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.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
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!!!
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UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
01-04-2021
UFO maneuvering over Lake Charles, Louisiana 31-Mar-2021
UFO maneuvering over Lake Charles, Louisiana 31-Mar-2021
This bright unidentified flying object was caught on tape in the sky above Lake Charles, a city in southwest Louisiana on 31st March 2021.
Witness report:
I was talking on the phone outside when I noticed a Light approaching me from the north. I Watched the light Do some pretty incredible acrobatics before I remembered my cell phone camera. The Night was partly cloudy and Pretty windy, with a wind from the north west about 10-25 mph and gusty. The light seemed not to react to the wind conditions at all. It seemed to be at about 3000 Ft. altitude when I first noticed it. It was descending rapidly directly toward my position. It appeared to descend just into the cloud deck and bob in and out eventually coming to a hover near the bottom of the clouds. ( Estimate 2500 ft.) The Light would dim periodically, and simultaneously appear to descend when it did so, usually after a sharp curving maneuver. The color was variable from a deep barely visible red, to a brilliant white, Tending toward yellowish most of the time. Most of the more startling color changes are not on the video. There was no noise and it seemed to move effortlessly in any direction. The speed seemed excessive for a drone at the altitude it appeared to be at. This is not the first time I have seen This Phenomena in this area, but it is the first time I have captured it on video.
A meteorite that stunned the world when it blazed through the sky and plummeted into a frozen lake in Michigan on January 16, 2018 contains some of the key ingredients for the creation of life, scientists have discovered.
The six-foot wide rock fragmented and illuminated the sky while travelling at 30,000mph, with footage of the event going viral around the world.
Fragments were rapidly tracked down and handed over to scientists who now know it contains some of the key ingredients for the creation of life.
So-called 'organic compounds' were found and these carbon-containing molecules are the backbone of amino acids, fats, DNA and other biological materials.
The discovery of these raw materials on a space rock means it is possible that billions of years ago a larger, but similar, meteorite landed on Earth and brought these organic compounds with it, eventually allowing life to flourish.
Security camera footage of the fireball in the sky over Toledo, Ohio. The six-foot wide rock fragmented and illuminated the sky while travelling at 30,000mph
The meteorite fragment that fell on Strawberry Lake which contains pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds
Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, which led analysis on the rock says: 'These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life.'
While scientists know that carbon-based compounds were instrumental in the development of life on Earth, their origins remain a mystery.
Some theories say they were belched out from deep inside the Earth, while others contest they likely landed on our planet from another world via meteorites.
The rock is not thought to contain life itself, but materials which – given the right conditions – could create life.
Scientists benefited from the public furore following the event, as it meant the rock fragments were rapidly tracked down and retrieved.
This ensured they remained relatively clean and unsullied by Earth's microbe-rich dirt, allowing for a truer picture of the meteorite's contents.
'This meteorite is special because it fell onto a frozen lake and was recovered quickly. It was very pristine,' says Dr Heck.
'We could see the minerals weren't much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds.'
Meteor lights up the skies as it explodes over the Midwest
Meteorite hunter Robert Ward with the meteorite on Strawberry Lake near Hamburg, Michigan
A piece of the meteorite sits on a display during a press conference, Friday, Jan. 19, 2018, at the Longway Planetarium in Flint, Michigan. Scientists now know it contains organic compounds
Astronomer Todd Slisher unfolds tin-foil to reveal a piece of the meteorite during the 2018 press conference
WHAT WAS THE MASSIVE FIREBALL THAT SOARED OVER MICHIGAN?
The American Meteor Society says it received hundreds of reports of a fireball on the night of Tuesday January 16 over Michigan, including many in the Detroit area.
Footage of a meteorite falling from the sky was captured by a number of residents throughout Michigan and further afield that evening.
A bright light, understood to be the soaring fireball exploding above Michigan, was seen as far away as Chicago and even across the border in Canada.
The United States Geological Survey said the equivalent of a 2.0-magnitude earthquake struck the area at the same time..
This would suggest it came crashing down to earth, but there has been no official confirmation of this yet.
By the end of the week, meteorite hunters who flocked to Detroit from across the U.S. after a meteor exploded had begun to find the fragments.
The 6-foot-wide meteor broke apart Tuesday about 20 miles over Earth, NASA scientists said. Most of the fragments landed in Hamburg Township.
The rock blazed bright as it burned up in Earth's atmosphere and broke up, but it was large enough that many of its pieces remained intact when they landed.
Smaller meteors disintegrate completely until nothing is left by the time it approaches Earth's surface.
But the pieces of the 2018 rock were so large they could be tracked by weather systems normally used to predict and follow rain and hail.
'Weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite. That meant that we were able to find it very quickly,' Dr Heck says.
Within two days an eager meteorite hunter, Robert Ward, had tracked down the first piece on the frozen surface of Strawberry Lake, near Hamburg, Michigan and entrusted it to the Chicago Field Museum.
The short period of time it took for the rock to be found provides an invaluable research opportunity.
'Because there was so much excitement surrounding it, everybody wanted to apply their own technique to it, so we have an unusually comprehensive set of data for a single meteorite,' says Ms Jennika Greer, co-author of the research and a scientist at the University of Chicago.
The research found that, apart from the cacophony of organic compounds, the rock is a rare form of meteorite, called a H4 chondrite.
The findings are published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
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.
Scientists found evidence that a meteor vaporized over Antarctica 430,000 years ago, burning up in a dramatic plume of hot gases.
(Image credit: Mark Garlick / markgarlick.com)
Roughly 430,000 years ago, an incandescent ball of hot gas came barreling out of the sky and slammed into Antarctica — and now, scientists have found tiny bits of debris formed by that impact.
The team scooped up the mineral particles from Walnumfjellet in the Sør Rondane Mountains of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, which is located south of Africa on the eastern side of the continent. Antarctica offers the perfect environment to scout for meteorite remnants, due to its dry, frigid climate and minimal human presence, first author Matthias van Ginneken, a geoscientist who specializes in the study of micrometeorites, or extremely tiny meteorites the size of dust particles, told Live Science.
"It was my first Antarctic expedition … and we found this very ideal sampling area on top of a Sør Rondane mountain," said Van Ginneken, who now conducts research at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, but during the study, held positions with the Free University of Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. After gathering sediment from the summit, Van Ginneken scanned the samples with an electron microscope.
"To my great surprise, I found these very weird looking particles that did not look like terrestrial particles ... but they didn't look like micrometeorites either," he said. Unlike micrometeorites, which resemble fine dust, about half of the samples looked like several teeny stones fused together. Some carried tiny flecks of material on their surfaces, while others bore distinct, almost snowflake-like markings, he said.
This micrograph shows meteorite impact particles collected in the Sør Rondane Mountains, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. (Image credit: Scott Peterson / micro-meteorites.com)
The chemical composition of the particles suggested that they formed hundreds of thousands of years ago during an airburst in the lower atmosphere, which occurs when a meteorite becomes vaporized before hitting the ground, according to the new study, published online March 31 in the journal Science Advances.
"If more of these unique touchdowns can be identified and then even older particles are investigated, maybe we can use them to understand the characteristics of early Earth's atmosphere," Maitrayee Bose, an isotope cosmochemist at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.
Understanding the nature of these impacts could also help us prepare if such a meteor came zooming toward Earth again, but this time aimed at a bustling city instead of the Antarctic wilderness, Van Ginneken said.
Reconstructing the impact
Upon first discovering the unusual particles, "I said, 'Bingo! This is fantastic, fantastic stuff,'" Van Ginneken said. But the discovery was just the start of the story — to learn how these particles came to be, the team conducted thorough chemical analyses, searched the literature for reports of similar particles and created numerical models to visualize the original asteroid that created them.
"The paper does detailed analysis at each step ... and does an excellent job of convincing me that such an event may have occurred in Earth's recent past," Bose told Live Science.
The particles themselves measured about 0.004 to 0.01 inches across (100-300 micrometers) and mostly contained the minerals olivine and iron spinel, which formed the snowflake-like patterns on some of the particles. These minerals were fused together by a small amount of glass. This composition closely matched a class of meteorites known as CI chondrites, confirming that the particles contained material from an asteroid, Van Ginneken said.
The high quantity of nickel in the particles also pointed to an extraterrestrial origin, because nickel is not very abundant in the Earth's terrestrial crust, he added.
Knowing that these particles contain material from space, the authors then wanted to figure out where and how they formed once their parent meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere. The oxygen isotopes in the particles — meaning forms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons — revealed how much oxygen was present during the particles' formation, Van Ginneken said.
Compared with typical chondrite material, the samples were very rich in oxygen, overall, suggesting they formed in the atmosphere, but relatively close to the ground. That said, the particles contained very few heavy oxygen isotopes, and specifically lacked an isotope called oxygen-18, the team found. This mimics the chemical composition of Antarctic ice, which contains little oxygen-18; based on this, the team concluded that the particles interacted and mixed with the ice during their formation.
Next, to estimate when these particles formed, the team went hunting for reports of similar meteorite touchdowns. It turned out that similar particles had been captured in ice cores drawn from other regions of Antarctica, including two summits known as the EPICA Dome C and Dome Fuji. Studies suggest that these meteorites fell to Earth 430,000 and 480,000 years ago, respectively, and by comparing the newfound particles to these other ones, the authors estimated that the Walnumfjellet particles formed 430,000 years ago.
"The mineralogic and textural evidence used in the paper shows similarities between particles from the different regions in Antarctica," but despite these overlaps, the absolute age of the Walnumfjellet particles remains unknown, Bose said. Future analyses will be needed to nail down their precise age, more conclusively, she said.
Considering the size, shape and density of the particles, the team was also able to produce a "very rough calculation" as to the size of their parent asteroid, Van Ginneken said. The particles' fused appearance hints that the cloud of hot gas in which they formed was very large and very dense, which allowed the minerals to collide and melt into one another on their way to Earth. This hints that the original asteroid was likely between 328 feet and 492 feet (100 and 150 meters) in diameter.
Based on their numerical models, "it turns out that such an asteroid will not reach the ground … basically it would be vaporized into a cloud of superheated meteoritic gas," Van Ginneken said. The cloud of gas would then continue descending toward the ground at a similar rate to the original asteroid — "we are talking kilometers per second," he said.
"This very dense, incandescent plume that would reach the surface, this is extremely destructive. This could destroy a large city in a matter of seconds, and do severe damage over hundreds of kilometers," Van Ginneken said.
Airburst events occur much more frequently than asteroid impacts that create large craters in the crust, he added. For example, an airburst event took place in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013, and scientists also suspect that the massive explosion that leveled forests near Tunguska, Russia in 1908 was an airburst, the authors wrote in the Science Advances report.
Tunguska-like events are estimated to occur "once every 100 to 10,000 years, which is orders of magnitude more frequent than large crater-forming impacts," the authors wrote. Studying the newfound Walnumfjellet particles could help scientists better understand how often these impacts occur and how severely they damage the earth below, Van Ginneken said.
The study suggests "that we should worry more about smaller asteroids, between a few tens of meters and 200 meters [32-656 feet in diameter], than much larger asteroids resulting in impact-cratering events," because the smaller asteroids touch down on our planet more often, he said. Should such an asteroid start hurtling toward a small country, a mass evacuation would likely be required to spare people from the fiery plume, he said.
Meteoriet explodeerde boven zuidpool met kracht van 1.000 Hiroshima-kernbommen
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET - Onderzoek van VUB en ULB, in samenwerking met een internationaal team van onderzoekers uit verschillende universiteiten in Europa, Rusland en de Verenigde Staten heeft aangetoond dat 430.000 jaar geleden een grote meteoriet met een diameter van ongeveer 100 meter is ontploft boven Antarctica. De reusachtige meteoriet drong de dampkring binnen en explodeerde, nog voor hij het ijs van de zuidpool bereikte, met een kracht vergelijkbaar met die van 1.000 Hiroshima-kernbommen.
“De explosie moet voor een vernietigende schade hebben gezorgd in een straal van tientallen tot enkele honderden kilometers rond de plek van de explosie”, zegt VUB-prof Steven Goderis, die in 2018 de expeditie leidde die de ontdekkingen mogelijk maakte.
Goderis en zijn team trokken toen op zoek naar micrometeorieten in de Walnumfjellet, die deel uitmaakt van het Sør Rondanegebergte in het oosten van Antarctica. “De microscopisch kleine brokstukken van de ingeslagen meteoriet hebben een speciale samenstelling, waardoor ze goed te onderscheiden zijn van de gewone meteorieten en micrometeorieten die we op Antarctica vinden. Ze hebben een samenstelling die overeenkomt met die van meteorieten, maar reflecteren ook de zuurstofisotopische samenstelling van het Antarctische ijs.”
De explosie kon gedateerd worden aan de hand van verschillende boorkernen die in de loop van de voorbije decennia in het poolijs zijn verzameld. In een aantal van die boorkernen vonden de onderzoekers ook sporen van de kosmische explosie.
“Waarschijnlijk komen dergelijke ‘airburst-achtige’ fenomenen geregeld voor, maar we vinden er meestal geen enkel spoor van terug”, zegt Goderis. “In 2013 was er in het Siberische Chelyabinsk een gelijkaardige maar veel kleinere bijna-inslag, die toen veel schade veroorzaakte en waarbij wonderbaarlijk genoeg bijna uitsluitend materiële schade werd aangericht. Nog in Rusland, in Tunguska, werd in 1908 een gelijkaardige impact van een 100 meter grote meteoroïde beschreven. Waarschijnlijk moeten we rekening houden met een frequentie voor een inslag van die omvang van één keer om de duizend tot vijfduizend jaar.”
Er blijft een kleine kans bestaan dat de meteoriet effectief het aardoppervlak heeft geraakt en dat de sporen daarvan in de loop van de voorbije vierhonderdduizend jaar letterlijk zijn ondergesneeuwd. In dat geval bevindt de impactkrater zich wellicht onder een flinke laag ijs. Toekomstig onderzoek kan daar eventueel uitsluitsel over geven. “De kans is redelijk klein”, denkt Goderis. “Maar niet helemaal onbestaand. Waar we wel zeker van zijn, is dat we de sporen van de thermische impact die zo’n explosie heeft veroorzaakt beter in kaart zullen kunnen brengen. Ook de schokgolf die na de explosie volgde, zal waarschijnlijk ergens sporen zal hebben nagelaten.”
Het onderzoek werd gepubliceerd in Science Advances onder de titel ‘A large meteoritic event over Antarctica ca. 430 ka ago inferred from chondritic spherules from the Sør Rondane Mountains’. Hoofdauteur is Matthias van Ginneken, nu aan de Universiteit van Kent maar destijds voor het onderzoek verbonden aan de VUB. Het onderzoek werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door de logistieke ondersteuning vanuit het Belgische Prinses Elisabethstation op Antarctica, en de financiële ondersteuning door het federaal wetenschapsbeleid (Belspo).
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31-03-2021
SpaceX, Shift4’s Inspiration4 mission reveals its final two crew members
SpaceX, Shift4’s Inspiration4 mission reveals its final two crew members
The crew for SpaceX and Shift4’s all-civilian Inspiration4 mission is now complete. The final two members of the groundbreaking mission were announced on Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Floria, where the Falcon 9 rocket carrying Inspiration4’s Crew Dragon capsule will be launching later this year.
Joining 38-year-old Shift4Payments CEO Jared Isaacman and 29-year-old physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux will be 41-year-old Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran and educator working for Lockheed Martin, and 51-year-old Dr. Sian Proctor, an entrepreneur, educator, and trained pilot who has a passion for space.
As per Inspiration4’s website, Sembroski will represent the virtue of Generosity, and Dr. Proctor will represent Prosperity. Isaacman represents the virtue of Leadership, while Arceneaux represents the virtue of Hope.
In an interview with TODAY‘s Tom Costello, Dr. Proctor remarked that being selected for the Inspiration4 mission felt like “opening up the chocolate bar and seeing the golden ticket to Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory.” She remarked that she had no worries about the mission at all, and that her reservations were actually more rooted in the prospect of the opportunity to go to space slipping by.
“I was more worried that this opportunity had slipped me by and I would never get the chance to go to space, but now here I am and that just shows you never give up because that moment for me is here… I’m ready. Just strap me in, let’s go!” she said.
As for Sembroski, launching from the Kennedy Space Center would be a rather symbolic experience. Twenty years ago, Sembroski showcased his passion for education and supporting passions by serving as a Space Camp counselor, an experience that he highlighted during his interview with TODAY.
“I’ve taken that experience with me to really drive the passion for getting kids to seek their passion in science and technology and really spark the interest in those fields by using space as that medium, and then ever since it’s stuck with me,” he said.
Isaacson, for his part, remarked that he is extremely excited for the Inspiration4 launch. “This is a very real moment, but I can’t help but be overwhelmed just thinking about all of the history that came before us here. That’s what’s going through my mind, like the astronauts climbing into the Apollo missions and Skylab and the space shuttle. It’s just so incredible to be here,” he said.
The Inspiration4 crew would now be undergoing intensive training for their upcoming mission, which is expected to launch sometime this fall. Previously, Isaacson has noted that Inspiration4 could launch around October, but in his recent interview with the US media outlet, he noted that the mission could launch before the end of September instead. Such a timetable would give the crew just about six months to get fully trained and ready for a multi-day trip to space about 335 miles above Earth.
Watch TODAY’s segment on Inspiration4’s completed crew in the video below.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for news tips. Just send a message to tips@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
St. Helens, Merseyside Woman Snaps a Possible Alien Creature
St. Helens, Merseyside Woman Snaps a Possible Alien Creature
Mellisa Braham, a St. Helens resident, reported seeing a tiny humanoid-shaped figure on February 26 Friday. It was her birthday recently, and as a gift, she received a new smartphone. Seeing it was a lovely afternoon on Friday, she decided to take her dog for a walk with her new phone to test out the camera.
She took several video clips and photographs at different resolutions. Later on in the evening, she uploaded the pictures to her PC to look at them.
When looking through the still photos, she noticed one of them showing what looks like a small humanoid-shaped figure walking from right to left.
Initially, she could not tell if the object was a tiny living and breathing being of some kind, but after she enlarged the photo, she saw what resembled a bipedal being with a head, eye, body, arms, legs, hands, and feet.
She said the object in the picture reflects sunlight and also casts a shadow on the ground and doesn’t look like a bird, rat, squirrel, or any other kind of animal.
Mellisa doesn’t rule out that the object could be something of nothing, something mundane captured at a weird angle or just a trick of the light, making it look extraordinary. She sent the photo to several experts and researchers to analyse and know what they make of it.
The picture was snapped at full resolution, 12 MP, camera set to fully automatic, and no zoom used. It was taken when the weather was dry, mild, and sunny at 16:05 between the Victoria park entrance and the now-demolished healthcare centre on Cowley Hill Lane, St. Helens, Merseyside, UK.
The Lost Pacific Continent of Advanced Human Beings... Did It Really Exist?
The Lost Pacific Continent of Advanced Human Beings... Did It Really Exist?
According to Churchward, the lost Pacific continent of Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island."
He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants known as the Naacals.
Its civilization, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own, and the ancient civilizations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt and the Mayas were merely the decayed remnants of its colonies.
Could this strange land and advanced human's have really existed?
Silver UFO flying strangely slowly over Saint Paul, Minnesota, next, a glowing Orb flew in and stayed for 2 hours over Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Then a blinking light flashing in a triangle over Florence, Montana, the lights were flashing like they were going in a pattern around a saucer shape metallic craft and a huge cylinder shaped anomaly near the sun appears and disappears within a second.
Features called recurring slope lineae (RSL) are found on some Martian slopes in warmer months. Red arrows point out an RSL in this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera system on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
(Image credit: A. McEwen/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
Mars' bizarre dark streaks may not be so astrobiologically intriguing after all.
Those streaks, known as recurring slope lineae, were discovered in 2011 by scientists studying imagery captured by the powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
As their name suggests, recurring slope lineae, or RSL for short, are found on Red Planet slopes. The marks creep down steep inclines, especially in Mars' southern hemisphere, during warm times of the year and fade away as the weather cools.
These characteristics led scientists to speculate that the dark marks could be caused by salty liquid water flowing or seeping through the red dirt, in spots that get warm enough for some of Mars' plentiful subsurface ice to melt. That exciting hypothesis got a boost in 2015, when data gathered by MRO's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer instrument, or CRISM, revealed the apparent signature of hydrated salts at some RSL locales. That's just what you'd expect to see after briny liquid had evaporated away.
But the liquid-water explanation has been losing favor over the last few years. For example, a 2018 study cast serious doubt on the CRISM find, suggesting that the supposed hydrated-salt fingerprint was actually an artifact of data processing. And researchers have been finding more and more evidence, from both experimental and modeling work, that dry landslides are etching the dark marks into warm Martian slopes.
The team, led by HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen, counted 150 active RSL sites during the year of the dust storm, compared to an annual average of just 36 in the six previous years. (The years here are Mars years, each of which lasts about 687 Earth days.)
"There are clear dust devil tracks in 73% of post‐storm images in the southern middle latitudes in the summer, where and when dust devils are most active," the researchers wrote in the study.
"The tracks indicate dust lifting, by several mechanisms," they added. "We suggest that dust lifting processes on steep slopes may initiate and sustain RSL formed from flows of dust (perhaps clumped) and/or sand that is destabilized by dust movement."
McEwen discussed the recent study last Thursday (March 25) during a presentation at the 2021 Spring Meeting of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's Committee on Planetary Protection. (Planetary protection refers to efforts to avoid contaminating other worlds with microbes from Earth, and to prevent potential alien bugs from getting a foothold on our planet.)
He also gave an overview of the decade-long history of RSL research, which he said now points strongly toward dry explanations for the dark features.
"None of the wet hypotheses have survived, in my opinion," said McEwen, who's based at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
He also said he doesn't believe that RSL sites should be regarded as "special regions" — locales that might be capable of supporting Earth life and are therefore off-limits to exploration by all but the most rigorously sterilized spacecraft.
If that view becomes the consensus, it will be easier for NASA and other space agencies to send rovers to RSL sites and study the mysterious features up close. But consensus has not yet been reached; the new study, while suggestive, doesn't slam the door on the wet-RSL hypothesis.
"These debates will continue," McEwen said.
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.
The company today (March 30) unveiled its second piloted space plane, a shiny silver vehicle called VSS Imagine.
Like Virgin Galactic's other spacecraft, VSS Unity, VSS Imagine is designed to take people and scientific experiments to and from suborbital space. However, the newcomer is the first of the next-generation SpaceShip III line, which features upgrades that will "enable improved performance in terms of maintenance access and flight rate," company representatives wrote in a statement today.
Virgin Galactic unveiled its first SpaceShip III vehicle, VSS Imagine, on March 30, 2021. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)
The SpaceShip III design also features a change that, while dramatic, is merely skin-deep — a mirror-like livery that reflects the vehicle's surroundings, from the ground all the way up to space and back.
"As a SpaceShip III class of vehicle, Imagine is not just beautiful to look at but represents Virgin Galactic's growing fleet of spaceships," Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, said in a statement today.
"All great achievements, creations and changes start with an idea," the billionaire entrepreneur added. "Our hope is for all those who travel to space to return with fresh perspectives and new ideas that will bring positive change to our planet."
VSS Unity is a SpaceShipTwo vehicle. SpaceShipOne, the design pioneer, won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 after making two crewed flights to suborbital space and back within a two-week span.
Unity and Imagine are two-pilot, six-passenger space planes designed to lift off beneath the wings of a carrier aircraft, which drops them at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). At that point, each spacecraft's onboard rocket motor lights up, blasting it up to suborbital space.
VSS Imagine has the same basic body plan as Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity, a SpaceShipTwo vehicle. But the new space plane features some performance-enhancing upgrades, as well as a different, mirror-like livery. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic passengers won't circle Earth like astronauts aboard the International Space Station do. But they will get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space. More than 600 people have booked a ride to date, at a price (most recently) of $250,000 per seat, company representatives have said.
Unity and Imagine are at Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's commercial hub. Unity is in the final stages of its test campaign and is expected to launch on another suborbital test mission — its third spaceflight overall but first from Spaceport America — this May, company representatives said.
VSS Imagine and a tow vehicle outside Virgin Galactic's hangar at Spaceport America in New Mexico. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)
It will be Unity's second crack at its third spaceflight. The previous attempt, in December 2020, was aborted after a faulty computer connection prevented Unity's onboard rocket motor from firing up as planned. Pilots C.J. Sturckow and Dave Mackay brought the vehicle down for a safe landing at Spaceport America shortly thereafter.
Imagine will begin ground tests soon and will take to the sky for unpowered "glide flights" this summer, if all goes according to plan, Virgin Galactic representatives said.
And Virgin Galactic will continue to build out its growing fleet. The company's manufacturing subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, continues assembling a third spacecraft at its headquarters in Mojave, California. (Unity's first two spaceflights lifted off from the nearby Mojave Air and Space Port.) We learned today that this third vehicle is a SpaceShip III, and that it will be called VSS Inspire.
VSS Imagine could begin unpowered "glide flights" this summer. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)
"VSS Imagine and Inspire are stunning ships that will take our future astronauts on an incredible voyage to space, and their names reflect the aspirational nature of human spaceflight," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in the same statement. "Congratulations to our dedicated team who worked so brilliantly to achieve this milestone."
There could be yet more space planes to come as well. Virgin Galactic's hangar at Spaceport America can fit five space planes and two carrier aircraft simultaneously, company representatives have said.
Virgin Galactic isn't the only major player in the suborbital space tourism business. Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company, Blue Origin, is developing a rocket-capsule combo called New Shepard, which already has more than a dozen uncrewed test flights under its belt.
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.
Thanks to author J. R. R. Tolkien and filmmaker Peter Jackson, just about everyone knows what a Hobbit is and many people wish they could meet one. Of course, these are the imaginary humanoids about half the size of humans, not the real archaic humans Homo luzonensis and Homo floresiensi, the tiny hominids nicknamed ‘hobbits’ that lived on the islands of Luzon and Flores in southeast Asia until about 50,000 years ago – which means they could have met early humans. Based on the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA modern humans carry, it could also mean that these early humans could have had sex with the hobbits. Did they? A new study set out to find out, and in the process revealed more about the mysterious rumored ‘southern Denisovans’.
No, not this kind of hobbit
“There are no ‘first-hand’ genomes of the kind we have from Neanderthals and Denisovans, but there are ‘second-hand’ bits of DNA in the Denisovan genomes that seem to come from them having interbred with a super-archaic population. These can be recognised by their greater-than-average divergence within the genome and also, if there has been recent interbreeding, the strands of DNA will have been shuffled up less, and hence found in larger and more ‘pristine’ chunks.”
The new study, co-authored by anthropologist Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London and published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, points out that there is no DNA from Homo luzonensis and Homo floresiensi but previous research of Neanderthals and Denisovans has helped researchers identify evidence of interbreeding between species. Because their existence overlapped with humans on the islands in southern Asia, Springer told Gizmodo he and the team believed they’d find that evidence.
“Conversely, we found no evidence that the ancestors of present-day Island Southeast Asia populations interbred with either of the two hominin species for which we do have fossil evidence in this region: H. floresiensis from Flores, Indonesia, and H. luzonensis from Luzon in the Philippines.”
In an article in The Conversation, study lead João Teixeira from the University of Adelaide gives the disappointing result of the research – no sex. However, this means that these two hobbits may actually be related to a different missing link – the mysterious ‘southern Denisovans’. They’re considered mysterious because no Denisovan fossils have been found on the islands despite a high concentration of their DNA in modern inhabitants. Even with the lure of sex, it’s a long, cold journey north from Island Southeast Asia to Siberia, where their namesake Denisova Cave is. Teixeira thinks this means their fossils might be on another island — Sulawesi, where stone tools have been found, and Australia are two possibilities.
Where’s the hobbit women?
“Alternatively, we may need to rethink our interpretation of the hominin fossils already discovered in Island Southeast Asia.”
“But perhaps Denisovans were much more diverse in size and shape than we realised, meaning we might conceivably have found them in Island Southeast Asia already but labelled them with a different name.”
In other words, H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis could be misidentified hobbit Denisovans. And most importantly, there could have been plenty of hobbit-human sex – we just haven’t found the fossils yet.
You may know Jerome Clark as a former editor of Fate magazine, or as the author of “Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America” and other books, or co-author (with Loren Coleman) of “Cryptozoology A to Z”, or from his many television appearances discussing the subject of UFOs. However, none of those things nor his other noteworthy accomplishments in the field of UFO research will get him as much exposure and notoriety as a few sections in his latest seven-volume collection, “The UFO Phenomenon,” which covers UFO reports from 543 BCE to present times. (Note: this series is an updated Kindle version of the “The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon From The Beginning” which was first published in 1998.) In particular, “UFOs in the Late 20th Century and the New Era 1991–2020 (The UFO Phenomenon Book 7)” has already made headlines for Clarke’s revelation that by his count a total of 212 people have been abducted by aliens since 2014 for the purpose of sex.
“Abductions can happen anywhere and may last anything from 20 minutes to five days. The usual duration is one to three hours. Most happen at night. A key procedure is inspection of the reproductive organs, often followed by extraction of sperm or eggs.”
That sounds pretty clinical, and in fact many stories of sexual encounters between humans and extraterrestrials emphasize that, even if the intercourse was consented to and the alien was sexually attractive, the experience was generally not pleasurable. That sexual attractiveness in some other cases is what apparently drew The Sun to Clark for an interview.
“Their usual dress is a coverall or one-piece jumpsuit, often skintight, perhaps even so snug that the beings appear (or are) nude.”
In the chapter titled “Khoury Case,” Clark describes the experiences of Peter Khoury, the head of Media at Australian news company NMRA, who claimed his 1992 abduction involved having two nude blonde aliens kneeling on his bed, one of whom engaged in foreplay before attempting to have sex – a failed attempt that allegedly left him with a few blonde hairs for evidence. According to the review, the hair was analyzed and found to be a hybrid of Asian and Gaelic advanced DNA.
Clark doesn’t ignore really close encounters of the female kind. The review tells the account of a woman from Indianapolis who told Clark aliens impregnated her while she was on a cruise ship (Earthly, not alien), returned a few month later for the fetus, and again to introduce her to her hybrid daughter.
In the sample of the Kindle book on Amazon, Clark tells of Antonio Villas Boas, who claimed he was abducted in 1958 by many small beings who “dragged him inside a landed UFO, drew blood samples and left him in a room where he had sexual relations with an almost-human female.” To show how times have changed, Clark shares that the “few ufologists who knew of this report kept it hidden in a plain brown envelope of secrecy” because of the damage inter-species sex would do to the field. However, stories of alien abductions picked up in the latter half of the 1960s and today this kind of sex is almost mandatory in TV and movie alien encounters.
Mock-up of a close encounter of a sexual kind with an alien
Did that teaser interview in The Sun have you breathing heavily for more alien sex stories? Clark’s seven-volume set was released on Kindle last week, and there’s no requirement to start from the beginning – you can skip right to the good parts in Volume 7. However, based on Clark’s large body of reputable books on UFOs, extraterrestrials, cryptozoology, and other strange creatures of the paranormal world, it would certainly be enjoyable and enlightening to start at Volume 1, page 1, in 543 BCE
Just about everyone has heard of the Roswell, New Mexico “crashed UFO” affair of early July 1947. However, what about the fabricated crashed UFO stories designed – in the early years of the Cold War – to try and make the Russians believe the West had its hands on extraterrestrial technology? Maybe, even highly advanced alien weaponry. There’s no doubt at all that many of the 1950s-1960s-era stories of crashed UFOs were nothing but creations of skillful figures in the Pentagon and the CIA. Today, I’ll share with you two such examples. One of the most controversial UFO events occurred (or didn’t) in Hart Canyon, Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948. In many respects, the case can be seen as Roswell’s “little brother.” An alien spacecraft was said to have crashed in the canyon, killing the diminutive creatures inside, who were whisked away by the military. See what I mean about the Roswell parallels? Writer Frank Scully was so enamored by the story he wrote his very own, full-length book on the subject in 1950 titled Behind the Flying Saucers. It became a smash-hit. Working along with Scully was a man named Silas Newton. He was a conman, millionaire, oil entrepreneur, and someone who had crossed paths with both the cops and the FBI on a few occasions, mainly because of his intricate plots to swindle just about anyone he could. Newton knew the UFO subject was taking off, so he thought of ways to earn money from it – which is why he got chummy with Scully.
By his own admittance, and a couple of years after the Aztec story surfaced in Frank Scully’s book, Newton was clandestinely visited by two representatives of “a highly secret U.S. Government entity,” as it was worded. Those same agents of the military told Newton, in no uncertain terms, they knew his Aztec story was nonsense. Amazingly, however, they wanted Newton to keep telling the tale to just about anyone and everyone who would listen. This caused CIA guy, Karl Pflock, to ponder on an amazing possibility: “Was this actually nothing to do with real saucers but instead some sort of psychological warfare operation [italics mine]?” There’s no doubt that Pflock was right on target: Newton was used to help spread the word that, yes, UFOs had fallen to Earth and the U.S. military had the technology. But, it was all a big, successful ruse. There were no crashed UFOs and no alien technology – but, the plot worked and had the Russians deeply concerned. Now, let’s take a look at another case – and another hoax.
For years, stories have surfaced to the effect that in 1952 – the same year Silas Newton got that strange visit from the U.S. military – a UFO slammed to the ground on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. Particularly interesting is a National Security Agency document that tells the story of the fatal crash and the recovery of a craft from another planet. The NSA’s copy of this previously-classified document is very slightly different to copies of the same document that have been declassified by the U.S. Air Force, the Department of State, and the U.S. Army. Someone in the NSA – unfortunately, we don’t know who – identified the Spitsbergen story in the document as being a “plant.” As for who secretly seeded the story, and why, well, that’s another matter entirely. Maybe, U.S. intelligent agents planted the story to try and further have the Russians believe that the U.S. government was back-engineering extraterrestrial spacecraft, when it really wasn’t. On the other hand, the “planters” may have been the Soviets themselves, trying to achieve something almost identical, but aimed squarely at the White House, the CIA, and the Pentagon. Jack Brewer, who runs TheUFO Trail blog, says of all this amazing chicanery concerning the Spitsbergen saucer saga of 1952: “It should be a forgone conclusion at this point that the UFO topic was exploited by the global intelligence community for a variety of purposes from one operation and era to the next. The consequences might indeed be significant and far-reaching.”
In October of last year, it was reported that asteroid Apophis (nicknamed the “God of Chaos”) was picking up speed and may end up crashing into Earth in the year 2068. This was quite concerning as the asteroid measures over 1,100 feet in width (335 meters) and would have caused a catastrophic impact equivalent of 880 million tons of TNT.
But now, according to new orbit analysis and calculations, NASA has stated that the asteroid will not hit Earth in 2068 and it won’t impact our planet for at least a hundred years. It will pass by us at a fairly close range in 2029 and 2036 but with no possibility of an impact. In fact, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will travel by us at a distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). Those living in the Eastern Hemisphere will be able to observe the asteroid with the naked eye and astronomers will have an excellent opportunity of studying it in greater detail.
Astronomers confirmed these new calculations when Apophis recently flew by us. They used strong radar observations in order to determine its orbit around the sun and that’s how they were able to say with confidence that it won’t pose any type of threat to us for at least a century.
Apophis’ trajectory when it will pass by Earth on April 13, 2029.
Davide Farnocchia, who is from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, reiterated this by stating, “A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility anymore, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years,” adding, “With the support of recent optical observations and additional radar observations, the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit has collapsed from hundreds of kilometers to just a handful of kilometers when projected to 2029. This greatly improved knowledge of its position in 2029 provides more certainty of its future motion, so we can now remove Apophis from the risk list.”
As for the equipment they used to make these new calculations, astronomers used the 70-meter (230-foot) radio antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to track the asteroid’s orbit. JPL scientist Marina Brozovic explained this further, “Although Apophis made a recent close approach with Earth, it was still nearly 10.6 million miles [17 million kilometers] away. Even so, we were able to acquire incredibly precise information about its distance to an accuracy of about 150 meters [490 feet].”
With the new calculations confirmed, astronomers are now hoping that their data will reveal the true shape of Apophis as it’s currently unclear what it actually looks like although previous radar observations have indicated that it has a “bilobed” or “peanut-like” shape.
Radar images of Apophis taken in early March.
They’re also looking at the asteroid’s rotation rate and axis in order to figure out what kind of effect our planet’s gravitational field will have on it when it passes by us in 2029.
A simulation depicting Apophis’ 2029 approach to Earth can be seen here.
Strange lights caught on camera in Montana, United States, 1952. Angels? What is it?
Strange lights caught on camera in Montana, United States, 1952. Angels? What is it?
In Montana, 1952, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding peoples being scared at a street location by what has been described as a “strange lights”.
That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake? Video here:
Massive Tic-Tac Decloaking Captured From The ISS! NASA Explain This! 2021
Massive Tic-Tac Decloaking Captured From The ISS! NASA Explain This! 2021
MASSIVE TIC-TAC Decloaking Captured From The ISS! NASA Explain This! 2021
It looks like the ground opened up as it was landing. Than after it landed they closed the rocky doors. Look at the ground carefully as it lands the rocks are closing and attaching to each other. Herm
Looking at this “tic tac” Blake, it almost looks like it is being swallowed up into the ground. LD
Huge Mothership Captured On Video Over Major City! Watch Now 2021
Huge Mothership Captured On Video Over Major City! Watch Now 2021
Huge Mothership Captured On Video Over Major City! Watch Now 2021
Tried buying countdown to disclosure last night , YouTube said it wasnt available 😞 Maybe today I’ll get lucky ,, it’s so nice to finally find a group who wants to know and get the truth about what’s really going on, Thank you. LJ
I notice the orange light has an obvious glare to it, perhaps because of a smear on the camera lens. That effect should be duplicated on the lights in the object, but isn’t which is odd. VL
Russian Astronaut Films Clear Massive UFO from ISS
Russian Astronaut Films Clear Massive UFO from ISS
Recently, a Russian Astronaut Filmed Clear Massive UFO Mothership type craft from NASA ISS while doing a time-lapse of the northern lights – There are more strange sightings Caught on Tape in 2021 than ever before. What are these UFO?
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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