20 Mystery Facts about Billy Meier Predictions

Billy Meier, for his surprising predictions has been always one of the most debated and controversial characters in the  modern history of Human civilization. Some of the predictions from this Swiss came true, while others did not. However, you cannot overrule the mystery in his predictions, if you are to believe that he made such predictions, with the help of some extraterrestrial creatures and the UFOs, as he claimed.

Strange Facts about the predictions of Billy Meier

(1) It was Billy Meier, first predicted the Iraq war. It seems to surprise people at how he got the indication of such events.

(2) Billy Meier once stated that AIDS would spread across the world at a rate that will resemble an epidemic. Standing in today’s time, this prediction has come absolutely correct

(3) About almost 50 years ago, Billy was instrumental to predict the devastating effect of global warming. It was made in a time when the slightest clue was not available in this regard.

(4) At a time when there were no issues with the ecological balance, Billy voiced the prediction that the world in heading towards such challenges.

(5) One of his prophecies hinted about the outbreak of the 3^rd World War.

(6) It is a mystery as how Billy was successful to predict overpopulation of the planet in the near future,

(7) Billy predicted the chances for a Civil War to break out in the United States of America.

(8) If Billy’s prophecies are to be believed, the sovereign US will split into several new nations, as the result of the Civil war.

(9) Billy’s prediction had references to militant activities on pleas of religion to attack the US.

(10) The idiotic act of mankind is paving the way for the extinction of the human civilization.

(11) The future of mankind is in danger as consequences of their own acts.

(12) Billy predicted that the entire world would collapse due to a devastating global fire.

(13) His prophecies correctly predicted the rise of terrorism across the globe in the 21^st

(14) Hundreds of atom-sun was predicted to break out, resulting in complete extinction of Germany and several of her neighboring nations.

(15) Billy was instrumental to predict a sharp fall in the values and humanitarian approaches in mankind.

(16) A civil war is expected to demolish Canada in the 21^st

(17) Billy predicted that somewhere in the middle of the 21^st century, the USA and various other Europen countries would experience a sharp drop in the quality of life and lifestyle.

(18) Billy claimed that all these predictions came from his foresight, assisted by the UFOS and the extraterrestrial creatures.

(19) Some people hold the notion that these predictions are the results of his success in time travel.

(20) Billy was never able to produce any evidence in favor of his claims, however, many of his predictions actually came true.

{ http://www.science-rumors.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 18:11 geschreven door peter  

Billy Meier UFO Contacts, the Predictions Are Accurate and Immensely Important

COAST TO COAST AM – Michael Horn, spokesperson for famed UFO contactee Billy Meier, addressed how recent developments in Europe were specifically predicted by Meier as far back as 1958. Horn declared that if the Meier claims of ET contact are real, it would be “the most important thing in human history.”

Horn continued with a litany of testimonials he says he has received from professionals who have checked on the Meier films, prophecies, and other material, and declared them genuine. He recounted his interaction with a former Air Force investigator who says he looked carefully into Meier’s personal history and claims and found them to be entirely true.

He (and others, such as special effects experts) Horn says, believe that photos of UFOs taken in the 1960s by Meier would have been impossible to fake at that time.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 17:53 geschreven door peter  

NASA gears up Mars rover for perfect 20/20 ‘SuperCam’ vision ahead of mission to red planet

NASA engineers are busy preparing the agency’s next Mars rover for its upcoming journey to the red planet. The six-wheeled robot will scour the Martian surface to look for signs of life. Deemed essential by NASA’s administrator, the mission is progressing as planned in order to meet a July launch.

The Perseverance Mars rover will land on Mars in February 2021, touching down in an ancient river bed called Jezero Crater. The 28-mile-wide crater is the site of an ancient river delta, and as such, scientists believe it could harbor fossilized life. That’s because the region is home to mineral deposits like hydrated silica, which is a preservative material here on Earth.

To help it search out key mineral deposits, the rover is packing a suite of scientific instruments, including some specialized cameras. The rover was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California but was shipped to its Florida launch site earlier this year.

Since its arrival, engineers have begun reassembling the rover and preparing it for flight. It will not be flying solo to the red planet, but instead, will be accompanied by the first interplanetary helicopter. Approximately the size of a softball, the Mars helicopter has passed pre-launch testing and was recently installed on the belly of the rover.

The rover, however, still has a few more milestones to complete before its ready to be tucked into its aeroshell and loaded into the launch vehicle. To that end, the rover recently had its vision tested.

Perseverance is packing multiple cameras that have a range of imaging capabilities from wide-angle cameras capable of capturing sweeping vistas to a narrow-angle, high-resolution camera capable of zooming in on details on the Martian surface.

The rover will use the SuperCam (along with its laser and spectrometers) to examine Martian rocks and soil, looking for organic compounds that could indicate past life on Mars.

So how does one test a rover’s vision? With a giant grid of dots.

The rover’s vision was first tested back in July 2019 at the Jet Propulsion Lab and then rechecked once the cameras were installed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rover’s main camera, called the SuperCam, is installed on the rover’s head. It appears as a large circular opening, and this is the lens. Underneath it are two grey boxes that are two Mastcam-Z-imagers, and on the outside of those boxes are two more cameras used for navigation.

“We completed the machine-vision calibration of the forward-facing cameras on the rover,” Justin Maki, chief engineer for imaging and the imaging scientist for Mars 2020 at JPL, said during the test. “This measurement is critical for accurate stereo vision, which is an important capability of the vehicle.”

To calibrate the imagers, target boards that feature grids of dots were imaged and placed at distances ranging from 1 to 44 yards (1 to 40 meters) away. Those boards were used to confirm that the cameras meet the project’s requirements for resolution and geometric accuracy.

“We tested every camera on the front of the rover chassis and also those mounted on the mast,” Maki said. “Characterizing the geometric alignment of all these images is important for driving the vehicle on Mars, operating the robotic arm, and accurately targeting the rover’s laser.”

But the work isn’t done yet, the imagers on Perseverance’s body and arm will happen in the coming weeks.

• The post NASA gears up Mars rover for perfect 20/20 ‘SuperCam’ vision ahead of mission to red planet appeared first on TESLARATI.

Source: 

• https://www.teslarati.com/nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-supercam-vision/

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 17:44 geschreven door peter  

Solar Winds Hitting Earth Are Hotter Than They Should Be–Here’s Why

Our planet is constantly bathed in the winds coming off the blistering sphere at the center of our Solar System.

But even though the Sun itself is so ridiculously hot, once the solar winds reach Earth, they are hotter than they should be – and we might finally know why.

We know that particles making up the plasma of the Sun’s heliosphere cool as they spread out. The problem is that they seem to take their sweet time doing so, dropping in temperature far slower than models predict.

“People have been studying the solar wind since its discovery in 1959, but there are many important properties of this plasma which are still not well understood,” says physicist Stas Boldyrev from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“Initially, researchers thought the solar wind has to cool down very rapidly as it expands from the Sun, but satellite measurements show that as it reaches the Earth, its temperature is 10 times larger than expected.”

The research team used laboratory equipment to study moving plasma, and now think the answer to the problem lies in a trapped sea of electrons that just can’t seem to escape the Sun’s grip.

The expansion process itself has long been assumed to be subject to adiabatic laws, a term that simply means heat energy isn’t added or removed from a system.

This keeps the numbers nice and simple but assumes there aren’t places where energy slips in or out of the flow of particles.

Unfortunately, an electron’s journey is anything but simple, shoved around at the mercy of vast magnetic fields like a roller coaster from Hell. This chaos leaves plenty of opportunities for heat to be passed back and forth.

Just to complicate matters further, thanks to its tiny mass, electrons get a good head start over heavier ions as they shoot forth from the Sun’s atmosphere, leaving a largely positive cloud of particles in their wake.

Eventually, the growing attraction between the two opposing charges takes over the inertia of those flying electrons, pulling them back to the starting line where magnetic fields once again play havoc with their paths.

“Such returning electrons are reflected so that they stream away from the Sun, but again they cannot escape because of the attractive electric force of the Sun,” says Boldyrev.

“So, their destiny is to bounce back and forth, creating a large population of so-called trapped electrons.”

Boldyrev and his crew recognized a similar game of electron ping-pong playing out in their own laboratory, inside an apparatus commonly used to study plasma called a mirror machine.

Mirror machines don’t actually contain any mirrors. At least, not the familiar shiny kind. Also known as magnetic mirrors or magnetic traps, these linear fusion devices are little more than long tubes with a bottle-neck at either end.

Their reflective nature is created as streams of plasma passing through the bottle pinch in at either end, altering the surrounding magnetic fields in such a way that particles within the stream reflect back inside again.

“But some particles can escape, and when they do, they stream along expanding magnetic field lines outside the bottle,” Boldyrev says.

“Because the physicists want to keep this plasma very hot, they want to figure out how the temperature of the electrons that escape the bottle declines outside this opening.”

Or if you’re Boldyrev and his team, those leaking electrons can be studied to better understand what’s happening with our very own solar wind.

He and his colleagues suggest the population of trapped electrons that yo-yo back and forth play a major role in the way electrons distribute their heat energy, changing the typical distributions of particle velocities and temperatures in predictable ways.

“It turns out that our results agree very well with measurements of the temperature profile of the solar wind and they may explain why the electron temperature declines with the distance so slowly,” says Boldyrev.

Finding such a good match between the mirror machine’s figures and what we see in space suggests there could be other solar phenomena worth studying this way.

• This research was published in PNAS.

h/t David M.

Read more at Science Alert

Source: 

• https://climatechangedispatch.com/solar-winds-hitting-earth-are-hotter-than-they-should-be-heres-why/

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 16:42 geschreven door peter  

Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health

Hey everyone, let me take a break from UFO and aliens today and talk about something that in plaguing the world...coronavirus. 

I first became concerned that something was not right on March 13th, 2020 when Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft...his baby. This was the very week that American news began to panic as the coronavirus began infecting large numbers of Americans.  Nothing but an apocalypse could pull this man away from his child...Microsoft. I didn't understand at the time...but I began to link the patterns between Bill and coronavirus. I feel the evidence points to Bill Gates stepping down because he feel responsible for this virus.

I did some investigating and Bill Gates owns a laboratory, controlled and owned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Back in 2000 his foundation became the worlds biggest foundation in the world holding over 46.8 billion dollars in assets...including some laboratories. 

His laboratory has a patent on coronavirus...the very virus circulating around the world population at this very moment. I believe that the virus came out of this laboratory and into the hands of the Chinese. 

How? One of three possibilities:

1. It was stolen by an Chinese scientist working for Gates and taken  to or shipped to China. 
2. It was sent by Gates to China to have others work on it to help create a map and possible cures for future epidemics.
3. The virus was created by China in Wuhan...and they followed Bill Gates exact steps and process he lays out in his highly detailed lectures in 2015 at John Hopkins. Bill says how dangerous of a weapon that coronavirus could be...and maybe China wanted to harness its power. 

So...you see, Bill Gates himself is responsible for this coronavirus that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Although he stepped up back in 2015 to warn the world...in one way or another...he instead caused it to take place. 

And I leave with a quote by Bill Gates; "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks."

Watch his lectures below...and decide for yourself. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

Bill Gates Talks Coronavirus on TED April 2015. 

Bill Gates Tells You His Worst Fear...Says 50% Chance of Epidemic In His Lifetime. 

Millions Could Die From Bio-Terrorism, Gates Feb 2017

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 16:22 geschreven door peter  

UFOs forming triangular shape over Michigan 19-Apr-2020

These orbs were recorded above Harrison Township, Michigan, just near Lake St Clair on 19th April 2020.

Witness report: 

Orbs flashing and appearing in the western sky approximately 9 were seen. My brother in law recorded this on 04/19/20 at approximately 9:30pm facing west from his home in Harrison township, Michigan. He stated there were approximately 9 orb type lights in the sky appearing and disappearing. They appeared to be moving in a northern direction. No navigation lights ( red and green) were seen, no sounds were heard.

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

20-04-2020 om 14:38 geschreven door peter  

Black triangle photographed over Kissimmee, Florida

Today we found this great photo of a BLACK triangle-shaped craft that was recorded in the sky above central Florida in United states back in April 2019 (19th) and it was just uploaded to MUFON website today.

Witness that uploaded this photo said the following statement that you can read below

What do you think this is? Do you think this is a military project called TR-3B that is seen all over the world?

Witness report: 

As I was driving I noticed this black triangle flying in front of me. I only have time to take this picture,because I couldn’t find it again

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

20-04-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Confirmed: Air Force “Men In Black” Were Investigating Luis Elizondo Over UFO Videos

JAZZ SHAW

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…

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…

“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.

You should click through to read the full AFOSI report for yourself, but the story turns out to be rather convoluted. A few months after the first video went public, AFOSI launched an investigation to see if the videos, which they believed to be classified, had gone through the proper declassification process. We can safely presume that if Elizondo had improperly released classified material they could and likely would have gone after him. But at the conclusion of their investigation, it turned out that the videos were never classified in the first place. They were determined to be “unclassified and for official use only.” So somebody screwed up, but it was almost certainly someone at the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) and not Elizondo.

But wait (as the saying goes), there’s more. The AFOSI report directly contradicts information that we’ve previously received from Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough. The report specifically identifies Elizondo as having worked on AATIP and adds a flatly stated detail saying that the program “focused research issues on Unidentified Flying Objects.” Both of these details are in direct contradiction to what the Pentagon has told us in the past. But then, virtually everything we’ve learned about AATIP has been cloaked in secrecy from the beginning and we also found out (courtesy of Tim McMillan once again) that they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the public from ever having access to a lot of this information.

Was this a case of the Pentagon spokeswoman simply not being aware that the Air Force was looking into all of this? Or were they just lying to us? Another nagging question is why it was the Air Force investigating the situation when those were Navy videos, to begin with? As we discussed previously, Elizondo believes that there are still people in the Defense Department with an ax to grind about him taking all of this information public. And that’s the most sensible explanation I can think of.

I remain both hopeful and confident that there are still more shoes to drop in this story. Elizondo has repeatedly said in interviews that he knows and has a lot more information than he’s revealed so far. He can’t just empty the bag, however, because he’s still under multiple nondisclosure agreements and he refuses to violate his oaths. While incredibly frustrating, I can respect that as a former military person myself. But stay tuned. There are cracks showing in this dam, and we may finally get some additional revelations this year.

{ https://hotair.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

UFO Sightings In Religious Art: Part 4 – Utsuro-Bune (Circa 1800)

by Andrew Arnett

With all the UFO related hubbub kicking up as a result of an article published last December by The New York Times regarding the existence of a secret Pentagon UFO study program and, more recently, the release of yet another Pentagon video of a UFO encounter, foreign governments are under increasing scrutiny and pressure from their citizenry to come clean and reveal what, if anything, they know about the UFO phenomenon.

Such is the case in Japan where, on February 27, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet issued a statement denying a UFO threat and stating “their existence has not been confirmed” and “we have not made any particular consideration of how to respond should one fly into Japan.” The statement came in response to an inquiry made by Seiji Osaka, a member of the Lower House opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

There’s little surprise that the government there has chosen at this time to not lay its UFO evidence out on the table for all to see, if such evidence does exist. This is and has been the M.O. for governments round the world since the UFO flap began in 1947. Nonetheless, the necessity for such a denial speaks volumes regarding ever increasing occurrences of sightings and encounters with UFOs, and the need for governments to quell concerns.

Indeed, the UFO mystery goes way back, in Japanese culture, and is embeded in Japanese folklore itself. We shall, in this article, take a closer look at some such curious cases, starting back at the dawn of the Industrial Age. In Japan, during the early 19th century, a series of unusual paintings appeared, by a variety of artists, from different provinces, which share a similar theme — that of the mystery of Utsuro-bune.

Depicted in all these paintings is a young woman, sometimes seen with red hair but always pale-skinned and beautiful. Nearby sits a spherical object, referred to as the Utsuro-bune (“hollow boat”). Though rendered with some variation by differing artists, this object is invariably round, covered, large enough to fit at least one person, and fitted with panels, or some kind of window opening.

The paintings tell of a legend, and the story goes like this: In the year 1803, there drifted onto the northern beaches of Hitachi province, in modern day Ibaraki prefecture, a large disc shaped object. A group of local fishermen found the object and described it as being made of metal, with crystal windows. Some said the object looked like a large incense burner.

Upon looking into the windows of this unusual ship, the fishermen could see strange symbols written on the walls but, most surprisingly, they discovered a fair skinned beautiful woman inside, wearing a garment made of some unknown fur or fine fabric. When the woman emerged from the ship, they found they could not communicate with her, for she spoke in an unknown language. Nonetheless, the woman appeared friendly enough, though she clutched a mysterious box which she kept to herself.

One version of the story states that the woman stayed on in that province where she landed, and lived to a fine old age. Other versions suggest the fishermen were quite spooked by the appearance of this stranger and thought it best to load her back onto her ship and push her back out to sea, wherein she drifted until landing on other beaches, evoking similar responses of shock and suspicion from locals along the way.

The legend of Utsuro-bune comes to us from a variety of sources, the first one appearing in 1825 in Toen shōsetsu (Tales from the Rabbit Garden) by Kyokutei Bakin. Another version appears in Hyōryū kishū (Diary and Stories of the Castaways) written in 1835 by an unknown author, and in Ume-no-chiri (Dust of the Apricot) by Nagahashi Matajirō in 1844.

It is easy to see the appeal of this story to Ufologists, who find in the spherical Utsuro-bune an object closely resembling a UFO or, more accurately, a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) as well as the alien-like description of the woman found inside. Another layer of mystery is added by researchers who find similarity between symbols found on Utsuro-bune, as depicted by artists, and those symbols associated with the Roswell incident and the Rendlesham Forest incident.

Perhaps Utsuro-bune was a bonafide extraterrestrial or, maybe, there is a perfectly reasonable terrestrial explanation to the mystery. Whatever the case may be, it is not the only incident of strange UFO encounters handed down to us through Japanese legends, as we shall examine in our next article.

• This story was originally published by Andrew Arnett on April 6, 2018 @ Paranoia Magazine

{ https://arnettfiles.com/ }

20-04-2020 om 01:24 geschreven door peter  

There are a shocking amount of strange and unidentified objects flying through our skies. Unfortunately most of these objects are not seen but on April 13, 2020 a resident of Sun City, Arizona saw, in the blink of an eye, several 'black things' while filming cloud formations.

Subsequently, the photographer, started going frame by frame and was shocked to see that he caught one these 'black things' on film.

The object resembling an elongated UAP/UFO must have been supersonic to appear in just only 1 frame. Whatever it may have been, it is unconventional.

The photographer has reported the sighting to Mufon for further investigation.

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

20-04-2020 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

Two huge asteroids which will fly past Earth on Friday and Saturday at speeds of up to 29,000mph are being watched closely by NASA

By Emma Parker

NASA has detected two asteroids which are headed towards Earth at speeds of up to 29,000mph.

According to NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies, one of the approaching objects is an asteroid which will intersect Earth’s path.

The first space rock is expected to visit our planet’s path on Friday and is called 2020 GR2.

2020 GR2 is currently travelling across space at a speed of almost 10,000mph and is believed to be 102ft tall.

The asteroid is an Apollo asteroid as it follows a wide orbit around the Sun.

It will not intersect Earth’s orbit this time, but it does flies close to our planet during some visits.

According to NASA, 2020 GR2 make its near-Earth approach on April 17 at 6.57pm BST.

The asteroid will be about 0.03188 astronomical units from the planet’s centre, which is equivalent to almost 3 million miles away.

It is not expected to return to Earth’s vicinity until February 21, 2080, after this pass.

Trailing behind 2020 GR2 is an asteroid known as 2020 GT2, which is much larger and fast than 2020 GR2.

NASA Estimated that 2020 GT2 measures about 177ft tall and it is expected to fly past Earth at a speed of over 29,000mph.

2020 GT2 follows an elongated orbit that extends beyond the path of Mars.

The asteroid is known to intersect Earth’s path as it goes around the Sun and is classified by NASA as an Apollo asteroid.

According to NASA, 2020 GT is expected to intersect Earth on April 17 at 1.07am on Saturday morning.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/  }

20-04-2020 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

SOCIAL media has been flooded with reports of UFOs appearing over Cincinnati, as baffling footage appears to show lights vanishing and reappearing.

By Katy Gill Video News Reporter

Shocked witnesses Laina and Angie captured the bizarre sighting in the skies above the city in Ohio, US, on August 3.

The clip begins with for bright objects moving in a line across the grey clouds.

But, one-by-one, they start to vanish from sight.

"They're gone, I just don't know," one of the camerawomen says as the objects then re-appear.

A fifth light then emerges on the left-hand side of the screen.

YouTube conspiracist MrMBB333 who uploaded the clip and said: “They didn’t go behind the clouds, they were in front of the clouds.

“Something comes in from the left, they appear to be in a straight row and at a slight angle.”

When the conspiracist switches the light formats, he claims the footage shows the planes turning “invisible”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/  }

20-04-2020 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

The Case for Past Life on Mars Gets Stronger

But how much evidence is needed until we can say there’s proof?

In a new paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Vincenzo Rizzo from the National Research Center in Cosenza, Italy, asks a provocative question: Why are many scientists reluctant to accept the use of geological methods to identify biological processes on Mars, when those methods are commonly used on Earth?

He points to a case in Germany from 1908, when a scientist by the name of Ernst Kalkowsky proposed that layered mounds, columns, and sheet-like sedimentary rocks called stromatolites were of biological nature. His contemporaries did not believe him. But Kalkowsky was later proven correct, when it was recognized that stromatolites formed because biofilms—composed of cyanobacteria and other microorganisms—trapped sediments. Stromatolites are now known to be the oldest evidence for life on Earth, stretching back at least 3.5 billion years, and they still exist in some remote regions, such as Shark Bay, Australia.

In his paper Rizzo follows in Kalkowsky’s footsteps by analyzing images from the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers on Mars that indicate the presence of biotic macrostructures such as stromatolites. He suggests that if no non-biological explanation can be found, the images should be considered as possible candidates for Martian stromatolites. Rizzo shows many examples of structures that have an amazing resemblance to stromatolites on Earth.

In principle I’m very skeptical of any evidence based only on visual resemblance or morphology, because the human brain has the tendency to see or fill in familiar patterns, even where they don’t quite exist. Rizzo goes well beyond appearances with his analysis, however. He made me realize that if—and it’s a big if—stromatolites did in fact exist on early Mars, they would probably look like the specimens he found in the rover images.

Carl Sagan’s saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” comes to mind. For every structure produced by biological processes, there might be some geochemical or physical process that mimics it. Some of these processes may be unknown to us on an alien planet such as Mars. On the other hand, we know more about Mars than we did in the past. We know there were lakes and possibly oceans on the planet early in its history, including at Gale Crater where the Curiosity images are from. Organic compounds have also been found at that location, and we know that rocks can travel from Earth to Mars (and vice versa), and that microbes are able to survive the trip. What, then, is the more “extraordinary” claim? That Mars during its early habitable period had life forms similar to those on Earth, which produced similar biogenic structures? Or that Mars is and always has been a dead planet?

Still, the bar for claiming to have detected life on Mars, past or present, has to be set high. Even on Earth it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a particular structure is the result of biology. Even though our ability to explore Mars has improved, we’re still not able to do what we routinely do on Earth—go out with a hand lens or other tool and study some enigmatic feature.

Future isotopic analyses of the stromatolite-like structures identified by Rizzo may strengthen or weaken the case for a biological origin (life prefers lighter isotopes, which we can use as a test). But I suspect that his hypothesis will have a similar fate as Ernst Kalkowsky’s. Only much later—likely when humans are exploring Mars—will we get a final verdict, which I hope will prove him correct.

{ https://www.airspacemag.com/ }

19-04-2020 om 23:34 geschreven door peter  

Cheops image of star HD 88111.

Credit: ESA.

ESA’s Cheops begins science mission

Marc Boucher

The Cheops telescope, a project of the European Space Agency (ESA), has now joined other similar spacecraft that examine stars in the hunt for exoplanets.

This week ESA announced that the Cheops telescope had begun its science mission.

The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, or Cheops, “is the first mission dedicated to studying bright, nearby stars that are already known to host exoplanets, in order to make high-precision observations of the planet’s size as it passes in front of its host star. It will focus on planets in the super-Earth to Neptune size range, with its data enabling the bulk density of the planets to be derived – a first-step characterization towards understanding these alien worlds.”

Earlier this year Cheops took its first picture, a star known as HD 88111. The image was taken its in-orbit commissioning. According to ESA, “the star is located in the Hydra constellation, some 175 light years away from Earth, and it is not known to host any orbiting planets. To demonstrate the stability of the satellite and instrument, Cheops took an image of this star every 30 seconds for 47 consecutive hours.”

Watch the ESA feature on Cheops science mission

“The images taken by Cheops are intentionally blurred: this deliberate defocusing is at the core of the mission’s observing strategy, which improves the measurement precision by spreading the light coming from distant stars over many pixels of its detector.”

“The in-orbit commissioning phase was an exciting period, and we are pleased we were able to meet all requirements,” says Nicola Rando, Cheops project manager at ESA. “The satellite platform and instrument performed remarkably, and both the Mission and Science Operation Centres supported operations impeccably.”

Now that the science mission is underway the Cheops team published its first result, an observation of the transit of KELT-11b in front of its host star HD93396.

“HD 93396 is a subgiant yellow star located 320 light-years away, slightly cooler and three times larger than our Sun. It hosts a puffy gaseous planet, KELT-11b, about 30% larger in size than Jupiter, in an orbit that is much closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun.”

“The light curve of this star shows a clear dip caused by the eight hour-long transit of KELT-11b, which enabled scientists to determine very precisely the diameter of the planet: 181,600 km – with an uncertainty just under 4300 km. The measurements made by Cheops are five times more accurate than those from Earth, providing a taster for the science to come from the Cheops mission.”

{ https://spaceq.ca/ }

19-04-2020 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

China wants a piece of the moon. Here's how it plans to handle lunar samples.

The moon, as seen by the United States' Clementine spacecraft in 1994.

(Image: © NASA)

Sample history

The former Soviet Union successfully executed three robotic lunar sample return missions. Luna 16 returned a small sample (101 grams) from Mare Fecunditatis ("Sea of Fertility") in September of 1970; in February 1972, Luna 20 returned 55 grams of soil from the Apollonius highlands region; and Luna 24 retrieved 170.1 grams of lunar samples from the moon's Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crisis") for return to Earth in August 1976.

The United States brought back much more moon material. The six Apollo missions that touched down on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972 collected 842 lbs. (382 kg) of lunar samples at different landing sites on the lunar surface, including rocks, core samples, lunar soil and dust.

China's moon rock plans

In a paper that was scheduled to be presented last month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), which ended up being cancelled due to concerns about the novel coronavirus, lead author G. L. Zhang from the National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, details the main tasks of the Ground Research Application System (GRAS) of the country's lunar exploration project.

These tasks include: receiving lunar samples from the spacecraft system; establishing special facilities and laboratories for permanent local storage of samples and backup storage at another location; and preparation and preprocessing of lunar samples.

According to the requirements of the mission, GRAS formed a complete lunar sample preprocessing, storage and preparation plan.

This plan mainly includes: handover and transfer of lunar samples from the spacecraft system to GRAS, unsealing of the sample package, sample separation (drilled sample separation and scooped sample separation), sample storage (scooped and drilled samples) and sample preparation.

• Related: Latest news about China's space program 

A lunar pipeline

A detailed pipeline for this plan is discussed in the LPSC paper.

First, the returned lunar samples will be divided into scooped samples and drilled samples after entering the lab. Both scooped and drilled samples will then be divided into four categories: permanent storage samples, backup permanent storage samples, scientific research samples and exhibition samples.

"All the tools that contact with lunar sample are made of stainless steel, Teflon, quartz glass or materials of known composition to strictly control the factors that will affect subsequent scientific analysis. The water and oxygen content in the glove box, filled with pure [nitrogen], will be strictly monitored to prevent the lunar samples from Earth pollution," the LPSC paper notes.

U.S. and China approaches

"They seem to be taking a very similar approach to how we have (and continue to) process and curate Apollo samples (and other astromaterials in our collection)," said Ryan Zeigler, NASA's Apollo Sample Curator and manager of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office of the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"There are a few minor differences, but that is to be expected since each mission has unique characteristics," Zeigler told Inside Outer Space.

The Chinese are clearly taking seriously the handling, storage and preliminary examination of a potential set of new lunar samples. The technology described is in many ways similar to the technology in the NASA Lunar Sample Laboratory, noted Carlton Allen, a former NASA Astromaterials Curator. (He is now retired.) 

"The use of a nitrogen atmosphere for preparation, subdivision and storage has proven both necessary and sufficient over 50 years of lunar curation at NASA," Allen said. 

Glovebox photos show that the nitrogen is maintained at positive pressure with respect to the laboratory atmosphere, which has proven important for contamination control.  The importance of restricting the materials that come into contact with the samples, another important aspect of contamination control, is also recognized. 

The technology described by G. L. Zhang and colleagues "has the potential to make these future lunar samples directly comparable to Apollo and Luna samples, which could significantly increase the value of each sample set," Allen said.

• The moon on Earth: Where are NASA's Apollo lunar rocks now?
• China's Chang'e program: missions to the moon
• The 20 most marvelous moon missions

Leonard David is the author of the book "Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

19-04-2020 om 22:45 geschreven door peter  

As Comet ATLAS crumbles away, Comet SWAN arrives to take its place for skywatchers

19-04-2020 om 22:03 geschreven door peter  

The Mysterious Aboriginal Rock Art of the Wandjinas

One of the most intriguing and perplexing legends of the Australian Aboriginal people is that of the Wandjinas, the supreme spirit beings and creators of the land and people.  The land of the Wandjina is a vast area of about 200,000 square kilometres of lands, waters, sea and islands in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia with continuous culture dating back at least 60,000 years but probably much older. Here, traditional Aboriginal law and culture are still active and alive.

The Worora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people are the three Wandjina tribes – these tribal groups are the custodians of the oldest known figurative art which is scattered throughout the Kimberley.

Perhaps what is most interesting about their figurative art painted on rocks and in caves is the way in which they have represented the Wandjinas - white faces, devoid of a mouth, large black eyes, and a head surrounded by a halo or some type of helmet.

The ancient paintings have received all manner of interpretations from stylized representations of people or even owls, to ancient astronaut theories which suggest that extraterrestrial beings visited Earth tens of thousands of years ago and had direct contact with the inhabitants. Some believe that the extraterrestrials even played a direct role in creation, which is reflected not only in the Dreamtime stories of the Aboriginals but also the myths and legends of many ancient civilizations around the world. 

One could be forgiven for thinking that there is indeed a remarkable similarity between the Wandjinas and the stereotypical image of an extraterrestrial which we see time and again in art, movies and witness accounts. And many raise logical questions such as, why were the Wandjinas painted with white skin if it was representing another Aboriginal, all of whom had black skin? Why were the eyes always painted so disproportionate to the face and nose? And why were they all painted without a mouth?

But what is even more surprising is the oral account of the Wandjinas which has been passed from generation to generation as all of the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories have.

The story goes like this – the Wandjina were “sky-beings” or “spirits from the clouds” who came down from the Milky Way during Dreamtime and created the Earth and all its inhabitants. Then Wandjina looked upon the inhabitants and realised the enormity of the task and returned home to bring more Wandjinas. With the aid of the Dreamtime snake, the Wandjina descended and spent their Dreamtime creating, teaching and being Gods to the Aboriginals whom they created.  After some time, the Wandjinas disappeared. They descended into the earth and since then, have lived at the bottom of the water source associated with each of the paintings. There, they continually produce new ‘child-seeds’, which are regarded as the source of all human life.  Some Wandjina also returned to the sky, and can now be seen at night as lights moving high above the earth.

Aboriginal people, in the Kimberley also believe that even after they disappeared, the Wandjina continued to control everything that happened on the land and in the sky and sea.

Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, rock art and cave paintings have often been considered more myth then reality, like the stories we find in the teachings of modern day religions. However, recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed the reality of at least some of the Dreamtime stories. For example, those that spoke of huge mammals walking the Earth were once considered fantasy. But discoveries of animal fossils belonging to ‘mega fauna’ including giant mammals confirmed that these stories were accounts of real life events, passed down by generations over tens of thousands of years.

Interestingly and of course controversially, objects have been found on geographical sites which suggest the area had been inhabited as long ago as 174,000 B.C.  This contradicts the theory that Aboriginals had their routes in Africa and that inhabitants travelled from Africa to Australia about 60,000 years ago. Other researchers have suggested that Homo sapiens actually originated in Australia .

Today, the Aboriginal tribes of the Worora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul still revere the Wandjina and only certain individuals are given permission to paint them. It is said that the Wandjina could punish those who broke the law with floods, lightening and cyclones and the paintings of the Wandjina are believed to possess these powers, therefore according to the Aboriginals they are always to be approached and treated respectfully.

Why would ancient Aboriginal people create so-called myths or fanciful stories if it meant so much to them and remains so important to their culture to this day?  So many myths and legends of the past have already been proven true by archaeological findings, such as the legend of the city of Troy , the labyrinth of the Minotaur, Norse legends of navigational crystals and many more.  Could it not be that the Aboriginal people of the time were simply telling of events as they saw them and how they understood them at the time? Perhaps one day we will uncover the answers to these intriguing questions.

By April Holloway

Related Links

http://poleshift.ning.com/profiles/blogs/wandjina-rock-art-kimberley-au

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/what-are-wandjinas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBUd_WIjN9g

Related Books

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

19-04-2020 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

On March 20, 2020, something exploded on the far side of the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) saw the debris flying over the sun's eastern limb.

Now on April 12, 2020, something exploded on the far side of the sun again. The blast hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. Two days later on April 14, 2020 there was a large solar explosion too. Coronagraph images from NASA's STEREO A probe confirm that a CME emerged from the blast site.

Two mysterious explosions within one month on the far side of the sun is very strange. But what caused the explosions?

It is suggested that it could be a far side sunspot or collapsing filaments but what about, as we have suggested in our first article - Mysterious explosion on the far side of the Sun - if these mysterious explosions on the far side of the sun are caused by an unknown source which has more devastating energy than anything we have ever seen so far.

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

19-04-2020 om 20:21 geschreven door peter  

April 2020: Dr. Steven Greer LIVE on The Science of Consciousness

Presented by Dr. Steven Greer. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun (narrated by Jeremy Piven) features groundbreaking video and photographic evidence and supporting interviews from prominent figures such as Adam Curry of Princeton’s PEAR Lab; legendary civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan, and Dr. Russell Targ, who headed the CIA’s top-secret remote viewing program. Their message: For thousands of people, contact has begun. This is their story. Dr. Greer’s previous works, Sirius and Unacknowledged, broke crowdfunding records and ignited a grassroots movement. In this film, Dr. Greer presents the most dangerous information that the architects of secrecy don’t want you to know: how forgotten spiritual knowledge holds the key to humans initiating contact with advanced ET civilizations.

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

19-04-2020 om 18:08 geschreven door peter  

A 'very big' burning object was spotted hurtling across the Cambridgeshire skyline for 20 minutes - and was 'too big' to be a shooting star

By Harry Gold / Anna Savva

Canal boat owner Gerry Underwood, 55, spotted the object at around 8pm on Wednesday

A flaming red UFO was spotted circling the skies over Cambridgeshire before disappearing behind some trees.

It was spotted by a stunned canal boat owner in Stretham, around 8pm on Wednesday, who says he watched its eerie descent for 20 minutes.

Gerry Underwood, 55, believes the flaming object was "very big" too big to have been a shooting star and created a massive "chemtrail".

Gerry who lives on his boat with partner partner Melanie, told CambridgeshireLive they were outside "having a small fire" when the mysterious object flew into view.

He said: “It looked like a very thick chemtrail to start with. It looked like a short, skinny cloud.

“It wasn’t moving quickly at all. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a meteorite, because they are gone in seconds.

“We have seen hundreds of shooting stars, but this definitely wasn’t that either.

“This was coming down very slowly and spiralling. It started to glow orange as you can see in the pictures.

“There were flames coming out of the back of it as well. It was really unusual.”

Gerry took several pictures of the burning entity dropping through the sky. A huge plume of smoke can be seen behind it as it descends into the distance.

Gerry said he watched the unidentified object fall through the sky for "between 10 and 20 minutes," as it was coming down slowly.

Eventually, the burning mass vanished behind the trees in the distance.

Gerry said he was looking towards Huntingdon as he watched it descend, but stressed the object might have landed "well beyond that."

He said: “The sheer size of it is what’s got me. When you look at the pictures, they show the trees in the foreground and it’s way beyond that, it was very big.

“It landed beyond the horizon, that’s how big it was - we couldn’t see it land.”

Gerry compared his sighting to a similar incident in Bristol just a few days ago.

He said: “They have put it down as a UFO on fire, which I don’t think this was, but it was so, so bright.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

19-04-2020 om 01:35 geschreven door peter