The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
12-03-2021
Anunnaki *****Breaking news*****
Anunnaki *****Breaking news*****
ANUNNAKI….
The Annunaki are the ones that began civilization on Earth, by creating Man with part of their own DNA. And yes, Man was initially created as a goldmining slave. The Annunaki then upgraded Man to become sentient and gave him this world to have dominion over.
The Reptilians then came to Earth, and they have secretly enslaved Man ever since. The Annunaki have returned to free Man from this bondage….there was a lot of Pleiadian seeding in the Nordic lines, but since the Pleiadians and
Annunaki are essentially the same base race, there isn’t a lot of difference.
If you are Rh-, you have a direct connection to the Annunaki. If you are Rh+, your line is one of the created lines.
High IQ, eyes in the hazel, blue to green spectrum, industrious/innovative, protective of family, very high ethical and moral code, physically attractive (though this is of course in the eye of the beholder). But again, one should not assume that any of these traits denote “superior” genetics, because the infusion of other seeder groups has made such an assumption impossible.
There’s an old saying… “What you are is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God.”
Because the body affects the spirit.
A man born in Iceland is different than a man born in Africa. These differences affect how a person will be embraced by those around him. Each world that created seedlines here, wanted to harvest souls that would fit into their world’s homogenous culture. Since mixed seedlines have learned to live harmoniously together her (occasionally), then this world will be used for mixed seeds that are found worthy.
Annunaki teleportation technology isn’t quite the same as what you’ve seen on Star Trek. The Annunaki are masters of transphasic technology, which is the science of changing the molecular vibration of an object, so it can operate within the laws of a different phase… I’ll explain.
If you wanted to transport from the planet to an orbiting ship, a transtator beam would vibrate your body at the molecular level, taking you out of phase with your surroundings, this allows you to pass through solid matter. A second magnetic (tractor) beam would lock onto the magnetic poles of your molecules.
The magnetic beam lifts and delivers you to the waiting ship, where a third transtator beam returns your vibration to its original phase.
We often use a variation of this that doesn’t change the phase of the person, but instead changes the phase of anything the person passes through during transport.
The Galactic Federation of Light (GFL) just takes UFO footage and claims it for themselves. The UFO wave that is now filling your skies, came right after Lord RayEl announced their imminent arrival, so those ships are NOT GFL, they are Annunaki ships, under Lord RayEl’s command….our Lord wants you to love and learn, but this is also the time of judgment, so there will be fear in the hearts of those who are not worthy.
Enki stayed after Enlil left, so history recorded his version of events, but it was Enki that caused the worker revolt so that the necessity of creating slaves would arise, then Enki made the slaves in such a way, that they would be part Annunaki, and thus, an obligation to preserve them was forced upon the Annunaki. And why did Enki do all of this? Because he wanted to create a kingdom on Earth for himself, with obedient slaves. Hardly humanity’s hero.
Enlil was the responsible one, he was the one against creating a retarded version of the Annunaki, simply to enslave them, his decisions were based on morality and mercy. Once there was no turning back, it was Enlil who nurtured humanity along its path to sentience.
2 Timothy 3:1-3 Is absolutely today’s world
What are angels?
“Angel” is an occupational designation within the Annunaki Empire. There are people who have volunteered for angelic duty from many races within the Empire.
Transtator technology is behind our interstellar communications and the way in which our ships travel faster than light. The visible light spectrum you all see is only the smallest fraction of light’s full spectrum, and at different levels in the light spectrum, light travels at different speeds. We change the phasic state of a wave or an object, to match the vibration of these higher
levels, and then we can move an object within those physical laws of speed. When we return to this phase, we’ve, by relativity, traveled farther and faster than the speed of light in this spectrum.
What are Reptilians?
The Reptilians are the armies of Satan, and the Anunnaki fleet has arrived to assist Lord RayEl to remove Satan and his legions from Earth.
Reptilian cloaking technology
Eyes and teeth are quickly covered and uncovered by lids and lips. The visual masking device the Reptilians use sometimes has a short lag time because of the rapid lid and lip movement. It’s basically a system glitch.
This is why in the old days, commoners were forbidden to look royalty in the eyes.
Everything is energy, and when broken down to its base form, one could call it a hologram.
Almost every public figure is either Reptilian or under Reptilian control. This has been a very large operation, and influencing/educating the masses has been their priority one, so they have left nothing to chance.
The Nephilim
The Nephilim were the giants, they were crossbreeds between Annunaki men and Earth women.
Genesis 6:1-4 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man for ever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Yeshua’s imprint on the Shroud of Turin
The imprint on the shroud was caused by the old-style transporters the Annunaki used. Back then they were not used on living things, only for transporting cargo, because the process of molecular acceleration used to make an object change its phasic state, allowing it to pass through another object, caused the accelerated object to heat up considerably. As most of you know from basic physics, molecular acceleration produces heat, hence the scorching of the shroud. Fortunately, the modern transporters use a cool-beam technology….the acceleration process does release light. And no, there is no published information on the cool-beam method the Annunaki uses… At least not yet….it is a matter of degrees, but there is a level that is acceptable to the rest of the neighborhood. Man has been quarantined here, so he could reach that level, and not pose a danger to others in this region of space.
In fairness, your species started off from a deficit position, and you’ve come a long way in a relatively short period of time.
The Pleiadians are real, they are “cousins” of the Anunnaki, and they have been working on Earth for a long time. Most of their work involved seeding the Nordic lines. The video is not made by real Pleiadians though. They are both capable of both good and evil, but they possess an enlightened moral core that drives them to do good.
Lord RayEl is half Anunnaki, and half Human. His body is Human, but (as we all watched during the Jerusalem Holy Spirit event) his Spirit is Anunnaki. Lord RayEl announced “The Armies of Heaven are fast approaching” on May 21,
2011 address. They were still about 6 months away, traveling toward Earth at high speed. The majority of the fleet arrived in November through January, and have been parked in orbit by Earth, Mars, and the Sun ever since.
One must be careful not to turn the Anunnaki into magicians. They are immensely powerful, but they do obey most of the laws of physics. When they needed gold, they dug for it.
The heaviest Anunnaki and Pleiadian strains are usually found in caucasian lines, but the Reptilians spread their seedline almost everywhere, so there really isn’t a good way to differentiate seedlines by sight. We know how people love to segregate themselves and assume superiority/inferiority, based on things that don’t matter as much as a person’s quality of character, so we are saving this for last, so as not to put another reason for discrimination on the table.
Anunnaki spirit yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that his last incarnation on Earth was as a British King. The reason that the last language on Earth shall be English, is because the Anunnaki speak this as their preferred language. It was introduced and promoted on Earth for this reason.
Zephaniah 3:9 “For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.”
Different groups have made individual contacts, but not to create human ambassadors or channels. The Anunnaki run the show on Earth, so no alien group is going to speak unauthorized. Now that Christ is here, everything official comes through us.
As to the aliens in question, there is no such thing as “interdimensional beings”, we all have height, width, and depth, which means that we all occupy 3-dimensional space. What is described as interdimensional beings, are simply aliens using transphasic technology. This technology allows them to vibrate at different frequencies, thereby removing themselves from your visible light spectrum.
Time does not exist, it is not a dimension nor a physical construct, it is an artificial metric used for measuring growth and duration. Do not be fooled by physicists with unquantifiable theories. Gravity is simply magnetism, and localized gravitational fields can interrupt the pull of the Earth’s field.
The NSA conducts covert operations of this nature, as a branch of the U.S. Intelligence infrastructure, they engage in both active and responsive projects under the umbrella of National Security. The FBI is a law enforcement agency.
Some have asked why seedline mixing was so hated among the ancients? As we’ve explained, the groups that seeded this world wished to harvest matured souls at the end of this process and return them to their worlds. Their worlds are homogenous, so as to keep them peaceful, and here is an example of why they prefer a homogenous society. Iceland is one of the most homogenous societies on Earth, and a society that carries some of the strongest concentrations of Annunaki/Pleiadian seedlines. It is modern, peaceful, and nearly free of violent crime.
Unfortunately, racism does creep into homogenous societies, but it is also in non-homogenous societies, the difference being that in non-homogenous societies, racism often leads to violence. Don’t worry, a good soul is a good soul, and that is the criteria by which residency in the New Kingdom shall be judged.
The Annunaki were somewhat like humanity at one time, but they will better explain their history later. God is divine, but Man doesn’t fully understand what that means. The Bible never says that God created the universe. He created the Heavens and the Earth. Heavens are settled planets within the Empire, as Earth shall soon be. Satan is not God’s enemy, Satan is Man’s adversary. There are other rulers of planets, but they are part of the Council of the Empire. Yes, Lord RayEl can and will save the world.
The Empire is vast, but the Council exists because of different ideologies. There are worlds outside of the Empire, but I don’t personally know of anyone desiring to be among them. The Empire is mostly centered in this galaxy, but there has been tremendous expansion recently. I really should leave it to them to explain fully.
Once souls have reached a safe level of sentience, maturity, and enlightenment, they are allowed to join the greater communion of worlds.
The people of Earth (those who have reached this level), are about to graduate into this communion. There is a cooperative agreement between all of the seeders, but the original plan was to segregate the seed-lines, so the harvest would be simple. Mature souls from each seed-line would just go back to their homeworld, but the mixing of seed-lines has forced other options.
As anyone who has studied the history of the gods knows, the Anunnaki were/are very incestuous, which is why today’s royal families are so incestuous. BUT… The Anunnaki see people as spirits, not bodies, to them the body is only a suit that can be easily changed, so to them, it isn’t incest like humans see it. Actually, we are debating which form of transportation to use at the moment. If things are still relatively calm, then we will just use standard transportation, but if things are really bad, the Annunaki fleet is on standby.
And you will all have the opportunity to meet and work alongside Lord RayEl at the Ops Center. Triangles are the easiest shape to create and maintain with force fields when ships gate through stars. The biggest hassle for moving ships through interstellar space is fuel storage, but when using stars as “gas stations”, one can fuel up at one star and use that fuel to travel to the next star, so travel then becomes quite efficient.
Generally, the only fuel stored when “gating”, is the fuel that will be used while traveling at the destination system. When ready to travel to the next star, the course is plotted, a rather large thrust is engaged, and because of the relatively low drag of space, it is like riding a bullet from one star to the next. This method is not the same as subspace (warp) travel, which takes a ship into a higher spectral bandwidth, allowing it to reach near-light speed in that bandwidth, and faster than light speed (relative) in this bandwidth.
Black people are part Anunnaki, but “Humans” came later. The original creations were called “Man”, but when the Reptilians took over the project,
they infused their DNA into parts of the population, creating HU-Man (HU is an ancient word for serpent gods). Man and HU-Man later intermixed naturally, creating “human beings”, which were considered monsters by early society. Enki wanted to keep black people as slaves, so he refused to give them enough Anunnaki DNA to evolve them genetically, so the only way to get more of the Anunnaki DNA, was to integrate black people into Western societies, where natural intermixing increased the infusion of Anunnaki DNA. If you look at a black man from Canada, compared to one whose family line has never left.
Africa, you can really see the difference. It was a rough process, but the black man has made it. As disgusting as slavery is, it was the fastest way to force integrate Africans into Western society. There was no other way the white man would have accepted the black man into Western culture at the time… This way, as harsh as it was, both sides gave the other something needed. Because it most closely resembles Anunnaki society. The New Kingdom will closely resemble a modern and matured version of the West. I’m glad to help brother.
Satan does what he does because God wants him to strengthen Man through adversity because adversity does build character. There is of course a limit to that. A child starving to death in an Ethiopian desert isn’t learning anything that will make him worthy of the New Kingdom, he is only suffering needlessly… But his suffering is teaching a valuable and terrible lesson to others.
The reason for all the madness in the world is because Christ/Isa/HaMashiac has returned and is walking the earth today. And the media & governments are trying to cover it up.
'World's oldest impact crater' isn't an impact crater at all! 62-mile-wide Maniitsoq structure was created by geological processes 3 billion years ago and NOT a meteorite strike, scientists claim
'World's oldest impact crater' isn't an impact crater at all! 62-mile-wide Maniitsoq structure was created by geological processes 3 billion years ago and NOT a meteorite strike, scientists claim
Experts argued in 2012 that the Maniitsoq area of Greenland was an impact site
The crater had been eroded away, but deep signs of shock remained, they said
Such included signs of rocks being pulverised and a large magnetic anomaly
However, researchers led from Canada have rebutted this controversial concept
Some rocks in the 'crater' are identical to those found outside of the 'impact' site
And there was not evidence of impact shock in tiny grains of the mineral zircon
The 'world's oldest impact crater' — the vast Maniitsoq structure that lies on the coast of west Greenland — is actually nothing of the sort, geologists have claimed.
In 2012, an international team of researchers proposed that the 62 mile (100 kilometre) -wide structure was formed by a giant impact some 3 billion years ago.
There is no crater-shaped bowl in Maniitsoq. This, the researchers argued, eroded away, as the present surface was buried 14 miles down at the time of the impact.
Instead the team pointed to a magentic anomaly as well as signs of circular deep-crustal crushing — which they said was evidence of the penetrating impact shock.
This was met with scepticism, however, with some experts claiming that the Maniitsoq structure did not meet enough of the criteria to be classified as a crater.
Now, researchers led from Canada have shown that the structure was indeed created by the exact same, regular geological process as the surrounding area.
In fact, some of the magmatic rocks at the core of the alleged crater were identical to those found in an adjacent region, outside the proposed impact zone.
The 'world's oldest impact crater' — the vast Maniitsoq structure that lies on the coast of west Greenland — is actually nothing of the sort, geologists have claimed. Pictured: Finnefjeld mountain, which researchers claimed back in 2012 was the core of a remnant impact structure
In 2012, an international team of researchers proposed that the 62 mile (100 kilometre) -wide structure was formed by a giant impact some 3 billion years ago. Pictured: a geological (main) and aeromagnetic (inset) map of the Maniitsoq region on Greenland's western coastline
THE ARCHEAN EON
The Archean is the second of Earth's geological eons, spanning from around 4–2.5 billion years ago.
At this time, the planet had cooled sufficiently for the continents to form and life on Earth was just beginning.
Rock outcrops dating back to the Archean eon have been found in various places across the globe — including Australia, Greenland, Scotland and Wyoming in the US.
They usually appear as granite-rich remains of continental crust, or heavily metamorphized deep-water sediment.
The hunt now continues for impact craters from the Archean eon, 4–2.5 billion years ago, when the continents were newly minted and life on Earth was just beginning.
Evidence for intense impact activity during this period can be found in the iconic craters on the moon's surface — but their terrestrial counterparts remain elusive.
It is possible than none actually remain, and that any evidence that once existed has been long ago eroded away or buried underneath much younger rock.
The study debunking the impact hypothesis was undertaken by geologist Chris Yakymchuk of the University of Waterloo, in Canada, and his colleagues.
'Our results conclusively rule out the proposal that much of the rock mass in the Maniitsoq region formed by an Archean meteorite impact,' the team wrote.
This, they added, 'leaves the 2.23 billion-year-old Yarrabubba structure in Western Australia as the oldest confirmed terrestrial impact structure.'
'The source craters for Archean-aged impact ejecta remain elusive on Earth.'
In their study, Professor Yakymchuk and his team combined mapping of geological outcrops in the field with rock dating and chemical analysis to get to the bottom of how the Maniitsoq structure was formed.
They found that the odd magnetic readings identified in the previous study do not persist over the wider area, as would be expected if this signature was formed by an impact event — and nor did magnetic scans reveal any circular impact structures.
The researchers analysed 5,587 grains of a mineral called zircon, looking for evidence of impact shock on their crystallographic structure.
'Zircon crystals in the rock are like little time capsules,' said Professor Yakymchuk.
'They preserve ancient damage caused by shockwaves you get from a meteorite impact. We found no such damage in them.'
The researchers analysed 5,587 grains of a mineral called zircon, looking for evidence of impact shock on their crystallographic structure — but found none. Pictured: a selection of zircon grains analysed by the researchers, as seen through a scanning electron microscope. The colours indicate the orientation of the crystal structure. Had the grains been subjected to a massive impact shock, this deformation would manifest as different colours in single grains
Moreover, analysis of a oxygen isotopes in zircons revealed no evidence that the rocks in the Maniitsoq structure were ever subject to an influx of hot seawater through impact-forged cracks, as had previously been proposed.
Had water altered the rocks in the area, they would have become enriched in a lighter isotope of oxygen that is relatively more common in seawater than rocks.
The team's investigation also revealed that some rocks that were claimed to have melted and reformed as a result of the high-energy impact were actually some 40 million years younger than previously thought.
Finally, the team found a swathe of rocks cross cutting the proposed impact site that were at least 100 million years younger but had also been subjected to burial, heat and deformation.
It would not be possible, the researchers explained, for these rocks and evidence for an ancient impact to co-exist together in the rock record — the latter would not survive such modification processes.
The study debunking the impact hypothesis was undertaken by geologist Chris Yakymchuk and colleagues. 'Our results conclusively rule out the proposal that much of the rock mass in the Maniitsoq region formed by an Archean meteorite impact,' the team wrote
'I try to keep an open mind about everything in science, especially until you see the rocks themselves,' Professor Yakymchuk told Massive Science.
However, he added, 'after seeing the rocks, it was kind of "Huh? These don't look that different from rocks I've seen elsewhere in the world."
'So either we missed impact structures everywhere on Earth or this wasn't one.'
'You have to take everything together and say, okay, what is the simplest explanation for all the features we see?' Professor Yakymchuk continued.
'And the simplest explanation is that this is not an impact,' he concluded.
If you look at the moon on a clear night through a pair of ordinary, hand-held binoculars, you'll see a multitude of meteorite craters.
Some are larger than 621 miles (1000 kilometres) in diameter and readily visible with the naked eye.
Through the first 500 million years of Solar System history, both the Moon and the Earth were constantly bombarded with a multitude of small and large meteorites and comets.
Some scientists even think that life was brought to the Earth by comets.
The Moon has preserved the remains of thousands of impacts, but on Earth only about 180 such impact structures are known, and most of them are very small, young and rapidly decaying.
Contrary to the Moon, the Earth is a dynamic planet with plate tectonics, mountain belts and erosion.
This means that most impact structures are eroded away, destroyed by mountain building processes or gradually buried by younger deposits over the course of geological time.
World's Oldest Meteor Crater, Not Caused by Impact Meteorite Impact
World's Oldest Meteor Crater, Not Caused by Impact Meteorite Impact
Several years after scientists discovered what was considered the oldest crater a meteorite made on the planet, another team found it’s actually the result of normal geological processes.
Credit: NASA
During fieldwork at the Archean Maniitsoq structure in Greenland, an international team of scientists led by the University of Waterloo’s Chris Yakymchuk found the features of this region are inconsistent with an impact crater. In 2012, a different team identified it as the remnant of a three-billion-year-old meteorite crater.
Archean Maniitsoq structure in Greenland
Credit: University of Waterloo
“Zircon crystals in the rock are like little time capsules,” said Yakymchuk, a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “They preserve ancient damage caused by shockwaves you get from a meteorite impact. We found no such damage in them.”
Additionally, there are multiple places where the rocks melted and recrystallized deep in the Earth. This process—called metamorphism—would occur almost instantaneously if produced from an impact. The Waterloo-led team found it happened 40 million years later than the earlier group proposed.
“We went there to explore the area for potential mineral exploration, and it was through close examination of the area and data collected since 2012 that we concluded the features are inconsistent with a meteorite impact,” Yakymchuk said. “While we were disappointed that we weren’t working in a structure that was the result of a meteorite hitting the planet three billion years ago, science is about advancing knowledge through discovery, and our understanding of the Earth’s ancient history continues to evolve. Our findings provide scientific data for resource companies and Greenlandic prospectors to find new mineral resources.”
Stirred not shaken; critical evaluation of a proposed Archean meteorite impact in West Greenland.
Chris Yakymchuk, Christopher L. Kirkland, Aaron J. Cavosie, Kristoffer Szilas, Julie Hollis, Nicholas J. Gardiner, Pedro Waterton, Agnete Steenfelt, Laure Martin. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2021; 557: 116730 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116730
UFO Shoots Past helicopter Bangkok, Thailand, March 11, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Past helicopter Bangkok, Thailand, March 11, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: March 11, 2021 Location of sighting: Bangkok, Thailand
This eyewitness was recording a helicopter flying over the neighborhood just at the right moment. A small black UFO sees the helicopter and shoots close to it, curving slightly, then shooting away before the helicopter pilots notice it. This is 100% typical behavior of alien drones. They are programed to find, investigate, record all data of flying technology. Flying technology is a priority for aliens to gather data on...because this allows them to accurately predict when humans will be capable of long distance space travel.
The 6 Most Mysterious UFO Crashes That Happened BEFORE Roswell
The 6 Most Mysterious UFO Crashes That Happened BEFORE Roswell
Some skeptics would have you believe that the Roswell UFO crash set the trend for reporting this type of strange event. But that’s not true.
Unidentified objects had been falling from the skies years before that. Here are 6 of the most intriguing cases.
6. Aurora, Texas – 1897
A good 50 years before the Roswell event started the craze, a large UFO allegedly crashed in the small town of Aurora, Texas. The object was silver in color and shaped like a cigar.
According to an article published in the Dallas News, the UFO had been steadily losing altitude when it struck Judge Proctor’s windmill. The explosion wrecked the windmill tower and scattered debris over several acres.
The article also reported that a well had been also damaged in the crash and its water tainted, leading the locals to bury it.
The article read:
”the pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only on board and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.”
A small ceremony was held at the local cemetery where the small alien body was buried. The tombstone was stolen in 2012 but from the existing photos one can clearly see it depicted a crudely-carved cigar-shaped object with portholes on its sides.
Unfortunately for everyone, at the time of the crash, a spotted fever epidemic was wreaking havoc in the area so the event quickly faded out of view.
Another interesting aspect is that in 1945, Judge Proctor’s property was bought by Brawley and Etta Oates. The entire Oates family began suffering serious health problems because they had re-dug the well. Before her death, etta became convinced the water was radioactive.
5. Indian Ocean – September 1862
This unusual incident was reported in the May 2, 1897 issue of The Houston Daily Post and centered around a story told by one of the few men who had survived to tell the story – a Dutch sailor.
He had been part of the crew aboard a ship called Christine. In the autumn of 1862, following a storm in the Indian Ocean, the ship sank. The crew members who had been lucky enough to survive suddenly found themselves on a small, deserted island completely devoid of life.
While on the island, they witnessed an extraordinary event: a giant UFO fell from the sky, crashing into a jagged cliff. It was as big as a battleship and had four huge wings on its sides.
The men mustered the courage to examine the wreck and, amid the debris, found the bodies of several 12 foot-tall men with strange clothing and bronze-colored silky beards. This gruesome discovery was too much to bear for the starving, desperate men and some of them even went mad.
Only a handful of people survived until rescue came in the form of a Russian trawler, among them, the Dutchman.
While this might be nothing more than a sailor’s story, it makes for a very interesting one nonetheless.
4. Stavropol, Russia – late 1800s
In the 1960s, a Soviet investigation uncovered clues about a UFO crash landing that took place towards the end of the 19th century. Several witnesses reported that “a strange apparition flew into a village of the Stavropol province” and that its passengers had survived the crash.
“Three dark-skinned men came out of it. They were breathing hard, making signs and soon died since they could not breathe air. The village residents quickly pulled apart the thing in which they landed.”
As the investigation progressed, the officials began receiving letters corroborating the story. A woman named Irina Danilova recalled a story told by her grandfather, who had personally witnessed the event.
According to Danilova’s grandfather, the craft was shaped like an arrowhead and was quickly dismantled by the locals, who used the metal to manufacture household goods.
The bodies were “buried without cross or ritual.”
3. Carolinas – 1941
This report comes from noted UFO researcher Leo Stringfield’s book UFO Crash/Retrievals: Search for Truth in a Hall of Mirrors. Stringfield tracked down and spoke with the mother of Guy Simeone, a soldier in the 26th Infantry Division prior to the United States’ involvement into the Second World War.
In October 1941, Simeone was taking part in a military maneuver “in the Carolinas” when an unidentified object crashed in the area. Interests rapidly shifted towards recovering the “crashed round, metallic object” and “little dead bodies from space.”
The craft was taken to a nearby Army post. It measured about 15 feet in width and 10 feet in height and housed a control room with four seats. The silver UFO had otherworldly inscriptions both on its exterior shell as well as inside.
The four recovered bodies were described as small and with large, insect-like eyes.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support this incident, apart from the accounts of second-hand witnesses. Nobody knows what happened to the craft or the body of its passengers.
2. Dundy County, Nebraska, 1884
The June 8th, 1884 edition of The Nebraska State Journal ran an article about the crash of a mysterious object and subsequent retrieval of very unusual debris.
According to the journal, local rancher John Ellis and other locals witnessed a burning object similar to a meteor falling from the sky.
The men rode their horses to the crash site in order to investigate the incident. When they arrived, they found a large number of incandescent objects strewn across the crash site.
The objects were so hot and burned so bright that none of the men dared approach them. The ranchers resolved to come back the following day.
When they returned, the men noticed the objects were, in fact, mechanical parts resembling gears, wheels and propeller blades. All of them appeared to have been made from an extremely light and durable metal. No bodies were found.
Nobody knows what became of the wreckage.
1. England – WWII
Former intelligence officer and Flying Saucer Review editor Gordon Creighton launched an investigation into the crash of a UFO on British soil, at the height of the Second World War.
The craft wreckage was reportedly retrieved and studied by British authorities.
He learned about the incident from a 1955 article published in the Los Angeles Examiner by journalist Dorothy Kilgallen.
Here’s an excerpt:
“I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling. British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet.
“The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified.
‘We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men—probably under four feet tall. It’s frightening, but there’s no denying the flying saucers come from another planet.’
“This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have possibly been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the ‘flying saucer’ examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public.”
After the article was published, Creighton attempted to contact Dorothy Kilgallen and ask for further information.
She died shortly after, leading the researcher to believe that “she had been effectively silenced.” But as it turns out, Kilgallen was not the only source of information regarding this incident.
Brazilian UFO researcher Olavo T. Fontes also claimed to found out about this retrieval from sources inside Brazil’s Naval Intelligence but had only sparse details.
Another interesting detail was revealed in 1988 by former CIA pilot John Lear. His sources revealed that the UFO had been “strapped to a Boeing B-17 and transported to the States.”
It seems the British Government managed to keep a tight lid on this enigmatic crash, because nothing else is known about it.
Perseverance keeps notching milestones on the Red Planet.
Our growing list of sounds on Mars now includes lasers.
NASA's Perseverance rover has begun using its rock-zapping SuperCam instrument on the Red Planet, mission team members announced today (March 10). SuperCam is equipped with a microphone, which has picked up the gentle whoosh of the Martian wind as well as the not-so-gentle snaps generated by the laser when it hits a rock target.
"These recordings have demonstrated that our microphone is not only functioning well, but we also have a very high-quality signal for our scientific studies," SuperCam team member Naomi Murdoch, a researcher at the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace in Toulouse, France, said during a live webcast today.
"In the SuperCam team, we're extremely excited about the perspectives and the scientific investigations that we're going to be able to do with the microphone data," Murdoch said.
This image shows a close-up view of the rock target named "Máaz" from the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. It was taken by SuperCam’s Remote Micro-Imager on March 2, 2021. "Máaz" means Mars in the Navajo language. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS)
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The car-sized Perseverance, the centerpiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, landed on the floor of Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The rover's main tasks involve hunting for signs of ancient life within the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which harbored a deep lake and a river delta billions of years ago, and collecting dozens of samples for future return to Earth.
SuperCam, which sits on Perseverance's headlike mast, is one of the seven science instruments the rover will use to do this off-world work. SuperCam fires a laser at targets up to 23 feet (7 meters) away, generating a cloud of vaporized rock, the composition of which can be determined by the instrument's cameras and spectrometers.
As Murdoch and her colleagues announced today, such rock zapping has already begun. SuperCam fired on a target named Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, on March 2. (Perseverance is exploring a part of Jezero the team has dubbed Canyon de Chelly, after a national monument on Navajo land in northeastern Arizona.)
The SuperCam observations allowed the team to determine that Máaz has a basaltic composition. Basalts are igneous, or volcanic, rocks that are common on Mars as well as Earth. But it's unclear at the moment if Máaz itself is volcanic, said SuperCam principal investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in New Mexico.
It's also possible that Máaz "is a sedimentary rock composed of igneous grains that were washed downriver into Jezero Lake and cemented together," Wiens said during today's update.
The SuperCam mic recorded audio of the Martian wind during Perseverance's first few days on Mars, the instrument team announced today. The microphone also captured the countless rapid-fire snaps of the Máaz work, which came from shock waves generated by the heat and vibration of the rock vaporization.
Such audio will be quite useful to the SuperCam team, Murdoch said. For example, details of the snaps will reveal the hardness of each rock target, a detail that cannot be determined from composition alone. (Chalk and marble have the same chemical composition, as Murdoch pointed out.)
SuperCam recordings will also help the Perseverance team keep tabs on the rover and its various subsystems and allow researchers to better understand the thin, carbon-dioxide dominated Martian atmosphere, Murdoch said.
Perseverance carries another microphone as well — one that's built into its entry, descent and landing (EDL) camera system. The EDL mic didn't record sound during the rover's "seven minutes of terror" touchdown on Feb. 18, but it has captured audio on the Martian surface.
These two microphones are the first ever to record true audio on Mars. And they may work together at some point; mission team members have discussed the possibility of operating both mics simultaneously to capture stereo sound on the Red Planet.
Perseverance has not begun its science work in earnest yet. The first big task for the rover involves finding a suitable airfield for the rover's helicopter, a 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) craft named Ingenuity, to make its technology-demonstrating flights.
Perseverance will attempt to document Ingenuity's forays into the Martian sky. And this might even be a multimedia extravaganza: It's possible that one or both mics could capture the sounds of Ingenuity's rotors churning through the thin Martian air, mission team members have said.
On March 9, the mission released three SuperCam audio files. Obtained only about 18 hours after landing, when the mast remained stowed on the rover deck, the first file captures the faint sounds of Martian wind.
First Audio Recording of Sounds on Mars: This recording was made by the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Feb. 19, 2021, just about 18 hours after landing on the mission’s first sol or Martian day. The rover’s mast, holding the microphone, was still stowed on Perseverance’s deck, and so the sound is muffled, a little like the sound one hears listening to a seashell or having a hand cupped over the ear. Just a little wind can be heard.
The wind is more audible, especially around the 20-second mark, in the second sound file, recorded on the rover’s fourth Martian day, or sol.
Perseverance Rover’s SuperCam Records Wind on Mars: This recording was made on Feb. 22, 2021, on the fourth sol (Martian day) by the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover after deployment of the rover’s mast. It provides a different overall sound than the SuperCam audio recording from the mission’s first sol. Some wind can be heard, especially around 20 seconds into the recording. Rover background sounds have been removed.
SuperCam’s third file, from Sol 12, includes the zapping sounds of the laser impacting a rock target 30 times at a distance of about 10 feet (3.1 meters). Some zaps sound slightly louder than others, providing information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness.
First Acoustic Recording of Laser Shots on Mars: This is the first acoustic recording of laser impacts on a rock target on Mars from March 2, 2021, the 12th sol (Martian day) from Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument. The sounds of 30 impacts are heard, some slightly louder than others. Variations in the intensity of the zapping sounds will provide information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness or the presence of weathering coatings. The target, Máaz (“Mars” in Navajo), was about 10 feet (3.1 m) away.
“I want to extend my sincere thanks and congratulations to our international partners at CNES and the SuperCam team for being a part of this momentous journey with us,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “SuperCam truly gives our rover eyes to see promising rock samples and ears to hear what it sounds like when the lasers strike them. This information will be essential when determining which samples to cache and ultimately return to Earth through our groundbreaking Mars Sample Return Campaign, which will be one of the most ambitious feats ever undertaken by humanity.”
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning
No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning
by Lisa Zyga , Phys.org
This is an artist's concept of the metric expansion of space, where space (including hypothetical non-observable portions of the universe) is represented at each time by the circular sections. Note on the left the dramatic expansion (not to scale) occurring in the inflationary epoch, and at the center the expansion acceleration. The scheme is decorated with WMAP images on the left and with the representation of stars at the appropriate level of development. Credit: NASA
(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.
The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.
Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.
Old ideas revisited
The physicists emphasize that their quantum correction terms are not applied ad hoc in an attempt to specifically eliminate the Big Bang singularity. Their work is based on ideas by the theoretical physicist David Bohm, who is also known for his contributions to the philosophy of physics. Starting in the 1950s, Bohm explored replacing classical geodesics (the shortest path between two points on a curved surface) with quantum trajectories.
In their paper, Ali and Das applied these Bohmian trajectories to an equation developed in the 1950s by physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. Raychaudhuri was also Das's teacher when he was an undergraduate student of that institution in the '90s.
Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the context of general relativity. Although it's not a true theory of quantum gravity, the model does contain elements from both quantum theory and general relativity. Ali and Das also expect their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is formulated.
No singularities nor dark stuff
In addition to not predicting a Big Bang singularity, the new model does not predict a "big crunch" singularity, either. In general relativity, one possible fate of the universe is that it starts to shrink until it collapses in on itself in a big crunch and becomes an infinitely dense point once again.
Ali and Das explain in their paper that their model avoids singularities because of a key difference between classical geodesics and Bohmian trajectories. Classical geodesics eventually cross each other, and the points at which they converge are singularities. In contrast, Bohmian trajectories never cross each other, so singularities do not appear in the equations.
In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term. These terms keep the universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age. The terms also make predictions that agree closely with current observations of the cosmological constant and density of the universe.
New gravity particle
In physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.
In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.
Motivated by the model's potential to resolve the Big Bang singularity and account for dark matter and dark energy, the physicists plan to analyze their model more rigorously in the future. Their future work includes redoing their study while taking into account small inhomogeneous and anisotropic perturbations, but they do not expect small perturbations to significantly affect the results.
"It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once," Das said.
Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das. "Cosmology from quantum potential." Physics Letters B. Volume 741, 4 February 2015, Pages 276–279. DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2014.12.057. Also at: arXiv:1404.3093[gr-qc].
Saurya Das and Rajat K. Bhaduri, "Dark matter and dark energy from Bose-Einstein condensate", preprint: arXiv:1411.0753[gr-qc].
4. a meteor on januari 16 , 2017 was visible from Missouri to Ontario
3. a meteor over Arizona on June 2, 2016 glowed blue on camera 3
2. a bright, fast meteor over Alberta, canada on februari 22, 2021
1. a fireball scattered around Chelyabinsk, Russia on februari 15, 2013
Feb 15,2013 - A "small" meteorite streaked through the skies above Russia's Urals region. The blast, equivalent to 300,000 tons of TNT, shattered windows, damaged more than 3,000 building and injured over 1,000 people.
8 months after the incident, the meteorite, weighing in at 570 kg, was pulled out of Lake Chebarkul, making it one of the biggest meteorites ever recovered.
Is the future of deep-sea exploration soft? Researchers have developed a new type of soft robot designed to cope with the crushing pressures at the bottom the ocean.
Inspired by the deepest-living known fish, the Mariana snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei), researchers used soft materials and distributed electronics to create a machine that can withstand extreme pressure. They say that a soft robot could be more versatile and reliable at depth than other machines which require bulk materials or pressure compensation systems.
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This silicone rubber robot can withstand the pressures in the ocean’s deepest abyss
Sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million of Earth's species should be sent to an ark built on the moon as a 'modern global insurance policy', scientists have proposed.
The lunar gene bank — which could also house seed and spore samples — is envisaged as being built under the lunar surface, in a hollow, cooled lava tube.
Specimens deposited in the ark would be kept refrigerated at cryogenic temperatures, with the facility powered by solar panels on the lunar surface.
The ark would preserve Earth's genetic diversity in the event of a global catastrophe, such as might be caused by climate change, a supervolcano or an asteroid impact.
Sperm (left) and egg samples from 6.7 million of Earth's species should be sent to an ark built on the moon (right) as a 'modern global insurance policy', scientists have proposed
The lunar gene bank — which could also house seed and spore samples — is envisaged as being built under the lunar surface, in a hollow, cooled lava tube. Pictured: a cross-section of how the lunar ark might look buried beneath the surface of the moon in a hollow lava tube
HOW WOULD YOU GET 6.7MILLION SPECIES TO THE MOON?
Building a genetic storage facility on the moon would be a significant undertaking — but one that Professor Thanga says would be possible.
According to his 'back-of-an-envelope' calculations, transporting some 50 samples for each of the 6.7 million target species would require 250 rocket launches.
For comparison, it took a total of 40 rocket launches to assemble the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
'It's not crazy big. We were a little bit surprised about that,' Professor Thanga said.
'Earth is naturally a volatile environment,' said study author and mechanical engineer Jekan Thanga of the University of Arizona.
'As humans, we had a close call about 75,000 years ago with the Toba supervolcano eruption, which caused a 1,000-year cooling period and, according to some, aligns with an estimated drop in human diversity,' he added.
'Because human civilization has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative cascading effect on the rest of the planet.'
The idea of creating gene banks to restore lost biodiversity in the future is not new — more than a million seed samples are currently stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen in the Artic Sea, for example.
However, Professor Thanga and colleagues explained that locating such facilities on Earth leaves them also vulnerable to accidental loss.
Climate change, for example, has the potential to push many species into terminal decline in the future — and, at the same time, the rising sea levels which will accompany global warming will see the Svalbard vault lost beneath the waves.
Removed but still accessible, the moon may present a safer location.
Building a genetic storage facility on the moon would be a significant undertaking — but one that Professor Thanga says would be possible.
The idea of creating gene banks to restore lost biodiversity in the future is not new — more than a million seed samples are currently stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (the entrance to which is pictured) on the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Sea, for example
According to his 'back-of-an-envelope' calculations, transporting some 50 samples for each of the 6.7 million target species would require 250 rocket launches.
For comparison, it took a total of 40 rocket launches to assemble the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
'It's not crazy big. We were a little bit surprised about that,' Professor Thanga said.
The team propose to establish the lunar ark within a lava tube (pictured, bottom left) — a hollow tunnel formed billions of years ago when molten rock flowed underground, ultimately leaving behind a network of hundreds of tubes each some 100 metres in diameter
The team propose to establish the lunar ark within a lava tube — a hollow tunnel formed billions of years ago when molten rock flowed underground, ultimately leaving behind a network of hundreds of tubes each some 100 metres in diameter.
Despite the sci-fi image of glass habitation domes adorning the lunar surface, it is much more likely that future lunar residents would want to settle underground, where they would be shielded from solar radiation, meteorites and temperature flux.
In the researchers' proposal, the ark facility would be accessible via two or more elevator shafts to the surface — one of which would be dedicated for the moving of construction materials into the base, so it can be extended along the lava tube.
The initial setting up of the base could be aided by another project from Professor Thanga's team, specifically tiny flying and hopping robots dubbed 'SphereX'.
These machines could be used to enter lava tubes in teams to collect samples of lunar dust and rock and collect data on the layout, temperature and makeup of the caverns which could be used to determine suitability for construction.
The initial setting up of the base could be aided by another project from Professor Thanga's team, specifically tiny flying and hopping robots dubbed 'SphereX' (left). These machines could be used to enter lava tubes in teams (right) to collect samples of lunar rock and collect data on the layout, temperature and makeup of the caverns before construction commenced
The main backbone of the base would be a series of cylindrical 'cryo-preservation' modules, in which stacked rows of petri dishes containing the sample material would be neatly archived.
The seeds, the team said, would need to be cooled to a chilly -292°F (-180°C), while stem cells would need to be kept colder at -320°F (-196°C).
(For comparison, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is stored at just -94°F [-70°C].)
Operating a facility at such temperatures comes with its own problems — risking metal base components freezing up, jamming or even cold-welding together.
On the other hand, such conditions could let us to take advantage of a special phenomenon called quantum levitation— allowing shelves of samples to float above metal surfaces, tended to by robots similarly flying above magnetic tracks.
The main backbone of the base would be a series of cylindrical 'cryo-preservation' modules, in which stacked rows of petri dishes containing the sample material would be neatly archived. The seeds, the team said, would need to be cooled to a chilly -292°F (-180°C), while stem cells would need to be kept colder at -320°F (-196°C)
The ultracold conditions needed to store the samples could let us to take advantage of a special phenomenon called quantum levitation — allowing shelves of samples to float above metal surfaces, tended to by robots similarly flying above magnetic tracks (left). Quantum levitation is achieved by placing a cryo-cooled superconductor above a powerful magnet, at which point the former will to float a fixed distance above the latter (as pictured right)
Quantum levitation is achieved by placing a cryo-cooled superconductor material above a powerful magnet, at which point the former will float a fixed distance above the latter, as if they were connected.
'It's like they're locked in place by strings, but invisible strings. When you get to cryogenic temperatures, strange things happen,' said Professor Thanga.
'Some of it just looks like magic but is based on tried and laboratory-tested physics principles at the edge of our understanding.'
Realising such a lunar ark, however, is still a long way off — with researchers first needing to determine, for example, how the facility would communicate with the Earth and what impact the low-gravity environment would have on the samples.
'Projects like this […] make me feel like we are getting closer to becoming a space civilization and to a not-very-distant future where humankind will have bases on the moon and Mars,' added Álvaro Díaz-Flores, also of the University of Arizona.
'Multidisciplinary projects are hard due to their complexity, but I think the same complexity is what makes them beautiful.'
Neil Armstrong made history by becoming the first person to set foot on the moon.
Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong on to the surface of the moon. His popular nickname gave itself to the animated characte Buzz Lightyear.
3 + 4. Apollo 12 - November 19 and 20, 1969
Pete Conrad and Alan Bean were the moon walkers on the Apollo 12 mission.
The Apollo 12 crew experienced two lightning strikes just after their Saturn V rocket launched.
5 + 6. Apollo 14 - February 5, 1971
Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell who were part of the Apollo 14 mission. They launched on January 31, 1971, and landed in the Fra Mauro region of the moon, the original destination for Apollo 13.
7 + 8. Apollo 15 - July 31, 1971
David Scott and James Irwin landed on the moon and stayed for three days, until August 2nd.
9 + 10. Apollo 16 - April 21 1972
John Young and Charles Duke were the next men to walk on the moon. When the crew reached lunar orbit, the mission almost had to be aborted because of a problem with Command/Service Module’s main engine.
11 + 12. Apollo 17 - December 11, 1972
The final people to walk on the moon were Eugene (Gene) Cernan and Harrison (Jack) Schmitt.
Before he left the moon, Cernan scratched the initials of his daughter Tracy into the lunar regolith. Since the moon does not experience weather conditions like wind or rain to erode anything away, her initials should stay there for a very long time.
Cave entrances like this one in Mare Tranquilitatis may open into lava tubes. Credit: NASA.
Researchers at the University of Arizona have proposed an audacious plan to backup Earth’s biodiversity in the event of a planetary obliteration, i.e. nuclear war. The idea is to store the genetic material from millions of species below the moon’s surface in lava tubes, which could act as a ‘lunar ark’ that preserves Earth’s most cherished resource: the evolution of billions of years of life.
This project is similar to Norway’s “Doomsday” Seed Vault, which hosts more than 850,000 different seed samples in the frigid Arctic. Seeds are kept at -18 °C (-3 °F) and should be protected against a number of potential disasters, ranging from global warming to nuclear war.
Likewise, the lunar ark would deposit cryogenically frozen seeds, spores, sperm, and egg samples from millions of species of animals. In order to protect these precious samples, the ark would be stored inside one of the more than 200 lava tubes identified so far beneath the moon’s surface.
A lava tube, or pyroduct, is a natural conduit formed by flowing lava from a volcanic vent that moves beneath the hardened surface of a lava flow.
These yawning, subterranean caverns can have heights that dwarf Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Untouched for the last billions of years, these lava tubes provide the perfect shelter from punishing solar radiation, which is why they’ve been identified as sites for future human bases.
But if we ever colonize the moon in a lava tube, why not take the extra step and build a genetic ark. Besides the ample space and radiation shielding, the temperature inside the lava tubes hovers around a constant -25° Celsius (-15° F), which is ideal for storing sensitive biological samples.
This lava tube is in Hawaii, but the features could be even bigger on the Moon.
Earth also has lava tubes formed during its early years, but these are much smaller, about the size of subway tunnels, and have been eroded over time by earthquakes, plate tectonics, and other natural processes. The lunar caverns are much better suited to acting as a genetic vault.
“Earth is naturally a volatile environment,” said Jekan Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona College of Engineering. “As humans, we had a close call about 75,000 years ago with the Toba supervolcanic eruption, which caused a 1,000-year cooling period and, according to some, aligns with an estimated drop in human diversity. Because human civilization has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative cascading effect on the rest of the planet.”
Of course, building an ark on the moon is a huge undertaking. By Thanga’s calculations, it would take at least 250 rocket launches to carry about 50 samples from each of the 6.7 million species on Earth. For comparison, it took about 40 rocket launches to build the International Space Station.
These samples would be housed in an underground facility powered by solar panels positioned on the moon’s surface. Two or more elevator shafts would lead down to the facility where biological samples would be housed in various cryogenic preservation modules.
Artist impression of the proposed underground lunar ark. Credit: University of Arizona.
Inside the modules, the samples would float above metal surfaces thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum levitation. Maintenance would be ensured by robots navigating above magnetic tracks.
All of this may sound wack, but it definitely is in the realm of possibility — we already have the technology at our disposal after all. It’s just a matter of directing resources and gaining public support.
Just the other day, China and Russia announced that they have plans to build a lunar outpost together. Elsewhere, the US has plans for its own lunar base called Artemis after it lands astronauts back on the moon in 2024.
“What amazes me about projects like this is that they make me feel like we are getting closer to becoming a space civilization, and to a not-very-distant future where humankind will have bases on the moon and Mars,” said Álvaro Díaz-Flores Caminero, a University of Arizona doctoral student leading the thermal analysis for the project. “Multidisciplinary projects are hard due to their complexity, but I think the same complexity is what them beautiful.”
An ancient, meteorite, or achondrite, was discovered in the Sahara desert last year that has now been identified as chunk from a protoplanet that formed before Earth came into existence.
The space rock, named EC 002, dates back 4.6 billion years and consists mostly of volcanic rock, leading experts to believe it came from the crust of a very early planet.
The team of French and Japanese scientists determined that the rock was once liquid lava, but cooled and solidified over 100,000 years to form the 70-pound piece that eventually made its way to our planet.
Researchers also note that no asteroids have been found with similar properties, which suggests the protoplanet it came from has since disappeared by either becoming parts of larger bodies or 'were simply destroyed.'
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An ancient achondrite was discovered in the Sahara desert last year that has now been identified as chunk from a protoplanet that formed before Earth came into existence. The stony meteorite, named EC 002, dates back 4.6 billion years
Anchondrites originate from early planetary bodies that have reformed from molten fragments and were flung into space as a result of another collision.
These rocks also resemble those on Earth at first glance, deeming them a rare discovery in the scientific community.
The latest anchondrite has been named after its landing site in Algeria's Erg Chech dune sea, which consist of several meteorites that collectively weight some 70 pounds, Motherboard reports.
Only a few thousands of these have been analyzed, most of which are basaltic, but EC 002 is made mostly of volcanic rock - making it rich in sodium, iron and magnesium.
The rock consists mostly of volcanic rock, leading experts to believe it came from the crust of a very early planet. The team describes EC 002 as 'relatively coarse grained, tan and beige,' noting that it was also spotted with yellow and green bits
The latest anchondrite has been named after its landing site in Algeria's Erg Chech dune sea, which consist of several meteorites that collectively weight some 70 pounds
With this in mind, the team says EC 002 'is also the oldest magnetic rock ever observed.'
Researchers determined its age by studying the rock's magnesium and aluminum isotopes, which showed it formed about 4.566 billion years ago – while Earth is said to be 4.543 billion years old.
The team describes EC 002 as 'relatively coarse grained, tan and beige,' noting that it was also spotted with yellow and green bits.
They also note that when they looked at other celestial bodies, focusing on their wavelengths, they found nothing that matched the wavelength reflected by EC 002.
The meteorite is also 58 percent silicon dioxide, making it even rarer than others previously found on Earth, as this mineral is commonly found in volcanic regions on our planet.
'However, no asteroid shares the spectral features of EC 002, indicating that almost all of these bodies have disappeared, either because they went on to form the building blocks of larger bodies or planets or were simply destroyed.'
Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks
An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.
A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.
A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.
This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.
If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.
For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.
The meteorite, which was discovered in the Algerian part of the Sahara Desert, dates from 4.6 billion year ago — before the Earth was truly formed. It’s one of the first building blocks of our solar system. It’s not just any old meteorite: analysis shows it formed volcanically so it was once part of a proto-planet, maybe even one that never really made it.
A piece of the meteorite.Image in public domain. Credits: A. Irving.
“Numerous stones containing distinctive large greenish crystals were found in May 2020 near Bir Ben Takoul, southern Algeria, within the Erg Chech sand sea,” reads a rather dull entry regarding the meteorite. But right from the get-go, researchers knew something was unusual.
No known asteroid looks like EC 002 (the official name of the meteorite) — because almost none of these ancient relics still exist. Since they were formed so long ago, they’ve been either reintegrated into planets or smashed to bits. Meteorites like EC 002 are also very rare, due to its composition.
Most meteorites we’ve found so far are chondritic: stony (non-metallic) meteorites that haven’t been melted. Meanwhile, EC 002 is essentially anigneous rock— an andesite, to be more precise, which is also unusual. Out of theover 50,000 meteoritesdiscovered so far, just3,179are not chondrites. Out of these, most are basalts, which makes EC 002 very rare.
Basalt is a common igneous rock not just on Earth but also elsewhere in the solar system. It’s formed by the rapid cooling of basaltic lava, often at the surface (or very close to the surface).
Andesite shares some similarities to basalt, but it has a different chemical make-up and is characteristic of areas where tectonic plates are either sliding by each other or being destroyed one under another. This makes it even rarer because it takes a very special set of circumstances for andesite to reach meteorites. But the surprises kept coming in.
The rock was once molten, and it solidified some 4.565 billion years ago, in a parent body that accreted 4.566 billion years ago. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old, so it’s already older than the Earth. We’re not sure where it formed, but whatever celestial body it formed on, it must have been in its very early days, a part of its primordial crust.
“This meteorite is the oldest magmatic rock analysed to date and sheds light on the formation of the primordial crusts that covered the oldest protoplanets,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
Further analysis also showed that it took the lava over 100,000 years to solidify, indicating that the lava must have been unusually viscous. A lava’s viscosity is given by its temperature, chemical composition, and volatile gas content, so already, geologists can infer certain properties.
It’s always difficult when studying something so old, but finds like this can help shed new light on how our corner of the universe formed and evolved.
Gareth Dorrian, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, University of Birmingham
Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan blasted off from the Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon in their lunar module Challenger on December 14 1972. Five days later, they splashed down safely in the Pacific, closing the Apollo 17 mission and becoming the last humans to visit the lunar surface or venture anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit.
Now the international Artemis programme, lead by Nasa, is aiming to put humans back on the Moon by 2024. But it is looking increasingly likely that this goal could be missed.
President Nixon welcomes astronauts aboard the USS Hornet. (Image credit: NASA)
History shows just how vulnerable space programmes, which require years of planning and development spanning several administrations, are. After Apollo 17, Nasa had plans for several further lunar Apollo missions, even including a possible flyby of Venus. But budget cuts in the early 1970s and a reprioritising of human spaceflight to focus on the Skylab project precluded any further lunar missions at that time.
It was not until July 20 1989, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, that President HW Bush inaugurated the Space Exploration Initiative. This involved the construction of a space station called Freedom, which would later become the International Space Station, aimed at returning humans to the Moon, and eventually undertaking crewed missions to Mars.
The project was to take place over an approximately 30-year time frame. The first human return flights to the Moon would take place in the late 1990s, followed by the establishment of a lunar base in the early 2010s. The estimated cost for the full programme, including the Mars missions, was US$500 billion (£350 billion) spread over 20-30 years. This was a fraction of what would be spent on the Iraq War in 2003 but, the project nevertheless ran into opposition in the Senate, and was later cancelled by the Clinton administration in 1996.
Orion, optimised for extended trips beyond low-Earth orbit, was to be developed by 2008, with the first crewed mission no later than 2014, and the first astronauts on the Moon by 2020. To lift the Orion and Altair spacecraft a new series of launchers would be developed under the name Ares, with Ares V having lift capability more akin to the massive Saturn V rockets of the Apollo era.
President Obama took office in 2009 and in 2010 instituted a review of US human spaceflight - the Augustine Commission. It found that the Constellation programme was unsustainable with current Nasa funding levels, was behind schedule, and that a human Mars mission was not possible with current technology. The prototype of the Ares I rocket was nonetheless launched on a successful test flight from the Kennedy Space Centre on October 28 2009.
The Constellation program was cancelled by President Obama in 2010. This was the same year in which private company SpaceX made their first flight with the Falcon 9 rocket. Obama’s space plans were praised by some, including SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk, but criticised by others, including several Apollo astronauts.
The only significant survivor of Constellation was the Orion spacecraft which was repurposed and renamed the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle or Orion MPCV. The Augustine Commission recommended a series of more modest space exploration goals for the US, which included Orion flights to near-Earth asteroids or to the moons of Mars, rather than the planet’s surface. Orion’s first, and so far, only test flight in space (without astronauts) took place on December 5 2014.
The future of Artemis
In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed “Space Policy Directive 1”, which reoriented Nasa to a lunar landing by 2024. Nasa implemented the Artemis programme in the same year and it has been endorsed by the new Biden administration. This is the first time in decades that a new US administration has continued with the deep space human spaceflight policies of the previous one.
Artemis is also an international programme, with the Lunar Gateway - an international orbital outpost at the Moon - being an essential part of the project. The international nature of Artemis might make the programme more robust against policy changes, although the Lunar Gateway has already been delayed.
Officially, the first uncrewed test flight of Orion to lunar orbit, Artemis 1, is scheduled for later this year, with the 2024 return to the lunar surface still on the books. The effects of the pandemic and recent engineering concerns with the new and still unflown Space Launch System, may push this back. Furthermore, in 2020 Nasa requested US$3.2 billion (£2.3 billion) in development costs for the Human Lander System, a critical component of the first lunar landing mission, Artemis 3. Congress approved only a fraction of what was requested, putting the 2024 landing date in further jeopardy.
A delay of any more than a year would move Artemis 3 beyond the end of President Biden’s first term in office. This would make it vulnerable to the many vagaries of US deep space human spaceflight policy that we have seen for most of the spaceflight era.
By contrast, Nasa’s Mars Exploration Program, which began in 1993 and whose goals are driven primarily by scientists rather than politicians, has resulted in a series of highly successful robotic orbiters and landers, most recently the spectacular landing of the Perseverance Rover at Jezero Crater. Undoubtedly, the robotic exploration of Mars carries less political weight than human missions and is considerably cheaper – with no inherent risks to astronauts.
If the current Artemis 3 schedule holds, then 52 years will have passed between Cernan and Schmitt departing the lunar surface in Challenger and the next human visitors to the Moon, in 2024.
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
Severed Head of Stone Age Woman Found Lodged in Rocks of Italian Cave
Severed Head of Stone Age Woman Found Lodged in Rocks of Italian Cave
Archaeologists arrived at Marcel Loubans cave near Bologna, Italy, in 2017 to embark on a unique rescue mission . Their goal was to extract a solitary human skull that had somehow become marooned on a rocky ledge deep inside the cave, at the top of a 40-foot (12 m) vertical shaft that could only be reached with specialized climbing equipment. Fortunately, the archaeologists were able to successfully retrieve the severed head, which consisted of a cranium with no jawbone attached. It was found encrusted within multiple layers of sediment and covered with a thin layer of calcite cave rock, suggesting that water had been flowing over the top of it for centuries.
After retrieval, the cranium was shipped to the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology at the University of Bologna. Over the past three years a team of researchers from the Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bologna have been playing the role of historical detectives, applying the very latest in advanced exploratory technology to unlock the secrets of the detached skull, and reveal more about the life and experiences of its former owner. In a study just published online in the open access, peer reviewed journal PLOS ONE , the scientists have revealed their full findings to the public for the first time—and they have quite the tale to tell.
Archaeologist Lucia Castagna recovered the ancient severed head within the Marcel Loubans cave in Italy.
Severed Head Provides Clues to a Stone Age Life and Death
Through radiocarbon dating, the researchers were able to establish that the person it belonged to died sometime between the 3630 and 3380 BC. This meant she lived during a period of the Neolithic Age known as the Eneolithic Age (or alternatively as the Copper Age , in recognition of the metalworking practices most common to that time).
By performing a CT (computed tomography) scan, they were able to determine that the skull had belonged to a young female, who was between the ages of 24 and 35 when she met with her demise. There was no way to tell exactly how her head had become disconnected from her body. But a set of lesions on the cranium revealed that the tissue on her face had been cut and scraped off sometime shortly after she had died.
These scrape marks, plus the separation of the head from the body, allowed the researchers to make a definitive conclusion about the cranium’s origin and the young woman’s fate. They knew that her head had been severed from her body, and the skin and underlying tissue removed from her face, in preparation for an elaborate Neolithic era funeral ritual . Her head would have been buried separately from the rest of her skeletal remains, which also may have been split up and buried in multiple locations.
The scientists have done an in-depth analysis of the severed head discovered in a cave in Italy to understand more about its unique history.
Similar Funerary Practices Discovered in Northern Italy
Other Neolithic finds in the same region of Northern Italy had already provided evidence of this type of funeral practice. In Re Tiberio cave, in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, the arm and leg bones of 17 deceased Neolithic Age individuals were found neatly arranged, in a manner that suggested ritual significance. But their heads were nowhere in sight.
In other caves in the region, Neolithic Age skulls with post-mortem cutting and scraping marks had been found, in contexts that indicated they had been prepared for interment. Combining geological knowledge with anthropological insight, the Italian scientists developed a plausible story to explain how the young woman’s skull had ended up in its final precarious resting place.
The shaft with the ledge where her skull had been resting had once been located near the entrance to a sinkhole, where water and mud had rushed in continuously until it had carved out a larger cave beneath the initial opening. If the woman’s head had been buried nearby, the regular runoff and flooding that created and gradually deepened the sinkhole could have washed the skull loose from its original resting place. From there, the skull would have ridden on a wave of flowing water and mud on down into the earth, where its descent was halted when it became lodged on a rocky ledge.
Based on a careful analysis of the sediment layers deposited on top of the cranium, and on the thickness of the calcite rock that covered the sediment, the scientists concluded that the skull must have plunged over the edge of the sinkhole approximately 1,370 years earlier. And there it had remained stuck in the accumulating muck for centuries, waiting to be discovered.
A Perilous Journey through the Neolithic Age
According to Live Science , study of the severed head has revealed additional details about the life of its owner. The Marcel Loubens skull belonged to a young woman. Overall, it seems her health had not been good. The woman had miniscule holes on the top of her skull, which may have been a side effect of inflammation caused by chronic anemia.
She also had two thick, ivory spots on her skull, an effect consistent with the presence of benign tumors. In her mouth she had multiple cavities and poorly developed tooth enamel, indicating that she suffered from malnutrition during childhood and had continued to consume a less-than-optimal diet in adulthood.
An additional indentation was found on the skull, surrounded by parallel grooves that indicated possible cranial surgery . She may have undergone an ancient medical procedure known as trepanation, which involves the intentional drilling or scraping of holes in the head to relieve pressure caused by head injuries or painful inflammation.
Somewhere between five and 10 percent of all Neolithic skulls recovered from across the world exhibit damage consistent with trepanation, which highlights just how common this practice was at that time. It is impossible to tell for sure how the woman died. But this cave discovery has uncovered a life was filled with peril—as was the journey of her disembodied skull after she had passed away.
Top image: The new study explores how the severed head ended up within the Marcel Loubens save in Italy.
Major Megalithic Cemetery Discovered with Dozens of Tombs
Major Megalithic Cemetery Discovered with Dozens of Tombs
Archaeologists have discovered a large and unique megalithic cemetery in south-central Poland. It has been dated to 5,500 years old, contains dozens of tombs, and researchers say, “a similar establishment is unknown in Poland.”
How Did Archaeologists Find the Megalithic Cemetery?
Researchers first noticed the site by studying satellite imagery of a field. A geophysical survey of the area and excavations carried out in the summer of 2019 and 2020 revealed a megalithic tomb and dozens of burials surrounding it.
Researchers first noticed the megalithic cemetery by studying satellite imagery.
Archaeologist Marcin M. Przybyła, part of the megalithic cemetery discovery team, says that this may be “one of the largest megalithic cemeteries in Poland.” He describes the site as having “longer walls reinforced with wooden palisades , while the short eastern walls contained the entrance to a kind of tomb chapel - a vestibule.”
Discovery Highlights
The megalithic cemetery is near a village called Dębiany in Świętokrzyskie Province.
It is 5,500 years old and one of the largest megalithic cemeteries in the country.
Unlike other Polish megalithic cemeteries, this one was lined with wooden poles, not stone.
The raised burial mound has an elongated trapezoid shape and a wooden palisade with outer ditches that are 40-50 meters long (131.23-164.04 ft.)
Most of the remains and grave goods are gone.
A square defensive feature found around some of the tombs suggests the site may have served as a temporary military camp in 9th-10th century BC.
The site is believed to be 5,500 years old and one of the largest megalithic cemeteries in Poland.
Speaking on the lack of artifacts at the site, Przybyła said, “Unfortunately, most of the remains of the deceased and grave goods were removed from these burials while the cemetery was still in use. It was a ritual behavior that we often encounter in cemeteries from that period.”
Most of the human remains and grave goods are gone, but this was a common ritual behavior at the time.
Another Polish megalithic complex is currently making archaeological news – the so- called “Polish pyramids” in Kujawy. This site has been studied for over 100 years, but it is only now that archaeologists have discovered the builders’ settlements. Polish News reports that archaeologists have identified 150 small settlements which probably housed no more than 10 families each. Archaeologists say that the inhabitants of several villages likely banded together to build the large tombs.
Megalithic Polish burial mounds discovered in the forest area of Góry in Wielkopolska have also made the headlines over the years. But unfortunately, that set of 5,500-year-old megalithic tombs was built on top of a coal deposit . This has sparked debate between people who want to save the structures built by the Funnel Beaker culture and those who back the coal mining company.
The so-called “Polish pyramids” are an important part of the country’s history and researchers plan to continue studying the megalithic cemetery near Dębiany, where they expect more tombs will be discovered.
Top Image: Excavations at the megalithic cemetery found in south-central Poland.
Pavlopetri: 5,000-Year-Old Town Discovered Underwater in Greece
Pavlopetri: 5,000-Year-Old Town Discovered Underwater in Greece
Nothing sparks the imagination of history enthusiasts quite like underwater discoveries, ranging from sunken cities to the millions of shipwrecks still unexplored on the seabed. The bottom of the seas and oceans of the world have been described as the biggest museum of the world, with less than 1% of the ocean floor having been surveyed to date. The remains of the Bronze Age port of Pavlopetri were discovered as recently as the 1960s and some argue that they may have been the basis for the legendary story of Atlantis.
The ruins of Pavlopetri are located a short distance from the coastline, just a few meters underwater in Vatika Bay in southern Greece.
Discovery of Pavlopetri: The Oldest Underwater Town in the World
In the 1960s, Nic Flemming from the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Southampton, rediscovered the remains of a submerged settlement believed to date back as far as 5,000 years ago. Located in the Peloponnesus region of southern Greece, near a small village called Pavlopetri, the archaeological site lies 4 meters (13.12 ft) underwater and is now believed to be the oldest known planned underwater town in the world. It therefore joined the ranks of other mysterious underwater settlements, towns, and cities which have captured the imagination of history enthusiasts including:
The perfectly preserved ancient Chinese city of Shi Cheng (the Lion City)
The mythical submerged temples of Mahabalipuram in India
The site had been originally identified by the geologist Folkion Negris in 1904, but after Flemming rediscovered the site, it was surveyed in 1968 by a team of archaeologists from the University of Cambridge. Then in 2009, under the direction of John C. Henderson, the University of Nottingham began a five-year project with the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research to study the town at Pavlopetri.
The resulting Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project used a novel combination of archaeology, underwater robotics and state-of-the-art graphics to survey the seabed and bring the ancient town back to life before the fragile remains are lost forever due to lack of protection, pollution, waves, currents, and tourism. Thanks to the project, Pavlopetri became the first underwater town to be digitally surveyed in 3D using sonar mapping technology . This fusion of cutting edge marine technology and movie industry computer graphics allowed them to generate stunning photorealistic 3D digital reconstruction images which revolutionized underwater archaeology.
The resulting research project used a novel combination of archaeology, underwater robotics, and state-of-the-art graphics to survey the seabed and bring the ancient town back to life.
The research project identified thousands of artifacts at the site which help create a deeper understanding of everyday life at Pavlopetri from about 3000 BC until it “sank” around 1100 BC, probably due to earthquakes that are common in the region, erosion, rising sea levels, or even a tsunami. The remains are the first of a sunken city in Greece that predates Plato’s story of Atlantis.
As a snapshot of life 5,000 years ago, Pavlopetri was incredibly well designed with roads, two storey houses with gardens, temples, a cemetery, and a complex water management system including channels and water pipes. In the center of the city, there was even a square or plaza measuring about 40 by 20 meters (131 x 65 ft) and most of the buildings had up to 12 rooms inside. “There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique,” explained Dr. Jon Henderson, from the University of Nottingham team who managed the Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project, in The Guardian .
The city is so old that it existed in the period that the famed ancient Greek epic poem Iliad was set in. Research in 2009 revealed that the site extends for about 9 acres (36,421 m2) and evidence shows that it had been inhabited prior to 2800 BC. Despite sinking so long ago, the arrangement of the city is still clearly visible and at least 15 buildings have been found. The city’s arrangement is so clear that the head of the archaeological team from Nottingham were able to create what they believe is an extremely accurate 3D reconstruction of the city.
Historians believe that the ancient city was a center for commerce for the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. Scattered all over the site there are large storage containers made from clay, statues, everyday tools, and other artifacts.
The original name of the city is unknown, as well as its exact role in the ancient world. “It’s a rare find, and it is significant because, as a submerged site, it was never reoccupied and therefore represents a frozen moment of the past,” explained Elias Spondylis of the Greek Ministry of Culture in the New Scientist .
A digital reconstruction of the buildings at Pavlopetri being submerged by the sea about 1100 BC.
Probably the most surveyed seabed in the world, the coverage the Pavlopetri site has been channeled into protecting the archaeological remains. In 2011, the BBC produced a stunning documentary entitled Pavlopetri – The City Beneath the Waves , which focused on the way technology was used by the University of Nottingham team to create a photorealistic impression of the seabed. In 2016 Pavlopetri was included on the World Monuments Watch , a global program which works to protect heritage locations under threat, to support local conservation and protection efforts - which included a Watch Day organized by the Greek Chapter of ARCH International to raise awareness about the site.
Since then the Watch Day has incorporated the Pavlopetri Eco-Marine Film Festival , which showcases films and documentaries about the marine environment, as well as underwater snorkel tours over the ancient city. Thanks to these actions, in August 2016 the area was demarcated by buoys to protect it from small vessels and in 2018 the site became the first in Greek waters to be included in marine charts provided to mariners by the Hydrographic Service of the Greek Navy.
Top Image: The University of Nottingham conducted a research project at Pavlopetri which combined archaeology, underwater robotics and state-of-the-art graphics. This allowed them to generate stunning images to rebuild the ruined town. Here you can see the underwater remains and the digitally reconstructed pillars and walls of one of the buildings. Source: Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project
I’m endlessly fascinated by stories of the quirks that were built into the TV system where the well-laid plans of the system simply fell apart because it was asked to do too many things.
Nearly five years ago, I wrote about one of them, the tale of how radio broadcasters were able to shoehorn an additional FM station into the radio because of the proximity of TV’s channel 6 to the rest of the radio feed.
So when I was informed that there was another oddity kinda like this involving the TV lineups, I decided I had to take a dive in.
It’s a tale that centers around channel 37, which was a giant block of static in most parts of the world during the 20th century.
The reason for that was simple: it couldn’t fend off its scientific competition.
1952
The year that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission opened up the television system to use UHF, or ultra high frequency signals. The practical effect of this addition of bandwidth was that the total number of potential TV stations increased dramatically, from 108 to 2,051, overnight. The first UHF applications were granted on July 11, 1952, according to The History of UHF Television, a site dedicated to the higher-frequency television offerings.
THE RADIO TELESCOPE AT THE VERMILLION RIVER OBSERVATORY, NEAR DANVILLE, ILLINOIS.
IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
The radio telescope that became a headache for the television industry
Within a 600-mile radius of the city of Danville, Illinois, population 31,246, are numerous major cities — among them Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto, and Washington, DC.
Nearly the entire length of the Mississippi River fits into that radius. If Danville was located just a little farther to the east, the radius would also include Philadelphia and New York City. For all intents and purposes, a 600-mile radius from Eastern Illinois covers basically the entire East Coast except the state of Florida and the Northeast.
(Importantly to this story, New Jersey generally does not fall into this 600-mile radius.)
But there was something located in Danville that was important enough to scientists that they didn’t want to share it with anyone else.
And that thing was a 400-foot-wide radio telescope, operating along the 610 MHz frequency. It was something of a monster of astronomy at the time, operating 12 to 16 hours per day, and researchers at the University of Illinois aimed to keep it that way.
The research that led to the creation of the radio telescope was, basically, an accident — but a fundamental one that taught us more about the universe than we might have learned with a mere optical telescope.
In 1931, a radio engineer and Bell Laboratories employee named Karl Jansky was trying to uncover the source of static that was interfering with radio waves … and found it had an extraterrestrial source, particularly at the center in the Milky Way galaxy.
Jansky wasn’t an astronomer, but an engineer, and despite discovering a new field of astronomy, his position at Bell Labs did not allow him to pursue it further.
But after World War II ended, others eventually did pursue radio astronomy, including George C. McVittie, a British cosmologist who built the astronomy department at the University of Illinois in the 1950s, and George Swenson, who helped to build the university’s radio telescope.
Speaking to the Royal Astronomical Society as part of an oral history in 1978, McVittie, who played a central role in the creation of the telescope, stated that the device was developed in the late 1950s with a goal of being cost effective:
Well, we wanted to build this parabolic cylinder. I sent George Swenson on a tour of radio astronomy outfits in the world, Australia, England and so on, and he came back with the idea of the parabolic cylinder, a fixed transit instrument that sweeps out the sky simply by the earth rotating. And we decided for engineering reasons that we could only build a really big one if we had a frequency round about 600 megahertz. Otherwise, the perfection of the reflector, if we went to a shorter wavelength, was not something that you could [do] by the acre, at least not at that time, which was the late 1950s. And so we picked upon this 610 megahertz band as the observing frequency.
(The telescope was more expensive to maintain than to build, McVittie added.)
The area around the 610 MHz band has, over the years, gained a reputation as being important to scientific research because of its placement in the context of two other frequencies important to radio astronomy, 410 MHz and 1.4 GHz.
As space and astronomy writer Bob King of Universe Todayput it in 2013: “Without it, radio astronomers would lose a key window in an otherwise continuous radio view of the sky. Imagine a 3-panel bay window with the middle pane painted black. Who wants THAT?”
There was just one problem — the sudden, high popularity of television made the general bandwidth area where the telescope operated, 608–614 MHz, a bit of a hot commodity. It was literally the spot where channel 37 was supposed to go — and broadcasters wanted access to that channel.
It threatened to cover up a key window.
18
The number of stations that had been allocated to use channel 37 in the U.S. in 1952, according to The History of UHF Television. One of those communities was Paterson, New Jersey, located within the New York City metro area — which is relevant to this story. In the end, no channel 37 actually ended up on the air in analog form in the U.S., though you may find a digital equivalent today thanks to differences in how signals are allocated.
IMAGE: PATRICK TOMASSO/UNSPLASH
Why the existence of channel 37 became such a problem for scientists
At the time the University of Illinois had built out its radio telescope, television was still in its infancy, and not every TV could actually access UHF signals. But soon, UHF went from optional upgrade to standard feature on television sets, and that meant this radio telescope was in the way.
Fortunately for the scientists that relied on this telescope, they had the support of the global community. A meeting of the International Telecommunication Union in 1959 set aside a series of frequencies that were important for different scientific and technical uses. One of those frequencies was where channel 37 sat.
The University of Illinois, wanting to protect its radio telescope investment, went to the FCC basically immediately after the ITU meeting. In 1960, it asked that channel 37 be allocated to radio telescopes exclusively.
As McVittie recalled, fellow scientists considered the push to block out an entire television channel a big ask:
Most of our radio astronomy friends said, “Look here, you two, Swenson and McVittie, you are just crazy. Do you mean to say you are asking the American public to give up one television channel for science? Who ever heard of anything so absurd?” So we said, “Well, the channel isn’t being used.” “Yes, that’s true, it’s not being used very much but it is being used in the neighborhood of New York, and places like that.” So I said, “We’re not in the neighborhood of New York.” Anyway, we got laughed at.
The FCC disagreed with the university’s assessment, feeling that it was too early to make such a call.
But just a couple of years later, stations were starting to call the FCC up for access to that specific station — particularly one directly outside of the antenna’s 600-mile radius, in New Jersey. (According to reports from the era, prospective broadcasters wanted to put a Spanish-language network in the spot.)
Because of FCC rules and limitations elsewhere, the city of Paterson had no other options to bring a TV station on air other than channel 37. But even with the channel being located hundreds of miles away and targeted at the New York City market, there was concern among scientists that even far-away interference could get in the way of scientific research.
The regulators, faced with a conflict that pitted a niche use case against a massive commercial windfall, tried to come up with a compromise. The compromise included:
No stations on channel 37 within a 600-mile radius of the antenna until at least 1968, allowing one specific scientist, McVittie, to complete a survey of radio star sources he was doing on the 610 MHz frequency.
No stations anywhere listed under channel 37 could air anything between midnight and 7 a.m. Keeping in mind time zones, this effectively would give McVittie four hours a night that were open to allowing for such research.
The FCC’s attempt to balance science and commerce was not well-accepted by said scientists, who took their story to the media.
What initially was seen as an absurd ask, even a silly one, gained momentum among fellow scientists. A letter sent to the FCC in regards to the debate puts the passion around the conflict into focus: “The FCC Docket suggests an appalling lack of comprehension within the FCC of the nature and needs of radio astronomy and yet the Commission has power to cripple and perhaps even destroy radio astronomy.”
That’s from an October 1963 document from the FCC that announced the commission’s decision to bar the use of channel 37 in the U.S. — while encouraging its neighbors in Canada and Mexico to do the same.
(The FCC did defend itself against the observer’s claim, writing: “Assertions charging the Commission with a lack of comprehension of the nature and needs of radio astronomy and implications that the Commission might cripple and even destroy radio astronomy are unjustified and can not be supported by facts.”)
The FCC agreed to a 10-year moratorium on channel 37 being used, which eventually became permanent.
The fun part about this is that McVittie, who helped to set the wheels in motion for the blanket ban of channel 37 in the U.S., never learned exactly why the FCC made the decision to flip its mindset on this issue. He speculated that media attention put the issue in front of the average person, allowing for wide-scale public support to mount up in favor of radio astronomy:
Somehow the news got around that here was this new way of listening to little green men on Mars. This is what radio astronomy seemed to the ordinary public. And the FCC was preventing it from being developed in the United States. We got rumors, George particularly from friends he knew, that gradually a huge accumulation of letters arrived at the FCC, protesting against this nonsupport of this new science, whatever it was. And that this finally persuaded the FCC that they’d better give in. Nobody knows.
Fortunately, we have the document explaining its thinking, and the thinking was essentially this:
It is probable that channel 37 operations at Paterson, New Jersey would interfere with observations at Danville to a certain extent. Also, (since interference from different sources would probably not occur simultaneously) the situation would be complicated by interference from other channel 37 stations if authorized. Moreover, any interference which would exist, even though for only a small percentage of time, might occur at critical times in the observing process. To the extent that observation programs would be interfered with, the time of completing them might well be substantially increased, so that a longer period of protection would be required to achieve the same results.
In other words, the commission didn’t necessarily know how putting channel 37 on the dial was going to impact scientific research in the long run, so best not risk it.
Ultimately, channel 37 went completely unused throughout the analog era in much of North America as well as most other countries — with a handful of exceptions, particularly in the Caribbean countries of the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago. (Today, channel 37 technically can appear as an over-the-air digital channel, but it is usually a so-called “virtual channel,” allowing a network to be positioned there no matter its position in the spectrum.)
In the end, the scientists won.
2000
The year that the FCC allowed for the use of wireless medical telemetry services (a.k.a. devices that allow for the tracking of patient vitals, like heartbeat, wirelessly) on the same band as channel 37. “Despite existing constraints in these bands, this allocation is flexible enough to allow spectrum to be available for medical telemetry services in all locations while protecting radio astronomy and government operations currently operating in the allocated spectrum,” the commission said at the time. Despite occasional rumors that the spectrum would go unlicensed eventually, it has yet to happen.
The tale of channel 37 reflects one thing: Without resistance, a commercial use case will usurp a noncommercial use case for a given resource.
A 1963 op-ed in The Harvard Crimson put it best: “Because the communication industries try to send strong signals to all parts of the globe and radio astronomy tries to receive weak extra-terrestrial signals, the growth of these two fields must inevitably lead to conflict.”
Think about this in terms of other things that have nothing to do with astronomy, like the internet. A year or two ago, there was a big conflict involving who owned the .org top-level domain, with commercial interests attempting to hone in on something intended to support nonprofits. The only reason it didn’t happen, just like the Channel 37 saga, was because people in the world of nonprofits and technology came together to lobby against it.
Ultimately, in the case of channel 37, scientists were able to save a small sliver of what was mostly going to be otherwise used commercially. Perhaps it looked like static to everyone else — but it was worth fighting for.
A version of this post originally appeared onTedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. Also published at https://www.vice.com.
Have You Seen a UFO? I Have, And Was Investigated by Project Blue Book
Have You Seen a UFO? I Have, And Was Investigated by Project Blue Book
Unidentified flying objects or UFOs are back in the news again. During the first week of February a couple of Evansville Police officers saw a string of strange lights while sitting in their patrol car. The same lights were reported in Louisville. These reports brought up memories for me of something I saw in 1967. It even made the official US Government investigation of UFOs.
In '67 I was working as the 6PM to midnight DJ on a radio station in Orlando Florida. Here I am standing in front of the studio and transmitter building of radio station WHOO on my first day at work.
The important thing to know is that the transmitter and broadcast studio that you see in the polaroid were located together on the very flat west side of Orlando with not too many lights to pollute the night sky. The station was 50,000 watts east-west directional which meant several very tall towers were located within a few hundred feet of the building.
The Milwaukee Braves baseball team had recently moved to Atlanta and on the night I spotted my UFOs we were carrying a Braves game. I had plenty of time to kill as I waited to insert local commercials into the broadcast. Suddenly the phone lit up. This was odd because not that many people could have been listening to the Braves getting clobbered again. Caller after caller asked about strange lights in the sky over the western part of the city. I knew McCoy air force base was located just a few miles away and since the Vietnam war had heated up in '67, heavy traffic in the sky wasn't uncommon. Also Cape Canaveral was sending space rockets up frequently. But the calls didn't stop. More and more people wanted to know what these strange sights in the night sky were.
When I had a break in the game I ventured outside and immediately I could see the lights. There were several travelling very fast in formation and would frequently change colors. they seemed to be able to dip and swerve faster than any plane possibly could. I watched as long as I could and headed back inside to the windowless studio where the phone was still lit up with more calls, I called McCoy air force base and they couldn't give me any information but they did take my name a the phone number at the radio station.
US archives www.archives.gov
The next day I got a call from the radio station receptionist to tell me an air force officer was waiting in the lobby to see me. Since I lived just a short drive away I got there in just a few minutes. I was greeted by a very stern US air force major. He represented the official US air force UFO investigation--Project Blue Book.
The reason the major wanted to interview me that day in '67 was that our radio towers were all logged on the air force maps of the Orlando area. The tower heights and exact locations were all plotted on those official charts. The Major had me take him to the exact location where I was standing when I saw the UFOs. He asked me where the lights were in relation to our towers. I remember his question about the size of the lights, "If you held a match at arms' length, how big was the light compared to the match head?". He had me fill out a questionnaire that was several pages long. At the end of our interview I asked him, "Did anyone at McCoy air force base see the lights"? He just looked at me with a little smile and said something that would be the modern equivalent of "Have a nice day". I never heard anything else from him.
Project Blue Book had begun in 1949 and ended in 1969, not long after I filed my sighting. The report was confidential until just recently. The main goal of the Blue Book investigation was to determine if the UFOs were any threat to US national security. It was determined that they were not. The project did collect a bunch of home movies of various sightings. Here are a couple of still shots of the better ones
photo from national archives www.archives.gov
photo from National Archives www.archives.gov
If you want to take a look at the de-classified videos you are welcome to by going to the national archives site. That will get you started and there's a lot to read.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.