2010 - 2020:  Wat hebben we geleerd? 16 wetenschappelijke lessen uit het afgelopen decennium

Beeld Hilde Harshagen

Het klimaat begint voelbaar te veranderen en insecten leggen massaal het loodje. Traditiegetrouw zetten we aan het eind van elk jaar de opmerkelijkste lessen op een rij – deze keer blikken we meteen maar terug op het hele decennium. Er is ook vrolijker nieuws: de duurzame revolutie komt op gang, traumatherapie werkt echt en we gaan niet meer dood aan ziekten die tien jaar geleden nog fataal waren.

In de jaren tien veranderde de opwarming van de aarde van een ietwat abstracte statistiek tot voelbare werkelijkheid. Dit is nog maar het begin, zeggen kenners eenstemmig.

Les 2: De wetenschap is niet onfeilbaar

Fraude, scoringsdra­ng, opschepperij: niets menselijks bleek wetenschappers vreemd in de jaren tien. Heeft de strijd tegen broddelwetenschap al iets opgeleverd?

Les 3: Astronomen openen nieuw venster op de kosmos via trillingen van ruimte en tijd

Sinds 2015 beschikken sterrenkundigen over een nieuwe manier om naar het heelal te kijken: zwaar­tekracht­golven. Zo is het heelal niet meer alleen te zien, maar ook te horen.

Les 4: We gaan anders dood

Ziekten waaraan patiënten tien jaar geleden nog overleden, zijn – soms dankzij biomedische hoogstandjes – ineens niet meer dodelijk.

Les 5: Kunstmatige intelligentie is de mens steeds vaker te slim af

Kunstmatige intelligentie kan steeds beter diagnoses stellen, creditcardfraude detecteren, muziek componeren en teksten vertalen. Is AI op weg de mens te overvleugelen?

Les 6: Insecten leggen massaal het loodje

Een Duits-Nederlandse studie zette de dramatische afname van het aantal insecten op de kaart. En nu is de klimaatverandering eens niet de grootste verdachte.

Les 7: Onze natuurwetten staan stevig op hun sokkel (maar dat is niet per se goed nieuws)

Terwijl het standaardmodel van de deeltjesfysica bijna alle fundamentele natuurkrachten beschrijft, is er nog wel één grote ontbrekende: de zwaartekracht.

Les 8: Een radicaal nieuwe supercomputer wordt eindelijk werkelijkheid

Rekenen met de regels van Moeder Natuur zelf. Dat is de belofte van de quantumcomputer, het langverwachte rekenbeest dat tot voor kort vooral een gedachtenexperiment was.

Les 9: Microplastics zijn niet te vermijden, maar we weten nog niet hoe schadelijk ze zijn

Ze komen het lichaam binnen via de lucht, drinkwater, voedsel of cosmetica. Er zijn verontrustende signalen over wat microplastics daar doen, alleen is niet bekend wat die waard zijn.

Les 10: Na een hartoperatie kun je binnen een dag thuis zijn

Te oud voor een openhartoperatie? Met een vernuftige ingreep via de lies is een aortaklep tegenwoordig óók te vervangen. En je hoeft er niet eens voor onder narcose.

Les 11: De schaduwzijde van de geschiedenis komt steeds meer in het licht

Tien jaar geleden was er nog geen Zwarte Pietendebat, geen discussie over termen als de Gouden Eeuw of figuren als J.P. Coen. Kunt u het zich nog voorstellen?

Les 12: Elke ziekte heeft haar festival

Met een collectebus langs de deuren voor onderzoek naar een (obscure) ziekte? Kansloos. Wie de aandacht van donateurs wil, denkt groot en organiseert een gala.

Les 13: Duurzame energie komt sneller op dan verwacht

Hernieuwbare energie kan inmiddels op prijs concurreren met fossiele en wint sneller terrein dan werd voorspeld. Maar het aandeel ervan in het totale  energieverbruik is nog beperkt, zeker in Nederland.

Les 14: In uw dna ijlt de geschiedenis nog na

Het was het decennium waarin archeologen ons beeld van de geschiedenis op zijn kop zetten. Niet door te graven in de grond – maar in ons dna.

Les 15: Levende wezens kun je programmeren

Opeens was er ‘Crispr-Cas’, een vervreemdende genetische techniek die de wereld op zijn kop zet. Verwacht mensdieren, genetisch gemanipuleerde baby’s en wondergenezingen op maat. Of wacht: die zijn er al. 

Les 16: Therapeuten kunnen trauma’s al in één sessie genezen

Wat nog altijd niet lukt bij depressies, burn-outs en fobieën, lukt wel bij ptss. Emdr-therapie verhelpt trauma’s snel en bewezen effectief. Een revolutie, zegt psycholoog Ad de Jongh.

{ https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap }

26-12-2019 om 22:07 geschreven door peter  

Kunstmatige intelligentie is de mens steeds vaker te slim af

Bron: De Volkskrant

{ https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap }

26-12-2019 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

The real reasons the US government is so secretive about UFOs

26-12-2019 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

26-12-2019 om 21:04 geschreven door peter  

Pole Shift: NASA Contractor Has Dire Warning of Magnetic Pole Reversal, North Pole Has Passed Prime Meridian

Mr. Allison is currently the Program Manager for the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5) High Altitude Lift-Off (HALO) Program, and as President of the High Altitude Research Corporation (HARC). In these capacities Mr. Allison is actively developing cheap access to space technologies.

Earth’s Magnetic North Pole Is Moving Faster Than Ever, Leaving Scientists Baffled

Mr. Allison has worked on the International Space Station Program for Grumman as a systems engineer specializing in robotics, for the Mevatec Corporation as an electrical power systems integration engineer, and for Teledyne Brown Engineering as a payload integration engineer for external space station experiments.

Mr. Allison is currently working for Hernandez Engineering as a safety and product assurance engineer on such projects as Orbital Space Plane, X-37 and HyTEx. Mr. Allison also studies means to defend Earth from asteroids, and the construction of large-scale space stations.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

26-12-2019 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Uncover World’s Oldest Forest

Scientists have discovered remnants of the world’s oldest fossil forest in a sandstone quarry in Cairo, New York.

It is believed the extensive network of trees, which would have spread from New York all the way into Pennsylvania and beyond, is around 386 million years old.

This makes the Cairo forest around 2 or 3 million years older than what was thought to be the world’s oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State and around 40 km away from the Cairo site.

All these trees reproduced using only spores rather than seeds.

The team also reported a ‘spectacular’ and extensive network of roots which were more than eleven meters in length in some places which belonged to the Archaeopteris trees.

It is these long-lived woody roots, with multiple levels of branching and small, short-lived perpendicular feeder roots, that transformed the interactions of plants and soils and were therefore pivotal to the co-evolution of forests and the atmosphere’, the researchers state.

Until this point in time, trees such as the cladoxylopsids only had ribbon-like and mostly unbranched roots which had to be constantly replaced as the plant above ground grew.

They believe the forest was eventually wiped out by a flood due to the presence of many fish fossils that were also visible on the surface of the quarry.

“It is surprising to see plants which were previously thought to have had mutually exclusive habitat preferences growing together on the ancient Catskill delta,” said co-author of the study Dr Chris Berry from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

“This would have looked like a fairly open forest with small to moderate sized coniferous-looking trees with individual and clumped tree-fern like plants of possibly smaller size growing between them.”

The research team say that the Cairo forest is older than the one at Gilboa because the fossils were lower down in the sequence of rocks that occur in the Catskill mountains.

“In order to really understand how trees began to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we need to understand the ecology and habitats of the very earliest forests, and their rooting systems.” continued Dr Berry.

“These remarkable findings have allowed us to move away from the generalities of the importance of large plants growing in forests, to the specifics of which plants, in which habitats, in which types of ecology were driving the processes of global change. We have literally been able to drill into the fossil soil between the trees and are now able to investigate geochemical changes to the soil with our colleagues at Sheffield University.

“We are really getting a handle on the transition of the Earth to a forested planet.”

Contacts and sources:

• Dr Chris Berry
• Cardiff University

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

26-12-2019 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

I’ve written a few articles over the course of the past week, and into this week, on the matter of what have rapidly become known as “simulated UFO abductions.” The theory is that these “abductions” – primarily in the 1950s onward – were not the work of aliens, but the work of intelligence agencies, possibly to determine how easy (or difficult) it might be to fabricate an alien encounter. After all, if you can hoax an E.T. incident then maybe you can fabricate something amazing on the battlefield and, in the process, freak out the enemy. In that sense, perhaps the abductions amounted to forerunners of bigger, far grander plans. We’re talking about the likes of the CIA’s controversial MKULTRA “mind-control” program. One person who read my article of December 23 asked if agencies, in the 1950s, had the ability to pull something like this off – and to do so 100 percent successfully. The guy asked: “Didn’t the CIA’s MKultra not start til early-middle 50s? Would they have time [to pull such a thing off]?” Well, yes, that’s a very good point. But, it’s a lesser known fact that the CIA’s mind-control ops actually kicked off at the very start of the 1950s. Also, further programs, run by other agencies, began back in the 1940s! Let’s see what history tells us all about that.

It was during August 1977 that The Senate MKULTRA Hearings were organized by what became known as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources. It turns out that as the committee dug deeper it found that there were similar programs which predated MKUltra. They were Artichoke and Bluebird. The Committee revealed what it had uncovered: “The earliest of the CIA’s major programs involving the use of chemical and biological agents, Project Bluebird, was approved by the Director in 1950. Its objectives were: (a) discovering means of conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of information from them by known means, (b) investigating the possibility of control of an individual by application of special interrogation techniques, (c) memory enhancement, and (d) establishing defensive means for preventing hostile control of Agency personnel.”

CIA headquarters

As for Artichoke, there are these words for the committee: “As a result of interrogations conducted overseas during the project, another goal was added – the evaluation of offensive uses of unconventional interrogation techniques, including hypnosis and drugs. In August 1951, the project was renamed Artichoke. Project Artichoke included in-house experiments on interrogation techniques, conducted ‘under medical and security controls which would ensure that no damage was done to individuals who volunteer for the experiments. Overseas interrogations utilizing a combination of sodium pentothal and hypnosis after physical and psychiatric examinations of the subjects were also part of Artichoke. Information about Project Artichoke after the fall of 1953 is scarce. The CIA maintains that the project ended in 1956, but evidence suggests that Office of Security and Office of Medical Services use of ‘special interrogation’ techniques continued for several years thereafter.”

A special procedure, designated MKDelta, was established to govern the use of MKUltra materials when specifically utilized in overseas operations. Such materials were used on a number of occasions. According to the Committee: “Because MKUltra records were destroyed, it is impossible to reconstruct the operational use of MKUltra materials by the CIA overseas; it has been determined that the use of these materials abroad began in 1953, and possibly as early as 1950.” The Committee revealed more on MKDelta: “Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKUltra/MKDelta materials were also used for harassment, discrediting, or disabling purposes. According to an Inspector General Survey of the Technical Services Division of the CIA in 1957 – an inspection which did not discover the MKUltra project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, non-volunteer subjects – the CIA had developed six drugs for operational use and they had been used in six different operations on a total of thirty-three subjects. By 1963 the number of operations and subjects had increased substantially.”

The Committee discovered that the U.S. Army had been working on such programs, too. In its 1977 report, the Committee revealed the following: “There were three major phases in the Army’s testing of LSD. In the first, LSD was administered to more than 1,000 American soldiers who volunteered to be subjects in chemical warfare experiments. In the second phase, Material Testing Program EA 1729, 95 volunteers received LSD in clinical experiments designed to evaluate potential intelligence uses of the drug. In the third phase, Projects Third Chance and Derby Hat, 16 unwitting non-volunteer subjects were interrogated after receiving LSD as part of operational field tests.”

Moving on, there is what the committee learned about an operation called Chatter: “Project Chatter was a Navy program that began in the fall of 1947. Responding to reports of amazing results achieved by the Soviets in using truth drugs, the program focused on the identification and the testing of such drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on animals and human subjects involving Anabasis aphylla, scopolamine, and mescaline in order to determine their speech-inducing qualities. Overseas experiments were conducted as part of the project. The project expanded substantially during the Korean War, and ended shortly after the war, in 1953.”

MKNaomi was yet another operation on which the committee found a lot. It was designed: (a) To provide for a covert support base to meet clandestine operational requirements; (b) To stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials for the specific use of TSD [Technical Services Division]; (c) To maintain in operational readiness special and unique items for the dissemination of biological and chemical materials; (d) To provide for the required surveillance, testing, upgrading, and evaluation of materials and items in order to assure absence of defects and complete predictability of results to be expected under operational conditions.”

Under an agreement reached with the Army in 1952, the Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick was to assist CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems – some of which were directly related to mind-control experimentation. By this agreement, the CIA finally acquired the knowledge, skill, and facilities of the Army to develop biological weapons specifically suited for CIA use. The Committee also noted: “SOD developed darts coated with biological agents and pills containing several different biological agents which could remain potent for weeks or months. SOD developed a special gun for firing darts coated with a chemical which could allow CIA agents to incapacitate a guard dog, enter an installation secretly, and return the dog to consciousness when leaving. SOD scientists were unable to develop a similar incapacitant [sic] for humans. SOD also physically transferred to CIA personnel biological agents in ‘bulk’ form, and delivery devices, including some containing biological agents.”

In addition to the CIA’s interest in using biological weapons and mind-control against humans, it also asked SOD to study use of biological agents against crops and animals. In its 1967 memorandum, the CIA stated: “Three methods and systems for carrying out a covert attack against crops and causing severe crop loss have been developed and evaluated under field conditions. This was accomplished in anticipation of a requirement which was later developed but was subsequently scrubbed just prior to putting into action.”

The Committee concluded with respect to MKNaomi that the project was “…terminated in 1970. On November 25, 1969, President Nixon renounced the use of any form of biological weapons that kill or incapacitate and ordered the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. On February 14, 1970, the President clarified the extent of his earlier order and indicated that toxins – chemicals that are not living organisms but are produced by living organisms – were considered biological weapons subject to his previous directive and were to be destroyed. Although instructed to relinquish control of material held for the CIA by SOD, a CIA scientist acquired approximately 11 grams of shellfish toxin from SOD personnel at Fort Detrick which were stored in a little-used CIA laboratory where it went undetected for five years.”

Given that Project Chatter was quietly created way back in 1947, it’s not at all impossible that by the mid-to-late 1950s those “simulated UFO abductions” couldn’t have been working very well and convincing people they had been abducted when they weren’t – or, at least, not by extraterrestrials.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

26-12-2019 om 18:29 geschreven door peter  

Dark UFO Seen During Sunset As Scream Is Heard, Dec 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 24, 2019
Location of sighting: Syracuse, New York, USA
Source: MUFON 

This dark UFO was recorded passing over the trees and over a lake in Syracuse yesterday. The UFO was seen during sunset and the video is a bit blurry and difficult to make out detail. I am a bit surprised that people today still use phones from 5 years ago or older. Even my son has an iPhone 7 which is 4 years old but takes better video than this. Also, must UFOs are seen during sunset. Odd, but true fact. 
Scott C. Waring 

 { https://www.etdatabase.com/  }

26-12-2019 om 17:50 geschreven door peter  

Orb Fleet Over Rochester, New York During Day On Dec 25, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 25, 2019
Location of sighting: Rochester, New York, USA
Source: MUFON 

These orbs were recorded flying around the white clouds during the day over Rochester. The person was able to get a little bit of video using a phone, but there was no sound. These are defiantly controlled objects and they are also very similar to the white orb UFOs that news recorded over the area about 9 years ago. Absolutely amazing that they are back!
Scott C. Waring

 { https://www.etdatabase.com/  }

26-12-2019 om 17:45 geschreven door peter  

Letter B And Alien Base Found On Mars, 100% Proof Of Alien Life, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Dec 25, 2019
Location of discover: Mars
Mission: HiRISE  ESP_023488_2050 "Mwarth Vallis" 
Source photo: 

• http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MSL/sol/02218.html
  

While searching through a Mars photo I found a rugged area of terrain that seemed to have been dug up from mining. Then I found a huge structure along a hillside, with other structures nearby. There was also the capital letter B on a hillside. The B might be an entire word in their language or an important symbol. This is absolute proof that intelligent aliens lived, thrived and died on Mars. 
Scott C. Waring

 { https://www.etdatabase.com/  }

26-12-2019 om 17:40 geschreven door peter  

Black UFO Hovers Near Power Lines In New York! Dec 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 24, 2019
Location of sighting: Rome, New York, USA
Source: MUFON 

Here is a great UFO video that was reported to MUFON today. The black UFO is not a disk, but more of a flying cylinder. The UFO was seen for for a few minutes near a power line before the eyewitness pulled out a phone and recorded a bit. Absolutely 100% proof that aliens are interested in New York.
Scott C. Waring

 { https://www.etdatabase.com/  }

26-12-2019 om 17:34 geschreven door peter  

During a flight from the city Almaty to Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan on December 23, 2019, a passenger noticed a strange rectangular glow above the clouds on which he decided to film it.

It is unclear what the strange glow could have been but it is quite possible that it was a tall building sticking out of the cloud formation.

The tallest building in Kazakhstan is Emerald Towers 1 in Nu-Sultan which is 240 meters high, the Esentai Tower in Almaty is 200 meters high. The construction of both towers as well as other tall buildings are similar to the rectangular glow.

Image left: Esentai Tower - Image right: Emerald Towers 1 in Kazakhstan

The exact location, the altitude of the plane as well as the altitude level of the cloud formation at the moment the passenger noticed the glow is unknown but could it be that he has filmed the roof of a tall building reflected by the sunset or was it something else?

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

26-12-2019 om 17:24 geschreven door peter  

This day in UFO history: The 1980 UFO Landings In Rendlesham Forest

England holds one of the most compelling UFO landing accounts. In late December 1980, invasion of unidentified flying objects over a period of several nights took place in the joint air bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge, situated within the vast Rendlesham Forest in late December.

Description of alien beings added to the controversial stories of the twin air bases. The hype took into another level with anomalous radar readings, electromagnetic effects, and surrealistic atmospheric conditions. Professionals, deemed to be credible, have been coming forward revealing their knowledge of the real alien event on the Bentwaters and Woodbridge Air Force Bases.

Uncorrelated object showed on the radar screens at RAF in Norfolk shortly after midnight on December 27, 1980. The thing then suddenly vanished in the area of the Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk. Bentwaters RAF radar also picked up the object.

The bases were allegedly housed a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the Woodbridge was the base of the 67th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron.

The radar operator that night, Mal Scurrah, said that they did not have any idea of what they captured on their radar. They checked the air traffic agencies and found out that there should have been nothing in the vicinity at the time. They sent a jet aircraft to investigate, and the pilot reported seeing a dazzling light in the sky in front of them after getting within about a quarter of a mile.

They saw on radar the object was stationary and it moved off in seconds. In just five minutes the UFO reached 90,000 feet and higher, and they had lost it in the radar scope.

The Woodbridge/Bentwaters started their extraordinary events with the sighting of a massive glowing object by three security guards of the twin bases. They followed the lights into the forest with initial thought that it was a commercial or military aircraft that crash landed.

The patrol was stunned to see a saucer-like craft with small beings with large heads suspended by a type of beam from the bottom of the craft. The beings reportedly performing a repair to their craft unaware of the three men watching their activities.

The guards radioed the base headquarters and requested emergency help. Assistance reportedly arrived headed by senior officers of the base. Later, there would be off record reports that they encountered strange anomalies, such as reality-bending, time displacement, and surreal atmospheric conditions.

Some of the senior officers allegedly communicated with the alien beings.

Called out on the second night of the sightings was then the now famous Colonel Halt. The group of Colonel Halt was reportedly one of the groups to chase the glowing UFO in the forest. He made an audio recording of the details of his trek into the woods.

Patrolmen Jim Penniston, John Burroughs, and Larry Warren later co-wrote a book about the incident, titled Left at East Gate.

Other men who were present during the encounter later revealed that there was an underground theater where soldiers were interrogated, sworn to secrecy and threatened. They also revealed that they were shown several films featuring UFO recoveries around the world. It was also reported that an alien being was there in one of the meetings.

OTHER VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

26-12-2019 om 17:11 geschreven door peter  

The Asteroids Might Remember a Forgotten Giant Planet

By Paul Sutter 

We have much to learn from the rocks of the asteroid belt.

An artist's illustration of the asteroid belt.

(Image: © ESA/ATG medialab)

• Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of "Your Place in the Universe." Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. 

The formation of the solar system is a deeply perplexing puzzle. We're left with clues all over the place: the positions and sizes of the planets, the members of the asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, and Oort Cloud and the populations of moons around the planets. But how did we get to this from a vague disk of gas and dust billions of years ago? 

Simulations and models lead the way, and recently researchers have turned to the asteroid belt for more help: the asteroids living closest to the sun actually preserve a memory from when the solar system was still evolving, and might even offer clues to the hypothesis that we once had five giant planets.

• Related: The Asteroid Belt Explained: Space Rocks by the Millions (Infographic)

Baby solar systems

Billions of years ago, our solar system was just a bunch of random gas and dust floating around as a nebula. As it collapsed, it formed a rapidly spinning merry-go-round of a flat disk around the young and hungry proto-sun. Over the course of 100 million years, that disk somehow became the planets and other smaller denizens of our home system.

Computer simulations of the disk-to-planet process are fantastically difficult, due to all the rich and complex physics involved, but they have a few general features. The innermost worlds tend to be small and rocky, while the outermost planets tend to be big and gassy and/or icy. Plus the process of formation leads to a bunch of random junk floating around.

Another general feature is that newborn planets tend to move quickly into resonant motion, meaning that orbits become integer multiples of each other. For example, Mars might orbit four times for every Jupiter orbit, and Jupiter might orbit twice for every turn around the sun that Saturn gets. 

And when it comes to our solar system in particular, in simulations the giant planets tend to form much closer together, and much closer to the sun, than they are today.

So then the question becomes: Once we've got a batch of baby planets formed from our protostellar disk, how do we get those planets in their modern-day positions?

• Related: Our Solar System: A Photo Tour of the Planets

It's Nice out there

Enter the Nice Model, named after the city in southern France where a few sun-baked researchers cooked up the idea in 2005. In the bare-bones version of the model, the too-close-for-comfort giant planets are surrounded by a disk of leftovers: tiny planetesimals that never got to play the planet game and had to hang out in the outskirts of the solar system.

But not for long. Every so slowly, over the course of 100 million years, the outermost giant planet (usually thought to be Neptune, but in some versions of the model it's Uranus) drifts close to one of those leftovers. Close enough to interact gravitationally, doing a little orbital dance where the planet pulls the bit of rock inward to a smaller orbit, and in exchange sends itself farther out. 

And then that little scattered rock encounters the next planet in and does the same thing. And then it approaches Saturn and repeats the process again, going ever sunward and spreading out three of the giant planets.

And then that plucky little planetesimal finds Jupiter, who is generally in no mood for games and doesn't like to be told what to do. Instead of nudging the rock inward, the massive bulk of our system's largest planet just sends that unlucky bit of debris out of the solar system altogether. That doesn't come without a price, however; the energy needed to eject the planetesimal reduces Jupiter's own orbit, sending it slightly closer to the sun.

This model is able to explain in large part the modern-day positions of the planets, and how they were able to get there from their birthplaces. And since 2005, more sophisticated versions of the Nice Model have appeared, trying to explain finer details of our system's makeup, including the possibility that we once were home to a fifth giant planet that got lost in all the gravitational reshuffling.

Look to the asteroids

But all versions of the Nice Model have a particular problem with the asteroid belt. All that orbital dancing in the outer system can have big impacts on the inner worlds and their own population of planetary leftovers. The on-again-off-again gravitational resonances that the outer planets experience as they migrate to and fro in the outer reaches destabilize members of the nascent asteroid belt, scattering them into all sorts of crazy orbits.

In particular, the various versions of the Nice Model tend to send the innermost belt members (the chunks of rock within 2.5 astronomical units) into orbits with high inclination, meaning that they're angled with respect to the rest of the solar system. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) And yet, we find most asteroids are on an even keel with the major planets, so we must be getting something wrong in our models.

Recently, a team of researchers took a more refined approach to the simulations, looking especially at the interactions of Jupiter and Saturn as they waltzed together in the early days of the solar system. The scientists found that during the process of planetary migration, Jupiter and Saturn approach a 5:2 resonance, meaning that Jupiter orbits five times for every two orbits of Saturn. 

They don't stay in that resonance for long. But the details of Saturn's orbit while near the resonance give it just the right gravitational effect on the inner system to clear away any high-inclination wannabes in the asteroid belt.

And what about the more exotic models, like early solar systems including a fifth giant planet? It too has an effect on all the resonances, which means that the modern-day asteroid belt may actually be a fossil record, remembering what the young system was like. And the more we study those little leftover asteroids, the more we can learn about our own origins.

Read more: "A record of the final phase of giant planet migration fossilized in the asteroid belt's orbital structure"

• The Asteroid Belt May Be a 'Treasure Trove' of Planetary Building Blocks
• Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz
• How Did the Solar System Form?

You can listen to the Ask A Spaceman podcast on iTunes, and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com.

Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman, or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook

{ https://www.space.com/ }

26-12-2019 om 01:49 geschreven door peter  

Methane Mystery on Mars May Get a Partial Answer Soon

By Mike Wall 

NASA's Curiosity rover just made some important measurements.

NASA's Curiosity rover has detected several intriguing spikes of methane in the air of Mars' Gale Crater.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

SAN FRANCISCO — NASA's Curiosity rover may have just taken a big step toward cracking at least part of the Mars methane mystery.

Curiosity's measurements show that methane levels cycle seasonally inside the Red Planet's 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, which the rover has been exploring since August 2012. The six-wheeled robot has also detected several big surges of the gas, which is a possible (though far from definitive) sign of Mars life.  

But here's where the mystery comes in: The view from above is very different. The European-Russian Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which was designed to sniff out low-abundance gases such as methane, has found the Martian air to be virtually free of the stuff. 

• Related: The 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars

For example, TGO recorded an upper limit of 0.012 parts per billion (ppb) methane during its first four months of full science operations, which lasted from April through August 2018. That's about 35 times lower than the background methane levels Curiosity measured inside Gale over the same period. 

And neither TGO nor Mars Express, a European probe that has been orbiting the planet since December 2003, spotted the most recent methane spike that Curiosity detected. During that event, which occurred on June 19 of this year, methane concentrations at the rover's location rose to a whopping 21 ppb — the highest levels that Curiosity had ever recorded. (Mars Express did, however, independently observe the first methane surge that Curiosity spotted, in June 2013.)

The discrepancy between ground measurements and orbital data has the Curiosity team "mystified, just like everyone else," mission principal investigator Ashwin Vasavada said here last week during a media roundtable at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). 

Perhaps something in the Martian atmosphere destroys methane very quickly, scrubbing away most of the gas that rises above Curiosity and therefore leaving little for TGO or Mars Express to detect, said Vasavada, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. But that's not the only possible explanation.

"Maybe the expansion and contraction of the atmosphere every day from solar heating is responsible," he told Space.com after the roundtable.

Curiosity's previous methane measurements — which the rover makes using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM — have been gathered at night, Vasavada said. That's not surprising, considering how busy the rover is during the day studying rocks in minute detail and/or driving across the rugged Red Planet landscape. But it means that Curiosity had sniffed only when the atmosphere was relatively dense and the methane concentrated as a result.

During the day, as the atmosphere expands, the methane becomes more mixed and diffuse — perhaps diffuse enough to explain, at least in part, why the orbiters' observations are so different. 

• Related: Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover (Latest Images) 

The Curiosity team is testing this idea. Over this past weekend, the rover was scheduled to make its first-ever detailed daytime methane measurement.

"This rare experiment is a chance to get some exciting science observations, but we'll need time after the experiment to analyze the data; we don't expect to have any takeaways right away," science team member Catherine O'Connell, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, wrote in a mission update on Friday (Dec. 13). 

The results, whatever they may be, will not solve the entire Mars methane mystery, for it's a multilayered one. For example, scientists don't know how the gas was produced. Most of the methane in Earth's air was emitted by living creatures, but the stuff can be created abiotically as well — specifically, by reactions involving hot water and rock.

And even if Mars' methane is biogenic — a very big if — there's no guarantee it's a sign of active life. The gas may have been generated billions of years ago in underground pockets, from which it's now slowly seeping, mission team members have said.

The Curiosity team also recently announced intriguing results about another possible biosignature gas. The rover's measurements show that oxygen levels rise considerably higher than expected in the spring and summer and drop below predicted concentrations during the Gale Crater winter.

"As it always has been, both methane and oxygen are a mystery," Vasavada said during the AGU roundtable. "It's telling us that there's things about the atmosphere that we don't understand. How methane and oxygen are produced, and how they're destroyed — both are not fitting our current models of atmospheric chemistry."

The main goal of Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission involves assessing the habitability of Gale Crater. The rover has already accomplished that objective, finding that Gale hosted a long-lived lake-and-stream system in the ancient past. 

Since September 2014, Curiosity has been picking its way up Mount Sharp, the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain that rises from Gale's center, searching for clues about Mars' long-ago transition from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold, dry planet it is today.

• The Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline
• Photos: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life
• Ancient Mars Lakes & Laser Blasts: Curiosity Rover's 10 Biggest Moments in 1st 5 Years

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

26-12-2019 om 01:23 geschreven door peter  

Alien hunters discover 'UFO highway' across America

26-12-2019 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

NASA airborne campaign catches the drift of snow water

by Jessica Merzdorf, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

{ https://phys.org/ }

26-12-2019 om 00:57 geschreven door peter  

Mexico built on top of this lost city? Thousands of discovered artifacts unfold mystery

7,000 objects, including sculptures, votive offerings and skulls of sacrificed victims were discovered from that particular area

By Bhaswati Guha Majumder

10 Facts About the Aztec Empire

{ https://www.ibtimes.sg/ }

26-12-2019 om 00:43 geschreven door peter  

The CIA Simulated UFO Abductions In Latin America As Psychological Warfare Experiments

 Published By Arjun Walia

Throughout history, the field of ufology and the examination of the extraterrestrial hypothesis has, without a doubt, been overcome with a plethora of disinformation. Those who have dived into the depths of ufology know this best, as it’s well documented that ‘outsiders’ from intelligence agencies and governments have infiltrated the field for the purposes of deceiving researchers and people who are interested in the topic for one simple reason, to keep them away from the truth. On top of these disinformation campaigns, which still seem to be in operation today, there has long been an “official campaign of ridicule and secrecy” (Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Ex CIA director)  associated with the subject. This is why I encourage all those reading who dive into this subject to stick with facts, data, and evidence rather than entertain what seem to be outlandish claims that in no way, at all, can be verified.

I’d like to draw your attention to Dr. Jacques Vallee, who holds a master’s degree in astrophysics and a Ph.D. in computer science. The subject of UFOs first attracted his attention as an astronomer in Paris. He subsequently became a close associate of Project Blue Book’s J. Allen Hynek and has written several books on the UFO enigma. He is currently a venture capitalist living in San Francisco. Vallée co-developed the first computerized map of Mars for NASA in 1963. He later worked on the network information center for the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet, as a staff engineer of SRI International’s Augmentation Research Center under Douglas Engelbart.

He’s a researcher that’s had a very interesting life, to say the least, with regards to researching the topic of UFOs. He’s come into contact with and had meetings with most experts in the field, politicians from around the world, high ranking military personnel and much more. His journey into the subject has led him to investigate an uncountable amount of case reports regarding UFOs and supposed extraterrestrial beings, and he’s been a major player with regards to bringing the mainstream scientific community forward to look at the evidence and data that’s involved with such a serious subject, that, in his time, was largely ridiculed. He is an important reason why the phenomenon has gained as much credibility as it has today.

Valle is one of many who have written about and documented the startling evidence that well-constructed hoaxes and media manipulations have misled UFO researchers, diverting them from the UFO phenomenon itself, what’s really going on.

In one of his latest books, Forbidden Science 4, he shares a record of his private study into unexplained phenomena between 1990 and the end of the millennium, during which he was traveling around the global pursuing his professional work as a high-technology investor. It’s a bit of a diary, documenting his experiences and encounters/meetings as he tries to examine and explore the phenomenon.

In an entry dated Thursday 26 March 1992, Valle writes:

I have secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.

Reading this line from his book triggered me back to earlier in his book when he mentions one of many conversations he’s had with Ron Blackburn.

On Monday 16 April 1990, he writes:

Over lunch again with Colonel Ron Blackburn (Air Force) at the Gatehouse in Palo Alto he revealed that the “Secret Onion” group started in 1985 in the classified tank located in his basement at the Lockheed Skunk Works. Colonel John Alexander had brought him a list of the people in the inner circle. They divided the world into layers of concentric trust and ability. John introduced Blackburn to Ed Dames. Blackburn and I have a firmed up our plants to ravel to New Mexico on May 4th, up the high mesa – supposedly to meet some Aliens.

It’s interesting to note that Colonel John Alexander army writes about Blackburn in his book, “UFOs, myths, conspiracies and realities.”

Among the people I met was Dr. Ron Blackburn, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who was then working at the Lockheed Skunk Works in Burbank. It was Blackburn who first asked me if I had ever heard of the infamous Area 51. In the early 1980s, this facility was still not widely known inside the military, let alone the general public, even though it had been functional for decades…Among areas of common interest between Blackburn and me were UFOs. We discussed many possibilities related to who might be in charge of UFO research. We both thought that there was some organization, probably within the U.S. Air Force, which had the responsibility. But we acknowledged that whoever had the ball, there must be a an interagency effort as well. Our assumption was that somebody must be in charge, and we were well aware of all the prevailing stories and rumours. Roswell, we assumed, was a real UFO event.

Fast forward to Friday, May 4th, 1990, Valle writes about Blackburn:

“I’m convinced the government is working on UFOs,” he told me. “What are the chances some witnesses are being fooled by special effects developed by psychological warfare?” I countered. Thinking of cases like Bentwaters in the UK or Cergy-Pontoise in France. “They’re pretty good,” he admitted. “Suppose you shine a week infrared laser into people’s eyes; it won’t hurt them but may induce a hallucinatory state. Experiments have been done where you send a microwave beam through someone’s brain; you pick up the transmitted energy pattern. You can influence people this way, even make them hear things. Holograms have been used too,”

fIt’s interesting to note the conversation Valle had with Blackburn in 1990, and then in 1992 writes that he had received a document that the CIA had been involved with staging UFO (alien abductions). Combine this information with Blackburn mentioning that holograms have been used, and technology exists to produce “hallucinatory” states.

This is just one of many examples and pieces of evidence many researchers in the field point to suggesting that there are staged abductions happening for reasons unknown, and that it’s continuing today.  It’s not surprising either if you’ve ventured down the road of CIA mind controlled tactics, programs like MK ultra and their desire to manipulate the perception of the masses with regards to various topics. It’s not surprising if you’ve looked into the black budget world, a world that’s far more advanced that the mainstream world with regards to technology.

Dr. David Jacobs, a retired university professor, is one of many experts who has hypnotically regressed people who claim to have had ET abduction experiences. After thousands of people, they all share the same story. Many filled with forced impregnation, and ‘hybrid’ children, among other things. Could many of these forced abduction experiments simply be deep black projects that are being conducted by rogue government agencies? Now we know that yes, many of them could be. Are all of them? There are stories floating around out there without much evidence, like the idea that Eisenhower made a deal with certain extraterrestrial groups, that they could abduct a certain amount of humans for the exchange of technology. Based on the idea that that forced abductions may be military operations, this supposed meeting is called into question.

Valle writes of Jacobs in his book:

I am trying to read Jacob’s Secret Life.’ The author appears obsessed with what he views as a massive Alien invasion, his analysis is no longer balanced.

This may explain why there is a whole array of people who claim to have had experience with beings from somewhere else, but these experiences did not involve forced abductions, but rather, simple contact experiences. Remember, the key nuance here is we’re talking about human and ET contact, vs forced abductions which are often quite aggressive or terrifying for people.

I’ve written previously about the work of Jacobs, you can read that article here. I’ve been in this field for more than a decade now and the more I learn, the more I have to unlearn and consider other possibilities. I wrote that article being aware that many abduction cases could be military operations, but I did not mention it. I’ve come across the work of many who have interviewed abductees and, from their experiences, there also seems to be a military component as well, or a feeling of military personnel appearing as ‘Aliens.’

How Deep Does The Misinformation Go?

Richard Doty is also mentioned multiple times in Valle’s book. He is a retired Air Force Special investigations officer (AFSIO), and his job was to spread disinformation about the UFO subject during his time with the Air Force. Spreading disinformation about the reality of UFOs is no secret, and in Doty’s case, he admitted to infiltrating UFO circles along with his colleagues to feed ufologists and journalists lies and half truths so that they would never understand any real truth.

So, as you can see, this type of narrative has many interesting sources. You can read more about Doty and watch an interview with him here.

Regardless, There Is Something Going On Here

Valle, and all others in this field are quite aware that something real is going on, and something quite possibility extraterrestrial and inter-dimensional. This article is not meant to shed doubt on the phenomenon itself as well as the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Credible information with regards to sightings, crash retrieval, and possible bodies and contact experiences with ‘aliens’ are out there and can be examined. That being said, there is obviously a lot of disinformation out there as well, ridiculous claims as well as charlatans who are in the field spreading lies and fake stories for the purposes of making money, or perhaps to do what Doty was once tasked with, to spread disinformation, are out there.

With all that being said, the fact remains that:

There is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations….This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.

– Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (source)

{ https://www.collective-evolution.com/ }

25-12-2019 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

Over the last few days there has been a significant amount of online debate about alien abductions, mind-altering technologies, and the possibility that some alien abductions may have been the work of the CIA and not of extraterrestrials. In his December 19, 2019 article (titled “Vallee Declines to Substantiate Claim of CIA Simulating UFO Abductions”) Jack Brewer wrote the following: “Dr. Jacques Vallee declined to attempt to fully substantiate the assertion contained in his book, Forbidden Science – Volume Four, that he secured a document confirming the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Brazil and Argentina. ‘I felt a duty to call attention to the issue,’ Vallee explained in a Dec. 17 email, but chose not to share the document or address pertinent questions surrounding its circumstances.”

Jason Colavito said at his blog: “A few months ago, Jacques Vallée, the longtime UFO researcher and scientific advisor to space-demon-hunting billionaire Robert Bigelow, published the fourth volume of his diaries, Forbidden Science, covering the 1990s. In that book, Vallée made the shocking allegation that the CIA staged fake alien abductions in Latin America and that there were documents that supported the allegation: ‘I have secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.'”

And, there’s my own article on this subject, here at Mysterious Universe. The article is titled: “Simulated Alien Abductions: the CIA, a Hot Hooker, and Secret Experiments.” As I say: “There’s a distinct possibility (maybe, even, a probability) that this all relates to a very weird and highly controversial affair that went down in Brazil way back in the 1950s. Antonio Villas Boas was a Brazilian man who claimed, in late 1957, to have had wild sex with an equally wild babe from the stars, after having been kidnapped and taken on-board a UFO. An early alien abduction? Yep. Or maybe not. In the late-1970s, UFO researcher Rich Reynolds had contact with a man named Bosco Nedelcovic, who had links to the world of intelligence, who spent time working in South America, and who claimed that the Villas Boas affair was not what it appeared to be. He told Rich that, in reality, Villas Boas was the unwitting player in a new and bizarre experiment. According to Nedelcovic, the UFO that Villas Boas saw over his family’s property was really a helicopter. Not only that, Villas Boas was supposedly hit by some kind of mind-altering aerosol spray that quickly placed him into an altered state, after the pilot of the helicopter flew right over him and at a low level. As for the girl from the stars, she was said to have really been a hooker, a girl hired to take Villas Boas on the closest encounter of all. But, it was all a ruse: a mind-bending event designed to fabricate a UFO incident.”

All of this brings me to another famous alien abduction case: the October 11, 1973 alien abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker at Pascagoula, Mississippi. The case has become a classic in UFO research circles. It’s a little-known fact, though, that just a few miles from where Parker and Hickson were taken is a stretch of land called Horn Island. It looks pleasant and inviting, which it is. But, that wasn’t always the case. When the Second World War was still raging, Horn Island was home to top secret research in the fields of chemical- and biological-warfare. Less than a decade later, the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps used the island for its early research into hypnosis, mind-control, and psychedelics – in essence, to see how the human mind could be altered, and radically so, too.

The history books state that all such work on Horn Island was halted in the 1960s – amid rumors that some of the locals ended up in altered states of mind after being accidentally hit by powerful aerosol-based hallucinogenic substances carried by the wind. But try asking the locals about when things really ended and you’ll get a very different response. There are tales of the Army secretly employing the use of BZ in the area, in the early 1970s. And what might BZ be? Known as “Buzz,” it’s a powerful, mind-mixer, the official title of which is 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate. Graphic hallucinations are typical. As are states of unreality. Cognitive dysfunction soon sets in. As does incapacitation. H.P. Albarelli, Jr., in his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake (on the controversial death of a bacteriologist named Frank Olson, who was an expert in the field of mind-altering drugs, including LSD) states the following: “In Mississippi, Olson made one visit, along with several other researchers, including Dr. Gerald Yonetz, to Horn Island, ten miles off the small town of Pascagoula, Mississippi.”

The city of Pascagoula, Buzz, alien abductions, Frank Olson at Pascagoula, and more all make for a heady brew, indeed.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

25-12-2019 om 22:56 geschreven door peter