Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
04-04-2020
Really fast UFO shown on Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs
Really fast UFO shown on Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs
This really fast and bright unidentified flying object was shown on Dirty Jobs series on Discovery Channel. It was noticed by the viewer that uploaded this clip on MUFON’s website.
When Three Species of Human Ancestor Walked The Earth
When Three Species of Human Ancestor Walked The Earth
An international team including ASU researcher Gary Schwartz, has unearthed the earliest known skull of Homo erectus, the first of our ancestors to be nearly human-like in their anatomy and aspects of their behavior.
Years of painstaking excavation at the fossil-rich site of Drimolen, nestled within the Cradle of Humankind (a UNESCO World Heritage site located just 40 kilometers or around 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa), has resulted in the recovery of several new and important fossils. The skull, attributed to Homo erectus, is securely dated to be two million years old.
Homo erectus cranium from Dimolen, South Africa.
Credit Angeline Leece.
In a paper published this week in Science, the team of nearly 30 scientists from five countries share details of this skull — the most ancient fossil Homo erectus known — and other fossils from Drimolen and discuss how these new finds are forcing us to rewrite a part of our species’ evolutionary history.
The high-resolution dating of Drimolen’s fossil deposits demonstrates the age of the new skull to pre-date Homo erectus specimens from other sites within and outside of Africa by at least 100,000 to 200,000 years and thus confirms an African origin for the species.
The skull, reconstructed from more than 150 separate fragments, is of an individual likely aged between three and six years old, giving scientists a rare glimpse into childhood growth and development in these early human ancestors.
A 3D laser scan of Drimolen main quarry showing the discovery location of the new Homo erectus (DNH 134) and Paranthropus robustus (DNH 152) crania relative to the major site features and the position of the original fossil find the site (DNH 7).”
Credit: David Strait
Additional fossils recovered from Drimolen belong to a different species — in fact, a different genus of ancient human altogether — the more heavily built, robust human ancestor Paranthropus robustus, known to also occur at several nearby cave sites preserving fossils of the same geological age. A third, distinctive species, Australopithecus sediba, is known from two-million-year old deposits of an ancient cave site virtually down the road from Drimolen.
“Unlike the situation today, where we are the only human species, two million years ago our direct ancestor was not alone,” said Andy Herries, project director and lead researcher from La Trobe University in Australia.
Gary Schwartz, a paleoanthropologist and research associate with ASU’s Institute of Human Origins, participated in the excavations and recovery of the new cranium, and as an expert in the evolution of growth and development, is continuing his work with the research team to analyze the many infant and juvenile specimens found at the site.
“What is really exciting is the discovery that during this same narrow time slice, at just around two million years ago, there were three very different types of ancient human ancestors roaming the same small landscape,” said Schwartz, who is also an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.. “We don’t yet know whether they interacted directly, but their presence raises the possibility that these ancient fossil humans evolved strategies to divvy up the landscape and its resources in some way to enable them to live in such close proximity.”
Drimolen excavation site. Gary Schwartz is in the red hard hat.
Credit: Andy Herries and Giovanni Boschian
The ability to date Drimolen’s cave deposits with such a high degree of precision, using a range of different dating techniques, allowed the team to address important broader questions about human evolution in this region of Africa.
Paper co-author Justin Adams from Monash University (Australia), a specialist in reconstructing paleohabitats based on the animals preserved at fossil sites, said the discovery now allows us to address what role changing habitats, resources, and the unique biological adaptations of early Homo erectus may have played in the eventual extinction of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa.
“The discovery of the earliest Homo erectus marks a milestone for South African fossil heritage,” said Stephanie Baker, project co-director and University of Johannesburg doctoral student.
Fieldwork will continue at Drimolen, expanding the excavations to include even more ancient components of the cave and to provide a more in-depth glimpse at the forces shaping human evolution in this part of the African continent.
Contacts and sources:
Julie Russ - Arizona State University
Publication:
Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa. Andy I. R. Herries, Jesse M. Martin, A. B. Leece, Justin W. Adams, Giovanni Boschian, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Tara R. Edwards, Tom Mallett, Jason Massey, Ashleigh Murszewski, Simon Neubauer, Robyn Pickering, David S. Strait, Brian J. Armstrong, Stephanie Baker, Matthew V. Caruana, Tim Denham, John Hellstrom, Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi, Simon Mokobane, Paul Penzo-Kajewski, Douglass S. Rovinsky, Gary T. Schwartz, Rhiannon C. Stammers, Coen Wilson, Jon Woodhead, Colin Menter. Science, 2020; 368 (6486): eaaw7293 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw7293
A team of scientists drilled into the ground near the South Pole to discover forest and fossils from the Cretaceous nearly 90 million years ago, which is the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, as the BBC reported.
The frozen continent was once home to a swampy rainforest and had average temperatures around 53 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the new study published in the journal Nature. The world than was much warmer and sea levels were 550 feet higher than they are now, according to Newsweek.
The discovery of preserved roots, pollen and spores in west Antarctica shows that the world at that time was a lot warmer than previously thought. For vegetation to grow in Antarctica during that period, the Earth needed a greenhouse climate and carbon dioxide levels much higher than scientists had estimated they were. It also means, the continent did not have glaciers then, as The Guardian reported.
In fact, the vegetation was probably similar to what is found New Zealand’s South Island today, according to the BBC.
“We didn’t know that this Cretaceous greenhouse climate was that extreme,” Dr. Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and a co-author of the research said to The Guardian. “It shows us what carbon dioxide is able to do.”
Speaking to Newsweek, he said, “We didn’t expect anything like this. An entirely terrestrial record of Antarctic forest soil at 82 degrees south!”
The research took place about 550 miles away from the South Pole. The discovery and analysis were conducted out by an international team of researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and included Imperial College London scientists.
They scientists found traces of the preserved forest in a sediment core drilled from the seabed in West Antarctica, near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. They noticed an odd color in one section that would have once been on land. color. “We just saw that we probably found something very special and it turned out to be true during our analyses of the following two-and-a-half years,” Klages told Newsweek.
According to a statement from Imperial College London, the team used a CT-scan to analyze the section of the core and discovered a dense network of fossil roots, which was so well preserved that they could make out individual cell structures. The sample also contained many traces of pollen and spores from plants, including from flowering plants — the first ever found at these high Antarctic latitudes.
“The preservation of this 90-million-year-old forest is exceptional, but even more surprising is the world it reveals,” Professor Tina van de Flierdt, from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering at Imperial College London and a co-author on the paper, said in the statement. “Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected.”
The researcher reconstructed the environment of this preserved forest, by analyzing descendant plants, as well as temperature and precipitation indicators within the sample. They created an animated movie of their discovery.
“We have a really nice X-ray movie through the sediment core,” Karsten Gohl, who spearheaded the expedition on Germany’s Research Vessel Polarstern, said to the BBC. “It’s like we’ve drilled into a modern swamp environment and you’re seeing the living root system, small plant particles and pollen – but this is all preserved from 90 million years ago. It’s amazing.”
One remarkable aspect of the plant fossils is that the plants had to adapt to three to four months of darkness.
“Probably these plants, they had a much more effective way of shutting down for a much longer amount of time and then come back successfully,” Klages said to the BBC. “That was quite an interesting adaptation, which is not present right now on the planet, but which can evolve.”
The discovery of plant fossils has lessons for today as the climate crisis bears down on us. Dr. James Bendle, an expert in organic geochemistry from the University of Birmingham in the UK, told The Guardian that the Antarctic ecosystem holds clues for our future since the unabated use of fossil fuels use could push concentrations of carbon dioxide to levels similar to those from 90 million years ago by the start of the next century.
“Ultimately, if we have an atmosphere of more than 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide, we are committing ourselves to a future planet that has little to no ice, and ultimately an Antarctic continent that would be vegetated and wouldn’t have an ice cover,” he said.
After centuries searching for extraterrestrial life, we might find that first contact is not with organic creatures at all.
We have a problem. In a 10-billion-year-old galaxy there should have been ample opportunity for at least one species to escape its own mess, and to spread across the stars, filling every niche. That this species doesn’t seem to have come calling leads to Fermi’s Paradox – if life isn’t impossibly rare, then where is everyone? Efforts to scan the skies for signs of intelligent life have come up blank too, adding to the puzzle. Perhaps the vast gulfs of interstellar space and the narrow windows of time for communicative species to exist within shouting distance of each other are to blame. Intelligences might be like small ships passing in the night in a vast ocean. Actual close encounters of any kind could be exceedingly unusual.
Another explanation for the great silence of the galaxy is that any surviving intelligence out there is so different from us, so radically evolved, that we can’t even conceive of its forms or behaviours. As a consequence, actually detecting and recognising it could be next to impossible. That’s a bit of a downer.
But there is also a possibility that lies between such extremes and it might be the most probable of all. When our first encounter or detection finally occurs, it could be a machine intelligence that appears in our sights.
The idea is not truly new. Back in the 1940s, the mathematician John von Neumann explored the possibilities of non-biological, self-replicating systems steeped in computation but requiring no operating minds. Later on, in the 1980s, others expanded on this concept by considering the real engineering needs for autonomous, replicating, space-faring devices; these machines would be able to roam the Universe, finding raw materials to build more and more of themselves, creating the infrastructure for energy from space or human settlement among the stars.
It would require a more complex mission still for such devices to have true artificial intelligence (AI). What would that purpose be, and what kind of AI is such a machine likely to have? An encounter with an alien machine could help us unravel this puzzle.
One possibility is that this machine is super-capable, exceeding our human capacity for cognitive or analytical tasks. Such an AI might be exceedingly hard to understand, either in terms of its underlying motivation or because of practical barriers of communication bandwidth. For this device, talking to us might be like talking to an infant. Or trying to discuss the collected works of Shakespeare using pictographs. An alien system optimised for processing vast data streams might not even be able to downgrade its pace enough to notice that we’re trying to talk, whether we use technology or not.
An extraterrestrial (ET) AI could also be seriously intimidating and scary simply because of its machine nature: a thing animated from non-living pieces, just like the classic tale of the golem moulded from clay or mud. By comparison, while a biological alien might be shocking, it would surely have some traits in common with us. We could convince ourselves that evolution leads to recognisable, even sympathetic behaviours and intentions. An artificial entity need not follow all of those evolutionary rules, taking alienness to a whole other level.
Encountering an alien AI would not only point to our own possible future, but also prompt a curious shift in our worldview. When Nicolaus Copernicus proposed in the 1500s that the Earth was not central in any way to the Universe, he set in motion the development of a critical scientific idea: that there is nothing cosmically special or significant about us. But meeting an ET-AI could turn that realisation on its head: if the only intelligence we meet is machine in nature, then we would be special, after all.
If we do meet an AI in our cosmological jaunt, it probably won’t be conscious in the full sense of the word. In fact, I think we’d find ourselves facing something akin to a ‘savant’ intelligence – a whiz at specific tasks, but otherwise extremely limited in its capacities.
A recent example right here on Earth is Google’s AlphaGo Master, a system that plays the board game Go, and learns some of its skills by exposure to vast catalogues of human-played games. Within a year of its inception, it began outdoing the world’s highest-ranking human Go players. Next came an evolved system called AlphaGo Zero. In 40 days of training, without recourse to data from historical games, this new AI made itself better than its silicon ancestor, and better than any living human. Now, yet another variant, AlphaZero, has taken a mere 24 hours to train itself and beat a modestly trained iteration of AlphaGo Zero – as well as topping other systems at playing both chess and Shogi, sometimes known as Japanese chess. If you read interviews with expert players, you’ll see that these machines don’t even play like humans, their strategies are alien and seemingly unfathomable.
These Alphas are the epitome of a savant machine. Such AIs will help us answer a host of scientific problems that are presently on the hairy edge of tractability. The researchers behind the Alpha systems are already talking about the puzzle of protein-folding – how chains of amino acids twist, gyrate and fold into structures with essential biological utility. The underlying molecular rules are understood but predicting what a particular recipe will give you is currently extremely difficult. It certainly sounds like a job for some future AlphaFold Zero.
Or take other pieces of modern science. Cosmological simulations or climate and weather predictions are all driven by physics phenomena such as gravitation, fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. Computer codes digitise these phenomena, calculating billions of iterations of forces and movements. But these computations are still hemmed in by processor speeds and precision. Deep-learning self-taught AIs might turn out to do better as quantitative soothsayers than those intense numerical simulations – presently bounded by their comparatively plodding, systematic approaches. A machine’s savant intuition might be able to skip across compute cycles, ‘seeing’ what the answer will be in a probabilistic sense, rather than painstakingly reproducing a pixelated version of it. Similarly, a machine’s savant intuition might be applied to the root process of scientific deduction and discovery itself. The possibilities are yet to be much explored, but they could be extraordinary. Savant machines could turn out to be simply so useful, so revolutionary in expanding our capacity for discovery and exploration, that there’s little initial motivation to seek anything fancier.
A cosmos filled with worlds offers millions, billions, even trillions of natural test tubes.
If this pattern of machine development is happening for us, it could represent a pattern that happens across the cosmos to influence the nature of cosmic exploration itself. Savant AIs would become the ultimate tools for allowing biological life to reach across interstellar distances: more robust than biology, and not smart enough to raise ethical concerns about being sent off to roam the cosmos according to our scientific whims. Propelling millions of these investigators into space would be an inevitable step. They could be sent to other stars and planetary systems, and designed to recognise the most interesting characteristics of these places, from astrophysics to the presence of life. These machines would reflect the motivations of their biological creators; perhaps simple curiosity, perhaps something more.
Another compelling reason for savant machines to be roaming the cosmos arises from thinking about how to build more general, more powerful AIs. It might be that a general AI system can be built out of lots of smaller savant AIs, each taking on some specific, difficult cognitive task, but linked together. That linkage could be very localised or quite spread out like the architecture of biological neural circuits. There’s the face-recognising savant, the natural-language savant, the calculus-savant, the tax-evading savant. One could then imagine an AI whose job is to learn how to combine savant AIs into something akin to a general intelligence – establishing a nursery for machine consciousness run from on-high.
The most challenging task for a nursery-room AI would be how to expose its collective of savants to the complexity of the real-world environment. Nature isn’t just about meeting fixed goals; it’s full of noise, randomness and trillions upon trillions of interacting pieces. For example, from the very instant an embryo forms, it is exposed to constant variation. First just a few cells, it senses the world purely from a molecular point of view. As the embryo develops organs to register light, sound, touch and smell, the portals to experience – and their complexity – expand.
In short, the way for a species to make a better AI is to let that AI and its components explore the messy Universe. As complex and nourishing as a single planet can be, a cosmos filled with worlds offers millions, billions, even trillions of natural test tubes, each with its own tale of natural selection and chance. Spreading savant AI pieces across the stars offers a way to exploit these endless natural experiments and sensory inputs.
The path towards better AI might parallel biological evolution only in superficial ways. Consider the raw development of a human brain. The core process appears to be a one-shot effort. It starts with stem cells racing up an initial structure called a neural tube at a rate of 15 million every hour and hooking together in a developing embryo. That prodigious assembly of the brain is followed by learning – the brain is shaped and pruned as experience creates our unique path through life. Although we’re incredibly flexible, and capable of absorbing and mastering all sorts of skills and knowledge, as individuals we are also, sadly, constrained by whatever genetic hand we were dealt. And, in truth, while we can all keep learning and changing, we seldom develop any miraculous new talents during our lifetimes.
A machine might not be as constrained, especially if critical pieces are out exploring the cosmos and have been designed to evolve into something new. Savant components of a larger intelligence might come and go in an ever-changing pick-and-mix. Some cognitive skills might be useful in certain contexts but could simply get in the way in other situations. In other words, machine-based intelligence could be highly fluid, changeable and, most of all, rapidly evolvable. As a consequence, what could be lurking out there in the cosmos is a vast and diverse zoo of AIs.
We might be incapable of registering the presence of billion-year-old machine savants.
In a sense, such AIs parallel the microbial machines that are at the core of life on Earth – forming the smallest units of intelligence to traverse the Universe, and ultimately combining together, as the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis posed, to create multicellular creatures, larger entities and consciousness itself. In fact, long after a biological species has faded away amid the relentless torrent of natural selection, or self-destruction, this type of machine will remain.
AI beyond Earth might be hard to recognise. Just as someone living on the steppe in 12th-century Mongolia would find a self-driving car both magical and meaningless, we might be quite incapable of registering or interpreting the presence of billion-year-old machine savants. Equally, savant machines might not be actively seeking to talk to us, or any other intelligences.
But a recognisable encounter with even one savant machine would indeed change everything. It would tell us that the galaxy is awash with intelligence, and could suggest that our future might be one of a vestigial, fading biological presence. Most of all, this discovery would tell us that we might currently be the only natural minds consciously aware of these facts. That’s because the biology that could produce AI explorers would likely evolve or go extinct on timescales far shorter than the persistence of these interstellar machines, and we already live in a galaxy that is 10 billion years old.
Finding an AI-ET could unlock our own cosmic exploration by lighting a path forward. It might also offer insight into the nature of its creators, those ancestral intelligences, presumably in biological form. Exactly what this investigative process would look like is extremely hard to imagine. Even a single savant AI might not come in one physical package but rather a swarm of tinier components incredibly hard to digest. However, let’s assume that by interrogation or literal disassembly we eventually solve the mystery of the AI-ET’s origins. We might find evidence of an organic species like us – or we might discover only machines all the way down.
Caleb Scharf is director of astrobiology at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology (2009), which won the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award. His latest book is The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing (2017).
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Investigators reveal the secret history of several U.S. Presidents and their connection to the UFO phenomenon. Starting with FDR, researchers examine the startling discoveries of unidentified flying craft facing a president preoccupied by WWII.
What happens to your religion if we find extraterrestrial life?
What happens to your religion if we find extraterrestrial life?
How will humankind react after astronomers hand over rock-solid scientific evidence for the existence of life beyond the Earth? No more speculating. No more wondering. The moment scientists announce this discovery, everything will change. Not least of all, our philosophies and religions will need to incorporate the new information.
Searching for signs of life
Astronomers have now identified thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. At the current rate of discovery, millions more will be found this century.
Having already found the physical planets, astronomers are now searching for our biological neighbors. Over the next fifty years, they will begin the tantalizing, detailed study of millions of planets, looking for evidence of the presence of life on or below the surfaces or in the atmospheres of those planets.
And it’s very likely that astronomers will find it. Despite the fact that more than one-third of Americans surveyed believe that aliens have already visited Earth, the first evidence of life beyond our planet probably won’t be radio signals, little green men or flying saucers. Instead, a 21st century Galileo, using an enormous, 50-meter-diameter telescope, will collect light from the atmospheres of distant planets, looking for the signatures of biologically significant molecules.
Astronomers filter that light from far away through spectrometers – high-tech prisms that tease the light apart into its many distinct wavelengths. They’re looking for the telltale fingerprints of molecules that would not exist in abundance in these atmospheres in the absence of living things. The spectroscopic data will tell whether a planet’s environment has been altered in ways that point to biological processes at work.
If we aren’t alone, who are we?
With the discovery in a distant planet’s light spectrum of a chemical that could only be produced by living creatures, humankind will have the opportunity to read a new page in the book of knowledge. We will no longer be speculating about whether other beings exist in the universe. We will know that we not alone.
An affirmative answer to the question “Does life exist anywhere else in the universe beyond Earth?” would raise immediate and profoundly important cosmotheological questions about our place in the universe. If extraterrestrial others exist, then my religion and my religious beliefs and practices might not be universal. If my religion is not universally applicable to all extraterrestrial others, perhaps my religion need not be offered to, let alone forced on, all terrestrial others. Ultimately, we might learn some important lessons applicable here at home just from considering the possibility of life beyond our planet.
In my book, I investigated the sacred writings of the world’s most widely practiced religions, asking what each religion has to say about the uniqueness or non-uniqueness of life on Earth, and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe.
Extrasolar sinners?
Let’s examine a seemingly simple yet exceedingly complex theological question: could extraterrestrials be Christians? If Jesus died in order to redeem humanity from the state of sin into which humans are born, does the death and resurrection of Jesus, on Earth, also redeem other sentient beings from a similar state of sin? If so, why are the extraterrestrials sinful? Is sin built into the very fabric of the space and time of the universe? Or can life exist in parts of the universe without being in a state of sin and therefore without the need of redemption and thus without the need for Christianity? Many different solutions to these puzzles involving Christian theology have been put forward. None of them yet satisfy all Christians.
Mormon worlds
Mormon scripture clearly teaches that other inhabited worlds exist and that “the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doctrines and Covenants 76:24). The Earth, however, is a favored world in Mormonism, because Jesus, as understood by Mormons, lived and was resurrected only on Earth. In addition, Mormon so-called intelligences can only achieve their own spiritual goals during their lives on Earth, not during lifetimes on other worlds. Thus, for Mormons, the Earth might not be the physical center of the universe but it is the most favored place in the universe. Such a view implies that all other worlds are, somehow, lesser worlds than Earth.
Bahá’í without bias
Members of the Bahá’í Faith have a view of the universe that has no bias for or against the Earth as a special place or for against humans as a special sentient species. The principles of the Bahá’í Faith – unifying society, abandoning prejudice, equalizing opportunities for all people, eliminating poverty – are about humans on Earth. The Bahá’í faithful would expect any creatures anywhere in the universe to worship the same God as do humans, but to do so according to their own, world-specific ways.
Light years from Mecca
The pillars of the faith for Muslims require the faithful to pray five times every day while facing Mecca. Because determining the direction of Mecca correctly could be extremely difficult on a quickly spinning planet millions of light years from Earth, practicing the same faith on another world might not make any sense. Yet the words of the Qu’ran tell us that “Whatever beings there are in the heavens and the earth do prostrate themselves to Allah” (13:15). Can terrestrial Muslims accept that the prophetically revealed religion of Muhammad is intended only for humans on earth and that other worlds would have their own prophets?
Astronomers as paradigm-shatterers At certain moments throughout history, astronomers’ discoveries have exerted an outsized influence on human culture. Ancient Greek astronomers unflattened the Earth – though many then chose to forget this knowledge. Renaissance scholars Copernicus and Galileo put the Earth in motion around the Sun and moved humans away from the center of the universe. In the 20th century, Edwin Hubble eliminated the very idea that the universe has any center at all. He demonstrated that what the universe has is a beginning in time and that, bizarrely, the universe, the very fabric of three-dimensional space, is expanding.
Clearly, when astronomers offer the world bold new ideas, they don’t mess around. Another such paradigm-shattering new idea may be in the light arriving at our telescopes now.
The ConversationNo matter which (a)theistic background informs your theology, you may have to wrestle with the data astronomers will be bringing to houses of worship in the very near future. You will need to ask: Is my God the God of the entire universe? Is my religion a terrestrial or a universal religion? As people work to reconcile the discovery of extrasolar life with their theological and philosophical worldviews, adapting to the news of life beyond Earth will be discomfiting and perhaps even disruptive.
But this doesn't mean the object is breaking apart in a meaningful way.
Imagery of interstellar Comet Borisov captured by the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that a piece broke off the object’s nucleus between March 23 and March 28, 2020. (The middle photo was taken with a different filter than the two on the sides, explaining its different appearance.)
Our solar system's second known interstellar visitor doesn't seem to be in one piece anymore.
Photos of the interstellar Comet Borisov taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on March 28 and March 30 show an elongated nucleus that appears to have two distinct components, astronomers announced in a note Thursday (April 2). That's a very different situation than the one Hubble observed on March 23, when the nucleus was a single entity.
"Actually, it turns out almost never to be that case," Jewitt told Space.com, referring to similar observations of native-born comets.
"Usually, the main nucleus drops off a piece, and the piece is small compared to the main nucleus — it contains a tiny fraction of the total mass," he said. "But, because it was just plucked out of the nucleus, it's pretty icy. And the ice fizzes and sublimates like crazy, making it a good producer of dust."
Dust is what Hubble is picking up in these photos. So, it's unlikely that Borisov is breaking apart in a significant way, Jewitt added. He estimated that Borisov may have just lost 0.1% to 1% of its total mass, comparing the probable scenario to a car that just dropped a side mirror.
Still, the researchers don't know for sure that this is the case; it's possible that something more dramatic just happened. Jewitt and his colleagues hope to figure it out, and additional Hubble observations could do the trick.
For example, further Hubble imagery could show researchers how fast the shed fragment is accelerating away from the main nucleus and how long it remains observable. Both of these data points would provide clues about the size of the newly liberated shard, Jewitt said.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of the interstellar object Comet 2I/Borisov on Oct. 12, 2019. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt (UCLA))
Comet Borisov was detected in August 2019 and made its closest approach to the sun in December. It's not necessarily surprising to see a chunk fly off the comet now, four months after this perihelion passage, Jewitt said; the timeline is consistent with two prominent models of comet shedding.
In one of those models, comets begin spinning faster after close solar approaches because the heating they experience causes significant, and asymmetrical, mass loss. It may take several months for the spin-up to get dramatic enough for pieces to go flying off into space, Jewitt said.
In the other model, this same heating causes pressure to build up inside comet nuclei. Eventually, the pressure reaches a pocket of supervolatile ice, such as carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, resulting in a blowout. And, again, this may take some time. (But comets may be too leaky for this explanation to be viable in most circumstances, Jewitt said.)
There's also the possibility that Comet Borisov got hit by something. But an impact is unlikely to be the explanation, Jewitt said, given how empty space is and how strange Borisov's orbit is compared to objects that were born in our solar system.
Borisov is the second known interstellar body ever spotted in our solar system. The first was the mysterious object 'Oumuamua, whose multilayered weirdness has prompted speculation that it may be an alien spacecraft of some sort.
'Oumuamua was already barreling toward the outer solar system when it was detected. Borisov had not yet rounded the sun in August 2019, meaning astronomers have been able to track it for longer stretches and in greater detail.
"It's entirely possible that the virus is going to kill the comet for most astronomers," Jewitt said.
But Hubble is still operating despite the outbreak, and this iconic eye in the sky is well suited to observe Borisov. Indeed, even the biggest ground-based scopes don't have the resolution required to detect the recent shedding event, Jewitt said.
"So, really, only [the Hubble] Space Telescope can see this sort of thing," he said.
A scarlet fan spread across the skies over Japan 1,400 years ago, and it's been puzzling astronomers ever since.
According to historical records, on Dec. 30, 620, a "red sign" shaped like "a pheasant tail" appeared in the sky. At the time, the sign was considered a bad omen. Modern scientists looking back at the report have wondered whether the spectacle may have been caused by an aurora or a comet, but neither of those explanations quite made sense.
Ryuho Kataoka, who studies space weather at the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan, and his colleagues decided they wanted to investigate what could have caused the scarlet phenomenon, according to a statement.
They began by comparing the historical description with a modern understanding of auroras. Although these celestial dances are often green, they can appear in other colors, including red, depending on which elements in Earth's atmosphere are being activated by charged particles spit out by the sun.
The team tracked down more recent observations of auroras that were visible over Japan in a fan shape with a red background. That matches the "pheasant tail" description of the 620 event. The researchers also mapped what Earth's changing magnetic field would have looked like at the time, suggesting that Japan would have been around 33 degrees of magnetic latitude in 620, as opposed to 25 degrees today, according to the statement.
A pheasant with its tail fanned out, below. (Image credit: Hiromichi Nakagawa)
The researchers also analyzed another hypothesis about the "red sign" — that it was caused by a comet. But such spectacles usually aren't tinged red, and the team determined that there should have been a low probability of a comet streaking by at the time.
"This is an interesting and successful example that modern science can benefit from the ancient Japanese emotion evoked when the surprising appearance of heaven reminded them of a familiar bird," Kataoka said.
The research is described in a paper published March 31 in the Sokendai Review of Culture and Social Studies.
In the world of the paranormal there are a variety of different types of encounters with seemingly humanoid entities. Some of these are of course of ghosts, while others can be of lesser defined phenomena, and some of these truly leave us scratching our heads. Among such reports are scattered accounts of encounters with what seem to be pitch black entities of some sort, which seem to appear anywhere and which have origins and machinations that are inscrutable to us. Here is a selection of such strange encounters with black humanoid entities from beyond our understanding.
Some of these strange encounters happen out in the wilds where things are already dark and scary enough as it is without having to worry about pitch black, possibly demonic entities. One such story comes to us from Reddit user “Justinf10000,” who says he had his spooky experience in the woods of Camp Tommy, in Fishkill, New York. He says he had been working as a camp counselor at the time of the incident, and that on this evening he was sneaking out to go meet up with his girlfriend in one of the other cabins. He wasn’t supposed to be out, as the cabins were supposed to be locked down after 10PM, but he had done this often and there was no reason to think anything strange would happen this time, but it did anyway. He explains of what happened as he cut through the forest:
Suddenly I heard rustling in the woods, and stopped to investigate it. There are bears/other animals so I was expecting something like that. This 3 foot humanoid type thing suddenly jumps out of the bushes spooked and looks at me. It’s too dark for me to make out any of its features, other than it was standing on 2 feet, had 2 arms, and basically looked just like a miniature person without any features (just looked solid black, if it had clothes on, I would have been able to notice that).
I was really curious what it was so I started walking towards it, and it must have got more spooked because it bolted back into the woods. I’ll never forget how mechanical it looked as it took off running too. It’s whole body basically shifted 90 degrees (like if someone was doing the robot dance) and it just took off. I have never seen anything on 2 legs run that quickly so I was pretty confused about what it was. I’m a pretty fast runner and fit person in general, but this thing was on another level of fast. As much as I try to make sense of it, I still to this day have no idea wtf it was. It was very human, but too short to be a human (3 feet tall is about accurate) and i really don’t know how a human could run that fast anyways. I have no freakin idea but it’s always bugged me! Maybe one day I will go back to try and find this creature again!
Strange, indeed. Another such account comes to us from the wilds of the state of Alabama, where Reddit user “AMpwrs” says she had a rather bizarre experience just after an evening riding around in his 4×4 truck through a wooded area. On their way back they apparently ran out of gas and were forced to push the truck to a secluded parking area, where they decided to sit and take a rest before deciding what to do next. It was as they sat there that the witness looked up and saw something strange in the solitary security light of the parking lot. He says of what happened next:
Standing there no more than 10 ft in front us and directly in clear view under the security light was a horrible creature. I froze up and just remained as silent as I could, then my buddy screams out loudly. That’s when this thing noticed us and jumped, turning in our direction. It immediately ran off in an awkward lanky fashion and ducked behind a tree. It then peeked around the tree back toward us then sprinted off towards the woods where it disappeared. That’s when I said, “did you see that”?
My friend immediately described exactly what it was that I had just witnessed down to detail. A solid black bipedal creature with shiny tight skin. It had an elongated head and no face. It did have facial bone structure but no orifices. No mouth, no nostrils and no eyes. You could see every bone in its body and it was slightly hunched. It had long dangling pointy fingers.
The creature apparently then ran off into the night and was not seen again. What was this thing? Who knows? Not all of these encounters happen out in the middle of nowhere. Another tale comes to us from a soldier in the U.S. Army, who at the time was at the sprawling, 94,000-acre Fort Sill, in Lawton, Oklahoma, for training exercises. He says that on this evening he was on firewatch duty, which was basically a pretty boring detail according to him. However, on this evening it would prove to be anything but boring. The witness says:
One Saturday I had firewatch. Not a big deal i decided I’d chill in my room for most of it and make myself been seen every now and then. We had a gym below the main floor. We would spend a lot of time in that gym. Firewatch was sometimes tasked with cleaning it up. There was a small walled off section though. It used to contain an electric chair. I’m still unsure on the history of the building we we’re at but it was next to a large cemetery. We would hear the occasional creepy story about the building and the electric chair.
Anyway, I digress. That night I was asked to clean the gym and then to mop 3rd deck. At the time no one lived on 3rd deck. My buddy and I cleaned the gym then walked up the stairs to mop. He mopped from the end to the middle and I proceeded to mop the rest of the way to the stairs. We finished mopping my friend went to go skate in his room while I told duty we we’re done. I walked back up the stairs to grab the mop bucket. I got up there and I realized someone had walked all over the floor that we just mopped. So I looked down the hallway.
When I did I saw a human like figure. Except it was black. The blackest black I have ever seen. I felt this wave of uncertainty and fear wash over me. Something I have never felt before. I sprinted down the stairs ran to my room waking my roommate up. He thought I was messing with him when I told him what happened. After that I never saw the figure again while I was there. It was honestly one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.
What in the world was going on here? Was this a ghost, his imagination, or something else altogether? On occasion, such entities are seen around more residential areas or even more creepily within homes. One account from Your Ghost Stories supposedly happened in 2008 in the U.S. state of Connecticut, with the witness saying that the strangeness began when he woke up one evening to find a strange presence in his room. He explains of what happened next:
A few seconds after awaking I felt the sensation of something gripping my heart and squeezing it to the point where it was painful. For me to admit pain, actual pain, with what I’ve gone through in terms of getting hurt playing sports, means that it was really something bad. Also, I don’t wake up at those hours of the morning anymore without a reason I’m aware of, a dream, having to go to the bathroom, or something along those lines. When I woke up for this, there was no immediate cause that I can remember that forced me to wake up… All I remember is waking up.
In the corner of my bed room, there was a black shadow, darker than my room that appeared to be humanoid, but somehow didn’t really have a shape. I never looked directly at it, but only looked at it out of the corner of my eye, which is unusual because I ALWAYS look at unusual objects/things. I do remember it seeming to reach out toward me at one point. All I did was curl up into a ball and started praying. A minute or 2 after I started praying, I felt the pressure in my chest release, and with it came a profound calmness I’ve never had before, and I’ve managed to maintain a piece of that calmness ever since. My house is not haunted, nobody has ever died in it, and there’s no ancient Indian Graveyard underneath it. I have no explanation for what happened.
This sounds like it could almost be a case of the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, wherein the witnesses will find themselves in a sort of limbo state between sleep and wakefulness and experience extremely vivid dream-like hallucinations, but it is hard to say. Another witness, Reddit user “Hhandholmes,” says that he and several acquaintances were plagued by a string of sightings of these types of black entities in the vicinity of where he lived, at an undisclosed location within the United States. He says that within a month he and several others spotted petite black humanoids standing only around 4 feet tall lurking about the area, and he explains:
In most of the cases we all witnessed the same style of humanoid, around 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall and pitch black, meaning that no features were even seen on the things. They would walk/run extremely fast and were only seem at night time, sometimes even passing through street lights yet their bodies got no lighter than what they were in the dark, they were always a pitch black.
They were spotted all in the same two blocks of each other, mostly standing in the alleys, once sitting in a tree, on someones front porch and even in a bedroom. The most seen together was only two, meaning that they mostly traveled alone? Most of them seemed to simply be watching, there was one incident where the being was slightly different. it was probably a foot and half taller but hunched over and could drop on all fours and sprint away faster than any animal or person I have ever seen.
There are cases along these lines reported from countries other than the United states as well. One comes to us from a Reddit User “is_no_good,” who says he had this experience while living in a small rural village in Germany in 2003. At the time he was on his way back from a church service when he saw something very outlandish standing in a side alley. He says of his encounter:
In a sidestreet under a lighted street lamp stood this thing, it was completely black had no face and no clothes, was very tall, like about 2m and the creature’s arms reached below its knees. It just stood there in silence and as I saw it and realized that it can’t be a human, I was frozen to fear and couldn’t stop looking at it, till it made a step in my direction. In this moment I ran like hell to the house of my parents without turning around. It didn’t get me or something but I was in extreme fear. I never talked to anyone about this because I feared that people would laugh about me. But I saw it and it still haunts my thoughts now and then. Fortunately, I never saw it again. In Summary: The thing was completely black it had no details. There was no face, no colors, no nose shape, no eyes. It had normal proportions except the knee long arms. It was very thin and approximately 2m tall. It made no sound. And I have the feeling that it was a ‘he.’
Another account is from a witness on Your Ghost Stories who lives in the Philippines. She explains that this happened when she was in college living with 4 housemates at an apartment near the university. It was here where they would all be menaced by a very strange entity indeed. The witness says:
One afternoon at around 4 or 5, one of our housemates (which was also my classmate and batchmate) was eating her dinner while I was sitting in the middle of the living room facing the mirror and my sister was in the living room watching TV. So as the area is an open space and is just divided by some sort of study table or chairs (I can’t remember the divider we used), all 3 of us are basically within the same room and can clearly see each other. After a while, I saw a tall dark figure sort of peeping at us from the kitchen sink area. There is a thick supporting foundation just before the sink (L-shaped area) and there was this tall dark thing hiding by it. I can see its face, hair, one arm and left leg and foot but the other parts are not visible as it seems to be hiding (like when a kid is shy but is still curious to see something kind of pose). So it took me a few seconds before I was able to talk because my mind can’t comprehend what I was seeing so my immediate question was, “is there anyone at the sink”? Which I know is quite odd and impossible as I know there are only 3 of us.
My housemate, being a scaredy cat suddenly stood up looking at me in disbelief asking me to stop teasing her but I told her that there is something by the column going to the sink looking at us. My sister then said there are only 3 of us in the house right now and it can be a burglar as we are just on the 2nd floor of the entire apartment building. But I told them that is not possible as the exit staircase is no longer there due to weather and rusting. I also told them that it is not person based from what I see.
They then asked me what I see and I told them that aside from the white of the eyeballs, everything was just black. I told them it was black as a charcoal and the hair is like that of an afro and the it is almost as tall as the ceiling. It stayed there for a good 2 to 3 minutes as if it was observing someone or something from the house (my guess is that it was looking at the TV as it was the direction of its gaze) before it disappeared. I think all the hairs on my body were standing up during the entire time I was seeing this thing and then everything went back to normal as soon as it disappeared. The funny thing is I think my sister and our housemate were even more afraid of the thing than I was even though I was the only one that can see it. I didn’t feel any scary aura coming from it. I guess my goosebumps were just due to the fact that I don’t know what I was seeing and I can’t believe what I was seeing. And more than ten years from that event, I still don’t know what that tall dark thing was.
With such an eclectic mix of truly bizarre reports we are left to wonder what it is we might be dealing with in such encounters. Are these examples of ghosts, demons, or even aliens or interdimensional interlopers of some sort bleeding over into our reality? Are they just fanciful fictionalized accounts or the product of the imagination? There is no way to really know for sure, and such cases as these serve to really fuel speculation and wonder as to what might be going on.
Everybody loves a murder mystery – including the space scientists at NASA. Spoiler alert: they already figured out the murderer in this whodunit and they’re calling it officially a “cosmic homicide.” If you know anything about space and astronomy, you won’t be surprised to learn that the culprit is a black hole. However, this one is a type that has been theorized to exist but has eluded detection and proof … until now. Is this really a murder mystery or more of a Stephen King horror thriller?
“Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as “intermediate-mass,” which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close.”
NASA’s press release on the discovery of the first known intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) opens like a murder case, but quickly switches to sounding like an archeological study.
“These so-called intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are a long-sought “missing link” in black hole evolution.”
And then it becomes a horror monster thriller.
“It took the combined power of two X-ray observatories and the keen vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to nail down the cosmic beast.”
This is getting interesting.
While the movie doesn’t have a title yet, the plot opens with the Hubble telescope, that workhorse responsible for so many stellar discoveries. According to the NASA press release for the study published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomer Dacheng Lin of the University of New Hampshire pointed the Hubble telescope at a strange X-ray flare detected but not identified previously by other space telescopes. The first clue this was something completely different was the startling discovery that it wasn’t coming from our galaxy nor from the center of another galaxy – which meant it wasn’t a supermassive black hole. Being on the edge of a galaxy made 3XMM J215022.4−055108 and its strange galactic home something new yet familiar.
“The star cluster that is home to 3XMM J215022.4−055108 may be the stripped-down core of a lower-mass dwarf galaxy that has been gravitationally and tidally disrupted by its close interactions with its current larger galaxy host.”
The cause of the X-ray flare was the cosmic homicide of a star by this strange black hole in a strange location in a strange galaxy. Using the glow, the astronomers estimated the size of the black hole at 50,000 solar masses – the perfect size to be an intermediate-mass black hole. That proves it’s both the murderer in the cosmic homicide tale and the missing link between small and supermassive black holes.
Like good homicide detectives, the astronomers will use this new knowledge to look for other cosmic killer IMBHs. They’ll also keep their eye on 3XMM J215022.4−055108 – there’s no way to bring it in and lock it up for life, so it’s still lurking in a dark corner of a mysterious galaxy … waiting for an unsuspecting star to sashay by. Yes, it’s a true “cosmic beast.”
Killer Cosmic Beast. Homicide: Life on the Galactic Edge. Law & Order: Intermediate Black Hole Unit. The movie and TV series possibilities are intriguing. Maybe it’s time for a channel that caters to astronomers. Andromeda Prime? Netflux? Starz Encore Murders?
Film-making has got to be among the most difficult careers in the world. More so if the topic of your film is something as mercurial and controversial as the UFO phenomenon. If you’re going to make a movie about tigers then you know that if you travel to the jungles of Southeast Asia (or Oklahoma) chances are you’ll be able to film some tigers. If your movie is about mount Everest you can book your plane ticket to Nepal with full confidence that the mountain isn’t going anywhere. But with UFOs, you will always be two steps behind them, so filmmakers need to follow a ‘cold case’ approach: visit the ‘crime scene’, interview the witnesses and the experts, perhaps even analyze trace evidence, if any; but the chances of capturing with your camera a bonafide flying saucer –or at the very least a fuzzy orange orb– are close to nil.
Yet that does not exclude the possibility of really weird things happening during the production of a UFO film. Nietzche’s famous quote, “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” is often invoked in paranormal circles, to illustrate how showing an active interest in these mysteries can often carry some unforeseen circumstances…
Take for instance the documentary Witness of Another World (Testigo de Otro Mundo) released originally in 2018 (last year with English subtitles) by Argentinian filmmaker Alan Stivelman. The film focuses on the story of Juan Pérez, who in 1978 was a very young ‘gaucho’ (a South American cowboy) who had an incredible close encounter of the third kind; a case so remarkable it merited the personal investigation by none other than Dr. Jacques Vallee. WoAW shows, among other things, how Juan’s experience forced him to isolate himself from society and even from his own family; living as a recluse in a small cabin with no electricity or even running water, with no other company than his animals with whom he claims to be able to communicate. For you see, like many other UFO experiencers, Juan developed what can only be described as psychic abilities, including the gift –or is that a curse?– of prophetic dreams.
[Minor Spoilers Ahead] In the film there’s a scene in which Dr. Néstor Berlanda –a professional psychiatrist who’s been treating Juan for many years– is shown conducting a sort of hypnotic regression therapy on him, in order to reveal more information of what happened on that fateful morning of September 6th, 1978, when the (then) 12-year-old boy who was sent by his father to fetch their herd of horses, found himself instead face to face with a shiny object which his juvenile mind first mistook for a ‘tractor’ or a ‘barn’, and inside the ‘barn’ he encountered two non-human entities (a very tall humanoid, and a smaller being which looked like a robot). On a podcast interview that my friend Greg Bishop and I recorded with Alan, among our many questions for him we asked about that scene in particular, because we’re both keenly aware of the backlash generated by the use of hypnosis in abduction research due to the potential risk of implanting false memories in the witness.
Berlanda and Juan
Alan explained to us the procedure Dr. Berlanda had applied on Juan carried no such risk, because was different from the typical hypnosis performed by therapists, and that it was more a method of ‘relaxation’ than an actual trance-like state –of course, critics could argue that relaxation is the whole point of hypnosis, so I guess Dr. Berlanda could be the only one able to explain the difference in detail. Another aspect of the therapy scene Greg had found very interesting was how, at one point in the session, Berlanda suggests Juan to ‘ask’ questions to the tall humanoid –like “why are they here?” or “why did you choose me?”– to which he apparently received some surprising answers.
Illustration depicting the tall being encountered by Juan
“What would be the point of asking such questions,” Greg asked Alan, “if they hadn’t really taken place during the original event of 1978?” Was Berlanda trying to help Juan attain some sort of closure by way of filling the gaps of his encounter using his own imagination?
“No,” Alan said to us. In what would seem as a total departure from causality and logic, Berlanda had discovered that by taking Juan in the proper state of mind, he was apparently not only able to remember what had taken place to him in the past, but also he was able to communicate with ‘them’ as if they were there during the session in the present time!
As incredible as this may sound, there is at least another example in the UFO literature in which similar interactions with alleged alien intelligences while in the presence of independent researchers have been documented: I’m talking here of course of the hypnotic sessions with Betty Andreasson Luca, as described by author Raymond E. Fowler in his classic book The Andreasson Affair.
Betty Andreasson and her husband, Bob Luca
According to Fowler, during the 12th regression session which was conducted on July 16, 1977, the MUFON investigators were attempting to extract more details about the event that happened to Betty and her family on January of 1967 –when she was taken from her home and led by a group of ‘gray aliens’ to a circular craft, and from there to another realm in which she received visions of a mystical nature– when suddenly Betty’s mind spontaneously ‘shifted’ from her past memories to the present, and she found herself unable to move her arms and legs. She also felt as if someone or something was controlling her words, and suddenly, to the amazement of everyone present, she began to talk with a mechanical tone in an unknown language –this “star language” was later determined to be very similar to ancient Gaelic.
At one point it seemed as the hypnosis with Andreasson had turned into a mediumship session, and the investigators were trying to ask direct questions to the intelligence or intelligences controlling Betty, who was answering them in plain English –although the meaning of the replies still remained too cryptic. At other times, the flow of the communication and the messages in the “star language” were interrupted by meaningless bursts like “Base 32 — Base 32 — Signal Base 32,” and it was later suggested messages from a truck driver using a CB radio was messing with the ‘alien transmission’ hijacking Betty’s mind.
Could it be that electromagnetic signals generated by human technology could actually interfere with the ‘superior technology’ of UFOs? Although no one is able to answer that question, basically every UFOlogist accepts that the opposite is true –based for example on the many cases in which automobile engines have been shut down by the close proximity of a UFO, which is attributed to the tremendous magnetic field surrounding these objects affecting the car’s alternator.
Which brings us back to Witness of Another World, and two other fascinating incidents occurring during the filming of that intriguing hypnotic session between Dr. Berlanda and Juan, which Alan shared with Greg and I during our interview (despite the fact that they were not mentioned in his documentary): During the shooting of that scene –which took place inside’s Juan humble house in the middle of the Argentinian pampa– all the lights in the camera crew’s equipment began to flicker all at once; an inexplicable phenomenon, given how they were being powered with independent batteries.
Alan Stivelman
Even more fantastic still, is that every single member of Alan’s team –with the exception of himself and Dr. Berlanda– fell asleep at the exact moment when Berlanda told Juan to ask the questions to the tall humanoid, and they didn’t wake up until the session ended.
Both Greg and I were totally dumbfounded when Alan told us these things via Skype, in October of 2019. It goes without saying that to this day he doesn’t have an explanation to why these things happened while he was making his movie, and neither have I. Perhaps part of the answer lies in what Betty Andreasson told to the MUFON investigators while she was in hypnotic trance in 1977: That, to these beings –whatever they are wherever they come from– “the future and the past are the same as today.”
Superzwaar zwart gat in centrum Melkweg begint wakker te worden
Voorstelling van links onze Melkweg en rechts Sagittarius A*, het zwarte gat in het centrum met sterren die er omheen cirkelen.
ESA/C.Carreau
Superzwaar zwart gat in centrum Melkweg begint wakker te worden
In het centrum van de meeste sterrenstelsels ligt een superzwaar zwart gat en dat is ook met onze Melkweg het geval. Sagittarius A*, zoals dat zwarte gat heet, staat niet bekend als een erg actieve kern, het slokt niet veel materie op uit de buurt en stoot dus ook niet veel straling uit. Maar daar lijkt verandering in te komen. Een nieuwe studie bevestigt dat Sagittarius A* sinds augustus 2014 drie keer meer energierijke uitbarstingen kent in het röntgenspectrum dan daarvoor. Hoe dat komt is voorlopig nog onduidelijk.
Luc De Roy
Door hun enorme zwaartekracht oefenen zwarte gaten, en zeker de superzware met een massa van enkele miljoenen tot enkele miljarden keer de massa van onze zon, een sterke aantrekkingskracht uit op alles in hun buurt. Sommige zwarte gaten slokken daardoor materie uit hun buurt op, en dat zorgt voor wrijving en een enorme hitte waardoor er elektromagnetische straling vrijkomt, röntgenstraling, visueel licht, infrarood en radiostraling. Ook kunnen ze jets uitstoten uit hun beide polen, 'fonteinen' van elektronen en geladen deeltjes materie.
Sagittarius A*, het zwarte gat in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel, is echter een vrij rustig exemplaar, ook al fluctueert de helderheid ervan wel zowat dagelijks in de verschillende elektromagnetische spectra. Maar de laatste tijd lijkt daar verandering in te komen.
Een studie uit 2017, waaraan ook astrofysicus Enmanuelle Lossoux van de Université de Liège meewerkte, stelde dat uit observaties van 1999 tot 2015 met de röntgenobservatoria XMM-Newton, Chandra en Swift bleek dat de helderste uitbarstingen in het röntgenspectrum sinds augustus 2014 toegenomen waren, terwijl de zwakste en minst energierijke uitbarstingen sinds augustus 2013 net iets minder talrijk waren geworden.
Om na te gaan of die tendenzen nog steeds aanhielden, heeft een Belgisch-Frans team onder leiding van Lossoux nu opnieuw de gegevens van 1999 tot 2015 bekeken en ook de data van 2016 tot 2018 van de drie telescopen.
Een voorstelling van het stellaire, niet superzware, zwarte gat Cygnus X-1 dat materie wegzuigt en opslokt van de nabijgelegen blauwe reus-ster..
NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
121 opflakkeringen
In de gegevens die verzameld werden tussen 1999 en 2015 hadden de onderzoekers 107 opflakkeringen in het röntgenspectrum gevonden, in de nieuwe gegevens die tussen 2016 en 2018 verzameld werden door de observaties van de Chandra-telescoop vonden ze 9 nieuwe opflakkeringen en in die van de Swift-telescoop nog eens 5, zodat het totaal op 121 komt.
De onderzoekers gebruikten nieuwe, betere algoritmes om de gegevens te analyseren en ze kwamen tot de conclusie dat de minst heldere en minst energierijke opflakkeringen stabiel waren gebleven. Hun aantal was dus niet gedaald sinds augustus 2013, zoals in de studie uit 2017 was gesteld.
De meest energierijke uitbarstingen waren daarentegen wel degelijk talrijker geworden, zo konden ze bevestigen. De telescopen zijn niet constant op Sagittarius A* gericht, zodat de opflakkeringen die wel geobserveerd werden, tot 2014 zowat overeenkwamen met één per dag. Sinds augustus 2014 is hun aantal in het röntgenspectrum zowat verdrievoudigd.
En dat is niet het enige spectrum, ook in andere golflengten is er een opflakkering geweest: verleden jaar zag de Keck telescoop op Hawaï in het nabij infrarood, het deel van het infrarode spectrum dat het dichtst bij zichtbaar licht ligt, Sagittarius A* op 13 mei gedurende twee uur 75 keer helderder worden dan gewoonlijk. Dat is dubbel zo helder als het vorige record. Nog verleden jaar vertoonde Sagittarius A* in totaal op drie nachten een verhoogde activiteit in het nabij infrarood, wat nog nooit eerder gezien was in de data die we hebben, volgens de onderzoekers die deze gegevens geanalyseerd hebben.
Voor 2019 zijn de data nog niet allemaal bekend, die komen dit jaar nog, maar uit korte berichtjes van verschillende astronomen blijkt alvast dat Sagittarius A* ook in 2019 erg actief is gebleven in het röntgenspectrum, zoals blijkt uit observaties met de Swift- en de ARTXC-telescopen.
De onderzoekers analyseerden al wel de gegevens van Swift en vonden 4 nieuwe opflakkeringen, het hoogste aantal dat ooit geobserveerd werd in een enkele campagne.
Duidelijk is dus in elk geval voor de onderzoekers dat de activiteit van Sagittarius A* sinds 2014 toegenomen is in verschillende golflengten van het elekromagnetische spectrum.
Een combinatie van beelden van de omgeving van Sagittarius A* in infarood licht (groot beeld) en een close-up in röntgenstraling (inzet).
X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al. IR: NASA/STScI
Oorzaak nog niet bekend
De oorzaak van de verhoogde activiteit van Sagittarius A* is nog niet bekend.
Mogelijkheden zijn een toegenomen accretie, dat er meer materiaal uit de ruimte wordt aangezogen en in de accretieschijf rond het zwarte gat belandt en daar meer straling veroorzaakt, een zogenoemde "getijdenverstoring" door passerende asteroïden of een verandering in het magnetisch veld van het zwarte gat.
Om daarover uitsluitsel te krijgen, is het wachten op de data voor 2019 van Chandra en XMM Newton, maar om zekerheid te verkrijgen over de toegenomen activiteit en de oorzaak te achterhalen zijn er ook meer gegevens nodig uit andere golflengten, het nabij infrarood en radiogolven. De onderzoekers zijn nu de beschikbare gegevens uit die spectra aan het bestuderen.
Wat de oorzaak ook is, Sagittarius A* ligt op 26.000 lichtjaar van de aarde, zo'n 245 biljoen kilometer. Naar astronomische normen mag dat dan wel een boogscheut zijn, het is in elk geval ver genoeg om uit te kunnen sluiten dat we er enige hinder van zouden ondervinden.
AFPSagittarius A*, in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel.
WETENSCHAPSagittarius A* is een zwart gat dat in het centrum van onze Melkweg ligt. Superzwaar, maar niet actief wat betekent dat het zwart gat niet superveel materie in zijn omgeving opslokt waardoor de kern niet bijzonder helder gloeit. Maar sinds 2014 lijkt daar verandering in te komen: Sagittarius A* lijkt wakker te worden. Dat stelt een Belgisch-Frans onderzoeksteam in het * vaktijdschrift Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Eerst dit: een zwart gat is een gebied in het heelal waar de zwaartekracht zo’n kracht uitoefent dat niets eruit kan ontsnappen, zelfs licht niet. Vandaar de naam zwart gat. Wanneer zo’n zwart gat materie in zijn omgeving opslokt, komt er evenwel energie vrij. Dat uit zich in elektromagnetische straling, röntgenstraling, visueel licht, infrarood en radiostraling. Door die energie, die af en toe vrijkomt, fluctueert de helderheid van het centrum van ons sterrenstelsel dagelijks. Dat is niet eigenaardig.
Wél bijzonder: hoewel Sgr A* zich normaal erg rustig gedraagt, zijn de heldere uitbarstingen de afgelopen jaren toegenomen. Dat stelt een onderzoeksteam van Franse en Belgische wetenschappers, onder leiding van astrofysicus en onderzoeksleider Enmanuelle Lossoux van de Université de Liège.
Eerder observeerden ze wat het zwart gat deed tussen 1999 en 2015. Daaruit bleek dat de heldere uitbarstingen sinds augustus 2014 toenamen. Om te controleren of het om een nieuwe tendens ging, vergeleek het onderzoeksteam de resultaten nogmaals met data van 2016 tot 2018, afkomstig van drie verschillende telescopen. Het vermoeden werd bevestigd met 14 nieuwe heldere uitbarstingen: negen opflakkeringen werden waargenomen met de Chandra-telescoop en nog eens vijf met de Swift-telescoop. Dat brengt het totaal aantal opflakkeringen tussen 1999 en 2018 op 121. De activiteit van Sgr A* is duidelijk toegenomen.
Hoe het komt dat het zwart gat in het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel wakker wordt, is voorlopig onbekend. Maar tot de oorzaak gevonden wordt, moeten we ons alvast geen zorgen maken. Omdat het zwart gat Sagittarius A* 25.640 lichtjaar van de aarde verwijderd is (zo’n 245.000 biljoen kilometer) zullen we niet meteen hinder ondervinden van de activiteit.
Joseph SchuberEen Maratus noggerup toont zijn dansmoves.
DIERENSpinnen zijn nu niet meteen ’s werelds meest geliefde dieren, maar voor deze schattige gastjes maken we toch graag een uitzondering. Dit zijn pauwspinnetjes en in Australië werden er zopas maar liefst zeven nieuwe soorten van ontdekt.
De nieuwe soorten worden beschreven in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Zootaxa door Joseph Schubert, een 22-jarige pauwspinnenexpert van het Australische Museum Victoria. Hij was zelf ooit bang van spinnen en hield hen als huisdier om zijn fobie te overwinnen en is nu door de diertjes gefascineerd. “Ik zou pauwspinnen omschrijven als kleine, kleurrijke kittens”, vertelde hij aan de Australische zender ABC. “Ze hebben hun eigen persoonlijkheid en zijn bijzonder klein: ongeveer zo groot als een rijstkorrel.”
Pauwspinnen behoren tot de familie van de springspinnen en zijn gekend voor het erg flamboyante achterwerk van de mannetjes en voor hun charmante paringsdans. Ze leven enkel in Australië en hoewel ze giftig zijn, zijn deze spinnetjes compleet onschadelijk voor de mens: ze jagen op minuscule vliegjes en andere insecten.
Joseph SchuberMaratus laurenae
Schubert heeft tot nu toe al 12 van de 85 gekende soorten pauwspinnen beschreven, inclusief uitgebreide details over hun paringsdansen. Hij krijgt vaak staaltjes toegestuurd ter identificatie, maar verricht ook veldwerk. “Sommige van deze soorten werden ontdekt door amateurwetenschappers die de lokale soorten documenteren en me foto’s opstuurden: hun hulp is erg belangrijk voor dit soort onderzoek”, legt hij uit.
Schuberts favoriete pauwspin is de Maratus constellatus, die zijn naam dankt aan zijn kleurrijke buik die gelijkenissen vertoont met het schilderij De Sterrennacht van Vincent Van Gogh. “Het is zo een mooie soort”, aldus Schubert.
Joseph SchuberMaratus constellatus
Jurgen Otto werkt voor het Australische ministerie van Landbouw en is eveneens gefascineerd door pauwspinnen. Hij is verantwoordelijk voor de identificatie van een hele reeks soorten en heeft een volledige website aan de kleurrijke spinnetjes gewijd.
De voorbije jaren werden er verscheidene nieuwe soorten ontdekt en gezien hun populariteit zullen er vermoedelijk nog nieuwe soorten aan het licht komen.
De pas beschreven zeven nieuwe soorten zijn Maratus azureus, Maratus constellatus, Maratus laurenae, Maratus noggerup, Maratus suae, Maratus volpei en Maratus inaquosus.
Onderstaande video toont de bijzondere paringsdans van een mannelijke pauwspin.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
Disclosure! They Are Out There!
Disclosure! They Are Out There!
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.
Multiple UFOs seen and filmed over Utica, New York 1-Apr-2020
Multiple UFOs seen and filmed over Utica, New York 1-Apr-2020
This footage was just uploaded to MUFON website. It shows 5 UFOs/ORBs flying over Utica, New York on 1st April 2020.
Witness report:
5 UFO Orbs Video Witnessed By Group Of People April 1 2020. Witnessed By Group Of People In Utica NY April 1 2020 We been recording ufos in central ny for a 2 year period
Rare phénomène au Brésil: 2 grosses météorites apparaissent en l'espace de 2 jours
Rare phénomène au Brésil: 2 grosses météorites apparaissent en l'espace de 2 jours
Deux météorites de grande ampleur sont tombées au Brésil en moins de deux jours : un phénomène qui n’était plus arrivé depuis 2016. Elles ont été capturées par les détecteurs et les webcams de surveillance d'un observatoire de Taquara, dans la région métropolitaine de Porto Alegre. La première est tombée dans la nuit du 29 au 30 mars, l’autre le soir du 31 mars.
"Les météores sont des phénomènes naturels, explique Carlos Fernando Jung, professeur et directeur à l’observatoire. Ils se produisent depuis le début de notre planète, donc ces événements continueront de se produire et nous espérons également que ces météores n'auront pas une magnitude si élevée qu'ils seraient capables de détruire notre civilisation".
Massive Fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station
Massive Fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station
More and more people around the world are starting to notice the massive formations of UFOs flying past our planet.
So also Gorden Mckenna, while checking NASA's live feed cam on April 2, he noticed a fleet of UFOs flying past the International Space Station.
As we have reported before, a first wave of UFOs and unknown space anomalies/debris appeared in February through the first week of march. This fleet of UFOs is part of the second wave that started a week ago and is just one of the many formations that fly by.
Just like the first wave, this second wave also comes from the same direction, indicating that there is something going on in deep space that forces all these UFOs to move to other locations.
It is of course difficult to determine what could be the reason for the displacements of all these UFOs but one reason could be that there is a space war going on.
Another reason could be that a huge devastating celestial body is the cause of the UFO displacements, since the live cam also shows countless unknown anomalies what looks like debris that fly by, which suggest that these anomalies may come from such a celestial body.
Fleet of UFOs flying alongside unknown anomalies/debris.
Whatever the reason, it's something to keep an eye on.
SpaceX is about to start putting the latest prototype of its Starship Mars-colonizing vehicle to the test.
Starship SN3 (short for "Serial No. 3") has been stacked and hauled to a launch stand at SpaceX's South Texas facilities near the seaside village of Boca Chica, photos tweeted recently by company founder and CEO Elon Musk show.
The stage is thus set for the SN3's test campaign, which will start with a pressure trial and end with short test flights into the South Texas sky. That's if all goes according to plan, of course, and there's no guarantee that it will. Two previous Starship prototypes, for example, didn't make it past the pressure-test hurdle.
The Starship transportation system consists of a 100-passenger vehicle called Starship and a giant rocket named Super Heavy. SpaceX is developing this reusable duo to carry people and payloads to a variety of destinations, especially Mars. Indeed, Musk has repeatedly said that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help colonize the Red Planet, making humanity a multiplanet species.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted this photo of the company’s SN3 prototype on the launch stand, getting readied for testing, on March 30, 2020. (Image credit: Elon Musk via Twitter)
SpaceX is building its way up to the final Starship design via a series of prototypes that will go beyond the SN3. For instance, SN4 will likely perform the first high-altitude test flights, which will get up to about 12 miles (20 kilometers) above Earth, Musk has said.
Such milestone tests might be just around the corner, for the billionaire entrepreneur wants to get Starship and Super Heavy up and running soon. SpaceX representatives have said the first operational Starship missions — likely launches of communications satellites to Earth orbit — could happen as early as next year.
SpaceX has one crewed Starship mission on the docket. In 2018, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa booked the vehicle for a round-the-moon voyage, with launch targeted for 2023.
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
ANTARCTICA scientists made a stunning discovery 3,500 metres below the ice, leading one to state they had "never seen anything like this before," a documentary revealed.
Expedition Antarctica took to the waters for a 50-day journey across the Southern Ocean and beyond the icy continent earlier this year. On board New Zealand’s research vessel RV Tangaroa, an international team used state-of-the-art technology to scan the seabed. The Aegis imaging system allowed scientists to capture fascinated images like nothing seen before.
While the mission is still ongoing, “The Secrets of Antarctica” documentary was released on YouTube in July revealing the amazing finds to date.
The narrator explained: “Having braved ice storms, broken equipment and rough seas for almost two months, the team braces itself for the most high-pressured assignment of them all.
“They will delve 3,500 metres into the abyssal plain, a depth almost as high as the Swiss Alps.
“It will endure 300 times more pressure than we experience every day.
Antarctica scientists were stunned by the creature
(Image: YOUTUBE)
The expedition traveled through the Southern Ocean
(Image: YOUTUBE)
I have never seen anything like this before
Kareen Schnabel
“Suddenly the abyssal plain reveals itself, it looks barren, like the surface of Mars, but a closer look reveals life that no one has ever witnessed in Antarctica at all.”
However, the scientists could not leave it there.
They wanted a closer look at some of the marine life and so sent down a fishing net.
The narrator added: “The team take the opportunity to trawl the bottom, having set up more than 5,000 of cable into the sea.
“The beam trawl finally comes aboard at 2:00am and, after six hours of waiting, the team gets its reward.
He said last month: “This is why I came to Antarctica, to see things like this.”
Dr Stewart held the creature up to the camera.
He then exclaimed: “I have to look at such features as the shape of the teeth, the jaws, the shape of the gill rakers, as well as counts of the vertebrae [to determine what it is].
“Now I have no idea what species this is.
“The colour pattern on the fins is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
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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.