rigel Woida, an optical sciences and engineering student at the University of Arizona, wrote an award-winning paper in 2007 on using large aperture, lightweight orbital mirrors for terraforming targeted areas on the Martian surface. He proposed orbiting a 1.5-km array of 150 segmented, 150-meter-diameter mylar balloons that would collect sunlight and beam it to a square-kilometer area of the Martian surface.
“I adjusted the aperture so the reflector would heat a square-kilometer of Mars’ surface to roughly Tucson daytime illumination and temperatures. This would have immediate benefits for the astronauts. It would increase the light level, solar panel energy collection and bring the temperature of that part of the planet up to Earth’s. Astronauts wouldn’t have to work in freezing temperatures or spend energy thawing frozen water – water they need for manufacturing fuel to return to Earth, as well as water needed for consumption. Eventually, using techniques like these, humans might cultivate plants on Mars.”
It’s a start
That’s EXACTLY what I mean, Elon is probably thinking but certainly not saying for obvious reasons. Woida received a $9,000 NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Student Fellows Prize for his idea. Musk received … well, that’s “tbd.” This idea seems more scientifically possible and certainly less radioactively controversial. But, is it ethical to terraform any other world to turn it into a junior Earth for the purpose of Earthlings colonizing it? Remember what happened on Earth so many times when settlers brought their own plants and animals to new lands? Are they the invasive species … or is it the humans who thought it was a good idea?
That answer requires more than just thought, doesn’t it? Elon?
Invisible flying object that sunds like a jet interrupts beam of high power laser pointer
Invisible flying object that sounds like a jet interrupts beam of high power laser pointer
Lately, many strange and unknown flying objects have been observed in the sky. Now, according to the latest reports and published by Linda Moulton Howe, people heard strange jet-like sounds but their were no planes, even according to two witnesses, the invisible craft interrupted the beam of high power laser pointers.
Image: Transparent ‘invisible’ craft photographed in the sky above Kaufman, Texas on July 19, 2016.
On August 14, 2019, a scientist in San Diego, California, who has heard loud jet noises in clear sky and two times flashed a powerful laser in direction of unexplained jet noise and saw the beam interrupted by something invisible.
Earlier this month, a Boeing employee witnessed the same phenomenon.
Boeing employee: “I took my high power laser pointer and shot it up in the direction of the unexplained loud jet sound. … On two separate occasions, I have seen the beam interrupted momentarily — It seems to me there is a real physical object moving through the air that is simply not visible.”
In both cases the laser beam was interrupted - Does that mean that there is a real physical object moving through the air that is simply not visible?
In the next video Linda Moulton Howe talks on the invisible flying object reported by the Boeing employee. (Report starts at the 9.50 mark in the video.)
A mysterious UFO above Amsterdam triggered a lot of speculations online about space alien craft sightings and even dark angels.
A strange aerial event was recently observed in the skies above the Dutch capital just as a tornado wreak havoc across the city centre last week.
YouTube channel Mavi777 uploaded the video online showing what seems to be a glowing UFO in the sky close to the top of the swirling column. The footage was reportedly recorded on August 10 as stated in the caption, but the integrity of it could not be immediately confirmed.
The unusual event shown in the clip led several social media users to suspect a possible appearance of a UFO with some of them claiming that these objects and the plasma orb lights are dark angels or the fallen ones that cauterise and kill animals for genetic parts and suck all the blood out as a sacrifice.
When the first dead bull turned up at the end of July, it didn’t raise an alarm at the Silvies Valley Ranch.
Cattle sometimes die suddenly on the ranch’s 140,000 acres in Harney County — struck by disease or felled by a broken leg and unable to find a way out of the rugged, forested terrain.
But by the time ranch hands discovered four more dead bulls within 24 hours, they knew they were likely dealing with deliberate, premeditated killings.
They’re still baffled by the circumstances. There were no wounds. No signs of a struggle. And the bulls’ genitals and tongues had been carefully removed.
The killing and mutilation of the 4 and 5-year-old Hereford bulls in the prime of their productive lives has since spurred a multi-agency investigation in eastern Oregon, but detectives have turned up no leads and haven’t yet even settled on a cause of death.
“How somebody put these bulls on the ground at what would be arguably a fairly close range — and to do it in a way that didn’t leave any signs, no trace evidence, no footprints, no struggle marks from the animal, no broken limbs — I have no idea,” said Colby Marshall, vice president of the Silvies Valley Ranch.
The mystery deepens because there’s no obvious reason someone would want those animal parts. They aren’t prime targets for black market sales, authorities said.
The deaths are eerily similar to a rash of livestock killings and mutilations across the West in the 1970s, when hundreds of cows and bulls turned up dead, also of seemingly unknown causes and with their genitals and tongues missing.
Back then, theories ran the gamut from a government conspiracy and UFOs to natural deaths and scavengers. Today, the circumstances at Silvies Valley Ranch point to humans as the probable culprits because of the precise cuts on the bulls.
Anything else for now is speculation, including ideas of what might have killed a bull without leaving marks. Marshall said he wonders if the killer used poison darts.
“We think that these are very sick and dangerous individuals and they need to answer for this horrible crime,” he said.
***
Silvies Valley Ranch, about 40 minutes north of the county seat of Burns, has put up a $25,000 reward for information on the bull killings that leads to an arrest and conviction, and the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association has offered its own $1,000 reward.
The investigation has pulled in Oregon State Police as well as the U.S. Forest Service because the cattle were grazing on a federal allotment in the Malheur National Forest.
The ranch is owned by veterinarian Scott Campbell, who bought the enterprise in 2006. Since then, it’s expanded into tourism with a golf course and resort on site, but still maintains around 4,500 head of beef cattle, including around 100 bulls.
The five dead bulls were found on July 30 and 31, in a wooded area about 15 miles from U.S. 395, the nearest major road. They were each about a quarter mile apart, Marshall said. There is some official disagreement on when they were killed — the Harney County Sheriff’s Office, which saw only four of the bulls, puts the deaths at three to 14 days before discovery, but Marshall believes the cattle were discovered within 24 to 48 hours of their deaths.
The delay in finding the animals is not unusual in such a remote area, where ranchers are tasked with patrolling large tracts of land, said Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. Harney County is Oregon’s largest county, covering more than 10,000 square miles where cattle outnumber people 14-to-1.
“These are huge, vast, steep landscapes with lots of rock and trees and brush,” Rosa said. “Ranchers may not see their cattle for long stretches of time.”
Beef is Oregon’s largest agricultural commodity, drawing in nearly $1 billion a year – and most cattle crimes typically involve theft, Rosa said.
This makes the deaths at Silvies Valley Ranch particularly bizarre, he said, because the bulls were worth a lot of money alive, particularly for breeding.
Marshall estimated their value at up to $7,000 apiece and said they would have sired at least 100 calves each over the remainder of their lives.
“Their productive life was a huge economic opportunity for the ranch, and now that’s completely lost,” he said. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Silvies Valley Ranch
The five dead bulls were found on July 30 and 31, in a wooded area about 15 miles from U.S. 395, the nearest major road. Their genitals and tongues had been cleanly removed.
Marshall has heard from several other Oregon ranchers who reported similar killings on their property over the past few decades — including cows that had been found with their udders, vulvas and tongues removed.
One of these ranchers, Terry Anderson, found a dead cow on land he was renting near Pendleton in 1980. Its udder had been cleanly removed and Anderson could see no clear evidence of what had killed the animal.
“There was no visible bullet hole or anything there,” Anderson recalled this week. “It was so unusual. It just left you with an eerie feeling.”
The hundreds of cattle deaths in the 1970s — largely concentrated in the Midwest — caused a media sensation as ranchers roiled by an economic crisis blamed a government conspiracy, according to Michael Goleman, a history professor at Somerset Community College in Kentucky who researched the phenomenon.
Because the killings were scattered across different states, investigators reached no overarching conclusion on the cause of the deaths, but Goleman said some people believed the government was conducting weapons tests on the cattle.
Facing pressure from ranchers, the FBI opened an investigation in 1979 into the deaths of 15 cattle in New Mexico, ultimately concluding that there was no evidence of intentional mutilation by humans and the animals had likely died of natural causes.
Since then, scattered reports have made headlines, including the discovery of several mutilated cows in Kansas in 2016 and five cows in 1990 that had been killed and dissected on a farm in Washington. Goleman said conspiracy theorists have pinned the blame on everything from satanic cults to aliens.
But Silvies Valley Ranch isn’t placing its bets on paranormal activity, though Harney County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Jenkins said he’s gotten a few suggestions that Sasquatch may be responsible. He’s received around 20 calls from around the western U.S. since news about the deaths started spreading.
Jenkins, the lead investigator on the case, said the lack of physical evidence at the crime sites — no footprints, no tire or ATV tracks — means authorities are relying on witnesses to call in to the tip line and report any suspicious activity they might have seen in the area.
***
David Bohnert, a professor at Oregon State University who studies beef cattle, said two things typically kill livestock: poisoning from eating toxic plants and people.
In this case, poisoning is unlikely, given the number of bulls involved and the plants in the area, he said. Larkspur typically flowers earlier in the year, while hemlock, another deadly plant, grows only around rivers and streams — not the dry forests where the bulls were found.
Plus, the fact that all five cattle killed were bulls, Bohnert said, is statistically unlikely to occur in nature — they make up only about 4% to 6% of a herd.
That leaves human activity as the most likely cause, he said. Adding to the evidence is the surgical precision with which the genitals and tongues were removed. Scavengers would leave obvious signs of tearing with teeth, claws or beaks, he said.
Bohnert said he has heard rumors of bull testicles being considered an aphrodisiac, and both tongues and genitals can be eaten — the famous “Rocky Mountain Oysters” come to mind. But he could think of no reason why someone couldn’t just legally buy the animal parts.
Yet the human explanation comes with its own difficulties.
Taking down a 2,000-pound bull is no easy feat, and Marshall said there were no signs of a struggle — the bulls were all lying on their sides as if they had just fallen over and died.
He said he could only think that some kind of toxic dart might kill a bull from a distance. But he has no proof of it and may never find it. It’s not clear if a dart would leave a detectable imprint.
In the meantime, tissue samples taken from the carcasses are still being analyzed for toxins and no results are available yet, Marshall said. Even with the tests, the killings may remain an enigma. The bulls had been left to decompose for several days, making a toxicology screen difficult to do, he said.
Until a suspect is found, ranch employees are on high alert, particularly those who patrol vast areas alone on ATV or on horseback.
Rosa said the news had also concerned other ranchers — but that greater awareness could also lead to faster answers in the tight-knit ranching community.
“The neighbors and the folks that are in those areas know each other,” Rosa said. “And when there’s someone strange or different that’s out and about, they take notice of that, and they let each other know.”
Crop circles have been appearing around the world for centuries.
Source:Supplied
IT all started with a UFO sighting.
Dr Horace Drew, 61, was just 10 years old when he allegedly saw an unidentified, silver, windowless craft hovering in the sky near his suburban home, in Jacksonville, Florida. The encounter lasted only moments but led to a lifelong fascination with the extraterrestrial.
“I saw a UFO, so I knew they were real from an early age,” Dr Drew told news.com.au.
The scientist, who holds a PhD in Chemistry from Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, and worked for CSIRO as a molecular biologist, has been researching crop circles and aliens for 20 years. Dr Drew relocated to Australia in the 1980s but most of his work has taken him overseas, predominantly to Europe.
“They’re quite rare in Australia,” he said.
He, along with many conspiracy theorists, believe crop circles are the work of aliens or human time travellers. Sceptics say most are probably man-made.
A crop circle is typically defined by standing wheat stems that have been flattened in the shape of a circle or more complex pattern. They tend to appear mainly in developed Western or secularised countries — including Japan.
The cause of many of the circles is unknown despite various natural and unorthodox explanations having been put forward. Some crop circles have been proven to be hoaxes.
But according to Dr Drew, a number are legitimate and contain puzzles that can be decoded and linked to time travel and alien life.
He told news.com.au he had visited about “two dozen crop circles” around the globe in his career. Typically, they were between 50-500m in length, he said.
“This has led to at least one major breakthrough the discovery of a more advanced binary code than our computers currently use.”
Dr Drew claimed that aliens or human time travellers have been leaving the crop circles on Earth as messages to “us or themselves”.
Sightseers visit an incorporated oversized crop circle in a cornfield, not far from the small community of Mammendorf near Munich, southern Germany, on August 3, 2016. The crop circle had a diameter of 180 metres.
Picture: AFP / Christof StacheSource:AFP
WHY ARE THERE CROP CIRCLES?
Dr Drew said he was one of a handful of scientists around the world who had worked to successfully decode some of the messages in crop circles.
According to him, some crop circles provide general descriptions of the future.
“Other crop (circles) show schematic images of the future for astronomical or human events,” he said.
He said some of the decoded messages read: ‘Much pain but still time. Believe. There is good out there’; ‘Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises’; ‘We oppose deception. Conduit closing’.
Dr Drew has developed at least two theories as to the purpose of the circles by reading their “advanced (version of) binary codes”.
“One theory is that they are trying to introduce themselves to us peacefully, like we do using bubbles with dolphins,” he said.
“When (humans) want to talk with dolphins we put little bubble circles under the ocean with a generator. We watch the dolphins come up and play and investigate, and we study them.
“This is called the ‘dolphin communication project’.”
He said the dynamic between the way humans interact with dolphins and whales was likely comparable to how extraterrestrials communicate with us.
“Barack or Trump have never said to a dolphin: ‘take me to your leader I want to sign a treaty with you’,” he said.
“And (the extraterrestrials are) not interested in making a treaty with us.
“They are ahead of us like we are ahead of the dolphins and the whales.”
His second theory was that the messages “are not even for us”.
Dr Drew said human time travellers from the distant future could be creating the circles as directional markers, to help them navigate “in their distant past, which is our present”.
“There are definitely humans living there in about 5000 years with time travel capability,” he said.
“They’re coming back and flying all over Earth.
“They seem to just say ‘this is a certain day’ and mark it.
“So the trouble is we don’t know space time physics enough to understand what’s happening. It’s beyond our knowledge.
“Maybe they don’t want us to know about it. It might be just for them.”
It’s a theory shared by many in his field of work.
A crop circle once appeared in field of wheat at Clay Hill, Warminster, Wiltshire. The site, made famous by UFO sightings in the 60s and 70s, had crop circle experts baffled over the 200 foot design.
Source:Supplied
HOW ARE THEY MADE?
Dr Drew said the circles appeared to be created by an “unknown energy that heats the crops up”.
“It’s like microwave energy but is something beyond earth’s science,” he said.
“It can pattern the wheat.
“No one sees or hears anything and that's why its so hard to prove. If there’s a craft, it’s silent, noiseless.”
But there’s nothing to fear, according to him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
REAL OR A HOAX?
Telling the difference between a real crop circle and a hoax is like differentiating between an original painting and a fake, according to Dr Drew.
“There are some things to look for,” he said.
Crops that are bent “halfway up” their stems, rather than on the ground ,is one telltale sign “cereologists”, or someone that advocates paranormal explanations of crop circles, look for to determine that it’s not a hoax.
“You can’t absolutely prove a crop circle wasn’t a hoax but you can give a high probability and judgment,” he said.
“If there’s a hoax the word of it gets around very fast, people are aware, people are not that easily fooled.”
Scientist Dr Horace Drew said he took this photos in a “newly found crop” circle at Etchilhampton near Decizes, England in July, 2012. “About 25 per cent of fallen wheat stems inside the picture were bent by unknown energies,” he told a conference on Wednesday.
Source:Supplied
In 1991, English pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley took credit for most of the crop circles across southern England made since 1978. They were inspired by the Tully “saucer nest” case in Australia, where a farmer found a flattened circle of swamp reeds after observing a UFO.
Using basic tools including a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line, they said they made complex crop circles in England — which others then copied all over the world into the 1980s.
They made a circle for journalists, which was later declared authentic by a cereologist. They then revealed their hoax to the world, spurring on even more copycats.
Scientist Dr Horace Drew has been researching crop circles and aliens for 20 years.
Source:Supplied
Dr Drew said there was a lot of scientific evidence to show that some crop circles were made by human time travellers or extraterrestrial beings. “Laboratory results on plant or soil samples taken from a crop circle in Brazil in October of 2016 show that it was formed by unknown sterilising images,” he said.
The earliest mention of a crop circle dates back to the 1500s. A woodcut from the time showed a “mowing devil” making the pattern.
An aerial view shows people strolling through a crop circle on a field near Mammendorf, southern Germany, on July 26, 2016. The pattern had a diameter of 180 meters.
Picture: AFP / Sven Hoppe.Source:AFP
GOVERNMENT SECRETS?
Earlier this month, US TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked former US President George Bush if he went through “secret files, the UFO documents” when he was in office.
But instead of laughing off the question, the former commander in chief replied: “Maybe.”
Mr Kimmel then asked him if there were “any great secrets you know that you can’t share with people?”
“Yeah, there are,” Mr Bush said. “But I’m not telling you.”
Many conspiracy theorists and some scientists, including Dr Drew, argued that Mr Bush’s comments indicated the US government knows much more about extraterrestrial life than it has publicly revealed.
“The politicians are scared they'll lose votes if they talk about it,” Dr Drew said.
He said international media had also played a part in causing the public to doubt the legitimacy of crop circles and aliens.
But according to him, its important for humans to keep seeking answers.
“The ET visitors have technologies which would benefit us greatly, for example, how to make safe, clean energy without burning oil, coal or gas,” Dr Drew said.
“Ultra-fast propulsion systems, based on gravity and inertia, could carry us safely to distant planets or stars.
“We may also need to upgrade our planetary defences soon, to protect against ET’s who may not be friendly.”
There’s still a lot more to be understood but Dr Drew’s hope is that he one day gets a closer look at what was inside the UFO he believes he saw as a child.
“I’d like to meet (the extraterrestrials or human time travellers) in person,” he said.
“But I don’t think they're going to do that.
“Whichever scientific team is doing this I don’t think we’re supposed to have full knowledge of it because it will interrupt their program, whatever they're doing.”
NASA announced in 2012 that it was working to build a "warp drive" that could enable "faster-than-light" travel. Two years later and the space agency hasn't built a spaceship capable of such speeds yet — but thanks to artist Mark Rademaker, we now know what one could look like. The result is the IXS Enterprise, a ship that shares similarities with both its science fiction Star Trek namesake, and NASA's real-world space shuttle.
Rademaker worked together with NASA's Dr. Harold White to produce visual concepts for the craft. White and his team at NASA are hoping to make "faster-than-light" travel possible with Alcubierre drives. The drives, named for physicist Miguel Alcubierre, theoretically work by distorting space-time. By expanding the space behind a ship and contracting the space in front of it, the IXS Enterprise could drastically speed up our space travel potential, making the 4.3 light-year journey to Alpha Centauri in around two weeks.
Rademaker says he was influenced in the design for his Enterprise by Matt Jefferies' sci-fi artworks from the 1960s. But where famed aviation artist Jeffries, who helped create the spaceships of the Star Trek universe, imagined spindly craft with thin rings, the IXS Enterprise sits inside two circles chubby enough to power its Alcubierre drive. The spacecraft is fatter than most of Jefferies' sci-fi ships, too, capable of bearing four cylindrical pods on its flanks, and sporting a wide, flat, duck's bill of a command module. Speaking at the SpaceVision conference last year, Dr. White justified the design, saying that "if you're going to go to all the trouble of making it that big, you might as well fit all you can in there."
Until NASA announces a breakthrough in its research of Alcubierre drives and "faster-than-light" travel technology, Rademaker's concepts will remain only concepts. But his visualization of the IXS Enterprise still gives us a glimpse of the kinds of vehicles we'll hopefully one day be able to use to travel to strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations.
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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 73 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.