Astronomers discovered an Earth-sized planet located in the habitable zone of a nearby star that could potentially contain liquid water. A group of NASA exoplanet astronomers (Josh Schlieder and his students Emily Gilbert, Tom Barclay, and Elisa Quintana) were looking at data from TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) when they found the planet and it’s really not that far from Earth. In fact, it’s so close that its atmosphere may potentially be observed by using the James Webb Space Telescope or even large ground-based telescopes.

The Earth-sized exoplanet’s host star is called TOI-700 (or TESS of Interest number 700) and it’s relatively small and dim. It’s only around 40% of the size of our own sun and approximately 1/50 of its brightness. It’s located in the constellation Dorado – which can be viewed from the Southern Hemisphere – and is approximately 100 light-years away from Earth. To put this into better perspective, Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to us, is located 4.2 light-years away from us and would take us around 20,000 years to travel there. So, although it’s quite far away, it’s still relatively close in comparison to other stars and exoplanets that have been found.

In the past decade, around a dozen Earth-sized exoplanets have been discovered that are located in the habitable zone of their host stars; however, most of them are between 600 and 3,000 light-years away from us and are pretty much impossible to study and observe.

Three planets surround TOI-700 and are simply named b, c, and d. Planet d is the one that’s located in the habitable zone and is around the same size as Earth. What’s even more interesting is that it orbits its star every 37 days. Planet b is also Earth-sized but orbits its star at a very close range (Planet c is mini-Neptune sized). For comparison, Venus receives twice the amount of sunlight that Earth gets and the planet is dry and extremely hot. Planet b receives five times that amount of sunlight.

And since liquid water is essential for life, it’s very important for astronomers to figure out if there is any on Planet TOI-700 d and what its atmosphere is like. Based on different models studied by the astronomers, if the planet’s atmosphere has a combination of methane or carbon dioxide, or water vapor, it could possibly be habitable. Hopefully the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to confirm or deny these hypotheses when it’s launched next year.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-01-2020 om 16:48 geschreven door peter  

“They’re he-ere!”

Anyone who remembers the movie “Poltergeist” knows that hearing someone say those words is not good news. That could explain why residents of Castle Rock, Parker and Fort Collins, Colorado, aren’t thrilled to hear the news that the mysterious giant drones that have been flying in formation over parts of northeastern Colorado and across the border into Nebraska are now moving west and southwest and are getting dangerously close to Denver — Castle Rock and Parker are just a few miles south of the state’s capitol and most populated city. This may also explain why residents in those cities and those in the northeast who have been seeing these drones every night since a week before Christmas are skeptical at best about the announcement that a government task force has been set up to investigate them. With many believing these drones are tied to the military, they’re wondering if this is an investigation … or a cover-up.

It wouldn’t be such a mystery if the drones appeared at dusk rather than at night.

“You could see them. There were four of them, perfectly spaced. I don’t understand why they don’t want the public to know unless there’s something hidden.”

Castle Rock resident Jim Tewes told the local Fox News affiliate that he’s seen the drones on multiple nights and they’re definitely not airplanes or helicopters. Castle Rock is considered to be part of the Denver metropolitan area even though it’s halfway between that city and Colorado Springs, the home of the US Air Force Academy. Tewes wife, Patti, is more forceful in her assessment of the growing fear of a conspiracy.

“The fact that no one is jumping on it from the government, the FAA doesn’t seem concerned, it’s got to be the government.”

What are they watching?

Now that the giant drones are both literally and physically out in the open, more people are coming forth with sightings, including Castle Rock’s Brian Swanson, who claims he may actually be a target for the mysterious force behind them. He has taken a video of the drones he claims have been flying over his home for two years. Swanson told ABC Contact7:

“They’re just kind of like trailing me. You don’t mention it too much to people because they think you’re nuts. It just ain’t normal stuff in the sky … Who’s operating the drones? is it legal to do this? I have no idea. No idea. I’d like to find out.”

Whether he’s really a target of the drones or not, many Colorado and Nebraska residents, not to mention concerned citizens around the country, agree with Swanson … they want to find out. Fortunately, the federal government is FINALLY here to help.

“We take every drone-sighting report seriously. Multiple FAA divisions are working closely with federal, state and local stakeholders to determine whether the reported sightings in Colorado and Nebraska are drones and, if so, who is operating them and for what reason.”

On January 6th, local law enforcement agencies from eastern Colorado held a meeting with several federal agencies and later announced the formation of a task force to try and identify the owner of the drones. The task force will probably need a bigger room for the next meeting because it now includes local sheriffs from numerous counties, the FBI, the FAA, the Department of Defense, Colorado Information Analysis Center, the Colorado Department of Homeland Security, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and a few kitchen sinks.

“I don’t think it’s silly. It’s causing fear, and that’s not funny.”

Sorry, Phillips County Sheriff Tom Elliott, we’re not laughing at the drones but the idea that their nightly flights over many parts of Colorado and Nebraska for at least three weeks and quite possibly many months is a mystery to so many federal agencies and organizations chartered with protecting the public from just such fearsome aerial activities. It’s little comfort that everyone seems to agree it’s NOT aliens … but it’s becoming terrifying that the authorities have not been able to quickly solve this perceived threat. Are they waiting for a private citizen to do what none of them seem to want to (and warn against doing) … shoot one down?

Pilatus PC-12 drone hunter.

The task force claims to be looking for a command vehicle – a sinister-looking plain box trailer or van with antennas – that would be near the flight paths of a drone formation. Separately from the task force, the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control is flying a state-owned high-tech Multi-Mission Aircraft – a Pilatus PC-12 airplane – this week over areas where the drones have been seen. So far, a spokesperson says “The joint operation found no verification of suspicious drones.”

No evidence of something that now hundreds of people and law enforcement officials have seen with their own eyes and a few smartphones.

Mystery … or cover-up?

This is far from over because …

“They’re he-ere!”

We’re he-ere!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-01-2020 om 16:34 geschreven door peter  

Big Glowing UFO Seen Over Volcano In Mexico, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 31, 2019
Location of sighting: Colima, Mexico
Source: Volcano live cam

This raw footage was recorded from the Colima Volcano live cam and shows a glowing disk object moving around, up, over and down the volcano. The object looks big, about the size of a car and has a powerful glow to it. 

UFOs have been seen around the Mexican volcanos for over a decade and the sightings have not decreased at all. The objects are usually glowing brightly like this one, but some are longer and half actually enter or leave the mouth of the volcano. 

Absolute proof that an alien base exists below this volcano. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

Other videos of UFOS by Vulcans, peter2011

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

08-01-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Real Reasons Behind US Government Secrecy on UFOs

In 2017, the New York Times revealed the shocking story of a secret Pentagon program to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The story led many researchers to delve into this strange world. Since then, the public has learned some interesting information about UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) as the Pentagon refers to them.

However, the US government makes it extremely difficult to know what and where UFO-related stuff is going on. Some believe the government is behind some significant conspiracy to cover up the evidence of alien visitation to Earth. Others think the government is in cahoots with ET species to create human-alien hybrids.

Perhaps, but many suspects not.

What many others believe is that the few people in the US government who know about it believe the phenomena might be a threat but don’t know how to deal with it.

Several UFO enthusiasts suggest the government’s assessment of the phenomena, though they won’t admit it, is that the UFOs are being monitored near the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. UFOs also are popping up near nuclear submarines and Air Force nuclear weapons bases.

On Robert Hastings’ documents, these UFOs have sometimes even temporarily shut down nuclear weapons systems in the US. It appears now that humanity’s perfection of nuclear energy piqued something or someone’s curiosity in us.

It is important to note that these UFOs are far more advanced than US military capabilities. These UFOs are observed as being capable of reaching hypersonic speeds, demonstrating anti-gravity and invisibility technologies. They have also been tracked moving in and out of Earth orbit, making the most advanced capabilities of the US military an absurd joke in comparison. If these UFOs intend harm, we don’t have a chance. For Pentagon planners, this scenario is an Armageddon-level thing.

Publicizing the truth about UFOs also risks another danger. If the US shares what it knows about UFOs, Russia or China might learn enough to replicate associated very advanced technologies behind UFOs for themselves. If Moscow or Beijing figures out the space-time manipulation before the US, we have a rather large problem.

So, don’t count the military to share more of what it knows anytime soon. We’ll get to the truth eventually, but it will take time.

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

08-01-2020 om 13:55 geschreven door peter  

These four questions need to be answered in 2020 to solve the mystery of UFOs

By Jasper Hamill, Science & Technology Reporter

You might not know it, but we’re currently living in a golden age of ufology.

In the 20th century, anyone who saw mysterious objects in the sky was dismissed as a crank or a fraudster. 

But that changed almost exactly two years ago when a bombshell article published in the New York Times revealed the existence of a shadowy US government project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) which gathered information about ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP).

This secret programme gathered information on at least three sightings of aircraft travelling at impossible speeds which were recorded by US airmen or military personnel.

In the most famous incident revealed during the uncovering of AATIP, two Navy pilots chased a ‘whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane’. This ‘Tic Tac’ UFO was observed off the coast of San Diego in 2004 and followed by two by jets launched from the USS Nimitz.

Since this report, details of the strange and almost unbelievable work carried out by AATIP has slowly leaked into the public domain. And in that time, Metro has worked closely with Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator, to cover all the revelations.

Now he’s set out four questions which need to be solved in order for us to solve the UFO mystery once and for all.

These pictures were taken by cockpit-cameras

(Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)

Pilots were shocked disbelief by what they saw

(Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)

3. Why is the Pentagon walking back on its earlier admission that AATIP investigated UAP?

Early official statements about AATIP described it as being a program to assess “far-term foreign advanced aerospace threats to United States” and added “including anomalous events (such as sightings of aerodynamic vehicles engaged in extreme manoeuvres, with unique phenomenology, reported by U.S. Navy pilots or other credible sources)”.

‘A May 2019 statement to New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet from a US Navy spokesperson confirmed that AATIP “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena”.

‘However, in a recent statement to UFO researcher John Greenewald Jr., a Pentagon spokesperson stated  that AATIP was not UAP related’.

‘This contradicts former DIA official and AATIP point man Luis Elizondo, who said “AATIP was a 100% UFO program”, as well as former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who set up AATIP. To further complicate matters, in January 2019 DIA’s Office of Corporate Communications released to me a copy of a DIA letter to Congress where they attached “a list of all products produced under the AATIP contract”, which included studies into anti-gravity, invisibility, stargates, warp drive, wormholes and the Drake Equation, the latter being a theoretical construct designed to estimate the number of other civilizations in our galaxy – clearly not something you’d need to know if the concern was Russian and Chinese aircraft.

‘Whether it’s the President or someone in Congress, someone needs to step in and sort out this mess, because at present we have one part of the government saying one thing, while another says something else. It’s farcical and it makes everyone look foolish.

4. What’s the status of Congressional interest in all this?

‘There’s been previous interest in AATIP and the US Navy encounters from several parts of Congress: the Armed Services Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. There have also been suggestions that the Space subcommittee and/or the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee should be involved.

‘However, the fact that Congress has two chambers – the Senate and the House of Representatives – complicates things. The public don’t know what committee or subcommittee – if any – has the current lead on all this, what documents have been generated by this Congressional activity and how much of this documentation will be releasable under the Freedom of Information Act.

‘It’s also not known whether or not this Congressional interest will evolve into formal hearings and, if so, whether these will be public hearings, or closed hearings, as may be the case if much of the information is highly classified.’

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

08-01-2020 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious lights spotted above Reading spark UFO sightings

The mysterious lights were spotted "moving randomly across the sky" in Reading on Saturday night

By Hugh Fort & Joshua Smith

What could the strange lights be? 

(Image: Berkshire Live)

Strange lights have been spotted above a UK town - leaving locals very confused.

The mysterious lights were spotted "moving randomly across the sky" in Reading on Saturday night.

People in the town have reported their confusion over what the strange shapes could be.

Charlotte Butterworth said she saw a "distinct, large white light in the sky" while driving down the M4 on the night of Saturday, January 4 at around 10pm.

She said: "It was visible for at least the last 20 miles, moving randomly across the sky."

Another person spotted the light in Sonning Common area, saying it was "a white beam of light scanning the sky", coming from the direction of Reading, Berkshire.

She added it was "a bit like Batman's signal."

Jake New, of Tilehurst , spotted the light above the village and took the photos above.

One possibility is that the light is the one seen coming from the Winter On Ice event, which has been in Reading throughout December.

The light there can be seen from quite a way away, depending on the cloud cover.

UFO sightings are set to increase in 2020 - and there have already been a number of them as a gigantic ‘triangular UFO’ was spotted above Texas days after a New York sighting .

A cigar-shaped UFO has been captured hovering over an Arizona airport.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

08-01-2020 om 01:14 geschreven door peter  

The home galaxy of a second repeating fast radio burst is a puzzle

Astronomers have traced a mysterious, recurrent blast of radio waves to a Milky Way–like galaxy

The first galaxy discovered to host a repeating fast radio burst was a tiny dwarf galaxy. Now a second host galaxy has been found (arrow points to the burst’s location), and it’s a massive spiral similar to the Milky Way.

SHRIHARSH TENDULKAR/GEMINI OBSERVATORY

By Maria Temming

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

08-01-2020 om 00:56 geschreven door peter  

Aliens definitely exist and they could be living among us on Earth, says Britain's first astronaut

By Rob Picheta, CNN

(CNN) - Aliens definitely exist, Britain's first astronaut has said -- and it's possible they're living among us on Earth but have gone undetected so far.

Final frontier: Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut. Photograph: Alamy

Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet Mir space station in 1991, told the Observer newspaper on Sunday that "aliens exist, there's no two ways about it."

"There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life," she went on. "Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not."

Then, in a tantalizing theory that should probably make you very suspicious of your colleagues, Sharman added: "It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them."

Sharman was the first of seven Britons to enter space.

Sharman became the first Briton in space in 1992.

The chemist spent eight days as a researcher on the space mission when she was 27, making her one of the youngest people to enter orbit.

NASA rovers are trawling Mars for evidence of past or present life forms, but humankind's endless fascination with extraterrestrial life forms has so far proved fruitless.

Sharman is not the only person to speculate that we've had brushes with aliens, though.

Aliens, flying discs and sightings -- oh my! A short history of UFOs in America

A former Pentagon official who led a secret government program to research potential UFOs, revealed in 2017, told CNN at the time that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.

Elsewhere in her interview, Sharman said there is "no greater beauty than looking at the Earth from up high."

"I'll never forget the first time I saw it," she added.

Sharman also discussed her frustration with observers defining her by her sex. "People often describe me as the first British woman in space, but I was actually the first British person. It's telling that we would otherwise assume it was a man," she said.

"When Tim Peake went into space, some people simply forgot about me. A man going first would be the norm, so I'm thrilled that I got to upset that order."

CNN has reached out to Sharman for comment.

{ https://edition.cnn.com/ }

08-01-2020 om 00:49 geschreven door peter  

Posted by Andy Briggs in SPACE 

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, a bright star in the constellation of Orion, has been making headlines due to a recent drop in brightness. Is an explosion imminent? If it happens, will Earth be affected?

View at EarthSky Community Photos. 

Brian Ottum kindly provided this direct comparison of Betelgeuse a few years ago and Betelgeuse now. He wrote: “Left is February 2016. Right is December 31, 2019. Note that the brightness/appearance of all background stars are identical left versus right, but Betelgeuse is definitely fainter on the right.” Thank you, Brian!

Why is the red supergiant star Betelgeuse in the news?

Beginning in October 2019, astronomers noticed that the brightness of Betelgeuse suddenly began to change. The star was dimming. Once one of the top 10 brightest stars in the sky, its brightness had fallen to 21st place by the end of December 2019. Wild claims have been made about this sudden dimming of Betelgeuse, and many misconceptions spread. Some media outlets claimed the dimming was evidence that the star was about to go supernova, ending its life in a spectacular explosion. Is that possible? And if Betelgeuse did go supernova, how would that affect Earth?

• See brightness estimates for Betelgeuse from the American Association of Variable Star Observers
• EarthSky 2020 lunar calendars are available! Nearly sold out. Order now!

Betelgeuse is one of 2 very bright stars in the constellation Orion. The other bright star is Rigel. Notice Betelgeuse and Rigel on either side of the short, straight row of three medium-bright stars. That row of stars represents Orion’s Belt. Betelgeuse represents Orion’s Shoulder.

What is Betelgeuse?

Betelgeuse, pronounced “BET-tal-joos”, is a red supergiant star, located an estimated 642 light-years away. It’s the alpha star – that is the brightest star – of the constellation Orion the Hunter, which is a very prominent constellation in the sky at this time of year. Betelgeuse represents Orion’s left shoulder. It’s a distinctly red-colored star. Betelgeuse has an estimated diameter of 767 million miles (about 1,200 km), as befits a red supergiant star. It has an estimated mass nearly 12 times that of our sun. The star is estimated to be between nine and ten million years old, in contrast to our sun’s age of about 4.5 billion years. Yet our sun is only middle-aged, while Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life. That’s because the massive supergiant stars, like Betelgeuse, burn their thermonuclear fuel more quickly that medium-sized stars like our sun.

This image, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows the red supergiant Betelgeuse, one of the largest stars known. In the millimeter part of the spectrum the star is around 1,400 times larger than our sun. The overlaid annotation shows how large the star is compared to our solar system. Betelgeuse would engulf all four terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — and even the gas giant Jupiter. Only Saturn would be beyond its surface.

Image via ESO.

Is Betelgeuse’ dimming unusual? Will the star go supernova?

The dimming of Betelgeuse is not unusual per se. It has been known for a long time that Betelgeuse is a variable star, that is to say one whose brightness fluctuates over time. The star has been found to have multiple cycles of dimming: a 5.9-year main cycle and, within that, several smaller ones. It’s conceivable that – when the minima of all the cycles come together – the star could look exceptionally faint, as it does now.

And there are other possibilities. Astronomers have also suggested that the change in brightness could be due to some sort of eruption of gas or dust, or changes in the star’s surface brightness.

So will Betelgeuse go supernova? Yes! But probably not in our lifetimes. Current understanding is that all supergiants, be they red or blue, end their lives as supernovae. However, in the case of Betelgeuse, this event is predicted to happen anytime within the next few hundred thousand years.

Most astronomers do not believe a supernova is imminent. For example, astronomers Richard Wasatonic and Edward Guinan, of Villanova University, postulate that the current dimming is due to an unusually extreme 425-day dimming cycle within the main 5.9-year one. Unusual, certainly, but nothing that indicates an imminent explosion.

The other thing to remember is that there is no precedent, in astronomy’s history of observing supernovae, for the end of a supergiant star’s life to be preceded by a dimming of its light. Such a phenomenon has not been observed, although it cannot be ruled out. But certainly there is nothing in the computer models of supernovae to indicate the existence of a dimming phase before the explosion. 

It must be said, however, that predicting supernovae is very much an inexact science, so there is still a possibility, however remote, that Betelguese’s fiery end could indeed happen tomorrow. Or, to be more exact, it happened 642 years ago and the light from it is about to reach the Earth.

Simon Briggs FRAS@darkmatter111

Just had a look at #Betelgeuse a few days ago seemed similar or just a little fraction brighter than Bellatrix, though in moonlight it seemed a bit brighter? circa ~1.4m. I will wait until the moon has moved away in a week or so then will look again.

• 1

11:19 PM - Jan 6, 2020

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If Betelgeuse did go supernova, is the Earth in any danger?

No. Our planet is simply too far away from Betelgeuse for the supernova to present any danger whatsoever. It will have absolutely no effect on the solar system. Stories you might have read in the media, about our planet being in danger, are just hype.

Astronomers believe the dimming cycle will end soon and Betelgeuse will return to its former glory. As its brightness increases, it is certain that the stories in the media about the star will fade and this episode will swiftly be forgotten.

However, one day Betelgeuse will explode and give us an amazing celestial show. It’ll be brighter in our sky than a full moon, and possibly visible in daytime!

Wonder of Science@wonderofscience

This is what the star Betelgeuse exploding would look like from Earth.

Credit: NHK/Cosmic Front

• 4,702

2:15 PM - Jan 6, 2020

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• 1,118 people are talking about this

• Bottom line: Questions and answers about the recent dimming of the star Betelgeuse.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-01-2020 om 22:29 geschreven door peter  

NASA's TESS Planet Hunter Finds Its 1st Earth-Size World in 'Habitable Zone'

07-01-2020 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

NASA ontdekt nieuwe planeet die mogelijk bewoonbaar is (met dank aan haar ‘planetenjager’) - HLN.be

Bron: NASA, ANP, Space.com

Lees ook

Nederlandse professor waarschuwt: “Nóg meer groeien kan de aarde niet aan”

Goudvis

TOI 700 d maakt deel uit van het planetaire systeem TOI 700 en ligt op 100 lichtjaren of 946.000.000.000.000 kilometer van de Aarde. Dat lijkt misschien ver, maar dat is het niet in ruimtetermen. De planeet maakt deel uit van het sterrenbeeld Dorado (Goudvis). Dat bevindt zich aan de zuidelijke hemel en is minder bekend bij ons omdat het niet te zien is vanuit België. 

De planeet bevindt zich in de bewoonbare zone rond zijn ster, wat betekent dat hij niet te ver en niet te dicht staat. Daardoor kan er mogelijk vloeibaar water voorkomen op de oppervlakte. Dat kán op zijn beurt leven mogelijk maken, maar dat is niet noodzakelijk zo.

Enkele cijfers: de ster van TOI 700 d is ongeveer half zo groot als de zon en ook ongeveer half zo heet. TOI 700 d krijgt daardoor ongeveer 86 procent van de energie die de Aarde van de zon krijgt. De planeet zelf is ongeveer 20 procent groter dan de Aarde. Een jaar duurt er 37 dagen.

TOI 700 d wordt daarmee toegevoegd aan een voorlopig beperkt lijstje met planeten die de juiste omstandigheden hebben om er leven mogelijk te maken. Op dat lijstje staan onder meer ook zeven planeten in het TRAPPIST-1-stelsel. Vooral TRAPPIST-1e lijkt daar erg op de aarde. (lees hieronder verder)

AFP

 photo_news

Het planetaire systeem TOI 700 zou in totaal uit drie planeten bestaan, voor zover de wetenschappers nu weten. De binnenste planeet heet TOI 700 b en is bijna exact even groot als de Aarde. De oppervlakte zou rotsachtig zijn en hij zou in 10 dagen tijd rond zijn ster draaien. De middelste planeet TOI 700 c is 2,6 keer de grootte van de Aarde - iets tussen de grootte van de Aarde en Neptunus - en draait in 16 dagen rond haar ster. Vermoedelijk bestaat die planeet vooral uit gas. TOI 700 d is de buitenste planeet en de enige in de bewoonbare zone.

Donkere kant

Bij alle drie de planeten is de rotatieperiode om hun eigen as dezelfde als de omlooptijd rond hun ster. Dat betekent dat telkens dezelfde kant van de planeten naar de ‘zon’ gekeerd is en dat de planeten dus een verlichte en een donkere kant hebben. Zoals de maan altijd met dezelfde kant naar de Aarde staat.

Verder onderzoek moet nu uitmaken of de planeten een atmosfeer hebben en waaruit ze exact samengesteld zijn. Wat alvast vóór mogelijk leven pleit, is dat er nog geen zonnevlammen gezien zijn: uitbarstingen die veroorzaakt worden door het vrijkomen van energie van de ster.  

TESS ontdekte daarnaast ook een planeet die rond twee sterren draait en die dus twee zonnen aan de hemel heeft staan. Die planeet is zeven keer zo groot als de aarde. Een jaar duurt er ongeveer 3 maanden. De planeet is 1.300 lichtjaar van ons verwijderd en staat in het sterrenbeeld Schilder.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

07-01-2020 om 20:57 geschreven door peter  

Armies Of Unidentified Drones Are Appearing Over The Western U.S. At Night, And It Is Really Freaking People Out

• Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here

Since just before Christmas, armies of unidentified drones have been appearing each night in the skies above Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.  The drones are approximately 6 feet wide and they have red and white lights, but nobody knows where they are from or who owns them.  This is a story that is now receiving national attention, and the FBI, the FAA and the U.S. Air Force are all investigating this mystery.  According to eyewitnesses, these drones can move “much faster than a regular aircraft”, and that would seem to indicate that they are highly sophisticated.  So far, the U.S. military, every government agency that has been asked, and many of the major companies in the area have all denied operating the drones.  Federal, state and local law enforcement officials have been doing all that they can to solve this mystery, but so far they have come up completely empty.

And even though these drones are now receiving so much attention, they just keep coming back night after night.  According to one northern Colorado resident, when the drones come out it looks like “something from a movie”…

For the last week, Michelle Eckert has spotted a high-flying, night-time mystery above her rural northern Colorado home. She has seen drones, sometimes a dozen or more with wingspans 6 feet wide.

“The sky is lit up with Christmas lights basically,” she told CBS News. “There’s lights and things flying all over. It reminded me of something from a movie.”

Sometimes eyewitnesses just see one drone.  In other cases, the drones are working in pairs.  And in other instances, there are large groups of up to 30 drones working in very close coordination.

On Thursday night, a Denver Post reporter went out in search of these drones, and it wasn’t long before some of them were spotted…

As light turned to dark Thursday, stars appeared in the night sky. And soon after, so did drones. Around 6:10 p.m., a Denver Post reporter and photographer spotted two unmanned aircraft whizzing west above I-70, 8 miles outside Limon.

More drones could be seen outside Last Chance, a slight whir audible as they passed overhead. The aircraft flashed one red light and one white. Two other yellowish lights remained on throughout the flight. In 20 minutes, a half-dozen flying objects could be seen traversing over the barren wind farms.

The fact that there are so many of them and that they are operating over such a large area would seem to indicate that this is not the work of some rogue individual.

But at this point we don’t have any answers.

Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Nestor has been working on this case for quite a few days, and his county map is now “dotted with blue and yellow thumbtacks” because so many people have been reporting sightings…

Inside the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Hugo on Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Tom Nestor and Capt. Yowell stared at a county map hanging in a narrow hallway.

It’s dotted with blue and yellow thumbtacks, depicting sightings from across the county of just under 5,500 people. There’s a series of tacks clustered around Interstate 70 in Limon, with a few scattered north and south of the interstate. Some people reported the drones flying in packs. Others saw solo flights.

Nestor immediately suspected that a local company may be doing some mapping, but that theory didn’t turn up anything.  And other law enforcement officials in the region have come up empty as well…

Nestor said he has spoken to local oil companies and drone experts, learning information but getting no answers. Neighboring sheriffs have spoken to the military, which has denied involvement, he said. The Air Force, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the University of Colorado Boulder have told The Denver Post that they’re not flying the drones.

The FAA has gotten involved, and you would think that they should be able to get to the bottom of this, but they are just as puzzled as everyone else…

Already, the FAA has contacted test sites, drone companies and companies that have received authorization to operate drones in the affected areas. But the agency has not been able to determine who is flying the aircraft, spokesman Ian Gregor said in a statement Monday.

The FAA also asked area airports and pilots to report sightings or people they see operating the drones from the ground.

So far there is no evidence that these drones are malicious, but just a few days ago we received a reminder of how deadly they can potentially be.  Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by a drone, and he probably never even knew that the attack was coming.

On Monday, dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement officials gathered in the town of Brush to talk about these drones.  At the conclusion of the meeting, reporters were told that there is still “no explanation” for this mystery…

Mysterious drone sightings remains a mystery on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. Monday, more than 70 local, state and federal officials met in Brush to talk about findings and reports from the last couple of weeks.

Multiple law enforcement agencies, the FBI, United States Air Force and the FAA ended the meeting with no explanation of what the objects hovering over vast properties really are.

People living in Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas desperately want some answers, and now a similar sighting has been reported in Minnesota…

Drones were reported flying over Juniata and Hastings Sunday night. An operator has not been identified at this time.

Minneapolis Air Traffic Control contacted the Hastings Police Department with a report from an airplane pilot about the drones.

Air traffic control reported the drones were flying in a grid pattern around 9-10 p.m. Sunday, Police Capt. Mike Doremus said.

This sounds very similar to many of the other sightings, but nobody has been able to examine one of these drones up close yet, and so we still don’t know precisely what we are dealing with.

But what we do know is that our world is a very strange place, and it is getting stranger by the day.

Hopefully this is just some relatively harmless top secret U.S. military program that the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about.

Because if these drones do not have a U.S. origin, then that opens up a completely different can of worms.

About the Author:

• I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.
• Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here

Source: 

• http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/armies-of-unidentified-drones-are-appearing-over-the-western-u-s-at-night-and-it-is-really-freaking-people-out

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

Retired USAF General Claims Advanced Technology Exists That Could Transport a Human Anywhere on Earth in 1 Hour

Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space.

Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever, reports The Drive in their extensive article on advanced space technology.

Around the 12:00 mark in the video, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:

“The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists.”

“This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour.”

• https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 15:48 geschreven door peter  

How did life survive in the Snowball Earth? Scientists might have cracked the mystery

• The researchers do admit that ‘Snowball Earth is just a hypothesis’, but that period seems to have been an era of the most extreme long-term cold spell(s) ever detected on Earth.

There is very little life in Arctic tundras and glaciers. However that was the situation in a big portion of the world during Ice Ages, says Technology.org.

This is a dramatization of what happened 700 million years ago, when Earth fell into the deepest ice age in its history. This period is called the Snowball Earth.

Image credit: Neethis via Wikimedia

How did life survive these difficult periods? How didn’t everything just die, being cut off from any kind of sources of nutrition and oxygen?

Scientists examined the chemistry of the iron formations in Australia, Namibia, and California to get a window into the environmental conditions during the ice age. They selected rocks left there by the ice age, because they are representative of the conditions during that difficult period for life.

By analysing these rocks scientists from the McGill University were able to estimate the amount of oxygen in the oceans around 700 million years ago.

Oxygen concentration is a crucial condition for sustainability of life. Without oxygen everything dies in a massive domino chain. And scientists did find that a huge portion of the ocean was uninhabitable due to a low concentration of oxygen, but some areas, particularly where the grounded ice sheet begins to float there, became a critical source of oxygenated meltwater.

This effect, called the glacial oxygen pump, enriches water with oxygen. Air bubbles trapped in the glacial ice are released into the water as it melts, becoming a crucial supply of oxygen for various life forms, including eukaryotes.

Scientists believe that this explanation answers a question that has been puzzling them for decades – how did life on Earth survive the Snowball Earth time 700 million years ago, when our planet fell into the most severe ice age in its history?

Professor Galen Halverson, one of the authors of the paper, commented: “This study actually solves two mysteries about the Snowball Earth at once. It not only provides an explanation for how early animals may have survived global glaciation, but also eloquently explains the return of iron deposits in the geological record after an absence of over a billion years”.

Previous studies have hypothesized that oxygen-dependent life might have been restricted to meltwater puddles on the surface of the ice. However, now it seems that there were plenty of marine life forms as well, living in oxygen-enriched water. Furthermore, scientists think that this process of adapting to these extremely harsh conditions became one of the crucial accelerators for the evolution of life. They think that this situation enforced the  diversification of various species into more complex forms. It is always the environment that is the biggest factor in the course of evolution.

The Snowball Earth is just a hypothesis, stating that 650-700 million years ago Earth’s surface became entirely or almost entirely frozen over. Scientists cannot prove these claims, but there are many evidences pointing out that it could have been the case. Regardless, that period was the most extreme climate period for our planet and life managed to survive and rise for a new time for its evolution.

Source: 

• McGill University

{ https://www.technology.org/ }

07-01-2020 om 15:43 geschreven door peter  

On January 3, 2020 Vladimiir Kartsovnik posted a bizarre video on his Facebook page showing a blue glowing orb that appears at the edge of the forest.

Next, the orb hovers over the railway tracks and ends up on the other side of the tracks before it explodes.

Whether it is ball lightning or evidence of a spirit or alien orb, so far there is no explanation for this mysterious phenomenon.

Bottom photos rotated and in negative color show an alien face inside the orb.

Although Vladimiir did not mentioned the location, the recording seems to have been made in the regions of Russia.

  

• https://www.facebook.com/vladimiir.kartsovnik/videos/3199403310074816/

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

07-01-2020 om 15:08 geschreven door peter  

Ahomeowner appeared to vanish in a streak of light when he stepped off his porch in astonishing Ring doorbell footage.

According to coasttocoast it starts with the man exiting his house in Porter, Texas.

In the video, the man can be seen exiting the house and venturing down the front walk, when something very weird occurs. As he stands at the end of the path, he suddenly appears to transform into a ball of light that zips into the sky and disappears.

What happened to the homeowner, did aliens teleported or abducted him?

However, the man's financee explained that they were looking through their videos recorded on December 27, 2019 by Ring and they found a weird glitch. She told him: 'Look Ring had you abducted by aliens or you just been part of the rapture!'

But was it really a glitch or the homeowner just doesn't remember it.

  

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

07-01-2020 om 15:00 geschreven door peter  

Cigar-shaped UFO recorded hovering near airport as 2019 drew to a close

Jeff Parsons

The strange object filmed hovering over Arizona

(YouTube/Disclose Screen)

Last year was a big one for the alien-hunting community.

There was the declassifying of secret military documents, a ‘flaming’ UFO on Friday 13th and – of course – the ill-fated attempt to storm Area 51.

But even as the year drew to a close, more footage was emerging.

While most of us were eating and drinking too much over the festive break, conspiracy theorists were debating a 14-minute video filmed on December 28 showing a cigar-shaped object floating in the sky in the US.

The UFO was filmed above Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona and uploaded to YouTube by conspiracist Disclose Screen The Grimreefar. It racked up over a thousand views after it was uploaded with commenters weighing in about what they thought the cylindrical object was.

Most were convinced it was some form of blimp that had drifted too close to the airport.

‘You can tell it’s a zeppelin when you pause a video. You can even see the square display and stabilizers,’ wrote YouTube user Ivan G. ‘And silver or gray color match the description. Flies like a Zeppelin, looks like a Zeppelin, located near a hangar for the Zeppelin…. Then it must be a UFO.’

Is this just a blimp?

(YouTube/Disclose Screen)

The fascination of UFOs and possible alien contact surged in 2019 and it’s unlikely to abate as we continue on into 2020.

‘Explaining the widespread interest in UFOs has proven more challenging than tracking it,’ said Greg Eghigian, a professor of history at Penn State University.

‘The most common explanation offered has focused on the Cold War: worries over possible alien invaders has been seen as an expression of anxiety about the threat of global nuclear destruction on the part of the scientifically uneducated,’ he told Metro.co.uk.

‘Academic research, however, has revealed that enthusiasts and their curiosity are more difficult to pin down than that. Studies conducted in the early-2000s showed that those reporting UFOs were generally lower income white males of moderate to high education.

‘And a survey in the 1980s of British UFO researchers indicated that a majority did not believe the objects came from outer space.’

A UFO sighting does not necessarily mean aliens

(Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images)

‘Overall, those who take a deep interest in UFOs have ranged widely in their motivations and beliefs. There are those who take up UFO study as a hobby akin to trainspotting or birding. There are sceptics who delight in treating each case as a challenging puzzle to crack.’

So, what we’re saying, is to expect plenty more bizarre sightings in the sky over the next 12 months.

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

07-01-2020 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

This Is Venus, Earth's Boiling Twin

By Jennifer Leman

NASA/JPL/USGS

Like Earth, our Twin planet Venus’s origins began around 4.5 billion years ago, in a gyrating cloud of dust, rock and rubble. In many ways, the two planets are similar—in size, density and gravity. Both have iron-rich cores, mantles filled with churning molten rock, and thin, rocky crusts that cover their surface.

Scientists suspect that, at one point, the surface of Venus looked a lot like Earth, with plate tectonics and shallow water oceans.

An artist’s rendition of an ancient, Earth-like Venus.

NASA

Then, 2 billion years into its life, everything changed. Shallow oceans on the Venusian surface began to evaporate, according to NASA. The amount of radiation emitted by the sun grew stronger and stronger. Atmospheric water vapor disintegrated, and hydrogen floated out into space, leaving a wealth of oxygen left to be cobbled into a choking cloud of carbon dioxide.

This cloud would encircle the planet for billions of years, trapping the Sun’s heat and energy in what scientists have dubbed a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Under these conditions, the planet absorbs more heat from the sun than it is able to radiate back out into space.

I'm Your Venus, I'm Your Fire

L. ESPOSITO (UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER), AND NASA/ESA

The surface of Venus is now far less-inviting.

It is the hottest planet in the solar system—scorching surface temperatures clock in at 880 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt lead. Ultra high temperatures have rendered the search for life on Venus's surface all but futile. Researchers don't think we're likely to find any sort of living organism—in any form.

For centuries, Venus was shrouded in mystery—literally. Scientists weren't able to peer past its cloudy atmosphere and weren't certain it even had a rocky surface. That's also one of the reasons why the planet is the brightest non-moon object in the sky—its bright, white haze reflects light readily. Its atmosphere is also a staggering 90 times more dense than Earth’s, we've recently discovered, exerting crushing forces on the planet's surface.

That thick atmosphere, made of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide, 3.1 percent nitrogen with piercing droplets of sulfuric acid, does a marvelous job of insulating the planet in a cushion of fire.

It doesn't sound very hospitable, but oddly, scientists believe the upper reaches of its thick atmosphere may be the spot we'd be most likely to find life. This is despite the fact that winds in the upper Venusian atmosphere churn and spiral at speeds of more than 220 miles per hour.

Temperatures at these altitudes are much more habitable—closer to that of Earth's surface. A 2018 paper published in the journal Astrobiology, suggested that dark, swirling clouds in Venus's atmosphere could be indicative of swirling colonies of light-absorbing bacteria.

Venus's close proximity to the sun, while still in the habitable zone, likely kicked off this unfortunate planetary process. It’s dramatic, but some researchers see the sweltering demise of Venus as a harbinger of things to come if we aren't able to control our own levels of carbon dioxide.

In any case, there are lessons to learn about our own future weather and climate from Venus’s atmosphere.

A Hidden Rocky Surface

NASA/JPL

Venus's impenetrable rocky surface is just as intriguing as its atmosphere. The crust is riddled with mountains, valleys, and volcanoes—like Maxwell Montes, the planet's highest peak, which stretches 20,000 feet above the surface. Atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet, which has a radius of just 3,760 miles, is equivalent to what you might find more than half a mile beneath the ocean.

Large plateaus of lava spread across the planet's hemispheres. Last year, a paper published Aug. 9 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets called into question the composition of some of these highland plateaus, and, in turn, the Venus’s water-logged history. Instead of being composed fully of granitic rock, researchers reanalyzed old Magellan data and posited that these landforms could be made of basaltic lava. Basaltic rocks do not need water to form, unlike granitic rocks.

Our understanding of the surface of Venus is changing all the time. Venusian volcanoes on may be a lot more active than previously thought, according to research published on January 3, 2020, in the journal Science Advances. Researchers analyzed rates of weathering in olivine crystals—the chemical signature of which ESA's Venus Express Orbiter discovered in the early 2000s—and found that lavas containing these chemically altered minerals would have been just days old.

Venus has strange features seen nowhere else in the solar system, too. For example, ring-like structures jut out, warping the planet’s surface, according to Space.com. It does have craters, but only large ones—most meteoroids large enough to create craters smaller than .09 miles burn up as they tumble through the atmosphere.

Interestingly. the planet itself is the only one named for a woman. Venusian surface features are named after powerful female historical figures, such as Sacajawea and the Roman goddess Diana.

In a Weird Orbit

NASA/BILL DUNFORD

Venus also has a highly unusual orbit and rotation. It's one of two planets in our solar system—here's to you, Uranus!—to rotate "backwards" from east to west instead of from west to east. And with no axial tilt, there are also no seasons.

Because Venus rotates extremely slowly on its axis, a single day on the planet is equivalent to 243 Earth days, but it takes Venus 225 Earth days to orbit the sun. So, yes, a year on Venus is shorter than a day on Venus. Curiously, Venus also has a nearly circular orbit, whereas, other planets that circle the sun do so on along an elliptical orbit.

Because of Venus's sluggish race around the solar system, its iron core isn't able to generate a robust, protective magnetosphere like we have here on Earth. Eventually, like every other inner, rocky planet in our solar system, Venus will be gulped up by the sun. Fortunately, researchers say this won’t happen for roughly 7 billion years.

A Soviet Obsession

JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / DAMIA BOUIC

A new mission to Venus could be on the horizon. Recently, scientists have suggested lofting a fleet of hot-air balloons equipped with super-sensitive seismometers that can capture infrasound waves down into the thick Venusian atmosphere. Others have hatched wild plans to launch "cloud cities" in the upper reaches of the Venusian atmosphere.

The last NASA spacecraft to venture to Venus was Magellan, which spun around the planet more than 15,000 times in four years before crashing into its surface in 1994. Magellan painted a previously never-before-seen picture of the planet, mapping more than 90 percent of its surface. Before that, Mariner 2, sped past Venus, gathering temperature and atmospheric readings of the planet, along with the Pioneer orbiter of the 1980s.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union sent several probes to Venus, including the first spacecraft to successfully land on another planet, Venera 7, which touched down on the rocky surface on December 15, 1970, before being crushed and melted by Venus’ extreme pressure and scorching heat. In total, the Soviet Union sent seven missions to Venus, and returned a number of images, important atmospheric readings, and soil analysis.

RUSSIAN SPACE AGENCY

The European Space Agency's orbiter, Venus Express, which launched in 2006 circled the planet for eight years, revealed secrets about its dark side, and found evidence of lightning. The agency has ambitious goals to revisit the sweltering planet. At a meeting in Madrid in 2019, scientists proposed sending a pair of orbiters, a handful of landers, a balloon, and rocket which would return samples to Earth.

A GUIDE TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM

• 

Small Yet Mighty Mercury Is Still a Mystery

• 

Everything You Need to Know About the Sun

• 

Jupiter Is a Jerk

Currently, Akatsuki, JAXA's spacecraft, which launched in 2010, is the sole spacecraft orbiting the planet. It's unlocked secrets about the planet's atmosphere and, in 2017, caught sight of a strange atmospheric disturbance, an arc of gravity waves, which washed over the planet and slowed its rotation.

In December 2019, Park Solar Probe, which isn’t designed to study planets, swung close to Venus. While the spacecraft primarily studies the sun’s plasma, it will use the flyby to study the location of the Venus's bow shock, a protective boundary around planetary objects that protects them from solar winds, and make measurements about the loss of Venus’s atmosphere. In July, 2020, and Feb., 2021, Parker will circle back around to measure atmosphere loss, which is caused by intense solar winds, again.

The greatest challenge of visiting Venus, of course, is designing a lander that can survive the trials of operating on its scorching surface. NASA has steadily increased its investments in developing "hot technologies," which can last up to weeks on surfaces as hot as Venus.

Hopefully, someday, we'll get there.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 01:10 geschreven door peter  

Anthropologist Russell Ciochon in his lab at the University of Iowa, holding a cast of a Homo erectus skull. The original fossils are in Indonesia.

Image via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

Scientists have determined the last known dates that Homo erectus, an early ancestor of human beings, walked the Earth. New analysis of a site at Ngandong, on the Indonesian island of Java, indicates that a population lived there as recently as 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. On December 18, 2019, the University of Iowa published a good description of this new study, which was led by Yan Rizal of the Bandung Institute of Technology, located in Bandung, Indonesia. The findings were published the same day in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Anthropologist Russell Ciochon of University of Iowa was a co-corresponding author on the study. Ciochon explained:

This site is the last known appearance of Homo erectus found anywhere in the world. We can’t say we dated the extinction, but we dated the last occurrence of it. We have no evidence Homo erectus lived later than that anywhere else.

The approximate location of Ngandong on the Indonesian island of Java in Southeast Asia. (Indonesia is shaded yellow in this map.)

Map of Indonesia via Uwe Dedering/ Wikimedia Commons.

Homo erectus arose in Africa about 2 million years ago, then dispersed throughout Asia and perhaps Europe. By about 400,000 years ago, this early relative of modern humans had largely disappeared. The date range for the last known Homo erectus holdout, in Ngandong, is 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. Around that same time, modern humans were roaming in Africa, and Neanderthals lived in Europe.

The fossils in Ngandong had been discovered in the 1930s by Dutch surveyors. Using notes left by these early surveyors, the researchers on the new study relocated the original bone bed where the Homo erectus fossils (12 skull caps and two tibia) had been found. In 2008 and 2010, the team excavated that site to collect animal fossil fragments for dating.

The new age ranges for the Homo erectus fossils – 108,000 to 117,000 years old – were determined using two strategies; besides dating the animal fossils in the original bone bed, the scientists further constrained the date range by geological dating of river terraces below and above the fossil bed.

Dutch surveyors excavated the original bone bed containing Homo erectus fossils in the 1930s. In 2008 and 2010, researchers led by Yan Rizal located and found the same site, using the earlier study’s notes. Dating of animal fossils at that site were used, in part, to determine the new age of the Homo erectus fossils.

Image via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

Around the same time that Yan Rizal’s team was excavating its site, another team, led by Kira Westaway of Macquarie University, was independently dating nearby surrounding landforms. Ciochon explained:

It was coincidental. With the data we had, we couldn’t really date the Ngandong fossils. We had dates on them, but they were minimum ages. So, we couldn’t really say how old, although we knew we were in the ballpark. By working with Kira, who had vast amount of dating data for the terraces, mountains, and other landscape features, we were able to provide precise regional chronological and geomorphic contexts for the Ngandong site.

Stalagmites from caves in the Southern Mountains of Ngandong were dated by Westaway’s team to determine when those mountains first rose. That helped them figure out when the Solo River started flowing through the fossil site and when sequences of river terraces were created. Westaway, who is listed as second author on the December 18, 2019, Nature paper, said:

The issues with the dating of Ngandong could only ever be resolved by an appreciation of the wider landscape. Fossils are the byproducts of complex landscape processes. We were able to nail the age of the site because we constrained the fossils within the river deposit, the river terrace, the sequence of terraces, and the volcanically active landscape.

Ciochon commented on the 52 new age estimates arrived at by the team:

You have this incredible array of dates that are all consistent. This has to be the right range. That’s why it’s such a nice, tight paper. The dating is very consistent.

According to previous research by Ciochon and others, Homo erectus arrived at Java, Indonesia, about 1.6 million years ago, and settled across the Indonesian islands. Back then, Ngandong was mainly a grassland with a rich flora and fauna, not unlike Homo erectus‘ original habitat in Africa. But around 130,000 years ago, it changed. Ciochon explained:

There was a change in climate. We know the fauna changed from open country, grassland, to a tropical rainforest (extending southward from today’s Malaysia). Those were not the plants and animals that Homo erectus was used to, and the species just could not adapt.

Ciochon also remarked on a unique feature of the Ngandong Homo erectus population. In a video statement, he said:

We assume that Homo erectus on the island of Java, because it was isolated, continued to encephalize – the brain got bigger. Does that mean that Homo erectus on Java was smarter than Homo erectus in Africa? We don’t know. But we can certainly document that the brain got bigger.

Casts of Homo erectus skulls at Russell Ciochon’s lab.

Via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

• Bottom line: The last known Homo erectus, a human ancestor, lived in Ngandong, Java, as recently as 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. These findings, published in the December 18, 2019, issue of Nature, are based on dating fossilized animals from the same bone bed in which the Homo erectus remains were found in the 1930s, and also by dating river terraces at the fossil site.
• Source: Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago
• Via University of Iowa

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-01-2020 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - Part I

Gerald K. Haines

An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists--a neologism for UFO buffs--and private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)

In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena.

Background

The emergence in 1947 of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union also saw the first wave of UFO sightings. The first report of a "flying saucer" over the United States came on 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and reputable businessman, while looking for a downed plane sighted nine disk-shaped objects near Mt. Rainier, Washington, traveling at an estimated speed of over 1,000 mph. Arnold's report was followed by a flood of additional sightings, including reports from military and civilian pilots and air traffic controllers all over the United States. (4) In 1948, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical Service Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might be real and of national security concern. (5)

The Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, assumed control of Project SIGN and began its work on 23 January 1948. Although at first fearful that the objects might be Soviet secret weapons, the Air Force soon concluded that UFOs were real but easily explained and not extraordinary. The Air Force report found that almost all sightings stemmed from one or more of three causes: mass hysteria and hallucination, hoax, or misinterpretation of known objects. Nevertheless, the report recommended continued military intelligence control over the investigation of all sightings and did not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena. (6)

Amid mounting UFO sightings, the Air Force continued to collect and evaluate UFO data in the late 1940s under a new project, GRUDGE, which tried to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary. UFO sightings were explained as balloons, conventional aircraft, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, or even "large hailstones." GRUDGE officials found no evidence in UFO sightings of advanced foreign weapons design or development, and they concluded that UFOs did not threaten US security. They recommended that the project be reduced in scope because the very existence of Air Force official interest encouraged people to believe in UFOs and contributed to a "war hysteria" atmosphere. On 27 December 1949, the Air Force announced the project's termination. (7)

With increased Cold War tensions, the Korean war, and continued UFO sightings, USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell ordered a new UFO project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major Air Force effort to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (8) The task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that UFOs were not extraordinary. (9) Projects SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US Government position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.

Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52

CIA closely monitored the Air Force effort, aware of the mounting number of sightings and increasingly concerned that UFOs might pose a potential security threat. (10) Given the distribution of the sightings, CIA officials in 1952 questioned whether they might reflect "midsummer madness.'' (11) Agency officials accepted the Air Force's conclusions about UFO reports, although they concluded that "since there is a remote possibility that they may be interplanetary aircraft, it is necessary to investigate each sighting." (12)

A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know what was happening, and the Air Force quickly offered the explanation that the radar blips might be the result of "temperature inversions." Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration investigation confirmed that such radar blips were quite common and were caused by temperature inversions. (13)

Although it had monitored UFO reports for at least three years, CIA reacted to the new rash of sightings by forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. (14) Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI's Weapons and Equipment Division, reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily explained. Nevertheless, he recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the problem, in coordination with ATIC. He also urged that CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public, "in view of their probable alarmist tendencies" to accept such interest as confirming the existence of UFOs. (15)

Upon receiving the report, Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) Robert Amory, Jr. assigned responsibility for the UFO investigations to OSI's Physics and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon as the officer in charge. (16) Each branch in the division was to contribute to the investigation, and Gordon was to coordinate closely with ATIC. Amory, who asked the group to focus on the national security implications of UFOs, was relaying DCI Walter Bedell Smith's concerns. (17) Smith wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of flying saucers was sufficiently objective and how much more money and manpower would be necessary to determine the cause of the small percentage of unexplained flying saucers. Smith believed "there was only one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the country, but even that chance could not be taken." According to Smith, it was CIA's responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts. (18)

Led by Gordon, the CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials at Wright-Patterson and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force claimed that 90 percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted for. The other 10 percent were characterized as "a number of incredible reports from credible observers." The Air Force rejected the theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons development or that they involved "men from Mars"; there was no evidence to support these concepts. The Air Force briefers sought to explain these UFO reports as the misinterpretation of known objects or little understood natural phenomena. (19) Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. (20) This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.

Amateur photographs of alleged UFOs

• Passoria, New Jersey, 31 July 1952
• Sheffield, England, 4 March 1962
• & Minneapolis, Minnesota, 20 October 1960

The CIA Study Group also searched the Soviet press for UFO reports, but found none, causing the group to conclude that the absence of reports had to have been the result of deliberate Soviet Government policy. The group also envisioned the USSR's possible use of UFOs as a psychological warfare tool. In addition, they worried that, if the US air warning system should be deliberately overloaded by UFO sightings, the Soviets might gain a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack. (21)

Because of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet capabilities, the CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns in the flying saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States. The group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO sightings to overload the US air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, added that he considered the problem of such importance "that it should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort towards it solution may be initiated." (22)

Chadwell briefed DCI Smith on the subject of UFOs in December 1952. He urged action because he was convinced that "something was going on that must have immediate attention" and that "sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." He drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the National Security Council (NSC) and a proposed NSC Directive establishing the investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. (23) Chadwell also urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs. (24) After this briefing, Smith directed DDI Amory to prepare a NSC Intelligence Directive (NSCID) for submission to the NSC on the need to continue the investigation of UFOs and to coordinate such investigations with the Air Force. (25)

The Robertson Panel, 1952-53

On 4 December 1952, the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) took up the issue of UFOs. (26) Amory, as acting chairman, presented DCI Smith's request to the committee that it informally discuss the subject of UFOs. Chadwell then briefly reviewed the situation and the active program of the ATIC relating to UFOs. The committee agreed that the DCI should "enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories" and draft an NSCID on the subject. (27) Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, Director of Air Force Intelligence, offered full cooperation. (28)

At the same time, Chadwell looked into British efforts in this area. He learned the British also were active in studying the UFO phenomena. An eminent British scientist, R. V. Jones, headed a standing committee created in June 1951 on flying saucers. Jones' and his committee's conclusions on UFOs were similar to those of Agency officials: the sightings were not enemy aircraft but misrepresentations of natural phenomena. The British noted, however, that during a recent air show RAF pilots and senior military officials had observed a "perfect flying saucer." Given the press response, according to the officer, Jones was having a most difficult time trying to correct public opinion regarding UFOs. The public was convinced they were real. (29)

In January 1953, Chadwell and H. P. Robertson, a noted physicist from the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue. It included Robertson as chairman; Samuel A. Goudsmit, a nuclear physicist from the Brookhaven National Laboratories; Luis Alvarez, a high-energy physicist; Thornton Page, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office and an expert on radar and electronics; and Lloyd Berkner, a director of the Brookhaven National Laboratories and a specialist in geophysics. (30)

The charge to the panel was to review the available evidence on UFOs and to consider the possible dangers of the phenomena to US national security. The panel met from 14 to 17 January 1953. It reviewed Air Force data on UFO case histories and, after spending 12 hours studying the phenomena, declared that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most, if not all, sightings. For example, after reviewing motion-picture film taken of a UFO sighting near Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 and one near Great Falls, Montana, on 15 August 1950, the panel concluded that the images on the Tremonton film were caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls and that the images at Great Falls were sunlight reflecting off the surface of two Air Force interceptors. (31)

The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses. (32)

To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities. (33)

The Robertson panel's conclusions were strikingly similar to those of the earlier Air Force project reports on SIGN and GRUDGE and to those of the CIA's own OSI Study Group. All investigative groups found that UFO reports indicated no direct threat to national security and no evidence of visits by extraterrestrials.

Following the Robertson panel findings, the Agency abandoned efforts to draft an NSCID on UFOs. (34) The Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs (the Robertson panel) submitted its report to the IAC, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. CIA officials said no further consideration of the subject appeared warranted, although they continued to monitor sightings in the interest of national security. Philip Strong and Fred Durant from OSI also briefed the Office of National Estimates on the findings. (35) CIA officials wanted knowledge of any Agency interest in the subject of flying saucers carefully restricted, noting not only that the Robertson panel report was classified but also that any mention of CIA sponsorship of the panel was forbidden. This attitude would later cause the Agency major problems relating to its credibility. (36)

The 1950s: Fading CIA Interest in UFOs

After the report of the Robertson panel, Agency officials put the entire issue of UFOs on the back burner. In May 1953, Chadwell transferred chief responsibility for keeping abreast of UFOs to OSI's Physics and Electronic Division, while the Applied Science Division continued to provide any necessary support. (37) Todos M. Odarenko, chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, did not want to take on the problem, contending that it would require too much of his division's analytic and clerical time. Given the findings of the Robertson panel, he proposed to consider the project "inactive" and to devote only one analyst part-time and a file clerk to maintain a reference file of the activities of the Air Force and other agencies on UFOs. Neither the Navy nor the Army showed much interest in UFOs, according to Odarenko. (38)

A nonbeliever in UFOs, Odarenko sought to have his division relieved of the responsibility for monitoring UFO reports. In 1955, for example, he recommended that the entire project be terminated because no new information concerning UFOs had surfaced. Besides, he argued, his division was facing a serious budget reduction and could not spare the resources. (39) Chadwell and other Agency officials, however, continued to worry about UFOs. Of special concern were overseas reports of UFO sightings and claims that German engineers held by the Soviets were developing a "flying saucer" as a future weapon of war. (40)

To most US political and military leaders, the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s had become a dangerous opponent. Soviet progress in nuclear weapons and guided missiles was particularly alarming. In the summer of 1949, the USSR had detonated an atomic bomb. In August 1953, only nine months after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, the Soviets detonated one. In the spring of 1953, a top secret RAND Corporation study also pointed out the vulnerability of SAC bases to a surprise attack by Soviet long-range bombers. Concern over the danger of a Soviet attack on the United States continued to grow, and UFO sightings added to the uneasiness of US policymakers.

Mounting reports of UFOs over eastern Europe and Afghanistan also prompted concern that the Soviets were making rapid progress in this area. CIA officials knew that the British and Canadians were already experimenting with "flying saucers." Project Y was a Canadian-British-US developmental operation to produce a nonconventional flying-saucer-type aircraft, and Agency officials feared the Soviets were testing similar devices. (41)

Adding to the concern was a flying saucer sighting by US Senator Richard Russell and his party while traveling on a train in the USSR in October 1955. After extensive interviews of Russell and his group, however, CIA officials concluded that Russell's sighting did not support the theory that the Soviets had developed saucerlike or unconventional aircraft. Herbert Scoville, Jr., the Assistant Director of OSI, wrote that the objects observed probably were normal jet aircraft in a steep climb. (42)

Wilton E. Lexow, head of the CIA's Applied Sciences Division, was also skeptical. He questioned why the Soviets were continuing to develop conventional-type aircraft if they had a "flying saucer." (43) Scoville asked Lexow to assume responsibility for fully assessing the capabilities and limitations of nonconventional aircraft and to maintain the OSI central file on the subject of UFOs.

CIA's U-2 and OXCART as UFOs

In November 1954, CIA had entered into the world of high technology with its U-2 overhead reconnaissance project. Working with Lockheed's Advanced Development facility in Burbank, California, known as the Skunk Works, and Kelly Johnson, an eminent aeronautical engineer, the Agency by August 1955 was testing a high-altitude experimental aircraft--the U-2. It could fly at 60,000 feet; in the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew between 10,000 feet and 20,000 feet. Consequently, once the U-2 started test flights, commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings. (44) (U)

The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays from the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers below. Air Force BLUE BOOK investigators aware of the secret U-2 flights tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions. By checking with the Agency's U-2 Project Staff in Washington, BLUE BOOK investigators were able to attribute many UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.

According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. (45) This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy of the 1970s. The percentage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956. (46)

At the same time, pressure was building for the release of the Robertson panel report on UFOs. In 1956, Edward Ruppelt, former head of the Air Force BLUE BOOK project, publicly revealed the existence of the panel. A best-selling book by UFOlogist Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major, advocated release of all government information relating to UFOs. Civilian UFO groups such as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) immediately pushed for release of the Robertson panel report. (47) Under pressure, the Air Force approached CIA for permission to declassify and release the report. Despite such pressure, Philip Strong, Deputy Assistant Director of OSI, refused to declassify the report and declined to disclose CIA sponsorship of the panel. As an alternative, the Agency prepared a sanitized version of the report which deleted any reference to CIA and avoided mention of any psychological warfare potential in the UFO controversy. (48)

The demands, however, for more government information about UFOs did not let up. On 8 March 1958, Keyhoe, in an interview with Mike Wallace of CBS, claimed deep CIA involvement with UFOs and Agency sponsorship of the Robertson panel. This prompted a series of letters to the Agency from Keyhoe and Dr. Leon Davidson, a chemical engineer and UFOlogist. They demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and confirmation of CIA involvement in the UFO issue. Davidson had convinced himself that the Agency, not the Air Force, carried most of the responsibility for UFO analysis and that "the activities of the US Government are responsible for the flying saucer sightings of the last decade." Indeed, because of the undisclosed U-2 and OXCART flights, Davidson was closer to the truth than he suspected. CI, nevertheless held firm to its policy of not revealing its role in UFO investigations and refused to declassify the full Robertson panel report. (49)

In a meeting with Air Force representatives to discuss how to handle future inquires such as Keyhoe's and Davidson's, Agency officials confirmed their opposition to the declassification of the full report and worried that Keyhoe had the ear of former DCI VAdm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who served on the board of governors of NICAP. They debated whether to have CIA General Counsel Lawrence R. Houston show Hillenkoetter the report as a possible way to defuse the situation. CIA officer Frank Chapin also hinted that Davidson might have ulterior motives, "some of them perhaps not in the best interest of this country," and suggested bringing in the FBI to investigate. (50) Although the record is unclear whether the FBI ever instituted an investigation of Davidson or Keyhoe, or whether Houston ever saw Hillenkoetter about the Robertson report, Hillenkoetter did resign from the NICAP in 1962. (51)

The Agency was also involved with Davidson and Keyhoe in two rather famous UFO cases in the 1950s, which helped contribute to a growing sense of public distrust of CIA with regard to UFOs. One focused on what was reported to have been a tape recording of a radio signal from a flying saucer; the other on reported photographs of a flying saucer. The "radio code" incident began innocently enough in 1955, when two elderly sisters in Chicago, Mildred and Marie Maier, reported in the Journal of Space Flight their experiences with UFOs, including the recording of a radio program in which an unidentified code was reportedly heard. The sisters taped the program and other ham radio operators also claimed to have heard the "space message." OSI became interested and asked the Scientific Contact Branch to obtain a copy of the recording. (52)

Field officers from the Contact Division (CD), one of whom was Dewelt Walker, made contact with the Maier sisters, who were "thrilled that the government was interested," and set up a time to meet with them. (53) In trying to secure the tape recording, the Agency officers reported that they had stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace. "The only thing lacking was the elderberry wine," Walker cabled Headquarters. After reviewing the sisters' scrapbook of clippings from their days on the stage, the officers secured a copy of the recording. (54) OSI analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station.

The matter rested there until UFOlogist Leon Davidson talked with the Maier sisters in 1957. The sisters remembered they had talked with a Mr. Walker who said he was from the US Air Force. Davidson then wrote to a Mr. Walker, believing him to be a US Air Force Intelligence Officer from Wright-Patterson, to ask if the tape had been analyzed at ATIC. Dewelt Walker replied to Davidson that the tape had been forwarded to proper authorities for evaluation, and no information was available concerning the results. Not satisfied, and suspecting that Walker was really a CIA officer, Davidson next wrote DCI Allen Dulles demanding to learn what the coded message revealed and who Mr. Walker was. (55) The Agency, wanting to keep Walker's identity as a CIA employee secret, replied that another agency of the government had analyzed the tape in question and that Davidson would be hearing from the Air Force. (56) On 5 August, the Air Force wrote Davidson saying that Walker "was and is an Air Force Officer" and that the tape "was analyzed by another government organization." The Air Force letter confirmed that the recording contained only identifiable Morse code which came from a known US-licensed radio station. (57)

Davidson wrote Dulles again. This time he wanted to know the identity of the Morse operator and of the agency that had conducted the analysis. CIA and the Air Force were now in a quandary. The Agency had previously denied that it had actually analyzed the tape. The Air Force had also denied analyzing the tape and claimed that Walker was an Air Force officer. CIA officers, under cover, contacted Davidson in Chicago and promised to get the code translation and the identification of the transmitter, if possible. (58)

In another attempt to pacify Davidson, a CIA officer, again under cover and wearing his Air Force uniform, contacted Davidson in New York City. The CIA officer explained that there was no super agency involved and that Air Force policy was not to disclose who was doing what. While seeming to accept this argument, Davidson nevertheless pressed for disclosure of the recording message and the source. The officer agreed to see what he could do. (59) After checking with Headquarters, the CIA officer phoned Davidson to report that a thorough check had been made and, because the signal was of known US origin, the tape and the notes made at the time had been destroyed to conserve file space. (60)

Incensed over what he perceived was a runaround, Davidson told the CIA officer that "he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them." (61) Believing that any more contact with Davidson would only encourage more speculation, the Contact Division washed its hands of the issue by reporting to the DCI and to ATIC that it would not respond to or try to contact Davidson again. (62) Thus, a minor, rather bizarre incident, handled poorly by both CIA and the Air Force, turned into a major flap that added fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and CIA's role in their investigation.

Another minor flap a few months later added to the growing questions surrounding the Agency's true role with regard to flying saucers. CIA's concern over secrecy again made matters worse. In 1958, Major Keyhoe charged that the Agency was deliberately asking eyewitnesses of UFOs not to make their sightings public. (63)

The incident stemmed from a November 1957 request from OSI to the CD to obtain from Ralph C. Mayher, a photographer for KYW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, certain photographs he took in 1952 of an unidentified flying object. Harry Real, a CD officer, contacted Mayher and obtained copies of the photographs for analysis. On 12 December 1957, John Hazen, another CD officer, returned the five photographs of the alleged UFO to Mayher without comment. Mayher asked Hazen for the Agency's evaluation of the photos, explaining that he was trying to organize a TV program to brief the public on UFOs. He wanted to mention on the show that a US intelligence organization had viewed the photographs and thought them of interest. Although he advised Mayher not to take this approach, Hazen stated that Mayher was a US citizen and would have to make his own decision as to what to do. (64)

Keyhoe later contacted Mayher, who told him his story of CIA and the photographs. Keyhoe then asked the Agency to confirm Hazen's employment in writing, in an effort to expose CIA's role in UFO investigations. The Agency refused, despite the fact that CD field representatives were normally overt and carried credentials identifying their Agency association. DCI Dulles's aide, John S. Earman, merely sent Keyhoe a noncommittal letter noting that, because UFOs were of primary concern to the Department of the Air Force, the Agency had referred his letter to the Air Force for an appropriate response. Like the response to Davidson, the Agency reply to Keyhoe only fueled the speculation that the Agency was deeply involved in UFO sightings. Pressure for release of CIA information on UFOs continued to grow. (65)

Although CIA had a declining interest in UFO cases, it continued to monitor UFO sightings. Agency officials felt the need to keep informed on UFOs if only to alert the DCI to the more sensational UFO reports and flaps. (66)

The 1960s: Declining CIA Involvement and Mounting Controversy

In the early 1960s, Keyhoe, Davidson, and other UFOlogists maintained their assault on the Agency for release of UFO information. Davidson now claimed that CIA "was solely responsible for creating the Flying Saucer furor as a tool for cold war psychological warfare since 1951." Despite calls for Congressional hearings and the release of all materials relating to UFOs, little changed. (67)

In 1964, however, following high-level White House discussions on what to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space and a new outbreak of UFO reports and sightings, DCI John McCone asked for an updated CIA evaluation of UFOs. Responding to McCone's request, OSI asked the CD to obtain various recent samples and reports of UFO sightings from NICAP. With Keyhoe, one of the founders, no longer active in the organization, CIA officers met with Richard H. Hall, the acting director. Hall gave the officers samples from the NICAP database on the most recent sightings. (68)

After OSI officers had reviewed the material, Donald F. Chamberlain, OSI Assistant Director, assured McCone that little had changed since the early 1950s. There was still no evidence that UFOs were a threat to the security of the United States or that they were of "foreign origin." Chamberlain told McCone that OSI still monitored UFO reports, including the official Air Force investigation, Project BLUE BOOK. (69)

At the same time that CIA was conducting this latest internal review of UFOs, public pressure forced the Air Force to establish a special ad hoc committee to review BLUE BOOK. Chaired by Dr. Brian O'Brien, a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the panel included Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer from Cornell University. Its report offered nothing new. It declared that UFOs did not threaten the national security and that it could find "no UFO case which represented technological or scientific advances outside of a terrestrial framework." The committee did recommend that UFOs be studied intensively, with a leading university acting as a coordinator for the project, to settle the issue conclusively. (70)

The House Armed Services Committee also held brief hearings on UFOs in 1966 that produced similar results. Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown assured the committee that most sightings were easily explained and that there was no evidence that "strangers from outer space" had been visiting Earth. He told the committee members, however, that the Air Force would keep an open mind and continue to investigate all UFO reports. (71)

Following the report of its O'Brien Committee, the House hearings on UFOs, and Dr. Robertson's disclosure on a CBS Reports program that CIA indeed had been involved in UFO analysis, the Air Force in July 1966 again approached the Agency for declassification of the entire Robertson panel report of 1953 and the full Durant report on the Robertson panel deliberations and findings. The Agency again refused to budge. Karl H. Weber, Deputy Director of OSI, wrote the Air Force that "We are most anxious that further publicity not be given to the information that the panel was sponsored by the CIA." Weber noted that there was already a sanitized version available to the public. (72) Weber's response was rather shortsighted and ill considered. It only drew more attention to the 13-year-old Robertson panel report and CIA's role in the investigation of UFOs. The science editor of The Saturday Review drew nationwide attention to the CIA's role in investigating UFOs when he published an article criticizing the "sanitized version" of the 1953 Robertson panel report and called for release of the entire document. (73)

Unknown to CIA officials, Dr. James E. McDonald, a noted atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, had already seen the Durant report on the Robertson panel proceedings at Wright-Patterson on 6 June 1966. When McDonald returned to Wright-Patterson on 30 June to copy the report, however, the Air Force refused to let him see it again, stating that it was a CIA classified document. Emerging as a UFO authority, McDonald publicly claimed that the CIA was behind the Air Force secrecy policies and coverup. He demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and the Durant report. (74)

Bowing to public pressure and the recommendation of its own O'Brien Committee, the Air Force announced in August 1966 that it was seeking a contract with a leading university to undertake a program of intensive investigations of UFO sightings. The new program was designed to blunt continuing charges that the US Government had concealed what it knew about UFOs. On 7 October, the University of Colorado accepted a $325,000 contract with the Air Force for an 18-month study of flying saucers. Dr. Edward U. Condon, a physicist at Colorado and a former Director of the National Bureau of Standards, agreed to head the program. Pronouncing himself an "agnostic" on the subject of UFOs, Condon observed that he had an open mind on the question and thought that possible extraterritorial origins were "improbable but not impossible." (75) Brig. Gen. Edward Giller, USAF, and Dr. Thomas Ratchford from the Air Force Research and Development Office became the Air Force coordinators for the project.

In February 1967, Giller contacted Arthur C. Lundahl, Director of CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), and proposed an informal liaison through which NPIC could provide the Condon Committee with technical advice and services in examining photographs of alleged UFOs. Lundahl and DDI R. Jack Smith approved the arrangement as a way of "preserving a window" on the new effort. They wanted the CIA and NPIC to maintain a low profile, however, and to take no part in writing any conclusions for the committee. No work done for the committee by NPIC was to be formally acknowledged. (76)

Ratchford next requested that Condon and his committee be allowed to visit NPIC to discuss the technical aspects of the problem and to view the special equipment NPIC had for photoanalysis. On 20 February 1967, Condon and four members of his committee visited NPIC. Lundahl emphasized to the group that any NPIC work to assist the committee must not be identified as CIA work. Moreover, work performed by NPIC would be strictly of a technical nature. After receiving these guidelines, the group heard a series of briefings on the services and equipment not available elsewhere that CIA had used in its analysis of some UFO photography furnished by Ratchford. Condon and his committee were impressed. (77)

Condon and the same group met again in May 1967 at NPIC to hear an analysis of UFO photographs taken at Zanesville, Ohio. The analysis debunked that sighting. The committee was again impressed with the technical work performed, and Condon remarked that for the first time a scientific analysis of a UFO would stand up to investigation. (78) The group also discussed the committee's plans to call on US citizens for additional photographs and to issue guidelines for taking useful UFO photographs. In addition, CIA officials agreed that the Condon Committee could release the full Durant report with only minor deletions.

In April 1969, Condon and his committee released their report on UFOs. The report concluded that little, if anything, had come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years and that further extensive study of UFO sightings was unwarranted. It also recommended that the Air Force special unit, Project BLUE BOOK, be discontinued. It did not mention CIA participation in the Condon committee's investigation. (79) A special panel established by the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the Condon report and concurred with its conclusion that "no high priority in UFO investigations is warranted by data of the past two decades." It concluded its review by declaring, "On the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings." Following the recommendations of the Condon Committee and the National Academy of Sciences, the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert C. Seamans, Jr., announced on 17 December 1969 the termination of BLUE BOOK. (80)

The 1970s and 1980s: The UFO Issue Refuses To Die

The Condon report did not satisfy many UFOlogists, who considered it a coverup for CIA activities in UFO research. Additional sightings in the early 1970s fueled beliefs that the CIA was somehow involved in a vast conspiracy. On 7 June 1975, William Spaulding, head of a small UFO group, Ground Saucer Watch (GSW), wrote to CIA requesting a copy of the Robertson panel report and all records relating to UFOs. (81) Spaulding was convinced that the Agency was withholding major files on UFOs. Agency officials provided Spaulding with a copy of the Robertson panel report and of the Durant report. (82)

On 14 July 1975, Spaulding again wrote the Agency questioning the authenticity of the reports he had received and alleging a CIA coverup of its UFO activities. Gene Wilson, CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator, replied in an attempt to satisfy Spaulding, "At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to the issuance of the panel's report has CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomena." The Robertson panel report, according to Wilson, was "the summation of Agency interest and involvement in UFOs." Wilson also inferred that there were no additional documents in CIA's possession that related to UFOs. Wilson was ill informed. (83)

In September 1977, Spaulding and GSW, unconvinced by Wilson's response, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Agency that specifically requested all UFO documents in CIA's possession. Deluged by similar FOIA requests for Agency information on UFOs, CIA officials agreed, after much legal maneuvering, to conduct a "reasonable search" of CIA files for UFO materials. (84) Despite an Agency-wide unsympathetic attitude toward the suit, Agency officials, led by Launie Ziebell from the Office of General Counsel, conducted a thorough search for records pertaining to UFOs. Persistent, demanding, and even threatening at times, Ziebell and his group scoured the Agency. They even turned up an old UFO file under a secretary's desk. The search finally produced 355 documents totaling approximately 900 pages. On 14 December 1978, the Agency released all but 57 documents of about 100 pages to GSW. It withheld these 57 documents on national security grounds and to protect sources and methods. (85)

Although the released documents produced no smoking gun and revealed only a low-level Agency interest in the UFO phenomena after the Robertson panel report of 1953, the press treated the release in a sensational manner. The New York Times, for example, claimed that the declassified documents confirmed intensive government concern over UFOs and that the Agency was secretly involved in the surveillance of UFOs. (86) GSW then sued for the release of the withheld documents, claiming that the Agency was still holding out key information. (87) It was much like the John F. Kennedy assassination issue. No matter how much material the Agency released and no matter how dull and prosaic the information, people continued to believe in a Agency coverup and conspiracy.

DCI Stansfield Turner was so upset when he read The New York Times article that he asked his senior officers, "Are we in UFOs?" After reviewing the records, Don Wortman, Deputy Director for Administration, reported to Turner that there was "no organized Agency effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s." Wortman assured Turner that the Agency records held only "sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject," including various kinds of reports of UFO sightings. There was no Agency program to collect actively information on UFOs, and the material released to GSW had few deletions. (88) Thus assured, Turner had the General Counsel press for a summary judgment against the new lawsuit by GSW. In May 1980, the courts dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Agency had conducted a thorough and adequate search in good faith. (89)

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects. Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.

CIA also maintained Intelligence Community coordination with other agencies regarding their work in parapsychology, psychic phenomena, and "remote viewing" experiments. In general, the Agency took a conservative scientific view of these unconventional scientific issues. There was no formal or official UFO project within the Agency in the 1980s, and Agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released. (90)

The 1980s also produced renewed charges that the Agency was still withholding documents relating to the 1947 Roswell incident, in which a flying saucer supposedly crashed in New Mexico, and the surfacing of documents which purportedly revealed the existence of a top secret US research and development intelligence operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists had long argued that, following a flying saucer crash in New Mexico in 1947, the government not only recovered debris from the crashed saucer but also four or five alien bodies. According to some UFOlogists, the government clamped tight security around the project and has refused to divulge its investigation results and research ever since. (91) In September 1994, the US Air Force released a new report on the Roswell incident that concluded that the debris found in New Mexico in 1947 probably came from a once top secret balloon operation, Project MOGUL, designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. (92)

Circa 1984, a series of documents surfaced which some UFOlogists said proved that President Truman created a top secret committee in 1947, Majestic-12, to secure the recovery of UFO wreckage from Roswell and any other UFO crash sight for scientific study and to examine any alien bodies recovered from such sites. Most if not all of these documents have proved to be fabrications. Yet the controversy persists. (93)

Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence.

From Studies In Intelligence Vol. 01 No. 1, 1997

06-01-2020 om 23:33 geschreven door peter