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Japan Is the World’s No. 1 Hotspot for UFO Sightings. Officials Are Trying to Figure Out Why.

Japan is no stranger to reports of unidentified flying objects. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s most famous UFO sighting out of Kofu, the capital city of Yamanashi Prefecture, in which two boys claimed to have met a grounded alien following reports of flying saucers. A mini UFO that was supposedly captured in Kochi Prefecture in 1972 and multiple 1974 sightings in Hokkaido Prefecture round out what enthusiasts see as Japan’s classic “big three” incidents.

Throughout the 1970s, residents in and around the town of Iino, near Senganmori Mountain, began reporting frequent sightings that they credit to the region’s spiritual and magnetic forces. The town’s location in Fukushima Prefecture has continued to draw more UFO attention, especially over the last decade. In fact, a rash of recent UFO sightings in Japan have occurred around nuclear facilities. Online forums and YouTube accounts are stacked with descriptions and videos of moving lights and clustered Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (the modern-day term for a UFO) in the skies over Fukushima following the nuclear disaster there in 2011.

When strange UAP reports begin to pour in from a country’s nuclear or defense facilities, it seems governments start to take the threat more seriously.

Japanese officials met on May 28, 2024 to announce the formation of an 80-plus-member, bipartisan look into increased UAP sightings within the country, especially in the Fukushima region. The new investigative body comes on the heels of last year’s U.S. Navy disclosures—detailing pilots’ accounts of aircraft capable of impossible maneuvers—and Congressional investigations into those reports. As a result, the U.S. Department of Defense created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in July 2022 to trigger a more serious look into the threats UAPs may pose.

Similarly, Japan’s response to ongoing sightings in the Land of the Rising Sun demonstrate how those lights in the sky are now considered legitimate national security threats, worthy of official mainstream investigation. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy to uncover the truth.

Aliens, Drones, Birds, or Myths?

Avi Loeb, Ph.D., is a physicist and professor at Harvard University. In a landscape where people make up their minds about UAP incidents before a proper investigation, Loeb applauds the Japanese approach of looking at its sightings from a more serious perspective.

“In the UAP field, there are skeptics and there are believers,” Loeb says. “Unfortunately, none of them are doing the hard work. That’s why it’s important to see government efforts such as AARO and this body in Japan approach UAPs objectively. In both cases, they’re considering possible security threats, but they’re not trying to debunk them.”

Loeb understands that citizens reporting UAP sightings in Japan, the U.S., or elsewhere most likely want to believe that they’re spotting extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, official efforts emerging from Japan and the Department of Defense must consider every possible explanation.

“I lead the Galileo Project at Harvard [the systematic scientific search for evidence of extraterrestrial technological artifacts],” Loeb explains. “In our work, we must first consider if an object is naturally occurring like a meteor or a bird, or if it’s human-made like a drone or a balloon. I think that is the approach these government agencies must take.”

As for why Japan has become a recent hotbed for UAP activity, the human psychology of mass hysteria and confirmation bias could play a role.

Mick West is a science writer with the Center of Inquiry, an Amherst, New York-based organization that investigates pseudoscience. He took a look at the Japanese claims of UAPs around Fukushima and would credit the decade’s worth of reports to people watching the area and wanting to get in on the proverbial UFO flap.

“We see a lot of videos and reports coming out of Fukushima because it’s a world famous site of a nuclear plant disaster,” says West, who has analyzed hundreds of UAP sightings. “There are a lot of 24/7 webcams around the power station. It’s natural for there to be more eyes looking at the area, and it’s likely those webcams are occasionally going to capture something people can’t identify such as a bird or an airplane. Once the public reports any of those images or videos as a UFO, people start going back looking for more images and videos to report as UFOs.”

As for Japan’s ongoing status as a UAP hotbed, West credits the clustering of reports to the true believers wanting to participate in the action or translating local superstitions into alien legends.

“You also see a town like Kofu wanting to brand itself as the Japanese Roswell to boost tourism,” West adds, drawing a comparison to the small New Mexico town that built international fame out of media reports of a crashed flying saucer in 1947.

It does seem possible that Japan’s myths, legends, and rich narrative tradition could be driving the suggestion of UAP reports, according to Joshua Frydman, Ph.D., an associate professor of Japanese at the University of Oklahoma who also wrote The Japanese Myths: A Guide to Gods, Heroes and Spirits in 2022. He says the foundational tales of eras past can inspire everything from pop culture trends to new faiths to the latest craze—and UAPs can easily fall into any of those categories.

“Ancient mythology is not only deeply incorporated into popular culture, but actively known and discussed in popular books, including ones on ‘secrets’ of being Japanese,” Frydman explains. “It’s also the foundation of several ‘new religions’ or the Japanese idea of cults, like the one responsible for the sarin gas attacks by Aum Shinrikyo on the Tokyo subways in 1995.”

Frydman notes that the influence of centuries-old stories on Japanese culture is somewhat recent as he claims it was not known as widely before the 1890s. He paints a portrait of an ancient society struggling to incorporate a late-hour introduction of the past’s mythology—while driving much of the world’s 20th- and 21st-century technological evolution.

“The current widespread knowledge of the ancient myths is related to the pre-World War II government’s attempt to make Shinto into a modern national religion by teaching the myths as actual history in schools,” he adds.

A Matter of Science and National Security

Given that the Japanese Parliament’s early summer announcement of its new UAP probe followed right on the heels of America’s creation of AARO, it might seem that the U.S. applied a form of international peer pressure to make UAP investigations a global effort.

However, Loeb believes potential threats from nations like China and North Korea have actually forced Japan and the U.S. into this position.

“Obviously, confirming extraterrestrial intelligence would be massively important for science as it would prove that we’re not alone,” Loeb explains. “But, importantly for national security, it’s essential for officials to admit we need to know what these objects are. In the case of Japan, there are nearby countries who want to spy on that nation. That government needs to know if they’re spotting drones or other devices used for espionage.”

As UAP investigations become a matter of public record in the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere, the PBS series NOVA will dig into the international question of UAPs in the upcoming January 2025 program, “What Are UFOs?” Julia Cort and Chris Schmidt, co-executive producers on the project, agree that efforts around the world to study the nature of UAPs will help to move the field beyond folklore or hype—and perhaps truly make some discoveries.

“It’s not just a question of what’s happening in Japan or the U.S. with these new official investigations,” Cort says. “This is a topic so many people are curious about, and the time is right to tackle it because the tone of the examinations and discussions around it have changed. There’s different kinds of evidence now, and it’s being taken more seriously.”

Schmidt hopes that UAP policy developments don’t become the main focus of what’s really going on in our skies.

“It’s important to look at what science can tell us about what [UAPs] are, rather than watch what defense departments are doing about them,” Schmidt says. “If any of us anywhere in the world see something they can’t explain or read a report about a sighting, there are questions we can ask to wrap our heads around possible explanations.”

Back in Japan, as the new UAP investigative body ramps up, the current government’s opposition leader, Yoshiharu Asakawa, went on the record opposing any concept of serious study on the topic. Via interpreted reports, he called UAPs “an occult matter that has nothing to do with politics.”

However, investigation member and former defense minister Yasukazu Hamada echoed the thoughts of Loeb and other scientists, insisting both national security and scientific exploration make UAP studies essential.

“It is extremely irresponsible of us to be resigned to the fact that something is unknowable and to keep turning a blind eye to the unidentified,” Hamada said.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

12-08-2024 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

The following topographical map brings clarity.

The ancient lakebed consists of several basins surrounding and including the Caralis Chaos region. In the distant past, they were all joined into one big lake named Lake Eridania. It had a surface area of about 1.1 million square km. The largest non-ocean body of water on Earth is the Caspian Sea, with a surface area of 389,000 km.

Liquid water was likely abundant on early Mars between about 4.1 and 3 billion years ago during the Noachian and Hesperian Periods. Mars may have even hosted a massive ocean that covered about one-third of its surface. Eridania Lake was likely a single lake until the late Noachian when Mars gradually lost its water. During that period, the lake was fragmented into multiple smaller lakes.

The ancient lakebed is now punctuated with mounds. Scientists think Mars’ dusty winds initially formed the mounds. Later, they were covered by water, then the water disappeared, and they were exposed to the wind again.

The floors of all of the basins that comprised Eridania Lake are covered by light-toned materials containing Fe/Mg-phyllosilicates. The region also has chloride, indicating that a playa region once existed here as the water receded. Some of the geological evidence in the region suggests that some surface water may have survived until long after the Noachian.

There’s also evidence of volcanic activity. Two large faults called fossae run through the region. Collectively, they’re known as Sirenum Fossae.

The region between the two faults is called a graben, a depressed portion of the crust. Sirenum Fossae was formed as Mars’ Tharsis region, a vast volcanic plateau that’s home to Olympus Mons and Tharsis Montes, rose up and put enormous pressure on the crust.

These images all come from the ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter. It has been orbiting Mars since 2004, mapping its surface and minerals and studying the planet’s interior, subsurface, and atmosphere. It has been in orbit for more than 20 years. The ESA has extended its mission until at least the end of 2026 and has given it a provisional extension until 2028.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ )

12-08-2024 om 23:19 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ )

12-08-2024 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

We may be already seeing the makings of next solar cycle, peeking out through the current one.

It’s been a wild ride. Thus far, Solar Cycle Number 25 has been one of the strongest cycles in recent memory, producing several massive sunspot groups. The current large region turned Earthward (Active Region 3780) is now easily visible with eclipse glasses… no magnification needed. Cycle 25 started back in 2019.

A Stormy Year

To be sure, the latest solar cycle will be one for the history books, as it heads towards an active maximum in 2025. But even though Cycle 25 will run out through the remainder of the current decade, there are already signs that Cycle 26 could be beginning, just under the roiling solar surface. A study out of the University of Birmingham recently presented at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomical Meeting in Hull (United Kingdom) shows that key indicators for the start of the next cycle may already be in place.

Numbering the solar cycle under current the convention goes all the way back to the start of Cycle 1 in 1755. The pattern for numbering cycles was started in 1852 by astronomer Rudolf Wolf.

We know that a new solar cycle has formally started when sunspots appear at higher solar latitudes. These also typically have a reversed polarity, versus the previous cycle. These then push down near the solar equator as the cycle progresses. Spot from two cycles can also mix as the transition gets underway.

Laying out spots from successive cycles versus latitude creates a butterfly diagram that demonstrates this effect, in what’s known as Spörer’s Law.

Peering Inside the Sun

But there’s more to the Sun than meets the eye. As a large ball of hydrogen and helium gas, the Sun does not rotate as a single solid mass. Instead, it rotates faster at the equator (25 days) versus near the poles (34 days). Scientists can probe the solar interior via a method known as solar helioseismology, which looks at waves crossing the solar photosphere in an effort to model the interior.

These internal sound waves form bands in a phenomenon known as solar torsional oscillation. Faster-rotation belts appear as a harbinger of the next cycle. These move along with visible sunspots towards the solar equator as the cycle progresses.

“The indication of Cycle 26 that we see is that the solar rotation has been speeding up at around 50 degrees latitude and now appears to be leveling off,” Rachel Howe (University of Birmingham) told Universe Today. “This forms part of a pattern called the torsional oscillation, where bands of slightly faster and slower rotation emerge at mid-latitudes before the cycle officially starts and move down to lower latitudes, alongside the sunspot activity, as the cycle develops. In earlier cycles we have seen that the faster-rotating band associated with the cycle can be traced back to around the maximum of the previous cycle, and we think we’re seeing the beginning of the pattern again. It will still be several years before we can expect to see sunspots belonging to the new cycle, though!”

Monitoring the Sun Around the Clock

The Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) makes the science of helioseismology possible. This is a worldwide network that monitors the Sun continuously. In space, the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager aboard the joint ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) compliments this effort. The Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) also plays a key role in this campaign. This effort goes back to 1995, spanning the last three solar cycles.

This gives researchers a look at the start of the last two solar cycles. It also hints at what might be in store for the start of Solar Cycle 26. “If we can understand how this flow pattern relates to the sunspot cycle, we may be able to do better at predicting how strong the next solar maximum will be and when it will occur,” says Howe.

Solar Cycle 25 has thus far been extremely active, far beyond expectations. This follows the historic lull that preceded it between Cycles 24 and 25. Observers saw few sunspots during this profound minimum. Still, this fell in line with many predictions made by astronomers who study the Sun, suggesting a stronger than usual cycle on rebound.

Looking Ahead to Cycle 26

“The Sun is always surprising,” says Howe. “Some of the most exciting discoveries recently have come from the spacecraft—Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe—that are flying closer to the Sun than ever before, helping scientists to unravel the connections between what we see on the Sun’s surface and the ‘space weather’ events that affect us on Earth. We’re looking at the surface of the Sun in more detail than ever before, but there’s also a place for long-term studies (which this work is a part of) that follow the large-scale patterns inside the Sun over decades.”

The May 10^th solar storm was thus far the most impressive one of the cycle. This storm sent aurora to latitudes far south as Spain and Mexico, areas where aurorae are rarely seen. We were treated to a persistent red glow watching from central Germany, an unforgettable sight.

Solar Cycles and More

Historically, the Wolf Sunspot Number defines the level of solar activity. Astronomers refer to this as the Relative or Zürich Sunspot Number. One 2013 study suggested that the orientation and strength of the heliospheric current sheet is a better indicator of the health of the current solar cycle, rather than the sunspot number.

We usually say it’s an 11-year solar cycle from one minima/maxima to the next… but it’s actually double that length. The Sun’s magnetic field flips every 11-years, returning to the same relative orientation every 22 years.

We see ‘starspot cycles’ on other suns as well. It is also unclear why an 11-year cycle is ‘baked in’ to our Sun. We’re also unsure if this has always been the case throughout its 4.6-billion year life span.

This research provides a great model to test the next solar cycle, as we struggle to understand and live with our tempestuous star.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ )

12-08-2024 om 22:57 geschreven door peter  

• Do you know more? Email tips@dailymail.com 
• READ MORE: Drone spying scandal involving Matildas rival 

By Lisa Edser For Daily Mail Australia

Astonishing footage has emerged of a possible UFO sighting after flickering coloured lights were spotted in the sky north of Adelaide.

A woman posted the video, which was filmed in Robertstown in South Australia's mid north region at 8.45pm on Saturday, to an Adelaide UFO sightings Facebook page.

'We were watching two lights move up down left right,' the woman's friend commented on the post.

'(The lights) shine very bright then just disappear, only to reappear again.

'This was happening just left of and below the moon.'

The video captured a series of coloured lights flickering in the sky.

'We're not too sure what it could be,' a woman can be heard in the background.

'It's just really bizarre.'

The flickering lights (pictured bottom) were seen below the moon with a woman's voice on the video calling the sighting 'bizarre'

Aussies were stunned by the pair's experience and their footage. 

'Freaky AF,' one wrote.

Others claimed they spotted similar sightings in other parts of South Australia. 

'I saw similar at Semaphore Beach,' another said. 

Another wrote: 'I saw something today. It wasn't lights it was during early arvo just an object hovering way to high to be a drone it was moving a bit then stopping kept fading in and out.'

A third commented: 'I saw a similar thing about six months ago in the hills. Three coloured lights in a line moving steadily downwards. Didn't have my phone on me.'

But not all Aussies were convinced the footage showed a UFO and believed there was a simple explanation.

'Drones usually have that coloured lighting,' one wrote.

Another added: 'I feel pretty definite that they are drones with those coloured flickering lights.'

A third wrote: 'Someone playing with drones maybe!'

But a drone pilot pointed out that drones are rarely up that high. 

The possible UFO sighting was filmed in Robertstown, South Australia (pictured) at 8.45pm on Saturday night

'I'm a high altitude drone pilot, (hobby only ) it just amazes me with all these pretty lights I never catch anything when I'm up,' one wrote.

'And about at 5km looking around, I can assure there is bugger all - in fact NO other drones around any part of the day or night, NOTAM can confirm this.'

The footage comes after a spate of UFO sightings in South Australia over the last decade.

South Australia's Astronomical Society's Paul Curnow previously told ABC News that UFO sightings are fairly common.

'The average city person doesn't look at the sky very often and sometimes when they do look up and see something strange, they can't really explain it,' he said. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

12-08-2024 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

Binnenkort wordt een enorme explosie op 3000 lichtjaar afstand verwacht: de gebeurtenis zal met het blote oog zichtbaar zijn

door Janine

NASA

De nachtelijke hemel lijkt onbeweeglijk en onveranderlijk, de sterrenbeelden lijken vast en zonder bijzondere veranderingen. Toch zal de hemel binnenkort een gebeurtenis bevatten waar astronomen al jaren op wachten: een enorme explosie op duizenden lichtjaren van de aarde vandaan. En ja, die zal met het blote oog te zien zijn.

Een nova-explosie die binnenkort met het blote oog te zien is

T Coronae Borealis is een binair systeem dat zich op ongeveer 3000 lichtjaar van de aarde bevindt en bestaat uit een witte dwerg en een rode reus. Velen zijn bekend met de term “rode reus”, dat wil zeggen een ster van een bepaalde grootte in de laatste fase van zijn leven: de zon zal over vijf miljard jaar ook een rode reus worden. Het geval van witte dwergen is anders, niet meer bestaande sterren die een massa hebben die vergelijkbaar is met die van de zon, maar gecomprimeerd tot de grootte van de aarde, of zelfs kleiner.

Kortom, het is een zeer dichte ster met een bijzonder sterke zwaartekracht. Precies om deze reden trekt de witte dwerg die aanwezig is in het T Coronae Borealis-systeem waterstof aan van de rode reus en hoopt dit op aan zijn oppervlak. Op een gegeven moment zullen de gasdruk en de hitte een kritiek niveau bereiken, met verwoestende gevolgen: er ontstaat een thermonucleaire explosie die het opgehoopte materiaal de ruimte in werpt. Het proces herhaalt zich gemiddeld elke 80 jaar, en zal binnenkort opnieuw plaatsvinden.

Hoe de explosie van T Coronae Borealis te herkennen

Het cyclische karakter van de T Coronae Borealis nova is op zijn eigen manier al enige tijd bekend: de eerste geregistreerde waarneming dateert uit de herfst van 1217, toen de explosie werd opgemerkt door een abt in Duitsland. Volgens NASA zal de explosie met het blote oog zichtbaar zijn en niet zo moeilijk te herkennen: trek gewoon een rechte lijn tussen Arcturus en Vega, twee van de helderste sterren op het noordelijk halfrond. Het sterrenbeeld Corona Borealis, waar T Coronae Borealis deel van uitmaakt, heeft de vorm van een hoefijzer en bevindt zich ten westen van het sterrenbeeld Hercules. Dit zijn de woorden van Rebekah Hounsell van NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center:

Dit evenement wordt een unieke ervaring die een nieuwe generatie astronomen kan inspireren. Het zal jongeren in staat stellen een kosmische gebeurtenis te observeren, vragen te stellen en gegevens te verzamelen.

En in feite zullen we, vergeleken met de vorige nova in 1946, een verzameling instrumenten hebben die toen gewoon ondenkbaar was. De Fermi Gamma-ray ruimtetelescoop, de James Webb ruimtetelescoop en NuSTAR en natuurlijk miljarden mensen zullen de gebeurtenis observeren.

Een buitengewone kans voor de astronomie

We weten natuurlijk dat de verwachte explosie al zo'n 3000 jaar geleden plaatsvond, en dat het licht ervan richting de aarde reist. De gebeurtenis zal echter van relatief korte duur zijn en de nova zal minder dan een week zichtbaar blijven aan de nachtelijke hemel. Dit is een buitengewone kans om de structuur en dynamiek van terugkerende stellaire explosies te bestuderen.

Maar is het zeker dat de dreigende explosie zal plaatsvinden? Ja en nee. Zoals we al zeiden, komen novae van T Coronae Borealis gemiddeld elke 80 jaar voor, en het is redelijk om aan te nemen dat de nieuwe explosie op komst is. Toch blijven deze hemelse verschijnselen zeer onstabiel en onvoorspelbaar. Er zullen ongetwijfeld veel ogen naar de hemel gericht zijn, op zoek naar een gloed in een nachtelijke hemel die vaak te stil en onveranderlijk is.

Source:

• https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/nasa-global-astronomers-await-rare-nova-explosion/

Finding T Coronae Borealis

A conceptual image of how to find Hercules and the “Northern Crown” in the night sky, created using planetarium software. Look up after sunset during summer months to find Hercules, then scan between Vega and Arcturus, where the distinct pattern of Corona Borealis may be identified.

NASA

A coordinated scientific approach

Watch V407 Cyg go nova! In this animation, gamma rays (magenta) arise when accelerated particles in the explosion's shock wave crash into the red giant's stellar wind.

NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/v}

12-08-2024 om 17:55 geschreven door peter  

The “Tic Tac” UFO: Unraveling the Mysterious Encounter Over San Diego

In November 2004, an extraordinary event occurred off the coast of San Diego that continues to intrigue and mystify both the public and the military. During routine training exercises conducted by a group of U.S. warships, an unidentified flying object (UFO), later described as resembling a “Tic Tac,” was detected. This incident, now famously known as the “Tic Tac” UFO encounter, has sparked widespread interest and debate about the nature of the object and the possibility of advanced, unidentified technologies operating in our skies.

The Encounter: A Routine Exercise Turns Unusual

The event began when the warships, including the USS Princeton, detected multiple unidentified objects on their radar systems near Catalina Island, about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. Initially, these radar contacts were dismissed as glitches in the newly implemented radar system. However, after rebooting the system, the objects reappeared, leading the Navy to deploy F-18 fighter jets to investigate further.

As the Navy pilots approached the location, they observed a white, oval-shaped object hovering above the water. The object had no visible wings or propulsion system, making its sudden and rapid movements all the more perplexing. At one point, the UFO reportedly descended from an altitude of 80,000 feet to just above the water’s surface in less than a second—a feat that defies the capabilities of known human technology.

Eyewitness Accounts: Confusion and Alarm

Naval Officer Ryan Weigelt, who was stationed on the USS Princeton, recalled being summoned to the ship’s bridge, where he witnessed the chaotic scene as crew members attempted to make sense of what they were seeing. Weigelt observed the object on video monitors and radar screens, noting that the extreme speeds and maneuvers of the “Tic Tac” UFO would generate G-forces far beyond what any human-made aircraft could withstand.

Pilots involved in the encounter, including Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, described the object as engaging with something below the water’s surface. This underwater presence was estimated to be about the size of a Boeing 737, and it seemed to be interacting with the “Tic Tac” in a manner that suggested intelligence or coordination. Moments later, the airborne object performed a series of evasive maneuvers before accelerating away at an incredible speed, leaving the Navy jets unable to track it.

The Implications: Technology Beyond Our Understanding?

The “Tic Tac” incident has raised significant questions about the nature of the technology involved. The extreme capabilities displayed by the object—such as rapid acceleration, sudden directional changes, and the ability to hover without any visible means of propulsion—are far beyond the known technology of any nation on Earth. This has led to speculation that the object could be of extraterrestrial origin or that some unknown party possesses highly advanced technology.

What makes this incident even more compelling is the fact that it is not an isolated event. Over a decade later, in July 2019, Navy aircraft recorded video of another unidentified object disappearing into the ocean in the same general area off the coast of Southern California. The recurrence of such encounters in a concentrated geographical area suggests that these events may be connected and that something unusual is happening in this region.

Conclusion: The Ongoing Mystery of the “Tic Tac” UFO

The “Tic Tac” UFO encounter remains one of the most compelling UFO sightings in recent history. Despite extensive investigations, the origin and nature of the object remain unexplained. The incident has fueled ongoing discussions about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and the possibility of advanced technologies operating in our skies and oceans that are beyond our current understanding.

• https://youtu.be/YGZ-EpUkiNE

As the U.S. Navy continues to detect and document similar incidents, the “Tic Tac” UFO remains a subject of intense interest for both the military and the general public. Whether these objects are the result of secretive human technology, natural phenomena, or something more otherworldly, they continue to challenge our understanding of the world and our place in the universe.

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

12-08-2024 om 17:39 geschreven door peter  

China’s Robotaxi Dreams Spark Economic Anxiety Over AI’s Threat

{ https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ }

12-08-2024 om 16:57 geschreven door peter  

Story by Prabhat Ranjan Mishra

China’s robot with light-driven system can be used like bullet, transform ballistics

Ateam of researchers led by a Chinese scientists has developed a light-driven launch system for tiny robots. The new development is expected to transform ballistics and aerospace industry.

The light-driven hydrogel launcher is inspired by squirting cucumber plants.

Claimed to release energy in only 0.3 milliseconds, the launcher can take off from any kind of surface.

Researchers claimed that the engineered accumulated strain energy-fracture power-amplification method is inspired by the pressurized fluidic squirting mechanism of Ecballium elaterium (squirting cucumber plants).

Photothermal response

Published in journal Nature, researchers realized a light-driven hydrogel launcher that harnesses fast liquid vapourization triggered by the photothermal response of an embedded graphene suspension.

“This vapourization leads to appreciable elastic energy storage within the surrounding hydrogel network, followed by rapid elastic energy release within 0.3 ms. These soft hydrogel robots achieve controlled launching at high velocity with a predictable trajectory,” said researchers.

The study claimed that robotic tasks that require robust propulsion abilities, such as jumping, ejecting, or catapulting, require power-amplification strategies where kinetic energy is generated from pre-stored energy. To solve this issue, researchers introduced their game-changing method.

Related video: 

• China`s drivers anxious as Robotaxis gain ground (WION)

• https://youtu.be/f5LrUohag1Q

The launcher can travel a distance 643 times its own body height and could even have the potential to be used like a soft bullet. It also has potential to be used like smart-seeding agriculture robot or medicinal robots for deep tissue sampling, according to reports.

Disk-shaped launcher tested on still and moving surfaces

The small, disk-shaped launcher has a diameter of just 7mm (0.27 inches) and a thickness of 3mm, but it is able to travel more than 1.93 (6.33 feet) metres vertically. The adaptable launch system, which the team tested on still and moving surfaces, including leaves, bark, and viscous liquids, could be used to develop untethered medical robots that require a high force output to enter deep tissue, reported SCMP.

Using accumulated strain energy-fracture method, researchers created the artificial squirting cucumber that disperses artificial seeds over metres, which can further achieve smart seeding through an integrated radio-frequency identification chip.

Power-amplification strategy provides a basis for propulsive motion

This power-amplification strategy provides a basis for propulsive motion to advance the capabilities of miniaturized soft robotic systems, according to research.

Researchers also claimed that the system could be used in ballistic weapons. However, they have not conducted any special test in this area.

The team demonstrated the use of the launcher in a smart seed robot by attaching a seed and radio-frequency identification (RFID) to the hydrogel matrix. When launched into a smart seed bed, the RFID is read by sensors to identify the seed type and broadcast care instructions, reported SCMP.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/channel/topic/Technology/ }

12-08-2024 om 16:50 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Drilled Into An Underwater Mountain In the Atlantic’s ‘Lost City’ To Obtain A Massive Core Sample

The deep ocean is packed with clues about early life.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

Johan Lissenberg

Johan Lissenberg, igneous petrologist at Cardiff University, and his colleagues are fascinated with the extreme temperatures of melted rock. Earth churns out molten rock, and seawater cools it down. It is intrinsic to the planet itself, and likely created life. The undersea mountain, called the Atlantis Massif, is home to a hot spring environment known as the Lost City hydrothermal field. Eons ago, a place like this may have been the cradle of unique microbes and the creatures that consumed them.

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, Lissenberg and a team of scientists analyzed the mantle rock the JOIDES Resolution research ship drilled out of Atlantis Massif last year. The trip was led by the International Ocean Discovery Program.

Down below the surface

Atlantis Massif is one of the rare places on Earth where geochemists can get their hands on material from the largest part of our planet: the upper mantle.

“Say three to four billion years ago, the continental crust was formed from magma that was sourced in the mantle," Lissenberg tells Inverse.

“But the oceanic crust is always forming. Every day, basically,” he adds. As subaquatic tectonic plates spread apart, the melted rock that makes up Earth's mantle rises up. The material that reaches the surface forms new crust. So, the drill core is a snapshot of processes happening deep below the oceanic floor otherwise inaccessible to researchers.

“The rocks that were present on early Earth bear a closer resemblance to those we retrieved during this expedition than the more common rocks that make up our continents today,” Susan Lang, an associate scientist in Geology and Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-chief scientist on the expedition, said in a study announcement.

Enigmatic reactions

The ship’s sample is mantle rock, the residue of partial melting underneath Earth’s crust. Embedded within it are minerals that may have been key to understanding early life, like serpentine. This mineral gets its name from a resemblance to snake skin. It’s usually grayish, white or green in color. It occurs when the primary mineral in mantle rock, called olivine, reacts with seawater.

This process releases hydrogen. “Hydrogen can then make compounds such as methane, which can then underpin microbial communities,” Lissenberg says.

Going forward, Lissenberg really wants to understand those reactions. The new study is a start. As the team logged the details of the core centimeter by centimeter, they were surprised. Instead of being rather homogenous, they saw a variability in the mineral composition.

This matters when scientists reconstruct the “chemical kitchen,” Lissenberg says, that led to reactions supporting life. Ultimately, Lissenberg wants to understand all the “flavors” of the upper mantle.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

12-08-2024 om 16:35 geschreven door peter  

Asteroids in Gaia data release 3

Doorbraak: ruimtetelescoop Gaia heeft mogelijk honderden manen rond ruimtestenen ontdekt

Vivian Lammerse

Het bewijst dat het door NASA geramde maantje Dimorphos zeker niet de enige is die rond een ruimtesteen cirkelt.

We weten dat planeten manen kunnen herbergen. Onze aarde heeft er bijvoorbeeld één, terwijl Saturnus met 146 erkende manen de grootste verzameling in ons zonnestelsel heeft. Maar ook ruimtestenen kunnen maantjes hebben. Denk maar aan het maantje Dimorphos, dat de plantoïde Didymos omcirkelt en door NASA’s Dart-missie van koers werd veranderd. Maar hoe uniek is het eigenlijk dat ruimtestenen maantjes hebben?

Binaire planetoïden
Het is mogelijk een stuk minder bijzonder dan we dachten. Ruimtetelescoop Gaia heeft namelijk mogelijke maantjes ontdekt rond meer dan 350 planetoïden waarvan niet eerder bekend was dat ze een metgezel hadden. Als deze ontdekking wordt bevestigd, komen er 352 nieuwe binaire planetoïden bij, wat het aantal bekende ruimtestenen met manen bijna verdubbelt.

Moeilijk te vinden
Dat er tot nu toe nog niet veel maantjes rond ruimtestenen zijn gevonden, is niet zo verwonderlijk. “Binaire planetoïden zijn lastig te vinden omdat ze vaak klein en ver weg zijn,” legt onderzoeksleider van de nieuwe studie Luana Liberato uit. “We verwachten dat iets minder dan een zesde van de planetoïden een metgezel heeft. Tot nu toe hebben we slechts 500 van de naar schatting één miljard planetoïden in binaire systemen ontdekt. Onze studie suggereert dat er nog veel manen zijn die op ontdekking wachten.”

Gaia
Door zijn speciale vermogen om de hele hemel in de gaten te houden, heeft Gaia sinds de lancering in 2013 al verschillende belangrijke ontdekkingen op het gebied van planetoïden op zijn naam staan. In de derde gegevensrelease heeft Gaia de posities en bewegingen van meer dan 150.000 planetoïden met grote precisie bepaald (zie ook de afbeelding hieronder).

Deze precisie maakte het mogelijk voor wetenschappers om verder te zoeken naar planetoïden die het typische ‘wiebelen’ vertonen, veroorzaakt door de aantrekkingskracht van een omcirkelende maan (zoals bij een binaire ster). En op deze manier kwamen onderzoekers dus honderden planetoïden met een natuurlijke satelliet op het spoor.

Meer over Gaia
ESA’s Gaia-satelliet (afkorting van Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics) werd eind 2013 gelanceerd en had een duidelijk doel voor ogen: de positie, afstand en bewegingen van miljarden sterren vastleggen, met een betere nauwkeurigheid dan ooit tevoren. De ruimtetelescoop opereert in een baan om het zogenoemde tweede Lagrangepunt, op een slordige 1,5 miljoen kilometer van de aarde. Op dit tweede Lagrangepunt zijn de zwaartekrachten tussen de aarde en de zon in evenwicht, waardoor de telescoop in een stabiele positie blijft en op lange termijn vrijwel onbelemmerd zicht heeft op de nachtelijke hemel. En de metingen zijn heel nauwkeurig; Gaia is zo gevoelig dat de telescoop zelfs de groei van een mensenhaar op de maan zou kunnen meten!

Waarom astronomen zo geïnteresseerd zijn in (de maantjes van) planetoïden? Dat komt omdat deze ruimtestenen waardevolle inzichten verschaffen in de vorming en evolutie van ons zonnestelsel. Binaire systemen zijn nog interessanter omdat ze ons de kans bieden te onderzoeken hoe verschillende hemellichamen ontstaan, botsen en met elkaar interageren in de ruimte.

Nieuwe gegegevengrelease
Ondertussen heeft Gaia al meerdere datasets vrijgegeven. In 2016 kwamen onderzoekers met de eerste dataset op de proppen. Deze bevatte de afstanden en bewegingen van twee miljoen sterren. In 2018 volgde de tweede dataset, waarin de 3D-posities, 2D-bewegingen, de helderheid en kleur van meer dan 1,3 miljard sterren werd onthuld. In 2020 volgde de derde gegevensrelease. De meer dan 150.000 ontdekte planetoïde banen werden vervolgens verfijnd als onderdeel van de Focused Product Release van dat jaar. En hier blijft het niet bij. We kunnen namelijk nóg meer planetoïde banen verwachten in de volgende gegevensrelease 4 van Gaia, die voor midden 2026 wordt verwacht.

Geheimen
Dankzij de ruimtetelescoop vergroten we dus steeds meer onze kennis over ons zonnestelsel. “Gaia heeft bewezen een geweldige ontdekkingsreiziger van planetoïden te zijn,” zegt Timo Prusti van ESA. “De telescoop werkt hard om de geheimen van het universum, zowel binnen als buiten ons zonnestelsel, te onthullen. Deze nieuwste ontdekking benadrukt hoe elke gegevensrelease van Gaia een grote verbetering in datakwaliteit betekent en laat zien welke opwindende nieuwe wetenschappelijke inzichten door de missie mogelijk worden gemaakt.”

Dat ESA zich blijft richten op het bestuderen van planetoïden blijkt ook wel uit de aanstaande lancering van de Hera-missie, later dit jaar. Hera bouwt voort op NASA’s DART-missie, die in 2022 Dimorphos ramde, om te testen of we planetoïden kunnen afbuigen. Hera zal Dimorphos na de impact onderzoeken. Het is bovendien de eerste missie die een binaire planetoïde op een bezoekje trakteert. En met aankomende missies zoals Hera in het vooruitzicht, kunnen we verwachten dat we nog veel meer zullen leren over planetoïden en hun manen, wat ons begrip van de kosmos verder zal uitbreiden.

Bronmateriaal

• "Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids" - ESA
  
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: ESA–D. Ducros, 2013

Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids

Artist impression of Hera gliding past Didymos to Dimorphos

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

12-08-2024 om 01:41 geschreven door peter  

AUFO crashed in Arizona, leaked documents claim. The US seized a UFO in May 1953 that crashed outside Kingman, near Route 66, according to a conversation between government officials.

A cartoon space ship appears to abduct a human 

(Image: Getty)

The visitors came tumbling down from the sky and slammed into the desert just east of Kingman, according to UFO researchers. Author Preston Dennett believes it's more than just a story.

He's been investigating UFOs since 1986 and is one of many who have looked at this alleged particular UFO crash, calling it the "Paradise Valley Crash" or "Kingman Crash".

The incident is not well known to those outside of Kingman and is not as famous as the 1947 Roswell Crash, but Dennett believes it to be in the top five of known UFO crashes.

"It's very rare to have multiple witnesses, multiple sources of information, confirming an incident like this," Dennett told 12news. Researchers have several differing theories as to what brought the UFO down.

To view the above tweet, please click here.

These include nuclear tests taking place in the area, unstable gravitational field lines or powerful radars being tested around Kingman to combat foreign aircraft.

At the research center at the Mohave Museum of History and Arts right off Route 66, there's a section dedicated to the UFO crash. Some redacted government documents allegedly detail the crash from those who were there.

Fritz Werner is a name that kept coming up, who Dennett now knowns him to be Arthur Stansel. Werner was a pseudonym Stansel reportedly used when he talked about what happened in Kingman.

An unidentified flying object 

(Image: Getty)

Stansel was an Air Force Engineer who studied the impact nuclear blasts had on homes and buildings, documents claim. He was one of 40 people taken to the crash scene in a blacked-out bus so passengers wouldn't know their surroundings. They were told this was part of a secret project, according to the redacted documents.

The reports claim they saw a UFO measuring 14 feet high and 30 feet in diameter upon arrival. It was made out of an unfamiliar metal that was plunged about 20 inches into the ground but was not damaged from the impact.

"It was [Stansel's] job to basically determine the speed of this object as it came down, based upon the gouge it made in the soil, and he estimated it was about 1200 miles per hour," Dennett said.

Next to the UFO, documents claim, was the reported dead body of a man, understood to be the pilot, who was described as being about four feet tall and wearing a silver metallic suit.

The workers conducted their studies on the aircraft. When they piled back on the bus, the document claims an Air Force Colonel who was heading up the operation made them take an oath to keep the mission a secret.

Around two decades later, Stansel signed an affidavit reportedly confirming what he saw. Fifty years after that, claims began circulating that investigators didn't just investigate the crash but took it.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon released a redacted conversation between him and a person he called a senior U.S. government member whose name was not disclosed.

It claimed people would be "slack-jawed" if word got out about what they knew—writing that the federal government seized the Kingman UFO.

"These craft are scooped up, taken to various Air Force bases, scientific labs, and studied intensely, intently to figure out exactly what we can figure out about how they work," Dennett said.

Dennett believes we will never truly know if what happened in Kingman is true unless the US Government admits to it. He added that this is unlikely.

{ https://www.irishstar.com/ }

12-08-2024 om 01:26 geschreven door peter  

The Saga Of David Grusch: Whistleblowers And The Potential For Hijacked Information August 7, 2024 Whistleblowers have been a part of UFO culture since the start of the modern UFO era, with some meeting some very questionable ends. However, in recent years, one whistleblower –… Read more...   Death In The Jungle: Extraterrestrial Contact Or Contract Killing? August 3, 2024 In the summer of 1966 two young men were discovered dead in a clearing in woodland in Brazil. The discovery would lead to one of the most mysterious cases of… Read more...   The Talmud of Jmmanuel Conspiracies – Opportunistic Nonsense Or Important Information? July 29, 2024 The claims of secret meanings in the Talmud of Jmmanuel would be controversial in their own right. However, the fact that the person making the claims was already associated with… Read more...   The War Of The Currents: Edison, Tesla, And Their Race To Speak With The Dead! 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Upon venturing outside to investigate, Art found himself staring at a hovering vehicle seemingly… Read more...   A Truly Strange Night Journey: The 1974 Beit Bridge UFO Teleportation Case April 12, 2024 In the early summer of 1974, husband and wife – Peter and Francis – found themselves in the middle of bizarre events as they traveled from modern-day Zimbabwe to South… Read more...   Further Claims Of A British Recovery Squad Of “Non-Human” Vehicles: The Franc Milburn Account April 5, 2024 In early 2024, a former special forces soldier with the British Armed Forces made the remarkable claim that he had been told by other special forces personnel of top-secret missions… Read more...   The Burbank UFO Landing: A Forgotten Encounter In The Middle Of A UFO Wave April 3, 2024 When a UFO landed in a backyard in California in the fall of 1973, the only witnesses to the bizarre events were a four-year-old boy, his two-year-old brother, and their… Read more...   The Hadhramaut UFO Landing And Strange Aerial Objects Of The Middle East April 1, 2024 A potential UFO landing case in the Hadhramaut region of the Middle East in the mid-1970s was one that was investigated thoroughly in the days that followed and remains one… Read more...   Something Very Strange Yet Credible: The 1967 Yvan Guindon UFO Encounter March 29, 2024 The UFO encounter of teenager, Yvan Guindon was not only an incident where physical evidence was later discovered at the scene, but the sighting was corroborated by another local resident,… Read more...   The Extraterrestrial Giants Of The Solomon Islands? 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12-08-2024 om 01:07 geschreven door peter  

Story by Andrey Feldman

Huge cosmological mystery could be solved by wormholes, new study argues

© Xuanyu Han via Getty Images

Microscopic wormholes may be driving the accelerated expansion of the universe, scientists say. These tiny wormholes are constantly being born from the vacuum of space due to subtle quantum effects.

If confirmed through experiments and observations, the wormholes could become a valuable source of information on quantum gravity — a theoretical unification of the fundamental forces of the universe, often considered to be the Holy Grail of theoretical physics.

Numerous astronomical observations show that our universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. However, Einstein's general theory of relativity states that if the universe contains only the species of particles and radiation we know, such behavior of the fabric of space is impossible.

To reconcile the observations of universe expansion with this theory, scientists have proposed that space is filled with an enigmatic entity that can't be detected in ground or space-based experiments.

This mysterious substance, called dark energy, interacts very weakly with other types of matter and fields, so, there is currently no reliable information about its structure or origin.

In a recent study published April 5 in the journal Physical Review D, researchers proposed a bold new candidate for dark energy: subatomic-size wormholes — or tiny tunnels connecting disparate points in space.

Related: 

• Wormholes might bend light like black holes do — and that could be the key to finding them

According to the authors, these wormholes are constantly being born and destroyed in the vacuum of space due to quantum effects. This is similar to how particles are produced near the event horizons of black holes, leading to Hawking radiation; or how electron-positron pairs are generated by a strong electric field — a phenomenon known as the Schwinger effect.

However, the creation of these wormholes is somewhat different from those other phenomena because their mathematical description requires quantum effects in gravity to be accounted for — a task that's much more complicated and poorly understood.

These difficulties in calculating quantum gravitational phenomena prevented the authors from accurately deriving the wormhole birth rate. However, using an approach known as Euclidean quantum gravity, they showed that if about 10 billion wormholes are spontaneously created per cubic centimeter per second, the energy they generate would be sufficient to explain the currently observed rate of the universe's expansion.

"Although our result was derived on the grounds of Euclidean quantum gravity… it is likely that our modification may hold for other quantum gravity theories as well," study co-author Stylianos Tsilioukas, a doctoral student at the University of Thessaly and National Observatory of Athens, told Live Science via email.

Moreover, the team's analysis showed that their model of dark energy is even better observationally than the most widely accepted theory, known as the Standard Cosmological Model, which posits that dark energy has a time-independent energy density.

"According to our proposal dark energy can change as time flows," Tsilioukas said. "This is a major advantage because recent observations suggest that the rate of expansion of the universe is different in recent times than it was in the early universe."

However, no matter how successful the researchers' model is at explaining the general properties of dark energy, the validity of any physical theory must be tested with experimental data. And for now, the theory remains untestable.

In the future, the ever-increasing accuracy of space experiments and observations should enable astronomers to deduce the universe expansion rate in more detail, as well as to measure other observable manifestations of dark energy. This could enable researchers to test whether this newly proposed model of dark energy is correct.

In the meantime, the authors plan to further improve their theoretical analysis. "We are working right now on a model which calculates the rate of wormhole formation. " Tsilioukas said. "The research seems promising and we hope to publish the results very soon."

• https://youtu.be/ERIvFWy_Uns

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

12-08-2024 om 00:56 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Pentagon official reveals tantalizing seven-minute encounter with glowing blue UFO - which emitted enough energy to 'power a small city'

• READ MORE: Experts have identified 'hairy UFO' that crashed in North Carolina

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A US Department of Defense contractor's tantalizing encounter with a giant, glowing UFO has sparked 10 years of research and two patents inspired by his encounter.

Three witnesses, including that Pentagon engineer, report that they captured electronic evidence of a 'barbell' UFO, half the length of a football field, that glowed an eerie 'indigo' blue.

The craft, they said, flew silently over an old logging road in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on August 28, 2013, near where the trio had camped for a hunting trip.

DailyMail.com spoke with the case's first investigators, who shared electronic data from the contractor's attempt to film the object — showing 'white noise' pulses in the video that recur in one-second loops identical to strobing light from the UFO itself.

Three witnesses, including a Pentagon engineering contractor, report capturing electronic evidence of a 170-ft long 'barbell' UFO that glowed an eerie 'indigo' blue. Above a  Computer-Aided Design (CAD) 3D render of the UFO, made by the Pentagon contractor witness himself

'The captured data of the event,' the witness reported, 'may be the first real physical proof of not just a craft flying, but that it flies by virtue of an incredibly complex and [...] powerful spinning electromagnetic propulsion system.'

The case was investigated by the same nanotechnology expert whose analysis of a 2007 mass UFO sighting in Texas became a centerpiece of the Steven Spielberg-produced UFO docuseries 'Encounters' last year on Netflix.

'Is there another 'barbell' case we've investigated like this?' that engineer, UFO investigator Robert Powell, told DailyMail.com of this rare case. 'No, it's the only one.'

Powell told DailyMail.com that UFO cases with this shape are so rare that only about '50 to 60 cases' exist 'throughout history.'

Powell, whose new book on UFOs has garnered praise from former Defense Department intelligence official Chris Mellon, personally visited the contractor's lab and worked with him on analyzing the eerie interference on his UFO video.

'He gave me a tour of the defense facility,' Powell said, who vetted the source's identity and biographical claims.

'There was a heavy duty commercial 3D printer in the lab and there were offices with three or four engineers that worked there beside him in that his building,' he noted.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

Retired US Army Colonel says secret UFO projects should be made public by October 2030 - to beat America's rivals and get ahead of a 'catastrophic' leak 

The August 28, 2013 'barbell' UFO encounter itself, these witnesses said, began at around 9:40pm as they were returning to civilization from a black bear hunting expedition, a practice that is legal when done in season in Canada.

The defense contractor witness was seated in the back of Dodge 4x4 truck, with the two other witnesses in the front seat, as reported to Powell and his co-investigator, retired former police detective Phil Leech.

'We were roughly four-and-a-half or five miles from the main road, when I noted something over my shoulder,' continued the defense contractor, who wishes to remain anonymous to preserve his Defense Department business contacts.

'The very first thing that was intense was just how bright this thing was,' he noted. 

'It was spectacular. Having been involved with optical systems in the past, we're talking about a vehicle that looked like a stadium lighting scenario — it was brilliant.'

The witness described 'an indigo plasma that covered most of the craft,' which was bone-shaped or barbell-shaped and extended about 170-feet long, 60-feet wide and 20-feet tall, as it flew slowly just over the tree-line above this old logging road. 

The case was investigated by UFO researcher Robert Powell (above) - the same nanotech engineer whose analysis of a mass UFO sighting witnessed by over 300 people in Texas became a centerpiece to Netflix's Steven Spielberg-produced UFO docuseries 'Encounters' 

'The craft rotated slowly around its center while emitting an electrical-spark-like shower, always opposite of the direction of travel,' the defense contractor stated, 'but without a specific origin point.'

The witness said he first attempted to film the UFO with two devices that he had on him, a Motorola cellphone and a Sony HD camera. 

But both devices behaved has if they were caught in 'a boot sequence,' failing to stay on while the craft was nearby, about 400 feet, leaving the witness to view the UFO more closely through the scope of his rifle. 

Up close, he told investigators, 'The lights that it emitted were not incoherent light,' meaning not the diffuse 'soft light' like that from a light bulb, but more like laser light.

The lay person's terms, he described the light as like 'tens of thousands of small lit particles, best described as those that occur during a fountain-type firework.'

But, more technically, the contractor described it as 'coherent' light: 'It was salty to my eyes. It was just as if I was looking into a laser that had been passed through a diffraction grating or something of that nature.'

Witnesses described 'an indigo plasma that covered most of the craft,' which was barbell-shaped and extended about 170-ft long, 60-ft wide and 20-ft tall, as it flew slowly over the tree-line Above a CAD 3D render of the UFO showing the UFO on the logging road in Ontario

About the logging road in southwestern Ontario where the 'barbell' UFO was spotted in 2013

'Both the other witnesses were extremely worked up about this,' the defense contractor said in a video taped interview. 'In fact, one of them said [...] "Just shoot it!" like he wanted me to actually shoot a rifle round into this thing.' 

The UFO moved in its slow rotating motion for approximately six or seven minutes, eventually allowing the defense contractor witness to film the event with his Sony HD camera, which yielded only static despite working before and after the event.

The sighting ended with 'a similar lit craft' emerging on the horizon and both UFOs zipping off a 'at incredible speed.' 

The moment left just visual static and the witnesses' astonished voices on their tape.

'I flew up to meet the guy,' Powell told the DailyMail.com, 'because it was just such an unusual case. I wanted to verify the reality of it. It was more of a personal thing.'

When Powell toured the defense contractor's engineering business, he worked with him to test his Sony footage via an oscilloscope — a device that tracks changes in electrical voltages, frequency, and other specs to troubleshoot electronics. 

'The time I spent with him on the oscilloscope was probably 20 or 30 minutes,' Powell said. 

'The first thing we looked at were the black bears that they had shot, mostly because we wanted to see a baseline on the oscilloscope, what the camera looks like just under normal operation,' he noted. 

'Then we looked at it when it was all basically noise in terms of video,' Powell said, 'here's some signals on the oscilloscope that repeat.'

Powell toured the defense contractor witness's engineering business and worked with him to test his Sony footage via an oscilloscope - a device that tracks changes in voltages, frequency, distortion and other electrical behavior (picture from that test above)

As provisionally concluded in Powell and Leech's report on the UFO case, produced in 2015 and 2016 for the civilian group the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), the oscilloscope 'post process of the video' matched the rhythm of the UFOs light show (testing shown above)

This oscilloscope processing of the video revealed that the 'interference' matched the rhythm of the UFO's light show, according to Powell and Leech's report on the UFO case, conducted for the civilian group the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), 

What looked just like 'white noise' on the video tape actually showed 'a perfect pulsation function,' according to their report.

This hidden 'perfect' pulse revealed by the scope was 'timed to the revolution of the lights' on the UFO and repeated at the same speed 'roughly 1-second intervals.'

According to the defense contractor witness, the pattern was what would be expected if the 'indigo' plasma outside the UFO was behaving like a very large version of an normal alternating current (A/C) motor. 

Such a giant A/C motor would produce a magnetic field around it that could disrupt nearby electronics in a similar way. 

'I believe this to be a poly phasing of two immense high frequency A/C fields polarized differently,' as the defense contractor put it.

'A white noise screen with a perfect pulsation function,' according to their report's appendix, 'is timed to the revolution of the lights from the [UFO's two] disks at roughly 1-second intervals.' Above, 11 cycles of the repeating one-second pulse as pulled from the video noise

Above, a close up on one of the repeating pulses, showing harmonic resonance. The researchers hope that this 'harmonic hash' will provide more clues on the UFOs propulsion system in the near future

'A more in-depth report is being generated for continued studies of this apparent "electronic signature,"' the defense contractor witness noted.  

But Powell and Leech added that interesting progress has already been made: 'The witness has two patents that resulted from information derived from the event.'

Based on the defense contractor's own experience producing plasmas at a much smaller scale than the indigo plasma that he said enveloped the giant craft, he was able to calculate a ballpark figure for the energy required to produce this field — which he suspects is the UFO's propulsion system.

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Calculated that the the craft had an approximate surface area of 3.1 million square inches, as he wrote to Powell and Leech, 'a minimum of 160MW (160 million watts)' of power would be needed to surround the craft in plasma. 

'This amount of power is 33 percent of the 478 million-watt nuclear power plant in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska,' he said, but packed into an object a fraction of that size.

'Unquestionably this craft was the highest power density vehicle I have ever even imagined,' at least according to the defense contractor witness.

Powell is sympathetic to view of skeptics who have noted that that while the case is 'a great story [...] without proof it's still anecdotal.'

The UFO investigator told DailyMail.com that he is still is in contact with the witness and 'prodding him every once a while about getting a raw copy of the video.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

11-08-2024 om 22:04 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Top UFO investigator reveals three spine-tingling, never-before-seen encounters

• READ MORE Pentagon reveals seven-minute encounter with UFO 

By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

You may have heard of the Tic Tac UFO encounter or the Gimbal and Go Fast videos.

But years before these now-world-famous craft sightings went mainstream, a little-known research group was analyzing them over and over again.

MUFON - the Mutual UFO Network - has 700 investigators in the U.S. and has been collecting evidence of strange encounters since the 1960s.

One of its top analysts, Bob Spearing, told DailyMail.com 'Our slogan is, 'Doing the Air Force's job since 1969'.' MUFON now has 137,000 reports of UFO encounters in its files.

Searing is today revealing the strangest cases which he believes could be the catalyst for further government investigations and congressional hearings.

Flying squids

The idea of 'Jellyfish' UFOs rocketed into the public consciousness thanks to a video on an Iraqi military base, released by journalist Jeremy Corbell.

MUFON debunked that video, which Spearing describes as having 'so many flaws' - but looked in its archive to find others.

'What we found was startling,' said Spearing - there were dozens of similar cases, both of larger squid-like craft - and smaller floating squid, some of which seemed to 'suck the life-force' from victims.

This floating squid was pictured in Denmark in 1975(MUFON)

This 'squid' was spotted in Rhode Island in 2023 (MUFON)

'We found a lot of drawings and photographs starting from Denmark in the 70s of these giant cloud-like mushrooms, and it goes right up until today - but then we also discovered that there's also a phenomenon of indoor jellyfish.

One strange encounter in Singapore found sleeping women attacked by floating objects with bioluminescent tentacles.

This squid was spotted in Russia in 1977 (MUFON) 

Spearing said: 'They noticed that in the corner of the room there were these squid-like objects with bio luminescent tentacles. 

'In one case, the creature, whatever it was, had attached itself to the back of the woman, and she felt pain, and that's what woke her up.

'The thing was sentient because it jumped away. She could hear it actually feel disturbed in English, like she could hear it telepathically.'

The squid attached itself to her like it was sucking the life force out of her.

Other squid encounters included one in Vancouver in 2016, and one in 2024 - as well as two further encounters in Iran.

MUFON's record of one of the Iranian encounter reads: 'The witness is a 45 year old woman, married with two sons.

'Few nights ago on October 24th the witness heard a sound again. She knew something was coming for her again. She woke up feeling a pressure against her chest. She said out-loud what is going on?'

A witness sketched what they saw for MUFON (MUFON) 

The Iranian woman woke up with scars on her abdomen (MUFON)

'That's when she saw what looked like a Boxed Jelly fish with lots of short legs, Half blue and half red on her stomach. It looked like a sea creature. It was right on top of her and then it got up and sat on the floor. 

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'Then disappeared after a few minutes. The next day she saw a scar few inches long on her abdomen. It has been itching and burning from inside out. Witness is very worried.'

The octagon spacecraft

Back in 2023, MUFON's interest was piqued after the U.S. military shot down three alleged Chinese spy balloons - one of which was octagonal in shape.

The search for the octagonal object was called off by Canadian mounted police after it was shot down with a Sidewinder missile.

'They could find the Titan submersible in 12,000 feet of water, but they couldn't find something in 142 feet of water?' says Spearing.

MUFON accessed its database of 137,00 cases, and found many reports of octagonal objects - some of which were startlingly similar.

Spearing said, 'It's mostly drawings. It's all drawings by witnesses, but there were a tremendous amount of cases, and the objects all look the same. 

'They were between 30 and 60 feet somewhere, octagons. They all had patterns of yellow, orange and white lights on the bottom.'

A map of octagon-shaped UFO sightings across the USA (MUFON)

One witness drew an image of what they saw (MUFON) 

Many had been spotted near strategic military base - and one was in the Upper Michigan peninsula on Lake Huron, where the USAF shot down the first Octagon.

One California sighting in 2014 was described in a MUFON UFO report: '… I… thought it might be a helicopter, or a new aircraft, but ..it was neither one of these,.. no propellers or wings. 

'There was NO sound at all…..Marsh Air Force base is several miles away, and I also took that into consideration. I counted the points of the shape, which was eight.

'It was dark out, but there were lights surrounding the craft in white, yellow red and orange.'

Cases stretched back to 1976, and were found in countries in Europe and beyond - often around military bases and other high-security installations.

In August 2023, a witness saw an Octagon over Fort Knox at 4.23 in the morning - and it sparked a reaction from a UFO-sensing device known as a MADAR detector built to detect changes in pressure and magnetism.

A UFO-sensing device known as a MADAR detector built to detect changes in pressure and magnetism (MUFON)

The MADAR devices are built to detect changes in pressure (MUFON)

Spearing said: 'These are all over the country. Volunteers have these hooked up all over the country.'

The witness wrote: 'The entire object and lights appeared to be under shallow water changing the shape very slightly yet still very visible. I've been totally freaked out ever since my sighting and was totally frozen as the object past over me and my home.'

The sighting was described and sketched in detail by a witness (MUFON) 

The octagon sighting coincided with a change in pressure which Spearing believes is related to a craft entering or leaving Earth's atmosphere.

The Delaware encounter

One of the most disturbing encounters in MUFON's archives involved a cylindrical craft which seemed to 'suck' a coyote up into the sky - and then turned its attention to human prey.

Spearing said: 'We have one drawing, basically a girl was on vacation in Delaware, near the Atlantic Ocean, a summer community, and behind her, about 100 yards out, is a forest of pine trees.

'She saw a silver-ish cylinder come down with purple lights on it. It comes down almost to maybe three feet above the ground. It was four feet long. 

The 1980 encounter saw a coyote 'sucked up into the sky' (MUFON)

'And she sees it drop something out of the bottom of the cylinder. And it turns out, it seems to be a chunk of meat.

'The coyote comes up to the meat sucked up into the cylinder. It vibrates again, incredibly loud, and about three minutes later, she hears what sounds like bones crunching them, plop. The coyote gets dropped out, and the thing takes off.'

The girl ran back into the house to grab a camera and came out to take a picture, Spearing said.

Spearing said, 'So she goes back in the house, and her mother says, Where have you been? 

'She goes, I just went outside to take a picture of something. She goes, you've been gone for four hours. It's one o'clock in the afternoon, so the girl had four hours missing time.'

Spearing says that it may be that the girl was abducted and investigated - but she may have been 'very, very lucky'.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

11-08-2024 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Top UFO investigator reveals three never-before-seen encounters

By BETHAN SEXTON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A Texas city which has seen a huge spike in UFO sightings is hoping a new app can help identify the phenomena.

The skies of Austin are increasingly lit up by unexplained sightings, partly thanks to Elon Musk's Starlink.

The network of 6,000 satellites were launched by his SpaceX company to try and bring internet to remote areas.

As a result there has been a rise in the number of suspected UFO sightings, although experts acknowledge not all can be explained by billionaire's project.

'With Starlink and other phenomenon up there in the night sky, you see more and more stuff that that you can't explain right away,' Michael Endl, a professor of astronomy and physics at Austin Community College told KXAN.

A Texas city which has seen a huge spike in UFO sightings is hoping a new app can help identify the phenomena

Now the Enigma Labs app is attempting to try and gather more data on UFO sightings in order to classify them better.

The app asks users to upload photo of the object, description and location data which is then sent to the government.

The company examines the reports and rules out objects which have a clear explanation such as Starlink. 

'One of the things that we've heard from the Pentagon and from NASA is that a lot of the issue with this topic is there's not enough data. So that's exactly what we're trying to do is gather more data,' Alejandro Rojas, a UFO researcher with the app said.

'Once you can't rule things out, that's when you have something anomalous that either deserves more research, or can point you in a direction.'

Among the unexplained phenomena submitted through the app was a 'small, cylindrical' UFO seen 'zig-zagging' above the Austin skies on July 28, 2023.

The skies of Austin are increasingly lit up by unexplained sightings, partly thanks to Elon Musk 's Starlink

The Enigma Labs app is attempting to try and gather more data on UFO sightings in order to classify them better

Another stargazer gave an account of a strange object spotted in December.

'I can't remember who saw it first, but we noticed this object directly above us. It felt distinctly weightless, spherical, and kind of amorphous,' the account reads.

'The texture was almost like a static TV, kind of gaseous, and grayish black except for a BRIGHT red glow that would flash along one edge, then another, then emanate from the bottom of the object. 

.'Tt was definitely at or above cloud level and was visible until it was way off in the distance, never changing its speed to my perception. We have no idea what this was - not balloons because it was too far and cutting against the wind, definitely not a plane, definitely not a consumer drone.'

 One curious incident during the solar eclipse saw a black object float past the sun during the cosmic event.

'We were on a boat waiting for the solar eclipse to happen,' the poster explained.

The app asks users to upload photo of the object, description and location data which is then sent to the government

Starlink is a network of 6,000 satellites were launched by SpaceX to try and bring internet to remote areas

'Ten minutes before totality I see this object through my camera fly by on the screen, didn't think much of it at the moment until I reviewed the footage a few days later.'

But UFO-skeptic Robert Shaeffer has his doubts about the usefulness of the app.

'Since we know that the vast majority of reported UFO sightings are readily explained, and hence of no scientific value, this app encourages the reporting and sharing of low-quality UFO sightings, thus muddying the waters,' he said.

'It promotes the idea that seeing a UFO is something that the average person can expect to experience, but even if you don't see anything, send us a photo of the sky, anyway!' 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

11-08-2024 om 21:33 geschreven door peter  

Getty Images

Are Underwater UFOs an Imminent Threat? The U.S. Government Sure Thinks So—And Here’s the Proof

In 1992, “multiple witnesses” in California reported that more than 200 disk-shaped objects soundlessly exited Santa Monica Bay waters, hovered for a moment, and then sped away into the sky. Six years later, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Charles Howard wrote an account of an apparent underwater anomaly. “My ship was visiting Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when I saw three strange, big white lights in the water,” he said in the History Channel show UFO Files. They were “10 or 20 feet on each side with a rounded shape,” according to Howard’s written account.

Claims of such Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs, have intrigued UFO enthusiasts for decades. Based on eyewitness reports, some of the objects have even seemed to traverse the boundary between air and water, traveling at shocking speeds of hundreds of miles per hour.

A small group of UFO devotees, including government security and military officials, have believed for years that the U.S. should be seriously looking into potentially threatening anomalies in bodies of water, as well on land and in the air. In a bipartisan effort, that group ultimately helped convince the U.S. government to legislate a name change for the term it uses to refer to UFOs today—from “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” to “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” reflecting lobbyists’ concerns about underwater threats.

The slight name change may appear to be a simple case of semantics, but it proves the Pentagon sees underwater UFOs as a legitimate concern.

The Department of Defense has made it clear that it doesn’t assume UAPs necessarily indicate extraterrestrial activity. In fact, these phenomena have so far proven to have mundane explanations. These include human-made technology like drones and weather balloons, Starlink satellites, or atmospheric events such as lenticular cloud formations.

The Government’s Name Game

A shift in how the government handled UFO reports first came to a head in the 2010s. Pressure from legislators, as well as public interest in the government’s disclosure of classified UFO reports, started changing defense culture. For instance, after decades of shielding information on sightings from the public, the military now encourages service members to report unexplained phenomena. Today, Navy pilots report odd incidents in the interest of national defense, such as the 2019 sighting by a Navy warship that seemed to link UFOs and USOs.

In 2021, the Department of Defense created the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, a program within the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence meant to “standardize collection and reporting” of UFO sightings. Aiming to integrate knowledge and efforts across the Pentagon and other government agencies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) soon afterward. By law, every federal agency must “review, identify, and organize each Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) record in its custody for disclosure to the public and transmission to the National Archives.”

Prior to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act—which authorizes funding levels for the U.S. military and other defense priorities—UAP originally stood for only aerial objects. Now, it includes underwater and trans-medium phenomena. It’s why AARO was so named, to investigate “All-domain” anomalies. But, before the legal name change, AARO was already considering objects over and in the water—so it was a little confusing to keep calling them all “aerial.”

In 2022, the terminology to describe unexplained incidents officially switched from “aerial” to “anomalous.” Congress enacted the name change that December. At the time, Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security told a roundtable of AARO:

“You may have caught that I just said unidentified anomalous phenomena, whereas in the past the department has used the term unidentified aerial phenomena. This new terminology expands the scope of UAP to include submerged and trans-medium objects. Unidentified phenomena in all domains, whether in the air, ground, sea or space, pose potential threats to personnel security and operations security, and they require our urgent attention.”

This legal change traces back to pressures from UFO enthusiasts who believed submerged and trans-medium objects, which seem to fly between air and sea, should be included in the government’s potential threat evaluation. These proponents include U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., who published a report on the potential maritime threat of USOs, and Luis Alizondo, who once ran the government’s secret Pentagon unit, the 2007–12 Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. A dearth of data about USOs and UAPs is “unsettling,” because they “jeopardize US maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean,” Rear Admiral Gallaudet wrote in his report. In addition, this is an opportunity to expand maritime science and meet the security and scientific challenges of the future, he added.

The Hunt For Solid Evidence

Yet, evidence of submerged objects is murky at best, says UAP investigator Mick West. There is “vastly less evidence than for flying objects,” he explains in an email. “You can’t see very far underwater, so there’s no video or photos. There are only stories about anomalous sonar returns and occasional sightings that might as well be of sea monsters.”

The Puerto Rico “Aguadilla” incident of 2013 also influenced USO and trans-medium enthusiasts, West says. However, they base their claim largely on one video of the incident, which when analyzed turns out to have “a perfectly reasonable explanation of two wedding lanterns and parallax illusions,” West says.

Based on the angle of the camera, positioned on a moving airplane, and consequently its changing line of sight on the flying objects, the viewer sees the objects streaking rapidly over the ocean, apparently diving in, and then emerging again. West’s analysis confirms a theory first proposed by Rubén Lianza, the head of the Argentinian Air Force’s UAP investigation committee.

The objects were wedding lanterns that originated at a nearby hotel and floated on the wind. Lianza confirmed the hotel typically released lanterns that were consistent with the video. The thermal camera (which reads heat) made it appear that the objects merged with the ocean because when the lantern’s flames were hidden, they were about the same temperature as the water they floated over. At the same time, the lanterns seemed to emerge from the water when the flame was visible again.

New trans-medium and submerged UAP reports could crop up in the future. The government will only be able to take reports of strange underwater lights or objects flying out of the water seriously, says West, if the sightings come with enough solid evidence to follow up with a solid analysis.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

11-08-2024 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

10 Movies About Extraterrestrial Life That Feel Like They Could Really Happen

By Alexander Valentino

SUMMARY

Movies centered around extraterrestrial life have always been a popular subject, but it's a select few of them that manage to truly depict what genuine human contact with aliens might realistically look like. Compared to other types of paranormal phenomena commonly depicted in movies, alien stories have the greatest chance of becoming real, with real-world governments even admitting to studying unidentified aerial phenomena. The best alien movies typically take advantage of this by thinking about what contact with extraterrestrial life would realistically mean.

To make a movie about aliens feel realistic, there are several things that must be mastered. The extraterrestrials themselves should feel alien in the true sense of the word, being unlike anything found in our own world. But more importantly, a given film's human cast should react appropriately to their presence, usually doing so in terror, making alien stories great for blends of horror and science fiction. In addition to all this, a sci-fi film should strive for an even tone if they hope to make their story of alien contact believable.

10. Contact - 1977

Robert Zemeckis' 1977 sci-fi classic takes advantage of the real life SETI programs to ground his story in realism. Standing for the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, SETI programs refer to real efforts to locate evidence of alien civilizations among the stars, typically doing so with advanced telescopes and listening devices capable of picking up all kinds of possible avenues of communication. Contact takes place in one such program, following a doctor who makes the discovery of a lifetime.

Beyond taking inspiration from real-life searches for alien life, Contact is very meticulous in its attention to scientific detail. The film has been acclaimed by scientists for being one of the most realistic looks at extraterrestrial life ever conceived, describing an alien civilization so fundamentally advanced that their capabilities seem almost magical to humans. The film's ultimate ambiguous levels of hard evidence is also very true to life, with real alien experiences being notoriously difficult to prove.

9. Arrival - 2016

Whereas Contact ends with humanity aching for hard evidence confirming the existence of aliens, Arrival takes a more thoughtful look at what an obvious global arrival of interstellar travelers could look like. Directed by Denis Villenueve, now famous for the Dune movies, the film follows a linguist who is recruited by the government to establish a rapport with alien creatures that arrive in massive ships all over the Earth. During her time studying the aliens' language, she makes an incredible discovery of their awesome abilities.

The military response to a neutral alien presence in Arrival feels incredibly genuine, with nervous generals being quick to see threats while trying to ascertain the aliens' goals on Earth. The creatures themselves, called "heptapods" for their seven-limbed bodies, are properly bizarre, communicating with the strange formation of inky black sigils. In addition to simply being a marvelous film that examines the human spirit, Arrival feels like a thoughtful interpretation of realistic human response to aliens.

8. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - 1977

The legendary filmography of Stephen Spielberg includes quite a few alien movies, with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial being by far the most famous. As great as E.T.'s family-friendly story is, it's far from a realistic portrayal of alien life, especially when compared to its directorial sibling Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Close Encounters of the Third Kind revolves around a simple blue-collar worker whose life trajectory is forever changed by a close encounter with a UFO.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind conveys both the potential beauty and madness alien visitors could bring, turning Roy into an obsessive fanatic following his encounter, just like many real-life claimants of alien abduction do. The government's attempts at communication and cover-ups in the film feel very true-to-life, whereas the presence of real-world mysteries like the missing ships of the Bermuda Triangle help connect the story further to real-life. Despite being a dreamier film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is astonishingly realistic.

7. Nope - 2022

Not every tale of aliens results in such warm, fuzzy feelings as Arrival, Contact, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind does, with Jordan Peele's recent film Nope being a premiere example of realistic alien horror. The film revolves around a family business of horse ranchers that discover their property being used as a hunting ground for a mysterious flying saucer. The object turns out to be far more dangerous than suspected, but the starring siblings, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, make a vow to capture it on video.

Despite its unassuming name, Jean Jacket is one of the most terrifying alien entities in cinema history, and its full unfurled form is almost divine in its horrific Lovecraftian imagery that pushes the limits of human sensation. Stephen Yuen's Jupe also plays a venture capitalist seeking to profit off the beat that feels all too true to life, owing to his survival of a chimp attack based on a real-life incident. From the human greed that drives the action to the incomprehensible terror of its alien, Nope is a triumph of extraterrestrial horror.

6. War Of The Worlds - 2005

Stephen Spielberg's aliens aren't always as friendly as E.T., as proven by his overly-disparaged 2005 film War of the Worlds. Based on the famous H.G. Wells science fiction novel of the same name, the film describes humanity's contact with an openly hostile invading alien force, capable of wiping out human civilization with their advanced technology. Tom Cruise stars as a simple dockworker and father trying to survive the hectic events from a boots-on-the-ground perspective.

In terms of all-out alien wars, it doesn't get much more realistic than War of the Worlds, whose horrifying Martian invaders paint scenes of destruction comparable to real human warfare. The film is rooted in the wartime paranoia that ran rampant in American society following the September 11 terror attacks, further grounding the film in a dark reality. While the film makes a few concessions that feel very Hollywood, for the majority of its runtime, War of the Worlds could be studied as a simulation of actual alien attackers.

5. Fire In The Sky - 1993

As realistic as some alien movies can get, it's rare for a film to directly cite a real-world alleged alien abduction as inspiration. Fire in the Sky does just that, however, loosely basing itself off a book written by a supposed survivor of alien abduction called The Walton Experience. The film follows logger Travis Walton as he goes missing on the job, only to turn up later traumatized by the ordeal of his terrifying alien encounter.

What makes Fire in the Sky both so scary and realistic is the fact that it's based on the real-life Walton's alleged true experiences, making the gruesome experiments he suffers at the hands of his captors in the film all the more chilling. The film doesn't go out of its way to inject some moral or false narrative into Walton's tale, acting as a straightforward recollection of events, making it feel even more grounded and tangible. From the gut-wrenching realism of the abduction scenes to the heartbreaking reactions of Walton's friends and family, Fire in the Sky is disturbingly real.

4. District 9 - 2009

District 9 twists the typical formula of alien contact with an interesting supposition that humanity would pose a bigger threat to aliens than the other way around. The film chronicles a higher-up in a weapons manufacturing company who seeks to exploit alien technology after a massive ship full of buglike beings, called "prawns", lands in South Africa. Soon, the hapless Wikus finds himself embroiled in a bitter war against his own species as he slowly mutates into one of the extraterrestrial creatures.

Being a semi-found footage film, and chronicled with grounded shakycam when it does switch to non-diegetic perspectives, District 9 does a great job at pulling viewers into its gritty world. The discrimination the prawns face is a clear allegory for the real crimes of apartheid in South Africa, further drawing parallels between District 9 and the real world, both driven by human greed and fear. As one of the most plausible-feeling alien movies, it's a shame District 9's obviously-teased sequel never manifested even 15 years later.

Similarly to Fire in the Sky, Dark Skies relies on real accounts of alien abduction to generate deep-pitted fear in its viewers. Whereas the former strove to be a faithful account of a singular story, the latter instead pulls inspiration from multiple accounts in order to craft the most deliberately horrifying tale it can. The film revolves around a family who quickly become haunted by an alien presence, culminating in a terrifying encounter with extraterrestrial life.

Dark Skies plays out more like a haunted house story than an alien story, but manages to feel disturbingly true to life in its depictions of alien activity. Real concepts like amnesia, sleep paralysis, and hysteria are all weaponized against the film's hapless humans, who struggle to get out from under the shadow of their extraterrestrial tormentors. Considering the film's Grey aliens are based on actual descriptions of alien visitors, Dark Skies might be one of the most accurate alien movies around.    

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 1968

One of the most famous films of all time, let alone among Stanley Kubrick's legendary movie catalog, 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds up today as one of the most breathtaking, and possibly accurate, depictions of human life. The film describes a long journey through space in order to find an alien artifact, the mysterious monolith, a massive black structure of vast cosmological importance. It's up to the astronaut Dave to brave the dangers of his mission and ascend humanity to a new plane of being.

The interstellar travel depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out a year before humanity walked on the moon for the first time, is so realistic that conspiracy theorists accused Kubrick of having a hand in fabricating the moon landing. Not only that, but the film's predictions of A.I. have thus far been eerily prescient. As far as the aliens are concerned, it makes sense that an interstellar species advanced enough to cross the vast distances of space would be as god-like in power as the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey implies.

1. Cloverfield - 2008

Admittedly far less heady than 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cloverfield deserves more credit as an alien film that revitalized the found-footage horror genre. It's easy to forget that the titular monster is indeed alien in origin, crash-landing on the planet in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background details towards the end of the film. Cloverfield depicts a group of friends trying to find safety in the wake of a giant alien kaiju's attack on New York City, dodging hysteria and destruction.

Matt Reeves' mastery of found-footage editing and realistic cinéma vérité style makes Cloverfield almost seem like a documentary at times. While giant monsters are an inherently unrealistic premise, it's hard to imagine a film that takes the concept more seriously as Cloverfield does, likely accurately conveying what such a disaster would look like in real life. Technically an alien movie, Cloverfield shouldn't be discounted for its ability to bring a creature from another world to life without sacrificing realism.

{ https://screenrant.com/ }

11-08-2024 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

An extraterrestrial lobbyist who wants the US Congress to acknowledge aliens says the Vatican and indeed the Pope have serious questions to answer over UFO secrets

The Vatican should open up its archives after bombshell alien claims, one expert believes 

(Image: Getty Images)

Dramatic claims that the Pope has alien secrets in the Vatican should be looked into, according to a UFO expert.

Steve Bassett is convinced the Catholic Church knows about alien activity and believes they have evidence stashed away in secretive archives. He told The Sun he believed the Church considers extraterrestrials "important”, something evidenced through their existence in religious artwork.

Bassett is best known as an extraterrestrial lobbyist and he wants the US Congress to acknowledge “an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race”.

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His comments come in the wake of bombshell claims from David Grusch. Last year, the former Air Force intelligence officer said the US has possession of "craft of non-human origin" discovered in Italy during Mussolini’s reign in 1933.

Grusch said this was later "backchannelled" to US President Franklin Roosevelt via Pope Pius XII before American officials took control of the potential spaceship. The comments are leading extraterrestrial experts to push the Vatican for the truth.

Bassett said Grusch’s "striking" remarks had caught many believers and activists off guard. He explained the story was previously unknown to them and came as a “surprise”.

"The Catholic Church, we have always known, has been aware of this subject going back perhaps hundreds and hundreds of years,” he said. "It's gone so far as to say whoever these beings are, they [the Church] would be happy to baptise them if they wanted to be baptised."

Now, extraterrestrial experts hope the Vatican Apostolic Archives will uncover the truth. But The Sun reported they will need permission from Holy See — the Church’s supreme governing body — to sift through records spanning thousands of years.

Bassett said he thought the Church would eventually allow researchers in but this was unlikely to happen happen until the US formally revealed the existence of aliens. Until then, he added, question marks will linger over Grusch's claim.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

11-08-2024 om 18:25 geschreven door peter