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...
26-08-2024
Stabiele kernfusie is dichterbij... dankzij mayonaise: de ontdekking in een wetenschappelijke studie
Stabiele kernfusie is dichterbij... dankzij mayonaise: de ontdekking in een wetenschappelijke studie
Onderzoek naar nieuwe energiebronnen is actiever dan ooit, maar het gaat niet alleen om het opgeven van fossiele brandstoffen of het ontwikkelen van duurzame energie. Hoewel het grote doel is om stabiele en effectieve kernfusie te bereiken, gaan niet alle ontwikkelingen op dezelfde manier. Een groep onderzoekers aan de Lehigh University heeft bijvoorbeeld een verband ontdekt tussen kernfusie... en mayonaise, naar verluidt een belangrijk “ingrediënt” in het onderzoek. Laten we eens kijken hoe dit mogelijk is.
Mayonaise en kernfusie
Als praten over een “ingrediënt” zeker een metaforisch middel is, is mayonaise ongetwijfeld een nuttige stof voor onderzoek naar kernfusie. Dit preparaat kan namelijk gebruikt worden om de complexe verschijnselen te bestuderen die optreden tijdens kernfusie, juist vanwege de visco-elastische eigenschappen. Anders gezegd: mayonaise kan het gedrag van plasma onder bepaalde drukomstandigheden simuleren. Ja, maar in welke zin?
In de regel kan mayonaise worden beschouwd als een vaste substantie die, wanneer het wordt blootgesteld aan een drukgradiënt, van toestand verandert van vast naar vloeibaar, op een vergelijkbare manier als de overgang van plasma in fusiereactoren. Als gevolg hiervan hebben twee wetenschappelijke onderzoeken op mayonaise gebaseerde modellen benut om de fysica van kernfusie te bestuderen zonder hun toevlucht te hoeven nemen tot de extreme omstandigheden ervan. En ze behaalden een aantal behoorlijk interessante resultaten.
Mayonaise als model voor kernfusie
EUROfusione/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 4.0
Een eerste onderzoek, gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Physical Review E in 2019, uitgevoerd door onderzoekers van Lehigh University, was gericht op het begrijpen van de fysica achter kernfusie. In feite praten we meestal over traagheidsfusie, dat wil zeggen waarbij bij de kernreacties capsules betrokken zijn die gevuld zijn met waterstof. Deze worden verwarmd en gecomprimeerd om de vorming van plasma en daarmee de opwekking van grote hoeveelheden energie op gang te brengen. Er is echter een probleem: traagheidsopsluitingsfusie genereert hydrodynamische instabiliteiten die de voortgang van de reactie kunnen beïnvloeden. Wat te doen?
De studie richt zich op het analyseren van hoe het gebruik van mayonaise het mogelijk maakt het gedrag van plasma te modelleren, onder de juiste drukomstandigheden. Kortom, nog voordat de stroming onstabiel wordt, zijn er verschillende overgangsfasen waar te nemen waarin de mayonaise nog steeds stabiel is.
Eindelijk een stabiele kernfusie?
Inzicht in de overgangsfasen van eerst mayonaise en dan plasma zou het echt mogelijk kunnen maken om instabiliteiten tijdens kernfusie te voorspellen en te beheersen. Op het spel staat, zoals we weten, de mogelijkheid om schone energie in enorme hoeveelheden te produceren. Daarom heeft het team van onderzoekers een nieuwe studie gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Physical Review E, waarin ze zich verdiepen in de studie van instabiliteiten tijdens reacties, met name Rayleigh-Taylor instabiliteiten.
Terwijl ze de mayonaise bestuderen, hebben wetenschappers ontdekt hoe ze het herstel van het materiaal kunnen maximaliseren en de instabiliteit volledig kunnen onderdrukken. Dit is een noodzakelijke vooruitgang in het onderzoek naar kernfusie, hoewel mayonaise iets heel anders is als plasma. Kortom, het is misschien nog te vroeg om te praten over echte kernfusie, een energiebron die vandaag de dag even nuttig als noodzakelijk is. Toch hebben de twee onderzoeken van het team van Lehigh University aangetoond hoe het mogelijk is om het resultaat in kleine stappen te bereiken... en met een beetje mayonaise.
NASA, ESA, A. del Pino Molina (CEFCA), K. Gilbert and R. van der Marel (STScI), A. Cole (University of Tasmania);
Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Leo A lacks galactic glamor. NASA’s newly-published image of thisdwarf galaxy is missing the Milky Way’s pizzazz, and Andromeda’s visual riches. But that’s what makes Leo A special.
Astronomers found Leo A beyond our galaxy, and past a few more, at the edge of our cosmic neighborhood. To see it, the Hubble Space Telescope peered 2.6 million light-years away. That’s a relatively close cosmic distance for galaxies. But it’s still extraordinary that Hubble saw Leo A, because this galaxy is small and dim.
This “speckling of stars,” the European Space Agency wrote in 2016, forms a single entity. “The relatively open distribution of stars in this diminutive galaxy allows light from distant background galaxies to shine through,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center officials wrote in Thursday’s image description.
The sparsely-populated sphere in this Hubble Space Telescope image is dwarf galaxy Leo A.
This image comes from data Hubble took during four observation programs. Three of these looked at star formation and its history, in relatively nearby dwarf galaxies, including Leo A.
Although sparsely populated, Leo A’s stars have an order. They make a spherical shape in space. A pattern also emerged when astronomers peered at their ages.
The recent Hubble observations have revealed that Leo A’s younger stars are located in the middle, and they are older the farther they are from the dwarf galaxy’s center. This could offer clues about how galaxies evolve.
Perhaps stars formed from “the outside-in,” NASA wrote. Or, perhaps, older stars migrated towards the edges of Leo A.
But older is a relative term. According to NASA, “around 90 percent of the stars in Leo A are less than eight billion years old — young in cosmic terms!” Astronomers are puzzled about why this small galaxy, one of the most isolated galaxies in our local group of galaxies, didn’t form stars on a “usual” timescale.
“Instead,” NASA says, Leo A “waited until it was good and ready.”
If an emergency happens on the International Space Station (ISS) sometime in the next six weeks, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to flee without the added safety of in-flight spacesuits.
At a media teleconference NASA held on August 14, agency officials said the spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore inside the Boeing Starliner are not compatible with other spacecraft.
This complicates NASA’s decision on whether the astronauts should fly home aboard Starliner or on a SpaceX vehicle. Starliner encountered technical problems shortly after it brought Wilmore and Williams into low-Earth orbit almost three months ago. If teams deem Starliner unfit to carry them back, they’d likely come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The Dragon of the Crew-8 mission is in space now, but it is the contingency plan for Wilmore and Williams if Starliner isn’t suitable to carry them home, NASA officials said. To complicate matters, there aren't any spare SpaceX suits. Those arrive no earlier than September 24, when the Dragon of Crew-9 launches towards the ISS with two empty seats and two extra spacesuits.
If Starliner flies home uncrewed, and their Dragon Crew-9 rescue vessel hasn’t yet reached the station with its specific spacesuits in tow, Wilmore and Williams would have no choice but to enter the Crew-8 Dragon without spacesuits in an emergency situation.
That is, unless NASA decides Starliner will return with its crew after all. The space agency is expected to make a final decision about Starliner coming back to Earth empty, or with Wilmore and Williams inside, by the end of this month.
Why do spacesuits differ?
Onboard the orbiting laboratory, a spacesuit is not necessary. Regular clothing or a uniform suffices.
Spacesuits used during transit, sometimes called intravehicular spacesuits, are tailor-designed for the spacecraft the astronauts are riding. These indoor spacesuits provide an extra layer of protection. They’re an additional buffer from the potentially hazardous launch or reentry environments around them.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images
When astronauts make repairs outside the station, they wear extravehicular spacesuits to remain alive and tethered to the station during their spacewalk.
Another type of spacesuit is used when launching up towards the station, aborting a flight or landing back to Earth. These are sometimes referred to as intravehicular spacesuits — and they’re tailor-designed for the spacecraft the astronauts are riding. These indoor spacesuits provide an extra layer of protection. They’re an additional buffer from the potentially hazardous launch or reentry environments around them.
Why would Starliner undock without Wilmore and Williams?
Starliner suffered helium leaks and thruster anomalies not long after launching on June 5. Since the technical dilemmas began, the aerospace giant and the space agency continue to pore over data from a slew of tests to determine if Starliner will return to Earth with its test pilots onboard.
Although designed originally as an eight-day mission, their trip has now entered its 12th week.
UFO mystery may be result of advanced 'stealth civilization' living on Earth among us, say Harvard scientists - as they reveal where their secret bases could be located
UFO mystery may be result of advanced 'stealth civilization' living on Earth among us, say Harvard scientists - as they reveal where their secret bases could be located
Skeptics have long questioned why UFOs, if they are alien craft, would visit Earth so often.
But two Harvard scientists suspect the beings may have been here all along.
In a new research paper, they estimate there is a one in 10 chance the true solution to the UFO mystery could be 'cryptoterrestrial' — meaning they belong to an advanced species hiding on Earth.
'While this notion may sound unlikely on first hearing, many observers are persuaded that it is at least conceivable,' the team wrote in their new study, 'not least because whole swathes of our planet remain virtually unexplored and uncharted.'
With 80 percent of our oceans unmapped, and still revealing ancient mysteries like Yonaguni Jima, the 'Japanese Atlantis,' not to mention unexplored caves and the dark side of the moon, they argue there's plenty of space for a 'stealth' civilization.
The researchers described, as one example of a potentially hiding advanced species, a massive submerged stone structure discovered by a diver off the coast of Yonaguni Jima in Japan that some marine geologists argue are might be the remnants of a 'Japanese Atlantis'
'If another intelligent species had inhabited Earth (or Mars) long before Homo sapiens, it is possible that we could have no idea,' the trio notes in their article, which is set to appear in the journal Philosophy and Cosmology this June.
The work is a collaboration between scientists who have independently tried to make sure that all viable theories are considered for the UFO mystery, which has seen a major effort effort for government declassification in recent months.
Congress, the Pentagon and others in government now more commonly refer to UFOs as UAP for 'unidentified aerial (or anomalous) phenomena.'
Multiple regions on Earth and near Earth were cited in the new study as worthwhile candidates for investigating the chances of a 'cryptoterrestrial' species' secret base.
One region, dubbed the 'Alaskan Triangle,' is a remote and sparsely populated area between the cities of Anchorage, Juneau and Utqiagvik that the authors described as 'a prominent 'hotspot' for UAP [UFOs], as well as other oddities.'
The triangle, they noted, has been ground zero for over 20,000 unexplained disappearances since the 1970s, above and beyond its penchant for UFO sightings.
Luis Guerra, a resident in the central Mexico city of Atlixco, photographed this image of an apparent UFO above the Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico. Sightings near this and other volcanos have fueled speculation that the UFOs might come from a hidden underground base
More concretely, the researchers pointed to a series of intriguing archeological finds that suggest the existence of ancient civilizations that would not only predate any known advances species, but may still exist in hiding.
They described a massive submerged stone structure discovered by a diver off the coast of Yonaguni Jima in Japan that some marine geologists argue are might be the remnants of a 5000-year-old pyramid from a Japanese Atlantis.
Habitable regions underground also remain to be explored, some with the right conditions to support life.
'The internal structure of Earth is still mostly a mystery,' the team wrote.
'For instance, it was recently found that the mantle transition zone (255 to 410 miles underground) acts as a large reservoir of water.'
They speculated that it is entirely possible that hundreds of miles below humanity 'another hominid species, or even a branch of Homo sapiens, could have adapted to live underground,' although it would likely scarcely resemble us.
Stunning photos taken by Luis Guerra, a resident in the central Mexico city of Atlixco, last year, have fueled similar speculation of a hidden UFO base underneath the country's Popocatépetl volcano, which has become a UFO hot spot.
Other major candidates, the researchers put forward, include long-term bases deep underwater in ocean trenches or on the dark side of the moon, whether built by an ancient advanced terrestrial race or our long-term extraterrestrial co-inhabitants.
Other major candidates, the researchers put forward, include long-term bases deep underwater in ocean trenches or on the dark side of the moon, whether built by an ancient advanced terrestrial race or our long-term extraterrestrial co-inhabitants
While researchers working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission have debunked the theory that this lunar image captured a 3.5-mile (5.6km) 'alien base' spire, much of the dark side of the moon remains unexplored and may yet hold such a discovery
While researchers working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission have debunked the theory that one captivating lunar image depicts a 3.5-mile 'alien tower,' much of the dark side of the moon remains unexplored and may yet hold such a discovery.
'Of course,' the researchers noted, 'the limits of our knowledge provides no particular argument for the CTH [the 'cryptoterrestrial hypothesis'].'
'Crucially,' they added, 'it means we must have [...] humility and realize neither can we dismiss it just because it contradicts the standard narrative of history.'
The new research follows prior exploratory work by the authors working separately.
The study's co-author Dr Michael Masters, a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technological University, had previously written a book arguing that the beings piloting UFOs might be 'extratempestrials' or time travelers.
'The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past,' Dr Masters told KBZK News 7 in Bozeman.
Using his evolutionary biology experience as an anthropologist, Dr Masters made the case that the so-called 'grey' aliens from UFO abduction lore resemble what time-travelling future humans might evolve to look like in a more high tech society.
His coauthor, psychologist Tim Lomas with Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, had just recently laid out the full case for the more traditional 'extraterrestrial hypothesis,' in another article for the same journal, Philosophy and Cosmology, earlier this year.
Brendan Case, the associate director for research at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, joined them in their call for scientists to pursue the 'cryptoterrestrial' UFO hypothesis.
'The hope is that we can begin a new dialogue and get past some of this stigma,' Dr Masters said. 'And not have to defend this as science, because it is very scientific.'
The wide open spaces of Montana have been named the top spot where you are most likely to have a close encounter, as half of locals claim to have seen a UFO.
Half (exactly 50 percent) of the residents of this western state — often called 'Big Sky Country' — also reported that they 'believe in UFOs,' a new study claims.
The wide open spaces of Montana have been named the top state where you are most likely to have a close encounter, as half of locals claim to have seen a UFO. Half (50 percent) of the residents of the western state also reported that they 'believe in UFOs,' the new study found
Delaware took second place, with 80 percent of locals admitting to believing in UFOs, but zero reported they had actually seen strange craft or odd lights in the sky.
Other chart-toppers included the state of Massachusetts, as data collected from Google searches shows that the New England state is the most UFO-obsessed in America, with 13,750 monthly Google queries related to the topic (or 19.64 searches per 10,000 people). But New York and New Jersey were not far behind.
The Google search terms incorporated in this analysis included 'UFO sighting,' 'Are UFOs real' and 'UFO video,' among others.
New York's 37,260 monthly UFO-related search queries divided into 19.04 per 10,000 residents, showing that this seemingly high number needed to be adjusted for population density.
New Jersey's 16,820 UFO searches came to 18.1 per 10,000 people, ranking it third.
Despite stereotypes of repeated 'alien abduction' cases in rural America, South Dakota, Arkansas and Louisiana were all ranked at the bottom for search term interest in the phenomena.
South Dakota came in dead last in UFO interest, with only 850 monthly searches, or 9.25 per 10,000 residents.
The findings are sure to be a surprise to residents of Nevada, home to the legendary classified US Air Force base and UFO mainstay Area 51: their state did not even crack the Top 10 in this new study. Above, an alien or an extraterrestrial man
(artist's depiction)
Arkansas placed second with 2,870 UFO Google searches, or 9.36 per 10,000 people in state; followed by Louisiana with 4,300 searches or 9.4 per 10,000 residents.
Collectively, one full quarter of all Americans (25 percent) admitted to believing in UFOs, according to survey data.
The number was intriguingly higher than those who were actually willing to admit that they have seen one: only 7 percent self-reported that they had personally witnessed a UFO in the study's surveys.
The total UFO sightings, according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), as used in the new study, was 132,850 last year.
The new study incorporated a range of metrics to determine which state gave locals and visitors the highest chance of seeing a UFO: including UFO sightings via NUFORC, data on light pollution levels, and survey data from 2,057 people on topics related to UFO encounters across each US state.
The project was sponsored by JackpotCity Casino for reasons that have not yet been fully disclosed.
But the adjustments based on light pollution, statewide population density, and survey data significantly altered the findings when compared to NUFORC's raw UFO sighting figures.
California, for example, would have otherwise topped the list with a staggering 16,354 UFO sightings in total reported to NUFORC.
But the state's high light pollution (57.37) and meager 7 percent of citizens who reported having seen a UFO themselves in the study's survey data weighed down the Golden State's ultimate ranking.
Nevertheless, California's skies remain a magnet for mysterious objects and nearly a quarter, about 24 percent, of its people want to 'believe in UFOs.'
Revealed: These 10 states are most likely to spot aliens in 2024
Rank
State
Number of UFO sightings
Level of Light pollution
Americans admitting 'I believe in UFOs'
Americans admitting 'I have seen a UFO'
1
Montana
1,011
27.08
50%
50%
2
Delaware
420
31.25
80%
0%
3
California
16,354
57.37
24%
7%
4
Mississippi
796
21.88
38%
10%
5
New Hampshire
1,203
20.83
30%
9%
6
Florida
8,366
46.71
29%
8.00%
7
Missouri
2,825
41.33
33%
17%
8
Indiana
2,744
44.13
41%
13%
9
Wyoming
418
20.83
40%
0%
10
Washington
7,268
43.57
31%
3%
Source:UFO sightings reported to NUFORC, light pollution data at numbeo.com, and a March 2024 JPC survey
AI Corrects Six Billy Meier UFO Earliest Photos 1970s, Do You Believe Him? UAP Sighting News. Video!
AI Corrects Six Billy Meier UFO Earliest Photos 1970s, Do You Believe Him? UAP Sighting News. Video!
Now I have lived over 5 decades and I can honestly say that I see the publics opinions of UFO sway with that of TV how hosts opinion rather than decide for themselves. I decided to take some of the earliest photos of Billy Meier of Switzerland and see for myself using AI to detect anomalies and focus everything. All went well until the last of the photos, when I ai detected something strange, a white line above a UFO, not that of an antenna, because the UFO was tilted and any center antenna would also be tilted, this was as if something were holding onto the UFO from above. You watch and decide for yourself. But in my opinion, most the earlier photos are real, but due to social pressure, Billy may have resorted to faking later sightings for personal gain.
Atlas is Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot, and is described by the firm as 'the world's most dynamic robot.'
The robot is fully electric and features an advanced control system and state-of-the-art hardware.
This gives it the power and balance to demonstrate advanced athletics and agility.
'We use Atlas to explore the potential of the humanoid form factor, leveraging the robot’s whole body to move with grace, speed, and dexterity,' Boston Dynamics explains on its website.
'Atlas demonstrates our efforts to develop the next generation of robots with the mobility, perception, and intelligence needed to be commonplace in our lives.'
In the new video, Atlas plants its feet wide apart, before squatting down and placing its hands on the floor. It jumps its feet back, before performing eight impressive push-ups
The movements are impressively human-like, and have been praised by hundreds of fans in the comments
Atlas the most human-like robot in Boston Dynamic's line-up.
It was first unveiled to the public on 11 July 11 2013.
According to the company, Atlas is a 'high mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough terrain'.
Atlas measures 1.5m (4.9ft) tall and weighs 75kg (11.8st).
The humanoid walks on two legs, leaving its arms free to lift, carry, and manipulate objects in its environment.
Atlas is able to hold its balance when it is jostled or pushed by an external force. Should it fall over, the humanoid robot is capable of getting up again on its own
Stereo vision, range sensing and other sensors allow Atlas to walk across rough terrain and keep its balance.
'In extremely challenging terrain, Atlas is strong and coordinated enough to climb using hands and feet, to pick its way through congested spaces,' Boston Dynamics claims.
Atlas is able to hold its balance when it is jostled or pushed.
If the humanoid robot should fall over, it can get up on its own.
Atlas is designed to help emergency services in search and rescue operations.
The robot will be used to shut-off valves, opening doors and operate powered equipment in environments where human rescuers could not survive.
The US Department of Defence said it has no interest in using Atlas in warfare.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
NASA Has More Disappointing News for Its Stranded Astronauts
NASA Has More Disappointing News for Its Stranded Astronauts
Story by Jeffrey Kluger
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams wave as they prepare to depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center on June 5, 2024.
The two NASA astronauts stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, won’t be coming home anytime soon. During a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, Aug. 24, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency was giving up on the idea of bringing Wilmore and Williams home aboard their balky Boeing Starliner spacecraft—which has been experiencing thruster problems since its launch on June 5. Instead, the Starliner will be flown home uncrewed, and Wilmore and Williams will hitch a ride back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will launch to the ISS in September for a five-month station stay, returning in February. This extends what was supposed to be an eight-day ISS rotation for Wilmore and Williams to a whopping eight months.
“NASA has worked very hard with Boeing to reach this decision,” Nelson said. “The decision is a result of a commitment to safety.”
The ruling rested on what NASA calls a flight readiness review (FRR). As agency brass explained at an Aug. 14 news conference, FRR’s are typically held before launch, when officials gather for a final go or no-go on the planned mission.
“We bring in representatives from all of the related centers, the technical authorities, the NASA engineering, and safety center flight operations,” explained Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut and an associate administrator for NASA’s space operations mission directorate. “We listen to the status of the mission, go through some special topics, and then we poll everybody at the end on whether or not they think we're ready to undertake the mission.”
On one occasion, that panel’s decision led to disaster. The FRR for the final mission of the space shuttle Challenger was held on Jan. 15, 1986, and the ship was cleared to launch. Thirteen days later, on Jan. 28, that liftoff took place, ending in a fuel tank explosion and the death of all seven crew members just 73 seconds after the ship left the pad. That tragedy, followed by the breakup of the shuttle Columbia and a similar loss of all hands on Feb. 1, 2003, left NASA much more risk-averse than it had been before.
The Starliner spacecraft on NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test is pictured docked to the Harmony module’s forward port as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. ( )
This view from a window on the space station cupola overlooks a portion of the International Space and shows the partially obscured Starliner spacecraft from Boeing docked to the Harmony module’s forward port. ( )
A view of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station as the vehicle comes in for docking on June 6, 2024. ( )
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test will take astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station. ( )
Related video:
NASA Starliner to return without astronauts (FOX News)
“We did not have the governance structure that we have today with technical authorities,” said Russ DeLoach, chief of NASA safety and mission assurance, during the earlier press conference. “So at that time, the program managers pretty much had near-unilateral decision making. And so if there were views that maybe a path we were taking was not correct, there was really no strong additional authority to step in and say, ‘Wait a minute.’”
That additional authority exists today, in the form of FRRs that take place mid-mission—though they often go by a different name: a mission risk acceptance forum. Whatever they’re called, the official panels are intended to bring the scrutiny of an FRR to bear at any point between the time a crew leaves the ground and the time they return to Earth. For the past several weeks, NASA has been under the gun to make such a decision about the hobbled Starliner—and to do it fast. The spacecraft’s batteries have a limited lifespan, and if the ship was not deemed fit to carry the crew home, it would have to fly back empty soon.
The FRR that resulted in the decision not to bring Wilmore and Williams home on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft was held on Aug. 23, and Nelson was very much in the loop. If there are dissenting opinions during the review, the decision goes first to Jim Free, NASA associate administrator. After him, Nelson could step in, and clearly he did.
Ahead of the decision being finalized, it was still possible that NASA could surprise the public—not to mention Wilmore and Williams—and announce that the stranded astronauts would be flying their dodgy Starliner home. But that was never likely. NASA’s institutional sorrow runs deep—back far before the Challenger and Columbia disasters, to the Jan. 27, 1967, launch pad fire that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, when they were conducting a dress rehearsal for the launch of their Apollo 1 spacecraft. Shortly after that tragedy, legendary flight director Gene Kranz gathered the grieving NASA staffers together for a grim but bracing post-mortem.
“From this day forward, flight control will be known by two words: Tough and competent,” Kranz said, chalking the words on a blackboard. “Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘tough and competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room, these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”
That price still stands. NASA could have decided to spare Boeing the embarrassment of flying their Starliner home empty, and Wilmore and Williams the ordeal of spending six more months in space, but that’s not the route the agency chose. Astronaut lives are on the line. A chastened NASA chose not to risk them again.
By eye, it’s impossible to pick out the exact boundaries of the superclusters, which are among the largest structures in the universe. But that’s because they are not defined by their edges, but by the common motion of their components.
The Milky Way galaxy was long thought to be a member of the Virgo supercluster, a complex, twisting branch containing over 100 individual galaxy groups and clusters stretching for more than a hundred million light-years. Astronomers arrived at that definition through some of the earliest galaxy surveys that attempted to map the nearby portions of the universe.
Those early surveys were not entirely sophisticated. Astronomers could spot the galaxies scattered around, and also dense clumps of galaxies known as clusters. Ever since the 1950’s astronomers debated if there were higher-order structures in the pattern of galaxies, wondering if “super-galaxies” (or superclusters) existed.
Once astronomers began to map deep into the universe, however, the cosmic web could not be ignored. While some galaxies found their homes in the clusters, most inhabited long, thin filaments and broad walls. This cosmic web was defined by the voids, the vast regions of almost-nothing that dominate the volume of the universe.
The largest portions of the cosmic web are the superclusters. But unlike the clusters, they are not gravitationally bound. That means that the member galaxies in a supercluster have not yet finished their building project. The superclusters are still in the process of forming. This fact makes it difficult to pick out exactly what a supercluster is.
Recently astronomers have turned to dynamical definitions of a supercluster. This means that they don’t just consider the position in space of a particular galaxy, but also its movement. Since superclusters are in the process of continual construction, this method looks at what galaxies are trying to build.
This method allows astronomers to distinguish one supercluster from another, and that’s how we’ve recognized that the Virgo supercluster is just one individual branch of a much larger structure known as Laniakea, which contains an astounding 100,000 galaxies. And that is our home in the universe.
Chinese Researchers Devise New Strategy for Producing Water on the Moon
In the coming years, China and Roscosmos plan to create the International Lunar Research PStation (ILRSP), a permanent base in the Moon’s southern polar region. Construction of the base will begin with the delivery of the first surface elements by 2030 and is expected to last until about 2040. This base will rival NASA’s Artemis Program, which will include the creation of theLunar Gatewayin orbit around the Moon and the various surface elements that make up theArtemis Base Camp. In addition to the cost of building these facilities, there are many considerable challenges that need to be addressed first.
Crews operating on the lunar surface for extended periods will require regular shipments of supplies. Unlike the International Space Station, which can be resupplied in a matter of hours, sending resupply spacecraft to the Moon will take about three days. As a result, NASA, China, and other space agencies are developing methods to harvest resources directly from the lunar environment – a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In a recent paper, a research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced a new method for producing massive amounts of water through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.
Ever since the Apollo missions brought samples of lunar rocks and soil back to Earth for analysis, scientists have known that there is abundant water on the Moon. These findings were confirmed by several subsequent robotic sample-return missions, including China’s Chang’e-5 mission. However, much of this water consists of hydroxyl (OH) created through the interaction of solar wind (ionized hydrogen) and elemental oxygen in the regolith. There is also plenty of water in the form of ice that can be found in permanent shadowed regions (PSRs), such as the craters that cover the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Unfortunately, lunar regolith contains very little hydroxyl that can be converted into water, ranging from 0.0001% to 0.02%. Moreover, the icy patches found in cratered regions are mixed with regolith, forming layers that extend beneath the surface. As such, extraction is a challenge regardless of where the water is coming from. After they examined the samples returned by the Chang’e-5 mission, the team led by Wang determined that the highest concentrations of water were contained in ilmenite (FeTiO3), a titanium-iron oxide mineral found in lunar regolith.
According to the research team, this is due to “its unique lattice structure with sub-nanometer tunnels.” The team then conducted a series of in-situ heating experiments that revealed how hydrogen in lunar minerals could be used to produce water on the Moon. According to their study, the process consists of heating lunar regolith to temperatures exceeding 1,200 K (~930° C; 1700° F) with concave mirrors. This led to the formation of iron crystals and water bubbles in the material, the latter being released as water vapor. The chemical process is expressed mathematically as:
FeO/Fe2O3 + H –> Fe + H2O.
The resulting water vapor is then reclaimed at a rate of 51-76 mg of water for every gram of lunar soil. That works out to 50 liters (13.2 gallons) of water for every ton of processed regolith, enough to sustain 50 people daily. As the team noted in their paper, “[t]his amount is ~10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon.” In addition to drinking water, this process could provide the necessary irrigation water for growing crops, another important task for future lunar settlements to lessen their dependence on Earth.
A map showing the permanently shadowed regions (blue) that cover about 3 percent of the Moon’s south pole. Credit: NASA Goddard/LRO
This same process could be used to chemically separate hydrogen and oxygen gas from regolith, which could then be fashioned into propellant – liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) – or used as fuel and for maintaining supplies of breathable oxygen. “Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in [lunar regolith] is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which is helpful for establishing scientific research stations on the Moon,” they conclude.
Another benefit is that the process is driven almost entirely by focused sunlight, while solar arrays can provide the additional power that drives the retention process. The one limiting factor is that this process will only be possible during a lunar day in the southern polar region (where China, NASA, and the ESA plan to build their bases). This means that the facility could run for two weeks straight, followed by a two-week lull.
However, this can be mitigated by stationing processing facilities away from the polar regions or possibly creating a network of solar mirrors or satellites that can direct light toward the southern polar region. In any case, this method presents a potential means of harvesting water on the Moon that is cost-effective compared to heating regolith in industrial furnaces and could be paired with ice extraction and processing to ensure future settlements have plenty of water.
Unveiling UFO Secrets: Lue Elizondo’s Revelations in Ross Coulthart Interview
Unveiling UFO Secrets: Lue Elizondo’s Revelations in Ross Coulthart Interview
In recent years, the topic of UFOs, now referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), has shifted from the fringes of science fiction to the forefront of public discourse. One key figure at the center of this conversation is Luis “Lue” Elizondo, a former Pentagon insider who led investigations into UAPs. His revelations have stirred significant interest and concern, particularly about what the U.S. government might know—and what it may be hiding—about these mysterious objects.
In an interview with Ross Coulthart, Elizondo delved into his experiences, shedding light on his journey from a senior intelligence officer to one of the most important voices in the modern UFO movement. His story is not just about unidentified flying objects; it’s about government secrecy, personal sacrifice, and the potential implications for humanity.
The Road to UAP Investigations
Elizondo’s journey into the world of UAPs began unexpectedly. In 2009, while working as an intelligence operations specialist for the Department of Defense, he was introduced to the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AWSAP), which investigated advanced weaponry and technologies. It was here that Elizondo first encountered the topic of UAPs. A senior colleague bluntly asked him about his thoughts on UFOs, a subject that had never piqued his interest before. However, this conversation marked the beginning of his deep dive into the mysterious and often unsettling world of UAP investigations.
Soon, Elizondo joined the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), where he encountered cases that challenged his understanding of reality. One such instance involved reports from the Brazilian Air Force, where townspeople in Calores claimed they were being harmed by UAPs. These accounts, once dismissed as folklore, were substantiated by military investigations, convincing Elizondo that there was more to the UAP phenomenon than mere legend.
UAPs: More Than Just Myths
Elizondo’s investigations led him to some of the most famous UFO cases in history, including the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico. According to Elizondo, what happened in Roswell was not just a crash of an unknown craft but a significant event where non-human technology was recovered. While such claims may sound outlandish, Elizondo insists that they are rooted in reality.
Moreover, his research suggested that UAPs might not be as benign as some hope. Military personnel who encountered these phenomena reported being injured or traumatized, raising concerns about the true nature and intent of these unidentified objects. The Veterans Administration has even granted disability benefits to service members who suffered injuries during UAP encounters, further validating the seriousness of these incidents.
The Government’s Role and the Secrecy Surrounding UAPs
One of the most controversial aspects of Elizondo’s work is his claim that the U.S. government has been actively involved in recovering and studying UAPs for decades. He alleges that military programs have not only retrieved alien technology but have also encountered non-human entities. However, these claims have been met with stiff resistance from within the government.
Elizondo recounts facing significant obstacles during his time at the Pentagon. He believes that powerful forces within the government, possibly driven by religious beliefs or geopolitical concerns, have deliberately stymied efforts to investigate UAPs. This resistance culminated in threats against him and others involved in UAP research, leading Elizondo to make the difficult decision to resign and go public with his findings.
Public Disclosure and Its Challenges
In 2017, Elizondo took the bold step of resigning from his Pentagon position and sharing his knowledge with the world. His revelations, coupled with the release of now-famous UAP videos from the USS Nimitz and USS Roosevelt, sparked a media frenzy and reignited public interest in UFOs. These videos, which showed objects performing maneuvers beyond the capabilities of known technology, have become central to the ongoing UAP debate.
Despite the increased attention, Elizondo and others who have come forward with similar claims have faced intense scrutiny and efforts to discredit them. The Pentagon has publicly denied Elizondo’s role in AATIP and questioned the authenticity of his claims. Yet, he remains undeterred, believing that the truth will eventually prevail.
The Future of UAP Research
Elizondo’s efforts have not been in vain. His work has contributed to a shift in how UAPs are perceived, both within the government and by the public. In 2022, legislation was passed to create a UAP office within the Department of Defense, now known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). This office is tasked with investigating UAP encounters and reporting its findings to Congress, marking a significant step towards transparency.
While Elizondo acknowledges that full disclosure is a gradual process, he remains hopeful. He believes that the next generation will play a crucial role in uncovering the truth about UAPs and their implications for humanity. For now, he encourages citizens to stay engaged, ask questions, and hold their leaders accountable.
Lue Elizondo’s journey from a Pentagon insider to a public advocate for UAP disclosure is a testament to his dedication to uncovering the truth. His experiences highlight the complexities of the UAP phenomenon and the challenges of investigating it within a framework of government secrecy and skepticism. As the conversation around UAPs continues to evolve, Elizondo’s voice remains a critical one, urging both caution and curiosity as humanity grapples with the possibility that we are not alone in the universe.
Panicked locals in two cities north of Los Angeles,California, piled onto Amazon's Ring neighbors app to report UFOs that 'zig zagged' and hovered over the weekend.
Their reports of a 'bright light' that looked like 'a shooting star' but acted more like a 'hovercraft' sparked shockwaves across social media — alongside the emergence of eerie cell phone videos that purported to capture some of these six alleged craft.
But a wide community of experts, including UFO researchers with Harvard's Galileo Project, told DailyMail.com that the videos were most likely 'an intentional hoax.'
The videos appeared to show drone swarms used in an LED light show thousands of miles away from California, based on landmarks and other visual cues, they said.
And some of these UFO videos were paired with old and unrelated audio tracks passed off as the videos' own.
Above, a clip from one of two videos purporting to be from the August 16, 2024 UFO sightings reported in California's Palmdale-Lancaster area, in the high desert north of LA
'The patterns of longitudinal lights are well-organized. This could be drone swarms.'
However, he admitted: 'The quality of the video doesn’t give us much to work with.'
Further assessments, by Tedesco and others, only added to those suspicions, suggesting the videos weren't related to the initial UFO reports north of LA at all.
The social media frenzy first started online the morning of Saturday, August 17, apparently spurred by reports posted to Amazon's Ring neighbors app Friday night.
'I was intrigued by the first neighbor who posted that he saw a UFO from his yard,' wrote one resident of the Palmdale-Lancaster area, in the high desert north of LA.
'So, my mom and I went out to ours to see if we'd see anything,' the user continued.
'They were too far [for] me to confidently say they were flying saucers, but [...] we counted six after being out there for 10 minutes.'
All told, at least five witnesses spotted one or all of the reportedly half dozen UFOs.
Records from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) related to mysterious and potentially hostile drone incursions over a top secret Pentagon airfield nearby, as well as public NASA data, may offer the best hope of explaining these Ring reports.
But the videos that were posted claiming to capture the same airborne enigmas are another story, one DailyMail.com's experts could answer more concretely.
In this video, a woman can be heard saying 'Oh, my God. It's landing!' as she appears to film the red-and-blue light UFO gliding slowly toward a marina dock below. Experts told DailyMail.com that the footage was likely taken from Hawaii - not California
Above, one of three user-generated posts to the Amazon Ring neighbors app about the UFOs
Soon piggy-backing off these text-only Amazon Ring app accounts, short UFO videos emerged of a blinking string of red and blue lights hovering allegedly over these same desert neighborhoods.
One 23-second video opens on a quiet, suburban street at night and then zooms in on the 'UFO' pulsing above the neighborhood.
A male voice exclaims in palpable fear off-camera: 'Oh, what is that? Mom! Mom, you see this?' A woman's voice can next be heard replying: 'Holy s***! What the hell is that?' The video then ends abruptly.
In a second clip, a woman can be heard saying 'Oh, my God. It's landing!' as she appears to film similar red-and-blue lights off of a UFO as the craft glides slowly toward a marina dock.
'Nearly as I can tell, the Palmdale footage is an intentional hoax using footage from a drone show in Hawaii,' Roe advised, 'and an audio track used in several other vids.'
A year earlier, in fact, the same audio between a concerned boy and his mother was posted to Reddit paired with footage of a large, wet sea slug writhing in a still pool.
One 23-second video allegedly from Palmdale last weekend (screencaptures above) uses audio from unrelated video that is, at least, over a year old
Above, one of three user-generated posts to the Amazon Ring neighbors app about the UFOs
Above, one of three user-generated posts to the Amazon Ring neighbors app about the UFOs
But a deeper analysis by Tedesco, the electrical engineer, and his avionics specialist brother who also works with Harvard's Galileo Project confirmed Roe's assessment.
'I took one of the video frames from the [23-second] video as a still image,' as Tedesco explained to DailyMail.com.
'There seem to be multiples of the object in a rectangular pattern, possibly nine drones,' Tedesco added. 'However, due to the quality of the video, I'm not certain.'
Tedesco's brother, aerospace avionics specialist Gerald Tedesco, who collaborates with him on their UFO field laboratory, agreed the drone explanation was most likely.
The behavior of these UFO lights also matched patterns pre-programmed into commercial drone swarms — according to Preston Ward, who serves as chief pilot and general counsel for the Texas-based drone light show company Sky Elements.
'To me it looks like the 6 drone test pattern,' Ward told DailyMail.com, 'distributed when someone first purchases drone show software.'
'The landing sequence is, for sure, drones using standard parameters,' the seasoned drone pilot opined.
Ward's colleague, Kyle Pivnick, added that one of the videos' visible landmarks did not match the alleged location of the sighting: 'Palmdale and Lancaster both are very land-locked and the video looks like it is at a marina.'
The footage appeared to have originated near the 2024 Pokémon World Championships in Honolulu, Hawaii — which capped off three nights of the international event with drone light shows according to local ABC affiliate KITV.
Footage uploaded to social media by the Hilton Hawaiian appears to show a similar marina adjacent to the coastal launch point for these Pokémon Worlds drone light shows — drones creating matching those red and blue LED light formations.
Above, an image of the Pokemon Worlds drone show posted by the Hilton Hawaiian last week
Above, another image of the 2024 Pokémon World Championships drone light show in Honolulu, Hawaii - captured by a local surf shop
Above, another image of the 2024 Pokémon World Championships drone light show in Honolulu, Hawaii - this one depicting Pikachu, a popular 'electric' type pokémon - captured on video by a local surf shop
Compounding the likelihood that these videos were simple online disinformation, the UFOs depicted do not resemble the written accounts of the UFOs posted by residents of the Palmdale-Lancaster area to the Ring neighbors app.
Another of these witnesses, who 'saw a bright light up in the sky' while walking their dog, described their sighting as one solid object.
'At first I was like omg what a cool plane that [US defense contractor] Northrop assembled, but to my dismay it was a hovercraft,' the Ring user wrote. 'I saw [a] UFO.'
Another self-reported witness said they saw a UFO that looked at first like 'a shooting star falling east,' while out in their backyard with their daughter. But the single bright object, not a collection of lights, 'stopped very abruptly and zig zagged going north.'
'Checking to see if anyone else saw it,' they continued, 'or are we both going crazy.'
The Tedesco brothers told DailyMail.com that the UFO field research that they conduct with their Nightcrawler team employs a suite of sensors that resolve whether or not a UFO sighting is actually a drone.
Their Galileo-partnered mobile lab has 'a sensitive acoustic microphone with a parabolic dish' to pull noise data off odd distant lights or apparent objects in the sky.
'If the objects were prosaic, we would get a specific sound and frequency profile for quadcopter propellers,' Gerald, the avionics expert told DailyMail.com, referencing a common, commercial drone model.
'The same could be said about the rotor blades of a helicopter, prop-driven planes or turbofan jet engines.'
'Additionally, doing a radar sweep of the sky would allow us to get a cross-sectional profile of the craft, gather distance, elevation, speed and possibly relative size and shape of the object,' Gerald added.
Despite the Tedesco brothers' high doubts about the videos that have claimed to be from the Palmdale-Lancaster sightings last weekend, the pair have not written off this 'UFO flap' entirely.
'I'm not saying it can't be something else, other than man-made drones,' Gerald Tedesco added. 'But with the limitations in parametric data to support other possibilities [...] the likelihood of drones becomes the simplest explanation.'
Above, NASA's experimentaal x-59 supersonic jet tested out of Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks, a classified facility run by the Pentagon contractor near Palmdale, California
Above, a recent notice from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banning drones in the Palmdale area, near its airport, due to incursion on top secret military airspace
The suspect videos aside, the unexplained citizen UFO reports out of the high desert north of LA might have to do with a recent spate of rumored drone incursions on the US Air Force's top secret aerospace testing facility Plant 42 in the area.
The Palmdale Regional Airport shares its runways with Plant 42, which is home to Lockheed Martin Skunkworks' advanced projects division.
The FAA has recently issued warnings and a ban on drone flights nearby, due to a series of incursions on this airspace that may have been flights by ordinary US citizens or espionage.
'We have observed multiple UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities over Plant 42 during the last few months,' Edwards Air Force Base spokesperson Mary Kozaitis told defense news site The War Zone on Monday.
'The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size and configuration,' according to Kozaitis. 'FAA was made aware of the incursions and Edwards continues to monitor the air space to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets.'
'As a reminder to drone enthusiasts,' the Air Force official added, ;overflight of Plant 42 is strictly prohibited and may result in criminal prosecution, fines, and loss of operator privileges.'
Reporters for The War Zone also noted that no local police reports appear to have been filed to confirm the UFO sightings reported on the Ring neighbors app.
Above, A skywatchers page run by the US space agency, and designed to help civilians spot the International Space Station (ISS) as it passes overhead, showed the station would be above Palmdale, California during the time of these UFO sightings
Above, a photograph of NASA's International Space Station (ISS) in orbit
But some of the sightings purporting to catch a glimpse of UFOs during last weekend's 'flap' are likely to have had an even more conventional explanation.
Glimmers of sunlight reflecting off NASA's International Space Station (ISS) were expected to be visible on the ground for minutes at a time in the early morning all across the past weekend and beyond.
A skywatchers page run by the US space agency, and designed to help civilians spot the ISS as it passes overhead, reported that sightings would feasible above Palmdale from Wednesday August 14, 2024 through Thursday August 29, 2024.
This page, NASA's 'Spot the Station' website, noted that visibility of the ISS from the ground around Palmdale-Lancaster was set to be one of its longest early on Saturday morning — shining in the sky for six minutes beginning at 5:35am local time.
A top UFOdebunker has revealed the bizarre case that still puzzles him to this day.
Scores of people, including military experts, have recorded eerie videos appearing to show UAPs - unidentified aerial phenomena - over the years and often seek answers by posting them online.
Mick West, of Sacramento, California, uses a range of tools to help explain these mysteries - but has been stumped by one Navy video of a UFO that was leaked by The New York Times.
The footage released in 2017 had been taken by a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot two years earlier and appears to show a UFO following the jet from the USS Theodore Roosevelt after the object had been detected by radar off the East Coast.
In the infrared cockpit video, the incredible high-speed object seemingly breaks the laws of physics - with the two pilots heard debating whether or not it was a drone.
Mick West, of Sacramento, California, uses several tools to debunk random flying objects, including FlightAware, Flight Radar 24, and Invisor. But his biggest help is Sitrec that integrates flight data, video, and satellite imagery
One case that piqued West's interest is footage taken by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot Ryan Graves. West wants to review the original video files himself to better understand their data
Combing over the footage, West, who often relies on data surrounding the video to debunk recorded events, investigated the clip and tried to work out the rotation of the camera and the glare on the lens. Still, he was left with no answers.
West is now hoping to gain access to the original radar data instead of the analysis the government released so he can recreate the phenomenon - and rule out any reasonable explanations.
As part of his approach, West uses multiple tools including FlightAware, Flight Radar 24 and Invisor, an app that gives information on video, audio, and photos such as resolutions and the date they were taken.
But his biggest resource is Sitrec - a tool he designed himself that stands for 'situation recreation' - which integrates flight data, video and satellite imagery to paint a full picture, he told Popular Mechanics.
'You have to be very careful about what you're looking at...for me, that's the very first step in investigating a case,' West, who has investigated around 1,000 UFO cases, told the outlet.
Last month, the former video game programmer spotted a white, elongated object from a plane window while he was flying to Pasadena and took a quick video of it.
'It’s not an intuitive thing, and if you don’t delve too deeply into it, [you’ll be wrong],' said West, who programmed Tony Hawk's Pro Series games
'It can be very difficult to figure out…but you have no choice,' he added (Pictured: Sitrec)
He thought was just another airplane - a conclusion he would be right about - but he found himself needing to investigate the matter personally, he told Popular Mechanics.
When he got to his hotel room, he used Photoshop to closely look at the image and downloaded the GPS routes from his flight and a few others in the area from FlightAware.com.
In order for West to find an answer, he has to look at simultaneous events and see how they all fit into the bigger picture.
His plane wasn't the only in the air, so he had to look at other flight paths, as well as weather phenomenon and satellite data.
He also looks closely at the video angle, In his case, he knew the video he took was several thousand feet above ground and the object was below him.
He used Flight Aware 24 to configure where other nearby planes were so he could 'figure out what’s actually in the air at a particular time,' he told Popular Mechanics.
West then zoomed in on his own flight and found the exact location of his plane when he took the video.
'I knew I was sitting on the right side of the plane,' he told the outlet.
The map showed him a 'likely contender' - a plane that had taken off from LA's Van Nuys Airport.
'That matches what we see in the video,' he told Popular Mechanics.
He then used Sitrec - which an unidentified organization paid him to develop and make publicly accessible - to point the camera from his plane directly down onto where the other plane was traveling.
'I set the camera to point from my plane to the other two. One of them matched exactly. It was a small Cessna,' he told the outlet. 'This confirms that this was the plane I was actually looking at.'
One Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UPA) - the term that took over for UFO in 2023 - that piqued West's interest appeared in footage the Chilean Navy caught of a black blob leaving streaks behind it in 2014, he told Popular Mechanics.
The Chilean military investigated the footage for roughly two years and boldly determined it to be aliens.
He determined the black blob seen by Chilean authorities was just a plane that had just departed from Santiago Airport, and the reason it appeared black in the footage their Navy had captured was because it was taken on a thermal camera and the plane was hotter than the surrounding area
However, West, thanks to Sitrec, came to a more reasonable conclusion and documented his investigation on YouTube.
He determined the black blob to be a plane that had just departed from Santiago Airport. He claimed the reason it appeared black in the footage captured by the Navy was because it was taken on a thermal camera and the plane was hotter than the surrounding area.
'It’s not an intuitive thing, and if you don’t delve too deeply into it, [you’ll be wrong],' West, who programmed Tony Hawk's Pro Series games, told the outlet.
As for the streaks the Navy recorded, he explained that these were just the airplane's engines leaving contrails.
West claimed that the Chilean Navy also got the flight path wrong.
'They thought they were looking at an object that was moving left to right.
'In fact, what they were looking at was this plane, just departed from Santiago Airport that had looped around to gain height over the mountains,' he said.
Using his program, he was able to successfully simulate the plane's movements by accounting for the camera angle and matched it to flight records.
West thinks his video game programming days helped condition him for the life of debunking UFOs as he spent 'an inordinate amount of time on this trivial little thing, this one intractable little bug that is just causing this problem' during his former profession.
West thinks his video game programming days helped condition him for the life of debunking UFOs as he spent 'an inordinate amount of time on this trivial little thing, this one intractable little bug that is just causing this problem' during his former profession
UFO sightings over America's nuclear arsenal appeared to shift their interest from the making of the bombs to silos and bomber bases as the Cold War arms race grew (above)
'It can be very difficult to figure out… but you have no choice,' he told Popular Mechanics.
He finds debunking claims of alien sightings has the same rigor as programming a game and tied with his fascination with conspiracy theories, it ignited his passion for investigating UAP.
However, other experts remain convinced that UFO activity is real and seemingly has some connection to nuclear sites.
The former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, Lue Elizondo, agreed that there 'seems to be a lot of correlation' between UFO appearances and nuclear sites.
And independent researcher Robert Hastings, who has been working toward full government disclosure of UAP activity, said in 2010, '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.'
Now, new research — in the form of three studies helmed by a retired US Air Force staff sergeant, Larry Hancock, and a data analyst affiliate with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, Ian Porritt — shows that not only has there been unusual activity around nuclear weapons and facilities, it has shifted over the years.
At first seemingly interested in the production of nuclear weapons, UFO sightings later sprang up around silos and bomber bases.
'You would see this interest at silos when they were being installed before 'the activity would drop off,' Porritt previously told the DailyMail.com.
Eerily similar to these encounters are the instances of UAPs following fighter jets that were disclosed by the UAP Task Force, including a 'giant Tic Tac' UFO witnessed by Navy veteran fighter pilot Commander David Fravor in 2004.
Fravor's fellow co-pilot Chad Underwood witnessed the 'perfectly white' wingless oblong captured by his cockpit's in-flight video.
'There was no denying it': Retired fighter pilot and mother-of-three who saw Tic-Tac UFOs in 2004 says Navy crew kept quiet due to fears of being labeled 'kooky'
'There was no denying it': Retired fighter pilot and mother-of-three who saw Tic-Tac UFOs in 2004 says Navy crew kept quiet due to fears of being labeled 'kooky'
Alex Dietrich, 41, was on patrol near San Diego in 2004 when she saw a Tic Tac-shaped UFO appear flying at pace and erratically
When her Navy commander went into for a closer look, the object began mimicking its movements and then disappeared
The mother of three and former Lt. Cmdr. says she feels a 'duty and obligation' to speak out about what she saw
She says other pilots were fearful of speaking about UFOs as they would be dismissed for being 'kooky'
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is to release its report about unidentified aerial phenomena sightings by military personnel next month
A former fighter pilot who saw Tic Tac-shaped UFOs in 2004 says her Navy colleagues stayed quiet for fear of being labeled 'kooky'.
Mother-of-three Alex Dietrich, 41, says she feels a 'duty' to speak up about her close encounter with unidentified aerial phenomena because she sees it as a vital matter of national security.
Dietrich appeared on a recent 60 Minutes special on unexplained aerial phenomena and also speaks regularly to House and Senate enquiries into UFOs, and says military pilots fear the stigma of being associated with UFOs.
'I do feel a duty and obligation,' the former Lt. Cmdr. told the Washington Post when asked why she was open to talking about her experiences, unlike many of her former colleagues.
'I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,' she told the Post.
'Citizens have questions. It's not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will.'
The Director of National Intelligence and other agencies is due to release a highly-anticipated report on UFOs to Congress next month.
Former fighter pilot Alex Dietrich, 41, was on patrol near San Diego in 2004 when she saw a Tic Tac-shaped UFO appear flying at pace and erratically
When her Navy commander Dave Fravor went into for a closer look, the object began mimicking its movements and then disappeared
Dietrich was one of six Super Hornet pilots who saw the object, but says many fear being labeled 'kooky' for speaking out about what they saw
Last April, the infamous 'Tic Tac' incident was one of three videos released by the Pentagon which showed footage of 'unexplained aerial phenomena' taken by US Navy pilots.
At least six pilots, including Dietrich, encountered the mysterious object as it flew at speed over the Pacific near Mexico on November 14, 2004. The way it moved has led to speculation that it was a UFO and it has become a key piece of evidence for those who believe in extraterrestrials.
Recalling that day, Dietrich says she had recently got her stripes as a fighter pilot and was on a regular training flight in her Super Hornet with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group when she noticed an unfamiliar object flying at speed and erratically.
A video of the encounter, verified by the Pentagon as authentic, showed the astonished reactions of the pilots as they watch the objects fly at great speed and with sudden changes in direction.
Her commanding officer Dave Fravor told Dietrich to stay back while he went closer to investigate. The object began to mimic his movements, and then flew off and disappeared.
These unidentified vehicles were reported to have descended 80,000 feet in less than a second.
Seconds later, he said, it reappeared on the the USS Princeton's radar 60 miles away.
Dietrich tweeted recently: 'Some days your boss asks you to swab the deck. Some days he asks you to keep high cover while he spars with a UFO.'
While recounting the incident to 60 Minutes, Dietrich said other fighter pilots had struggled with how much to reveal to the public about what they had seen.
'Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'' Dietrich said during the interview.
'Because it sounds so crazy when I say it.'
Now a tutor George Washington University and the US Naval Academy, Dietrich told 60 Minutes: 'I felt the vulnerability of not having anything to defend ourselves. And then I felt confused when it disappeared.'
Dietrich told the Washington Post that people had got in contact over the years with her wanting to know more about what she had seen.
'I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.'
Dietrich says she had recently got her stripes as a fighter pilot and was on a regular training flight in her Super Hornet with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group when she noticed an unfamiliar object flying at speed and erratically on November 14 2004
'Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'' Dietrich said during the interview. 'Because it sounds so crazy when I say it'
'Some days your boss asks you to swab the deck. Some days he asks you to keep high cover while he spars with a UFO' she tweeted recently
Why are people suddenly interested, Dietrich wondered in a tweet after the 60 Minutes special aired
The mother of three now teaches at the US Naval Academy and George Washington University
In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Sean Cahil - a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms on the USS Princeton (pictured) - spoke about the sighting of a UFO that has become known as the 'Tic-Tac', because of its shape
Marco Rubio says many lawmakers in Congress 'giggle' when the topic of UFOs comes up, but that the national security threat needed to be taken seriously
Ahead of next month's blockbuster intelligence report to Congress on military sightings of UFOs, retired Navy officers have been warning of the dire threat the mystery objects could pose.
'The technology that we witnessed with the Tic Tac was something we would not have been able to defend our forces against at the time,' Sean Cahil - a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms - told CNN's Chris Cuomo of one recently-released video.
'What we saw in the Tic Tac is the five observables. [These] indicate a technology that outstrips our arsenal by at least 100 to 1000 years at the moment.'
Footage released recently week confirmed as real by the Pentagon appeared to show a UFO buzz a United States stealth ship near San Diego before diving under the water.
Commenting on the video, an ex-navy officer said that the technology on display is 100 to 1000 years ahead of that possessed by the United States.
'What we're seeing are a number of distinct and different things,' he said.
'Sometimes we're seeing a 50-foot object that can travel at hypersonic speeds and seemingly go into orbit or come down from altitudes of potentially above 100,000 feet.'
He added that the social stigma around reporting such events has for a long time kept witnesses of such phenomena quiet.
The Department of Defense's watchdog is also expected to examine how the Pentagon has handled UFO reports, with a source telling CNN earlier this month that there will be more enquiries announced in the near future.
The Pentagon released three short videos from infrared cameras In April 2020 that appeared to show flying objects moving quickly, after the veracity of the videos had been acknowledged in September 2019 ahead of their official release.
It came as Senator Marco Rubio warned that UFOs pose a serious threat to national security and can no longer be laughed off by lawmakers.
'Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kinda, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.'
Rubio said the possibility that drones or aircraft from a rival military power - or from another civilization - were entering US airspace without permission should be getting more attention and resources.
'I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,' Rubio told 60 Minutes.
'Tic Tac' UFO: US Navy pilot made visual contact with the object on November 14, 2004
At least six Super Hornet pilots made visual or instrument contact with the UFO on November 14, 2004.
The encounters, which are documented in numerous interviews with first-hand witnesses, remain a mystery, and the object's incredible speed and movements have led to speculation that it was extraterrestrial in origin.
The original FLIR video from the USS Nimitz encounters leaked online as early as 2007.
Witnesses say that clips of the video had been circulated widely on the Navy's intranet - used to communicate between ships in the carrier group - and an unknown sailor in the group likely first leaked it.
The USS Nimitz, a US Navy aircraft carrier, was at the center of a bizarre UFO sighting saga in 2004.
The clip became one of the most-touted pieces of evidence in the UFO community when the Pentagon confirmed its authenticity in 2017.
In January, Chad Underwood, the former Navy aviator who shot the famous leaked video clip, broke his silence in an interview with New York Magazine.
He said the oblong, wingless 'Tic Tac' shaped object was spotted off the coast of Mexico over the Pacific.
He also revealed that for about two weeks, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
The radar contacts were so inexplicable that the system was even shut down and restarted to to check for bugs - but operators continued to track the unknown aircraft.
Then on November 14, Commander David Fravor says he was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he made visual contact with the object, which seemed to dive below the water, resurface, and speed out of sight when he tried to approach it.
As Fravor landed on the deck of the Nimitz, Underwood was just gearing up to take off on his own training run.
Fravor told Underwood about the bizarre encounter, and urged Underwood to keep his eyes open.
He recalls how he suddenly saw a blip on his radar before tracking it on his FLIR camera.
'The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving,' Underwood told the magazine.
'And what I mean by 'erratic' is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I've ever encountered before flying against other air targets.'
Underwood said the object wasn't obeying the laws of physics and dropped from 50,000 feet altitude to 100 feet in seconds, which he says, 'isn't possible'. He added that he saw no signs of an engine heat plume or any sign of propulsion.
The pilot refuses to speculate as to whether the object is an alien spacecraft or not, however.
'That's not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.'
Two Navy officers told DailyMail.com that masses of high-quality radar, sonar and other data of the strange craft were sent to a Naval base on shore – as they accuse the government of a cover up after the Pentagon claimed the data is nowhere to be found.
A source who investigated the incident for the Department of Defense told DailyMail.com that they were briefed about sonar data from a nearby submarine that tracked the UFOs moving at more than 460 mph underwater during the shocking November 2004 encounter.
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the storied 'Nimitz Incident', their revelations add a new, intriguing dimension to the most prominent UFO case in recent history.
On November 14 2004, Top Gun fighter pilot David Fravor was flying a training exercise off the coast of San Diego when he was re-routed to investigate a strange object spotted on radar by warships protecting his aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz.
Witnesses to an infamous 2004 Tic-Tac UFO incident have given shocking new information about the infamous incident to DailyMail.com. They include Kevin Day who was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time
Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar
What he found was a roughly 40ft white object with no windows or wings, shaped like a Tic-Tac, flitting about above the sea that was roiling below it, disturbed by something large submerged beneath the surface.
Commander Fravor told Congress last year that as he circled the object, it turned to mirror his movements, then shot off past him at thousands of miles per hour, somehow stopping a second later at a secret pre-designated rendezvous point 60 miles away, that only he and a handful of Navy staff on his ship were given ahead of their training exercise.
Kevin Day was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time, in charge of monitoring the skies with radar to protect the Nimitz.
He told DailyMail.com that in the 10 days prior to the incident, he saw similar objects on his radar, behaving inexplicably.
F-18 pilot Lieutenant Chad Underwood
Day said groups of about 10 objects were repeatedly detected 80,000ft above them, where the Earth's atmosphere becomes space, dropping down to 20,000ft in less than a second, then following the ships by flying through the air at a relatively leisurely 115mph, before zooming off towards Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico where they seemed to disappear under the sea.
'They originated from sub-earth orbit. They came in groups of five to 10 at a time. If you added up all the groups, it was about 100 contacts,' Day said.
'The very first group had 10 objects. They sat right around 80,000ft or so, off the east coast of Catalina Island. They just sat there for a time.
'Then they would drop down as a group, instantly, down to between 20,000 and 28,000ft off the coast of Catalina Island, about 10 miles east of it.
'The really weird thing was, a single object would leave that group and travel very slowly right over the top of us, at between 20-28,000ft at about 100 knots, which was really slow.
'It would just track above us, and then the next one would depart, and the next one,' he added. 'All the groups did that.
'All 100 of them, to the best of my knowledge, disappeared in the same spot in the sky. And that spot was about 60 miles north of an island off the coast of Mexico called Guadalupe Island.
'Everyone was looking at me like, what is this? And I didn't have good answers.
'We agreed just to track and report. Of course we made our intentions known to the admiral on the Nimitz.'
The 'Tic-Tac' UFOs disappeared from sight about 60 miles north of Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico, according to witnesses who spoke with DailyMail.com
A screenshot from the video of a Navy pilot tracking the space craft over the Pacific. US military personnel in California believe they saw UFOs off the coast on November 14, 2004
The story has become one of the strongest examples of other-worldly craft routinely encountered by the military in US airspace.
But the story gets stranger from there.
DailyMail.com can reveal that unknown objects were also allegedly recorded zooming around underwater during the incident.
A senior sonar officer on board the USS Princeton at the time told comrades that while Day was seeing objects dropping from space and Fravor was dogfighting with the 'Tic-Tac', his team were picking up sonar returns for objects in the water.
This shocking revelation marks a new element to the infamous story, 20 years after it occurred.
Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton at the time of the sighting
Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar.
He says a senior sonar officer on the Princeton later told him about the underwater data.
'I was shopping at the local Navy commissary about a mile from my house. I bumped into a former shipmate who worked in the sonar department and was active during the exercise.
'He said that they were practically all around us. He goes, 'Man, we were tracking things underwater, just as much as they were tracking them in the air during that exercise.'
The top sonar tech, who asked not to be named, did not dispute the story when contacted by DailyMail.com, but declined to elaborate.
A source who worked as a senior official in defense intelligence told DailyMail.com that they investigated the incident several years later, and were briefed on sonar data recorded by a US submarine in the area of the Nimitz carrier strike group.
The source said that the sub's sonar caught the UFOs traveling at more than 400 knots, or 460 mph, through the water in the vicinity of the ships.
Day said that the ships in the group built a three-dimensional picture from combining their sophisticated radar and sonar, and that all the data was combined and sent to a Naval base in San Diego.
'We shared all the combat information, put it on a data link and sent it back to the beach. So anybody who was interested in these things, they could see our data,' he said.
'There's underwater stations called SOSUS. And we also have towed array. So we have those three sonar devices going off for each ship. All the ships are feeding the composite picture. So we have a really good three-dimensional picture underneath the water.'
Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton at the time of the TIc-Tac UFO sighting, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar
Warships guarding the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz as well as a submarine in the area spotted a sttrange object on radar in the Pacific in November 2004
Cahill has spoken openly about the 2004 UFO sighting before – including during a 2001 appearance on Fox News
He said these records would routinely be kept for decades.
But the Pentagon official charged with investigating UFO incidents claimed that he couldn't find any data on the Nimitz incident.
'My opinion is that one is going to remain unresolved because there is no data. There is no radar data,' Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the recently-retired head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said in a March 2024 interview.
'I think the Tic-Tac is so far back in time, there's no data. We went and looked for all of it.
I asked around for it.'
The seminal case was also glossed over in a historical report released by AARO, the Pentagon's UFO investigation office, on March 6 2024.
Cahill and Day say Kirkpatrick is wrong, and could even be deliberately trying to hide the truth.
'Those things are available for decades of the most mundane events that happened and everyday operations, they should be there for all these all the vessels that were there. But they're all missing,' said Cahill.
'It seems like purposeful obfuscation to me. It seems like a dereliction of duty for them not to investigate what is the most famous, well-documented case of UAP activity that we have, with the most amount of witnesses, the most amount of assets placed on it. And it's public now.
'They completely ignored it.'
'I think he should give all his money back that he took in salary,' Day said.
They said Kirkpatrick should have also had access to high fidelity radar and satellite data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) that could have picked up the Tic-Tac and other UFOs tracked by the warships in November 2004.
Others on the ship at the time say that tapes with data of the incident were erased and taken by mysterious visitors in flight suits.
Petty Officer Gary Voorhis told engineering news site Popular Mechanics in 2019: 'These two guys show up on a helicopter, which wasn't uncommon, but shortly after they arrived, maybe 20 minutes, I was told by my chain of command to turn over all the data recordings for the AEGIS [radar] system.
'They even told me to erase everything that's in the shop—even the blank tapes.'
The men were spotted returning with 'a bunch of bags', another witness on the ship, Leading Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt, told Popular Mechanics.
Reports of objects moving rapidly and in inexplicable ways underwater – as they allegedly were around the Nimitz in 2004 – are less well-known frontier in the UFO topic.
But they are increasingly coming under scrutiny, and now even have their own name: Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs.
Retired Navy Commander David Fravor testifies before a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing about UFOs in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC in 2023
UFO expert and author Richard Dolan is set to release a book on the topic this year called The History of USOs: The True Story of Anomalous Craft in Earth's Bodies of Water.
It documents more than 600 cases, including extraordinary incidents of objects picked up by submarine radar moving faster than torpedoes and executing impossible right-angle turns, hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean.
'For every one of these USO stories, there's probably close to 100 you don't know. It's often sheer luck that they come out,' Dolan told DailyMail.com.
'One of the shocking things that I've seen in my last two years of USO research, is the number of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers encountering objects that were actually able to disable them for certain periods of time. I have at least 10.
'If you're the US Navy, I can't think of anything more important to you than your fleet of aircraft carriers,' he added. 'Anything that's going to shut down those aircraft carriers is going to be of supreme importance.
'Ronald Moultrie [former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] spoke to the Senate a couple of years ago, saying we're confident that if we encounter these UAP we can identify and, if necessary, mitigate them.
'That's such a joke on every level. We know full well that this is a major problem, and they're not mitigating anything.'
Since retiring from government, former Rear Admiral and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Tim Gallaudet has revealed that he was briefed on similar incidents of submarines picking up UFOs on sonar moving at rapid speeds underwater.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Gallaudet cautioned that he has not spoken with any of the sonar operators involved in the 2004 tic tac incident, but added that in general: ‘We have to investigate undersea and transmedium UAP in the same way we do other UAP to get a more complete understanding of the phenomenon.’
Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes Contain Much More Water than Previously Thought
Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes Contain Much More Water than Previously Thought
Water is an important component of exoplanets, with its distribution, that is, whether at the surface or deep inside, fundamentally influencing the planetary properties. According to new research, for Earth-size planets and planets more massive than 6 times the mass of Earth, the majority of water resides deep in the cores of planets.
The majority of water can be stored deep within the exoplanet’s core and mantle, and not at the surface.
Image credit: Sci.News.
“Most of the exoplanets known today are located close to their star,” said ETH Zurich’s Professor Caroline Dorn.
“This means they primarily comprise hot worlds of oceans of molten magma that have not yet cooled to form a solid mantle of silicate bedrock like the Earth.”
“Water dissolves very well in these magma oceans — unlike, for instance, carbon dioxide, which quickly outgasses and rises into the atmosphere.”
“The iron core is located beneath the molten mantle of silicates. So how is the water distributed between the silicates and the iron?”
“The iron core takes time to develop. A large share of the iron is initially contained in the hot magma soup in the form of droplets.”
“The water sequestered in this soup combines with these iron droplets and sinks with them to the core. The iron droplets behave like a lift that is conveyed downwards by the water.”
Until now this behavior had only been known to be the case for moderate pressures of the sort that also prevail in the Earth.
It was not known what happens in the case of larger planets with higher pressure interior conditions.
“This is one of the key results of our study,” Professor Dorn said.
“The larger the planet and the greater its mass, the more the water tends to go with the iron droplets and become integrated in the core.”
“Under certain circumstances, iron can absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates.”
“However, owing to the enormous pressure at the core, the water no longer takes the form of water molecules but is present in hydrogen and oxygen.”
This study was triggered by investigations of the Earth’s water content, which yielded a surprising result four years ago: the oceans on the Earth’s surface only contain a small fraction of our planet’s overall water.
The content of more than 80 of the Earth’s oceans could be hidden in its interior.
This is shown by simulations calculating how water behaves under conditions of the kind that prevailed when the Earth was young. Experiments and seismological measurements are accordingly compatible.
The new findings concerning the distribution of water in planets have dramatic consequences for the interpretation of astronomical observation data.
Using their telescopes in space and on the Earth, astronomers can under certain conditions measure the weight and size of an exoplanet.
They use these calculations to draw up mass-radius diagrams that permit conclusions to be drawn about the planet’s composition.
“If in doing so — as has been the case so far — the solubility and distribution of water are ignored, the volume of water can be dramatically underestimated by up to ten times,” Professor Dorn said.
“Planets are much more water-abundant than previously assumed.”
Water distribution is also important if we wish to understand how planets form and develop. The water that has sunk to the core remains trapped there forever.
However, the water dissolved in the magma ocean of the mantle can degas and rise to the surface during mantle cooling.
“So if we find water in a planet’s atmosphere, there is probably a great deal more in its interior,” Professor Dorn said.
Water is one of the preconditions for life to develop. There has long been speculation about the potential habitability of water-rich super-Earths.
Then calculations suggested that too much water could be hostile to life. The argument was that in these water worlds a layer of exotic high-pressure ice would prevent the exchange of vital substances at the interface between the ocean and the planet’s mantle.
The current study reaches a different conclusion: planets with deep water layers are likely to be a rare occurrence as most of the water on super-Earths is not located on the surface, as has been assumed until now, but is trapped within the core.
This leads the astronomers to assume that even planets with a relatively high water content could have the potential to develop Earth-like habitable conditions.
“Their study thus casts a new light on the potential existence of water-abundant worlds that could support life,” the authors said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
H. Luo et al. The interior as the dominant water reservoir in super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Nat Astron, published online August 20, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02347-z
Cretaceous Amber Fossils Shed New Light on Evolutionary Origin of Tardigrades
Cretaceous Amber Fossils Shed New Light on Evolutionary Origin of Tardigrades
Tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates widely known for their extreme survival capabilities. Molecular clocks suggest that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropods (arthropods, tardigrades, velvet worms and lobopodians) before the Cambrian period, but their fossil record is extremely sparse. Now, paleontologists have described a new species of tardigrade and redescribed a previously known species, Beorn leggi, both from Canadian Cretaceous-aged amber.
Artistic reconstruction of Beorn leggi (top) and Aerobius dactylus (bottom) in a hypothetical fossilization environment.
Image credit: Franz Anthony.
First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates that are best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions.
Also known as water bears or moss piglets, these creatures can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5 mm, best seen under a microscope.
They are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, for a few minutes at temperatures as low as minus 272 degrees Celsius or as high as 150 degrees Celsius, and minus 20 degrees Celsius for decades.
Tardigrades withstand pressures from virtually 0 atm in space up to 1,200 atm at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and are also resistant to radiation levels up to 5,000-6,200 Gy.
They survive by entering a state of suspended animation called biostasis, using proteins that form gels inside of cells and slow down life processes.
“Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates characterized by a compact body plan with four pairs of typically claw-bearing lobopodous legs that are closely related to onychophorans and euarthropods as members of Panarthropoda,” said Harvard University Ph.D. candidate Marc Mapalo and colleagues.
“Tardigrades are popularly known for the cryptobiotic ability of some species that allow them to survive extreme conditions, such as space vacuum, ionizing radiation, and low subzero temperatures, as well as their worldwide distribution in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats.”
“Despite their ubiquitous nature in the present-day biosphere, tardigrades have a notoriously scarce fossil record, which limits the study of their macroevolution including the origin of their body plan, and the timing of their terrestrialization and acquisition of cryptobiotic capabilities.”
“Currently, there are only four known crown-group tardigrade fossils, all of which are preserved as amber inclusions, but only two of them have well-established taxonomic positions relative to extant tardigrades.”
Aerobius dactylus.
Image credit: Mapalo et al., doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06643-2.
In their study, the authors looked at a piece of amber found in Canada in the 1960s that contains the known fossil tardigrade Beorn leggi and another presumed tardigrade that couldn’t be substantively described at the time.
Using confocal laser microscopy, a method usually employed for studying cell biology, they were able to examine the tiny structures of the fossil tardigrades in stunning detail.
The study provides not only a definitive classification of Beorn leggi in the tardigrade family tree, but the identification of a new species: Aerobius dactylus.
“Both of them are found in the same piece of amber that dates to the Cretaceous period, which means that these water bears lived alongside dinosaurs,” said Dr. Javier Ortega-Hernández, also from Harvard University.
“The images of Beorn leggi show seven well-preserved claws, with the claws that curve toward the body being smaller than those curving away from it, a pattern found in modern-day tardigrades.”
“The second, previously unidentified specimen, had claws of similar length on each of its first three pairs of legs, but longer outer claws on its fourth set of legs.”
Both species serve as critical calibration points for what’s called molecular clock analysis, which help scientists estimate the timing of key evolutionary events.
For example, the latest findings suggest that modern tardigrades likely diverged during the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago.
The study also sheds light on the origin of the remarkable ability of tardigrades to survive extreme conditions by entering a state of stasis.
“The study estimates that this survival mechanism likely evolved during the mid to Late Paleozoic, which may have played a crucial role in helping tardigrades endure the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most severe extinction events in Earth’s history,” Dr. Ortega-Hernández said.
The results appear in the journal Communications Biology.
M.A. Mapalo et al. 2024. Cretaceous amber inclusions illuminate the evolutionary origin of tardigrades. Commun Biol 7, 953; doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06643-2
AI Focused UFO Behind Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Jan 2016, UFO Sighting News.
AI Focused UFO Behind Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Jan 2016, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Jan 2016 Location of sighting:behind Nellis AFB, Nevada, USA
Guys, I decided to use ai to focus this old sighting from 2016 and wow it blew my mind! The detail is amazing, but I have to admit, I have never seen anything like it. This is different, it's unique unlike anything ever. And it's flying slowly over top secret USAF land that is dangerous to enter.
AI Focused Sunken Shipwreck Off Wisteria Island, Florida Keys, UFO Sighting News. 4K HD.
AI Focused Sunken Shipwreck Off Wisteria Island, Florida Keys, UFO Sighting News. 4K HD.
Hey all, I was asked by many followers of mine on Youtube to use my ai focusing program on something different. So here we go. This is a ship I discovered in the Florida Keys, USA back in 2023. Watch the video, see for yourself if ai is capable of focusing all photos or just human faces. The proof is in the pudding.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
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Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
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.
!['It¿s not an intuitive thing, and if you don¿t delve too deeply into it, [you¿ll be wrong],' said West, who programmed Tony Hawk's Pro Series games](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/08/07/20/88233633-13715847-image-a-48_1723060752103.jpg)
