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...
05-09-2024
This Man From US Army Claims 57 Alien Species Similar To Humans Are Walking Among People
This Man From US Army Claims 57 Alien Species Similar To Humans Are Walking Among People
In the world of UFO research, the name of retired Army sergeant Clifford Stone is nearly a legend. Stone claimed to have been serving for 22 years as a Decorated Vietnam combat veteran. From 1968 to 1990, he was a part of the secret elite group that was assigned to recover the crashed UFO or E.T. parts, alien bodies, and artifacts. Besides, he said that intelligent life had been visiting our planet in highly advanced crafts that are capable of covering many light-years in less time which is beyond modern human knowledge.
Initially, he was assigned to the NBC Team (nuclear, biological, and chemical retrieval and abatement detail) at Fort McClellan Army post in Alabama and did some regular assignments until he was called for retrieval duties. He was reportedly out for a week when the army required him for UFO retrievals. What is more, his army service record was manipulated and excluded all his UFO recovery activities, showing him as a typist.
To support his claims, Stone cleverly disclosed the existence of classified projects such as Moon Dust and Blue Fly, that had been created to hide the UFOs’ debris by using Freedom of Information Acts.
Clifford Earl Stone January 2, 1949 ~ February 10, 2021 (age 72). Image credit: Ballard Funeral Home & Crematory
For example, in reviewing an Air Force Intelligence letter known as the Betz memo (1961), Sgt. Stone was able to reveal to the general public evidence that Project Moon Dust involved a “potential for employment of qualified field intelligence personnel on a quick reaction basis to recover or perform field exploitation of unidentified flying objects.” (Source)
Stone’s catalogs in UFOs are real documents he had been able to retrieve by FOIA even during his years of military service. Consequently, Stone’s pioneering documentary research into UFO crash retrievals is strong support for his testimony of actually having served on such teams during his military service.
Stone claimed in his old interviews that during his military service, he was monitored by an individual whose rank he was never told but whom he called “Colonel.” The colonel was present at UFO crash retrieval locations and led debriefing sessions of Stone. He noted that the colonel allowed him to read a three-inch thick notebook manual that contained information on 57 types of extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs) known to the military.
He said that many species looked like humans, but their eyes were slightly larger and had black iris. According to him, extraterrestrial species contacted only through telepathy and could even read minds.
In 1973, Stone was involved in the retrieval of a crashed UFO. He hid a small metallic piece of UFO in his shoe and buried it near his property in New Mexico, Nevada, after his retirement in 1989.
He said: “Yes, I have it and wouldn’t dare to keep it in the house. I had it here to show some people where I kept it, a day longer than I should have and then somebody actually came here and tried to take it. That was some tense moments, I almost shot somebody that day.”
On May 9, 2001, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and the resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. As part of the Disclosure Project, Sgt. Stone publicly revealed his story and was willing to testify before Congress if they asked him.
Below is the transcript of Sgt. Stone’s part in the Disclosure Program (Full Video link here):
“Morning ladies and gentlemen, my name is Clifford Stone, I was a sergeant first class United States Army. I had a secret clearance with nuclear surety. I could get the clearance that I needed to do whatever it was necessary for me to do at the time on special operations when I was called in on those.
What I’m referring to here is that I was involved in situations where we actually did recoveries of crashed saucers. There were bodies involved with some of these crashes and also some were alive. While we were doing all this, we were telling the American public there was nothing to it. We were telling the world there was nothing to it.
I’d like to go into detail on some of the cases about the nuts and bolts cases right here. But I will be available if you have any questions concerning my involvement in this, you can talk to Dr. Greer to arrange for me to get to talk to you. But the whole situation is, we have setback, we’ve told the American people that there’s no such thing as UFOs. I’ve been involved where we have recovered these objects, we know them to be of extraterrestrials.
In 1969, I had an event that happened to me while I was stationed at Fort Lee Virginia. We went to Indiantown Gap Pennsylvania that would be my first exposure to any time that we would be recovering an unidentified flying object. When we went there, we already had people that were in the facility with a backup team which was supposed to be NBC because there were supposed to be some nuclear materials that were on board this craft.
Later on, most people involved were told that there was nothing on board. It was nothing more than to crash at one of our aircraft. I know better because I was one of the people that approached it with a Geiger counter to get surface readings. I was the first person to go ahead and see that there were bodies on it that would be the first of approximately 12 events.
UFO crashes are not events that take place every day. They’re rare. I know we’re not alone in the universe. I know that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it’s evidence that has been denied to the American people. I stand before you today and my Almighty God, and I tell you this: if the Congress calls me in and says: ‘Will you testify in detail what you know?’ I stand here today prepared and ready to do just that, governments must never lie to the people for no reason. Thank you.”
Further, she talked about Stone’s alien encounter in Vietnam, where he helped aliens to escape from military custody, as he cared for the rights of extraterrestrials who visit Earth.
Sgt. Clifford Stone claimed that he had been good at communicating with the ETs found at the crash sites or in an encounter with his military team. Once, his team fired a bullet at an ET, but they deflected it with some advanced technology. He also mentioned the teleport techniques of ETs when he found himself hundreds of feet from his initial position.
Stone also claimed that there are many alien groups that visit our solar system and Earth as well, but when humans learned how to detect their crafts, they limited their visits but did not stop.
He had no intention to benefit from his claims and evidence and no desire to gain publicity. His only desire was to let the US citizens know the truth about the UFOs and extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), that these are interplanetary spacecraft. Sgt. Clifford Stone, aged 72, passed away peacefully at his home on February 10, 2021.
A Brown University astrobiologist and an international team of planetary scientists say they have found an ‘improbable’ series of patches of water frost sitting atop a number of massive Martian volcanoes. According to the researchers behind the discovery, this finding represents the first time that water frost of any kind has been spotted near the planet’s equator. It would also be a finding that goes against current models describing the red planet’s atmosphere and water cycle.
“We thought it was improbable for frost to form around Mars’ equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures during the day relatively high at both the surface and mountaintop — unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks,” explained Adomas Valantinas, a postdoctoral fellow and astrobiologist at Brown University and the team’s lead researcher.
This simulated perspective oblique view shows Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano not only on Mars but in the entire solar system. The volcano measures some 600 km across. CREDIT: Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (A. Valantinas)
According to the team’s analysis, the layer of water frost appears each morning until the rising sun heats up the planet’s surface and causes it to evaporate back into the atmosphere. The process normally only takes a few hours, as the frost only appears as a very thin layer, likely only one-hundredth of a millimeter thick, before disappearing. For comparison, this is about the thickness of a human hair.
Still, the researchers say that the actual covering of frost is incredibly vast. In fact, the team calculates that as much as 150,000 tons of water are evaporated and then redeposited on the Martian surface every single day. “That’s roughly the equivalent of 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools,” they explain.
Discovery Atop Martian VOlcanoes is the Culmination of Six Year Long Project
In the team’s published study, which appears in the journal Nature Geoscience, Valantis notes how he first began searching for evidence of frost atop Martian volcanoes back in 2018 when he was still a Ph.D. student at the University of Bern. That effort involved combing through thousands of high-resolution photos of Mars captured by the Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) instrument onboard the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter.
When an image revealed a spectral signature consistent with water frost, Valantis says he placed it into a larger series of images sorted by time, location, and season. As more images joined the series, Valantis found that they began to reveal a daily cycle, where this ultra-thin layer of water frost was deposited overnight and then evaporated back into the atmosphere by the rising sun each morning.
“What we’re seeing may be a remnant of an ancient climate cycle on modern Mars,” Valantis posited, “where you had precipitation and maybe even snowfall on these volcanoes in the past.”
To ensure that what they were seeing was real since it was so unexpected, Valantis and his colleagues verified the images using separate observations made by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera onboard the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter and the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery spectrometer onboard the Trace Gas Orbiter. All told, the researchers say over 30,000 images were selected and verified during the six-year project.
In the study’s conclusion, the team says they believe the water frost, which sits inside the caldera of several Martian volcanoes within the Tharsis range, is created and deposited due to microclimates that form within these massive structures. These microclimates exist due to the enormous height of the Tharis volcanoes. According to the researchers, the mountainous volcanoes of Tharsis range between one and two times the size of Mount Everest on Earth. The largest, Olympus Mons, is as wide as France.
Astrobiology and the Search for Marian Life
Since his transition from Bern University to Brown University, Valantis says he is going to continue exploring “Martian mysteries.” This includes transitioning to a full-time astrobiology role, where he will apply his analysis skills to help characterize the ancient environments around Martian vents, where microbial life may have once thrived.
According to the press release announcing the discovery, the researchers believe that modeling how the frosts are forming atop these Martian volcanoes “could allow scientists to reveal more of Mars’ remaining secrets, including understanding where water exists and how it moves, as well as understanding the planet’s complex atmospheric dynamics, which is essential for future exploration and the search for possible signs of life.”
If everything goes well, Valantis said he hopes his work, including his discovery of water frost atop Martian volcanoes, can help lead to the detection and collection of high-value Martian soil samples that are brought back to Earth for study. In fact, he says that searching for life that evolved outside of Earth has always captured his imagination, so he is not going to miss out on the opportunity to help science try to make another major discovery.
“This notion of a second genesis, of life beyond Earth, has always fascinated me,” Valantinas said.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him onX,learn about his books atplainfiction.com, or email him directly atchristopher@thedebrief.org.
Inside Monster Martian Volcanoes
The newly discovered volcano has monstered-sized company in the form of three other gigantic Martian volcanoes
Background image: NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) digital elevation model. Geologic interpretation & annotations by Pascal Lee and Sourabh Shubham 2024
The volcano, temporarily named the Noctis, spans 280 miles wide and was discovered alongside a buried ice glacier to the east of Mars.
NASA/USGS
“This area of Mars is known to have a wide variety of hydrated minerals spanning a long stretch of Martian history,” said Sourabh Shubham, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology.
The origin of humanity is perhaps the most significant mystery that the world needs to unravel. In mainstream science, the theory of evolution is proposed to provide an explanation for human biological history. However, not many people subscribe to this theory, and there may be much more to the story that we are not yet aware of.
In episode number 2028 of the Joe Rogan podcast, the two current popular figures in UFOlogy, Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp discussed the possibility that humans were genetically engineered by a non-human intelligence for nefarious purposes, and some individuals within the government are aware of this. Knapp also mentions that he knows someone high-ranking who told him that human conflict, specifically war, is sometimes intentionally designed by a malevolent non-human intelligence through manipulation.
During the podcast, George Knapp discussed Bob Lazar and mentioned that Lazar was told while working on “the program” that humans were viewed by extraterrestrials as “containers of souls.” This may sound bizarre and fictional to many people; however, Lazar can be seen saying the exact same thing in his 1989 interviews. (Source)
“These beings conveyed information about the capability of affecting the human brain to anesthetize the human body. This is done without any physical contact from a remote source. For this anesthesia to be accomplished, the brain has to be in a relaxed state, similar to that required for hypnosis. If the brain is subject to any external stimulation, like stimulant drugs or loud music, this manipulation of the nervous system is ineffective.
These beings said that man was the product of externally corrected evolution. They said that man, as a species, had been genetically altered 65 times. They referred to humans as containers. Yet, I don’t know what we’re containers of. As I’m sure you now know, it was impossible for me to corroborate the information in the second section. And obviously, if this information is true, the ramifications are far-reaching and you don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to figure that out.”
In the podcast, Corbell discusses John Lear, who told him that “Aliens see us like a wine and our bodies are containers and our souls are beings matured as like a commodity.” Moreover, according to another bizarre theory that has been covered by researchers like Linda M. Howe, David Icke, etc., these non-human intelligence or extraterrestrials feed on human souls.
“It’s my conclusion over many years that reincarnation is a trap. It’s not that it doesn’t exist although I don’t think it’s quite the same as it’s explained it’s a bit more subtle maybe but I do think it’s a trap, said David Icke.” Whereas Linda said, “The recycling of souls reincarnation is the Machinery of this universe.” (Watch this episode of the Why Files for more context)
Robert Allan Monroe (1915-1995) was a radio broadcasting executive from Indiana known for his research into altered consciousness and founding The Monroe Institute. His 1971 book, “Journeys Out of the Body,” popularized the term “out-of-body experience.”
In 1958, Monroe suffered a series of bizarre events, prompting him to seek medical advice, but doctors found him to be healthy. He decided to dedicate his life to studying altered states of consciousness, eventually developing Hemispheric Synchronization (Hemi-Sync), a technology using binaural beats to harmonize brain hemispheres.
The US government took an interest in Monroe’s work and invited him to join a classified project called the Gateway Process, aimed at using his techniques for remote viewing. According to declassified files, this program aimed to alter consciousness, allowing participants to access intuitive knowledge and other dimensions. (CIA file)
During these experiments, participants sat in darkness wearing headphones and reported encountering interdimensional entities. According to Robert, subjects would often encounter interdimensional entities. Most frequently, reptilian humanoids were witnessed. Viewers referred to the uncanny creatures as ‘the alligators’ due to their crocodilian features. Curiously, Monroe was already quite familiar with the unsettling breed. During countless expeditions, he observed identical saurian creatures. For over 35 years, he gathered insight about these startling beings.
Experiments opened portals to other dimensions where reptilian humanoids reside.
Robert A. Monroe Photo. Image Credit: The Monroe Institute
Here is what he uncovered: For millennia, humanity has been controlled and enslaved by nefarious vertebrates known as Reptilians, who operate within the 4th dimension, invisible to most but those who can perceive beyond our limited spectrum of visible light. These parasitic entities thrive on our spiritual lifeforce, referred to as “loosh” by Monroe, and rely on negative and low vibrational energy for their survival. Viewing Earth as a vast farm, they harvest human emotions such as fear, hatred, anxiety, anger, and depression. With intelligence equal to or surpassing that of humans, this elusive lizard-like race considers itself superior and the rulers of mankind.
Robert Monroe pursued transcendental endeavors until he passed away in 1995. His beliefs never changed, and he frequently warned of the sinister spiritual vampires. Gateway’s revolutionary experiments continued throughout the 1980s.
There is a case of a British woman named Samantha McDonald who claimed that she had been repeatedly abducted by reptilians since her first contact in the 1990s, but on every abduction, her memory was wiped by her abductors. In 2014, she was invited to a British talk show named “This Morning,” where she revealed there were two alien species, the Greys and Reptilians, who worked together. (Source)
She said that when she woke up, there were needle marks, scratches, and bruises on her body. “I’ve asked them what they want with me and they said they have come to take me and my family. What they were after was my energy and soul essence. I don’t know why they keep coming back to me. I think it is to do with my energies as I’m into healing and meditation.”
Dr. Ellis Silver, an author of the book “Humans are not from Earth: A Scientific Evaluation of the Evidence,” has a strong belief that life on Earth was sparked by aliens thousands of years ago. He said, “Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more.” (Source)
Ellis strongly believes that Earth is some kind of galactic jail made by aliens to teach humans a behavior lesson. Similarly, in 2019, members of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), a San Francisco-based research organization, convened in Paris and suggested that we could all be living in a Galactic Zoo run by aliens.
Florence Raulin Cerceau, who is the METI director as well as an astrobiologist explained: “This puzzle of why we haven’t detected extraterrestrial life has been discussed often,” adding, “But in this workshop’s unique focus, many of the talks tackled a controversial explanation first suggested in the 1970s, called the ‘zoo hypothesis.’” METI president Douglas Vakoch weighed in by saying, “Perhaps extraterrestrials are watching humans on Earth, much like we watch animals in a zoo.” (Source)
MIT researcher John Ball presented the zoo hypothesis in his 1973 paper. He wrote, “Extraterrestrial intelligent life may be almost ubiquitous,” adding, “The apparent failure of such life to interact with us may be understood in terms of the hypothesis that they have set us aside as part of a wilderness area or zoo.” He later wrote in another research paper: “ETI may be discreetly and inconspicuously watching us but not dabbling.”
Additionally, former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, UFO advocate, and media personality Luis Elizondo explained his reasoning behind claiming that UFO mysteries have made him “somber.” His speculative ideas are straight out of middle 20th-century science fiction, particularly the so-called “zoo hypothesis” that appeared in a number of stories at that time, imagining that Earth was essentially a zoo run by space aliens.
“What if it turns out that there’s another species that is even higher on that ladder than we are? Do we need the social institutions that we have today, do we need government and religious organizations that we have today, if it turns out that there is something else or someone else that is technologically more advanced and, perhaps from an evolutionary perspective, more advanced? Have we been wasting our time all this time? Or are we doing exactly as we are supposed to be doing?
[What] if it turns out that mankind is in fact just another animal in the zoo? If we saw ourselves as the zookeeper before, maybe we’re just another exhibit inside the zoo? What would that mean to us?
So, when I say ‘somber’ or ‘sobering’, I mean there’s going to come a point in this conversation when we’re going to have to do a lot of reconciling with ourselves, whatever that means, from whatever philosophical background you have. This is going to impact every single one of us. And I think that’s important. Do we find ourselves in a situation where history may have to be rewritten? So that’s what I meant.”
I-Team: A look back at 1989 Bob Lazar interview; it started new UFO conversations
Area 51: Aliens, UFOs, Bob Lazar & Advanced Technology
Astronomers have detected a peculiar radio signal originating from deep space that evades current scientific understanding. Designated ASKAP J1935+2148, the signal repeats every 53.8 minutes, making it the longest period ever recorded for such a phenomenon.
Published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the discovery, made using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, has left astronomers puzzled and excited about the potential implications for our understanding of the universe.
In recent years, astronomers have identified several enigmatic objects emitting repeating radio signals. In 2020, GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3, located near the galactic center, was observed emitting unusually bright flashes for just three months before falling silent.
Another object, discovered last year, GPM J1839-10, behaves like a slow pulsar, emitting five-minute radio bursts every 22 minutes.
However, the newly-discovered radio signal acts a bit differently.
The signal was first detected during routine observations by the ASKAP radio telescope, located in Australia’s Wajarri Yamaji Country. The telescope, known for its wide field of view, was monitoring a gamma-ray burst when it stumbled upon ASKAP J1935+2148. The signal stood out due to its unique properties, including its long period and distinct emission states.
ASKAP J1935+2148 blinking on and off. (Image: Emil Lenc, CC BY-NC)
Dr. Manisha Caleb, an astrophysicist at the University of Sydney and the lead author of the study, said in a press release that she thinks this could be a new type of neutron star.
“It is highly unusual to discover a neutron star candidate emitting radio pulsations in this way,” she said in a press release. “The fact that the signal is repeating at such a leisurely pace is extraordinary.”
Following the initial detection, the team conducted further observations for several months using both ASKAP and the more sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
Equipped with a special type of radio receiver, the ASKAP telescope was set up in a grid pattern to scan the sky at a frequency of 887.5 MHz. The signals it picked up were divided into smaller chunks to get a clearer picture, and the data was processed every 10 seconds to catch the bright pulses from ASKAP J1935+2148. Meanwhile, the MeerKAT telescope, which operates at a higher frequency range (0.86-1.71 GHz), provided more detailed and sensitive observations.
“What is intriguing is how this object displays three distinct emission states, each with properties entirely dissimilar from the others,” Caleb explained. “The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa played a crucial role in distinguishing between these states. If the signals didn’t arise from the same point in the sky, we would not have believed it to be the same object producing these different signals.”
According to the study, the astronomers observed bright linear pulses that lasted anywhere between 10 and 50 seconds, followed by weaker pulses that followed a circular pattern that only lasted 370 milliseconds, followed by a lull where no pulses were detectable. This would all then repeat.
This new mysterious radio signal challenges the current astrophysical models of neutron stars and white dwarfs. Neutron stars, known for their rapid rotation, typically complete rotations in seconds or fractions of a second. The 53.8-minute period of ASKAP J1935+2148 places it in the “pulsar death valley,” where detectable radio signals are not expected. In other words, if this is a neutron star, it shouldn’t be giving off anything.
One hypothesis is that ASKAP J1935+2148 could be an ultra-long period magnetar, a type of highly magnetized neutron star. However, the slow rotation and continued radio emission are unusual for such objects. Another possibility is a highly magnetized white dwarf, but no known white dwarfs have been observed to emit radio waves in this manner, making this explanation less likely.
Caleb and her team currently believe that this radio signal is probably from a slow-spinning neutron star or a binary system with a neutron star or another white dwarf. They admit that this is only a hypothesis since something like this has never been observed before, and further research needs to be done.
“It might even prompt us to reconsider our decades-old understanding of neutron stars or white dwarfs,” Caleb concluded. “How they emit radio waves and what their populations are like in our Milky Way galaxy.”
MJ Banias covers space, security, and technology with The Debrief. You can email him at mj@thedebrief.org or follow him on Twitter @mjbanias.
Unveiling SETI’s Quest: How Scientists Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Unveiling SETI’s Quest: How Scientists Search for Extraterrestrial Life
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has fascinated humanity for decades. While science fiction often portrays alien contact in dramatic and immediate terms, the real-world efforts to discover extraterrestrial life are far more systematic and grounded in rigorous science. In a detailed conversation with journalist Ross Coulthart, Bill Diamond, the President and CEO of the SETI Institute, shed light on the current state of the search for intelligent life beyond Earth and the innovative technologies driving the quest.
The Origins of SETI and Its Evolving Mission
SETI, founded 40 years ago, was initially focused on detecting radio signals that could suggest the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Diamond explained that the institute’s efforts were originally supported by NASA but now rely heavily on private funding. The core mission remains the same: to search for signals or phenomena that could indicate the existence of advanced civilizations elsewhere in the universe. Over time, however, SETI’s scope has expanded beyond just radio waves.
According to Diamond, SETI has evolved to search for various “technosignatures”—evidence of technology used by extraterrestrial civilizations. This includes not only radio transmissions but also optical signals such as laser pulses, which might be used for communication or propulsion. SETI also considers the possibility of detecting megastructures like Dyson spheres, which could suggest the presence of highly advanced technologies harnessing massive amounts of energy.
SETI’s Use of Radio and Optical Telescopes
SETI employs both radio and optical telescopes in its search. Radio telescopes listen for potential extraterrestrial signals across a wide range of frequencies, while optical telescopes search for laser communications that could indicate advanced extraterrestrial technologies. Diamond described how SETI integrates these methods in its efforts to capture engineered signals that nature alone would not produce.
One of the significant challenges facing SETI is the vastness of space and the relatively short period that humanity has been a “technological civilization.” Earth has only been emitting detectable electromagnetic signals for about a century—since the invention of radio. Diamond pointed out that while Earth’s radio signals might be detectable within 10 to 20 light-years, this range is extremely limited compared to the scale of the galaxy. Thus, SETI’s search is constrained not only by the technological limitations of our telescopes but also by the immense distances over which signals would have to travel.
Quantum Teleportation and Interstellar Communication
A particularly fascinating part of Coulthart and Diamond’s conversation touched on the potential for interstellar quantum communication. Quantum teleportation—where the quantum state of a particle is transmitted instantaneously to another, regardless of the distance between them—has long been a topic of scientific intrigue. Coulthart asked whether such a phenomenon could be used by extraterrestrial civilizations to communicate across the vast distances of space.
Diamond acknowledged that while quantum entanglement is a real and measurable phenomenon, scientists are still unsure how—or if—it could be used to transmit information in the way we understand communication. While there are mathematical models suggesting the possibility of quantum communication across interstellar distances, the technology is currently beyond our grasp. However, Diamond did not rule out the possibility that more advanced civilizations might have discovered ways to harness quantum mechanics for communication.
The Role of AI and New Technologies in SETI’s Future
As SETI continues to innovate, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a growing role in its search. Diamond highlighted how AI can help process vast amounts of data collected by SETI’s telescopes, which gather terabytes of information every second. Rather than focusing on specific, narrow-band signals, AI can analyze the entire electromagnetic spectrum, identifying any anomalies or unexpected signals that human researchers might miss. This new approach could significantly increase the likelihood of detecting extraterrestrial signals.
SETI is also exploring the possibility of placing radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon. A lunar-based telescope would avoid the interference from Earth’s noisy radio environment, making it an ideal location for detecting faint extraterrestrial signals. The project is still in the discussion phase, but Diamond expressed optimism about its potential.
The Debate Around Active SETI
Coulthart raised the philosophical debate surrounding “Active SETI,” also known as Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). Unlike traditional SETI, which passively listens for signals, METI involves actively sending messages into space in the hope of making contact with intelligent civilizations. While some scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, have cautioned against this approach—arguing that it could attract the attention of hostile extraterrestrial civilizations—others believe it is a logical step in the search for life.
Diamond explained that while SETI does not currently engage in METI, the institute encourages open dialogue about the risks and benefits. He personally does not subscribe to the so-called “Dark Forest” theory, which posits that advanced civilizations may be inherently predatory and dangerous. Instead, Diamond speculates that any civilization advanced enough to communicate across the stars is likely to have solved many of the existential challenges that face humanity today, such as climate change and resource depletion. Such a civilization, he believes, would be more likely to be cooperative and peaceful than aggressive.
VIDEO:
Head of SETI reveals to Ross Coulthart how they search for life in space | Reality Check
Bill Diamond’s conversation with Ross Coulthart provided a comprehensive and insightful look at the current state of SETI’s efforts to discover extraterrestrial intelligence. While the search is fraught with challenges—both technological and philosophical—Diamond remains optimistic. With advancements in AI, quantum communication, and new observatories on the horizon, SETI is poised to push the boundaries of human knowledge and potentially make one of the most profound discoveries in history: proof that we are not alone in the universe.
Einstein, teleportatie en het raadselachtige 'Philadelphia Experiment' Geloof je in buitenaards leven? Denk je dat tijdreizen een mogelijkheid is? Als jouw antwoorden op beide vragen 'nee' is, lees dan verder over deze vermeende gebeurtenis in de Verenigde Staten tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Het is huiveringwekkend!
Vragen zonder antwoorden Het universum verbergt veel mysteries. Een daarvan is of er intelligent leven aanwezig. Het volgende verhaal suggereert dat dit inderdaad het geval is en onthult daarnaast dingen die nog angstaanjagender zijn.
Experiment Volgens het boek 'The Expanding Case for the UFO' van Morris K. Jessup (een aan de University of Michigan opgeleide astronoom) heeft de Amerikaanse marine een experiment uitgevoerd dat bekend zou worden als het 'Philadelphia Experiment'.
Hoe gebeurde het? Verondersteld wordt dat het schip, gemeerd in de stad Philadelphia, in een flits licht, met haar bemanning en al, aan boord spoorloos verdween.
Getuigen Vermeend getuige van het incident was marinier Carl Allen. Hij beweerde eveneens te hebben gezien dat enkele bemanningsleden dood waren, versmolten met de scheepsromp.
EInstein's onderzoek Volgens het History Channel, ontwikkelde Albert Einstein een project van voor het Amerikaanse leger dat het fenomeen zou kunnen verklaren.
Einstein's onderzoek Volgens zijn unificatietheorie ('theorie van alles'), zou een elektromagnetisch apparaat hiervoor verantwoordelijk kunnen zijn. De VS wilde oceaan kunnen oversteken zonder dat het door de vijandelijke schepen waargenomen zou worden.
Onzichtbaar Volgens het History Channel, zou Einstein een experiment hebben ontwikkeld waarbij een sterk elektromagnetisch veld werd geïnstalleerd op het schip dat het 'onzichtbaar' zou maken voor radars en mijnen. Maar beweerd wordt dat het experiment een heel ander effect had.
Film De film 'The Philadelphia Experiment' is gebaseerd op het verhaal en werd uitgebracht in 1984. Jaren later zou de film opnieuw voor controverse zorgen.
Getuigenis Alfred Bielek kwam met nieuwe getuigenverklaringen en claimde dat de film hem zijn ervaringen tijdens het experiment opnieuw deed beleven. Volgens hem werden ze niet alleen naar een andere plek geteleporteerd, maar hebben ze ook door de tijd gereisd.
Buitenaards leven Door de ophoping van zoveel energie zou er volgens Bielek een doorgangsportaal in de ruimte zijn ontstaan door welke UFO's naar onze planeet zouden kunnen komen.
Bewijs? Alfred Bielek ging zelfs verder en zei dat de Amerikaanse marine hier niet alleen weet van had, maar dat het eveneens een buitenaards wezen gevangen had weten te nemen.
Verre van voorbij Zij die niet in deze samenzweringstheorie geloven wijzen op objectieve feiten die het weerspreken. Voor hen die er wel in geloven, zijn de antwoorden op het marineschip zelf te vinden.
Verslagen Volgens de verslagen is er geen buitengewone activiteit waargenomen en er is ook geen document dat kan bevestigen dat het schip in Norfolk is aangemeerd.
Onzichtbaarheid Er zijn gevorderde wetenschappelijke onderzoeken gedaan naar onzichtbaarheid die geen directe relatie hebben tot de theorie van Einstein.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm (Photo: AP)
It's a drone; it'sa UFO; it's really who you ask: What's buzzing around U.S. nuclear sites?
Going back from the 1940s and ‘50s to the present day, whistleblowers have reported UFO sightings around nuclear sites, but Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jennifer Granholm said they’re "drones."
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., hit Granholm with rapid-fire questions, including if the DOE was reverse engineering crashed alien technology, and if it worked with a counter-terrorism task force.
Granholm's answers were, "I have no knowledge of that," and "Yes," respectively, which an expert told Fox News Digital is a "big deal" admission.
Granholm danced around the question at first, but Luna repeated the inquiry and demanded a yes or no answer.
Granholm finally responded, "Yes, we do."
Investigative journalist and leading UFO expert Jeremy Corbell said, "This was a bold move by Congress."
WATCH FULL EXCHANGE BETWEEN LUNA AND GRANHOLM
JSOC is a military task force that plans and executes special operations missions under the command of U.S. Special Operations Command.
Corbell said a whistleblower had pointed out that JSOC had worked with the DOE to recover crashed alien spacecraft and reverse-engineer their technology.
“JSOC is likely heavily involved in the aircraft recovery program under the purview of the CIA, so it’s a big deal for the Department of Energy to acknowledge that it’s working with JSOC,” Corbell told Fox News Digital. “Secretary Granholm has been loath to acknowledge that.”
JSOC has denied these allegations and implications in previous statements. Fox News Digital reached out to JSOC for comment but did not receive a response.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna questioned Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about reverse engineering alien technology.
(Fox News Digital/John Michael Raasch)
In an email to Fox News Digital, Luna said that while “some people, like Secretary Granholm, want to ridicule these things,” “more than 50 percent of Americans believe UAPs may exist.”
“That means the federal government should be taking this seriously,” the Florida Republican said. “I have confronted Energy Secretary Granholm directly with multiple reports and statements from the Department of Defense, and she continues to deny the facts.”
“And that’s why I think the American people have lost faith in government transparency.”
Luna’s exchange with Granholm wasn’t the end of her interactions with the DOE.
She submitted nine questions to the DOE, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital. The questions include:
“DOE has received the QFR and will respond directly to the committee and members of Congress,” a DOE spokesperson said in an email.
Footage of a UFO flying near the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 and disappearing into the ocean without a splash or crash debris.
(Jeremy Corbell/Weaponized Podcast)
Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, former Navy commander David Fravor, and former U.S. intelligence officer David Grush testified before a House subcommittee specializing in UFOs.
(House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security, Borders, and Foreign Affairs)
Luna’s Question
How are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) designated by DOE?
What characteristics must an object have to be considered a UAP?
How many UAP intrusions have been reported to the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)?
F1 events deploy private companies that can disable drones and track the pilots. Is that technology available to DOE? Follow-up: If so, how many drones were able to track the pilots? And how many were able to be disabled?
Follow-up: If so, how many drones were you able to track to their operators? And how many were you able to disable?
This year alone, how many UAP intrusions have been reported internally at all critical infrastructure locations under DOE’s oversight (e.g., nuclear weapons, refining, and deployment sites such as Pantex and the Savannah River Site)?
There have been multiple reports of frequent drone intrusions over DOE nuclear facilities, including the incident that occurred at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on April 1, 2021. Can you tell us more about DOE’s current security measures to prevent unauthorized drone activity? Also, given the frequency of these incidents, what steps are being taken to strengthen these measures?
A recent AARO report emphasized that better data collection is essential to understanding the UAP phenomenon. What technologies and methodologies is DOE employing to collect and analyze data related to UAP sightings, especially near critical infrastructure?
Given the potential security and safety risks posed by UAPs near nuclear facilities, what protocols are in place to ensure the safety of DOE personnel and the public? Have there been any documented cases of personnel being adversely affected as a result of an encounter with a UAP?
In the spirit of transparency, how is the Department of Energy handling public disclosure of UAP incidents? Are there plans to declassify and release more detailed reports on UAP sightings over Department of Energy facilities to keep the public informed and reassured?
Department of Energy: Sightings are ‘drones’, not UFOs
Before Luna’s exchange with Granholm, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee questioned the Energy secretary about “suspicious sightings” of UFOs near nuclear facilities.
She responded that the Department of Defense had concluded that there was no evidence of UFOs or aliens.
“But there is the possibility of malicious drones out there,” Granholm said, emphasizing that safety and defensive measures are in place.
As both senators pointed out, UFO sightings near nuclear facilities predate drones.
This was one of several examples of unexplained UAPs listed in NASA’s Sept. 14 report.
(NASA)
In 2018, a mysterious jellyfish-like object was spotted flying over a military base in Iraq.
(Jeremy Corbell/Weaponized Podcast)
Recently declassified documents about a UFO program called Kona Blue detail a government plan to collect and reverse engineer crashed alien technology.
“Several highly sensitive and unconventional aerospace discoveries have been identified and significant progress has been made,” former U.S. Senator Harry Reid said in a June 2009 letter.
An excerpt from a 2009 letter from former U.S. Senator Harry Reid discussing the need to keep the government’s crashed
alien technology recovery program and reverse engineering efforts secret. (Department of Defense)
“Given the current rate of success, continued research into these subjects is likely to lead to technological advances requiring special protection in the near future…”
“Given the potential applications of these technologies in future systems, including space flight, weapons, communications and propulsion, standard management and protection procedures cannot adequately ensure that all aspects of the project will be adequately protected.”
READ THE FULL DECLASSIFIED KONA BLUE REPORT
AARO, The Pentagon’s specialist unit investigating UAP said “multiple” whistleblowers mentioned Kona Blue during its investigation into the alleged aircraft recovery program.
In its report, AARO stated: History and origins Kona Blue said it was “proposed” to Homeland Security leadership but “never approved or formally enacted.”
According to AARO, the project has never received any materials or funding, and the Department of Homeland Security disapproved the project in 2011 “citing concerns about the adequacy of the program’s legitimacy” and ordered it immediately halted.
According to AARO, its complete origins and history can be found at: It is here.
Chris Eberhart is a crime and U.S. news reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to chris.eberhart@fox.com or on Twitter @ChrisEberhart48.
Boeing's Starliner was mysteriously blooping like a submarine in space. Here's why.
Boeing's Starliner was mysteriously blooping like a submarine in space. Here's why.
Story by Elisha Sauers
UPDATE: Sep. 2, 2024, 7:00 PM EDT In a statement released to Mashable on Monday, Sept. 2, NASA said the pulsing sound astronaut Butch Wilmore heard coming from a speaker inside Starliner was the result of an audio configuration between the International Space Station and Starliner and has since stopped. Because many spacecraft are interconnected through the station's audio system, noise and feedback are common, the space agency said: "The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6."
Starliner's commander, astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, asked Houston mission control on Saturday why the test capsule had started emitting strange noises from a speaker. At first the sounds weren't audible, then Wilmore, 61, captured a better recording: an unnerving, perpetual blooping, similar to the pulse of a submarine's sonar ping.
"I'll let y'all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what's going on," Wilmore said in his Southern drawl over the radio.
Flight controllers didn't seem to immediately know the cause or source of the noise. Neither NASA nor Boeing, the spacecraft's developer, responded to questions from Mashable on Sunday regarding the sounds, and it was unclear whether the issue persisted. The only unusual thing Wilmore had observed at the time was the sound transmitted over the speaker. No other problems or weird configurations were happening within the capsule, he said.
Boeing's Starliner experienced propulsion problems during its crewed testflight in June 2024.
On Monday, after Mashable's report published, NASA responded to the inquiry, saying the pulsing sound coming from a speaker in Starliner has since stopped. The sound was the result of an audio configuration between the International Space Station and Starliner — a common occurrence due to the many interconnected spacecraft and modules to the audio system, the U.S. space agency said.
Related video:
Boeing Starliner to return empty: What happens to Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore? (WION)
NASA and Boeing push back Starliner's crewed return to June 18 | WION
Boeing Starliner NASA astronauts give update from International Space Station | full video
"The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6," NASA said in an emailed statement.
Though the agency recently decided Wilmore and his crewmate, pilot Sunita "Suni" Williams, would not return on Starliner but a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Starliner remains docked at the space station some 250 miles above Earth. It is expected to stay there until departing for a robotic landing without passengers no earlier than 6:04 p.m. ET Friday, Sept. 6.
If all goes as planned, Starliner will touch down at the Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico about six hours later. A system of parachutes and air bags should cushion its drop over the desert shortly after midnight on Sept. 7.
The pulsing sounds were the latest in a series of quandaries related to Starliner, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in June for its first test flight carrying people. The issue was first reported by Ars Technica on Sunday, based on a posting of the space station chatter in a NASASpaceflight.com forum.
Boeing Starliner's test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February 2025.
Veteran astronauts Wilmore and Williams were in limbo this summer while NASA leadership and Boeing managers discussed whether Starliner was safe to bring them home. During their flight to the space station, Starliner experienced propulsion issues.
What should have been an eight-day stint in space for them will now stretch for eight months. Both will be incorporated as regular crew members of Expedition 71/72 through February 2025 and will return with the agency’s Crew-9 mission. In the fallout, two astronauts who were originally assigned to Crew-9 — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — lost their ride to space to free up a pair of seats for Wilmore and Williams to come home.
"I'll let y'all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what's going on."
Getting Starliner through its testing phase has been a relentless battle for Boeing, though its representatives have not always been forthcoming on why the program has suffered so many setbacks. A string of issues has spanned a decade.
After the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, NASA hitched all of its rides on Russian rockets to the space station, costing the United States tens of millions of dollars per ride. Some considered it a national embarrassment.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the station in 2014. While SpaceX's capsule went into service four years ago, Boeing's Starliner has yet to obtain certification for regular flight operations.
NASA never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk's basket and says Starliner is still crucial to have as a backup. Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for space operations, hinted that the agency expects Starliner to fly again.
"We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations," he said in a statement. "We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station."
This story has been updated from an earlier version to include a NASA statement explaining the nature of the pulsing sound within Starliner.
NASA has an explanation for the “strange noise” emitted by Boeing Co.’s Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station.
The noise was heard by astronaut Butch Wilmore, who radioed mission control about the sound Saturday, as first reported by Ars Technica. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker [on Starliner],” he said. “I don’t know what’s making it … I don’t know if there’s something that’s maybe connected between here and there making that happen,” he added.
NASA said the noise — which is no longer being emitted — was the result of an audio configuration between the Boeing capsule and the International Space Station. Boeing referred MarketWatch to NASA for comment.
“A pulsing sound from a speaker in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heard by NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore aboard the International Space Station has stopped. The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner,” NASA’s Commercial Crew program wrote Monday on X, formerly Twitter. “The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback.”
“The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system,” the Commercial Crew program added. “The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6.”
Related video: NASA Infusing Fast Laser Communications On Space Missions (Dailymotion)
Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed with Wilmore and his fellow crewmember Suni Williams returning in a SpaceX capsule after the Boeing capsule was beset with problems. The Boeing spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously undock from the space station at approximately 6:04 p.m. Eastern time on Sept. 6 to begin the journey home, weather conditions permitting, NASA said, in an Aug. 30 statement. NASA and Boeing are targeting approximately 12:03 a.m. on Sept. 7 for the landing and conclusion of the flight test at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.
NASA and Boeing have wrestled with helium leaks and thruster issues on Starliner, which launched on June 5 and arrived at the ISS the following day. The capsule was initially expected to be docked at the orbiting space lab for at least eight days before bringing the two astronauts home. They have now been there for more than 80 days.
The test, which has faced a number of delays in recent years, is the first crewed mission of the Starliner capsule. The spacecraft’s launch in June also marked the first time NASA has had three crewed vehicles in orbit.
SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission is scheduled to depart for the ISS no earlier than Sept. 24.
Alien Visitation Claims Are Widespread Societal Problem, Researcher Says
Alien Visitation Claims Are Widespread Societal Problem, Researcher Says
Around a fifth of U.K. citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO. The figures are even higher in the U.S. — and rising. The number of people who believe UFO sightings offer likely proof of alien life increased from 20% in 1996 to 34% in 2022. Some 24% of Americans say they’ve seen a UFO. In his new paper in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, Dr. Tony Milligan of King’s College London argues that the belief in alien visitors is no longer a quirk, but a widespread societal problem.
The idea that aliens may have visited our planet is becoming increasingly popular.
Image credit: Fernando Ribas.
The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the U.S., feel they have to respond.
The disclosure of information about claimed UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country.
Much of it plays upon familiar anti-elite tropes that both parties have been ready to use, such as the idea that the military and a secretive cabal of private commercial interests are keeping the deep truth about alien visitation hidden.
That truth is believed to involve sightings, abductions and reverse-engineered alien technology.
Belief in a cover-up is even higher than belief in alien visitation. In 2019, a Gallop poll found that a staggering 68% of Americans believed that the US government knows more about UFOs than it is telling.
This political trend has been decades in the making. Jimmy Carter promised document disclosure during his presidential campaign in 1976, several years after his own reported UFO sighting. Like so many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus.
Hillary Clinton also suggested she wanted to ‘open Pentagon files as much as I can’ during her presidential campaign against Donald Trump.
Trump suggested he’d need to ‘think about’ whether it was possible to declassify the so-called Roswell documentation.
Former president Bill Clinton claimed to have sent his chief of staff, John Podesta, down to Area 51, a highly classified US Air Force facility, just in case any of the rumors about alien technology at the site were true. It is worth nothing that Podesta is a long-time enthusiast for all things to do with UFOs.
The most prominent current advocate of document disclosure is the Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer.
His stripped back 2023 UAP disclosure bill for revealing some UAP records was co-sponsored by three Republican senators.
Pentagon disclosure finally began during the early stages of Joe Biden’s term of office, but so far there has been nothing to see. Nothing looks like an encounter. Nothing looks close.
Still, the background noise does not go away.
This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid — 1I/2017 U1 (’Oumuamua).
Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
Problems for Society
All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions.
There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51.
And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.
Too much background noise about UFOs and UAPs can also get in the way of legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life.
Astrobiology, the science dealing with such matters, has a far less effective publicity machine than UFOlogy.
History, a YouTube channel part owned by Disney, regularly delivers shows about ‘ancient aliens.’ The show is now in its 20th season and the channel has 13.8 million subscribers.
The NASA astrobiology channel has a hard won 20,000 subscribers. Actual science finds itself badly outnumbered by entertainment repackaged as factual.
Alien visitation narratives have also repeatedly tried to hijack and overwrite the history and mythology of indigenous people.
The first steps in this direction go back to Alexander Kazantsev’s science fiction tale Explosion: The Story of a Hypothesis (1946). It presents the 1908 Tunguska meteorite impact event as a Nagasaki-like explosion of an alien spacecraft engine.
In Kazantsev’s tale, a single giant black female survivor has been left stranded, equipped with special healing powers. This led to her adoption as a shaman by the indigenous Evenki people.
NASA and the space science community do support efforts such as the Native Skywatchers initiative set up by the indigenous Ojibwe and Lakota communities to ensure the survival of storytelling about the stars. There is a real and extensive network of indigenous scholarship about these matters.
But UFOlogists promise a far higher profile for indigenous history in return for the mashing together of genuine indigenous stories about life arriving from the skies with fictional tales about UFOs, repackaged as suppressed history.
The modern alien visitation narrative has not, after all, emerged out of indigenous communities. Quite the opposite.
It emerged in part as a way for conspiracy-minded thinkers in a Europe torn apart by racism to ‘explain’ how complex urban civilizations in places like South America could have existed prior to European settlement.
Squeezed through a new age filter of 1960s counterculture, the narrative was flipped to value indigenous people as having once possessed advanced technology.
Once upon a time, according to this view, every indigenous civilization was Wakanda, a fictional country appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.
If all of this stayed in its own box, as entertaining fiction, then matters would be fine. But it doesn’t, and they aren’t. Visitation narratives tend to overwrite indigenous storytelling about sky and ground.
This is a problem for everyone, not just indigenous peoples struggling to continue authentic traditions. It threatens our grasp of the past. When it comes to insight into our remote ancestors, the remnants of prehistoric storytelling are few and precious, such as within indigenous storytelling about the stars.
Take the tales of the Pleiades, which date back in standard forms to at least 50,000 years ago.
This may be why these tales in particular are heavily targeted by alien visitation enthusiasts, some of whom even claim to be Pleiadeans.
No surprises, Pleiadeans do not look like the Lakota or Ojibwe, but are strikingly blond, blue-eyed and Nordic.
It is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that has real and damaging consequences.
Tony Milligan. 2024. Equivocal encounters: alien visitation claims as a societal problem. In Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union: IAUS (387). Cambridge University Press
Author: Tony Milligan, a research fellow at King’s College London.
Gewoonlijk draaien sterren rond het centrum van een sterrenstelsel, bijvoorbeeld de Melkweg: dit is het geval voor de zon en de meer dan 200 miljard sterren in ons sterrenstelsel... op één na. Sommige wetenschappers hebben een object gezien dat zo groot en zwaar is als een ster en dat zich met meer dan 1,6 miljoen kilometer per uur voortbeweegt, een snelheid die zo hoog is dat het aan de zwaartekracht van de Melkweg ontsnapt... vroeg of laat. Laten we eens kijken hoe dit mogelijk is!
Er is een ster ontdekt die op de vlucht is uit de Melkweg
We bevinden ons in het project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, dat tot taak heeft nieuwe planeten en bruine dwergen in de omgeving van ons zonnestelsel te ontdekken, ook met de hulp van amateurs. Door de beelden te bestuderen die zijn gemaakt door de Wide Field Infrared Explorer of WISE-missie en latere missies, hebben sommige amateurwetenschappers een nooit eerder gezien object gezien, een hemellichaam dat veel te snel door de ruimte beweegt, alsof het ontsnapt uit de Melkweg. Dit zijn de woorden van een van de ontdekkers, die samen met anderen een studie publiceerde in Astrophysical Journal Letters:
Ik kan het niveau van opwinding niet beschrijven. Toen ik voor het eerst zag hoe snel het bewoog, was ik ervan overtuigd dat het al was gemeld.
Het hemellichaam, CWISE J124909.08+362116.0 genaamd maar kortweg CWISE J1249 genoemd, heeft zo'n lage massa dat het moeilijk te classificeren is. Volgens onderzoekers zou het desondanks een kleine ster of een bruine dwerg kunnen zijn. Maar waarom beweegt hij zo snel?
Waarom zo'n hoge snelheid?
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Alleen al binnen het project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 zijn er al meer dan 4000 bruine dwergen geïdentificeerd, hemellichamen die het midden houden tussen een gasvormige planeet zoals Jupiter en een ster zoals de zon. Geen van hen beweegt echter met zo'n hoge snelheid dat ze zouden kunnen ontsnappen aan de zwaartekracht van de Melkweg. Bovendien heeft CWISE J1249 een andere samenstelling dan de andere bruine dwergen en sterren in ons melkwegstelsel, omdat hij minder ijzer en andere metalen bevat: hij zou deel kunnen uitmaken van de eerste generatie sterren in de Melkweg.
Over zijn snelheid hebben wetenschappers twee hypotheses bedacht. Aan de ene kant kan de bruine dwerg deel hebben uitgemaakt van een binair systeem met een witte dwerg, die op een gegeven moment explodeerde als supernova en zo de ontsnapping van CWISE J1249 in gang zette. Aan de andere kant zou de snelheid veroorzaakt kunnen zijn door een ontmoeting met een binair systeem gevormd door twee zwarte gaten, waarvan de interacties de bruine dwerg de ruimte in zouden hebben geslingerd. En uit de Melkweg.
Het belang van Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
De ontdekking van CWISE J1249 en zijn ontsnapping aan de zwaartekracht van de Melkweg is slechts het laatste succes van Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Het project bevordert de samenwerking tussen duizenden astronomen wereldwijd en heeft het mogelijk gemaakt om enorme hoeveelheden astronomische gegevens te analyseren. Het project bevordert de samenwerking tussen duizenden liefhebbers van de astronomie over de hele wereld en heeft het mogelijk gemaakt om enorme hoeveelheden astronomische gegevens te analyseren, vergelijkbaar met het project Black Hole Finder voor het zoeken naar zwarte gaten. Terwijl Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 ook uitgaat van het idee van het bestaan van een negende planeet in het zonnestelsel voorbij Neptunus, is het een initiatief dat heeft geleid tot de ontdekking van vele bruine dwergen en andere hemellichamen in ons melkwegstelsel.
In dit opzicht is het project een perfect voorbeeld van hoe wetenschap en passie voor de astronomie tot buitengewone resultaten kunnen leiden. Waaronder de ontdekking van een ster die ontsnapt uit de Melkweg, het eerste voorbeeld van een hemellichaam met zo'n hoge snelheid dat het ontsnapt aan de galactische zwaartekracht, maar niet aan onze ogen.
De geheimen rond de Bermudadriehoek De wateren rond Bermuda, dat Brits grondgebied is, hebben van meer dan 1.000 mensen het leven geëist. Veel schepen en vliegtuigen zijn op onverklaarbare wijze verdwenen in het gebied dat ligt tussen Bermuda en Miami. Door veel piloten zijn verhalen verteld over kompassen die niet meer werkten.
Mysterieuze verdwijningen en bizarre verhalen hebben geleid tot talloze complottheorieën en er heerst een akelig gevoel omtrent de Bermudadriehoek. Bekijk deze galerij om enkele van de meest intrigerende onverklaarde mysteries rond het eiland en zijn wateren te ontdekken.
George Somers Hij vertrok vanuit Plymouth in Engeland met een vloot van zeven schepen. Zijn vlaggenschip, de Sea Venture, bracht kolonisten, voedsel en goederen met zich mee.
George Somers De vloot kwam in een zware storm terecht en de schepen werden van elkaar gescheiden. Na een aantal dagen begon de Sea Venture vol met water te lopen en in een poging van wanhoop voer de uitgeputte kapitein het schip naar de riffen van wat Bermuda bleek te zijn.
George Somers Gelukkig hebben alle 150 passagiers die aan boord waren het overleefd. Ze verbleven tien maanden op het eiland en stichtten de eerste nederzetting van Bermuda.
Bermuda Volgens het toerismebureau Bermuda Attractions liggen er meer dan 300 scheepswrakken op de zeebodem rond het eiland. Waarom er zoveel schepen zijn gezonken in de wateren rond Bermuda blijft een raadsel.
Flight 19 In een groep van vijf vliegtuigen waren er in totaal veertien man aan boord, waaronder de ervaren luitenant Charles C. Taylor. Ze verdwenen allemaal spoorloos. Naar verluidt zei een van de piloten via de radio: "beide kompassen werken niet meer en ik probeer Fort Lauderdale in Florida te vinden."
Flight 19 Een opsporingsteam doorzocht in vijf dagen ruim 300.000 vierkante kilometer grondgebied. Helaas zijn er nooit overblijfselen van Flight 19 gevonden. Een boot met een zoekteam van dertien mensen verdween ook toen het op zoek was naar de vliegtuigen.
Christoffel Columbus Naar verluidt schreef hij in een van zijn memoires dat hij een vuurvlam in de zee zag slaan en dat er een paar dagen later in de verte een vreemd licht verscheen.
Mary Celeste Volgens Bermuda Attractions werd het schip drijvend in de Atlantische Oceaan aangetroffen terwijl er niemand aan boord was. Er bestaan complottheorieën rondom het mysterie van de Mary Celeste die gaan van ontvoeringen tot buitenaardse wezens, natuurrampen en zelfs paranormale activiteiten.
USS Scorpion De USS Scorpion was een kernonderzeeër van de Amerikaanse marine. Hij vertrok op 15 februari 1968 uit Norfolk, gelegen in de Amerikaanse staat Virginia, voor een operatie van drie maanden en had een 99-koppige bemanning
USS Scorpion Volgens History Net, een Amerikaanse uitgever van tijdschriften die artikelen publiceren over onderwerpen uit de geschiedenis, werd er een zoekteam ingezet toen de onderzeeër niet terugkeerde naar zijn thuishaven. De 76,5 meter lange onderzeeër verdween spoorloos.
USS Scorpion Het wrak van de onderzeeër werd in de Atlantische Oceaan voor de kust van de Azoren gevonden, maar complotdenkers hebben het mysterie van de USS Scorpion in verband gebracht met de Bermudadriehoek.
Carroll A. Deering Volgens Bermuda Attractions was er een lichtschip in staat om via de radio met de Carroll A. Deering te communiceren. De kapitein van het lichtschip hoorde een bemanningslid zeggen dat ze hun ankers waren kwijtgeraakt en dat dit aan het hoofdkwartier doorgegeven moest worden, maar de Carroll A. Deering stopte niet en voer langs het lichtschip.
US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker In 1963 kwamen naar verluidt twee KC-135-vliegtuigen van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht met elkaar in botsing en stortten ze neer in de Atlantische Oceaan. Ze werden echter gevonden op twee verschillende locaties die ruim 260 kilometer uit elkaar lagen.
De Ellen Austin De Ellen Austin was een schip dat regelmatig tussen Londen en New York door de Bermudadriehoek voer. Tijdens een van haar reizen in 1881 kwam de Ellen Austin een ander schip tegen waarop niemand aan boord was.
De Ellen Austin In een poging het verlaten schip te redden stuurde de kapitein van de Ellen Austin enkele van zijn bemanningsleden. Twee dagen lang zeilden de schepen zij aan zij totdat ze door een storm van elkaar werden gescheiden. Het verlaten schip en de nieuwe bemanning zijn nooit gevonden.
Niet opgelost en onverklaard Ondanks dat er ruim duizend mensen om het leven zijn gekomen, blijven de wateren rond Bermuda een van de drukst bevaren plekken ter wereld. Zou dit de illusie kunnen wekken dat er hier meer incidenten plaatsvinden of is er echt iets mysterieus aan de hand?
Saturn's majestic rings will vanish in just six months from now
Saturn's majestic rings will vanish in just six months from now
Story by Eric Ralls
Saturn's majestic rings will vanish in just six months from now
Most people consider Saturn's awe-inspiring system of rings that encircle the gas giant to be the most fascinating and iconic celestial feature in our solar system.
Back in the 17th century, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first spied Saturn through his ancient telescope. He compared the planet's appearance to having "ears" due to the limitations of his device.
The diligent work of scientists like Galileo Galilei has laid the foundation for our modern-day ability to explore the incredible wonders of our universe.
Over the years, advances in technology and innovative techniques have empowered astronomers, such as Dr. Lucy Jones from the esteemed Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), to delve deeper into the enigmas surrounding celestial bodies.
Through cutting-edge research and observations, they have unraveled the intricate mysteries of Saturn's rings, revealing their composition and the dynamic processes that shape them.
Cosmic vanishing act
A fast-approaching and significant cosmic event will soon dramatically alter our view of this magnificent planet. Come March 2025, Saturn's majestic rings will become virtually invisible to earth-based observers.
This phenomenon occurs due to the unique tilt of Saturn's axis, which will position the rings edge-on to our line of sight.
Related video:
Saturn and the moon to join side by side on Aug. 20(Dailymotion)
As a result, this is a rare opportunity for citizens and astronomers alike to witness this celestial transformation, while also reminding us of the ever-changing nature of our universe.
Thankfully, this isn't a permanent change. It's a fleeting cosmic event that recurs every 29.5 years, which is how long it takes Saturn to orbit the Sun. After March 2025, Saturn's axial tilt will bring the rings back into view, then vanish again in November 2025.
So, the rings are not really disappearing but rather playing a celestial game of hide and seek. At their reappearance, we can also enjoy an accentuated view of Saturn's moons.
Saturn's ring structure
So, what are Saturn's rings really made of? Mostly, they consist of ice particles, rocky debris, and cosmic dust, creating a stunning spectacle visible from Earth with a telescope.
Picture a bustling city with buildings of all sizes. Similarly, the ring particles vary from tiny grains, about the size of sand, to huge chunks as big as houses or even school buses. This mix gives the rings their intriguing look.
Saturn's rings aren't just one solid structure. They're made up of several distinct sections, including the A, B, and C rings, along with the fainter D, E, F, and G rings that are harder to see.
These sections are separated by gaps, like the well-known Cassini Division between the A and B rings, which is around 4,800 kilometers wide. The shapes and setups of these rings are mainly shaped by gravitational interactions with Saturn's many moons.
Some of these moons, dubbed "shepherd moons," hang out near the edges of the rings and help keep things in shape by pulling on the ring particles with their gravity.
As for how Saturn's rings came to be, that's still a hot topic among astronomers. There are plenty of theories, from being the leftovers of a destroyed moon or comet that got torn apart by Saturn's strong gravity to materials left over from when Saturn formed over 4 billion years ago.
Each theory has its own fascinating ideas, and ongoing research keeps revealing new insights about these amazing structures that orbit the planet.
This ambitious journey to uncover the cool mysteries of Saturn and its stunning rings started when the spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, kicking off a thorough 13-year exploration that wrapped up in 2017.
Throughout its journey, the Cassini-Huygens mission brought us a treasure trove of information about Saturn and its complex system. One of the coolest finds was discovering gaps in the rings, especially the Cassini Division, which is the noticeable space between the A and B rings.
This division is shaped by the gravitational pull of Saturn's moons, showcasing how dynamic and ever-changing the ring system really is.
The mission also gave us deeper insights into Saturn's many moons, revealing their unique compositions and geological features. For example, Enceladus, one of Saturn's icy moons, has geysers that shoot out water vapor and organic materials, hinting at the possibility of subsurface oceans.
Thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission, scientists gained valuable insights into the intricate dance of moons and rings around Saturn, completely transforming our understanding of the planet and its unique traits.
Saturn's moons and magnetic field
There is much more to Saturn than just those incredible rings. In fact, Saturn boasts a minimum of 145 moons, each with its own unique characteristics and mysteries.
Among these, Titan, the second-largest moon in the Solar System, truly steals the show with its thick atmosphere and intriguing surface. Interestingly, Titan has a magnetic field that, while weaker than Jupiter's, is stronger than Earth's, indicating complex interactions with Saturn's magnetic environment.
Titan radiates powerful radio waves, particularly from its spectacular auroras at the poles, which can provide valuable insights into both Titan's atmosphere and the overall dynamics of Saturn's magnetic field. The upcoming Dragonfly mission will search for life on Titan.
That said, Titan's mysteries pale in comparison to what we might find on Enceladus. Cassini discovered the presence of vital components for life on this icy Saturnian moon.
Based on this data, experts have identified crucial organic compounds and a potent energy source, hinting at the moon's potential to support life.
"Not only does Enceladus seem to meet the basic requirements for habitability, we now have an idea about how complex biomolecules could form there, and what sort of chemical pathways might be involved," explains Jonah Peter, a doctoral student at Harvard University who conducted the research while working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Stargazers, Saturn, and those magnificent rings
To sum it all up, as Saturn's rings prepare to vanish from view in March 2025, stargazers have a unique opportunity to witness this fleeting cosmic event.
The rings will align edge-on with Earth, making them virtually invisible and highlighting the dynamic nature of celestial objects.
For now, Saturn remains a captivating target for those with telescopes or high-powered binoculars. The planet's stunning rings, composed of countless ice particles and rocky debris, offer a glimpse into the complex and beautiful structure of our solar system.
ESA lanceert nieuwe satelliet die waterkwaliteit, natuurrampen en methaanuitstoot beter in kaart kan brengen
ESA lanceert nieuwe satelliet die waterkwaliteit, natuurrampen en methaanuitstoot beter in kaart kan brengen
Artikel door Michaël Torfs
De lancering maakt deel uit van ESA's Sentinel 2-programma, een project dat in samenwerking met de Europese Commissie loopt. De Sentinel-2C zal de Sentinel-2A vervangen. Die was gelanceerd in juni 2015 en intussen staan we heel wat verder, wat voor een grote verbetering zal zorgen in de aangeleverde data. Dat zegt Inge Jonckheere van de ESA in een gesprek met VRT NWS.
Jonckheere werkt als directeur van de Green Solutions Division bij ESA die satellietdata gebruikt voor alle mogelijke wetenschappelijke en maatschappelijke toepassingen, specifiek dan voor het observeren van de aarde, het milieu en het klimaat.
Over de missie
De Sentinel 2-missie telt 2 identieke satellieten, Sentinel 2A (gelanceerd in 2015) en Sentinel 2B (2017), die in dezelfde baan vliegen maar 180 graden uit elkaar om de dekking en de revisit-tijd te optimaliseren. De satellieten draaien elke 100 minuten in een baan om de aarde en bestrijken elke 5 dagen alle landoppervlakken, grote eilanden, binnenwateren en kustwateren.
Eenmaal in een baan om de aarde zal Sentinel-2C zijn voorganger Sentinel-2A vervangen, terwijl Sentinel-2D later Sentinel-2B zal vervangen om de continuïteit van gegevens na 2035 te waarborgen.
Sneller data, en een goed oog
De combinatie met de nog actieve Sentinel-2B wordt voortaan beter. Er zullen vaker data binnenlopen, wetenschappers zullen zowat om de week een update krijgen van wat er op de grond gebeurt.
"We zullen met deze satellietcombinatie elke 5 tot 10 dagen beeld hebben van een specifiek gebied, afhankelijk van de breedtegraad - tegenover ongeveer tweewekelijks met 1 satelliet - waardoor de tijdsresolutie preciezer wordt", zegt Jonckheere.
"We krijgen daardoor bijna continu een aanvoer van data. En hoe meer data je hebt, hoe beter de opvolging van natuurlijke processen en extreme events."
En er is meer. De nieuwe optische satelliet heeft ook een relatief scherp oog. "Je moet rekenen op een grondresolutie van 10 tot 30 meter, wat relatief gezien behoorlijk nauwkeurig is. Sommige satellieten die gebruikt worden voor het klimaat hebben amper een paar kilometer resolutie."
Het is wel zo dat wolken de observatie kunnen verstoren, maar net daarvoor is het zo belangrijk dat de omlooptijd door het gebruik van de 2 satellieten nu een stuk korter gaat worden.
Van methaan tot algenbloei in het water
De nieuwe satelliet heeft toepassingen voor landbouw, waterkwaliteit, natuurrampen en de uitstoot van het sterke broeikasgas methaan.
Landbouw/bosbouw:"We kunnen opvolgen hoe vochtig het is in een bepaalde regio en hoe goed de Green Index is, die ook een aanwijzing geeft over hoe gezond een stuk land is. Zo kan je bijvoorbeeld de landbouw helpen", schetst Jonckheere. Ze verwijst naar het World Cereal-project dat geleid wordt door de Vlaamse Instelling voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek VITO en gewassen als granen en maïs wereldwijd in kaart brengt.
Waterkwaliteit: onderzoekers kunnen zien hoeveel water (of niet) er is in een bepaald gebied en hoe dat evolueert. Het is ook interessant om waterkwaliteit in kaart te brengen, bijvoorbeeld wat betreft het bloeien van bepaalde algen. Onderzoekers kunnen een soort kwaliteitsindex van het rivierwater opmaken, of onder meer ook afval op zee in beeld brengen.
Natuurrampen: na pakweg een zware bosbrand kan de satelliet in kaart brengen of en hoe snel een gebied zich herstelt, en waar moet worden bijgestuurd. Of hoe groot de impact van overstromingen is, of hoe snel gletsjers wegsmelten.
Methaan: de methaanuitstoot is de jongste jaren naar historische hoogtes gestegen. Voor een deel is dat rechtstreeks het gevolg van bijvoorbeeld olie- of gaswinning met lekkend methaan. Dat moet nog beter in kaart worden gebracht, ook al om landen die zeggen inspanningen te doen goed te kunnen opvolgen. Dat is belangrijk voor het klimaat, want methaan zou momenteel voor ongeveer 30 procent van de klimaatopwarming verantwoordelijk zijn (na CO₂).
De ESA gaf deze illustratie vrij van de lancering van de Sentinal-2C.
Zoveel mogelijk op eigen benen staan in tijden van AI (en fake data)
De lancering is niet enkel van belang voor meer en betere data. Het gaat er ook om dat Europa zelf zoveel mogelijk op eigen benen wil staan wat betreft datagaring. Momenteel is er voor zulke aardobservatie- programma's veel samenwerking met bijvoorbeeld de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA en/of met China, en worden veel data samengelegd.
Maar wat als Trump verkozen raakt als VS-president en het programma afbouwt, of wat als China geld vraagt? "Hoe meer ownership Europa zelf heeft, hoe beter", onderstreept Jonckheere.
Bovendien kan Europa de eigen garing 100 procent betrouwen: "We zien dat er door artificiële intelligentie (AI) valse satellietdata circuleren via deep fakes. Bij eigen garing heb je de garantie dat het wel degelijk om authentieke data gaat."
De Sentinel-data zijn open en worden met iedereen gedeeld, zoals ook de NASA dat doet. Ze zullen onder meer gebruikt worden door de Europese klimaatdienst Copernicus.
'Fingers crossed' (want het ging al eens verkeerd)
Hoe veelbelovend de nieuwe satelliet ook klinkt, ze moet komende nacht eerst nog met succes naar de ruimte worden gestuurd. De ESA wacht toch met een beetje spanning de lancering in Kourou, Frans-Guyana, af.
Sentinel-2C wordt de ruimte ingestuurd door de Vega-draagraket, waarvoor het overigens de laatste vlucht wordt. De Vega-raket heeft geen vlekkeloze reputatie. Zo gingen er in december 2022 2 kostbare satellieten verloren toen een lancering mislukte.
Geld op het spel, maar vooral continuïteit
Anderzijds ging het vaak wel goed, zoals in oktober vorig jaar toen Vega enkele Belgische instrumenten meenam van de Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek (VITO). De lancering is voorzien voor 3.50 uur vannacht, maar uitstel is altijd mogelijk als het weer zou tegenzitten.
Bij ESA schuiven ze toch wat zenuwachtig heen en weer op hun stoel. Een satelliet zou tussen de 50 en 100 miljoen euro kosten, de lancering zelf 20 miljoen. Maar het zou vooral jammer zijn voor de opeenvolging van data, zegt Jonckheere. "Dan zou er geen datacontinuïteit verzekerd zijn, wat net een van de grote troeven is van het programma."
Research led by Tony Milligan, King's College London
Image credit: _freakwave_ @ pixabay.com
The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO.
This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What’s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we’d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.
The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the US, feel they have to respond. The disclosure of information about claimed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs rather than UFOs) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country.
Much of it plays upon familiar anti-elite tropes that both parties have been ready to use, such as the idea that the military and a secretive cabal of private commercial interests are keeping the deep truth about alien visitation hidden. That truth is believed to involve sightings, abductions, and reverse-engineered alien technology.
Belief in a cover-up is even higher than belief in alien visitation. In 2019, a Gallop poll found that a staggering 68% of Americans believed that “the US government knows more about UFOs than it is telling”.
This political trend has been decades in the making. Jimmy Carter promised document disclosure during his presidential campaign in 1976, several years after his own reported UFO sighting. Like so many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus. (That happens a lot.)
Hillary Clinton also suggested she wanted to “open [Pentagon] files as much as I can” during her presidential campaign against Donald Trump. As seen in the video below, Trump suggested he’d need to “think about” whether it was possible to declassify the so-called Roswell documentation (relating to the notorious claimed crash of a UFO and the recovery of alien bodies).
Former president Bill Clinton claimed to have sent his chief of staff, John Podesta, down to Area 51, a highly classified US Air Force facility, just in case any of the rumors about alien technology at the site were true. It is worth noting that Podesta is a long-time enthusiast for all things to do with UFOs.
The most prominent current advocate of document disclosure is the Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer. His stripped back 2023 UAP disclosure bill for revealing some UAP records was co-sponsored by three Republican senators.
Pentagon disclosure finally began during the early stages of Joe Biden’s term of office, but so far there has been nothing to see. Nothing looks like an encounter. Nothing looks close.
Still, the background noise does not go away.
Problems for society
All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.
Too much background noise about UFOs and UAPs can also get in the way of legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology, the science dealing with such matters, has a far less effective publicity machine than UFOlogy.
History, a YouTube channel part owned by Disney, regularly delivers shows about “ancient aliens”. The show is now in its 20th season and the channel has 13.8 million subscribers. The NASA astrobiology channel has a hard won 20,000 subscribers. Actual science finds itself badly outnumbered by entertainment repackaged as factual.
Alien visitation narratives have also repeatedly tried to hijack and overwrite the history and mythology of indigenous people.
The first steps in this direction go back to Alexander Kazantsev’s science fiction tale Explosion: The Story of a Hypothesis (1946). It presents the 1908 Tunguska meteorite impact event as a Nagasaki-like explosion of an alien spacecraft engine. In Kazantsev’s tale, a single giant black female survivor has been left stranded, equipped with special healing powers. This lead to her adoption as a shaman by the indigenous Evenki people.
NASA and the space science community do support efforts such as the Native Skywatchers initiative set up by the indigenous Ojibwe and Lakota communities to ensure the survival of storytelling about the stars. There is a real and extensive network of indigenous scholarship about these matters.
But UFOlogists promise a far higher profile for indigenous history in return for the mashing together of genuine indigenous stories about life arriving from the skies with fictional tales about UFOs, repackaged as suppressed history.
The modern alien visitation narrative has not, after all, emerged out of indigenous communities. Quite the opposite. It emerged in part as a way for conspiracy-minded thinkers in a Europe torn apart by racism to “explain” how complex urban civilizations in places like South America could have existed prior to European settlement.
Squeezed through a new age filter of 1960s counterculture, the narrative was flipped to value indigenous people as having once possessed advanced technology. Once upon a time, according to this view, every indigenous civilization was Wakanda, a fictional country appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.
If all of this stayed in its own box, as entertaining fiction, then matters would be fine. But it doesn’t, and they aren’t. Visitation narratives tend to overwrite indigenous storytelling about sky and ground.
This is a problem for everyone, not just indigenous peoples struggling to continue authentic traditions. It threatens our grasp of the past. When it comes to insight into our remote ancestors, the remnants of prehistoric storytelling are few and precious, such as within indigenous storytelling about the stars.
This may be why these tales in particular are heavily targeted by alien visitation enthusiasts, some of whom even claim to be “Pleiadeans”. No surprises, Pleiadeans do not look like the Lakota or Ojibwe, but are strikingly blond, blue-eyed, and Nordic.
It is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that has real and damaging consequences.
Ganymede Was Struck by Giant Asteroid 4 Billion Years Ago, New Research Suggests
Ganymede Was Struck by Giant Asteroid 4 Billion Years Ago, New Research Suggests
Jupiter’s moon Ganymede has an ancient impact structure called a furrow system. This system is the largest impact structure in the outer Solar System, and the impact should have significantly affected Ganymede’s early history.
Distribution of furrows and location of the center of the furrow system shown in the hemisphere that always faces away from Jupiter (top) and the cylindrical projection map of Ganymede (bottom). The gray regions represent geologically young terrain without furrows. Furrows (green lines) exist only on geologically old terrains (black regions).
Ganymede is the largest satellite in the Solar System and has many unique features, including tectonic troughs known as furrows.
Furrows are the oldest surface features recognized on Ganymede because they are crosscut by any impact craters with diameters exceeding 10 km. They can provide a window into the early history of this moon.
Furrows have been proposed to be fragments of multiring impact basin structures, similar to those of the Valhalla or Asgard basins on Callisto.
The largest furrow system is present across Galileo and Marius Regios — the so-called Galileo-Marius furrow system — and it is the remnant of an ancient giant impact, which extends concentrically from a single point of Ganymede.
“The Jupiter moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all have interesting individual characteristics, but the one that caught my attention was these furrows on Ganymede,” said Kobe University planetologist Naoyuki Hirata, author of a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Kobe University HIRATA Naoyuki was the first to realize that the location of an asteroid impact on Jupiter's moon Ganymede is almost precisely on the meridian farthest away from Jupiter. This implied that Ganymede had undergone a reorientation of its rotational axis and allowed Hirata to calculate what kind of impact could have caused this to happen.
Credit: HIRATA Naoyuki
“We know that this feature was created by an asteroid impact about 4 billion years ago, but we were unsure how big this impact was and what effect it had on the moon.”
First, Dr. Hirata realized that the purported location of the impact is almost precisely on the meridian farthest away from Jupiter.
“Drawing from similarities with an impact event on Pluto that caused the dwarf planet’s rotational axis to shift and that we learned about through NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, this implied that Ganymede, too, had undergone such a reorientation,” he said.
According to the study, an asteroid that hit Ganymede probably had a diameter of around 300 km — about 20 times as large as the Chicxulub asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago and ended the age of the dinosaurs — and created a transient crater between 1,400 and 1,600 km in diameter.
Only an impact of this size would make it likely that the change in the distribution of mass could cause the moon’s rotational axis to shift into its current position. This result holds true irrespective of where on the surface the impact occurred.
“I want to understand the origin and evolution of Ganymede and other Jupiter moons,” Dr. Hirata said.
On large parts of its surface, the Jupiter moon Ganymede is covered by furrows (right) that form concentric circles around one specific spot (left, red cross), which led researchers in the 1980s to conclude that they are the results of a major impact event.
Credit: HIRATA Naoyuki
Distribution of furrows and the location of the center of the furrow system shown in the hemisphere that always faces away from Jupiter (top) and the cylindrical projection map of Ganymede (bottom). The gray regions represent geologically young terrain without furrows. Furrows (green lines) exist only on geologically old terrains (black regions).
Credit: HIRATA Naoyuki
“The giant impact must have had a significant impact on the early evolution of Ganymede, but the thermal and structural effects of the impact on the interior of Ganymede have not yet been investigated at all.”
“I believe that further research applying the internal evolution of ice moons could be carried out next.”
N. Hirata. 2024. Giant impact on early Ganymede and its subsequent reorientation. Sci Rep 14, 19982; doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-69914-2
Kurt Russell’s Shocking UFO Encounter: Reporting Six UFOs Over Phoenix, Arizona
Kurt Russell’s Shocking UFO Encounter: Reporting Six UFOs Over Phoenix, Arizona
In the realm of UFO sightings, one of the most intriguing and well-documented incidents is the “Phoenix Lights” event, which occurred on March 13, 1997. Among the many witnesses to this mysterious phenomenon was Hollywood actor Kurt Russell, who later revealed that he was the pilot who first reported the unusual lights in the Arizona skies. Russell’s account adds a unique and personal perspective to the ongoing fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
The Phoenix Lights Incident
The Phoenix Lights incident is one of the most significant UFO sightings in the United States. On that night in 1997, thousands of people across Arizona reported seeing a massive, V-shaped formation of lights silently moving across the sky. The phenomenon was visible for hours and was witnessed by people in various locations, including Phoenix, Tucson, and the Sonoran Desert. Despite numerous eyewitness accounts, the lights’ origin remains a mystery, leading to widespread speculation and debate.
Kurt Russell’s Encounter
Kurt Russell’s involvement in the Phoenix Lights incident was not widely known until he discussed it years later during an interview. At the time of the sighting, Russell was flying a private plane into Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport with his son. As they approached the airport, they noticed six bright lights in a row, hovering in the sky in a formation that defied conventional explanation.
Concerned about the unusual sight, Russell contacted air traffic control to report what he was seeing. Interestingly, air traffic control informed him that no other planes were in the vicinity, and there were no military exercises or activities scheduled that could account for the lights. Russell’s report to the authorities is now recognized as one of the first official accounts of the Phoenix Lights.
The Aftermath and Speculation
Following the sighting, the Phoenix Lights incident gained national attention, with media coverage and investigations by both civilian and military organizations. While some officials claimed the lights were simply flares dropped by military aircraft during training exercises, many witnesses, including Kurt Russell, remain unconvinced by this explanation. The lack of definitive answers has only fueled speculation about the true nature of the lights.
Kurt Russell’s account adds a significant layer to the story because of his credibility as a public figure and his background as a licensed pilot. His detailed description of the six UFOs and his proactive approach in reporting the sighting make his story one of the most compelling aspects of the Phoenix Lights phenomenon.
Legacy of the Phoenix Lights
Over two decades later, the Phoenix Lights incident remains one of the most discussed and analyzed UFO sightings in history. It has inspired documentaries, books, and countless theories about extraterrestrial life and government cover-ups. Kurt Russell’s revelation that he was the pilot who reported the sighting has only added to the intrigue, cementing his place in UFO lore.
Russell himself has expressed a mix of curiosity and bewilderment about the incident. In interviews, he has admitted that the experience was strange and unexplainable, leaving him with more questions than answers. For many, his testimony is a reminder that even the most grounded and skeptical individuals can encounter phenomena that challenge their understanding of the world.
VIDEO:
Kurt Russell Reports SIX UFOs Flying Above Pheonix In Arizona | UFO Witness
Kurt Russell Shares UFO "Phoenix Lights" Experience | UFO Witness
Kurt Russell’s report of six UFOs over Phoenix, Arizona, is a fascinating chapter in the larger story of the Phoenix Lights incident. His experience as a pilot and a public figure adds credibility and intrigue to an event that continues to captivate those interested in UFOs and unexplained aerial phenomena. Whether or not the Phoenix Lights were of extraterrestrial origin, the mystery remains unsolved, leaving room for ongoing speculation and wonder.
Black Hole in a Planet's Orbit Could Indicate an Advanced Civilization An English mathematical physicist and Nobel-prize winner named Roger Penrose hypothesized how energy could be extracted from a rotating black hole in 1971. He proposed constructing a harness around the black hole's accretion disk—where infalling matter reaches near-light speeds—which would trigger an enormous release of energy across multiple wavelengths.
Since then, several scientists have proposed that advanced civilizations might use this idea—dubbed the Penrose Process—to power their technology. This technological possibility suggests just one interesting technosignature that scientists looking for life beyond Earth could search for in outer space.
Following Hypotheses Building upon this idea, scientist John M. Smart has proposed the Transcension Hypothesis. In this hypothesis, he suggested that advanced intelligence may migrate to regions surrounding black holes. There, they could take advantage of the energy available.
The latest idea based on the Penrose Process comes from Harvard Professor Avi Loeb. His paper where he poses his latest findings and ideas, "Illumination of a Planet by a Black Hole Moon as a Technological Signature," was recently published in the scientific journal Research Notes of the AAS.
Avi Loeb’s Paper Professor Avi Loeb is an extremely accomplished scientist. He is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, the Director of the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics (CfA), the founding Director of the Black Hole Initiative (BHI), and the head of the Galileo Project.
In his latest paper, he proposed that advanced civilizations could rely on a "Black Hole Moon" to provide their home planet with power indefinitely. He argues that the way a black hole would light up the planet it orbits could serve as a potential technosignature for future SETI surveys. (SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.)
Stephen Hawking’s Theory In 1975, Stephen Hawking theorized that black holes emit photons, neutrinos, and some larger particles. These theoretical larger particles have been called "Hawking Radiation." Since then, proposals for harnessing black holes as an energy source typically fall into one of two categories.
Some scientists believe in the possibility of the Penrose Process, which involves capturing the energy from angular momentum of black hole accretion disks. Similarly, some believe that capturing the heat and energy generated by black hole hypervelocity jets would be possible, perhaps in the form of a Dyson Sphere. On the other hand, some believe that these black-hole-civilizations would have to feed matter into the black hole they rely on and harness the resulting Hawking Radiation in order to create power.
An Orbiting Black Hole Engine In his recent paper, Loeb proposed that an advanced alien civilization could rely on the latter process by engineering a black hole to orbit their home planet. This black hole would be relatively very small, weighing just one hundred thousand tons (10-11 g). (Yes, this sounds like a lot, but it is not in terms of black holes.)
However, without any sort of maintenance, this black hole would evaporate in just a year and a half through the emission of Hawking Radiation. Loeb explained that, luckily for any potential civilization, a black hole could be sustained by giving it small amounts of matter—about 4.85 lbs (2.2 kg) per second. In return, the black hole would offer a continuous supply of power.
Powerful and Efficient “This black hole system is the most efficient engine that I ever thought about,” Loeb explained. “The fuel is converted to energy with the perfect efficiency of 100%, because the mass falling into the black hole is ultimately coming out as Hawking Radiation. I have not seen this idea discussed before and had a ‘Eureka moment’ when I realized it a few weeks ago.”
According to Loeb, the amount of antimatter needed is currently beyond humanity’s capabilities—a civilization more advanced than our own would have to figure that out. However, Loeb's proposed 10-11 g black hole could continuously supply 40 quadrillion Watts of power, which is certainly enough to power a planet.
Using Waste for Energy "The global energy use is a few terra-Watts, ten thousand times less than the power supply of this black hole," Loeb explained. Another benefit is that a black hole can use any type of matter as fuel, including the waste generated by a civilization. In this way, a black hole engine could address an advanced civilization's waste disposal issues while simultaneously offering a limitless source of energy.
"The other advantage of this black hole engine is that it can use any form of matter as fuel,” Loeb said. “It could be trash. There is no better way to recycle trash than convert it into clean energy with 100% efficiency."
Possible for Advanced Civilizations Humans produce roughly 1.92 billion metric tons of waste annually. This is having a severe impact on our planet Earth. However, this would be enough to feed a black hole of Loeb’s proposed size for more than 437 million years.
According to Loeb, a black hole engine that uses waste as its energy source would be much simpler than other proposed alien energy sources. Theoretically, it would be technology that a Type II civilization could engineer (for reference, Earth is only _almost_ a Type I civilization).
A Technosignature on Earth “This is the big challenge,” Loeb said. “Any production line of a 10-11 g black hole requires compressing matter or radiation to a mass density that is 60 orders of magnitude above the density of solid iron. The density of atomic nuclei or neutron stars is only 15 orders of magnitude above solid density. This was possible to achieve in the cosmic radiation density less than a femtosecond after the Big Bang."
In another recently written paper by Loeb, he argued that, based on the theory of General Relativity, black holes could be made out of light. According to his theories, this proposed black hole engine would be detectable light-years away, which might be most interesting about his hypothesis. This would make black hole engines viable technosignatures that would indicate the existence of a far-away advanced civilization to scientists.
Potential Extraterrestrial Power As with many proposed technosignatures—such as science-fiction-like Dyson Spheres and other megastructures—the idea of a black hole engine remains speculative and theoretical. However, as Freeman Dyson noted, if something is within the realm of our imagination and the underlying physics are valid, a sufficiently advanced civilization might already be employing it.
Loeb speculated, “The black hole engine could be discovered as a rogue rocky planet that is illuminated by a gamma-ray moon with no stellar-mass companion. If we ever find evidence for such an engine, we would need to consider the possibility that the source was created or trapped as a primordial black hole by a highly advanced technological civilization. There is no better marker of technological innovation than creating a furnace out of spacetime curvature in the form of a mini black hole.” Loeb’s hypothesis is another interesting theory posed by scientists that could help to confirm life beyond our Earth.
Video by The Atlantic. Source: Sobli / RDB / ullstein bild / Getty.
At a meeting in NASA headquarters yesterday, the public had some blunt questions about UFOs, or, as the government now calls them, “unexplained anomalous phenomena.” A NASA spokesperson summarized them aloud: “What is NASA hiding, and where are you hiding it? How much has been shared publicly? Has NASA ever cut the live NASA TV feed away from something? Has NASA released all UAP evidence it has ever received? What about NASA astronauts—do they have an NDA or clearance that does not allow them to speak about UAP sightings? What are the science overlords hiding?” In short: Are you guys lying to everyone?
There was some gentle laughter among the panelists, whom NASA had convened on the subject. No, NASA “has never intentionally cut a live feed to hide anything,” a senior agency official said. A retired astronaut who worked at NASA for 20 years chimed in: “There was never any formal or informal discussions at all about UAPs or UFOs or anyone reporting anything that would suggest something from beyond our planet.” An astrobiologist—the kind of scientist whose job revolves around finding extraterrestrial life—said that scientists are a “rebellious” type, and if someone told him to keep a secret as big as this, he’d want to spill.
The group had spent the past several months examining reports of strange sightings in the sky, and yesterday’s hours-long event was its first (and only) public meeting. The NASA-organized committee, a mix of scientists and industry experts, did not make any dramatic pronouncements. The main takeaway was what we’ve heard all along. “Many events have conventional explanations,” David Spergel, an astrophysicist who chairs the committee, told reporters. (See: balloons.) “There remain events that we do not understand,” he said, “but these events tend to be characterized by poor-quality, limited data.” Ultimately, the group found UAP data “insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event,” Spergel said.
But in doing this work, NASA has discovered a different truth: Talking about UFOs can be a nasty business. If you publicly investigate, contemplate, or even breathe about UFOs, you will probably be harassed on the internet. Several of the panelists “have been subjected to online abuse due to their decision to participate on this panel,” Dan Evans, the NASA official assigned to the committee, said at the outset of the meeting. “A NASA security team is actively addressing this issue.’ (Evans later told me that there were “specific attacks on the character of individuals.”) And then there are the accusatory questions and distrust from the public. The agency has finally opened the doors to serious discussions about UFOs, and what it’s gotten instead is seriously toxic.
NASA has historically steered clear of anything involving UFOs, leaving the matter up to other federal agencies, which operated clandestine UFO programs for military and national-security purposes. The world’s top space agency was more concerned with searching for alien life far beyond Earth’s atmosphere—around planets orbiting other stars, for example—than weird things in our own sky. But UFOs have been popping up in the news quite a bit in recent years, thanks to newspaper reports on those secret government programs and the resulting congressional hearings. But last year, NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, seemed to succumb to the pull of UFOs and directed the agency to form a panel of experts.
Spergel and the other members of the committee stressed that their goal was not to conduct an exhaustive investigation of every frame of grainy footage but to provide a “roadmap” for NASA that details how the agency could contribute to the future study and analysis of UFOs. The panel did not have access to any classified data either. That approach was bound to provoke those who believe that some reported UFOs have extraterrestrial origins, and that the government—and perhaps now NASA too—is hiding that fact.
Despite the high emotions surrounding UFOs, nearly all public meetings on the subject are quite anticlimactic, and distinctly lacking in someone unfurling a giant sign from the ceiling that declares, once and for all, WE FOUND THE ALIENS. I’ve covered the space industry for years, and to me, the most surprising result was how absorbed NASA seemed to be in the discussion. Last year, a NASA official said a dedicated UAP-research effort would pose a “reputational risk” for the agency. But yesterday, this committee was advising NASA to approach UFOs in a way that the agency has not done in its nearly 65-year existence. Instead of opting out, the panelists said that NASA should help reduce the stigma surrounding UFOs; one expert from the Federal Aviation Administration said that the agency should “leverage its brand image” to do so. Evans, the NASA official, was also on board, saying, “It’s now our collective responsibility to investigate these occurrences with the rigorous scientific scrutiny that they deserve.”
The NASA panel must now draw up a formal report to deliver to agency leaders this summer. One panelist said that NASA should set up its own UFO office, a modest but dedicated force, to collect and archive data alongside other, more serious programs in the Defense Department. But first, NASA would probably like everyone to stop getting worked up over aliens. Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science missions, said yesterday that “harassment only leads to further stigmatization of the UAP field, significantly hindering scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter.” Indeed, the road to understanding the nature of UFOs will be paved with abuse and, as NASA now knows, an ungodly number of emails. “I think every one of the 16-strong panel, plus myself, receives emails on a daily basis of all sorts concerning this subject,” Evans told me. Some of them are terrible, and, unfortunately, there’s nothing anomalous about that.
A Leicester family has finally revealed the truth behind a UFO mystery
(Image: Leicester Mercury)
A Leicestershire family has finally revealed the truth behind a decades-old UFO mystery. An unidentified flying object spotted in 1970, which puzzled locals and even involved the RAF, has been revealed to be a homemade hot air balloon.
Former RAF engine fitter and licensed pilot, Albert Jones, has been identified as the creator of the UFO which caused a stir 54 years ago. Mr Jones crafted hot air balloons using tissue paper and firelighters as part of their annual bonfire night celebrations.
Martin Jones, 64, from Whitwick, near Coalville, shared the story to mark what would have been his father's 100th birthday. He revealed how his father swore him and his friends to secrecy at the time. He said: "He was worried about repercussions once the RAF got involved."
A 1970 edition of the Leicester Mercury referred to the handmade balloon as 'space objects'(Image: Rebecca Jones)
One of these balloons landed in a garden on Nursery Road, Leicester, sparking a UFO sighting report. A Leicester Mercury report from November 7, 1970, covered the incident with the headline "Space objects crash-land". In it, the article showed Iris Draper, of Nursery Road, Scraptoft Lane, who had discovered one of the "UFOs" in her back garden.
The object was described as a 12-foot-long white paper balloon attached to a 4-foot wooden hoop, with a wooden cross supporting a small wire basket.
The RAF and Met Office were unable to identify the objects at the time, leaving them a mystery for years. Albert's fascination with flight stemmed from his RAF days and continued with his interest in gliding and private piloting.
Mr Jones, who was 10 years old at the time of the incident, told LeicestershireLive: "My dad owned a hardware shop in Whitwick. Every bonfire night, he used to sell fireworks himself. When bonfire night was over, anything that was left, he used to have a big display himself, because he was just a big kid really."
The balloons, launched from the family's hardware shop in Whitwick, often travelled several miles.
Albert Jones, a former RAF engine fitter and licensed pilot, crafted the hot air balloons using tissue paper(Image: Martin Jones)
Describing the balloon-making process, Martin said: "He'd lay all these sheets of tissue paper down and glue them all together. It'd be probably 12 foot high and six foot diameter, or whatever he decided to do at the time."
The balloons often travelled impressive distances. Martin said: "My cousin once followed one on his motorcycle and lost sight of it going over Burton on Trent."
Mr Jones said his father likely launched smaller balloons throughout the year for personal amusement, contributing to local UFO lore. Speaking about how his father would feel about the truth finally coming out, Martin said: "He would laugh about it now."
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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