Pentagon baffled by 8,000 mysterious UFO orbs hovering over US military bases

• MORE: Mysterious 'UFO' caught hovering over Disney World before vanishing into the darkness

By CHRIS MELORE, US ASSISTANT SCIENCE EDITOR

An invasion of small metallic orbs has been spotted hovering over the US in recent years, leaving the Pentagon scrambling to identify these mysterious UFOs.

A new report from the crowdsourced platform Enigma, which allows people to report sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), reveals more than 8,000 sightings across the US between December 2022 and June 2025. 

Among these, 422 reports specifically describe metallic orbs, with the majority observed between 1am and 4am near military installations in New York, California, and Arizona. 

Eyewitnesses, including civilians, pilots, and military personnel, reported seeing the spheres hover silently before moving at extreme speeds, leaving no trace of their departure. 

Some of the sightings have been captured on video or radar, though many remain unexplained. 

'I was walking into work when I looked up and saw two metallic liquid-like objects hovering for about two minutes,' said one witness over Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton in June 2024. 

Another in California described seeing a metallic orb above Los Angeles shortly after a squadron of planes flew by. 

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has been charged with investigating claims of UFOs and has dismissed many as natural phenomena like flocks of birds, conventional aircraft, drones, balloons, or other explainable objects. 

Military drone footage from the Middle east in 2022 revealed a metal sphere flying through the sky in broad daylight (circled in purple)

The crowdsourced platform Enigma reported that over 8,000 orbs have been seen over the US since December 2022

However, some cases have remained unsolved, reportedly due to a lack of data. Of the 757 UFO cases between May 2023 and June 2024 released in AARO's annual report, 21 cases were classified as unresolved sightings.

Although the Pentagon and civilian groups like the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) have also been cataloging these incidents, many have continued to baffle military officials, who have no way of explaining what was seen.

While the new report focused on the thousands of sightings in the US over the last three years, strange orbs have been documented all over the world, from Puerto Rico to the Middle East.

Moreover, these tiny craft have apparently been visiting our skies for decades, with pilots during World War II reporting similar orbs over the skies of Europe.

Enigma revealed that more than 360 'metallic orb' reports took place within a few miles of military bases here on US soil.

In three of those cases, witnesses revealed that the orbs got within five miles of Fort Hamilton in New York, Papago Military Reserve in Arizona, and Los Angeles Air Force Base on multiple occasions.

These mystery orb sightings include one shocking encounter revealed by Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of AARO, which was captured on a MQ-9 Reaper drone's camera in the Middle East in 2022.

Enigma revealed that witnesses spotted strange orbs flying above Fort Hamilton military base in New York multiple times

Even more close calls were documented around Los Angeles Air Force Base in California between 2022 and 2025

Kirkpatrick warned that if these videos didn't prove that aliens exist, then they're evidence that a rival foreign power could be 'doing stuff in our backyard.'

Some theories have suggested these orbs could be surveillance devices from foreign powers like China or Russia.

Government officials believed they might be advanced drones, due to their tremendous agility and ability to avoid radar, according to a 2022 report in the New York Times.

This theory exploded into rampant paranoia last year, when countless drones were spotted flying over the East Coast, including over key military sites and President Trump's property in New Jersey.

As for Enigma's report, many of the orb sightings have been concentrated in Texas and Florida. 

In fact, visitors at Disney World's Epcot in Florida got an unexpected sight this month, when a glowing orb appeared over the amusement park.

After searching online and finding no information about drones or satellites in the area, Morgan Huelsman, digital director of The Bobby Bones Show, described the object as a 'UFO,' adding, 'definitely a UFO with aliens.'

The Enigma platform has also received sightings from all over the US, over critical infrastructure such as power plants, and over naval vessels at sea.

The Buga Sphere recovered in Colombia (pictured) remains one of the only pieces of physical evidence tied to metallic orb sightings worldwide

However, the most convincing proof of this invasion of mysterious orbs has been found in Colombia, where locals actually recovered a metallic sphere that was seen hovering over the town of Buga in March.

The 'Buga Sphere' has become a major topic of discussion among UFO researchers, with scientists claiming the object contains a maze of fiber-optic wires that suggest it can send and receive signals.

After striking a power line and crashing to the ground, the object also appeared to have somehow dehydrated the field it landed in, killing all the grass and soil where it touched down.

Scientists suggested this was proof that the object produced some kind of energy field, but researchers had not attempted to forcibly cut the object open so far. The sphere has since been taken to Mexico for further analysis.

However, UFO researcher Dr Julia Mossbridge from the University of San Diego is among the many who doubt the authenticity of the Buga Sphere, calling it a 'man-made art project.'

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28-09-2025 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

Mars is the most studied planet in the Solar System after Earth. Right now, there are six spacecraft belonging to four different space agencies operating in its orbit. They are accompanied by two rovers and a drone that has been repurposed as an autonomous weather station. We will tell you about these spacecraft, their main tasks, and discoveries.

NASA’s Martian armada

Of all the space agencies, NASA has the largest Martian armada. It consists of three orbital and three ground-based vehicles.

The oldest of these is Mars Odyssey, launched back in 2001 (hence its name, which was given in honor of “2001: A Space Odyssey”). It is the longest-running Martian spacecraft in history, and of all interplanetary missions, it is second only to the legendary Voyager probes in this respect.

The main objective of the Mars Odyssey was to map the surface of Mars. Over the years, the spacecraft took nearly 1.5 million images of the Red Planet in the visible and infrared ranges, compiling a global map. This map was later used to select landing sites for subsequent Mars missions. Mars Odyssey also discovered large reserves of water ice beneath the surface of the Red Planet, collected data on the radiation environment in its vicinity, studied seasonal changes in the polar caps, and photographed Phobos.

Of course, such a long stay in space could not fail to affect the technical condition of the Mars Odyssey. One of its main scientific instruments has failed, and its fuel reserves are almost exhausted. According to engineers’ estimates, they will last until the end of this year or the beginning of next year. However, Mars Odyssey may cease operations earlier if NASA’s 2026 budget proposal, which calls for the early termination of the mission, is approved.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is probably one of the most famous Mars explorers in history. It has been orbiting Mars since 2006. During this time, it has transmitted over 400 terabytes of data to Earth, including millions of images of the planet’s surface.

The MRO data has significantly expanded our knowledge of Mars. It has compiled the most detailed map of the Red Planet’s surface and discovered many geological formations that have provided insight into its past. Its data has been and continues to be used to search for landing sites for Mars expeditions. It is also actively used as a space “detective.” MRO images have revealed the mystery of the disappearance of the Beagle 2 probe and the fate of the Schiaparelli landing platform. In addition, it regularly photographs new craters formed on Mars as a result of asteroid impacts.

Finally, MRO plays a key role in maintaining communication with NASA’s Mars rovers, relaying their data back to Earth. It will likely continue to do so for a long time to come. According to the latest estimates, MRO has enough fuel reserves to continue operating until the middle of the next decade.

The MAVEN spacecraft is NASA’s newest Mars explorer. It was launched in 2013. MAVEN is used to study the Martian atmosphere. Over the years, it has measured the rate at which the atmosphere is leaking into space. MAVEN has also studied its interaction with the solar wind, the tail of comet C/2013 A1, and measured radiation levels in the vicinity of Mars. Like MRO, MAVEN also plays a very important role in communicating with Mars rovers, relaying their data back to Earth.

Like Mars Odyssey, MAVEN is now under threat of cancellation due to the White House’s proposed new NASA budget. But space enthusiasts hope that the mission can be saved. Its premature closure would deal a significant blow to American plans for Mars exploration.

Mars rovers and a drone that became a weather station

In addition to three orbital spacecraft, NASA also has two rovers operating on the surface of the Red Planet. The first is Curiosity, which landed at the end of 2012. The rover is conducting research in Gale Crater, at the bottom of which there was once a lake.

During its mission, Curiosity has traveled over 35 km. This has affected its condition. Some of the rover’s wheels have developed holes, and its radioisotope thermoelectric generator now produces much less energy than it did during landing. Nevertheless, the rover is still successfully performing its tasks, and NASA hopes that it will continue to operate for many years to come.

The Perseverance rover, which landed in February 2021, was based on Curiosity but has a set of more advanced scientific instruments. These have enabled it to make a number of high-profile discoveries, including the recent discovery of biosignatures. The rover is also collecting soil samples, which may be delivered to Earth in the future by a special mission.

Perseverance landed on Mars together with the Ingenuity helicopter drone. In 2024, it crashed and lost its ability to fly. After that, engineers switched it to autonomous weather station mode. It is assumed that it wakes up every day, takes pictures of the surface, and collects temperature data. Whether this is true or not is impossible to verify at this time: Perseverance has moved too far away from the drone to maintain communication with it. However, NASA engineers believe that Ingenuity will be able to operate in this mode for about 20 years.

In the future, the drone may be selected for a specific mission. The data stored inside it will not only benefit developers of Martian technology but will also allow scientists to gain a long-term understanding of Martian weather conditions and dust movement.

European Mars researchers

The European Space Agency boasts two spacecraft operating in Martian orbit. The first is Mars Express, which was launched back in 2003 and is second only to Mars Odysseus in terms of service life.

Source: ESA

Despite its considerable age, Mars Express continues to delight us regularly with various discoveries. Many of these have been made possible by the radar on board. Analysis of its data, in particular, has revealed signs of liquid water in the planet’s interior. Mars Express also photographed the famous “Face on Mars” in high resolution. To the disappointment of all ufologists, it turned out to be not an alien artifact, but merely a rock formation.

The TGO spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since 2016. Its main task is to study the planet’s atmosphere and search for rare compounds that indicate the possibility of life. The spacecraft has also compiled a global map that allows scientists to estimate the percentage of water ice in the subsurface layers of Mars.

Initially, it was assumed that TGO would work in tandem with the Rosalind Franklin rover. However, due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the breakdown of cooperation between ESA and Roscosmos, the latter remained on Earth. The rover may be launched in 2028, but this date is still subject to change.

New Mars explorers

NASA and ESA are the “old hands” in the study of Mars. However, in recent years, they have faced competition from new space powers that have launched their own Mars missions. One of them is the UAE. In 2020, it sent the first Arab interplanetary mission in history to Mars, called Emirates Mars Mission.

The key scientific goal of this mission is to create a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere. The spacecraft will study how the weather changes throughout the local day and year, investigate meteorological events in the lower atmosphere, such as dust storms, and observe the climate in different geographical regions of Mars. Based on images from the Emirates Mars Mission, scientists have also created a three-dimensional map of the planet’s surface.

The Chinese Tianwen-1 mission was also launched in 2020. It was the first step in China’s ambitious program to conquer the Red Planet. The main task of the spacecraft is to conduct a global survey of Mars, including mapping the morphology and geological structure of the planet, studying the characteristics of the surface layer and the distribution of water ice in it, analyzing the composition of surface materials, measuring the parameters of the planet’s ionosphere, electromagnetic and gravitational fields, and obtaining information about the climate of Mars.

The tasks assigned to Tianwen-1 appear to be quite ambitious. However, this is only a prelude to the much more complex and costly Tianwen-3 mission. As part of this mission, China plans to bring samples of Martian soil to Earth for the first time in history. At present, the launch of Tianwen-3 is scheduled for 2028.

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28-09-2025 om 23:12 geschreven door peter  

Yorkshire resident spots mysterious collection of ghostly UFOs near Leeds – including one that looks like a SPOON 

• READ MORE: Saucer-shaped 'UFO' spotted flying though the hills near Skipton

By JONATHAN CHADWICK, ASSISTANT SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 

Yorkshire may be swiftly becoming Britain's 'UFO' hotspot.

Several remarkable new photos reveal a flurry of so-called 'unidentified flying objects' in Headingley in Leeds, West Yorkshire. 

Local resident and photographer Jesse Gallagher snapped the strange collection of unearthly bodies over several months using his iPhone.

The snaps, shared exclusively with the Daily Mail, were all taken after dark around midnight, making their ghostly light easier for the camera to detect. 

And they certainly form an eerie motely crew of strange shapes and sizes, several deviating a lot from traditional depictions of a UFO. 

'When zooming in, the orbs are either white or multi-coloured and can be seen pulsating,' Mr Gallagher told the Daily Mail. 

'One recording has the moon as a backdrop which provides some interesting perspective.

'I have seen other videos of similar objects around the world.'  

They make up an eerie motely crew of strange shapes and sizes, deviating a lot from traditional depictions of a UFO. Pictured, the spoon-shaped entity 

Another entity in a deeper shade of blue seems to form a very rough sphere or orb and be emitting a faint ring of light

Mr Gallagher said his footage was captured around midnight in Headingley between August 2021 and November 2023. 

Bizarrely, one of the UFOs with a ghostly slivery-blue tint resembles a spoon or a spade – with a narrow stream of light connecting a fainter circle.

Another entity in an even deeper shade of blue seems to form a very rough sphere or orb and be emitting a faint beams of light. 

Meanwhile, the third snap shows a bright white ball of brilliant light, almost perfectly circular, with the moon as a tiny blob in the background. 

But perhaps most intriguing photo shows a textured grey object with an unusual level of detail – a possible cone or horn, with what seems to be a hole in the middle. 

Clues from its appearance suggest it could be a discarded piece of machinery or a fragment of disused spacecraft.

But, in such an instance, rules of physics surely dictate that it would hit the ground. 

Philip Mantle, a British UFO researcher, said the images show some kind of 'distant light source that is out of focus'. 

The third snap shows a bright white ball of brilliant light, almost perfectly circular, with the moon a tiny blob in the background

A piece of spacecraft? Perhaps most intriguing of the four pictures is this one, showing a textured grey object with an unusual level of detail

'The out of focus image makes the light look very different from what the naked eye would see,' he told the Daily Mail. 

'They could well be simple lens flares as seen in the photo of the moon.' 

But Mr Mantle stopped short of calling them 'UFOs' – a term that may or may not describe an object thought to have an extraterrestrial origin.

Only last week, another Yorkshire resident revealed  photos of a bizarre saucer-shaped object just outside of Skipton. 

John Tunnah took about 10 or 12 photographs from his vantage point near the hills, but the object only appeared in one of them.

The object is remarkably similar to the classic UFO saucer shape depicted in popular culture, with a distinctive round and elongated shape. 

Nick Pope, a UFO expert formerly with the UK's Ministry of Defence, offered a number of explanations for Mr Tunnah's photo. 

'When photos show an anomaly that wasn't seen at the time, I suspect either a glitch with the camera, or a fast-moving object like a bird or an insect, close to the lens,' Mr Pope told the Daily Mail. 

This bizarre saucer-shaped object was snapped with a Pentax Optio SVi camera by Yorkshire photographer John Tunnah

The man's attention was drawn by a perfectly formed arch of cloud over the trees (centre) - and only later did he notice the saucer-shaped object on the left

UFOs became a major subject of interest after World War II and were thought by some researchers to be intelligent extraterrestrial life visiting Earth. 

In the US, the government's Department of Defense, commonly known as the Pentagon, now refrains from using the term UFO at all.

This is largely because it is commonly associated with wind up conspiracy theories and paranoia.

Instead, the Pentagon uses UAP – 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' – although in most places this has low usage and is yet to enter common parlance.

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28-09-2025 om 23:11 geschreven door peter  

A respected congressman has claimed that advanced alien beings could be hiding out in 'five or six' underwater UFO bases right off the US coast.

Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee overseeing UFO reports, drew massive attention on social media after saying that he believed there were alien 'entities' currently living in deep-water areas on Earth.

The September 17 clip posted on X has already been viewed more than 1.9 million times.

During the sidewalk interview with a UFO researcher and documentary filmmaker who goes by the pseudonym Red Panda Koala, Burchett suggested that advanced alien beings or civilizations may have been hiding in Earth's oceans for generations.

He added that there have been frequent sightings of unidentified craft around five or six specific deep-sea areas, which he found significant given how little is known about the ocean compared to the moon's surface.

The congressman also noted that US Navy personnel have reported chasing these underwater craft that move at extraordinary speeds and far surpass the abilities of current US military technology.

Despite these claims, no verifiable physical evidence, such as artifacts or clear footage of these underwater craft, has been publicly presented to confirm the existence of alien bases.

Skeptics have argued that the reliance on anecdotal reports from naval personnel and the lack of peer-reviewed scientific data casts significant doubt on the claims made during recent congressional hearings on UFO phenomena.

Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett (pictured) suggested in a viral clip online that there are alien beings in secret underwater bases near the US (Stock Image)

UFO researcher Dr Michael Salla said these bases are believed to be in a region of the Atlantic near the Bahamas

Following the explosive revelations, Dr Michael Salla, an author and researcher focused on extraterrestrial phenomena, revealed where it's believed these UFO bases may be, singling out a region of the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

He added that he's also spoken to credible whistleblowers, including senior military and executive branch officials, who confirm the existence of underwater bases and advanced craft.

Dr Salla highlighted that the US Navy operates a top-secret underwater facility he likened to Area 51 called AUTEC, which stands for the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center, right in this region of the Atlantic.

'Just to the right of it is Tongue of the Ocean, which is a very deep part of the ocean there in the Bahamas. It drops off immediately around 3,000 feet,' Salla said while appearing on the Redacted podcast on September 19.

'So that's ideal for a submarine, but it's also a place where people have seen many UFOs, many underwater craft coming into and leaving the water. So, there have been a lot of UFO sightings in that area,' he revealed.

The UFO researcher noted that he had interviewed two eyewitnesses who claimed that they had visited these secret bases, including one who was a US Army whistleblower who used the pseudonym 'JP.'

The whistleblower claimed he was on a mission where he was taken by a Blackhawk helicopter to an ocean platform, then boarded a high-tech submarine crewed by tall, Nordic-looking extraterrestrials.

The submarine, capable of space travel, took him to an underwater city under a dome, resembling Dubai, with a large white pyramid. The mission involved retrieving an artifact, but no physical evidence of this mission has ever been produced.

Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri recently revealed video of a US military drone striking an orb-shaped UFO with a missile, which bounced off and did not stop the craft

Despite Burchett and Salla's lack of tangible evidence, there has been growing interest and testimony from credible sources, including military personnel at congressional hearings, suggesting that UFOs and extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth. 

A recent congressional hearing on September 9 featured new whistleblowers who shared their experiences with UFOs, including a video showing an orb-like object surviving a missile strike and splitting into four parts they kept flying.

'We have naval personnel telling me we have these sightings, these underwater craft they're chasing that go hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we got is something that does maybe a little under forty miles an hour,' Burchett said in the interview posted on X.

'So I got a lot of questions about that stuff.'

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28-09-2025 om 22:41 geschreven door peter  

One of the main mysteries that scientists want to solve in the Solar System is the existence of life on Mars – today or in the past. But why do scientists think there should be something there at all? The reasons for this are quite complex and interesting, because history and biology, physics and chemistry are intertwined.

Life on Mars and beyond

One of the topics that inevitably arises when discussing space exploration is life on Mars. One of the largest space programs currently being implemented by NASA is dedicated to discovering whether life exists there now or may have existed in the past. But why do scientists think that something can be found on Mars? Why not on some other planet?

The reason for this is primarily historical. In general, the idea that there may be living beings on other planets is relatively new. Back in the early 17th century, this statement, made by Giordano Bruno, was used to prove that he was a heretic. And when scientists finally got the chance to speak more freely, they immediately started talking about the possibility of life on absolutely all celestial bodies.

For example, intelligent beings were sought for quite a long time (and even claimed to have been found) on the Moon. Today, we could immediately come up with a whole bunch of scientific arguments, but it is worth remembering that in the 18th century, people were just beginning to learn about things such as the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere and its role in biological processes.

Gradually, scientists realized how much life depends on the availability of certain substances and physical conditions, but even in the 19th century, Mars seemed to be a planet with changing seasons and fairly large bodies of water.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, scientists realized that Martian canals were just an optical illusion, and that Mars itself was, at best, a dry steppe and, at worst, bare rock. However, it was at this time that the popularization of science and science fiction was born, so the public continued to believe in the existence of life on Mars.

Everything finally fell into place when, in 1965, Mariner 4 flew past Mars and photographed it from close range for the first time. Scientists were presented with a planet with a very thin atmosphere unsuitable for breathing, a weak magnetic field, and no trace of water or green foliage. So why have we not yet decided, once and for all, that there is no life there?

What do you need to live?

One of the reasons why people are still searching for life on Mars is habit. People have believed for so long that there is a biosphere there that it is not so easy to give up on this idea. However, there are also purely scientific reasons not to stop searching.

First of all, we must remember what life is. Its general definition is rather vague, but it is quite possible to use the description of what it is on Earth. Life is a set of chemical processes involving complex carbon compounds that occur in an aquatic environment and ensure the ability of biological systems to reproduce themselves. Most often, these processes occur with the participation of oxygen.

It follows that the two main factors determining the possibility of life are the presence of carbon and water. Carbon is not a problem on Mars. The entire atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide, i.e., carbon monoxide. And there is plenty of carbonate rock on the surface.

Water is not so simple. There is a lot of it in the form of ice on the surface of Mars, mainly concentrated in the ice caps at the poles, although it can also be found beneath the surface in temperate latitudes. However, for life to exist, water must be in a liquid state. On Mars, temperatures range from +20°C at the equator during the day to -153°C at the poles at night.

That is, at least somewhere it should be in a liquid state, but that would be true for Earth. On Mars, with its pressure 170 times lower than Earth’s, ice immediately turns into a gaseous state.

Oxygen is also essential for life, and there is plenty of it on Mars. It is the second component of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, and the famous red color of its surface is due to iron oxides.

Thus, all the components necessary for life exist on the surface of Mars, and this is what makes it one of the best targets for the search for life beyond Earth. If only this planet were a little warmer and its atmosphere had higher pressure…

The Past of Mars

There were such periods in the history of Mars. We are talking about the Noachian period, which began about 4.1 billion years ago and ended 3.8 billion years ago. During this time, Mars had a primitive atmosphere of hydrogen, which gradually changed to a fairly dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. Scientists have found numerous traces of volcanism, which enriched the planet’s gas envelope with substances that caused the greenhouse effect.

During this period, Mars’ climate was warm enough for water to flow on its surface. Scientists know this for sure because they have found numerous riverbeds and former lakes, and at their bottoms – clay and other rocks that can only form in conditions of constant water presence.

At the same time, the water was of very different quality. At least in the beginning, volcanic geysers with acidic water played a major role. Later, they were replaced by colder reservoirs. The entire northern basin of the planet was occupied by the ocean.

At the same time, the atmosphere remained oxygen-free. Therefore, multicellular animals could not exist on Mars, but various anaerobic microorganisms could. And it is precisely on the search for their remains that scientists have focused in recent decades.

If life once existed on Mars, then it must first be sought in the sediments of that era. Structures resembling bacteria have been found in a meteorite that was once part of the Red Planet. However, scientists are still not entirely sure about their identification.

The greatest hopes for finding traces of life on Mars are pinned on samples collected in the Jezero crater by the Perseverance rover. These are mainly fossilized clays, and they are the most likely place where the remains of microorganisms, if they ever existed on Mars, could have survived to this day. It is expected that in the next decade, these samples will be delivered to Earth laboratories, where they can be thoroughly studied.

Life on Mars today

The very discovery of ancient microorganisms could be a real sensation. After all, it would mean that life is indeed widespread throughout the universe. But it would be even more exciting if some of these bacteria could be brought back to life.

This scenario is one of the most popular among horror movie writers. Because our imagination immediately conjures up images of humanity dying out from an unknown disease. These fears are based on the fact that our immune system will not be ready to fight them.

However, they forget that all past cases of deadly epidemics are associated with viruses and bacteria that had been spreading for a long time in other human populations and among species relatively close to us.

Ancient Martian life did not have millions of years of evolution to adapt to existence inside terrestrial multicellular organisms. Of course, there is a chance that it poses a danger to Earthlings, which is why research must be conducted in compliance with all safety requirements. However, it is equally likely that Martian organisms themselves will need much greater isolation in order not to perish in the Earth’s environment.

However, no one expects to find signs of life that existed on Mars billions of years ago. But if much younger samples are found on Mars, everything may turn out differently.

It is believed that in the middle of the era following the Noachian and Hesperian periods, the planet’s climate began to change rapidly, and soon it became what we know today: cold, dry, and virtually devoid of atmosphere. However, almost since the visit of Mariner 4, there has been an opinion that the current state of Mars has not lasted for hundreds of millions of years, but is a relatively temporary phenomenon, only a few tens of thousands of years.

In particular, in recent years, its concept as a geologically dead planet has been significantly revised. Earthquakes recorded by the InSight device on the surface indicate that liquid magma is hidden somewhere in the depths. This means that volcanic eruptions and geysers are entirely possible. Traces of such activity have been observed over the last 50 million years.

So the main question of whether life on Mars is possible now depends not so much on the conditions there as on our knowledge of what conditions living organisms can withstand in general. Already today, we can name species that could exist on the Red Planet even under the conditions it has.

At the same time, “surviving now” does not mean “surviving for billions of years.” We still know too little about evolution to claim that extremophile bacteria could have emerged even if they never had ancestors living in much more comfortable conditions. Moreover, no one can claim that isolated populations preserved in Mars’ glaciers throughout its existence can ensure global evolution.

However, it is still worth searching for life on Mars.

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28-09-2025 om 20:26 geschreven door peter  

Göbekli Tepe: A Calendar in Stone, A Memory of a Forgotten World?

The people of Göbekli Tepe were precise observers who cared about regularities in the heavens long before written records.

by Ivan Petricevic

 

High-quality shot of the beautiful megalithic circle at the center of Gobekli Tepe, filled with pillars.

Credit: Shutterstock

The hill does not announce itself. From a distance it looks like any other rise in the dry country of southeastern Turkey. Up close, the ground opens into circles of towering T-shaped pillars, carved with foxes, birds, snakes, scorpions, and symbols that seem to speak a language we no longer understand. This is Göbekli Tepe, and it should not exist in the time it occupies.

Archaeologists date the main enclosures to the tenth millennium BC. That is twice as old as the first cities of Mesopotamia. Yet the site shows large-scale planning, heavy stonework, and an iconography that looks deliberate rather than improvised. If the latest interpretations hold, it may also contain the earliest solar calendar ever made.

The claim: a solar year, cut into stone

A study in Time and Mind, building on work by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, argues that certain repeated markings at Göbekli Tepe form a working calendar. One motif is a simple V. The team proposes that each V marks a single day. On at least one pillar they counted 365, the length of a solar year. The placement of a V on the neck of a bird-like figure is read as a sign for the summer solstice, a way of anchoring the count to a fixed point in the sky.

The proposal goes further. The carvings appear to encode both lunar and solar cycles. The authors suggest that the builders tracked changes in constellations through the seasons. If that is true, the people of Göbekli Tepe were precise observers who cared about regularities in the heavens long before written records.

This interpretation is contested, as any strong claim should be. But it is not casual speculation. It rests on counts, on placements, on comparisons across pillars and nearby statues where the same V sign appears at the neck of figures linked to time and creation.

The calendar reading connects to a larger idea. Several researchers argue that a major comet encounter around 10,850 BC helped trigger the Younger Dryas, a sharp cooling that followed the last ice age. In that view, witnessing a violent sky could have pushed people to watch it more closely. A carved scene at Göbekli Tepe has been read as a representation of the Taurid meteor stream, with a period of about twenty-seven days. If these readings are right, the site preserves not only ritual scenes but also a memory of an ancient impact.

Whether or not one accepts every link in this chain, the direction of the thinking matters. It suggests that Göbekli Tepe is not random decoration. It is pattern, tally, and sky knowledge, expressed in stone.

My position: this is not an isolated marvel

Here I must be clear. What follows is a working theory. It is not settled fact. It is where the evidence points me today.

Göbekli Tepe is not a lone anomaly. It is the visible edge of a deeper story. I do not see hunter-gatherers experimenting on a whim. I see trained builders, organizers, and skywatchers who already possessed methods, symbols, and a shared canon. I believe Göbekli Tepe is a remnant of a long-lost civilization that predates the Mesopotamian textbook beginning. I have said this out loud on many occasions.

Several lines support this view. Hear me out.

First, engineering. The pillars are up to six meters high and weigh many tons. They were quarried, shaped, moved, raised, and set into carefully prepared sockets. The enclosures are not piles. They are architectures with symmetry and recurrence. That implies logistics, leadership, and a labor force that could be coordinated.

Second, astronomy. If the calendar interpretation is even partly right, the builders observed and codified cycles of the Sun and Moon, recognized solstices, and related those cycles to figures that carried meaning. You do not arrive at that in one season. You inherit and refine it.

Third, context. Göbekli Tepe is not alone on the landscape. Karahan Tepe, Sayburç, and other sites on the Urfa plateau are revealing parallel stonework, similar T-pillars, and related artistic language. This looks like a cultural network, not a one-off project. The pieces fit together like tiles in a mosaic we are still uncovering.

Fourth, influence. Monumental stone building appears later in several regions. It is not proof, but it is reasonable to consider that practices and ideas diffuse. A culture that mastered ceremonial stone enclosures and sky timekeeping by 9500 BC could echo forward through memory, teaching, and migration. If so, Göbekli Tepe may be the earliest surviving root of the monumental impulse that later appears in ziggurats, pyramids, and stone circles.

Less than a tenth of Göbekli Tepe has been excavated. That is the detail most people miss. The hill was deliberately backfilled in deep antiquity. What we see are a few cleaned windows into a buried complex that extends under the surface. Dozens of enclosures may still wait below the soil. There could be sequences of pillars that show calendar variants, new constellations, or a ledger of seasonal rites. There could be tool marks that settle debates about quarrying and transport. There could be transitional rooms that show how the iconography evolved over time.

When a site is this large and this old, every new trench can reset the conversation. We should hold our models with a light grip and update them as the ground demands.

What mainstream critics will say, and why this still stands

Mainstream archaeology offers strong counterpoints. Farming, pottery, and permanent settlement are generally thought to precede large monuments. Elite organization is easier to sustain in villages and cities. By that logic, hunters and foragers should not be able to invest this much effort in stone architecture.

The counter to the counter is empirical. Göbekli Tepe exists. The pillars are real. The sockets are real. The enclosure walls and floors are real. The toolkits recovered on site show capability with stone. The coordination problem is a fair challenge, but it pushes us to consider seasonal congregation, ritual economies, and forms of leadership that do not mirror later city states. It expands the range of what early societies could do when purpose and memory aligned.

As for the calendar reading, healthy skepticism is necessary. Iconographic interpretation can go astray. But counts of marks, repeated placements, and cross-site recurrences are measurable. They can be tested as new areas are excavated. If future finds show different counts, or if the V signs appear in contexts that do not fit the calendar model, we adjust. If they continue to cluster around solstitial markers and time-linked figures, the case grows stronger.

It helps to picture the work as lived life rather than abstract pattern. Imagine the dawn at the hill, the line of workers moving up from the low ground, the craftspeople who know how to read flaws in the limestone, the carvers who have practiced the same fox outline so many times their hands can do it without a sketch. Someone keeps track of the days. Someone watches the place on the horizon where the Sun rises at midsummer. The V mark is not a symbol on a blackboard. It is cut with a stone blade by a person who believes it matters.

Ritual does not preclude measurement. In early societies the two often reinforce each other. If a community survives a period of cold and scarcity, and elders say the sky can warn us when risk returns, then counting becomes duty. Over time, duty becomes tradition. Tradition becomes art. The art encodes the count. That is one way a calendar is born.

What this could mean if my theory is right

If Göbekli Tepe represents a true calendar culture and if it belongs to a network that predates the first cities by millennia, then the standard narrative needs expansion. The rise of civilization would no longer be a sudden Mesopotamian bloom but a long relay. Knowledge would have moved along corridors of ritual gathering, marriage ties, seasonal routes, and shared sanctuaries. Writing would still be a later invention, but its precursors would include tally marks, fixed points on the horizon, and a habit of making memory durable in stone.

That does not erase Mesopotamia. It deepens the preface. It invites us to treat the tenth millennium BC as a time of innovation rather than mere survival.

Three practical steps can test and refine this picture.

First, excavation. Careful, phased work at Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, and related sites will tell us whether the calendar pattern repeats and how the iconography changes across layers.

Second, high-resolution documentation. Systematic scanning of pillar surfaces can reveal faint marks and corrections. If carvers altered counts or added signs near solstices, those edits would be strong evidence for timekeeping.

Third, independent sky modeling. We can simulate the sky of southeastern Turkey across the relevant millennia and check whether proposed constellations align with the placements and orientations on the ground. A calendar should match the sky it claims to track.

The safest position is to wait for more data. The bolder position is to outline what the present evidence allows and to say what it might mean. I choose the second, with care. Göbekli Tepe looks like more than an early shrine. It looks like a coordinated project of builders and observers who counted days, watched cycles, and tried to make memory survive disaster.

If that is so, then this hill is not simply an ancient place. It is the echo of a culture that refused to forget. Most of it is still under our feet. The rest is in the sky, rising at the same points on the horizon that their carvers once watched.

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{ https://curiosmos.com/category/ancient-civilizations/ }

27-09-2025 om 23:01 geschreven door peter  

{ BELGISCH UFO-MELDPUNT }

27-09-2025 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

Een ufo werd gespot voor de kust van Jemen.

© RV

27-09-2025 om 22:26 geschreven door peter  

When I was growing up, I watched a lot of sci-fi movies about aliens that come to Earth. The extraterrestrials in popular culture, however, always looked so familiar that I found them far-fetched. What are the chances that E.T., the Predator, or ALF would develop arms and legs, a humanlike face, and opposable thumbs? Perhaps as a result, I associated alien life more with fantasy than with science, and I never gave much thought to what a visit would really look like. But my attitude started to change in 2020, when I read Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” and its two sequels. In Liu’s books, creatures called Trisolarans send a scouting mission of supercomputers to spy on and subtly disrupt human affairs. Although Trisolarans could do seemingly impossible things, such as program protons, Liu’s rigor got me thinking about aliens from a scientific perspective. Suddenly, I could imagine a sophisticated civilization coming into contact with humanity, perhaps in ways that we don’t immediately understand.

Then, in 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on unidentified anomalous phenomena (U.A.P.)—essentially a rebranding of U.F.O.s. Several Navy videos had been made public a few years prior. In the so-called GOFAST video, recorded off the coast of Florida in 2015, a Navy pilot with an infrared camera follows an object zooming above the water and asks, over the radio, “What the fuck is that?” Another clip, deemed GIMBAL—“Look at that thing, dude”—showed a similar shape above some clouds. A third video, known as FLIR, was taken in 2004 from an aircraft in California. Navy pilots in two planes saw what looked like a large Tic Tac hovering over the water; it seemed to zip away at thousands of miles per hour. Military whistle-blowers subsequently claimed that the government knew more than it was admitting, leading to congressional hearings in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Last month, House Representative Eric Burlison, a Republican, introduced the U.A.P. Disclosure Act of 2025, aimed at preserving and eventually releasing U.F.O. reports.

None of the government’s disclosures demonstrated that Earth had welcomed interstellar house guests. And yet, after the releases and hearings, it seemed more acceptable to explore the possibility. In 2022, roughly fifteen hundred university faculty members replied to a survey about U.F.O.s; a majority said that recent governmental and journalistic reports had increased the topic’s credibility, and three-quarters said that it was of average importance, very important, or essential for academics to conduct more research about it. Tyler Cowen wrote about U.F.O.s for Bloomberg and Ross Douthat wrote about them for the New York Times; they compared notes on Cowen’s podcast. On the prediction platform Polymarket, the odds that the U.S. will “confirm that aliens exist in 2025” have ranged between four and fourteen per cent. (The detection of aliens on a faraway planet would count.)

I started to ask myself, How likely is it that we’ve ever been visited by aliens or their technology? It seemed improbable yet plausible. I wondered how scientists, engineers, and other thinkers would approach the question. What would count as evidence, and what kinds of educated guesses could we make? I decided to call Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester and the author of “The Little Book of Aliens,” which looks to differentiate between science and fiction.

Frank doesn’t put much stock in U.F.O. videos, and he told a story to explain why. In February, 2023, photographs of a Chinese spy balloon over Billings, Montana, prompted speculation about aliens. The Air Force eventually shot it down, but first the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane flew past and took a selfie that showed the balloon out the window. “You can see it in exquisite detail,” Frank told me. “Where are all those pictures? Every U.F.O. picture is a fuzzy blob. Everybody carries a high-resolution camera in their pocket now, and it’s always fuzzy blobs.”

There are potential answers to Frank’s question, but most of them raise questions of their own. Maybe there’s a coverup. But, if so, wouldn’t whistle-blowers have turned up something by now? “Color me extremely skeptical that any government could keep a secret like this effectively for a week, let alone decades,” Austin Carson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written extensively about government secrecy, told me. Steven Aftergood, who directed the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, pointed me to a 1970 report produced by a government task force on secrecy: “It is unlikely that classified information will remain secure for periods as long as five years, and it is more reasonable to assume that it will become known to others in periods as short as one year.”

Maybe the aliens are coy and want to stay hidden. If that’s the case, though, why are we seeing them at all? Mark Rodeghier, the scientific director of the Center for U.F.O. Studies, which is headquartered in his basement, told me, “They’re actually trying to slowly acclimatize us to the idea that aliens, in fact, exist.” Robert Hampson, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest University who has written over a dozen science-fiction novels, speculated that, perhaps, “what we’re detecting are the alien equivalent of graduate students who have been given an assignment to go and watch the humans and report back.” Plenty of human graduate students have been tasked with researching other worlds—and they don’t always get the best equipment.

The elaborateness of these explanations, in Frank’s view, is a reason to be skeptical of them. “If you’ve got to go through all those contortions to make your story work, you’re not doing science anymore,” he said. He noted that, when humans send spacecraft into the solar system, they tend to land safely. Alien craft, in contrast, “would have managed to cross interstellar distances, and these things seem to crash every fifteen minutes. It’s like everybody’s sending us their 1987 Dodge Omnis.” The 2021 national-intelligence report on U.A.P.s said that it could not explain a hundred and forty-three U.F.O. reports, but that many were probably “airborne clutter,” weather, or terrestrial technology. “Sometimes they’re hard to explain because we just don’t have the data,” Frank said. In his opinion, high-quality data (high-resolution photography, for example) has never “showed us that anything required an extraterrestrial hypothesis.”

Our galaxy contains at least a hundred billion planets, and biology finds a way in extreme environments on Earth, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that life thrives elsewhere in the Milky Way. But if aliens wanted to visit us they would have a long way to go. The closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is roughly 4.2 light-years away. NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe would take more than seventy-five thousand years to get there, if it were headed in the right direction. The closest inhabited solar system could be much, much farther away. Could aliens, or at least their tech, survive that journey?

Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, thinks they may have already. In 2014, military satellites observed a half-metre-long meteor in the sky near Papua New Guinea. Several years later, Loeb and a student, Amir Siraj, concluded that the meteor had been travelling too fast to be orbiting the sun, and that, therefore, it was interstellar. Loeb went on to argue, over the objections of many experts, that it may have been alien technology, and that debris he recovered on a Pacific expedition was from the meteor. “Think of it as Amazon delivery service, but from interstellar space,” he told me during the expedition, from a ship that was incidentally called the Silver Star. He and numerous collaborators wrote up their findings in Chemical Geology last year. (Cosmochemists questioned the claim that the debris was interstellar; one told Science, “I’m surprised anyone would take it seriously.”) Loeb currently leads the Galileo Project, which is erecting ground-based sensors to look for anomalous phenomena.

U.F.O.s could contain biological aliens or machines powered by artificial intelligence. Either way, they might travel much faster than Voyager 1—but that would require a lot of energy. Les Johnson, a retired chief technology officer at NASA who has written fiction and nonfiction books about interstellar travel, gave me an example. To accelerate a pineapple to just a tenth the speed of light, he said, would require the energy of seven Hiroshima explosions. You would need the same quantity of energy to decelerate at your destination. “Suddenly, you’ve got the energy of fourteen Hiroshima bombs on a pineapple,” he said. “So I look at that, and I think it just doesn’t pass the giggle test.” At that speed, a speck of space dust would also have the impact of T.N.T. “I’d love to think we’re in a ‘Star Trek’ universe,” Johnson said. “But I don’t know if we are.”

Logically speaking, the chance that aliens are here right now must be slimmer than the chance that they have been here at some point in the past. Garry Nolan, a biotech founder and an immunologist at Stanford, has a hunch that we’ve been visited by aliens—he had an eerie experience as a child—and speculates that they or their technology may have been on Earth for millions of years. “So the open question might be, Is this even our planet?” he asked me. As outlandish as his theory is, it’s tricky to firmly disprove. If they came long ago, and left or died, would we even know? In 2018, Frank and a co-author published a paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology titled “The Silurian Hypothesis.” (In “Doctor Who,” Silurians are advanced reptilian humanoids who predated us on Earth.)

“Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?” Frank and his colleagues ask. Organisms can turn into fossils that last tens of millions of years, but most organisms don’t become fossils; metals and plastics might not stick around at all. And the planet’s surface constantly erodes and churns. “Our claim was that, after about a couple million years, anything on the surface is gone,” Frank said. “Even if some aliens came and built a pretty intense civilization, you wouldn’t have any evidence of it.” The best evidence one might hope for, he argued, was indirect: for example, an unusual proportion of certain isotopes at particular depths of rock. (In a 2019 paper, a physicist suggested that we should look for old probes, or “Lurkers,” on space rocks near Earth.) So far, humans haven’t found anything like that.

Science fiction often explains interstellar travel by imagining some kind of warp drive. Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but, in 1994, the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre found an exception: Einstein’s theory of general relativity actually allows for a craft to outpace light by squeezing space-time at its bow and stretching it at the stern. Nolan, who is a fan of this idea, likened the Alcubierre drive to “creating your own sub-universe, a warp bubble around yourself.” Of course, it is not at all clear that such a thing could be constructed. Alcubierre invoked what physicists call negative energy; later theorists thought that lots and lots of regular energy could be used instead. Nolan speculated that, maybe, sufficient energy could be harvested from space-time itself, using the zero-point field and quantum tunnelling. But he quickly admitted that “those are just fancy words that we throw at the unknown.” (On the plus side, a warp drive might quote-unquote explain the Navy’s U.F.O. videos; one paper estimated that the objects in the videos appeared to be pulling up to five thousand Gs, using no visible propulsion and leaving no wake. Stunt pilots max out at around ten Gs.) Other U.F.O. enthusiasts argue that aliens could reside in dimensions beyond the four that we know and love. Or maybe they’re time travellers.

I ran these notions by Arlan Andrews, a retired mechanical engineer and author who is the founder and director of SIGMA, a think tank of sci-fi writers that advises the government and N.G.O.s. He responded by throwing up his hands in exasperation. “If you start to do the woo-woo stuff with interdimensional and time travel, I can’t say they’re wrong, but there’s no place to start,” he told me. “As an engineer, I like to have a starting place.”

Acivilization that’s millions or billions of years ahead of us would probably know physics that we don’t yet comprehend. Its technology might seem like magic to us. In that case, practically anything is possible. A NASA report on U.F.O.s, released in 2023, acknowledges that “it is difficult to put physical constraints on them at present.” How would you turn something without constraints from woo-woo into science?

The Society for U.A.P. Studies (SUAPS) is a think tank attempting to define U.A.P. studies as a field. “Not only is there not a science but there’s no academic field,” Michael Cifone, a philosopher of science at St. John’s University and one of the group’s founders, said. “How do we study this phenomenon? Who’s involved? What are the methodological principles that should guide us?” He cares less about people’s out-there theories than about what steps should be taken to resolve U.F.O. cases. He wants to avoid “endless, unconstrained, undisciplined speculation.” In his view, we’re at “a crucial transition point between the older ‘ufology,’ ” akin to forensic investigation, and modern scientific methods.

The first step to making something a science usually involves data. NASA’s report focusses on the agency’s potential role in collecting data, and in using A.I. to analyze it. According to the report, the agency’s sensors could be supplemented with crowdsourced data from apps; one example is Enigma, which uses algorithms to rate the credibility of people’s sightings and triangulate objects using video recordings. UAPx, a Florida nonprofit, has developed a suite of sensors specifically for analyzing odd aerial phenomena. And then there’s the data contained in past reported sightings, which could be regularized and collated somehow. Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who testified about U.F.O.s in Congress, founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, which encourages pilots to report U.F.O.s. The group vets the cases and has brought them to Congress; the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is part of the Department of Defense; and, lately, to an F.B.I. working group. But, as some argue, the plural of anecdote is not data. “I don’t trust pilots’ sightings,” Matt Mountain, the president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, told me. “They’re on a mission, not doing scientific exploration.” We should keep in mind, Mountain told me, that most criminal convictions that are overturned by DNA evidence were based in part on eyewitness testimony.

Graves said that he was agnostic about aliens. “I’m not jumping to conclusions,” he told me. “But I want to figure it out, damn it.” Still, he seemed skeptical of expert analysis. In November, 2024, AARO announced that it considered the GOFAST video mystery resolved; the object’s altitude, it said, gave it an exaggerated appearance of speed. “Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet,” the agency’s director told CBS. Graves wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. “Some of these cases aren’t quote-unquote debunked or no longer of interest,” he has said.

When I spoke to people who supported an alien hypothesis, I was often struck that relatively patchy evidence—what Frank had described as fuzzy blobs—had inspired such in-depth theories. I’m as puzzled by the U.F.O. videos as the next guy, but, as far as I can tell, nothing in them requires us to accept the existence of warp drives or time travel. Until someone produces high-definition videos of flying saucers and little green men, the evidence might not be extraordinary enough to demand such extraordinary explanations. And to the extent that U.F.O.s do need explanations it’s worth asking whether aliens are the best one. People have seen weird stuff in the sky for thousands of years, and only in the last eighty have flying saucers been a popular interpretation. Before that, we tended to credit the supernatural.

After all my conversations, I thought the odds that aliens or their tech had visited Earth were probably south of five per cent. Most U.F.O.s. are likely balloons, airplanes, weather events, visual illusions, or technical glitches. Even so, there are enough unknowns, and unknown unknowns, that the margin of error seemed enormous. A person who thinks the odds are much higher, I’d argue, shouldn’t be met with ridicule.

One more question: Why would aliens even visit us? Coming up with an answer forces us to speculate about alien motives. “I’ve always said that aliens are going to alien,” Andrews, the sci-fi writer who founded SIGMA, told me. “We have no idea what an alien person or being or intelligence or machine would be motivated by. . . . We don’t know what motivates the Kremlin, for God’s sake.” Extraterrestrials, he suggested, could be as different from us as we are from centipedes. (That could be an understatement.) Robert Powell, a chemist who serves on the board of the Scientific Coalition for U.A.P. Studies, has argued that some U.F.O.s are intelligently controlled and do not come from Earth. But, in his view, we shouldn’t try to study extraterrestrials as if they’re lab rats. “We’re the rat, and we’re trying to figure out what the doctor is doing,” he said.

It’s reasonable to think that there would be commonalities among intelligent species. One is the drive for self-preservation, which motivates the Trisolarans in “The Three-Body Problem.” Hampson, the neuroscientist and sci-fi writer, didn’t think that was a very good reason to come to Earth. “If they’re after resources, there are easier ways to get them,” he said. “Why would you go to an already inhabited world?” Meanwhile, a warlike species would probably just wipe us out. “If the idea is conquest, then I think we would already know,” he said. But he could imagine another reason: curiosity.

Nick Pope, who ran the U.F.O. program at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994, told me that the ministry had considered three main motives for alien visits: military reconnaissance, scientific study, and tourism. It’s not a given that aliens would enjoy travel. Maybe we’ve never met them because they’re homebodies. Still, what kind of intelligent life form wouldn’t want to see a sunrise on another world? “This might be the only place in the universe to see an elephant,” Pope said. “How many planets have a Stonehenge or a Machu Picchu or a Great Pyramids?” Aliens might want to survey the galaxy for all life forms—including us. They might even be having the same debate we are. Are we alone in the universe? The truth—whatever it may be—is still out there.

{ https://www.newyorker.com/ }

27-09-2025 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

archieffoto van Amerikaans ministerie van Defensie van een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend voorwerp

"VS verbergt informatie over buitenaards leven": ex-officieren getuigen voor Amerikaans Congres in "UFO-hoorzitting"

De drie getuigen, Ryan Graves, David Grusch en David Fravor leggen de eed af voor de hoorzitting

{ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/ }

27-09-2025 om 21:48 geschreven door peter  

The U.S. Government’s Top UFO Scientist Has an Open Mind about Alien Visitation

By Leonard David edited by Lee Billings

27-09-2025 om 21:21 geschreven door peter  

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{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-09-2025 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-09-2025 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-09-2025 om 20:41 geschreven door peter  

Unexplained Mysteries: Ancient Alien Theories Debunked or Proven?

Abstract

Ancient astronaut or ancient alien theories posit that extraterrestrial beings visited Earth in antiquity and influenced human civilizations. This dissertation evaluates these claims through a scientific lens, examining archaeological, geological, and historical evidence, as well as methodological considerations. Rather than accepting or outright rejecting all sensational narratives, this analysis emphasizes testable hypotheses, the weight of corroborating evidence, and the importance of plausible, terrestrial explanations grounded in current scholarship. While some mysteries remain due to gaps in our knowledge, the balance of evidence currently favors human ingenuity, cultural diffusion, and naturalistic processes as sufficient explanations for most ancient extraordinary phenomena.

Introduction

Ancient alien theories have gained popular appeal by offering dramatic explanations for complex achievements in antiquity, such as monumental architecture, advanced astronomy, or unfamiliar engineering. Proponents argue that features seemingly beyond the capabilities of ancient societies imply intervention by technologically superior beings. Critics argue that these theories reflect a bias toward underestimating ancient capabilities and a misinterpretation of incomplete archaeological records. This dissertation does not presuppose either conclusion but instead places the claims within a rigorous epistemic framework: testable predictions, reproducible methods, and a coherent alignment with established data from multiple disciplines. The central question is not “Are aliens responsible?” but “What evidence would be required to substantiate such claims, and is that evidence present or plausibly explainable by non-Extraterrestrial (ET) mechanisms?”

Historical context and the appeal of ancient alien theories

Ancient alien theories gained prominence in the late 20th century through popular media that highlighted architectural wonders—pyramids, giant statues, megalithic structures—and claimed they could not have been built without outside intervention. Proponents often point to perceived technological gaps between ancient populations and the monumental works they produced, or to enigmatic depictions in art and myths that allegedly reference visitors from the stars. The appeal is dual: it offers a narrative where humanity’s achievements are recognized as part of a larger cosmic story, and it provides a simple, memorable explanation for complex historical phenomena.

However, as with many extraordinary claims, the more extraordinary the assertion, the stronger the evidence must be. Science does not reject extraordinary ideas out of hand, but it requires robust, reproducible, and parsimonious evidence. When claims rely on misinterpretation, selective data, or lack of methodological transparency, they fail the test of scientific validity. The following sections explain how researchers evaluate these claims and where the science tends to converge or diverge from popular assumptions.

Common claims and the methodological pitfalls Ancient alien arguments typically center on a few recurring claims:

• Engineering feats that allegedly exceed known ancient capabilities (e.g., lifting massive stones without contemporary techniques).
• Anomalous artifacts or inscriptions interpreted as evidence of non-human visitors.
• Correlations between myths or astronomical alignments and supposed extraterrestrial contact.

Ancient Aliens or Ancient Artisans?

Methodological challenges in these debates include:

• Anthropocentrism and underestimation of past human ingenuity. Archaeology has repeatedly shown that ancient peoples developed sophisticated techniques and organizational systems appropriate to their contexts.
• Selection bias and cherry-picking. Highlighting a single site or artifact while ignoring the broader archaeological record can distort what is known about a culture’s capabilities.
• Ambiguity in the evidence. Artistic motifs, cosmologies, or damage patterns can often be explained by multiple plausible, non-extra-terrestrial causes.
• The burden of proof. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Absence of occasional fragments of data is not evidence of aliens.

Evidence for and against the central claims To evaluate ancient alien theories, scientists consider several categories of evidence:

• Archaeological context: Excavation records, dating methods, tool marks, construction sequences, and settlement patterns provide a coherent narrative about how communities organized labor and allocated resources.
• Engineering and material analysis: The feasibility of constructing large structures is tested using contemporary engineering understanding, experimental archaeology, and replication studies.
• Chronology and dating: Absolute and relative dating anchor a structure within a historical timeframe, allowing researchers to assess whether proposed “alien” intervention would have been necessary at all.
• Comparative anthropology and ethnography: Local traditions, myths, and oral histories are examined to distinguish symbolic or religious motifs from literal claims.
• Astronomical alignments: When structures are oriented toward celestial events, scientists assess whether these alignments are intentional and culturally meaningful rather than coincidental.
• Occam’s Razor and theoretical economy: Explanations that account for the evidence with fewer assumptions about external agents are generally preferred.

When evaluated through these lenses, many ancient alien claims encounter significant challenges:

• Most monumental constructions can be traced to feasible human processes, including collaborative labor, leadership structures, and incremental technological innovation. In many cases, experimental archaeology has demonstrated viable methods for quarrying, transporting, and erecting massive stones using simple machines, ramps, lubricants, and organized planning.
• The supposed “hand of aliens” is often a projection of modern awe onto ancient peoples, ignoring the rich, culturally situated motivations behind architectural and artistic choices.
• A number of famous examples have undergone more careful scrutiny with results that align with known historical developments. For instance, methodical reassessments of large stone-building sites have revealed employment and organizational strategies fully within human capabilities of their respective eras.

Case studies and common misinterpretations

• Pyramids and monumental architecture

The Great Pyramids of Giza are the most emblematic targets of ancient alien claims. Critics note the precision of stone-cutting and long-range logistics. Yet Egyptologists have demonstrated that a workforce comprised of skilled laborers, seasonal workers, and well-organized supply chains could mobilize resources and expertise without extraterrestrial assistance. Modern engineering studies simulate the construction sequences, ramps, and supervision necessary to erect such monuments, underscoring human-scale feasibility. The absence of records indicating alien involvement is not proof of absence of aliens, but the documented social, religious, and economic contexts provide plausible explanations consistent with known practices.

Von Däniken suggests that the Nazca lines (200 BC– 700 AD) in Peru could be "landing strips" for alien spacecraft. 

(CC BY-SA 2.5 es)

• Nazca Lines and geoglyphs

The Nazca Lines in Peru are often cited as evidence of ancient alien contact due to their vast scale from a height. In reality, researchers have shown that these geoglyphs were created using straightforward surveying techniques with simple tools and labor coordination. The social and ceremonial significance of the lines, tied to water rituals and cosmology, offers a robust cultural interpretation that does not require extraterrestrial intervention.

• Stone circles, megaliths, and alignments

Sites such as Stonehenge or other megalithic complexes attract claims of remote engineering knowledge or astronomy beyond the capabilities of ancient communities. In many cases, careful chronology, material sourcing, and landscape analysis illuminate a long arc of development. While some alignments are astronomical, they often fit within the observable agendas of agricultural calendars or ritual cycles rather than implying alien construction.

Puma Punku Stone Blocks – Bolivia. 

(Adwo /Adobe Stock)

• Technological diffusion and environmental adaptation

Some scholars propose that supposed gaps in ancient knowledge reflect not gaps in capability but differences in sources of knowledge—trade networks, diffusion of techniques, adaptation to local environments, or iterative experimentation. For example, metallurgy, long-distance trade, and early writing systems show cumulative human progress that could be misread as sudden leaps requiring otherworldly help. When approached with rigorous dating and contextual analysis, the narrative of sudden, inexplicable leaps tends to give way to gradual, context-dependent development.

• The role of cognitive biases and media framing

Public fascination with ancient aliens is amplified by cognitive biases. Availability heuristics—where memorable or sensational information weighs more heavily than balanced data—can skew perception. Media portrayals often privilege extraordinary narratives over ordinary processes, shaping public expectations and terminology. Scientists aim to counterbalance by communicating uncertainty clearly, presenting the evidentiary standards, and illustrating how everyday archaeological reasoning solves mysteries within a cultural context.

Sunrise at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, 21 June 2005.

(Andrew Dunn, 2 /CC BY 2.0

Scientific approaches to evaluating claims

• Clear hypotheses: Scientific evaluation starts with precise, testable hypotheses. In the alien-claim scenario, a robust approach would articulate what specific evidence would be required to confirm extraterrestrial involvement and how it could be falsified.
• Replicability and reproducibility: Claims must be testable by independent researchers using accessible methods. Replication of experiments or analyses, such as experimental archaeology or independent artifact dating, strengthens conclusions.
• Bayesian reasoning: Researchers often use Bayesian methods to update the probability of a hypothesis as new evidence emerges. This helps avoid over-interpretation of ambiguous data and promotes proportional responses to the strength of the evidence.
• Transparency and peer review: Sharing data, methods, and uncertainties within the scientific community is essential. Peer review helps ensure that conclusions are not driven by speculation, misinterpretation, or selective reporting.

Antikythera mechanism. 

(CC BY-SA 3.0)

What would constitute credible evidence for ancient aliens? Even among proponents, the threshold for credible evidence remains high. Potentially compelling lines of inquiry could include:

• Unambiguous artifacts with undeniable non-human origin markers or provenance that cannot be explained by known processes, accompanied by thorough, reproducible analyses.
• Independently verifiable, cross-disciplinary data showing a conspicuous, non-human signal that cannot be reconciled with cultural, technological, or environmental explanations.
• Direct, verifiable interference with human sites or artifacts that demonstrably alters outcomes in a way that cannot be accounted for by natural or human processes.

However, to date, such evidence has not withstood rigorous scrutiny.

Most alleged proofs collapse under methodological evaluation: artifacts turn out to be misidentified natural objects or domesticated tools; dating methods reveal ordinary timelines; and proposed signals lack independent corroboration.

Implications for science communication and public understanding

The debate over ancient aliens highlights the broader challenge of science communication. Complex, nuanced conclusions must be conveyed without feeding sensationalist narratives that overshadow careful scholarship. Clear explanations of uncertainty, the distinction between correlation and causation, and the iterative nature of scientific progress help the public appreciate why evidence accumulates gradually rather than through instantaneous, drama-filled breakthroughs.

Constructive pathways forward

• Emphasize robust, multi-method research. The strongest explanations for historical mysteries arise from converging lines of evidence across archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, geology, and physics.
• Encourage critical thinking and literacy. Public education about how scientists assess evidence, weigh competing hypotheses, and use dating and material analyses can foster more informed engagement with extraordinary claims.
• Promote transparency in research. Open data, preregistration of hypotheses, and clear documentation of uncertainties improve trust and reproducibility.

Conclusion Unexplained mysteries will always captivate the imagination, inviting us to imagine that the past harbors more spectacular explanations than human ingenuity alone can offer. Ancient alien theories, while alluring, have consistently faced rigorous scrutiny that emphasizes evidence, methodology, and context. Across a broad spectrum of case studies—from the pyramids to geoglyphs—careful archaeological inquiry tends to reveal a human story: communities, technologies, labor organization, and cultural significance shaping monumental works that reflect creativity, collaboration, and adaptation within their particular environments.

That is not to deny wonder or to dismiss the possibility of unforeseen discoveries. It is to acknowledge the standards of scientific inquiry that separate plausible explanations from sensational conjecture. As new methodologies emerge and datasets expand, our understanding of ancient civilizations will continue to evolve. What remains stable is the essential principle of scholarship: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and the most compelling narratives are those that can be tested, replicated, and integrated into a coherent understanding of the human past. In the discussion of unexplained mysteries, the balance between curiosity and skepticism is not a constraint but a compass—guiding us toward explanations that illuminate rather than mystify, and toward a history that reflects the ingenuity of humanity in the face of the unknown.

{ PETER2011 } 

26-09-2025 om 23:18 geschreven door peter  

Buitenaardsen kunnen onze radiosignalen voor ruimtevaartuigcommunicatie onderscheppen

Inleiding

De mensheid zendt al tientallen decennia signalen uit in de ruimte, vooral via radiocommunicatie met ruimtevaartuigen en satellieten. De gedachte dat intelligente wezens anderszins onze boodschappen zouden kunnen onderscheppen is zowel fascinerend als onwennend: wat als onze technologische signalen op een dag door een buitenaardse civilisatie worden opgevangen, geïnterpreteerd en bestudeerd? Dit artikel onderzoekt wetenschappelijk wat het betekent dat “alienen” (aliens) mogelijk onze radiogolven kunnen onderscheppen voor ruimtescheepscommunicatie, welke natuurkundige en technologische principes hierachter schuilgaan, welke mogelijkheden en beperkingen bestaan, en welke ethische en beleidsmatige implicaties volgen.

Achtergrond: hoe radioverenigingen ruimtevaart en communicatie met elkaar verbonden zijn

Ruimtevaartuigen, waaronder satellieten en landers, communiceren via elektromagnetische signalen die meestal in radiofrequentiebanden worden uitgezonden. Deze signalen dienen verschillende doelen: telemetrie (toestand van het vaartuig), telecommando’s (besturing door de aarde), en wetenschappelijke data (metingen, beelden). De gebruikte frequenties worden afgestemd op doel en afstand, met inachtneming van wettelijke regels zoals de International Telecommunication Union (ITU) spectrumtoewijzingen en de Europese/andere nationale regelgevende lichamen. In de diepe ruimte kunnen signalen zelfs in ruisvolle omgevingen met enorme lichtjaren afstand nog worden gedetecteerd met grote radioantenneparken en geavanceerde signaalverwerkingsmethoden.

De hypothese van onderschepping door buitenaardse wezens draait om een fundamenteel principe: elke intelligente beschaving die radiogolven verzendt, maakt zich zichtbaar in het elektromagnetische spectrum. Onze eigen signalen zijn wereldwijd waarneembaar met voldoende gevoeligheid en tijd. In theorie kunnen buitenaardse luisterende civillaties die los van culturele motivaties geïnteresseerd zijn in ons technologische stadium, onze signalen oppikken en op de een of andere manier verwerken. De vraag is niet alleen of dit mogelijk is, maar ook of het waarschijnlijk is, gezien de afstanden, signaalverzwakking en mogelijke privacy- of veiligheidsconcerns.

Signalen van onze ruimteschepen en Marsrovers zouden onderschept kunnen worden door buitenaardse beschavingen.

Illustratie gegenereerd door AI, ChatGPT

Fysica van onderschepping: van signaalsterkte tot detectie

Een cruciale factor bij onderschepping is signaalsterkte op afstand. Het uitgangssignaal van een uitgerust ruimtevaartuig kan variëren tussen tientallen milliwatts tot enkele kilowatts, afhankelijk van missie, antennegrootte en modus. Naarmate het signaal zich voortplant door ruimte wordt het vierkant toegepast met afstand, en verzwakt het door atmosferische, interstellair-materie- en kosmische ruis, plus de efficiëntie van het ontvangende systeem. Voor een buitenaardse luisteraar die op miljoenen lichtjaren afstand zit, zouden onze signalen extreem zwak worden en hoogstwaarschijnlijk onder de ruis van kosmische achtergrondvallen. Toch kan een hypothetische geavanceerde beschaving met gigantische ontvangstantennes en geavanceerde signaalverwerkingsalgoritmen dergelijke signalen detecteren, of zelfs “lineariseren” door gebruik te maken van coherente detectie, matched filtering, en kunstmatige intelligentie.

Een relevante overweging is de soebereiding van de signalen zelf. Wij zenden in specifieke banden (bijv. de ruimtevaartbanden, de S- en X-banden, en mogelijk lagere frequenties voor langeafstandsatellieten). Deze banden worden gekozen om interfering noise te minimaliseren en om praktische antenneontwerpen mogelijk te maken. Een buitenaardse luisteraar die niet gebonden is aan menselijke regelgeving, zou kunnen letten op patronen in het spectrum die wijzen op kunstmatige origine, bijvoorbeeld regelmatige pulspatronen, modulatietechnieken of herhaalde sequenties die niet plausibel zijn als natuurlijke bronnen. Detectie kan verder worden vergroot door middel van disperse onderzoeksmethoden, zoals seriële signal search, afwijkingen in polarisatie en signaalmodulatie diep in de tijd.

In een nieuwe studie hebben wetenschappers van de Universiteit van Pennsylvania en het Jet Propulsion Laboratory van NASA menselijke communicatie in de diepe ruimte geanalyseerd en vastgesteld dat onze transmissies vaak gericht waren op onze eigen ruimteschepen op Mars, de Zon en andere hemellichamen. Omdat planeten zoals Mars het hele signaal niet blokkeren, zou buitenaardse intelligentie die zich langs het pad van interplanetaire communicatie bevindt – wanneer planeten vanuit hun perspectief zijn uitgelijnd – mogelijk signaallekkage kunnen detecteren.

Bron: Zayna Sheikh

Technische mogelijkheden en scenario’s van onderschepping

• Simpele afluisteren: Een buitenaardse luisteraar die passief de ruimte observeert, kan bestaande radiobelten opvangen zonder terug te reageren. Deze scenario vereist geen snelle reactie of enorme signaalverwerking, maar veronderstelt wel dat de andere beschaving constant en langdurig uitzendt en dat hun ontvangstsysteem sterk genoeg is om de zwakke signalen te extraheren.

• Geavanceerde afluistering en decodering: Een hypothetische beschaving met enorme ruimtelijke antennes en krachtige signaalverwerkingskrachten kan patronen herkennen, tijdreeksen analyseren en mogelijk communiceren met ons door terug te zenden of door te anticiperen op hun eigen wijze. Zij kunnen onze modulatietechnieken herkennen, en zelfs simulaties uitvoeren om te begrijpen wat de mensheid communiceert.

• Directe communicatie-alisatie: In een extremere visie zou een buitenaardse beschaving proberen onze signalen te onderscheppen en actief te communiceren of zelfs te sturen. Dit scenario plaatst ons in een contactdilemma: hoe zouden wij reageren, en hoe zouden we onze communicatie beschermen tegen misbruik of misinterpretatie?

• Radiogolven als stille témoen: Een andere mogelijkheid is dat buitenaardse luisteraars onze buitenaardse detectie in de vorm van technologische signatures signalen identificeren die duidelijk kunstmatig zijn, zoals consistent gemoduleerde patronen die wij als technologische artefacten interpreteren.

Ethiek, veiligheid en beleidsimplicaties

De mogelijkheid dat aliens onze radio-communicatie onderscheppen roept ethische en veiligheidsvragen op. Ten eerste, als buitenaardse wezens bestaan die in staat zijn ons te detecteren, moeten we overleggen over deontologie van semantisch zinvol contact. Moeten we openbare communicatie handhaven of voorzichtige, beperkte communicatie hanteren om misinterpretatie of economische of technologische voordeel te voorkomen?

Daarnaast bestaan er praktische overwegingen: het beschermen van gevoelige wetenschappelijke of technologische informatie die in deze signalen is geëtaleerd. Hoewel onze signalen niet bedoeld zijn als privé, kunnen we wel nadenken over het minimaliseren van potentieel schadelijke informatie leakage die buitenaardse luisteraars kunnen interpreteren als brug naar technologische superioriteit. Beleidsmatig liggen er vragen over internationale samenwerking, transparantie en de ontwikkeling van normen voor interstellair contact. Het is niet vanzelfsprekend dat de nationale veiligheids- of wetenschapsinstanties hier een eenduidig antwoord op hebben.

Impliceert onderschepping virale risico’s?

Het samenleven met een mogelijke buitenaardse luisteraar roept de bezorgdheid op dat mislukte interpretaties of verkeerde decodering serieuze gevolgen kunnen hebben. Als een buitenaardse beschaving interpreteert dat de mensheid agressief of vreedzaam is, kan dit leiden tot een gebrek aan vertrouwen of zelfs misbruik van misleidende signalen. Daarom is het van belang dat wetenschappers duidelijk communiceren over de aard van signalen en de beperkingen van menselijke interpretaties, en dat internationale samenwerking versterkt wordt om de risico’s te mitigeren.

Een illustratie van buitenaardse wezens.

Science Picture Co. / Getty Images

Methoden om onze eigen communicatie te beschermen en te documenteren

• Vergroten van robuuste signaalintegriteit: Door redundantie, foutcorrectie en encryptie-achtige beveiliging in ruimtesignalen te implementeren (waar mogelijk) kunnen we de interpretatie door een onbekende luisteraar bemoeilijken. Dit zou ook kunnen helpen bij het onderscheiden van kunstmatige versus natuurlijke bronnen.

• Transparantie en dataverzameling: Het documenteren van alle detecties en analyses in open wetenschappelijke journals en internationale fora vergroot de reproducibiliteit en minimaliseert misverstanden over wat wel of niet waarneembaar is. Internationale protocollen kunnen helpen bij het harmoniseren van waarnemingsstrategieën.

• Publieke wetenschappelijke educatie: Het vergroten van begrip over wat we zenden en hoe detectie werkt kan helpen bij het demystificeren van de kans dat buitenaardse wezens precies weten wat we bedoelen. Het bevordert verantwoorde publieke discussies over SETI, contact en ruimtebeleid.

Wetenschappelijke context: SETI, kosmische achtergrondruis en de Fermi-paradox

Het onderwerp van onderschepping past in de bredere context van Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Wetenschappers bestuderen of signalen van buitenaardse beschavingen zouden bestaan en hoe we ze kunnen detecteren. De aanwezigheid van technologische activiteit in het universum wordt vaak gedetecteerd door een combinatie van radiosignalen en spectrale lijnen die kunstmatige oorsprong suggereren. De Fermi-paradox, de vraag waarom we nog geen onmiskenbaar bewijs van buitenaards contact hebben gevonden, is relevant: het roept ons op om zowel de kans van detectie als de duur van de signalengebruik-stijging in kaart te brengen. Een mogelijk antwoord is dat signalen te zwak zijn, te kort duren, of dat beschavingen niet lang genoeg bestaan om ons bereiken. Een andere mogelijkheid is dat beschavingen hun signalen bewust paderen of vervangen door niet-radiogebonden wijzen van communicatie.

Concluderende reflectie

Het idee dat aliens onze radiogolven kunnen onderscheppen voor ruimtescheepscommunicatie blijft een mix van wetenschappelijke plausibiliteit en speculatie. De huidige fysica en technologie suggereren dat onderschepping mogelijk is in principe, maar dat de praktische kans dat een buitenaardse beschaving onze signalen detecteert en interesse toont afhankelijk is van enorme afstanden, signaalverzwakking, en de technologische capaciteiten van de luisteraar. Desondanks is het onderwerp waardevol voor de wetenschappelijke dialoog over hoe we communiceren in een ruimtelijke context en welke veiligheids- en ethische overwegingen hierbij horen.

Voor de toekomst betekent dit dat we onderzoek moeten blijven investeren in de detectiekunde, signaalverwerkingsmethoden, en internationale samenwerking. Het ontwikkelen van normen en protocollen rond interstellair contact, transparante communicatie, en bescherming tegen misinterpretatie kan ons helpen voorbereid te zijn op mogelijke toekomstige scenario’s. Terwijl de vraag “Zouden aliens onze signalen kunnen onderscheppen?” hoog in het veld van speculatie blijft, biedt de wetenschappelijke uitleg erachter een solide basis om kritisch en verantwoordelijk na te denken over hoe de mensheid haar boodschap naar de kosmos uitstuurt en hoe we moeten omgaan met de mogelijke ontvangst van geluiden uit de ruimte.

Samenvatting

• Radiocommunicatie met ruimtevaartuigen is gericht op telemetrie, commando’s en wetenschappelijke data, en vindt plaats in gefrequenteerde banden met regelgeving.
• De mogelijkheid dat buitenaardse luisteraars onze signalen onderscheppen hangt af van afstand, signaalsterkte, en capaciteiten van de ontvanger.
• Zowel eenvoudige asociale afluistering als geavanceerde decodering zijn theoretische scenario’s die uitdagingen en kansen bieden voor wetenschappelijke benadering.
• Ethische, veiligheids- en beleidsvragen rondom mogelijk contact vereisen internationale samenwerking en duidelijke normen.
• SETI en gerelateerde wetenschappen bieden een kader om deze ideeën te plaatsen binnen de grotere zoektocht naar buitenaardse intelligentie, met aandacht voor Fermi-paradox en de realistische beperkingen van detectie en interpretatie.

{ PETER2011 }

26-09-2025 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

Every time NASA engineers send a command to a Mars rover or interplanetary spacecraft, they simultaneously send a message into deep space. Powerful radio signals directed at neighboring planets are only partially absorbed by the target. The other part continues its journey through space-time, spreading out almost infinitely. This “leak” of information, previously considered a side effect, is now seen as a potential beacon for extraterrestrial civilizations.

New research by scientists at Pennsylvania State University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory offers an interesting hypothesis. Scientists analyzed data from the Deep Space Network (DSN) over the past 20 years. They concluded that an alien intelligence located at a specific point in space could easily intercept our transmissions. The key is that all the planets in the Solar System rotate in roughly the same plane — the ecliptic.

As astronomer Pinchen Fan explains, if an observer is located at the edge of this plane at a distance of about 23 light-years, their chances of entering the radio shadow of our signals to Mars or other planets increase dramatically. Calculations show that the probability of such a coincidence reaches 77%, which is orders of magnitude higher than random detection.

Mirror search

The same idea can be applied to the search for extraterrestrial life. Assuming that other technologically advanced civilizations are also exploring planets in their systems, we can point our telescopes at similar “hot spots.” The most promising exoplanetary systems will be those where, from our perspective, two or more planets periodically line up in a row — transiting in front of their star. From such positions, their potential DSN could transmit signals in our direction.

However, as Fan notes, we are only at the beginning of this journey. At present, only a few systems with multiple transit planets are known. However, future space missions, such as the launch of the Nancy Grace telescope, promise to revolutionize space exploration. This telescope is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new exoplanets, significantly expanding our map of potential “listening zones.” v

Earlier, we explained why we still haven’t found aliens.

• According to psu.edu

• Posted in News, Tech

{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

26-09-2025 om 21:24 geschreven door peter  

The creators of science fiction films love to amaze viewers with various strange devices or technologies. Teleportation, faster-than-light travel, hibernation, artificial gravity – these are just a few of the most obvious examples. Unfortunately, many of these technologies currently seem impossible from the perspective of the laws of physics as we know them. Others seem achievable, but only in the distant future.

However, there are also reverse cases. Some devices imagined by sci-fi authors have already become reality. And just like with futuristic gadgets, digital tools are also evolving. Today, you can work with documents not only on a computer but also on a tablet or smartphone — thanks to modern solutions like UPDF, which combine PDF editing, file organization, and even AI-powered features.

The editors of Universe Space Tech have selected five technologies and devices from science fiction films that have either already entered or are gradually entering our everyday lives.

1. Mobile phones

The heroes of many science fiction novels and films used compact devices to stay in touch. A notable example is the communicators from the popular Star Trek franchise. They allowed the crew members of the Enterprise to communicate with one another and with other spacecraft. Losing, breaking, or going out of range of the communicator often created a difficult situation for the characters.

It is precisely the communicators from Star Trek that are often cited as one of the main sources of inspiration for mobile phone technology. The prototype of such a device was created by Motorola in 1973, eight years after the first episode of the series was released. We do not think we need to tell you what happened next. Interestingly, in some later episodes of Star Trek, the characters also used wrist communicators that closely resemble smartwatches.

Of course, the communicators from Star Trek did not have many of the capabilities of modern smartphones. At the same time, in some respects, they are still unmatched. For example, communicators were not affected by electromagnetic interference and allowed users to contact subscribers on another planet almost instantly without any signal delay. So, manufacturers of modern gadgets definitely still have something to strive for.

2. Tablets

At the time, “2001: A Space Odyssey” amazed audiences with its grandiose vision of a high-tech future in which space stations orbited the Earth to classical music and humanity confidently conquered the far reaches of the solar system. Of course, half a century later, the authors’ vision seems overly optimistic, even naive. But some of what was shown in Stanley Kubrick’s film did come true. And one of the most surprising “hits” in reality was… the tablet.

In one scene in the film, the crew members of the Discovery spacecraft watched the news on flat-screen devices that closely resembled modern tablets. Interestingly, the film’s script called for the New York Times logo and the newspaper’s digital front page to appear on the device displays, complete with several article headlines that could be opened with a touch. Had this scene been filmed, the creators of Space Odyssey would surely have been hailed as the people who predicted the internet. But even without it, the tablets in the 1968 movie look truly astonishing. And if they once seemed like pure fantasy, today their capabilities are part of everyday life. For instance, with Organize PDF, you can arrange your files on a tablet as easily as the characters of 2001: A Space Odyssey browsed the news.

Interestingly, when Samsung sued Apple in 2011 for patent infringement in the creation of tablet computers, its lawyers even included footage from “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the case. In this way, the Korean company tried to prove that its competitors did not actually come up with the design for their iPad, but simply “borrowed” it from Stanley Kubrick.

3. Bionic prostheses

All Star Wars fans surely remember the scene of Luke Skywalker’s battle with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, in which the young Jedi lost his arm. Fortunately for the hero, he later acquired a bionic prosthesis that completely replaced all the functions of his lost limb. Thanks to this, Luke Skywalker was able to once again skillfully wield his lightsaber in the sequel to the saga.

At the time of the film’s release, such a device seemed as fantastical as blasters or the Death Star. But much has changed in the forty years since. In 2016, Mobius Bionics began producing an innovative bionic prosthetic arm that gives users much greater freedom of movement than conventional prostheses. The device’s smart system reads muscle signals, allowing it to perform a variety of complex movements: using a screwdriver, brushing teeth, zipping up a zipper, holding both fragile and heavy objects, and putting an arm behind the back. The device has been named LUKE. The abbreviation stands for Life Under Kinetic Evolution, but it is also, of course, a reference to Luke Skywalker.

A few years later, LUKE underwent significant improvements and was equipped with a biological feedback system. With the help of electrodes implanted in peripheral nerves and muscles, the prosthesis user can now feel touch, vibration, and even pain. This has greatly simplified the use of the device. And just as bionics changes people’s lives, artificial intelligence transforms the way we work with documents: UPDF offers ChatGPT-4.1-powered tools that let you chat with PDFs and instantly extract the data you need.

4. Exoskeletons

Exoskeletons are as integral to modern science fiction as colonies on other planets. Examples of such devices can be found in numerous films, from Aliens to Edge of Tomorrow. But you do not have to buy a movie ticket to see an exoskeleton anymore – you can already find them in real life.

In recent years, various companies and inventors have introduced many different types of exoskeletons. Most of them only strengthen one part of the body, but there are also full-body suits. Some exoskeletons are designed to restore lost motor functions. Others can be used in construction and industrial work. Still others are designed for use by extreme athletes.

Of course, the military is also showing great interest in such developments. Yes, exoskeletons are not yet part of the standard equipment of any army in the world. But given the pace of technological progress, it cannot be ruled out that the image of a mobile infantryman clad in combat armor, described in Robert Heinlein’s famous novel Starship Troopers, will one day become a reality.

5. Deflection of hazardous asteroids

In 1998, two films were released simultaneously, both depicting NASA’s attempts to save Earth from an uninvited visitor from space. Despite their different tones, at the time, the plots of both Armageddon and Deep Impact seemed like pure fantasy, as humanity had no way of deflecting a dangerous asteroid from Earth.

And now, a quarter of a century later, NASA has taken the first step toward creating such technology. In November 2021, a Falcon 9 rocket launched the DART probe into space. Its target was the 160-meter asteroid Dimorphos, a satellite of the larger object Didymos (65803 Didymos). On September 26, 2022, DART crashed into this object at a speed of 6.6 km/s.

The consequences of the collision far exceeded scientists’ expectations. According to the most conservative estimates, the impact knocked at least a thousand tons of material off the asteroid’s surface, changing its shape. It also left a long dust trail (which later split in two) stretching 10,000 km.

In addition, the impact significantly altered Dimorphos’ orbital parameters. Before the impact, its orbital period around Didymos was 11 hours and 55 minutes. After the impact, it decreased to 11 hours and 22 minutes. The distance between the two asteroids also changed, decreasing by 37 meters.

Bombing an asteroid is not just fun and games for NASA. It will allow them to test methods for changing the orbit of a potentially dangerous asteroid in practice. Yes, it may not look as spectacular as Bruce Willis’ heroic self-sacrifice. But who knows? It is quite possible that one fine day, this technology will actually save our planet from danger from space.

Modern Tools for PDF Work

Science fiction is becoming reality not only in space but also in our digital lives. UPDF offers unique advantages:

• Works on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android with one account across 4 devices.
• Full editing suite including OCR and AI chat with documents.
• Lifetime free upgrades.
• 6x cheaper than Acrobat.
• Monthly updates, 24/6 support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.l

• Posted in Articles, Questions

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26-09-2025 om 21:12 geschreven door peter  

Humans just got even OLDER: Ancient skull pushes back our origins by 400,000 years - making Homo sapiens more than one million years old

• READ MORE: Scientists baffled by a mysterious skull found fused to a cave wall

By JONATHAN CHADWICK, ASSISTANT SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

It's time to rewrite the family tree, as scientists have revealed that our species is even older than we thought.  

Previous studies have proved that we evolved in Africa before finally conquering the world – getting the better of some other rival human species on our way. 

However, scientists now say we've been getting the date of own origins totally wrong.

In a new paper, the experts that claim Homo sapiens began to emerge over one million years ago.

Until now, it's been commonly believed that we split from our closest human relatives 600,000 years ago.  

So the findings, based on a new analysis of a rare Chinese skull fossil, pushes back our species' origins by some 400,000 years. 

Study author Chris Stringer, an anthropologist the National History Museum, said the 'landmark' findings offer an important window into our evolutionary past. 

'Fossils like this one just how much we still have to learn about our origins,' he said.

Homo sapiens began to emerge over one million years ago – pushing back our species' origins by some 400,000 years. Pictured, a new replica reconstruction of Chinese skull Yunxian 2 (left), and the Yunxian 2 skull itself (right) 

The focus of this study is Yunxian 2, a fossilised cranium found badly crushed by excavators in Hubei, China back in 1990. 

Dating back one million years ago, the heavily deformed skull was once thought to belong to an adult male member of the species Homo erectus.

Appearing about about two million years ago, Homo erectus was a direct ancestor of modern humans and the first species to walk fully upright. As a result, it's thought of as the first human species to have left Africa. 

Using CT scanning, light imaging and virtual reconstruction techniques, the team made a physical model of what the skull would look like had it not been squashed.

The physical model also incorporated a few small anatomical elements from Yunxian 1, another fossil found at the site in 1989, also badly crushed. 

Once completed, the model was compared it to 104 other fossil specimens and similar high-quality replicas. 

Their findings show Yunxian 2 does display some primitive traits similar to Homo erectus, such as a large, squat braincase, a strong brow ridge, and a more projecting lower face. 

However, derived features in the face and rear of the braincase, as well as a larger brain capacity, are closer to later species such as Homo longi ('Dragon Man') and Homo sapiens. 

Scientists 'could barely believe their own findings'. The international team has been led by researchers from Fudan University, Shanghai and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, alongside Professor Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum

The model of Yunxian 2 also incorporated a few small anatomical elements from Yunxian 1 (pictured), another fossil found at the site in 1989, also badly crushed 

Based on their analyses, Yunxian 2 is not a Homo erectus at all, but an early member of the lineage that includes Homo longi and several other Chinese fossils.

Homo longi is strongly linked with the Denisovans, another extinct group of archaic humans known primarily from fossil finds in Siberia and Tibet.

Crucially, this lineage originated more than one million years ago, according to Professor Stringer, who worked alongside experts at Fudan University in Shanghai and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. 

'Our research reveals that Yunxian 2 is not Homo erectus, but an early member of the longi clade and linked to the Denisovans,' he said. 

'This changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago, our ancestors had already split into distinct groups, pointing to a much earlier and more complex human evolutionary split than previously believed.' 

Despite their findings, the researchers are reluctant to describe Yunxian 2 as belonging to the Homo longi, at least for the moment.

Analysis of a third Yunxian skull found in 2022 ('Yunxian 3') will act as 'an important test' of the new reconstruction and hopefully make it conclusive. 

'We will now be extending our analyses to include further sources of data and other fossils, which will be critical for refining this picture,' Professor Stringer added.  

Homo longi or 'Dragon Man' is a species identified from a skull fossil known as the Harbin cranium, found in Harbin City in Heilongjiang province in 1933. Pictured, artist's impression of the species 

'The human lineage': This illustration shows the closest extinct relatives of modern humans (homo sapiens, right)

The team's new findings, published today in the journal Science, paint a 'radically different' picture of human evolution. 

According to the scientists, in the last 800,000 years, most large-brained humans can be traced to just five major branches – Asian erectus, heidelbergensis, longi, sapiens, and neanderthalensis.

The research reveals that these groups were already splitting from one another more than a million years ago – deeper in time than we previously thought.

Homo sapiens evolved in Africa but migrated out of the continent 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, reaching Europe and Asia. 

There, we found and mated with the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), our closest ancient human relative, also extinct. 

Not a lot is known about the Denisovans, the population of early humans who lived in Asia at least 80,000 years ago and were also distantly related to Neanderthals. 

Denisovans also bred with humans around 50,000 years ago, likely in Asia, meaning the DNA of the early hominids survives today.

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{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

26-09-2025 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

A remarkable million-year-old skull discovered in China has shattered long-held beliefs about human evolution, suggesting that modern humans and their closest relatives diverged from common ancestors at least half a million years earlier than previously thought. The discovery challenges the fundamental narrative of human origins and raises the tantalizing possibility that  Homo sapiens may have first emerged not in Africa, but in Asia. This bold research, published in the prestigious journal  Science, represents one of the most significant advances in understanding human evolution in decades, forcing scientists to completely reconsider the timeline and geography of our species' emergence on Earth.

The reconstructed Yunxian 2 skull, originally excavated in 1990 from Hubei Province in central China, was initially classified as belonging to the primitive human species  Homo erectus. However, sophisticated digital reconstruction techniques have revealed that this ancient cranium possesses a unique combination of features that place it much closer to the mysterious Denisovans and the  Homo longi lineage, dramatically reshaping our understanding of human evolutionary history.

• Million-Year-Old Human Skull Found in China Reveals Missing Link
• 'Dragon Man' Skull Found in China May Be ANOTHER New Human Species

Comparison showing Dragon Man skull features similar to those found in Yunxian 2. 

( Mr. Wei Gao / Chuang Zhao/Cell)

Revolutionary Digital Reconstruction Reveals Hidden Identity

For over three decades, the badly crushed and distorted Yunxian 2 skull remained an enigma, its true significance hidden beneath layers of geological damage. The breakthrough came when researchers led by Professor Xijun Ni of Fudan University and Professor Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum applied cutting-edge CT imaging and sophisticated digital reconstruction techniques to virtually restore the cranium to its original form.

"From the very beginning, when we got the result, we thought it was unbelievable. How could that be so deep into the past?" Professor Ni told the BBC.

"But we tested it again and again to test all the models, use all the methods, and we are now confident about the result, and we're actually very excited."

The painstaking reconstruction process involved CT image segmentation to digitally separate fossil bones from surrounding rock matrix, followed by careful repositioning of displaced fragments. When the skull's true shape was finally revealed, it displayed a remarkable mosaic of primitive and advanced features that clearly distinguished it from both  Homo erectus and modern humans.

• Ancient Skulls Found in China Could Belong to an Unidentified Human Species
• Rethinking Homo sapiens? The story of our origins gets messy

Reconstruction of the Yunxian 2 cranium showing the sophisticated features that place it within the Homo longi lineage.

Source: Feng et al 2025, Science

The Dragon Man Connection and Denisovan Mysteries

The reconstructed Yunxian 2 skull revealed features characteristic of what researchers call the  Homo longi clade - a group that includes the enigmatic Dragon Man and likely encompasses the mysterious Denisovans. These features include a large cranial capacity of approximately 1,143 cubic centimeters, a long and low frontal skull bone, and distinctively narrow spacing between the eye sockets.

"The Homo longi clade, containing the Denisovans, lasted for over a million years," study co-author Chris Stringer explained to Live Science. "But so did the Neanderthal and  sapiens lineages."

Using statistical analysis of 57 fossil skulls and advanced phylogenetic modeling, the research team calculated that the major human lineages diverged much earlier than previously believed. The Neanderthal clade separated first, around 1.38 million years ago, followed by the  Homo longi clade at 1.2 million years ago, and finally  Homo sapiens at 1.02 million years ago, according to the report in Science.

This dramatically compressed timeframe suggests a period of rapid evolutionary diversification, with three distinct human lineages emerging within just 360,000 years. The implications are staggering: rather than gradual evolution over millions of years, human ancestors underwent explosive adaptive radiation in response to unknown environmental pressures.

Challenging Africa-Centric Human Origins

Perhaps most controversially, this discovery raises fundamental questions about the geographic origins of modern humanity. The traditional "Out of Africa" model posits that  Homo sapiens evolved exclusively on the African continent around 300,000 years ago before spreading globally. However, the antiquity and sophistication of the Yunxian 2 specimen suggests a more complex picture.

"This changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago our ancestors had already split into distinct groups, pointing to a much earlier and more complex human evolutionary split than previously believed," Professor Stringer told The Guardian. "It more or less doubles the time of origin of  Homo sapiens."

The research team suggests that if the  Homo longi lineage was already established in Asia one million years ago, and if this group shares common ancestry with modern humans and Neanderthals, then the ancestral population from which all three lineages emerged may have existed in western Asia rather than Africa. This would represent a fundamental revision of human evolutionary geography.

The discovery also helps resolve what paleoanthropologists call the "muddle in the middle"—dozens of confusing human fossil remains dating between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago that have proven difficult to classify. With earlier divergence dates, these puzzling specimens can now be grouped as members of the three major lineages or their primitive ancestors.

Phylogenetic family tree showing relationships between Yunxian 2 and other human specimens 

Source: Feng et al 2025, Science

Scientific Skepticism and Future Research

While the findings are groundbreaking, not all experts are convinced by the dramatic timeline revision. Dr. Aylwyn Scally, an evolutionary geneticist at Cambridge University, cautioned that considerable uncertainties remain in both morphological and genetic dating methods.

"One has to be particularly tentative about the timing estimates, because those are very difficult to do, regardless of what evidence you're looking at," Scally told the BBC.

"Even with the largest amount of genetic data, it is very difficult to place a time when these populations may have co-existed to within 100,000 years, or even more."

The research team acknowledges these limitations but maintains confidence in their reconstruction and analysis methods. They used bootstrap resampling techniques to test the robustness of their conclusions, finding that potential errors in restoration and character scoring had minimal impact on their phylogenetic inferences.

Future validation will require additional fossil discoveries and, ideally, genetic material from the Yunxian specimens themselves. As Dr. Frido Welker from the University of Copenhagen noted, "molecular data from the specimen itself could provide insights confirming or disproving the authors' morphological hypothesis."

This extraordinary discovery represents far more than academic debate - it fundamentally challenges our understanding of what it means to be human and where we came from. As researchers continue to uncover and analyze ancient remains, the story of human evolution becomes increasingly complex, revealing a rich tapestry of interactions, migrations, and adaptations that shaped our species across deep time.

• Top image: The original Yunxian Man cranium before reconstruction, showing distortion from geological pressure.  
• Source: Gary Todd/CC0

By Gary Manners

References

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-0 }

25-09-2025 om 23:28 geschreven door peter