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...
28-08-2019
There Are Thousands of Tardigrades on the Moon. Now What?
There Are Thousands of Tardigrades on the Moon. Now What?
Tardigrades, which live on every continent on Earth, are also (maybe) living on the moon, following the crash of a lunar lander carrying thousands of the microscopic water bears.
Did any of them survive the impact? If they did, what happens to them now?
When the tardigrades were placed on the Israeli moon mission Beresheet, they were in a tun state — dehydrated, with their chubby limbs and heads retracted and all metabolic activity temporarily suspended. Their arrival on the moon was unexpectedly explosive; Beresheet's crash landing on April 11 may have scattered the microorganisms onto the lunar surface.
Tubby tardigrades are notoriously tough, but were the Beresheet tardigrades hardy enough to survive that impact? It's certainly possible that some of them made it to the moon intact. But what would that mean for the moon to have what might be thousands of Earth microbes as new inhabitants? And what might it mean for the tardigrades?
First of all, is anyone in trouble for accidentally spilling tardigrades on the moon? That's a complicated question, but the short answer is no. Space agencies from around the world follow a decades-old treaty about what is permissible to leave on the moon, and the only explicit prohibitions are against weapons and experiments or tools that could interfere with missions from other agencies, according to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
In the decades that followed the treaty, other guidelines were created that acknowledged the risks of seeding other worlds with Earth microbes, and these stipulations outlined practices for sterilizing mission equipment to avoid contamination. But even though large space agencies typically follow these rules, there is no single entity enforcing them globally, Live Science previously reported.
Scientists have yet to find any evidence that the moon ever hosted living organisms (other than visiting astronauts and microbial hitchhikers from Earth) that could be threatened by microscopic invaders. However, contamination could carry serious consequences for missions to planets where life might yet be found, such as Mars; experts suggest that one potential consequence of colonizing Mars could be the extermination of native microbial life through exposure to Earth bacteria.
It's possible that even before the Beresheet tardigrades crashed on the moon, other forms of terrestrial microbes were already there: gut bacteria in abandoned bags of astronaut poo, said Mark Martin, an associate professor of biology at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.
"I'd be very surprised if you couldn't culture a few things out of the center of that freeze-dried material," Martin told Live Science. "Especially spore-formers. They make a very thick outer layer of their spore proteins that's known to protect them against dehydration, radiation — a variety of things."
Sole survivor
Tardigrades survive conditions that would destroy most other organisms; they do so by expelling the water from their bodies and generating compounds that seal and protect the structure of their cells. The creatures can remain in this so-called tun state for months and still revive in the presence of water; scientists even resuscitated two tardigrades from a 30-year deep freeze in 2016.
As a tun, a tardigrade can weather boiling, freezing, high pressure and even the vacuum of space, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported in 2008, after sending water bears into orbit. Ultraviolet radiation turned out to be the tardigrades' kryptonite, as few of the creatures survived full exposure to UV light during the ESA experiments.
This could be good news for the desiccated Beresheet tardigrades. If they landed in a spot on the moon shielded from UV radiation, the microscopic creatures might stand a chance of survival, Martin said.
"My guess is that if we went up in the next year or so, recovered the wreckage, and found these tiny, little tuns and put them in water, a few of them would come back to life," he explained.
But as long as the tardigrades remain on the moon, their chances of spontaneously awakening are low. Without liquid water, the tiny creatures will remain in a tun state, and while there's evidence of ice on the moon, liquid water is nowhere to be found.
Even if the lunar tardigrades did somehow encounter liquid water while still on the moon, without food, air and a moderate ambient temperature, they wouldn't last very long once they revived, Kazuharu Arakawa, a tardigrade researcher with the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Keio University in Tokyo, told Live Science in an email.
"Much as I would love to see the establishment of the Lunar Tardigrade Republic, I don't think that's going to happen," Martin said.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has reasserted his belief that Pluto should be a classed as a planet and reignited a debate which has raged for more than a decade,
Astronomers and leading scientists have long squabbled over the issue of Pluto and its classification as a non-planet since its demotion in 2006.
Mr Bridenstine st N ated in a recorded, but not broadcast, interview excerpt that he is still firmly of the belief that Pluto should be classed as a legitimate planet.
Scroll down for video
Mr Bridenstine stated in a recorded, but not broadcast, interview excerpt that he is still firmly of the belief that Pluto (pictured) should be classed as a legitimate planet
'Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet,' he said while on a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder.
'You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it.'
It comes on the 13th anniversary of Pluto's fall from grace and formal demotion to a 'dwarf planet'.
WHY IS PLUTO NOT A PLANET?
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to 'clear' its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit.
Since Neptune's gravity influences its neighbouring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status.
Before 2006, there was never a formal definition for what constituted a planet.
Scientists argue that this means Pluto's demotion is unjust and unreasonable.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to 'clear' its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit.
The IAU used this to shake up the planetary world and remove Pluto from the ranks of the solar system's elite bodies, taking the number of planets down to nine.
Since Neptune's gravity influences its neighbouring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status.
But despite the official ruling, many have never accepted it.
Mr Bridenstein is one of the die-hard supporters of Pluto and his latest remark backs this up.
'Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet,' Mr Bridenstine (pictured) said while on a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder. 'You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it'
Cory Reppenhagen✔@CReppWx
My favorite soundbyte of the day that probably won't make it to TV. It came from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. As a Pluto Supporter, I really appreciated this. #9wx#PlutoLoversRejoice@JimBridenstine
However, it is unlikely to sway the official bodies and spur them into action to reinstate Pluto.
A study from last year however, is one of the latest to ad more robust support than the whimsical wishes of the NASA administrator.
Research from the University of Central Florida in Orlando claims the reason Pluto lost its planet status is 'not valid'.
It reviewed scientific literature from the past 200 years and found only one publication - from 1802 - that used the clearing-orbit requirement to classify planets, and it was based on since-disproven reasoning.
'The IAU definition would say that the fundamental object of planetary science, the planet, is supposed to be a defined on the basis of a concept that nobody uses in their research,' said UCF planetary scientist Philip Metzger, who is with the university's Florida Space Institute.
'And it would leave out the second-most complex, interesting planet in our solar system.'
Metzger said moons such as Saturn's Titan and Jupiter's Europa have been routinely called planets by planetary scientists since the time of Galileo.
'We now have a list of well over 100 recent examples of planetary scientists using the word planet in a way that violates the IAU definition, but they are doing it because it's functionally useful.'
'It's a sloppy definition
'They didn't say what they meant by clearing their orbit. If you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet clears its orbit.'
Pluto should STILL be classified as a planet, Nasa chief claims
Pluto should STILL be classified as a planet, Nasa chief claims
Charlotte Edwards, Digital Technology and Science Reporter
POOR Pluto was declassified from being a planet in our Solar System to just a humble dwarf planet 13 year ago.
Despite it being over a decade since this decision was made, the topic is still hotly disputed and there are those who think Pluto should be labelled as a planet once more.
Pluto was considered to be a planet until it was declassified 13 years agoCredit: PA:Press Association
The International Astronomical Union made the final decision but it seems NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has put himself firmly in Pluto's corner.
Bridenstine recently spoke out about his support for Pluto as a planet during a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The Nasa chief said: "Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet.
"You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it."
Cory Reppenhagen✔@CReppWx
My favorite soundbyte of the day that probably won't make it to TV. It came from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. As a Pluto Supporter, I really appreciated this. #9wx#PlutoLoversRejoice@JimBridenstine
Many people were taught that Pluto was one of the planets in our Solar SystemCredit: Getty - Contributor
Bridenstine's lighthearted comment doesn't change Pluto's classification but it does bring to light the ongoing debate once more.
Pluto was removed from the list of nine planets in August 2006 mostly because its properties were more suited to the definition of a dwarf planet.
The difference between a dwarf planet and a planet is largely to do with the space around it.
Planets have a clear area around their orbit whereas dwarf planets do not.
There are also many other celestial objects a similar size to Pluto with unclear orbits so some scientists have argued that if Pluto where to be considered a planet then all those other objects would have to be too.
However, Pluto has other features like a multilayered atmosphere, moons, weather and organic compounds that all make the issue regarding its planet status even trickier.
Pluto facts
Here's what you need to know...
Pluto was discovered in 1930
It was considered to be one of nine planets in our Solar System until 2006
The decision to declassify Pluto was controversial because, even though it is small and doesn't have a clear orbit, it has lots of other planet like features like an atmosphere and weather
Pluto is the largest dwarf planet
Pluto has five known moons
Pluto was visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, during which pictures were taken of its surface
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETHet is de laatste jaren wellicht een van de grootste discussiepunten onder astronomen: de status van Pluto. Sinds het het hemellichaam in 2006 niet langer een planeet, maar “slechts” een dwergplaneet werd genoemd, raken wetenschappers het niet meer eens met elkaar. Ook de NASA-directeur, Jim Bridenstine, mengt zich nu in het eindeloze debat. “Voor mij is Pluto een planeet. Je kan dus schrijven dat de beheerder van NASA Pluto opnieuw als planeet beschouwt”, zei hij gisteren op een bijeenkomst.
Toen Pluto in 1930 werd ontdekt door de Amerikaanse astronoom Clyde Tombaugh, werd het hemellichaam geclassificeerd als planeet en werd het zo de negende planeet van ons zonnestelsel. Toen men 62 jaar later ook andere even grote objecten in de ruimte ontdekte, kwam men op die beslissing terug. In 2006 werd uiteindelijk beslist om buitenbeentje Pluto, die kleiner is dan de overige planeten, als dwergplaneet te benoemen. Sindsdien hoort Pluto dus niet meer bij de overige planeten Mercurius, Venus, de Aarde, Mars, Jupiter, Saturnus, Uranus en Neptunus.
Sindsdien zijn er geregeld verhitte discussies over die degradatie. En nu mengt dus ook de NASA-directeur zich in het debat. Hij staat resoluut aan de pro-planeetzijde en trekt de beslissing van dertien jaar geleden in twijfel. “Ik blijf erbij, het is de manier waarop ik het geleerd heb, en ik blijf erachter staan”, verdedigde hij gisteren op een bijeenkomst van het FIRST Robotics event in Oklahoma.
Planeet
Volgens de definitie is een hemellichaam een planeet van zodra het aan drie criteria voldoet: het draait in een baan rond een ster, het heeft voldoende zwaartekracht om een ronde vorm aan te nemen en het bevindt zich in de baan baan rond een ster waar het zijn eigen baan heeft schoongeveegd van andere objecten.
Hoewel Pluto de eerste twee eigenschappen kan afvinken, is het niet groot genoeg om ook aan de derde eis te voldoen. Om die reden werd in 2006 dus beslist om het hemellichaam tot dwergplaneet te degraderen.
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Onderzoeker spot enorm ‘gezicht’ op Antarctica. Bekijk het zelf op Google Earth
Foto: Google Earth
Onderzoeker spot enorm ‘gezicht’ op Antarctica. Bekijk het zelf op Google Earth
Iemand is op Google Earth op iets vreemds gestuit. De persoon in kwestie ontdekte op Antarctica een soort gezicht, dat doet denken aan het legendarische gezicht op Mars.
De vondst werd onlangs op de Instagram-pagina ‘ufo_scandinavia’ gedeeld.
De onderzoeker was aan het speuren op Google Earth en kwam in het ijzige, bergachtige landschap opeens een gezicht tegen.
Geheimen
Er zijn onder meer ogen, een neus en een mond te ontwaren.
Volgens complottheoretici liggen er allerlei esoterische geheimen verscholen op Antarctica.
Veel mensen wezen op de gelijkenissen tussen de vondst en het gezicht op Mars in de regio Cydonia, dat in 1976 voor het eerst werd gefotografeerd door NASA’s Viking 1.
Coördinaten
Iedereen kan het ‘gezicht op Antarctica’ bewonderen door de volgende coördinaten in te voeren bij Google Earth: 72° 00′ 36″ S, 168° 34′ 53″ E.
Sceptici zeggen dat het ‘gezicht’ simpelweg een geval van pareidolie is en geen mysterieus verloren monument dat onder de sneeuw verborgen ligt.
Archaeologists have unearthed three ancient skeletons in Croatia — and two of them had pointy, artificially deformed skulls.
Each of those skulls had been melded into a different shape, possibly as a way to show they belonged to a specific cultural group.
Artificial cranial deformation has been practiced in various parts of the world, from Eurasia and Africa to South America. It is the practice of shaping a person's skull — such as through using tight headdresses, bandages or rigid tools — while the skull bones are still malleable in infancy.
Ancient cultures had different reasons for the practice, from indicating social status to creating what they thought was a more beautiful skull. The earliest known instance of this practice occurred 12,000 years ago in ancient China, but it's unclear if the practice spread from there or if it emerged independently in different parts of the world, according to a previous Live Science report.
In this case, archeologists found these three skeletons in a burial pit in Croatia's Hermanov vinograd archeological site in 2013. Between 2014 and 2017, they analyzed the skeletons using various methods, including DNA analysis and radiographic imaging— a method that involves using radiation to view the inside of an object such as a skull.
Their analysis revealed that the skeletons were all males who had died between ages 12 and 16. They all showed evidence of malnutrition, but that's not necessarily how they died. They could have had "some kind of disease that killed them quickly and didn't leave any traces on their bones," such as plague, said senior author Mario Novak, a bioarchaeologist at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia.
The archaeologists didn't find artifacts in the burial that could have revealed the boys' social status, Novak said.
Analysis also revealed that the three had lived between A.D. 415 and 560, a time that corresponds to the Great Migration Period, which is "a very turbulent period in Europe's history," Novak told Live Science. Right after the fall of the Roman Empire, completely new populations of people and cultures began to arrive in Europe and become the basis for modern European nations. "In other words, this period set the foundations of Europe as we know it today," Novak said.
Indeed, DNA analysis of the ancient trio revealed that one of them had a West Eurasian ancestry, another a near-Eastern ancestry and the third an East Asian ancestry.
The boy who was of near-Eastern ancestry had a circular-erect type cranial deformation, which means that the frontal bone behind the forehead was flattened and the height of the skull was "significantly increased," Novak said. The boy who likely came from West Eurasia didn't have any skull deformation, and the boy with East Asian ancestry had a skull with an "oblique" deformation, which means the skull was elongated diagonally upward.
"We propose that different skull deformation types in Europe were used as a visual indicator of association with a certain cultural group," Novak said. As of yet, it's unclear what cultural groups they belonged to, though the East Asian boy could have been a Hun.
Now, Novak and his team hope to find more samples of cranial deformation from Europe to understand this phenomenon on a larger scale.
The findings were published yesterday (Aug. 21) in the journal PLOS One.
Buitenaards ogende schedels opgegraven in Kroatië. Archeologen zitten met veel vragen
Buitenaards ogende schedels opgegraven in Kroatië. Archeologen zitten met veel vragen
In Kroatië zijn twee vreemd gevormde menselijke schedels opgegraven. De schedels zien er buitenaards uit.
Ze zijn in 2013 ontdekt op een archeologische vindplaats in Osijek en in de jaren daarna geanalyseerd.
De schedels zijn allebei op een andere manier vervormd, mogelijk om te laten zien dat ze toebehoorden aan een specifieke culturele groep.
Turbulente periode
Uit de resultaten, die zijn gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift PLOS One, blijkt dat de schedels toebehoren aan twee jongens die ongeveer 1500 jaar geleden stierven.
Het is nog onduidelijk tot welke culturele groepen ze behoorden. Eén van de jongens is mogelijk een Hun geweest.
Ze leefden ergens tussen 415 en 560 na Christus, een turbulente periode in Europa.
Geesten
Het is ook niet duidelijk waaraan de jongens precies zijn overleden. Archeologen schatten dat ze tussen de 12 en 16 jaar oud waren.
In sommige culturen werd de schedel doelbewust vervormd. Dit had vaak te maken met status. Daarnaast geloofde men op deze manier dichter bij de geesten te staan.
Police and Forestry officials at Khao Kala in Nakhon Sawan on Aug. 16, 2019.
NAKHON SAWAN — Police are investigating whether a meditation center known for UFO sightings is encroaching on protected forests, after dual raids on Thursday and Friday.
Dozens of policemen and rangers rushed Khao Kala mountain for a second time Friday to determine whether the Khao Kala Meditation Center, run by a group of UFO believers, is encroaching on forest area. Police have also issued summons for the landowners of the meditation center.
“If we find anyone guilty of wrongdoing, we will file a criminal case against them. If a UFO descends and parks here, that’s even better. We’ll capture them all,” Police Maj. Gen. Damrong Petpong said.
Police were drawn to raid the area after the UFO Kaokala group organized a UFO-watching event for Saturday, with locals reporting that some adherents believe they are mediums for aliens from Pluto.
UFO Kaokala is a group of UFO believers who maintain that aliens communicate with them via meditation. They say their communications with aliens enhance their Buddhist practices and even help them predict natural disasters (a group member predicted in 2017 that World War III will ignite by 2022).
The group was founded in 1998, when nurse Somjit Reapeth said she saw aliens at Nakhon Sawan mountain. Since then, the mountain has become Thailand’s go-to UFO sighting spot.
Saturday’s event is actually Somjit’s birthday. As of press time, an organizer named “Jack,” whose phone number is on the event page, said that the event will still go on, but at the foothills rather than the peak of the mountain. Admission is free and transportation via van from Bangkok will be provided. Contact Jack at the number listed on the event page if interested.
Officials armed with coordinate measuring machines canvassed the mountain from its foothills to its peak on Thursday and Friday.
“The Forestry Department will use satellite GPS to check whether, and how much, the center is on forest space. We will proceed according to the law,” Pinit Laoyuu from the local Forestry Department said.
Pinit said Friday that he estimated about 3 to 5 rai (0.48 to 0.8 hectares) of the meditation center encroaches on forest. He said that forest officials will be securing the area.
“For the time being, we will not allow people to pitch tents or hold activities here since a case is ongoing,” Pinit said.
Adherents camped at Khao Kala in Nakhon Sawan on Aug. 16, 2019.
Charoen Raepetch, the listed owner of the meditation center, was not on site Thursday. When contacted, he said that he would not be returning to the mountain any time soon and half-jokingly said that he was “afraid the Forestry people would capture him.”
Police have summoned Charoen as well as others suspected of being involved in the meditation center for questioning.
Despite the police presence, locals have flocked to the mountain to take photos, exchanging alleged UFO sightings. Some say that the lights at night can be explained away by shooting range practice at a nearly military case. Others are UFO Kaokala adherents with tents, set on seeing aliens via meditation, with or without forestry officials nearby. The mediums include a doctor and a captain in the military.
Chaliew Phoocharoen, the sub-district head of Khao Kala tambon, said that most people living in the area are not alien believers, and that most of the followers are from out-of-town. µ
The Amazon Rainforest biome has an extension of about 6.7 million square kilometers shared between Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and the French Guyana. Some 62% of it is in Brazil, where 84% of its original area at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 A.D. are preserved. This mostly untouched area is about the size of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Spain and Portugal together; if it were a country, it would be the world seventh in extension, larger than India.
The Amazon Rainforest must not be confused with the Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal), a geographical region delimited for the purpose of establishing special tax regimes in order to encourage economic activities in the nine Northern Brazilian states. These states comprise 61% of the national territory but harbor less than 13% of the country’s population, and account for less than 8% of Brazil’s GDP. Their low living standards can be assessed by the fact that only 13% of its urban inhabitants have access to sewage systems; a great part of the 4 million Brazilians who do not have a simple toilet at home live there. The region also holds significant parts of other two Brazilian biomes, the Cerrado (savannah) and the Pantanal (wetlands). The Legal Amazon has 5.1 million sq.km; the Brazilian part of the Rainforest, 4.2 million sq.km.
The Rainforest is not the “lungs of the world”; its vegetal and animal biotas consume all the photosynthesis-generated oxygen in their process of respiration (yes, plants do breathe), so the net budget is near zero. (And lungs do not produce oxygen, after all.)
It is not a functional “carbon sink” either, because as a stable climax ecosystem its net carbon budget is also close to zero (except when it burns). Anyway, if people are worried about carbon, they should support the clearing of the forest and its replacement by the secondary regeneration vegetation (called “capoeira”) instead, that captures the atmospheric carbon during its growth, indeed. By the way, between 2008 and 2012, the area of “capoeiras” increased twice and a half faster than the area of cleared forest (there aren’t more recent data). (Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting this course of action.)
The Rainforest is obviously relevant for the biogeochemical cycles of the biosphere but it does not have any significant impact upon the world climate. Its chief contribution for the atmospheric dynamics is to recycle some half of the rainwater coming westwards from the Atlantic Ocean back to the atmosphere by means of evapotranspiration, forming a water vapor flow that is partly re-directed southward. This process is important for the Rainforest itself and its surroundings but its influence can hardly be regarded as being global.
The much-ballyhooed projections about a feared “tipping point” of deforestation beyond which the Rainforest would supposedly suffer an irreversible “dieback” are just products of mathematical models without factual evidence. These models may be useful as academic drills but should not be the turf of policymaking. If other biomes are useful for comparison, the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica), with a biodiversity similar to the Rainforest, covered 1.3 million sq.km of the Brazilian territory along the coast in the 16th century, and has lost over 80% of its original area since but it has not suffered such a “dieback” so far. The hypothetical deforestation “tipping point” for the rainforest is 20%, a number that grants appealing apocalyptic forecasts and shocking media headlines but does not fit with the hard facts and the common sense.
The annual deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon have been decreasing steadily since the last decade, and are now well under 10,000 sq.km a year. Taking into account that much of this deforestation occurs in the Cerrado, a hypothetical linear projection using such rates suggests that it would take well over 400 years to clear the Rainforest entirely – an absurd scenario that is unimaginable by anyone in their right mind except some delusional and uninformed radical environmentalists, anyway.
Much of the deforestation occurs in private properties and government-sponsored settlement areas for small family farmers, meaning that it is legal. The Brazilian 2012 Forest Code allows that 20% of the property areas in the Rainforest and 50% in the Cerrado be cleared for economic use. Unfortunately, the deforestation rates regularly trumpeted in the media do not make this needed distinction.
The number of fires in the Legal Amazon (including the Cerrado) has also been falling since the record years of 2004-05; the projections for 2019 point that they will reach half or so the numbers of those years. A good deal of such fires occurs in private properties where people have been using fire as a method of cleaning the terrain for centuries; it’s not the best method but it is what they have access to. It’s relevant to notice that most of the fires are not located in the Rainforest itself but in its Southern transition zone to the Cerrado and in the Cerrado itself, as can be seen in the Fire Information for Resource Management System website (See this – the Rainforest is roughly delimited by the huge dark green and light green area north of parallel 15oS). Incidentally, one can also observe that Brazil is far from being alone in the current worldwide fire season.
There are over 25 million people living in the Legal Amazon, most of them in precarious socio-economic conditions. The vast majority of people who cut trees or make use of fire are not criminals but do it because they need to eke out a living somehow (of course, there are criminals that manage to avoid the law enforcement and the due punishment, like everywhere else). Keeping in mind the respective proportions, nobody but some stubborn environmentalists is regarding the Germans as environmental criminals because the remnants of the Hambach Forest near Köln are intended to be felled by the RWE energy company, in order to get the lignite in the subsoil needed to fuel thermoelectric plants, after chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the closing of several of the country’s nuclear plants for purely political reasons.
Brazil is a developing country and is still struggling to find its way towards the full development of its human and natural resources. For the Amazon region, the path is not “preserving” it as a gigantic combo of botanic garden and zoo, as many people seem to think naively. It must begin with the long overdue tasks of land rights regularization, ecological-economic zoning, adding value to the local productions and resources with the best techniques available, improving and expanding the infrastructure needed to enable quality of life gains for the local populations and a massive effort of research and development of its vast biodiversity resources, combining research institutions, private enterprises and the precious traditional knowledge of its inhabitants. In short, a kind of an Industrial Amazon 4.0, an impulse capable of bringing most of its inhabitants to the levels of wellbeing permitted by the 21st century knowledge. All this can and must be done with the needed care for the environment and, hopefully, we will be able to put this rational agenda in practice but a fundamental prerequisite for this is to dispel the myths and hysteria about the region and its development.
So, people, including foreign leaders and personalities, should inform themselves better before ridiculously blaming Brazil of “threatening the world climate”, or asking for sanctions against the country (mostly motivated by political and economical reasons). And the same goes for many Brazilians who are always willing to reverberate any criticisms against the country coming from abroad, regardless of their seriousness or lack thereof.
Geraldo Luís Lino is a Brazilian geologist, former environmental consultant and co-founder and director of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIa – www.msiainforma.org); e-mail: geraldoluislino@gmail.com.
The original source of this article is Global Research
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Antarctica Anomaly Hunter Spots Massive 'Face' There Via Google Earth
Antarctica Anomaly Hunter Spots Massive 'Face' There Via Google Earth
An anomaly hunter scouring Google Earth for unusual sights stumbled upon a curious spot in Antarctica which gives the legendary ‘Face on Mars’ a run for its money.
The weird find came to light on August 20th when it was posted on the Instagram account ‘ufo_scandinavia.’
While looking at Google Earth images of Antarctica, the researcher noticed what appears to be a rather sizeable face standing out amid the frosty mountainous terrain.
Everything that happens in space is generally considered to be a “first.” While we’ve no confirmed verification of it, there’s probably even been a first sex act in space. What we haven’t had is the first crime in space … until now. The spouse of an astronaut is accusing her of stealing her identity while serving on the International Space Station and using it to illegally access her bank account while the couple is in the process of getting divorced. Who is responsible for policing space? NASA? The FBI? Interpol? The Space Force? Robocop? And who is responsible for handling the ensuing personal scandal that the accusation brought to light? NASA? Dr. Phil? Oprah?
“Just because it’s in space doesn’t mean it’s not subject to law.”
Mark Sundahl, director of the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University, told The New York Times he believes this crime in space is unprecedented. The accused is astronaut Anne McClain, who was onboard the ISS from December 3, 2018, to June 24, 2019, and achieved a bit of space notoriety when the first all-female spacewalk she was scheduled to be part of had to be scrapped due to a lack of two spacesuits small enough for women.
Astronaut Anne McClain
The accuser is Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer, who married McClain in 2014, filed for divorce in 2018 and complained to NASA in 2019 that McClain had sent her threatening emails and accessed her files illegally from space. The complaint was reported last week in The New York Times, effectively outing McClain and making her the first known gay astronaut of either sex. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was also gay but that was not revealed until after her death.
“The more we go out there and spend time out there, all the things we do here are going to happen in space.”
Sundahl certainly is right about that, although it appears NASA isn’t too happy about either the alleged identity theft nor the outing. McClain’s attorney says his client did nothing wrong, and the astronaut was interviewed under oath by the inspector general, where she explained that accessing Worden’s bank accounts was something she’s always done while away in order to make sure Worden had the finances available to care for their six-year-old child – a child they’re now fighting for custody of. McClain is a decorated Army pilot who flew over 800 combat hours in Operation Iraqi Freedom and is on a list of candidates NASA is considering to be the first woman on the moon. Worden is a former Air Force intelligence officer, so she should know about breaking into accounts and crimes. This sounds like an epic space crime battle the likes of which has never been fought before. Where will it take place and who will be the judge?
According to a 2014 interview with NASA engineer and instructor Robert Frost, the question first goes to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. In Article VIII of the treaty states that:
“A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body.”
International Space Station
That governs a spacecraft where all of the crew members are from the nation that launched it. However, the ISS has its own rule because its crew members come from so many different countries. For a crime committed there, we turn to an Intergovernmental Agreement signed by all parties in 1998. With regard to criminal conduct, it states:
“Canada, the European Partner States, Japan, Russia, and the United States may exercise criminal jurisdiction over personnel in or on any flight element who are their respective nationals.”
So the nation of the accused has jurisdiction over him or her. But which court would handle it? Worden filed her complaint with the Federal Trade Commission while McClain works for NASA. Based on how things have been going lately in lower courts, should this case go right to the Supremes?
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s yet another group of mysterious lights in the sky. Shortly after a group of claimed UFOs were filmed by residents of Cincinnati, and a baffling string of sightings were reported over Wyoming, another group of UFOs has recently been spotted over the Crimean peninsula, which is either in Ukraine or Russia depending on whether you ask Ukraine or Russia, respectively.
Three separate videos of the incident were collected and uploaded to YouTube by the UFO channel The Hidden Underbelly 2.0—check the video out for yourself here. In all three videos, which all look to be shot around dusk, you can see six strange orange lights hanging in the sky, in what looks like a deliberate formation. The three videos all show very different views of the group of lights, but it’s still clear that they are all showing the same thing. This tells us two things: first, that this is an actual group of objects in the sky (seeing as how they’re subject to perspective and all that); and two, that the mysterious lights are fairly low in the sky.
The “UFOs” look to be in an intentional sort of formation. The third video in the group shows this the clearest, as if there are three groups of two lights all circled around a central point. It’s fairly certain, in fact, that whatever these lights are, there is an intention behind them.
So what are they? Folks in the comments on YouTube videos are usually pretty sure of themselves, so against my better judgement I entertained what they had to say for a minute or two. If it wasn’t definitely aliens, it was definitely flares from the Russian navy. So I looked up some videos of naval flares, including some from Russia, and nothing I could find looked like what was in the video. The color was right, for sure, but the thing about flares is they fall really fast. Flares don’t just hang out in the sky. These lights hang hovered around for a decent amount of time. So they’re probably not flares, and all we’ve learned is that shot-from-the-hip YouTube comments are hot garbage. Which is to say we’ve learned nothing at all.
Don’t worry it’s not aliens. World War III is just going to look really, really cool.
Although, to be fair, it probably does have something to do with the Russian military. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, they have kept a military presence on the peninsula; and according to an article published today by TASS, a Russian news site, the Russian air force just finished up combat exercises in Crimea involving air-to-air combat training against simulated airborne targets. Considering the videos were posted three days ago, there’s a distinct probability that these lights may be those simulated airborne targets.
But, you know, that could be Russia covering up that they’re absolutely lousy with aliens.
Pareidolia: the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.
72°00′ 36.00” S , 168° 34′ 40.00” E: location of what many pareidoliacs see on Google Earth as a gigantic “grey alien face” bulging out of the ice in Antarctica.
Credit: Google Earth
Pity the poor person who finds an amazing likeness of Jesus burnt into their tortilla or toast. They can’t get anyone to pay attention to them now that Google is making satellite images available of the surfaces of the Earth, the Moon and Mars where anyone can piece together enough rocks, shadows and wind-blown sand or snow to see aliens, space ships, giant faces or any number of out-of-place images that put the burnt toast back in the toaster where it can get 15 minutes of flame instead of fame.
The latest example comes from the craggy white surface of Antarctica, where the anonymous owner of the ufo _scandinavia account posted a Google Earth image of what they describe as an “grey alien face.” While one can certainly find evidence of each of those things individually, is it that collectively? And if so, what if anything does it mean?
Credit: Google Earth
“GIGANTICA! Ancient Alien [NEW] Discovery “THE FACE” Antarctica? 2019-2020”
The YouTube channel thirdpahseofmoon managed to fill a 10-minute video (see it here) with as much as they could possibly come up with on the Google Earth image. The comments on the video and on the image posted by ufo_scandanavia are proof that imagination is not dead. On the other hand, if that’s a giant grey alien trying to chew its way to the surface of Antarctica, it definitely is dead. Is it a giant statue? If it is, it puts Mount Rushmore to shame. Or is it a message to future extraterrestrials visiting Earth, like “Kilroy was here”? Maybe the mouth opens and reveals an alien base?
Makes about as much sense as leaving messages with circles in a cornfield or lines in a desert, doesn’t it?
When the water levels began lowering outside Peraleda de la Mata in Cáceres, Spain, large standing stones revealed themselves in the reservoir. Nicknamed the “Spanish Stonehenge”, the location may have once been the site of ritual worship.
Of the 144 standing stones, several of them are as a tall as two meters high and have serpents engraved on them. The stones were arranged in a circular shape (just like Stonehenge), but nobody knows why they were put there in the first place or by whom.
Just like England’s Stonehenge (pictured here), some of the stones from the Spanish Stonehenge are two meters tall
It is believed that the site was created in the second and third millennia BC and was used as a sun temple on the banks of the River Tagus as well as a burial ground. “The site would have been created over thousands of years, using granite transported from kilometers away,” local official Angel Castaño stated to The Local. As for its purpose, Castaño explained, “They seemed to have a religious but also economic purpose, being at one of the few points of the river where it was possible to cross,” adding, “So it was sort of a trading hub.”
Nobody has seen the site for nearly six decades since it was submerged under water in 1963 after the construction of a dam made a reservoir. But with no rain, warm weather, and water extraction creating a drought in the area, the water levels lowered so much that the “Spanish Stonehenge” has re-emerged after hiding under water for many years. “We grew up hearing about the legend of the treasure hidden beneath the lake and now we finally get to view them” Castaño said. He also mentioned that while there may possibly be treasures hidden underneath the stones, just witnessing the stones themselves is enough of a treasure.
(Not an illustration of the Spanish Stonehenge)
Castaño and a group of locals are currently trying to preserve the site before it gets submerged under water again by campaigning to have the stones moved to another location on dry land. “If we miss this chance it could be years before they are revealed again,” Castaño insisted, adding, “And the stones, which are granite and therefore porous, are already showing signs of erosion and cracking, so if we don’t act now it could be too late.” They certainly have a valid point, as the last time the site was witnessed (until now) was 56 years ago. You can see pictures here of the “Spanish Stonehenge”.
With the pace of everyday life in the modern world, it can become easy to forget the more fundamental questions we have about who we are, and what it means to be a part of the great enigma that is humankind.
To borrow the words of historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “As evolution slowly grinds out species, who’s human? Who’s to say? It is tempting to reserve the term human for ourselves—members of the species we call Homo sapiens.” Along similar lines, the late Philip Adler of East Carolina University acknowledged that “Paleoanthropologists continue to dig up specimens that challenge believers in human uniqueness,” and cause us to have to consider what, precisely, it means to be “human.”
Indeed, with time we may have to drastically rethink the uniqueness of humans in relation to the long line of ongoing hominin discoveries. A more remote possibility—but one which may nonetheless prove to be true—is the discovery of new hominin types that may have existed far more recently, or which might even still exist in small numbers today; a tantalizing, though increasingly unlikely prospect as time goes on. Technologies that are ever-steadily mapping remote corners of the world, in addition to issues like climate change, deforestation, population growth, and other environmental issues would no doubt present considerations in terms of the discovery of any new species, let alone those that might be large mammals resembling humans.
Nonetheless, several archaeological discoveries in recent years do suggest that unique kinds of early humans probably did, at very least, exist more recently than once believed.
As far back as 1979, a discovery was made in a cave in the Guanxi region of China that, decades later, would prove to be of remarkable significance in our broader understanding of human ancestry and the curious persistence of hominid types into recent times. Found at Longlin Cave a similar discovery was made one decade later at the Red Deer Cave site in Yunnan Province, China.
Charcoal remnants extracted from the same areas the fossils were tested in 2012, and found to be of remarkably recent ages: the fossils from Red Deer Cave yielded dates of between 14,300 and 12,600 years, while the earlier Longlin Cave discovery dated to even more recently at around 11,500 years ago.
Partial skull (reconstructed) found in Longlin cave in 1979
(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).
Named after the Red Deer Cave, which became the type site for the discoveries, this mysterious group of hominins bore a number of unique features that seem to place them in between modern humans and those of an earlier archaic variety. With the prevalence of Denisovan DNA remnants that exist among human populations in Southeast Asia, it has been proposed that the Red Deer Cave people might have been human-Denisovan hybrids.
The remains bear remarkable similarities to early archaic human types such as Homo erectus; however, since attempts at extracting DNA from the Red Deer Cave fossils have proven unsuccessful thus far, anthropologists have been at odds over whether to classify these as a new species.
Mandibles recovered from Red Deer Cave in Yunnan Province, China in 1989.
(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).
Opinions on the matter are wide and varied. Darren Curnoe, and evolutionary biologist with the University of New South Wales, Australia, gave an enthusiastic statement on the discovery to National Geographic in 2012.
“We have discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago… In short, they’re anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree.”
Alternatively, some critics have argued that the fossils may simply be modern humans with an odd appearance.
Erik Trinkaus, Professor Emeritus of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in Saint Louis, called the discovery “an unfortunate over-interpretation and misinterpretation of robust early modern humans, probably with affinities to modern Melanesians,” stating that the finds were “nothing extraordinary.”
While attempts at gathering genetic information about the Red Deer Cave people have proven unsuccessful so far, could there actually be evidence for similar human relatives in our own DNA?
Recent genomic studies also seem to point to mysterious archaic human types that can also be traced in modern human DNA, but which remain unknown in the archaeological record. In other words, we can prove that in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans, there are at least two other unknown archaic human types that anatomically modern humans met, lived alongside, and even interbred with within the last several tens of thousands of years.
Homo habilis skull reconstruction, which has been compared to certain features present with the Red Deer Cave specimens
(Public Domain).
Recently, I reported on a study published in the journal PNASwhich detailed genetic evidence for two unrecognized hominin species that existed in Asia. According to the study’s authors:
“At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area.”
In other words, if this recent DNA evidence is any indication, we’re already certain there are indeed “missing links” in our evolutionary past, waiting to be corroborated in the fossil record.
Whether those fossils will be found or not, and later corroborated with evidence found in DNA remains to be seen. However, it is clear enough already from the data discussed here that there are plenty of mysteries about humanity’s past to keep us busy for some time to come.
Alien Ship Seen On Surface Of Sun In Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Ship Seen On Surface Of Sun In Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery:Aug 2019 Location of discovery: Sun, lower right corner. Source:Helioviewer.org I noticed this black triangle UFO about two weeks ago and have been following it. Some people tried to explain it away as dust on the lens of the sun satellite, but dust doesn't travel across the sun. Dust would stay in place. This object is dark black and that tells me its much colder than the surface of the sun. Alien technology could achieve this. If an alien species was billions of years ahead of our technology, such materials immune to heat would exist. This object is about the size of earths moon. The ship is huge and seems to be caught in the suns gravity. I believe the ship has some propulsion left because its sinking lower and lower slowly. Perhaps its hiding there from someone. Or perhaps its caught in the suns gravity and cannot escape, which would take months or even years for something the size of the moon to be pulled into the sun, especially if the ship is fighting it with some propulsion systems. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
White Domed Disc captured above Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
White Domed Disc captured above Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
UFO accidentally captured in photograph by David Studer while vacationing in Merida, Yucatán Mexico on August 26, 2019. Mr. Studer has submitted the image to Mufon for further investigation.
If you look at the top center of the photograph and just above the clouds you will see it. A second unknown object flies close to the white domed disc.
The white domed disc was directly above the clouds and moving East and did not change direction.
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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.