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 ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
29-10-2023
UAP Buzzes Plane Over Bartow, Florida Oct 25, 2023, UFO Sighting News. Video.
UAP Buzzes Plane Over Bartow, Florida Oct 25, 2023, UFO Sighting News. Video.
Date of sighting: Oct 25, 2023 Location of sighting: Bartow, Florida, USA
A plane was traveling across Florida from west to east and a giant glowing UFO shot past them. The object was about 15X larger and didn't fall but instead traveled ahead of the plane and out of sight. The ocean off the Florida coast is home for a huge alien base. This video is 100% proof of that. And please, compare the size for yourself of the UFO and the plane. That looks like a 727 that is below the UFO, so this UFO...is huge!
Chile’s Sky Shocker: UFO Phenomenon Breaks Cover Amidst the Clouds!
Chile’s Sky Shocker: UFO Phenomenon Breaks Cover Amidst the Clouds!
UFO sightings have long captured the imagination of many across the globe. From mysterious saucer-like shapes hovering over vast expanses of land to inexplicable light formations darting across the night sky, these unidentified flying objects have frequently become a topic of intrigue and debate. Our exploration dives deep into a particular incident in Chile, using it as a springboard to discuss the broader phenomenon of UFO sightings.
The Chilean Encounter
On a serene day, 45 miles southeast of Santiago, Chile, a family, blissfully unaware of the unusual encounter ahead, set out for a Sunday picnic near the ELO reservoir. With the picturesque valley and the vast sky serving as a perfect backdrop, the mother snapped a series of photos. But, a routine family outing soon turned into an event of paranormal proportions.
Upon returning home and browsing through the shots, an anomaly stood out – a gigantic, saucer-shaped object, lurking amidst the reddish clouds. This wasn’t just another digital glitch; the image had inadvertently captured what many believe to be evidence of UFO sightings.
A Deep Dive Analysis
The Chilean government, ever inquisitive about such events, entrusted the photos to Ted Row of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). His detailed examination of the image revealed an unexplained anomaly: a disc-shaped entity amid the clouds. When contrasting the light levels within the photograph, NARCAP deduced that the photographed object was external and solid – not a mere insertion or aberration.
Chile: A Hotbed for UFO Sightings?
Chile has often been cited as a hotspot for UFO sightings. Tales of mysterious lagoon behind the mountains near ELO reservoir serving as a UFO landing strip have often made the rounds. Regions like Sométonga and the Chilean Patagonia have reported numerous UFO shaped clouds and unidentified aerial occurrences. Could Chile’s topographical and atmospheric conditions make it a preferred destination for extraterrestrial visits?
Scientific Perspectives
While the community remains divided, experts from various fields have pitched in with their theories. Mark De Antonio, an astronomer and video effects designer, hypothesizes that the unique colors captured in the Chilean image might be the result of cirrus clouds’ prismatic effects at high altitudes. On the other hand, meteorologist Juan Hernandez believes that the reddish hue, being the prime enigma, couldn’t have been the result of a setting sun.
Video:
The Proof Is Out There: Chilean UFO Spotted in the Clouds (Season 4)
While UFO enthusiasts may be quick to label such incidents as concrete evidence of extraterrestrial life, skeptics and scientists continue their quest for logical explanations. Whether these UFO sightings are real, misinterpretations of natural phenomena, or results of man-made activities, the allure and enigma surrounding them remain undiminished.
In every war there are often lesser known experiences floating about beyond the typical tales of fighting and heroism. Here in the background of all of the conflict and death often lurk outlandish accounts of something strange going on, something perhaps even more frightening than the enemy. Strange things in the sky have long been said to loiter around places of war, going all the way back to ancient times, but this is far from just in the realm of superstition and the ignorant of the past misunderstanding common celestial phenomena, and here we will look at some of the stranger cases of these things congregating to war all the way up into modern times.
Starting from World War I we have the spectacular time the Red Baron supposedly shot down a flying saucer. The so- called Red Baron was the German ace pilot Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, who was both renowned and feared for his unrivaled flying skills, often considered to be “the ace of aces” and racking up at least 80 air combat victories over his wartime carreer. In the book UFOs of the First World War, by Nigel Watson, there is a curious account that seems to show that human pilots were not the only ones the Red Baron hunted down and engaged. The story goes that as he was flying over the Belgian trenches in the spring of 1917 with fellow pilot Peter Waitzrick, the Baron spotted an unidentified object that was described as “an upside down silver saucer with orange lights” hovering in clear blue skies. After a moment of awe, fear and wonder, the Red Baron opened fire upon it, and Waitzrick, who reportedly saw the whole incident, described what happened next as follows:
We were terrified because we’d never seen anything like it before. The Baron immediately opened fire and the thing went down like a rock, shearing off tree limbs as it crashed into the woods.
But wait, it gets even weirder still. As they passed over the wreckage, two humanoid figures were supposedly seen to climb out of the otherworldly wrecked craft and scurry off into the trees, after which they were not seen again. Waitzrick would keep the whole bizarre story to himself until 80 years later, in 1999, when he would tell the world about it. There are certainly some suspicious aspects of the whole tale, not the least of which is that Waitzrick chose to come out with his amazing experience after 8 decades of silence to The Weekly World News, which many readers will recognize as perhaps not the most trustworthy of news publications. Also, the planes they were piloting were claimed to be Fokker triplanes, which is odd since these planes would not be used in the war until some months after the alleged event, in August of 1917. Perhaps Waitzrick just didn’t know anyone who would take his story seriously and didn’t know any better so it just happened to be that the Weekly World News picked it up, and perhaps with the planes his memory after nearly a century was not what it once was, but one thing he seems to be quite sure of is that the infamous Red Baron shot down a UFO, saying:
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Baron shot down some kind of spacecraft from another planet and those little guys who ran off into the woods were space aliens of some kind.
Other UFOs encountered during World War I are the so-called “Flaming Onions” which were typically described as glowing green balls that would zip around, do flips, other aerial maneauvers, and very often chase aircraft, easily outpacing and outmaneuvering them but not actually ever attacking them in any way. This strange phenomenon was purportedly seen throughout the war by both sides of the engagement, and it always terrified those who experienced it. One theory as to what the Flaming Onions were is that they might have been flares fired by the Germans, but flares typically do not actively chase aircraft and seasoned pilots can usually recognize flares as such. They remain a curious unexplained mystery of the war.
Besides spaceships and weird lights, another baffling aerial phenomenon reported during World War I began with a very strange sighting made by a Lieutenant Frederick Ardsley as he was on a morning patrol in northern France on January 9, 1918. As he flew along, another biplane of the same make and model as his own positioned itself next to him, and when he looked to see who was in the cockpit he was surprised to see a beautiful woman with long flowing blonde hair blow him a kiss and do a Can Can dance in her cockpit before swiftly flying away. Ardsley attempted to chase the mysterious pilot, but she was reportedly a far superior pilot and was able to easily lose him. Unbelievably, the mystery woman would show up at other times during the war and engage German pilots, usually easily beating them and shooting them down, and sighted by both pilots and civilians alike. Some reports even say that her plane was impervious to bullets or that she would vanish into thin air. She came to be known as “Lady Sopwith” or “The Valkyrie,” and became legendary. No one knows who she was or whether this is all just another wartime myth.
If alien forces are somehow attracted to war, then considering that World War II is one of the greatest and most massive wars of all time it is perhaps no surprise at all that they should be drawn there as well. On the evening of November 27, 1944, a Lt. Fred Ringwald of the U.S. Air Force was riding as an observer on a night operation over the Rhine Valley, just north of Strasbourg on the French-German border when he saw something in the sky that was not supposed to be there. There over a hill in the distance were eight to 10 of lights in a row, glowing fiery orange, and when he pointed them out the pilot and the rest of the crew saw them too. They checked with Allied ground radar, but they registered nothing. As they decided whether to engage, the lights then simply vanished. It was completely baffling to them, as these lights had not been any known aircraft they were familiar with and defied any rational explanation, and they decided to keep it to themselves.
Ringwald and his crew were part of a U.S. Air Force unit called the 415th Special Operations Squadron. Formed in 1943, it was tasked with carrying out missions in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, and then later in northwestern Europe during World War II. As the name suggests, they were mostly involved in nighttime operations and missions, which made them especially likely to notice strange lights in the skies around them. Although Ringwald’s crew stayed quiet about what they had seen on that mission, they would soon learn that other flights from their unit were starting to see something similar in the sky, in particular over the German-occupied Rhine Valley. Pilots were coming forward with stories of strange lights, usually red, orange, or green following them, or even flying parallel to their planes to pace them. They were reported as typically cigar-shaped, with no wings or visible propulsion system, and very maneuverable and fast, as well as often flying in formation of up to 10 of them and never showing up on radar. These mysterious lights had a habit of seeming to toy with the pilots, before suddenly tearing away at breathtaking speed or simply vanishing into thin air, and no one had any idea of what they were. One baffled airman would give a good representative account when he said:
I was flying and there was an object next to me. I couldn’t get rid of it, I slowed up, it was there. I sped up, it was there. I would dive, it would be there. I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping up with me. I called. Nothing on radar.
These objects defied all explanation, and there were whispers that they were not of this planet. Sightings began pouring in from all over the European Theater of war, and it was looking more like the War of the Worlds than World War II. Before long these mysterious glowing craft were being called "Foo Fighters," which is a silly name that came from the comic strip Smokey Stover, in which the main character had the catchphrase “Where there’s foo there’s fire.” Considering the reliability and experience of these witnesses, on top of the sheer number and consistency of reports, the military launched an investigation into the phenomenon. At first they suspected that the Foo Fighters were some sort of top secret German weapons, but the rabbit hole got deeper when they learned that enemy pilots were seeing the same thing and they also realized that the objects never actually seemed to attack or act in a threatening manner. After a full investigation there was no official conclusion reached. Theories include that these Foo Fighters were enemy tech, some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, or just combat fatigue and the pilots seeing things, but their true nature remains unknown.
Interestingly, over in the Pacific Theater of Operations of the war pilots there were also reporting bizarre things in the sky. In this case, rather than glowing objects zipping about doing aerial maneuvers, pilots typically reported “balls of fire” hanging in the sky, often just hovering there before shooting off or vanishing. Once again, theories were thrown around that these were just some kind of Japanese weapon, but as with the Foo Fighters of Europe they never seemed to attack and the enemy fighters were seeing them as well. Although the terms UFO and flying saucer had not yet been coined, both the Foo Fighters and the Pacific balls of fire would have certainly fit the bill. Aliens or something else? The answer remains lost to the mists of time.
Moving on to the Korean War, fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953, we have a case that has largely remained confined to the shadows of history, and which supposedly involved a whole regiment of men who seem to have come under attack by forces from beyond this world. A very bizarre account from the Korean War emerged in January of 1987, when John Timmerman, of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), sat down for an interview with a former U.S. Army private first class (PFC) by the name of Mr. Francis P. Wall, who had a most unusual tale to tell. Wall had been deployed with the Army infantry, 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 'Easy' Company, and in May of 1951 they were operating outside of Chorwon, in an area known by the military as the Iron Triangle, on a mission to reach a small village in the mountains. The village in question was in an area marked to be bombarded with artillery fire, wiped off the face of the earth, and Wall and his men were there to make sure that any innocent civilians were properly warned of the impending rain of fire. Indeed, the air was already reverberating with the thumps and booms of shells hitting, the dark of night occasionally lit up with flashes in the distance. Wall and company had made their way to a steep slope overlooking the village and the fiery flowers of artillery airbursts painting the scene with fire, and that was when they saw something they could not explain up there in the air in the middle of this war ravaged scene. Wall would say of this:
We suddenly noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting down across the mountain. And at first no one thought anything about it. So we noticed that this thing continued on down to the village to where, indeed, the artillery air bursts were exploding. It had an orange glow in the beginning. We further noticed that this object was [so] quick that it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed. But then this object approached us. And it turned a blue-green brilliant light. It's hard to distinguish the size of it; there's no way to compare it. The light was pulsating. This object approached us.
The men were understandably very unsettled by this point, as the object was obviously not one of theirs, nor any known aircraft any of them had ever seen before, and they radioed the situation in to their superiors, requesting permission to open fire on it. Why they would think that their rifles would do any good when they had just witnessed it casually make its way through artillery explosions is anyone’s guess, but the permission was granted and Wall claims that he would then open fire on it with his M-1 rifle loaded with armor piercing bullets. He claims that he hit the object several times, hearing the pings of the bullets against what sounded like metal, and the bullets seemed to have an effect on it where the artillery had not, apparently damaging it and causing it to exhibit some strange behavior. Wall would say:
Now why would that bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn't? I don't know, unless they had dropped their protective field around them, or whatever. But the object went wild, and the light was going on and off. It went off completely once, briefly. And it was moving erratically from side to side as though it might crash to the ground. Then, a sound -- we had heard no sound previous to this -- the sound of, like, diesel locomotives revving up. That's the way this thing sounded.
This was where things would get pretty harrowing, as according to Wall the craft unleashed some sort of a retaliatory attack on them. The craft allegedly emitted a kind of ray or beam that came in pulses, and which they could see aiming at them “like a searchlight.” When the ray swept over them the men found themselves overcome with a tingling, burning sensation, and while it didn’t seem to be causing any visible damage they could feel it penetrating through their skin and the pain was enough to make them scramble for cover, scurrying in a panic into their bunkers, where the attack seemed to continue. Wall describes the terrifying and otherworldly scene thusly:
So the company commander, Lt. Evans, hauled us into our bunkers. We didn't know what was going to happen. We were scared. These are underground dugouts where you have peep holes to look out to fire at the enemy. So, I'm in my bunker with another man. We're peeping out at this thing. It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light, and then I saw it shoot off at a 45-degree angle, that quick, just there and gone. That quick. And it was as though that was the end of it.
Unfortunately for Wall and the others, this seemed to be far from the end of it, as over the next few days they would begin to develop an array of debilitating physical symptoms, including disorientation, memory loss, headaches, stomachaches, nausea, and extreme weakness that was potent enough that some of them had trouble even walking. Doctors who examined them could find no reason or cause for these symptoms, the only evidence that anything was wrong being an unusually high white blood cell count that could not be explained. Despite nothing really officially being wrong with them, the men were nevertheless all physically ill and suffering from something, and it was widely assumed by them that this was the doing of the beam that UFO had fired at them. According to Wall, many of them continued to suffer from ill health for years after the encounter, with him saying that even to that day he had frequent bouts of disorientation, memory loss, weakness, and difficulty putting on weight.
In later years it has been speculated that the men were probably suffering from radiation sickness, but there have been plenty of other ideas by those who have heard of this rather obscure case. One idea is that the Soviets or even the Chinese had been carrying out covert military experiments in the remote region testing anti-gravity technology and sonic weaponry, and indeed this has been used as an explanation for many of the dozens of other UFO sightings made during the Korean War. Of course there is also the notion that this encounter was exactly what it looks like, being an attack by an actual UFO, perhaps having been present in the region observing the combat for inscrutable reasons, and it has even been suggested that the craft did not mean to launch a fatal attack, but to merely disorient and immobilize them, hence the fact that that they did not suffer any severe injury or death.
Then again, maybe this is all hallucinations and the result of trauma, tiredness, and stress in the war-torn environment. It could even just be a tall tale conjured up by Wall himself, as he is the only official witness, and although he claims that 25 other men witnessed this event none of these others seem to have ever been tracked down and independently interviewed. Just about the only thing known for sure is tht he was indeed a soldier in the Korean War in the area specified on the date specified, but after that no one knows. Although he swore an oath that his story is true, in the end we are really left to take the word of one witness. So was this just war time hallucinations, Soviet or Chinese experiments, or an actual attack by an otherworldly UFO? It is quite likely we will never have a concrete answer, and that this will just remain another curious account lost in the fog and history of warfare.
By all accounts it seems that troops in the Vietnam War were also absolutely plagued by UFO activity, and some of the most spectacular reports of alien encounters that seem to have occurred during the Vietnam War have to do with actual military engagements with UFOs. One such incident allegedly occurred on June 15, 1968, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam, where a patrol boat known as PCF-12, commanded by a Lieutenant Pete Snyder, was on a routine night patrol near Cua Viet. At 12:30AM, PCF-12 reportedly received a frantic distress call from another patrol boat in the vicinity, PCF-19, claiming that they were being attacked by unidentified lights they were calling “enemy helicopters,” which seemed odd because the North Vietnamese enemy were not known to utilize combat helicopters at the time.
Snyder ordered the PCF-12 to head for PCF-19’s position to offer assistance, and they as they closed in reported spotting in the sky two circular bright lights immersed in a “strange glow” hovering over PCF-19’s position. As they approached, one of the strange lights reportedly emitted a bright flash of light, after which PCF-19 exploded in a cascade of water and flying debris. Directly after the destruction of PCF-19, the two enigmatic lights were described as rapidly accelerating away towards the sea as PCF-12 scouted the area for any possible survivors of the carnage they had just witnessed. Two wounded men were found and recalled that the two UFOs had been trailing them for miles along the river. The survivors then claimed that they had decided to fire upon the threatening, mysterious objects, and that was when one of them had issued a piercing blast of light to obliterate the boat. At first it was thought by officials that the PCF-12 had been the victim of an enemy missile fired from shore, but a later AP dispatch from Saigon would quote a military spokesman as having attributed the loss of PCF-19 to an “unidentified object,” and not enemy coastal batteries or missiles.
The PCF-12 continued its patrol up the river and were soon approached by the same two unidentified lights, which took up positions hovering on the port and starboard sides around 300 yards away and 100 feet above the water. PCF-12 called in to headquarters to try and get an idea of what they were dealing with, but were met with the response that there were no aircraft in the area at the time. Realizing that these craft were not friendly, Snyder ordered his men to open fire on the lights, which apparently did little to faze or even slow them down, and PCF-12 began to retreat at full speed as the two mysterious aircraft tailed and stalked them, flickering in the night the whole time. Second engine man Jim Steffes would later claim that he got a good look at the craft and described them as having “a rounded front like an observation helo,” and what looked like “two crewman sitting side by side.”
Strangely, although no weapons could be seen mounted on the unidentified aircraft, PCF-12 nevertheless found itself being fired upon. Steffes remembered seeing tracer rounds piercing up into the night from the nearby base Point Dume, with their targets being what he said were other far-off blinking circular lights whizzing about in the sky above. Eventually, a group of Phantom F4 fighter jets arrived to converge upon and chase off the strange lights that were plaguing PCF-12 out to sea, leaving the crew to wonder what in the hell had just happened.
At roughly the same time, another very strange incident was unfolding out in the South China Sea with an Allied ship of the Royal Australian Navy, the HMAS Hobart, which was patrolling near Tiger Island, about 20kms off Cap Lay and reported sighting up to 30 unidentified slow-moving lights hovering in the night sky near their ship, which were at first thought to be Russian-built M-14 ‘Hound’ helicopters, but upon closer inspection it could be seen that they were not. US 7th Air Force Phantom fighter-bombers were sent to engage, supported by generous anti-aircraft fire from the ground. The lights flew out to sea as they were pursued by the fighters, which fired upon them mercilessly along with several other military ships in the area, which unfortunately contributed to the friendly fire incident in which a U.S. swift boat was sunk by missiles, killing 5 of the 7 crew.
The HMAS Hobart was prepped for battle when the radar room detected an incoming unidentified aircraft coming in fast with no identification number to mark it as friend or foe. Word soon came in that the craft was “friendly,” but it was then that a missile struck the ship to kill one and injure two others, followed by a barrage of two more missiles. Whatever the craft was swiftly fled the scene before it could be shot down. In the meantime, F4 jets scrambled about firing upon the lights, joined by a hail of anti-aircraft fire from the ground, with attempts to communicate with whoever was onboard the mystery craft going unanswered. Eventually, the lights floated off and the fighter pilots were ordered back to base. The following morning, a complete search of the area turned up not a single shred of wreckage of an enemy helicopter, or any other enemy aircraft for that matter, despite the intense fighting that had occurred. The complete and utter lack of any wreckage of any aircraft was baffling considering that these enemies had come under such resistance and been met with so much concerted, relentless fire. The Royal Australian Navy News would later confirm:
No physical evidence of helicopters destroyed has been discovered in the area of activity nor has extensive reconnaissance produced any evidence of enemy helicopter operations in or near the DMZ.
There was little confidence among the men engaged in the incident that the aggressors had been “enemy helicopters” as was at first claimed. After all, if that were the case they should have been decimated by the potent retaliatory force displayed upon their arrival and attacks. There was also no trace whatsoever of helicopters at the time in the area before or during the incident and no wreckage afterwards. A skipper aboard the Hobart during the baffling engagement would later claim that it was certainly not enemy helicopters, expressing his doubt of such a theory by saying:
Neither before nor after the incident … was there any report by any of the ships of a helicopter being there [around Tiger Island]. Now having said that, the captain of one of the American ships told me later at Subic Bay that he thought there were helicopters there, but the fact is he didn’t report, and if he believed there was a helicopter … it was his duty to report it at the time, but there was no report.
Whatever the lights were that caused so much chaos continued to be sighted sporadically for months afterwards along the DMZ, furtively skirting around the area, wandering back and forth over the line, and baffling those who saw them. They were often sighted by radar roaming up and down the coast, and apparently no one could quite figure out what they were. They appeared on radar to be low, slow moving objects just like helicopters, but often there would be no visible confirmation or they would not look at all like helicopters. They were also prone to just disappearing into thin air, and jets scrambled to intercept the objects would arrive to find nothing there. Troops on the ground would sometimes witness the lights appear and disappear out of nowhere, and in one such case American artillerymen reported seeing a group of mysterious lights along the Ben Hai River, but when they had opened fire on them the objects had suddenly vanished as if they had never been there at all. At no point did anyone report seeing an actual helicopter, and the strange objects were always described as moving lights, often hovering erratically or moving in sudden bursts of speed inconsistent with a helicopter.
The origin of the strange lights remains unknown to this day. There were theories at the time that somehow a misreading of radar signals had occurred, which had then made other friendly vessels appear to be slow moving flying blips, or that the North Vietnamese had more helicopter power than had been previously assumed. In the end the official explanation was that it was all due to atmospheric disturbances or possible enemy helicopter activity, coupled with panicked friendly fire, and there have also been theories that it was all due to bird flocks or even insect swarms, but does any of this really match up to what occurred? Would trained Navy and fighter jet personnel go to engage such mundane phenomena? What hit the Hobart? Indeed what attacked the PCF 12 and 19 at precisely the same time? If there were enemy helicopters involved where was all the wreckage, why were they never successfully shot down, and wouldn’t these trained men know helicopters when they saw them? It is also strange that an enemy helicopter would so brazenly venture over the heavily defended DMZ, and it would be strange that they should fly around with their lights on all of the time for hours on end. In the case of the Hobart it seems obvious that this was some sort of concerted attack, but by who or what remains open to debate and speculation.
It is interesting that these reports make mention of “enemy helicopters,” as this was a term used so often to describe any unidentified lights in the sky in Vietnam that it became sort of a code word for “UFO,” regardless of any relation the object had to an actual helicopter, becoming sort of a catch-all phrase for anything weird in the sky. The fact that the Viet Cong were not known to use helicopters made it a perfect way to explain discreetly when men were seeing something in the sky that shouldn’t be there. On October 16, 1973, the USAF Chief of Staff, General George S. Brown, gave a press conference in Illinois where he addressed this terminology to some extent when asked about UFOs in Vietnam, saying:
I don’t know whether this story has ever been told or not. They weren’t called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters. And they were only seen at night and they were only seen in certain places. They were seen up around the DMZ [demilitarized zone] in the early summer of ’68. And this resulted in quite a little battle. And in the course of this, an Australian destroyer took a hit and we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves when this had all been sorted out. And this caused some shooting there, and there was no enemy at all involved but we always reacted. Always after dark.
Another comment on the matter was made by a patrol boat captain by the name of Bill Cooper, who served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. During a UFO conference in Los Angeles in 1989, Cooper would say of his own experiences:
After about five months I was sent up north to the DMZ, to a place called Qua Vieaf [perhaps Qua Viet] on the Tacan [sic] river …. It was while there that I discovered that there was a tremendous amount of UFO and alien activity in Vietnam. It was always reported in official messages as ‘enemy helicopters’. Now any of you who know anything about the Vietnam war know that the North Vietnamese did not have any helicopters especially after our first couple of air raids into North Vietnam [during 1965]. Even if they had, they would not have been so foolish as to bring them over the DMZ, because that would have ensured their demise.
Another American ship was not directly attacked, but nevertheless allegedly had a very intimidating and threatening encounter with an Unidentified Underwater Submersible, or USO. In 1974 the ammunitions ship the USS Kilauea was operating in the Indian Ocean along with a destroyer and a carrier, and the witness claims that one evening at around 9PM he had been on deck with two friends looking up at the brilliant array of stars in the night sky. Their attention was drawn to the eerie beauty of the shifting light trails formed by phosphorus algae in the wake of the ship in formation in front of them, yet as they watched this light display of nature something else began glowing in the depths, becoming brighter and brighter until it became a blinding orange/yellow ball just under the surface. The mysterious blazing orb then spectacularly burst forth from the water to arch right over the top of the destroyer, just missing smashing into it, before crashing back into the ocean on the other side and sinking back into the dark depths. The witness would say of the puzzling, frightening incident:
We all just stared at each other with our mouths open. We could not believe what we saw, but I asked friends of mine who were on watch on the bridge if they saw it and they all did. There was nothing ever reported that I know of though and we just quit talking about it. I bet the destroyer got a good look at it. It went right over the bridge of that ship and it was big. Maybe 150 to 200 feet in diameter. That was my big encounter.
It is all a very intriguing peek into some of the more mysterious aspects of these wars. Such tales lurk beyond the known history of these conflicts, hiding in the cracks and shadows and invisible, lost to the mists of time save for the few who are willing to share their bizarre tales. What went on out there in the skies above all of the fighting? What were these troopers and pilots dealing with? Were these cases some sort of experimental aircraft, the stresses of combat playing tricks on the imagination, or something altogether more bizarre? The true answers have been buried by history and lost to the mysterious shadows of history.
The blue areas on this map of Mars are regions where NASA missions have detected subsurface water ice (from the equator to 60 degrees north latitude). Scientists can use the map – part of the Subsurface Water Ice Mapping project – to decide where the ... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Planetary Science Institute.
Water will be one of the most important resources for human explorers on Mars. They’ll need it for drinking, propellant, breathing, and more. It makes sense to land near a spot where there’s water ice close to the surface.
NASA has released a new map of Mars’s northern hemisphere showing all the places where subsurface water ice has been detected, some of which are surprisingly close to the equator, as well as surprisingly close to the surface. This map could decide the first human landing site.
Earlier and later HiRISE images of a fresh meteorite crater 12 meters, or 40 feet, across located within Arcadia Planitia on Mars show how water ice excavated at the crater faded with time. The images, each 35 meters, or 115 feet across, were taken in November 2008 and January 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Early on during the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission, which arrived at Mars in 2006, scientists started finding evidence of subsurface water ice being exposed from recent impacts, showing up as bright white in the high-resolution images from the new spacecraft. While scientists were fairly certain there was ice below the surface at high latitudes of Mars, they were surprised to find that the ice was also present closer to the equator.
But whenever you’re looking for exposed subsurface ice on the Red Planet, you have to look fast. It doesn’t take long for ice — or water – to sublimate away because of the thin atmosphere on Mars.
The ice-exposing impact crater at the center of this image is an example of what scientists look for when mapping places where future astronauts should land on Mars. It’s one of several such impacts incorporated into the latest version of a series of NASA-funded maps of subsurface water ice on the Red Planet.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Scientists have now combined data from several NASA missions, including MRO, 2001 Mars Odyssey, and the now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor. The project is called SWIM, Subsurface Water Ice Mapping. The project has just released its fourth set of maps, and NASA and JPL say these are the most detailed water ice maps since the project began in 2017.
Using a mix of data sets, scientists have identified the likeliest places to find Martian ice that could be accessed from the surface by future missions.
“These ice-revealing impacts provide a valuable form of ground truth in that they show us locations where the presence of ground ice is unequivocal,” said Gareth Morgan, SWIM’s co-lead at the Planetary Science Institute, in a JPL press release. “We can then use these locations to test that our mapping methods are sound.”
These Mars global maps show the likely distribution of water ice buried within the upper 3 feet (1 meter) of the planet’s surface and represent the latest data from the SWIM project. Buried ice will be a vital resource for astronauts on Mars, serving … Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSI
The new maps reveal what scientists believe are masses of subsurface frozen water along Mars’ mid-latitudes. The northern mid-latitudes are especially attractive because a thicker atmosphere exists there than most other regions on the planet. A thicker atmosphere would aid in slowing down an incoming spacecraft. NASA says the ideal astronaut landing sites would be a sweet spot at the southernmost edge of this region – far enough north for ice to be present but close enough to the equator to ensure the warmest possible temperatures for astronauts in an icy region.
“If you send humans to Mars, you want to get them as close to the equator as you can,” said Sydney Do, JPL’s SWIM project manager. “The less energy you have to expend on keeping astronauts and their supporting equipment warm, the more you have for other things they’ll need.”
The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this image of a new, 8-meter (26-foot)-diameter meteorite impact crater in the topographically flat, dark plains within Vastitas Borealis, Mars, on November 1, 2008. The crater was made sometime after Jan. 26, 2008. Bright water ice was excavated by, and now surrounds, the crater. This entire image is 50 meters (164 feet) across. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Back in 2009, data from several instruments on MRO detected and confirmed highly pure, bright ice exposed in new craters, ranging from 1.5 feet to 8 feet deep, at five different Martian sites. Scientists said they were able to figure out, given how long it took that ice to fade from view, that the ice was about 99 percent pure ice.
Over the years, MRO’s wonderful, high-resolution camera, HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has continued to study fresh impact craters, where meteoroids may have excavated chunks of ice. For the latest maps for the SWIM project, HiRISE data was incorporated to provide the most detailed perspective of the ice’s boundary line as close to the equator as possible. Another instrument on MRO, the Context Camera, which provides a big-picture, background view of the terrain, provides data that further refines the northern hemisphere maps.
Detailed image of large-scale crater floor polygons, caused by desiccation process, with smaller polygons caused by thermal contraction inside. The central polygon is 160 metres in diameter, smaller ones range 10 to 15 metres in width and the cracks are 5-10 metres across. Credit: NASA/JPL
In addition to ice-exposing impacts, scientists also look for “polygon terrain,” where the seasonal expansion and contraction of subsurface ice causes the ground to form polygonal cracks. Seeing these polygons extending around fresh, ice-filled impact craters is yet another indication there’s more ice hidden beneath the surface at these locations.
“The amount of water ice found in locations across the Martian mid-latitudes isn’t uniform; some regions seem to have more than others, and no one really knows why,” said Nathaniel Putzig, SWIM’s other co-lead at the Planetary Science Institute. “The newest SWIM map could lead to new hypotheses for why these variations happen.”
In this artist’s concept, NASA astronauts drill into the Martian subsurface. The agency has created new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts.
Credit: NASA
He added that it could also help scientists tweak models of how the ancient Martian climate evolved over time, leaving larger amounts of ice deposited in some regions and lesser amounts in others.
SWIM’s scientists hope the project will serve as a foundation for a proposed future mission, called Mars Ice Mapper. This would be an orbiter with a powerful subsurface radar that could search for near-surface ice beyond where HiRISE has confirmed its presence.
This artist’s rendering shows the star HR 8799 and one of its four planets, HR 8799c. It illustrates the system at an early stage of evolution. It also shows the star's dusty disk and rocky inner planets. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics
When the JWST activated its penetrating infrared eyes in July 2022, it faced a massive wish-list of targets compiled by an eager international astronomy community. Distant, early galaxies, nascent planets forming in dusty disks, and the end of the Universe’s dark ages and its first light were on the list. But exoplanets were also on the list, and there were thousands of them beckoning to be studied.
But one distant solar system stood out: HR 8799, a system about 133 light-years away.
Why this system over others? 15 years ago astronomers discovered three exoplanets orbiting the star. Not long after they announced a fourth, all detected with direct imaging. They’re all massive planets on wide orbits, which are rare. The HR 8799 system is also young, another important point.
The fact that they were discovered 15 years ago is also important; it means we have observations of these planets that span a lengthy time. This type of data is critical to understanding other solar systems because the duration of the data paints a more complete picture.
However, it also poses more questions and whets our appetite for more answers.
That’s why the JWST observed the system recently. Its MIRI instrument and its coronagraph can perform the kind of high-contrast imaging needed to understand the system better.
HR 8799 is 1.5 times more massive than the Sun and is almost five times more luminous. It’s also surrounded by a debris disk and is only about 30 million years old. Young solar systems are important because they can reveal the intricate details behind planet formation, one of the things the JWST was built to focus on.
The four planets are HR 8799 b, c, d, and e. They’re all massive planets, between 5.7 and 9.1 Jupiter masses, barely below the point where deuterium fusion takes place, making them brown dwarfs. They range from 16 to 71 astronomical units away from the star, and have orbits from about 45 to about 460 years. All four of them have radii of about 1.2 Jupiter radii.
A portrait of the HR8799 planetary system as imaged by the Hale Telescope. A fourth planet was eventually discovered. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory.
Massive giant planets that follow large orbits greater than 5 AU are rare. So every instance of these types of planets is important. MIRI’s high contrast imaging can open up a new window on these types of systems and allowing scientists to characterize them more fully. Mid-infrared observations of the system have been difficult up until now. Not only that, but the JWST’s angular resolution makes the observations even more powerful.
What did the JWST find?
“Overall, the MIRI images of the HR 8799 system yield a very different vision than in the near IR, with the clear detection of the four planets, together with a localized but extended central emission,” the authors write.
The JWST was able to refine what we already know about some aspects of this system. The main objective of this work was to characterize the planetary atmospheres better.
While there has been some uncertainty around the nature of the planets, and if they are brown dwarfs, the JWST observations put that idea to rest. “Their colors indicate that these four giant planets differ from field brown dwarfs,” the authors write.
An artist’s depiction of the relative sizes of the Sun, a low-mass star, a brown dwarf, Jupiter, and the Earth. While there was some initial uncertainty over the nature of the planets around HR 8799, the JWST images confirmed them as planets rather than brown dwarfs. Image Credit: Jupiter: NASA,ESA,and A. Simon (NASA,GSFC); Sun and Low-Mass Star: NASA,SDO; Brown Dwarf: NASA,ESA,and JPL-Caltech; Earth: NASA; Infographic: NASA and E. Wheatley (STScI)
Their temperatures range from 900 K to 1300 K, with HR 8799 b being fainter and cooler. The JWST measurement’s shows that planet b’s temperature is lower than previous observations showed, an indication of the telescope’s greater power. MIRI also identified two atmospheric chemicals unequivocally: H2O and CO. The authors say there’s a debatable detection of methane, and that’s additional evidence that they’re planets not brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs always show the signature for methane at these temperatures.
The JWST’s MIRI instrument was built with different filters. They were partly designed to investigate the presence of ammonia, which is a solid biosignature on terrestrial planets. Unfortunately, these four planets are a little too hot for ammonia to stand out. “As a result, the current data cannot conclude on the detectability of the ammonia feature in the HR 8799 planets,” the paper states. If it had detected ammonia, it would be headline news.
This is one of the JWST’s MIRI images of HR 8799 and its four planets. It won’t grace the cover of a magazine; it’s a scientific image. Image Credit: Boccaletti et al. 2023.
The HR 8799 system is also noteworthy for its debris disk. It’s unusual in that it has two belts. Researchers have wondered if the inner edge of the outer belt was caused by a fifth planet with a mass between Jupiter’s and Saturn’s. Others thought it might be a dust clump.
But the JWST shows that it’s a background object, and seems to have ended the debate. “With a new data point, 4.44 years apart from the former detection, we can now safely conclude that this is a background object,” the authors write.
The powerful filters on the JWST’s MIRI instrument ended the debate about a potential fifth planet at HR 8799. This MIRI image helped determine that the object is in fact a background object. Image Credit: Boccaletti et al. 2023.
This was the JWST’s first look at a young exoplanetary system with its MIRI instrument, including its filters and its coronagraph. “The MIRI instrument onboard JWST is now offering high-contrast imaging capacity at mid-IR wavelengths, thereby opening a completely new field of investigation to characterize young exoplanetary systems,” the authors explain.
As such, the main thrust of the work was to test the observations and different algorithms to determine how to best use it in future work, and how to interpret the results. For example, measuring a planet’s flux successfully means accounting for how the coronagraph attenuates the images, depending on a planet’s position.
These observations contribute to using the instrument more effectively. Ironically, MIRI’s coronagraph can be so sensitive that understanding its images of young stellar systems can be challenging. The use of the instrument is only in its infancy, and the coronagraphs extreme sensitivity “can make the detection and the interpretation of young system observations very challenging, not mentioning the confusion related to background galaxies,” the authors write.
The authors point out that there’s still room for improvement, and these results will only lead to improved future results.
Former US intelligence officer David Grusch testified before Congress during the July 2023 UAP hearing, stating that we have numerous spacecraft of non-human origin. If this is the case, one might wonder if any contact has been established between humans and these extraterrestrial species. There have been persistent rumors suggesting that the US government may have signed treaties with these extraterrestrials and has been engaged in collaborative efforts with them over an extended period.
According to a rather extraordinary claim made by former US government consultant Timothy Good, it is alleged that the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had three clandestine meetings with extraterrestrials. Good claimed Eisenhower met aliens at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954. In more recent times, former Israeli Space Head Haim Eshed stated that aliens and the U.S. government had reached some type of deal to stay quiet about their experiments on Earth and secret facilities on Mars. Eshed went on to claim the existence of a “Galactic Federation” and implied that then-President Trump was on the brink of making significant revelations in this regard.
Video Evidence
During a podcast with former Fox News anchor Clayton Morris on his show Redacted, Joshua Reid, a former United States Navy serviceman with a background in missile weapons defense systems, brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. He opened the conversation by referencing his personal experiences in the Navy, specifically during the years 2004 to 2006. Reid’s background made him intimately familiar with topics related to secret space projects, a subject that has piqued his interest for over two and a half decades.
It is worth noting that Joshua Reid’s extensive research in the field of UAPs and classified information has led him to the inner workings of certain government activities. His extensive four-year investigation revealed a disconcerting pattern. It appeared that military technology, particularly in special access programs, was unintentionally making its way to foreign adversaries, including China. This exchange of classified information seemed to involve universities and professors who were receiving grants to reverse engineer technologies from these programs.
The remarkable twist in this story was that Hillary Clinton’s emails were potentially facilitating the sale of this classified information to China and other foreign entities. China would fund universities, enticing professors to divulge information on special access programs. This enabled them to advance their technology rapidly, potentially reaching parity with the United States.
Former Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, well-versed in these special access programs, played a crucial role in this unfolding drama. He represented David Grusch and became a central figure in the whistleblower saga. According to Reid, multiple whistleblowers were involved, with two possessing firsthand information and tangible evidence. The fear of repercussions led these individuals to testify in front of congressmen, notably, Indiana Congressman André Carson. However, it was not until these whistleblowers presented video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials that congressmen took their claims seriously.
The impact of these videos was profound. Congressmen were visibly shaken, with one trembling and another drinking water profusely. This sudden shift in demeanor signified that the evidence was both extraordinary and unsettling. The whistleblowers were introduced to Inspector General McCullough, who had an extensive background in the very special access programs at the center of the controversy.
“I’ve heard that we can confirm this later, but from what I’m hearing, André Carson is this Congressman that they testified in front of, along with a few others. The Congressman didn’t take these guys seriously, but what ended up happening is they pulled out the evidence, a DVD, and they showed these congressmen video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials. After these videos were shown to congressmen, they were noticeably shaken in fear. One of them was holding a piece of paper and could not stop shaking. Another was drinking water profusely, and this is when they began to take this very, very seriously and introduce these gentlemen to the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, McCullough. Hence, he enters the picture as someone who understands these SAP programs, has been read into these programs from back in the day, and is now representing these gentlemen.”
Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He posed the question of where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.
Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.
Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He asked Reid where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.
Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.
One of the prominent UFO researchers who has been sharing insider knowledge on UAPs is investigative journalist Ross Coulthart. It is quite uncertain if Coulthart possesses this DVD evidence but he did reveal that there exists a huge UFO in the possession of the United States that cannot be moved, and he knows the location of the craft. Ross mentioned the existence of non-human intelligence engaging with Earth for a long time and the recovery of certain objects, but he could not disclose specific details due to concerns about revealing advanced technologies.
In a recent episode of “The UFO Podcast,” host Andy engaged in a thought-provoking conversation with Ross. The discussion centered around the secrecy surrounding UFO sightings and government knowledge. Ross, who has deep insights into the matter, shared his perspective on why certain details remain undisclosed.
Andy began by addressing a critical question that has been on the minds of many UFO enthusiasts: the location of the mysterious craft. He asked Ross whether he could reveal where the craft was being held.
Ross responded: “Let me tell you, I can’t tell you the country it’s in; it’s not America. But what I can tell you is that the place where it is kept is used for another purpose that is a laudatory purpose that’s as much in your interests in your country in the UK as it is in mine in Australia and as it is in America. The simple reasons are that there are other uses for the place where this object is stored, and we could end up with a storm Area 51-type scenario if you came out and announced it.”
Ross went on to explain the potential consequences of revealing such information, including international incidents and threats to the safety of personnel at the facilities. He also emphasized the importance of protecting sources, drawing on his experience as a journalist dealing with sensitive intelligence.
Interestingly, Steve Sprague, a UFO researcher who studied the UAP phenomenon for 30 years, claimed that an aerospace executive would come forward and share the information during the July 2023 Congressional Hearing on UAPs. This unidentified insider is described as a C-level executive within the United States-based company, which, according to Sprague, is a top firm reverse-engineering alien technology.
According to the insider, aliens not only exist but have been present on Earth for at least five millennia, if not longer. Startlingly, the individual revealed the existence of at least two civilizations currently residing on our planet: humans and a group known as the “Ganzi,” originating from a distant part of our galaxy, roughly forty light years away. The Ganzi are characterized as technologically advanced beings who possess knowledge far surpassing humanity’s capabilities.
The insider also touched upon significant presidential briefings that have taken place, shedding light on the United States government’s awareness of these developments. On various occasions, President Biden was reportedly briefed on advanced technologies recovered from the Ganzi. The briefings included demonstrations of lasers capable of remarkable feats, such as extracting elements directly from ore and analyzing biological and geological data.
Videos of these briefings purportedly exist, with one showing Biden interacting with three Ganzi beings through a small device placed in his ear. Notably, one of the individuals accompanying the beings was John Podesta, who later assumed the role of Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. The insider also linked breakthroughs in fusion energy and laser technology to the company’s efforts in reverse-engineering Ganzi technology.
Sprague wrote,
“Date 4 – May 19, 2022, Biden is now in Alaska and stopped off to refuel at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. This video is the most incredible of all. Biden meets with three of the Ganzi. Biden puts a small device in his ear and a conversation occurs without sound. The video lasts for nine minutes and then four people enter the area. One of the people is John Podesta. The other three are unknown. The beings leave and the video ends. In September of 2022, Biden names Podesta as the Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. December 14, 2022, America has a breakthrough in fusion. To achieve this scientific feat – a laser is used. This laser has ‘unique’ properties.” (Source)
Sprague’s claims cannot be verified; however, it is certain that there exists an alien craft, and the United States has successfully accessed its interior. Dr. James Lacatski, a retired DIA intelligence officer who established the UFO program that operated from 2008 to 2010, has confirmed this. He stated that the craft possesses a streamlined configuration suitable for aerodynamic flight but lacks conventional features such as an engine, wings, intakes, exhaust, or fuel tanks.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
NASA knows there is a spinning and glowing artificial object hiding in the Kuiper Belt
NASA knows there is a spinning and glowing artificial object hiding in the Kuiper Belt
On May 12, 1994 astronomers Michael Irwin and Anna Jitk were working at the observatory in the Canary Islands observing the Kuiper Belt when they spotted something and it glowed and dimmed in a regular rhythm every 5 and a half hours and according to science this object shouldn't even exist.
On April 7, 2016, the NASA team running NASA’s New Horizons mission were waiting nervously. The spacecraft was about to enter the outermost reaches of our solar system.
They'd aimed toward Pluto. Which lives in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt. Just before arriving at the dwarf planet, the team noticed an object, discovered by the astronomers in 1994, nearby. And it was acting very strange. This object, whatever it was, was spinning faster than everything else around it. Too fast. Artificially fast. And the object reflected light in an odd way.
New Horizons changed course to do a fly-by. They wanted a better look at this bizarre behavior. But as the spacecraft approached the object, all communications went down.
The New Horizons spacecraft suddenly put itself into safe mode. Nothing was broken but NASA wasn't able to see or hear anything.
Something or someone was controlling it and blocking the signal and if there is someone controlling the object, they don't want to be seen and of all the places in the solar system the Kuiper belt is the best place to hide.
Whoever it was did not want NASA to know they were here and that they’ve been watching us for a very long. time.
Even though NASA did lose contact with New Horizon at one point in time it is not a surprise that there's no official record of New Horizons breaking down.
When high-ranking officials whisper secrets, hidden for decades, and Congress sheds light on age-old mysteries, there’s a seismic shift. At the heart of this change, there’s George Knapp, an investigative journalist who’s had an up-close encounter with the truth.
In the 1980s, Area 51 was mostly unknown, a mere spot in the Nevada desert. That changed with two names: Bob Lazar and John Lear. They brought to the public’s attention tales of reverse engineering alien craft, stoking the fires of UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists. While many dismissed Lazar’s accounts as fabrications, George Knapp, a seasoned journalist, couldn’t simply look away.
Throughout his career, Knapp navigated the intricate web of UFO lore, whistleblower accounts, and government silence. His encounters with David Grusch, an intelligence officer, became especially significant. Grusch unveiled his whistleblower complaint that disclosed a multi-decade UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. In the presence of high-ranking bosses, Grusch attended a UFO conference, shedding light on these covert operations.
The Mysterious Mantell UFO Incident by Crashed Pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell (1948) - FindingUFO
The Pilot Who Chased a UFO... and died - Thomas Mantell
Such testimonies weren’t isolated events. There were congressional hearings where pointed questions were asked about extraterrestrial technology and biologics. Eyebrows raised at the mention of non-human entities associated with UFO crash sites. Even more startling were revelations of unidentified aerial phenomena showing interest in nuclear technology.
This isn’t merely a tale of unverified accounts. Behind the stories lies a deeper truth: a government possibly sitting on groundbreaking information. Are they safeguarding national security, or is there more to the story? As Knapp’s reporting suggests, there might be people behind the scenes who possess knowledge far beyond what’s publicly known.
In recent years, the conversation has changed. UFOs, once a fringe topic, are now discussed openly in mainstream media. The public’s interest has surged, eager for answers to questions that might reshape humanity’s understanding of itself and the cosmos.
Video:
The UFO Reporter Part 2: The Files of George Knapp | NewsNation Prime
Yet, as Knapp reminds us, the journey to truth is layered. “It would be interesting if we could have a much larger investigation by someone else,” he mused. And while the path ahead remains uncertain, one thing is clear: this enigma warrants our attention.
With researchers like Knapp and Jeremy Corbell at the forefront, sharing testimonies of whistleblowers and unearthing more pieces of the puzzle, the future promises revelations that could be both astonishing and transformative.
Planet formation is a little like making a cake. If you haven't yet added an emulsifier, you will find that the liquids and fats separate in the bowl. Something like this happened when big celestial bodies in our Solar System were forming billions of years ago. Scientists now think Mars was once covered in a global magma ocean, and eventually, gravity began to separate the different stuff within this gooey ultra-hot blob into layers.
Data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission suggests that its center is more decadent than expected. Rather than one single, sizable liquid iron core, there’s evidence that it's much smaller but topped with a coating of molten rock.
LISTENING TO A CRASH
On Wednesday, the journal Nature published two papers based on data from Insight, which listened keenly to Mars’ interior rumblings beginning in 2018 until dust blanketed the stationary lander’s solar panels, cutting off its energy supply and forcing the mission to end in 2022.
The Red Planet is only the third celestial body, after Earth and the Moon, to have its interior significantly examined via seismological waves, the same science that tracks earthquakes on Earth. On Mars, tremors are called marsquakes. These perturbations come from internal activity or when a meteorite smacks into the planet’s surface, and they give scientists an idea about what is sitting in the middle of the planet, deep below any probe could survive. Waves travel differently depending on what they move through, and thanks to one particular meteorite strike, scientists have reimagined what lies deep beneath Mars’ surface.
The two new studies focused on a strike from a meteor that smacked into Mars almost on the opposite side to where Insight was located. The September 2021 event created waves that sliced through the planet and skimmed across the top of Mars's center. This reading, paired with other marsquake data, reveals that the iron core of Mars is smaller than previously estimated, owing to the coating of a molten rock layer.
Two new studies published on October 25, 2023 suggest that Mars’ liquid iron core (center) is surrounded by a 93-mile-thick (150 km) molten rock layer.
A critical aspect of the new work is the P wave that propagated through Mars. In seismology, there are two main types of waves. Imagine a slinky on a table, and you're holding one end. Push it, and the coil will compress and travel, known as a P wave. The meteorite impact was almost on the other side of Mars to where the InSight probe was stationed, so the lander picked up this P wave after it hit the molten rock layer on top of the iron liquid core.
Other marsquakes that happened much closer to Insight produced S waves. If instead of pushing a slinky, you move the end side to side, you create a vertical wiggle known as an S wave. Altogether, P wave and S wave data show that Mars's iron liquid iron core is actually much smaller than previously predicted, as it’s surrounded by a 93-mile-thick liquid layer made of silicate.
A UNIQUE POSSIBILITY
Molten rock touching molten iron “appears to be unique,” Amir Khan, a geophysicist at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich and lead author of one of the two studies, says in a Nature article describing the research. “You have this peculiarity of liquid–liquid layering, which is something that doesn’t exist on the Earth.”
The second study suggests there was an ancient, global magma ocean on Mars, a time in the planet’s ancient past when heavy iron gravitationally separated from the lighter silicates and formed the liquid iron core that has fascinated scientists since InSight’s surveys began.
Scientists think Mars’ core is entirely covered by the molten rock, but the estimate is based on the serendipitous blows that meteorites dealt to Mars while InSight was online. There’s no future seismological survey planned for Mars to add further checks, but at the very least, what scientists have learned with the lander will inform missions to other worlds in our Solar System.
NASA heeft een prachtige opname gepresenteerd in de ‘Astronomische Afbeelding van de Dag‘ van Komeet Encke, de tweede periodieke asteroïde ooit ontdekt in de geschiedenis, na de Komeet Halley, naast de emissienevel die officieel bekendstaat als IC 410.
Encke (2P/Encke) staat bekend om zijn korte omlooptijd onder de kometen die door ons zonnestelsel reizen, en heeft slechts 3,3 jaar nodig om een volledige omloop om de zon te voltooien en zichtbaar te worden.
Bovendien is deze komeet nauw verbonden met ten minste twee jaarlijkse meteorietenregens op aarde, de Noordelijke en Zuidelijke Tauriden, die beide eind oktober en begin november plaatsvinden.
Op de afbeelding is de schoonheid van Komeet Encke te zien, met zijn groene kleur, in de buurt van een jonge sterrenhoop en wolken in de emissienevel IC 410.
NASA benadrukt een indrukwekkende opname van een komeet naast een nevel
Mars’ liquid iron alloy core is surrounded by a layer of fully molten silicate (magma) about 150 km thick, according to a pair of papers published in the journal Nature.
An artist’s depiction of a liquid silicate layer wrapped around the Martian core.
Image credit: IPGP-CNES.
In 2021, an analysis of seismic data gathered by the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument onboard NASA’s InSight lander suggested the presence of a large but low-density core, composed of liquid iron and lighter elements such as sulfur, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
However, these results suggest that the core has a higher proportion of lighter elements than is feasible according to estimates of the abundances of these elements early in Mars’ formation history.
In the two new studies, the authors analyzed the latest batch of seismic data from InSight in combination with first principles simulations and geophysical models to produce their estimates for the size and composition of the Martian core.
They found that the liquid iron core of Mars is surrounded by an approximately 150 km-thick layer of near-molten silicate rock, the top of which was previously misinterpreted as the surface of the core.
This decrease in core radius implies a higher density than estimated in the earlier InSight study.
“The blanket not only insulates the heat coming from the core and prevents the core from cooling, but also concentrates radioactive elements whose decay generates heat,” said University of Maryland’s Professor Vedran Lekic.
“And when that happens, the core is likely to be unable to produce the convective motions that would create a magnetic field — which can explain why Mars currently doesn’t have an active magnetic field around it.”
Without a functional protective magnetic field around itself, a terrestrial planet such as Mars would be extremely vulnerable to harsh solar winds and lose all the water on its surface, making it incapable of sustaining life.
“This difference between Earth and Mars could be attributed to differences in internal structure and the different planetary evolution paths the two planets took,” Professor Lekic said.
“The thermal blanketing of Mars’ metallic core by the liquid layer at the base of the mantle implies that external sources are necessary to generate the magnetic field recorded in the Martian crust during the first 500 to 800 million years of its evolution,” said Dr. Henri Samuel of the French National Center for Scientific Research.
“These sources could be energetic impacts or core motion generated by gravitational interactions with ancient satellites which have since then disappeared.”
The findings support theories that Mars was at one time a molten ocean of magma that later crystallized to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the base of the Martian mantle.
The heat emanating from the radioactive elements would then have dramatically altered the thermal evolution and cooling history of the Red Planet.
“These layers, if widespread, can have pretty big consequences for the rest of the planet,” Professor Lekic said.
“Their existence can help tell us whether magnetic fields can be generated and maintained, how planets cool over time, and also how the dynamics of their interiors change over time.”
“The discovery of this stratification in the Martian mantle opens new research horizons, since the seismic data recorded by the SEIS instrument of the InSight mission will now be reconsidered in the light of this new paradigm,” said ISAE-SUPAERO’s Dr. Mélanie Drilleau.
A. Khan et al. 2023. Evidence for a liquid silicate layer atop the Martian core. Nature 622, 718-723; doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06586-4
H. Samuel et al. 2023. Geophysical evidence for an enriched molten silicate layer above Mars’s core. Nature 622, 712-717; doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06601-8
Idaho’s Unsolved Mystery: UFO Chase Ends in Military Showdown! #TruthIsOutThere
Idaho’s Unsolved Mystery: UFO Chase Ends in Military Showdown! #TruthIsOutThere
The picturesque landscapes of northern Idaho, with its expansive lakes and undulating mountains, aren’t just renowned for their beauty. For some, they harbor secrets that span both the modern age and ancient times. Among the captivating mysteries is the story of Carolyn, a resident of the region, whose tale of a mysterious sighting and an unexpected military confrontation has left many astounded.
On a seemingly ordinary day in the vicinity of Lake Pend Oreille, Carolyn’s afternoon took an unexpected turn. As she glanced towards the mountains, a strange object streaked across the sky. To the casual observer, it could have been dismissed as a meteor, but for Carolyn, it was clear this was no ordinary celestial body. The object was engulfed in flames, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake, moving faster than any aircraft she had ever seen. Intrigued and driven by an indomitable spirit of curiosity, she decided to follow it.
But what started as a pursuit of the unknown quickly took a dark turn. Rounding a bend, Carolyn was met not with answers, but with the chilling sight of military jeeps and armed personnel. The guns weren’t pointed to the skies from whence the object came, but squarely at her. The urgency and surprise in the encounter were palpable. Where had they come from? Why were they so suddenly on the scene? And most importantly, what were they hiding?
Carolyn’s account suggests that whatever she saw wasn’t just known to her, but was also of significant interest to the military. Rumors later swirled through the town of a military flatbed truck, making its way discreetly with an enigmatic cargo hidden beneath a tarp. Was it a fragment of the object she saw, or was it something else entirely?
The story is reminiscent of many UFO accounts where witnesses find themselves inadvertently crossing paths with official entities, seemingly eager to keep such incidents under wraps. What sets Carolyn’s story apart is the backdrop of Lake Pend Oreille’s rich history. The land, which is steeped in Native American culture, particularly the Kalispell tribe, has tales of the ‘star people’—beings from another realm or perhaps, another galaxy.
VIDEO:
UFO Witness Was Threatened By The US Military After Pursuing Mysterious Sighting | UFO Witness
While Carolyn’s confrontation with the military was unnerving, it’s also a testament to the lengths to which some entities might go to keep certain truths hidden. Whether the object was extraterrestrial or just a top-secret military asset is still up for debate, but for Carolyn and those who’ve heard her tale, the skies over Idaho will never look the same again.
In a world where the extraordinary is often drowned out by the noise of daily life, stories like Carolyn’s serve as a powerful reminder. Sometimes, all it takes is a glance towards the horizon to challenge what we know and push us into the realm of the unknown.
Bizarre aerial phenomenon baffles Ohio residents with sonic boom
Bizarre aerial phenomenon baffles Ohio residents with sonic boom
On October 23, 2023, an unusual event unfolded in the skies above Northwestern and Eastwestern Ohio, leaving residents perplexed.
Initially, attention was drawn to a mysterious white object descending through the daytime sky above Eastwestern Ohio which was obviously not a conventional aircraft, helicopter, drone, or meteor, the orb-like nature of this white object fueled speculation.
Soon after, a second swiftly moving object emerged above Northwestern Ohio, changing direction which means the object is under intelligent control. Adding to the intrigue, a sudden and thunderous sonic boom echoed through the air, further intensifying the mystery.
The first white object remains unexplained. Regarding the second unidentified entity, MrMBB333 proposed a hypothesis involving a potential crash into the Earth. However, alternative theories circulated, with some speculating that the resounding sonic boom might have been the result of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier. Nonetheless, this theory lacks conclusive evidence.
Whatever these two objects were, their presence in the sky constituted a highly uncommon occurrence, capturing the attention of onlookers on that October day.
When it comes to mystery and eeriness, there is no place quite like Solomon Islands. This remote island chain in the Pacific Ocean is located to the east of Papua New Guinea and consists of six major islands and hundreds of smaller islands. Guadalcanal is the largest island where the capital city Honiara is located. Much of what we know about the strange and chilling phenomena that routinely occur here was documented by an Australian aircraft engineer named Marius Boirayon, in his book titled, Solomon Island Mysteries. [1]
Marius had taken early retirement and married into the local community in the Solomon Islands. During the time he was living in Guadalcanal he came to know from the locals that the dense tropical forests of the islands are infested with hundreds of humanoid giants, some of whom are well over 15-feet tall! Sightings of these Sasquatch-like creatures are very common here, and no-one makes a big deal out of it. Terrifying stories of abduction and cannibalism practiced by the giants are remembered and passed on by the villagers. The giants have an unsavory reputation of occasionally abducting women and breeding with them, giving birth to human-giant hybrids, some of some still survive. I had written about Marius’s experiences with the Solomon Island giants in a previous article.
The Solomon Islands and Melanesia. Credit: Cruickshanks, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
As if the incredible tales of menacing humanoid giants are not enough to test the limits of our belief, Marius writes of another strange phenomenon that occurs routinely on the islands. Almost every other night, a bright, menacing, UFO - which the villagers call a “Dragon-Snake” – flies over the island, and often terrorizes the locals. During the time Marius was living in a remote seaside village in north-west Guadalcanal, he learnt that, “this creature came out of the mountains at night and flew around. Everyone in the whole area had feared this so-called Dragon-Snake for generations, as it had piercing red eyes that killed people and had been responsible for people going missing.” One night, while spear-fishing by torchlight with his friend Joseph, Marius got his first view of the Dragon-Snake.
“As I looked down the beach, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. About a kilometer away, there was a very bright luminous white object flying slowly over the water...After focusing in on the star-like, brilliantly lit object (with binoculars), I noticed that it was about 60-foot round and appeared to make no noise. We watched it for a couple of minutes until it submerged itself in the sea. Joseph told me to just wait for about ten minutes and I’d see it come back out again - which it did! When it rose out of the water, it was glowing twice as brightly as when it first went in. We continued to watch it with my binoculars as it returned back to the coast in the same direction as it came and disappeared out of sight over the top of the coconut trees.”
The UFO appeared almost every other night, and Marius recounted having seen it more than sixty times over a seven-month period. Once it flew noiselessly over Marius’s house, the brilliance of its white light illuminating the whole area. Not only could it fly at phenomenal speeds, it could also vanish instantly, almost as if it had cloaked itself! The locals said that the Dragon-Snake had been seen well over a century, but it exhibited a distinctly unfriendly and menacing attitude towards the islanders, because of which it was greatly feared. Marius was greatly mystified by these tales, as well by his own sightings. He wondered how many of the UFOs were actually there on the islands. Why did it go under the sea from time to time? What could be the reason for the killing and abduction of the natives?
A couple of disturbing incidents convinced Marius that the stories of abduction and injuries inflicted by the UFOs were not just tall tales meant for the entertainment of foreigners. One day Marius learnt from his friend Joseph that a fisherman had sustained grievous burn injury to his entire body from a UFO. Marius and Joseph visited the fisherman in the hospital, where he was lying on his bed in great pain, covered in bandages from head to toe. The fisherman recounted his story to Joseph in the Guadalcanal language.
“He told Joseph that he had been out fishing in his fiber-glass boat at about 3:00 am, when he saw the Dragon-Snake flying along. Foolishly, he started flashing his torch at it. That was when it flew over to him in an instant and hovered overhead. Panicking, he started his engine and took off to get away from it, but it followed him as he zigzagged his way back to shore. It was during this short pursuit to the beach, that the so- called Dragon-Snake fired some form of light at him, only partially hitting him…The fisherman said that when he drove his boat up onto the beach and ran into the bush, the Dragon-Snake followed him to where he was hiding behind a tree and hovered above him.”
It seems like the act of flashing the torch offended the UFO to the extent that it decided to injure the fisherman with a light beam. Of course, this is not the first time that the UFOs of Solomon Islands have tormented and terrorized the villagers, without much of a reason. It reveals an insensitive and sinister side of the UFOs that is often not observed or reported in other parts of the world.
The only other cases that I am aware of where UFOs were said to have inflicted severe burn injuries on humans, or even killed them, are those which were recorded during the UFO wave in Brazil in 1977-78. The MUFON archive in the Black Vault Encyclopedia Project contains a detailed report by UFO investigator Bob Pratt who had made more than ten field visits to Brazil between 1978 to 1993 with the express objective of collecting and translating documented information about the UFO incidents, and to interact with eyewitnesses. The report states,
“Operação Prato was a Brazilian Air Force investigation of a prolonged UFO wave that went on in Brazil in 1977-78. In the Prato investigation between October 1977 and January 1978, intelligence agents from the Air Force base in Belém in northern Brazil interviewed hundreds of witnesses in Colares and about thirty other villages north of Belém…
The men were sent to the Colares area only after several mayors complained that their villages had come under attack by UFOs and appealed to the Air Force for help. Many of the people had been burned by rays of light from UFOs that swarmed over the area. During the operation the agents themselves saw UFOs numerous times and took hundreds of photographs as well as several hours of motion picture films. Some of the films reportedly showed UFOs diving into or coming out of the waters of nearby Marajó Bay. The investigation lasted only four months but continued unofficially throughout much of 1978 because of the personal interest of the leaders of the investigators.
In 1997, long after he had retired as a lieutenant colonel, Hollanda decided he was no longer obligated to remain silent about Operação Prato and publicly discussed Operação Prato. He gave several interviews, including one with fellow researcher Cynthia Luce and me (Bob Pratt). He told us “many people” had been burned by UFOs during the UFO wave, both on the Colares Island side of Marajó Bay and on Marajó Island.... A doctor once told Belém researcher Daniel Rebisso Giese that a colonel had shown him many photos of people who had been burned….Wellaide Carvalho, the doctor in Colares at the time, told Daniel and me in 1993 that she had treated about forty people who had been burned and that two of them died. She said members of the Air Force team knew people had been burned.”[2]
Bob Pratt later wrote a book titled UFO Danger Zone (1996), where he described the harrowing encounters of the people of Colares with the UFOs during the 1977-78 wave, and the physical and psychological aftereffects of these experiences.
“Frequently, an encounter of the unhealthy kind peculiar to Brazil begins when a UFO appears without warning just above the head of someone at night, revealing itself in a burst of sudden daylight and then chasing the terrified man, woman or child as he or she flees in terror. At times, UFOs have tried to pull a victim up into their craft with some unseen force, and sometimes they've taken people away. They've also used grappling hooks to snag unfortunate souls, and dropped hot liquid on the arms and shoulders of others to make them let go of trees and bushes.
Some hapless victims have been paralyzed during encounters. Others have hidden, horror-stricken, as UFOs tried for hours to flush them out of their hiding places. Not even homes have been safe, as beams of lights from UFOs have pierced tile roofs like lasers and burned men and women inside.
Even when a person isn't injured, he or she is nearly always traumatized. They are confronted by a strange airborne machine with seemingly magical powers and humanoid creatures who try to take them away. Even the simple sighting of a fiery ball of light in the sky can be terrifying because almost everyone knows of someone who had been chased, hurt or killed by these things.”
Apparently, the UFOs that swooped down on the island of Colares in Brazil in 1977-78, and later extended to nearby locations, exhibited the same kind of terrorizing propensity as those of Solomon Islands. Could these be a specific bunch of rogue aliens who get a kick out of terrorizing hapless victims? Perhaps, they just can’t stop themselves from showing off their technological superiority and having a laugh at our expense? While abductions and genetic experiments have been reported in many UFO cases, there haven’t been too many instances of people being deliberately burnt or killed. This is kind of scary and one can only imagine the terror that the people of Colares went through and the deep scars it would have left in the collective memory.
Coming back to Marius’s adventures on Solomon Islands, sometime after the fisherman incident Marius heard on the radio news that two Catholic nuns had gone missing while walking along the road, a few kilometers east of the village where he lived. This greatly intrigued him. This region of Guadalcanal was renowned for the Dragon-Snake’s reputation for stealing people. Were the UFOs at it again? Or were the normally reclusive giants feeling the urge to breed with the villagers? These are the kinds of surreal issues that the Solomon Islanders grapple with. When an abduction happens, they try to narrow it down between giants or UFOs. They don’t think in terms of criminals or psychopathic nutcases on the loose, like the rest of us.
During one of his conversations with a local chief, Marius came to know that the Dragon-Snake comes out of a lake at the base of a waterfall, located high up on an unnamed mountain, around 8 km inland from the coast. For the sake of convenience, Marius named this mountain, “Mount Dragon”. After a bit of planning, he and Joseph set out on a difficult and dangerous trek through the dense, mountainous, rainforests, which were teeming with wild boars, snakes and leeches. After three days of arduous climbing on steep, slippery slopes, they caught sight of the waterfall lake below them. It was about half the size of a football field with reeds growing around its edge and a waterfall feeding it from above. They found a good viewing spot, and concealed themselves with leaves and twigs to avoid being spotted by the UFO and getting incinerated. Their efforts paid off, as Marius writes:
“It was nearly 9:45 pm when we first saw the light of the UFO glow in the water of the lake before it surfaced and, after moving to the edge of the lake, flew slowly northwards down the mountain range at a 45-degree angle, continuing along the length of the valley and, after a minute or so, disappearing out of sight. I remember that moment as being all the confirmation I needed of what the chiefs had told me – and the beginnings of a mind-altering realization. We had been waiting for it to return for about two hours when we saw the light of another UFO surfacing out of the lake. “What! Two of them! How many of them were there?” This one did not head north but instead went south along the valley and, shortly after, disappeared out of sight. It was approximately 2:30 am when, I presume, the one that went north emerged from the darkness and flew back up the valley, slowly climbing to the lake’s entrance and submerging itself in the lake, with the glow from the vehicle diminishing as it went deeper. I had been expecting the UFO that went south to return that night, but it didn’t.”
This is probably the only instance I know of where a UFO has been surreptitiously observed emerging from its subterranean entrance and re-entering the same entrance later at night. If this account is true – and I have no reason to believe otherwise – then it is a strong indication that the UFO phenomenon is largely driven by the inhabitants of a highly advanced underworld civilization, who prefer to keep themselves hidden from us. Marius also found out from a book kept in the Solomon Island Cultural Museum that the Solomon Islanders who had interactions with the “alien” beings flying these UFOs described them in a very similar fashion as other eyewitnesses from around the world.
“Upon arriving at the Solomon Island Cultural Museum, and after a few directions to this book, there it was! Fifteen pages of hand-drawn, detailed sketches of aliens, just like the ones we are all used to seeing on the television. An islander had compiled this short collection for the museum from different eyewitness accounts of these strange-looking creatures.”
Over time, working on tips and information received from the islanders, Marius identified five entrances on the islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita that the UFOs use to enter and exit their subterranean world. He believes that all these entrances lead to a vast, highly-advanced, subterranean civilization that we have no clue about. “Although there’s no shortage of extraterrestrial traffic around Planet Earth from other parts of the Galaxy”, he writes, “the majority of the UFO sightings that we Homo sapiens surface-dwellers see, are actually from extraterrestrial subterranean species that live beneath our planet. It’s a big world down there…”
He believes that these subterranean dwellers “were here several hundred thousand years before Homo sapiens arrived and they originally evolved here on Earth anyway. A long time ago, they and many other technologically advanced species, learnt that it is safer to live below the surface of the planet.”
Now, that is an astute observation, for it is indeed safer under the earth’s surface, where one can be sheltered from extreme temperature fluctuations, volcanic eruptions and high-energy radiation from space that causes harmful genetic mutations. However, one needs to be physiologically adapted to living in an environment with low oxygen and sunlight. Recent scientific discoveries indicate that subterranean life may be the most common form of life on the other planets of the Solar System. Surface living may be an exception, rather than the norm. In 2019, scientists found geological evidence of a “planet-wide groundwater system” on Mars. Pluto has an underground ocean below its thick frozen shell, as does Europa, the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 67 confirmed moons. These subsurface oceans may act as incubators of life. If alien life forms from the subterranean oceans or caverns of a different star system came to the earth thousands or millions of years ago, either on spaceships or by hitching a ride on interstellar comets, they would be inclined to fashion a home for themselves underground, within the vast aquifers or enormous cave systems.
Marius’s reckons that the giants of the Solomon Islands – who are sighted almost every other day somewhere on the island chain – also live under the surface of the earth, and move from place to place through extensive subterranean tunnels.
“The giants have vast cave systems running within most of the mountains of this 200-plus kilometer tropical jungle island. Some of the Guadalcanal giants live organized lifestyles with social structures, and I have come across many Guadalcanal people that believe they can go from east to west through their cave systems without seeing the light of day, and many believe that their population numbers in the thousands. The Guadalcanal islanders also believe that there is a huge city of them living inside or underneath the big mountains of the island.”
What I found most appealing about Marius’s accounts of the Solomon Island UFOs and giants is the conviction with which he claimed that both the giants and the UFOs inhabit a secret, subterranean civilization. This conviction stems not only from his own experiences and researches into this topic over a period of many years, but also the many interactions he had with many locals and eyewitnesses, who had nothing to gain by relating their incredible experiences and the stories they had heard from their ancestors.
In many parts of the world, the UFO phenomenon seems to go hand-in-hand with Sasquatch sightings. In other words, wherever Sasquatch sightings are frequent, or the legends of the giants and the dwarfs are deeply embedded in the local folklore, UFOs are also spotted from time to time. This could be because there are certain “hot spots” on the surface of the earth with multiple points of entry and exit to the subterranean civilization. The subterrestrials prefer to use these portals for their nocturnal adventures, and as such, we find a concentration of paranormal phenomenon in a specific region. Undoubtedly, Marius’s personal experiences in the Solomon Island takes us a step closer to unraveling this ongoing mystery, where answers are hard to come by.
References
[1] Marius Boirayon, "Solomon Island Mysteries: Accounts of Giants and UFOs in The Solomon Islands", 2009. [2] Operação Prato , MUFON archive in the Black Vault Encyclopedia Project, https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/MUFON/Pratt/prato.pdf
The inner structure of Mars, revealed: NASA discovers a molten layer wrapped around the planet's core - in breakthrough that could provide key clues to its formation
The inner structure of Mars, revealed: NASA discovers a molten layer wrapped around the planet's core - in breakthrough that could provide key clues to its formation
The discovery suggests Mars' core is denser and smaller than previous estimates
It may help to explain how Mars evolved and became the barren planet it is today
Like Earth, much of Mars' rocky insides remain somewhat of a mystery because the planet's interior is inaccessible to humans.
But a major new breakthrough could yet provide new insights into how Mars formed, evolved and became the barren world it is today.
That's because two new studies have helped to uncover a previously unknown molten layer wrapped around the planet's core.
The scientists involved compared it to a 'heating blanket' and say the discovery suggests the Martian core is likely to be smaller and denser than previously thought.
Their findings have been described as 'the most accurate and precise estimates so far of Mars' core and mantle structure'.
The inside of Mars: Data from NASA's Insight lander has helped to discover a molten layer wrapped around the Red Planet's core
Cutting open the Red Planet: Scientists compared it to a 'heating blanket' and say the revelation suggests the Martian core is likely to be smaller and denser than previously thought
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, with a 'near-dead' dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere.
Mars is also a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes, and evidence that it was even more active in the past.
It is one of the most explored planets in the solar system and the only planet humans have sent rovers to explore.
One day on Mars takes a little over 24 hours and a year is 687 Earth days.
Facts and Figures
Orbital period: 687 days
Surface area: 55.91 million mi²
Distance from Sun: 145 million miles
Gravity: 3.721 m/s²
Radius: 2,106 miles
Moons: Phobos, Deimos
Vedran Lekic, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland and co-author of one of the new studies, said: 'The blanket not only insulates the heat coming from the core and prevents the core from cooling, but also concentrates radioactive elements whose decay generates heat.
'And when that happens, the core is likely to be unable to produce the convective motions that would create a magnetic field — which can explain why Mars currently doesn't have an active magnetic field around it.'
Experts believe Mars once had a similar magnetic field to Earth which shut down billions of years ago and left behind only patches of magnetism thanks to magnetised minerals in the Martian crust.
Without a protective shield surrounding it, the Red Planet would then have been extremely vulnerable to harsh solar winds, causing it to lose all water on its surface and making it incapable of sustaining life.
Lekic believes the difference in internal make-up between Earth and Mars is likely to explain why the two planets took very different evolutionary paths, leading to life forming on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago.
'The thermal blanketing of Mars' metallic core by the liquid layer at the base of the mantle implies that external sources are necessary to generate the magnetic field recorded in the Martian crust during the first 500 to 800 million years of its evolution,' said the paper's lead author Henri Samuel, of the French National Center for Scientific Research.
'These sources could be energetic impacts or core motion generated by gravitational interactions with ancient satellites which have since then disappeared.'
The researchers added that the results would help to further scientists' understanding of how terrestrial planets such as Mars and the Earth form, as well as revealing more about what they are made of.
The Red Planet's internal structure was originally mapped by NASA's InSight mission — a probe which landed on Mars in November 2018 and concluded its mission last year.
Conclusion: The new studies support theories that Mars was once a molten ocean of magma which later crystallised to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the base of the planet's mantle
However, scientists are still pouring over data from the mission.
This is what helped to uncover the existence of a thin layer of molten silicates – rock-forming minerals which make up the crust and mantle of both the Earth and Mars – surrounding the Red Planet's liquid iron core.
With the new discovery of this layer, the researchers concluded that Mars' core is likely to be both denser and smaller than previous estimates indicated.
This assumption is also backed up by geophysical data and analysis of Martian meteorites.
A separate new study led by researchers at ETH Zürich in Switzerland also suggests that the liquid iron core is in fact surrounded by a 93-mile (150km)-thick layer of near-molten silicate rock, the top of which was wrongly thought to be the surface of the core.
How Mars evolved: The heat coming from these radioactive elements would have dramatically altered the thermal evolution and cooling history of the Martian world, experts say
Analysis of measurements from InSight suggested in 2021 that Mars had a low-density core made up of liquid iron and lighter elements such as sulfur, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
However, this doesn't fit with estimates of how abundant such lighter elements were at the time the Red Planet was formed.
The new studies support theories that Mars was once a molten ocean of magma which later crystallised to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the base of the planet's mantle.
The heat coming from these radioactive elements would then have dramatically altered the thermal evolution and cooling history of the Martian world, experts say.
'These layers, if widespread, can have pretty big consequences for the rest of the planet,' Lekic said.
'Their existence can help tell us whether magnetic fields can be generated and maintained, how planets cool over time, and also how the dynamics of their interiors change over time.'
The two new studies have been published in the journal Nature here and here.
Tools: The InSight lander (pictured) had three key instruments
Three key instruments allowed the InSight lander to 'take the pulse' of the Red Planet:
Seismometer: The InSight lander carried a seismometer, SEIS, which listened to the pulse of Mars.
This recorded the waves travelling through the interior structure of a planet.
Studying seismic waves tells us what might be creating the waves.
On Mars, scientists suspect that the culprits may be marsquakes, or meteorites striking the surface.
Heat probe: InSight's heat flow probe, HP3, burrowed deeper than any other scoops, drills or probes on Mars before it.
It was tasked with investigating how much heat is still flowing out of Mars.
Radio antennas:Like Earth, Mars wobbles a little as it rotates around its axis.
To study this, two radio antennas, part of the RISE instrument, tracked the location of the lander very precisely.
This helped scientists test the planet's reflexes and gave them information about how the deep interior structure affects the planet's motion around the sun.
Why doesn’t Mars have a magnetic field? If it did, the planet would be protected from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by our Sun. With a magnetic field, perhaps the Red Planet wouldn’t be the dry, barren world it is today.
It has long been believed that Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth does, but somehow the iron-core dynamo that generated it must have shut down billions of years ago.
But new seismic data from NASA’s InSight lander might change our understanding of Mar’s interior, as well as alter the view of how Mars evolved and changed over time. InSight’s data revealed the presence of a molten silicate layer overlying Mars’ metallic core. Scientists say this insulating layer is like a blanket that might prevent the core from producing a global magnetic field.
“The blanket not only insulates the heat coming from the core and prevents the core from cooling, but also concentrates radioactive elements whose decay generates heat,” said Vedran Lekic, a professor at the University of Maryland and co-author of a new paper published in Nature. “And when that happens, the core is likely to be unable to produce the convective motions that would create a magnetic field—which can explain why Mars currently doesn’t have an active magnetic field around it.”
Earth’s magnetic field comes from its core, where molten, electrically conducting iron flows beneath the crust. This magnetic field is global, meaning it surrounds the entire planet. Even though Mars is a rocky, terrestrial planet like Earth, Mars does not generate a magnetic field on its own, outside of relatively small patches of magnetized crust.
Without the protection a magnetic field provided, Mars’ atmosphere was stripped, and eventually, any water on the surface – even oceans – would have evaporated as water vapor in the atmosphere was lost to space, making it incapable of sustaining life.
InSight’s seismometer, SEIS, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure. Credit: NASA/JPL
NASA’s InSight mission deployed the first seismometer on the surface of Mars. It recorded “Marsquakes,” and it has also helped determine the layering and thickness of the planet’s crust, the structure of the mantle, and the size of Mars’ core and its composition. Data from InSight is helping planetary scientists to work out the internal structure of Mars. Lekic and his colleagues say that InSIght has now revealed, surprisingly, the molten silicate layer overlying the planet’s metallic core.
Silicates are rock-forming minerals that make up the crust and mantle of both Mars and Earth. The molten layer on Mars lies between the mantle and core. Earlier research with data from InSight revealed that the Martian core is molten but is larger than previously thought. With the discovery of this molten layer, the researchers say this explains “other geophysical data and analysis of Martian meteorites,” according to a press release from the University of Maryland.
They also theorize that Mars was at one time a molten ocean of magma that later crystallized to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the base of the Martian mantle. The heat emanating from the radioactive elements would then have dramatically altered the thermal evolution and cooling history of the red planet.
Mars’ interior as revealed by the NASA/DLR InSight lander. Image Credit: Cottar, Koelemeijer, Winterbourne, NASA
“These layers, if widespread, can have pretty big consequences for the rest of the planet,” Lekic said. “Their existence can help tell us whether magnetic fields can be generated and maintained, how planets cool over time, and also how the dynamics of their interiors change over time.”
The InSight lander mission officially ended in December 2022 after more than four years of collecting data on Mars. InSight was part of the overall effort to understand Mars and if it was habitable in the past. By probing the planet’s interior, it has revealed some of the planet’s geological history. Another finding by InSight’s magnetometer showed that the planet’s magnetic field may have been much stronger on the surface than orbital measurements showed, which strengthens the case for its potential ancient habitability.
As this new research indicates, analysis of the spacecraft’s observations continues.
“This new discovery of a molten layer is just one example of how we continue to learn new things from the completed InSight mission,” Lekic said. “We hope that the information we’ve gathered on planetary evolution using seismic data is paving the way for future missions to celestial bodies like the Moon and other planets like Venus.”
Io has 266 Active Volcanic Hotspots Linked by a Global Magma Ocean
Jupiter’s Io stands apart from the Solar System’s other moons, with its numerous volcanoes and its surface dominated by lava flows. Io’s surface volcanism was confirmed in 1979 when the Voyager spacecraft imaged it, but its volcanic nature isn’t duplicated anywhere else in our system. Tidal heating is behind the moon’s eruptive nature, driven by Jupiter’s powerful gravity, and by resonance with other moons. But is there a magma ocean inside Io?
A final answer to that question has been elusive, but new research supports the idea of a magma ocean.
NASA’s Juno mission has shifted its focus from Jupiter to the gas giant’s moons, beginning with the volcanic Io. It’s flybys are getting increasingly closer to the unique moon, and the decreasing distance is giving the spacecraft a better and better look. It’s identified 266 active volcanoes, and together, they’re evidence of a vast global ocean of magma according to new research.
A new study titled “Io’s polar volcanic thermal emission indicative of magma ocean and shallow tidal heating models” presented these results. The lead author is Ashley Gerard Davies from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The extreme level of volcanic activity on Io, the most volcanically active object in the Solar System, is the result of tidally-induced internal heating,” the authors write. That’s not a new conclusion, but there’s more to the research.
Juno’s Jovial Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument acquired the data behind this research. JIRAM is an image spectrometer, and was designed to probe Jupiter’s upper atmosphere in infrared, including the giant planet’s auroral regions. But now the focus has shifted to Io, and JIRAM is observing the moon’s widespread volcanic activity.
“Io is the most volcanic celestial body that we know of in our solar system,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “By observing it over time on multiple passes, we can watch how the volcanoes vary – how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, whether they are linked to a group or solo, and if the shape of the lava flow changes,” Bolton said in May 2023 when Juno came within about 35,500 km (22,000 miles) of Io.
Since then, Juno has closed the distance even more, and its latest pass brought it to within 12,000 km (7500 miles.) But it’s not just the proximity that is driving more discoveries. Juno follows a polar orbit, while previous observations of Io have been mostly confined to an equatorial plane. Why does that matter?
Scientists have been studying Io intently, trying to discover what drives its volcanic nature. They’ve developed detailed models of the moon, but haven’t been able to test them as rigorously as they can now. “Models predict enhanced heat flow at Io’s poles if tidal heating is deep in the mantle, and at lower latitudes if heating is predominantly in the asthenosphere, or a magma ocean is present,” the authors explain.
But now scientists have Juno’s data to work with, and its polar orbit is giving researchers a more complete look at the moon.
This figure from the research shows four images of Io from JIRAM. Two are from perijove 10 and show the south polar region at a resolution of 112 km/pixel (a & c.) The other two (c & d) are from perijove 43 and show the north polar region at a resolution of 21 km/pixel. Image b and d are JIRAM data overlain on Galileo/Voyager images. This new data from Io’s poles is critical to understanding the moon’s nature. Image Credit: Davies et al. 2023.
“The distribution of Io’s volcanic activity likely reflects the position and magnitude of internal tidal heating,” the authors write. Now that JIRAM has provided polar data, researchers have complete, global near-infrared coverage that reveals the distribution and the magnitude of thermal emission from Io’s actively erupting volcanoes. With that data, the researchers can probe the moon’s interior and models developed to explain it.
“This result is consistent with models of a global magma ocean or tidal heating in the shallow asthenosphere.”
From “Io’s polar volcanic thermal emission indicative of magma ocean and shallow tidal heating models” by Davies et al. 2023
The research uncovered differences in energy output between the poles and the more equatorial regions, and between the poles themselves. “On average, Io’s polar volcanoes individually generate less energy than volcanoes at lower latitudes; and the south polar volcanoes generate less energy per volcano than the north polar volcanoes,” the researchers explain.
This figure from the research shows the hot spot detections. They range in colour and size from blue up to yellow. Each increasing size and corresponding colour indicates greater spectral radiance. Image Credit: Davies et al. 2023.
Why are these findings significant? It’s because of previously developed models.
“We show that the distribution of volcanic heat flow from 266 active hot spots is consistent with the presence of a global magma ocean, and/or shallow asthenospheric heating,” the authors write.
This isn’t the first study to suggest that Io has a magma ocean. Previous research from 2009 based on Galileo’s magnetometer data showed that the moon must have a magma ocean about 50 km (30 mi) below the surface. But Galileo only did one flyby of the moon, leaving room for some doubt to creep in. More recent analysis of the same data strengthened the same conclusion, showing that the magma ocean is 50 km thick.
But there was always a little doubt cast on those conclusions because they lacked global infrared data. Now that scientists have that data, the case for a magma ocean is solidifying
After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos?
Asteroid Didymos (bottom left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL.
After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos?
NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) slammed into asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, changing its orbital period. Ground and space-based telescopes turned to watch the event unfold, not only to study what happened to the asteroid, but also to help inform planetary defense efforts that might one day be needed to mitigate potential collisions with our planet.
Astronomers have continued to observe and study Dimorphos, well past the impact event. However, Dimorphos is the smaller asteroid in this binary system, and is just a small moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the only telescope capable of visually distinguishing between the two closely orbiting asteroids. Now, astronomers have made follow-on observations on the system with JWST to see what happened to Didymos after the dust cleared.
In a new preprint paper, a team of scientists, led by Andrew Rivkin, the Investigation Lead for DART, explain how they used two instruments on JWST to measure spectra of Didymos about two months after the DART impact. One of their biggest takeaways is that Didymos and Dimorphos appear to be of the same composition, which is that of an ordinary chondrite. That’s the class of stony meteorites which account for over 80% of total meteorite falls on Earth. This means DART’s test was an extremely good proxy for the type of asteroids that might pose a threat one day.
“One of the benefits of using the Didymos system was definitely that we thought it was representative of most of what’s out there in its properties,” Rivkin told Universe Today via email. “People working on planetary defense often note that the ‘asteroid picks us rather than the other way around,’ but showing that what we did at Dimorphos is broadly applicable is very important.”
For the new observations, the scientists used NIRSpec – the near infrared spectrometer — and MIRI, the mid-infrared instrument, on November 28, 2022.
At the time of the observations, the centers of Didymos and Dimorphos were never separated by more than 0.1” from each other, from JWST’s vantage point. But the team did take advantage of Dimorphos being occulted by Didymos during the MIRI observations.
Median averaged slice through the MIRI MRS IFU showing Didymos. Note that Dimorphos was being occulted by Didymos during the entire period of MIRI observations.Credit: Rivkin et al, 2023.
“Didymos is roughly five times larger in diameter than Dimorphos and therefore it has roughly 25 times the cross-sectional area as Dimorphos,” the researchers wrote. “This size difference between the components means that roughly 96% of flux from the system typically comes from Didymos.”
The researchers said several lines of evidence suggest that the asteroid and its moon have similar compositions and the team concludes they “can reasonably estimate the composition of Dimorphos specifically from measurements of the Didymos-dominated flux.”
This image from the DART spacecraft of the light from asteroid Didymos and its orbiting moonlet Dimorphos. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DART Navigation Team
Given how hard it is to distinguish between Didymos and Dimorphos in long-range observations, I asked Rivkin if they were able to see any noticeable changes in the observations of Didymos after the impact to Dimorphos, given all the dust and debris from the impact. The results seem to indicate Didymos escaped mostly unscathed from DART’s impact of the asteroid’s moon.
“We have a lot of new results from observations of the Didymos system that are getting published (including this pre-print paper led by Theodore Kareta) talking about the tail development and evolution. It shows that after 25 days or so there was no extra brightness from debris within the Didymos system, and so by November 2022, observations of the system (including the JWST ones!) are pretty much all Didymos again.”
Rivkin added that they’ve made some puzzling observations using polarized light that suggest perhaps the average particle size or the average reflectivity might have slightly changed on Didymos, but they are waiting for spring 2024 to get more observations.
Rivulets of melted rock line the fusion crust of melted rock on this small Chelyabinsk meteorite. Credit: Bob King
An interesting (and fun!) comparison that Rivkin and his team made is how similar in composition Didymos is to the Chelyabinsk meteor, the famous meteor that created a huge airburst event over Russia in February 2013. The Chelyabinsk meteor is thought to be the biggest natural space object to enter Earth’s atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event. So, it too serves as a very representative near-Earth asteroid.
“Yes, that comparison seemed particularly apt!” Rivkin said. “What Didymos and Dimorphos are composed of are very common among near-Earth asteroids, so even a randomly chosen meteorite would have a good chance of matching!”
Other asteroids that have been studied even more closely — such as Eros and Itokawa — also have similar compositions, Rivkin said, even though they likely don’t come from the same original object. But all the asteroids mentioned here are from the same class, S-type asteroids – siliceous or stony.
Eros was the first asteroid to be orbited by a spacecraft (NEAR in 2000), and the first asteroid to have a spacecraft land on it. It was also the first near-Earth asteroid (NEA) to be discovered, in 1898. Itokawa was visited by the JAXA Hayabusa mission, and was the first asteroid from which samples were captured and brought to Earth for analysis.
Detailed view of the rubble-pile asteroid 25143 Itokawa visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005. Credit: JAXA
Even though remote observations of distant objects like Didymos and Dimorphos are incredibly difficult – especially for precisely determining asteroid composition – Rivkin said he’s heartened by the success they’ve had.
“We’ve spent over 50 years trying to sort out some very detailed questions and how to approach them,” he said. “Studies like the JWST observations and all of the other great work done to observe Didymos over the years and the fact they agree on the big-picture story gives us a chance to step back and realize how far we’ve come in being able to remotely tell what something is made of.”
But the observations of Dimorphos and Didymos will continue, and astronomers are looking forward to learning even more soon. ESA’s Hera mission is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos system in late 2026, and the researchers said they’ll be able to follow up or extend several of the results they found with JWST.
Hera specifically will be able to image Didymos’ surface at higher spatial resolution than was possible from DART (as well as from LICIACube — the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, a cubesat that was part of the DART mission, which sent back images of the impact.) Hera will be able to perform a test of the regolith particle size inferences derived from mid-infrared spectroscopy and a do check on the measured thermal inertia.
“We look forward to Hera and future JWST measurements of additional S-complex asteroids to help us continue efforts to understand the population of potential asteroid impactors, for the science return and to help inform planetary defense efforts to mitigate potential collisions,” the researchers said.
Civilizations are Probably Spreading Quickly Through the Universe
TheSearch for Extraterrestrial Intelligence(SETI) has always been plagued by uncertainty. With only one habitable planet (Earth) and one technologically advanced civilization (humanity) as examples, scientists are still confined to theorizing where other intelligent life forms could be (and what they might be up to). Sixty years later, the answer to Fermi’s famous question (“Where is Everybody?”) remains unanswered. On the plus side, this presents us with many opportunities to hypothesize possible locations, activities, and technosignatures that future observations can test.
One possibility is that the growth of civilizations is limited by the laws of physics and the carrying capacity of the planetary environments – aka. The Percolation Theory Hypothesis. In a recent study, a team from the University of the Philippines Los Banos looked beyond traditional Percolation Theory to consider how civilizations might grow in three different types of Universes (static, dark energy-dominated, and matter-dominated). Their results indicate that, depending on the framework, intelligent life has a finite amount of time to populate the Universe and is likely to do so exponentially.
The study was conducted by Allan L. Alinea and Cedrix Jake C. Jadrin, an Assistant Professor of Physics and a Teaching Associate with the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics at the University of the Philippines Los Banos. The preprint of their paper, “Percolation of ‘Civilization’ in a Homogeneous Isotropic Universe,” recently appeared online. For their study, the team considered how traditional Percolation Theory could be interpreted in terms of a Logistic Growth Function (LGF), where a population’s per capita growth rate gets smaller as population size approaches a maximum imposed by the limits of local resources (aka. carrying capacity).
The Big Bang Theory: A history of the Universe starting from a singularity and expanding ever since. Credit: grandunificationtheory.com
Percolation Theory
In brief, Percolation Theory describes how networks behave when nodes or links are removed, wherein they will break down into smaller connected clusters. The first known instance of this theory being applied to the Fermi Paradox was perhaps made by Carl Sagan and William I. Newman in 1981. In a paper titled “Galactic Civilizations: Population Dynamics and Interstellar Diffusion,” they argued that the reason humanity has not encountered extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) is because interstellar exploration and settlement are not linear phenomena.
In contrast to the Hart-Tipler Conjecture, which argues that advanced ETCs would have colonized our galaxy long ago (hence, they do not exist), Sagan and Newman postulated that interstellar exploration is a matter of diffusion. Geoffrey A. Landis argued these same sentiments in his 1993 paper, “The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory,” where he argued that the laws of physics impose limits on interstellar growth. According to Landis, there is no “uniformity of motive” to be expected from extraterrestrial civilizations:
“Since it is possible, given a large enough number of extraterrestrial civilizations, one or more would have certainly undertaken to do so, possibly for motives unknowable to us. Colonization will take an extremely longtime, and will be very expensive.It is quite reasonable to suppose that not all civilizations will be interested in making such a large expenditure for a pay off far in the future. Human society consists of a mixture of cultures which explore and colonize, some times over extremely large distances, and cultures which have no interest in doing so.”
Similarly, Prof. Adam Frank and colleagues from NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanetary Systems Science (NExSS) wrote a paper in 2019 titled “The Fermi Paradox and the Aurora Effect: Exo-civilization Settlement, Expansion, and Steady States.” Inspired by the 2015 novel Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, they argued that the interstellar settlement would occur in clusters since not all potentially habitable planets would be hospitable to an alien species. In short, the laws of physics, biology, and evolution impose limits on how far and fast a species can settle our galaxy.
Solve for T & H
To constrain those limits, the team considered the three main cosmological models of the Universe, including static, matter-dominated, and dark energy-dominated. A static Universe, as originally described by Einstein and his Cosmological Constant, is infinite in terms of space and time and is neither expanding nor contracting. A matter-dominated Universe describes the state of the Universe prior to 9.8 billion years after the Big Bang, a time when the energy density of matter exceeded both the energy density of radiation and the vacuum energy density.
A dark energy-dominated Universe describes the latest phase of cosmic evolution, which began roughly 9.8 billion years ago and is characterized by an accelerated rate of expansion. The team also considered all three scenarios in terms of a Logistic Growth Function to determine the number of planets settled with time. From this, the team obtained the two parameters of their study: T, the time needed to settle a spherical section of an ideal Universe that is both homogeneous and isotropic, and H, the Hubble parameter that describes the rate of cosmic expansion – a.k.a. the Hubble Law or Hubble-Lemaitre Law.
For a static Universe, they found that settlement follows the LGF, similar to how population growth, the spread of infectious diseases, and chemical reactions do. As they noted in their study, these dynamical systems follow a general pattern beginning with a relatively slow start due to limited sources (in this case, habitable planets). But, as they continue to expand and acquire new sources, this multiplies the number available, and the propagation speeds up. This continues until the number of sources begins to dwindle and/or the elements of the system are exhausted.
To their surprise, the team noted similar behaviors when looking at a matter-dominated and dark-energy Universe. As Dr. Alinea told Universe Today via email.
“Remarkably, when the space itself is expanding as in the dark-energy and matter-dominated Universes, the process of settlement, for the most part, still follows the Logistic Growth Function. We did not expect this result because a system with expanding space appeared to us as vastly different from a static system. Most of the studies we know on percolation are based on a static lattice (e.g., spread of forest fire, propagation of disease, information diffusion) where the logistic growth behavior is usually observed. Our study ‘extends’ this behavior to cases where the lattice is expanding like our very own Universe.”
Steps to the Hubble Constant.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)
Nevertheless, they did find there was a delay in an expanding Universe in terms of the rate of settlement compared to a static one. For a dark energy-dominated universe, they found that the total settlement time (T) was marked with divergence for a large enough expansion rate (H). In accordance with Hubble’s Law, when H is large enough, some planets would expand beyond the horizon and become “unreachable.” In essence, distant planets can be receding faster than the speed of light, making it improbable that an expanding civilization would ever reach them.
They also found that in cases where the Hubble Sphere (H) was smaller, the relation between T and H was linear – in other words, T was roughly equal to H (T ~ H). For a matter-dominated Universe, their findings indicated that where Hwas similarly small, the same relation applied, but where H became larger, the relation changed significantly to T~ H2. In comparison to that of a dark energy-dominated Universe, T did not increase exponentially or reach infinity unless H was infinite. Said Alinear:
“This is interesting because a matter-dominated Universe is also characterized by a horizon. It means that for planets far enough from a reference planet in this Universe, they are receding at a velocity faster than light, making it appear that they are unreachable. However, for a matter-dominated universe, in accordance with Friedmann Equation, the comoving Hubble Sphere is shrinking instead of expanding. Put simply and informally, those planets far away from a reference planet in this Universe (that are initially ‘moving’ faster than the speed of light) are ‘slowing down,’ making them reachable, at least in principle.”
So… Where Are They?
From their results, the team determined that advanced civilizations will generally follow a growth trend that is slow to start but will take off over time, eventually slowing and stopping as the number of “reachable” planets is exhausted. As Dr. Alineal described, “This model is marked by a three-phase pattern: slow settlement rate –> fast settlement rate –> slow settlement rate.” The question remains: what does this mean for Fermi’s time-honored question? How does this three-phase pattern help us refine the search for advanced civilizations expanding across the galaxy?
To that, the team concludes that our galaxy may currently be in Phase I, characterized by a slow settlement rate. This could be because only a few intelligent, advanced civilizations are engaged in interstellar settlement right now. “This slow phase can be exacerbated by large distances between”living” planets. But once some number of traveling civilizations is reached, we may enter Phase II, characterized by a fast settlement rate. Given enough time upon entering this phase, we may finally say hello to aliens out there.”
The center of the Milky Way as seen from Chile. The core contains very old stars that date back to early in cosmic history. Credit: ESO/P.Horalek CC by 4.0.
Moreover, their results address the possibility of humanity becoming an interstellar species someday, perhaps as a means of ensuring the continued survival and development of our species. This represents a challenge in an ever-expanding, ever-accelerating Universe dominated by Dark Energy. But as Dr. Alineal summarized, there are options:
“Given enough technology to travel near the speed of light, it is still challenging to reach any planet in the Universe, particularly the far away planets. Having said this, there is a spherical section of this Universe, centered in our location, whose planets are reachable, at least in principle, for possible settlement. Beyond this are planets that “move” away from us at a speed higher than that of light and may not be reachable. Unfortunately, this sphere is shrinking, so a section of the universe that we can inhabit, although large on the human scale, becomes smaller and smaller with time.”
“If there is a mechanism to drive the universe to a state such that its expansion rate is the same or similar to that of a matter-dominated universe, then we would be lucky enough to have a Universe that can, in principle, be colonized up to any distance from us; that is, the colonization and human influence in the Universe is not bounded by any sphere unlike that of the dark-energy dominated Universe.”
In summary, the answer to Fermi’s question may be that advanced civilizations are in an early, slow phase of expansion that has (so far) prevented us from making contact. But as there spherical volume of Hubble Space (H) that we could occupy expands, we are more likely to get close enough to someone else’s that we will finally know that we’re not alone in the Universe. Similarly, while Dark Energy may limit how far we can reach (within our galaxy, not much farther), a sufficient volume of space would enable our continued development and could prevent a single cataclysmic fate from claiming all of our species.
And who knows? Perhaps cosmic expansion will not carry on as it has for the past 4 billion years, and the Universe will slow down and achieve a sort of homeostasis – the kind Einstein preferred to believe in. In that case, our Hubble Spheres may continue to expand indefinitely, and there will be no shortage of intermingling between cosmic civilizations. It does make for some exciting prospects, doesn’t it?
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Astronomers Want JWST to Study the Milky Way Core for Hundreds of Hours
This overview of the Milky Way's Galactic Center (GC) shows the region of the proposed JWST survey. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)
Astronomers Want JWST to Study the Milky Way Core for Hundreds of Hours
To understand the Universe, we need to understand the extreme processes that shape it and drive its evolution. Things like supermassive black holes (SMBHs,) supernovae, massive reservoirs of dense gas, and crowds of stars both on and off the main sequence. Fortunately there’s a place where these objects dwell in close proximity to one another: the Milky Way’s Galactic Center (GC.)
Astronomers know this, and they’ve studied the GC intensely. There are many unanswered questions in astronomy and astrophysics, and some of the answers are hidden in the densely-packed GC. But while its densely-packed nature make it an area practically begging to be studied, it also makes it difficult to study. Only the most powerful telescopes have the angular resolution to make sense of the Milky Way’s central region and its crowded constituents.
Fortunately, the James Webb Space Telescope has the angular resolution to make sense of the region. A new white paper lays out the case for a multi-epoch, large-area, multi-wavelength survey of the Milky Way’s inner 100 parsecs.
The paper is “The JWST Galactic Center Survey: A White Paper.” Over a hundred participants from more than 80 institutions around the world are listed authors, with Rainer Schodel from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC), Granada, Spain listed as first author.
“JWST has the unique capability to provide us with the necessary, game-changing data,” the authors write. “As a community, we have identified the key unknowns that are limiting the potential of the Galactic Center as a laboratory for extreme astrophysics and understanding how galactic nuclei shape the galaxy population.”
These images from the white paper show how the JWST’s high angular resolution can help scientists figure out what’s going on in the GC. The left image was captured with the the ESO’s Vista Telescope in 2010. The middle image was captured in 2019 with the ESO’s VLT, and the image on the right is from the JWST. Image Credits: L: Minniti et al. 2010; M: Nogueras-Lara et al. 2019; R: JWS Proposal 1939, PI J. Lu.
What are the unknowns in this turbulent region? Sgr. A*, the SMBH at the heart of it all, draws matter inexorably towards itself, shredding stars that get too close and creating an enormous swirling mass of gas and dust. Vast gas clouds are caught up in it all, and out of these clouds, stars in their multitudes are born and then extinguished, many as ultra-powerful supernovae. The Milky Way’s nuclear star cluster is there, too, and is many times more massive than Sgr. A*, an anomaly in galaxies. And then there’s the nuclear bulge, where old, comparatively metal-rich stars congregate.
This image shows the Milky Way’s nuclear bulge and its nuclear star cluster (NSC.) The Milky Way is one of the few instances where evidence shows an NSC in a galaxy that also has an SMBH. Image Credit: Schoedel et al. 2008.
This survey, if it takes place, will help astrophysicists untangle some of nature’s most perplexing, stubborn questions. In their white paper, the multi-national team of astronomers lays out five key questions that the JWST can help address in an observing campaign focused on the GC:
What is the formation history of the Galactic Center and its relation to the overall formation history of the Milky Way?
How much stellar mass formed in the past ~30 Myr and what does this imply for the overall energetics of the GC?
What is the origin of, and environmental variation in, the stellar initial mass function?
Why is the star formation rate one to two orders of magnitude lower than predicted by standard star-formation-dense-gas relations?
What is the 3D structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) orbiting and fueling accretion and star formation at the Galactic Center?
This is an ambitious list of questions that helps define the current state of astronomy and astrophysics. Perhaps the only things not mentioned are dark matter and dark energy, and those two phenomena are outside of the JWST’s primary focus.
Success depends on being able to resolve more detail than previous studies of the region. “By being able to resolve physical processes down to size scales separating individual stars, the survey will provide a foundation for addressing key open questions in other fields,” the authors write. The GC is an extreme environment, and is often the case in science, understanding the extremes helps us understand nature’s boundaries.
“What drives the mass flows and energy cycles in extragalactic nuclei and high-z environments?” the authors ask. “What shapes star formation and the evolution of nuclear star clusters, nuclear stellar discs and their interaction with central black holes?” These are all compelling questions.
The proposed survey is designed to address them. As a multi-epoch survey, it would examine the GC in three separate epochs separated by 1, 5, and 10 years. It would observe the nuclear stellar disk and associated giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the central molecular zone (CMZ,) a region containing about 60 million solar masses of star-forming gas. To see inside the region accurately, the survey would utilize the JWST’s NIRCam and its system of filters.
This image shows the Milky Way’s GC region and some of the objects of interest, including the nuclear star cluster and associated giant molecular clouds in the central molecular zone. Image Credit: Schodel et al. 2023.
One telescope can’t reveal everything, and the JWST won’t be alone in this survey. Success will rely on synergy with other telescopes. ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope will be part of this observational coalition, as will future telescopes like the Roman Space Telescope, the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, and Japan’s JASMINE infrared astrometry mission.
“Together these surveys herald a revolution in the interpretation of current/future data, bring together research in different sub-fields, and answer key open science questions with enormous legacy potential,” Schodel and his colleagues write.
One of the questions the survey hopes to address is particularly fundamental in astrophysics: the Initial Mass Function (IMF.) The IMF describes how mass is distributed during star formation in a giant cloud of gas. The IMF is like an agglomeration of smaller sub-functions in star formation, and it also links individual star formation to larger issues of galaxy formation and evolution. “Thus, understanding the properties of the IMF and how it behaves in different environments has far-reaching implications for star formation theory and beyond,” the paper states.
The Milky Way’s galactic center is the only GC we can observe, and it’s been a tricky target. But the JWST has the power to probe this tumultuous astrophysical maelstrom more deeply than ever before. Along with the SMBH, the NSC, and gas clouds, there are other mysteries. The GC contains hundreds of mysterious magnetized radio filaments that are so far unexplained. Then there are the questions around stellar feedback and how it interacts with the Interstellar Medium (ISM) and how black hole feedback plays into it all.
If this survey takes place, it’ll provide answers that shift the horizon of our knowledge, and also highlight new questions. This survey will far surpass other GC surveys and observations. The authors claim that they can discern the proper motion for more than 10 million stars in the GC. “Such revolutionary data would enable exploring the GC kinematically down to almost solar mass main sequence stars,” the authors write, and that would be an enormous contribution.
As always, there will be surprises, and those surprises will almost certainly spread to scientific topics beyond the study of the GC. “The project proposed in this White Paper has implications for the entire GC community – and beyond,” the authors write.
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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 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
