Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS.
ON 06/06/2024 MORE THAN 2.056.610
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
02-04-2020
Meet Eurythenes plasticus, the new marine species named after plastic
Meet Eurythenes plasticus, the new marine species named after plastic
Researchers find new species with plastic in its body.
Discovery a new species is usually a reason for celebration, especially in the ocean, where up to a million species live and two-thirds of them may still be undiscovered. Nevertheless, the expansion of microplastics in the water in recent years has changed things a bit.
A group of researchers from Newcastle University discovered a new species of a marine creature, a type of crustacean called an amphipod. Their glee was short-lived, however, as they quickly found plastic in its body, showing the large scale of plastic pollution across the globe.
The crustacean was found in the Marina Trench at a depth of roughly 6,000 meters (20,000 feet). But even animals that live in such extreme and ostensibly remote areas of the world are affected by plastic pollution.
Inside the body of the previously unknown amphipod, the researchers found little pieces of plastic debris, called microplastics. The material was identified as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — a kind of plastic used broadly, in both drink and food packaging.
Consequently, the team at Newcastle decided to call the species Eurythenes plasticus, to forever remind the world about the grim state of the global environment from the effects of pollution. Urgent action needs to be taken to “stop the deluge of plastic waste into our oceans,” said lead author Alan Jamieson in a statement.
“We have new species turning up that are already contaminated and so we have missed the window to understand these species in a natural environment,” said Jamieson to Newsweek. “This discovery exemplifies the extent of the plastic problem. Species in remote and extreme marine environments are suffering as a result of human activity.”
Plastic waste is now found throughout all the world’s oceans. A 2015 study showed that roughly 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every single year. Once there, it begins to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics — that are subsequently eaten by animals.
Microplastics appeared in nature at the same time as plastics, more than 50 years ago. As the world is producing more and more plastic, the number of microplastics continues to grow dramatically. Researchers from several countries are working to understand their distribution and impacts.
The finding by the Newcastle researchers and the decision to name the species linked to plastics was welcomed by environmental organizations. It was a “bold and necessary move,” said the Vice President of Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Lauren Spurrier.
“There can be no disputing the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our environment and its impact on nature,” she said to Newsweek, via a statement. “We now are seeing even more devastating impacts of plastic pollution; in that it is infecting species science is only just now discovering.”
For the last forty years or thereabouts, Roswell has been Ufology’s number-one case. It’s a field of research that is always looking for proof that UFOs exist. And, by proof, I mean hard, solid evidence that can be examined and studied – if, of course, “they” would only “tell us the truth.” As I write this, more than seventy years have gone by since Kenneth Arnold kicked off the flying saucer controversy – after encountering a squadron of unidentified aerial vehicles near Mt. Rainier, Washington State. And, although we have masses of material, eye-witness testimony, photos, declassified files, etc., the fact is that we still don’t have hard evidence of – or definitive answers for – what UFOs actually are. Roswell, however, UFO researchers say, theoretically offers us those answers. If only, that is, we could uncover the bodies, the wreckage, the old files, and so on. And presuming, of course, that Roswell was an alien event and not something else. Such as something down-to-earth and which still has to remain hidden at all costs.
The fact is that Ufology is not just looking for hard, undeniable proof that UFOs exist. Much of Ufology is desperate to find pro-E.T. evidence for Roswell, chiefly so that all those decades of research won’t be seen as a waste of time. Those UFO researchers now in their sixties, seventies and eighties are faced with meeting the Grim Reaper before they get to see the doors to the “secret Roswell hangar” opened wide. For those researchers, the answers have to come, before it’s all too late. And they have to come soon. Roswell is to them what Moby Dick was to Captain Ahab. So, for those who conclude that aliens crashed back in July 1947, the Roswell affair – with its large number of first-, second-, and third-hand witnesses, and with the government having changed its stance on what happened more than a couple of times – is the one that could really tip the scales. And, with the scales tipped, the world would know that the UFO community was right all along and it was all worth it. All thanks to Roswell.
There is very little doubt in my mind that when Ufologists see the word “Roswell” prominently referenced in a new online article, there’s an immediate sense of “Maybe, this time, we really have it nailed.” I saw just such a thing happen when the fiasco known as “the Roswell Slides” surfaced a few years back. For those who don’t know the pathetic saga, it revolves around a photograph of a mummified child which was, for a while, touted as one of the bodies from the Roswell crash. The whole thing was a shitty embarrassment, one that is best forgotten. There’s another reason why Roswell is so important, but from a very different perspective. If, one day, Roswell is conclusively proven not to have been an extraterrestrial event – maybe, instead, some dark and murky experiment of the kinds I have suggested – then I firmly believe that the UFO community will have a collective breakdown / meltdown of epic proportions and from which it will never recover. Shaking knees, breathing slowly into paper bags, stomach ulcers, antidepressants, and uncontrollable bladders will be commonplace. Don’t even get me started on out-of-control bowel movements.
In that sense, Ufology is desperate to see Roswell confirmed as an extraterrestrial event. Ufology can barely consider Roswell as anything else. For many, such a situation is utterly unthinkable. So, again, whenever Roswell pops up – and particularly so amid rumors that “something big” is coming – there is a dire and pressing need, and a desperate yearning, for something tangible. And, everyone clicks on the link, praying for the definitive breakthrough that has consistently failed to surface; the breakthrough that only “Saint Roswell” can (maybe) deliver into Ufology’s eager hands. Roswell has been elevated and championed as an E.T. event to such an incredible degree that it can – in single-handed fashion – completely make or break Ufology. Forever. However you look at the case – and whatever your personalopinion on what happened in ’47 on the Foster Ranch – that’s why the incident remains so incredibly important.
It has been seen time and time again that UFO encounters and alien abductions seem to happen to people from all walks of life, and are far from confined to just weirdos out in the middle of nowhere. On occasion there have been such reports from very famous people or those in high standing, and these are the ones that tend to really resonate and catch people’s attention to get them talking. One of these is the chess-playing Russian Federation president who not only claims to have been abducted by aliens, but that they invented the game he loves most.
Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov is not a name many people will probably be familiar with, but he has had a rather impressive and colorful career. He burst onto the political scene from the private sector, where he was the president of SAN Corporation in Moscow, to be elected as the first president of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Kalmykia in 1993, a position in which he would serve until 2010, constantly re-elected unopposed. His stint as president is mostly notable for allegations of corruption, misappropriation of funds, and his wild and unorthodox ideas while in office, such as offering a free mobile phone to every shepherd, paying $100 dollars out to everyone who voted for him, and an almost obsessive compulsion to build religious buildings, such as a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic church, 22 Orthodox churches, and 30 Buddhist temples, as well as his assertion that he was able to psychically subconsciously influence and mind control people, once saying:
Irrespective of what I tell people, I give them instructions on a subconscious level, a code. I do the same thing when I communicate with Russian citizens from other regions. I am creating around the republic a kind of extra-sensory field and it helps us a lot in our projects.
He was also a completely hopeless chess geek. A lifelong avid chess player, after winning the regional championship as a child, he went on to become a master player, defeating former world chess champion Garry Kasparov to go on to become the head of the International Chess Foundation (FIDE), which he would remain until 2018 and which was every bit as colored by scandal as his presidency. He has played chess against some of the best, and has also had bizarre matches against an ecclectic mix of celebrities and other politicians such as the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in the process pouring millions of government dollars and from his own personal fortune into chess related projects and promoting chess in schools all over the world. Make no mistake about it, Ilyumzhinov really, really likes chess. He also has been abducted by a UFO and thinks chess was created by aliens from outer space. Wait, what?
Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov
The whole bizarre tale begins in September 1997, when one evening Ilyumzhinov claims he was at home at his flat in Moscow when a UFO swept down, piloted by beings in “yellow spacesuits” of some sort, and whisked him away. As soon as he was aboard their ship he says he was provided with a spacesuit similar to theirs in order to help him breathe, and that they spoke to him telepathically. Ilyumzhinov would describe being the abduction and being aboard their ship thusly:
It was from my apartment. They flew in and picked me up. They were wearing yellow spacesuits. I remember this moment exactly. We went off to their interplanetary ship, and I started to feel a lack of air, a lack of oxygen. They gave me a spacesuit as well. One of the aliens pointed to his chest and indicated that the oxygen supply could be regulated by turning a dial. So this is what I did.
The ship was absolutely enormous. One of its chambers was the size of a large football pitch. We landed on one of the planets and picked up some piece of equipment. They told me everything in detail. I asked them to take me back to Earth as quickly as possible, because in two days I had to conduct Youth Government Week. And then they brought me back and everything was normal again. A few days later I was walking along thinking: ‘Why did they take me?’ And I was cursing myself for not asking them any questions. But it is possible that it is still not the time for us to meet these extraterrestrial civilizations.
He describes coming back to find that he had an hour of missing time, and he would soon discover that while he had been gone members of his staff had been searching his apartment for him but had found no trace of where he had gone. He describes these entities as being very similar to us, with the same ways of thinking and same visions for the future. He believes that they were also responsible for many inventions here on Earth, and of course since this is Ilyumzhinov we are talking about here this includes chess. He says of this:
My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules — 64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa — the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.
Considering his high political position and reputation at the time, and that he was well into his presidency, it seems as if this might have been a bizarre experience he’d want to keep to himself, but in interviews and with the media he was very open and candid about what had happened to him, and this led to many of his fellow countrymen wondering if he was fit to lead. In particular, one Russian parliament member by the name of Andre Lebedev was very outspoken about his concerns that Ilyumzhinov was perhaps not in his right mind and fit to govern, and not necessarily because he admitted being taken up on a spaceship or claiming that they had invented chess, mind you, but rather because he was worried that the leader had given the aliens state secrets. Others just flat-out thought he had lost his mind, and others still commended him for his willingness to openly disclose his experience. For his part Ilyumzhinov thinks he did the right thing to bring people’s attention to the presence of UFOs and aliens, and has said of all of this:
I’m not a crazy man, but after I gave the first interview to Radio Freedom in Russia … thousands — not hundreds — thousands of people wrote me letters and called on the phone, saying, ‘Oh, Kirsan, you are a politician and you are not afraid to talk about it?’
Whether he was crazy or not, he still managed to stay in office for many years after this story hit, and it is either a good example of a politician coming clean about UFOs or more eccentric ramblings from a decidedly eccentric man. It goes to show that not all of those who claim such encounters are nutjob nobodies, and sometimes people in high places have them as well. This one was just perhaps a bit stranger than most.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
OOK PILOTEN VRAGEN ZICH AF WAT ER GEBEURT IN DE LUCHT...
OOK PILOTEN VRAGEN ZICH AF WAT ER GEBEURT IN DE LUCHT...
De vreemde patronen die worden gevlogen door vliegtuigen, ook boven ons land, blijven maar aanhouden. Het begint dermate op te vallen dat ook piloten nu vragen beginnen te stellen.
Misschien is er een heel simpele verklaring voor al die vreemde vliegbewegingen boven ons land. Misschien zijn ze er altijd al wel geweest en is het nooit iemand opgevallen omdat normaal gesproken het luchtruim vol is met commercieel vliegverkeer hetgeen op dit moment uiteraard niet het geval is.
Wel hebben we eerder laten zien dat er opvallend vaak vreemde patronen worden gevlogen boven gebieden waar zich veel coronagevallen voordoen.
Tijdens het opstellen van dit artikel kregen we in die zin ook weer een bevestiging hierover binnen via een lezer (dank!):
Hi redactie,
Jullie schreven laatst over propeller vliegtuigjes met vreemde vluchtroute. Ik heb het nieuws in Heerde en Gorré Overvlaké gevolgd en vind het zeer opvallend idd dat deze 2 gebieden nu ernstige Corona bezwijkingen hebben .
Nu vandaag sinds 12 uur is hier omgeving Nieuw vennep Hoofddorp en Hillegom een vliegtuigje al uren aan het cirkelen het is nu inmiddels rond 1500 uur en net hoorde ik m nog . Ik denk mocht er wat komen dat door de wind vooral nieuw vennep en Hoofddorp bereikt zijn.
Mtvrgrt
Er is tot nu toe ook summier aandacht aan besteed in de mainstream media, waar men eigenlijk ook niet verder komt dan de aanname dat het wel zal gaan om luchtfoto’s voor Google en dat die nu gemaakt worden omdat het mooi helder weer is.
Waar de opnames exact voor worden gebruikt is niet bekend. Het vliegtuigje boven de Veluwe is van het Belgische bedrijf Eurosense, dat gespecialiseerd is in ‘geo informatie’. Zij staan 365 dagen per jaar paraat om de lucht in te gaan, maar het heldere weer van vandaag maakt dat de omstandigheden ideaal zijn voor luchtopnames. In België nemen ze echter niet de telefoon op om uitleg te verschaffen.
En dan gaan ze verder met te zeggen dat de omgeving van Zwolle ook recentelijk door Google opnieuw in kaart is gebracht
Echter, dan blijft het totaal onverklaarbaar waarom er ook gewoon in het donker wordt doorgevlogen. Dat kan weinig te maken hebben met foto’s voor Google, dus moet er een andere reden zijn.
Hier is een voorbeeld van een screenshot dat we ontvingen van een lezer (dank!) betreffende een vlucht ’s avonds rond half tien boven Rotterdam.
En zo zijn er inmiddels meerdere binnengekomen (dank allemaal).
De volgende opname is ook een bijzondere; het gevlogen patroon is heel rommelig. De reden zou kunnen zijn dat het vliegtuig een Aero L-39 Albatros van het bedrijf Skyline Aviation is en niet een propellorvliegtuig zoals al die anderen. Maar op deze wijze foto's maken voor het in kaart bregen van het land (Google) kan niet en we kijken hier dus naar iets anders. Maar wat. Voor een holding patroon lijkt het ook veel te onregelmatig.
Skyline Aviation is gespecialiseerd in het trainen van luchtmachten. Hoewel het civiele toestellen zijn die zij vliegen, werkt men nauw samen met diverse Europese luchtmachten om de rol van aggressor te spelen. Voor dit doel heeft men een aantal Aero Albatrossen en een Learjet 35.
Opvallend is dan weer wel dat dit toestel wederom vliegt boven één van de zwaarst getroffen coronagebieden in Nederland.
Dan ontvingen wij de volgende email van een lezer (dank!) die dat eveneens bevestigt, maar ook nog iets anders.
Ook onder piloten wordt er nu gesproken en gespeculeerd over de nog immer voortdurende vliegbewegingen. Dit terwijl het belgische vliegruim gesloten is voor VFR verkeer! (Redactie: VFR betekent dat er "op zicht" gevlogen wordt in plaats van op instrumenten)
Zelf ben ik ook heel benieuwd naar de achterliggende reden van deze vluchten. (Genoemd worden Aerodata, foto's, etc)....
Ik heb recentelijk in het oosten van het land een vliegtuig zien gaan in de avond, afkomstig uit Duitsland. Deze heeft urenlang boven Arnhem gevlogen.
Hiermee blijft vooralsnog dit raadsel voortduren en wij blijven hopen dat er toch binnenkort een harde verklaring komt voor dit alles.
Eerder publiceerden wij de volgende foto, een Amerikaanse treinwagon met het opschrift covid-19.
Deze opname schijnt volgens sommigen niet echt te zijn, want de/een originele treinwagon zou er als volgt uitzien.
Als dat inderdaad klopt, dan is de wagon met covid-19 een photoshop product en dat zal dan ook weer niemand verbazen in een wereld waar zo goed als alles tegenwoordig nep is.
Blijf scherp en laat ons weten of er zich meer vreemde dingen voordoen.
Defense Intelligence Agency Employee's Bizarre UFO Sighting and Missing Time
Defense Intelligence Agency Employee's Bizarre UFO Sighting and Missing Time
COAST TO COAST AM -
Dr. Irena Scott, who has worked in institutions involved in the UFO field including the DIA and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, discussed her very unusual UFO sighting which included possible missing time, something that made her car interior light up in a strange way, and a stranger who chased her during the encounter. Scott related the 1968 sighting that she had while on an East Coast road trip with her sister.
At the time, she was working on classified satellite technology for the Defense Intelligence Agency and couldn’t admit anything about the sighting to anyone because she thought she’d “just gone crazy.”
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.
I was looking over the Mars Google online map when I discovered some structures. This one is not downloaded and it has better detail in the infrared photo. The first structure is a long tall building that enters the side of a crater like an arrow hitting a target. At its end it has a small tower on its slope. The other structure is a four sided pyramid with a huge six sided doorway in its side. This doorway is big enough for ships to enter and exit. But what looks like a door may be a tinted window for a city that may exist inside this pyramid. The pyramid is about 5km across and 4km wide. The long structure is closer to 10km long. Watch the video for more details.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO Disk Seen During Daytime Over Colorado, Feb 2020, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Disk Seen During Daytime Over Colorado, Feb 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: February 7, 2020
Location of sighting: Colorado, Montezuma County, USA
Source: email report.
I was going through my email and received a photo from a person in Colorado that saw a UFO shaped cloud coming over the mountains. He stated, this thing was hiding in plain sight. I have to agree, when UFOs create clouds and hide in them, they do assume that humans are not intelligent enough to know the difference, but we are learning fast. The dark disk outline on the bottom of the cloud really gives it away. Also notice that far above are some waves in the cloud ceiling above it...possible disturbed from the alien craft moving through it not long ago. From the looks of it, I would estimate it to be 1.5 to 2km across.
Alien Craft Seen Over Fairview, Texas Road During Day, March 31, 2020 Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Craft Seen Over Fairview, Texas Road During Day, March 31, 2020 Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:March 31, 2020
Location of sighting: Fairview, Texas, USA
Source: MUFON #107397
This UFO was reported to MUFON today. A black craft flew over a persons car as he was waiting for the stop light. He took two photos of clouds and in one of them caught a dark UFO. The UFO must have been traveling very fast, because he didn't notice it. But many UFO researchers believe that UFOs are all around us on this planet, but they jump from location to location fast, traveling so fast the human eye cannot see them, but the camera lens can. Looks like alien visitors in Texas.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
The UFO was in my picture of the sky. I took 2 pictures of the clouds seconds apart. Clouds looked odd. In the first picture the UFO is clear. 2nd photo snapped immediately after does not show it. Time stamped 5:41pm on both pictures. It looks like a black millenial falcon. I did not notice it in the picture until I posted it on Instagram. It's definitely not something on windshield or camera lens. It would have been on both.
With the on going UFO activity above earth captured on the ISS live feed for the last two months, now Gina Colvin Hill from Salem, Indiana wants to share some images taken on March 24, 2020 showing numerous ufo ships in the sky.
Gina has used different filters to capture these ships otherwise you don't see them since most of them are cloaked.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Netizens Baffled After Watching UFO With Wings in the Sky Above Arizona
Netizens Baffled After Watching UFO With Wings in the Sky Above Arizona
Netizens were out of words to describe a UFO with wings hovering in the skies above Arizona. YouTube user Ballee18 posted the UFO sighting video to YouTube on 22 March. According to the video uploader, the sighting happened near Ahwatukee urban village in Phoenix. Conspiracy channel mavi777 shared the video, and it eventually went viral.
The sighting comes after multiple UFOs were observed in different areas of the US. In one such event, YouTube username Denspion caught video of three red orbs hovering over Washington.
Social media users have made various explanations, with some saying that the so-called UFO in the sky could be a human who’s practicing extreme social or physical distancing to avoid contracting the COVID-19. Other netizens suggesting the video shows a flying human-made possible with a jet pack.
However, other social media users believed that the hovering human figure could be a sign of space alien life. A few users thought it was an alien drone, but many others thought it was some kind of hovering craft, suggesting that we’re not alone.
What do you think of the mysterious hovering figure? A kite, jetpack, or extreme social distancing? Let us know in the comment section.
Want to build the largest radio telescope to fly in space? Here's an easier technique: Design sixtiny satellites to fly in formation and work together.
That's the approach of a NASA's new Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2023. SunRISE aims to help scientists understand the complex relationship between the sun's activity and a host of dangerous phenomena around Earth called space weather. The mission selection comes amid a burst of solar science and an emphasis on missions that incorporate space-weather prediction into plans for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit.
"We are so pleased to add a new mission to our fleet of spacecraft that help us better understand the sun, as well as how our star influences the space environment between planets," Nicky Fox, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, said in a NASA statement. "The more we know about how the sun erupts with space weather events, the more we can mitigate their effects on spacecraft and astronauts."
Scientists have watched the sun fling energy and material toward Earth in outbursts, and they have also seen the impacts that such events can have on orbiting satellites, particularly on communication and navigation instruments. But scientists don't yet understand the nitty-gritty details of the connection between solar outbursts and space weather phenomena well enough to predict space weather.
If all goes well, the $63-million SunRISE mission should help to bridge that gap.
The six telescopes that make up the mission are tailored to study the radio waves that the sun ejects during solar particle outbursts. In particular, SunRISE will target outbursts called coronal mass ejections, which can throw massive amounts of plasma, the soup of charged particles that makes up the sun, across the solar system.
The toaster-sized satellites will spread out across about 6 miles (10 kilometers), orbiting Earth at an altitude of 22,000 miles (35,000 km). That orbit will keep SunRISE well above the ionosphere, which blocks radio waves of the relevant frequencies from reaching Earth.
From that perch, the flock of cubesats should be able to map the influence of the sun's magnetic field across space. They should also be able to gather the data scientists need to understand how different parts of a coronal mass ejection dramatically speed up and which such events are accompanied by bursts of radiation, which are vital clues for space-weather prediction.
"We can see a solar flare start, and a coronal mass ejection start lifting off from the sun, but we don't know if it is going to produce high energy particle radiation, and we don't know if that high energy particle radiation is going to reach Earth," Justin Kasper, a space scientist at the University of Michigan who leads the mission, said in a university statement. "One reason why is we can't see the particles being accelerated. We just see them when they arrive at the spacecraft, which isn't much of a warning."
That situation is inconvenient when it comes to satellites, but downright dangerous when it comes to humans venturing beyond the safety of Earth, hence the impetus to better understand space weather.
"Knowing which part of a coronal mass ejection is responsible for producing the particle radiation will help us understand how the acceleration happens," Kasper said. "It could also result in a unique warning system for whether an event will both produce radiation and release that radiation towards Earth or spacefaring astronauts."
In episodes 7 and 8 of "Cosmos: Possible Worlds," host Neil deGrasse Tyson explores themes of science as an instrument of hope and tenacity, and as a means by which the human race can realize its true potential.
Episode 7, titled "Search for Intelligent Life," focuses specifically on first contact and the search for intelligent life in the vastness of the cosmos. Are humans ready to make first contact with other intelligent beings? Is our technology even sophisticated enough to detect communication signals from another world?
Beneath China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) teems an underground network, the product of enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria and animals: the mycelium. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
Tyson points out that we've only had the technology to detect radio signals for a little over a century, making FAST a truly monumental achievement. FAST has already detected a number of pulsars — or compact stellar corpses — and will continue to search for gravitational waves and signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, among other data it collects.
However, there's an intricate global communications network hidden here on Earth that we've only just become aware of. Tyson turns our attention to a "hidden matrix … the creation of an enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria and animals." He's referring to the mycelium, a complex network of threadlike filaments that forms the functional structure of a fungus and extends to other species, such as trees. These hauntingly beautiful hyphae, or the branching filaments that make up the mycelium, illustrated in the show by special effects to interweave in the soil beneath our feet, reveal the forests' complex and interlinked nature.
"Who are we to search for alien intelligence when we can't even recognize or respect the consciousness all around us, or even beneath our feet," Tyson says, strolling through the forest on top of the soil that's protecting the mycelium beneath his feet. Still, conversations with different worlds, Tyson says, will be done in the language of science.
"Cosmos" host Neil deGrasse Tyson enters the Palace of Life, an imaginary place of ancient towers hidden by the mists of time and enshrouded in myth. Here, he moves into its largest, most ancient realm, to walk among the life at the bottom of the sea. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
"The symbolic language of the scientist, mathematician and engineer avoid those things that are lost in translation from one culture to another," Tyson says, explaining that this type of language is more precise and less open to misinterpretation. If we find extraterrestrial intelligent life, will we be communicating with them in a language that resembles a computer programming language, built on the binary code?
"First contact" with intelligent life (on Earth)
Humans have actually already made "first contact" with other intelligent life that communicates through equations and a symbolic language, Tyson points out: bees. Insects in general have played an instrumental role in the development of the natural world, mostly by spreading pollen. Each grain of pollen has been"sculpted differently by evolution — each a novel strategy for survival, sharpened by vast expanses of time, " Tyson says.
Insects are as much a part of the Earth's history as the earth itself; The "great Ordovician biodiversity event," when our world began to change as plants and insects left the sea and began to make the land their home, occurred approximately 480 million years ago (or Dec. 20 on Tyson's "cosmic calendar," where the Big Bang marks New Year's Day). The world Tyson describes is an alien one; giant mushrooms tower over trees that only grew a few feet tall, and insects ruled the skies, undisturbed by other winged creatures.
In the Palace of Life, "Cosmos" host Neil deGrasse Tyson encounters Saccorhytus coronarius. When it lived, 550 million years ago, the species was microscopic. But now, it looms large. This creature is the earliest common ancestor we've yet found, a physical connection we share with almost every animal on Earth. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
It was Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch who unlocked the secrets of bee behavior in the early 20th century. "For thousands of years, bees have been symbols of mindless industry … shackled to the dreary roles assigned to them by nature," says Tyson, but von Frisch found in his studies that bees lead much more complex lives. They communicate through mathematical equations expressed in their movements, appearing to the untrained eye to be little more than a waggle, but in reality can be an incredibly accurate set of coordinates to a food source meters away.
Tyson calls this a "first contact story" because bees and humans evolved on very different trajectories, and yet both species risked everything and chose the unknown; it's as if there were an unwritten code common to bees and human beings driving those ambitions. This echoes the work of legendary scientist Charles Darwin, who realized if all life is related, certain philosophical implications had to follow. Darwin realized we are "surrounded by other ways of being alive and conscious," Tyson says, and that science had the potential to expand our capacity for empathy and compassion.
"The Sacrifice of Cassini"
Building on those themes of compassion and ambition, episode 8, "The Sacrifice of Cassini," chronicles tales of sacrifice and reveals the little-seen sentimentality and emotion that often accompany our greatest scientific endeavors. The episode honors the efforts and sacrifices of scientists Giovanni Cassini, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, and Alexander Shargei, among others.
The episode opens with Tyson's recap of the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency that launched Oct. 15, 1997. The spacecraft would embark on an epic voyage that would last more than two decades and culminate in a final, fatal mission of self-destruction by flying itself into Saturn's atmosphere in 2017.
Spacecraft sent to the outermost regions of our solar system, like Cassini, have brought back valuable data. Researchers are especially interested in any information about the mysterious ringed planets, which puzzled early planetary scientists like Galileo. These ring systems have been notoriously difficult to detect; Galileo's early research on Saturn had him believe the planet had two symmetrical moons, which we now know to be Saturn's rings. What would Galileo say if he could see Saturn as we see it now through the eyes of powerful scientific instruments?
Why do some worlds have rings, and others don't? Here, we imagine what our own planet would look like with a ring system. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and Cassini also sent back valuable data about the atmospheres and other physical properties of our cosmic neighbors, like the elusive Uranus. Without Voyager 2, we wouldn't know about the planet's long summers and winters, or that while Uranus doesn't generate any internal heat and the outer edges of its atmosphere is hotter than 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius), Uranus also has the coldest clouds in the solar system, nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit (240 degrees Celsius) below zero.
Interestingly, as Tyson reviews Giovanni Cassini's early life in what is now Italy, he notes that the Italian scientist began his career as an astrologer; a pseudoscientist. Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King," who would be the first monarch to recognize the power of science and the opportunities it afforded national security, would play a pivotal role in Cassini's career development. It was Louis XIV, who established the Paris Observatory — a scientific powerhouse — and who gave Cassini the tools he needed to pursue his research.
Gravity has a big bag of tricks, none lovelier than the ring systems of worlds. (Image credit: Cosmos Studios)
Cassini's observations of Saturn and its moons would have an enduring effect on the scientific world among his other accomplishments, like having discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot (independently from Robert Hooke) and having calculated the length of a day on Mars; he was only off by 3 minutes.
Cassini's work on Saturn also greatly furthered human beings' knowledge on the planet at the time; he was the first to know Saturn's rings were composed of natural satellites orbiting the planet, and that there were gaps between them. Decades later, a bus-size 12,000-lb. (5,400 kilograms) spacecraft, sent on a years-long voyage to that same celestial body, would be named in his memory.
The scientists who worked closely with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, some of them since the very beginning, undoubtedly became emotional as it completed its final mission, as did spectators around the world who witnessed its final moments.
The probe's travails, however, cannot compare to the pain and tragedy of scientist and visionary Oleksandr Shargei, a forgotten pioneer of spaceflight. Shargei was orphaned at a young age and, while studying engineering at a university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was drafted to the army to serve the Russian Empire in World War I. After the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, he changed his name to Yuri Kondratyuk out of fear for his life.
In 1926, Kondratyuk self-published a manuscript on rocket motion and space colonization, which would end up capturing the attention of an engineer working on the Apollo program, John Houbolt, decades later. Houbolt's updating of Kondratyuk's theories convinced NASA to select the lunar orbit rendezvous flight plan for Apollo, and to win the Space Race.
NASA engineer John Houbolt, as seen in 1962, shows on a blackboard his lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) concept for landing on the moon. (Image credit: NASA)
Seeing footage from Apollo 11 in the episode elicits a sentimental feeling as it dawns on us that we're witnessing Kondratyuk's dreams become reality, and that his dreams are still coming true to this day; even the Cassini mission used gravity assist maneuvers, also conceived by Kondratyuk, to explore the Saturn system.
The final scene of the episode is of Kondratyuk's childhood home — a place where he endured much tragedy in his early years, and sought refuge in physics books. It was also here that Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong made a pilgrimage after his historic flight to the moon, to honor the man who made that voyage possible.
"There are all kinds of stories in the struggle to understand the cosmos," Tyson reflects. "Sometimes your dreams die with you, but sometimes the scientists of another age pick them up and take them to the moon, and far beyond."
"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.
Mars Curiosity sends back one giant Martian panorama…and (maybe) a clue of past life
Mars Curiosity sends back one giant Martian panorama…and (maybe) a clue of past life
The Curiosity rover’s extended stay on Mars has proven to be one of NASA’s biggest recent success stories. More than seven years after its arrival at the Bradbury landing site on the Martian surface, Curiosity has just sent back the largest, most detailed panoramic image ever of the Red Planet’s landscape … along with an intriguing new discovery that could yield fresh insights into whether Mars has ever harbored microbial life.
Between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1 of last year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory captured what the agency describes as the “highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface,” compositing more than 1,000 individual images taken by the telephoto zoom lens on Curiosity’s Mast Camera. The image below is actually the lower-resolution version of the two that NASA has made available; a higher-res version (which omits the rover from the picture, thanks to the extra zoom on the telephoto) is available as 2.43-gigabyte download on the NASA/JPL host page.
NASA also shared a super-informative video highlighting just how much landscape detail the new image contains, zooming in on deep-field features like the rim of the crater that Curiosity calls home; as well as the exposed remnants of the Greenheugh Pediment — “a vast sheet of rock draped over the side of a mountain.”
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on YouTube
Early chemical analysis of another Curiosity discovery — the presence in Martian soil of organic compounds called thiophenes — also has researchers speculating that the compounds could suggest that living bacteria once had a foothold on the Red Planet. According toWashington State Universityastrobiologist Dirk Schulze‑Makuch, part of an international team assessing the data, scientists typically associate thiophenes here on Earth with the breakdown of once-living organisms, though their presence on Mars may have other explanations that can’t yet be ruled out.
“We identified several biological pathways for thiophenes that seem more likely than chemical ones, but we still need proof,” he explained. “If you find thiophenes on Earth, then you would think they are biological, but on Mars, of course, the bar to prove that has to be quite a bit higher.”
Researchers speculate that Mars’ warmer, wetter conditions 3 billion years ago may have harbored the conditions necessary for microbes to thrive, although they say the data are still insufficient to rule out other explanations for the thiophenes’ presence — including chemical reactions from past meteor impacts, or other super-hot events that might have caused the “thermochemical sulfate reduction” process required for the unique compounds to form.
While Curiosity’s data-collecting abilities limit researchers’ ability to pinpoint the still-elusive answer, this year’s scheduled launch of the Rosalind Franklin rover should end up offering more details. The new rover “will be carrying a Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA, which uses a less destructive analyzing method that will allow for the collection of larger molecules,” reports WSU News.
Interview with HISTORY's Travis Taylor: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Interview with HISTORY's Travis Taylor: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Photo by History Copyright 2020
For the first time ever, HISTORY is gaining full, unprecedented access to one of the most infamous and secretive hotspots of paranormal and UFO-related activities on earth, Skinwalker Ranch, in a new one-hour nonfiction series, "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" premiering Tuesday, March 31 at 10PM ET/PT. Few have ever gained official access to Skinwalker Ranch, and none have ever been able to bring cameras onto the property for a television series, until now.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Travis Taylor, the lead astrophysicist of "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" about his journey and his experience investigating the unexplained phenomena in Utah's Uinta Basin. Scientific research, tribal legends, and the unexplained converge at Skinwalker Ranch that you must see to believe.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Why and how were you chosen for this project?
Dr. Travis Taylor: Well, first of all for the why and the how I don't know what you know about me or how much you've read of my bio and that sort of thing. I have a PhD and a dual disciplinary degree in electrical engineering and physics called optical science of engineering - it's basically quantum physics. I have another PhD in aerospace engineering, building and designing spacecraft and rockets. I have a Master's degree in astronomy. I have a Master's degree in physics. I have a Master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. I have a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Since I was 17, I'm 51 now, I've published about two dozen referee journal articles and well-respected peer review physics, and optics and military defense type journals.
As far as I know, I'm the only person besides my co-author of the book who has taken the idea seriously and written a textbook and a detailed examination on how we would defend the planet if we were actually invaded by aliens. Different types of invasions and what our military approach should and could be. In fact, I'm the only one who teaches from that text on the topic to the Air Force officer's space school at Maxwell Air Force base. Now, I do that pretty much yearly and have for a while.
My background has been building spacecraft, rockets and high-energy laser weapons and things like that for DOD for a long time. I also am a science fiction writer and have written twenty-something best-selling science fiction novels, mostly military hard science fiction. With that background in mind, I was invited to start doing TV shows in the early 2000s which led to the next TV show and the next TV show and so on. When HISTORY and Prometheus were approached by the new billionaire owner of the Ranch to do an investigation, they said, "Well you need someone who is an experimentalist and who also is experienced with talking on TV and we recommend this guy."
And that's how that happened.
WATM: What was the first thing that stuck out to you about this investigation when you joined the team of researchers?
Travis Taylor: Well, when the invitation came to me to become a part of the investigation team and to lead the experiment portion of the research, at first I was very skeptical of the phenomena on the ranch being real or being some natural phenomena that maybe causes hallucinations, or unnatural phenomena that causes actual phenomena like lights in the sky or maybe there was a classified defense project. At no time did I think that I was going to find strange, unexplainable physical phenomena at least from the start. That was my philosophy or my thought going into it. But I did have an open mind that, hey, what if I find something that is unexplainable?
WATM: How was evidence gathered of the phenomena at the Ranch?
Travis Taylor: The way we approached it is, we had scientific instrumentation and sensors -- as many as we could afford based on the budget we had -- spread about the ranch that were collecting data continuously, 24/7. We also had security cameras placed in certain locations to give us as much of a full view of the ranch as possible that were running 24/7. Plus we had game cameras placed in locations that we could move if we thought there was a need to move them. We collected all this information and we went through the video and data pretty much on a daily basis. Plus, there was also multiple cameramen, camera crews and camera sites set up continuously throughout the investigation.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Based on the evidence that you have gathered, what are your thoughts on why this phenomena specifically happens at Skinwalker Ranch?
Dr. Travis Taylor: That is an excellent question and we ask ourselves this all the time. Now, the first thing that I will say is that when the team and I talk about this, in no way do we believe that our man-made farming fences along the border of the 500 acres is keeping out any super, you know, physics hyper paranormal -- whatever you guys want to call it, phenomenon within the borders of the ranch. In fact, people in the local in Fort Duchenne, Roosevelt and the other town that's nearby, are all the time reporting phenomena occurring outside of the boundaries of the ranch. Now, that being said, if you look at the Uintah Basin on Google Earth, to me it looks like an ancient meteor impact crater. It looks like it came from the east to the west at a low inclination. And that's what splattered the salt flats to the west of the Uintah Basin.
There's Gilsonite all around the Uintah Basin which typically is only found in a meteor impact crater, plus all of the petroleum that is underneath the Uintah Basin. There are a lot of geologists and natural physicists now beginning to think that impact craters cause a phenomena that creates petroleum. If you look at this impact crater, the ranch is dead center give or take but it's pretty much dead center. Perhaps [it has] something to do with the bowl shape of the basin or whatever caused the basin, made this the central or the nexus for whatever the activity might be.
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Would the government hide the evidence of extraterrestrials? What impact would that have on the population if they did or did not disclose evidence?
Dr. Travis Taylor: I honestly don't believe the Brookings Report. I don't think that people are going to go nuts. What does an invasion of something that's invisible do to society? Well guess what it makes it's all go hide in our houses and be afraid to touch anybody. That's exactly what's happening right now, as an alien invasion, with this COVID-19. Well I'm not saying the virus is from outer space.
What I'm saying is it's alien to us and we're having to defend it in the way that we figure out how to defend it. If there were an alien invasion, we'd have to figure out what type of invasion it were and then how to - what type it was and then go from there. It could be a bazillion possibilities on the type of invasion.
I don't believe in big conspiracies. There's no way that humans are adept enough and trust each other enough to create conspiracies so large it would take hundreds and hundreds of people to maintain it. Now there is the possibility that things have been classified for national security reasons.
At such time when it could be disclosed and not reveal a national security advantage, then I could see that taking place but what's it going to do to the general public? Most people, the general public, believe there are aliens anyway. I don't think it's going to do anything except assure them -- I'll tell you what it will do to politics: it will improve the funding for programs to do research like the AATIP program, or like advanced spacecraft technology or like advanced spacesuit technology. Why all of our soldiers don't have Iron Man suits I can't explain that. We should be - that should be one of the biggest defense projects we have.
But we don't spend any money on it. So that's the things that will change is where we're spending our money based on what we think the threats are. That's all I think disclosure will do. The everyday person, I think, they'll just say 'I knew it all along, I told you so.'
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Is it possible that the phenomena observed is man-made, such as Top Secret weapons testing?
Dr. Travis Taylor: So, as a person who does weapons testing for his day job, I can tell you that would be so highly crazy illegal [and] that it's nonsense. There would be people in jail. What I observed the first day on the ranch, we had a long discussion that if what we were observing was man-made. [What if] someone was violating federal laws and [what we would do] - we needed to alert the authorities if we could prove it was man-made. Then from that point on I realized what we were measuring was impossible even for mankind to make. At that point is when I dropped that line of discussion because I realized just flat out mankind was not doing what we are doing and it's probably a skeptics coping mechanism because I did it too.
The first conclusion to an odd strange thing is 'Oh that's a classified government program' and 'Oh they're doing human testing' honestly like, you know, there were programs that the CIA did back in the 60s and 70s that I don't think they're proud of and where people were involved in those experiments. [So, if] you look at it nowadays, we realize now that you can't do that and you won't get away with it forever and somebody will go to jail. I just am thoroughly convinced that this is not some top-secret weapons testing program on people or whatever. Number one: there's no site nearby that is doing that type of work and number two: they would eventually get caught and go to jail. There is oversight committees on classified programs in Congress and in the Senate. Eventually somebody would say, 'Wait a minute you all can't do that.'
Photo by History Copyright 2020
WATM: Okay, so now that we know that there isn't a government conspiracy or illegal weapons testing -- What is happening at Skinwalker Ranch?
Dr. Travis Taylor: So I'm not going to tell you what evidence was observed and what phenomena were observed because and, you know, it would be spoilers for the show. What I will tell you is yes, when you watch the show and you see the evidence we acquired that is scientifically verifiable, you're going to be blown away because I was. I'm still amazed to this day and still have a hard time believing what I saw.
You can watch the new one-hour nonfiction series "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" premiering Today, Tuesday, March 31 at 10PM ET/PT.
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
An ancient sediment core revealed a shocking discovery: pollen and spores, indicating a long-lost rainforest that was shrouded in perpetual darkness for months at a time.
Antarctica is the most remote and barren continent on Earth; a land where only the hardiest creatures can survive the punishing year-round conditions. But dial the clock back by 90 million years to the age of dinosaurs, and this icy landscape transforms into a lush temperate rainforest that somehow braved months of perpetual darkness.
The story of this ancient Antarctic rainforest is written in sediment buried 25 meters under the seafloor off Pine Island Glacier, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature. The fossils preserved in an ultra-rare core represent the first glimpse of Cretaceous ecosystems at latitudes this far south, just 500 miles from the South Pole.
“It is definitely the southernmost Cretaceous evidence ever recovered on the planet,” said lead author Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in a call. “We were the first ones to ever drill there in that environment.”
Klages and his colleagues obtained the core during a 2017 expedition of the research vessel Polarstern, but the extraction process was not easy. The specialized drilling machine used to penetrate the seafloor required several days to pull out each new core, and all it seemed to be reaching was quartzitic sandstone layers bereft of fossils.
THE MEBO SEABED DRILLING SYSTEM ON RV POLARSTERN.
IMAGE: JP KLAGES, AWI
Meanwhile, ice sheets from the nearby island began advancing toward the sample site, threatening to slice the cord between the drill and the vessel. Before evacuating the area to prevent the loss of expensive equipment, Klages and his colleagues decided to take one last three-meter core.
Unlike the light-colored sandstone, this core was dark, suggesting it was rich in organic materials. “We immediately saw that something special was going on,” recalled Klages. “We saw these amazing, pristine, complete, dense networks of fossil roots in the core connected down to the core base.”
“If you go to the forest in front of your house, or somewhere, and you drill a hole, you would get something very similar,” he said. “It was full of pollen and spores and really diverse assemblages.”
Over the past three years, the team has meticulously examined the core and unraveled incredible new details about the rainforest that once blanketed Antarctica. The pristine condition of these plant fossils demonstrates that this was a swampy ecosystem of conifer trees that may have looked like the rainforests of modern New Zealand.
Based on comparisons with similar Cretaceous biomes found much farther north, dinosaurs may well have roamed through this biodiverse Antarctic landscape. “It’s very likely that there were insects and dinosaurs and all of that there too,” Klages said, “but we can’t say for sure because we did not find anything like that. We only can say a lot of stuff about the paleobotany that we found in the core.”
Remarkably, these forests were located at a southern latitude of 82°, which means they would have been plunged into total darkness for about four months of each year. Modern rainforests rely on perpetual sunlight to survive, but this bygone ecosystem had to switch to another source of energy for the long, black winter.
ARTIST CONCEPT OF ANCIENT RAINFOREST.
IMAGE: ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT/J. MCKAY
That fuel may have been supplied by extraordinarily high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which could have staved the forests over until the return of the Sun. In fact, the discovery of this rainforest strongly suggests that CO2 levels in this era were higher than previously assumed, perhaps reaching 1,680 parts per million (ppm). For reference, our current CO2 levels are just above 400 ppm, though they are rapidly rising due to human activity.
These high CO2 levels imply that Cretaceous Earth was warmer than expected, and that no ice cover existed at the South Pole. Klages and his colleagues estimate that the mean annual temperature in the rainforest was about 12°C, with summer temperatures averaging around 19°C.
“It really was that warm,” Klages said. “That amazed us, of course, but also the climate modelers because no one expected such extreme values very close to the South Pole."
"We are quite confident now in saying that there was no ice present, that Antarctica was completely vegetated, and that we had very high CO2 concentrations.”
The research offers a rare chance to imagine this strange Antarctic forestland, but it also contains lessons for our modern warming world. For instance, Klages and his colleagues modelled what would happen if the current version of Earth had the same CO2 levels, and found that our planet’s polar ice cover reflects too much sunlight to result in the same high global temperatures.
“The presence of an ice sheet makes a huge difference, even if you have very high CO2 concentrations,” Klages said. “That is really important for us to know, and to think about how we can better preserve ice sheets.”
“We need to look into these extreme climates that happened on the planet already, because they show us what a greenhouse climate looks like,” he concluded. “We are definitely in an interesting time because if we continue what we’re doing right now, then it could lead into something that we can’t control anymore.”
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Wetenschappers hebben sporen van coniferen en boomvarens ontdekt op dieptes tot 30 meter onder de oceaanbodem dicht bij West-Antarctica - de overblijfselen van een regenwoud van 90 miljoen jaar geleden. Het woud groeide in het midden van het Krijt, het tijdperk van de dinosaurussen, zei het in Duitsland gebaseerde Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI), verwijzend naar een studie die woensdag in het vakblad Nature verscheen.
“We waren heel verrast door de ontdekking”, zei de hoofdauteur van de studie, AWI-geoloog Johann Klages. Volgens de bevindingen lag de gemiddelde jaartemperatuur op Antarctica in die tijd rond de 12 graden Celsius. “Dit bevestigt dat Antarctica ijsvrij moet zijn geweest”, aldus Klages. Tot dusver was dit enkel een veronderstelling. “We weten enkel dat het Krijt een van de warmste periodes ooit was, maar we hadden geen bewijs van het gebied bij de Zuidpool.”
Uit analyses bleek dat de concentratie aan koolstofdioxide in de atmosfeer veel hoger was dan aanvankelijk verondersteld. “De studie illustreert het grote potentieel van het broeikasgas kooldioxide als energieleverancier en de afkoelende eigenschappen van de ijslagen van vandaag”, benadrukte Klages. Waarom het klimaat later afkoelde, trachten de vorsers nog uit te zoeken.
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A Lake Full Of Human Bones - Thats Pretty Scary
A Lake Full Of Human Bones - Thats Pretty Scary
If there is one thing that anybody can assure you of, it is this. When it comes to travelling within India, you will never ever complain of boredom. This is one country that is filled to bursting with lots of fun experiences, some of which border on the bizarre! Yes, since India is steeped in superstition, there are a couple of things that may seem strange or bizarre to a non-residential citizen. However, there are other fun and unusual places in India things that you will see when you choose to travel across the country. The Taj Mahal and the Konark temple are all definite must-visits. But those are places everybody visits in India. So, why not veer off the beaten track sometimes?
Possible meteor impact leaving huge crater and destroys over 100 houses in Akure, Nigeria
Possible meteor impact leaving huge crater and destroys over 100 houses in Akure, Nigeria
Earlier in March, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that an asteroid would fly over Earth. This asteroid is referred to as large and potentially dangerous.
The asteroid named 2012 XA133 was set to pass Earth on Thursday March 26th (March 27th in Nigeria) at a speed of 53,000 mph. However, with a note of confirmation, NASA said the Earth would not be affected.
“When objects close to the Earth revolve around the sun, near-Earth objects can come close to Earth.
Note that the "astronomical" corridor can be very far away from a human point of view: millions or even tens of millions of kilometers.
However, the Nigerians in Akure were on alert in the early hours of March 28, after hearing a loud explosion which shook the entire town of Akure, which led to the destruction of over 100 buildings, school, churches in the city's Eleyowo community located 1 km from Accor airport.
Amid speculation about the noise, the governor said that it was a truck carrying explosives that exploded, but experts led by Adepelumi Adekunle, a professor of geophysics and earthquake engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, said the explosion was caused by a natural phenomenon, possible a meteor or at least a part of an asteroid or meteor which impacted the location from “an angle of 43 degrees leaving a crater 21m diameter and 7.8m depth.
Adekunle added there was no evidence of a buried vehicle, buried ordinance or explosives from the site, and that “foreign rocks and strange metallic objects” were found within the crater.
The fact that' strange metallic objects' have also been found within the crater, the question arises whether it was indeed a meteor or something extraterrestrial.
DAYTIME VIDEO: UFO caught on tape over Sacramento, California 29-Mar-2020
DAYTIME VIDEO: UFO caught on tape over Sacramento, California 29-Mar-2020
Check out this amazing new footage of a bright unidentified flying object hovering in the sky above Sacramento, California. It was recorded on 29th March 2020 and submitted to us through our Facebook page.
Glowing orbs over Laguna beach, California 31-Mar-2020
Glowing orbs over Laguna beach, California 31-Mar-2020
Here’s one new footage of a bright orbs hovering in the sky above Laguna beach, California on 31st March 2020.
Witness report:
set of four glowing orbs that became seven appeared in a straight line above the water offshore. Out walking our dogs on the streets of North Laguna Beach. Very quiet out with most observing the stay at home rules. Looked out to the water and notice 4 bright glowing objects above the water. The slowly the number increased one by one until at one point there were seven. Then they started to fade out one by one until there were none left. I thought at first that someone had shot some flares off from a boat but all the objects matinee a straight line. We observed them for around 10-15 minutes and then walked back home. We took pictures and have video.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.