Freek Vonk ontdekt nieuw soort reuzenslang in de Amazone: verschillen zijn genetisch gezien enorm

Jeannette Kras

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27-11-2024 om 22:39 geschreven door peter  

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27-11-2024 om 22:09 geschreven door peter  

Recently-Discovered Active Asteroid is in Fact Main-Belt Comet, Astronomers Say

456P/PANSTARRS, an active, main-belt asteroid first spotted in 2021, is recurrently active, and activity is likely driven by the sublimation of volatile ice, according to new observations from the Magellan-Baade telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope.

Images of 456P/PANSTARRS taken with the Magellan-Baade telescope in Chile on October 3, 2024, and the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona on October 26, 2024, where the head, or nucleus, of the comet is at the center of each image, and the tail extends to the right.

Image credit: Scott S. Sheppard / Carnegie Institution for Science / Audrey Thirouin, Lowell Observatory / Henry H. Hsieh, Planetary Science Institute.

“Main-belt comets are icy objects found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — rather than the cold outer Solar System where icy bodies are typically expected,” said Planetary Science Institute senior scientist Henry Hsieh and colleagues.

“They sport comet-like features, like tails extending away from the Sun or fuzzy clouds as the Sun’s heat vaporizes their ice.”

These objects were first discovered in 2006 at the University of Hawaii by Dr. Hsieh and his then-doctoral advisor, Professor David Jewitt.

“Main-belt comets belong to a larger group of solar system objects known as active asteroids, which look like comets, but have asteroid-like orbits in the warm inner Solar System,” the astronomers said.

“This larger group includes objects whose clouds and tails are made of ejected dust produced after an impact or as they quickly rotate, rather than just those that eject dust due to vaporized ice.”

“Both main-belt comets and active asteroids in general are still relatively rare, but scientists are discovering them at a growing clip.”

456P/PANSTARRS was discovered as P/2021 L4 (PANSTARRS) from observations on June 9 and 14, 2021, by Pan-STARRS1, and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope observations on June 14, 2021.

Dr. Hsieh and co-authors observed the object twice using the Magellan Baade Telescope and Lowell Discovery Telescope in October 2024 to establish its status as a main-belt comet.

“This object is not just an asteroid that experienced a one-off event that caused it to show activity one time, but is an inherently active, icy body similar to other comets from the outer Solar System,” Dr. Hsieh said.

If 456P/PANSTARRS’s activity were due to something other than ice vaporization, then its tail would be expected to appear only once randomly, and not repeatedly appear when it was close to the Sun.

An icy object, on the other hand, heats up every time it approaches the Sun, and the vaporized ice drags dust out along with it.

When the object moves farther from the Sun and cools, the activity stops.

Observations of repeated dust ejection activity during close approaches to the Sun are currently considered the best and most reliable way to identify main-belt comets.

“There are still very few confirmed main-belt comets known,” Dr. Hsieh said.

“We want to build up the population so we can get a clearer idea of what their broader properties are — such as their sizes, activity duration and distribution within the asteroid belt, for example — so that they can be better used to trace ice in the Solar System in general.”

• The findings were published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
• Henry H. Hsieh et al. 2024. Confirmation of Recurrent Activity of Main-Belt Comet 456P/PANSTARRS (P/2021 L4). Res. Notes AAS 8, 283; doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/ad90a6
• This article is a version of a press-release provided by the Planetary Science Institute.

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27-11-2024 om 21:50 geschreven door peter  

The Hayabusa2 mission, launched in 2014, landed on a small asteroid named Ryugu in 2018 and returned a sample of material to Earth in 2020. The sample was kept sterile the whole time, hermetically sealed for the journey back, and only opened in a pure nitrogen clean room using sterilized equipment. The sample was as clean and uncontaminated as we could get. When the team prepared a sample and looked at it under an electron microscope, they found rods and filaments of organic matter consistent with microbial life. In other words, the team found life on an asteroid.

Except they likely didn’t.

One thing to keep in mind is that microbial life is incredibly robust. It exists everywhere and spreads rapidly. You can find the stuff in the cores of nuclear power plants, in hot thermal vents, and in the cleanest clean room. And even if you sterilize something, microbial life will find a way. When the team found life on their sample, the first thing they did was to look for evidence of contamination, and there was plenty of evidence to be found. To begin with, the size distribution of the organic rods and filaments found in the sample is consistent with those commonly deposited by terrestrial life. Their data also found evidence of a growth and decline period of about five days, which is also consistent with Earth life. If the Ryugu samples had truly evolved beyond Earth, they would be genetically separated from us by millions or billions of years. Their size and growth rate wouldn’t match those of our common microbes. So the best explanation is that the sample became contaminated despite our best efforts.

While the study doesn’t support the panspermia model, it does tell us two important things. The first is that our sterilization procedures are likely inadequate. We may have already spread life to the Moon and Mars inadvertently. The second is that asteroids have organic materials that could sustain terrestrial life. That’s good news if we want to establish ourselves elsewhere in the solar system. Earth life may not have begun in space, but it could very well end up there.

Reference: 

• Genge, Matthew J., et al. “Rapid colonization of a space?returned Ryugu sample by terrestrial microorganisms.” Meteoritics & Planetary Science (2024).

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27-11-2024 om 20:56 geschreven door peter  

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27-11-2024 om 20:46 geschreven door peter  

Europa, one of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter is one of the most intriguing locations in the Solar System to search for life. However, its subsurface oceans are buried beneath thick layers of ice making exploration difficult. To explore its oceans, scientists have suggested using small swimming robots capable of penetrating the icy shell. Recently, NASA engineers tested prototypes designed to operate as a swarm, enabling them to explore the mysterious sub-ice oceans on Europa and other icy worlds in the Solar System.

Along with the other three Galilean satellites orbing Jupiter, Europa was discovered just over 400 years ago by Galileo. It is the smallest of the four measuring just 3,120 km across. It orbits Jupiter at a distance of 671,000 km in an almost circular orbit. In comparison to our own Moon, Europa is a little smaller but that is where the similarities end. Europa is made of a silicate rock and has a thick water ice crust below which is thought to be a liquid water ocean and it is this which has captured the interest of scientists. 

The deep oceans of Europa may well harbour forms of aquatic life. Consider the deepest parts of the oceans of Earth where whole eco-systems thrive off thermal vents. At these depths, no light from the Sun penetrates so the organisms and creatures living at these depths take all their energy from the heat escaping from inside the planet.  It is this which tantalisingly suggests that maybe such life could have evolved in the oceans of Europa too.

The exploration of Europa is already underway with NASA’s Europa Clipper expected to arrive in 2030. It will explore Europa with a powerful set of scientific instruments over a total of 49 flybys. Each pass will see the instruments search for signs that the ocean under the thick icy crust could sustain life. This will just be a flyby mission with Europa being probed from high above its surface. NASA are already shaping up their next mission to include even more complex robots that could survey the depths of the sub-surface oceans of Europa.

This is where NASA’s new mission called SWIM ‘Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers’ comes in. The concept at least, is simple…a swarm of self-propelled robots that can swim around in the underground oceans having been deployed by the ice piercing cryobot. Once underway, the swimming robots, which are about the size of a mobile phone, would hunt for chemical and temperature signals that might indicate life.

The swimming robots are not just on the drawing board. Engineers have already used 3D printers to create prototypes that have already been tested in a 23 metre pool. The devices which are propelled along by two propellers, with flaps for steering were able to stay on course. These prototypes however were a little larger than those destined to make it into space measuring about three times larger. 

The results of the test were very promising but much more work is needed before they are ready for launch. Meanwhile the robots are likely to be trialled here on Earth to support oceanographic research before being sent on their way to Europa. 

Source : 

• NASA Ocean World Explorers Have to Swim Before They Can Fly

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-11-2024 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

• DailyMail.com has obtained two UFO videos recorded by an Indian police official
• The videos both depict an apparent craft near India's Kudankulam nuclear plant
• Protestors fought the Kudankulam nuclear plant for decades, citing safety issues
• READ MORE: Ukrainian drone films UFO in warzone, soldier asks 'Maybe ram it?'

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFO hotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer.

Indian Police Service investigator Syed Abdul Kader shared two videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which track the bright lights making 'zigzags' above the facility.

Fearing the craft was not manmade, Kader turned to his nation's leading UFO expert, who in 2019 filed a petition to the Supreme Court of India with the backing of former Pentagon officials and US Air Force vets — urging the south Asian nation to take all the unexplained sightings near its nuclear facilities more seriously. 

Kader's UFO encounters add international heft to domestic national security concerns within the US, following detailed Pentagon and civilian research into an eerie correlation between UFO sightings and America's tightly held nuclear arsenal.

While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane.

'It's shaking when it's moving! It's going up and down,' the confused cop narrates in one video, watching the UFO's bizarre and apparently non-aerodynamic maneuvers.

'The way it's moving,' he opines in the video, 'this could never be an airplane.'

India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFO hotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer 

Roughly a dozen or so incidents last summer all involved apparent airborne craft loitering near the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (pictured above) at the southern tip of the subcontinent - as well as the Madras Atomic Power Station near Kalpakkam, along the country's east coast

'It's in a southern direction,' Kader told his wife during the August 8th sighting.

'It's standing [or hovering] in the direction of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.'

'It is always coming in at this time, when it is not too dark, nor too bright,' Kader's wife can be heard saying. 'I've seen this many times.'

While it is difficult for an outside observer to discern if the UFO is moving, or if Kader's camera is unsteady, DailyMail.com can report that some common prosaic explanations can likely be ruled out.

Such sightings have turned out to be distant planets, like Venus that is the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon.

And the bright 'dog star,' Sirius, as well as the planets Jupiter and Mercury have also been occasionally misreported as UFOs.

However, in Kader's August 8 video, filmed at dusk (7:30PM local time), the eastern direction of the UFO at sunset refutes the notion that a common bright planet or star could explain the mystery's eerie aerial glow.

While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane 

Syed Abdul Kader shared two of the videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which show bright lights whizzing up and down above the facility

Police sub-inspector Syed Abdul Kader (right), assigned to the technical wing of the Tirunelveli office - one hour's drive north of the Kudankulam nuclear plant - told UFO expert Sabir Hussain (left) that he filmed two videos of these unusual aerial phenomena or UAP

A sky map for that night and time, geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com shows that Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and below the sunset. 

Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment. 

At another point in the video, Kader's wife exclaims, 'It's so close. How come no one else is seeing this?'

To which Kader replies, 'No, that's why the DGP [Director General of Police] he, himself, has seen it [the UFOs]. And that's why everybody's talking about this.'

In fact, the Kaders' sightings to the south overlapped with weeks of others in July and August up India's east coast along the Neelankarai-Mahabalipuram shoreline.

That region, near the bustling city of Chennai, is home to the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) in Kalpakkam.

READ MORE: 

• Watch the incredible moment India made history, as its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft landed on the lunar South Pole for first time [Video]

India made history by becoming the first nation to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole August 23, 2023

Kader's mysterious UFO videos were first secured by one of India's foremost UFO investigators, Sabir Hussain, director of the Indian Society for UFO Studies (INSUFOS) based in Chennai.

It was Hussain who petitioned the Supreme Court of India in 2019 warning that casually dismissing reports of UFO activity near the nation's sensitive atomic power sites could risks an unintentional nuclear war between India and its uneasy neighbor Pakistan.

His efforts came with letters endorsing his petition, by former US counterintelligence official and Pentagon UFO investigator Lue Elizondo, US Air Force veteran Robert Salas, and other UFO experts from America and Europe. 

'Syed came to my house,' Hussain told DailyMail.com. 'I debriefed him.'

'He told me that most of the time, [the UFO] was either coming from the direction of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, going towards it, or stationary in that direction.'

Officer Kader, Hussain told DailyMail.com, also stated that the UFOs were sometimes spotted hovering above the nearby Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Propulsion Complex.

Nestled alongside the mountainous Mahendragiri hill in the state of Tamil Nadu, the ISRO Propulsion Complex tests cryogenically stored rocket fuel among its other space program duties.

The ISRO facility is also approximately one hour's drive south of the Kaders' home, which is in the city of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu.  

A vocal advocate on the UFO issue, Hussain once voiced his suspicion that alleged alien occupants of such craft cut communications between ISRO and its Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander in 2019 — for the south Asian nation's own good. 

'The extra-terrestrials have sent a message to the Indian government to get rid of your nukes before you explore other worlds,' Hussain told the Deccan Chronicle.

'You will not be allowed to land on the moon unless "they" decide to allow you.'

The fate of ISRO's Vikram lander aside, Hussain's new UFO witnesses, sub-inspector Kader and his wife, can at least be heard in their videos discussing the mysterious aerial phenomena's consistent apparent interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant.

Kader's video-taped sightings, as Hussain told DT Next, 'happened just 10 days after former DGP [Director General of Police] Prateep V. Philip took pictures of a UFO on [the] Muttukadu sea shore near Chennai.'

Philip's rank of DGP is the highest position attainable in the Indian Police Service.

A sky map for that night and time (above), geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com, shows Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and sunset. Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment 

The Kaders' sightings to the south overlapped with weeks of sightings in July and August up the eastern coast, along the Neelankarai-Mahabalipuram shoreline. That region, near the city of Chennai, is home to the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) in Kalpakkam (above)

Hypothetical extraterrestrial interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant, if correct, would join decades of active protests against the plant by concerned local civilians.

Thousands of local residents faced teargas shelling, imprisonment and prosecution under both terrorism and sedition charges by local police for speaking out against the nuclear energy plant. Even children with the protestors faced sedition charges.

In September of 2019 the Kudankulam nuclear plant was discovered to be infected with malware, which one cyber security analyst with CSO attributed to 'a false flag operation using stolen North Korean code to muddle attribution.' 

Hussain told DailyMail.com that the plant has faced corruption charges and safety concerns since before it first became operational a decade ago.

'Kudankulam, which is a focus of our attention,' Hussain said, 'came online only in 2013 after Fukushima disaster happened.'

'Ever since it came online, it has been shutting down once every two months,' he added. 'They are working only to 30 percent of their capacity. So you do the math.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to the Indian government's Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd., which runs the plant, for comment. 

US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas (pictured left, and as a young man, right) told of his encounter with an orange flying disc that turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967  

An email shows AARO staff contacted former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his encounter. He tweeted his thank you email from AARO 

This time last year, two Air Force veterans revealed to DailyMail.com's Josh Boswell that they had just testified to the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) about their experiences witnessing UFOs interfere with US nuclear missiles.

One email showed AARO staff contacting former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his chilling encounter with an orange flying disc that inexplicably turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967.

Another former officer, Dr. Robert Jacobs, also briefed AARO, testifying to a 35mm film he shot for the Air Force in 1964, which allegedly caught a flying saucer shooting a test missile out of the sky.

Although Salas described those early interactions with AARO officials as 'very magnanimous,' this month the disappointed Air Force veteran described the Pentagon office's most recent UFO report as 'a 'Steaming pile of ...' 

'I gave AARO a two hour PowerPoint presentation on the Malmstrom AFB incidents where twenty ICBMs were disabled during UFO encounters,' Salas said on the social media site X, speaking to incidents at the base beyond 1967. 

'The USGOV owes us, the informed public, much more respect on this subject,' he concluded, 'than offered by AARO's steaming pile of insults.' 

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26-11-2024 om 23:05 geschreven door peter  

The three-word warning message UFOs are trying to send humans, according to top Air Force vet

• READ MORE: Indian police spot glowing UFOs zig-zagging over nuclear plant

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A retired Air Force Captain — who witnessed a UFO deactivate 10 nuclear missiles in 1967 — believes its 'alien' occupants have a simple, three-word message for humanity: 'WTF!?' 

'I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?' Captain Robert Salas joked after delivering the blunt opinion to Congresswoman Nancy Mace during an episode of the podcast Total Disclosure.

At the height of the Cold War, a then 26-year-old USAF Lieutenant Salas was underground while overseeing Malmstrom Air Force Base's nuclear equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in Montana.

He claimed an eerie red glowing UFO above the base's front gate temporarily disabled 10 ICBMs on the night of March 24, 1967. 

'They knew exactly how our systems worked. Exactly,' Capt Salas told South Carolina Representative Mace, speaking about the UFO's mysterious pilots.

Capt Salas was grilled by Rep Mace about what he thought the UFO's pilots were trying to convey.

''WTF!? You have nuclear weapons,'' he said, paraphrasing these appalled, pacifist aliens. 'That's what I think [they meant] .Of course, it's just my opinion.'

Retired US Air Force Captain Robert Salas personally witnessed a UFO deactivate 10 nuclear missiles in 1967 at a US Air Force base in Montana. He spoke to South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, after this month's shocking UFO hearing on November 13

Above, a missile combat crew member at Captain Salas' old post - Malmstrom Air Force Base - prepares to close a three-foot thick door inside a nuclear launch control center 70-feet underground

Both Rep Mace and Capt Salas spoke on the podcast Total Disclosure for an episode released online November 24, 2024. 

In his analysis of the Malmstrom AFB incidents, the retired official was adamant the nonviolent, nondestructive nature of the UFOs interactions might be a clue as to the potentially extraterrestrial occupants' peaceful intent.

'No equipment was fried. Nothing was damaged,' Capt Salas told Rep Mace.

'It was simply intermittent electrical pulse that was delivered to a particular part of the guidance system, called the logic coupler,' he explained. 

'And this was proven by Boeing. Boeing did a test of this so-called logic coupler.'

'Without that piece of equipment working properly, the guidance system would not properly work,' he continued. 'So, the missile shut itself down.' 

'The missiles were all brought back up on alert within 24 hours,' he noted.

Both Representative Mace (above) and USAF Captain Salas spoke on tape for an episode of the podcast Total Disclosure - for an episode published online November 24, 2024 

'No equipment was fried. Nothing was damaged,' Capt Salas told Rep Mace. 'It was simply intermittent electrical pulse that was delivered to a particular part of the guidance system.' Above an ICBM nuclear missile at Malmstrom AFB which is home to the 341st Missile Wing

Air Force veterans have repeatedly testified about their experiences of UFOs interfering with US nuclear missiles - some occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana (pictured)

At the time of the 1967 UFO incursions, Capt Salas said he was also told the incident had been classified and that he was forbidden from speaking about it.

'I signed a non-disclosure agreement,' he said. 'Didn't start talking about it 'til 1996.' 

The veteran later learned that his crew commander had dealt with a unnerving and virtually identical UFO episode on the nuclear base just eight days prior to his own.

Capt Salas, who has long advocated for government transparency on UFOs, told Rep Mace that he has published a recent book digging into '13 similar cases that happened all over the world, including Russia.'

'In none of those incidents was any significant damage done,' as he emphasized to the congresswoman this month. 

'To me, that says they're sending us a message about nuclear weapons.'

In March 2023, Salas and another Air Force veteran told DailyMail.com that they had taken their testimony to the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) expressing concern over UFOs ability to interfere with US nukes.

One now public email confirms that AARO staff contacting former Salas to gather information about his chilling encounter with the orange-red glowing 'disc' that inexplicably turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom AFB.

US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas (pictured left, and as a young man, right) told of his encounter with an orange flying disc that turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967  

READ MORE

EXCLUSIVE

• The haunting connection between UFOs and America's nuclear weapons is laid bare in fascinating new study which concludes: They're trying to stop us from annihilating ourselves

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26-11-2024 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

Panic in space as astronauts on NASA's ISS report 'toxic smell' and 'contamination hazard

• READ MORE: Astronauts on the ISS are braced for an urgent evacuation  

By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were sent into a panic after a cargo ship arrived with a 'toxic smell' and 'possible contamination hazard in the form of droplets.'

The Progress 90 docked with the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am ET on Saturday and Roscosmos cosmonauts identified a smell immediately after opening the hatch.

The Russian crew quickly strapped into protective equipment and activated an extra air-scrubbing system aboard their segment of the ISS for about 30 minutes.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit also reported some 'spray paint-like' smell in the Node 3 module of the US Segment, but it was not immediately clear if it had originated from Progress.

'Space station air scrubbers and contaminant sensors monitored the station's atmosphere following the observation, and on Sunday, flight controllers determined air quality inside the space station was at normal levels,' NASA shared in a statement.

The agency continued to explain that there are no concerns for the crew as of Sunday afternoon, but the hatch between the Russian modular and cargo craft is still closed.

The Progress 90 arrived at the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am, delivering three tons of food, fuel and supplies for members of the Expedition 72 crew on board the ISS. 

The Progress 90 docked with the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am ET and Roscosmos cosmonauts identified a smell immediately after opening the hatch. NASA said the crew has yet to reopen the hatch

NASA reported that the US side of the orbiting laboratory also activated its own air-scrubbing system, while the hatch to Russia’s Poisk module remained closed.

While Russian outlets reported a toxic smell, NASA told a different story.

'After opening the Progress spacecraft’s hatch, the Roscosmos cosmonauts noticed an unexpected odor and observed small droplets, prompting the crew to close the Poisk hatch to the rest of the Russian segment,' the agency shared on X.

Progress 90 is scheduled to stay docked for about six months before returning to Earth.

The 'toxic smell' comes just months after a report revealed space agency and its Russian counterpart, Roscomos, are tracking 50 'areas of concern' related to a growing leak aboard the station.

NASA called the cracks in a Russian service module a 'top safety risk' - escalating the threat rating to five out of five.

Although officials have been aware of the issue since 2019, the exact source of the leak is still unknown.

All potential cracks have been covered with 'a combination of sealant and patches' but NASA warned that the leak reached its fastest rate yet in April this year.

Both the US and Russian side of the ISS activated its air-scrubbing systems after the toxic smell was identified

Concerns over the station's safety are now so high that NASA has negotiated with Roscomos to only open the hatch when necessary and to keep it sealed in the evenings.

And that's not the only cause for concern, as the space agency has warned that the ISS is at risk of being pelted with micro-meteors and space debris.

The air leak is located in the Russian Zvezda Service Module Transfer Tunnel, installed in 2000, and is used to house life support equipment and to access a Russian cargo dock.

In 2019, it was noted that the module had begun to leak a small amount of air through an unidentified crack.

However, despite efforts to seal the module, the amount of air escaping the station has only increased over the last five years.

In February this year, NASA was forced to hold a press conference on the issue as the amount of air escaping temporarily increased from 0.2 lbs per day (0.09 kg) to 2.4 lbs (1.08 kg) per day.

A report published in September by NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirmed that the leak hit record rates in April - losing 3.7 lbs (1.68 kg) of air every day.

This has prompted the space agency to escalate the threat rating to the highest level and consider evacuation plans.

In May and June, NASA officials traveled to Russia to discuss 'heightened concerns' over the seemingly growing leak.

Speaking to the Washington Post, NASA associate administrator Jim Free says: 'We have conveyed the seriousness of the leaks multiple times, including when I was in Russia earlier this year.

'We've come to a compromise that they close it in the evening.'

The OIG report states: 'The Service Module Transfer Tunnel leak is not an immediate risk to the structural integrity of the Station, and there are no current concerns of long-term impacts to the overall structure.'

Likewise, ISS program manager Joel Montalbano told a press conference in February that the leak was 'not an impact right now on the crew safety or vehicle operations, but something for everybody to be aware of.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

26-11-2024 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

NASA spots 'spiderwebs' on never-before-explored region of Mars that could be linked to aliens

• READ MORE: NASA finds traces of gas that could signal life on the Red Planet

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

NASA has spotted mysterious 'spiderwebs' on a never-before-explored region near the equator of Mars.

The agency's Curiosity rover has been dispatched to probe these bizarre structures — which cover a six to 12 mile stretch of Martian desert — as the machine searches for signs that this long desolate world once supported alien life.

Geologists suspect that the spiderwebs are a gigantic version of a type of crystalized minerals, known as a 'boxwork,' which appear inside some caves on Earth. 

They can be found on the ceiling of Wind Cave in South Dakota, which were created by calcium carbonate mineral water seeping into cracks between softer rocks that hardened into crystals.

But the sprawling, over 3,800-acre-wide boxwork on Mars differs in that it was likely formed by Martian seawater and may have trapped fossils of ancient life in its web.

'These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer,' according to Rice University geologist Dr Kirsten Siebach. 

'Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment,' Dr Siebach explained, nothing that the 'salty liquid water' that created these Martian webs an ideal location to find lingering fossil evidence of ancient alien microbes.

The discovery comes as Australian researchers have found that a Martian meteorite, which crashed into Northwest Africa, provides more evidence of hot water on Mars. 

A chemical analysis of that meteorite suggests conditions were ripe for aquatic life to develop on Earth's nearest neighbor over four billion years ago. 

According to satellite mapping work by 'Martian geologist' Dr Kirsten Siebach, at least 113.6 billion gallons of salty, warm mineral-laden water would have been required to create the vast field of crystal webbing (above), which is about as big or bigger than Los Angles Airport (LAX) 

NASA's planetary geologists suspect the webs are a gigantic version of a type of crystalized minerals, known as a 'boxwork,' that appear inside caves on Earth. Above, Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota has some of America's most spiderweb-like 'boxwork' on its ceiling 

Ever since it first parachuted down to the Martian surface on August 6, 2012, Curiosity has been exploring the Red Planet for signs of life — as well as hunting for clues about Mars' climate, geology and where all its ancient water went.  

But NASA researchers have been intrigued by the massive geological spiderweb for even longer, ever since their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite first captured aerial images of this haunting landscape back on December 10, 2006.

How such formations could appear on Mars' surface is still a mystery, but theories point to the climate chaos that stripped Mars of its water billions of years ago.

The likelihood that evidence of aquatic microbial life of Mars might be caught in this giant web as fossils 'makes this an exciting place to explore,' Dr Siebach noted.

This web of potential dead alien microbes and bugs rests in the shadow of a three-mile tall mountain, officially known as 'Aeolis Mon,' but nicknamed 'Mount Sharp.' 

Past explorations by the Curiosity rover have revealed many sedimentary layers along the cliff faces of Mount Sharp, suggesting in rich detail that it had been formed by water erosion via ancient lake deposits.

NASA scientists suspect that this erosion helped form the giant crystal spiderweb, as mineral-rich pulses of water seeped and cascaded down Mount Sharp into fractures in the surface rock and then crystallized.

According to satellite mapping work that Dr Siebach published in 2014, at least 113.6 billion gallons of salty, warm mineral-laden water would have been required to create the vast field of crystal webbing, which is bigger than Los Angles Airport (LAX).  

Above, NASA's Curiosity rover takes a 'robotic selfie' on the Red Planet via its arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Each of the rover's selfies is really a composite image created from dozens of high-resolution photos taken at various angles by the MAHLI camera

Above, another view of the 'boxwork' webs on the ceiling of Wind River cave in South Dakota

'This is a significant amount of groundwater that must have been present,' she and her co-author wrote in their paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

'Mineralization,' the kind of crystal formation that likely occurred here, 'is known on Earth to help facilitate preservation of once-habitable environments,' they noted.

And in Australia this month, scientists working with Martian meteor NWA 7034, discovered after it crashed into Northwest Africa, have found still further evidence that ancient warm oceans on Mars could have easily supported alien life.

'We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago,' planetary scientist Dr Aaron Cavosie said in a statement.

'Geochemical markers of water' were discovered on meteor NWA 7034, Dr Cavosie explained, based both on the shape of its rocky grain patterns and its chemical composition: 'tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed.'

It's believed that NWA 7034 was ejected from an asteroid impact on Mars that created a crater in the northeast of the 'Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum' province in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

Curiosity rover captured this panorama on November 2, 2024 as it was leaving Mars' so-called 'Gediz Vallis' channel on its way toward the mysterious gigantic spiderweb formation

Above, another panorama made by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover before it left Gediz Vallis

A special technique used to date the age of incredibly old zircon minerals via trace amounts of radioactive material, called 'Uranium–lead dating,' found that this meteor was made up of some of the oldest Martian volcanic rock ever obtained.

'The team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminum, yttrium and sodium,' Dr Cavosie said, 'Through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy.'

Read More

• NASA's Mars Orbiter snaps a stunning photo of frosty sand dunes in the northern planes of the Red Planet  

'These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago,' he continued, 'suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity.'

This mixture of hot and mineral-rich water, not unlike the hydrothermal vents that support life deep in Earth's oceans, point towards the possibility that life was developing on Mars billions of years ago, amid all this volcanic activity.

'Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth,' Dr Cavosie explained, 'and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation.'

The Australian planetary scientist and his team at Curtin University in Australia published their results in the journal Science Advances this past Friday.

In its decade-plus on the Red Planet, NASA's Curiosity rover has trekked roughly 20 miles of the Martian surface for clues about the life that may have once thrived there.

Curiosity will begin studying the spiderweb ridges up close in 2025, according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson, where it will stay for a 'monthlong journey through Mars' boxwork.'

WHAT IS THE MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER?

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) searches for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. 

It was launched August 12, 2005, and achieved an initial orbit around the red planet on March 10, 2006. 

In November 2006, after five months of, it entered its final science orbit and began its primary science phase.  

Since its arrival, MRO and its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) telescope have been mapping the martian surface, which has been taking shape for more than three billion years. 

MRO’s instruments analyse minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor daily weather in support of its science objectives.

MRO's missions have shown that water flowed across the Martian surface, but it is still unknown whether water persisted long enough to provide a habitat for life. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

26-11-2024 om 20:31 geschreven door peter  

Scientists come up with a way to save Earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision

• READ MORE: 'God of chaos' asteroid could trigger astroquakes as it skims Earth 

By WILIAM HUNTER

The idea of a killer asteroid smashing into Earth might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster. 

But it could become a reality, according to NASA, which puts the chance of a deadly asteroid striking Earth in any given year at roughly one in 300,000. 

Before you panic about our impending doom, there's good news.   

A scientist from the University of Murcia has come up with an equation to spot killer asteroids heading for our planet. 

Professor Oscar del Barco Novillo's equation is based on the gravitational bending of light, and will allow scientists to pinpoint the precise positions of minor objects in the solar system.

This includes objects in the Kuiper Belt – a region of icy objects including Pluto and other dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Neptune – and a vast, frozen, spherical shell called the Oort Cloud, which is the most distant region in our solar system. 

In turn, that could allow planetary defence networks to spot and prepare for any asteroids which could collide with Earth.  

This advanced warning could be the difference between having time to deflect the asteroid onto a safe path and a cataclysmic impact. 

The idea of a killer asteroid smashing into Earth might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster. But it could become a reality, according to NASA, which puts the chance of a deadly asteroid striking Earth in any given year at roughly one in 300,000 (stock image)

Before you anic about our impending doom, there's good news. A scientist from the University of Murcia has come up with an equation to spot killer asteroids heading for our planet

Normally, light takes a straight path from an object to our eyes, meaning where we see the image is where the object really is.

However, this isn't the case for distant objects like asteroids because of a phenomenon called 'gravitational deflection'.

When a beam of light passes through a strong gravitational field like the one around our sun it leaves its straight path and follows a curved trajectory.

You can think of this like a ball following a curving path as it rolls over some uneven ground.

The idea that gravity might bend passing beams of light was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1730.

However, it wasn't until Albert Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity in 1916 that scientists were able to confirm this was really the case.

The issue for astronomers is that gravitational deflection means that the image we see of a distant object doesn't line up with where the object really is.

Professor Novillo told MailOnline: 'When the sunlight is reflected on the minor objects in the solar system, such as asteroids, the light beams we receive on Earth are deflected due to the Sun and major planets such as Jupiter.

Normally, light takes a straight path from an object to our eyes, meaning where we see the image is where the object really is. However, this isn't the case for distant objects like asteroids because of a phenomenon called 'gravitational deflection' 

'In this sense, the actual positions of these minor bodies are shifted, so this effect should be taken into account in the equations of motion of these minor bodies.'

For most applications that might not be an issue, but when it comes to calculating the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid even a small miscalculation could be fatal.

Professor Novillo's solution, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is to treat gravity as if it were a physical medium like water to work out how much light bends as it passes through. 

Using this formula, Professor Novillo calculated the angle of deflection for light beams coming from Mercury at different points in its orbit.

Comparing the results to those based on Newtonian and Einsteinian equations, he found there was up to a 15.8 per cent difference when Mercury was at its greatest distance from the Sun.

Professor Novillo says that the most important consequence of this discovery is to enable 'a better calculation of the orbits of minor objects in the solar system, which could be potentially hazardous to the Earth.'

While it won't help detect asteroids in the first place, it will help determine a more precise location for these objects and, consequently, a better estimation of their orbits.

Space agencies such as NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are currently investigating ways that humanity might be able to avoid colliding with an asteroid.

Just like in the movie Armageddon (pictured), humanity may be able to deflect an incoming asteroid so long as there is time to organise a response 

For example, the ESA's DART mission used a fridge-sized satellite to slam into the space rock Dimorphos to see if an asteroid could be knocked from its path.

While the results are due to be confirmed by the Hera mission late next year, early observations show that the impact did deflect Dimorphos' orbit.

In theory, humanity could use a similar kamikaze satellite to deflect the orbit of a hazardous asteroid on its way to Earth.

However, doing this would require years of prior warning to give space agencies time to plan the mission and for the asteroid to drift out of Earth's path.

That is why it is so critical for space agencies to have an accurate way of assessing the locations and orbits of asteroids drifting through the solar system.

Beyond planetary defence, this equation could also be used to deepen our understanding of the universe.

The hope is that scientists will now be able to calculate the exact location of the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri.

Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light-years away and is thought to have three exoplanets orbiting around it.

This discovery could also be used to determine the exact location of Proxima Centauri B (artist's impression). If this exoplanet is in its star's habitable zone, it could be the closest Earth-like planet to our sun

If its location could be precisely determined, that would also help scientists accurately study the orbits of its planets to learn whether they do indeed sit within their star's habitable zone.

Additionally, Professor Novillo's discovery could even help scientists map the most distant reaches of space.

Professor Novillo says: 'Distant galaxies, which are distorted and magnified by large amounts of intervening mass, such as galaxy clusters, might be precisely located with this new exact equation.'

Over the next six years, the ESA's Euclid mission will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years – with the goal of creating the largest cosmic 3D map ever made.

Armed with this equation, scientists could produce even more accurate maps which might help understand how dark matter and dark energy have shaped the Universe into what we see today.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

26-11-2024 om 19:30 geschreven door peter  

Tucker Carlson’s Claim Of ‘Troops Dying From UFO Encounters’ Corroborates With Other Stories That Show Dark & Disturbing Elements Of UAPs

The UFO enigma is garnering increasing attention, particularly after David Grusch’s historic testimony during the 2023 UAP hearing. The United States government is deeply concerned about UAPs, especially since many individuals, including Rep. Tim Burchett, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, and Senator Chuck Schumer, believe that the American public has been kept in the dark about this issue for decades.

What is preventing the US government from telling the truth? The answer is far more complicated than most people believe. A month ago, on Redacted, Tucker Carlson discussed the UFO issue with hosts Clayton and Natali Morris. He said, “The second thing that bothers me is the UFO story… If you talk to people who have firsthand knowledge, there are aspects of that narrative that I find deeply perplexing and disturbing… There’s a spiritual component that eludes my understanding.”

When we jump into phenomena like UFOs, NHI, or E.T., it suggests that humanity is on the brink of self-destruction, and time is running out. This chilling and unsettling aspect of the UFO issue is deeply concerning. Former CIA John Ramirez claimed that the government is aware of an impending event in 2027 that will reveal something quite significant, so people are being prepared. He has been stating that there is a presence on Earth (which he refers demonic) who are just projecting their belief systems to make us disbelieve in what we believe.

Clayton Morris, a former Fox News host, along with Tucker, hinted at possessing knowledge about a similar UFO-related story. They mentioned that this particular story is something they have not discussed with their families. “It’s so unsettling. I haven’t even shared it with my wife,” Tucker remarked. “And this isn’t merely something I stumbled upon online; it’s profoundly disturbing information.”

A while back, on the “Full Send” podcast, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson recounted a study conducted by a Stanford professor 11 years ago. Interestingly, the US Defense Department tasked Dr. Garry Nolan (which he publicly confirmed) with investigating numerous cases where pilots’ brains were seriously damaged after encountering UFOs. However, Dr. Nolan never publicly said whether these injuries led to fatalities. Tucker said that hundreds of servicemen had been killed.

According to Tucker, “[In] several cases, these unidentified objects have landed on military bases. Servicemen who approached them either suffered traumatic brain injuries or were killed. I wonder, why isn’t this making headlines in the New York Times. I don’t know.”

Later, Susan Gough, a Defense Department spokesperson, told Military Times that the story was false and the Pentagon declined to comment further. (Source)

Tucker did not stop there and raised a sensitive issue about the potential harm or killing of individuals connected to the U.S. government’s UFO programs during his interview with David Grusch. He specifically asked Grusch if he had a reason to believe that the government had hurt or killed anyone, particularly American citizens, in connection to these programs. (Click here to read the full article)

Grusch responded by acknowledging concerns that were raised by individuals who approached him, expressing worries about potential harm. He emphasized that he took those concerns seriously and reported them to the Inspector General of the intelligence community, directing the individuals to law enforcement.

Tucker pushed further, specifically mentioning the allegation of murder, to which Grusch confirmed that the concerns included both murder and physical harm. However, he refrained from providing specific details due to the ongoing investigation and potential risks to his safety.

Grusch disclosed that he felt his life was in jeopardy, and he reported the threats and surveillance to a counterintelligence element and law enforcement. He revealed that the threats not only affected him but also impacted his wife. He stated that he did not know the identity of those involved, ruling out the possibility of it being a foreign entity

Do fatalities occur in the UFO subject?

Many UFO researchers investigating these incidents have uncovered truly disturbing information from witnesses and victims about their UFO encounters.

Stefan Michalak’s case is the most discussed UFO encounter that happened in 1967 near the famous Falcon Lake in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Not only are we talking about seeing an extraterrestrial flying craft but also about contact made between the victim and the craft that resulted in serious burns.

A picture below shows severe burns on his chest after encountering a UFO near Falcon Lake, Canada. At first, he thought that the object was an American experimental test vehicle, so he sarcastically said: “Okay, Yankee boys, having trouble? Come on out and we’ll see what we can do about it.” Having received no answer, he tried greeting in different languages but still got no response. Therefore, without any second thought, he put his head into the half-open hatch and saw something like a dashboard and a huge number of glowing lights.

Stefan Michalak with burns on his chest after encountering UFO near Falcon Lake, Canada

As Michalak was examining quartz rocks, fortunately, he was wearing safety goggles so that the bright light could not blind him. But then, the hatch suddenly closed again, and he quickly recoiled not to be pinched. At the same time, he touched the outer surface of the mysterious spaceship which burned his glove, so he received a burn on his hand. After that, the craft changed its position and a gridlike exhaust vent was facing toward him. A hot gaseous substance was thrown out of it in his direction. His clothes immediately caught fire, and only with great difficulty, he managed to extinguish the fire. The UFO flew into the air and disappeared, leaving Michalak alone with severe pain and nausea.

“I’m not so close-minded that I can’t entertain the possibility that it’s otherworldly. I can’t discount that. But without specific evidence to show me that it is, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that I’m an aviation fanatic, a huge aviation buff, and I am very familiar with how aviation technology has advanced in the past 50 years. And there was nothing even close to that in the works anywhere at that time,” Michalak said.

During a subsequent medical examination, doctors found burns on his chest in the form of a mesh pattern, which fully corresponded to his story. In the following months, he had to contend with health problems such as loss of appetite, weight loss, swelling, and fainting. Michalak died in 1999 at the age of 83.

Stefan Michalak and his alleged encounter with the alien craft at Lake Falcon have been the subject of big research, and Canadian UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski, who co-authored the book “When They Appeared” with him, spent many years studying and collecting countless documents, statements, photographs and personal belongings of Michalak.

Rutkowski told the reporters that Michalak had been treated at the Misericordia Hospital, where he was examined by doctors for the first time. Then he was transferred to the Mayo Clinic. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Air Force, who were investigating, admitted that they had no explanation for what had happened.

During the investigation, Michalak’s welding gloves and shirt were examined but nothing could be found in the analysis. A circle of 4.5 meters was left at the landing site and the area was declared radioactive. More than 50 years after the incident, Rutkowski transferred all documents and items related to this case to the archives of the University of Manitoba.

What is also interesting to note about the UFO phenomenon is that we see critical instrumentation failure of our aircraft when in the vicinity of some of these objects.

The former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who ran the agency from 1993 to 1995, has recently spoken about the most classified cases in the history of the United States. In an interview with the Black Vault, Woosley said that a lot of examination is going on the UFOs over the years. He also shared one incident that happened to one of his friends, when his aircraft paused at 40,000 feet and stopped operating as a normal machine.

“But there was one case in which a friend of mine was able to have his aircraft stop at 40,000 feet or so and not continue operating as a normal aircraft,” Woolsey said. He was invited by the host of Black Vault on his YouTube channel, where he discussed the instances from his newly released book “Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin’s Secret War on America.” He talked about the Russian involvement in the continuation of the Cold War, then he was asked about the assassination of JFK, and also discussed the UFOs.

“I’m not as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly. But something is going on that is surprising to a series of intelligent aircraft, experienced pilots,” he said. “And we will just have to see what it is.” (Source)

Next, we have the case of the Tordesillas boys, which is not well-known outside Spain. It is a perfect example of the consequences of the UFO’s interaction with the human body. Martin Rodríguez witnessed how a beam of light, arising from a UFO, pierced his chest and supposed numerous neurological operations.

It happened on the evening of October 1, 1977, on the outskirts of the city of Tordesillas, Spain. Martin Rodríguez and some friends were playing hide-and-seek in a vacant lot near the road and next to abandoned farm buildings.

At some point, Martin and Fernando Caravelos (both 7 years old) decided to hide somewhere so that no one could find them. The two boys ran to an abandoned corral that stood far away from the place where the children were playing. The boys knew that vagrants took shelter in that corral, so they decided to first check if there were any strangers inside.

Martin took the rock and threw it through the broken window, only to hear a loud metallic clang as if the rock hit what looked like a huge steel cauldron. The sound sparked their curiosity, as they had climbed inside the corral several times before and knew that there was nothing that could emit that sound. So, the two went in to investigate.

Inside the old corral, they were amazed at the sight of a strange metal object standing in the corner. It was shaped like a drop of water and stood on three supports. It was about 3 meters high and 2 meters wide with three circular windows as if they were intended for portholes.

A few moments later, the boys got closer to the object and it began to vibrate and rise. The first instinct of safety worked for Fernando, he jumped back and grabbed Martin’s arm to pull him away from the object. But it was too late, Martin stood frozen as if paralyzed, and a strange glow of light came out of the object and ended up hitting Martin’s chest.

The studies carried out concluded that the soil samples collected that day were subjected to a temperature of approximately 600°C. These studies were conducted by a local journalist and UFO researcher Iker Jimenez, 20 years after the event. Meanwhile, Jimenez published a book called “Enigmas Sin Resolver,” where he presented these facts. Martin also appeared on an episode of a TV show hosted by Jimenez, Cuarto Milenio.

In the following years, Martin Rodriguez, who had always been in good health, began to suffer from stomach pains, vomiting, dizziness, and loss of vision. He was admitted to the Redondo Onésimo Hospital in the city of Valladolid, and from that moment on, he underwent 14 surgeries.

Over the years, Martin suffered numerous relapses that led to routine comas, and many of his family and friends thought he could die at any time. But Martin’s life continued more or less normal, despite his illness and suffering from the operations performed. Martin’s case is considered one of the most important ufological cases in Spain, both for the witnesses who saw the object flying and for the consequences that such interaction had on Martin.

The Varginha case revolves around a reported crashed UFO in Varginha, Brazil that happened in 1996, where many locals claimed to have seen two alien creatures, captured by the Brazilian military. According to Investigative journalist Lelsie Kean, one creature was dead while the other one was still alive. (Click here to read the full article)

According to the report, the encounter involved two military police officers, who came across a creature running in front of their vehicle. One of the officers, Marco Chereze, supposedly captured the creature with his bare hands but later suffered from an infection that turned out to be fatal.

Kean revealed that she spoke with the doctors who had treated the police officer before his tragic demise. She said: “The circumstances of his death are shocking. He had this little cut on his shoulder from having grabbed this entity when it was alive, and it cut him. Then he got a horrific infection, and no antibiotics would work.” The veteran Brazilian doctor she spoke to, known for his expertise in autopsies, had never encountered anything like that, indicating the severity and uniqueness of the situation.

These are some of the known incidents where life-threatening injuries occurred, as well as fatalities in rare cases, during the UAP phenomena. So, when Tucker Carlson says the UFO truth is dark, could these cases be the reason behind it, or is there something more sinister?

{ https://howandwhys.com/ }

25-11-2024 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers have observed stars that are accelerating through space at a shockingly rapid pace. Normally this is assumed to relate to gravitational forces in some way, or to the natural emissions of the stars that might be causing them to move at unusually fast rates.

But one researcher has a different idea about why some stars or star systems seem to be moving more rapidly than normally, presumably dragging their planets along with them as they go. According to Clement Vidal, a philosopher from Vrije University Brussels in Belgium who has an interest in astronomy, these traveling solar systems may have been converted into fast-moving “spaceships” by advanced alien civilizations looking to explore other areas of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Solar System as UFO

Assuming for a moment they developed the technology to actually accomplish such a thing, an alien civilization might have various motivations for propelling their entire solar system through space.

“Two universal evolutionary motivations will make interstellar travel a necessity to any long-lived civilization: survival and reproduction,” Vidal wrote in a non-peer-reviewed paper about his concept published through Cornell University.

Such a civilization might want to escape the vicinity of a nearby supernova that threatens their star system’s existence. Or they might be running out of resources on their home planet, and decide to move to another part of their galaxy where resources might be plentiful. Or they could simply be explorers driven by curiosity or a sense of adventure. They might even be forced to take such action as a response to attacks from other alien civilizations.

Rather than constructing ships that would carry just a few of them through space as astronauts, these aliens could take everyone along for the ride, with their solar system traveling through space on the ultimate voyage of discovery. While the journey to another solar system in a different part of the galaxy would be a long one, since the entire civilization was taking the trip together the passing of the time wouldn’t really be noticed.

Binary star system R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth.

(European Southern Observatory/CC BY 2.0).

This is an astonishing proposal, but it is based on an idea that has been around for a long time. The idea of creating a “stellar engine” (a star that could be used to power space travel) was first conceived of by science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon in 1937, and the concept has always been considered sound—impractical perhaps, but not totally out of the realm of possibility.

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In his theoretical study, Vidal proposes that binary star systems would make the best candidates to be converted into spaceships. The particular types of binary systems he identifies are known as spidar pulsars and redback pulsars, and each consists of a star that is smaller than our sun revolving around a dense neutron star with a powerful gravitational field.

In such systems the neutron stars create an enormous amount of energy. They do this through the combination of their rapid rotation (rapidly spinning stars are known as pulsars) and the gravitational forces they generate, the latter of which causes high-powered ejections of materials from their partner stars.

It is these forces, Vidal says, that could be controlled or redirected by an advanced alien civilization to actually propel an entire star system through space at a high rate of speed. The idea would be to take control of the pattern of ejections by the neutron’s companion star, and to point them in a specific direction. This would essentially turn that star into a massive rocket, propelling the solar system and all of its inhabitants toward the region of space they would like to explore. Making changes of direction in the material ejection patterns would allow the alien engineers to steer their moving solar systems, giving them total control over their final destination.

25-11-2024 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

One of the most enduring myths of humankind is that pertaining to giants. In almost every major civilization and culture in the world, there are tales of ancient giants, enormous and powerful, credited with the construction of many great sites. But for the most part, the myths about giants remain only that - myths. For generations, scholars and historians tried to bring these myths to reality, to find some evidence that giants really existed. Their efforts are shrouded in enigma. There are stories of giant skeletons being excavated, and many oral legends that point to their existence. But they all somehow, “mysteriously” disappear, or are placed “under the rug”. So what is the truth? Did the giants really live in ancient history?

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The Quest for Giants

Across millennia, the notion of these colossal beings of immense power and stature had fascinated societies. Many people from all corners of the globe had folklore and myths centered on these beings, and even religious texts mentioned them to a great extent. So much so that scholarly inquiry was needed: were these legends simple allegories, or were they based on actual facts from some ancient time in history? To answer this question, scholars had to navigate through heaps of ancient texts, through myths and cultural lore, and plenty of archeological finds that all point out towards the existence of giants.

Perhaps the best place to start the quest was by examining ancient texts and religious accounts. Many of them specifically mention giants as being an actual part of our shared history. One of the best known such mentions come from the Hebrew Bible, which mentions beings known as the Nephilim. A passage from the Bible’s “Book of Genesis”, mentions them as follows:

“There were giants (Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

-Genesis, 6:4

This verse, combined with other references such as those in the Book of Enoch - an apocryphal Jewish text - suggests that beings of considerable size and power once walked the earth. This book takes things even further, describing them as the offspring of certain angels who descended to earth and mated with human women. The resulting offspring were beings of giant stature and great strength, whose mere existence led to corruption and violence across the world. This state ultimately prompted the biblical divine flood - a way to cleanse the earth and start anew.

• The Relic of Bir Hooker & The Giants of the Past - Part 2
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Norandino and Lucina Discovered by the Ogre’ (1624) by Giovanni Lanfranco. Galleria Borghese

(Public Domain)

The Oldest Legends of the Oldest Civilizations

This would sound like a mere legend, if it didn’t closely align with a myth from an altogether different civilization. This civilization was Mesopotamia, which left to posterity the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, one of the world’s oldest surviving literary works. Gilgamesh himself is described as a giant of extraordinary power, possibly hinting at a long-lost connection to a race of oversized beings. Similarly, the Mahabharata and other Hindu scriptures mention beings of gigantic proportions, known as , who played significant roles in cosmic battles. These giants were said to have superhuman strength and were often depicted as guardians of powerful secrets or treasures.

Statue of Ravana from the 18th century AD, British Museum

(Claire H./CC BY-SA 2.0)

However, it is very important to note that the theme of giants is not confined to a single culture; it is a global motif. For example, in the famed Greek mythology, there existed Titans. These were primordial giants who ruled the Earth before the arrival of the “normal” gods of the Olympus. Due to their sheer size and great strength, they were difficult enemies to overthrow. Nevertheless, the gods eventually defeated them, ending their existence in a climactic battle known as Titanomachy. A very similar story exists in Old Norse mythology, which speaks of the  Jötnar, a race of giants who dwelled in Jotunheim. Much like the Titans, they too were embroiled in a bitter conflict with the human Gods of the Asgard. But not all of them were evil, the myths say, and many formed alliances and even married with the Gods.

Scene from Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold , illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1910). The giants Fasolt and Fafner abduct Freia after Wotan fails to pay them for building Valhalla.

(Public Domain) 

Amongst the Celtic peoples there are stories of the Fomorians, an ancient race of giants which were the infamous enemies of Ireland’s very first settlers. In the extensive Irish myths, these giants were eventually defeated by the Tuatha de Danann, a more advanced race of beings - the Gods of the pre-Christian Irish. The existence of megalithic structures such as Newgrange and Stonehenge has fueled speculation about whether such giant beings could have had a hand in their construction.

The Fomorians.

(Public Domain)

And far from the lands of the Norse or the Celts, amongst the Native American Indians, there also existed tales of giants. The Paiute Native American tribe has an extensive oral history that speaks of the Si-Te-Cah. These were a race of red-haired giants that inhabited an area that is today the state of Nevada. Settling in the area, the very first natives warred with these giants, who were cannibals. The giants eventually met their bitter end in this war. Their numbers constantly dwindled, and they finally disappeared when the Paiute trapped the last of them in a cave and set it ablaze, suffocating them. This tale gained further intrigue with the discovery of Lovelock Cave in the early 20th century, where gigantic skeletal remains were purportedly found, leading some to believe that the legend was actually based in truth. However, the remains mysteriously “disappeared” under the care of the Smithsonian Museum.

The Giant Hidden History

Archaeological findings often become a point of heated debate when giants are discussed. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there were numerous reports of giant skeletal remains unearthed in various parts of the world. For instance, in the United States, newspapers such as the New York Times published articles claiming that giant skeletons were found during digs in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, and the Appalachian region. Some reports mentioned skeletons ranging from 7 to 12 feet tall (2.1 to 3.6 m tall), complete with robust bone structures that appeared to support a human form of that magnitude. In fact, there were hundreds of such finds in America, many documented with photographs. However, virtually all of them were discredited, and many allegedly destroyed by the Smithsonian Museum, where many ended up. Why? No one really knows.

The Smithsonian, in fact, has been at the center of what were termed “conspiracy theories” that claim it actively suppressed findings related to giants to align with prevailing views of human history. However, the institution has repeatedly denied these claims, maintaining that no verified remains of giant humanoids have ever been recovered. And thus, ultimately, skepticism prevailed in academic circles. Modern archeologists usually attribute these claims to simple mistakes: misidentified animal bones and ancient fossils, hoaxes, and simple exaggerations.

One of the more important archeological finds often brought into discussion about giants was found in the ancient city of Baalbek, situated in modern-day Lebanon. Discovered were some of the largest stone blocks that were ever used in construction, with the heaviest (known as the “Stone of the Pregnant Woman”) weighing well over 1,000 tons. Modern historians attribute these megaliths to the craftsmanship and advanced abilities of the Roman Empire, but there are those that argue that they are the evidence of an ancient race of giants. In fact, they state that only giants could carve, move, and arrange such stones - ultimately creating many megalithic structures across Europe.

Stone of the Pregnant Woman pictured with Ralph Ellis standing on it, at Baalbek, Lebanon

(Ralph Ellis/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Giants, or Giant Mistakes?

There are those scholars who argue that the ancient stories of giant beings were simply metaphors and exaggerations, and not actual descriptions of them. They state that ancient peoples, not familiar with very old megalithic structures, or having lost certain technologies, simply ascribed them to mythical giants. And in ancient myths, these same giants were used to symbolize chaos, primal forces, or the boundary between order and disorder. As such, their defeat at the hands of human gods or heroes usually represents the triumph of civilization over nature or barbarism, and the very old ways of existence.

Anthropologists also have a say in this, claiming that ancient stories of giants could be connected to large fossils. When ancient peoples would uncover, for example, bones of mammoths or prehistoric creatures, they would liken them to bones of humans - only much larger. Not realizing otherwise, they would envision a race of giant men. This hypothesis is supported by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who mentioned in his “Histories” that the Egyptians pointed to large bones as proof of a race of giants.

Additionally, psychological interpretations consider the stories of giants as expressions of human fears and desires. The idea of a larger-than-life being embodies power, intimidation, and the unknown. These attributes may have been incorporated into oral traditions as cautionary tales or as explanations for natural phenomena that were difficult for ancient people to comprehend. A good example is the mythology of the Aztecs. They mention Quinametzin, the Giants that dwelt in the world before them. According to the Aztecs, it was giants who created their foremost city, Teotihuacan (transl. “The Place Where Men Become Gods”). But since the giants did not venerate the gods, they were all ultimately defeated.

Aztec Giant Quinametzin

(Giggette/CC0)

Too Many Similarities?

Secrets, myths, and inexplicable things - these are all that surround the notion of giants in ancient history. Whether or not giants really roamed the Earth is a question that remains unanswered to this very day. Ancient texts, cultural stories, and speculative archaeology suggest a rich tradition that spans continents and centuries. Yet, conclusive physical evidence is lacking, leaving room for both skepticism and belief. And on top of it all, there are those that seemingly put all their efforts to repeatedly shove this story under the rug, and to portray all those who believe in it as conspiracy theorists.

But nevertheless, the tales of the giants - be they metaphorical or literal - remain the foremost symbols of the mysteries that surround most ancient human history. And they also highlight the power of the stories that are passed down through generations. Whether these tales are born from an overactive imagination, allegorical storytelling, or faint recollections of a forgotten chapter in human history, they continue to captivate and provoke thought either way. In the end, however, they are urging us to always explore the dark unknown. Because in that darkness could hide the answers for which humanity is not yet ready.

Top image:

• A huge great statue of the greek god titan atlas holding planet earth in his hands. dark sky in the background.
• Source: MVProductions/Adobe Stock

By Aleksa Vučković

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends }

25-11-2024 om 21:10 geschreven door peter  

The cane farm crop circles and an enduring UFO mystery

At first light, a boy and his father sling rifles over their shoulders and trudge barefoot through squelching grass.

They’re hunting — for proof of UFO landings on their sugar cane farm.

A young Shane Pennisi trails in lockstep behind his dad, Albert, eyes fixed on the swarm of mosquitoes surrounding him as they approach the lagoon.

“The whole of his back would be just black and they’re all full of red blood,” Shane says.

They survey the scene for any disturbance to the bullrush reed bristling from the murky water and triple-check that no crocodile has spilt into residency during the recent floods.

Best stay armed, just in case.

The Tully saucer nest in Horeshoe Lagoon in 1966. (Supplied: Dorothy Jones Library Hertiage Collection, Tully)

Albert Pennisi sitting on the saucer nest in January 1966. (Supplied: Dorothy Jones Library Hertiage Collection, Tully)

With last night’s sleep still clinging to the corners of their eyes, they hoist the rifles above their heads and slide into the warm marsh.

Paternal bonding comes in all shapes and sizes.

Wading through stagnant, larval-rearing water in search of “saucer nests” is just part of the daily routine for this father-son duo.

Something happened here that knocked the family off its axis and tormented a mild-mannered man for the rest of his life.

An impression left in this very lagoon would grow into a roaring wave of global crop circle fever.

And there are still secrets to tell almost six decades on.

An unlikely protagonist

George Pedley was a wiry young banana farmer in Far North Queensland when he encountered what he later described as a flying saucer.

The gentle bachelor in his 20s worked the plot of land beside the Pennisi cane farm at Euramo, just south of Tully, and built a rough but sturdy shack for his tractor and tools.

It was the era of the space race.

Aliens, UFOs and interplanetary exploration were part of the pop cultural furniture.

Less so, perhaps, around Tully.

The town then, as today, prided itself on being the wettest place in Australia — a simple agricultural and logging community carved into the skirt of a rainforest-blanketed mountain.

It seemed an unlikely spot, with an unlikely protagonist, for a mystery that would foreshadow a rash of UFO and crop circle reports all over the world.

Even so, in the grips of a sweltering wet season in January 1966, Tully went into a tailspin.

The sighting

Shane Pennisi was seven years old at the time and living on the same cane farm in the single-storey house he still calls home today.

He remembers his whole family pulling into the driveway after a beach trip on the afternoon of January 19, 1966 to find their neighbour sitting on their front steps.

George Pedley had an uncharacteristic look of agitation etched across his face.

“He started stuttering a bit. Something had happened.”

Shane’s dad Albert spoke with George for a few minutes before they all hopped in the ute — adults up front, kids clinging on in the tray — and drove to a horseshoe-shaped lagoon at the edge of a cane paddock.

That’s when they saw it.

A perfect circle of flattened bullrush reeds in the middle of the water, about nine metres in diameter and floating like a pontoon.

There were no markings around it — no trail from machinery that might have fabricated the unusual imprint.

Back at the house, George opened up about his experience.

He had been driving his tractor that morning when he heard a tremendous “hissing” noise and hopped out in search of a punctured tyre.

“He heard the hissing getting louder and louder. Then he turned around and looked up,” Shane says.

“He saw a UFO. Just above the treetops — tilted like it hesitated, and then it was gone.

“Then he looked back in the lagoon and saw the water swirling.”

Shane clearly recalls his neighbour picking up two teacup plates from the table, tipping one upside down and placing them lip to lip.

This was what he had seen.

A flying saucer, illuminated with bright lights and hissing away in a puff of blue vapour.

The term “gone troppo” is Australian slang for being driven mad by excessive heat and possibly a few too many swigs of the flagon.

George was not a drinker.

Still, the banana farmer couldn’t shake the suspicion he had contracted an acute case of the tropical malady.

“George being George just thought, ‘I’m just seeing things,’” Shane says.

George went back to the shade of his shed and boiled a billy to get his faculties in order.

Questions were piling up.

After a while he returned to the lagoon and discovered this floating mat of reeds, almost woven in a clockwise swirl into a perfect geometric circle of botanical fabric.

Or so the story goes.

The bush telegraph

Police were eventually called and word of this weird encounter spread like a contagion as the small-town rumour mill went into overdrive.

It was dubbed a “saucer nest” — a sort of prototype crop circle two decades before the latter term would become popular — and everyone wanted a look.

Cars roared onto the farm in their hundreds, with yahoos knocking over cane, drinking beer and climbing the reedy pontoon, which could hold a man’s weight with no trouble at all.

It was a lot for a seven-year-old boy to take in.

Shane remembers the dust from the traffic being so thick that his mum couldn’t hang the washing.

“It was one car after the other,” he says.

“They parked anywhere they could, they walked over plant cane … broke down trees … they just walked through the lagoon.”

The family was eventually forced to retreat to their nearby beach shack until things died down.

It would take a while.

News reports all over the country featured photos of the splayed, flattened reeds, and reporters spent the night getting mauled by mosquitoes in hope of experiencing a visitation.

They never got one, but they did get plenty of fodder for a readership desperate for anything to do with aliens, flying saucers and cosmic expeditions.

How do you explain the unexplainable?

Wild theories started popping up about what could have caused the strange phenomenon.

Obviously it wasn’t aliens … was it?

Everything from helicopters and reed-eating grubs to whirlwinds and waterspouts were proposed as logical culprits.

There was even a theory that the purported saucer nest had been created by ducks swimming in a circle.

George’s honesty and mental stability were questioned in news articles and cartoons, and to his dying day he felt slighted about being publicly ridiculed.

Locals who knew him and the landscape were more inclined to believe his story.

Valerie Keenan was a child when saucer nest mania swept through Tully.

Her dad, a cattle station owner from one of the area’s original pioneering families, was already something of a UFO enthusiast.

“He would sit out on the lawn in this chair and observe the night sky and talk about what he would do if someone, a UFO landed,” she remembers.

He was one of a few locals to receive an invitation from George to visit the saucer nest shortly after its discovery — and he brought Valerie in tow.

For all the interest in George and his encounter, there remained a secret to which only a handful of people were privy.

It went almost entirely unnoticed by all those hundreds of trespassing sightseers and headline-chasing journalists.

Given the media circus was in full swing, Albert and George weren’t keen on bringing too many others into the fold.

But Valerie knew.

There were more so-called saucer nests in horseshoe lagoon.

Even stranger, these shapes would keep appearing on the farm for decades to come.

Other farms, other farmers

The crop circle is now such a pervasive cultural touchstone that it’s easy to forget the term wasn’t coined until the 1980s.

Sporadic mentions of comparable formations pop up as far back as 1678, when a woodcut pamphlet published in England told of a “mowing devil” at work in Hertfordshire.

The story went that a farmer had refused to pay a labourer’s exorbitant price to harvest 3 acres of oats and swore “that the Devil should mow it, rather than he”.

That night he saw the field go up in flames, but by morning any sign of fire was gone and the crop was cut to perfection in a manner “no mortal man was able to do the like”.

Crop-lopping Lucifers aside, it wasn’t until the Tully saucer nest sensation that these stories really found their stride.

Keith Basterfield is a UFO researcher who in 1973 investigated an eerily similar case in an oat field at Bordertown in South Australia.

Keith says seven of these shapes were scattered across the farm — and he would investigate similar reports over the years.

For some, saucer nests had become the subject of genuine scientific inquiry.

Unfortunately for believers, their credibility was dealt a catastrophic blow in 1991 when British artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted they had faked hundreds of the celestial glyphs across the UK since the 1970s.

In a bizarre turn of events, those British artists pointed to what happened at Horseshoe Lagoon in Tully as their inspiration.

But authorities were not simply dismissing reports outright.

Brett Biddington is a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) intelligence officer who spent years investigating UFO reports for the military.

He was once tasked with driving to Bendigo after local media went into a frenzy over strange lights appearing in the sky in the 1980s.

He got a first-hand glimpse of how the hunt for a headline can whip up hysteria and misinformation.

“It tends to be both sensationalised and somewhat trivialised in the general media,” he says.

Brett says military interest in UFOs was very real, but not because of any perceived threat from little green men.

“There was intense interest by both sides in the Cold War — the United States on the one hand, the Soviets on the other, to try to understand what the level of their technologies were with regard to space,” he says.

RAAF investigations into UFOs wrapped up in the 1990s and never really kicked off again Down Under.

A small percentage of cases remain unexplained, like what happened in Tully.

Some measure of vindication

George Pedley’s memorial plaque at the Tully cemetery features a small embossed figure of a horse cocking its front leg and the epitaph: “Husband, father, grandfather and brother.”

A man’s life summed up in five words.

He was a quiet farmer who, according to those who knew him, never sought nor enjoyed the limelight that was thrust upon him.

George died aged 85 in 2022, around the time a fundamental shift was happening in the public perception of UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they’re often now called.

Three years ago, the United States government published a report into 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021.

It was inconclusive in terms of identifying the nature of these phenomena — but it did not rule out the possibility of advanced tech from foreign nations or extraterrestrial sources.

In 2022, the US Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.

A new government branch called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was also created to investigate UAPs across, as the name suggests, all domains — air, sea, land and space.

Suddenly there is an acknowledgement that not all encounters can be written off as hoaxes or the creations of overactive imaginations.

If this shift does provide some measure of vindication to witnesses, it has arrived too late for old George.

Dozens more nests over decades

If there was one person who never doubted George’s reliability as a witness, it was his neighbour, Albert Pennisi.

He would visit the lagoon every day for decades, jotting down notes of any disturbances and sending them back to UFO researchers in Brisbane.

Valerie Keenan and her dad were among a select few locals who were shown the other saucer nests that had also appeared that fateful January in 1966.

“There was another lagoon on the other side, and we saw another three pads, different sizes, different shapes,” she remembers.

“It was just sort of like something had come down from above — and where we saw the other three, there was no way in the world you would have got a vehicle of any kind in there.”

And it didn’t stop there.

Those early mornings spent waist-deep in the lagoon with parasites lapping at their veins and rifles held above their heads were not the most comfortable father-son expeditions.

But for Shane, they were beautiful moments spent with the man he idolised.

And they didn’t always come back empty-handed.

The pair never saw a spacecraft themselves, but Shane swears saucer nests kept appearing until about a decade ago.

“I couldn’t tell you the number … 25, 30, more,” he says.

“Towards the end, I didn’t even keep marking it down.

“You know, it’s very scary for your kids. I saw but I didn’t mark it down.”

The last saucer nest

The recent shift in public perception towards UFOs is one factor, but there’s something much more existential than that.

That seven-year-old boy is now an old man himself, and this lagoon is where he feels closest with his dad.

But it’s time to sell the farm.

Shane recently survived serious heart surgery and his kids won’t be taking over the reins.

He’s terrified that whoever buys the farm will bring in the dozers and fill the lagoon to fit in a few more rows of cane.

“What’s the biggest thing that’s going to hurt me? It’s this. Walking away from it,” Shane says.

“I’ve got to walk away from it all.

“It’s my life. I’ve got to leave and forget and don’t look back.”

Shane’s voice trembles as he sits in the same dining room where Albert and George drank tea after that very first sighting in 1966.

He feels like a weight has been lifted.

“I’m the last that’s going to be involved in it, so now’s the time for the public to know.”

Credits

• Reporting: Chris Calcino and Danielle O’Neal
• Audio production: Grant Wolter
• Photos & video: Dominic Cansdale, archival, Chris Calcino, Dorothy Jones Heritage Library 
• Illustration: Sharon Gordon
• Digital production: Daniel Franklin
• Supervising producer: Piia Wirsu

Ancient Aliens: Thousands of Mysterious Crop Circles in Farm Fields (Season 19)

25-11-2024 om 18:20 geschreven door peter  

Revealed: The 7 most astonishing pieces of evidence that Jesus left behind

• READ MORE: Turin Shroud IS the cloth Jesus was buried in, scientist claims
  

By WILIAM HUNTER

As the Bible tells it, 2024 years ago a man named Jesus was born in a little-known town on the edge of the Roman Empire and was killed 33 years later.

But do we really have any reason to believe this is more than just a story?

Perhaps surprisingly, experts say we do have extremely compelling evidence to support the story recounted by the gospels.

From the plethora of contemporary sources to the graffiti mocking his followers, Jesus' life left an indelible mark on the historical record.

Likewise, archaeologists working in Palestine and Israel have uncovered a number of artefacts supporting the basic facts of Jesus' life as described in the Bible. 

And, while there is no conclusive physical evidence, experts say this is exactly what we would expect for someone of Jesus' status in society.

Dr Lawrence Mykytiuk, a specialist in Hebrew studies from Purdue University, told MailOnline: 'We have many very good reasons to accept the real, historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.' 

Here's the seven most astonishing pieces of evidence that Jesus left behind.  

Despite having lived a short life as an impoverished peasant over 2,000 years ago, experts say there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus was a real historical figure 

1: Written evidence 

The best reason we have to believe in the existence of the historical Jesus is that there surprisingly good written records about his life.

What makes this so compelling is that many of the accounts are written by non-Christian authors who were often openly opposed to Christianity.

Dr Mykytiuk says: 'For well over 1,000 years, no one claimed that Jesus did not exist.

'Every single non-Christian source from ancient times recognizes, implicitly or explicitly, that he was a real person who really existed.'

Possibly the best example of this comes from the Roman historian Tacitus who despised Christians.

In a section of the 'Annals' describing the AD 64 fire of Rome, Tacitus describes how Emperor Nero tried to shift the blame to early Christians.

Tacitus writes: 'Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts … whom the crowd called “Chrestians.”

Flavius Josephus (pictured) was a Jewish historian who wrote about 60 years after Jesus' death. In his history of the Jewish people he mentions 'the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah, James by name'

'The founder of this name, Christ, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate.'

Likewise, the Jewish author Flavius Josephus mentions Jesus in his sprawling 'Jewish Antiquities' which was written just 60 years after Jesus' death.

In a section of the book, Josephus describes how a priest named Ananus tried to execute Jesus' brother, James.

He writes that Ananus 'called a meeting of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah, James by name.'

What makes this so interesting is that James, or Jacob as it would have been written, was such a common name that Josephus felt the need to specify by mentioning Jesus.

Dr Mykytiuk says: 'If Jesus, James’s brother, had not been a real person, this reference to Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah would have made no sense.'

2: The Alexamenos Graffito

Once we go beyond the written records, physical evidence of Jesus' existence becomes significantly harder to find.

This crude graffiti carved into a wall of the Palatine Hill in Rome is possibly the first depiction of Christians anywhere in the world 

As researchers have noted, we don't have records for 99 per cent of the people who served in the Roman Empire.

This makes it astronomically unlikely that there would be any trace of a man who lived in poverty and met the fate of a common criminal.

However, there are some artefacts from the early days of the Church which do offer compelling evidence.

Surprisingly, one of the best real pieces of evidence we have for the existence of Jesus is a crude and rather abusive piece of ancient graffiti.

Known as the Alexamenos Graffitto, this was a crude drawing scratched into the wall of a room near the Palatine Hill in Rome somewhere between the first and third century AD.

The drawing depicts a man worshipping a donkey-headed man hanging from the cross with a message that translates to: 'Alexamenos worships [his] god.'

Dr Jonathan Reed, a leading authority on the archaeology of early Christianity from the University of La Verne, told MailOnline: 'The earliest evidence we have in the archaeological record for Christians is someone making fun of Jesus being crucified.'

The reason this is so convincing is that it passes what Dr Reed calls describes as 'the criterion of embarrassment'.

The Alexamenos Graffito shows a Christian worshipping a donkey-headed Jesus with the inscription 'Alexamenos worships [his] god'. Experts say this mocking depiction of Christ is good evidence that the embarrassing features of his death actually occurred and were well-known between the first and third centuries. Pictured, a tracing of Alexamenos Graffito

Dr Reed says: 'The crucifixion would have been seen as shameful and much of the Gospels are about trying to make the crucifixion into a heroic death.'

Similarly, the fact that Jesus is presented initially as a follower of John the Baptist was deeply troubling to the early church and something that a lot of effort was spent trying to explain.

The fact that embarrassing details survived and that Christians were so distressed by them is actually a good sign that they weren't made up.

Dr Reed says: 'From my perspective, what I would be most certain of is that Jesus started off as a follower of John the Baptist, that he was from the lower peasant classes, maybe he was an illegitimate child, and that he was crucified.'

3: The Crucified heel 

Another detail of the crucifixion that some scholars have found hard to explain is: If Jesus died an enemy of the state, why was he permitted a full burial?

Although there is plenty of evidence that the crucifixion really happened, some critics argue that Jesus would more likely have been thrown in a mass grave for criminals.

However, in 1986 a construction crew accidentally uncovered several tombs in Northern Jerusalem.

The crucified heel of a man named Jehohanan was found in a tomb in Israel. This proves that Jesus could have received a proper burial as the Gospel claims rather than being thrown into a mass burial pit for criminals 

One ossuary, a chest for holding skeletal remains, was marked with the name Jehohanan and contained the remains of a man who appeared to have been crucified.

The bones included a heel which still had the nail embedded in it from where the man had been pinned to the cross.

Not only does this further support that the description of Jesus' nailing to the cross is accurate, but it also shows that families could retrieve the remains of crucified criminals.

While not a direct piece of evidence for Jesus' life, this discovery vindicated the Gospel writer's account of his death.

4: The Shroud of Turin

Of course, there couldn't be a discussion of evidence for Jesus' life without some mention of the holy relics.

The most famous of all the objects supposedly associated with Jesus is the Shroud of Turin.

This is a piece of cloth bearing an imprint of a man which is considered by many to be the cloth Jesus was wrapped in after the crucifixion.

The Shroud of Turin features the image of a man with sunken eyes, which experts have analysed under different filters to study it (pictured) 

Unfortunately, the evidence surrounding the reality of the shroud is highly contentious.

Some scholars are convinced that this is a legitimate relic of Jesus but there is a growing body of evidence mounting against that position.

For example, a recent study found that the distinctive image marked on the shroud could not have been made by a human body but must have been made by shallow carving.

Likewise, a study conducted by the Italian researcher Antonio Lombati found that the weave pattern used for the shroud doesn't match any examples of grave linens from Israel and Palestine dated to Jesus' time.

Rather, the pattern is extremely similar to cloth produced in the early Middle Ages during the Crusades – the period to which the shroud was dated during research in the 1980s. 

Dr Reed says: 'I'm convinced that they [the holy relics] are all forgeries and that's partly to do with the fact that they all pop up at the same time after the Crusades when there was a thirst for this stuff in Europe.

'If you look at the Shroud of Turin, early on, even in the Church documents, there was some suspicion of it.

However, some researchers remain still convinced of the shroud's veracity.

A recent study concludes that the impression on the shroud could not have been made by a three-dimensional human body, but was perhaps from a bas-relief - a shallow carving (top)

Dr Ben Witherington III, a Bible scholar at the Asbury Theological Seminary, told MailOnline: 'The shroud itself has a negative image on it of a crucified man, which existed at least as early as the early Middle Ages, in an age long before photographs.

'How exactly did that image get on the cloth, and how does it represent so accurately where Jesus would have been flagellated on his back, or nailed in his wrists, or bleed from the head due to something- say a thorny crown?' 

5: The Church of the Apostles

In 2017, archaeologists digging in the area of El Araj, Israel made a surprising discovery.

Buried next to the River Jordan the archaeologists found the remains of a Byzantine basilica measuring 27m by 15m (88ft by 52ft).

Researchers believe that this may be the site of Bethsaida, the village which was home to the apostles Peter, Andrew, and Phillip.

If that were the case, this would make the El Araj basilica the lost 'Church of the Apostles which was supposedly built over the village's ruins.

Following further investigations in 2021, Professor Steven Notely, an archaeologist from Nyack College and co-director of the dig, told the Biblical Archaeology Society: 'There are no other churches in the vicinity mentioned by Byzantine visitors to the Holy Land, and there is no reason to question that this is the [Church of the Apostles].'

This mosaic was found in a basilica believed to be the Church of the Apostles, built above the homes of Peter, Andrew, and Phillip. However, how much evidence this provides for the existence of the historical Jesus is debated 

Even more interestingly, excavations found the remains of a Roman-era fishing village beneath the later church.

For some, this provides a compelling case that the Biblical account of Jesus' life is backed up by hard evidence.

Dr Reed says: 'I've excavated many of the places mentioned in the Bible and the Gospels describe them all with a certain level of accuracy.'

However, Dr Reed also points out that this doesn't necessarily tell us much about the figure of Jesus.

'If you really push me, I'd say it's not even proof that Jesus existed,' says Dr Reed.

Likewise, Dr Mykytiuk says that these findings show that the Bible is broadly correct about historical context.

He adds: 'This support is so indirect that it has almost no effect regarding Jesus’s existence - except perhaps to whet the appetite of researchers.'

6: The 'Jesus is God' inscription 

This  1,800-year-old mosaic contains the ancient Greek phrase: 'The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.' This is the first recorded mention of the divinity of Christ 

Just like the Alexamenos Graffito, evidence from the early church gives us a strong indication that there really was a person for the followers to unite around.

Another slightly more flattering example of this is an inscription found beneath the floor of an Israeli prison.

This 1,800 year-old-mosaic features the first written declaration of Jesus as a God. 

The 581-square-foot mosaic decorated the world's first prayer hall in 230 AD and contains the ancient Greek phrase: 'The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.'

Carlos Campo, CEO of the Museum of the Bible which recently exhibited the mosaic, hailed it as 'the greatest discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls'.

This shows that the divinity of Christ became part of some Christians' ideologies as little as 200 years after his death.

However, leading Biblical historian Bart Ehrman claims that this was not a view shared by all of the earliest Christians. 

Dr Reed says: 'As early as the first century there was a competition to talk about who Jesus really was and what is the significance of the Christ figure.

Experts say that the existence of conflicting views of Jesus and the widespread discussion of his divinity in places like the Megiddo Mosaic (pictured) suggests that there was a real figure that the early church was reacting to 

'Because you have these disagreements, I just don't buy the theory that there was a conspiracy to fabricate this person.

'If there was a conspiracy, it was the most disorganised, chaotic, contradictory attempt imaginable.' 

7: The James ossuary  

The so-called 'James Ossuary' is a bone box bearing the Aramaic inscription: 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.'

Dr Witherington says: 'The likelihood of that particular combination of those three names not referring to the famous James the Just, and his father Joseph, and his brother Jesus are slim to none.

'If it were true that the crucifixion was the end of Jesus' story, no one would be bragging about being related to him on an ossuary.'

If the James Ossuary is real, it would indeed be a striking piece of evidence that Jesus was a real figure who became important shortly after his death.

Unfortunately, the story of the James Ossuary is a little more complicated.

The ossuary was allegedly acquired by an Israeli businessman named Oded Golan from an unknown antique dealer in the 1970s.

However, in an unusual move, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) accused Mr Golan of faking the relic and took him to court in the 'the forgery trial of the century'.

Experts from the IAA alleged that Mr Golan had taken a real first-century ossuary and added the inscription himself.

When police took Mr Golan into custody they did indeed find a forgery lab filled with tools and half-finished 'antiquities'.

But, in another twist, Mr Golan was then acquitted of all charges of forgery in 2012 on the grounds that the IAA had not proven the inscription was fake.

During the trial, it emerged that some of the IAA's experts didn't have the proper specialisms to properly appraise whether or not the writing was real.

For many, this vindicated the James Ossuary as a brilliant piece of evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

However, as is so often the case, not all academics agree that the James Ossuary has also been exonerated. 

The original owner of the James Ossuary was charged with forgery. Although he was later acquitted some experts still question the suspicious circumstances in which the artefact came to light. Pictured at the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, 2002

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Dr Reed says that just because Mr Golan was acquitted doesn't mean the ossuary is real.

'I'm a big believer in archaeology finding things in situ, if it pops up on the black market we can't be sure where it was found and we be sure whether it has been doctored,' Dr Reed says.

'We have pretty good evidence that part of the inscription was doctored and it was found in a person's home who had forging equipment.

'I think there's so much fishiness that we can't include it in the historical record.'

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{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ )

25-11-2024 om 17:04 geschreven door peter  

(Daniel10ortegaven / Wikimdeia Commons CC 3.0)

According to accounts shared by the Waorani people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, stories of a variety of large anacondas said to exist in the region were compelling enough to warrant a ten-day expedition to the Baihuaeri Waorani Territory’s Bameno region.

Anacondas are large aquatic snakes that thrive throughout rivers and wetlands in parts of South America east of the Andes. Currently, four species are recognized in the Eunectes genus, the largest of which, the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus), lives mostly in tropical regions like the Amazonian basin and the parts of the Orinoco River.

Stories of particularly large anacondas have existed for more than a century. In 1906, explorer Percy Fawcett made his first in a series of expeditions to South America on behalf of the Royal Geographic Service to map a region of jungle in Brazil near the Bolivian border. During his travels, Fawcett claimed to have observed several animal species undocumented by science, the most impressive—and questionable—of them being an alleged encounter with a massive, 62-foot-long anaconda he and his companions claimed to have shot and killed.

Fawcett’s claim was met with derision from the scientific community at the time. However, during his travels, he was told of even larger snakes in the Araquaya and Tocantin basins that locals called Dormidera, meaning “sleeper,” due to the sounds of the massive reptiles were said to make while sleeping.

Such stories are still met with skepticism, although the invitation from the Waorani to come to see the snakes they said were rumored to be among the world’s largest seemed almost too good for the University of Queensland team to pass up.

Joining hunters in boats as they paddled through the Bameno region’s rivers, University of Queensland biologist Bryan Fry said the team went for several days before encountering “several anacondas lurking in the shallows, lying in wait for prey.”

Fry said that one of the largest anacondas they encountered, a female, measured a remarkable 20.7 feet in length. However, during their travels Fry and the team were told of even larger snakes that reportedly measured as much as 24.6 feet that had been seen in the same area.

Based on their research, a new paper detailing the team’s findings identifies “two distinct clades within Eunectes murinus, revealing two species as cryptic yet genetically deeply divergent.”

“This has led to the recognition of the Northern Green Anaconda as a separate species (Eunectes akayima sp. nov), distinct from its southern counterpart (E. murinus), the Southern Green Anaconda,” the team writes.

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

24-11-2024 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

 Opinion by Peter Bergen and Erik German

• Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen,” also on Apple and Spotify. Erik German is the senior producer of “In the Room.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion at CNN.

It sounds like a pitch for a Hollywood movie. But last year, Americans saw it happen on the news. The former Pentagon official, David Grusch, had been an Air Force intelligence officer. He told a congressional committee that he’d learned of a decades-long Pentagon program focused on “crash retrieval and reverse engineering” of UFOs from other planets. Grusch also said that remains found at the spacecraft crash sites were “non-human biologics.”

That’s right. Crashed alien spacecraft and dead extraterrestrials, right there in the Congressional Record. If it wasn’t the wildest thing ever broadcasted on C-SPAN, it must’ve been close. Someone should look into this, right?

It turns out that someone already had. In 2022, the Pentagon tapped a veteran scientist and intelligence officer named Sean Kirkpatrick to set up a new office tasked with investigating UFO sightings by the US military. Named the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office by the US Department of Defense, Kirkpatrick told us his team dug into UFO cases and interviewed US service members who said they had knowledge about encounters with UFOs.

David Grusch, former member of the Defense Department's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, testifies during the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. 

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images/File

Kirkpatrick recently retired from his job at the Pentagon and spoke with us for the Audible podcast “In the Room.” Kirkpatrick and his team investigated every US government UFO sighting going back to Roswell in the 1940s, putting the findings in a report that the Pentagon released publicly on Friday. That report debunks multiple claims of alien visitations to Earth and of any purported cover up of those visits.

In the most extensive media interview he’s given, Kirkpatrick laid out a convincing case that the stories swirling for decades about the alleged government cover-up of alien-related UFOs may well have been fueled largely by true believers inside the US government or with close ties to it.

Since the term “flying saucer” was first coined, much of the conspiratorial thinking about UFOs has been spawned by people catching glimpses of highly secret US aircraft and wanting answers. And when the government doesn’t provide answers, the public imagination takes over.

US Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a video of an unidentified aerial phenomena, as he testifies before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing at the US Capitol on May 17, 2022. 

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

But, in fact, Kirkpatrick says, his investigation found that most UFO sightings are of advanced technology that the US government needs to keep secret, of aircraft that rival nations are using to spy on the US or of benign civilian drones and balloons.

“There’s about two to five percent of all the (UFO reports that are)… what we would call truly anomalous,” says Kirkpatrick. And he thinks explanations for that small percentage will most likely be found right here on Earth.

The Roswell incident

This is how Kirkpatrick and his team explain the Roswell incident, which plays a prominent role in UFO lore. That’s because, in 1947, a US military news release stated that a flying saucer had crashed near Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico.

A day later, the Army retracted the story and said the crashed object was a weather balloon. Newspapers ran the initial saucer headline, followed up with the official debunking, and interest in the case largely died down. Until 1980, that is, when a pair of UFO researchers published a book alleging that alien bodies had been recovered from the Roswell wreckage and that the US government had covered up the evidence.

Kirkpatrick says his office dug deep into the Roswell incident and found that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were a lot of things happening near the Roswell Airfield. There was a spy program called Project Mogul, which launched long strings of oddly shaped metallic balloons. They were designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests and were highly secret.

The US Air Force released this photo on June 24 of an aeroshell of a NASA Voyager Mars space probe prior to launch at Walker AFB, New Mexico (formerly Roswell AAF) as part of its report on the so called "Roswell Incident" of 1947. 

Reuters

At the same time, the US military was conducting tests with other high-altitude balloons that carried human test dummies rigged with sensors and zipped into body-sized bags for protection against the elements. And there was at least one military plane crash nearby with 11 fatalities.

Echoing earlier government investigations, Kirkpatrick and his team concluded that the crashed Mogul balloons, the recovery operations to retrieve downed test dummies and glimpses of the charred aftermath of that real plane crash likely combined into a single false narrative about a crashed alien spacecraft.

Kirkpatrick also lays out a convincing case that something similar is happening today. He says new technology taking flight now could help explain a lot of the modern era of UFO sightings from the early 2000s on. It’s not just secret government technology, either. Lots of observers get flummoxed when they catch sight of cutting-edge drones and even odd-looking balloons.

• 

Related articleOpinion: Congress is too credulous on UFOs

“What’s more likely?” asked Kirkpatrick. “The fact that there is a state-of-the-art technology that’s being commercialized down in Florida that you didn’t know about, or we have extraterrestrials?” he said. “And it even makes me scratch my head more when you show them; here’s the company in Florida that builds exactly what you’ve described. And their response is, well, no, no, no, it’s gotta be extraterrestrials, and you’re covering it up.”

Nevertheless, UFOs remain a genuine national security concern mainly because they are flight hazards. As Kirkpatrick put it, “military pilots that are flying at greater than Mach 1; if they run into a balloon with a tether on it, it’s going to rip a wing off.”

Since 2020, the Pentagon has standardized, de-stigmatized and increased the volume of reporting on UFOs by the US military. Kirkpatrick says that’s the reason the closely covered and widely-mocked Chinese spy balloon was spotted in the first place last year. The incident shows that the US government’s policy of taking UFOs seriously is actually working.

The true believers

So in the face of the actual evidence, why are people in and around government promoting the unsupported idea of alien invaders being covered up by the US government?

“True believers are not just outside of government; many of them are inside government,” Kirkpatrick told us, including the late US Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was Senate Majority leader. Another key player was Reid’s longtime friend Robert Bigelow, a Nevada billionaire and the owner of a company called Bigelow Aerospace, both of whom shared a long-running interest in UFOs. Kirkpatrick says, “Senator Harry Reid was a true believer and thought that ‘Hey, the government is hiding this from congressional oversight.’”

Then-Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) holds a news conference to announce the inclusion of the "public option" in the Senate's version of the health care reform legislation October 26, 2009 in Washington, DC. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/File

In 2007, Senator Reid got funding for a US Defense Intelligence Agency program that paid $22 million to his buddy Bigelow’s aerospace company — money the company spent on investigations into paranormal phenomena. Among other investigations, Bigelow’s team looked into sightings of UFOs by US military personnel and proposed setting up laboratories to study the purported physical remains of alien spacecraft. (On “60 Minutes” in May 2017, Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that UFOs have visited Earth.)

Reid told a reporter in Nevada in 2021 that even though this was a secret program to look into UFOs, Bigelow didn’t benefit from “some sweetheart deal … it was put out to bid.” Reid also told The New York Times, “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going…I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”

Yet, Kirkpatrick points out, “none of that actually manifested in any evidence” of alien spacecraft. But stories about these secret programs spread inside the Pentagon, got embellished and received the occasional boost from service members who’d heard rumors about or caught glimpses of seemingly sci-fi technology or aircraft.

And Kirkpatrick says his investigators ultimately traced this game of top-secret telephone back to fewer than a dozen people.

“It all goes back to the same core set of people,” Kirkpatrick said. This is both deeply weird and richly ironic. Because, for decades, UFO true believers have been telling us there’s a US government conspiracy to hide evidence of aliens. But — if you believe Kirkpatrick — the more mundane truth is that these stories are being pumped up by a group of UFO true believers in and around government.

Sadly, for all the UFO lovers out there, that may be the biggest takeaway from Kirkpatrick’s report to Congress, which is expected to be published later this month. Plenty of outsiders have long speculated about whether the Pentagon’s alien-focused programs were coming up empty and perhaps were suspiciously self-perpetuating.

But now, highly credible people inside the Pentagon — with really high-level security clearances — are finally saying, we looked at every single piece of secret evidence about supposedly alien UFOs. And as far as we can tell, it’s humans all the way down.

Although Kirkpatrick concedes that for those who truly believe that there are alien visitations here on Earth, little will convince them otherwise: “There is absolutely nothing that I’m going to do, say, or produce evidentiary that is going to make the true believers convert … It is a religious belief that transcends critical thinking and rational thought.”

• This article has been updated with the Pentagon’s release of a report on UFOs.

{ https://edition.cnn.com/ }

24-11-2024 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

“We are facing an almost guaranteed event with potential to cause an existential catastrophe,” Dr. Yampolskiy said in a statement issued by publisher Taylor & Francis. “No wonder many consider this to be the most important problem humanity has ever faced. The outcome could be prosperity or extinction, and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.”

Dr. Yampolskiy, an expert in AI safety, has highlighted the dangers of uncontrollable AI for over a decade, emphasizing the existential threat it could present to humanity. In a 2018 paper, Dr. Yampolskiy and co-author Michaël Trazzi said “Achilles heels” or “artificial stupidity” should be introduced to prevent AI systems from becoming dangerous. For example, AI should be prevented from being able to access and modify its own source code. 

Last summer, in an article for Nautilus, Dr. Yampolskiy and public policy attorney Tam Hunt described building AI superintelligence as being “riskier than Russian roulette.” 

“Once AI is able to improve itself, it will quickly become much smarter than us on almost every aspect of intelligence, then a thousand times smarter, then a million, then a billion … What does it mean to be a billion times more intelligent than a human?” Dr. Yampolskiy and Hunt wrote. “We would quickly become like ants at its feet. Imagining humans can control superintelligent AI is a little like imagining that an ant can control the outcome of an NFL football game being played around it.” 

In his latest book, Dr. Yampolskiy delves into the myriad ways AI could dramatically reshape society, often veering away from human benefit. The core of his argument is that without incontrovertible proof of controllability, the development of AI should be approached with extreme caution if not halted altogether.

Despite the widespread recognition of AI’s transformative potential, Dr. Yampolskiy points out that the AI “control problem,” also known as AI’s “hard problem,” remains a nebulous, under-researched issue. 

“Why do so many researchers assume that AI control problem is solvable? To the best of our knowledge, there is no evidence for that, no proof,” Dr. Yampolskiy states, emphasizing the gravity and immediacy of the challenge at hand. “Before embarking on a quest to build a controlled AI, it is important to show that the problem is solvable.” 

One of the most alarming aspects highlighted in Dr. Yampolskiy’s research is the inherent uncontrollability of AI superintelligence. 

AI superintelligence refers to a theoretical scenario where an AI system’s intelligence surpasses that of even the brightest human minds. 

Researchers disagree about how likely present-day human intelligence can be surpassed by technology, arguing that AI will always lack human cognitive abilities, including possessing true human consciousness.  

However, other scientists, including Dr. Yampolskiy, believe that the advancement of AI superintelligence “is an almost guaranteed event” following the development of artificial general intelligence. 

Dr. Yampolskiy says systems with AI superintelligence will be able to evolve their ability to learn, adapt, and act semi-autonomously. Consequently, this would decrease our capacity to control or fully understand the AI system’s actions. Ultimately, it would create a paradox where the advancement of AI autonomy corresponds with a decrease in human safety and control.

After a “comprehensive literature review,” Dr. Yampolskiy concludes that AI superintelligent systems “can never be fully controllable.” Thus, AI superintelligence will always present a degree of risk, regardless of any benefit they can provide. 

Dr. Yampolskiy points out several obstacles to creating “safe” AI, including the infinite potential decisions and failures a system with AI superintelligence can make, resulting in endless and unpredictable safety issues. 

Another concern is that AI superintelligence may not be able to articulate the reasoning behind its decisions, compounded by human limitations in grasping the advanced concepts it utilizes. Dr. Yampolskiy emphasizes that, at the very least, AI systems must be capable of detailing their decision-making processes to guarantee they are free from bias.

“If we grow accustomed to accepting AI’s answers without an explanation, essentially treating it as an Oracle system, we would not be able to tell if it begins providing wrong or manipulative answers,” Dr. Yampolsky explained. 

Concerns over AI bias have taken center stage recently when it was revealed that Google’s AI-powered image generator and chatbot, Gemini, had difficulty producing images depicting white people. 

Scores of people on social media posted pictures demonstrating that when asked to depict traditionally white historical figures, such as “America’s founding fathers,” Gemini would instead generate images exclusively featuring people of color. In one example, when prompted to visualize a 1943 German soldier, the AI chatbot created images of a black man and an Asian woman dressed in Nazi Waffen SS uniforms.

Google has since taken down Gemini’s image generator feature. 

“We’re aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions,” Google said in a statement. “We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.”

According to Dr. Yampolskiy, the recent Gemini debacle is a relatively harmless and mild preview of what can go wrong with AI left unchecked. More alarming, he argues it is fundamentally impossible to truly control systems with AI superintelligence.  

“Less intelligent agents (people) can’t permanently control more intelligent agents (ASIs). This is not because we may fail to find a safe design for superintelligence in the vast space of all possible designs, it is because no such design is possible, it doesn’t exist,” Dr. Yampolskiy argued. “Superintelligence is not rebelling, it is uncontrollable to begin with.” 

“Humanity is facing a choice, do we become like babies, taken care of but not in control, or do we reject having a helpful guardian but remain in charge and free.”

Dr. Yampolskiy says there are some ways to minimize the risks. These include making AI modifiable with ‘undo’ options and being limited to using transparent and understandable in human terms. 

Additionally, “nothing should be taken off the table” when it comes to limiting or partially banning the development of certain types of AI technology that have the potential to be uncontrollable. 

Dr. Yampolskiy’s work has garnered support from notable figures in the tech world, including Elon Musk. A vocal critic of unrestricted AI development, Musk was one of over 33,000 industry experts last year who signed an open letter calling for an immediate pause on “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

Despite the ominous impact AI could have on humanity, Dr. Yampolskiy says the concerns raised by his latest research should serve as a catalyst for increased AI safety and security research. 

“We may not ever get to 100% safe AI, but we can make AI safer in proportion to our efforts, which is a lot better than doing nothing.” urged Dr. Yampolskiy. “We need to use this opportunity wisely.”

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

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

24-11-2024 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

Aliens Abducted Retired Russian Army Veteran And Told Him They Would Destroy Humans From Earth

Leonid said it happened somewhere between 2000 & 2001 when one day, he was out on his bicycle to mow hay for his goats outside his village near a wine shop.

It was getting dark, and while he was busy mowing, he saw a brightly luminous object approaching from the west in the sky.

At first, Leonid thought it was moonlight, but it was too early for the moon to come. Then he got goosebumps all over his body because he remembered listening to the broadcast of the strange encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials.

He got scared and hid in the bushes squatting down, watching the approaching UFO.

The UFO landed right in the meadow where he was going to mow the grass and suddenly, unexpectedly, someone grabbed him from behind and lifted him into the air.

Leonid said: “and suddenly someone grabbed my scruff, just like a kitten.”

He saw a very tall creature dressed in a tight uniform that looked like fish skin, carrying him in the air to the huge luminous ball that was standing on the 3 metallic legs.

As soon as Leonid approached the door of the UFO, it opened, and he saw two more aliens sitting inside the ship.

According to Leonid, those creatures had human-like appearances, they had arms, legs, and tanned faces.

Leonid realized that he was abducted but worried about his goats. So, he asked them about his goats. In reply to his question, the strange creature said in anger that nothing would happen to them.

Then he felt that the ship took off, and they were flying for a long time. The alien who dragged him into the ship talked a lot with him. He explained to Leonid something that made him very angry.

The old man forgot almost everything told to him by the aliens, but the only thing he remembered was his last words when he was released.

Leonid said that when they landed, the door of the ship opened, and the alien suddenly said: “You are interfering with us and our planet. We will be forced to destroy you.” He repeated it twice.

Leonid went downstairs, the alien slammed the door, and a shiny elongated oval ball soared into the air and quickly flew away.

Leonid said that when he got out of the ship, he did not understand where he was and also could not recognize himself. Apparently, his memories of the details of the flight and what had happened there were erased. The only thing that he clearly remembered was the last words of the alien.

Leonid took his bicycle, scythe, and bag and returned home. He felt so bad that he had to call an ambulance. He spent 6 weeks in bed and did not tell anyone all that time about his encounter with aliens.

When Leonid got normal, he told everything about his meeting with strange creatures to his friends and family. It turned out that no one considered him crazy because a similar incident happened to at least one more resident of the Novokubanka region.

Every second person in his area saw strange objects in the sky or at least caught a glimpse of them. So, they believed Leonid’s story and the aliens never visited him again.

 Ветеран был похищен пилотами НЛО Veteran was abducted by UFO (Kra...

{ https://howandwhys.com/ }

24-11-2024 om 18:38 geschreven door peter