Several days ago a resident from Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa captured an incredible image of a huge cigar-shaped UFO/USO at the moment it emerged from the ocean off coast Umtuntweni beach nearthe city of Kwa Zulu Natal.

USOs are defined as unknown craft that are sighted in the water, sighted rising up out of the water, or diving into the water. There's a long history of this kind of sightings but till now we don't know whether these UFOs/USOs are secret government craft or of extraterrestrial origin.

If we look at this huge flying object, we see that it is comparable to several UFOs / USOs that were caught by an American submarine years ago.

UFO off coast  Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.

Two UFOs captured by by an American submarine.

Sanderson, a renowned zoologist with a keen interest in the paranormal, puts forward the curious theory that OINTS" - 'Other Intelligence's' living in the Earth's oceans.

This underwater, parallel, civilization may be twice as old as Homo sapiens, he proposes, and may have developed what we call space flight.

What better place to have an impenetrable base than deep within the oceans of the planet.

  

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

14-04-2020 om 16:55 geschreven door peter  

Amada of UFOs in the sky above – United States

This UFO footage was filmed somewhere over United States in April 2020. Similar sightings were recorded over different places in the USA recently. What are those unknown lights?

Please leave your comments below!

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

14-04-2020 om 16:39 geschreven door peter  

Weird alien planet may be core of stripped-down gas giant

By Charles Q. Choi

The bizarre newfound world resides in the mostly barren 'hot Neptunian desert.'

An artist's depiction of the exoplanet NGTS-4b, one of the few known Neptune-sized worlds that orbit very close to their stars. The odd newfound planet TOI-849b also resides in this “hot Neptunian desert.”

(Image: © University of Warwick/Mark Garlick)

A distant world about 40 times more massive than Earth may be the remnant core of a giant planet, or a giant planet in the making whose growth stalled, a new study reports.

These findings may help shed light on what the mysterious cores of giant planets look like, researchers said.

Scientists investigated the exoplanet TOI-849b, which NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) first detected in 2018 and whose existence the La Silla Observatory in Chile later helped confirm. This alien world orbits the sunlike star TOI-849 about 730 light-years from Earth. 

• Related: The strangest alien planets (gallery)

With a mass about 40 times that of Earth, TOI-849b is nearly half as massive as Saturn. At the same time, data from the Paranal Observatory in Chile and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope helped reveal that the exoplanet has a diameter about 3.45 times that of Earth, comparable to Neptune's. Altogether, this information suggests the exoplanet has a density similar to Earth's, making it the densest Neptune-size planet discovered to date.

TOI-849b circles its star in a fast, tight orbit just 18.4 hours long. This brings it scorchingly close to its star at a distance of just 1.5% of an astronomical unit (AU), the average distance between Earth and the sun (which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). 

The newfound exoplanet therefore lies in the middle of the so-called "hot Neptunian desert," an apparent (and mysterious) dearth of Neptune-size worlds that orbit very close to their stars. 

"There are not a lot of planets in this in-between place, so to see a planet this size this close to a star is pretty cool," Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist at the Observatory of Bordeaux in France, who did not take part in this research, told Space.com.

Previous models suggested that nascent planets more than 10 to 20 times Earth's mass should have strong enough gravitational fields to gobble up huge amounts of material from the protoplanetary disks of gas and dust that surround their newborn stars. Such worlds should therefore swell to become gas giants similar to Jupiter or Saturn. As such, one might think that TOI-849b is the remnant of a gas giant that lost most of its weight somehow, perhaps due to the heat it experiences orbiting so close to its star.

However, as much as the light from TOI-849b's star would sear the exoplanet, the scientists noted such heating alone might still not strip a gas giant's atmosphere down to nearly the planet's core. They estimated the star is about 6.7 billion years old. Given that amount of time, as well as TOI-849b's distance from its star, they calculated a Jupiter-like gas giant would have lost only a few percent of its mass due to stellar radiation to date.

This is the first clear image of a planet forming from the disk of gas and debris surrounding its host star. The planet, PDS 70b, is visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the star's blinding light.

ESO / A. Muller et al.

As such, the researchers suggest that TOI-849b may be the remnant core of a gas giant that lost mass through a different mechanism. Perhaps it collided with other giant planets, for example, or the gravity of its star peeled off much of its gas envelope. Alternatively, if TOI-849b were slung to its current position due to gravitational clashes with other planets, the energy the exoplanet would have experienced as its star's gravity pulled TOI-849b into its current circular orbit would have greatly heated that world, potentially leading to significant mass loss.

Another possible explanation for TOI-849b's current state has to do with arrested development. Perhaps TOI-849b formed late, when much of its system's protoplanetary disk was gone, the researchers said. Alternatively, perhaps as TOI-849b developed in orbit around its star, it carved off all the material available to it for its growth within the protoplanetary disk.

All in all, TOI-849b may give scientists a glimpse at what the core of a gas giant looks like. Future research may directly observe that core's composition by analyzing evaporated material in the exoplanet's remaining atmosphere. 

Further work may also investigate whether this exoplanet actually was a gas giant whose atmosphere was stripped away by the light from its star.

"They claim that it's unlikely, but these calculations are hard to do," Raymond said.

The new study, which was led by David Armstrong of the University of Warwick in England, has been accepted by the journal Nature. You can read a preprint of the paper for free at arXiv.org.

• 7 ways to discover alien planets
• NASA's TESS exoplanet-hunting mission in pictures
• NASA's TESS is finding hundreds of exoplanets. It's poised to find thousands more

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

14-04-2020 om 01:29 geschreven door peter  

Trailblazing Mars helicopter attached to Perseverance rover for July launch

By Mike Wall

The little chopper will attempt to pioneer a new type of off-Earth exploration.

The Mars Helicopter, visible in lower center of the image, was attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover at Kennedy Space Center on April 6, 2020. The helicopter will be deployed onto the Martian surface about two-and-a-half months after Perseverance lands.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The newest Mars rover's pioneering passenger has come aboard.

Technicians attached the first-of-its-kind Mars Helicopter to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover on Monday (April 6) at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the robot is being prepped for its upcoming launch. That liftoff will take place during a three-week window that opens on July 17.

Prep work on the rover is officially in high gear. For example, over a four-day span in late March, mission team members finished installing Perseverance's parachute system and also put on the robot's six wheels.

• More: NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance in pictures

Perseverance's descent stage was also fueled up last weekend, just before the helicopter integration, NASA officials said.

The descent stage is the rocket-powered sky crane that will lower Perseverance onto the Martian dirt via cables in February 2021. Gassing up the crane was no trivial task; the craft's four tanks hold a total of 884 lbs. (401 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant, agency officials said.

"The last hundred days before any Mars launch is chock-full of significant milestones," David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. (JPL built Perseverance and is the lead center for the rover's mission, which is called Mars 2020.)

"Fueling the descent stage is a big step," Gruel added. "While we will continue to test and evaluate its performance as we move forward with launch preparations, it is now ready to fulfill its mission of placing Perseverance on the surface on Mars."

That placement will occur inside Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) hole in the ground that hosted a lake and a river delta in the Red Planet's ancient past. Perseverance will hunt for signs of long-dead Martian life, characterize the region's geology and perform a number of other tasks, chief among them collecting and caching samples for a future return to Earth.

The Mars 2020 mission will also demonstrate several new technologies, including an instrument that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere and the 4-lb. (1.8 kg) Mars Helicopter, which will be the first rotorcraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth.

If all goes according to plan, the helicopter will be deployed in May 2021, 2.5 months after Perseverance's touchdown. The little solar-powered chopper will then conduct a series of short flights during a test campaign that will last up to 30 days.

The Mars Helicopter won't gather any scientific data during these excursions; it carries no instruments. But a successful test campaign could pave the way for extensive aerial exploration of the Red Planet in the not-too-distant future, mission team members have said.

• Mars 2020: The Red Planet's next rover
• Meet 'Perseverance': NASA's Mars 2020 rover has a new name
• Photos: Ancient Mars lake could have supported life

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

14-04-2020 om 00:59 geschreven door peter  

Ozone hole three times the size of Greenland opens over the North Pole

By Brandon Specktor 

Ozone holes open over the South Pole every year. Holes at the North Pole are much, much rarer.

A satellite image shows the new ozone hole spreading over the North Pole.

(Image: © European Space Agency)

Scientists have detected what may be the largest hole in the ozone layer ever recorded over the North Pole.

The ozone hole covers an area roughly three times the size of Greenland, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement, and could expose people living at far northern latitudes to high levels of ultraviolet radiation if it grows much larger. Fortunately, the hole looks likely to close on its own in the next few weeks, the ESA researchers said.

Holes form in the ozone layer — which is a sheet of gas in Earth's atmosphere that absorbs much of the harmful ultraviolet light emitted by the sun — every year over Antarctica due to seasonal changes in cloud cover. Ozone holes over the Arctic, however, are rarer. The last time an Arctic ozone hole opened was in 2011, and it was significantly smaller than the hole seen now, the researchers said.

"From my point of view, this is the first time you can speak about a real ozone hole in the Arctic," Martin Dameris, an atmospheric scientist at the German Aerospace Center, told Nature.

• Related: Banned ozone-depleting chemical was used illegally in China

The Antarctic ozone hole opens every year due to the combination of frigid temperatures and man-made pollution. When temperatures plummet at the start of Antarctica's winter, high-altitude clouds form over the South Pole. Industrial chemical pollutants, including chlorine and bromine, trigger reactions in these clouds that eat away at the surrounding ozone gas.

The Arctic, which has more variable temperatures, doesn't usually see the same ozone-depleting conditions, the researchers said. But this year, powerful winds trapped cold air in a "polar vortex" above the Arctic.  That led to colder temperatures and more high-altitude clouds than normal. Hence, North Pole ozone-depletion began.

Fortunately, with the sun slowly getting higher over the Arctic, atmospheric temperatures are already beginning to increase, which means the conditions causing the ozone hole should soon change, the researchers said. However, if the hole continues to expand south, Arctic residents — like those living in southern Greenland — may need to apply sunscreen to prevent UV damage.

The much larger Antarctic ozone hole will remain a seasonal feature, as it has for roughly four decades, though that hole has begun shrinking in size. A 2018 assessment by the World Meteorological Organization found that the southern ozone hole has been shrinking by about 1% to 3% per decade since the year 2000, with the 2019 hole measuring smaller than it ever has since 1982. The shrinking of the southern ozone hole is thanks largely to a global ban on ozone-depleting chemicals initiated in 1987, though some key nations still do not appear to be participating. According to a 2018 investigation, factories in China still appeared to be pumping large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals into the atmosphere.

• Images of melt: Earth's vanishing ice
• The reality of climate change: 10 myths busted
• Top 10 ways to destroy Earth

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

14-04-2020 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

• Courtesy The Brush Banner
• Journalist Dane Edwards

During the 1970s, thousands of ranchers and farmers across America woke up to discover a bizarre and horrible thing in their fields and pastures. They found that not only had one of their cows or bulls died, but that it had been bizarrely mutilated. The lifeless body would be lying on its side completely drained of blood, the desiccated corpse staring up at them with empty eye sockets, the flesh cut away from the nose and jawbone creating a macabre grin. The anal cavity was bored out, and the sex organs completely removed. There were no signs of footprints, or any other kind of forensic evidence to point to any kind of perpetrator, human or animal. The ranchers filed reports with local brand inspectors, the sheriff’s office, and in some cases even federal investigators, but investigations resulted in no suspects, leads or explanations.

This exact scenario played out this summer in eastern Oregon. Five previously healthy bulls from the Silvies Valley Ranch were suddenly found dead, drained of blood, and with organs and pieces of their soft tissue precisely removed. There were no footprints or signs of predation, and authorities currently have no explanation. The story was covered by national news outlets like NPR and USA Today.

“The common denominator for every one of these is the lack of blood,” says Chuck Zukowski, a Colorado Springs resident and the deputy director of Animal Mutilation Investigations for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) International, which has more than 4,000 members and has been investigating UFO phenomena since 1969. Zukowski has 35 years of experience researching paranormal phenomena, including cattle mutilations. He is also the subject of the Travel Channel’s TV show Alien Highway. “Not only that, but the lack of evidence of blood. How much blood is in a cow?” asks Zukowski. “There’s a lot of blood in a cow, and for that blood not to be there when a carcass is found is unusual.”

These kinds of cattle mutilation cases rose to national prominence in the 1970s, when thousands of carcasses across 21 states were discovered to be mutilated. By 1975, the response to the problem had reached a fever pitch amongst ranchers across the Midwest. Many were carrying guns and patrolling their fields at night. The Bureau of Land Management ran ads in eastern Colorado newspapers urging ranchers not to shoot at survey helicopters. The prevailing theory at the time was that these killings were the work of a nefarious cult. The horrific Manson family murders were recently seared into social memory in the U.S., so it seemed like a plausible explanation. When satanists were hiding in the lyrics of rock ‘n’ roll songs, in the pages of fantasy novels, and in American basements in the form of the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons, certainly it had to be their work when it came to the cattle as well.

• RELATED The strange disappearance of Dane Edwards

In August 1975, the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph (now the Gazette) reported on a study conducted by eastern Colorado law enforcement officials who were dealing with the approximately 60 mutilation cases reported so far that year. The Gazette said the study provided “a glimpse into a satanic organization with national political overtones which has grandiose plans of bringing about a 1,000-year reign of terror and darkness.”

As law enforcement officials desperately searched for proof of cult involvement, the mutilations increased in number and frequency, popping up in Crowley, El Paso, Elbert, Douglas, Las Animas, Washington and Morgan counties here in Colorado — and in 20 other states across the country.

Courtesy ufonut.com

Local Chuck Zukowski is a nationally recognized UFO investigator.

The most comprehensive media coverage of the phenomena at the time came from an unlikely publication out of a small farming community just east of Fort Morgan. It was there that Dane Edwards, a recent Colorado transplant who had allegedly spent time in “Europe, the Middle East and Far East filing wire service reports,” acted as editor and publisher of the now-defunct Brush Banner, Brush's weekly newspaper. Information about Edwards' life prior to Colorado is limited, but a “Meet Your Editor, Publisher” column from a July, 1975 issue of the Banner boasts “17 years newspaper experience, Former member of the President’s Council on Youth Opportunities, and in August, 1972, Invited to the White House by the President.”

Edwards' first mutilation story ran on July 30, 1975. Grisly black-and-white photographs of mutilated cattle adorn the front page of the Banner with the headline, “Cattle Mutilations Hit Near County.” He documented an incident from Woodrow, where a 1,000- pound cow “had its nose, one eye, an ear and its tongue cut away.” Edwards noted that “while massive mutilations often occur, little blood is found in the area of the carcasses. In some instances, officials report that scavenger animals and birds refuse to touch the body.”

The owner of the mutilated cow, John Kalous, told Edwards, “There wasn’t a sign of a footprint in the area either.” In spite of the lack of human-generated evidence, though, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department noted that the cow’s tracks were clearly visible, thanks to a recent rain. Moreover, law enforcement officials were unable to photograph the evidence. “After several attempts, both the Morgan County and Washington County officers were unable to take a photo of the carcasses with a Polaroid camera. … The photos were consistently dark and even when the camera settings were changed to compensate for the conditions, the pictures were without contrast,” Edwards wrote.

“I can’t explain it,” Washington County Undersheriff Bob Jones was quoted as saying, “I’m not going to try.”

The following week the Banner ran another story about the first mutilation reported in Morgan County, and Edwards was one of the few journalists at the time to critically analyze the cult hypothesis. He interviewed Lorin Paull, an Episcopal priest who claimed, “in considering what is cut from the animal, the mutilations do not suggest cultism of a satanic nature. None of the items removed from the cattle are used in satanic rites.”

Edwards also interviewed a coven of Denver witches, who provided him with a symbol, a stylized variation of the evil eye, which was supposed to “ward off the activities of satanic followers.” Displaying the symbol would supposedly stop the satanists from “further acts until the symbols have been removed.” The Banner ran the symbol with the story. “By printing the symbols in each of our 6,500 papers,” Edwards wrote, “they obviously cannot be removed.” Edwards also was able to track down the origins of the cult story, which came from federal prisoner Kenneth Bankston. Bankston had read an article about the wave of mutilations that took place in Minnesota in 1975 and wrote to the author of the article, who forwarded Bankston’s letter to an agent within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That agent took Bankston’s claims seriously and launched an investigation. According to Edwards, Bankston claimed that the mutilations were “the work of a cultist operations, and that the group had also drawn up a list of future human victims that included notable political figures such as Hubert Humphrey.”

The Gazette reported on the “bizarre Satanical group somewhat reminiscent of the Charles Manson ‘family’” in August 1975, quoting a “field investigator.”

“There’s a right wing, white supremacist faction to the cult which has planned the assassination of a number of prominent liberal-type political figures.”

In return for his cooperation with the investigation, Bankston was transferred to a lowersecurity facility, from which he escaped on May 31, 1975. No member of the “Sons of Satan,” the alleged name of the cult, was ever arrested. The cult theory quickly became a dead end for both law enforcement and journalists.

With satanists out of the picture, ranchers and law enforcement began looking for other explanations. The scope of the mutilations led many to believe it was the work of a vast government conspiracy, and others to look to the stars for an extraterrestrial explanation.

By the end of August and into September, Edwards was reporting on new twists in the cattle mutilation incidents: menacing aircraft and strange lights at the mutilation sites. Edwards collected reports from Elbert County, Elizabeth, Franktown and Simla of unmarked helicopters “buzzing” farmers and “chasing” people. “Several people reported having seen a flashing ‘strobe’ light,” wrote Edwards, “travelling from east to west at an extremely fast rate of speed and changing directions with a staccato effect in the sky.”

Edwards allegedly began working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, providing them with evidence gathered during the course of his investigations, after reporting that “agencies such as the FBI stated there is no evidence of federal crimes.” Edwards was frustrated with the response, noting that “it would mean that 21 groups of mutilators have operated in 21 states. Since it is a federal offense to commit interstate crimes that would open the door for their participation in the investigation.”

It wasn’t until Edwards began receiving threats at the Banner to “lay off the investigations of the cattle mutilations,” that Colorado Senator Floyd Haskell finally sought the FBI’s assistance within the mutilation investigations.

In October of 1975, the Gazette reported that the Banner, with reporting by Edwards, was “the only newspaper in Colorado known to have conducted a full scale investigation into the matter of mysterious deaths and mutilations of livestock in Colorado.” Edwards was interviewed in the Gazette to announce that this phenomenon was actually “an outcropping of a program” that began in 1961, and that he would be writing a book that “will tell how the project was conceived, how it progressed and why.” Edwards admitted in the interview that “anger made me interested in the cattle mutilations. It disturbed me that the public would take the word of officials, that no one was willing to look into it himself.”

But in that same interview, he alleged that not everyone appreciated his investigations, saying, “my office had been broken into twice and things gone through. Blood was thrown on my glass storm door at my home.”

Edwards also criticized law enforcement officials, who were beginning to ditch the cult theory for claims that the mutilations were actually the natural result of predation, scavengers and the decomposition process. This would be the conclusion of both a CBI investigation and an FBI investigation into the matter. Edwards called the investigations “an unimaginative job” and noted that “the most popular but weakest theory is that the mutilations are caused by predators. This is a good one for law men who can’t solve cases, since they don’t have to pursue the case any further.”

Shortly after Edwards’ interview with the Gazette, he was terminated at the Brush Banner. The new publisher, Drusilla Georgsson, said it was for “poor business practices.”

Then, on Dec. 10, 1975, the Banner’s headline read: “Ex Banner Publisher Presumed Missing.” The paper reported that Edwards’ wife filed a missing person’s report five days earlier, after he failed to contact her “as was his policy while he was away.” The Banner also noted that, “While in the Banner’s employ Mr. Edwards expressed concern for his well being on various occasions.”

Edwards’ car was found abandoned at a truck stop, and no one in Brush ever heard from him again.

“There’s two ways of looking at what happened with this guy,” says MUFON’s Zukowski. “He got caught into something and he got threatened bigtime and he went underground. I can think of one other person who that happened to. They went off the grid.” Zukowski also mentions the case of Max Spiers, a UK conspiracy theorist and UFO investigator who died in Warsaw, Poland under mysterious circumstances, allegedly vomiting black goo. “There are issues with doing different types of UFO investigations that could cause you to step over the proverbial line, so to speak,” warns Zukowski. “You have to be careful what you do. When you do UFO investigations and you go too far, you will get silenced.

Courtesy ufonut.com

The team of Travel Channel's show, Alien Highway

“Then you have the case where he just started a new life,” adds Zukowski. “There’s always the possibility he left his wife and used the conspiracy theory to cover his tracks.”

Zukowski works full-time as a microchip engineer and has served as a reserve deputy for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. He says he applies scientific and forensic methodology to his mutilation investigations, and has also reported strange findings with mutilated remains, some similar to Edwards’ findings from decades ago, and some uniquely weird. “I’ve had a few cases where the animal is lying in a round ground depression — not a crop circle — but a ground depression, where something pressed the vegetation down, 16 to 22 feet in diameter,” he explains. “I’ve taken soil samples from inside the ground depression and compared it to a test sample outside the ground depression, and the nutrients, the soil itself, in the ground depression is less water-soluble. The cations and CECs are different.” Zukowski implies that something, presumably whatever the deceased bovine had come in contact with, was able to change some fundamental atomic aspects of the soil. Cation exchange capacity (CEC) is a measure of a soil’s ability to hold positively charged ions — it's an inherent soil characteristic and is difficult to alter significantly. “That tells me that whatever made the round ground depression that the animal is laying in the middle of might have been a high energy source," he says. "I’ve also picked up EMF, electromagnetic field, from these ground depressions.”

As for what Edwards observed in the ’70s, many of those anomalies still occur.

“Unmarked helicopters will show up after the fact,” explains Zukowski. “August 2014 in Walsenburg, I investigated eight cows that were mutilated within a couple of miles of each other. The majority of the cows were found lying in the same direction. All the animals had the same type of cuts. The dewclaws were cored out. I interviewed two ranchers who reported helicopters in the area with spotlights where the animals were mutilated. There were also reports of lasers that diverted commercial air traffic. A week after the last mutilation, the rancher’s daughter saw a UFO.”

Zukowski has collected findings that cause him to doubt the predator theory, which Edwards also thought was bogus. “One thing we’ve learned is that the animal is picked up from location A — wherever it was grazing — it’s taken to a location B and it is mutilated and drained of blood, and then it’s taken to a location C, which is in the vicinity of Location A, not exactly, but close by. There was a case in Trinidad where we actually found the tracks of the cow where it ended, and then a good 60 yards away was the cow laying on the ground. Did it jump?”

The alleged predators’ choice in prey has also caused suspicion in some of Zukowski’s cases. “There was another case in the Walsenburg area,” recounts Zukowski, “where a cow had calved. The next day the cow was found mutilated. It was void of blood and the milk sack was cut out. A good 50 or 60 feet away was the newborn calf and the half-eaten placenta. Predators don’t go after a 1,000-pound animal and leave a 100-pound calf.”

Chuck Zukowski

Zukowski still documents cattle mutilation cases.

Others have also questioned the predation theory. The Gazette covered a mutilation in October 1976, a year after the Banner’s initial investigations: Logan County Sheriff Harry Graves found signs that a coyote had approached the mutilated animal, but “he never got closer than 22 ½ feet from the animal. Other cattle and horses in the same pasture were spooked and wouldn’t approach the dead steer either.”

Additionally, during the few field autopsies that were able to be performed, in cases where the time of death could be estimated, veterinarians discovered various anomalies. In January, 1976, the Gazette reported that Dr. Susan Colter of the Trinidad Animal Clinic was able to examine “various parts of the animal including the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver and she sent specimens to the extension laboratory in La Junta. She was especially interested in the way the animal’s organs turned to mush in a short time.”

Cattle mutilations have lessened in frequency since 1975, but continued. Many cattle mutilation cases allegedly go unreported. In 1975, Edwards noted that “one hundred and eleven mutilation cases held in the files of the Nebraska Brand Inspector’s office had never been turned over to law enforcement agencies.”

Zukowski attributes the under-reporting to what he calls the “giggle factor.” He notes that “ranchers don’t want to speak out and report something just to be made fun of.” Zukowski’s most recent mutilation investigation took place in Westcliffe in 2018. Since 1975, no arrests have been made in any of the over 10,000 cases involving cattle mutilations.

Forty-four years after mutilations originally terrified American ranchers, explanations of this phenomena remain controversial. The mutilators, whatever or whoever they are, have been able to keep their secrets this whole time, while conducting operations around the nation, without any defectors, leakers or whistle-blowers. UFO investigators, like Zukowski, are seen as conspiracy theorists at best. With unsatisfying official findings, and recent publicized cases, old explanations are resurfacing.

Colby Marshall, Vice President of the Silvies Valley Ranch in Oregon, which recently saw five bulls mutilated under mysterious circumstances, said in USA Today, “We think that this crime is being perpetuated by some sort of a cult.”

{ https://www.csindy.com/ }

13-04-2020 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

New Horizons’ view of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, which makes up half of Pluto’s “heart” feature. A new study of odd ripples on the opposite side of the dwarf planet supports previous evidence that Pluto has a subsurface ocean.

Image via NASA/ SwRI/ JHUAPL/ Science News.

Not all that long ago, scientists thought that Earth was the only place in the solar system with an ocean. But then we learned – surprise! – that several icy moons in the outer solar system are also water worlds. They’re true water worlds, too, in the sense that most, if not all, of their oceans are global. These alien oceans are different from Earth’s oceans: they’re not on the surfaces of the moons, but below the moons’ surface crusts of ice. Now, evidence is building for yet another such ocean, this time not on a moon but on the dwarf planet Pluto. The evidence is based on what the scientists called “ripples” on Pluto’s surface.

Scientists presented the latest findings about ripples in Pluto’s surface – and a possible ocean below Pluto’s crust – at the virtual 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The evidence suggests that Pluto has a deep ocean between its crust and core. The conference had been scheduled to be held from March 16-20 in The Woodlands near Houston, Texas, but was changed to a virtual-only format this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This latest update on a possible Plutonian ocean was also the subject of a new article by Theresa Machemer in Smithsonian Magazine on April 1, 2020. The results are based on a new paper that was first pre-published on ArXiv in October 2019, and is still waiting for peer review. Lead author is a name you may recognize. It’s Alan Stern, who spearheaded the New Horizons mission to Pluto for decades, from concept to reality. 

The main focus of the new paper was to study the far side terrains of Pluto, and how they formed. From the paper:

The New Horizons spacecraft provided near global observations of Pluto that far exceed the resolution of Earth-based data sets. Most Pluto New Horizons analysis hitherto has focused on the encounter hemisphere of Pluto (i.e., the anti-Charon hemisphere containing Sputnik Planitia). In this work, we summarize and interpret data on the far side (i.e., the non-encounter hemisphere), providing the first integrated New Horizons overview of the far side terrains.

The unusual dark “ripples” on the far side of Pluto (circled). Pluto’s far side was only able to be seen in lower resolution during the New Horizons flyby, but the images still provide valuable clues as to the possibility of a subsurface ocean.

Image via New Horizons Team/ Science News.

The evidence for a Pluto ocean comes from dark ripple-like features on the far side of Pluto. How did these ripples form? Scientists think they were produced by the same large impact that created Sputnik Planitia, which is a huge smooth plain of primarily nitrogen ice on the other side of the dwarf planet. This shallow basin composes one half of the distinctive huge “heart” feature on Pluto. As Purdue University planetary scientist Adeene Denton told Lisa Grossman in a statement to Science News:

If the impact is large enough, the planet itself can act like a lens, and focus the wave energy at the exact opposite point on the planet from the impact.

Denton and her colleagues had run computer simulations to see how the shock waves from the impact might have affected Pluto’s interior. The simulations suggested that an ocean was necessary to explain the ripples. As Denton said:

We got the fun answer.

Diagram of what the interior of Pluto might look like below Sputnik Planitia (the cellular terrain on the right side, on top). The ice crust above the water is thinner in this region.

Image via James Tuttle Keane/ Medium.com/ Starts With a Bang!.

The ocean would need to be at least 90 miles (150 km) deep, and Pluto’s core must contain minerals, such as serpentine, that form through interactions between rock and water. Denton said:

It’s certainly not exactly a smoking gun. But it’s exciting.

This new modeling of Pluto’s interior is the latest of a growing number of studies suggesting that Pluto could still have liquid water beneath its surface. Previously, in 2016, scientists also showed that fissures on the surface, and the spherical shape of Pluto itself, were evidence for a subsurface ocean. Pluto’s orientation may also be a clue. Another study from last year contends that the rocky body that collided with Pluto and created Sputnik Planitia actually broke through the dwarf planet’s icy crust. This allowed the ocean to briefly flow on the surface before freezing, which affected Pluto’s axis orientation.

The new research is compelling, although not conclusive yet. It’s still possible that there is another explanation for the rippled terrain on the far side. As James Tuttle Keane, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Scientific American in a statement:

There’s a lot of weird stuff on that far side of Pluto. And there are a lot of different ways that you can imagine creating some of those odd patterns that we see.

Close-up view of the unusual cellular terrain in Sputnik Planitia, composed of nitrogen ice. Water ice mountains are on the edge of this region.

Image via NASA/ JHUAPL/ SwRI/ Medium.com/ Starts With a Bang!.

Whether the newest research really does indicate an ocean on Pluto remains to be seen. But if it does, that would greatly help scientists understand how such subsurface oceans can exist on worlds that are otherwise too cold and too far from the sun, including possibly other small objects in the Kuiper Belt – a ring of small rocky and icy bodies orbiting the sun beyond Neptune – where Pluto resides. As Denton told Scientific American:

We might need to think a little differently about the Kuiper Belt itself and all of these distant worlds in it and maybe look at them a little bit closer. They could all host such incredible, rich geologic histories.

If there really is an ocean on Pluto, then how and when did it form? As planetary scientist Carver Bierson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Science News:

If there’s an ocean today, it raises the question of, when did that ocean get there?

According to Bierson, if Pluto had a “cold start,” then the water would have been frozen from the beginning, before melting later on due to decaying radioactive elements in the dwarf planet’s core. It would then partially re-freeze again. But if Pluto had a “warm start,” then the ocean would have always been liquid, and probably still is today, with perhaps only partial re-freezing. Cracks would form from the water partially re-freezing, and this is what the New Horizons images seemed to show. Bierson said:

That means maybe Pluto did start off warm. Maybe it started with a liquid ocean really early on.

Pluto backlit by the sun, as seen by New Horizons. The thin atmosphere glows an ethereal soft blue color.

Image via NASA/ JHUAPL/ SwRI.

So if Pluto has had an ocean for the past few billion years, could it be habitable? Could Pluto’s ocean actually support life? If Pluto’s core does contain minerals as hypothesized, then water-rock interactions at the ocean bottom could conceivably provide the necessary energy and nutrients, as in oceans on Earth and possibly ocean moons like Europa and Enceladus. And if Pluto could be habitable, what about other bodies in the Kuiper Belt? As Keane surmised in Science News:

This lays out one of the coolest hypotheses that a future Pluto mission could test. If Pluto can have an ocean and potentially be habitable, it’s very likely that other bodies in the Kuiper Belt also are ocean worlds and also are potentially habitable.

Although New Horizons’ mission at Pluto is long over, the data sent back will keep researchers busy for decades to come. As noted in Scientific American by Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University:

It’s amazing how we squeeze every little bit out of it.

Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and lead author of the new study.

Image via SwRI.

New Horizons found that Pluto is a complex little world, with vast, smooth icy plains of frozen nitrogen, the surface of which is divided into large “cells” (known as cellular terrain) and mountains composed of water ice with methane “snow” on top. Pluto also has a very thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, and when New Horizons viewed Pluto backlit by the Sun, the atmosphere glowed softly as a blue ring around the dwarf planet. And even though Pluto is much smaller than Earth, it has no less than five moons! If there is an ocean below as well, that would make this already bizarre world even stranger.

• Bottom line: Odd ripples on Pluto’s far side add to the evidence for a subsurface ocean.
• Source: Pluto’s Far Side
• Via Smithsonian Magazine
• Via Science News
• Via Scientific American

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

13-04-2020 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

THE DISCOVERY OF MICROBIAL LIFE ON EARTH OFFERS A NEW HOPE FOR LIFE ON MARS

“I am now almost over-expecting that I can find life on Mars.”

13-04-2020 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

This Is the Pentagon's 'Real Men in Black' Investigation of Tom DeLonge's UFO Videos

The report contradicts public claims the Pentagon has made about its UFO program.

Tim McMillan

IMAGE: EMMA MCINTYRE/GETTY IMAGES FOR KROQ

A new document acquired by Motherboard shows that the Air Force launched an investigation into the release of classified UFO videos by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge’s UFO outfit To the Stars Academy.

At the end of last year, we revealed the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations had looked into several videos, which The Pentagon claims show "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or UFOs. This news was particularly curious considering the videos were initially filmed by the Navy (not the Air Force) in 2004 and 2015. Since the videos were published in a New York Times article in December 2017, the Air Force has refused to discuss anything related to UFOs.

The new document, obtained from the Air Force Office of Investigations (embedded below), shows that after that New York Times article, AFOSI looked into the classification of the released videos, called “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR.” Originally, it found “all three videos were classified” and that, though a declassification request had been made for these videos, it was never granted. As we reported in December, AFOSI has become known as "The Real Men in Black" in the UFO community.

The AFOSI investigation also contradicts the Pentagon's claims that Luis Elizondo, the man who says he ran the Pentagon's UFO program, called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, never worked on UFOs at all.

Though his name is redacted, the investigation is clearly focused on Elizondo, who left the Pentagon, spoke to the New York Times, and has since joined DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy. Before leaving his position as an intelligence specialist in the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence’s Office, it was Elizondo who applied for the release of the three UFO videos.

In the years since the videos’ release, the Pentagon has contentiously denied the existence of a current Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and has denied that Elizondo investigated UFOs for the DoD. This appears to be disputed by this investigation. The AFOSI report states, “[Elizondo] disclosed his involvement (to several news outlets) with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which focused research issues on Unidentified Flying Objects.”

Similar to what’s implied in the OSI report, since Fall of 2019 when the Pentagon made it known the videos weren’t cleared for public release, the court of public opinion has widely assumed Elizondo was responsible for side-stepping regulations and releasing the videos before leaving the DoD.

However, during a previous investigation, I was able to locate a former colleague of Elizondo who was involved in the process. According to them, any errors in the process were the fault of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) agency, and not Elizondo. When asked who was responsible for the videos not being cleared, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough acknowledged to me, “DOPSR in this specific case.”

“I did everything I was supposed to do to request the release, and even went above and beyond by also engaging Foreign Disclosure personnel; which I did not have to do by regulation,” Elizondo told Motherboard.

According to the report, three months into OSI’s investigation, an unnamed official with the Unauthorized Disclosure Office said the videos were finally determined to be “Unclassified and For official use only.” The official also told OSI agents the videos were submitted to multiple offices within the Navy for review, and it was determined they contained “No sensitive symbology or other items of concern.”

In one final interview detailed in the report, another unnamed official said “100% of all F-18 videos go through his office for declassification and public release,” however, the videos in question, “never went through his office.” The official says there’s no indication the videos were ever classified and it’s uncertain where exactly they came from since “individual units kept track of their own footage.”Intriguingly, the official told OSI, “Some videos were kept for training purposes and some for situations such as SUBJECT’s public release of unauthorized videos.” What isn’t clear, is if the “situations” being referenced relates to video taped encounters with UFOs, or if this was a reference to unauthorized releases generally.

"There are still elements within the Pentagon who are very sensitive about this topic and are unhappy with this information being brought forward for public discussion"

Almost four months after launching their investigation, the report says on April 13, 2018 OSI closed the case after it was determined the three UFO videos were “unclassified,” and the Unauthorized Disclosure Program Management Office equally considered the matter “closed.”

What’s still unclear is why the Air Force was investigating Navy videos.

“I find it strange the Pentagon would assign an Air Force unit to investigate alleged data spills involving Navy information, technology, and data,” Elizondo said. “Especially, when there are NCIS [Naval Criminal Investigative Service] representatives in the same building.”

When OSI’s involvement became known in December of 2019, Motherboard asked DoD spokesperson Susan Gough if she could clarify why the Air Force’s investigative service would have been involved with the Navy’s UFO videos. Gough initially agreed to provide a response, however, she subsequently failed to respond, and ignored numerous follow-up requests.

Other journalists have expressed similar frustrations when it comes to the DoD’s sudden silence to anything UFO related. Tyler Rogoway of The War Zone recently published an entire feature detailing the DoD’s refusal to answer his inquiries related to the 2004 Nimitz UFO event.

After being provided with a copy of the report, Motherboard asked Elizondo if he had any significant takeaways from it or the DoD’s current silence. Elizondo said, “Even though there was no wrongdoing on the part of my office, there are still elements within the Pentagon who are very sensitive about this topic and are unhappy with this information being brought forward for public discussion.”

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

13-04-2020 om 21:53 geschreven door peter  

Scientists in Myanmar have discovered six new types of coronavirus in bats. While the viruses are part of the same family as the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the six new types are not closely genetically related to SARS-Cov-2, SARS, or MERS.

The new types of coronavirus were identified when researchers were studying bats in Myanmar for a government-funded program that’s called PREDICT. The program is used to find infectious diseases that could possibly be transferred from animals to humans. They analyzed hundreds of samples of saliva and feces (also called guano which is used to make fertilizer) from 464 bats and at least 11 different species between the years 2016 and 2018. The samples came from bats living in three different locations around Myanmar where humans often get into close contact with them.

Map of bat capture sites in Myanmar between 2016 and 2018.

PLOS ONE

In their study (which can be read in full here), the researchers wrote in part, “Two of these sites also featured popular cave systems where people were routinely exposed to bats through guano harvesting, religious practices and ecotourism.”

The genetic sequences of the hundreds of samples were compared with the genomes of coronaviruses that have already been identified. The new types of the virus were identified in three species of bats: the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat (Scotophilus heathii) which PREDICT-CoV-90 was identified; the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat (Chaerephon plicatus) which was host to PREDICT-CoV-47 and -82; and Horsfield’s leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros larvatus) which contained PREDICT-CoV-92, -93 and -96.

Bats have been named as the most likely source of the COVID-19 transmission to humans and it’s been predicted that thousands more types of coronavirus that have yet to be discovered could be living in them.

But don’t panic just yet, as more research needs to be done in order to understand fully how – or if – these new types of coronavirus could be transferred to other species and how/if they could affect the health of humans. Suzan Murray, who is the director of the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program as well as the co-author of the study, said, “Many coronaviruses may not pose a risk to people, but when we identify these diseases early on in animals, at the source, we have a valuable opportunity to investigate the potential threat,” adding, “Vigilant surveillance, research and education are the best tools we have to prevent pandemics before they occur.”

Marc Valitutto, who is a former wildlife veterinarian with the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program and the lead author of the study, weighed in by stating, “Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals — what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species –– the better we can reduce their pandemic potential.”

In other bat news, the United States has recommended that all testing of bats be suspended in order to prevent coronavirus from spreading to North American species and ultimately causing another wave of the virus to hit the public.

In a statement, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson told the Washington Post, “We know that many mammals are susceptible to infection by a diversity of coronaviruses,” adding, “What is not known is whether the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect, or cause illness in, North American wildlife, including bats.”

There have already been several reports of humans passing the virus on to animals, specifically cats and dogs, as well as a Malayan tiger that was more than likely infected by an asymptomatic worker at the Bronx Zoo. And since bats in the United States have been suffering through white-nose syndrome since 2006 – which has killed over 5.5 million bats – researchers have to be careful not to infect them with coronavirus as they may be more susceptible to catching it.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-04-2020 om 21:09 geschreven door peter  

One way some people are passing the time while in coronavirus lockdown is by traveling vicariously around the world via Google Earth. And just as when really exploring, they’re finding unusual things in unexpected places. While the Nazca desert area of Peru — home of the Nazca lines — isn’t exactly an unexpected place, what one such Google Earth explorer found is definitely unusual. On a mountain just northeast of the lines he discovered some strange stone circles and a large, curved mound in the shape of a serpent. What could they be and why has no one seen them before?

“I found something about 20-25 miles NE of the famous Nazca Lines in Peru on Google Earth. Circular stone structures in the mountains above 10,000 ft in the middle of nowhere.”

YouTube user cf-apps7865 (Chuck. Las Vegas, Nevada) describes his channel as a “look at ancient history without an agenda” and that seems to be the case with this video (watch it here) he uploaded recently titled “I Unveil A Mystery Above Nazca, Peru ~ Google Earth.” Using all of the impressive features of the software, cf-apps7865 first focuses on a group of what appear to be stone circles about the size of a “football pitch” (between 100 yards (90m) and 130 yards (120m) long and between 50 yards (45m) and 100 yards (90m) wide) at an elevation of about 10,000 feet (3 km). While this seems to be in the middle of nowhere for human activity, many of the commenters on the site quickly linked them to similar structures in South Africa that have been identified as ancient livestock corrals known as the Blaauboschkraal stone ruins.

The Blaauboschkraal stone ruins have two theories of origin. One is that they were made by European settlers (most likely Dutch) in the 1600s to use as corrals or kraals (Afrikaans) in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. They also may have been there before and were used by the local Zulu people for pens, defense and possibly areas for rituals. The other theory refers to them as Adam’s Calendar and author Michael Tellinger (among others) proposes they’re indeed part of an extraterrestrial calendar built by Annunaki 300,000 years ago. While it’s certainly plausible that Spanish and Dutch settlers could have made the same types of corrals in Peru, There are also theories that the Nazca lines are ancient calendars made by, inspired by or used to attract extraterrestrials. Are these circles a part of them, or could they be a different, unfinished attempt at an alien calendar?

“The ‘serpent’ just really jumped right out at me. It’s either a very large natural formation or a manmade artificial site like the serpent mound in Ohio.”

The serpent-shaped stone mound is more mysterious because of its resemblance to earthen mound in southern Ohio in the U.S. That Great Serpent Mound is believed to have been made by indigenous people as part of the funeral rituals for nearby graves. Some astronomical thought was put into it – the head of the serpent aligns with the summer solstice sunset, tail points to the winter solstice sunrise and the shape matches the constellation Draco, making it potentially a giant compass pointing to true north. Since the Nazca lines are believed by many to be directional guidelines, this stone mound might have a similar purpose and a study of its alignment to the solstices and the stars is in order.

Or it could just be a natural formation. That might make for sense if it weren’t for the mound’s close proximity to the stone circles – which themselves might be natural formations. It looks like an expedition is in order … except the world is currently in lockdown and travel restrictions and social distancing would prevent a proper one for now.

In the meantime, keep searching Google Earth for more unusual anomalies. It beats binge-watching old TV shows.

{  https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-04-2020 om 20:53 geschreven door peter  

13-04-2020 om 20:08 geschreven door peter  

Comet Atlas: The Real Reason Why Donald Trump Wanted To Purchase Greenland - (Incoming on May 11th)

Shoutouts to @RoseHannah, @GlobalWatchmenNews and @TheFinalDays YouTube Channels in assisting me with my research as we look at the incoming Comet Atlas and the possibility that a rather enormous ‘magnetic’ planet has entered Earth’s atmosphere and may be playing games with Earth’s magnetic force field in the coming month’s. You will see more predictive programming (just like we saw with the Coronavirus Pandemic) and how the Global Elite may be running and hiding from further calamity here on Earth. By the end of April we will clearly be able to see the approaching Comet Atlas and there may be an underlying reason as to why we have all been placed under House Arrest. See no evil… speak no evil. Out of sight, Out of mind. Just saying. We will be following this right up to the very end. 

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

13-04-2020 om 19:52 geschreven door peter  

Water Present on Earth Since Formation

Credit: Scooter20 - Wikimediacommons

A team of researchers demonstrated that water has been here since the Earth was formed. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this discovery has profound implications in terms of the habitability of the Earth, Venus and Mars.

While everyone agrees that our blue planet is rich in water, this observation seems contradictory, first, with the exploration of other rocky planets with an arid surface, and then, with the idea of ‘a giant impact between proto-Earth and a planetary embryo the size of Mars, from which the Moon would have originated. Such an event should have vaporized the preexisting water, and dried up the primitive Earth.

“So we have two options to explain the presence of water on Earth after such a giant impact: either the water was reported later, after the disaster, in particular by ice-cold or water-rich asteroids; or the giant impact was not important enough to vaporize all the water on Earth “, underlines Cédric Gillmann.

To investigate the origin of terrestrial water, a team of modelers and geochemists led by Cédric Gillmann – G-Time laboratory, Faculty of Sciences, Free University of Brussels, funded by the EOS ET-HoME project – traveled – digitally – far beyond Earth: to Venus.

While Earth and Venus are often thought of as twin sisters, their respective geological and climatic developments have diverged dramatically in the past.

Using numerical simulations of impacts by different types of asteroids containing different amounts of water, the team discovered that collisions with asteroids rich in water cannot explain the current composition of the atmosphere of Venus. This means that the material brought to Venus – and therefore to Earth – after the last giant impact had to be dry, which drastically limits the late water supply.

Contacts and sources:

• Cédric Gillmann Laboratory G-Time ULBFree University of Brussels

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

13-04-2020 om 19:44 geschreven door peter  

UFOs over Corona, California – recorded yesterday!

This strange UFO video was recorded in the sky above Corona in California on 11th April 2020 at 5.30AM and submitted to our website through report form.

Witness report:

 I was taking my dog out for her morning duties when I notice something orange in the sky approaching from the south east direction. At first I thought it was a small plane since there is a nearby local airport in the town. However, as I waited I noticed the orange light was not making a sound. I used my frame of reference by first noticing the light moving through the tree branches. It was moving slowly from branch to branch, that was my first indicator that it was moving. I then stopped moving to listen for any sound coming from ‘an engine’of the orange object but I did not hear any engine sound in the distance. It was then I quickly ran inside and grabbed my cell phone and began recording.
As I began to record, the orange object stopped and slowly began moving north. I could see it by my naked eye but on my cellphone camera kept trying to adjust the image. I swear on everything I hold dear…this thing stopped moving and was below the clouds. It could not be a planet or star but I could be wrong. After 5 minutes it disappeared.
For the recorded, I served over ten years in the US Army and I have been in a war zone. I have seen satellites, rockets, and drones…I have never seen anything like this. Plus, I HAVE NEVER SEEN A UFO IN MY ENTIRE LIFE….except what I saw that morning.
I will email you my video from email if I can…it is 4m and 11sec long.Be advise…most of the clear video starts at minute 1:55.
Again…it could be a planet…but I knew what I saw.

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

13-04-2020 om 17:25 geschreven door peter  

Latest UFO Sightings Reports – April 2020 #2

Latest UFO sightings that were submitted through our report page and Facebook page.

Corona California – April 11th, 2020 5:30AM Saturday

I was taking my dog out for her morning duties when I notice something orange in the sky approaching from the south east direction. At first I thought it was a small plane since there is a nearby local airport in the town. However, as I waited I noticed the orange light was not making a sound. I used my frame of reference by first noticing the light moving through the tree branches. It was moving slowly from branch to branch, that was my first indicator that it was moving. I then stopped moving to listen for any sound coming from ‘an engine’of the orange object but I did not hear any engine sound in the distance. It was then I quickly ran inside and grabbed my cell phone and began recording.
As I began to record, the orange object stopped and slowly began moving north. I could see it by my naked eye but on my cellphone camera kept trying to adjust the image. I swear on everything I hold dear…this thing stopped moving and was below the clouds. It could not be a planet or star but I could be wrong. After 5 minutes it disappeared.
For the recorded, I served over ten years in the US Army and I have been in a war zone. I have seen satellites, rockets, and drones…I have never seen anything like this. Plus, I HAVE NEVER SEEN A UFO IN MY ENTIRE LIFE….except what I saw that morning.
I will email you my video from email if I can…it is 4m and 11sec long.Be advise…most of the clear video starts at minute 1:55.
Again…it could be a planet…but I knew what I saw.

Tilden, Nebraska – APRIL10 10 P.M.

I was in my backyard at 305 s. Elk street and while facing southwest I saw several bright lights [a total of over 25] moving in various directions. [not all at one time but in a fairly small area] about 60 degrees off the west horizon and could see them until they were 80 degrees off east horizon, then suddenly I noticed one after another traveling from northwest to southeast. There were no flashing lights or sound & there was just a trace of wind. I counted 13 in a row about 10 seconds apart. One would appear and disappear then another would follow. They were moving too fast to be airplanes. First I thought they were satellites until we saw them come across one after another. My neighbors- alex and emily were also in their back yard at the time and they witnessed 8 or 9 after I called to them. Sorry no photos.

Melton, Victoria, Australia – 9/04/2020

I honestly can not believe I am writing this, I also can’t believe what I have just witnessed over the last 3 hours. This is the first time I have ever written to any forum like this, about this ect. I am really shaken still so please excuse my grammar. What was witnessed tonight is hand on bible true, we were not under ANY INFLUENCE, we are not drug users, weed users, drinkers or smokers. We are literally the most ordinary suburban couple, I have always believed that there might be life outside our planet, but I never looked into it or anything, my husband on the other hand, does not(DID NOT) believe in anything like this until tonight, I feel like I had to write a little disclaimer because if someone told me they had witnessed what I have just witnessed, I WOULD THINK THEY HAD LOST THEIR MINDS! This is the true account of our UFO sighting and I am only writing this in the hopes that someone else out there saw it too, I find it now quite coincidental that this happened while the world is on lockdown, it has started to make me question EVERYTHING.
Anyways….
At about 6.15pm my husband and I were sitting outside (on lockdown from Covid 19) in Victoria, the sun was still setting the sky was a dark pink/purple but the sun had not fully set yet and there was no sign of stars in the sky. When I looked into the sky directly behind my husbands head all of a sudden a HUGE bright star looking thing appeared out of thin air, I told my husband to look and asked what is that? (I myself have always believed in E.T, ufos ect but my husband did not. He freaked out when he saw this light, you could clearly see it was not a star, it was an oblong shape and With the lights shinning from it, it almost looked like a cross shaped object, we watched it for about 10 minutes in which we KNEW WITHOUT A DOUBT that it was NOT a star, the object was hovering and moving quite slowly and it was very large, I ran inside for a couple of minutes while he stayed to watch it and came back in 2 minutes in which I could no longer see it from the position I had first sighted it, meaning the object had moved quite a significant distance in a short amount of time.
As we kept our focus on the large object because as it flashed quite brightly, I swear on everything, this sounds so crazy I honestly can’t believing I’m typing this but I am in hopes that SOMEONE ELSE SAW WHAT WE DID… we started to see this distinct black shadow looking thing coming from the brightly flashing object, the best way I can describe it as crazy as it sounds is it looked like these black tentacles moving around, we both saw it, we were both screaming to each other “can you see the black thing coming out from the right, left bottoms ect” we could both see it at the same time. As that caught our attention to say the least… we failed to see that many more objects (about 10) had appeared in the same area of the sky but spread a distance from each other, as the sun began to set and the sky became darker, it was all very very clear, the other 10 objects were a lot smaller then the initial first one but still significantly bigger then a star, not only that but you could clearly see a red and white flashing light from them as well as they were also of oblong shape, it was as clear as anything,
(The stars started to appear and without a doubt you could tell the difference between the stars and these objects, the stars stayed in the same spot and were not flashing red and white) (we also sighted 2 airplanes in this time which just had no comparison to the object) we watched all of this with our own eyes, but that’s not the craziest part, as we shifted our attention from the initial big one to the smaller (but still quite large) flashing objects, IT WAS CLEAR AS DAY WE COULD SEE ABOUT 20 or so even smaller objects FLYING out of the larger ones, it was as CLEAR as the letters I am typing right now, we both saw it, I called my mum and told her to look she also lives in the same suburb, and she could see them clear as day also, the smaller little objects would flash their lights bright and then switch them off and switch them back on, they were flying so quickly and then stop to hover away from each other, some would fly far into the distance and disappear, others would fly towards the other bigger objects and disappear into them, the smaller ones were the ones moving around, we were clearly so shocked by this and did not want to move our attention to anything else, we kept track of them but there was soo many moving around so quickly, now this is what scares us the most, these smaller objects (from what we observed in particular the ones that flew away and disappeared rather then the ones that would go back into the bigger object)as they flew around, stopped to hover, and flew away again WE BOTH SAW (my mum also still on the phone while watching this happen too) A DARK OBJECT FALLING FROM THE FLYING OBJECT…you could distinguish the dropped object over the flying object because it would fall from the flying object at such a speed (like someone jumping from a plane for example). Now clearly we were very distracted by this in which we all started looking for the 1st Biggest object we saw… it had completely vanished. We spend 3 hours outside watching this, the activity decreased as all the smaller objects flew back to the “medium” sized objects and then those medium objects would hover around for some time until they flew away until they also disappeared. I honestly can’t believe in my life I could witness something so bizarre and unexplainable as this.
I was able to get a video of the larger object from my iPhone but the video DOES NOT do it justice, you can clearly see the first big object (no better then you can see a star) but the camera could not pick up the “medium” objects (as you can tell by the footage 1. We had not seen the smaller objects yet and 2. The “stars” we said were flickering was actually the “medium” objects we had not identified yet, at this point there was still not 1 actual “star” in the sky, the “stars” were the 10ish medium objects that we witnessed the smaller objects fly out of and into. ( Your website will not allow me to upload the video, can I email it??)
I hope this is clear to read, I am honestly in that much shock after what we witnessed that I am just trying to document this ASAP!

Kumanovo Macedonia – Apr 9, 2020

Indianapolis, Indiana – 8 April 2020

Umtuntweni beach, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa – April 2020

I took this photo off the sea, when l took it there was nothing on the horizon, when l look later there was this black spot on the photo. First l thought the lens was dirty, or something on the windscreen.
Can not enlarge properly to see wat it was. Maybe you can help in this regard, as you have more experience in things like this.

Unknown location in United States – April 2020

Alameda, ca. – March 26th 2020

I saw 6 objects coming out of the western sky with Orions belt as the background. This was on 3-26-20 at approx. 8:20 pm. The first one I saw was bright and moving fast, thought it might be a satalite, but then a second one came out of the same area, and a 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. They were moving from West to East following each other at equal distance, and speed. Took about 40 seconds for them to clear . I don’t know what they were, but do know they were in space above the Earth. Any ideas out there?

New Smyrna Beach Florida – June 2017

Cigar shape photo was taken from the Motel balcony we were staying at. My wife took it during or after a thunder storm that day.

Winchester. U. K. – September 2006

Flat saucer cream coloured shape shot from deep out in space between stars faster than anything I’ve ever seen, faster than anything made by humans as we do not have the power yet to go as fast as this disc, I thought for a minute it was a comet or something, it was faster than a comet. It looked like it just feel out off the sky iand past our planet. I was driving a coach back from London on the M3 Motorway on a September evening I was approaching Winchester and looking for Harvest Moon when I saw this shape just drop from out off outside of our atmosphere, from between the stars, so fast I could not believe what I saw, I’m usually a bit of a synic but hey < I saw this and I know people won’t believe it< it was like the Star Trek warp speed, the size of the disc compared to say a plane was absolutely huge

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

13-04-2020 om 17:14 geschreven door peter  

Alain Juillet pour Paris Match : “Le phénomène ovni échappe à la dimension terrestre”

par Pascal Fechner 

«Le phénomène est devenu palpable. J’ai eu la chance de pouvoir filmer une réunion des membres de la commission SIGMA 2 qui étudie les Ovnis de manière rigoureuse et scientifique ou encore de rencontrer le Sénateur Harry Reid à l’origine du programme AATIP de recherche sur les OVNIs du département de la défense américaine. Toutes ces interviews ont confortés mes intuitions.»

Dominique Filhol pour Paris Match

Oui, vous avez bien lu, Alain Juillet, ancien Directeur de la DGSE, est en ITW pour Match sur le sujet des OVNIS.

Lien vers l’article de Paris Match :

• https://www.parismatch.com/Culture/Medias/Alain-Juillet-Le-phenomene-ovni-echappe-a-la-dimension-terrestre-1681758

Parce qu’Alain Juillet fait partie des intervenants du nouveau documentaire de Dominique Filhol, “OVNIS, Une Affaire d’Etats”, qui sera diffusé Mardi en début de soirée.

On rappelle que Dominique Filhol accueillera dans un live exceptionnel Luc Dini, Pierre Bescond (Sigma 2) et Jan Harzan (Président MUFON US), tous participants dans le documentaire.

Informations sur le live :

⚠️ LIVE INÉDIT avec des invités exclusifs ⚠️

▼▼▼ Toutes les informations en description ▼▼▼

Le MUFON France vous propose une émission spéciale post-diffusion du documentaire de Dominique Filhol “OVNIS, une affaire d’États”

👉 La diffusion du documentaire aura lieu UNIQUEMENT sur la chaîne Planète+ A&E le mardi 14 avril 2020 à 21H : https://www.canalplus.com/chaines/les…

🔊 Bande annonce du documentaire : https://youtu.be/zd6SXDrFAr8

🤔 QUI SONT NOS INVITÉS ? Nous échangerons et discuterons du sujet OVNI avec Dominique Filhol avec :

• Alain Juillet – Ex-Directeur des renseignements a la DGSE
• Luc Dini – Président de la commission technique SIGMA (3AF)
• Pierre Bescond – ex CNES membre de COMETA et SIGMA2
• Jan Harzan – Directeur du MUFON – Mutual UFO Network
•  Et Pascal Fechner, qu’on voit de façon subliminale dans le reportage mais il est content quand même puisque ça a été filmé au QG du MUFON France à Valensole

💕 NOS COUPS DE CŒUR – A voir et à revoir …

• “OVNIS, UNE AFFAIRE D’ÉTATS” le Mardi 14 Avril à 21h sur Planète+ A&E, Réalisé par Dominique Filhol : https://youtu.be/zd6SXDrFAr8

• “Les Neuf Milliards de Noms de Dieu” par Dominique Filhol https://youtu.be/Etq4djlsKH8

{  http://mufonfrance.com/ }

13-04-2020 om 00:28 geschreven door peter  

Next stop, Enceladus? Scientists make their case for a mission to Saturn's icy moon

Specifically, Hendrix argued that Enceladus should be a target for the next round of the same mission size that includes the new Dragonfly mission to Titan, as well as missions like the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission, the Juno mission to Jupiter and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Two missions proposed during the most recent round did focus on Enceladus, but they did not make the final selection. Both Enceladus and Titan were listed together as the same potential type of destination, "ocean worlds." Because NASA didn't select an Enceladus mission, scientists are worried that the "ocean world" goal will now be considered under control, even though Dragonfly's visit to Titan will only teach us so much about Enceladus. The same limitation holds true of NASA's Europa Clipper, which will visit an icy moon of Jupiter that is superficially much more similar to Enceladus than Titan is.

"We now know that there's a lot of ocean worlds in our solar system and each as we currently understand it is unique and each offers something different to our understanding of ocean worlds," Hendrix said. "Enceladus is distinct from Europa and Titan."

The most exciting reason Enceladus is so distinct from other ocean worlds in our solar system is those plumes shooting out of the moon near the south pole. These plumes mean that scientists wouldn't need to build a spacecraft that can land on and penetrate an icy shell to study the hidden ocean.

"This is my personal opinion, but if we're going after life in our solar system and we've got an ocean out there that's just spewing itself out into space and making it easy for us," Hendrix said, "let's go do it, let's not make things harder on ourselves by first trying to do a lander mission."

While Enceladus' plumes make its ocean more accessible to spacecraft, the innards of the world remain isolated enough that, if there is indeed life in its hidden ocean, it could have evolved independently of life, say, here on Earth. But right now, that is a possibility of a possibility, and the only way to begin navigating out of these "ifs" is to send a spacecraft to check out the ocean.

"This ocean at Enceladus could be a host to a whole separate genesis of life," Hendrix said. "It could be uninhabited or it could be in a prebiotic state, but regardless, any Enceladus mission exploring this ocean is going to provide groundbreaking discoveries."

•  Saturn moon Enceladus' varied landscape dazzles in new photo 
•  A gift from Saturn: Icy moon Enceladus amid glowing rings (photo) 
•  Crescent Enceladus: Icy Saturn moon shines in Cassini photo 

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/news }

12-04-2020 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

Surprise! The universe's expansion rate may vary from place to place

By Mike Wall

The new results challenge a core tenet of modern cosmology.

These four galaxy clusters were among hundreds analyzed in a large survey to test whether the universe is the same in all directions over large scales. The study results suggest the concept of an "isotropic" universe may not entirely fit.

(Image: © NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bonn/K. Migkas et al.)

The universe may not be the same in every direction after all.

The expansion rate of the universe appears to vary from place to place, a new study reports. This finding, if confirmed, would force astronomers to reassess just how well they understand the cosmos. 

"One of the pillars of cosmology — the study of the history and fate of the entire universe — is that the universe is 'isotropic,' meaning the same in all directions," study lead author Konstantinos Migkas, of the University of Bonn in Germany, said in a statement. "Our work shows there may be cracks in that pillar."

• Related: The universe: Big Bang to now in 10 easy steps

The universe has been expanding continuously for more than 13.8 billion years, ever since the Big Bang — and at an accelerating rate, thanks to a mysterious force called dark energy. Equations based on Einstein's general theory of relativity suggest that this expansion is isotropic on large spatial scales, Migkas wrote Tuesday (April 7) in a blog post about the new study. 

Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the universe-pervading radiation left over from the Big Bang, support this notion, he added: "The CMB seems to be isotropic, and cosmologists extrapolate this property of the very early universe to our current epoch, nearly 14 billion years later."

But it's unclear how valid this extrapolation is, he stressed, noting that dark energy has been the dominant factor in the universe's evolution over the last 4 billion years or so. Dark energy's "baffling nature has not yet allowed astrophysicists to understand it properly," Migkas wrote. "Therefore, assuming it to be isotropic is almost a leap of faith for now. This highlights the urgent need to investigate if today's universe is isotropic or not."

The new study reports the results of one such investigation. Migkas and his colleagues studied 842 galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, using data gathered by three space telescopes: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Europe's XMM-Newton and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a joint Japanese-U.S. mission that ended in 2001. 

The researchers determined the temperature of each cluster by analyzing the X-ray emissions coming from huge fields of hot gas within them. They used this temperature information to estimate each cluster's inherent X-ray luminosity, without needing to take into account cosmological variables such as the universe's expansion rate.

The researchers then calculated X-ray luminosity for each cluster in a different way, one that did require knowledge of the universe's expansion. Doing so revealed apparent expansion rates across the entire sky — and these rates didn't match up everywhere.

"We managed to pinpoint a region that seems to expand slower than the rest of the universe, and one that seems to expand faster!" Migkas wrote in the blog post. "Interestingly, our results agree with several previous studies that used other methods, with the difference that we identified this 'anisotropy' in the sky with a much higher confidence and using objects covering the whole sky more uniformly."

It's possible that this result has a relatively prosaic explanation. For example, perhaps galaxy clusters in the anomalous areas are being pulled hard gravitationally by other clusters, giving the illusion of a different expansion rate. 

Such effects are seen at smaller spatial scales in the universe, the researchers said. But the new study probes clusters up to 5 billion light-years away, and it's unclear if gravitational tugs could overwhelm expansion forces over such vast distances, they added.

If the observed expansion-rate differences are indeed real, they could reveal intriguing new details about how the universe works. For instance, maybe dark energy itself varies from place to place throughout the cosmos.

"It would be remarkable if dark energy were found to have different strengths in different parts of the universe," study co-author Thomas Reiprich, also of the University of Bonn, said in the same statement. "However, much more evidence would be needed to rule out other explanations and make a convincing case."

The new study appears in the April 2020 issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. You can read it for free at the online preprint site arXiv.org.

• How can the universe expand faster than the speed of light?
• Our X-ray universe: amazing photos by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory
• 7 surprising things about the universe

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/news }

12-04-2020 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Massive Black Triangles Spotted Over Seattle W.a.

NOVEMBER 1993 ……SEATTLE WASHINGTON

The following is a true and accurate account of my “close encounter” in Seattle, Washington, which occurred in 1993. I believe it was in the month of November.

It was a Sunday night about 9:30. I often had occasion to be driving north about that time of evening on Sundays, and I usually took the I-5 freeway. This time, however, I knew the freeway, northbound, was jammed up due to an accident. So I took an alternate route which eventually led me to what I think was East Marginal Way, right next to the main Boeing Aircraft facility in Seattle.

As I was traveling, northbound, I noticed three red lights low in the sky ahead of me and to my right. They were moving in unison, very slowly across my field of vision from east to west. At first, I thought they must be the lights of a low flying plane, perhaps about to land. Then I thought, no, they must be helicopters because a plane, even if it was landing, wouldn’t be moving that slowly.

The trouble was, I couldn’t actually see the craft or crafts that the lights were attached to. They were, maybe, a half mile ahead of me, about 30 degrees to my right. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to this because I’d been making that Sunday night drive past Boeing (although via the freeway) for twelve years.

This is also not too far from the Sea-Tac Airport. In all that time I’d seen plenty of airplanes and helicopters flying low in this area. But something was different this time. It took me a minute to realize what it was. It was the fact that the lights weren’t blinking. I thought that was odd.

It seemed to me every airplane or helicopter I’ve ever seen flying at night had blinking lights. I squinted my eyes as I drove toward the lights, trying to see just what I was actually looking at.

Although I was now only about two blocks away from being directly under the flight path of these lights, I still could not make out what they were attached to.

However, from their slow, steady movement, in unison, I was pretty sure all three of them were attached to a single object, rather than being independent of each other. By the time I was directly in line with their flight path, they were about to enter the airspace above Boeing Field to my immediate left.

At this point I was convinced it was a single, low-flying craft of some kind and I knew there was something very odd here. I pulled my car off to the side of the road and rolled down the window to get a better look. But the craft was now directly overhead so I had to get out of the car to see it…

I opened the car door and stepped out, craning my neck to see the craft as it passed slowly directly over my head at an estimated altitude of less than 500 feet (Note: at the actual time of the sighting my impression was that the craft was perhaps only about 150 feet above me).

I could see it was a gigantic black triangle. There is no other way to describe it because that’s precisely what it was; a huge, black, triangle; not just “sort of” triangular-shaped, like one of those stealth jets I’d seen photos of.

It was just one big, three-sided, cookie-cutter-straight-edged, black, geometric shape; a triangle with one large, round unblinking red light at each of its three corners, flat up against the underside of the craft. There was a high, gray cloud cover that evening, subtly lit by the Seattle city lights in the distance. I could clearly and without obstruction see the object like a huge, dense, black silhouette against this gray ceiling.

I stood there almost not believing what I knew I was seeing. I actually said to myself, “Ok. What, exactly, are you seeing? You’re going to want to remember every detail of this! Just the facts, now. What, exactly, do you see?”

I made a mental inventory. “Black triangle. Red light on each corner, flat up against the underside of the craft. They don’t blink…

(Note: at this point it has proceeded on past me and was now over Boeing field)… It looks like it’s about seventy-five to a hundred feet above one of the main Boeing hangars. It’s moving very slowly. Maybe five miles per hour. It’s heading west. It appears to be about the size of a football field.”

Suddenly I realized, as I stood there in the dark on this quiet empty street, the object didn’t make a sound! Maybe more than anything else, that’s what made the whole thing so eerie. Something that huge, that close, moving through the air at a snail’s pace should be making some kind of a sound. A hum. A rumble. Anything. But, no.

It just moved across the sky like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie with the volume turned off. I looked up and down the street to see if anyone else was witnessing this silent event, but the street was dark and empty in both directions.

It occurred to me, however, that the thing had just passed directly over hundreds of cars on the freeway which was only a few miles east of where I was standing. I looked up again at the mysterious craft now blending into the dark horizon. I watched it until I couldn’t see it anymore and then it was over.

I got back into my car and closed the door. The window was still open and I took another look. Nothing was there but the gray night sky, softly aglow from the distant city lights. It was as if nothing had happened. But believe me, it did, indeed, happen.

NOTE: The above image is CGI.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

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THANKS TO HTTP://WWW.UFOCASEBOOK.COM

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=25821

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12-04-2020 om 21:43 geschreven door peter