The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
28-05-2020
New Class of Cosmic Explosions Discovered
New Class of Cosmic Explosions Discovered
Astronomers have found two objects that, added to a strange object discovered in 2018, constitute a new class of cosmic explosions. The new type of explosion shares some characteristics with supernova explosions of massive stars and with the explosions that generate gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), but still has distinctive differences from each.
Artist’s conception illustrates the differences in phenomena resulting from an “ordinary” core-collapse supernova explosion, an explosion creating a gamma-ray burst, and one creating a Fast Blue Optical Transient. Details in text.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
The saga began in June of 2018 when astronomers saw a cosmic blast with surprising characteristics and behavior. The object, dubbed AT2018cow (“The Cow”), drew worldwide attention from scientists and was studied extensively. While it shared some characteristics with supernova explosions, it differed in important aspects, particularly its unusual initial brightness and how rapidly it brightened and faded in just a few days.
In the meantime, two additional blasts — one from 2016 and one from 2018 — also showed unusual characteristics and were being observed and analyzed. The two new explosions are called CSS161010 (short for CRTS CSS161010 J045834-081803), in a galaxy about 500 million light-years from Earth, and ZTF18abvkwla (“The Koala”), in a galaxy about 3.4 billion light-years distant. Both were discovered by automated sky surveys (Catalina Real-time Transient Survey, All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, and Zwicky Transient Facility) using visible-light telescopes to scan large areas of sky nightly.
Two teams of astronomers followed up those discoveries by observing the objects with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Both teams also used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the team studying CSS161010 used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Both objects gave the observers surprises.
Anna Ho, of Caltech, lead author of the study on ZTF18abvkwla, immediately noted that the object’s radio emission was as bright as that from a gamma-ray burst. “When I reduced the data, I thought I had made a mistake,” she said.
Deanne Coppejans, of Northwestern University, led the study on CSS161010, which found that the object had launched an “unexpected” amount of material into interstellar space at more than half the speed of light. Her Northwestern co-author Raffaella Margutti, said, “It took almost two years to figure out what we were looking at just because it was so unusual.”
In both cases, the follow-up observations indicated that the objects shared features in common with AT2018cow. The scientists concluded that these events, called Fast Blue Optical Transients (FBOTs), represent, along with AT2018cow, a type of stellar explosion significantly different from others. The scientists reported their findings in papers in the Astrophysical Journal and the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Artist’s conception illustrates the phenomena that make up the new class of cosmic explosions called Fast Blue Optical Transients.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
FBOTs probably begin, the astronomers said, the same way as certain supernovae and gamma-ray bursts — when a star much more massive than the Sun explodes at the end of its “normal” atomic fusion-powered life. The differences show up in the aftermath of the initial explosion.
In the “ordinary” supernova of this type, called a core-collapse supernova, the explosion sends a spherical blast wave of material into interstellar space. If, in addition to this, a rotating disk of material briefly forms around the neutron star or black hole left after the explosion and propels narrow jets of material at nearly the speed of light outward in opposite directions, these jets can produce narrow beams of gamma rays, causing a gamma-ray burst.
The rotating disk, called an accretion disk, and the jets it produces, are called an “engine” by astronomers.
FBOTs, the astronomers concluded, also have such an engine. In their case, unlike in gamma-ray bursts, it is enshrouded by thick material. That material probably was shed by the star just before it exploded, and may have been pulled from it by a binary companion.
When the thick material near the star is struck by the blast wave, it causes the bright visible-light burst soon after the explosion that initially made these objects appear so unusual. That bright burst also is why astronomers call these blasts “fast blue optical transients.” This is one of the characteristics that distinguished them from ordinary supernovae.
As the blastwave from the explosion collides with the material around the star as it travels outwards, it produces radio emission. This very bright emission was the important clue that proved that the explosion was powered by an engine.
The shroud of dense material “means that the progenitor star is different from those leading to gamma-ray bursts,” Ho said. The astronomers said that in the Cow and in CSS161010, the dense material included hydrogen, something never seen in in gamma-ray bursts.
Using the W.M. Keck Observatory, the astronomers found that both CSS 161010 and ZTF18abvkwla, like the Cow, are in small, dwarf galaxies. Coppejans said that the dwarf galaxy properties “might allow some very rare evolutionary paths of stars” that lead to these distinctive explosions.
Although a common element of the FBOTs is that all three have a ‘central engine,’ the astronomers caution that the engine also could be the result of stars being shredded by black holes, though they consider supernova-type explosions to be the more likely candidate.
“Observations of more FBOTs and their environments will answer this question,” Margutti said.
To do that, the scientists say they will need to use telescopes covering a wide range of wavelengths, as they have done with the first three objects. “While FBOTs have proven rarer and harder to find than some of us were hoping, in the radio band they’re also much more luminous than we’d guessed, allowing us to provide quite comprehensive data even on events that are far away,” said Daniel Perley, of the Liverpool John Moores University.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The study of CSS161010 was partially supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
Contacts and sources:
Dave Finley National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Publications:
A Mildly Relativistic Outflow from the Energetic, Fast-rising Blue Optical Transient CSS161010 in a Dwarf Galaxy. D. L. Coppejans, R. Margutti, G. Terreran, A. J. Nayana, E. R. Coughlin, T. Laskar, K. D. Alexander, M. Bietenholz, D. Caprioli, P. Chandra, M. R. Drout, D. Frederiks, C. Frohmaier, K. H Hurley, C. S. Kochanek, M. MacLeod, A. Meisner, P. E. Nugent, A. Ridnaia, D. J. Sand, D. Svinkin, C. Ward, S. Yang, A. Baldeschi, I. V. Chilingarian, Y. Dong, C. Esquivia, W. Fong, C. Guidorzi, P. Lundqvist, D. Milisavljevic, K. Paterson, D. E. Reichart, B. Shappee, M. C. Stroh, S. Valenti, B. A. Zauderer, B. Zhang. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2020; 895 (1): L23 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab8cc7
The Koala: A Fast Blue Optical Transient with Luminous Radio Emission from a Starburst Dwarf Galaxy at z = 0.27. Anna Y. Q. Ho, Daniel A. Perley, S. R. Kulkarni, Dillon Z. J. Dong, Kishalay De, Poonam Chandra, Igor Andreoni, Eric C. Bellm, Kevin B. Burdge, Michael Coughlin, Richard Dekany, Michael Feeney, Dmitry D. Frederiks, Christoffer Fremling, V. Zach Golkhou, Matthew J. Graham, David Hale, George Helou, Assaf Horesh, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Russ R. Laher, Frank J. Masci, A. A. Miller, Michael Porter, Anna Ridnaia, Ben Rusholme, David L. Shupe, Maayane T. Soumagnac, Dmitry S. Svinkin. The Astrophysical Journal, 2020; 895 (1): 49 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab8bcf
Incredibly rare pieces of tiny Neolithic rock art found in a shallow Australian cave were made by creating tiny stencils out of beeswax, researchers have concluded.
Located in the Yilbilinji rockshelter in northern Australia's Limmen National Park, miniature stencils of this type are only known from two other sites across the globe.
Although the site — traditionally owned by the Marra Aboriginal people — has been known for decades, the tiny art was only documented in 2017.
Each of the images is less than 4.7 inches (12 centimetres) in length.
The miniatures appear among around 300 larger scale stencilled images, the latter of which are common among the 28,000-year history of Aboriginal art.
The large images are made by spraying paint across objects held against the rock face — with hands, boomerangs and animal parts often used as stencils.
However, the tiny stencilled images are too small to have been made using ordinary objects — which encouraged researchers to explore how they were made.
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Incredibly rare pieces of tiny Neolithic rock art found in a shallow Australian cave, pictured, were made by creating tiny stencils out of beeswax, researchers have concluded
Archaeologist Liam Brady and colleagues including Marra Rangers and Park Rangers recorded a total of 17 of the tiny stencils — including such motifs as human figures, animals, boomerangs and geometric shapes.
'We have found the largest concentration of these images anywhere in the world,' said Dr Brady, who hails from Australia's Flinders University.
'We wanted to know how they were made and what they might mean,' he added.
The team concluded that the shape of the stencilled images meant that they were likely made using a material that could be easily moulded and stuck to the surface of the rock — as there was no sign anything else was used to affix the stencils.
With anthropological studies in the region noting that children often shape beeswax into tiny items like cattle and horses the team set out to test if the sticky substance could be used to produce stencilled art similar to that found in the rockshelter.
The researchers heated and shaped beeswax, proving that it could be employed successfully to make miniature stencils.
'Our experiments show how important the role of precision, carefulness, time and effort are in decorating and inscribing the landscape with symbols' said Dr Brady.
The miniatures appear among around 300 larger scale stencilled images, the latter of which are common among the 28,000-year history of Aboriginal art
The large images are made by spraying paint across objects held against the rock face — with hands, boomerangs and animal parts often used as stencils. However, the tiny stencilled images are too small to have been made using ordinary objects — which encouraged researchers to explore how they were made
Located in the Yilbilinji rockshelter, pictured, in northern Australia's Limmen National Park, miniature stencils of this type are only known from two other sites across the globe
According to the researchers, understand how the images were made may help shine light on exactly why they were made, as well.
Among some Aboriginal populations for example, beeswax is conferred a spiritual significance and is associated with the ancestral beings — or 'Dreamings' — that are said to have originally shaped the world, as well as the practice of sorcery.
At the same time, however, the researchers noted that the fact that children are often seen making things with beeswax could suggest that the art was the product of play — or practice for making the similar, but full-sized, art also found in the cave.
This conclusion is supported by the fact that some of the tiny stencils were left on the rock at child height.
'The Marra were making these miniature stencils in their landscape that is filled with the memories of their ancestors who continue to care for it,' said Dr Brady.
The team concluded that the shape of the stencilled images meant that they were likely made using a material that could be moulded and stuck to the surface of the rock — as there was no sign anything else was used to affix the stencils. Pictured, the team made beeswax stencils
With anthropological studies in the region noting that children often shape beeswax into tiny items like cattle and horses the team set out to test if the sticky substance could be used to produce stencilled art similar to that found in the rockshelter, pictured
The researchers heated and shaped beeswax, proving that it could be employed successfully to make miniature stencils, as pictured
Although the site (pictured) — traditionally owned by the Marra Aboriginal people — has been known for decades, the tiny art was only documented in 2017
Regardless of the reason that the rock art was originally stencilled, the researchers said that the study shows the potential of collaboration between archaeologists, rangers and the Marra Traditional Owners.
'Since this work was published we have already discovered three new miniature motifs, a human figure, freshwater turtle, and an echidna,' said Dr Brady.
'For the Marra, studies of this sort are also about re-connecting knowledge, people, and place to sustain an on-going system of care.'
The only other known sites featuring tiny stencilled rock art exist in New South Wales' Nielson’s Creek and on Indonesia's Kisar Island.
Unlike those found at the Yilbilinji rockshelter, however, these images are both of figures, rather than the diverse range of motifs seen in the north Australian site.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Antiquity.
Located in the Yilbilinji rockshelter in northern Australia's Limmen National Park, miniature stencils of this type are only known from two other sites across the globe
Archaeologists Reveal Rock Art’s Big Little Secret
Archaeologists Reveal Rock Art’s Big Little Secret
Australian archaeologists have discovered some of the most detailed examples of rare, small-scale rock art in the form of miniature stencils in a rockshelter traditionally owned by the Marra people.
The research, published in the journal Antiquity, examined the unusual art from the Yilbilinji rockshelter at Limmen National Park in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region of northern Australia.
Traditionally owned by the Marra Aboriginal people, the site was documented by the research team in 2017 and instantly stood out as unique.
The Yilbilinji rock art site
Photos Dr Liam Brady, Flinders University.
“It’s the size of the rock art that makes this site unusual and highly distinctive,” says Flinders University archaeologist ARC Future Fellow Dr Liam Brady.
“Typically, stencilled rock art around the globe features full or life-sized dimensions such as human and animal body parts, objects (e.g. boomerangs), and even plant matter.
“However, many of the stencils at Yilbilinji are tiny or miniature-sized, and too small to have been made using real-life body parts and full-size objects.”
Only two other examples of this miniature stencilled form of rock art, both human figures, are known from anywhere in the world: one at Nielson’s Creek in New South Wales, and one at Kisar Island in Indonesia.
Replication experiments were conducted to test the method used to create the art works.
Photos Dr Liam Brady, Flinders University.
The research team – archaeologists, anthropologists, Marra rangers, and Limmen National Park rangers – recorded a total of 17 images of these miniature stencils during a 2017 field trip.
The images depict a wide range of motifs including, human figures, animals (crab, long-necked turtles), kangaroo paws, wavy lines, boomerangs, and geometric shapes.
The researchers set out to find out how these unusual images were made. One clue came from the fact most of the miniature stencils were made with rounded and curved edges meaning they were probably made using something that could be easily moulded and stuck to the rock surface.
Another clue came from anthropological research in the region. Co-author and anthropologist Dr John Bradley, from the Monash Indigenous Centre, has worked with Aboriginal people in the study area for more than 40 years.
He remembers seeing beeswax used by people for a range of purposes such as an adhesive for repairing spears and harpoons. He also saw children shaping beeswax into objects and animals such as cattle, horses and cowboys.
Experimental archaeology: recreating the stencils using beeswax.
Photos Dr Liam Brady, Flinders University.
“Using these clues, the researchers decided to test if beeswax could have been used to make the miniature stencils,” he says.
“Our experiments involving heating and shaping beeswax into human figures, animals, objects, and geometric shapes, and then stencilling onto a rock slab confirmed beeswax was an excellent material for making miniature stencils.”
“Whoever made these miniature stencils – adults or children – is open for debate, as is their meaning,” says Matthew Flinders Fellow Professor Amanda Kearney.
“However, what is important here is that this discovery adds another dimension to the Australian and global rock art record,” she says.
Photos Dr Liam Brady, Flinders University.
In fact, since this discovery was made, three additional stencils have been discovered in the area – a human figure, an echidna and a freshwater turtle – which further highlights the archaeological potential at Limmen National Park.
Glenn Durie, Manager of Aboriginal Partnerships, Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife, says the research with Marra Traditional Owners, archaeologists, and park rangers means this discovery could be among the first of many more in the area.
The article, ‘A rare miniature and small-scale stencil assemblage from the Gulf of Carpentaria: replication and meaning in Australian rock art’ (May 2020) by Liam M Brady, John J Bradley (Monash University), Amanda Kearney and Daryl Wesley has been published in Antiquity (Cambridge) Vol 94, No 375 June 2020 DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2020.48
This research is funded by the Australian Research Council (DP170101083, DE170101447, FT180100038).
Nick Redfern ‘What if the Crash at Roswell Was Not a Flying Saucer with Alien Bodies'
Nick Redfern ‘What if the Crash at Roswell Was Not a Flying Saucer with Alien Bodies'
Beyond Belief TV Series Special…
Nick Redfern has extensively researched Roswell and has come away with a new theory that is even more controversial than extraterrestrial visitation. A new investigation was opened in 1993 which disclosed details suggesting that the wreckage was from a classified weaponized-balloon program. At the time, the U.S. and Japan both actively tested high altitude balloons for military applications.
Sometimes they were fitted with explosives, other tests used animal subjects or humans. No matter the outcome, alien or human in origin, Roswell will always be an important case for UFOlogy. Nick Redfern’s main area of research centers around determining what has been learned about the UFO subject at an official level in Britain. At the Public Record Office in London, he has uncovered thousands of pages of previously-classified Royal Air Force, Air Ministry and Ministry of Defense files on UFOs dating from the Second World War.
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.
Steven Greer: Classified Alien Encounters Revealed By Traumatologist
Steven Greer: Classified Alien Encounters Revealed By Traumatologist
Steven Greer: Classified Alien Encounters Revealed By Traumatologist
Steven Greer, founder the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence has a virtual sitdown with Patrick Bet-David and discussed his new movie Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind.
About the guest:Steven Macon Greer is an American ufologist and retired traumatologist who founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Disclosure Project, which seeks the disclosure of allegedly classified secret UFO information.
I found a cross on Mars today in a Curiosity rover photo. The cross is deeply carved into a black of stone. The stone clearly didn't belong here, but was placed here by someone. The stone is about 6 inches high. Right next to it is a statue of a sheep that has fallen on its side which is about 8 inches long. The statue looks more worn and eroded, but its clearly a sheep. I'm not a religious guy and didn't go out looking for this. I just came across the photo and found it. These small statues are further proof that a tiny alien race once exited on Mars, similar in size to the woman figure found years ago on Mars.
Now I believe in the Christian faith that the lamb is sometimes referred to as the lamb of god, or god being kind and caring. But it could also mean the followers of the faith, who often refer to themselves as sheep.
What gets my goat...no pun intended...is that the cross didn't become a christian symbol until Jesus died upon it 2,000 years ago on Earth. But if Jesus did the same on Mars too...then this is further proof that Jesus was an alien trying to instill morals and ethics onto not just humanity but other intelligent species too.
Now the plain cross is suppose to be a symbol of Jesus resurrection. Where a cross with him on it means the sacrifice Jesus made for humanity.
This seems to much of a coincidence that two religious icons would be sitting so close to one another. This has to be actual religious evidence of an alien culture on Mars.
International Space Station Records Thousands Of Alien Spacecrafts Leaving Earth
International Space Station Records Thousands Of Alien Spacecrafts Leaving Earth
On May 18, 2020, a camera from the International Space Station (ISS) recorded something really unusual, thousands of strange objects that simultaneously shoot out from the surface of our planet and fly into outer space.
This can be seen in the original video published on the project channel “High Definition Earth Visualization (HDEV)” on the Ustream platform or below we have posted the part of the video showing the alien spacecraft, the objects seem to take off at high speed and the remains are not the remains of liquid fuel rockets.
Skeptics believe that these are ice particles that detach from the ISS and that are reflected in the camera thanks to sunlight.
But for experts in the field there is no doubt about it, it is the massive evacuation of thousands of UFOs leaving our planet.
Skeptics believe that these are ice particles that detach from the ISS and that are reflected in the camera thanks to sunlight. But for experts in the field there is no doubt about it, it is the massive evacuation of thousands of UFOs leaving our planet.
For them the images show that aliens have been very present on our planet since ancient times. This civilization or civilizations of other worlds have their own underground and submarine bases on Earth, but the question some ask is, what has led them to evade Earth massively?
They consider that this strategy can only be carried out if our planet is doomed and it is very dangerous to be on it. But the threat would not be the coronavirus pandemic, as some have suggested, rather it would be from our closest star. NASA scientists have confirmed that the solar minimum they predicted three years ago has been met.
And scientists have warned that the Dalton minimum, one of the most extreme weather periods in history, will repeat itself. It lasted more than three solar cycles, from 1790-1830, and resulted in heavy snowfall, deep frost, and general cooling worldwide, in addition to drastic weather changes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and famine. It was hell on Earth.
And if the worst predictions are unfortunately fulfilled, perhaps we would find ourselves facing a mass extinction, just as happened with dinosaurs. The truth is that we do not know if this will be the case, but all the events that are happening in the last months seem to indicate that something will happen on our planet. And this video may be evidence that there isn’t much time left.
What do you think about the video of theISS? Is it a massive UFO evacuation? Or do you have another explanation?
Clouds in the greater universe are clumpy areas of greater density than their surroundings. Space telescopes have observed these cosmic clouds in the vicinity of supermassive black holes.
This artist’s concept depicts a quasar, a type of active galactic nucleus, surrounded by a dusty donut shape (torus) and clumps called “clouds.” These clouds start small but can expand to be more than 1 parsec (3.3 light-years) wide. In this diagram, the clouds are at least 1 parsec from the torus.
Once you leave the majestic skies of Earth, the word cloud no longer means a white fluffy-looking structure that produces rain. Instead, clouds in the greater universe are clumpy areas of greater density than their surroundings.
Space telescopes have observed these cosmic clouds in the vicinity of supermassive black holes, those mysterious dense objects from which no light can escape, with masses equivalent to more than 100,000 suns. There is a supermassive black hole in the center of nearly every galaxy, and it is called an active galactic nucleus (AGN) if it is gobbling up a lot of gas and dust from its surroundings. The brightest kind of AGN is called a quasar. While the black hole itself cannot be seen, its vicinity shines extremely brightly as matter gets torn apart close to its event horizon, its point of no return.
But black holes aren’t truly like vacuum cleaners; they don’t just suck up everything that gets too close. While some material around a black hole will fall directly in, never to be seen again, some of the nearby gas will be flung outward, creating a shell that expands over thousands of years. That’s because the area near the event horizon – the threshold around a black hole where the escape velocity surpasses the speed of light – is extremely energetic; the high-energy radiation from fast-moving particles around the black hole can eject a significant amount of gas into the vastness of space.
Scientists would expect that this outflow of gas would be smooth. Instead, it is clumpy, extending well beyond 1 parsec (3.3 light-years) from the black hole. Each cloud starts out small, but can expand to be more than 1 parsec wide – and could even cover the distance between Earth and the nearest star beyond the sun, Proxima Centauri.
Astrophysicist Daniel Proga at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, likens these clumps to groups of cars waiting at a highway onramp with stoplights designed to regulate the influx of new traffic. He said:
Every now and then you have a bunch of cars.
What explains these clumps in deep space? Proga and colleagues have a new computer model that presents a possible solution to this mystery, published April 21, 2020, in the peer-reviewedAstrophysical Journal Letters. Science suggests that extremely intense heat near the supermassive black hole can allow the gas to flow outward really fast, but in a way that can also lead to clump formation. If the gas accelerates too quickly, it will not cool off enough to form clumps. The computer model takes these factors into account and proposes a mechanism to make the gas travel far, but also clump. Proga said:
Near the outer edge of the shell there is a perturbation that makes gas density a little bit lower than it used to be. That makes this gas heat up very efficiently. The cold gas further out is being lifted out by that.
This phenomenon is somewhat like the buoyancy that makes hot air balloons float. The heated air inside the balloon is lighter than the cooler air outside, and this density difference makes the balloon rise.
University of Nevada doctoral student Randall Dannen led the study. Dannen said:
This work is important because astronomers have always needed to place clouds at a given location and velocity to fit the observations we see from AGN. They were not often concerned with the specifics of how the clouds formed in the first place, and our work offers a potential explanation for the formation of these clouds.
This model looks only at the shell of gas, not at the disk of material swirling around the black hole that is feeding it. The researchers’ next step is to examine whether the flow of gas originates from the disk itself. They are also interested in tackling the mystery of why some clouds move extremely fast, on the order of 20 million miles per hour (10,000 kilometers per second).
Bottom line: A new study looks at how cosmic clouds form near black holes.
The location of Earth’s north magnetic pole appears to be controlled from deep within Earth by 2 competing blobs in the magnetic field. One is under Canada, and the other is under Siberia. “The Siberian blob is winning,” according to scientists.
You probably know that a compass doesn’t point to true north. Earth’s geographic north pole – and magnetic north pole – were first recognized as two different placesin 1831. Until the early 1990s, the magnetic North Pole was known to lie some 1,000 miles south of true north, in Canada. Yet, as scientists realized, the location of magnetic north was not fixed. Magnetic north was drifting at a rate of up to about 9 miles (15 km) a year. Since the 1990s, however, the drift of Earth’s magnetic north pole has turned into “more of a sprint,” scientists say. Its present speed is about 30 to nearly 40 miles a year (50-60 km a year) toward Siberia. And now – using satellite measurements – scientists in Europe have helped confirm a theory as to why Earth’s magnetic north pole is drifting so rapidly.
The European Space Agency (ESA) released this interesting article on May 14, 2020. It describes a new study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience that describes the theory of “tussling magnetic blobs deep below Earth’s surface” at the root of the phenomenon of rapid magnetic pole drift since the 1990s. ESA said:
In late October 2017, [the magnetic north pole] crossed the International Date Line, passing within 390 km [242 miles] of the geographic pole, and is now heading south …
Tussling magnetic blobs deep below Earth’s surface appear to be at the root of the phenomenon of rapid magnetic pole drift since the 1990s.
In our modern world, it’s not just compasses that are affected by the drift of Earth’s magnetic north pole. ESAexplained:
One of the practical consequences of this is that the World Magnetic Model has to be updated periodically with the pole’s current location. The model is vital for many navigation systems used by ships, Google maps and smartphones, for example.
That’s why the subject of magnetic north is such a vital one to our world, and why ESA’s Living Planet Symposium last year featured a talk from scientists at the University of Leeds in the U.K. about their findings on magnetic north, using SWARM satellite data. The Swarm satellites carry sophisticated magnetometers. Their goal, in part, is to provide a survey of Earth’s magnetic field. ESA said:
The data showed that the position of the north magnetic pole is determined largely by a balance, or tug-of-war, between two large lobes of negative flux at the boundary between Earth’s core and mantle under Canada.
By analyzing magnetic field maps and how they change over time, we can now pinpoint that a change in the circulation pattern of flow underneath Canada has caused a patch of magnetic field at the edge of the core, deep within the Earth, to be stretched out. This has weakened the Canadian patch and resulted in the pole shifting towards Siberia.
The big question, these scientists say, is whether the pole will ever return to Canada or continue heading south. Livermore explained:
Models of the magnetic field inside the core suggest that, at least for the next few decades, the pole will continue to drift towards Siberia.
However, given that the pole’s position is governed by this delicate balance between the Canadian and Siberian patch, it would take only a small adjustment of the field within the core to send the pole back to Canada.
Bottom line: Scientists studying the drift of Earth’s magnetic north pole have pinpointed a change in the circulation pattern of magnetic blobs deep below Earth’s surface. They’ve learned a change in the flow underneath Canada has caused a patch of magnetic field at the edge of Earth’s core, deep within the Earth, to be stretched out. This has weakened the Canadian patch and resulted in the pole shifting towards Siberia.
An image from the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
As the US military releases videos of ‘unidentified’ flying objects, renowned Scottish UFO investigator and paranormal researcher Malcolm Robinson tells Michael Alexander why, after years of scepticism, he believes aliens have almost certainly visited Tayside and Fife.
When the US Department of Defense released three declassified videos of “unexplained aerial phenomena” at the end of April, the Pentagon said it wanted to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real”.
The videos, which had already been ‘leaked’ in 2007 and 2017, included a 2004 clip filmed by two US Navy fighter pilots which showed a round object hovering above the water, about 100 miles (160 km) out into the Pacific Ocean.
Two other videos filmed in 2014 showed objects moving through the air, one of which is spinning. In one, a pilot is heard saying: “Look at that thing, dude! It’s rotating!” Inevitably, the videos have rekindled debate about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and conspiracy theories about government.
But do they really point to the existence of alien life?
Renowned Scottish amateur UFO investigator Malcolm Robinson has extensively researched thousands of cases over the past 40 years – including numerous cases in Tayside and Fife. He says 95% of UFO sightings are explainable by “natural identifiable solutions”.
However, the self-confessed former UFO sceptic puts these American military videos firmly into the 5% unexplained category. He stands by his now long-held view that “non-human intelligence” has probably been visiting Earth for hundreds if not thousands of years.
“What’s surprising when you look at the US military footage is that it involved a rather large military exercise involving the USS Nimitz – the pilots clearly don’t know what they are looking at, and the speed these things are moving at, around 2400 mph, is quite staggering,” said Mr Robinson.
“We have two possibilities when it comes to explaining what might have happened.
UFO investigator Malcolm Robinson
“The first possibility is it’s America’s own ‘black budget’ technology being tested and these film clips were released simply as a way of distraction. The US government and military would be happy for these lights to be masquerading as UFOs, like a smokescreen, knowing full well the video is going to come out. “Let’s not forget that the stealth bomber was flying in America for 10 years before the American military finally put their hands up and said ‘yep it’s ours’. This had already given rise at the time to many false UFO reports. “The other possibility is that these truly are UFOs – because similar things have been seen flying in our skies for millennia, right through recorded history. The speeds at which these craft have been described is superior to any Earth-based technology. It’s like tossing a coin I guess. You weigh up the options and you decide what you feel is right.
UK F-35 Lightning jets flying in formation with two B-2 Spirit stealth bombers of the United States Air Force, as part of a deployment to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.
“But if you want to know what I truly think, I don’t think it was black budget technology. The immense speed and manoeuvrability of these objects suggest to me we managed to capture something very mysterious on film and I’m just thankful we have that out in the public domain.” Mr Robinson, a now 63-year-old East Sussex-based former newspaper advertising executive, was always interested in strange phenomena as a small boy growing up in Tullibody, Clackmannanshire.
But as he grew older he felt there was no validity to the claims of ghosts and poltergeists. In 1979 he decided to start his own group – Strange Phenomena Investigations. His main aim was to disprove and show “what a lot of nonsense” they were. Yet as he learned more, he came “off the fence” and started doing lectures and more media work.
In 1992 he became one of the main investigators for the so-called ‘Bonnybridge Triangle’ multiple UFO sightings. Working with local councillor Billy Buchanan, he concluded 95% of the sightings reported over the Stirlingshire town had identifiable solutions.
The others, however, were less clear cut, and they petitioned Downing Street for answers. Their call for a government inquiry was turned down because the “objects did not pose a threat to the security of the UK”. It was against this backdrop that he became involved in other investigations.
Mr Robinson said he remains deeply sceptical about many things. But his investigations over the years have thrown up more questions than answers and on balance he is “not embarrassed” to say he now believes in alien life.
“My studies over 40 years have clearly shown to me that we are dealing with a non-human intelligence that’s always been with us,” he said. “It sounds fanciful. But at the end of the day there’s enough evidence to suggest that things have been seen in our skies – many in Scotland as well – which defy description. They do not conform to classic aircraft design or helicopters.
“They are in the main low level close proximity objects that you could more or less throw a stone at – some of them have been so close. “The bottom line for me is there is a lot of nonsense out there – a lot of UFOs are misconstrued as the planet Venus, as satellites traversing the night sky etc etc. But believe you me, there is a substance to some of these accounts.
Let’s not forget we laughed at Marconi, we laughed at John Logie Baird with the invention of the television, we laughed at the Wright Brothers.
“What I’m trying to say with these analogies is just because something looks and sounds ridiculous, we shouldn’t laugh at it. Yes, we have to be very careful but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater or the egg could truly be all over our faces.”
TAYSIDE AND FIFE CASES
Throughout history, human kind has always had the desire to learn and know more about the paranormal. But while investigating reports by “good honest people” over the years, Malcolm Robinson has also had to keep in mind that he’s dealing with human beings and will always look for a rational explanation first. For example, were they drunk or hallucinating? It’s also been suggested film and TV can influence what people think they’ve seen.
Amanda Holden, Shaun Ryder, Malcolm Robinson and Philip Schofield talking paranormal in 2015
Mr Robinson spoke to a former cinema projectionist who, in 1954, was walking in woods near his home in Crieff when he was astonished to observe a “disk shaped object passing overhead at a uniform speed”. It made no noise whatsoever, and it continued on its journey in a northerly direction towards Perth. In prophetic words, the witness stated, “Had I not seen this with my own eyes, I would be an unbeliever about UFOs”.
The book also went into great detail about an incident at Blairgowrie in 1984 when a beam of light “shot out” onto the stomach of a woman doing tapestry work in her garden. Feeling a warm sensation, she looked up into the sky and observed a long translucent object above her house to the east. It was also witnessed by her husband and son who phoned the police. Helicopters later appeared above the house with police, who took soil samples, telling the family they were “conducting tests”….
Malcolm wrote to then PM David Cameron in 2010 calling for an inquiry
Yet another unusual shaped UFO was sighted in Dundee in August 1995 when a former member of the Special Forces walking his dog spotted a “cone shaped light” which was coming out from a silver metallic looking object. It’s possible he saw an unusual plasma effect from the afterburner of an RAF Leuchars Tornado, but like most cases of its kind, this sighting remained unidentified.
Following various sightings around Dundee in 1996 – the same year as the alleged ‘Fife incident’ when a family driving near Newton of Falkland claimed they saw a large black triangular shaped ‘craft’ and numerous small grey ‘beings’ in front of some woods – a senior physicist at Dundee University told The Courier: “I would not rule out the possibility that there are aircraft of extra-terrestrial origin”.
Humans were in America long before we’ve been told, and the Australian Aborigines have a genetic connection to the Amazon which once had great cities. FRANK JOSEPH looks at the fresh discoveries in Graham Hancock’s latest book.
As the former editor-in-chief (1993 to 2007) and ongoing writer for Ancient American – a US magazine examining Old World impact on the New World before 1492 – recently released materials regarding pre-Columbian possibilities often come my way. I was surprised, however, to find that Graham Hancock’s latest tome, America Before, compares remarkably with Before Atlantis (2013), my own book, published six years earlier, in more than title.
Both works go into the Bering land-bridge Theory, megalithic alignments with the Cygnus constellation, Easter Island’s moai, Gobekli Tepe, the discoveries of Albert Goodyear, Brazil’s Stonehenge, the Meadowcroft Rock shelter, Neanderthals, the Clovis First Controversy, Pedra Furada, etc., etc. Other topics tackled in America Before – Ohio’s Great Serpent Mound, North American earthworks, the Piasu Bird, Cahokia, et al. – were likewise described at length in my earlier releases: Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America (2006), Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds (2008), Unearthing Ancient America (2009), Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America (2010), Lost Worlds of Ancient America (2012), Lost Colonies of Ancient America (2014), and Lost History of Ancient America (2016).
Independent research that arrives at common conclusions tends to validate disparate investigators at work in the same field. Of them all, Graham Hancock is certainly the best known, thanks to his early association with such prestigious periodicals as The Times, The Independent, The Economist, and The Guardian, which granted him access to major book publishers with international distribution, such as St. Martin’s Press, publisher of his latest work. His Fingerprints of the Gods was a worldwide bestseller. At the time of its release in 1995, critics – even those sympathetic to the author’s belief in ancient catastrophism – faulted him for merely reworking long-known if not well-publicised information. But they were forced to admit that Hancock acquainted millions of readers with otherwise neglected information about the deep past.
America Before is not unlike Fingerprints of the Gods in that it introduces an international audience to a version of antiquity not otherwise available in schools or mainstream publications. America Before also joins Before Atlantis in highlighting “a global cataclysm that occurred near the end of the Ice Age around twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. A disintegrating comet crossed the orbit of the Earth and bombarded our planet with a ‘swarm’ of fragments.” Familiar language to readers already familiar with The Destruction of Atlantis (2002) and its sequel. Survivors of Atlantis (2004) similarly tells how an abundance of physical proof for worldwide destruction left by comets during the Bronze Age was offered by scientists meeting at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge, England.
In 1997 they presented undeniable evidence in the form of annual growth rings at Irish bogs and oak forests, ash-fall deposits from Greenland ice-cores, impact lines made by colossal waves along the shores of Morocco, abrupt lake level changes from Western Europe to South America, and small, glassy spherules that result specifically from cometary collisions subjecting rock to intense heat. Earth’s periodic brushes with celestial upheaval belong to a pattern of astronomical interface with our planet that abruptly terminated the Ice Age, as described in America Before and earlier in Before Atlantis.
Buried in the floor of Lake Cuitzeo was a thin, dark layer containing unequivocal evidence for a large, cosmic body that struck central Mexico just when the Younger Dryas period opened with such violence. Virtually identical sediment strata dated to the same period have been previously located at numerous locations throughout North America, Greenland, and Western Europe. According to Science Daily, “The data suggest that a comet or asteroid – likely a large, previously fragmented body, greater than several hundred meters in diameter – entered the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle. The heat at impact burned biomass, melted surface rocks, and caused major environmental disruption.” The resulting crater became Lake Cuitzeo, measuring twelve and one-half miles across, with an average depth of ninety feet.
Dr James Kennett, professor of earth science at the University of California (Santa Barbara), told the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “These results are consistent with earlier reported discoveries throughout North America of abrupt ecosystem change, megafaunal extinction, and human cultural change and population reduction. These changes were large, abrupt and unprecedented, and had been recorded and identified by earlier investigators at a ‘time of crisis’. The timing of the impact coincided with the most extraordinary biotic and environmental changes over Mexico and Central America during the last approximately twenty thousand years, as recorded by others in several regional lake deposits.”
Professor of earth science Dr James Kennett and other researchers postulate from the evidence that a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth close to 12,800 years ago, causing rapid climatic changes, megafaunal extinctions, sudden human population decrease and cultural shifts and widespread wildfires (biomass burning). They studied the impact spherules in 18 sites in nine countries on four continents for their study. (Graphic credit: YDB Research Group)
The floor of Lake Cuitzeo is rich in spherules formed when they collided with each other at high velocities during the whirling chaos of an extraterrestrial impact. They are joined by numerous specimens of lonsdaleite – an identifiable configuration nanodiamonds assume when they are pressured by large meteorite collisions – and aciniform soot, the acne-like appearance of dust residue resulting from the same cause. “These materials form only through cosmic impact,” Kennett explained, not through volcanic or other natural terrestrial processes. In the entire geologic record, the only other known continental layer with abundant peaks in lonsdaleite, impact spherules and aciniform soot is in the sixty-five-million-year-old Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary layer that coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Evidence for Early Human Settlement
“Recent discoveries show that North America was first peopled at least one hundred thirty thousand years ago,” according to Hancock, “many tens of thousands of years before human settlements were established in Europe and Asia.” Homo sapiens-sapiens? Yes, but the European continent was actually settled one hundred seventy thousand years earlier by Neanderthals. In fact, the oldest evidence for proto-humans in Europe goes back 1.3 million years. “At least” is a bit of an understatement for human settlement in the New World, because Before Atlantis describes how prehistorian Juan Armena Camacho discovered lithic implements at Hueyatlaco, seventy miles south-east of Mexico City. According to US geologist Dr Virginia Steen-McIntyre, “radiometric dates using methods identical to those used in Africa to date the early sites there place Hueyatlaco’s stone tools to slightly over a quarter of a million years ago.”
Some thirty years prior to Camacho’s find, a still older site came to light one mile north from the Oklahoma town of Frederick, at a ten-mile-long, half-mile-wide ridge. Ten to twenty-five feet beneath the surface of this gravel deposit occur dozens of well-crafted stone implements cemented in place in common strata with the bones of extinct animals firmly dated to seven hundred fifty thousand years ago. C.N. Gould, Director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, reported: “There can be no doubt that the artifacts occur in the pit near the basal portion, on the same level as the fossil remains. An examination of the undisturbed face of the pit, immediately above the position of the finds, showed unbroken, nearly horizontal strata above it. As the case stands, it looks very much as though the artifacts are of the same antiquity as the fossil animals. At the same time, it would be well to reserve final judgment until we are certain that the artifacts are not secondary inclusions.”
Since Gould released his report in 1929, subsequent investigations of the Holoman Pit, as it is locally known, repeatedly confirmed that the stone tools are not later inclusions but were indeed laid down at the same time the animal bones were stratified, three quarters of a million years ago. As recently as 2005, archaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool’s John Moore’s University in England discovered a line of human footprints dating back forty thousand years ago near Puebla, in Mexico. Conventional scholars, convinced no human set foot in Middle America before twelve thousand years ago, sought to debunk the heretical period she assigned the evidence by dispatching a team of leading geologists led by Paul R. Renne, director of California’s Berkeley Geochronology Center, to the site.
Once there, they took repeated argon testing to investigate the magnetic imprint of the foot-printed, magmatic rock, together with other state-of-the-art procedures. Renne announced their results in the scientific journal Nature, stating that the rock featuring the footprints was not forty thousand years old after all. It was, instead, 1.3 million yearsold.
During the early 20th century, archaeologist Carlos Ameghino (1865 to 1936) led teams of excavators along the Argentine coast south of Buenos Aires after detecting clues to an early habitation site at Miramar. By 1914, he discovered numerous stone tools cemented within Pliocene Era strata. As Silvia Gomez experienced in the following century, Ameghino’s critics commissioned a group of professional geologists to debunk his assertion. Instead, they verified it, stating that the artefacts had been laid down between two million and three million years ago. Although their analysis was released by the prestigious Anales del Museo de Historica Natural de Buenos Aires, it has since been ignored by archaeologists in the outside world.
Australia-Amazon: An Unexpected Discovery
“Certain tribes of the Amazon jungle,” states America Before’s back cover blurb, “are closely related to Australian Aborigines. How did this extraordinary, unexpected, and extremely ancient DNA signal get to the Amazon?” This question elevates Hancock’s new book with fresh discoveries that threaten to shake the scientific establishment to its core by opening an entirely new and revolutionary archaeological theatre of operations.
The vast Amazon region has long been dismissed by mainstream scholars as anciently under-populated and barren of all but the most backward, native cultures, hermetically sealed off by nature from the outside world. Hancock writes, “in September 2015, Pontus Skoglund, his senior colleague Professor David Reich of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and other leading experts in the field, announced in the pages of Nature that they had found new evidence in South America, and specifically in the Amazon rainforest, that called for a rethink.”
Researchers mapped similarities in genes, mutations and random pieces of DNA of Central and South American tribes with groups in other parts of the world including Australia. Warmer colours indicate the strongest affinities. Researcher Skoglund said “a statistically clear signal linking Native Americans in the Amazonian region of Brazil to present-day Australo-Melanesians and Andaman Islanders” was confirmed. (Graphic credit: Pontus Skoglund, Harvard Medical School)
He quotes Skoglund’s “genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to present-day Eurasians or Native Americans,” and are, in Hancock’s words, “more closely related to Melanesian Papuans and Australian Aborigines than to any other Native American population.” “We spent a really long time trying to make this result go away,” Skoglund explained, “but it just got stronger.” In the end, “a statistically clear signal linking Native Americans in the Amazonian region of Brazil to present-day Australo-Melanesians and Andaman Islanders” was confirmed.
“We also know it has to be pre-Columbian,” added Professor Eske Willerslev of Denmark’s Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. Further studies by Willerslev and his colleagues “found Australian DNA already present in skeletal remains from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, dated to 10,400 years ago, and confirmed the suspicion of the researchers that the anomalous genetic signal must have reached South America in the Late Pleistocene – that is, near the end of the last Ice Age, [when] a group of people carrying Australo-Melanesian genes settled in what is now the Amazon jungle.”
The headline of the Oct/Nov 2010 edition of Cosmos magazine and accompanying by-line, augmented by a photograph of an American skull (Luczia) exhibiting morphology that closely resembles Australian Aboriginal people. The oldest human skull unearthed in the Americas has cranial features similar to those of Australian Aborigines. Another piece of anomalous evidence pointing to an early human story, but largely ignored because it contradicts official scientific theory.
This is undoubtedly one of the most striking revelations ever made in the entire history of archaeology, as inexplicable as it is astounding. It does not mean that a few Australoid castaways accidentally washed ashore on Peruvian shores, then somehow traversed the formidable Andes Mountains and descended into Brazil’s totally different, but no less forbidding jungle, where they cohabited with a few, indigenous individuals.
Rather, DNA evidence signifies a mass-migration of Australo-Melanesians to Amazonia, where they interbred with native peoples on such a broad scale some ten and a half centuries ago, the genetic imprint is still discernible. Their epic, 12,940–kilometre, trans-Pacific voyage to coastal Peru and subsequent 1,890–kilometre trek to Brazilian rain forest were successfully achieved at a time when Western European Man was struggling to survive the challenging Upper Paleolithic, or Late Stone Age. Australia’s contemporaneous material culture was itself far too underdeveloped for undertaking anything even approaching an oceanic crossing of such magnitude, not only in terms of the extreme distances concerned, but especially regarding the large number of persons participating in the expedition, or expeditions.
The maritime technological requirements necessary for conducting an operation of transpacific scope alone rule out all possibilities for Australoid responsibility. Moreover, what conceivable motivation could have possessed them to attempt such a huge enterprise? Hancock wonders if a third party was involved – a different, unrelated, unknown, though far higher culture that, for reasons even more obscure, transported Australo-Melanesians to Amazonia.
Speculation like this begins to conjure ‘legendary’ Lemuria, the pre-Polynesian civilisation that rose to ancient heights of technological greatness and imperialist domination of the Pacific realm, before succumbing to a natural catastrophe sufficiently powerful enough to shake the very foundations of the Earth itself. Hancock, however, shies away from any Lemurian connotations.
Ancient Amazonia Rises Out of the Cleared Forests
Even so, America Before’s most valuable and original contribution to our deepening grasp of antiquity is its investigation of Amazonia, an area of the world hitherto neglected by conventional and alternative researchers alike. They traditionally laboured under the assumption that Brazil’s rain forest was always far too environmentally hostile for civilisation to have taken root there. Hancock cites the academic view “that the Amazon could only have been inhabited for about 1,000 years, and then only by very small groups of hunter-gatherers, since the jungle was ‘resource poor’.”
Among the very few archaeologists who personally challenged this dominant paradigm was Percy Harrison Fawcett. His disappearance in search of the lost city of Z during 1925 seemed to confirm consensus opinion that no such place could possibly exist in the Brazilian jungle, and America Before is remiss in failing to properly credit or even mention in passing the British Colonel, whose self-sacrificial, if percipient effort foreshadowed the very discoveries Hancock describes in Chapters 11 through 17.
Together with the two previous chapters detailing Amazonia’s genetic connection with Ice Age Australia, they combine to represent the book’s highest worth. Nowhere else may readers learn more about the Amazon Basin’s otherwise unknown archaeological wealth.
An artist’s conception shows a Xinguano village of the Brazilian Amazon as it might have appeared before 1492. An example of how the Amazon was once likely inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people in numerous well-managed cities, towns and villages. Archaeologists have found traces of wide, curbed roads and managed parklands.
He tells how the first modern Europeans travelling the Amazon River from Ecuador to its estuary on the Atlantic coast of Brazil saw “great cities” that “glistened in white” (suggesting limestone construction, like that favoured by Maya construction engineers) during their 7,000-kilometre, seventeen-month journey. Some of these urban centres were “more than twenty kilometres from end to end, roughly the length of Manhattan… enormous expanses were given over to productive agriculture, and there were signs everywhere of large and well-organised political and economic systems linked to centralised states that were capable of fielding disciplined armies thousands strong.”
Hancock quotes the mid-16th century expedition’s Spanish chronicler, Dominican friar Gaspar de Carvajal, concerning an abandoned, native “villa, in which were a great deal of porcelain ware of various makes, both jars and pitchers, very large, with a capacity of more than twenty-five arrobas [one hundred gallons] and other small pieces such as plates and bowls and candelabra of this porcelain of the best that has ever been seen in the world, for that of Malaga [Spain’s centre for pottery production] is not its equal, because this porcelain which we found is all glazed and embellished with all colours, and so bright, that these colours astonish, and, more than this, the drawings and paintings which they make on them are so accurately worked out that one wonders how with only natural skill they manufacture and decorate all these things making them look just like Roman articles.” Native porcelain of such high quality does not appear in Brazilian archaeology.
The largest native city Carvajal and his companions saw was greater than twenty kilometres in extent, with a population of twenty thousand or more residents. Their chieftain, Machiparo, also ruled over “many settlements and very large ones, which together contribute for fighting purposes fifty thousand men…”
Two, subsequent expeditions, twenty years later and 1637-38, respectively, supported Carvajal’s report. Hancock quotes UCLA Professor David Wilkinson, “an authority on long-term and large-scale phenomena in world politics [who] has made a special study of the level of civilisation in the Amazon prior to European contact.” Based on a late 17th-century report that one of Brazil’s native cities could field 60,000 warriors, Wilkinson found “comparative-civilisational standards have implied an urban population of 300,000 to 360,000.”
He goes on to describe “more than 30 epidemics – smallpox, measles, and other outbreaks – some on a massive scale – in 16th-18th century South America.” With fatal consequences in the upper ninety percentile, the Amazonian metropolitan areas literally died out though depopulation. “Once left deserted,” Hancock explains, “the great cities and monuments and other public works of any hypothetical Amazonian civilisation would quickly have been encroached upon and soon completely hidden by the jungle…” They only began re-emerging in 1977, “when giant, geometrical earthworks were discovered in the Rio Branco area of the Brazilian state of Acre, in the southwestern Amazon.”
It was the first of many related sites that have since come to light, including a pair of perfect squares – 200 metres and 100 metres wide – connected by a 20-metre-wide, 100-metre-long causeway. Archaeologists estimate “that as many as 1,500 geoglyphs might ultimately be found.” Severino Calazans, the largest Amazonian structure of its kind so far surveyed, “defined by an enclosure ditch twelve metres wide, measures 920 metres.” This particular location and other, outsized designs “have since been revealed by mass clearing of the forest for the cattle industry, thus becoming visible, especially from the sky, over the past 30 years. Indeed, the enormous size of the geoglyphs makes it easier to distinguish their shape and configuration from an aerial perspective, than at ground level…”
Groups are composed chiefly of circles, ellipses and rectangles, suggesting possible celestial orientations. Hancock writes that “because they offer an unobstructed view of the horizon, such locations are also very often what ancient astronomers looked for when they set out monuments on the ground – aligned, say, to the June solstice sunset or to the March equinox sunrise. Without a full-scale archaeo-astronomical survey of the Amazonian geoglyphs,” however, their suspected celestial significance remains unproven.
Their resemblance to Old World Stone Age sites nevertheless inspires provocative comparisons. Hancock tells how “the square enclosure ditch at Severino Calazans shares the ground plan, base diameter and cardinality [orientation to the Four Cardinal Directions] of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. That epoch, moreover, around 2500 BC, coincides and overlaps with the megalithic epoch in Europe, so another curiosity is the way that the circular geoglyphs of Amazonia resemble henges – the circular embankments with deep, internal ditches that surround the great, stone circles of the British Isles. The scale is very similar and the resemblance is so obvious that even the most sober archaeologists, usually wary of cross-cultural comparisons, are willing to remark upon it.”
The Severino Calazans site, formed by a single square-shaped ditch, is cut and partially destroyed by Highway BR-317. A farm has been built inside the area enclosed by the ditch. Indigenous people consider the earthworks sites as sacred and do not use them for housing. (Photograph by Sanna Saunaluoma)
Whatever critics may make of America Before, they cannot deny that its unique discussion of the lost civilisation of the Amazon, plus revelations concerning the mind-boggling heritage of its present-day descendants from 9th millennium BCE Australia, opens new vistas of antiquity, as trailblazing, as they are intriguing.
America Before is available from all good bookstores.
What are these mysterious lights in the sky seen from Daanbantayan, Cebu?
What are these mysterious lights in the sky seen from Daanbantayan, Cebu?
By: Immae Lachica - General Assignments Reporter/CDN Digital
CEBU CITY, Philippines— Netizens are curious about unusual lights in the sky captured and shared by a photo enthusiast from Daanbantayan town, northern Cebu on Saturday evening, May 16, 2020.
Photo enthusiast Jack Ponpon captured the strange but beautiful display of lights fromLibertad, Bagay, Daanbantayan and shared it on his social media account, creating a bit of a buzz online.
Here are some of the photos of the unusual sightings.
This wasn’t actually the first time the lights showed up.
“Ang first jud ani last week kay nag likod2x ko daplin sa dan then nahibung rako naay 5 ka lights (red, blue, green, white, red n green) nag sigeg blink2x nya dili stationary maong nag duda mi nga star haha,” said Ponpon.
(I first noticed these lights last week while I was sitting along the roadside and I noticed that there were five lights blinking in the skies, colors red, blue, green, white, red and green, so I suspected they were just stars.)
Ponpon even said that his neighbors were also fascinated by the lights in the skies and that they thought it was just Ponpon playing with his drones.
Out of his fascination and curiosity about these lights shining from the sky he took out his camera and took some shots, which he then posted on Sunday evening, May 17.
“It’s week 1 and some of our neighbors still think I was flying my drone for consecutive nights. 🌌 Have you seen some of these strange lights in your neighborhood as well? 🤔,” captioned Ponpon.
Whatever these fascinating lights were, they sure did catch the attention of netizens and the residents in the northern town. It also played with their imaginations, too.
Netizen Miko Butaslac commented on Ponpon’s post: “Maski ngari sa Cebu City, Jack makakita ko ana permi bya gabie ako work. Unsa kaha na sa?”
(Even here in Cebu City, I see [these lights] always since my work is at night time. What could those be?)
André Erasmo also commented, “3 days nako nag bantay ana kuya Jack, hangtud ron, wa japon ko kaybaw ug unsa na )
(I’ve noticed that for three days, until now, I still don’t know what those are.)
CDN Digital asked the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) in Mactan about these lights but the country’s National Meteorological and Hydrological Services agency hasn’t replied yet as of this posting.
Mysterious sky lights seen from Cebu could be due to ‘planetary conjunction’ — Pagasa
By: Raul Constantine L. Tabanao
MOALBOAL, CEBU — The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) in Mactan may have answers to the “mysterious” lights seen in the sky from Daanbantayan town, northern Cebu.
Netizens were curious about unusual lights in the sky captured and shared by photo enthusiast Jack Ponpon from Daanbantayan town, northern Cebu on Saturday evening, May 16, 2020.
Ponpon captured the strange but beautiful display of lights from Libertad, Bagay, Daanbantayan and shared it on his social media account the day after.
Asked about this, the country’s National Meteorological and Hydrological Services agency said this could be due to planetary conjuction, a phenomenon where planets “align” in the night sky.
Nedz Saletrero – Deflin, weather specialist of Pagasa-Mactan, told CDN Digital that according to their PAGASA astronomy page, a conjuction of planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Neptune, have been seen lining-up with the waning Moon on May 12 until today, May 18, 2020.
The advisory also revealed that the conjunction of the planets will be observed in the southeastern horizon.
“Jupiter will lie among the background stars of the constellations Sagittarius, the Archer, while Saturn, Mars and Neptune will dwell together among the stars of the constellation Capricornus, the Sea Goat,” the advisory reads.
These “mysterious” lights caught the attention of netizens and the residents in the northern town after it was shared by Ponpon.
Netizen Miko Butaslac commented on Ponpon’s post: “Maski ngari sa Cebu City, Jack makakita ko ana permi bya gabie ako work. Unsa kaha na sa?”
(Even here in Cebu City, I see [these lights] always since my work is at night time. What could those be?)
André Erasmo also commented, “3 days nako nag bantay ana kuya Jack, hangtud ron, wa japon ko kaybaw ug unsa na )
(I’ve noticed that for three days, until now, I still don’t know what those are.) /bmjo
Astronomers have discovered an extremely rare doughnut-shaped galaxy that has been described as a “cosmic ring of fire”. Locate d approximately 11 billion light-years away from Earth, R5519 is about the same mass as our own Milky Way galaxy. What’s so incredibly strange about R5519 is that studies have indicated that it could possibly be a collisional ring galaxy and if that’s true, it would be the first one that’s ever been discovered in the early Universe.
A team of researchers from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, and Australia studied spectroscopic data of the galaxy from the WM Keck Observatory located in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (A couple of pictures of R5519 can be seen here.)
Galaxy named R5519 has been described as a 'cosmic ring of fire' by scientists. It is 11 billion light-years away from Earth
The galaxy was imaged using pictures taken by NASA's Hubble Telescope
Lead researcher Tiantian Yuan who is from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) described the galaxy as being a “very curious object” and that it “looks strange and familiar at the same time”.
Milky Way Galaxy
The hole in the middle of the R5519 galaxy is so huge that its diameter measures about two billion times further than Earth is to our sun. And it’s currently quite active as stars are being created at a rate of 50 times faster than our own Milky Way galaxy. “Most of that activity is taking place on its ring, so it truly is a ring of fire,” Yuan said.
In a paper that was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the researchers wrote in part, “Contrary to previous predictions, this work suggests that massive collisional rings were as rare 11 Gyr ago as they are today,” adding, “Our discovery offers a unique pathway for studying density waves in young galaxies, as well as constraining the cosmic evolution of spiral disks and galaxy groups.”
Astronomers have identified two types of ring galaxies – one where the hole was formed by internal processes which is the most common type; and the very rare occurrence when one galaxy has a violent collision with another one (called collisional galaxies).
R5519 is about 11 billion light-years away from Earth.
Kenneth Freeman, who is from the Australian National University and is one of the co-authors of the study, explained this further, “The collisional formation of ring galaxies requires a thin disc to be present in the victim galaxy before the collision occurs,” adding, “The thin disc is the defining component of spiral galaxies: before it assembled, the galaxies were in a disorderly state, not yet recognizable as spiral galaxies.”
He went on to explain, “In the case of this ring galaxy, we are looking back into the early Universe by 11 billion years, into a time when thin discs were only just assembling. For comparison, the thin disc of our Milky Way began to come together only about nine billion years ago.” “This discovery is an indication that disc assembly in spiral galaxies occurred over a more extended period than previously thought.”
I wonder if this is what Johnny Cash had in mind when he was singing his hit tune, “Ring of Fire”.
It seems that no matter where one travels on Earth (Remember traveling? It will be back soon, just keep wearing masks), you can’t escape mice – the rodent kind, of course. That list now includes on frozen glaciers in Alaska, where researchers looking for microbes – long assumed to be the only things that can survive in the harsh environment – have been finding the ice mysteriously covered with small, green mice moving around in formation on the surface … so many of them that the scientists received funding to study them.
Did he say green mice moving in formation? Is this Earth or Mars? Are they planning an invasion?
“What the heck is this!”
That was the initial scientific assessment of University of Idaho glaciologist Tim Bartholomaus, co-author of the new study published recently in Polar Biology. He was referring to the day in 2006 when he arrived at the Root Glacier near the former mining town of Kennicott-McCarthy, Alaska. What Bartholomaus encountered were hundreds of mouse-sized furry green egg shapes covering the ice. (Photos here.) He bravely touched one and found it was a soft, moss-covered ball of dirt. (Sorry — not like the feature photo.) Upon finding a lack of information on what these might be, Bartholomaus called them “glacier mice” and decided to study them. The first thing he discovered is that the glacier mice are covered with different types of moss. However, the second thing is what prompted the six-year study.
Glacier mice in Iceland.
Ruth Mottram
Glacier mice can be composed of different moss species.
Timothy Bartholomaus
The research team tagged each moss ball with an identifying color sequence of beads to track them over months and years.
Sophie Gilbert
It’s not easy being not green either.
“They really do look like little mammals, little mice or chipmunks or rats or something running around on the glacier, although they run in obviously very slow motion.”
Study co-author and wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert told NPR that they noticed the balls were in slightly different spots every day. Assuming the cause to be something like the wind that pushes tumbleweeds, they got down and dirty with the fuzzy dirt balls – attaching a thin loop of wire strung with identifying beads around 30 of them. That was in 2009. They measured the movements for 54 days, then left and returned in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and measured them again. The researchers found that the glacier mice were pretty indestructible. And they were surprisingly well-organized.
“We show that glacier moss balls move an average of 2.5 cm per day in herd-like fashion, initially to the south and later towards the southwest, and their movements are positively correlated with glacier ablation. Surprisingly, the dominant moss ball movement direction does not align with the prevailing wind or downslope directions, nor with the dominant direction of solar radiation. After attaining a mature size, glacier moss balls persist for many years, likely in excess of 6 years.”
Bartholomaus told NPR the movement was similar to a school of fish or a flock of birds and defied conventional explanation. They even changed directions and speeds over time. (Video here – not from this study.) The one thing for certain was that the glacier mice needed to move an inch a day so that the moss on their bellies would get sunlight.
Perhaps the movement and moss growth is required to feed their gut microbes. Yes, cutting open a glacier moss exposed water bears (tardigrades) and tiny worms. This fits in with prevailing theories that the microbial ecosystem on the glaciers depends on moss – something that could suffer with climate change.
I’m inside a moss ball? No way!
The team completed the study without going back since 2012 to see the original flock of glacier mice at Root Glacier. Batholomaus is hoping to return soon and see how many of the original group are still ‘alive’ and rolling.
They’re slow and they’re boring, but at least glacier mice don’t leave green mouse droppings everywhere.
In the spring of 1959, a U.S. Air Force C-118, now called a Douglas DC-6, was doing training runs at McChord Air Force Base, also called McChord Field, in Pierce County, Washington. On April 1, the large cargo aircraft was doing take offs and landing training, particularly what are called “touch and go” landings, after which the plane would circle back around and do another run. On this day the plane had a very experienced crew, with seasoned pilot 1st Lieutenant Robert Roy Dimick, his co-pilot 1st Lieutenant Thomas E. Lasater, and flight engineers Technical Sergeant Guy J. Cunningham and Staff Sergeant Arthur T. Foote. Everything was going to plan and it was all considered to be pretty routine stuff, but then something very odd would happen that would launch this plane into an obscure but fascinating oddity of UFO history.
During one of the landing runs, the plane was told to hold off and let some approaching fighter jets land, so Dimick brought the aircraft into a holding pattern over nearby Bonney Lake while they waited. At some point during this holding pattern, which was a mundane maneuver the pilot had done many times before, the pilot allegedly suddenly made a panicked radio call, saying “We’ve hit something or something has hit us.” The plane then quickly lost altitude as the pilots struggled to maintain control, finally clipping some treetops in the surrounding wilderness, which heavily damaged the wing. The plane would then continue limping on, spewing flames the whole way, and finally come down just outside the town of Orting, killing everyone on board.
C-118
For the Air Force, there was nothing mysterious about it. They officially explained the crash as due to pilot error and a misunderstanding between the plane and ground control over who was tracking its altitude, all compounded by the fact that it was very dark and there were no ground lights in the wilderness they were over. For the Air Force is was just a tragic accident, move along, nothing to see here. However, some odd details would begin to emerge that seemed to point to something far stranger. In the days after the crash, some locals claimed that they had heard what sounded like sonic booms at around the time of the accident, and there were also some reports of seeing strange lights in the sky in the weeks before and even on the evening in question. When combined with the claim that the pilot had said they had hit something, this started to spawn rumors that the plane might have actually collided with a UFO. According to some researchers, the plane also did not seem to hit the ground at an angle, as one would expect, but rather it has been claimed that it seemed to have almost come down vertically, as if pushed down from above. Also, according to some witnesses there were sinister efforts by the military to quiet local officials in Orting from talking about it.
Pushing it all further into the realm of conspiracies is the fact that the original report on the incident seems to have had two whole pages redacted from it, and numerous requests for the information have allegedly been denied time and time again. Why should that be if this was a simple training accident involving pilot and ground tower error? Also, the doomed plane was flying in calm conditions on a routine run, and suddenly radioed a collision, before going down to take the lives of all aboard. With all of the reports of the lights and sonic booms and other strangeness surrounding this case, is it all as the Air Force says it was, or is there something else more mysterious going on here?
The case of the Bonney Lake incident is fairly obscure, but has all the makings of an intriguing case. What really caused that plane to go down back in 1959? What did those men potentially witness out there while soaring over that swath of wilderness? What did that call mean that they had hit something? What could that have been and how does that tie into the official explanation? Why the redacted pages? Although the military claims it was all an accident, these oddities and discrepancies have made sure that the case has still generated discussion in some circles, and considering we will probably never really know the full story it seems destined to do so for some time to come.
Every now and again people contact me about the controversial Alien Autopsy Film that surfaced in 1995. When it was first aired I suspected that the film showed the body of someone who had a rare, strange, medical condition. Various syndromes were put forward by people in the medical community. For a while, I even mused on the possibility of the footage showing a genuine alien. The controversy rumbled on for years. Twenty-five years later, just about everyone in the field of Ufology (including me) takes the view that the whole thing was nothing but a hoax – albeit a very well made hoax, it must be said. There are, however, a few people in Ufology who still cling to the theory that the footage is the real deal – whether of an alien or of a human. They really shouldn’t, though. With that all said, I thought today I would share with you an aspect of the controversy that doesn’t get the coverage it should. At one point in the film, one of those in the autopsy room removes a pair of eye-lenses from the creature. It’s then that we learn the aliens do not have black eyes, after all. Those black eyes are actually just dark lenses that can be peeled off. Their eyes are pretty much like ours, but slightly bigger. This brings us to a certain U.K. television show called UFO.
UFO was a popular sci-fi show that aired in the U.K. in 1970. It ran for 26 episodes. It was the brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who also created a bunch of other shows that entertained me when I was a little kid. They included Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, and Stingray. As for the theme of the show, the people at UFO Series.com state the following: “The series is set in what would have been ten years in the future – the early 1980’s. It had been discovered that Aliens are coming to Earth and kidnapping people for unknown reasons. A secret military defense organization named SHADO (‘Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization’) is set up and is just becoming operational in the first episode. SHADO’s main headquarters is secretly hidden beneath a London film studio, and many SHADO personnel double as film studio employees as a cover. SHADO also has a base on the moon (‘Moonbase’) and a fleet of submarines (‘Skydiver’). Incoming UFO’s are detected by an Earth orbiting satellite (‘Space Intruder Detector’, or ‘SID’).”
Gerry Anderson’s U.F.O Wiki note: “To protect their eyes the aliens wear opaque sclera contact lenses with small pinholes for vision. The show’s opening sequence begins by showing the image of one of these contact lenses being removed from an obviously real eye with a small suction cup, even though the lens is not shown in contact with the eye. The entire lens-removal sequence is shown in the pilot episode.” Of particular relevance is the fact that the SHADO team discovers that the aliens’ eyes are not what they appear to be when they perform an autopsy on the human-looking alien. In fact, in UFO the removal of one of the eye-lenses is the very first thing we see in the opening credits of the show!
As I said, the Alien Autopsy Film-UFO connection doesn’t surface too often. In my mind, though, it’s an integral part of the “AA” controversy that has lasted for twenty-five years. I’m sure those who still valiantly hang onto the claim that the film is genuine will find some way to squirm out of all this. And they will probably say that all of the above is just down to coincidence. But, with everything said, the most likely scenario is also the simplest one: certain aspects of UFO inspired the creators of the Alien Autopsy footage.
SpaceXAstronauten Bob Behnken (links) en Doug Hurley.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETAlle ogen in de ruimtevaart zijn morgen gericht op het Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Voor het eerst in bijna tien jaar worden daar twee Amerikaanse astronauten vanop eigen bodem de ruimte in geschoten. En voor het eerst in bijna veertig jaar zal dat met een gloednieuw toestel gebeuren: de Crew Dragon van SpaceX, het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Tesla-baas Elon Musk. Boezemvrienden Bob Behnken (49) en Doug Hurley (53) zijn de twee astronauten die de nu al legendarische vlucht zullen maken. Een vlucht die wel niet zonder risico’s is, zo berekende de NASA.
Als het weer het toelaat, zal de Crew Dragon woensdag om 22.33 uur (Belgische tijd, 16.33 uur in Florida) aan zijn eerste bemande ruimtereis beginnen. Dat zal gebeuren vanop lanceerplatform 39A, waar ook Neil Armstrong in 1969 vertrok naar de maan. Het is van 8 juli 2011 geleden dat er nog astronauten vanop Amerikaanse bodem naar de ruimte gestuurd werden. Toen vond de laatste missie plaats van het Spaceshuttleprogramma, dat in 1981 begon met de lancering van de Columbia. De laatste missie werd uitgevoerd door het ruimteveer Atlantis.
De Crew Dragon luidt een heel nieuwe periode in. SpaceX en vliegtuigbouwer Boeing kregen maar liefst 7,8 miljard dollar van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA om een opvolger voor de Spaceshuttle te ontwerpen. SpaceX was als eerste klaar. In maart vorig jaar slaagde al een eerste onbemande vlucht met de Crew Dragon naar het internationaal ruimtestation ISS en nu is het tijd voor een bemande vlucht. Aan boord: Bob Behnken (49) en Doug Hurley (53).
De twee zijn boezemvrienden en hebben er al allebei twee missies met een Spaceshuttle opzitten. Behnken (die afkomstig is uit Missouri) en Hurley (die van New York is) ontmoetten elkaar 20 jaar geleden tijdens hun opleiding bij de NASA. Ze maakten deel uit van NASA Astronaut Group 18, een groep van 17 ruimtevaarders die in 2000 met hun training begonnen. Ze trouwden allebei met een collega-astronaut: Behnken met Megan McArthur en Hurley met Karen Nyberg.
NASADoug Hurley en Bob Behnken aan het lanceringsplatform.
In 2015 werden ze geselecteerd voor de eerste bemande missie van de Crew Dragon en sindsdien zijn ze nog onafscheidelijker. Hurley (een gepensioneerd kolonel bij de marine) zal verantwoordelijk zijn voor de lancering en de terugkeer op aarde van het toestel. Behnken (een ingenieur en kolonel bij de luchtmacht) zal het dokken van de Crew Dragon aan het ISS in goede banen leiden.
Hoe geolied het team is, bleek onder meer op een persconferentie afgelopen vrijdag. Daarop werd niet alleen duidelijk hoe goed de twee technisch op elkaar zijn ingespeeld, maar ook hoe goed ze persoonlijk met elkaar kunnen opschieten. Getuige de grapjes die over en weer vlogen. Zo gaf Behnken toe dat Hurley gevoeliger is voor hygiëne en beter is in Trivial Pursuit.
SpaceXZo zal het er in de ruimtecapsule uitzien.
SpaceX
Een beeld van een controlekamer.
Normaal gezien passen er zeven bemanningsleden in de capsule, maar uit veiligheidsoverwegingen zullen nu maar twee astronauten de eerste bemande vlucht maken. De NASA maakte in de aanloop naar de lancering ook een berekening van hoe riskant de missie exact is.
Aan de nieuwssite Business Insider vertelde de ruimtevaartorganisatie dat er een kans is van 1 op 60 dat de missie mislukt zonder dat de bemanning daarbij omkomt. De kans dat de bemanning van de Crew Dragon het niet overleeft, is 1 op 276. En dat blijken beide astronauten prima te vinden. Behnken en Hurley verklaarden al dat ze zich “erg comfortabel” voelen bij de risico’s die ze lopen.
Zorgen
De vluchtleiding maakt zich overigens het meeste zorgen over ruimteafval en micrometeorieten die het toestel kunnen beschadigen. Daarom kreeg het ruimteschip extra bescherming aan de buitenkant. Het zal ook gefotografeerd worden vooraleer het weer vertrekt aan het ISS.
NASADe Crew Dragon is gemonteerd op de recycleerbare Falcon 9-raket.
Artistieke impressie van de in-flight abort test
Ter vergelijking: het risico op een fatale missie voor de bemanning van de Spaceshuttles van de NASA was 1 op 68. In totaal werden er 135 missies uitgevoerd met de vijf toestellen van het programma: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis en Endeavour. Twee daarvan liepen fataal af: op 28 januari 1986 ontplofte de Challenger iets meer dan een minuut na de lancering en op 1 februari 2003 onderging de Columbia hetzelfde lot door een beschadiging van het hitteschild bij de terugkeer in onze atmosfeer. Bij allebei de ongevallen kwamen zeven astronauten om het leven.
AP
Een beeld van de ontploffing van de Challenger in 1986.
AP
De bemanning van de Challenger: Ellison S. Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Francis R. Scobee, Judy Resnik (bovenaan van links naar rechts), Gregory Jarvis, Ronald E. McNair en Mike Smith (onderaan van links naar rechts).
BELGA/AFP
De verongelukte bemanning van de Columbia: Rick D. Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William C. McCool (vooraan van links naar rechts), David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, Michael P. Anderson en Ilan Ramon (achteraan van links naar rechts).
NASAEen recente vondst van een sterrenstelsel dat anderhalf miljard jaar na de oerknal ontstond, suggereert dat platte sterrenstelsels - zoals spiraalstelsel Messier 101, hier op de foto - al eerder ontstonden dan astronomen tot nog toe dachten.
WETENSCHAPAstronomen hebben dankzij radiogolven een sterrenstelsel ontdekt dat circa anderhalf miljard jaar na de oerknal ontstaan is. Dat staat te lezen in vakblad Nature. De vondst is des te opmerkelijker, omdat volgens de klassieke theorieën zo’n vroege ‘geboorte’ niet mogelijk was.
Lange tijd werd gedacht dat sterrenstelsels zoals de Melkweg geleidelijk aan ontstonden. Astronomen gingen er immers van uit dat heet kosmisch gas samenklonterde. Het duurde vervolgens zeker een paar miljard jaar vooraleer dat gas voldoende afgekoeld zou zijn om sterren te vormen.
De ontdekking van de ‘Wolfe-schijf’ lijkt die theorie nu echter naar de prullenbak te verwijzen. Het platte sterrenstelsel dook onverwacht op via de meetgegevens van de ALMA-telescoop, ’s werelds grootste ontvanger van kosmische radiosignalen. Opmerkelijk: het natuurfenomeen is ‘slechts’ anderhalf miljard jaar oud. Geen miljarden jaren dus.
Computersimulaties
“Volgens traditionele scenario’s kan dit sterrenstelsel helemaal niet bestaan”, zegt astronoom Marcel Neeleman van het Max Planck-instituut voor astronomie in de Duitse stad Heidelberg. Ter info: het heelal zelf bestaat al 13,8 miljard jaar.
Recente computersimulaties lijken het wel bij het juiste eind te hebben. Zij lieten uitschijnen dat zo’n schijfstelsel geboetseerd kan worden uit koud gas, een proces dat aanzienlijk korter duurt. “Maar niemand wist of die theorie echt klopte. Nu hebben we daar wel zekerheid over gekregen.”
Onder de indruk
Ook astronoom Joop Schaye (Universiteit Leiden) is onder de indruk van de vondst. “We hadden weet van stelsels die 3 miljard jaar na de oerknal ontstaan zijn, maar dit exemplaar is dus twee keer zo jong.”
En de toekomst oogt veelbelovend. “Normaal vinden we sterrenstelsels door te kijken naar het licht van hun sterren. Deze keer hebben onderzoekers net het tegenovergestelde gedaan: ze zochten naar licht dat verdween, door het gas dat zich tussen de sterren bevindt.”
“Met die techniek kunnen we in de toekomst misschien tientallen sterrenstelsels vinden die ook nog eens heel andere kenmerken hebben dan we gewend zijn. En dan kunnen sommige van onze huidige theorieën definitief op de schop.”
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET China wil in juli een missie naar Mars lanceren. Een vanop afstand bestuurbare robot moet het oppervlak van de rode planeet gaan verkennen, laat het bedrijf dat het project uitvoert weten. De Marsmissie is een van de vele projecten van China’s peperdure ruimteprogramma.
De missie naar Mars stond al een tijd op de agenda van de Chinese regering. De China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) heeft nu laten weten dat de missie binnen enkele maanden kan vertrekken. “Het grote project loopt volgens plan en we mikken op een lancering in juli”, liet CASC zondag weten.
De missie kreeg de naam Tianwen, wat letterlijk vertaald “vragen aan de hemel” betekent. Het project houdt in dat er een satelliet in een baan rond Mars gaat vliegen en dat een robot het landoppervlak van de planeet gaat verkennen en de bodem gaat analyseren. Het kost naar verwachting maanden om Mars te bereiken. De afstand van de aarde naar Mars bedraagt dan ook ruwweg 55 miljoen kilometer.
China voerde eerder al een soortgelijke maanmissie uit. In januari 2019 lieten de Chinezen als eersten een klein landvoertuig de duistere zijde van het maanoppervlak verkennen. De Verenigde Staten hebben intussen al vier verkenningsvoertuigen naar Mars gestuurd. De bedoeling is dat deze zomer een vijfde vertrekt, die ongeveer in februari volgend jaar moet aankomen. De Verenigde Arabische Emiraten willen hun eerste Arabische Marsmissie lanceren vanuit Japan op 15 juli.
Ruimtestation
Andere doelen van China zijn onder meer om Chinese astronauten op de maan te zetten en in 2022 een eigen ruimtestation te hebben. Het land wil zo op hetzelfde technologische niveau komen als de Verenigde Staten en haar status als wereldmacht onderstrepen.
Photo NewsLancering van een Chinese raket die gebruikt wordt bij de bouw van een Chinees ruimtestation.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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