Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
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!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
08-04-2021
Former National Intelligence Official Says Upcoming Government UFO Report Will Be Hard to Explain
Former National Intelligence Official Says Upcoming Government UFO Report Will Be Hard to Explain
An upcoming report on UFOs from the government will include details that can’t easily be explained, a former top official of national intelligence hinted.
John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that there are cases where they don’t have good explanations for some of the unusual that they’ve seen. When that details become declassified, he’ll be able to talk more about that.
Ratcliffe said that a report to be released by the Pentagon and other federal agencies would present more details to the American people than declassified UFO sightings in the past.
Ratcliffe said that there had been sightings in different parts of the world, and when we talk about sightings, it’s not just a pilot or just a satellite or some intelligence collection. He explained that we have multiple sensors that are picking up these sightings.
In the unreleased sightings, Ratcliffe revealed that elements that are difficult to explain include movements that are not easy to replicate or traveling at speeds that surpass the sound barrier without making a sonic boom.
Maria Bartiromo later said in the program that the report is expected to be released on June 1 of this year.
Russian Navy Captain: Aliens Probably Build Their Bases On Earth’s Seabed
Russian Navy Captain: Aliens Probably Build Their Bases On Earth’s Seabed
Hundreds of new reports on UFOs appear everyday. One percent of those reports remain a mystery unraveled though 99% of them could be explained by natural or man-made factors.
Let us assume that aliens exist and visit Earth on a regular basis. What would be the best place for them to build a secret base? Seabed would be the best option. The oceans cover two-thirds of the planet.
The ocean remains virtually unexplored. We have a much clearer picture of processes that occur on the Moon, our knowledge of things that happen deep under the surface of the sea is scarce. As it turns out, reports about certain mysterious undersea incidents arrive steadily.
Those incidents are reported by naval officers who normally have good technical expertise and composure. The Navy officers are subject to annual medical examinations.
Submarines have no skylights. Maintaining radio communication under the sea is not easy though a radio wave passes through the water a lot better than it does above the sea surface. That is why submariners largely report incidents related to strange acoustic signals.
“I remember the time when panic struck the brass at the Headquarters of the Soviet Navy. It was in the mid-1970s, and the masters of the nuclear submarines began reporting strange sources of sound. The sound men on board the subs couldn’t identify the sounds detected in the Atlantic while on duty during the combat cruising,” says former senior officer of the Headquarters of the Russian Navy, Captain 1st Rank (Ret.) Vadim Kulinichenko.
“The crew of a submarine had to go though a troublesome experience while doing its best to sneak past the NATO antisubmarine systems and maintain the course as the sub moved at a depth of 200 meters. Some personnel, especially young seamen and midshipmen, could be pretty stressed-out from all that pressure. “
“And suddenly a duty sound man reports a case of ‘unidentifiable sounds’ to the captain’s bridge. The combat alarm stays on as long as sounds are being detected. Because nobody can be certain of the nature of the sounds, probably it’s some brand-new sub or a surface ship of the ‘potential enemy’. The sounds of the unknown could be detected several times a day,” says Kulinichenko.
What kind of sounds are you talking about?
“The sounds varied by the length and tone. The majority of them resembled a long croaking of a frog.”
“The number of incidents involving strange sounds kept growing. The Soviet Navy could not simply brush them aside. Finally, in October 1977, the Navy ordered the captains of the submarines to report all strange sonic incidents. And I know for sure that the U.S. Navy has instructed its subs likewise.”
“The operative staff personnel of all the fleets were told to gather information on any unexplainable acoustic manifestations. Every incident of the kind was to be marked in the charts. The naval officers whose job was to gather such information were dubbed “croakers.”
“There was a “croaker” in the North Fleet where I was serving at the time. Once I happened to take a look at his “for-your-eyes-only” chart. It looked as if the whole North Atlantic, north of Island and upward, had contracted measles. By the way, the term “croaker” eventually settled in. It was used for referring to the source of those strange phenomena,” says Kulinichenko.
Did the Navy arrive at any conclusions?
“No conclusions whatsoever. At first the Navy suspected the Americans, but those suspicions were pure allegations, there wasn’t any evidence in hand. A book titled U.S. Navy Intelligence Against the USSR has been recently published in Russia. It was written by two high-ranking American submariners. It is an interesting book with numerous accounts of U.S. naval reconnaissance during the Cold War era. However, there’s nothing in that book that can refer to the activity of “croakers.” Looks like the Americans have nothing to do with it.”
“Some authors simply confuse one thing with the other while writing about some ‘croaker’ allegedly captured by the Soviet Navy back then. The Soviet and U.S. Navy alike actively used sonic underwater buoys. In short, it’s a boy positioned at the sea bottom for transmitting certain acoustic signals that can be heard within a range of 20-30 kilometers.”
“Locating and destroying a sonic buoy of the potential enemy is really a big deal. For some reasons, the abovementioned authors take the cases of foreign sonic underwater buoys for the capture of ‘croakers’. Nobody has ever caught any of them yet.”
You said the Navy attempted to establish contact with the “croakers.” What are they, after all? Are they UFOs or sounds produced by fishes, other marine animals?
“So far there is no answer to this question. The ocean is like a forest in spring, it rustles thousands of different sounds. The majority of those sounds have been properly described and filed under proper categories. Any Navy training center can teach you to handpick sounds out of a cacophony. ”
“The list of sounds keeps growing. One theory maintained that the weird sounds were produced by female species of the killer whales while copulating. However, the killer whales are still out there in the ocean, and they keep copulating. But the mysterious ‘croakers’ are gone.”
“The first croakers were reported in the early 1970s, the ‘croaking’ reports reached a peak in the period from 1975 through 1980. Eventually, they just vanished in the deep blue sea. To my knowledge, the Russian submarines haven’t detected any new ‘croakers’ since the early 1990s.”
According to chief designer Nikolai Shevchuk at the Nikolayev Shipyard in Ukraine, Soviet designers worked on a flying submarine before the WWII broke out. The flying submarine was designed to carry a crew of three. It was designed to take off the sea surface and fly around a certain area searching for enemy vessels.
Having located a target, the winged sub was to dive underwater, approach an enemy vessel and launch torpedoes. The sub was thought to be an ideal weapon for conducting sabotage activities behind enemy lines.
The design of the flying submarine was approved by the Scientific Research Committee of the Soviet Union. But the project stalled in 1938 due to unknown reasons. Nobody has ever heard of it since.
It is quite possible that the project was put on hold at the time. Either the Soviet Navy or shipbuilders contracted by NATO may have resurrected it in the 1960s or 1970s.
Technical specifications of the flying submarine:
Crew: 3 men Speed: 200 km/h Range: 800 km Maximum altitude: 2,500 m Submersion depth: 45 m Independent underwater operations: 48 hours Weapons: two18-inch torpedoes; two paired machine guns
The first submarines were built at the turn of the 20th century. The first mysterious incidents involving submarines came on record during WWI.
On July 10, 1918, the U.S. submarine L-2 and the German submarine U-56 were about to attack each other. A sound man on board the American sub reported yet another U-boat at a distance. No sooner had he finished his report, the first enemy submarine blew up.
The sound of the second unidentified sub died away 20 minutes later. The above sound man claimed that he received a strange message in Morse code: three long sounds and one short. The sounds represented the letters “OE”. The meaning of the message remained unclear.
The captain of the L-2 figured out that the other German sub torpedoed the friendly one that was gearing up for action. However, the postwar documents clearly indicated that only one German submarine operated in that area in the summer of 1918.
In fact, aside from the L-2, no other subs operated in the area. According to documents, the area was free of depth bombs at the time. The strange two-letter message was not used by either of the parties involved in hostilities.
The incident may have taken place due to some sort of confusion during the war. Today it is hard to find out what caused the incident resulting in the sudden demise of the German submarine. However, the statistics released by the International Union of Submariners show that during a hundred-year period, from 1904 to 2004, 204 submarines were lost due to reasons unrelated to hostilities.
In other words, each year 2.3 submarine perishes goes down. Maybe the actual number of casualties is higher. Not every country is willing to declassify data on its vessels deemed sunk or missing.
Source:
“Komsomolskaya Pravda”, translated by Guerman Grachev
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
US has 'secret evidence of UFOs breaking sound barrier without a sonic boom and performing moves humans don't have the technology for', says Trump's Director of National Intelligence
US has 'secret evidence of UFOs breaking sound barrier without a sonic boom and performing moves humans don't have the technology for', says Trump's Director of National Intelligence
In December a 180-day deadline was announced for a report into UFO sightings
The Pentagon and intelligence agencies must release their report by June 1
John Ratcliffe, former DNI, said there were more sightings than publicly known
Ratcliffe said the observations were made by Navy and Air Force pilots
They were recorded by 'multiple sensors' and had no obvious explanation
The incidents included supersonic travel without a sonic boom
Ratcliffe said it was in the public interest that the information be released
The U.S. has evidence of UFOs breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom and making maneuvers impossible with known technology, the former Director of National Intelligence has revealed.
The revelations increased excitement about a forthcoming report detailing what the U.S. government has observed.
John Ratcliffe, who served as Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence, said that many of the incidents still have no easy explanation.
'There are a lot more sightings than have been made public,' Ratcliffe told Fox News.
'Some of those have been declassified.
'And when we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.
'Movements that are hard to replicate that we don't have the technology for. Or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.'
John Ratcliffe appeared on Fox News on Friday to discuss the forthcoming report
Ratcliiffe said that there had been more UFO sightings than the public previously knew
Navy pilots recorded seeing unexplained objects spinning in mid air, in the summer of 2014
Ratcliffe told host Maria Bartiromo that the sightings of 'unidentified aerial phenomena' had been observed all around the world.
'When we talk about sightings, the other thing I will tell you is, it's not just a pilot or just a satellite, or some intelligence collection,' Ratcliffe said.
'Usually we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things, and some of these are unexplained phenomenon, and there is actually quite a few more than have been made public.'
The government was, in December, given a 180-day deadline to disclose what it knew, meaning that the report should be out before June 1.
Ratcliffe said he had hoped to publish their findings before he left office on January 20.
'We weren't able to get it down into an unclassified format quickly enough,' he said.
The report was part of a $2.3 trillion COVID relief bill, which Trump signed into law in December.
The bill contained the Senate Intelligence Committee's Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 that had in it a 'committee comment' section that addressed 'unidentified aerial phenomena.'
The report, produced by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, must identify, among other things, any threats posed by unidentified aerial phenomena and whether they may be attributed to foreign adversaries.
'Weather can cause disturbances, visual disturbances,' Ratcliffe said.
'Sometimes we wonder whether or not our adversaries have technologies that are a little bit further down the road than we thought or than we realized.
'But there are instances where we don't have good explanations for some of the things that we have seen.'
Avril Haines is now the Director of National Intelligence in the Biden administration.
The Defense Department announced in September the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force on August 4.
Videos from the Navy were released last year through the Freedom of Information Act that showed UFOs moving at incredible speeds and performing seemingly impossible aerial maneuvers.
One of the videos was shot in November 2004; the other two were shot in January 2015. The three videos were code-named 'FLIR1,' 'Gimbal,' and 'GoFast.'
In the 2015 videos, Navy pilots can be heard expressing disbelief. All three UFO videos were captured by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets.
The videos were made public and published because of efforts by the New York Times, as well as through efforts by To The Stars Academy, which was founded by Tom Delonge, the founder and lead vocalist for the bands Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves.
Ratcliffe said it would be 'healthy' for as much of this information as possible to be made public.
A week before Ratcliffe stepped down, in January, the CIA released a treasure trove of newly-unsealed records.
They showed chilling accounts of hundreds of UFO sightings across the globe dating back to the 1950s - along with the international intelligence community's efforts to understand them.
A dossier with nearly 3,000 pages of documents about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) - the government's official term for what are commonly called UFOs - was published on The Black Vault website.
Thousands of paranormal enthusiasts pored through the collection of more than 700 individual documents, according to Black Vault's founder John Greenewald Jr, who has spent the past two decades suing the CIA to release the records and then scanning the pages into his database one by one.
The CIA purports that the files account for its 'entire' collection of declassified UAP intel, but Greenewald cautions that there's no way to verify that claim and has vowed to continue searching for further records.
The documents also show correspondence about UFO sightings between CIA officers and members of the military.
Sometimes the officials brush off observers' stories as purely superstitious, even when another explanation isn't clear. But in other instances the officers show genuine concern that perhaps something dangerous is at play.
Pictured: A photo from the Project Blue Book archive shows lights misidentified as a group of UFOs over a Coast Guard air station in Salem, Massachusetts in 1952
In December it emerged that two Pentagon reports had been produced, providing detailed classified information about strange sightings.
The DoD's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force issued the two classified intelligence 'position reports' in 2018 and summer 2020, and they circulated widely in the U.S. intelligence community, according to a detailed account from The Debrief based on interviews with multiple intelligence sources.
The position reports' startling contents included a leaked photo that has never before been made public, accounts of 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena' (UAP) emerging from the ocean and soaring through the sky, and an admission that extraterrestrial origins for the objects cannot be ruled out.
This leaked photo, published by The Debrief in December, was included in the 2018 position report, two DoD and one intelligence source told the outlet
The photo was previously described as depicting an 'unidentified silver 'cube-shaped' object' hovering over the ocean at an altitude of roughly 30,000 to 35,000
The leaked photo was was captured in 2018 off the East Coast of the United States by a military pilot using his cell phone camera, the sources said.
The photo was previously described as depicting an 'unidentified silver 'cube-shaped' object' hovering over the ocean at an altitude of roughly 30,000 to 35,000.
It appears that the image was captured by the backseat weapons systems operator of what appears to be an F/A-18 fighter jet.
Experts were baffled by the photo, but noted that the object somewhat resembles a GPS dropsonde, an atmospheric profiling device designed to be dropped from aircraft, typically over a hurricane.
'These revelations are extraordinary, and give the public a genuine peek behind the curtain when it comes to how the US government is handling the UFO issue,' Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the UK Ministry of Defence, told DailyMail.com.
'What this new information does is confirm that the US government is taking the UFO phenomenon more seriously than ever before,' he added. 'I anticipate further revelations shortly.'
The Pentagon has not confirmed the existence of the two position reports, as well as the authenticity of a leaked cockpit photo included in one of the reports.
Even more shocking were the revelations contained in a second, revised report issued by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in early 2020.
The report delved deeply into the possibility that UAP are able to freely move both through the air and underwater, zipping through the ocean undetected and emerging into the air at incredible speeds.
The report contained an 'extremely clear' photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft that emerged from the ocean in front of a F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilot, sources told The Debrief.
An artist's recreation (above) shows the image in the 2020 report as described by sources: a large equilateral triangle with rounded edges and large, spherical white 'lights' in each corner
Researcher Dave Beaty created this image to depict the object as described by sources who had seen the report from the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force
That photo has not been leaked publicly, but artist and researcher Dave Beaty's recreation shows it as described by sources: a large equilateral triangle with rounded or 'blunted' edges and large, perfectly spherical white 'lights' in each corner.
The encounter occurred off the East Coast in 2019, according to officials who had seen the latest report.
Two officials said said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from the ocean and shot straight upwards.
Officials say the latest report focused specifically on the possibility of 'transmedium' craft that are able to operate both underwater and in the air.
'Tic Tac' UFO: US Navy pilot made visual contact with the object on November 14, 2004
At least six Super Hornet pilots made visual or instrument contact with the UFO on November 14, 2004.
The encounters, which are documented in numerous interviews with first-hand witnesses, remain a mystery, and the object's incredible speed and movements have led to speculation that it was extraterrestrial in origin.
The original FLIR video from the USS Nimitz encounters leaked online as early as 2007.
Witnesses say that clips of the video had been circulated widely on the Navy's intranet - used to communicate between ships in the carrier group - and an unknown sailor in the group likely first leaked it.
The clip became one of the most-touted pieces of evidence in the UFO community when the Pentagon confirmed its authenticity in 2017.
In January, Chad Underwood, the former Navy aviator who shot the famous leaked video clip, broke his silence in an interview with New York Magazine.
Chad Underwood, the former Navy aviator who shot the famous leaked video clip, broke his silence in an interview with New York Magazine in January
He said the oblong, wingless 'Tic Tac' shaped object was spotted off the coast of Mexico over the Pacific.
He also revealed that for about two weeks, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
The radar contacts were so inexplicable that the system was even shut down and restarted to to check for bugs - but operators continued to track the unknown aircraft.
Then on November 14, Commander David Fravor says he was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he made visual contact with the object, which seemed to dive below the water, resurface, and speed out of sight when he tried to approach it.
As Fravor landed on the deck of the Nimitz, Underwood was just gearing up to take off on his own training run.
Fravor told Underwood about the bizarre encounter, and urged Underwood to keep his eyes open.
He recalls how he suddenly saw a blip on his radar before tracking it on his FLIR camera.
Underwood was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet as part of the USS Nimitz (above) carrier group when he encountered an 'unidentified aerial phenomena'
'The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving,' Underwood told the magazine.
'And what I mean by 'erratic' is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I've ever encountered before flying against other air targets.'
Underwood said the object wasn't obeying the laws of physics and dropped from 50,000 feet altitude to 100 feet in seconds, which he says, 'isn't possible'. He added that he saw no signs of an engine heat plume or any sign of propulsion.
The pilot refuses to speculate as to whether the object is an alien spacecraft or not, however.
'That's not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.'
When do we know we’ve entered a ‘full disclosure’ zone for UFO information being held by our or any government? When people who are currently still in office or in power do the disclosing. That makes one recent revelation about UFOs following U.S. Navy ships in 2019 so special – it was made by a current admiral. Another recent revelation is of the ‘former’ kind – a former CIA director reveals a UFO encounter that is beyond explanation … unless the explanation is ‘aliens’.
“No, we have not. I am aware of those sightings, and as it’s been reported, there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States, but other nations — and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force. Those findings have been collected and they still are being analyzed.”
Admiral Michael Gilday
In a speech at a Defense Writers Group event in Washington this week, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday, the U.S. Navy’s top officer, gave that answer when asked if he or anyone in the Navy had positively identified UFOs reported by multiple warships off the coast of California on two consecutive days and nights in July 2019. When asked if they were extraterrestrial, Admiral Gilday responded: “No, I can’t speak to that – I have no indications at all of that.” At all? Or ‘At all so far’? Reporters from The Drive were in attendance and attempted to follow up with the Navy, Coast Guard, FBI, and members of the intelligence and armed services committees in both the Senate and the House and received no answers as of this writing.
Perhaps they should ask former CIA director (1993-95) and former Under Secretary of the Navy (1977-79) R. James Woolsey Jr. Woolsey has released a book with co-author Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian acting spy chief who defected to America in 1978, entitled “Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin’s Secret War on America” and is making the rounds giving interviews on it. During one with The Black Vault, he as asked about UFOs and said this:
“There have been over the years now events of one kind of another, usually involving some kind of aircraft-like airframe. I never thought there was anything to all this, it always seemed pretty far out to me.”
R. James Woolsey Jr.
Sounds like any other politician giving an evasive non-answer … until he added this revelation from someone he “respects.”
“But there was one case in which a friend of mine was able to have his aircraft stop at 40,000 feet or so and not continue operating as a normal aircraft.”
That’s right … an airplane was reportedly suspended in space by something unexplained. Woolsey said he has no idea what could cause this, but then the former CIA director implied that this is not the first time.
“There had just been enough things like that that have occurred that I think there will be a lot of examination of what’s going on over the course of several months or years. I’m not as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly, but something is going on that is surprising to a series of intelligent aircraft, experienced pilots.”
You mean like the intelligent aircraft and experienced pilots of the USS Nimitz? Or the experienced crews of the USS Kidd, the USS Rafael Peralta and the USS John Finn who saw UFOs on two nights in July 2019 that neither they nor their highest ranking officer can identify?
Something is definitely going on … if experienced personnel can’t identify it, it’s either secret aircraft a foreign country is testing, secret aircraft our country is testing on its own troops (wouldn’t be the first time) or something from somewhere that’s not either of those.
The most amazing …and unsettling … thing about these latest two revelations is the calm manner in which these two highly respected and highly ranked people delivered them. We could attribute that to experience and training … we could also wonder about brainwashing and mind control.
Until these UFO sightings are explained, all possibilities are open for discussion.
The UFO phenomenon is one that goes deep, and extends past what many might at first think. Many cultures around the world have their own legends and tales that feature something that could be seen as UFOs today, no matter whether the original people who told these stories knew what to call them or not. They have variously been attributed to gods, spirits, and other assorted entities, and the main takeaway is that this is a phenomenon that has been taking place in one form or other across cultures and geographical boundaries for a very long time. Native Americans also have their own stories of what in modern lingo would be aliens and UFOs, and even their own story of a crashed alien spacecraft.
One very interesting voice in the UFO field is the author, researcher, and Professor Emeritus at Montana State University, Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke. Coming from Cherokee and Chocktaw heritage, she has been very active in working with the Native American community, raising awareness of their plight, and also writing on their experiences with the UFO and alien phenomena, a point of view that is rarely covered in the field. She has made much mention of the spiritual connection these people give to the phenomena, that UFOs and aliens are just as much a part of the spiritual realm as anything physical, and with some tribes even believing that their souls came from out in space. In an interview with the Skeptiko podcast she mentions of this connection:
It depends on the tribal group, and it’s difficult for me to say, as a general rule, there is this spiritual connection. But there definitely is with some of the tribes. There’s no question about it. Some of the tribes actually talk about the trip across the Milky Way. That when you die you cross the path of the Milky Way. You’ve got a common theme there that the cosmos plays so much a part in afterlife and death and the ability of the deceased that they never really die. They just move on into another dimension and that they can come back and communicate with the living.
She also writes much of what she calls the “Star People,” or ancient entities that came from the skies in their vessels to teach the Native people, and which are present in the lore and legends of many tribes, with some old tales even claiming that they interbred with them. These are not necessarily described as aliens from another world, exactly, but rather as spirits or gods descending from another spiritual realm. She has covered this theory in her book Encounters With Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians, and in some cases it seems that these are far from myth, as there have been tales of meeting these Star People right up to the present. One such tale covered in her book is that of a tribal elder known only as Harrison, a member of one of the Northern Plains tribes and who has quite the bizarre story to tell.
This apparently happened back in 1945, well before the UFO craze took over in the mainstream and indeed even before the infamous Roswell incident. At the time Harrison was just 12 years old, and one evening he was at home with his grandfather when they heard a rumbling as the whole house shook like there was an earthquake happening. The grandfather then ran outside to see that all of his horses had run off in a panic, so he tried to gather as many as possible and decided to search for the rest the following day. That morning, the grandfather went out to look for his remaining horses and came back obviously distressed and afraid of something. Harrison asked him what had happened and the grandfather merely told the boy to follow him. There is no way to know what Harrison expected to see at this point, but there is a good chance he couldn’t have imagined what was in store for him.
His grandfather took him some distance away, where there was a large gouge or crater in the earth, as if something very big had come to smash into the field. At the bottom of this crater was a metallic craft of some kind, with what appeared to be a doorway hanging open and damaged on the side. The two of them stood there staring for some time before the grandfather decided to go look inside, where he apparently found several entities that were described as being 8 feet tall and wearing green suits, with translucent skin and eyes that changed colors. The strangers seemed to be just as surprised to see him as he was to see them, even appearing to be slightly afraid of him and trying to distance themselves. The creatures seemed to shy away from him, and when he tried to speak with them they apparently vanished into thin air. Since the grandfather and Harrison had no notion of aliens from outer space, they thought of them in terms they could understand, that these were the “Star People” that their ancestors had so often spoken of.
Over the next several weeks these mysterious Star People appeared around the property, always keeping their distance and with the ability to appear and disappear at will. It seemed as if they were curious about Harrison and his grandfather, that they were studying them, but they were obviously very wary at first, never coming too close and vanishing whenever they were startled or scared. They were also seen to sometimes gather rocks, plants, and other things, as if taking samples for study. Through all of this, the grandfather always heartily greeted his enigmatic visitors and even offered them food on some occasions, and as the days went by they would approach closer and closer until one day they invited the grandfather onto their ship, which was still lodged into the earth at the bottom of that crater.
On the ship, the entities then communicated with him telepathically, telling them about their realm, which was described as dry and arid like the South Dakota badlands, the terrain so harsh they were forced to live underground in domed cities. They also told him about their history, and their way of life, and explained that they had been visiting Earth for thousands of years but had rarely ever actually interacted with humans as they were doing now, rather merely observing and studying. According to them there were two other ships they had been with at the time of their unfortunate crash, and that they had been sent by a larger mothership, which they were making attempts to contact with their damaged communications equipment. The grandfather would later tell Harrison that he had seen much wondrous technology aboard the ship while he was there, such as screens that could show all manner of images and a special seat that covered whoever sat in it “like an envelope.”
According to Harrison, one night the mothership finally came, a massive cylindrical object that hovered for some time before shooting off into the night. The next morning when they went to see the crater, the ship was gone, along with its strange occupants. Shortly after this Harrison claimed that U.S. military men had arrived and cordoned off the area. They would allegedly confiscate the grandfather’s entire ranch and create a lake at the site where the ship had come down. The grandfather apparently never equated these creatures or their ship with aliens as we know them, as in being from another planet, but he was very sure they were not from around here nevertheless. There is no way to know if any of this really happened or not, but it is certainly a curious UFO case and an account of possibly crashed aliens from another culture and mindset that we rarely get to see. Real or not, it is truly fascinating all the same.
Deeply spiritual cultures remember a time when “people from the stars” freely interacted with members of the human species.
Mysterious 'Marsquakes' detected by Nasa's Insight lander in area of Red Planet where volcanic activity and landslides have been spotted
Mysterious 'Marsquakes' detected by Nasa's Insight lander in area of Red Planet where volcanic activity and landslides have been spotted
Mystery rumblings from Mars picked up by Nasa's Insight - an unmanned lander which arrived on the planet in November 2018
The quakes occurred almost exactly one Martian year - or two Earth years - after two previous quakes were detected in the same area
The Cerberus Fossae region is thought to be a center of volcanic activity, and in 2019 a landslide was detected there
Mars doesn't have tectonic plates like Earth, and so the causes of the quakes are the subject of ongoing research
Using its robotic arm, InSight has been able to partially bury the seismometer in order to shield it from the fierce winds and record more accurate data
Mysterious rumblings known as 'Marsquakes' have been detected by Nasa's InSight lander, offering further clues about volcanic activity beneath the surface of the Red Planet.
The tremors originated in a region called Cerberus Fossae - an area where Nasa scientists have picked up significant seismical activity and even landslides in the past.
They believe the tremors were likely caused by a sudden release of energy beneath the surface of the planet, but as Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, the precise cause and origins of the rumblings remain unknown.
The quakes were picked up by InSight's seismometer, an onboard device specially built to capture Marsquakes.
Using its robotic arm, InSight has partially buried the seismometer to protect it from strong seasonal winds and allow for more accurate readings.
NASA's InSight has detected two large quakes on Mars in a region called Cerberus Fossae, further supporting the idea that this location is seismically active
An artist's rendition of the InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars. It is supporting several other missions orbiting the Red Planet
The area here the quakes were detected - Cerberus Fossae - is a steep-sided area cut into volcanic plains where active landslides were photographed in 2019.
Intriguingly, the quakes occurred almost exactly one Martian year - or two Earth years - after two previous quakes were detected in the same area.
InSight has recorded over 500 quakes to date, but because of their clear signals, these four were the best quake records for probing the interior of the planet, Nasa said in a statement announcing the quakes.
Taichi Kawamura of France's Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, which provides support to the Nasa mission, said the quakes added to scientists understanding of volcanic activity on the planet.
'Over the course of the mission, we've seen two different types of Marsquakes: one that is more 'Moon-like' and the other, more 'Earth-like,' he said.
Earthquake waves travel more directly through the planet, while those of moonquakes tend to be very scattered, said Kawamura.
THREE MISSIONS TO MARS IN 2021: US, UAE AND CHINA AT OR ON THE RED PLANET
So far 2021 has been the 'year of Mars' with three spaceships from Earth arriving at the Red Planet.
The first visitor from Earth to arrive was also a first for the Arab world - the United Arab Emirates 'Hope' probe.
This spaceship is going to monitor the weather on Mars over a full year.
The second ship was from China - Tianwen-1 will orbit Mars until May when it will deploy a rover.
This will make China only the second country after the US to land a rover on Mars if it is succesful.
NASA's Perseverance was the last of the three to arrive in Martian orbit, but the first to land on the Red Planet.
Marsquakes fall somewhere in between.
'Interestingly all four of these larger quakes, which come from Cerberus Fossae, are 'Earth-like.'
InSight launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in May 2018, touching down on Mars in November that year with the mission of giving the planet its first thorough check-up since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.
It is working in conjunction with several missions orbiting Mars and roving around on the planet's surface: including the Curiosity rover.
InSight's ability to adapt to the incredibly harsh conditions on the planet has given in an effort to gain more accurate data.
It regularly faces extreme swings in temperature - from minus 148 Fahrenheit during the night to 32 Fahrenheit - and fierce seasonal winds.
Its hoped that the Martian summer will bring calmer weather, making it easier to detect other quakes.
In order to record more accurate data, the InSight lander has begun using a scoop on its robotic arm to place soil over the cable connecting its seismometer - called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) - to the spacecraft.
'That allows the soil to get as close to the shield as possible without interfering with the shield’s seal with the ground.'
Scientists hope insulating it from the wind will make it easier to detect Marsquakes.
The new quakes were slightly smaller than two previous quakes of magnitude 3.6 and 3.5 detected n the same region.
InSight has recorded over 500 quakes to date, but because of their clear signals, these are four of the best quake records for probing the interior of the planet.
Since arriving in November 2018, the InSight lander has worked with several missions orbiting Mars and roving around on the planet's surface: including the Curiosity rover
In 2019, Nasa picked up evidence of active landslides at Cerberus Fossae, a set of troughs cut into volcanic plains on Mars
The Curiosity rover also snapped a pair of panoramas using its Mastcam camera
Earlier this week, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover snapped a picture of itself with a selfie with the 20ft-tall 'Mont Mercou' rock formation.
The selfie shows the rover alongside a rock formation dubbed 'Mont Mercou', a nickname taken from a mountain in France.
And while the photo is impressive on its own, it was actually taken to celebrate Curiosity's 30th sample to date, after the rover drilled a hole at a nearby rock sample nicknamed 'Nontron.'
Curiosity also snapped a pair of panoramas using its Mastcam on March 4.
NASA explained: 'By shooting one panorama from about 130 feet (40 meters) away from the outcrop, then rolling to the side and shooting another from the same distance, the rover created a stereoscopic effect similar to those seen in 3D viewfinders.
'Studying the outcrop from more than one angle helps scientists get a better idea of the 3D geometry of Mount Mercou's sedimentary layers.'
Curiosity is the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars, and is part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.
It launched from Earth on November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars almost a year later, on August 5, 2012.
The rover's key mission is to unravel they mystery of whether or not Mars ever had the right conditions to support life.
NASA added: 'Early in its mission, Curiosity's scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars.
'It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life.'
Several interesting events have occurred on Mars in recent days. NASA’s InSight lander detected two quakes coming from the Cerberus Fossae region – one on March 7th and the other on March 18th.
The two quakes, which had magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1, further validate the theory that the location is seismically active. In fact, InSight has detected more than 500 quakes so far during its mission.-
Experts have revealed that the planet has two types of quakes – one that is “Earth-like” and the other “moon-like”. While earthquakes here travel through our planet, those on the moon are more scattered, and the majority of those on Mars seem to be between the two, although the four largest quakes that happened at Cerberus Fossae were categorized as “Earth-like”.
InSight lander
In other Mars news, a strange green-colored rock was discovered by Perseverance which has experts guessing its origin. The rock, which measures approximately 6 inches in length, was zapped by a laser on the SuperCam instrument in hopes of finding out what it is made of. Is it a meteorite or part of another area on Mars that ended up in a different location? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the laser detects in the rock. (A picture of the rock can be seen here.)
The Perseverance rover used its SuperCam laser to study this strange green rock on Mars.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived as the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has finally touched down on the Red Planet when Perseverance dropped it down to the surface. The helicopter, which weighs just 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), is scheduled to take its first flight on April 11th and the data that it collects will be received here on Earth the following day.
It has two cameras that will collect data while flying over the Jezero Crater for 31 days. The helicopter will fly at an altitude of about 16.5 feet (5 meters) and its flight ranges will each be about 300 feet long.
While experts were concerned about the Ingenuity’s first night on Mars, new reports have stated that it survived its first cold night on the Red Planet’s surface. The helicopter’s battery successfully powered its heater to keep a steady temperature of approximately 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius). Now we have to wait and see what kind of data it will collect during its flights.
Perseverance
Another interesting bit of news surfaced recently where studies of a yet-to-be-named crater on Mars indicated that it once had water; however, there were no clues revealing how it ended up there.
Research led by Brown University Ph.D. student Ben Boatwright along with Professor James Head claimed that the unusual features of the crater were probably due to a runoff from an ancient glacier. The water ran off the top of the glacier and directly into the crater as Boatwright described as being “a previously unrecognized type of hydrological system on Mars,” adding, “In lake systems characterized so far, we see evidence of drainage coming from outside the crater, breaching the crater wall and in some cases flowing out the other side. But that’s not what is happening here. Everything is happening inside the crater, and that’s very different than what’s been characterized before.” Their study was published in The Planetary Science Journal.
I’m looking forward to seeing what more secrets Mars will reveal to the world.
Is Bigfoot Real? Let’s Look at Emerging Scientific Evidence
Is Bigfoot Real? Let’s Look at Emerging Scientific Evidence
In 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin spotted, and filmed, or so they claimed, a Sasquatch next to Bluff Creek in California. Dubbed an elaborate hoax by many, this image has become the universal symbol for Bigfoot throughout the United States. But, is Bigfoot real? A better question would be to ask why mainstream science has failed to put the question to the test when it comes to not only Bigfoot, but to other cryptids as well. Science is duty-bound by definition to explain the unexplained, yet some people are still debating the existence of Bigfoot rather than examining emerging scientific evidence, some of which has come to light in unexpected places.
Iconic frame 352 from the Patterson-Gimlin film which gave a face to the now popular cryptid creature known as Bigfoot. Despite emerging evidence, people continue to ask: Is Bigfoot real? (Bob Gimlin / YouTube)
Security Cam catches UFO, dead cows! April 2021, Willinston, North Dakota, UFO Sighting News.
Security Cam catches UFO, dead cows! April 2021, Willinston, North Dakota, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 5, 2021
Location of sighting: Williston, North Dakota, USA.
Source: MUFON 114593
A security cam captured this UFO and to top it off...two dead cows were found nearby when no cow farms existed within ten miles! This UFO was recorded for 38 seconds of which its glowing diamond shape was 95% lit up! The UFO has a smaller craft above it, that is used to assist in navigation when close to the ground. When it shoots away, the small craft lowers back into the top of the larger craft. Since two cows were mysteriously found dead nearby, this UFO must have been opened on top, because the smaller craft was picking up and carrying the dead cows to the ground after the animals have been scientifically probed and information gathered. Why probe the cows? Aliens know that cows are created to feed humans worldwide and as a main source of food, cows genetics and diseases, viruses and bacteria all will effect the human species in the coming hundreds of years. Thus...aliens can predict our health to some degree.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Object was caught by motion detection on ptz camera mounted on top of structure out at remote unoccupied farmstead object moved from north to south - unclear how far away - next motion event was daylight, you can see the grain bins in background there were 2 dead cows found in a tree row less than a mile away - no obvious cause of death, covered in mud. No farms with cows around for 10 miles, no reported missing cows from nearby farms never seen anything like this out there on the cameras.
Weird UFO caught on ptz camera at remote farmstead in North Dakota
Weird UFO caught on ptz camera at remote farmstead in North Dakota
Weird UFO caught by motion detection on ptz camera mounted on top of structure out at remote unoccupied farmstead in Williston, North Dakota on April 5, 2021.
UFO moved from north to south - unclear how far away - next motion event was daylight, you can see the grain bins in back ground.
There were 2 dead cows found in tree row less than a mile away - no obvious cause of death, covered in mud. No farms with cows around for 10 miles, no reported missing cows from nearby farms.
Never seen anything like this out there on the cameras. Mufon case 114593.
Swarms of flashing 'Tic-Tac shaped' UFOs chased four US Navy destroyers off California coast at 45 mph and hovered above them at night for WEEKS, ship logs reveal
Swarms of flashing 'Tic-Tac shaped' UFOs chased four US Navy destroyers off California coast at 45 mph and hovered above them at night for WEEKS, ship logs reveal
Mysterious drones chased and harried four US Naval destroyers for up to 100 nautical miles just off the coast of California
The drones, or UAVs, were able to travel long distances at high speeds with extreme maneuverability
Seamen onboard the destroyers reported seeing multiple drones, and flashing red and white lights
A UFO spotter said the drones were 'tic-tac' shaped
The head of the navy and the FBI were involved in investigation, but it was hushed up by Naval intelligence
The area is home to a large US Naval Base on Sam Clemente Island, and in the same area as another infamous UFO sighting in 2004
US Navy warships stationed off the coast of Los Angeles encountered swarms of mysterious drones, which pursued them at high speed in low visibility - prompting a high level investigation and some head scratching among top military brass.
The series of encounters with suspected UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, in July 2019, saw as many as six mystery aircraft swarm several US Navy warships close to a sensitive training area at the Channel Islands, according to The Drive.
Based on deck log data from four US destroyers targeted in the series of encounters, The Drive worked out that the drones flew at speeds of up to 45 miles an hour and traveled at least 100 nautical miles - far exceeding the capabilities of any commercially-available unmanned aircraft.
The incident was brought to the attention of the Chief of Naval Operations and the FBI, and at one point the Navy began investigating itself as the potential source of the 'mystery' drone operators.
However before conclusive answers could be uncovered, the Navy classified all communications about their investigation.
USS destroyers on patrol in July 2019 were suddenly swarmed by flashing, tic-toc shaped drones, which were able to travel long distance at high speeds
The USS Kidd, pictured above in 2011, was one of four Navy destroyers swarmed by sophisticated drones traveling at high speeds during a bizarre incident in 2019. The origin of the drones is unknown
The USS Gonzalez, a guided-missile destroyer, is in the same class as the naval ships targeted by drones in a brazen attack off the coast of California in 2019. They use an onboard intelligence team known as a SNOOPIE to track unknown flying objects
The bridge of the USS Porter, which is the same Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as those targeted in the July 2019 drone skirmish
The Drive, which investigates military weaponry and tactics, using ship logbooks and internal emails released by the Navy under the Freedom of Information Act, were able to reconstruct the bizarre series of events.
Their account shows the drama began on the night of July 14 2019. Deck logs from the USS Kidd show that just before 10pm that night two drones were spotted.
An onboard intelligence crew responsible for documenting and investigating contact with unknown vessels - known as the Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation team - or SNOOPIE - was engaged to figure out who, or what, the mystery flying objects were.
Within a few minutes of the sighting, reports show the USS Kidd moved into quiet mode, minimizing communications as it sought to work what the threat level was.
It contacted a nearby warship also on patrol, the USS Rafael Peralta, who also engaged their onboard photo intelligence team, or SNOOPIE.
Several other US Navy destroyers on patrol nearby began noticing strange lights.
The USS John Finn also reported UAV activity, and noticed a 'red flashing light' at 10:03pm, according to its logbook.
Just over an hour later at 11:23pm, the USS Rafael Peralta spotted a white light hovering over the flight deck.
The drone was able to remain hovering above the destroyer's helicopter landing pad while traveling at speeds of 16 knots and in low visibility.
The nearly 90-minute encounter was well beyond the capability of commercially-available drones.
The next night, the drones returned, this time as the warships were patrolling closer to the Californian mainland.
US warships have state-of-the-art detection systems, but were unable to discover the origin of these drones
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter shows off its high-tech weaponry
Filmmaker and UFO enthusiast Dave Beaty was the first to bring the drone encounter to light, revealing it was in the same area as the 2004 Nimitz Encounter
He said the drones were 'tic-tac shaped', similar to previous reported UFO sightings
They were first spotted by the USS Rafael Peralta and the ship's SNOOPIE team was engaged at 8:39pm.
At 8:56pm, logs show the USS Kidd had also come into contact with drones.
'The drones seem to have pursued the ships, even as they continued to maneuver throughout the incident,' The Drive reported.
Logbooks onboard the USS Russell show drones were swarming all over it, dipping in elevation from 1000 to 700 feet and seemingly able to move in any direction.
The USS Russell had separate contact with drones nine occasions in less than an hour.
Then at 9:20pm that night, the USS Kidd noticed 'multiple UAVs' around the ship.
The USS Rafael Peralta was also swarmed by as many as four drones. It was contacted by a passing cruise ship, the Carnival Imagination, to say they too had spotted up to six drones.
The three-hour frenzy of activity continued until close to midnight, with none of the warships able to say with certainty where the drones had come from.
The Navy's top commanders including the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and commander of the Pacific Fleet were notified.
The Los Angeles bureau of the FBI was also brought in to look at the incident.
The subsequent investigation found that just a handful of civilian ships were in the area at the time that could have been used as landing pads for the drones.
Investigators suspected the drones may have been launched from the ORV Alguita, a catamaran in the area.
And while the Alguita did have drones onboard, it was soon established its aircraft were not capable of such aeronautical feats.
Naval intelligence was brought in on the investigation and it was soon turning its glare inwards.
The area is home to a large US Naval Base on Sam Clemente Island, where sensitive training operations are often undertaken.
Soon afterward, the Navy classified the investigation, preventing further information from being released to The Drive.
There were further drone sightings later in July 2019, with SNOOPIE teams aborad the destroyers again being called on to identify the drones and work out where they were coming from.
The bizarre incident was first noticed by filmmaker Dave Beaty, a UFO researcher who UFOs.
In June 2020, he Tweeted: 'Did the navy ship #USSKidd #DDG100 encounter a UAP in July 2019 in So Cal OPAREA Trying to find out more. The ship logs indicate a "Snoopy Team" was deployed - an intel section that tries to visually ID objects. DM if you know more. Near San Clemente island.'
Later, relaying information he'd received from a Navy source, Beaty said a crew member on board 'could see them with the naked eye and they were almost eye level with the bridge hovering'.
'They were the same tic-tac shaped objects.'
Beaty said the sightings occurred in the same areas as another infamous UFO sighting in 2004 which became known as the 'Nimitz Encounters'.
The Drive said there remained 'baffling' questions about how the drones had been able to fly with such breathtaking skill, speed and maneuverability.
'If the drones were not operated by the American military, these incidents represent a highly significant security breach,' it reported.
Just a few days ago, the former Director of National Intelligence revealed the US has evidence of UFOs breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom and making maneuvers impossible with known technology.
John Ratcliffe, who served as Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence, said that many of the incidents still have no easy explanation.
'There are a lot more sightings than have been made public,' Ratcliffe told Fox News.
'Some of those have been declassified.'
'Tic Tac' UFO: US Navy pilot made visual contact with the object on November 14, 2004
At least six Super Hornet pilots made visual or instrument contact with the UFO on November 14, 2004.
The encounters, which are documented in numerous interviews with first-hand witnesses, remain a mystery, and the object's incredible speed and movements have led to speculation that it was extraterrestrial in origin.
The original FLIR video from the USS Nimitz encounters leaked online as early as 2007.
Witnesses say that clips of the video had been circulated widely on the Navy's intranet - used to communicate between ships in the carrier group - and an unknown sailor in the group likely first leaked it.
The USS Nimitz, a US Navy aircraft carrier, was at the center of a bizarre UFO sighting saga in 2004.
The clip became one of the most-touted pieces of evidence in the UFO community when the Pentagon confirmed its authenticity in 2017.
In January, Chad Underwood, the former Navy aviator who shot the famous leaked video clip, broke his silence in an interview with New York Magazine.
He said the oblong, wingless 'Tic Tac' shaped object was spotted off the coast of Mexico over the Pacific.
He also revealed that for about two weeks, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
The radar contacts were so inexplicable that the system was even shut down and restarted to to check for bugs - but operators continued to track the unknown aircraft.
Then on November 14, Commander David Fravor says he was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he made visual contact with the object, which seemed to dive below the water, resurface, and speed out of sight when he tried to approach it.
As Fravor landed on the deck of the Nimitz, Underwood was just gearing up to take off on his own training run.
Fravor told Underwood about the bizarre encounter, and urged Underwood to keep his eyes open.
He recalls how he suddenly saw a blip on his radar before tracking it on his FLIR camera.
'The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving,' Underwood told the magazine.
'And what I mean by 'erratic' is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I've ever encountered before flying against other air targets.'
Underwood said the object wasn't obeying the laws of physics and dropped from 50,000 feet altitude to 100 feet in seconds, which he says, 'isn't possible'. He added that he saw no signs of an engine heat plume or any sign of propulsion.
The pilot refuses to speculate as to whether the object is an alien spacecraft or not, however.
'That's not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.'
UFOs harassed US warships for several days in July 2019, according to the newly-released information from the logs of US warships.
The USS Kidd, USS John Finn, and USS Rafael Peralta were in a military area off the coast of California engaging in a training exercise when those on board noticed UFOs they described as drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
The three ships were swarmed by as many as six drones over a matter of days, at times doing brazen manoeuvres around the vessels.
The Drive obtained the logs through the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which recorded the sightings in entries such as ‘White light identified hovering over the ships flight deck,’ and ‘Kidd reported UAV overhead.’
One entry from Rafael Peralta reported, ‘Two UAV’s spotted off the starboard wing.’ Another entry added six minutes later, ‘Four UAV’s spotted off the starboard bridge.’
During the encounter, the UAVs matched the USS Kidd’s speed and bearing for around 90 minutes, which is 60 minutes more endurance than drones of their size.
The warships are equipped with electro-optical systems, thermal imaging, radar, and sensors, but the crew could not track the craft when they disappeared.
On July 15, 2019, the three vessels contacted the nearby cruise ship Carnival Imagination to know if the crafts were from there, but the crew confirmed they weren’t, but they also noticed five or six of the UFOs around the warships.
This time, the craft hovered with the USS Rafael Peralta in the area for three hours, and at one point recognizing four drones following the ship. The Navy, Coastguard, FBI, and other agencies did a formal investigation, but they found no answers.
It does not determine where the crafts were launched.
Une roche martienne qui intrigue les scientifiques
Une roche martienne qui intrigue les scientifiques
Les scientifiques de la NASA sont spéculatifs à propos d’une étrange roche turquoise découverte sur Mars par le rover Perserverance.
Plus tôt cette semaine, le petit rover a tweeté une photo de la roche martienne en précisant l’avoir zappé avec un laser.
La NASA explique avoir procédé à cette opération dans le but d’en apprendre davantage sur la géologie de la planète rouge.
Les experts ne se sont pas encore prononcés sur le type de roche, mais ils affirment que l'échantillon de 6 pouces ressemble à un fragment de météorite déjà observé par le passé, rapporte CNN.
Des scientifiques avancent aussi l’hypothèse qu’il pourrait s’agir d’un substrat rocheux patiné ou carrément d'un morceau de planète.
La trouvaille survient au moment où la NASA est en préparation pour faire voler un hélicoptère sur Mars.
Si l’agence spatiale réussie, elle écrira une page d’histoire en réalisant le premier vol contrôlé sur une autre planète.
VIDÉOS LIÉES (Anglais), sélectionnées et publiées par peter2011
From the “Ethically Dubious” file, which is in the “What could possibly go wrong?” filing cabinet, comes the news that researchers have grown mouse embryos outside of a mouse womb and kept them growing for 12 days – which would be about the length of the first trimester for a human embryo. Speaking of human embryos – the researchers are already discussing growing them outside of the womb for much longer than the few days embryos grow at invitro fertilization clinics before being implanted in a mother or destroyed. Is this the start of a brave new world, the end of ethics, the plot of the ultimate dystopian horror movie … or something far more unimaginable?
“It’s not only about being able to grow [mouse] embryos, but being able to manipulate them.”
If you picked “far more unimaginable,” you’re probably right. Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is the senior author of the mouse-embryo-growing-in-a-jar study accepted for publication in the journal Nature Research and the purpose was not just to see if it could be done but to play/experiment with the embryos. Mice have a 20-day gestation period, so the 12 days in a jar was enough for them to grow tissues and organs – and be observed by researchers doing little more than peering through the glass. In fact, the only thing stopping the mouse embryos from growing to term in the jar of liquid nutrients was the lack of a blood supply to their hearts. Hanna told MIT Technology Review that he’s not interested in going to term – his goal is “to watch and manipulate early development.” One idea is to introduce viruses such as Zika, to learn how exactly they harm the fetus. That’s fine for mice (but not for animal rights activists) but Hanna wants to go beyond mice to … human embryos.
HANNA, ET. AL./WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE/YOUTUBE/SCREENSHOT
“Once the guidelines are updated, I can apply, and it will be approved. It’s a very important experiment. We need to see human embryos gastrulate and form organs and start perturbing it. The benefit of growing human embryos to week three, week four, week five is invaluable. I think those experiments should at least be considered. If we can get to an advanced human embryo, we can learn so much.”
(Insert screams here.)
Hanna recognizes and respects the so-called 14-day rule – an unwritten guideline for embryologists which keeps them from growing human embryos more than two weeks. However, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) wants to allow for a much longer term and that’s what Hanna is waiting for. He told MIT Technology Review he wants to conduct experiments where human embryos could be altered to limit their potential to develop fully – for example, by installing genetic mutations in a calcium channel to prevent the heart from ever beating.
Is Jacob Hanna making plans to help humankind through science … or is he a mad scientist helping to make a new kind of human? A little of both? One thing is for certain – he’s not alone in this thinking. And one other thing is probable – this is already being done somewhere else.
Do you want this brave new world? What could possibly go wrong?
Pressurized oxygen helps to feed the developing cells, pushing through with pressure where nature would build a circulatory system. The embryos eventually died because they grew too large for oxygen to penetrate without the help of the placental blood oxygen flow that embryos have in real wombs.
Twelve days represents about half a mouse’s natural full gestational term. Hanna tells MIT Technology Review he hopes this will lead to human embryo studies of up to 5-week-old embryos. In naturally occurring pregnancies, it’s almost impossible to study embryos without jeopardizing them in some way—the same way it’s very, very ethically difficult to study pregnant people under the traditional scientific method.
To demonstrate the wide-ranging research ramifications of their method, the scientists also experimented with specific stains, chemicals, and more to show the embryos could still grow in the spinning artificial womb:
“This culture system is amenable to introducing a variety of embryonic perturbations and micro-manipulations that can be followed ex utero for up to six days. The ability to remove a mammalian embryo from the uterine environment and grow it normally in controlled conditions constitutes a powerful tool to characterize the effect of different perturbations on development during the period from gastrulation to organogenesis, that can be combined with genetic modification, chemical screens, tissue manipulation and microscopy methods.”
Developmentally, the 12-day-old mouse embryo, which is at “the hind limb formation stage,” is the same as the 5-week-old human fetus. As Technology Review points out, other researchers are actively studying ways to culture artificial human embryos by prompting human stem cells to divide and grow. But there are ethical questions that go both ways when it comes to studying embryos.
First, many critics consider the idea of implanting a so-called “artificial embryo” into a human womb to be extremely distasteful, and the practice is even illegal in some places. Trying to study this dynamic would be fraught, to say the least. Second, implanting a real embryo in an artificial womb to be studied up to 5 weeks, when the embryo would recognizably be human and have growing features, is a tough sell for many people.
UFO abductees come in all flavors. Some are highly respected or educated people who seem to have impeccable credentials, some are from more questionable sources. Some come from those who have stories that seem to follow some rational internal logic, while others fly right off the charts into the realm of the completely outlandish. Certainly some reports are way off the meter when it comes to pure bizarreness, and one of these is the time a farmer says he was whisked away to Mars, the Moon, and Venus by aliens.
The man named Buck Nelson was once pretty much a nobody. Born in 1895, he lived on his rural farm in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, and there wasn’t really much that was remarkable about him. That is, until 1954, when one evening would turn his mundane world inside out. On this night he was out at his farm when his radio began acting up, changing channels on its own and turning on and off. As he tinkered with the radio trying to fix it, his dog began barking uncontrollably outside. The animal was apparently going absolutely nuts, so he went out to see what was going on and was startled by three disc-shaped crafts hovering in the sky above, one large one and two smaller ones. The startled farmer then tried to signal these crafts with his flashlight, and that was when he claimed to have been hit with a beam “much brighter and hotter than the sun.” This apparently did not hurt him, but it left him paralyzed and unable to move, after which the UFOs moved off into the night.
After this strange encounter, he claimed that chronic back pain he had dealt with for years suddenly disappeared and his eyesight improved, but this was only the beginning of the weirdness. The flying saucers would begin to make regular appearances over his farm, and there would also appear two “friendly human spacemen” who called themselves Bucky and Bob, with a large black dog that apparently looked exactly like a regular old Earth dog and which they called “Bo.” These men claimed that they were actually human beings who had long ago been brought to live with the aliens on their home world and that there were other humans up there as well. The spacemen apparently explained to him that they were from the planet Venus, and they then looked around his house and asked him various questions about his life and stuff. Nelson would say of this odd encounter:
They stayed with me for about an hour and they were interested in everything in the house, especially my radio. When I told them a battery on top of it was for power, they smiled and said, with all this power around you in the air?…they went past a picture of Christ and I asked them if that meant anything to them and they said, “yes, we understand but you people don’t.
Before leaving they told him that they would be back again to take him onto a trip to space. The aliens were apparently true to their word, because one night they took him aboard their spacecraft and allegedly took Nelson on a tour of the solar system. They stopped off at the moon, which was described as a manufacturing base, then Mars, which was colorful, vibrant, and similar to Earth, and then Venus, which was a fantastic peaceful utopia where there was no war or crime. On Venus, they apparently showed him a “book machine,” about the size of a TV set, which you could put a book into and it would read the pages and play music. Bucky and Bob also told Nelson about what they called “The Twelve Laws of God,” which are suspiciously nearly exactly the same as the 10 commandments from the Bible with a couple new ones tacked on, explained that they only used solar power, that many of the Venus aliens and abducted humans like them lived on earth, many in important positions and in the space industry, and that they were keeping a careful eye on the increasing development of atomic weapons. According to them, countless galactic civilizations had destroyed themselves with nuclear weapons and they feared Earth was careening along this doomed path.
Nelson would write of all of this in a booklet imaginatively titled My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus, which includes instructions for building a “saucer detector,” and he also began holding an annual “Spacecraft Convention,” all of which made him a bit of a minor celebrity at the time. He would present many pictures as proof of all of this, and even samples of hairs from the spacemen’s dog, as well as alleged recordings of Bucky’s voice, but they are weak evidence at best. Considering that the spacemen looked exactly like humans, pictures of them are useless, and the hairs of the dog were merely dog hairs, prompting Nelson to comment “Dawgs is dawgs. Don’t matter what planet they’re from.” As for the voice caught on tape, although it is eerie, high and oddly shaky, it still sounds an awful lot like Nelson’s voice. Nelson would hold his conventions and bask in his minor fame all the way to his death in 1982, and remains a lesser known, but very odd feature of the 1950s contactee movement.
Nelson’s story is absurd on many levels. For one, we know now that Mars is hardly colorful and vibrant, that Venus does not have an atmosphere conducive to a utopian life, or even life in general, and it all seems to borrow heavily from the science fiction available at the time from writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. The booklet that Nelson wrote is also poorly written, thin on details, and reads exactly like one would expect from an uneducated farmer spinning yarns about aliens. Despite its quirky charm it reads like hack fiction, in fact, yet Nelson maintained to the last that it was all true. There is nearly zero chance that any element of the story is true, but it is nevertheless a fascinating peek into one of the weirder individuals in the contactee scene that was all the rage at the time, and a strange little tale to add to the lore of such stories.
There was a time when I thought it was at least feasible that cattle mutilationsmight be the work of aliens. That, however, was more than a few years ago. The more I dug into the mystery, the more I came to believe that the subject had far less to do with aliens and far more to do with government activity. Within in the field of Ufology, there is an acceptance that the first real animal mutilation case (as ufologists see it) was that of Snippy, a horse found dead under bizarre coincidences. As the Denver Library state of the Snippy affair: “On September 7, 1967, near the town of Alamosa in the San Luis Valley, Snippy, a 3-year-old Appaloosa, failed to return to the Harry King Ranch where she was stabled. Two days later, Mr. King (the ranch owner) discovered Snippy’s remains roughly a quarter-mile from the ranch house. According to his account, the neck and head had been completely stripped of flesh, leaving nothing but bare, seemingly sun-bleached, white bone, while the remainder of the mare remained unscathed.”
The problem here is not the story, but the fact that the more I dug into the matter of the mutilations, the more I came to find that secret government studies of the United States’ cattle herds had been going on for decades. In fact, way back. The reason: the U.S. government was quite rightly very worried about foreign nations and agents using deadly viruses to bring the herd down and, as a result, cause chaos in America. So, the government – periodically and careful and quietly – ran tests on cattle to see how such attacks on the U.S. were working or not on the poor animals. If that disappoints you, too bad. And if you think that such a thing couldn’t be done, consider the data contained in the documents I’m about to share with you now. It was back in 2001, while spending about in the National Archives, that I found out the extent to which government agencies were secretly tied to America’s cattle.
Bacteriological Warfare in the United States is a fascinating FBI document – declassified into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – that covers the years 1941 to 1950. Notably, of the file’s original 1,783 pages, no less than 1,074 have been firmly withheld from declassification by the FBI. The file reveals a wealth of illuminating and disturbing data on animal disease and death, and their potential, theoretical links to bacteriological warfare and sabotage by enemy nations and individuals. For example, J.R. Ruggle, the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge at the Savannah, Georgia office of the Bureau in the early-to-mid 1940s, wrote thus to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on February 3, 1943: “This office has received a copy of a communication from John T. Bissell, Colonel, General Staff, Assistant Executive Officer, Military Intelligence Service, Washington, D.C., dated December 29, 1942, to directors of intelligence in all Service commands…” Colonel Bissel’s communication read:
“It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.” And what did the government do? I’ll tell you: they very carefully began to take a look at the cattle herd and to determine the extent to which those “enemy nations and individuals” might be. And the secret investigations were undertaken wherever it seemed the cattle were being subjected to viruses by our enemies.
The FBI even found examples of such concerns going back to the First World War: “Anton Dilger, a German-American medical graduate from John Hopkins University, was in Germany when the First World War broke out. He offered his services to the Kaiser, and was promptly detailed by Colonel Nicolai to do secret service work in the United States. Dilger returned to America with a supply of cultures of glanders and anthrax germs. Financed by von Papen, he set up a laboratory in Chevy Chase, near Washington, and started breeding germs on a large scale for infecting mules, horses, and cattle awaiting shipment to the allies. This man then organized a band of some twelve assistants to travel around the country, carrying Dilger’s germs in small glass phials stopped with corks through which a needle extended. This roving band jabbed their deadly needles into the livestock. They also spread germs by placing them in fodder and drink. Thousands of soldiers, as well as horses and cattle, died as a result of Dilger’s germs. At last Dilger revolted against his mission of silent death. He was murdered by German spies a few months before the end of the war. Could it happen here? It did happen here!”
Now, let’s take a trip to 1949. Particularly notable is a July 11, 1949 document that refers to the government’s desire to acquire “world-wide information on animal diseases and animal population” [italics mine]. And, one year later, the FBI was still collecting such data. On October 19, 1950, the FBI prepared a document titled Abnormal Loss of Hogs in Nebraska and Illinois that dealt with an unusually high number of hog deaths in the aforementioned states – as a result of cholera. The files, however, make it clear that, in official, FBI quarters, the nature of the animals’ deaths had been viewed with deep suspicion. It was concluded that the deaths were due to a “variant virus” or “atypical virus”” that stemmed from “local conditions and the physical conditions of the hogs.” The important factor, however, is that this document was found within a file specifically focused upon bacteriological warfare. In other words, the FBI was still looking closely at any and all animal deaths that might not have wholly conventional explanations.
So, we’ve seen that government concerns went back the First World War. Then, in the late 1940s the secret investigations were still going on. And, as was shown above, secret investigations of hogs in the 1950s took place. Then, a decade later, cattle mutilations began. I could have made this article at least a 4-part one, such is the sheer number of documents now available on the subject (if you know where to look). There are thousands and thousands of pages. Had cattle mutilations suddenly surfaced out of nowhere in 1967, I might be a bit more open to the alien angle. The fact is, though, that covert studies of America’s cattle have been going on for around a century. Sometimes with the bodies of the dead left where they were covertly studied. Add to that a bit of government disinformation to the effect that all of this is due to aliens, then it’s very easy to see how government agencies were able to undertake their secret studies and with the real (and far more disturbing) story kept hidden.
The Ocean’s Youngest Monsters Are Ready for Glamour Shots
The Ocean’s Youngest Monsters Are Ready for Glamour Shots
Divers practicing blackwater photography are helping marine scientists gain new insights into fish larvae.
An inch-long larval lionfish off the coast of Palm Beach, Fla. “What’s really fascinating is when you send the scientists something and they have no idea what it is,” said Steven Kovacs, a local dentist and blackwater photographer.Credit...Steven Kovacs
For most scuba divers, few places underwater match the visual thrill of a kaleidoscopic coral reef teeming with colorful fish. For Jeff Milisen, a marine biologist and photographer in Kona, Hawaii, there is no better place to dive than an open stretch of deep ocean. At night.
“There’s a whole lot of nothing,” he said. “There’s no bottom, no walls, just this space that goes to infinity. And one thing you realize is there are a lot of sea monsters there, but they’re tiny.”
Of course, there are big monsters, too, like sharks. But the creatures Mr. Milisen is referring to are part of a daily movement of larval fish and invertebrates, which rise from the depths to the surface each evening as part of one of the largest migrations of organisms on the planet. The emerging hobby of taking pictures of them is known as blackwater photography.
Most of the larvae are no bigger than a fingernail; others are even smaller. And they can easily be mistaken for bits of seaweed or drifting detritus. But up close, when captured with a camera using a special lens called a macro, the animals can appear to loom as large as wild animals on a safari — a safari on another planet.
Five years ago, Mr. Milisen began sharing his photos in a Facebook group, and there he discovered a community of passionate nighttime adventurers who were capturing images of living things rarely seen before. Perplexed and astonished by what they were photographing, Mr. Milisen and others in the community, called the Blackwater Photo Group, began contacting fish scientists, asking for help in identifying what they were seeing.
Even the most seasoned specialists responded with incredulity.
“The No. 1 thing people, even scientists, ask is: ‘What the hell is that?’” said Ned DeLoach, an experienced underwater photographer, who, with his wife, Anna, and the writer Paul Humann, has published eight books on marine fishes. “Why these images are so spectacular and so popular is they’re so otherworldly. People have never imagined that creatures like this exist, and that has attracted photographers.”
David G. Johnson, curator of fishes at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, was one of the first scientists to be contacted by members of the Facebook group. He said he was immediately smitten by the images.
“You have behavior, colors,” he said. “It really is a great advance in terms of what we can learn about the early life history of fishes.”
As the blackwater hobby has taken off, gaining adherents around the globe, more and more photographers have captured stunning images and videos that reveal a secret world of bizarre, tiny animals that scientists have struggled for decades to better understand. Many of the images have gone viral on social media, and some recently won major underwater photography awards.
Now, scientists like Dr. Johnson want to formalize the collaboration with blackwater photographers.
In a paper published on Tuesday in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology, scientists from Hawaii, along with Dr. Johnson and others at the Smithsonian, have outlined how they hope to enlist more nighttime underwater photographers, most of whom have no scientific background, to participate in marine research. If the photographers could collect specimens of the tiny animals they photograph, DNA could be extracted and analyzed.
A larval cusk-eel and marine biologist Jeff Milisen, who joined a Facebook group for likeminded enthusiasts of nighttime open-ocean photography.Credit...Jeff Milisen
A bony-eared assfish (Acanthonus armatus).Credit...Steven Kovacs
A larval cusk-eel, genus Brotulotaenia.Credit...Steven Kovacs
Hairy goosefish (Lophiodes fimbriatus), off the coast of the Big Island in Hawaii.
Credit...Jeff Milisen
So far, the scientists leading the effort have recruited about a dozen divers, who have collected more than 60 specimens for analysis. More are in the pipeline.
“We’re building a collection that for the first time has a live image,” Dr. Johnson said. “We get the specimen and create a DNA record tied to it.”
He expects scientists with a knack for underwater photography to join the effort as well. Marine researchers hope that examining images of animals photographed in their natural surroundings and pairing those images with data drawn from techniques such as dissection and DNA barcoding will significantly expand the knowledge of how these animals change over time and why they behave as they do. Ideally, the work will also shed light on the mysterious daily migration of creatures, called the diurnal vertical migration, that takes place every night in every ocean around the globe.
The diurnal vertical migration includes trillions of tiny animals, many in the larval stage, that rise from great depths of 1,000 feet or more to just beneath the surface to feed. The journey takes place at night, scientists believe, because it allows the animals to avoid predation by larger fish that locate their prey visually. The baby fish return to the lightless deep before sunrise.
Like many insect species and frogs, most marine fishes and invertebrates look and behave vastly different in their larval stages than they do as adults. The fish larvae are often festooned with flamboyant, streaming appendages to help them navigate the currents or imitate other species such as poisonous jellyfish. Some have enormous eyes and broadcast a rainbow iridescence that would not look out of place beneath a glass counter at Tiffany’s.
Most marine fishes and some ocean invertebrates go through this two-stage life cycle. Scientists believe that the drastic shift in form is a product of evolution and natural selection.
“Larvae and adults are each living in a completely different evolutionary arena,” Dr. Johnson said. “The larvae make their living in the open ocean currents, which is such a different place than where they’re going to settle out, like the sandy bottom, a coral reef or the deep sea.”
The larval stage of many sea creatures transpires in the open ocean, which is difficult to study, and little is known. Almost all of the previous understanding of what these animals look like comes from expeditions that collected them in large conical devices called plankton nets, which are dragged behind research vessels. The technique began over 150 years ago, gaining prominence with the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876, organized by the British government. There have since been some major advances in the technology, but the basic technique is largely unchanged.
A larval spotted ribbonfish off the coast of Palm Beach.Credit...Steven Kovacs
Plankton nets draw the animals into a large open ring and funnel them into a jarlike device called a cod end. As water is forced into the jar, the animals are easily crushed and usually die before reaching the surface. Many creatures, such as jellyfish, salps and glittery, orb-shaped animals called ctenophores, are so delicate that they are mushed into a gelatinous goo that researchers on boats pull from the jars by the handful. The animals that remain intact are fixed in an alcohol solution, which prevents them from decomposing, but which turns them ghostly white. Often the delicate filaments and fins break off, making it impossible to know how the animals looked and behaved while alive.
“Those filament appendages are extremely important,” said Luiz A. Rocha, a marine biologist and curator of fishes at the California Academy of Sciences who is not involved in the project. He said that they can be used for mimicry, movement or camouflage.
“Because all that information is lost when collected in the nets, the photographs can open up an entirely new research area to understand why they have these features and what they use them for,” he said.
Open water observation of fish larvae is not new, but it was mostly practiced during the day. The technique, called blue water diving, began in the 1980s when a group of California scientists, hoping to overcome the problems with plankton nets, began taking boats out while the sun blazed overhead.
William M. Hamner, a retired ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a pioneer of blue water diving and developed many techniques to drift and dive in the open ocean that are used today by blackwater divers.
“The fact that we started blue water is simply because no one cared enough about plankton at the time to go to all the effort to observe them in the wild, and I did,” Dr. Hamner said.
In both blue and blackwater diving, scuba divers usually travel far offshore, often 10 miles or more, where the seafloor may lie several thousand feet below. They descend 50 to 100 feet beneath the ocean while clinging to a tether that hangs from a boat or from a buoy on the surface.
In blackwater diving, however, powerful underwater lights are attached to a tether to illuminate the water, often attracting animals, including sharks. The avocation is not for everyone.
“There’s a whole new sensory experience when there’s no top or bottom,” said Ms. DeLoach, one of the photographers. “It’s the closest I think I’ve come to being in outer space.”
Images of live (left column) and fixed (right column) larvae of a cusk-eel (genus Luciobrotula) and a deepsea tripod fish (genus Bathymicrops)
Credit...via Smithsonian Institution
For the photographers, capturing an image of something never observed, let alone photographed, before becomes almost an addiction.
“What’s really fascinating is when you send the scientists something and they have no idea what it is,” said Steven Kovacs, a dentist in Palm Beach, Fla., and a frequent contributor to the Facebook group, who has been blackwater diving for five years. “Or it’s the first time being seen. That’s one of the greatest thrills of all.”
The photographers have reason to gloat. Some scientists say the images, paired with DNA from collected larvae, have the potential to revolutionize the study of larval fishes.
“We believe this approach opens a new window for our understanding of these larvae and raises exciting questions for future research,” said Ai Nonaka, a researcher at the Smithsonian and the lead author on the paper.
Dr. Johnson hopes that the project will inspire a new generation of underwater photographers to become citizen scientists and participate in research.
“We’ve been doing this for four to five years, but it’s still new,” said Mr. DeLoach, who began collecting specimens for the Smithsonian with his wife in 2019. “There’s so much that hasn’t been discovered yet. It’s a pretty handy thing to have a specimen in the Smithsonian collection with your name on it.”
Other scientists who study larval fishes are happy to give the photographers their due credit.
“I think that this is one of those special cases in which the underwater photography people actually realized something quite valuable and cool before science did,” said Tom Shlesinger, a marine biologist based in Florida who is a convert to blackwater photography. “It really opened my eyes and mind to the fact that we actually know very little about what’s going on in the sea at night.”
De heli is zaterdag losgemaakt van de robotjeep Perseverance, die op 18 februari op de Rode Planeet is geland. Na het losmaken, kon de Ingenuity geen gebruik meer maken van de energie van de Perseverance en was hij op zijn eigen zonnepanelen aangewezen. Ook om zich te verwarmen tijdens de ijskoude nacht waarbij de temperatuur tot min 90 kan dalen.
Voor de NASA is het een "belangrijke etappe" dat de mini-helikopter die nacht heeft doorstaan. De volgende dagen ondergaat het tuig een reeks testen. De eerste vlucht vindt ten vroegste op 11 april plaats. Het zal dan de eerste gemotoriseerde vlucht op een andere planeet zijn.
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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