Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
01-12-2019
State Troopers Alien Craft Close Encounters In Indiana
State Troopers Alien Craft Close Encounters In Indiana
At around 7:30 pm on 4th February, Hollace Chastain had just finished his state trooper patrol duties and was checking his mailbox on his way home in Norman. As he did so, however, he noticed an elliptical-shaped bright light in the sky seemingly hovering overhead.
He watched the light for several moments and after being satisfied that it was indeed something unusual, he would radio a report to another trooper on patrol, James Blevins. As he did so, the object suddenly began to move, changing colors from “white to orange to greenish-blue” before finally returning to white as it settled back into a hovering position. Even more bizarre, although the witnesses believed the object to be solid, they also witnessed it seemingly changing its shape. In total, it remained visible for around half an hour before disappearing from their sight.
From his position, around 10 miles from Chastain’s location, Blevins would describe the object as “much too big to be a star”, even if it had of remained stationary. When it did move it appeared to “flicker and wobble”. This might be suggestive of some kind of rotation taking place.
Although the object disappeared from the view of the two state troopers, beginning in the early hours of the following morning, only several hours later in real time, several other sightings would unfold within hours of each other.
Several Sightings Within Hours Across Indiana
As they were returning home from Huntingburg where they had performed earlier, several members of a band would witness a strange object just before 2 am, around 10 miles outside of Oakland City. They would describe the object as “pale green with a bluish tinge”. The brightness of the object varied as they continued to watch it.
However, more remarkable, and very similar to the claims of the two state troopers only hours previously, was that it appeared to change shape. At first, it appeared like a boomerang before seeming to morph into a teardrop shape. As the members of the band watched the incident, who would incidentally all request anonymity, another vehicle passed theirs. It appeared these unidentified people also witnessed the bizarre encounter.
Around 75 miles away and 45 minutes later at 2:30 am in Crothersville, state police officer, Richard Barker witnessed and followed a “huge ball of greenish-blue and white lights” that appeared to have a flat, rotating underside. He would follow the bizarre object for around 10 miles, closing to “within (about) a mile of it” before it “took off fast”. He would state:
It wasn’t like any airplane I’ve ever seen. I know it wasn’t a plane!
Just under four hours later at around 6 am, an anonymous woman would report a very similar object over Bedford. She watched the object for around 30 minutes, recalling that it was “oval-shaped, sort of like a cigar”. Furthermore, the “top was shiny” while there was a “bright light on the bottom”. She got the impression from how the light appeared to move that the object was “looking for someplace to land”.
The object came closer to her home and eventually hovered overhead for several minutes before taking off. NOTE: The above image is CGI.
Remote U.S. Military Base Discovered - What Is Going on There?
Remote U.S. Military Base Discovered - What Is Going on There?
Satellites over New Mexico capture something in the sands: a US military base that has an interesting purpose.
The US military had the same surveillance blimps in Iraq. If you had access, which I did, I was able to watch the blimp feed for each blimp in the area. A.M.
This is an operator’s account of two years on the Persistent Threat Detection System in Iraq in 2007 and in Afghanistan in 2008.
Here, a massive super-computer simulation shows the strong particle density fluctuations that occur in the extreme turbulent environments that host black holes and neutron stars. Dark blue regions are low particle density regions, while yellow regions are strongly over-dense regions. Particles are accelerated to extremely high speeds due to the interactions with strongly turbulence fluctuations in this environment. Credit: Image from published study
For decades, scientists have speculated about the origin of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from celestial regions that host black holes and neutron stars—the most mysterious objects in the universe.
Astrophysicists believe that this high-energy radiation—which makes neutron stars and black holes shine bright—is generated by electrons that move at nearly the speed of light, but the process that accelerates these particles has remained a mystery.
Now, researchers at Columbia University have presented a new explanation for the physics underlying the acceleration of these energetic particles.
In a study published in the December issue of The Astrophysical Journal, astrophysicists Luca Comisso and Lorenzo Sironi employed massive super-computer simulations to calculate the mechanisms that accelerate these particles. They concluded that their energization is a result of the interaction between chaotic motion and reconnection of super-strong magnetic fields.
"Turbulence and magnetic reconnection—a process in which magnetic field lines tear and rapidly reconnect—conspire together to accelerate particles, boosting them to velocities that approach the speed of light," said Luca Comisso, a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia and first author on the study.
"The region that hosts black holes and neutron stars is permeated by an extremely hot gas of charged particles, and the magnetic field lines dragged by the chaotic motions of the gas, drive vigorous magnetic reconnection," he added. "It is thanks to the electric field induced by reconnection and turbulence that particles are accelerated to the most extreme energies, much higher than in the most powerful accelerators on Earth, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN."
When studying turbulent gas, scientists cannot predict chaotic motion precisely. Dealing with the mathematics of turbulence is difficult, and it constitutes one of the seven "Millennium Prize" mathematical problems. To tackle this challenge from an astrophysical point of view, Comisso and Sironi designed extensive super-computer simulations —among the world's largest ever done in this research area—to solve the equations that describe the turbulence in a gas of charged particles.
The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the Crab nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester (Arizona State University)
"We used the most precise technique—the particle-in-cell method—for calculating the trajectories of hundreds of billions of charged particles that self-consistently dictate the electromagnetic fields. And it is this electromagnetic field that tells them how to move," said Sironi, assistant professor of astronomy at Columbia and the study's principal investigator.
Sironi said that the crucial point of the study was to identify role magnetic reconnection plays within the turbulent environment. The simulations showed that reconnection is the key mechanism that selects the particles that will be subsequently accelerated by the turbulent magnetic fields up to the highest energies.
The simulations also revealed that particles gained most of their energy by bouncing randomly at an extremely high speed off the turbulence fluctuations. When the magnetic field is strong, this acceleration mechanism is very rapid. But the strong fields also force the particles to travel in a curved path, and by doing so, they emit electromagnetic radiation.
"This is indeed the radiation emitted around black holes and neutron stars that make them shine, a phenomenon we can observe on Earth," Sironi said.
The ultimate goal, the researchers said, is to get to know what is really going on in the extreme environment surrounding black holes and neutron stars, which could shed additional light on fundamental physics and improve our understanding of how our Universe works.
They plan to connect their work even more firmly with observations, by comparing their predictions with the electromagnetic spectrum emitted from the Crab Nebula, the most intensely studied bright remnant of a supernova (a star that violently exploded in the year 1054). This will be a stringent test for their theoretical explanation.
"We figured out an important connection between turbulence and magnetic reconnection for accelerating particles, but there is still so much work to be done," Comisso said. "Advances in this field of research are rarely the contribution of a handful of scientists, but they are the result of a large collaborative effort."
Other researchers, such as the Plasma Astrophysics group at the University of Colorado Boulder, are making important contributions in this direction, Comisso said.
Multiple Russia UFO sightings were actually a military ICBM test launch
Multiple Russia UFO sightings were actually a military ICBM test launch
The ‘UFO’ pictured next to a building in Ufa, Bashkiria
(social media / east2west news)
Skywatchers in Russia have been reporting sights of a bizarre ‘shuttlecock-shaped’ UFO flashing through the night.
Initially, it was feared the object – passing over the Urals and Volga regions – was a meteorite.
Social media across several time zones in Russia and also Kazakhstan was buzzing with awe-inspiring images of the mysterious object as it streaked overhead in the early evening.
Later it became clear that the UFO was not aliens or a lump of space rock but a test launch of a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic rocket by Vladimir Putin’s strategic missile forces.
Footage showed the launch from the Kapustin Yar firing range in Astrakhan region, claimed the Russian defence ministry. It hit a target at the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile site in Kazakhstan in a ‘successful’ test, according to officials.
The missile was visible over Chelyabinsk, Russia
(social media / east2west news)
The timings of the missile test matched the sightings of the unusual object in the sky.
One posting in Saratov said: ‘Some kind of UFO. Did anybody else see it too? Something really unusual, what was it? Then it flashed…and soon disappeared’.
Sofya Salova, from Ufa, said: ‘We went for a walk with the children and saw a UFO over the city. It was unknown and surprising. At first it was just a bright spot, then it flashed to the right like a large torch, made a light ‘fart’ – sorry I can’t find a better word – and just vanished.’
In Chelyabinsk – hit by a major meteorite in 2013 – residents described the object as a ‘flying jellyfish’.
A Topol missile launch at Kapustin Yar
(Defense Ministry of Russia / east2west news)
The Topol-M is a strategic intercontinental ballistic missile system developed at the end of the Soviet era. It is capable of carrying an 800-kilotonne warhead with the destructive power of 800,000 tonnes of TNT.
That’s 40 times the destructive power of the atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
The new discovery was achived by the Scan Pyramids project – a cross-disciplinary, multi-institution/nation effort that has employed various high-tech, non-destructive methods – such as infra-red thermography and muons radiography – to ‘scan’ the Great Pyramid for hidden cavities and/or structures.
Now, two years later, the Scan Pyramids team have released a new video (embedded below) announcing that the large cavity – which generated some controversy, with questions raised as to whether it truly was there, or was just some sort of scanning artifact – has been confirmed by more scans taken from new points within the pyramid, including the so-called ‘relieving chambers’ that sit above the ‘King’s Chamber’:
The big void was again observed from these new measuring points, confirming and refining the results published in 2017. The cavity is just above the Grand Gallery, between 10 and 15 metres above. Its minimum length, estimated initially at 30 metres, has been reevaluated to 40 metres minimum probably in one single section. However the mission scientists continue to debate about a slope.
The video also discusses other aspects of the project, including the other cavity found behind the entrance to the pyramid, as well as the lack of anomalies between the top of the relieving chambers and the peak of the pyramid:
A mysterious radar track yesterday prompted Washington D.C. to go on alert.
A search of the area turned up nothing.
A reporter for CBS News noticed a missile launcher during the alert.
A mysterious radar return prompted yesterday that an unauthorized aircraft was flying over the restricted airspace of Washington D.C. A search of the area reportedly turned up nothing, but one reporter located in the city did notice something: a surface to air missile system across the street from the White House.
At approximately 8:30am local time, a “track of interest” on a radar at the Capitol Police command center was detected over Washington D.C. The track was described as a “slow moving blob.”
Washington’s skies are heavily regulated, the result of the 9/11 attacks in order to protect the White House, Capitol building, and other government locations. North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD, sent a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter to investigate. The helicopter, call sign “Blackjack,” did not notice anything unusual but note it nearly ran into a flock of birds at 1,300 feet.
The alert lasted 45 minutes. During that time a CBS News reporter, Sara Cook, noticed something unusual on a building across the street from the White House: a missile launcher.
Sara Cook✔@saraecook
·
.@SecretService statement on this morning's lockdown at the White House:
“The White House was locked down this morning due to a potential violation of the restricted airspace in the National Capital Region. The lockdown has been lifted at this time.”
Sara Cook✔@saraecook
Spotted during the lockdown: a missile battery in position atop a building across the street from the White House
The launcher is an Avenger air defense missile system. Avenger consists of eight Stinger missiles and a M3 .50 caliber machine gun, and was originally designed to protect U.S. Army forces from low-level air attack. Avenger is typically mounted on a Humvee, but the Washington system appears to be mounted on a pedestal on top of the building.
Stinger is a short range system with a relatively small explosive warhead, so it is ideally suited for shooting down hostile small aircraft, drones, and other threats in and around the White House. Stinger missiles are infrared-guided and have a range of approximately two miles.
The Avenger system could be the missile launcher first spotted in 2004, on top of the nearby New Executive Office Building. It appears to be in a position where it is only noticeable from certain locations on the ground. It is visible on Google Maps on the northwest corner of the building.
At around 8:30am on November 26th, what appeared to be a potential violation of the tightly controlled airspace ringing Washington D.C. occurred, sparking off a course of eventsthat drew national attention. The White House and the Capitol went into lockdown as a Coast Guard MH-65, callsign Blackjack, scrambled to intercept the possible intruder and F-16s were sent to runway alert at Andrews AFB, prepared to rocket into the sky if needed at a moment's notice. Confusion followed as to what exactly was detected and why. Now, according to officials with direct knowledge of the events, here is what actually occurred.
Before we begin, one must understand that the Washington D.C. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is a chunk of airspace that rings the Capital. From its center, the Special Flight Rules Area reaches out roughly 30 miles in any direction, with the Flight Restriction Zone being a bubble within the ADIZ with a radius of roughly half that distance. The ADIZ is supported by a large number of highly networked, but disparate sensors, including various radars, electro-optical and infrared cameras, and other passive sensors to closely surveil the skies in the area for potential threats. And yes, it is backed up by medium-range NASAMS surface-to-air missile systems scattered around the region, as well as Avenger short-range missile systems near key locales. Beyond that, MH-65 Dolphin helicopters at Reagan National Airport stand alert to intercept any slow-moving targets, while F-16Cs do the same at Andrews Air Force Base for faster-moving ones.
Fully armed and ready to go F-16s sit engines running at Andrews AFB. The LITENING targeting pod is used for long-range air-to-air visual identification of targets.
30 miles may sound like a lot, but it is anything but. A subsonic jet traveling at cruise speed can cross that distance in less than four minutes. A single-engine light plane can do it in less than fifteen minutes. If the threat, such as a drone, pops up deep inside the airspace already, these times get cut down to nothing.The missiles are there, in part, because it may be impossible to get an F-16 or MH-65 in the air fast enough to deal with a hostile actor. So, air defenders that are tasked with this incredibly challenging mission work in seconds and single miles when it comes to reaction and decision-making times.
This is a tough business with the highest stakes imaginable.
On top of this, the system has been upgraded in recent years in key areas to be able to detect small radar cross-section and slow-moving targets that are out of the detection capabilities of more traditional radar systems. Once again, all these sources are networked to improve target processing fidelity, reduce the chance for horrific mistakes, and to give operators and commanders the best information possible in the least amount of time.
Our sources tell us that although it is not uncommon for birds to be the cause of false alerts multiple times a month around this time a year, the issue that occurred on the 26th was a radar anomaly that was compounded by human error. One of the radars that feeds data into the integrated air defense system created what is called a "mirror track" of an innocuous and in-contact airplane whose transponder was squawking that it was under visual flight rules (VFR). Because it was a mirror track of just the transponder, there is no primary radar return where the mirror track was, the system pointed it out immediately and started automatically pointing electro-optical camera systems at it to validate the return and to identify what it actually was.
Apparently, the D.C. area's integrated air surveillance system is good enough that transponder tracks alone, where the radar doesn't also have a corresponding hard radar return, nearly never occur. But in this case, it was an anomaly happening within the radar system, not the result of lack of radar coverage or fidelity.
When the cameras pointed at the mirror track's location, they saw a real plane that was located roughly along the same azimuth as the mirror track. The issue is that since cameras cannot quantify range, it validated that something was there, but in reality, that plane was not at the range the radar showed the mirror track to be, it was much farther away. In other words, if a plane was actually where the mirror track should have been, the cameras would have seen two airplanes, not just one. As a result of this confusion, more cameras started being pointed at the target automatically.
At this time, the mirror track faded away, so the cameras had no automated radar data left to point to. Human operators took over and they started manually scanning the area for something that wasn't there anymore. There have been reports of ‘blobs’ being seen by the air defense system operators during this instance. Our sources made it clear that this is anything but uncommon as looking into the sky with long focal length cameras results in blobs, especially when scattered clouds are present. There is simply nothing substantial or defining to look at.
An Air Force air traffic controller working with his terminal.
The entire detection period of the mirror track only lasted a number of seconds before the radar picture returned to normal. Those directly operating the radar system knew close to immediately it was just a glitch/anomaly, but by this time, other operators were looking everywhere on camera for anything they can find, and the incident was escalating up the command and control ladder. As such, the powers that be didn't want to discount the situation too quickly. Remember, there is literally no margin for error when it comes to countering a real threat and the nature of potential threats Washington D.C. air defenders could face has evolved dramatically recently. What could look like a flock of birds could end up being something far more nefarious in the years to come.
So, once the wheels were in motion, it was really too late to stop them. This included downstream impacts like locking down high-risk targets around the Mall. But that isn't such a bad thing as this was about making absolutely sure nothing was in the airspace that was a threat, not about having a quick trigger finger. The exact opposite actually.
It's also worth noting that the sensors and support systems that enable the air defense mission around DC are very capable, and continue to get upgraded, but like any complex system of system, some parts remain a bit behind in terms of cutting-edge technology. The system will only get better with time, and in the end, people have to interpret the information and make the best calls they can. Considering the firepower at their disposal within a dense urban area, they have done a good job over the years at making sure nobody gets hurt because of inevitable imperfections in mechanical systems and the software they run on.
This should be the final takeaway, no matter how advanced a mechanical system or the larger architecture it is embedded with may be, it has the potential to be imperfect. Humans build these systems and write the code for their software and we are fallible. Above all else, aerial surveillance and air defense is far from a perfect science as we have pointed out time and time again. The average person's perception of it being significantly otherwise is so far outside the realm of reality that it is quite frustrating at times. In the end, it comes down to the training and expertise of those who operate these systems and who would be forced to make very tough calls in very short amounts of time as a result of the data they provide.
So, while the mechanical system failed momentarily in a minor way, the overall human system prevailed where it mattered most.
Tesla Cybertruck: Elon Musk explains why its design looks so weird
Tesla has gone for a very angular design with the Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck made quite a stir when it debuted last Thursday. The company’s highly-anticipated all-electric pickup truck defied expectations by ditching curves in favor of bold, sharp edges. While it makes the car look like something out of a mid-nineties video game, it turns out there’s a good reason behind the design.
“Reason Cybertruck is so planar is that you can’t stamp ultra-hard 30X steel, because it breaks the stamping press,” CEO Elon Musk explained via Twitter Sunday evening, signaling how the body’s materials could have made a design like this almost a necessity. “Even bending it requires a deep score on inside of bend, which is how the prototype was made.”
It’s an added curiosity for the head-turning truck, which has racked up 200,000 orders since its debut. On November 23, when the truck only had around 146,000 orders, Musk broke these sales down by type:
17 percent of buyers ordered the $39,900 model. This is a single-motor rear-wheel drive with over 250 miles of range, over 7,500 pounds of towing capacity, and 0 to 60 mph in less than 6.5 seconds.
42 percent of buyers opted for the $49,900 model. This is a dual-motor all-wheel-drive with over 300 miles of range, over 10,000 pounds of towing capacity, and 0 to 60 mph in less than 4.5 seconds.
41 percent of buyers went for the $69,900 model. This is a tri-motor all-wheel drive with over 500 miles of range, over 14,000 pounds of towing capacity, and 0 to 60 mph in less than 2.9 seconds.
With the first vehicles expected to go into production in late 2021, it will be a while before the Blade Runner-inspired vehicle hits streets.
Elon Musk standing next to the Tesla Cybertruck.
Tesla Cybertruck: the steel at work
The body is made of a thick, ultra-hard stainless steel. This has been cold-rolled 30 times. MetalSuperMarkets explains that where hot-rolled steel is rolled at temperatures over 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, cold-rolled steel is processed further in cold reduction mills. This gives it a higher tolerance and straightness.
“We’re going to be using the same alloy in the Starship rocket,” Musk said.
The rocket, currently under development by SpaceX, is designed to transport the first humans to Mars and beyond. The material is much cheaper than its previous plan to use carbon fiber, which would have cost $130,000 per ton versus the $2,500 for steel. Long-term, SpaceX aims to take steel directly from the mill and curve it to the needed nine-meter diameter.
The steel is a big area of focus for the Starship, and it seems Musk is making the most of SpaceX’s advancements in this area for the truck. Musk explained via Twitter than the decision to switch the Starship to steel came before the Cybertruck.
“We were going to use titanium skins for Cybertruck, but cold-rolled 30X stainless is much stronger,” Musk explained via Twitter. “We’re creating this alloy at Tesla. Not a problem to create a lot of it, but we’ll need to come up with new body manufacturing methods, as it can’t be made using standard methods.”
The vehicle measures 231.7 inches long, 79.8 inches wide and 75 inches high. It has six seats, and a 6.5-foot rear bed. The major change versus other trucks is the mass is moved to the outside, which Musk likened to an “exoskeleton.” This is different to how most trucks are designed, with a body and bed on frame essentially
Tesla’s lead designer, Franz von Holzhausen, demonstrated the strength of the steel by hitting it with a hammer:
Bam.
Musk also detailed how the company held ballistic impact tests, with a 9-millimeter full metal jacket weighing 115 grain from 10 meters. Where a traditional steel door failed, Musk described it as “literally bulletproof.”
“You want a truck that’s tough?” Musk said. “You want a truck that’s really tough, not fake tough?”
Unfortunately, the transparent metal glass didn’t hold up as well. While a demo sheet of glass held up well from drop tests, the glass failed to hold its own against von Holzhausen’s throw:
Oops.
Musk claimed via Twitter that the glass cracked because the sledgehammer impact cracked the glass base. He also shared a video on von Holzhausen throwing a steel ball just ahead of the launch and bounding off the truck fine.
In short, the steel is really strong. Just don’t throw any metal balls at the glass if you’ve already given the door a whack.
01-12-2019 om 17:22
geschreven door peter
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Says ‘Evidence’ Of Alien UFO ‘Wreckage’ Is Being Held By U.S. Government
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Says ‘Evidence’ Of Alien UFO ‘Wreckage’ Is Being Held By U.S. Government
Conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared on the History Channel program 'Ancient Aliens' last week.
Controversial Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been known to embrace eccentricconspiracy theories. On his own program in June of this year, Carlson went on a tirade against the metric system, calling it “tyranny.” But in last week’s episode of the History Channel program Ancient Aliens, Carlson appeared to support an even farther-out theory.
In an interview with British journalist Nick Pope that aired on the November 22 edition of Ancient Aliens, Carlson claimed that a “knowledgeable” source has told him that the United States government possesses physical evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on Earth — or at least, crash-landed.
“I’ve heard this from someone who I think is knowledgeable on the subject that there is physical evidence that the U.S. government is holding, um, that, you know, would tell us a lot more – about what these objects are,” Carlson told Pope on the program, as seen in the video excerpt below on this page.
Pope then asked Carlson if he was referring to UFO “wreckage.”
“That is correct,” Tucker told the Ancient Aliens interviewer.
Of course, Carlson’s openness to the existence ofUFOsand aliens on Earth is not new. In July, Carlson interviewedDonald Trumpfor aFox Newssegment, raising the subject with him.
Trump told Carlson at the time that he did not consider himself a “believer” in UFOs, and said, “personally, I tend to doubt” that aliens have visited Earth in spaceships. But Trump left the door open, adding, “you know, I guess anything is possible.”
Carlson also asked Trump if he believed the claim that the government was holding UFO wreckage in an Air Force facility. But Trump replied, “I don’t assume it’s correct.”
Nonetheless, Trump told Carlson that he had “an open mind” on the subject.
At the time of Carlson’s interview, the U.S. Defense Department had recently briefed Trump on a series of sightings by Navy pilots of objects in the sky that they could not identify. The objects appeared to be moving at “hypersonic speeds,” according to the Fox News report on Carlson’s interview with Trump.
In 2007, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a report documenting the intelligence agency’s own investigations of the UFO phenomenon. The 84-page report, which remains available to read online via CIA.gov, notes that at least two U.S. presidents — Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter — claimed that they had experienced UFO sightings.
The study acknowledged “documents” that claimed to prove “the recovery of UFO wreckage” from an alleged Roswell, New Mexico, crash site. But the CIA report said that, “most if not all of these documents have proved to be fabrications.”
I was looking over Curiosity rover photos and found a fish fossil that the rover arm was examining. I could only find one photo with the fish fossil in it. Its not the only fish fossil I have ever found and reported, but actually the third or fourth over the years. This fossil has good detail, so good that had it been found on earth...there would be no doubt about what it is. I can make out its eye, mouth, sharp upper and lower ridges and its tail. Its lower stomach area clearly collapsed inward due to it drying out before becoming a fossil.
This photo was taken back in May 26, 1996. As the camera panned upward it settled on a glowing UFO near the shuttle Endeavor. The UFO then began to move away and upward. When I tried to find other photos of what happened next...I only found the next photos location to say"No Browse Image Available." This is the same NASA index where I found the legendary and viral photos of the Black Knight Satellites which I released back in 2011. This is 100% proof that the Shuttle Endeavor was visited by an alien ship while in orbit for those ten days. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Linda Moulton Howe discloses alien secrets beneath the ice in Antarctica
Linda Moulton Howe discloses alien secrets beneath the ice in Antarctica
There is a huge secret hidden beneath the ice in Antarctica. Military whistleblowers report large alien structures under two miles of Antarctic ice.
It all started when Linda Moulton Howe received a shocking and astonishing email from a retired 60 year old U.S Naval officer first class engineer on the extremely strange events happening in the Antarctic.
The Naval Officer (Navy Seal Spartan 1) experienced and saw, like a huge opening in the ice in a no-fly area, when they were crossing with a medical emergency on board.
Then, Navy Seal Spartan 1 walked an alien hallway inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs and tells Linda that Antarctica’s alien presence spans centuries, linked to Star Gate portals around Earth and beyond our solar system.
The new revealing documentary is now available at:
Astronomers discover supermassive black hole in the Milky Way galaxy 70 TIMES larger than the Sun that according to current scientific understanding should NOT exist
Astronomers discover supermassive black hole in the Milky Way galaxy 70 TIMES larger than the Sun that according to current scientific understanding should NOT exist
Black hole, dubbed LB-1, has a mass that is 70 times greater than the sun
Experts say it's impossible for something this size to form in the Milky Way
It couldn't have bee formed by a supernova, but by another physical mechanism
Astronomers have discovered a black hole in the Milky Way so massive that it challenges existing models of how stars evolve.
Called LB-1, this black hole is 15,000 light years from Earth and has a mass 70 times greater than the Sun.
LB-1's large mass falls into a range known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it, leading experts to believe this is a new kind a black hole, formed by another physical mechanism.
The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes but LB-1 is twice as massive as anything scientists thought possible, said Liu Jifeng, a National Astronomical Observatory of China professor who led the research.
Scroll down for video
LB-1 (artist impression) is 15,000 light years from Earth and has a mass 70 times greater than the Sun. The black holes's large mass falls into a range known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it
'Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution,' he added.
Scientists generally believe that there are two types of black holes.
The more common stellar black holes -up to 20 times more massive than the Sun -- form when the center of a very big star collapses in on itself.
Supermassive black holes are at least a million times bigger than the Sun and their origins are uncertain.
But researchers believed that typical stars in the Milky Way shed most of their gas through stellar winds, preventing the emergence of a black hole the size of LB-1, Liu said.
'Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation.'
The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes, but LB-1 is twice as massive as anything scientists thought possible, researchers say
David Reitze, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the discovery, told AFP: 'Astronomers are still only beginning to grasp 'the abundance of black holes and the mechanisms by which they form.'
Stellar black holes are usually formed in the aftermath of supernova explosions, a phenomenon that occurs when extremely large stars burn out at the end of their lives.
'LB-1's large mass falls into a range 'known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it,' Reitze said.
'That means that this is a new kind a black hole, formed by another physical mechanism!'
LB-1 was discovered by an international team of scientists using China's sophisticated LAMOST telescope.
Additional images from two of the world's largest optical telescopes -Spain's Gran Telescopio Canarias and the Keck I telescope in the United States -confirmed that the size of LB-1, which the National Astronomical Observatory of China said was 'nothing short of fantastic'.
WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?
Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light.
They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.
How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.
Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.
Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.
When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
Reusachtig zwart gat ontdekt dat eigenlijk niet kan bestaan. Astronomen staan voor een raadsel
Reusachtig zwart gat ontdekt dat eigenlijk niet kan bestaan. Astronomen staan voor een raadsel
Chinese astronomen hebben een supermassief zwart gat ontdekt dat zo zwaar is, dat er nog geen verklaring voor bestaat.
En dit is nog maar het topje van de ijsberg, zeggen sterrenkundigen.
De studie is woensdag gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature. Het zwarte gat, met de naam LB-1, is 70 keer zo zwaar als de zon en staat op ongeveer 15.000 lichtjaar afstand.
Op de schop
Wetenschappers gingen er tot nu toe vanuit dat zwarte gaten in onze Melkweg niet veel zwaarder kunnen zijn dan 20 zonnemassa’s.
Het kan dus eigenlijk niet bestaan.
Als het resultaat klopt, moeten de theorieën over het ontstaan van zwarte gaten op de schop.
Uitdagende taak
Hoofdonderzoeker Liu Jifeng van de nationale sterrenwacht van China legde uit dat LB-1 twee keer zo groot is dan welk ander zwart gat in de Melkweg dan ook (en het zijn er naar schatting zo’n 100 miljoen).
“Zulke zware zwarte gaten zouden volgens de huidige modellen helemaal niet moeten bestaan in ons sterrenstelsel,” zei Jifeng.
Theoretici staan nu voor de uitdagende taak om met een verklaring te komen, voegde hij toe.
Nieuw soort
Natuurkunde David Reitze van het California Institute of Technology zei dat dit ‘een nieuw soort zwart gat is’.
In april onthulden wetenschappers de eerste foto van een zwart gat, gemaakt door de Event Horizon Telescope.
Wat is de kans dat voor de tweede keer binnen een korte tijd er wederom een object van buiten ons zonnestelsel langs komt?
Er wordt bovendien gezegd dat dit object onder een vreemde hoek van boven het zonnestelsel binnen komt, allemaal toeval of toch niet?
Wat opvalt is dat we nu in een kort tijdsbestek een tweede bezoeker hebben in ons zonnestelsel die hier niet thuis hoort. Dat is opmerkelijk want voor zover ons bekend is dit nog nooit eerder voorgekomen.
De komeet werd afgelopen zomer ontdekt door de Oekraïense amateurastronoom Gennadiy Borisov, naar wie het object ook is vernoemd. Onderzoekers denken dat het object uit het eigen planetenstelsel is geslingerd, nadat het tot een bijna-botsing kwam met een planeet.
Ze kletsen natuurlijk maar een stuk in de ruimte, want ze hebben werkelijk geen flauw benul wat dit object hier komt doen en waarom het hier is.
Een lezer schrijft (dank!) naar aanleiding van bovengenoemd nieuwsbericht het volgden
Graag mag ik uw site elke dag een paar keer checken om te zien of er nieuwe artikelen zijn geplaatst. Wellicht heeft u over het volgende al de nodige informatie ontvangen, maar ik stuur het u toch graag toe. Rond 7/8 december zal een komeet-achtig object de zon en de aarde passeren op een afstand van 300 miljoen kilometer. Het heeft een staart, maar gedraagt zich niet als een komeet, zo wordt geschreven. En het heeft een rode gloed.
Ik moest daarbij denken aan eerdere artikelen van u over Niburu en "komeet-planeet".
Er wordt geschreven dat de baan van het object van bovenaf komt door het zonnestelsel, en er dus zo doorheen is met ongelooflijke snelheid. Tegelijkertijd wordt vermeld dat het ruim een half jaar in het zonnestelsel blijft tot in 2020.
Zelf werk ik met droomboodschappen welke elke nacht doorgenomen. In de afgelopen jaren zaten daar meerdere bij over Niburu. In de afgelopen maand kwam o.a. de datum van 8 december door. In het Italiaans, ik weet nog niet precies waarom. De kortste afstand van het object tot de zon blijkt bereikt te worden rond 8 december. Misschien heeft het niks met elkaar te maken, maar ik vind het wel frappant.
Tot zover de lezer met een zeer interessant verhaal. Bovenstaande foto is enkele dagen geleden gemaakt en laat zien hoe groot de komeet is ten opzichte van de aarde.
Hiermee is het object te klein om de planeet Nibiru te kunnen zijn die naar verluid minimaal zes keer zo groot is als de aarde. Maar, het zou natuurlijk heel goed een soort voorbode kunnen zijn van de komst van het minizonnestelsel waartoe de planeet Nibiru behoort.
In dat kader is natuurlijk ook vorig jaar de eerste bezoeker van buiten ons zonnestelsel, Oumuamua, zeer interessant. Dit object had duidelijk alle kenmerken van een soort verkenner.
Eerder dit jaar hadden we te maken met een vreemd ruimteobject, dat werd omschreven en geclassificeerd als een komeet en dat van buiten ons zonnestelsel scheen te komen.
Sinds ons artikel zijn er alleen nog maar meer vragen gerezen over dit object dat inmiddels de naam Oumuamua heeft gekregen. Het object dat van een ander zonnestelsel kwam, om de zon draaide en weer verdween in de ruimte. The Minor Planet Center heeft bijgedragen aan de naamgeving, wat zoveel betekent als eerste boodschapper van ver weg.:
Accordingly, the object A/2017 U1 receives the permanent designation 1I
and the name ʻOumuamua. The name, which was chosen by the Pan-STARRS team, is
of Hawaiian origin and reflects the way this object is like a scout or
messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us (ʻou means reach out
for, and mua, with the second mua placing emphasis, means first, in advance of).
Volgens de European Southern Observatory (ESO) is Oumuamua een object dat we nog nooit eerder hebben gezien en bestaat het uit rots of metaal met een roodachtige kleur.
Het object moet er ongeveer als volgt uit zien. Een ander fenomeen is dat het om haar eigen as lijkt te draaien en dat de lichtintensiteit varieert.
Men probeert wanhopig om voor dit alles logische verklaringen te vinden, maar slaagt daar niet zo erg in.
Men vermoedt dat het uit de buurt komt van de ster Vega, maar ook dat schijnt niet te kunnen omdat in de tijd dat Oumuamua daar is vertrokken, die ster op een heel andere plek stond. Nu denken ze dat het object misschien wel helemaal nergens thuishoort en als een soort los projectiel door de ruimte zwerft.
De wetenschap zit (ook) wat dit object betreft met de handen in het haar, want niet één van de normale verklaringen past.
Waar we hier over praten, is een groot moederschip dat ons hier met een bezoek heeft vereerd. Dat is de enige logische verklaring en ook is er ook één die past in de omschrijving van het object en de gedragingen.
Nu komen er via NASA berichten dat een team van wetenschappers met behulp van gegevens van de Hubble ruimtetelescoop en andere bronnen heeft vastgesteld dat Oumuamua opeens accelereert en van koers is veranderd.
En dan zijn er natuurlijk nog de frappante voorspellingen van de Chileense astronoom Muñoz Ferrada, die medio vorige eeuw al sprak over de komst van de planeet Niburu die zich zou gedragen als een komeet.
WAT VEROORZAAKT DEZE VREEMDE CIRKEL OP BUIENRADAR ? ( VIDEO )
WAT VEROORZAAKT DEZE VREEMDE CIRKEL OP BUIENRADAR ? ( VIDEO )
Wanneer je wilt weten waar je in ons land de komende uren buien kunt verwachten of hoelang het duurt voordat het droog wordt, dan kijk je op de buienradar.
In het algemeen zijn dit soort radars vrij betrouwbaar, maar nu gebeuren er vreemde dingen bij Buienradar.
Een buienradar bestaat eigenlijk nog niet zo gek lang en toch zijn we al heel erg gewend aan dit fenomeen.
In het algemeen kan een radar gedefinieerd worden als een elektronische installatie is,die bedoeld is om de omgeving af te zoeken naar objecten in de lucht, op het land of in de zee. Deze objecten zijn bijvoorbeeld vliegtuigen, raketten, schepen of auto's. De objecten worden via een beeldscherm zichtbaar gemaakt.
Een radar zendt via een antenne radiogolven (elektromagnetische straling) uit en ontvangt de door de objecten gereflecteerde radiostraling, oftewel echo, weer op via (meest dezelfde) antenne. Uit de aard van de ontvangen echo kunnen gegevens van het object bepaald worden ten opzichte van die radar, zoals richting, afstand, hoogte, vorm en snelheid.
Vanwege het zgn. Doppler- effect- d.w.z. dat de golflengte van de radiogolven verandert naarmate de afstand tot de bron groter of kleiner wordt- kan ook bekeken worden wat de intensiteiten van de neerslag in een wolk zijn en tevens wat de windkracht en - richting is; ook geldt dat hoe meer er van het signaal wordt teruggekaatst, des te intensiever de neerslag is.
Even kort door de bocht betekent dit dat de radar iets uitzendt wat weer teruggekaatst wordt. Hoe meer solide het object of hoe intensiever de neerslag des te sterker wordt de weerkaatsing. Kijk met dat in het achterhoofd even naar de volgende beelden van Buienradar die wij donderdagochtend kregen opgestuurd van een lezer (dank!).
Is het een natuurlijk fenomeen, waarbij onweersbuien een perfecte cirkel vormen? Of hebben we hier te maken met weermanipulatie, waarbij misschien technieken zoals HAARP worden gebruikt?
Feit is dat de radar iets teruggekaatst krijgt en omdat het Buienradar is, neemt men aan dat het neerslag is. Echter, we hebben eerder gezien hoe een weerradar gek kan doen als er bijvoorbeeld een ufo in de buurt is. Zoals dat gebeurde in Mexico, waar in 2012 een sigaarvormige ufo met een enorme snelheid de Popocatepetl vulkaan in dook.
Onderstaande afbeelding is afkomstig van de weerradar van Intellicast van 27 oktober, de dag dat een Ufo de vulkaan Popocatepetl in vloog. Het beeld bleef de hele dag online tot en met 28 oktober.
Hier zie je heel duidelijk de vorm van de vortex.
Het centrum van de vortex ligt precies op de plaats waar de vulkaan zich bevindt.
Was er misschien ook bij ons een verborgen ruimteschip of ufo? Een groot object dat zich verborgen hield in de dikke wolkenlaag en daardoor verscheen als een cirkelvormige onweersbui.
Dat dit helemaal niet vergezocht hoeft te zijn blijkt wel uit het feit dat de dag ervoor aan de Engelse oostkust ook een merkwaardig object werd waargenomen in de lucht.
De combinatie onweersbuien en ufo's komt in de praktijk heel veel voor en dan is er natuurlijk nog de mogelijkheid dat er zich boven Nederland een soort dimensieportaal heeft geopend, iets waarover wij regelmatig schrijven.
Kortom, wie het weet mag het zeggen, maar vreemd is het wel. Hierna nog wat bewegende beelden van het object boven Engeland.
Artificial Intelligence BREAKTHROUGH: 'Better than human' AI algorithm beats brain in test
Artificial Intelligence BREAKTHROUGH: 'Better than human' AI algorithm beats brain in test
AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence algorithm designed to interpret images and video has beaten human scientists at mapping active neurons in the brain, a shocking new study has claimed.
Bio-engineers studying the complexities of the brain in mice chart out each individual neuron as it fires off during periods of activity. Using a process known as two-photon calcium imaging, scientists see bright spikes and flashes of light in the brain – nerve impulses firing off in response to stimulus. The process is incredibly slow, arduous and requires scientists to circle every single neuron, which lights up like a lightbulb. However, an incredible artificial intelligence algorithm tested by Duke University in North Carolina, US, has proven to be much more effective at the job.
A Duke study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found the AI automated process is as accurate but considerably faster.
The algorithm, according to its lead author, appears to be “better than human experts”.
Duke University said in a statement: “This new technique, based on using artificial intelligence to interpret images, addresses a critical roadblock in neuron analysis, allowing researchers to rapidly gather and process neuronal signals for real-time behavioural studies.”
Typically, the human-led process of mapping neuron activity in a 30-minute-long video would take researchers anywhere from four to 24 hours.
Artificial intelligence trialled by Duke, on the other hand, was able to complete the process in mere minutes.
Artificial intelligence: AI algorithms are as accurate and faster than human experts
(Image: GETTY)
The AI proved faster and does not require food, hydration, toilet breaks or sleep to operate at peak performance.
Sina Farsiu, an associate professor of engineering at Duke, said: “As a critical step towards complete mapping of brain activity, we were tasked with the formidable challenge of developing a fast automated algorithm that as accurate as humans for segmenting a variety of active neurons imaged under different experimental settings.”
Fellow Duke researcher and professor Yiyang Gong said: “The data analysis bottleneck has existed in neuroscience for a long time – data analysts have spent hours and hours processing minutes of data, but this algorithm can process a 30-minute video in 20 to 30 minutes.
“We were also able to generalise its performance, so it can operate equally well if we need to segment neurons from another layer of the brain with different neuron size or densities.”
And Somayyeh Soltanian-Zadeh, a Duke PhD student and the study’s lead author said: “Our deep learning-based algorithm is fast and is demonstrated to be as accurate as, if not better than, human experts in segmenting and overlapping neurones from two-photon microscopy recordings.
Algorithm is fast and is demonstrated to be as accurate as, if not better than, human
Somayyeh Soltanian-Zadeh, Duke University
Deep learning algorithms give scientists and researchers a chance to trawl through cast amounts of data with relative ease.
AI algorithms can be trained to identify different parts of a complex image for a specific purpose – in this case, to track firing neurons.
Duke’s researchers were so impressed with the algorithm’s ability to beat humans, they have made their software publicly available to the public.
Artificial intelligence: AI algorithms rapidly track firing neurons in mouse brains (pictured)
(Image: DUKE UNIVERSITY)
The scientists are confident the application of AI in researcher can boost the speed at which bio-engineers study the mysteries of the brain.
Ms Soltanian-Zadeh said: “This improved performance in active neuron detection should provide more information about the neural network and behavioural states, and open the door for accelerated progress in neuroscience experiments.”
The news comes after scientists have developed a machine capable of predicting the future.
Artificial intelligence: Deep learning can be trained to interpret images
(Image: GETTY)
Experts in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence have also warned the rise of intelligent machines threatens to displace millions of people from their workplaces.
Nisreen Ameen, a lecturer at Queen Marty University of London, argued in an article for The Conversation higher education might be affected by smart technologies.
She said: “Artificial intelligence is set to have a significant impact. And not just on teaching and learning, but also on the whole student experience – innovation infused with traditional academic processes.
“This will change the classroom experience and how universities communicate with students, with lectures and marking potentially done by robots.”
Authored by Dagny Taggart via the organic pepper blog
Experts have been warning us about potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence for quite some time. But is it too late to do anything about the impending rise of the machines?
Once the stuff of far-fetched dystopian science fiction, the idea of robot overlords taking over the world at some point now seems inevitable.
The late Dr. Stephen Hawking issued some harsh and terrifying words of caution back in 2014:
The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded. (source)
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, warned that we could see some terrifying issues within the next few years:
The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand.
The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential.
I am not alone in thinking we should be worried.
The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen… (source)
Experts say it is time to study “machine behavior.”
Last week, a team of researchers made a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems. The group, led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab, published a paper in Nature in which they called for a new field of research called “machine behavior.” The new field would take the study of artificial intelligence “well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences,” according to an MIT Media Lab press release.
Scientists have studied human behavior for decades, and now it is time to apply that kind of research to intelligent machines, the group explained. Because artificial intelligence is doing more collective ‘thinking,’ the same interdisciplinary approach needs to be applied to understanding machine behavior, the authors say.
“We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab.
Machines are making decisions and taking action without human input.
Rahwan explains:
“We’re seeing the rise of machines with agency, machines that are actors making decisions and taking actions autonomously. This calls for a new field of scientific study that looks at them not solely as products of engineering and computer science but additionally as a new class of actors with their own behavioral patterns and ecology.” (source)
“We’re seeing an emergence of machines as agents in human society; these are social machines that are making decisions that have real value implications in society,” says David Lazer, who is one of the authors of the paper, as well as University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Sciences at Northeastern.
We interact numerous times each day with thinking machines, as the press release explains:
We may ask Siri to find the dry cleaner nearest to our home, tell Alexa to order dish soap, or get a medical diagnosis generated by an algorithm. Many such tools that make life easier are in fact “thinking” on their own, acquiring knowledge and building on it and even communicating with other thinking machines to make ever more complex judgments and decisions—and in ways that not even the programmers who wrote their code can fully explain.
Imagine, for instance, a news feed run by a deep neural net recommends an article to you from a gardening magazine, even though you’re not a gardener. “If I asked the engineer who designed the algorithm, that engineer would not be able to state in a comprehensive and causal way why that algorithm decided to recommend that article to you,” said Nick Obradovich, a research scientist in the Scalable Cooperation group and one of the lead authors of the Nature paper.
Parents often think of their children’s interaction with the family personal assistant as charming or funny. But what happens when the assistant, rich with cutting-edge AI, responds to a child’s fourth or fifth question about T. Rex by suggesting, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you had this dinosaur as a toy?”
“What’s driving that recommendation?” Rahwan said. “Is the device trying to do something to enrich the child’s experience—or to enrich the company selling the toy dinosaur? It’s very hard to answer that question.” (source)
There is still a lot we don’t know about how machines make decisions.
What hasn’t been examined as closely is how these algorithms work. How do they evolve with use? How do machines develop a specific behavior? How do algorithms function within a specific social or cultural environment? These issues need to be studied, the group says.
There is a significant barrier to the type of research the group is proposing, however:
But even if big tech companies decided to share information about their algorithms and otherwise allow researchers more access to them, there is an even bigger barrier to research and investigation, which is that AI agents can acquire novel behaviors as they interact with the world around them and with other agents. The behaviors learned from such interactions are virtually impossible to predict, and even when solutions can be described mathematically, they can be “so lengthy and complex as to be indecipherable,” according to the paper. (source)
And, there are ethical concerns surrounding how AI makes decisions:
Say, for instance, a hypothetical self-driving car is sold as being the safest on the market. One of the factors that makes it safer is that it “knows” when a big truck pulls up along its left side and automatically moves itself three inches to the right while still remaining in its own lane. But what if a cyclist or motorcycle happens to be pulling up on the right at the same time and is thus killed because of this safety feature?
“If you were able to look at the statistics and look at the behavior of the car in the aggregate, it might be killing three times the number of cyclists over a million rides than another model,” Rahwan said. “As a computer scientist, how are you going to program the choice between the safety of the occupants of the car and the safety of those outside the car? You can’t just engineer the car to be ‘safe’—safe for whom?“ (source)
The researchers explain that it will take experts from a host of scientific disciplines to study the way machines behave in the real world, as a press release from Northeastern University states. “The process of understanding how online dating algorithms are changing the societal institution of marriage, or determining whether our interaction with artificial intelligence affects our human development, will require more than just the mathematicians and engineers who built those algorithms.”
As we watch robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence machines and the like slowly (and sometimes rapidly) permeate our world, it’s not hard to imagine them going from permeating to taking over. Reaching that point, even those who don’t watch sci-fi movies can see the possibility of rogue robots and AI machines using computer logic to eliminate the one thing that could stop their takeover – humans – and initiating a robot apocalypse. Fortunately, some computer scientists in California have developed an algorithm that trains robots to always avoid the bad, human-elimination decisions and stay on the path of good, obedient servitude instead. How well do you think this will work?
“We want to advance AI that respects the values of its human users and justifies the trust we place in autonomous systems.”
In a Stanford University press release announcing the publication in the journal Science of the paper “Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines,” Emma Brunskill, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford and senior author of the paper, illustrates the alleged noble goal of robot and AI developers – making them tools for the good of humankind – and describes the algorithm she and her colleagues have designed to accomplish – and hopefully guarantee – that goal.
“We show how the designers of machine learning algorithms can make it easier for people who want to build AI into their products and services to describe unwanted outcomes or behaviors that the AI system will avoid with high-probability.”
The idea is to describe bad decisions and behaviors mathematically. While “don’t do this or the patient will die” decisions are easy to describe, behaviors such as gender bias – a line AI is crossing as it’s used more and more to evaluate employment or school applications – requires a sense of fairness that is obviously much harder to define mathematically. The Stanford researchers modified the algorithm in a program designed to predict the future grade point averages of students and it learned to avoid bias toward one gender. While “fairness” is much more vague than “life or death,” the researchers believe it can – and should – be built into all AI using their algorithm.
Does all of this sound familiar? The paper refers to this solution as a “Seldonian algorithm” and fans of Isaac Asimov will recognize that obvious reference to Hari Seldon, the mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor in Asimov’s “Foundation” sci-fi series. Seldon developed psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allowed him to predict the future in probabilistic terms. It worked for Hari Seldon … will it work for us?
“Given the recent rise of real-world ML applications and the corresponding surge of potential harm that they could cause, it is imperative that ML algorithms provide their users with an effective means for controlling behavior. To this end, we have proposed a framework for designing ML algorithms and
shown how it can be used to construct algorithms that provide their users with the ability to easily (that is, without requiring additional data analysis) place limits on the probability that the algorithm will produce any specified undesirable behavior.”
Why do humans want us to avoid bad behavior when bad behavior is so much fun?
In the paper’s conclusion on using machine learning (ML) algorithms to change robot behavior, that nasty word “probability” pops up. The algorithm is not a 100% guarantee of robot apocalypse prevention and even if it were, it depends on humans using it in all applications. Just as it’s easy to imagine a robot apocalypse, it’s easy to imagine it being caused by unscrupulous businesses leaving the “bad behavior prevention algorithm” out to cut costs or make more profits.
Henry Lee was the 19th century expert on sea serpents, as we have seen in several articles I wrote last week. As far as the 20th century is concerned, however, there is no doubt about to whom the crown was passed. It was one Bernard Heuvelmans, whose work, In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, is the defining book on the subject. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman – who, with Patrick Huyghe, wroteThe Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mysterious Denizens of the Deep – said of Heuvelmans, who died in 2001: “From 1948 on, Heuvelmans exhaustively sought evidence in scientific and literary sources. Within five years he had amassed so much material that he was ready to write a large book. That book turned out to be Sur la piste des betes ignorees, published in 1955, and better known in its English translation three years later as On the Track of Unknown Animals.” As for In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, it became a classic – and, to this day, it very much remains a highly important research tool for creature-seekers everywhere.
Of particular significance is Heuvelman’s theory – based upon 358 sightings – that there are far more than just one kind of animal that falls into the sea serpent category. Heuvelmans’ list of creatures is an important one. It not only describes the physical appearances of the animals: it also reveals which kinds of creatures are most often seen – at least, at the time that Heuvelmans compiled his list. He began with what he termed the “long-necked” type, for which Heuvelmans had forty-eight reports. This particular group, he added, had necks that ranged from long to “very long,” a “median hump on the back,” and a pair of horns on the head. As for the color of the creatures, they were typically mottled.
Second on Heuvelman’s list was the “merhorse.” It had, said Heuvelmans, a “long floating mane,” huge eyes, a long neck, and whiskers on the face. For this entry, Heuvelmans had studied no less than thirty-seven cases. The third entry was focused on “many-humped” animals. As their title suggests, they had a “string of dorsal humps of virtually equal size.” The necks were not overly large, and had white stripes on their necks. Now, we move onto the “many finned” beast of the deep. As for these creatures they had “several triangular fins looking like a huge crest.” They also had a jagged crest on the spine and “prominent” eyes. Then, there was the “super otter.” Heuvelmans described it as having “a slender medium-length neck” and a “long tapering tail.” The color was beige or grey, according to the thirteen sightings that Heuvelmans had in his files.
The “super eel” plays an important role in Heuvelmans’ work, as in more recent times reports of massive eels are growing and growing. Twelve reports that Heuvelmans had on file allowed him to make a good image of the animals. They had a long neck, one which formed “am extension of the head.” The tail was “long [and] tapering,” “Leaps out of the water and falls back with a splash,” Heuvelmans told his readers. “The marine saurian” was very much like a crocodile, albeit seen in an “oceanic habitat.” Then, there was the “father-of-all-the-turtles.” Yes, we’re talking about giant turtles, a subject that I will return to here at Mysterious Universe on a later occasion. And, finally, Heuvelmans introduced his followers to “yellow belly,” a beast that was yellow with black stripes. Heuvelmans said of his list that, “It is not surprising that the types based on a few not very detailed sightings have few determining characteristics. It follows that the least well-defined types may include several different species, not necessarily related to one another.”
If you are into Cryptozoology and have not yet read Heuvelman’s classic book, you really should!
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
Planet-wide storms could have caused Mars's water supply to...
