The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld 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...
27-09-2022
US Navy Chilling Underwater UFO Encounters Might Prove Aliens Hiding Under Ocean
US Navy Chilling Underwater UFO Encounters Might Prove Aliens Hiding Under Ocean
For a long time, UFOs have been known to be Aerial phenomena that moves only in one medium, but then the report of objects diving into the water and coming out hit the media. Now, many experts including the Pentagon consider UFOs as “transmedium objects.” For example, an object could be considered “transmedium” if it could fly through Earth’s atmosphere in addition to another environment, such as space or underwater. There are more than dozens of incidents reported by the Navy personnel that justify the UFO maneuvers underwater with enormous speed. Those who have served years in the Naval force experienced something whose origins are still not understood.
1966, USS Tiru (SS-416) Encounters UFO
In 1966, a mysterious series of events occurred with the US Navy submarine USS Tiru SS-416. The submarine left Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and was bound for Seattle, Washington, where it was scheduled to stay in the repair dock for several days, after which it was supposed to take part in torpedo exercises. On the way to Seattle, one of the crew members reported something strange in the sky at a distance of about 2 miles, and he asked other sailors to check it, but at that moment, the boat’s radar station also recorded anomalous contact. One of the eyewitnesses, a crew member named Jim Speiser recounted what had happened: (Source)
“The lookout refused to tell the OOD (officer of the deck) what it was that he had seen and instead insisted that the starboard lookout and the OOD both look at that area. The three men looked through their binoculars toward the area reported and were astounded to see a metal craft larger than a football field tumble from the clouds into the ocean. It actually tumbled end over end and when it hit the water and sank beneath the ocean huge geysers of water rose into the air.
When the port lookout was sure that the others had seen it he then told the OOD that he had seen it tumble from the ocean up into the clouds. The OOD and the starboard lookout were speechless. Within a few minutes, however, they all became excited when it again rose from the water and tumbled up into the cloud layer. At about the same time a crew member below queried the bridge about a radar contact at the same range and bearing. Sonar also reported strange echos.
The OOD called for the Captain to come to the bridge at that time. At about the same time the object emerged from the clouds and fell down into the ocean. All five men witnessed this. The QMC (Quartermaster Clerk) took pictures as it rose up into the clouds and then back down into the ocean once again.
The five men watched for quite a while longer but nothing else happened. Soon the sub had moved out of visual range and the Captain told all witnesses that they were never to discuss what they had seen with anyone under any circumstances. He stated that the incident was classified information.
The Captain then went below and sent a radio msg. There was no doubt as to what we had seen. It was a metal craft with machinery on and around the outside of it. It appeared to have windows or lenses placed around its perimeter. It made no noise that we could hear. It did not disturb the sub’s electrical systems nor did it affect the gyro compass. It looked very much like a round flying “ship” as in sea going ship. It had the shape and form of a saucer with a bowl inverted in the saucer and it was huge. I will never forget it as long as I live.”
1991, USS Kirk FF108 UFO Encounter
Another similar incident took place in 1991 off the west coast of South America. The witness stated that at that time, he was a Chief of Operations and Intelligence serving aboard the Knox-class escort destroyer USS Kirk FF1087 and that they were part of a drug interdiction force consisting of the USS Kirk and three other Navy ships. Their main task was to patrol using a network of radars to track and then intercept drug planes flying out of Colombia, Panama and Guatemala, as well as to seize any smuggling ships that they could find. (Source)
USS Kirk (FF-1087). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
The witness said that his primary position was at the CIC Combat Information Center, which he and 22 other specialists maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rotating in two shifts of 11 people.
At 2 a.m. on December 16, he was on duty at CIC. The night was calm and nothing unusual happened. He said he used the break to go up to the bridge. At this time, the entire ship was in a status called “darkened ship,” when all external lights were turned off, as well as on the bridge, that is, everything around was dimly lit only by instrument panels. His friend was on deck duty that night, and they chatted when they had some free time. And suddenly, everything around was lit up in red color:
“All of a sudden and out of nowhere, like a huge flash from a camera, emanating from the starboard bow sea level upward was a huge flash of red glowing light, which lit up our entire ship. It only lit up our ship, not the surrounding ocean, just our ship. It happened so fast, that the OOD, the navigator and I were speechless for about 5 seconds, at which time I looked at the OOD and asked him if he just saw that light. He stated yes in a sullen voice.
I then asked the navigator and he replied yes. I then took the navigator’s sound powered headset, and asked the forward and aft look outs, if they had just seen the same red flash, to which the forward look out stated, “YES! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
After lookout said yes as well. I then immediately contacted CIC, and asked the CIC officer if we had any aircraft or surface ships in our vicinity, to which he replied clear as a whistle. I asked if we had any submarine activity in the area, to which he replied, no. At this point I looked at the OOD and asked him if we should wake up the captain or as we would call him, The Old Man. The OOD sat there stunned for a minute, as did I and everyone else.
What had just happened did not make any sense. The flash emanated from the sea, directly off of our starboard bow (like it was touching our bow), and ascended upwardly so rapidly, creating the effect of the bright red flash. The other weird aspect of this event was that only our ship was lit up within the red flash, not the surrounding sea, but our vessel only. The OOD elected not to wake the captain, and the entire incident was logged in our ship’s log as an unexplained phenomenon.
Up until this event, I did not believe in UFOss or USOss. I have no doubt that our ship, steaming along at 12 knots, came right up on a submerged unidentifiable aircraft. I don’t think the aircraft or USO had any idea we were sailing up to them. I think whatever it was, took off in a very unplanned and fast manner, and wanted to quickly identify us, thus the flash.”
In the end, after much deliberation, they decided not to wake the captain up, but simply to register it in the ship’s log as an “unexplained phenomenon.”
Another Navy submarine encountered something strange happened in October 1989. On October 24, USS Memphis was on a mission to secure a shuttle launch site in Florida, patrolling about 150 miles from the coast, when something very large was detected by sonar and began approaching them quickly. At that point, almost all the instruments on the submarine failed: (Source)
“The ship was malfunctioning, our tanks were blowing out of control, we were losing navigation ability and the communications area was totally lost. We went to all stop and tried to access what was happening. The controls in the reactor area started to malfunction. This presented a serious danger to our safety, so the captain ordered us to shut down the reactor, surface and go to diesel motors. When the ship surfaced I went to my watch station. The ship was still experiencing electronic difficulties but the mechanical devices such as diesel engines, cook stoves, and turbines were fine.
This huge vessel was over a half mile across. The UFO made a half circle around our ship then passed across the stern causing our electronics systems to go crazy. We had permanent damage in communications and the sonar room. As the craft flew over the stern, I could see the rain stop under its red glow. The water seemed to rise almost a foot as the UFO passed over silently. When the UFO finished its swing across the stern it paused – the sky got brighter red and it simply moved off at tremendous speed inside 15 seconds. When the UFO left, our boat returned to normal with the exception of the radio and sonar. We did a quick system check and the captain ordered us to return to reactor power and get underway. The captain took two petty officers, the executive officer, and myself into the wardroom. He told us to not spread any rumors until we had a chance to talk to Commander Submarine Fleet – Atlantic.
We reached port in about 7 hours where I was taken into “protective custody.” Two enlisted men and myself agreed we had witnessed a real UFO. I was the one who shot it with a laser range finder, so I was the only one that had its exact sizes. I shot that vessel as it hovered and I got solid readings, not spotty like I would on debris. We were in holding for about three hours when an officer from the Air Force arrived and gave us a line of bull about an exploding weather satellite. The Navy then transferred virtually everyone on the crew to new assignments. This included the captain, the executive officer and the entire crew. They were split up which almost never happens unless one of them gets a promotion or a new command, neither of which happened.”
Nimitz-class aircraft carrier UFO Encounter
More recently, there has been a report from E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman, who in 2010 served aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. At the time, the ship was off the coast of Haiti, delivering humanitarian aid to a region that had just experienced a catastrophic earthquake. He had a break that day, and he sat on the deck of the SAM launcher and was just looking at the water as usual. He liked to watch the underwater world. (Source)
He said: “I was staring into the water from above when a large, flat, white ’Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
Baughman could not believe what he saw. He told his supervisor about the strange object he had seen underwater. But others were indifferent and ended the talk by saying “everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
He doubted about his sighting as he believed that it could be anything from an albino whale, shark, or some ship wreckage to an optical illusion. He said: “But it cast its own shadow and that’s how I was able to perceive it as a solid object.”
Capt. Kent D. Whalen and John Baughman, 2011
However, Baughman remained silent for all those years until the 2004 Nimitz event got public in 2017. This encouraged him to reveal his encounter with an underwater UFO. “It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities,” he explained.
Being afraid of the response he could have received on his story, he had been keeping silence for many years. Likewise, there are other military personnel who do not reveal their incidents due to many reasons.
USS Omaha (LCS 12)
Some interesting UFO sightings have been reported by many in the US Navy, and footage has even been released showing UFOs entering water. Among the proposed evidence for this is a video filmed off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 by the crew of the USS Omaha. In a video posted by UFO researcher and investigative director Jeremy Corbell, a spherical object is seen flying over the ship and then descending into the water as one of the crew exclaims, “Wow, it splashed!”
The video caused a lot of buzz on the Internet, but it became even more interesting when Corbell said that a Navy submarine was sent to search for the object, however, it did not find anything. Interestingly, there was information that at about the same time, American submarines spotted other mysterious anomalous objects underwater in that area, which seemed to defy the laws of physics. The Navy has confirmed that the footage was genuine, but they cannot explain it.
More specifically, Luis Elizondo, a former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said:
“Imagine a technology that can do 6-700 g-forces, which can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, which can evade radar and which can fly through air and water and eventually. in the space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. This is precisely what we are seeing.” (Source)
One of the undated accounts was a Soviet nuclear submarine’s encounter with the formation of six alien spacecraft in the south of the Pacific ocean. At the depth of 260 meters, the six disc-like objects were moving towards the submarine at the speed of 426 km per hour. The crew could not escape their pursuit, and the commander ordered the crew to rise to the surface. The crew saw through the periscope that the objects came out of the water and took off at absurdly fast speed.
According to former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, many mysterious events also took place in the Bermuda Triangle region. The devices failed for no apparent reason. He believed that the UFOs were behind it.
“[In Translation]We have repeatedly observed that devices record the movement of material objects at an unimaginable speed. We measured some speeds – it is about 230 knots (400 km per hour). Such speed is difficult to create on the surface, only in the air. But there is gigantic resistance in the water. As if the laws of physics do not apply to these objects. There is only one conclusion: the creatures who created such material objects significantly surpass us in development” Beketov said.
Another Navy intelligence Captain Igor Barclay said that the Unidentified submerged objects were seen in the places where the Russian Navy and NATO fleet are concentrated. He said: “These are the Bahamas and Bermuda, Puerto Rico. Especially often UFOs are seen in the deepest region of the Atlantic – in the south of the Bermuda Triangle and in the Caribbean.” (Source)
NASA Announces The Discovery of a Potentially Habitable ‘Sister Solar System’
NASA Announces The Discovery of a Potentially Habitable ‘Sister Solar System’
NASA recently announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets around the habitable or ‘temperate zone’ of a star 39 light-years away, in one of the most significant exoplanet discoveries to date.
According to research, at least the inner six planets appear to have Earth-like masses, are made of rock, and have surface temperatures ranging from 0 to 100°C (32 to 212°F). NASA refers to it as a “sister solar system” to our own, and claims that some of the planets might potentially support liquid water and even extraterrestrial life.
NASA made the announcement in a live press conference after triggering much speculation over their big “discovery beyond our Solar System”.
The new exoplanets were discovered circling TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf star 39 light-years distant from our Sun in the Aquarius constellation.
Using Earth-based telescopes, astronomers led by Michal Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium discovered three exoplanets around the star. However, it wasn’t until the researchers examined it more extensively using NASA’s Spitzer satellite telescope that they identified four extra planets in the system.
Based on these findings, initial estimations imply that at least five of the planets have masses similar to Earth, and further Hubble Space Telescope metrics indicate that they are most likely rocky in composition.
At least three appear to be in their star’s temperate zone, which implies their surface temperatures are most likely to be between 0 and 100°C (32 and 212°F), making liquid water and possibly even extraterrestrial life a possibility.
Before we get too enthusiastic, the researchers emphasize that much more research and analysis have to be done, particularly on the seventh, outermost planet, which has only been detected orbiting the star once.
As a result, we still don’t know how long it takes the seventh planet to orbit TRAPPIST-1 or how it interacts with the inner planets. And because the entire system is so far away, we can’t be certain whether it contains water or is a good environment for life.
According to the researchers, not only are at least three of the planets potentially home to liquid seas, but the entire system appears to have a lot in common with our own. The authors write in Nature, “The TRAPPIST-1 system is a tiny analogue of the inner Solar System.”
Below is a comparison of the inner Solar System to the TRAPPIST-1 system:
oA/Amanda Smith
Despite the similarities, there are also significant differences between our systems. TRAPPIST-1 is only slightly larger than Jupiter, and its planets orbit only slightly farther apart than Jupiter’s moons.
The entire system is also quite compact, with the closest planet requiring only 1.5 days to round its star. The sixth planet takes 13 days. That is, if you were standing on the surface of one of these planets, the neighboring planets in the sky would appear larger than our Moon does to us at times.
Imagine something like this:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
As a result, it’s suggested that the planets may all affect each other, and that they may even be tidally locked, with one face always directed towards their star, similar to how Jupiter’s moons always have one side locked towards the giant planet.
That tidal locking could also do some strange things to the temperature gradients on the planet, which NASA says makes it possible that liquid water could exist on any of them under the right conditions.
Perhaps more interesting than this discovery is what it suggests for the potential of other Earth-like planets in our galaxy.
“In the past few years, evidence has been mounting that Earth-sized planets are abundant in the Galaxy, but Gillon and collaborators’ findings indicate that these planets are even more common than previously thought,” Ignas A. G. Snellen, an astronomer from the Leiden University in the Netherlands who wasn’t involved in the research, writes in an accompanying opinion piece in Nature.
“From geometric arguments, we expect that for every transiting planet found, there should be a multitude of similar planets (20 to 100 times more) that, seen from Earth, never pass in front of their host star.
Of course, the authors could have been lucky, but finding seven transiting Earth-sized planets in such a small sample suggests that the Solar System with its four (sub-)Earth-sized planets might be nothing out of the ordinary.”
For the time being, we can only speculate about what these seven fantastic Earth-like worlds would be like. But the best part about all of this is that in the not-so-distant future, we might actually be able to know more.
With the NASA James Webb Space Telescope launched last year, researchers will have a better understanding of the composition and atmosphere of this sister solar system.
When the European Space Agency’s Extremely Large Telescope gets functional in 2024, it should be able to detect water on distant worlds from right here on Earth.
If you want the wonder of this discovery put into perspective, here’s Sean Carey, the manager of NASA’s Spitzer Science Centre, to fill you with awe about the galaxy we live in:
Former NASA Employee Saw UFOs during Apollo 15 Mission
Former NASA Employee Saw UFOs during Apollo 15 Mission
Apollo 15 UFO
Note: I was able to contact the gentleman who made this report. I asked him several questions about his account that I needed cleared up for my own curiosity, and the veracity of the report itself. One question concerned his employment dates, which he very quickly cleared up. Secondly, I asked him about what mission was being broadcast as he watched the UFOs on the TV screen. I had thought it must be Apollo 15, and he verified this for me also.
I would also like to thank Eileen Nesbitt for her invaluable assistance in gathering information on this very important report.) (B J)
When I first started working for NASA, its initials, not the name, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was how it was referred to. NASA is with whom I began employment in 1958 as a security guard on Wayside in Houston, Texas. They hadn't even started building Manned Spacecraft Center at Webster yet, which would later be called MSC at Clear Lake.
In 1961, I transferred to the Fire Department at the fledgling MSC and started training as a Fire and Safety Technician. The contractor responsible for Fire and Safety was Houston Fire and Safety. They held the contract for five years, losing out to Wackenhut Corporation out of Coral Gables Florida in 1966 because Wackenhut incorporated all phases of fire, safety and security under one blanket contract. Some say that George Wackenhut had first, Kennedy's, then Johnson's ear, but I haven't seen proof of it.
Everybody who hired in as a Fire Fighter was cross-trained in almost every aspect of maintenance operations. I attended numerous schools on fire alarm systems, pump repair, electrical and mechanical maintenance, physical plant operations, and last and certainly not the least, fire, safety and security. We were told that we had to pass a very rigid security clearance investigation, and that our job would be forfeit if we did no pass. I passed with flying colors and kept my job. There were several who did not pass, and we were never told why they had been laid off.
When I started, there were approximately three hundred eighty men who were attached to the fire department there at MSC. I saw a lot of men come and go during my twenty-six years of employment, but I never saw anyone who was willing to speak out about the rigid security. Even in later years, I kept in touch with several of my closest friends, when conversations turned to anything we were told not to talk about, there was always someone there to remind us that we had been told not to discuss it, even after we were no longer there.
I saw things, and heard statements from Astronauts that I didn't discuss, even with my wife or family. It was like a gigantic trust handed us and we honored it. To this day, I don't talk about everything I heard when I was around the Astronauts, at least not in detail.
There were several incidents that occurred during my tenure as an employee and to several of the Fire Fighters that got all of us thinking about how our government wasn't telling all they knew. For instance, in Building #1 on Johnson Space center, which was Building #2 when I first started work there, most of the north center of the second floor was the "crypto" room. We didn't know what went on in the room, but we did know that we weren't allowed in the room under normal circumstances. However, when an alarm came in at the Fire Station, we responded to the floor of the building that showed up on the enunciator panel at the station, One time, around 1964, we responded to Bldg.#2 to find that the alarm originated from the "crypto" room.
However, the doors were open and we just walked in to check the minor panel located there.
The whole east wall was covered with photos of UFOs. As we finished up, the officer of that room came back in and found us there. He actually pulled his sidearm and pointed it at us before demanding to know why we had entered that room.
He eventually accepted our explanation, but it took Everette D. Shafer*, head of NASA Security to vouch for us before the man would shut off his threats towards us. Everette Shafer reminded him, that had the armed officer been there in the room with the door locked, the incident could have been avoided. No, that was one very unhappy officer. I think he was Air Force, but I could be wrong; he was a Captain, I do remember that. When I came back from the Cape in 1968, we had another incident in the very same room, and the same officer was there also.
Apollo 15 Landing Site
Hadley Rille/Apennine Mountains-26.13222° N latitude, 3.63386° E. longitude
The Apollo 15 landing site was located at 26° 4´ 54¨ north latitude by 3° 39´ 30¨ east longitude at the foot of the Apennine mountain range. The Apennines rise up to more than 15,000 feet (4572 m) along the southeastern edge of Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
The Apennine escarpment--highest on the Moon--had been selected to allow the astronauts to drive from the LM to the Apennine front during two of the EVAs.
This time, he had Mr. Shafer to give the okay for us to enter the room, with him as our armed escort. But this time the walls on all four sides were photo-to-photo of UFOs and other very strange looking aircraft. We did our job, got out of there, but Mr. Shafer and the officer both told us to not speak to anyone of what we saw or observed in that room, ever! During Man Rated Tests, the fire department was trained to be rescuers should anything happen. Or job was to stand-by in readiness during many long hours of boring, repetitious, and meaningless exercises. Most times it was not the Astronauts themselves who performed the exercises, rather it was trained test subjects who did. We all became acquainted with them.
Buildings #7, #32, and #33 on Manned Spacecraft Center, were the test sites for Vacuum Chamber related tests. In Building #32, was housed the largest vacuum chamber in the free world. In Building #33, was the ultra-high vacuum test chamber, and Building #7 housed three test chambers. Building #7 is also where the Astronauts Space suits were manufactured.
Throughout the sixties, we performed numerous duties, some at MSC, while others were at Area 2000 at Ellington AFB in Genoa, Texas. Area 2000 was where the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle was tested and flown by test pilots and Astronauts. I was Crew Chief of the Contract Fire Department personnel at Area 2000 for close to a year, working all three shifts due to loss of personnel or whatever, but eventually being promoted up the ladder to Training Officer.
Not anything really special happened while I was Training Officer, but I did get to go places that was off limits to other personnel. It was one of my jobs to draw the pre-fire attack plans for every building on Site, to accomplish that job, I had the need to enter all buildings and accurately record everything of interest towards fire, safety, and security onto drawings. That is why I remember so much detail concerning the buildings, their locations, the interior layouts, and where all exits and equipment relating to Fire, Safety and Security were located.
Another part of everyone's job was the Safety patrols during any mission. From the first day on the job, before we were trained to become good little NASA Fire Fighters, we were told that we would perform various duties during our employment, that we would be constantly training, ensuring that we all would have the latest knowledge to do our job with the highest of proficiency.
Part of the training regimen was to know, and I do mean know, every building so intimately that we could draw a set of plans for them in our sleep. We ate, slept, and dreamed of building plans; construction materials inside and out, how many panels and manufacturer name of all alarm systems; how to repair or reset those systems; what was in the buildings that could be dangerous to us during emergencies.etc. but mostly the interior layout, hallways, exits, room locations.
With that small introduction, I will now attempt to give you the details of the safety patrols for Integrated Mission Control Center, commonly known as Building #30 on Johnson Space Center.
Building #30 is not just one building, rather it is two separate buildings, each having distinct functions. There is the Administrative side that houses support personnel, and the Mission Operations Control Rooms, otherwise known as the MOCR. By the way, at the time I was there, the Admin side of Building #30 was the building that housed the office of James Oberg.
There are two MOCR's located in IMCC, one on the second floor and one on the third floor. The building is like a big square, windowless structure sitting right next to the Southwestern Bell building. You can't miss it, because it is the only building that looks like it. Three stories inside, it looks more like a five- storied structure from the outside. As you have most likely ascertained by now, there are some very high ceilings inside the MOCR's.
Although we were never told we couldn't go into the MOCR's during missions, all of the safety inspectors assumed that we weren't welcome, that maybe we would be a distraction. However, we were allowed in every section surrounding the MOCR's.
On the second and third floors, there was the outside section, and the center section with a hallway completely around the inside of the building that separated the outside section from the inside. The outside section of the building housed the air handlers, workshops, soft and hardware support offices, and tool rooms, while the inside portion was dedicated to the MOCR and it's support.
In the MOCR itself, was a huge screen that stretched across the entire wall. It was the mission map, which kept the technicians apprised where the vehicle was at any given moment during its orbits above the earth. On one end was the big television screen, which received its picture from a large bank of cameras directly behind the screen.
Those cameras generated a lot of heat, and part of our duty during inspections was to make sure that there weren't any ignitable materials in that area. It was kept dark for some reason, but the cameras gave off enough light so a person didn't stumble around in there. It was also very cold most of the time, especially during missions.
At the back of the MOCR is a series of glass windows. These windows are set into the wall that makes up the barrier that separates the viewing room from the MOCR. The viewing room has two doors for entry. Entry is accomplished by getting off the elevator, taking a right down the hall, and the first door is the first entryway. About twenty-five feet further down the hall is the second door. Situated between them is a small door about three to four feet high. This door lets a maintenance technician into the area under the viewing room.
On each side of the room, to the front are located phone booths, one on each side of the window. There are about eight rows of seats with a set of slight stairs that separate them into two sections. The seats are similar to any seat you may see in a movie house, but way more comfortable.
Mounted on the wall above the big windows are two large screen colored TV's with several high mounted speakers so the viewer can listen in to the conversations between the Astronauts and the ground crews.
At the back of the room, right at the top of the center stairs, is a minor alarm panel. It was this minor alarm panel that safety had to monitor during all missions. The room was relatively quiet, cool and very comfortable. It was here I always chose to take a pipe break. My partner was also a pipe smoker, so we shared stories, listened to the quiet banter between the ground crew and the vehicle, and actually didn't pay much attention to what was going on in the MOCR.
Nothing out of the way ever occurred in the Missions, but during one particular Mission, something so unique happened that I would always remember it. Jim Baker and I had been doing the regular routine safety inspection during a Manned Mission to the Moon.
We entered the viewing room at the end of our patrol, and as was our wont, sat at the back of the room to enjoy a pipe. We both smoked a pipe, and the viewing room allowed smokers. We had been there for no longer than fifteen minutes, it may have been longer, but I doubt it, when the stage left door opened and in walked several, at least five of the upper echelon administrators of Johnson Space Center.
Uh, it actually wasn't called Johnson Space Center at that time; rather the name was Manned Spacecraft Center. Anyway, I do know that one of the people was definitely Chrome Dome, as we were irreverently known to call Dr. Gilruth. At that time I had hair and found it funny to refer to one of the finest minds our country had by the moniker, "Chrome Dome."
Just prior to their entering the viewing room, Jim and I noticed that the Technicians in the MOCR had gotten up and left the room. Now, that isn't unusual during a normal EVA, but the Astronauts were in Hadley's Rille. They couldn't be seen because they were over the edge, down in the Rille itself. The Lunar Rover was about thirty, maybe forty or more yards from the edge, and had the left front camera on the spot where the Astronauts had disappeared. You could hear the Astronauts voices talking, but as in most of the dialogs, we weren't paying close attention to what they were saying. We did notice the technicians getting up and leaving the MOCR. Jim is the one who actually said something about it.
"Looks as if everyone got a bee in their bonnet at the same time, don't it?" "Most probably their piss and lunch break," I offered. It was right after I made that statement, that Dr. Gilruth entered, and several others came in with him. They didn't look back, just went to the center of the viewing room and were talking excitedly among themselves and pointing towards the big screen to the right of the main screen in the MOCR.
Jim and I then paid close attention to what was on the screen. There was an object above the spot where the Astronauts were supposed to be in Hadley's Rille, just hovering. I am totally positive as to it being an object; it was round, it had a shiny side with a shadow side, with the shadow side matching the shadows on the moon, and though all the video shots coming from the moon looked black and white, they could actually have been in color. The harsh lighting was probably responsible for the illusion of black and white.
Anyway, The object started a slow move from screen left to screen right. The camera on the left front of the Rover followed the object as it moved screen right. Soon it was apparent that it actually wasn't moving screen right, but was circling the Rover.
The Rover has two mounted cameras on it. One camera was mounted on the left front and one on the right rear. As the object came into view of the right rear, that camera picked up the object and continued tracking it as it circled, very slowly around the Rover. It finally came to the point where the right rear camera could no longer follow it, so the left front camera picked up the image again and followed it to where it was once more above where the Astronauts were in Hadley's Rille.
I uttered something that brought us to the attention of Dr. Gilruth and the others. "What the crap is that? What caused me to utter that phrase was, the object took off straight up and went out of sight in less than a second. It may have been longer, but seemed like it was gone in the blink of an eye, but I was still aware that it had actually gone straight up.
One of the men there, I still think it was Everette Shafer, turned and asked us what we were doing in the room, and we told them that we were there to inspect the fire alarm panel at the rear of the room and to take our smoke break. And to ask a question of our own. "What in hell was that about?"
Can you believe they actually told us it was a drop of oil on the lens of the camera on the moon? Truth! Now, I am not stupid, though I have done a few stupid things in my life, like getting married the first time, but I know a pile of schlock when I hear it! It wasn't a drop of oil, no way!
I opened my mouth and said, "There's no way it was on the lens on the camera on the moon."
"The temperature would freeze the drop solid."
To Which the man holding my clearance in his hand, reading my name replied, "I mean it was a drop of oil on the camera lens at the back of that screen." To which he pointed. Okay, it was a good place to shut up and get out of the viewing room, but.. Once more I said something because as I have previously stated, I'm not stupid!
"There's no way that drop of oil is on any one of those lenses at the back of the screen, because of the temperature."
"The heat is high enough back there to set the drop of oil on fire."
Who ever it was holding my badge in his hand, says, "If you want to keep your job, you'll get out of here and keep your mouth shut about what occurred here."
Not about what I saw, not about why I was in there, just get out and keep my mouth shut about what had occured. I pulled away from him, turned to Jim and said lets go.
When we exited the room, to our surprise, there was Dick Nieber and Loring E. Williams of security on the doors. They were as surprised at seeing us come out of the room as we were at seeing them standing guard there. Further, they told us that Andrado and two others were on the rear doors to keep unauthorized people out of there.
Then they told us their story: They were pulled away from vehicular patrol and told to go immediately to IMCC and the second floor MOCR viewing room and stand guard until further notice. They were told that absolutely nobody other than Dr. Gilruth and the people who were with him were to be allowed into the room. It's no wonder our being there disturbed Dr. Gilruth and the others; we weren't supposed to be there.
When Nieber asked us what had happened in there, we told them we couldn't discuss it. They thought that the Astronauts had been killed. That was what had been circulating between them while they were guarding the doors to the viewing room. Wrong! That same evening, I sat at the typewriter and wrote out everything, time, date, place, and mission, plus all the names I could remember of who were there with all the facts concerning the incident, and asked Jim Baker to read it and sign it. He read it and signed it on condition that I would give him a copy of the report. I went to the copier, and made six complete copies of the report and gave Jim one of them.
Incidentally, when we arrived back at the fire station, Sgt. Thomas Walsh asked us to come to the dispatcher's office to speak to him. He closed the door and told us that he'd received a call from Shafer, that no matter what we had seen or heard in the viewing room, we were not supposed to discuss it with anyone at all, ever, because it had to do with National Security. "National Security over a drop of oil on a camera lens?" I think not!
Jim Baker died in 1983 of a sudden heart attack. He was forty- six and one of my best friends and we got together regularly at his home, in his gun shop to discuss different people and things. The last time I saw him alive, I asked him if he still had his report hidden away and he told me he had actually burned his copy, but had given a copy to another friend from West Virginia who wanted it.
I retired in 1979, and moved to Austin Texas. I was security dispatcher for the LBJ Presidential Library there in Austin when I got a call from Jim's daughter, Amey, telling me that her father had passed away early that morning.
Jim's last words to me, there in his little gun shop was, "You sure raised hell over that drop of oil, but you were right, they were full of shit and you knew it."
Addendum: 03-13-05
I looked it up recently and it was Apollo 15. For some reason, I have lost my original notes written up on NASA Fire Department's old IBM Selectric. However, I must reiterate that it wasn't a film, it was real-time and we observed the incident as it happened on the big screen in the MOCR on the second floor at Building 30, aka, Mission Operations Control Center.
We had stopped in the viewing room to check the minor fire panel at the rear of the room and then sat down to smoke our pipes. We had been in there about fifteen minutes when in walked Dr. Gilruth and about five other men. They didn't even know we were in the room until the object took off straight up, this being after it had circled the Lunar Rover.
As I stated, it was the Flight where the Astronauts had landed close to Hadley's Rille, and when the incident happened, they were out of sight over the edge, in the Rille. To the best of my knowledge, that is what was being told by the news media. However, when we returned to the Fire Station, nobody had seen the object, and Sgt. Thomas Walsh had taken us into the Dispatchers office and told us that he had received a call from Everette Shafer, NASA Security, telling him to apprise us of the oaths we had signed concerning National Security and the penalties attached to breaking the law.
*:Spelling may be Sheaffer, or Sheafer
In addition to this very recent information about the astronauts sighting one or more UFOs while in Hadley's Rille, the following is a conversation discovered from NASA's Apollo 15 flight journal with the crew in respect to an interview with news media. 270:22:31 Henize: Hey, 15, we're getting a beautiful picture coming through.
270:22:37 Scott: Roger. Go ahead with your questions.
270:22:46 Henize: Roger. We'll - we'll admire the beautiful picture for - for a few minutes here.
270:22:56 Henize: Deke just passed out from the shock, incidentally.
[The crew appear in a row, facing the camera. Dave is camera-left, Al in the centre and Jim to camera-right. Dave has a noticeable beard after 12 days in space.]
270:23:15 Henize: Okay, fellas. I have a preliminary statement to make here. The questions you will be asked in this news conference have been submitted by newsmen here at the Manned Spacecraft Center who've been covering the flight. Some of the questions they raised have been answered in your communications with - with Mission Control, but the public-at-large has not necessarily heard them. The questions are being read to you exactly as submitted by the newsmen, and in an order of priority specified by them.
270:23:46 Henize: Question number 1. This last week, we have shared scores of exciting moments with you. Which single moment would you most like to live again, and is there any moment which you would never like to repeat?
270:24:03 Scott: Well, I guess we all probably have a different idea of which would be the single most exciting moment of the flight, and maybe we'll just run through it one at a time. I guess the most impressive moment I can remember is standing up on Hadley mountain - Hadley Delta, and looking back at the plain and seeing the LM and the rille and Mount Hadley, and the whole big picture in one - one swoop. And I think we've got some pictures for you from up there, and I believe the TV was running at the same time, and I think that was probably the most impressive sight that I've ever seen. Al?
This information puts a whole new light on the following photos acquired over the years.
David Scott made his third space flight as spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, July 26 - August 7, 1971. His companions on the flight were Alfred M. Worden (command module pilot) and James B. Irwin (lunar module pilot). Apollo 15 was the fourth manned lunar landing mission and the first to visit and explore the moon's "Hadley Rille" and Apennine Mountains which are located on the southeast edge of the Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
NASA will on Monday attempt a feat humanity has never before accomplished: deliberately smacking a spacecraft into an asteroid to slightly deflect its orbit, in a key test of our ability to stop cosmic objects from devastating life on Earth.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spaceship launched from California last November and is fast approaching its target, which it will strike at roughly 14,000 miles (22,500 kilometers) per hour.
"It's the final cosmic collision countdown," tweeted mission control at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
To be sure, neither the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, nor the big brother it orbits, called Didymos, pose any threat as the pair loop the Sun, passing about seven million miles from Earth at nearest approach.
But NASA has deemed the experiment important to carry out before an actual need is discovered.
If all goes to plan, impact between the car-sized spacecraft, and the 530-foot (160 meters, or two Statues of Liberty) asteroid should take place at 7:14 pm Eastern Time (2314 GMT), viewable on a NASA livestream.
By striking Dimorphos head on, NASA hopes to push it into a smaller orbit, shaving ten minutes off the time it takes to encircle Didymos, which is currently 11 hours and 55 minutes—a change that will be detected by ground telescopes in the days or weeks to come.
The proof-of-concept experiment will make a reality of what has before only been attempted in science fiction—notably in films such as "Armageddon" and "Don't Look Up."
Technically challenging
As the craft propels itself through space, flying autonomously for the mission's final phase, its camera system will start to beam down the very first pictures of Dimorphos.
Minutes later, a toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which already separated from DART a few weeks ago, will make a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta—the pulverized rock thrown off by impact.
LICIACube's pictures will be sent back in the next weeks and months.
Also watching the event: an array of telescopes, both on Earth and in space—including the recently operational James Webb—which might be able to see a brightening cloud of dust.
Finally, a full picture of what the system looks like will be revealed when a European Space Agency mission four years down the line called Hera arrives to survey Dimorphos' surface and measure its mass, which scientists can currently only guess at.
Being prepared
Very few of the billions of asteroids and comets in our solar system are considered potentially hazardous to our planet, and none are expected in the next hundred years or so.
But "I guarantee to you that if you wait long enough, there will be an object," said NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen.
We know that from the geological record—for example, the six-mile wide Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, plunging the world into a long winter that led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs along with 75 percent of all species.
An asteroid the size of Dimorphos, by contrast, would only cause a regional impact, such as devastating a city, albeit with greater force than any nuclear bomb in history.
How much momentum DART imparts on Dimorphos will depend on whether the asteroid is solid rock, or more like a "rubbish pile" of boulders bound by mutual gravity—a situation that's not yet known.
The shape of the asteroid is also not known, but NASA engineers are confident DART's SmartNav guidance system will hit its target.
If it misses, NASA will have another shot in two years' time, with the spaceship containing just enough fuel for another pass.
But if it succeeds, the mission will mark the first step towards a world capable of defending itself from a future existential threat.
Graphic on NASA's DART mission to crash a small spacecraft into a mini-asteroid to change its trajectory as a test for any potentially dangerous asteroids in the future.
The DART spacecraft will smash into the asteroid Dimorphos, and the LICIACube probe (bottom right) will snap photos of the aftermath, as shown in this artist’s rendering.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
On 26 September, at 7:14 p.m. US eastern time, NASA will strike a pre-emptive blow against the dangers of the Solar System. That’s when, 11 million kilometres from Earth, the agency is set to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid. The goal is to knock the harmless space rock into a slightly different orbit to test whether humanity could do such a thing if a dangerous asteroid were ever detected heading for Earth1.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will meet its end when it crashes into the asteroid Dimorphos, which is about 160 metres across. “We describe it as running a golf cart into the Great Pyramid,” says Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The endeavour is reminiscent of Bruce Willis saving Earth by blasting a wayward asteroid in the 1998 film Armageddon. And the whole event will unfold like a film when it’s broadcast on NASA’s website. DART’s camera will focus on Dimorphos and the larger asteroid that it orbits, Didymos, as the spacecraft approaches.
At first, DART will not be able to distinguish between the two asteroids, but when it gets close enough, its view will resolve into two points of light. The spacecraft will continue to hurtle towards Dimorphos, snapping images once per second and sending them to Earth until the asteroid’s rubbly surface fills the field of view. “We are super excited to see what it’s going to look like,” says Michelle Chen, a software engineer at the Johns Hopkins lab. Then the footage will end abruptly, as DART smashes into the surface.
Aftermath of a smash
But the US$330-million mission aims to accomplish some science before the credits roll. DART will study the effects of injecting kinetic energy — from an impact at 6.6 kilometres per second — into an asteroid. Dimorphos might absorb much of that energy or it might partially break apart, depending on whether it is made of solid rock or is a loose agglomeration of space pebbles2. Small asteroids are “little geophysical and geological worlds”, says Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France. “What DART will see, we don’t know.”
This simulation, created by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, predicts what will happen as DART hits the surface of Dimorphos, if the asteroid is made of strong rocky material.
Researchers will get their best view of the collision’s aftermath from another spacecraft that will fly by. An Italian probe named LICIACube is travelling a little behind DART and will zip past Dimorphos just three minutes after the impact. Its cameras will snap images before and after the crash. LICIACube will see whatever is left of the DART spacecraft — unless the impact kicks up a cloud of dust big enough to obscure the view3,4. The most exciting images from LICIACube should be available within 24 hours of the crash, says Simone Pirrotta, the probe’s project manager at the Italian space agency ASI in Rome.
The impact might not leave behind a crater if Dimorphos absorbs much of DART’s kinetic energy, says Adriano Campo Bagatin, a planetary scientist at the University of Alicante in Spain. Visits to other asteroids have shown just how complicated and surprising space rocks can be. Beginning in 2018, for example, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spent two years orbiting and studying the asteroid Bennu, but when it moved in to collect a sample, Bennu turned out to be a loose collection of pebbles that responded in unexpected ways to the sampling arm.
Confirming success
With Dimorphos, it will take days to weeks before mission scientists can confirm whether the test worked. The goal is to speed up Dimorphos’s orbit, cutting the time it takes to travel around Didymos by 10–15 minutes (see ‘Destructive manoeuvre’). Scientists will learn whether this has happened by using telescopes on Earth to observe how Dimorphos blocks the light from Didymos, and vice versa, as the smaller asteroid circles the larger.
Source: This graphic was repurposed from this story, by Alexandra Witze
Observatories on every continent will measure the aftermath of the crash, as will the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. “I’m going to be rooting for every single observer,” says Cristina Thomas, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff who leads the observation teams. Changes to Dimorphos’s orbit will probably become apparent around 1–2 October, or even earlier, depending on how quickly the cloud of dust clears after the impact. Researchers will have to wait until 2027 for another close-up look, when a European Space Agency mission called Hera visits the asteroid to study the crash site5.
Dimorphos and Didymos are not a threat to Earth — and they won’t be after the test. NASA just wants to understand whether it has the ability to deflect a space rock of Dimorphos’s size, which could devastate a region of Earth if it were to hit the planet.
The agency is surveying the cosmos for threatening asteroids, but the project is behind schedule. With the telescopes currently available on Earth, it would take another three decades to finish. And this year, NASA delayed the launch of a long-awaited space telescope that would help hunt these asteroids, from 2026 to no earlier than 2028.
“The most important thing to keep in mind about any of these deflection techniques is they rely on having enough time to work,” says Amy Mainzer, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and principal investigator of the planned telescope. “The key is finding objects well ahead of any potential impact.”
NASA laat vannacht opzettelijk satelliet neerstorten op meteoriet
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA laat komende nacht (13.15 uur Belgische tijd) een satelliet inslaan op een ruimterots. Op die manier wil NASA onderzoeken of ze de aarde kan redden als een meteoriet op onze planeet zou afstormen.
Vorig jaar in november werd het ruimtevaartuig DART, Double Asteroid Redirection, gelanceerd vanaf Vandenberg in Californië. De ruimtesonde met een grootte van een golfkarretje is aangekomen bij het einddoel: de planetoïde Didymos A.
De satelliet - ongeveer 310 miljoen euro waard - moet met een snelheid van 22.000 kilometer per uur op Dimorphos, een maantje dat rond Didymos A draait, botsen. Het doel is om het maantje uit zijn baan te duwen.
Door de klap zal de omlooptijd van de maan, die normaal 11 uur en 45 minuten is, waarschijnlijk met tien minuten veranderen. Kosmisch gezien is dit maar een klein duwtje. Maar een kleine koerswijziging kan er al voor zorgen dat een toekomstige op ramkoers liggende planetoïde langs de aarde scheert.
Geen dreiging
Het is de eerste keer dat NASA zo’n missie start. “Het stelsel is een perfecte plek om te testen of het mogelijk is de koers van een planetoïde te veranderen door er moedwillig een ruimtevaartuig op in te laten slaan”, klinkt het bij de ruimtevaartorganisatie.
NASA benadrukt dat er voorlopig geen enkele dreiging voor de aarde is. Volgens ‘The Guardian’ volgen astronomen continu zo’n 30.000 grote asteroïden op in de nabijheid van de aarde. Geen enkele daarvan zou de komende honderd jaar in contact met de aarde komen. Maar DART zou wel een antwoord kunnen vormen op kleinere, minder voorspelbare meteoren die richting onze planeet vliegen.
The Amarnaperiod (1347 – 1336 BC) was undoubtedly one of the most unique stages in the history of ancient Egypt. The establishment of the Egyptian capital in a totally virgin territory so far, the artistic revolution in the representations of the pharaoh and his family or the changes introduced in the religious world are some of its most important aspects, but not the only ones.
At the end of the 19th century, a peasant woman discovered by chance the so-called Amarna letters, an archive of contemporary documentation to Amenhotep III (1390 – 1352 BC) and Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) which has become a great treasure of Egyptology.
In this article we are going to try to summarize what the Amarna letters are, what are the themes that their contents deal with or who are the protagonists who speak to us through them.
What are the Amarna Letters?
Around 1347 BC, in his fifth year as sovereign, Amenhotep IV took a radical turn in his reign by changing his name: he was renamed Akhenaten, which literally means ” one who effectively acts for the good of Aten.”
As part of his revolutionary program, the pharaoh moved the capital of the country to a newly created city in a territory never before inhabited: Tell el-Amarna, originally known as Akhetaten, that is, “horizon of Aten”.
At the same time that thousands of people of different conditions moved to live in Amarna, so did the main officials of the kingdom.
With them traveled the documents that would make up the great Tell el-Amarna archive, located in the so-called House of Correspondence of the Pharaoh.
The missives in the Amarna archive are engraved in cuneiform script and in Akkadian, one of the lingua francas for international relations.
The language used in these clay tablets flees from formalities and goes into directly analyzing issues such as the political situation of the kingdoms, marital alliances, disputes and diplomatic cordialities, war reports…
To reach their destination, they were transported by officials who sometimes had to walk hundreds of kilometers to fulfill their mission.
The discovery of the first letters occurred fortuitously during the illegal excavations that Farag Ismain was carrying out in the area in mid-1887.
Shortly after, the excavations of the Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie began to bring to light new custom letters that the remains of the Pharaoh’s House of Correspondence were identified.
We do not know the approximate number of tablets that it must have housed at the peak of the Amarnian period, but at present we conserve about four hundred which are distributed between the British Museum in London, the Old Museum in Berlin and the Museum in Cairo.
Contents of the Amarna letters
The fundamental factor that makes the Amarna archive so valuable is its uniqueness, since it is the only set of diplomatic texts that the Nile civilization has bequeathed to us.
The letters are an exceptional testimony of Egypt’s international relations with the great powers of the Middle East from the end of the reign of Amenhotep III, the entire reign of Akhenaten and the beginning of that of Tutankhamun (1336 – 1327 BC).
The scribes who were in charge of writing the Amarna letters that the ambassadors would later carry also played a fundamental role, often working as translators.
After all, the accuracy of the translation depended on whether the message arrived exactly as it should. An incorrect intonation or a badly translated word could generate a misunderstanding that could lead to an international conflict.
Example of five Amarna letters exhibited in the British Museum in London
What are the Amarna letters about?
Within the Amarna letters, one of the requests that is repeated the most, on the part of the pharaoh, is that of princesses and servants of foreign courts.
This marriage circuit was not reciprocal, since the Egyptian sovereign showed his desire to marry Asian princesses while making it clear that he was not willing to send any of his daughters out of the kingdom
However, that does not mean that they did not achieve anything. In the case of Babylon, for example, we know that they sent princesses to Egypt in exchange for large amounts of gold .
Let’s see to finalize some specific cases. One of the Amarna letters indicates that Amenhotep III requested the hand of Princess Kiluhepa of Mittani. The princess then moved to Egypt accompanied by more than three hundred servants.
Another letter specifies the long list of goods that the Mittanian king Tushratta (approx. 1375-1350 BC) contributed as a dowry to his daughter Taduhepa , who eventually traveled with 300 men and women for her personal service.
In another, King Burna-Buriash II of Babylon(approx. 1359 – 1333 BC) complained about the little pomp with which he had transferred his daughter to the country of the Nile, as if she were anybody.
Also angry, Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon (1374 – 1360 BC) showed his indignation to Amenhotep III for not wanting to give one of his daughters as a wife.
In conclusion, the Amarna letters allow us to peek through a knowledge gap into a world of kings, princesses, courts and entanglements that we could not have accessed through archeology or the texts that were represented in stelae, temples, tombs or palaces.
For all these reasons, this archive is one of the most relevant sources of knowledge that we have when it comes to reconstructing the relationship of political forces existing in Egypt and the Middle East in the 14th century BC in particular and in the Egyptian New Kingdom in general.
Source:
GOLVIN, JC (2017): Cities of the ancient world. Madrid: Wake up Ferro.
LIVERANI, M. (2012): The ancient East. History, society and economy. Barcelona: Criticism.
LULL, J .: “The Amarna archive: the Pharaoh’s letters”, in National Geographic History, nº 193, pp. 38-49.
PADRÓ PARCERISA, J. (2019): History of Pharaonic Egypt. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.
SHAW, I. (2014): History of Ancient Egypt. Madrid.
Fragment of one of the letters between King Tushratta of Mittani and the Egyptian pharaoh
Tablet containing a letter between King Burna-Buriash II of Babylon and the Egyptian pharaoh
Ancient collisions with asteroids actually moved the moon's north and south pokes by about 186 miles, scientists revealed in a new study.
A team atNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland used computer simulations to 'erase' thousands of craters from the lunar surface - as if they were going back in time to 4.25 billion years ago when the craters didn't exist.
Their work led them to discover that asteroid impacts caused the location of the poles to 'wander' by 10 degrees in latitude or about 186 miles. To put that in perspective, the moon's total diameter is 2,159 miles.
These wandering poles can teach scientists more about the poles, which are considered more prized regions because of the frozen water that's been discovered there.
Ancient collisions with asteroids actually moved the moon's north and south pokes by about 186 miles, scientists revealed in a new study
A team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland used computer simulations to 'erase' thousands of craters from the lunar surface. GRAIL gravity model GRGM1200B (left), and GRGM1200B with 5197 crater gravity anomalies removed (right)
Their work led them to discover that asteroid impacts caused the location of the poles to 'wander' by 10 degrees in latitude or about 186 miles. To put that in perspective, the moon's total diameter is 2,159 miles
Vishnu Viswanathan, a NASA Godard scientist who led the study, said in a statement: 'Based on the Moon’s cratering history, polar wander appears to have been moderate enough for water near the poles to have remained in the shadows and enjoyed stable conditions over billions of years.'
Asteroid impacts excavate mass and leave depressions in the surface, or pockets of lower mass, but the moon would reorient itself to bring those pockets toward the poles - while bringing areas of higher mass out toward the equator via centrifugal force.
As NASA notes in a blog post, this is the same force that causes pizza dough to stretch out when a chef tosses it and spins it in the air.
'If you look at the Moon with all these craters on it, you can see those in the gravity field data,' said David Smith, principal investigator for the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. 'I thought, "Why can’t I just take one of those craters and suck it out, remove the signature completely?"'
Above, left: Hammer projection map centered on 270° E showing the nonuniform distribution of craters with diameter 20-150 km. Above, right: Map of lunar gravity anomalies expanded to degree and order 650
The study comes at a time when NASA's beleaguered Artemis 1 mega-rocket (above) is facing a cryogenic test this week and a possible launch attempt - pending multiple conditions - during a 70-minute window on Sept. 27 with a backup on Oct. 2
Artemis 3 and China's Chang’e-7 both identify sites near Shackleton, Haworth and Nobile craters as potential landing zones (areas circled in red, above). These areas of overlap are home to shadowed craters that can trap water-ice
For their study that was published in the Planetary Science Journal, Viswanathan, Smith and colleagues worked with about 5,200 craters ranging in size from 12 miles to 746 miles in width.
They designed computer models to take the craters' coordinates and width to locate their gravitational signatures.
Then they ran simulations that removed the gravitational signatures - essentially rolling back the clock to 4.25 billion years ago.
The study comes at a time when NASA's beleaguered Artemis 1 mega-rocket is facing a cryogenic test this week and a possible launch attempt - pending multiple conditions - during a 70-minute window on Sept. 27 with a backup on Oct. 2. If those dates do not pan out, NASA wont' be able to try again until Oct. 17 at the earliest.
In addition, the space agency recently called on China to be 'open and transparent' with its lunar missions following a revelation of overlap between the two countries in potential landing sites near the lunar surface's south pole region.
'We’ll continue to share our plans with the world as we are able, and hope that other nations will share their plans with us. We encourage transparency and peaceful exploration of space, per the tenets of the Artemis Accords and the Outer Space Treaty,' the American space agency previously told DailyMail.com.
Artemis 3 and China's Chang’e-7 both identify sites near Shackleton, Haworth and Nobile craters as potential landing zones. These areas of overlap are home to shadowed craters that can trap water-ice.
'In exploring the Moon, we will follow what we have spelled out in the Artemis Accords—that we will be transparent about all activities, operate in a safe and responsible manner, and avoid harmful interference,' NASA added.
'There are a few things that we haven’t taken into account yet, but one thing we wanted to point out is those small craters that people have been neglecting, they actually do matter, so that is the main point here,' said Sander Goossens, a Goddard planetary scientist who participated in the study.
Although researchers studying polar wander have removed craters from the record, they’ve removed only a couple dozen of the biggest impacts.
'People assumed that small craters are negligible,” said Viswanathan. 'They’re negligible individually, but collectively they have a large effect.'
'In exploring the Moon, we will follow what we have spelled out in the Artemis Accords—that we will be transparent about all activities, operate in a safe and responsible manner, and avoid harmful interference,' NASA added
The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years
The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years
Until 1959, humans had only seen one side of the Moon. The Moon is tidally locked with Earth, and so we can only see one side from the Earth’s surface. It took the soviet Luna 3 spacecraft to capture a blurry image for humans to get their first glimpse of the lunar far side. Because of this, many people imagine that the Moon has always been this way. But as a recent study shows, that isn’t quite true.
Although the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, it isn’t physically locked to Earth. It is still a freely moving body that rotates on its axis. The Moon always shows the same side to Earth because its period of axial rotation and its orbital period is the same. But even this isn’t an exact match. The Moon’s rotation is essentially constant, but its orbit isn’t exactly circular. So the Moon moves along at a bit faster or slower rate depending on where it is in its orbit. This makes the moon appear to wobble back and forth slightly. There’s also the fact that the Moon’s rotational axis is tilted slightly relative to its orbital plane around the Earth, and the orbit itself is tilted slightly relative to the Earth’s equator. All of this together gives the Moon a small but complex wobbly dance as seen from Earth, known as libration. So over the course of a few years, we actually see slightly more than half the lunar surface, though this effect is too small to notice in our daily lives.
The appearance of the Moon through one synodic period. Note that in addition to rocking back and forth (libration) and side-to-side (nutation), the Moon appears to swell and shrink in size. Wikimedia Commons graphic in the public Domain.
But because the Moon is a freely moving body, its rotational axis can shift from other things as well. For example, geological activity such as the drift of continents, and the freezing or melting of polar caps cause shifts in our rotational axis. It even shifts the length of our days slightly. But the Moon isn’t really geologically active, and it doesn’t have weather patterns to freeze or melt polar caps. But it has been bombarded by asteroids over the years, and that brings us to this latest study.
The team looked at high-resolution gravity maps of the Moon taken by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL). These maps give us a good idea of the distribution of mass within the Moon, since the more mass you have in a given area, the higher the gravity. They also used a detailed map of lunar craters captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). They then used computer models to “remove” the craters’ age layer by age layer.
The wander of the Moon’s rotational axis, seen in black. Credit: Smith, et al.
Since a crater shifts the mass distribution slightly, it also shifts the Moon’s axis of rotation slightly. The team basically rewound the clock for about 5,200 crater impacts spanning more than 4 billion years of history. They found that the Moon’s orbital axis has shifted by about 10 degrees in that time. That might seem like much, but it’s pretty impressive to track the Moon’s rotation over billions of years. In the future, the team would like to include more data, including effects such as early volcanic eruptions.
Chinese Companies are Planning to Offer Space Tourism Flights by 2025
Chinese Companies are Planning to Offer Space Tourism Flights by 2025
One of the more famous features of Space Age 2.0 is the rise of the commercial space industry, also known as “NewSpace.” While the space agencies of the world plan to send astronauts back to the Moon (this time, to stay), crewed missions to Mars, and robotic missions to every corner of the Solar System, NewSpace companies are offering cost-effective launch services, sending commercial astronauts to space, and commercializing Low Earth Orbit (LEO). There’s also the prospect of space tourism, with companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX offering suborbital flights, trips to LEO, and beyond!
China, one of the fastest-growing nations in space, is looking to offer commercial flights to suborbital space. According to senior rocket scientists Yang Yiqiang, who spoke to the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN), China will send its first group of commercial passengers on a spaceflight, with ticket prices ranging between $287,200 to $430,800 (2 to 3 million yuan). While China is a relative newcomer to the commercial space scene, this announcement signals its intent to catch up to companies based in the U.S. and other space competitors.
Illustration of the first two types of commercial space travel: flights to the ISS (right) and twin-fuselage configuration designs (left). Credit: CFP
Yang Yiqiang was the general director of the Long March 11 rocket project and the founder of Beijing-based rocket company CAS Space (founded in 2018). As Yang explained, there are currently three modes of spacelight:
The International Space Station (ISS): This consists of launch vehicles sending spacecraft to rendezvous with the ISS. This sets strict requirements on the physical and psychological conditions of the tourists.
Lift and Release: This consists of a cargo aircraft lifting another spacecraft to release altitude and the spacecraft flying to suborbital altitude. Virgin Galactic offers this mode with its White Knight Two aircraft (and other “motherships”) and VSS Unity and Imagine spacecraft.
Rocket Flights: This consists of launch vehicles sending capsules to suborbital altitudes. This is the mode Blue Origin is dedicated to using its New Shephard reusable launch vehicle.
According to Yang, this third mode will be most suitable for commercial passengers and the one that China will focus on. Based on the illustrations featured by CGTN, this will probably involve using the Long March 3C (CZ-3C) to launch a Shenzou spacecraft (and/or a converted Tianzhou automated cargo spacecraft) with a crew of three. China’s next-generation crewed spacecraft (a reusable vehicle intended to replace the Shenzou) can accommodate up to seven passengers and is likely to be used for tourism ventures.
The Chinese commercial space sector is still a few decades behind the curve established by its U.S. counterpart, which emerged in the 1980s but has only matured since the turn of the century. However, China has experienced significant growth in the past seven years due to increased investment, competition, and technological innovation. According to an industry report, China had more than 370 enterprises focused on satellite manufacturing, rocket launches, and related services.
Until now, said Yang, China’s commercial sector was in the “1.0 era” characterized by basic manufacturing, research, and development. But with these new steps underway, China has entered the “2.0 era,” driven by applications and market forces. At their current rate of progress, Yang claims they will reach parity with the U.S. within ten years. “The key for the development of China’s commercial space sector is application rather than rockets or satellites,” he said. “We need to ensure that common people have access to the sector.”
An illustration of suborbital space travel (the third type of commercial spaceflight). Credit: CFP
The Chinese government has also signaled its interest in becoming part of the growing satellite market and commercialization of LEO with the passage of landmark legislation. This includes the passage of the No. 60 State Council Document in 2014 that opened China’s “civil aviation infrastructure” to capital investment. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), officially endorsed in March 2021, also established numerous priorities for achieving development goals they hope to reach by 2035. Among them, the plan called for China to:
“Accelerate the disposition of satellite telecommunications networks and other such novel networks aimed at global coverage, implement the major Beidou industrialization projects, and build application demonstrations and open laboratories. Accelerate the commercial application and integrated innovation of the Beidou system, satellite telecommunications networks, surface and low-altitude sensing, and other such space network infrastructure.”
The price point cited by CGTN is clearly meant to be competitive with U.S.-based launch services. On February 16th, Virgin Galactic began taking reservations for the first 1,000 customers, with tickets going for $450,000 apiece (and customers must put down a $150,000 deposit to hold their spot). Based on the Space Foundation’s Space Report 2022 Q2, the commercial space sector grew to $469 billion in 2021. This represented an 11% increase from 2020 ($424 billion) and a 70% increase since 2010.
On top of that, a recent Citibank report indicates that the industry will reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040, with launch costs dropping 95% to unlock more services from orbit. This growth not only accounts for the burgeoning satellite megaconstellation market but also for passenger flights to space and commercial activities in orbit (private space stations, space hotels, etc.) Clearly, China wants a piece of the action, befitting its emergence as a major power in space!
This is the 3rd photo that I found structures in on Mercury. This photo is not a black and white photo, but an infrared photo. The Mariner 10 had an "8-postition filter wheel." Each filter allows the camera to take a different kind of photo. Infrared allows you to see things the human eye cannot. These structures were not built yesterday, but most likely have been there thousands or more years. Time is of little importance to ancient aliens because they do not age like we do. Their anatomy is totally under their control allowing them to decide what age to be, alter their appearance and more. So building a structure so massive...although it may take a hundreds of years...its of little consequence too them. I took the original photo and enlarged it +200% allowing this incredible view of the surface of Mercury. I wonder if any of the doubters or skeptics have tried this? Or are they too busy being paid by the NSA to leave negative feedback, comments and such across the internet when actual evidence arrises? I know you skeptics are paid NSA employees!
The top and bottom photos are the same, I just added color so you can see it better.
Please look carefully at these structures that I found. They are not there to fool, confuse, infuriate you or anything else...I just want to raise humanities level of awareness of the amazing things around us. These are real structures on a real planet...not far from our own.
To and bottom photo are the same, I added color so you can see it better.
To the inhabitants on Mercury, I humbly ask that forgive humanity for its shortcomings. The good far outweighs the bad I assure you. I am sure you have rules of non interference when it comes to visiting earth...but to reject an invitation would be rude non the less and that would be a terrible way to start out a relationship. So...lets dance you and I. Much to talk about and much to learn from you. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Ancient Aliens: The biggest cover-up in history
Ancient Aliens: The biggest cover-up in history
UFO's are real and the government and military forces on Earth know it. Explore suppressed and hidden information about the strangest UFO incidents in history.
You will be amazed by countless UFO sightings by highly credible witnesses that defy explanation.
UFO's are here whether we like it or not, and their technology far exceeds ours. If they decided to take over the human race, there would be little our government and military factions could do about it.
Learn about the deception and cover-up of the UFO Phenomenon. Everything you've been told about Aliens and UFOs is a lie.
If you look at the history of the earth, there are earth changes every 12,000 years that are also called ELE (Extinction Level Events). Events in which countless life forms on Earth disappear and we are also now in such a period according to Niburu.
Something is already going on at the moment. And that something has everything to do with the Earth's magnetic field and the magnetic poles. That could be one of the reasons, for example, that so many fish and other marine life are stranded, because their orientation point has changed position.
The North Magnetic Pole has been in a restricted area in northern Canada for centuries, but that has changed. And no small change either, because the magnetic north pole is now moving towards Siberia at unprecedented speed
In the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa, there is a vast region of Earth’s magnetic field, called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), that is about three times weaker than the field strength at the poles and has decreased in strength by a further 6%, as well as moving closer to the west.
According to ec.europa.eu the geomagnetic field has been decaying for the last 3,000 years,’ said Dr Nicolas Thouveny from the European Centre for Research and Teaching of Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE) in Aix-en-Provence, France. Historically, there was a 5 percent decline per century, which is now 5 percent per decade. If it continues to fall down at this rate, in less than one millennium we will be in a critical (period).
If Earth’s magnetic field were to decay significantly, it could collapse altogether and flip polarity – changing magnetic north to south and vice versa. The consequences of this process could be dire for our planet, first starting with our communications satellites in the highest orbits which go down and the most worryingly, we may be headed right for this scenario.
Whether this will eventually culminate in a magnetic pole reversal is perhaps less important than the fact that every time in our history when the magnetic north pole moves, violent things happen.
It happened about 12,000 years ago when things happened that caused the climate to change rapidly and various life forms disappeared from the earth.
If you go further back in history, you will see that this pattern repeats itself.
A channel on Youtube that has been dealing with the above issues for years is called Suspicious Observers. As you can see in the video below, we are currently in a period that occurs once every 12,000 years.
Two UFOs chase an airplane in Argentina : "We are seeing an incredible show here !"
Two UFOs chase an Aerolíneas Argentinas plane going to Bariloche: "We are seeing an incredible show here !". Video shared on Reddit by RealRock in September 2022. You can hear the pilots corroborating with the control tower...
US Navy Battle with UFOs / UAPs, Summer 2019
Video shared on Instagram. This is a strange case that The Drive reported at the end of March 2021.In the summer of 2019, US Navy destroyers off the coast of California were harassed by two UFOs of unknown model and origin. Three years later, despite investigations involving the FBI as well as top US Navy officials, no one knows what the flying objects were, what they wanted or where they came from - and it looks like the Navy Not only the United States. It was the documentary maker (and UFO enthusiast) Dave Beatty who first reported the collision between the Navy and these mysterious unidentified flying objects in June 2020. Using the American Right to Information mechanism, the Freedom of Information Act, The Drive was then able to investigate the case ... This is a video shot by one of the warships, you can see that they fired well at it and you can see the result in the pictures. The objects are still flying...
EDIT : Apparently this video is a hoax, we discovered after posting that it was extracted from the game Arma 3 and manipulated in order to look real. Only fans of Arma 3 could know it. Sorry for the deception but we were fooled too by the pictures. After all, we're here to discuss about these videos, trying to explain them...
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Voyager 1 Receives a Mysterious Instruction in Interstellar Space from Something Unknown
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Same UFO filmed over 4 different locations over United States (Pennsylvania, New York, Texas) YESTERDAY
Same UFO filmed over 4 different locations over United States(Pennsylvania, New York, Texas) YESTERDAY
Check out this UFO video of 5 sightings of the same UAP over different locations in USA. What do you think this object was? Filmed yesterday (on 24th September 2022).
Witnesses reports:
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Witnessed a slow flying orb like object which appeared to be followed, then passed by a helicopter. While walking my wife and I observed a orb like object flying slow in the sky which seemed to have an aurora around it and seemed to leave a trial. We also observed a helicopter following behind it which youll see in the video eventually passed under the object. Shortly after, the object seemed to vanish as if it passed threw a portal or something. We filmed the object for approximately 1 minute. There was absolutely no clouds in the sky. It was a cool clear 54 degrees at the time.
Staten Island, NY
Slow moving object high altitude blue comet like cloud tail. Looked like entering atmosphere. Was on my nightly walk, I always look up at the sky on a clear night. I walk to Gateway park in Staten Island NY. I have seen many shooting satellites and other identifiable aerial events. This area is secluded and dark for the suburbs. On my way there on 9-24-22 at approximately 7:45 pm (dusk) I saw an object at a high altitude roughly at a 40-45 degree angle slowly appearing to enter the atmosphere. It was a small blue glowing pill sized object omitting a large cloud comet like tail. I quickly accessed my phone to film the last 35-40 seconds. I observed it for roughly over 1 min total what looked like entry time. A week earlier I observed a glowing orange ball object around the same area. This video may be explainable, however many years star gazing I have never seen anything like it.
Forestport, NY
Ariel light moving in night sky. Northerly direction, uniform speed. Spot light that seemed to e moving and shingles it’s beam Iin various directions. There was virtually no engine or other sound.
Hanover, PA
Me, my son, and a parking lot of people seen a ufo. “I include the ufo video and a video of a plane we saw right after for reference” the plane blinks. Me and my son went to lowes for holloween supplies we pulled in right as it got dark outside. We see a family with kids shouting and recording something in the sky. That’s wen we saw it and I ran to my truck and grabbed my phone to record. I was in shock with excitement and didn’t wanna frighten my 5 year old son, but I was convinced this was a real ufo “I have thousands of hours of scientific lectures under my belt lol”. It was a hazy night so we hung out and waited for a plane so we could get a reference and they do not compare at all. And if you zoom in on the object and go frame by frame you can see it shoot off to the right at a incredible speed at the exact same time it looked like it simply dissapeard. It did not vanish but it actually flew off what looked to be faster than the speed of light. My only regret is not running out from under the parking lot lights that severely messed the video up, but I couldn’t due to having my son in a busy parking lot.
Rutherford, NJ
Bright light with triangular bright light behind. The object’s tip appears like a diamond. Flying north east. It had a bright tail behind that open up into a wide < shape like. There were airplanes going to land at Newark airport but they were flying lower and had distinguishable lights and sound. The object was very visible. Steady flight path. Clear sky and after 30 seconds disappeared. Other stars were visible in the sky. Very unusual. Others are posting seeing it.
A UFO hunter at Sheffield Hallam makes a startling discovery
A UFO hunter at Sheffield Hallam makes a startling discovery
The truth is out there…and David Clarke is going to find it
By Harry Shukman
The photograph had eluded Dr David Clarke for 26 years, and here, finally, it was in his hands. The buzz he felt was so powerful that even now, as he recounts the moment, words briefly fail him.
“It was,” explains Clarke, “almost like finding the Holy Grail of this subject.”
The Calvine incident, 4 August 1990.
The photo is perhaps the clearest image ever captured of a UFO, or unidentified flying object. It was taken in 1990 and shows a grey sky in the Scottish Highlands — foliage at the top, fencing at the bottom — and two objects in the air. One looks like a Harrier jet plane, the kind used by the RAF. The other is…something very different. It's the shape of a flat diamond, grey but with daubs of white and black. It looks much, much bigger than the jet.
Clarke is not an eccentric UFO nut who believes senior politicians have been abducted by aliens and injected with microchips. He is an academic at Sheffield Hallam, specialising in journalism and media law. And he never expected to see this photo. For years, as part of his research into contemporary legends, he had been sending information requests to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), tracking down former military intelligence officers, and spending countless hours hunched over government archives to uncover evidence of unidentified flying objects. This snap, taken in Calvine on the edge of the Cairngorms, had eluded him for a quarter-century. And now he had it.
He first read about Calvine in a UFO book in 1996 — a couple of sentences mentioning an incident in the Highlands — but it wasn’t until 2009 when Clarke was working at the National Archives curating declassified MoD files that he came across an odd drawing. It was a bad sketch by any measure — like a biro doodle from the back of a school textbook — but it showed a jet flying next to a UFO. This appeared to be a depiction of the Calvine incident. In the same archive was a defence briefing dated from Margaret Thatcher's government, advising how to dismiss unwanted press questions about Calvine.
Clarke’s interest was piqued, but his enquiries about the incident were rebuffed by government departments. The identities of the camera operator and the intelligence officers handling the incident were meant to be kept secret until 2076 due to privacy concerns. Without any more evidence Clarke had come to think, by 2021, that the Calvine incident may have been a hoax.
Craig Lindsay holding the Calvine incident print. Photo: David Clarke.
Until this summer, when he happened upon a “lucky break”. A professional investigator, Clarke protects his sources, but says he was put in touch with a retired RAF officer called Craig Lindsay who investigated Calvine. Clarke went to Lindsay’s home in Scotland. There, the former RAF man took a copy of Great Aircraft Of The World out of his desk, plucked an envelope hidden within its pages, and showed him this incredible photograph and told Clarke the story he had been waiting most of his adult life to hear.
Back in 1990, Lindsay had been tasked with interviewing two young chefs, who had been “utterly changed” by a weird experience in the Highlands. On the night of August 4th, these two men had finished a shift in the kitchens of a Pitlochry hotel and went for a hike in nearby Calvine. It was around 9pm — still light — when they saw something that made them dive into the bushes. Hovering silently in the sky above them was a craft roughly 100 feet long and shaped like a diamond. A jet plane zoomed by, circling the diamond craft, before shooting off on its way. The duo, who had a camera with them, took six photographs of this eerie scene. After ten minutes of hovering, the diamond ascended quickly into the sky.
Clarke credits Steven Spielberg for his interest in UFOs. It was the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with Richard Dreyfuss doggedly investigating extraterrestrial life, that hooked him. He began his career as a journalist at the Sheffield Star before finding his way into UFOlogy, writing a dozen books on the subject, including How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth and The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings. His books are well-reviewed, but not always popular with UFO enthusiasts, since they tend to chart his own journey from believer to sceptic (alongside documenting changing cultural attitudes to UFOs). He is now the co-founder of the Contemporary Legend research group at Sheffield Hallam.
“I haven’t been able to get away from it,” Clarke says, describing his career investigating UFO sightings. “I’ve thought that’s it, I’ve done everything I possibly can, and then something else comes along. [Calvine] is the perfect example. It’s just good to have found that photograph. To me, it’s a really important artefact.”
David Clarke with Craig Lindsay. Photo: David Clarke.
In his book The UFO Files, Clarke delves into public reactions over the last century to strange sightings in the sky. Interestingly, these sightings seem to surge during times of social uncertainty (such as the two world wars, the Cold War) and after the release of alien shows like The X-Files. The British public go through phases of obsession with UFOs.
But how did the public get hooked in the first place? UFOlogy got off to a flying start in 1947. According to a BBC article on the subject, commercial pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed in June of that year that he had seen nine “flying discs” in Washington state moving at 1,200mph — something which was reported to the Associated Press news service, and was broadcast further by Hearst International shortly afterwards. “The story spread around the globe considerably faster than 1,200 mph. Soon there were hundreds of other reported sightings.” Clarke quotes a Sheffield woman, during the flying saucer craze of 1947, writing in her diary about her husband’s new mania. Her exasperation is palpable:
“Husband much keyed up about the flying saucers over American skies. One of his pet subjects. Papers can’t report enough about them to satisfy him. Just like a small boy about it.”
1962 photos of UFOs over Sheffield. Photo: Alex Birch.
Sheffield has a rich history of UFO sightings, which will feature in a new Contemporary Legend archive at Sheffield Hallam. Two incidents stand out in particular. In 1962, a 14-year-old boy named Alex Birch took a picture that appeared to show a fleet of flying saucers over the city. It was published in the News of the World but dismissed by the Air Ministry as sunlight reflecting ice crystals in the smoky air. “This conclusion satisfied no one,” Clarke writes in The UFO Files.
Another occurred in 1968, when an off-duty constable called Martyn Johnson and his girlfriend spotted two multicoloured lights approaching them in High Hazels Park — “they were very, very soft and didn’t throw beams like a torch”, PC Johnson recalled — before splitting into four lights and zipping off along the railway towards Rotherham. Soon after this experience, Johnson was summoned to Sheffield Police Headquarters and quizzed by two men from “a government investigation department in London”, conspicuously dressed in trench coats and trilby hats. According to PC Johnson’s ever-so slightly hammy account (“if the people of the world knew how many genuine sightings there were like yours, there would be total panic,” he reports the men telling him), they swore him to secrecy.
Unlike Johnson, the two chefs in Scotland did not want to remain quiet. They decided to send their pictures into the Daily Record newspaper. Curiously, it never printed them. Clarke suggests that the paper’s editors alerted the government, which in turn pressured the Record not to print the photos due to national security concerns. Lindsay collected the photos from the newspaper, faxed a copy to the MoD’s offices in London, but kept the print. It stayed there, in the same envelope in Lindsay’s desk at home for more than three decades. Until Clarke showed up. “I have been waiting for someone to contact me about this for more than 30 years,” Lindsay told him.
According to another source of Clarke’s, the two chefs were out poaching in the Highlands and were posing with a deer they killed when they spotted the Calvine craft. This might explain why, after so long, neither of them has spoken about their experience. “I think they were up to no good,” Clarke explains, suggesting that the MoD struck a deal with the youngsters: the officials would not alert the police about their poaching in exchange for the chefs’ silence.
A News of the World clipping from the time.
Silence about what, though? To dispel the most tantalising theory — it’s almost certainly not aliens. Clarke says that 95%, or even 99% of UFO encounters can be explained without needing to get little green men involved. In his book, The UFO Files, he describes case after case in which conventional aircraft, weather balloons, satellites, or rare types of lightning (like the kind captured in this video) were mistaken for alien spaceships.
The remaining 1% of cases, it would seem, are simply yet to be understood. While it is thrilling to imagine that tiny percentage is proof of extraterrestrial technology, Clarke does not believe that aliens have ever come to Earth. He is, however, open to the idea that they may be out there…
So back to Calvine. Clarke puts forward a convincing argument for what happened there. The UFO sighting’s date is significant: still in the Cold War, just two days after the Gulf War broke out. A time of military paranoia and secrecy. Could the US military, which had airbases in rural areas of Scotland, have been testing one of its so-called “black projects”, a highly-classified type of aircraft?
It has never been confirmed, but in the late 1980s, the US was rumoured to be developing the Aurora plane, a speedy, silent aircraft that could spy on its enemies. If the Aurora was being tested in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands, what were the odds that two chefs out poaching venison late one night would have stumbled onto this top-secret machine?
The truth is out there, somewhere in the bowels of the MoD. And if anyone’s going to find it, it’ll be David Clarke.
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
"THE GAME IS OVER!"
Too Smart
Artificial intelligence researchers are doubling down on the concept that we will see artificial general intelligence (AGI) — that's AI that can accomplish anything humans can, and probably many we can't — within our lifetimes.
Greene's original column made the relatively mainstream case that, in spite of impressive advances in machine learning over the past few decades, there's no way we're gonna see human-level artificial intelligence within our lifetimes.
"Solving these scaling challenges is what will deliver AGI," the DeepMind researcher tweeted, later adding that Sutskever "is right" to claim, quite controversially, that some neural networks may already by "slightly conscious."
DeepMind itself hasn't gone so far as to declare its new Gato multi-modal AI system capable of AGI, but given what one of its lead researchers is saying, it seems only a matter of time before Google declares that it's going to be the first to achieve it.
How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on Sept. 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this.
The spiral galaxy M74 imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team., CC BY-NC-ND)
How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on Sept. 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this(opens in new tab). The Drake equation, dating from a stage in his career when he was "too naive to be nervous" (as he later put it), has become famous and bears his name.
This places Drake in the company of towering physicists with equations named after them including James Clerk Maxwell and Erwin Schrödinger. Unlike those, Drake's equation does not encapsulate a law of nature. Instead it combines some poorly known probabilities into an informed estimate.
Whatever reasonable values you feed into the equation (see image below), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we shouldn't be alone in the galaxy. Drake remained a proponent and a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial life throughout his days, but has his equation really taught us anything?
The expanded Drake equation. (Image credit: Author Provided)
Drake's equation may look complicated, but its principles are really rather simple. It states that, in a galaxy as old as ours, the number of civilizations that are detectable by virtue of them broadcasting their presence must equate to the rate at which they arise, multiplied by their average lifetime.
Putting a value on the rate at which civilizations occur might seem to be guesswork, but Drake realized that it can be broken down into more tractable components.
He stated that the total rate is equal to the rate at which suitable stars are formed, multiplied by the fraction of those stars that have planets. This is then multiplied by the number of planets that are capable of bearing life per system, times the fraction of those planets where life gets started, multiplied by the fraction of those where life becomes intelligent, times the fraction of those that broadcast their presence.
Tricky values
Frank Drake. (Image credit: wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
When Drake first formulated his equation, the only term that was known with any confidence was the rate of star formation — about 30 per year.
As for the next term, back in the 1960s, we had no evidence that any other stars have planets, and one in 10 may have seemed like an optimistic guess. However, observational discoveries of exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) that began in the 1990s and have blossomed this century(opens in new tab) now make us confident that most stars have planets.
Common sense suggests that most systems of multiple planets would include one at the right distance from its star to be capable of supporting life. Earth is that planet in our solar system. In addition, Mars may have been suitable for abundant life in the past — and it could still be clinging on(opens in new tab).
Today we also realize that planets don't need to be warm enough for liquid water to exist at the surface to support life. It can occur in the internal ocean of an ice-covered body(opens in new tab), supported by heat generated either by radioactivity or tides rather than sunlight.
There are several likely candidates among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, for example. In fact, when we add moons as being capable of hosting life, the average number of habitable bodies per planetary system could easily exceed one.
The values of the terms towards the right hand side of the equation, however, remain more open to challenge. Some would hold that, given a few million years to play with, life will get started anywhere that is suitable.
That would be mean that the fraction of suitable bodies where life actually gets going is pretty much equal to one. Others say that we have as yet no proof of life starting anywhere other than Earth, and that the origin of life(opens in new tab) could actually be an exceedingly rare event.
Will life, once started, eventually evolve intelligence? It probably has to get past the microbial stage and become multicellular first.
There is evidence that multicellular life started more than once(opens in new tab) on Earth, so becoming multicellular may not be a barrier. Others, however, point out that on Earth the "right kind" of multicellular life, which continued to evolve, appeared only once and could be rare on the galactic scale.
Intelligence may confer a competitive advantage over other species, meaning its evolution could be rather likely. But we don't know for sure.
And will intelligent life develop technology to the stage where it (accidentally or deliberately) broadcasts its existence across space? Perhaps for surface-dwellers such as ourselves, but it might be rare for inhabitants of internal oceans of frozen worlds with no atmosphere.
What about the average lifetime of a detectable civilization, L? Our TV transmissions began to make Earth detectable from afar in the 1950s, giving a minimum value for L of about 70 years in our own case.
In general though, L may be limited by the collapse of civilization (what are the odds of our own lasting a further 100 years?) or by the near total demise of radio broadcasting in favor of the internet, or by a deliberate choice to "go quiet" for fear of hostile galactic inhabitants.
Play with the numbers yourself — it's fun! You’ll find that if L is more than 1,000 years, N (the number of detectable civilizations) is likely to be greater than a hundred. In an interview recorded in 2010(opens in new tab), Drake said his best guess at N was about 10,000.
We are learning more about exoplanets every year, and are entering an era when measuring their atmospheric composition(opens in new tab) to reveal evidence of life is becoming increasingly feasible. Within the next decade or two, we can hope for a much more soundly based estimate of the fraction of Earth-like planets where life gets started.
This won’t tell us about life in the internal oceans, but we can hope for insights into that from missions to the icy moons of Jupiter(opens in new tab), Saturn(opens in new tab) and Uranus(opens in new tab). And we could, of course, detect actual signals from extraterrestrial intelligence.
Either way, Frank Drake's equation, which has stimulated so many lines of research, will continue to give us a thought-provoking sense of perspective. For that we should be grateful.
This article is republished from The Conversation(opens in new tab) under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article(opens in new tab).
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
Cyclones circling Jupiter's poles still baffling space scientists
Cyclones circling Jupiter's poles still baffling space scientists
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
Infrared image of the northern hemisphere of Jupiter as seen by JIRAM. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01774-0
A team of space scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., working with a colleague from Italy and another from France has used modeling to partially explain the resilience of cyclones circling Jupiter's poles. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes how they analyzed images captured by the Juno space probe and used what they learned to create shallow water models that might at least partly explain how the cyclones last so long.
In 2016, NASA's Juno space probe entered an orbit around Jupiter. Unlike other such probes it has been circling the planet from pole to pole, rather than around its equator. As the probe began sending back pictures of the planet from this new perspective, researchers looking at them found a surprise. Not only was there a single cyclone sitting atop each of the poles, but both were surrounded by more cyclones. As time has passed, more pictures of the poles have arrived and the researchers studying them continue to be surprised by the stability of the cyclones—the original ones are still there today and have not even changed shape. Such behavior is of course unheard of here on Earth—cyclones take shape, travel around for awhile and then dissipate. Such behavior has left researchers scrambling to come up with a reasonable explanation for what they have observed.
Photos of the planet's north pole show that there are eight cyclones surrounding the central cyclone directly over the pole. All eight are in close proximity and all are nearly equidistant from the central cyclone—and are arranged in an octagonal pattern. At this time, it is not clear if the cyclones rotate around the center. There is a similar arrangement at the southern pole, only there are just five cyclones, shaped as a pentagon. In this new effort, the researchers have tried a new approach to explaining how it is that the cyclones hold in place for so long, and how they do it without changing their position or shape.
Vorticity and divergence derived from two independent determinations of the wind. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01774-0
The work by the team involved analyzing pictures and other data from the Juno probe, looking specifically at wind speeds and direction. They then took what they learned and used it to create shallow water models and that led them to suggest that there is an "anticyclonic ring" of winds that move in the opposite direction of the cyclones, which is what keeps them in place. And while that may hold true, the team was unable to find signatures of convection, which would have helped to explain how heat was being used to fuel the cyclones. They acknowledge that much more work will need to be done to fully explain the behavior of Jupiter's cyclones.
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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..
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