Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
09-07-2024
Archeologists Believe They've Located the Remains of Noah's Ark
Archeologists Believe They've Located the Remains of Noah's Ark
Archeologists Believe They've Located the Remains of Noah's Ark The story of Noah’s Ark is perhaps one of the most universally known Bible tales. The biblical patriarch used his enormous eponymous vessel to allow his family and a menagerie of animals to survive a great flood and repopulate the earth in its aftermath.
Researchers examining a peculiar geological formation in modern Turkey believe they may have in fact found the remains of Noah’s Ark, which would shine a whole new light on our understanding of the ancient world.
Biblical Flood The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the more memorable tales from the Bible. Ahead of a great flood, God chooses a man and instructs him to build an enormous boat and populate it with two of every animal, alongside his family.
The story goes that God observed man’s corruption, violence and weakness. Abhorred by the actions of his creation, God looked to wipe the slate clean with a cleansing flood and restore man’s goodness.
Hunt for the Ark The story is known all around the world. Many view it, along with other stories in the bible, as simple metaphor and myth, perhaps inspired by some natural calamity like a devastating flood of some kind.
Others believe the event occurred exactly as described in the Bible, and finding the remains of the Ark would prove their stance correct. Scholars, archaeologists and even amateur adventurers have tried, and failed, to locate the Ark over the years.
The Ark’s Location The Bible states that the Ark arrived on Turkey’s “mountains of Ararat” after the 150-day flood sent by God. Since 2021, archaeologists have been working at a geological formation in the Doğubayazıt district of Ağrı in eastern Turkey, which aligns well with the description in the Bible.
The Durofeiner formation looks, from above, to have a boat-like outline. Some suggest this could in fact be the fossilized remains of the Ark.
Noah’s Ark Research Team Many have believed Mount Ararat to be the Ark’s final resting place for some time now. Recent work at the Durofeiner site has been carried out by a collaboration between Turkish and American universities, the “Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark Research Team.”
Researchers have taken samples from the rock formation, and tests revealed seafood, clay and marine materials. Some claim this as evidence of human activity in the region.
Age of the Site The 500-foot-high rock formation sits just 3 miles from the Turkey/Iran border. It’s composed primarily of limonite.
Researchers have determined that test samples from the site are around 3,500 to 5,000 years old. Biblical archaeologists and scholars put the time of the 150-day flood from the Noah’s Ark tale at around 3,000 BC, meaning the samples align well with this time frame.
Human Activity in the Region at the Time of the Flood Dr. Faruk Kaya of the Agri Ibrahim Chechen University claims the data gathered from the samples is proof of human activity in the area during the period following the biblical flood.
In her words: “According to the preliminary findings of our research, we believe that human activity occurred in this region during the Chalcolithic period (Stone and Copper Age), specifically between 5,500 and 3,000 BC.”
Too Early to Draw Conclusions Dr. Kaya was careful to stress that while these findings are promising for Ark hunters, they are far from conclusive, and it’s too early to tell whether they could lead to the discovery of Noah’s Ark.
In the same study, Dr. Kaya says: “Noah’s flood is believed to have taken place 5,000 years ago, and our findings indicate the presence of life in this region during that time. However, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions.”
Dispute of the Findings Not everyone supports the suppositions of the Mount Ararat team, and many geologists in particular have pushed back against their claims. Far from being evidence of human activity, they believe the formation at the Durofeiner site is simply ancient rocks.
It would take something far more substantial than the current findings to convince many in the geological community that researchers have found the fossilized remains of Noah’s Ark.
Flood Myths and Actual History Many ancient cultures share narratives of massive, cataclysmic floods. They likely represent a shared symbolic representation in mythical narratives of survival, rebirth and intervention of the divine.
These stories may indicate how ancient cultures responded to natural disasters. If we examine flood myths alongside geological evidence, we can start to get an idea of what actually happened and what is mythical embellishment.
Future Research Through multidisciplinary research of things like the Durofeiner site by archaeologists, Bible scholars and geologists working in tandem, we may be able to start to recontextualize the myth of Noah’s Ark into an established, historical narrative.
Researchers are far from done with the Durofeiner site and are planning excavations to conduct detailed analysis and hopefully uncover new artifacts. They hope to get greater insight into the history of the region, particularly ancient civilizations in the area, and hopefully firmly establish the existence of Noah’s Ark.
Transparency Is Key in Future Research Whatever the findings at the Durofeiner site ultimately mean, future research is probably warranted. It will be crucial to keep this research transparent, though, so that it’s properly framed.
Things can sometimes get contentious when science meets faith. Having a multidisciplinary team can help to give findings proper context without a skewed narrative one way or the other. If findings don’t completely support the myth of the great flood and Noah’s Ark, there is still meaningful significance to finding proof of human activity in an area of biblical importance.
Missie die leven op Mars simuleerde na meer dan jaar beëindigd
Een experiment waarbij vier vrijwilligers het leven op Mars hebben gesimuleerd, is na iets meer dan een jaar afgerond. De vier deelnemers hebben de simulator Mars Dune Alpha kunnen verlaten, zo heeft het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap Nasa zaterdag meegedeeld.
De eerste missie van het zogeheten Chapea-programma werd in juni vorig jaar opgestart. Dat programma moet het mogelijk maken om een toekomstige missie naar de rode planeet beter voor te bereiden.
In this image made from video provided by NASA, the crew members of the first CHAPEA mission, Kelly Haston, center, shakes hands with NASA Deputy Director Flight Missions Kjell Lindgren, second right, as other crew Ross Brockwell, emerges from their craft, July 6, 2024, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
NASA via AP
De vier deelnemers, twee mannen en twee vrouwen, hebben exact 378 dagen doorgebracht in de Mars Dune Alpha. Dat is een huis van 160 vierkante meter dat het leven op Mars moet nabootsen. De simulator staat opgesteld in het onderzoekscentrum van Nasa in Houston, in de Amerikaanse staat Texas.
De Mars Dune Alpha had onder meer een verticale boerderij om sla te laten groeien, een kamer voorbehouden voor medische procedures, een ontspanningsruimte en werkposten. Via een sas kwamen de bewoners terecht in een Marsachtge omgeving. Op het rode zand bevonden zich een weerstation, een toestel om bakstenen te maken, een kleine serre en een loopband, waarop de valse astronauten, opgehangen aan riemen, konden lopen. Het huis was gemaakt met een 3D-printer.
Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) is a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars. Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat.
Bill Stafford/NASA
De deelnemers mochten de simulator niet verlaten. Ze konden met vrienden en familie communiceren, maar dat gebeurde dan wel in ‘Mars-tijd’. Het versturen van een kort tekstbericht naar de buitenwereld duurde daardoor meestal 22 minuten.
De prestaties en cognitieve capaciteiten van de deelnemers werden tijdens het experiment nauwlettend in het oog gehouden. Dat moest het mogelijk maken om “belangrijke dingen te leren over complexe systemen en het zal de reis naar Mars en terug veel veiliger maken”, zegt Julie Kramer van Nasa.
Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) is a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars. Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat.
Bill Stafford/NASA
Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) is a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars. Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat.
Bill Stafford/NASA
Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) is a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars. Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat.
Bill Stafford/NASA
Ross Brockwell, een van de vier vrijwilligers, omschrijft zijn deelname aan het experiment als een geweldige ervaring. “Ik hoop echt dat we hierdoor een beetje dichter bij de realiteit van mensen op Mars kunnen komen.”
Nasa wil in 2025 en 2027 nieuwe Chapea-missies uitvoeren.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
08-07-2024
UFOs target nuclear warheads and planes for alarming reason, experts warn
UFOs target nuclear warheads and planes for alarming reason, experts warn
Boffins have come up with a theory as to why UFOs are regularly seen near high-speed planes and nuclear warheads - and why they might be becoming more intrusive at US bases
The unconfirmed UFO appearance near Concorde - which has resurfaced on Reddit's UFOs subchannel, appears in a 1976 British Airways advert where an orb-like UFO can be seen darting toward the aircraft in an inquisitive way before accelerating away.
After the Fukushima lab disaster in Japan, witnesses told Netflix docuseries Encounters that UFOs saved them by lowering radioactivity levels.
Several glimmering white orbs could be seen above the plant after the nuclear disaster in 2011, and appeared to drop into the lab before emerging again.
Planes could also be a target of aliens(Image: Getty Images)
At the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in June 2022, the monarch was honoured with a presentation by nine fighter jets letting off streams of smoke in the Union Jack's red, white and blue colours.
Reddit users were quick to point out that an unidentified disc could be seen near the jets - but no clear answer has ever been given to explain what it was.
There have also been reports of UFOs being seen after rocket test-fires.
New research from retired US Air Force staff sergeant Larry Hancock, and Ian Porritt, a data analyst affiliated with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, shows the unusual activity around nuclear weapons and facilities has shifted over the years.
A UFO can be seen in a British Airways advert for Concorde in the 70s(Image: Getty Images)
The studies suggest that at first the UFOs seemed interested in the production of nuclear weapons, but now pop up around silos and bomber bases.
When a new arsenal of ICMBs was built in the 1960s, UFOs became “much more intrusive” in their approach of ICBM bases, Porritt previously said, adding: “They're very low altitude, they penetrate the security perimeters of the base.”
There is also a theory that UFOs are actually “turning off” nuclear weapons - with several reports of this happening by the US military since the 60s.
There is a theory that UFOs are 'turning off' nuclear weapons(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
In the pair’s latest study, the research concludes: “Notable unidentified aerial phenomena loitering, military intrusions and weapons facility interference were documented in a series of incidents in 1967 (Malmstrom AFB) and 1975 (Loring AFB and Malstrom AFB), where at least one flight of 10 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) was officially recorded as having unexplainably gone off alert status.”
The study discusses how former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas said he was asked by the AARO to gather information after he said an orange flying disc shut off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967.
Fukushima disaster witnesses told a Netflix docuseries that UFOs saved them by lowering radioactivity levels(Image: Zuma Press/PA Images)
He was later forced to sign an NDA on the matter by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
Mr Salas is not the only one to have made such a claim. In 2000, US Air Force First lieutenant Robert Jacobs also said he witnessed this in 1964, but was told not to speak about the alleged encounter again.
And in June 2023, two Air Force veterans told DailyMail.com they had testified to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that UFOs turned off their nuclear warheads.
The former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, Lue Elizondo, has previously said there “seems to be a lot of correlation” between UFO appearances and nuclear sites.
And independent researcher Robert Hastings said in 2010: “Declassified US government documents and witness testimony from former or retired US military personnel confirm beyond any doubt the reality of ongoing UFO incursions at nuclear weapons sites.'”
Als we een computer beschouwen als een mechanische rekenmachine, dan is de oudste tot nu toe gevonden computer het Mechanisme van Antikythera. Dit oude technologische wonder dateert van meer dan 2000 jaar geleden en is al lange tijd een mysterie dat moet worden opgelost. Terwijl sommige onderzoeken het in verband brachten met de Egyptische zonnekalender, heeft een recente studie aangetoond dat het mechanisme de Griekse maankalender volgt, en dat niet alleen. Aan de basis van de nieuwe ontdekking liggen in feite zwaartekrachtgolven: laten we eens kijken hoe dit mogelijk is!
Het Mechanisme van Antikythera
Als je hem vandaag de dag ziet, in zijn 82 fragmenten die zijn ondergebracht in het Nationaal Archeologisch Museum in Athene, in Griekenland, lijkt hij niet meer dan een vrijwel verwoeste vondst. In werkelijkheid wordt het Mechanisme van Antikythera beschouwd als 's werelds oudste computer, een machine die de astronomische bewegingen van de maan, zonsverduisteringen en de positie van de zon kon voorspellen, evenals die van de vijf destijds bekende planeten.
Het was in feite een geavanceerd astronomisch instrument, gebouwd tussen de derde en eerste eeuw voor Christus en samengesteld uit een complex systeem van tandwielen en tandraderen. In de loop der jaren hebben verschillende studies het Mechanisme van Antikythera diepgaander geanalyseerd en de interne tandwielen en gemechaniseerde werking van de structuur onthuld. Kortom, 's werelds oudste computer werd ontworpen om Babylonische astronomische cycli, Platonische wiskunde en Griekse astronomische theorieën te combineren. Het doel: de beweging van hemellichamen voorspellen op basis van de Egyptische zonnekalender. Of misschien niet?
Mechanisme van Antikythera en zwaartekrachtgolven: de nieuwe studie
Freeth et al./Scientific Reports - 2021
Een recent onderzoek door onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Glasgow heeft de heersende interpretatie over het gebruik van de Antikythera in twijfel getrokken. Met behulp van geavanceerde methoden die zijn ontwikkeld op het gebied van onderzoek naar zwaartekrachtgolven was het feitelijk mogelijk om te onthullen dat de component die verantwoordelijk was voor de kalender 354 of 355 gaten had, één voor elke dag van het jaar. Dus geen 365, zoals in de Egyptische zonnekalender, maar 354 of 355, zoals in de Griekse maankalender. Dit zijn de woorden van Graham Woan, een van de auteurs van het onderzoek:
De precisie van de plaatsing van de gaten zou extreem nauwkeurige meettechnieken en een ongelooflijk vaste hand vereisen om ze te maken. Het is een prachtige symmetrie dat we de technieken die we vandaag de dag gebruiken om het universum te bestuderen, hebben aangepast om een mechanisme beter te begrijpen dat mensen bijna twee millennia geleden hielp de hemel te volgen.
De oudste computer ter wereld, van meer dan 2000 jaar geleden tot nu
Marsyas/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0
De technieken die zijn ontwikkeld op het gebied van onderzoek naar zwaartekrachtgolven zijn, zoals we hebben gezien, gebruikt om het mysterie van het Mechanisme van Antikythera te ontrafelen. Wat echter opvalt is, afgezien van de feitelijke kalender die dit instrument meer dan 2000 jaar geleden moest meten, de realisatie ervan. Want om de 354 of 355 gaten te maken en de Griekse maankalender te meten was een vaardigheid nodig die de komende duizend jaar niet meer zou worden gezien. Voor een even nauwkeurige astronomische klok had men moeten wachten op het Astrarium van Giovanni Dondi, dat rond 1300 werd gebouwd.
Kortom, het Mechanisme van Antikythera blijft een buitengewone getuigenis van het vernuft van het oude Griekenland en het vermogen om kunst, wetenschap en vakmanschap te combineren in een uniek artefact. Wat voor velen de oudste computer ooit gevonden is, is daarom veel meer: het bewijs van een wereld die inmiddels ruim 2000 jaar verdwenen is, maar vandaag de dag levendiger is dan ooit.
Unlocking the Roswell Mystery: Science’s Next Frontier
Unlocking the Roswell Mystery: Science’s Next Frontier
The mystery surrounding the 1947 Roswell incidentcontinues to captivate the imagination of UFO enthusiasts and researchers alike. Nick Pope, a former investigator of UFO sightings for the British government, asserts that modern forensic technology should be utilized to revisit the site near Roswell, New Mexico. His stance is that the location, which the military initially claimed to have recovered a flying disc from before retracting the statement a day later, still holds significant scientific potential.
The Epicenter of UFO Mysteries
Nick Pope describes Roswell as the ground zero of modern UFO mysteries. Contrary to the common belief that the media or public first broke the story, it was actually the U.S. military that announced the recovery of a “flying disc.” This statement was quickly retracted and replaced with an explanation involving a weather balloon. Despite the retraction, the incident’s enduring power is evident as people continue to discuss and speculate about it nearly eight decades later.
The Call for Forensic Investigation
Pope advocates for the application of contemporary forensic methods to investigate the Roswell site thoroughly. He suggests that technologies like DNA analysis and other modern forensic tools could uncover new evidence about what truly happened in 1947. According to Pope, this isn’t just about anecdotal accounts of lights in the sky; there were credible reports of something crashing, which means there could be physical evidence to analyze. Conducting a forensic investigation could potentially yield new insights and perhaps even debris from the crash site.
Contemporary Theories on Extraterrestrial Presence
In addition to discussing Roswell, Pope also comments on a recent research paper exploring the hypothesis that aliens may already be present on Earth. This 42-page paper, authored by three researchers including two from Harvard University, proposes that these beings could be living underground or might even be time travelers. While the paper does not present these ideas as facts, it encourages the scientific community to consider them seriously and investigate rigorously.
The Shift in Scientific Discourse
Pope finds it refreshing that the scientific community is now more open to discussing unconventional theories about extraterrestrial life. He notes that a few years ago, such discussions would have been inconceivable. Now, with public hearings in Congress and academic papers on the subject, there is a growing willingness to ask “what if” questions. This shift represents a significant vindication for those who have long been marginalized for entertaining these ideas.
Military Sightings and Compelling Evidence
Reflecting on his time investigating UFO phenomena for the British government, Pope points to sightings by military pilots as some of the most compelling evidence. These sightings are often corroborated by radar data, infrared camera footage, and sometimes satellite data. Although much of this information remains classified, Pope is hopeful that more of it will be declassified and made available to the public in the near future.
The Public’s Right to Know
One of the central issues Pope addresses is the balance between national security and the public’s right to information. While there are valid concerns about causing public panic or giving adversaries an advantage, Pope believes that ultimately, people have the right to know the truth. He advocates for greater transparency and hopes that more classified information will be released to the public.
VIDEO:
UFO expert: ‘There is science to be done in Roswell’ | NewsNation Prime
Nick Pope’s insights highlight the enduring intrigue of the Roswell incident and the potential for modern science to shed new light on this historical mystery. His call for a renewed forensic investigation into the Roswell site underscores the importance of utilizing contemporary technology to explore unexplained phenomena. As scientific discourse evolves to include more open-minded investigations into extraterrestrial theories, the possibility of uncovering new truths about UFOs becomes ever more exciting.
To be honest, we’re tired of waiting. Where are they? Where on Earth are all the aliens?
Well, not on Earth, or anywhere near, that’s very much the point.
At a conservative estimate, there are 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Let’s say there are 100 billion stars in each. Even if only 1% of those stars had a single planet orbiting around them, that’s still 200 quintillion possible new Earths.
Then let’s assume a planet has a one in a trillion chance of having the magic combination of water, temperature and chemicals for that magic spark to happen.
That still means there should be life on a few hundred thousand planets.
Surely one of those should have said hello by now?
Of course, not all of those will be home to intelligent life. We don’t know what they’ll be home to. Microbes. Crustaceans. Alien birds that fly using their ears, Dumbo-style. Jellyfish that look like VHS tapes. Space dinosaurs.
But among all those planets, around all those stars, in all those galaxies, there absolutely has to be some other form of intelligent life.
1. The Drake equation
The outrageously basic maths above is a very simplified version of the Drake equation – the second-most famous formula in science after E=MC2.
Proposed by radio astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, it calculates the likelihood of intelligent, communicating civilisations based on the a range of factors, including number of planets, chances of life arising, and how likely that life is to be advanced.
It looks like this:
N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
So you can see why we did our own.
It isn’t a new conundrum. In fact, it has long had a name – the Fermi paradox.
Apparently, in 1950, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were enjoying a lively discussion about flying saucers over lunch when he blurted out ‘Where is everybody?’.
Well, we feel the same, and decided to ask a few experts why we haven’t found anyone – or been found – yet.
Alien life and intelligent alien life are two very different things
There are, sadly, many reasons why we may not have yet discovered alien life out there.
One of these, the Great Filter theory, proposes that there are simply so many hurdles to get over for intelligent life to reach a point we could see it, it is highly improbable they will be able to clear each of them and reach the same point us, or even further.
Related video:
Why haven’t we found aliens? A physicist shares the most popular theories (Big Think)
Think about it. Very, very simply, we started as life in the ocean, crawled out, diversified, some crawled back in, huge numbers went extinct five separate times, the rest kept evolving, humans arrived, we developed societies, health care, and finally, started looking for others.
‘Just because a planet is capable of supporting life, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will form there,’ says Dr Greg Brown, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
‘It certainly doesn’t mean that that life will overcome the myriad barriers between simple single-celled lifeforms and intelligent life capable of communicating with other civilisations across space, or that those changes will happen in such a way that they are active at the same time as us.’
This similar hypothesis considers how hard it is even to create the right conditions for even most basic forms of life, never mind getting to the point we are now.
‘This is an idea I happen to agree with,’ says Dr Paul Byrne, associate professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St Louis. ‘That it’s perhaps not difficult for life to emerge, but it’s extremely difficult for life to be sustained.
‘For example, we know that Earth has had liquid water on its surface for virtually all of its lifetime. That’s a crazy long time for conditions on the surface to remain pretty much between 0C and 100C.
4. Maybe we're not worth bothering with?
We could be a disappointment to other civilisations
Astrophysicist Amri Wande suggested maybe there actually is loads of life out there, so advanced extraterrestrials capable of searching around the universe can take their pick – and won’t deem Earth worthy of a visit because we’re not intelligent enough ourselves.
Savage.
‘We also know that life emerged at least as far back as 3.4 billion years, and possibly longer. But we also know that it’s at least possible that Venus had oceans for a time, and so it, too, might have had truly Earth-like habitable conditions – and perhaps even life.
‘But if it did have oceans, something went wrong at some point in the past to push the planet into a runaway greenhouse, and those oceans boiled off into space. Today, Venus is sterile, at least at the surface.’
Likewise, Mars once had liquid water flowing across its surface, and both the Moon and Mercury had thick, moist atmospheres for a very short time.
‘So getting a habitable environment might not be all that difficult, and maybe so is making life from non-life – known as abiogenesis,’ says Dr Byrne.
‘But keeping things nice and amenable to life could be really, really hard. Perhaps Earth is the only place in the solar system that has successfully managed it.’
5. They’re only microscopic, and living in oceans
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, is one thing, but trying to confirm, 100%, that a planet has some microscopic wrigglies wriggling around is even more difficult.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not trying.
These gals would be pretty hard to spot from trillions of miles away (Picture: Getty)
Warwick University PhD researcher Faith Hawthorn says: ‘There is some potential precedent for this in our own solar system, as we think that some moons of Jupiter and Saturn – Europa and Enceladus in particular – have liquid water oceans underneath thick crusts of ice on their surfaces.
‘Given the right sources of energy and the water providing a medium for chemical reactions, it may be a suitable environment for microbial life to form.
‘However, this would be extremely difficult – if not impossible – to detect on exoplanets.’
Detecting the presence of non-intelligent life, in the sense that they won’t be sending out signals, is generally focused on biosignatures in the atmosphere, offering chemicals and clues to what is living within it.
This would still be unlikely in the case of, say, microscopic life at the bottom of an ocean.
An artist’s impression of the planet K2-18 b, one potential home of alien life (Picture: Nasa/CSA/ESA/J Olmsted/N Madhusudhan)
But in September last year, Nasa discovered the strongest evidence for life yet when detecting the presence of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, an exoplanet 120 light-years away.
DMS is produced by life, primarily phytoplankton in oceans, rivers and lakes.
6. We’re missing their signals, either because of the wrong frequency or timing
This is a big one. Yes, the universe is vast, so you’d imagine there should be other life out there. But it’s also really, really old – more than 13 billion years (or double that, according to one recent study), so what are the chances of us all being around at the same time?
‘If we compress Earth’s evolutionary timeline into a 24-hour period, life emerges at 4am,’ says Dr Minjae Kim, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick.
‘The extinction of dinosaurs occurs at 11:41pm. The history of human-like creatures, exemplified by species like Australopithecus afarensis, begins at 11:58:43pm.
‘Essentially, human-like life has existed for a mere 77 seconds in this analogy. Remarkably, the timeframe in which humans have developed technology capable of interacting with potential extraterrestrial life is significantly shorter – less than a single second. This possibly implies remarkably brief technological lifespans compared to the overall age of planetary systems.’
We’re looking… (Picture: Getty)
Dr Byrne agrees.
‘The most likely explanation in my opinion is that space is ****ing huge and time is really long,’ he says. ‘Even if a sentient species emerged on a planet close enough for us to detect their signals, a difference of only a few ten thousand years would mean we’d miss them if their civilisation only lasted for a few millennia.
We need to give it more time
We humans are famously impatient, and have only been able to properly search the vastness of space for a few decades.
And while we know for sure there aren’t Martian-built canals on the Red Planet or a man on the Moon, there is still much more to explore.
‘We’re still continuing to develop higher-resolution spectrographs and instruments,’ says Ms Hawthorn. ‘These include those on the James Webb Space Telescope that would be able to sensitively detect biomarkers in the atmospheres of planets, so the next few years could start to be a game-changer for this.’
We’re also discovering new exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – all the time.
7. The dark forest hypothesis
This is by far the scariest reason we haven’t found aliens yet.
The basis for the theory is that aliens are out there, but they are both silent and hostile. They keep quiet working on the assumption that other civilisations will be hostile too, and they don’t want to get wiped out in a massive interstellar war.
Fun.
Dr Paul Strøm, assistant professor at the University of Warwick, adds: ‘One natural step forward is to try to estimate the number of life-bearing planets and look for good candidates of favourable life hosting environments.
‘There are several examples of how this is being done currently – looking for life on the moons of Jupiter, listening out for radio signals and looking for other planets which may have the right conditions for life to emerge to mention only a few.
‘Just 25 years ago, the idea of detecting the composition of atmospheres of planets outside of our own solar system domain was only found in [theoretical] science. Today it is a reality. We can detect the composition of these exoplanets, and even monitor their weather patterns. How exciting!’
We’re waiting… (Picture: Getty)
The big question
‘So where is everybody?’ asks Dr Byrne.
‘They’re dead, or they haven’t come to be yet, or they’re too far away.
‘This, to me, is by far the most likely explanation for the seeming contradiction between there being loads of planets and zero evidence for alien civilisations. It’s a space and time numbers game.
‘Which doesn’t make it any less depressing, mind.’
Huge Asteroid Incoming It's no secret that asteroids pass close to Earth from time to time. There are currently around 1,000 asteroids that cross Earth's orbit on a regular basis.
Range of Sizes Asteroids range in size from 329 miles across to just 33 feet. 329 miles is the distance from New York to Augusta, while 33 feet is the length of a roll of wallpaper or two giraffes stacked on top of one another.
How Much Damage Can They Do? Most rocks that hit earth's atmosphere burn up on impact, which is how we get shooting stars and meteor showers. For a rock to hit the ground, it would have to be huge to begin with because so much would be lost in the atmosphere. Even a meteor the size of a tennis court failed to make it to the ground in 2013. Although it still caused damage because it exploded in the air and released more energy than a nuclear bomb.
Depends on the Location How much damage an asteroid could do would depend on the location where it hit. If it were in an isolated place, the damage would be less significant. But if one were to explode over a city such as London or New York, the damage could be widespread even if it didn't hit the ground. There would be heat damage and blast damage to buildings and people.
Asteroid 2024 MT1 8th July The asteroid which is passing Earth on the 8th July 2024 is 260 feet long. That's as big as the Statue of Liberty. It was detected and tracked by NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program which keeps an eye on anything that might be a threat.
Unlikely to do Damage 2024 MT1 is unlikely to hit Earth or cause any damage. It will pass us around 933,000 miles away which is about four times the distance from us to the moon. It is travelling at a staggering 40,600 miles per hour - hence the need for it to be monitored.
NASA's Observations Program NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program observes and tracks objects that approach the Earth from space. It uses telescopes and radar to detect objects from the ground. Although the tracking of 2024 MT1 has now passed over to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. This provides data such as the asteroid's position, speed and distance from Earth.
Ground-Based Strategies NASA has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office which works on strategies to combat any potential damage from asteroids hitting Earth. Although no impact or damage is expected from 2024 MT1, there are still strategies in place just in case. One of the possible actions could be to try and deflect the asteroid by crashing a space craft into it.
An End to Civilisation? We know that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. Could that happen to us? Thankfully not at any time in the next century thanks to early warning systems that can track the orbits of larger asteroids decades ahead of time. Smaller asteroids that can cause catastrophic regional damage are harder to track and these are the ones to watch out for.
Exciting for Some The close approach of 2024 MT1 isn't a scary prospect for everyone. Many astronomers and space enthusiasts are excited at the chance to catch a glimpse of the asteroid and it is hoped that much can be learnt from its composition and structure.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc America's most famous UFO case is still producing more evidence as scientists and civilians are on a mission to prove that the Roswell crash was not of this world. The 1947 incident made headlines when the U.S. Army Air Force issued a press release stating that it had recovered debris from a 'flying disc' — only later to reverse course, claiming that the material had really just belonged to a downed weather balloon.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc Geologist Frank Kimbler (pictured) is among the many experts who have challenged the military's official version of what crashed on the outskirts of this New Mexico town, where he has scoured the alleged UFO's crash site with a metal detector since 2010. Kimbler has since uncovered over 20 unusual scraps of metal material, most no bigger than a fingernail, and has now submitted one uniquely odd metal for testing to the Discovery Channel's new series 'Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction.'
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc Testing revealed that the metal was '100-percent pure aluminum,' which experts said was 'compelling evidence' that could prove aliens crashed in the area decades ago. 'I was really trying to champion truth throughout,' the new series' cohost, Chrissy Newton, told DailyMail.com, adding that she was not afraid to debunk a few celebrated UFO cases, if that's where the facts led. 'I want to prove that it's identifiable,' Newton said, 'not everyone's gonna like that.' Nevertheless, Newton found the tests on the pure aluminum mystery metal to be compelling, she said, in part because a former Pentagon UFO investigator has told her that 'pure aluminum has been connected to multiple other UFO crash sites.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc While Newton did not name her Pentagon source, she described them as 'a source formerly from AATIP,' the U.S. military's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program , which from 2007 to 2012 had been tasked (in part) with studying UFOs. Kimbler, who teaches earth sciences and geology at the New Mexico Military Institute, told Newton and her cohost that he had pulled this particular metal fragment, roughly a quarter-inch long, from an ant hill within the Roswell debris field. Testing ant hills for ant-harvested metals, the geologist noted, has been a common tactic for gold prospectors, mining geologists, and metal detector hobbyists alike.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc
The insect colonies are known for collecting sturdy and sometimes buried materials for to build their tunnel systems, according to Jim Davis of Utah's geology survey. 'Thanks to the ant's undertakings, prospectors have discovered rich lodes of gold, copper, nickel, turquoise, diamonds, and many other minerals,' Davis said. Over the years, Kimbler has been open that many of the metal fragments he's recovered from the infamous crash site might have a more earthbound explanation. 'Some of it could be trash, camper trash,' he told KRQE in 2018 after the Bureau of Land Management caught wind of his hobby, 'but some of it could be interesting.'
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc To confirm what Kimbler actually found, the new Discovery Channel series sent the metal sample for chemical testing via mass spectrometry to independent experts at the Texas-based firm Cerium Labs , which specializes is aluminum metallurgy. Dr Tom Hossain, chief scientist at Cerium Labs, reported that the aluminum metal fragment was not only unusual for its purity, but it also differed from the typical industrial-grade aluminum used in manufacturing. 'Most Al [aluminum] in use are anodized Al,' Dr Hossain said. Anodizing is an electrochemical process that converts the metal surface into a decorative, durable and corrosion-resistant finish known as an anodic oxide. It protects the metal underneath that finish from corroding in reactions with the oxygen molecules present in both air and water. 'This is not an alloy,' Dr Hossain wrote. 'This is pure aluminum.'
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc Kimbler's find joins a growing body of eyewitness testimony, and even declassified government records, that appear to indicate that the Roswell crash included some form of exotic metal materials. More than 40 witnesses to the Roswell crash mentioned that a metal-like material from the site could 'remember itself' when folded or physically altered, according to UFO researcher Anthony Bragalia. Bragalia obtained over 150 pages from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2021 via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which he said included telling new evidence about where this 'memory metal' may have ended up.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc The records included pages that repeatedly mention 'advanced technology reports' surrounding Nitinol, described as a shape recovery alloy. Nitinol had similar properties to the 'memory metal' found near the Roswell crash site, according to Bragalia. Pages from the FOIA reply indicate that the Pentagon was exploring whether Nitinol could be integrated into the human body for the improvement of health, the researcher wrote at his blog, UFO Explorations . 'Although much of the reports' details are redacted, what can be gleaned is that these technologies represent a literal quantum leap beyond the properties of all existing material known to man,' Bragalia said. 'Based on the documentation received,' he added, 'it appears that the retrieved debris exhibits other extraordinary capabilities.' 'In addition to 'remembering' their original form when bent or crushed, some of these futuristic materials have the potential to make things invisible, 'compress' electromagnetic energy, and even slow down the speed of light,' Bragalia said.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc Today, even the lead author of the Air Force's official 1994 report, Colonel Richard Weaver, that revisited the Roswell case has come forward to caution that the military's current official explanation is by no means conclusive. 'Did we say it was 100-percent? Col. Weaver said on a 2020 podcast . 'No way. We didn't say that.' Col Weaver also alluded ominously to 'politics and a lot of manipulation going on behind the scenes' of his 1994 inquiry, but added he is still confident in his report's explanation - that a secret military spy balloon was what crashed at Roswell. Not every case to come to the hosts of Discovery's new 'Alien Encounters' reaches this level of fascinating physical evidence and documentation, however, as the show examines each submitted 'alien encounter' to the same high investigative standards.
Geologist unearths mystery metal at Roswell UFO crash site in new doc The show's premiere included two other cases: one proved to be explainable and the other appeared to remain a genuine mystery. Posting up at The Variety, a long-standing local watering hole in Roswell, New Mexico, Newton interviewed multiple self-described UFO and alien 'experiencers' on camera to more thoroughly vet their stories. Her cohost in this process, occult scholar and author Mitch Horowitz, called Kimbler an 'inspiration' for the local geologist's willingness to ask 'pure questions' and for taking a proactive approach to investigating these unexplained events. 'Along with Mitch, we both state our opinion, if we think it is a UFO or not,' Newton told DailyMail.com. 'But looking at the facts, [sometimes] there's not strong enough data to even make a conclusion.' 'Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction' premieres tWednesday, June 19 at 10PM ET/PT on the Discovery Channel. Soon after, the series will be streaming on Max.
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De stad Varginha werd beroemd In januari 1996 vond in de gemeente Varginha, in de Braziliaanse deelstaat Minas Gerais, een ufo-gerelateerd voorval plaats. Er zouden naar verluid buitenaardse wezens in de stad zijn geweest.
Ufologie in Varginha Het vredige stadje werd wereldberoemd door meldingen van waarnemingen van buitenaardse wezens en trok de aandacht van ufologen uit de hele wereld.
In een documentaire In 2022 kwam de zaak weer tot leven door de Amerikaanse documentaire 'Moment of Contact', geregisseerd door James Fox, met daarin getuigenissen van getuigen uit die tijd en van andere betrokkenen.
Hoe het allemaal begon De feiten begonnen bekendheid te krijgen toen sommige mensen beweerden dat ze vreemde wezens in de regio hadden gezien. In een interview vertelde één van deze getuigen alles tot in de kleinste details.
(Op de foto één van de getuigen, Valquíria Silva, 14, TV Alterosa).
Getuigenis over de buitenaardse wezens van Varginha "Het was bruin. Het hurkte, maar was kort. Ik had de indruk dat het iets heel zachts was, het zag eruit alsof het ging barsten, met een gladde huid en rode ogen. Het keek naar ons", zei Kátia Xavier in een interview met EPTV Sul de Minas, in 2006.
Andere getuigen De vermeende waarneming vond plaats op 20 januari 1996. Kátia was 22 jaar oud en werd vergezeld door twee vriendinnen, Valquíria en Liliane. Door hun getuigenissen werden er ook
Nog een getuigenis van een ufo-waarneming Op dezelfde dag beweerde het echtpaar Eurico (foto) en Oralina een object te hebben gezien dat over het terrein van hun huis vloog, met dezelfde kenmerken als die de zakenman had gemeld. Volgens hen gaf het rook af, maar maakte het geen geluid.
Verklaringen van de dierenarts van de dierentuin Volgens een verslag van G1 zei dierenarts Marcos Mina, nu directeur van de dierentuin, dat er donker slijm werd aangetroffen in de maag en darmen van de dode dieren, hoewel ze allemaal ander voedsel hadden gekregen.
De vreemde dood van een politieagent Een andere opzienbarende gebeurtenis was de dood van de militaire politieagent Marco Eli Cherese (foto) uit Varginha. Destijds werd zijn dood toegeschreven aan een virus dat zou zijn overgedragen door de vermeende buitenaardse wezens.
Wat was de echte doodsoorzaak? De toenmalige commandant van het 24e Militaire Politiebataljon van Varginha, Maurício Antonio Santos, verklaarde volgens het tijdschrift IstoÉ echter: "De doodsoorzaak was een ernstige ziekenhuisinfectie, die het gevolg was van een operatie".
En de Braziliaanse overheid? Hetzelfde tijdschrift wees erop dat de ufolologische gemeenschap destijds het idee koesterde dat het Braziliaanse leger, de militaire politie en de brandweer twee buitenaardse wezens hadden gevangen en naar ziekenhuizen in Campinas, in de staat São Paulo, hadden gebracht om daar een necropsie op hen uit te voeren.
De versie van ufologen Volgens ufologen verborgen Braziliaanse instellingen deze buitenaardse wezens, om te voorkomen dat informatie de bevolking bereikte.
De overheid ontkent betrokkenheid Bovendien ontkende de Braziliaanse overheid elke betrokkenheid bij de gebeurtenissen en de officiële versie is dat er geen bewijs is voor buitenaards leven.
De resultaten van het onderzoek van de militaire politie Volgens luitenant-kolonel Lúcio Carlos Pereira, hoofd van de militaire politie, was wat Kátia Xavier en haar vrienden zagen in werkelijkheid een man die in de volksmond 'Mudinho' werd genoemd. Hij hurkte voorover, in een houding die leek op wat ze in hun verslagen beschreven, en had waarschijnlijk een mentaal probleem, aldus IstoÉ.
Het buitenaardse ervaring van Varginha De zaak werd een cultureel fenomeen en genereerde veel speculaties en samenzweringstheorieën. Er werden zelfs monumenten in de stad geplaatst ter ere van de buitenaardse ervaring van Varginha.
De ufo-vormige watertoren in Varginha In Brazilië nam de belangstelling voor ufologie hierdoor aanzienlijk toe. Varginha kwam bekend te staan als 'ufo-stad' en het voorval trok de aandacht van de internationale media en het toerisme.
BIJKOMENDE INFO DOOR PETER2011
An artist’s rendition of the alien life form allegedly spotted in Varginha, Brazil.
Sketches drawn of the Varginha alien.
Newspaper reports about the alleged Varginha alien encounters.
The International Space Station (ISS) has long been a place that has inspired some of the best of humanity. Over the past 23 years, the football field-sized space structure has represented a beacon of peace as well as the epitome of human exploration. But the ISS cannot last forever. Last year, NASA announced that the space laboratory would be decommissioned by the end of 2030, at which point the floating lab will crash into the ocean.
While the ISS was never meant to last forever — many a space exploration professional, and NASA, argue — what comes next is far less certain. What is certain is that there will be no next gen ISS. The next era of space stations will be owned by private companies, many of which are currently vying for contracts with NASA. But with these budding new stations, the space agency itself won’t be calling all the shots. They’ll be an anchor client, for sure, but a customer nonetheless. Finally, the crowning achievement of the ISS — it’s the largest peacetime international project ever, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman tells Inverse — will fall to the wayside.
“It’s the most complex and largest engineering exercise we’ve ever accomplished as human beings. It’s also the largest international project, according to a variety of metrics, that’s been done in peace time,” Reisman says.
As we look to the future of space travel, what will be lost when the ISS is gone? A lot, many experts argue. The ISS is home to the longest-inhabited platform in space of all time. Continuous, non-stop occupation in space will be essential to getting humans to loftier destinations, like Mars. Astronauts like Frank Rubio and the Kelly twins have demonstrated the brink of human endurance in microgravity, and that’s barely scratching the surface about what we need to learn to venture farther away, Don Platt, associate professor of aerospace at the Florida Institute of Technology, tells Inverse.
The International Space Station, as seen from Space Shuttle Discovery, in March 2009.
For NASA to split the costs of human space exploration in space, they’ll pay for access to these private space stations. Axiom, Blue Origin, Long Beach-based Vast Space, Nanoracks and Voyager Space are some of the companies striving to get the coveted NASA low-Earth orbit contracts through the agency’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program. NASA astronauts will then have to share the stations with other customers, either private citizens with a lot of disposable income to buy seats into space, or projects like Inspiration4 that sent an all-civilian crew to space, or astronauts from other space agencies or nationalities seeking to place one of their own some 250 miles high above Earth.
But to share the space practically, future stations must be much more automated. And smaller. They’ll need to be easier to maintain and use. All of this reduces their size.
The ISS is a massive collaboration of many space agencies around the world. NASA and Roscosmos lead the pack. But Japan, Europe, Canada and others have greatly contributed by way of modules, robotic arms, experiments and astronauts. The ISS is possible because there are control centers across the world, employing hundreds of people, to keep tabs on the gigantic craft. There’s no company that could hope to match this scale, Reisman says.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Aki Hoshide of the ISS Expedition 32 flight took this picture during an extravehicular activity, or spacewalk, in September 2012.
When it comes time to say goodbye, the ISS may require two years to fully be brought down.
The Space Shuttle, now retired, and its massive cargo space was essential to carrying segments of the ISS up to space. It’s unclear if the SpaceX Starship, currently in testing, will be ready in time for the ISS retirement procedures.
Reisman is thrilled by the progress and pace of development. Reisman is currently on the advisory board with Vast Space, and worked with SpaceX for seven years as its Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule were getting ready to carry their first humans to space. Reisman was too young to be a part of Apollo, but thinks perhaps the pace of current low-Earth orbit technological development offers a taste of what that iconic chapter in history must have been like.
Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Oleg Novitskiy, of ISS Expedition 33, monitor data at the manual docking system controls in the Zvezda Service Module of the ISS during approach and docking operations of the unpiloted ISS Progress 49 resupply vehicle. NASA astronaut Suni Williams appears at the top.
But the ISS, Reisman’s home for a little more than three months over the course of two Space Shuttle missions in 2008 and 2010, embodies something unique. He says it was a more peaceful time, and its cultural role and its place in history as an incredible logistical accomplishment, may never happen again. He says we’ve moved away from that charmed period.
“There won’t be a government to government partnership. It won’t be the head of Roscosmos meeting regularly with the head of NASA, and the head of ESA and JAXA. That element won’t exist. I think that’s a shame. The ISS in its peak was really this beacon of hope. This Star Trek future, where we all get along,” Reisman says.
Editor’s Note:
This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Garrett Reisman is an ongoing advisor for Vast Space. A previous version of the story stated that he had left that position.
The Grand Canyon is known as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Credit: Matthew Lachniet
The Grand Canyon's valleys and millions of years of rock layers spanning Earth's history have earned it a designation as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. But, according to a new UNLV study, its marvels extend to vast cave systems that lie beneath the surface, which just might hold clues to better understand the future of climate change—by studying nature's past.
(Credit: sumikophoto/Shutterstock)
A research team—led by UNLV paleoclimatologist and professor Matthew Lachniet—pulled an ancient stalagmite from the floor of an undisturbed Grand Canyon cave. By studying the mineral deposits' geochemistry, they were able to analyze precipitation patterns during the rapidly warming period following the last Ice Age to improve understanding about the potential impact of future climate change on summer monsoon rains in the U.S. Southwest and northwestern Mexico.
Their findings, published Oct. 2 in Nature Geoscience, revealed that increasing levels of water seeped into the cave between 8,500 and 14,000 years ago, during a period known as the early Holocene when temperatures rose throughout the region. Using a paleoclimate model, the researchers determined that this was likely caused by intensified and expanded summer rainfall stemming from atmospheric impacts on air circulation patterns that more quickly melted the winter snowpacks and sped up the evaporation process that fuels monsoon rains.
Recent photograph of Grand Canyon from Walhalla Plateau, with the red line showing the Great Unconformity between the metamorphic Proterozoic basement complex and the Paleozoic sediment strata.
ANNIE SCOTT/USGS
This is significant, authors say, because most of the water currently infiltrating through the bedrock and into caves and aquifers—and contributing to groundwater recharge—comes from winter snowmelt. During the early Holocene, however, when peak temperatures were only slightly warmer than today, both summer and winter moisture contributed to groundwater recharge in the region.
The authors suggest that future warming, which could cause temperatures to rise above those of the early Holocene, may also lead to greater rates of summer rainfall on the high-elevation Colorado Plateau and an intensifying North American monsoon, the pattern of pronounced and increased thunderstorms and precipitation that typically occur between June and mid-September.
UNLV professor Matthew Lachniet holds a stalagmite retrieved from a Grand Canyon cave. Credit: Laura Sangaila
"What was surprising about our results is that during this past warm period, both the summer monsoon and infiltration into the cave increased, which suggests that summer was important for Grand Canyon groundwater recharge, even though today it is not an important season for recharge," said Lachniet, who personally retrieved the stalagmite from a cave in the Redwall Formation on the South Rim of eastern Grand Canyon in 2017. "While we still expect the region to dry in the future, more intense summer rainfall may actually infiltrate into the subsurface more than it does today."
Stalagmites are common cave formations that act as ancient rain gauges that record historic climate change. They grow as mineral-rich waters seep through the ground above and drop from the tips of stalactites on cave ceilings. Calcite minerals from tiny drops of water accumulate over thousands of years, and much like tree rings, accurately record the rainfall history of an area. Three natural forms of oxygen are found in water, and the quantity of one form decreases as rainfall increases. This information is locked into the stalagmites over time.
Because of the distinct difference in the oxygen isotope composition between summer and winter precipitation, it is possible to estimate the relative contributions from each season. Variation in uranium-234 isotope and changes in the growth thickness of stalagmite give indication of the change in the amount of precipitation.
"We were able to validate the oxygen record with the growth data, with the uranium isotope data to confirm that in fact, we see significant increases in summer moisture during this warm period, which we attribute to the monsoon," said the University of New Mexico professor Yemane Asmerom. "Unfortunately, effective moisture is the balance between precipitation and evaporation. Unlike the more temperate Grand Canyon climate, the dry southern part is likely to be drier, as a result of the increased temperatures."
The research team used stalagmite samples to reconstruct groundwater recharge rates—or, the amount of water that penetrates the aquifers—in the Grand Canyon area during the early years of the Holocene period. High groundwater recharge rates likely occurred on other high-elevation plateaus in the region, too, they said, though it's unclear how the activity applies to hotter, low-elevation deserts.
UNLV paleoclimatologist Matthew Lachniet retrieved the stalagmite from an undisturbed Grand Canyon cave in 2017. Credit: Laura Sangaila
What is clear is that ongoing human-caused climate change is leading to hotter temperatures throughout southwestern North America, including the Grand Canyon region. Alongside population growth and agricultural pressures, this warming can reduce the infiltration of surface water into groundwater aquifers. Groundwater recharge rates also depend on the frequency and intensity of summer rains associated with monsoon season.
Though summer infiltration isn't a significant contributor to groundwater recharge in the region today, these latest findings suggest that could change in the future as the climate warms and monsoonal moisture increases. What's unknown is how a projected decrease in winter precipitation and snowpack could impact overall groundwater reserves.
In addition to Lachniet and Asmerom, the following researchers collaborated on the report: Xiaojing Du and Sylvia G. Dee of Rice University; Victor Polyak of the University of New Mexico; and Benjamin W. Tobin of the University of Kentucky.
An alleged UFO sighting at a farm near McMinnville, Oregon, 1950. Picture: SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY
As the new series of the BBC’s Paranormal looks into alleged UFO sightings, one aerospace expert says accessible, modern technology puts us in a stronger position than ever to work out what’s going on in the skies above us.
It was a rainy day in Pembrokeshire (Wales) in February 1977 when a group of pupils from Broad Haven Primary School claimed to see an unidentified flying object (UFO) outside.
David Davies, who was just 10 at the time, remembers his fellow students coming inside throughout the day “trying to alert the headmaster that there was something strange going on”.
The schoolboy was sure there was a logical explanation for what they had seen. “My intention was to go out there and completely prove them wrong,” David says.
But when he went to investigate, he says he saw a “silver, cigar-shaped object” about the size of a bus, with a domed upper section and a “red pulsating glow” on top.
“I had this overwhelming urge to run away,” David says of the sighting that lasted about 10 seconds.
This event in south-west Wales is explored in the latest series of the BBC’s Paranormal. Across four episodes, host Sian Eleri investigates alleged UFO sightings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It comes as claims about extraterrestrial life have captured the public imagination yet again. Last year, the US Congress convened a landmark panel on the topic, mysterious monoliths continue to appear in the UK and around the world, and social media is home to viral trends about “alien bodies”.
On TikTok, for example, there are more than a million posts with the hashtag “UFO”.
And one aerospace expert tells the BBC that in 2024, thanks to everyone having a phone in their pocket and many people using apps to follow air traffic, we are in “a much stronger position to be able to track what’s known and what’s unknown”.
So is there a simple explanation for why we see UFOs? And should they be investigated?
‘A lot of UFO hunting’
UFOs have held our attention for decades, ever since reports of alleged extraterrestrial debris in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, the movie The Flying Saucer being released three years later and the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union gaining steam throughout 1950s.
And stories about alien life would go on to influence popular culture in the years to come, from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning E.T. in 1982, to The X Files first airing in 1993 and even recent additions like Jordan Peele’s 2022 film Nope feeding into the cultural obsession.
Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe – the head of the school of human and social sciences at Buckinghamshire New University — says there was also a “huge peak of interest” in UFO sightings around the 1980s that resulted in “a lot of UFO hunting”.
Reported sightings were covered by media around the world – and the alleged sighting at Broad Haven Primary School was picked up by publications as far as New Zealand.
The Broad Haven incident was one of a wave of sightings in the area in 1977 – dubbed the Dyfed Triangle. In the past, a number of theories have been put forward to explain them, including the work of a “local prankster”.
While sightings like the one in Broad Haven captured mass attention, Dr O’Keeffe says there may be plausible explanations.
“The key fundamental psychological explanation for what’s going on is around eyewitness testimony,” says Dr O’Keeffe, who also consults on the BBC’s Uncanny, adding that eyewitness testimony can be prone to errors.
“The nature of the interviewing of an eyewitness can distort the memory of the event significantly,” he adds, especially if the questioning of a witness is poor. For example, leading questions and exposure to media coverage of an event can be distorting factors.
However, the UFO sighting at Broad Haven Primary School was not just one eyewitness, it was a group of pupils. Here, Dr O’Keeffe explains the idea of “contagion” and group conformity could be behind a mass UFO sighting.
“Contagion is this idea that thoughts, feelings and behaviours can spread amongst a group of people,” Dr O’Keeffe says.
However, David feels he can “rule out” these psychological explanations for the 1977 sighting after the children reportedly drew near identical images of the UFO they had seen.
Before the incident, David adds, he did not have a “big interest in Sci-Fi”. But in the years that followed, he would spend thousands of pounds on books and research materials to understand what happened.
‘Not always publicised’
Dr Ryan Marks, an aerospace engineer who appears in Paranormal, says air traffic in the sky could also offer plausible explanations for UFO sightings, particularly around built-up areas where there are airfields.
According to the RAF Museum, between 1970 and 1990 there were five airfields in south Wales, with one being used as a missile testing range.
“There’s a huge amount of air traffic at any one time and that’s obviously increased over the last 40 years,” Dr Marks explains, adding that there is “always a level of military activity” in the sky and that “not all of this is always publicised”.
In March this year, for example, a US government report concluded that UFO sightings in the US in the 1950s and 1960s were caused by tests of advanced spy planes and space technology.
Around the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Dr Marks says developments were taking place in the UK exploring hot air balloons and airships – and some “would resemble traditional UFOs”.
He notes, however, these were “small-scale” experiments that did not get outside of the air hangar.
Today, Dr Marks says, “a lot of air traffic movements are recorded,” with free-to-download apps able to identify a plane, where it has come from and its destination. This “digital fingerprint” makes it a lot easier to track what is going on in the sky, he explains.
For his part, David remains confident in his UFO sighting.
“Unless somebody can explain to me what type of aircraft was flying at that time, that was 45-feet long, cigar-shaped and silver – I have no explanation for it,” he says, adding that believing in UFOs can sometimes be “like you’re banging your head against a brick wall, against society”.
“It’s still being dismissed as nonsense,” he says.
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) closed their UFO desk in 2009 after saying it served no defence purpose and was taking staff away from more valuable defence-related activities.
In a statement, an MOD spokesperson added: “In over 50 years, no sightings of extraterrestrial intelligence, Unidentified Flying Objects and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reported to us indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.”
Shola Lee is a journalist based in Tenterden, United Kingdom, with a focus on local news. She writes for BBC News, BBC Mundo, and Cigalah Group, and her work has also been featured in Yahoo News, 65twenty, Tyla, and UNILAD. Shola covers a wide range of topics, including community events, environmental issues, crime, and human interest stories.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Huge UFO shoots away on house cam, Margate, Florida Jan 22, 2024, UAP Sighting News.👽👽👽
Huge UFO shoots away on house cam, Margate, Florida Jan 22, 2024, UAP Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 22, 2024, 19:25
Location of sighting: Margate, Florida USA
Source: X account @isaiasroldan009
Hey all, check this out. A follower of mine on X tweeted to me to show me this video he captured at home in Florida a few months ago. He stated that he and his wife noticed a dark shadow over their home in the back yard so he checked his front cam because he didnt have a cam in the back yard and he focused it upward, just as he did, the huge dark shadow shot away...as if it knew it was being recorded. The shadow appears to be that of a disk, notice the dark round front area, and the flat back is due to the propulsion system causing a disturbance. Awesome and rare footage from Florida. 100% proof that aliens not only watch but notice if we are recording them or not too.
Scott C. Waring - Utah
Eyewitness Isaias Roldan on X platform, https://x.com/isaiasroldan009 please visit him and support him by following him.
Date of discovery: July 2, 2011 Location of discovery: Mars Discovered By: Scott C. Waring
Original post states:
Yeah I found another structure on Mars. You know the old saying, where theres smoke theres fire, well I found a few so I keep looking in hopes of finding more. Tonight I found these two unusual photos. I know, the last thing you want to see is another Mars building, but aren't you curious a little bit what alien buildings looks like? The first has the framework of what looks like an ancient wooden ship whose ribs are the only thing left, but this could also be the frame of an ancient building or the rib bones of an animal that died.
+++++
Updated July 6, 2024:
Guys this is getting ridiculous. NASA literally has change most my links. So often you will see reposts with new URLs here. Thats so other researchers can make videos, tiktoks, ect and help spread the world.
Now I just wanted to share this with you all. NASA deleted the original link which now gets a 404 error, click it above to see old link vs new. And I wanted to put this new link up so that other researchers could make videos, posts and so on about it. NASA tries to change the links in order to prevent such amazing and important discoveries from staying. It's a sneaky trick and something that the NSA or CIA must have taught them. I do this for everyone, so it's available for you all and exists for future generations.
Er is een nieuw wezen ontdekt in de diepten van de oceaan in de Golf van Alaska, voor de westkust van Canada. Laten we samen zijn merkwaardige eigenschappen en de sleutelrol die het in de diepten speelt ontdekken.
Nieuwe soort zeekomkommer ontdekt
Een nieuw waterdier, dat leeft op de bodem van de Stille Oceaan in de Golf van Alaska, is ontdekt door een team mariene biologen. Het is een soort met merkwaardige eigenaardigheden: het heeft tweehonderd poten en zijn kleur is roze. Het team, bestaande uit onderzoekers Francisco Solís Marín, Andrea Caballero Ochoa en Carlos Conejeros-Vargas, professoren aan het Instituut voor Oceaanwetenschappen en Limnologie in Mexico, presenteerde de ontdekking en beschreef het als een nieuw wezen dat over de zeebodem kruipt.
Maar wat is de naam van dit wezen wat nog nooit gezien was? Het is een onbekende variant van de zeekomkommer, paarsroze en bleek van kleur, met een lang, slijmerig lichaam uitgerust met 214 poten die in een zigzagpatroon zijn geplaatst en op kleine buisjes lijken. De wetenschappelijke naam in de studie gepubliceerd in Biodiversity Data Journal is Synallactes, maar de eenvoudigere bijnaam is McDaniel zeekomkommer.
De McDaniel zeekomkommer speelt een belangrijke rol voor de oceaan
Biodiversity Data Journal
De meer onofficiële naam werd geïnspireerd op Neil McDaniel, een deskundige natuuronderzoeker uit Canada die zich toelegt op de studie van zeedieren zoals koralen, anemonen, sponzen en zeekomkommers. Net als de andere exemplaren van zijn soort brengt de McDaniel zijn bestaan kruipend door op zoek naar voedsel. Deze wezens zijn te vinden op dieptes variërend van ongeveer 21 tot 426 meter. Om zich te voeden gebruiken ze hun talrijke tentakels, waarmee ze sedimenten van de zanderige zeebodem verzamelen, waaronder algen en verschillende soorten afval.
Hun activiteit, zo ontdekten de onderzoekers, blijkt zeer nuttig te zijn: zeekomkommers dragen over het algemeen aanzienlijk bij aan het mariene ecosysteem, omdat ze de onbetwiste "schoonmakers" zijn van afval dat in de diepte aanwezig is. Wat ze binnenkrijgen, wordt gefilterd en uitgestoten in de vorm van schoner zand: juist hun dieet zorgt er dus voor dat de zeebodem minder vervuild en vrij is van residuen. De vertering van zeekomkommers zorgt bijvoorbeeld voor een toename van calciumcarbonaat, wat nuttig is voor het gedijen en gezond blijven van koralen.
Kenmerken van de McDaniel zeekomkommer
De nieuwe soort McDaniel, met zijn zachte maar over het algemeen stevige en ruwe lichaam, is tussen de 22 en 30 cm lang, waarbij het onderste deel van het lichaam iets lichter van kleur is. Wat hem onderscheidt van andere zeekomkommers is het aantal papillen op zijn rug. Twee zigzaggende rijen van elk 62 buisvoeten en twee andere van elk 45 poten bevinden zich op het onderste deel van het lichaam en helpen hem om zich te verplaatsen over zanderige en rotsachtige oppervlakken in het noordoosten van de Stille Oceaan.
Het totale aantal zeekomkommers, die ook voorkomen in de Marianentrog, neemt af, maar biologen hopen dit tegen te gaan door meer bekendheid te geven aan het belang van deze wezens in oceaanecosystemen. Hun werk is weliswaar belangrijk, maar niet genoeg om het probleem van de onderwateromgeving op te lossen, maar een grote gemeenschap kan zeker een sleutelrol spelen in het welzijn van dit leefgebied.
Synallactes mcdanieli sp. nov.Holotype RBCM 995-00131-001. Ossicles of dorsal papillae A tri-, quadri- and pentaradiate tables; B spiny rods, with the lateral spines (sometimes branched); C long, thin, smooth, straight or curved rods with perforated ends.
Part of: Solís Marín F, Caballero Ochoa A, Conejeros-Vargas C (2024) Synallactes mcdanieli sp. nov., a new species of sea cucumber from British Columbia, Canada and the Gulf of Alaska, USA (Holothuroidea, Synallactida). Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e124603. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e124603
ON APRIL 17, 2013, attendees at an independently organized TEDx event in Geneva, Switzerland, were offered a glimpse at a seemingly impossible future.
Presented under the theme of “eCulture 360° and Wikinomics”, the event offered something unique even to a gathering of some of the most renowned international speakers on science and technology: the organizers billed it as a “TEDx with the opportunity to meet Jacques Vallée, one of the founder[s] of ARPANET, the first version of the Internet.”
Vallée’s lecture at the event, titled “The Age of Impossible: Anticipating Discontinuous Futures,” dealt with how the speed at which modern technology accelerates has resulted in events that would have seemed impossible to many people only years before they transpired. With examples ranging from the collapse of General Motors in 2009 to Bernie Madoff’s role in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Vallee presented what he called a “Typology of the Impossible” that hinged on four main kinds of scenarios: events that escalated too quickly, convergences of “low-p scenarios,” events that appear to violate current cultural norms, and finally, scenarios that involve the appearance of a “completely alien concept within a particular culture.”
“There are many things in our culture today that fit that model,” Vallée said at one point during the talk, as he described historical instances where things that seemed unimaginable at one time later became technological norms. Such things, Vallee said, “are possible, but we cannot imagine them. The public is not aware that they can be done. History provides many examples, and the internet itself is an example of something that was unimaginable.”
After discussing his own part in helping create ARPANET, Vallée went on to share several more examples from recent history where unforeseen scientific advancements occurred, seemingly out of the blue.
“And finally,” the scientist said, never evincing a change in his measured tone and demeanor, “the Pentagon could not imagine that fast, erratic, mobile, oval objects in the sky were anything other than mental illusions, and they…” After a brief pause, Vallée cryptically added, “and you can fill out the answers in the next few years.”
Despite his success as a venture capitalist and “co-creator of the Internet”, most of the attendees at the 2013 TEDx event in Geneva were likely aware of what Vallée is best known for: his decades of involvement with the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. As a young computer scientist and astronomer in the 1960s, Vallee not only worked alongside Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the official scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book but also authored Anatomy of a Phenomenon, one of the earliest popular books written on the UFO subject by a professional scientist. Though he never uttered any of the popular names or abbreviations for the phenomenon, it was obvious what Vallee had been alluding to during this brief, passing reference to “oval objects” during his talk.
At least at that time, what had not been so obvious had been why Vallée specifically referenced the Pentagon’s relationship to UAP, nor why a series of seemingly impossible future events might come to pass involving this subject “in the next few years.”
THE CALL FROM DR. VALLÉE came through earlier than I expected.
The scientist’s voice, softened by age yet still resonant with the French he learned as a youth in Pontoise before emigrating to America many decades ago, was unmistakable to me, having heard it in many interviews and documentaries over the years. Vallée, now 83, is a man whose work in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena is only one finger on the glove of his impressive resume, spanning decades of work in astronomy, physics, computer science, and venture capitalism.
As evidenced by his billing at the TEDx event in 2013, one could indeed argue that Vallée is partly responsible for the creation of the Internet, although the affable Frenchman is modest on this point, nearly to a fault. This much was evident almost immediately as we began our discussion, and I wasted no time in bringing up the talk in Geneva and some of the intriguing hints he had dropped at that time.
“I’ve seen the development and the unfolding of a number of technologies,” Vallée told me during our call. “Very often what happens is that a discovery is made, and everyone agrees that it is important, and people write papers, and so on. And then it disappears.”
Vallée with collaborator and fellow author Chris Aubeck (Credit: Chris Aubeck).
Don’t miss Jacques Vallée’s recent interview on Rebelliously Curious with Chrissy Newton over on The Debrief’s YouTube Channel, and linked at the end of this article.
“You know, the Arpanet was essentially dead for a while,” Vallée recalls from his years working on the project decades ago. “Until [the] National Science Foundation picked up the funding, thinking that there would be several internets.” Initially a simple matter of accounting, the NSF initially believed it would be easier to fund three separate projects that looked at using networks through which computers could connect for purposes of communication.
“And then they picked it up from the DOD, and it became the Internet, as we know it now.”
Vallée offered several similar examples of predecessors to the Internet—not all of them American innovations—a point which Vallée emphasized as he shifted back to our subject of greater mutual interest: UAP.
“When I watched the meetings in Congress recently, all they talk about is American cases,” Vallee said. “And among American cases, all they talk about is military cases.”
“I can tell you, having developed a lot of databases over the years, the U.S. is less than 2% of the habitable surface of the Earth,” Vallée said.
“So, if this is extraterrestrial, what about the other 98%?
THE PATH THAT BROUGHT Vallée into the tempest that is the study of unidentified aerial phenomena is a long one, which stems back to his early years in Pontoise at an age when the world was still at war.
“There are things you don’t forget,” Vallée said during our call, describing his memories of seeing American aircraft being shot down over his town when he was five years old.
“I remember seeing the crew dropping out in parachutes and the Germans shooting at them.”
By 1945, the war had ended, although fears of a return to conflict lingered throughout parts of Europe. To the north, reports of ghostly “rockets” over countries like Sweden in the summer of 1946 kept many guessing whether the Soviets were conducting tests, perhaps with a form of secret new aerial weapon they had captured from the Germans. The following year, an all-new kind of paranoia would erupt across the Atlantic, as American newspapers were flooded with stories of “flying saucers” seen careening through the skies, especially in airspace around sites of importance to U.S. national security.
By the Autumn of 1954, as the wave of sightings of strange objects was cresting over North America, France was having its own torrent of reports of similar phenomena. Major newspapers like L’Aurore and France-Soir were carrying stories about unidentified flying objects almost daily, and Vallée began collecting clippings of stories like those of Marius Dewilde, a railroad worker who described his observation of a pair of diminutive “robots” next to a dark machine resting on the train tracks.
The reports seemed incredible, and very well might have remained so had it not been for what occurred the following year in May 1955, when Vallée had his own sighting.
“My mother saw it first,” he would later recall of the incident. She had been working in the garden when Vallée, sixteen at the time, heard her screaming for him and his father. Vallée made his way from the attic where his father’s woodworking shop was located, and down three flights of stairs just in time to observe a metallic disc-shaped object “with a clear bubble on top” as it hovered over the nearby church of Saint-Maclou.
A modern view of Pontoise with the Cathédrale Saint-Maclou visible in the distance (Credit: Rozinante/CC BY-SA 4.0).
The object reminded them of the parachutists the family had watched descending from the skies during the war. His mother, who continued watching it, recalled how it sped away, leaving only a few wisps of white vapor where the object had been. Vallée would later learn that a schoolmate nearby had also noticed the object, observing it through binoculars.
Despite his father’s disapproval, Vallée maintained his interest in these unusual aerial objects. “I realized,” he would later write in his journal, “that I would forever be ashamed of the human race if we simply ignored ‘their’ presence.” The young Frenchman began to educate himself on the topic by reading the works of Aimé Michel, one of the earliest serious French researchers to undertake the study of unusual aerial phenomena. It was an interest he maintained through his college years, completing his degree in mathematics at the University of Paris in 1959 and going on to receive his M.S. from the University of Lille Nord de France two years later. By 1961, Vallée was employed at the Paris Observatory as an astronomer with its artificial satellite service, tracking space objects through theodolites by night.
“Naively, I started work here with great enthusiasm, assuming that we would be engaged in genuine research,” Vallée would recall of his years at the observatory. “That is not what I found.” In July of 1961, he and the other astronomers recalled a few instances where they observed objects passing overhead that they could not identify. “The next morning,” he recalled of one incident, his superior “simply confiscated the tape and destroyed it.” Vallée inquired as to why they hadn’t sent this seemingly important information along with their normal Telex tape dispatches to U.S. Navy officials in Paris.
“The Americans would laugh at us,” his superior scoffed.
Having his fill of the prevailing attitudes in Paris, by 1962, Vallée had emigrated to the United States, first working at the University of Texas, Austin, as a research associate in astronomy, and thereafter for a short stint at the McDonald Observatory, where he helped to compile the first informational map of the planet Mars with fellow French astronomer Gérard de Vaucouleurs. However, by the summer of 1963, Vallée was looking ahead at new opportunities, one of which arrived following a meeting in September with astronomer J. Allen Hynek, chair of Northwestern University’s astronomy department, who helped the young scientist find work as a systems analyst on campus. Hynek, at the time the scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book UFO investigation, was a natural ally; not only would he serve as a mentor to Vallée, who went on to receive his Ph.D. from the institution in 1967, but for years thereafter the two would remain close colleagues in the pursuit of their mutual interest.
An undated photo of astronomer J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée
(public domain).
However, by the late 1960s, it seemed evident that scientific opinions on the UFO subject in the United States had finally begun to sour, despite the efforts of Hynek, Vallée, and a close network of like-minded scientists looking into the problem. By the end of 1968, the University of Colorado UFO Project, a U.S. Air Force-funded study headed by physicist Edward U. Condon, had delivered its findings; in an introductory summary to the lengthy report, Condon wrote that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge,” adding that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”
Vallée, musing over the Condon study during our call, remembered his incredulity at the time he first heard about its conclusions.
“That’s an interesting chapter in science,” he said. “Or the failure of science.”
By then, Vallee had already returned to France. As he, his wife Janine, and their son, Oliver, were acclimating to life in Europe again, Vallée was quietly readjusting his approach to the UFO question.
“Once I was back in France, in a way, it served to give me the space to rethink what we had done,” Vallée told me. “I mean, I knew the Condon Committee was a joke… and that science was somewhere else. So it forced me to ask some fundamental questions that I would not have asked if I had stayed at Northwestern.”
“So I thought, where does all this come from, anyway?”
Vallée began haunting the old Paris bookshops, acquiring rare historical texts and early treatises on the sciences. An interesting question had begun to form in his mind, as he recorded in a journal entry on October 29, 1967: What about the forgotten accounts of Little People, of Elementals, of Leprechauns? If these beings are part of the same phenomenon we see now, what does that mean for their nature? Are we necessarily dealing with extraterrestrials?
“I found that the phenomenon has always been there,” Vallée says of his years spent mining observations of unusual aerial phenomena from texts that date back to classical antiquity. “Of course, they are describing it in the language of the time,” he notes, “but they are describing something that’s very, very much like what I get from witnesses today.”
The fruits of such musings culminated in Vallée’s seminal 1969 effort, Passport to Magonia, widely regarded as one of his most influential early works and, paradoxically, the effort that cast him as a pariah in the eyes of many of his ufological peers.
Mass market paperback edition of Passport to Magonia
(Credit: Archives for the Unexplained).
“At first, it was completely rejected.” he says, recalling one UFO magazine that featured his likeness shortly after Magonia was published, accompanied by the headline, “Vallée has gone off the deep end.” Today, Vallée laughs about the chiding he received from his peers, and I note a hint of nostalgia about those early works behind the dry chuckle that emerges.
“Maybe the truth was in the deep end.”
OVER THE COURSE OF the ensuing decades, Vallée would continue to challenge the extraterrestrial hypothesis favored particularly among American UFO researchers. Parallel to this effort, his professional career brought him into work with the Institute for the Future in the mid-1970s, where he worked as principal investigator on the National Science Foundation computer networking project that gave rise to one of the earliest iterations of the ARPANET conferencing system. In the following decade, Vallée would become involved in venture capitalism, first as a partner at Sofinnova, then moving on to become a general partner in multiple different Silicon Valley funds, including his involvement in private investments today.
As his professional career flourished, Vallée never lost sight of his fascination with strange aerial phenomena. He authored a string of follow-ups to Magonia on the topic of UFOs throughout the 1970s and 80s, each continuing to build on the premise that the phenomenon could be far more complex than conventional opinions on UFOs would offer. His pioneering work continued to garner attention along the way, even serving as the inspiration for Claude Lacombe, a French scientist portrayed by actor François Truffaut in Stephen Spielberg’s classic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Actor François Truffaut in Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (fair use).
In the 1990s, Vallée authored a trilogy of books that focused on the prospects of alien contact. However, he always maintained a healthy distance from drawing conclusions about what any exotic technologies behind UFOs might represent. It was also during this period that Vallée began working with real estate developer Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), a privately funded scientific research effort that looked at UFOs and related phenomena.
In July 2014, Vallée presented a paper at the GEIPAN International Workshop in Paris, France, titled “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Strategy for Research,” offering both a snapshot of what he had learned about the complexities of the phenomenon over several decades of study, as well as what he believed might be a path toward more fruitful future research.
“After years of ideological arguments based on anecdotal data the field of UAP research appears ready to emerge into a more mature phase of reliable study,” Vallée wrote in the paper’s abstract. Citing the mounting scientific interest in UAP around the world, based in part on documents conveying an official military interest in these phenomena, the scientist argued that the path forward would require the analysis of hard data, paired with intelligently informed theoretical studies.
“Without pre-judging the origin and nature of the phenomena, a range of opportunities arise for investigation,” Vallée wrote, warning that “such projects need to generate new hypotheses and test them in a rigorous way against the accumulated reports of thousands of observers.”
The problem was that in 2014, despite the existence of several notable independent catalogs containing information on historical incidents, there was no single collection of reliable UAP reports—a centralized database, in other words—upon which such studies could rely. This had been part of what prompted Vallée to assemble such a database for NIDS, work that would later carry over as Bigelow’s efforts moved out of the private sector and into the official world as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP).
(Credit: Jacques Vallée/fair use)
“In the United States the National Institute for Discovery Science (“NIDS”) and the Bigelow Aerospace Corporation have initiated a series of special catalogues to safeguard their own reports from public sources and from their staff,” Vallée wrote in his 2014 paper, adding that he had been asked to develop a UAP data warehouse containing 11 individual databases.
“The project is known as ‘Capella,’” it stated.
According to slides accompanying Vallée’s 2014 presentation, the Capella project focused on several areas that ranged from patterns emerging from UAP data to possible physics underlying the phenomenon and its impact on humans.
During our call, Vallée spoke candidly about the project and what he hopes it might still be used to achieve.
“There is such a database. It is the one we built as part of the AATIP/BAASS project in Las Vegas,” Vallée told me. Comprising roughly 260,000 cases from countries around the world, the scientist said during our call that the Capella database had been one of the major focal points of the program.
“Contrary to what people believe, [Capella] is the largest part of the budget that was spent on the classified project,” Vallée said. This included paying for translations of incident reports from Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages into English, and providing funding for teams that conducted additional research on-site.
“It was a large effort for two years, Vallée said, though he added that in reality, “probably close to fifty or sixty years of work went into the database.” Although Capella constitutes what is arguably the most extensive database containing information on UAP ever built, don’t expect to see it any time soon; it remains classified as a part of the data developed under the DIA’s AAWSAP program managed by James Lackatski between 2008 and 2010.
“The database is still classified, to my knowledge,” Vallée said during our call, prompting me to ask whether such a vast amount of historical information on the UAP subject shouldn’t be made publicly available.
Speaking with The Debrief in December 2021, Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D., director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies and a longtime colleague of Vallée, expressed frustration over previous statements made by Colm Kelleher, Ph.D., another of the scientists who worked on the AAWSAP program, who noted that much of the AAWSAP data will likely remain classified.
“I mean, isn’t that discouraging, disappointing, [and] ridiculous,” Rodeghier told The Debrief. “It’s not work on how we can get a hypersonic missile. It’s UFO investigations. How can that be classified at this point? And the answer, of course, is that it shouldn’t be classified now.”
During our call, Vallée expressed similar sentiments to Rodeghier’s, although he also defended Capella’s current classified status on account of some of the information it protects.
“You make a good point,” Vallée told me. “That’s the kind of thing that should be accessible to science,” although adding that “it will be accessible to very highly competent people who can continue to look at it under the proper classification.”
“I think it’s properly classified,” Vallée added, “because it contains a lot of medical data that should be private.” However, he said that he thinks that over time, perhaps portions can be “sanitized” for release to the public, “so that we don’t invade the privacy of individuals who have reported those things, especially their medical data.”
“It’s not classified for any military or intelligence reason as far as I know,” Vallée said. “But I’m not part of the project anymore.” Vallée noted that even he no longer has access to Capella, although several longtime colleagues of his who still work in government do.
“I’m very proud to have worked on that,” Vallée said. “It’s probably the high water mark in the computer study of UFOs so far.”
“But as we know, the high water mark is going to go even higher after this.”
DESPITE HIS OWN LEVEL of involvement with government UAP studies, as well as the level of interest generated by videos of unidentified objects collected by the U.S. military—the existence of which Vallée himself hinted at in Geneva as early as 2013—the 83-year-old scientist still doesn’t necessarily hold military UAP data in higher regard than that collected by civilians.
“The military cases in the databases I know of are less than ten percent in every country,” Vallee said during our call. “They are really good because the military has radar. They have, of course, planes that can chase the objects… pilots who are very well trained and very well positioned to give a description.”
“Those are excellent reports,” Vallée concedes. “But what about the farmer in the field, who sees [an object] close to him, and has traces, and has materials? Who has felt physiological reactions?”
“What about those cases?” he asks. “They are full of information.”
Vallée’s appreciation for UAP information collected from non-governmental sources is particularly evident in his latest book, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret, coauthored with Italian journalist Paola Leopizzi Harris. In it, they unravel the story of two men, Jose Padilla and Reme Baca, who claim to have witnessed the crash of an unusual aircraft near San Antonito, New Mexico, in August 1945. Padilla, who went on to become a State Trooper in Rowland Heights, California, maintained that as children, he and Baca had seen a large, dull-gray avocado-shaped object—along with its frantic occupants—where it had apparently crashed near his family’s ranch. The object, they say, was later recovered by the military.
Vallée while conducting field research in New Mexico in advance of the publication of Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret(Credit: Jacques Vallée).
In a newly updated second edition of the book, Vallée and Harris present additional witness testimony they have gathered about the alleged incident, which includes an observation of the crash remembered by the family of Lt. Colonel William J. Brothy, who at the time had been piloting a B-25 on a training mission. According to Brothy, he and his crew had flown over the site and recalled, “There were a lot of pieces.”
In Trinity, Vallée emphasizes what he believes are undeniable similarities between descriptions of the 1945 incident and a UAP landing in New Mexico observed by police officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964. Then, the following year another strikingly similar incident occurred near Valensole, France, involving the close observation of a landed craft and its apparent pilot or occupant.
“There is a case in Valensole, in France, and the case in Socorro. The object is identical to the Trinity object,” Vallée said. “And the [occupants] are identical to the creatures that Mr. Padilla is describing to me at Trinity, that he saw.”
“I was involved in Socorro, and I was involved in Valensole. Those are cases I know very well,” Vallée said, adding that Trinity contains new information on the Socorro case, once referred to by Hector Quintanilla, director of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book at the time of the incident, as being “the best documented case on record.”
Today, much of Vallée’s research is focused on the collection and study of material samples believed to have been collected from UAP. Compared with his earlier work, which challenged popular notions about extraterrestrials being associated with UAP, this might surprise longtime followers of the scientist’s work. For Vallée, however, it is only the next phase in the many decades he has spent working toward resolving the mystery.
“It’s all one thing,” Vallée said during our call. “The first book I wrote was Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which… I took as a study of extraterrestrial intelligence in general, and how it was I thought UFOs illustrated the idea of life elsewhere and intelligence elsewhere… that’s definitely the place from which we started.”
“Then, when I started working with Dr. Hynek, and I started working with—in those days, it was just called ‘computer catalogs,’ it wasn’t dignified as databases or data warehouses—but those catalogs held thousands of cases. My first complete catalog was donated to the Condon Committee at the University of Colorado, when they did the study funded by the Air Force.”
“Which,” Vallée notes, “to my surprise, concluded the problem didn’t exist. So, we’ve come a long way from that.”
Given his level of involvement in working to resolve the UAP question—an effort now spanning more than six decades, including his involvement in official government UAP investigations in several countries and having authored some of the most popular books ever written on the subject—perhaps the most surprising thing expressed by Vallée during our discussion had been his predictions about how he thinks his own work will be remembered by future generations.
“I think everything I’ve done, and everything my contemporaries have done, is going to be forgotten,” he said, mirroring his observations of the invention, and subsequent reinvention, of so many other innovations in science over time, not least among them the World Wide Web.
“And then in a few years, it’s going to be reinvented by, you know, great people at Stanford and Harvard in a new way,” he tells me, accompanied by the distinctive chuckle I had by now come to expect after one of his witty responses.
“That’s always the way science works.”
Micah Hanks is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. Follow his work atmicahhanks.com and on Twitter:@MicahHanks.
Human-caused climate change is transforming the world at a lightning pace. New research reveals exactly what that means for Alaska’s glaciers and icefields. These critical bodies of frozen water are shrinking much faster than current models predict, and the rate of ice loss is accelerating rapidly, according to a study published July 2 in the journal Nature Communications. The science suggests icefields in Alaska and similar regions could soon reach a tipping point past which no amount of climate mitigation or greenhouse gas emissions could stop their decline, with unsettling implications for sea level rise.
“It’s incredibly worrying,” said Bethan Davies, lead study author and a glaciologist at Newcastle University in England in a statement. “The feedback processes this sets in motion [are] likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession.”
More than 20 percent of global sea level rise results from mountain glaciers and ice cap melt and Alaska’s glaciers are already the largest single contributor among that portion. The new findings indicate that the state’s future contributions to rising tides may soon be baked-in, and impossible to prevent.
Davies and her co-authors combined historical aerial photographs, geologic data on the most recent glacial maxima, and satellite images to specifically quantify volume and area loss at one site, which likely carries implications for others. They focused their analysis on Juneau Icefield, a sprawling expanse composed of about 1,000 glaciers covering about 1,500 square miles on the Alaska/British Columbia border, and assessed how the formation changed between 1770 and 2020.
The scientists found some alarming trends. Following the end of the “Little Ice Age” that spanned from about 1300 to 1750, ice loss was relatively consistent between 1770 and 1979. During that period, Juneau Icefield lost between .65 and 1.01 cubic kilometers (0.16 to 0.24 cubic miles) of ice each year. Between 1979 and 2010, that rate increased to 3.08 to 3.72 cubic kilometers of ice loss annually. From 2010 to 2020, the rate of ice loss doubled in just a decade, rising to about 5.91 cubic kilometers per year. Zooming in on a narrower and more recent time period, losses accelerated even further between 2015 and 2020.
All of this has unfolded against the backdrop of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and rising average temperatures. Summer temperatures at Juneau Icefield were about 1 degree Celsus warmer, on average, from 2001 to 2020 than they were from 1941 to 1970. The mean winter temperature for the same time period is up more than 2 degrees C, lengthening the annual period of melt.
More than 20 percent of global sea level rise results from mountain glaciers and ice cap melt and Alaska’s glaciers are already the largest single contributor among that portion.
DAVID MARANO PHOTOGRAPHY/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
As of 2019, 100 percent of the glaciers mapped at Juneau Icefield were receding and 108 had disappeared completely. The total ice loss since the Little Ice Age maximum is estimated to be about 24.25 percent of the icefield’s volume. In addition to the loss of ice volume and area, the remaining ice field is becoming increasingly fragmented and vulnerable.
As the melt eats away at the ice field and its glaciers, several knock-on processes are triggered which can lead to feedback loops that, in turn, produce more melting. For one, Juneau Icefield (as with many Alaskan icefields) is relatively flat, so it’s losing volume all over. As this happens, it becomes less thick and, over time, the surface of the ice gets closer to sea level. At lower elevations, the air is warmer, and melting increases.
Another feedback loop occurs when fresh snow accumulation is reduced at lower altitudes, as the icefield surface gets farther away from the snowline. With less fresh snow, the icefield surface becomes dirtier and less reflective. These darker surfaces absorb more heat and additional melting ensues. Fragmentation that exposes rocks and gravel also reduces the reflectivity (or “albedo”) of the icefield, and enables hotter air to penetrate deeper into glaciers.
Each of these processes individually is “destabilizing”, write the study authors, and together they are even worse news. Scientists rely on mathematical and computer models to try to predict how ice losses are set to unfold under climate change. However, existing icefield models often don’t consider these sorts of feedback loops and fail to capture the depth, breadth, and speed of planetary modification underway.
Currently, models suggest that Juneau Icefield should be losing ice linearly through 2040, with losses only accelerating after 2070, but the new study indicates those models are flawed. “Current glacier projections may be too small and underestimate glacier melt in the future,” Davies said. If we want to understand what the coming decades hold, we’ll have to pay closer attention to the past.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.