Has the mystery of 'Britain's Roswell' finally been solved? Rendlesham Forest UFO 'landing' was a prank SAS tricksters played on US Airmen, insiders claim

• Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, has intrigued UFO enthusiasts since 1980 
• Military personnel said they saw lights flying in the woods in December that year
• The group was largely convinced they had witnessed an alien spacecraft
• Yet it has now been claimed that the extraterrestrial sighting was a hoax

By JESSICA GREEN FOR MAILONLINE

Dubbed ‘Britain’s Roswell’, the Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, has intrigued UFO enthusiasts since taking place in December 1980.

On three separate nights just before the New Year, military personnel said they saw lights flying in the sky and descending into the woodland - the group was convinced they had seen an alien spacecraft. 

Yet it has now been claimed that the extraterrestrial sighting was a hoax, played on the US air force by the SAS in revenge for capturing a squad and subjecting them to a brutal interrogation.

Since the incident in 1980, Rendlesham Forest has become a site of endless speculation for UFO chasers 

The SAS were said to have regularly tested US security by probing the perimeters of RAF Woodbridge in the English county, which allegedly stored Nuclear warheads and was believed to be a key target for Soviet agents.

But when an SAS troop parachuted into the complex one night in August 1980 they were unaware the guards had upgraded their radar system.

Their black parachutes were immediately detected and the British were hauled off for questioning.

They claimed they were beaten up by their captors who refused to believe who they were and repeatedly referred to as ‘unidentified aliens’, before being released 18 hours later after the British authorities intervened.

On three separate nights just before the New Year, military personnel said they saw lights flying in the sky and descending into the woodland (pictured)

Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston sketched the craft he says he saw at the time of the incident

Seething from the interrogation, SAS soldiers were keen to take revenge.

British X-Files expert Dr David Clarke, who has been researching the story for three years, revealed: ‘After their release, the troopers made no complaint at their rough treatment but were determined to get their own back on the USAF for the beating that they had received.

‘In particular, their repeated characterisation as “aliens” sowed the seeds of a plan. They said: “They called us aliens. Right, we'll show them what aliens really look like.”’

As December approached, lights and coloured flares were rigged in Rendlesham Forest. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote-controlled kites to carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by radio-controls.

Taking place over three nights between 26 and 28 December in 1980, military personnel from nearby RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge witnessed strange lights in the woods and hovering above the airbases which were on high alert as the Cold War was at its peak. 

‘A great deal of nocturnal Christmas fun was had at the expense of the USAF - and the matter should have ended there,’ according to a letter written to Dr Clarke by an alleged SAS source.

‘Unfortunately, a senior US officer (Lt Col Halt) led the US contingent out into the forest on the second night and took along his tape recorder.

‘The hovering and whizzing lights were sufficiently impressive for him to send a report to the MoD.

‘Someone in London recalled the events of the previous August and questions were asked. A few red faces - but also some satisfaction and amusement - followed.

Military personnel from nearby RAF Bentwaters (pictured) and RAF Woodbridge witnessed strange lights in the woods and hovering above the airbases

‘The USAF was 'reassured' at a very senior level and no UK investigation was undertaken - for obvious reasons.’

Dr Clarke said he was first contacted three years ago by ‘Frank’ who claimed to be a SAS insider.

He had seen Dr Clarke talking about Rendlesham on a TV documentary and felt ‘it was about time that the truth was revealed about the incident’.

Dr Clarke, of the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University, said: ‘I investigated his incredible story by talking to trusted and open sources in the British military, including some high profile former SAS troopers.

‘What happened in the forest, according to Frank, would be bread and butter for special operation soldiers trained to deceive and misinform whilst remaining invisible.’

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30-09-2020 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

In May of this year I had a new book published by Lisa Hagan Books. Its title: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy. Here’s the publicity information for the book: “In the final days of December 1980, strange encounters and bizarre incidents occurred in the heart of Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. Based upon their personal encounters, many of the military personnel who were present at the time believed that something extraterrestrial came down in those dark woods. What if, however, there was another explanation for what happened four decades ago? What if that explanation, if revealed, proved to be even more controversial than the theory that aliens arrived from a faraway world? The ramifications for the field of Ufology would be immense. In his new, sensational book, Nick Redfern reveals that one of the most famous UFO cases of all time was really a series of top secret experiments using holograms, mind-control programs, deception, disinformation, conspiracies and cover-ups. The shocking truth of a forty-year-old mystery is now revealed.”

There’s a good reason why, today, I’m mentioning the book again. There is some fascinating information that I wasn’t aware of, but which certainly now adds to the “secret experiment” angle of the Rendlesham affair. In my book, I pointed out that the events in the forest occurred over the Christmas period – something that would have ensured most people would not have been out and about at that time. They would be celebrating at home. And that also included significant numbers of military personnel who – on leave for the holidays – worked at the two nearby military bases: Royal Air Force Bentwaters and Royal Air Force Woodbridge. In other words, by running the clandestine program over the Christmas nights, few people would know what happened. One of the other issues I address in my book is the matter of how, in the latter part of 1964, U.K. military personnel were dosed with LSD in a couple of English woods – and without their knowledge of what was going down. It was an experiment coordinated by staff from Porton Down, Wiltshire – a facility that has a long, secret and controversial history of researching the effects of hallucinogens on people. That brings us to the latest bit of the story.

I should stress that it isn’t exactly a new revelation. In fact, it was noted back in the 1960s; however, as a result of what I learned while doing the research for my book, it now places this particular piece of information in a new, eye-opening light. The story can be found in the pages of Arthur Shuttlewood’s 1967 book, The Warminster Mystery: Astounding UFO Sightings. On the book’s jacket, we’re told: “Two years ago the small Wiltshire town of Warminster was suddenly gripped by a series of Flying Saucer sightings, which have persisted right up to the present day. No town in England, or for that matter in the world, has registered so many authentic reports of UFOs.” The publisher continues: “The Warminster Mystery is a dramatic unfolding of these sightings, with eye-witness accounts of strange ‘things’ seen by day and night; of bewildering mushrooms of smoke, crescents of fire, weird, disturbing sounds, and even accounts of conversations with those from Outer Space.”

Now, to the crux of it all. Stationed at a military facility called Knook Camp at Heytesbury (which is only four miles from the town of Warminster) was the 1st Welch Regiment. On Christmas Day, that same regiment found themselves in a very strange situation. As Arthur Shuttlewood wrote: “Over thirty soldiers awoke to a thunderous crescendo at the camp early on Christmas Day, 1964 [when it was still dark, in other words]. A sergeant told me ‘it was as if a huge chimney stack from the main block was ripped from the rooftop, then scattered in solid chunks of masonry across the whole camp area.'” Shuttlewood added: “The guard was alerted, standing by for action, but none developed. Surprised, the soldiers were unable to explain the blasting sounds, beyond asserting that they were decidedly not caused by conventional type aircraft. This aerial thunderclap was the forerunner of an astonishing series of incidents like that which occurred on Christmas Day, 1964.”

So, on Christmas Day, in both 1964 and 1980 – and when most Brits would have been at home celebrating Christmas – military personnel in the U.K. were exposed to strange and unexplained phenomena that was perceived as being UFO-based in nature. And, the LSD experiments run by Porton Down’s scientists took place in the final days of 1964. Not only that: Porton Down is located only twenty-four miles from Warminster. And, as my book on Rendlesham demonstrates, there was a Porton Down presence in Rendlesham Forest the night before the incidents began. There are, without doubt, significant parallels and threads to be unraveled here. For me, this is all beyond coincidence. We’re seeing two different experiments – one in the 1960s and the other in December 1980 – but with identical goals: to fabricate UFO events (both on just about the quietest day of the year in the U.K.) and to see how military personnel responded to amazing and bizarre phenomena (Many thanks to Ray Cox for bring this development to my attention).

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30-09-2020 om 18:18 geschreven door peter  

In 1936, workers at archaeological excavations of monuments belonging to the Parthian civilization (248-226 BC) in the village of Khujut Rabu, near Baghdad, Iraq, stumbled across something unusual down in the ground. They found an ancient, weathered terracotta pot or jar, about 6 inches high, which contained a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, within which sat a rod of iron, and the whole of it was topped with plugs or stoppers of bitumen. The innards of the jar had been corroded with perhaps some sort of acidic juice or vinegar, and the whole of it was very odd and out of place amongst the other artifacts of the era that were being dug up. Others were found, twelve in all, and no one could figure out what the anomalous objects were supposed to be or what they were used for. At the time, the strange jars and the inexplicable contents were put on display in the National Museum of Iraq and sort of forgotten about. Little did anyone know that these unassuming little pots would turn out to be a persistent historical mystery.

It would not be until 1938 that anyone would take a really good look at the artifacts, when German archaeologist Wilhelm König was at the museum and saw one sitting there amongst other objects from the site, including some other similar jars. The curious objects drew his attention and he had them studied, deducing that they were from the 3rd century BC and were a form of crude galvanic cells, or basically electric batteries. He deduced that the iron and the copper were mounted in such a way as to insulate them with the bitumen, or asphalt, after which an electrolyte such as vinegar or some other acidic substance had been poured in to produce a voltage difference generated by the metals. He speculated would have been used for electroplating layers of precious metals such as gold onto objects.

Whatever the “batteries” were for, if that is what they were this would all be very interesting indeed, because it would usurp the generally held view that the battery was invented in 1800 by the Count Alassandro Volta, whose name is indeed where we get the word “volt.” If these were indeed batteries, then it would mean that human beings had created this technology thousands of years earlier than previously thought. König would go on to write a paper on this hypothesis in 1940, after which World War II came and the “Baghdad Battery” was forgotten once more. After the war, a Willard F. M. Gray, of the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, did his own experiment with the battery and found that it could produce up to two volts of electricity, or about a fortieth of the power of a triple-A battery and other experiments produced similar results, further strengthening König’s case. In 1980, German scientist Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht found that the voltage could be increased if several of the batteries were linked together, and demonstrated that the devices could produce enough electricity to gold plate a small statue when a gold cyanide solution was used. In more modern times, in 2005 the Discovery Channel TV show Mythbusters it was shown that ten replicas of the Baghdad Battery linked together could produce five volts of power. The problem with the experiments linking the jars together is that there is no evidence that the original jars ever had any sort of wires or electrical connections for links between them.

Although the idea that the Baghdad Batteries were some sort of batteries was and still is widely accepted by many, it is unknown for what purpose such a device would have been used, as there are no artifacts from the time of anything that would have required such a power source, and while many experiments work on the assumption that the power was used for electroplating, there is no evidence of gold plated items produced in such a way from the era these batteries supposedly belong to. Besides electroplating, it has been speculated that the devices were used for electrotherapy of some kind, for some theatrical or ritual purpose, or even that these were merely vessels for holding papyrus scrolls. Other more fringe ideas are that these were from aliens, or that they were made to power some as yet unknown and mysterious ancient technological device. No one really knows, and sadly we probably never will, as the original batteries vanished during the 2003 Iraq invasion, when the National Museum was looted and thousands of exhibitions were stolen or destroyed.

We are left to wonder what these strange objects were. Who made them and for what purpose? Why have there been no others found? Were they used for powering something, medicinal purposes, or were they simply some bored person’s little science project? Among the many instances of ancient technology that have been found over the years, the Baghdad Batteries have gone on to be continually discussed and talked about, as well as unsolved.

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30-09-2020 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

Based on new research, scientists have discovered three salty lakes below Mars’ south pole and there could be several others.

Back in 2018, scientists found evidence of a subsurface lake located about a mile underneath the ice at the south pole. In order to study that lake, experts analyzed data gathered from the MARSIS radar sounder instrument that’s located on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. The equipment scanned an area 155 miles by 185 miles at the location where the subsurface lake is situated.

The radar data provided more proof of the lake and revealed that it measures approximately 12 miles by 18 miles although they’re still uncertain as to how deep it is. And that’s not all; they found three additional lakes about 6 miles by 6 miles in size. These three lakes are separated from the larger main lake by strips of dry rocks.

According to the scientists, these lakes are extremely salty which is the reason why they’re still in liquid form and not frozen by the cold temperatures from the glaciers. This liquid water isn’t believed to be from melting glaciers as it was previously suggested that geothermal activity may have caused subsurface lakes. However, in order to form numerous underground lakes, it would have required much larger geothermal activity which “I don’t think it is physically possible, given what we know,” said Elena Pettinelli who is a geophysicist at Roma Tre University in Rome and a co-author of the study.

This leads researchers to believe that a bigger body of water was present on the surface of the planet millions or billions of years ago. Pettinelli went on to say, “This is a complex system of water, not just a single pond,” adding, “It suggests that the conditions that created these lakes might have been more spread across the region, that there might be other systems like this around.”

If the lakes “are remnants of water that was once on the surface, it certainly may have been a good habitat to harbor life, extinct or living,” she explained. But in order to know for sure, scientists would need to drill approximately 0.9 miles into the ice, which as of right now, they don’t have the equipment on Mars to conduct such an experiment. Hopefully in the near future we’ll be able to find out exactly what lurks beneath the ice and in the salty lakes of the Red Planet.

Dark narrow streaks called recurring slope lineae emanating out of the walls of Garni crater on Mars. The dark streaks here are up to few hundred meters in length. They are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (RED) image (ESP_031059_1685) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Full image and caption

Their study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy and can be read in full here.

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30-09-2020 om 17:51 geschreven door peter  

Straling op maan blijkt 200 keer hoger dan op aarde: “Ruimtebasis zou beter onder grond worden gebouwd” - HLN.be

Artemis heet het programma waarmee de NASA tegen 2024 opnieuw astronauten op de maan wil laten landen en de weg wil banen voor een permanente basis tegen de jaren 2030. Maar het moet nog enkele hordes nemen eer het zo ver is.

Lees ook

Tom Cruise stijgt in oktober 2021 op voor eerste filmopnames ooit in de ruimte: “Maar eerst een half jaar opleiding”

Maanlander

Een van die hordes heeft te maken met de kosmische straling waaraan de astronauten op de maan blootgesteld zullen worden. Dat staat te lezen in een nieuwe studie die vrijdag gepubliceerd werd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift ScienceAdvances.


In die studie wordt verslag uitgebracht van een van de bevindingen van de onbemande Chinese maanlander Chang’e 4, die begin vorig jaar de achterkant van de maan bereikte. De lander slaagde er onder meer in om voor de allereerste keer de straling op de maan in kaart te brengen. De dagelijkse dosis die astronauten te verduren zouden krijgen, blijkt maar liefst 200 keer hoger te zijn dan op de Aarde en drie keer hoger dan wat ze in het internationaal ruimtestation (ISS) ervaren.

Langdurige blootstelling aan een grote dosis kosmische straling – bijvoorbeeld als de astronauten een jaar of twee op de maan zouden kamperen voor onderzoek – kan echter een schadelijk effect hebben op de gezondheid. “Je kan er acute klachten van krijgen, maar ook cataract, kanker en aandoeningen die ons centrale zenuwstelsel of onze organen doen aftakelen”, staat er te lezen.

76 centimeter diep

Wie een maanbasis wil bouwen, houdt daar dan ook best rekening mee volgens de experts achter de studie. Zo zou een nederzetting op het maanoppervlak een minder goed idee zijn. Het zou beter zijn om de basis ónder de grond te maken. Een diepte van 76 centimeter is ideaal, aldus Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, een van de auteurs van het onderzoek in een persbericht.

Voor de volledigheid: de astronauten van de Apollo-missies in de jaren 60 en 70 hadden ook instrumenten bij zich die de straling moesten meten. Maar die konden alleen tonen hoeveel straling de astronauten op hun vollédige reis te verduren hadden gekregen, niet alleen op de maan.

Op de Aarde hebben we overigens weinig last van straling door de dikke atmosfeer en het magnetisch veld van onze planeet.

• Lees ook: Ruimtestation ISS lekt ongebruikelijk veel lucht

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30-09-2020 om 17:19 geschreven door peter  

Ondergrondse meren ontdekt op Mars - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

De meren bevinden zich onder de zuidpool van Mars. Ze zijn ontdekt met de satelliet Mars Express van de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA. Die sonde ontdekte in 2018 ook al een ondergronds meer op Mars, op een diepte van 1,5 kilometer. De grootste plas heeft een omvang van 20 bij 30 kilometer. Er liggen een paar kleinere meren omheen.

Mars had vele miljoenen jaren geleden waarschijnlijk stromend water op het oppervlak, maar dat is verdwenen. Ondergronds bevindt zich nog wel water. Dat is mogelijk miljarden jaren oud. De meren zijn moeilijk te bereiken, maar zijn wetenschappelijk interessant omdat er leven zou kunnen voorkomen.

Op de aarde zijn vergelijkbare meren. Op vier kilometer onder de Zuidpool bevindt zich bijvoorbeeld het Vostok-meer. Dat is 250 bij 50 kilometer groot en ruim 400 meter diep.

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30-09-2020 om 17:01 geschreven door peter  

Beautiful Glowing UFO Seen During Day At Outer London, Sept 29, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 29, 2020

Location of sighting: Outer London, England

 

This is a tear drop shaped UFO hiding in the clouds above outer London this week. Also misidentified as a sun dog by some and accepted as a natural event. This is anything but natural. This is a cloaked UFO and when the sun, UFO and eyewitness form a perfect triangle, equal on all sides...then the UFO becomes visible. One day, science will catch up with reality, but right now...a lot of scientific facts are not only unproven, but absolutely false. This glowing object is a UFO. One day, science will change their statements about it...as science often does. 

 

Remember how science said UFOs didn't exist, and then the US pentagon releases videos of several actual UFOs? Science has some catching up to do. 

Scott C. Waring 

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30-09-2020 om 15:46 geschreven door peter  

White Cross UFO Seen Over France In Sept 26, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 26, 2020
Location of sighting: Aix Les Bain, France

If you watch the video carefully you will notice that at 1:20 into the video the UFO becomes mostly focused. The UFO is strange shaped, like a large white cross, but not a cross. UFOs come in all shapes, sizes, colors so I have to keep an open mind here. The object is rotating slowly from right to left as it moves across the hillside. This UFO is flying very low and seems to not care that its totally visible to the public below. The movement, speed and silence all point to it being a UFO. 
Scott C. Waring 

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30-09-2020 om 15:27 geschreven door peter  

UFO Reacts To Laser Over Garden Grove, California Sept 27, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 27, 2020
Location of sighting: Garden Grove, California, USA

Watch this amazing video as a person is using a green laser to tag UFOs that pass overhead. I have done this myself and when I did...the UFO flashed back at me, so this does work. Here the UFOs actually try to dodge the laser beam and change directions. The objects clearly show intelligence. Also having a green laser helps in UFOs finding you at night in case you try to meditate an call them mentally to you. It works sometimes, but requires absolute focus. 
Scott C. Waring 

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30-09-2020 om 15:20 geschreven door peter  

Five UFOs Hover Over Japanese Flag At Ball Park, Sept 29, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighing: Sept 29, 2020
Location of sighting: Yokohama stadium, Japan
News source: 

• https://note.com/kimiko12/n/n35ce168ca8f4
  
  

Five glowing orbs were seen over a stadium in Japan this week. The stadium is 29km from Tokyo. The UFOs are hovering over the Japanese flag on top of the stadium. The five glowing orbs are working in unison, but I believe they are five different craft. Maybe aliens are there to observe how Japanese are dealing with Covid19 and the stress of new rules. How humanity relaxes (at the ball park) is a great way to see how humans deal with the new and complex stresses of life. Its not clear if the eyewitness saw it or realized it later after seeing the photos, but the photos are amazing evidence that aliens are observing Japanese. 
Scott C. Waring 

Eyewitness states:

Again, UFO 🛸 appears on the stadium (on the flag 🚩) Same as mysterious phenomenon III? Maybe it's resident? I wonder if I'm enjoying baseball 🤗

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30-09-2020 om 14:39 geschreven door peter  

See What Happens If Nazca Lines Are To Be Extended Around The Planet

Nazca Lines is a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched in desert sands in southern Peru. There are around 300 different figures, including plants and animals, covering an area of nearly 1,000 square kilometers. The figures are composed of over 10,000 lines and some of which measure 30 meters wide and stretch over 9 kilometers. They are most visible from nearby hilltops or from the air. If extended until they would all intertwine, Nazca Lines would all meet up at the Angkor Wat.

The Angkor Wat is a megalithic site filled to the brim with tons of stone blocks. It stretches out for thousands of miles.

Anthony Horowitz theorized this many times in the past. He talked about it quite a lot in his series of books, known as the Power of the Five.

He states in these books that the Nazca Lines all unite for them to summon up the Old Ones. Watch the video for more interesting information and let us know what you think of this theory.

Check out this amazing book about the top 10 UFO cases in the history.

Get your’s on Amazon: Top 10 UFO Sightings: Best Cases: Aliens are visiting us

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30-09-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Water-vapor geysers erupt from cracks at the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Scientists using Cassini data now have evidence for fresh ice at the moon’s north pole, too. Could it be more geysers for this fascinating ice moon?

Infrared images of Saturn’s moon Enceladus as seen by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn, weaving among its moons, from 2004 to 2017. A new analysis of Cassini date shows that Enceladus’ north pole might be resurfaced by fresh ice deposits. In this image, the famous tiger stripes fissures – from which water erupts in strange alien geysers – can be seen at the moon’s south pole.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ LPG/ CNRS/ University of Nantes/ Space Science Institute.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus is famous for the huge water-vapor geysers at its south pole, which are thought to originate from a global ocean deep beneath the moon’s outer ice crust. At this moon’s south pole, water is seen to comes up to the surface through giant cracks in the ice called tiger stripes. As the water vapor re-freezes in Enceladus’ extremely tenuous atmosphere, it forms ice particles that fall back down and coat the moon’s south polar region with fresh ice. Until now, this kind of activity was seen only at the moon’s south pole. Now that has changed.

Now, scientists studying new global mosaic infrared images of Enceladus, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, have announced that they’ve found the first evidence that the moon’s north pole has also been painted with a fresh coat of ice fairly recently, geologically-speaking.

Weak geysers at this pole could be the reason. Or the fresh ice might be due to water forced up from the subsurface ocean through cracks in the moon’s icy crust.

The new peer-reviewed study was published in the October 2020 issue of Icarus.

The famous geysers of water vapor at Enceladus’ south pole erupt through huge cracks in the icy surface. Now scientists have evidence that the moon’s north polar region is also geologically active, although on a smaller scale. The plumes contain water vapor, ice particles, salts, methane, silica, molecular hydrogen and a variety of simple and complex organic molecules.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Space Science Institute.

The new infrared images, from Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), are the most detailed ever made of Enceladus’ surface from data sent back by the Cassini mission, which ended in September 2017. The researchers found that, surprisingly, the moon’s north polar region also showed evidence of resurfacing by ice, even though it lacks any known geysers or tiger stripe-like fissures. This may be caused by as-yet unseen geysers or a more gradual movement of ice through fractures in the crust from the subsurface ocean to the surface. Gabriel Tobie, VIMS scientist with the University of Nantes in France and co-author of the new paper, said in a statement:

The infrared shows us that the surface of the south pole is young, which is not a surprise because we knew about the jets that blast icy material there.

Now, thanks to these infrared eyes, you can go back in time and say that one large region in the northern hemisphere appears also young and was probably active not that long ago, in geologic timelines.

VIMS collected light reflected off Saturn, its rings and its ten largest icy moons. This was both visible light that can be seen by human eyes as well as infrared light, which tells scientists more about the makeup of the material reflecting it.

Enceladus’ geysers originate from the subsurface ocean, venting through cracks in the icy surface at the south pole. They coat the surface with fresh layers of ice. Are there as-yet unseen plumes at the moon’s north pole as well?

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI.

A closer visible light image of Enceladus’ north pole, taken by Cassini on November 27, 2016. The terrain is much more cratered than in the south, but the infrared images in the new study – and the cracks in the surface seen here – show that there has been at least some geological activity in the region.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Enceladus’ geysers were first spotted by Cassini back in 2005, and ever since then the moon has fascinated scientists and the public alike as to its potentially for being a habitable world. This was especially true after Cassini later confirmed that the water was originating from a global salty ocean beneath the icy surface, similar to Europa.

Additional studies have shown that the ocean is similar to Earth’s oceans in terms of salinity, and there is even evidence for active geothermal vents on the ocean floor. On Earth, such vents – like “black smokers” – are oases for a diverse population of lifeforms in the otherwise very dark and cold ocean depths.

Last January, scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced that they had developed a new geochemical model of Enceladus that showed the interior of the small moon is more complex than previously thought, including carbon dioxide being controlled by chemical reactions on the seafloor of the ocean. Those findings open up intriguing new possibilities for life in Enceladus’ subsurface watery abyss.

Lead author Christopher Glein, of SwRI, said in a statement:

By understanding the composition of the plume, we can learn about what the ocean is like, how it got to be this way and whether it provides environments where life as we know it could survive. We came up with a new technique for analyzing the plume composition to estimate the concentration of dissolved CO2 in the ocean. This enabled modeling to probe deeper interior processes.

Gabriel Tobie, VIMS scientist at the University of Nantes and co-author of the new study.

Image via LPG.

During its mission, Cassini flew through through the water vapor plumes several times, analyzing what is in them. The spacecraft found water vapor, ice particles, salts, methane, silica (SiO2), molecular hydrogen (H2) and a variety of simple and complex organic molecules. Since this is basically seawater being spewn out into space, this provides important clues as to what conditions are like in the ocean. So far, all signs point to an ocean that is quite habitable by earthly standards. This doesn’t prove there is life there yet, but the evidence indicates there well could be.

The infrared images from Cassini are providing new clues about how geologically active Enceladus is, not only at its south pole with the dramatic watery plumes, but elsewhere on the this little icy world as well.

• Bottom line: A new study of infrared images of Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows that the moon’s north pole is geologically active. It might have weak geysers, or water being forced up from the moon’s subsurface ocean through cracks in its icy crust.
• Source: Photometrically-corrected global infrared mosaics of Enceladus: New implications for its spectral diversity and geological activity
• Via Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

The Vinland Map: A Most Non-European Artifact

The Vinland Map carries with it the air of mystery and, some would say, the stench of deception. In the vaults of Yale University, and insured for $25 Million, it is either a colossal fraud or an artifact of unparalleled value. The map appeared on the scene in 1957 when a couple of shady characters tried to sell it to the British Museum. Experts determined that the ink used was not typical iron gall ink, the map was declared a fake, and the museum declined the offer.

If authentic, the map is considered priceless, as it would be the first map that has unique information about North America . The major problem associated with the map is that there is no acknowledgement – or maybe, no knowledge - that the Vinland associated with the map was a real place, with a functioning society, on Newfoundland Island.

Aerial panoramic view of L’Anse aux Meadows, an archaeological site located on northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland. Evidence of a Norse presence was discovered there in the 1960s, the only one of its kind in North America.

( edb3_16 / Adobe Stock)

Defying Convention: Seeing the Vinland Map from a New Angle

Nobody seems to know the origin of the Vinland Map, except there is near unanimity that it was made in Germany. The argument presented in this article defies the conventional paradigm that the Vinland Map is a European artifact, arguing that the Vinland Map is the genuine article and that it was not made in Europe at all, but created in Vinland around 1420.

As will be shown, the Vinland Map is not a European artifact primarily because of the following three factors. First of all, the parchment on which the map is drawn is crude, so crude that it would be an embarrassment to European parchment makers of the 1400s. Let’s not forget that European parchment was an enterprise characterized by high skill and impeccable products. Secondly, virtually all of Europe used iron gall ink with a vegetable-based (gum) binder. In contrast, when preparing the Vinland map a soot-based ink was utilized that had an animal-based glue binder. Finally, the Vinland Map has an inscription that tells where it was manufactured, namely in Vinland.

inland Map on display at Mystic Seaport, May 2018.

( CC BY-SA 4.0 )

There are several controversial issues related to the Vinland map. The first is whether a country called Vinland existed as of 1420, the year that the map was drawn. Recent research on Newfoundland island indicates that not only did Vinland exist, but that the physical remains are still visible. Moreover, descendants of that Vinland are still very much with us. Not only did Vinland the city exist, but a structure that is being tentatively called Vinland Cathedral, a basilica-type stone structure, is still intact in the wilderness of Newfoundland Island.

As has been established, the Chinese arrived on Newfoundland Island around early autumn, 1417. Along with the Norse, whom the Chinese rescued from Greenland in 1418, a multi-religious medieval civilization that included elements of both cultures was founded. The Norse called it Vinland. There are clear references in various histories to indicate that the Vatican not only knew about it, but was also receiving tributes from Vinland from as early as the 1400s.

Model of Viking settlement at the L’Anse aux Meadows museum in Newfoundland.

(Torbenbrinker / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Analysis of the Vinland Map

Experts have established that a communications channel existed between Vinland and Rome. For this to occur, a map would have been needed to indicate to the officials at Rome the approximate location of the new Vinland spiritual vineyard (Vinland was known for its wild grapes which led to its name which translates as “land of wine”). A rough map would show Rome the approximate position and major characteristics of the new land of the Norse. The crude vellum of the map indicates a simple matter of expediency. Someone needed to make a map that was never meant to be a cartographic masterpiece, a map simply to show where Vinland was, and a piece of parchment not yet fully prepared would be quite adequate for the task.

The fact that the Vinland itself (a.k.a. Newfoundland Island) is drawn in such an unusual configuration simply reflects the level of understanding of the religious about the piece of geography on which they found themselves. They drew the world as they understood it at the time. They understood Europe fairly well, Greenland they comprehended exceptionally well, and the island on which they now found themselves they knew hardly at all. They simply didn't know the dimensions nor the shape of the island; they had not been on Islandia Vinlandia (Vinland Island) long enough, barely two years in fact. One of the rivers is clearly the Exploits River, because it leads to a large lake known today as Red Indian Lake.

Left;Focus on Vinland on the Vinland map. ( Public domain ) Right; Focus on Vinland on a modern map

( CC BY-SA 2.5 )

This lack of knowledge simply means that the map was drawn soon after the Greenlanders arrived on Newfoundland Island and before they knew a great deal about the new land where they were now living. Some of them were probably still trying to separate the elements of the old Norse myth of Vinland the Good from the reality of the environment in which they found themselves. They may have utilized an existing map to draw the Europe portion. Regrettably, we do not have the documentation that accompanied the map. It was likely left in the Vatican archives when the so-called Vinland Map was stolen.

Refuting the Naysayers: Finding Truth in the Vinland Map

There are several other issues that seems to disturb the equanimity of the experts. One of these is the perceived inconsistency in some of the letters of the Latin script on the map. Several experts claim that the utilization of certain vowels, such as the old Latin character ‘æ’ rather than ‘e’, is indicative of the writer being Italian.

Among the priests, monks and nuns at Vinland, there were, undoubtedly, people from most countries of Europe. People got around, even then, and the city of Bremen, the “Rome of the North,” regularly supplied priests and other religious to the far north west missions. Kirsten A. Seaver determined that the lettering on the map was made by a German hand. This deduction about a “German hand” may be close to correct and an astute observation, but that particular German hand was not writing in Germany, but in Vinland.

Some experts dispute the authenticity of the Vinland Map because it shows Greenland as an Island. However, the general understanding of the time, at least in Greenland, was that Greenland was an island and had been proven so by some Norse voyagers who managed to circumnavigate the island during a warming period. Moreover, recent research indicates that Greenland was sufficiently warm for the Norse to grow Barley around that earlier time. On the Vinland Map, Greenland is drawn almost perfectly accurate, another indicator that the people who drew the Vinland Map were the Greenland Norse, who were new to Vinland.

Leiv Erikson discovering America.

( Public domain )

Finding Meaning in the Vinland Map Inscription

Morrison notes that the script on the Vinland Map “suggests that there had been somewhere on the North American seaboard a Christian community to which the bishop [Eric Gnupson] felt he should minister, and, hence, he made a voyage to Vinland and back.” The script says:

“Eric Bishop of Greenland and adjacent regions and papal legate, arrived on this truly spacious and opulent land, in the last year of our most blessed Pope Paschal, remained there a long time both summer and winter and afterwards returned northeasterly toward Greenland and proceeded thence in humble obedience to superior will .” (Morrison, 1971)

That is, indeed, a strange inscription if the Vinland Map was prepared in Europe, the inherent contradiction of which the esteemed experts do not bother to try to explain. The inscription, apparently, says, “... arrived on this truly spacious and opulent land.” If “this” is an accurate translation, then one might conclude that the map was made at the location that the map purports to show, wherever that is. In any case it would be difficult to confuse the Latin words huius (this) with est (that). Besides, who except a priest from the Greenland Norse religious community, now having migrated with his flock to Vinland, could have had that information?

The voyages of the Norse peoples to Vinland were recorded in oral tradition. These were finally written down centuries later, in the Saga of Eric the Red (seen in the image above) and the Saga of the Greenlanders.

( Public domain )

Did Chinese Explorers Reach Newfoundland?

As has been detailed, a Chinese fleet on a mapping expedition, arrived at Newfoundland Island in 1417. The island was at that time empty of people. The fleet continued north, mapped Hudson Bay, and proceeded south along the western coast of Greenland. Finding the Greenland Norse on the verge of starvation, the Chinese rescued them all and took them to Newfoundland Island, the mythical Vinland the Good of the Greenland Norse people. The Norse, all of whom were Christians, delighted to find themselves in the land of milk and honey, began to send tributes of thankfulness to God, personified in the guise of the Holy See.

Many experts, consistent with ignorance of the existence of Vinland circa 1418, assume that the ink is the typical iron gall ink that was utilized in medieval Europe. However, Skelton's scientific colleagues at the British Museum made a short preliminary examination in 1967 and found that “despite its appearance to the naked eye, the ink was certainly not conventional iron-gall ink… and indeed was unlike any recipe they had ever seen.” They spent several months after the initial testing trying to find similar inks as far afield as Iceland.

Indeed, if the map were drawn on Vinland, modern-day Newfoundland Island, as herein proposed, the ink could not be of iron gall composition because there were no oak trees on Newfoundland Island at the time, the “gall” of the typical medieval European iron gall ink coming from oak galls. Assuming that the Chinese of Vinland, experts from ancient times in the preparation of ink, had a hand in the ink utilized in the preparation of the map, that ink would have been prepared from the soot of pine tree roots and glue from animal sources.

Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada.

( CC BY 2.0 )

The Answers Lie in the Detail

Interestingly, some scientists identified the ink's binder as gelatin, probably made from animal skin. This would be consistent with the ink being made in China or being manufactured in Vinland under the supervision of the Chinese immigrants. Besides, iron gall ink as typically formulated in medieval Europe had a gum binder, not a gelatin binder which was typical of Chinese ink at the time.

The gall in all of this, to use the pun, is that the element anatase has been found in identifiable concentrations in the ink of the map. According to the scientists, the anatase particles are unique, having been synthesized only in 1917, and thus concluding it “impossible to have been prepared in 1440, 300 years before titanium was discovered and, … manufactured only with great effort and expense.” The anatase particles were not just sticking to the surface but were found to be a constituent aspect of the ink itself. Other researchers determined that the black pigment in the ink consisted essentially of soot-type carbon. They declared that the presence of a yellow line containing anatase, closely associated with a stable carbon ink, indicates that the Vinland Map is a modern forgery. The suggestion that the anatase is environmental pollution has been rejected.

Let's examine the assumptions. The first is that the map is determined to be a forgery because the ink is different from that which was expected. If someone were to construct a forgery, one would think that he or she would attempt to ensure that the ink be as close to the kind utilized during the era the map was purportedly created. If the ink is different, and easily determined to be so, surely it is not a forgery but a map that was created elsewhere, where the standard ink was different.

Looking for Answers Beyond Europe

However, the prevailing paradigm was – and still is - that the map simply had to be of European origin. Nobody, until now, has suggested that if the map is so different to those being made in Europe, down to the inferior parchment, then it must have been created elsewhere.

According to some investigators, because titanium was not recognized or identified by Western science until later, then it could not be utilized in any form, anywhere, before that time. That is patent nonsense. Regardless whether it was identified or recognized as such, titanium or its oxidized form TiO2 (anatase), could have been utilized for thousands of years (and likely was, given the Chinese record of natural medicines) simply because it was a constituent element in various natural products. The Chinese utilized a number of natural products having antibacterial, anti-microbial, and antiviral characteristics even if they were not able to synthesize the active ingredients.

Much is made about the 0.3 micrometer crystalized form of anatase that was synthesized around 1917 and appears to be in the ink of the map. It needs to be noted that plants take up various elements from the soil in elemental or, maybe rarely, molecular form. The crystallization process, and the resultant crystalline size and form, would depend on numerous unique characteristics of plants. Moreover, titanium is found in almost all living things, as well as bodies of water, rocks, and soils. For example, plants generally contain about 1 part per million (ppm) of titanium, food plants have about 2 ppm, and horsetail and nettle contain up to 80 ppm. 

• Can Oceanic Archaeologist Finally Zero in on Elusive Lost Viking Colony?
• Remote Sensing Satellite Uncovers Astonishing New Evidence of Viking Presence in Newfoundland, Canada
• The Beothuck Key: Finding a Lost Chinese-Norse Civilization in Canada

It is to be noted that titanium will oxidize immediately upon exposure to air. Whatever might have been in the Chinese inksticks, this article proposes that they contained titanium, would naturally default to anatase after some period of time after the ink was committed to the parchment. The Chinese may have added titanium or anatase (titania) to the ink base via extracts from plants known to have the needed antibacterial properties. The cost or difficulty of preparing modern anatase, factors that have been touted as somehow significant to the issue, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the science of the issue at hand.

But, there is still an elephantine question that remains unanswered. If someone wanted to perpetuate a fraud, why go through the trouble of creating a completely new ink, of which no more than a gram or so would be utilized? If someone wanted to commit a fraud, wouldn’t they have been careful to use an ink that was typical of medieval European inks or, at least, an ink that had an iron gall base, which, by the way, are readily available in Europe. To create this particular soot-based ink, one would have had to make pine-root charcoal, and then boil down cow skin and hoofs in order to make the glue as a binding agent. The suggestion stretches one's credulity to the breaking point! Because the ink is clearly not European in constitution, one can suspect that neither is it European in origin. The fact that the ink is typically Chinese, and not at all European, despite the unresolved anatase issue, provides an even stronger argument that the map was created in Vinland.

The Vinland Map , subject of much controversy, and the Achilles heel for many fragile academic egos, is without a doubt an enigma. However, virtually nothing about this map is suggestive of European origin. All of the contextual information, much of it still surprisingly unknown to contemporary scholars, points steadfastly to a North American origin and, specifically, an origin in an ancient Nation of Vinland (circa 1418 – 1700).

• Top image: Whether the Vinland Map is a colossal fraud or an incredibly valuable artifact is still unclear. Said to be a 15 ^th century map, it is the first known map of the North American coastline. Source: Public domain

By Ronald Ryan, DA., PhD., Rev.

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{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

30-09-2020 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

Study Reveals Sapiens Copulated the Y Out of Neanderthals

Early human interbreeding  with our “cousins” the  Denisovans and Neanderthals is an established fact but newly sequenced Neanderthal Y-chromosomes tell scientists that modern humans are the product of a complex history of interspecies sex. Neanderthals had lived in  Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, when our modern human ancestors left  Africa in the most recent wave some 60,000–70,000 years ago. When the two groups met in Eurasia around 45,000-years-ago they mated and a whole new kind of human was formed. Recent research confirms early human interbreeding but also provides evidence that makes our earliest encounters with both Neanderthals and Denisovans a much more complicated relationship.

According to the 2010 publication of the Neanderthal  draft genome  sequence, a comparison of the Neanderthal draft  genome with modern human sequences revealed that about “2 percent of the DNA in the genomes of modern-day people with Eurasian ancestry, is Neanderthal in origin,” most notably expressed in the skin, hair and diseases of modern people. While it is known that Neanderthals left their genetic mark in the DNA of modern humans, less was known about the reverse flow of  Homo sapiens’  DNA into Neanderthals when the two species met in Eurasia around 45,000 years ago.

However, a new study on early human interbreeding has shown that those Neanderthals already had  Homo sapiens’  genes on board from “much earlier encounters," and the new research also suggests the  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome had “completely replaced the original Neanderthal Y chromosome sometime between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago.”

DNA double helix molecules and chromosomes: the forensic evidence that proves early human interbreeding and when.

(Giovanni Cancemi /  Adobe Stock )

A Re-examination Of Early Human Interbreeding Based On Genes

The X and Y chromosomes are the two sex chromosomes in mammals, including humans, and they determine the biological sex of an individual. Females inherit an  X chromosome  from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype. Only mothers can pass on the X chromosome.

The new  paper by evolutionary geneticists Martin Petr and Janet Kelso, from the  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology , presents details of their team’s new method of sequencing Y-chromosome DNA, in their quest to understand early human interbreeding. The study results were based on Y-chromosome  DNA sequencing  of “two Denisovans and three Neanderthals samples gathered from sites in France, Russia and Spain dating between 38,000 to 53,000 years ago.” The results confirm early human interbreeding with these two species of  hominins. But the results of the study also indicate that these prehistoric sexual encounters resulted in “a really complicated population history spanning thousands of years and several continents.”

Modern Human DNA Entered The Neanderthal Population Slowly

Archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered several bones, which when gene sequenced, prove that a Neanderthal and a Denisovan had mated. Previous studies of non-sex chromosomes have established that Neanderthals and Denisovans share a branch of the human family tree, which split off sometime between 700,000 and 550,000 years ago.

However, according to this new paper “the Y-chromosomes tell a different story, suggesting our most recent common ancestor lived around 370,000 years ago.” This means that a long time after the three different groups had split up and evolved into different populations, they met up again and mated again. The paper says that “over time, our version of the Y-chromosome genome ended up replacing the Neanderthal version.” Therefore, early human interbreeding first occurred a long time ago, and then, after a very long break, it happened again.

In case you didn’t know already, an “ allele” is one of two or more versions of a known gene mutation identified at the same location on a chromosome. Previous gene studies have mostly all indicated that modern human “alleles” probably entered the Neanderthal gene pool  slowly. How slowly? At a speed, determined by Petr, Kelso, and their colleagues, to be “roughly single-digit percentage of the population,” which according to the scientists isn’t enough to become fixed.

A Neanderthal man holding a Neanderthal's skull perhaps wondering how much of his DNA was from modern humans and Denisovans. Today, we are wondering the same thing!

(Roni /  Adobe Stock )

Unfortunately, Most Ancient Hominin Bones Are Female

This very slow rate of change in the Neanderthal DNA makeup suggested to the researchers that  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome alleles may have offered some kind “of fitness advantage,” when compared with the Neanderthal versions.

To prove or disprove this theory, a computer simulation was created in which a Y-chromosome allele from  Homo sapiens  was passed on to one percent of the Neanderthal population. Even at one percent, the model showed that the chances of replacing the older Neanderthal version over a 50,000-year period only “shot up to about 25 percent, suggesting that whatever selective edge  Homo sapiens  alleles offered, it may have been tiny, but that's enough to stick around.”

• Modern Humans Interbred With At Least Five Archaic Human Groups
• Neanderthals Mated with Modern Humans Much Earlier than Previously Thought, Study Finds
• DNA Study Reveals We Have a Mystery Human Ancestor

The exact nature of this genetic “selective advantage,” which was written into  Homo sapiens ' Y-chromosome DNA, is yet unknown because of a distinct lack of Denisovans and Neanderthal genome samples. As fate would have it, the archaeological record is heavily populated by female Neanderthals and female Denisovans but almost void of male remains, and it’s the men that pass on the Y chromosomes. Hopefully, over time, more male Neanderthals and male Denisovans will be found and more gene sequencing can be carried out to solve the selective advantage puzzle. But it is very interesting to know that we modern humans carry a complex DNA mixture that could only come from early human interbreeding with other hominins over a very long period of time.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

• Top image: Early human interbreeding is well known but a recent research study has shown that modern humans both received and gave DNA to, proving that these hominin cousins met more than once in the long arc of prehistoric time.           
• Source: AlienCat /  Adobe Stock

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

30-09-2020 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

World’s first jet suit paramedic unveiled

It can reach people much faster than a car or ground teams.

 by Fermin Koop

Paramedics in the UK have carried out the first test of a jet suit that would get them to people in danger or distress in a fraction of the time it would take by car or foot. The exercise was part of a collaboration between Gravity Industries, which developed the jet pack, and the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS).

The Lake District is among the UK’s most famous national parks, attracting more than 15 million people ever year. But its wild terrain can be treacherous, leading to several incidents that require the assistance of the team at GNAAS. They are forced to move by vehicle or foot, as helicopters can’t land in the area due to its peaks and valleys.

Looking for potential alternatives, GNAAS engaged in conversations last year with Gravity Industries, founded by Richard Browning. The company recently developed a jet suit with five mini engines. It can reach impressive speeds of up to 85 miles/hour for up to 10 minutes and a maximum altitude of 3,658 meters.

The year-long conversations finally culminated in a recent jet suit test flight, carried out at Langdale Pikes in the Lake District. Browning flew from the valley bottom to a simulated casualty site on The Band, near Bowfell. The whole flight took 90 seconds, which would have required 25 minutes and a steep climb on foot.

“It was wonderful to be invited to explore the capabilities of the Gravity Jet Suit in an emergency response simulation and work alongside the team at GNAAS,” said Browning in a press statement. “We are just scratching the surface in terms of what is possible to achieve with our technology.”

The scenario was that a 10-year old girl had fallen from the cliffs and sustained a serious leg injury. After receiving the coordinates of the casualty, Browning, dressed as a jet suit paramedic, set off across rocky hills and picturesque scenery to successfully reach the girl. The paramedics could then assess her injuries and provide treatment.

Andy Mawson, director of operations at GNAAS, came up with the idea of a partnership with Gravity Industries and described seeing the first trial as an “awesome” experience. He said the exercise had demonstrated the huge potential of using jet suits to deliver critical care services.

“There are dozens of patients every month within the complex but relatively small geographical footprint of the Lakes,” he said in a press statement. “We could see the need. What we didn’t know for sure is how this would work in practice. Well, we’ve seen it now and it is, quite honestly, awesome.”

World's first flying suit patent was recently unveiled. As the fastest flying suit, it has also been awarded with Guinness World record also.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

Mars has ‘multiple bodies’ of liquid water, new study concludes

This has been a tremendous month for discoveries on the inner planets.

 by Mihai Andrei

 

Astronomers have found that Mars might have salty lakes sealed under its icy polar regions.

The low pressure that results from the lack of an atmosphere makes surface water on Mars impossible — unless it’s protected by something. That something, it turns out, exists; it lies on the Martian south pole, and you might know it as ice.

Astronomers first reported on the possibility of a subglacial lake on Mars back in 2018, and they just published a new paper admitting they were wrong. There’s not one lake on Mars, there’s several, and they’re salty — which makes them all all the more interesting for extraterrestrial life.

“We identified the same body of water, but we also found three other bodies of water around the main one,” says planetary scientist Elena Pettinelli at the University of Rome, who is one of the paper’s co-authors. “It’s a complex system.”

The discovery was made using a radar from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft Mars Express. The existence of the first lake was proposed after 29 observations made from 2012 to 2015. Now, the dataset includes 134 observations from 2012 to 2019 and makes a much stronger case for the existence of water on Mars. The first lake, observations suggest, is around 20 x 30 kilometers (12 x 18 miles), buried under 1.5 km (1 mile) of ice. Separate from the main lake, multiple bodies of water of various sizes are thought to exist.

These lakes are tantalizingly similar to subglacial lakes we have here on Earth such as Vostok Lake, although the Martian lakes are thought to be much saltier. In fact, the authors suggest that the liquid bodies are hypersaline solutions, which would explain why they can remain liquid despite the cold environment at the Martian pole. But even so it’s not implausible that they can support life.

Polar ice caps of Mars are captured in this photo, taken in 1999 by the Hubble Space Telescope 

©  Flickr/NASA

A few billion years ago, Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth. But after its atmosphere slowly dissipated, Mars lost its water and turned into the dry desert we see today. However, there are still signs of water on the Red Planet.

Both satellite data and on-site analysis have supported the existence of former water bodies on Mars, this is the first time researchers have found solid evidence of actual bodies of water on Mars.

Whether this is an actual lake or something more akin to a sludge or slush is up for debate, and the lakes themselves are still debated. Jack Holt, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told Nature that he doesn’t think these are lakes.

So, for now, we’re left with a stronger, but still-not-fully-proven case for lakes on Mars. Thankfully, there may soon be additional data to help settle the debate. The Tianwen-1 mission will enter Martian orbit in February 2021, deploying a rover on its surface.

But it’s hard not to get excited at the possibility of liquid water on Mars because where water exists, life can also exist. If there really is life in these salty waters, it could take different forms, but it will almost certainly be microbial. Most scientists speculate that anaerobes (extremophile microorganisms that don’t need oxygen) are the most likely candidates, but the existence of oxygen-breathing microorganisms is also possible.

“The water bodies at the base of the (south polar layered deposits) therefore represent areas of potential astrobiological interest and planetary protection concern,” the study concluded, urging for more exploration studies to analyze these subglacial bodies.

Journal Reference:

• Multiple subglacial water bodies below the south pole of Mars unveiled by new MARSIS data, Nature Astronomy (2020). 
• DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1200-6 , www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1200-6

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29-09-2020 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

WATCH A METEOROID BOUNCE OFF THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

ESA

This image depicts the two areas where most of the asteroids in the Solar System are found: the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the trojans, two groups of asteroids moving ahead of and following Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun.

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

29-09-2020 om 22:20 geschreven door peter  

PARAMEDICS TEST JETPACK FOR DARING MOUNTAIN RESCUES

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{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

29-09-2020 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Cuz there’s a black hole underground
— (“I Feel the Earth Move” — with apologies to Carole King)

If you think that version of Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” would sound pretty bad, wait until you here the explanation given in a paper published in a scientific journal on why there’s a black hole in the center of Earth … an explanation that, like a black hole, pulls in references to everything from DNA to string theory, curved space-time and – hold onto your hat – your humble writer! Read on while I figure out whether to be honored or run like hell in the opposite direction.

“Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun.”

Forget that … we’re here for the black hole

That’s the opening to “A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold,” a paper published in the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences. Yes, asking “Why is a medical journal interested in black holes?” is a very good question – we’ll get to that. First, the statement “Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the center of the earth” may ring a bell – in May 2019, I wrote about a former NASA scientist named Louise Riofrio who proposed that a black hole the size of a grain of sand but with the weight of the Moon is at the Earth’s center. (She also claimed that the speed of light is changing.) Well, that article is referenced in this new study! It’s important to note here that my conclusion was “While this ‘black hole in the center of the earth’ idea does have a certain sci-fi movie appeal, with so little evidence and no scientific reviews or rebuttals, the needle on the meter is heading for that black hole known as “highly skeptical.”” But that didn’t seem to faze the long list of authors (13 in all) of the study.

Why is this study in a medical journal? The “brane” it references is a dynamical object which can propagate through spacetime according to the rules of quantum mechanics. A “black brane” seems to imply that the brane is a black hole, but then comes a HUGE black-hole-sized leap from “brane” to DNA. The study then devotes page after page of equations and illustrations to allegedly explain this. Rather than attempt to summarize them (a job FAR beyond the pay grade of this writer), let’s look at the follow-up paper published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information titled “Formation of Neural Circuits in an Expanded Version of Darwin’s Theory: Effects of DNAs in Extra Dimensions and within the Earth’s Core on Neural Networks.” Darwin linked to the Earth’s core? This study doesn’t make things any clearer.

Perfectly clear?

These year-old papers have suddenly popped up because some well-known and well-respected scientists like Paul Byrne (planetary geologist at North Carolina State unknown as the Planetary Guy) discovered it and are trying to figure out how these journals could have published what they believe to be well-written nonsense. Mathematician Sarah Rasmussen identified the “gotcha” – one co-author, Torello Lotti, wrote an article on so-called “predatory journals” – journals that charge to publish articles without checking them for quality and legitimacy – and identifies the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences as one that has ‘unknowingly been duped’ into publishing them in the past. The dots connecting this study to “let see if we can get someone to print this rubbish” are much closer than the distance between DNA and a black hole at the center of the universe.

Excuse me while I wrap this up and run as fast as I can away from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences while singing another Carole King classic.

“There’s somethin’ wrong here, there can be no denyin’”
— (“It’s Too Late” – Carole King)

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29-09-2020 om 21:29 geschreven door peter  

In the 1960s and early 70s, the U.S. space program was deeply involved in studying the lunar surface, launching its famous, historical Apollo program, also called Project Apollo, conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The ambitious program, which ran from 1961 to 1972, was notable for landing the first human beings on the moon in 1969, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin making landing on the lunar surface with their Apollo Lunar Module, and there would be five further Apollo missions that would also land American astronauts on the moon. The program also set quite a few other major milestones in spaceflight, spurred growth in various areas of technology that have had far reaching effects beyond space travel, and with the many photos and lunar surface samples that were taken it taught us an unprecedented amount of information about our nearest celestial neighbor. Yet there have long been many mysteries and conspiracies surrounding the Apollo program and moon as well, and one of these is the supposed trainer of astronauts and keeper of moon photos who claims that there were many instances of photos of an alien presence on the moon, and efforts by NASA to cover it all up.

Among the scores of people who made the whole program work was aerospace engineer, pilot, and astronaut trainer Ken Johnston, who according to him was one of the four Civilian Astronaut Consultant Pilots who helped train astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission. Hired by Grumman Aircraft Corp., one of Johnston’s main duties at the time was cockpit and instrument development and training, as well as to test the lunar mission module in the vacuum chambers in order to make sure they were safe for flight, in the process helping to train the astronauts in how to land it. Johnston would supposedly later take on other duties, such as allegedly working at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, which dealt with processing and analyzing various samples taken from the moon, as well as photographs. Johnston says he handled the photographs from five of the Apollo missions, which were stored, curated, catalogued, and often sent off to scientists to be studied and analyzed. Indeed, Johnston claims he was the Director of the Data and Photo Control Department, and so had access to all of the photographic data being sent back to Earth from the moon, including photos, film and slides. It is with his work here that the conspiracies and strangeness begins.

When the Apollo program began to wind down and the samples were mostly sorted and take care of, Johnston was surprised when his superior, Bud Laskawa, to destroy all of what remained of the photo archive, and special emphasis was put on making sure a collection of glossy 8 by 10 prints never saw the light of day. He claims that the reason for this was that many of the photos had strange anomalies in them that NASA did not want the public to see, and which they were very interested in keeping quiet about, to the point that, according to Johnston, the photos would often be altered to cover up anything weird in them, with extensive manipulation and doctoring done on them to hide what he says were evidence of some sort on nonhuman structures on the lunar surface. He has said of all of this in an interview with Indian researcher Parvathi Benu:

Once we were done with the first three missions, I was put in charge of photographing and documenting their exact location. One day, my boss ordered me to destroy these images. I reminded him that the government had paid for them and that they should be made public to which he replied, “No. Get rid of it. I don’t care what you think.” It was because there were elements in the pictures that were unexplainable. You can see the lunar anomalies too. It looks like something has been smudged out. Way before Photoshop, they would paint things out. Once, when I walked into the photo lab, I saw a woman painting something out. She called herself a ‘stripper’ and said that she was paid for it. This really upset me as I was in charge of keeping a record of things. I guess that’s why they call me a whistleblower.

Johnston would end up defying his orders and keeping a set of these photos for himself as part of his personal portfolio and as evidence of what he had witnessed. He would sit on these photos for years, keeping them secret and afraid to come forward with them or show them to anyone else until 1995, when Johnston attended a lecture being given by the somewhat controversial researcher Richard Hoagland. After the seminar, Johnston allegedly approached Hoagland with his photo set, and the two would look through them together. According to Hoagland, the photos were very intriguing, and definitely showed evidence of an alien presence on the moon. Hoagland also claimed that he was allowed to take scans of the prints, which he says allowed him to uncover further details on analysis, and he would write of the photos in his 2007 book Dark Mission, saying:

In scanning Ken’s priceless Apollo 14 C-prints, I’d discovered that the computer could “see” what the human eye could not—incredible geometric detail in the pitch black areas, like the lunar sky. The sensitivity of modern CCD imaging technology, in even commercially-available image scanners, coupled with the amazing enhancement capabilities of state-of-the-art commercial software — like Adobe’s Photoshop—allowed the invisible detail buried in these supposedly black layers, of these thirty-year-old emulsions, to ultimately be revealed—a “democratization” of technology that no censor at NASA could have possibly foreseen over more than thirty years.

Hoagland would then go on to exhibit and lecture extensively on these photos, claiming that he had found all manner of anomalies in them that had never been uncovered before, but there has been quite a bit of skepticism towards these bold claims. One excerpt from the rational wiki has pointed out one the problems with these scans and Hoagland’s claims as follows:

Of course scanning cannot reveal “invisible detail” if it truly is invisible. Hoagland has made a career out of trumpeting the fact that his scans of Ken Johnston’s collection show things that the “official” scans do not. But of course, he’s comparing, on the one hand, a professionally scanned image from an original negative or internegative done in a clean room — and on the other hand, a photoprint stored in a ring binder for 23 years, then pulled out and scanned on Hoagland’s office scanner, the glass of which is quite clearly contaminated. For use as Powerpoint™ slides, Hoagland typically slams up the brightness — a procedure guaranteed to reveal any scanner contamination wherever the image is black.

The scans have been written off by skeptics as merely showing imperfections and artifacts in the scanning surface, such as blemishes or fibers. Regardless of what Hoagland’s scans show, they were responsible for making Johnston’s photos public, and Johnston himself would begin to be more open with his original collection, releasing them to the public for free in 2015 and donating the collection to the Roswell International UFO Research Center and Museum. Those who have looked at the photographs for themselves have claimed to see all manner of strange things in them, including satellite dishes, statues, ruins, buildings, and even a lunar alien base with visible lights and structures.

In the meantime, Johnston has travelled and lectured extensively on what he calls a NASA cover-up, as well as conducting various interviews. One of the most well-known and controversial of Johnston’s claims is that there were photos from the Apollo 14 mission that supposedly showed an alien base in Tsiolkovsky, an enormous crater on the back side of the Moon. Johnston claims that when he first saw the photographs he could see lights and a pentagonal cluster of domes showing that it was clearly a facility of some sort, but that the next day it had all been doctored to erase it. According to him it had essentially been airbrushed out. This claim has also become controversial, because according to NASA records Apollo 14 never flew over Tsiolkovsky and it was never photographed, although Johnston denies this.

Even in the face of such criticism Ken Johnston has nevertheless become almost legendary as a “NASA whistleblower” and champion of disclosure, and he has over the years his claims have gone ever more into the fringe, such as that there are bases on Mars and that he has been hypnotically regressed to learnt that it was in fact aliens that had told him to defy NASA and come forward with his strange findings. This has understandably brought a lot of attention to him, both by UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists, as well as skeptics, who have constantly challenged Johnston’s claims even as controversy surrounds him. One of the red flags that has come up is that Johnston has increasingly claimed that he is an actual astronaut, which is false, and he has been found to frequently misrepresent himself and blow up his credentials, also sometimes labelling himself as a former “chief trainer at NASA,” all of which has gotten him in hot water with NASA and the State Department. He has also made other extravagant claims that have been seen by skeptics as questionable at best, such as that he has a “Doctor of Metaphysics” diploma, and his close colleague Bret Sheppard, who often accompanies him to lectures, has also been a controversial figure within the UFO field.

For his part, Johnston has continuously fought off his critics and insisted it is all real. We are left to wonder, is there anything to this? Is Ken Johnston for real, or is he a fraud? Is this for real or a hoax? It has become hotly discussed and debated, and it shows that the moon will likely attract stories like this for some time to come.

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29-09-2020 om 20:41 geschreven door peter