Anomaly Detected on Voyager 1: What Is Happening in Deep Interstellar Space?

In the vast expanse of interstellar space, Voyager 1 continues its extraordinary journey, defying expectations and pushing the boundaries of human exploration. Launched on September 5, 1977, this intrepid spacecraft has ventured far beyond its initial mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn, now traveling more than 15 billion miles from Earth. As it navigates the uncharted depths of space, Voyager 1 has begun to exhibit anomalous behavior, puzzling NASA scientists and challenging our understanding of the cosmos.

Unprecedented longevity and challenges in deep space

Voyager 1's remarkable endurance has surpassed all initial projections, with the spacecraft continuing to communicate with Earth nearly five decades after its launch. This longevity, however, comes with its own set of challenges. The extreme conditions of interstellar space, coupled with the limitations of 1970s technology, have led to ongoing equipment degradation.

Space radiation has likely accelerated the wear and tear on Voyager 1's components, presenting NASA engineers with unique problems to solve. One of the most critical issues has been the degradation of the spacecraft's thrusters, which are essential for maintaining its orientation and communication with Earth.

The mission team has had to adapt to these challenges, employing innovative solutions to keep Voyager 1 operational. Their efforts have included :

• Developing new software to compensate for hardware limitations
• Repurposing existing systems for unintended functions
• Xarefully managing power consumption to extend the mission's lifespan

Thruster clogging dilemma and ingenious solutions

Perhaps the most perplexing issue faced by Voyager 1 has been the clogging of its thrusters. These vital components are crucial for keeping the spacecraft's High Gain Antenna pointed towards Earth, ensuring continued communication. The problem stems from silicon dioxide buildup, a result of the aging fuel tank's rubber diaphragm deterioration.

NASA engineers have had to think creatively to address this critical issue. With the first set of thrusters decommissioned in 2002 and the second set showing signs of wear by 2018, the team faced a daunting challenge. The discovery that the openings in the trajectory correction thrusters—the third and final set—had narrowed to a mere 0.0015 inches (half the width of a human hair) further complicated matters.

NASA Engineers Revive Voyager 1 to Maintain Communication with Earth, demonstrating their ingenuity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Their approach involved :

• Carefully analyzing the remaining thruster capabilities
• Developing new firing sequences to maximize efficiency
• Implementing software updates to optimize thruster performance

Voyager 1's scientific legacy and ongoing discoveries

Despite these technical challenges, Voyager 1 continues to make groundbreaking discoveries and contribute to our understanding of the universe. The spacecraft's crossing of the heliopause—the outer boundary of the heliosphere—marked a historic milestone in space exploration. This achievement has provided invaluable data about the structure and role of the heliosphere in shielding our solar system from cosmic rays.

The information gathered by Voyager 1 has profound implications for future interplanetary missions and our understanding of the cosmos. Some key contributions include :

As Voyager 1 continues its journey, it complements the findings of its twin, Voyager 2, which is now over 12 billion miles from Earth. Together, these probes offer humanity an unprecedented view of the outermost reaches of our solar neighborhood and beyond.

Future implications and the legacy of Voyager 1

The mission team is acutely aware that Voyager 1's remaining set of thrusters may not last indefinitely. Every operational day becomes a testament to human ingenuity and perseverance as the spacecraft pushes further into the unknown. The eventual failure of these thrusters will mark the end of active communication with Voyager 1, but its legacy will endure.

The data collected by Voyager 1 will continue to inform scientific research and exploration for years to come. Its incredible journey has proven that humanity can push the boundaries of exploration to unprecedented extremes, from the icy regions of the outer planets to the edge of interstellar space.

Future missions inspired by the Voyagers will benefit immensely from the lessons learned during this pioneering expedition. As we plan for human expeditions to the outer planets and beyond, the experiences gained from these spacecraft will be invaluable. Interestingly, a hidden population of objects discovered beyond the Kuiper Belt in the outer Solar System further emphasizes the importance of continued exploration and the potential for new discoveries in our cosmic backyard.

Voyager 1's anomalous behavior in interstellar space serves as a reminder of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in space exploration. As we continue to push the boundaries of our knowledge, the spirit of innovation and determination embodied by the Voyager mission will guide us towards new frontiers and uncharted territories in the vast expanse of the universe.

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02-11-2024 om 00:31 geschreven door peter  

(ID 74418913 © Emoke Kupai | Dreamstime.com)

UFO sightings during northern lights display sparks conversation

Have you ever wondered if we’re not alone in the universe and beyond?

Maybe you know we’re not or you’re still trying to decide, but interest in alien life, at least by those in Alberta, was recently reignited after an orb was spotted in the sky outside Andrew, Alta. during the northern lights display a few weeks ago.

The incident was reported on Enigma Labs, a UFO sightings data network based out of the U.S. They also reported 1,197 UFO sighting submissions in Canada on their network over the past few months.

This marked a total of 14,527 UFO sightings in Canada reported by Enigma, which is the second most on their network behind the United States.

Alejandro Rojas, a UFO expert at Enigma based out of Arizona, told rdnewsNOW that sightings usually coordinate with population.

“Wherever there’s more people, there’s more sightings,” he said. “There’s also outreach; for example, who knows about us and who knows where to report. We have enough connections in Canada that Canadians often participate.”

Enigma allows the public to upload pictures and videos of UFOs across the world which is used by researchers and scientists. It also allows for community scientists and the rest of the users to crowd analyze the sightings. The data collected is from those reported by the public but also through historical databases.

“We’ve found that the northern lights in particular caused a lot of sighting reports and really it’s because people are outside looking at the sky for an extended period of time,” he added.

“When they do that, often they see something they can’t explain.”

Often UFOs seen by people can vary in shape and size but Rojas said there are more frequent types of shapes.

Points of light and spheres are the more common ones reported, which makes sense because people sometimes see what appear to be satellites but are unsure of what they are.

“Those are also some of the most mysterious ones because one of the most frequent types of sightings is seeing what they think is a satellite but then it starts to do something weird like zig zag or speed up,” he said.

One of the most recent reports in Red Deer came in April and August of this year. However, one case was also reported in November 2023.

Red Deer resident Shelby Leclarc said she and her partner have a nightly routine where they’ll watch for satellites and look at the different constellations.

On that night in November she looked up at the sky, and after watching a plane go by she saw multiple moving orange dots in the sky.

They also twinkled like a star but was much more noticeable and moved faster than the plane. The UFO’s were more circular shape and did not make any sound.

“What the heck was that,” Leclarc remembers saying. “Seeing lights you don’t recognize is a little weird. I’ve never seen anything like it since.”

A year ago, David Grusch. a former U.S. intelligence official and whistle blower said at a congressional hearing under oath, that the U.S. government is in possession of non-human space crafts as well as bodies of deceased corpses.

The claims raised many questions and also excitement online and in social media.

Rojas explained that those were just claims without any evidence. However, he did say the government has a lot of secrecy around this topic.

“The manner in which they collect all of that data is classified so they’re not in the best position to share a lot of data with the public,” Rojas said.

“That’s always going to lead to secrecy and speculation about what they know. I haven’t seen any evidence that they really know much.

“I think one thing that’s exciting is that they have admitted they’re having reports of these metallic orb type things. They don’t know what they are and they haven’t figured it out.”

{ https://rdnewsnow.com/news }

02-11-2024 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

ORLANDO, Fla. — A parking spot shuffle coming up this weekend more than 250 miles above Earth will mark a unique feat for a pair of NASA astronauts who will become the first to fly in both Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams who flew up to the International Space Station in Starliner, but remained on board when NASA opted to return it back to Earth without crew, are now part of the four-member crew that will fly home on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom next year.

Freedom arrived to the ISS on Sept. 29 with just two crew — NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov —leaving room for Wilmore and Williams on that flight home targeting February 2025.

But because parking space is limited at the ISS, all four will climb on board early Sunday for a short trip moving from the Crew Dragon Freedom from the front-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module, and redock it to the space-facing port of the same module.

That will make room for the planned launch of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon on the CRS-31 mission launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Space Launch Complex 39-A as early as 9:29 p.m. Monday carrying 6,000 pounds of supplies.

The ISS has only the two ports capable of parking either SpaceX Dragon or Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The Russian side of the station has its own spots for Soyuz crewed vehicles and Progress cargo vehicles, while the Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft can connect on the ISS’ Unity module.

For Dragon and Starliner, NASA prefers to bring on new spacecraft to the forward-facing port, so each time a new ship is coming, they have to move the one that’s already there.

So while Crew Dragon Freedom’s trip will take less than an hour, it will be the first time Williams and Wilmore will have traveled in it under its own propulsion.

It will also mark their fourth spacecraft within which they will have traveled, not including the ISS, as both had previously flown on both space shuttle and Soyuz missions.

That’s similar to the record set by NASA’s John Young, who flew in four spacecraft. He flew on two Gemini missions, two Apollo missions, one with a landing on the moon so it meant a ride down and back up to the surface in the Apollo lunar lander, and then two missions of the Space Shuttle Program, including the first

Because of the moon lander’s liftoff from the lunar surface, Young would still hold the record for number of different spacecraft launching off of the surface of a planet or moon.

Other astronauts have at least been inside at least four spacecraft in space, as they either are assigned duties such as unloading cargo from visiting vessels like Cygnus and Dragon, or get a little tour from their fellow space station crew of the ships they flew up on.

The first person to be inside any of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in space was when NASA astronaut Bob Hines floated in after the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 in 2022 after it docked with the ISS when he was part of Expedition 67.

The ISS is now amidst Expedition 72 having been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

SpaceX and Boeing were awarded contracts under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to provide U.S.-based launches to and from the ISS until it’s decommissioned.

SpaceX is now in its ninth rotational mission having flown the test Demo-2 mission in 2000 followed by operational flights about every six months since. It has Crew-10 scheduled for February and Crew-11 for as early as next July.

Boeing meanwhile was unable to complete its version of the Demo-2 flight called the Crew Flight Test this summer four years after SpaceX accomplished the feat, but could still find a way to certification by NASA to begin operational missions beginning with Starliner-1 before the end of 2025.

NASA and Roscosmos, meanwhile, continue to do seat swap missions allowing for cosmonauts to ride up on the Crew Dragon flights while astronauts take one of the three seats on board the Soyuz missions.

• ©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit at orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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01-11-2024 om 23:37 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Mystery around controversial Peru 'alien mummies' deepens after new fingerprint analysis indicates they're NOT 'HUMAN'

• READ MORE: Expert says Colombian body may be 'tiny cave-dwelling humanoid'

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Bizarre diagonal grooves along the fingertips and toes of one of Peru's eerie and hotly debated 'alien mummies' points to a nonhuman origin for these odd remains.

Worldwide controversy has followed the small peculiar specimens since September, when veteran broadcast journalist and prolific UFO researcher Jaime Maussan first presented two alleged 'alien' corpses to Mexico's congress last year.

Now DailyMail.com has spoken to a former Colorado prosecutor and current defense attorney, who has examined one of the over half-a-dozen 'alien' specimens with the help of three independent forensic medical examiners from the United States.   

'These were not traditional human fingerprint patterns,' that attorney, Joshua McDowell, told DailyMail.com.

Above, a photo of one of the mummy's unusual fingerprints posted to social media by Jose Baizan and attributed to the Mexican Naval surgeon Dr Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, who has also examined the Peruvian 'alien' mummies on behalf of ufologist Jaime Maussan

In Peru last April - as part of another event hosted by Maussan - a new 'alien' specimen named Montserrat (above) was presented. This photo was taken by Colorado attorney Josh McDowell who told DailyMail.com, one mummies' 'fingerprints weren't consistent with human prints'

The use of fingerprints — or what are technically known as 'friction ridge' skin impressions — dates back as far as 300 BC in China according to the US Department of Justice's Fingerprint Sourcebook.

And criminal forensic investigators in America have long systematized the hunt for unique features ever since these patterns first came into use by US law enforcement in 1902, beginning with three broad types of fingerprint: arches, loops and whorls.

But 'María,' the so-called 'alien' mummy that McDowell and his forensic doctors examined, appeared to have fingerprints that matched no known human pattern.

'We did not see any loops or whorls on the prints of the fingers or on the toes,' McDowell, now principal at the McDowell Law Firm, told DailyMail.com.

'I'm a former prosecutor. I'm a criminal defense attorney. I've seen lots of fingerprints. And these were not classic fingerprints,' the attorney added.

'María's fingerprints weren't consistent with human prints.'

Criminal forensic investigators in America have long systematized the hunt for unique features ever since these patterns first came into use by US law enforcement in 1902, beginning with three broad types of fingerprint: arches, loops and whorls (pictured)

'We did not see any loops or whorls on the prints of the fingers or on the toes,' McDowell, now principal at the McDowell Law Firm, told DailyMail.com. Above an image of the specific, so-called 'alien' mummy in question, known as María, who was first made public in 2019

Like most of the well over half-a-dozen 'alien' mummy specimens brought to light by Jaime Maussan in the past year, María was discovered caked in diatomaceous earth: white, powdery aquatic fossils left behind by a type of plankton known as diatoms.

'Much of her body is covered in diatomaceous earth,' McDowell explained, 'however, on the fingers that were exposed, the epidermal ridges I saw appeared to be in mostly straight lines.'

McDowell and the three US medical examiners who journeyed with him to Peru to examine the bodies last April have emphasized that it would be 'extremely premature' to make any definitive statements about these mysterious mummies.

McDowell told DailyMail.com that there may yet be a terrestrial explanation for the unusually straight 'friction ridge' skin patterns on María's fingers and toes.

'It could possibly have something to do with the way her skin was preserved,' he advised. 'It's very odd.'

McDowell, previously a deputy district attorney for Colorado's Fourth Judicial District Attorney's Office, brought a city coroner from Denver as well as a forensic anthropologist from Maryland's State Medical Examiner to Peru to inspect María.

The third expert, McDowell's father Dr John McDowell, is a forensic odontologist and retired professor at the University of Colorado — who once worked to identify victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center via their dental records.

Joshua McDowell emphasized to DailyMail.com that 'no determination has been made about what the nature of the specimens is at this date,' adding that his teams' effort to identify the true nature of these 'alien' mummies is very much still active. 

'I've been to Mexico a couple times, spent a week in Peru,' the attorney said. 'Two to three hours a day, I'm dealing with something on this.'

'So far we have tomographies [CT scans] and fluoroscopy analysis,' Maussan told DailyMail.com describing the x-ray and ultrasound data on the mummies that he unveiled at West Hollywood's Mondrian Hotel at a prior March 12, 2024 press event (pictured above)

Above, two of Maussan's collaborators, documentarians Serena DC (right) and Michael Mazzola (left), pose with a new 'alien' mummy from this March - which they said has 30 percent 'unknown' DNA

This past January - after two mummies were seized by Peruvian customs - Flavio Estrada (right), a forensic archaeologist with Peru's Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Lima, said that the alien bodies are 'dolls' made of animal parts

María is one several specimens that have been dubbed 'the Nazca mummies,' after the province in southwestern Peru where these bodies were allegedly unearthed.

Most of these specimens have gained fame and infamy, in part, due to their elongated heads and their three-fingered hands which resemble decades of anecdotal accounts and UFO lore about extraterrestrial 'grey' beings.

Maussan and his colleagues have had an eventful year pushing for wider scientific interest in the apparently alien bodies, including two bitter clashes with Peru's Ministry of Culture, who have described the mummies and man-made hoaxes.

In January, Flavio Estrada, a forensic archaeologist of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Lima of the Public Ministry, told a press conference that two of the alien bodies seized by Peruvian customs were 'dolls.'

'The conclusion is simple,' Estrada said, 'they are dolls assembled with bones of animals from this planet, with modern synthetic glues, therefore they were not assembled during pre-Hispanic times.'

But María, like several of the other Nazca mummies, does not resemble the smaller, more doll-like specimens seized at the border or presented to Mexican congress. 

The new — albeit provisional — fingerprint analysis suggests some of the Nazca mummies are either not dolls or were constructed of more grim, unusual material.

In March 2024, Maussan published a report on the DNA of the Nazca 'tridactyl' mummies - a report that he described as having been performed by 'the top specialist in Molecular Biology and Genetics of Peru' (page one above)

Ten scientists with San Luis Gonzaga National University of Ica (UNICA), according to Maussan's statement in March, concluded 'their DNA [i.e. the Nazca mummies' DNA] contains 29 percent that does not belong to the evolutionary chain of the Earth' (page two above)

But the larger Nazca mummy specimens also have their critics.

One critic of Maussan, Latin American historian Christopher Heaney, noted that multiple regions of Latin America, including Peru, have a rich tradition of head-binding and head-shaping practices performed on infants' developing skulls.

'The Spanish, when they arrived in the 16th Century observed and commented on individuals walking around with very specifically shaped skulls,' as Heaney told DailyMail.com, 'and they recognized and saw them doing it using these bandages.'

This specific 'alien' mummy, María, was first debuted at a November 6, 2019 press event held at Peru's San Luis Gonzaga National University of Ica (UNICA) alongside three other Nazca 'tridactyls' (three-fingered bodies): 'Wawita,' 'Albert' and 'Victoria.'

Maussan, who was a party to McDowells' trip to UNICA to inspect these mummies, unveiled a new 'alien' specimen named Montserrat during the recent April 2024 trip.

Maussan has pushed for wider scientific interest in the apparently alien bodies, including a presentation before Mexico's Congress (pictured)

'Would you consider I would take the bodies to the Mexican Congress putting in danger 50 years of [my journalism] career to present fake bodies?' he asked at a press event this March 

The previous month, Maussan published a report on the Nazca 'tridactyls' DNA that he described as having been performed by 'the top specialist in Molecular Biology and Genetics of Peru.'

Ten scientists with UNICA, according to Maussan's statement that March, concluded 'their DNA [i.e. the Nazca mummies' DNA] contains 29 percent that does not belong to the evolutionary chain of the Earth.'

McDowell's US team of forensic medical examiners were more circumspect in their analysis after their trip to UNICA the following month.

'We would want actual, very definitive DNA studies done at high complexity laboratories,' the US team said at their mid-April 2024 press conference. 

'The carbon dating needs to be repeated with more sophisticated methods. Those are things that we're looking for,' they added. 'Our preliminary investigation really just led to the fact that more investigation is needed.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

01-11-2024 om 21:55 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: US Congress to submit controversial 'alien' mummies for lab tests

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Dissection has begun on hands from one of Peru's hotly debated 'alien mummies' — seen in an eerie new video revealing bones and odd metallic structures.

Worldwide controversy has followed these now roughly dozen or so small peculiar specimens, often referred to as the 'Nazca Tridactyls' after the region in Peru where they are believed to have been taken by anonymous local 'huaqueros' (tomb raiders).

Now, doctors claimed to have removed a 'light metal' implant from the new specimen's palm, a reporter who is working with medical professionals involved in the investigation told DailyMail.com.

The short video documents the moment one physician carefully pulls the suspected 'alien implant' from the Nazca Tridactyl's severed, three-fingered hand with tweezers.

Mexican Navy forensic doctor Dr Jose Zalce Benitez — who devoted his free time to remove the metal — said: 'It is a very complex metal alloy that requires special knowledge and techniques to be able to achieve it with such quality and purity.'

'It was possible to identify elements such as aluminum, tin, silver, copper, cadmium and osmium among others in smaller quantities and percentages,' Dr Zalce added.

The video also depicts what appears to be one of the mummified hands peeled back to reveal two of its 'metacarpal' or 'palm' bones.

Mexican Navy Forensic doctor Dr. Jose Zalce Benitez, working with a colleague, removed an 'implantation of light metal' from the hand (pictured) of a tiny, 2-ft-tall specimen - believed by some to be an 'alien mummy' - as reporter Fernando Correa Dominguez told DailyMail.com

Dissection has begun on these hands from one of Peru's macabre and hotly debated 'alien mummies' - seen in eerie new videos revealing two of its apparent 'metacarpal' or 'palm' bones (above) as well as a thin, eerie metallic structure

'This tridactyl hand, from which I obtained the metal, does not belong to any of the bodies presented at the Mexican Congress,' Dr Zalce emphasized.

'This hand is part of a series of loose pieces that belong to the place where the tridactyl bodies of Peru were found,' the physician and forensic expert clarified. 

The doctor's volunteer investigation into these unusual, potentially extraterrestrial bodies dates back to his testimony before an open hearing of Mexico's Congress last year, during which two similar alleged 'alien' corpses were presented.

Since that September 12, 2023 congressional presentation, two distinct sizes of these alleged 'alien mummies' have been subjected to public scrutiny — but the new video examination relates to the smaller and more controversial of the specimens.

The alleged 'metal implant' can be see looking like a torn patch of silvery reptilian scales in the new video, as it is tilted toward the camera by Dr Zalce's gloved hand.

Reporter Fernando Correa Dominguez explained to DailyMail.com that the hand had been carefully rehydrated by the doctors to better remove the 'metal implant.'

Initially, Correa noted, 'they did not see any moisture inside the hand, [only] dehydrated skin tissue was observed inside the tendons and muscles.' 

Dr Zalce described the procedure in more detail: 'We used a forensic technique to protect the tissue and minimize its degradation [...] a special serum that is used for the rehydration of corpses that has very specific concentration percentages.'

Correa told DailyMail.com that this hand from this alleged non-human mummy had been rehydrated by Drs Zalce and Rangel to better remove the 'metal implant' (above)

Above: 'The metal implant,' as Correa explained from Mexico on Wednesday, 'looks like aluminum and tin: a very light alloy [...] However, it is not possible to confirm what type of metals it contains until it is subjected to metallurgical analysis

'We use sterile swabs with a soft surgical cotton tip to avoid any type of damage or contamination to both the metal sample and the tridactyl hand,' Dr Zalce elaborated.

'This technique is used by the FBI and helps recover data or information from relevant evidence in forensic investigations,' the physician noted.

Correa, who took credit for bringing Dr Zalce onto this project, added that the severed 'tridactyl' hand closely resembles the hands present on the specimens brought before Mexican Congress last year.

That spectacle within the nation's highest legislative body had been spearheaded by UFO researcher and broadcaster Jaime Maussan, Correa's boss for over two decades at the paranormal-focused TV news magazine 'Tercer Milenio.'

'It is a hand from small bodies,' Correa told DailyMail.com, 'such as the mummies of Josephina, Victoria and Louise' as the mummies have been nicknamed by the team. 

These purported beings — typically just under two feet (60.96 centimeters) long — have originated from sites in Peru along with larger, more human-sized specimens, similarly coated in white, powdery algae fossils known as diatomaceous earth.

Critics, including top Peruvian officials from the Ministry of Culture, have claimed the smaller bodies are grim fabrications, based on two specimens seized by customs.

Dr Flavio Estrada, a forensic archaeologist with Peru's Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, concluded the seized bodies were grisly dolls, 'assembled with bones of animals from this planet, with modern synthetic glues.'

'They're not extraterrestrials,' Dr Estrada pronounced after his group's examination last January. 'It's totally a made-up story.'

But Colorado attorney Josh McDowell has told DailyMail.com that these two alleged mummies, which were confiscated by Peruvian customs from courier DHL at an airport in Lima, only superficially resemble those brought before Mexico's congress.

These contraband specimens, he said, also did not resemble those kept at the University of Ica in Peru, where many of the Nazca Tridactyls are currently stored.

McDowell said that the seized 'mummies,' dressed-up in miniature imitations of traditional Andean dress, had merely been bootlegs made by an artist who intended to cash-in on the 'Nazca mummy' craze.

'The artist that made them said as much,' he continued.

'There is a way to obtain definitive answers as to what these specimens are through genetic testing and additional forensic examination,' McDowell emphasized. 

'It would mean a true collaborative effort with a multidisciplinary team of scientists, working with the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, to complete the studies legally, ethically and with respect to the cultural heritage of Peru.'  

The prolific UFO researcher and broadcaster Jaime Maussan (left) was Correa's boss for decades at the paranormal-focused TV news magazine 'Tercer Milenio.' Above, Correa (right) and Maussan pose beside a statue of a 'grey alien' in Tercer Milenio's studio in Mexico City

But whatever the truth behind these two seized 'alien mummies,' Correa said that the hand dissected by his partners closely match those presented to Mexico's congress. 

'Dr Ricardo Rangel, molecular geneticist, and Dr Zalce, a physician expert in forensic sciences, are the two scientists with the most experience in this case,' he said.

'I invited them from the beginning to analyze the bodies of the Nazca mummies.'

Correa noted that Rangel and Zalce's study of this specimen's hand greatly resembled the internal structure of Maussan's prior Nazca bodies, scanned via a noninvasive x-ray-like method, high-resolution computed tomography.

'Both agreed on the inside of the hand,' Correa said.

'There is anatomical correspondence with this member that comes from the same place where the other specimens were found: a cave in the Peruvian desert,' he said.

But even some sympathetic observers and amateur 'ancient alien' archeologists online have voiced their doubts about the hand as depicted in the new video.  

Posters on the Reddit forum r/alienbodies likened the interior seen in the new alien hand video to 'wet sludge and bones' or hastily stuffed 'with ground coffee beans.' 

'The more I learn about these,' one opined, 'the less authentic I believe them to be.' 

For his part, Dr Rangel, whose past research work has focused on a form of gene called Human leukocyte antigens (HLA), has focused the most of his studies on DNA samples taken from the Nazca mummies over the past few years.

In one of his 2023 assessments of the specimens, he asserted that 'there is a probability greater than 50 percent that this organism is not related to living beings known to date on our planet.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

01-11-2024 om 21:33 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Pentagon UFO chief reveals US military's new 'alien tech' crash retrieval program

• READ MORE: Pentagon hid a UFO data retrieval unit, 'Immaculate Constellation'

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

The Pentagon's former chief UFO investigator has revealed a sensitive new government program to recover 'alleged alien tech' in the event of a 'shoot down.'

Dr Sean Kirkpatrick — a longtime CIA scientist who headed the US military's UFO-chasing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — admitted to the program's existence when pressed during a new interview.

The retrieval program's protocols were for 'any UAP recovery' involving 'everything from balloons to drones to alleged alien tech,' as Dr Kirkpatrick told podcast host John Michael Godier.

In recent years, Pentagon brass, NASA experts and academics have all reframed what were once called 'flying saucers' as 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' (UAP).

The revelation is the first time that the US government has officially acknowledged a UAP or UFO retrieval program, despite decades of speculation and whistleblower testimony that America has already been in possession of alien craft for decades.

It also comes amid multiple federal investigations into 'mothership' UFOs over key US military sites, releasing hard to identify, much less catch, 'drone swarm' UFOs.

This week, the Pentagon's North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) admitted that America's military installations have been plagued, since 2022, by at least 600 so-called 'drone' incursions, many still unexplained.

This model of a sunken and deteriorated Soviet K-129 submarine was created by the CIA during its 1971-74 AZORIAN mission - one of the most elaborate terrestrial 'crash retrieval' missions undertaken in secret by the US intelligence community and now declassified  

The now retired director of the Pentagon UFO office, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick (above), spent 2023 engaged in heated public sparring with UFO whistleblowers over alleged retrievals of alien spacecraft dating back to the Cold War-era 

Classified documents suggest that the new UFO crash retrieval program began in early 2023, with a focus on 'response and recovery and material transfer.'

Dr Kirkpatrick initiated high-level meetings formalizing AARO's version of a UFO crash retrieval program in January and February 2023 — according to the redacted documents released last September via the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  

As one scheduling email explained: 'The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the disposition of funding within the context of safety and security implications of UAP.'

Establishing 'a receiving point' for any and all recovered UFO materials was one key issue to be addressed, the meeting memo added.

'The problem is those types of activities are already covered under Foreign Materiel Collection and Analysis,' as Dr Kirkpatrick told Godier and listeners to his Event Horizon podcast Thursday.

'There's already a process and procedures in place for many of these things,' he continued. 'So this conversation was really to start [asking]: How do we document that for UAP? And, what kind of procedures do we need to put in place?'

Since at least the dawn of the Cold War, America has had crash retrieval programs, led by the CIA, but comprising all branches of the US military.

These programs were set up mainly to acquire Russian and Chinese tech, including the CIA's top secret salvaging of a nuclear-equipped, sunken Soviet sub in 1974.

'Equally important was retrieving US fragments that had landed in foreign nations to prevent the Soviets from recovering and exploiting them,' according to curator James E. David of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

Dr Kirkpatrick's latest disclosure adds context to an intriguing release of 78-pages worth of redacted plans between AARO and US Space Command (above), where the physicist had previously served as deputy director of intelligence from 2019 to 2021

Space Command was only the just one of the branches AARO consulted.

Leadership from the White House's Joint Chiefs of Staff also weighed in on the UFO recovery effort, including its directorates for intelligence (J2), operations (J3), strategy and policy (J5).

'AARO is Congressionally directed to come up with not just standard reporting procedures, but also mitigation and response procedures in the event of a shoot down or a collection of any sort of UAP,' Dr Kirkpatrick said.

'To do that mitigation and response, as well as standardized reporting,' he added, 'will occur through all of the combatant commands.'

'Because they already have people in place that would collect [crashes].' 

'Like, if we shot down another Chinese high altitude balloon, it's that team that would go and collect it, right? It's those procedures and processes on how it gets notified and how we go and get it.'

Space Command records obtained via FOIA show that Dr Kirkpatrick had meetings to establish AARO's version of a UFO-specific crash retrieval program on April 10 with Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, Commander of US Northern Command. 

General VanHerck, who led the mission to takedown the infamous Chinese spy balloon back in February 2023, has also taken a hard stance on domestic UFO cases.

'If there are unknown objects within North America,' he said of the recent wave of baffling drone swarms over US bases, 'go out and identify them.' 

Air Force and intelligence agency veteran David Grusch (center) testified under oath before Congress in July 2023 alleging widespread illegalities stemming from a long-secret UFO 'crash retrieval' program. Grusch and Dr Kirkpatrick sparred publicly over these claims that summer

Whistleblowers with knowledge of a classified UFO 'reverse engineering' program have opted to testify to the Senate intelligence committee, in part over their reported mistrust of Dr. Kirkpatrick and his Pentagon UFO office. Above, a page from Project 1794 declassified in 2012

General VanHerck, who also has a leadership role over NORAD, has pled with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to authorize more electronic eavesdropping equipment to solve the severe national security mysteries involving the drone UFOs. 

But the general has also acknowledged that strict rules govern the use of this level of espionage tech over US soil. 

Although Dr Kirkpatrick told Event Horizon's listeners that he found no evidence that the US government has previously recovered an alien spacecraft via its past crash retrieval programs, several of his predecessors have contradicted his claims.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  New Pentagon report on Roswell UFO crash is 'bogus' says former NASA scientists and Air Force veterans 

Dr James Lacatski, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst and missile expert who managed one UFO-centered program from 2008-2012, has claimed that the US not only has recovered alien spacecraft but that officials have gotten inside one.

'The United States,' as Dr Lacatski wrote in a 2023 book on that program, 'was in possession of a craft of unknown origin and had successfully gained access to its interior.'

This craft, as he briefed then US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2011, had 'no intakes, exhaust, wings, or control surfaces […] no engine, fuel tanks, or fuel.' 

Dr Lacatski's book, 'Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations,' was co-authored with Las Vegas-based investigative reporter George Knapp and biochemist Dr Colm Kelleher. 

Dr Kelleher had worked alongside Dr Lacatski from the private contractor side of the DIA's once highly secretive UFO program, the Advanced Weapons System. Application program (AAWSAP).

When asked by UFO documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell whether or not he himself had entered this recovered UFO, Dr Lacatski replied: 'I can't answer that.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to Dr Lacatski for comment and will update this article if he replies.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

01-11-2024 om 21:06 geschreven door peter  

The Manhattan Alien Abduction: Where Is Linda Napolitano Now?

Custom image by Simone Ashmoore

Netflix's The Manhattan Alien Abduction revisits the alleged 1989 alien kidnapping of Linda Napolitano from the 12th floor of her Manhattan apartment. At about 3 a.m., November 30th that year, she insists that three gray-colored bipedal aliens removed her from her bedroom using a blue light stream that paralyzed her before lifting her into the sky and onto a reddish-orange spacecraft, which then veered off toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Once aboard their craft, these other-worldly beings, claims Napolitano, performed a series of unspecified experiments on the housewife by inserting a metallic device in her nose, before returning her to her home in New York.

She described the aliens as having black eyes; they were allegedly able to communicate with her telepathically - telling her in some strange language to be quiet - before she wound up unable to move as the blue beam lifted her into the night sky and onto the ship. In The Manhattan Alien Abduction, one of several UFO documentaries, she remembered an examination room where a metallic device was inserted into her nose, and then waking up back in Manhattan in bed next to her husband as if nothing had happened. According to her, her first thought was that she'd dreamed the entire episode, until she noticed a lump in her nose.

Linda Napolitano Has Sued Netflix Over The Manhattan Alien Abduction

Napolitano Says The Film Is Unflattering

The story generated some headlines in the early 1990s, but gained traction with the publication of UFO investigator Budd Hopkins' book Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction, in 1997. Hopkins' book attracted significant skepticism over Napolitano's claims, but the author reported that he had interviewed more than 20 witnesses to the event, which lent the tale some credibility. Despite this, Netflix's The Manhattan Alien Abduction docuseries firmly suggests that Napolitano's story is entirely fanciful, which has so riled up the alleged abductee that she has taken the matter to court.

In the suit, Napolitano challenges that the show sets her up as "a villain for purposes of controversy and conflict," and "defames her persona and character," and will "destroy her reputation as an honest and decent person.” Now 77, Linda Napolitano still lives in New York and is sticking resolutely to her story, despite the content in The Manhattan Alien Abduction and the evidence provided by Carol Rainey and others painting her abduction event as, at best, hallucinatory.

Related

10 Great Movies About Alien Abductions

Sci-fi films have always been fascinated by aliens kidnapping humans, and these films capture the terror, and sometimes the humor, of alien abduction.

“If I was hallucinating,” she told Vanity Fair in 2013, “then the witnesses saw my hallucination. That sounds crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon." The Manhattan Alien Abduction is Netflix's attempt to sort the fact from the fantasy and to tell Napolitano's story objectively and in light of all the evidence. Like almost all alien abduction narratives, Napolitano's extraordinary claims can't be proven based on the evidence available and will likely remain so. Even If Linda Napolitano's claims aren't taken seriously, she is sticking to her story to the very end: “I’ll tell you,” she says, “I wish I was psychotic — at least there is treatment for that.”

Sources: 

• Forbes, 
• Vanity Fair
  

Shocking Alien Abduction | Linda Napolitano | Sci-Fi Mystery Movie | Free Movie

ps://screenrant.com/ }

01-11-2024 om 19:32 geschreven door peter  

While new rockets and human missions to the Moon are in the press, NASA is quietly thinking through the nuts and bolts of a long-term presence on the Moon. They have already released two white papers about the lunar logistics they’ll require in the future and are now requesting proposals from companies to supply some serious cargo transportation. But this isn’t just for space transport; NASA is also looking for ground transportation on the Moon that can move cargo weighing as much as 2,000 to 6,000 kg (4,400 to 13,000 pounds.)

In a recent press release, NASA asked U.S. industry to submit proposals for logistics ideas and solutions to help the agency land and move cargo on the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis missions.

“NASA relies on collaborations from diverse partners to develop its exploration architecture,” said Nujoud Merancy, deputy associate administrator, strategy and architecture in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Studies like this allow the agency to leverage the incredible expertise in the commercial aerospace community.”

In the two white papers, NASA outlined the “gaps” they have lunar logistics and mobility as part of its Moon to Mars architecture.  In the first paper, “Lunar Logistics Drivers, Needs,” NASA said that as the Artemis missions and goals are conceptualized and planned, it is imperative to accurately predict logistics and resupply needs, not only for mission goals but for the very important need of keeping the humans alive and healthy. They need to have a good plan and the ability to transport landed cargo and exploration items from where they are delivered to where they are used.

“The total amount of logistics items required to keep the crew alive and healthy, to maintain systems, and to perform productive science and utilization can be relatively large,” the authors wrote. “It can also heavily influence the design of the architecture and exploration missions. The architecture must therefore be based on comprehensive, accurate estimates of logistics item needs and include assessment of a suitable logistics sub-architectures to deliver those needs.”

How to provide various things like food, water, air, spare parts, and other similar products required to sustain life, as well as maintain all the various systems and structures are key to having productive science and utilization activities. NASA also expects they will need to move all these supplies around on the Moon, including to the lunar South Pole where they plan to send crews in the future. The paper outlines the importance of accurately predicting logistics resupply needs, as they can heavily influence the overall architecture and design of exploration missions.

NASA’ said their current planned lunar mobility elements, such as the Lunar Terrain Vehicle and Pressurized Rover, have a capability limit of about 1,760 pounds (800 kilograms) and will primarily be used to transport astronauts around the lunar surface. However, future missions could include a need to move cargo totaling around 4,400 to 13,000 pounds (2,000 to 6,000 kg). That’s why NASA wants input from companies who have experience in this area.

But to be able to move cargo around to various places on the Moon, NASA first needs to get the supplies to the lunar surface. The second white paper, “Lunar Surface Cargo,” looks at the lunar surface cargo delivery needs, compares those needs with current cargo lander capabilities, and outlines considerations for fulfilling this capability gap. NASA said that access to a diverse fleet of cargo landers would empower a larger lunar exploration footprint, and that a combination of international partnerships and U.S. industry-provided landers could supply the concepts and capabilities to meet this need.

“Given diverse cargo needs of varying size, mass, delivery cadence, and operational needs, a diverse portfolio of cargo lander capabilities will be necessary to achieve NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives,” the paper says. “Encouraging the development of varied cargo lander concepts and capabilities will be key to establishing a long-term lunar presence for science and exploration.”

While the request for proposals doesn’t explicitly seek new concepts for landing vehicles, it does ask for integrated assessments of logistics that can include transportation elements.

“We’re looking for industry to offer creative insights that can inform our logistics and mobility strategy,” said Brooke Thornton, industry engagement lead for NASA’s Strategy and Architecture Office. “Ultimately, we’re hoping to grow our awareness of the unique capabilities that are or could become a part of the commercial lunar marketplace.”

Got ideas? Check out NASA’s Request for Proposals.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

01-11-2024 om 18:42 geschreven door peter  

Geomagnetic reversals are chaotic events. Though they occur on average about every 450,000 years, there’s no pattern to them. There have been about 183 of them in the last 83 million years, leading us to the 450,000-year number. But the last one was 780,000 years ago, and some say that we’re overdue for the next one.

Sometimes, the events are excursions rather than full reversals. That’s when the field shifts for several hundred years and then returns to its original orientation, like the Laschamps event about 41,000 years ago. In an excursion, the field reverses in Earth’s outer core while its inner core remains unchanged. These happen more frequently than full reversals, but their exact number and timing are more difficult to determine since their effects aren’t global.

The evidence for these reversals and excursions is found in paleomagnetism. Paleomagnetism measures the orientation of magnetic elements like iron in volcanic rock as it cools. By determining the age of the rock, scientists can determine the orientation of Earth’s magnetic field when the rock solidified. The history of Earth’s magnetic reversals is recorded where new magma cools as the seafloor spreads.

During these excursions and reversals, the magnetic field’s strength weakens. During the Laschamps event, which lasted several hundred years, the field weakened to only 5% of its normal strength.

Earth’s magnetic fields deflect cosmic rays away from Earth, and at only 5% of its normal strength, the field lets in far more cosmic rays than usual. Cosmic rays are high-energy particles, usually protons or atomic nuclei, that come from the Sun and from objects both inside and outside of the Milky Way and travel at relativistic speeds. When they strike Earth’s atmosphere, they produce showers of secondary particles.

No matter how often they occur or what causes them, scientists are pretty sure that the Laschamps event was the latest excursion, and the European Space Agency decided it would be good if we knew what it sounded like.

The ESA launched its three-satellite Swarm mission in 2013 to study Earth’s magnetic fields. Swarm measures magnetic signals not only from the core but also from the mantle, the oceans, and all the way up to the ionosphere and magnetosphere. Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used Swarm data and data from other sources to create a soundscape of the Laschamps event.

The scientists used recordings of natural sounds, such as rocks falling and wood creaking, and blended them into alien-like sounds that were both familiar and strange. The result sounds Earthly, subterranean, natural, and creepy all at the same time as if some ancient part of the Earth is writhing around inside the planet, which, in a way, it is.

The first version was created in 2022 and was played as a sort of public art installation in Copenhagen. There were 32 speakers, and each one played the sound represented by changes in the magnetic field at 32 locations around the world.

• https://soundcloud.com/esa/the-scary-sound-of-earths-magnetic-field? 

Check out the ESA’s SoundCloud channel, where they post their audio creations.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

01-11-2024 om 18:30 geschreven door peter  

Unexplained Lights & Breakthrough Listen: Are We Close to Confirming ET Contact?

In recent months, the possibility of extraterrestrial contact has ignited excitement and debate within the scientific community and beyond. Two specific incidents have captured widespread attention: a mysterious light sighting in the skies over Norway and a promising signal detected by Breakthrough Listen, known as Candidate 1 (BLC 1). Together, these events are reviving the age-old question: are we alone in the universe?

Norway’s Unexplained Light Sighting

Eyewitnesses in Norway recently observed an unexplained phenomenon in the night sky that has yet to be definitively identified. On a calm evening, witnesses reported hearing a loud thump before spotting a strange light illuminating the area. Local resident Mari Palmer initially assumed it was an air ambulance, but what she saw was an unfamiliar airborne object, unlike anything she’d seen before. Intrigued and unsettled, she snapped a picture of the light and shared it online, igniting speculation and discussion about what it could be.

Various theories have surfaced, ranging from a meteor to a military exercise, though experts have ruled out both possibilities. Even meteorologists and astronomers who reviewed the event confirmed that it was not related to any known astronomical activity, such as a comet or meteor shower. The Norwegian Armed Forces also denied that any military drills were taking place in the area at that time. This unusual incident has left experts and locals alike puzzled, and it continues to stir questions about the nature of unidentified flying objects and whether this sighting might be more than a simple misidentification.

Breakthrough Listen and the Search for Technosignatures

While the mystery in Norway remains unsolved, the scientific community has focused on a potentially even more groundbreaking discovery—the BLC 1 signal detected by the Breakthrough Listen initiative. Launched in 2015, Breakthrough Listen is an ambitious effort to detect signals, or “technosignatures,” from other civilizations in our galaxy. In 2019, the BLC 1 signal was detected by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, generating immediate interest due to its unique characteristics.

What makes BLC 1 so intriguing is its origin: the signal appears to come from Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, located just over four light-years away. The signal falls within a narrow frequency band and exhibits a Doppler shift—a sign that it could originate from a rotating planet. This raises the possibility that BLC 1 might be more than just random noise; it could be an indicator of intelligent life in the Proxima Centauri system. Adding to the intrigue, this system includes Proxima b, a potentially habitable exoplanet located within the star’s “Goldilocks zone,” where conditions could support liquid water.

Is BLC 1 Really a Message from Another Civilization?

While BLC 1 holds promise, scientists caution against premature conclusions. The initial excitement was tempered by a 2021 analysis, which indicated that BLC 1 might not be an extraterrestrial signal but rather an “intermodulation product” caused by interference from human-made devices, such as satellites or cell towers. Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, shared that despite its intriguing characteristics, BLC 1 does not meet all criteria needed to confirm it as an authentic technosignature.

However, some researchers remain optimistic. Professor Simon Holland, who has closely followed the BLC 1 case, believes that undisclosed data from other research centers might validate BLC 1 as an extraterrestrial signal. Holland points to ongoing studies from institutions like ASTRON, a leading Dutch astronomy research group, which are expected to yield further insights.

Upcoming Research and Future Prospects

Future research facilities, such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), offer even greater potential for discoveries like BLC 1. Planned as the world’s largest radio telescope, the SKA will operate across Australia and South Africa, covering an unprecedented range of frequencies. Its advanced capabilities could enhance our understanding of signals like BLC 1, allowing scientists to distinguish between terrestrial interference and genuine extraterrestrial transmissions.

Although the SKA is still under development and won’t be operational until the late 2020s, several other research facilities are actively supporting Breakthrough Listen’s work. Current instruments such as the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa and the LOFAR network in Europe are already scanning the skies for additional technosignatures, potentially laying the groundwork for transformative discoveries.

What Could This Mean for Humanity?

If either the unexplained lights in Norway or the BLC 1 signal is confirmed as a genuine sign of extraterrestrial technology, it would profoundly impact humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe. Contact with an advanced civilization could inspire a new era of scientific exploration and redefine philosophical, religious, and cultural beliefs about our existence.

Until then, scientists continue their diligent analysis, leveraging sophisticated technologies and collaborative research networks to solve the mysteries posed by phenomena like BLC 1. The prospect of finding intelligent life remains tantalizingly within reach, pushing humanity to look deeper into the cosmos with each passing day.

VIDEO:

• Chris Lehto – Unexplained Lights & Breakthrough Listen: Has ET Finally Made Contact?

• https://youtu.be/XY6-QULl8N8

Both the Norway sighting and the Breakthrough Listen project remind us that there is still so much to discover. While skeptics may view these events as anomalies or misinterpretations, they also represent humanity’s unending quest for knowledge and understanding. Whether or not these incidents ultimately point to extraterrestrial life, they fuel our curiosity and drive to explore the unknown.

In the vastness of space, these mysteries may someday be resolved, but for now, they continue to inspire wonder, research, and the dream that perhaps we are not alone.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

01-11-2024 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

NASA rover climbs daunting slope, views its remarkable Mars adventure

NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover is making a hard slog.

The space agency's robot is fighting both steep and slippery terrain as it ascends the wall of Mars' Jezero Crater, the site of once vigorously flowing water. The Mars rover is headed to more sites that may reveal whether the Red Planet ever hosted microbial life. It took advantage of the elevation to capture an expansive vista of its 3.5-year-journey.

"The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the biggest challenge to getting where we want to be in the future," Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager, said in a statement. "If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you begin to get an idea what we’re dealing with. Mars didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to get to the top of this ridge."

The mosaic below shows dozens of sites of exploration significance (as well as other Mars landmarks) as Perseverance and its six metallic tires rumbled across the Martian desert — a place now 1,000 times drier than the driest desert on Earth. The labels can be tough to read, so the broad vista is followed up by two close-ups: An area showing where NASA's experimental and record-breaking Ingenuity helicopter crashed, and the region where the rover dramatically landed in 2021.

An annotated image from the Perseverance rover showing significant spots on the robot's journey through the Jezero Crater.

At center-right, the "Ingenuity" label shows where the small robotic helicopter rests in the desert after 72 successful flights.

Along its journey through Jezero Crater this year, the rover discovered a curious leopard-spotted rock that incited profound scientific interest. The unique white splotches may have been created by microbial organisms. "The rock exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago when the area being explored by the rover contained running water," NASA said in a statement. But, crucially, much more research, over many years, is needed to confirm this possibility. The sample collected by the rover must be brought back to Earth — a highly complex and costly Mars Sample Return mission the agency is currently assessin

Ascending the crater's edge has proven daunting. The sand is loose, and the heavy rover slips. "For every two steps forward Perseverance takes, we were taking at least one step back," Camden Miller, the rover's remote driver, explained. The team has tried driving backwards up the steep terrain, and has crisscrossed back and forth across the slope, "switchbacking" like hikers traveling up a mountain.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/-}

01-11-2024 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

Location of 'Noah's Ark' is revealed as scientists decipher world's oldest map on 3,000-year-old Babylonian tablet

• READ MORE: Archaeologists unlock secrets of 4,000-year-old tablet

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

Scientists have deciphered the world's oldest map etched in a clay tablet about 3,000 years ago, finding it features the location of 'Noah's Ark' among the drawings.

The Babylonian artifact, known as the Imago Mundi, shows a circular diagram with a writing system that used wedge-shaped symbols to describe the early creation of the world.

Researchers at the British Museum, where the tablet is housed, revealed what they had deciphered last month, but a deeper analysis of their work uncovered the Biblical reference within the ancient language.

The back of the tablet acts like a key, describing what a traveler will see on their journey, with one portion says that they must pass through 'seven leagues... [to] see something that is thick as a parsiktu-vessel.'

The word 'parsiktu' has been found on other ancient Babylonian tablets, specifically to explain the size of a boat needed to survive the Great Flood.

Researchers followed the instructions, finding a path to 'Urartu' where an ancient Mesopotamian poem claims a man and his family landed an ark to preserve life.

The location is the Assyrian equivalent to 'Ararat,' the Hebrew word for the mountain Noah crashed the Biblical vessel that was constructed for the same purpose.

Dr. Irving Finkel, British Museum curator, said: 'It shows that the story was the same, and of course that one led to the other but also, that from the Babylonian point of view, this was a matter of fact thing.

'That if you did go on this journey you would see the remnants of this historic boat.'

The Imago Mundi, also called the Babylonian Map of the World, was discovered in 1882 by renowned archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city in what is now present-day Iraq

The Imago Mundi has mystified researchers since it was found in 1882 in what is now known as Iraq.

The ancient text, written in cuneiform, was only used by the Babylonians, who etched astronomical events, future predictions and a map thought to be the entire 'known world' at the time.

At the bottom center of the map sits Mesopotamia, enclosed by a circle representing a 'bitter river' that was believed to surround the entire world.

The tablet has since been damaged, but once featured eight triangles that researchers determined signified mountains that match descriptions on the back.

'Number four says 'To the fourth, to which you must travel seven leagues,'' Dr Finkel said in a YouTube video.

He continued to explain that the passage continues to explain how a journeyer will eventually come upon a giant vessel.

'This parsiktu measurement, is something to an Assyriologist which makes their ears prick and the fact is it's only once otherwise known from cuneiform tablets and it's rather an interesting cuneiform tablet too,' said Dr Finkel.

'Because it is the description of the Ark which was built, theoretically, by the Babylonian version of Noah.'

The back of the tablet provides instructions on how to read the map. One passages tells the traveler to pass through the sea and they will come to 'Urartu' where an ancient Mesopotamian poem claims a man and his family landed an ark to preserve life

The location is the Assyrian equivalent to 'Ararat,' the Hebrew word for the mountain Noah crashed the Biblical vessel that was constructed for the same purpose

The Babylonian version of the story says the god Ea sent a flood that wiped out all of humanity except for Utnapishtim and his family, who built an ark at the command of the god and filled it with animals.

'In this account, the details are given and the God says 'You have to do this, this and this' and then the Babylonian Noah says 'I did this, this and this. I've done it! And I made these structures as thick parsiktu vessel,'' Dr Finkel.

The Gilgamesh Flood story is known from clay tablets that date back around 3,000 years, the Biblical Flood was about 5,000 years ago.

Dr Finkle explained that anyone who traveled the path to Urartu would, theoretically, see the wooden ribs of the vessel on the mountain 'like the one in the Bible.'

The Bible claims the ark settled on the 'mountains of Ararat' in Turkey following a 150-day flood that drowned the Earth and every living thing on it that was not housed inside the wooden ship. 

And the mountain in question features a peak that matches the shape and dimensions of Noah's ark. 

The vessel was said to measure '300 cubits, 50 cubits, by 30 cubits', which translates to up to 515 feet long, 86 feet wide and 52 feet high.  

The idea that the ark landed on Ararat has been surrounded by controversy, as some scientists claim the formation was formed by nature and others are sure it came from a higher power.

A team of experts led by Istanbul Technical University has been excavating the mountain for years, revealing in 2023 that they found clay, marine materials and seafood that placed humans at the scene between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago.

However, Dr Andrew Snelling, a young Earth creationist with a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney, had previously said that Mount Ararat could not be the ark's location because the mountain did not form until after the flood waters receded.

Although considered a historical event, most scholars and archaeologists do not believe in literally interpreting the Ark story.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Rise of the killer robots: Experts reveal just how close we are to a Terminator-style takeover

• READ MORE: Elon Musk forecasts a '10 to 20 per cent chance' of global disaster

By Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline 

It's been exactly 40 years since The Terminator hit the big screen, shocking cinemagoers with its terrifying depiction of a post-apocalyptic future. 

In James Cameron's epic sci-fi blockbuster, billions of people are killed when self-aware machines trigger a global nuclear war around the start of the 21st century. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the eponymous robotic assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to eliminate the threat of a human resistance. 

Famously, the Terminator, which looks just like an adult human, 'absolutely will not stop … until you are dead', as one character puts it. 

While this sounds like pure sci-fi, academic and industry figures – including Elon Musk – fear that humanity will indeed be annihilated by AI. 

But when exactly will this happen? And will humanity's demise mirror the apocalypse depicted in the Hollywood film?

MailOnline spoke to experts to find out just how close we are to a Terminator-style takeover. 

In James Cameron's epic sci-fi blockbuster - which arrived in US cinemas on Friday, October 26, 1984 - Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the eponymous robotic assassin 

In the classic film, the Terminator's objective is simple – to kill Sarah Connor, an LA resident who will give birth to John, who will lead a rebellion against the machines. 

Terminator is equipped with weapons and an impenetrable metal exoskeleton, plus advanced vision and superhuman limbs that can crush or strangle us with ease.

Natalie Cramp, partner at data firm JMAN Group, said a real-life equivalent of the Terminator in the real world is possible, but thankfully it likely won't be during our lifetime.

'Anything is possible in the future, but we are a long way from robotics getting to the level where Terminator-like machines have the capacity to overthrow humanity,' she told MailOnline.

According to the expert, humanoid-style robots such as the Terminator aren't the most likely pathway for robotics and AI to advance right now. 

Rather, the more urgent threat in the industry are the machines that are already commonly in use, such as drones and autonomous cars. 

'There are so many hurdles to making a robot like that effectively work – not least how you power it and coordinate movements,' Cramp told MailOnline. 

'The main problem is that it isn't actually the most efficient form for a robot to take to be useful. 

The Terminator is equipped with weapons and an impenetrable metal exoskeleton, as well as massive superhuman limbs that can crush or strangle us with ease

'If we're speculating on what type of AI-devices could "go rogue" and harm us, it's likely to be everyday objects and infrastructure – a self-driving car that malfunctions or a power grid that goes down.' 

Mark Lee, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Birmingham, said a Terminator-style apocalypse would happen when 'any government is mad enough to hand over control of national defence to an AI'. 

'Thankfully I don’t think there’s a nation mad enough to consider this,' he told MailOnline. 

Professor Lee agreed that there are different kinds of AI are a more pressing concern, including the powerful algorithms behind them. 

'The immediate danger from AI for most people is the effect on society as we move to AI systems which make decisions on mundane things like job or mortgage applications,' he told MailOnline. 

'However, there is also considerable effort in military applications such as AI guided missile systems or drones. 

'We need to be careful here but the worry is that even if the western world agrees an ethical framework, others in the world might not.' 

The Terminator's objective is simple - to kill Sarah Connor, an LA resident who will give birth to John, who will lead a rebellion against the machines

Dr Tom Watts, a researcher on American foreign policy and international security at Royal Holloway University of London, said it's 'crucially important' human operators continue to exercise control over robots and AI.

'The entire international community, from superpowers such as China and the US to smaller countries, needs to find the political will to cooperate – and to manage the ethical and legal challenges posed by the military applications of AI during this time of geopolitical upheaval,' he writes in a new piece for The Conversation. 

'How nations navigate these challenges will determine whether we can avoid the dystopian future so vividly imagined in The Terminator – even if we don’t see time travelling cyborgs any time soon.' 

In 1991, a hugely successful sequel – Terminator 2: Judgment Day – was released, depicting a 'friendly' reprogrammed version of the eponymous bot.

The film's humanoid antagonist called T-1000 can run at the speed of a car and in one memorable scene liquifies himself to walk through metal bars. 

Scarily, researchers in Hong Kong are working towards making this a reality, having designed a small prototype that can change between liquid and solid stages. 

Overall, creating a walking, talking robot with lethal powers will be more of a  challenge than designing the software system that acts as its brain. 

Since its release, The Terminator has been recognised as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. 

At the box office, it made more than 12 times its modest budget of US$6.4 million, which is £4.9 million at today’s exchange rate. 

Dr Watts believes the film's greatest legacy has been to 'distort how we collectively think and speak about AI', which today poses an 'existential danger that often dominates public discussion'. 

Elon Musk is among the technology leaders who have helped keep a focus on the supposed existential risk of AI to humanity, often while referencing the film. 

A TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK'S COMMENTS ON AI

Musk has been a long-standing, and very vocal, condemner of AI technology and the precautions humans should take 

Elon Musk is one of the most prominent names and faces in developing technologies. 

The billionaire entrepreneur heads up SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring company. 

But while he is on the forefront of creating AI technologies, he is also acutely aware of its dangers. 

Here is a comprehensive timeline of all Musk's premonitions, thoughts and warnings about AI, so far.   

August 2014 - 'We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.' 

October 2014 - 'I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.'

October 2014 - 'With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.' 

June 2016 - 'The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we'd be like a pet, or a house cat.'

July 2017 - 'I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that's why it really demands a lot of safety research.' 

July 2017 - 'I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.'

July 2017 - 'I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.'

August 2017 -  'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.'

November 2017 - 'Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].'

March 2018 - 'AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?' 

April 2018 - '[AI is] a very important subject. It's going to affect our lives in ways we can't even imagine right now.'

April 2018 - '[We could create] an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.' 

November 2018 - 'Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.'

September 2019 - 'If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.'

February 2020 - 'At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.'

July 2020 - 'We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.' 

April 2021: 'A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work.'

February 2022: 'We have to solve a huge part of AI just to make cars drive themselves.' 

December 2022: 'The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.' 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 23:19 geschreven door peter  

Uranus' MOON could harbour extraterrestrials, scientists say after discovering evidence of an ocean beneath its surface

• READ MORE: Uranus is gassier than we thought, scientists say 

By Shivali Best For Mailonline 

It's one of the biggest unanswered questions in science – if there's life beyond Earth, where is it?

While you might think the answer is 'far far away', surprisingly, it could be much closer to home than we thought.

A new study suggests that extraterrestrials could be hiding just 1.7 billion miles from Earth - on Uranus' moon, Miranda. 

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory have discovered evidence of an ocean beneath Miranda's surface, which they say could be habitable.    

'To find evidence of an ocean inside a small object like Miranda is incredibly surprising,' said Tom Nordheim, co-author of the study.

'It helps build on the story that some of these moons at Uranus may be really interesting—that there may be several ocean worlds around one of the most distant planets in our solar system, which is both exciting and bizarre.'

Based on the findings, the researchers are calling for a new mission to Uranus. 

'We're excited by the possibilities and eager to return to study Uranus and its potential ocean moons in depth,' Mr Nordheim added. 

A new study suggests that extraterrestrials could be hiding just 1.7 billion miles from Earth - on Uranus' moon, Miranda

It's one of the biggest unanswered questions in science – if there's life beyond Earth, where is it? While you might think the answer is 'far far away', surprisingly, it could be much closer to home than we thought

Among the 288 moons orbiting the planets in our solar system, the scientists say that Miranda 'stands out'. 

Images snapped by NASA's Voyager-2 spacecraft back in 1986 showed that the moon's southern hemisphere was a 'Frankenstein-like hodgepodge' of grooved terrain. 

The researchers compared this landscape to the squares on a quilt - and suspected it may be the result of tidal forces within the moon. 

In their new study, the team reassessed these images to understand what the moon's interior could look like. 

Firstly, the team mapped the moon's surface features, including its cracks and ridges. 

Next, they developed a computer model to test several possible structures of the moon's interior. 

Their analysis revealed that the interior that produced the best match with the surface was a vast ocean under Miranda's icy surface, some 100-500 million years ago. 

This ocean was no more than 19 miles below the surface, and extended for at least 62 miles, according to the model. 

The only spacecraft to visit Uranus was NASA's Voyager 2 in 1986 - and this isn't the first time that scientists have called for a fresh mission

Given Miranda's radius is just 146 miles, this suggests the ocean would have filled almost half of the moon's body. 

Caleb Strom, who led the study, said: 'That result was a big surprise to the team.'

The researchers are unsure if the ocean is still there , and say that if it is, it's relatively thin.

'But the suggestion of an ocean inside one of the most distant moons in the solar system is remarkable,' Mr Strom added.

Based on the findings, the researchers are calling for a new mission to Uranus to photograph its moon once again. 

'We won't know for sure that it even has an ocean until we go back and collect more data,' Mr Nordheim said. 

'We're squeezing the last bit of science we can from Voyager 2's images.'

The only spacecraft to visit Uranus was NASA's Voyager 2 in 1986 - and this isn't the first time that scientists have called for a fresh mission. 

Back in 2022, a report by the National Academy of Sciences urged NASA to launch a mission to Uranus. 

The report called Uranus 'one of the most intriguing bodies in the solar system', and said studying it would improve our understanding of ice giants generally.

The group said the spacecraft should operate in the system over a number of years, orbiting the ice giant and sending a probe into its atmosphere.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 22:50 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Pentagon chief reveals high-res photo of a UFO 'mothership': 'A huge mini city floating in the sky'

• READ MORE: UFOs may be from 'stealth civilization' on Earth, Harvard study says

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

'Guess what we caught in Romania in 2022? By the way, the US Embassy,' as Elizondo told attendees at the paid event, gesturing to the photo: 'That.'

He went on to describe it as a 'huge mini city floating in the sky.' 

But the UFO, which resembles a gleaming disc-shaped craft, has already drawn withering critiques from skeptics, believers and even military UFO witnesses alike, who claim to have traced the photo to, not to the US Embassy, but a Facebook page.

One suggested to DailyMail.com that Elizondo has been lax in his vetting of such images in a bid to add sensational new material to his 'paid speaking engagements.'

Ex-Pentagon official Luis Elizondo (right), who gained fame for blowing the lid off a $22-million, secretive government UFO program, has revealed an image of a UFO 'mothership'

'Guess what we caught in Romania in 2022? By the way, the US Embassy,' as Elizondo told attendees at the paid event, gesturing to the photo (above): 'That'

UFO encounter himself in the Middle East decades ago, told DailyMail.com that Elizondo's dubious 'mothership' UFO fits a pattern with the man's past claims. 

'This unfortunate situation with Lue follows my experiences with him nearly exactly,' McGowan said. 'I witnessed him exaggerate or outright fabricate information that simply wasn't true.'

Elizondo unveiled the 2022 Romanian UFO photo at an October 28, 2024 event held at The City Winery, a wine bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $50-$30 per ticket.

'There's a whole lot more here folks,' Elizondo told the audience in a leaked clip. 'I just want to give you kind of a small taste of what's going on "behind the scenes."'

'We're having pilots, military pilots and civilian pilots in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, report what unimaginably seems impossible,' as Elizondo began to explain his 'real photo' of a UFO.

'They described it literally 'the mothership,'' Elizondo said.

But despite credible federal reports of 'mothership' UFOs over domestic US military sites — investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an FBI task force, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and 16 local sheriff's offices — internet sleuths quickly managed to poke holes in Elizondo's 2022 Romanian UFO.

John Greenewald Jr, a longtime government transparency advocate who runs The Black Vault, quickly tracked the photo back to a September 13, 2023 post in a Facebook group titled 'Mysterious Ancient Discoveries.'

John Greenewald Jr, a longtime government transparency advocate who runs The Black Vault , quickly tracked the photo back to a September 13, 2023 post in a Facebook group titled ' Mysterious Ancient Discoveries' (above)

The higher resolution image of this apparent 'mothership,' which looks at first glance to be piercing clouds with its beatific shafts of light, appears more likely to have originated as the reflection of an indoor chandelier lamp reflected in window glass

'I reverse imaged searched it,' Greenewald posted on X. 'It got more than 182,000 likes and more than 23,700 comments.'

The higher resolution image of this apparent 'mothership,' which looks at first glance to be piercing clouds with its beatific shafts of light, appears more likely to have originated as the reflection of an indoor chandelier lamp reflected in window glass. 

The placement of Romania's coal-fired Arad Power Station indicates the image was not taken from the US Embassy, but a building near the Mureș River a few miles away.

America's Embassy in Romania is roughly 400 miles to the southeast of Arad, in the capital city of Bucharest.

While dedicated UFO skeptics were eager to pounce on Elizondo's inaccurate claims, UFO enthusiasts also expressed frustration over the episode. 

'Lue is 100 percent using us as pawns to line his pockets,' one contributor to the Reddit forum r/UFOs lamented. 'His most recent book was no.1 seller in the nation.'

'It's muddying the waters and detracting from the important convo,' another opined.

By midday Wednesday, Elizondo was publicly attributing the error to 'a friend in Government' who provided him with the photo 'a couple of years ago.'

Retired USAF Staff Sergeant McGowan, however, told DailyMail.com that Elizondo's error was far from a one-off mistake. 

'I've been on the receiving end where Lue has pulled out his cell phone and shown me what he described as highly classified video,' McGowan told DailyMail.com.

The placement of Romania's coal-fired Arad Power Station (above) indicates the image was not taken from the US Embassy, but a building near the Mureș River a few miles away. America's Embassy in Romania is roughly 400 miles to the southeast of Arad, in Bucharest

'For him to think I would believe he would simply carry classified info on an unsecure civilian cell phone is just insulting,' he added. 'And it wasn't just me, multiple podcast hosts were shown video Lue attributed to things they were not.'

For the past two years, McGowan has been notably public about this instance in which Elizondo showed him what he claimed was, in McGowan's words, 'a highly secret video smuggled out of Russia' taken by a Soviet Union probe near Mars.

The video, as McGowan recollected to DailyMail.com, looked to be a decades-old public UFO video from the Soviet's Phobos 2 probe, released by retired Soviet Air Force Colonel Marina Popovich in 1991.

Elizondo had shown the video to McGowan, in hushed tones, in January 2021.  

While Popovich, who wrote a book about her own UFO encounters as a test pilot, long maintained the Phobos 2 video depicted a legitimate alien craft, the odd video had nevertheless been public for about three decades, in other words.

'There is a striking similarity between that public video and what Lue showed me on his phone,' McGowan recollected. 

'Only saw it for a few seconds,' he said, 'so the granular details didn't get absorbed.'

McGowan, whose duties in the Air Force included service in Desert Storm attached to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and drug enforcement missions in Colombia, has been public for years on his own UFO encounter. 

In the mid-90s, while serving as a member of the JSOC J2 Security Team for 'Ellipse Foxtrot,' Jeremy McGowan (above) says he was a witness to unusual aerial lights appearing to survey a highly classified cargo container he had been tasked with guarding in the desert

For the past two years, McGowan has been notably public about an instance in which Elizondo showed him what he claimed was, in McGowan's words, 'a highly secret video smuggled out of Russia' taken by a Soviet probe near Mars. The video however had been public since 1991

In the mid-90s, while serving as a member of the JSOC J2 Security Team for 'Ellipse Foxtrot,' McGowan says he was a witness to unusual aerial lights appearing to survey a highly classified cargo container he had been tasked with guarding in the desert.  

He spoke to the History Channel about this UFO sighting in the Mid East for the 2020 docu-series 'Unidentified,' which had been hosted by Luis Elizondo.

As McGowan recollected about his appearance on the show in a Medium blog post, he had agreed to this on-camera interview in the hopes of getting back in touch with other witnesses to the event, but felt 'used' by the experience.  

'I was supposed to be introduced to investigators and researchers who could help me identify the person with me on that dune and saw what I saw!' he wrote in 2022. 

'I left with no answers [...] I sent a few emails to production that were ignored, and I was never extended the courtesy promised to me.'

By midday Wednesday, Elizondo was publicly attributing the error to 'a friend in Government' who provided him with the photo 'a couple of years ago' (above)

Elizondo unveiled the 2022 Romanian UFO photo at an October 28, 2004 event held at The City Winery, a wine bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , for $50-$30 per ticket

Federal government concern about 'mothership' UFOs harboring swarms of 'drones,' have spilled out into public view following the release of internal reports via the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in recent years. 

Weeks of reports of mystery 'drones' swept eastern Colorado and nearby areas of Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas over the winter holidays of 2019 into the new year.

The sightings worried citizens and local law enforcement alike, but odd craft and thier 'motherships' troubled the US military especially for their proximity to some of America's sensitive, nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

'They all seem clustered in an area that has quite a few Minuteman sites,' a redacted official confessed in one email released via FOIA by F.E. Warren Air Force Base.

F.E. Warren security staff spoke to local sheriff's deputies who ' reported seeing a 'mothership' six feet in diameter flanked by 10 smaller drones (some fixed wing, some not).'

'When deputies follow the drones, they clock them at speeds of 60-70 mph,' the redacted base official stated.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 22:27 geschreven door peter  

Climate catastrophe plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed HALF of Norway and Sweden 1,500 years ago, study finds

• READ MORE: Vikings may have practiced form of plastic surgery 1,000 years ago

By Michael Havis For Mailonline

A real-life Ragnarok plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed up to half of the people in Norway and Sweden, new research reveals.

In Viking belief, Ragnarok is the end of the world, when the Norse gods die battling demons and giants in an apocalyptic final clash.

And the agony of Ragnarok begins with the Fimbulvetr – a winter lasting three years that ends almost all human life.

Now new research has shown that the Nordic world really faced such a long winter, and its impact on human life was devastating.

By analysing tree rings, scientists at the National Museum of Denmark proved a real-life climate catastrophe took place 1,500 years ago.

Morten Fischer Mortensen, a senior researcher at the museum, said it was the result of volcanic eruptions enveloping the world in a veil of ash and sulphur.

He said: 'I imagine it would have been terrifying – the volcanic eruptions happen so far away from Europe that no one would have known the cause.

'Then you realise - perhaps overnight - that the sun is hidden behind a veil, and it is not warm and yellow, but cold and bluish.

A real-life Ragnarok plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed up to half of the people in Norway and Sweden, new research reveals

(artist's impression)

By analysing tree rings, scientists at the National Museum of Denmark proved a real-life climate catastrophe took place 1,500 years ago

'Even in the middle of the day, no shadows were cast and for more than a year no stars could be seen in the sky.'

To complete their research, scientists analysed 650 pieces of oak from between 300 and 800 AD.

They found growth rings became dramatically smaller starting in 536 AD, and even more so between 539 and 541 AD.

Mortensen described the impact on civilisation.

He continued: 'Based on our studies of the tree rings, we can see that for several years there were really poor growing conditions, which must also have been true for the farmers' crops.

'We are in a period where everyone lives off, and on, the land, and is 100% self-sufficient.

'So when the harvest fails for several years in a row, it's really critical.'

For many, it was unsurvivable.

Morten Fischer Mortensen, a senior researcher at the museum, said the event was the result of volcanic eruptions enveloping the world in a veil of ash and sulphur

Photo shows a depiction of the final battle of the gods during Ragnarok by Johannes Gehrts 

Mortensen said: 'Landscape reconstructions based on pollen analyses shows that some areas were abandoned and forest spread over the abandoned fields.

'Power structures shifted and, in Denmark, we have many large deposits of gold that have been interpreted as offerings to the gods to bring back the sun.

'Many settlements ceased to exist, and it is easy to imagine that hunger, famine, and disease took the lives of a large part of the population.'

He added: 'In Norway and Sweden, researchers believe that up to half the population died, and it is not inconceivable that the same happened in Denmark.

'It almost gives me chills to see these small, narrow annual rings because I know how much sorrow, death and misfortune they represent.'

Furthermore, the similarity with the Fimbulvetr of Ragnarok legend may be no coincidence.

Mortensen said: 'It is remarkable that for three summers in a row the oak trees have virtually no summer growth.

'The myth of Ragnarok starts with a three-year-long winter with no summer in between.

'Of course, we can't prove a direct link between the climate event and the myth, but there is a strong correlation.

'It is therefore conceivable that elements of what people have experienced have found their way into the myths and are thus an echo of previous experiences.'

Which volcanoes caused the long winter has not been determined.

But candidates have been proposed in Papua New Guinea, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iceland, and North America.

In any case, the disaster was not limited to the Nordic world – climate modelling shows a global temperature drop of several degrees.

Written sources from as far apart as the Roman empire and China attest to the change in climate.

It's even been suggested that the drop in temperature boosted crop fertility in the Arabian Peninsula, boosting the food supply and contributing to the Islamic conquests.

For the Danes, however, the winter left another – less dramatic – legacy.

Mortensen explained: 'Danes have a great love for rye bread.

'Rye is a cereal that arrives very late to the country and only becomes common in the centuries after the climate crisis.

'At the same time, rye can survive with the fewest hours of sunshine and can grow on relatively poor soil.

'Therefore, it's likely that rye is a crop we adopt as a hedge against bad times – a crop that has the best chance of yielding a return in the bad years.'

Mortensen and his colleagues published their study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

DID THE VIKINGS DISCOVER NORTH AMERICA?

Some experts believe the Vikings may have discovered North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus made his famous journey to the New World. 

L'Anse aux Meadows was the first Viking settlement believed to have been found in North America in the 1960s.

In 2016, scientists claimed to have uncovered another Viking settlement in Newfoundland that was built between 800 AD and 1300 AD.

Some experts believe the Vikings may have discovered North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus made his famous journey to the New World

The site, discovered in an area called Point Rosee in southern Newfoundland, is 400 miles (643km) south west of a Viking settlement found in L'Anse aux Meadows during the 1960s.

Now, one expert claims to have found a mysterious location known as 'Hop'.

Based on Viking descriptions, three key things identify this mystical settlement - an abundance of grapes, salmon and canoes made from animal hide. 

An archaeologist claims the only place that matches this description is the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area in northeastern New Brunswick in Canada.

This would be the third Viking settlement claimed to have been found in North America, although it could be hard to ever prove it for once and for all.

It is thought the Vikings first discovered America by accident in the autumn of 986 AD, according to one historical source, the Saga of the Greenlanders.

It tells how Bjarni Herjolfsson stumbled across North America after being blown off course as he attempted to sail from Norway to Greenland, but he did not go ashore.

Inspired by his tales, however, another Viking Leif Ericsson then mounted his own expedition and found North America in 1002.

Finding it a fertile land, rich in grapes and berries, he named it Vinland.

Eriksson also named two further 'lands' on the North American coast - one with flat stones, which he called Helluland, and one that was flat and wooded, named Markland.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

Alien life could be lurking on Mars, NASA says

• READ MORE: NASA finds gas traces in Martian crater - that could be signs of life

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

A NASA-led study has revealed that alien life could be hiding beneath the icy layers of Mars.

Scientists suggested that the Red Planet's ancient ice packs may have long acted as a shield for microbial life, blocking out deadly cosmic radiation.

But the key to their survival would be ice that likely formed from dusty snowfall, where sunlight absorbed by that darker dust would allow pockets of melt water to develop safely under its icy surface, lead author Dr Aditya Khuller told DailyMail.com.

Computer modeling showed that the amount of light piecing the water ice could trigger photosynthesis in these shallow pools of meltwater — similar to pools on Earth that are teeming with life.  

'These are called "cryoconite holes" and form when dust and sediment on top of the ice melt into the ice because it is darker than the ice,' said Dr Khuller, who worked as a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A host of tiny, plant-like creatures have been documented in cryoconite holes on Earth — including algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria, all of which pull in energy from the sun via photosynthesis to live. 

'If we're trying to find life anywhere in the universe today, Martian ice exposures are probably one of the most accessible places we should be looking,' Dr Khuller said.

A 2016 image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter documenting what scientists believe is dusty ice lining the edges of a set of Martian gullies. Planetary scientist Dr Aditya Khuller and his co-authors believe this ice (pictured) should be a prime candidate in the search for alien life

These cryoconite colonies have been uncovered and studied everywhere from Antarctica, to Greenland, to Norway's Svalbard archipelago: an island chain midway between the Scandinavian country's northern coast and the North Pole.

'The microorganisms typically go dormant in the winter,' Dr Khuller told Space.com, 'when there is not enough sunlight to form liquid water within the dusty ice.'

'So, the two key ingredients for photosynthesis can be present within dusty Martian ice in the mid-latitudes,' he added. 'Photosynthesis requires adequate amounts of sunlight and also liquid water to occur.'

The new study builds off of Dr Khuller's work as a PhD student, when he worked on a project to predict the dust content of ice deposits on Mars — based off of data collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander and its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The team poured this data into computer simulations that were originally built to predict the brightness of terrestrial snow and glacier ice on Earth.

These brightness models built off of Earth's well-studied and better understood ice, they theorized, would help estimate the dust content mixed into distant Martian ice.

'This small amount of dust has a very important effect,' Dr Khuller told DailyMail.com.

'The depth to which enough sunlight can reach for photosynthesis to occur within the ice changes depending on how dusty the ice is,' he noted. 'Similarly, the amount of dust within the ice also changes the depth [down] to which harmful ultraviolet radiation can penetrate.'

The Martian life that may one day be found in the Red Planet's dusty ice might resemble life in ' 'cryoconite holes' here on Earth. Above, researchers sample a cryoconite hole on the Longyearbreen glacier, somewhere along Norway's Svalbard archipelago in 2017

'The microorganisms typically go dormant in the winter when there is not enough sunlight to form liquid water within the dusty ice,' researchers said. Above, More cryoconite sampling performed during that same field work for a 2017 Arctic microbiology course on Svalbard

The team's computer modelling efforts predicted that ice containing higher amounts of dust, 0.01 to 0.1 percent, will only be able to support life at a depth around five to 38 centimeter below the surface.

But, Dr Khuller noted: 'There are zones where photosynthesis could occur at [...] meter-depths for cleaner ice.'

The cleaner ice was found to be especially fertile territory for deeper pockets of microbial life along Mars' mid-latitude ranges, in both its northern and southern hemispheres. 

At 40° latitude in both hemispheres, these colonies of tiny alien life could exist as far down as 2.15 to 3.10 meters deep, based on Dr Khuller and his team's estimates,  published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment. 

'We are not stating we have found life on Mars,' Dr Khuller emphasized to reporters, 'but instead we believe that dusty Martian ice exposures in the mid-latitudes represent the most easily accessible places to search for Martian life today.' 

But, complicating matters, Mars, unlike Earth, has two different kinds of naturally occurring ice: frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide, a la man-made 'dry ice.' 

Thanks to the thin and dry atmosphere on Mars, planetary and atmospheric scientists are still debating whether or not melting 'water ice' even becomes liquid water there at all — with many arguing it 'sublimates' immediately into water vapor.

The ice sheets that might hold life on Mars were formed by dusty snow storms over the course of dozens of ice ages that hit the Red Planet across the past 5 million years. Above: a May 12, 2016 NASA image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope showing Mars' visible cloud cover

Above a NASA-funded artist's concept of what Mars might have once looked like with liquid water (blue regions). Data collected by NASA's Curiosity rover has suggested that Mars was once a water world fit for life - whose surface later became inhospitable to human or other life

Melting water ice shielded under layers of ice and snow might fare better, but there is still a lot of guess work in this process, Dr. Khuller noted.

'As far as I know, it is currently believed that Martian dust across the planet has the same composition,' he continued. 

Read More

• Life on Mars? Scientists discover 'oceans' of water 12 miles beneath the surface of the Red Planet 

'However, we currently do not have any samples of Martian material returned to Earth for detailed analyses,' he added, 'so it is difficult to be sure.'  

'We'd love to access samples from within that ice at some point, but that's for a future mission to consider.' told DailyMail.com

Big questions remain as to whether or not photosynthetic life exists on Mars now or even if it once did during its earlier epochs, when it had more liquid water and a stronger magnetosphere to protect it from the sun's cosmic rays.

But, at least, for now, Dr Khuller and his colleagues have helped narrow down where alien life is most likely to be on the vast 55.74 million square-miles of Martian surface.

'I am working with a team of scientists to develop improved simulations of if, where, and when dusty ice could be melting on Mars today,' Dr Khuller told DailyMail.com. 

'Additionally, we are recreating some of these dusty ice scenarios in a lab setting to examine them in more detail,' said the researcher, who will be joining the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle this coming November.

Is There Life on Mars? We Asked a NASA Scientist

Encounters with UFOs; Search for ancient life on Mars; James Webb Space Telescope | Full Episodes

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31-10-2024 om 21:36 geschreven door peter  

Story by Hiyah Zaidi

 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
Not alive, not dead, but a third state. Sounds spooky, but it’s the future of medicine. More specifically, this ‘third state’ is when the cells of an organism adopt new functions even after ‘death’. Or in other words, the cells are functioning, but the being is dead. And this spooky phenomenon is revolutionising synthetic biology as, usually, death is considered to be irreversible. But with this new discovery of a ‘third state,’ different cells from a range of organisms can be repurposed into biological ‘robots’. But what can they do? 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death

In a review published in the journal Physiology, researchers are contemplating the implications of taking cells from organisms (dead or alive) and turning them into biological robots that have new functions. For example, researchers have managed to successfully create tiny 'robots' from human cells which could be used to heal wounds, regenerate tissue and treat diseases, known as anthrobots. In another instance, researchers from Tufts University in Massachusetts have also created xenobots from the cells of already dead frogs. The cells, despite coming from a dead organism, can self replicate and perform simple tasks 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
The creation of these biobots essentially points to the ‘third state’. In The Conversation, biologists Dr Peter Noble and Dr Alex Pozhitkov, co-authors of the review, wrote: ‘The third state challenges how scientists typically understand cell behaviour. While caterpillars metamorphosing into butterflies, or tadpoles evolving into frogs, may be familiar developmental transformations, there are few instances where organisms change in ways that are not predetermined. Tumours, organoids and cell lines that can indefinitely divide in a petri dish, like HeLa cells, are not considered part of the third state because they do not develop new function’ 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
So, to break it down even further, third state ‘beings’ are those that can undertake new functions after death. This means cancer cells are also excluded, since they don’t exhibit new functions either. Going back to the anthrobots, they were taken from human lung cells. But somehow they managed to repair damaged neuron cells placed in a nearby petri dish. They managed to move by using their own hair like projections, also known as cilia (Picture: Getty)

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
Dr Noble and Dr Pozhitkov wrote: ‘Taken together, these findings demonstrate the inherent plasticity of cellular systems and challenge the idea that cells and organisms can evolve only in predetermined ways. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the inherent plasticity of cellular systems and challenge the idea that cells and organisms can evolve only in predetermined ways’ 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
Although the third state beings have semi-cheated death, they only last for no more than 60 days, and biograde when they’re dead – they are natural organisms, after all. Even so, 60 days is still a wonder since it's unclear how these repurposed cells are able to live so long after an organism dies, and we still don’t know the extent of their new functions 

(Picture: Getty)

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death
The authors give one hypothesis, however: ‘One hypothesis is that specialised channels and pumps embedded in the outer membranes of cells serve as intricate electrical circuits. These channels and pumps generate electrical signals that allow cells to communicate with each other and execute specific functions such as growth and movement, shaping the structure of the organism they form’ 

Xenobots can move, heal and interact with their environment on their own.

Diagram A shows an anthrobot building a bridge across a scratched neuron over the course of three days. Diagram B highlights the ‘stitch’ in green at the end of Day 3.

Gumuskaya et al. 2023/Advanced Science, CC BY-SA

Different cell types have different capacities for survival, including white blood cells.

Ed Reschke/Stone via Getty Images

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31-10-2024 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

Story by Conor Feehly

 

Mysterious green spots hidden in Martian rock indicate past interaction with liquid water.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image, a nighttime mosaic of the Malgosa Crest abrasion patch at “Serpentine Rapids,” using its SHERLOC WATSON camera, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The diameter of the abrasion patch is 5 centimeters (about 2 inches) and the large green spot in the upper center left of the image is approximately 2 millimeters (about 0.08 inch) in diameter. Mosaic source images have been debayered, flat-fielded, and linearly color stretched. This image was acquired on Aug. 19, 2024 (sol 1243, or Martian day 1,243 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 19:45:30.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Perseverance rover is approaching four years of activity on the Martian surface — and all this time, the rover has been exploring ancient environments, collecting samples, and investigating whether our reddish neighbor may have once supported microbial life

In its latest findings, Perseverance took a nighttime mosaic image of the Malgosa Crest abrasion patch, at a location called the "Serpentine Rapids," using its SHERLOC WATSON camera. The image revealed white, black and, surprisingly, green-ish spots within the rock. While these rocks' composition remains a mystery, the unexpected find has scientists excited about what other hidden gems Perseverance might stumble across going forward.

To acquire images from within the rock, Perseverance made an abrasion patch in a rock outcrop named "Wallace Butte." The abrasion patch measured five centimeters (roughly two inches) in diameter, and the large green spot that can be seen in the upper left of the image is approximately two millimeters (about 0.08 inches) in diameter. The image was acquired on Aug. 19, on Martian day 1,243 of the Mars 2020 mission.

Rocks on Earth that resemble the studied red Martian rocks typically get their color from oxidized iron, the same type of iron that makes our blood red and similar to the oxidized red rust you might find on your car. The green spots that can be seen in Perseverance's new image are also common in red rocks on Earth, and are formed when liquid water seeps through sediment before hardening into rock. This process supports a chemical reaction that transforms oxidized iron to its reduced form, creating a green hue in the rock.

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Sometimes, microbes play a role in this process on Earth, but decaying organic matter can also create the right conditions for the reduction reaction. Chemical interaction between sulfur and iron can also facilitate iron-reduction reactions without the help of microorganisms.

Exactly what type of reaction was responsible for the green spots found in Perseverance's image will remain a puzzle, however, as there was not enough room for the rover to safely place its arms holding the SHERLOC and PIXL instruments directly on top of the green spot. Thus, the robotic explorer was denied a closer look. The team hopes Perseverance unearths something similar in the future to get a better understanding of what type of chemical reactions are generating these features in the rock.

Next on the agenda for Perseverance is to ascend to the Jezero Crater rim, during which time it will have to cover steep terrain. Then it will finally leave the crater it has called home for the last two years.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

31-10-2024 om 19:11 geschreven door peter  

Lasers reveal 3,000-year-old secret Mayan city with more than 6,500 structures

• READ MORE:  Ancient Mayan city containing 50-foot pyramids discovered

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Scientists have uncovered a secret Mayan city hiding in Mexico, which once featured an urban landscape of more than 6,500 structures.

The team used lidar technology to create three-dimensional models across 50 miles of land in Campeche, allowing them to map areas not visible to the naked eye.

The method revealed a 21-square-mile metropolis with iconic stone pyramids, houses and other infrastructure that have been concealed for more than 3,000 years.

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites, but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities.

'Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability,' said the study's co-author, Luke Auld-Thomas, a doctoral student at Tulane University.

'We didn't just find rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area's only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,' Auld-Thomas said. 

The city, called Valeriana, included a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces as well as a curved amphitheater and temple pyramids

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites , but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities

The team conducted an aerial lidar survey, which uses laser pulses to measure distances and create three-dimensional models of specific areas. 

It has allowed scientists to scan large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab, uncovering anomalies in the landscape that often prove to be pyramids, family houses and other examples Maya infrastructure. 

'Because lidar allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail, that made us react, 'Oh wow, there are so many buildings out there we didn't know about, the population must have been huge,' Auld-Thomas said. 

'The counterargument was that lidar surveys were still too tethered to known, large sites, such as Tikal, and therefore had developed a distorted image of the Maya lowlands. 

'What if the rest of the Maya area was far more rural and what we had mapped so far was the exception instead of the rule?' 

The team uncovered two blocks of the Mayan city, one of which included a distinct pseudo-pyramid that was identical to one found at Rio Bec - a pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological site located near the Guatemala border in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The city, called Valeriana, was adjacent to a freshwater lagoon and encompassed two major areas of architecture that includes a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces.

Valeriana also contained a curved amphitheater, temple pyramids and a reservoir that 'has all the hallmarks of a classic Maya political capital,' the study said.

The survey was conducted near a highway, revealing the hidden city with over 6,5000 structures

The Mayan city was discovered near Campeche in Mexico and covers about 21 square miles

'The discovery of Valeriana highlights the fact that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the existence or absence of large sites within as-yet unmapped areas of the Maya Lowlands,' researchers shared.

A third region of the city was identified as a 'sparse and modest settlement, consisting of scattered or loosely clustered residences with no monumental architecture and limited investment in water storage.

Read More

• Lasers reveal 650-square-mile ancient Mayan city hidden beneath Guatemala rainforest 

Tulane professor and co-author Marcello Canuto said: 'Lidar is teaching us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of towns and communities over their tropical landscape.' 

He continued: 'While some areas are replete with vast agricultural patches and dense populations, others have only small communities. 

'Nonetheless, we can now see how much the ancient Maya changed their environment to support a long-lived complex society.'

Although hundreds of sites have been found, it's impossible to determine exactly how many Mayan cities still have to be studied.

However, lidar technology is helping researchers unearth them much more quickly, particularly in regions of southern Mexico and Guatemala.

'The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there's a lot more to be discovered,' Auld-Thomas said. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 00:00 geschreven door peter