Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
24-08-2023
Tom DeLonge Claims Secret DoD Document From UFO Program Proves Telekinesis Is Real
Tom DeLonge Claims Secret DoD Document From UFO Program Proves Telekinesis Is Real
Tom DeLonge, the former lead vocalist and guitarist of the popular band Blink-182, has always had a keen interest in UFOs. He has spent many years researching and studying the topic. He has even formed a company, To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (or To The Stars) to investigate and promote research on UFOs and other related phenomena.
DeLonge’s To The Stars is behind publishing the three footages (captured in 2004 and 2015 by the US Navy) that were released in 2017 and 2018. They depict UFOs and include audio recordings of the pilots. These videos gained a lot of attention when they were released.
His interest in UFOs began at a young age. As a child, DeLonge was fascinated by stories of alien encounters and sightings. He used to spend hours reading books and watching documentaries about UFOs, and was particularly interested in the famous Roswell incident of 1947, where a UFO allegedly crashed in New Mexico.
DeLonge’s research led him to conclude that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin. He believes that there is a wealth of evidence to support this conclusion, including reports of sightings and encounters, as well as physical evidence such as radar tracks and photographs.
During a podcast with Daniel P Carter of BBC Radio 1 Rock, DeLonge disclosed that he has a secret official Pentagon document from a UFO program that shows telekinesis is a real ability. He believes that telekinesis has been proven in the lab and that consciousness precedes matter, and once we discover that, life is going to get very interesting.
He suggests that we have the ability to heal ourselves and create new types of Sciences and Engineering tweets. He also believes that telepathy is going to be a part of it, and that they have found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens. He thinks that once people accept all of the stuff that they have been talking about, it’s going to change the world. Below is the transcript of his conversation with Carter:
“I always tell people there is this really cool document (that I have) that was a part of the UFO program where they were studying a kid in China who can move objects with his mind. He is around 10 years old, so they wanted to figure out how that’s possible, and they recreated it in the lab.
I have the whole Department of Defense document, and it goes through it and says they were able to put a piece of paper in a glass jar, screw the lid on it, and move the paper through the lid and then six feet across the floor, all with their mind. 100 people can do this, only 10 have mastered it, and it was just wild.
So telekinesis has been proven in the lab, but no one knows about it. I’m like, to be able to move things with the force, like in Star Wars, is a big deal. It sounds ridiculous, that’s why, and within the current paradigm, it sounds ridiculous. I’m sure, or you won’t remember, but we had a conversation at the Reading Festival many years ago where I think I probably came across as a total maniac, even to someone as open-minded as yourself. But, I was talking about reading a bunch of different things, which means nothing, but I was looking at different realms of consciousness because that’s the basis of everything I believe.
I believe that consciousness precedes matter and I highly agree with you. Because the current paradigm is that consciousness is a facet that’s created by matter, which is just this weird thing that’s come about because our brains are complicated and that’s nonsense. I think it’s exactly the opposite and once we discover that stuff, life is going to get very interesting.
Once we discover that mind over matter, not the other way around, we will have the ability to heal ourselves, create new types of Sciences and Engineering, and become a civilization where telepathy is a part of it. I believe that’s all going to happen. There is one person, who was up for the Nobel last year, is one of the top geneticists in the world, at one of the Ivy League schools that we are working with, who worked on part of the UFO program at the Pentagon. I was talking to him, and they found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens, and he believes he can create something to enhance it by a thousand times, like some type of drug that targets that area of the brain.
So, that’s the thing, people do think it’s ridiculous, but not the people who have an open enough mind to research and jump in. These guys are like World leading PhDs, and that’s been the kind of the story of my life, is everything I’ve told, even on Rogan, is not made up, it’s coming from somewhere, and I can’t say where it’s coming from, but at the end of the day, it’s all real. I think it’s going to be a very exciting time once people accept all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about here on this interview, I think it’s going to really change the world.”
Moreover, as in the January 2022 Thrasher Magazine issue, DeLonge was asked: “Would you say UFOs are driven by aliens or do you think it’s more like a drone?” He replied: “I think both.” He suggested that it is important to note that while studying UFOs, we must be aware of the fact that they could be remotely controlled and may have occupants. (Source)
“I think the biggest misconception is that they are coming from other planets. Evidence doesn’t really support that. The evidence supports that it’s dimensional and that it’s parallel timelines that exist with frequency. It’s really complicated, different, and interesting. But once you understand that, you have no way out of reexamining the religious world and wondering what the Star of Bethlehem really was,” DeLonge explained.
Further, he was asked if UFOs or aliens are coming from the oceans. He said that while the origin of UFOs is a separate conversation, it is believed that they do exist in our oceans. With the use of sensors placed throughout the ocean to detect submarines and other objects, it has been reported that there have been sightings of unidentified submerged objects (USOs).
In one instance, a helicopter pilot was testing torpedoes, and a navy SEAL was sent down on a wire to retrieve the torpedo. However, as soon as he touched the water, a large craft came underneath him, took the torpedo, and left at the high speed. The navy SEAL was in shock and panicked, requesting to be pulled up immediately. Although there were initial plans to have the witnesses speak on television, they later backed out, and some of them testified to the committee. Nonetheless, similar incidents continue to occur frequently, and it is, indeed, extraordinary.
DeLonge’s views on UFOs have been met with both praise and criticism. Some people believe that his research is valuable and that it is important to investigate and study UFOs in an open and honest manner. Others believe that DeLonge’s opinion is misguided and that there is no evidence to support his conclusions.
Despite the criticism, DeLonge remains committed to his research and wants to continue promoting the truth about UFOs. He believes that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin, and that the truth about UFOs should be investigated and studied openly and honestly. Through his work To The Stars, DeLonge hopes to bring more attention to the topic of UFOs and to promote research and discussion about this fascinating phenomenon.
The south pole of the Moon just might be the hottest real estate in the Universe right now. Nearly every country with a space program has its eyes set on establishing a presence on the lunar surface’s south side. NASA, for example, is currently in the middle of its Artemis campaign, set to culminate with a permanent U.S. settlement there, and India, Russia, and China are all inching their way to our neighboring celestial body.
If this feels like deja vu, you’re not wrong. The original “space race” — a fierce battle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over who had the technology to conquer the cosmos first — began with the launch of Sputnik 1 and culminated with the U.S. landing the first crewed spacecraft, Apollo 11, on the moon. But now, over 50 years later, we may be entering an entirely new era of space exploration, one that seems poised to come with a race of its own.
Earlier this month, at a press conference at Kennedy Space Center for NASA’s Artemis II mission, NASA administrator Bill Nelson expressed concern that if China's space agency beat NASA to a crewed Moon landing, China might deny other countries access to landing sites and water ice.
“The space race is really between us and China,” said Nelson. “And we need to protect the interests of the international community.”
Inverse talked with space policy expert Ian Christensen of the Secure World Foundation, who also is involved in "twice-yearly informal, off-the-record dialogues with the U.S. and Chinese space sector actors,” about why the U.S. and China are gearing up for a new “space race,” what exactly is at stake, and how it’s likely to play out.
WHY WE’RE RACING TO THE MOON AGAIN
NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) seem to be eyeing some of the same landing sites for Artemis III and Chang’e-7, a CNSA mission to explore the Moon, including landing on its surface, planned for a 2026 launch.
That’s not terribly surprising. The Moon’s southern craters are an ideal location for a number of reasons. First, the area offers a near-perfect landing site: a high, flat ground with good lighting. The resources around it also make it possible to set up a permanent base on the moon. A nearby crater contains an ice deposit large enough to turn the frozen water into rocket fuel and breathable oxygen — two resources that are critical to establishing long-term bases on the Moon and eventually providing logistical support for missions to Mars. And that’s something both countries are determined to do.
All of this, on some level, is about power.
“Space is not separable from diplomatic soft power,” says Christensen. (“Soft power” refers to wielding influence rather than military might or financial leverage.) “The State Department and NASA have tried to leverage space as part of U.S. international diplomatic strategies. China does the same thing; they don't have quite the brand identity, but they certainly bring space into diplomatic and trade agreements.”
Domestic policy may also have something to do with it. The idea of a space race hearkens back to the Cold War, and that is politically expedient for both countries, at least in some ways.
“There's something of an ‘Apollo hangover’ in the U.S.,” says Christensen. “The idea that competition with the Soviets led to this tremendous achievement, and we want to recapture that sort of environment. I think there's certainly an element of that in there.” The idea of a competitor might also give the U.S. space program a sense of urgency.
Meanwhile, Christensen says, “The Chinese ecosystem is certainly motivated at a certain level by trying to maintain its reputation as a space power,” and keeping pace with the U.S. is a key part of that.
A NEW RACE, A NEW RIVAL
What about our old Cold War “space race” rival, Russia? Nelson essentially dismissed Russia as a competitor in the current race to the Moon. He cited a long history of U.S. and Russian cooperation in space (although that, too, has been strained since Russia invaded Ukraine). But he also made it clear that Russia just isn’t in a position to compete:
“I don't think that a lot of people at this point would say that Russia is actually ready to be landing cosmonauts on the Moon in the timeframe that we're talking about going to the Moon, or that possibly China would be,” Nelson said.
As if to prove Nelson’s point, Russia’s Luna-25 lander crashed during an attempt to land near the Moon’s south pole on August 19. Luna-25 had been neck-and-neck with India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander in the race to become the first spacecraft to land near the Moon’s south pole.
The crash is an embarrassing political setback for Russia, whose president Vladimir Putin touts the country’s space program as proof of Russian power, both to his own people and to other countries.
Despite Putin’s ambitions, though, it’s been more than 30 years since Russia was a real space power. In recent years, Roscosmos has mostly been in the business of ferrying astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station (and even that hasn’t gone so well lately). The agency has been working on a shoestring budget for decades. Money — and access to hardware — has gotten even tighter since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, triggering waves of international sanctions, including from some of the countries that were originally slated to provide electronic components for Luna-25.
With Luna-25 now a pile of scrap on the lunar surface, it looks like India may beat Russia — and everyone else — to the south pole of the Moon. But for NASA, China remains the competitor to watch: the country is a powerhouse economic, political, and ideological rival to the U.S. here on Earth, and (unlike Russia) it has both money and political will to throw behind a race to the Moon.
NO ONE OWNS THE MOON
So how will the new lunar “space race” unfold? Neither the U.S. nor China (nor anybody else) can just plant a flag and declare that they own Shackleton Crater. Both countries have signed the Outer Space Treaty, which says that celestial bodies like the Moon and Mars can’t be claimed as national territory.
On the other hand, you really can’t land your spaceship on top of somebody else’s astronaut encampment or robotic lander. The U.S. and China agreed, by signing the Outer Space Treaty, not to cause “harmful interference” with each other’s operations, which definitely includes not landing a rocket on them. What’s less clear is how much room one country is obligated to give another country’s landing site, for example.
Sorting out that kind of detail is going to be a huge challenge in the years ahead, and communication between the U.S. and Chinese governments will be key to working out those issues — and maybe even setting the precedent that will define how countries interact on the Moon, on Mars, and in the asteroid belt.
The question, says Christensen, is, “Do we have the lines of communication between these two states to figure out deconfliction mechanisms or to share information on activities being conducted so that we don't stumble into some sort of inadvertent crisis points?” But the two countries’ strained relationship here on Earth could make that difficult.
“We've seen kind of a difficulty in establishing communication channels in other domains of operations, so I think there's some concern that that will continue in the space domain,” says Christensen.
NAVIGATING AROUND THE COMMUNICATIONS BARRIER
U.S. law actually forbids NASA to talk to China’s space agency. An amendment to a 2011 appropriations bill, called the Townsend amendment, prohibits direct discussions between NASA and Chinese officials.
Instead, says Christensen, conversations on coordinating and minimizing conflict on the Moon have to happen in big, multinational forums like the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space or the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or in what Christensen describes as "informal dialogues between stakeholders on both sides.” Those are mostly discussions about the broad strokes of each country's goals and principles — not establishing rules of the road for future lunar settlements.
"We're not looking for agreements, and we're not looking for any sort of cooperation; we're just looking to have some very basic kind of better understanding of individual and cultural logic," says Christensen. "It's a kind of indirect and slow process."
And there are other ways to work around the Townsend Amendment. The U.S. and China have managed to swap scientific information a few times in the past, trading observations from NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) for data from China’s Chang’e missions.
“I think we should be looking for more opportunities to do that: around sample uses, physical characterization of the regolith, things like that,” says Christensen, “so that some limited basic scientific data exchange can occur and help us have some connections.”
TENSION, BUT NOT CONFLICT
Things between the U.S. and China are already tense, and that’s going to make us awkward lunar neighbors at best. And there’s a very good chance that disputes over lunar landing sites could add stress to the already strained relationship between the U.S. and China here on Earth.
“There's a risk that it becomes another point of tension in this larger dynamic between the two states,” says Christensen.
But he doesn’t expect that tension to spill over into armed conflict, either on the Moon or about the Moon.
“I think conflict over the Moon is probably unlikely in the foreseeable future,” says Christensen. “I don't think we've yet established the type of integration of the Moon into broader economics and geopolitics to bring into conflict.”
In the end, Christensen says a space “race” probably isn’t the right word and definitely not a productive one. “I think it puts a little bit too much importance on getting there } and detracts from some of the more long-term questions.”
The subject of UFOs and extraterrestrial life has gripped the imagination of many, but perhaps nobody embodies this curiosity as much as Arthur C. Clarke did (Amazon link). The eminent science fiction author and futurist, whose work often grappled with mankind’s place in the universe, once took it upon himself to explore the various facets of unidentified flying objects.
From Skepticism to Curiosity
Clarke’s own experience with what he initially thought was a UFO turned out to be a weather balloon, a common source of mistaken identity. His tale serves as a gentle reminder that not everything we see in the sky is from another galaxy. Clarke was skeptical about long-range UFO sightings primarily because they often lacked irrefutable evidence.
However, he was genuinely fascinated by “Close Encounters”—instances where people claimed to have come into direct contact with extraterrestrial beings or their craft. Clarke pointed out that while it is possible that older, more advanced civilizations might have been visiting Earth, there is no hard evidence to suggest ongoing visitations in the modern era.
The Tale of Mrs. Jesse Roestenburg
One of the more engrossing accounts Clarke delved into was that of Mrs. Jesse Roestenburg, who lived in a Staffordshire farmhouse. Roestenburg’s tale was gripping: a giant, Mexican hat-shaped object suspended in the sky, with beings inside who had golden hair and “eyes full of compassion.” For Roestenburg and her children, this was a moment that defied rational explanation. The object performed aerial maneuvers before ascending sharply and disappearing, leaving a family in awe and wonder.
When Physical Evidence Appears
Bob Taylor, a forestry worker, was another individual who claimed to have a close encounter, but with a twist: there was physical evidence. Taylor stumbled upon a dark, domed object while walking down a woodland track. He described smaller “spiky” objects rolling towards him and an overwhelming, choking smell before losing consciousness. When he returned home, his trousers were torn in a manner consistent with being pulled upward.
The police found unexplainable track marks and holes in the ground at the scene, adding a layer of mystique to an already baffling event. Could this have been evidence of a craft landing or taking off?
The Technological Watchtower
Clarke was particularly intrigued by the idea that if extraterrestrial visitors were frequenting Earth, it seemed improbable that they could elude the extensive radar networks operated by various countries. Anything “as big as a pencil” orbiting Earth could be tracked, making the secretive arrival of an extraterrestrial craft unlikely.
What To Do If You Meet an Extraterrestrial?
Clarke’s advice was whimsical yet profound: “Be very polite and be prepared for a long journey.” If the visitors are anything like us—curious explorers of the cosmos—they might be as fascinated by us as we are by them.
Video:
Arthur C Clarke Unmasks The Truth Behind UFOs | Our World
Arthur C. Clarke’s balanced, scientific perspective on UFOs serves as a guide for how we might approach this enduring mystery. While Clarke remained skeptical about random lights in the sky, he was open to the possibility of life beyond Earth and the compelling tales of those who claim to have had close encounters. Like Clarke, perhaps we should be prepared to embrace the unknown, armed with curiosity and a dash of skepticism, as we continue our collective quest to understand our place in the universe.
Just two years before his death, William M. Tompkins had written “Selected by Extraterrestrials,” which induced sudden chaos in the UFO community with his incredible testimony about the US Navy’s secret development of space battle groups with the assistance of major aerospace companies beginning with Douglas Aircraft. He can be considered one of the most incredible whistleblowers to step forward and disclosed the Secret Space Programs, E.T. Agendas, and hidden governments. He claimed to be part of an operation involving US Navy spies who stole UFO plans and antigravity technological secrets from the Nazis during World War II.
In July 2017, at a press conference, Tompkins made an unprecedented statement. He worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company alongside extraterrestrials (Nordic alien women). It had been 4-7 years before NASA appeared. He claimed about it in his book (mentioned above) that was published in 2015.
Additionally, he revealed that the Nazis had already had operational UFOs during the war, and because of the information that the US spies were able to obtain, the US later developed its own fleet of UFOs – which then got siphoned off into the black military sphere under the control of Majestic 12, the ultra-secretive group that controlled and managed the UFO/alien issue in the 1940s.
During the time of World War, there were secret societies such as the Thule Society and the Vril Society. Famous British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clark wrote a whole chapter about Maria Orsic in his book “Black Sun” published in 2001, where he connected her with Vril society.
The author mentioned that Orsic could communicate with alien civilizations and one of them was from the planet Aldebaran, which is located in the Taurus system.
According to Tompkins, the Nazis were in contact with Extraterrestrial Reptilians at the same time as Orsic was doing her channeling. Hitler found out about Orsic, her abilities, and the fact she was receiving information that detailed how to construct UFOs.
According to Tompkins, Hitler allowed Orsic (and the Nordics with whom she was working for) to continue work on their UFO program because the Nazis were already in contact with the Reptilians, and because Hitler knew he could always take over Orsic’s project at any time.
Robert Wood, who was interviewed alongside William Tompkins by Search4TruthReality (source), claimed that the Nazis’ technology rapidly advanced due to their relationship with the Reptilians, so that they actually got to the far side of the moon before the end of WW2.
Dr. Wood worked in research and development management in Douglas Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas from 1956 to 1993. Later he became a Board member of MUFON. He was given $500,000 to disseminate UFO documents and $250,000 to make a UFO documentary. Later, Robert and his son Ryan scanned hundreds of MJ-12 documents and made them available on their website MajesticDocuments.com
According to William Tompkins, he was recruited at a young age by the Navy due to his precocious ability to build highly accurate model ships. After working at North American Aviation and Northrop, he was hired by Douglas Aircraft Company in 1950.
In the interviews such as with Project Camelot and in his book “Selected by Extraterrestrials,” Tompkins revealed much of his story. He explained that MJ-12 began in 1942 with the senior Douglas (the man who started the company).
Tompkins stated that right after the Battle of LA in 1942, in order to handle the implications of UFOs openly showing themselves in the skies, Douglas pulled some key men into a group (or think tank) that later became MJ-12.
Seventeen-year-old Bill Tompkins points out the detail on his models to naval Captain H. C. Gearing, commandant of the 11th Naval District in San Diego. Bill was soon inducted into the navy and is shown in the second photo in his uniform holding one of his aircraft carriers. He went on to help design com on the real ships.
Image Credit: Craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Tompkins
Dr. Wood stated that MJ-12 is mostly associated with the Air Force, not other branches of the US military. He explained that the US Navy started back-engineering Nazi UFO crafts in 1942 before MJ-12 came into existence. It took the Navy around a decade to produce functional UFO craft, but they did so eventually.
Tompkins stated that when the first astronauts went to the moon, they were shocked to discover it had already been occupied by Draco Reptilians. He said that the Reptilians, over 9 feet tall, were standing next to their advanced craft.
According to both Tompkins and Dr. Wood, the Reptilians had already made a deal with the Nazis. Amazingly, Tompkins himself claimed he saw ancient structures on the far side of the moon and that he saw a floating building – 1.5 miles above the lunar surface.
According to Tompkins, although there are many ET species interacting with humanity currently, including Dracos/Reptilians and Nordics which have a great influence on the world.
In his Project Camelot interview, Tompkins prevented himself from disclosing more information about Reptilians as it was harmful to his credibility.
Tompkins also described the US Military’s concerns about UFOs and alien beings and the Military’s rush to create advanced space-based weapons, which could be used to defend the planet Earth against an ET threat to our civilization.
He revealed US Navy has Battle Groups operating outside the Earth. He personally designed five space ships and thirty support ships. Using the latest technology, he designed different space ships for Northrop Aviation Company. Northrop started building the huge craft underground in Utah.
Tompkins claimed we are now building even better Battle Groups. The Apollo moon landings were also designed to build a base on the moon. We have had bases on the moon along with bases on Mars and Jupiter’s moons.
A month after the shocking conference, Tompkins passed away unexpectedly on August 21, 2017, in San Diego, California, at the age of 94.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Ancient River Is Helping NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Do Its Work
Ancient River Is Helping NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Do Its Work
Perseverance Views Jezero Boulder Field: The Mastcam-Z imager on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a series of images on July 6 that were stitched together to show a field of boulders deposited in Jezero Crater by a fast-moving ancient river. Rover tracks across the middle of the image give a sense of scale. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS. Download image ›
The six-wheeled geologist is getting some assistance in its search for diverse rock samples that could be brought to Earth for deeper investigation.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover sealed the tube containing its 20th rock core sample on June 23 (the 832nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission), and the mission’s science team is excited about its potential. That’s because this sample was drilled by the rover from an outcrop composed of tiny chunks of other rocks that were carried from elsewhere by a river in the distant past and deposited here, where they became cemented together. Conglomerates like this one (nicknamed “Emerald Lake” by the team) pack a lot of information about places the rover may never visit, with each new rock fragment representing a geologic a story to be told.
“Pebbles and boulders found in a river are messengers from afar,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from Caltech in Pasadena. “And while the water that created the Martian riverbed that Perseverance is currently exploring evaporated billions of years ago, the story carried by those waters remains fresh, stored in conglomerate rock.”
Perseverance's 'Otis Peak' Sample Reveals Colors of Conglomerate: NASA’s Perseverance captured this image June 13 of a sample it cored from a conglomerate rock called “Emerald Lake.” This “Otis Peak” core shows distinctly colored areas that are individual minerals transported by a river that once flowed into Jezero Crater. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image ›
Perseverance is collecting these samples so that they can be brought to Earth by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign and studied by lab equipment that’s too large and complex to bring to Mars. Scientists will be able to look at each pebble and fragment in this core, dubbed “Otis Peak,” to determine details such as its age, what the environmental conditions were like in the river when the conglomerate formed, and whether it contains signs of ancient microbial life.
Now in its third science campaign, Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 130 feet (40 meters) tall. With this sample sealed and stored in its belly, the rover is on its way to a low ridge called “Snowdrift Peak.” To get there, it will have to cross a field of boulders.
As with the rock fragments in the Otis Peak sample, scientists believe the boulders likely formed elsewhere and were transported to their present location billions of years ago by an ancient river. Boulders are also desirable because their large surface area allows scientists to visually investigate many potentially distinct rocks in a single image. So the team will be keeping their options open, ready to stop for anything that piques their curiosity.
“Whether the boulders appear intriguing enough for closer examination and possible sampling remains to be seen – literally,” said Farley. “We’re taking a page from the past. Prospectors looking for gold or diamonds in the old days often looked in rivers to determine whether there was any deposit of interest upstream. No need to hike up there to see – let the river do the work!”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Researchers have successfully forced electromagnetic (EM) waves that usually pass right through each other to collide head-on by manipulating time, made possible with the unique properties of metamaterials.
Inspired by the concept of using macro-scale waves like tsunamis or earthquakes to cancel each other out, the manipulation of time interfaces to cause these photons to collide instead of pass through each other could open up a wide range of engineering applications, including advances in telecommunications, optical computing, and even energy harvesting.
IS USING ONE WAVE TO CANCEL ANOTHER WAVE POSSIBLE?
Engineers studying the devastating effects of wave-driven catastrophes like tsunamis and earthquakes have often postulated the idea of using a counter-wave to stop them in their tracks. Unfortunately, various laws of physics have proven the idea impractical, if not downright impossible. Still, researchers studying wave interactions at the atomic and sub-atomic scale wondered if the idea might be possible in the quantum universe.
“While such an outcome (stopping a tsunami) is impossible in conventional wave physics, we knew it was possible in principle with a temporal metamaterial,”saidEmanuele Galiffi, a postdoctoral fellow at Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) and the leading author on this latest study. “Our experiment allowed us to demonstrate this concept in action for electromagnetic waves.”
MANIPULATING TIME PROVED KEY TO CAUSING FIRST-EVER PHOTON COLLISIONS
To make the historic photon collision, the CUNY ASRC team first looked back at the work they had previously published on something called time reflections.
From a purely theoretical standpoint, time reflections are exactly what they sound like. Instead of a reflection of a light wave, like seeing oneself in the mirror, or a reflection of a sound wave, like hearing an echo, a time reflection is rooted in the idea that time moves like a wave, and given the right conditions, time could be reflected backward. At least on a quantum scale.
Although the idea had been discussed for over six decades, there was no known material that could change its overall state quickly enough to initiate these time reflections. Then earlier this year, the same CUNY ASRC team behind this latest breakthrough finally proved the existence of time reflections by using a metamaterial that had only recently been developed.
“Using a sophisticated metamaterial design, we were able to realize the conditions to change the material’s properties in time both abruptly and with a large contrast,” explained Andrea Alù, Distinguished Professor of Physics at The City University of New York Graduate Center and founding director of the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative at the time of the discovery. The result was the first observable evidence that time had been reflected backward.
Now, Professor Alù and his team have shown that manipulating time in a metamaterial can indeed cause photons to collide.
“Our work is building on a series of experiments that show how we can create metamaterials with unique properties that emerge from abrupt time variations of their electromagnetic properties,” said Alù. “These variations allow us to manipulate wave propagation in ways not seen in nature.”
This newest work, which was published in the journal Nature Physics, proved that the abrupt temporal changes in tailored metamaterials they had previously demonstrated, a.k.a. time interfaces or time reflections, could actually make electromagnetic waves collide. It’s something seen in macro-scale objects like pool balls colliding, but at the sub-atomic scale, it is something never witnessed before.
Also notable, the researchers said that by manipulating time, they were able to control the nature of the collision to determine if energy was lost or conserved. For example, two pool balls colliding conserve the vast majority of their energy, whereas two rubber balls colliding lose much of theirs.
“We were also able to control whether the waves exchanged, gained, or lost energy during these collisions,” said Alù.
DISCOVERY COULD LEAD TO TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN NUMEROUS AREAS
One interesting application proposed and actually demonstrated by the researchers involved using their method to shape electromagnetic pulses by colliding them with one another.
“This technique allows us to use an additional signal as a mold to sculpt a pulse that we are interested in structuring,” said Gengyu Xu, a postdoctoral fellow with Alù’s lab and co-leading author of the paper. Xu says they have already shown this ability using radio waves and that they are now working to “realize this sculpting ability” at higher frequencies.
In their conclusion, the researchers state that the ability to collide EM waves with the goal of controlling wave propagation could also lead to breakthroughs in a number of areas that rely on such processes. These include advances in wireless communications, energy harvesting, imaging, and computing.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him onX, learn about his books atplainfiction.com, or email him directly atchristopher@thedebrief.org.
20th August 2023, Maidstone, UK– In the era of advanced technology and scientific discovery, there still remain moments that are shrouded in mystery and wonder. A recent event that took place over Downswood has grabbed the attention of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike, adding to the ever-growing catalog of unexplained “UFO sightings” from around the world.
Witness Report: A Glimpse Into the Unknown
On a day marked by clear skies and a backdrop of azure blues, a mysterious long rectangular object was seen emitting an extraordinary light. Travelling in an easterly direction at approximately 15,000 to 20,000 feet, the UFO, visible to the naked eye, was brightly illuminated—whether by its own lights or a reflection remains a subject of debate.
However, what made this sighting particularly compelling was its peculiar behaviour. The lights from the object flashed intermittently, causing the UFO to momentarily disappear before resurfacing in the vast sky. This unusual pattern of appearance and disappearance left many onlookers in awe and bewilderment.
Contextual Puzzle Piece: The Eastbourne Airshow
In a curious twist to the narrative, an Eurofighter Typhoon, participating in the Eastbourne Airshow, was spotted flying from the North to the South. This jet, cruising at a height considerably lower than the unidentified flying object, provides an intriguing contrast and context to the sighting.
Did the two events, occurring almost simultaneously, share a connection? Or was it simply a remarkable coincidence that a highly sophisticated and identifiable aircraft was present near the mysterious high-flying entity?
Captured for Posterity
Thanks to the advancements in smartphone technology, the strange spectacle was captured on a Google Pixel 7 Pro mobile phone. The video accompanying this article clearly showcases the object’s trajectory and distinctive features. It serves as a visual testimony, inviting viewers to come to their own conclusions about the unexplained phenomenon.
VIDEO:
While the existence of extraterrestrial life remains a divisive topic, UFO sightings like the one over Downswood serve as tantalizing clues to the enigma. As interest in the unknown continues to grow, and as people from different corners of the world come forth with their own stories and evidence, one thing remains certain: The sky, in all its vastness, still holds secrets waiting to be unraveled.
On September 24, 2022, the vast Texas sky, known for its bright stars and expansive views, was the stage for this surreal triangle-shaped UFO sighting that was just submitted to MUFON today. The recorded footage, spanning a surreal 40 seconds, has left netizens buzzing with intrigue and curiosity.
Witness Account: The incident was documented by a musician who was driving home after a show. Just as he was navigating the Texan roads, a peculiar formation in the night sky compelled him to pull over. Initially mistaken for the moon, it soon became evident that this was no celestial body. Instead, what hovered above was a “HUGE FOOTBALL FIELD sized triangle aircraft.”
To emphasize the sheer magnitude of the UFO, commercial planes, reduced to tiny pinpoints of light, fluttered past this gigantic triangular entity. With a cloud-veiled sky as the backdrop, the sighting became even more dramatic. Notably, this unidentified object remained stationary for an estimated seven minutes before it initiated a gradual movement across the horizon.
“I thought this thing was the moon but the moon was on the other side of the night sky,” said the musician, her voice tinged with a mix of awe and fear. She added, “Everyone that sees it is like ‘wow!‘”
The Video Proof: Accompanying this article is the must-watch video, filmed from the musician’s car. While a 40-second clip may seem brief, every second is laden with wonder and raises questions about the mysteries of our universe.
VIDEO:
UFO sightings have always been a topic of global fascination, and this recent event in Texas further fuels the debate. Was this a clandestine military project, an otherworldly visitor, or perhaps a natural phenomenon we are yet to understand? While theories abound, one fact remains irrefutable: the skies of Texas were home to an aerial spectacle on that fateful September night.
For those eager to delve deeper into such phenomena, stay tuned and search for more on “UFO sightings.” This universe, it seems, has many more tales to tell.
India becomes first nation to land spacecraft near Moon's south pole
India becomes first nation to land spacecraft near Moon's south pole
This handout screen grab taken and received from the live feed of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) website on August 23, 2023, shows the successful lunar landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon.
(Photo by ISRO / AFP)
Bengaluru, India: India on Wednesday became the first nation to land a craft near the Moon's south pole, a historic triumph for the world's most populous nation and its ambitious, cut-price space programme.
The unmanned Chandrayaan-3, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, touched down at 6:04 pm India time (1234 GMT) as mission control technicians cheered wildly and embraced their colleagues.
Its landing comes days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region and four years since the previous Indian attempt failed at the last moment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi smiled broadly and waved an Indian flag on a live broadcast to announce the mission's success as a triumph that extended beyond his country's borders.
"On this joyous occasion I would like to address the people of the world," said Modi from the sidelines of the BRICS diplomatic summit in South Africa.
"India's successful moon mission is not just India's alone," he added. "This success belongs to all of humanity."
The Chandrayaan-3 mission has captivated public attention since launching nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators.
Chandrayaan-3 took much longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.
India used rockets much less powerful than the ones the United States used back then, meaning the probe had to orbit the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long journey.
The lander, Vikram, which means "valour" in Sanskrit, detached from its propulsion module last week and has been sending images of the Moon's surface since entering lunar orbit on August 5.
Now that Vikram has landed, a solar-powered rover will explore the surface and transmit data to Earth over its two-week lifespan.
Ambitious programme
India is closing in on milestones set by global space powers such as the United States and Russia, conducting many of its missions at much lower price tags.
The South Asian nation has a comparatively low-budget space programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.
The latest mission has a cost of $74.6 million -- far lower than those of other countries, and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.
Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.
In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars and is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth's orbit by next year.
Wednesday's landing had been eagerly awaited by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after the frustrating failure of its previous mission at the last hurdle in 2019.
Back then, mission control lost contact with the Chandrayaan-2 lunar module moments before its slated landing.
'Very, very important'
Former ISRO chief K. Sivan told AFP that India's efforts to explore the relatively unmapped lunar south pole would make a "very, very important" contribution to scientific knowledge.
Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved controlled landings on the Moon.
Russia launched a lunar probe in August -- its first in nearly half a century.
If successful, it would have beaten Chandrayaan-3 by a matter of days to become the first mission from any nation to make a controlled landing around the south pole.
But Luna-25 crashed on Saturday after an unspecified incident as it prepared to descend.
Journalists film the live telecast of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network facility in Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, August 23, 2023.
Missie geslaagd: India landt als eerste ooit onbemand ruimtetuig op de zuidpool van de maan
Missie geslaagd: India landt als eerste ooit onbemand ruimtetuig op de zuidpool van de maan
India heeft een onbemand ruimtetuig laten landen op de zuidpool van de maan. Het is het eerste land ter wereld dat daarin is geslaagd. Voor India is het een dubbele primeur. Voor het land is het de eerste succesvolle maanlanding.
Laurens Dekock
m 14u33 raakte de onbemande Indische maanraket Chandrayaan-3 het maanoppervlak, precies zoals verwacht. Voor het eerst in de geschiedenis landt een ruimtetuig op de zuidpool van de maan, iets waar Rusland afgelopen weekend niet in was geslaagd. Ruimtesonde Loena-25 crashte toen tegen de maan.
Het is voor India een dubbele primeur. Voor het land is het ook de allereerste maanlanding. Daarmee is het slechts het vierde land dat daar is in geslaagd. De Sovjet-Unie deden het eerst, de Verenigde Staten brachten de eerste mens op de maan en de laatste maanlanding was in 2020 door China.
"Dit succes behoort de gehele mensheid toe", zei Indiaas premier Narendra Modi, meteen na de landing. Hij was zelf niet in India, maar volgde de landing vanop de Brics-top in Zuid-Afrika. Op X, het vroegere Twitter, spreekt hij over "een historische dag voor de Indiase ruimtesector".
Maanwagen
Loena-25 moet zo'n jaar lang op de zuidpool van de maan opereren om onder meer bodemstalen te nemen. Daar is in de kraters bevroren water ontdekt de afgelopen jaren.
Dat kan toekomstige ruimtemissies meer mogelijkheden geven. We zouden er als mens langer kunnen blijven en de maanbodem ontginnen.
Het zuidelijke gebied op de maan is bijzonder interessant voor wetenschappers. De voorbije jaren is daar bevroren water ontdekt in kraters en wetenschappers willen dat maar wat graag verder onderzoeken. De zuidpool is ook interessant voor een basis omdat er bijna altijd zon schijnt.
Aan boord van de Chandrayaan-3 is een rover of maanwagen. Die zal stalen verzamelen en de chemische verbindingen ervan analyseren. De verzamelde data wordt doorgestuurd, maar de maanlander zelf vliegt niet terug naar de aarde. De hele missie duurt 14 dagen, oftewel een maan-dag.
India just became the fourth nation to stick a lunar landing.
India has joined the moon-landing club.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down softly near the moon's south pole today (Aug. 23), notching a huge milestone for the nation. India is now the fourth country to stick a lunar landing, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
The historic touchdown occurred at 8:33 am ET (1233 GMT or 6:03 p.m. India Standard Time), according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). "We have achieved soft landing on the moon! India is on the moon!" ISRO chairman Sreedhara Somanath announced after the landing.
"This success belongs to all of humanity and it will help moon missions by other countries in the future," India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech following the landing. "I'm confident that all countries in the world, including those from the global south, are capable of achieving such feats. We can all aspire to the moon and beyond."
A little over two hours after landing, ISRO posted images to X (formerly known as Twitter) showing the moon's surface as seen by Chandrayaan-3's during its descent, adding that the agency has successfully established a communication link between the spacecraft and mission control.
Soon, a solar-powered rover named Pragyan (Sanskrit for "wisdom") is expected to roll off Chandrayaan-3's Vikram ("valor") lander. The robotic duo will spend one lunar day (about 14 Earth days) exploring its new home, with the goal of collecting scientific data about the moon's makeup before its batteries drain after sunset.
"The whole country is excited about this mission," Anil Bhardwaj, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in India, which built a few of the instruments onboard Chandrayaan-3, told Space.com prior to the landing. "We all hope that we will be successful in ... bringing out new science from this mission."
Chandrayaan-3 was India's second try at landing near the moon's south pole, a largely uncharted region of immense interest to scientists and exploration advocates alike. The south polar region is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, which, if accessible, could be mined for rocket fuel and life support for future crewed missions. The country's first attempt at a lunar touchdown, in September 2019, failed when the Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed into the moon due to a software glitch.
Close to four years and many design and software upgrades later, the homegrown Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched atop a LVM3 rocket on July 14 from a spaceport in Sriharikota, on India's east coast. The spacecraft entered an elliptical orbit around the moon earlier this month, then performed multiple maneuvers to shift into a nearly circular path, which took it about 93 miles (150 kilometers) above the lunar surface.
Last Thursday (Aug. 17), the Vikram-Pragyan duo separated from the mission's propulsion module, which will study Earth from its orbit around the moon. The lander and rover, which had entered an egg-shaped lunar orbit after separation, braked successfully on Friday (Aug. 18) and then again on Sunday (Aug. 20) to get closer to the moon's surface.
While still in orbit around the moon on Monday (Aug. 21) and Tuesday (Aug. 22), the duo established contact with Chandrayaan-2's orbiter, which has been circling the moon since 2019 and will serve as the critical communication link with Earth for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
When the sun rose today on the targeted landing site, which was seen from Earth on one edge of the moon, mission control at ISRO's headquarters in Bengaluru commanded the lander to begin its descent to the lunar surface, activating its fully automatic landing system.
The historic landing was covered live by ISRO and broadcast by Indian public broadcaster Doordarshan. Once the powered descent began, the lander first braked to reduce its height from 18.6 miles (30 km) to just 0.4 miles (0.8 km) above the moon's surface. Then, the lander turned such that its altimeters, which measure height to the surface real-time using cameras onboard, faced downward in preparation for landing.
At 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT and 18:03 India time), the lander Vikram touched down in its target landing area, at roughly 70 degrees south latitude. This location is close to where Russia had hoped its first moon mission in 47 years, Luna-25, would land on Monday (Aug. 21). That effort, however, failed when the probe crashed into the moon over the weekend after a final orbital maneuver went sideways.
India's success today can be attributed to "extensive changes" to its landing strategy after Chandrayaan-2's 2019 crash, Bhardwaj said. Onboard algorithms that calculate spacecraft speed in real time during descent were reworked to allow for "more freedom to deviate" from protocol "but still do the landing," he added.
Other changes that helped facilitate the mission's success include a larger target landing zone, stronger legs for Vikram to withstand higher landing speeds and dynamic engines that adjusted the spacecraft's velocity for a smoother touchdown.
Images of the moon that Chandrayaan-2's orbiter has been sending home since 2019 also painted a clearer picture of the landing site than what scientists knew previously, according to Bhardwaj. "There is not much of a hurdle in this [landing] area," he said.
Now that Vikram is settled on the moon, Pragyan is expected to roll onto the lunar surface and start analyzing lunar soil and rocks.
Similar to the unfortunate rover on Chandrayaan-2, Pragyan's wheels are etched with the Ashoka Chakra, a religious symbol of a wheel with 24 spokes depicted on the Indian flag, and ISRO's logo. So when Pragyan inches along on the moon, ISRO hopes both symbols will be stamped onto the surface, where they will remain untouched for eons.
The lander Vikram is equipped to sense moonquakes near the landing site using an onboard seismometer, and to probe lunar soil to record its temperature.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which costs a modest 6 billion rupees ($73 million US at current exchange rates), is unfolding at a time when multiple nations — notably, the U.S. and China — are eyeing the moon for future crewed missions. NASA, for example, aims to land astronauts near the lunar south pole in late 2025 or 2026 on its Artemis 3 mission, and to build one or more bases in the region shortly thereafter.
Chandrayaan-3 could also help spur India's space program, leading to even greater accomplishments in the future.
"It is going to be a game changer for the new generation," said Bhardwaj, adding that the success is important for the country's "strategic and geopolitical purposes" as well as to drive "the youth to do something different and unique."
When the sun sets upon the landing site in two weeks, the robotic duo will be left to fight a frigid night, which will be "very difficult to survive because the batteries will be drained out and it is too cold for electronics," Bhardwaj said.
Meanwhile, his team has geared up for what they hope will be a busy fortnight: "Our job starts after landing."
Update for 11 am ET:This story was updated to include Chandrayaan-3's image of the lunar surface during descent and ISRO's confirmation of communication link.
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Along with still operational missions, these observatories will gather massive volumes of high-resolution spectroscopic data. Sorting through this data will require cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to look for indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). In a recent paper, a team of scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida (UF-IFL) recommended that future surveys use machine learning to look for anomalies in the spectra, which could reveal unusual chemical signatures and unknown biosignatures.
The study was conducted by a mix of physicists and machine learning experts, including Associate Professor Katia Matcheva, physics graduate student Roy T. Forestano, Professor Konstantin T. Matchev, and Ph.D. student Eyup B. Unlu. A preprint of their paper, “Searching for Novel Chemistry in Exoplanetary Atmospheres using Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection,” recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. As they explained, the central premise of their paper is that what constitutes “life” remains an open question for scientists, and it would be advantageous to expand the scope of our search.
First off, it is important to acknowledge how far the study of exoplanets has come in recent decades. The first confirmed detection did not take place until 1992, which consisted of two Super-Earths (Poltergeist and Phobitor) observed around a pulsar (PSR B1257+12, aka. Lich) located 2,300 light-years from Earth. While scientists firmly believed that most stars had their own system of planets, they had no incontrovertible proof before this discovery. And until the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009, exoplanet discoveries were being added at a rate of a few per year.
Since then, a total of 5,496 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,096 systems, with another 9,820 candidates awaiting confirmation. In recent years, the process has shifted from the process of discovery towards characterization, where improved instruments and methods have enabled astronomers to analyze exoplanet atmospheres directly to measure their potential habitability. As Prof. Matcheva explained to Universe Today via email:
“The instruments are getting better and better: better spectral resolution, exceptional signal-to-noise level, wider wavelength coverage. In addition to JWST, which has returned some exceptional spectroscopic observations of several exoplanets, ESA is planning a dedicated exoplanet space telescope ARIEL that will observe 1000 planets. Analyzing this data will keep scientists busy for a long time.”
According to Matcheva, the fields of exoplanet studies and astrobiology are incredibly fascinating because of the sheer potential involved. Currently, the field is largely concerned with constraining “habitability” through the targeted search for biosignatures: evidence of life and organic processes. Using Earth as a template, the only planet where we know life exists, the most highly-sought biosignatures include nitrogen gas (N2), oxygen gas (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH?), and water (H2O).
This constitutes the “low-hanging fruit approach,” where scientists are looking for life that conforms to terrestrial standards. This is not an accident, nor is it a lazy approach. It’s simply because it is exceedingly difficult to search for signs of life that we are completely unfamiliar with. But this also presents an opportunity to contemplate the possibilities and expand the range of what we know. “Do we know what to search for?” Matcheva added. “Do we know where to search? Would we recognize it if we saw it? The exoplanet science community always works with these questions in mind.”
For their study, Matcheva and her colleagues investigated how machine learning could be trained to look for “anomalies” in transit spectra. This refers to light curves obtained by observing distant stars for periodic dips in luminosity, which could indicate the presence of a planet passing in front of the star relative to the observer. This is known as Transit Spectroscopy (or the Transit Method), which remains the most effective and widely-used method for detecting exoplanets. In addition to detection, this method allows astronomers to occasionally observe light passing through the planet’s atmosphere.
When measured with a spectrometer, these observations will reveal data on the atmosphere’s chemical composition, which could include telltale biosignatures! In the coming years, the combination of next-generation telescopes and machine learning (ML) will allow astronomers to more accurately determine the potential habitability of exoplanets. “We believe that ML methods in astrophysics can be a game changer in how we process data in terms of speed, volume, and methodology, said Matcheva. “And we see that across all fields of science.”
“The spectra are calculated with current models, assuming that the atmosphere of each planet is a mixture of 5 different gasses in different proportions. As an experiment, we treated one of the absorbers (for example, H2O) as a ‘mystery’ absorber. We trained the ML algorithm on a subset of the data that is deficient in H2O and tested if it will correctly flag planets with water as anomalous.”
“We repeated the experiment for four of the gasses. We used both LOF and OCSVM. Both methods did an outstanding job in finding the anomalous planets when no noise or very little noise (~10 ppm) is present, even for very small amounts of the ‘mystery’ gas. Unsurprisingly, the ML model starts making mistakes when the noise level increases too much.”
A major objective for next-generation space telescopes will be the search for signs of life (biosignatures).
Credit: NASA
As Matcheva indicated, their paper demonstrated that LOF and OCSVM methods are very robust, even in the presence of signal noise. These results offer a taste of what could be possible in the near future, where literally thousands of exoplanets can be analyzed rapidly and systematically using ML methods to identify anomalous planets for follow-up investigations. These examinations will likely be very educational, given that inconsistencies between theoretical models and observations are often how the most exciting discoveries are made.
“Although looking for biosignatures was not a primary goal of this paper, it is a very interesting outcome, and we are very excited about the potential of the method,” said Matcheva. “Looking for signatures of life in the Universe is more like looking for a needle in a haystack rather than for a smoking gun. It is actually even more challenging because we do not know what the needle looks like. The novelty detection methods are designed exactly for that: rare events [where] we do not know what they look, smell, or sound like.”
As noted earlier, the search for extraterrestrial life – and indeed, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) – can be summarized as searching for life “as we know it.” But if life is very rare in the Universe or very “exotic” in nature (meaning that it can arise from all sorts of chemicals and conditions), then it makes sense to cast a wider net. After all, if our frame of reference is an impediment to our astrobiology efforts (one could certainly argue as much), expanding it could be the difference between finding evidence that we are not alone and leaving the question unanswered for another generation. Said Matcheva:
“The astrobiology community has been working on a definition of “life” for a long time, but we have no idea what aliens really look like and how they would interact with their environments. We are biased by our human experience, and the current strategies are to search for life in the “habitable zone,” which by definition is human (or terrestrial life) friendly. So how do you search for something when you don’t know what it looks like? That is where the novelty detection machine learning techniques come in – they can flag data points that are inconsistent with the training data, i.e., do not agree with the current theoretical models. So indeed, in that sense, our method is searching for life “as we don’t know it”.
As Isaac Asimov famously said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.'”
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Vector shaped UFO parked on the surface of the moon
Vector shaped UFO parked on the surface of the moon
The resurgence of the Vector symbol across various space agencies, including NASA, has sparked intrigue. Questions arise about the significance of the Vector symbol and its presence on these agency logos.
One wonders if the symbol refers to a symbolic talisman, representing an emblem of occult worship or linked to celestial beings such as angels, demons, or other entities or eventually it is an allusion to ancient times, a sign denoting the essence of the multiverse itself? Does it symbolize the mastery over time and space?
Now if you take a look at the following images and video the use of this vector symbol across multiple space agencies appears less coincidental.
Consider the intriguing images below, captured by the Apollo 11 crew during their return journey from the moon to Earth. With a closer look involving zooming in, enhancement, and application of various filters, the object becomes more discernible. It unveils a structure shaped like a vector, complete with three supporting legs, situated on the lunar surface.
Comparisons of this object with another object photographed by the Apollo 17 crew reveals a striking similarity in the vector structure's appearance.
Additionally, an image captured during a spacewalk by a member of the STS115 mission reveals the very same vector configuration intriguingly mirrored on the astronaut's helmet.
Despite much speculation, these images as well as analysis of the lunar object in the video of YouTube channel 1967Sander provided below, suggest that these vector-shaped objects potentially represent highly advanced alien vehicles.
In an age where the skies are constantly being watched, and where most of the mysteries have been debunked, a newly submitted UFO sighting has rekindled the fervor of extraterrestrial enthusiasts everywhere. Despite being filmed back in 2021, this sighting has only recently seen the light of day on the MUFONwebsite. Along with this captivating article, a riveting video showcases the mysterious event in all its wonder.
When & Where: The sighting occurred on the evening of January 23, 2021, in the scenic backdrop of Oregon, USA.
Witness Account:
A regular family evening, spent in the company of a television, took a startling turn for an Oregon family. The witness recounts, “My wife, son, and I were deeply engrossed in our TV show when my wife’s gaze was pulled towards our front door. A series of strange, luminous lights danced outside.” Joining her in her astonishment, the witness and his son observed a rotating craft adorned with lights all around its perimeter. Realizing the rarity of what they were witnessing, a quick-witted video was captured, providing a glimpse into their otherworldly experience.
“After the initial shock and awe, we were drawn to it – almost like a moth to a flame. We moved upstairs for a clearer, unobstructed view,” the witness elaborates. The craft, however elusive in nature, continued its dance in the Oregon night sky for a few more tantalizing minutes. In a spur of courage and curiosity, the witness, accompanied by his wife, decided to chase the enigmatic vision. But alas, the craft, with its dazzling lights, vanished into the vastness, leaving behind a trail of questions and intrigue.
VIDEO:
The Burning Questions: As with allUFO sightings, this one too leaves us wondering – was it a visitor from a distant world, a top-secret human-made aircraft, or something else entirely? What made the family wait almost a decade before sharing it with the world?
To the Enthusiasts: For those always on the lookout for verified and intriguing UFO sightings, this newly surfaced evidence is certainly one for the records. Do watch the accompanying video and join the global conversation.
In the vast tapestry of the unknown, this sighting, like a bright star, beckons for attention. And as always, the truth remains out there.
Newly Released UFO Sighting in Arizona: Ephemeral Yet Captivating
Newly Released UFO Sighting in Arizona: Ephemeral Yet Captivating
April 3rd, 2023, Arizona: Months after the event, a breathtaking video capturing a UFO sighting has finally been unveiled to the public via the MUFON website. UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike are buzzing with anticipation and curiosity, seeking answers to yet another tantalizing episode of extraterrestrial wonder.
Unearthly Encounter in Arizona Skies
On a seemingly regular day in Arizona, an unsuspecting witness glanced up to find an unexplainable anomaly hovering silently above. The object, seemingly defying the laws of physics, remained stationary amidst the azure expanse, with its luminous features shining more brightly than what the video could truly capture.
However, the most baffling part of this UFO sighting wasn’t its stationary presence, but rather its abrupt exit. As described by the witness, merely moments after ceasing the recording, this ethereal craft took off with unprecedented speed, vanishing into thin air within a mere 1-2 seconds.
Unanswered Questions and Rising Curiosity
Such events, especially when supported by tangible evidence, often stir a mixture of emotions—awe, disbelief, wonder, and a myriad of questions. What was the nature of this craft? Why did it choose to appear, only to disappear just as quickly? Was this an extraterrestrial visitation or a product of advanced human technology yet unknown to the public?
With the growing number of UFO sightings reported worldwide, it’s more essential than ever to approach these events with an open mind and a discerning eye. As researchers and enthusiasts continue to dissect this newly released footage, the pursuit for answers intensifies.
To all intrigued souls, the video accompanying this article offers a glimpse into that mysterious April afternoon in Arizona. Whether you’re a firm believer in extraterrestrial life or a curious skeptic, this sighting promises a fascinating journey into the vast world of the unknown.
For more tales of the unexplained, insights, and the latest updates on UFO sightings, stay tuned and keep gazing at the stars, for the truth, as they say, is out there.
India maakt zich op voor zijn allereerste maanlanding: wat zijn ze van plan met de Chandrayaan 3 missie?
India maakt zich op voor zijn allereerste maanlanding: wat zijn ze van plan met de Chandrayaan 3 missie?
Morgen is het zover. Op woensdag 23 augustus onderneemt de ‘Indian Space Research Organization’ (ISRO) een poging om met de Chandrayaan 3 missie een rover op het maanoppervlak te zetten. Indien succesvol meteen ook de eerste landing op de zuidpool van de maan nadat die van Rusland recent nog mislukte. Spannende tijden voor India en de ruimtevaart. Derde keer, goede keer?
Redactie Wetenschap
Martijn Peters Wetenschapsexpert
Al 47 jaar is er, buiten China, niemand in geslaagd om succesvol op de maan te landen. De laatste geslaagde landing vond plaats in 1976 toen de Russische Luna 24-missie maanstenen terug naar de aarde bracht met een robotachtig ruimtevaartuig. Sinsdien bereikte enkel nog China het maanoppervlak. Het deed dat 3 keer, met onder andere een eerste gecontroleerde landing op de achterkant van de maan. In de afgelopen jaren ondernamen Israëlische en Japanse teams nog een poging, maar zij faalden allemaal tijdens hun afdaling naar het maanoppervlak.
Spannende tijden dus voor de Indiase ruimtevaartorganisatie die morgen een poging onderneemt. Het ruimtevaartuig Chandrayaan 3 maakt zich klaar om woensdag af te dalen naar het maanoppervlak, 4 dagen nadat de Russische Luna 25 lander hier niet in slaagde. Als alles volgens plan verloopt zal Vikram, zo heet de Chandrayaan 3-lander, morgen om 14u34 Belgische tijd zachtjes op het maanoppervlak landen.
Chandrayaan 3 maakte al enkele mooie beelden van het maanoppervlak met de camera van de landingsmodule
Zoals de naam al doet vermoeden, is dit de derde missie in het Indiase ruimtevaartprogramma voor de verkenning van de maan. De vorige mislukte landingspogingen van India, de Chandrayaan 1 en 2 missie, vonden plaats in 2008 en 2019. De kostprijs van de nieuwe Chandrayaan 3-missie die op 14 juli van start ging met de lancering is ongeveer zo’n 80 miljoen euro. Op zich een lage kost voor een onderzoeksmissie, vergelijkbaar met de kosten van een SpaceX Falcon 9-lancering.
Als de Vikram-lander succesvol kan neerdalen op de zuidpool van de maan zal hij de Pragyan lanceren, een kleine rover. De op zonne-energie werkende mobiele robot zal met behulp van wetenschappelijke instrumenten de chemische samenstelling van het maanoppervlak bestuderen. Pragyan zal dit ongeveer een 14-tal dagen doen. Zolang duurt immers een ‘maan-dag’. Daarna gaat de zon onder op de landingsplaats en daalt de temperatuur waardoor de rover niet meer kan werken.
Tijdens de missie zullen ook nog andere wetenschappelijke experimenten uitgevoerd worden zoals het meten van maanbevingen en afstanden op de maan met lasers. De resultaten van deze metingen kunnen bijvoorbeeld helpen bij het bepalen van toekomstige locaties om te landen of een basis te bouwen op de maan. Voor dat laatste is de zuidpool van de maan vooral interessant door de aanwezigheid van kraters die permanent in schaduw gehuld zijn. Van bovenaf is daar namelijk al water in de vorm van ijs waargenomen, wat essentieel is wanneer er een basis gevestigd zou worden. Dit is ook een van de redenen waarom de Artemis III missie van NASA op de zuidpool van de maan wil doen wandelen binnen enkele jaren.
Zal India het vierde land worden dat na de Sovjet-Unie, VS en China op de maan kan landen? En het eerste op de zuidpool? We zullen het morgen weten. Wetenschappers van over de hele wereld hopen alvast op een goede afloop.
In 1973, before the presidential elections, yet to become President, Jimmy Carter filed a report with the International UFO Bureau claiming he had seen a UFO in October 1969. Along with other witnesses, Carter saw a bright UFO that changed colors and moved towards and away from the Earth before disappearing. He was quite vocal about his beliefs on UFOs and promised to public all available information about UFOs if he became president.
“He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called ‘the darndest thing I’ve ever seen’ in the sky.” Along with 10 to 12 other witnesses, Carter observed a bright object in the sky, which was about the size of the moon. (Source)
“We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white,” Carter told GQ in 2005. The object reportedly hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon, moved towards and away from the Earth, and eventually disappeared into the distance. Carter’s experience led him to make a vow to never again ridicule individuals who claimed to have seen a UFO.
“One thing’s for sure, I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists,” Carter said.
As for the object that Carter saw, it has since been classified as “a high altitude barium release cloud launched from Eglen AFB,” which sounds legit. However, after winning the presidency, Carter backed away from this promise, citing concerns about national security and defense implications. His experience with a UFO is just one of many reported sightings that have fueled conspiracy about extraterrestrial life and government cover-ups.
President Carter’s Disturbing Briefing on UFOs and Religion
Former NASA researcher Ed Harris claimed that serious researchers on the subject believe the story of former President Jimmy Carter crying after being briefed about classified UFO information to be true. According to the story corroborated by multiple witnesses, U.S. presidents are given only a brief overview of the subject by the CIA, and presidential curiosity is not considered a sufficient need to know.
After being repeatedly stonewalled, Carter was given “the talk,” which reportedly left him deeply sobbing and visibly disturbed for weeks. He was told that major religions, including Christianity, were created by extraterrestrials to prevent humans from destroying themselves while they ran experiments on us, and that they made us. Carter, a deeply religious man who had witnessed a UFO with six other people, realized that releasing such information could cause tremendous economic and social upheaval.
Below you can read Ed Harris’ statement on the subject that he wrote on Quora:
Yes, the incident of Jimmy Carter crying after being briefed about classified information regarding UFO’s is largely believed to be true by the serious researchers on the subject. As a forewarning, the following information is very unsettling and will explain why Carter never “kept his promise” of revealing classified UFO information to the public.
According to the story that was corroborated by more than one witness, U.S. presidents are only given a cursory overview of the subject. Apparently, the CIA runs the program, only provide information to the President on a need to know basis, and do not consider presidential curiosity as sufficient need to know. This was implemented after Kennedy, and all presidents after him have been given only summary briefings (some presidents for unknown reasons were given more than others).
Okay on to your question. President Carter is a deeply religious man who had also witnessed a UFO with 6 other people. Everyone thought that he would be the one to finally release UFO info to the public but as the story goes, he was repeatedly stonewalled. Eventually, the CIA had “the talk” with him, and afterward it was reported that he sunk his head in his hands and not only began to deeply sob, but was visibly disturbed for some weeks afterward.
What was he told and shown?
He was told that the major religions including Christianity were programs created by extraterrestrials to prevent us from destroying ourselves while they ran their experiments on us – and that they made us. At this moment it became clear to Carter that such information could cause tremendous economic and social upheaval. I should add that I am not only a Christian but a clergyman, so I am in no way attempting to promote atheism here. In fact, how God fits into this might be an interesting separate post. Nevertheless, these are the facts as I know them to be.
Author and world’s leading UFO researcher Richard Dolan also writes about this incident in his book “UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-Up Exposed.” According to his book, there are claims that President Carter was given a UFO briefing at the White House on June 14, 1977, which he was then bound to secrecy about.
The briefing was supposedly given by a lone MJ-12 briefing officer and several independent sources. The leaked “Executive Briefing: Project Aquarius” document gives the standard account of multiple retrievals of alien technology. While there is no hard evidence to support the claims of the briefing, a presidential aide, who was “very, very close to Carter,” witnessed President sobbing after a UFO-related briefing in the Oval Office.
Carter Administration & Project Blue Book
Daniel Sheehan, a Harvard-educated Constitutional Trial Lawyer and Appellate Attorney has worked on many high-profile cases in his career. In 1977, he was approached by his friend Marcia Smith, who informed him that President Carter had demanded that the CIA provided classified information about unidentified flying objects to him, but George H. Bush, who was the CIA director at the time, refused to give this information to the president.
Sheehan tried to obtain information on the UFO phenomena and extraterrestrials from the Vatican Library but was unsuccessful. However, with Carter’s help, he managed to get access to the classified portions of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book for a few hours in May 1977, where he claimed to have discovered classified documents and photographs of a crashed UFO being investigated by Air Force personnel.
“There were these photographs of unmistakable — of a UFO sitting on the ground. It had crashed,” Sheehan said. “Apparently, it had hit into this field and had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field,” he paused for a second.
“It was wedged into the side of this bank,” he said after taking a deep breath. “There was snow all around the picture. The vehicle was wedged into the side of this mud-like embankment — kind of up at an angle. There was Air Force personnel. As I cranked the little handle and looked at additional photos, these Air Force people were taking pictures.” (Click here to read the full article)
When Mr. Sheehan left the room, the guard asked to see his yellow legal pad and flipped through the pages, missing the alien hieroglyphs Sheehan had copied on the back of the pad. Sheehan offered to share this information with the religious establishment; they told him they were not interested.
Russia’s Luna-25 lander met an untimely end this weekend, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Luna-25 crashed on the Moon sometime on Saturday afternoon (Moscow time) after something went drastically wrong with its engine. The Russian lunar lander had been neck-and-neck with India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander in the race to become the first spacecraft to land near the Moon’s south pole. With Russia’s contender out of the race, India has a clear shot on Wednesday — but also a grim reminder that space is hard.
Russia’s Luna-25 lander “ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” said Russian space agency Roscosmos in a statement.
Luna-25 was supposed to field-test landing technology for Russia’s next three lunar landers, then spend a year studying the surface near the lunar south pole — but the technology test evidently didn’t go so well. Mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday afternoon Moscow time, after firing the lander’s engine to shift the spacecraft into a closer orbit around the Moon to line up for a landing attempt.
“Most likely the braking thrust was either too strong, or it was in a wrong direction,” Natan Eismont of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences told the New York Times. The institute led science operations on Luna-25, but Eismont was not directly involved with the lander.
The Luna-25 mission came nearly 50 years after its predecessor, Luna-24, which launched in August 1976. That mission successfully landed on the Moon on Aug. 18, 1976. During its mission, it retrieved a sample of lunar soil and returned it safely to Earth.
WHERE THE SPACE RACE STANDS NOW
Luna-25 should have tested the technology that will be used on Russia’s next three landers: Luna-26, Luna-27, and Luna-28. Those landers, in turn, are intended to pave the way for an eventual joint lunar base with China near the Moon’s south pole. But the next three installments in the Luna series are already years behind schedule, and now Roscosmos faces the choice to redo Luna 25 (which means additional expense and additional delays) or fly the next mission without successfully tested technology.
Meanwhile, Luna-25’s crash leaves a path wide open for the other contender in the race to the pole, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander. The Indian lander launched on July 14, nearly three weeks ahead of Luna-25, on a longer but more fuel-efficient course to the Moon, and is set to land on Wednesday. India’s last attempted Moon landing, the Vikram lander, fell silent about a mile from the lunar surface, and it’s not too hard to guess what happened next. Making it to the south pole first would be a huge win for India, which so far hasn’t successfully landed anything on the Moon.
Artemis II is scheduled to launch in late 2024, and Chang’e 6 lander, which plans to return rock and regolith samples from a site near the south pole, is set to launch earlier in the same year.
De race naar de zuidpool op de maan gaat onverbiddelijk verder. Na de mislukte maanlanding van Ruslands Loena-25 is het uitkijken naar de Indiase Chandrayaan-3. ‘De maan is opnieuw hot.’
Samira Ataei
Wat voor Moskou begon als een ambitieus prestigeproject, is uitgedraaid op internationaal gezichtsverlies. Na een succesvolle lancering op 10 augustus kwam de onbemande Loena-25 uiteindelijk in een verkeerde baan om de maan terecht en stortte de Russische maanlander op 19 augustus neer. Behalve dat het ‘een noodsituatie’ betrof, liet het Russische ruimtevaartagentschap Roskosmos alleen weten dat de communicatie met Loena-25 een dag eerder was stilgevallen. Volgens het Russische Telegram-kanaal Yura Prosti lag een rekenfout aan de basis van de verkeerd gelopen landing.
Hoe het precies is misgelopen, zal wellicht een vraagteken blijven. Wat wel vaststaat, is dat Rusland zich, vijftig jaar na Loena-24, opnieuw heeft gewaagd aan een maanlanding. En dat het daarbij heeft gefaald. Het Russische staatskanaal wijdde veertig seconden aan de mislukte missie, waaraan decennialang onderzoek voorafging en waarvan de bedoeling was om de zachte landingstechnologie uit te testen. Als die slaagde, kon Rusland aan de wereld tonen dat het als eerste land het dichtst bij de zuidpool van de maan was geraakt.
Dat zou geen klein nieuws geweest zijn, ook al was de bestemming, de Boguslawski-krater, duizend kilometer verwijderd van de zuidpool. Onderzoek heeft aangetoond dat sommige koude kraters in het intrigerende, en tot dusver onaangeraakte landschap op de zuidpool water bevatten in de vorm van ijs. Als dat kan dienen als drinkwater of als brandstof, is de eerste en belangrijkste stap naar een permanente en bewoonbare basis op de maan gezet.
Druk verkeer
Het is dus niet onlogisch dat het verkeer rond de maan in jaren niet meer zo druk is geweest. ‘De maan is opnieuw een hot topic’, beaamt planeetwetenschapper Simeon Barber, verbonden aan een onderzoekscentrum van de Open Universiteit in Milton Keynes (Verenigd Koninkrijk).
Niet alleen overheidsinstellingen, maar ook commerciële bedrijven zien een grote toekomst op de maan. Eerder dit jaar ging voor het eerst een privéruimtetuig van het Japanse bedrijf Ispace de ruimte in.
De reden voor de hernieuwde interesse ligt bij de Apollomissies in de jaren 60 en 70. ‘Omdat die plaatsvonden rond de evenaar van de maan, waar het kokend heet was, concludeerden wetenschappers dat de maan een dor, droog hemellichaam was’, zegt Barber.
‘Pas decennia later veranderde hun idee, doordat ze de toen genomen stalen opnieuw analyseerden en kleine waterdeeltjes ontdekten. Bovendien zagen nieuwe ruimtetuigen in een baan om de maan hints van waterijs, vooral in de richting van de polen.’
Ook India waagt zich met de Chandrayaan-3 aan een maanlanding. Die werd gelanceerd twee dagen voor de Russische Loena-25 de ruimte inging. De Indiase maanlander legt een langere route af en zal woensdag landen, als alles goed verloopt. Na de lancering is de landing de grootste uitdaging. ‘De slaagkans bij maanlandingen is lager dan vijftig procent’, nuanceert Barber. ‘Daarenboven zijn landingen dicht bij de noord- of zuidpool des te moeilijker vanwege de ligging van die gebieden.’
De vorige Indiase maanlanding, de Chandrayaan-2, die vier jaar geleden de ruimte inging, is ook mislukt. ‘Wellicht zal India daaruit lessen hebben getrokken, maar de missie is daarom niet minder complex. Tot nu toe is geen enkele missie erin geslaagd om in die regio’s te landen.’ De Indiase ruimtevaart ziet in de Chandrayaan-3 een manier om zich prominent op de ruimtekaart te zetten.
Economie op de maan
Met Loena-25 probeerde de Russische ruimtevaartorganisatie letterlijk los te breken uit het internationale isolement sinds het begin van de invasie van Oekraïne. Aanvankelijk speelde Barber ook zelf een rol bij Loena-27, een van de volgende Russische missies met als doel samples van het water te verzamelen. ‘Europa ging een machine leveren die kon analyseren of en hoe het mogelijk is om er water uit te extraheren.’ Sinds de oorlog is de samenwerking volledig stopgezet.
Daarom benadrukt Barber het belang van elke missie. ‘De maan is een enorm divers hemellichaam. Hoe meer missies we uitvoeren, hoe vollediger ons beeld kan worden. Een mislukte maanlanding betekent een groot verlies aan informatie. In die zin heeft niet alleen Rusland een missie verloren, maar wij allemaal.’
Toch blijft Barber optimistisch. ‘Het gaat niet er alleen om als snelste een vlag neer te planten. Voor elke kilogram die van de aarde naar de maan verplaatst wordt, is er 1 miljoen euro nodig. Als wij een liter water, gelijk aan één kilogram, kunnen extraheren op de maan voor minder dan 1 miljoen euro, openen er deuren om mensen langer op de maan te laten blijven. Misschien is er dan sprake van een economie op de maan waar wetenschappers, ingenieurs, ondernemers en zelfs toeristen samenwerken om onze dichtstbijzijnde buur te ontdekken.’
“All this visible universe is not unique in nature and we must believe there are, in other regions of space, other worlds, other beings and other men.”
– LUCRETIUS 99-55 BC
Is it possible some UAP are extraterrestrial craft? Is it reasonable to think there is intelligent alien life visiting earth?
Scientists still debate whether the universe is infinite, but at a minimum, our visible universe contains trillions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of planets and moons. As best we can tell, the same laws of physics apply everywhere, and the heavy organic molecules that form the basic building blocks of life are abundant. In short, from the nearest solar systems to the most distant edges of space and time, we are surrounded by endless opportunities for life. Amidst these endless opportunities, intelligent extraterrestrial life is a near mathematical certainty. But what about the prospects for intelligent life to evolve in Earth’s galactic neighborhood? Although estimates vary considerably, many indicate we are probably not alone in the Milky Way.
Duncan Forgan, a Ph.D. Candidate in astronomy at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland, carefully evaluated data on the composition of the Milky Way and concluded there should be over 360 stable, advanced civilizations in our galaxy. He also believes that if microbial life can spread via meteors, we may be sharing the Milky Way with tens of thousands of technologically advanced civilizations.
In 2020, astronomers Tom Westby and Christopher Conselice, researchers at the University of Nottingham, performed an extensive assessment of the latest astronomical data and concluded, within a band of uncertainty, that we share the Milky Way with dozens of other technologically advanced alien civilizations.
Astronomers Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan took a somewhat different approach but reached similar conclusions. According to co-author Adam Frank, “Even if you are pretty pessimistic and think that you’d have to search through 100 billion planets in habitable zones before you found one where a civilization developed, then there have still been a trillion civilizations over cosmic history!” Even if life arises on habitable Earth-like planets only once in 60 billion opportunities, we are still not the first civilization in the Milky Way.
As these and other astronomers have concluded, the existence of advanced alien civilizations in our galaxy is a good bet. Nevertheless, the Milky Way is hundreds of thousands of light years across. Could other civilizations in the Milky Way reach earth with probes or spacecraft? With what might appear to us to be UAP? The answer is, unequivocally, yes… if other civilizations follow technological trajectories similar to those on Earth.
Bear in mind that we’ve only been a space-faring species for under 70 years, less than the lifetime of the average American. My grandfather was born in 1897, nearly seven years before the Wright Brothers launched their first successful flight from atop a sand dune in North Carolina. Yet, he lived to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in 1969 and later the launch of the Space Shuttle. Now, some 50 years after the first moonwalk, there is already a plan to send a probe to our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, four light years from earth. Conceived by billionaire Russian physicist Yuri Millner, “Project Starshot” quickly attracted the support of Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerburg, Avi Loeb, and others. The plan is to use a massive laser to propel a small sensor package equipped with a light sail to 1/5 the speed of light. Depending on how long it takes for the probe to reach its maximum velocity, 20-30 years will elapse here on Earth before the probe arrives at its destination.
However, due to the time dilation effects of relativity, there would be a reduction in the actual travel time experienced by an interstellar craft and anyone aboard it. More to the point, if a single wealthy individual can send a probe to another star system, what doubt is there that a far older and more advanced alien civilization could send probes across interstellar space? Note that there is no requirement for superluminal travel. In fact, a space-faring civilization expanding through the Milky Way at 20% of the speed of light could theoretically colonize the entire galaxy in as little as 500,000 years, a tiny fraction of the galaxy’s lifetime.
It is also conceivable that more advanced civilizations have achieved faster than light travel by exploiting wormholes, “interdimensional travel,” or by some other means we have not yet conceived. Other civilizations may also have developed the ability to extend biological lifetimes indefinitely. If nothing else, it is easy to imagine uncrewed but highly intelligent probes, perhaps even self-replicating probes, gradually spreading throughout the galaxy. If this seems fanciful, recall that there already are functioning probes operating in interstellar space.
Although I support the SETI project, it seems far more likely extraterrestrial civilizations would dispatch probes rather than blindly broadcasting radio signals into space. For one thing, any civilization broadcasting openly to space is announcing its location and potentially inviting its own destruction. As they say, “The spouting whale gets the harpoon.” Probes, by contrast, can obtain information stealthily, permitting direct observation without interference or detection. They also eliminate the need for compatible communications technologies and provide the means to collect and examine physical specimens as we ourselves are doing today on Mars. Probes are also likely to be more efficient considering the massive energy required to send signals into space that would be detectable at interstellar distances. It is not surprising that NASA sends probes rather than signals to explore the solar system. So why aren’t we seeing evidence of probes from other civilizations? Or are we?
THE FERMI PARADOX
Given the overwhelming number of potentially viable habitats in our galaxy, many scientists profess surprise that intelligent alien life has not already been detected. As the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi once famously observed, conveying this gap between theory and observation, “Where is everybody?” This quip by the renowned physicist is now known as “the Fermi paradox.”
I perceive a paradox as well, although it is a paradox of a different sort. I call it the “UAP paradox.” What strikes me as paradoxical is that at the same time Enrico Fermi was asking, “Where is everybody?” UAP were flying around Los Alamos like moths around a candle. More broadly: Why are so few scientists willing to consider UAP as potential alien probes when there is such extensive evidence of mysterious craft in our skies demonstrating capabilities otherwise found only in science fiction?
Let’s begin by looking at Dr. Fermi himself. In 1944, Dr. Fermi joined the Manhattan Project full-time and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico. He worked at Los Alamos for the remainder of the war and remained an active researcher at Los Alamos during the summer months for many years thereafter. Indeed, his famous comment, “Where is everybody?” was made to a group of fellow physicists at Los Alamos in the summer of 1950. Now consider the following quote from a memo sent by the Director of Security at Los Alamos National Labs to Brigadier General Joseph Carroll, the commander of the USAF Office of Special Investigations in May 1950, just a few months before Dr. Fermi’s posed his famous question, “Where is everybody?”:
“The frequency of unexplained aerial phenomenon in the New Mexico area is such that an organized plan of reporting these observations should be undertaken….the observers of these phenomenon include scientists, Special Agents of the Office of Special Investigation, USAF and airline pilots, military pilots, Los Alamos security inspectors, military personnel and many other persons of various occupations whose reliability is not questioned … the phenomenon has continuously occurred during the last 18 months and is continuing to occur..in the vicinity of sensitive installations.”
This memo in May of 1950 also comes on the heels of one of the most extraordinary UAP events in American history, when in March of 1950, dozens of residents of nearby Farmington, New Mexico, reported hundreds of silver metallic disks flying in formation over their town in broad daylight. In other words, hundreds of UAP were being observed by all manner of personnel in the vicinity of Los Alamos at precisely the time Dr. Fermi was professing bafflement over a perceived absence of alien life. The UAP evidence included numerous reports by trained observers, pilots, scientists, and security personnel, as well as photographs and even radar tracks and theodolite measurements.
Does it not seem ironic that recurring visits by greenish fireballs and supersonic silver disks were prompting major security concerns for Los Alamos Labs at the same time Dr. Fermi was asking, “Where is everybody?”
This vignette regarding Dr. Fermi is a perfect illustration of the strangely blinkered views of the scientific community, the press, and mainstream America as a whole. Even with the Defense Department officially acknowledging the existence of hundreds of UAP incidents, few journalists, scientists, or citizens seem interested in what may soon become the greatest discovery in human history. The evidence is not yet definitive, at least not the information in the public domain, but the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems the only explanation fully consistent with a large and rapidly growing body of compelling data. Moreover, some UAP seem to be an ideal match for the alien probes that theory predicts.
THEORY AND OBSERVATION
As the focal point for U.S. nuclear weapons design and development, the motive for scrutiny of Los Alamos is obvious. Imagine that NASA probes someday encounter an inhabited exoplanet. The first order of business will unquestionably be to assess what threats or dangers exist. If ever there was to be a honeypot used to lure alien probes, I can’t imagine anything more likely to succeed than atmospheric explosions of nuclear weapons. As noted above, UAP activity was persistent and compelling near Los Alamos and other nuclear weapons facilities, with recurring overflights and intrusive entries into highly sensitive restricted airspace. Thanks to the efforts of author Robert Hastings; the outspokenness and persistence of nuclear weapons veterans like Robert Salas; and the work of researchers who have painstakingly leveraged the Freedom of Information Act (e.g. Brad Sparks; Paul Dean), this pattern of UAP activity at U.S. nuclear installations is well-documented despite the refusal of the U.S. Air Force to forthrightly acknowledge these incidents or cooperate with public or even Congressional requests for information.
If alien craft or probes are monitoring earth, we should expect them to be radically different from anything we possess, baffling in both appearance and capability. In the immortal words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” To my mind, UAP data again fit the ET probe hypothesis. The most common UAP observed in the Los Alamos area in Dr. Fermi’s day were green fireballs and supersonic silver disks capable of fantastic acceleration and maneuverability despite the lack of any discernible means of propulsion. The cumulative weight of credible reports from Blue Book and other sources provides highly persuasive evidence for the existence of radical craft superior to anything created by man.
I am also aware of cases of individuals who have reportedly suffered burns or radiation damage from encounters with UAP. Some of these cases have occurred in the U.S., others in Brazil and the Solomon Islands. This is compelling because the U.S. and its allies do not manufacture aircraft that produce nuclear radiation.
During the Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book eras, some senior military personnel examining UAP data considered the ET hypothesis a viable explanation for UAP, but few mainstream scientists were willing to make this connection. A prominent exception was Herman Oberth, one of the fathers of modern rocketry who served as a mentor to Wernher von Braun, who wrote a lengthy analysis concluding:
“It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system.”
Dr. Oberth was likely influenced by exposure to UAP incidents while working for the U.S. government. The frequency of military UAP encounters also explains the keen interest in UAP evinced by many high-ranking retired military officers of that era. For example, the leaders of the most active public UAP research group in the 1950’s and 60s, the National Investigating Committee for Airborne Phenomenon (NICAP) included former CIA Director Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter; Admiral Delmar Fahrney, director of the Navy’s guided missile programs; USMC aviator Major Donald Keyhoe; and Rear Admiral H.B Knowles among others. My UAP activism also stems from exposure to military UAP reporting.
Unfortunately, the UAP stigma persists among many, perhaps most scientists to this day. Worse, some scientists have been spreading misinformation about UAP. For example, I’ve been astonished to see prominent SETI researchers asking in public forums, “If UAP are real how come commercial airline pilots never see them?” How could these SETI scientists be so grossly mistaken when a simple Google query is all it takes to find credible data regarding thousands of commercial airline pilot sightings of UAP?
Similarly, an astronomer from the University of Arizona published an article in 2020 making the preposterous claim that UAP sightings “..stop at the Canadian and Mexican borders.” Again, if the author or his editors had spent 5 minutes looking online they’d have quickly learned that Canada and Mexico are rife with UAP sightings, photos, videos, and even military reports.
I’ve had the opportunity to interview numerous military personnel who encountered unidentified aircraft that defy our present understanding of aeronautics and engineering. This includes a retired NORAD watch officer, USAF Col. James Cobb, who observed the radar track of a high-flying UAP that proceeded from the arctic down the entire U.S. East coast. NORAD’s best efforts to intercept the object failed due to the UAP’s speed and altitude. I’ve also been privy to substantial government UAP information that has reinforced my views regarding the anomalous nature of the phenomenon. However, I find the unclassified and open source data sufficiently compelling, indeed so cumulatively overwhelming, that I remain surprised there is not much greater academic and press interest in the UAP issue. Those already familiar with the Nimitz case may wish to skip the next section, but for those who are not, this well-documented case will help to explain why the U.S. government is now treating UAP as a serious national security issue.
THE NIMITZ CASE
I can discuss the Nimitz case with some authority because I’ve interviewed most of the Navy personnel involved from both the Nimitz and the USS Princeton. I’ve also studied the official DoD reporting on the incident and an extensive analysis prepared by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
In November 2004, the USS Princeton, equipped with the world’s most capable naval radar, tracked dozens of UAP performing seemingly impossible maneuvers while it was conducting training operations off the coast of Southern California. The speeds, range, altitudes, and acceleration of these objects defied logic and experience. In some cases, the objects descended from at least 80,000 feet, possibly even orbital altitudes, according to reports from some crew members working in the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) cell aboard the ship. The baffled Princeton crew reset and recalibrated their Aegis radar, yet the bizarre activity continued. Finally, after several days, two F-18s were directed to intercept one of these objects. Conditions were ideal, with clear sunny skies.
When they arrived at the intercept location the pilots observed a white vehicle nearly 50 feet long with no wings, control surfaces, exhaust, or visible means of propulsion. All four naval aviators observed the craft react to their presence and perform seemingly impossible maneuvers, moving in ways that defy our understanding of physics. As the lead jet approached the strange white craft, it turned toward the fighter while hovering, then moments later circled upward and away from the F-18 before accelerating to hypersonic speeds and disappearing over the horizon. It seems the craft must have been using some form of relativistic, anti-gravity propulsion system because there was no sonic boom or evidence of extreme heat. Further, the estimated g forces would otherwise have obliterated the craft.
Incredibly, the strange object flew precisely to the latitude and longitude the aviators had agreed to use for their training operations that day. Low on fuel, Cmdr. Dave Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich returned to the Nimitz. However, another F-18 was launched to search for the object. This F-18 did not get as close, but it was able to acquire infrared imagery of the so-called “Tic Tac” before the UAP shot away again at hypersonic speeds. What the aviators observed they say was unlike anything they were familiar with. Quoting pilot Chad Underwood who took the famous “FLIR” video I provided to the New York Times in 2017:
“It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.”
He goes on to say:
“…normally, you would see engines emitting a heat plume. This object was not doing that. The video shows a source of heat, but the normal signatures of an exhaust plume were not there. There was no sign of propulsion. You could not see the thing that the ATFLIR pod should pick up 100 percent of the time.”
The U.S. government acknowledges this was not an experimental US aircraft, and as the recent DoD report to Congress explains, there is also no indication that the craft belonged to Russia, China or any other country. Cmdr. Dave Fravor, the highest ranking officer in the air that day and the pilot who got closest to the object, believes the “Tic Tac” was “not from this world.” Because it was so bizarre and its capabilities so vastly superior to any aircraft known to man, Fravor’s conclusion seems perfectly logical. There is nothing we know in the inventory of any nation on earth that comes close to the appearance or performance of the “Tic Tac”.
In addition to the pilots and radar operators involved, I’ve discussed this case with cleared Congressional staff, high-level Pentagon officials, and senior engineers from the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks and the Boeing Phantom Works. I’ve yet to encounter a plausible conventional explanation. Moreover, all concerned agree that extreme advances in physics and engineering would be required before America could even attempt to build a craft like the Tic Tac. Admittedly, this is not yet conclusive proof of alien life, but what else can it be if it was not manufactured by the U.S., China, or Russia?
OTHER CASES
If the Nimitz case was a singular incident, we might somehow discount it; but there have been many hundreds if not thousands of comparable incidents since at least WWII. DoD presently acknowledges 400 military UAP incidents since 2004, but that number excludes anomalies in space; many thousands of NORAD reports; undersea anomalies, and information that remains concealed by classification guidelines and non-disclosure agreements. A high percentage of the reported DoD cases–over half–involve multiple sensor data. Further, we know that in most cases, military personnel have been afraid to report sightings and contacts, so the actual number of DoD encounters is far higher than the 400 cases recently reported to Congress.
At this point, it is tempting to discuss similar military encounters in other countries, including France, Brazil, Britain, Belgium, Canada, and Russia; or mass sighting cases in the U.S., Australia, Zimbabwe, or Italy; or the sensational press accounts of the flyover on successive weekends of the U.S. Capitol in July 1952. According to its Director, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) alone has received over 200,000 UAP reports since its founding in 1969. There are also thousands of UAP videos and photographs, despite the mathematically remote prospects of photographing high-flying or fast-flying UAP. As physicist Brad Sparks explains on page 382 of The UFO Encyclopedia, due to the limitations of smartphone cameras and the need for the target to be very close and slow, we should not expect even a single clear UAP photo from billions of smartphones over a 5 year period. Nevertheless, there are many photos and videos (such as the FLIR and Gimbal videos) that defy simple conventional explanations. The government has also collected a considerable amount of authentic video and radar data in the short time since they resumed officially studying the UAP issue in 2020. What then explains the unwillingness of most scientists and academics to consider UAP as potential examples of the abundant extraterrestrial intelligence that theory predicts?
REASONS THAT MAINSTREAM SCIENTISTS FAIL TO CONNECT UAP AND EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
1. Lack of Information
As we have seen above, there is still a widespread gap in academia regarding basic facts about UAP. How many astronomers realize there have been hundreds of thousands of UAP sightings worldwide, including thousands of reports by commercial airline pilots, military pilots, and radar operators? How many are aware of the hundreds of unsolved Project Blue Book cases or the recent “Preliminary Report” on UAP provided to Congress by the Intelligence Community? How many have read any of the books on UAP written by fellow scientists, including astronomer Dr. Allen Hynek, information scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee, or nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman?
Fortunately, as my experience with the Congressional oversight committees demonstrates, when people get credible UAP information, they generally respond to the data and modify their views. Congress’ sudden interest is simply due to the fact that prior to 2017, Congress lacked access to credible UAP information.
Nothing has had a greater impact on government officials than the testimony of military aviators and other trained personnel. To hear Cmdr. Dave Fravor and his colleagues tell their tale in person is powerful and compelling. Unfortunately, scientists and academics generally do not have the benefit of these perspectives.
Thankfully, Congress is requiring DoD to continue providing unclassified public reports on the latest UAP data each year. This will undoubtedly help to raise public and scientific interest and awareness.
2. Science vs. National Security
There is a fundamental difference in evidentiary standards between the national security community and scientists and academics. Scientists strive to formulate hypotheses that can be tested and disproven; they then publish their results so others can independently replicate their findings. This time-honored approach, combined with free markets and freedom of speech and association, underpins our prosperity and incredible advances in health and living standards. This disciplined approach generally works well in a laboratory or observatory, but the national security community does not always have the luxury of working with inert materials or controlled environments. In fact, the organizations and individuals national security analysts study are often diligently working to confuse and deceive us. Policymakers also do not always have the luxury of deferring conclusions or action until conclusive data is available. These disparate standards and circumstances sometimes lead to contrasting reactions to the same information.
For example, in the Nimitz case, the testimony of the pilots and radar operators and the Aegis and IR data is about as good as it gets from a military perspective. For national security officials to discount such compelling information would be tantamount to the radar operator in Hawaii on Dec. 7th, 1941, ignoring the approaching Japanese aircraft that appeared on his screen. Yet, many scientists cavalierly dismiss military reporting because it does not include data they can independently evaluate and confirm. I appreciate this difference in perspectives, but I would appeal to scientists considering the UAP issue to bear in mind we are in entirely uncharted waters. Notably, if the ET hypothesis is correct, this represents the first time in history we have attempted to analyze manifestations of a more intelligent and technologically advanced species. Normal standards and practices do not suffice. If we observe a UAP event and then fail to replicate it subsequently, is that consistent or inconsistent with the ET hypothesis? Are they monitoring and reacting to our monitoring them? Are they able to interfere with or deceive our instruments? Are they able to interfere with or modify our perceptions? If the observed behavior of UAP contradicts our understanding of physics, is that evidence the data is flawed or evidence of a more highly advanced civilization? If there is a dearth of clear photos, is that because of stealthy concealment, lack of actual UAP, or due to an energetic field generated by relativistic UAP propulsion systems that interfere with the reflection of photons to the camera?
Although I recognize the UAP information available to the public does not constitute proof of alien life, I also believe we must acknowledge this as a genuine possibility and move rapidly to determine as best we can the identity, motives, and capabilities of the anomalies being observed underwater and in the atmosphere and space. The national security implications are far too grave, and the potential scientific rewards too great.
3. Stigma
The lack of basic knowledge regarding UAP has been seriously compounded by the contemptuous and demeaning attitude historically displayed by the U.S. government (and most academic scientists) toward the UAP topic. This derisive attitude was primarily due to the recommendations of the CIA’s Robertson Panel in 1953. At the time, due to fears the UAP issue might be exploited by the USSR, the Air Force was advised to discredit the topic. The Air Force used Project Blue Book and the Condon report to distort the data and convey the impression that if only more detailed data were available conventional explanations could be found for all UAP cases. Yet, the Blue Book data clearly shows the opposite: The more witnesses and the better the data, the less likely the USAF was able to find a conventional explanation for UAP incidents. Nevertheless, the government, Dr. Condon, and others succeeded in conveying the message that there was no credible reason to believe UAP demonstrated superior technology or posed a threat to national security. We now know both conclusions were simplistic and premature.
4. The Social Nature of Information
Psychological research reveals that most people value fitting in with their peers more than faithful adherence to facts or the analysis of data. Humans are social creatures, getting along amicably often trumps facts, logic, or data.
In his account of Project Blue Book, Dr. Allan Hynek points out that when confidentially polled, many astronomers reported interest in the UAP issue; however, while in committee, they almost always disparaged the topic for fear of being ridiculed or challenged by their peers. This same fear has, until very recently, also prevented most military and government personnel from reporting UAP encounters or expressing interest in the topic.
5. Cognitive Dissonance
It doesn’t help that the implications of the extraterrestrial hypothesis are deeply disturbing for most people, challenging core beliefs and causing considerable anxiety and uncertainty in the process. For some, the prospect is simply terrifying. Psychologists call such interference with normal mental processing “cognitive dissonance.” It is not surprising to find that process at work with regard to UAP. The concept of alien craft and alien beings is fine in fiction, but it is an extremely challenging concept to process or integrate into our daily lives.
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM
Fortunately, we have reached a turning point. We now have a top-down DoD effort, embraced at the highest levels. This is unprecedented, a fundamentally different situation than either the Congressionally mandated Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), an unclassified contractor study; or AAWSAP’s successor, the small but scrappy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) led by Luis Elizondo. The public isn’t generally aware of the incredible capabilitiesDoD operates, but the most extensive and capable sensor apparatus yet devised by man is now being used to help identify UAP and determine their capabilities and intent. This changes everything. DoD’s technical capabilities are so precise and extensive that I expect major progress, likely even conclusive results, within the next few years if progress continues.
Moreover, there are historic whistleblower provisions in the pending Intelligence and DoD Authorization bills in Congress. These provisions enjoy broad bipartisan and bicameral support and will almost certainly be enacted by year’s end. Once enacted, they will enable Congress to learn the truth of long-standing allegations that the U.S. government is in possession of recovered alien technology. Concurrently, pending legislation will require a General Accounting Office review of classified information pertaining to UAP dating back to the end of WWII. I am already aware of a number of individuals who claim they will testify to the existence of recovered alien technology or are considering doing so.
Already, we can see a few positive glimmers resulting from public interest in UAP. It is encouraging to see that a handful of private citizens in America can still bring about changes in policy when they have facts and data on their side. It is a relief to see the U.S. Congress is still capable of meaningful bipartisan collaboration. It is also encouraging to see that empirical data can still win the day in U.S.Congress despite the increasing public rejection of scientific data and principles.
PROSPECTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Between the U.S. government’s technical collection efforts directed at UAP and the amnesty provisions and document review soon to be enacted, the prospects of finding answers to the UAP mystery are real and rapidly growing. What if we find conclusive evidence that some UAP are manifestations of alien technology?
If UAP have hostile intentions, we’d likely already know after so many decades (possibly even thousands of years) of UAP activity. In the unlikely event some UAP intervention is planned, then the sooner we acknowledge the reality of UAP the better. There are steps we might take to enhance our deterrence capabilities.
Although some UAP activity is concerning, especially continued violations of restricted airspace, it seems more likely that the pattern we’ve been experiencing for decades, perhaps centuries, will continue indefinitely – namely, furtive, intermittent sightings of strange craft that have an unknown interest in our planet. If this passive pattern continues after “disclosure,” then the discovery that we are not alone might actually work to the great advantage of our species.
Let’s briefly imagine the impact of an authoritative announcement from the U.S. government, or a group of world leaders, that some UAP are of extraterrestrial origin. This discovery would undoubtedly be the most transformative in human history. If the current, furtive pattern of UAP activity remains unchanged, then one impact might be to divert Russia, China, and the U.S. away from increasingly dangerous confrontation toward collaborative scientific and military activities instead.
It is difficult to exaggerate the need for unprecedented international collaboration at this juncture in history. It should by now be clear to all that the existential challenges facing our species cannot be solved unilaterally. In addition to the urgent need to reduce the rapidly growing prospects of war between nuclear powers, unprecedented collaboration is also required to manage global warming, the uncontrolled rise of artificial intelligence and biological engineering, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It may seem far-fetched, but the discovery that we are not alone could be our best hope for radically re-framing the views of the major world powers and humanity itself. In sum, the most likely scenario – no change in their conduct but major changes in ours – may also prove to be the most optimistic. As Ronald Reagan once said, addressing the UN General Assembly in 1987:
“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”
CONCLUSION
Our collective journey from the center of creation to a random location in a cold, dark, infinite and unfeeling universe seems bleak. However, discovering we share the earth and the unending vastness of space with other intelligent civilizations could provide the impetus for thrilling new voyages of exploration and discovery.
What could be more profound, exciting, or transformational than the discovery of biological or even silicon beings who appear magical due to their mastery of science and technology? Contact could potentially advance our understanding of the laws of nature, placing some of these god-like powers within Mankind’s reach as well. The knowledge that we are being monitored by one or more mysterious civilizations could potentially reframe international security paradigms in a manner that supplants rivalries with new alliances. If nothing else, proof we are not alone in the cosmos might renew access to wonders and mysteries that fled before the onslaught of secularism and science. As Arthur C. Clarke once observed:
“Across the seas of space lie the raw materials of the imagination. Strangeness, wonder, mystery and magic – these things which not long ago appeared lost forever will soon return to the world.”
For me, the question, “where is everybody” is better directed at humanity – the mainstream scientists and journalists ignoring UAP data rather than the aliens who may actually have been here quietly watching us all along. If nothing else, we can at least all agree that the truth about UAP is increasingly within reach. I hope more mainstream scientists, journalists, and government officials will set the UAP stigma aside and, as objectively as possible, consider the growing body of UAP evidence and its potential implications.
Update 9/2/22: The inclusion of a reference to the Pentagon’s AATIP program, led by Luis Elizondo, was added by the author alongside existing references to its predecessor, the DIA’s AAWSAP program.
Christopher Mellon spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community, including serving as the Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. In his free time, Mellon works to raise awareness regarding the UAP issue and its implications for national security.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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