60+ Schoolchildren Witness A UFO Land & Extraterrestrial Beings Emerge: The “Ariel” Phenomenon

What Happened: 

One of the most interesting UFO witness cases that exists within the lore of the phenomenon comes from Ruwa, Zimbabwe in September of 1994. The encounter took place at Ariel Primary School and involved more than 60 school children who were out playing at recess. All of the children, who were in elementary school at the time, describe seeing multiple hovering objects that one would describe as “spaceships” or “UFOs” as well as multiple beings exiting the craft.

What’s fascinating about this story is that all of the children, who were interviewed by many, including Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack, told the exact same story. They did so in such a precise manner and appeared to be completely sincere about their experience, something that’s not hard for children to do. Another remarkable fact about this case is that the children’s drawings of the objets and the beings were extremely consistent with one another. They were, according to Mack, clearly telling a story as if it had actually happened, they believed what they were saying and there was no evidence of psychosis or delusion among the children.

Below are some remarks from the teachers, taken from some interesting and old footage that’s been uploaded to Youtube. You can also see a few interviews with the children with John Mack and others at that time as well. What’s interesting is that many of these children are still speaking about the incident today. There’s an example of that at the end of the article.

I was able to find a few videos with the children from 1994 on Youtube ... ( videos adapted by peter2011)

They came running up here in such a panic, and even if we staged it they could have not all run together like that. They came up here like a living snake, we were in a staff meeting and we just heard them screaming and screaming…A child cannot make that up. – Teacher (From Youtube videos linked above)

I was very skeptical in the beginning as well, I believed that they had seen something, but I wasn’t prepared to accept that it was anything supernatural, but I think the consistency of what’s been going on indicates that it was more than I was prepared to admit at the beginning.” – Teacher (From Youtube videos linked above)

Some of the children were asked what they got from the experience. One of them answered that they were here to tell us that “we don’t look after the planet properly.” This is interesting, having been a researcher in the field more than 15 years I can tell you that this type of theme and communication among those who have claimed to have had contact with beings from other worlds is quite common. The children were quite shaken and left with some horrible feelings and visions that our planet may be destroyed because of our actions. One of the children in the videos linked above stated that “all the trees would go down and nobody would be able to breath.”

As mentioned above, many of the children still speak about the incident today, many of them will be featured in an upcoming  documentary currently in the works, but it has yet to be released. The film is supposed to cover  the story of everyone involved — the students, teachers, investigators, BBC Bureau Chief Tim Leach, Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack — and includes never-before-seen interviews of the children shortly after the encounter, as well as interviews with them more than two decades later.

Below is a brief video of one of the children, Emily Trim years later speaking about the encounter. Here’s’ a video with Salma Siddick in 2018, another one of the children (at the time) from the 1994 encounter. 

You can find a few more clips with some of the students as they’ve aged, here.

We will have to wait for the documentary to release for more.

The Takeaway: Extraterrestrial contact experiences among children, adults, and people from all walks of life and various professions is and has been a common theme for a very long time. For years this has been attributed to some type of “psychosis”, which is interesting because even if one of these experiences is true it has tremendous implications. We’ve come a long way since 1994, and now the existence of UFOs has been verified and confirmed, with many people with “credible” backgrounds alluding to the idea that some of these objects are most likely extraterrestrial in origin. The topic is receiving mainstream attention from establishment media mouthpieces like CNN and the New York Times.

All of this mainstream media disclosure seems to be quite rapid and it comes after many decades of what seems to have been a ridicule campaign that tossed this topic in the “conspiracy theory” bucket. I am concerned about mainstream media and “official” government disclosure of this phenomenon. This topic is quite large and vast and has tremendous implications, what we will receive from governments and mainstream media will most likely be a heavily sanitized version of disclosure as well as an attempt to control the masses perception of the phenomenon.

In my opinion, you are better off doing some independent research, and investigating cases like this one among the thousands of others. If you do, you will find astonishing corroboration and consistency among those who have claimed to have some sort of experience with beings from other worlds.

This topic has the potential to expand human consciousness and initiate a major paradigm shift for humanity. That being said, we have a lot of things we need to do here on planet Earth so we can change the human experience and make it a better one for all life that resides here, and mother Earth herself.

We’ve been writing about this topic in depth for more than 10 years. If you want to sift through our articles on the subject, you can do so here.

{ https://www.collective-evolution.com/ }

29-01-2021 om 16:39 geschreven door peter  

Alien Craft Close Encounter And Landing In Tully Australia

Pictured: It’s definitely aliens. 

JANUARY 19, 1966 - TULLY AUSTRALIA

At 9:00 am on January 19, 1966, a calm sunny day, a 28 year old banana farmer named George Pedley was driving a tractor near Horseshoe Lagoon on the property of Albert Pennisi, near Tully, in tropical far north Queensland, Australia. When he was about 25 yards from the lagoon, he heard a loud hissing sound above the noise of the tractor.

Suddenly, an object rose out of the swamp. When I glanced at it, it was already 30 feet above the ground, and at about tree-top level. It was a large, grey, saucer-shaped object, convex on the top and bottom and measured some 25 feet across and 9 feet high.

While I watched, it rose another 30 feet, spinning very fast, then it made a shallow dive and took off with tremendous speed. Climbing at an angle of 45 degrees it disappeared within seconds in a south-westerly direction…

Another surprise came when Pedley rounded the bend of the road and came to the spot from which the object had risen. There in the lagoon was a large circular area that was clear of reeds and in which the water was rotating slowly. It had not been like that three hours earlier when he had passed the lagoon. After looking around, he got back on the tractor and left.

A few hours later, at about noon, Pedley returned to the lagoon for a second look. The scene had changed, because now the circular area was covered by a floating mass of green reeds that were distributed in a clockwise radial pattern. The circular mass of reeds was about 30 feet in diameter.

Pedley was by now excited enough about what he was seeing to go and tell Albert Pennisi, the owner of the sugar cane farm land on which the lagoon was located, and another friend. Pennesi recalled that his dog had acted strangely that morning, barking madly and heading off toward the lagoon at about 5:30 am.

Pennisi and the other man were amazed by the circular mass of reeds. Wading out to the mass, they found that they could swim under the mass of reeds and that the lagoon floor beneath it was smooth and showed no traces of roots.

Oddly, the outside edges of the mass of reeds angled down, similar to the shape of a saucer placed face down. Pennisi went and got his camera and took photographs of the mass of reeds, which was now beginning to turn brown on its top surface. George Pedley reported his experience to the Tully police that evening, and they in turn reported it to the RAAF after making a trip to the site the next day, January 20.

Within days, the media had picked up the event and the area was filled with investigators, many of whom were trying to prove theories as to the cause of the “nest” such as helicopters, big birds, crocodiles, reed-eating grubs, and whirlwinds of one sort or another. Pedley’s UFO sighting was all but overlooked in the flurry of explanations.

During the course of the investigations, as many as five other “nests”, all smaller than the original, were discovered. In some of these, the reeds were rotated in a counter-clockwise direction and a couple of them showed signs of burning in the center of the nest. Samples of the original nest were sent to Brisbane for analysis, but nothing unusual was detected. Other than being part of the “nest”, the only unusual thing about the reeds was that they turned brown in about 8 hours, whereas reeds uprooted by hand in the lagoon took three days to turn brown.

In another unusual twist, Albert Pennisi told a reporter from the Sydney, Australia newspaper The Sun that he had been dreaming about a UFO landing on his property for a week:

I’d get them almost every night. And they were beginning to worry me. I couldn’t understand them. It was always the same. This thing like a giant dish would come out of nowhere and land nearby.

And I would watch it in my dream and get real afraid before it went away. Then on Wednesday morning about 5 o’clock my dog suddenly seemed to go out of its mind. It was howling like a mad thing and raced off towards the lagoon.

What happened at Horseshoe Lagoon? There was never any evidence that there were any helicopters in the area nor any demonstrated reason for one to be over the lagoon. There was no evidence that crocodiles made the nest and analysis of the reeds from the nest showed no trace of “reed-eating grubs.” There was no known bird that would or could make such a nest in three hours.

The best explanation that the RAAF could offer was that the nest was created by a willy willy, a type of small whirlwind known to occur in the area.

Although a conclusive determination could not be made, the most probable explatation was that the sighting was of a “willy willy” or circular wind phenomenon which flattened the reeds and sucked up debris to a height of about 30 feet, thus forming what appeared to be a “flying saucer”, before moving off and dissipating.

Hissing noises are known to be associated with “willy willies” and the theory is also substantiated by the clockwise configuration of the depression.

However, such whirlwinds, except when they occur in the desert as dust devils, normally accompany thunderstorms, and although the Tully event occurred during the rainy season, January 19 was a sunny day with little or no wind. Pedley described what he saw as a blue-grey object shaped like two saucers face to face.

This description doesn’t sound like a whirling mass of swamp debris, and there was no fallen debris in the area where the dissipation would have occurred. Finally, how does the whirlwind explanation account for the fact that the water was clear when Pedley looked the first time, yet was covered by the mass of reeds when he looked again three hours later?

KENS NOTE:

Of course the RAAF would try to debunk the encounter with an alien craft. That was their job, in the sixties, just like the american military. The goverment did not want the public to know the truth because it would cause panic and make the goverment’s look inadequate.

• KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS
• HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG
• HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG
• HTTP://WWW.NEWDISCOVERIES51.YOLASITE.COM
• HTTP://WWW.STRANGE-AND-WEIRD-IMAGES.YOLASITE.COM
• THANKS TO HTTP://WWW.MUFON.COM CASE FILES
• Google ……….KEN PFEIFER ALIEN CRAFT
• DuckDuckGo…………..KEN PFEIFER DISCOVERIES

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=28964

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29-01-2021 om 16:10 geschreven door peter  

A Brief History Of Some Of Australia’s Weirdest UFO Encounters

By Ben McLeay

Thanks in so small part to movies like Close Encounters and Signs, the imagery of UFO encounters and alien abductions is deeply tied to the American mid-west. Aliens rustle amongst fields of corn. Strange sounds emanate from big red barns. People in plaid shirts recount grabbing the shotguns out of their pickups because they saw some strange lights up in the sky and wish to respond the only way they know how. But the American heartland doesn’t have a monopoly on UFO sightings — hell, neither does the entire contiguous United States. People believing that aliens are real transcends all borders; possible UFO sightings crop up all over the world constantly, even in our tiny, huge corner of the world.

The Westall UFO Incident

Arguably the biggest incident in the Australian UFO mythos is the Westall UFO encounter. According to a combined 200 students and teachers, on April 6, 1966, a UFO was spotted hanging around over two different schools (Westall High School and Westall State School) for about 20 minutes, before landing in a nearby paddock and eventually flying off again.

The object was described as being a silvery disc with a purple hue, roughly the size of about two cars. One of the explanations put forth is that they saw a weather balloon but, 50 years later, we still have no concrete idea what all these people saw.

Studio 10 spoke to a bunch of the witnesses for a special 50th-anniversary show and a bunch of them are still pretty adamant about what they saw:

The Tully Saucer Nest

Also in 1966 was another prominent Australian UFO sighting: the Tully Saucer Nest. Tully is about 200km northwest of Townsville in northern Queensland, and it’s where a 28-year-old banana farmer named George Pedley claimed to have had a pretty close encounter with a flying saucer while driving his tractor.

The man described seeing a blue-grey disc around 25 feet in diameter rise out of a nearby lagoon before flying off. Upon inspection, a section of the lagoon the size and shape of the saucer appeared to have formed a whirlpool ‘devoid of all plant life’. Afterwards, dead reeds started to float to the surface, forming the ‘nest’ from which the incident takes its name. According to Pedley, when he told the owner of the sugarcane farm on which the incident happened, the owner said that, a few hours before Pedley saw the saucer, his dog had been acting strangely, barking in an agitated fashion and running in the direction of the lagoon from which the saucer supposedly emerged.

Pictured: It’s definitely aliens. 

Albert Pennisi, the owner of the neighbouring sugarcane farm, reportedly told a journalist from Sydney that he had been dreaming of UFOs all week before the event. Hell yeah, dude.

Nullarbor Car Jacking

Next, we cast our beady eyes on South Australia in the year 1988, when a family driving through the Nullarbor claimed to have their entire car lifted off the ground by — you guessed it — bloody aliens.

According to a wonderfully detailed dive into the story by the ABC, the Knowles family was making the long drive from Perth to Melbourne when they were ‘tormented’ by a large glowing sphere of light for 90 minutes. The glowing ball chased them before landing on the roof and lifting them clear off the ground, as described by a police spokesperson at the time:

It apparently picked the car up off the road, shook it quite violently and forced the car back down on the road with such pressure that one of the tyres was blown.

One of the family members in the car reported hearing their voices distort as if time was slowing down, either a symptom of shock or just the coolest UFO thing in the world. If that’s not creepy enough, here’s what the mum told reporters happened after it picked them up:

I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff. It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball.

I think we can all agree: what the hell.

The Cahill Abduction

Five years later, we had the Cahill Abduction, in which a woman driving back to Melbourne from the Dandenong Ranges claimed to have been abducted by aliens in Narre Warren North. Kelly Cahill (not her actual name) and her husband Andrew reported seeing what looked like a blimp with a ‘ring of orange headlights’.

Cahill said that, as they got closer, she became blinded by the light coming from the object and then woke up later, noticing that she had lost an hour of time. It doesn’t end there though: she claimed to notice a new, triangular shaped mark on her stomach and, after a few weeks, began to recall more and more details of the abduction.

Cahill described seeing ‘skinny black figures with bulging red eyes’, in addition to seeing people in two other cars who also witnessed the abduction — although none of these people have spoken to the media outside of UFO researchers.

Pictured: Cahill’s depiction of the aliens, which are REAL.

The Disappearance Of Frederick Valentich

Keen-eyed UFO enthusiasts may have spotted a rather prominent omission from this list, which is, of course, the disappearance of Frederick Valentich in 1978. Valentich and his Mi-619-386.png (available on Cessna 182L disappeared after he reported being followed by a flying object that he described as “not an aircraft“.

I didn’t get into this one because someone else has already done the hard work for me, in the form of our Australian mysteries podcast, the All Aussie Mystery Hour (available on iTunes and Spotify). Mel and Jose get way, way deep on this one back in episode two and it is well worth your time if you reckon aliens are either a) real or b) fake but super cool.

{ https://www.pedestrian.tv/ }

29-01-2021 om 15:50 geschreven door peter  

Ball of Light, Touchet, Washington, USA 1-27-2021, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Jan 27, 2021
Location of sighting: Touchet, Washington, USA
Source: MUFON #113398

 

This eyewitness caught about 30 seconds of a glowing ball of light moving across the tree tops in his back yard in Washington state. The ball is almost pulsating and seems to be moving slowly on purpose to watch the humans reactions on the ground. As curious as we are about different alien species...they also feel the same about us. Knowledge is the one constant in the universe...the universal gold standard valued above all else. Aliens wish to learn about us so they can report their discoveries to others and teach others what they learned. Wow, 100% proof that aliens are right in our back yards, if we just keep an eye out for them. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

29-01-2021 om 15:26 geschreven door peter  

Bright UFO caught on tape over Touchet, Washington 27-Jan-2021

This huge bright UFO was filmed over Touchet, Washington on 27th January 2021.

Witness report: 

Bright random light of four; hovering; quick ascent. I was raised within hours of area 51 in California, and have never witnessed a UFO until now. At the dusk of day, just off my back porch, I noticed some brightness of lights flashing, looking closer it was evident the object was stationary and hovering. Grabbing binoculars, I could make out a dome shape with four pulsating lights along it’s bottom edge. It was disappointing and unfortunate this detail was not captured in my video. After a duration of 3 minutes or so, the object ascended backwards like a shooting star, and disappeared from my sight.

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

29-01-2021 om 13:55 geschreven door peter  

Strange space object 2020 SO was discovered on September 17, 2020, on approach to Earth. On November 8, it slowly drifted into Earth’s sphere of gravitational dominance, to become a new mini-moon. It’ll escape back into a new orbit around the sun in March 2021. During that time, it’ll make 2 large loops around our planet. In this image, Earth is the blue dot. The moon’s orbit is the yellow circle. 2020 SO’s trajectory is the looping pink line.

Image via Phoenix7777/ Wikimedia Commons.

Astronomers first noticed the object now known as 2020 SO last September. Orbit models quickly showed that both the low speed and trajectory of the approaching object were unusual. The models showed that Earth would capture this object – temporarily – as a new mini-moon. And that’s what happened. 2020 SO has been orbiting Earth since November 8. Following further analysis of its motion – and a very close approach of the object (just 30,000 miles, 50,000 km or 0.13 lunar-distances) on December 1 – NASA was able to confirm that the object is a relic of the early Space Age, a Centaur upper-stage rocket booster, once called America’s workhorse in space. Now 2020 SO is about to make one more close approach to Earth on February 2, 2021. It’ll pass farther away this time, but still within 0.58 lunar-distances (140,000 miles, or 220,000 km). Afterwards, in March 2021, Earth’s gravity will relinquish its hold on the object.

It’ll no longer be a mini-moon for Earth. Instead, it’ll be orbiting the sun.

You have a chance to see 2020 SO online. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will be showing the object online on the night of February 1. Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi wrote:

We will say it goodbye, live: join us from the comfort of your home!

• EarthSky 2021 lunar calendars still available! Order now.

The live feed is scheduled for the night of February 1, 2021, starting at 22:00 UTC (that’s February 1 at 4 p.m. Central, 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific in North America; translate UTC to your time). That’s when, Gianluca said, 2020 SO will be at its best above the Virtual Telescope’s robotic telescopes in central Italy. See the poster below for details and read more about this event via Virtual Telescope.

Poster of the February 1, 2021 online event, via Virtual Telescope.

Astronomers first sighted the object on September 17 using the 71-inch (1.8-meter) Pan-STARRS1 telescope at Haleakala, Hawaii. They gave it its designation – 2020 SO – and added it as an Apollo-type asteroid in the JPL Small-Body Database.

However, 2020 SO was quickly seen to have some features that set it apart from ordinary asteroids. According to NASA/JPL calculations, the object sped past Earth’s moon at a speed of 1,880 miles per hour (3,025 km/h) or 0.84 km per second (.5 mi/sec). That is an extremely slow speed for an asteroid.

These calculations also show the apparent “slow asteroid” orbiting the sun every 1.06 years (387 days). The low relative velocity, along with the Earth-like orbit, both suggest it as an artificial object launched from our planet. Radar images showed that 2020 SO had an elongated shape estimated to be between 20 and 45 feet (6 to 14 meters), a match for the dimensions of an Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D (approximately 41 feet or 12 meters).

The confirmation that SO 2020 was indeed a lost-and-found rocket booster came from data collected at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Maunakea, Hawaii, and from orbit analyses conducted at the the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This particular rocket launched the ill-fated Surveyor 2 spacecraft toward the moon in 1966.

Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, first suggested the object might be Surveyor 2’s lost rocket booster. Surveyor 2 was a robotic spacecraft that was launched to the moon on September 20, 1966. It was meant to be the second lunar lander in the uncrewed American Surveyor program to explore the moon. The spacecraft blasted into space atop an Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

A mid-course correction failure caused ground controllers to lose contact with the craft three days later, after a thruster failed to ignite. The failure caused the spacecraft to tumble and ultimately to crash near the moon’s Copernicus crater.

Unlike some rocket boosters today (which return to Earth and land on ships at sea), Surveyor 2’s rocket booster remains in space and was lost. It appears to have been pushed from its original trajectory by a small but continuous pressure from sunlight.

As it turns out, the defunct booster – now known as 2020 SO – had passed Earth unnoticed several times in the past, including a close approach in 1966, not long after it launched.

This 1964 photograph shows a Centaur upper-stage rocket before being mated to an Atlas booster. A similar Centaur was used during the launch of Surveyor 2 two years later and is currently known as 2020 SO … a new temporary mini-moon for Earth.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

An Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D launch on June 30, 1964.

Image via AstroNautix.

A model of the ill-fated Surveyor 2 lander, which crashed on the moon in 1966.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

How could we have lost an entire 41-foot-long rocket? Space archaeologist Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Australia told ScienceAlert that – before our modern era of reuseable rockets – the rockets that launched craft into space were surprisingly easy to lose. She said:

There are so many factors in the space environment, like gravitational factors and other things that affect movement, that it can sometimes be quite unpredictable.

You have to keep tracking these things, or you can just sort of lose sight of them really easily. And if they do something a little bit unpredictable, and you look the wrong way, then you don’t know where it’s gone. It is quite astonishing, the number of things that have gone missing.

NASA explained that pressure from the sun’s radiation caused the object to change its trajectory:

The pressure exerted by sunlight is small but continuous, and it has a greater effect on a hollow object than a solid one. A spent rocket is essentially an empty tube and therefore is a low-density object with a large surface area. So it will be pushed around by solar radiation pressure more than a solid, high-density clump of rock, much like an empty soda can will be pushed by the wind more than a small stone.

This animation shows the orbit of 2020 SO as it was captured by Earth’s gravity on November 8, 2020. It will escape in March 2021. Its motion has been speeded up a million times faster than real time.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

This isn’t the first time Earth has captured a mini-moon.

As you might have realized by now, space is chock-full of small asteroids. Once in a while, one of these space rocks is captured, temporarily, by our planet’s gravity, before being cast out back into the solar system at large. Two confirmed mini-moons are 2006 RH120 (in Earth orbit between 2006 and 2007), and 2020 CD3 (in our orbit between 2018 and 2020).

It’s also not the first time we’ve mistaken space junk for an asteroid.

Another small object that was initially thought to be an asteroid was WT1190F, detected in October 2015 on approach to Earth. Its trajectory suggested it was about to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere near Sri Lanka, in the Indian Ocean, an event that happens with ordinary asteroids several times every year.

As WT1190F was disintegrating in our atmosphere on November 13, 2015, scientists analyzed its light via spectroscopy.

This analysis suggested the object might be a spacecraft component or part of a spent rocket, another wandering piece of space junk returning home.

In the case of 2020 SO, its return home won’t last long. After March, the spent rocket body will be on its way again, back into a larger solar orbit. Who knows how long we’ll keep track of it this time?

2020 SO isn’t the first object thought to be an asteroid, and later realized to be human-made space junk. Here’s an object tagged as WT1190F entering Earth’s atmosphere south of Sri Lanka on November 13, 2015.

Image via IAC/ UAE/ NASA/ ESA.

• Bottom line: An “asteroid” spotted in September 2020 became a new mini-moon for Earth in November. In early December, NASA confirmed the object is a lost rocket from the Surveyor 2 mission, originally launched from Earth more than 50 years ago. Now 2020 SO is about to make a final close approach to Earth. That’ll happen on February 2. The night before, February 1, you can join an online viewing of this object.
• Via NASA
• Via ScienceAlert
• Via Popular Mechanics
• Via Virtual Telescope

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

28-01-2021 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

Photos And Videos: The Ancients Had Knowledge That Surpass Ours?

Many preserved buildings and artefacts points out that the ancients had advanced control technology. A number of ancient buildings and paintings of deities shows all too similar to the existing people – with aircraft, missiles and space suit. The oldest working model “glider” comes from the excavations of ancient Egypt 3000 years ago before Christ.

EGYPT

{ https://dailymysteries.com/ }

28-01-2021 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

Researchers Say Humanity Will Be Officially Screwed If Artificial Intelligence Keeps Learning To Teach Itself

#ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Based on some of the advancements in artificial intelligence that have been unveiled in recent years, it seems like there are way too many people out there who’ve watched an episode of Black Mirror and thought, “Hey, that’s a great idea,” as you’re kind of missing the point if you use a show that’s devoted to highlighting the potential pitfalls of our crippling reliance on technology as a good source of inspiration.

I’m sure most of the people who’ve devoted their lives to figuring out how to harness the power of artificial intelligence have good intentions, but the same could be said for the researchers who brought Jurassic Park to life (and we all know how well that worked out for them). There’s no denying that it’s wild to live in a world where we can “talk” with people after they’ve died and even have a computer predict when you’re going to die, but as the aforementioned movie taught us, it’s easy to get so preoccupied with whether or not you can do something to take a second to ask yourself if you should. 

Natural and artificial intelligence

DEPOSITPHOTOS ENHANCED BY COGWORLD

Whenever Boston Dynamics releases a video showcasing a new skill one of its robots has learned, there’s always an avalanche of people who respond by joking about the “robot overlords” that will eventually bring humanity to its knees. However, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests that outcome isn’t a laughing matter, as some people who more know about A.I. than I ever will believe that dystopian future is a very real possibility.

Now, we have even more proof courtesy of researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Humans and Machines, who recently published a paper in The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research with a fun little title containing the words “Superintelligence Cannot Be Contained,” which is totally, definitely not a cause for concern whatsoever.

The authors of the paper took a closer look at the “Three Laws of Robotics” author Isaac Asimov famously said could prevent an I, Robot scenario from unfolding, which appear to be about as foolproof in the real world as they were in that work of fiction.

Shutterstock

While some experts have posited you can control A.I. by limiting its access to the internet or writing algorithms in an attempt to control its behavior, the chance of those strategies actually working becomes increasingly unlikely as humans willingly push the limits of what artificial intelligence can do, with researcher Iyad Rahwan saying:

“The ability of modern computers to adapt using sophisticated machine learning algorithms makes it even more difficult to make assumptions about the eventual behavior of a superintelligent AI.”

Oh well. At least society had a good run.

• [Business Insider]

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28-01-2021 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

The Devil’s Sea Zone: Secrets of the Dragon’s Triangle of Japan

28-01-2021 om 22:18 geschreven door peter  

Spontaneous Human Combustion: A Burning Mystery

For some time, people have debated whether or not human beings could spontaneously combust, or burst into flames, without an external heat source. However, over the past 300 years, there have been more than 200 reports of such incidents occurring. This phenomenon is called spontaneous human combustion (or SHC) and it occurs when a person supposedly burns to death by a fire believed to have started from within the body of that person. Of the hundreds of accounts on record, there seems to be a similar pattern.

A solitary victim is often consumed by flame, usually inside his or her home. However, the extremities, such as the hands, feet, or parts of the leg, often remaining intact. The torso and head are charred beyond recognition and, in rare cases, the internal organs of a victim remain unscathed.

The room the victim was in usually shows little to no signs of fire, aside from a greasy residue left on furniture and walls. Often there is a sweet, smoky smell in the room where the incident has occurred.

Historic Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion

The history of SHC can be traced back to medieval literature and some even believe there are several passages in the Bible making reference to it.

In 1641, the Danish physician, Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680), described the death of Polonus Vorstius in his book Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum , a collection of strange medical phenomena.

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Vorstius was an Italian knight, who, while at his home in Milan, Italy in 1470, drank some strong wine and started vomiting flames before bursting into fire. This is considered to be the first recorded account of spontaneous combustion in human history.

Illustration of person spontaneously combusting

( Public Domain )

In 1673, French author Jonas Dupont, published a book entitled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, which is a collection of cases and studies on the subject of spontaneous human combustion.

One famous incident from France dates back to 1725, when a Parisian innkeeper was awoken by the smell of smoke and discovered that his wife, Nicole Millet, had been reduced to ashes while lying on a straw pallet, which itself had been untouched by the flames.

All that remained of Madame Millet, a chronic alcoholic, was her skull, a few bones from her back, and lower legs. Wooden items found around her were undamaged. Her husband was charged with murder and initially found guilty.

On appeal, however, the judges agreed with his defense of “spontaneous human combustion,” thanks in part to the testimony of a surgeon named Dr. Claude-Nicolas Le Cat. Le Cat was at the inn when the smell of smoke awoke the house and Nicole’s body was discovered. Her death was later declared to be the consequence of “a visitation of God.”

Spontaneous human combustion became popularized in the 19th century after famous English author Charles Dickens used it to kill off one of his characters in the novel Bleak House . When critics accused Dickens of trying to validate something that didn’t exist, he simply pointed to existing research showing 30 historical cases at the time.

Illustration of the spontaneous human combustion case in Bleak House by Charles Dickens

( Public Domain )

Common Characteristics of Spontaneous Human Combustion Victims

The topic of SHC received coverage in the British Medical Journal in 1938 when an article by L.A. Parry cited a book published in 1823 called Medical Jurisprudence . It stated that cases of spontaneous human combustion shared several common themes including:

• the victims were chronic alcoholics;
• they were usually elderly females;
• the body had burned spontaneously, but some lighted substance had also come into contact with it;
• the hands and feet usually fell off;
• the fire had caused very little damage to many other combustible things in contact with the body;
• the combustion of the body has left a residue of greasy and fetid ashes, very offensive in odor.

Alcoholism seems to have played a heavy role in early references to SHC, partially because some Victorian era physicians and writers believed spontaneous human combustion was caused by it.

The Wick Effect: A Scientific Explanation for SHC

There are several theories as to what causes SHC apart from the above-mentioned alcoholism. These include: flammable body fat, acetone buildup, static electricity, methane, bacteria, stress, and even divine intervention.

The theory explaining SHC which is most approved by science is called the “wick effect.” It likens the body of an SHC victim to a candle. A candle is composed of a wick on the inside surrounded by a wax made of flammable fatty acids. Fire ignites the wick and the fatty wax keeps it burning.

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In the human body, the body fat acts as the flammable substance, while the victim's clothing or hair is the wick. A cigarette might set fire to a person’s clothing then split their skin, releasing subcutaneous fat, which in turn is absorbed into the burned clothing. As the fat melts from the heat, it soaks into the clothing, acting as a “wax-like substance” to keep the "wick" burning. The burning continues for as long as there is fuel available. Proponents of this theory say it explains why victims' bodies are destroyed yet their surroundings are barely burned.

The three stages of the Wick Theory

( arzbmad16/Slideshare)

There is More to Consider About This Phenomenon

Author and biology professor Brian J Ford offers another explanation for SHC. He says that an acetone build-up is likely at the root of this bizarre phenomenon:

“When a person is ill they sometimes naturally produce traces of acetone in the body, and acetone is highly inflammable. I experimented with scale model humans using pig flesh that had been marinated in acetone; they burn like incendiary bombs. Alcoholism can cause people to produce acetone, as can many diseases. My conclusion is that an unwell individual produces high levels of acetone which accumulates in the fatty tissues and can be ignited, perhaps by a static spark or a cigarette.”

Something that should be taken into consideration is the fact that cases of SHC almost always occur indoors, to lone humans, and often near sources of heat. For example, there are almost no known instances of spontaneous human combustion happening in the middle of the street.

Another point to consider is that the phenomenon only seems to happen to humans, there are no known reported cases of animals suddenly catching fire.

Also, the "wick effect" doesn’t seem to fully explain why the victims remain motionless during the episode of combustion and burning, nor does it provide enough explanation why surrounding furniture is so often unaffected by the fire.

Furthermore, believers in SHC point to the fact that the human body has to reach a temperature of roughly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 degrees Celsius) in order to be reduced to complete ashes, which has been the case with many of the victims found. By comparison, cremating a human body is carried out at a temperature between 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius).

Modern Spontaneous Human Combustion Cases

Cases of SHC aren’t simply the stuff of old wives tales or confined strictly to books of antiquity. For instance, a more modern example took place in Ireland in 2010.

The burned body of an elderly man was found lying with his head near the fireplace of his apartment in a room that had virtually no fire damage. There were no burn marks on the floor, on the ceiling directly above him, or anywhere else in the room. An Irish coroner would later rule that spontaneous combustion was the cause of the death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty.

Another modern case of possible SHC occurred in 2017. The Independent reported that a 70-year-old man suddenly burst into flames “in unexplained circumstances in a London street.” The Fire Brigade’s investigation “found no evidence of an “accelerant” that would have spread the flames” and the man’s death was treated as “unexplained.” Could this be another case of spontaneous human combustion?

Many people believe that there is much about the human body which makes it unique among earthly beings and there are aspects of humans that are still unknown to us. One such feature is the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, which remains an unsolved mystery .

Spontaneous human combustion remains an unsolved mystery.

(Matthew/ CC BY NC ND 2.0 )

• Top Image: Spontaneous Human Combustion is an unexplained phenomenon. Source: lucas le coadou/EyeEm /Adobe Stock

By Bryan Hill

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28-01-2021 om 21:21 geschreven door peter  

The Lost Continent of Kumari Kandam

Most people are familiar with the story of Atlantis, the legendary sunken city as described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Till this day, opinion is still divided as to whether this story should be understood literally or taken merely as a morality tale. Further east in the subcontinent of India is a similar tale, though it probably is less well known compared to that of Atlantis. This is the ‘lost continent’ of Lemuria, frequently connected to the legend of Kumari Kandam by speakers of the Tamil language.

The term Lemuria has its origins in the latter part of the 19 ^th century. The English geologist Philip Sclater was puzzled by the presence of lemur fossils in Madagascar and India but not in mainland Africa and the Middle East. Thus, in his 1864 article entitled ‘The Mammals of Madagascar’, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India were once part of a larger continent, and named this missing landmass ‘Lemuria’. Sclater’s theory was accepted by the scientific community of that period as the explanation of the way lemurs could have migrated from Madagascar to India or vice versa in ancient times. With the emergence of the modern concepts of continental drift and plate tectonics, however, Sclater’s proposition of a submerged continent was no longer tenable. Yet, the idea of a lost continent refused to die, and some still believe that Lemuria was an actual continent that existed in the past.

One such group is the Tamil nationalists. The term Kumari Kandam first appeared in the 15 ^th century Kanda Puranam, the Tamil version of the Skanda Puranam. Yet, stories about an ancient land submerged by the Indian Ocean have been recorded in many earlier Tamil literary works. According to the stories, there was a portion of land that was once ruled by the Pandiyan kings and was swallowed by the sea. When narratives about Lemuria arrived in colonial India, the country was going through a period when folklore was beginning to permeate historic knowledge as facts. As a result, Lemuria was quickly equated with Kumari Kandam.

Bhagavata-Purana, 10th Skanda. 

Image source .

The story of Kumari Kandam is not regarded as just a story, but seems to be laden with nationalistic sentiments. It has been claimed that the Pandiyan kings of Kumari Kandam were the rulers of the whole Indian continent, and that Tamil civilisation is the oldest civilisation in the world. When Kumari Kandam was submerged, its people spread across the world and founded various civilisations, hence the claim that the lost continent was also the cradle of human civilisation.

So, how much truth is there in the story of Kumari Kandam? According to researchers at India’s National Institute of Oceanography, the sea level was lower by 100 m about 14,500 years ago and by 60 m about 10,000 years ago. Hence, it is entirely possible that there was once a land bridge connecting the island of Sri Lanka to mainland India. As the rate of global warming increased between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the rising sea levels resulted in periodic flooding. This would have submerged prehistoric settlements that were located around the low-lying coastal areas of India and Sri Lanka. Stories of these catastrophic events may have been transmitted orally from one generation to another and finally written down as the story of Kumari Kandam.

One piece of evidence used to support the existence of Kumari Kandam is Adam’s Bridge (also called Rama’s Bridge), a chain of limestone shoals made up of sand, silt and small pebbles located in the Palk Strait extending 18 miles from mainland India to Sri Lanka.  This strip of land was once believed to be a natural formation, however, others argue that images taken by a NASA satellite depict this land formation to be a long broken bridge under the ocean's surface. 

The location of Adam's Bridge between India and Sri Lanka

The existence of a bridge in this location is also supported by another ancient legend.  The Ramayana tells the tale of Sita, Rama’s wife, being held captive on the island of Lanka. Rama commissions a massive building project to construct a bridge to transport his army of Vanara (ape men) across the ocean to Lanka. 

As with most so-called myths, it seems likely that there is at least some truth to the ancient Tamil legends of Kumari Kandam, but just how much, is yet to be determined.

By Ḏḥwty

References

Jayakaran, S. C., 2011`. The Lemuria Myth. [Online] Available at: 

• http://www.frontline.in/navigation/?type=static&page=archiveSearch&aid=20110422280809000&ais=08&avol=28

Mahalingam, N., 2010. Lemuria and Kumari Kandam. [Online] Available at: 

• http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/lemuria-and-kumari-kandam/article482101.ece

Parameswaran, N., 2005. Tamil civilisation - is it the oldest?. [Online] Available at:

•  http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=256

Wikipedia, 2014. Kumari Kandam. [Online] Available at: 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumari_Kandam

Wikipedia, 2014. Lemuria (continent). [Online] Available at: 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent)

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28-01-2021 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

VIDEO: Secret Video Archive Of UFO Recordings Released.

Area 51 is the most secret and most protected area of ​​the world by the US military. What is hidden in the bowels of an inaccessible base?
North of Las Vegas, near the Nevada desert territory is the size of 15,000 km square. It is the most secret and most protected area of ​​the world by the US military – Area 51. This is an area where the first conducted underground tests of nuclear weapons and where was the secret US military exercises. Later, there began research and training flights with the latest types of combat aircraft of the US Air Force. The base circulating different stories and myths, in particular regarding the existence of UFOs. It was built in 1957 as a military research center in drying lake.

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28-01-2021 om 20:42 geschreven door peter  

Edwin Starr once asked the musical question: “War – what is it good for?” and provided the musical answer: “Absolutely nothing.” You could “say it again” about black holes. While all of their negative qualities are well known – sucking up everything within their gravitational pull, including light – no one seems to have figured out what they might be good for … until now. An astrophysicist at New York’s Columbia University claims their energy can be harvested and used to power anything that needs massive amounts of fuel – and that is the best way for us to discover black-hole-sucking extraterrestrials. If they can do that, do we really want to meet them?

“Black holes are commonly surrounded by a hot ‘soup’ of plasma particles that carry a magnetic field. Our theory shows that when magnetic field lines disconnect and reconnect, in just the right way, they can accelerate plasma particles to negative energies and large amounts of black hole energy can be extracted.”

Physicists Luca Comisso from Columbia University and partner Felipe Asenjo from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile explain in a university press release the essence of their new paper, published in the journal Physical Review D. They theorize that this “hot soup of plasma” is generating energy just outside the event horizon of the black hole where it can be collected in a theoretical giant receptacle by a civilization intelligent enough to pull it off. Knowing we’re not that civilization, Comisso sticks with food to explain in simpler terms how this all works.

“It is like a person could lose weight by eating candy with negative calories. This might sound weird, but it can happen in a region called the ergosphere, where the spacetime continuum rotates so fast that every object spins in the same direction as the black hole.”

You heard what he said — negative calories!

It certainly does sound weird, but Asenjo further explains that it’s the high velocity between captured and escaping plasma particles that shoots out the stream of energy-charged – a process that beats the efficiency of any power plant on Earth.

“We calculated that the process of plasma energization can reach an efficiency of 150 percent, much higher than any power plant operating on Earth. Achieving an efficiency greater than 100 percent is possible because black holes leak energy, which is given away for free to the plasma escaping from the black hole.”

And it’s FREE! No wonder the smart aliens are pumping it into the galactic spaceships or fueling their death stars or whatever they might be using it for. We pitiful humans obviously can’t do this, even if we were less than 1,000 light years from the nearest black hole. However, we’re smart enough to figure out what this black hole energy extraction process might look like from far away, and that is what Comisso says will lead us to that superior alien civilization.

And maybe them to us?

We would LOVE to meet you pitiful humans.

Perhaps the words of Edwin Starr apply here too:

“What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
Say it again.”

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28-01-2021 om 18:42 geschreven door peter  

Every once in a while there is a case in the field that really raises eyebrows. These are the cases in which even the most open-minded and willing to believe are sometimes left speechless and wondering what to think. Such stories have become almost legendary within the field, and one of these is certainly the time a supposed Venusian emissary was a guest at the Pentagon.

In the winter of 1967, Harley Andrew Byrd, nephew to the late Rear Admiral Richard R.E. Byrd of the United States Navy, who was a high ranking official at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a part of Project Blue Book, got a harried and panicked call from the Police Department in Alexandria, Virginia. According to him, two policemen reported that they had seen a UFO had landed in a field, and a that tall man dressed in white had emerged, claiming to be from “The High Council” and calling himself “Valiant Thor.” This being was then purportedly picked up and taken to the Pentagon, where he was introduced to the Under Secretary of Defense, as well as Secretary of Defense Neil H McElroy, and then given VIP status and hurried off to see the president of the United States himself, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as the vice-president at the time, Richard Nixon. According to Byrd, Valiant Thor was from Venus, and spent some amount of time at the Pentagon speaking to the president about the world’s problems, and Byrd would say:

Commander James was on duty at the Security Clearance and Review for the branch officer of the Project Blue Book. He oversaw the meeting through official channels and reported the landing and meeting of the “space emissary”, as he was labeled by the Department of Defense, to a governing group of high military officials including Secretary of Defense F.F. Forestall and other scientific men of which there were twelve. They in turn made recommendations to the President and Cabinet members, the CIA, FBI, NSA, and so on. The landing of Valiant Thor was perhaps the first documented landing of a human-type alien by military officials. He contacted an individual in the Pentagon who was an advocate of the UFO alien situation. “Nancy Warren” in turn contacted a minister, who was also a private investigator and theologian, a Dr. Frank E. Stranges, who then met with this individual. Dr. Stranges had been a guest speaker at the National Evangelistic Center for two weeks.

Val Thor landed in Alexandria and met with the President to discuss the world’s problems and offer advice and counsel on how to deal with and eliminate them. He indicated to Mr. Eisenhower that the world was in a precarious situation and that if the world continued to proceed on a war footing – it would cause an economic imbalance throughout the world. He indicated that his race of people lived and dwelled underground and that many of the planets throughout the universe sustain life in this same manner. He also mentioned the waves of aliens who would land around the world to help with the Earth’s seemingly insurmountable problems. He stated that a group from a distant planetary system would be coming to give aid and data to help the Earth’s progress.

Alleged photo of Valiant Thor

Richard Nixon was apparently fascinated by Val Thor, and allegedly said to him:

You have certainly caused a stir… for an out-of-Towner. Of course, we are not totally convinced of anything just yet. But suffice it to say we are checking and double checking everything you say and do. When Sergeant Young from Alexandria radioed in and stated that you had just landed in a flying saucer, we thought Sergeant Young had flipped. Say, were you in on that UFO flap over Washington? You certainly had us all in a dither, if you were.

Frank E. Stranges would have a personal meeting with the entity and give much information of these interactions between Valiant Thor and the government in his book on the matter, the 1967 Stranger at the Pentagon, and would also go into depth about the alien’s appearance and behaviors. Stranges said that Val Thor looked like a perfectly normal human being, except that he had six fingers on each hand and could live for 500 years, and it also turned out that he wasn’t alone, having actually arrived with three companions, called Donn, Jill, and Taniya. Val Thor supposedly told him that they had been watching humanity closely since the atomic bombs in World War II, and sought to “begin a new era in knowledge, wisdom and understanding on our planet.” Curiously, Stranges would also claim that Valiant Thor had a deep interest in Christianity, even going as far as to say that Jesus was in fact an alien from outer space, and had spread His word across the galaxy. This might not be so surprising since Stranges just happened to be a travelling Evangelical preacher, and he would say:

He told me that his purpose in coming was to help mankind return to the Lord. He spoke in positive terms…always with a smile on his face. He said that man was further away from God than ever before, but there was still a good chance if man looks in the right place.

Apparently, Valiant Thor stayed there in Washington D.C. for a full 3 years on his mysterious mission, before suddenly dematerializing in 1960 to return to his home planet. The story was published in Stranges’ book and went on to become firmly entrenched in UFO lore as one of the most completely bizarre accounts on record, going on to be much discussed and debated, and even appearing on TV shows and in the media. However, if you have been paying attention so far you may perhaps see why it has all drawn skeptics to it like moths to a flame. The list of gripes against this outlandish tale is long. For one, Venus is far from what one would consider a traditionally habitable planet, so why would it produce a race of beings nearly indistinguishable from humans? Also, where is all of the evidence? He was here for 3 years, yet the only evidence that has been offered are some photographs of a man in a suit said to be him and one of a group of some clean-cut young people who Stranges claims to be Val, Donn, Jill, and Tanyia, but who seriously could be anyone at all. it is all pretty flimsy at best.

Valiant Thor and his Venusian friends

Another is that the credentials of Stranges and others involved in this case have been seriously called into question. There is no independent verification that Stranges ever had top security clearance at the Pentagon, and his self-proclaimed credentials have also been challenged, such as his assertion that he has Ph.Ds. in psychology, philosophy, and criminology, as there is no evidence that he ever earned such diplomas. It is curious, as he often calls himself Dr. Stranges despite being unable to prove that this actually fits. Indeed, there is no real corroboration on any of the people involved in any way. There is no evidence that a Harley Andrew Byrd ever had such top clearance at the Pentagon, or even that he had any relation to Admiral Byrd at all. Brian Dunning at the site Skeptoid would say of him:

“Harley Andrew Byrd” is probably not who he says he is. Records on Ancestry.com can’t really confirm or disprove the possibility that Admiral Byrd had a nephew by this name, but his story requires that he would have held a senior role at Project Blue Book with top security clearance and over a year of training behind him, all by the age of 18. When he went on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio show in 1995 it went south very quickly. He told ridiculous stories of Admiral Byrd’s adventures, including that the admiral entrusted him as a young boy with secret diaries telling of his contacts with aliens and Nazis. One listener wrote:

“[Harley Byrd] talks nonsense, makes all manner of bizarre claims about greys, sasquatch, Aryans, and other alien types, and assiduously commercializes the whole for profit… Harley Byrd is actually a huckster [who] merely poses as Byrd’s grandson to sell these bogus diaries.”

It certainly is all pretty out-there, and is likely to be scoffed at by most in the general mainstream. There are plenty of inconsistencies and red flags in the story, and yet it has become a pretty indelible mainstay within the field. For some it is one of those persistent stories we like to brush under the carpet and pretend doesn’t exist. For others it is a point of debate and discussion. For others still it is enough to make one just shrug their shoulders and wonder. Was Stranges telling the truth or is this all complete woo woo nonsense? Whichever side you fall on, the story of Valiant Thor has become fairly legendary, and at the very least is another one of the many other truly bizarre cases that inevitably pop up from time to time.

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28-01-2021 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

The Five Most Mysterious & Shocking UFO Sightings Ever Reported in Ireland

28-01-2021 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

If you live in Ireland, you may want to look up towards the sky as the country has the most UFO sightings in all of Europe. According to data collected by Psychic World from the National UFO Reporting Center State Report Index, Ireland has the most UFO sightings, followed by France and then Spain.

A total of 105 recorded UFO sightings have occurred in Ireland with the encounters lasting an average of 13 minutes each. Most of the sightings in Ireland consist of mysterious bright lights. However, bright lights are the second most common form of sightings in all of Europe (the lights are usually red, blue, or white) while unidentified flying disks are the most common occurrences in the entire continent.

Northern Ireland reported a total of 6 UFO sightings last year in 2020 (two more than the previous year) which may have been partly because of the pandemic where so many people were staying home and spending time outside.

As for the Northern Ireland sightings in 2020, the first one was reported on March 13^th of a UFO “with many flashing lights making no noise” in Dunmurry which lasted about half an hour. Six days later, a “flying object” that looked like solar panels in Bangor was reported. Then there was a “UFO going down the Springfield Road” on April 3^rd.

The most interesting report came in on May 12^th when a man claimed to have been dropped off at Bangor Marina by a UFO. The last two reports consisted of one sighting on August 22^nd where three UFOs were witnessed flying over Belfast, and then on September 26^th when a man in the Ballygomartin area claimed to have seen six UFOs flying over his house.

David Moore, who is the editor of Astronomy Ireland Magazine, stated that more people were stargazing during the lockdown. He went on to say, “About 90% of all reports end up having a straightforward explanation,” adding, “It’s the few that don’t that are really intriguing. But the guy claiming to be dropped off at Bangor Marina, that’s very difficult to explain.”

Chris McMurray, who is a chairperson of the Northern Ireland UFO Society, weighed in by stating that the majority of the increased sightings of “unknown aerial phenomena” have occurred around the Cavehill and Black Mountain area in addition to the Mourne region. “A common theme that we notice is that sightings of anomalous lights tend to be seen near certain geographical features, such as the granite mountains and other areas of a crystalline nature,” he noted, adding, “This could be because, as widely accepted by ufologists and paranormal investigators alike, these can help amplify the natural energies of the Earth.”

France came in second place with a total of 71 sightings, but their encounters only lasted an average of 6 minutes. Spain is a close third with 70 sightings lasting an average of 12 minutes, but their encounters consisted mostly of diamond-shaped objects in the sky.

As for the longest sightings in all of Europe, they occurred in Monaco where the estimated time lasted 45 minutes. And if you don’t want to see a UFO, your best bet is to move to San Marino where they hadn’t had any official encounters or Georgia where there were only two short sightings of mysterious fireballs that each lasted about 15 seconds.

In the entire continent of Europe, there were a total of 994 UFO sightings with an average duration of 12 minutes each.

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4

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28-01-2021 om 17:08 geschreven door peter  

According to the terrified photographer he was ducking and flinching as it flew past and could not believe what he witnessed. 

We can rule out that it would be an insect or bird that flies by just in front of the camera lens as the slow motion footage shows the object moving away from the photographer's location at a high speed until it disappears. Mufon. 

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28-01-2021 om 15:59 geschreven door peter  

Triangle-shaped formation filmed over Naples, Florida 27-Jan-2021

This was filmed over Naples, Florida on 27th January 2021.

Witness report: 

Went to the beach for sunset. Noticed a very bright object.

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28-01-2021 om 15:51 geschreven door peter  

Can you name the top 12 brightest objects in the solar system? How many have you seen without the aid of binoculars or a telescope?

South Carolina sunrise through a piece of beach glass.

Image via Fran Aquino.

What are the brightest objects in our solar system that you can see in your sky? The sun is the very brightest, of course, but you might be surprised by some of the other objects that make the list. You can see the first seven objects on this list using just your eyes, even from cities and suburbs. The last items on the list are fainter and therefore more challenging, and likely require a dark-sky site and some optical aid.

In astronomy, the brightness of objects is measured by what’s called magnitude. The lower the number, the brighter the object. So, 1st-magnitude objects indicate the brightest stars in our sky, 2nd-magnitude fainter ones, 3rd-magnitude fainter still, and so on. Note that some objects, some planets for example, are even brighter than 1st magnitude, peaking in negative numbers at their brightest.

Without optical aid, the human eye can see objects to around 6th magnitude, in optimum conditions and under dark skies. There are about a dozen natural solar system objects that are, in theory, visible to the unaided eye. In practice, the fainter ones are very difficult to see with the eye alone, but perhaps possible for those keen vision and true darkness.

Transient objects, such as very bright meteors or comets, aren’t included in this list. Extraordinary meteors can turn the night sky as bright as day, and some comets reach stunning brightnesses, too, such as Ikeya-Seki in 1965, which reached a whopping -10 magnitude and could be seen at noon. But because they’re only in the sky on a temporary basis, and not something that can regularly or consistently be observed, these objects aren’t included here. We also don’t include manmade objects, such as satellites and the International Space Station. Try the Heavens-Above website, if you’re interested in observing human-made Earth-orbiting objects.

Here are the top 12 brightest natural solar system objects, in order from brightest to dimmest:

1. The sun.

No surprise here. The sun shines at magnitude -26.7. Technically, the sun can’t even be looked at without special safety filters to protect your eyes. Gazing at the sun directly without special protective filters can cause blindness. That said, now would be a good time to equip yourself with filters for solar observing, and to begin a program of regular sun viewing. You might know that the sun increases and decreases in activity in a cycle lasting 11 years. The new cycle – Solar Cycle 25 – was officially announced in September 2020. At EarthSky Community Photos, we’re beginning to see more sunspots! And more are surely coming, increasing in number to a peak five or so years from now.

• Read more: Top 7 tips for observing the sun safely

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Victor C. Rogus wrote on January 20, 2021: “The sunspot formerly known as AR2797 has split in two: AR2797 and AR2798. Trailing sunspot AR2798 is crackling with C-class solar flares.” Thank you, Victor!

2. The moon.

The moon varies in brightness depending on what phase it’s in. At its full phase when it’s the brightest, it tops out at magnitude -12.7. On the other hand, the moon in its crescent phase shines at only about magnitude -6. If you’re a deep-sky observer, the moon is bright enough to ruin your night vision, meaning it’ll prevent you from getting the best view of distant, faint star clusters, nebulae and galaxies. If you’re using a telescope, the moon should be your last stop during a night of observing. To the eye alone, though, there’s nothing more beautiful than a bright moon shining in the night sky, casting its light and creating moon shadows in the landscape all around you. Visit EarthSky’s moon phases page to learn the dates of major moon phases throughout 2020.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kannan A in Singapore captured this image on January 26, 2021, and wrote: “The waxing gibbous moon rising from behind the apartment block. The moon was 94.1% illuminated and distance from Earth was 391,375 km [243,000 miles] away from Earth when this photo was taken. It was still very much a day moon, as the skies were still bright at this time.” Thank you, Kannan A!

3. Venus.

The closest planet to Earth, one step inward in orbit around the sun, is also the brightest planet. It can shine as brightly as magnitude -4.7, bright enough to be seen in daylight if you know just where to look. The brightness of Venus is thanks in part to its proximity to Earth and also, largely, to its thick, reflective clouds. As with all the other solar system objects, Venus varies in brightness depending on a number of factors, including how close it is to Earth and what phase it’s in. Yes, as a planet orbiting inward from Earth, Venus shows phases! Venus was in our morning sky – in the east before sunrise – throughout late 2020. Soon, though, it’ll be gone from our skies for a few months, traveling behind the sun from Earth. Venus will return to our evening sky in May 2021. Find Venus’ location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Catherine Evans caught Venus near daybreak on January 17, 2021, from the Edna Valley in San Luis Obispo, California. She wrote: “Closer and closer to the sunrise, so it won’t be seen much longer.” So true, Catherine! Thank you. Even into early February 2021, if you have a clear sky to the eastern horizon, you might still be able to snag a last look at Venus. Look very low in the east before sunup. If you can’t see it, try sweeping with binoculars.

4. Mars.

The red planet is the second-closest planet to Earth after Venus, and it doesn’t often reach its maximum magnitude of -2.9. But when it does … wow! What a sight to behold. Just like other planets outside Earth’s orbit, when Mars is brightest around the time of its opposition, when it’s opposite the sun from Earth, rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. Mars’ oppositions come when our faster Earth moves between Mars and the sun. That happens about every two years. Some Mars oppositions are better than others. Mars was particularly bright in 2018, and its last opposition – around mid-October 2020 – was a good one, too. For about a month around the 2020 opposition, Mars was brighter than Jupiter. At other times (in fact, most of the time), Mars is relatively faint. Sometimes it’s very faint indeed, when it’s on the far side of the solar system from us, shining across its nearly-maximum distance from Earth (about 250 million miles, or 400 million km). After all, Mars is just a little planet, littler than Earth. So its brightness waxes and wanes dramatically as we and Mars move around the sun. Find Mars’ location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Niko Powe in Kiwonee, Illinois, captured Mars next to the Harvest Moon on October 2, 2020. Niko said: “There was a layer of clouds but these two’s appearance would not be denied.”

5. Jupiter.

Because Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, some mistakenly believe it’s the brightest planet. But not so. Jupiter’s greater distance from us lets Venus and Mars, our neighbors, shine more brightly. Jupiter is nearly always brighter than Mars, though (except when Mars is at its best). At its maximum, Jupiter shines at magnitude -2.8, nearly as bright as Mars’s peak of -2.9, and brighter than Sirius, the sky’s brightest star, which shines at magnitude -1.4. Jupiter was named for the ancient king of the gods. And it has a king-like aspect, always shining at the same dazzling brightness, not changing in brightness like Mars. Plus Jupiter moves in a stately way around the sky; it isn’t tied to the sunrise or sunset like Venus. Come to know Jupiter, and you’ll enjoy spotting in your sky for much of every year. Find Jupiter’s location for each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

6. Mercury.

Surprise! The rarely-seen planet Mercury shines more brightly than Saturn at its best. Mercury can reach -1.9 magnitude. That’s brighter than Sirius, the sky’s brightest star. But – because Mercury is our solar system’s innermost planet – this world, more than any other in our solar system, is tied to the sun in our sky. It’s always seen shortly before sunrise, or shortly after sunset, and never gets very high in the night sky. Therefore its brightness is often offset by the fact that you’re viewing the planet in twilight and not in a nice dark sky. Still, Mercury’s brightness will surprise you!

7. Saturn.

The ringed planet Saturn is stunning in a telescope, and it’s also an easy catch without optical aid. With the eye alone, you won’t see its rings, but you will see Saturn’s golden color and steady light. At magnitude +0.7, Saturn outshines most stars and is on a par with most of the brightest stars. Plus – because it orbits our sun beyond Earth’s orbit – it’s seen more often than Mercury by casual observers. Saturn is often around deep into the night, when its brightness contrasts with the depths of a dark night sky.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Dan Wyman in Oceanside, California, captured Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and a flock of birds on January 11, 2021. Thank you, Dan! Find Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury each month in EarthSky’s planet guide.

8. Ganymede.

If you’re a sky-watcher, you’ve probably seen all the objects mentioned so far without optical aid, knowingly or not. But have you seen Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede? Binoculars will let you spot Ganymede circling Jupiter when the satellite is at its brightest, approximately 4.6 magnitude. Ganymede takes about seven Earth-days to complete an orbit around Jupiter, and the other Galilean moons take varying amounts of time (Io nearly two days, Europa about four days, Callisto 17 days). So on any given night, you’ll find the moons in ever-shifting locations with respect to Jupiter. They look like little “stars” strung out in a line that bisects Jupiter. Thus you’ll want to use software, for example SkyandTelescope.com’s interactive Jupiter moon page, to let you know which dot circling Jupiter is Ganymede, from the location, date and time at which you’re looking. Which leads us to …

9. Io.

The next item on the solar system brightness list is Jupiter’s volcanic satellite, Io. At a little larger than our moon, Io is the innermost Galilean satellite and shines at magnitude 5.0 when it’s at its best. Can you see Io – or Ganymede – with the eye alone? In theory, you should be able to. But in practice they’re not that easy to see in the glare from Jupiter itself. Some observers with renowned vision (for example, Steven James O’Meara) have claimed to have seen Ganymede with the unaided eye. But such claims are rare. You’ll likely need binoculars for Ganymede or Io, or Europa (see below). Small telescopes show all four Galilean moons in their never-ending dance around Jupiter.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | John Nelson was at Puget Sound, Washington, on September 24, 2020, when he captured this image. See Jupiter and its moons in the upper left? You might need to view this photo larger to see Jupiter’s moons. John wrote: “All four Galilean moons were visible. I brightened them up just a bit in Photoshop Elements so they would be easier to see in a photo that you can’t zoom in on. From left to right, the moons are Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and just to Jupiter’s right is Io.” Thank you, John.

10. Vesta.

The fourth asteroid to be discovered, Vesta, is the only asteroid to make our list of brightest solar system objects. Vesta is the second-largest asteroid, after Ceres. Vesta can reach magnitude 5.1 at its closest approach to Earth. Its opposition – a highlight of the year for asteroid observers – is coming up on March 4, 2021. This is when Earth will sweep more or less between Vesta and the sun, bringing the asteroid closest to us for this year. Because it doesn’t have a bright nearby locator, as Ganymede and Io have with Jupiter, it’s best to watch for Vesta for a couple of nights in a row to see which dim “star” in the area appears to move slowly in front of the fixed star background. Try TheSkyLive for charts and other information on how to observe Vesta.

11. Europa.

We bounce back out to Jupiter for the next item on the list, Europa, another of Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons. Europa is a great object to attempt to view and ruminate on, because it may harbor an ocean – and possibly life – beneath its icy crust. Europa just makes our list of the brightest objects in the solar system at magnitude 5.2. Again, we recommend using observing software, such as SkyandTelescope.com’s interactive Jupiter moon page, to know which Galilean moon is which.

12. Uranus,

finally. Many know that planet Uranus is theoretically visible to the unaided eye. The seventh planet from the sun appears at magnitude 5.6 at its best. Uranus is most easily picked up with the unaided eye after first pinning down its location with binoculars or a telescope. It has a disk instead of a pinpoint image through an optical device and may even appear faintly bluish green. It is particularly easy to find on the occasions that it pairs up closely with objects easier to locate, such as Mars.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Victor C. Rogus in Sedona, Arizona, captured this image of Uranus and Mars through his telescope on January 20, 2021. He wrote: “The sky this evening was fair at best, but I was able to capture this image of an over-exposed Mars and the planet Uranus through thin clouds. Light takes 2 hours, 43 minutes and 27 seconds to travel from Uranus and arrive to us.” Thank you, Victor!

• Bottom line: Here are the top 12 brightest natural solar system objects, in order from brightest to dimmest. If you’ve seen every one of these objects, with or without optical aid, congrats!

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

28-01-2021 om 00:26 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s space helicopter is one month away from landing on Mars

Helicopter to Mars, submarine to Titan, what’s next? A subway on Venus?

 by Alexandru Micu

Did you ever dare to dream of the day you’d see a helicopter in space? Well, rest easy, your watch has come to an end — NASA’s Ingenuity, the “Mars Helicopter”, is one month away from touching down on the red planet.

Ingenuity is currently onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, the US’ latest Mars-bound rover. It’s the first American mission to Mars since 2018’s InSight, but it was only one of three missions sent out to Mars in 2020 alongside the UAE’s Hope orbiter and China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, lander, and rover.

While all of them are very exciting, Ingenuity will be the first helicopter to actually be sent to space, ever. NASA is expecting it to touch down on Mars on February 18.

Flying on new horizons

“NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is the first aircraft humanity has sent to another planet to attempt powered, controlled flight,” NASA explains in a press kit. “If its experimental flight test program succeeds, the data returned could benefit future explorations of the Red Planet – including those by astronauts – by adding the aerial dimension, which is not available today.”

The helicopter is pretty small, similar to a medium-large commercial drone, and comes equipped with two carbon-fiber rotors. These will spin at around 2,400 rpm in different directions so as to stabilize the craft in flight. That speed of rotation is many times faster than those used by passenger helicopters on Earth, due to their smaller size and Mars‘ thinner atmosphere both. Since the air is thinner there, rotors have to put in a lot of extra work to generate the same lift they would produce on our planet.

If all goes well, Ingenuity could completely change how we explore Mars, and other planets with atmospheres. Up to now we’ve been using rovers, which have quite a few benefits (ground vehicles have great energy efficiency since they don’t need to stay aloft, and weight is much less of an issue, for example). However, they’re also much slower than any other vehicles in general, as they have to contend with terrain features. If Ingenuity manages to do its job, and do it well — and, especially, if it can withstand Mars’ harsh environment — space helicopters will definitely become much more common in the future.

But until then, Perseverance still needs to reach its target, and Ingenuity still needs to prove it can fly on Mars. Fingers crossed.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

27-01-2021 om 23:59 geschreven door peter