UFO Fleet Cloaked As Clouds Moving Over Mount Shasta, March 2024, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 2024

Location of sighting: Mount Shasta, California, USA

 

Hmmm...this reminds me of something. Mount Shasta is a hotspot for UFO sightings. I remember a couple who saw a spacecraft hovering over the St. Germain Foundation property in 1991 while lounging in their hot tub on their back porch. Also, its said an alien base site below Mount Shasta, and St. Germain is one of its leaders...and is often seen wandering the mountain trails from time to time. I know there is an alien base below Shasta, however the real question is...how do we the public contact them?

Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-03-2024 om 01:12 geschreven door peter  

UFO hovers over oil rig near where locals believe there is an ‘alien base’, UAP Sighting News. 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-03-2024 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

Man claims to have been abducted by aliens who forced him to perform 'sexual experiments' UFO Sighting News.

As funny a it may seem...such things do occur and there are hundreds of reports of such treatment by aliens, both in Project Blue Book reports and Majestic 12 reports and more. It doesn't seem about sex at all, but instead more about inbreeding, mixing species to make two strong species one single more powerful species (talking powerful through genetics and DNA). Biology says that when two species mix, often the new DNA introduced to the offspring brings fresh and more unique traits and abilities. Whats wrong with wanting a better life for ones offspring? 

Scott C. Waring 

26-03-2024 om 00:36 geschreven door peter  

What did Buzz Aldrin mean when he said, “you didn’t, no you didn’t, you watched animation.” About the nasa moon landing? UFO sighting news. 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-03-2024 om 00:28 geschreven door peter  

 UFO Shoots Across Moon As Astronomer Is Blown Away By What He Had Seen, March 2024, UAP Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 2024

Location of sighting: Earths moon

News Source: 

• https://ustimespost.com/watch-the-moment-a-ufo-zooms-across-the-moons-surface-as-the-astronomer-cant-explain-what-he-filmed-with-the-telescope/

 

News talked about an eyewitness who was using his telescope and recorded an unknown object shooting across the moon. I decided to look further into the recording and used the screenshot and added contrast and sharpening to see its true detail. The UFO is actually at the front right end of the glowing line. The UFO is also a disk with sharp not perfectly round but with about 8-10 different rectangle walls along the edge of the disk. The disk is also flying vertical to the moon. A disk flying vertical would be impossible, however many contact reports in Project Blue Book talk about the disks having their own gravity within, making such turns and angles of flight not felt by the pilots within. This UFO seen in the recording is 100% real, data doesn't lie. 

Scott C. Waring

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-03-2024 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers discovered another asteroid sharing Mars’ orbit. These types of asteroids are called trojans, and they orbit in two clumps, one ahead of and one behind the planet. But the origins of the Mars trojans are unclear.

Can this new discovery help explain where they came from?

There are now 14 known Mars Trojans and the name of the newest one is 2023 FW14. They’re in two groups, one 60 degrees ahead and one 60 degrees behind Mars. These are the Lagrange 4 and Lagrange 5 points.

Most of the Mars trojans are at the L5 point, and this newly discovered one is the second one found at the L4 point.

New research published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics presents the discovery. Its title is “Dynamics of 2023 FW14, the second L4 Mars trojan, and a physical characterization using the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias.” The lead author is Raul de la Fuente Marcos from the Earth Physics and Astrophysics Department at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Scientists aren’t certain where the Mars trojans came from. Other trojans like the Jupiter trojans may have been captured by Jupiter in the Solar System’s early years. Or Jupiter may have captured them later when it migrated.

But Mars is a much less massive planet, and astronomers aren’t certain if Mars can capture trojans the same way Jupiter does. The Mars trojans could be as old as the Jupiter trojans, but some evidence suggests otherwise. The dozen or more trojans at the Mars L5 point seem to be a family from the same collision. The family is called Eureka, and their spectra indicate an olivine-rich composition.

Olivine is relatively rare in the main asteroid belt. That’s led some researchers to suggest that the L5 Mars trojans are debris from an ancient impact between Mars, where olivine is common, and a planetesimal.

The two L4 Mars trojans are different. They don’t have the same spectra as the L5 trojans, but the pair do show some similarities in their spectra, so a common origin for these two is a possibility.

In this paper, the researchers set out to determine 2023 FW14’s origins. They used the Gran Telescopio Canarias for their work. It’s a 10.4-meter telescope in Spain’s Canary Islands with an attached instrument called the OSIRIS camera spectrograph.

2023 FW14’s spectrum places it in the same class as an Xc-type asteroid. The X-type name contains several different types of asteroids with similar spectra but probably with different compositions. Xc-types are a sub-class of the X-types that are intermediate between C-type asteroids, the most common type of asteroid in the Solar System, and the uncommon K-type asteroids.

The researchers also used N-body simulations to try to understand the new asteroid’s resonance with Mars. Trojans follow what are known as tadpole orbits. Tadpole orbits are influenced by Earth’s gravity, which causes objects to librate or accelerate or decelerate alternately.

Tadpole orbits are complex. Asteroids on these orbits exchange large amounts of energy and angular momentum with a planet moving in a circular orbit. Tadpole loops are made of multiple overlapping epicyclic loops.

2023 FW14 has a higher orbital eccentricity and lower inclination than Mars’ other L4 trojan. This means that it occupies an unstable region and orbits at the whim of several different resonances. That instability means that in a few million years, it’ll likely be ejected.

The researchers calculated its size as approximately 318 metres (+493/-199.) That makes it one of the smallest known trojans so far.

As for its origins, the authors say that there are two possibilities.

Its long-term behaviour, including its past, suggests that it was captured from the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) population of Mars-crossing asteroids. But it could be a fragment of another trojan, as well, one that is so far undiscovered, or one that is no longer a trojan.

Spectral data suggests something else. Both of the L4 asteroids appear to be more primitive than Mars’ L5 trojans. 2023 FW14’s spectrum also supports the idea that it’s a captured Mars-crossing NEA. However, that data isn’t as clear, according to the authors, and can’t be used to rule out the other hypothesis, which is that the asteroid formed in situ. “Although incomplete, the data support the interpretation of 2023 FW14 as an interloper captured from the Mars-crossing NEA population, but they cannot be used to reject the competing hypothesis that 2023 FW14 was produced in situ,” they write.

Whatever its origins are, the researchers calculate that 2023 FW14 has about 10 million years before it’s ejected from its trojan orbit. It’s a temporary trojan, and this discovery could prove that Mars trojans can be temporarily captured, something that so far has been unproven.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-03-2024 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

Some observations showed that Oumuamua’s path wasn’t steady, but kept making tiny changes. Most scientists agreed that this was almost certainly because of pockets of ice melting and jetting away in the Sun’s heat. This is a common phenomenon, that we often see happening with comets. More detailed observations and simulations showed that it had a long and skinny shape, more like a splinter than a boulder, which is very unusual among the asteroids and comets that we’re used to. But Oumuamua only really hit the mainstream press when a well-known and prestigious astrophysicist decided, in a surprising leap of logic, that all these details proved that it could be an alien spacecraft!

The Oumuamua discovery led many scientists to start searching for other interstellar objects. CNEOS 2014-01-08, with its high reported speed, looked like a promising candidate. The physicist who had made such a big deal about Oumuamua being artificial took a closer look at the bolide reports and concluded that it must have been traveling fast enough to be another extrasolar object. This claim was controversial, not only because the government sensors appear to be classified and so cannot be verified, but because meteor speeds are notoriously difficult to measure. Observers have mistakenly reported extrasolar meteors as far back as 1951!

But if CNEOS 2014-01-08 truly was from outside the Solar System, and we could find pieces of it, that would be an incredible discovery: The first actual geological samples from a planetary system outside our own!

The expedition

This is why an expedition was launched in 2023 to try and find it. The research team used seismic and infrasound data from seismic research stations in the area to try and find the exact place where the meteoroid would have splashed into the sea. They identified two likely signals from Geoscience Australia’s Passive Seismic Network. The signals were recorded by Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (AU.MANU) and Coen, Queensland, Australia (AU.COEN), at around the same time that people saw the fireball. They triangulated a precise location based on those recordings, and sailed out to search the ocean floor.

The expedition was widely reported as a success, after they found “metallic spherules”. These spherules had an unusual composition, which the expedition leader said was proof of a possible extraterrestrial origin. Like the speed calculations, though, this interpretation was widely challenged. Specialists in other fields have weighed in to argue that there was nothing unusual about the debris, and that various natural and human processes could have created them (My personal favorite: 19th century pollution!). With so much doubt as to where the spherules came from in the first place, it’s probably not wise to say that they are of “extraterrestrial technological” origin.

The truck

The most recent challenge to the results of this expedition come from a team led by Dr Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University. Their report focuses on the seismic and infrasound data used to locate the impact site.

They noticed a number of problems with the expedition’s analysis, starting with the fact that none of the detections happened within 30 seconds of the fireball. But beyond that, these stations are located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is very tectonically active. They detect a great many earthquakes and other natural seismic events every day, and some of these happened at the same time as the the meteorite impact. Separating the two signals is hard to do without distorting both of them. This adds a lot of error to any calculations based on those data.

Along with seismic data, these stations also have infrasound detectors, meant to detect and monitor nuclear weapons tests. But infrasound has a limited range, and is strongly affected by geography.

Fernando’s team concluded that only one station recorded an infrasound signal that could have come from CNEOS 2014-01-08, and that none of the seismic detections had anything to do with the bolide. Based on this, they believe that the expedition was looking in the wrong place, and that the debris they discovered had nothing at all to do with the 2014 bolide.

But their most damning claim is this: The strongest signal had an unusual pattern, lasting a long time and coming from a direction which changed halfway. They noticed that there is a road passing near the station, with a curve in it that matches the change in direction of the signal. They point out that the signals recorded by trucks driving that road are a far closer match than any natural event.

In other words, they believe that the expedition based its search location for an extraterrestrial meteoroid on the noise of somebody in a truck going for a drive.

In their defense

It’s tempting to laugh at the researchers on the expedition, especially since their leader was a respected astrophysicist who has recently developed a reputation for having crackpot ideas about aliens. But I think there is value in investigating these questions.

It’s easy to get tired of cranks and fools wasting our time with conspiracy theories and crazy stories about abductions. And we should always be skeptical of any claims about aliens, given what we know about the physics of interstellar travel and the absurd scale of the Universe.

But most astronomers agree that life has to exist elsewhere in the Universe, and many think that it could well be intelligent and technologically capable, like us. Nobody’s saying that they can’t possibly exist, only that it’s extremely unlikely that they are over here!

So we should be skeptical of these reports. It’s good to not waste too much time studying them, when there are other mysteries that are far more likely to be true. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the possibility altogether. It would be disastrous if, by some chance, it turned out to be real, and the scientific community had simply refused to acknowledge it! When new evidence comes in, we must revisit our assumptions and go back and check our previous conclusions. And it’s important that somebody do this even when we’re certain that they’ll get a negative result.

• To learn more, visit https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/03/07/alien-meteor-truck/

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-03-2024 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

For the study, PSP collected direct measurements of 32 interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) between October 2018 and August 2022 and distances from the Sun ranging between 0.23 and 0.83 astronomical units (AU), with 1 AU being the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or approximately 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Of the 32 measurements, four were discarded due to gaps in the data, leaving 28 CMEs successfully measured by PSP. The study’s objectives were to identify various aspects of CMEs, specifically pertaining to how they change as they travel farther from the Sun, also known as radial distance. So, what were the most significant results from this study?

Dr. Salman tells Universe Today, “A few results that I would like to highlight are that we observed the internal CME magnetic structure to become more complex with radial distance. We found the CME magnetic field strength to decrease at a lower rate than previous studies. We also saw that the expansion of the CME is important in the formation of the compression region ahead of it and the internal magnetic field has an influence on the short-scale fluctuations we find within the compression region.”

While the study of CMEs falls under the scientific field of solar physics, which studies how our entire Sun functions, scientists also classify CMEs as part of space weather, which studies the activity on the Sun’s surface and how it affects the surrounding environment. Space weather can wreak havoc on electronics, specifically communication satellites and power stations on Earth, with one of the most notable space weather events occurring in September 1859 known as the Carrington Event, which was caused by a massive solar storm that wreaked havoc on worldwide electrical grids and created spectacular auroras across the globe, as well, with the latter traditionally only being visible in the northern and southern latitudes. Therefore, what implications can this study have on future research regarding our Sun, and specifically space weather?

“The compiled catalog of CME events itself will be a valuable resource for performing future extensive case studies,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “Understanding the evolution of CMEs is of paramount importance for space weather operations. This statistical investigation of different aspects of CME evolution is a step towards that as it validates previous approximations but also raises new questions that need to be explored further with a more robust data set in the future.”

After having its first solar encounter in October 2018, PSP has continued to smash records regarding its distance from our Sun. This includes achieving its closest distance of 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) on September 27, 2023, which is slated to be surpassed after its last flyby of Venus in November 2024. Science objectives for PSP include determining the solar corona processes responsible for producing the solar wind, gaining insight into the solar plasma and magnetic field properties, and learning more about additional energy particles emitted by the Sun.

The reason why PSP can travel so close to our Sun is due to its state-of-the-art solar shield comprised of a 11.43-centimeter-thick (4.5-inch-thich) carbon-composite shield capable of withstanding scorching temperatures up to 1,377 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit). While PSP has already broken records regarding its distance to the Sun, PSP is slated to come within 6.16 million kilometers (3.83 million miles) during its mission, which is planned to last a total of seven years. But how has PSP contributed to our understanding of our Sun and space weather?

“PSP is so important for us to advance our current understanding of CME evolution and space weather,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “The questions of interest for space weather are will a CME impact Earth and whether it will have a southward field component to interact with the northward magnetic field of Earth. Our modeling frameworks depend on an initial characterization of the CME closer to the Sun (within 20 solar radii) based on which the models project the CME parameters when it impacts Earth.”

Dr. Salman continues, “The initial characterization is made based on CME remote-sensing imaging. What PSP is doing is providing direct measurements of CMEs in the initial phases of propagation. Adding to this are the widespread radial observations of PSP to make our statistical approximations more robust. This is how PSP is contributing to develop a more accurate picture of the CME propagation and evolution from closer to the Sun to Earth.”

CMEs have been observed for thousands of years in the form of auroras when the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field near the planet’s surface. They are produced from the Sun’s corona in the form of massive discharges when solar plasma interacts with the Sun’s massive magnetic field and their velocities can range from 250 kilometers per second (155 miles per second) to almost 3,000 kilometers per second (1,864 miles per second).

CMEs are monitored by the Space Weather Prediction Center with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using a combination of ground- and space-based solar observatories. As noted, space weather is constantly monitored to determine how much damage can be caused to Earth surface power grids and satellite communications. But aside from monitoring space weather, why is it so important to study CMEs?

“CMEs are crucial for the existence of our Sun,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “CMEs appear as a valve that releases the built-up magnetic field from the Sun without which the Sun will rip itself apart. But the investigation of CME science also has important societal relevance. CMEs drive the strongest solar storms that can wreak havoc through impacting power grids and telecommunication networks. CMEs can also damage orbiting satellites and technological infrastructure. CMEs are now counted among the major natural hazards as well. A more in-depth understanding of CMEs (from initiation to propagation to evolution along the Sun-Earth line) is thus required to improve the current status quo of space weather operations.”

What new discoveries will researchers make about coronal mass ejections in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

• As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-03-2024 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

On July 1st, 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Euclid Observatory, a mission that will spend the next six years investigating the composition and evolution of the Universe. In particular, Euclid will observe how the Universe has expanded over the past 10 billion years to test theories about Dark Energy. While fine-tuning and calibrating the telescope’s instruments in preparation for the mission’s first survey, the mission team noticed that a few layers of water ice formed on its mirrors after it entered the freezing cold of space.

While common, this is a problem for a highly sensitive mission like Euclid, which requires remarkable precision to investigate cosmic expansion. After months of research, the Euclid team tested a newly designed procedure to de-ice the mission’s optics. On March 20th, the ESA announced that the team’s de-icing approach worked (so far) and that Euclid’s vision has been restored. If the method proves successful, it will have validated the mission team’s plan to keep Euclid‘s optical system working for the rest of its mission.

The problem first became evident as science operations experts noticed a small but progressive decrease in light measured by the telescope’s VISible instrument (VIS). This instrument is responsible for measuring visible light from distant galaxies to determine how the light’s trajectory is affected by gravity fields. Mischa Schirmer, a calibration scientist for the Euclid consortium and one of the main designers of the new de-icing plan, explained in an ESA press release:

“We compared the starlight coming in through the VIS instrument with the recorded brightness of the same stars at earlier times, seen by both Euclid and ESA’s Gaia mission. Some stars in the Universe vary in their luminosity, but the majority are stable for many millions of years. So, when our instruments detected a faint, gradual decline in photons coming in, we knew it wasn’t them – it was us.”

It was always expected that there would be some water contamination with Euclid, which is why there was an “outgassing campaign” shortly after launch. This consisted of the telescope being warmed up by onboard heaters and also partially exposed to the Sun, sublimating most of the water brought from Earth. However, a considerable amount remained after being absorbed in the telescope’s multi-layer insulation, which slowly began building up on the VIS intrument’s mirror surfaces. After months of research, lab studies, and calibrations, the team determined the source and began working on a solution.

The obvious solution was to heat Euclid again by running all its internal heaters for days. However, this ran the risk of deforming the mechanical structure of the spacecraft, which could alter Euclid’s optical alignment. Said Andreas Rudolph, Euclid Flight Director at ESA’s mission control:

“Most other space missions don’t have such demanding requirements on ‘thermo-optical stability’ as Euclid. To fulfil Euclid’s scientific goals of making a 3D map of the Universe by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky, means we have to keep the mission incredibly stable – and that includes its temperature. Switching on the heaters in the payload module therefore needs to be done with extreme care.”

The team began by individually heating two of Euclid’s mirrors independently, a low-risk approach since they are located in areas where water vapor was not likely to contaminate other instruments. After analyzing the initial results, the team found that Euclid’s vision was restored to its previous accuracy. However, this was a temporary solution, and a long-term strategy for regular de-icing is still being sought. In the meantime, the ESA promises to continue to monitor the telescope for changes and share any new findings publicly.

However, the response to this problem highlights the international cooperation that made this mission possible. Said Ralf Kohley, Euclid Instrument Operations Scientist who coordinated the response:

“A complex mission requires a united response from teams across Europe, and I’m incredibly thankful for the effort and skill that so many have poured into this. It took work from teams at ESA’s ESTEC technical heart in the Netherlands, the ESAC science operations centre in Madrid and the Flight Control Team at ESOC mission control in Darmstadt – but we couldn’t have done it without the Euclid consortium and the critical inputs we got from spacecraft prime contractor Thales Alenia Space and its industrial partner Airbus Space.”

In addition, this issue could lead to vital research on how to maintain missions where highly sensitive optics are concerned. Despite how common this issue is for spacecraft, there is very little research on how ice forms on optical mirrors and impacts observations. Therefore, the solution devised by the mission team and agency could lead to new procedures for future missions. These could come in handy when Euclid is joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) in March 2027 – another mission that will explore the “dark Universe.”

Further Reading: 

• ESA

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-03-2024 om 20:37 geschreven door peter  

Mysterieuze grascirkels in Namibië houden wetenschappers al decennia bezig. Eindelijk is er een definitieve verklaring

Jeannette Kras

Aan de rand van de woestijn in Namibië bevindt zich dor grasland met daarin kale plekken, die een vrijwel perfecte cirkel vormen. De vraag is: hoe kan het gras eromheen wel groeien en in de cirkel niet? Het is een mysterie dat wetenschappers al decennia bezighoudt, maar een stel Duitse en Israëlische onderzoekers lijkt nu het antwoord te hebben.

Ze zijn zelf het veld ingetrokken om te kijken hoe net opkomend gras vrijwel direct weer afsterft in de cirkel, terwijl het eromheen wel welig tiert. Dat blijkt door een gebrek aan water te komen, ontdekten ze. De bovenste 10 tot 12 centimeter grond functioneert als een soort death zone waarin gras niet lang kan overleven. Het gaat tien tot twintig dagen, nadat er regen is gevallen alsnog dood. Daarmee kan een andere theorie de prullenbak in: het gras gaat niet ten onder aan termieten, zoals lang werd gedacht.

Honderden metingen
De wetenschappers zijn niet over één nacht ijs gegaan om dit tientallen jaren oude mysterie op te lossen. Ze hebben vijfhonderd grasplanten in vier regio’s van de Namib-woestijn opgemeten, en dan zowel de wortels als de sprieten. Ook hebben ze er statistische analyses op losgelaten en foto’s gemaakt. De honderden metingen van de vochtigheid van de grond tijdens en na de regenseizoenen van 2023 en 2024 boden uiteindelijk definitief uitsluitsel.

Daaruit bleek namelijk dat de toplaag erg gevoelig is voor uitdroging. Tijdens en na het regenseizoen is deze grond drie tot vier keer minder vochtig dan de aarde op een diepte van 20 centimeter. Daarbovenop is de toplaag in de periode na de regen nog droger binnen de cirkels dan erbuiten.

• https://youtu.be/KoWyV01wR7o

Langere wortels
Onder deze omstandigheden kan het net ontkiemende gras niet overleven in de cirkel, concluderen de onderzoekers. Het droogt uit, omdat het de diepere, vochtigere grondlaag niet kan bereiken met de wortels die gemiddeld nog maar 10 centimeter lang zijn. Het grote, oudere gras daarentegen dat aan de rand van de cirkel groeit, heeft langere wortels en weet het water op 20 tot 30 centimeter diepte dus wel te halen. Het wordt na een stevige regenbui al snel weer lekker groen.

“Met hun goed ontwikkelde wortels zuigen deze graspollen veel van het water op. Na de regen hebben ze een enorm voordeel boven de net ontkiemende grassen in de cirkel. Het nieuwe gras verliest maar een klein deel van het water via transpiratie door zijn kleine sprietjes, waardoor er onvoldoende zuigkracht is om nieuw water uit diepere bodemlagen te halen”, legt hoofdonderzoeker Stephan Getzin uit van de Göttingen University.

Schematische weergave van de groei van het gras en de waterverdeling in de eerste weken na hevige regenval in de cirkel. Afbeelding: Bauhaus University Weimar, Faculty of Art & Design/Animation Art & Design

Bovenste grondlaag
De metingen tonen verder aan dat het water vooral makkelijk uit de grond te zuigen is in de eerste twintig dagen na de regen en dan met name in de bovenste grondlaag. Het gevolg is dat het oudere, stevigere gras voornamelijk water haalt uit de bovenste 10 tot 20 centimeter grond. Daardoor blijft er nog minder over voor de nieuwe plantjes. “Dit is de doodsoorzaak van het nieuwe gras in de cirkel. Continue metingen van de grondvochtigheid gedurende meerdere jaren ondersteunen die conclusie, omdat daaruit blijkt dat het grondwater in de cirkel alleen merkbaar snel afneemt tijdens de groei van het omringende gras na de regen”, aldus de onderzoeker.

Dit betekent dus dat de cirkels eigenlijk een waterbron vormen voor het omringende gras dat een groot deel van het jaar kampt met een watertekort. Het gras zelf vormt de ronde vorm van de cirkels, omdat het zo voor zichzelf maximaal toegang heeft tot grondwater. “Deze zelforganisatie kun je zien als zwermintelligentie. Het is een systematische aanpassing aan een gebrek aan water in droge regio’s”, verklaart Getzin.

Geen termieten
De theorie dat termieten de wortels van het verse gras opeten, waardoor het afsterft, klopt dan ook niet volgens de onderzoekers. “In een uitgebreide discussie over de zandtermietentheorie tonen we aan dat tot nu toe geen enkele veldstudie met systematische meetgegevens van de wortellengte heeft weten te bewijzen dat de termieten zich voeden met de wortels van het nieuwe gras in de cirkels”, klinkt het overtuigd.

Het bewijs stapelt zich dus op dat het echt een watertekort is dat tot de mysterieuze cirkels in de Namib-woestijn heeft geleid. De nieuwe verse grassprietjes delven het onderspit tegen de grote, oudere grassen, die veel langere wortels hebben.

Bronmateriaal

• "Desiccation of undamaged grasses in the topsoil causes Namibia's fairy circles – Response to Jürgens & Gröngröft (2023)" - Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics
  
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Stephan Getzin

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

25-03-2024 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

Constructing a lunar railroad system may seem like something from a science fiction movie. Yet, the project reflects the Department of Defense’s (DoD) mysterious focus on lunar operations and potential ambition to establish a strategic military presence on the Moon. 

“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies, and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface – contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman said in a statement. 

According to Northrop Grumman, the company will begin by exploring concepts for constructing and operating a lunar railroad network, including identifying the foreseeable costs, necessary resources, and technological risks associated with such an ambitious endeavor. 

Chris Adams, vice president and general manager at Northrop Grumman’s Strategic Space Systems, emphasized the significance of this initiative. “This investment in key developmental research propels our technology to the forefront of next-generation solutions, establishing a sustainable space ecosystem,” Adams stated.

America’s development of a nationwide railroad network in the 1800s is primarily recognized as a symbol of modernity and national progress. However, the expansion of the First Transcontinental Railroad also came at a significant cost to the landscape and Indigenous communities of the American Midwest. 

Many historians argue that the construction of the Pacific Railroad from 1863 to 1869 played a significant role in the near-extinction of the American bison. This was largely due to the railroad’s influx of settlers who hunted the bison extensively. 

Furthermore, the arrival of these new settlers, coupled with diminishing natural resources, led to increased tensions and conflicts between the U.S. government and the Indigenous tribes of the region, as the expanded homesteading facilitated by the railroad encroached on their lands.

As a consequence of these developments, Indigenous peoples in the United States ended up losing nearly 99% of the land they had occupied for tens of thousands of years.

The Moon lacks human inhabitants or an ecosystem that a lunar railroad system could potentially disrupt. Nonetheless, this does not eliminate the possibility of unintended consequences as humanity plans to colonize the lunar surface.

As it relates to potential “unintended consequences,” perhaps one of the most pressing questions is why DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) primary brain trust, has taken such a keen interest in the Moon in recent years. 

During the announcement of industry partners for DARPA’s 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study, known as “LunA-10,” Dr. Michael “Orbit” Nayak, a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, underscored the agency’s intention to turn the Moon into an economic extension of the U.S.

“LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years,” Dr. Nayak said. “LunA-10 performers include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure.” 

Policy experts note that DARPA’s lunar initiatives, such as constructing a lunar railroad network, comply with the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967. This treaty prohibits the militarization of space and requires the Moon and other celestial bodies to be used only for peaceful purposes.

However, there remains a risk of “unintended consequences” similar to those experienced during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. In this case, the conflict would not involve Indigenous populations but could arise from commercialization and competition for lunar resources with another global power: China.

China likewise has plans for a permanent lunar settlement, including a nearly 14-square-mile lunar base with underground facilities, a command and communication center, a power station, laboratories, and a fleet of autonomous robots to support scientific research and commercialization of the Moon. 

Even before either country has started constructing permanent settlements on the Moon, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has accused China of intending to claim resource-rich areas of the Moon as its own sovereign territory, an allegation that Beijing has denied, labeling it a “lie.”

Nevertheless, as recently reported by The Debrief, Beijing plans to extend its advanced mass surveillance network, known as “Skynet,” to the Moon. Expanding its extensive spy network to include the lunar surface suggests China is already preparing for potential disputes with lunar neighbors, particularly the U.S.

The recent lunar railroad initiative by DARPA is not just about creating a novel means of transport but also envisioning a future where the Moon plays a pivotal role in supporting human life and commercial activities. 

DARPA’s burgeoning interest in lunar infrastructure development subtly aligns with the DoD’s broader vision to leverage the Moon’s strategic position beyond mere scientific exploration to achieve economic and defense objectives. 

It remains to be seen whether perceiving the Moon as a critical asset for U.S. national security and economic development will ultimately lead to earthly conflicts in the future.

In an interview, last year with Space.com, Paul Szymanski of the Space Strategies Center and co-author of The Battle Beyond: Fighting and Winning the Coming War in Space described the sudden international interest in the Moon as “strange.” 

“For my entire 50-year career, no one I knew was particularly interested in it [the moon], but now there is extreme attention,” Szymanski said. “In the 1970’s NASA asked the Air Force if they wanted a base on the moon, and they said ‘no,'”

“Yet now, I personally know of companies planning on providing cell phone service on the Moon, and the Air Force Research Lab is developing several programs, such as space surveillance for the far side of the Moon. None of this makes sense unless there is some other not publicly known factor that has changed everyone’s attitudes.” 

• Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

25-03-2024 om 01:29 geschreven door peter  

CIA Chilling Document Reveals Presence Of Giant Aliens On Mars 1 Million Years B.C

In the CIA declassified file, it was detailed how Uri Geller could replicate things drawn by a researcher in another sealed room. As the US government was getting benefits from this program, they continued funding it.

One of the remote viewers named Angela Dellafiora Ford revealed her physics powers on the CBS News program “48 Hours.” In 1989, she was asked by the army to psychically track down the location of one man. She located the man in Lowell, Wyoming, and then he was arrested 100 miles west of a Wyoming town called Lovell.

In 2021, John Greenewald, Jr.’s Blackvault published approximately 2,700 pages of the declassified documents provided by the CIA, involving UAP/UFO information. One document that staggered ET hunters was about Mars.

Read also:

• Ret. US Army Major Showed Deleted UFO Photos Captured By Apollo Astronauts On Moon
• Former Area-51 Engineer Claimed Testing Re-Engineered UFO That Crashed In Arizona In 1953 With Four Aliens
• Ret. US Army Colonel Claimed Aliens In Roswell UFO Crash Were Bio-Robots Built For Space Travel
• FBI Chilling UFO Reports: Recovered 3 UFOs With Alien Bodies In New Mexico & 27,000 Mph Craft

Giant Entities On Mars

The document titled “Mars Exploration May 22, 1984,” basically centers around a subject that made use of astral projection which helped him observe ancient alien life on Mars. In this document, there is a transcript, where a subject named Joseph McMoneagle, a retired US Army veteran was given an envelope prior to the interview and asked not to open it until the interview ended. According to the CIA’s own documents, the unnamed psychic described “The planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years B.C.” (Source)

He claimed to identify that he saw pyramid-like structures on the Red Planet. The subject also added that he witnessed alien life forms on the Martian surface.

[Subject]: I’m seeing, ah… It’s like a perception of a shadow of people, very tall… thin, it’s only a shadow. It’s as if they were there and they’re not, not there anymore.
[Monitor]: Go back to a period of time where they are there.
Sub: Um… (mumble) It’s like I get a lot of static on a line and everything, it’s breaking up all the time, very fragmentary pieces.
Mon: Just report the data, don’t try to put things together, just report the raw data.
Sub: I just keep seeing very large people. They appear thin and tall, but they’re very large. Ah… wearing some kind of strange clothes.

According to the date specified in the “Mars Exploration” memo, it was approved to be published only in 2000 although it was recorded in 1984, and McMoneagle was the only remote viewer to be working at that time. He wrote in his book “Mind Trek” about a similar incident mentioned in that memo.

Jacob Brogan, an assistant editor at the Washington Post tracked down and called McMoneagle. According to Brogan, McMoneagle told him that the request to visit Mars was not made by the CIA but by some unknown army person to him. (Source)

“Neither of us knew what we were working on. Our assumption at the time was that I was working on targets on Earth. I was not familiar with any pyramids on Earth that had such large rooms,” McMoneagle told him.

McMoneagle was confused why he had been asked by the army to explore Mars. He had no clue. He remembered one more incident when he was asked to examine the UFO. “The problem that I have with targeting UFOs and Mars and things like that is that there’s no real way to validate the information,” he said.

In an interview with Richard Thieme, a founder of ThiemeWorks, McMoneagle shared his experience on Project Stargate, UFOs, and ETs. He shared his encounter with the UFO in 1966, in which he got a radiation burn.

Richard Thieme asked him: “Is it all one thing, though? These are complex psychological processes – and you were burned physically in 1966. Is it all one thing? Do scriptural texts of folk documents about people encountering entities – can we connect that experience with an experience of the lights going on at night and you seeing a physical craft?”

McMoneagle replied: “I did a remote viewing in early 1980s, 82 or 83, where a UFO target was mixed in with other targets, so I had no idea it was a UFO target.” Over the years, as McMoneagle said, he was involved in about 450 missions. One of his favorites was in 1980 when CIA personnel captured a suspected KGB agent in South Africa. They wanted to know how the agent was communicating with the Soviet military. They put an envelope on McMoneagle’s desk, and without knowing anything of the man, McMoneagle told the CIA that the man liked to use a small pocket calculator. The calculator turned out to be a disguised short-wave radio. He retired from the Army in 1984 but continued to work as a Stargate consultant.

Jacob Brogan, an assistant editor at the Washington Post tracked down and called McMoneagle. According to Brogan, McMoneagle told him that the request to visit Mars was not made by the CIA but by some unknown army person to him.

“Neither of us knew what we were working on. Our assumption at the time was that I was working on targets on Earth. I was not familiar with any pyramids on Earth that had such large rooms,” McMoneagle told him.

McMoneagle was confused why he had been asked by the army to explore Mars. He had no clue. He remembered one more incident when he was asked to examine the UFO. “The problem that I have with targeting UFOs and Mars and things like that is that there’s no real way to validate the information,” he said.

In an interview with Richard Thieme, a founder of ThiemeWorks, McMoneagle shared his experiences on the Project Stargate, UFOs, and ETs. He shared his encounter with the UFO in 1966, in which he got a radiation burn.

Richard Thieme asked him: “Is it all one thing, though? These are complex psychological processes – and you were burned physically in 1966. Is it all one thing? Do scriptural texts of folk documents about people encountering entities – can we connect that experience with an experience of the lights going on at night and you seeing a physical craft?”

McMoneagle replied: “I did a remote viewing in early 1980s, 82 or 83, where a UFO target was mixed in with other targets, so I had no idea it was a UFO target.”

CIA Interdimensional Experiemnt

Robert Monroe (1915 –1995), another RV that had a striking history of remote viewing was probably the first RV hired by the CIA. One day in 1978, the CIA representatives contacted him. They wanted to implement his mind-expanding practice in attempt of sending soldiers into deep remote viewing sessions. Given Monroe’s extensive background and various patented applications, he was the perfect choice for this trailblazing operation. Hoping to obtain further credibility in the study of paranormal phenomena, he agreed to join them. (Source)

Since those involved were opening portals to other dimensions, researchers aptly named the assignment Gateway Process. According to declassified files, the program is “a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space. (Source)

The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge the universe offers.” Discoveries listed in Commander Wayne M. McDonnell’s final analysis paper included detailed information about the nature of reality. Investigators ascertained we live in a holographic universe and waking life is a projected electromagnetic matrix.

To enter the unearthly realms, headphone-donning voyagers sat in isolated darkness while listening to various tones at specific hertz. The participants had no contact or communication with one another. After their journey was finished, the volunteers would report what they experienced with staff members.

According to Robert, subjects would often encounter interdimensional entities. Most frequently, they witnessed reptilian humanoids. The viewers referred to the uncanny creatures as “the alligators” due to their crocodilian features. Curiously, Monroe was already quite familiar with the unsettling breed. During countless expeditions, he observed identical saurian creatures. For over thirty-five years, the etheric investigator gathered insight about these startling beings.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

Ex-Apollo Astronaut Claimed Humans Are Ancient Aliens, Visited Earth From Space

By Vicky Verma

In the history of space programs, seven Apollo command module pilots spent time in isolation in lunar orbit while the rest of the crew explored the moon. These astronauts were completely cut off from Earth and the nearest humans had ever been when they were on the far side of the Moon. One of these astronauts was Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden who flew to the Moon in July 1971. He is remembered as the “most isolated human being” ever  – at times his companions being 3,600 km (2,235 miles) away on the lunar surface. He passed away at the age of 88 on March 18, 2020.

Astronaut Al Worden claimed that we are not alone in the universe. He said there is no doubt there are other living species out there. During his visit to FM’s Ray D’Arcy Show in 2014, he recalled being alone in space for three days during his 1971 mission gave him time to think about the bigger questions in life. (Source)

He said, “You see the universe out there and all the stars and you think and you do a little research on the stars. You realize how many there are out there. “There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone and there are another 200 billion galaxies. You begin to think ‘All that out there, there’s got to be somebody’.” Asked why he thought we haven’t had any contact from potential extraterrestrials, he quipped: “Why would they want to? They know enough about us not to want to. We’re making a balls of what we’re doing down here.”

Later he reconsidered his thoughts on alien life during his interview with the British TV show “Good Morning Britain.” He without any hesitation said that humans are the ancient aliens who had arrived on Earth in the distant past. When Worden is asked about the possibility that there are extraterrestrials out there, Worden says, “You know, I’ve been asked that question hundreds of times, ‘do you believe in aliens?’ and I say ‘yeah.’

In 2017, on a British TV show, he gave a shocking response when a host asked why to spend a lot of money on space missions when there are lots of problems on Earth. He was asked if he believed aliens were real. The answer probably surprised everyone watching the interview. The former Apollo 15 member said that not only were aliens real, but they had come to Earth in the distant past and created our civilization, and if we wanted to look for evidence, all we had to do was to look at ancient Sumerian literature.

“We are the aliens, but we just think they are somebody else. But we are the ones who came from somewhere else, because somebody else had to survive, and they got into little spacecraft then they came here and landed, and they started civilization here. And if you don’t believe me, go get books on Ancient Sumerians and see what they had to say. They’ll tell you right up front,” Worden added. He died on March 18, 2020.

ccording to his words, he was the firm believer in the ancient Sumerian scriptures. They reveal that humans and gods used to live together, while humans were servants to gods and each Sumerian city was guarded by its own god. The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth can be found in a tablet excavated in Nippur, an ancient Sumerian city in Mesopotamia, in 1893. (Click here for the full article)

According to the cuneiform tablets, Earth was ruled by human-like gods at the beginning. When they arrived on Earth, they made it habitable by toiling the soil and mining the minerals. Besides, the text mentioned the revolt between the gods and their laborers.

“When the gods like men
Bore the work and suffered the toll
The toil of the gods was great,
The work was heavy, the distress was.”

It is said before humans, the Anunnaki (a group of deities of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians) used the Igigi (sometimes also spelled “Igigu”), the young generation of Ancient Astronaut Gods as their servants to mine gold on Earth, but later, they were replaced by humans when they rebelled against the Annunaki. For the ancient Mesopotamians, heaven is divided into three domes. The lowest dome of heaven was the home of the stars, and the middle dome was the home of the Igigi, the younger gods. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was personified as An, the god of the sky.

Supporting Al Worden’s statement, Dr. Ellis Silver, an author of the book “Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence,” has a strong belief that life on earth was sparked by aliens thousands of years ago.

According to him, humans should have become the strongest race in the universe, but the mortal body failed to thrive in the Earth’s environment, it can easily be harmed by sunlight, natural disasters, and diseases. He said: “Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more.”

Dr. Ellis concluded that mankind did not come from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

A twinset of icy asteroids called Mors-Somnus is giving planetary scientists some clues about the origin and evolution of objects in the Kuiper Belt. JWST studied them during its first cycle of observations and revealed details about their surfaces, which gives hints at their origins. That information may also end up explaining how Neptune got to be the way it is today.

The Mors-Somnus binary is part of a collection of objects beyond Neptune. They’re called, aptly enough, “Trans-Neptunian Objects” or TNOs, for short. About 3,000 are numbered and known, and many more aren’t yet surveyed. They all lie beyond the orbit of Neptune and are divided into various classes. There are the classical Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and scattered disc objects. Within those two classes, there are resonant TNOs—which move in resonance with Neptune and extreme TNOs, which orbit far beyond Neptune (around 30 AU). Then there are objects in orbits similar to Pluto’s, called “plutinos”. Mors-Somnus is also a Plutino.

Neptune and Beyond

Why is there such a varied bunch of objects “out there”? Where did they originate and how have they changed over time? One way to answer those questions is to study the surface properties of Kuiper Belt Objects and, in particular, icy rocks like Mors-Somnus. One way to do that is to take spectra of their surfaces. The data reveals information about the surface compositions of these objects. That, in turn, tells scientists something about the environments in which they formed and those they’ve experienced over time.

Neptune itself likely formed closer to the Sun but then migrated to the outer Solar System (along with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus). At the same time, a huge dense disk of rocky and icy planetesimals and asteroids populated space out to about 35 AU. As the giant planets migrated to more distant orbits, they preferentially scattered those smaller bodies. These icy asteroids and cometary bodies settled into the Kuiper Belt, scattered disk, and the Oort Cloud. How that activity progressed and where those icy bodies came from in the first place are questions planetary scientists are working to answer.

More About Mors-Somnus and Neptune

This is where Mors-Somnus comes in handy. The pair is a good example of a “cold classical” TNO. It was studied by JWST as part of a program called Discovering the Surface Compositions of Trans-Neptunian Objects (DiSCO-TNOs) led by Ana Carolina de Souza Feliciano and Noemí Pinilla-Alonso at the University of Central Florida. The project identifies the unique spectral properties of these small celestial bodies beyond Neptune, something that hasn’t been done before now.

The Mors-Somnus is a member of the same dynamical group as other nearby TNOs and they share spectroscopic characteristics with other cold-classical group objects. This means they probably all formed at about the same time. They probably originated beyond 30 astronomical units from the Sun. Trans-Neptunian binaries such as Mors-Somnus provide a unique way to look at the formation and evolution of planetesimals in that region of space.

Studying the composition of small celestial bodies such as Mors-Somnus gives us precious information about where we came from, Pinilla-Alonso said. “We are studying how the actual chemistry and physics of the TNOs reflect the distribution of molecules based on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen in the cloud that gave birth to the planets, their moons, and the small bodies,” she says. “These molecules were also the origin of life and water on Earth.”

The Importance of Objects Beyond Neptune

The chemical and physical properties of TNOs offer a treasure trove of information about what conditions were like in the early Solar System. They likely contain pristine materials that existed in the protoplanetary disk from which our Solar System formed, including primitive ices. Those ices don’t change due to solar heating (since the Sun is so far away), but they can be darkened by ultraviolet radiation over time, as planetary scientists have seen at Pluto and other icy worlds. And, those bodies can get transported from their birth regions to other parts of the solar system. If their surfaces don’t change much, then scientists can used spectral studies to trace where groups of objects originated.

The TNO region also contains what scientists call a “dynamical structure”. That is, its distribution of objects by various characteristics, including their orbits and motions over time. Objects and events can change the dynamical structure. For example, the dynamical structure of the trans-Neptunian region bears the traces of planetary migration that occurred in the first billion years of the Solar System’s existence. The TNOs, and in particular, binaries like Mors-Somnus were affected by such migrations.

Migration and Neptune

It’s very likely that this binary pair originally formed well beyond the orbit of Neptune. The researchers found similar spectroscopic characteristics between Mors and Somnus and the cold-classical group. It’s compositional evidence that this binary pair formed well beyond 30 astronomical units (nearly 2.7 billion miles away). Then, they moved to their present positions under the gravitational influence of other planetary migrations.

Thanks to gravitational perturbations from Neptune, Mors-Somnus and its neighbors moved closer to the planet. They now orbit in resonance with the planet. All these objects are potential tracers for Neptune’s migration path before it settled into its final orbit, the researchers say.

Binaries separated by distance, as Mors-Somnus is, rarely survive outside of areas bound by gravity, where they are sheltered by other KBOs. To survive migration, they require a slow transportation process toward their destination. The migration of Neptune to its final orbit offered such a leisurely opportunity.

Using JWST to study the surface characteristics of smaller distant worlds is a great accomplishment, according to co-author Pinilla-Alonso. The telescope has studied larger worlds out there, but this is the first time it’s focused on such tiny members of the outer Solar System. “For the first time, we can not only resolve images of systems with multiple components like the Hubble Space Telescope did, but we can also study their composition with a level of detail that only Webb can provide. We can now investigate the formation process of these binaries like never before.”

For More Information

• UCF Scientists Use James Webb Space Telescope to Uncover Clues About Neptune’s Evolution
• Spectroscopy of the Binary TNO Mors–Somnus with the JWST and Its Relationship to the Cold Classical and Plutino Subpopulations Observed in the DiSCo-TNO Project

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 18:42 geschreven door peter  

In a New Memoir, NASA Scientist Reveals What Asteroids Keep Him Up At Night

Frightening yet alluring asteroids are the subject of a new space memoir.

BY DORIS ELÍN URRUTIA

 

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

This month, Lauretta spoke to Inverse about the keystone to the entire mission — the space-rock scooper called the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) that grabbed the sample — as well as what might be hiding inside the carbon-rich, ultra-dark asteroid samples, and what near-Earth asteroids keep him up at night.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Inverse: The TAGSAM, which is the robotic “arm” that scooped the asteroid sample as the spacecraft flew by Bennu, went through over 25 rounds of testing to ensure it could do this incredibly important, yet tricky task. It did these tests in NASA’s test plane, nicknamed the “Vomit Comet” for its signature parabolic, u-shaped flights known to induce severe nausea. When you saw the TAGSAM again once it landed on Earth last year, did you have flashbacks to this testing from 11 years ago?

Lauretta: Definitely. When the TAGSAM touched the test bed in the reduced gravity aircraft [the Vomit Comet], it was so gentle! Everything kind of just flipped up in slow motion. It was like a snow globe, but you could tell the physics were different.

It was so captivating. I found myself staring at it and thinking, ‘Wow.’ It really is a different regime when you’re trying to work in microgravity. We don’t have common sense for that. That really stuck with me. What will happen when we get down to the really low gravity [of Bennu], which is impossible to simulate on that aircraft?

Have all the Bennu asteroid samples been cataloged yet or is it an ever-evolving process?

It’s kind of a fractal process. When we take them out of TAGSAM and put them in what we call our pizza trays — if you’ve seen some pictures of them, they look like pizza slices — and that whole tray has a sample number. Then we go in and say, ‘Oh, that stone looks interesting!’ That stone gets pulled out and gets its own sample number. That process will go on for years because there are thousands and thousands of stones, especially as you get to smaller particles.

There’s a lot of discussion and decision-making. It’s a balance between doing the most exciting science, meeting the minimum science requirements, and also preserving the legacy of the collection for the future. We don’t want to consume all of a unique thing. But we do want to look at it, so we figure out how to characterize it while maintaining its integrity.

In the book, you describe the difficulties in talking to media outlets about an asteroid called Duende that would safely fly by the Earth. But then, that same morning, a meteoroid exploded with the power of a nuclear bomb over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Do you have fears that, say, OSIRIS-REx, now called OSIRIS-APEX, finds something gnarly about its new asteroid target, Apophis?

The risk of an asteroid impact is real. It’s small. But the consequences are huge. The event in Chelyabinsk really showed us. That was a true asteroid impact over a populated area. It was a really small object, as these things go, but it still caused damage. Hundreds of people were injured, and the property was destroyed. It woke everybody up.

That reminded me of the comet that struck Jupiter in 1994. Same kind of awareness. We live our lives with our heads down with all our daily struggles. But every once in a while, you look up, and you go, you know, there could be something coming, and maybe we should think about it. These kinds of high-profile events catalyze a lot more activity in these areas, absolutely.

How did Chelyabinsk affect the progression of the OSIRIS-REx mission? At the time, the mission hadn't yet been confirmed.

My science is all about origins investigations: How did Earth form, where did life come from, and does it exist elsewhere in the universe? But that’s somewhat esoteric, I would say, especially for Congress and politicians. But something coming from outer space that could cause damage? Everybody understands that. Our mission directly addresses it. So we absolutely leaned into it.

A few years ago, NASA confirmed that the asteroid this spacecraft is chasing now, called Apophis, won’t hit Earth in 2029, nor in 2068, and will fly past us safely in both instances. But Bennu could strike our planet in the year 2182. If that happens, it could create a fireball many times brighter than the Sun and carve out a four-mile-wide crater where dislodged rocks the size of sixteen-story buildings would rain down. Does knowing all this ever give you nightmares?

No. I mean, what it does is make me very humble in the sense that the universe is much bigger than anything I can imagine. Even though I spend my time trying to imagine how big it is, it’s impossible.

The forces that are out there are unbelievably powerful. Once you kind of appreciate that, you can’t help but feel tiny. An asteroid impact is one facet of that. The universe is such an amazing place to explore. There are beautiful things, but there are dangerous things. Our place is very precious. At the end of the day, I come away grateful that I’m here, that I’m alive.

In the last 20 years, have advancements been made to better track asteroids? What would you like to see happen next in this field?

In the last 20 years, there have been advances, and there have been setbacks. Advances have been made in the sense that some very capable asteroid survey telescopes have come online. One of which is the Pan-STARRS facility in Hawaii. That was a huge asset that came online and has discovered many hazardous asteroids — and non-hazardous asteroids, for that matter — every night. At the University of Arizona, where I’m based, we operate the Catalina Sky Survey, which has continued to improve its capabilities. It is still a very productive program for looking for asteroids in the Solar System.

I think the biggest setback is the loss of the Arecibo planetary radar system in Puerto Rico. That took severe damage from the hurricane that passed through there. That was such a powerful tool for characterizing the nature of these asteroids: getting their orbit, their size, their shape, their rotation state, and even some information about their surface properties. Arecibo data was absolutely central to mission planning for OSIRIS-REx at Bennu.

We don’t have that anymore. There’s no plan to rebuild Arecibo. I think it’s critical infrastructure. We should be talking about a replacement radio telescope. That, to me, is a major setback and a loss in our capability to get up close and personal with these objects.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 18:25 geschreven door peter  

10 UFO Sightings That Got the Internet Talking

UFOs occupy a special place in the human imagination, blurring the line between reality and fiction.

Shannon Sanford

Alien Scene from Signs the movie 

(Image Via Buena Vista Pictures Distribution/Touchstone Pictures

The allure of the unknown has always drawn us toward the stars, igniting our imaginations and prompting questions about what lies beyond. Among these cosmic curiosities, UFOs occupy a special place, blurring the line between reality and fiction. However, not every light in the sky is a sign of extraterrestrial visitors; many are the creations of earthly tricksters!

Today, we're looking at some UFO rumors and hoaxes that took the internet by storm. These posts and videos may have gone viral, but that doesn't mean they should be trusted. The truth may be out there!

From misunderstandings to outright deception, these are the UFO "sightings" that got the world talking:

1. Is This an Authentic Video of 3 UFOs Spotted Over New Mexico or Nevada?

• https://youtu.be/F5LsNif0aZo

In August 2023, a video claiming to show UFOs being chased by F-22 Raptors over Nevada took social media by storm. However, the creator disclosed that it was all virtual reality and that it was filmed using the "Digital Combat Simulator" video game.

Despite looking incredibly realistic and even fooling some UFO enthusiasts, the video doesn't feature real unidentified flying objects.

2. Did Rep. Tim Burchett Accuse US Government of Covering Up UFOs 'Since 1947'?

In a podcast appearance in June 2023, U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett discussed the U.S. House Oversight Committee's efforts to declassify unexplained anomalous phenomena and hold hearings on recovered non-human-made aircraft. Burchett mentioned the possibility of the government hiding evidence of alien technology since 1947, citing UFO sightings and the infamous Aurora, Texas, incident from 1897. 

Though the alleged airship crash from Mars was later revealed as a hoax, Burchett did make this claim. These discussions shed light on the ongoing interest in unexplained aerial phenomena and their potential implications.

3. Does This Video Show a UFO in Kazakhstan?

• https://youtu.be/jBl0zqnaY94

In mid-June 2023, a Twitter user posted a video supposedly capturing a UFO in Kazakhstan. However, it turned out to be an optical illusion created by the lights from the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. The video, although genuine, didn't depict a UFO. 

It was filmed in Balkhash, south of the Kazakh Uplands, shortly after the spacecraft's launch on Sept. 21, 2022. The footage surfaced online four days after the launch and continued circulating for a month, offering a glimpse into the fascinating world of misinterpreted space phenomena.

4. Does NASA Video Show Aliens Flying 2 Rectangular UFOs?

• https://youtu.be/-CHMQDqxFRY

In February 2023, a Twitter post misleadingly claimed that NASA had recorded a video of aliens piloting two rectangular UFOs eight years prior. This assertion quickly sparked curiosity and skepticism. However, the truth is far less extraterrestrial. 

The video in question was actually a digital animation created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, showcasing the twin spacecraft satellites from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, not alien technology. This creative misunderstanding highlights the importance of verifying sensational claims, especially when they involve the vast unknown of space.

5. Does This Video Show Helicopters Escorting a UFO?

• https://youtu.be/22GxeGv5ooc

In early February 2022, UFO enthusiasts were abuzz with a video purporting to show an alien spacecraft being chased by helicopters over Durham, Connecticut. The footage, described in sensational headlines, was too grainy to confirm details such as the date, location and type of helicopters involved. 

Despite the fuzzy quality, the video likely depicted three helicopters, with the middle one shining a spotlight below, rather than a UFO encounter. This interpretation leans more towards a terrestrial explanation.

6. Did Pentagon Confirm Leaked Pics of UFOs Were Taken by Military Personnel?

In July 2019, a night-vision video captured by the USS Russell crew showed pyramid-shaped objects flying in the night sky, confirmed as authentic by the U.S. Department of Defense. While the public might jump to extraterrestrial conclusions, these are officially termed "unidentified aerial phenomena." The origin and nature of these objects remain a mystery even to U.S. military officials. 

Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and investigative reporter George Knapp released the footage, hoping it sparks a rational and transparent investigation into UFO phenomena, suggesting technology possibly beyond current human capability. Further images captured by military aviators in 2019 have also surfaced, adding to the intrigue around these unidentified objects.

7. Did a 'Declassified' Picture Show an Alien UFO Crash?

An online ad promising "40+ Wild Photos That the Government Has Declassified" featuring a dramatic image of a UFO crash scene led curious folks to a lengthy slideshow on the Daily Forest website. The intrigue? A flying saucer surrounded by officials, straight out of a sci-fi scene. However, the twist in the tale was that the advertised UFO crash photo didn't make an appearance in the article. 

Instead, it was revealed to be a still from "The X-Files: The Event Series," dating back to 2016. 

8. Was a UFO Spotted Over New Jersey?

In mid-September 2020, a TikTok video capturing what seemed to be a UFO over New Jersey quickly went viral, amassing millions of views. The footage showed onlookers near Route 21, mesmerized by the sight. However, the mystery was soon solved: the "alien spaceship" was actually a Goodyear Blimp, confirmed by a company representative.

The blimp was in the area to film the NFL game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers at MetLife Stadium.

9. Was an Alien Spotted Boarding a UFO in Romania?

• https://youtu.be/nIvatqK_57o

In January 2018, a video allegedly capturing an alien boarding a spaceship in Romania and soaring over the forest became a social media sensation, amassing more 15 million views. Despite skepticism, some viewers were convinced it documented a real extraterrestrial visit.

However, the video's authenticity was questionable, with conflicting reports about its location — ranging from Târgoviște to Bacău, Romania, and even Alaska, highlighting a typical internet hoax pattern. 

Originally posted on the "Alien Unleash" YouTube channel without a specific location, the video, surrounded by keywords like "UFO" and "Real Aliens," was part of a collection featuring fantastical elements such as dragons and alien abductions, casting further doubt on its legitimacy.

10. Did a UFO Disappear Into a 'Portal' Above Colorado?

On April 17, 2017, a video claiming to show a UFO over southern Colorado went viral after being posted on the "I'm From Denver" Facebook page. Despite its widespread sharing, there were no local news reports to corroborate the sighting, which would be expected for such an extraordinary event. 

The video's true origins trace back to Sonora, Mexico, not Colorado. Skepticism grew as no concrete evidence supported the sighting, and the possibility of it being a drone light show or a digital creation was considered. Gabe Hash, a YouTube personality, debunked the video as a likely computer-generated hoax.

By Shannon Sanford

Shannon Sanford is a freelance writer assigned to come up with fun content from Snopes' archives.

{ https://www.snopes.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 14:37 geschreven door peter  

Sean Kirkpatrick, director of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the defense department, speaks at Nasa’s headquarters in Washington DC on 31 May 2023. 

Photograph: Joel Kowsky/Nasa

Sean Kirkpatrick doesn’t seem too thrilled to be chatting with me about UFOs. Since taking over the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 – government-speak for UFO hunting – Kirkpatrick has received violent threats, social-media smear campaigns, and even had to call the FBI after a UFO fanatic showed up at his home.

“I’ve had people threaten my wife and daughter, and try to break into our online accounts – far more than I ever had as the deputy director of intelligence [of US Strategic Command],” Kirkpatrick says. “I didn’t have China and Russia trying to get on me as much as these people are.”

So, after 18 months in the job, Kirkpatrick called it quits last December. Then, last week, AARO published the first part of a report he had worked on that concluded there was no evidence “that any USG [US government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology”.

AARO’s conclusions sent the world of ufology – the study of UFOs, the practitioners of which are known as ufologists – into a tailspin.

After all, it was only in July last year that the former intelligence officer David Grusch told a packed congressional hearing that for decades the US government had been hoarding crashed alien spaceships and attempting to reverse-engineer them. True believers thought we were getting closer than ever to full disclosure; it was only a matter of time until the government would wheel out the flying saucers on to the White House lawn.

David Grusch, center, testifies during a house hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena in Washington DC on 26 July 2023. 

Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kirkpatrick was watching that hearing. Over the course of three hours, and via testimony from two former US navy pilots, David Fravor and Ryan Graves, Congress heard about unknown aircraft making impossible manoeuvres, or the government’s possession of “non-human biologics” recovered from crashed spaceships. At one point, Representative Tim Burchett asked Grusch if he had any personal knowledge of people being harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal extraterritorial technology. Grusch replied: “Yes.” Burchett then asked Grusch if he had heard of anyone being murdered. The former intelligence official answered: “I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.” Grusch also claimed that the Men in Black were on his case and were harassing other witnesses.

Crucially, Grusch said he hadn’t seen the spaceships and “biologics” with his own eyes; someone in the intelligence community told him the story.

Naturally, Kirkpatrick tried to talk to him. But although Grusch had dropped most of these bombshells months before on the cable channel NewsNation, when asked to discuss it with the one man in the US government who really needed to hear the yarn, he was a no-show. “We tried to reach out to him four or five times to get him to come in,” Kirkpatrick says. “And as of the time that I left, he had refused to come for a variety of reasons.”You see this story crop up every couple of decades, and it’s pretty much the same story

Kirkpatrick – who has sharp features, a thin goatee and speaks in a measured monotone that makes even this topic seem slightly boring – says the evidence against Grusch’s claims is conclusive. “There’s no evidence to support any of the allegations or any extraterrestrial reverse engineering or ‘human biologics’ or whatever you want to call it,” he says. “You see this story crop up every couple of decades, and it’s pretty much the same story.”

And it comes, he says, from the ufologists who gave him such grief – a core of people that can only be described as America’s new UFO lobby.

A new age

The 21st century’s UFO craze began on 16 December 2017 after the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had created something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This was supposedly a secret department investigating unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs (the Department of Defense’s preferred acronym for UFOs).

The Times piece also included three videos, the most compelling of which showed an object eerily similar to a flying saucer, moving with no apparent means of propulsion.

The story went viral and UFOs went mainstream. Serious people were now taking little green men and their spaceships very seriously. Barack Obama told The Late Late Show with James Corden that things were happening in our skies that the US government simply could not explain.

A flying saucer photographed near Santa Ana, California, in August 1965. 

Photograph: GRANGER/Historical Picture Archive/Alamy

However, not everything in the Times’ story was accurate. Yes, the Pentagon did have a UFO programme, but it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), not AATIP, and it had bizarre beginnings.

Seated next to Grusch in that congressional hearing was George Knapp, a journalist who in 2006 co-wrote a book called Hunt for the Skinwalker (a shape-shifting witch in Navajo culture). Knapp’s book tells stories of vanishing cattle, “invisible objects emitting magnetic fields” and flying orbs zooming around the eponymous Skinwalker Ranch – a large property in Utah.

The book has proved to be instrumental in modern ufology. It found its way to James Lacatski, an intelligence officer in the Department of Defense, who was blown away by it and contacted the aviation billionaire Robert Bigelow, the owner of Skinwalker Ranch at the time. Bigelow allowed Lacatski to visit the ranch and investigate; one evening, Lacatski claimed to see an apparition in the kitchen, described in Knapp’s and Lacatski’s 2021 follow-up book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon as “an unearthly technological device” which took the form of “a complex semi-opaque, yellowish, tubular structure”.

Lacatski and Bigelow took their findings to the late Harry Reid, the Nevada senator, who also had a keen interest in UFOs. Bigelow was a longtime donor to Reid’s campaigns, and persuaded him that it was time to look into UFOs and related phenomena.

There was one problem: a defence programme focused on UFOs would not loosen any purse strings at the Pentagon, so Lacatski buried the true purpose of his research under an unremarkable acronym: AAWSAP, which promptly kicked off a search for poltergeists, ET and “the freakish hybrid of small dinosaur [sic] and large beaver”.

The Pentagon gave $22m to AAWSAP in 2008 – and AAWSAP gave the funds to none other than Bigelow and his company, Bigelow Aerospace, who used the money to chase UFOs and the paranormal at Skinwalker Ranch.

A few years later, the Pentagon got wind of what was really happening, and AAWSAP was fully closed down by 2012. There’s no evidence that AAWSAP found spaceships or aliens.

The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America, which headquarters in Los Angeles, released this photo taken by a member reportedly showing a flying saucer estimated at 70ft in diameter. 

Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

But the myth had taken root.

In Kirkpatrick’s report, he says all the stories – the alien bodies and crashed spaceships that Grusch peddled in Congress – “largely originate from the same group of individuals who have ties to AAWSAP/AATIP program” and “worked with each other consistently in various UAP-related efforts”.

Their beliefs, he says now, are as circular as their associations with one another. “Some of that same core group of individuals had reached out to one of these industry partners and convinced them to take a look at a piece of material that they claimed was part of a crashed UFO. And then they turned around to point to that company and say, ‘Hey, ‘they’re reverse engineering crashed UFOs?’ Well, they were the ones that gave it to them.” Nevertheless, he and his team at AARO looked into it. “It turns out that’s not really a UFO. It’s most likely a piece of a missile case from an air force test,” he says.

What about the leaked UFO videos, like the one in the New York Times? Kirkpatrick says there’s not enough data to provide a definitive analysis of each one but insists that, like all the stories that came across his desk, they have mundane explanations that don’t involve space aliens. The rotating object shaped like a flying saucer is probably glare from a distant heat source. “The source could be any number of things. Even a weather balloon will give off that kind of glare if it’s got enough shiny metal on it, and the sun’s just right,” he says.

But evidence is not the point. Some will never be swayed. “There’s the absolute true belief, which would suggest it is more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing,” he says. “And those are the people that you’re never going to convince, no matter what you put in front of them. I can lay out the pictures of the classified programmes that they mistook, and they still wouldn’t believe it. They would say, ‘No, that was derived from alien technology.’”

And what if the government does eventually get its hands on aliens and their flying saucers? “It’s not their job [to keep it secret],” he says. “It would immediately get turned over to Nasa, and Nasa would immediately disclose it to everybody. That’s their job.”

• This article and its headline were amended on 22 March 2023. A previous version misquoted Sean Kirkpatrick as saying a UFO fanatic tried to break into his home. Instead a ufologist only showed up at his home.

{ https://www.theguardian.com/world/ufos }

24-03-2024 om 14:00 geschreven door peter  

Australian Pilot Followed By Large UFO & Mysteriously Disappeared 43 Years, Never Found

Frederick Valentich disappeared in 1978 while flying a Cessna over the Bass Strait

On October 21, 1978, Valentich (20) planned a date with his fiancee Rhonda Rushton to fly in his light-engine Cessna 182L aircraft from Moorabbin to King Island. Somehow, the plan failed as Rhonda could not leave work earlier and also unable to call him. Due to the tight schedule of the flight, Valentich had to leave her behind, began his flight at 18:19 and flew at an air level of 1500 m.

The plane flew to the island, not over the shortest distance, but making a broken line to minimize the duration of the flight over the Bass Strait, a sea strait separating Tasmania from the Australian mainland. At the 41st minute of the flight, the plane reached Cape Otway and turned towards the strait.

Read also:

• Project Stargate: CIA Top Secret Program To Track UFOs & Explore Mars
• Former CIA Director Believes In UFOs & His Friend’s Aircraft Stopped At 40,000 Feet In The Air
• Aliens From Andromeda Told US Army Personnel That Humans Are Composite of 22 different E.T. races
• Bizarre UFO Encounter Of US Farmer: Three Aliens Gave Him Pancakes

At 19:06, Valentich informed the ground control service of Melbourne that he had seen an unidentified aircraft flying higher and faster. The controllers did not know anything about the planes flying in that area, and the radars showed that Valentich was flying all alone.

Nevertheless, Frederick insisted that there was a large aircraft next to him, which appeared and disappeared from his view. Over the next 5 minutes, he continued to talk about the spaceship flying around him, however, he did not give any detailed description of it. The only significant information related to the appearance of the UFO given by him was that it had four landing lights.

It has been over 43 years since Valentich’s plane disappeared. The search operation carried out in the Bass Strait and on King Island had no result, although it continued until October 25. The investigation carried out by the Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, lasted for 3.5 years. On April 27, 1982, it ended with a laconic verdict and the reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has not been determined.

Richard Valentich was 12 when his brother vanished but said there was no family fixation on UFOs. “The concept of a UFO taking my brother is very far out there,” he said.

“Did he encounter something that made him crash? That may be more plausible. There’s a lot of theories out there but no one has proven anything.” The people in authority tried to destroy all records of his flight. It was done ostensibly to announce that on October 21, 1978, there was no such flight at all. Moreover, the original audio recording of Valentich’s conversations with the control room has disappeared. In 2008, BBC officials formally requested the original audio recording from the Australian Ministry for Infrastructure but never received it.

At the end of 1978, dozens of reports were received about strange objects and incomprehensible optical phenomena in the sky over the western part of the Bass Strait. In 1998, it became known about the existence of three witnesses, who on October 21, 1978, watched from the shore a flight over the Bass Strait of a light-engine aircraft, which was pursued by green lights.

Interestingly, there was a witness on the ground who claimed to have seen a green light just above Valentich’s plane. The last piece of audio recording with a duration of 17 seconds, in which strange grinding sounds are heard, was examined by researcher Richard Haines. According to him, this audio fragment contained 36 sound signals (bursts) of different frequency spectrums without a clear rhythmic pattern.

UFO researchers have made great efforts to find possible witnesses of the incident with Valentich. According to them, they managed to find more than 20 people who were near the coast in the area of Cape Otway before, during, and after the sunset on October 21, 1978, and who had seen an unidentified object or incomprehensible optical phenomena in the sky.

The Frederick Valentich case is documented in both Ross Coulthart’s “In Plain Sight” and Leslie Kean’s “UFOs.” Here you can listen to the actual audio of Valentich’s last transmission.

Richard Valentich is still convinced that his brother was abducted by aliens. In all his interviews, he invariably declared that what had happened to his brother could not be staged and had no rational explanations. Frederick Valentich is still officially listed as a missing person, and his family members still hope that one day, his disappearance mystery will be solved.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

24-03-2024 om 13:41 geschreven door peter  

The north west has reported the highest number of UFO sightings

By Damon Wilkinson Reporter -  Richard Ault

It's been an interesting few years for UFO enthusiasts 

(Image: Andy Johnstone for The Daily Mirror)

In Moston a shiny silver object was seen 'randomly disappearing and reappearing in a cloudless sky'. Several bright white lights were spotted in Stalybridge ascending towards a bright star.

And in Stretford a 'white light streak' was caught on a doorbell camera zig-zagging across the atmosphere. They're just some of the dozens of UFO sightings reported across Greater Manchester over the last four years, a new report has revealed.

It's been an interesting time for UFO enthusiasts. Last year American fighter jets shot down an unexplained flying object - which was later identified as a Chinese balloon, suspected to be on a spying mission - as well as three other objects in or near American airspace.

READ MORE: The real story behind the hilarious UFO wind-up in Happy Valley

Then whistle-blower Major David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, set the internet on fire when he claimed the US was concealing a long-standing programme that retrieves and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects.

The intrigue has continued into 2024, with Ukrainian troops recording a huge disc-shaped object over the battlefield of Donetsk, while closer to home a hiker came upon a mysterious monolith on a hilltop in Powys, which he initially assumed was 'some sort of UFO', but has since left some speculating it may have been planted by aliens.

But despite increasing speculation about alien visitors online and in the media, the skies above the UK have been relatively quiet in the last year. In its annual report, the research group UFO Identified documented 395 sightings in the UK in 2023 - a 20% drop from 497 sightings in 2022 and lower than in 2021 (413) and 2020 (484).

Information was taken from social media, newspaper reports, and over 50 Freedom of Information requests, as well as from reports made directly to UFO spotter groups around the UK. According to the report, people in the North West had the best chance of seeing a UFO last year, with 41 sightings across the region, followed by the South East (40) and then the South West (39).

Use our interactive map to see the UFO sightings where you live..

• https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/mapped-more-1500-ufo-sightings-9185114

Source: ufoidentified.co.uk

The vast majority of sightings were of far-off objects in the sky, but there were 27 'Close Encounters of the First Kind', more than double the previous year. These are reports of UFOs seen up close, at a distance of no more than 500ft away.

Ash Ellis of UFO Identified said: "Overall, it’s disappointing to see such a big decrease in reports this year, especially after the bumper year of 2022. This time last year we were hoping that a reduction in the stigma surrounding the topic would lead to more reports being filed, but this clearly hasn’t been the case.

"Hopefully, as we and other groups around the country continue giving people space and a platform to talk about their experiences that will help more people come forward and be confident to stand up and tell their story. Despite the reduced number of reports, we continue to see the same trends across different datasets.

"Whether that's the area in which sightings are being made, to the time of day, and the described shape of UFOs, and so on, these have all been consistent over the past four years. This, to me, tells us that there are areas which are more prone to seeing UFOs and we will be using this data to forecast areas of interest over the coming years."

{ https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ }

24-03-2024 om 13:24 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers Find Two Ancient Substructures in Inner Milky Way

Dubbed Shakti and Shiva, the newly-identified structures are between 12 and billion years old — so ancient they likely formed before even the oldest parts of the present-day Milky Way’s spiral arms and disk.

This image shows the location and distribution of Shakti (yellow) and Shiva (blue) stars throughout the Milky Way.

Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / K. Malhan.

“What’s truly amazing is that we can detect these ancient structures at all,” said Dr. Khyati Malhan, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

“The Milky Way has changed so significantly since these stars were born that we wouldn’t expect to recognize them so clearly as a group — but the unprecedented data we’re getting from ESA’s Gaia satellite made it possible.”

Using Gaia observations, Dr. Malhan and Max Planck Institute for Astronomy’s Dr. Hans-Walter Rix were able to determine the orbits of individual stars in the Milky Way, along with their content and composition.

“When we visualised the orbits of all these stars, two new structures stood out from the rest among stars of a certain chemical composition. We named them Shakti and Shiva,” Khyati said.

Each stream contains the mass of about 10 million Suns, with stars of 12 to 13 billion years in age all moving in very similar orbits with similar compositions.

The way they’re distributed suggests that they may have formed as distinct fragments that merged with the Milky Way early in its life.

Both Shakti and Shiva streams lie towards the Milky Way’s heart.

Gaia explored this part of the Milky Way in 2022 using a kind of galactic archaeology. This showed the region to be filled with the oldest stars in the entire Galaxy, all born before the disk of the Milky Way had even properly formed.

“The stars there are so ancient that they lack many of the heavier metal elements created later in the Universe’s lifetime,” Dr. Rix said.

“The stars in our Galaxy’s heart are metal-poor, so we dubbed this region the Milky Way’s ‘poor old heart’.”

“Until now, we had only recognized these very early fragments that came together to form the Milky Way’s ancient heart.”

“With Shakti and Shiva, we now see the first pieces that seem comparably old but located further out.”

“These signify the first steps of our Galaxy’s growth towards its present size.”

While very similar, the two streams are not identical. Shakti stars orbit a little further from the Milky Way’s center and in more circular orbits than Shiva stars.

Fittingly, the streams are named after a divine couple from Hindu philosophy who unite to create the Universe.

Some 12 billion years ago, the Milky Way looked very different to the orderly spiral we see today.

We think that our Galaxy formed as multiple long, irregular filaments of gas and dust coalesced, all forming stars and wrapping together to spark the birth of our Galaxy as we know it.

It seems that Shaki and Shiva are two of these components — and future Gaia data releases may reveal more.

The authors also built a dynamical map of other known components that have played a role in our Galaxy’s formation and were discovered using Gaia data.

These include Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, LMS1/Wukong, Arjuna/Sequoia/I’itoi, and Pontus.

These star groups all form part of the Milky Way’s complex family tree, something that Gaia has worked to build over the past decade.

“Revealing more about our Galaxy’s infancy is one of Gaia’s goals, and it’s certainly achieving it,” said Gaia project scientist Dr. Timo Prusti, an astronomer at ESA.

“We need to pinpoint the subtle yet crucial differences between stars in the Milky Way to understand how our Galaxy formed and evolved.”

“This requires incredibly precise data — and now, thanks to Gaia, we have that data.”

“As we discover surprise parts of our Galaxy like the Shiva and Shakti streams, we’re filling the gaps and painting a fuller picture of not only our current home, but our earliest cosmic history.”

• The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
• Khyati Malhan & Hans-Walter Rix. 2024. Shiva and Shakti: Presumed Proto-Galactic Fragments in the Inner Milky Way. ApJ 964, 104; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad1885

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

24-03-2024 om 12:55 geschreven door peter