Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
NASA zal dan toch geen "rover" (een rijdende robot) naar de zuidpool van de maan sturen om er water te zoeken. Dat heeft het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap woensdag bekendgemaakt. De kosten van de missie liepen te hoog op.
Het ruimtevaartagentschap gaf al 450 miljoen dollar uit aan de robot, waarvan de kosten oorspronkelijk waren geraamd op minder dan 430 miljoen dollar. De lancering was in eerste instantie voorzien voor 2022, maar was uitgesteld tot ten vroegste het voorjaar van 2025. Dat zou de totale kosten hebben opgedreven tot meer dan 600 miljoen dollar.
Het was volgens NASA een zeer moeilijke beslissing om de missie af te blazen, terwijl de rover al is opgetuigd. Het ruimtevaartagentschap heeft een oproep gelanceerd voor industriële of internationale partners die mogelijk geïnteresseerd zijn in de rover. Anders is NASA van plan om het toestel te ontmantelen om bepaalde onderdelen te hergebruiken, zoals batterijen en zonnepanelen.
This “penguin party” (called Arp 142) is loud! The distorted spiral galaxy at center, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical galaxy at left, the Egg, are locked in an active embrace. A new near- and mid-infrared image from the Webb Space Telescope, taken to mark its second year of science, shows that their interaction is marked by a faint upside-down U-shaped blue glow. The blue galaxy at upper right (near bright star) is a closer galaxie teeming with new stars. It's not part of the collision and lies closer to Earth than Arp 142.
What happens when a spiral and an elliptical galaxy collide? To celebrate the second anniversary of the “first light” for the Webb telescope, NASA released an amazing infrared view of two galaxies locked in a tight dance. They’re called the Penguin and the Egg and their dance will last hundreds of millions of years.
“In just two years, Webb has transformed our view of the universe, enabling the kind of world-class science that drove NASA to make this mission a reality,” said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Webb is providing insights into longstanding mysteries about the early Universe.”
Webb Witnesses a Galactic Dance
The telescope targeted a collision scene named Arp 142 containing both galaxies—a scene that the Hubble Space Telescope has also explored. They lie about 326 million light-years away. Their first close encounter began somewhere between 25 and 75 million years ago. That’s when two partner galaxies had the first of many passages that will distort their shapes more than they already appear here.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured visible light when observing Arp 142, nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg, in 2013. The Webb view (right) shows the near-infrared view. Courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Webb’s observations, which combine near- and mid-infrared light from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), respectively, clearly show that a hazy cloud of gas and stars (blue) links them together. The close approach also set off tremendous bursts of star birth in the colliding clouds of gas and dust.
Eventually, after several close approaches in their cosmic dance, these two galaxies will merge completely. Observers hundreds of millions of years in the future will look at Arp 142 and see one massive elliptical galaxy.
Interestingly, Webb’s sharp infrared eyes also picked out very distant galaxies. Some lie beyond this cosmic collision, although at least one lies about a hundred million light-years closer to Earth. It bristles with hot, young, newborn stars.
How The Arp 142 Galaxies Experience a Merger
The Penguin and Egg galaxies lie about 100,000 light-years apart but they affect each other. The Egg’s gravitational pull distorts the spiral and that interaction is “sculpting” the Penguin. The core makes up the eye of a penguin. The slowly unwinding spiral arms form a beak, head, backbone, and tail.
Webb’s infrared view reveals otherwise unseen activity between the two. For example, the Penguin is rich in dust. Webb’s view shows us how gravitational interactions pull that dust away from the Penguin. There are also scads of new stars in the galaxy, surrounded by what looks like smoke. Webb’s view shows this hydrogen cloud. It’s rich in carbon-based molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are incredibly abundant in the Universe and astronomers find them just about everywhere they point a telescope.
Webb’s mid-infrared MIRI image shows the Egg as a small teal oval. Mid-infrared light predominantly shows the oldest stars in the elliptical galaxy, which has lost or used up most of its gas and dust. This is why the view is so different from the combined image, which includes near-infrared light. Courtesy: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
By contrast, in Webb’s view, the Egg looks like it’s hardly been touched—it’s still an egg-shaped elliptical. It has much older stars than the Penguin. Past epochs of star birth have pretty much used up the available star-making material. So, even though the two galaxies have about the same mass, the Egg just doesn’t have as much material to get stretched out or turned into stars.
Zeroing in on Webb’s Two Views
If you look at both of Webb’s infrared views of the galaxy collision, you can see marked differences in them. That’s because each one prioritizes a different set of infrared wavelengths. In the mid-infrared view, the egg looks tiny and washed out. That’s because the instrument sees only the old stars in the Egg. By contrast, the Penguin’s distorted core and spiral arms are brimming with young stars embedded in the PAH-rich hydrogen clouds.
The combined near- and mid-infrared view shows more of the gas clouds as the Egg tears them away from the Penguin. These regions will glitter in the future with the light of newly formed stars. For now, however, only cooler, older stars are visible in the combined image. The younger ones are there, but the mid-infrared-sensitive instrument doesn’t spot them.
Here’s a flythrough visualization of Arp 142. NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Christian Nieves (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Frank Summers (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI)
Why Does Webb Study Galaxy Collisions?
By studying this galactic collision site, the Webb telescope further probes the activity as galaxies evolve. Collisions are an integral part of this process. Our Milky Way Galaxy will dance with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, starting in about 5 billion years. Images and data from observations of other galaxies doing the same thing give astronomers a chance to understand the process and forecast the distant future when something called “Milkdromeda” will contain the stars and planets of two spirals that once were close neighbors.
A Hopping Robot Could Explore Europa Using Locally Harvested Water
Various forms of hopping robots have crept into development for us[e in different space exploration missions. We’ve reported on their use on asteroids and even our own Moon. But a study funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) in 2018 planned a mission to a type of world where hopping may not be as noticeable an advantage—Europa.
The mission, developed by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Purdue University, and Honeybee Robotics, is known as the Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds, or SPARROW. It’s about the size and shape of a soccer ball, with the logic, power, and control systems inside a spherical outer hollow shell.
SPARROW wouldn’t be able to operate on its own, however. It would require a lander to deposit it onto the surface and serve as a refueling and sample collection storage base. Europa Clipper, the only currently planned NASA mission to the icy moon, would have been good for hitching a ride, but its lack of a lander made it unsuitable for SPARROW.
Budget constraints are always a problem for innovative missions – as Fraser explains with Dr. Manasvi Lingam.
However, the hopping robot itself is well suited for the environment in Europa. Its designers intended to make it “terrain agnostic,” meaning it could traverse even the harshest terrain the icy moon could throw at it. These would include penitentes, shards of ice that could be meters tall, and difficult for ground-based robots to traverse.
SPARROW could fly over them, collect interesting samples, and return to the lander to refuel and deposit them. Then, it could go out again in a different direction. To model this system architecture, the JPL team spent Phase I trying to determine the best propulsion system for the robot and modeling control algorithms for the flights.
First, let’s tackle the propulsion system. The lander accompanying SPARROW would have to mine ice off the moon’s surface, then heat it and store it as water. When SPARROW returned from a hop, it would use the water to refuel. Five different propulsion methods were considered as part of the study. Still, the best turned out to be a “hot water thruster,” where SPARROW would internally heat the water supplied by the lander, then eject that out in a burst of propulsive force to launch the robot off the surface.
Exploring the surface of Europa is only one part of its mystery – as Fraser explains.
The second major part of the paper was controlling that propulsion. Trajectory correction is critical to mission success, but in this case, the designers believe that no matter where the robot ends up, it will be able to collect a sample and return to the lander. This is due to its gimballed design, which allows the robot to consistently orient correctly, even after bouncing along a frozen surface for a while.
There is still much work to do before the mission is ready to go, though. Some of the most pressing questions are how to stop ice from forming in the robot’s propulsion nozzle and throughout its structural cage. Such blockages could easily throw off any existing trajectory calculations and theoretically immobilize the hopper entirely if they were severe enough.
However, no work is planned to solve those problems for now as the project has yet to receive Phase II funding from NIAC, and work on it appears to have stalled. Dr. Gareth Meirion-Griffith, the primary investigator on the project, has moved on from JPL to take a job at Collins Aerospace. Even so, someday, the author’s ideas might be integrated into a Europa lander mission—we’ll have to wait and see.
'Clearest ever UFO photo of spaceship chased by fighter jet' uncovered
'Clearest ever UFO photo of spaceship chased by fighter jet' uncovered
Story by John O'sullivan & Danny Gutmann
On August 4, 1990, a pair of hikers embarked on a trek through the Scottish Highlands, unaware that they were about to snap what's been hailed as the 'clearest UFO photo ever taken'. The photograph, known as the 'Calvine photo' after the nearby hamlet where it was snapped, would go missing and become the subject of myth for thirty years.
However, after 13 years of relentless investigation by Professor David Clarke, a former journalist and now academic at Sheffield Hallam University, the elusive image was finally located. Prof Clarke discovered ex-RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, who had retained a copy of the photograph depicting the extraordinary scene the two hikers witnessed.
In the astonishing image, a sizable saucer-shaped craft is distinctly seen, with a jet fighter seemingly in hot pursuit. The hikers originally handed over the photograph to the Daily Record newspaper in Scotland, but it eventually ended up with the British Ministry of Defence, where it remained shrouded in secrecy until 2022.
Speaking to Newsweek, Prof Clarke recounted: "The Daily Record's picture editor at that time sent them to Craig Lindsay, who was the RAF press officer in Scotland. He passed the print to the Ministry of Defense in London, the Ministry of Defense in London then asked him to obtain the negatives. So he went back to the Daily Record, asked the Daily Record to send the negatives to London, which they duly did-quite amazingly-and that's when they disappeared."
Related video:
Pentagon Releases 3 NEW UFO Videos (Secret History)
The video, titled "Go Fast," can be seen below.
The video was reportedly taken from a Pentagon program studying Unidentified Flying Objects. It was originally classified when it launched in 2007 as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The program shut down in 2012, but some elements of the program are reportedly still active. To The Stars Academy claims several government organizations reviewed the footage and it is available for anyone who submits a Freedom of Information Act request.
Despite the media attention the photo received, the two hikers involved have kept mum about their experience. Lindsay, however, shared what he knew about their eerie encounter with Clarke.
The pair, who were working as chefs at a hotel in the Scottish Highlands, took an evening stroll in Calvine in August 1990 and encountered the enigmatic object soaring overhead.
Prof Clarke told Newsweek: "They saw this thing in the sky and it scared them. They ran into some woodland to sort of keep their heads down, and they heard this jet come down the valley and then, two minutes later, it returned and started circling around the object. And that's when they took the photographs."
The incident witnessed by the men remains an unsolved enigma to this day.
The Ariane 6 rocket promises to be Europe’s newest portal into space. On Tuesday, the rocket successfully reached orbit for the first time, taking off from Europe's Spaceport in northeastern South America. If all continues to go well on future flights, Ariane 6 will pick up after Ariane 5, the workhorse that flew for the last time in July 2023, and which delivered critical missions into space like the James Webb Space Telescope.
“Ariane 6 is Europe’s rocket for the needs of today, adaptable to our future ambitions,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General, shared via ESA.
When the new rocket is fully functioning, the ESA will be able to pay a European company to launch its projects. Today, it relies on U.S.-based private space companies such as SpaceX.
Ariane 6, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon fleet, isn’t a reusable rocket. However, the newly constructed spacecraft does come with some novel technology, including a special upper stage engine, called Vinci, that will be agile and friendly to the space environment.
“With many features brand new to Ariane 6, we’ll be able to carry more and take it further, while sustainably disposing of the launcher's upper stage to prevent it becoming space debris,” officials from the operator of the Ariane 6’s inaugural flight, the European Space Agency (ESA), wrote on Sunday.
An illustration of the Ariane 6 lifting off from French Guiana.
The 184-foot-tall spacecraft is a collaboration between Arianespace, its main customer ESA, and the French space agency CNES, which built out the Ariane 6 launchpad at Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana. Like Ariane 5, Ariane 6 will launch near the Equator, taking advantage of the boost from Earth’s rotation there to reach space.
MEET VINCI
The Vinci upper stage engine is the Ariane 6 feature with the most allure. For one, it can be reignited, which allows a single Ariane 6 launch to deliver multiple missions on different orbits.
“Reigniting an engine in zero gravity may not sound so difficult, but as fuels float freely inside the tanks, it is not as simple as you might think. The Auxiliary Propulsion Unit (APU) helps here, providing a small but steady amount of thrust to cause fuel in the Vinci tanks to settle ensuring it can fire again,” ESA officials added.
A final command tells Vinci to passivate, or remove energy, so that it can reenter the atmosphere and burn up with the least chance of an explosion. According to ESA, this reduces the chances that Vinci pieces will linger around as space debris.
With Ariane 6, the ESA can now envision missions both within Earth orbit and beyond to destinations like the Moon.
Researchers made a tantalizing discovery after they MacGyver-ed old data from a radar instrument on a satellite gathered 14 years ago from the Moon. When they used the mission data in a fresh new way, they found proof of a Moon cave hiding in plain sight.
The cave is inside a hole in the ground located in the Sea of Tranquility, which is the same region where the first Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon. This pit is named Mare Tranquillitatis pit (MTP) after the area’s Latin spelling.
The team behind the new work, which was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, created an ad-hoc radar technique. This provided them a refreshing new look at observations made with the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2010, when it fired pulses at an inclined angle down towards the pit. This data was invisible to the satellite’s optical cameras.
When they analyzed the signals anew, and compared it with simulations, they saw that Mini-RF had detected something spectacular. From an observational angle of about 47 degrees, they saw evidence that the pit floor, which was always visible overhead, is flanked by something burrowed beneath the surface. The finding may have repercussions for future lunar explorers.
The Mare Tranquillitatis pit (MTP) on the Moon’s near side.
The Moon cave is a conduit, or a section of a longer tunnel where something once used to flow.
What formed it? Researchers think that beneath the ground, lava flow likely formed the tunnel in the ancient past. Then suddenly, for an unknown reason (potentially a meteorite strike or tectonic activity), one section of the tunnel’s roof caved in, allowing Moon debris to fall down and form a cone-shaped pile.
This is the most compelling evidence for Moon conduits so far. There are several other conduits suspected of existing. But MTP was the right size to reveal its hidden cavern.
“It was large enough that the Mini-RF instrument could collect significant amounts of data from within the pit and, fortuitously, the conduit was oriented such that the look angle of the instrument could see into it,” Wes Patterson, study author and Mini-RF principal investigator, tells Inverse.
WHY LOOK FOR WHAT’S LURKING ON THE MOON?
Subsurface Moon caves could be an exciting foray for lunar science.
Beyond the natural silvery satellite, data on these features could shape how astronomers interpret other data to recreate an idea of how the planets formed. It could sharpen our idea of how the Moon and our world are intertwined.
“The study of this conduit could enhance our understanding of the dynamic relationship between the Earth and the Moon,” the study’s lead author Leonardo Carrer tells Inverse.
There’s also a far-off application: refuge for NASA’s Artemis program astronauts. The space agency is funneling its resources towards returning humans to the Moon this decade. The first program flight to bring boots back to the Moon is seeking a landing site near the lunar south pole. Craters may offer refuge to the crew. The lunar south pole, unlike the Sea of Tranquility, offers another critical resource: frozen water.
There’s no evidence that the Sea of Tranquility offers frozen water. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there, Carrer explains. “The presence of water ice in the lunar subsurface is unknown because we have not had the opportunity to observe it directly. This is why our discovery of a likely accessible cave is so important; it provides a potential entry point to explore the lunar subsurface.”
But if MTP leads to a conduit, there may be more. There could be other caverns on more distant worlds where NASA seeks to place astronauts: Mars.
This pit may have just opened up a whole new world of Moon science.
'The real Atlantis' discovered off the coast of Greece
'The real Atlantis' discovered off the coast of Greece
Story by Harriet Brewis
The legendary land of Atlantis may get all the press, but there exists a sunken city that’s far older than its mythological counterpart.
Pavlopetri is thought to be some 5,000 years old, but it wasn’t discovered until the 20th Century, and experts are still uncovering its secrets and treasures.
The Bronze Age town was first identified off the coast of Greece’s southern Peloponnese region in 1904 by a geologist named Folkion Negris.
However, it was largely unexplored until 1967, when Nicholas Flemming, of the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Southampton, rediscovered the site.
The following year Fleming, accompanied by a group of archaeologists from the University of Cambridge, spent six weeks surveying the drowned city, which lies submerged in around three to four metres (10 to 13 feet) of water, IFL Science reports.
The researchers then mapped out the ancient town, which boasted at least 15 separate buildings, as well as courtyards, streets and tombs.
They also recovered a number of artefacts from the seabed,including pottery, blades and a small bronze figurine which they dated to between 2800 and 1180 BC. However, the buildings of the city itself were found to date back to around 1650 to 1180 BC.
A diver explores Pavlopetri's submerged remains, which include parts of what was once a large rectangular building ((Jon Henderson and the Pavlopetri Project))
You might think that the discovery of a long-lost city buried beneath the waves would generate a fair amount of hype. But, in fact, it took another 40 years for the Pavlopetri site to receive further attention.
In 2009, an international team of experts from the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Centre for Maritime Research, and the University of Nottingham began a five-year project to excavate and explore the town in detail.
During their survey, the team discovered a further 9,000 square metres (97,000 square feet) of new buildings, including a large rectangular hall and structures that lined a previously hidden street, IFL Science notes.
They also unearthed ceramics that confirmed the city existed during the Mycenaean period (the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece), plus evidence suggesting that it had been occupied from around 3000 BCE up to 1100 BC, during which it would have had a population of around 500 to 2,000 people.
What ultimately sent Pavlopetri to the bottom of the sea remains unknown. Although, some experts believe it could have been sunk by an earthquake that occurred either around 1000 BC or 375 AD.
But given that the city predates Plato’s allegorical account of Atlantis, some people have excitedly suggested that Pavlopetri was the real-life inspiration for the glittering “lost” continent that still excites our imagination today.
Cassini Reveals Surface Properties of Titan’s Hydrocarbon Seas
Cassini Reveals Surface Properties of Titan’s Hydrocarbon Seas
Saturn’s moon Titan was explored by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft from 2004 to 2017. While Cassini revealed a lot about this Earth-like world, its radar observations could only provide limited information about Titan’s liquid hydrocarbons seas Kraken, Ligeia and Punga Mare. In anew paper in the journal Nature Communications, Cornell University researcher Valerio Poggiali and colleagues report the results of the analysis of the Cassini radar experiments data of Titan’s polar seas.
An artistic rendering of Kraken Mare, a large liquid methane sea on Titan.
Image credit: NASA’s John Glenn Research Center.
“The Cassini spacecraft explored Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, from 2004 to 2017, revealing an Earth-like world with a diverse set of strange, yet very familiar, surface morphologies shaped by a methane-based hydrologic system, operating in a dense nitrogen atmosphere,” Dr. Poggiali and co-authors said.
“Winds in the lower atmosphere move sediments and shape them into vast dune fields that encircle Titan’s equatorial latitudes.”
“In the mid-latitudes, flat and relatively featureless plains mark a transition between the eolian-dominated equator and lacustrine-dominated poles.”
“In the polar regions, large seas and small lakes of liquid hydrocarbons dominate the terrain.”
“Precipitation-fed channels flow into the seas creating estuaries, in some cases deltas, and other familiar coastal sedimentary deposits.”
“While Cassini has revealed much about Titan, these discoveries have prompted more questions.”
In the study, the scientists used four bistatic radar observations, collected by Cassini during four flybys in 2014 (May 17, June 18, October 24) and 2016 (November 14).
For each, surface reflections were observed as the spacecraft neared its closest approach to Titan (ingress), and again as it moved away (egress).
The authors analyzed data from the egress observations of Titan’s three large polar seas: Kraken Mare, Ligeia Mare and Punga Mare.
“A bistatic radar experiment involves aiming a radio beam from the spacecraft at the target — in this case Titan — where it is reflected toward the receiving antenna on Earth,” they explained.
“This surface reflection is polarized — meaning that it provides information collected from two independent perspectives, as opposed to the one provided by monostatic radar data, where the reflected signal returns to the spacecraft.”
“The main difference is that the bistatic information is a more complete dataset and is sensitive to both the composition of the reflecting surface and to its roughness.”
The team found differences in the composition of the hydrocarbon seas’ surface layers, dependent on latitude and location (near rivers and estuaries, for example).
Specifically, the southernmost portion of Kraken Mare shows the highest dielectric constant — a measure of a material’s ability to reflect a radio signal.
For example, water on Earth is very reflective, with a dielectric constant of around 80; the ethane and methane seas of Titan measure around 1.7.
The researchers also determined that all three seas were mostly calm at the time of the flybys, with surface waves no larger than 3.3 mm.
A slightly higher level of roughness — up to 5.2 mm — was detected near coastal areas, estuaries and interbasin straits, possible indications of tidal currents.
“We also have indications that the rivers feeding the seas are pure methane until they flow into the open liquid seas, which are more ethane-rich,” Dr. Poggiali said.
“It’s like on Earth, when fresh-water rivers flow into and mix with the salty water of the oceans.”
“This fits nicely with meteorological models for Titan, which predict that the ‘rain’ that falls from its skies is likely to be almost pure methane, but with trace amounts of ethane and other hydrocarbons,” said Cornell University’s Professor Philip Nicholson.
“More work is already underway on the data Cassini generated during its 13-year examination of Titan.”
“There is a mine of data that still waits to be fully analyzed in ways that should yield more discoveries. This is only the first step.”
V. Poggialiet al. 2024. Surface properties of the seas of Titan as revealed by Cassini mission bistatic radar experiments.Nat Commun15, 5454; doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49837-2
This article is a version of a press-release provided by Cornell University.
Unveiling the Secret UFO Base of East Mountain: A Journey into Cold War Mysteries
Unveiling the Secret UFO Base of East Mountain: A Journey into Cold War Mysteries
In this episode of Strange Places, the spotlight is on a hidden relic from the Cold War era nestled deep within Vermont’s wilderness – the North Concord Air Force Station. This abandoned radar base is not just a reminder of past geopolitical tensions but also a site steeped in UFO history. From its connection to Project Blue Book to the famed Betty and Barney Hill abduction case, this location offers a fascinating blend of military history and ufology.
The Cold War Context
The early 1950s were marked by intense Cold War tensions, with the United States and the Soviet Union locked in a nuclear arms race. Amidst fears of aerial invasion and nuclear missile attacks, the US established a series of early warning radar systems across remote areas of North America, including Alaska, the Arctic, and Canada. Within the continental United States, radar stations were constructed to protect strategic air bases and form a comprehensive radar defense network. One such installation was the North Concord Air Force Station, situated in a secluded part of Northern Vermont, close to the Canadian border.
Establishment of the Radar Base
Construction of the North Concord Air Force Station began in 1952, though it did not become fully operational until 1956. Perched atop East Mountain, which stands at an elevation of nearly 3,500 feet, the station offered strategic views into Canada and neighboring New Hampshire. This vantage point was ideal for detecting potential Soviet threats from the north.
UFO Sightings and Project Blue Book
During the 1950s, the term “flying saucer” became widespread, and reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) surged, raising concerns among government officials. Many military bases across the US, including the North Concord Air Force Station, reported UFO sightings. These incidents were meticulously cataloged by Project Blue Book, the US Air Force’s official investigation into UFOs.
Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1970, was tasked with collecting and analyzing UFO reports. Under the leadership of its first director, Edward Ruppelt, the project coined the term “unidentified flying object” or UFO. Despite the project’s initial goal of identifying potential threats, it concluded in 1970 with the assertion that UFOs did not pose a threat to national security and showed no evidence of extraterrestrial origins.
Significant UFO Incidents at North Concord
Two notable UFO incidents were recorded at the North Concord Air Force Station. The first occurred on August 4, 1960, when an airman observed a circular object with a blue tip and a white tail over the mess hall. Despite the detailed eyewitness account, Project Blue Book concluded that the sighting was likely a meteor.
The second, and perhaps more intriguing, incident took place on September 19, 1961, the same night as the infamous Betty and Barney Hill abduction. Radar operators at the base tracked a large, erratically moving object at 62,000 feet for 18 minutes. The object’s behavior, including hovering and changing course, led the Project Blue Book report to speculate it was a weather balloon. However, the description and circumstances suggest it was something far more unusual.
The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction
The Betty and Barney Hill abduction case remains one of the most famous UFO incidents in history. On the night of September 19, 1961, the couple reported seeing a light in the sky while driving through Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, which later appeared to be a craft with humanoid figures inside. They claimed to have been taken aboard the craft and examined by its occupants. This event occurred just hours after the radar sighting at North Concord, located only 34 air miles away. The proximity and timing raise intriguing questions about a possible connection between the two incidents.
Exploring the Abandoned Radar Station
Today, the North Concord Air Force Station, later renamed the Lyndonville Air Force Station, lies abandoned. Despite its derelict state, the site offers a glimpse into its past through the remaining structures and graffiti-covered ruins. Exploring the base involves a challenging hike, but the panoramic views from the top of East Mountain and the eerie remnants of the Cold War era make it a compelling destination for adventurers and history enthusiasts alike.
Legacy and Speculations
The North Concord Air Force Station stands as a testament to Cold War paranoia and the lengths to which the US military went to protect the nation. Its brief operation period, from 1956 to 1963, and subsequent abandonment reflect the rapid technological advancements of the time. The UFO sightings linked to the base add a layer of mystery and intrigue, especially when considering their potential connection to the Betty and Barney Hill abduction.
While the true nature of the UFO phenomena observed at North Concord remains a topic of debate, the site’s role in the broader narrative of UFO history is undeniable. As modern investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena continue, the legacy of Project Blue Book and the Cold War radar stations like North Concord Air Force Station provide valuable context and insights.
The North Concord Air Force Station, with its rich history of Cold War defense and UFO sightings, offers a unique and fascinating story. From its strategic construction to its eerie abandonment, and the mysterious events that unfolded in its vicinity, the site encapsulates a remarkable chapter of American history. As we continue to explore and understand the complexities of UFO phenomena, places like East Mountain’s secret UFO base will remain significant landmarks in our quest for answers.
ESA bereidt missie voor naar asteroïde die vlak langs aarde zal scheren: “Zoiets gebeurt maar eens om de 5.000 of 10.000 jaar”
Een asteroïde die vroeger beschouwd werd als de gevaarlijkste van alle bekende planetoïden, zal op 13 april 2029 langs de aarde scheren en dichter bij komen dan sommige satellieten die rondom onze planeet cirkelen. Het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap ESA bereidt een missie voor om de passage van ‘99942 Apophis’ - een erg uitzonderlijke gebeurtenis - van nabij te volgen. Dat moet helpen om eventuele toekomstige botsingen met asteroïden te kunnen voorkomen.
Voor alle duidelijkheid: Apophis zal langs de aarde vliegen, maar tot een botsing zal het niet komen, volgens de ESA. “Astronomen hebben berekend dat een botsing tussen de asteroïde en de aarde voor minstens de komende honderd jaar uitgesloten is”, aldus het ruimtevaartagentschap.
De asteroïde met een diameter van 375 meter zal wel op minder dan 32.000 kilometer van het aardoppervlak passeren en dat is dichterbij dan telecomsatellieten in een geostationaire baan.
Unieke kans
Het biedt een unieke kans voor onderzoek, zegt ESA. Dat zo’n grote brok zo rakelings langs de aarde scheert, gebeurt immers maar eens om de 5.000 of 10.000 jaar.
Het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap wil met de missie Ramses (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) een ruimtetuig naar de asteroïde sturen om de passage te bestuderen. De verwachting is dat de aantrekkingskracht van de aarde een impact zal hebben op Apophis, met mogelijk aardbevingen of aardverschuivingen op de asteroïde tot gevolg. Ook de baan van de ruimtebrok kan veranderen.
“Door te analyseren hoe Apophis tijdens de passage verandert, zullen de wetenschappers veel te weten komen over de reactie van een asteroïde op externe krachten en over de samenstelling ervan, de interne structuur, de cohesie, de massa, de densiteit en de poreusheid”, stelt ESA. “Dat zijn allemaal belangrijke eigenschappen om te bepalen hoe een gevaarlijke asteroïde die op ramkoers ligt met de aarde, van baan kan worden veranderd.”
Gegevens die de Ramses-missie verzamelt, zullen ook meer inzicht geven in het ontstaan en de ontwikkeling van het zonnestelsel, “omdat asteroïden ook tijdcapsules zijn die ruim vier miljard jaar geleden gevormd werden”.
Experimenten
“Er is nog zo veel dat we moeten leren over asteroïden”, zegt Patrick Michel, onderzoeksdirecteur van het observatorium van de Côte d’Azur. “Tot nu toe moesten we ver in het zonnestelsel reizen om ze te bestuderen. We moesten zelf experimenten uitvoeren om in te werken op het oppervlak. Voor de eerste keer ooit brengt de natuur een asteroïde tot bij ons en voert die het experiment zelf uit.”
Ramses moet in april 2028 gelanceerd worden, zodat het ruimtetuig in februari 2029 bij Apophis kan aankomen, of twee maanden vóór de passage langs de aarde. De voorbereidingen voor de missie zijn nu gestart. In november 2025 moet tijdens een ministeriële top van ESA het licht definitief op groen worden gezet.
Blote oog
De passage van ‘99942 Apophis’ zal ook enkele uren met het blote oog te zien zijn in de nacht van 13 op 14 april 2029, als het weer het toelaat welteverstaan, en dat “voor ongeveer twee miljard mensen in het grootste deel van Europa en Afrika en delen van Azië”, aldus ESA.
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA stuurt ook een ruimtetuig - OSIRIS-REx - naar de asteroïde. Maar dat zal er pas een maand na de scheervlucht langs de aarde aankomen.
De ingang van de grot ligt op meer dan 100 meter diepte en de grot zelf zou zo'n 40 meter breed en tientallen meters lang zijn.
Foto: NASA, Universiteit van Trento
Grot gevonden op de maan: "Mogelijke uitvalsbasis voor toekomstige astronauten"
Wetenschappers hebben een grot ontdekt op de maan, niet ver van waar Neil Armstrong en Buzz Aldrin in 1969 voor het eerst voet op de maan hebben gezet. Ze vermoeden dat er nog honderden andere grotten zijn die als uitvalsbasis voor astronauten zouden kunnen gebruikt worden.
Stien Schoofs
Op slechts 400 meter van waar Neil Armstrong en Buzz Aldrin 55 jaar geleden zijn geland op de maan hebben Italiaanse en Amerikaanse wetenschappers een grot ontdekt die op meer dan 100 meter diepte ligt, onderin een diepe kuil.
De kuil, waarvan wetenschappers vermoeden dat er nog honderden andere zijn op de maan, zou miljoenen of miljarden jaren geleden ontstaan zijn toen lava op de maan stroomde en er zo een tunnel onder het gesteente ontstond.
De ingang van de grot ligt op meer dan 100 meter diepte en de grot zelf zou zo'n 40 meter breed en tientallen meters lang zijn. Dat staat allemaal beschreven in een onderzoek gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature Astronomy.
"Je kan er dus niet zomaar in wandelen", nuanceert ruimtevaartingenieur Stijn Ilsen. "Het is een soort van oude 'lavabuis'. Je kan het vergelijken met oude vulkanen op de aarde die ook buizen hebben waar vroeger de lava heeft doorgestroomd."
Maangrotten zijn al meer dan vijftig jaar een mysterie
De Maansatelliet Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter heeft in 2010 al beelden gemaakt van kuilen waarvan wetenschappers dachten dat het grotingangen konden zijn. Nu hebben ze echt bewijs door met een radar door te dringen in de opening van een kuil.
"Dat is een radar die die pulsen afvuurt naar de maan en zo kijkt wat er wordt teruggekaatst. Uit die terugkaatsing kunnen ze berekenen hoe het oppervlak zich gedraagt", legt Ilsen uit. "Nu hebben ze specifiek gemikt op een gebied waar ze een vermoeden hadden dat er een ingang van een grot zou zijn en daar hebben ze met een nauwkeurigheid van 25 centimeter die ingang gevonden."
"Maangrotten zijn al meer dan 50 jaar een mysterie. Het was dus spannend om eindelijk het bestaan ervan te kunnen bewijzen", zeggen onderzoekers Leonardo Carrer en Lorenzo Bruzzone van de Universiteit van Trento aan persbureau AP.
Uitvalsbasis voor astronauten
Wat kan zo’n grot betekenen voor een toekomstige Armstrong of Aldrin? Volgens de wetenschappers kan de grot gebruikt worden om een langere periode op de maan te overbruggen. De maangrot kan namelijk bescherming bieden tegen schadelijke straling, extreme temperatuurverschillen en kleine meteorietinslagen.
"Het leven op aarde is ook begonnen in grotten, dus het is logisch dat mensen ook op de maan veel hebben aan die grotten", zegt professor Carrer nog.
De maangrotten lijken zich volgens wetenschappers vooral te bevinden in de oude lavavlaktes van de maan.
Foto: NASA
Hoewel de wanden van de grotten misschien nog verstevigd moeten worden om instorting te voorkomen, is het volgens de wetenschappers een betere optie dan zelf voorzieningen bouwen om een langere periode op de maan te blijven.
De maangrotten lijken zich volgens wetenschappers vooral te bevinden in de oude lavavlaktes van de maan. Toch vermoeden ze ook dat er een paar op de zuidpool van de maan zijn, de plek waar NASA nog astronautenlandingen plant in de toekomst.
"Waar ze de grot ontdekt hebben, is het ongeveer 14 dagen heel warm, met temperaturen rond de 100 graden Celsius. Dan komt er 14 dagen nacht, waar het 100 graden Celsius onder nul is. Die lage temperaturen overleven mensen niet. Dan is zo'n grot de ideale schuilplaats", denkt Ilsen.Helen Sharman, de eerste Britse astronaut die naar de ruimte reisde, vertelde aan de Britse openbare omroep BBC dat de nieuwe ontdekte grot een goede uitvalsbasis lijkt. Ze suggereerde zelfs dat mensen mogelijk binnen 20 tot 30 jaar in maankuilen zouden kunnen wonen.
Wel vermoedt ze dat er jetpacks of een lift nodig zijn om eruit te komen, net omdat de grot zo diep is.
Leven op Mars?
De grotten kunnen dus handig zijn voor mensen, maar de wetenschappers benadrukken dat ze ook kunnen helpen bij het beantwoorden van vragen over de geschiedenis van de maan en ons zonnestelsel.
"De maan wordt continu gebombardeerd door deeltjes van de zon en die gaan de stenen die aan het oppervlakte liggen wel veranderen. In zo'n oude tunnel ga je net gesteente vinden dat bij wijze van spreken miljoenen - zelfs miljarden - jaren onaangeroerd bleef", zegt Ilsen.
Volgens Francesco Sauro, de coördinator van het Topical Team Planetary Caves van ESA, kan het onderzoek zelfs helpen om grotten op Mars te onderzoeken. Dat vertelt hij aan BBC.
"Dat zou de deur kunnen openen naar het vinden van bewijs dat er leven is op Mars. Want als dat er geweest is, zou dat vrijwel zeker in grotten zijn geweest, net omdat die bescherming bieden tegen elementen op het oppervlak."
Bekijk:
Professor sterrenkunde Leen Decin over het belang van deze ontdekking
Voor het eerst grot gevonden op de maan: "Mogelijke uitvalsbasis voor toekomstige astronauten"
Voor het eerst grot gevonden op de maan: "Mogelijke uitvalsbasis voor toekomstige astronauten"
Artikel door Stien Schoofs
Op slechts 400 meter van waar Neil Armstrong en Buzz Aldrin 55 jaar geleden zijn geland op de maan hebben Italiaanse en Amerikaanse wetenschappers een grot ontdekt die op meer dan 100 meter diepte ligt, onderin een diepe kuil.
De kuil, waarvan wetenschappers vermoeden dat er nog honderden andere zijn op de maan, zou miljoenen of miljarden jaren geleden ontstaan zijn toen lava op de maan stroomde en er zo een tunnel onder het gesteende ontstond.
De ingang van de grot ligt op meer dan 100 meter diepte en de grot zelf zou zo'n 40 meter breed en tientallen meters lang zijn. Dat staat allemaal beschreven in een onderzoek gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature Astronomy.
De Maansatelliet Luna Reconnaissance Orbiter heeft in 2010 al beelden gemaakt van kuilen waarvan wetenschapper dachten dat het grondingangen konden zijn. Nu hebben ze echt bewijs door met een radar door te dringen in de opening van een kuil.
"Maangrotten zijn al meer dan 50 jaar een mysterie. Het was dus spannend om eindelijk het bestaan ervan te kunnen bewijzen", zeggen onderzoekers Leonardo Carrer en Lorenzo Bruzzone van de Universiteit van Trento aan persbureau AP.
Uitvalsbasis voor astronauten
Wat kan zo’n grot betekenen voor een toekomstige Armstrong of Aldrin? Volgens de wetenschappers kan de grot gebruikt worden om een langere periode op de maan te overbruggen. De maangrot kan namelijk bescherming bieden tegen schadelijke straling, extreme temperatuurverschillen en kleine meteorietinslagen.
"Het leven op aarde is ook begonnen in grotten, dus het is logisch dat mensen ook op de maan veel hebben aan die grotten", zegt professor Carrer nog.
De maangrotten lijken zich volgens wetenschappers vooral te bevinden in de oude lavavlaktes van de maan.
Hoewel de wanden van de grotten misschien nog verstevigd moeten worden om instorting te voorkomen, is het volgens de wetenschappers een betere optie dan zelf voorzieningen bouwen om een langere periode op de maan te blijven.
De maangrotten lijken zich volgens wetenschappers vooral te bevinden in de oude lavavlaktes van de maan. Toch vermoeden ze ook dat er een paar op de zuidpool van de maan zijn, de plek waar NASA nog astronautenlandingen plant in de toekomst.
Helen Sharman, de eerste Britse astronaut die naar de ruimte reisde, vertelde aan de Britse openbare omroep BBC dat de nieuwe ontdekte grot een goede uitvalsbasis lijkt. Ze suggereerde zelfs dat mensen mogelijk binnen 20 tot 30 jaar in maankuilen zouden kunnen wonen.
Wel vermoedt ze dat er jetpacks of een lift nodig zijn om eruit te komen, net omdat de grot zo diep is.
Leven op Mars?
De grotten kunnen dus handig zijn voor mensen, maar de wetenschappers benadrukken dat ze ook kunnen helpen bij het beantwoorden van vragen over de geschiedenis van de maan en ons zonnestelsel.
De rotsen in de grot zullen namelijk minder beschadigd zijn door het ruimteweer en kunnen de geologische geschiedenis van de maan beter weergeven.
Volgens Francesco Sauro, de coördinator van het Topical Team Planetary Caves van ESA, kan het onderzoek zelfs helpen om grotten op Mars te onderzoeken. Dat vertelt hij aan BBC.
"Dat zou de deur kunnen openen naar het vinden van bewijs dat er leven is op Mars. Want als dat er geweest is, zou dat vrijwel zeker in grotten zijn geweest, net omdat die bescherming bieden tegen elementen op het oppervlak."
The mysterious case of a UFO sighting at an African school nearly 20 years on
It wasn't the first high profile case of school children reporting to see a UFO
(Image: Getty Images)
The mysterious case of a UFO sighting at an African school nearly 20 years on
Almost 20 years ago 60 school children reported one of the now most famous alien sightings on record with detailed descriptions all the way down to wha the strange space creatures were wearing
By Danny Gutmann
A school in Africa is the scene of the most notoriousUFO sightings of all time.
In September 1994 Ruwa was only a tiny agricultural centre just 14 miles south east of the Zimbabwe's capital city Harare but ever since that day it has been a major talking point for all UFO enthusiasts.
It was a typically sunny early-afternoon on September 19 1994 when a group of 60 children at Ariel School made the shock claim to have witnessed aliens landing in their playground beside the school.
When asked by the BBC Zimbabwe correspondent Tim Leach one student said: "It looked like it was glinting in the trees. It looked like a disc, like a round...".
Some of the children claimed to have seen aliens alongside the spacecraft
( Image: BBC)
And when Leach asked the children whether they could have been mistaken and whether it could have been a 'Harrier Jump jet' or 'something the Zimbabwe Air Force have got?' they stuck to their guns and were adamant about what they had witnessed.
UFO enthusiast Cynthia Hinds had her interest peaked by the sighting and even travelled all the way from England to speak to the children.
She told the BBC: "I certainly believe the children. I've come across a similar type of thing in Broad Haven in Wales, 1979 and the British didn't believe it, although I went down three times. It's very similar to the whole incident here."
The headteacher at the school told the children to draw a picture of what they had seen
( Image: BBC)
Various different theories and explanations have been mused about what the children had actually seen or whether the in fact that had made the whole thing up.
But, in the days and weeks later a dramatic development was made in the case as more sightings were reported in nearby by areas.
One local woman said: "I saw a glow over my chicken run. A very orange glow."
Meanwhile 239 miles west in the town of Kariba, a man made a similar statement saying: "We suddenly looked up and we saw this this thing coming over the top of the hill. As it came abreast of us it suddenly changed from this glow to two big red orange balls."
The schoolkids who said they saw 'aliens'
A child’s drawing of what they saw during the Ariel School Phenomenon. /span> Ariel Phenomenon/Facebook
Harvard University is one of the most revered institutions in the world, so when its academics publish new studies, people take note.
It may come as a surprise, therefore, that a team of scientists at Harvard and Montana Technological University, have just produced a paper suggesting anadvanced alien civilisation may be “walking among us” here on Earth.
The fascinating, albeit eyebrow-raising, report speculates that sightings of "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" (UAP) may reflect activities of intelligent beings concealed in stealth here on Earth (e.g., underground), and/or its near environs (e.g., the Moon), and/or even 'walking among us' (e.g., passing as humans)."
And whilst its authors acknowledge that the idea of hidden-in-plain-sight “cryptoterrestrials” is “likely to be regarded sceptically by most scientists," they argue that the theory "deserves genuine consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness."
Such hypotheses play into the growing conviction that the US government has coordinated a secret cover-up of alien activity.
The following month, after a highly publicised UFO hearing in Congress, Majority leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer announced: “The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena.
“We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena ut to create a pipeline for future research to be made public.”
David Grusch shared his staggering testimony in the US Congress in June 2023
(Getty Images/US government)
And yet, we still don’t seem to have any concrete evidence that aliens exist, either down here or on other planets.
Nevertheless, the Harvard and Montana researchers have put forward a number of possible theories as to why this might be.
Firstly, the authors are quick to stress the significance of the term “non-human” intelligence (NHI) as opposed to “alien”.
They pointed to the fact that when Grusch was asked during a 2023 News Nation interview if the government had been “concealing the existence on this planet of alien life,” he clarified: “I would couch it as non-human intelligence [because] I don’t necessarily want to denote origin. I don’t think we have all the data to say, ‘Oh, they’re coming from a certain location’.”
In this spirit, the scientists’ study focuses on a broad collection of possibilities, grouped under the label “ultraterrestrial” hypotheses, which all centre on the theory that NHI may “already [be] present in the Earth’s environment in some sense.”
The authors quote retired Army Colonel Karl Nell – who served alongside Grusch in the US government’s UAP Task Force – who defined “ultraterrestrial” as connoting “any sentient lifeform regardless of ultimate origin that has resided on Earth or in its environs – under/land, under/sea, aero/space – for significant duration in a semi-permanent (albeit covert) status excluding humans from modern day civilization and their known antecedents.”
Indeed, the idea that these NHI may not be the same as aliens has been given serious consideration, with intelligence insiders allegedly telling Ron James, of UFO research group MUFON, that “a very large contingent” of biblically-minded people within the Pentagon have sought to shut down investigations into UAP based on the fear that these may actually involve “demons” coming from “hell”.
Others argue that since UAP defy explanation in conventional terms, the only recourse is to turn to unconventional explanations. And, as a result, they suggest that NHI could, in fact, be “angels”, or what we generally consider the preserve of folklore: fairies; elves; gnomes; trolls, etc.
Also within this broad ultraterrestrial category lies the so-called “interdimensional” hypothesis, which suggests that NHI might belong to a different dimension to our own.
Similarly, some suggest that UAP are, in fact, linked to time-travellers, with Harold Puthoff, of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, claiming that there could be an “ancient occult group, isolated pre-Diluvial high-tech society… existing alongside us in distinct stealth.”
But the main focus of the Harvard-Montana study is what is known as the “cryptoterrestrial” hypothesis which, they say, “suggests the NHI responsible for UAP may already be present in Earth’s environment in some sense, as opposed to having an extraterrestrial explanation.”
However, they continue, “rather than existing in other ‘dimensions’ or other ‘times’ they are present in a relatively more conventional sense (i.e., within current standard spacetime dimensions) but are nevertheless ‘hidden’ in some way (e.g., living underground).”
The authors then stress: “As with other ultraterrestrial hypotheses, we should state outright that we consider this unlikely. Crucially though, we do not regard it as impossible. Indeed, emerging observations seem to suggest it may well have some validity.”
Central to the theory’s credibility is the mounting evidence that UAP are not only aerial but can also move underwater in ways that defy explanation.
The researchers refer to a white paper created by retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet who argues that an extensive body of data and first-hand accounts show “Unidentified Submersible Objects” (USOs) acting in ways that surpass human technology, and even challenge scientific understanding of what is possible underwater.
They then note that respected Stanford chair and long-time UAP researcher Dr Gary Nolan once stated in an interview that NIH come from both outside our atmosphere and from beneath our oceans, adding that “sonar images show these things moving at speeds a dozen times faster than our fastest submarines.’”
If the prospect of advanced civilisations lurking beneath our seas wasn’t enough, the researchers point out that some UAP sightings involve craft and other phenomena, such as “orbs”, appearing to enter or exit potential underground access points, like volcanoes.
Is Popocatepetl a secret UAP base?(iStock)
“The Popocatepetl volcano in central Mexico, for example, is considered a ‘hotspot’ for such observations, with numerous such events captured on camera in 2023,” they write.
They note that in one article, an observer was quoted as suggesting that the volcano functions as an interdimensional ‘portal’, whilst others speculate that “some UAP might not only be drawn to such locales (e.g., as a portal, or for purposes such as hiding or gathering energy), but might come from underground (i.e., with the NHI responsible residing in a subterranean way).”
They cite former member of the United States House of Representative Mike Gallagher, who last year posited that one potential explanation for UAP is “an ancient civilization that’s just been hiding here, for all this time, and is suddenly showing itself right now.”
Indeed, in an article titled ‘Secret UFO bases across the U.S.’, UAP scholar John Keel (1968) argued that since UAP have “been consistently active in the same areas for many years, it is quite reasonable to speculate that these objects originate in some unknown manner from these areas, rather than traversing great spatial distances to make brief random and apparently pointless 'visits'.”
Otherwise put, “many of the thousands of observed ‘flying saucers’ and ‘spook lights’ are more apt to be a part of the Earth's environment than extraterrestrial craft flying in from some distant point”.
If this were true, it would explain why UAP seem to take such a particular interest in Earth and would do away with all the questions surrounding the logistics of interstellar travel.
Furthermore, the authors provide examples of recorded testimony from respected sources insisting upon the existence of NIH, perhaps most notably that of Albert Einstein’s one-time assistant Dr Shirley Wright.
Speaking in 1993 – in recordings which only became public in 2021 – Wright claimed she and Einstein had helped investigate the famous Roswell UAP crash and that this was “not only a genuine UAP, but that biological entities had survived the crash and were subjected to questioning.”
Even more remarkably, she insisted that these were actually “just humans, but an advanced form,” and that many of their “species” actually “reside underground on our planet.”
Former CIA officer John Ramirez allegedly corroborated this claim, revealing that authorities did, indeed, conduct biological tests and “were able to sequence something in those bodies that look like a genome. And from there they checked the human genome and saw the correlations.”
Some argue that the Moon could also be a secret NHI base(iStock)
Wrapping up their extraordinary paper, the Harvard-Montana experts note that NIH could be lurking in another nearby habitat.
“A third site of intrigue is the moon, and particularly its “far” side, which remains perennially hidden from view,” they write.
“Indeed, some observers suggest the moon itself is very strange, characterised, as recently noted by Avi Loeb, by numerous extraordinary ‘coincidences regarding its size, behaviour, and composition’,” they continue.
“As a result, some have speculated that the entire object may be an artificial NHI construction.”
The researchers point to “photographic evidence” of anomalous features on the satellite’s surface, which some have taken to be lunar bases.
Furthermore, NASA whistleblowers including Karl Wolfe and Ken Johnston have allegedly claimed that “even more conclusive photographic evidence of potential bases exists, but that NASA has actively sought to deny, suppress, and conceal such information,” the authors write.
Former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell is on record as saying, in 2008: “Yes, there have been E.T. visitations, there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered. We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time”.
Concluding their study, the researchers categorise the different subsections of potential “cryptoterrestrials” into the following four groups:
1. Human cryptoterrestrials
A technologically advanced ancient human civilisation that was largely destroyed long ago (e.g., by flood), but continued to exist in remnant form.
2. Hominid or theropod cryptoterrestrials
A technologically advanced non-human civilisation consisting of some terrestrial animal which evolved to live in stealth (e.g., underground), perhaps a hominid, or alternatively a species much more distantly related to us (e.g., descendants of unknown, intelligent dinosaurs).
3. Former extraterrestrial or extratempestrial cryptoterrestrials
Extraterrestrial aliens or our intertemporal descendants who “arrived” on Earth from elsewhere in the cosmos or from the human future, respectively, and concealed themselves in stealth.
4. Magical Cryptoterrestrials.
Entities which are less like homegrown aliens and more like earthbound angels, relating to the world inhabited by humans in ways that (at least from our present perspective) are less technological than magical, who are known in European languages by names like fairies, elves, nymphs, etc.
Nevertheless, we should stress that the Harvard-Montana authors are not positing that cryptoterrestrials do exist, rather, that they could, and the idea shouldn’t be categorically dismissed.
As they themselves put it: “We arguing that UAP do have a cryptoterrestrial explanation, but simply that they could, and the judicious approach is to consider all valid theories until the evidence decisively demonstrates they should be rejected.
“We therefore suggest scientists should keep an open mind and investigate the [cryptoterrestrial hypothesis] as a genuinely viable theory.”
After all, they note: “It is the mission of science to investigate all aspects of physical existence, regardless of the extent to which they push at the circumscribing boundaries of our notions of conventional reality.”
I ran this through ai to focus it and it was strange, the ai sees the uncloaked parts and doesn't see the semi transparent part. At first glance you might think this is fake, but it's not and here is the proof, most people who fake make perfectly level UFOs. This one is tilted, just like Nuclear Physicist Bob Lazar of Area S4 said UFOs do when they move in a direction. This is 100% real and it's just fantastic that it was seen in Russia! So few sightings make it to Russian news, so this is one rare gem. It's easy to make out the metal disk hull and the upper dome area. Classic disk at its best. Scott C.Waring - Taiwan
News states:
(google translated)A UFO was seen over Poim yesterday. An unknown flying saucer circled over the village for some time, and then disappeared from view. The picture was taken by a local resident, there is hardly any doubt about the lack of ability to work with Photoshop.- This is where the Bath Bridge, where Rinat Murakov ... she hung right above the yard, healthy. And then, while the boy began to set up the phone, she had already begun to fly away and turned out to be small. And she's so big... It looks like extraterrestrial intelligent beings are closer than we think...
8 UFO hotspots around the world – and what really went on there If you were to have an alien encounter, where in the world would you expect it to be? The US, maybe? Unidentified flying objects (UFOs), also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), are a source of mystery and intrigue to many people around the world, and there are a few places on this list that may surprise you (Picture: Getty)
8 UFO hotspots around the world – and what really went on there So, where are the best places to go if you wanted to spot a UFO? American non-profit organisation the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has a bank of data revealing, they feel to be, the most credible or interesting cases. The organisation said these reports tend to be from ‘trained observers such as pilots, reports of anomalous structured craft seen at close distances, and reports with interesting and clear video or photographic evidence’. Many of these cases stem back to the 1990s, and are posted in the author’s own words. So, where are the UFO hotspots around the world? (Picture: Getty Images)
1. The United States Naturally, the US made the top of the list with a whopping 133,682 apparent UFO sightings across the country dating back to 1995. The state with the most viewings is California, with 16,399 ‘credible’ cases since the mid-90s, and the fewest number of viewings were around the capital, the District of Columbia, with only 155 cases. No aliens in Capitol Hill then? In California, reported shapes often take the form of mysterious ‘lights’ or orbs. One case as recent June 15 in Richmond, reported three pink orbs glowing in the sky. The witness wrote: ‘Three orbs in a line coming up from the ground. Was heading east on I-80 and saw three pink lights in a column. The lowest of the lights looked to be hovering just above the ground and the highest was probably 100-200ft in the air and the middle was directly in between the other two. They weren’t moving or blinking but eventually all three dimmed and went out' (Picture: Getty)
1. The United States Another case report, from the colder state of Minnesota, in 2008, details a cigar-shaped UAP. The witness wrote: ‘Small white cigar-shaped object, low in sky, hovered for 2 minutes, then disappeared, no trail. Two friends and I were golfing on the 10th hole at North Links golf course, and there was a clear blue sky. As we looked forward into the sky, one of us noticed a white, cigar or tampon-shaped object sitting in the sky, no wings, obviously not a plane or helicopter, and there was no smoke or jetstream coming from the object. It was probably about 500 yards or so away in the sky. We sat stunned, asking each other, “What could that possibly be, besides a UFO?” No one wanted to tee off, because we wanted to wait to see what happened with the foreign craft. After about two minutes, the craft gradually got smaller for about 10 seconds, and then completely disappeared like it went into stealth mode, again, no smoke or anything, it just vanished. Within minutes of seeing the craft, a small army-type plane was flying in the same general area where we had seen the craft. We kept looking for the next two hours of golf, but no reappearance occurred.’ The organisation noted that the witness chose to remain totally anonymous and provided no contact information (Picture: Bettmann Archive)
2. Canada Still in North America, the people of Canada have compiled 5,973 UFO sightings dating back to 1995. With a large number like this, NUFORC has split case reports by province, and revealed the highest number of reports came from the province of Ontario, with 2,547 reports (eh). The fewest reports came from Prince Edward Island, with 27 ‘credible’ reports (Picture: Getty)
2. Canada In the province of New Brunswick, in the town of Bouctouche, two observers reported that they saw a disk-like object in the sky. The witnesses wrote: ‘On May 17, 2021, I was driving my friend home as I noticed lights in the sky and told my friend about it. It was a line of lights – seems like stars, but was not – and then it faded away. We were 30 seconds from my friend’s house, so I rushed to park and got out of the car to see if we could see more. We started looking up and suddenly saw an oval-shaped flying object that was moving. We noticed it was passing in front of two stars. It also looked like it had windows, but was very low on lighting around, we could only spot it because of window lights on the objects. We could see it floating for like a good 30 seconds before we lost track of it' (Picture: Getty)
3. The UK The UK is another well-known hotspot for UFOs, and has racked up 3,439 cases that date back to 1996. But, no, there are no aliens around Big Ben. The reports appear across the country, with one witness in Birmingham, in September 2009, saying: ‘South Birmingham 11.40am, clear sky gold flat object a few feet square with slight bend. On Sunday morning, while taking a coffee after some light housework – my wife was at work. I witnessed something exceedingly weird off the back patio. I have no belief in UFOs – laws of physics dictate against it – and have always explained away anything unusual as helicopter lights etc but not this time, I’m afraid. I observed a crazy sighting which I cannot figure out. It looked like a piece of gold vellum paper, slightly folded as if hovering in the wind. It was sunny so I could have been catching the Sun. I also considered a butterfly. However, it became apparent that the size was wrong for a butterfly, and paper, it was not – because the object proceeded to move out across the park at supernatural speed, with increasing velocity. I was completely dumbstruck and offer no explanation. I’m employed as a physics engineering technician’ (Picture: Getty)
3. The UK Over in Ciliau Aeron, Wales, a report in 2018 told of a sphere-shaped, house-sized, UFO that hovered above the valley. The witness reported: ‘I opened the back door at 6am to let the dogs out. I looked across the fields to where I have a view of the Aeron Valley. It was very dark, but I immediately saw what I thought was a house on fire about half a mile away. I watched for a minute, planning to call 999. Then, the “fire” moved to the west a few hundred metres behind some trees. I realised it was a large sphere, the size of a house and seemed to churn or pulsate with its “fire”. It was extremely bright and white/yellow in colour. Then it stopped where it hovered for a minute and then flew the other way to the east where it continued past its original position, all the way along the valley until out of sight. Just before it went out of sight, a bright red light appeared on the top half of the sphere. It travelled in a straight path, sometimes behind trees at the speed of a car. It also had “sparks” flying out of it like molten metal falling to the ground. It didn’t make a sound. I believe it to have been something not of our Earth’ (Picture: Getty)
4. Australia On the other side of the world, but not quite upside down, there is one surprising country that has quite a few sightings of UFOs. In Australia, data from the NUFORC revealed there have been 961 sightings since 1996, and some echo other reports from elsewhere in the world. In 2023, one witness in New South Wales reported a triangular UFO, with white lights that was moving fast and silently. The report said: ‘Standing in my suburban backyard at 6:45pm EST looking at the stars facing West. I saw the object as it passed directly overhead heading in a south westerly direction. The object was triangular in shape with approximately 10 lights on the forward two sides and 3 on the rear side. The lights were white and not flashing. Stars were blacked out within the triangle as it passed over. The object appeared to be the size of a football field in width and there was no sound whatsoever. It appeared to be quite close. I lost sight of the object as it passed over a hill to the south west. The object was visible to me for approximately 20 seconds’ (Picture: Getty)
4. Australia Triangular objects seem to be a popular shape for a UFO down under – another report in 2018 in Victoria spoke about a solid metallic object that was around five feet on all sides. The witness wrote: ‘It was in the middle of the day, I was sitting on an oval [an Australian Football field] with my friend and I look up and see a giant metal triangle hovering without moving a bit away from us, not to far away, maybe half an oval away. It looked like it was solid metal and after a few seconds of hovering in the same spot it zoomed away very fast over the tree line. It was a nice sunny day without any wind. It definitely wasn’t a drone or a weather balloon. The metal didn’t look bendable and looked like a solid triangle just in the sky' (Picture: Getty)
5.India While we hear of many cases from countries like the US and the UK, we rarely hear of reports from countries such as India. However, according to the NUFORC, there are 502 ‘credible’ cases that stem back to 1999. In 2010, a woman in the city of Alwar saw a UFO hovering overhead for around five minutes. She reported the object looked like a disk, and featured lights, as well as an aura or a haze surrounding it. She wrote: ‘At 6:21pm, I was playing with my kids at the rooftop of our row house in Alwar city of Rajasthan State in India. Suddenly I saw a white and silver color saucer sparkling in the sky. It was moving in a zigzag way, it was moving towards the east and then suddenly changed direction to the north. I told my parents and kids to also look and we all saw the object for around 5 minutes as it was moving very slowly and everybody was surprised to see the same thing. We tried to capture the picture of the object in our mobile phone camera but as the object was distant, we were not able to capture it. Let me also say it was clear sky that day but suddenly we saw a rapid change in weather and after three hours a thunderstorm and lightning happened. I am not sure but this might be linked to this flying object. To add to my credibility I am a post graduate in science and a mother of two kids’ (Picture: Getty)
5. India In 2021, a witness in Jalpaiguri reported a hockey stick-shaped UFO that had lights, as well as an aura or haze. They wrote: ‘It looked like a hockey stick oscillating like a pendulum. The two crafts suddenly collided and there was light which moved northwards. I was playing with my friends and we suddenly noticed something in the sky quite far above. There was a shrill sound for a matter of a few seconds. Most thought it to be a jet aircraft or a shooting star but I thought it was something else. Then as we looked carefully we saw as if something like a hockey stick was upside down and it was showing oscillatory movement. Suddenly the two crafts of the same sort collided and a streak of light was emitted. Then we all thought it was a UFO. We were amazed and the crafts were separated for around 20 minutes. Suddenly they collided and the light streak started moving straight towards the north eastern direction continuously for around another half an hour and it was of the same size quite unlike the common thing that we know. Though we all understood that it was going far, however the size of the light streak didn’t decrease. Suddenly, in an absurd way again the light disappeared and nothing else was seen. We had no mobiles or cameras then and we were alone’ (Picture: Getty)
6. South Africa Another UFO hotspot on the list is the country of South Africa. According to the data, the country has 211 reports that date back to 1997. But despite the smaller number of cases, they are still just as eerie. One witness reported seeing a UFO over a rhino sanctuary in Klerksdorp, which has a no-fly zone. The witness wrote: ‘I have some very weird footage for you from South Africa, captured at 4am by my son on a high security rhino farm with state of the art security systems, including radar – which was how the object was detected in the first place – and night sight cameras. They could not identify the object on camera, and as it is a no fly zone, they dispatched a team of rangers, but no lights and no sound was heard by the team, so they could not locate anything as it was still dark. The object was not travelling in a straight line, and it changed course as well. Hard to determine the height of it, as it looked high at some stages, and very low at other stages. This is definitely not a drone of some kind, and the shape seems to move on the top of the object as if scanning or something. Just very very weird.’ (Picture: Getty)
6. South Africa Another report came through of an apparent UFO sighting in Cape Town near the harbour. The alleged UFO had lights, and was in the shape of a triangle. The witness reported: ‘South Africa also got UFOs. I just left the restaurant called Panama Jacks Seafood in Cape Town Harbour and took a photo of my wife in front of the massive harbour cranes and lights. I handed her the camera back and she put it back in her handbag. As we looked up for the last time at the enormous cranes [we saw] 3 x orange lights in a perfect triangular shape. They held formation in distance from each other, but were kind of erratic in movement, much the same way as a stingray fish would swim. Came from the ocean direction and passed over or left of Table Bay Mountain. I tried to get them on my Blackberry Cell phone camera but I could not find them on the screen. Sorry!’ (Picture: Getty)
7. Ireland Back in Europe, another UFO hotspot country that maybe unknown is Ireland. The country has reported 189 cases which date back to 1998. But no cases of aliens drinking Guinness – that we know about. But despite being half a world away, the organisation revealed reports that also talked of a flying object moving in a zigzag pattern. One witness from Dublin in 1998 wrote of a strange light spotted with an aura nearby. The report said: ‘I was looking out my bedroom window staring at the stars when suddenly one moved. At first I thought it was a satellite but it was zigzagging, jerking, moving in circles, and changing direction. I called my father and my brother and we went outside to look at it better. It stopped moving for a while then started moving again. I stayed there observing it for another 20 mins before I went inside again. When I got upstairs I couldn’t see it anymore…’ (Picture: Getty)
7. Ireland A more recent report from 2019 told of an apparent UFO that seemed to scan the sky with lasers. The report said: ‘At first it was just one blue glow in the clouds. The glow would get stronger and then dim a little. Afterwards it moved and at stages bluish/white lights came through the clouds. Very hard to describe but the best example I can give is when you see a sci-fi movie where a robot or gadget 3D scans something with lasers. These lights would light up the clouds but when they were visible they’d beam out one direction then change very quickly to another direction. They shot out at every angle too. After maybe two minutes there were two blue glows behind clouds. Both moved rapidly from one point to another with flashing lighting up clouds as they stopped. When I could see the beam, it looked as though it came from a central point and spread out into a few beams like I said as though it was quickly scanning then moving. Sorry I know it’s really hard to put into words this episode, but I didn’t know where or who else to report this to as I feel very uneasy about it all’ (Picture: Getty)
8. Brazil Brazil isn’t well known for being a UFO hotspot, but there are more than a handful of apparent sightings. Since 1997, NUFORC revealed there have been 153 sightings of UFOs around Brazil, and some of the sightings are strange (Picture: Getty)
8. Brazil In 2015, one person reported seeing a teardrop-shaped UFO in the city of Florianopolis. The witness said: ‘I was driving to class, when I looked up to see the sky and saw a lime green light, shaped like a teardrop, travelling really fast, and vanishing seconds later. I’m positive it wasn’t a weather balloon or a drone, it appeared to be really high and the shape may be due to its velocity’ (Picture: Getty)
8 UFO hotspots around the world – and what really went on there Metro.co.uk made a map outlining eight UFO hotspots around the world. Was your country on the list? And are there any place you think need flagging? (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
The unverified UFO sighting near Concorde - which has re-emerged on Reddit's UFOs subchannel, features in a 1976 British Airways advert where an orb-like UFO can be observed darting towards the aircraft curiously before speeding away. Following the Fukushima lab disaster in Japan, witnesses told Netflix docuseries Encounters that UFOs saved them by reducing radioactivity levels, while another expert said UFOs prevented nuclear war.
Several shimmering white orbs were spotted above the plant after the nuclear catastrophe in 2011 and appeared to descend into the lab before reappearing. At the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in June 2022, the monarch was celebrated with a display by nine fighter jets releasing streams of smoke in Union Jack's red, white, and blue colors.
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Reddit users were quick to spot an unidentified disc near the jets, but no clear explanation has ever been provided. Reports of UFO sightings following rocket test-fires have also surfaced.
Retired US Air Force staff sergeant Larry Hancock and Ian Porritt, a data analyst associated with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, have conducted new research showing that unusual activity around nuclear weapons and facilities has evolved over time.
The studies indicate that initially, UFOs appeared interested in nuclear weapon production, but now they are frequently seen around silos and bomber bases.
When a new arsenal of ICMBs was constructed in the 1960s, UFOs became "much more intrusive" in their approach to ICBM bases, Porritt previously stated, adding: "They're very low altitude, they penetrate the security perimeters of the base."
There is also a theory that UFOs are actually "turning off" nuclear weapons - with several reports of this happening by the US military since the 60s.
In their latest study, the pair conclude: "Notable unidentified aerial phenomena loitering, military intrusions and weapons facility interference were documented in a series of incidents in 1967 (Malmstrom AFB) and 1975 (Loring AFB and Malstrom AFB), where at least one flight of 10 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) was officially recorded as having unexplainably gone off alert status."
The study delves into the account of former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas, who was tasked by the AARO to gather information after he reported an orange flying disc disabling 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967.
He was subsequently made to sign a non-disclosure agreement on the incident by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Salas isn't the only one making such claims. In 2000, US Air Force First Lieutenant Robert Jacobs also claimed to have witnessed this in 1964 but was instructed not to discuss the alleged encounter again.
Moreover, in June 2023, two Air Force veterans told DailyMail.com that they had testified to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) about UFOs deactivating their nuclear warheads.
Lue Elizondo, the former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, has previously stated that there "seems to be a lot of correlation" between UFO sightings and nuclear sites.
Independent researcher Robert Hastings echoed these sentiments in 2010, stating: "Declassified US government documents and witness testimony from former or retired US military personnel confirm beyond any doubt the reality of ongoing UFO incursions at nuclear weapons sites."
For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here.
The sudden and catastrophic collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations was one of the most dreadful events in history. Towards the beginning of the 12th century BCE, cities across the eastern Mediterranean region – in Cyprus, Crete, Greece, Anatolia, Egypt, Syria, Levant, etc. – went up in flames, never to rise again, and the cultural expressions and religious institutions of the Bronze Age were lost forever. Historian Robert Drews, Professor of Classical Studies, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University, wrote in the book, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 BC, that,
“Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again…Throughout the eastern Mediterranean, the twelfth century BC ushered in a dark age, which in Greece and Anatolia was not to lift for more than four hundred years. Altogether, the end of the Bronze Age was arguably the worst disaster in ancient history...”[1]
The intensity and geographic scale of this devastation are quite mind-boggling. When the archaeologists of the mid-19th century started exploring the ancient Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean, they found that the cities and palaces – which were constructed of megalithic blocks of stone - had been entirely leveled and almost everywhere they detected a layer of ash containing charred wood. At Hattusa, the capital of the mighty Hittite Empire, the excavators found a layer of “slag, formed when mud-bricks melted from the intense heat of the conflagration,”[2] while at Mycenae, the “masonry structures within the fortification walls (of the citadel) melted in a fire of great intensity.”[3]
The area of the Great Temple with storerooms surrounding the temple proper, Hattusa, Turkey. Credit: Carole Raddato, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia commons
Everywhere there were signs of a massive, violent conflagration that had brought on the utter demise of these longstanding centers of culture. Many of these sites – such as Hattusa or Mycenae - remained unoccupied, forgotten, and lost from the pages of history for thousands of years, until they were dug up by archaeologists in the 19th century. At some of the sites, archaeologists have detected signs of rebuilding after the initial wave of devastation in the early 12th century BCE. However, even the rebuilt cities did not last long and were destroyed and abandoned shortly. Apparently, whatever had brought on this widespread disaster lingered on for some time during the 400 years of the Dark Ages that followed.
Archaeological site of Mycenae, Greece. Credit: Annatsach, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
However, not all cultures in the region were utterly decimated in the 12th century itself. In some cases, the collapse was long drawn out. In Egypt, the rule of Ramses III – the last of the great pharaohs - ended in 1155 BCE with his murder, following which there was a “mega drought” lasting 150 years or more, which caused a severe economic crisis.[4] The end of the 20th Dynasty in 1069 BCE marked the end of Egypt as an independent power. The period from 1070 BCE – 664 BCE is called the “Third Intermediate Period” of Egypt, when the Libyans and the Kushites claimed the throne, at a time of political turmoil, social disintegration, droughts and famine.
Another ancient empire that survived the initial wave of destruction in the 12th century was Assyria, even as most cities in the Levant and Southern Mesopotamia went up in flames. However, upon the death of Ashur-bel-kala in 1056 BCE, even Assyria went into a comparative decline for the next hundred or so years. The empire shrank significantly, and by 1020 BCE, Assyria appears to have controlled only areas close to Assyria itself.
The ruins of the Bronze Age city of Ugarit in Ras Shamra, Syria. Credit: Loris Romito, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The effect of this catastrophic civilizational collapse on the people of the eastern Mediterranean was traumatic, to say the least. There was large-scale depopulation, and the people lived in small, isolated, settlements. Some squatters occupied the ruins of the big cities and lived in small huts. Famine gripped the lands, and people migrated in search of food. The ancient trading networks came to a grinding halt. A Dark Age gripped the lands for nearly 400 years, during which time the entire cultural edifice of the Bronze Age was lost forever.
When the Iron Age began at around 750 BCE, the construction of megalithic cities and palaces had ceased. The pottery had simple geometric patterns. Iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice for manufacturing tools and weapons. Chariots were no longer used in warfare. The Linear B writing of the Mycenaean period was forgotten, and the Greeks had to re-learn the alphabet from the Phoenicians in the 8th century BCE. It was almost as if an “epoch” of humanity was over and the old had given way to the new.
Modern historians think of the Greek Dark Ages as a time of “transition” from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Robert Drews used the term “dawn time” to refer to this period of catastrophe and transformation. He wrote that,
“The end of the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age, in the twelfth century BC, was one of history’s most frightful turning points. For those who experienced it, it was a calamity. In long retrospect, however, the episode marked a beginning rather than an end, the “dawn time” in which people in Israel, Greece, and even Rome sought their origins. ...The metallurgical progress - from bronze to iron - was only the most tangible of the innovations. More significant by far were the development and spread of alphabetic writing, the growth of nationalism, of republican political forms, of monotheism, and eventually of rationalism.”[5]
The philosophers of ancient Greece generally thought of the Dark Ages as a time when a “Shift in the Ages” took place from the “Age of the Heroes” to the “Iron Age”. Many Greek writers dated the famous battle of Troy described in the Iliad, to around the same time that the Late Bronze Age collapse had occurred: Ephorus had dated it to 1135 BCE, Sosibius to 1172 BCE, and Eratosthenes to 1184 BCE.
As it turns out, the ruins of the city of Troy were discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870, in the course of his excavations on the mound of Hisarlik, which overlooks the plain along the Turkish Aegean coast. The excavations at the site have revealed multiple occupation layers dating back to 3600 BCE.
The ruins of the gates and terraces at Troy, dating to the Late Bronze Age. Credit: Bgabel, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
What is interesting is that, Troy was destroyed at around 1180 BCE – coinciding with the onset of the Late Bronze Age collapse - following which the city was rebuilt but was destroyed again in 1050 BCE, possibly due to an earthquake. Troy was again rebuilt by the survivors, but suffered yet another destruction by a fire in 950 BCE. This tells us that the entire Mediterranean region was visited by an extended period of catastrophes during the Dark Ages. Robert Drews makes a similar observation:
"Altogether, then, the Catastrophe seems to have begun with sporadic destructions in the 1st quarter of the thirteenth century, gathered momentum in the 1190s, and rages in fully fury in the 1180s. By about 1175 the worst was apparently over, although dreadful things continued to happen throughout the twelfth century."
The question is, what could have caused this widespread and long drawn-out calamity in the Mediterranean region that obliterated the Bronze Age cultures that had flourished in the region for nearly three millennia?
The Sea Peoples
Some historians believe that the so-called “Sea Peoples”- a loose, seafaring, confederation of uncertain origin – are to blame for these upheavals. The principal evidence for the invasions of the Sea Peoples comes to us from the inscriptions and pictorial reliefs on the walls of the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.
They tell us that, during the eighth year of the pharaoh’s reign, a coalition of foreign states that originally lived “on the islands in the middle of the (Aegean) sea” attacked Egypt. The attackers are said to have defeated a number of countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Hatti (Hattusa), Alashiya (Cyprus) and Arzawa (a small city in Western Anatolia). Ramesses III claims to have slaughtered the Sea Peoples in a naval battle, and took many of them as captives.[6]
Scholars now believe that the Sea Peoples were a military alliance of “western Anatolian petty states”, since the names of some of the individual tribes that made up the Sea Peoples (which have been mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions) are, to a large extent, identical to the neighbors of the Hittites in the west and the southeast.
A map of the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean shows the cities which collapsed, and those which survived the initial destruction. Credit: Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
But, if we think about it, the Sea Peoples were not such a powerful adversary, since they were easily annihilated by Ramses III, and therefore - while they might have defeated a few Hittite cities - they were unlikely to have reduced those cities to utter rubble. Besides, the Late Bronze Age collapse took place over a vast swathe of land in the eastern Mediterranean and the Sea Peoples certainly didn’t go anywhere after the thrashing they received in Egypt. Moreover, the catastrophic events in the Mediterranean region had persisted for some time during the Dark Ages. It was not just a collapse of cities that we are dealing with here. Famines had overtaken the lands, trade networks were disrupted, people forgot how to read and write, and all the cultural expressions of the Bronze Age were lost.
Clearly, this was not the work of some invaders of uncertain origin, but of Mother Nature. A major environmental cataclysm must have brought this on.
Some historians have pointed to the eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland as a potential trigger. The eruption of Hekla has been dated to around 1021 BCE (±130), and it caused worldwide temperatures to drop for nearly 18 years, as recorded in Irish bog oaks.[7] Since the explosion occurred nearly two hundred years after the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse it cannot be a regarded as a cause, although it certainly contributed to the woes already inflicting the people.
Hekla volcano, beyond a snowy field of volcanic ash, Iceland. Credit: cogdogblog, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Meteor Airbursts?
A possible cause for the Late Bronze Age collapse could be a series of meteor airbursts above the eastern Mediterranean region. When meteors explode in the air, they do not leave any impact craters, but their effects on human civilization can be utterly devastating. Shock waves from meteor airbursts can flatten cities and the intense temperatures from the explosions can cause violent conflagrations capable of melting mud-bricks and stone walls – which is what has been seen at many Late Bronze Age sites.
A well-known example of a meteor airburst is the Tunguska event of June 30, 1908, when a large meteor - about 120 feet across weighing 100 million kilograms - exploded over Eastern Siberia with the force of 1000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, and flattened over 2000 square kilometers of forest. Strong seismic waves and near-hurricane gusts of wind were felt 600 kilometers from the site. Locally, hundreds of reindeer were killed, but there was no evidence that any person was killed in the blast, due to the remoteness of the location. The same explosion over a densely populated city would have had tragic consequences on human life.
In the eastern Mediterranean, a devastating meteor airburst had occurred a few centuries prior to the Late Bronze Age collapse. In 2021, a team of scientists discovered that the Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam in Jordan had been completely flattened by a Tunguska-sized meteor airburst at around 1650 BCE. The high temperatures from the airburst melted pottery shards and clay bricks and produced diamond-like carbon, while the incredible pressures shocked quartz crystals. Their findings were published in the journal Nature.[8]
Tall el-Hammam excavations. Credit: UC Santa Barbara
Some researchers believe that Tall el-Hammam could be the biblical city of Sodom mentioned in Genesis, which, in addition to Gomorrah, had been destroyed by God, since its inhabitants had become wicked. As per Genesis, fire and sulfur had rained down on the cities, which leveled the buildings, killed all the inhabitants and destroyed the vegetation in the fields.[9]
James Kennett, emeritus professor of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara, who was leading the research team, said that “All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst…but there's no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.”[10]
While the biblical identity of Tall el-Hammam will continue to be debated, it is becoming evident that meteor airbursts can have devastating consequences on human civilization, and many such events have occurred in the past. But, did anything of this sort occur during the time of the Late Bronze collapse?
The Kaali Crater
A recent scientific paper published in the International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (2020), claims that the Kaali Crater in Estonia - which is named after a small village called Kaali located close to the impact site - was caused by a meteorite impact between 1183 - 1162 BCE. The force of the impact set up a Baltic-wide mega-tsunami at 1171 BCE, and caused a violent seismotectonic effect in Sweden.
The author of the paper, Nils-Axel Morner, a retired geologist of Stockholm University wrote,
“At about 1200 cal. yr. BC something quite unique occurred in the Baltic region: a meteorite impacted the ground on Saaremaa Island in Estonia giving rise to the Kaali Crater and 8 minor impact marks. At the same time along the Swedish east coast, we record high-magnitude paleoseismic activity, ground shaking with power of fracturing the bedrock, intensive methane venting tectonics, and the occurrence of a mega-tsunami with a run-up on the order of 15 m. In this paper, we propose that all the events occurred at the same time, and that the geodynamic events along the Swedish east coast were all triggered by the Kaali impact.”[11]
The main Kaali Crater has a diameter of around 110 m and a depth of 25 m, including its debris rim. Today, the crater has a lake in it, fed by groundwater and precipitation. There are eight minor craters within 1 km of the main crater, with diameters ranging from 12 – 40 m. It is believed that these craters were created when a large meteor, weighing anywhere between 400 – 1000 tons entered the earth’s atmosphere and fragmented into multiple pieces, which struck the Saaremaa Island in Estonia with a velocity of about 10 - 20 km. per second.
The Kaali crater on Saaremaa Island, Estonia, viewed from near the debris rim. Credit: Mannobult CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsThe Kaali Crater is located on Saaremaa Island off the coast of Estonia. Source: Google Maps
There have been ongoing debates about the age of the Kaali Crater, with the span of uncertainty ranging between 1700 BCE – 1000 BCE. New mathematical models used by Brendan Duffy for the computation of the boundary age for the onset of sedimentation within the crater provide dates ranging from 1183 BCE - 1162 BCE. This is in close agreement with the 1171 BCE date for the Baltic-wide mega-tsunami that has been recorded at 11 sites in Sweden.
Nils-Axel Morner has proposed that a large meteor fragment must have fallen into the Baltic Sea, somewhere between Estonia and Sweden, and caused the mega-tsunami. Around the same time, there was an abnormal peak of seismotectonic events at 13 sites in Sweden resulting in bedrock deformation, large-scale liquefaction, and explosive methane venting tectonics.
The timing of the impact i.e. between 1183 - 1162 BCE coincides with the catastrophe that struck the eastern Mediterranean at the beginning of the 12th century BCE. Since multiple fragments of the meteorite struck the land in Estonia, and a large fragment probably fell into the Baltic Sea, all of them may have originated from a large, disintegrating, comet.
It is quite possible that some large chunks of cometary debris exploded over the eastern Mediterranean region, flattening the Bronze Age cities, and causing the mud-bricks and stone masonry to melt. Cosmic airbursts and impact events can also destroy the vegetation in the fields and induce widespread aridity, thereby causing famines. Since volcanism can also be triggered by meteor impacts, the Hekla eruption could have been a result of these bombardments.
The reason why the Sea Peoples were invading other cultures of that time was possibly because they were one of the first victims of the meteor airbursts; and having lost their homes and food sources, they were searching around for a new place to settle.
There are indications that meteor impacts continued to occur during the Dark Ages. Lars Franzen and Thomas Larsson of Goeteborg University, Sweden, have presented evidence from sites in Tunisia and Sweden, which show that,
“A major atmospheric cooling event, accompanied by excessive precipitation, which led to flooding, occurred around 1000 BCE. The event was sudden and widespread, and the finding of small glassy spherules pointed to a possible impact origin. Franzen and Larsson suggested that an asteroid or comet of diameter in the range 0.5-5 km may have landed in the eastern Atlantic around 1000 BCE, affecting in particular Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.”[12]
Now, why would the earth be subjected to an extended period of bombardment from asteroids and meteors? From where did these impactors originate? The answer to that question probably lies within the dense core of the Taurid meteor stream.
The Taurid Swarm
The Taurids are the largest meteor stream in the inner solar system. It contains some large chunks of rocks that have struck the earth in the past. Most scientists believe that the Beta Taurids – which is the section of the stream we cross from June 5 to July 18, with peak activity on June 29 – was the source of the Tunguska meteor of June 30, 1908.
The progenitor of the Taurid stream was a giant comet, around 50 - 100 km in diameter, which had entered the inner solar system at least 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. The comet was tossed into a short-term orbit around the Sun, and disintegrated in stages, leaving behind a trail of debris known as the Taurid meteor stream or Taurid Complex.[13]
The Earth crosses the Taurid meteor stream twice in course of its annual orbit. The dense swarm of comets within the stream is called the Taurid Resonant Swarm. Credit: David Clark, University of Western Ontario.
The giant progenitor comet of the Taurid meteor stream still remains hidden in the center of the Taurids, moving within a tightly packed swarm consisting of several large comets formed by the fragmentation of the progenitor (all of which are in a dormant state), and dozens of full-size asteroids up to 1 km wide. This dense cluster of comets and asteroids within the Taurid meteor stream is called the “Taurid Resonant Swarm”. The faint Comet Encke, which is the only visible comet within the Taurid meteor stream today, could be a recently reactivated fragment of the Taurid progenitor comet.
In an article in National Geographic, Australian astronomer Duncan Steel provided an estimate of how often we get hit by the comets and asteroids within the Taurid swarm:
“Every 2,500 to 3,000 years or so, the core of the Taurid stream passes near Earth and produces much more intense meteor showers for a few centuries, said Steel. A gap of a few centuries separates the era of intensity between Northern Taurids and Southern Taurids.”[14]
This is a significant observation from the perspective of the Late Bronze Age collapse. If the earth had passed through the dense core of the Taurids towards the beginning of the 12th century BCE, then it would have resulted in intense meteor showers over a period of a few centuries – with consequent cosmic airbursts and impact events - which could account for all the calamities that befell the eastern Mediterranean region over the next 400 years.
The area of collapse, in fact, was much wider than the eastern Mediterranean. In reality, the Greek Dark Ages was a time of global collapse of civilization.
A Global Catastrophe
Everywhere we look around the world, the period from 1200 BCE – 700 BCE was the time when the erstwhile Bronze Age cultures collapsed and gave way to the Iron Age civilizations. In Persia, for instance, the Median kingdom emerged in the 8th century BCE, but what do we know about the Bronze Age cultures of the region? Very little, for all of them disappeared, and it is only at sites like Jiroft that we get an inkling of Bronze Age Persia.
The Indus Valley civilization had already undergone a catastrophic collapse at around 1900 BCE due to a host of environmental conditions – notably droughts and earthquakes - and most Indus cities had been abandoned by 1700 BCE. However, a Late Harappan, post-urban culture continued to survive in parts of Sindh and Saurashtra, which was characterized by relative poverty in their material culture – crude pottery, poorly constructed buildings, disappearance of urban amenities etc. The Late Harappan phase continued till around 1000 - 900 BCE,[15] and ended due to factors not clearly known. After a gap of nearly 400 years we see the emergence of the 16 Great Kingdoms (Mahajanapadas) in the Gangetic plains at around 600 BCE, marking the beginning of the Iron Age culture of India. While certain Harappan traditions were carried over to the later-day Indian civilization, many elements of their skills, beliefs, customs, and socio-cultural setup were lost forever.
Catastrophe also struck the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica at this time. The center of Olmec culture in the early years was at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. However, in c.950 BCE there was a wholesale destruction of San Lorenzo monuments. The site was abandoned at around 900 BCE, and the center of power shifted to La Venta soon afterward. Mesoamerican scholars believe that severe environmental changes may have been responsible for this shift in Olmec centers, with certain important rivers changing course.
Apparently, the Greek Dark Ages was a time when civilizations across the world got a drastic reboot. The old ways of doing things were violently erased, and while some elements of the Bronze Age societies were carried forward, we mostly see the emergence of new artistic styles, religious beliefs, philosophies, architecture, and modes of governance. This brings to mind those haunting words that the Egyptian priest of Sais had spoken to Solon, the Athenian law-giver when Solon had gone to Egypt at around 600 BCE:
“Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.”[16]
The “stream from heaven” that the Egyptian priest spoke of, could refer to the Taurid meteor stream, which seems to play a crucial role in the periodic annihilation of civilization. In my book Yuga Shift, I have proposed that the Greek Dark Ages correspond to the period of transition between the descending Kali Yuga and the ascending Kali Yuga in the Yuga Cycle, and I have identified the Taurid meteor stream as the primary trigger for the cataclysms of the transitional periods between the Yugas.
References
[1] Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C., Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 3-4. [2] Ibid p. 8. [3] Ibid p. 24 [4] Dave Roos, “What Caused Ancient Egypt’s Decline?”, History, 10 August 2022, https://www.history.com/news/decline-ancient-egypt-causes [5] Ibid p. 3. [6] "The Sea Peoples’ Inscriptions and Excavation Results", Luwian Studies, https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/ [7] Mike Baillie, “Do Irish bog oaks date the Shang dynasty?” Current Archaeology 1989, 10: 310–313. [8] Ted E. Bunch et al, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea”, Scientific Reports, 2021, Vol.11, Article No.18632, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3 [9] Genesis 19:24-26. [10] Sonia Fernandez, “Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed ancient city in the Jordan Valley”, Phys.org, 20 September 2021, https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html [11] N. Mörner, “The Kaali Impact as Trigger of a Mega-Tsunami Event and Violent Seismotectonics in Sweden”, International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2020, Vol.10, No.3, pp. 235-246, https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=103095 [12] Trevor Palmer, Robert N. Brandon, Perilous Planet Earth: Catastrophes and Catastrophism Through the Ages, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 344. [13] D.I. Steel, D.J. Asher, S.V.M Clube, “The Taurid Complex: Giant Comet Origin?” International Astronomical Union Colloquium, 1991, Vol. 126, pp. 327-330, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0252921100067063 [14] John Roach, “Meteor Shower Promises Seven Shooting Stars an Hour”, National Geographic News, 7 November 2003, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1107_031107_taurids.html [15] Jim G. Shaffer, “Reurbanization: The Eastern Punjab and Beyond”, Studies in the History of Art, 1993, vol. 31, pp. 53–67. [16] Plato, Timaeus, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
A few days before his mysterious death, the 35th US president John F. Kennedy demanded that the CIA provide him with a UFO dossier. From another archival note by John Kennedy, it became known that he wanted to offer the USSR a joint program for space exploration. Almost half a century after the death of John F. Kennedy, sensational details were revealed regarding his latest orders. It turned out that just 10 days before his death, the 35th president of the United States requested top-secret information about flying ships from special services.
According to the Daily Mail, Kennedy sent two requests: one to the CIA, the other one to NASA. The circulars had been useless in the archives of these departments for many years, but in the end, on the request made by author William Lester under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA had to release the documents to him.
Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he requested while researching for his new book ‘A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.’
While working on a new book ‘A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier,’ the writer got the opportunity to familiarize himself with the contents of archival materials. Studying those documents, the author came across two sensations at once.
In a letter dated November 12, 1963, to the Director of the CIA, John F. Kennedy demanded a detailed report on the secret materials of the department devoted to UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. In another one, that was addressed to the administration of the National Space Agency (NASA), the president expressed a desire to cooperate with the Soviet Union in the field of space research and even join forces in space exploration.
Of course, there could be no talk of any opening of the Iron Curtain: after the Caribbean crisis, relations between the two nuclear powers became extremely heated. However, according to Lester, the coincidence of the two documents in time is far from accidental. The fact is that flying ships had repeatedly been seen over the territory of the Soviet Union. Kennedy rightly feared that the USSR might regard the appearance of unidentified objects in the sky above its territory as military aggression.
“I think this is one of the reasons why he wanted to get his hands on this information and get it away from the jurisdiction of NASA so he could say to the Soviets,” said Lester.
”The government regularly declassifies documents after a certain amount of time goes by, and then you have to file a request for those documents,” Lester told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site of Space.com. “When I was in the process of filing, those letters had just become declassified and released to the public.” This happened in 2006 or 2007, Lester said. “At the time, I think other people were getting them too.”
The top secret memo hasn’t turned up anywhere else besides Lester’s book, however, and some archivists question its authenticity. A research technician at the JFK Library in Boston, who asked not to be named, was unable to find a carbon copy of it in its presidential archive, which holds copies of all of JFK’s letters.
“We did some research into the presidential papers to try to find any evidence of the Nov. 12, 1963, letter to the director of the CIA, John McCone,” the technician told Life’s Little Mysteries. Despite the fact that JFK kept carbon copies of all his letters, even the classified ones, “in searching through the president’s office files — CIA, NASA and National Security files — we could find no evidence of this memo or anything like it.”
“Something is a little odd about it,” the technician said. “It is sanitized in very odd places: the director’s name, the top heading of the document (which usually distinguishes which agency is generating it) and then the tiny “top secret” print at the top of letter. Top secret items are usually stamped in large dark ink on the letter.“
The publicized documents once again convinced ufologists that the president was killed because of his interest in UFOs. According to paranormal researchers, behind the tragic death of Kennedy were people who were not interested in the head of state who was wildly popular among ordinary Americans, to learn the truth about UFOs.
Supporters of the conspiracy theory in connection with newly discovered circumstances recall other documents: the sensational “burned memo.” In 1999, ufologist Timothy Cooper was given a certain document with charred fields. The papers contained internal correspondence of senior CIA officers. In particular, the director of intelligence services drew the addressee’s attention to the fact that ‘Lancer’(Kennedy’s Secret Service code name) was too actively making inquiries, and his curiosity needed to be stopped.
It was reported that this top-secret file, subject to destruction, was saved from the fire by a CIA officer who served in the department from 1960 to 1974. The authenticity of the document was repeatedly questioned, and its last owner even turned to forensic experts for a professional opinion. However, the examination results have not yet been made public.
UFO investigator Robert Wood said he has tested the paper it was printed on, the ink age, watermarks, font types and other markings. He said: ‘I hired a forensics company to check the age of the ink and check several other things that you can date, using the same techniques you’d use in a court of law.’
New investigations into humanity’s ancient interactions with an enigmatic “lost” species are revealing the complex world our early ancestors once shared.
The recent research conducted by an international team of geneticists and AI experts has revealed that the lives of early modern humans and Neanderthals were more interconnected than previously thought. Significantly, the study points to waves of interbreeding over time that fundamentally shaped the genetic makeup of modern humans and offers new insights into the mysterious disappearance of the Neanderthals.
Led by Joshua Akey from Princeton University, the team says it has discovered evidence of such genetic exchanges dating back as far as 250,000 years. This data challenges existing theories about human migrations in the ancient world and what factors may have steered human evolution over time.
The new findings point to a far deeper level of interaction that once occurred between ancient humans and our Neanderthal cousins.
THE NEANDERTHAL ENIGMA
First discovered in 1856, what eventually came to be recognized as the first known Neanderthal bones were found in a limestone quarry in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany. The discovery introduced these mysterious archaic hominins to the paleoanthropological record and prompted serious scientific interest in what factors shaped human evolution over time.
Once mischaracterized as slow and lacking intelligence, mounting evidence of traits exhibited by Neanderthals, including advanced stone toolmaking and the possibility that they may have treated each other’s injuries, is continually reshaping our ideas about their intelligence levels.
While similar to us in many ways, the differences between Neanderthal remains and those of modern humans have long remained intriguing to scientists, raising questions that have deepened in recent years with the discovery of another hominin group, known as the Denisovans, that once also populated parts of Asia and South Asia as recently as the latter part of the last Ice Age.
Now, Akey and his team at Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics are uncovering deeper insights than ever before into the genetic history modern humans share with the Neanderthals, who mysteriously vanished from the fossil record around 40,000 years ago.
According to Akey and his team, multiple different waves of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans appear to have taken place.
“We now know that for the vast majority of human history, we’ve had a history of contact between modern humans and Neanderthals,” Akey recently said.
Liming Li, a professor at Southeast University in China who was also a contributor to the study, called the team’s findings “the first time that geneticists have identified multiple waves of modern human-Neanderthal admixture.”
COMMON ORIGINS WITH AN INTELLIGENT “LOST” SPECIES
The findings help to confirm that around 600,000 years ago, modern humans and Neanderthals split from an earlier common ancestor. More than 350,000 years would pass before each group developed distinctive physical characteristics that clearly defined them as separate species.
However, over the course of the 200,000 years leading up to their disappearance, humans continued to interact with Neanderthals. In their research, Akey and the team used genomes collected from 2,000 living humans, as well as genomes from three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, to map the flow of genetic information between these groups spanning a period of about 250,000 years.
Additionally, the team’s research was aided by a machine learning tool called IBDmix, which helped them identify three major waves of contact that occurred between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago, 100,000 to 120,000 years ago, and a final wave between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, just before the last known Neanderthals vanished from the fossil record.
The team made additional insights into the presence of modern human DNA in Neanderthal genomes, an approach that helped identify that offspring from such interbreeding events were likely to remain in Neanderthal populations, with no traces present in the genomes of living humans.
According to Akey and his team, this very dynamic state of early human movement also complements archaeological evidence of cultural and tool exchanges that were believed to have occurred between these hominin relatives.
Finally, the Princeton research team’s findings offer a revision to past estimates of the size of Neanderthal populations. They reveal that past figures were interpreted as being greater than they actually were, reducing the breeding population of Neanderthals the team observed in their data by close to 1000 individuals
Although Akey prefers the notion of slow assimilation into human populations over the idea of extinction, he nonetheless concedes that the disappearance of the Neanderthals had been foreshadowed by population decline over a fairly long period.
“Neanderthals were teetering on the edge of extinction, probably for a very long time,” Akey says.
Ultimately, the steady growth in modern human populations coinciding with the slow decline and assimilation of Neanderthals resulted in their absorption. Akey and his team’s research strongly support this gradual assimilation model, offering what may be the clearest picture yet of the rise and fall of the enigmatic Neanderthals.
“Modern humans were essentially like waves crashing on a beach, slowly but steadily eroding the beach away,” Akey said in a statement.
“Eventually, we just demographically overwhelmed Neanderthals and incorporated them into modern human populations.”
Akey and his team’s findings were published in a recent study, “Recurrent gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans over the past 200,000 years,” which appeared in the journal Science.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
