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 In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
Astronomers have learned that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. The resulting weakly magnetized gas flow can feed the growth of new stars.
See the lines – called streamlines by scientists – in this composite image of the Serpens South star cluster? They’re from magnetic fields in this great star-forming cloud. Notice the lower left, where magnetic fields have been dragged into alignment with a narrow, dark filament. In that area, astronomers say, material from interstellar space is flowing into the star-forming cloud and fueling star formation.
Image via NASA/ SOFIA/ T. Pillai/ JPL-Caltech/ L. Allen/ USRA.
Astronomers have known for decades that stars like our sun form when giant clouds of gas and dust in space – sometimes called molecular clouds – collapse under their own gravity. But how does the material from interstellar space flow into these clouds, and what controls the collapse? The image above helps illustrate an answer to these questions. It’s a composite, made with data from SOFIA – an airborne telescope designed for infrared astronomy – overlaid on an image from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. This composite shows that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. And it shows that, when that happens, weakly magnetized gas can flow – as on a conveyor belt – to feed the growth of newly forming star clusters.
A statement from the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany, explained:
A major finding in the last decade has been that extensive networks of filaments permeate every molecular cloud. A picture has emerged that stars like our own sun form preferentially in dense clusters at the intersection of filaments.
Now look back at the image above, which shows the Serpens South star cluster, a star-forming region located some 1,400 light-years from Earth. In that image, you see a dark filament in the lower left. Now notice the “stripes” on the image, which astronomers call streamlines. They represent magnetic structures, discovered by SOFIA. The astronomers said these magnetic structures act like rivers, channeling material into the great star-forming cloud.
As you can see in the image, these magnetic streamlines have been dragged by gravity to align with the narrow, dark filament on the lower left. Astronomers say this configuration helps material from interstellar space flow into the cloud.
This is different from the upper parts of the image, where the magnetic fields are perpendicular to the filaments; in those regions, the magnetic fields in the cloud are opposing gravity.
Astrophysicist Thushara Pillai led the study showing that magnetic rivers feed star birth in the Serpens South star-forming region.
The scientists said in a statement from Universities Space Research Association (USRA) that they are:
… studying the dense cloud to learn how magnetic fields, gravity and turbulent gas motions contribute to the creation of stars. Once thought to slow star birth by counteracting gravity, SOFIA’s data reveals magnetic fields may actually be working together with gravity as it pulls the fields into alignment with the filaments, nourishing the birth of stars.
The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy on August 17. The lead author of the new study is Thushara Pillai of Boston University and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.
In 1835, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the unknowable nature of stars:
On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are … necessarily denied to us. While we can conceive of the possibility of determining their shapes, their sizes, and their motions, we shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure … Our knowledge concerning their gaseous envelopes is necessarily limited to their existence, size … and refractive power, we shall not at all be able to determine their chemical composition or even their density…
He was, famously, wrong.
He couldn’t have envisioned the range of tools available to modern astronomers. It’s a beautiful thing that, nowadays, astronomers can not only learn about the compositions of stars via their studies of their spectra, but also probe the deeper mysteries, going all the way to the births of these colossal, self-luminous balls in space.
SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. The HAWC+ polarimeter on board SOFIA was used for the observations of the magnetic field in the Serpens South star-forming region.
Bottom line: Astronomers have learned that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. The resulting weakly magnetized gas flow can feed the growth of new stars.
Get your white flag and start waving it at the nearest calendar – especially if you live in the U.S. NASA is warning that a near-Earth asteroid will make a near Earth pass on November 2nd – one day before the country’s presidential election. Is this the universe letting us know we’re not as important as we think we are?
NASA Asteroid Watch @AsteroidWatch Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth! It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.
That tweet by NASA was made after the mainstream, space-watching and conspiracy media came out with blaring headlines warning that Asteroid 2018VP1 will be very close to Earth – with a non-zero chance of impact – on November 2nd, the day before an election that is dominating the news and the attention of most Americans. Of course, the impact could occur anywhere on Earth, but we self-important Americans always make these things about us, don’t we? While a “0.41% chance” sounds pretty small (except when discussing the upcoming election – there we go again!), it’s actually 1-in-240, which SOUNDS much more probable.
Are those better odds than Las Vegas?
Why haven’t we heard about this sooner? If you know anything about asteroids or you have an intuitive mind, you’ll either know or figure out that “2018VP1” means this asteroid was discovered in 2018 and has been tracked ever since. Ironically, 2018VP1 was discovered on November 3rd, 2018 by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in Southern California. During the brief period it was visible (about 13 days), astronomers determined it had the potential to cross Earth’s orbit and potentially collide with the planet.
What if it did?
The answer to that is a good news/bad news response. The good news, as NASA points out, is that the chance is very low and it will probably pass no closer than 4,700 miles. Even if it did make a direct hit, at a diameter of 6.5 feet (2 meters), 2018VP1 will probably burn up in the atmosphere like almost all asteroids of that size do on a regular basis. The bad news is, ‘almost’ means it could survive the entry. If it’s made primarily of ice, 2018VP1 will put on a spectacular sky show to remind everyone to vote the following (there we go again). If it is primarily solid metal, 2018VP1 or pieces of it could impact the surface but their size – even if it landed whole – would make damage minimal. If you look at ‘minimal’ as ‘non-extinction-causing’ or ‘non- Chelyabinsk’, that’s good news. If you get hit by a piece (the odds are not zero), it could be fatal – but at least you’ll be famous and you probably won’t take anyone else with you.
In september 2018 waren er verschillende mensen in de Amerikaanse staat Minnesota die een vreemd cirkelvormig object waarnamen in de lucht. Later bleek dat een vergelijkbaar iets ook was gezien in andere landen, waaronder Nederland, en nu is het weer terug in Minnesota.
Misschien is er een heel logische verklaring voor en heeft het allemaal niets te maken met ruimteschepen van eventueel buitenaardse afkomst, maar feit is dat voor zover ons bekend niemand nog een verklaring heeft kunnen vinden voor dit vreemde verschijnsel.
Een object dat bij ons precies twee jaar geleden in beeld kwam toen het werd waargenomen boven de Amerikaanse staat Minnesota.
Het zag eruit als op de volgende afbeeldingen en werd door diverse mensen gezien.
Hier volgt een video opname van hetzelfde fenomeen:
Iemand die ergens op een weg reed in Minnesota en hetzelfde zag:
In april 2019 wordt eenzelfde soort object waargenomen in China:
En nu, meer dan een jaar later duikt het weer opnieuw op in Minnesota. De volgende opname is gemaakt door iemand uit Lakeville, Minnesota, vanaf de veranda van zijn huis.
Degene in kwestie heeft de opname vervolgens opgestuurd naar Mufon voor verder onderzoek.
Wat het ook mogen zijn, het lijkt duidelijk dat we hier wederom te maken hebben met hetzelfde object.
Om het verhaal compleet te maken hierna nog een getuigenverslag van iemand uit Nederland die jaren geleden (1996) eenzelfde object waarnam in het zuiden van ons land.
This evening while looking at your site I saw “Ruimteschip hangt vier minuten boven weg Update”
This gave me the goosebumps! This is exacly what my X wife and myself saw in 1996 From Oeffelt To Our House In Boekel, I didn’t have a camera with me so I didn’t take a picture but now I see it and thank you for that.
Op die website staat inderdaad het hele verhaal wat er die zomeravond in juni 1996 gebeurde tijdens een autorit van Oeffelt naar Boekel, een afstand van zo’n 26 kilometer.
De man in kwestie was samen met zijn toenmalige vriendin op bezoek geweest bij vrienden die in een vrij afgelegen boerderij in de buurt van Oeffelt woonden.
Hij kan zich die avond van 22 juni 1996 nog goed herinneren, want dat was de avond dat Nederland tegen Frankrijk speelde voor de wereldkampioenschappen.
Rond middernacht vertrekt het stel omdat de volgende dag een werkdag was en ze een beetje op tijd in bed moesten liggen. Het eerste wat de man ziet is een rond object met vele lichten dat rondcirkelt boven de boerderij waar ze op bezoek waren. Het was identiek aan die die nu wordt waargenomen in Minnesota.
Het was een kilometer of 7 richting snelweg vanaf de boerderij en de weg was verlaten en liep door een vrijwel onbebouwd gebied. De vriendin kon vanuit de auto zien dat het object hen volgde rechts van de auto en exact dezelfde snelheid aan hield. Toen de man gas gaf accelereerde de UFO ook en toen hij een bocht naar rechts maakte volgde de UFO.
De man werd een beetje overmoedig, stopte de auto en stapte uit om beter te kunnen kijken. Het object draaide rond tegen de richting van de wijzers van de klok in en stopte boven een huis aan de rechterkant van de weg. Toen begon het met de richting van de wijzers van een klok mee te draaien en bewoog zich richting auto en de man had het gevoel alsof het object met hem communiceerde. Hij schat de grootte ervan op enkele voetbalvelden, geen kleintje dus. Bovendien maakte het geen geluid. Het vloog enkele keren over de auto en tenslotte stapte de man weer in.
Omdat ze op een gegeven moment onder een bladerdak van bomen reden dachten ze het object kwijt te zijn, maar niets was minder waar. Een minuut later was het weer terug aan de passagierskant van de auto. De vrouw vroeg hem om sneller te gaan rijden en de auto zo snel mogelijk thuis de garage in te rijden, hetgeen geschiedde.
Thuis gekomen was de man toch weer nieuwsgierig geworden, liep naar buiten en zag het object hangen boven het huis van de buren. Omdat het object nu heel dichtbij was en onder een bepaalde hoek hing, had de man heel sterk het gevoel dat ze naar hem keken. De man riep naar zijn vriendin en de babysitter om snel naar buiten te komen en toen ze dat deden schoot het object weg met hoge snelheid. Het verdween van het ene op het andere moment, zonder enig geluid te maken.
De man was een voormalig sergeant bij de luchtmacht en is daardoor wel goed in staat om onderscheid te maken tussen bijvoorbeeld een helikopter en een onbekend object.
Even later kwam het object nogmaals terug en werd toen ook gezien door de babysitter en de buurman die net zelf terugkwam van een feestje. Uiteindelijk verdween het object opnieuw en ze hebben het daarna nooit meer gezien. Wel bleek later dat er die avond veel UFO meldingen waren geweest in dat gebied.
Tot zover dit verhaal.
Tips ter opheldering van dit fenomeen of eigen ervaringen zijn altijd welkom via redactie apenstaart niburu.co
Pentagon is forming new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases - defense officials say - after US senators demand answers
Pentagon is forming new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases - defense officials say - after US senators demand answers
Two defense officials said a new task force that hunts and investigates UFOs seen by military aircraft will be unveiled in the next few days, reported CNN
It will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, they said
US senators are demanding more transparency from the Pentagon over mysterious encounters in the skies
In July, it emerged the Pentagon's once secret UFO hunting department was still in operation despite official claims it was disbanded in 2012
The Pentagon released three videos in April showing US Navy pilots encountering UFOs flying over military bases
The need to investigate UFOs comes from concerns US adversaries such as China and Russia could have made technological leaps in espionage
The Pentagon is forming a new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases, according to defense officials.
Two defense officials toldCNN the task force will hunt and investigate UFOs that have been seen by military aircraft and will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist.
The task force will be officially announced over the next few days, they added.
This comes just weeks after it emerged the Pentagon's once secret UFO hunting department continued to operate over the past decade despite claims it was disbanded in 2012.
US senators have demand more transparency from the Pentagon over mysterious encounters in the skies.
The Pentagon (pictured) is forming a new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases, according to defense officials
Details of the new task force - including its name and whether its investigations will be made public - are not yet clear.
It is also not clear whether the new task force will replace the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force which the New York Times revealed last month was still in operation.
A secret multi-million dollar program named the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program first began in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
In 2017, the Pentagon acknowledged funding the program to investigate UFO sightings but defense chiefs claimed it ended in 2012 citing 'other, higher priority issues that merited funding'.
In July, the Times reported that people who worked with the UFO program through to 2017 and beyond confirmed it continued to exist - but under a different name and office.
Members of the unit insisted some of the objects discovered were items humans 'couldn't make ourselves' and 'vehicles not made on this earth'.
In April, the Pentagon released footage from three sightings of unidentified objects (pictured)
The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy acknowledged they were genuine videos
Donald Trump expressed skepticism over the validity of the footage calling it 'one hell of a video' and saying 'I just wonder if it's real'
In June, US senators demanded to see the Pentagon's UFO files as they pushed for influence over the secretive Navy program.
The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted defense chiefs to publish a report on the Pentagon's UFO program and any phenomena it observes.
The committee said it 'supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force' - appearing to also confirm such a program still existed - but said the public should be better informed of its activities.
The Pentagon's UFO department could now be forced to give reports to the public every six months.
The push for transparency from the Senate came after the Pentagon released three videos showing US Navy pilots encountering UFOs flying over military bases back in April.
The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy acknowledged they were genuine videos.
One of the videos was shot in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015.
In one, a weapons sensor operator appears to lose lock on a rapidly moving object which seconds later suddenly accelerates away to the left and out of view.
The new UFO task force will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist (pictured), according to officials
In another video which is tracking an object above the clouds, one pilot wonders if it is a drone.
The Department of Defense said it was 'releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.'
Donald Trump expressed skepticism over the validity of the footage calling it 'one hell of a video' and saying 'I just wonder if it's real'.
'Hazard reports' about the unexplained encounters were then released the following month.
'The unknown aircraft appeared to be small in size, approximately the size of a suitcase, and silver in color,' one report about an incident in 2014 read.
The need to investigate the existence of UFOs stems less out of concern over extraterrestrials, however, and more from the threat posed by real-world US adversaries such as China.
The Pentagon admitted in June that a nuclear detonation in space by Russia or China was among the possible threats to US interests.
The US is particularly worried about China's espionage capabilities, including use of drones and other aerial technology.
Earlier in July, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CBS that he was concerned about unidentified aircraft flying over US military bases.
He claimed that China or Russia may have made 'some technological leap' that 'allows them to conduct this sort of activity'.
'Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out,' he added.
Honestly guys, I'm getting sensory overload on this whole photo. Just too many ancient artifacts, and only 1 in 20 I will show you. Mostly because the other 19 are less detailed, less understandable, less significant. I found a face of a young girl, looks to be a chubby young girl with curly hair. The face is highly detailed and facing outward from the hillside. It looks human-like, if the human were 7 years old. I found a few standing figures, a few words engraved deeply into the stone, a few doorways, a few oddities that just cannot be explained by anything except as an ancient city. But my estimates are that those that lived here were a mere 3-5 inches tall. Right now you doubt me, but honestly, why do you think intelligence is limited by size? Some of the smartest people I ever met...were some of the shortest too. Scott C. Waring
Below is a (Side View) face looking up to the sky, only see the nose, chin cheeks, crown, neck.
Standing figure is only about 3-6 inches tall. Wearing a suit, hoody off, naked bald head seen from back.
Below is a male figure, wearing a pointy hood hat bending over the rock. I made him grey to make him stand out more easily for you. His face is very clear.
This is a white structure...which I call the white ceramics. These structures are near impossible to photograph due the powerful reflection of light bouncing off of them. I added contrast and they came into focus. I added yellow to the building area so you can see exactly what I see. It does take years of practice and patience to allow your eyes to adjust to not only the black and white photos, but to search for similar signs of structures that I have found in the past ten years. This has to be one of the top ten. The map ruler is not accurate, its true size is close to 300 meters across. and 50 meters high. Don't just glance at the screenshots here...allow your eyes to get use to looking at it. Search for the defining shading and edges. Take a few minutes and search the screenshots...finding these structures takes practice.
Kinds of structures I have found on the moon.
1. Once found elongated 6 sided 24k gold ship, flat, huge cross-like vein covered its surface only.
2. Found some transparent pyramids...very difficult to focus the pictures due to mass reflections. But experienced searcher could see it easily.
3. Metallic grey metal structures, often smaller and near edges of larger non reflective black structures.
3. White Ceramic structures, had to find some in focused due to light reflection, but if in a bit of shadows, can be focused.
4. Non reflective (stealth fighter black) black structures. Massive in scale, largest of all structures on Earths moon. Usually mistaken for shadows by inexperienced searchers.
Time, patience and practice...and you can accomplish the impossible.
This is an interesting find on the beach of Oveson, Norway. The person states on Reddit that they found the object on the beach and are asking for help identifying it. Some comments believe it to be a sinker for fishing, but its huge size puts that in doubt since most sinkers are now plastic and styrofoam making a sinker out of zinc would be very impractical and expensive, especially one of this size. I believe that this object fell from our atmosphere and while it did, it became damaged. Observe the molten uneven outer coating of the object. Observer the deep meteorite like craters on its surface. This is not caused by the salt water and rust, because we see no sign of decay or rust. It has be heated to extreme temperatures. I believe this object did not hit the ocean, but hit the beach itself. You can see that there is some non metal material that has been lodged inside the molten metal and burned. That material is from the beach. This is an alien probe, the kind that are often seen darting from cloud to cloud. Its value is immeasurable since it surly has keys to AI within its material itself. What I mean is, the systems...the computer, the AI, the propulsion are all built into micro scale into the metal itself. If there are sections left undamaged within it...then the micro technology found in it could change the world forever advancing humanity thousands of years ahead. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
High speed UFO stops midair and shoots straight up through the sky caught on Live Webcam
On August 17, 2020, witness lmx2001 tuned in to St Ives Hayle Beach Live Webcam UK to watch a sunset and noticed a strange bright light hovering above the sea so he used a desktop screen recorder to capture it.
The light then suddenly darts to the left over a distance at high speed then stops sharply where it just hovers again.
Then towards the end of the video it shoots straight up through the sky very fast and is gone.
The first video is the original recording of the UFO, while the second video shows a closer look at the UFO.
Daytime footage of a solid object flying in the sky above Westland in Michigan. This was taken on 30th June 2020.
Witness report:
Son and I saw this thing in the sky and I took a video of it. My son and I were in front of our local metro PC’s store waiting to buy a new phone and I was looking around and saw what at first glance looked like a large balloon in the shape of a donut flying across the sky. But when it dawned on me as to the largeness of this thing and my poor distance eye sight without my glasses was amazing and new it couldn’t possible be a balloon, so I started filming and showed my son.
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The Pentagon's footage from these sightings, which has been made public, depicts objects zooming quickly through the sky, as recorded by military pilots. Though these objects fit the technical definition of a UFO — meaning an unidentified flying object — they may not adhere to the folk understanding of "UFO" as synonymous with an extraterrestrial spacecraft. That's because there isn't exactly any evidence that these objects are of extraterrestrial origin, or that they defy any existing laws of physics that might hint at their development by a more scientifically advanced species.
"To understand the videos, all you need to do is ask any fighter pilot familiar with the FLIR camera system," Brian Dunning, a professional scientific skeptic and podcaster, told Salon by email. "What looks like great speed and wild maneuvers is just a common optical illusion combined with the effects of the FLIR's gimbal and glare filter." FLIR cameras, short for forward-looking infrared cameras, are capable of seeing slightly into the infrared spectrum, meaning that heat sources light up on FLIR camera footage.
Dunning zeroed in on a released video that appears to show a bat-winged shaped craft, noting that "the object you're seeing is a single point of heat from an unidentified plane, probably a distant commercial jet, flying away from the F-18. The camera is looking out the side of the F-18 which is speeding past nearby clouds, making the object appear to be moving relative to the clouds."
He added, "Its bat-wing shape is how the FLIR's glare filter always depicts single bright points (there are plenty of examples of this on YouTube), and whenever the object appears to turn, this is simply the FLIRs gimbal rotating to keep the target in view as the F-18 maneuvers. The other videos also have similarly prosaic explanations."
Timothy Caulfield, a law professor at the University of Alberta who also hosts a TV series that debunks pseudoscience (titled "A User's Guide to Cheating Death"), explained to Salon that there are a number of potentially innocuous explanations — many of them involving military or other highly secretive scientific experiments — that get ignored due to sensationalism.
"I get why people are fascinated by this topic. It's exciting, it's intriguing, it's mysterious," Caulfield said. "But the idea that these things are UFOs and alien sightings, and that there is alien material left on our planet, is scientifically implausible and highly unlikely. It's an Occam's Razor story. I think there is probably a more straightforward explanation, but we will just never know with the deep uncertainty. People want answers."
"When people look at those kinds of videos and the reaction of the pilots, for example, I think that's often also used to give them more credibility with these expert pilots, often military pilots, commenting on the behavior of the shifts," Caulfield explained. "I'm not a physicist, I'm not an engineer. I can understand what people are intrigued. They don't know what this object is and it's moving in a manner that seems impossible given our current technology."
Alexander Wendt, an international relations professor at Ohio State University who has become a prominent amateur ufologist, pointed to the reactions of the military pilots as a sign that these new UFOs should be taken seriously.
"I challenge anybody to do better than the Navy to explain what's in those videos. If the Navy couldn't do it..." Wendt told Salon, before adding that "they had every reason to want this off their plate."
As Wendt pointed out, "I think what's unique about these Navy videos is that the whole issue arose from the pilots... I think the upset pilots is really a key thing. These guys are the experts on what's in the sky. They have thousands of hours of experience flying up there. You see some of the interviews with these pilots and they think something is going on, and they were the ones that pushed this whole issue to the front."
Another Ohio State University professor, political scientist Thomas Wood, opened up to Salon about why people embrace UFO conspiracy theories.
"If you look at the data on public opinion on this, it is really sort of incredible," Wood explained. (A Gallup poll last year found that 33 percent of Americans believe that some UFO sightings were caused by alien visitation; a YouGov poll last month found that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government would hide UFO evidence from the public.) "The American public fascination with UFOs is one of the very durable conspiracy theories in the American public's imagination. Most conspiracy theories may become popular and then quiet quickly — for instance, the Barack Obama was born in Kenya theory, the American government planned the 9/11 terrorist attack theory. The UFO conspiracy theory is one of those that just sort of stuck around."
Dunning was quite cynical about the reasons for people believing in UFOs.
"Two words: Sensationalism sells," Dunning emailed Salon. "Nobody is excited about the artifacts of the FLIR glare filter; everyone is excited about the prospect of the Pentagon hiding the 'truth about aliens.'"
He added, "Humans are hardwired for anecdotal thinking. Our brains gravitate toward the simple and the desirable, and away from the complicated and the boring. The people in the business of selling TV programming are well aware of this, and that's why we see UFOs, ghosts, psychics, and miracle cures dominating pop culture."
Many famous people claim to have encountered either UFOs or aliens, from singers Elvis Presley and Blink-182's Tom DeLonge and President Jimmy Carter. They were able to have successful careers despite the stigma associated with such an alleged experience, though many other believers were not.
Earlier this year, the TV series "Unsolved Mysteries" devoted an episode to a group of people from a small town in western Massachusetts who claim they encountered a UFO in 1969. They described being socially rejected, viciously bullied, and in one case even harassed to the point where they moved away. it makes sense why they wouldn't go to the police or the local press at the time with their story. Many other reports of UFO sightings and encounters follow the same pattern — those who come forward suffer for doing so. As one of the people in the episode puts it, the town devolved from "Norman Rockwell to Salvador Dali" as public opinion and un-visited citizens turned against the purported witnesses.
MATTHEW ROZSA
Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
Ivan Vagner joined the ISS crew on 9 April, when a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft sent him along with fellow cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka as well as NASA’s Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir to the space oupost.
Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, who is currently woking on board the International Space Station, has shared a video of the aurora over Antarctica which showed several unknown objects flying through outer space.
In the 60-second clip that Vagner posted on his Twitter page on Wednesday, at least five mysterious objects are seen emerging from the dark and slowly moving in space before completely disappearing.
"[…] In the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora. At 9-12 seconds, 5 objects appear flying alongside with the same distance. What do you think those are? Meteors, satellites, or…”, the cosmonaut tweeted.
He added that the footage was sent to the management of the Russian space agency Roscosmos as well as to the country’s leading rocket and spacecraft scientific centre TsNIIMash and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for "further analysis".
Several Twitter users have, meanwhile, suggested that the "breathtaking" video captured nothing but a new batch of Starlink satellites that were launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX on Tuesday.
Starlink is the next-generation satellite network capable of providing Earth's inhabitants with broadband internet access. The project's implementation began in February 2018 amid SpaceX’s plans to launch a total of about 12,000 such satellites into outer space.
There have been hundreds of sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) around the world.
Lincolnshire is certainly no different - there have been all sorts of strange sightings in the skies of our county over the years.
Last year, Boston was named as one of the top ten places in the UK to spot a UFO.
The most recent sighting - showed flickering lights the sky over the A151 near Bourne.
This sighting is just one of a number of other, more mysterious sightings,that still can't be explained.
Here are our picks of the weirdest UFO sightings across Lincolnshire.
Amazing footage captures UFO sighting in sky above Lincolnshire - July 2020
A man has captured video footage of a possible UFO flying in the sky above Lincolnshire.
The footage, which was filmed over the A151 by Alex Platts, shows flickering lights in the sky overhead on Monday, July 27.
He posted online: "UFO I’ve just been watching over Bourne.
"Headed off North Easterly direction. Any ideas??"
The video caused a stir, with a lot of people commenting with ideas of what they thought it was.
One said: "Very odd. That’s not something easily explained.
(Image: Alex Platts)
"I do love a good UFO sighting."
Another suggested: "The light flashing pattern makes me think it's a helicopter."
Alex, however, says he believes it's not a helicopter - as there was no rotor noise and the way the lights "flowed from front to back" was not like that of a helicopter.
"It looks like several of whatever they are," another person commented.
Mysterious object over the Lincolnshire coast - October 2019
A man in Ingoldmells spotted this very strange image in the sky in October last year.
The man who took the photo, Gary Couldwell, said: "It was so weird. At first I thought it was a lantern, but the way it moved in the sky I don't think it could have been.
"It just stayed in that position for such a long time before shooting up so quickly.
"I don't believe in any of that, really. I'm a doubter. But after this, seeing it with my own eyes - I'd say I'm inbetween."
(Image: Gary Couldwell)
Shiny round object in the sky over Boston - May 2017
In May 2017, a video of a shiny round silver object in the sky which appeared and disappeared over Boston was posted on YouTube.
Five strange lights spotted over Lincoln Cathedral in broad daylight - April 2014
People in Lincoln spotted five lights in a pentagon shape April 2014.
The person who captured the footage claimed they were absolutely not Chinese lanterns and has labelled the phenomenon a UFO.
Hovering, flashing lights spotted over Heckington - August 2013
This example has seen plenty of exposure since it came to light seven years ago.
An eyewitness, Pete Willerton, from Heckington, said he saw the lights from his home.
Speaking in 2013 he said: "It looks a bit like a chinese lantern but it flashes and changes colour from orange to red to white. It moves around slightly then just disappears.
Strange object seen over Lincoln - May 2019
Simon Carrison photographed this object in the sky from his home in College Close, Lincoln just after 6.30pm on May 23 2019. He had no idea what the object could have been.
(Image: Simon Carrison)
Object burning in the night sky - September 2017
In 2017, Zoe Fletcher took to Facebook at about 9pm on Monday, September 4 and wrote that she'd seen something burning through the night sky.
She wrote: "Me and Nathan were in the garden and heard a strange whirring noise in the sky like an aircraft but ranging from low pitch to high pitch.
"It looks like something burning through the atmosphere," she added.
Mysterious lights floating over Skegness for seven hours - 1996
Mysterious lights were seen in the sky over Skegness for seven hours, and the object was spotted on a military radar.
But the RAF were told to ignore it after it was “overruled at the highest level” and files show that RAF Coningsby wanted to scramble aircraft to the scene.
A letter from an unidentified government official criticised the government's defence secretary at the time, writing: "I am very concerned about an incident that occurred off the Anglian Coast recently, involving a visual unidentified flying craft sighting which was correlated by various different military radar systems.”
It added that it was "incredible" that "no aircraft were scrambled when an uncorrelated target was picked up so close to the coast” and that “this raises serious issues about the way in which we police the UK’s Air Defence Region”.
Large, dark object hovering over Lincolnshire - 2016
This image was taken in 2016 and appears to show a mysterious dark object floating in the sky in Lincolnshire.
It is not known exactly where the video was filmed but it was uploaded to YouTube with the title 'UFO Sighting Over Lincolnshire, UK August 20, 2016'.
"Is it a plane or a UFO?" - May 2014
A Lincolnshire allotment keeper spotted this mysterious object in the skies above the county.
Hunting cameras installed to identify people breaking into sheds and stealing chickens showed a strange light in the sky.
Allotment holder Gary Ingham said: "Is it a plane or a UFO?"
Grimsby Live has also reported a number of strange sightings and events in North Lincolnshire. One woman claimed to have been abducted by aliens from her home in Tetney the same day UFOs were spotted over Grimsby.
They report some of their strangest sightings below.
March 2000 - Woman claims to have been abducted by aliens
A woman claimed to have been abducted by aliens at her home in Tetney on the same day UFOs were sighted over Grimsby.
She said that at around 9.30am that morning she was transported from her bed to an alien space ship that was constructed entirely of a steel-like material.
She explained: “I was in bed and felt myself getting weaker and weaker, like I was collapsing. The next thing I knew, I was in this corridor.”
While on board the alien ship she opened a door and was shocked to find a human male “spread-eagled” on a table, while aliens “peeled back his skin to look at his insides”.
The woman added: “There was a female being, who was milky white and wearing some sort of wig, I think it was to try and make her look less frightening, and more human.
“She communicated to me, telling me not to worry about my cats and dog, that they would be looked after.
“She didn’t speak to me in words, just put these thoughts in my head. She didn’t scare me, I think she was trying to help."
She said she thought she was going to die, but the next thing she knew she was back in her bed and only 11-and-a-half minutes had passed.
“I was so shocked to be back, I thought I was gone for good,” she said.
The woman said she knew people would perceive her as “mad” but honestly believed it was a real abduction.
September 1970 - Fatal crash sparks strange theories
The downing of fighter jet XS894, piloted by American Captain William Shaffner on a September evening in 1970, has been officially documented as a tragic accident.
But reports of bizarre flying transparent spheres, unusual blips on the radar and the fact the aircraft was discovered with its cockpit empty and canopy shut fast has left the story open to discussion.
On the night of September 8 1970, Captain William Schaffner, an American pilot based at RAF Binbrook took off from the flight-line out into the skies over Grimsby and headed across the Humber, and out over the North Sea, heading to Flamborough. Shortly after 10.30pm his plane ditched into the North Sea, five miles south of Flamborough Head.
An air and sea search and rescue operation was launched but it would take a further four days for the joint American and British operation to cease their search.
On October 7, 1970, it was revealed that the plane had been found when navy divers sailed to Flamborough onboard the HMS Kedleston but their search still did not provide answers and they returned empty handed.
August 1999 - 'Disc' hovers over Scartho Fork
A UFO was spotted over Scartho Fork. A vast glowing disc hovered over the roundabout and then sped upwards, according a Springfield Road resident.
He added that he had seen the object a total of five times.
He said: "The first time I saw the UFO, I was frightened. The disc gave off a warm red glow and then turned green.
"The disc spun off in to the night sky, moving this way and that in an apparently random way. Who knows where it was going.''
April 2000 - Several sightings of strange phenomenons
Grimsby Telegraph readers flooded the telephone lines with sightings of strange phenomenons.
A Cleethorpes couple got the shock of their lives when an unidentified red ball hurtled towards their house and passed through one of their bodies.
A woman was on the telephone when her husband shouted to at her to look through the window.
She said: ''I left the phone dangling as I saw a two-inch red ball of fire come through the window and pass through my husband's chest.
“We immediately lifted his shirt to see if it had left a mark, but there was nothing there – we daren’t tell anyone at first, it was very frightening. People will think we’re mad but there was nothing in the sky and not a soul around.”
The man involved said: “I’m too old to be scared, it didn’t hurt but we both saw it and my wife never drinks.”
Meanwhile, one Cleethorpes woman's husband thought she was “cuckoo” after she told him she had seen a “bright light travelling really slowly across the sky down the Humber” when she put her washing out.
She described the object as “round and big”.
Another reader saw a “really bright light” hovering above Blundell Park.
He said: “It was like a comet, it was so quick it couldn’t have been an aeroplane or a helicopter. It vanished in a split second. It was travelling at a height between 3,000 to 5,000 feet – I can’t describe it, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
October 2003 - UFO spotted near Freeman Street
A couple spotted what they believe was a UFO "turning over and over in the sky" near Freeman Street in Grimsby.
The UFO was in the air above their Bodiam Way home for several minutes before Steve went inside and grabbed his video camera.
The footage showed an intriguing black object coming in and out of view and catching the light at regular intervals.
September 2005 - Mysterious animal and unidentified flash
Ashby-cum-Fenby was visited by both a UFO and a large black cat, according to a resident.
During one weekend, his CCTV camera caught images of a mysterious animal walking in a field near his house as well as an unidentified flash.
March 2009 - 'Protractor-shaped' flashes
Two people saw “protractor-shaped” flashes in the sky at about 8pm on March 23. Three others spotted a multi- coloured flashing object hovering in the sky above Grimsby’s Grafton Street.
January 2009 - Witnesses say UFO damaged wind turbine
Witnesses in the Conisholme area claimed damage to a wind turbine was caused by a UFO.
One person described seeing a “massive ball of light” with “tentacles going right down to the ground”.
The story garnered international attention as was reported on the front page of The Sun.
It was later reported that "bolts securing the blade to the hub of the turbine failed due to material fatigue".
September 2010 - 'Strange red aircraft lights' spotted near Tetney
A second appeal for sightings was printed in the Telegraph, following initial reports of “strange red aircraft lights” near Tetney earlier in the week. The story followed an e-mail from another reader who said they had “possibly just seen two UFOs travelling in an easterly direction over Fulstow village, heading towards the North Cotes area”.
September 2019 - Unusual lights over Grimsby
Several people got in touch to say they spotted unusual lights over Grimsby shortly before dawn one morning.
The unidentified objects were seen flying low over the town centre and are said to have disappeared mysteriously quite suddenly. Witnesses also said there was no sound accompanying the lights.
One picture sent to us appeared to show three distinct lights which did not seem to be connected by any visible object.
Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests
Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests
High-resolution observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of mysterious bright spots (faculae) in Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres suggest the existence of a brine reservoir — which is about 40 km (25 miles) deep and hundreds of km wide — that emerged to the surface through long-lived cryovolcanic activity as a consequence of the impact that created the crater.
This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres.
“Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition,” said Dawn’s mission director Dr. Marc Rayman, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer.”
Long before Dawn arrived at Ceres in 2015, astronomers had noticed diffuse bright regions on the dwarf planet with telescopes, but their nature was unknown.
From its close orbit, Dawn captured images of two distinct, highly reflective areas within Occator crater, which were subsequently named Cerealia Facula and Vinalia Faculae.
Scientists knew that micrometeorites frequently pelt the surface of Ceres, roughing it up and leaving debris. Over time, that sort of action should darken these bright areas. So their brightness indicates that they likely are young.
Trying to understand the source of the areas, and how the material could be so new, was a main focus of Dawn’s final extended mission, from 2017 to 2018.
The research not only confirmed that the bright regions are young — some less than 2 million years old; it also found that the geologic activity driving these deposits could be ongoing.
This conclusion depended on scientists making a key discovery: salt compounds concentrated in Cerealia Facula.
On Ceres’ surface, salts bearing water quickly dehydrate, within hundreds of years. But Dawn’s measurements show they still have water, so the fluids must have reached the surface very recently.
This is evidence both for the presence of liquid below the region of Occator crater and ongoing transfer of material from the deep interior to the surface.
The researchers found two main pathways that allow liquids to reach the surface.
“For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago,” said Dawn principal investigator Dr. Carol Raymond.
“The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.”
Dawn captured pictures in visible and infrared wavelengths, which were combined to create this false-color view of a region in 92-km- (57-mile-) wide Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. Recently exposed brine in the center of the crater was pushed up from a deep reservoir below Ceres’ crust. In this view, it appears reddish. In the foreground, is Cerealia Facula, a 15-km- (9-mile-) wide region with a composition dominated by salts. The central dome, Cerealia Tholus, is about 3 km (1.9 miles) across at its base and 340 m (1,100 feet) tall. The dome is inside a central depression about 900 m (3,000 feet) deep. The area depicted in this scene is about 2.1 km (1.3 miles) wide in the foreground, about 11 km (7 miles) wide across the dome, and 56 km (35 miles) wide in the background, where the crater rim rises against the black sky. The distance from the near point (at the bottom) to the far point (at the top) is about 52 km (32 miles).
Dawn got as close as 35 kilometres to Ceres' surface, enabling it to create image mosaics like this one of Cerealia Facula.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI)
This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres.
(NASA: JPL)
Scientists are confident there's a deep brine reservoir under Occator crater.(NASA: JPL)
In the Solar System, icy geologic activity happens mainly on icy moons, where it is driven by their gravitational interactions with their planets.
But that’s not the case with the movement of brines to the surface of Ceres, suggesting that other large ice-rich bodies that are not moons could also be active.
Some evidence of recent liquids in Occator crater comes from the bright deposits, but other clues come from an assortment of interesting conical hills reminiscent of Earth’s pingos — small ice mountains in polar regions formed by frozen pressurized groundwater.
Such features have been spotted on Mars, but the discovery of them on Ceres marks the first time they’ve been observed on a dwarf planet.
On a larger scale, the Dawn scientists were able to map the density of Ceres’ crust structure as a function of depth — a first for an ice-rich planetary body.
Using gravity measurements, they found Ceres’ crustal density increases significantly with depth, way beyond the simple effect of pressure.
The authors inferred that at the same time Ceres’ reservoir is freezing, salt and mud are incorporating into the lower part of the crust.
The findings were published in a series of papers in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.
All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
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C.A. Raymond et al. 2020. Impact-driven mobilization of deep crustal brines on dwarf planet Ceres. Nat Astron 4, 741-747; doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1168-2
M.C. De Sanctis et al. 2020. Fresh emplacement of hydrated sodium chloride on Ceres from ascending salty fluids. Nat Astron 4, 786-793; doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1138-8
Heavy Rains Filled Lakes and Rivers on Early Mars, New Research Suggests
Heavy Rains Filled Lakes and Rivers on Early Mars, New Research Suggests
Planetary researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center have used dry paleolakes and riverbeds to determine how much precipitation was present on Mars 3.5-4 billion years ago.
Open and closed lakes on early Mars.
Image credit: University of Texas at Austin.
The climate of the ancient Mars is something of an enigma to scientists. To geologists, the existence of riverbeds and paleolakes paints a picture of a planet with significant rainfall or snowmelt.
But planetary scientists who specialize in computer climate models have been unable to reproduce an ancient climate with large amounts of liquid water present for long enough to account for the observed geology.
“This is extremely important because 3.5 to 4 billion years ago Mars was covered with water,” said study lead author Dr. Gaia Stucky de Quay, a postdoctoral researcher in the Jackson School of Geosciences and the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It had lots of rain or snowmelt to fill those channels and lakes.”
“Now it’s completely dry. We’re trying to understand how much water was there and where did it all go.”
In the study, Dr. Stucky de Quay and colleagues found that precipitation must have been between 4 to 159 m (13-520 feet) in a single episode to fill the Martian lakes and, in some cases, provide enough water to overflow and breach the lake basins.
“Although the range is large, it can be used to help understand which climate models are accurate,” Dr. Stucky de Quay said.
“Climate models have trouble accounting for that amount of liquid water at that time. It’s like, liquid water is not possible, but it happened. This is the knowledge gap that our work is trying to fill in.”
The scientists looked at 96 open-basin and closed-basin lakes and their watersheds, all thought to have formed between 3.5 billion and 4 billion years ago.
Using satellite images and topography, they measured lake and watershed areas, and lake volumes, and accounted for potential evaporation to figure out how much water was needed to fill the lakes.
By looking at ancient closed and open lakes, and the river valleys that fed them, they were able to determine a minimum and maximum precipitation.
In 13 cases, the authors discovered coupled basins — containing one closed and one open basin that were fed by the same river valleys — which offered key evidence of both maximum and minimum precipitation in one single event.
“Our study takes previously identified closed and open lake basins, but applies a clever new approach to constrain how much precipitation these lakes experienced,” said study co-author Dr. Tim Goudge, also from the Jackson School of Geosciences and the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Not only do these results help us to refine our understanding of the ancient Mars climate, but they also will be a great resource for putting results from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover into a more global context.”
A paper on the findings was published online in the journal Geology.
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Gaia Stucky de Quay et al. Precipitation and aridity constraints from paleolakes on early Mars. Geology, published online August 13, 2020; doi: 10.1130/G47886.1
A group of citizen scientists working with a NASA citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has discovered 95 new brown dwarfs in the sun’s nearby neighborhood.
Artist’s concept of one of the 95 new cool brown dwarfs in the neighborhood of our sun. A companion white dwarf star is in the distance. Brown dwarfs are sometimes said to be star-planet hybrids. They’re not massive enough to ignite thermonuclear fusion reactions in their interiors, and so shine as stars do. Yet they’re too massive to be considered planets.
Image via NOIRLab/ NSF/ AURA/ P. Marenfeld/ William Pendrill/ JPL.
Almost every week, astronomers announce new discoveries such as exoplanets found orbiting distant stars, asteroids whizzing past Earth, and faraway galaxies with their massive black holes blazing at the edge of the universe. On August 18, 2020, NASA announced yet another discovery – made by members of the public assisting with a citizen science project – in this case of another 95 new cosmic neighbors – brown dwarfs – many within just a few dozen light-years of our solar system.
The findings are currently pending publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
These citizen scientists helped to find the brown dwarfs through a NASA-funded project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Like other such projects, this one is a collaboration between scientists and volunteers. It relies on data – lots of data – from various sources, including NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite, from NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s ground-based NOIRLab program, which involves five major obervatories. Sifting through the mountains of data collected by all these instruments is a huge task. That’s why citizen scientists are so helpful, said Aaron Meisner of NOIRLab. He co-founded Backyard Worlds, and he’s lead author of the new study:
Vast modern datasets can unlock landmark discoveries, and it’s exciting that these could be spotted first by citizen scientists. These Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping our scientific understanding of our solar neighborhood.
Comparison of the typical masses of exoplanets, brown dwarfs and stars.
Jackie Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History in New York said:
This paper is evidence that the solar neighborhood is still uncharted territory and citizen scientists are excellent astronomical cartographers. Mapping the coldest brown dwarfs down to the lowest masses gives us key insights into the low-mass star-formation process while providing a target list for detailed studies of the atmospheres of Jupiter analogs.
Brown dwarfs are fascinating objects that are too small and not massive enough to be stars, but too large and too massive to be considered planets. Some brown dwarfs can have temperatures in the thousands of degrees, but that’s not enough to fully “ignite” and become stars. Others are much colder, and many of the newly discovered ones are in this category. Some are colder than the boiling point of water, while others are actually have temperatures close to that of Earth. There is also evidence that, just like gas giant and ice giant planets, brown dwarfs can have very stormy atmospheres. The brown dwarf Luhman 16A may look a lot like Jupiter.
Astronomer Aaron Meisner of NOIRLab. He is lead author on a citizen-science effort that led to the discovery of 95 new brown dwarf neighbors.
If these brown dwarfs are so relatively close to us, why weren’t they discovered until now?
The answer is that, since they’re relatively cool objects, they shine only faintly in visible light. They can also be seen in infrared light, but because of their cool temperatures, they’re faint in infrared as well.
These new brown dwarfs are a missing link in the types of brown dwarfs known to exist, these scientists said. By learning more about them, they said they can learn more about how these objects form, and how they relate to other stars and planets in our sun’s neighborhood.
Some brown dwarfs are cold enough to have water vapor clouds, similar to earthly clouds. There is evidence for this on the coldest known brown dwarf, WISE 0855, which was discovered in 2014 and is only about seven light-years away. With a temperature of minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 23 degrees Celsius, some scientists thought it might actually be a rogue planet, floating freely in space between stars. The new discoveries now help to put WISE 0855 in the context of other cool brown dwarfs. According to astrophysicist Marc Kuchner, principal investigator of Backyard Worlds: Planet 9:
Our new discoveries help connect the dots between 0855 and the other known brown dwarfs.
Artist’s concept of turbulent weather on a brown dwarf.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Western Ontario/ Stony Brook U.
And just how did the citizen scientists find the new brown dwarfs?
The volunteers – over 100,000 of them – were approached by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 to examine telescopic images consisting of trillions of pixels. Ultimately, 20 different citizen scientists from 10 countries became coauthors of the new study. They used sky maps produced from observations by WISE and NEOWISE and scoured additional archival datasets, such as those from the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and Víctor Blanco 4-m Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), both programs of NOIRLab. As one citizen scientist, Les Hamlet in Springfield, Missouri, said:
Being that this will be the first scientific paper that I’m a coauthor on, its publication will definitely be the highlight of working with Backyard Worlds so far. Also, being connected in some way with the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope through this paper is kind of special to me.
These new brown dwarfs are just the latest to be discovered; Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has previously found over 1,500 such cool worlds.
So … what’s next?
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will soon image the entire southern hemispheric sky over 10 years, which should be yield many more cool brown dwarfs, among other discoveries. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study some of these brown dwarfs more closely to find more clues as to how they form as well as other planet and atmospheres.
Brown dwarfs are enigmatic worlds, and scientists are now starting to learn how they came to be, in their cosmic place between planets and stars.
Artist’s concept of the brown dwarf Luhman 16A (not one of the newly-discovered brown dwarfs), which may have Jupi
ter-like bands. Image via Caltech/ R. Hurt (IPAC).
Bottom line:A group of citizen scientists working with Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has discovered 95 new brown dwarfs in the sun’s neighborhood.
According to a new study, citizen scientists have recently discovered nearly 100 brown dwarfs located fairly close to our sun. Several members of the public, which includes volunteers as well as professional scientists, were part of a citizen science project that was funded by NASA and called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9.
During the project, over 100,000 citizen scientists analyzed data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (or NEOWISE) satellite as well as other data that was gathered by WISE between 2010 and 2011 in addition to information collected from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab.
They were able to locate 95 brown dwarfs which are space objects that are too small to be stars but too big to be planets. And they are relatively close to our sun with some of them being just a few dozen light-years away.
Even though they are called brown dwarfs, they are actually orange/red or magenta in color. While some brown dwarfs can reach temperatures as hot as thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, they can also be cooler than the degree at which water boils, and some have temperatures pretty close to Earth which would allow them to have water clouds.
The coldest brown dwarf ever found is called WISE 0855 and it was discovered in 2014. It has temperatures of around minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) which is by far the coldest brown dwarf that has been detected. In fact, it is so cold that some experts questioned whether it was instead a rogue exoplanet.
It’s quite exciting to think that citizen scientists made such a significant discovery. “These Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping our scientific understanding of our solar neighborhood,” said Aaron Meisner, who is an assistant scientist at NSF’s NOIRLab and the lead author of the study.
Jackie Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and who is a co-author of the study, weighed in by stating, “This paper is evidence that the solar neighborhood is still uncharted territory and citizen scientists are excellent astronomical cartographers,” adding, “Mapping the coldest brown dwarfs down to the lowest masses gives us key insights into the low-mass star-formation process while providing a target list for detailed studies of the atmospheres of Jupiter analogs.”
In total, volunteers for Backyard Worlds have so far detected over 1,500 cold worlds pretty close to our sun and the newly discovered 95 brown dwarfs were the most ever found through a citizen science project. Many more are probably just waiting to be found and the James Webb Space Telescope will surely help with the findings when it is launched next year.
MUFON Canada UFO Primer: Interview with Victor Viggiani
MUFON Canada UFO Primer: Interview with Victor Viggiani
MufonCanada has launched a new Podcast feature on our YouTube channel. These will feature interviews with Ufologists from around the world, witness interviews from our cases files and other exciting news as we follow the US Navy Intelligence UAP Task Force. Listen now to the first of many to come.
Victor Viggiani is currently the News Director of ZlandCommunications an international news service. His study of anomalous aerial phenomenon, research and analysis of Extraterrestrial issues spans over 30 years. His experience involves UFO sightings report investigation, academic and radio journalism with a primary focus on UFO/ET government Disclosure. Victor has addressed the media and audiences in Sydney and Brisbane Australia, Washington D.C., at the Washington D.C. National Press Club, Rochester NY, CBC and CTV Toronto television news programs and at Convocation Hall University of Toronto. Victor is a co-host on the Richard Syrett Show on AM 740 Radio in Toronto.
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Unknown flashing object over Cleveland, Ohio 19-Aug-2020
Unknown flashing object over Cleveland, Ohio 19-Aug-2020
This bright UFO was seen and recorded in the sky above Cleveland, OH on August 19, 2020.
Witness report:
On 08/19/20 at approximately 10:00 hours I was assigned to assist with traffic in downtown Cleveland. There were 4 other parties assigned to the intersection of E.9th & Bolivar to repair telephone lines. During our time at the intersection I was discussing the buildings surrounding area. We began discussing the cable that was stabilizing a communication tower and the insulator in the middle which we thought was odd. In the video you can see the insulator, which can be mistaken for a hovering object. At 10:23 hours I noticed an object fly out from behind one of the buildings. The crew I was working with had also noticed it. I took out my phone and attempted to capture video of the object. In the video, we can all be heard acknowledging the object. The object appeared to have an erratic flight path. It flew to my left and flashed a few times and then moved to my right and flashed a few times then shot off into the sky. I believe I found one view of it. As it was flashing and moving so quickly it was almost impossible to capture.
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It was a strange interstellar comet, it was a stranger spaceship, it was an interstellar asteroid, it was something else, and the latest — it’s a frozen hydrogen-sicle. And now, the cigar-shaped unknown space object from another solar system is back to being a spaceship … or at least a piece of alien technology. That’s the latest from two leading astrophysicists who have been watching and commenting on ‘Oumuamua ever since it showed up unannounced in 2017 and has been inspiring debates, exploration suggestions and occasional concern ever since.
“The first interstellar object observed in our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), exhibited a number of peculiar properties, including extreme elongation and acceleration excess. Recently, Seligman & Laughlin proposed that the object was made out of molecular hydrogen (H2) ice. The question is whether H2 objects could survive their travel from the birth sites to the solar system.”
Like this, only hyrdrogen?
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, and Thiem Hoang, an astrophysicist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, sprang into action as soon as astrophysicists Darryl Seligman, University of Chicago, and Greg Laughlin, Yale University, released their research paper in May 2020 proposing that ‘Oumuamua was formed in a giant molecular cloud (GMC) and is composed of molecular hydrogen ice – a giant cigar-shaped interstellar hydrogen iceberg. Seligman and Laughlin tied their theory to the idea that outgassing or evaporating hydrogen ice wouldn’t be visible from Earth — explaining the mystery of how ‘Oumuamua could be a comet if it didn’t have a tail, especially when it accelerated out of the solar system.
“Assuming that H2 objects could somehow form in the densest regions of GMCs, we found that sublimation by collisional heating inside the GMC would destroy the objects before their escape into the ISM [interstellar medium]. We also studied various destruction mechanisms of H2 ice in the ISM. In particular, we found that H2 objects are heated by the average interstellar radiation, so that they cannot survive beyond a sublimation time of tsub ~ 10 Myr for R = 300 m (see Figure 1). Only H2 objects larger than 5 km could survive.”
“Not so fast!” said Loeb and Hoang. In their response, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they point out that the closest GMC is too far away for a hydrogen iceberg to survive the trip (due to the heat generated by cosmic collisions) and would probably not even survive an exit from a GNC. Loeb admits that, while this knocks ‘hydrogen iceberg’ off the “What’ is ‘Oumuamua?” list, we still don’t know for certain what it is. Fortunately, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO) is scheduled to become operational next year and he believes it will detect “one ‘Oumuamua-like object per month.” If they can’t figure out what it is with that kind of data, they need to turn in their astrophysicist club membership cards.
‘Oumuamua as alien technology disguised in a crust of space debris – proposed by Loeb in 2019 – was never disproved, just pushed down on the list of possibilities. With hydrogen iceberg joining the “Nope” list, it can move up again until the VRO collects more data or a human spaceship launched in time to catch ‘Oumuamua before it leaves the solar system.
Place your bets on your favorite now.
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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.
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